Direct Action (33 page)

Tom watched her settle in, thinking she was the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth.

3:11
P
.
M
. “Tony,” MJ said, “what about me?”
Wyman’s monocle dropped onto his vest. “What about you what?” “I’m not in the chronology.”
Wyman gave her a quizzical look. “So?”
“October tenth: Shahram calls Paris station. October twelfth: Shahram

visits the embassy. October twelfth: Shahram goes into hiding. October fifteenth: Gaza.” She paused. “Okay, now I add myself into the time line. Five
P
.
M
., October sixteenth: I send the name Imad Mugniyah to Mrs. ST. JOHN. Very early October seventeenth: Mrs. ST. JOHN calls the seventh floor about my Imad Mugniyah photo. Before I get in, she’s already rejected the picture and she’s looking for a way to get rid of me.” She looked at Tony Wyman. “But the seventh floor has already heard about Imad Mugniyah—a week before.”

“Hmm.” Wyman scratched his chin.
“Then,” MJ continued, “roughly the same time as Mrs. Sin-Gin is telling me to go to hell, Tom is having lunch with Shahram. Shahram gives Tom pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said. Shahram knew he’d been set up the previous Sunday. Giving Tom those pictures and the information about Ben Said was his...I don’t know, his insurance, his... something.”
“Not insurance,” Tom broke in. “Look, Shahram had his own agenda with Langley. Maybe he was running a scam, maybe not. It’s possible Shahram wanted to see if he could still put the squeeze on the Agency. It’s also possible he felt justified about asking twenty-five mil if he facilitated Imad’s capture. But then Langley slammed him—didn’t just turn him down but painted a big target on his back.” Tom paused. “Look, Tony, I think Shahram truly believed he’d developed valid information, and he hated these people enough to want to get it out. So he called me.”
“Hoping we’d put it to good use,” Reuven said.
“Good use?” Tony Wyman pulled a vermeil Montblanc rollerball out of his vest and played with it.
“Actionable intelligence. We’d get our hands on Ben Said,” Tom said.
Tony Wyman twirled the Montblanc. “And then what?”
“Turn him over.”
“To whom?”
Tom shrugged. “Ultimately that’s your call, Tony. But if Ben Said was responsible for Jim McGee’s death, we should have him extradited to the U.S.”
“That means a trial. It means a media circus.”
“What about the French?”
“There’s no death penalty in Europe,” Reuven said.
“Which is why the French will never let him be extradited,” Tom added.
Tony Wyman slid the pen back into his vest. “This is all very preliminary,” he said. “It’s a distraction. Right now I’d like to know Langley’s motivation for throwing a wrench at us.” He looked at the others. “That affects our bottom line, lady and gentlemen.”
“Protection of the status quo,” Tom said. “Everybody keeps their jobs.” He tapped the photos MJ had printed from the video he’d shot in Ben Said’s bomb lab. “Can you imagine how long anybody on the seventh floor would be employed if you took these pictures and showed them to Porter Goss. Goss wants George Tenet’s job bad.”
Tony Wyman gave Tom a wary look. “Porter and I were in the same training class—and we’ve stayed in touch.” Wyman scratched his chin. “As I recall, he was an adequate operator.” He paused. “I agree—he wants Tenet’s job, and having one of our own as DCI could improve the situation at DO. But I’m not in favor of a coup—at least for the present.” “Why?”
“It’s not in our interests.” Wyman’s voice took on an edginess. “Because we have no resolution, Tom. No bad guys in handcuffs. No bombs for show-and-tell.”
Wyman was deflecting. Tom couldn’t believe it. “Tony, I’m serious. Look at what’s happening in the press. Langley is leaking like a sieve these days. It’s goddamn unprecedented. All sorts of stories about how the White House cooked the books on Iraq. Stories about how CIA tried to warn the president that there were no WMDs.” Tom slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “It’s all chaff, Tony. Disinformation. What the Sovs used to call active measures. You know it as well as I do. The president asks the DCI whether or not there are WMDs, and the DCI tells him, ‘It’s a slam dunk,’ even though anyone at Langley worth their salt had doubts about the depth of the program. And now the seventh floor is trying to weasel out of the responsibility for giving everyone—everyone from the White House to the Pentagon to State—either bad intelligence or no intelligence at all. This whole rotten situation is about job security, Tony. No more, no less. We should take what we know to Porter Goss and let him run with it.” “The answer is no,” Wyman snapped. “Let me be blunt here, Tom: 4627 is not in the business of staging coups at CIA.”
“Maybe we should be.”
“Perhaps you and Reuven should worry more about refining the details of the current operation to ensure we don’t have any flaps and less about the machinations of Washington politics.” There was about thirty seconds of dead air. Then Tony Wyman said, “Thank you, MJ. Your contributions have been enormously valuable.” He picked up the two sheets of time line and the yellow legal pad on which MJ had written her notes, and tucked them under his arm. “You guys keep at it,” he said. “I’m going to make some phone calls.”
When Wyman had left the room, Tom turned to Reuven and spoke in Arabic. “What do you think?”
The Israeli shrugged. “I think he’s a boss. Bosses do what bosses do.” Reuven’s cell phone chirped. He flicked it open and said, “Parle-moi.” Fifteen seconds later, he snapped the instrument shut. “The shipment just left Orly. Our guy’s headed for Boissons Maghreb,” he said. “If he loads any containers of olives into his car, we’ll snatch him.” He looked at Tom. “Let’s get to the warehouse.”

RUE DU CONGO, PANTIN 4:54
P
.
M
.

They were using the small
EUREC
truck. Reuven, in repairman’s coveralls, a black knit cap, and a bushy mustache attached to his upper lip sat behind the wheel, a cell phone clapped to his ear and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Tom was set up in the rear of the blue
ÉCLAIRAGE & SIGNALIZATION
truck behind a black gauze sniper’s screen that made him invisible to anyone staring through the windshield but didn’t impede the vision of his light-gathering Steiner binoculars or the telephoto lens of the digital Nikon single-lens reflex he’d set up on a tripod. Behind Tom, Milo stretched out, eyes closed, on a dirty cot mattress.

Tom turned toward Milo. “Where are the Algerians?”
“Around,” Milo grunted.
“Not obvious, I hope.”
Milo propped himself up on an elbow. “Did you see them?” “Not yet.”
“You won’t.” The Corsican lay back down and rested an arm across

his eyes.

They’d set up on the south side of rue du Congo, just past the intersection of rue Auger, giving themselves an unobstructed view of the blocksquare commercial zone of small warehouses, contractors’ storage sheds, and light-industrial companies. They were roughly 175 yards from Boissons Maghreb, well within the range of Tom’s 500mm telephoto lens. Hamzi’s facility was, in fact, not a proper warehouse at all, but a deep, moderately wide storefront with basement storage. The place sat between an electrical contractor and a restaurant-supply house. The heavy steel trapdoors to the basement were propped open and the hydraulic lift was level with the sidewalk. Obviously, they were waiting for a shipment.

5:19. The truck from Orly eased up onto the curb and blocked the sidewalk to make unloading easier. Two burly Arabs unbuckled the rubberized canvas sides of the truck, revealing three plastic-wrapped pallets holding what appeared to be cases of wine and two pallets on which were stacked dozens of two-foot-high yellow plastic barrels of olives. Tom shot a dozen or so photos.

5:22. It was growing dark rapidly. As Tom affixed the night-vision device to the camera lens, the truck crew stopped work and lit up cigarettes. That, too, was captured on the Nikon’s memory stick.

5:47. Hamzi arrived in a champagne-colored Mercedes 500-series coupe with Paris plates whose grille and bumpers had been gold-plated. The Moroccan drove up onto the sidewalk and parked.

Reuven heard Tom say, “Pimp your ride much, Yahia?” As the Moroccan exited the car, Tom muttered to himself and shot more pictures.
5:48. Hamzi took a look around—a wary coyote sniffing the wind. He looked much the same as he had in Shahram’s surveillance photo: cleanshaven, a round, dark face set off by thick-framed eyeglasses with tinted lenses, and a full head of curly black hair. He was dressed in a dark raglansleeved wool overcoat, under which he wore his customary light-colored suit and open-necked shirt. The Moroccan’s body language betrayed nothing untoward. He turned his attention to the cargo and gesticulated, berating the crew, who ground out their cigarettes on the pavement and resumed unloading.
5:53. It had gone completely dark. The first load of wine cartons descended into the Maghreb cellar. The pallets of olives were still untouched. Tom increased the power of the lens, focusing on Hamzi’s head, watching as the Moroccan watched the elevator disappear. Suddenly Hamzi whirled, looking straight into Tom’s lens, as if he sensed the American’s presence.
Rattled, Tom hit the shutter and captured the expression on Hamzi’s face. As he did, it occurred to him that the Moroccan might have heard the shutter, even though the Nikon’s shutter was digital not mechanical. Even though Tom was more than a hundred and fifty yards away and the truck was just one shadow among many.
Tom was nervous. He edged forward and whispered, “Time to make the adjustment, Reuven?”
He had no evidence that they’d been compromised. But there was something about Hamzi’s actions that made Tom uneasy. It was almost as if the Moroccan knew he was being watched. Was it them? Was it the Algerians? Had there been a slip somewhere? Ops like this were risky and hugely prone to compromise. You could never be sure what was what. Tom said, “Reuven?”
“Your op,” the Israeli said. “Your call.”
Tom chewed his upper lip for several seconds, watching Hamzi. The Moroccan was talking to his crew. Then he turned away and looked into the darkness, staring straight into Tom’s eyes once again. Tom almost dropped the camera onto his lap. “We move, Reuven.”

5:55:14
P
.
M
. Tom slapped the Israeli’s shoulder. “Go.”

Reuven turned the ignition key, eased the truck off the curb, drove fifty feet, and without signaling made a quick right turn into a narrow passageway heading south. Once they were out of sight of rue du Congo, the Israeli floored the truck and sped eighty yards to where the passageway spilled into a narrow, crooked street that ran east to west. Before Reuven had started the engine, Tom had already collapsed the tripod. Once the truck was moving, he ripped the sniper screen down and stuffed it, along with the tripod, camera, NV, and binoculars, into a black canvas satchel.

5:55:47. At the end of the passageway, Reuven brought the truck to a stop and jumped onto the pavement. Tom followed him. The Israeli rapped the side of the truck with his knuckles. “Milo—back to the warehouse, please.”

“My pleasure.” The Corsican slid behind the wheel and drove off.

5:55:56. They’d prepositioned a black Audi sedan. Reuven used a remote control to unlock the door of the big car and switch the ignition on. The car’s side and rear windows were heavily tinted and its interior lights had been turned off.

5:56:11. Tom climbed into the passenger seat. He clutched the satchel on his lap, unzipped the top flap, and retrieved the sniper’s gauze veil. “Go.”
5:56:25. Reuven edged the car into the street. All lights out, he drove about sixty yards and stopped.
5:56:36. Tom handed the Israeli one side of the sniper’s veil.
5:56:38. Reuven took it and pressed the corner up against the far upper left-hand side of the windshield, attaching the gauze with a small tab of Velcro. Then he attached the bottom to a Velcro patch on the lower edge of the dashboard. Tom mirror-imaged Reuven’s actions on the right-hand side of the windshield.
5:56:43. They were perhaps sixty feet south of the rue du Congo intersection. As Tom retrieved the camera, Reuven edged the Audi forward crawling foot by foot until they were able to see the Boissons Maghreb storefront.
5:57:30. The truck was still there all right—complete with the pallets of wine and olives just as they’d been less than three minutes before. But the sidewalk in front of the storefront was deserted. And Yahia Hamzi and his gold-plated Mercedes were nowhere to be seen.

35

“MERDE.” Tom ripped the gauze off and slammed the dash. “Got an idea.” Reuven gunned the Audi, swerved right at the corner,
then took his first right again. “If he’s going back into town, this is the
shortest way.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then we’re screwed. But he’s not carrying any olives. The two pallets
were still wrapped securely. I don’t think he’s making the drop.” “Are you sure?”
The Israeli snorted. “I’m a trained observer, remember?” Tom was in no mood for jokes and said so.
“Take it easy, boychik.” Reuven took a reassuring tone. He handled the
big car smoothly. Reuven swung left onto a busy avenue, chockablock with
brightly lit stores and sidewalks crowded now that the Ramadan fast had
ended. Tom caught a glimpse of the street sign. It read A
V
. J. L
OLIVE
. “There!” Reuven said. “Look. That’s him.” Quickly, the Israeli pulled the car over to the curb. “About half a block ahead—he double-parked on
the right.”
Tom rummaged for his binoculars. The car was Hamzi’s all right.
Stopped on a block of cafés, newspaper stands, and small supermarkets.
The Moroccan had double-parked outside a greasy spoon, leaving his flashers on.
Tom started to lift the field glasses to his eyes but Reuven slapped them
back onto his lap. “No,” the Israeli said in Arabic. “Don’t.”
“Sorry.” Tom had gotten so excited he’d forgotten his tradecraft. He
checked the pedestrian traffic. Pairs of bearded men in skullcaps walked
arm in arm, their wives in burkas trailing behind carrying the grocery bags.
The refrigerated display window of a halal butcher opposite Tom flaunted
whole goats and half lambs, their entrails hanging from the partially
skinned corpses. Somewhere close by, banlieue gangbangers were playing
Rai rap on a boom box. Reuven was right: they’d crossed into an alternative Islamic universe.