Collision(97)
“Not on purpose.”
“Take the credit, we need it.”
“Ben. This course of action sounds sane to you. It sounds crazy to me. I just want to get a gun and kill Hector. Problem solved.”
“Doing it my way makes it a lot more likely that we survive.” Ben stepped forward, leaned on the cracked Formica bar that divided the kitchen from the tiny dining space. “Jackie Lynch was in league with the people that killed Kidwell. Homeland’s going to want Jackie’s head on a plate, and he’s driving a car that ties him to Hector. They therefore will want Hector’s head on a plate. If there’s an alliance between them, we destroy it. Isolate him.”
“You should call Vochek.”
“No.” Ben shook his head. “You will.”
“I have poor phone manners.”
“You’re the one with the information she wants. But you’re going to meet her by yourself. Because she may set a trap and she can’t catch us both. One of us has to stay free if the meeting goes bad.”
Pilgrim nodded. “She’s not catching me, don’t worry.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’ll call her.” He shook his head at Ben. “No offense, but I really am not getting used to having a partner.”
“Hopefully it’s not for much longer,” Ben said.
31
Vochek glanced at the clock—just past nine on Saturday morning—and studied the photos of the dead men. The investigators on Kidwell’s murder, operating out of the Homeland Security office in Houston, sent her the latest on the dead Arab gunmen.
The men had been identified; they were all from the southern suburbs of Beirut. Two of the men were brothers, two more were their cousins, and all were tied to a gang that ran drugs into Beirut and did muscle work when hired.
She remembered a truism she’d read about the Middle East in a book by former CIA agent Robert Baer: You don’t recruit individuals; you recruit families, tribes, clans. Here was a perfect example. But the one with dyed blond hair, the other with two piercings in his ear—these men did not strike her as typical fundamentalists.
She called one of the Homeland investigators in Houston, let him complain about working with the FBI for three minutes, then she said: “But these guys don’t seem like religious extremist types.”
“Oh, I don’t think the Murads are prayerful boys. They’ve always been hired help.” She heard a shuffle of paper on the investigator’s desk. “The Murads all flew in via Paris then Miami, staggered over five days. Tickets paid for in cash in Beirut. But they all stayed together at a hotel in Miami before they flew into Austin, the morning of the attack.” He coughed a smoker’s hack. “Here’s the sticky part. Back in the 1980s, Papa Murad, the head of the clan, was eyes and ears for the CIA.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. When we were hunting the embassy bombers, he was an informant. Not a great one but he was willing to point a few fingers for a price. He dropped off the Agency payroll about a decade ago. One of his sons got tangled up with a Blood of Fire cell in Lebanon, did some for-hire bombing work for them, got murdered a few months back.”
“So the Murads have played both sides.”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t know it to hear the CIA. They say they don’t have a file on the Murads, which beggars belief; they’ve been part of the Beirut underworld for two generations. My sources are two retired CIA field officers. And Mrs. Murad.”
“You talked with her.”
“She’s not speaking publicly, of course. And she could be trying to defend her family’s honor, say they’re not terrorists. But frankly, it’s more dangerous for her to link her family to the CIA than to Hezbollah. She said her husband mentioned he’d gotten a call from an old friend, big money for a favor.”
“Who’s the old friend?”
“She says he was an Englishman her husband knew years ago called the Dragon. Of course the CIA denies that they know, or have known, anyone by that code name. In fact, the CIA is no longer talking to me.”
The Dragon. She said, “Of course they’re putting distance and denying they know anything. Former hirelings of theirs attacking a Homeland office on American soil? It’s a PR nightmare. They won’t touch it.”
Former CIA informants, and now a mysterious Englishman from the Murads’ CIA days. “Why does someone hire a gang from Lebanon? You could just as easily find gunmen closer to home.”
“Quit asking hard-to-answer questions.”
She tapped her finger on the table. “They attacked an office that wasn’t even open yet. Very low payback for the effort put forth. Let’s say they get caught or killed. Arab gunmen attacking a Homeland office, it creates a different image in the media. That sounds like a terrorism attack. But this wasn’t.”