The problem was, Rubens needed him right now. The doctor who had been standing by with the team in Detroit had come down with the flu and had a 104° fever. The Art Room had two military doctors available as backups, but Rubens much preferred using one of his own people for security reasons.
Still, if Ramil wasn’t up to it, there was nothing he could do.
“What if I needed to use him right away?” said Rubens.
“Well, in that case I’d keep an eye on him. If you really needed him.”
“Where is he?”
“Downstairs in the squad room. I said you wanted to talk to him.”
“Very good.”
Ramll sipped the iced tea, letting the cold liquid fill his mouth before swallowing. The squad room — the ops’ nickname for the large lounge where Desk Three missions were debriefed — had the air of an English country club, with thick leather furniture and a variety of amusements. It was also quiet, off-limits except to Deep Black ops and the few people who worked directly with them. Ramil felt quite comfortable here, calm and alone. Safe.
What would a mental breakdown feel like? Something similar to what he had experienced in Istanbul, he thought, but it would last much longer. His was only temporary, a burp — he’d been tired.
“Doctor, I’m glad to see you made it back,” said William Rubens, striding into the room. He pulled a leather club chair over and sat on the edge, pitched forward like a dentist on a stool about to examine his teeth. “How are you feeling?”
“More relaxed. I think I was overstressed by the heat and the jet lag.”
“It was considerable stress.” Rubens nodded. “Perhaps you’d like a long vacation.”
“No.” Ramil felt his heart begin to race. “I’m fine. Where do you need me to be?”
“I don’t want to push you beyond your means.”
Ramil felt angry, as if Rubens had called him a coward.
“I’m quite capable,” he said. “It was a temporary glitch. You know the brain is a sensitive organ. Too much stimulation — too much adrenaline, a change in the blood flow — we react. We have to react. I’m over it.”
Rubens stared at him.
“I’ve been through much worse situations,” Ramil told him, striving to make his voice as conversational as possible. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to operate while we were being shelled.”
Actually, he could — fifteen in total, though only two had been truly scary.
“Morris is sick, I heard,” added Ramil. “So I should be there, in the background, in case anything goes wrong. I’m familiar with the patient. He has a heart condition. We don’t want to lose him.”
Rubens frowned, ever so slightly, but Ramil had seen that frown before; it meant he agreed, though with reservations. Desk Three did not have unlimited resources; it carried as many doctors as Art Room supervisors, and the latter were considerably more important to the success of any given mission. If Ramil didn’t go, Rubens would have to bring in a doctor who, even if he was on active military service — not likely in the States — would not have passed the rigorous security and background checks the NSA routinely required of even contract employees. Worse, Rubens would have no direct control over the doctor, since he would answer to a military commander. And Rubens was nothing if not a control freak.
“Ms. Telach will make the arrangements,” said Rubens finally. “If possible, I’d like you to leave within the hour.”
“Where am I going?”
“Detroit. Asad bin Taysr arrived there an hour ago.”
CHAPTER 81
“The brother says the imam requested a special meeting after Friday prayers.”
Marid Dabir nodded, carefully controlling the expression on his face. While he trusted his informant, prudence required that he not give any sign of emotion. And besides, the fact that there was a special meeting did not necessarily mean Asad was in Detroit. Dabir would have to continue methodically, discovering where the traitor was and then delivering justice.
Dabir had arrived in the city from Ontario the night before, riding the bus through the tunnel between the two cities. The passport formalities were trivial. His prematurely gray hair made him appear too old to be a threat; the al-Qaeda organizer did not fit the profile of a terrorist.
Nor did Asad.
So how would Dabir find the so-called Red Lion of Mohammed, Islam’s most perfidious traitor?
Dabir could not confront the imam, who owed his allegiance to Asad and would surely believe him rather than a man known to have fallen from favor before being banished to Germany. Nor could he send one of his people to the mosque; with the exception of his informer, they were unknown to the imam and would not be trusted with important information.
He would have the mosque watched from a distance. Sooner or later, Asad would show himself.
And if he didn’t?
Then it would mean that he wasn’t here. At that point he would formulate a new plan.
“Brother, have I done well?” asked his informant, snapping Dabir from his contemplative daze.
“Extremely,” Dabir told him. “Extremely.”
CHAPTER 82
The air conditioning in the secure conference room in the White House basement was on the fritz, and Rubens estimated that the temperature was no higher than sixty-five degrees. CIA Director Louis Zackart and Debra Collins huddled around a carafe of coffee for warmth. Even Secretary of Defense Art Blanders, who made a habit of attending even the most formal cabinet meeting in shirt sleeves, had left his suit jacket on.
Bing entered the room with the president. Rubens reminded himself not to read anything into that; the national security advisor might very well have been stalking him in the hall.
“Gentlemen, ladies, good morning,” said Marcke, his tone as brisk as the air in the room, “thank you for getting up early for me. Let’s get going. Where are we, Billy?”
“The Saudi situation is stable,” said Rubens.
He ran over the highlights quickly, indicating that the Saudis had moved after tentatively linking the two al- Qaeda contacts to the oil fields; more arrests were expected and the entire military was on alert. He then moved on to Asad — identified even here only as Red Lion — noting that he had spent the night in Detroit.
“The operation is proceeding, but it is at a difficult stage,” said Rubens. “We still do not know what the American target is.”
“An attack on the Alaskan pipeline would be on par with an attack against the Saudi oil fields,” said Defense Secretary Blanders. “It’ll be on that sort of scale.”
Rubens listened as other possible targets were named: natural gas pipelines, large oil fields in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. But the target did not have to be bigger than the Saudi oil fields to have a large impact on the U.S. Striking even a small American facility would send tremors through the commodities market. Hurricane Katrina had proven how sensitive the system was to disruption, and while that disaster had by now been accommodated, the market was still shaky. The price of oil had jumped twenty dollars a barrel following the attack in Germany. A successful strike in the U.S. might be triple that, at least in the short term. The successive attacks, fully successful or not, would make it seem as if al-Qaeda was gaining momentum in its war on the West. Within weeks it would cost over two hundred dollars to fill an economy car with gas.
“Rather than guessing or waiting for Red Lion to tell us what he has in mind,” said Bing, “we should arrest him now and find out what the target is.”
“I doubt we could break him in time,” said Rubens. “I doubt we can break him at all.”
