Splinter Cell. Don Pendleton

he had been unsuccessful in at least one way.

      He and Paxton had flown commercial to keep a low profile upon entering the Netherlands. There was no chance of that now. By the time they touched down in Amsterdam the pilot would have radioed all that had happened aboard the 747 to the tower. There would be long interviews with police, which took time away from the mission. But worse than that, the airport would be a carnival of newsmen and-women shouting questions and popping flash in their faces.

      Bolan and Brick Paxton would not go unnoticed, they’d be celebrities. Their pictures would be on the front page of every newspaper in Europe and quite possibly the rest of the world.

      The Executioner leaned back against his seat, shut his eyes and frowned. Then, slowly, the corners of his mouth began to turn upward as a plan took shape in his mind.

      A LIGHT SNOW HAD BEGUN falling over the city of Marken by the time Abdul Hassan slid his heavy overcoat over his navy blue blazer, placed the woven tweed fedora on his head and wrapped his muffler around his neck. He descended the back stairs of his hotel to avoid having to speak to the desk clerk but, as luck would have it, the hotel manager was sweeping the stairwell near the rear door when he reached the ground floor.

      The manager looked up in surprise when he heard Hassan’s footsteps coming down the last flight of stairs. But he smiled. “It is not that cold outside,” he said in Dutch as he dumped the contents of his dustpan into the large rubber trash can he had rolled into the stairwell along with the broom. “You will soon be sweating.”

      Hassan forced a laugh. He didn’t like surprises like this, didn’t like being noticed at all when he was in Marken. Which was why, while he lived only a few short miles away in Amsterdam, he always came to town the night before he was to meet his contact. And why he never stayed at the same hotel. But such coincidences were sometimes unavoidable, and he had his cover story ready, as always.

      “You seem to forget,” Hassan replied in Dutch, “that I come from a country where 120-degree temperatures are not unusual. To me, it is freezing out there.”

      The two exchanged another short, polite round of laughter. As Hassan reached for the door, the manager’s eyebrows lowered in either concern or curiosity—Hassan wasn’t sure which. But he expressed concern.

      “You should use the front door,” the man said. “Marken is not a violent town like Amsterdam. Still, there is crime, and the alleys are not safe.”

      Hassan shrugged. “I suppose you are right,” he said. “But I am only out for a short walk. And it is only a few steps down the alley from the door to the street. I will be all right.”

      Now it was the manager’s turn to shrug. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But I will watch you from the door until you reach the sidewalk.”

      “Thank you,” Hassan said and opened the door.

      The manager had been correct—it was not cold enough outside for the way Abdul Hassan had dressed. He guessed the temperature to be only slightly below freezing, and the wind was light. Still, it chilled his face and hands as he stepped outside. His footsteps echoed hollowly along the bricks of the narrow alleyway, and he could see the light from the open door to the hotel reflecting off the walls to both his sides. It illuminated his path, and for that he was grateful.

      He glanced behind him and saw that, as promised, the hotel manager was still watching him.

      He walked casually along the pavement. He would take a roundabout route through the downtown area of Marken, doing his best to appear to be nothing more than his cover story claimed he was—an exporter of Holland’s wooden shoes to the Middle East. He was in town on business and bored in his hotel room.

      The real reason for his walk, however, was to look for a tail. He had begun his relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency nearly three years before, which was a long time for such a relationship. He was only human, and he knew he had made many mistakes in the past that could have given him away to the more fundamentalist Muslims who had infiltrated Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. What was even more frightening was the fact that he knew he had to have made countless other mistakes of which he was not even aware.

      Perhaps it was time to get out. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he could do that. He felt a tremendous responsibility to stop the terrorism his misguided fellow Arabs perpetrated. It gave everyone with the sharp features and dark skin of the Middle East a bad name, and made men and women suspicious of everyone who fit the profile.

      Hassan didn’t even glance into the shoe-shop window as he passed. If someone was following him, he didn’t want the man remembering him as having any interest in the shoe shop at all. Tomorrow, he would leave through the same door to the alley by which he’d exited the hotel tonight, then follow a labyrinth of other alleys to another back door into the shoe shop.

      There, he knew, he was to meet two new men.

      The snow began to lighten as Abdul Hassan walked on, stopping occasionally to window-shop at businesses that had nothing to do with his work, and glancing casually behind him. He did the same at street corners as he waited for traffic lights to change, and turned randomly right and left whenever the mood struck him, or when he thought he’d seen a familiar figure behind him more than once. Each time, the men or women who had caught his attention eventually disappeared. Which meant that he was left wondering if he had simply imagined them following him, or if they might have turned the surveillance over to another agent.

      Yes, Abdul Hassan nodded to himself as he finally turned back toward his hotel. Paranoia was definitely beginning to get the better of him.

      But by the time he was within two blocks of his hotel, his mistrust had all but evaporated. He had seen no one on the way back that he had seen before, and he felt a sudden relaxation come over him. Either no one was interested in him, or they were so good at what they did that he would never spot them. If the latter was the case, there was nothing he could do about it. They would eventually kill him, and that would be that. Strangely, this realization brought on a certain calmness. He had done everything he could do.

      Hassan slowed his pace, actually enjoying the walk now that he had given up his own counter-surveillance and warmed up. He stuffed his hands deeper into his coat pockets and felt the hilt of the pesh kabz dagger. The T-shaped blade was always reassuring to him. Even though it was of Persian and Northern India origin and he was not, he had chosen it because its original role had been to penetrate chain mail.

      He assumed it would work just as well in penetrating the thick clothing worn against the Netherlands cold. He always carried the dagger unsheathed, letting the heavy wool of his coat and the other layers of clothing beneath the garment protect him from both the point and edges.

      Hassan wrapped his fingers around the grip of the dagger as he walked on. There were two reasons he had left Syria for the Netherlands. The first was to escape the influence of the fundamentalist Muslims who insisted on restricting behavior to that more befitting the twelfth century than the twenty-first. The second reason was the heat. What he sometimes questioned, however, was why he had allowed himself to be recruited by Jim Campbell, who had been the CIA chief of station in Amsterdam when he’d first arrived. What was even more puzzling was why he’d stayed on after Campbell had been transferred and he’d been turned over to the ambitious man’s lackluster replacement, Felix Young.

      Hassan thought of the man who had taken Campbell’s place. He rarely left his office, wherever that was—Hassan had to assume it was at the American Embassy after the fashion of all intelligence services the world over. The bottom line was that Hassan had done more work, accomplished far more, during the six months he’d worked for Campbell than in the two and a half years since his recruiter had been replaced.

      The light turned and Abdul Hassan walked on. He could see the sign above his hotel ahead. Soon he would be inside and warm. He would get a good night’s rest, then meet with two new men from some other agency to which the CIA was turning him over. He hoped they would be more ambitious than Young, and that he would actually do some good in changing the way the world looked at Islam and Arabs at this point in history. As his heels clicked against