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

Fahd one to read--an espionage/counter-terrorism thriller. Thinking quickly, he stuffed his tie in a coat pocket. He folded his suit coat in half, then laid it across the back of his overcoat and stuffed it into the arm holes on each side, then put on the coat. It was tighter across the back, but there was a little bulge, and it actually made him stoop forward somewhat, like an older man. He paid the attendant thirty Euros for his time and left, affecting a slight limp and hunching forward, trying to walk like his grandfather back in Ha’il. He walked west, back toward the metro station, but he did not intend to take it. Halfway there he turned into a shop he’d seen as he hurried past over an hour ago. There he bought a black hat and a wooden cane, emerging back onto the street looking very much an elderly French gentleman as he hailed a taxi.

Cameron looked at his watch. “Nearly four o’clock,” he saw, “not much time.” He waved to the girl at the counter for his check, and returned to the machine. First, he found the BatoBus website, and looked at the stops. He’d not had time to look before, and now he saw that the stop near the Place Concorde was actually two blocks west. No matter, Fahd would find it. He guessed his friend would be in a taxi in any case, and the driver would know the place well. The schedule was fluid, a boat at every stop every fifteen to twenty minutes. It would have to do. Close to five o’clock, Fahd would be there. Cameron had planned to board himself on the south side of the river, under the shadow of Notre Dame, but he saw immediately that this would not work. The service ran East from there for two stops before turning around the end of the Ile St. Louis and stopping twice more before the place he’d sent Fahd. At fifteen minutes each, that would take him more than an hour, and he had other things to do. “Not good” he thought. Down to fifty-five minutes as the girl brought the bill and he laid ten euros on the table. He would have to find a cab, make the preparations if he was lucky, and then have the cab race across town to the boat dock at Hotel de Ville on the Right Bank not later than four-thirty. “It’ll have to be enough,” he mumbled, signing off his user id and closing the browser to erase his trail.

He stood, putting on his dark wool coat and smiling again at the girl. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

“Yes, monsieur,” she said, “can I help you with something?”

“Mademoiselle, I need a taxi. And do you know a bar where perhaps I may find some Spaniards like me? I need to have a meal and a drink to remind me of home.” He spoke in English but with what he hoped sounded like a Spanish accent.

“I am sorry, monsieur, but I do not,” she replied. “But, there is a place two blocks south of the museum, there. I have had paella for dinner there, but that is the only Spanish item on the menu that I recall.”

“That is good enough, thank you.” He left abruptly, looking for a taxi.

In his own taxi, General Fahd removed his new hat and tried to make himself more presentable. Contacting Cameron had renewed his confidence, now he wanted to make a good impression. He had not seen the man in years. “What a year that was,” and he stared out the window of the car, “that year in Montgomery at the USAF War College.” And it had been. For Fahd and his family, a welcome, novel experience of life in the United States. The cool weather, everything green, everything so inexpensive, and the relaxed schedule of the school had made for a year of refreshment for the whole family. He smiled. Little Aziz had been born there; he and Fadia were so proud. They now had a daughter and a son who were both American citizens by birth. “And Cameron,” he thought. “A true friend—to offer to take Aziz into his own home if I should want to send the boy to school in America someday.” His mind began to drift, still staring out the window as the car neared the Place du Concorde and the Louvre. What a fellow he is. Always knew more than the lesson could teach about the world, and war, and politics. Always ready with an oblique but insightful comment that made everyone think. Beautiful wife with those curious blue eyes, beautiful blonde children, a girl and a young boy who would each be in university now. What were their names? The boy is Sean, I think, and he plays soccer. I shall have to ask him about the girl. But yes, I will call him “abu-Sean” when we meet, and he hoped his friend would call him “abu Mohammed” after his own oldest son. And didn’t he win the athletic award twice in the year? There was that martial arts thing, as well, gave him bruises on the arms all the time but I could tell the difference in his presence in the room after a few months, very strange thing now I think of it. And that sense of humor, just like all American pilots. A Christian, attends church, a Person of the Book and therefore permitted to us as a friend. Knew to point out to me which way was East for my prayers in the building, Praise be to God, and to tell the other Americans to buy kosher meats for the parties we had. . .

With a start he realized he had not prayed since midday, but excused himself because of the follower and the need to stay out of sight for a while. He would say extra prayers at maghrib, God willing, and again at Isha tonight and at fajr at dawn tomorrow. . .

Engrossed as he was in these thoughts, Fahd did not notice that the taxi had stopped at a traffic light. He was so engrossed, in fact, that he made a very serious mistake. On the corner not four meters from his window Ahmed al-Kisani was simply loitering, passing the time before he would head back to the General’s hotel to pick him up again, and wondering what he would tell Ibrahim if he did not. And then there was his quarry, so close he could almost touch the car, the man staring absently into space behind the window. It was all he could do not to leap for the scooter that waited at the curb another six meters to his left. Instead, blessing God and all his ninety-nine names, he very slowly took a few steps backward, behind the man to his left, making slowly for the scooter. Then the light changed and traffic started to move. He bolted for the scooter, kicking it to life and gunning the machine into traffic, searching ahead for the quarry he had lost and now by the grace of God had found. But where was it? His hopes fell, and he gazed wildly around the circle, hoping, searching . . .There! He was nearly killed by a Renault barreling in from his right, but now he saw the taxi across the circle. He fell smoothly in behind, three cars back. “Today I am lucky, perhaps I will be even more so” he said aloud to the traffic around him. He was sure the target had not seen him.

Kisani was correct. Fahd sat in the taxi, still working to restore himself to a dignified appearance. His collar was back down, the tie replaced around his neck. He’d laughed as he squirmed within the coat and withdrew his now wrinkled suit coat from its hiding place, smoothing it on his lap. “What to do now?” he checked his watch. “Forty minutes until the boat, but perhaps it will be earlier? Better not to miss it, or we’ll have to start over.” “Driver,” this in French, “do you know the BatoBus stop near the Place du Concorde?”

“Oui monsieur, but it is further west, perhaps half a kilometer. Is this the one?”

This was confusing. “Is there another nearby?” he asked.

“Non, on this side of the river, the next one is east, near Hotel de Ville” said the cabby.

“Bon,” said Fahd, deciding, “let’s go to this stop west of the Place, then.”

“Bon” the cabbie returned, and he began to look for a place for a u-turn.

He was nearly thirty-five minutes early when he descended the steps to the bank of the Seine and found the ticket kiosk under the bridge. The dock was simple, but the BatoBus sign was unmistakable, so he bought a three day ticket and walked West along the embankment, a little stroll to calm the nerves while he waited.

Kisani parked his scooter at the curb above on the street, and cautiously walked out onto the walk on the bridge. He leaned on the railing and looked East toward the Louvre on the Right Bank and the D’Orsay on the Left, and Notre Dame in the distance. Then he casually looked down to confirm his man was still there. He was, and again he blessed his own luck that he had his monthly transport pass. He would not need to buy a ticket, but could wait until the boat was alongside, blend with the crowd that was starting to build now, and slip onto the boat without being seen. He settled in to wait as the target strolled under the bridge and out of sight. He knew he would not be going anywhere for thirty minutes.

*****

Cameron was nervous in his cab as it pulled up at the place the waitress had named. It had taken nearly ten precious minutes to get here, and he had not even started what he needed to do. He asked the cab to wait and promised a ten Euro tip, then leapt out and through the door into the restaurant.

It was dim inside, even for late afternoon. There was a wall on his immediate left that ran all the way to the back, and along this wall a bar of dark polished wood. Standard bottles behind the bar, and a mirror, several beer taps, and hanging in a niche amongst the shelves the trademark jamon, a Spanish cured ham. The whole leg stood there in the wooden rig, with the knife that slid on a guide to slice it along its length, paper thin. He salivated. “Jamon and beer. Not much time,” he thought, “but have to break into this somehow, might as well look like a homeboy.” He walked down the bar toward the man behind it. To his right was a space of perhaps thirty feet, tables a little farther apart than you would see in the US, but about what he remembered from his one trip to Spain. The air was stale with old smoke, beer, food, bodies, and there was a light haze of cigarette smoke clinging to the ceiling. He made a quick look and turned to the bar, counting the people from the snapshot in his head: maybe fifteen.

“Buenos tardes, señor” he said to the bartender in what he hoped was Castilian-sounding Spanish, or at least Cuban. He’d learned in Colorado as a high school student, so he thought he probably sounded like a Mexican, but Cuban would be better here.

“Hola, que tal señor?” Said the bartender in reply, “Hello, how are you. Will you have something?

“With pleasure, señor,” Cameron continued. A plate of jamon, and a beer, if you please.”

“Of course señor.” As the man busied himself with the ham, Cameron made a study of his prospects in the in the mirror behind the bar. He was looking for someone dressed in dark, even black clothes, maybe even a leather jacket, perhaps longish hair,