“Out of my league.” DiCiccio shook his head. He chewed on his lower lip. He was done talking, I could see that. He said, “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be running a coffee shop on Bloom Straat, would I?”
Actually, I believed him. And even if I hadn’t, a knock on the office door saved him from explaining himself any further. A crack opened in the door, and I heard my waitress say, “Arman, I’ve got an order here for three ounces of Moonshine Dominator. I can’t find it on the shelves.”
“Hold on,” DiCiccio called to the door. Then he looked me up and down. “Well, business calls, Mr. Green.”
“You’ve been a big help,” I said quietly.
DiCiccio nodded. He reached for the remote and lowered the volume on the soccer game. He rose to his feet and extended his hand. “It’s been a pleasure. Don’t leave town until we’ve had dinner.”
“I’ll try,” I said, taking his hand. I pumped it once. I was a nice invitation, but we both knew I was the last person on earth Arman DiCiccio wanted to have dinner with just now. “Keep your head down.”
“You, too. Good luck, Mr. Green.” He pointed to the back door. I scooped up my backpack and let myself out. A cobbled alley led me back to Warmoesstraat Boulevard and tourists trying to look discreet as they prowled among Amsterdam’s many temptations.
I turned south and settled my pack on my shoulder. Now I had to throw Atash Morshed’s name into the National Security Agency’s hopper and hope that their computers could find a link with that one special name in Tehran; they’d know by the amount of money that was being funneled through this special person’s account. The rest was up to me.
The safe house the MEK had procured for me was on Bergstraat, but I never intended to use it. Instead, I’d paid cash for an upper-floor room in the Golden Dutch Hotel on Singel. It was a twenty-minute walk from Arman DiCiccio’s café, and I spent most of that time checking my tail. There were bicycles by the hundreds on the street, and this added to my dilemma.
It’s hard not to love Amsterdam. They say it began as a medieval fishing village. Thankfully, the canals are still there to remind you, and the extraordinary quality of a floating city prevails. These days it still holds on to a good amount of the seventeenth-century magic of its heyday, and the buildings that crowd the canals look as ancient and proud as the stone they were built from.
The Golden Dutch Hotel was one of these buildings, though half of its patrons were full-time residents. I used the back stairs instead of the lift and climbed to the fifth floor. A musty scent followed me to room 523, and I used my key to let myself in. I went straight to the window. I studied the street, then the Singel canal. The banks were cluttered with colorful houseboats, and a floating market was bursting with the colors of what looked like a million flowers.
I sat on the bed and used the iPhone to activate the secure linkup to route my call through the CIA’s encrypted connection. I sent a conference request to General Tom Rutledge. The text reply came back immediately: confirmed. Good, I thought. He was making the mission his top priority, and I guess that only made sense.
The conference-call program gave a beep prompt, and I oriented the iPhone toward me. Rutledge’s face appeared on the screen. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead and a white towel was draped over his shoulders. The collar of his gray U.S. Army T-shirt was ringed with perspiration. It was 1416 hours here in Amsterdam. With the six-hour time difference, I must have caught him in the middle of his morning racquetball game.
He looked at me and said, “Things are well?” He would never use my name, and I would never use his. No matter how secure the line was supposed to be, you didn’t use names.
“Smooth as silk.”
Tom nodded. This was his way of acknowledging the hit against Reza Mahvi. Even though the video of our call was highly encrypted, a man in Tom’s position couldn’t afford to implicate himself on a sanctioned assassination. I waited. He wiped his face with a corner of the towel. “Lay it on me.”
“I’ve got a lead here in Amsterdam. Look for the info in five. I need our friends at Fort Meade”—in other words, the NSA—“to give it an Alpha Sigma Nova priority. My instructions will be in the e-mail.”
“Done,” he answered. “What’s the terrain like?” By this he meant the danger level.
“Pretty flat right now. But I’m on for tea in the afternoon.” This confirmed my meeting with the MEK’s leadership in two hours. “I’m going on a walkabout after this call.”
“Good. Keep me posted. Anything else?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then I’m out.” The call disconnected and the screen went blank.
I composed the e-mail and forwarded the information on Atash Morshed. The NSA had decades of practice tunneling into banking operations, but even their supercomputers would take time. I’d check on their progress later.
I didn’t want to talk to Deputy Director of Operations Otto Wiseman, so I sent him a voice text. Three words: See Tom Run. In other words, “Talk to General Tom Rutledge. He’ll give you an update.”
Last but not least, I sent a text to Roger Anderson, my longtime contact here in Holland. It read: On track. Drinks at ten. This confirmed our rendezvous at a dive bar we both knew called Tracks at 1800, two hours earlier than my message suggested. His reply was instantaneous: With bells on.
After closing the communication links and the associated apps, I put my Jerry Garcia cap back on, hitched my pack over my shoulder, and went outside for a recon of the area. I strolled in what seemed an aimless pattern along the canals and made my way toward the center of Amsterdam. I did a couple of tourist things. I bought coffee from one street vendor and a braut from another. But it was all for show. I was on the prowl, vigilant, wary, suspicious of even the most ordinary of details. So I spotted the two guys following me fairly quickly.
They were good. Not great, but good. Did that make them MEK or DDO or someone else? I couldn’t tell.
I ducked into a pub and headed to the men’s room with my backpack. I swapped my hoodie for a blue golf jacket, my denim cap for a khaki hat with a floppy brim, and the mirrored sunglasses for tortoise-shell wraparounds. I stared at myself in the mirror. It was a simple but effective change, from stoner to tourist.
I used the back door and walked halfway down the alley. I entered a second pub via the kitchen, gave a nod to a startled chef, and ordered a glass of Rauchbier from the bar. I carried it out to an empty table on the outdoor patio and slouched in a chair. I sipped the beer, toyed with my iPhone, and watched the people coming my way.
The two men strolled on the adjacent sidewalk. They had glossy black hair, swarthy complexions, and trim beards; definitely Middle Eastern, but Amsterdam was replete with them. Their gazes swept the patio and passed over me. One of them was talking on a cell phone as they passed by.
He was speaking Persian. Mine was still a little rusty, but I understood him when he said, “We’ve lost him…”
CHAPTER 6
I watched the two men halt at the entrance to the pub’s patio.
The one with the cell phone was doing more listening than talking now, which meant that someone was not real happy. The questions I was asking myself were pretty straightforward. Who did these guys work for? And who was giving them hell right now on the other end of the phone?
I’d been tag-teaming with a couple of Wiseman’s Amsterdam agents since I’d arrived, and they were waiting for my call in the lobby of the Amsterdam Hilton. So I felt relatively confident in assuming that these two were not more of Wiseman’s men; and that if they were, then the deputy director of operations was not playing it straight with me.