Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

Probably the best mathematicians of all time were the ones who’d made up the rules for gambling games, Bell thought. They’d provided just enough illusion that you had a chance to sucker you in. Born inside the human mind was the most dangerous of drugs. That was called “ego,” too.

“So, I start out on the ‘white’ side of the house? Watching currency fluctuations and stuff?” said Jack.

Bell nodded. “Correct. You need to learn the language first.”

“Fair enough.” His father had started off a lot more humbly than this, as a junior accounting manager at Merrill Lynch who’d had to cold-call people. Paying one’s dues was probably bad for the ego but good for the soul. His father had often lectured him on the Virtue of Patience. He’d said that it was a pain in the ass to acquire, even after acquiring it. But the game had rules, even in this place. Especially in this place, Jack realized on reflection. He wondered what happened to people on The Campus who crossed over the line. Probably nothing good.

“BUON VINO,”Dominic observed. “For a government installation, the wine cellar isn’t half bad.” The year on the bottle read 1962, long before he and his brother had been born . . . for that matter, so long ago their mom had just been thinking about Mercy High School, a few blocks from their grandparents’ place on Loch Raven Boulevard in Baltimore . . . toward the end of the last Ice Age, probably. But Baltimore was a hell of a long way from the Seattle they’d grown up in. “How old is this place?” he asked Alexander.

“The property? It goes back to before the Civil War. The house was started in seventeen-something. Burned down and rebuilt in 1882. Government got hold of it just before Nixon was elected. The owner was an old OSS guy, J. Donald Hamilton, worked with Donovan and his crowd. He got a fair price when he sold it, moved out to New Mexico and died there in 1986, I think, aged ninety-four. They say he was a mover and shaker in his day, stuck it out pretty far in World War One, and helped Wild Bill work against the Nazis. There’s a painting of him in the library. Looks like a guy to step aside for. And, yeah, he did know his wines. This one’s from Tuscany.”

“Goes nicely with veal,” Brian said. He’d done the cooking.

“This veal goes well with anything. You didn’t learn that in the Marine Corps,” Alexander observed.

“From Pop. He is a better cook than Mom,” Dominic explained. “You know, it’s an old-country thing. And Grandpop, that son of a bitch, can still do it, too. He’s what, Aldo, eighty-two?”

“Last month,” Brian confirmed. “Funny old guy, travels the whole world to get to Seattle, and then he never leaves the city for sixty years.”

“Same house for the last forty,” Dominic added, “a block from the restaurant.”

“This his recipe for the veal?”

“Bet your bippy, Pete. The family goes back to Florence. Went up there two years when the Med FMF was making a port call in Naples. His cousin has a restaurant just upriver from the Ponte Vecchio. When they found out who I was, they went nuts feeding me. You know, Italians love the Marines.”

“Must be the green suit, Aldo,” Dominic said.

“Maybe I just cut a manly figure, Enzo. Ever think of that?” Captain Caruso demanded.

“Oh, sure,” Special Agent Caruso replied, taking another bite of the Veal Francese. “The next Rocky sits before us.”

“You boys always like this?” Alexander asked.

“Just when we drink,” Dominic replied, and his brother laughed.

“Enzo can’t hold his liquor worth a damn. Now, we Marines, we can do anything.”

“I have to take this from somebody who thinks Miller Lite is really beer?” the FBI Caruso asked the air.

“You know,” Alexander said, “twins are supposed to be alike.”

“Only identical twins. Mom punched out two eggs that month. It had Mom and Dad fooled until we were a year old or so. We’re not at all alike, Pete.” Dominic delivered this pronouncement with a smile shared by his brother.

But Alexander knew better. They only dressed differently – and that would soon be changing.

MOHAMMED TOOKthe first Avianca flight to Mexico City and there he waited for British Airways Flight 242 to London. He felt safe in airports, where everything was anonymous. He had to be careful of the food, since Mexico was a nation of unbelievers, but the first-class lounge protected him from their cultural barbarism, and the many armed police officers ensured that people rather like himself did not crash the party, such as it was. So, he picked a corner seat away from windows and read a book he’d picked up in one of the shops and managed not to be bored to death. He never read the Koran in such a place, of course, nor anything about the Middle East, lest someone ask him a question. No, he had to live his cover “legend” as well as any professional intelligence officer, so that he did not come to an end as abrupt as the Jew Greengold in Rome. Mohammed even used the bathroom facilities carefully, in case someone tried the same trick on him.

He didn’t even make use of his laptop computer, though there was ample opportunity to do so. Better, he judged, to sit still like a lump. In twenty-four hours he’d be back on the European mainland. It hit him that he lived in the air more than anywhere else. He had no home, just a series of safe houses, which were places of dubious reliability. Saudi Arabia was closed to him, and had been for nearly five years. Afghanistan was similarly out-of-bounds. How strange that the only lands where he could feel something close to safe were the Christian countries of Europe, which Muslims had struggled and failed to conquer on more than one occasion. Those nations had a nearly suicidal openness to strangers, and one could disappear in their vastness with only modest skills – hardly any, in fact, if you had money. These people were so self-destructively open, so afraid to offend those who would just as soon see them and their children dead and their entire cultures destroyed. It was a pleasing vision, Mohammed thought, but he didn’t live within dreams. Instead, he worked for them. This struggle would last longer than his lifetime. Sad, perhaps, but true. But it was better to serve a cause than one’s own interests. There were enough of those in the world.

He wondered what his supposed allies from yesterday’s meeting were saying and thinking. They were certainly not true allies. Oh, yes, they shared enemies, but that was not the summation of an alliance. They would – might – facilitate matters, but no more than that. Their men would not assist his men in any real endeavor. Throughout history, mercenaries had never been really effective soldiers. To fight effectively, you had to believe. Only a believer would risk his life, because only a believer had nothing to fear. Not with Allah Himself on his side. What was there to fear, then? Only one thing, he admitted to himself. Failure. Failure was not an option. The obstacles between him and success were things to be dealt with in any way that was convenient. Just things. Not people. Not souls. Mohammed fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. In this sense, at least, Mexico was a civilized country, though he refused to speculate on what the Prophet would have said about tobacco.

“EASIER INa car, isn’t it, Enzo?” Brian teased his brother as they crossed the finish line. The three-mile run wasn’t a big deal for the Marine, but for Dominic, who had just maxed out his PT test for the FBI, it had been a bit of a stretch.

“Look, turkey,” Dominic gasped out, “I just have to run faster than my subjects.”