The Nabatean Secret

by J C Ryan

  Was this guy for real? A CIA undercover agent?

  Before long, Piero spotted a small coffee shop and stopped, gesturing for everyone to get out. They followed Piero into the shop to order, and when Piero turned to Dylan with raised eyebrows, he said, “Cappuccino for my crew,” thinking it was the most Italian coffee he knew of.

  Piero snorted. These ignorant Americans didn’t know it was rude to order anything other than espresso after ten a.m. He turned to the barista and said, “Otto caffè, grazie.” Eight coffees, thank you.

  It would be his pleasure to teach the Americans. He noted with delight that Carter and Mackenzie already knew the proper etiquette, but he instructed Dylan and the rest. Taking the tiny cup holding the equivalent of two shot glasses of strong coffee, he remained standing at the counter as he gulped it down in two swallows. His audience followed suit.

  When he finished his coffee, he ordered eight arancini, which the barista put in a paper bag and handed to him. It had taken less than five minutes in and out of the shop, and they were back on the road and on their way to Matera.

  Dylan was wondering what was in the bag when Piero handed it to Mackenzie and asked her to hand it out to everyone. The little balls of deep-fried bread crumbs holding who-knew-what were new to Dylan and his crew.

  Carter and Mackenzie had enjoyed them on their previous trip to Italy, so Carter bit into it, revealing a ball of rice stuffed with what Piero called ragù. Unlike the bottled spaghetti sauce known by the brand name in the US, this was meat and tomato sauce laced with mozzarella and peas.

  The result was magical!

  Dylan and his men wolfed theirs down and wished there were more. All of them decided there and then they were hooked on this little delicacy and would eat as much of it as often as they could while they were in Italy.

  In practically no time, they arrived in Matera, only forty miles from the airport. As before, Mackenzie had upgraded their accommodation to a five-star hotel, the Palazzo Gattini. This time Dylan had no objections. If Bill was okay with it, he certainly was okay with it too.

  The operatives were in double rooms on each side of Carter and Mackenzie’s suite, while he, Kyle Fields, the pilot, and Piero were directly across the hall.

  Carter had booked a suite so they’d have space for all of them to meet when required. This was the most delicate part of the operation.

  Rossi finally read his instructions from Bill. He’d had enough of an idea of the importance when he heard the number of bodyguards accompanying Carter and Mackenzie that he’d come prepared with the weapons they’d need.

  When he was done reading, he burned the paper in the fireplace of his room and got the gear ready.

  An hour after they checked in, Rossi became all business as he handed each of the bodyguards a Glock G43 subcompact gun. They were ultra-concealable, accurate, and most important, comfortable for shooters regardless of hand size. He also handed each of them three six-round magazines as they’d had in Jordan.

  After some discussion, they agreed to have a guided walking tour of part of the Sassi, the old city, after lunch.

  Carter had a good idea where it was, but they’d only wander around until they “found” it, and that would be the following morning. Until then, they’d be American tourists, a little clueless.

  Chapter 59 - Be rid of them for good

  May 5

  On the day after questioning Zachariah Sachs, the leader of the group who’d done so received a disturbing report from one of his team. They’d fallen almost a day behind in matching faces with the names and passports of visitors to Petra but were nearly caught up. Even more disturbing, for the first time in the ten years he’d been running the program, there was a mismatch.

  “What do you mean, a mismatch?” he roared, causing the man who’d brought the bad news to cringe.

  “Sayyidi, it is just as I say. The facial recognition identifies this man as John Ellis. But his passport says he is Rodger Faye. I fear this man has a false passport.” He bowed low, hoping to avoid another outburst from his superior.

  The leader called in his entire staff and harangued them about falling behind, since the records at passport control showed Rodger Faye had left Jordan the day before. Then he dismissed them curtly to do a more thorough search for the days when Rodger Faye was in the area.

  The team worked feverishly for half an hour, isolating the photos of Faye and those traveling with him. The leader began to get a bad feeling when he realized these were the people he’d questioned Zachariah Sachs about just yesterday. Even more so when the photos were enlarged, enhanced, and run through the program again. This time, they found two more mismatches. One was Chris Faure according to his passport but Kyle Fields according to the facial recognition system, a nobody, at least a nobody on their watch lists.

  But the other was a big problem. Carter Devereux. The Arab leader turned as pale as the pigments in his olive-colored skin would allow. He’d be lucky to keep his head for this, much less his job. Hiding it would make things even worse. He must report immediately. With a trembling hand, he picked up his satphone to report to his immediate superior over a secure line.

  In less than fifteen minutes, the order came back. Pick up Sachs and force him to reveal who these people really were and what they really wanted. Name, rank, and serial number if applicable—in short, every bit of information on every member of the party. Above all, what were they doing in Petra?

  There’d been no order for the leader to step down, for which he was grateful. Perhaps it wasn’t so serious after all. But he’d be worried until the matter was resolved.

  Half an hour later, two canvas-covered troop carrier trucks blew into Sachs’s camp at full speed. The twelve soldiers within jumped out and rounded up Sachs and his research team at gunpoint.

  “What is this?” Sachs cried. “My permits are valid. You have no right!” He stopped protesting as the man who’d questioned him the day before stepped forward.

  “You lied to us. You will come with us peacefully, or you and your entire team will be arrested.”

  “But I didn’t! I told you everything I know,” Sachs protested, though his stomach was in turmoil at the lie of omission. No one had asked him about guns, and he hadn’t mentioned them or his meeting with Friedman.

  Now he regretted getting involved at all. His students were at risk. There was nothing to do but go with these dangerous-looking Arabs.

  As an Israeli, he could be in very deep trouble.

  Sachs was even more worried when they placed a black bag over his head while driving away from his camp. He’d seen the videos, hideous as they were. But those awful events had taken place in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, not in Jordan though, which was considered one of the safer Middle Eastern countries.

  He tried to relax and tell himself the bag was simply to keep him from knowing where they were going. But that alone was worrying enough.

  When the trucks stopped, Sachs was dragged out of his seat and thrown to the ground. He felt the bag snatched from his head and blinked in the unremitting sunlight. When he could focus again, his heart sank. There were no buildings to be seen, no road even. They were somewhere in the desert, but he had no idea where or even in what direction he’d walk to find civilization if he survived the questioning.

  The same man who’d questioned him before stepped forward and backhanded Sachs across the face. “That is just a small taste of what is to come if you don’t answer truthfully.”

  Sachs reeled with the blow but didn’t fall. He looked the man in the face and said, “I have told you everything I know. Please, I have no idea what to say.”

  The next blow came from the opposite direction. “We know your visitors were traveling under false passports. What are their true names?”

  “I don’t know! I swear it!”

  “One of them was Carter Devereux. Am I to understand you, an archaeologist, did not know who he was?”

  “I saw no one I recognized as the famous Doctor
Devereux. If I had known—”

  Whatever Sachs had intended to say was cut off by a vicious blow to his stomach. He doubled over and fell to the ground.

  The questions came in rapid succession, and by the time Sachs’s badly beaten, half-dead body was dumped on the Israeli side of the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge border crossing between Jordan and Israel, he’d given up nothing except that he’d armed the visitors at the direction of an acquaintance, the same Ben Freidman he’d mentioned as having referred them to him.

  His last conscious thought was the hope his students were safe.

  ***

  The news of Devereux’s excursion to Petra and intention to go on to Petras made its way up the chain of command and finally reached Mathieu Nabati while Sachs was still being questioned.

  Upon hearing it, Nabati threw a temper tantrum that rivalled the worst of his mother’s. Only after a priceless Ming Dynasty vase lay shattered on his floor did he turn icy.

  The Devereuxs were running around unchecked in the Middle East and Mediterranean, and not a word had Russell McCormick reported. The man had become useless and could now number his days in the single digits if Mathieu had any say in it. As soon as he’d issued orders to his contacts in the Middle East to track down the Devereux party, he’d urge his mother to give him permission to terminate McCormick, whose incompetence was an embarrassment to the Nabateans

  Mathieu gave some thought to his own failures. Time and time again, Carter Devereux and those around him had escaped his clutches. Mathieu wasn’t sure how much longer his mother would put up with the failures.

  He didn’t suppose she’d have him killed, but she was certainly capable of sidelining him and taking over his job herself. She’d done it for a very long time before he came of age, and she was very good at it.

  It was days like this that he missed the uneventful lifestyle of a small banker in Zürich.

  However, he must shake off this disappointment and deal with the Devereuxs. He paced as he analyzed the information he had. If Devereux and his wife were traveling in disguise and flying with fake passports and a team of five others, there must be a good reason for it.

  That they’d visit Petra, the holiest of Nabatean sites, made his stomach roil. What were they doing there, if not attempting to learn Nabatean secrets? And then to go on to Petras. That meant they’d learned a fact not widely known, though not entirely a secret. In their heyday, Nabateans boasted a thriving community of merchants and traders in Petras.

  It was imperative he catch up to the Devereuxs, wherever they were. It didn’t take much imagination to determine that their jet would have been similarly disguised, and his contacts should be able to give him information about a new call sign and markings. That was the first step.

  In fact, it took less than half an hour to have that information in hand and then to trace the movements of the jet. They’d arrived in Amman on May 2, left on May 4 for Petras, and then, what?

  Matera? There were no Nabateans in Matera.

  What’s Devereux up to?

  On second thought, Mathieu wasn’t so quick to dismiss the possibility that Devereux was following a lead the Nabateans didn’t know about. The man had an annoying habit of digging up things where they were not supposed to be. The evidence was strong that Devereux’s trip had everything to do with investigating Nabatean history. He had to be stopped.

  And that was Mathieu’s brief. Carter Devereux, his wife, and more than a few of his associates were thorns in the sides of the Council of the Covenant of Nabatea, and as such, their lives were forfeit. It didn’t matter what they were looking for.

  Matera was as good a place as any to assassinate them.

  This time, he wouldn’t use spetsnaz troops. They had proven themselves incompetent on the Freydís mission and had no loyalty. As far as he was concerned, they were a bunch of loudmouth, unendurable, vodka-drinking, insolent, superstitious, overrated nincompoops.

  This time, he’d use professional assassins, of which he had no shortage. And he’d send three without telling any of them there were two others with the same brief. As he communicated his orders, he provided the assassins with photos of the targets as they were disguised, the name of the hotel where they were staying, and the prices on their heads.

  Carter Devereux, as the driving force behind the campaign against the Nabateans, was most valuable at two million dollars. His wife, almost an equal thorn, should not be so difficult to kill. Therefore, her price was one million. Out of sheer spite, Mathieu offered a quarter million for each member of the team around them. It would soothe his ruffled feathers to take out all of them, and the extra incentive to kill as many as possible would feed his assassins’ greed.

  In a city of only sixty thousand permanent population and a few thousand tourists at any given time, it should be easy to hide in plain sight and for the assassins to blend in as well. It didn’t matter whether the targets died from apparent accidents or frank murder, so long as they did die.

  He just wanted to be rid of them for good.

  Chapter 60 - I’ll go to your ranch with you

  May 2 to 5

  Bill Griffin was due at the Oval Office at nine a.m. on May 2. He’d had a good night’s sleep for a change, having left Carter and his team in Dylan’s capable hands. They’d left the night before, and the only thing on the to-do list for this morning was a report from Sebastian Birch to the President on his progress with Michelle Davis.

  The President had invited Bill to sit in on that meeting as an interested party, though that invitation should have come through the DNI himself. The fact that Bill was much closer to the President than his boss proved the near-irrelevance of the position. Bill had nothing against his nominal boss. He just didn’t think the man was effective in his mission. Still, it was better to send Birch than to go himself to that harpy’s nest.

  Birch’s report proved him right. As Birch detailed the disastrous meeting with Senator Davis, quoting much of it verbatim, the President and Bill came to the same conclusion independently. As soon as Birch had left the Oval Office, Bill voiced it.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked

  “Probably. How do you want to do it?” the President responded.

  “Let’s get Sean in here and get his buy-in, then give him the task.”

  It took an hour to locate Sean, who was having a bit of a sleep-in with his phone off after his late night. Nevertheless, he arrived at the White House in short order after his secretary personally rousted him at home. There, the President had Bill outline their plan.

  “McCormick has been a wash. We need to get him out of the way so we can use the resources on more productive tasks. I assume you can handle that with no further direction?”

  “Out of the way alive?” Sean responded.

  “I won’t condone an assassination on an American national,” Grant answered.

  “Gotcha. I’ll take care of it.”

  Bill shot Sean a frown for his informal address, but the President didn’t seem bothered.

  “The second thing is, we’re going to have to spike Davis’s plans for her hearing somehow. President Grant and I think the best way to do that will be to bring the Devereuxs out of hiding and put them before the oversight committee. What’s their status?”

  “They’re out of pocket right now, as you know, but they’ve already been notified they need to be back for the hearing. It won’t be a problem. However, I wouldn’t feel right about doing it unless they’re granted immunity for their testimony.”

  “I have no objection to that,” the President said. “We already know they aren’t guilty of anything, but I wouldn’t put it past Michelle to try to pin something on them. Let’s keep that under wraps, though. It will be my pleasure to watch her squirm when she learns of it at the last minute.”

  “Sounds like there’s a story behind that remark,” observed Sean, who was unaware of the bad blood between the President and the Senator.

  “Old story. S
he did something stupid eight years ago when we were both running for this office,” Grant said. “I’ve forgiven her, but she seems determined to nurture the grudge. And if she wants to go another round, then I’ll oblige her.” Grant’s predatory grin was the last bit of explanation Sean would get.

  “If that’s all, I’ll get right on the other matter,” Sean said discreetly.

  “That’s all for now, and thanks for coming so quickly.”

  ***

  Sean reflected that he should have known Bill wouldn’t want McCormick dead, even if the President hadn’t made that perfectly clear. He’d been of no use to find the Security Council leak, and it was a waste of time and resources to keep tabs on him. But he might be of some use to testify against the traitor when he was found, as well as against the Nabateans. Therefore, he couldn’t be arrested without letting on to their quarry that the CIA was onto them.

  Two things needed to happen. They had to get a better look at that black box, and McCormick had to disappear; and although the two matters were linked, he had separate ideas to handle them.

  Before he did anything else, Sean sent overnight mail to his brother, Jared. Jared lived on a ranch in central Colorado, fifty miles or so west of Colorado Springs, where he raised alpaca. Jared had been cooperative a time or two before and would be glad of the extra hand. Along with the briefing letter, Sean included a check for McCormick’s keep and a separate letter for McCormick.

  Sean had to work quickly for the timing to be right. What he planned for McCormick had to be timed precisely to avoid endangering the man’s life. He reported to Bill when he had all the elements in place.

  “Do you need to inform Alec Burnett, so the FBI won’t go nuts hunting for him?”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll tell him McCormick’s going to disappear but will be all right. Anything else you want me to give him? Like the location where you’ll be holding him?”