Stuart Woods - Iron Orchid

“Good. I’m looking forward to seeing you. Bye-bye.” Teddy hung up. He really was looking forward to seeing her. His increasing interest in Holly Barker was making him horny, and he needed relief.

Teddy went to his workbench and returned his attention to something he had been working on for several days. He didn’t have a sniper’s rifle, and buying one that would suit his purpose would be too complicated and too dangerous. Instead, he had decided to make one himself that would break down and be easily concealable.

He owned a virtually unused Walther PPK-S, the stainless-steel, updated version of the gun made famous in the James Bond novels. The caliber was.380, which posed a problem, but he could deal with that. He also had a Douglas.380 rifle barrel that he’d ordered more than a year ago.

He cut down the rifle barrel to sixteen inches and built a six-inch silencer to add to that. Then he replaced the pistol’s grip panel with an L-shaped piece of flat aluminum plating that came over the top of the gun. He shaped a folding stock of a strip of one-inch alloy that was fixed to the plating by a single screw, so that it could be quickly attached or detached using a dime for a screwdriver.

Finally, he mounted a 6x18 power Leupold zoom scope to the top of the L-shaped plating. He broke down the little pistol, removed the barrel and replaced it with the new, longer barrel, then reassembled it. Then he carved an eight-inch wooden grip and affixed it to the barrel, to protect his hand from the heat buildup when the weapon was fired. What he finished up with was a neat, small, very quiet rifle with a pistol grip that could be broken down and carried in a briefcase or raincoat pocket. This was perfect, but if the rifle were going to be effective at, say, a hundred yards, he was going to have to upgrade the ammunition; the standard.380 round was just not powerful enough.

He hand-loaded a hundred rounds of ammunition with a 115-grain, pointed, lead-tipped bullet and a cartridge packed with five grains of Unique powder. That would give the round the extra velocity, accuracy and destructive power it would need to hit an eight-inch target dead center at a hundred yards. Still, the bullet would drop more than it would from a higher-powered rifle, so he was going to have to fire the rifle to sight it in for the range.

IRENE ARRIVED in New York and followed Teddy’s instructions. She went to the fountain in Grand Army Plaza outside the Plaza Hotel at high noon and loitered for ten minutes. Then she set off across 59th Street and into Central Park. Teddy, who had been watching her from half a block away, was occupying a bench along the walkway toward the zoo, reading the Post. He dawdled a hundred yards behind her, looking for tails, then watched as she moseyed around the zoo and finally headed north.

He followed her for half an hour, then, when he was sure she was not being tailed, called her cell phone.

“Yes?”

“There’s a room booked in the name of Frances Williams at the Lowell Hotel, on East Sixty-third Street, between Park and Madison. Go there and check in, telling them that your luggage was delayed by the airline and will be delivered later. When you’ve satisfied yourself that you’re clean of tails, call my cell from your room and give me the room number.”

“Got it,” she said.

Teddy followed her all the way to the hotel, then walked past it and around the block again, making sure he was not followed. Halfway around, his cell phone rang.

“Yep?”

“Six one six. All is well.”

He continued around the block, then entered the hotel, went straight to the elevator and rode to the eighth floor. He walked down two flights, and, after checking out the hallway, knocked on the door.

There was a pause, and he was inside. Irene was already naked under a terry robe. He was out of his clothes in a flash.

AN HOUR LATER, as they lay, half asleep, in each other’s arms, she spoke for the first time. “How about a nice, flashy Saudi prince with financial connections to Al Qaeda?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he murmured.

“His name is Ali ben Saud, and he’s one of hundreds of Saudi princes,” she said. “What sets him apart is that he actually makes money, instead of just lying around and collecting whatever allowance the king allots him. He’s invested cleverly, too cleverly, we think. What caught our attention is that he invests more than his allowance, and we think the extra funds come from an Al Qaeda contact in Syria. There is constant activity in his accounts, money being wired here and there, some legit, some questionable.”

“How sure are you of his involvement with Al Qaeda?” Teddy asked.

“We’re sure, but we couldn’t prove it in a court of law.”

“Where is he?”

“He lives flashily, right here in New York. He’s an assistant secretary general at the U.N., and he has a big duplex apartment in the U.N. Plaza building.”

“I love that building,” Teddy said. “I remember once a character in a movie saying that if there is a god, he probably lives in that building.”

Irene laughed. “He has a penthouse apartment, and the building’s security is excellent, so it would probably be very difficult to get to him there.”

“What’s his work schedule, and how does he get to the office?”

“He leaves his apartment every morning at nine for work and walks to the main entrance of the U.N. building. Then he exits the U.N. building every afternoon at four, regular as clockwork, and walks home.”

“That’s very cooperative of him,” Teddy said. “He must drive his security people crazy.”

“He walks with an entourage of six or eight guards, who are heavily armed. Our people have observed this, but we’re not allowed to maintain any real surveillance on him, because he’s too well connected with Saudi officials in this country who have a lot of influence with the State Department. We haven’t even told the New York station of our interest in him, though that’s going to happen any day now.”

“Good,” Teddy said. “That means I’ll have to deal with only his personal security people and not worry about surveillance from anybody else. I’ll have to go down to U.N. Plaza and take a look at the area.”

“Not right now,” Irene said, pulling him toward her.

“Oh, no, indeed not,” Teddy said, kissing her.

HOLLY WAS HOME at lunchtime to walk Daisy, when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s the old man,” Ham said.

“How you doin‘, Ham?”

“Not bad. Ginny and I thought we might come up to New York and do some Christmas shopping.”

“Great! It would be wonderful to see you, I can put you up, you know.”

“Nah, suggest a good hotel. I told you why.”

“There are two good ones in the neighborhood, though, the Lowell, on Sixty-third and the Plaza Athenee, on Sixty-fourth. They’ll both have thick walls.”

“Okay, I’ll book us in.”

“When you coming?

“Tomorrow okay?”

“Sure. I’ll see if I can get some time off, and if you’ll give me your flight information, I’ll have a car meet you.”

“I’ll e-mail it to you. Bye.” He hung up. Ham had never been one for long telephone conversations.

Holly got Daisy’s leash and left the building, headed for the park. She tried not to be self-conscious, tried not to look over her shoulder, but the thought that maybe Teddy might be following her never left her mind. They entered the park at 64th Street, walked past the zoo and headed north at a fast walk for Holly and a slow one for Daisy, but since she had a lot of sniffing and inspecting to do, the pace was good for both of them.

At the Bethesda Fountain Holly looked around for a cop and, seeing none, unclipped Daisy and let her range around the open area, while Holly sat on the fountain’s edge and kept an eye out for the law. It was a one-hundred-dollar fine to have your dog off the leash in the park after nine a.m.