The Assassins (The Judd Ryder Books)

by Gayle Lynds

  The men looked up and yelled what sounded like names. Surveying the area, they ran again toward where the rental jet had been parked. Again they stopped and peered down, this time at the place where the customs inspector had died.

  “More blood,” Morgan explained. “One of them is phoning someone named Jabari. It sounds as if Jabari’s important in al-Sabah’s organization. They’re telling him the customs inspector found Greg and Courtney Roman, but now there’s blood in two places, the jet is gone, and the Romans, the inspector, and the two men are missing.” After more gazing around, the two new men looked down again. “There are some drops of blood. They’re following them.” Periodically glancing at the tarmac, the pair ran toward the small hangars. They tried doors. “They’ve found one with a broken lock,” Morgan told her. “Guess why.”

  “George and Jack broke it so they could dump the bodies inside.”

  “Bingo.”

  Because the men were out of sight, there was no way the directional mike would work. Morgan and she sat in silence. He seemed relaxed.

  “Aren’t you worried?” she asked.

  “About what? Two bungnuts who have to report in to a boss who really isn’t the boss but works for a worse SOB than he ever dreamed of being.”

  The men reappeared, talking as they hurried to the terminal.

  Morgan aimed the mike again. “They’re leaving the bodies where they are,” he translated, “and they’ll tell the coppers they saw you and Judd kill them.”

  She felt a jolt of fear. “That’s just wonderful. Now every policeman in Baghdad will be looking to welcome us.”

  Morgan waved at her to be quiet. The men were still speaking. “Ah-ha. Now we’re getting somewhere.” He listened, his gaunt face intense. “They’re going to meet Jabari.” He turned on the ignition. “They’re parked near the front of the terminal. We’ll follow. Call Bosa and tell him what we’re doing.”

  73

  There had been no bombings in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. People emerged from shops and stores to peer around nervously then move briskly off, heading home, for errands, or perhaps to the local café. Walking toward a large Shiite mosque with a blue-tiled dome, al-Sabah passed a man with a pushcart kitchen who was slicing thin cuts of meat from a rotisserie for shawarma, flatbread sandwiches. The mouth-watering aroma of grilling lamb drifted along the sidewalk. A crowd was gathering. Doing ordinary things helped people to feel normal, al-Sabah noted. The human animal was predictable.

  Skirting the group, he stepped through a door into a thousand-year-old Shiite mosque that had been built of stone laid upon stone secured not by mortar but by the finest craftsmanship. Continuing down a corridor, he knocked on a polished wood door and entered a small whitewashed room with large framed portraits of Imam Ali and his son Hussein, the founders of Shiism, on two walls and of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s 1979 revolution, on a third.

  Across the room, kneeling on the floor in the traditional pose, his back to the wall, was Ayatollah Abdel-Hussein Gilani. Looking up, he closed the Koran and rose. With his long gray beard streaked with snowy white, his high-bridged nose, and his black, intelligent eyes, Gilani was the picture of a Shiite patriarch. He wore a light gray robe, black loafers, and the black turban that told the world he was a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. At the moment, his gaze was kindly and interested, but Gilani was a follower of Imam Khomeini, who believed all of God’s authority was vested in the supreme leader and senior religious scholars.

  They exchanged the usual affectionate greetings.

  “Allaa bil-kheir,” Ayatollah Gilani said. God bless.

  “Shall we walk?” al-Sabah, the courteous host, asked.

  “Yes, let’s do.”

  With a gracious gesture, al-Sabah invited the ayatollah to precede him into the corridor. Like Baghdad’s oldest houses, the mosque was built around a courtyard rimmed by colonnaded porticos. And, too, like the oldest houses, the great building was inward-looking, sealed off from the street on the ground floor except for a single door in each of its four exterior walls, all of which fronted streets. Al-Sabah and Gilani, who was still carrying his Koran, walked beneath an arch and into the central courtyard, an emerald-green oasis of plum, apricot, and walnut trees with winding paths and hard-packed sand areas for prayer rugs. When they saw the ayatollah, the men who had been reading or praying retreated respectfully to the porticos and vanished into the mosque, leaving al-Sabah and Gilani alone.

  It had all begun in 2003, when al-Sabah and his boyhood friend Tabrizi had founded the SIL political party in Baghdad, sharing a vision of Iraq once again at the heart of a powerful and important Shiite world. Al-Sabah had used his old Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah contacts to set up meetings with mullahs from Iran’s ruling clerical class.

  Over the next few months, both sides grew optimistic that it was possible in their lifetimes. Shiites who had found safety in Iran from Saddam’s persecutions were returning to Baghdad to run the government, to open businesses, and increasingly to fight the Sunni sheiks and military men who did not want to give up the privileges Saddam had lavished on them. The American coalition was losing control of Iraq, while the country disintegrated into violence. For many it was disaster, but for al-Sabah, Tabrizi, and the Iranian mullahs, it was opportunity. That was when al-Sabah began working with Ayatollah Gilani to fund and train Shiite freedom fighters to come from around the world, especially from Iran, to put Iraq finally and irrevocably under Shiite control.

  Nothing happened quickly in the Middle East, and certainly nothing as drastic as a political union between the Persians of Iran and the Arabs of Iraq, two ancient civilizations that had warred against each other. But now, at last, they were on the brink of success.

  As if Gilani were reading al-Sabah’s mind, he said, “One of my assistants told me yesterday, ‘Iran’s history is so magnificent that the world should listen to us.’”

  “Yes, of course,” al-Sabah agreed. “Iranians are nostalgic to be a superpower again.”

  Beginning with Cyrus in the sixth century B.C., the Persian empire had become the largest, most powerful kingdom the world had ever seen—the world’s first superpower.

  “Mesopotamia had also more than its share of glory,” al-Sabah reminded him, his tone amused at the recurring debate between them. Neither expected to win, and in the process they somehow grew closer by sharing the storied greatness of their ancestors. “More than two millennia before your empire—in fact, in 3000 B.C.—we gave you writing. We gave you the wheel. We were the cradle of civilization. And by the way, we gave you the Arabic language, too—the language of the Prophet, blessed be His name.”

  With a smile, Gilani inclined his black-turbaned head. “And then our kingdoms came together. The Prophet brought us together.”

  In the seventh century, after Muhammad’s death, the Islamic armies of the caliphs rode out of Arabia and conquered Mesopotamia and Persia. The vast majority of both countries converted to Islam. Over time, Baghdad became Islam’s capital and intellectual center, the wealthiest and most beautiful city in the world, where art, science, and philosophy thrived.

  Al-Sabah and the ayatollah followed their usual path across the courtyard and through an archway into another corridor. It had been a warm afternoon, but the enormous mosque was cool. Pipes on the roof trapped the breezes and circulated them all the way down to the cellar. As they walked downstairs, al-Sabah could feel the whispers of fresh air slipping past the stone walls. It was almost as if the mosque were breathing.

  “They are hard at work, as you will see.” Al-Sabah opened one door after another, showing small windowless rooms where clusters of men sat at computers, alternately typing and sifting through documents and printouts. All were Shiites, some wearing the white robes and head cloths that marked them as Arabs, some in the long robes and turbans of Persians. The ayatollah greeted each group and blessed them.

  As they left the last room, the ayatollah asked, “How is sec
urity?”

  “As always, impeccable,” al-Sabah assured him. “They are doing Allah’s work. They won’t betray Him.” In addition, Shiite black hatters had created unbreachable computer security.

  Still in the basement, they entered an office, another whitewashed room but large and with a bank of television screens turned to International Al-Jazeera and news stations in both Tehran and Baghdad. All were muted, with captioned translations in Old Arabic, the language of the Koran. In Tehran was a duplicate office where, on alternating months or immediately, if events demanded, al-Sabah and Gilani met to address concerns and continue negotiations and planning.

  Two assistants quickly got to their feet, and again the ayatollah greeted and blessed them.

  “You have the new opening to the constitution’s preamble?” al-Sabah asked. It had been the cause of much heated discussion and had finally been approved at the highest clerical levels in Iran, and by both Tabrizi and al-Sabah, who, assuming all went according to plan, soon would be running Iraq’s government.

  The assistants handed copies to al-Sabah and Gilani. They read silently:

  May Allah guide us as we create a living embodiment of the Koran and the Hadith, joining our two great nations, Iran and Iraq, in an Islamic theocratic federation called the Union of Shiite States. Each nation will be partially self-governing, with the division of power between the nations and the central government to be spelled out in our constitution. Just as Islam was born of the fire and blood battles of Mecca and Medina when the Prophet, blessed be His name, stood fast against the infidels, Iran and Iraq will stand fast against all necessary obstacles to create our federation. We hope that this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.

  Islamic lawyers and scholars were working on a constitution in which the two nations would be united under a Shiite central organization. They would integrate their school systems to teach both Farsi and Arabic. Citizens would have the right to cross their shared border without restriction. All cross-border tariffs and duties would be eliminated. Additional highways and rail systems would be built to speed commerce between the two states of the union. Groundwork would begin for a unified currency and economy. Each nation would have its own sharia courts, but there would be a Union of Shiite States supreme sharia to which questions and disputes would be referred.

  As with NATO, the two states would share defense responsibilities. Iran was far stronger militarily. It had established a military self-sufficiency program in the 1980s, and today it not only bought but built its own jet fighters, tanks, missiles, submarines, torpedoes, and drones. It had the largest military in the Gulf region and controlled the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil passed every day. Iran’s proven oil reserves and natural gas reserves were sizable, but Iraq had the advantage—its oil reserves were even larger. Together, they were sitting on most of the globe’s oil and natural gas, with the result that the USS would have all of the wealth, influence, and power that came with such rich petroleum and gas reserves. At last, the world would again give them the respect they deserved.

  Al-Sabah and Ayatollah Gilani exchanged gratified smiles.

  “I’m satisfied,” Gilani said.

  “Yes,” al-Sabah agreed. “I’m also satisfied.”

  They left the room together, walking side-by-side down the narrow stone hall.

  Gilani stroked his long beard thoughtfully. “How are your plans developing for tonight?”

  “In a matter of hours, it will all be over,” al-Sabah assured him. “Tonight’s action will shake my people to the core. There’s nothing worse than to lose confidence in one’s government, and Iraqis’ confidence, which is already shaky, is going to evaporate. Our friend Tabrizi will be elected prime minister and appoint a cabinet of Shiites, either religious or easily controlled.”

  “My fellow mullahs are ready to move forward,” Ayatollah Gilani told him gravely. “Everything depends on you now. What exactly is this ‘action’?”

  Al-Sabah hesitated. Then he quoted: “‘It is He who makes the lightning flash upon you, inspiring you with fear and hope, and gathers up the heavy clouds. The thunder sounds His praises, and the angels, too, in awe of him. He hurls his thunderbolts at whom He pleases. Yet the unbelievers wrangle about God.’”

  Gilani pressed his Koran against his heart. “Allah is ever all-aware. Yes, I understand. Muhammad was forced into a violent armed struggle against his enemies. We should expect nothing less.”

  They exchanged farewells. Wishing the ayatollah a safe journey back to Tehran, al-Sabah headed upstairs and out into the warm Baghdad afternoon. With each step he remembered his years in Islamic Jihad, when he had fought with sincere dedication to restore the caliphate to Shiite Islam; then there were his years as “Seymour,” feared international assassin; and finally, now, there was his life in Baghdad and the happiness he had found here. He had come full circle. At last he was able to plant the roots of his boyhood dream of an all-powerful Shiism, and it would be right here in Baghdad, in the city of myth and legend. His myth, his legend.

  74

  It did not look like the Wild West, but it had the feel of it, Judd thought as he and Bosa stepped inside Sindbad’s Oar. It was the new, hypermodern nightclub where they were to meet Mahmoud Issa. The nightclub was in Karada, an affluent area in central Baghdad.

  Past the entryway, Judd could see tables and customers and a large, high-ceilinged room decorated with chrome, leather, and fake leopard skin. The noise of many voices, clinking glassware, and chairs scraping across the terra-cotta floor was bruisingly loud.

  “Are you packing?” The young man wore tight jeans and an even tighter T-shirt. In one hand he held a walkie-talkie, the omnipresent sign of authority in Baghdad. He spoke to them in Arabic. “If you are, you have to check it.” He waved a ticket. “We’ll take good care of it and return it when you leave.”

  Judd simply nodded and handed over his Beretta and a fifty-dollar bill.

  “Ohhhh, I’ll take very good care of it, sir,” the youth crooned. He gave Judd a ticket.

  Bosa had said nothing, but Judd could feel disapproval radiating from his pores. Finally he handed his Walther to the young man. “I’ll kill you if it’s not waiting for me undamaged and unused.”

  “I’m sure you will, sir,” the youth replied. “But then everyone else will kill me, too, if I don’t have their guns for them. There won’t be much of me left. I lead a very dangerous life.” He turned and opened a narrow door. Inside were wall hooks holding an array of weapons.

  A middle-aged man walked toward them from inside the nightclub. Muscular, he had an oval face and a cropped brown beard. His eyes were sunk deep in dark hollows. “No, Imad,” he told the youth. “These are my guests. Give them back their toys.” He smiled at Judd and Bosa and introduced himself. “I’m Mahmoud Issa.”

  “Yes, sir.” And that was that. The young man returned the Beretta and the Walther. Reluctantly he offered Judd the fifty-dollar bill.

  Judd waved him off.

  “Thank you, sir!” He beamed.

  Mahmoud led them into the nightclub, and they skirted the room. The patrons were mostly men. The few women wore head scarves. The tables were piled high with food, the spicy aroma enticing. Waiters in black button-down shirts and shiny black suits took orders and carried trays.

  With Mahmoud in the lead, they climbed stairs and paused at the top where a wide balcony overlooked the dining area. Mahmoud studied the patrons below, his head moving every time someone new entered. At last he lit a Gauloise cigarette. “We’re religious here in Iraq now—no alcohol, no pop music, no pornography, but smoking is tolerated. I’d been watching for you on our security cameras. Did you see anyone following?”

  “No,” Judd told him.

  Giving a nod of approval, he tapped on a door. There was no door handle, no apparent way to open the door. “This is where our security gets closely controlled.”

  The do
or was opened by a man the size and shape of a side-by-side refrigerator. Inclining his head to show respect, the man stepped back.

  Mahmoud gestured, and they walked into a softly lit room. Tiles painted in stunning mosaics covered the floor and climbed halfway up the walls. Tall narrow bureaus appeared to be made of mirrors, reflecting the rich furnishings and the men and beautiful women there.

  While all the men appeared to be Arab, the women were black-, brown-, and white-skinned. There were brunettes and redheads and one blonde, all dressed in sheer, flowing abayas, their nipples and pubic hair on display through the silvery see-through fabric. The women served drinks, filled hookah pipes, and sat with their arms wrapped around the men, who were dressed in desert robes, business suits, or suede sports coats and baggy jeans.

  “You’re religious?” Judd asked. “Are my eyes lying, or is this a—”

  “A very high-class whorehouse.” Mahmoud laughed. “This part of my establishment obviously isn’t religious, but it’s high-security and safe for intimate gatherings.”

  “You work for al-Sabah?” Judd wanted to be sure.

  “Yes.” Mahmoud opened another door and invited them into a silent room with paneled walls and leather furniture, a masculine room.

  “My office,” Mahmoud said. “Please sit. Relax. Chivas Regal? This is the hour I indulge myself. You could say it’s my daily ritual.”

  To their right were two heavy leather sofas facing each other, a chrome coffee table between.

  Bosa lowered himself on the more distant of the two sofas, facing them. “I’ll have a double.” He set his Walther on his thigh, his hand gripping the hilt.

  Judd sat beside him. “Double for me, too.” He also took out his pistol, but in his palm was what appeared to be a tiny memory stick. They had stopped to buy it at a crowded market in the Sadriya district. It was a miniature digital movie camera that was motion- and voice-activated and both saved the movie and sent it wirelessly. Judd had set up a new Yahoo account to receive it. Hidden between his hand and his weapon, the recording end was pointed at Mahmoud. He could feel Bosa watching.