Brothers In Arms (18 page)

“Will you want to eat?” Marie said.

“Save me something,” Isabelle said. “I don’t think I’ll be gone long.”

In a café across the street from the youth hostel her target was staying at, Isabelle lingered over coffee. After a short while, she saw the young Arab come out, his courier satchel slung across his shoulders, and watched him as he glanced around. Then he set off at a stroll toward the rendezvous point, a marijuana coffee shop a few blocks away. Isabelle followed him from across the street, taking her time and watching for any surveillance. There were no cars with extra mirrors and multiple antennas, no couples lingering overlong in storefronts, no solos suddenly changing direction to follow the young Arab. Satisfied that she alone was following the young man, she crossed the street and fell in behind him, studying his tradecraft. He stopped a few times to look in windows and watch for anyone following him; he looked across the street for anyone moving in tandem with him, and he hurried across the street when the light changed to see if anyone hurried to catch him. He stopped in one shop and
bought a bottle of water, then came out and stood in front and slowly drank the water, giving any watchers time to show themselves. She’d continued past him without another glance. He gave her the appreciative look that men normally gave her, but she ignored him and went on ahead. She knew where he was going, and that was her advantage.

Isabelle stopped in a shop and looked at some boots till she saw the Arab pass by. Then she came out and fell in behind him again. The weight of the knife bothered her, and she brushed her hands over her skirt to make sure that the knife wasn’t sagging against the fabric. She studied the nape of bin Hassan’s neck, and thought about taking the heavy bladed knife and sinking it into his spine. Her anger over the contract and the inadequacy of the client’s intelligence effort might find some short-lived release in that.

She looked for telltale signs of tension in his body. She had once studied massage, and with it anatomy, and found the knowledge the training imparted invaluable in her profession as a killer. The cutout was nervous and tense. She saw that in his shoulders and back. Amsterdam had no shortage of massage practitioners and was famous for its sex workers; why hadn’t he taken advantage of that? Of course, he was Muslim, but he was also young and male and the demands of covert operations required release. If he had been on her team she would have sent him for a massage and some sex to relax him.

He paused just short of the coffee shop to look in the window of a newsstand, his eyes roving over the racked magazines and the stacks of cigarettes and small cigars behind the cashier’s counter. She stopped beside him and said, “Hello, Joe from the States.”

The young man startled, his features for a moment registering surprise and more than a little fear, then he caught himself and turned to her.

“You must be Marta’s friend,” he said. “Is Marta with you?”

“Not today, Joe,” Isabelle said. She took his arm and tucked both hands into the crook of it. The young Arab tensed under her touch, and part of her filed that information away, even as she went to soothe him.

“Relax,” she said. “No one is following us, it’s a beautiful day, and we have some business to discuss.” She steered him back onto the sidewalk and into the flow of passersby. “Do you like coffee, Joe?”

“Yes,” Youssef said. “I do.”

“Then let us go then, you and I, to this café here, where we can get a good coffee and sit and watch people. I enjoy that, do you?”

Youssef paused. “Yes. I do.”

Isabelle gently steered him, letting his arm rest against her side and the swell of her breast. She was aware of his awareness of her sex, and she subtly encouraged his discomfort by bumping her body against him and pressing her breast into his arm.

At the café, they took a seat near the street, at a table away from the others, where the background noise of the street was just enough to mask their quiet conversation from the other patrons.

They sat quietly till their espressos arrived.

“So, Joe,” Isabelle said. “How do you find Amsterdam?”

Youssef sipped at his coffee with enthusiasm. “It is a beautiful city.”

“Yes it is,” Isabelle said. “Quite beautiful. The people are good, too, don’t you think?”

Youssef set his cup down, turned it slightly with one finger. “Yes.”

They sat together quietly for a few minutes, watching the people passing by, each hurrying on their way in the beautiful light of the summer day.

“So, Joe,” Isabelle finally said. “What of our business?”

“It is wondered if you can complete the contract.”

“No,” Isabelle said.

“I should say, it is wondered if you can complete the contract with additional information.”

Isabelle sighed. “Even with exact targeting information, information more specific than before, the target has become much harder. Our people there were unable to determine where the target is, and the level of protection, much higher than we were told, is sure to have risen. We don’t think that it can be done.”

Youssef let a distressed look slip across his face. “We are told that you are the best. If you think it can’t be done . . .”

“Not by us. We have had too much exposure and there isn’t enough information.” She paused. “If you don’t wish to be the bearer of bad tidings to your people, I would be glad to talk directly to them and explain why. I understand how difficult it must be for you to explain to them . . . why not let me help you?”

She watched the play of emotions across the young man’s face, and her intuition spoke clearly to her and guided her as it always did.

“It must be so hard for you,” she said. “Being alone in a city where you don’t know anyone . . . and then to have this difficult tasking upon you. Since we’re ending the contract anyway, I don’t think your people will mind meeting with me—I can help them make a decision about where else to go with the project.” She studied him, touched her ponytail, then folded her hands together on the table in front of her.

“Are you hungry, Joe?” she said. “Would you like to take a meal together?”

“Yes,” Youssef said. “I would like that.”

Over lunch they talked of inconsequential things. Youssef talked about his family, his friends from the camps, his loneliness; he poured it out to the sympathetic ear of the woman who told him to call her Isabelle.

“And what of the man who controls you?” Isabelle said. “Does he not spend time with you to help you with your tasks?”

Youssef shrugged. “He is a busy man, and there are many demands upon his time . . . he does the best he can.”

“When do you meet him again?”

“He’ll be coming here, in a few days. He’ll contact me and let me know when.”

“Then it’s perfect for us,” Isabelle said, stressing the
us
. “When he arrives we can meet and speak about the impossibility of continuing this contract. I can give him the bad news himself, to his face, and you need not concern yourself anymore with that.”

Relief and worry alternated on the young Arab’s face. “It’s not good tradecraft. He will be angry . . .”

“There’s no need for tradecraft between friends, and the contract is concluded. We are only a few people talking about past business, and we are very safe in this city. Let me worry about his anger, will you, my friend?”

“That would be good,” Youssef said. “If you could help . . .”

“Of course,” Isabelle said warmly. “What are friends for?”

She touched the top of her thigh where the fighting knife was sheathed, and studied the young man’s neck.

Ray Dalton sat at his desk, his isolation reinforced by the closed door and his instructions to his secretary to hold all calls and keep all visitors from his door.

He had a lot to think about.

On the desk in front of him were the latest reports, the ones he received as soon as each therapy session was completed, from the doctor working with Rhaman Uday. The frightening bits and pieces were coming together. Also on his desk was a report from the National Security Agency that pieced together intercepted communications with an old debrief from an Iraqi defector. The NSA report told of an Iraqi project to genetically engineer the smallpox virus. One of the project’s goals was to make the incubation period longer, and to enhance communicability during incubation. Another goal was to increase the lethality of the virus from its normal 30 percent fatality rate. Like all of the Iraqi biological projects, the program had been swathed in secrecy, but the defector debriefing indicated that the engineering had been successful. The virus had been tested on live humans, prisoners, in a secret Iraqi test facility. Saddam Hussein had been so interested in the outcome of the
program that he personally visited the facility and made sure that his high-level administration saw the effects of the virus. One of those people had been the administrator Rhaman Uday.

The name of the project, in English, was Sad Holiday.

During the three-and-a-half-hour drive to O’Hare airport in Chicago, Charley and Dale hashed out their game plan.

“What about weapons?” Charley said. “I’m not going light against the Twins.”

“We’ll be met at the airport once we clear customs,” Dale said. “The contact will take care of that for us. I ordered you a Glock.”

“I hate going naked.”

“We won’t be. The contact will provide us with transportation and a surveillance crew.”

“That will save us a lot of time, if the crew’s good.”

“According to Callan they are.”

“We’re onboard the same boat when it comes to what we want to do here, right?”

Dale nodded, his hands steady on the wheel of the rented Jeep Cherokee. “You’re right. Killing them isn’t the right solution. They’ve got too many powerful friends and they’ve done too much work for the powers that be—including our people.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No,” Dale said. “I lost my capacity for surprise about that kind of thing.”

“You and me both, brother,” Charley said. “Did it seem to you that Callan is moving pretty fast?”