The Ragnarok Conspiracy (2 page)

Through the window of the bistro, Savas could see an elegant woman in a gray pantsuit step out of a cab. Her highlighted hair shone a rich golden blonde in the May sunlight, and she walked with a quick and confident step across the sidewalk to the restaurant entrance. She spoke politely to the maître d', who directed her toward a table at the back. He watched as she surveyed the establishment—tables well separated, sounds absorbed by the old woods and carpets—approving of his careful choice. They were ensured a private and comfortable conversation. Savas smiled when several heads turned as she made her way to the table where he waited.

“Dr. Wilson, it looks like your medical training has paid off.”

She sat down and looked at him sardonically. “OK, John, and the punch line?”

“Well, I saw at least three men look your way. At forty-eight, you must've developed some serious antiaging formula.”

She smiled curtly. “Requisite flattery: check. Quotation of age: Uncheck. Decent digs for lunch: check. And the check?”

“Check,” nodded Savas.

“I think you owe me dinner for this one.”

“Lorrie, this case is three years, five agents, several hundred thousand dollars…”

“And one dead diplomat.”

Savas frowned. “He was plugged into terrorist networks I'd give my right arm for!”

“He was plugged, alright.”

Savas sighed. “Somebody wanted him out of the way. I don't know
if it's a competitor, another government, or what. But he was taken out for a reason. I want to know who and why.”

A waiter came over to the table, and they quickly ordered, resuming their conversation when he was out of earshot. The woman pulled out a manila folder and slid it across the table. Savas put his hand on it.

“This is everything?” he asked.

“Jeez, you're one greedy bastard. My husband is alive because of you, but there have to be
limits
, John.”

Savas was already flipping through the pages. “How is Mike?” he asked absentmindedly.

“Fine. Look, John, everything you need is there. I've looked over it. They didn't get much from the crime scene. They recovered the bullet—high caliber—damn thing blew right through him. They traced the angle of fire to a rooftop a block away. A long-range shot. The shooter was thorough—not a print, not a shell, not so much as a hair anywhere up there. The diplomatic turbulence on this pushed them to work overtime. Top forensics team. Several people flown in from other crime labs. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought in a board-certified psychic.
Nothing
.”

“Mmmmm,” said Savas, reading through the file.

“But you
are
right about something.”

Savas glanced up from the papers. “Yes?”

“Somebody wanted him dead very seriously. The ballistics report is eyebrow raising, if you know much about guns.”

“Go on,” said Savas, irritated at her dramatic pauses. He had forgotten how she liked the stage.

“7.62 by 51 millimeter, .308-caliber hole and bullet.”

“Sniper rounds?”

“Yes, standard issue US Army and civilian law enforcement. With a twist,” she said coyly, sipping from her water, her attractive face angled slightly. Savas just stared at her. “A slight variant on the ammunition. Ballistics had to call in help. Turns out it's a limited production of the cartridges used only in the beginning stages of the Iraq War. Couldn't get much more information on it. Definitely
not
civilian ammo.”

Savas leaned back in his chair and squinted at the physician. “You're telling me that my contact was gunned down by a limited-edition military bullet from a high-powered rifle, fired over a block away with enough accuracy to strike the man's heart?”

She flashed him a winning smile, obviously enjoying the look of confusion and surprise on his face. “That's it, Johnny-boy. This is a weird one.”

“How the hell did
that
end up in New York City?”

“I don't know, John. That's
your
job. This CSI shit isn't what I went to med school for. Now, the rest is there for you to read at your considerable leisure.” She glanced purposefully around the restaurant. “I'm hungry—for food and for a drastic change in the topic of conversation.”

Savas nodded, still fixated on this absurd piece of information. Sniper rifles with obscure military rounds. The assassination of a dirty diplomat in the pocket of international terrorists. Blown apart outside a Bronx dive by a mysterious and highly skilled sniper.
What the hell was going on?

CIA agent Brad Thompson squinted at the monitor, watching a large crowd gathered restlessly around the mosque on the outskirts of London. They seemed to strain to hear the words of Imam Wahid, broadcast over the loudspeakers yet drowned out by surrounding noise and distance. He didn't know what worried him more—the imam's inflammatory rhetoric or the number of people the nut could draw who were eager to hear it.

He approved of the heavy presence of British military to keep the peace. The task was underlined by the boiling unease and anger simmering beneath the surface of the youthful and mostly male crowd.

Agent Thompson cursed the faint rain that misted over the people, the streets, and the rows of cars lining the curbs, making their surveillance that much harder. At least they were hidden. He imagined how it looked from outside: a few hundred feet from the edge of the crowd, a wet and rusted white van parked roughly between two cars. Everything about the vehicle said that it was in disrepair, neglected, and of a very limited life span. Only a thick black antenna on the side of the van might give any hint as to the reality within the vehicle.

Inside, it was a very different story. Behind the deeply tinted glass, several rows of computer monitors displayed video feeds from many angles around the mosque. Members of Thompson's team sat in front of these monitors, earpieces relaying audio, microphones over their mouths.

He had been assigned only three months ago to investigate Imam Wahid. He glanced back at the monitor, shaking his head at Wahid's angry words, his youthful charm.
Your charity fronts don't fool us, buddy.
The man was a powder keg of Islamic radicalism. They would stop him, but not before finding out the bigger picture.

The words of the imam's speech were broadcast at a low level throughout the van. “The United States wants to control our world,” rang out a charismatic and strong voice. One video feed showed the passionate gesticulations of the imam; another, the rapt attention of the young men in the crowd. “Yes, with the dollar and the sword they seek to subdue every nation, every people, every religion. But what chance does an empire, however grand, have next to the power of God? No, God will channel His great power through each of you. Each of you becomes a soldier of Heaven against the armies of Satan. The world will be Islam!”

An agent in the van whistled softly. “The bastard is really on. How many future martyrs has he recruited today, I wonder?” Thompson leaned over one of the monitors, staring at a pan of the crowd near the speaker. “Keep an eye on those close ones—the ones he acknowledges, singles out, greets, walks with. Let's get face shots, front and side. We need to ID these people. They're possible nasties, folks.”

An agent at the back spoke up. “Hey, you all hear that they've come up with a new punishment for suicide bombers?” He paused for effect. “Death penalty.”

There were a few scattered chuckles and several rolled eyes. “Stay on task, Johnson,” Thompson barked. Chastised, the agent quickly returned his attention to the monitor in front of him.

Suddenly, a woman's scream wailed over the speaker system, and everyone in the van stiffened involuntarily. A man monitoring the speaker focused intently at his screen and nearly shouted to the others present.

“Wahid's down!”

“What?” Thompson gasped.

“Switching to stage angles.”

All the monitors lit up with images at various angles of the platform on which the speaker had stood. The podium was empty now, the crumbled body of the imam near its base. Figures leapt onto the stage
and raced to the body, turning it over as panicked screams rose from the crowd.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Thompson. The video feed made it very clear that the imam was unlikely to return to the podium ever again. Figures around him were tearing at their beards, several covered in Imam Wahid's blood. One cradled the man in his arms, the body limp, a large bloodstain over the left breast visible on the video. The rain washed softly over their forms, diluting the red.

Thompson mobilized his team. “Move people! We have a hit on Wahid! It's long range, rifle shot, and from high ground, I'd put money. Sync with the Redcoats! Rooftops, exits—we need it all covered! I need agents moving
now
!”

The van erupted in an uproar of sound and activity, voices over the speakers in ears, commands shouting into microphones. The crowd outside was turning violent, with men grouped and chanting angrily, fists raised in the air. Several men pummeled the car next to the van, smashing its windows.

Shit.
Thompson thought quickly. “People, this will get ugly. Radio British police that we have a riot brewing. Let our people out there know where the violence is and how to avoid it.”

The van began to shake, fists impacting loudly against its sides and the dark glass. Several shouts announced the arrival of the mob.

“Don't panic! The glass is stronger than the walls.” Thompson pulled out a gun, its dark metal gleaming in the lights of the computers. Except in training, he had never used it before. “The door isn't going to last. Michelson, let's try to get this piece of junk moving!”

He checked the cartridge, released the safety, and moved to the front seat of the van. Daylight spilled into the dark vehicle as several angry arms forced open the door. The CIA man aimed the weapon and fired.

"John, I think I might have something.”

Savas leapt over to the console next to a shy-looking man sporting an awkward grin. The man's face turned back to the screen and was partly obscured by an enormous beard and long, disheveled hair curled down below his shoulders. The sounds of keys clacking burst from underneath the hair. Savas had to suppress a laugh.
What did the team call Hernandez? “Our very own Jesus.” Yeah, exactly. Except for the pornography.
Savas frowned as he tried to decipher the multiple open windows, filled with database output, open web pages, photographs of crime scenes, and more.

“I don't see it, Manuel. We're looking for known hit men with MOs that might match what we have on the Hamid assassination.”

Hernandez nodded. “That's how I started. But it was a long shot, John, like we discussed. I've been in front of these databanks for
three days
cross-correlating materials and methods from every known killer we have in there with the forensics. Larry's got us drawing from FBI
and
CIA records. If there's a known assassin with any consistency in style, it would show up. Three days and nothing. Gets boring, John. I always get in trouble when I'm bored.”

“That why they tossed you out of graduate school?” Savas asked absentmindedly, still squinting at the screen, trying to see the pattern.

Hernandez sighed. “No one believes me that I quit! Honestly, John, there were weirder people there than me.”

“Yeah, but not so much trouble.”

“Can't a man just want to serve his nation in the war on terror?”

Savas smiled and waved his hand at the screen. “I give up. Don't have a computer science PhD. Explain.”

Hernandez opened several windows from online news organizations. All were dated reports, weeks to months old, from diverse locations across the globe. Each had an image of a dead body and police. The headlines in every case contained the word “assassinated.”

“Manuel, what are we looking at here…and why?” asked Savas.

“Since I wasn't getting anywhere looking for a
who
, I started looking for a
what
. What unsolved crimes in the last two years might have matched the MO we have in this case? Honestly, after drawing a big zero in the database, my feeling was that our killer, or
killers
, weren't in there, that we are looking for something, someone new. Our fancy intel databases were useless. Where else left to go but the papers?”

Savas nodded. “OK, what are we looking at?”

“It's thin, John, but there's something. Remember the Al Jazeera reporter killed in Atlanta, right as he exited the airport?”

“Mohammed Aref? Of course I do. Larry reassigned the case while I was in the hospital.
Lighten my workload
, he said. Aref was a real tap dancer. He had been implicated by the Sheikh in money laundering through some of the East Coast mosques.”

“The
Sheikh
?”

Savas smiled. “My little double-agent friend.”

“The one we don't mention, whose real name not even Larry knows?”

“That one.”

“So, he ratted out Aref?”

“And several others, as he collected from them, too, no doubt. The Sheikh's a real charmer.” Savas grinned. “Second-generation Syrian street punk. Broke away from his conservative parents, but not before he picked up enough Arabic to make him very valuable to certain underground elements. Kid's addicted to gold and adrenaline, and likes to feel smarter than everyone he's conned.”

“
That's
what you call charming?”

“Anyway, the Al Jazeera job was a cover for Aref, for his real work.
He had a good scheme going. Charity dollars from many uncharitable sources. We used Aref to trace an assassination plot against a diplomat from Pakistan. We're still planning to move on the entire operation, as far as I know.” Savas glanced down at the computer scientist. “The connection?”

Hernandez gestured toward the screen. “Aref was gunned down by a high-powered sniper rifle. Single shot. Right through the heart. Sound familiar?”

Savas furrowed his brows. “Coincidence?”

“And so's this, I suppose,” said Manuel as he enlarged another window. Savas read aloud from the web page.

“Raahil Hossain, a lawyer and lobbyist for a Saudi construction conglomerate, was gunned down today in Egypt on a business trip. Known for his outspoken stance on Arab rights of ownership of oil and gas sites developed by foreign powers, he had become a controversial figure in the international community. Condemned by many Western governments for alleged ties to jihadist movements in several countries, he had found his ability to travel outside the Middle East increasingly restricted.”

“Skip to the next-to-last paragraph.”

Savas paused and scrolled the text up on the monitor. “Reports claim that Mr. Hossain was struck by a bullet as he exited his hotel in Cairo and that he died instantly, suffering a direct hit to the chest. The gunman was never found; police speculated that the killer had fired a high-powered rifle from a distance and escaped in the ensuing panic.”

Savas was quiet for a moment. Hernandez used the silence to bring up a list of names, dates, and locations. He rolled his chair backward and let Savas lean in closer, reading through the file.

“All killed by snipers,” mumbled Savas as he read silently through the list. “All taking direct hits that killed them instantly. Each a player in the underground terrorist network. There must be twenty names here, Manuel. You think that they're all linked?”

“I don't know, John. Some don't exactly fit—head shots, for example, even though in some of those cases the bullets were identified
to be military grade. Not the special ordnance you discovered, but we don't know how careful the ballistics teams were, whether they did their homework like your contacts. Half these kills were in parts of the world where they likely don't even do a full workup, let alone release the data.”

Savas put on his best Larry Kanter voice. “This is
really
thin, Manuel.”

Hernandez nodded dejectedly. “Yeah, John, I know. But it's all I have.”

“I didn't say I thought it was wrong.” Savas sat down and breathed out slowly, lost in thought. “Do you remember those studies at Army Research focusing on soldiers in Iraq who had a high rate of survival?”

“Not really, John.”

“I do, because I found it fascinating. A large number of those soldiers were characterized by strong emotional responses to environments, having
hunches
and
gut feelings
about danger. The studies showed that these guys tended to have hyperactive attention to detail, keen sight and other senses, noticing absurd details others missed, yet they were not consciously aware of it.”

“Yeah, now I remember. Like the soldier who thought ‘the concrete slab didn't look right' and inside was an IED waiting to blow them apart.”

“Exactly. He had processed a lot of data subconsciously about the slab—imperfections, mismatches in colors, location, and so on—and without knowing why, his brain sent an alert. All he knew was, it
looked wrong
.”

Hernandez shrugged his shoulders nervously. “So what's that got to do with this?”

Savas looked back at the list of names compiled by his computer systems man. “After reading that article, I started believing in intuition, Manuel, that it's often much more than simple flighty emotion. Sure, in some percentage of the population it
is
flighty, useless stuff, and that's why we get nut-jobs paranoid about things that aren't there, conspiracy theories, and people afraid of their own shadow. But for those with a
history of survival, or of finding solutions to puzzles, let's say, with few clues, I think it's real, representing a lot of neurological processing we aren't aware of.”

Hernandez simply stared at Savas.

“What I'm trying to say, Manuel, is that I know this is thin,” he said, gesturing to the list. “I can't justify it logically, but my gut tells me there's something here. I think yours did, too. There's something in that list. Like that cement block, it doesn't look right. There's something there.”

“What?”

“I wish I knew. There are a lot of dead men on that list.”