The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

Over that time the foolish ones had died by the guns of Mossad officers. Those
still alive, like Qati, were the survivors, the strong, clever, dedicated
products of a Darwinian selection process.
'How are you dealing with informers?' Bock asked.
'We found one last week,' Qati answered with a cruel smile. 'He identified his
case officer before he died. Now we have him under surveillance.'
Bock nodded. Once the Israeli officer would merely have been assassinated, but
Qati had learned. By watching him – very carefully and only intermittently –
they might identify other infiltrators.
'And the Russians?' This question got a strong reaction.
'The pigs! They give us nothing of value. We are on our own. It has always been
so.' Qati's face showed what had today been rare animation. It came, then went,
and the Arab's face lapsed back into enveloping fatigue.
'You seem tired, my friend.'
'It has been a long day. For you also, I think.'
Bock allowed himself a yawn and a stretch. 'Until tomorrow?'
Qati rose with a nod, guiding his visitor to his room. Bock took his hand before
retiring. They'd known each other for almost twenty years. Qati returned to the
living room, and walked outside. His security people were in place and alert.
Qati spoke with them briefly, as always, because loyalty resulted from attention
to the needs of one's people. Then he, too, went to bed. He paused for evening
prayers, of course. It troubled him vaguely that his friend Günther was an
unbeliever. Brave, clever, dedicated though he was, he had no faith, and Qati
did not understand how any man could carry on without that.
Carry on? Does he carry on at all? Qati asked himself as he lay down. His aching
legs and arms at last knew rest, and though the pain in them didn't end, at
least it changed. Bock was finished, wasn't he? Better for him if Petra had died
at the hands of GSG-9. They must have wanted to kill her, those German
commandos, but the rumor was that they'd found her with a babe suckling on each
breast, and you could not be a man and kill such a picture as that. Qati
himself, for all his hatred for Israelis, could not do that. It would be an
offense against God Himself. Petra, he thought, smiling in the dark. He'd taken
her once, when Günther had been away. She'd been lonely, and he'd been
hot-blooded from a successful operation in Lebanon, the killing of an Israeli
advisor to the Christian militia, and so they'd shared their revolutionary
fervor for two blazing hours.
Does Günther know? Did Petra tell him?
Perhaps she did. It wouldn't matter. Bock was not that sort of man, not like an
Arab for whom it would have been a blood insult. Europeans were so casual about
such things. It was a curiosity to Qati that they should be that way, but there
were many curiosities in life. Bock was a true friend. Of that he was sure. The
flame burned in Günther's soul as truly and brightly as it did in his own. It
was sad that events in Europe had made life so hard on his friend. His woman
caged. His children stolen. The very thought of it chilled Qati's blood. It was
foolish of them to have brought children into the world. Qati had never married,
and enjoyed the company of women rarely enough. In Lebanon ten years earlier,
all those European girls, some in their teens even. He remembered with a quiet