real purpose in returning to Washington went far beyond simply delivering a personal high-level briefing for her Bureau superiors, she was going to have to play the game as though it were.
"What about the vehicles and gear I requested?" he asked.
"They'll be waiting for you," Klein promised. His voice sharpened. "But I still have some very serious misgivings about involving Howell so closely with this operation, Colonel. He's a bright fellow . . . maybe too bright, and his fundamental loyalties lie outside this country."
Smith glanced at Peter. The Englishman was staring out the cockpit side windows, seemingly wrapped up in watching the vast panorama of drifting cloud masses and seemingly endless flat brown countryside over which they were flying. "You'll have to trust me on this one," he told Klein softly. "Back when you signed me on to this show, you told me you needed mavericks, self-starters who didn't quite fit into everybody else's neat little tables of organization. People who were willing to buck the system for results, remember?"
"I remember," Klein said. "And I meant it."
"Well, I'm bucking the system right now," Smith said firmly. "Peter is
already basically focused on the same problem we are. Plus, he's got skills and instincts and brainpower we can use to our advantage."
There was silence on the other end for several seconds while Klein digested that. "Cogently argued, Colonel," he said at last. "All right, cooperate with Howell as closely as you can, but remember: He must never learn about Covert-One. Never. Is that understood?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die, Chief," Smith answered.
Klein snorted. "Fair enough, Jon." He cleared his throat. "Let me know once you're on the ground, all right?"
"Will do," Smith replied. He leaned forward to check the navigation display, which showed their position, distance from Andrews, and current airspeed. "It looks like that should be sometime around nine P.M., your time."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
La Courneuve, Near Paris
The grim, soulless high-rise housing projects of the Parisian slums, the cites, rose black against the night. Their design - massive, oppressively ugly, and intentionally sterile - was a monument to the grotesque ideals of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who thought solely in cold, utilitarian terms. The projects were also a testament to the penny-pinching of French bureaucrats - who wanted only to cram as many of their nation's unwanted immigrants, most of them Muslims, into the smallest possible spaces.
Few lights shone around the graffiti-smeared concrete bulk of the Cite des Quatre Mille, the "city of four thousand," a notorious haven for thieves, thugs, drug dealers, and Islamic radicals. The honest poor were trapped in a de facto prison essentially run by the criminals and terrorists among them. Most of the street lamps were either burned out or broken. The charred wrecks of stripped cars littered the potholed streets. The few stores in the neighborhood were either barricaded behind steel bars or else reduced to looted, blackened rubble.
Ahmed ben-Belbouk drifted through the night, a shadow among other shadows. He wore a long black raincoat against the night air and a kufi cap to cover his head. He was a little less than six feet tall, and he cultivated a full beard that masked some of the acne scars that pockmarked his round, soft face. By birth French, by heritage Algerian, and by faith a follower of radical Islam, ben-Belbouk was a recruiter for the jihad against America and the decadent West. He operated out of a backroom office in one of the local mosques, quietly and carefully screening those who heeded the call to holy war. Those he judged the most promising were given false passports, cash, and plane tickets and sent outside France for advanced training.
Now, after a long day, he was at last returning to the bleak, grimy welfare apartment graciously provided for him by the state. Counting the secret funds at his disposal, he had money enough to live someplace better, but ben-Belbouk believed it was better to live among those whose loyalty he sought. When they saw him sharing their hardships and their hopelessness, they were more willing to listen to his sermons of hatred and his calls for vengeance on their Western oppressors.
Suddenly the terrorist recruiter noticed movement along the darkened avenue ahead. He stopped. That was odd. These were the hours when the streets of this district were usually deserted. The timid and honest were already cowering at home behind their locked doors, and the criminals and drug dealers were usually either still asleep or too busy