“I have to get into Saudi Arabia,” Cabrillo said quickly, “to stop him.”
“That, my friend, is harder than it appears,” the emir said. “Since the Gulf War of 2003, King Abdullah and I have had a touchy relationship. My close and continued support of the United States, allowing troops and the large airfield here to be constructed, has placed a rift in our friendship—at least publicly. To appease the hard-liners in his country and to keep himself in power, he has found it necessary to publicly condemn my actions.”
“Surely if you explain the threat he will come around,” Jones said.
“I will try,” the emir said, “but at this point we only speak through intermediaries. The process is slow and tedious.”
“Will you try?” Cabrillo asked.
“Of course. But even if he did allow you to help,” the emir said, “we have another problem. And this is quite serious.”
“What is that?” Cabrillo asked.
“Only Muslims are allowed in the city of Mecca itself.”
SCOTT THOMPSON WAS drenched in a cold sweat.
Dr. Berg had just strapped what looked like a videogame headset over his eyes and adjusted the strap to fit firmly. So far, Thompson had held firm. He’d been injected with truth serum, which had not worked; grilled endlessly over the past few days; and subjected to telephone calls from family in the United States explaining what they’d been told would happen to them if he did not cooperate.
Nothing had made him talk.
Thompson had been trained for such instances and a doctrine had been drilled into his head.
He’d learned how to fight off the truth serum, been endlessly briefed on how to handle questioning, and internalized the fact that, whatever he was told, the United States would not harm innocent people to make him talk.
But no one had briefed him about this.
Thompson felt Berg’s breath near his ear. “Scott,” Berg said, “you are going to see some colored lights in a minute in front of your eyes. In time these will induce epileptic-like seizures and a fierce burning that feels like nails are being driven into your brain. If you need to vomit, and you will, you probably won’t be able to move your head, so try and be careful not to inhale your own vomit. I have a nurse standing by who will vacuum out any residue. Do you understand?”
Thompson moved his head slightly.
“Now I want to give you one last chance to come clean before this starts. I want you to know we rarely use this technique because we’ve had a fair amount of patient failure with this therapy. By that I mean inducing vegetative or catatonic states and even a percentage of outright expirations. Do you understand what that means?”
Commander Gant was off to one side of the hospital suite. He could not stand to watch what was happening and motioned that he was going to leave. Berg waved as he walked out. Then he walked over to a computer terminal and entered the commands.
Thompson began to twitch and then arched his back up against the straps.
He began to flop around on the table like a fish out of water.
IT WAS 2 P.M. in Qatar, 9 A.M. in Washington, D.C., when Overholt answered his telephone. Cabrillo wasted no time.
“I’m in Qatar,” he said. “We now think that Hickman might try to strike at one of the three most important sites to Islam.”
“The Kaaba, Muhammad’s Tomb, or the Dome of the Rock,” Overholt said. “I’ve been studying.”
Overholt had spent hours yesterday with the Agency’s Islamic scholar and read pages of documents prepared by the research department.
“Well done,” Cabrillo said.
“I’ve also had the National Security Agency tracing all communication to and from Hickman for the last few weeks and finally got the results,” Overholt said. “He’s been in communication with Pieter Vanderwald—in fact, an overnight package was just sent to Saudi Arabia from one of Vanderwald’s front companies.”
“Pieter the Poisoner?” Cabrillo said.
“The same,” Overholt said.
“Somebody should take care of him,” Cabrillo said.
“I issued a directive,” Overholt replied. “A ‘wet team’ is seeking him now.”
“Have you spoken to Hanley recently?” Cabrillo asked.
“Yes,” Overholt said, “he explained what your men found at the mill in Maidenhead. We’re sure it’s some toxin Vanderwald supplied.”
“And they sprayed it on the prayer rugs,” Cabrillo said.
“I’m sure he sealed the containers, or the pilots would have been sickened on the flight from England and crashed the plane. Hickman’s crazy, but he’s not stupid. It’s once the containers are opened that we have a problem.”
“Which could be any hour now,” Cabrillo said.
Just then the fax machine in Overholt’s office started printing. He wheeled his chair over to it, lifted off the papers, rolled back to his desk and scanned them.
“I’d say he’ll strike at the Dome of the Rock and blame the Israelis for the entire affair,” Overholt said.
