Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

"That doesn't explain how Dar got tapped for a suicide run on the tube."

"No, it doesn't, but it doesn't much matter, does it? He did, he's dead, there you go."

"That would have put him in Saudi a year ago."

"About eighteen months ago."

"So something happened in Saudi in the last eighteen months to turn a HUM veteran into a suicide bomber."

"Suicide arsonist," Cheng corrected. "Maybe there's a manpower shortage?"

"Not in Saudi there isn't. They've got a surfeit of eager young men willing to blow themselves sky-high in the name of Allah."

"That's a rather broad brush you're using there, Paul."

Crocker glared at nothing in particular. "We both know who the enemy is here, Angela, and blaming HUM-AA or al-Qaeda or the Islamic Society of North America is only part of the bloody tree, not the roots. The Saudi government has spent four decades fomenting and funding Wahhabist extremism. They're not our allies, they've never been our allies, and all declarations to the contrary, they never will be our allies. It took al-Qaeda blowing up the foreign workers' housing complexes in Riyadh before the Saudi government took substantive action, and then they arrested, what, twenty people?"

"Twenty-one."

"And promptly denied us the opportunity to interrogate any of them by rushing them off for public execution. They didn't want uncomfortable questions asked, anything that might point a finger back at the Palace. The Saudis were covering their asses."

"You're in a mood," Cheng observed.

"I'm always in a mood."

"And here I was about to blame it on the heat."

"Blame it on whatever you like, it goes back to the same problem. Until Saudi Arabia changes its policies, we reap the result of institutionalized hatred."

"You ought to run for office," Cheng said.

"You know that the belief of Islam spreading through the sword is a myth, don't you?" Crocker asked suddenly. "Not many people do, they believe the propaganda-Christian propaganda, a thousand years old. Islam is not a religion of violence, despite certain individuals and organizations doing their damnedest to paint it as such."

"Wahhabism isn't Islam."

"That's my point entirely, thank you."

"Really pisses you off, doesn't it?"

"On the scale of my daily outrage, it ranks an eleven," Crocker confirmed.

They continued walking, now past the Albert Memorial, turning south in the direction of Rotten Row.

"I heard the folks at Box found another one of the safehouses," Cheng said. "I assume Kinney has been by to rub your face in it, or if he hasn't, he soon will be."

"I won't ask how you know that."

Cheng tapped the side of her nose. "About the safehouse, you mean? I know what C had for breakfast this morning, too."

"Weetabix, to keep him regular, I'm sure." Crocker scowled. He hadn't known about Box finding another safehouse, and he didn't much relish the inevitable visit from Kinney, especially given the events of Tuesday morning.

They found a bench, took it, and Crocker broke out his pack once more, lit another cigarette.

"We're going to hit back," Crocker said after a moment.

"That's a given, isn't it? Unless the rules have suddenly changed."

"No, the same rules still apply."

"You sound uncharacteristically reluctant."

He sighed out a cloud of smoke. "I don't object to retaliatory action. I object to committing to retaliatory action with undue haste. It wasn't three hours after the strikes that C was ready to order me to send the Minders on a bloodletting."

"This is the same C who thinks the Special Operations Directorate is a waste of time, money, and a danger to the Security of the Free World?"

"That's the one."

"Changed his mind right quick when he wanted to show the PM that you boys can kick some ass, huh? Sounds like you'll be sending Minders to Pakistan."

Crocker opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again as a couple passed in front of the bench, holding hands. Cheng waited, tilting her head back against the seat, catching sunlight on her face as she watched the lovers kiss.

"If it is HUM that was behind this," Crocker resumed. "Those eighteen months leave that open to question."

"HUM and HUM-AA are two different groups, don't forget that. Same origins, different agendas."

"In which case it's Minders to Saudi."

Cheng chuckled. "Like that will ever happen."

"They've got their knickers in a twist, it might just get authorization."

"No, it won't. Covert action in Saudi? You'll never get that kind of directive, even if your masters decided it was warranted. They'd go to the MOD for SAS instead, wouldn't they?"

Crocker grunted the concession. "Still presuming your intel is correct, that Dar was HUM-AA. Just as possible he fell in with another organization."

"My intel is correct."

Neither of them spoke for a time, and Crocker finished his cigarette and flicked it away much as he had the first.

"You'll let me know if anything else crops up?" he asked.

"Hey, we're in it with you," Cheng replied. "There's more than a couple of folks Stateside saying, 'Hey, that could've been us.'?"

"New York."

"New York, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., the list goes on and on." She got to her feet, waiting for Crocker to follow suit. "I'll see if we can't find out exactly what Dar was doing in Saudi."

"I'd appreciate it."

She smiled, began to turn, then stopped, struck by a memory. From her coat pocket, she removed a gift-wrapped package of blue paper with a crushed pink ribbon, which she offered to Crocker.

"It was your youngest's birthday this week, wasn't it? Ariel?"

"She turned eleven."

"Tell her I said happy birthday."

"I shall."

He took the package, waited for her to turn away. Cheng didn't move. "You want to keep us in the loop on this, Paul."

"That's been my intention."

"All the way, that's what I'm saying."

It took him a moment to see it. "What was the final tally?"

"Eighteen," Cheng said, and she turned away, beginning her walk back to Grosvenor Square and the American Embassy. "Most of them were college kids."

Crocker watched her go before slipping the gift into his pocket and making his own way out of the park, thinking of the eighteen Americans and the twenty-three French and the seven Germans and all the rest who had been murdered in the tunnels of the Underground. • He was back at Vauxhall Cross at eighteen past one, passing through the security first at the gate, then in the lobby, and then at the elevators, and at each point he showed his pass to the guards, then swiped it through the reader. He stopped on the fourth floor, ducking into Rayburn's office in the hopes of finding him, and instead got D-Int's PA, a perpetually grumpy young man named Hollister, who informed him that Director Intelligence was presenting to the JIC, and would D-Ops like to leave a message.

"Yes," Crocker snapped. "Ask him why the CIA knows more about what Box is doing at any bloody given moment than we do."

Then he went to his office, to find Kate waiting for him, and before he'd even come through the door she was up and coming around from behind her desk to intercept him.

"Bloody Box," Crocker said.

Kate cringed and motioned toward the inner office, where the door was ajar, and Crocker groaned inwardly.

"How long has he been waiting?" he asked.

"Twenty minutes."

"I assume you cleared my desk."

Kate looked indignant and didn't bother to respond.

"Coffee," Crocker told her, and then pushed his door open the rest of the way, to see David Kinney seated in one of the chairs facing his desk. He paused again, taking a breath, reminding himself that Kinney was good at his job. Kinney's people were good at theirs.

But that didn't change the fact that Crocker hated the man's living guts, and the feeling was mutual, and their encounters were always exercises in barely restrained civility. Tuesday had only made matters worse.