“Sounds like your people have a handle on the problems,” Lincoln said. “Why are you backing off?”
“They’re backing off,” Crystal Quest said, “because the director has convinced the White House that American interests would be better served if the CIA held the Triple Border action.” Quest fingered some crushed ice out of a bowl and began munching on it. “Drugs, contraband cars, a black market in computer software or pirated Hollywood films are small potatoes. We have reason to believe that Triple Border has become a staging area for Muslim fundamentalist groups working in the western hemisphere; at Triple Border they can purchase all the arms their hearts desire and launder the money to pay for it. And their fedayeen can get some R and R at the local bars, out of sight of the mullahs who expect them to remain chaste and pray five times a day. The mosques in Foz de Iguaçú on the Brazilian side and Ciudad del Este on the Paraguayan side are filled with Sunnis and Shiites who in other parts of the Muslim world don’t give each other the time of day. In Triple Border we suspect that they’re plotting to attack the United States and kill Americans.”
Kiick spoke up. “Despite what the CIA thinks of our collective abilities, the FBI did manage to run a handful of assets in Triple Border. With some persistence one of them struck pay dirt, pay dirt being the Egyptian named Ibrahim bin Daoud who runs the fundamentalist training camp called Boa Vista. Daoud, whose real name is Khalil al-Jabarin, has a record—al-Jabarin was convicted of being a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and served serious time in a Cairo military prison. He has the physical and mental scars to show for it; electrodes attached to testicles are said to be the torture of choice of Egyptian jailers. No doubt about it, Daoud himself is a cold-blooded killer—whether it’s the result of his suffering or his genes we don’t know. What we do know is that last month he snuck a crocodile into a swimming pool in São Paolo and then pushed in a man accused of being a police informer while some local hookers holding paper plates filled with defrosted hors d’oeuvres looked on. Money was spread around and the murder was hushed up. We know the story’s not apocryphal because one of the hookers was a collateral asset. The dead informer was our principal asset in Triple Border.”
“So the FBI has gone blind out there?” Lincoln asked.
“For all intents and purposes, yes.”
“The principal asset who got close to Daoud didn’t have an understudy?”
“We didn’t get around to it in time,” Kiick admitted.
“What else can I expect to find at Triple Border besides ravenous crocodiles?”
Kiick—Lincoln had a nodding acquaintance with him from having sat in on several of the rare joint CIA-FBI coordinating sessions—slid an FBI briefing book across the conference table. “What we’ve picked up is all in here,” he said. “You’re likely to come across a Texan who goes by the name Leroy Streeter. He’s what we call a crossover—in his case, an Aryan nationalist nut who is making common cause with the Muslim fundamentalists. Mind you, the mix is potentially lethal. If and when Muslim terrorists do attack the United States, the white supremacists could provide infrastructure support and eventually hit men, since it’s easier for an American to gain entrance to public places than an Arab from the Middle East. Leroy Streeter may or may not be the Texan’s real name, by the way. The guy you’ll meet—he’s five foot two, a hundred and thirty pounds, speaks with a Texas drawl—travels under a passport made out to a Leroy Streeter Jr. Leroy Streeter Sr. was the führer of a Texas-based white supremacist splinter group called the Nationalist Congress; he died of cancer in Huntsville while he was serving time for blowing up a black church in Birmingham. State Department consulate in Mexico City issued a passport to a Leroy Streeter Jr. four years ago, but Argentina’s Secretariat for State Intelligence thinks that he drowned on a Rio beach two years back; as far as we know, no body was recovered. Which means that Leroy Streeter Jr. has risen from the dead or someone is using his passport. Either way, he’s high on the FBI’s most wanted list. “
“Don’t let yourself get sidetracked,” Crystal Quest told Lincoln. “Leroy Streeter is not the target of this operation. The person we’re after down there is the Saudi.”
“Does the Saudi have a name?” Lincoln inquired.
“Everyone has a name,” Quest snapped. “FBI just doesn’t know it.”
“From what our principal asset was able to tell us before his untimely death,” continued Kiick, unfazed by Quest’s dig at the Bureau, “we understand the Saudi is the kingpin of a fundamentalist group that recently surfaced as a blip on our radar screen. It’s been operating out of Afghanistan since the Russians were evicted from the country two years ago and calls itself al-Qa’ida, which means ‘The Base.’ The Saudi appears to be organizing al-Qa’ida cells across Europe and Asia and running them from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.”
“How do I get to this Saudi?”
“With any luck, he gets to you,” Quest said. “He’s in the market for explosives, lots of it. The FBI asset picked up rumors that the Saudi is shopping around for a truckload and is offering a small fortune if it can be delivered to an address in the United States. The explosives may be the tip of the iceberg—the Saudi may have his heart set on acquiring something that will render the explosives more lethal.”
“You’re talking about a dirty bomb,” Lincoln guessed.
“He’s talking about gift wrapping the explosives with plutonium or enriched-uranium radioactive waste,” Quest said, “which would result in the contamination of a wide area when the charge is detonated. Hundreds of thousands could be effected. It’s because of this threat that the president decided to bring the CIA into the picture.”
Kiick said, “Mind you, Lincoln—I understand that that’s the name you’re using now—the business about a dirty bomb is a worst-case scenario, and pure speculation.”
Quest ignored the FBI representative. “We’re going to come at the Saudi obliquely,” she told Lincoln. “We know of an al-Qa’ida cell in the Balkans that’s been running guns and ammunition to the Muslims in Sarajevo in the belief that war between the Serbs and Bosnians is inevitable. Guy who directs it is an Azerbaijani who uses the name Sami Akhbar. Our plan is to hang you out to dry on the Dalmatian coast, which is Sami’s stamping ground, and let him stumble across you. Once you’ve established your bona fides and whet his appetite, you reach the Saudi by working your way up the chain of command. In Triple Border, he’s said to use Daoud as a doorkeeper; nobody gets to the Saudi without getting past the Egyptian.”
Crystal Quest, dressed in one of her signature pantsuits with wide lapels and a dress shirt with frills down the chest, scraped back her chair and stood up. Taking their cue from her, the wallahs from the DDO jumped to their feet. “Get it into your head that Triple Border isn’t the Club Med,” Quest reminded Lincoln. “The group we know least about—the group which interests us the most—is this al-Qa’ida entity. Bring home the bacon on the Saudi and al-Qa’ida, Lincoln, and I’ll personally see to it you get one of the Company’s jockstrap medals.” She added with a leer: “Pin it on you myself.” The DDO contingent all laughed. As Quest headed for the door, Kiick offered his hand across the table and Lincoln, half rising from his chair, shook it. “Our cutout will make herself known to you by saying something about Giovanni da Varrazano and the bridge named after him.” Kiick added, “Holy mackerel, watch your ass when you get to Triple Border. You’ll be rubbing shoulders with mighty ornery folks.”