If it was the fault of anybody at that table, it was his own—he could have ignored the pull-back and turned his wolves loose in time. They weren’t blaming him—discipline was their religion; you followed orders, you played your part, you subsumed your personal feelings for the good of the team and the operation: it was the only way.
Right down to the end they’d been telling each other that Langley knew what it was doing, that somebody else was on the case, that some other operations team was going to get the glory. They’d been telling each other that until Zaki called in from the Riyadh airport to say that the Jihad’s suicide commandos had their bomb and their tick ets and Ashmead had had to tell Zaki to come in, to scrub the interdiction.
Even when their Agency turbojet was screaming out of Cypriot airspace toward the Gulf, Slick was saying, booted feet up on the seat across from him as he looked out the window so Ashmead couldn’t see his face, “Maybe they’ll blow those terrs out of the sky—yeah, a nice mid-oceanic jetliner crash. That’s what they’ll do. Who’d ever know? The right parallel, and nobody’ll ever find that jetliner’s black box… clean as a whistle, not even a diplomatic incident.”
But Langley had done zilch, and here they were, in an almost-empty hotel dining room in Abu Dhabi that ought to have been full of fat and happy oil types dealing from a position of superior strength with Western businessmen in impeccably tropical worsteds—six foreigners at a table for seven getting burning looks from the hotel staff, who didn’t quite dare refuse to serve them but wished they could.
Yael Saadia was picking at a hangnail as she said offhandedly: “I wouldn’t put it past them to poison us; anybody in Occidental clothing is responsible for what’s happened, as far as they’re concerned.” They were all dressed like tourists, to make a clean break with their earlier, operational identities, and Yael, a Western-looking woman, had been bearing the brunt of Arab frustration on the streets: the damage reports and warnings in the news were terrifying enough to make Arabs feel about Americans as they had long felt about Jews. “So I’ll taste everything first, and we’ll wait awhile to see what happens.”
Thoreau raised his head and turned his baseball cap around, a sure sign that what he was going to say was the pilot’s final word: “My ass you will, Saadia.” Thoreau and Yael Saadia were clandestine lovers; when he called her by her last name, she cupped her hand in her chin and looked away out the window without saying anything more.
“Speaking of waiting,” Slick said, “who are we waiting for, Rafic?” He sighted-in on the empty chair. “Who was that guy with you in the alley today?”
“That guy,” Jesse said with soft murder in his voice, “blew the scratch for us—he’s the one that yelled Rafic’s name.” Jesse’s lips pulled tight, remembering.
Ashmead’s entire operations team eyed him steadily now, waiting to be briefed.
“Casper the friendly spook,” he told him. “INR,” he told them. “He says he’s got something that might interest us more than what we’re doing. We’ll listen, we’ll be polite, and we’ll get back to him if we like what he’s got to say.”
“Unless he wants to reactivate the time-travel project,” Slick cracked, “he ain’t gonna say nothin’ I wanna hear.”
The team laughed at that—CIA had spent an unholy amount of money trying to determine whether it was operationally feasible to send an agent into the past: it hadn’t been—people and other material things didn’t travel well through spacetime; rumor had it that it had cost lives to find that out.
Zaki, their electronics expert and a physics buff, teased Slick: “What use, to reactivate such a project as Task Force 159?” Every interested party in the Agency had known the name of the supposedly secret time-travel project, a glum commentary on the state of Langley’s internal security measures. “You would then volunteer, perhaps? And we would be rid of you. Ah, my friend, it is a temptation—even though 159 could not send so much as a bullet back through time formerly, perhaps in your case, with God’s help, they will make an exception to the laws of physics. You are, after all, neither so quick as a bullet nor so necessary.”
Again there were chuckles, and a chorus of “Ayes,” as if a vote could propel Slick into the past, and even Ashmead’s deputy joined in good-naturedly, saying that anywhere Zaki went, Slick would gladly follow. For they wanted to laugh, needed to regain their sardonic insouciance, to feel that, even if they’d lost their quarry today, there’d be other days and other targets.
That was all Ashmead wanted from Beck: Beck was going to make up for the boner he’d pulled by showing Ashmead’s team that they were still in demand, that a government of some sort still existed, that somebody, somewhere, thought the sinking ship of state was salvageable. Then Beck could go fuck himself while Ashmead’s Assassins, as his critics had tagged the team, got on with the business of countering terrorists.
Just then Beck came in, tall and charismatic next to the hook-nosed Ethiopian maitre d’, waved and made his way toward them between empty tables.
The operations team twisted in their seats, following Ashmead’s gaze and answering wave.
For a moment there was total silence; no one breathed. Then, like one man, five fists were raised and five thumbs turned down sharply.
As Beck came around to take the empty seat beside Ashmead, Zaki hissed softly; Jesse joined in; Thoreau pulled his cap’s bill down over his eyes and tipped his chair onto its back legs; Yael said in a cutting, drawn-out sotto voce: “Booooo.”
Only Slick applauded, five African-style claps of his hands that sounded like pop-gun reports a hundred yards away.
To give Beck credit, his welcoming grin stayed firmly in place as he shook hands with Ashmead and slipped into his seat: “I see my reputation has preceded me,” he said generally and without a hint of defensiveness; pinned to his jacket collar was a radiation-sensitive film badge. “Good to see you again, Rafic. Sorry I’m late. If you’ve already ordered, that’s fine. I’m here to talk, not eat. Gentlemen and lady, I’m Mark Beck, State’s Intelligence liaison—”
“We know who you are, Casper; what we want to know is why you should continue to exist,” Slick said pleasantly.
Ashmead sprayed his people with a glare to shape them up and everybody sat up straight. “Beck, this is Slick, my deputy; Yael Saadia, my chief of station; Zaki, case officer and ELINT; Jesse, counterinsurgency; Thoreau, COMINT, SIGINT and chauffeur.”
“My pleasure, Slick, everyone,” said Beck, sizing it up as it lay.
“Wish we could say the same. I’ve bled out people for less than you did today. Look, Mister State Department, say your piece and split before we lose our appetites, okay?” For Slick, that was polite: Ashmead had half expected him to say, while you still can.
Ashmead could have intervened, controlled Slick, but he didn’t bother: he was doing this for his people, not Beck. He sat back in his chair and toyed with his fork so that Beck would know he was on his own.
“Right,” Beck said with a sigh, still managing to appear friendly and calm: “Let’s define the objective, then—”
“Let’s,” Slick agreed drily.
“After past wars, the United States rebuilt Germany, even Japan; now we’re going to do it for ourselves.”