“Anything before I go to bed?” he asked. They would spend the night here before returning to the house. Cars coming and going in the night tended to attract the attention of nosy neighbors.
“Yes, four items,” Tariq replied, sitting down in the opposite chair. “One, Hadi is on his way back to Paris. He and Ibrahim will be meeting tomorrow.”
“You reviewed Hadi’s packet?”
“Yes. Four facilities in particular look promising. Our agent has worked at each of them within the last two years, and it appears security has changed dramatically at only one of them.”
“Paulinia?”
“Correct.”
This made sense, the Emir thought. Petrobras’s facility there had been tasked with accommodating the new influx, which in turn required new construction-and this, he knew, was where the vulnerability lay. They’d seen it happen outside Riyadh in the ’70s and ’80s, a deficit of trained, competent security personnel to keep pace with expansion. Such was the price of greed.
“It’ll be a year before their security has caught up.”
“You’re probably right, but we are not going to wait to find out. Recruitment?”
“Ibrahim is almost done,” Tariq concluded. “He reports he’ll be ready within two weeks. He’s proposed that Hadi be recruited for the team.”
The Emir considered this. “Your thoughts?”
“Hadi is reliable, that much we know, and there’s no question about his loyalty. He’s had some training in fieldwork, but little real-world experience beyond what he’s done in Brazil, which has been solid. If Ibrahim thinks he is ready, I tend to agree.”
“Very well. Give Ibrahim my blessing. What else?”
“An update from the woman. Their relationship is well established and she’s making progress, but she doesn’t think he’s quite ready to be reeled in yet.”
“Did she offer a timeline?”
“Three to four weeks.”
The Emir mentally projected that on the calendar. Her information was the cornerstone. Without it, he would have to consider postponing for another year. Another year for the Americans to whittle away at their networks and for tongues to wag. And for someone somewhere to get lucky and stumble onto that one thread that would unravel the entire spool.
No, he decided, it had to be this year.
“Tell her we’ll expect it no later than three weeks. Next.”
“A message from Nayoan in San Francisco. His men are in place and awaiting orders.”
Of all of Lotus’s myriad parts and pieces, Nayoan’s had proven the easiest, at least the infiltration and preparatory phases. Student visas were relatively easy enough to come by, and easier still to acquire by someone in Nayoan’s position. Besides, as ignorant as Americans were about the world outside their own borders, Indonesians were for the most part seen simply as Asians or “Orientals” rather than as members of the single greatest concentration of Muslims on the face of the earth. Bigotry and narrowmindedness, the Emir thought, were weapons the URC was only too happy to employ.
“Good,” the Emir said. “Tomorrow let’s review the targets again. If there are changes to be made, we should make them sooner rather than later. Next?”
“Last item: You saw the news about the Tripoli embassy?”
The Emir nodded. “Idiotic business. A waste.”
“The planner was one of ours.”
The Emir sat up, his eyes hard. “Pardon me?” Eight months earlier, word had been sent to all URC affiliates that cell-level missions were forbidden until further notice. Their current operation was too delicate, too intricate. Smaller operations-mostly near misses and low-casualty events-had their place in creating the illusion of disorganization and business as usual, but something like this…
“What’s his name?” the Emir asked.
“Dirar al-Kariim.”
“I don’t recognize it.”
“A Jordanian. Recruited from the Hussein mosque in Amman three years ago. A soldier, nothing more. The same mission was proposed last year by our people in Benghazi. We declined it.”
“How many dead?”
“Six to eight of ours. None of theirs.”
“Praise God for that.” With no hostages killed, the Western press would quickly forget about the incident, and often where the press’s attention went, so, too, did intelligence agencies’. Such was the burden of fighting their “global war on terror.” They were the proverbial Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
“Do we know who he recruited?”
“We’re looking into it. Also, we don’t know whether anyone survived the raid-except for al-Kariim himself,” Tariq added. “He didn’t participate, in fact.”
“Imbecile! So this… nothing plans a mission without our approval, then botches it and doesn’t have the good sense or honor of dying in the attempt… Do we know where he is now?”
“No, but he shouldn’t be hard to find. Especially if we extend our hand. He’ll be on the run, looking for safe haven.”
The Emir nodded thoughtfully. “Good. Do that. Offer him an olive branch, but at a distance. Have Almasi handle it.”
“And when we have him?”
“Make him an example for the others.”
34
IN PARIS’S Montparnasse Arrondissement Shasif Hadi sat, sipping his coffee and doing his best not to appear nervous.
As promised, his connection at Topanga Beach had made contact the day after their meeting and given him instructions where he should pick up the return packages, each of which he’d found at rented mailboxes in the Los Angeles area. He was unsurprised to find each package contained an unlabeled CD-ROM but was surprised to find a typewritten note attached to one of them-“Indiana Cafe, Montparnasse, 77 Av Maine”-along with a date and time. What Hadi didn’t know was whether this was simply another courier mission or something more.
Algerian by birth, Hadi had emigrated to France in his early teens as his father sought gainful employment. Hadi spoke good French, with the accent of a
