He looked up suddenly at his chief of staff and asked, “Is the ship on schedule?”
Mansoor Shakuri was glad he had checked the sailing plan before the briefing. Something positive that he could report. “Yes, sir. She will be on station at the proper coordinates at the correct time.” In his heart, he thought: More martyrs. The colonel dealt in high body counts.
“I don’t trust the navy,” the colonel said. “Stay on top of that movement and do not let them become tentative. Make sure that ship is where it is supposed to be, Major. If the admirals argue, tell them to talk to Tehran — after they follow my orders.”
“Yes, Colonel. Is there anything else?”
Colonel Naqdi grew quiet as he mentally ran through his timetable. It was too early to bring the missile crew to full alert status, for that could arouse unwanted interest at a time when suspicion was already high in Egypt. “No,” he said and dismissed the major.
Then he walked back to his window to watch the demonstration below as he weighed the situation. There was a lot yet to do. The Muslim Brotherhood and its leading clerics were trying to take over the legislative branch of the elected government, the People’s Assembly. The Brotherhood was still a minority after last year’s vote. The prime minister sided with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and he was still in control because the generals were reluctant to surrender power, despite the outward appearance of supporting civilian rule.
Colonel Naqdi recognized that the fires of revolution burn brightly for a only brief time; then demonstrators go back to their day-to-day and leave only the predators to fight for the ultimate power. He knew this to be true because he was one of those predators. The risks were great, but the potential payoff was enormous.
The costly American experiment to establish democracy in Iraq had failed, but it had deposed the Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Baghdad and its firebrand preachers and figurehead politicians now rested easily in the pocket of the religious rival Shia government in Tehran.
So now it was again Egypt’s turn at the altar, and Colonel Naqdi was to deliver the strategically important country as still another puppet state. At the end, he would have the Egyptian armed forces also under the control of Iran, and it would become a Muslim Brotherhood dagger pointed straight at the Israelis. In addition, the standing armies in both Egypt and Iraq would sandwich Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, and Iran also would have military control of the vital sea routes that fed the world’s unending appetite for oil.
What could be better? That kind of geopolitical shift was worth the sacrifice of the soccer team. A few more hammer blows, a handful of soldiers, a little time and a little luck, and he would have it.
8
A private car was waiting at Heathrow. Swanson was a bit surprised that it was not a white luxury vehicle of the Excalibur Enterprises fleet but rather a dark police sedan with a pair of plainclothes types as an escort. Other than a preliminary greeting, neither man in front spoke as they cruised along the direct route between the giant airport and a modest and totally secure safe house where the Cornwells had been hidden in the university city of Oxford.
Kyle fidgeted in the backseat. One of his core principles as a sniper was to consider that going slow was almost always better than too fast. This was not one of those cases. He felt as if he had been poking along like a man on horseback, exactly one horsepower, when he wanted to travel at the speed of light. Even the hottest military jet would not have been fast enough. He chewed on his anger as the big car ate up the miles.
The stone house was normally used by visiting academics at Oxford and had the exterior look of an old English home, with base stones that reflected the weak winter sun in shades of soft orange. It was unremarkable in every way and blended perfectly with similar cottages nearby. Another policeman was at the door and required Kyle to show identification before being allowed to pass. Just inside was an immaculate, small reception room with a uniformed cop at a little desk, his hand casually resting on a submachine gun. He logged Kyle in as an approved visitor, then touched a buzzer.
The door at the far end of the room was opened by an attractive woman in dark slacks, a pink cowl-neck sweater, and low heels. “Gunnery Sergeant Swanson,” she said, offering a hand; the grip was firm. “I am Tianha Bialy,” she added, with no further explanation. Her voice had a low pitch, long black hair fell over her shoulders, and the distinctive bump of a holstered pistol showed beneath the sweater at her waist. “Please come in. Lady Pat and Sir Jeff are in the living room.”
A few paintings of someone’s ancestors hung on the walls, shelves were jammed with old books and files, and Lady Patricia Cornwell stood drinking a glass of beer before a fire that burned in a wide hearth of gray stone.
Kyle walked straight to her, his eyes searching for any damage, and she laughed and embraced him. “Relax, Kyle. I’m fine.”
He turned to Jeff, who remained seated in a cushioned chair, a knobbed wooden walking stick tilted against one arm. Kyle went over and gave him a hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner,” he said.
“It’s all good now, boy,” Jeff said with a deep laugh. “Have no worries about us. The security jockos have us locked up like the queen’s jewels, and our Pat even broke a leg of one of the toffs.”
There was a gleam of excitement in the older man’s eyes. Kyle noticed a framed map of Egypt propped on the mantel above the fireplace. Something had been under discussion when he arrived, and he could guess what it was.
Jeff turned toward the other person in the room, a middle-aged man with thin brown hair, who was in a common bureaucrat’s vested suit and black shoes that were scuffed in places. “Kyle, let me present Sir Gordon Fitzgerald, the chief of MI6.”
“Delighted,” said Fitzgerald, lifting his whisky and taking a sip. Known more commonly by the letter C, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service that handled foreign threats looked more like a tradesman than a spy. Kyle supposed that was the point.
Swanson got right to it. “I want them. I want both of the bastards who attacked her.” His eyes reflected the frustration that he had been holding in for hours.
The small and portly MI6 chief was unperturbed by Kyle Swanson’s outburst. He had been prepared for it and was used to handling high-strung field agents. His voice was steady and quiet. “That is quite out of the question. They are in the custody of the queen’s government. It will remain that way.”
“Do a rendition, then,” Swanson said. “Put them on a plane to a country that specializes in making prisoners more cooperative. Your hands remain clean, I will get what I want there, and whatever happens is not your fault.”
“Now you are just being insulting. My friends Jeff and Patricia assured me that you could put aside your personal feelings so that we might work together. If you cannot, then I have no further use for you. You can fly right back to America, as far as I am concerned.”
Swanson put his hands on his hips and stared at the seated security chief. “What?”
“You see, I know quite a lot about you, Gunnery Sergeant Swanson. In fact, I had a word with your General Middleton at Task Force Trident in Washington about an hour ago. He has issued new orders for you to lend all assistance possible to us. Paperwork to follow, if need be. Are you prepared to do that?”
Swanson turned to face Cornwell. “What’s going on here, Jeff?”
“Things are looking rather nasty, Kyle. Forget the attackers; they are little fish.”
Lady Pat came over. “Sit down, Kyle, and put on your thinking cap. It seems the attack on me was just part of some big plot. I am a bit put out that I was not the big prize. I thought I was the star.”
Swanson sat, breathed deeply, and relaxed his tight muscles. He really had no choice. “All right. I’m in, Sir Gordon.”
* * *
“Grand. There is a lot of ground for us to cover. First, let me set your mind at ease — the unsavory chaps who attacked Lady Pat have already assisted police with our inquiries to the maximum of th
eir limited abilities. They were just common waterfront riffraff hired by an anonymous solicitor to do the kidnapping. One of them followed their unsuspecting benefactor all the way home and thus obtained his name and address. By the time the police ran round to that apartment, it had been destroyed by fire, and the bodies of the solicitor and his wife were discovered in the debris. It was murder and arson.” C lifted his glass again.
“Murder.”
“Someone was tidying up after the attack to break the connection,” said Sir Jeff.
“Even then, MI6 was not involved. The assault on Lady Pat had been under investigation as an ordinary criminal matter.” The director placed his glass on a side table beneath a lamp and leaned toward Kyle. “What I am about to disclose is very highly classified, which General Middleton says you possess appropriate clearances to hear.”
“I understand.”
The voice of the MI6 chief remained neutral. “We have a valuable source in Egypt who goes by the name of Pharaoh. We do not know his true identity, but his material is flawless and without fault. A message from the Pharaoh arrived overnight that contained information on the dead solicitor, the kidnap plan, the two men who were hired, and the person who gave the orders.”
Swanson put his teacup aside because he was tempted to throw it into the fireplace. “An Egyptian ordered this attack?”
Jeff coughed to clear his throat. “No, Kyle. Not an Egyptian. An Iranian officer by the name of Mansoor Shakuri.”
“Shakuri?” Swanson felt the chill of recognition. “That’s the same guy who was behind the hit on your accountant friend,” he told Jeff.
“Apparently. Your people shared that with us,” said C. “Then earlier today, the Pharaoh informed us that it was Shakuri who had planned and carried out yesterday’s awful slaughter of the Iranian national soccer team in Cairo. It’s a bit much to believe it to be a coincidence. Iranian intelligence is stirring up trouble in Egypt to get an excuse to strike back hard. Working through the Muslim Brotherhood, they could take over that country.”
“Complicated,” Kyle observed.
“Yes. Quite,” agreed the MI6 director. “That is where you come in.”
“You want me to take out this bad guy?”
“No. Not at this point, at least. We need more information. It seems a bit too easy to have found the name of this Major Shakuri popping up from multiple sources. He may be nothing but a diversion. I want to know what is really happening, Gunnery Sergeant. Egypt is critical, it is in trouble, and we must be certain before we act.”
Sir Jeff stirred in his armchair. “Kyle, I have been in contact with an old business acquaintance in Cairo who swears to me that Egypt’s more popular politicians, plus the commercial leaders and government experts, have had nothing to do with these outrageous attacks. Just the opposite. They want stability, so things can calm down and they can bring the country back to being a prosperous business partner in the international arena. So I am going down to Egypt to meet personally with him, and I want you to come along.”
Kyle shook his head abruptly. “The hell you are. You and Pat will stay in this safe house until this all settles down. Send me instead.”
“Precisely what we intend to do,” said C. “I was arguing with this stubborn old man about that very thing when you arrived. Since you are a vice president of Excalibur Enterprises, you can go in with Dr. Bialy and do some advance surveillance under the cover of routinely setting up a meeting for Sir Jeff at some unspecified time. Instead, the people we need will meet with you.”
“Dr. Bialy? Who’s that?”
The MI6 woman whom he had believed to be an assistant to C smiled from her watchful position along the wall. “That would be me.”
“I don’t want a civilian woman along on a mission that could become dangerous. I won’t have time to wet-nurse her.”
“Doctor Bialy is a native of Egypt, sir, and is a recognized expert in Egyptology. She speaks the language and has personal contacts, which you do not. Tianha is also a fully trained MI6 operative, and she is going with you, or she will be going in alone, and you remain here.”
“You threaten people a lot, don’t you, Sir Gordon?”
Jeff deflected the subject. “My so-called meeting is set for next week in Sharm el-Sheikh. You two will arrive there the day after tomorrow.”
“Sharm? Why Sharm? Wouldn’t this be better up in Cairo?”
C heaved himself from the chair and walked laboriously over to the map. “Normally, that would be correct. But Cairo, despite the mobs and the unrest, is not what has us worried. This map shows it clearly.”
“Shows what?”
“You do this one, Tianha,” said C, wandering away to read some book titles on a shelf, his chin jutting forward as he became lost in thought.
“Yes, sir.” She stood before the map, with her arms crossed, not needing to look at it because she knew it from memory. “That attack in America and the attack on the soccer team are, in our opinion, diversions. Iran really gained nothing through such actions other than inflaming passions. So they must have some ulterior motive, a higher purpose. We were thinking more about water and oil.”
Kyle stared at the map. Egypt was a vast, squarish country that shared the desert in the west with Libya, and another desert border with Sudan in the south. The broad Mediterranean Sea occupied the entire north, while the Red Sea provided most of the eastern edge. Saudi Arabia was on the other side. A smaller finger of water, the Gulf of Aqaba, branched off to the right and ran up to a point where Egypt, Israel, and Jordan all met. The second fork from the Red Sea branched left and became the Suez Canal. The place where the split took place was the coastal resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“It is our opinion,” Dr. Bialy said, “that those horrible acts are setting up some kind of strike to take control of Sharm.” She tapped the map with a bright red fingernail. “It would be an enormous strategic coup and allow them to control shipping in the Red Sea, wreck European trade, and give the Iranian Navy easy entry into the Mediterranean.”
Swanson remembered that warships of the Iranian Navy had been making bold ventures into the Red Sea in recent months, showing the flag and letting the navies of other nations know that there was a new player on the block. “The U.S. would never allow that to happen. It’s too much of a choke point.”
“The politics of the region changed with the Arab Spring revolutions, Kyle,” said Jeff. “A strident Muslim government in Egypt allied with the Iranian theocracy could tilt the entire region as we know it today. Once the Iranians are lodged in tight, it will be difficult to evict them.”
Kyle was incredulous. Iran had to know this would mean war, and that would provide the final answer to whether or not Tehran possessed a nuclear weapon. The mullahs would paint the situation as a holy conflict and throw everything into the battle, with millions of Muslims in other countries being sympathetic to their calls. Israel could be obliterated, and the Western nations attacked. “Has your Pharaoh reported anything about this?” he asked C.
“No. Another reason that Tianha is going along is to try to establish a personal contact with him. You are to sniff around Sharm and see what’s what down there of strategic value. We need every shred of information that we can get, Gunnery Sergeant Swanson.”
Lady Pat came up behind Kyle and wrapped her arms around him, peering over his shoulder. “And you must stay out of trouble.”
“Right,” he said.
9
OXFORD, ENGLAND
Kyle Swanson put on a jacket that evening and went for a walk, alone, to clear his thoughts. The historic town was quiet and brought up automatic thoughts of all things English — benign tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur and Lady Diana, and the rough histories of warriors such as the Desert Rats and Lord Nelson and the Special Air Service. A chilly mist was settling over the area as he passed through Gloucester Green near Worcester College, headed east on Beaumont Street, and then up St. Giles until he found the Eagle and Child Pub. He went
in for a pint. The place was packed with students, and they all seemed like kids. By comparison, at thirty-six, he was probably the oldest man in the room, aside from the barkeep.
He found an empty corner in which to nurse his beer. A pretty young brunette at a nearby table checked him out and whispered to her girlfriend, and they giggled. He ignored them. Not tonight. Even amid the crush and chatter of the young people, Swanson had the uncomfortable, creeping feeling that he was old and alone.
Normally, even when deep in enemy territory, that seldom bothered him, for there were times that he preferred to operate totally on his own. He knew that he was a U.S. Marine, and therefore a member of an elite force of more than two hundred thousand brothers and sisters whose fighting prowess was known around the world. From the newest recruit to the four-star commandant, they all had his back. Then there was Task Force Trident itself, a little five-person unit with clout far beyond its size, for it answered only to the president of the United States. If he was in trouble, usually all he had to do was call, and help would be on the way, sometimes through methods that lay far outside of normal channels.
That was what was really troubling him; in Egypt, Swanson would be beyond the reach of his security blanket. He would not be going into a potentially hostile situation as a Marine, much less in his specialty of the Trident sniper. His position would be that of a civilian, a prosperous business executive. He would move in open luxury, not evading surveillance. His only backup was a woman MI6 agent who knew more about King Tut, the kid monarch who died a thousand years before Christ was born, than she did about twenty-first-century terrorism. Things had changed a lot since the time of chariots. If he didn’t really know her, how could he trust her? It would be up to her to win that trust, not his responsibility to make it happen.
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