THE LIBERTY HOTEL
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Saturday morning
Samir Basara enjoyed the silk slide of Golden Slope chardonnay down his throat. He’d been surprised and pleased to find it in the small refrigerator in his suite, but he’d stayed at the hotel before and they knew it was one of his favorites. It was from a small boutique winery in Napa Valley, and very different from the heavy, overripe fruit taste of the Algerian wine he’d been raised with. He remembered his father striding through the family vineyard in Coteaux du Zaccar, fondling his Carignan and Clairette blanche grapes, whistling, giving orders, drinking a good amount of his profits. His preference had always been what they called their burgundy, but it wasn’t burgundy at all, rather a heavy mongrel blend. No one ever pointed that out to him, they were too scared of the old man, as Samir had once been, a very long time ago.
He remembered his mother carping and whining after his father had struck her, Samir so used to it he paid it little mind. He couldn’t wait for the day he left his family and Algeria, bound for Paris and the Sorbonne. He’d been unhappy in Paris as well, because his Algerian French accent was mimicked with a contemptuous twang, and he was looked down on, despite his family’s money, his academic success, and his good looks. He practiced his English, anxious to leave the French bigots behind him, and went on to take his doctorate in economics at Berkeley, California. He’d found his home at this fascinating place where he could say anything he wanted—the more outrageous, it seemed, the more he was considered to be an intellectual and accepted, the women always eager to sleep with him. And the wine was good. At Berkeley, he hadn’t been an outsider. He’d been embraced. He might have stayed on if he hadn’t known he was destined for greater things.
His three sisters, the worthless cows, had reveled in the rich lifestyle their father’s lands provided and had all married moneyed Frenchmen and enjoyed the fruits of Paris. But not Samir. He had chosen a different path. It had all come to him so gradually, it seemed, spawned in America, in the belly of the enemy, and there surely was irony in that.
Every year he traveled to Algeria to visit his father and mother, always during Ramadan. Last year Ramadan had fallen in July and a surprise awaited him. His father was lying in bed, his left side paralyzed from a stroke, and his mother now ruled the household. He was no longer a happy alcoholic who struck out when it pleased him, he was now a supplicant.
His mother glowed. Another irony. She’d talked mostly of wanting him to marry, about wanting grandchildren from her only son. All his father wanted was a drink.
Samir took another sip of his chardonnay, let it settle first on his tongue, then slide smoothly down his throat, and he smiled. Perhaps he would marry someday, perhaps Lady Elizabeth Palmer. He saw his dark hands on her smooth white flesh, heard her screaming his name when she came. What would their children look like?
His parents believed he was a big-shot intellectual, and he was, actually, a noted speaker and a professor at the London School of Economics. But he was much more than that. Neither of them had a clue that the man they called Hercule, the nickname his grandfather had bestowed on him, was also known as the Strategist, a shadowy figure, feared and spoken of in whispers, a man whose reputation continued to grow throughout Europe and the Middle East for the simple reason that he could always be trusted to fulfill a contract for any job desired, from an assassination to an exploded building. Jihadists believed him to be one of them, and Hercule knew his plan, his Bella, was a terrorist’s wet dream and would make them admire him even more. What they didn’t know was that the destruction of the West’s sacred cathedrals, for him, the Strategist, was something else entirely. In the future, after three or four of the world’s famous cathedrals had fallen into ruin from his hired bombers, all it would take was the threat of a specific target cathedral, and the payoffs would become a source of huge revenue to him.
He remembered Imam Al-Hädi ibn Mirza had christened him the Strategist after a particularly intricate plan he’d devised to kill a Shiite banker in Syria who was helping to fund Hezbollah. Hercule had profited handsomely from that plan, seizing a shipment of large bills before the man died in a hail of bullets. The imam never learned that detail. The imam thought of Hercule as a committed genius who would help him bring the world to Islam, a true believer to whom money meant little. So did dozens of hardened fighters who had worked for him and who feared his name. He’d heard one of his most trusted, skilled men, Bahar, call him the iron fist inside the imam’s velvet glove. Until he decided otherwise, for the moment, he would continue to be tied to the imam.
He’d been based in London for seven years now, and each year he’d learned from his mistakes. Some had cost lives and, more important, cost him money. He had won the right to choose the targets the imam funded, putting Hercule in command of dozens of jihadists. He agreed with some of their grievances, but he saw them as misguided thugs who did as he asked for very little money. What better cover could he ask for than mindless acts of terrorism when there was an opportunity for profit?
It had been years since Hercule had allowed the imam to help plan an operation, but this time, against his better judgment, he had. Nasim Conklin had been a big mistake. Hercule wouldn’t have used that kind of leverage. It was too uncertain, too unpredictable. You could always count on a true believer, but using a man’s family as a sword over his head was taking too big a risk. The imam had been certain Nasim would make the perfect tool. He would give up his life for his family, the imam was certain. He had refused to approve Bella without his being used, and Hercule needed the imam’s backing for this project. The stakes were too high. But there was more, Hercule knew it simply because he knew the imam so well, knew he hadn’t told him his real reason for wanting Nasim Conklin to give up his life at JFK.
He got up to ease his frustration. He cracked his neck and stretched as he walked to the wide suite windows that looked toward the Charles River. He couldn’t actually see the water, not in the middle of the night, but knowing it was there was somehow satisfying. The endless flow, the gentle lash of waves against the docks, the water lipping the sloping grassy shoreline: it was like watching the Thames from his apartment window in London. It helped him think.
Hercule turned away from the window. He was tired but knew he couldn’t sleep yet. It was time to meet the failures of the past few days head-on, to look at every step taken, every decision, and why each had failed. He had to salvage what he could of his meticulous plan, his brilliant project, Bella, named after a particularly inventive lover he’d enjoyed for several months in the South of France.
He’d even come to the States to oversee the details directly, his cover a lecture at Boston University, and that had gone well. But Bella’s kickoff? It had dived headfirst into the crapper.
It was his thirty-seventh birthday and everything was cocked up.
Letting Al-Hädi ibn Mirza talk him into using Nasim Conklin to provide the grenade blast at JFK as a diversion was the obvious first mistake. Nasim had screwed up royally, was taken down by an FBI agent in the security line—a woman, of all things. It was a completely avoidable blunder, but not in itself fatal to his plan. It had worked as a diversion, in any case.
Then the wretched bad luck of the altar boy finding the bomb in the utility closet at St. Patrick’s, the priest hurling the bomb out onto Fifth Avenue. No one had been killed, not a single stone ripped from St. Patrick’s belly or even its newly shined-up façade. And worst of all, the vice president was still alive and well, a surviving hero. He would have to devise a new plan to remove him from this earth.
Two failures. The imam had consoled him that it was bad luck all around, but Hercule knew to his gut it wasn’t bad luck at JFK. Out of respect, Hercule hadn’t pointed out the obvious to the imam, that Nasim had been the imam’s mistake. It was on Hercule’s head nevertheless, because he hadn’t said no. The imam would never make him go against his better judgment again.
As for St. Patrick’s, yes, he would accept that every plan had risks, a small chance of failure, even if it was planned perfectly. But today in France, they wouldn’t be so lucky.
He sat back down on the sofa, leaned his head against the soft cushion, and closed his eyes. He didn’t even know for certain whether that idiot Nasim was dead, whether that irritating thread had been nipped.
He’d sent Jamil Nazari, his best sniper, a longtime friend in Algeria, to kill him. The GPS chip in Nasim’s armpit would guide him, and Hercule had his family under his control. He surely expected Jamil to succeed, dangerous as it was for him. When Jamil called him on his business phone to tell him the FBI woman from the airport was there with Nasim at the safe house, Hercule happily gave the order to take her out as well. Surely the FBI hadn’t gotten their hands on that burner phone—Jamil was always too careful for that.
Hercule had considered what would happen if Jamil failed to kill Nasim—he always considered everything. He’d had Jamil followed to Colby, New York, with instructions for the follower to keep out of Jamil’s sight, keep watch, and keep Hercule informed of everything as it happened. So he knew Jamil had been shot, knew he was out of surgery and expected to live in that Podunk hospital on Long Island. Hercule mourned losing Jamil even though he wasn’t dead. He would be imprisoned forever, perhaps executed, and there was little chance of freeing him. He wasn’t worried about Jamil talking—he was a true believer, not hired muscle. Hercule knew Jamil would never talk, not even if the FBI poured a truth serum down his throat.
What he didn’t know for certain was whether Nasim was still alive, whether Jamil had succeeded in killing him. Nasim hadn’t been removed from the safe house, not dead, not walking, in the several hours after the shooting, the GPS chip out of power or disabled. The FBI had made no announcement of any kind. Were they playing with him, hoping he would spare Nasim’s family until he knew for certain? Even if Nasim had talked before Jamil shot at him, it didn’t matter much, because he didn’t know about the whole, only his tiny part. He could tell him he’d met with the imam, but without proof, the old man was probably safe. Nasim knew nothing about Hercule, nothing about the Strategist. He really should stop worrying; Jamil had very likely killed Nasim.
There was a knock on the suite door. It was room service with fish and chips, his favorite, served up at the crack of dawn for his breakfast, served elegantly and without any smart comments. He would put everything right, back on track. He would give the FBI no more than a day to make an announcement about Nasim. If they didn’t, he would eliminate Nasim’s family and put the whole business behind him. It was too dangerous to let them live. Bella had more surprises than they knew of yet.
And there was France. He should find out very soon now.
As he chewed on a french fry dipped in mayonnaise, he wished himself a happy birthday and thought again of that redheaded female FBI agent who was there when they’d taken Jamil. She would be the woman who beat him twice. How would it look to let a woman do that to the Strategist? What could he accomplish if the primitive men who worked for him lost their fear of him, their respect? He decided to kill her—in public, if possible—with lots of smartphone videos running. It would be seen as an outrage, she’d be a martyr for some, but his own people would know the Strategist had the last word.
His cell rang. It was Bahar, calling from France. He listened and then hung up.
And smiled.