Jihad (3 page)

“Bottoms up,” said Karr, draining his glass.

CHAPTER 4

CHARLIE DEAN TRIED not to react as the bodyguard grabbed Lia. As deliberately as he could, he pulled up the camera that hung around his neck as if to take a picture of the disaster in front of him. His fingers slowly manipulated the focusing ring, zeroing the crosshairs on the head of the man who had just grabbed his partner. The camera was linked to an automated sniper rifle hidden in a van parked nearby; when he pushed the autofocus button down, it locked the target, allowing the computer that guided the weapon to remember and track the head he’d zeroed in on for about ten meters.

He could hear Lia arguing with the man, her tone familiar despite the strange words in Egyptian Arabic she’d spent hours memorizing over the past few weeks.

She’s okay, he told himself; just keep playing tourist. If he was going to work with her, if he was going to remain close to her—love her—he had to learn to hang back. That was the deal they made.

Not that he could ever be comfortable with it: his heart jumped when he saw the bodyguard pull her roughly to her feet.

“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” demanded Lia, speaking in Egyptian Arabic and then switching to English. “The men need attention and I am a nurse.”

The first man ignored her. Another grabbed the sleeve of her long Muslim dress.

“Stay back, sister,” said one of the bodyguards in Arabic. “We will attend to the wounded.”

“I am a nurse, educated at Aga Khan University School of Nursing in Pakistan. That man in the back needs attention. Look at the cut on his head,” she added, pointing.

“You’re not from Pakistan,” said the man. “Or here.”

“I was born in Malaysia.”

“You sound Egyptian.”

“Where I have worked for ten years. Are we meant to argue here while your friend bleeds to death? Is that why God Himself directed me to walk down the block at the moment of this catastrophe?”

Smoke poured from the bus. The bodyguard who had thrown Lia down took the man she had pulled out and began dragging him away.

“No!” yelled Lia. She surged forward, pressing against the arm of the bodyguard holding her. “He may have a head injury. You will paralyze him! Careful!”

The man on the ground was Asad bin Taysr. Known in the West as “the Red Lion,” he was the number three official in the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Traveling as a Syrian businessman, he had come to Istanbul for a meeting with other members of the terrorist network.

“Hayir, hayir!”
screamed a man nearby, saying no in Turkish.

Lia turned in time to see another of the bodyguards pull a Beretta handgun from his holster and fire pointblank into the face of a driver whose car had stopped nearby. It was apparently a case of mistaken identity—the cabbie who had set up the accident was long gone—but it was too late for Lia or anyone else to do anything about it. The man’s head flew back and his mouth opened, as if he were taking a last gulp of air before expiring.

The gunman turned and came toward her, gun pointed at her face. Lia stared at the barrel; Charlie Dean was nearby somewhere, but it seemed unlikely that he’d be able to do anything if the man with the gun decided to fire.

“Who are you?” he demanded in English.

“I am a nurse,” she answered. “Your friend there needs attention or he will die. And you cannot drag him on the street like a bag of rice.”

The man put the pistol a few inches from her forehead. “If he dies, so will you.”

Lia scowled at him, then pushed herself from the other bodyguard’s arm and knelt beside Asad.

“An ambulance,” she said loudly. “An ambulance quickly, or he will join the Prophets in Paradise, all praise and honor to their souls.”

“THE AMBULANCE IS two blocks away,” Rockman told Dean.

“You’d better get over to the hospital.”

Dean didn’t answer, watching as a police car pulled up. The officers ran over to the bodyguards standing over Lia as she pretended to minister to Asad. The guards had not bothered to holster their pistols. One of the policemen began shouting at them; Dean tensed, almost expecting a shootout. They’d rehearsed this operation more than two dozen times, but that was one contingency they hadn’t thought of.

“Charlie, you there?”

“Relax, Rockman,” said Dean.

One of the bodyguards raised his pistol and pointed it at the policeman. Dean glanced at Lia, kneeling a few feet away; she’d be sure to be hit in a crossfire.

A second and then a third police car drove up the street, followed by a fire engine, its siren blistering the air. The bodyguard who’d pointed the weapon at the policeman began telling him in English that someone had tried to murder his boss, a prominent Syrian diplomat.

“The lies just keep on comin’,” said Rockman sarcastically. “Red Lion will be president of Syria next.”

“You, back,” barked someone to Dean’s left.

He turned and found a plainclothes detective with his hand out, moving the onlookers back to the curb. Dean shuffled back to the sidewalk, deciding that it was indeed time to go—the hospital was only a few blocks away, but even with the bicycle it might take several minutes to weave through the traffic. Dr. Ramil would be wondering where he was.

But as Dean started for the comer, the plainclothes policeman caught up to him.

“The film,” said the policeman in Turkish, grabbing him by the arm. “We need it for the investigation.”

The policeman was considerably younger than Dean, but that was his only advantage; he had a potbelly, stood six inches shorter than Dean, and was already huffing from the few steps it had taken to catch up with him. But the last thing Dean needed at the moment was a confrontation.

“He’s asking for the film in your camera,” said the translator back in the Art Room. “Tell him you don’t understand:
Anlamryoyrum.”

You’re a big help, Dean thought.

“This camera doesn’t have film,” Dean told the policeman in English. “Do you see? It’s digital?”

The detective squinted. Dean guessed that like most Turks, the man could understand English, as long as it was spoken carefully, but felt more sure of himself in his native tongue.

“The camera doesn’t use film,” repeated Dean. He slipped his finger to the side, snapping open the compartment where the battery and memory card were kept. “I can give you this. Is this what you want?”

He pushed on the back of the small Memory Stick and removed it from the camera. It was blank, but the policeman had no way of knowing that.

“Film?” asked the cop.

“Evet,”
said Dean, using one of the few Turkish words he’d been able to memorize. “Yes. Digital film.”

He handed it to him. The policeman told him in heavily accented English that he could pick it up at the police station in two days. Then he waved him away, turning to find someone else who might have witnessed the accident.

“You have to work on your accent,” said the translator as Dean hurried for the bike, chained to a post on the next street.

“I’ll try and work that in,” Dean replied, fumbling with the combination.

CHAPTER 5

THE SEDATIVE KARR had placed in the men’s drinks was powerful, but the dose in the capsule had been designed for one man, not two, and Karr wasn’t sure it would completely knock the doctor out. He hoped it would; the alternative plan called for him to pop the physician while they changed. He didn’t want to do that, not because it was more complicated, but because he didn’t want to hurt the guy, who seemed a congenial sort.

But the drug didn’t seem to be working, even though the doctor had drunk nearly the entire glass of tea. He picked up the tube of the pipe, closing his eyes as he took a long breath. Karr found himself staring at him when the doctor opened his eyes.

“Have another puff,” sad the doctor, passing him the pipe.

“Love to,” lied Karr. The doctor’s friend looked a little tired at least.

“So what is your specialty?” asked the doctor.

“Pediatrics,” said Karr. “But I was thinking I might get into psychiatry.”

“Psychiatry?”

“Yeah. Kind of like what you do, only from a different angle.”

Since he’d had to strip naked to get into the baths, Karr was out of communication with the Art Room. A small implant in his skull functioned as an internal headphone, but the real guts of the radio were sewn into his clothes and belt back in a changing room. Without help from the Art Room, he couldn’t take the conversation too far or make it too specific; Karr knew a lot about a lot of things, but had always kept as far as possible from doctors and their craft.

“The brain—some things should be mysterious,” said the Turkish doctor, taking the pipe.

“I think you’re right,” said Karr.

“The human organism—to be—it is not—a machine.”

With the last word, the doctor’s head edged backwards. Karr caught him and leaned him against the back of the seat. He turned and found the doctor’s companion already passed out, head against the top of the cushion.

“I really want to thank you guys for the tobacco,” said Karr, making them comfortable. “And the curdled milk.”

He stood up. The attendant came over, staring at the men.

“Guess I bored them,” Karr said, heading for his clothes.

CHAPTER 6

DR. SAED RAMIL SMILED at the head of internal medicine at Istanbul Medical University Center, nodding as Dr. Ozdilick explained the small private hospital’s elaborate computer system. Each resident at the hospital carried a wireless device that allowed him to see a patient’s complete chart instantly. The devices could display X-rays and other scans as well, though it was generally more convenient to use one of the many larger screens littering the hallways and walls of the rooms.

“Impressive,” said Ramil. He wondered where Charlie Dean was. He didn’t need him for the procedure, but the op was good insurance if anything went wrong.

Not that it would.

Dr. Ozdilick pulled up a pharmacological reference on one of the wall screens. Ramil, trying not to overplay his role as an interested foreign doctor, gave a restrained “mmm” in admiration.

“In your own specialties of neurology and trauma, we have all of the diagnostic tools one could wish,” said his guide, jabbing a menu at the lower left of the large screen. The screen filled with icons indicating a number of programs. Ramil stared at them as if he were seeing them for the first time.

“You’re frowning,” said Dr. Ozdilick.

“Oh, just trying to decipher these.” Ramil feigned a smile. Instead of practicing the procedure umpteen times with the Desk Three people, he should have taken an acting course. That was the tough part of this, wasn’t it? Pretending to be someone else. The medical procedure he could do cold.

Any second, Red Lion would be wheeled through the doors downstairs and they could get to work. Then he’d relax. It would be like the old days, the
really
old days in Vietnam when he worked in the MASH unit. He’d be nervous until the snap of the gloves. Then something else would take over and the butterflies would disappear.

“Doctor?”

Ramil looked at his guide. “Might I have some water? I feel thirsty.”

Dr. Özdilick led him a few yards down the hall to a large water cooler. Air bubbled up from the jug with a loud
kerklunk.
It tasted like cardboard in his mouth, but at least it was cold.

“There you are,” said a quiet voice behind them.

Ramil turned and saw that Charlie Dean had finally arrived. Rather than reassuring him, it caused his stomach to turn—the operation was ready to begin.

“My colleague, Dr. Gomez from Madrid,” Ramil told Dr. Özdilick.

“Yes, you introduced us yesterday. How was the session?”

“A little bit, eh, not interesting,” said Dean. He spoke English with a Spanish accent that was more Mexico than Madrid, but few people in Turkey would know the difference.

Dr. Özdilick’s pager gave a short beep.

“Excuse me,” said the doctor, retreating a few steps down the hall to the open window of a nurse’s station.

LIA ADJUSTED HER headpiece as the ambulance backed in toward the emergency room entrance of the Istanbul Medical University Center. The bodyguard who had shot the Turkish man was crouched near the door, watching the attendant who’d slapped an oxygen mask on Asad.

Even with the pure oxygen, the al-Qaeda operative seemed to be having trouble breathing. If Asad died, the whole operation would be a waste.

Even so, Lia would have relished seeing Asad choke to death. In his mid-thirties, with the air of a humble and soft-spoken college professor, he’d been responsible for hundreds of deaths, and was in Istanbul to plan thousands more.

The ambulance doors opened and the bodyguard jumped out, surveying the area before letting the attendants take the stretcher out. Lia put her fingers on Asad’s throat as if she were taking his pulse. She trotted alongside as the attendants pushed him inside, people backing out of the way to allow them to pass. She had a brief speech outlining his symptoms ready, but a nurse began immediately examining the patient as he was wheeled in, and before Lia could say anything, the woman had barked instructions for the hospital’s neurologist to be called.

The attendants pushed the rolling stretcher toward a set of white curtains at the far end of the room. A nurse appeared and told Lia in Turkish that she was not permitted beyond the common area.

“I’m a nurse,” Lia said, also using Turkish.

“I’m sorry—”

“No, she comes,” insisted the bodyguard in English. Though his pistol was in his holster and out of sight, his voice was sharp enough that the nurse backed off and let Lia join them.

“They’re just finding out that Dr. Kildare won’t be joining the party,” said Rockman over the Deep Black communications system. “They’ll be calling our guy down any second.”

“His pupils aren’t responsive,” Lia told the doctor who met them. The drug-induced symptom had an immediate effect: the doctor concluded that the patient probably had a concussion or an even more serious head injury.