All Necessary Force

He hesitated, half wanting to hang up and half wanting to know how this woman had the phone he’d planted for his partner. In the end, his partner won out. However bizarre it appeared, it was a link that he couldn’t sever.

“Yes. I speak English. Who is this?”

“I’m a friend of a friend. He asked me to call.”

The pilot felt a bump of elation. “He’s free? Let me speak to him.”

“He is free, but he’s not with me. He gave me the phone and asked me to warn you.”

“Warn me? Who is this? Put my friend on the phone or I hang up.”

The woman began speaking rapid-fire, almost overwhelming his grasp of English.

“Don’t hang up! There’s an Arab man that you both know. He’s dangerous. Your friend wanted you to stay away from him. He asked us to pick you up.”

The pilot began to feel light-headed, unsure of what to believe. He swiveled his head looking for Kamil. The man would be here at any second.

He said, “I’m meeting him now. At a cafe.”

The woman became agitated. “Where? Where are you?”

The pilot hesitated. He had no idea who this was. After the last few days, his ability to trust anyone he didn’t know had evaporated. He needed a cut line, something he could anchor against. He asked a simple question.

“What’s my friend’s name?”

He thought he heard whispering in the background, and a rustling of paper. Then, “I can’t pronounce it. It’s Indonesian.”

Can’t pronounce it? She’s trying to read the name. She hasn’t talked to him.

Which scared him, but also told him she had something from his partner. And, since she wasn’t with the Arab, the fact was something to consider.

He said, “I’m not going to tell you where I am, but I’ll meet you. You tell me where I can see my friend, and we’ll do it that way. Some place public.”

The woman backed off, saying, “Okay, okay, we can do that, but you are in danger now. I mean right now. Get out of there.”

The pilot felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up into the flat eyes of a killer. The same man who had sawed through a crewmember’s neck with all the emotion of cutting up a chicken for dinner.

Thinking fast, the pilot said, “No, no. Don’t file the flight plan yet. I don’t know when I’m departing. Leave the date open.”

And hung up.

Kamil placed a hand on his other shoulder, standing behind his chair. He leaned in and whispered into his ear. “Sorry I’m late. Where did you get that cell phone?”

Jennifer put the phone down and said, “We’ve lost him. The Arab’s there.”

Retro said, “How do you know? What happened?”

“He started babbling nonsense about flight plans, then hung up. He was trying to cover who he was talking to.”

I said, “He’s got about six minutes to live. The Arab gets him into a car, and we lose. We know from the tower track this morning he’s in a footprint within a half mile of here. What else do we know? How can we find him? Think, people.”

Finger raised, Jennifer said, “He’s at a cafe. He said that.”

She was so sure of herself, yet the information was so vague, it hit my funny bone.

“Jesus, why didn’t you say so? I can’t be expected to plan without all the information. Are you hiding a holocaust cloak as well?”

Jennifer got the reference to The Princess Bride, the single movie we both enjoyed, and rolled her eyes.

Decoy said, “Wait, she’s actually on to something. The Arab knows as much as we do about Budapest, and he’d want a location that would be easy to find. He wouldn’t pick some obscure local place, where he’d stand out. He’d pick a tourist area.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So what?”

“Well, right around the corner is a little promenade that’s lined with cafes on both sides. That’s where I’d plan a meeting.”

I looked at him, waiting on an explanation.

“Hey, I had a life before the Taskforce. On the teams, we used to call this place Booty-Fest.”

“Huh. Your man-whore days might pay off. Lead the way.”

Decoy led us to a park called Jokai Square, a promenade full of gardens and statues. Actually, a pretty cool area that I’d like to come back to when I wasn’t under the gun to stop a terrorist. It had streets on the north and south sides, but the middle was basically an open grassy area, and just like Decoy said, it had restaurants, nightclubs, and cafes lining the way.

We split up left and right, leaving Buckshot as the van driver. I took north with Jennifer. Decoy and Retro took south.

This early in the morning, we would have little trouble getting an ID, since each cafe had only a few people in them, and most of the restaurants and nightclubs were closed. We slowly trolled the park, Buckshot shadowing us on a parallel path one road over.

We had one false call, which was quickly eliminated when Retro transmitted a cell phone picture of two guys in a cafe. The team was forcing the issue, wanting to be right, but the photo contained what looked like two Cuban guys. I didn’t need Jennifer to call bullshit.

We reached Andrassy Avenue with nothing.

Retro said, “What now?”

“I don’t know,” said Decoy. “That was the only place I can think of. I’m sure there’re others. Besides the bridal salons, I didn’t do a whole lot of cultural engagement.”

I felt the clock ticking, knowing we were about to lose our only hope of connecting with the EFPs. The contact on the phone was about to die.

Jennifer said, “Why don’t we just keep going?”

She pointed across Andrassy. “I can see umbrellas over there as well.”

Decoy looked and said, “Damn, she’s right. None of that shit was here in ninety-eight.”

57

On the other side of Andrassy Avenue, I could see a large four-story building with some sort of latticework scaffolding built of old rough-hewn lumber, like someone had decided to work on the facade, then quit, leaving the scaffolding in place. Directly to the southwest of the building was another promenade, this one fronted by a sculpture of different-colored flowers in the shape of a cross on a shield. Past it, several statues sprinkled among the trees competed with the outdoor cafes for the attention of the pedestrians walking around. The promenade itself was much narrower than Jokai Square

“Okay,” I said. “This one’s a little less open. One street on the right and nothing on the left. We’ll stagger by time. Decoy and Retro go first, taking the path straight down the middle and eyeing the left side. We’ll give you two minutes and follow in your footsteps looking to the right. Both teams be prepared to redirect on the other’s call.”

While Retro and Decoy crossed the street, I contacted Buckshot and told him our position, giving him instructions to shadow us on Terez Boulevard a block to the northwest.

Jennifer and I busied ourselves looking at a statue of some old Hungarian guy to blend in while we waited. When I made some comment about how they could have picked a more attractive subject, she said, “It’s Jokai Mor. The Hungarian novelist this square’s named after. Do you ever do any research?”

“Just enough to get my guy. Although I was thinking about researching those bridal salons Decoy mentioned.