“John, please,” said Vujanac. “We need you to put aside your personal issues. It's hard enough trying to get the FBI and the CIA to play nice. I know this is painful, but we need you to rise to this.”
Savas looked out the window at the city. Inside, he felt a war of emotions. Outside, through the glass in Kanter's office, it was utterly still, row upon row of buildings stretching until he could not see beyond them. He closed his eyes and tried to think. He knew they were right. He knew he was being childish, unprofessional. But they did not understand how hard this was. It was something he had never expected. The son of a bitch even dressed like an Arab! He shook his head and laughed bitterly.
“OK, you two. I can give you this. I have one goal, and that is to bring justice to murderers of innocents, those terrorists that kill our children and hope to see Heaven for it. I'll work with anyone who shares that goal. If he does, I'll make it work.”
“Thank you, John,” Kanter said with evident relief.
Savas rose from his chair and walked to the door. He stopped and turned around. “Just don't expect me to be friends with the man. He does his job, I'll do mine.” With that, he walked through the door and shut it behind him.
23
The next morning, Husaam Jordan briefed the team on his long-standing operation. Savas was stunned at how quickly the CIA man had integrated into the group, his extreme professionalism notwithstanding. Muslim or Tibetan monk, he was serious and knowledgeable, and held an intense focus for his work that reminded Savas of the pursuit of a predator of its prey. He also had a strangely winning side to his personality, which seemed to work best with the women in his group. It was clear that the ex-marine Miller was not going to warm easily to the man, and Matt King never warmed easily to anyone.
Cohen was a supporter early on and often came to his side when some of the more hostile members of the group were expressing that hostility. Savas had to admit he was one of those. Lightfoote was positively stuck to the man, showing specific and real interest in another human for the first time in her tenure at Intel 1. She hadn't called Savas “Ruthless Overlord” once today.
Savas, despite his very mixed feelings, was fascinated with what this man had done at the CIA. In the span of three short years, he had built up an undercover operation to infiltrate some of the most powerful and profitable arms dealerships in the world. For each of them, he used the front of an African American radical Muslim who was arming his organization for terrorist attacks in the United States. Whether or not the arms dealers knew or cared anything about this, or believed his intent, was likely irrelevant. They believed that the man wanted to buy, and did buy, and paid promptly in a way that established him and his false group with a strong reputation. It didn't hurt that several major arrests, including that of Viktor Bout himself, had been made in the last few years, disrupting organizations and forcing them to lower standards in chaotic rushes to claim client bases when they restructured. Jordan had taken advantage of this and promised his clients much larger buys in the near future.
For more than two hours, he detailed the organization, its members, foreign bases of operation and contacts, and difficult-to-trace money transfers. It was impressive, Savas had to admit. Impressive and frightening. A black Muslim seeking to become a domestic terrorist through international arms acquisition. The ruse was too plausible for comfort.
The presentation finished, Jordan turned on the lights and sat down. He appeared a bit drained and drank from a glass of water at his side. The room was quiet for a moment.
“Why do you think that this is the source of the explosives?” asked Cohen.
Jordan drank down the remainder of the glass and spoke. “Well, of course, we can't know, but there are not many ways to obtain that grade of explosive. The US government will not sell this stuff to just anyone. It stays with military or, in some cases, is sold to other nations. As you know, that's where the real black market in these things starts, and how our weapons mafia gets its sources. So there may be other ways, but I'm willing to bet that our new terrorist organization used one of these groups as its supplier. Bout's old organization is the biggest and still the best. It's a good place to start poking around.”
He looked around the table, studying the faces of Intel 1. “I'm actually curious to know who these people are that went to all the trouble to go for such top-of-the-line materials — really overkill for what they wanted to do.”
Savas had known this would come. Jordan had shown his hand from the CIA, down to the last PowerPoint slide. He expected a full briefing in return. Savas wanted to send him back to Langley with a thank you very much! and use this potential new lead. But the FBI needed the international reach of the CIA on this, and they specifically needed Jordan and his operation to have any hope of getting close to these dealers. Besides, it was the professional thing to do, and if he didn't, Kanter would cart someone else in to do the job.
“Rebecca Cohen will give you a briefing on what we know.”
Cohen stood up, dimmed the lights, and spent the next hour going over everything they had gleaned from the events to date. The forensics reports and details on the bombings seemed familiar to Jordan, likely from previous briefings given by Vujanac or even Kanter. She concluded with the speculation that it might be an internal, American group but was careful to note that there was little solid evidence for that conjecture.
“There are also other, wilder theories,” said Savas. He felt the eyes of the group bore in on him. That was a hell of a thing to open up now. Why he had done it; he didn't know. Perhaps to seek some form of acceptance, or, less charitably, perhaps to shake this Muslim up a little.
“Yes? What other theories?” asked Jordan after several moments of silence.
“His rogue Valkyries,” said Lightfoote cryptically. Savas stared at her in wonderment. Had she spoken to Rebecca?
“It's a possible connection between two cases we've been working on.” Savas summarized the worldwide string of assassinations, the use of the Sheikh as bait in a plan gone horribly wrong, and the connection between the attacks in the Afghan mountains and the murders. When he came to the subject of Norse mythology, and the speculation about the group's motivations, Jordan sat upright and still. The information on the more obscure point of the group's unusual name and symbolism seemed to interest him deeply, and he asked a number of intense questions on this matter.
“This Columbia professor,” Jordan said, “I think he may be right, and his analysis makes for a very dark view of what we are up against.” Jordan nodded thoughtfully toward Savas. “Now I see where you are headed, Agent Savas. You believe that this group is responsible for both the assassinations and these bombings, and that the motivation is the same — a hatred of Islam. Beyond that, a desire perhaps to wage a war against Muslims the world over. By this symbolism, an unending war until Judgment Day.”
Rideout cut in. “Come on, people! Look, you've got a terrorist group that is playing to fears in a very effective way. You have a set of assassinations. The only thing connecting them? Scary mythology and some strange occult symbols.”