was an evil, a betrayal of Allah.
Still, the sooner he got rid of this bottle, the better. And the sooner he got out of this mosque, this gathering of the Devil’s disciples, the better.
He thought about getting out a lot now. Going back to America, back to Brooklyn. Back to the friends he had known all his life, the mosque where he had grown up, the cleric there who had been his friend and mentor ever since his father died in a construction accident, eight years ago. A year after his father’s death, his mother was murdered.
He had watched the television in horror as the World Trade Center towers collapsed. He knew she was in there, on the fifty-second floor. That was where she worked.
He remembered that day as the most horrible of his life. He had stayed glued to the television … and his mother never came home.
They never even found her body.
Later, in the days that followed, when the police would let spectators pass, he had gone to Ground Zero and stood looking. That was the horror the jihadists wanted, that they planned and plotted and schemed for as they dreamed of murder and Paradise, with houris who would give them sexual pleasure beyond their wildest fantasies. Because they murdered infidels — and fellow Muslims if they happened to get in the way.
Shit happens, the people in Brooklyn said.
Yeah, Eide Masmoudi reflected. Indeed it does. And simpleminded fools who have no idea of the harm they are causing make it happen.
Still, the bottle was hot in his pocket. He was going to kill a man with it.
That was no small matter.
Nor was the fate awaiting him if the holy warriors who followed al-Taji found out — or even suspected — he had been the agent of the great man’s death. In their anger they would torture and murder him as fiendishly as they could. They were like children, or savages, assuming that torture and murder of their enemies would solve the problems they saw in their world. When you hate enough, they thought, you can change the world. Hate was their motivation and their salvation. Hate enough and Paradise awaits.
Allah would watch over him, Eide thought. His life would go as Allah wished. God is great. Allah akbar. Put your trust in Allah and go forward. At least the holy warriors had that right; in fact, that was the only thing they had right.
All he needed was an opportunity. So far it hadn’t come.
Let it come soon, he prayed.
Jake Grafton had two men shadowing Huntington Winchester, so it was a simple matter to call them and find out where he was. New York City, they said, in an office building on Madison Avenue, across the street from Madison Square.
The helicopter that had brought him from Washington deposited him at the West 30th Street Heliport. He went to the street and hailed a taxi.
So that was how he came to be sitting in Madison Square when Huntington Winchester and two people, a man and a woman, came out of the building across the street and paused to shake hands. There was a limo waiting for Winchester, but before he could get into it, one of Jake’s men spoke to him and nodded at Grafton, sitting on a bench across the street. After speaking to the limo driver, Winchester jaywalked and joined the admiral on his bench. The two attorneys, if that was what they were, managed to flag down a taxi and climb in.
“Lawyers?” Jake asked, nodding toward the departing taxi.
“I’m putting a couple of their kids through Harvard,” Winchester said. “Divorces are the cost of socially sanctioned sex. Hell, everyone I know is divorced, getting divorced or wishes they were divorced.”
Jake Grafton, who had been happily married for many years, didn’t bother to comment.
“That man over there who spoke to me and pointed you out — he works for you, doesn’t he?”
“For a few days. I needed to keep tabs on you, and the folks at the FBI were kind enough to help.”
“He’s an FBI agent?” Winchester was incredulous.
“He’s still standing over there. Go ask to see his credentials.”
Winchester waited for a break in traffic and jaywalked again. The FBI man glanced at Grafton, who nodded, then produced his credentials for Winchester’s inspection.
When Winchester returned to the bench, he dropped beside Grafton and said, “Why didn’t you just call me?”
“We’ll get to that,” Grafton replied. He stood and glanced behind him to see who might be listening. That glance was not lost on Winchester. “Let’s take a walk,” the admiral said.
They walked through the park, and there was another limo waiting on Fifth Avenue. The driver held the door open for Grafton and Winchester as they approached.
“My wheels,” Grafton said, and motioned for Winchester to get in first. When they were rolling south down the avenue, Grafton said, “We can talk here.”
“So this isn’t some kind of giant scam,” Winchester said glumly.
“Jerry Hay Smith said it was?”
“Yes.”
“I’d take anything he says or writes with a grain of salt, if I were you.”
Winchester rubbed his eyes with his fists. Finally he took them down and took a deep breath. “I’ve been a fool,” he said savagely.
“We both have,” Grafton said. “I should never have agreed to this charade.” He smacked his thigh with his fist. “Well, I did and you’re in it now, right up to the roots of your hair.”
Hunt Winchester stared at the admiral. “What am I in?”
“We’re trying to find a terrorist,” Grafton said softly, “named Abu Qasim. And now he’s trying to find you.”
Winchester couldn’t believe his ears. “Me? Find me?”
Grafton nodded.
“Why?”
“He wants to kill you,” Jake Grafton said, smiling’to take the sting out of his words.
Grafton brought him up to date on events in Europe. When he fell silent, a badly shaken Winchester said, “I need to think. How about taking me back to my hotel?”
“Sorry. I have a suite reserved for you in a different hotel, under another name, and two FBI agents are waiting there. They’ll be just outside the door all night.”
Huntington Winchester tried to say thank you, but it wouldn’t come out. He nodded instead.
Oleg Tchernychenko and his two bodyguards rode in the back of the limo. The bodyguards rode on the jump seats facing aft, and Tchernychenko rode facing forward. As usual, he used his limo time to read contracts and proposals and memos from his small staff.
The limo driver, who had been with Tchernychenko for two years now, was a retired policeman. He drove too fast and, when he got stopped for speeding, never got a ticket.
The driver had brought the limo to Scotland from London to pick up Tchernychenko, who refused to fly unless there was no other way to get to where he had to go. As they rode the motorway south, the driver and bodyguards kept a wary eye on traffic.
They were well aware of the fact that criminals and terrorists had a variety of ways to stop a limo and kidnap or murder the occupants. A handful of determined men would be very difficult to thwart, especially since this vehicle was not hardened, wore no armor or bulletproof glass. The bodyguards had automatic weapons — old Sten guns, for which they had permits — on the floor at their feet. In holsters under their arms they wore pistols. The driver was also armed. They were competent, alert, fit and ready.
They had been in the car a little over an hour and were rolling along at about seventy miles per hour when the bomb under the floorboards exploded. It contained almost five pounds of plastique and sprayed glass and auto parts in every direction. The main frame of the car and the engine and what was left of the passenger compartment skidded along the road, smoking. The two rear wheels were blown completely off the vehicle. As the wreckage decelerated amid a shower of sparks and smoke, it caught fire.
Cars and trucks on the motorway swerved desperately. One large truck went into a guardrail and overturned. Another car smashed into it.
