by a single photon. Even in the blackest night, there were shadows. Janson and
Katsaris would stay in those shadows as long as possible: they would move along
the sides of the courtyard, avoiding the center.
Now, for a few moments, Janson kept perfectly still, not even breathing: just
listening. There was the distant, soft roar of the sea, washing at the base of
the promontory. A few bird noises—a cormorant, perhaps—and, from the forests to
the south, the scraping and buzzing of tropical insects. This was the aural
baseline of the night, and they would do well to be aware of it. It was
impossible to move with absolute silence: fabric slid against fabric, nylon
fibers stretched and contracted around a person’s moving limbs. Soles, even
those of thick, soft rubber, registered their impact on the ground; the hard
shells of a dead beetle or cicada would crunch with a footfall. The night’s
acoustic tapestry would conceal some noises but not others.
He listened for sounds of Katsaris’s movement, straining harder than any sentry
would, and heard nothing. Would he be as successful in maintaining silence?
Ten feet, then twenty feet, along the wall. There was a scraping sound, then the
burst of a tiny combustion: the third guard was lighting up.
Janson was near enough to watch the motion: a thick, self-lighting match struck
against brick, its candlelike flame held under what looked like a thin
cigarillo. After twenty seconds, the tobacco smell wafted toward him—it was
indeed a cigarillo—and Janson relaxed a little. The flare of the match would
constrict the sentries’ irises, temporarily reducing their visual acuity. The
tobacco smoke would render their noses all but useless. And the activity of
smoking would compromise their ability to respond, in an encounter where a split
second was the difference between life and death.
He was now fifteen feet away from the northern veranda. He took in the
rusticated limestone and wrought-iron grille. The terra-cotta mission roof tiles
were a late addition and sat oddly on a structure that had been built and
rebuilt over centuries. Four stories; the grand rooms on the second floor, where
the leaded glass, hood moldings, and arched transoms suggested the
transformation of a Portuguese fortress into what a Dutch overlord pretentiously
dubbed his “palace.” Most of the windows were dark; dim hallway lights seeped
through some of them. And where was the Caliph, the architect of death, sleeping
tonight? Janson had a pretty good guess.
It would be so easy. A fragmentation grenade, lobbed through the leaded glass. A
stinger missile, blasting into the bedroom. And Ahmad Tabari would be dead. No
more would remain of his corporeal existence than remained of Helene’s. He
batted the thought away. It was a fantasy merely, and one he could not afford to
indulge. It was inconsistent with the mission objective. Peter Novak was a great
man. Not only did Janson owe him his life, but the world might owe him its
future survival. The moral and strategic calculus was incontrovertible: the
preservation of a great man had to take precedence over the destruction of an
evil one.
Janson lowered his gaze from the governor’s suite to the northern veranda.
Fifteen feet away from the nearest sentry, he could see the men’s faces. Broad,
peasant faces, unwary and unsophisticated. Younger than he had expected. But
then, the forty-nine-year-old operative reflected, these men would not have
looked young to him for most of his career as a field agent. They were older
than he was when he was running raids behind the Green Line near Cambodia. Older
than he was when he killed for the first time, and when he first escaped being
killed.
Their hands were visibly chafed, but no doubt from farmwork rather than martial
arts. Amateurs, yes, he mused again; but it was not a wholly reassuring thought.
The KLF was too well organized to have entrusted so valuable a treasure to the
protection of such men as these. They were a first line of defense only. A first
line of defense where, logically, no defense at all would have been called for.
And where was Katsaris?
Janson peered across the courtyard, across sixty feet of darkness, and could
make out nothing. Katsaris was invisible. Or gone.
He made a quiet tsk into the filament mike, trying to modify the sound to echo
the insect and avian noises of the night.
He heard an answering tsk in his earpiece. Katsaris was there, in place, ready.
The accuracy of his first determination would be crucial: Was it safe to take
out these men? Were the men themselves decoys—birds on a wire?
Was there a wire?
Janson raised himself from his crouch, peered into the windows behind the iron
grille. Perspiration lay on him like a film of mud; the humidity of the air
prevented evaporation. Now he envied Katsaris the procholinergic. The
perspiration wasn’t cooling him; it just adhered to his skin, an unwanted layer
of clothing.
At the same time, it concerned him that he was even conscious of such
incidentals. He had to focus: Was there a wire?
He looked through the NV scope, angling it toward the iron grille behind the
smoking peasants. Nothing.
No, something. An orange spot, too small to correspond to a body. In all
likelihood, it was a hand belonging to a body concealed behind a stone wall.
The men on the veranda, it was a reasonable surmise, were unaware that they had
backup; it would have diminished their already doubtful efficacy. But they did.
Did the backup have backup? Had a sequential operation been designed?
Improbable. Not impossible.
From a long thigh pocket, Janson withdrew a blackened aluminum tube, thirteen
inches in length, four inches in diameter. Inside, it was lined with a snug
steel mesh, which prevented the living creature within from making noise. An
atmosphere of 90 percent pure oxygen prevented asphyxiation during the operation
schedule.
The time had come for noise, for distraction.
He unscrewed one sealed end, the Teflon-coated grooves moving soundlessly over
each other.
By its long, naked tail, he removed the rodent and flung it toward the veranda
in a high parabola. It landed as if, in its nocturnal travels, it had lost its
purchase and dropped off the roof.
Its glossy black pelt was now standing on end, and the creature made its
telltale piglike grunts. The sentries had a visitor, and within four seconds
they knew it. The short head, wide muzzle, scaly, hairless tail. One foot long,
two and a half pounds. A bandicoot rat. Bandicota bengalensis was its formal
name. Quite literally, Ahmad Tabari’s bete noire.
In their Dravidian tongue, the Kagama guards broke out into short, hushed,
frantic exchanges.
“Ayaiyo, ange paaru, adhu yenna theridhaa?”
“Aiyo, perichaali!”
“Adha yepadiyaavadhu ozrikkanum.”
“Andha vittaa, naama sethom.”
“Anga podhu paaru.”
The animal scurried toward an entryway, following its instincts, while the
guards, following theirs, tried to stop it. The temptation was to fire a weapon
at the giant rodent, but that would awaken everyone in the compound and make
them look foolish. Worse, it could draw attention to a failure, and a crucial
one. If the Beloved One, asleep in the governor’s suite, were to come across
this harbinger of death in his living quarters, there was no telling how he
would react. He might, in a black terror, enact its prophecy himself by ordering
the death of the sentries who had permitted its entry. They knew what had
happened last time.
The consternation had, as Janson had hoped, brought out the others—the second
team. How many? Three—no, four.
The members of the second team were armed with American Ml6s, probably
Vietnam-era. They were standard infantry issue during Vietnam, and the NVA
collected them by the thousands after the South fell. From there, the Ml6
entered the international market and became the standard semi-automatic of
less-than-well-funded guerrilla movements everywhere—the kind that bought on the
installment plan, that scrimped and saved and never splurged on nonessentials.
Christmas Club warriors. The Ml6 would fire short, buzz-saw bursts, seldom
jammed, and, with a minimum of maintenance, was reasonably rust-resistant, even
in humid climes. Janson respected the weapon; he respected all weapons. But he
also knew that they would not be fired unnecessarily. Soldiers in proximity to a
resting leadership did not make loud noises at four in the morning without good
cause.
Janson withdrew a second bandicoot rat, an even larger one, and, as it writhed
and squirmed in his gloved hands, pressed into its belly a tiny hypodermic
filled with d-amphetamine. It would produce hyperactivity, thus making the rat
even bolder and faster than the other one and, in the eyes of the sentries, even
more of a menace.
A low, underhand toss. Its small, sharp claws grabbing at thin air, the rat
landed on the head of one of the peasant sentries—who let out a brief but
piercing scream.
It was more attention than Janson had been aiming for.
Had he overshot the mark? If the scream drew soldiers who were not assigned to