Countdown to Mecca (38 page)

“Teacher,” Pyotr bowed his head as he sat down.

“Here, we are as one,” the imam said, his voice just above a whisper. “We wear the enemy's costume. Something to drink?”

Pyotr sensed it was a test. He had not lived a blameless life. There had been long periods of dissolution—not just in Russia but Chechnya itself. For long intervals vodka had been a great solace, providing both courage and forgetfulness—qualities much to be valued. But he had put those needs behind him even before meeting the imam and coming to understand the true nature of his calling. The smell of the caf
é
brought the evil of his vices back. His stomach turned bitter, and he tasted the first pangs of vomit in his mouth.

“A bit of tea, if it is convenient,” he said.

The imam smiled, and signaled a waiter. Moments later, a fresh cup had been poured. Pyotr, still uncomfortable, remained silent, and didn't sip until the imam nodded to him.

“What news?” the imam asked. He spoke in Russian to make it difficult for eavesdroppers to understand. This was a surprise; Pyotr had not thought the imam could speak Russian so well. He should have known. After all, he knew Pyotr so well.

“The weapon will be in place within twelve hours,” Pyotr replied, also in Russian. “I have the fusing device. It will be a simple matter of attaching it and flying to the proper altitude.”

“You will do this yourself?”

“Yes.”

“You are using the general's own transport?”

“It was there, it was best,” said Pyotr. “My man is there. I have nothing to fear.”

“You are sure?”

“I am absolutely positive.”

The imam stared at him and Pyotr felt a single bead of sweat begin to emerge from his scalp. “You have failed before,” the imam said without judgment—simply as a statement of fact.

That was true. A year before, Pyotr and his men had stolen a bomb from a Russian storage depot at great cost. But it had a core of uranium refined to only seventy-six percent quality for the weapons-grade material. It was too weak to explode properly. The original intention was to refine it further, but that proved beyond the imam's means.

“I learned a great deal from that failure,” Pyotr stated. It was a failure that had led directly to the present plot, where Pyotr had pretended to cooperate with the American general.

That seemed to satisfy his imam. He nodded approvingly. He had been working on both plans—and perhaps a dozen more—for years and years. Pyotr wondered what else he contemplated.

“Others attempted to take your weapon,” said the imam. “They were not content with what you gave them.”

“As I anticipated,” Pyotr responded. “So I created a distraction for them.”

The imam nodded again. “Then you alone will make the final attack.”

Pyotr nodded. It was a decision borne partly of determination not to fail, and partly of selfishness—he didn't want anyone else sharing his glory. “My target remains true?” he asked.

The imam nodded once.

“We cannot change it back to Jerusalem?”

“No. The result would not be as desirable,” said the imam calmly. He could have been speaking of a soccer strategy. “There would have been no stopping the Israelis, and they are the ones we must fear. The Jews are the ones who will be ruthless, because they have already tasted so much blood. The Americans will remain weak for quite some time.”

Pyotr nodded. “They are weak, but they can be tenacious.”

The imam shook his head sagely. “Not they. He.”

“The reporter?”

“More than likely he is with the CIA and only claims to be a reporter.”

Pyotr did not contradict the imam, though he knew this wasn't true. He had learned a great deal about Jack Hatfield in the past few days.

“This will be an attack ten times greater than the one on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon,” said the imam. “A practical, as well as a symbolic strike. The heart of the American evil will be torn out. The filth it purveys to the world will be shut off at the source.”

“The target is well chosen,” said Pyotr. He had heard this speech many times over the past several years.

“The devil's songs will cease, and it will be easier for us to lead our people,” said the imam. “But you will be in Paradise, enjoying your bounties, thanks to the Prophet's largess, blessed be his name.”

Pyotr bowed his head. He needed no more encouragement—he understood that his entire life had led him to this moment. His name would be enshrined at the head of the list of martyrs; he would be better known than them all.

And he would savor the moment of death. It would come at exactly 18,500 feet, in exactly thirteen and a half hours.

“I must go now, imam, if I am to catch my plane,” Pytor said abruptly, rising.

“Eternal peace be with you, brother,” said the imam, without a trace of irony. “May Allah's will be done.”

“It shall be,” said Pyotr firmly before striding from the caf
é
to find a taxi.

 

49

San Francisco, California

“You're kidding, right?” Dover said, gripping the coffee mug so tightly Carl Forsyth thought it would shatter in her hand.

“Dover, we've only known each other a short time,” her boss said, “but I have to believe that you wouldn't think I'm a kidder. Yes? Certainly not about something like this.”

She nodded.

“The whole thing has to be a hoax,” he went on. “There's nothing there. Believe me, I've talked to a lot of people in Washington who know … or
would
know if something were going on.”

“Isn't that the whole point of covert operations?” she asked. “Secrecy?”

“In the field, yes. In D.C.? No. Everything gets found out, usually sooner rather than later. This one? You'd need a lot of moving parts.”

“Or a bunch of tight-lipped, loyal fanatics like on 9/11.”

“Again, you don't find that in Washington, at the Pentagon, Dover. That's why authors write about it. It's fiction.”

“Until one day it isn't,” Dover said. “Until one day someone depends on exactly that mind-set.” She felt as though her head would explode. “Carl, it was right there,” she continued, trying to keep from gesticulating wildly. There were too many windows in his office and too many eyes were on them. “General Brooks said so right into the camera. He said, in effect, ‘I … am … going … to blow up Mecca!'”

“Agent Griffith,” Forsyth said patiently, and not without some sympathy. “Think like an agent for just a second.”

“I am thinking like an agent,” she seethed. “An agent who wants to prevent a catastrophic attack before it's too late!”

Forsyth just shook his head sadly. “No, you're thinking like a—a
friend
of Jack Hatfield's.”

Dover's mouth snapped shut and her lips grew very thin. He was going to say “girlfriend.” Dover knew it. And her narrowed gaze told Forsyth that she knew it. But he had checked himself in deference to her previous good work.

She knew why her superior thought that. Jack was in trouble, and she obviously, seriously hated the fact that she wasn't able to help him. She believed, even if Forsyth didn't, that he'd stumbled onto something even bigger and more deadly than the Chinese plot that had spawned their relationship, and hated the fact that she didn't have all of the information on it.

Most of all, she hated the fact that she wasn't with him.

“Come on, Dover,” Forsyth went on. “Ask yourself: why on God's green earth would Brooks admit that in public, let alone directly to a camera? Especially when there was time to stop it? Not a lot of time, I grant you, but still time.”

Dover thought about it. Yes, it did seem reckless at the very least.

“His immediate superior—” Forsyth checked his notes “—Army Chief of Staff Ortiz, said Brooks was borderline certifiable. A man, and I quote—” Forsyth checked the report again, “‘—whose entire life was dedicated to the army, and a man who would do anything to remain relevant on the eve of his retirement.'” Forsyth tossed the report back onto the high stack of papers on his desk. “What does that say to you?”

“I don't know,” she said numbly, struggling to focus on this—trivia.

“Does it mean that we're dealing with someone who posed a credible threat? Or a desperate, sad, lonely man who just wanted to force people to take his life's work seriously?”

“But the missing container … the plane c-crash?” she stammered.

“Now, as before, they happened,” Forsyth agreed. “But that doesn't mean they're connected.”

“And the Schoenberg murder?”

“What about it?”

“If it wasn't part of this conspiracy—”

“See, there's the word that always sets off alarms,” Forsyth said. “Conspiracy.”

Dover could practically see a satisfied grin on Forsyth's face.

“Schoenberg apparently had a lover back in Germany who was thrown over,” the FBI officer told her. “That's what that is about.”

“That's absurd.”

“Really? You don't think a woman is capable of murder?”

“That's not what I mean, Carl, and you know it.”
Especially not now,
she thought, growing increasingly frustrated with her boss.

Forsyth held up his hands in supplication. “Okay, but this German girl was a crack shot, and she just committed suicide. There's even a suicide note.”

“Anything about killing Schoenberg?”

“No, but that's not for us to muck about in. The murder is a local case, Dover. It is being credibly handled by our friend Jeffreys. In any event, it's not my case, not our case, and we really can't afford to waste time with it.”

Dover found that her teeth were biting hard enough to threaten her fillings. She unclenched her jaw, and her fist, and tried to control herself.

Forsyth saw and appreciated it. He sighed. And crossed the line he had hesitated to cross before. “Look, Dover, I understand you have feelings for the guy. And frankly I like him. Usually. I owe him something for letting me take all the credit for the Chinese affair. Believe me, I understand. But this—this is a lot of confetti flying around with no pattern, no sense but what he's struggling to make of it. Hell, that's what journalists do!” He leaned closer. “Brooks wanted to feel important one last time in his life. He wanted to alert the world of the threat he felt Islam posed. Maybe he knew he was dying. He wanted one last bit of footage that would outlive him.”

“By threatening to destroy the world?” Dover asked incredulously.

“What better?” Forsyth countered. “In this age of YouTube getting millions of hits for a drunk TV star eating a hamburger? The second-highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Strategic Command swearing he's going to blow up Israel and Mecca? If this footage ever got out, hawks and doves would use it against each other for decades.”

“So that's it?” Dover said tightly. “That's really why you think he did it?”

“If I had to bet money? Yeah,” he said. Forsyth shook his head. “Believe me, Dover, I ran with it. The CIA nearly laughed me out of their office.”

“They didn't take it seriously?” Dover exclaimed.

“Oh, they took it seriously, all right. For about an hour. And when nothing, and I mean
nothing
that they found backed it up, they saw it for what it is. A sad man's last gasp.” Forsyth stood and took Dover by the arms. “Face it, Agent Griffith. The threat was a sham. And the threat died with Brooks.”

Dover was silent. She rose, excused herself quietly, and stood down the hall, out of view of Forsyth. She tried to find a way to agree with him, but her compass needle kept swinging back to Jack. And not because of their relationship. His boots were on the ground, he had been through this from the start. Whose gut should she believe? His or the armchair director a dozen yards away?

Within minutes of leaving her superior's office, Dover made a call and then shared Forsyth's estimation with Jack. He put the call on speaker so Doc and the chauffeur could hear.

“They don't believe us,” she said.

All three men appeared stunned. Only Jack said, “What?”

“They think it's all a figment of your, and Brooks's, overactive imaginations.”

“Imaginations?” Jack said.

“My imagination is limited to women and handgun concealment,” Doc said. “What kind of psychos do they think we are?”

“This can't be happening,” Jack said. He was still processing what she'd told him.

“They're stubborn,” she admitted.

“But how—we've got evidence—”

“Circumstantial, they say.”

“Dover, they can't be that blind,” Jack said.

“Whatever their reason, that's their position.”

Jack looked at the chauffeur. They were in a security office half a world away, near the epicenter of the plot. Yet he never felt so disconnected. He addressed the driver. “What's happening at Yanbu?”

“The investigators are there now,” the driver reported. “It is as you said. But, as you also said, there is no sign of real radioactivity or actual bomb making. Except for the corpses, it looks like an elaborate hoax for reasons we cannot yet fathom.”

“But the dead bodies
are
there!” Jack said. He got back on the phone. “Dover, you have to go back to Forsyth. They can't be this blas
é
about it! Too many pieces fit, and fit in a way that doesn't allow another interpretation!”

“I know, I know,” Dover said. “But they'll come up with reasons for the corpses and I'm betting they won't involve Brooks. Christ, I could come up with other explanations—”

“You, too, Dover?” Jack didn't like the fact that he was suddenly echoing a dying Julius Caesar.