Teeth of the Tiger

anyone tailing them would stand out. It was just a matter of checking his mirror. No one lingered there for more than a few minutes. Any police shadow would be a man — it would have to be a man — in his twenties or thirties. Maybe two of them, one to drive and one to look. The men would be physically fit looking, with conservative haircuts. They'd tail for a few minutes before breaking contact, as someone else took the surveillance job over. They'd be clever, of course, but the nature of the mission made their procedures predictable. Some cars would disappear and reappear. But Mustafa was fully alert, and no car had appeared more than once. They might be tailed by aircraft, of course, but helicopters were easy to spot. The only real danger was a small fixed-wing aircraft, but he could not worry about everything. If it were written, then written it was, and there was no defense against that. For the moment, the road was clear and the coffee was excellent. It would be a fine day. OKLAHOMA CITY 36 MILES, the green road sign proclaimed.

* * *

NPR announced that it was Barbra Streisand's birthday, a vital piece of information with which to begin the day, John Patrick Ryan, Jr., told himself as he rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. A few minutes later, he saw that his clock-controlled coffeemaker had functioned properly and dripped two cups into the white plastic pot. He decided to hit McDonald's this morning and get an Egg McMuffin and hash browns on the way to work. It wasn't exactly a healthy breakfast, but it was filling, and at twenty-three he wasn't overly worried about cholesterol and fat, as his father was, courtesy of his mother. Mom would already be dressed and ready to be driven to Hopkins (by her principal agent of the Secret Service) for her morning's work, without coffee if she was operating today, because she worried that caffeine might give her hand a slight tremor — and drive her little knife into the poor bastard's brain after skewering the eyeball like the olive in a martini (that was his father's joke, which usually resulted in a playful slap from Mom). Dad would go to work on his memoirs, assisted by a ghostwriter (which he detested — but the publisher had insisted). Sally was in the pretend-doc stage of medical school; he didn't know what she was doing at this moment. Katie and Kyle would be dressing for school. But Little Jack had to go to work. It had recently occurred to him that college had been his last real vacation. Oh, sure, every little boy and girl wants nothing more than to grow up and take proper charge of his or her life, but then you get there — and it's too late to go back. This work-every-day thing was a drag. Okay, fine, you got paid for it — but he was already rich, the scion of a distinguished family. The money, in his case, was already made, and he wasn't the kind of wastrel likely to piss it all away and become a self- unmade man, was he? He set his empty coffee cup in the dishwasher and went to the bathroom to shave.

That was another drag. Damn, a teenybopper was so pleased to see the first bunch of peach fuzz turn dark and bristly, and then you got to shave once or twice a week, usually before a date. But every damned morning — what a pain in the ass that was! He remembered watching his father do it, as young boys often do, and thinking how neat it was to be a grown man. Yeah, sure. Growing up just wasn't worth the hassle. It was better to have a mom and dad to take care of all the administrative bullshit. And yet…

And yet, he was doing important stuff now, and that did have its satisfactions, sort of. Once you got past all the housekeeping that accompanied it. Well. Clean shirt. Pick a tie and tie tack. Slide the jacket on. Out the door. At least he had a fun car to drive. He might get himself another. A ragtop, maybe. Summer was coming, and it would be cool to have the wind blowing in your hair. Until some pervert with a knife slashed the canvas top, and you had to call the insurance company and the car vanished into the shop for three days. When you got down to it, growing up was like going to the shopping mall to buy underwear. Everyone needed it, but there wasn't much you could do with it except take it off.

The drive to work was about as routine as driving to school, except he didn't have to worry about an exam anymore. Except that if he screwed up, he'd lose the job, and that black mark would follow him a lot longer than an 'F' in sociology would. So, he didn't want to screw up. The problem with this job was that every day was spent in learning, not in applying knowledge. The whole big lie about college was that it taught you what you needed to know for life. Yeah, right. It probably hadn't done that for his dad — and for Mom, hell, she never stopped reading her medical journals to learn about new stuff. Not just American journals, either, English and French, too, because she spoke pretty good French and she said that French docs were good. Better than their politicians were, but, then again, anyone who judged America by its political leaders probably thought the U.S. of A. was a nation of fuckups. At least since his dad had checked out of the White House.

He was listening to NPR again. It was his favorite news station, and it beat listening to the current brand of popular music. He'd grown up listening to his mom on the piano, mostly Bach and his peers — maybe a little John Williams in a gesture toward modernity, though he wrote more for brass than the ivories.

Another suicide bomber in Israel. Damn, his dad had tried awfully hard to settle that one down, but despite some earnest efforts, even by the Israelis, it had all come undone. The Jews and Muslims just could not seem to get along. His dad and Prince Ali bin Sultan talked about it whenever they got together, and the frustration they displayed was painful to see. The prince hadn't been screened for the kingship of his country — which was possibly good luck, Jack thought, since being a king had to be even worse than being President — but he remained an important figure whose words the current king listened to most of the time… which brought him to…

Uda bin Sali. There'd be more news on him this morning. Yesterday's take from the British SIS, courtesy of the CIA pukes at Langley. CIA pukes? Jack asked himself. His own father had worked there, had served with distinction before moving up in the world, and had told his kids many times not to believe anything they saw in the movies about the intelligence business. Jack Jr. had asked him questions and mainly gotten unsatisfactory answers, and now he was learning what the business was really like. Mostly boring. Too much like accounting, like chasing after mice in Jurassic Park, though at least you had the advantage of being invisible to the raptors. Nobody knew that The Campus existed, and so long as that remained true everyone there was safe. That made for a comfortable feeling, but again, boring. Junior was still young enough to think excitement was fun.

Left off U.S. Route 29 and on to The Campus. The usual parking place. Smile and a wave at the security guard and up to his office. It was then that Junior realized he'd driven right past McDonald's, and so he picked two Danish off the treat tray, and made a cup of coffee on his way to his cubbyhole. Light up the computer and go to work.

'Good morning, Uda,' Jack Jr. said to the computer screen. 'What have you been up to?' The clock window on the computer said 8:25 AM. That translated to early afternoon in London's financial district. Bin Sali had an office in the Lloyd's insurance building, which, Junior remembered from previous hops across the pond, looked like a glassed-in oil refinery. Upscale neighborhood and some very wealthy neighbors. The report didn't say which floor, but Jack had never been in the building anyway. Insurance. Had to be the most boring job in the world, waiting for a building to burn down. So, yesterday Uda had made some phone calls, one of them to… aha! 'I know that name from somewhere,' the young Ryan told the screen. It was the name of a very rich Middle Eastern fellow who also had been known to play in the wrong playground on occasion, and who was also under surveillance by the Brit Security Service. So, what had they talked about?

There was even a transcript. The conversation had been in Arabic, and the translation… might as well have been instructions from the wife to buy a quart of milk on the way home from work. About that exciting and revealing — except that Uda had replied to a totally innocuous statement with 'Are you sure?' Not the sort of thing you said to the wife when she said to get a quart of skim milk on the way home.

'The tone of voice suggests hidden meaning,' the Brit analyst had opined gently at the bottom of the report.

Then, later in the day, Uda had left his office early and entered another pub and met with the same guy he'd been talking to on the phone. So, the conversation hadn't been innocuous after all? But, though they hadn't managed to overhear the conversation in a pub booth, neither had the phone chat specified a meeting or a meeting place… and Uda didn't spend much time in that particular pub.

''Morning, Jack,' Wills greeted as he came in and hung up his suit jacket. 'What's happening?'

'Our friend Uda is wiggling like a live fish.' Jack punched the PRINT command and handed the printout across to his roomie even before he'd had a chance to sit down.

'It seems to suggest that possibility, doesn't it?'

'Tony, this guy is a player,' Jack said with some conviction in his voice.

'What did he do after the phone conversation? Any unusual transactions?'

'I haven't checked yet, but if there is, then he was ordered to do it by his friend, and then they met so that he could confirm it over a pint of John Smith's Bitter.'