by Graham Brown
“Do you know why I have these bodyguards?” Najir said.
She could guess but didn’t.
“Because I told the Syrians to get the hell out of my country, demanded the Israelis stop bombing us, and warned the Iranians to never come here again.”
It was a proud statement. She sensed it was true.
“Left alone, we Lebanese will find a way to live together. But there is a price to pay for bravery.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it firsthand.”
“And been part of it, I’d guess,” he said. “Otherwise Arnold would not speak so highly of you.”
Never one to take compliments well, she wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I don’t need you to go with me,” she said. “Just get me inside. Tell me what to look for and who’ll be there. I can do the rest.”
Najir took a drink of water and then broke a corner off his bread. He dipped it in olive oil and turned back to her, his smile as warm as the Mediterranean sun. “That will look suspicious,” he said.
“Because I’m a woman?”
“No,” he said smiling. “Because they will be surprised not to see me.”
She smiled back at him. “Of course.”
“We all have temptations we find hard to resist.”
“That we do,” she said. “When’s the auction?”
“After the evening prayers, we will meet some of our brothers from the other side of the city. And then you will see what Bashir wanted to see.”
CHAPTER 23
Hawker and Sonia took cover in the audiovisual control room while a wave of panic swept through the outside. Sporadic gunfire was interspersed with screaming, and then they heard nothing but silence.
“What’s going on?” Sonia asked.
He was pretty damn sure that she knew what was going on.
“My guess?” he said. “These are the people your father was working for.”
Another burst of gunfire echoed.
“They’re killing those people,” she said.
That was a distinct possibility, Hawker thought, but he didn’t want Sonia to feel that.
“I doubt it,” he said. “They’re looking for you.”
“Me?”
“After they took your father, they went after a lab he’d been working out of. There can be only one reason for that: he didn’t give them everything they wanted.”
“And they think I’ll have it?” she asked. Fear filled her eyes. The type of fear he’d seen once before, years ago, when it seemed they might all die before they got the chance to leave the Republic of the Congo.
He didn’t completely trust Sonia — there were too many red flags for that — but he was certain of one thing: No way on earth would he let this cult get their hands on her and do what they’d done to Ranga.
A small boom echoed from the main room. It sounded like an explosion.
“We have to do something,” Sonia said. “We can’t just hide here.”
Hawker intended to do just that. Sooner or later it would turn into a standoff. Hotel security would rush in and Dubai’s antiterrorist forces would appear. If he guessed right the attackers did not want that. They had to find Sonia quick and get her out of there, probably by using the helicopter they’d flown in on.
The problem was, it wouldn’t take them long to go through the attendees, and then they’d start checking the rooms off the main hall, like the one he and Sonia were in now.
He glanced around, looking for a weapon. As he did he noticed light coming from a long flat panel near the wall. It looked like a mixing room of a recording studio. The controls for the audiovisual displays were still lit from within: The power was still on.
Right off the bat he’d assumed the attackers had cut the line, but that was easier said than done in a big hotel like the Burj. Somehow they’d taken out the lights, but that was it. For all he knew they’d just turned off the damn switch.
“I’m not going to let those people die for me,” she said.
“A lot more people will die if they get their hands on you. Trust me.”
She looked at him as if the statement confused her, but for reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on, it seemed like a performance. He hoped he was wrong, but once again he heard Keegan’s words in his head. The man was right. He couldn’t tell a friend from a foe.
He crawled to the panel, conscious of more shouting outside in the hall. After a second of looking it over — and realizing he knew nothing about how to work it — he began throwing switches, pressing buttons that seemed to represent Play and pushing levers that he guessed would control speakers or lighting effects.
The sound of the spa music rose up again. He could hear it from the main room. He pushed the lever to full, and then pressed Play on what looked like a giant DVD player.
The music grew louder and the voice of the spokesman cut in, but at a hundred decibels or more.
“You are here in the city of the future,” it boomed.
He threw a bunch of other levers and then grabbed Sonia.
“Come on.”
Out in the ballroom the guests lay flat on the floor. Three of them were dead, blood pooling around beneath them on the marble floor. Several others had suffered beatings.
A group of thugs in black fatigues and ski masks had fanned out around the perimeter. They’d gotten control quickly and now pointed automatic weapons at the men and women corralled between them.
At the center of that group, two others stood. One held his weapon at the ready; the other, without a mask and displaying a long blond ponytail, walked among the prone hostages like a wolf on the prowl.
He stopped.
“You.”
He pointed toward one of the Paradox personnel.
“Get up.”
As the man stood, Ponytail grabbed him by the throat.
“You’re a spokesman?”
The man from Paradox nodded fearfully.
“Then speak. Tell me where she is.”
“Who?”
“Sonia Milan.”
The spokesman choked at a lump in his throat. “She went down the east hall,” he said finally. “With Hendricks.”
“Hendricks? The old man?”
The spokesman nodded.
Ponytail shook his head. “We killed Hendricks. She wasn’t with him.”
“I swear they went together, right before you got here,” the poor guy said.
Ponytail brought a pistol up, placed the barrel against the man’s forehead, and cocked the hammer.
“I swear it! It’s the last I saw of her! I don’t know anything else!”
“Then I don’t need you anymore,” Ponytail said.
He pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded and he fell backward, dead. Screams rose and were quickly stifled.
“Anyone else have any better information?” Ponytail shouted. “You know, the kind that might keep you alive?”
Before anyone spoke, the huge plasma screens lit up and began dropping slowly on their hydraulic slides. The music came up seconds later, blaring at a painfully loud volume, making it hard to hear. And then the voice-over began. A calm, soothing voice, played so loud it blocked out the music and distorted the speakers.
“Welcome to the city of the future.”
In the center of this madness the men with guns looked suddenly nervous. The ones on the perimeter stepped back a few paces, their hands tightening on their weapons.
“You have come here to see your future.”
The flickering of the screens was disorienting in the darkness.
“What the hell is this?” one of the thugs asked.
Their leader remained calm.
He grabbed one of the hotel staff and shoved the pistol in the man’s face. “Where’s the control room?”
The man pointed to the east hall.
The east hall again.
Ponytail shoved him back to the floor, waved two of his people over, and stormed off the dance floor, h
eading for the darkened recess of the east hall.
Hawker held Sonia’s hand as the two of them slipped out the back door of the control room and entered the west hallway. The setup was simple: a big horseshoe with the ballroom in the middle, the east hallway coming out of one edge and the west hallway on the other side.
With the sound system raging and the plasma screens bathing the main room in an ever-changing flicker of light, it would be hard to notice two people sneaking around. Though that cut both ways.
Hawker stared down the hall. “All we need is a little fog and we could make a rock video,” he mumbled.
As the light brightened he caught sight of something more useful: a janitors’ closet. He pulled Sonia toward it and opened the door. Buckets and mops, tarps, and all kinds of supplies filled the small space. Perfect.
“Get in the back,” he said, pushing her inside. “Lie on the floor behind all that crap and make it look like this room is empty in case they look for you. Whatever happens, wait here. Don’t make a sound, no matter what. Just like in Africa. Understand?”
She nodded tearfully.
“Relax,” he said, smiling. “I’ll be right back.”
He shut the door, wondering if he would indeed be back. First he needed a weapon.
* * *
As Ponytail and his two men moved down the east hall, the cacophony of sound and voice diminished slightly but the flickering screens lit them up like a strobe. It gave him a sense of danger he’d not expected to feel.
“Go slow, boys,” he said, ghosting the left wall with his gun raised.
The others did likewise, but no one challenged them and they reached the AV room unhindered. One of them pushed on the door.
“Locked.”
Ponytail fired away at the handle until the doorjamb and the handle were blasted to splinters. One of his men kicked it in and the door swung open to darkness.
Stepping inside they saw nothing.
A rear door beckoned. He waved his men on.
“Find her!”
As the men went out the door, Ponytail looked around the room, checking the nooks and crannies. “Sonia!” he called.
No response and he found no one hiding. He stepped to the audiovisual controls, raised his rifle, and unloaded on it, shredding the entire panel.
“You’re going to piss me off, young lady,” he mumbled to himself.
When the echo of his shots died, the eighty-first floor went silent once again. Ponytail checked his watch. They were running out of time.
Hawker inched his way down the hall, hands up in case anyone saw him. The chaos seemed to be keeping everyone interested, at least until the sound of rifle fire overrode it and the speakers and plasma screens went dead.
So much for plan A.
He stared through the suddenly complete darkness for something, anything.
He found what he was looking for under a glowing sign: the fire alarm.
He elbowed the glass and yanked the handle down.
A piercing wail went out across the floor. A long blast, followed by four short blasts and accompanied by flashing strobes and emergency lights.
As the alarm shrieked, a figure appeared down the end of the hall. Hawker dove just as the man opened fire.
Booming gunfire and the sharp sound of ricochets mixed with the piercing tone of the alarm and the flashing lights.
Seconds later another man fired. But this time from the rear of the hall. In the madness and the dark, the gunmen were shooting at one another.
The man near the ballroom went down.
Hawker glanced back and then took off running. He launched himself toward the injured thug, hammering him with a forearm as he landed. More gunfire snapped; bullets tore holes in the walls and skipped off the marble floor. Hawker wrested the thug’s gun loose and fired back down the hall, lighting up the guy at the far end.
With confusion now reigning and gunfire all over the building, some of the hostages had panicked. Without waiting, they made a break for the stairwells; others remained where they were. One of the terrorists opened fire on the crowd and Hawker saw a couple of people fall.
He aimed and pulled the trigger, dropping the man. But another one found Hawker and fired back.
Hawker dove away, hearing the bullets whiz by. All hell had broken loose and the remaining terrorists were fleeing, running toward the east hall and firing back into the crowd as they did.
Hawker knew they were heading for the stairwell and back to the helicopter on which they’d come. He let them go and raced back around the corner into the west hall, fighting his way through a crowd.
He reached the janitors’ closet where he’d hidden Sonia and pulled the door open.
“Sonia, it’s me,” he said.
Silence.
“Sonia?”
He stepped inside, but she was gone.
CHAPTER 24
An hour after dusk, Danielle stepped out of the silver Mercedes SUV and into the geographic center of Beirut. Ahead of her was a building that had been bombed, shot to pieces, flooded, and then had become a home of refugees and wildlife during the decades of sorrow. It was now reclaimed and fully restored. The National Museum.
Next to the museum a nascent hospital sprouted on one side, while the other side was home to the new government library, also freshly reconstructed. Its façade was a mix of old stone walls and modern tinted glass. All three buildings looked spectacular lit up for the night and fitted out for a ball.
Security was heavy. Cameras, bomb-sniffing dogs, and Lebanese soldiers with rifles seemed to be everywhere.
The valet drove the SUV away and Danielle stepped forward. Lights, music, and a red carpet beckoned. She climbed the stairs in a charcoal-colored gown of smooth, shimmering material. It flowed smoothly as she moved and accentuated her tan skin.
Najir and his bodyguards flanked her, each of them in a tuxedo.
It almost made her laugh. During her early years with the NRI, she and Moore had attended many functions, conferences, and charity balls. You went where the contacts were, and in the high-tech world of industrial espionage, that meant following the money, the investors, the inventors.
For years her closet had been filled with gowns like the one she now wore. And then a funny thing had happened. Beginning with the Brazil project, Danielle had traded in her cocktail dresses and makeup for boots and mosquito repellent.
The mission to Brazil took them deep into the heart of the Amazon. Later it was Mexico, from the Gulf Coast through the jungle to the mountains. The fanciest outfit she’d worn was a simple cotton dress, and that had been borrowed. Most of the time it was cargo pants, T-shirts, and backpacks. Despite the stares from the men around her, Danielle felt a little awkward dressed to kill once again. A square peg in a round hole somehow.
It made her wonder how Hawker was faring. If she felt out of place, she wondered how he could possibly hope to pull off an upscale event like the one in Dubai.
She hadn’t been told what his cover was. Perhaps he’d sneak in as part of the waitstaff, with caterers or the cleaning crew.
Listen to me, she thought. In truth, she guessed he’d clean up pretty good and felt a slight pang of jealousy at not being there to see it, especially while an old flame of his would apparently get the full treatment.
She put the thought aside and focused on the moment.
“You’re rebuilding quite well,” she said.
“We’re always rebuilding,” Najir said. “We must find a way to stop tearing down.”
She smiled and noticed the Phoenician Builder logo in half a dozen places where the reconstruction was ongoing. “It’s a good business to be in around here.”
“We make no money off this one,” Najir insisted. “We are rebuilding the hospital and the wealthy families here are paying thousands to have their names attached to it. This party is a celebration. While it goes on above, we will be met and taken to a separate area, where some of the patrons will be given a chance to bid on
the artwork.”
“And that part’s not for charity,” she guessed.
“Not unless you consider Swiss bank accounts charity.”
“Do you know what we’re bidding on?”
“I have talked to some people,” he said. “Bashir has several items here for sale, early Mesopotamian art.”
“I’m not interested in what he was selling,” she said.
Najir nodded. “Except it’s believed he is selling them to raise funds for the one he wants to buy.”
“Which is?”
“The main item in the second lot. It’s labeled ‘Copper Scroll — Proto Elamite.’ Originally it was offered with a carving of Gilgamesh, the famous king of that period. But now they are separate.”
The names meant nothing to Danielle, and by the look on Najir’s face, they meant nothing to him. She suddenly wished she had an expert with her. Still, she was glad the one person who came to mind was somewhere else, safe and sound.
“And if I need to buy?”
He glanced over at her. “Ranga Milan is dead, you say?”
She nodded, wondering what that had to do with anything. “You said you didn’t know him.”
“An oversight,” Najir said.
Danielle couldn’t tell if he was lying or speaking the truth.
“I did not remember him,” her host insisted. “I met him twice. Bashir introduced him to me a year ago and I introduced him to these people. As I told you, they know me. You cannot just arrive at an auction like this and bid. You have to be vetted first and prove your ability to pay. Mr. Milan needed an account they could access. I set one up for him.”
Something told her Najir had his hands in all kinds of business dealings.
“You’re some kind of middleman in this?”
“I am trusted,” he said, “by all sides. It has its rewards.”
“You take a cut,” she guessed.
“If you bring in a bidder, you take a percentage of what that person pays.”
“Incentive to find others and bring them to the table,” she said.
“Exactly,” he said. “For tonight, I have set up an account and indicated that you are here to bid on Ranga’s behalf.”
