Page 24 of End of Days

I’ll admit the suicide pilot’s stay was a little strange, but it was easily explained by other events. The pilot was fleeing persecution just like Qassim had done, and he had to have a place to stay once he arrived. Qassim might be Doctor Evil, but then again, he could just be collateral damage because of a shared hardship. I had a Syrian refugee who could be blamed for just such a connection. I’d seen the mighty United States make linkages the same way—seeing a forest fire when there was only a whiff of smoke—but I was willing to help, if only to sit by a river in Zurich and eat ice cream.

Jennifer licked her cone and a bit ran down her hand. She raised it to her mouth, cleaned it off, and said, “You think this is all BS, don’t you?”

I took a bite of my ice cream and said, “Yep. I think it’s bullshit.”

She said, “I’ve never seen Shoshana be wrong. When she has an intuition, it’s right. There’s something here.”

I said, “Really? She tried to kill me in Istanbul when her intuition told her I was the bad guy.”

Jennifer smiled and said, “Youwerethe bad guy. You ripped her off of a moving motorcycle. And if memory serves, she quickly learned otherwise.”

I said, “Okay, I agree. There is something here, but it’s not the big conspiracy they think it is. This guy is probably running some coyote scam to get refugees into Switzerland, and now he’s going to get burned because one of them ended up being a terrorist.”

She nodded, going back to her cone. I said, “Hey, at the end of the day, we’re in Zurich, paid for by Israel, eating ice cream in the old town. Can’t beat that.”

She said, “Aaron and Shoshana are outside his door right now.They believe, and we should, too. At least until this is over one way or the other.”

I turned to her and said, “Seriously? You’re givingmeadvice on staying alert here? You think I’m slacking because I don’t think this will go anywhere?”

Chagrined, she said, “Well, you seem to be enjoying the ice cream more than the mission.”

I laughed and said, “Don’t take my skepticism of the strategic mission as slacking on the tactical side. Getting into his apartment isnotbullshit. It’s volatile, and we need to protect them, so I’ll do that without regard to what I think.”

Qassim lived in a rat warren of a seventeenth-century building above a consignment clothing shop called Blenda Vintage, the surroundings a maze of stairs and apartments right in the middle of the old town on the east bank of the Limmat River. The mission was fairly simple: Aaron and Shoshana would trigger when the target left, wait for the roadblock teams to pick him up, then they’d break into the apartment to search for evidence that he’s a bad guy.

The way the apartment was situated, he’d have only two ways to go to get to the city—south, toward us, or north, toward where Knuckles and Brett were sitting on the only other bridge within walking distance over the Limmat River, where the city center was located. We knew he didn’t have a car, and we surmised that when he left his place, he would travel west, toward the city center.

In a perfect world, we’d have the forces to cover all avenues of approach, but we were a little light, so we did some analytical work and decided where to position. If we were wrong, and he went east, away from the city center, we’d just re-cock and try again, this time positioning ourselves to box him going that way.

Surveillance in and of itself is a shadow game. You don’t want toforce the issue with aggressive actions to find the target, because he or she will invariably find you from those same actions. Patience is the name of the game, and missed opportunities help to build the pattern of life we needed to know.

Our job, outside of eating ice cream, was to keep Qassim in sight while Aaron and Shoshana penetrated his apartment. Basically, we were to be the early warning to let them know if they had to abort. An easy assignment—especially since I got to sit in Zurich’s old town with my wife, licking a frozen treat.

Jennifer wrapped another napkin around her cone in a losing battle to keep it from melting before she could finish. She said, “What if she’s right? What if there’s something going on here? Do you think we can get the Taskforce to engage?”

I chuckled and said, “You mean beyond letting us take the Rock Star bird? No. They’d better find the diabolical plan to start World War Three before Wolffe will engage. He’s got enough political bullshit to deal with besides telling them he let us freelance using Israeli passports. It would have to be pretty big.”

Jennifer glanced at me, and I could see she wanted to say something. I said, “What? Can’t we just sit here and enjoy this?”

She said, “You’re always asking for a fight, and now you’re just wanting to eat ice cream.”

That sort of ticked me off. I said, “I didn’t ask to come here. They interrupted our wedding, for God’s sake. We were supposed to spend a week in Charleston with our friends.”

She grinned and took my hand, letting the ice cream run down her other arm. She said, “You aresofull of crap. Youwantedthis to happen. I saw you at the rehearsal.”

I reached up and wiped her arm with a napkin, saying, “I didn’t want this to happen, but you have to admit it’s pretty cool.”

She laughed and said, “Iknewit. I knew it.”

I grinned and said, “Come on. This is nothing. No shots fired, no danger. We get to spend a weekend in Zurich and we don’t even have to pay for it. Tell me you don’t think this is cool, too.”

She said, “Yeah, right up until it’s not.”

And then my phone buzzed with a text.

He’s on the move. Headed south.

Which meant toward our location. I looked up from the phone to see her reading the same text. I said, “Looks like vacation time is over.”

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