Collision of Evil (35 page)

Hirter replaced the papers on the desktop.

“We have our link,” Waldbaer said.

“Most of it,” agreed Hirter. “Kaltenberg passed nerve gas equipment to some anti-Semitic Arabs in exchange for money and his need to have a place in history. I’ll ask my people to trace Prince Hafiz. He has to be the final figure leading to al-Assad.”

“Fine,” Waldbaer noted. “Now, let’s go to Munich. I’m supposed to brief the Bavarian security coordinator on where we stand.”

Sayyid kept his eyes to the sidewalk as much as possible, not only to preserve his anonymity, but to avoid having to glance at the garish array of strip joints and pornographic video stores lining the streets near the Munich main train station. It had rained all day, and the wet evening pavement reflected the gaudy flashing lights advertising their carnal wares. It was Sayyid’s turn to purchase food and bring it to his comrades in the hotel. He welcomed the opportunity to break up the suffocating boredom of sitting for hours in his room, long stretches of time interspersed only with briefer stays in the hotel coffee shop. He rejoiced in the fresh air, even if it was city air, its purity sullied, defiled even, by the readily discernable scent of hops emanating from the vents of the city’s several breweries.

He had one stop to make before ordering kebab at the little Turkish carry-out. The stop was unauthorized, the one act that he had to conceal from his comrades. It is not a bad thing I am doing, Sayyid told himself, even though the others would not approve. It was just that Fatima, his wife, was so young and their parting had been so abrupt and final. He needed to assure her, to let her know one last time that all was well with him, so that she would understand later, after he had become
shahid
. Sayyid felt great affection for his wife and intended to include her in his company of the elect in paradise, along with the harem of dark-eyed virgins. It was a private matter, a last settling of his affairs.

What harm could a single phone call do? He made his way to a yellow telephone booth, entered its cramped space, and pulled the
heavy metal-and-glass door shut behind him, dampening the traffic noise from the street. He slipped three euros into the stainless steel slot and dialed a familiar series of numbers.

The wind picked up speed over the North Atlantic, turning the vast grey expanse of water into angry whitecaps. The waves were driven mercilessly toward the English coast, ultimately slamming with a hollow roar into the churning gravel at Dover beach. The wind did not stop at the water’s edge but swept over grassy meadows and country lanes, urging pedestrians deeper into their rain macs. The gusts blasted over rolling countryside, punching the last, intransigent autumn leaves from surrendering branches. Eventually, the stream of air slammed into the Yorkshire region and clawed at the array of parabolic satellite dishes covering the verdant landscape of Menwith Hill Station, a sprawling communications monitoring facility jointly operated by the United States and a British counterpart, GCHQ—Government Communications Headquarters.

The field of antenna dishes in the Yorkshire countryside pulled in information from a series of high-range satellites concealed in the heavens above. The satellites picked up voice and data transmissions from several countries, including telephone calls. Some calls were intercepted due to the presence of key words, such as “Al-Qaeda” or “Shahid.”

A number of antenna dishes were concealed within radomes: large white spherical units that looked like giant golf balls deposited on the terrain. It was one of these dishes with a diameter of over a hundred feet facing due east that down-linked telephone intercept data from Germany, despite the howling interference of the storm.

Spencer Pryce-Ashton, the lean GCHQ official in charge of the evening shift, walked the long corridor of Building 122 with a
distinct military gait, carrying a yellow folder and a reel of audio tape. Even through the concrete walls of the bunker-like structure he could hear the ill-tempered assault of the wind. He smiled to himself, reflecting that he loved a good storm, a view common to inhabitants of the British Isles. He located the office he was looking for, and entered the open door past the nameplate that marked it as belonging to Mr. George Cienfuegos, NSA.

Cienfuegos, a squat and broad middle-aged man, looked up from his word processor at his British colleague. He yawned into a pudgy hand and his features settled into a pleasant smile. “Spencer, what can I do for you on such a crappy night?”

The GCHQ officer smiled in return. “Don’t disparage the weather, George, nothing to be done about it. If you’d bother to take a stroll outside you’d find it invigorating, I expect. Sadly, it’s not the joys of Yorkshire weather that bring me here.”

“To what do I owe the honor?” Cienfuegos asked, his voice taking on a more professional tone as he settled into his swivel chair.

“It’s those telephone numbers in Germany that your Maryland betters alerted us to last week. We’ve had no hits to date, as you know. All the phone activity on those numbers has been entirely mundane. Until now.”

Cienfuegos leaned forward, hands entwined on the government-issue desk in front of him. “Okay, Spencer, don’t be a tease. What’s up?”

“Quite. Well, it appears there was a phone call from a chap who seems to have been speaking to his wife. The caller referred to a ‘holy mission’ of some sort that he must fulfill. The female implores him to return home. The caller relates that she’ll be proud of him ‘once we have struck.’ There’s a bit more in this vein, the woman finally seems to accept that the chap isn’t coming back, there’s an exchange of ‘
Allah akhbar
,’ and he rings off. I imagine that your friends at Fort Meade will want to give a listen.”

Pryce-Ashton deposited the folder and reel of tape into Cienfuegos’s hands. “Tape of the original conversation. I thought you might want to alert Fort Meade yourself to ensure this gets the proper
attention. That should do it, George; I expect I can leave you to your business.”

“Don’t worry, Spencer, I’ll send a cable to the fort and let them do their thing. By the way, where did this guy call from?”

“Munich. From a public phone, as one might expect.”

Outside Building 122 the wind picked up as the storm rushed over the Yorkshire hills. Hundreds of miles away in Munich, Sayyid had returned to his charmless spaces in the Rote Adler Hotel after delivering warm Doener kebab to his comrades. He looked into the mirror above the stained sink and rubbed a hand over his beardless face. At least, he comforted himself, Fatima understood why he had vanished, and she would honor his martyr’s death. Other than fulfilling the mission by unleashing the contents of the canister, there was nothing left to be done.

“Munich is the source of the call,” Caroline said, reading the transcript that had been forwarded to CIA from NSA in Maryland.

Warren Stockbridge sat stern faced and attentive across the table from her. “Munich,” he repeated.

“That’s interesting,” Caroline continued. “Munich isn’t far from Rosenheim. Sixty miles or so. I’m surprised that al-Assad and company didn’t put more geography between their new lair and the warehouse where they produced the Sarin. My guess was that they headed for Berlin, it’s the capital and Germany’s largest city. That struck me as the optimal place to conduct a terrorist attack. I was wrong.”

Stockbridge smiled briefly. “Your logic is good. Berlin makes sense from a targeting perspective. Still, Munich is big enough. This intercept is watertight. The phone call was made to this Fatima, the wife of one of al-Assad’s accomplices, Sayyid. The content refers to a pending suicide attack that Sayyid will be a part of. Most importantly, this call originated from a public phone in downtown Munich. Now for some supposition. I can’t imagine that al-Assad or any terrorist employing good security would have sanctioned this call. I expect that Sayyid did it without authorization, which means that we got lucky. The Germans need to pull out all the stops in scouring Munich for this group.”

Caroline nodded. “I’ll place a secure call to Robert Hirter. He can pass the info to his police kommissar, and they can hit the Munich streets running.”

Stockbridge adjusted his burgundy wool tie. “Caroline, it’s not quite that easy, I’m afraid.”

She stared at him blankly, awaiting clarification. “Here’s our problem. The intercept people have declined permission for us to pass the communications intercept information to the Germans.”

Caroline raised her eyebrows and slammed the palms of her hands audibly on the tabletop. “What? Have they gone crazy? This is a terrorism case for God’s sake, it’s actionable intelligence.”

Stockbridge could not suppress a smile at the fervent display. He raised his long frame from the chair and strolled the beige carpeting of his office. “Stay cool, Caroline. Look at it from the NSA prism. If they give the transcript to the Germans, they automatically make clear their ability to target the German phone network. German authorities would regard our intercept of their domestic communications as illegal and raise holy hell. Because we got the information via the UK, we would also have to get GCHQ to agree to pass the information to the Germans. A tad complicated, right?”

Caroline stood now as well, energized. “Great. Let me get this straight, because of bureaucratic complications we don’t tell our people in Bavaria that al-Assad and his gang are in Munich? That’s criminal.”

Stockbridge clucked disapprovingly. “Caroline, I said stay cool; you are not cool. I didn’t say that we would do nothing. What I said was that NSA won’t give the raw information to the Germans because it would compromise their collection method. Fair enough. What we need to do is disguise how the information was acquired, while ensuring that the Germans understand that Munich is the target.”

“Oh,” Caroline replied, her anger of a moment before dissipating. “That sounds okay in principle, but what do we ask Robert to tell the police?”

“I think we’ll use a different messenger for this piece of information. Have Central Travel book you a flight to Munich. You can probably still get one from Dulles this evening. In the meantime, I’ll work on a text suitable for passage to the Germans.”

“You want me to fly to Germany? I thought you wanted me to honcho this case here? I’m not complaining, mind you.”

Stockbridge shrugged his broad shoulders and stared out his office window at the treetops of Langley. “I expect you back soon. Spend a couple of days there. It shows the Germans that we’re putting real effort into this case. Plus it lets you get an impression of how professional this kommissar is—or isn’t. We need to assess him. If you think this Waldbaer isn’t up to the task, let me know, and we can pull strings through our people in Berlin.”

Caroline snapped a mock salute. “Will do, boss. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Stockbridge narrowed his eyes theatrically. “Vote of confidence? Don’t leap to conclusions. I want you to gain operational experience, Caroline. Field experience is what permits ops officers to mature. By the way, do you have an alias passport?”

“I do. Tourist passport in the name of Rebecca Skibiski, valid for five years.”

“Rebecca Skibiski? Where does Cover Staff get these names?” “From dead people I think.”

Stockbridge uttered a sigh and ushered her to the door. “Use the alias. I don’t want to identify you in true name to the Germans. Get your tickets, and I’ll send you the liaison text shortly. Bon voyage.”

Caroline walked to Central Travel, and booked a business class seat on a direct flight to Munich. Returning to her office, she decided to go through incoming cables one last time. Examining her electronic in-box, she focused on a message from the CIA installation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The first line of text made it clear that the message provided background on Prince Abdullah Abu Hafiz, distantly linked by tribe to the ruling House of Saud and owner of Global Gulf Pharmaceutical Import-Export.

Caroline’s eyes drank in the information that her colleagues in Riyadh had obtained through a unilateral Saudi contact. The CIA author of the message noted that the information could be passed to other intelligence services if not attributed to Riyadh. “This should get the attention of Robert and his German buddies.”

It occurred to Robert Hirter that he was spending lots of time meeting CIA employees in airports. Meeting Allen Chalmers at the diminutive and quiet Salzburg airport a few days ago, this morning preparing to greet Caroline in the more cosmopolitan expanse of Munich International, with its two main terminals and maze of levels, shops, and lounges.

Hirter heeded the signs, and made his way to the international arrivals gate. A glance at his wristwatch confirmed that he had ten minutes before the scheduled arrival of Caroline O’Kendell’s flight, which had departed the States the previous evening. Hirter reached the arrivals area and found a place to stand. A large electronic board above the gate confirmed that the flight from Dulles had landed and was deplaning. A few minutes later the first passengers issued through the sensor-activated doors and Hirter spotted a slim, short-haired young woman in a stylish turtleneck and jeans.