Teeth of the Tiger

hard information and spinning it into a complete soap opera.

Rounds just tapped his nose and smiled. 'Since when do you believe in coincidences? Something smells about this one.'

'What's Langley think?'

'Nothing yet. They've assigned it to the Southern Europe Desk for evaluation. I expect we'll see something in a week or so, and it won't say much. I know the guy who runs that shop.'

'Dumb?'

Rounds shook his head. 'No, that's not fair. He's smart enough, but he doesn't stick his neck out. Nor is he especially creative. I bet this doesn't even go as far as the Seventh Floor.'

A new CIA Director had replaced Ed Foley, who was now retired and reportedly doing his own 'I Was There' book, along with his wife, Mary Pat. In their day, they'd been pretty good, but the new DCI was a politically attractive judge beloved of President Kealty. He didn't do anything without Presidential approval, which meant it had to be run through the mini-bureaucracy of the National Security Council team in the White House, which was about as leaky as RMS Titanic, and hence beloved of the press. The Directorate of Operations was still growing, still training new field officers at The Farm in Tidewater, Virginia, and the new DDO wasn't a bad man at all — Congress had insisted on someone who knew how to work the field, somewhat to Kealty's dismay, but he knew how to play the game with Congress. The Directorate of Operations might be growing back into proper shape, but it would never do anything overtly bad under the current administration. Nothing to make Congress unhappy. Nothing to make the freelance haters of the intelligence community get loud about anything other than their routine complaints about historical wives' tales and grand conspiracy theories, and how CIA had caused Pearl Harbor and the San Francisco Earthquake.

'So, nothing will come of this, you figure?' Granger asked, knowing the answer.

'Mossad will look around, tell its troops to stay awake, and that'll work for a month or two, and then most of them will settle down to their normal routines. Same with other services. Mainly, the Israelis will try to figure how their guy got fingered. Hard to speculate on that with the information at hand. Probably something simple. Usually is. Maybe he recruited the wrong guy and it bit him, maybe their ciphers got cracked — a bribed cipher clerk at the embassy, for example — maybe somebody talked to the wrong guy at the wrong cocktail party. The possibilities are pretty wide, Sam. It only takes one little slip to get a guy killed out there, and the best of us can make that sort of error.'

'Something to put in the manual about what to do on the street, and what not to do.' He'd done his own street time, of course, but mainly in libraries and banks, rooting around for information so dry as to make dust look moist, and finding the occasional diamond in a pile of it. He'd always maintained a cover and stuck to it until it had become as real to him as his birthday.

'Unless some other spook craps out on the street somewhere,' Rounds observed. 'Then we'll know if there really is a ghost out there.'

* * *

The Avianca flight from Mexico touched down at Cartagena five minutes early. He'd flown Austrian Air to London Heathrow, and then a British Airways flight to Mexico City before taking Colombia's flag carrier to the South American country. It was an old American Boeing, but he was not one to worry about the safety of air travel. The world had far greater dangers. At the hotel, he opened his bag to retrieve his day planner, took a walk outside, and spotted a public phone to make his call.

'Please tell Pablo that Miguel is here… Gracias.' And with that he walked to a cantina for a drink. The local beer wasn't all that bad, Mohammed found. Though it was contrary to his religious beliefs, he had to fit in to this environment, and here everybody drank alcohol. After sitting for fifteen minutes, he walked back to his hotel, scanning twice for a tail, which he did not see. So, if he was being shadowed, it was by experts, and there was little defense against that, not in a foreign city where everyone spoke Spanish and no one knew the direction to Mecca. He was traveling on a British passport that said his name was Nigel Hawkins of London. There was indeed a flat at the indicated address. That would protect him even from a routine police stop, but no cover legend went forever, and if it came to that… then it came to that. You could not live your life in fear of the unknown. You made your plans, took the necessary precautions, and then you played the game.

It was interesting. The Spanish were ancient enemies of Islam, and this country was composed mostly of the children of Spain. But there were people in this country who loathed America almost as much as he did — only almost, because America was to them a source of vast income for their cocaine… as America was a source of vast income for the oil of his homeland. His own personal net worth was in the hundreds of millions of American dollars, stored in various banks around the world, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and most recently, the Bahamas. He could afford his own private plane, of course, but that would be too easy to identify, and, he was sure, too easy to shoot down over water. Mohammed was contemptuous of America, but he was not blind to her power. Too many good men had gone unexpectedly to Paradise for forgetting that. It was hardly a bad destiny, but his work was among the living, not the dead.

* * *

'Hey, Captain.'

Brian Caruso turned to see James Hardesty. It wasn't even seven in the morning. He'd just finished leading his short company of Marines through their morning routine of exercise and the three-mile run, and like all his men he'd worked up a good sweat in the process. He'd dismissed his people to their showers, and was on his way back to his quarters when he'd encountered Hardesty. But before he could say anything, a more familiar voice called.

'Skipper?' the captain turned to see Gunnery Sergeant Sullivan, his senior NCO.

'Yeah, Gunny. The people looked pretty sharp this morning.'

'Yes, sir. You didn't work us too hard. Good of you, sir,' the E-7 observed.

'How did Corporal Ward do?' Which was why Brian hadn't worked them too hard. Ward had said he was ready to get back into the swing, but he was still coming off some nasty wounds.

'He's puffing some, but he didn't cave on us. Corpsman Randall is keeping an eye on the lad for us. You know, for a squid, he isn't too bad,' the gunny allowed. Marines are typically fairly solicitous to their Navy corpsmen, especially the ones tough enough to play in the weeds with Force Recon.

'Sooner or later the SEALs are going to invite him out to Coronado.'

'True enough, Skipper, and then we're gonna have to break in a new squid.'

'What you need, Gunny?' Caruso asked.

'Sir — oh, he's here. Hey, Mr. Hardesty. Just heard you were down to see the boss. Beg pardon, Captain.'

'No problem. See you in an hour, Gunny.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Sullivan saluted smartly and headed back to the barracks.

'He's a pretty good NCO,' Hardesty thought aloud.

'Big time,' Caruso agreed. 'Guys like him run the Corps. They just tolerate people like me.'

'How's about some breakfast, Cap'n?'

'Need a shower first, but sure.'

'What's on the agenda?'

'Today's class work is on comms, to make sure we can all call in air and artillery support.'

'Don't they know that?' Hardesty asked in surprise.

'You know how a baseball team does batting practice before every game, with the batting coach around? They all know how to swing a bat, right?'

'Gotcha.' The reason they were called fundamentals was because they really were fundamental. And these Marines, like ballplayers, wouldn't object to the day's lesson. One trip into the tall weeds had taught them all how important the fundamentals were.

It was a short walk to Caruso's quarters. Hardesty helped himself to some coffee and a newspaper, while the young officer showered. The coffee was pretty good for a single man's making. The paper, as usual, didn't tell him much he didn't already know, except for late sports scores, but the comics were always good for a laugh.

'Ready for breakfast?' the youngster asked, all cleaned up.

'How's the food here?' Hardesty stood.

'Well, kinda hard to screw up breakfast, isn't it?'