The next half hour passed quickly. Then came a bridge of considerable size and height, and a sign that announced the Mississippi River, followed by a sign that welcomed them to TENNESSEE, THE VOLUNTEER STATE. His mind wandering from so much driving, Mustafa started to wonder what that might mean, but the thought died aborning. Whatever it meant, he had to cross Tennessee on the way to Virginia. Rest would not come for at least fifteen more hours. He’d drive about a hundred kilometers east of Memphis, then turn the car over to Abdullah.
He’d just crossed a great river. His entire country had no permanent rivers, just wadis that flooded briefly with a rare passing shower and soon went dry again. America was such a rich country. That was probably the source of their arrogance, but his mission, and that of his three colleagues, was to take that arrogance down a few pegs. And that, Insh’Allah, they would do, in less than two more days.
Two days to Paradise, was the thought that lingered in his mind.
CHAPTER 12
ARRIVING
TENNESSEE PASSED quickly for those in the back, only because Mustafa and Abdullah shared the wheel for the three hundred fifty kilometers from Memphis to Nashville, during which Rafi and Zuhayr mainly slept. One and three quarters kilometers per minute, be calculated. It translated to another . . . what? Twenty more hours or so. He thought about speeding up, to make the trip go faster—but, no, that was foolish. Taking unnecessary chances was always foolish. Hadn’t they learned that from the Israelis? The enemy was always waiting, like a sleeping tiger. Waking one up unnecessarily was very foolish indeed. You only woke up the tiger when your rifle was already aimed, and only then so that the tiger could know that he’d been outsmarted, and unable to take action. Just to be awake long enough to appreciate his own foolishness, enough to know fear. America would know fear. For all their weapons and their cleverness, all these arrogant people would tremble.
He found himself smiling into the darkness now. The sun had set again, and his car’s headlights bored white cones into the darkness, illuminating the white lines on the highway that dashed in and out of his vision as he drove eastward at a steady sixty-five miles per hour.
THE TWINS were now rising at 0600 and going out to do their daily dozen exercises without Pete Alexander’s supervision, which, they’d decided, they really didn’t need. The run was getting easier for both of them, and the rest of the exercises had also mutated into a routine. By seven-fifteen, they were done and heading in for breakfast and the first skull-session with their training officer.
“Those shoes need some work, bro,” Dominic observed.
“Yeah,” Brian agreed, taking a sad look at his aging Nike sneaks. “They’ve served me well for a few years, but it looks like they need to go off to shoe heaven.”
“Foot Locker in the mall.” He referred to the Fashion Square shopping mall down the hill in Charlottesville.
“Hmm, maybe a Philly cheesesteak for lunch tomorrow?”
“Works for me, bro,” Dominic agreed. “Nothing like grease, fat, and cholesterol for lunch, especially with cheese fries on the side. Assuming your shoes will last another day.”
“Hey, Enzo, I like the smell. These sneaks and me been around the block a few times.”
“Like those dirty T-shirts. God damn it, Aldo, can’t you ever dress properly?”
“Just let me wear my utilities again, buddy. I like being a Marine. You always know where you stand.”
“Yeah, in the middle of the shit,” Dominic observed.
“Maybe so, but you work with a better class of guys there.” And, he didn’t add, they were all on your side, and they all carried automatic weapons. It made for a feeling of security rarely found in civilian life.
“Going out to lunch, eh?” Alexander said.
“Tomorrow, maybe,” Dominic answered. “Then we need to arrange a proper burial for Aldo’s running shoes. We got a can of Lysol around here, Pete?”
Alexander had himself a good laugh. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“You know, Dominic,” Brian said, looking up from his eggs, “if you weren’t my brother, I wouldn’t take this crap off of you.”
“Really?” The FBI Caruso tossed him an English muffin. “I swear, you Marines are all talk. I always used to whip him when we were kids,” he added for Pete’s benefit.
Brian’s eyes nearly popped out of his head: “My ass!”
And another training day got started.
AN HOUR later, Jack was back on his workstation. Uda bin Sali had enjoyed another athletic night, with Rosalie Parker again. He must like her a lot. Ryan wondered how the Saudi would react if he knew that after every session she gave a play-by-play to the British Security Service. But for her, business was business, which would have deflated a lot of male egos in the British capital. Sali surely had one of those, Junior thought. Wills came in at quarter to nine with a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts.
“Hey, Anthony. What’s shakin’?”
“You tell me,” Wills shot back. “Doughnut?”
“Thanks, buddy. Well, Uda had some more exercise last night.”
“Ah, youth, a wonderful thing, but wasted on the young.”
“George Bernard Shaw, right?”
“I knew you were literate. Sali discovered a new toy a few years back, and I guess he’s going to play with it till it breaks—or falls off. Must be tough duty for his shadow team, standing out in the cold rain and knowing he’s getting his weasel greased upstairs.” It was a line from the Sopranos on HBO, which Wills admired.
“You suppose they’re the ones who debrief her?”
“No, that’s a job for the guys over at Thames House. Must get old after a while. Pity they don’t send us all the transcripts, though,” he added with a chuckle. “Might be good for getting the blood flowing in the morning.”
“Thanks, I can always buy a Hustler at the magazine store if I feel scuzzy some night.”
“It’s not a clean business we’re in, Jack. The kind of people we look at, they aren’t the kind you invite over for dinner.”
“Hey, White House, remember? Half the people we hosted for a State Dinner—Dad could hardly shake hands with them. But Secretary Adler told him it was business, and so Dad had to be nice to the sunzabitches. Politics attracts some really scummy people, too.”
“Amen. So, anything else new on Sali?”
“I haven’t gone over yesterday’s money moves yet. Hey, if Cunningham stumbles over anything significant, what happens next?”
“That’s up to Gerry and the senior staff.” You’re way too junior to get your panties in a wad about that, he didn’t add, though the young Ryan got the message anyway.
“WELL, DAVE?” Gerry Hendley was asking upstairs.
“He’s laundering money and sending some of it off to persons unknown. Liechtenstein bank. If I had to guess, it’s to cover credit card accounts. You can get a Visa or MasterCard through that particular bank, and so it could well be to cover credit card accounts for persons unknown. Could be a mistress or a close friend, or somebody in whom we might have direct interest.”
“Any way to find out?” Tom Davis asked.
“They use the same accounting program most banks do,” Cunningham answered, meaning that with a little patience, The Campus could crack their way inside and learn more. There were firewalls in the way, of course. It was a job better left to the National Security Agency, and so the trick was to get NSA to task one of its computer weenies to do the cracking. That would mean faking a request by CIA to do the job, and that, the accountant figured, was a little harder to accomplish than just typing a note into a computer terminal. He also suspected that The Campus had someone inside both intelligence agencies who could do the faking so that no discernible paper trail would be left behind.
“Is it strictly necessary?”
“Maybe in a week or so, I can find more data. This Sali guy might just be a rich kid playing stickball out in the traffic, but . . . but my nose tells me he’s a player of some sort,” Cunningham admitted. He’d developed good instincts over the years, as a result of which two former Mafia kingpins were now living in solitary cells at Marion, Illinois. But he didn’t trust his own instincts as well as his former and current superiors did. A career accountant with a foxhound’s nose, he was also very conservative in talking about it.
“A week, you think?”
Dave nodded. “About that.”
“How’s the Ryan kid?”
“Good instincts. He found something most people would have missed. Maybe his youth works for him. Young target, young bloodhound. Usually, it doesn’t work. This time . . . looks like maybe it did. You know, when his dad appointed Pat Martin to be Attorney General, I heard some things about Big Jack. Pat really liked him, and I worked with Mr. Martin enough to respect him a lot. This kid may be going places. It’ll take about ten years to be sure of that, of course.”