Legends

Presiding over the formal postmortem in the DDO’s seventh floor bailiwick at Langley, Crystal Quest made no effort to tame the shrew in her. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, she seethed. The adults pretending to be FBI agents in the field behind the hangar had been spotted by a child—by a child!—before the raid was even underway. Daoud had walked into a hail of bullets so as not to be taken alive. Lincoln Dittmann’s legend was blown when he saved Kiick’s life. As an added extra bonus, the FBI clowns under Felix Kiick’s command had gunned down a juvenile armed with a plastic pistol. Holy Christ, it hadn’t even been loaded with water. Leroy Streeter Jr., who would get a life sentence for attempting to blow up a square mile of Wall Street, knew precious little about the al-Qa’ida cells and less about the Saudi who was organizing them; Streeter’s expertise was limited to a small group of nutty white supremacists in Texas that had already been infiltrated by so many state and Federal agents half the group’s dues came from the government. To add humiliation to embarrassment, any hope of nabbing the Saudi had evaporated the night before when the cretins from the Argentine State Intelligence had bungled the raid on Boa Vista. Talk about stealth, they had headed into the Brazilian mato graso in half a dozen giant army helicopters flying at treetop level with their running lights on, for God’s sake, and kicked up such a storm of sand when they touched down at the training camp that half the fedayeen managed to slip away in the confusion. Naturally the Saudi who had been presiding over the meeting in the low-roofed building was nowhere to be found when the SIDE agents, backed up by a handful of the Company’s paramilitary people who were currently hunting for new jobs, burst through the door. So what did the raid net? I’ll tell you what it netted. Are you ready for this, gentlemen and ladies? It netted two jokers from Hamas, two more from Hezbollah, seven from Egypt’s Islamic Brotherhood, a drunk Irishman from the IRA and two young females from the Basque ETA who listed fashion model under profession when they were interrogated. Fashion models my ass! One of them was so flat chested she put padding in her brassiere to break even, for Christ’s sake. No shit, we could have snared twice as many terrorists using fly paper tacked to the rafters of any bar on the main drag of Foz do Iguaçú.

Quest appeared to come up for air. In the several seconds of silence, Lincoln was able to get a word in. Well, he said, we did pin down the identity of the Saudi.

The speculation about the chronic kidney failure had been the starting point. On the theory that Leroy Streeter’s offhand remark about the Saudi’s wealth (“Thanks to Allah and his late father, he is very rich”) would suggest he’d been diagnosed and treated by an expensive private physician, Riyadh intelligence authorities had combed the clinics frequented by the royal family and affluent members of the business community. If they came up with anything, they kept it to themselves. Confronted with the Saudi foot dragging, the American secretary of state had been persuaded to take the matter up with his Saudi counterpart. Within days the intelligence authorities in Riyadh had pouched a thick dossier to Langley filled with hundreds of photographs and associated biographical information. Lincoln had sorted through the photos in the conference room next to the DDO’s office, with Quest peering anxiously over his shoulder. He came across several that gave him pause. No, no, that’s not him, he would finally say, our Saudi had incredibly intense eyes that seemed to look into you rather than at you. Going through the pouch a second time, Lincoln had used a magnifying glass to study the group photographs. Suddenly he had leaned over the table to get a closer look at one man.

I think maybe—

You think maybe what, for Christsake?

Maybe this is our Saudi. Yes, there’s no doubt about it. Look at those goddamn eyes.