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

to give the place a good look-over. It was only one block to Fahd’s hotel, but fifty yards along this side of the street was a small grocery; he ducked in to buy some mints to clear his head and to watch for anything unusual for a moment. In Spanish he asked the clerk if he knew the phone number for the Vieux Saule, and in a moment he was dialing. Another pause and Fahd said, “Na'am?”which is “Yes?”

“Fi inglesi, ana abu Sean,” Cameron responded in Arabic. “In English, it’s me, father of Sean.”

“Paul, my friend, I was beginning to worry about you. All is well, I hope?” Fahd said in English.

“Fine, fine, abu Mohammed. Listen, I’m just down from your hotel, and I’ll be there in a few moments. Anything unusual there today?”

“No, no nothing, we are bored to tears, as you Americans say, nobody has been out all day, nobody has used the phone. Where are you calling from?”

“I’m just down the street at a grocery, but I have a cell phone, also one for you. Can you meet me in the lobby to talk for perhaps thirty minutes?

“Of course, I will see you there directly. You have not attacked anyone else today, have you now Paul?”

Cameron chuckled. “No, no I have not, not yet at least, but the day is still young, Abu Mohammed. I’ll see you in the lobby in five minutes. Masalaama.” He rang off. He’d been peering out the grocery window as he spoke, surveying the pavement, looking for anyone unusual. For some reason he was worried about the Pharaoh, the big Egyptian, and half-expected to find him lingering here in front of Fahd’s hotel, informed by some unbelievable providence of the new address. The sighting of LaPlante from the airport had shaken him, he did not believe in coincidence, not in a place as big as Paris, and he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do with the Egyptian if he was here. He was running out of time in any case, he had a meeting to make at four.

But the Pharaoh was either still in Saint Germaine outside the Agora or he’d given up for the day, in any case he was not to be seen here, so Cameron crossed to the other side of the street and walked into the Vieux Saule.

The lobby was small, like most such hotels, with polished sandstone floors inlaid with diamond-shaped tiles that looked like black slate. The ceiling was low and paneled in dark wood, but bright recessed lights cast a gleam off the brilliant floor and made the whole space seem alive with light. A heavy and gorgeous burled reception desk stood on his right, and a pretty receptionist smiled at him on the point of asking if he could be helped when the elevator opened and disgorged the smiling General Fahd.

The two shook hands warmly, as old friends, the receptionist looking on sat wondering, captivated by something in the man who’d just come in from the street. She could not quite place it, he moved with an air that contained both grace, speed, and . . .power? Perhaps that was it, that and the warm smile, the shining, piercing blue eyes. She wondered still as they disappeared into the small café.

“Listen, Abu Mohammed” Cameron began. “I have to get moving again soon, I am sorry to be in a rush. There is much to be done. First, I was at your hotel this morning, the other one, and there was someone there to watch for you, an Egyptian, I think. A big man, rough looking, nasty piece of business. Keep an eye out for him here, anytime before you leave the hotel, and if you see anyone like him, you should call me and remain indoors.”

Fahd looked concerned, but resolute. He said, “I shall. And you mentioned some mobile phones?”

“Yes, yes, here is one for you, and here is the number for mine. That one will need to be charged I think. Now, I’ve been thinking, Fahd. If ever we are to have you living in safety at home again, I think we’re going to have to go to Saudi Arabia, and soon. Have you talked to your son Ali? Have they made their move to Ha’il?”

“No, I have done nothing today but read newspapers and sleep, God preserve me. May I use this phone to call, Paul?”

At this Cameron smiled broadly, “Yes, courtesy of the US government.” He chuckled. “I seem to have an expense account of some size. Yes, call them after I’ve gone, and then call me and let me know how you find things there. I think we should probably go to Ha’il for starters, but I’m not sure how to get there. What I am pretty sure of is that we should not go by way of Riyadh or Dhahran, by airline I mean. What can you suggest in the line of another route?

Fahd thought a moment, the barest hint of a smuggler’s sly grin creasing the corners of his mouth. “Paul, I find you’ve become something entirely different from the honest fighter pilot I knew years ago. Well, we shall talk of that in my house in al Ha’il, with a great khopsa before us and all my relations around to eat it. Here is how we will do it, my friend . . .” X. Saudi Arabia/Paris/Langley

The day had developed into one of those truly horrible days along the Persian Gulf coast: hot, the dry-bulb temperature around one hundred seventeen degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity was hovering at ninety three percent. The sky was not clear, but rather a milky haze seemed to cover it all around so that it looked white instead of blue, but there was no shade, at all, the merciless sun glaring through the shroud piling heat upon heat.

The blast of it took Mohammed’s breath away for a moment as he opened the door of the apartment in Al-Jubail, thirty kilometers north of Dhahran. The door closed quietly behind him, and he stood there on the balcony, adjusting his eyes to the glare and his lungs to the suffocating heat. He did not like the coast. His family came from the interior, Nejd, north of Riyadh, where the air was dry and even on a day like today the sky would be a deep blue, the hot breezes felt like a furnace blast but at least they did not leave you soaking with filthy sweat from your small clothes right through a freshly pressed thob. He found his sunglasses, adjusted his igaal to hold his head cloth at the just the jaunty angle he liked, turning to find the stairs for the four-floors’ walk to the street below.

As miserable as the heat made him, he was having a good day, now that he was over his misgivings with this mission. He still thought Khalid was asking him to take an incredible risk, but he had convinced himself it could be done, and his meeting here had set the last pieces in motion. The two brothers, Basir and Hamid, would help. They rounded out his team of six men, and together, they could take the General’s house and his family.

He hoped. But they could not do it tonight, which would not please Khalid, but as God willed, it could not be done. The other three men would come, but they were in Taif far to the West, and it would take them until tomorrow morning to arrive. Then there was preparation, planning, perhaps some shooting practice in the desert, food and sleep. Tomorrow night it would have to be, God willing. And, he had many things to think about. He’d already driven by the house once today, where all was quiet, but that was to be expected on such a filthy day. The women and the little ones would not want to be outdoors. They would sleep, eat, play, but all indoors. He had drawn a map, taken a few digital pictures, and he had a plan of attack and escape in his mind. But he’d had to do this first, to be sure of the two brothers. Now he would return to his own apartment, in Khobar, to sketch out the plan, rehearse it in his mind, looking at the map and refining both so that he could show the men how it must be done. He needed to organize the weapons still this evening; not a difficult thing, but not simple either. He wanted pistols, all the same caliber, with silencers if he could get them, and knives for all the men. “Unlikely, though,” he thought ruefully. Their weapons were always a polyglot of whatever could be found, and nobody knew how to make a proper silencer anymore. “It is the price we pay for jihad, and God will reward us with victory, however.”

With this thought he reached his car and welcomed the steady flow from the air vents when it was running. Soon he was driving South on the four-lane highway, the high-rises of Khobar and Dhahran just visible in the heat-shimmer on the horizon. He was confident: all was progressing well, and he’d accomplished much in only a short afternoon. But he found himself thinking again, unbidden as he often did these days, of the sword flashing down in a wide arc to remove his head, his body buried in an un-marked grave, his mother wailing in their home in the north. He shook his head, muttered some verses from the Quran, forced the image away for the hundredth time. “By the Grace of God,” he said aloud, “we are the defenders of the faith. Allah will give us victory.” The speedometer said he was moving at one hundred thirty kilometers an hour. He squeezed down harder on the accelerator and the needle swung upward to one-sixty

*****

Khalid Shahrani was also having a good day, but he was cooler by far, in the dry interior of the Kingdom. He liked Riyadh: even at a hundred and twenty degrees, one never felt even damp, and the sky was a clear, piercing blue from one horizon to the other. Just now he was sitting in the central square within sight of the old fort which now served as a museum, on a rock under the sparse shade of a date palm. It was coming on toward dusk, trade and traffic in the shops nearby was brisk.

The drive from Dhahran had taken only three hours. Since his arrival, he’d bought ten airline tickets from four different travel agencies, all on European flag carriers, changing in five European cities and all arriving at five different international airports in Canada. On different days. It was a good start. He had seventy five men to move, if they could all be counted upon, but the arrangements must not be made at too rapid a pace. Such a thing might raise suspicions. He glanced to the center of the square where the grating lay in a depressed spot in the pavement: there they took the heads of criminals in Riyadh. He squirmed a little, tried to relax, made a covert scan around the place to see if anyone was watching. No, there was not.