Non-Prophet Intelligence

    
by CJ Cooper

CHAPTER ONE

Catch up with him and kill him.

The December wind echoed Falcon Spitzer¿s gut instincts as it blew icy snowflakes against her back, pushing her through the abandoned warehouse district of Paris. She paused at a dark intersection and scanned the street in both directions for her target. A streetlight illuminated his silhouette for an instant before darkness once again engulfed him. She followed, staying a full block behind him. When he hurried to the opposite side of the street, she did the same. He would turn left at the next street, if her information were correct.

Anonymous tips about terrorists were notoriously unreliable.

But this tip was different from most. The beep of her fax machine had rescued her from restless sleep at two o'clock that morning. She expected a Research and Advise coversheet from Interpol, DGSE (French Counterintelligence), or Jeff Kreger, so the grainy printout surprised her. She recognized the face in the photo instantly—a terrorist known only as Guza. The second sheet was an itinerary: the address she had staked out for more than an hour before the target had emerged; the bus stop he was approaching as she tailed him; and Charles de Gaulle International Airport for a 9:12 a.m. flight departure.

The deliberate omission of airline information in the faxed tip held ominous implications. Was he planning to catch a flight at 9:12, or was the unnamed 9:12 flight slated for his terrorism? Falcon had to keep track of him so she could report reliable information to Grepagnier's terror hotline at Interpol. Unless Guza was apprehended when he stepped off the bus, picking up his trail at the huge airport complex would be nearly impossible—and the consequences might be deadly.

At 5:13 Falcon stopped in the shadows to assess the area on the opposite side of the four-lane intersection. There were very few cars on the pre-dawn Paris streets, so people walking to the bus stop ignored crosswalks and traffic signals. Five buses idled at the curb of a huge, well-lit plaza. Large ceramic planters, decorated for the December holidays, separated small tables outside a row of coffee and snack shops from the passengers already clustered at each bus. She spotted a bank of phones between two of the ceramic planters. On the far side of the bus stop, a narrow alley ran between the plaza shops and the tall brick buildings that lined the rest of the street.

She folded back the face cover of her ski mask and crossed the intersection. Meandering through the crowds of people, she read the destination indicator on the front of the first and second buses as she passed them, and scanned the faces of the taller men—Guza was six-four. The itinerary in the fax hinted he¿d be in the airport bus line. If she didn't find him, the fax would go into her file of unreliable tips.

As she skirted the mass of passengers at the third bus, she noticed airline logos on the jackets of several people walking toward the bus at the head of the line, the one that would leave first and transport them to their jobs at the airport. She neared the airport bus. The cold breeze played in the blonde hair of a tall man who stood out from the rest of the crowd. Guza?

She had to see his face before she did anything else to be sure he was Guza and not some poor schmuck whose morning schedule coincided with the faxed itinerary. Passing the phone bank, she noticed "Out of Order" signs on two of the three phones. As soon as she verified the target's identity, she'd telephone the hotline at Interpol and request an airport security alert.

"Verified" was Jeff Kreger's buzzword. A "verified" terrorist would generate a quicker response than a "suspected" terrorist ever could. Her preferred response to the tip would have been verification two hours ago and quiet elimination of Guza in the cold darkness of a deserted street.

How will your unauthorized killing of an unverified terrorist prove that you aren't one? Kreger's rebuttal whispered the enigma of Falcon's existence in her thoughts. Guza had created a terrorist organization, Sahin Istemek (Falcon Desires), named Falcon as its leader, and blamed its repeated acts of terror on her. She couldn't prove her innocence or verify Guza's role in the terror.

Killing him would stop his terrorism, but it wouldn't clear her name.

Besides, Kreger was calling the shots. She had to follow his procedures.

A few meters beyond the phone bank, she turned toward her target to make her ID. Her stomach jumped. Guza stared right at her. He smiled instead of looking away, as if he were pleased that she had taken the faxed bait. Following him made more sense than the phone call procedure, but she hadn't brought money for the bus. Guza continued to smile, as if he sensed her frustration.

Fuck him, she thought. The phone call was the last step. After she made it, she'd go home and Interpol would contact someone to handle the problem. That was correct procedure.

She retreated to the phone bank. Pulling off her glove, she dug into her jacket pocket for her phone card and silently recited the information she wanted to relay to Grepagnier's hotline.

"Verified" pounded in her thoughts. She glanced around the side of the phone bank and watched until Guza had boarded the airport bus. As the bus pulled away from the curb, she punched the hotline number. Before the second ring, a bright flash of hot light and a deafening sound wave blew her off her feet and pummeled her with flying glass, metal, and the smell of gasoline.

~

Jeff Kreger heard the vintage Datsun 280Z long before he saw it park at the curb a block behind him. The car¿s headlights flashed twice. He silently cursed Sahin Istemek and Falcon Spitzer's magnetic pull on trouble. He was still cursing as he resumed surveillance of the bus stop plaza. He had positioned himself on a stoop in front of a recessed doorway. He had cover if he needed it, and the stoop was six steps above the pavement, so he had an uninterrupted view of the entire plaza on the opposite side of the alley adjacent to his post.

The early morning crowd was beginning to board the buses. Like Kreger, most of them wore hooded jackets to counter the cold December wind, although none of them had been standing in the cold as long as he had. The hood of Guza's jacket hung down his back, the thing Kreger noticed before he recognized the terrorist¿s face. A few moments later he spotted Falcon dressed in black sneakers, black slacks, black pea coat, and a black ski mask that she had folded back like a stocking cap. Kreger kept track of them both.

Guza immediately fell in at the end of the airport bus line. He seemed to search the crowd until he zeroed in on Falcon. Then he watched her movements to a bank of phones. When she was a few meters past the phones and still thirty-five or forty meters from Guza, they appeared to make eye contact with each other. Guza smiled. Falcon's body language didn't change—no recognition of Guza or acknowledgment of the smile.

Kreger silently prayed that she would follow the terrorist to the airport.

She returned to the phone bank.

Kreger cursed again. He pulled the glove off his right hand and reached into his pocket to finger the syringe, then eased over the railing and dropped silently into the alley. To avoid the lights of the plaza, he stopped at the corner of the building that housed snack shops. He was about ten meters behind Falcon and no longer had a view of her face, so he focused on her black slacks and sneakers, ready to move when she did.

A yelp escaped his lips as the explosion hurled him into a row of trash bins halfway down the alley. Blinking at the "flash bulb" suns that spotted his vision, he swallowed the bitter taste of adrenalin and climbed to his hands and knees. Slow-motion sounds of activity from the bus stop plaza echoed into the eerie quiet of the alley. He pushed himself to his feet and checked his pocket for the syringe. It was still intact. After he brushed off his clothes and tried to shake the ringing from his head, he returned to the corner of the building to see what had exploded.

The wind carried the wail of sirens from every corner of Paris toward the wail of human suffering at the bus stop. The amount of damage convinced Kreger that C4 had been used to destroy the third bus in the original line-up. The smoldering frame was all that remained. Large portions of the chassis had blown into the vehicles in front of and behind it. The smell of gasoline competed with the stench of thick, black smoke and burning flesh, and warned that a second explosion was a definite possibility. Injured people, crying and screaming, had begun to dig themselves and each other out of the burning rubble. Charred bodies and severed limbs lay silent and motionless.

The smoke was drifting toward the opposite end of the plaza, so Kreger climbed over piles of glass, metal, hunks of concrete, and slabs of asphalt until he reached the street. Inhaling deep breaths of fresh air, he spotted the Datsun, still parked at the curb a block away and apparently undamaged. The airport bus was a distant silhouette in the dim morning light.

He stifled the urge to get out of the area before the next bus exploded and scrambled toward the phone bank. The explosion had knocked it off its pedestal and onto the ground in front of the snack shops. The café tables were gone. Tattered awnings and signs hung over the gaping holes where windows and doors had once been. Dazed people stumbled from the shops into the smoky plaza. A few were using cell phones.

He found Falcon face down on the pavement and unconscious.

"Dammit, Falcon, this is the dumbest stunt you've ever pulled." He pressed his fingers against her neck and allowed himself a moment of relief when her pulse beat against his fingertips.

Two police cars, an ambulance, and a fire engine screamed into the wide intersection beyond the bus stop. Kreger knew the cops would cordon off the area and close the streets feeding into it. The firemen should control the threat of a gasoline explosion. He lifted Falcon into his arms and carried her to the Datsun.

His buddy Jacques was leaning against the hood, watching the chaos at the bus stop. He opened the door for Kreger and reclined the passenger seat. "Lot of blood, Kreger. Is she dead?"

"Not yet." Kreger laid her on the seat. He dabbed his handkerchief across the blood on her cheek. It was just a scrape. He frowned at Jacques' squeamish reaction. "Here's the plan. Beaucoup police cars are going to swarm this area in a matter of minutes. I'll meet you at my apartment."

"Un moment! What if I get stopped?"

"Avoid the limelight, buddy. Take the side streets. I'll meet you there." When Falcon moaned and her thick lashes fluttered, Kreger pulled the syringe from his pocket and plunged it into her thigh. He closed the car door. "She won't give you any trouble."

As Jacques hurried toward the driver's side, he said, "Per chance, someone removed the memory chip from her fax machine. There was no way to reconstruct a transmission."

"Gotcha. Did you check her computer?"

"You didn't ask me to check her computer."

Kreger winced. "Let's get out of here. I'll see you in thirty minutes, max."

Kreger waited on the sidewalk while Jacques made a u-turn. He had planned to ride back to his apartment, but the Datsun had only two seats and he didn't want Falcon to sit in his lap, in case she had broken bones or internal injuries. Besides, jogging along the pedestrian overpasses was usually faster than vehicle transportation, and he needed time to think. He began his run.

He was one of the few people alive who rejected the rumor that Falcon was a terrorist. Now he might be the only person who still refused to believe it. She was a trouble magnet, but she was incapable of terrorism. And she was becoming a pretty good operative, despite her arrogance and impulsiveness. There was absolutely no way she had orchestrated and authorized the bus stop fiasco. He paused on the thought and amended it. There was absolutely no way she could have done it without his knowing about it.

But he couldn't afford to be wrong. The CIA was supposed to expunge the treason charges from his personnel file in February, maybe March. The problem should have been settled before the end of the year. Kreger had even toyed with the idea of going home to Atlanta for Christmas. The September 11^th terrorist attack on America had changed everything. Given the volatile state of world politics and the current unpredictability of American policies, this was definitely the wrong time to be on the wrong side of a terrorism issue.

He heard the Datsun behind him and picked up his pace, reaching his apartment a few seconds ahead of Jacques. He opened the car door to retrieve Falcon. "Thanks, buddy."

"This is the end, Kreger. I don't want to know anything about the explosion or the woman, and I won't help you dispose of the body if she dies."

Recognizing the vow of silence, Kreger returned Jacques' smile. "See you in hell."

Kreger carried Falcon into his apartment and laid her on the sofa. Then he telephoned Rene Burdot at DGSE. "You might be able to nab Guza at de-Gaulle International if you haul ass."

"Is Falcon with him?"

"I don¿t think so. Gotta go. I'll be in touch." Kreger hung up and unplugged the phone.

After he took off his jacket and washed his face, he sat on the ottoman next to the sofa and carefully undressed Falcon. He checked her for broken bones, discoloration, and swelling. Except for serious bruising on her back and shoulders and the scrape on her face, she seemed okay.

He stared at her nakedness. She was still the most perfectly proportioned one hundred pounds he had ever seen. He had been her sex toy, once, for a few hours, and resented it afterwards. He must have been insane. Shaking his head, he spread a blanket over her and rummaged through his first aid kit. He covered her eyes with his left hand, then cleaned the scrape on her cheek with hydrogen peroxide and sprayed an antiseptic on it. He returned the first aid kit to his desk drawer.

Next, he reached for her pea coat. He needed proof, or even a hint of proof, that she was a victim of the bus stop explosion, and not the cause. He searched the jacket pockets. Empty. He checked each pocket of her jeans. Empty. Empty. Empty. Her sweater didn¿t have pockets. He tossed it on the pile of clothes. There was nothing in her pockets, not even lint, let alone a scrap of paper or the phone card she must have had before the explosion.

"Dammit!" Kreger whispered. He got up and paced.

He and Falcon had tracked four primary leaders of Sahin Istemek, the terrorist organization she supposedly led, across the Middle East and into Indonesia and had killed them. The three remaining primaries—the Triumvirate—always flew below the radar. There was no solid data about how the they fit into the scheme of things, the location of their base of operations, or the number of people who worked for them.

Falcon had accumulated reams of research data to support her continually evolving theories about the Triumvirate, but none of it was verified. None of it could ever be verified.

Then one member of the Triumvirate, Guza, showed up in Paris.

The other two, Aleksi Rybakov, a Russian, and Jon Lon Song, a Chinese, were still unknowns. Unknown to Kreger. He frowned at Falcon, recently described as the fairy tale paragon of truth and justice. He didn't want to believe that he had been duped by a five-foot tall, one hundred-pound female. But everything seemed to point in that direction.

If she had died in the blast, he could make a convincing case for her innocence. But her injuries were minor compared to many of the victims. If she had boarded the airport bus, she could claim to have ignored procedures to keep track of Guza. But she made the phone call.

Resisting the urge to shake her awake and demand answers, he brewed a pot of coffee and reduced the volume on his CD player to almost nothing before he put on the jazz music she liked. She had survived a serious explosion, but she had been unconscious for nearly ten minutes before he gave her the mild sedative, so she might experience some temporary memory loss. If he hoped to get factual information from her, he had to start slowly and gently.

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