Nelson Demille - The Lion's Game

I sat at my desk. In reality, there was almost no chance that my photo in the papers, or even on television, was going to draw Khalil out, or that I would become his target. Unless I got too close to him.

Kate sat opposite me and began flipping through the paperwork on her desk. "My God, there are tons of stuff here."

"Most of it is garbage."

I scanned the New York Times, looking for the story of the murder of the American banker in Frankfurt. Finally, I found a small AP piece that gave only the barest details and made no mention of any Asad Khalil connection.

I assumed that the various authorities didn't want to help create confusion amongst the American citizenry and law enforcement people, who were looking for Khalil here.

I gave the newspaper to Kate, who read the article. She said, "They must be having some doubts about this." She added, "And they don't want to play into the hands of Libyan Intelligence, if that's what this murder is about."

"Right." Most of the homicides I've dealt with were committed by idiots. The international intelligence game is played by people who are so smart that they act like idiots. People like Ted Nash and his opponents. Their brilliant schemes get so convoluted that half of them must wake up every morning trying to remember whose side they're on that week and what lie was the truth disguised as a lie disguised as the truth. No wonder Nash didn't say much-he used most of his mental energy trying to resolve conflicting reality. My motto is-Keep it simple, stupid.

Anyway, Kate reached for the telephone and said, "We need to call Jack."

"It's six hours earlier in Frankfurt. He's asleep."

"It's six hours later. He'll be in the field office."

"Whatever. Let him call us."

She hesitated, then put down the receiver.

We both read the headline stories in the newspapers, commenting to each other about how the media didn't have to be manipulated-they managed to get most of the prepackaged news wrong anyway. Only the Times, to give the Gray Lady her due, got most of it right. But, as with my files, the important and interesting stuff was missing.

There were photos of Khalil again in all the newspapers, and a few doctored shots had him wearing glasses, a beard, a mustache, and grayish hair parted differently. This, of course, was supposed to alert the public to the possibility that the fugitive had changed his appearance. What it accomplished, however, was to make the public suspicious of innocent people with glasses, mustaches, and beards. Also, as a cop, I knew that the thinnest of disguises were usually effective, and even I might not be able to spot this guy in a crowd if he was smiling and wearing a mustache.

I perused the articles to see if anyone had taken my suggestions about making public the theory that Mrs. Khalil and Mr. Gadhafi were more than friends. But I didn't see any hint of that.

Despite my motto of keeping it simple, there are times when psychological warfare is good stuff, but underused by the military and by law enforcement-except when the cops question a suspect and use the old "good cop/bad cop" routine. In any case, you have to plant seeds of doubt and deception through the media, and hope the fugitive reads it and believes it, and that the good guys remember that it's bullshit.

On that subject, I was wondering if Mr. Khalil was reading about himself and seeing himself on TV. I tried to picture him somewhere, holed up in a cheap rooming house in an Arab neighborhood, eating canned goat meat, watching daytime TV, and reading the newspapers. But I couldn't picture that. I pictured him, instead, nattily dressed in his suit, out there in public, working on fucking us again.

If this case had a name, it would be called "The Case of the Missing Information." Some of the stuff missing in the news was missing because they didn't know it. But what was also missing was stuff they should have known or concluded. The most glaring thing missing was any reference to April 15, 1986. Some hotshot reporter with half a brain, or half a memory, or a modem, should have made this connection. Even newspaper reporters weren't that stupid, so I had to figure that the news was being managed a little. The press will cooperate with the Feds for a few days or a week, if they can be convinced that national security is at stake. On the other hand, maybe I was reading too much into what I wasn't reading. I asked Kate, "Why didn't any of these stories mention the anniversary date of the Libyan raid?"

She looked up from her desk and replied, "I guess someone asked them not to. It's not a good idea to give the other side the public relations it wants. They make a big deal of anniversary dates, but if we ignore it, they get frustrated."

Sounded good to me. There were a lot of considerations regarding an event of this magnitude. The bad actors were putting on a tragedy, but we weren't going to give them free advertising.

Anyway, there wasn't much new in the news, so I accessed my voice mail as Kate was now doing. I should have used the handset rather than the speaker because the first message was from Beth at 7:12 A.M. She said, "Hey, you. I called your place last night and this morning, but didn't leave a message. Where are you hiding? Call me at home until eight, then the office. Miss you. Big wet kiss. Bye."

Kate continued listening to her own voice mail, pretending not to hear. I said, as if to myself, "Got to call Mom back," but I didn't think that was going to fly.

Anyway, the next message was from Jack Koenig, who said, "Message for Corey and Mayfield. Call me." He gave a long phone number with lots of zeros and ones, and I guessed he wasn't back in his office down the hall.

There was a similar message from Teddy Nash, which I deleted.

There were no further messages, and I looked at new stuff on my desk.

After a few minutes, Kate looked up and said, "Who was that?"

"Jack and Ted."

"I mean the other one."

"Oh… Mom?"

She said something that sounded like "wool shirt," but I may have misunderstood. She stood and walked away from her desk.

So, I'm sitting there, sleep-deprived, the bullet hole in my abdomen aching, six under cooked brioches in my stomach, the last and final act of my career in trouble, and some crazed terrorist is drinking camel milk somewhere, staring at my picture in the papers. I could handle all of that. But did I need this? I mean, I thought I'd been up-front with Kate.

Just when I was having second thoughts about Ms. Mayfield, she returned with two mugs of coffee and put one on my desk. "Dark, one sugar. Right?" "Right. No strychnine. Thanks."

"I can run out and get you an Egg McMuffin if you'd like. With cheese and sausage." "No, thanks."

"A man on the move needs solid food." "Actually, I'm just sitting here. Coffee is fine. Thanks." "I'll bet you didn't take your vitamins this morning. Let me run out and get you some vitamins."

I was detecting a wee bit of taunting in Ms. Mayfield's tone, or maybe the word of the morning was baiting. Not only was I bait, I was being baited. I said, "Thanks, but coffee is all I need." I lowered my head and studied a memo in front of me.

She sat opposite me and sipped her coffee. I felt her eyes on me. I looked up at her, but those blue eyes, which were heavenly a little while ago, had turned to ice cubes.

We stared at each other, then finally she said, "Sorry," and went back to her paperwork. I said, "I'll take care of it." Without looking up, she replied, "You'd better." After a minute or two, we got back to the business of catching the world's most wanted terrorist. She said, "There's a combined report from various police departments regarding car rentals in the Metropolitan area… basically, thousands of cars are rented every day, but they're trying to isolate cars rented to people with Mideastern-sounding names. Sounds like a long shot."