She saw his admiring gaze and smiled. “OK, this time I did wear it for you to look at my chest,” she said impishly.
Savas smiled. “So, I have permission?”
She laughed and kissed him. “Let's try some of that salad.”
Cohen walked to the table as Savas brought out the salad and the lamb. “It's too much for the two of us, but I'd rather save some for tomorrow and not invite in our well-armed shadows.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, each content in this mundane activity that nonetheless seemed as deep as any world event that had crashed on them in the last five months. Finally, Cohen spoke through the stillness.
“Frank is going to be OK?”
Savas put down his fork and exhaled. “It looks like he will. There was a lot of deep-tissue damage, so his racquetball game is never going to be the same. But he'll get most of his range of motion back, or so the doctors tell me anyway. At least we got Husaam out of lockup without too much trouble. What a mess!”
“God, John, it still runs through my mind every day. If it weren't for Frank…”
He cut her off. “But he was there, love. It's torture to think through the possibilities. I'm here, and we just have to keep our wits about us now.”
“Nothing more from the sniper?”
Savas shook his head. “No. Same pattern as the other one. Ex-military, served in an antiterrorism unit. There were reports of behavior toward enemy combatants that led to formal disciplinary action. Seems that lots of these Mjolnir soldiers have some strong hatred for Muslims, Rebecca. Gunn must have recruited such men.”
“So we just play it cool with Gunn?”
“That's how they want it. Filtering it through Larry's evasions, it seems there is still enough debate higher up about messing with Gunn that they are going to slow down, which makes sense from another angle — he's still working with the FBI. The hope is to find enough about Operon, or get lucky and strike gold in looking into Gunn International itself, that we'll find what we need to take this thing down and stop whatever they're planning next.”
“John, something is troubling me about all these attacks.”
“You mean besides all the death and destruction?”
She gave him her sharp look. “Yes. They don't make sense. OK, sure, they are all Muslim targets and Mjolnir is out to destroy Islam — motive is there. But why do you go out bombing random mosques across the world, or, come on, a civilian airliner? How is this going to bring down a religion of over a billion souls?”
“I don't know, but it's sure shaking up the world. The Islamic nations have gone ape-shit, embargoed us, and we've sent a bunch of ships toward the Gulf threatening them and scaring everyone that World War Three is on the horizon. That part of their plan seems to be working.”
“OK, yes, that is something, but couldn't that be done while still hitting more strategic targets? Government buildings? Leaders of nations? These targets are so random, so haphazard. Why not more professional-type targets for such a professional group? They began with assassinations that followed such a pattern. Then this.”
“Maybe we don't know what their aims are.”
Cohen shifted her weight forward, put her elbows on the table, and clasped her hands under her chin. “That's exactly what I am getting at, John. We are missing something. These guys are too smart, too careful, too thoughtful to appear so scattershot.”
“Sometimes revenge isn't logical, Rebecca. Sometimes it's just mean and crazy.”
She shook her head. “John, I don't think so. They are too cruel, too ordered, for simplistic revenge. You said it best — Gunn is like a serial killer. There is something cold, calculating alongside all that hatred. Some pattern, however demented. We're missing something that is pointing somewhere.”
Savas heard the anxiety in her voice and reached out to take her hand. “Where then? What do you mean?”
Cohen stared out across the room. “I don't know. Somewhere dark. To something bigger, much bigger.”
She squeezed his hand so tightly it nearly hurt. “John, I'm scared.”
48
Michael Inherp watched the docked boats bob in the waves of the Gulf of Mexico. Night had fallen on New Orleans. Not the old New Orleans, he reminded himself, full of swagger and slum, of music and magic, of Mardi Gras and murder, of artists and pimps. It was a wounded shadow of the once great city, left alone to rot after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Lights danced on the sea stretching out before the dock like those in a van Gogh painting, the rigging of sailboats nearby like muffled bells playing to the rhythm of the waves. Calm before the storm. He closed his eyes, thinking about the tempest to come.
A small freighter waited hungrily at the dock. It was an unusual vessel, thoroughly modernized, down to tinted black windows and highly sophisticated and expensive radar and communications equipment visible from the outside. Inherp had seen the inside and knew the outside told only a superficial tale. For several days, he and other soldiers of Mjolnir had passed on and off the boat. Men with purpose and haste and intensity foreign to the rhythms of the port.
Inherp continued to scan the port as part of his guard duty. He watched an old fisherman prepare his boat for the night's expedition. This was not the first time the old man had worked his boat during Inherp's watch. Stooped, a gray beard visible from a distance, he had seen unusual activity at the strange boat. Inherp doubted the fisherman thought long on the issue. This was New Orleans, after all. He displayed no real curiosity. He prepped his boat and cast out. Night after night. The old man seemed to have a different pace, a sense of the sea, its rhythm, its long heartbeat and toll of a lifetime. Inherp suppressed a bitter laugh. Not like us, are you, Gramps? With our machines and power, flaunting our disrespect for the great waters of the world.
This night, the activity was particularly brisk, and Inherp knew the man had seen much, even inadvertently. Seen too much. The old fisherman had been working when the very large crate was pulled along the dock on an extended trolley. The old man had perked up when the crate rolled by, its mass flanked on each side by armed men. He had cast a glance or two as the men wheeled the crate to the freighter, which was equipped with a small crane. The men had secured the crate to a harness, and the crane had pulled the crate upward, out of sight. The old man had worked late one night too many.
It happened so quickly the old fisherman never understood. Inherp watched a shadow rise behind the fisherman. He had only an instant to recognize the broad end of a silenced weapon raised as several muffled spits sounded over the splashing of waves against the dock. The old man lay on the deck of his boat, nets tangled around his arms, a pool of blood forming around his head.
Inherp bowed his head for a moment. The rigging of the sailboats rang like church bells in the thickening night.
Later, onboard, he was ordered to sequester the large crate below deck. He and his fellow soldiers worked very carefully and secured it tightly. Next to the crate, he and the others stood at attention. A tall, thin man descended a narrow set of stairs above him, bowed to fit within the lower ceiling, and straightened to full height when he reached the last step and entered the room. He wore a dark-gray suit, his silvery hair set tight on his head. Money, power, and influence seemed to radiate from his person, as well as something more feral, something that Inherp could feel and that kept him even more tightly at attention. William Gunn. Inherp felt stunned to be in his presence. Following behind, a powerfully built figure with blond hair emerged and now stood a few feet to Gunn's left. This man had a sharp crew cut and the face of a tested warrior.