“Not like that, Senator,” Russell said, still laughing at the legislative maneuver. “I haven’t been out to the Gulf region for a while. What can you do, sir? Just keep your eyes and ears open, especially with your friends on Armed Services.” MacIntyre rose and went for his overcoat, which was lying on the leather couch. “And watch my back.”
“Always do, Rusty, always do.” The two shook hands and then embraced. “And give my best to that lovely, lefty wife of yours,” the Senator said, smiling.
“I’ll need to give her something. Right now she’s probably sitting outside in her car waiting to take me to Dulles, and freezing,” MacIntyre said, walking toward the door.
“Then get your ass in gear, boy.” The chairman laughed, flicking his wrist. “Go, go. Never leave a pretty lady waiting in the cold.”
Sarah Goldman was feeling cold at the moment, in more ways than one. Their drive out the Dulles Airport Access Road together was more taxing on MacIntyre than negotiating with the Brazilian intelligence service (which he had done three months before, hoping to learn what one of South America’s leading spy agencies really knew about the Hezbollah presence in the “triangle area” near Uruguay).
“I don’t mind that your job means you can’t go to our friends’ dinners or that you won’t be here when my brother arrives tomorrow. I just don’t like being told at the last minute, that’s all,” Sarah said, gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly. “I know your job means you can’t always tell me why, and I accept that it’s more important than my work, but...”
“Honey, I never said my job is more important. What you do for refugees is sometimes a matter of life and death, too,” MacIntyre said, regretting he had put it that way as soon as he said it. He patted his various pockets looking for his passport. “It’s just that in addition to secrecy, my job also involves a certain unpredictability, a spontaneity. And if I had remembered that your brother was coming to town tomorrow, I would have delayed a day; you know I love Danny.
“And if I knew for sure when I was coming back, I would tell you, but this trip is a little open-ended,” he said, retrieving the worn black diplomatic passport from the new Coach attaché case her mother had given him for Chrismica.
“It’s all right, Rusty, seriously,” she said, looking at him and not the traffic. “It’s just that I leave Sunday for Somaliland. So I am giving the cat to Max and Theo and you have to remember when you get back to go and get Mr. Hobbs from them. And then you need to feed him, and not starve him like you did last summer when I was in Sudan, poor thing.”
Mr. Hobbs was their cat and surrogate child, an arrangement that Sarah seemed to be perfectly happy with, most of the time. When he’d press Sarah for a decision to try to have their own human child, she would point out that both their travel schedules and his work hours meant that something would have to give. “It can’t just be my job to raise our child like it is just me taking care of Mr. Hobbs. It would have to be an equally shared responsibility.” He accepted that concept, but he did not see how he could walk away from his job to some thirty-hour-a-week position at a boring think tank like Brookings or RAND. There was too much going on. There were too few people who knew how to do it. And his mind would turn to mush writing think-tank monographs that no one would ever read.
Yeah, he wanted a child, their child. Sarah always ended these conversations with the same unconvincing assertion: “It’s not like we’re failures if we don’t have a kid. I am not like my mother, and I just don’t buy that I have to procreate to justify my space on the planet. Believe me, there are more than enough people doing that without us adding to it.” So he had bought toys for Sarah and the cat in airport shops around the world. They were not much appreciated by either.
Sarah wove her way through the triple-parked cars, taxis, and police on the departure level of Dulles, to the Virgin Atlantic door. She threw on the emergency blinkers and got out of the car to embrace him, while the Dulles policeman yelled, “Move the car, lady.”
“Be safe and be careful, wherever the hell you’re going,” Sarah said as the kiss ended and their breath formed two columns of hot air in the cold night.
“London has been perfectly safe since the Underground bombings in 2005, really . . .” he tried. She put her finger across his mouth to silence him, then slipped her hand inside his coat pocket. “You heard me, mister,” Sarah said. She smiled warmly at the Dulles cop and got back into the car.
Rusty waved, hoping that she would be looking at him in the rearview mirror. Then he started looking for his badge to get through security. What he found first, in his coat pocket, was a card deck and a note on a yellow Post-it: “You need to practice the Ambitious Card trick for the IAC Charity Show. Have a great trip, boss, Debbie.”
After bypassing the long security line, MacIntyre went to the Virgin Club to await his flight. He sat at the bar and opened up the deck of cards. Somehow, he realized, on trips he felt free of all the tension between him and Sarah. He was already feeling it, his muscles relaxing. As he shuffled the cards Debbie had sneaked into his coat, Rusty looked up at the plasma screen carrying CNN. Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad was giving a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Dallas. He asked the bartender to turn on the sound.
“. . . dating from Franklin Roosevelt’s meeting with the Saudi royal family aboard the cruiser the USS Quincy. Those who have forced the Sauds from power, for now, are al Qaeda murderers. They plan to spread their jihadist government throughout the region, threatening our allies in Egypt, Bahrain, and elsewhere. But I have a message for them. The United States of America will never permit them to harm our allies and will work for the restoration of the rule of law and order on the Saudi peninsula.”
In Dallas, the crowd roared. In Dulles, Rusty MacIntyre cut the cards, and ordered a Wild Turkey.
4
FEBRUARY 4
The Burj al Arab Hotel
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
New York Journal reporter Kate Delmarco took a taxi to the world’s tallest hotel, a building shaped like a giant dhow’s sail on a man-made island a hundred yards off the coast of Dubai. She did not enter the hotel, but instead climbed into a golf cart that took her back over the short causeway to the shore, past the Wild Wadi Water Park, and then down to a dock where electrically powered little dhows departed for the canals of the nearby hotel and shopping complex. Alighting at the modern air-conditioned souk, she followed the signs through the mall to an Italian restaurant.
Although she was based in Dubai, her best source in the region was her friend Brian Douglas, the British diplomat stationed in the British embassy in Bahrain. She knew he was more than the regional energy affairs section chief, which was how he was listed in the embassy directory. But despite a few overnight sailing trips together on his 32-foot Bahrain Beauty, Douglas had never broken cover. He had never admitted to his other job. Last week he had called and suggested to her, somewhat cryptically, that she should meet “another Dubai friend” of his. So that was what she was about to do.
Waiting at the bar was Jassim Nakeel, a scion of one of the families that were building the new city of Dubai, soaring office towers, offshore islands of villas and condos, tourist theme parks. He did not wear traditional Arab clothing but looked instead like a transplant from Malibu or Laguna Beach.
“You thought because my name is Delmarco I would like an Italian restaurant?” she said as he led her to a table outside on the balcony. Kate Delmarco looked as though her family came from southern Italy, with slightly olive-tinted skin and long black hair. Although she would be forty-five later in the year, Delmarco was fit and exuded a Mediterranean allure. She had managed to finagle an open invitation to go riding at the Dubai royal stables anytime she wanted. It had become her Saturday-morning ritual.
“No, actually, I thought you’d like this place because it has a great view of the sound and light show the Burj al Arab hotel does every night,” Nakeel said as he seated Kate facing the giant sail-shap
ed hotel. “Besides, it has a great wine list.”
“Wine list! Is there anything about Dubai that is still Arab? Wine lists, theme parks, high-rise condos filled with Europeans, you in Armani . . .” Kate stopped as the seventy stories of the Burj turned purple, stars sparkled up one side of the tower and then down the other, and then the building faded to pink.
“Dubai is the center of the new Arab world, Kate, cutting-edge, business-smart, and cosmopolitan,” Nakeel said, taking the wine list. “For most Europeans, it’s more affordable than the South of France and a lot more fun. Besides, it’s cold there this time of year. The 1999 Barolo, please,” he told the waiter without consulting her. “After what happened in Riyadh, most global companies moved their regional offices to Dubai. It’s safe, secure, modern, and efficient. Besides, there are no taxes. They all love it here.”
Kate frowned. “Yes, but isn’t it a little close to the old Arab world? Islamyah? Iran? You can see the lights of the Iranian oil platforms from the bar on the top of the Dubai Tower.” She stabbed a pepper on the antipasto plate that had appeared.
“Yes, that’s why we’re a little worried,” Nakeel said, putting down the menu. “That’s what I want to talk with you about.”
“I’m all ears.”
“For generations, the mullahs in Iran have wanted to unite the Shi’a world into a single power, ruled from Tehran or Qom, the seat of their religious leaders,” he began. “Right after they took power in 1979, they started to stir up the Shi’a majority in Iraq. That’s why Saddam attacked them in 1980.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Kate replied, breaking a breadstick. “Or maybe he just thought he’d grab their oil province while they were weak after the fall of the Shah.”
“The point is,” Nakeel continued, “that almost a million people died in that war over eight years, until both sides quit from exhaustion, and nobody won. Fifteen years later, the U.S. Army comes along and topples Saddam in three weeks. Three years later and the Shi’a are practically running Iraq under Iranian guidance. Washington did Tehran’s work for them. While all the American attention was focused on car bombs in Baghdad, the Iranians secretly built nuclear weapons while denying it and tricking the Europeans and Americans into thinking that they were five years away from a bomb.”
Kate looked bored. “Jassim, that’s your version of history. I think we prevented Iraq from getting WMD again and we gave it democracy. Democracy means majority rule, so the Shi’a rule, but that doesn’t mean Iran is in charge of Iraq. So what else is new?”
“The next steps, Kate. They are about to happen.” He tasted the splash of Barolo the waiter offered for his approval and nodded for him to pour for the lady. “Now they want the Shi’a majority in Bahrain to take power and facilitate Iranian activity across the Gulf. Do you really believe that Pentagon crap that it’s Islamyah behind the bombings in Bahrain?” Nakeel scoffed.
“No, I don’t, but my editors seem to. They spiked my story blaming it on Tehran and ran a piece by our Pentagon reporter demonizing Riyadh,” Kate admitted.
“Your Defense Secretary Conrad has been demonizing them since the day they drove the Sauds out.” He paused and looked her in the eye. “We think Conrad is on the al Saud payroll,” Nakeel said softly.
“ ‘We’? The Dubai real estate development board?” Kate shot back. “Or do you have another job, too?”
He ignored her question. “If you want a story your editors can’t spike, Kate, talk with my friend in Bahrain.” As he spoke, the Burj al Arab and the hotel next to it that was shaped like a giant wave both erupted into a galaxy of twinkling stars, fireworks shot from their roofs, and the speakers in the souk played “Rocket Man.”
“I’m actually booked there on Gulf Air tomorrow afternoon, but I appreciate the advice, Jassim,” she said flatly.
“Well then, may I suggest someone you might want to interview there, a tip from the Dubai real estate board?” He smiled as they brought his veal scaloppine and her roasted pork loin. The music switched to ABBA.
FEBRUARY 5
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel
Manama, Bahrain
“You’re not afraid to be in a hotel lobby in Bahrain, Ms. Delmarco?” Ahmed said as he sat in the chair opposite her in the coffee shop. He was wearing a blue blazer and khakis, and looked like a thin, young American assistant professor.
“Should I be, Doctor?” she asked as she extended her hand, testing to see if he would take it. He did.
“Perhaps. Many people died in the Diplomat and Crowne Plaza, but not, as your paper claims, at the hands of Islamyah,” he said quickly, settling into his seat.
“Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Rashid. I know you are a busy man at the hospital and...everything else,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I met an American naval intelligence officer today at the base, who told me that Riyadh was definitely behind the terrorism, part of a plan to push the Navy out of Bahrain.”
“We have to ban smoking in Bahrain,” Ahmed joked. “And lies. You should have better sources than this Navy intelligence man.”
“I guess everyone has their vices,” she said, snubbing out the Kent after two puffs. “That captain’s vices apparently include trying to pick up female reporters. We’re having dinner tonight. What are your vices, Doctor?”
“I have an addiction to American television comedies.” He smiled. “My family would never understand. Do you know Frasier?”
Kate thought Ahmed had a warm, genuine smile, and that the spy business was definitely a second career for him. As much as she liked Brian Douglas, it was going to be a lot easier getting information out of the good doctor. “Frasier? But you’re not a psychologist, you’re a cardiologist. You worry about hearts.” She signaled for the waiter. “And minds?”
“Some people are trying to sow fear in the minds of Americans, Ms. Delmarco, but America does not need to fear the new government in Islamyah. We have replaced a corrupt, undemocratic government with one more in line with our traditions and beliefs as a people. We still sell oil on the world market. We do not attack Americans. Why not let us alone?” Again, he flashed the charming, boyish smile.
“ ‘We,’ Doctor? I thought you were a physician who just happened to have a highly placed brother in Riyadh, a brother from whom the Islamyah embassy press attaché assures me you are estranged. What does that mean, ‘estranged’?” she said, taking out her digital recorder.
“May I call you Kate?” he asked. She nodded. “Then, Kate, let’s stop the dance. I was told I could trust you, and you were told the same about me. I have known the Nakeels for twenty years. My parents have owned a vacation house next to theirs in Spain forever. Yes, many people in our new government would not talk to an American reporter, a woman reporter, but because I support that government, I will. I will try to help you see the truth, assuming you will report it.” Ahmed stopped abruptly and touched his cell phone’s Bluetooth earpiece. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”
Kate sipped her coffee, trying to hear something of what was being said into Ahmed’s ear. His face had changed; he looked concerned, almost afraid.
“I apologize. I have to get back to the intensive care unit. May we meet tomorrow? May I call you?” he said, placing Bahrain dinars on the table.
She smiled and handed him her card, with the Dubai cell phone number. “Anytime, Doctor.”
In a moment, he was gone. Kate Delmarco turned off the recorder and wondered what could happen at the ICU to put fear into such a pleasant young man.
The beat-up Nissan was no more. He had ditched what the cell had given him and purchased something more to his liking. Ahmed Rashid’s new BMW 325 was supposed to be parked at the hotel door, thanks to a small contribution he had made to the doorman, but it was nowhere in sight. A young man in a valet’s uniform ran over, key in hand.
“Excuse me, sir, but we had to move your car. It’s just around the corner. Should I bring it or would you like to follow me?”
Impatient, Ahmed waved him forward. �
��Let’s go.”
The valet nodded and stepped smartly, Ahmed behind. The valet turned the corner and disappeared. Ahmed could see the front of his BMW as he moved past the building’s edge. He vaguely wondered where the valet had gone when he spotted something moving to his right. As he turned his head, he saw the valet, hand out in front. But instead of car keys in his hand, the valet held something large and metal and black. As Ahmed realized it was a gun, the valet suddenly lurched and fell to his knees and then on his face. Ahmed now faced Saif, breathing rapidly, eyes narrow and dark.
Ahmed looked down at the valet. A knife was sticking out of the base of his head, blood gurgling out from the wound and onto his uniform and on the concrete. The thought floated through Ahmed’s mind that Saif knew his business: the valet, or whoever he was, had been half dead before he had hit the ground.
“Iranian,” Saif said. “Qods. He’s been shadowing you for a couple of days. Waiting for the right opportunity.”
And you’ve been shadowing him, Ahmed thought. Or me.
“Thank you,” Ahmed said simply, hoping his voice didn’t sound as shaky as he felt.
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