Ops Files II--Terror Alert Read Free Page B

that tells us he’s still receiving foreign support. Which may not seem like much, but it’s something.” Uri looked back at the mosque. “And I’ve learned to hate Dhaka even more than yesterday, so at least you’re not alone in that.” He laughed drily. “Look at the bright side – at least I’ve still got cigarettes left, so you don’t have to find a store.”
    The younger man looked at his watch. “They’ve been in there for an hour. Prayer service was over, what, twenty minutes ago?”
    “Maybe he’s using the can.”
    “Seriously. What are we doing here?”
    Uri gave Gil another long-suffering stare, his eyes like a basset hound’s, yellowed where they weren’t bloodshot, and the bags beneath them dark and drooping. “We’re recording who he’s in there with. It’s the best we can do.” Uri tapped his PDA screen. “See? Camera’s still in position, and we should be able to grab faces from the footage and compare them using the recognition software our enterprising American colleagues have generously shared with us.”
    “Without knowing what they’re talking about, this is a huge waste of time,” Gil countered. “We should be bribing the Western Union clerk so we can trace the money he received.”
    “I know you’d like to go in with guns blazing, but that’s not what we do, my young friend. Patience is a virtue. Good things come to those who wait.”
    “You should write fortune cookies.”
    “I may have to if they cut our expense account any further.”
    “Did you tell them that we picked up local chatter about something being planned?”
    Uri sighed. “Of course. They asked what it was – which, of course, we don’t know. They wanted to know who was involved. Which again, we don’t know. They asked about a target. Which we know zip about. Let’s just say that their response to our earth-shattering news was less than enthusiastic.”
    “We can’t learn any of that without the resources we need.”
    “Agreed. In the meantime, we sit here, I regale you with colorful stories of the Mossad’s glory years, and you learn a thing or two about tradecraft.”
    “My tradecraft’s fine.”
    “Pride goeth.”
    Gil stiffened and looked back at the mosque. “Wait. The doors are opening again.” They’d watched as the building had emptied out after the morning prayer, but their target, a local imam named Ajmal Kahn, hadn’t been among those who’d left – unusual, and the first time in the month that Uri and Gil had been following him.
    A VW van slowed to a stop in front of the mosque. Kahn’s two bodyguards, slim young men with scraggly black beards and the expressions of hawks, stepped out of the entryway into the hazy sunlight, followed by Kahn, who as usual looked as though he was ready to single-handedly command the heavens to open so the wrath of eternity could rain down upon those around him. His humorless face could have been carved from granite, etched with deep frown lines and eyes black and beady as a weasel’s.
    The three men looked around expectantly, and one of the bodyguards held a cell phone to his ear as the van’s sliding door opened. The imam and his men climbed inside and the panel slammed shut.
    Gil eyed Uri. “Well? Let’s go.”
    “Not so fast. We know our friend is in the van. What we don’t know is what he was doing in the mosque, or who he was with.”
    “One of us has to follow him.”
    “Agreed. I’ll take the car. Think you can find someplace discreet to watch the entrance from? Take photos of anyone that comes out.”
    Gil nodded. “You’re lucky my phone’s state-of-the-art and not that piece of shit they authorized.”
    “We’re all grateful for your profligate habits, young man.”
    “Where do you want to rendezvous?”
    “Back at my place,” Uri said, referring to the shabby office in the basement of his building that served as cover for the Mossad’s Dhaka operations. “Better snap to it, or I’m going to lose him.”
    Gil