“You have a message to call Signor Ryan when you get in. Your rooms are just next to his,” the clerk told them, then he waved at the bellman, who guided them to the elevator.
“Long drive, man,” Brian said, leaning back against the paneled walls.
“Tell me about it,” Dominic agreed.
“I mean, I know you like fast cars and fast women, but next time how about a damned airliner? Maybe you can score with a stew, y’know?”
“You friggin’ jarhead.” Followed by a yawn.
“This way, signori,” the bellman suggested, with a wave of his arm.
“The message at the desk, where is he?”
“Signor Ryan? He is right here.” The bellman pointed.
“That’s convenient,” Dominic thought aloud, until he remembered something else. He let himself get moved in, and the connecting door to Brian’s room opened, and he gave the bellman a generous tip. Then he took the message slip out of his pocket and called.
“HELLO?”
“We’re right next door, ace. What’s shaking?” Brian asked.
“Two rooms?”
“Roger that”
“Guess who’s just down from you?”
“Tell me.”
“A British guy, a Mr. Nigel Hawkins,” Jack told his cousin, and waited for the shock to subside. “Let’s talk.”
“Come right on over, junior.”
That took no more time than Jack needed to slip into his loafers.
“Enjoy the drive?” Jack asked.
Dominic had poured his minibar wine into a glass. There wasn’t much left. “It was long.”
“You did all the driving?”
“Hey, I wanted to get here alive, man.”
“You turkey,” Brian snarled. “He thinks driving a Porsche is like sex, except better.”
“It is if you have the right technique, but even sex can wear a man out. Okay.” Dominic set his glass down. “Did you say . . . ?”
“Yeah, right there.” Jack pointed at the wall. And moved his hand to his eyes. I’ve seen the mutt. The reply was just nods. “Well, you guys get some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can think about our appointment. Cool?”
“Very cool,” Brian agreed. “Ring us up about nine, okay?”
“You bet. Later.” And Jack headed for the door. Soon thereafter, he was back on his computer. And then it hit him. He wasn’t the only guy here with one of those, was he? That might be valuable . . .
EIGHT O’CLOCK came earlier than it should have. Mohammed was up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and on his machine checking his e-mail. Mahmoud was in Rome as well, having arrived the previous night, and near the top of 56MoHa’s mailbox was a letter from Gadfly097, requesting a meeting site. Mohammed thought about that and then decided to exercise his sense of humor.
RISTORANTE GIOVANNI, PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, he replied: 13:30. BE CAREFUL IN YOUR ROUTINE. By which he meant to employ countersurveillance measures. There was no definite reason to suspect foul play in the loss of three field personnel, but he hadn’t lived to the age of thirty-one in the business of intelligence by being foolish. He had the ability to tell the harmless from the dangerous, he thought. He’d gotten David Greengold six weeks earlier, because the Jew hadn’t seen the False Flag play even when it bit him on the ass—well, the back of the neck, Mohammed thought with a lowercase smile, remembering the moment. Maybe he should start carrying the knife again, just for good luck. Many men in his line of work believed in luck, as a sportsman or athlete might. Perhaps the Emir had been right. Killing the Mossad officer had been a gratuitously unnecessary risk, since it courted enemies. The organization had enough of those, even if the enemies did not know who and what the organization was. Better that they should be a mere shadow to the infidels . . . a shadow in a darkened room, unseen and unknown. Mossad was hated by his colleagues, but it was hated because it was feared. The Jews were formidable. They were vicious, and they were endlessly clever. And who could say what knowledge they had, what Arab traitors bought with American money for Jewish ends. There was not a hint of treachery in the Organization, but he remembered the words of the Russian KGB officer Yuriy: Treason is only. possible from those whom you trust. It had probably been a mistake to kill the Russian so quickly. He’d been an experienced field officer who’d operated most of his career in Europe and America, and there’d probably been no end to the stories he could have told, each of them with a lesson to be learned. Mohammed remembered talking to him and remembered being impressed with the breadth of his experience and judgment. Instinct was nice to have, but instinct often merely mimicked mental illness in its rampant paranoia. Yuriy had explained in considerable detail how to judge people, and how to tell a professional from a harmless civilian. He could have told many more stories, except for the 9mm bullet he’d gotten in the back of the head. It had also violated the Prophet’s strict and admirable rules of hospitality. If a man eat your salt, even though he be an infidel, he will have the safety of your house. Well, the Emir was the one who’d violated that rule, saying lamely that he’d been an atheist and therefore beyond the law.
But he’d learned a few lessons, anyway. All his e-mails were encrypted on the best such program there was, individually keyed to his own computer, and therefore beyond anyone’s capacity to read except himself. So, his communications were secure. He hardly looked Arab. He didn’t sound Arabic. He didn’t dress Arabic. Every hotel he stayed at knew that he drank alcohol, and such places knew that Muslims did not drink. So, he ought be completely safe. Well, yes, the Mossad knew that someone like him had killed that Greengold pig, but he didn’t think they’d ever gotten a photo of him, and unless he’d been betrayed by the man whom he’d hired to fool the Jew, they had no idea of who and what he was. Yuriy had warned him that you could never know everything, but also that being overly paranoid could alert a casual tail as to what he was, because professional intelligence officers knew tricks that no one else would ever use—and they could be seen to use them from careful observation. It was all like a big wheel, always turning, always coming back to the same place and moving on in the same way, never still, but never moving off its primary path. A great wheel . . . and he was just a cog, and whether his function was to help it move or make it slow down, he didn’t really know.
“Ah.” He shook that off. He was more than a cog. He was one of the motors. Not a great motor, perhaps, but an important one, because while the great wheel might move on without him, it would never move so quickly and surely as it did now. And, God willing, he would keep it moving until it crushed his enemies, the Emir’s enemies, and Allah’s Own Enemies.
So, he dispatched his message to Gadfly097, and called for coffee to be delivered.
RICK BELL had arranged for a crew to be on the computers around the clock. Strange that The Campus hadn’t been doing that from the beginning, but now it did. The Campus was learning as it went, just as everyone else did, on both sides of the scrimmage line. At the moment it was Tony Wills, driven by his personal appreciation that there was a six-hour time difference between Central Europe and the American East Coast. A good computer jockey, he downloaded the message from 56 to 097 within five minutes of its dispatch and immediately forwarded it to Jack.
That required fewer seconds than it took to think it. Okay, they knew their subject and they knew where he was going to be, and that was just fine. Jack lifted his phone.
“You up?” Brian heard.
“I am now,” he growled back. “What is it?”
“Come on over for coffee. Bring Dom with you.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Followed by click.
“I HOPE this is good,” Dominic said. His eyes looked like piss holes in the snow.
“If you want to soar with the eagles in the morning, buddy, you can’t wallow with the pigs at night. Be cool. I ordered coffee.”
“Thanks. So, what’s up?”
Jack walked over to his computer and pointed to the screen. They both leaned down to read.
“Who is this guy?” Dominic asked, thinking Gadfly097 . . . ?
“He came in from Vienna yesterday, too.”
Across the street somewhere, maybe? Brian wondered, followed by, Did he see my face?
“Okay, I guess we’re up for the appointment,” Brian said, looking at Dom and getting a thumbs-up.
The coffee arrived in a few more minutes. Jack served, but the brew, they all found, was gritty, Turkish in character, though far worse even than the Turks served. Still, better than no coffee at all. They did not speak on point. Their tradecraft was good enough that they didn’t talk business in a room that hadn’t been swept for bugs—which they didn’t know how to do, and for which they did not have the proper equipment.