by Larry Bond
“Who do you think did this?” Corrine asked as they waited for the chopper.
“Ordinarily I’d say the Syrians, but they looked a little surprised.”
“There were Syrians in the club?”
“They followed you in. Second bet would be some of the people you had dinner with.”
“They were government people and businessmen.”
“Is that supposed to rule them out?”
“Was it Khazaal?”
“If blaming him will get me permission to kill him, then sure.”
“Ferg.”
“No, I doubt it was Khazaal. He’s not here. Probably it was some group of local crazies trying to score big who heard that you were around.” He could hear the helicopter in the distance. He pointed at two of the bodyguards. “You two guys are on the ground with me. Everybody else goes home.”
One of the men started to object.
“No, listen to what he says,” said Corrine. “He’s with the CIA.”
“Well, don’t tell everybody.” Ferguson smiled. The helicopter had already started to glide in. “There’s not enough room for everybody in the chopper. It’s all right. You’re safe with me. I’ve had my rabies shots.”
Corrine started for the helicopter, then turned back. “Thanks,” she told Ferguson.
“For what?”
“For saving my life.”
“I was saving my own. You just got in I lie: way.”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Not unless I’m out of ammo.”
“I wanted to tell you something. I saw a man in the hotel whom I saw with Mossad.”
“Probably an officer,” said Ferguson. “Maybe he runs some agents up here.”
“He denounced me.”
“What?”
“He denounced me.” Corrine had to yell to make herself heard over the chopper. “He said his name was Fazel al-Qiam and he’d been a rep to the UN, an Arab. He denounced me.”
“Did he spell that?”
“No.”
“I’m just kidding. Thanks, I’ll check it out.”
“Can the helicopter get me down to Beirut?”
“Why?”
“I’m supposed to be there tomorrow.”
“It’ll take you to Oz if you want. Go.”
“Thanks, Ferg.”
“Yeah. I’ll hate myself in the morning.” Ferguson turned to the marine and Delta bodyguard staying behind. “Beer’s on me boys. But let’s find a place with a calmer floor show.”
2
CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
The CIA and American intelligence in general were often faulted for not knowing much of what was going on in the world, but to Thomas Ciello, the criticism was not only unfair; it was wrong-headed. The CIA and its brother and sister agencies knew a great deal, so much, in fact, that it was impossible to know exactly what they knew.
Which was the real problem. Even someone like Thomas, who had made a career of knowing what the Agency knew, couldn’t possibly know everything. All he could do was skim and skim and skim, use search tools that made Google look like a disorganized orangutan, and occasionally — only occasionally — take wild guesses.
The wild guesses usually led nowhere. The search engines, however, helped him match the name of a Russian weapons expert with a place he didn’t expect to find him: Syria. Northwestern Syria, as a matter of fact, where Jurg Vassenka had booked a ticket on a rare flight to Latakia from Cairo via Damascus.
Vassenka was an expert in several weapons systems. The one that was most interesting in this case, given the Iraqi connection, was the Russian R-11/SS-1B, more popularly known as the Scud.
Thomas soon realized that Vassenka’s arrival in Latakia would not actually be all that unusual; the Syrian resort on the Mediterranean was a popular place for arms dealers, one of the many facts that the CIA knew that he didn’t. But by then Thomas had found more data on Latakia, including intercepted e-mails from several months before between Khazaal’s Iraqi group and a mosque in the city.
As he started to type the information into a brief report, he glanced at Professor Ragguzi’s manuscript on his desk. After he spoke to Corrigan, he promised himself, he would write an e-mail to the professor and point out his error on the UFOs. Surely a man as great as Ragguzi would appreciate knowing that he had made a mistake… as impossible as that was to contemplate.
3
TRIPOLI
Even if he hadn’t already made up his mind that Lebanon was a wrong turn, the kidnapping would have cinched it for Ferguson. Had it been successful, the attempt would have brought down the wrath of the local authorities on the radicals in town, something Khazaal wouldn’t have been foolish enough to want.
Figuring out precisely who had made the attempt on Corrine was a problem for smother day, if not an entirely different agency. Ferguson’s goal at the moment was to get out of the country without expending any more ammunition. Syria was the logical destination, but going over the nearby northern border involved document contingencies that would be hard to finesse for his two companions, Special Forces/Delta Sergeant Gordon Ranaman, and Marine Corporal Winchester Abbas. Ferguson decided that it would be considerably quicker to smuggle them across the border in the mountains to the northeast, which involved a great deal of driving, or go by sea, which not only would have meant procuring a boat but also would have deprived him of the car. So he chose the mountains.
There were many things Ferguson could have done with Abbas’s name, but the marine had won a rather unfortunate tag from a drill instructor upon his initiation to the Corps: Grumpy. Ranaman was already using it, and Ferguson saw no reason not to do so himself. Ranaman’s name was pronounced like rain man, thus suggesting Monsoon.
Nicknames decided, Ferg parceled out shifts for driving and sleeping. Two of the three men would stay awake while the other caught what rest he could in the backseat.
Which was how Ferguson came to be woken by this conversation:
“You know where we are?”
“On the road he told us to take.”
“You think we should stop?”
“They’re going to shoot us if we don’t.”
“They may shoot us if we do stop.”
“Looks to me like we can count on it.”
Ferguson bolted upright in the backseat. “Floor it,” he yelled, pulling out his big Glock.
They’d come upon a preborder checkpoint manned by Syrians to cut down on smuggling. Fortunately, the checkpoint was manned by only two soldiers who were a bit sleepy and slow to realize that the Mercedes wouldn’t stop. Unfortunately, the men a half mile away were much more awake, considerably more numerous, and better shots. They proved all three as the Mercedes rounded a curve down the pass on a narrow road leading to the border. The first few shots missed. The second set of rounds bounced harmlessly off the armor-plated hood. The next hundred or so, all fired by a light machine gun, did varying amounts of damage to the fenders and door but did not slow Grumpy, who was driving like a true marine: foot hard on the accelerator.
“Go, just keep going,” Ferguson said, pulling on his night glasses. There was an obstruction set up in the middle of the road, but Grumpy managed to get the Mercedes past it by plowing through a ditch, sideswiping the Syrians’ vehicle, and then barreling through a fence and down an embankment. When the car finally stopped, Ferguson grabbed his pack.
“End of the line guys, come on.” They jumped out into the field and began to run, about twenty or thirty seconds ahead of the Syrians.
“What if this a minefield?” said Monsoon.
“Hey, good idea,” said Ferguson. He reached to his belt and pulled out one of his small pin grenades. As he pulled the pin, he screamed in Arabic, “Mines! Mines!” and rolled the grenade on the ground, following it with a second and more warnings.
After the second grenade exploded, Ferguson cupped his hand around his mouth in a way he hoped would throw his voice and began yelping that his leg h
ad been hurt. Whether his crude attempt at ventriloquism worked or not, the Syrians didn’t bother following.
“Now what do we do?” asked Monsoon when they were finally sure they were clear.
“One rule from now on,” Ferguson told them. “Never let me sleep through the good parts of the movie. Wake me up. OK?”
“Yes, sir,” said Grumpy.
“It’s all right. I forgot marines drive faster than most normal human beings,” said Ferguson. “I thought I had another half hour before we got close to the border.”
The other men laughed.
“All right. Next thing we do is find ourselves another car. And figure out where the hell we are.” He glanced at his watch. “But first I have to call home.”
The GPS device said they were about five miles from An Nabk, a small town on the road north of Damascus. Or as Corrigan put it, the middle of nowhere.
“I can tell you used to work for Rand McNally,” Ferguson said.
“We have a theory.”
“Who’s we?”
Corrigan explained what Thomas had found out about Latakia.
“Thomas admitted Vassenka might be a coincidence,” said Corrigan. “But he does know how to set up Scuds. He’s an expert on the fuel systems. So if the Iraqis had some of the missiles but needed help using them, he’d be able to get them on track.”
“He would, wouldn’t he?” said Ferguson. “Do we think Khazaal has some?”
“No. But you know there were at least two dozen that were never accounted for properly. At least. You could have parts buried in the desert somewhere.”
“I’d think of Khazaal more trying to sell them than use them,” said Ferguson. “He’s more meat and potatoes: rocket grenades, car bombs. According to the estimate I read, he’s supposed to be on his way out.”
“A Scud would change that.”
Sure would, thought Ferguson, especially if it were aimed at Baghdad when the president was there.
Or Israel.
“Thomas got this on his own or after talking to Fouad?”
“Thomas doesn’t talk to anybody,” said Corrigan. “Not in any language they can understand.”
“Fair enough,” said Ferguson. “We’ll be up there by the afternoon. Get me some rooms, backup gear, whole setup. I have two friends with me. Get Thera and the boys over there, too.”
Ferguson told Corrigan about the Mossad agent Corrine had encountered in the Tripoli hotel.
“No diplomat of that name exists,” said Corrigan after a quick check on one of the databases.
“Gee, no kidding, Jack. Here’s the thing, either the guy is a legitimate Mossad agent who was worried about having his cover blown, or he’s a double agent who Mossad ought to know about. Either way, we have to talk to Tischler about him. I just want some more information before I do it.”
“You’re going to talk to him?”
“Who do you suggest?”
“Um, Corrine said she would. She already has the call in.”
“Jeez, Louise, get her a real job, would you?” Ferguson pressed his lips together. “All right. Make sure she knows about the double-agent angle. Tischler won’t admit it, so she shouldn’t expect him to. Maybe I should tell her. Where is she?”
“En route to the embassy.”
“She should have been in Beirut hours ago.”
“She was. She got up early, and she’s on her way to Damascus.”
“What?”
“She was going there anyway. State’s going to file a formal protest with the Lebanese and—”
“Save the details for another time. I have to go steal a car.”
* * *
Smugglers in Syria were generally assumed to be heading east toward Iraq, which was one thing in Ferg’s favor. The second thing in his favor was the unexpected availability of a car bearing the faded but still visible indicia of the local Red Crescent society, the Arab world’s equivalent of the Red Cross. Ferguson didn’t steal the car; he bought it for five hundred Euros from a service station/junkyard/chicken farm that had just opened for the day. The vehicle, a ten-year-old Fiat with multicolored fenders, was a veritable bargain even considering the large rip in the backseat and the fact that it burned a quart of oil every two hundred miles.
Monsoon’s Arabic was quite good, his accent smoothed out by a year’s service at the Beirut embassy and considerable practice. Grumpy, on the other hand, knew only a few words, and even Ferg had a hard time understanding them. The marine’s grandfather had come from Iran, and Grumpy claimed to know Farsi very well. Ferguson didn’t know the language beyond a few rudimentary phrases, but he guessed that most people they encountered wouldn’t either. The mix of language skills suggested a potential cover story: they were relief coordinators on an inspection tour, Monsoon working with the UN from Damascus, Ferguson an international visitor from Ireland, Grumpy an Iranian.
The story wouldn’t have withstood very deep questioning, but it wasn’t put to the test; they made decent time north, bypassing the city of Hamah and cutting straight toward the coast and the region north of Tartus. Ferguson did the driving and got mildly lost only twice, both times because the car’s engine started acting up and he decided it would be better to break down off the main highway.
North of Baniyas the engine began overheating, and despite suggestions from Grumpy on how to nurse it the car finally died about ten miles south of Latakia. The distance was walkable, but after a mile they found a bus stop and joined a group of workers heading to town to fill night jobs in the tourist industry.
Tourism in Tripoli had ancient roots, but it had a very temporary feel there; the grayness of the town around the major hotels and the very visible scars of the Israeli occupation seemed to hang like a shroud at the edges. Latakia, by contrast, was brighter. You could see the money in the freshly paved highway and the sleek lampposts, along with the neon Western-style signs and the glittering domes of two new mosques, recently built by devout nouveau riche businessmen.
Tourists from the Middle East and southeastern Europe found their Euros went ten times as far in Latakia as in European hot spots: the casinos paid off a little better and neglected to report earnings to foreign tax authorities. The tight control of the Syrian government made the area extremely safe for tourists; there was no question of kidnapping or crazed suicide bombers here, unless they were under the direction of the government. The dictator and his family owned interests in several of the major resorts and casinos, further encouraging local prosperity. It might be terrible to live under a dictatorship, but playing here was not so bad. Arms dealers and other shady characters had flocked to the city over the past two years, finding the government mostly benign as long as the informal taxes were paid and the occasional favor rendered.
Corrigan found them a suite at an older hotel in town called the Taib, which translated roughly into English as “good,” an apt description. A business-class hotel that had a sedate, understated staff, Taib was around the corner from one of the main streets at the southeastern end of the city. The building’s thick masonry and plaster walls made listening devices harder to place, and the main clientele made them mostly a waste of time. Ferguson’s sweep turned up only one in the suite, and it had dead batteries. He placed white-noise machines in the two bedrooms and common area, then told his companions to rest up while he went scouting.
“You’re not tired?” Monsoon asked as Ferguson tried to work the wrinkles out of a sports coat for his evening forage.
“Nah. I slept on the plane,” he told him. “I have the key, but I’ll knock like this when I’m back.”
He rapped on the bureau, mimicking the first bars of “Jug of Punch,” an old Irish folk song.
“I may even sing to you.”
“What do we do if it’s not you?” asked Monsoon.
“After you shoot the person knocking, there’s a dock at a new hotel called Versailles about a mile and a half from here on the water. If something happens, you call this number and go ther
e.”
Ferguson wrote down a local phone number and gave both men a copy.
“What do we say?” asked Grumpy.
“Nothing. Make sure the call is answered, then hang up. Someone will look for you at the dock. The person there will say your name and will know your social security number. If not, kill him. If you’re not already dead.”
4
DAMASCUS
Corrine studied her reflection in the mirror. Her blond hair had grown a trifle long; she reached into her toiletry purse and retrieved a scissors to trim the bangs.
The puffy bags under her eyes were a more difficult problem to solve. She daubed on a light veneer of makeup, then rubbed most of it off. Corrine ordinarily wore very little, and even the light touch looked artificial to her. She decided that the excitement of the night before would excuse a pair of heavy eyes, and if they didn’t, tough.
The Lebanese had bent over backward with apologies. When she insisted on continuing on to Damascus, everyone, from the security people to the ambassador, looked at her as if she were insane. But she saw no reason to change her plans. She wasn’t about to let the attempt on her life — if that’s what it was — influence what she did.
The fact that people thought it was appropriate to treat her as a piece of delicate china pissed her off. That was the way she thought about it: pissed off. Profanity and all.
Corrine closed her bag and checked her dress. She was scheduled to attend a small reception at the president’s palace with the ambassador that evening. American-Syrian relations had started to thaw with the incoming administration, although the country remained on the U.S.’s sanctions list for dealing with terrorists.
A knock on the door startled Corrine. She reached instinctively for the small pistol in her bag, even though she was in the embassy, but it was only the steward.
