Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [56]
As talented as he was, though, he often could be obsessive about details and got angered when others didn’t listen to him or follow his plans. Marwan attempted to calm him down. “The man doesn’t know enough to be a danger.”
“Give me my phone back so I can throw it at you again.”
“You worry too much, Shahab.”
“It’s my job to worry,” said Rashid as he walked behind his boss’s desk, parted the blinds, and looked out the office window over the showroom floor. “You should worry too.”
“Why?” said the older man with another wave of his hand. “You worry enough for both of us. Everything will be fine. We are in no danger. We will send Mohammed Nasiri back to Pakistan.”
“We can’t send him back to Pakistan now. The police are looking for him. His name is going to be on the no-fly list.”
“Then we’ll kill him.”
It was a choice made as casually as someone ordering off a menu.
“Wow, Marwan. You really wrestled with that decision, didn’t you?”
“Mohammed Nasiri will be a martyr for the cause of Allah. That is all that matters.”
“Did you ever stop to think,” asked Rashid, “that maybe Allah values success more than martyrdom?”
Jarrah smiled again. “Are you about to give me another lecture on our duties to Islam?”
“Consider it a lesson in management economics. We have a project to complete. This project must be completed on time. We have limited resources. If we remove Nasiri from the production line, we will miss our deadline.”
“Not if you take his place.”
Rashid was shocked and didn’t even try to hide it. “I can’t believe it. You want me to be a Shahid? After all that we have been through, you’re asking me to martyr myself?”
“It would put to rest all of the questions about whether or not we can really trust you.”
“Yeah, permanently. I’d rather you continue to doubt my loyalty.”
Jarrah laughed. “We both know you’re much too valuable to become a martyr. Besides, I’d be lost without your company.”
“What you’d be lost without is my ability to move amongst our enemies.”
“You have been a great blessing to us,” the older man said as he raised a finger in caution, “but never underestimate our opponents. You must never believe yourself completely beyond their grasp. When that happens, you will get careless. And when you get careless, that is when you will start making mistakes.”
“Which brings us right back to Nasiri.”
Jarrah sighed. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to bring him in; protect him. He made a mistake, but I don’t want the rest of us to suffer because of it.”
The older man began to speak, but Rashid held up his hand. “Wait, Marwan. Hear me out. Nasiri has been loyal to the cause. He will do whatever we tell him to do. He can still be useful. In fact, we may even find a completely different use for him.”
That remark piqued Jarrah’s interest. “A different use? What are you thinking of?”
“The police want him for his hit-and-run accident. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. We may be able to use him as a decoy of some sort.”
“That is interesting.”
“I haven’t figured the whole thing out, but I know that we can’t use him for anything if he’s dead.”
“You’re too soft,” said the older man, baiting him.
This time, Rashid laughed. “Listen, if I can’t figure out a use for him, I’ll kill him myself.”
“Fine. Next issue. Where are we going to keep him?”
“Give me my phone back first.”
“Why?” asked Jarrah. “Are you going to throw it at me again?”
“No. I don’t want you to throw it at me.”
CHAPTER 25
PARIS
Samir Ressam took another drag on his cigarette and tried to look bored as he walked down the Boulevard Saint-Michel toward the Seine. He had made his martyrdom video and knew that within the next half-hour it would be uploaded to the Internet along with the videos of seven other martyrs.
The setting for his had been particularly brazen. A graduate student at the International Film