Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

“Did he talk about anything? The news on TV or in the papers?”

“He watched the news on TV. But he didn’t speak a word. I said that it was appalling, all that killing, but all he did was grunt. He can be the most heartless chap, though he’s always nice to me. We’ve still not had a cross word,” she told them, caressing both with her blue eyes.

It was hard for the cops to regard her with professionalism. She had the looks of a fashion model, though at five foot one she was too short for it. There was also a sweetness about her that must have stood her in good stead. But inside was a heart of pure ice. It was sad, but not really their concern.

“Did he make any telephone calls?”

She shook her head. “None at all. He didn’t bring his mobile phone this weekend. He told me that he was all mine and I wouldn’t have to share him with anyone else this weekend. That was a first. Other than that, it was the usual.” She thought of something else: “He does bathe more now. I had him shower both days, and he didn’t even complain. Well, I helped. I went into the shower with him.” She gave them a coquettish smile. That pretty much ended the interview.

“Thank you, Miss Davis. As always, you’ve been very helpful.”

“Just doing my bit. You think he’s a terrorist or something?” she had to ask.

“No. If you were in any danger, we’d give you fair warning.”

Mandy reached into her Louis Vuitton purse and pulled out a knife with a five-inch blade. It wasn’t legal for her to carry such a thing concealed, but in her line of work she needed one sure friend to accompany her, and the detectives understood. She probably knew how to make proper use of it, they surmised. “I can look after myself,” she assured them both. “But Uda isn’t like that. He’s actually rather a gentle man. That’s one thing you get to know in my business, reading men. Unless he’s a bloody fine actor, he’s not a dangerous sort. He plays with money, not guns.”

Both cops took that pronouncement seriously. She was right – if there was anything a hooker was good at, it was reading men. Those who couldn’t often died before reaching twenty.

After Mandy took a cab home, the two Special Branch detectives wrote up what she’d told them, and then e-mailed it to Thames House, where it became another entry in the Security Service files on the young Arab.

BRIAN ANDDominic arrived at The Campus at 8:00 A.M. on the dot. Their newly issued security passes allowed them to take the elevator up to the top floor, where they sat and drank coffee for half an hour until Gerry Hendley showed up. Both of the twins sprang to attention, especially Brian.

“Good morning,” the former senator said on his way past, then he stopped. “You want to talk to Sam Granger first, I think. Rick Pasternak will be here at around nine-fifteen. Sam should be in any time now. I have to see to my desk right now, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Brian assured him. What the hell, the coffee wasn’t bad.

Granger came out of the elevator just two minutes later. “Hey, guys. Follow me.” And they did.

Granger’s office was not as large as Hendley’s, but it wasn’t a trainee’s cubbyhole, either. He pointed to the two visitors’ chairs and hung up his coat.

“How soon will you be ready for an assignment?”

“How does today grab you?” Dominic asked in reply.

Granger smiled at the reply, but overly eager people could worry him. On the other hand, three days before . . . maybe eagerness was not so bad a thing after all.

“Is there a plan?” Brian asked.

“Yeah. We worked on it over the weekend.” Granger started with the operational concept: reconnaissance by fire.

“Makes sense,” Brian observed. “Where do we do it?”

“On the street, probably. I’m not going to tell you how to perform a mission. I will tell you what we want done. How you do it is going to be up to you. Now, for your first target we have a good crib sheet on his location and habits. It will just be a matter of identifying the right target and deciding how to do the job.”

Do the job, Dominic thought. Like something from The Godfather.

“Who is he and why?”

“His name is Uda bin Sali, he’s twenty-six, he lives in London.”

The twins exchanged amused looks. “I should have known,” Dominic said. “Jack told us about him. He’s the money puke who likes hookers right?”

Granger opened the manila file he’d picked up on the way in and handed it across. “Photos of Sali and his two girlfriends. Location and photos of his house in London. Here’s one of him in his car.”

“Aston Martin,” Dominic observed. “Nice wheels.”

“He works in the financial district, has an office at the Lloyd’s insurance building.” More photos. “One complication. He usually has a tail. The Security Service – MI5 – keeps an eye on him, but the troop they have assigned seems to be a rookie, and there’s only one. So, when you make your hit, keep that in mind.”

“Not using a gun, are we?” Brian asked.

“No, we have something better. No noise, nice and covert. You’ll see when Rick Pasternak gets here. No firearms for this mission. European countries don’t like guns much, and hand-to-hand is too dangerous. The idea is that it looks like he just had a heart attack.”

“Residue?” Dominic asked.

“You can ask Rick about that. He’ll give you chapter and verse.”

“What are we using to deliver the drug?”

“One of these.” Granger opened his desk drawer and took out the “safe” blue pen. He handed it across and told them how it worked.

“Sweet,” Brian observed. “Just stab him in the ass, like?”

“Exactly right. It transfers seven milligrams of the drug – it’s called succinylcholine – and that pretty much takes care of business. The subject collapses, is brain-dead in a few minutes, and all-the-way dead in less than ten.”

“What about medical attention? What if there’s an ambulance just across the street?”

“Rick says it won’t matter unless he’s in an operating room with doctors standing right at his side.”

“Fair enough.” Brian picked up the photo of their first target, looking at it, but really seeing young David Prentiss. “Tough luck, buddy.”

“I SEEour friend had a nice weekend,” Jack was saying to his computer. This day’s report included a photo of a Miss Mandy Davis, along with a transcript of her interview with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. “She’s a looker.”

“Not cheap, either,” Wills observed from his workstation.

“How much longer has Sali got?” Jack asked him.

“Jack, it’s better not to speculate on that,” Wills warned.

“Because the two hitters – hell, Tony, they’re cousins of mine.”

“I do not know much about that, and I do not want to find out. The less we know, the less problems we can have. Period,” he emphasized.

“You say so, man,” Jack responded. “But whatever sympathy I might have had for this prick died when he started cheerleading and funding people with guns. There are lines you can’t cross.”

“Yeah, Jack, there are. Be careful that you don’t step too far yourself.”

Jack Ryan, Jr., thought about that for a second. Did he want to be an assassin? Probably not, but there were people who needed killing, and Uda bin Sali had crossed over into that category. If his cousins were going to take him down, they were just doing the Lord’s work – or his country’s work, which, to the way he’d been brought up, was pretty much the same thing.

“THAT FAST,Doc?” Dominic asked.

Pasternak nodded. “That fast.”

“That reliable?” Brian inquired next.