Deadly Straits (A Tom Dugan Novel) by R.E. McDermott Read Free Book Online

Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT) was a Stasi clone and always in need of talent, especially talent with fluent Spanish and Cuban roots. He touched his face. The Cubans had excellent plastic surgeons.
    His Nordic good looks and native fluency in a half a dozen languages provided the Cubans an asset of incalculable value, and he parlayed that to his own advantage. He’d become a “consultant” and then a free agent, protected by the Cubans in exchange for sharing intelligence. Capitalist by default now, he worked for anyone with his fee, from drug lords to African dictators. His best clients to date were Latin American demagogues, champions of a failed model, buying the votes of the dispossessed with promises no economy could make real, especially not the bungled economics of the neo-socialism.
    Braun smiled again. No client had been as malleable and oblivious to fees as that idiot Rodriguez in Venezuela. It would be a shame to lose the cash flow should it prove necessary to sacrifice him as damage control. Then again, the Iranian had proven to be more than generous and deserved his fire wall. Braun was looking forward to a very comfortable retirement.
    He settled in behind his desk and contemplated the latest turn of events. He didn’t like this American lodging with Kairouz, but it was apparently an arrangement of long standing; best to keep to routine. Besides, Kairouz was thoroughly cowed, and this Dugan was one more American he could throw into the mix to make things all the more believable.
    Willingly to the slaughter. Braun could hardly believe his good fortune.

Chapter Six
    House of Islamic Knowledge
Dearborn, Michigan
27 May
    Mohammad Borqei stood, balled fists in his back as he stretched to ease the stiffness of the old shrapnel wound. American shrapnel, for the Great Satan had been generous in aid to Saddam when the madman had been murdering Iranians. Borqei swallowed his anger. He moved from the window to his desk and picked up the message from Tehran.
    A wistful smile crossed his bearded face at thoughts of Iran, a home he’d never see again. It had taken years to craft his “legend” as a moderate, advancing viewpoints he despised in mosques across Tehran, enduring the hostility of colleagues, and finally imprisonment for seditious acts. Then he’d “escaped” to the US via Canada, and the foolish Americans had tugged the Trojan horse through the gate.
    He’d settled in Dearborn, with its large Muslim community, joining interfaith groups and preaching tolerance. When the Imam of the House of Islamic Knowledge died in a car crash, he was the logical choice to assume leadership of the community’s preeminent mosque. Able to count Islamic voters, the local congressman fast-tracked Borqei’s citizenship application and stood smiling as he took the oath. Indeed, Borqei’s public “assimilation” was so convincing that it undermined his mission. His inner circle of the faithful was small and resistant to all efforts at expansion.
    For, despite cynicism about American ideals as preached and practiced, the Muslims of Dearborn were optimistic. Conflicts with their “real” American neighbors were frequent but waged with words during meetings, not by stone-throwing mobs or suicide bombers. Each grudging compromise was a small victory, as their sons played American football and ate halal pizza, and they built new lives, much better than those they’d left behind.
    Borqei had faced the paradox. His need for “assimilated” Americans would never be met by American-born Muslims, who were corrupted beyond redemption. Hezbollah had come to his aid, trolling teeming refugee camps for orphans. While they trained in Iran, Borqei prepared the ground, helping the faithful of his inner circle get citizenship, allowing them in turn to use the Child Citizenship Act to adopt “foreign-born children,” all graduates of Hezbollah training. They arrived, committed to serving Islam by becoming ever more