“That translates to the Sword of Faith,” said Lafitpour. “He is very skilled. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, they’ve all used him. But he is run out of MOIS in Tehran now.”

“Khamenei’s got a pet shooter running around the US?”

Lafitpour took a sip of his wine. Paused a moment. “It is more complicated than that. Al Qaeda has money, billions from Bin Laden alone. But it is impossible for them to move it in traditional fashions.”

“Sure,” said Hickman. “After 9/11, we froze any account anywhere that even had their scent on it.”

“Diamonds are one of their options,” Munroe said. “They’re small, they’re valuable, and they’re easy to move.” Munroe filled Hickman in on the diamond trade, the Lebanese connection, the ties to Al Qaeda and to Iran.

“And Hardin stole some of their diamonds?” Hickman asked.

“Not just some,” said Munroe. “Look, Mossad has been watching the Al Qaeda diamond play for a while. Stein was working with Mossad. Used his network to suck the Al Qaeda couriers into bogus brokers, and then the couriers would get whacked and Mossad would take their stones. So Al Qaeda stopped taking delivery for several months until it was sure it had arranged a safe exchange. This shipment that Hardin hijacked? It was worth north of $100 million.”

Hickman let out a low whistle. “No wonder he’s attracted so much attention.”

“Yes,” said Lafitpour. “The gravity of mammon.”

“But still,” Hickman said, “if we can catch this al Din, then we can tie him to Tehran, right? We’ve got an Iranian operative killing US citizens on US soil.”

“We’ve got more than that,” said Munroe. “This Hardin, he’s got a history with the Hernandez Cartel. They know he’s on the ground here, and they’re looking for him, too.”

“I’m not following here. What’s that got to do with the diamonds or this al Din?”

Munroe took a slow pull at his wine, sat back, smiled a little. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? From a certain perspective, what we have here is a major Al Qaeda financing operation, the Hernandez Cartel sniffing around it and Tehran’s top trigger man riding shotgun on the deal.”

Munroe paused, took a sip of wine, settled further back in his chair. “You’ve got some idea of what I do, right? Wanna know the three things that keep me up nights? First, has some fundamentalist Islamic yahoo finally gotten enough scratch together to do something really bad, and I don’t mean knock down a couple buildings with airplanes. I mean make a mushroom cloud someplace. Second, what’s Tehran going to do once they have the bomb, because they’re going to, sooner or later? And, third, how do we keep Mexico from turning into a narco state? There are a couple hundred other things I worry about, if you want the full list, but those are the top three. Now, if we control the narrative on this cluster fuck, then what we have is the cartel, Al Qaeda, and Tehran all in bed together engaged in a terrorist conspiracy that includes killing US citizens on US soil. We have an Iran problem, we have an Al Qaeda problem, and we have a Mexico problem. We play this right, we get out in front of all three of them.”

Hickman sat back, digesting that for a minute. “Are we maybe missing the bigger issue here? We’ve got Al Qaeda looking to put better than $100 million in operating capital in play all at once. Shouldn’t we be asking why? We’ve got a major potential terrorist operation, maybe in Chicago, given that al Din keeps hanging around, and you want to muddy the water with some ginned-up cartel connection?” said Hickman. “I’m all for playing hardball, but not if it means we’re giving this al Din guy a chance to make the Loop glow in the dark. Don’t we need to focus on him?”

Munroe shook his head. “Al Din wouldn’t be hanging around if he had an op ready to run. He’d pull the trigger and blow town. That means he needs the diamonds to make it go. Hardin bounced their shipment before it got a hundred miles, and every time al Din turns up, he’s sniffing around after Hardin. Al Din isn’t here to pull the trigger on 9/11 the sequel. He’s here to pull the trigger on Hardin and get the rocks back. We stop that, we stop whatever plot they were going to use the stones to finance.”

Hickman thought. Made sense, and this cartel/Al Qaeda/Iran thing, it could work, seen in the right light. “This Mexico to Tehran by way of West Africa thing, there anything to it?”

Munroe shrugged. “Is there? Dunno. I doubt it. Could there be? Sure. Hey, you wanna make the world safe for democracy, you gotta break a few eggs. I’m in the egg-breaking business, and I’m inviting you into the kitchen. I just gotta know if you can stand the heat.”

It was Hickman’s turn to take a drink. The man was asking if he wanted to plunk his chips down at the big-boy table. If he did, he’d either come out flush or busted. Hickman thought about Munroe’s scenario for a moment, and Munroe’s track record. From what he’d heard, Munroe had been pulling this type of shit for something like forty years without ever once popping up on anybody’s radar. If you’re going to go all in, those are the type of odds you want on your side. Thing worked out, he’d be looking at lots of the right kind of face time in all of the right kind of places. And Illinois had a Senate seat opening up.

“What’s my role?” Hickman asked.

“Stage manager,” said Munroe. “Hardin’s meeting with Lafitpour tomorrow night. Once we’ve got him in the bag and we feed him his lines, then we go public. We need somebody on the scene who knows the local players and can herd the cats. What I hear, that’s you. You need to picture the end game here, the press conference. Somebody’s gonna be the face behind the podium when we break the biggest War on Terror story since 9/11. Except this time, instead of shaking our fists in the rubble, we’re taking a victory lap and waving around some big-name scalps. You want in, then the face behind the podium is yours.”

Hickman pushed his chips into the pot.

“OK, I’m in,” Hickman said. “But I’m not just your pretty face. You want me to manage things, fine. But we have to do this right. You need to get an official skin on this ASAP. The snatch tomorrow? That’s got to be on the record. Get your intel boys to dummy up whatever you need, but I need it tonight. I’ll need a warrant, then I’ve got to brief the FBI and DEA, get them both on board to make the grab. For those guys, credit comes down to who makes the bust, so we want everybody covered in glory, make sure we don’t have any inter-agency sniping later if somebody gets jealous. If you freeze them out on grabbing Hardin, then he’s not their bust and they have no reason to play ball if anything unravels. Put their faces on the arrest, then they’ve got a dog in the fight and they’ll back your play.”

Risky, Munroe thought. Too many people inside the tent too early. But Hickman was right. Give the Feds credit for Hardin’s scalp, then they’ll help Munroe make it fit on any head he wants.

“Done,” Munroe said. “I’m going to put you in touch with Langley, they’ll get somebody official out to sit in on your briefings tomorrow, somebody who knows the game plan. Bahram, do you have your story together on the money?”

“Broad strokes, but they will hold up. All I have to do is point the FBI forensic accounting people in the appropriate direction. Once you tell them Hernandez and Al Qaeda are cooperating on finance, they’ll find plenty of overlap between their organizations. With the volume of cash Hernandez has to move on a daily basis, and assuming he prefers to do so through banking channels that are not focused on collecting personal data and transmitting it to taxing authorities, then he and Al Qaeda will inevitably be moving money through the same institutions. Switzerland perhaps, the Caymans, the Channel Islands, some of the new players in the South Pacific, Vanuatu and the like. The FBI will find the overlap.”