“How many times have you been there?” the Emir asked.
“Four times. Twice for recruitment and twice for reconnaissance.”
“Tell me more about your contact.”
“His name is Cassiano Silva. Brazilian by birth, raised in the Catholic faith. He converted to Islam six years ago. He is one of the faithful, of that I’m sure, and he’s never failed to provide what I’ve asked of him.”
“Tariq tells me your recruitment of him was nicely done.”
“Western intelligence calls it a ‘false flag.’ He believes I’m with Kuwait’s intelligence service, with connections to OPEC’s Market Analysis Division. I thought he would find the idea of industrial espionage more… palatable.”
“I’m impressed, Ibrahim,” the Emir said, meaning it. “You’ve shown good instincts.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And your plan… you’re confident it is feasible?”
“I am, but I’d like to remain cautious until I am on the ground. On the surface, all the parts fit together nicely.”
So he’d let Ibrahim go forward with his plan and know it would be the first domino in a series, at the end of which awaited a truly world-changing event. But that was in the future-not far in the future but far enough that focusing on it to the exclusion of the smaller pieces could harm the whole.
“How many casualties do you expect?” the Emir asked.
“That is impossible to say at this time. Hundreds, perhaps. As you said, though, those numbers are largely irrelevant.”
“True, but dead bodies on television have a fearsome effect, which is something that will work to our benefit later. How long will your final reconnaissance take?”
“Five to six days.”
“And after that?”
“Forty-eight to seventy-two hours to the event itself.”
The Emir brought his mental calendar to the forefront of his mind. Juggling more than one operation as he was, he would have to hold off on final approval until they heard back from the Russian teams at least. The other pieces in Dubai and Dakar were in place and standing by. The cornerstone, of course, their lovely Tatar girl, could be hurried only so much. Tariq was confident she was moving at an appropriate pace, and that would have to do for now, but in the back of his mind he had to consider alternatives should she fail. Still, they had to be ready to step in. A dangerous gambit, that. They might be able to disguise their actions or put in place some delaying tactics, but violence-especially the kind of violence that would likely be required-would without a doubt draw the attention of the authorities.
If such action became necessary, could they stay far enough ahead of the authorities to complete Lotus?
“You have final approval,” the Emir said.
Their hunch that the Emir was in all likelihood already in the United States, hiding somewhere between the Dakotas and California, was quickly followed by the realization that there was little they could do to confirm the hypothesis. True, they knew Shasif Hadi, flying under the alias Joel Klein, had been headed for Las Vegas when they lost his trail, but that meant nothing. The Klein passport hadn’t subsequently shown up in the system, which could mean he went no farther than Las Vegas, or it could mean he’d simply followed the rules of tradecraft and dumped Klein for yet another alias. Jack’s peel-back of Hadi’s activities had shown a lot of travel to the Persian Gulf states, Western Europe, and South America-which would necessitate a number of CONUS layovers. Short of distributing Hadi’s photo to Las Vegas law enforcement, there was little they could do but continue to work the problem with what they had in hand.
Whoa!” Jack Ryan Jr. said from his cubicle.
“What?” Dominic called from the conference room, where the daily skull session had just started.
“Hang on, I’m coming in.” He tapped a few keys, sending the file to the conference room’s AV node, then walked in and picked up the remote from the table.
“You look like a teenager who’s seen his first boob,” Brian said. “What’s up?”
“I was trolling one of the URC websites when I came across this.” He aimed the remote at the forty-two-inch monitor on the wall. After a few seconds, three side-by-side images appeared on the flat screen, the first showing a man hanging from the neck in a featureless room; the second showing the same man lying on the floor, his severed head sitting beside him; in the third, the man’s severed head was bracketed by his severed feet.
“Jesus Christ, that’s some serious shit,” Brian said.
“Which website, Jack?” Rounds asked.
He recited the URL, then said, “It’s a URC hub, but up until now it’s been all propaganda-‘rah-rah, stick it to the infidel, we’ve got them on the run’ kind of stuff.”
“Well, this sure as hell ain’t a pep talk,” Ding Chavez said.
“It’s punishment,” Clark said, staring at the screen.
“What’re you thinking?”
“Hanging is a pretty standard execution technique for them, and the beheading is a little extra humiliation- something out of the Koran, as I recall-but the feet… That’s the real message?”
“What, he tried to run?” Dominic asked. “Leave the URC?”
“No, he made a move and the higher-ups weren’t happy about it. Saw this in Lebanon in ’82. Some offshoot of Hamas, I can’t remember the name, blew up a bus in Haifa. A week later the leaders were found the same way: hanged, beheaded, their feet chopped off.”
“Hell of a way to make your point,” Chavez said.
Rounds asked, “Jack, where’s the site run out of?”
“That’s the kicker,” he responded. “It’s Benghazi.”
“Bingo,” said Dominic. “This thing coming so close on top of the Tripoli embassy… How much you wanna bet we’re looking at the fallout from an unsanctioned mission?”
There were no takers at the table.
“What if it’s more than punishment?” Jack offered.
“Explain,” Rounds said.
Clark answered, “It’s a warning. That Lebanon thing… Two weeks later, Hamas tried to ram a car bomb into the British embassy about a block from the bus explosion. It fell through because their intel people were still cranking away on the bus bombing.”
“Same principle could be at work here,” Jack said. “They’re telling the other cells to mind their manners.”
“Yeah, but in favor of what?” Chavez asked.
53
THE GRAVEL ROADWAY leading away from the beach looked almost pristine, probably because there was little, if any, traffic on it, and not even much in the way of animals to trample on it, and the harsh weather either killed or stunted anything that tried to grow.
Musa gave their captain, Vitaliy, a final wave, then nodded solemnly at Idris, whom he’d ordered to stay behind. However unlikely, if the captain tried to leave before they returned, Idris would kill the two Russians. Piloting the boat back to port without them would be a challenge, but Allah would show them the way.
Musa climbed into the cab’s passenger seat. Fawwaz, already behind the wheel, started the engine while Numair and Thabit climbed into the bed.
“Go,” Musa ordered. “The sooner we finish what we came to do, the sooner we can leave this cursed place.”
Fawwaz shoved the gearshift into drive and started up the hill.
The lighthouse and its neighboring hut were only a kilometer away, maybe five hundred
