Death Wave

“Copy. I think I have him.”

The two Desk Three operators continued to skirt the crowd as the impassioned declarations boomed out, eliciting waves of cheering, chants, and dizzying exultation. The speaker was Maulana Masood Azhar, delivering his Friday sermon from somewhere inside the Binoria Madrasah.

That in itself was interesting. The Pakistani government had repeatedly told the West that they had no idea of Azhar’s whereabouts.

Dean didn’t speak Urdu; since their arrival in Pakistan yesterday, the two operatives had been reliant on the Art Room’s simultaneous translations and on the efforts of Najamuddin Haroon. Even so, the rhythm and power and sheer thunder of the declamations had a mesmerizing quality. Dean was reminded of films he’d seen of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech to a sea of passionately adoring listeners at Nuremburg.

The speech was an assault upon reason itself.

Dean had hoped that by this time they would have been on their way back Stateside. After the debacle in Dushanbe, he’d assumed Rubens would pull them out, turning Haystack over to other field assets. He didn’t like breaking off in the middle of a mission, but he’d actually been looking forward to it this time. The riot in Kunduz had reminded him how much he hated this part of the world with its Islamic Nazis, volatile passions, brain-dead bigotry, and blind adherence to unreasoning hatred.

They’d said good-bye to Masha at the Kabul airport yesterday afternoon — she would be flying to the States sometime today — and boarded a NATO C-130, heading south to Karachi and landing at a military airfield just outside the city. They’d been met by the CIA station chief himself and taken to the U.S. Embassy, where they’d spoken with Rubens, eaten, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.

Early this morning, they’d been awakened and introduced to Haroon. They received new legends, identity cards and papers, local clothing, money, and a new mission.

Their target, they were told, was attending a public sermon by Maulana Azhar, who would be speaking at the Binoria Madrasah this morning.

And there he was.

Alfred Koch stood out in the crowd. Blond and blatantly Aryan, he was still wearing his gray flight utilities, though he’d donned a borrowed taqiyya in deference to local custom requiring a head covering for men. Koch had been the pilot of the NATO helicopter that had picked up twelve suitcase-sized containers in a cotton field outside Qurghonteppa and flown them to Karachi. He was leaning against the wall of a shop opposite the madrasah’s entrance and seemed to be nodding to the cant and meter of the speech.

It had been relatively easy to follow him. Koch’s cell phone used a SIM card with a coded number that could be tracked if you had a sufficiently large antenna in orbit, and the NRO had several SIGINT satellites in the sky with truly large antennae indeed. The NSA had been able to lock onto Koch’s phone after tracking his banking records; a deposit of a quarter of a million euros that afternoon at a bank in Karachi had focused the agency’s attention on the man. German Luftwaffe lieutenants didn’t normally make deposits of that size.

A final burst of invective from the loudspeakers set the crowd into wild and jubilant celebration. A chant had started.

“Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

God is great.

Dean and Akulinin split up as they approached, sidling in from left and right. Koch seemed unaware of either of them until Dean stepped up on his left, draping his SIG SAUER P226 within the long and loose-hanging sleeves of his kameez and pressing the muzzle hard against the small of the German’s back.

“What’s the matter, Alfred?” Akulinin said in English from Koch’s right. “You’re not joining in with all the celebrating.”

“Was ist?”

Koch demanded, eyes widening, then narrowing to slits. He shifted to English. “Who the hell are you?”

“We’re accountants, Alfred,” Dean told him. “We’d like to have a word with you about that bank deposit you made today.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Nothing at all,” Dean agreed, “except maybe borrowing a NATO helicopter, and flying proscribed weapons for the wrong people.”

Surprisingly, Koch smiled. “You are Americans? CIA? You can prove nothing. You have no legal jurisdiction here.”

“What makes you think we’re CIA?” Akulinin asked, his voice casual, even friendly.

“You’re Americans. The accents …”

Dean nudged him with the pistol. “Walk. That way. Nice and easy. You’re out for an evening stroll with a couple of friends.”

“You must be CIA!”

Akulinin grinned, a cold showing of teeth. “Alfred, you’ve pissed off a lot of people, not just the Americans.”

“But—”

“Shalom, Alfred,” Dean said, and he gave the German another nudge with the weapon’s muzzle.

By the time they reached the car, with Haroon at the wheel, Koch was babbling, almost pathetically eager to talk.

LA PALMA AIRPORT

SOUTH OF SANTA CRUZ DE LA PALMA

LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS

FRIDAY, 0915 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Lia DeFrancesca held on to Chatel’s arm as they stepped off the boarding ladder and onto the tarmac of La Palma’s airport. “Oh, I do hope you’re not going to tell Mr. Feng on me, Herve,” she said, cooing with her best innocent schoolgirl voice. “He would just kill me!”

“Of course not, cherie,” Chatel said, and Lia could almost see his white knight’s armor gleam in the morning sun. “The man is a boor and a barbarian. He hasn’t the slightest idea how to treat a beautiful woman properly.”

Chatel’s tone of voice indicated that, of course, he himself did know how to treat a woman well. The patronizing I-know-best flavor to the words set Lia’s teeth on edge.

“It’s about respect, Herve,” she told him. “He was treating me like a piece of meat, like eye candy, putting me on display …”

“I know, and it was terrible! But you don’t need to worry about that now. I’m sure we can find you an excellent position with Petro-Technologique.”

“Thank you, Herve.” She gave his arm a squeeze as they walked across the tarmac toward the main airport building. “I am so grateful. The guy couldn’t keep his hands off me.”

As promised, Rubens had had her on a Spanair flight to Grand Canary by early the previous evening. What she hadn’t expected was to be here with Herve Chatel, inspecting his company’s operations in the Canary Islands. Shah, thankfully, had remained in Spain, but he was expected to arrive on La Palma later today.

They’d stayed on Grand Canary overnight and caught an island hopper across to La Palma this morning. Chatel had spent most of the morning talking — primarily about himself.

Which was fine, so far as Lia was concerned. She needed to learn all she could about this Frenchman who’d expressed doubt about some aspect of a secret operation involving both Feng and the mysterious al-Wawi. So far, she’d learned that he was a senior vice president for his company, which manufactured high-duration drilling bits for the petroleum industry, that he had more money than God, and that he expected to move up to the position of CEO when the old man retired late next year.

“So, how long are you going to be here in La Palma?” she asked him.

“A few days. I need to check with my people in the field on … on a project.”

“Really? What project?”

“Nothing you would be interested in, my sweet. I’ve already reserved a room for you at the Hotel Sol. You can enjoy the sun and the sea while I go check on my people in the interior. When I return, we shall fly back to Paris, and I’ll talk to my human resources people about hiring you as my personal assistant.”