The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [161]
"Aye, aye, sir." The remainder of the day looked as though it would be pretty dull after such a fast beginning.
Mohammed got the news over his computer-rather, he was told in code to call a cutout named Ayman Ghailani whose cell phone number he had committed to memory. For that purpose, he took a walk outside. You had to be careful using hotel phones. Once on the street, he walked to a park and sat down on a bench, with a pad and pen in his hand.
"Ayman, this is Mohammed. What is new?"
"Uda is dead," the cutout reported somewhat breathlessly.
"What happened?" Mohammed asked.
"We're not sure. He fell near his office and was taken to the nearest hospital. He died there," was the reply.
"He was not arrested, not killed by the Jews?"
"No, there is no report of that."
"So, it was a natural death?"
"So it appears at this time."
I wonder if he did the funds transfer before he left this life? Mohammed thought. "I see " He didn't, of course, but he had to fill the silence with some words. "So, there is no reason to suspect foul play?"
"Not at this time, no. But when one of our people dies, one always-"
"Yes, I know, Ayman. One always suspects. Does his father know?"
"That is how I found out."
His father will probably be glad to be rid of the wastrel, Mohammed thought. "Who do we have to make sure of the cause of death?"
"Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali lives in London. Perhaps through a solicitor ?"
"Good idea. See that it is done." A pause. "Has anyone told the Emir?"
"No, I don't think so."
"See to it." It was a minor matter, but, even so, he was supposed to know everything.
"I shall," Ayman promised.
"Very well. That is all, then." And Mohammed thumbed the kill button on his cell phone.
He was back in Vienna. He liked the city. For one thing, they'd handled the Jews here once, and many Viennese managed to control their regrets over it. For another, it was a good place to be a man with money. Fine restaurants staffed by people who knew the value of skilled service to their betters. The former imperial city had a lot of cultural history to appreciate when he was of a mind to be a tourist, which happened more often than one might imagine. Mohammed found that he often did his best thinking when looking at something of no importance to his work. Today, an art museum, perhaps. He'd let Ayman do the scut work for now. A London solicitor would root about for information surrounding Uda's death, and, being a good mercenary, he'd let them know of anything untoward. But sometimes people simply died. It was the hand of Allah, which was not something easily understood, and never predicted.
Or maybe not so dull. NSA cross-decked some new message traffic after lunch. Jack did some mental arithmetic and decided it was evening on the other side of the pond. The electronic weenies of the Italian Carabinieri-their federal police, who walked about in rather spiffy uniforms-had made some intercepts, which they'd forwarded to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, and which had gone right up on the satellite to Fort Belvoir-the main East Coast downlink. Somebody named Mohammed had called somebody named Ayman-they knew this from the recorded conversation, which had also mentioned the death of Uda bin Sali, which had caused an electronic "Bingo" on various computers, flagging it for a signals-intelligence analyst, and causing the embassy puke to squirt the bird.
"'Has anyone told the Emir?' Who the hell is the Emir?" Jack asked.
"That's a nobleman's title, like a duke or something," Wills answered. "What's the context?"
"Here." Jack handed a printed sheet across.
"That looks interesting." Wills turned and queried his computer for EMIR, and got only one reference. "According to this, it's a name or title that cropped up about a year ago in a tapped conversation, context uncertain, and nothing significant since. The Agency thinks it's probably shorthand for a medium-sized hitter in their organization."
"In this context, looks bigger than that to me," Jack thought aloud.
"Maybe," Tony conceded. "There's a lot about these