by Larry Bond
“So what do you want?”
“My coffee, for starters. Then you probably want to close the door.”
* * *
Corrine and her bodyguards left before dawn and drove north from the capital to Tripoli in a pair of Mercedes, escorted by an unmarked Renault police car. The hotel was located south of the city proper, not far from the Olympic Stadium, but protocol required Corrine to first pay a visit to the local mayor. This meant going into the city, a gray-looking place that still showed signs of the occupation by Israel that had ended many years before. A faceless apartment building gaped at a small fruit stand not far from the center of town; closer to the sea, a brand-new mansion muscled its way into a quarter of battered old brick buildings that had stood since the time of the Crusades.
The mayor and the dozen other city officials who met her were so gracious that Corrine found herself feeling guilty for using them as a cover to come here. She listened as they made a short and almost subtle pitch about the importance of better trade with the U.S. and all countries. When she told them that she would take their message back to the president, she meant it.
Walking back to the car, she saw a wall pasted with posters of Bashir al-Assad, the dictator of Syria. The image was a popular one here, though it was difficult to tell if it was a sincere appreciation or something simply meant to curry favor from the muscular and dominant neighbor, which had also occupied Lebanon in the past.
Corrine and her small entourage headed back south, passing the Olympic Stadium and catching a grand view of the Mediterranean as they pulled into the hotel lot. The embassy had detailed two marines and two Delta Force bodyguards, all dressed in civilian clothes, as escorts. The men fanned out around Corrine as she walked into the hotel. One of the Delta ops and a marine went upstairs to check her room out while she waited below.
The hotel’s display cases showed off eleventh- and twelfth-century Italian manuscripts, pages that had originally been part of prayer books brought to the Holy Land by crusaders. Though the works were exquisite, Corrine thought it odd that the hotel would feature a display devoted to the art of the country’s ancient invaders. She wondered at the disconnect between war and art, between the reality of what the crusaders had experienced and done, and the beauty of the artists’ work.
Her brief moment of distraction was interrupted by one of the marines, who tapped her on the shoulder.
“We have a problem, ma’am,” he said. “Men with guns in your hall.”
* * *
Ferguson made sure Romanski took two full sips from his coffee before he drank his. The Russian saw this and nodded.
“A lesson from your father?”
“Common sense,” Ferg told him.
Romanski claimed to have known his father from service in Germany as well as the Middle East, though Ferguson had never bothered to check. He was the right age, pushing sixty, and he had been in the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR), which was succeeded more or less intact (as far as his area was concerned) by the Central Intelligence Service, or Centralnaya Sluzhbza Razvedkyin (CSR), in the early 1990s. He had retired in 1995 to set up shop as a businessman; as long as he did not sell drugs to Russians, his former employers left him alone. Romanski knew everything that was going on in Tripoli and northern Lebanon, indeed, in the rest of the country and much of Syria as well. He had better sources now than when he had worked as an intelligence officer.
Which wasn’t the same thing as sharing information or even sharing the truth.
“Can the women be trusted?” Romanski said, pointing toward the women. Aress had joined Kel on the bed.
“As much as any women,” said Ferg.
Romanski frowned. “You are here why?”
“Nisieen Khazaal.”
“Khazaal? The Iraqi lunatic? You’re looking in the wrong country. He’s in Iraq.”
“I heard he was on his way here.”
“Why would he come here?”
“Big meeting of lunatics.”
“I doubt it.”
“You wouldn’t be doing business with him, would you?”
“Terrorists do not buy drugs.”
“I was thinking Khazaal might be a seller, looking for money.”
“The only thing the Iraqis can sell are weapons. And most of those are toys that stopped working long ago. Why do you waste your time, Ferguson?”
“Is he hiding over at Oil City?”
“Bah. The Iraqis there all work for the government now. They are fat and lazy; why would they have him in their midst?”
“You tell me.”
“Bah. You have CIA agents in Iraq,” Romanski told Ferguson, refilling his coffee cup. “What do they say?”
“They ask who Khazaal is.”
“I would not be surprised. What do the Israelis say?”
“They say he’s going to Syria.”
“Then look there. Mossad is very good.”
“Big country.”
“There are only a few places to look.”
“How about you ask the Syrians for me?”
“A favor? You have the nerve to ask for a favor?”
“I have nothing but nerve.”
Romanski gave him a crooked smile. “Why are they meeting?”
“Not sure.”
“The Iraqis sell weapons and beg for money. For either of those things I would go to Latakia.”
Romanski took another sip of his coffee. Before Ferguson could decide whether that was an educated or uneducated guess, the phone at Romanski’s belt began to ring.
“Do you mind if I answer that?” asked the Russian.
“I wish you would.”
He took it out and held it up. His face flushed. “You set a trap for me?” he thundered at Ferguson.
“Let’s not do anything rash.” Ferg gestured with his pistol toward Kel and the grenade. “I didn’t set a trap. What’s going on?”
“Armed men coming upstairs. Americans.”
Great timing, Ferguson thought to himself.
“It’s just my boss. She’s here to chew me out.” Ferguson got up and walked to the terrace. They were on the third floor; jumping down would not have been a problem except for Romanski.
“I have a rope,” said Ferguson. “I’ll get you out.”
“This is a trap.”
“Aw, come on Romanski. Why would I bother?”
Ferguson got the rope from his bag and tied it to one of the bed legs.
“You, down,” Romanski said to one of his men. “See if the way is clear. Give me your gun first.”
He took the Steyr AUG/HBAR. The bodyguard hung off the terrace, then dropped down.
“How many of your men are outside?” Ferguson asked.
The Russian scowled. “I can handle the situation, thank you.”
“I thought you had all the police in town bribed.”
“You owe me, Ferguson. I will get a repayment.”
“I’ll double it for real information about Khazaal.”
Romanski slung the gun over his shoulder and climbed out the window. He got down to about the middle of the first floor, then let go, rolling on the ground. His last bodyguard bolted over the terrace and paid for his haste with a sprained ankle.
Ferguson went to Kel and took the grenade. It was wet with her sweat. He let the spring trigger snap open, setting the grenade to fire. He held it for a moment, then dropped it out the window, where it began spewing smoke.
“Don’t think I didn’t trust you with a real grenade,” he told Kel when she stopped screaming. “It was all I had handy.”
Someone pounded on the door before he could answer. A voice claiming to be the police told them to open up.
“Just a second,” said Ferguson in English. He took the large Glock and dropped it out the window into the billowing smoke.
“Aress, open the door, would you?”
Before she could reach the knob, the police broke it down.
16
<
br /> EASTERN SYRIA
Rankin, Thera, and Fouad stopped outside of Mansura a few hours before dawn and slept in a field until nearly noon. Several hours of rummaging in town turned up no trace of Khazaal. All of Fouad’s old contacts were gone, and Thera had trouble with the accents in the small restaurant when they bought lunch. Their bikes stood out, but Rankin didn’t want to leave them outside of town. Parking them in a lot near a bank didn’t help much. He had his Uzi stuffed into his pack on his back, but the pack probably made them look almost as suspicious as the gun would. Rankin felt uncomfortably out of his element, exposed and obvious. This was the sort of situation that Ferguson made look easy, the sort of place where a glib bullshit artist could parlay some vague lie into a plan of attack, wheedling information out of stones. But Rankin wasn’t a bullshitter. Never had been, never would be.
You had to be, maybe.
“Best thing is to go down the road a bit,” he whispered to Fouad when he noticed the stares as they walked through the old part of town. The Iraqi agreed. They went back to their bikes and got onto the highway, riding until they found a turnoff with a view of the river. It was postcard perfect. Thera oohed, and even Fouad was impressed. Rankin stared at the blue shimmer.
“Let’s see if we can turn up anything at the airport,” he said finally.
Fouad nodded.
“They’re probably not going to tell us anything,” said Thera.
“Then we’ll just have to figure out a way to bullshit them into it,” Rankin said, walking back to the bike.
17
TRIPOLI
The police were incredibly understanding, thanks partly to a suggestion to the sergeant in charge that a processing fee for the incredible amount of paperwork sure to be involved would probably be most appropriate if paid in advance. Kel’s timely rearrangement of the bedclothes didn’t hurt either. Aress swore she had seen one of the men going into a room down the hall; the police mustered after the fresh lead.
Corrine was not so easily dealt with. She and two of her guards appeared in the hallway, glancing through the open doorway as the police finished their interrogation. She gave Ferguson an evil glare.
“You look Irish,” he said loudly, giving his English a Dublin twist. “Tourist?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Corrine.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said, as if realizing he was wearing only his shirt and shorts. (He’d scooped off his pants and shoes under the cover of the blanket as the policemen entered.) “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I hardly think so.”
“In the bar. Right now. Come on. Soon as I get m’pants.”
“Thank you, no.”
“You have a big appetite,” he said, gesturing toward the men.
Corrine flushed. Even though she knew it was an act, she was furious with him, so mad that the emotion clouded her judgment.
“Drinks?” suggested Ferguson. “Lunch?”
“No, thank you,” she said stiffly. The police were now breaking into another room down the hall.
“Well, I’ll be there if you change your mind,” said Ferguson.
* * *
He wasn’t in the restaurant or the casino when Corrine went down to look for him a half hour later.
“Where the hell is he?” she demanded when she called the Cube from her room.
“Go swimming,” said Corrigan, who’d come back on duty.
“What?”
“Go swimming. Ferguson will meet you in the water.”
“We’ll be seen.”
“He’ll figure it out. Go swimming.”
Corrine didn’t have a bathing suit with her. “Tell him it will take a while. I don’t have a bathing suit. I’ll have to go buy one.”
Wait until the General Accounting Office saw that voucher, she thought to herself.
“He’s pissed, just to warn you,” said Corrigan. “He says you almost blew his cover.”
“Screw him.”
She snapped the phone off. Corrine leaned back in her chair and picked up the small white noise machine; she’d found two bugs with the scanner and used the screener just in case.
Ferguson was being difficult, but from his perspective, it might in fact look as if she had screwed up. It was just a coincidence that they’d chosen the same hotel. Actually, Corrigan should have told her he was at the Medici, and she could have made other arrangements. Although maybe that would have seemed suspicious.
It had been a bad decision to come here, that was the problem. But she couldn’t let Ferguson do what he wanted. She had to bring him to heel.
Parnelles had a point about giving a good officer room to do his job, but how much room was that? Her job was to make sure that the First Team didn’t just run amok. And if you considered the number of bodies that were falling…
That might not be a fair measure, but the Intelligence Committee and Congress weren’t necessarily known for being fair.
Corrine continued to wrestle with notions of what to do until she arrived at the dress shop from the hotel. There she turned her attention to an even knottier problem: finding a bathing suit that fit. The European-style suits came in two sizes: incredibly tiny and ridiculously infinitesimal. Finally she found a one-piece suit that didn’t make her look like a bimbo or an idiot. She got a modest wrap and some sandals, and took out her personal charge card to pay, wincing as she mentally worked out the exchange rate.
“I need at least two people on the detail with me on the beach,” Corrine told her escorts as they walked back to the car. “Volunteers?”
“Uh, we don’t have suits, ma’am,” said the sergeant in charge of the detail.
“That’s my point. There’s a men’s store right over there. Put it on this,” she said, tossing him her card. “And go easy. That’s my personal card.”
* * *
Corrine walked to the far end of the sand near the kids’ pool but didn’t see Ferguson. She spread one of the towels she’d rented — those she charged to the room — and waited for a while. Finally, she decided to go for a swim in the ocean.
The water relaxed her. Corrine had been on the swim team in high school, and she fell into an easy pace now, her muscles remembering the early morning routines. That had always been the way back then: dread for the first lap, then contentment as she fell into the exercise.
“Whoa,” said one of the marines, swimming near her. He stopped paddling and stared at the beach.
A bevy of rather attractive young women had come down from the hotel in ultra-skimpy two-piece suits and were fussing over their blankets. There were more than a dozen women between whom the material of their suits wouldn’t have filled a square foot.
She was a bit far to know for sure, but Corrine assumed among them were the two girls she’d seen in Ferguson’s room. She spun in the water, just in time to see one of the marines darting downward.
“It’s all right,” she hissed. “He’s with me. Let him go.”
Corrine had meant the warning for the Marine, but when Ferguson bobbed upward, it was the bodyguard who was in his grip, not the other way around. The second Marine made another lunge, but the CIA officer was too quick, releasing the other man and paddling backward.
“It’s Ferguson,” hissed Corrine. “Relax, Bob. They’re with me.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” said Ferguson. “Step into my office.” He paddled backward, using the marines to help screen them, though it was difficult to think anyone would look out to sea while the girls continued to preen on the beach.
“You’re lucky I was on the swim team,” said Corrine.
“So that’s why you’re in the shallow water. What was your event?”
“Butterfly.”
“I’m freestyle.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“So what the hell are you doing here?” asked Ferguson in his most cheerful voice. “Besides trying to get me killed.”
“The president is going to Baghdad next week.”
> “Everybody and his brother knows that.”
“He’s also going to make a side trip, to Jerusalem to announce a new peace accord between Israel and Palestine. They’ve agreed on a shared security arrangement to keep the holy sites of Jerusalem safe for all faiths. The trip hasn’t been announced, and it won’t be until it happens.”
“It’ll be hard to keep that a secret.”
“You didn’t know it,” said Corrine. “How hard can it be?”
“Touché.” Ferguson took a few strokes, glancing back toward the beach to make sure his diversion was still in force. “So, are you going to answer my question or not? Why are you here?”
“Bob—”
“You can call me Ferg.”
“If Special Demands does anything to mess that up, the president will not be happy.”
Ferguson didn’t respond.
“Why did you go to Cairo without clearing it with me first?” said Corrine.
“My job is to make the operational decisions,” said Ferguson. “That hasn’t changed. Once we were on Seven Angels, it was my show.”
“The original plan called for you to follow Thatch in Jerusalem. You weren’t following Thatch, and you weren’t in Jerusalem.”
“What if he had gone to Tel Aviv?”
“He didn’t. He died.”
“See, the problem is, Corrine, we’re not arguing a legal case here. We’re doing a covert action that you can’t define beforehand. I went to Cairo because I thought I might have a chance at finding out who Seven Angels was connecting with, and from that getting more information about them and their plans, which would help us close them down. That’s my job. It’s a real pain to have to explain step by step what I’m doing.”
“You can’t just go off on your own. There are other considerations. Like the president’s peace plan and visit.”
“You want my opinion on that?”
“No.”
Ferguson smiled and took a few strokes away, checking on the beach show.
“Is Khazaal a threat to disrupt the visit to Baghdad?” Corrine asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure where he is at the moment. Probably not here. But I’d stay the hell out of Baghdad on general principle, don’t you think?”
