40
Seamus waded into the crowd, fighting his way to the bar. He reached it and waited. A barkeep came his way, and he said, “Guinness. Also, I’m looking for Dermot.”
The bartender nodded and began his pour, shouting over his shoulder.
Dermot was the man who’d done the legwork to find their original safe house in Dublin. A man not unused to helping out the cause, even if he professed not to know what was being done. Seamus had leased the town house with his grandfather’s name and had thought that would be the end of the relationship with Dermot. After Frog’s call, Seamus had contacted him for another favor.
The beer arrived at the same time as Dermot. Seamus waited until the barkeep was gone, then said, “Well? Seen anything out of place?”
Wiping down a pint glass, Dermot smiled and said, “Yeah. Your two friends are in the garden. Looking like they’d rather be dead.”
“Two? There’s two of them?”
“Yep. Tall and lanky. Dressed like a couple of vagabonds and sticking out like burnt wood.”
Seamus thanked him, then picked up his beer and began fighting the crowd, pushing and twisting to get beyond the bottleneck of live music. He entered the door to the beer garden, really just another room, and the music faded to the back. He glanced around and immediately spotted the Somalis. Both huddled over a small table, drinking what appeared to be tea, they were exactly as advertised. Tall and lanky. Even their skulls were long, almost as if someone had taken them as a child and drawn them out until their features were distorted, the mass of their muscles lost in the stretching.
He threaded his way through the tables until he was next to theirs. Not wanting to alarm them, he stood until they looked up. He said, “Ali Hassan?”
They glanced at each other, then back at him. One had a small harelip, his teeth white against the cleft. He said, “I am Ali Hassan. And you are?”
“You may call me Clover. I’d prefer not to give you my name, but Frog is the one who introduced us.”
Ali squinted and said, “So you know my name, but I cannot learn yours.”
Seamus said, “May I sit?”
Ali nodded.
He did so and said, “Look, I mean no offense, but what you are proposing is pretty significant. I don’t want to be tied to a failure, but I’ll be more than willing to claim success. I never wanted to meet you here, in Ireland. Too many people know me. I’m sure you understand.”
Ali looked at the other Somali, saying nothing.
Seamus said, “Who is your friend?”
Teeth bared, the friend said, “You may call me Ismail. Nothing more.”
Seamus nodded and said, “I understand. We’re on the same page. I wish Frog had not given me Ali’s name, but he did. A necessary risk of doing business. So, you are prepared to conduct the strike? And it will be significant?”
Ali said, “Yes, it will be greater than anything seen on this continent, but we won’t do it unless you can deliver. We understood from Frog that you have someone of importance. Someone who will cause the United States to cease their activities in Somalia. I need to know if that’s true.”
Seamus pulled out his smartphone and flipped to the camera roll. He pulled up one picture and said, “See this? It’s the vice president’s son. Next to him is his fiancée. The guy in the back is the husband of a governor of the United States. Yes. They’re important. I pass them to you, and you get a coup of unimaginable proportions.”
Ali took the phone and said, “How do I know this is true? How do I know you didn’t manipulate it with Adobe Photoshop?”
A little taken aback, expecting the goat-herder facade to extend to the man’s mentality, Seamus said, “You see the faces? See the bruises? You won’t find any pictures like this on Facebook. Go ahead and search. I have them, trust me.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as it takes. You want them, you need to pay.”
Ali looked at Ismail again, and Seamus wondered who was really in charge.
Ismail nodded and Ali said, “We are ready. Right now. Frog said you would provide the explosive material.”
“Yes. I can do that, but I need some assurances you can penetrate the target. The RDX is traceable. It was stolen, and if it’s found before detonation, it could lead back to my organization. Afterward, I don’t care.”
Ismail said, “Don’t worry about that. We have two people who are working as a cleaning crew at the target. They’ve been there for two years. We can penetrate. Can you deliver the necessary amount of RDX? It isn’t small.”
Seamus ignored the question, saying, “A janitor isn’t going to get you inside. Tell me you haven’t planned everything on that. The security at that place is very high.”
Ali said, “No. We are fishermen. We live in the water. We’ll swim to it. There is little protection from that side. All we need is someone to unlock a door once we are up.”
Seamus considered his words, then said, “Okay. Yes, I can get you the explosives. Are you looking to separate one car or what?”
Ali smiled. “No. The entire thing. I told you it was significant.”
Seamus smelled a bluff. He leaned back and said, “Bullshit. No way can you do that. I don’t even know if you can rig the explosives, but you sure as shit can’t do it in a manner to cause catastrophic failure. I’m not trading for a puff of smoke and thirty minutes on the news. If I’m going to claim the attack, I need thirty days of news.”
Ali pointed at Ismail and said, “He is a structural engineer. Trained in Egypt. He has studied everything available on the target. He says he can do it. If you give us the proper explosives.”
Seamus went from one to the other, then said, “Okay. It’s a trade, then. You get the crown jewels of the United States, and I get your attack. You do understand, though, that if you fail, if you get captured, you’re on your own.”
“Of course. But we won’t fail. I promise you that.”