The Assassin by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online

said.
    “It is difficult to believe that you are actually in the diplomatic corps.”
    Petrou glanced around again without moving his head. He hesitated, then apparently reached a decision. From an inside coat pocket he removed a folded piece of paper and passed it across the table.
    His companion slowly unfolded the paper and held it in both hands as he read. “Your mother?” he said.
    “Yes.”
    The man folded the paper along its original lines and put it in an inside jacket pocket.
    “It’s yours,” he said.
    Petrou reached for the case, then saw the waitress bringing his wine. He withdrew his hand.
    After thanking her, he took a sip. Cool, tart and delicious.
    The man across the table consulted his menu. “I am thinking of having the fish,” he said pleasantly. “I hear it is acceptable here.”
    Petrou didn’t pick up the menu. He took another drink of wine, a healthy swig. “I remind you that you promised nothing was going to happen to Mother.”
    The man glanced up from the menu, met his eyes and said, “So I did.”
    Petrou drained the wineglass, then reached for the case under the table. As he rose from his chair he caught the waitress’ eye. “He’ll pay,” he said, nodding at his companion. Then he walked out, carrying the attache case.
    Abu Qasim took his time over his meal. Petrou had told him last week that a small group of wealthy Europeans and Americans was funding a private army to search for and kill key members of the Islamic Jihad movement with information mined from the records of some major international financial and shipping concerns. Now he had supplied him with a list of the people and institutions involved … in return for money, of course.
    As he ate, Qasim weighed the information he had received. His networks were going to have to be more careful, avoid the companies on the list if possible. Sometimes it was not possible. Zetsche’s shipping concern was really the only major shipper in much of the Arab world. Still, the data-miners would get little information if all parties to the transactions took the proper precautions. As for the private army … the holy warriors could and would deal with them, if they should become a nuisance. He had made a good bargain with Petrou, receiving very valuable information for a relatively modest sum. As he dined, Qasim marveled again at what a low price most people put on their honor, and their souls.
    December
    Abdul-Zahra Mohammed drank the last of his tea as he stood looking through the dirty, fly-specked window at the crowds in the narrow street below. Two- and three-story flat-roofed buildings lined the street in the Old Quarter, which had stood essentially unchanged on the flanks of the hill under the mosque for almost five hundred years.
    The crowds in the street… they, too, looked as they had for generations, with only a few changes. Many of the men and all of the women wore robes, and the women were veiled, yet here and there a man, usually young, usually a common laborer, wore trousers and a loose shirt. The street was too narrow for vehicles; instead of the mules, donkeys and camels that had hauled food and merchandise through the Old Quarter since the dawn of time, most haulers used a bicycle, a motor scooter or even a motorcycle.
    The window was open a few inches, admitting the smells and sounds of the quarter. Spices, unwashed humans, leather, animal dung, smoke from cooking fires, spoiling meat and fruit—it was a heady aroma, one Mohammed rarely noticed anymore. He was used to the sounds, too, a cacophony of voices, power tools, small gasoline motors, and whirring fans.
    Abdul-Zahra Mohammed had spent his life in this quarter. Born in the back of his father’s shop, educated in the mosque, he left the quarter only when he needed to meet with people in the movement who could not or did not want to come here.
    The quarter was watched—Mohammed knew that. Everyone did. The entrances to the narrow streets of the Old Quarter