For his part, Mika Kharitonov acted well. No Oscar, but the show and threat, and very real action he had witnessed, had brought out his inner coward. He led them through what appeared to be very ordinary office rooms, filled with clerks, mostly female, typing into computers and taking calls. Guns were good business, and like any modern business, there was a lot of administration. Several people looked surprised to see him, and even more so the entourage that followed him through the room and down the hall to another room where thousands of optical disks were filed and a lone archivist worked. As he had done in the other rooms, Kharitonov put on a pleasant, professional, if somewhat strained face, and told the archivist to leave them alone.
Jordan's team went to work immediately. Within minutes, they had located the records for all transactions within the last five years. These were no longer stored on the computer, so they pulled and pocketed the CDs from storage cabinets. A USB memory stick was used to store all the records that were present on the computer itself, although Jordan doubted that what they were looking for was there. Kharitonov was clearly as intrigued as he was frightened, but he was forced to chew on his questions as the operatives worked on in silence.
“OK, move it, move it. The clock's running on this one, and we don't know when time runs out,” Jordan said, pushing his team.
Within half an hour they were finished. Jordan rounded up his team, the precious data in his own backpack. They headed back the way they had entered, through what looked suspiciously like a call center, and out the back door. Kharitonov opened the door to the outside, stood upright, straight as a plank of wood, and dove to the right and outside the door.
Ambush! thought Jordan, and lunged to the left, pulling the Uzi out as he slid to the floor. The thin walls of the building exploded with sound as bullets tore through the siding and whizzed in through the open door. Two of his team fell with multiple bullet wounds, as did several phone operators near the door. Screams filled the room, and women dropped to the floor or dashed out toward the front of the building, sending papers flying through the office. Still the bullets blasted against the walls, and one shattered the single window on the side of the building where Jordan lay, showering glass over him and the unmoving body of a nearby office worker.
He knew things had been too easy.
29
The day was going to be hot, and the tourists squirmed awkwardly under backpacks, cameras, and overloaded shopping bags along the streets of Algiers. Street vendors hocked their overpriced items as locals smirked at the naive Westerners spending more money than could possibly be justified for the goods. Business was particularly good around the Great Mosque. The combination of history and its nearness to the sea made the landmark a must-see stop on the tourist run.
“Allahu Akbar!” Suddenly, a loud, static-filled call rose over the loudspeaker near the mosque. Heads of tourists turned toward the sound, despite having heard it several times in the day already, and five times every day of their stay; it was still an unusual sound to their ears. In contrast, the Algiers citizens seem to give a calm and familiar response, the pious slowly stopping their activities, pulling out prayer mats and laying them on the ground. A tight group of American tourists listened as their guide explained and translated.
“The muezzin is making the adhan, the call to prayer,” he said.
“Allaahu Akbar!”
“God is great!” he echoed in English to the wondering faces.
“Ashhadu Allah ilaaha illa-Lah; Ash Hadu anna Muhamadar rasuulullah.”
“I bear witness that there is no other god but Allah. I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God!”
“Hayya' alas Salaah; Hayya' ala Falaah.”
“Come to prayer! Come to Success.”
“Allaahu Akbar! Laa ilaaha illa-Lah.”
“God is great! There is no god but Allah.”
The echoes of the haunting Arabic chant rebounded over the streets and cement buildings, reaching out over the harbor toward incoming ships. After a moment of silence, as if in answer, the mosque exploded.
The sound was deafening, the shock wave injurious and stunning, citizens and tourists alike thrown to the ground as rock and metal hurled through the air at lethal velocity. The loudspeaker from the minaret arched high above the road as debris flew underneath it, then reached an apex and took its parabolic dive toward the street below, crushing a street vendor and his cart. The muezzin making the call to prayer, and all the worshippers within the mosque, were never identified in what remained.
Chaos landed along with the loudspeaker, as the able-bodied fled from the scene in panic, abandoning hundreds of injured and dying to their screams for aid. Time slowed down for all who remained, as a false evening fell from the smoke and dust obscuring the sun. Wounded shadows limped through the choking fog of grit, like undead creatures risen from the grave, the horror real and more terrible than any film director's vision.
Finally, muffled sirens were heard as emergency vehicles and military personnel arrived on the scene and worked to impose order over the chaotic remains. Just as they had begun to attend to the wounded and put out the fires, staring with wide eyes toward what was minutes ago the Great Mosque, a strong breeze from the sea sliced the cloud of dust blocking the view, providing a tunnel of vision southward to reveal the majesty and brutal artistry of the Martyrs Monument.
Under the shadow of the monument, a group of French tourists were gathered for a final photograph before returning home from their vacation. What had been a tightly pressed form with twenty smiles facing the camera became a dissolving clump looking toward the northern part of town as a thunderous sound reached their ears and a pillar of smoke began to rise several miles away. The photographer turned to face the chaos, and the sounds of her shutter firing rapidly stuttered in the growing silence. All conversation ceased for several moments, then rose to a higher level as concerned voices sought the meaning of the events. Many were running toward the northern edges of the park that rose up on a small hill above the port, seeking a closer and clearer view of the source of the smoke and noise. Cell phones were pulled out, more photos taken, and many left the monument site to head home or elsewhere.
The French tourists remained close to the monument. They were expecting their tour guide to return and meet them there, under the monument, and lead them to a bus for the airport. None of them would make the return trip.
Three massive explosions erupted around them, the blast ejecting building debris radially from the structure, flailing the tourists to death in milliseconds. Each explosion was centered on one of the three legs of the Martyrs Monument, placed strategically to sever the supports of the tower from its body like a giant's scalpel. Those watching at a distance stared transfixed as time crawled and the great tower appeared to shudder above the disk of debris beneath it, then plunge toward the ground like a spear. The concrete column crumbled as it smashed into the surface underneath, dissolving like dust and throwing a circular plume outward and upward. Within seconds, the great symbol of Algerian pride for independence from foreign rule was gone.
“Anything from Husaam?” Rebecca Cohen asked as she poked her head into John Savas's office.
“No,” he replied, sipping from his morning coffee. “The CIA is slow to update us, and they never released his precise schedule. He should have made contact with the Russian dealer by now. I guess we'll hear soon how that went.”