The Solomon Effect

by C. S. Graham

  “The usual channels. But don’t worry. I told the station people at the embassy there to give you a wide berth.”

  “I was thinking more about the file photo my friend in Berlin was carrying.”

  “Ah.” Matt blew out his breath in a long sigh. “We’re still trying to get a fix on that. Whoever’s accessing your file is good, Jax. We can’t trace them.”

  “What is it you’re saying? That they’ve done it again?”

  “About half an hour ago. Your file, and October’s, too.”

  49

  Beirut, Lebanon: Thursday 29 October 1:15 P.M. local time

  By one o’clock that afternoon, Jax and Tobie were in Beirut, standing in front of a seedy falafel stand known as Chez Mahmoud. A fierce Mediterranean sun flooded the narrow street with golden waves of dusty heat as a steady stream of sleek Mercedes, honking Fiats, and diesel-belching trucks thundered past.

  “He’s late,” said Tobie, glancing at her watch. They had been told to wait here, in South Beirut. Azzam Badr al’Din would contact them.

  Jax gave a soft laugh. “Of course he’s late. This is Beirut, not Berlin.”

  Tobie’s gaze drifted to the bullet-pocked walls of the buildings around them. Once, Beirut had been called the Paris of the Middle East, back in the days when Lebanon had been held up as a shining example of how people of different religions could coexist peacefully for centuries. Then came the creation of Israel in 1948, and hundreds of thousands of Christian and Sunni Muslim Palestinians poured across the border to escape the fighting. The delicate balance teetered. Collapsed. By the 1970s, Lebanon had descended into a brutal civil war that killed tens of thousands; repeated Israeli invasions and bombing raids killed tens of thousands more. Now, in the wealthier areas along the Corniche, rebuilding efforts were once again underway. But here, in the poorer sections, debris and bomb-shattered buildings were everywhere.

  “What is it?” she asked, as she watched Jax’s eyes narrow.

  “The tan Range Rover. See it?”

  She saw it. Swooping in close to the curb, the driver hit the brakes. The SUV skidded to a halt; two men toting Skorpion machine pistols spilled out of the car.

  “Shit,” she whispered, taking an involuntary step back.

  One of the men was big and brawny, maybe mid-thirties, his complexion olive, his hair dark and wavy. His companion was both younger and fairer, no more than a boy, with green eyes and a wide smile. He held the muzzle of his machine pistol against Jax’s cheek and said in rapid Arabic, “Get in the car, please.”

  They got in the car. The brawny, olive-skinned guy took the seat next to the driver, while his younger companion squeezed into the back with Jax and Tobie.

  Jax, she had discovered, spoke fluent Arabic. He said, “No blindfold?”

  The boy beside them laughed. “You’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies. Everyone in Beirut knows where Dr. Badr al’Din lives.”

  Tobie whispered to Jax, “Doctor?”

  “He has a Ph.D. in psychology. From Berkeley.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  They took off in a swirl of dust. It occurred to her, looking back, that no one on that crowded street seemed at all shocked or disturbed by what had just happened. The guy in the falafel stand hadn’t even looked up.

  They headed south, past the sports stadium, past a squalid ghetto of tiny shacks built of concrete blocks hideously crowded together. As she stared at the grim, crooked alleyways lined with wretched half built, half destroyed houses crisscrossed by sagging lines of tattered wash that drooped in the dusty heat, she realized what she was looking at. A refugee camp.

  “That’s Sabra and Shatila,” said the boy, following her gaze.

  For some reason she couldn’t explain, she felt a brush of cold air against her cheek, like the whisper of an unseen, unhappy ghost that was there, then gone.

  She was glad when they broke free of the city, passing through olive groves and scattered villages of whitewashed houses with flat roofs and shutters rolled down against the heat of the day. The sea was a swath of vivid sparkling blue on their right. Then the road they followed swung toward the mountains, and thick stands of sweet-smelling cedars rose up beside them until the sea only appeared in surprising glimpses when they rounded a bend or crested a ridge. The driver punched a CD into the stereo, and the wail of a popular Lebanese singer filled the car.

  Gradually, the road narrowed, deteriorated. Chickens scratched at the rocky soil beneath scented orange groves; goats lifted their heads to watch as the dusty Range Rover roared past. They were stopped at one checkpoint, then another. Looking ahead, Tobie saw a fortresslike compound rising above them.

  With its high stone walls and massive corner guard towers, the compound reminded her of the castle of some medieval robber baron. Only, instead of being surrounded by a moat, this fortress rose from amidst rolling fields of some leafy green crop she couldn’t identify, and the guards in the towers had heavy 50 caliber machine guns. She had no doubt that the men standing on the roof of the tall sandstone house in the center of the complex had Stinger missiles.

  Waved through by the guards at the gate, the Range Rover swept into a courtyard softened by hanging vines of bougainvillea and sweetly scented jasmine. Two men in fatigues reached out to yank open the car doors.

  Stiff from the long, cramped ride, Tobie clambered out.

  “Marhabah. Welcome to my home.”

  She turned to see a man somewhere in his late thirties or early forties descending the shallow stone steps from the house’s broad veranda. He was slim and fit, with an open tanned face and a rapidly receding hairline. He was also, she realized, quite short—probably no more than five-four or–five.

  “Jax, my dear old friend,” said Azzam Badr al’Din, engulfing Jax in a fond embrace. “It’s been too long.”

  “If I remember correctly, the last time we met, you said if you ever saw me again you’d shoot my balls off.”

  Azzam took a step back. “I said that?”

  “You did.”

  Assam laughed and threw a questioning glance toward Tobie.

  Jax said, “This is Ensign Guinness.”

  Azzam’s eyebrows rose at the “Ensign,” but he shook her hand in warm welcome and said, “I hope you don’t believe everything he’s told you about me.”

  “How much of it should I believe?”

  Azzam laughed again. “No more than half.” He spread one arm wide in an expansive gesture toward the house. “This way, please.”

  “Let me do the talking,” Jax whispered to Tobie as they followed the arms dealer around the house, to a broad, stone-flagged veranda shaded by a grapevine-draped pergola.

  For once, she wasn’t inclined to argue. This guy was seriously intimidating.

  Azzam said, “Please, sit. You’ll have tea?”

  A slim brown boy of maybe twelve appeared from the house bearing a tray with tea and flatbread and a yoghurt-and-cucumber dip. The drinking of either mint tea or a vile, thick Turkish coffee was an inescapable part of any social or business interaction in the Middle East. At least it wasn’t vodka, Tobie thought as they seated themselves on a set of rattan chairs with floral cushions.

  “So,” said Azzam when the tea had been served and the boy withdrew. “What is so important that you’d risk having your balls shot off by coming here?”

  Jax tore off a piece of flatbread and dipped it in the yoghurt sauce. “A Nazi U-boat.”

  Azzam gave one of his sharp laughs. “What do I know of Nazi submarines?”

  “Just one sub. An XI-B Type that went down off the coast of Denmark near the end of the war. A Russian by the name of Jasha Baklanov talked to you about selling part of its cargo.”

  Azzam took a slow sip of his tea and said nothing.

  Jax said, “I know he came to you.”

  Azzam held his cup with both hands. He was still faintly smiling, but his eyes were hard and bright. “What is your interest in Jasha?”

  �
�Jasha is dead. His entire crew was massacred five days ago and the U-boat destroyed.”

  “Surely you don’t think I’m responsible?”

  “No. The way I see it, Jasha was planning to double-cross the men who hired him and sell the sub’s cargo through you. That’s why they killed him.”

  “So, what is it you think I can tell you?”

  “I want to know who hired him.”

  Azzam leaned back in his chair. “That, I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “There are certain kinds of information men like Jasha keep to themselves. You know that.”

  “So tell me about the cargo.”

  Azzam’s smile widened into something less than pleasant. “You of all people should know I don’t give anything away, Jax.”

  “Not even for old times’ sake?”

  “Especially not for old times’ sake.”

  Jax tore off another piece of bread and chewed it slowly. “Jasha was planning to sell the U-boat to a Turkish shipbreaker by the name of Kemal Erkan. Erkan is dead, too.”

  “If you mean to imply that I myself might somehow be in danger, I suggest you take a look around. Everyone from the Israelis to the Phalangists and Hezbollah have been trying to get me for years. I’m not an easy man to kill, Jax.”

  At this rate, thought Tobie, they were going to be here all week. She set aside her teacup with an impatient clatter. “How about a trade?” she said. “You give us what we want, and we give you something you want.”

  Both men turned to stare at her: a female interrupting a time-honored demonstration of macho strut. She was aware of Jax giving her a warning frown. She ignored him.

  Badr al’Din shifted in his seat. She was an unknown quantity, and he wasn’t sure where she was going with this. He said, “What are you offering?”

  “The information we need really isn’t important to you, is it? The only reason you’re not telling Jax what we want to know is because you need to feel like you’re getting the best of him.”

  Azzam let out a surprised bark of laughter. “Now that’s a novel approach.” He leaned forward. “I tell you what, Ensign. I’ll give you what I know, as a gift. But at some time in the future, you”—he pointed to Tobie—“will owe me a favor.”

  There was no accompanying leer to suggest any kind of sexual innuendo. She said, “It’s a deal.”

  The Druze sat back, his elbows propped on the wide arms of his chair, his hands folded before him. “All right. What do you want to know?”

  It was Jax who answered. “We want to know exactly what Jasha told you.”

  A hot breeze ruffled the vine leaves overhead and brought them the scent of garlic sizzling in olive oil. Azzam chose his words carefully. “He said he had an item for sale—an item that would be of great interest to an enemy of Israel.”

  “He didn’t say what it was?”

  Azzam shook his head. “He wanted me to arrange a direct meeting with a potential buyer.”

  “With you earning your usual finder’s fee?”

  “Of course.”

  “And did you find a buyer?”

  “I arranged a meeting, but the buyer wasn’t interested.”

  “Who was it?”

  “That, I can’t give you. But I can ask this individual if he’s willing to talk to you. If he is, he’ll contact you.”

  The Druze pushed to his feet. The interview was over. “My men will drive you back to Beirut. Get a room at Hotel Offredi, near the stadium.”

  “And?” said Tobie.

  “And wait.”

  50

  Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia: Thursday 29 October

  4:00 P.M. local time

  Borz Zakaev kept a heavy foot on the gas as he headed east toward Yasnaya Polyana. It was only late afternoon, but already the light was beginning to fade from the white, cloud-laden sky.

  This entire oblast gave him the creeps, with its dark bogs and empty, silent houses. He’d heard it said that before the war, East Prussia had been one of the most intensely cultivated and heavily populated regions in Europe, second only to the Netherlands. No one would believe that now.

  He put his foot down harder and heard the blip of a siren. Casting a quick glance in the rearview mirror, he saw a militia van with flashing red and blue lights coming up behind him, and swore.

  The snow began to fall late in the afternoon.

  Stefan stood in the soaring doorway of the abandoned granary and watched the big, fluffy flakes float down to cover the world in a hushed wonder.

  It had been sometime before dawn when the old farmer reigned in to let Stefan and the pup down some two kilometers before Yasnaya Polyana. “You’re going home, aren’t you?” said the farmer.

  When Stefan only stared up at him, the old man laughed, displaying a scant collection of stained, gaping teeth. “If someone’s after you, home’s the first place they’ll look. You know that, don’t you?”

  Stefan tried to swallow the sudden lump in his throat, failed, and simply nodded, his lips pressed tight together.

  “You take care, you hear?” said the farmer, and spanked the reins against his mules’ rumps.

  The old man had only confirmed Stefan’s worst fears. And so, even though he was so close to home that he imagined he could practically smell his mother’s freshly baked bread and hear the honking of the geese as she walked down to the pond at feeding time, Stefan and the pup had come here, to the vast ruins of what had once been the royal stables of Trakehnen.

  The stud farm was the birthplace of the famous warm-blooded Trakehner horses, begun back in the eighteenth century by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I. Stefan had heard it said that at one time the village of Yasnaya Polyana had been called Trakehnen, too, back in the days when Kaliningrad had been a German land and the stud farm had housed more than twelve hundred horses and three times that many people.

  Now, the horses and their handlers were all gone. The dilapidated old mansion, with its towering stucco walls and moss-covered red-tiled roof, had been turned into a school. But the rest of the vast stud lay deserted beneath the falling snow, a crumbling ruin of brick stables and grain silos and overgrown, empty pastures.

  Stefan felt the dog’s cold nose thrust against his hand. Hunkering down, he threw an arm across the pup’s shoulders and drew it close. From here he could look out across the fields to the old riding ring and the school beyond. “What do we do now? Hmmm, boy? Any suggestions?”

  But the pup only gazed up at him with silent, trusting brown eyes.

  51

  Beirut: Thursday 29 October 5:00 P.M. local time

  Hotel Offredi was built into the side of a dusty, weed-strewn hillside scarred by piles of broken rocks and bulldozed raw earth. Cheap aluminum-framed windows reflected the glare of a pitiless hot sun that wilted the fig tree growing in a cinderblock container near the front door. Rows of rusting rebars thrust up from the walls at the roofline, as if in anticipation of another story that might or might not be built someday.

  Inside, they found a thickset woman in a long dress and headscarf seated behind a desk with a simple sign that said in Arabic, ROOMS TO LET. English and French-speaking patrons didn’t usually make it into this part of town.

  “I wanted to ask you,” October whispered to Jax as they followed the woman up a set of bare stairs to a narrow hall. “What exactly was the crop growing around Badr al’Din’s compound?”

  “You didn’t recognize it?”

  The hall was starkly bare, the floor paved with cheap tile inexpertly grouted by someone in too much of a hurry to wipe up stray blobs of mortar.

  “No,” said October. “What was it?”

  “Cannabis.”

  “Cannabis? You mean—” She broke off. “Oh.”

  Wordlessly, the woman leading them thrust open the door to a small room with a hard bed covered in faded red chenille. A battered, fifties-style blond-veneered chest of drawers and bedside table, and an orange plastic chair completed
the room’s furnishings. Everything was worn and cheap but meticulously clean. Mohammed had taught his followers that cleanliness is next to godliness, and they still struggled valiantly against dust and sand and poverty to please God.

  “Shukran,” said October.

  The woman nodded and withdrew.

  Jax went to stand at the window overlooking the mean street below. A withered old man, his head down, pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with propane tanks past a handful of noisy, half-grown boys playing what looked like a version of Star Wars. Otherwise, the street was quiet in the mid-afternoon sun. Yet, Jax’s palms were damp, and he could feel waves of heat rising from his stomach to his throat. He didn’t like this setup. He didn’t like it at all.

  “It’s beginning to sound more and more as if there really was an atomic bomb on that sub,” said October, dropping her bag on the floor with a thump. “Or at least, the material to make a dirty bomb.”

  Jax glanced back at her. She sank down on the hard plastic chair, hooked her heels on the edge of the seat, and drew her knees up so she could clasp them to her chest. He said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  She tossed her head to shake the loose strands of honey-colored hair away from her face. “So what exactly are we hoping to get out of this mysterious contact of Azzam’s?”

  “Confirmation.” Jax pushed away from the window.

  “Is that really necessary at this point?”

  “It’s always necessary. Remember the run up to the Iraq War? How certain individuals cherry-picked unconfirmed intelligence suggesting Iraq still had a WMD program and was in contact with al-Qa’ida? It was all bullshit.”

  “Yeah, but that was deliberately planted bullshit, designed specifically to trick the American people into supporting a war. This is different.”

  A dusty old white Mercedes crawled down the street, scattering the laughing children. Jax watched it through narrowed eyes. “I keep coming back to that remote viewing session you tried in Bremen.”