the ensuing police investigation uncovered the entire plot, to include the specific names of CIA operatives involved. Using cell phone records, car rental receipts, hotel guest logs, and other old-fashioned police work, the Italians dissected the entire operation from start to finish. His abduction was ruled an illegal kidnapping, with most of the CIA operatives named in an arrest warrant. Since Italy is a member of the European Union, the warrants were valid in every other EU member nation. The end state was an enormous embarrassment for the CIA, with scores of operatives no longer able to set foot on the European continent.
The point was driven home to Kurt that the actual capture or killing was the easy part. He decided that the Taskforce would never attempt an operation without the requisite groundwork laid first, which took time. If a target presented itself before they could conduct the operation without compromise, it was passed up to wait for a better day.
Now the Taskforce had no time to prepare, no infrastructure in place. Kurt had no doubt that they could successfully snatch or kill the terrorist currently in Bosnia, but knew that it would take little police work to unravel that Americans had been involved. Once word reached back that a capture/kill operation had occurred involving American forces, the press and the U.S. government itself would unwittingly help the Bosnians in their investigation, with the Taskforce exposed as a paramilitary organization operating outside the bounds of U.S. law. The president would have no choice but to step forward and accept responsibility.
He would have liked someone to talk to, someone to bounce ideas off of, but he had purposely kept his support of Pike a secret from his own men, including George Wolffe. If it blew up, at least they would be protected as unwitting. The only one he trusted above him was the one man who would bear the brunt of the decision — the president — and he was currently on a European goodwill tour. Contacting him meant going through the White House communications room. Using that, with everything recorded and God knows who else listening, would be the same as announcing Prometheus in the newspaper.
He thought about the Oversight Council and decided against discussing the problem with them. He had never called an emergency session, and after his last meeting with Standish, he didn’t trust his ability to control the direction of the conversation without presidential support.
The irony wasn’t lost on him that he was contemplating becoming what he feared the most — a single man making Prometheus decisions.
85
Bakr awoke and rolled over to ensure the weapon was still in place underneath his bed. Seeing the Tupperware container, he smiled. He wouldn’t need to worry about losing the weapon much longer. Today was the day that Sayyidd was to finalize both their method of entry into Israel and the means by which they would implicate the Persian infidels. He quickly dressed, anxious to see what Sayyidd had sent. He knew it would be another thirty minutes before the cafe opened, but he didn’t have the patience to sit around in his hotel room. He decided to get a bite to eat at a coffee shop across the street from the cafe. He felt like breaking into a run after leaving the hotel, but forced himself to walk at a natural pace.
The service at the coffee shop was rapid, since there were only two other customers: a woman who was clearly closer to paradise than the usual Bosniak unbeliever, as she had her head covered in a scarf, and, on the other side of the room, a small man who looked like he spent most of his nights on the street, with a frayed black leather jacket and dirt-encrusted shirt, his gnarled hands holding the steaming cup of coffee as if he had purchased it more for the heat it provided than the coffee itself.
Bakr fidgeted until he saw the owner flip the Cyrillic sign in the window of the cafe, signaling the start of business for the day. He threw some money on the table and rapidly crossed the street.
Two minutes later, Bakr leaned back in his chair, disappointed by the fact that Sayyidd hadn’t e-mailed him back. There was nothing to be done about it. He would just have to wait until tomorrow for the news.
He left the Internet cafe, walking toward his hotel at half the speed he had used to get there. Caught in his own thoughts, he failed to notice the Muslim woman from the coffee shop match his pace on the opposite side of the street.
Jennifer let the terrorist get a hundred yards away before picking up surveillance behind him. Learning all the time, she now stayed on the other side of the street, knowing it gave her a better ability to keep him in sight without his suspecting he was being followed.
Pike had been wrong on the number of Internet cafes. There were, in fact, seven within the radius of the e-mail trace. They had driven by each one and had discarded several, one because it was located next to a police station, a few that catered solely to tourists, and those that had their interiors monitored by cameras.
The process of elimination left two cafes, although Jennifer knew they were wishing away alternatives that might, in fact, be used. Luckily, both she and Pike knew what this terrorist looked like, allowing them to split up. The window-jumper wasn’t the man that Jennifer had seen in the passport in Guatemala, which meant that she would recognize the remaining terrorist.
One location could be watched from a coffee shop situated across from the cafe. The other had no convenient location from which to view the entrance other than from a parked car on the same street. Not wanting to repeat what had happened in Oslo, with the terrorist recognizing him, Pike had given Jennifer the coffee shop location, buying her a quick disguise of a multicolored head scarf, a set of large, cheap sunglasses, and an ankle length peasant’s dress of the type that was ubiquitous in downtown Tuzla. She had dyed her hair black to complete the transformation, and now looked like one of a hundred Bosnian women roaming the city center.
Jennifer had been sitting in the coffee shop for only a few minutes, barely enough time to think through her surveillance plan, when a man resembling the passport photo came in. She wasn’t sure, since the guy in the passport had a beard, and this man didn’t. When he left the coffee shop and entered the Internet cafe, all doubt fled her mind.
Her mission was simple: Figure out where he was staying, right down to the hotel room.
After three blocks, seeing the sidewalks beginning to swell with noontime shoppers that would give her some cover, she decided she’d pushed her luck for long enough. She crossed over, her fear of missing the opportunity now overpowering.
She picked up a position about thirty meters behind him, keeping him in sight through the crowds, but just barely. She called Pike and gave him an update, referring to the terrorist with the name she had seen in his American passport in Guatemala.
“Carlos has gone about four blocks from the cafe. I’m still on him. He appears to have a destination, but he’s not moving with a purpose. Are you nearby?”
“Yeah, I’m right outside your Internet cafe. I’ll be within a couple of blocks of you at all times. How’re you holding up?”
“I’m okay. I’m about to fall asleep on my feet, but I’m okay. Nothing like exhaustion to tamp down stress.”
“I hear you. I just about ran over a kid five minutes ago. Look — I’m having second thoughts about how far we should push this today. I think you should just pinpoint his hotel. We can find some other way to figure out his room. I think we’re risking too much by you going in.”
