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.”
5:55:14P.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 AV. J. LOLIVE.
“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.
Tom squinted at the steamy window and read the Arabic aloud. “Abu Ali Café.” He started to exit the Audi, but Reuven grabbed his arm. “Stay put.”
Tom shook off the Israeli’s hand. “I want to see what he’s doing,” he said in French.
Reuven shook his head and continued in Arabic. “It doesn’t matter what he’s doing-he’ll get back in the car in a minute-the flashers are going.” The Israeli’s tone was rebuking. “C’mon, man-take a look at the people in the street. It’s like we turned the corner and suddenly we’re in Beirut, or Oran. Look at yourself. You put your gringo ass anywhere near that place, you’ll blow us.”
“What if he’s meeting Ben Said there? Or phoning him?”
“If he is,” Reuven said, “we’ll find out about it soon enough.” The Israeli rubbed his hands together. “Wait him out, Tom. Time is on our side-not his.”
Tom wasn’t entirely convinced. Then he saw Hamzi come out the door of the café juggling a pair of oversize brown plastic bags. The Moroccan opened the car door, leaned inside, and dropped his cargo on the floor of the front passenger seat. Then he climbed in, closed the door on the driver’s side, checked his side mirror, pulled into the rush-hour traffic, and accelerated away.
“Food for the troops.” Reuven let Hamzi get past the metro sign at avenue Hoche, two hundred meters ahead, only then nosing the Audi forward. “He’ll veer left before thepériphérique. That’ll take him back to rue du Congo.” He followed Hamzi’s trail but turned right at the metro stop, paused long enough to allow a burka-clad woman to cross against the light, then steered onto a one-way street. “This’ll take us back where we began this little diversion.” He looked at Tom’s worried expression and spoke in English. “We’ll get there before he does. Trust me.”
7:22P.M. Tom stared through the night-vision device and watched the last of the wine disappear into the cellar. All that remained now were the two pallets of olives. The heavy traffic flow on rue du Congo had dwindled to a trickle-a vehicle only every seventy, eighty seconds. Hamzi’s Mercedes sat on the sidewalk behind the truck. Hamzi himself had disappeared inside his storefront with the two bags of takeout and hadn’t reappeared in more than an hour.
“So?” His eyes still on Boissons Maghreb, Tom nudged Reuven. “How do we activate the Algerians?”
Reuven tapped the cell phone in his hand. “One call.”
“Are they close?”
Reuven remained silent.
“How does it all work, Reuven? What happens if there’s a hitch?”
“If there’s a hitch we work around it.”
“And?”
“And what? We take this one step at a time, Tom. One step at a time.” He looked analytically at the American. “This is your first, isn’t it?”
“My first.”
“What you people call direct action.”
Tom swallowed hard. Then his head bobbed up and down once. “Affirmative.”
“Listen to me: it’s all right to be nervous. You’re jumpy. That’s natural, too-so long as it’s just the two of us. But you can’t ever show it. Not to outsiders.”
“I know, Reuven.”
“Listen to me,” the Israeli continued. “Direct action is different from everything else you’ve ever done. It’s more than mind games, or exploiting vulnerabilities, or spot, assess, develop, recruit, and run-all the agent stuff you’re so very good at.” He paused. “Direct action is full contact, Tom. It’s life-and-death. It’s the soldiering part of what we do.”