Massive Attack (A Guy Niava Thriller Book 1)

by Dana Arama

  Yassin’s call came exactly at the right moment. It was a bit suspicious. Immediately after the meeting had ended, reminding me that my troubles were far from over.

  “Yes,” I answered briefly.

  Without asking how I was, he asked, “Do you know the new building being built near the Museum of Modern Art? Go there now.”

  “What is there?”

  “Go now. It is a building site. A person will be waiting for you, to give you an address where to go.”

  “What’s all this mystery about?” I asked, but he had already hung up.

  I wondered who could have notified him? It couldn’t have been Alex or Aldo; they would never betray me. It couldn’t have come from my father, because come hell or high water, he wouldn’t want me to meet up with Yassin. Much later, I understood that it wasn’t coincidental. It was a test. I had made a promise to God and now he was testing me. I had permission to go ahead with the transaction and so the boy could be returned to me. He had to be returned to me. That was the deal I struck with God, and, in return, I had gotten my life back.

  The guard at the site gave me a note with an address I didn’t recognize, but that wasn’t new. Yassin had the tendency to switch places often. What I didn’t like was the verbal instruction: “Come alone.” I gave the address to Aldo and we drove off. I wasn’t happy with the idea that I would have to go in without Aldo and Alex, but that was Yassin and his strange quirks.

  The shop was located on the side of a fancy office building and served as a poor remnant of the neighborhood that was once there, a neighborhood of Asian immigrants. I opened the door and a bell rang. The sounds of it was nostalgic, reminding me of old movies. A wave of spices hit my nose. An old wrinkled man with a white head covering appeared behind the counter and gave me a toothless grin.

  “Have you come to pray?” he asked.

  I looked around. Maybe Yassin had made a mistake. This place was too small to hold seven people. The old man was also confused. How can one pray here if there is no place to cleanse oneself before praying, as is customary for devout Muslims?

  I wanted to turn around and walk out. Just to be sure I asked first, “Yassin?”

  “Who’s Yassin?” He asked in Arabic. “Which Yassin?” he asked again, in English.

  I took the yellow note out of my pocket, containing only Yassin’s signature, and gave it to the old man.

  He examined it thoroughly under the light of the lamp, and when he was satisfied that the signature was real, he looked at me and smiled. “Come in, come, come,” he said in Arabic. He lifted the wooden counter and signaled for me to follow him. Behind the hidden door was a stairway lit up by a single light that hung at a dangerous angle. It had probably hung thus since the building had been built, and would most likely stay that way, after all of us were long gone. The staircase was longer than expected and split at the top, each side leading to a door. By the smell, one of them was the toilet.

  The old man knocked once on the left door, followed by two quick knocks, and then one final knock. The door was opened by a pious-looking Muslim I didn’t recognize.

  “Salam aleikum.” He bowed his head.

  “Aleikum Hasalam,” I answered.

  “Do you have a weapon on you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I am sorry,” he said without contrition, “But this is a place of worship. You’ll have to leave it outside.”

  I wanted to tell him that weapons are hid in mosques on a regular basis all over the world, but this wasn’t the time to argue. I showed my dissatisfaction and unwillingly pulled my gun from my waistband and gave it to the old man waiting to receive it. The old man stood by the wall and allowed me to pass. I went through the door, into a large, well-lit hall. It was a basement, which had been turned into a prayer house. There were mats spread out on the floor. Three basins for washing one’s feet before the prayer. Three tall basins for washing the hands and face. Cushions for the comfort of the men praying and shelves full of books that, from afar, looked like the Quran.

  Yassin sat by the far wall on a light-colored couch. He patted the space next to him. I came closer to him. “Do you know why I love this place?” he asked, with no preamble.

  “Because it is hidden?” I answered with a question. I wanted to ask what was so urgent that he had called even though we had agreed that I would call him when I had some news. But I played along with him.

  He laughed. “Hidden is good, but that is not the reason.”

  “So, what is the reason?” I inquired, without real interest. What I was truly interested in was that I was here in a hidden basement without my bodyguards, without a cell signal, without my gun and without food in my belly, surrounded by several men who would obey any command Yassin might give. And the boy I had left in his hands was nowhere to be seen.

  “Also, because there is no internet connection and everything is done through notes. And the smell of the spices drives me crazy. It reminds me of home.”

  “Home?” I lifted an eyebrow and looked at him, amused. “Your home was a British mansion and there was no smell of eastern spices there at all.”

  “My real home is in Iraq. There in the training camp on the border. That is where I really found my purpose in life.” Yassin smiled and whispered in my ear, “And also my greatest love.”

  “I didn’t know you were in love.”

  “Yes. The best cook in the world.” He looked as if he was lost in an old memory, then added, “It was a pity she was a Kurd and I had to get rid of her. I could have taken her to England with me. Our cook doesn’t know how to mix the spices correctly.”

  “Isn’t it something one can learn?”

  “My little Kurd was the queen of spices. I remember the smell of her hands and the yellow of the cumin that stuck to her skin.” And with the same intonation, as if still trapped in his memories, he asked, “What about my weapons?”

  “Where is the boy I left in your care?”

  “He is in a safe place.” He smiled. “Did you know his father is a scientist?”

  A rollercoaster of thoughts and speculations raced through my head. I tried to maintain a calm tone as I reacted. “I didn’t get that far with him in my investigations. Which field is he in?”

  Yassin said, “In the beginning I thought the kid just didn’t want to answer, but after a while I realized that he really didn’t know. He doesn’t fucking know.”

  “Have you left him in good condition? You do remember that you have to return him to me tomorrow,” I somehow managed to form a crooked seemingly calm smile.

  Yassin didn’t answer but carried on speaking as if I hadn’t interrupted him at all. “Having no choice, I had to pull some strings of my own and found out some interesting details about the Israeli scientists living in the United States. Apparently about a quarter of the scientists are biology researchers, and maybe more than that are mathematicians. And there are physicists and astrophysicists. The rest are computer scientists. And the boy’s father…” He stopped to emphasize the dramatic information, “Well, of all the fields, he chose to research fucking satellites.”

  “Okay...” I answered neutrally and waited for the bombshell.

  It arrived immediately after he got up. “It gave me the idea to hit an Israeli satellite and that means...” He started pacing the room. “It’s fucking exciting me, everything that is going to happen here.”

  “What’s going to happen here?” His excitement was contagious and everyone around him had begun smiling. I found him frightening.

  “I am going to buy the boy from you.”

  “I am sorry,” I put a sad look on my face and shook my head. “The boy is not for sale.”

  That didn’t deter Yassin, “Everything is for sale!” he declared. “The question is only how many zeros after the first digit.”

  Guy Niava,

&n
bsp; El Desconocido’s office, November 14, 2015, 12:30 p.m.

  Zorro said in Hebrew, “You are aware that as soon as we are out of here, he’ll call his partner and warn him, right?” Her accent was pretty sexy. I answered, “Yes. I realize that.”

  “Do you have a plan to handle it?”

  “Let’s concentrate on how to get out of here alive.” I smiled at her, not taking my gaze from everyone else in the room.

  Laura joined the conversation with her broken Hebrew and said, “His boss look from sky on us.”

  It took Zorro a minute to understand her meaning. “Is she right? Is Gideoni following us via satellite at this moment?”

  “Is it important if she is right or not?” I asked. I took a step back and looked through the curtain. The men outside were running around, drawn guns. The situation was quickly escalating

  “It is important to me to know that you are not planning on killing him!”

  “We have no intentions of killing him,” I confirmed. “We just want to monitor his phone calls to see who he notifies. It will help us locate them.”

  “Did you plan this from the beginning?”

  “I promised you he would be kept alive.” I returned my attention to what was happening in the room. “My promise carries weight.”

  Zorro laughed. “You are leaving him alive because it suits your plans…. and apparently your plans suit mine.”

  “I suggest,” Laura interrupted, “that we take my sister. Maybe I could persuade her on the way to come back home.”

  “He would never agree to that,” Zorro answered her. “And he knows very well why.”

  “That is not true. He knows I will never let you hurt my sister.”

  Zorro sneered, “Don’t try to stop me. I already have a bullet with your name on it.”

  “She could be our get out of jail card….”

  Zorro smiled, “Well that’s something to think about.” The tension in the air grew tauter every second. I knew we couldn’t stay in this situation much longer. Either there would be an attack from outside the room or a mutiny on the inside. We needed El Desconocido’s consent to leave in peace.

  “Good idea,” I agreed. I looked at El Desconocido and said, “Raphael…can I call you Raphael?”

  He seemed amused. “The circumstances prevent me from calling you a welcomed guest, but you are a guest, nonetheless. Call me Raphael.”

  “We told you from the beginning and I am saying it again: we have no interest in you. We have received the information we came for and we want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “The door is open,” he indicated with a sweeping hand. “Go.”

  “I wish things were so simple,” I said. “We will take Gail with us to the border and then we will let her go.”

  “You are endangering my people, and Gail is a key person in my organization now. You are putting her at risk, and expect to get out of here without any guarantee?”

  “Guarantee?” I asked.

  “Leave her sister,” El Desconocido said.

  “If Gail is dear to you, you would want her sister to look out for her. We are not leaving a guarantee, but I can promise you that because of the information you have given us, the Israeli Mossad won’t hunt you down.”

  Zorro added, “You know my stories, Raphael, you know that being hunted by the Israeli Mossad is like being hunted by the Angel of Death.”

  And Laura added, “I am willing to give you information on a mole in your organization, for a few hours with my sister.”

  “Gail, do you trust your sister to look out for you?” he asked, still looking at me.

  Gail stared at Laura and Laura returned her gaze. The silence in the room was interrupted by the cries outside to break into the room. We all held our breath. Our peaceful exit out of here was dependent on the emotional state of the two sisters, a delicate ecosystem that seemed unfathomable to the rest of us, but no doubt containing a deep history. A young and brilliant girl doesn’t just choose to disappear from her family and go down a radically different path, which turns her into their enemy. Both sisters were fire and wind. What would be the result of their meeting? We would only know once Gail gave her answer.

  “She won’t hurt me, my love, but I am not sure that she’ll let me go. So just in case, I’ll take Gomez with me,” Gail said, slowly.

  “I am not sure my love, not sure at all,” El Desconocido said.

  “I want the mole’s information. We talked about this. This is our chance,” Gail said.

  I realized that the card in our hands was more important than I had anticipated.

  “I promise that you will get the information before I release you,” Laura answered.

  “No, give it now!” Gail insisted. “Or we continue waiting here and the odds are against you.” She smiled coldly.

  “Okay. And then you leave with us!” Laura bargained with her.

  “She is not leaving alone. You heard her. Gomez is joining her. That is not up for discussion,” El Desconocido declared.

  “If you trust that he will look after her, we will not argue about it,” I conceded.

  “I am waiting for a name, Laura,” said Gail, ignoring the rest of us.

  Without hesitating, Laura said: “It’s Joaquin. The one who walks around with the American cowboy hat.” I was surprised how quickly she released the information. As if she had taken into consideration that such information would lead to death by torture.

  “Who does he work for?” Gail pressed.

  “He belongs to the police.”

  “Where is he now?” El Desconocido asked.

  “That I will tell you once we are on the border,” Laura smiled, and added mysteriously,

  “I have a feeling you need to know where he is. It may be that every second is important. It could possibly be that the balance of the odds is not in your favor after all.”

  Gail and El Desconocido looked at one another briefly and then El Desconocido signaled to the Mexican who was threatening Laura, “Release her and give her a gun...” and to Laura he said, “Look after your sister and beware of her.” He pointed at Zorro. “I don’t know how well you know her, but she is a very dangerous woman.”

  Gomez took out another gun from his waistband and gave it to Laura. She stood, shook her hands and took the gun from him. “Don’t worry,” she answered El Desconocido and slowly pointed her gun at Zorro. “I also have a long record with her, and as far as I am concerned, her job here is finished.”

  Murat Lenika,

  The spice shop, November 14, 2015, 2:00 p.m.

  I couldn’t stop him. He was in an ecstatic state. “Chaos… Murat, think chaos…” The madness in his eyes looked like live flames and once again I saw why strangers were charmed by him. “Terror is being frightened of the unknown, but possible… I want every scenario they ever imagined likely to happen to actually occur. Ask yourself, ‘Why should it happen’?’”

  He was silent and looked at me expectantly. After a moment I realized that I was supposed to answer. “Why should it happen?” I asked.

  “It will happen because I will make it happen.”

  “What do you mean, Yassin?” I was tired. I hadn’t slept in two days, but he had no intention of letting me go on my way. He went over to a piano which stood in the far corner of the basement and sat down. His fingers played on the keys with the same exhilaration I’d seen in his eyes a moment before.

  “This piece is called Julia… she reminds me of my Julia.”

  “This is really a nice piece of music. I didn’t know you had a woman by the name of Julia.” I didn’t add that an apparently loving relationship with a woman was definitely a surprise coming from him. “Was she there with you?”

  “Where is ‘there’?”

  “I don’t know, Afghanistan or Pakistan. One of your playground
countries.”

  “In those countries, there is no interest in women. It is a paradise for men. They have their Bacha boys. Boys who are taught to be girls.”

  “What?” A wave of nausea filled me.

  “Or you find yourself a boy on the streets…”

  “Find a boy?” I cut him off, not quite understanding, “What do you mean find a boy? Do you just walk along and pick a boy off the street?”

  “Exactly so. They go to work cleaning the streets by the age of six. There are boys out there who are drug addicts by the age of ten. So, you can find yourself a boy, give him drugs and turn him into your own whore. Or, in my case, I bought a beautiful boy from his parents and used him until I returned to England.”

  “So, who is this Julia?” The wave of nausea grew stronger.

  “She was my nanny when I was four years old and she said that I could conquer the world. I’ve never loved any woman but her.”

  That sounded like the Yassin I knew. I asked, “What do you mean when you say ‘chaos’?”

  “The chaos of disrupting the whole Zionist proposition… their security, their international relationships, their media. An attack on the Israeli planes, on the Israeli consulates in the United States. But not only on them.”

  “On who else?”

  “I will blow up planes that have direct flights to Israel. Any airline that flies directly there will know that it is in danger and that their planes may blow up in the air at any moment.” He returned to playing the piano and then added, “We won’t forget the new glorious technology in the air.”

  “What new glorious technology?”

  “The satellite they are working on at this very moment. The Zionist satellite that is supposed to connect Africa to Facebook.” He snickered. “As if we can allow for that to happen. We will attack it and the Zionist enemy won’t be able to do anything about it. When the Zionist enemy can’t react, it will be like…” He didn’t finish his sentence but closed his eyes and concentrated on playing. The people around him kept quiet, as if they had stopped breathing. He smiled, his eyes still shut. His body swayed to the rhythm of the music and, in a cold voice, he whispered to the sound of the melody, “Like pouring acid over the eyes of a heretic, in the moment before you burn him.”