The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [57]
"So, how was it to kill the Jew in Rome?"
"It was very satisfactory, Ibrahim, to feel his body go slack as I cut his spine, and then the surprised look on his face."
Ibrahim smiled broadly. It wasn't every day they got to kill a Mossad officer, much less a Station Chief. The Israelis would always be their most hated enemies, if not the most dangerous. "God was good to us that day."
The Greengold mission had been a recreational exercise for Mohammed. It hadn't even been strictly necessary. Setting up the meet and feeding the Israeli juicy information had been fun. Not terribly difficult, even. Though it would not soon be repeated. No, Mossad would not let any of its officers do anything without overwatch for some time. They were not fools, and they did learn from their mistakes. But killing a tiger had satisfactions all its own. A pity he had no pelt. But where would he hang it? He had no fixed home anymore, only a collection of safe houses that might or might not be totally safe. But you couldn't worry about everything. You'd never get anything done. Mohammed and his colleagues didn't fear death, only failure. And they had no plans to fail.
"I need the meeting arrangements and so forth. I can take care of travel. Arms will be provided by our new friends?"
A nod. "Correct "
"And how will our warriors enter America?"
"That is for our friends to handle. But you will send in a group of three at first, to make sure the arrangements are satisfactorily secure."
"Of course." They knew all about operational security. There had been many lessons, none of them gentle. Members of his organization peopled many prisons around the world, those who were unlucky enough to have avoided death. That was a problem, one which his organization had never been able to fix. To die in action, that was noble and courageous. To be caught by a policeman like a common criminal was ignoble and humiliating, but somehow his men found it preferable to die without accomplishing a mission. And Western prisons were not all that terrible for many of his colleagues. Confining, perhaps, but at least the food was regular, and Western nations did not violate their dietary rules.
These nations were so weak and foolish regarding their enemies, they showed mercy to those who gave them none in return. But that was not Mohammed's fault.
"Damn," Jack said. It was his first day on the "black" side of the house. His training in high finance had gone very rapidly, due to his upbringing. His grandfather Muller had taught him well during his infrequent visits to the family home. He and Jack's father were civil to each other, but Grandpa Joe thought real men worked in the trading business rather than in the dirty world of politics-though he had to admit, of course, that his son-in-law had worked out fairly well in Washington. But the money he could have made on Wall Street why would any man turn away from that? Muller had never said that to Little Jack, of course, but his opinion was clear enough. In any case, Jack could have gotten an entry-level job in any of the large houses, and probably worked up the line pretty fast from there. But what mattered to him now was that he had skipped through the financial side of The Campus and was now in the Operations Department-it wasn't actually named that, but that's what it was called by its members. "They're that good?"
"What's that, Jack?"
"NSA intercept." He handed the sheet across. Tony Wills read it. The intercept had identified a known associate of terrorists-exactly what function he performed was not known yet, but he'd been positively identified from voiceprint analysis.
"It's the digital phones. They generate a very clean signal, easy for the voiceprint computer to ID the