Teeth of the Tiger

again, just for good luck. Many men in his line of work believed in luck, as a sportsman or athlete might. Perhaps the Emir had been right. Killing the Mossad officer had been a gratuitously unnecessary risk, since it courted enemies. The Organization had enough of those, even if the enemies did not know who and what the organization was. Better that they should be a mere shadow to the infidels… a shadow in a darkened room, unseen and unknown. Mossad was hated by his colleagues, but it was hated because it was feared. The Jews were formidable. They were vicious, and they were endlessly clever. And who could say what knowledge they had, what Arab traitors bought with American money for Jewish ends. There was not a hint of treachery in the Organization, but he remembered the words of the Russian KGB officer Yuriy: Treason is only possible from those whom you trust. It had probably been a mistake to kill the Russian so quickly. He'd been an experienced field officer who'd operated most of his career in Europe and America, and there'd probably been no end to the stories he could have told, each of them with a lesson to be learned. Mohammed remembered talking to him and remembered being impressed with the breadth of his experience and judgment. Instinct was nice to have, but instinct often merely mimicked mental illness in its rampant paranoia. Yuriy had explained in considerable detail how to judge people, and how to tell a professional from a harmless civilian. He could have told many more stories, except for the 9mm bullet he'd gotten in the back of the head. It had also violated the Prophet's strict and admirable rules of hospitality. If a man eat your salt, even though he be an infidel, he will have the safety of your house. Well, the Emir was the one who'd violated that rule, saying lamely that he'd been an atheist and therefore beyond the law.

But he'd learned a few lessons, anyway. All his e-mails were encrypted on the best such program there was, individually keyed to his own computer, and therefore beyond anyone's capacity to read except himself. So, his communications were secure. He hardly looked Arab. He didn't sound Arabic. He didn't dress Arabic. Every hotel he stayed at knew that he drank alcohol, and such places knew that Muslims did not drink. So, he ought be completely safe. Well, yes, the Mossad knew that someone like him had killed that Greengold pig, but he didn't think they'd ever gotten a photo of him, and unless he'd been betrayed by the man whom he'd hired to fool the Jew, they had no idea of who and what he was. Yuriy had warned him that you could never know everything, but also that being overly paranoid could alert a casual tail as to what he was, because professional intelligence officers knew tricks that no one else would ever use — and they could be seen to use them from careful observation. It was all like a big wheel, always turning, always coming back to the same place and moving on in the same way, never still, but never moving off its primary path. A great wheel… and he was just a cog, and whether his function was to help it move or make it slow down, he didn't really know.

'Ah.' He shook that off. He was more than a cog. He was one of the motors. Not a great motor, perhaps, but an important one, because while the great wheel might move on without him, it would never move so quickly and surely as it did now. And, God willing, he would keep it moving until it crushed his enemies, the Emir's enemies, and Allah's Own Enemies.

So, he dispatched his message to Gadfly097, and called for coffee to be delivered.

* * *

Rick Bell had arranged for a crew to be on the computers around the clock. Strange that The Campus hadn't been doing that from the beginning, but now it did. The Campus was learning as it went, just as everyone else did, on both sides of the scrimmage line. At the moment it was Tony Wills, driven by his personal appreciation that there was a six-hour time difference between Central Europe and the American East Coast. A good computer jockey, he downloaded the message from 56 to 097 within five minutes of its dispatch and immediately forwarded it to Jack.

That required fewer seconds than it took to think it. Okay, they knew their subject and they knew where he was going to be, and that was just fine. Jack lifted his phone.

'You up?' Brian heard.

'I am now,' he growled back. 'What is it?'

'Come on over for coffee. Bring Dom with you.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Followed by click.

* * *

'I hope this is good,' Dominic said. His eyes looked like piss holes in the snow.

'If you want to soar with the eagles in the morning, buddy, you can't wallow with the pigs at night. Be cool. I ordered coffee.'

'Thanks. So, what's up?'

Jack walked over to his computer and pointed to the screen. They both leaned down to read.

'Who is this guy?' Dominic asked, thinking Gadfly097…?

'He came in from Vienna yesterday, too.'

Across the street somewhere, maybe? Brian wondered, followed by, Did he see my face?

'Okay, I guess we're up for the appointment,' Brian said, looking at Dom and getting a thumbs-up.

The coffee arrived in a few more minutes. Jack served, but the brew, they all found, was gritty, Turkish in character, though far worse even than the Turks served. Still, better than no coffee at all. They did not speak on point. Their tradecraft was good enough that they didn't talk business in a room that hadn't been swept for bugs — which they didn't know how to do, and for which they did not have the proper equipment.

Jack gunned down his coffee and headed into the shower. In it was a red chain, evidently to be pulled in case of a heart attack, but he felt reasonably decent and didn't use it. He wasn't so sure about Dominic, who really did look like cat puke on the rug. In his case, the shower worked wonders, and he came back out shaved and scrubbed pink, ready to rumble.

'The food here is pretty good, but I'm not sure about the coffee,' he announced.

'Not sure. Jesus, I bet they serve better coffee in Cuba,' Brian said. 'MRE coffee is better than this.'

'Nobody's perfect, Aldo,' Dominic observed. But he didn't like it either.

'So, figure half an hour?' Jack asked. He needed about three more minutes to be ready.

'If not, send an ambulance,' Enzo said, heading for the door, and hoping the shower gods were merciful this morning. It was hardly fair, he thought. Drinking gave you a hangover, not driving.

But thirty minutes later, all three were in the lobby, neatly dressed and wearing sunglasses against the bright Italian sun that sparkled outside. Dominic asked the doorman for directions and got pointed to the Via Sistina, which led directly to the Trinita dei Monti church, and the steps were just across the street, and looked to be eighty or so feet down — there was an elevator serving the subway stop, which was farther down still, but going downhill was not too outrageous a task. It hit all three that Rome had churches the way New York City had candy stores. The walk down was pleasant. The scene, indeed, would be wonderfully romantic if you had the right girl on your arm. The steps had been designed to follow the slope of the hill by the architect Francesco De Sanctis, and was the home of the annual Donna sotto le Stelle fashion extravaganza. At the bottom was a fountain in which lay a marble boat commemorating a major flood, something in which a stone boat would be of little use. The piazza was the intersection of only two streets, and was named for the presence of the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See. The playing field, as it were, was not very large — smaller than Times Square, for example — but it bustled with activity and vehicle traffic, and enough pedestrians to make passage there a dicey proposition for all involved.

Ristorante Giovanni sat on the western side, an undistinguished building of yellow/cream-painted brick, with a large canopied eating area outside. Inside was a bar at which everyone had a lighted cigarette. This included a police officer having a cup of coffee. Dominic and Brian walked in and looked around, scoping the area out before coming back outside.

'We have three hours, people,' Brian observed. 'Now what?'

'We want to be back here — when?' Jack asked.

Dominic checked his watch. 'Our friend is supposed to show up at about one-thirty. Figure we sit down for lunch about twelve forty-five and await developments. Jack, can you ID the guy by sight?'

'No problem,' Junior assured them.

'Then I guess we have about two hours to wander around. I was here a couple years ago. There's good shopping.'

'Is that a Brioni store over there?' Jack asked, pointing.

'Looks like it,' Brian answered. 'Won't hurt our cover to do some shopping.'

'Then let's do it.' He'd never gotten an Italian suit. He had several English ones, from No. 10 Savile Row in London. Why not try here? This spook business was crazy, he reflected. They were here to kill a terrorist, but