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

what I would like him to be, and I must be in contact with him daily or he may sell the place to a Kuwaiti.”

Majid laughed. His cousin Fahd commanded the Royal Saudi Air Force Base just outside of Dhahran, on the coast of the Arabian Gulf. Not Persian, Arabian. He knew the deputy, too, and was equally unimpressed. “Yes, you devil, there is one four blocks to the east along this great street, but on the other side. Don’t cross the street though, you will be killed by these lunatic French. Go down into the Metro there, and cross underground, may God protect you.”

“Thank you, cousin. Well then, I’m off to defeat the wicked French and their traffic, and you to the important business of the Kingdom’s commercial affairs, no doubt. I will tell Fadia we are invited to your house for dinner, and she will arrange it with Nala when it suits them. The Ministers of the Interior, Majid, they rule us with an iron rod, do they not?”

“Walhamdulillah, but they do, cousin, they do indeed.” Then Majid stood, looking important, threw enough Euros on the table to pay for the coffees, and shook his cousin’s hand. “I’ll see you, then,” he said in parting, “to the King’s business, God bless him.”

“God bless him,” Fahd echoed, and watched his cousin leave the café. He sat back down, ordered another coffee from the very pretty French waitress, and began to think.

In English. He mostly thought in English these days, which he admitted was a curious thing, but there it was. It was an honest thing, anyway. He had been three years to school in England at Sandhurst, whence he had his commission. He was a fighter pilot, and all that training, most in the United States, had been in English. Most of the time he flew in English, the universal language of aviation. He dealt daily with his American and British advisors, often the only people he could trust to help him run his base without someone getting killed once a day. Not that his Saudi pilots weren’t good. They were, many of them. Some not so good, though, but he was working on that and the advisors were helping. It was just that the whole thing was so regulated, and many of his own men were not used to it. That, and they had often too much of the idea that their survival was in the hands of God and not their own. “Another generation and we will change that, God willing, he thought.”

Now this business, he puzzled. At least here I can think without worrying about someone trying to blow me up or shoot me. He smiled at that. Let’s hope anyway, he corrected himself, and took a casual look around the café. Seems innocent enough.

His position was difficult, but not impossible. He had information that was dangerous, very dangerous, and he did not know what to do with it. So far, he was fairly certain that nobody knew he had it, and that was good. But who to tell? He had no idea at first, but he had to get out of the Kingdom quickly, and so he had left on the pretense he’d laid out to his cousin. What he did not tell was more revealing, however, and he had seen that Majid was troubled to see him in Paris. He’d brought Fadia and Miriam to watch after the little one, that much was true. But he had chosen Mohammed for a more delicate reason. Mohammed had been running with the wrong kind of people of late. Fahd thought the boy needed a refreshing taste of the West to wake him up to the more moderate politics of his family, and lure him away from some of the shocking influences that had gripped much of the Kingdom the last year. More to the point, Fahd was worried about the rest of the family. He had brought Mohammed to get him out of the way. Another son, Ali, could be trusted to do his father’s bidding. Tomorrow Ali would move the rest of the family by road from Dhahran to the family home in the northwest, at al-Ha’il. There, if things did not go well in Dhahran, they would be protected by the tribe. Had Mohammed been there, he might not have obeyed, and Fahd could not have that right now.

All things considered, things were laid out as well as could be expected. The family would all be safe for the time being, praise be to God. What he needed to do next was to send an email to let someone know he was here. He had got the address from one of his American advisors, an F-15 pilot flying with the 13th Squadron at Dhahran. How the Captain had got it he did not know. What he did know was that he’d asked the man if there was any way he could be put in touch, confidentially, with an old friend of his from the USAF. It must be very quiet, he’d said, and perhaps a meeting out of the country, in Europe, might be arranged? It had taken a long, nervous week, during which Fahd wondered how long he’d last. But the Captain came through, and he did well. No emails, no phone calls. He’d waited for Fahd to come to the squadron to fly, managed to schedule himself to fly with the General (for Fahd was a Brigadier, himself). In the privacy of the briefing room, Captain Davidson handed over the small slip of paper with a HotMail address on it.

“General, take this,” he’d said quietly. If you are in Paris the third week in April, a friend may meet you there. Here are some instructions, do not write them down. Use an internet café, not your hotel or your laptop. Create a new email account, one you’ve never used before. Send a message to this address. You are to say “Falcon one, contact” in the email body, no subject line. Wait for a reply, and instructions will be given to you.”

“Thank you, Captain. If I am in Paris this Spring, perhaps I will try it. Have you ever been to Paris yourself?

“No sir, I don’t much care for the French,” Davidson admitted.

“Pity,” said General Fahd. “Well, I think I will not fly today after all, Captain. I’m feeling a little under the weather, as you say in the USAF. I’m going to see the flight Surgeon.”

“God protect you, General,” was the Captain’s parting remark. At this the General turned, a look of some alarm crossing his face, then it was gone.

“And you, Captain, and you.” Fahd left the squadron. He and his family were on their way to Paris the next evening.

And now he was here. In truth, he’d been here a week already, but Majid did not need to know that. His family was soon to be protected, and that was a comfort. He’d now checked in with his embassy, as required, even if his mode of doing it had been a little irregular. In fairness, he should have gone to the embassy himself and spoken with the Military Attaché. But that might have been messy, and the story of little Aziz might not have held up. He did not know the Attaché, so he could not trust him. Majid was important enough, and well connected enough, that he could cover with the “notification” if it ever came up. “At least, he would make a lot of noise about it to keep his honor with me,” he thought.

His coffee finished, General Fahd paid his bill and got up. At the door, he turned and asked the waitress in French where the nearest Metro entrance was. “To your left, monsieur, about one block to your left.” He made a show of looking out the door in a wide semi-circle from his right to his left, and then pointing in that direction. “Looks OK I guess, but who am I kidding?” he wondered. “Well, inshallah,” he mumbled in Arabic, “as God wants,” and he left and moved quickly down the street in the direction of the Place de la Concorde.

 

*****

 

Across the street and half a block west Ahmed Al-Kisani appeared to be staring through the front window of a trendy suit shop. It was a bright day, the interior of the shop was dimly lit, and the plate glass of the window made an excellent mirror in which to watch the café into which the two men had gone. He did not know either man, not even the names, but had been told to follow this one and report on his movements. He’d had a long boring day—first, the long wait in front of this man’s hotel in St. Germaine, then the long walk to a metro station that was unnecessary, then almost losing the man on the metro itself, and then the brisk walk from the Arc de Triomphe station. “At least the last was downhill,” he thought, “but I wish there was somewhere I could sit down, and I have not prayed since dawn, God help me.” He glanced in his mirror at the door of the café, then turned slightly to look in another part of the window for a moment. A cold breeze blew downhill from the Arch as a cloud scudded across the sun, and Ahmed turned up the collar of his wool car coat and dug his hands deep into the pockets.

Kisani was a small man, which never ceased to bother him. He tried to stand and walk just a little on his toes most of the time as this put him just a shade over five feet six inches tall. He was thin as well, and while he was trim and fit and never likely to be fat like many of the soft Arabs, he would never be muscular or powerful. This also bothered him. His greatest asset, and that of which he was most proud, was the light-skinned, mostly European-looking face that his parents attributed to a great grandfather who had been a Spaniard. Nobody ever talked much about the great grandmother, and he did not ask. What mattered to him now was that he could speak French well, and in most places he could pass for a Frenchman. “Best to be one who blends in if you are going to do the work of God” he remembered being told by his mentor in Morocco.

As far as his parents knew, Ahmed was in France studying business at a small occupational school. It was all they could afford, but the family had great hopes for him. They sent him a small allowance each month to help cover his expenses, and of course they paid his tuition. For the rest of his upkeep he was required to work. For this purpose he’d concocted a job cataloguing books at a suburban Parisian library—an honorable job, not manual labor or restaurant service, but something respectable and learned. Ahmed’s father was very proud and told all the neighbors in the hometown outside of Ceuta.

Ahmed made far more money than his father imagined, however, and this had nothing whatever to do with libraries. He’d met a new friend his first week in town, in the small restaurant next to the cheap hotel where he’d taken a room and still lived. An unusual man, Ibrahim. “Unusual” was the word that came to Ahmed’s mind every time he saw or thought of Ibrahim. Tall, stout for an Arab, lean and strong looking. Strong Arab features, the hawkish nose, wavy black hair and close cropped stubble of a beard, and eyes that seemed to be completely black. It was the eyes that were unusual, and the way he moved. The eyes seemed to be on fire, even though black as coal, and yet somehow they were cold, distant, detached. Ibrahim moved like the tigers Ahmed had seen at the Paris zoo. Fluid, but with