Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (741 page)

“I see your point, but that’s not how the system works.”

“Okay, I knew you’d say that, but how the hell do we fix what’s broke at CIA if all we do is just to clone their operation?” Jack demanded.

And there wasn’t a ready answer for that which would satisfy the questioner, was there? Wills asked himself. There simply wasn’t, and this kid was catching on way too fast. What the hell had he learned in the White House? For damned sure, he’d asked a lot of questions. And he’d listened to all the answers. And even thought about them.

“I hate to say this, Jack, but I’m only your training officer, not the Big Boss of this outfit.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. I guess I got used to my dad having the ability to make things happen—well, it looked that way to me, at least. Not to him, I know, not all the time. Maybe impatience is a family characteristic.” Doubly so, since his mom was a surgeon, accustomed to fixing things on her own schedule, which was generally
right the hell now.
It was hard to be decisive sitting at a workstation, a lesson his dad had probably had to learn in his time, back when America had lived in the gunsights of a really serious enemy. These terrorists could sting, but they couldn’t do serious structural harm to America, though it
had
been tried in Denver once. These guys were like swarming insects rather than vampire bats . . .

But mosquitoes could transmit yellow fever, couldn’t they?

SOUTH OF
Munich, in the port city of Piraeus, a container was lifted off its ship by a gantry crane and lowered to a waiting truck trailer. Once secured, the trailer went off, behind the Volvo truck driving out of the port, bypassing Athens, and heading north into the mountains of Greece. The manifest said it was going to Vienna, a lengthy non-stop drive over decent highways, delivering a cargo of coffee from Colombia. It didn’t occur to the port security people to conduct a search, since all the bills of lading were in good order and passed the bar-code scans properly. Already men were assembling to deal with the part of the cargo not intended to be mixed with hot water and cream. It took a lot of men to break down a metric ton of cocaine into dose-sized packets, but they had a single-story warehouse, recently acquired, in which to accomplish the task, and then they would be driving individually all over Europe, taking comfort in the lack of internal borders the continent had adopted since the formation of the European Union. With this cargo, the word of a business partner was being kept, and a psychological profit was being recompensed by a monetary one. The process went on through the night, while Europeans slept the sleep of the just, even those who would soon be making use of the illegal part of the cargo as soon as they found a street dealer.

THEY SAW
the subject at 9:30 the following morning. They were having a leisurely breakfast at another
Gasthaus
half a block from the one that employed their friend Emil, and Anas Ali Atef was walking purposely up the street, and came within twenty feet of the twins, who were breakfasting on strudel and coffee, along with twenty or so German citizens. Atef didn’t notice he was being watched; his eyes looked forward and did not discreetly scan the area as a trained spook would have done. Evidently, he felt safe here. And that was good.

“There’s our boy,” Brian said, spotting him first. As with Sali, there was no neon sign over his head to mark him, but he matched the photo perfectly, and he had come out of the right apartment building. His mustache made an error in identification unlikely. Reasonably well dressed. Except for his skin and mustache, he might have passed for a German. At the end of the block, he boarded a streetcar, destination unknown, but heading east.

“Speculate?” Dominic asked his brother.

“Off to have breakfast with a pal, or to plot the downfall of the Infidel West—we really can’t say, man.”

“Yeah, it’d be nice to have real coverage on him, but we’re not conducting an investigation, are we? This mutt recruited at least one shooter. He’s earned his way onto our shit list, Aldo.”

“Roger that, bro,” Brian agreed. His conversion was complete. Anas Ali Atef was just a face to him now, and an ass to be stuck with his magic pen. Beyond that, he was someone for God to talk to in due course, a jurisdiction that didn’t directly concern either of them at the moment.

“If this was a Bureau op, we’d have a team in the apartment right now, at least to toss his computer.”

Brian conceded the point. “Now what?”

“We see if he goes to church, and, if he does, we see how easy it might be to pop him on the way in or out.”

“Does it strike you that this is going a little fast?” Brian wondered aloud.

“I suppose we could sit in the hotel room and jerk off, but that’s hard on the wrist, y’know?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Finishing breakfast, they left cash on the table but not a large tip. That would too surely mark them as Americans.

THE STREETCAR
wasn’t as comfortable as his car, but it was ultimately more convenient because of the necessity of finding a parking place. European cities had not been designed with automobiles in mind. Neither had Cairo, of course, and the traffic jams there could be incredible—even worse than they were here—but at least in Germany they had reliable mass transportation. The trains were glorious. The quality of the lines impressed the man who’d had engineering training a few—was it really just a few? he asked himself; it seemed like a complete lifetime—years before. The Germans were a curious people. Standoffish and formal, and oh so superior, they thought, to all the other races. They looked down on Arabs—and, indeed, on most other Europeans as well—and opened their doors to foreigners only because their internal laws—imposed upon them sixty years earlier by Americans after World War II—said that they must. But because they were compelled to do so, they did, mostly without open complaint, because these mad people obeyed the law as though it had been delivered to them by God’s own hand. They were the most docile people he’d ever encountered, but underneath that docility was the capacity for violence—
organized
violence—such as the world hardly knew. Within living memory, they’d risen up to slaughter the Jews. They’d even converted their death camps into museums, but museums in which the pieces and machines undoubtedly still worked, as though standing ready. What a pity they could not summon the political will to make it so.

The Jews had humiliated his country four separate times, in the process killing his eldest brother, Ibrahim, in the Sinai while he’d been driving a Soviet T-62 tank. He didn’t remember Ibrahim. He’d been far too young then, and only had photographs to give him an idea of what he’d looked like, though his mother still wept for his memory. He’d died trying to finish the job these Germans had started, only to fail, killed by a cannon shot from an American M60A1 main battle tank at the battle of the Chinese farm. It was the Americans who protected the Jews. America was ruled by its Jews. That was why they supplied his enemies with weapons, fed them with intelligence information, and loved killing Arabs.

But the Germans’ failure at their task hadn’t tamed their arrogance. Just redirected it. He could see it on the streetcar, the brief sideways looks, the way old women scuttled a few steps away from where he stood. Someone would probably wipe down the overhead bar with disinfectant after he got off, Anas grumbled to himself. By the Prophet, these were unpleasant people.

The ride took another seven minutes exactly, and it was time to get off, at Dom Strasse. From there, it was a one-block walk. Along the way, he saw more of the glances, the hostility in the eyes, or, even worse, the eyes that took note of his presence and just passed on, as though having seen a stray dog. It would have been satisfying to take some action here in Germany—right here in Munich!—but his orders were specific.

His destination was a coffee shop. Fa’ad Rahman Yasin was already there, dressed casually, like a working man. There were many like him in this café.

“Salaam aleikum,”
Atef said in greeting. Peace be unto you.

“Aleikum salaam,”
Fa’ad said in return. “The pastry here is excellent.”

“Yes,” Atef agreed, speaking softly in Arabic. “So, what is new, my friend?”

“Our people are pleased with last week. We have shaken the Americans badly,” Fa’ad said.

“Not enough for them to disown the Israelis. They love the Jews more than their own children. Mark my words on this. And they will lash out at us.”

“How?” Fa’ad demanded. “Lash out, yes, at whomever their spy agencies know about, but that will only inflame the faithful and drive more to our cause. No, our organization they do not know about. They do not even know our name.” This was because their organization did not really have a name. “Organization” was merely a descriptive word for their association of the Faithful.

“I hope you are correct. So, do I have more orders?”

“You have done well—three of the men you recruited chose martyrdom in America.”

“Three?” Atef was agreeably surprised. “They died well, I trust?”

“They died in Allah’s Holy Name. That should be good enough. So, do you have any more recruits ready for us?”

Atef sipped his coffee. “Not quite, but I have two leaning in our direction. This is not easy, as you know. Even the most faithful wish to enjoy the fruits of a good life.” As he was doing himself, of course.

“You have done well for us, Anas. Better to be sure than to be overly demanding of them. Take your time. We can be patient.”

“How patient?” Atef wanted to know.

“We have additional plans for America, to sting them worse. This time we killed hundreds. The next time, we shall kill thousands,” Fa’ad promised, with a sparkle in his eye.

“How, exactly?” Atef asked immediately. He could have been—
should
have been—a plans officer. His engineering education made him ideal for such things. Didn’t they know that? There were people in the organization who thought with their balls instead of their brains.

“That I am not at liberty to say, my friend.” Because he didn’t know, Fa’ad Rahman Yasin did not say. He wasn’t sufficiently trusted by those higher in the organization, which would have outraged him had he known it.

The son of a whore probably doesn’t know himself,
Atef thought at the same time.

“We approach the hour of prayer, my friend,” Anas Ali Atef said, checking his watch. “Come with me. My mosque is only ten minutes away.” It would soon be time for the Salat. It was a test for his colleague, to make sure that he was truly faithful.

“As you say.” Both rose and walked to the streetcar, which fifteen minutes later stopped a block from the mosque.

“HEADS UP,
Aldo,” Dominic said. They’d been checking out the neighborhood, really just to get a feel for the area, but there was their friend, walking down the street with what had to be a friend of his own.

“Who’s wog number two, I wonder?” Brian said.

“Nobody we know, and we can’t freelance. You packin’?” Dominic asked.

“Bet your bippy, bro. You?”

“Hang a big roger on that,” Dominic answered. Their target was about thirty yards off, walking right at them, probably heading to the mosque, which was half a block behind them. “What do you think?”

“Wave off, better to bag him on the way out.”

“Okay.” And both turned right to look into the window of a hat shop. They heard—they damned near
felt
—him pass by. “How long you suppose it’ll take?”

“Damned if I know, man, I haven’t been to church myself in a couple of months.”

“Super,” Brian growled. “My own brother’s an apostate.”

Dominic stifled a laugh. “You always were the altar boy in the family.”

SURE ENOUGH,
Atef and his friend walked in. It was time for daily prayers, the Salat, the second of Islam’s Five Pillars. They would bend and kneel, facing Mecca, whispering favored phrases from the Holy Koran, affirming their faith as they did so. On entering the building, they removed their shoes, and, to Yasin’s surprise, this mosque suffered from a German influence. There were individualized cubbyholes in the wall of the atrium for their shoes, all of them properly numbered, to prevent confusion . . . or theft. That was a rare offense indeed in any Muslim country, because the Islamic penalty for thievery was very harsh, and to do so in Allah’s Own House would have been a deliberate offense to God Himself. They then entered the mosque proper and made their obeisance to Allah.

It didn’t take long, and with it came a kind of refreshment for Atef’s soul, as he reaffirmed his religious beliefs. Then it was over. He and his friend made their way back to the atrium, collected their shoes, and walked outside.

They weren’t the first out the large doors, and the others had served to alert the two Americans. It was really a question of which way they’d go. Dominic was watching the street, looking for a police or intelligence officer, but didn’t see any. He was betting that their subject would head toward his apartment. Brian took the other direction. It looked as though forty or so people had gone in for prayers. Coming out, they scattered to the four winds, singly or in small groups. Two got into the fronts of taxicabs—presumably their own—and drove off to catch fares. That did not include any of their coreligionists, who were probably working-class schlubs who walked or took public transportation. It hardly made them seem villainous to the twins, both of whom closed in, but neither too fast nor two obviously. Then the subject and his pal came out.

They turned left, directly toward Dominic, thirty yards away.

From his perspective, Brian saw it all. Dominic removed the gold pen from the inside pocket of his not-quite-a-suit jacket, furtively twisting the tip to arm it, then holding it in his right hand like an ice pick. He was heading on a close reciprocal course to the subject...

It was, perversely, a thing of beauty to watch. Just six feet away, Dominic appeared to trip over something, and fell right into the Atef guy. Brian didn’t even see the stick. Atef went down with his brother, and that would have covered the discomfort of the stab. Atef’s pal helped both of them up. Dominic made his apology and headed on his way, with Brian following the target. He hadn’t seen Sali check out, and so this was interesting in a grim sort of way. The subject walked about fifty feet, then stopped in his tracks. He must have said something, because his friend turned as though to ask a question, just in time to see Atef fall down. One arm came up to protect his face from the fall, but then the entire body went limp.