by Allan Topol
“Twenty-three,” Fox said weakly.
“Well, if you really love her, break it off with her before it’s too late.”
Fox knew as well as David what their fate would be if her husband found out, but he had refused to break it off with her. He was almost forty, but his hormones were raging as if he were twenty. It wasn’t just sex—made all the better by its forbidden character—but love, he told himself.
For Jameelah there was another component as well. She was rebelling against a society and a life in which her father had forced her as a young virgin to become the third wife of a fat middle-aged man who viewed her as his plaything for whatever he wanted. He disgusted her, and what he demanded of her sexually was loathsome. With Fox, she was making an intellectual statement, albeit a dangerous one. Saudi women should be free. But he wasn’t just the vehicle for her rebellion, Fox believed. Jameelah was deeply in love with him as well. He intended to sneak her out of the country where they could be free to love each other.
“Breaking it off with Jameelah’s not an option,” Fox said stubbornly.
“Then what do you want with me? I’m not Ann Landers, for christ sake.”
“You don’t understand. If Nasser and his group stage a fundamentalist revolution, they’ll kill all the royalists. It’ll be like 1917 in Russia. They’ll kill her husband and all of his wives and children. Nasser’s made that clear, and his people are ruthless. After all, they’re doing God’s work. They’ve got their power center in Hezbollah cells deep in Shiite areas in the eastern part of the country, and the Iranians are pouring in arms, money and people as fast as they can be absorbed. It’s a question of months until they make their move to take over the country.”
“You’ve clearly got a problem,” David said.
“Please help me. Please. You’re my only chance.”
Fox’s hands trembled as he thought about the risk he was taking in coming to talk to Nielsen. In his Washington meeting with Joyner and Chambers, the general, who kept rubbing his jaw, set and reset in two long rounds of plastic surgery, had made clear his hatred of Nielsen. With an awful menacing look in his eyes, he had told the CIA Director, “Listen, Margaret, I don’t believe for one second the CIA conclusion that Nielsen died in the Saudi desert trying to escape. That was only your people protecting one of your own. Now that I’m chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I’ll use the DIA to find that bastard. If he happens to be shot trying to escape, well, that’ll be a real shame.” Then after the meeting, when Fox had stopped at a bar in Georgetown to take stock of his alternatives, an army major on Chambers’ staff had delivered a note from the general that said, “If I ever hear that you’re still involved with Greg Nielsen, I’ll make sure that Jameelah’s husband finds out about your relationship.”
Fox looked at David beseechingly and continued, “You have to understand how evil this Nasser is. He’s already been responsible for gunning down six royalists, cousins of Jameelah’s husband, in their beds and hacking up their bodies. He’s launched an attack on the American embassy in Kuwait. He was responsible for a terrorist bomb on a bus in Jerusalem about a year ago, last August, I’m sure you read about it wherever you live. It killed…”
David sat up with a start, reached over and grabbed the lapel of Fox’s jacket tightly. He pulled Fox toward him. “What did you just say?”
Startled by David’s burst of emotion, Fox repeated what Nasser had done.
“How do you know he was responsible for the Jerusalem bus bombing?”
“The Saudi secret police got the information during their interrogation of suspects after the murder of the six royalists.”
David moved his face in close to Fox. “And they never told the Americans?”
“Nope.”
“Bastards.” He released his hold on Fox. “How’d you find out?”
Fox took a deep breath and looked at Greg with fear. He had never seen such hatred in a person’s face. “I planted a bug in Jameelah’s house with the aid of a servant whom I bribed. I wanted an early warning in case her husband found out about us. On the tape, I heard her husband talking with one of his brothers after the interrogation. They laughed and said the Jerusalem bus bombing was the only good thing Nasser ever did. Killing all those Jews.”
“But now that the terror’s being aimed at them, they’re not so enthusiastic.”
“They’re scared shitless.”
“Serves them right.”
“But what can I do to stop the fundamentalists or to get Jameelah out of there?”
David didn’t hear Fox’s question. He was too consumed in his own thoughts, reliving his own grief for Yael.
“So what can I do?” Fox repeated.
“Let me think about it. When I have some information for you, I’ll use the London answering machine. If there’s a reference to Portland, Oregon, you’ll know it’s me. You got that?”
Fox nodded. “Please, Greg, you’re my only hope.”
David looked around as he and Fox stood up. In the far corner of the park he saw something he didn’t like. A jogger in a black warm-up suit had just come through the wrought iron gates of the park and was running toward them along a diagonal cement pathway. It was too hot for a warm-up suit unless you wanted to conceal something. David watched the jogger getting closer. He had thick, curly black hair and olive skin. Suddenly, he reached into the pocket of his jacket. Out came a metallic object that sparkled in the sun.
As soon as David saw it, he pushed Fox down on the ground behind the bench. He dropped next to the dazed Fox, reaching for his Beretta at the same time. The jogger came closer and closer, raising a gun with his hand. He got off the first shot, aiming at David, but it sailed high over the bench. The mother with the blond girl screamed. The couple making out shrieked.
David raised the Beretta and aimed at the jogger, who suddenly stopped to fire another round. Before he could pull the trigger, David fired. His shot caught the jogger square in the heart. As blood oozed through the jacket of his warm-up suit, the gun fell out of his hand, and he collapsed onto the path.
More screams.
“Take off,” David barked to Fox. The CIA station chief jumped to his feet and ran toward the park exit leading to Knightsbridge. David wiped his prints from the Beretta, tossed it into a trash can and ran in the other direction, toward Piccadilly Circus. By the time he heard the sound of a distant police car, he had already blended into the crowds. Slowly and calmly, he walked up to Shaftsbury, then to the left into the streets of Soho. He found a porno movie theater and settled into a seat—only one of three men in the grimy theater—close to an emergency exit.
He tuned out the moans and groans of the copulating couples and tried to evaluate his options. What bothered him was that the jogger had two possible targets, but his first shot had been aimed at David. He was the target, not Fox. Somebody had found him. It was an assassination attempt, plain and simple.
Going back to the Park Lane for his bags was dangerous. On the other hand, leaving them there and not returning to the hotel was a worse choice. It would seem suspicious and cause the hotel’s management to notify the police in view of what happened.
He left the theater and wandered in the crowds along the Strand to make certain he wasn’t being followed. He took a circuitous route to the Park Lane, approaching the hotel from Mayfair.
Back in Room 804, he packed his small suitcase quickly, then took one more look outside with his binoculars. The park was filled with bright lights as the police combed the grass for evidence. He scanned in every other direction, but didn’t see anything suspicious—until he looked down at the sidewalk close to the hotel. There, he saw a man in a gray checked suit with a receding hairline, in his mid-thirties, David guessed. He was standing about ten yards from the hotel entrance with his eyes continually jumping from the front door to a Hebrew newspaper he was reading. Well, well. So the Mossad had finally decided to get into the game. It was about time.
With his next thought, David went pale.
The checked suit could have been here since yesterday. He might have seen everything David had done in the last twenty-four hours. When he had arrived at Heathrow, he had been so worried about avoiding a tail that he had overlooked the fact that if someone knew he was staying at the Park Lane ahead of time, they could easily keep tabs on him by watching the hotel. And it would be simple enough to find his hotel, though he had made the reservations himself. All they had to do was check with the Israeli phone company all outgoing international calls made from the kibbutz. How could I have been so stupid? he chided himself. But he knew the answer to that question. After five years his trade craft was rusty. Besides, he was getting too old. Spying was a young man’s game.
Still, he wasn’t beaten yet. From the checked suit’s presence, it was obvious that the Mossad had no interest in turning him in to Scotland Yard or MI5. So, after paying his hotel bill, he walked outside the Park Lane and went directly up to the agent who quickly, awkwardly folded his newspaper.
In Hebrew, David said to him, “Do you work in the cultural section of the embassy or some other department?”
Though embarrassed that he had been caught, checked suit couldn’t conceal a small smile. David hailed a cab, and as he expected, checked suit hailed the next cab. When David got out in the heart of crowded Trafalger Square, he moved quickly up and down the narrow streets, packed with pedestrians, until he was certain that he’d lost the tail. To be doubly sure, he took the Underground, waited until the last second to board, and saw that the platform was deserted. By now adrenaline was surging in his body. I may be rusty, he thought, but don’t count me out.
He spent the night at a tiny bed and breakfast in Chelsea, operated by a gray-haired British spinster who must have been deaf, based upon how loud she played the telly. As he tossed in bed, waiting for her to turn the damn thing off, he developed a plan to escape from London and elude the Mossad as well as the people who had sent the jogger. He knew how the game was played. The Mossad would be watching Heathrow and Gatwick airports and checking the reservation lists of all international carriers by accessing the airlines’ computers. That was always the first priority. He doubted if they had sufficient resources in England to check surface transportation as well; and he was prepared to bet that they wouldn’t share their knowledge with the British authorities. So he decided that early tomorrow morning he’d be on the Chunnel train to Paris.
In the morning, as an extra precaution, he went into a local Boots drugstore, and purchased a woman’s blond hair rinse and makeup. He took them into the men’s room off the lobby in the Carlton Hotel, where he lightened his hair and made his skin pale.
Satisfied with what he saw, he took a taxi to Waterloo Station. There, he dodged around enough to convince himself no one was following him. Again, he waited until the last minute to board.
Once he was on the train, he quickly turned to the three morning newspapers he had purchased at the station. Not surprisingly, the shootout in Green Park was the lead item in all three. The dead man was identified as an Iranian national, but that was all. Scotland Yard said it had no suspects.
Weary from yesterday’s encounter with Fox and the nameless Iranian, and having been up much of the night because of that stupid telly, David fell sound asleep as soon as the train started to move.
Chapter 5
As David slept on his way to Paris, a sleek two-hundred-foot luxury yacht, custom-built by the Dutch company Feadship and named Predator, pulled away from its moorings in the harbor of St. Tropez and moved out into the sparkling Mediterranean. Four burly men from what had once been French West Africa, armed with Uzis, stood on the upper deck beside an Aerospatiale Alouett III that was tethered to a helipad. Their eyes darted back and forth as the Predator gained speed. On the sundeck, Jacqueline Blanc, the president of Petroleum de France, one of the largest privately owned companies in the country, dressed in a skimpy Versace bikini that showed off her remarkably good figure for the age of sixty-one, put down her espresso cup and impatiently eyed the lawyer, adorned in a dark blue suit and tie. “I want this Greg Nielsen,” she said sharply, “and I want him now. Yesterday, to be more precise.”
Victor Foch took a deep breath and watched Madame Blanc, as she insisted on being called, gently touch her dyed black hair tied up tightly in a bun, with every hair in place as it always was, even on a boat at sea. He had represented Madame Blanc and PDF for more than twenty years. Though she paid him handsomely, he didn’t like her. He doubted if anyone did. Still, he had a great deal of respect for her, and he knew that she was never to be underestimated. In the war her parents, both Catholics, had bitterly divided over politics and survival. Her father joined the Vichy government and was ultimately executed by De Gaulle’s forces after the war. Her mother took little Jacqueline and joined the resistance, conducting hit-and-run attacks against the Nazi occupiers. A month before D-Day, the Germans caught her mother and made Jacqueline watch while they tortured and killed her. After the war Claude Dessault, one of her mother’s colleagues in the resistance, who became a confidant of General De Gaulle and ultimately finance minister in the French government, adopted her and became her mentor. She grew up hearing about the new France and its vibrant economy. He made certain that she attended the Sorbonne where she studied economics. After that, she earned an MBA at Wharton. Once she completed her education, Dessault used his contacts to aid her rapid rise to the position of a powerful industrialist. Throughout her business career she had gone to great lengths to keep her name out of the media, but Madame Blanc, as she was known, was both feared and revered in top French economic circles.
Victor was used to her demands, but he still insisted on giving her his advice. Whether she followed it or not was a different matter.
“Let’s talk about Greg Nielsen,” Victor said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to include him.”
She sneered at him with annoyance. She didn’t like anyone questioning her decisions. “Why not?”
“Because we won’t be able to depend on him.”
“What makes you say that?”
Victor reached into the black leather briefcase resting on the deck, set the numbers on the combination lock and snapped it open. With long, thin fingers he pulled out a blue bound folder and clutched it possessively in his right hand.
Victor said, “It’s a complete dossier on Greg Nielsen from his birth in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, to what he was doing last week. We even found the cause of that limp, that distinctive walk of his that allowed Khalid to spot him in Paris. In high school he was playing American football, and a big player from someplace called Beaver Falls landed on his right leg during his senior year. That injury kept him out of the war in Vietnam, though he tried to enlist.”
“Did you also cover the facts about his battle with General Chambers five years ago?”
“Absolutely. They were drawn from the secret report of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Margaret Joyner then chaired. I obtained a copy from a Senate staffer, and I’ve had a psychiatrist look at it. He confirmed professionally my instinct that Nielsen’s not a team player and that we won’t be able to depend on him even if, and it’s a big if, we can get him on board.”
She held out her hand. “Let me have the report, Victor. I’ll form my own opinion.”
Reluctantly, he handed her the folder, then watched her while she lit up a Cohiba cigar and read the document. He was hoping to see a frown in her face that showed she agreed with him. Together, they had developed a plan so daring and brilliant that he could barely restrain his excitement. And now, just because that Arab had accidentally spotted a man who walked with a bad leg in Paris, they were about to put the entire plan at risk.
When she finished reading, she tossed the report back to Victor.
“Well?” he asked, hoping for agreement.
“This Daphna, the stepdaughter, is a valuable pawn for us.” Her voice was cold as steel. To her Daphna wasn’t a person. She was an object to be used. “He’s soft on her bec
ause he’s transferred his love for the mother to the daughter. And the best part is that we can easily get to her in Paris.”
He was sorry that he had included any mention of Daphna in the report. Predictably, it had only served to whet her appetite. “Somehow I knew you’d pick up on his relationship with Daphna.”
“Well, the man has obviously worked hard to create a new life for himself,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and now we’re going to destroy it.”
“We don’t have to do that, you know. There’s another option. Ignoring Nielsen and moving ahead.”
“That’s not an option. Colonel Khalid wants him, and that decides it for me. At least for now.”
“But what can he really contribute?”
She leaned forward, pressing her forefinger against Victor’s chest for emphasis as she responded. “Khalid says, and we’ve confirmed, that Nielsen developed and installed the computerized security system at the king’s palace in Riyadh five years ago when he was still with the CIA.”
“But they must have changed it ten times since with developments in technology.”
“Khalid says no. He says the Saudis aren’t like the West that way. They’re not continually updating their systems. They follow the third world approach of installing a system and leaving it in place. If we can neutralize that system before an attack, casualties will be lighter and the whole operation will go that much easier.”
“Why do you care about their casualties? Suppose Khalid loses ten thousand men in an attack on the palace. Big deal.”
She was losing patience with Victor. “Personally, I don’t care,” she replied sharply. “But for now my main objective is to keep Khalid happy. He’s always been a reluctant partner. If he walks on us, we have nothing. Don’t ever forget that.” She said showing total contempt for Victor and his obvious lack of intelligent analysis. “We lose a deal worth an absolute minimum of $500 million per year for several years. We’re talking about billions of dollars. And you’re getting a five percent cut. So my conclusion is that we get Nielsen on board; we use him for our purposes; we watch him carefully; and when we’re finished with him we dispose of him.”
