by Ward Larsen
He set out again in the direction of his truck, one last stop to be made. By the time he reached the true decontamination area the gauge on his breathing tank showed five minutes of air remaining. He could tell the suit was sagging in spots, the overpressure effect nowhere near what it had been earlier. Exhausted from his exertions, he was glad to have had the forethought to preposition everything.
With air running critically low, he went through the protocols he had so diligently practiced. The first task was probably overkill, but he’d already committed to going through with it. Sitting down on a rock, he picked up an auto-injector, removed the safety cover, and sank the needle straight through his suit and into the meaty part of his left thigh. He watched the syringe to make sure it fully expelled before pulling the needle clear. He’d already taken a regimen of pyridostigmine. When he removed the suit, he would be theoretically protected if he made any mistakes or if the wind suddenly shifted.
Theoretically. Not a comforting modifier for a man who had seen what he’d just seen.
He used a pump sprayer to bathe himself in five gallons of decontamination solution. By the end his suit was dripping with the amber fluid. That done, he retrieved a doubled garbage can liner and, leaning on the rock for support, placed his feet inside the opening. He peeled the tape from the seams of his hood, then the wrist seal on each glove. He rolled down the suit from top to bottom, undulating like a molting snake to free himself from the protective garment. He’d practiced the maneuver countless times: leaning on a hotel room bed, on a dinner chair in a Damascus safe house. All for this one moment.
The desert breeze, hot and arid as it was, gave instant relief. Soon the yellow suit was puddled in the trash bag at his feet. Still wearing the outer gloves, he pried his feet from the oversized boots, beginning with his aching right foot, and stepped clear of the plastic bag. The outer gloves were next to go. Then, still wearing the inner glove liners, he unstrapped the air tank and dropped it onto the pile of gear. When he at last took off the glove liners, his hands were wet and clammy beneath.
Only after sealing the bag, with the entire ensemble inside, did Sultan allow himself a momentary pause. The warm air felt like freedom itself. It struck him that the desert here was different from the one he’d been born into. More heat, perhaps, less moisture. Sudan was a more populated country, yet somehow it seemed more desolate. Greater expanses and fewer small villages. Bands of nomads roaming the great desert. Sultan’s eyes swept the valley 360 degrees. He saw nothing but brown desert and blue sky.
His thoughts turned to the two victims. He wondered if they were father and son, and decided it was likely. At least they were together in the end. A pair of vultures wheeling in the distance caught his eye. Would they be the first to arrive? If so, there would be two more carcasses to add to the show.
He abandoned his musings. The most challenging task was behind him now. He broke a leafy branch from a shrub near the wadi, and used it to sweep away the deepest boot prints. It wasn’t perfect, but the desert, relentless as ever with dust and wind, would do the rest.
He heaved the plastic bag over his shoulder and set out the final hundred yards to the truck. By the time he arrived his foot was acting up again. He heaved the bag into the bed, got behind the wheel, and tried to slot the key into the ignition. It didn’t fit.
His heart fluttered in a moment of horror. Then he looked down and realized it was the key to his other car—the Fiat sitting in the garage outside Damascus. Which means the key to the Toyota …
He unzipped the small suitcase on the seat next to him, pulled out the khaki trousers he’d been wearing that morning. In the front pocket he found the key to the Toyota. He drew a long, deep breath and was unable to suppress a smile. And what other errors have I made?
He twisted the rearview mirror to look at himself. His hair was matted in sweat, and there was a red band around his forehead where the suit’s hood had pressed in. Nothing that wouldn’t fade in time. All in all, Sultan felt a surge of pride. After so much groundwork—the meeting with Petrov, the travel, dealing with the maid—he had done what he’d set out to do.
The little truck sparked obediently to life, and he steered toward the dirt trail to the east. Progress was slow, the truck bounding over ruts and channels in the hardpan earth. He navigated for eight miles using a GPS handset, then stopped near a featureless stand of scrub. Sultan got out and retrieved a small camping shovel from the bed of the truck. Ten minutes later the garbage bag containing his equipment was buried. This was the one bit of evidence he didn’t want to be found—nothing to do with the residues on the outside of the suit, but rather what was inevitably within. He had considered burning everything, but he’d been told by the Russian who provided the gear that it would produce thick black smoke under an open flame. Now was not the time to draw attention.
Sultan kept driving eastward, and as he did he was struck by the boundlessness of the desert. Under a faultless sky, the land here seemed every bit as hard and detached as his homeland. Which of them concealed more atrocities he couldn’t guess. Twenty minutes later he reached a semi-improved gravel road. Just before climbing the shoulder onto the raised roadbed, Sultan tossed the camping shovel through the window and into the brush.
The little truck bounded onto the road and quickly picked up speed.
THIRTY-SIX
The Hyundai fit nicely into Achmed’s garage, if that’s what it could be called. To Slaton the standalone building looked more like a chicken coop on steroids, a fifteen-by-twenty-foot rectangle of corrugated siding and plywood over a beaten dirt floor. When Slaton pulled the twin doors shut, one creaked like something from a bad horror movie. The other had to be dragged through the dirt. There was nothing secure about the place, but it at least put the car out of sight.
The backyard was surrounded by a head-high stone wall, and Slaton couldn’t see the windows of any neighboring house—which meant he couldn’t be seen in return. All around the yard were piles of discarded machinery, most of it rusting, and uneven stacks of sunbaked scrap lumber. The neighbor had a dog, which might have been a good early warning system had the creature not barked incessantly.
Ever since entering the neighborhood, Slaton had been watching for anything or anyone out of place. So far, he’d seen poverty and hard work, a few hints of criminal enterprise. But nothing at all worrisome.
Salma appeared at the back door, and her uncle was right behind her. From a distance he stared at Slaton menacingly. An understandable reaction to a guest arriving with an MP5 in hand.
Slaton leaned toward Ludmilla, and asked quietly, “Does Achmed live alone?”
“As far as I know. Why do you ask?”
“It’s always a good thing to know before you walk through an unfamiliar door with a weapon.”
To that Ludmilla had no reply.
Slaton set out toward the house.
* * *
A charmer Uncle Achmed was not. He was average in height with a stocky build. His unkempt black hair could have used Salma’s attention and he hadn’t shaved in days. He invited them inside with all the cordiality of a prison guard on overtime.
Slaton ignored another hard stare as he carried the MP5 through the back door. There would be no equivocation regarding who he was or why he was here. Having firepower nearby was mandatory from this point on.
They assembled in what passed for a living room. Brown water stains leached down one wall like a curtain. A pair of threadbare couches, one tan the other shamrock green, faced a flat screen TV. Slaton saw a paused image on the screen that he recognized from the movie Titanic: the two young lovers at the bow of the ship. Achmed reached for the remote, thumbed a button, and Rose disappeared before she could fly.
The low ceiling was stained by cigarettes, and the scent of stale tobacco clung to the air. The rest of the furnishings looked like rejects from a college dorm, and a sputtering box air conditioner blew a hurricane from a side window.
Slaton sat with Ludmilla on
the tan couch, which looked reasonably stable.
“My niece tells me you need to get out of Syria,” Achmed began. His voice was raspy, but at least he spoke English. Slaton wasn’t surprised. For a smuggler of any attainment, it would be an essential corporate skill.
“I came to escort Ludmilla out. Unfortunately, things went a bit sideways at the salon. Salma and Naji may now also be at risk.”
“A bit sideways?” Achmed repeated. “I heard you blew up half the street.”
“An exaggeration,” Slaton deadpanned. “It was no more than a quarter.”
The Syrian might have grinned but it was hard to tell through the uncropped stubble.
Slaton said, “Your niece tells me you know how to move things discreetly. And maybe how to avoid the authorities.”
“I know a few gaps in the border. And I have friends in Lebanon.”
“What exactly do you smuggle?”
An upside-down U fixed on the Syrian’s lips. “That is not a nice word. I am a businessman, pure and simple. Food, watches, phones … whatever is selling. I merely prevent the government leeches from taking their cut.”
“Have you ever moved people?”
“I have never been that kind of trafficker!” Achmed said indignantly.
“Good to hear. But it looks like you are now.”
“I am not so sure. Friends tell me what is happening. There is a blockade around the city, like those at the height of the war. Getting out of Damascus for the next few days … it might be impossible.”
“No, what’s impossible is for your niece to stay in her uncle’s home. Salma and Naji have disappeared. The Mukhabarat won’t know if they’ve been abducted or killed, or if they’re helping Ludmilla. When they don’t turn up in a day or so, they’ll assume it’s the latter. At that point, the Muk will get their act together and start looking, and they’ll start with family.”
Achmed seemed to search for a countering argument. There wasn’t one.
Slaton said, “Look, I know we’re putting you in a bad spot. If you don’t want to help, that’s fine. We’ll leave right now.”
Achmed’s eyes shot to his niece, who was on the floor with Naji. She nodded, and for the first time Slaton saw more uncle than smuggler in the Syrian’s rough-hewn visage.
“All right,” Achmed said. “I will try to come up with something, but it will take a little time. Other than Salma, few people know where I live … I keep it that way for professional reasons, you understand. I think we are safe here until morning.”
“Probably,” Slaton allowed. He stood up from the couch, the springs creaking in relief. “While you work on getting us out of town, I could use help with something else. Ludmilla has some information we need to look at—it’s on an SD card. Do you have a computer or a tablet we could use?”
“In the back room,” said Achmed, pointing down a short hall. “There is a new laptop on the table.”
Slaton pulled the SD card from his pocket, and said to Ludmilla, “I’d like you to hear this as well—it will help us both get a clear picture.” She got up and followed him toward the narrow hall.
Slaton took the MP5 with him. As he left the room, he looked back at Achmed. He’d gone down on one knee to tickle Naji. On last glance the boy was giggling, with Achmed smiling the smile of a happy shark.
Soon—very soon—Slaton knew he would have a decision to make: whether or not to trust yet another stranger.
* * *
It was another hour before Sultan reached a properly paved road. Soon after, the small town of Burush came into view. It was a low-slung and amorphous place, warrens of earthen huts clotted amid swales in the featureless desert. There seemed no obvious reason for the town being where it was. No river or lake, no notable road intersection. It was simply the kind of settlement that arose by default, that came into being because there wasn’t anything like it within a hundred miles.
Sultan pulled the truck to the side of the road. He left the engine idling, his misfortune with the key earlier having heightened his caution. He sat still for a time contemplating the town before him. The four original Rashidun Caliphs had built a vast empire, stretching from the Caucuses to the Black Sea, and around the Mediterranean to Algiers. The hills before him would have been at the bottom of that territory—indeed, near the edge of civilization itself fourteen hundred years earlier.
Will I be so fortunate? he wondered. Could these lands someday be mine?
“Only if I make it so,” he whispered, putting an end to his musings.
From the glove box he removed three virgin burner phones. He powered up the first and saw a reasonably strong signal. He next brought his secure phone to life, and after double-checking it wasn’t connected to any network, he navigated to a menu of three carefully edited voice recordings. He queued up the first file, the one with the female voice, then dialed 999 on the first burner.
As the connection ran he held his breath: calling emergency services in Sudan was rather like summoning a plumber to fix a failed water main. In his favor: a rapid and efficient response was not required.
A dispatcher came on the line, his voice reedy and distant. He was almost certainly in El-Obeid, the capital of North Kurdufan. As he had practiced many times, Sultan nested the phones together and played the recording.
He’d procured the woman’s services easily—six bead necklaces from the blanket that was her shop, purchased at the end of a slow day. After that transaction, he’d told her she had a particularly mellifluous voice. I produce a radio program in Jordan. We’ve been looking for a voice actress for a new series. Would you mind reciting a script into my phone for later evaluation? The woman would not have smiled more broadly if she’d stumbled upon a bag of gold in the street. She went through six takes as he coached her to achieve just the right mix of clarity and urgency.
Now, listening to the playback, he thought she was really rather good. Her harried account of a tragedy traveled less than an inch to the only audience she would ever have, ending in a flurry of fearful sobbing. The dispatcher was midway through his first question when Sultan ended the call abruptly.
He turned the phone off and threw it through the window into the desert. He began driving again, ever watchful for other vehicles. The most troubled areas were behind him, but in Sudan it was always best to remain wary. Ten minutes later, on the far side of Burush, he went through the exercise twice more. The other two voices were male, obtained through similar contrivances in the slums of Khartoum. Both were convincing, panicked one-line messages that reinforced the woman’s call. A few added details. Slightly different background noise. Those burners, too, went skipping into the desert afterward.
With another portion of his mission complete, Sultan double-checked the gas gauge. Satisfied, he settled in for the balance of his journey. East to Khartoum for fuel and dinner, then northeast into the night.
And twelve hours later, the shoulder of the Red Sea.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The back room of Achmed’s house was even more of a bachelor dump than the front. A warped box fan near the closed window chewed up air with a vengeance. There was a sheetless mattress on the floor, and boxes had been stacked against every wall. Clothes littered the floor like leaves beneath an elm in autumn. His first thought was that Achmed hated to do laundry. Then Slaton realized many of the shirts still had tags, and it all fell into place. A smuggler who trafficked textiles never needed to do laundry.
The laptop looked brand new, and was already up and running. Slaton pushed aside empty soda cans and half a bag of potato crisps to make room on the desk. He clicked on the mouse and the screen came to life. Thankfully there were no passwords. He made sure the micro SD card was locked to prevent corruption of the data, then plugged it into the port.
“Let’s hope the card isn’t password protected or encrypted,” he said.
“If it doesn’t work,” Ludmilla replied, “I can tell you much of what was said at the meeting.”
“I’m su
re you can, but hearing the transcript would be better. It might help you remember more. I think there’s a good chance the recording will be unprotected. You told me Petrov’s man came to collect the shoe, so they probably never expected anyone to get their hands on the raw data.”
A menu of what was on the stick came up on the screen. Slaton saw three audio files. He played the first and heard a man speaking in Russian.
“What is he saying?”
“I don’t recognize the voice, but he is only counting.”
“That’s good, a system test. I’m guessing they would have preferred to transmit from the mike directly to a more secure system, but the room you were in had probably been caged by the Syrians to prevent electronic emissions—that would leave no choice but a hard recording.”
The second file was similar, but slightly more muffled—perhaps a test after the recording unit had been installed in the shoe. The third file was much larger than the other two.
Slaton opened it.
The quality of the recording was good. He not only heard Petrov and Rahmani, but also Kravchuk’s muted translations. Less audible was the voice of the other interpreter, Sofia Aryan. Ludmilla had already explained her fate.
Because Slaton was not fluent in either Arabic or Russian, he stopped and started the recording repeatedly to allow Ludmilla to translate. The audio began during the premeeting photo op, which according to Ludmilla was the usual grip-and-grin, followed by some empty banter while the heads of state posed for cameras.
Once the doors closed, however—clearly heard in the recording—things quickly turned more interesting. The exchange began cagily, talks of a delivery and Iran being surrounded by enemies. Then it turned more specific.
Rahmani: “How deadly is it?”
Petrov: “It makes Novichok look like weed killer.”
Rahmani: “And it can be aerosolized?”
Petrov: “My technicians guarantee it. (Pause) This agent will provide you a strong new capability, but I will say what I’ve said before … chemical weapons must only be used for defensive purposes. I trust you would never employ them unlawfully. The international community is watching, as they should be.”
