Emma simply nodded and they rode the elevator down to the lobby. There was a new clerk behind the counter. When they reached the front door Emma stopped short.
“I should wait here,” she announced.
“Are you sure you don’t mind being alone?”
She looked out the window as the streets began to fill with cars and pedestrians. “I’m sure. Besides, I’d need to get a headscarf.”
“I can’t believe you’re thinking about shopping at a time like this. So like a woman,” Zac teased gently in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“There are no Westerners in this neighborhood. I’d stand out here without a headscarf,” she said.
“Look, I’m sorry about the shopping comment . . .”
But there was no humor in Emma’s expression. “I’m serious.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that they’re looking for a man with a Western woman. Together we’ll attract too much attention, especially in this neighborhood.”
Zac didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, but she had a point. It was a blue-collar area of the city and most of the people on the streets were laborers or in the service industries. Her fair hair and red pencil dress were like optical magnets.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked.
“One hundred percent.”
“OK. I’ll meet you back in the room in half an hour. Don’t open the door for anyone.”
She nodded. “I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”
She watched Zac reach for the door handle and step into the street. He didn’t look back. If he had, he would have seen Emma approach the front desk.
“May I use your phone? It’s a local call.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
ZAC WALKED SLOWLY down the street, checking reflections in shop windows for anyone who might be following him. Though he was being cautious, he wasn’t worried. With his beard, and Assad’s suit and sunglasses, he looked like a typical Emirati businessman.
He found what he was looking for almost immediately, but the wireless store required identification to buy even a prepaid mobile phone. He wasn’t going to risk using Assad’s credentials. The two men looked nothing alike.
Zac walked down a side street and soon found a bank of pay phones. He dialed his office number and asked for his boss. Peter Clements had been with CIA for nearly twenty years and developed a reputation as an aggressive leader with keen instincts for people and details. In the three years Zac had worked for him, they had forged a strong relationship based on excellence in their work and mutual respect. Clements would go to the wall for his people and that was exactly what Zac needed now.
“Hello,” answered the London chief of station.
“Peter, it’s Zac. I’m calling from a pay phone on the street in Dubai.”
“What the hell are you doing in Dubai? Did you decide to go to the camel races instead of Singapore?”
“I’ll fill you in on everything once I’m safe. I need a ride out of here.”
“Who’s after you?”
“The guys across the Strait and now the locals.”
“How was your layover?”
“It was a disaster. I never made it to Singapore.”
Clements was quiet on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry things didn’t go as planned during the layover,” Zac said. “But it was everything I’d feared. I’ll fill you in once I’m back in London.”
“Give me your address and I’ll send someone to pick you up.”
Zac gave his boss the address of the hotel.
“Sit tight. I’ll have a car there in an hour or two, tops.”
“Thank you. Listen, one more thing. Someone is with me, another American citizen who helped me out and is in trouble with the local cops. It’s nothing, but tell whoever is coming that there will be a woman too.”
“OK. We’ll talk more when you’re off the street. Go back to the hotel now and let me work this.”
“Thanks, Peter.”
The streets had become more crowded in the few minutes he’d been on the phone. When he was one block from the hotel he saw Emma step onto the sidewalk, her dark-blond hair and her red dress contrasting sharply with the gray cityscape, and he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Everyone on the sidewalk was looking at her, and she was supposed to be hiding in the room.
Zac crossed the street and walked faster, fighting the urge to run. Emma was facing the opposite direction, looking for something. When he was a hundred feet away, a white Bentley sedan pulled around the corner and stopped in front of the hotel. A heavyset man in an immaculate dishdasha stepped out of the rear seat and called to Emma. She said something back but didn’t move. She looked down the sidewalk and saw Zac.
“Hurry!” she shouted to him.
Zac ran to the car.
“Emma. Who is this?”
“This is the client I was telling you about. He’s going to help us.” Emma moved to enter the car. “We can trust him.”
Zac grabbed her arm. “How did he know you’re here? Please tell me you didn’t call him from the hotel.”
No sooner had the words left Zac’s mouth than a blacked-out SUV stopped on the other side of the road. Two thick-set men stepped out and waited for a gap in the four lanes of traffic. One of the men stepped in front of a car, causing the driver to slam on his brakes and lay on his horn. Everyone turned to see the cause of the noise, including Emma and Zac.
Zac saw the two men watching him as they started to cross the street.
“Get in the car!” Zac yelled. He pushed Emma into the backseat. The Bentley’s owner waited for Zac to get in, but Zac stepped back and drew his weapon.
Emma screamed as she looked through the window at the men crossing the street. Zac yelled at the car’s owner, “Go! Go!”
Emma yelled again, “Zac! Come with us.”
“It’s me they want. Just get yourself to the consulate.”
The Bentley’s owner saw the gun and the two men crossing the street. He climbed into the backseat and shut the heavy door. The big sedan accelerated away from the curb and melted into the heavy traffic.
The SUV’s driver pulled into the intersection and began to make an aggressive U-turn while the two men on foot watched the Bentley drive away. Zac yelled to draw their attention away from Emma, but the horns of angry drivers drowned him out. He raised the pistol and fired once into the air. Pedestrians on the sidewalk screamed and scattered, and the two men realized that their prize was not in the white car after all.
Zac ran to the corner and down a side street. A red light on the main road pinned the SUV in traffic, but the men on foot were not lost so easily. One of them shoved a pedestrian out of the way and drew a pistol. There were more screams and the crowd scattered. The man fired twice down the busy sidewalk, narrowly missing Zac but striking a bystander.
Zac kept running through the crowd. The SUV had found a gap in the traffic and came around the corner with tires screeching. Zac looked over his shoulder and saw the two men and the SUV closing in. He ran around another corner and ducked behind a Dumpster for cover. A siren began to wail in the distance.
The two men slowed as they approached the corner, unsure of Zac’s whereabouts. The SUV pulled up behind them, stuck behind a car at a red light. From behind the Dumpster, Zac could see the driver yelling something through the open passenger window. The two men turned in Zac’s direction, weapons drawn. When they were twenty feet from the Dumpster, Zac leaned out and fired, striking one of them. The other one fired back, but the bullet ricocheted off the metal garbage bin. The three men exchanged a dozen shots while more sirens closed in. The blacked-out SUV cleared the light and roared around the corner. A submachine gun erupted from inside. Bullets slammed into the Dumpster and the concrete building behind it while the two p
assengers climbed into the backseat. The SUV’s tires screeched as it sped off.
Zac came out from behind the Dumpster and fired, emptying the magazine into the rapidly departing truck, peppering its rear with bullet holes and shattering the back window. He reached for Assad’s spare magazine and reloaded, but the SUV was gone.
By now the streets were in a full-fledged panic. Pedestrians had scattered in every direction and the remaining vehicle traffic had stopped or turned away. Zac holstered the pistol and walked around another corner. Except for the din of the rapidly approaching sirens, the scene was strangely silent.
He kept walking and turning corners until he found an empty taxi. He climbed into the orange-and-white van and met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“U.S. consulate.”
“OK, boss.”
The cab pulled away as Zac thought about the men in the black SUV. The response had been swift, almost guaranteeing that they were tied to the police. It meant that Assad had been found. But the men hadn’t acted like police officers; they’d fled from the approaching sirens, just like Zac. They’d probably been Arzaman’s men who’d come from Iran. It would explain why they’d fired into the crowd without worrying about innocent bystanders. The Iranians had even beat the police to the scene, which meant Assad was probably working behind the scenes to get the goons there first.
It also meant that whoever Peter Clements sent to the hotel would find no sign of Zac and no indication that anything was amiss. All of the police activity would be around the corner, blocks away from the hotel where the shooting had taken place.
It was a lot for Zac to process, but any way he looked at it, it meant that Assad was on the loose, and he was a dangerous foe. He knew all about Zac and his intent to get to the consulate. With Arzaman and Assad working together, Zac would have to be very careful.
After several minutes the cab turned into a cluster of high-rise office buildings and approached a busy turnaround in front of the consulate building. A security guard was directing traffic away from the large no-standing zone outside the entrance. Most of the cars idled for no more than a few seconds to drop off passengers before pulling away, yet there were two black sedans with tinted windows parked in the driveway that the guard completely ignored. They were the same 5-series BMWs that the police drove, but that type of car was common in Dubai, and almost everyone had tinted windows to stave off the heat. Zac scowled. Maybe he was being paranoid.
But was he paranoid enough?
Something didn’t feel right. The security guard was shooing away every car except the two black sedans. As the cab entered the turnaround, the low angle of the morning sun revealed four men in each car. No one was getting out and no one was getting in. They were waiting. They might be diplomatic security or bodyguards for a rich sheik, or they might be local cops and Iranian goons. It didn’t matter who they were. Eight men was a lot of muscle, and Zac had to assume the worst. There would be no second chance if he was wrong. He told the driver to keep going.
The cabbie drove smoothly around the traffic circle and back onto the main road. He looked back at Zac in the rearview mirror.
“Where to now, boss?”
“Take me to the American embassy.”
“Embassy in Abu Dhabi, boss. Maybe two hours from here. Very expensive ride, boss.”
Zac held up the wad of cash from Assad’s wallet.
“OK, boss.”
Zac stared out of the window as the cab pulled onto the highway and entered an industrial section of town. Like his incursion into Iran, his carefully crafted plan to escape Dubai with Emma had gone to hell almost immediately. Whether he’d been spotted leaving the hotel, or someone had overheard Emma’s call to her client, her fate was out of his hands now.
Most of the morning rush-hour traffic on the highway was headed in the other direction, north into the city. The southbound lanes were nearly empty, yet Zac noticed the cab driver repeatedly checking his side mirrors, then glancing at Zac in the rearview mirror. After he’d done it a few times, Zac spoke up.
“Is everything OK?”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror again.
“Don’t know, boss. One of those black cars from the consulate may be following us.”
Zac realized that the driver knew exactly why Zac didn’t get out at the consulate. The man’s intuition should not be dismissed out of hand.
“That’s a pretty popular kind of car around here. What makes you think he’s following us?”
“Cars like that usually pass me very fast, but this one’s just staying back there. I move left, he moves left. I move right, he moves right.”
“Do you think you can lose him?” Zac asked.
The cab driver scowled as he quickly looked over his shoulder. “Lose him? Do you think you’re in the movies? ‘Follow that car,’ ‘lose him,’ ‘shoot first, ask questions later.’ What is it with you Americans? I am an honest man trying to make a living. I don’t want any trouble. Do you know what they do to Sri Lankans who violate the law here? No way, boss, no way.”
The cab driver was pulling over to the side of the freeway.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zac shouted. “Don’t slow down!”
THIRTY-NINE
ZAC TURNED AROUND in the backseat of the van. The cabbie was slowing down and the black BMW was barely a quarter mile behind them. He couldn’t tell for sure if it was one of the cars from the consulate, but there was no room for error.
“Drive, dammit! I’ll pay you double,” said Zac.
“Get out. Get out of my cab!” the driver yelled.
Zac pulled the gun and put it to the driver’s head. “Keep driving!”
The van nearly rolled over as the cabbie slammed on the brakes and swerved onto the sandy shoulder.
“Son of a bitch,” Zac muttered as he put the gun away. He jumped out of the car and onto the shoulder. The BMW was closing in fast. Zac sprinted toward an industrial park that was a hundred feet from the highway. A chain-link fence blocked his way but he leapt halfway up the side and pulled himself over the top. He glanced over his shoulder. The cab had already pulled away and the BMW was coming to a halt.
Zac darted randomly between the buildings inside the industrial park. There were scrap yards, transportation companies, and dozens of warehouses. After a few minutes he came to a road and watched a long line of tanker trucks drive past. He stopped short as he began to cross the street. He suddenly realized that he wasn’t in an industrial park at all. He was in a seaport.
To the north was a gated exit. It looked like a border crossing with eight lanes, heavy security, and a sign that read “Port Jebel Ali.” It was the massive port that he’d seen last night on television. There were offices and pedestrians nearby. Zac set off toward the buildings in search of a phone.
He’d taken no more than a few steps when a voice called out in thickly accented English.
“Hey, you there. Come here.”
Zac turned and saw an armed security guard with a radio and a hard hat walk from the shade of a nearby building. The man didn’t look Arab and Zac quickly decided to take an enormous gamble. He slowly reached into his jacket and removed Assad’s police credentials. Zac flashed the badge long enough for the guard to see the shield but not the photo. As Zac put the badge away, he brushed his jacket open so the guard could see the gun holstered on his hip.
“Police business,” Zac said in English with a fake Arabic accent.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than two white-and-green Dubai police cars approached the gate from the highway.
“I was not informed,” said the guard, reaching for the radio on his belt. “We are always informed when there is police activity in the port.”
With one eye on the police cars, Zac improvised. “We are looking for a suspect, but must keep it quiet. He is armed and dangerous. He
is dark-skinned with black hair, wearing blue jeans and a work shirt.” Like a newspaper horoscope, the generic description applied to nearly everyone in Dubai.
“I must check with my command post.”
The guard brought the radio up to his mouth and depressed the talk button. The two police cars entered through the gate.
“You see,” Zac said, “reinforcements are here already. They are bringing pictures of the suspect. You will probably have a briefing on it soon.”
He motioned to the gate with his left hand as he flexed his right hand.
The guard looked over his shoulder as the two police cars pulled into the port and stopped in front of the administration building. He released the talk button on the radio.
“OK. Good luck,” the guard said as he turned and walked toward the gate.
Zac turned and headed toward a storage area stacked with containers. The narrow passageways between them looked like a hedge maze, and would be the perfect place to hide, but he’d walked barely ten feet before the guard called out again.
“Wait!”
Zac heard footsteps behind him. He turned around slowly and slid his right hand inside his jacket.
The guard held out his hard hat.
“You’ll need this . . . I’ll get another one inside.” He nodded to Zac and walked back toward the office.
Zac walked quickly to the container storage area and threaded his way through the fifty-foot-high stacks of metal boxes. He emerged from the stillness of the container maze into a hive of activity unlike any he’d ever seen. A line of cargo ships was in front of him, their multicolored containers rising up from the horizon. Arrayed across the quay were dozens of trucks and hundred-foot-high cranes on rails, all working in a carefully choreographed effort to load and unload the container ships. Zac took in the scene for a few more seconds before resuming his search for a telephone. He saw one of the police cars pull around a corner and block the road. To his front and left was the sea, to his right were the police, and behind him was the security guard who would soon realize that he’d been talking to the wanted man just a few minutes earlier. Zac’s world suddenly became very small.
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