else.
I tried to remember what day this was, and decided it was Sunday.
The only light in that dark soup was the little glow of the light above the front door.
Was there anyone out here in this stuff?
I closed my eyes and concentrated on what I could hear.
Nothing.
I opened the car door and got in, started the engine and fed gas.
Sunday morning, and the roads were nearly empty, which was fortunate, since I drove way too fast for the conditions. I parked at a subway station on the outskirts of London and took the next train in. I kept looking at my watch. Six thirty a.m. in St. James’ Park, the third bench in from the southwest corner, Grafton had said.
Should I be precisely on time, or early? I thought early, if I could make it, and as I trotted toward the entrance to the park, I thought I would get there with maybe ten minutes to spare.
Eide Masmoudi found the bench in St. James’ Park that he had told Grafton about and stood in the fog trying to catch his breath. He checked his watch. A few more minutes. The big American would be on time — of that Eide was sure. Tommy Carmellini. Eide had seen him on several occasions but had never spoken to him. Jake Grafton trusted him, and that was enough.
He threw himself on the bench and stared about him into the fog. After a few seconds he found that he couldn’t sit.
He stood, shifted from one leg to another, walked around a little, listened and peered into the opaque gloom that swirled about him. He held his cell phone in his hands, just in case.
The sheikh was dead, he told himself. That was something positive. The sheikh and the others were so happy last night. They killed somebody.. with a car bomb, probably. Like children, they were delighted by explosions, which fascinated them: The split second of extreme violence appealed to their imaginations and their souls. He didn’t get much of what they said, just a few whispers, then they would laugh.
He didn’t know who they killed. Not that it mattered to them. They killed someone, some infidel, and they really didn’t care who. Just murdering someone made them feel good, empowered, important. They were like dogs, pissing on the pillars of a great civilization that they neither understood nor felt a part of.
He thought about Radwan. If only the driver hadn’t panicked!
Inshallah. It would be as Allah willed it.
Eide took a deep breath and exhaled. He forced himself to think about his mother. She was in Paradise with her husband, that he knew, and he silently thanked Allah for that.
He heard someone coming.
By some quirk he could hear soft footsteps approaching. On the sidewalk … from the direction of the corner gate. Grafton’s man would come from there, probably.
He turned to face that way. A figure solidified out of the fog, a man wearing a business suit. Out for a stroll this morning, carrying an umbrella in his left hand, wearing a soft hat…
“Good morning,” he said in perfect English as he walked the last few feet toward Eide, who was still standing in front of the bench.
“Hello,” Eide said, visibly relaxing.
Now the man’s right hand swept up. He had a pistol in it. Eide saw the pistol with its fat silencer too late to react.
Eide forced his eyes from the black hole in the front of the silencer to the man’s face, which was partially hidden under the hat brim. It was a hard face, he could see that.
The man was going to kill him — he knew it and accepted it.
“I would pray,” he said.
“If you wish.”
He looked about, wondering in which direction Mecca lay. It didn’t matter, he realized. He went to his knees, bent his head to the sidewalk and began to pray.
The bullet caught him in the back of the head. His body toppled. The man took a step closer and shot him again in the head. Then he picked up the spent brass cartridges and pocketed them.
Another man loomed out of the fog, but he approached the bench from behind. He, too, had a pistol in his hand.
“Quickly,” the first man said. “Sit him on the bench and give me his cell phone.”
They pocketed their guns and lifted Eide onto the bench. With the cell phones in hand, the first man led the second into the fog behind the bench. He stopped and checked the telephone numbers Masmoudi hadxalled last.
“He called Jake Grafton,” Abu Qasim said. “So someone will be coming to meet him here, and soon.”
“Should we kill him, too?” Khadr asked.
Abu Qasim pocketed the telephone as he considered. “No, I think not. I want you to stay here. Move forward just enough so that you can see the bench and anyone who arrives, and if he examines the body of the traitor, shoot him. Make sure you get at least one bullet in him. Then flee.”
“He will probably be armed,” Khadr pointed out. In his entire career he had never been in a gunfight, and Tommy Carmellini was the only man who ever managed to fire a shot at him. He did not relish the prospect of giving Carmellini another chance.
“Perhaps,” Qasim acknowledged.
Khadr said no more. Had anyone but Abu Qasim told him to do this, he would have refused.
With his umbrella firmly in hand, Abu Qasim walked away into the fog.
The morning looked like wet concrete when I came out of the subway station, although the sky was trying to get lighter in the east. The fog swirled like smoke when disturbed. Not many people out and about yet — not any sane ones, anyhow. The moisture felt cold against my cheeks and forehead, almost like a wet cloth. Damp and cold and clammy.
I felt my phone vibrating.
“Yeah,” I said when I got the button punched and the thing against my ear.
“They aren’t answering their cell phones,” Grafton said. “They may have turned them off so they won’t attract attention.”
“That’s one possibility,” I agreed as I strode through the wrought-iron gate that marked this entrance to the park.
“Be careful, Tommy,” he said, and the line went dead.
I put the phone back in my shirt pocket and put my right hand into my coat pocket, where I had the Springfield stowed. It felt solid, reassuring, as I walked along in that dark gray, wet, gauzy world.
I found the first bench beside the sidewalk easily enough. Eide and Radwan were supposed to be on the third one. Needless to say, I didn’t know how far that was from where I stood. Ten yards, fifty, a hundred?
I stood by the bench, near a light pole, listening to the silence. There was a background of muffled traffic noises, the occasional rumble of a subway train that went under the street I had just left… and … a plane, somewhere high and far away.
Now I heard steps. A man. Hard leather heels, walking purposefully, striding along the sidewalk.
Even as I turned in his direction he appeared out of the gloom, a man in an overcoat wearing a soft brimmed hat and carrying an umbrella. He nodded at me and strode on. I listened to his steps fading.
I walked the way he had come, looking for the second bench. It was perhaps twenty yards past the first one. I got my first glimpse of the darker shape of it from about fifteen feet away. The light on the pole above it was lit, illuminating the fog for a few feet around.
Never in my life had I seen fog that thick. It seemed to be getting thicker as the dawn progressed, if that was possible.
I walked on.
Barking. Actually it was yapping, just ahead. A little dog, yapping at something. And a woman’s voice, scolding the dog.
Now I saw them, coming toward me. She was tugging the dog along on its leash. It didn’t want to come. It was looking behind her, still yapping, worried about something. “Now, Winston,” she said.
She saw me and flashed a grin.
