Islamic terrorists detonated a fifteen-hundred-pound bomb underneath the World Trade Center in New York City. The guys who carried out that bombing had links to al-Qaeda and also to our own intelligence services. The Trade Center conspirators used a bomb-making manual originally supplied to them by the CIA. They also had access to combat manuals from our own Special Forces Warfare Center. We taught these guys to blow us up and we’re still doing it.
“Just look at the civil war that has torn apart the European nation that was once Yugoslavia. Islamic jihadists trained and armed by U.S. corporations were active in Bosnia, and are joining the conflict currently starting in Kosovo. Al-Qaeda and Egyptian jihadists are operating in Albania and throughout the former Yugoslavia. Their aim is to use that war as a means of opening a back door into Western Europe. Yet the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA remain in total denial about the threat they pose. Gentlemen, this is madness.”
For the first time, Vermulen was raising his voice and putting extra emphasis into his words. He had paced his speech like a long-distance runner waiting till the final lap before he put in his big effort.
Sitting at a table in the far corner of the room, Waylon McCabe was impressed. He was beginning to understand how Vermulen had earned three stars before his fiftieth birthday.
“I fear that we are witnessing the first skirmishes in a great war between faiths that could determine the state of the world for decades, even centuries to come,” the general continued. “The soldiers of Islam won’t use tanks or rockets, but bombs, strapped to their own bodies. For they are prepared to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, while too many of us lack the courage or the will to sacrifice anything at all.
“Our society is soft. Our leaders dare not confront the electorate with the truth. They do not even want to hear the truth themselves. And so I come to you, the members of the Commission for National Values, because I know you will appreciate the stakes for which we are playing.
“We are sleepwalking toward disaster. And if we do not wake up, our values, our freedom, and our faith will be murdered while we sleep.
“Thank you.”
As Vermulen stepped away from the podium, he sighed with relief, and felt his shoulders drop inches as the tension finally drained away. He’d been back at his table for a couple of minutes, sitting silently, too mentally spent to make conversation with the other men at his table, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned in his seat to see an elderly man in a suit. But this was no amiable, silver-haired geezer. The face that looked down at Vermulen was as tanned and desiccated as a headhunter’s trophy, pierced by eyes that burned with a feverish intensity. And though the body beneath was clad in an expensively tailored suit, Vermulen could sense that it was as lean and tough as beef jerky.
The man bent down and spoke in a rasping, dry-throated Texas accent.
“Liked what you had to say, General. The name’s McCabe. I believe I could help you some. Maybe we could talk about that.”
Then he turned away with a hurried “ ’Scuse me,” and hunched over with a hand to his mouth as his whole body was wracked by a fit of coughing that seemed to tear at his lungs like a ravenous predator, ripping his chest apart.
16
Alix put on her shades, then strode right into the Hotel Imperial as if she owned the place. Confidence was the key to acceptance. Aside from the occasional casual glance as she went by, no one paid the slightest attention as she walked toward the main staircase and made her way to the first floor of guest rooms.
She walked to the end of the corridor, checked to see that there was no one else around, and knocked on a door.
“Entrez!” came the voice from within, the word spoken in a British accent: “Orn-tray.”
Before she could get away, the door opened. A middle-aged man was standing there, fresh from the bathroom, a towel around his waist. He raised an eyebrow and looked her up and down.
“Yes? Can I help?”
“Sorry,” she stammered. “Wrong room.”
“Well, do come in anyway,” he said, oozing an unwarranted confidence in his powers of seduction.
She shook her head and scurried away. The man stood and watched her, then retreated into his room.
She tried a second time, at the other end of the corridor. There was no reply. She slipped the pass card down the slot in the lock and a green light appeared by the door handle.
The room was unoccupied, the beds undisturbed, the closets empty.
The third room’s guest wasn’t in, but he was a lone male, with nothing that Alix could use.
Finally, in the fourth room she tried, she struck gold. A couple was staying there, the name SCHULTZ inscribed on their luggage tags. It looked as if they’d already gone out for the evening. There were daytime clothes scattered on the bed and chairs, damp towels on the bathroom floor, and Chanel makeup strewn around the marble basin. The woman had packed for a busy social life, because whatever she was wearing this evening, there were two more evening gowns hanging in the closet. The frocks weren’t Alix’s style, but the pretty pair of high-heeled black leather sandals, perched on a rack below them, fit just fine. By the time she left, five minutes later, the shoes were in her bag and her face had a freshly applied coat of foundation and blush.
On the second floor, she knocked on a door, received no answer, walked in, and found a couple making love. They had the lights down low and soft music playing. She’d raced from the room before they’d even realized she was there.
Five rooms later, she emerged with a black silk corset on under Carver’s coat, and glossy scarlet lips, courtesy of another woman’s Christian Dior. On the third floor Alix made excuses to an African woman about her own age and, a few doors down, a Chinese businessman hard at work at his laptop. But another room she tried provided a black skirt that clung to her in all the right places and a pair of sheer black stockings to wear beneath it.
