Amir sat down without greeting and looked directly at Sam. “Are we going to speak in front of her?” That was as close to a greeting as Fannie was going to get. She held her tongue but felt like poking Amir through the eye with the steak knife that sat to her right.
Sam calmly said, “In this particular operation you will both be working on the same assignment. I wanted to explain the whole thing one time and for both of you to understand how important it is.” He waited while they nodded acknowledgment. Amir still hadn’t turned and looked at Fannie. A vein popped in his neck.
After an awkward moment of silence, Amir said, “Will we have to work side by side? Because I would find that inappropriate. She is only a woman and unwed. I shouldn’t really have to sit with her now.”
Fannie again resisted the impulse to stab him with her knife. Instead she waited to hear Sam’s response.
In his cultured English accent, Sam said, “We must work with other groups in this struggle. You will both escort one of our partners. You need only work together in Estonia and possibly further west when we’ll need your language ability, Fannie, and your engineering experience, Amir. But you will both be on most of the trip together.” He was very calm when he said, “And if you question my judgment again, Amir, you will find yourself in a retraining camp under the supervision of a very strict teacher. Is that understood?”
Amir nodded but added, “It is my duty to explain my concerns before an operation. I feel as if this woman has been given far too much credit and risen too high in the organization, but I understand the need to succeed against the United States and will work with anyone in the world against the Great Satan.”
Sam smiled as he looked from Fannie to Amir. “Good, because the man you are meeting is a Russian army officer.”
Fannie was shocked, but obviously not as shocked as Amir. The first thing that popped into her head was to call back the American major who had called her. She might find a use for him sooner than she’d thought. It was funny how things worked out so well.
10
Derek Walsh found himself almost stumbling by the time he’d reached Vestry Street in the neighborhood known as SoHo, which started south of Houston Street. He still felt out of place in a sweat stained white shirt, and he had taken several long breaks on his trek from Chinatown and Mulberry Street. He stepped inside a small grocery store and bought a Dr Pepper with the loose change in his pocket. He was using the break to catch his breath and to clear his head. He hadn’t seemed to do either successfully.
Several police cars passed him at different times, but all of them were racing along the street with their lights on. A couple of them used their sirens as well, and the drivers focused straight ahead. They looked like more reinforcements headed to a battle.
As he walked along Vestry, he heard an explosion from the direction of Wall Street. It was in the distance, but it was still clear, as was the smell of acrid smoke, which drifted along on a light breeze. He had seen brief reports of what was happening to New York when he ducked into stores and noticed a TV on in the corner, and it was almost impossible to believe. London was suffering worse violence than this, and there had been several terrorist attacks across Western Europe.
Walsh tried to block all of that out of his head and focus on the issues he was facing. How did someone make the trades without his knowledge? How could he get back inside Thomas Brothers and bring up photographs on his security plug? But mainly, for the moment, he just wanted to cover a couple more blocks and get into his apartment to grab some different clothes and the little bit of cash he had on hand. He was pretty confident that the FBI hadn’t figured out he had the tiny apartment yet.
He remembered something his friend Mike Rosenberg had said about the FBI being overrated. His lean CIA friend had looked into several law enforcement jobs and had friends with every agency. He said the agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration were the sharpest of all the federal agents. The DEA guys tended to look low key and weren’t noticeable in public. They were just as driven and high achieving as the FBI, but they understood what the real world was like. Rosenberg felt the FBI was too stiff and worried about image. He said the FBI had a certain “type.” Walsh thought that if Tonya Stratford was the FBI “type,” then he was in deep shit. She had proven to be knowledgeable and smart and had a look that could cut through him like a laser. Her partner might not have been as smart, but he seemed to have a certain ruthless quality that would help in looking for someone like Walsh.
Walsh approached his apartment cautiously and stopped on the corner when he noticed a blue Dodge parked across the street from his three-story building. He could just make out a young man with very dark hair sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette. He was clearly looking across at the apartment building and then scanning the street.
Walsh backed away and considered his options. Just as he was about to turn, someone bumped into him from behind, saying in a loud voice, “Hello there, Derek.”
Once they had left their meeting with Sam, Amir had not spoken to Fannie. At least not in words. His look and attitude made it clear that if he had the chance she wasn’t going to hold her position much longer. All they had to do was escort some Russian from Estonia down to somewhere south and west.
She hadn’t told them about her possible intelligence coup. She had flirted with the handsome army major named Bill Shepherd and even had a lovely dinner with him. She made it clear that once she was done traveling they would spend time together. She knew how most Western men thought, and he definitely believed she meant they would spend time in bed together. But the sight of him sickened her, and all she could think about was getting him to spill his secrets, either in the privacy of the bedroom or under great duress. Either way, he’d be able to tell them things they couldn’t get anywhere else.
She hadn’t bothered to return his calls, but he left two messages and sounded sincerely worried about her safety as violence bloomed across the continent. Now that she knew her assignment as a guide with a Russian, she was certain she knew what was planned, and she could take advantage of her encounter with the American. If the Russians were such a big part of this operation, the Americans would be, too. She took a moment to call him back and leave a quick message on his cell phone saying she missed him and hoped to see him soon, but she was absolutely safe. She hoped that was true. It was odd that while she fought against one of the most powerful nations on earth, her greatest fear was being murdered by one of her comrades.
Fannie couldn’t sleep and decided to explore Tartu, the second-largest city in the country, but more of a quaint town by Western standards. It had none of the traffic of Berlin or Stuttgart and none of the elegance of Paris, but it didn’t have tourists or smog, either. It was almost as if it hadn’t ever left the old Soviet Union’s influence. Beat-up Voleex hatchbacks and Yugos sputtered along the narrow streets, and heavy people with no regard for fashion shuffled along the broken sidewalks.
Fannie had to admit it felt a little bit like a slap in the face to go from planning large financial transactions to acting as an escort for some Russian army officer. The only consolation was that Amir had to feel even worse about it. His father had fought against the Russians in Afghanistan as a foreign fighter, and Amir had no use for either of the world’s major powers.
An alliance with Russia made sense even if it did go against the group’s long-term goals. For years Russia had been a target of jihadists. There was no great love for the former empire. But the group’s progress against the U.S. had been slow. An occasional success would be met with a massive military response. It could be devastating.