“Are you still willing?” asked al-Baz.
Fayyad had no choice. Between the lure of the money and the consequences for backing out now, he was committed. He nodded. “I will do it.”
Across the street, hidden behind a pair of cracked shutters, a man watched the trio as they talked. Every few seconds, as one of them turned or inclined his head suitably, the man raised a Nikon camera and took a photograph. He was careful with his selections, occasionally changing positions as necessary. After taking two rolls of photos, he packed his case and slipped out into the alleyway.
Now would come the tricky part, the man told himself. Who would pay the best price? If his guess about the men’s identities was correct, he knew of at least three potential customers. It would take delicacy, for these customers were unforgiving. But that didn’t worry him.
It should have.
In addition to being a master at surveillance and a savvy entrepreneur, the man was greedy and naive — naive to think he could play stringer agent to not only the Israeli Mossad, but the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and the PLO as well without eventually getting burned. None of this entered his mind, however.
He hurried down the alley, already calculating his profits.
Charlie Latham scanned the report of the samples collected from the La Guardia crash site. His phone rang. “Charlie Latham.”
“Charlie, Jed. Step over for a minute, will you?”
“On my way.”
Report in hand, Latham started down the hall. He passed a man wearing a visitor’s badge. The man stopped. “Agent Latham?”
“Yes?”
“Stanley Hosteller,” the man said, extending his hand. “I understand you’re handling the Delta bombing for the bureau.”
“That’s right, Congressman.”
“Where do we stand?”
“I assume you’ve just spoken with my boss.”
“I have, but—”
“He’s got the same information I have, Senator.” Most of it, at least, Latham added, conscious of the report in his hand. “It’s still early into the investigation, sir, but it’s coming along.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“How is your daughter?” asked Latham.
“Physically she’ll be fine, but that’s only part of it.” Hostetler hesitated. “You interviewed her…. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When I think what that son of a bitch did to her…”
As a father, Latham understood Hosteller’s rage. Someone had defiled, used, and then tried to murder his little girl.
“At any rate,” said Hosteller, “I told your boss I have every confidence in you and the bureau.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And I’m sure you understand the need for decisive results, Agent Latham?”
“Clearly, Congressman.”
“Good. I look forward to hearing more from you.” With that, Hostetler strode toward the elevator.
Latham walked into his boss’s office. “I just got buttonholed in the hall.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said the assistant director. “We’ll handle Hostetler, you concentrate on the case. Where are we?”
Charlie Latham liked his boss. The man wasn’t an investigator by nature and made no pretense about being one. He was a superior administrator who had enough sense to let his people work and stay out of their way.
Latham handed him the report. “Just got it. Pretty sophisticated device. A pound of Semtex molded into the lining of the suitcase. The steel toe rivets had been wired to act as a circuit for the detonator.”
“What kind of actuator?”
“A combination barometer-timer. That’s where it went wrong.”
“Let me guess: single-route circuit?”
“You got it.” They’d seen this before.
A single-route barometric detonator measures air pressure — thus altitude — and is designed to trigger the bomb when a preset limit is reached. A double-route circuit, however, must reach two of these limits for detonation. A combination barometric/timer detonator is designed to work in two, and sometimes three stages. Stage one occurs when a timer activates the first barometer; once its limit is reached, it in turn activates yet another barometer, which finally detonates the bomb. Such a trigger lets the bomber set the device to explode far from its point of origin, oftentimes well into other countries and after several landings and takeoffs.
In this case, the lab found the bomb’s engineer had mis-wired the timer, so instead of sending the detonation signal when the plane reached cruising altitude, the barometer had to settle for the next best thing, which was the plane’s landing at La Guardia.
“That tells us they’ve got access to sophisticated equipment, but they screwed it up,” said Latham. “The irony is, if they’d gotten it right, we’d have a better idea of the engineer.”
“And we’d have a hundred eighty dead instead of five.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately, the device isn’t going to lead us anywhere. But this guy Cynthia Hostetler described rings a bell. It’s a textbook honey trap. Hostetler matches the profile to a tee: single woman traveling alone, swept off her feet by a stranger; a romance ensues; plans are made to have the man return home with her, but he’s delayed at the last minute; he asks her to take a package with her as he can’t fit it in his suitcase; she gets on the plane, and—”
“Boom.”
“Right. Israel’s Shin Bet thinks the technique was perfected by Ahmed Jabril and the PFLP general command. Whether this incident is theirs or not…”
“You recognize Hostetler’s mystery man?”
“Maybe. We sent a sketch artist over to the hospital, and she gave us a few more details. Her description matches others. But the kicker is the name and nationality he used: Ricardo, Italian. He’s used it before. Sometimes it’s Ricardo, sometimes Paolo or Antonio, but always Italian.”
“Bad habit for a terrorist. So where do we go now?”
“I have a friend in Shin Bet,” said Latham. “I want to call him, see if he can point us in a direction. But I’m betting Liaison is going to scream bloody murder.”
“Make the call. I’ll handle the bullshit,” said the assistant director.
“We’re behind the game on this one, Gentlemen,” National Security Adviser James Talbot told the members of the National Security Council. “The administration has yet to state its policy, and it’s starting to show. The president needs options.”
Sitting at the table were the secretaries of defense and state, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Chuck Cathermeier, and Dick Mason.
Mason heard Talbot’s words but was having a hard time concentrating. Between both DORSAL and SYMMETRY, his plate was becoming increasingly crowded. He’d averaged four hours of sleep a night for the past month, and judging from the tone of this meeting, that average was about to plummet. Someone had pushed the near-panic button at the White House.
The NSC, which met at least once a week — more often as events dictated — was only one of the dozens of committees on which Mason sat, including the NFIB (National Foreign Intelligence Board) and the PFIAB (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board). Often, however, their agendas overlapped, and Mason found himself rehashing the same topics. It was maddening.
DORSAL and SYMMETRY. Two separate operations, 5,000 miles apart, yet they had one thing in common: Both their primary agents were gone, one dead, the other kidnapped. Movie portrayals aside, the loss of an agent was not a common occurrence. Was there a connection? If there was, they had yet to find it. Worse, they still had no idea what had gone wrong.
Today the NSC’s agenda dealt with Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The Syrian military exercise was gaining momentum, and Assad’s government was stonewalling; all back-channel inquiries through the State Department had been politely brushed off.