Jihad

Lia followed Asad off the ferry, staying close until he got into a taxi near the pier. The taxi was a new development, but it was apparently just a part of Asad’s precautions; it took him only a mile away where a new vehicle was waiting. From there, he was driven to a house on the eastern end of town where he hadn’t stayed before. She set up a surveillance net, working with Dean but never close enough to see him, before retreating.

When the Art Room decided that Asad was staying in for the night, Lia arranged to meet Charlie in a restaurant nearby, ostensibly to divvy up the overnight duties, though really just because she wanted to see him.

What bothered her even more than finding Terry Pinchon alive was finding that she still felt something for him — that there was emotion there, a real attraction she couldn’t deny. It scared her, not just because it cut against any logic — clearly he didn’t care for her, clearly he was a jerk, clearly any attraction was a mistake, no more than skin deep — but because it made her unsure what she felt for Dean.

“You’re a little late,” said Dean when she found him inside the restaurant.

“Sorry.”

“You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay.”

Dean gave her one of his looks, then turned to the waiter and ordered a bottle of spring water.

“Art Room claims he’s in for the night,” said Dean when the man left. “Which one of us is going to sleep first?”

“You,” she said automatically. Then she regretted it — she wished she’d said they should sleep together. Not that they would have — they had to stay focused on the mission — but she wanted to let him know that she wanted to.

“Fine. You hungry?”

“No.” Out of synch now, she felt an urge to get away. She had to — she had to refocus herself, concentrate on the job, not her emotions. “I have to check on the team trailing the Saudis. They’re at a hotel on the Asian side. I’ll check on them and then turn in.”

“Is Pinchon on the team?”

“Does it matter?”

The words came out too quickly for her to take back. Dean raised his eyebrow, but said nothing.

“I’ll wake you up with a kiss,” she said. Her voice sounded phony in her ears, and she left before he could say anything.

CHAPTER 50

By the time Marid Dabir arrived in Karlsruhe, Germany, the European al-Qaeda organizer realized that he was being followed by one of the German security forces. He decided he had two alternatives, either to flee or proceed; fleeing was impossible, and so his course was set. To flee meant to fail, and failure meant he would never return to bin Laden’s side. Better to die immediately as a martyr than wander in the wilderness any longer.

Who had betrayed him? Logically, it must be someone in his network here, though that seemed beyond belief.

Dabir went to the house he had rented as an adjunct teacher of Middle Eastern history at Karlsruhe University, doing everything one might do after returning from a trip abroad: picking up the mail, checking phone messages, answering the e-mails from university colleagues that had accumulated while he was gone. He then went to his office at the school, checked on his mail there, and while picking up papers from his department chairman’s office, pilfered the wireless PDA from his desk. Back in his own office, Dabir retrieved a cell phone hidden behind his bookcase. He connected the chairman’s PDA to the telephone, then slipped a small flash memory card into the top of the handheld computer. A screen for an instant message service appeared. Dabir tapped the bottom of the screen and a keyboard appeared; he used it to write seven short messages, which were then sent through the instant message service to the terrorists he had recruited. He wrote in simple German; one of the programs contained on the card he had put into the computer encrypted the messages into a string of letters and numbers that could only be read by someone with the same program. Within a half-hour all of the recipients had sent back a reply: ja.

“Yes.” They were ready.

Dabir returned the handheld computer to the chairman’s office without being noticed, then went back outside to resume his errands. A balding man in a sports coat followed as he walked to his car; clearly he was from one of the intelligence services. Dabir let him tag along for the time being, confident he could get rid of him when the time was right.

CHAPTER 51

The afternoon sun turned the Rhine a deep, purplish blue, the German river moving majestically past the hills near Karlsruhe. It looked like a landscape painting come to life.

Aesthetics was never one of Tommy Karr’s strong suits, neither could he be called a naturalist. Still, he stared at the river with sharp intensity, his attention focused on the police boats zipping back and forth near the MiRO refinery on the opposite side of the river. Tankers and barges were thoroughly inspected before they were allowed into the lagoon near the refinery’s storage tanks at the northern side of the complex; two large tugboats would block the path of any vessel that failed to stop.

“The analysis showed that was the weak point,” said Hess, the BND officer Karr had been assigned to help. “Exploding a ship near the tanks — I don’t want to think about the effect.”

There were other ways to attack MiRO. Crude oil arrived via two different pipelines, one originating in Italy and the other in Bavaria. The large complex was served by several roads and a rail line. These were all being checked with admirable German efficiency. Even Karr and the BND were ordered out of their car at the main gate so it could be closely inspected, and each had to pass through a metal detector to enter the administration building.

“No guns?” Karr asked Hess as they walked down the hallway.

“Why would we need them?”

The guards, at least, had guns. Blaser 93 LRS2s — fancy tactical weapons popular with police SWAT teams because of their versatility — as well as the ubiquitous Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The security director was rather proud of his men’s marksmanship scores, and Karr got the impression they could have mounted a pretty good rifle team. What they’d do against terrorists remained to be seen.

The massive complex had once been two different refineries; in an emergency, half the plant could be shut off from the other easily, with smaller sections cordoned off and secured piece by piece. The facility’s emergency procedures had been tested by a large fire a few years before, and regular drills were now held to deal with terrorist threats.

“We crush them like ants in the house,” said the security head as he ended the tour.

As impressive as his accent made that sound, Karr couldn’t help thinking that for every ant you saw, there were maybe a hundred more below the floor.

Besides the refinery, a major German nuclear research facility was located in the general area, and security had been tightened there as well. Given a choice between inspecting security there or having dinner in town, Karr went for the Wiener schnitzel.

German law provided no way of arresting Marid Dabir or even holding the suspected al-Qaeda plotter for questioning until either a crime had been committed or the police had overwhelming evidence that one was being planned. Dabir had no known connection to the local terrorist networks or radical groups on any of the various German watch lists. The Germans accepted the American intelligence indicating he was a terrorist, but for the moment the most they could do was place him under surveillance by the state police extraordinary crime unit and wait for him to commit a crime.