He gave me the boyish grin again. “Have you heard of an ‘active denial system’?”
“No. Should I have?”
“ADS is the Pentagon’s name for a nonlethal millimeter wave energy weapon. America’s troops have used it in Iraq.”
“Okay…” I said, getting interested.
“It shoots electromagnetic radiation at ninety-five gigahertz. Boils moisture in the skin, but only to a depth of one sixty-fourth of an inch. So it hurts like hell, but doesn’t cause damage.”
I glanced down at the backpack. “Your guys have developed a portable version.”
“Correct. The Pentagon’s unit, which they had developed by Raytheon, is truck-mounted. Very powerful-the range is over a kilometer-but big. What I’ve got here has to be employed close up, but you can carry it on your back.”
“It goes through walls?” I asked, doubtful.
“That’s…the tricky part. You can adjust the frequency. Shorter-range frequencies go through walls, yes. But they also cause more damage.”
“So if you don’t calibrate it right…”
“Right, you can cook the hostages along with the terrorists. It looks bad on TV after. Do it right, though, and no one gets worse than a sunburn.”
I nodded. “What does it feel like?”
He smiled. “You want to try?”
“Just tell me.”
He laughed. “A wise decision. I had it done to me-once. It feels like your skin is on fire, simple as that. The Sayeret Matkal had a little competition. Five thousand shekels to anyone who could group three rounds in a five-inch cluster from ten yards away while being hit with the beam. This is a joke for these men, they’re expert shooters. Ordinarily they group in one inch from much farther.”
“What happened?”
He laughed again. “They couldn’t shoot at all. They were too busy writhing and running away. No one asked to try twice. When word got around about what it felt like, people stopped volunteering.”
“I like it,” I said.
He nodded. “You should. Without intelligence…”
“Yes, I know. Delilah’s already been persuasive on that point.”
He looked at me. “You’re treating her right?”
I returned the look. “That’s really none of your business, is it?”
He shrugged. “She’s my colleague, and as close as a sister. We watch each other’s backs.”
I nodded. “It’s good of you to ask, then.”
“So? You’re treating her right?”
I couldn’t help laughing. He laughed, too. “I know, I know,” he said. “We Israelis are pushy. You know, there’s no word for ‘Excuse me’ in Hebrew?”
“What?”
He shrugged. “An old joke. But with some truth. If I put my nose where it doesn’t belong, forgive me.”
“We’re…managing,” I told him, thinking of what she had said to me on the phone just a few hours earlier. “It’s not easy, though.”
He laughed again. “It never is, my friend. It never is.”
We were quiet for a moment. I said, “You…have a family?”
He nodded. “Three sons and a baby daughter. Thank God we finally had a girl. My wife was ready to give up. And you?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, after a moment.
We were quiet again, and this time he didn’t push.
“Why did Hilger take your friend?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
He shrugged. “It won’t affect what happens to Hilger.”
“It did affect it. It guaranteed it.”
“Good.”
We finished the food. He said, “So? How do you want to do it?”
I shrugged. “Show me how to use the device. I’ll take care of the rest.”
He nodded. “I owe Delilah a hundred shekels.”
“What?”
“She told me you would say that.”
I looked at him, nonplussed.
“I can’t show you. It takes training and experience. I have to see the terrain. Set the controls wrong one way, and it has no effect. Wrong the other way, and you boil your friend’s internal organs. And while you’re trying to get it right, probably people on the boat will be shooting at you. Don’t be stupid.”
I didn’t answer.
“Besides,” he went on, “I’ve already got a van, a driver…”
“Jesus, you’re not alone?”
“No one works alone anymore, Rain. You’re the only one I know.”
Again I didn’t answer. I was trying to account for how quickly and thoroughly I’d lost control of this op. And at the same time thinking, admitting, really, that my odds of success were better because of it.
“You’ll like Naftali,” he said. “He’s, what do you call it, a wheelman?”
“You could call it that, I guess, yeah,” I said.
“Very serious. I don’t think he knows how to talk.”
“That’ll be refreshing.”
He laughed. “Here’s what I propose. Naftali drives. I operate the device. You do the shooting. I assume you’re equipped?”
“With a cannon.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. I’m equipped. And I already have a driver.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
“I’m not. I think we’re all going to have to sit down together. If we don’t coordinate…”
“You’re right, it will be a cluster fuck.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked at me, and I nodded to show that I appreciated his use of the idiom. “Yes,” I said. “A cluster fuck.”
He smiled. “And you’re sure Hilger will be on the boat, as Delilah says?”
I didn’t hesitate, or give any other indication that I was lying. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”
“Good. Then let’s sit down with our two drivers. We don’t have much time.”
29
HILGER STEPPED OFF THE BOAT, leaving Guthrie and Pancho with Dox. He needed to check the bulletin board, and preferred to do so from anonymous points like Internet cafés. He was able to tell where Rain was accessing it, and although he had taken steps to ensure that Rain couldn’t do the same thing on the other end, a little extra caution never hurt.
He did a surveillance detection route, then caught a cab to the Ritz-Carlton, where he logged in at their business center. No response from Rain, but…
He checked, and sure enough, Rain had accessed the board a few hours earlier, from Paris. He must have gone back there after New York. That’s where he’d been when they first grabbed Dox. Maybe he was living there these days. Something to consider, if they didn’t wrap him up soon somewhere else.
He wondered why Rain hadn’t responded. Maybe he hadn’t felt the need to. Hilger had told him to call at 08:00 GMT; maybe Rain simply planned to comply.
Or maybe Rain had found unpersuasive Hilger’s protestations of innocence about what had happened outside Accinelli’s apartment. So what, though? They still had Dox, meaning Rain had no choice but to play along. Playing along meant, at a minimum, calling in to make sure Dox was still okay. At which point, Hilger would deny everything again, assure Rain there was a third target, and just keep stringing the man along for another couple of days. Once Rotterdam was done, he’d give Rain a fictitious target and finish him off when he showed up for the job. But for now, Rotterdam was the main thing. He needed to focus on that.
He went to a pay phone and called Boezeman. They had never met-Demeere had recruited and run Boezeman precisely to keep his knowledge of Hilger’s operation as limited as possible-but they also had a backup plan, just in case. Agency SOP, and Hilger still followed it. Because if something happens to the primary case officer, how do you make contact with his assets? And how do you establish your bona fides when you do?
Demeere had implied to Boezeman that he was fronting a heroin operation. Demeere had never said so in so many words, of course; just a wink here and a nudge there, and Boezeman had filled in the details he was most comfortable with. Why else would the blond Belgian want a Rotterdam port security official to escort him onto the facilities, look the other way while he removed something from a shipping container, and escort him out? For a million dollars U.S., it had to be drugs, and a big shipment at that. And it wasn’t as though anyone was going to be hurt by it. Holland’s drug laws were the most liberal in the world, but they were still fundamentally silly, distinguishing between “soft” drugs, like cannabis and magic mushrooms, on the one hand, and heroin and cocaine, on the other. But people wanted them all, and what right did the government have to interfere with that? Or with a man’s right to profit so handsomely from the government’s hypocrisy?