“What do you mean? Tell me nothing terrible has happened.”
“Pretty goddamn terrible, as far as I’m concerned. We had a visit from the Serious Fraud Office this morning. They cordoned off the place: files, computers, the whole lot. We had to shut down trading. I sent the employees home, told them not to come in tomorrow.”
“Good,” she said.
“No. It’s a disaster. And I don’t understand why it’s happening. Is this what you were talking about? Is this the work of your friends?”
They were closing the door of the plane. The flight attendant was telling her, in the usual insistent way, to turn off her cell phone.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Just go home, and stay home.”
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
The flight attendant had called the purser, who was wagging his finger at Marx. She said goodbye as the plane rolled back from the gate.
30
When the Dubai flight landed at Brussels Airport, Sophie Marx was met by two security officers from the U.S. Embassy. They spotted her as she cleared customs and wordlessly flanked her on either side. She was happy to see them, though they were not exactly invisible. They had that overtrained look of security officers: big burly arms, and thick around the chest as refrigerators. The driver was waiting in the arrivals lane; when they were all seated in the armored Mercedes, the two security officers introduced themselves, Ted and Luis, or at least those were their work names. They were both from the station; they said that a team from Joint Special Operations Command was waiting at the rendezvous.
“How was the flight?” asked Ted. From bellhops to bodyguards, that was always the first question people seemed to ask any traveler. Marx said that the flight had been fine.
“I gather some folks are after you,” said Luis.
“So it seems. But you never know until the bomb goes off.”
“And you don’t know then, either, if it’s a good bomb,” said Ted. “It’s just lights out.”
Marx closed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well for days, and she dozed off as the Mercedes rolled toward the city. It was nice to have these big American men watching over her.
The meeting point was an apartment at the Citadines, a residence hotel off the Avenue Louise in the center of town. It was early morning, and the city was just coming to life, the sidewalks beginning to fill with gray civil servants heading to their jobs at the European Commission. As Marx emerged from the limousine, a frail beggar woman thrust forward her child and pleaded for money. Marx dropped into the cup some Pakistani rupees, which was all she had in her pockets, and the woman cursed her in a strange dialect.
Up in the apartment, three bulky members of the U.S. paramilitary team were already installed, looking at maps of the city. They were dressed in plain clothes, but the leader was evidently the man bent tight over the map like a human torsion spring. The others addressed him as Major Kirby.
“You’re one tough lady,” said the major after shaking Marx’s hand.
“More lucky than tough,” she said.
“That’s even better. Hope it rubs off.”
He pointed to his map of the city, laid out on the coffee table.
“We’ve had, like, twelve hours to work on this, which is impossible, frankly. But my boss talked to your boss, whoever he is, and I gather we have no choice but to move right away. And to do it unilaterally, without telling the Belgians, which is never a good idea, but what the hell, right?”
“Whatever you say, Major. I’m not even sure who my boss is anymore, but I think his name is Hoffman.”
Kirby shrugged. He was wired and impatient. He wanted to get on with it.
“Look,” he said, “we’re here because the agency isn’t supposed to do this anymore, interrogation and rendition and all that, and the military can do whatever it wants, so long as we call it ‘force protection,’ or ‘tactical intelligence,’ or ‘preparation of the battlefield,’ so the lawyers can say it’s Title Ten. But basically, we’re working for you, okay?”
“Sounds good to me. Any title you like.”
“All they told us was that you have some kind of urgent security problem, which my boss says wasn’t explained to him. Which must mean it’s pretty damn serious, right, if they can’t even tell us what it is?”
“Yes, Major, I promise you that it’s extremely damn serious. Four of our people have been killed and more on the way if we don’t get a handle on this soon. What’s your ops plan?”
“The ID we have been given on the target is Joseph Sabah. Correct? For security, we are just going to call him Harry from here on. Okay?”
Marx nodded.
Major Kirby pointed to the lower right quadrant of the Brussels map, southeast of the city center. He spoke the place names very carefully, not wanting to botch them.
“Harry lives here, on Avenue…George…Bergmann. His apartment is a few blocks east of a big park called Bois…de…la…Cambre. Did I say that right?”
“Sort of,” answered Marx. “Nobody would mistake you for a Belgian.”
“Thank you,” said Major Kirby. “Okay, Harry has a dog, a little yapper dog. What is it, Sergeant?”
“A miniature poodle, sir.”
“Right. So every evening when Harry gets home from his job at this SWIFT place south of the city in, lemme look…La…Hulpe, he takes this dog out for a walk to do his business in the park, in this Bois…de…la…Cambre.”
“You can just call it the park, Major, that’s fine,” said Marx.
“Roger that. Harry walked his dog last night, and we were able to get one of our friends to access the surveillance cameras in the park. He took the dog there every night for the last week, same route, pretty much. So, gents and lady, we are going to assume that he goes to the park every freaking night, and that when he gets home from work tonight he will take little bowser on that same route for his evening walk.”
“And we will be waiting in the park?” asked Marx.
“Not exactly ‘we,’ ma’am, if that includes you. ‘We’ will be there, meaning me and my two JSOC brothers, plus Ted and Luis from the station. But you, meaning you, will be at the safe house where we are going to interrogate this clown, assuming we do this right.”
“Okay, but I’m good luck. You said so yourself.”
“We’ll just have to live with that. Let’s finish our pre-op. Ma’am, you may want to get some rest. There’s a bedroom down the hall.” He looked at the other four men.
“Okay, brothers. De oppressso liber.”
“Why did you say that?” asked Marx.
“Special Forces motto. Liberate the oppressed.”
“Oh,” said Marx. “Nice.”
A voice piped up from the side of the room. It was one of the two other soldiers, who hadn’t spoken yet.
“IYAAYAS,” he said, speaking the letters quickly.
“What the hell does that mean?” queried Marx.
“Unofficial shooters’ motto, ma’am,” said the soldier. “‘If you ain’t ammo, you ain’t shit.’”
“Please, gentlemen,” she said. “Grow up.”
The armored Mercedes returned to the Citadines at noon and transported Sophie Marx to a house in a leafy suburb south of Brussels, on the way to Waterloo. A member of the station was already there, preparing the room where the interrogation would take place. He had closed the blinds and the curtains and was moving furniture around, trying to make it look like Grandma’s living room. The very word “interrogation” seemed to make him squeamish. He had been told to bring food for the “suspect” and the interrogators, as well as several cans of dog food.
Marx went upstairs to call Hoffman, but he didn’t answer his phone. She rang Perkins again, and when he didn’t pick up, either, she gave up trying. She knew she should call Gertz, but she didn’t know what she would say to him, and if he ordered her home, she would refuse. So the best course, she decided, was to take another nap.