All the Old Knives (10 page)

“He's traveling on a Lebanese passport, but he's one of ours,” Vick explains to us all, his cheeks growing pink from excitement. “A courier. Just damned good luck he ended up on the flight.”

Ernst nods approvingly. “I'd say we have the upper hand.”

We've each got a copy of Ahmed Najjar's file in front of us, and I've been reading through the first page. To our great relief, he is fluent in both Arabic and Farsi, but I'm not entirely optimistic. I say, “Don't be too sure, Ernst. He's had the training, but for the last six years he hasn't done much more than spike dead drops. He's also fifty-eight, working the clock until retirement. He won't be strong-arming anyone.” Seeing the annoyance in his eyes, I add, “But anything's possible.”

Vick's computer bleeps, and he takes a look. “He's sent one more, kids. Wait …
oh.
” He frowns. “Says,
Old man died of coronary. Austrian, I think.
” Vick shakes his head. “Well, that's a shame.”

Ten minutes after that message, all of us, including Henry, are watching on a flat-screen television in Vick's cabinet as the door to the plane opens and an old man is lowered with rope to the tarmac. He is identified by ORF an hour later as Günter Heinz, an engineer from Bad Vöslau.

Bill asks about Ilyas Shishani. Vick says, “The Austrians are looking. We're looking. Isn't that right, Henry?”

His features stiff and serious, Henry nods. “But we're looking for a needle, and we're running out of time. Finding him is not something we can depend on.” His hands move from the arm of his chair to his knees to the opposing elbows; he looks scruffy in the way only field agents do. He's the one man of action in the room, and we all know it. He says, “If we don't get in that plane soon, it's going to be a bloodbath.”

“And you know this as fact,” Ernst says with a hint of scorn.

“Well, it's not like the Germans are going to hand over the prisoners.”

“Is this true?” Bill asks.

Vick shrugs. “We talked to the BND. They'll ship their prisoners to Vienna as a show of goodwill, but Merkel won't let them go. She thinks it's political suicide.”

In the silence that follows, Henry clears his throat and forges ahead. “Ergo, we've got to get inside in…” He checks his wristwatch symbolically, since he's already done the math. “Well, we've got forty-two hours to crack open that can.”

“There's such a thing as negotiation,” Ernst explains, as if to a child. “It's what we usually start with.”

I already know what Henry thinks of Ernst. (“There is no subject on which an idiot like Ernst Pul isn't an expert.”) Now, he gapes at the man and says, “Negotiate? With Aslim Taslam?” He's incredulous. “Are you
kidding
me? They've already made their negotiations with Allah. Have you read their manifesto?”

Silence, for it's quickly apparent that no one in the room has any idea what he's talking about. Henry sighs loudly.

“March 2004, drafted in Tehran but sent out by e-mail from Mogadishu. It's their statement of purpose, and it lays out everything they will and will not do. For instance, they will never accept anything less than their demands. They will kill themselves before receiving anything less than their demands. This happened in Kinshasa, when the Congolese tried to negotiate. Remember?” He looks around the room—maybe we remember, maybe we don't, so he spells it out for us. “They set off an incendiary device in the central police station, burning everyone inside, including themselves. Aslim Taslam?” He shakes his head. “They do what they say, and they never go back on their word.”

“Sounds like you admire them,” Vick mutters.

Henry shrugs, defiant, as if he's the only one in the room who doesn't have to prove his patriotism. “They don't suffer from ambiguity. I sometimes wish we could say that about ourselves.”

After a pause, Owen Lassiter says, “He's right. Either they get their prisoners, or everyone on the plane is dead. If the Germans and Austrians don't want to bow to the demands, our only option is to storm the plane before the deadline. But how do we storm the plane?”

“We?” Vick says, shaking his head. “
We're
not storming anything. We're advising the Austrians.”

“How do we advise,” Owen corrects, “that this be accomplished?”

“The undercarriage,” Henry says. “Just like Ahmed suggested. It's been done before. Some passengers will be killed, but it's better than all of them dying.”

“You're forgetting something,” I say.

They look at me, Henry frowning.

“ORF. There are television cameras at the fence, watching everything. They didn't call the media on a lark—they wanted eyes on the outside of the plane.”

“So the Austrians will cordon them off,” Henry says.

“And what will the newscasters say?” I ask. “Will they quietly slip back? No. They'll speculate. They're desperate for fresh news, and being ordered back is the only news they'll have. It won't take a genius to speculate that the government's preparing to go in.”

I feel, as their gazes return to their hands, like a wet blanket. I check the time—I've got a meet to make. As I get up, Henry says to me, as well as to everyone else, “Then the media will need to be distracted.”

The room looks at him, full of hope, but he just shakes his head. “Don't look at me. I don't know. We just need an excuse to clear everyone out.”

I think he knows, just as the rest of us do, that this won't work. All we're doing now is grabbing at straws.

As I reach the door, Vick says, “Moment, Celia.”

I turn.

“Keep this quiet,” Vick says to all of us. “I don't want anyone—not even on the floor—knowing about our friend Ahmed.”

All of us, with deference, nod.

 

8

My second meeting, with Sabina Hussain, turns out to be a bust. Sabina, an organizer with the Muslim Women's Foundation, calls as I wait in a depressing little café in Simmering. She's apologetic, but in her voice there's a very definite enthusiasm, for the drama at the Flughafen has brought on a rush of work for her, unnerved women seeking advice out of a fresh fear of recriminations from tough, stupid Austrian youth. “It's a zoo here,” Sabina tells me, and I know she feels no regret. I wouldn't, either. Unlike conversation with me, there's nothing abstract about the faces of the desperate women she has devoted her life to helping. In a way, I envy her.

I call Henry and tell him to make those dinner reservations for now.

As I drive my embassy Ford back to the center of town, Bill calls. I put him on speaker. “Where are you?” he asks.

“Leaving a canceled meet. Heading to dinner.”

“With Mr. Right?”

“Who else?”

“Listen,” he says after a moment. “Our friend got in contact. Says his hosts have been talking
Russian
on the phone. What do you make of that?”

“I don't know what to make of it,” I say, gliding down the Rennweg inside a constellation of brake lights. Then: “Wait. Ilyas…” I hesitate, trying to figure out some code for the Chechen Ilyas Shishani, but Bill's already understood.

“He speaks Russian,” he says.

“Exactly.”

“Which suggests?”

“That he really is in town,” I answer, though we both know that it's just a suggestion, not evidence. But with his arrival in Barcelona the stars seem to be aligning. “Should I come back?”

“Have a proper dinner,” he tells me. “Talk to Mr. Right about this, too. His time over there, and all.”

When I find Mr. Right at the Restaurant Bauer on Sonnenfelsgasse, I'm thinking less about Ilyas Shishani than I am about fashion, because it occurs to me that my lover dresses down. I've dated more men than I care to think about, most for less time than it takes to read a menu, and by and large they were fastidious about their appearance, keeping a comb in their pocket for emergencies, shaving once or twice a day, ensuring their clothes were pressed, often by ancient local women who performed the service for pennies an item.

Henry, though, is his own kind of anomaly, the first field agent I've taken to bed. His primary duty is to blend in, to look like everyone else, which on the streets means looking disheveled. Were he to get an assignment spying in a government office, I'm convinced some untapped vanity would erupt in him, to the point of suspected homosexuality. This evening it's no different, but with the addition of a black necktie—tied correctly, I note—it's obvious he's making an effort.

He's already ordered drinks, and as he manhandles his martini, a Blauer Portugieser waits for me. He gets up and kisses my lips before helping me into my seat, all gentlemanly and suspicious. As we sit, he asks, “Progress?”

I shrug, then tell him about the most recent revelation from Ahmed Najjar. His eyebrows rise, then narrow. “Are they thinking the Russian embassy's involved?”

“Ilyas Shishani speaks Russian, doesn't he?”

He frowns, thinking about this, nodding, then says, “I never told you about him, did I?”

“Just that you'd met him in Moscow.”

Moscow is not a topic we bring up often. I know of the letter he sent to Langley, disparaging the administration's reaction to the Dubrovka Theater hostage crisis, and the disillusionment that led him to flee Russia. Now a look crosses his face. It's pained, as if he's been stuck with a knife from behind, and I get the feeling we're crossing into sensitive territory.

“What is it?” I ask.

He shakes his head, waving it away, but gives me something. “I told you I was ordered to hand the FSB a list of my sources, right?”

I nod. “That's why you wrote the letter.”

“It's one reason,” he says, his eyes darting around the busy dining room before returning to me. “Ilyas was one of them. One of my sources. A week later I tried to make contact, but he had disappeared. No one knew what had happened to him.”

“He left town?”

“Maybe, but there was no reason. His life was there, had been for at least fifteen years. He baked bread, for Christ's sake. Why would he pick up and leave?”

“You never found out?”

He shakes his head. “After I wrote my letter, they pulled me off the street. Then I came here. Later, I heard he'd ended up in Tehran. But he wasn't a radical when I knew him, and I wonder sometimes if my giving his name to the Russians pushed him over the edge.”

“You blame yourself,” I say, and as the words come out I realize that I like this about him. I like this nugget of self-hatred. It makes him human.

But he just shrugs.

I watch him a moment, and then the waiter arrives. He's an aging Austrian with a grandiose mustache, a throwback these days but somehow fitting in the
gemütlich
setting, and when he takes our orders—rabbit risotto with chorizo for Henry; stuffed squid with lemon and pepper sauce for me—he does so with an almost surreal level of cheerfulness. Once he's gone again, I say, “What do you think? You think he's here?”

His face settles, and for an instant I think I can see what he'll look like when he's very old. “I don't know. I'm almost ready to admit defeat.”

“Doesn't sound like you.”

He rocks his head from side to side.

“And that necktie doesn't look like you. What's up?”

Self-consciously, he tugs at it, then looks past me, toward the entrance. I wait. He reaches a hand across the table to hold mine. “I've been thinking.”

“You know how I feel about thinking,” I tell him.

He smiles. “You want to move in?”

It takes a moment to register. I leave my hand on the table, under his. It's warm. “In?”

“Well, we have choices. You can move into my place, I move into yours, or—and I think this is the better option—we get something bigger. In the Innere Stadt. Down by the river.”

“You've got it all figured out.”

“Well, not really,” he says, leaning back and bringing his hand with him. “It's just—well, we've been at this a while now, haven't we? There's not a lot of next steps available to us.”

“We could just get married,” I say.

He laughs aloud at that, as if it's a joke. It is, but still. I give him a smile in return, a comforting one. He calms a little. “Well?”

Holding on to the smile, I shrug. “Let me think about it.” When I see his expression, I say, “Not the answer you expected?”

He leans forward again, pushing aside the martini so he can reach both hands across the table to grip mine. “It's exactly what I expected, Cee. You're a careful girl. It's something I love about you.”

But I'm not careful, and I think he knows this. I think he knows that a part of me gets a thrill from being with a field agent who sometimes comes to my house with bruises he refuses to explain, or stands me up because of “last-minute things” that, I know in my heart of hearts, he might not survive. A part of me wonders if domestication will kill what we have, while another part, which tingles down my back as he squeezes my hands, imagines the danger of cohabitation, of sudden departures in the night, of the potential for enemies to
know where I live.

I give him a sly wink, or as sly a wink as I know how to pull off, and I wonder how it would look, that dangerous life. As we sip our drinks and play at significant silence, I wonder how far it could be pushed. First, we share the mortgage. We share towels and orange juice. We share friends and a Facebook account. We share vacation photos with family and at some point share the pedestal in a chapel, either here or back in the States, telling a small, select crowd that we're going to share our lives permanently. We send off Christmas cards, like clockwork, with shots of us sharing a shore in Martinique or Dubrovnik, and eventually we share genes, making one or two little ones whose lives we'll share unto death even if the marriage doesn't work out.