Legends (28 page)
“Sounds like your people have a handle on the problems,” Lincoln said. “Why are you backing off?”
“They’re backing off,” Crystal Quest said, “because the director has convinced the White House that American interests would be better served if the CIA held the Triple Border action.” Quest fingered some crushed ice out of a bowl and began munching on it. “Drugs, contraband cars, a black market in computer software or pirated Hollywood films are small potatoes. We have reason to believe that Triple Border has become a staging area for Muslim fundamentalist groups working in the western hemisphere; at Triple Border they can purchase all the arms their hearts desire and launder the money to pay for it. And their fedayeen can get some R and R at the local bars, out of sight of the mullahs who expect them to remain chaste and pray five times a day. The mosques in Foz de Iguacii on the Brazilian side and Ciudad del Este on the Paraguayan side are filled with Sunnis and Shiites who in other parts of the Muslim world don’t give each other the time of day. In Triple Border we suspect that they’re plotting to attack the United States and kill Americans.”
Kuck spoke up. “Despite what the CIA thinks of our collective abilities, the FBI did manage to run a handful of assets in Triple Border. With some persistence one of them struck pay dirt, pay dirt being the Egyptian named Ibrahim bin Daoud who runs the fundamentalist training camp called Boa Vista. Daoud, whose real name is Khalil al-Jabarin, has a record al-Jabarin was convicted of being a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and served serious time in a Cairo military prison. He has the physical and mental scars to show for it; electrodes attached to testicles are said to be the torture of choice of Egyptian jailers. No doubt about it, Daoud himself is a cold-blooded killer whether it’s the result of his suffering or his genes we don’t know. What we do know is that last month he snuck a crocodile into a swimming pool in Sao Paolo and then pushed in a man accused of being a police informer while some local hookers holding paper plates filled with defrosted hors d’oeuvres looked on. Money was spread around and the murder was hushed up. We know the story’s not apocryphal because one of the hookers was a collateral asset. The dead informer was our principal asset in Triple Border.”
“So the FBI has gone blind out there?” Lincoln asked.
“For all intents and purposes, yes.”
“The principal asset who got close to Daoud didn’t have an understudy?”
“We didn’t get around to it in time,” Kuck admitted.
“What else can I expect to find at Triple Border besides ravenous crocodiles?”
Kuck Lincoln had a nodding acquaintance with him from having sat in on several of the rare joint CIA-FBI coordinating sessions slid an FBI briefing book across the conference table. “What we’ve picked up is all in here,” he said. “You’re likely to come across a Texan who goes by the name Leroy Streeter. He’s what we call a crossover in his case, an Aryan nationalist nut who is making common cause with the Muslim fundamentalists. Mind you, the mix is potentially lethal. If and when Muslim terrorists do attack the United States, the white supremacists could provide infrastructure support and eventually hit men, since it’s easier for an American to gain entrance to public places than an Arab from the Middle East. Leroy Streeter may or may not be the Texan’s real name, by the way. The guy you’ll meet he’s five foot two, a hundred and thirty pounds, speaks with a Texas drawl travels under a passport made out to a Leroy Streeter Jr. Leroy Streeter Sr. was the frihrer of a Texas-based white supremacist splinter group called the Nationalist Congress; he died of cancer in Huntsville while he was serving time for blowing up a black church in Birmingham. State Department consulate in Mexico City issued a passport to a Leroy Streeter Jr. four years ago, but Argentina’s Secretariat for State Intelligence thinks that he drowned on a Rio beach two years back; as far as we know, no body was recovered. Which means that Leroy Streeter Jr. has risen from the dead or someone is using his passport. Either way, he’s high on the FBI’s most wanted list. “
“Don’t let yourself get sidetracked,” Crystal Quest told Lincoln. “Leroy Streeter is not the target of this operation. The person we’re after down there is the Saudi.”
“Does the Saudi have a name?” Lincoln inquired.
“Everyone has a name,” Quest snapped. “FBI just doesn’t know it.
“From what our principal asset was able to tell us before his untimely death,” continued Kuck, unfazed by Quest’s dig at the Bureau, “we understand the Saudi is the kingpin of a fundamentalist group that recently surfaced as a blip on our radar screen. It’s been operating out of Afghanistan since the Russians were evicted from the country two years ago and calls itself al-Qa’ida, which means “The Base.” The Saudi appears to be organizing al-Qa’ida cells across Europe and Asia and running them from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.”
“How do I get to this Saudi?”
“With any luck, he gets to you,” Quest said. “He’s in the market for explosives, lots of it. The FBI asset picked up rumors that the Saudi is shopping around for a truckload and is offering a small fortune if it can be delivered to an address in the United States. The explosives may be the tip of the iceberg the Saudi may have his heart set on acquiring something that will render the explosives more lethal.”
“You’re talking about a dirty bomb,” Lincoln guessed.
“He’s talking about gift wrapping the explosives with plutonium or enriched-uranium radioactive waste,” Quest said, “which would result in the contamination of a wide area when the charge is detonated. Hundreds of thousands could be effected. It’s because of this threat that the president decided to bring the CIA into the picture.”
Kuck said, “Mind you, Lincoln I understand that that’s the name you’re using now the business about a dirty bomb is a worst-case scenario, and pure speculation.”
Quest ignored the FBI representative. “We’re going to come at the Saudi obliquely,” she told Lincoln. “We know of an al-Qa’ida cell in the Balkans that’s been running guns and ammunition to the Muslims in Sarajevo in the belief that war between the Serbs and Bosnians is inevitable. Guy who directs it is an Azerbaijani who uses the name Sami Akhbar. Our plan is to hang you out to dry on the Dalmatian coast, which is Sami’s stamping ground, and let him stumble across you. Once you’ve established your bona fides and whet his appetite, you reach the Saudi by working your way up the chain of command. In Triple Border,
he’s said to use Daoud as a doorkeeper; nobody gets to the Saudi without getting past the Egyptian.”
Crystal Quest, dressed in one of her signature pantsuits with wide lapels and a dress shirt with frills down the chest, scraped back her chair and stood up. Taking their cue from her, the wallahs from the DDO jumped to their feet. “Get it into your head that Triple Border isn’t the Club Med,” Quest reminded Lincoln. “The group we know least about the group which interests us the most is this al-Qa’ida entity. Bring home the bacon on the Saudi and al-Qa’ida, Lincoln, and I’ll personally see to it you get one of the Company’s jockstrap medals.” She added with a leer: “Pin it on you myself.” The DDO contingent all laughed. As Quest headed for the door, Klick offered his hand across the table and Lincoln, half rising from his chair, shook it. “Our cutout will make herself known to you by saying something about Giovanni da Varrazano and the bridge named after him.” Klick added, “Holy mackerel, watch your ass when you get to Triple Border. You’ll be rubbing shoulders with mighty ornery folks.”
Crystal Quest’s voice, suffused with satisfaction at her own morbid sense of humor, came drifting back over her shoulder: “Whatever you do, Lincoln, stay away from swimming pools.”
Hanging out with Leroy Streeter in a booth at the rear of the Kit Kat Klub on the main drag of Foz do Iguacii for the second night running, polishing off the last of the sirloin steak and French fries, washing it down with cheap Scotch in a shot glass and lukewarm beer chasers drunk straight from the bottle, Lincoln watched the hookers slotting coins into the jukebox and swaying in each other’s arms to the strains of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which, judging from the fact that it was played over and over, night after night, was either number one on the Brazilian hit parade or the only 45-rpm record in the machine still functioning. Leroy had just come down the narrow stairs leading to a dark hallway with two bedrooms off of it, having gotten his ashes hauled (as he put it) for the second time that night. The skinny teenage girl with the red-dyed hair worked into a chignon on the top of her head to add height and age came down behind him,
ironing the folds of a thin shift with her palms as she tottered back to the bar on spiked high heels. “I prefer jailbait,” Leroy informed his new found friend as he signalled for another bottle of beer. “They got their selves tight snatches and do whichever you tell ‘em to without raising a fuss or renegotiating the price. Can’t figure what you got ga inst getting laid, Lincoln. Like I told you, the girls here is all clean as whistles.”
“They’re only clean as the last whistle they blew,” Lincoln said. “Last thing I need to come down with is gonorrhea. Wind up costing me two hundred fifty grand to get screwed.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Leroy said. He looked over at the dancers padding around on the broad pine planks of the floor in front of the jukebox; one young man, whom Leroy had identified as a Pakistani he’d seen at Daoud’s boon dock training camp, was hugging Leroys skinny friend with the red-dyed hair and dancing in place, shifting his weight from foot to foot in time to the music. “I don’t hold with females dancing with females,” the Texan told Lincoln, aiming his chin in the direction of the hookers who hung limply in each other’s arms, their backs slightly arched, their painted lids closed, their heads falling off to one side as if their necks weren’t strong enough to support the weight of their elaborate hairdos. “It ain’t normal, is my view, in the sense that lesbian love ain’t normal. If God meant women to fuck women he would have given some of them dicks. The hell kind of music is that anyway? Don’t worry, be happy is how I aim to pass the rest of my days on earth once all this is over with.”
Lincoln decided the moment had come to see whether his efforts at bonding with the Texan had paid off. Bending over the table, lowering his voice so the two Brazilians in the next booth couldn’t make out what he was saying, he asked, “Once all what is over with? It’s got to do with the ammonium nitrate, right? Tell me something, Leroy what the fuck would anyone do with a moving van stuffed with ammonium nitrate?” He managed to ask the question very casually, as if he were only trying to hold up his end of the conversation; as if he couldn’t care less about the answer.
Leroy, a little man who wanted people to think of him as big, couldn’t resist bragging. “Between you and me and the fly on the wall over there, I’m gonna go and personally drive it through the Holland
Tunnel,” he replied, leaning forward until their foreheads were almost touching. “Gonna set the fuse and blow it up in downtown Manhattan and flatten a square mile of Wall Street real estate, is what I’m gonna do with it.”
Sinking back, Lincoln whistled through his teeth. “You guys aren’t fucking around you’re going straight for the jugular.”
“Fucking A we’re not fucking around,” Leroy said, squirming gleefully on his banquette.
Lincoln raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed a mouthful of warm beer. “What you got against Wall Street, Leroy? Did you lose money on the stock market?”
Leroy sniffed at the air in the Kit Kat Klub, which reeked of beer and marijuana and perspiration. “I hate the Federal gov’ment,” he confided, “and that there Wall Street is a branch of the Federal gov’ment. Wall Street is where them Jews hang out, running the country from behind their polished mahogany desks, plotting to take over the whole entire world. Whether you admit it or not, you know I’m right or you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. You’re a foot soldier like me in the war of liberation. Hell, we may have to destroy America to liberate her, but one way or another we are gonna go and set the clock back to where right thinking folks can get on with their lives without being dictated to by some pompous asshole in Washington. It’s the Civil War all over again, Lincoln. The Federal gov’ment’s trying to tell us what we can do and what we can’t do. Things keep up the way they been going, hell, they’re gonna throw away the Constitution and decide you need to get yourself a license before you can own a handgun.” Leroy kept his voice pitched low but he was starting to rant now. “A license to buy a handgun! Over my dead body! Listen up, Lincoln, you got yourself book learning so you know the country is going to the dogs. Give the kikes an’ niggers an inch, they’ll come right back at you for a country mile. If we don’t draw the limit line in the dirt, if we don’t make our stand now, why, one day soon they’re gonna bus the niggers to every goddamn school in the country until there won’t be such a thing as a white man’s school left between the Pacific and the Atlantic.”
Leroy seemed to run out of steam just as the mulatto girl working the bar turned up with his beer. She deftly flicked off the cap with a church key hanging between her breasts at the end of a long gold necklace. “Ready for a refill?” she asked Lincoln.
The bottle of beer on the table in front of him was still half full. “I’m okay,” he said.
“He is definitely okay,” Leroy agreed impatiently.
The waitress told Leroy, “My girlfriend Paura, she’s the dark haired one in toreador pants dancing all by herself over there, has taken a shine to your friend here.”
“You don’t say,” Leroy said. He smirked across the table at Lincoln. “Why don’t you invite Paura over for a beer, Lincoln. If’n you don’t fancy her I’ll take her on.”
“I told you ” Lincoln started to say, but Leroy had already grabbed the waitress’s wrist. “Go and tell this Paura chic to get her ass over here.”
The waitress could be seen laughing and saying something to her friend as she headed back to the bar. Paura, holding an enormous joint between two fingers of her left hand, slowly turned her head and sized up the two men in the booth, then went on with her dancing though each shuffling step brought her closer to the rear of the bar. She kept dancing even after the record stopped and wound up swaying like a leaf in a faint breeze next to the booth as “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” started in again. She took a drag on her joint and swallowed the smoke and said, “I bet she told you my name’s Paura.”