Jack Ryan 12 - The Teeth of the Tiger (48 page)

“It shall be as you say,” Ahmed Musa
Matwalli responded respectfully. He killed his phone. It was a cloned phone, bought from a street thief for that one purpose, and then he tossed it into the river Tevere
—the
Tiber
—off the Ponte Sant'Angelo. It was a standard security measure for speaking with the great commander of the Organization, whose identity was known to but a few, all of whom were among the most faithful of the Believers. At the higher echelons, security was tight. They all studied various manuals for intelligence officers. The best had been bought from a former KGB officer, who had died after the sale, for so it had been written. Its rules were simple and clear, and they did not deviate from them a dot. Others had been careless, and they'd all paid for their foolishness. The former
USSR
had been a hated enemy, but its minions had never been fools. Only unbelievers.
America
, the Great Satan, had done the entire world a favor by destroying that abortion of
a nation. They'd done it only for their own benefit, of course, but that, too, must have been written by the Hand of God, because it had also served the interests of the Faithful, for what man could plot better than Allah Himself?

BEER AND

HOMICIDE

THE FLIGHT
into
Munich
was silky smooth. German customs were formal but efficient, and a Mercedes-Benz cab took them to the Hotel Bayerischer.

Their current subject was somebody named Anas Ali Atef, reportedly an Egyptian by nationality, and a civil engineer by education, if not by profession. Five feet nine inches or so, 145 pounds, clean-shaven. Black hair and dark brown eyes, supposed to be skilled at unarmed combat and a good man with a gun, if he had one. He was thought to be a courier for the opposition, and also worked to recruit talent—one of whom, for certain, had been shot dead in
Des Moines
,
Iowa
. They had an address and a photo on their laptops. He drove an Audi TT sports car, painted battleship gray. They even had the tag number. Problem: He was living with a German national named Trudl Heinz, and was supposedly in love with her. There was a photo of her, too. Not exactly a Victoria's Secret model, but not a skank, either—brown hair and blue eyes, five feet three inches, 120 pounds. Cute smile. Too bad, Dominic thought, that she had questionable taste in men, but that was not his problem.

Anas
worshipped regularly at one of the few mosques in
Munich
, which was conveniently located a block from his apartment building. After checking in and changing their clothes, Dominic and Brian caught a cab to that location and found a very nice Gasthaus—a bar and grill—with outside tables from which to observe the area.

“Do all Europeans like to sit on the sidewalk and eat?” Brian wondered.

“Probably easier than going to the zoo,” Dominic said.

The apartment house was four stories, proportioned like a cement block, painted white with a flat but strangely barnlike roof. There was a remarkably clean aspect to it, as though it was normal in
Germany
for everything to be as pristine as a Mayo Clinic operating room, but that was hardly cause for criticism. Even the cars here were not as dirty as they tended to be in
America
.

“Was darf es
sein?” the waiter asked, appearing at the table.

“Zwei
Dunkelbieren
, bitte,
”
Dominic replied, using about a third of his remaining high-school German. Most of the rest was about finding the Herrnzimmer
, always a useful word to know, in any language.

“American, yes?” the waiter went on.

“Is my accent that bad?” Dominic asked, with a limp smile.

“Your speech is not Bavarian, and your clothes look American,” the waiter observed matter-of-factly, as though to say the sky was blue.

“Okay, then two glasses of dark beer, if you please, sir.”

“Two Kulmbachers, sofort,” the man responded and hurried back inside.

“I think we just learned a little lesson, Enzo,” Brian observed.

“Buy some local clothes, first chance we get. Everybody's got eyes,” Dominic agreed. “Hungry?”

“I could eat something.”

“We'll see if they have a menu in English.”

“That must be the mosque our friend uses, down the road a block, see?” Brian pointed discreetly.

“So, figure he'll probably walk this way . . . ?”

“Seems likely, bro.”

“And there's no clock on this, is there?”

“They don't tell us 'how,' they just tell us 'what,' the man said,” Brian reminded his brother.

“Good,” Enzo observed as the beer arrived. The waiter looked to be about as efficient as a reasonable man could ask. “Danke
sehr. Do you have a menu in English?”

“Certainly, sir.” And he produced one from an apron pocket as though by magic.

“Very good, and thank you, sir.”

“He must have gone to
Waiter
University
,” Brian said as the man walked away again. “But wait till you see
Italy
. Those guys are artists. That time I went to
Florence
, I thought the bastard was reading my mind. Probably has a doctorate in waitering.”

“No inside parking at that building. Probably around back,” Dominic said, coming back to business.

“Is the Audi TT any good, Enzo?”

“It's a German car. They make decent machines over here, man. The Audi isn't a Mercedes, but it ain't no Yugo, either. I don't know that I've ever seen one outside of Motor Trend. But I know what they look like, kinda curvy, slick, like it goes fast. Probably does, with the autobahns they have here. Driving in
Germany
can be like running the Indy 500, or so they say. I don't really see a German driving a slow car.”

“Makes sense.” Brian scanned the menu. The names of the dishes were in German, of course, but with English subtitles. It looked as though the commentary was for Brits rather than Americans. They still had NATO bases here, maybe to guard against the French rather than the Russians, Dominic thought with a chuckle. Though, historically, the Germans didn't need much help from that direction.

“What do you wish to have, mein
Herrn?” the waiter asked, reappearing as though transported down by Scottie himself.

“First, what is your name?” Dominic asked.

“Emil. Ich
heisse
Emil.
”

“Thank you. I'll have the sauerbraten and potato salad.”

Then it was Brian's turn. “And I'll have the bratwurst. Mind if I ask a question?”

“Of course,” Emil responded.

“Is that a mosque down the street?” Brian asked, pointing.

“Yes, it is.”

“Isn't that unusual?” Brian pushed the issue.

“We have many Turkish guest workers in
Germany
, and they are also Mohammedans. They will not eat the sauerbraten or drink the beer. They do not get on well with us Germans, but what can one do about it?” The waiter shrugged, with only a hint of distaste.

“Thank you, Emil,” Brian said, and Emil hurried back inside.

“What does that mean?” Dominic wondered.

“They don't like
'em
very much, but they don't know what to do about it, and they're a democracy, just like we are, so they have to be polite to 'em. The average Fritz in the street isn't all that keen on their 'guest workers,' but there's not much real trouble about it, just scuffles and like that. Mainly bar fights, so I'm told. So, I guess the Turks have learned to drink the beer.”

“How'd you learn that?” Dominic was surprised.

“There's a German contingent in
Afghanistan
. We were neighbors
—our camps, like—and I talked some with the officers there.”

“Any good?”

“They're Germans, bro, and this bunch was professionals, not draftees. Yeah, they're pretty good,” Aldo assured him. “It was
a reconnaissance group. Their physical routine is tough as ours, they know mountains pretty good, and they are well drilled at the fundamentals. The noncoms got along like thieves, swapped hats and badges a lot. They also brought beer along with their TO and E, so they were kinda popular with my people. You know, this beer is pretty damned good.”

“Like in
England
. Beer is a kind of religion in
Europe
, and everybody goes to church.”

Then Emil appeared with
lunch—Mittagessen—and that, they both learned, was also okay. But both kept watching the apartment house.

“This potato salad is dynamite, Aldo,” Dominic observed between bites. “I never had anything like it. Lots of vinegar and sugar, kinda crispy on the palate.”

“Good food isn't all Italian.”

“When we get home, gotta try to find a German restaurant.”

“Roger that. Lookie, lookie, Enzo.”

It wasn't their subject, but it was his squeeze, Trudl Heinz. Just like the photo on their computers, walking out of the apartment house. Pretty enough to turn a man's head briefly, but not a movie star. Her hair had been blond once, but that had changed in her midteens, by the look of her. Nice legs, better-than-average figure. A pity she'd linked up with a terrorist. Maybe he'd latched onto her as part of his cover, and so much the better for him that it had side benefits. Unless they were living platonically, which didn't seem likely. Both Americans wondered how he treated her, but you couldn't tell something like that from watching her walk. She went up the other side of the street, but passed the mosque. So, she wasn't heading there at the moment.

“I'm thinking . . . if he goes to church, we can poke him coming out. Lots of anonymous people around, y'know?” Brian thought aloud. “Not a bad concept. We'll see how faithful this guy is this afternoon, and what the crowd's like.”

“Call that a definite maybe,” Dominic replied. “First, let's finish up here and then get some clothes that'll fit us in better.”

“Roger that,” Brian said. He checked the time:
14:00
. Eight in the morning at home. Only one hour of jet lag from
London
, easily written off.

JACK CAME
in earlier than usual, his interest piqued by what he took to be an ongoing operation in
Europe
, and wondering what today's message traffic would show.

It turned out to be fairly routine, with some additional traffic on Sali's death. Sure enough, MI5 had reported his death to
Langley
as having been the apparent result of a heart attack, probably caused by the onset of fatal arrhythmia. That's what the official autopsy read, and his body had been released to a solicitors' firm representing the family. Arrangements were being made to fly him home to
Saudi Arabia
. His apartment had been looked at by the
London
version of a black-bag team, which had not, however, turned up anything of particular interest. That included his office computer, whose hard drive had been copied and the data carted off. It was being examined bit by bit by their electronic weenies, details to follow. That could take a lot of time, Jack knew. Stuff
hidden on a computer was technically discoverable, but, theoretically, you could also take the pyramids of
Giza
apart stone by stone to see what was hidden under them. If Sali had been really clever about burying things into slots only he knew about, or in a code to which only he knew the key . . . well, it would be tough. Had he been that clever? Probably not, Jack thought, but you could only tell by looking, and that was why people always looked. It'd take at least a week, to be sure. A month, if the little bastard was good with keys and codes. But just finding hidden stuff would tell them that he'd been a real player and not just a stringer, and the varsity at GCHQ would be assigned to it. Though none of them would be able to discover what he'd taken away to death with him inside his head.

“Hey, Jack,” Wills said, coming in. “'Morning, Tony.”

“Nice to be eager. What have they turned on our departed friend?”

“Nothing much. They're airmailing the box home later today, probably, and the pathologist called it a heart attack. So, our guys are clean.”

“Islam pretty much requires that the body be disposed of quickly, and in an unmarked grave. So, once the body's gone, it's all-the-way gone. No exhumation to check for drugs and stuff.”

“So,
we did do it? What did we use?” Ryan asked.

“Jack, I do not know, and I do not want to know what, if anything, we had to do with his untimely death. Nor do I have any desire to find out. Nor should you, okay?”

“Tony, how the hell can you be in this business and not be curious?” Jack Jr. demanded.

“You learn what is not good to know, and you learn not to speculate on such things,” Wills explained.

“Uh-huh,” Jack reacted dubiously. Sure, but I'm too young for that shit, he didn't say. Tony was good at what he did, but he lived inside a box. So did Sali right now, Jack thought, and it wasn't a good place to be. And besides, we did waste his ass. Exactly how, he didn't know. He could have asked his mom about what drugs or chemicals there might be that could accomplish this mission, but, no, he couldn't do that. She'd sure as hell tell his father, and Big Jack would sure as hell want to know why his son had asked such a question—and might even guess the answer. So, no, that was out of the question. All the way out.

With the official government traffic on Sali's death, Jack started looking for NSA and related intercepts from other interested sources.

There was no further reference to the Emir in the daily traffic. That had just come and gone, and previous references were limited to the one Tony had pulled up. Similarly, his request for a more global search of signals records at
Fort
Meade
and
Langley
had not been approved by the people upstairs, disappointingly but not surprisingly. Even The Campus had its limits. He understood the unwillingness of the people upstairs to risk having somebody wonder who'd made such a request, and, not finding an answer, to make a deeper query. But there were thousands of such requests back and forth every day, and one more couldn't raise that much of a ruckus, could it? He decided not to ask, however. There was no sense in being identified as a boat rocker this early into his new career. But he did instruct his computer to scan all new traffic for the word “Emir,” and, if it came up, he could log it and then have a firmer case for his special inquiry the next time, if there was a next time. Still, a title like that—to his mind, it was indicative of the ID for a specific person, even if the only reference CIA had about it was “probably an in-house joke.” The judgment had come from a senior
Langley
analyst, which carried a lot of weight in that community, and therefore in this one as well. The Campus was supposed to be the outfit that corrected CIA's mistakes and/or inabilities, but since they had fewer people on staff, they had to accept a lot of ideas that came from the supposedly disabled agency. It did not make all that much logical sense, but he hadn't been consulted when Hendley had set the place up, and therefore he had to assume that the senior staff knew their business. But as Mike Brennan had told him about police work, assumption was the mother of all screwups. It was also a widely known adage of the FBI. Everybody made mistakes, and the size of any mistake was directly proportional to the seniority of the man making it. But such people didn't like to be reminded of that universal truth. Well, nobody really did.