The Shadow watched as each player was dealt two cards, face down, before the five community cards, face up, were placed in the centre of the group. Everyone in the group inspected their own cards, and not one showed any expression other than practiced boredom.
***
Jamie and Max were admitted into the ballroom by two large black security men whose nationality was unknown, as they never spoke. Inside, a lady sat at a table arranging name badges. Jamie was given her badge, which declared her as ‘Jamie Johnson, USA, North Eastern Conference Champion’.
Max was impressed, and looked eagerly for his own badge. The lady handed him a badge which read ‘Guest 27’. Jamie almost laughed at the disappointment registered on his face.
“It’s a good thing you’re not the one playing poker, Max,” she joked.
“I didn’t realise you were a serious poker player, Jamie,” Max offered, genuine surprise in his voice.
“I come from a family of policemen. I learned to play poker long before I got my first pack of Old Maid Cards in my Christmas stocking.”
Jamie didn’t tell Max that an overweight and rather unfit man by the name of Pete Catterson was actually the NEC champion, but he had never travelled outside the USA and so Homeland were able to persuade him to give way to Jamie, who the forged tournament papers showed as having come second in the latest competition.
Together they pushed through the heavy black velvet curtain that screened the ballroom from any casual observers. Max took a sharp intake of breath. “Wow!” was all he could say. The circular ballroom was on two levels, the floor itself and a mezzanine level that overlooked the floor, and which had magnificent views of the Gulf.
The ballroom was painted and wallpapered in gold colours, the fittings were all gold leaf and a colourful carpet filled the gap between the wooden parquet dance floor and the walls. In the centre of the dance floor, on its own, stood the top table. This was the table where the serious players were seated.
Around the outside, on the carpeted areas, six more tables were arranged. These were for the next tier of players, and most were occupied by locals and what looked to be Egyptian and Lebanese players. One table had a variety of nationalities and one empty seat.
“I guess that’s for me,” Jamie said aloud. “You can watch from the upper level.” Then she whispered, “Did you see our target on the top table?” Max nodded. “Good. Keep your eyes on him.”
***
Kwong Chong Lee knew that the secret to winning the Championship was not to try to win every hand but to play cautiously and build your own pot slowly, always waiting for the big hit. Unfortunately, knowing the secret and having the cards to make it work were two different things. Out of six players, he was running fourth. At least he would avoid the cut.
Jamie was playing out of her skin. She was taking risks and they were paying off. She was leading her table by a mile. Her goal was to make it to the top table as the wild card.
After the first round, one of the Arabic players left the top table, bowing to the other players, and everyone awaited the announcement.
“The wildcard player of the evening is Hassan Mohammed,” the British compere announced, getting the man’s given and family names the wrong way around. Everyone clapped as he took his seat at the top table, but Jamie was bitterly disappointed. She had missed the wildcard nomination by less than forty dollars.
***
By midnight Todd was sitting almost alone in the lobby at the base of the impressive atrium. He had taken his fill of cake and coffee, and had read every newspaper in the rack. He was now busy playing ‘Angry Birds’ on his iPhone. A text arrived on his phone just as he was about to annihilate more greedy pigs.
‘KCL is out of game, he may head out soon. We r on r way – J’. Todd walked to the door and asked for the Porsche to be brought back to the front of the hotel by the valet parking team. He handed over the ticket, and the man didn’t move a muscle. Todd gave him fifty dirhams, and still he did not move. Todd gave him another fifty dirhams and the man smiled. “I will be right back, sir.”
“That was a thirty dollar tip!” Todd thought to himself. “Bloody cheek.”
Todd’s job was to follow the Shadow in the Porsche and keep the Range Rover up to date with his position. Eventually the Range Rover would take over the tail. In this part of Dubai the roads were well lit, and a tail was easy to spot, unless the traffic was heavy. Fortunately, at this time of night, there were still enough cars on the road to conceal a tail.
Todd took up his vigil again. Fifteen minutes passed before Kwong Chong Lee appeared in the foyer. The Shadow had mysteriously acquired a droopy moustache and a tiny V-shaped beard under his lower lip since the CCTV picture of him at the Metro station was taken. Along with the stylish rectangular glasses and tortoiseshell frames, he looked quite different, but not to someone who was looking for him specifically.
Lee stepped out of the lobby into the warm evening air and had to wipe his glasses, which had steamed up at once in the humid atmosphere. Todd crossed the lobby and left by a side door, collecting his keys from an anxious valet who had been warned not to park vehicles outside unless they were Ferraris, Maseratis, Bentleys or better, and a Porsche just didn’t make the grade.
A few moments later, and just as Lee was stepping into a limousine, Max and Jamie presented their valet ticket to the concierge. They deliberately did not look in the direction of either Todd or their target.
The limousine pulled away from the magnificent hotel entrance smoothly and slowly. After a few moments, and after allowing a taxi to go before him, Todd followed.
***
The Shadow was more tired than he had realised. Adrenaline had kept him going this evening, but now he dozed, and by the time they arrived at the destination he was asleep on the comfortable leather upholstery. The driver was deeply puzzled. He was depositing his client outside the Gold and Diamond Centre, which had long since closed for the night, and there were no hotels or apartments close by.
“The limousine service is complimentary, sir. I can take you anywhere in Dubai. Are you sure this place is acceptable?” the driver asked, showing concern for his passenger’s well-being.
“This is fine,” Lee said, pushing a hundred dirham note into the man’s hand. The Shadow stepped out of the car and walked around the side of the Gold and Diamond Centre, then on through a parking area to a pedestrian walkway. Within two minutes he was in the workshop, where a camp bed awaited him.
***
The Range Rover was on the limo’s tail when it stopped and dropped off the target. “Todd, Lee is walking through a car park with a lowered barrier. We can’t follow him by car,” Max said into his phone. “I’ll follow him on foot at a safe distance. You swing around the back and see if he crosses the road. Jamie can hover around here at the front.”
Max waited until Lee was out of sight, and then he jogged the hundred yards to the pedestrian walkway entrance. Lee was walking along the service road away from the Gold and Diamond Centre. When he was sufficiently far ahead, Max pulled the pedestrian gate, but it wouldn’t move.
Max noticed a card reader on the wall for the first time. Lee was out of sight now, and so Max launched himself at the six foot high gate and clambered over it in an unseemly fashion. He looked up to see a CCTV camera catching a man in a dinner suit clambering over a gate, into a service area which housed only refuse and other storage containers.
Max ran to the corner where he had last seen Lee. The man had disappeared. Using his phone, he called Todd. “Has he come out onto the road yet?” he asked.
“No, mate,” came the reply. A moment later Jamie replied that he had not exited at the front, either. “OK, we lost him,” Max sighed disconsolately.
A grid search of the area showed only two exits, both of which were clearly covered by Todd and Jamie’s line of sight. Inside this perimeter were six buildings, all industrial in nature, all with roller shutter doors and personnel doors.
“OK, w
e know he’s in here somewhere. It makes sense, too. These are all workshops,’ Jamie noted. “And we’re less than a hundred yards away from the First Gulf Bank Station where he exited the Metro.”
“Let’s go back to the villa,” Todd suggested. “We can scope out the area in the morning, and by then Vastrick should have information on which of these workshops has been let recently.”
Chapter 41
Villa Afzal, 14C Street, Al Safa 1, Dubai:
3rd March; 11:35am
Afzal is the Arabic term for superior, and whilst the Villa itself was certainly superior, the people inside felt frustrated and neutered - anything but superior, in fact. Early that morning Vastrick had sent an email to Max, which read:
‘Max,
We can find no record of any recent lettings in your stated area, but this is not a surprise as many lettings are either recorded late or not at all. We did have a hit from DEWA (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) however. It seems that they disconnected a car repair facility last year when a Volvo Dealership closed down, and a week ago they reconnected it for the landlord. I attach a site plan for the area with the workshop marked in red.
Regards, Dominic.’
The red highlighted building was almost exactly where they had lost contact with their target last night. The three agents tried calling the Brigadier at Bur Dubai Police Station to request a task force to surround the workshop, but he was not available. Despite their urgent requests, they could not persuade the lady on the end of the line to forward their call to his mobile phone, as he was attending a family wedding. Worse still, his deputy was reluctant to respond to their requests without the Brigadier’s agreement, but he said that he would seek agreement from someone in authority.
The phones had remained silent for almost two hours before Sheikh Mahmoud called to ask what was happening. Max explained the delay.
“Heaven help us! There may be bombs in that workshop and we are sitting around worrying about whether we should storm in and seize them. I will call you back in a few minutes,” the Sheikh said, anger hardening his normally soft voice.
That call had ended almost thirty minutes ago and Max, Todd and Jamie were sitting impatiently, trying to stay calm.
“I’m going down there. I won’t do anything, I’ll just make sure he doesn’t get away,” Todd said as he grabbed his car keys.
“Todd, the police told us to stay away. They said they have the place under surveillance. If you go storming in you could ruin everything and get yourself arrested,” Jamie noted. Todd would have argued with her, if the phone hadn’t rung at that precise moment. Max answered, listened for a moment, and said, “Thank you, Sheikh. We’re on our way.”
***
Todd, Max and Jamie were closer to the workshop than the police and so they arrived at the Gold and Diamond Centre first. They pulled the Range Rover into the car park, after assuring the Pakistani guard that they were customers of the MORE Café and that they were booked in for lunch.
“Where’s the surveillance?” Todd asked. The others looked around but there was no sign of a police presence. “Let’s move into a position where we can see the shutter door and the personnel door.”
The others followed Todd, aware that they were unarmed and vulnerable. The Sheikh had mentioned that if the police found weapons on any one of the three they would arrest them and ask questions later. They were attending as observers only.
A moment later a police car pulled up beside them and the passenger in the green and white Nissan 4x4, marked POLICE, wound down his window casually and asked in a loud voice, “What are you doing?”
Max crossed to the car and put his fingers to his lips in the universal sign of silence. Max whispered, “There is supposed to be police surveillance on this workshop. We’re working with the Brigadier and Sheikh Mahmoud.” The policeman was still wary.
“We watched the place for two hours this morning, before we were sent off to an accident in Al Quoz. We have been gone only forty five minutes. The place looks deserted,” the policeman added.
Max looked at the dark-skinned, moustachioed man, dressed in what looked like military fatigues, and replied despairingly.
“OK, we can’t worry about that now. A tactical team is on its way. We’d better all stay out of sight.”
“No-one told us about a tactical team,” the policeman said, reaching for the radio. Max walked back to his friends to await the arrival of the task force.
***
Kwong Chong Lee had slept late, and when he awoke he dressed in casual clothes and crammed his dinner suit into the big black holdall which also held his gun. He placed the holdall in the trunk of his hire car, beside the lunchbox bombs, and closed the lid.
The Shadow raised the shutters and drove his car out onto the concrete apron beyond. After closing the shutters by remote control, he drove out of the estate.
As he turned onto the main road, he froze. A police vehicle was blocking his path. His heart racing, Kwong Chong Lee waved a hand, suggesting that he was allowing the police car right of way. The dark- skinned, moustachioed policeman in the passenger seat held up a thumb in acknowledgement.
The police car turned into the car park and, concerned that the policeman might remember his vehicle, The Shadow headed off to a shopping mall where he could safely abandon the car. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks when the attack was just a day away.
***
The tactical team turned up shortly after the police car repositioned itself out of sight of the workshop unit. Eight men, dressed in black and wearing helmets and body armour, climbed out of two unmarked cars. Four police cars came to a halt in the car park, and seven men and a woman sergeant, dressed head to toe in a green burkha with three red stripes on each arm, alighted and took up positions with their handguns at the ready. The seven regular policemen were dressed in khaki fatigues, heavy boots and green berets. The stripes on their arms, and the uniform trim, were bright red. Red and green, of course, were the colours of the national flag.
The tactical team banged on the doors and shouted, “POLICE! COME OUT!” When there was no response, they tried the doors. Both were locked.
“ARMED POLICE COMING IN!” a black-shrouded policeman shouted as the doors were forced.
The Shadow had not left in a hurry, and he had obviously intended to return, as a camp bed stood neatly made up in the corner, beside a small fridge that held soft drinks and snacks. Unfortunately there was no sign of any explosives.
The leader of the tactical team shouted “All clear!” in English and Arabic, and then said something that Max did not understand with his kindergarten grasp of Arabic. The leader’s meaning became apparent a moment later when a scruffy looking dog came into view, straining at its leash. After sniffing around the gathered team, its handler led it into the workshop. The dog raced over to a box in the corner of the room and barked sharply three times, then stood resolutely looking into the box, wagging his tail.
Nestling at the bottom of the otherwise empty box were three torn sheets of waxed paper. “There were explosives in here, Sir,” the handler said to his immediate superior.
Todd swore loudly and kicked the door hard. “What a bloody farce! We had him, Max, I know we did. We had him and we let him go!” He swore roundly again, and stormed off to the car.
The leader of the tactical group caught up to the three operatives a few minutes later. His chest tag read ‘Al Mittan”. He spoke directly to Jamie.
“I am as distressed by this as you are. We were sitting in our station all morning waiting for instructions. We got here as soon as we could.”
“We understand, Sergeant. Todd and I both have experience of being jerked around by the chain of command. What was the hold up?” she asked.
“The building is owned by a developer whose chairman is closely related to the Ruler. No-one would risk giving the go ahead until he was consulted. Then, when he was consulted, he said, ‘Hell, yes! You don’t need my permission, go a
nd get the……” He looked at Jamie, flushed and said, “You can probably imagine the rest.”
***
The Shadow was parking his car at the Mall of the Emirates when his phone beeped. He looked down and saw an alert from the application he had set up to protect the workshop. The doors had been breached. He could not return there. In fact, he needed to be out of this tiny Emirate as soon as possible. He felt suddenly claustrophobic, and his heart started to race.
Chapter 42
Villa Afzal, 14C Street, Al Safa 1, Dubai:
3rd March; 4:20pm
The mood inside the villa was sombre. A maniac with enough explosives to kill a football crowd had escaped capture because some functionary was afraid to upset a high-ranking official who readily gave his permission as soon as he was aware there was an issue. It was a farce, and Todd had said the same to the Brigadier and the Sheikh, both of whom were offended by Todd’s accusations, although they also understood his frustration. Nonetheless, Todd had been stood down until he apologised. Jamie wasn’t hopeful that would happen any time soon.
Todd’s mobile phone rang. “Yes?” he barked impatiently into the phone. The voice on the other end of the phone was soft and feminine. Todd sighed. “Sorry, Aara, it’s been a bad day. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
Todd listened as Aara, the Sheik’s distant cousin and manager of Dubai’s first women’s shelter, spoke.
“Mr Todd, I fear I may be unfair calling on you and abusing your goodwill, but I have an urgent problem. A local man has found our location and has been banging on the door, asking us to return his maid. He said she belongs to him.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No, Mr Todd. The police will take the girl away and try to settle the matter amicably. Her boss, he is wealthy, and by tonight she would give in and go back to him, rather than stay in the police station. Can you come and reason with him, please?”
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