“A very true statement. You are very wise.”
“Just experienced.”
“Don’t push it, Charlie,” said Rockman. “Just get him out of there.”
Dean went to the sink and washed his hands. Asad was the perfect picture of a wise man, knowledge leavened by the wear on his face, his beard streaked with lines of silver. His soft voice would have been equally at home in a library, or the hushed precincts of a mosque or other holy place. When he spoke of God, he did so not just with confidence but with a touch of humility, the tone of his voice conveying the sense of wonderment that he had been allowed to experience faith and its accompanying grace so completely.
The Devil wears a three-piece suit, his grandmother used to say. And speaks with a silver tongue.
“What happened to the doctor who saw me at the hospital?” said Asad, getting up from the chair. “I was told I would have him.”
Dean shrugged, barely understanding the question through Asad’s accent.
“He doesn’t get out of bed this early?” Asad added.
“Yes. Well, that is the assistant’s job.”
“I am glad that you could help me. My head feels better already.”
“You should try some aspirin.”
“Allah is my aspirin. My men will pay you.”
“I need no fee.”
Asad bowed his head slightly, then left the room. One of his men threw a hundred-lira note on the floor as he left.
When Lia got Dr. Ramil into the car, she saw that his hands were trembling. She pulled out of her parking space and drove around the block, anxious about leaving Dean but not wanting to be too close when Asad and his bodyguards came out. The doctor sat like a mannequin in the Renault’s passenger seat, staring straight out the front window.
“They’re leaving,” Rockman told her finally. “Take Ramil back to the hotel.”
“No,” said Lia. “Get Dr. Ramil a plane ticket. I’ll take him to the airport.”
“We may still need him.”
“He’s useless.” Lia glanced at her passenger. His eyes were fixed on the windshield. His hands were shaking violently, even though they were resting on his lap.
“Lia, this is Marie. What’s the situation with Dr. Ramil?”
“Totally freaked. He’s no good, Marie. I’ll put him on a plane and you collect him on the other end.”
“Get out the satphone and let me talk to him.”
“Suit yourself.” Lia reached down into her bag and took out the satphone. She hotkeyed to the Art Room, then gave the phone to Ramil. The doctor stared at it a moment, then put it to his ear. He listened without speaking, then handed the phone back.
“Convinced?” Lia asked.
The Art Room supervisor didn’t answer. Lia spotted the old city wall ahead; though slightly hazy on where she was, she turned left, knowing the highway out to the airport would be in that direction. She had just found it when Telach got back to her.
“We have him on a plane that leaves at six. It’s a direct flight to New York.”
“We’ll be at the airport in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER 59
The owner of the number one bait shop in Karlsruhe, Germany, was not particularly happy about being woken up at two in the morning, especially when he found out why. But he agreed to go immediately to the police station for more details on the break-in at his store. There was a bit of confusion when he arrived, since the police seemed to think that he had reported the break-in, and he thought they had discovered it. This was soon sorted out, however, and a patrolman accompanied him to the shop to identify what was missing. The latch had been pried from the fence, the burglars apparently stymied by the lock; it was a real hack job, in contrast to the rest of the operation, which had been so smooth only the owner would have noticed that anything had been taken — six small oxygen tanks used in scuba setups ordinarily stored around the side.
“There’s been a crime, which means you can investigate,” said Tommy Karr when he met Hess at the airport in Baden.
“Robbery is not terrorism.”
“You should check and see if Dabir took scuba classes. Maybe see who else took them with him.”
“As if we don’t have anything better to do,” said Hess.
“Hey, if you want help, just holler.”
“With that, you can help,” she said sarcastically.
“Good going, Tommy,” Rockman told him. “We’re downloading the names and addresses to your PDA right now. Two of them look like real possibilities.”
Floodlights had been set up on the land side of the lagoon at the MiRO petroleum plant, covering the large bay ships used to load and unload at the facility. Two helicopters were circling overhead, playing their searchlights on the surface. Sharpshooters were spread out along the shoreline, ready to plaster anything or anyone that came out of the water.
Out on the river, two patrol boats had moved in to close off access to the plant. MiRO I — the half of the plant near the water — had been shut down; the police were sweeping through to see if the terrorists were already inside. A NATO helicopter was en route from a base on the Baltic with hydro-phonic gear sensitive enough to detect the breathing apparatus that would be fitted to the stolen tanks.
“Cripes, there’s a creek down there,” said Karr, looking out the window from Hess’s helicopter as they overflew the massive complex.
“Yes?” said Hess.
The Alb Creek split the plant in two. It fed into a large pond at the north — a pond very close to a road and sheltered from the air by a patch of woods.
“Alert the security people. The terrorists are probably already inside,” Karr told Hess. “They’ll be in the eastern end of the plant, MiRO 2, not MiRO 1. Have the security teams check that creek.”
CHAPTER 60
Dean went through the clinic carefully after Asad had left, looking for anything the bodyguards might have left behind. All he saw was the money; though it would be difficult at best to get any useful DNA from it, he picked the notes up with a pair of forceps and put them into a plastic bag. Then he shut everything down.
“Charlie, Lia is taking Dr. Ramil out to the airport,” Rockman told him when he was ready to leave. “Can you swing by the hotel and pick up his suitcase? We’ll send a taxi to meet you out front.”
“Who’s going to follow Asad?”
“He’s heading back toward the safe house. It sounds like he’s going back to bed for a while. He told his bodyguards he was tired. Don’t worry; we already have one of the CIA backup teams near the house. I’ll update you when you have his bag.”
The taxi was coming down the block when Dean emerged from the back of the building. He gave the man the address in Turkish — few taxi drivers spoke more English than “hello” and “good-bye”—and sat silently as they drove over to the hotel. With the clerk napping in the small office behind the reception desk, Dean used his duplicate key to get into Dr. Ramil’s room. A half hour later, he arrived at the airport.
Lia was waiting in the seats at the far end of the building, across from the rows of check-in windows reserved
