Jihad (7 page)

“Working,” said Rockman. “Much better signal.”

“I’m going to kick the ball around with this kid a bit before I go back to the car,” Dean said, starting down. “For cover.”

“Since when are you nice to kids?” Rockman asked.

“I’m always nice to kids.”

CHAPTER 17

WILLIAM RUBENS WAS due at the White House at noon to brief the new national security advisor on the operation. With things running well, he decided to leave Crypto City early enough to stop and visit the old national security advisor, his friend and one-time teacher, George Hadash. But as he approached Hadash’s hospital room, he was suddenly filled with dread; it was only out of a sense of loyalty and duty that he forced himself to continue down the corridor. Two days before, Hadash had undergone an operation to remove a brain tumor. The doctors had pronounced the operation a great success, but Rubens, visiting him a few hours later, had a completely different impression.

“Come,” said Hadash when he knocked on the door. Rubens was pleasantly surprised to find him sitting up in bed, the newest issue of
Foreign Affairs
in his hands. A pile of books sat on the bed next to him; two laptops sat on the rolling tray to the left.

“William! How are you?” said Hadash, his voice as strong as ever.

“I believe the question is how are you?” said Rubens. He shook Hadash’s hand—a good grip, though a little cold—and looked for a chair to sit down in. The nearest one was covered with books: all on the Civil War, Rubens noted as he piled them on the floor.

“Have you read this?” Hadash held up the
Foreign Affairs.
“McNally on Russia?”

Before Rubens could answer—he had read a few paragraphs and then moved on in disgust—Hadash launched into a lengthy and devastating critique, punctuated several times by the phrase “and people in Congress talk
seriously
of McNally as the next secretary of state.”

“A comment on the ability of Congress, surely,” said Rubens when the former national security advisor finally paused for a breath.

Hadash burst out laughing.

“You’re doing much better than the other day,” said Rubens. “When will you be out?”

“When they’ve grown tired of poking me. I have another MRI session scheduled for this afternoon. They promise a date then.”

Rubens nodded.

“Do you think about death, William?”

“I don’t,” Rubens answered honestly. “But I don’t think you’re going to die.”

“Eventually we all do,” said Hadash. “I’m ready, if it comes to that.”

Death seemed an impossible thing to be ready for. Rubens changed the subject, asking what Hadash was doing with all the Civil War books.

“I have been thinking of General Lee and McClellan. An interesting pair, symbols of their age,” said Hadash. “Brilliant, yet both deeply flawed.”

McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, had faced off against the Confederate Robert E. Lee in the first half of the war; Rubens knew enough Civil War history to realize that most historians regarded him as a poor military leader. But Lee’s flaws were less known, at least to him.

“He overextended his army,” Hadash quickly explained. “You see, the critical difference—well, look at George Washington during the Revolution. The turning point of the war comes after the British take New York and the Revolution doesn’t collapse. General Washington realizes what sort of war he’s fighting. All he has to do is survive. Lee missed that.”

“I doubt Lincoln would have settled for that,” said Rubens.

Hadash smiled. He relished well-reasoned arguments and was just revving up. “True. Lincoln was not King George. But there were elections to contend with. Lincoln might not have been there had events gone differently.”

Hadash charged into a short lecture on McClellan, laying out how he would have sued for peace had he won the election. There was a glint in his eye that Rubens realized meant he was purposely overstating his case.

This was an excellent sign, Rubens thought; Hadash was clearly on the mend.

“I’d like to hear more, but I’m afraid I’m due at a meeting,” said Rubens finally. “I’ll call you tonight, to see how your scan went.”

“Yes, very good. And we’ll talk about Grant,” added Hadash.

“I’m afraid I know relatively little about him and the war in general.”

“Then I’ll have the advantage.”

CHAPTER 18

ASAD’S DRIVER HAD been placed in a room with three other patients on the third floor of the hospital, next to an emergency staircase and only a few yards from the elevators; snatching him would not be difficult. But that meant the men coming for him would have an easy time as well.

One of the patients in the room was suffering from the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Posing as an acquaintance of the man’s daughter—her name and address were in his file, easily accessed by the Art Room—Lia went up and surveyed the room. The driver lay in the second bed from the door, knocked out by the drugs they’d given him to ease the pain of his burns. Lia placed a video bug and an eavesdropping “fly” inside the room and in the hallway, making up for a gap in the hospital’s video security system that failed to completely cover the hallway down from the nurse’s station.

“Easiest thing to do is to take him down the stairs, slap him in a wheelchair and roll him out the front door,” she told Rockman as she descended in the elevator. “Can you kill the alarms on the staircase?”

“Not a problem. We have two CIA paras in a car outside.”

“Para” was short for paramilitary officers, CIA operatives specially trained for covert military mission.

“Describe their car.”

Lia left the hospital through a side exit and circled around the block, coming up on them from behind. Unlike some of the CIA people she’d worked with, these ops were smart enough to be out of the car, watching their backs. Still, they were ridiculously easy to spot, wearing mirrored sunglasses and identical black baseball caps, seemingly oblivious to the evening shoppers passing nearby. Lia pulled a guidebook from her pocket and strolled down the block; as she got close to them, she flipped open the book and turned to one of the men.

“Can you help me with directions?” she said in a loud voice. “I was looking for the tram line.”

“Lia?”

The voice took her by surprise. She looked into the CIA officer’s face, staring past the sunglasses. Never in a million years would she have expected to see the face behind them, and even as she stared at them she told herself it must be a mistake, must be some trick of her unconscious.

But the voice was definitely his.

“I believe you have to go up about three blocks,” said the man, shaking off his own surprise. “And I think it’s that way.”

He pointed to the left, down the street.

“Could you show me?” Lia asked, regaining her composure.

“Love to.”

“Lose the hat and glasses,” she said, starting down the block.

“You haven’t changed at all,” replied the CIA officer.

CHAPTER 19

BLOOD LAPPED AT Ramil’s feet, surging from the floor. The young man the doctor was supposed to operate on lay on the table in front of him. The kid’s skull was misshapen, too large, too shot up. How could he save this boy? There was so much metal his knife couldn’t even find flesh to cut.

The ceiling of the tent fluttered with the wind, then flew off. The lights they’d put up to help him with the surgery shot upwards, captured by the gale.

God help me. Help this kid—I can’t save him. Please help me.

The wind settled. The tent, which had been sweltering despite the massive air conditioner at the side, instantly cooled. Ramil bent over his patient and realized that the wounds, though numerous, were not impossible to deal with; it was a matter of taking them in order, working steadily. He didn’t have to rush. All he had to do was be precise.

I’ve saved him. Allah saved him.

Intense white light filled the tent.

Ramil woke with a start. He felt as if his lungs were filled with ice, incredible coldness emanating from inside his body. Disoriented, he stared around the shadows of the room, not knowing where he was.

Istanbul, Turkey. For Desk Three.

Yes.

He was still in his dress clothes, still wearing shoes. The clock next to his bed said it was just after seven. Ramil remembered coming back with Lia, collapsing on the bed.

He should check in via satphone. Then maybe get something to eat, though that meant leaving the hotel. The Sari Oteli served only breakfast, and drinks on the roof terrace.

Ramil stared at the shaft of dim light that fell across the extra bed beside him. The dream hadn’t really been a dream, or rather, it was a dream based on something that had really happened, an experience as a young surgeon in Vietnam. The wind wasn’t there, or the light, but the core—the panic and the dread, the prayer, the calm that followed, the success especially—those had truly happened.

He hadn’t thought of it in a long time.

Why not?

“I just haven’t,” he said aloud, answering the thought as if someone had spoken to him.

He looked at the phone, then pushed the buttons to call the Art Room.

“This is Ramil,” he said.

There was a slight pause while a security system confirmed his voice pattern. Then Marie Telach came on the line.

“Doctor, how are you?”

“I thought I’d check in. I’ve had a nap.” Ramil got up from the bed, walking across the small room. “I think I’ll have a shower and then go and get something to eat. There’s a hotel across the way with a restaurant. I’ll probably eat there.”

“Good.”

“My patient?”

“He’s fine. I’ll call you if we need you. In the meantime, just relax and play tourist.”

“Yes,” said Ramil absently, thinking back to the dream. He had saved that young man. Why hadn’t he thought about it? It was a triumph, a real achievement, saving a life. He’d saved many in Vietnam.

With God’s help.

He hadn’t done much of importance since. Teaching and consulting and the work with the NSA for nearly two decades now, boring work mostly, giving advice on stocking first aid stations and standing by for emergencies that never occurred. This was by far the most interesting assignment he’d had. But even this wasn’t as important as saving a life.

Wasn’t it, though? It would save many lives. potentially.

“Doctor, are you still there?” asked Telach.

“Yes, I’m sorry. My blood sugar, I think, is probably low. I’d best get something to eat.”

CHAPTER 20

LIA BIT THE side of her cheek as she helped Terrence Pinchon roll up his pants beneath the hospital gown. Touching him like this, even like this, shot a wave of barely controllable emotion through her. She fought against the shudder, gritted her teeth together to avoid reacting to her old lover, to the man she’d given up for dead three years before.

“Remember: Don’t do anything until I’m in the room,” she told him. “Wait to hit him with the syringe; he has to see that these guys are after him.”

“That’s taking a risk, isn’t it?”

“Just do what I say. You have the .22?”

Pinchon patted the pistol in his lap, which had a silencer.

“We use the .22s, not the heavy artillery,” Lia added. “The Glock is only for emergencies.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Bligh.” He winked at her. “Like being on top?”

“Just do what I say.”

“Always.”

Lia glanced at the other CIA paramilitary, John Reisler. Reisler wore a long lab coat that made his MP5 submachine gun less conspicuous. Lia was dressed as a nurse, wearing a long white dress; she had added a stethoscope and a name-plate she had found at the nurse’s station on floor two.

“Ready?” Lia asked.

Reisler nodded and adjusted the earbud for his radio. The radio was tied into his satellite phone, and through that connected to the Deep Black system; the signal would go halfway around the world even though the team members were almost nearly next to each other.

“Coast is clear, Lia,” said Rockman, monitoring the hospital security system as well as the flies Lia had planted. “The only nurse on duty is at the other end of the hall.”

Lia pried open the door, waited a second, then stepped into the hallway. She walked briskly to the nurses’ station and retrieved a wheelchair. Twirling it around, she headed back toward Pinchon, who was standing near the stairway in his hospital gown. He looked like a ghost in the dim light.

“You’ve gained weight,” she whispered after she started to push him in the wheelchair.

“Too much easy living.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Death’s overrated.” He tilted his head back slightly. “We working here or what?”

“This doesn’t seem to be right,” Lia said aloud, using Turkish supplied by the Art Room translator as she entered the room. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Nurse,” said one of the men as she started to leave. “I have not had my shot tonight.”

“Don’t worry. You’re next,” said Lia in Turkish. What she lost in pronunciation she more than made up for with her eyes; the man flushed and she was sure that his pulse must have doubled.

“Our guests are here,” said Rockman. “Just pulling up outside.”

Lia walked back to the stairway door, knocked twice quickly, then leaned against the crash bar and eased it open. Reisler was waiting—his MP5 pointed at her chest.

“You don’t trust my knock?”

“Maybe there was somebody behind you,” he said.

Lia took the pistols she’d prepared earlier, a pair of .22-caliber Ruger Mark IIs equipped with silencers.

“Three of them, coming up in the elevator,” Rockman told her. “They went straight past the front desk. I’ll tell you when they’re on the floor.”

Lia turned to Reisler. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” He raised the submachine gun. “How do you know Pinchon?”

“We were in the army together. Delta”.

“On your floor,” said Rockman. “They have pistols, down at the side. One’s hanging back, trailing them toward the room and facing the elevator.”