Collision of Evil (39 page)

The detective displayed a weary smile. “You and your friends have been a big help, Hirter. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without CIA assistance. However it goes, this will be a hell of a day. Times like this, I wish I had become a lawyer or a teacher.”

“No you don’t,” Hirter replied, allowing his own smile.

Television camera crews were setting up positions along the parade route as several blocks away, al-Assad’s companions gathered in his musty hotel room for a final briefing. Al-Assad looked approvingly at the tinted colors in the men’s hair and at the jaunty angle with which Sayyid wore his baseball cap. Al-Assad detected tension, his own, and that of his men. That was all right, he thought, given what would be accomplished over the next few hours. He stood at the window to address them one final time.

“Brothers, our attitude must be one of submission. Submission to Allah and the jihad. How fortunate we are to have been selected for today. Our names will be honored by coming generations of the
ummah
for what we accomplish here in the House of War. Are you ready?”

The men nodded in unison.

“Good. As we move into battle, there are a few final preparations. First, we leave the hotel not as a group but separately, at fifteen minute intervals starting an hour from now. I will be the first to go. Then Taamir, then Jawad, and finally Sayyid. All of us except Jawad go to the U-4 subway station at the end of the block and ride to the Oktoberfest. Jawad, to break up the pattern, I want you to walk to the
Wies’n
along the parade route. It’s only a fifteen-minute stroll. All of you try to blend into the groups of people, feign being one of them. Remember, we are swimming in a sea of Oktoberfest visitors. I want you to look happy like the rest of the crowd. If the police are looking for us they expect to see earnest faces. Don’t oblige them.
Now, I have a few items for you.” Al-Assad gestured toward the bed and the objects atop the blanket.

“Plastic bags,” murmured Sayyid, confused. Assad smiled broadly.

“Yes, plastic bags. One for each of you. They bear the Oktoberfest logo. These are bags you get when you buy a festival souvenir. These bags will arouse no suspicion. Thousands of people will be carrying them. We place the Sarin canisters into the bags. Next to the bags you will notice square cardboard containers. Those are what souvenir beer mugs are packaged in. I bought four mugs downtown and threw them away, just to get the containers. The canisters fit inside the containers snugly. We place the canisters into the cardboard boxes and the boxes into the plastic bags. The police will likely be expecting us to carry backpacks, but we are a step ahead of them. When you find a place inside the tents, choose the right moment, reach into the bag, open the carton and activate the device. The rest takes care of itself; you will have accomplished your mission.”

Taamir spoke up, his soft voice sounding almost shy. “How long will it take? How long before we are martyred?”

Al-Assad nodded understanding. “Not long at all at that proximity and with these high concentrations. The symptoms will occur rapidly. Your nose will begin to run and you’ll feel a headache. You will start to salivate and it will become hard to breathe. By that point, you’ll feel dizzy and your limbs might start to twitch. It is over soon after that. Don’t worry, our way will be made easy for us. Remember—get as deep into the crowd as possible. We want many to fall today. I have no more to tell you, brothers, except to state my respect at your fortitude. I will see you all again later today. But not on this earth.”

He dispatched them to their rooms for the remaining hour before the sequence of departures would begin, his first of all. Al-Assad found that he did not feel nervous; felt only contentment. He went to the bed and reached down to retrieve his battered suitcase from underneath. Unzipping it, he extracted the metal canister secreted underneath some folded shirts. Al-Assad smiled, luxuriating in the
feel of the object in has hands. He slipped the cylinder into the cardboard jacket emblazoned with the words
Original Oktoberfest Krug
and displaying a picture of the Munich cathedral. He nodded in satisfaction. The box was the image of innocence. He placed the container into the shopping bag and consulted his wristwatch. Soon. He turned toward Mecca, knelt on the hard hotel room floor, and began to pray.

Caroline O’Kendell and Allen Chalmers were dressed in blue jeans and sweaters to blend with the crowd. They disembarked from a beige taxi directly at one of the Oktoberfest entrances. Caroline spotted Robert first, his tall frame easy to pick out as he stood in a relaxed pose underneath the twenty-foot-high, garlanded archway at the entrance to the
Wies’n
. She waved and Robert raised his hand in reply. She found him attractive in an understated way she decided, but pushed the thought aside with a nudge of professionalism.

A moment later the three CIA officers were huddled together.

“Time to party,” Chalmers offered, with a glance at the brightly colored Oktoberfest structures stretching out before him. His eyes fixed on the imposing beer tents dominating the fairgrounds, the perfect environment for a mass-casualty Sarin attack.

Caroline crossed her arms around her lithe torso and shivered. “Munich will be associated with a new type of warfare—terrorist use of chemical weapons. The city will be twice-cursed. Remember the Munich Olympic massacre, back in the days of Mark Spitz? You can imagine what another terrorist attack will do for this city.”

“You’re right,” Chalmers agreed. “But if they pull this off it will make the Olympic massacre fade into insignificance. Look at those tents. We could be talking about thousands of fatalities.”

“Caroline, anything new?” Robert inquired.

She shook her head from side to side, her dark hair shimmering with the motion. “Nothing. I placed a secure call to headquarters, but there haven’t been any intercepts. There’s no more time, Robert, the parade has started. The tents will be opening soon.”

Robert smiled at her, aware of how pretty she was. “You’re right, Caroline. Let’s head toward the tents. The Kommissar has already ordered his men to their positions.”

The parade of brewery wagons wound its way through the Munich streets, thronged with loud, mirthful crowds. Each garlanded wagon was laden with rows of oak kegs and drawn by a team of sturdy dray horses, their hooves clanging rhythmically against the pavement. Each steed was a paragon of equestrian finery, outfitted with silver or bronze accouterments, their formidable sides bedecked with the escutcheon of the brewery represented, a snarling, stylized lion for Löwenbräu, a hooded monk for Paulaner, a bishop’s kreutzer for Augustiner. Unbeknownst to the laughing onlookers, stern-faced teams of surveillants silently monitored the faces and movements of those present, covertly searching for the earnest, bearded faces they had imprinted in their brains.

Now, al-Assad concluded, glancing at his wristwatch. He studied the hotel room one last time, looking in the mirror at the blond streaks recently added to his hair. He went to the dresser and tugged a Walther pistol from the drawer and inserted it into his trousers. He doubted that he would need it, but it offered a reserve of protection. Pulling a blue windbreaker over a gray sweatshirt that read “Let’s Party,” he exited the room, took the stairs to the lobby, and paid his bill to a bored checkout clerk who didn’t notice that al-Assad had no luggage with him, other than an Oktoberfest plastic bag.

A moment later he was on the street, boisterous with life. His trained eyes detected no sign of observation, and he merged with the stream of humanity heading toward the U-4 subway station a block away. He forced a vacuous smile and walked with an enthusiastic step that he truly felt, but for reasons far different than all of those around him. He felt like a shark invisible to the school of fish within which he swam. Staring ahead, he could see the U-bahn sign a few hundred yards in front of him. As he approached the stairs leading to the underground, al-Assad noticed two stationary men who seemed to be intently studying the stream of people passing them by. They could be policemen, he thought, or perhaps they were just waiting for a friend.

Taking no chances, al-Assad spotted a blonde woman in the crowd ahead of him and deftly moved to her side. As they approached the two suspicious men, al-Assad began talking to her as if they belonged together. “This will be even better than last year,” he said to the slightly perplexed woman, “the weather’s great and
you can tell everybody is in a party mood.” They swept past the two men and al-Assad drifted away from the blonde and moved with the human herd to the subway tracks, his grip tight around the plastic bag containing the Sarin. Al-Assad knew that a train would appear momentarily and he would be on his way to the Oktoberfest grounds, a few minutes ride away. He felt a rush of anticipation surge through his veins.

Fifteen minutes after al-Assad’s scheduled departure, Taamir repeated the procedure of leaving his room and settling his account at the hotel desk. He, too, had left his luggage in the room and carried only the brightly colored plastic bag. Exiting the building, Taamir took the same route as al-Assad and merged with the torrent of pedestrians. Taamir’s thick head of hair, now largely red, reflected the autumn sunlight. As al-Assad had instructed, he carefully arranged his features into a happy configuration.

A few moments later, and wholly unknown to Taamir, he was observed by one of two men standing near the entrance to the U-bahn station. The undercover policemen considered Taamir’s features for a moment, but the lack of beard, broad grin, and red hair did not match the image in the officer’s head.

Taamir continued on his way unmolested, cosseted by the crowd of revelers. Minutes later, as Taamir pushed himself into the jammed confines of a subway car, the diminutive form of Jawad left the hotel as well, but, staying above ground, walked a different route to his target.

Sayyid gazed at the plastic clock in his room and knew that the others had by now departed. He pulled himself from the bed, muttered a final
sura
from the Koran, and descended the creaking stairwell to the lobby. There were no customers at the front desk, only the balding, old clerk who worked the morning shift. “Checking out from room three twelve,” Sayyid half-whispered, taking out his wallet. “I’ll pay cash.”

The clerk nodded, and entered strokes on the keyboard in front
of him. The man hit another key and a printer groaned into brief life, spitting out a page that the clerk passed to Sayyid. “Where’s your suitcase?” the man asked in a gravelly voice. Flustered by the unexpected question, Sayyid could only think to say, “I already took it out.” He lifted his plastic bag into view. “This is the last of it.” The clerk had already lost interest. Sayyid pushed the hundred euro notes across the counter. “Keep the change,” he added, feeling more nervous and vulnerable than he had expected.

Bumping along the street with the endless crowd, Sayyid was halfway to the subway entrance when he discovered that he had left the baseball cap back in the hotel room. He cursed the oversight, knowing al-Assad would not be pleased. He considered returning to the hotel, but rejected the idea as it would entail another conversation with the clerk, perhaps being accompanied back to the room and then being discovered in a lie with his luggage lying on the unmade bed. No, Sayyid thought, better to go ahead without the cap. It was no big deal.

Markus Henkel touched his companion’s elbow gently. “Straight ahead,” he murmured, “edge of the sidewalk about thirty meters.” His colleague Tobias Mauer shifted his eyes and focused on a dark-haired young man.

The observed man had a brooding look on his face not consonant with the occasion. The thick hair and low hairline matched at least one of the suspects—but no beard. As the man walked closer, jostled by the celebrating crowd, Mauer thought he could make out the outline of where a beard had recently been. Then again, the man was not wearing a backpack, only carrying a small plastic souvenir bag.

“What do you think, Tobias?” Henkel asked.

“Don’t know, but let’s stop him at least. Take a look into his bag, too.”

The two men began a slow approach to intercept their target before he reached the subway entrance.

Sayyid saw the subway sign ahead and began to pray, the reality of his impending death affecting him more profoundly than he had
anticipated. He tightened his grip on the plastic bag, nervous that the raucous crowd might dislodge it from his hand. The animated mass in front of him was now pouring into the yawning, shadowed maw of the subway entrance. But not all.

Curiously at first, Sayyid noticed that two men were moving against the crowd in his direction. He watched them carefully and quickly developed a sickening sensation that they were purposefully guiding on him.
I must be wrong
, he thought.
My nerves are causing me to imagine things
. He moved sideways to the opposite side of the street. As he did, he noticed that the two men altered their course as well.

With sudden, crystalline clarity, Sayyid knew that he had been discovered. He felt cold sweat erupt on his forehead and could think of nothing but to flee. He turned against the crowd and like a swimmer against the waves shoved his way through the phalanx of flesh. Elbowing those around him, he forced a path through the crowd.