Thorpe waited.
"I have been at this assignment for seven years," Esdras said. "It is an important one. Of course the Germans know we are here. We allow them some intelligence access in our own country. It is the way the game is played. A balancing act."
"Just like the Samson option and Red Flyer," Thorpe said.
Esdras nodded. "And Operation Delilah. I pretended not to know, but I knew about the Samson option. And your Red Flyer team placing their fake nuclear bomb outside of our storage site in the Negev Desert. Part of the game." Esdras wagged a finger. "But your Omega Missile getting launched — that was not part of the game."
"Omega Missile was launched by the man who designed it to stop the game-playing," Thorpe said.
"It didn't work."
"No," Thorpe agreed, "it didn't."
"Because people will be people and governments will be governments." Esdras threw the shot glass to his lips and emptied it. He got up and walked to the cabinet and poured one more.
"I drink too much," he said. "I know my superiors know. But what can they do?" He shrugged. "There are only so many people who can do this job. When they feel I am no longer an asset, they will put me out to pasture like they did the generation before me. Old men with crazy stories no one will believe. No one wants to believe." He sat down. "Do you know what our priority here is? Not espionage. No. We are here to watch the skinheads. 'Never again' is the cry. So we watch idiot youths run around and kick foreigners to death."
"Those youths are not the danger. They have little power. It is the people with power who would use the skinheads for their own means we have to fear. But people with real power — like Hakim Yasin — make governments do as they want, so we do nothing. All a game. A pawn cannot defeat a more powerful piece."
"It can if it gets close enough," Thorpe said. "You—" Thorpe began, but Esdras wasn't done.
"The Man Who Waits. Do you know who he was?"
"The man who sat on top of your nuke in Washington?"
"Yes. He was a friend of mine. We served together in a counterterrorist unit before the Mossad."
"The 269th of the Parachute Infantry Brigade?"
Esdras gave a wan smile. "See? There are no secrets."
"No, there aren't. You know what Jawhar and Akil did here." Thorpe said it as a fact, not as a question.
Esdras's eyes were unfocused, staring off into the distance. His fingers played with the shot glass. "I saw them in action once. The brothers. And did nothing. They killed a boy and a girl. After Jawhar raped her, of course. Watched them through my night-vision scope. The crosshairs of my rifle centered on Jawhar's head. It would have been so easy, but I had my instructions. Watch only."
Esdras looked over at Thorpe. "Do you judge me for that? I was following them. They made a meet with some people before and after the killing. Black market weapons people. We were able to give the information to the Germans and then closed down those weapons people and save many lives. So maybe it was the greater good?" Esdras didn't sound like he believed that much.
Thorpe tapped the picture of Terri. "Was this the girl you saw killed?"
"No."
"Do you know if they killed my friend's daughter? Terri Dublowski?"
Esdras ran a hand along the side of his face. "The two I saw killed were the only ones we know of for sure. I have heard rumors that Jawhar has taken some girls."
"Taken?"
"As I said earlier, there is almost a slave trade going on in certain Middle Eastern countries concerning women. While many know of those who are well paid to be there, there are also those who are not asked to come, but rather taken there, held prisoner and not paid, and who never come back. Especially if you are talking about underage girls."
"She might be alive?" The possibility had never occurred to Thorpe.
"They are only rumors," Esdras warned.
Thorpe remembered what the kids in the room had said about the Jewel Man. "Where would he take them?"
"I don't know. Somewhere back in Saudi Arabia, but the Yasin family has so many palaces and houses…" Esdras shrugged.
"Find out where."
Esdras nodded. "I'll try."
"The black marketers that Akil and Jawhar met," Thorpe said.
"Yes?"
"Why would the brothers meet with such people? They would have access to all the weaponry they want through legitimate means in their own country, wouldn't they?"
"That is a fair assumption," Esdras said.
"You don't know why they made the meet?" Thorpe was astounded. "I thought you said you shut down the black marketers. You must have interrogated them."
"I didn't shut them down," Esdras said. "We are in Germany, after all. We passed the information on to the Germans. GSG-9 took them down."
Thorpe felt like he was pulling teeth. "And what did they come up with in interrogation?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Bullshit. You're the one who talked about balance. They would have given you that information in exchange for giving up the targets."
"You would think they would have," Esdras agreed, "but they didn't."
"What are they up to?"
"I don't know."
Thorpe stood.
Esdras stood also. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find Jawhar. And you're going to help me."
Chapter Twenty
The field training center for Special Forces was in the center of the Camp Mackall Training Area, a sprawling military reservation on the west side of Fort Bragg, separated from the post by a narrow strip of civilian land. It wasn't far from where Takamura's trailer had been, and Colonel Parker and Sergeant Major Dublowski had passed the site of the specialist's fatal car accident on their way to Mackall.
They had not spoken since leaving Bragg, each lost in private thoughts, considering the information that Thorpe had called and given them. Parker had had to restrain Dublowski from jumping on the next thing flying to Germany when he heard there was a possibility his daughter was still alive.
"If neither Akil or Jawhar are here in the States, then who killed Takamura?" Parker finally broke the silence, trying to get Dublowski into the here and now.
"Thorpe said they were dealing with arms dealers," Dublowski said. "Some of those people have a long reach."
"But how could Takamura have even gained their attention?"
"I don't know?"
Another long silence ensued. As they got farther from Fort Bragg, Parker felt impelled to talk. "Why did Special Forces put their training area so far off post?"
"Huh? Oh, to get away from the bullshit of the regular army people on Bragg. Mackall is our own little world out here. Used to be pretty primitive — the main camp, that is — until they did some building a couple of years back. When I went through the Q-Course, we lived in poncho hooches. Now they got all the comforts of home."
"Delta trains a lot at Mackall too. We use the old airfield there for various operations. The Rangers also use it to practice airfield seizure. Lots of Special Ops people go through Camp Rowe."
"Camp Rowe?"
"Used to be called Camp Mackall, but they renamed the main compound after Colonel Nick Rowe. He started up the SERE — survival, evasion, resistance and escape — school for Special Operations. He had a lot of firsthand knowledge he thought it was important to pass on. He'd been a prisoner of the Viet Cong for five years before escaping. He was a pretty remarkable guy."
They had just passed a sign telling them they were back on a military reservation after traveling through the North Carolina countryside for half an hour.
"You keep saying 'was'. What happened to him?"
"Assassinated in the Philippines in 1989. Supposedly by communists."
"Supposedly?"
Dublowski sighed. "That's the official version." He reached a three-way intersection and turned right on a narrow dirt road with tall pines on either side.