the Second Horseman (2006) (13 page)

"I think you're still a cheap bastard." He pointed at Catherine with a finger covered in Cherry Garcia. "You know he used to make us put those little erasers on our pencils if we ran out of eraser before we ran out of lead."

She nearly started laughing before she caught herself. "He still does."

Brandon grimaced and sat at the table, popping the top on one of the Cokes and holding the open pizza box toward Catherine. "Give it a try. You know how they say that you appreciate stuff you earn more? Not true. Stolen stuff is always just a little bit better."

She hesitated for a moment and then took a slice, biting off an end and chewing energetically. "It is pretty good," she said through a full mouth.

"Christ," Scanlon said. "Just what I need. Two of you."

Brandon started in on the ice cream again. "So, did you ever figure it out, Richard?"

"Figure what out?" Catherine asked.

reaching for a stolen Coke.

"What Brandon was up to when he was working for me. At the time, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what he was after, so we had to cover every base. You wouldn't believe the amount of money and man
-
hours we spent changing security procedures, locks, passwords, computer systems -- all in case some of the people he worked with were still around."

"How much?" Brandon asked.

"Millions."

"Nice. I hope you looked like a compete fuckup."

"Oh, believe me, I did. Honestly, it's the reason I left and started this company. My credibility was never coming back."

They fell silent again and Catherine drummed impatiently on the table. "Okay, enough of this. Tell me. How were you going to rip off the casinos?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Brandon said, smiling broadly. "Besides, it'd be more interesting to see how Richard did."

Scanlon sat at the table but seemed reluctant to eat. "You weren't interested in the casinos at all."

"What do you mean?" Catherine said, motioning for Brandon to share the carton of ice cream in his hand.

"Have you ever considered where Las Vegas's cash goes?"

"Not really"

"Of course not. Why would you? But think about it now. The cash comes flooding in here every day. The casinos and local businesses take it in -- literally tons of it. If they didn't get rid of it, it would just pile up in the streets."

Brandon quietly clapped his hands, genuinely impressed.

"Okay," Catherine said. "Sure."

"So how do you figure they do that?" Brandon interjected. "Get rid of it, I mean."

"I don't know. A transport plane? Maybe a motorcade of armored cars?"

Brandon grinned. "I used to go to this bar. There was a big bathroom on the first floor. You know, urinals, stalls. Whole thing was covered in graffiti. Upstairs, there was another bathroom. It was small and just looked like something that would be in your parents' house. After ten years, not a single word of graffiti."

She thought about that for a moment and then just shrugged.

"Don't you get it? Very few people in the world truly have the ability to think outside the box. You write graffiti in a public bathroom, but not in your mom's. The whol
e t
ransport system is based on the theory that no one ever thinks outside that box."

"Except you," Scanlon interjected.

"Yeah. I wrote 'Fuck' really big on the wall of that bathroom right over a vase of fake flowers. Two weeks later, it was covered. Like you always said, Richard, it's all about leadership."

Catherine rolled her eyes and got up to look for a spoon.

"Years ago, when I worked for the FBI here," Scanlon started, "I helped set up a simple transfer based on the hide-in-plain
-
sight principle. If we'd created something more obvious and elaborate -- the armored motorcade you mentioned -- it would have attracted the wrong element." He thumbed toward Brandon. "And a plane doesn't solve your problem -- you've still got to drive to it, load it, and then do the same thing on the other end."

"Exactly," Brandon said. "It's kind of an elegant setup, if you think about it. They keep it quiet and ninety-nine percent of the people in the world never give the flow of cash out of Vegas a moment's thought. The other one percent either aren't criminals or just assume there's some massively secure setup involving the army or something."

"So how does it get moved?"

Scanlon nodded toward Brandon. "Now let's see how you did."

"By regular old vans and sometimes semis, taking random routes to the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, right?"

It was Scanlon's turn to clap.

"So the question I was trying to answer working for Richard was what the schedule was -- I wanted to hit the semi, not the individual vans, obviously. And I needed to know the level of protection -- air cover, number of guards, type of guards. That kind of stuff."

"Did you ever get that information?" Catherine asked.

"Not much of it. You can imagine that it's kind of hard to draw anyone into that conversation without being obvious. But I was piecing it together and meeting the people who could get me there." He turned toward Scanlon. "One thing I never figured out and it kind of haunts me: How much is in that semi?"

Scanlon didn't answer, a hint of uncertainty suddenly appearing in his eyes.

"Come on, Richard. It's a little late to get squeamish now."

"Yeah, I guess it is. Somewhere between a hundred and seventy-five and two hundred million."

Brandon let out a low whistle. "Oh, man. That's beautiful. Is your information still good?"

He nodded. "When I finally figured out what you were after, I went to the security firm that oversees the transport and told them. They juggled a bunch of the procedures in case you'd figured any of them out."

"And were you one of the jugglers?"

"A paid consultant. I know everything."

"Irony," Brandon said, slowly shaking his head. "I love that."

"We've been through this four times already."

Scanlon was pacing back and forth across the room, his back aching from hours of sitting. He was tired enough to make it nearly impossible to think coherently, while Brandon seemed to be sucking energy directly from the air. The sad truth was that he was getting too old for all this. It was coming time for Brandon's generation to take responsibility for the world.

"Yeah, but I'm not completely clear on the --"

"You've got plenty to think about," Scanlon said. "We can deal with the minutiae tomorrow."

Catherine was sitting on the floor, dozing amid a collection of empty paper plates and wadded-up tinfoil.

"You just need a little caffeine," Brandon said, shaking the soda cans on the table, searching for one that hadn't been drained.

"What I need is to go home."

Catherine woke suddenly, tossing the hair out of her face. "Home?" she said groggily.

Brandon found something left in one of the cans, but instead of offering it to Scanlon, he drained it, stood, and wandered out of the room. He was deep enough in thought that he rammed the doorjamb with his shoulder and didn't seem to notice.

"I'm sorry I fell asleep," Catherine said, struggling to her feet. "But when he started into exactly how trailers are hooked to semis for the tenth time, it was like someone hit me over the head with a brick."

"It seems like overkill," Scanlon agreed. "But there's no point in second-guessing him on this kind of thing."

"You look horrible," she said, walking up and smoothing the shirt on his shoulders. "Are you sleeping?"

"Are you?"

She ignored the question and put a hand on his forehead. "You're not getting sick are you?"

"I'm fine," he said, gently taking her hand and putting a small piece of paper in it.

"What's this?"

He leaned in close to her ear. "An e-mail address and passwords. Memorize them and destroy the paper."

"What --"

"If you should ever run into serious problems and can't contact me, you'll need to get into that account."

He looked into her worried face and immediately felt a pang of guilt for being the cause of it. What choice did he have, though? There was no telling what Hamdi had planned for Brandon, and he didn't want to see her get caught between those two.

"It's okay," he said. "I can't imagine you'll ever need it. But you hope for the best and plan for the worst, right?"

Chapter
SIXTEEN

Despite its being quite simple, Jamal Yusef read the e-mail a third time, closed it, and decrypted it again. The result was always the same.

Finally, knowing that the computer was draining the ancient car batteries providing power, he shut it down. The blood was pounding loudly in his ears, and when he tried to stand, his legs seemed incapable of supporting him.

Edwin Hamdi had been so smooth and logical during their courtship. He'd made perfect sense, gracefully countering every argument Yusef had put to him with talk of patriotism and the greater good. But none of this was theoretical anymore. Hamdi hadn't watched those people at the theater die. He hadn't seen them bleed, smelled them burning. With hands so slippery with blood, it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold on to that logic.

Yusef hesitated before opening the tent flap. He'd been barricaded inside since his return from Jerusalem -- something that had likely not gone unnoticed by his men. What had they read into his self-imposed isolation?

When he finally stepped out into the blinding sun his legs had steadied, but his hands still shook. They always did now.

Ramez was drilling the men, trying to get them into military formation and to march them in a straight line. Why, Yusef wasn't sure. Perhaps it appealed to the younger man's overdeveloped sense of order, though it generated nothing but frustration for everyone else involved. There was something about Arab culture that didn't mesh with military discipline. These were people ruled by passion.

Yusef grabbed a rifle leaning against a rock and fired it in the air, feeling a sickly burst of adrenaline as the recoil wrenched his arm. The men ducked involuntarily and then turned, looking both confused by his uncharacteristic outburst and relieved to be done with Ramez's endless drill.

It occurred to Yusef that he could kill them all right now. They were unarmed, lined up only twenty feet away. His clip was still nearly full. Eleven fanatical terrorists --

men who would devote their lives to creating death and chaos -- gone in a matter of seconds. And when he then put the gun to his own head, twelve.

But what good would it do? There were hundreds of other cells just like this one. And when the male relatives of these men got news of their martyrdom, they would join the cause. The mythical Hydra was alive and well in the Middle East.

"We have our money!" Yusef shouted.

He was immediately drowned out by the shouts of his men as they rushed forward, hugging him, kissing his cheeks, clasping his hands. After a few seconds, he managed to pull away, stepping back to examine the unbridled joy and religious ecstasy in their eyes. All except Muhammad. There was something else in those eyes. Jealousy. The thirst for power. And, of course, hate. But for whom exactly?

"God willing, we will soon have nuclear weapons and the enemies of Islam will tremble. America will fall to its knees and beg us for mercy! God be praised!"

Another cheer erupted, but he raised his hand, silencing it. "Secrecy is the most critical thing now. The Americans and the Jews have ears everywhere. We must maintain complete silence until our plan has bee
n c
arried out."

The men all nodded eagerly, though Yusef knew it was more from excitement than agreement. Silence, like military formations, took discipline that terrorists, almost by definition, lacked. In fact, he was counting on that particular failing to cause the news to leak to compatriots, families, and sympathizers across the globe. It wouldn't be specific enough to cause them any serious problems -- just another shout in the never
-
ending chorus of hate monitored by the CIA and Mossad. As usual, the source wouldn't be investigated until the attack had already occurred. And that investigation would lead right where it was supposed to -- to an isolated band of Islamic fanatics.

"Our prayers have been answered," he said, turning his back on his men and starting toward his tent again.

Contacting the Ukrainians was never quick or simple. If he was going to stay on Hamdi's schedule, he'd have to start the process now.

Chapter
SEVENTEEN

There was only one potential escape route that Brandon could see: back through the stone and steel lobby, past the unusually vigilant guard, beneath five surveillance cameras, and through the thick glass doors that led to the street where Daniel was parked. Less than ideal.

Catherine moved aside and he stepped into the empty elevator, turning to watch her slip through the closing doors and press the button for the fifteenth floor. The camera above them looked on silently.