Brothers In Arms (34 page)

She watched the play of emotions across the young Arab’s fine features: longing, wonder, anger, and then a mask of stillness.

“What is it that you think about?” she said, softly insistent. “What is it that you can’t tell me? There’s something, I can see that. Tell me.”

“I had a friend,” Youssef said. “Palestinian. We were good friends, went to university together. But when we graduated, he went back to the West Bank to participate in the armed struggle against the Jews. He was captured by the Israelis, and they tortured him. He was a fine musician, he played the piano. They put his fingers in a drawer and a soldier kicked it shut. He never played piano again . . . he died in their custody, like so many others. He will never have a day in the sunshine in Amsterdam, he won’t have coffee in a café or take a light meal. There’s nothing for him except the memories in the minds of his friends, and the actions that we would take in his name.”

Britta sighed. “Oh, Youssef, are you political? Is that what this is?”

“If political means to be willing to take action, then I am political.”

“What sort of actions can one man do? You are so alone, it seems that all you have is hatred. This is the first time I’ve seen that in you, Youssef. You’re so much more than that. There’s so much that is fine in you. Let your anger go. You’re right, your friend can’t enjoy those things . . . but why can’t you enjoy them for him? Why should you deny yourself a life worth living because of past sadnesses? Your friend is gone . . . let us go and lift a glass in his memory today. Let yourself feel some good things, enjoy people and the day, Youssef . . . maybe then your anger will ease.”

Youssef stared stubbornly at the foot of the bed, refusing to meet Britta’s pleading look.

“It’s easy for you to say that,” he said. “Your life is so open and easy . . . it would be different if you had lost someone close to you to the Americans and the Jews. Perhaps you wouldn’t be so happy, so carefree.”

“I’m getting angry,” Britta said. “You know very little about me, Youssef, but you’re quick to judge me. Maybe I have lost people, not in the same way, but lost all the same. How we feel about things is a choice. We can choose to find the bad in it, or we can choose to find the good in it and go on with our lives. I will always take that path. I will always look to find the good and the good is always in there. It’s up to us to find it and let it guide us on a good path. You’ve been wandering alone here in my city and you were guided to me. I believe that. And maybe you should take it as a sign that there is some sweetness for you instead of all the bitterness you carry around. Hasn’t this been good?”

She gestured at the bed and the room and the open window.

“Hasn’t it?” she said. “I know you’ve enjoyed yourself and I’ve enjoyed you. Let a little light in, Youssef, and enjoy life. Your friend would want you to do that.”

Youssef threw back the covers, spilling coffee from the mug clenched in his hand. He stood up and set the coffee mug down on the floor. His shoulders were hunched and his hands came up as though to ward something off.

“You don’t understand what I must do,” he said. “I need to be alone today, do you understand?”

“Then be alone!” Britta snapped. She threw back the covers and got out of bed, snatching up her silken bathrobe and throwing it around herself. She went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Youssef watched her go with something akin to relief. Her anger gave him a sense of justification. He took his underwear from the floor and slipped it on, then put on his pants and shirt and looked around for his shoes. After he slipped on his low-rise hiking shoes, he picked up his courier bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he went to the door and went out, shutting the door quietly behind himself.
From the bathroom he heard the sound of weeping, and he steeled himself against that sad sound as he went down the narrow stairs to the street. It was early yet, and there were only a few people out on the street. He wandered away, aimlessly at first, standing on a canal bridge and staring at the murky water beneath, then wandering along, letting his feet take him where they would. He passed Dam Square, and realized he was close to the Central Train Station.

Along the pedestrian walkway and alleys that paralleled the main street that led from Dam Square to the station were numerous small travel agencies specializing in discount airfares. Youssef wandered along, looking at the prices, and found himself standing outside one agency that posted a cheap fare from Amsterdam to Toronto. He thought about it for a time, and thought out a possible itinerary. He could fly into Toronto, go through the relaxed Canadian customs, then take a bus from Toronto into the US on his forged US passport. Then he could fly or stay on the bus to get to Washington, DC, where he could blend into the faceless crowds that filled the Washington, DC youth hostel during the summer. He could be one more traveler, seeing the sights of Washington, DC, enjoying the nightlife, just another face in the crowd.

He hadn’t received his activation signal yet, but with Internet access he could get it anywhere.

Even in Washington, DC.

Charley tapped Dale on the shoulder and handed him a steaming mug of coffee.

“Here you go,” he said. “They really know how to make good coffee here. They understand the subtleties.”

“Thanks,” Dale said, taking the cup.

“
Hoka hey
,” Charley said.

“What does that mean?” Hans said from the sofa where he watched Dale and Charley hunched over the small monitors and computers set out on a battered folding table.

“It means it’s a good day to die,” Charley said.

Hans laughed. “You have a dark sense of humor, Charley.”

“Well, it is, isn’t it?” Charley said. “We’ve got the early part of what promises to be a simply stunning day. The sun is shining, and the girls are out in their short skirts and summer dresses, we’ve got the perfect box on the perfect quarry, and we’ve got the serious shooters coming in to bag and tag him. Then we can party. Damn right it’s a good day.”

Hans laughed and the equipment operator, a bone-thin palefaced Dutchman dressed all in black, joined him.

“You know how to enjoy life, my friend,” Hans said.

“It’s all a matter of priorities, friend,” Charley said. “A long time ago I learned the difference between being serious about what I did and taking myself seriously while doing it. The first is essential, the second is disastrous.”

“That’s wise,” Hans said.

“That’s because I’m an old gray-haired dog and I’ve reached the age of wisdom,” Charley said. “Isn’t that right, Dale?”

Dale mumbled something from his seat at the equipment operator’s shoulder and drank his coffee.

“Now that,” Charley said in a voice pitched for Hans’s ear alone, “is a way too serious guy.”

Hans bit back a smile and winked.

“Hans, run it down for me, will you?” Dale said.

“Sure, my friend,” Hans said. “We have four people in the room next door, two equipment operators and two walkers, one of them armed. In the lobby we have four walkers, and standing off two minutes away I have three cars. We have radio contact with everyone and everyone is fresh. Bin Faisal is awake and has taken a shower. He had a pot of coffee and some rolls and a newspaper brought to his room; so far he hasn’t gone out, which is not unlike him. He’s taking his time reading and drinking his coffee and appears to be in no hurry to go anywhere. Callan is on the ground and on his way here. He will coordinate the snatch team to take bin Faisal on the street once we get him out and moving.”

“Where’s the snatch team?” Dale asked.

“They’re in a safe house of their own choosing. Callan is keeping it compartmented right now. They will have a liaison man with us when Callan arrives, and he’ll coordinate everything with us.”

“So what about us?” Charley said.

“I assumed that you would want to be on the street when the snatch goes down,” Hans said.

“That’s right where I intend to be,” Charley said. “Come too far to miss out on that. Dale?”

“Yeah,” Dale said. He set his coffee cup down and got up and stretched his back and arms. “I intend to be in on the kill. All of us deserve that.”

“Well, then, Mr. Ahmad bin Faisal,” Charley said. “Get your ass up and moving. We’re just about ready to take your terrorist ass.”

Costas, the leader for the operation, sat in a Fiat with stolen license plates down the street from the Athens Hilton. He could see one of Hans’s vehicles, a watcher car. What gave them away were the small stick-on mirrors placed on each of the side mirrors which gave a true 360-degree view around the vehicle when you counted the inside rearview mirror. With a prepaid cell phone and a digital messaging pager he could communicate with the members of his hit team assembled loosely in a box that surrounded the surveillance team setting up around the Athens Hilton.

His pager beeped, and he looked down at the display which showed a line of numbers. This sequence meant that the lobby team had identified the surveillance-team members in the lobby, the ones that would be the first responders to any movement by Ahmad bin Faisal. While they couldn’t be sure, it was a good bet that a team of this size and expertise had rooms in the Hilton, and penetration of bin Faisal’s room. Costas’s last instructions to bin Faisal had been to remain in his room till noon, then, if he hadn’t been contacted, to go about his business and wait for them to find a way to get to him.

Costas entered in the numbers that sent the message
MESSAGE RECEIVED
and sent it to his lobby crew. With their pagers set to
vibrate and a number code worked out in advance, they had a nearly untraceable and low-key method of real-time communications. Cell phones, ubiquitous in the crowded streets of Athens, were for realtime and urgent communications.

Anna, her long hair bound into a neat, tight bun at the top of her head, shifted in the seat beside him. Beneath a newspaper beside her was an Israeli mini-Uzi, the one without the collapsible stock. It was nearly useless for anything beyond pistol range, but at close range—say next to a car or a few feet away from a target—it would put eight hundred rounds a minute of 9mm into a human being. It was an excellent assassination weapon, and Anna was highly skilled with it. Costas, as one of November Seventeenth’s premier assassins, carried a US government-issue Colt .45 Model 1911 semi-automatic pistol, one that had been pilfered from the stocks of weapons the US had hidden in Greece during the 1950s, when Greece had been a staging area for operations into communist Yugoslavia. The big .45 had been used in a number of assassinations of US diplomatic and military personnel.

The two of them planned to add to their body count today, although their primary job was command and control. All told, there were five teams of two shooters each, deployed loosely in and around the surveillance box of the Americans. The shooters blended into their surroundings, as it was their territory—a message they meant to bring home to the American intelligence agents working bin Faisal. They planned a straightforward killing of as many of the surveillance team as possible, leaving the bodies with their incriminating weapons and surveillance equipment, and enough people left alive to add to the confusion when the police and the press arrived to take note of an American intelligence operation blown in violence on Greek soil.

It would be a killing blow against the Americans and a clear message about operating on Greek soil. It would be a great embarrassment to the American president and his anti-terrorist campaign and a severe blow against US–Greek relations. And November Seventeenth would fade into the background once again, their signature of the .45 in several killings and a message taking credit for it in the press.

Anna and Costas found it exciting to the point of sexuality. They’d had sex three times last night, and the older man found himself rising like a young stallion to the younger woman. But now they were focused on the job ahead of them, and they were both cool and calm and collected like the professionals they were.