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

them as Afghan rugs. In a richer mosque they would most likely be made in Iran, but this was a place for common men. Men lined up to pray across the front row from right to left, regardless of rank, and filled the rows behind as necessary. He took his place, standing, and waited quietly. Above him the interior of the dome of the mosque loomed far above, worked in beautiful tiles, geometric designs and intricate calligraphy of the verses, the sura, of the Holy Book. From the ceiling hung massive, ornate chandeliers. In another minute the leader at the front, before the mihrab, a door-shaped niche facing toward the Ka’aba in Mecca, began to pray by raising his hands, palms forward, and saying aloud “Allahu akhbar”, God is most Great. Khalid fell into the routine automatically, as he had done five times a day every day from the time he was five years old until he became occasionally too busy doing the work of God. But it was automatic, unconscious, ritual, and he fell into the rhythm and peaceful bliss of the prayer, standing there in the sight of Allah with his fellows, humble before their God.

Thirty minutes later he came back out onto the street, waited for the shopkeepers to hustle past him, and decided it was time to check his email again, just in case. The drive to Taif could wait until the cool of evening, and it was only just before one. Khalid was seated at the same machine a few minutes later drinking a cold Pepsi when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Nam?” he answered.

“Hello Khalid, this is Mohammed calling. How are things in Riyadh?”

“Very well, my friend, very well. How are your plans progressing?”

“That is what I’m calling about, coincidentally, I couldn’t talk earlier. Were you aware that your nephew is not in Dhahran today? I stopped by your brother’s house, may God protect him, earlier today to make sure we would not be a bother if we came to give our birthday wishes tonight, and nobody was home. It looks like the whole family has left for the summer or something. Did you not know your brother was leaving town?”

Khalid frowned and began to perspire again, thinking hard. First Ibrahim had been destroyed, less than eight hours ago. The Saudi general was at large in Paris, probably, or at least he had to assume he would be. As far as he knew the rest of the family had been at the Dhahran house yesterday, although now he thought of it, there was no way to be completely sure of this, either. If they were gone, either they were warned yesterday or this morning, but perhaps they’d left even earlier? He shook his head. Too many unknowns.

“Khalid?”

“Just a minute, I’m thinking, err, of where he could be. I did not know my brother was planning to travel this week.” He tried to focus. Someone was screwing with him, fast and hard, that much had to be assumed. The grate in the plaza flashed across his mind yet again, but he brushed it aside. This was the kind of thing he was good at, although he felt like he was behind, and he was not accustomed to being behind. He had no idea where the family might have gone, anywhere in the Kingdom as far as he knew. It occurred to him that this call was lasting too long.

“Mohammed, I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I regret any trouble you may have gone to, and I appreciate your willingness to help me wish my nephew happy birthday. I will remember your kindness, my friend. For now it appears that I will miss that honor, but perhaps I will make a late acknowledgement to my brother some other time. Is there anything I can do for you in Riyadh, or perhaps Taif? I find I need to go to the mountains tonight or tomorrow?”

“No, no, Khalid, there is nothing, but thank you for your kind words. I’ll be in touch, then?”

“Yes, Mohammed, I will talk with you soon. Thank you again, my friend. Goodbye.” He stabbed the “End” button before he heard a reply.

There had been no more email from Ibrahim, but that was no real surprise, the man should be on a train halfway across France by now. Khalid struggled with the feeling that everything was falling in on him, from every direction, and that he was losing control of things. Was that true? Maybe it was time to leave Saudi Arabia after all, maybe for just a little while to see if things settled down? At least until he knew how deeply he was penetrated by—who? The Americans? He looked at his cellular phone suspiciously, thought of Ibrahim’s phone compromised in Paris. Could they do that here, in the middle of Saudi Arabia? Surely not? He made a mental note to make fewer calls, just in case. It would be an awful lot of trouble to get a new phone and get the number into the hands of all the people who would need it.

Energized by a sense of disarray and doom, Khalid got moving. In five minutes he was in his car, driving West on the Mecca Highway toward the Al-Khariyya mall and a travel agent he knew would be there. He was determined to finish his ticket buying today, tomorrow, the next day at the latest in Tabuk. As he drove he decided he would buy one more ticket, for himself, although he could not think of anywhere he wanted to go.

*****

Bert Phillips was the duty officer in the Agency’s 24-hour Operations Center on this early morning in April. He nodded and took another sip of coffee as the intercepts officer handed him a sheet of paper. He read it quickly, another of these phone intercepts that the guys who were pissing off half of Paris were interested in and wanted hot off the wire, day or night. He’d talked with the DDO just about an hour ago, this looked pretty harmless, so he decided not to bother him with it. He checked the row of clocks on the wall—just after eleven in the morning Paris time.

“Can you get me a number for this Viper guy in Paris, or get him on that phone?” he asked the intercepts guy, pointing at the big multi-line secure phone on the desk next to his feet.

“Yep, take about two minutes, you pick it up when it flashes.”

The flashes came, he picked up the phone, watched as the lights on the line went from amber to green, and said, “We’re secure. This is the duty officer, you Viper?”

“Viper,” Ripley replied, slightly annoyed.

“I have another intercept on your line in Saudi Arabia. You still want it, or have you guys killed everyone that matters in Paris already in the last twelve hours?”

“Very funny, asshole,” Ripley said. “At least I’m not some piss-ant REMF Ops Center clown with my feet up on a desk and a bad cup of coffee in my gut in the bowels of Langley. Maybe I’ll kill you next, pal.”

Bert took his feet off the desk. “OK, OK, so you don’t have a sense of humor. I can send this stuff to the Embassy if you don’t want it now. What’s it going to be?”

“Read it. Please.”

Bert read it. “Sounds like somebody called off a birthday party. Wait one,” Bert signaled the intercepts officer, asked “are we following this number, the one our guy called?”

“Not yet, but we can.”

Bert returned to the phone. “Viper, we can watch the new number. Do you want it?”

“Yeah, I want it. Send it all to Paris Station, my attention. I’m going to be busy for the next couple of hours. What’s happening on the Paris Police net?”

“Not much. They’re looking for a Saudi named al-something and a guy named Cameron, but it’s all background stuff. Nobody’s said anything about ‘em for the last hour.”

“Anybody mention an airport called Aérodrome de Toussus-le-Noble?” Ripley asked.

“Not that I recall, but I’ll ask the guy who worked it and call you back.” He tossed a wad of paper at the back of a sleeping head, the head turned, Bert made a hand signal, the man went to work on his keyboard.

“Good. If they did, send it to the Station, I don’t need it now. Any heat from the Boss?”

“Nope. I woke him just after 4 with your initial report. No fireworks, I guess he knew what you were up to. Anything you want me to pass on before the telecom at seven Langley time?”

“Nope, the other guys will handle that, I’m just a professional killer.” Ripley replied. “Anything else?”

“Nope. Ops out.” Bert killed his end of the line. “Asshole,” he said to nobody in particular.

*****

Anderson sipped the excellent coffee and munched on fried bacon as he read the morning paper. That was the thing about his housekeeper. Sure, she was from Guatemala, but she could fry bacon better than his mamma and damn sure she could make coffee like a pro. “Must be that whole Juan Valdez thing,” he mused.

The phone rang precisely at 0700; he heard his security guy answer in the study, and was up from his chair and headed that way with coffee cup in hand when he heard “For you, sir,” from the other room. Anderson ran a pretty loose ship here at home.

The study was an enormous room, nearly forty by twenty feet, with a row of four arched windows from floor to just below the top of the ten foot wall. The walls were paneled in a rich pecan, each window was dressed with heavy draperies in deep blue velvet. The cathedral ceiling soared eighteen feet overhead, with beams that spanned the space and from which hung a series of antique flags, US, the flag of the house of Bourbon with its three fleurs de lis on a blue field, the royal flag of the house of Windsor, the Cross of Saint Andrew, and another with quartered arms that nobody but Anderson’s family would recognize. On the wall opposite the windows stood a massive fireplace, above it was a portrait of George Washington in military uniform. The remainder of the walls were covered mostly in pecan bookcases filled with books, but these spaces were punctuated by hung swords of various sizes and shapes, as well as elaborate silk carpets and the occasional oil painting, all dark colored. The floor was of pecan to match the paneling, but it was mostly covered by two enormous Persian carpets from the region of Heriz. There were two burgundy leather sofas and two chairs in front of the fire place, and at the end of the room, facing the door and the sitting area, stood a massive desk, behind and above which hung a spectacular Isfahan carpet from Iran.

The DDO dismissed the security man with a wave and “Thanks, Chuck,” and the man left, closing the French doors behind him. Anderson picked up the phone, noted the green lights, and began.

“Anderson, who’s on the other end?”

“Jones, sir, and Allen is with me from Langley and Ripley, the station chief in Paris.”

“Right, well, you guys have been busy, and I’ve got a long day, so let’s have the short version quick as you like. Who’d you take, what do you know, and where’s Phoenix?”

Jones took it from there, talking for about eight minutes with occasional interjections by Ripley. Allen remained completely silent, and the Boss did not interrupt. When Jones finished everyone was quiet for a quarter of a minute.

“Very good, very nice,” Anderson finally said, still mulling things over in his own mind. “Is the guy with the leg talking to anyone yet as far as we know?”

“No sir, not as far as we know. We left him alive primarily to give the French something to work with. They may get something out of him, and hopefully we can get it from them when the time comes. He may be