Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

“Okay, Jim, you’re on loud and clear, go ahead please.”

“A week ago you sent out a confidential e-mail request to all coalition intelligence services with offices in DC embassies asking for any updates they came across on Ibrahim Zarzi, right?”

“I did. I got nothing out of it. But frankly, I expected nothing out of it, I did it to cover my ass in case later anyone said, ‘Why didn’t you blah blah.’”

“Understood. But of course Mossad got it from a dozen or so sources.”

“They’re pretty good, huh?”

“Not since the hot days of the Cold War and the classic KGB operators have I seen guys so good.”

“Cool.”

“You probably knew that. But here’s what you don’t know. The Israelis have a guy at the Four Seasons.”

“Wow.”

“He’s contract, probably would work for anybody, but he’s real good too, freelancer, keeps tabs on diplomatic guests whose policies might have a bearing on Israel.”

“Got it.”

“He told them, they told me, and now I’m telling you something that may or may not have some significance.”

“We’re listening.”

“A week or so ago, Zarzi was in a very strange mood. This is a cosmopolitan man, mind you, with the tastes of a Saudi prince and the morals of an alley cat.”

“We’re aware of that.”

“But he does this very odd thing. He offers a servant a choice between two watches. As a gift. Never done that before, never done that since, not known for that, a parsimonious man who tips the minimum and basically treats staff like cattle.”

Nick looked around at the people in the room.

“These two watches were both expensive. But one was really expensive. It was one of these custom jobs, a Paul Berger-Paul makes twelve or so a year, the big richies love them, it takes a fifteen-year wait to get one, that sort of thing, and it doesn’t keep time any better than a Timex, maybe even worse. It probably costs a hundred thousand or so. Of course the kid chose the wrong one, even if it was a nice watch, but the larger issue is: what the fuck?”

“Yeah,” said Nick, “what the fuck?”

“Maybe it fits into a pattern, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a tell on his psychology of the moment. But it’s so out of character for this actor. That’s all. Thought you should know.”

“And you’re sure on this?”

“I am. My guy is one hundred percent with me. He does me, I do him, you know.”

“I got you. Thanks, Jim.”

He put the phone down, faced a dozen bewildered faces.

“So?”

Nobody said a thing.

Then, of course, Swagger: “A guy like him only gets rid of wordly treasure when he’s preparing to die. No other reason.”

“Well, then wouldn’t he dump it all?” said Nick. “Not just a selective, tiny percentage?”

“He knows if he did that, it would be noticed. This is ‘symbolic,’ or some crap that an egghead psycho nutcase like him would take as ‘symbolic.’ He’s the kind of asshole who needs symbols.”

“It’s a reach,” said Nick. “There’s nothing solid there.”

“He’s dumping his shit because he’s getting ready to blow himself up. And the president and the cabinet and the head of the CIA and all those generals, all of them, along with him. Tonight’s the night, this is the hour, and the minute is very close.”

“Impossible,” said Susan. “Not merely because of the exhaustive psychological penetration we’ve put him through, but also because White House security is extraordinary and there’s no way at all he can get an explosive beyond it. Even if he’s swallowed it or, excuse me, had it anally implanted, he will be examined and x-rayed, he agreed to that. He can’t be cleaner.”

“Then why’s he passing off watches to peons?” asked Bob. “It ain’t a bit like him.”

“Possibly he had an erectile dysfunction,” said Susan, “and he couldn’t find his Viagra and he was really depressed at his failure and in that vulnerable mood he uncharacteristically gave something of value to a servant. Been known to happen.”

“It’s not really actionable, Nick,” said Chandler. “Provocative, as Mr. Swagger says, but not actionable. I’d hate to take it to the White House.”

Nick glanced at his watch. “Practically speaking, there isn’t time to take it to the White House. They’re committed to this event, it’s already starting, we’d only get the duty officer and it would never reach the president. Anyhow, Chandler, pick an office and make the call with our recommendation that the event be canceled. Just so we’re on the record.”

“Yes, sir,” said Chandler, trundling off.

“Now what?” Nick said.

“Well, well, well,” said Susan.

“What?”

She pointed to one of the many monitors in the room; this was a security feed from the White House, just beyond the 15th Street entry, where all guests were wanded, prodded, poked, sniffed, and inappropriately touched to make sure they weren’t carrying any fizzing, bowling-ball-like cordite bombs.

“It’s the man himself. Can you rewind and show the last ten seconds?” she asked. “Number 5, the center screen. Go back to 1745 or something.”

Nick said, “Someone young, make it happen.”

A couple of junior agents scurried off, and in seconds the images on monitor number 5 began to run backward until they reached 1745, at which point they froze, showing a blur, then lurched forward.

The crew in the room watched as an obedient Ibrahim Zarzi allowed himself to be probed, etc., etc.

“There. Stop,” she cried, and the image froze.

It caught Zarzi with his hands up, his elegant suit momentarily drooping sloppily from the awkwardness of the position. His hands above his head as someone blurrily waved the metal-seeking wand across his body, his sleeves fallen back under the power of gravity. The angle, from slightly behind him, was such that his watch was displayed.

“Well, unless I miss my guess, that’s no fifteen-hundred-dollar Cartier, much less a Berger hundred-thousand-dollar model. It looks more like something you’d pick up in a Seven-Eleven,” she said, as if someone as elegant as Susan, much less Zarzi, had ever been in a 7-Eleven.

“Some kind of big, ugly plastic junk,” said Nick. “Again, unlike him.”

“Very unlike him,” she said.

“If he’s getting ready to do something nuts, the way his mind works, he wouldn’t wear a good watch,” said Bob.

“Very good catch, Ms. Okada. But…”

“But so what, you’re saying? Maybe Swagger is right. It’s an indicator.”

“Nick,” said ever-rational Starling, back from her call to the White House, “it is another indicator. But it sure as hell isn’t actionable. This is very touchy stuff, seeing as he’s an official State Department guest, under their protection.”

“I don’t see how I can do anything on that,” said Nick. “Let’s note it, and it goes into the CIA file, just in case this turns out real bad.”

The monitor reverted to real time, and it now displayed the actual time, 1814.12 and emptiness at the security point. Other monitors showed something else: all the heads and swells were gathered in the Rose Garden in the warm late summer evening, and in a few minutes the president would come to the podium, make a few kissy-kissy comments, call Ibrahim Zarzi to the podium and present him with the Freedom Medal as a ringing endorsement of his commitment to America, to democracy, to the joint future of their countries, to the friendship of Islam and the West, to a bright and bloodless tomorrow. Then it was over. A few minutes and it was over.

Nick thought: It is not going to happen. It is too fantastic. There is nothing he can do.

And then he thought: That’s what everybody said on 9/10 as well. They are cunning assholes. They are not smart, but they figured out how to destroy a nation’s confidence and plunge the world into extended decades of darkness with $19 worth of X-acto knives.