Will these ancient cobblestones soon be drenched with blood? Donovan wondered, as he, de Waha and Maccabee walked across the Grand Place.
He looked up at the hundreds of gilded windows gleaming in the late morning sun and felt his muscles tense. Despite the massive security, despite the guards at each building, despite the numerous room searches, he feared Stahl might be behind a window, looking down on the G8 leaders’ grandstand, mocking their efforts to stop him, counting the seconds until he unleashed his weapon.
Donovan scanned the windows for any hint of a face. He watched for a curtain shifting, a shadow moving. He saw nothing, mostly due to the sun’s reflections.
He looked up at the Hôtel de Ville’s 310-foot spire. On its top, stood the statue of Michael the Archangel, his foot crushing the head of a demon.
There’s a new demon in town, Michael! And if you’re not busy, we could use your help…
They walked inside the 14th century Maison du Boulanger building and entered the G8 command center. It reminded Donovan of a NASA control room. More than twenty specialists sat at keyboards linked to flat-screen monitors scanning every foot of the Grand Place.
Their leader, Pierre Dumon, worked the main control console. Donovan knew Dumon, an information-technology wizard. He’d worked with the thin, forty-year-old man with intense blue eyes and red hair tied in a ponytail. He waved Donovan and the others over.
“Check this out!” Dumon said, pointing to a 103-inch, high- definition monitor. The screen replayed Maccabee, de Waha and Donovan walking across the Grand Place. The picture was so sharp, Donovan saw a razor nick on his chin and the detail of Maccabee’s silver bracelets and tear-drop earrings.
Donovan placed his hand on hers and nodded toward the screen, “You look like an innocent tourist.”
“Moi? Innocent? After last night?”
Donovan smiled and flashed back to last night’s passionate lovemaking. Miraculously, it had ignited something in him that he feared he’d lost and would never again regain. The courage to love a woman again… and the magic of two people becoming one. He was amazed at how quickly the feelings and emotions had re-emerged in him. He’d thought they might be extinguished forever. But they weren’t. And he was blissfully happy that they had rekindled.
“Each screen,” Pierre Dumon said, “can zoom in on a suspect. We then compare his frontal and profile facial composition to Stahl’s. If our facial recognition software scores high enough comparing eye-width, ear, nose and mouth to Stahl, we move in on the guy. They eyes are the big thing. Their dimensions don’t change.”
“How long for the comparison?” Donovan asked.
“Our new units give us a preliminary comparison in about thirty seconds.”
“You’re covering the entire Grand Place, right?”
Dumon nodded. “We’ve divided it into thirty-three sections. If we see Stahl in section B-6, officers surround him and close in fast!”
Donovan nodded. “What about all the windows?”
“Each window is scanned every thirty seconds. As you know, no one has been allowed inside the Grand Place buildings since last night at six p.m. Since then, over two-hundred armed guards have blocked all building entrances, front and back.”
“But what if you see someone in a window?” Donovan asked.
“We identify the person fast. If we can’t, and he’s holding a weapon or something that looks like a weapon, we take him out.”
“How?”
“Anti-terrorist teams are just outside all buildings. They’ll enter and break into the room.”
Donovan nodded. “But what if the team can’t reach him in time?”
Dumon pointed at the roofs.
Donovan saw a row of snipers and remembered they were Belgian’s best special ops snipers and among the world’s best.
“Were all rooms searched this morning?”
“An hour ago,” Dumon said. “And we’re checking them again now.”
Donovan nodded. “Who’s checking the checkers?”
“We are. All checkers must report for roll call outside on the Grand Place, and all their weapons must be accounted for, five minutes before the ceremony begins.”
Down on the square, Donovan watched people move through metal detector arches at the six street entrances to the Grand Place. Once they passed through the metal detectors, they stepped into full body scanners. Next, they were sniffed for biological and chemical toxins. Overhead, Geiger counters sifted the air for the radioactive isotopes of a dirty bomb.
People seemed in a festive mood and not too bothered by the extensive security measures.
The security measures reassured Donovan, but he knew Stahl had anticipated them and planned for them.
Donovan walked over in front of the team. “Last night,” Donovan said, holding up Stahl’s photo in front of them, “we learned Stahl dyed his hair black. By now it may be blond or red or gray or he may be bald. Or he may wear a beard. Go by height. He’s one-point-nine meters tall, six-three, he weighs one hundred kilos, two hundred twenty pounds. He has powerful arms and shoulders. But he’s a genius at disguise. So check everyone that height, anyone older, fatter, a policeman, a doctor, a man in a wheelchair, a tall nun, a Hasidic Jew, a monk, a one-legged man on crutches. Look for anyone paying special attention to our security.”
The group nodded.
“And above all look for these eyes,” Donovan said, pointing to the black eye sockets on Stahl’s face. “Lenses can change their color – but not their intensity - or how deep-set they are. He knows that, so he’s probably wearing sunglasses.”
* * *
Directly below him on the Grand Place, he listened to the crowd noise grow louder. He peeked out the ancient window of the secret storage room and was pleased to see people filling the square and crowding close to the grandstand. The more the better.
Just minutes now, he realized.
He took off his sunglasses and saw sunlight pouring into the small room. He followed the rays of the sun back to the middle of the room where they bathed his beautiful rocket launchers in gold. The launchers were armed and ready. So were the brothers operating them.
He looked down at where the leaders would soon sit – the large grandstand.
On that grandstand, I will avenge the loss of my family and the slaughter of my Muslim brothers and sisters… On that grandstand we will repay Israel and the infidel nations for their occupation and desecration of our sacred lands.
Earlier, wearing their police uniforms, they’d entered an Arab food shop two blocks from the Grand Place. In its sub-basement, they removed the loosened concrete blocks, crawled into the ancient, abandoned sewer and walked through it to the cellar of the Grand Place building. There, they then climbed to the third floor and stepped into room 3C where they moved the large armoire aside and entered the secret storage alcove. They inched the armoire back in front of the door, sealing themselves inside the alcove. Everything had gone smoothly.
And still was.
One second later, it wasn’t.
He heard floorboards creak in the hallway. The kind of creak caused by human weight. Someone was walking this way.
Finger to his lips, he alerted the brothers.
In the hallway, he heard men checking rooms, shouting commands. Moments later, they stepped into room 3C with the large armoire beside him. He heard a dog sniffing around the armoire.
“The dog’s acting strange,” a man said.
“Where?”
“Over near this armoire.”
“Probably some food in there.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, let’s keep moving. We got more rooms to check. And we gotta get down to the Grand Place.”
“No – something’s in this armoire.”
The dog scratched at the armoire, then began to growl.
“Open it for chrissakes.”
He heard the armoire’s door squeak open.
The dog scratched harder.
“It’s filled with huge stacks of magazines and papers and shit like that. Probably food or a dead mouse underneath.”
“No. This dog is trained for explosives.”
“So wave the explosives sniffer around in there.”
“Dogs are better. They can sniff what sniffers can’t.”
“Wave the damn sniffer anyway. Hurry!”
Seconds later. “Negative readings. Absolutely nothing.”
“Okay. Check behind the armoire!”
“What? This thing’s flush against the wall! And heavier than Napoleon’s tomb!”
A phone rang and a man said, “Yeah, okay, we are hurrying!” He hung up. “We got our arms-check roll call outside in two minutes! Let’s go!”
The men hurried out of the room and hustled down the hall.
When he no longer heard the men, he inched up to the window, lifted his sunglasses and peeked outside. He saw the sun-drenched grandstand below where the G8 leaders would sit in just minutes. A nine-foot-high bulletproof Plexiglas wall surrounded the grandstand.
An excellent wall, except for one thing. No roof. His rocket grenades, four powerful thermobaric fuel-air explosive warheads, the most powerful and deadly in the world, would easily sail over the wall and explode.
And obliterate everyone on the grandstand and beyond.
The leaders would be identified by their teeth.
If teeth could be found.