Ben leaned forward and placed a hand on Emily Stanborough’s shoulder.
“You recently wrote a piece on the Hamas, didn’t you?” He asked, almost certain of the answer.
Emily responded without taking her eyes off of Nazari.
“Uh…yes. I wrote a lengthy article on the international community’s growing concern over reports that the Hamas was in the early stages of building and training an army.” She was writing down Nazari’s mannerisms, a digital recorder sat nearby on the ledge of the balcony wall to capture his words.
“It made page two of the New York Times. It was…a month ago.” She added.
Ben nodded and faded back behind her.
Nazari continued.
“In 1947, the United States of America took Palestinian land and gave it to Israel. Before this time, we had no disagreement with the Jews.” Nazari said loudly into the mic.
“Since then, the Israelis have taken both the West Bank and Gaza, apparently what they originally stole, was not enough.”
Ben noticed out of the corner of his eye some movement from the auditorium’s entrance. He turned to see the man he had spotted exiting an aircraft the day before.
Imam Nazari stopped speaking and acknowledged his late guest.
“Izz al Din Kalif, how good of you to grace us with your presence.”
Kalif stopped in his tracks. His guards shadowed his every movement. He was not use to being insulted, to say the least. A fierce frown covered the lower half of his flaccid face.
Izz al Din Kalif had been a professor at a prestigious university in Saudi Arabia. He’d been removed from his post, after Osama Bin Laden’s men detonated a truck bomb outside of U.S. base Khobar in 1996. Kalif, along with 1300 other teachers, was deemed extremists and a threat to the Crown Prince. In the decade after his expulsion from academia, Kalif had made it to the top of everyone’s terror list. He had waged a war against the west and the Saudi family by sponsoring training camps, housing suicide bombers and mapping out elaborate attacks on a variety of enemy governments.
It was clear to everyone present that Kalif couldn’t think of how exactly to respond. Finally, he blurted out “How dare you Nazari. Just because the rest of the world has fallen in love with your rhetoric, does not mean that the Arab people have.” Kalif’s layered robes lifted up as he spun around and headed for the exit.
“Brother Kalif, please accept my humblest apology, please join me.” He said waving his left hand over the podium. The Arab hesitated, unsure of what to do. After a long and awkward pause, he climbed the stairs and crossed the stage toward Nazari.
Everyone held their breath as Nazari opened his arms wide and embraced the taller man. For a moment, the tension in the room subsided. Then Nazari released his guest and took a step backward. Reaching under his robe he removed a black revolver and leveled it at him. Kalif’s eyes grew to the size of silver dollars. The audience gasped in unison. Nazari pulled the trigger and the man collapsed like a lifeless doll. Two men stepped out of the wings of the stage from behind thick dark curtains and opened fire on Kalif’s bodyguards; they had no time to react. Each man fell to the floor same as their master, in a bloody heap. Nazari’s men didn’t stop shooting until their machine guns ran dry. The audience was silent as they witnessed the horrifying spectacle. Imam Nazari stepped back behind the podium and removed the microphone from its fixed cradle.
“Stay in your seats brothers.” He commanded as he waved the .38 caliber pistol from side to side over the crowd.
Emily Stansborough started to scream but Ben threw up his hand and covered her mouth.
“Stay calm.” He urged. “These men don’t have any qualms about killing an American journalist.” He whispered in her ear.
Ben felt her legs give out from underneath her and he thrust his forearms up and under hers to keep her from hitting the floor.
Nazaris’s men reloaded their weapons and jumped off of the stage. They fanned out on the floor, keeping the ends of their guns trained on the crowd. They stopped at opposite ends of the auditorium and stood in the only two doorways in the room.
One of the men in the audience stood and demanded to know what was going on. Nazari stared at the man, he didn’t recognize him. While no one else dared speak, several nodded their heads in agreement to the inquisition.
Nazari contemplated an answer. The next few minutes were going to be some of the most critical in the entire operation.
“It is unfortunate that Izz al Din Kalif needed to be sacrificed. But I would say that it is more unfortunate that Allah’s freedom fighters have allowed such a degradation of leadership to represent them globally. I happen to know that Kalif has been speaking both to America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6. He has been brokering a deal between these two devils for his own personal protection and fortune.” The passion in Nazari’s voice rose and fell in crescendos and decrescendos that echoed through the hall.
Ben lay Ms. Stansborough gently on the ground. While crouching, he glanced at the entrance and exit to the balcony; they were both attended by guards.
Ben knew enough of Kalif’s resume to know that neither of the governments that Nazari mentioned would be talking to the terrorist and vice versa. He rightly guessed that Nazari was simply eliminating the only challenge to his leadership and authority that could possibly have arisen.
“Everyone in this room understands that this is what has held us back.” Nazari continued.
“Our people have suffered great defeat in the last one hundred years, despite owning most of the world’s largest oil reserves. Though we have millions of soldiers whom are zealous for the glory of Allah and access to inexhaustible resources, men like Kalif here…”
Nazari stopped to aim his right index finger at the body of the dead terrorist.
“…and their undeniable hypocrisy and ‘back room’ deal making with western nations have caused a great divide among us.”
Ben glanced down at the room below the balcony; it was too far to jump. Even if he survived the fall, he would be surrounded by literally hundreds of men that would relish shedding his blood.
Schweitzer now knew that Nazari had known his true identity all along. He could guess at Nazari’s reasons for inviting the rest of the reporters to the summit. They had undoubtedly written some inflammatory piece somewhere, either defaming the Hamas or its fearsome leader.
Ben had been in dozens of tight situations over the years. As a Mossad agent he lived in a state of danger, often infiltrating enemy hideouts or working his way up the ladder in terrorist cells. But while the Jewish man had been programmed to rely on his training in such circumstances, he was beginning to feel a slight twinge of trepidation. He was surrounded and he was on an unknown island in the middle of nowhere.
Ben stood back up and pretended to be interested in what Nazari was saying, in case anybody was watching. In reality, the Mossad agent was calculating his chances of escape.
“If our people, if you and I, band together.” Nazari said as he dramatically clapped his hands together. The echo of the slap reverberated through the chamber.
“There is not an army or nation on earth that can stand against us.”
Nazari studied the men in the crowd. He read their faces. It was difficult to discern how his message was being received. Kalif’s death had been an intense shock.
“But make no mistake my brothers, we can only conquer if our power is consolidated. There can be no more infighting. There can be no more divisiveness. There can be no more compromises with the West.” Nazari lowered his head. This was the first speech he had given during his time with the Hamas, where his emotions weren’t for show. He fought back tears of joy. Joy over what was about to take place; the unification of what the world would call terrorists but what Nazari would call God’s soldiers.
“We are all connected by our faith yet we have been taught to despise each other over petty differences. One group will fight with another because of some inane detail, something of little or n
o real consequence. We have been conditioned to think in this way so that we are too busy fighting one another. Too busy to organize and fight our true enemies, the Zionists, America, Britain and the entire infidel race.” Nazari was pacing back and forth behind the podium now, his long black robe lifting up slightly at the bottom, each time he pivoted on his heels.
Nazari had imagined the speech in his head for over three decades and he simply recited from memory. He had dreamt up all of it, down to the western reporters he had staged upstairs on the balcony. He stopped pacing and glanced up their way. Some of the men in the crowd followed his gaze and met Ben Schweitzer’s face. Nazari wondered just how scared Schweitzer was at the moment. The thought energized his tirade.
“This has kept us from also seeing what we are capable of. We no longer believe that we are able to defeat our enemies on the battlefield. Brothers, think of the Ikwhan at the turn of the last century. They were able to bring all of Arabia under one ruler. Would they have been able to accomplish this great task if they had been at war with each other?”
The Ikwhan had defeated tribal warlords all over the Arabian Peninsula. They had united the land by force and placed them under the rule of the first King of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz. The Ikwhan, or brotherhood, was a source of great Arab pride and the invocation of its name brought a great sense of honor to these men.
“The time has come for us to be united.” He shouted.
Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue ball point pen. Hidden above its small ink cartridge was a razor sharp stiletto blade. The blade was held in place, under significant spring tension, by a tiny button inside the shaft wall of the pen’s body. On the outside the button appeared as a logo. It was actually a safety mechanism to ensure the weapon was only deliberately activated. Once the logo was rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees, it could be pushed in, which would offset the retaining plate below the blade. The blade would then push the plate completely aside and thrust itself through the ink cartridge, knocking the ball point tip out of the pen and producing a two and a half inch stainless steel knife in its place.
Ben moved away from the railing on the balcony and walked casually over to one of the guards at the entrance to the loft’s seating area. The other guard had gone down the stairwell to the first floor and now the man at the entrance was the only one of Nazari’s men left upstairs. The guard straightened as Ben approached. Nuzzled up against his body was a compact para trooper model AK-47 that he had leveled at Schweitzer.
Ben motioned in the air with the pen. Using his hand to represent a piece of paper, he pantomimed writing something down.
“Do you have something to write on?” He asked as he stepped to within a few feet of the man. The guard tightened up on his grip and pulled the weapon closer to his body. He motioned with his head for Ben to go back and join the other journalists. But Ben kept inching forward, feigning ignorance.
Suddenly, the Israeli reached out and thrust the guard’s rifle in a downward motion with the palm of his hand. He spun the man around so that his back was to him. The spy then slid his free hand up the side of the man’s head and pulled it down toward his shoulder. He brought the end of his pen up against the exposed side of the guard’s neck and depressed the button. The blade ejected the ball point and crashed through the man’s flesh, opening the carotid artery. Ink and blood mixed together and flowed freely out of the wound.
Several gruesome seconds later, Ben lowered the man’s body to the floor and walked to the staircase at the opposite end of the balcony. At the top of the stairs he listened for the other guard. For a while he heard nothing and then the sound of heavy footsteps traveled up the staircase walls. Ben crouched down low behind the wall at the top of the landing. He made eye contact with several reporters and pointed to his eyes with his fingers and then out over the balcony. Emily Stansborough, who had been revived, was the first to understand.
“He wants us to face the stage, pretend like everything is normal.” She whispered. The group complied. They bowed their heads and strained to concentrate on Nazari’s house of horrors.
When the guard reached the top of the stairs, Ben launched himself upward, grabbing the man’s chin in the process. He jerked up hard on the bottom of his jaw, snapping two of the cervical vertebrae in his neck. The Arab tumbled backward down the steps. Schweitzer tried to catch him but couldn’t. He watched as the dead guard’s body stopped halfway down the flight of stairs in a twisted mess.
Ben rushed down the stairs and began rummaging through the guard’s pockets. He found a worn and tattered version of the Koran, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a sparsely filled wallet, but no cellular phone. He grabbed the man’s weapon and two extra magazines and started for the balcony.
Emily turned around and focused on Ben. She was frightened but ready to do what she had to get out of there.
“I have no plan of escaping this island. Only of getting information about Nazari out to my superiors. After I do that, I will concentrate on planning an escape but not before then.” Ben warned after seeing the look of desperate hope in her eyes.
“You’re thinking about getting a story out? We might die here and you’re concerned with newspapers or magazine articles, are you serious?” Emily said with tears at the corners of her eyes.
“I am not a reporter.” Ben replied. He grabbed her elbow and led her a few feet away from the other reporters.
“I work for my government. I am here to gather intelligence on Imam Nazari and report back to my superiors so that they can make an accurate assessment of who he really is.” He said quietly enough so that the others couldn’t hear.
“Are you with the Iranians? The Israelis?” Emily questioned, unable to silence the reporter in her.
Something Ben heard peaked his interest. He walked back over to the edge of the balcony and looked down at the cleric. Nazari was still center stage to the left of the podium, pistol hanging low at his side. No one appeared to have heard the ruckus on the staircase.
“There is no more Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansar Al-Islam. No more Mujahedeen, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Palestinian Liberation Front, Al-Qaida…” Nazari went down an exhaustive list of terrorist organizations, all of whom had at least dozens of representatives present.
“We are going to return to a simpler time.” Nazari added.
One of the men in the audience stood up and shouted an obscenity at Nazari, apparently too disturbed by Nazari’s suggestion to care about the value of his own life.
Nazari had been prepared for such an event. He actually had been surprised he had gotten so far through his speech before a dissenter threw down the gauntlet. But more important than Nazari being prepared, was Hassan Bishara’s quick response. The young Syrian had been standing in the back of the auditorium, listening to his boss’s speech; waiting for just such an outburst.
Hassan recognized the man as being from “Islamic Jihad”. He squeezed himself between dozens of bent knees as he walked down the aisle, toward the man. The man was yelling now, shouting about being Islamic Jihad. He screamed that he would never join Nazari or the Palestinians. He would never forsake his organization.
Hassan reached the renegade in short time. The man was somewhat startled when he noticed Bishara. He looked into his eyes, knowing what was coming next, and turned back to Nazari.
“This will never stand.” He said finally. He turned toward Bishara who was offering his hand. The man followed Bishara down the aisle and out of the side entrance of the auditorium.
Nazari continued.
“There is no time t…” The sound of Nazari’s voice was joined by a lone muffled gunshot from just outside the center’s walls. Nazari paused and lowered his head. He decided to take the opportunity to address the violence of the day.
“My brothers, we do not want to extinguish our own people.” He said, a genuine crack in his tone, testifying to his sincerity.
“But as you will see over time, the only way for our c
ollective cause to succeed is for absolute unity. We can have no conflict or division among us.”
Ben noticed that several of the reporters weren’t really looking at Nazari. One man’s lips were moving but nothing was coming out. Another was tracing an unseen image with his fingertip on the rounded wooden railing of the balcony, over and over again. Shock had settled firmly into their minds. The Israeli agent doubted he would be able to get any of them out alive. They would be nothing but dead weight.
Emily spoke frankly with Ben, whispering quietly so the others couldn’t hear.
“We’re not going to get out of here are we?” She asked.
Ben hesitated to give her the most straightforward answer that he could. It wasn’t his style to exaggerate or sugarcoat. But if she panicked, there was certainly no way of her surviving the ordeal and their chances were severely limited as it was.
“I don’t know.” He said.
15
Azraq Jiden Island
“Today, we return to tradition.” Nazari said as his words picked up in tempo and excitement filled his chest.
“Nearly one hundred years ago, the Ikwhan, our true brothers, desired to return the hearts of our people to the rightful place, Islam. They succeeded in gaining collective authority under King Abdulaziz. But the Western powers came in after the discovery of their precious oil and corrupted the heart of the King.” Nazari said, emotion ebbing and flowing as he talked.
There began to be cheers from the audience. This too, Nazari had planned and expected. Once the group thought as one, he would have complete dominion over them.
Ben returned to the body of the first guard. He drug the dead man to a spot closer to the balcony and positioned it in the front row of seats. He then secured the other guard on the stairwell and hoisted him onto his shoulder. He set the body on top of the previous and took the man’s AK. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and told Ms. Stansborough to go through the man’s pockets and look for a cell phone.
SANCTION: A Thriller Page 12
