A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka Page B

Three didn’t.
    After a moment, Chace said, “If it comes, it’ll be D-Ops who tasks it, not us. We just complete the mission, we don’t lobby for the action.”
    “Won’t be you, anyway, Chris,” Poole said, snagging one of the darts and then quickly scooting his chair back as the missile fell, point down, to the floor. “If they call for a hit, it’ll go to Minder One, with me as backup.”
    “Because I’m the baby?”
    Poole grinned at Lankford over his shoulder. “That’s right.”
    “It’s academic,” Chace interposed. “It’ll be weeks before anything is authorized, and that’s
if
anything is authorized. They’ll want to be damn sure we’re going after the right people before initiating any op.”
    Lankford’s frown deepened. “Then what the hell are we doing here?”
    “Nothing productive. If you boys want to shove off, I’ve no problem with it.”
    Poole grunted and tilted his chair forward, getting to his feet almost immediately. “You’ll tell the Watch?”
    Chace nodded.
    Poole moved past, fetching his coat from the stand.
    “The Boss won’t think we’re ditching?” Lankford asked.
    Chace shook her head. If Crocker had a problem with her turning Poole and Lankford loose, he’d bring it to her, not to them. And Chace doubted that he would have a problem. The fact was, until there was more data, until there was a mission in the offing, the three of them were just killing time. And time didn’t seem inclined to die without a struggle, not while all London was still holding its breath.
    Lankford hesitated, looked from her to Poole, watching the big man pull on his coat before rising to follow suit.
    “For what it’s worth,” he told Chace, “if he asks, tell him I’ll do the job.”
    “Of course you will, Chris,” Chace told him. “That’s why you’re here.”

Preoperational Background
Leacock, William D.
Some nights, before plummeting into his exhausted sleep, Sinan bin al-Baari would stare at the shadowed ceiling of the tent and think about names.
    At twenty-two years old, he had already gone through two, not counting the odd handful that had served as covers or other deceptions, or the dozens that had been thrown unkindly in his direction throughout his youth. He had been christened William Leacock, but that name was long dead to him, and when his thoughts did stray to it—something that happened less and less frequently these days—it seemed to him the name of a boy he had known only briefly and had not much liked.
    Then he had found Allah and taken the name Shuneal bin Muhammad, as was appropriate to one who had found the True Faith. It was the name he’d used upon reaching Egypt, during the months he’d spent studying in Cairo. It was the student’s name, and though he would never be mistaken for an Arab, by that name he was always known as a Muslim. It was that student who had entered his first
madrassa,
had read ibn Abdul Wahhab’s
Book of Tawhid.
It was that student who had begun collecting the cassette tapes sold outside of mosques throughout Cairo, sermons by the great Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia. In his room, shared with Aamil and six other students, they had listened to the tapes for hours. To the sermons of the late Abdul Aziz bin Baz, to the passion of Sheikh Wajdi Hamzeh al-Ghazawi, to the fury of Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, and, most of all, to the faith of Dr. Faud al-Shimmari.
    It was Shuneal bin Muhammad who had first heard jihad described as the Sixth Pillar of Islam. It was Shuneal bin Muhammad who had nodded his head in agreement at al-Ghazawi’s words when his recorded voice said, “Jihad is the peak of Islam.”
    It was Shuneal bin Muhammad who, with Aamil and two others, had begun lurking in the mosques and cafés of Cairo in the vain hope of making contact with some member of the Jamaat al-Islamiyya. But although Shuneal bin Muhammad was a Muslim, even perhaps a Wahhabist, he was not, and would never be, an Egyptian. After three months of