The Mercenary Option

by Dick Couch

  Amir Sahabi’s father was a man who knew how to collect information, and that was the legacy he passed on to his son. The Sahabi family, which Amir now headed, had dealt in that commodity for the last twenty years and had made their fortune with it. His knowledge and files of the House of Saud would make those kept by the famed J. Edgar Hoover on American presidents look like credit-card applications. Ostensibly, he was paid for his counsel and advice to the royal family, but though it was never spoken of, the Saudi princes also paid for his discretion. The Saudis did not like this Iranian in their presence, but his knowledge and his secret files protected him. If Saudi Arabia became the next Iran, and the royals were thrown out, he would not be far behind them. Like his robber-benefactors, he had millions in Swiss banks, but where would he go? Paris, London, Cairo? He was safe here—for now, his information kept him safe. That would not be the case outside the Arabian Peninsula. If the House of Saud were to fall, and they were forced out of Saudi Arabia, they would then have nothing to lose. The exiled princes would then have him killed; they had the money to do it. Sahabi tried to think of alternatives, but there seemed to be only one. The pipeline from the Caspian must never be built. It was the only chance for the House of Saud—and for him. The Americans must be stopped, but that was no easy task. Bin Laden had greatly underestimated them. His tactical victories in New York and Washington proved to be strategic blunders. The Americans will fight if they are attacked or threatened, and they can be very dangerous when provoked.

  He sipped his tea and carefully thought through the problem. Sahabi was a large man with a magnificent mustache. His cheeks were heavily bearded, but he had himself shaved twice a day to keep it in check. At fifty-eight, he was a fit and handsome man, and spent no less than two hours a day in the hands of his personal trainer—a Western personal trainer. Those who served in his household remarked in private that Sahabi bore a striking resemblance to Saddam Hussein. But these remarks were made in whispers, for such talk was dangerous. Sahabi and Saddam were quite similar—up to a point. Both prized devotion; both were quick to kill if there was any hint of disloyalty in their inner circle. But where Saddam often purged those around him who were competent, Sahabi rewarded them. Within his organization and his family, he was part businessman, part charismatic leader, and part despot. Like Saddam, he loved the grand power game, yet he was smarter than Saddam. At least, he took fewer chances.

  One thing is certain, he thought; if I am to deal with Americans and their pipeline, I will need money and I will need expertise. And I cannot afford to underestimate them like Saddam. After a moment’s reflection he pushed himself from the leather armchair and walked to his desk. He picked up one of the phones, a secure line. I may as well satisfy the easy requirement first—the money. He hit a button on the speed dialer. It was answered after the first ring.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Amir Sahabi. I would like to speak to His Excellency.”

  “One moment, and I will see if he is available to the telephone.”

  The voice at the other end of the line was dripping with contempt. Sahabi knew this; it was to be expected. When and if the time came, he would have the man killed, but it was no more than a passing thought.

  “Amir, my friend, how are you? When are you coming to Riyadh?”

  “Perhaps soon, Excellency. Have you heard what the Americans are proposing?”

  “I have. We were just talking about this new turn of events. Can the Americans do this?”

  Sahabi sighed inwardly at the naïveté, no—the stupidity—of the man. “They can and they will, Excellency. Would it please the royal family if a way can be found to dissuade the Americans from this course of action?”

  What Sahabi was saying, and what His Excellency, a first cousin of Crown Prince Abdullah, clearly understood, was, “If I can make the problem go away, are you willing to pay?”

  “I think it would be very pleasing. Can you tell me about it?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it on the phone. I will be in the capital late next week. I will telephone for an appointment at that time, Excellency. You may, however, tell the Crown Prince that there may yet be a way to avert all this.”

  “I’ll look forward to our meeting, Amir. Just call my personal representative, and he will arrange for the meeting.”

  “As you wish, Excellency. Good-bye.”

  He put the phone to its cradle, but did not take his hand away. Your personal representative, indeed, you rump-wrangling twit. Sahabi’s father had sent him to Harvard for his undergraduate work. He often found American idioms most appropriate for behavior he deemed amoral or deviant. The next call would be a little more difficult. Sahabi had no idea how to stop the Americans, but he knew who might be able to bring this about. This was dangerous business, and he paused again to turn the matter over again in his mind. There seemed to be no other way. The man was good—the best; there was no question of that. Very few knew that this was the person who had been the brain behind bin Laden’s ability to orchestrate the 9/11 attacks. Fewer still knew that this same man had counseled against the attacks. But Amir Sahabi knew; he was in the business of information. It took the overseas operator five minutes to put through his call, and another five for the scramblers on either end to engage. Then another several minutes for his party to come on the line. The call itself lasted less than two minutes. His request was brief. The man on the other end of the line simply said he understood and that he would be in touch.

  Sahabi wandered out through the heavy portal to the veranda to enjoy the dry, warm late afternoon. The family would not gather for dinner for another hour and a half. After such weighty considerations, he felt himself in the need of a diversion. Slowly, he made his way across a columned portico to one of the servants’ quarters—one that was away from the other compound buildings and off limits to all but himself. He let himself inside and stood just inside the door, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. Then he moved forward into the room. He smelled the scented olive oil before he felt the soft hands from behind ease off his robe. Another pair of gentle hands held his forearm, her firm young breast pressed lightly against it. She guided him to a large sunken tub in the middle of the room that had been prepared for his pleasure.

  Saturday morning, March 9,

  Villefranche, France

  Pavel Zelinkow stood on the large veranda, silent and imposing like the nearby marble sculptures, and basked in the spectacular view from his villa. Shifting his gaze slowly, he took in the full 180-degree panorama that embraced layered shades of emerald green and royal blue stretching as far as the eye could see. Closer to shore, the sweeping arc that was the Bay of Villefranche was dotted with yachts riding at anchor. Each morning, while Dominique busied herself with the espresso machine, he admired the view from this corner of the veranda and had his first cigar, a mild H. Uppman robusto made to his specifications. Since they had been out the night before, they had slept late. His bathrobe hung open, revealing that he wore nothing but a Speedo and a gold chain. The chain cut an oval in the small, dense mat of gray hair on his chest, making it almost invisible. The rest of his body was clean and tanned to a healthy olive glow. Zelinkow, himself totally immodest, could see nothing of the Speedo due to his ample belly.

  He had lived in the villa for close to four years, and he loved it dearly. The previous owner lived in Paris and had been reluctant to sell it. Only recently had Zelinkow found the means to make the owner an offer he couldn’t refuse. But it had taken nearly all of his cash reserves.

  “Your coffee, darling.”

  “Ah, you are a dear. Thank you,” he replied in fluent French. “And how are you on this beautiful morning?”

  She smiled pleasantly and set about visiting the potted plants with her watering can. Zelinkow parked his cigar on the stone railing of the veranda and sipped cautiously at his steaming espresso. After a companionable silence, he again turned to her. She was busy arranging a massive display of bougainvillea that erupted fro
m a large clay urn.

  “And what did you think of the opera?”

  She paused and considered the question. “In truth, I was a little disappointed. Luciano was all I hoped he would be, and more, but they could have supported him better. The female lead was simply not up to it, and the orchestra, well…” She shrugged and went back to the plants.

  Zelinkow considered this. “I agree,” he said. “But the orchestra is improving. I think we may be two, perhaps three, woodwinds and a French horn away from a very decent ensemble. As for the soprano, well, perhaps she was simply intimated by the maestro. He can do that, you know.”

  Zelinkow cared about two things in the world, privacy and culture. He kept a small flat in Paris so that he could attend the theater and opera. From the airport in Nice, he was only a short flight from Paris or Rome. He occasionally returned to Moscow for the Bolshoi, but it was not what it had once been. But then what is? He took up his cigar and took a final draw before returning it to the railing. He never snubbed out a good cigar, but parked them down in a safe place, allowing them to die in their own fashion. Dominique would be along later in the day to take care of it, just as he took care of her.

  He again turned from the Mediterranean and watched Dominique while he finished his coffee. She moved from plant to plant like a honeybee working a flowering bush, smooth and economical in her movements from one to another. They had been together for close to a year now, and it was proving to be a good arrangement. It was an arrangement, no more and no less. She understood this, or at least he felt she did, and he was seldom wrong in his assessment of people and circumstances. He had met her at an art exhibition in Toulon. She was on holiday, and at the time had been a contralto and engaged in a performance of Carmen with the Malaga philharmonic. They had begun their relationship over a series of dinner dates when he visited the Costa del Sol, and they began attending plays together. She was younger than he, but she was not young. They eventually became lovers, and soon after that, he asked that she share the villa with him. The invitation came with a proposal—a proposal that they have a highly defined arrangement. After he explained it, she thought about it a long moment, gave him one of her wan, delicious smiles, and nodded slowly. They would live together and share the villa. The domestic demands they would place on each other would be in keeping with those of any two educated, cultured adults who were together because they did not want to be alone. He would deposit fifteen hundred Euros each month to an account registered in her name. The arrangement would end when either of them decided that it should.

  Physically, the relationship had cooled over time, but on occasion, and usually in the afternoon after a bottle of amarone while enjoying a selection of Italian arias, they felt a physical need for each other. Both were experienced and warm-blooded, making love like a pair of breeding lions on the Serengeti. Intellectually, they had grown closer, and they shared much in the art world. They occasionally disagreed, but they never quarreled. Most importantly, they gave each other space. All of this made for an acceptable arrangement, Zelinkow felt. He was satisfied, content, and at peace. And he drew a measure of satisfaction that Dominique was happy. He felt she was a woman of character, one that deserved to be taken care of and made happy. If and when it ended, well, then so be it. It was an understanding that suited him, and he sensed that it was not disagreeable to her.

  A soft purring from a speaker under the eave of the house broke his reverie. Dominique did not look up; it was not the house phone. He sighed and made his way through the open double doors that led to a single door with a security alarm. His fingers flew over the keypad, and he pushed open the metal door to his office. It was a small room, and the only place in the villa that Zelinkow had ordered strictly off limits to Dominique. She would no more have violated their understanding that this space was his alone than he would have rummaged about in her lingerie drawer. But this room was dangerous as well. To turn on one of the computers or open a file cabinet without certain protocols would create a thermite event that would consume the entire room and anyone in it. Once inside, he studied the ID screen a moment, then picked up the telephone.

  “Yes?” he replied neutrally in Farsi.

  Moments later, he returned to the veranda, deep in thought. Dominique demurely lifted an eyebrow when he said that he needed to cancel their afternoon luncheon. Preoccupied as he was, he could tell she was disappointed. The fields above Villefranche grew the flowers for much of France’s perfume industry, and they were in riotous bloom. They had planned to take a picnic basket to a favorite, secluded spot on a hill overlooking the aromatic color. There, with a blanket, a plate of cucumber sandwiches and deviled eggs, and perhaps a bottle of superb amarone…well, it was something she had been looking forward to. Actually, so had he.

  “I need a few hours to attend to some matters, chérie,” he told her in a soothing voice. “The day is warm, so why don’t we take in an early dinner and drive into the country afterward? Perhaps take along a bottle of cognac and some cheese, and we can enjoy the sunset from one of the roadside vista overlooks.”

  She smiled and went back to her flowers. He returned to his office and sat, lost in thought, for close to an hour. After he hung up the telephone, he had instantly known what his next move would be. But like the accomplished chess player he was, he needed time to plan several moves ahead—to think through the consequence of each successive move. Then he took out a legal pad and a fountain pen and began to write. For several hours the office resonated with the scratching of his pen point across the paper, punctuated by the tearing of a finished sheet as begin the next. He wrote in a beautiful Cyrillic hand, line after neat line, page after page. Occasionally he would pause and neatly line out a word or two, then continue without hesitation. When he was finished, he assembled the loose pages in order and quickly began to read them. There was a gentle tapping at the door, and he paused. When he opened the door, there was a plate of sausages and toast points, and a glass of red wine resting on the stone floor by the jamb. He retrieved them and continued to read. By early afternoon he had finished. He leaned back in the high-backed office chair and closed his eyes for fifteen minutes. Finally he nodded slowly and picked up one of the several phones on his desk. The small stack of handwritten pages sat neatly in front of him. He made six phone calls, pausing after each call to make notes in the margins of his text. Then he locked the manuscript in his desk safe, set the alarm, and stepped into the private shower that adjoined the office. The prospect of a meal and a drive into the country was suddenly very appealing to him.

  Tuesday, April 16,

  Lahore, Pakistan

  Moshe tried to contain himself as he walked along Peshawar Boulevard and turned north along Songhai Street. He was on fire, his mind racing. All the planning, carefully building the cell, creating the trust among the others—it had consumed him for the last two years. And now it was all on the line—everything. Finally, they have sent for me. We can do so much for the cause, but not without their help. And what took them so long?

  Halfway down the block, he turned abruptly to look in a shop window. As he pretended to look at the cheap jewelry and beadwork, he caught his own reflection. Moshe was tall for a Pakistani, but he had an agreeable academic slouch. He was ethnic Pashtun with a high forehead and delicate bone structure. His fine, black hair was short and pushed into an indifferent middle part. There were already signs that he would be bald by middle age, as were all the men in his family. He wore a tattered wool topcoat over an open-collared white shirt, baggy cotton trousers, and heavy leather sandals with wool socks. His careless dress was in keeping with what he was, or at least what he had been for most of his life, a student. There were a number of fine universities in Lahore, and this section of town saw its share of itinerant students looking for bargains. Lahore was Pakistan’s most culturally progressive city. Due to its central location in the Punjab, it was also a hotbed of intrigue.

  Moshe would have blended totally with the other men on this s
treet full of heavily robed and partially veiled women but for his eyes. They burned with the passion and intensity of total commitment. His smooth, light-brown skin and narrow, prominent nose served to make those fierce dark eyes appear as smoldering holes in his skull. Since Lahore was a cultural center, those who passed him and sensed his passion would probably have taken him for an artist. He had taken the train down from Islamabad the previous day and found lodging in the Old City near Aserkais. Earlier that morning, per his instructions, he made his way along the Mail Road to Peshawar Boulevard and now walked through the shopping district.

  Moshe was an engineer by training, an anarchist by avocation—and a most passionate Muslim. He had trained in the United States, taking a degree in physics, with honors, from MIT. In Islamabad he might have been recognized, for in some circles he was quite well known. There was little chance of that in Lahore. His colleagues were scientists and engineers, and seldom left the capital. Moshe continued walking until he eventually turned onto a street crammed with open-air stalls. As he threaded his way through the crowded bazaar, he reflected on his time at Cambridge and his four-year stay in America. He could not think of America and Americans without bitterness and disdain—their arrogance, their consumptive lifestyle, their horrible manners! They were almost as offensive as Indians, Moshe thought, and Hindus as well were an abomination. If they will help us, we can change all that. If they will allow us to help them! Moshe walked onto the appointed corner, paused momentarily at a storefront, then retraced his steps for perhaps fifty meters. Abruptly, he proceeded back along his original track and turned down an alleyway. So anxious was he about the meeting that he almost failed to turn left into the rear entrance to the market. He pushed his way through the throng of housewives who were busy fingering the produce and back out onto a main thoroughfare. There he turned right and walked another two blocks to a small café. He ducked quickly through the door and into the dimly lit interior. Once inside, he went to an empty table, took a seat, and waited.