"Sounds like a maria hit."
"Almost, except the killer did a masterful job of disguising himself well enough to double as the pilot. After actually taking off the plane, he killed the flight crew by injecting them with a toxic nerve agent known as sarin, turned off course and abandoned the aircraft over Iceland."
"He must have worked with a team of highly trained professionals," the President said admiringly.
"We have reason to think he acted alone," said Brogan.
"Alone?" The President's expression turned incredulous. "This guy has to be one canny son of a bitch."
"The finesse and intricacy are trademarks of an Arab whose name is Suleiman Aziz Ammar."
"A terrorist?"
"Not in the crude sense. Animar is one of the cleverest assassins in the game. I wish he was on our side."
"Never let the liberals in Congress hear you say that," the President said wryly.
"Or the news media," Brogan added.
"Do you have a file on Ammar?"
"About a meter thick. He's what the trade used to call a master of disguise. A good, practicing Muslim who has little interest in politics, a mercenary with no known association with fanatical Islamic diehards. Ammar charges enormous fees, and gets them. A shrewd businessman. His wealth is estimated at over sixty million dollars. He seldom goes by the book. His hits are ingeniously planned and carried out. All are planned to look like accidents. None can be laid on his doorstep with certainty. Innocent victims mean nothing to him so long as his target is taken out. We suspect he is responsible for over a hundred deaths in the past ten years. His attempt, proven, to kill Hala K I would mark his first recorded failure."
The President adjusted his glasses and turned to the report on the air crash. "I must have missed something. If he meant for the plane to vanish in the ocean, why did he bother poisoning the passengers? What possible reason could he have for killing them twice?"
"There's the catch," explained Brogan. "My analysts don't think Ammar was responsible for murdering the passengers."
The President's eyes took on a look of surprise. "You've switched me on a sidetrack, Martin. What in hell are you talking about?"
"Pathologists from the FBI labs flew up to Thule and performed autopsies on the victims. They found fifty times the sarin required to kill inside the flight crew's bodies, but their tests showed the passengers died from ingesting manchineel in the flight meal."
Brogan paused to sip his coffee.
The President waited, impatiently tapping a pen against a desk calendar.
"Manchineel, or poison guava as it's called, is native to the Caribbean and gulf coast of Mexico," Brogan continued. "It comes from a tree that bears a deadly, sweet-tasting, appleshaped fruit. Carib indians used the sap to tip their arrows. any number of early shipwrecked sailors and modern tourists have died after eating the manchineel's poisonous juices."
"And your people believe an assassin of Ammar's caliber wouldn't stoop to using manchineel?"
"Something like that." Brogan nodded. "Ammar's connections would have no trouble buying or stealing sarin from a European chemical-supply company. Manchineel is something else. You can't find it on a shelf.
It also works too slowly for a quick kill. I find it doubtful Ammar would even consider using it."
"If not the Arab, then who?"
"We don't know," answered Brogan. "Certainly none of the three survivors. The only trail, and a faint one, leads to a Mexican delegate by the name of Eduardo Ybarra. He's the only other passenger besides Hala Kaniil who didn't eat the meal. "
"It says here he died in the crash." The President looked up from the briefing file. "How could he insert poison in the flight meals without being seen?"
"That was done in the kitchen of the company that caters for the airline. British investigators are checking out that lead now."
"Maybe Ybarra is innocent. Maybe for some simple reason he didn't eat."
"According to the surviving flight attendant, Hala slept through the meal, but Ybarra feigned an upset stomach."
"It's possible."
"The surviving flight attendant saw him eating a sandwich from his briefcase."