Brothers In Arms (31 page)

A countersurveillance security team has a specific function: its job is to identify any surveillance on a given subject and, depending on the mission, either neutralize them or merely watch them watch the subject. It’s one of the more difficult and demanding of the black arts, requiring a level of expertise on the street at least as high as the people they’re going up against, and the ability to read the players’ minds and read their moves as though they were playing a mobile and three-dimensional game of chess. November Seventeenth had some of the very best surveillance people in the business; their highly professional and high-profile assassinations took place only after long and extensive surveillance provided them with the information to pick a time and place for the killing. The five-person team, three men and two women, who approached the
taverna were among the best the terrorist organization could field.

And they saw things that other people would not.

They noticed vehicles parked along the street with two men sitting in them, not talking to each other. They noticed people lingering in the street as though they were waiting for someone. They noticed how every route out of the taverna seemed to have vehicles and people that were out of place.

And that told them what they had come to see. They had a hasty conversation, and decided to lay back along a route they would have their subject walk. Forming a series of static posts, they would be able to identify the mobile surveillance as it followed their quarry past the static posts, giving the terrorists the opportunity to identify each vehicle and individual.

Then it would be time for further action.

“I have bad news for you, my friend,” Christou said. “You were followed here.” The fat man looked around the nearly deserted restaurant. Only a single couple occupied a table near the door, far from bin Faisal’s table. “They are waiting for you outside.”

“Who are they?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Christou said. “They are very good, though. You can be forgiven for not seeing them.”

“I’m sorry for bringing this trouble to your door.”

“It’s not a problem,” Christou said. “As you said, we are merely two people enjoying a drink together. But it will be different when you leave here. You will want to walk straight down the hill to the main street, turn left, and follow that back to your hotel. Don’t do any countersurveillance, don’t look around, just stroll back to your hotel. Have a cigarette on the way, take your time. Our people will be watching you and watching the others.”

“I understand. I thank you, my old friend.”

“We now have an interest in this,” Christou said. “It may be that this is an opportunity for an action on our part. But that decision
is not mine. You have a part to play tonight, though. Play it well.”

Bin Faisal took his napkin and touched his lips, then his forehead. “I will do my best,” he said.

“Then it’s time for you to go,” Christou said.

He walked the Arab to the front door and slapped his shoulder in a friendly fashion, then opened the door and stood there for a moment with bin Faisal.

“Thank you for coming,” he said in his melodic voice. “Please come again.”

Bin Faisal smiled at him and said, “I will. Thank you for such a delicious dinner.”

The two men parted ways, Christou back in his restaurant and bin Faisal alone on the sidewalk. He took out a cigarette and lit it with his silver lighter, and took a good moment to draw on it. Bin Faisal was extremely nervous; this was not the sort of thing he was used to. He noticed that his hand was trembling and that there was sweat on the metal of his lighter. He had to force himself not to look around, and felt as though he looked hunted. Throwing back his shoulders and taking a deep breath, he started walking down the uneven pavement of the hill to the main street below.

“Subject is moving,” came a tinny voice over the earpiece the operators in Hans group all wore.

Dale shifted on his tiny seat in the back of the delivery van parked a block away and craned to look over the shoulder of the camera operator who operated a camera hidden in a ventilator hood in the top of the van.

“Where is he?” Dale said.

“Right there,” the operator said. He twisted his toggle slightly so as to better capture the image of Ahmad bin Faisal on the small monitor in front of him. “We’ve got him cold coming and going.”

All around bin Faisal there were subtle movements. Cars started, and began to slowly pull out. People who had been lingering for a long while began to move, some with him, some along side
streets not visible to him, prompted and guided by the small voices in their earpieces.

“They are very professional,” one of the female terrorists said to her male partner as they lingered in a doorway, kissing. “It is a large team . . . I count two vehicles for sure with two men each in them, and four streetwalkers. That’s on the street, not counting what they may have standing off.”

“I wonder if they are Americans,” the man said. “If so, their command and control element will be farther out. Let’s go and see how they work.”

He pulled himself off the body of his partner, and took her hand. They strolled out, a block and a half behind bin Faisal, apparently just another Greek couple enjoying the summer night air, on their way to a club or disco.

Hans’s surveillance team was focused on their quarry. Surveillance is so difficult that it takes all the resources available to a team just to keep up with their subject, and so limits the amount of energy they can put toward watching their own backs. That’s why they have gunfighters and security for the surveillance team. But those hardworking and conscientious operators have to be able to keep up with the surveillance operation and they can’t lag behind.

So two of the gunfighters on the tail end of the moving box around bin Faisal took brief notice of the young Greek couple walking hand in hand behind them, evaluated them, and dismissed them.

Bin Faisal felt as though someone very large and very heavy was standing on his chest. He forced himself to relax, taking deep breaths, and once choking on the cigarette smoke he inhaled too deeply. He kept one hand in his pocket and the other one held his cigarette, which he drew on greedily. His stomach churned, and for a moment he was angry that
his wonderful meal was spoiled. That was the least of his worries, he reminded himself, and got his mind back on what was happening. Right now, it seemed as though nothing was. There were a few cars that passed him coming down the hill, and there were people out walking, but people walked every night in Athens and its traffic was famously dense and thick and impatient.

He could see nothing, and he fought down the urge to look around for signs of the surveillance he knew surrounded him. The skin on the back of his neck seemed to tingle as the fine hairs there stood up in an atavistic response to being the hunted one, and for a moment the terrorist administrator had the sense of what it must be like for one of his operators out in the field, alone. Fear like this was new to Ahmad bin Faisal, and seemed so far away from his meetings in paneled rooms. This was the fear the street operator knew, and bin Faisal had a flash of self-awareness that comes at times like this and he knew that he could never do what he sent others out to do; this was not something his constitution could manage.

It was enough for him to keep putting one foot in front of the other. At the bottom of the hill, he paused and ground out his cigarette butt beneath one loafer-shod foot. He took out another and was grimly satisfied that his hand seemed to stop trembling. Maybe it was because he was on a busy thoroughfare now, dense with traffic and pedestrians, brightly lit, and well away from the dark street he had just walked down, alone but not, consumed with his own thoughts.

“That old boy is shaking like a dog shitting peach pits,” Charley said. “Look at him . . . he’s made the surveillance.”

“He is nervous,” Hans said. “That doesn’t mean he’s made us.”

“What’s he got to be so nervous about?” Dale said.

“He is not a street operator,” Hans said. “He hasn’t made us. He may think he has, but he hasn’t. He’s just not used to the street.”

“Let’s hope that’s the case,” Dale said. “Let’s see how he does out here.”