Three hours later, he was waiting for the sun to set next to the lake, trying to return to the promise of the mission. He feared he was losing focus of what constituted the work of Satan and what was for the greater good of humanity. The woman would be the greater good. The boy was not.
He thought it no different than Rahab in the Bible, a harlot who had protected Israelite spies in Jericho. She’d hidden them, and when the Israelites came to sack the city using the spies’ information, she had been spared by hanging a crimson rope outside her window.
This whore would be doing the same thing. Protecting a spy for the promised land. With that thought, he closed his eyes, waiting on the sun to set.
Two hours later, someone bumped his hood, startling him awake. Under the harsh glare of a streetlight, he saw a couple headed into the park. It was full night now, and the usual hookers were stalking around the greenspace next to the lake.
He left his vehicle and entered the park, surveying the various prostitutes walking about. He saw a black woman with a tube top, tight shorts, and sandals sitting on a bench, her hair in cornrows. She caught him looking her way and smiled. He went to her.
He knew how the game was played. Prostitution wasn’t technically illegal, but solicitation was, meaning the women couldn’t come to you and ask if you “wanted a good time.” You had to go to them.
She was small, about five foot four, which was in his favor. She was also a different race, which would help throw off the investigation. His other victims had been someone he was sexually attracted to, but he had none of that here, and any confusion he could interject on the case would only help.
In his broken Italian, he said, “You out here by yourself?”
She looked him up and down, saw no threat, and said, “Yes.”
He nodded and said, “You want some company?”
Hearing the magic words, she smiled. She hadn’t solicited him, so it was okay. “Sure. What would you like to do?”
He said, “My Italian isn’t that good. Do you speak English?”
She smiled again and, in English, said, “Yes. My Italian is better, but I speak English. You are American?”
He sat down next to her and said, “Yes, I am. Here on business. I have a rental apartment about a mile away. You want to go get some drinks?”
She stood, threw her purse over her shoulder, and said, “Sure. I can do that. What’s your name?”
“You can call me Splinter.”
She said, “My name is—” and he cut her off, saying, “I don’t want to know.”
He walked her to the car, making small talk. She was from Senegal and had been in Italy for close to two years. She lived with a group of women, but had no pimp. She was here illegally, but wanted to get a work permit to let her quit this life. Endless chitchat, making Garrett sad.
He was convinced he was doing her a favor. She would never leave this purgatory, and he was giving her a second chance for the afterlife. She would be a brick in the wall of the second coming. Like Rahab, it was probably the greatest thing she could ever aspire to.
He drove east, winding through the neighborhoods, eventually passing the park next to his rental complex. He stopped his car in the shadows of the west end of the building, leading her through the darkness to a side door away from the security cameras and streetlamps from the primary entrance. When they continued in the darkness instead of moving to the light of the main entrance, she became suspicious, saying, “Why aren’t we going in the front?”
He said, “My apartment is right above us. It’s just quicker.”
She nodded and he opened the door to a stairwell with a flourish of his hand. She entered and they went up two floors, then exited into a hallway. He led her forward, reaching the apartment door.
He punched in the code to the door, heard it unlock, then swung it wide for her. She smiled again and entered.
He followed behind, pulling a red cord out of his jacket pocket, each end having a piece of wood threaded through to make it easier to use.
Chapter 26
I checked my watch for probably the fortieth time, seeing it was now 11:30 a.m. Almost showtime. I was sitting on a bench in Lidenhof Park, right smack-dab in the center of Zurich’s old town, this time all by myself. I got on the radio and conducted a comms check with all of my bumper positions, making sure they were prepared to execute, and each one acknowledged they were set and ready to go. That was small comfort, because this operation was running the ragged edge of my team’s capability.
The mission had changed, and we were nowhere near the size needed for the new scope, but after the Taskforce call last night, everything had ratcheted up.
It had been George Wolffe on the phone, and the situation had morphed drastically from me being on a boondoggle with the Israelis, out in the wind on my own. A U.S. diplomat had been executed in Italy, with the same type of note the Israelis had found on their dead Ramsad crammed in her mouth. Keta’ib Hezbollah had claimed credit, and the president of the United States was now out for blood. Which was good for me, but bad given the size of my team.
I’d told Wolffe my plan about the mugging to get the thumb drive, then the follow-on hit in Bahrain, and, for the first time in my Taskforce career, he had stunned me. Instead of the usual mealy-mouthed Oversight Council pushback whenever I wanted to do something, he took it to the next level, telling me to drop the mugging idea and go with a full-on takedown. He wanted me to extract the target from the middle of Zurich—a metropolitan city—in broad daylight, then get him on the Rock Star bird and evacuate him to Aviano Air Base in Italy, a U.S.-controlled facility where Taskforce interrogators would be standing by.
The idea held merit, because clearly this guy knew a lot of what was going on, so when he’d asked me if I could accomplish the mission, of course I’d said yes. After all of my bitching on other missions about being held back because the Oversight Council were a bunch of cowards, there was no way I was going to say no. But it was going to be a little tight.
I had Shoshana as the trigger at the apartment, but we were going to rely on his habitual pattern from there. Knuckles would pick him up at the hotel, leaving Brett, Aaron, and me to take him down. Jennifer would be up the street with a Land Rover for exfil. Once the action had occurred, and we’d loaded him up, Shoshana would use the other Land Rover to evacuate the team. Easy day, except it left nothing for contingencies. If it went the way we planned, there would be no problem, but like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
At 11:43, Shoshana came on the net, “Professor is on the move. Same direction as yesterday.”
I said, “Roger. Knuckles, that means about fifteen minutes until he breaks the door of the Kindli hotel.”
He said, “Roger all. Standing by.”
Shoshana came back on and said, “He’s got his laptop with him this time.”
Shit. While we intended to take this guy off the board, the original plan was still in play. We’d get the thumb drive information and still have the option of executing my original mission, if that’s what the Oversight Council thought was best. That plan required us to take the Professor before he had a chance to transmit the linkup information to the mysterious Bosniak, allowing the Taskforce to set up their own trap. If he had the laptop, he had the ability to extract the message and resend in one trip. But maybe he had it just to surf porn after he had the message.