“How was the Corps?” Jack asked Brian.
“The Corps is the Corps, cuz. It just rolls along, keeping busy for the next war that’ll come along.”
“Dad was worried when you went to Afghanistan.”
“It was a little exciting. The people there, they’re tough, and they’re not dumb, but they’re not trained that well, either. So, when we bumped heads with ’em, we came out ahead. If we saw something that looked hinky, we called air in on it, and that usually took care of things.”
“How many?”
“How many did we take out? Some. Not enough, but some. The Green Berets went in first, and the Afghans learned from that that a stand-up fight was not in their interest. Mostly, we did pursuit and reconnaissance, bird-dogging for the airedales. We had a CIA guy with us, and a signals-intelligence detachment. The bad guys used their radios a little too much. When we got a hit, we’d move in to about a mile or so and give it a look-see, and if it was interesting enough we’d call in air and scramble the hell out of it. Scary to watch,” Brian summarized.
“I bet” Jack popped open a can of beer.
“So this Sali guy, the one with the girlfriend, Rosalie Parker?” Dominic asked. Like most cops, he had a good memory for names. “You said that he was jumpin’ up and down about the shootings?”
“Yup,” Jack said. “Thought they were just swell.”
“So who was the cheerleading with?”
“Pals he e-mails to. The Brits have his phones tapped, and the e-mails—well, as I said, I can’t tell you about the e-mails. Those European phone systems aren’t anywhere near as secure as people think—I mean, everybody knows about intercepting cell phones and stuff, but the cops over there pull stuff we can’t do here. The Brits especially, they use intercepts to track the IRA guys. I heard that the rest of the European countries are even freer to act”
“They are,” Dominic assured him. “At the Academy, we had some in the national Academy program—that’s like a doctoral course for cops. They’d talk about that sort of thing after you got a few drinks into them. So, this Sali guy liked what those mutts did, eh?”
“Like his team won the Super Bowl,” Jack replied at once.
“And he bankrolls them?” Brian asked.
“That’s right.”
“Interesting,” was all Brian had to say after getting that question answered.
HE COULD have stayed another night, but he had things to do in the morning, and so he was driving back to London in his Aston Martin Vanquish, Bowland black. Its interior was charcoal, and its handmade twelve-cylinder engine was pushing out most of its 460 horsepower as he headed east on the M4 at a hundred miles per hour. In its way, the car was better than sex. It was a pity Rosalie wasn’t with him, but—he looked over at his companion—Mandy was an agreeable bed warmer, if a little too skinny for his usual tastes. If only she could put some meat on her bones, but European fashion did not encourage that. The fools who determined the rules of women’s bodies were probably pederasts who wished them all to look like young boys. Madness, Sali thought. Pure madness.
But Mandy enjoyed riding in this car, more than Rosalie did. Rosalie, sadly, was fearful of driving fast, not as trusting of his skills as she should have been. He hoped he could take this car home—he’d fly it there, of course. His brother had a fast car of his own; but the dealer had told him that this four-wheeled rocket topped out at over three hundred kilometers per hour—that was 196 miles per hour—and the Kingdom had some fine, flat, straight roads. Okay, so he had a cousin who flew Tornado fighters for the Royal Saudi Air Force, but this car was his, and that made all the difference. Unfortunately, the police here in England would not allow him to exercise it properly—one more traffic ticket and he might lose his driver’s license, the spoilsports—but at home there would be no such problems. And after seeing what it could really do, he’d fly it back to Gatwick and use it to excite women, which was almost as good as just driving it. Certainly Mandy was properly excited by it. He’d have to get her a nice Vuitton bag and have it messesgered to her flat tomorrow. It didn’t hurt to be generous with women, and Rosalie needed to learn that she had some competition.
Racing into town as rapidly as the traffic and the police allowed, he zoomed past Harrods, through the vehicle tunnel, and past the Duke of Wellington’s house before turning right onto Curzon Street and then left onto Berkeley Square. A flash of his lights told the man he paid to guard his parking place to move his car, and he was able to park just in front of his three-story brownstone town house. With continental manners, he got out of the car and raced around to open Mandy’s door and gallantly escorted her up the steps to the huge oak front door, and, smiling, held it open for her. In a few minutes, she’d be opening an even nicer door for him, after all.
“THE LITTLE bugger’s back,” Ernest observed, making the proper note of the time on his clipboard. The two Security Service officers were in a British Telecom van parked fifty yards away. They’d been there for about two hours. This young Saudi madman drove as though he were the reincarnation of Jimmy Clark.
“I suppose he had a better weekend than we did,” Peter agreed. Then he turned to punch the buttons to activate various wiretap systems in the Georgian town house. These included three cameras whose tapes were collected every third day by a penetration team. “He is a vigorous little bastard.”
“Probably uses Viagra,” Ernest thought aloud, and somewhat enviously.
“One must be a good sport, Ernie, my lad. It will cost him two weeks of our pay. And for what she is about to receive, she will surely be truly grateful.”
“Bugger,” Ernest observed sourly.
“She’s thin, but not that thin, boyo.” Peter had himself a good laugh. They knew what Mandy Davis charged her “tricks,” and, like men everywhere, they wondered what special things she might do to earn it, all while holding her in contempt. As counterintelligence officers, they did not quite have the degree of sympathy a seasoned police constable might have had for relatively unskilled women trying to earn their way. Seven hundred fifty pounds for an evening’s visit, and two thousand pounds for a complete night. Exactly what her custom was for a full weekend, no one had asked.
They both picked up the earphones to make sure the microphones worked, switching channels to track them through the house.
“He’s an impatient sod,” Ernest observed. “Suppose she’ll stay the night?”
“I’ll wager she doesn’t, Ernie. Then maybe he’ll get on the bloody phone and we can get something useful off the bastard.”
“Bloody wog,” Ernest muttered, to his partner’s agreement. They both thought Mandy was prettier than Rosalie. Fit for a government minister.
THEY WERE correct in their judgment. Mandy Davis left at 10:23 A.M., stopping at the door for one last kiss, and a smile certain to break any man’s heart, and then she walked downhill on Berkeley Street heading toward Piccadilly, where she did not turn right at the Boots drugstore for the Underground station on the corner of Piccadilly and Stratton, but rather caught a cab that took her downtown, to New Scotland Yard. There, she’d be debriefed by a friendly young detective whom she rather fancied, though she was too skilled in her profession to mix business of the business sort with business of the pleasure sort. Uda was a vigorous john, and a generous one, but whatever illusions existed in their relationship were his, not hers.
THE NUMBERS came up on the LED register, and were saved and time-stamped in their laptop computers—there were two of them, and at least one more at Thames House. On each of Sali’s phones was a pin register that noted the destination of every call he made. A similar device did the same for all incoming calls, while three tape machines recorded every word. This one was an overseas call, to a mobile phone.
“He’s calling his friend Mohammed,” Peter observed. “I wonder what they’ll be talking about.”
“At least ten minutes of his adventure this weekend, I’ll wager.”
“Yes, he does like to talk,” Peter agreed.
“SHE’S TOO skinny, but she is an accomplished harlot, my friend. There is something to be said for unbelieving women,” Sali assured his colleague. She and Rosalie really liked him. He could always tell.
“I am glad to hear that, Uda,” Mohammed said patiently from Paris. “Now, to business.”
“As you wish, my friend.”
“The American operation went well.”