The Phoenix Affair - Dave Moyer (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

he decided. He fired up the car and turned for home and bed. There would be plenty of work to do in the morning.

*****

Paul Cameron emerged on the street level two blocks away from his hotel and moved westward, away from it, for one hundred yards. Checking behind himself for traffic, he abruptly crossed Rue Rivoli making a careful scan of the north sidewalk in the direction he’d come. He was not being followed. Relaxing now, he made his way toward his hotel on the Rue Jean Lantier.

The evolution to move Brigadier Fahd’s family had gone well enough. He’d arrived at the hotel in Ste. Germaine at around ten o’clock in a Chrysler Town and Country minivan taxi, which he thought was ironic but very practical. He’d sat in the car for three minutes or so on arrival, chatting with the driver and making a good sweep around the hotel to look for any watchers. There were none.

Fadia received him with both joy and caution: she was uncomfortable in the company of another man without her husband present, but she’d remembered him fondly from War College. Mohammed was clearly irritated about this breach of family protocol, but in the end they were all bundled into the van and delivered at the Hotel du Vieux Saule in the Marais District, north of the river Seine.

Fahd had been there for forty five minutes, and he’d arranged the rooms to accommodate the family. The hotel was classically Parisian: small, old, but well appointed and clean. It was five stories with a small lobby and patisserie on the ground floor, just around the corner from the ancient Carreau du Temple on Rue d. Picardie. Cameron left them there at nearly eleven, running on empty after a very long day.

Now he walked through the door of the Grande Hotel du Champagne, greeted the night clerk and retrieved his key. He made his way to the tiny elevator which bounced noisily to the third floor. Finding his room, he undressed quickly and fell into bed and a deep sleep. He was snoring loudly five minutes later, dreaming a strange dream of young Arab men eating onion soup au gratin among the dunes of some faraway desert. VIII. Saudi Arabia

Ali bin Fahd al-Auda could see the outskirts of the town of al-Ha’il in the crisp, hard-cold air of early morning in the desert. In the middle and back seats, four of his brothers and sisters were still asleep. “Good,” he thought. He looked again in the rear view mirror. A hundred meters behind, an identical black GMC Suburban followed, driven by his nineteen year old cousin, Saad, and carrying the other four children of General Fahd bin Turki al-Auda.

It was the end of a long, hard drive. They’d left their home in ad-Dhahran on the coast of the Arabian gulf at midday yesterday, as his father had ordered. The route took them straight for Riyadh, four hundred fifty kilometers across the open desert of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the repository of nearly one third of all the world’s known reserves of oil. The two vehicles, each bearing the sticker of his father’s rank on the lower windscreen, had passed without remark through the three highway checkpoints. In Riyadh they’d stuck to the highway through town until they passed north of the Diplomatic Quarter in the northwest of the city, then they’d taken the al-Buraydah road north stopping for gas, maghrib prayers, and a poor dinner in the village of al-Majma’ah. By the time they’d got there he was beginning to relax. Nobody was obviously following them, indeed there hadn’t been a car behind them for at least twenty miles by the time they’d stopped. From Majma’ah the road became narrower, and they could no longer drive at the nearly one hundred miles per hour that was usual on Saudi highways, and it had been a very dark night. But, now they were here, al-Ha’il, to be welcomed and protected by the powerful al-badawiyyah, or Bedouin tribe of the al-Auda to which they belonged.

Ali was honored to have taken the lead in his older brother’s absence, especially since he was only seventeen and cousin Saad was nineteen. He was not so honored that his judgment was clouded, however. Ali understood the danger his father had described, and he was anxious to get his brothers and sisters into town to the rambling family villa, enclosed in the walled compound that held the homes of his uncles and their families. He passed the first buildings on the outskirts of the town he knew so well from his many summers here, and he turned at the first left as he’d agreed with Saad last night. Saad powered straight on for three blocks, then turned left as well. He’d gone three blocks West along a street lined with small shops when he passed a cross street, and saw Ali’s Suburban waiting at the sign as expected. Saad slowed as he passed, taking a long, hard look down the street behind Ali, looking for anything suspicious. Nothing. He punched the accelerator and the 454 V-8 roared, accelerating the big SUV quickly back to one hundred kilometers per hour. Ali saw him go, but waited, counting slowly, and when the time was right he accelerated smoothly away turning left, falling in behind Saad about three hundred meters back. They were clear. Saad would lead them to the compound now.

In another ten minutes they arrived at the gate, on the north edge of town on a small hill. The wall was ten feet high, the gate a set of double doors of heavy steel painted to match the sand-colored stucco of the outer wall’s covering. The nearest neighboring house was half a kilometer to the west, there was another a kilometer east on the other side of a wadi that was always dry except after a hard winter rain. To the north was the open desert, here mostly hard, flat ground strewn with bits of flint, very occasionally a small dune of fine, brown sand, and a surprising number of hardy Joshua trees that somehow managed to eek out a prosperous living from the arid land. A hundred miles further north the world was a continuous sea of shifting sand. Another hundred miles along a desert track one struck the Tap Line Road running along the border with Kuwait, Iraq, and then Jordan. The road followed the Trans-Arabia pipeline that had once transported Saudi oil all the way to the port of Sidon, in Lebanon, and from there to Europe. That had of course ceased in 1967 when the Israelis had cut the line where it passed through the Golan Heights, but one could still use the excellent road from al-Rafdha four hundred fifty miles northwest to Amman, Jordan.

Ali and Saad got out of the Suburbans simultaneously and approached the locked gate. Ali went to the left-hand gate post and pressed the button on the electric intercom, which only worked about half the time, but he was an optimist. Saad went to the right and found the doorbell switch, giving it several quick pushes to see if he could get anyone inside to wake up and let them in. They converged at the middle of the gateway, shielded from the road by the two vehicles, and waited.

“Sabah ilkhayr, ya Ali” Saad said quietly, “Good morning, oh Ali. How was your night?”

“Sabah innur, ya Saad”, replied Ali, “Good morning, Saad. It was a long drive, but the younger ones slept after dinner, thanks be to God.” He looked at the gate, which sat cold and immobile and closed, no noise from inside the house. “Do you think they are still at prayer?”

Saad checked his watch: five o’clock, and he looked at the growing light of the morning. That was it. They had been too far outside of town to hear the call to fajr prayers as the first light of dawn told the difference between a gray thread and a white one in the palm of a muezzin’s hand, but that would have been only ten or twelve minutes ago, not more. The family was very likely at prayer in the small mosque at the north end of the long drive that split the compound into two even halves.

“I think they must be, cousin,” Saad said at once. They looked at each other. Neither had thought of praying on the drive, not since dark last night; they were too eager to get here and away from the open road. But now, without a word, they turned a little south of west, toward the holy city of Mecca and the Qa’aba of Abraham, and together they began to chant softly, “Allahu akhbar, Allahu akhbar, Allahu akhbar . . .” and from there they fell into the comforting rhythm, occasionally on their knees with foreheads pressed to the ground, at other times standing with hands clasped in front.

In another ten minutes they were finished, and both felt refreshed. Now they each tried the electronics again, the intercom and the doorbell, hoping to catch someone moving about before everyone went back so sleep for the ninety minutes that remained before the whole compound would awaken again to prepare for the day.

They waited again, and just when they were beginning to wonder if something was very wrong, there was a voice from the other side of the gate, gruff and demanding, a little threatening.

“Peace be upon you,” the voice growled, “who comes to disturb the peace of our home at this hour? If you are a brigand I will shoot you.”

Saad and Ali both grinned, then mouthed “Great-Uncle Majid” in unison. Uncle Majid thought himself the patriarch of the family, mostly because he was the oldest living member at seventy-eight. He was no longer straight and tall, strong and threatening, but his voice still commanded respect that was due him at his age, and he had the courage of a desert lion.

“Uncle, it is I, Ali bin Fahd. I have the rest of the family in the cars, and cousin Saad is here. Let us in, Uncle.”

There was a noise of surprise from the old man, then steel grated on steel as the bolt moved. The hinges gave a loud shriek when the old man opened the door just enough to peer through at the boys outside, but he did not show himself. The wary old bedu stood back from the gate and waited for the others to show themselves; he cradled an AK-74 assault rifle in his leathery hands. But he saw Ali and knew him at once, Saad, too. Lowering the weapon he came forward with his arms wide to hug them both, the three of them yammering away the multitude of Arabic greetings that were required, expected, and gladly rendered on such occasions.

“Your father, my brother’s son told me to expect you today, oh Ali, but I did not expect you so early. The men and I have just come from the mosque, the women are going back to bed. Are you all here?”

“Yes, Uncle” Ali replied, a little urgently. “The rest are in the cars outside. Help us to open the gates, let’s get them inside before anyone sees that we’re here.”

“God