Teeth of the Tiger

'Hotel Imperial,' Ryan repeated.

The driver thought for a moment. 'Ach so, Hotel Imperial , ja?'

'Das ist richtig,' Junior assured him, and sat back to enjoy the ride. He had a hundred Euros, and assumed that would be enough, unless this guy had attended the New York City school of taxi driving. In any case, there'd be ATM machines on the street.

The drive took half an hour, fighting the rush-hour traffic. A block or two from the hotel, he passed a Ferrari dealership, which was something new for him — he'd seen Ferraris only on TV before, and wondered, as all young men wonder, what it might be like to drive one.

The hotel staff greeted him like an arriving prince, and delivered him to a fourth-floor suite whose bed looked very inviting indeed. He immediately ordered breakfast and unpacked. Then he remembered why he was here, and picked up the phone, asking for a connection with Dominic Caruso's room.

* * *

'Hello?' It was Brian. Dom was in the gold-encrusted shower.

'Hey, cuz, it's Jack,' he heard.

'Jack who — wait a minute, Jack?'

'I'm upstairs, Marine. Just flew in an hour ago. Come on up, so we can talk.'

'Right. Give me ten minutes,' Brian said, and headed into the bathroom. 'Enzo, you ain't gonna believe who's upstairs.'

'Who?' Dominic asked, toweling himself off.

'Let it be a surprise, man.' Brian went back to the sitting room, not sure whether to laugh or barf as he read the International Herald Tribune.

* * *

'You gotta be fucking kidding,' Dominic breathed as the door opened.

'You ought to see it from my side, Enzo,' Jack answered. 'Come on in.'

'Food's good in Motel 6, isn't it?' Brian observed, following his brother.

'Actually, I prefer Holiday Inn Express. I need to pick up a Ph.D. for my curriculum vitae, y'know?' Jack laughed and waved them to the chairs. 'I got extra coffee.'

'They do it well here. I see you discovered the croissants.' Dominic poured himself a cup and stole a pastry. 'Why the hell did they send you?'

'I guess because you both know me.' Junior buttered his second. 'Tell you what. Let me finish breakfast and we can take a walk down to the Ferrari dealership and talk about it. How do you like Vienna?'

'Just got here yesterday afternoon, Jack,' Dominic informed him.

'I didn't know that. I gather you had a productive time in London, though.'

'Not bad,' Brian answered. 'Tell you about it later.'

'Right.' Jack continued his breakfast while Brian went back to his International Trib. 'They're still excited at home about the shootings. Had to take my shoes off at the airport. Good thing I had clean socks. Looks like they're trying to see if anybody's trying to leave town in a hurry.'

'Yeah, that was pretty damned bad, man,' Dominic observed. 'Anybody you know get clobbered?'

'No, thank God. Even Dad didn't, with all the people he knows in the investment crowd. What about you guys?'

Brian gave him a funny look. 'Nobody we knew, no.' He hoped that little David Prentiss's soul would not be offended.

Jack finished the last croissant. 'Let me shower and you guys can show me around.'

Brian finished the paper and turned the TV on to CNN — the only American station the Imperial had — to check on the news at 0500 in New York. The last of the victims had been buried the previous day, and the reporters were asking the bereaved how they felt about their loss. What a dumbass question! the Marine raged. You were supposed to leave twisting the knife to the bad guys. And politicians were ranting on about What America Has to Do.

Well, Brian thought, we're doing it for you, guys. But if they found out, they'd probably foul their silk drawers. But that just made him feel better about it. Somebody had to play a little catch-up ball, and that was his job now.

* * *

At the Bristol, Fa'ad was just waking up. He, too, had ordered coffee and pastry. He was scheduled to meet a fellow courier the next day to receive a message that he'd then pass on in due course. The Organization operated with great security for its important communications. The really serious messages were all passed exclusively by word of mouth. The couriers knew only their incoming and outgoing counterparts, so that they were organized in cells of three only, another lesson learned from the dead KGB officer. The inbound courier was Mahmoud Mohamed Fadhil, who'd be arriving from Pakistan. Such a system could be broken, but only through painstaking and lengthy police work, which was easily foiled if only one man removed himself from the ratline. The trouble was that the unexpected removal of a rat from the line could prevent a message from reaching its destination entirely, but that had not yet happened, and was not expected to. It was not a bad life for Fa'ad. He traveled a lot, always first-class, resided only in top-of-the-line hostelries, and, all in all, it was rather comfortable. He occasionally felt guilty for this. Others did what he thought were the dangerous and admirable things, but on taking the job he'd been briefed that the organization could not function without him and his eleven comrades, which was good for his morale. So was the knowledge that his function, while of great importance, was also quite safe. He received messages and passed them on, often to the operatives themselves, all of whom treated him with great respect, as though he had originated the mission instructions himself, of which he did not disabuse them. So, in two days, he'd receive more orders for transfer, whether to his nearest geographic colleague — Ibrahim Salih al-Adel, home-based in Paris — or to an operative currently unknown. Today he would find out, and make such communications as were necessary, and act upon developments. The job could be both boring and exciting at the same time, and with the comfortable hours and zero risk to his person, it was easy to be a hero of the movement, as he sometimes allowed himself to think of himself.

* * *

They walked east on Kartner Ring, which almost at once angled northeast and changed its name to Schubertring. On the north side of it was the Ferrari dealership.

'So, how are you guys doing?' Jack asked, out in the open, and with the traffic noise beyond the reach of any possible tapping device.

'Two down. One more to go, right here in Vienna, then off somewhere else, wherever it is. I kinda thought you would know,' Dominic said.

Jack shook his head. 'Nope. I haven't been briefed on that.'

'Why did they send you?' This one came from Brian.

'I'm supposed to give you second guesses, I think. Back you up on the intel side and be some sort of consultant. That's what Granger told me, anyway. I know what happened in London. We got lots of inside stuff from the Brits — indirectly, that is. It was written off as a heart attack. Munich I do not know much about. What can you tell me?'

Dominic answered. 'I got him coming out of church. He went down on the sidewalk. Ambulance arrived. The paramedics worked him over and carted him off to the hospital. All I know.'

'He's dead. We caught that on an intercept,' Ryan told them. 'He was accompanied by a guy named 'Honeybear' on the 'Net. Saw his buddy go down and reported it in to a guy with the handle Fifty-six MoHa, somewhere in Italy, we think. The Munich guy — his name was Atef — was a recruiter and courier. We know he recruited a shooter in the mess last week. So, you can be sure he earned his way onto the hit list.'

'We know. They told us that,' Brian said.

'How are you doing these people, exactly?'

'With this.' Dominic pulled his gold pen from the suit jacket pocket. 'You swap the point out by twisting the nib and stick them, preferably in the ass. It injects a drug called succinylcholine, and that ruins the subject's whole day. The drug metabolizes in the bloodstream even after death, and can't be detected easily unless the pathologist's a genius, and a lucky one at that.'

'Paralyzes them?'