Mind Bomb

The Wolf gently lifted out a tiny brass flywheel and frowned at the corrosion. The old diving watch had salt-water damage. “I am beset by them.”

“I fear the Americans may have become involved.”

Wolfli set the tiny wheel on the felt in front of him. The operation he was currently running was the most delicate, dangerous and had the highest stakes of his career, and quite possibly anyone else’s on Earth. “Are you sure?”

“It seems very likely.” Winter made a face. “Ferraris thinks it is the FBI. Circumstantial evidence supports his idea.”

It was very likely that one day soon either Winter or Ferraris would inherit the Wolf’s position. Ferraris had the bad taste to be openly in competition for it and to make misogynistic innuendo behind Winter’s back. “Well.” The Wolf peered over his glasses. “Ferraris does bench-press more than you.”

Winter smirked.

“What do you think?” the Wolf inquired.

“It does not smell like the FBI.” Winter waved a casual hand. “To me anyway.”

The Wolf smiled again. Winter was from the central canton of Fribourg. High German was her first language but any Swiss who met her would laugh and say, “That one is Italian!” by temperament. Wolfli himself was from the southernmost canton of Ticino and he had grown up speaking Italian. Winter was the first woman the Wolf had ever recruited and trained. “And what is it that you smell, Dani?”

Winter’s nose wrinkled. “Cowboys.”

The Wolf nodded. The United States was an amazing place, and the FBI and CIA were marvelous organizations. The best of their kind in the world. However, during the seventies and the Vietnam conflict, and the eighties when their President Reagan had decided to win the Cold War, the prime of the Wolf’s fieldwork, the CIA had cemented its cowboy reputation among its fellow nations. It remained a nickname for them to this day in some circles.

The few occasions when the Wolf had been forced to take action against agents of the United States, either personally or by proxy, he had outmaneuvered and eliminated them with ease. They had never suspected him or even known of his organization, and he had left their superiors blaming the Soviets or other hostile players. The Americans were good, but in the Wolf’s experience few of them were chess players, and none were watchmakers. Of course, it was a relatively new century now and everything got better with practice. “CIA?”

“I don’t know. Ferraris described it as ‘renegade, but with extreme precision.’”

The Wolf snorted. Ferraris was a Geneva man and, as Swiss went, very French in style. “Surely you do not suspect private contractors?”

“I do not know. I cannot put my finger on it, but I do not like anything about what I am hearing.”

The Wolf sighed wearily. If the Americans knew what was really going on, all hell would be breaking loose. However, Hell’s fire and chaos appeared to remain confined in Gehenna, for the moment. This led him to believe that the Americans had stumbled upon the side effects. Nevertheless, he could not afford to have them bumbling around. A United States intervention could be catastrophic. The question was, like the watch in front of him, was it repairable?

“Where are these cowboys now?”

“Ferraris reports they have gone dark.”

“We know their line of inquiry?”

“Yes, in fact they were very useful in that regard.”

“They will reemerge. Pick your team. Have them standing by.”

“At once, I will—”

“Have Ferraris lead it.”

Winter controlled her facial expression but the room went as cold as her name.

“You will act as controller, in the field,” the Wolf concluded.

The room warmed a degree or two. Winter loved fieldwork, and field commander on an assignment of this magnitude was huge. However, putting Winter in charge of Ferraris hinted at a possible hierarchy to come. “As you say.” Winter lingered a moment by the door. “Pirmin?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Do I have permission to exercise the fight-fire-with-fire protocol?”

The Wolf bent over his work. The die was cast. “Yes.”

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_c1ed2338-f67a-5c90-b616-00a47380087c)

The War Room, Stony Man Farm

Kurtzman and Huntington Wethers pored over databases based on Lyons’s search criteria. The initial search had brought up thousands of files. The obvious conclusion was that the world was a violent place. Kurtzman trawled North, Central and South America while Wethers worked North Africa and the Middle East. They’d been at it through the night. Akira Tokaido looked up from his workstation and laughed. “Data dump from Japan! Godzilla size! Who wants it?”

Wethers let out a long breath. “Sometimes, I hate him.”

Kurtzman stared at his vast folder of not much. Besides the recent attacks in Mexico, the Americas were yielding nothing save cartel killings and the usual South American sicko horror. The United States was loaded with anomalous killings, crimes and misbehaviors, but nothing quite rang true to Lyons’s criteria. Kurtzman smiled at his map. “I’ll take it.”

“Transferring now!”

Kurtzman watched file upon file descend upon him courtesy of the Farm’s resident young hacker. In Kurtzman’s experience a great deal of Japanese crime could be considered anomalous. They had a very different culture. Part of that culture was a code of silence when it came to violent crime. It was also an open secret that Japanese authorities cooked their books to make their nation appear to be a nonviolent industrious island paradise. Kurtzman sent the files to his main west screen of the drive-in-size monitor and hit his translation software.

Hunt Wethers tapped his display. “Here.”

“Where?”

“Israel. Haifa to be exact.”

A map of Israel popped up on one of Kurtzman’s auxiliary screens. He tapped a key and data scrolled wearing a frown. “The string of suicide bombings last week? Hezbollah claimed full credit. The Israelis are launching retaliatory air strikes as we speak.”

“Yes, but one of the attackers survived. The suicide vest failed.” Wethers looked over from his screen pointedly. “A teenage girl, off everyone’s radar until last week.”

“She claims she didn’t do it?”

“Full signed confession, save that the Haifa police had a file going and everything prior to her confession has been completely redacted.”

Kurtzman knew where this was going. “The Mossad took over the case.”

“Military intelligence took over the case,” Wethers confirmed. “And while it doesn’t say it in so many words, it sure smells like Mossad yanked the case from them.”

Kurtzman mulled that over. “Haifa and military intelligence.”

“You know something?”

“I might know somebody, and they might still owe me a favor.”

“You calling this actionable?”

“Best lead we have. I need every scrap of information on the bombing in Haifa, news feeds, internet rumors and anything else we can cajole out of the Israelis through normal channels. Contact Jack, tell him to pull Cal out of Texas, and tell Able to sit tight.”