Free All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer Page A

“Enough self-absorption. What’s on our plate today?”
    I walk him through the morning meeting, and he nods, beginning to look human again. “TRIPWIRE, you say?”
    I nod.
    â€œThere was something…” He begins to type with determination, and I lean back, allowing him his moment of escape inside the job. He uses work that way, to sidestep the realities of his miserable life. The best of us do that. “Yes. Here. In ’04 TRIPWIRE gave us a load of shit about an al Qaeda cell in Salzburg. We wasted a lot of time with the Interior Ministry, trying to get them to storm a warehouse. Empty, of course.” He shakes his head. “We can keep an eye on this, but I’d say there’s an eighty percent chance he’s selling us another fairy tale.”
    â€œMaybe,” I tell him, “but look at your in-box. From Europol.”
    He goes back to his computer, scrolling until he finds the message I saw when he showed up. It’s a mention of the arrival of one Mashood Al-Fakeeh, on a Saudi passport, in Barcelona two days ago, arriving from Jordan. Mashood Al-Fakeeh, the analysts believe, is in fact Ilyas Shishani, a Chechen radical who reportedly joined forces with Ansar Al-Islam. It isn’t much of a leap to wonder if he’s one of the operational planners that Ansar Al-Islam has lent to Aslim Taslam for TRIPWIRE’s “airline-related event.”
    Bill certainly doesn’t need any prodding. He reads the message, then raises his head to look hard at me. Without a word, he nods and stands up. He’s in command again, using work the way it should be used as he marches off to Vick’s office.

 
    4
    Maternal feelings are the only explanation for why I insist on taking Bill to lunch when I’m not even hungry. Maternal feelings, and pity. So a little after one o’clock I tap on his door frame and ask when he last ate. He’s hunched over his keyboard, gray hair scattered across his forehead. “Last night,” he says, looking surprised by his own admission.
    â€œPack your things. I’m treating you to the Golden Dragon.”
    It takes some convincing, but the truth is that other than putting out an alert to watch for Ilyas Shishani and fretting about a rumor from Damascus, there’s not a lot to do. He says, “You’re not lunching with Mr. Right?”
    â€œHe’s on the other side of town. Shaking down networks. Following leads.”
    â€œAha,” Bill says, bobbing eyebrows, then gives in. “But I’m buying.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Goldener Drachen is nearby, down steep stairs beneath a typical Viennese monstrosity at the southern end of Liechtenstein Park and its Garden Palace. Once we get downstairs, a disarmingly cheerful man brings us into the main dining room, full of civil servants of various nationalities eating cheaply off the Mittagsmenü, surrounded by twisty dragons and ornate Chinese characters adorned in red. The Dragon advertises itself as Austria’s first Chinese restaurant, and with its photos of famous personages over the decades, smiling with the owner, it’s not hard to believe this claim.
    We’re in luck—a free table beside the aquarium. As we settle down Bill taps irreverently on the glass, scaring aquatic life. We ask for tea and go through the menu. Unlike the government workers around us, we’re unable to bend our tastes to their preset lunch menus, and we end up ordering a smorgasbord: spring rolls, mixed grill, wonton and egg-drop soups, Hou-You chicken in oyster sauce, and Szechuan duck. Tea comes, we place our order, and once we’re alone Bill returns to the aquarium and its strips of faux seaweed, through which exotic fish dart and hide. “You want to talk about it?” I ask.
    I’m not sure he’s heard me. His gaze doesn’t shift. Then he says to the fish, “I’d rather hear about you and Henry. How is utopia?”
    He