The Phoenix Affair - Dave Moyer (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

minutes.”

“Play it.” Ripley breathed deep again, and listened. They were the same two Arabic voices, one obviously Kisani, the other the strong, fluid voice he’d heard earlier this morning. “Ibrahim. Got you, my friend,” he smiled to himself. It was looking like turning into a very good day.

“That’s enough,” he said after two minutes of the tape. “Do you have the translation of the earlier call?”

“Yes.”

“Read it.” And the voice did. There was nothing interesting, really: concern for Kisani’s health, a few questions about the circumstances of the attack. Ripley remembered the other voice sounding concerned when he’d heard it in Arabic only an hour and a quarter ago. “Suspicious, maybe?” There were instructions to meet at a café, but no address, obviously it was a place they knew well, not even a name. No help. “The suspicions, though?” He wondered. In his mind, he replayed the more recent call, the one he’d just heard from the cell phone. “No, there was no suspicion in the voice there. Concern, help for a friend. Good, they think it’s a random mugging, no more. And why would they think otherwise? This guy Jones is running, he’s something else.”

“Anything else?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” Ripley replied. “I need the translation at Paris station today. Tap the mobile phone, send the log to Paris along with the rest.” He had another thought. “Call me right away if the guy makes any international calls.”

“Done,” said the voice, and the line went dead.

Ripley snapped the flip-phone shut and replaced it in his holster. His breathing was back to normal now, and he drank deeply from the bottle of water. He caught the dark-haired waitress’s eye and ordered some breakfast.

Twenty minutes later he nearly choked on a slice of bacon when Kisani limped out of the hospital door, and he’d just started on the breakfast. He motioned to the waitress again for the check, regretting the loss of the rest of breakfast, but then he relaxed a little. Kisani was limping slowly straight toward him; he would not have to hurry all that much. The little man had half a block to cover before he’d pass, and it was clear he was making for the Metro station another three blocks away, for he had not hailed a taxi. He tucked the napkin back onto his lap and continued to eat, but a little faster.

In the light of day Kisani looked ghastly as he walked by within ten feet of Ripley’s table. He had a black eye on the right side, and that huge bruise on the left ear. The broken rib was causing him the most distress, however. Ripley’s keen ears heard the labored breathing as he passed. “Bad shape,” he thought, feeling a little sorry for the Moroccan. “But then, you have to know the rules if you’re gonna play this game, pal. Jonesey’s guy just showed you what it costs to play with the big boys.” He laid enough euros on the table to cover the bill and a nice tip, the latter he hoped the dark-haired girl might remember, as he thought he might stop by here again soon to see if he could pick her up. Right now there was obviously no time. “Story of my life.” He smiled broadly at the girl, though, and she smiled back, which made him feel a little warm. He walked nonchalantly out of the café and followed Ahmed to the Metro station.

Kisani either knew no tradecraft or was just too sore to care. He walked straight to the station and descended the escalator without so much as a look around after he’d bought his ticket. On the eastbound RER platform, Ripley stood against the tiled wall with the other passengers waiting for the train, but about a car’s length away from Kisani. A tail job on the metro could be tricky. If his luck was good, the target would get on through the rear door of one car, and he would get on the following car through its front door. He would be close enough to monitor the target, but it was much harder to get caught that way, particularly if there wasn’t much traffic. That wouldn’t be a problem so much today, traffic was heavy. As it happened he boarded in the car behind Kisani, who found a forward-facing seat and never once looked around at anything or anyone.

Ripley assumed the train trip would take them all the way to the northern suburbs, which he’d taken to thinking of as “little Arabia” since this whole show began last night He therefore expected a change to the RER-B line at the St. Michel station. He was surprised when Kisani got up at the Invalides station and made to leave the train. Ripley took care to be last to leave the car, but kept an eye on his prey, taking up station perhaps fifty meters behind him. They ascended to the street, where Ahmed first crossed the Ave. D’Orsay and walked onto the Pont Alexandre III, the most ornamented bridge across the Seine. Halfway across Ripley stopped to pretend to take a picture of the boats on the river, using his mobile phone as simulated camera, to make himself look inconspicuous and to give Kisani the chance to open the distance. He was just “photographing” the last of the gilded sculptures atop the columns at each end of the bridge when the Moroccan turned right on the north side of the bridge and headed East. Ripley stowed his phone with a last look around, now nearly two hundred meters behind, but that would be no problem. Kisani was moving so slowly he’d be caught up in a few minutes and would have to work out another excuse for delay.

As he turned right at the end of the bridge the seasoned CIA agent and former Ranger was horrified to see Kisani strapping on a helmet and then boarding a scooter. The bike growled to life with a tweak of an electric starter, and Kisani moved quickly out into traffic. Ripley looked to his left and began flailing his arms at the passing cars, trying desperately to hail a taxi, looking intermittently right to see where Kisani was. It was no good. There was no taxi, and in thirty seconds Kisani had mixed with the frantic flow of vehicles in the roundabout at the Place de la Concorde a quarter mile East, and he was gone. Ripley looked at his watch; it was just after eleven. More than a little disappointed, he crossed the street and walked North toward the US Embassy, a little comforted in the knowledge that there was a treasure-trove of information waiting in his office there, and that Langley would be waking up in about an hour. There were other ways to find Ahmed Kisani, starting with the address on his driver’s license, and with him the man with the liquid voice.

*****

Dawn would not come to Virginia for another hour. A clear cold sky of deep black swept from horizon to horizon, stars burning brightly out of it, casting faint shadows. The night creatures had gone silent, the day creatures not yet moving about. It was quiet as death, only the faint rustle of the still-bare tree limbs accompanied their ghostly starlight shadows dancing on the grass.

The screen was bright enough that it nearly spoiled the view out the window, but Jones enjoyed it anyway. He too had once been a creature of the night, and this one was perfect for stalking and killing—moonless, but with the starlight that would show the inexperienced prey moving around in what they would think was safety. The view and the memory stirred a shot of adrenaline, and he felt alive for a moment in a way that he seldom did in this headquarters job. His shoulders drooped a little, which nobody could see, and he turned from the window to read the report again.

Ahmed Kisani’s parents ran a small grocery market outside the Spanish colony of Ceuta. The colony was a source of some friction between Spain and its Moroccan neighbor across the Strait of Gibraltar. It had been there for over four centuries now but still the Moroccan population often chafed at the border within their own, and at the affluence in the colony. Outside, the Moroccan village wrapped around the old Spanish town, and the border between wealth and poverty was striking. Despite that, it looked like the Kisanis were doing all right. There was a sister still living at home, and two brothers believed to both still be in Morocco. Looked like a dead end, but the guys in Morocco were still working.

Ripley had done well in Paris. He noted the two phone numbers and other information that had come from the search, the taps on the two phones, even one address from the land line. The name attached to that phone account was one Mohammed Isa, but he was sure that would be a fake. The name on the cell phone account was Khalid Dourhi, probably also false. It didn’t matter. By the end of the day Paris time, perhaps tomorrow at the latest, Ripley would surely have a picture of the guy with the phones, and perhaps Mohammed-Khalid would make some interesting calls before the day was out. Meanwhile, the geeks in Intel would also be running the voice prints from the call-tapes, they might get lucky and find a match.

He returned to Cameron’s email, still thinking through the whole package he had before him. The concept of teams of Arabs finding their way into the US was not new, of course, but this idea of guys with US passports was a little novel. Of course the Agency had thought of it, but nobody had ever really figured what, if anything, they might do about it. It was good information to have, but it wasn’t really much when you got right down to it. There had to be several thousand Saudis with US passports; without some names it would be tough to get anything moving. And, he had no idea of what their targets might be, except Cameron’s mention of the kids’ doing some small arms training. “Well, they probably all do that,” Jones thought. He was still a little irked that he’d been unable to locate Cameron on his own. The cheeky bugger was checked into no less than four hotels, and no telling which one he was really staying at. It might be all four. No matter. The new cell phone number was on Ripley’s answering machine in Paris, and once the two hooked up he’d not lose Phoenix again.

He fired off an email to his Homeland Security liaison, including Cameron’s text after he’d sanitized out the names. He sent a copy to his FBI liaison as well, knowing that contact would send a note to Immigration, with a warning to look for an unusual influx of Saudis with US passports entering the country. Last, he sent Cameron’s information and his own synopsis of what they knew in Paris to the Intel department right there at Langley, with a request to compile a list of all Saudi holders of US passports. They’d have to get that from State, but since 911 even the intelligence people over at Foggy Bottom had learned to play ball, and they would produce. It might be a very long list, but it was a place to start. Might as well see how deep that pond was before he wrote off the possibility of catching a few fish in it.

What they really needed, he thought as he turned again to the window, was some names. Would this Saudi General’s nephew remember any? Almost certainly. A few names would be enough to start gathering others. How to get them? It was obvious once he thought of it. The US government could not ask the Saudi government to help, for two reasons. One, the Saudi government was probably penetrated, that