Molina looked amused. “You’d lie to the press?”
“Everyone else does.”
“That Rosen guy will probably tell us what the pirates’ sword of Damocles is.”
“He’ll tell us what the pirates tell him to say. Be kinda nice to know the true facts before we put people in harm’s way.”
Molina sighed. Through the windows one could see the lights of the grounds, very tasteful and decorative, designed to make security airtight. He could hear the faint sounds of classical music emanating from the windowpane vibrators, sounds so faint he couldn’t even follow the music. It was just noise. Molina hated this building. Hermetically sealed off from the outside world and the rest of humanity, the secure spaces reminded him of graves.
“The president says not a dime.”
Grafton waved away that comment with a dismissive flip of his fingers. “If you’re willing, I have a favor to ask,” Grafton continued. “When the sun comes up, how about talking to the secretary of the treasury. I need two hundred million counterfeit dollars, just in case. Make it hundred-dollar bills.”
Molina rolled his eyes.
Grafton pretended not to notice. “We need to keep all our options open until we figure out precisely what Ragnar has planned, what his capabilities are. We may have to buy him off, get the Sultan people out, then go back and liberate the money and whack him. Or we may decide to pay the ransom with counterfeit bills. We’ll make the decision, real or fake, when we know what cards Ragnar is holding.”
Molina’s face now wore its usual expression, eyebrows up, brows knitted, jowls sagging, his lips slightly pursed.
“The Shabab guy, Feiz al-Darraji,” Grafton added. “We’ll have to string him along, too. If we buy off Ragnar, we want the people out, not murdered. We don’t want the Shabab to get homicidal before we are ready.”
“Counterfeiting, now.”
“Ink and paper are cheap. The stuff’s gotta be good enough that it’ll pass for real, yet later we can tell the world the bills are bad and what to look for. Tell Treasury to get cracking. I need it in three days.”
“Just a thought,” Molina murmured. “If Treasury prints it and the government issues it, the courts may decide it’s real money, even if we put Johnny Depp’s picture on it.”
Jake Grafton snorted. “If I had a fart in me, I’d turn it loose, Sal. We get the hostages home alive, everybody safe and sound, I don’t give a damn what the courts decide five years down the road.”
They talked for another few minutes; then Molina left.
Grafton had had enough. He closed and locked his door, left the photos stacked on his desk, stretched out on his couch and was almost instantly asleep. He had met some pirates back when he was young, and he dreamed about them.
At seven that morning he made a telephone call to the Israeli embassy. At eight o’clock he entered a breakfast joint for working men and women in a strip mall shopping center in Silver Spring, Maryland. There was an empty booth in the back of the row, and he asked the woman at the register for it. He ordered coffee, eggs, bacon and dry wheat toast. He was sipping his second cup of coffee and waiting on the eggs when a man walked in wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and sat down across from him.
The man’s name was Sascha Meissl; he was the Mossad liaison officer to the CIA. His official title at the embassy was something else; Grafton didn’t know what it was, nor did he care. Meissl was a short, heavyset man with a square jaw and a head of curly, wire-density hair. He and Grafton conferred about once a week, on average. Grafton suspected Meissl had other espionage duties at the embassy, but he never asked and didn’t want to know what they were. The FBI could worry about Mr. Meissl’s extracurricular activities, if any.
After the usual pleasantries, Grafton got right to it. He explained that he had been appointed to be the chief negotiator for the Sultan hostage crisis in Somalia, and wanted whatever help Meissl’s agency could give.
Grafton explained his theory that the pirates must have a deterrent to military attack already in place. “They have planned this for at least a month. And they are not stupid.”
“A bomb,” Meissl said, then watched the waitress approach. He ordered coffee and orange juice and a short stack of pancakes.
When the waitress was gone, Grafton resumed. “I need all the information that you can give me, and I need it yesterday.”
“I thought you might call,” Meissl said with a grin.
“I’m too predictable.”
“We don’t really know anything about Somalia. However, we think one of Hamas’s head bomb makers went to Africa for a working vacation about six weeks ago. He went to Cairo, then disappeared. We think he’s probably in Somalia.”
“Name?”
“God only knows what his parents named him. He goes by the nom de guerre of Al-Gaza. About thirty to thirty-five, technically astute, believes in jihad, has built and exploded bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine. His specialty used to be bus bombs, but he’s branched out into bigger and better things.”
“Could he work with ammonium nitrate? Fertilizer?”
“Sure. Detonators, radio controls, all of it. Rather good at what he does. Not suicidal himself, but he likes to help martyrs start their journey to Paradise. Or wherever in hell they end up.”
The coffee and OJ came. Meissl sipped the juice, then attacked the coffee. The waitress brought Jake’s breakfast and filled his coffee cup. Jake dawdled over the eggs.
“You got any guys who know this dude?”
Meissl nodded.
“I’d like to borrow them, if I could. For a couple of weeks, no more. Give them a free trip to Somalia. If they can spot this guy or whoever their bomber is, lend us some expertise, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Al-Gaza might not be there.”
“Someone there knows explosives. As a rule, pirates don’t have much experience building bombs. The Shabab in those parts doesn’t blow stuff up, either. Just shoots people, rapes women, steals food and fuel and weapons and anything else they can physically move.”
“I’ll talk to Tel Aviv. If these guys find our man, we don’t want him walking away.”
“Something can probably be arranged,” Jake said dryly. His eyes crinkled and the corners of his lips turned up slightly. That was his smile. Sascha Meissl smiled back, showing his teeth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EYL, SOMALIA
The fortified lair of Sheikh Ragnar, the big banana of piracy, Somalia-style, was an old hotel right on the waterfront in Eyl. Six stories high, from the upper story it had a fine view of the harbor created by the two small promontories. Ragnar had knocked down superfluous walls on the top story to create a penthouse. His men were on the floors below, and he had four machine guns mounted on the roof, one on each corner, just in case.
From time to time Ragnar glanced at the captured cruise ship anchored in the river’s channel and permitted himself a smile. Ragnar was not his real name. He wasn’t a sheikh either; he was a vicious, amoral sewer rat who shot first and asked questions later. With his greed, sewer smarts, violent disposition and respect for nothing, Ragnar had what it takes to succeed as a pirate.
So far he had done very well at the trade. The ransoming of Sultan of the Seas and her passengers and crew would be the capstone on his career. He intended to retire and live like a pasha on his ill-gotten millions. He would have all the good food, liquor, women and drugs he could possibly want to eat, drink, screw or snuff up his nose—yet, in truth, Ragnar had that now. Still, like humans everywhere, he wanted more.