by Mack Maloney
And the girls, were they here? Again the answer was yes. Twenty-two of them, in fact.
And what of the local police? The managers assured him that two patrol cars were parked out back as usual and that their officers had been “bonused.” Translation: They had been paid off and would not be a factor tonight.
Only then did the DP smile, twisting the largest diamond ring on his left hand. “My two cousins, downstairs,” he told the managers, “make sure they win at the tables.”
Then the DP indicated the conversation was over and the managers disappeared. He walked deeper into the low-lit, gaudy romper room.
He found his guest soon enough. He was Jabal Ben-Wabi, his older, uglier brother. Just slightly less rich than the DP, Jabal was a lot less glamorous and very unrefined. Due to a childhood illness, he was missing his left eye. Because he wore a covering over this empty socket, his nickname was Qacba, Arabic for “Patch.”
He was as grubby and gnarled as the DP was polished and clean. While he was in the favor of the Saudi Royal Court, Jabal was not as well liked as the DP. Jabal was worth about $1 billion, the DP ten times that. And where the DP was usually dressed in white robes or Western-style clothes, Jabal wore the attire of a peasant, robes of reds, blues, black. There were 32 brothers and sisters in their family; Jabal and the DP were actually more unalike than having much in common. The DP thought of himself as being much more cosmopolitan.
They did share one bond, though: Both were thick in the underground world of Islamic terrorism. The DP was a financier and dreamed of starting his own empire in West Africa; Jabal was frontline hard-core Al Qaeda.
Just like the DP, Jabal had had a hand in the attacks of 9/11. He’d worked with bin Laden himself on the overall plan and was the middleman in arranging for passports for more than half the 19 hijackers and their handlers. Without him, many would have never been able to get into the United States in the first place.
When the United States invaded Afghanistan a month later and crushed the Taliban, Jabal escaped to Iran, as did many of the Al Qaeda bigwigs. Since then, he’d been moving back and forth over the border between Afghanistan and Iran, directing many of the terrorist operations in Pakistan and Kashmir and recruiting new members to fight in Iraq. More chilling, though, he was also known as one of bin Laden’s chief executioners.
Jabal had come here at the invitation of the DP, who had yet to hear about the attack on the prison at Loki Soto and needed some more warm bodies for his grand designs in West Africa. Jabal was in the business of providing warm bodies. The DP was hoping they could make a deal, but only after a night of entertainment.
They greeted each other warmly. They hadn’t seen each other in months. The DP bid Jabal to join him atop a particular high pile of pillows. Two bowls of yogurt and warm lamb guts were waiting for them. The Patch settled in beside his brother, and by custom they shared a date palm. Then a servant poured a glass of champagne for each of them. Their night had officially begun.
Jabal had one thing worrying him, though. He’d only been to this casino a few times before; by contrast, the DP usually flew out here twice a week if he was in town. Jabal had heard this place had recently gained a reputation for bad luck after an incident involving their close cousin Prince Ali Muhammad. He’d killed a girl here during rough sex about a half-year before. The murder wasn’t what was bothering Jabal; that sort of thing went on here all the time. It was that shortly after the incident their cousin Ali had met a very gruesome, if mysterious, end himself. His chartered jet somehow went off-course and slammed into a place called the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange, a business he owned. The word in the casbah was that their cousin’s untimely death had something to do with the incident that had happened in this very place just days before.
The DP knew of his brother’s fears and quickly sought to put them to rest.
“It had nothing to do with that,” the DP told him, again nervously twisting the huge diamond ring on his left hand. “What was bad luck about it? Did our cousin get found out? Did the police charge him? Did the employees here inform on him? No, none of these things happened — because it was just status quo here. His death was unrelated.”
But Jabal was not yet at ease. “We have all heard the Crazy Americans were behind his death, as revenge for this murder thing,” he said.
Again the DP just waved his concerns away. “They are not related,” he said a bit sternly. “He had many issues with the Crazy Americans. The death of the girl he’d taken here was a very minor incident in comparison.”
Jabal listened and sipped his drink, but with a little less gusto.
Truth was, Jabal was terrified of the Crazy Americans. Terrified that his name was on their hit list and when they reached it his days would be numbered. Just like cousin Ali Muhammad. Just like so many of top jihadists over the past year. These American Ghosts didn’t just kill you — they made you feel it before you died. Long, slow, and sacrilegious. Despite what his brother was saying, Jabal believed that once the Crazy Americans got under your skin, there was no way you could ever get them out. You drove yourself crazy with worry — until they caught you and tortured you and then buried you alive in a shallow grave along with a pig whose throat had been cut. Jabal could not bear the thought of dying that way.
The DP saw the wheels turning in his brother’s head. He poured him another glass of champagne. “Please, my brother, put these things out of your mind,” the DP told him. “Just for tonight. Be like me. I do not share your fear of these Crazy Americans. I think they are a myth. Propaganda, rustled up in desperation by their intelligence people. Besides, we are safe here. My bodyguards are stationed at the front door. The police are in our pay and they watch this place like hawks. No one can reach us here. Be logical about it, and believe me your fears will disappear.”
Jabal thought about all this for a moment. He didn’t feel completely at ease but then drained his champagne and finally smiled. He had terrible teeth.
“All right then, let us revel,” he said. “And let Allah sort everything else out.”
* * *
The evening began in earnest with their favorite food being served atop the pillows. Brought in on one huge silver platter covered and steaming, it was essentially a pile of grilled-cheese sandwiches and a couple quarts of Chinese takeout. This was followed by German ice cream and cookies. The brothers consumed a bottle of champagne each and had made two toasts with sake in memory of their dearly departed cousin, Ali. His problem, they decided over dinner, was that he got caught. He’d left a trail in his jihad activities — he was running money to Al Qaeda cells right out of his office building. Hundreds of people were involved, and they all died along with him that day his plane crashed into his own building. A half-blind man could have found out Ali.
The DP and brother Jabal were smarter than that. They were experts at leaving no trails. They cleaned up their messes or had trusted people do it for them. More important, they were even higher up in the Saudi royal structure than Ali, and the closer they were to the top, the more protection they knew they had from the inconveniences of life. So, for a while, Jabal actually did relax.
Once the meal was dispensed with and the dishes were cleared away, two young boys bathed the brothers with hot cloths. Then the girls were brought out.
There were 22 of them as promised. The DP and Jabal could have all of them or none of them. The girls were from all over the world; indeed, the DP’s handlers were approached all the time by managers of young women or the young women themselves, asking to be made part of DP’s harem, as they knew as much as a million dollars or more could be made if they were selected. That was the case with the more sophisticated ones anyway. Others had simply been sold to the DP’s minions as sex slaves. Sophisticated or not, none of them had the faintest idea what could be in store for them on the second floor of the casino. They were all beautiful, but they were all disposable, too. Just the way the DP and Jabal liked them.
A kind of game ensued as the two
brothers pretended to compete for the pick of the litter by flipping dice. This ended presently, though, as Jabal’s Viagra started kicking in. He selected three blondes — they could have been triplets — and hurried into one of the luxurious private rooms that ringed the ballroom.
The DP let Jabal go, more convinced than ever that he had less class, less style, than he. There was only one woman to be selected here. She was at the very end of the line. Absolutely gorgeous. Perfect body, wrapped in a tight leather pseudo S and M outfit, held together by little more than spikes the size of knitting needles, she was a black-haired vision, looking very vulnerable.
Best of all, she was Asian.
The DP would have her tonight.
* * *
The Diamond Prince was almost too handsome to kill.
Li hadn’t expected this. He was tall and dark, with the looks of a male model, at least in the low light of the second-floor ballroom. His dark eyes radiated a certain air of intelligence. He had an attractive smile. His physique wasn’t too shabby, either.
But she knew all about the DP by now. Her CIA handlers had made sure of that. His extensive connection to 9/11. The billions he’d made selling weapons in Africa. His involvement in the ongoing genocide in the Sudan. The girls he’d murdered, during rough sex, right in this very building. Dashing or not, he was a very bad guy. And he had to go.
But Li was scared stiff. She’d never trained to be an assassin. The furthest she got was a self-defense course at FBI Quantico. But as her Agency handlers had told her, this was war and what she had to do was no different from shooting an enemy general on the field of battle. By her one act, many future terrorist attacks could be prevented. Many lives might be saved. She had to see it through.
She was carrying just the weapon to do it with, too — thanks to no small piece of brilliance on the part of the CIA, considering she’d gone through more security to get into this place than someone coming to see the President of the United States. It all started when her handlers made arrangements with a Bulgarian slave trader to insert her into his cache of young females earmarked for Bahrain this weekend; getting to the Arab country was the easy part. Once on the ground, though, she’d been taken to a building attached to the casino, stripsearched twice, questioned by the DP’s security people, and then strip-searched again — and only then were she and the other girls allowed into the casino itself. Once in, they were frisked, every hour on the hour, until the DP finally showed up and the vulgar chorus line assembled. Bottom line, it would have been impossible to sneak a gun or a bomb or even a knife inside here.
But still, Li was packing a murder weapon, hiding it on her body, in plain sight.
* * *
The Diamond Prince had selected her first, from the line of attractive young women. But she was not the only girl that he fancied. He also separated a young blond girl from the others. Barely 17, she was from Slovakia and thrilled she’d been selected, too.
Dismissing the rest of the girls, the DP turned to Li, who was now standing beside him next to the mountain of pillows, and whispered in her ear: “I’ll bet you like the clams as well as the oysters.” It was a line from the movie Spartacus. Translation: “I hope you go both ways.”
Li rubbed up against him and cooed: “I like it all.”
The DP led them both to one of the nearby bedrooms, making a big production out of taking Li by the arm like a gentleman, while practically pushing the giggling young blonde ahead of him, like a lamb to slaughter.
The bedroom was done in the same bad taste as the pillow-happy ballroom. Lots of flashy silk and cheaplooking Chinese lanterns. The DP forced the young girl onto the bed; she was still laughing, but a little nervously now. Then with a gush of charm, he poured Li a glass of champagne. She watched him carefully, making sure he didn’t slip anything into the flute, like a roofie or worse. Only after she saw him take a sip from his own glass, poured from the same bottle, did she pretend to sip hers as well.
The bed was equipped with leather restraints. The DP drained his champagne and then without another word tied the blond girl to the bed, first by the ankles, then by the wrists. Then he ripped the tiny negligee from her body. When the girl somewhat playfully complained the DP was being too rough, he slapped her hard across the face. It was only then that the young girl realized something was not right here.
Li knew what was going to happen next — her CIA handlers were well aware of the DP’s modus operandi. Once the young girl was restrained, the Prince would wrap a silk scarf around her neck. Then, while fondling her, he would begin to draw the silk tighter, slowly choking her, up to the brink of asphyxiation. Then he would have sex with her near-lifeless body and, once depleted, would finish the job with his diamond-encrusted fists. Li was surprised, though, that it was all happening so fast. In a weird way, she’d been expecting a little more foreplay.
The DP stripped down to his shorts and refilled his champagne glass. He ran his hands up and down’s Li’s body, this as the girl on the bed started to cry. Her weeping only served to further stimulate the DP. He drained his second glass, then moved back toward the bed, silk scarf in hand. The girl began begging for her life, but again, this only increased the DP’s excitement.
He put the scarf around her throat. The young girl screamed — but it was no use. The bedrooms here were virtually soundproof. Besides, no one in the casino would ever come to her aid, even if they’d heard her cries. Again, this sort of thing went on here all the time. As the CIA men had described it, it was the casino’s kink du jour.
Hovering over the young girl now, the DP looked over his shoulder at Li and winked. She blew him a kiss of approval. He smiled and pulled the scarf tight. The girl began gasping for air. A little tighter. She tried to let out another scream — but this time nothing came out. The DP removed his shorts and started to climb on top of her. That’s when Li walked over and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He turned back to her, certain she wanted to get in on the action. Instead, he saw in her hand one of the spikes that had been holding her outfit together. It was long and sharp and shiny. Without hesitation, Li plunged it into his left eye.
There was surprisingly little resistance going in. The spike was nine inches long but was essentially a carpenter’s nail. It went through the pupil, then the entire eyeball, and then into the DP’s brain as easily as if it were going through butter. There was very little blood, too, and only the slightest sucking sound. Li gave the spike one last thrust, pushing it all the way in, and then let it go. The DP just stared back at her — his remaining pupil going wide — baffled by her sudden betrayal. He reached out, not to grab her but just to hold on to something, anything. Li just took a step back. He fell to the floor with a thud.
Then the words just tumbled out of her mouth: “Now you’ll need a patch, too — just like your brother.”
The girl on the bed tried to scream again. But Li immediately put her fingers to her lips, even as she was loosening the scarf.
“Just stay quiet,” she hissed at the girl. “You can still get out of this alive.”
Still, the girl begged Li to untie her — but Li knew better. If the girl stayed tied, then the DP’s minions could never accuse her of killing their boss, at least that’s what she hoped.
So Li just followed the plan. She left the girl as she was, calmly fixed herself up, straightened her costume, and went out the door, closing it tightly behind her.
The only people in the ballroom were the servants. Li walked by them summoning up the best imperial air she could muster.
“They want to be…alone, ” she said to one, in passing.
The servant simply nodded. He considered Li lucky. The DP rarely left witnesses to his indiscretions.
She walked across the ballroom to the private elevator. As she was getting on, two middle-aged men, twins, were getting off. They both looked dim-witted and drunk. They were also giggling like schoolgirls. She hit the down button and went to the first floor. Crossing the crowded casino, sh
e slipped out the side entrance, where she knew a carousel of limousines awaited.
She climbed into the nearest one — the driver asked her no questions. He immediately turned the car around and headed for the airstrip just down the road. From here the plan was simple. The same CIA-owned Gulfstream that had brought her and the rest of the Bulgarian cache to Bahrain would be landing here again. In fact, it should be touching down right about now. It wouldn’t even shut off its engines. Li would climb aboard and they would be halfway to Ramstein Air Base in Germany before anyone discovered the DP’s body.
She leaned back against the limo seat and let out a long breath. Maybe then it would hit her, she thought. Maybe once she was out of this horrible place and back in the arms of civilization she would break down and shed tears over what she’d just done. There was a distinct horror in taking another person’s life, she was sure. But the feeling hadn’t arrived yet. At the moment, she was still rock hard and steel willed.
The limo arrived at the airstrip — but this was not the same place Li had first seen this afternoon. Back then, it looked like nothing more than a patch of asphalt in the middle of a field of sand. Now it looked like a military base. She counted more than a dozen F-15 fighters parked along the runway. Each plane was brightly lit and had mechanics nursing it. Not only were these people here, but there were also soldiers — or at least heavily armed men in uniforms — guarding the jet airplanes.
The driver pulled in about halfway up to the airstrip. There was a small gate here where most people boarded their private planes. Li lowered her window and miraculously heard above the whine of the idling military jets the sound of a Gulfstream’s smaller, higher-pitched engines. She looked up to see the familiar green and white aircraft pass overhead, turning for a landing. This was the CIA transit plane. Thank God, she thought.
