That was what Putin wanted to hear. Now he said, “So we can now focus on the military aspect of the operation. The Muslims have completed their assignments. We will see how long our truce lasts with them.”
Simplov nodded his head. “I can have our contacts in ISIL eliminated, if you don’t think we will ever have need of them again. We could even eliminate their contact whom we used during our recon of Estonia. I understand, however, she is French by birth and is gifted with languages. We might have more use for her later if you are comfortable with it.”
Putin nodded his head. “We can always use good people. Leave the contact alone unless there is a problem.”
“And the leaders in ISIL? We are technically fighting them in Syria.”
Putin shook his head. “If this is successful, who knows what we will do in the future. There will always be rumors about who we do and do not work with. This throws some mystery into the mix. I just want to be clear, and this is important, the military phase can begin now, correct?”
Yuri smiled and said, “Without delay.”
19
Fannie Legat tried to hide her disappointment when Anton Severov said he’d been recalled to his company. He told her while Amir was standing next to her and made no mention of their brief liaison. She hoped it meant something to him and she wasn’t just another woman he had met during his career. Soldiers expected women to melt at their feet, but she had gotten the impression Anton Severov was different.
She appreciated how he had considered what the Russian invasion might mean to the people living in Estonia, as well as his professional demeanor as he made sketches and notes about their route. He was nothing at all like what she had expected. And she hoped he felt the same about her. Since she’d been sixteen, all Fannie had considered were the wrongs against Islam. Over and over her teachers and imams had told her essentially that everyone outside of Islam was a danger, but that Americans and Russians were an actual threat. She would often hear the older men talk about their time fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. That was where Osama bin Laden had learned many of his tactics and honed his rhetoric. The younger men talked about fighting the Americans in Afghanistan.
Partly due to the difference in decades, but also to a different philosophy, the Russians used brute force and tactics that drove all of the Afghanis away from them. Their tanks would level villages, and they would kill indiscriminately. No one was even sure why the Russians cared about Afghanistan. The popular political rhetoric was that the dying Soviet Union had to assert itself somewhere in the world, and Afghanistan was the best place to show off its military power.
The Americans were not met with as much resistance. Much of the country rallied to them in defiance of the Taliban. Also, the American tactics were considerably different. They avoided civilian casualties whenever possible and had such precision ordnance that they were able to take out military targets with very little collateral damage.
In the mosques and schools she attended, this distinction was never made. They talked about America as a breeding ground for a new generation of crusaders who saw Islam as standing between them and oil.
This experience with Major Severov had put a human face on the enemy. He’d even made her consider all the people who died in the bank building in Bern who had no knowledge of what was going on and were no immediate threat to Islam. Was this her conscience popping up?
The U.S. and Europe was another story. The French had kept her bottled up in a ghetto. The Americans treated all Middle Eastern people like petulant children or criminals. She abhorred their decadence and wastefulness, what Amir would call “sinfulness.” She and Amir were what the West should fear. Intelligent and ruthless. Ruthless on a scale Westerners couldn’t easily comprehend. Not only would she give her life for the cause, but she would sacrifice any of her comrades, too. As long as she hurt the West she would feel fulfilled.
She was sorry to see the town of Valga, on the Latvian border, disappear behind them as she headed north to the border with Russia. She had to talk the Russian major into sitting in the front seat, because he didn’t like having Amir behind him, but he had agreed. Anton Severov mostly looked out the window but would occasionally glance over at her, and her heart felt like it would explode.
From the backseat, Amir said, “Perhaps once we get rid of you, we can straighten out Fannie and turn her back into a good Muslim.”
Severov shifted quickly in his seat to look back at the little Iranian. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means it’s none of your concern. You must plan to oppress these people in Estonia. You will not have time to worry what Fannie and I do once you are gone.”
Fannie was about to say something, but she saw the look on Severov’s face. She decided to see where this conversation would lead.
Grabbing sleep in short spurts had not helped Derek Walsh, and now, in the early morning hours, he sat on the edge of the bed staring at a TV, which was bolted to the wall, with the volume turned down low as he flipped between the different news channels.
Alena still slept soundly as he tried to piece together the events he was watching from around the world.
The BBC America channel focused on the meltdown of the London stock exchange, which had lost more than 16 percent in the last two days. They mentioned a faulty computer trading issue but acknowledged that the majority of that crash was panic selling by major funds. The newscasts showed protests turning violent in front of Parliament and even Buckingham Palace. English youth with shaved heads hurled bottles and rocks at police huddled behind shields.
The Russia Today “RT” channel seemed to cover the events in Germany, England, and the U.S. with a degree of glee not seen on other networks. He had barely even noticed the channel before, only seeing it in certain hotels. For the longest time he thought it was some kind of offshoot from MSNBC because they often talked about the same subjects with the same tone. It wasn’t until recently he realized it was a news station owned by the Russian government. It covered American news in English, much like Al Jazeera America. In this case, economists Walsh had never heard of were talking about the inevitability of these crashes and the inability of Western nations to sustain any serious growth. Specifically, they talked about the American desire to dominate the world militarily, hampering its ability to advance economically.
Walsh shook his head and paused briefly on the Al Jazeera International channel, which surprisingly covered the events honestly. Its talking heads seemed disappointed that Islamic-based terrorism appeared to be on the rise again. They did not shy away from mentioning that the suicide bombers in Western Europe and the U.S. had mostly been identified as Middle Eastern nationals from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, and fighters who had been trained in Syria.
He listened for reports on death tolls in the U.S. Across the world there were people killed in attacks in Italy and France, a dozen more in London, twenty-two outside a military base in Germany. That made him worry about his friend Bill Shepherd.
One estimate was that over five hundred had been killed in Europe and more than two hundred in the U.S., with more than five times that seriously injured.
The biggest attack had been on a Swiss bank in Bern. More than seventy people were dead and dozens still missing in the massive debris. The investigation was still under way, but the size of the bomb indicated that it had been built into the structure of the building and had left a huge crater on one side and a shaky-looking column of offices along the rear. One report speculated that the bank was also the original site of the algorithm that was introduced into the financial markets. Even Walsh knew that couldn’t be a coincidence.