Oh, curse it, for what had happened then was the probing and nagging and questioning. While Henry had said very little, he had said something about his meeting with the Sudanese and the work he had done and the warnings he had received and…
He stopped at an intersection. And another thing. The Sudanese should have come back. Should have told him more. Should have—
And, God’s beard, like something out of a fairy tale, the Sudanese was there, standing next to him!
The Sudanese smiled. ‘You look surprised, my brother. Hide your shock well. I do not want to draw attention to either of us. Continue your walk.’
‘I… I was just thinking of you, and what you asked me to do… tell me, can you tell me when—’
‘Hush, now,’ the Sudanese said. ‘I cannot tell you a thing. Not yet, at least. But I need to talk to you in private. Do you have the time?’
‘Of course!’
They walked among the crowds, the lines of people flowing about him, and Henry Muhammad Dolan was proud that the Sudanese had returned, for it meant something of importance was going to happen. Of that he had no doubt. None whatsoever. Like the vision he had once, that the black flag of Islam would one day fly over Whitehall, there was not a doubt. It was to be a reality, and sooner than anyone would think—
At a small hostel, the Sudanese went through a side door, up a narrow set of stairs. Henry followed. A television was playing loud and there was music and cooking smells, but it all meant nothing to him. All that mattered was the tall Sudanese dressed in a shabby dark brown suit, walking ahead of him. The Sudanese took out a key, opened another door. He walked ahead of Henry, put his own grocery bags on the floor. The room was simple, with a small bed, a table with a television on it, and a washbasin in a corner. The window shade was drawn, and on the floor was the oddest thing: a square of green plastic, two or three meters to a side.
The Sudanese said to Henry, ‘Before we begin, I must ask you something.’
‘Go right ahead.’
‘The task I assigned you — did you tell anyone of what you did?’
Henry felt his face grow warm and was wondering what to say when the Sudanese looked at him sharply and said, ‘You will speak the truth to me. Did you tell anyone?’
Henry looked down at the floor. ‘My wife. I told her a little. About you.’
‘And what else?’
‘Only that she was forbidden to travel to the United States next month. To visit her sister. I told her something bad was going to happen to America. That she had to stay home.’
The Sudanese seemed upset at something, but not at what Henry had just said. It was like some inner struggle was taking place. Then the Sudanese closed his eyes for a moment and said, ‘Very well. What is done is done. But no harm will come to your wife and children. None.’
‘Very good,’ Henry said, confused. ‘But what does all of this mean?’
The Sudanese reached underneath his coat, pulled out a pistol of some sort, and Henry knew what was about to happen, could not believe it. He started to say a prayer and the shock of what the Sudanese said next — ‘Greetings from the people of the United States’ — caused him to halt in mid-sentence, just before a split-second flash of light preceded a final darkness.
The man known as the Sudanese was now in a men’s room, staring at a mirror. He had the room to himself. He looked at the dark face and brown, impassive eyes. Water was running in the sink, and before him was an open container about the size of a yogurt carton. He took a washcloth, dipped it in water, and then dipped it again in the container, and started rubbing at his face. Rub, rub, rub, and the dark color started to wash away, revealing a lighter skin, brown but not as black as before. More rubbing and something else began to emerge, a pattern, a display of scar tissue, of facial skin that had been badly burned, years ago. More rub, rub, rub, and when he was done there was no longer a Sudanese looking back at him from the bathroom mirror.
Instead, it was Montgomery Zane, of Tiger Team Seven.
‘Welcome back to the world,’ he whispered to the mirror.
Outside the restroom, Monty walked into a wide, open room with a low ceiling. There was country and western music being played somewhere, and in the middle of the room were a number of tables and chairs. Men were there, eating and drinking and smoking, and some were playing cards. Men were also two-deep at the bar, on the other side of which was a grill, open 24/7, where someone could order anything from frog’s legs to bacon and eggs to a milkshake to Maine lobster to caviar. Anything and everything. The men’s voices were loud and boisterous, though some of the men were quiet, sitting by themselves, reading or sleeping or listening to music through headphones or watching a movie on a handheld DVD.
Monty felt his body relax, for that was the purpose of this room. It was in a nondescript building stuck in the corner of a training facility at Hurlburt Air Force Base in western Florida — home of Air Force Special Operations — but there were about a dozen other facilities like it scattered around the world. Its purpose was simple: it was an oasis, a recharging place, a room to re-enter The World after doing the dirty work of the United States. For each and every man in this room was a member of an elite, either Special Forces or Delta Force or Navy SEAL or Air Force Special Ops or any other black-budget group, who in fact were known as the ‘point of the spear’, and here they relaxed for a while, after killing the enemies of the United States.
At the bar Monty leafed through a thick menu, ordered a plate of barbecued ribs. After getting a Sam Adams, he went back to a table and sat down. There was a day-old USA Today newspaper there and he started looking through it. He yawned. Man, going through so many time zones in just a few days fucked up his inner clock so bad the poor thing probably didn’t even know what year it was anymore. The beer was cold and good and as he sat there, feet stuck out, he thought about the past couple of days. Some strange shit, though he was no newcomer to strange shit. His job was to be the hammer. Somebody’s else’s job was to be the architect, the designer.
Another swallow of the beer. But what kind of design lay behind his latest run? He had spent a fair amount of time over the past few years playing around with these contacts and others, passing along spoof information, knowing that it was for a good cause. The spoof information could cause enemy higher-ups to react, to make plans, to be caught on the radar of all the God-loving forces involved in this war on terror. So that had been the job, and he had done good with it, playing the devout Sudanese, paying attention to terrorist-wannabes.
So why were they whacked? What possible threat could they have posed?
Somebody kicked at his feet. He looked up, and smiled in recognition. ‘Yo, Bravo Tom, have a seat.’
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said the other man, a bulky redhead whose hair was cropped short and whose muscular shoulders looked like they were about to burst through his black T-shirt. Bravo Tom was a second-generation Croatian, whose father had taken him to the United States when the Yugoslav civil war began in earnest. He had a twelve-syllable first name that began with the letter ‘B’ and, thankfully, his middle name was Thomas. His last name was also a jumble of consonants and one vowel, and everywhere he was deployed he was just called Bravo Tom. Monty had met the man in a SEAL refresher course a few years back, and had run into him, off and on, all across the great globe.