It was ten minutes later that he realized that the Koran was almost a word-for-word clone of what all the Jewish prophets had scribbled down, divinely inspired to do so, of course, because they said so. And so did this Mohammed guy. Supposedly, God talked to him, and he played executive secretary and wrote it all down. It was a pity there hadn’t been a video camera and tape recorder for all these birds, but there hadn’t, and, as a priest had explained to him at Georgetown, faith was faith, and either you believed as you were supposed to, or you didn’t.
Jack did believe in God, of course. His mom and dad had instructed him in the basics, and sent him through Catholic schools, and he’d learned the prayers and the rules, and he’d done First Communion, and Confession—now called “Reconciliation” in the kinder, gentler Church of Rome—and Confirmation. But he hadn’t seen the inside of a church for quite a while. It wasn’t that he was against the Church, just that he was grown up now, and maybe not going was a (dumb) way of showing Mom and Dad that he was able to make his own decisions about how he’d live his life, and that Mom and Dad couldn’t order him around anymore.
He noted that there was no place in the fifty pages he’d skimmed through that said anything about shooting innocent people so that you could screw the womenfolk among them in heaven. The penalty for suicide was right on the level with what Sister Frances Mary had explained in second grade. Suicide was a mortal sin you really wanted to avoid, because you couldn’t go to confession afterward to scrub it off your soul. Islam said that faith was good, but you couldn’t just think it. You had to live it, too. Bingo, as far as Catholic teaching went.
At the end of ninety minutes, it came to him—rather an obvious conclusion—that terrorism had about as much to do with the Islamic religion as it did with Catholic and Protestant Irishmen. Adolf Hitler, the biographers said, had thought of himself as a Catholic right up until the moment he’d eaten the gun—evidently, he’d never met Sister Frances Mary or he would have known better. But that bozo had obviously been crazy. So, if he was reading this right, Mohammed would probably have clobbered terrorists. He had been a decent, honorable man. Not all of his followers were the same way, though, and those were the ones he and the twins had to deal with.
Any religion could be twisted out of shape by the next crop of madmen, he thought, yawning, and Islam was just the next one on the list.
“Gotta read more of this,” he told himself on the way to the bed. “Gotta.”
FA’AD WOKE up at eight-thirty. He’d be meeting Mahmoud today, just down the street at the drugstore. From there, they’d take a cab somewhere—probably a museum—for the actual message transfer, and he’d learn what was supposed to happen, and what he’d have to do to make it so. It really was a pity that he didn’t have his own residence. Hotels were comfortable, especially the laundry service, but he was approaching his tolerance limit.
Breakfast came. He thanked the waiter and tipped him two Euros, then read the paper that sat on the wheeled table. Nothing of consequence seemed to be happening. There was a coming election in Austria, and each side was enthusiastically blackguarding the other, as the political game was played in Europe. It was a lot more predictable at home, and easier to understand. By nine in the morning, he had the TV turned on, and he found himself checking his watch with increasing frequency. These meetings always made him a little anxious. What if Mossad had identified him? The answer to that was clear enough. They’d kill him with no more thought than flicking at an insect.
OUTSIDE, DOMINIC and Brian were walking about, almost aimlessly, or so it might have seemed to a casual observer. The problem was, there were a few of those around. There was a magazine kiosk just by their hotel, and the Bristol had doormen. Dominic considered leaning against a lamppost and reading a paper, but that was one thing they’d told him in the FBI Academy never to do because even spies had seen the movies where the actors were always doing that. And so, professional or not, realistic or not, the whole world was conditioned to be mindful of anyone who read a newspaper while leaning on a lamppost. Following a guy already outside without being spotted was child’s play compared to waiting for him to appear. He sighed, and kept walking.
Brian was thinking along the same lines. He thought about how cigarettes might help at moments like this. It gave you something to do, like in the movies, Bogart and his unfiltered coffin nails, which had eventually killed him. Bad luck, Bogie, Brian thought. Cancer must have been a bitch of a disease. He wasn’t exactly delivering the breath of spring to his subjects, but at least it didn’t last months. just a few minutes, and the brain winked out. Besides, they had it coming in one way or another. Maybe they would not have agreed with that, but you had to be careful about the enemies you made. Not all of them would be dumb and defenseless sheep. And surprise was a bitch. The best thing to have on the battlefield, surprise. If you surprised the other guy, he didn’t have a chance to strike back, and that was just fine because this was business, not personal. Like a steer at the stockyards, he walked into a little room, and even if he looked up he’d just see the guy with the air hammer, and after that it was off to cattle heaven, where the grass was always green and the water sweet, and there weren’t any wolves around . . .
Your mind is wandering, Aldo, Brian thought to himself. Both sides of the street served his purpose just fine. So he crossed over and headed for the ATM machine directly across from the Bristol, took out his card, and punched in the code number, to be rewarded with five hundred Euros. Checked his watch: 10:53. Was this bird coming out? Had they missed him somehow?
Traffic had settled down. The red streetcars rumbled back and forth. People here minded their own business. They walked along without looking sideways, unless they were interested in something specific. No eye contact with strangers, no instinct to greet people at all. A stranger was supposed to stay that way, evidently. He appreciated it here even more than in Munich, just how in Ordnung these people were. You could probably eat dinner right off the floor in their houses, as long as you cleaned up the floor afterward.
Dominic had taken up position on the other side of the street, covering the direction to the opera house. There were only two ways for this character to go. Left or right. He could cross the street or not. No more options than that, unless he had a car coming to pick him up, in which case the mission was a washout. But tomorrow was always another day. 10:56, his watch said. He had to be careful, not look at the hotel’s entrance too much. Doing this made him feel vulnerable . . .
There—bingo! It was the subject, all right, dressed in a blue pin-striped suit and a maroon tie, like a guy going to an important business meeting. Dominic saw him, too, and turned to approach from the northwest. Brian waited to see what he was going to do.
FA’AD DECIDED to trick his arriving friend. He’d approach from across the street, just to be different, and so he crossed over, in the middle of the block, dodging the traffic. As a boy, he’d enjoyed entering the corral for his father’s horses and dodging among them. Horses had brains enough not to run into things unnecessarily, of course, more than could be said for some of the cars heading up Kartner Ring, but he got across safely.
THE ROAD here was curious, with one paved path like a private driveway, a thin grass median, then the road proper with its cars and streetcars, then another grass median, and the final car path before the opposite sidewalk. The subject darted across and started walking west, toward their hotel. Brian took up position ten feet behind and took out his pen, swapping out the point and checking visually to make sure he was ready.
MAX WEBER was a motorman who’d worked for the city transit authority for twenty-three years, driving his streetcar back and forth eighteen times per day, for which he was paid a comfortable salary for a workingman. He was now going north, leaving Schwartzenberg Platz, turning left just as the street changed from Rennweg into Schwartzenberg Strasse to go left on the Kartner Ring. The light was in his favor, and his eye caught the ornate Hotel Imperial, where all the rich foreigners and diplomats liked to stay. Then his eyes came back to the road. You couldn’t steer a streetcar, and it was the job of those in automobiles to keep out of his way. Not that he went very fast, hardly ever more than forty kilometers per hour, even out at the end of the line. It was not an intellectually demanding job, but he did it scrupulously, in accordance with the manual. The bell rang. Somebody needed to get off at the corner of Kartner and Wiedner Hauptstrasse.