The Matarese Countdown

by Robert Ludlum

  Julian Guiderone, dressed in an aba, thobe, and ghotra, and wearing large dark glasses, walked down the crowded Al Barrani Boulevard looking for the sign that would tell him he had reached his destination.

  There it was! A blue fleur-delis on a small white banner hanging in the storefront window of a jewelry shop. The son of the Shepherd Boy paused to light a cigarette in front of the glass; it allowed him to slowly glance up and down the street, his eyes searching for the unusual. A man or a woman whose eyes were on him. Such was the danger of the conference that was about to take place on the second floor of the store. No one, no one outside of those conferring could know the purpose of the meeting about to begin. Should even a rumor be floated, it could spell disaster.

  Satisfied, Guiderone stamped out his cigarette and walked inside, instantly holding up three fingers waist high in front of his robes. The clerk behind the counter nodded twice and gestured with his head to a dark red velvet drape on his right. Julian acknowledged with a slight bow and proceeded through the curtain that concealed a staircase. He climbed the narrow steps, as always annoyed by the impediment of his injured leg, the limp restricting his swiftness. At the top of the stairs he looked around at the three doors on the second floor; he saw the blue dot on a brass doorknob and awkwardly maneuvered his way around the curved railing toward it. He stood still briefly except for his hands, which roamed under his robes checking his two weapons, a small 25 caliber automatic on his right, and a fluted grenade like missile on the left that when hurled against a wall exploded a gaseous substance lethal to any who inhaled it.

  Guiderone reached for the brass knob, twisted it, swung the door open, and remained in the frame, studying the room. There were four men all dressed in bedouin robes around a table, each wearing a desert veil cloth, a protection against sandstorms, here a protection against identity. Julian had no need for such a device. He wanted all to know the face of the son of the Shepherd Boy, for if they disobeyed, that face would haunt them until each took his last breath, which could come any hour or any minute from the moment of disobedience.

  "Good morning, gentlemen, or is it now afternoon?" he said, entering and taking the chair nearest the door.

  "I trust that you, all of you, have thoroughly checked the security of our meeting place."

  "The room is bare but for our chairs and this table," replied the Arab at the opposite end from Guiderone, the brocaded gold on his ghotra signifying a chieftain's status.

  "The walls have been examined by our subordinates and deemed clear of listening devices."

  "And what about yourselves? Ourselves? Desert robes can conceal so many things, can't they?"

  "Despite the times," said another to the left of Julian, "the ancient rules of that same desert prevail. A traitor's punishment is still decapitation by dagger, excruciatingly slow in its work. None of us would shirk at executing another, and each of us knows it."

  "That's succinct, to say the least. So let's proceed. Since nothing can be written down, I believe each of you, as leader of your faction, has an oral report to give me, am I correct?"

  "You are," answered a third member of the conference, at the far end of the table.

  "They may appear to be repetitive as each essentially delivers the same information-"

  "Then in the interests of brevity," interrupted the last man, diagonally across the table on Julian's right, "since each of us has a price on his head, and none cares to remain here any longer than necessary, why not state the general information, each following up with geographical specifics?"

  "An excellent idea," agreed the son of the Shepherd Boy, "but allow me to compliment all of you on the obvious. You speak my language far better than most of my countrymen."

  "You are a polyglot society of vastly undereducated people," said the Arab chieftain at the end of the table.

  "We are different, far different.

  I, for one, read law and international jurisprudence at Cambridgealong with many others of my Islamic brothers."

  "And I am a physician, University of Chicago's School of Medicine, residence and practice in Stanford-among several hundred other Muslims over the years," added the man on the apparent leader's right.

  "I held the chair of medieval studies at a university in Germany several years after my doctorate from Heidelberg," quietly noted the impatient member.

  "My credentials are less impressive," said the fourth delegate, "but perhaps more pragmatic. I am an electrical engineer and worked on major projects for firms dealing with governments and private industry. I pray for the day I can return and build in our own homeland."

  "Fascinating," mumbled Guiderone, scanning the dark eyes of the four Arabs.

  "You're the elite of the Middle East, yet they call you terrorists."

  "Others prefer the term 'freedom fighters," which is far more accurate," corrected the chieftain.

  "The Hagganah and the Stern Group simply had more apologists in the West than we do, and we continue to do what we do, for those who should be our allies constantly make deals with our mutual enemies. It's revolting."

  "They'll think twice before entering into such negotiations after we've struck," said the restless man, "so why don't we get down to business?"

  "Splendid," agreed the son of the Shepherd Boy, "and since you're eager to do so, why don't you begin with the general information applicable to you all."

  "With pleasure, sir," said the impatient former scholar, "especially since you are one of our most generous benefactors.. .. Our units are in training in twenty-four locations, from the true Yemen to the Baaka Valley, all in deserts and waterfronts beyond the scrutiny of enemies and infiltrators. Also, we have learned a lesson from the Jews at Entebbe: Precision is the key to our operations. Thanks in part to your financing, mock installations have been built both on desert sand and in the water. The teams are under the leadership of our most experienced military personnel as well as experts in intelligence, infiltration, and sabotage. When the hour comes to strike, we will operate in unison, a conflagration the world will never forget, never be able to expunge from history."

  "Confident words, my friend," said Guiderone, nodding his head slowly.

  "Now to specifics. Shall we begin with your counterpart across from you?"

  "With even greater pleasure," replied the physician trained in Chicago with an enviable residency and practice in California.

  "My units' targets are in Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, the absence of prejudice a mark of our universality. Ten thousand oil wells will be put to flames, making the Kuwait disaster a minuscule campfire."

  "My teams are concentrating on the major Saudi fields from AdDawadimT to Ash Shadra to the wells north of "Unayzah," said the electrical engineer.

  "Then to the tankers in the Persian and Oman gulfs anchored offshore in fueling ports from Al Khiran to Matrah and Muscat-" "Thus including the Emirates, yes?"

  "Of course, all of them; the sultans know nothing."

  "And I will oversee the ports in the eastern waters," added the scholar of medieval studies from Germany, his eyes bright above his desert veil.

  "Descending from Bandare Deylam south to Bandare "Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. As the wells are destroyed, so will be millions upon millions of tons in the ports."

  "I save for myself," said the bedouin sheikh at the opposite end of the table from the unmasked son of the Shepherd Boy, "all the exports loaded off the shores of Israel, hundreds of ships in the harbors of Tuilkarm, Tel Aviv, and Rafah, their merchandise-produce, machinery, and illegal armaments-blown up in concert. The monied Zionists will break any treaties to fill their treasuries with shekels. We will put a stop to it, and watch the money lending banks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv plummet into chaos!"

  "You can assure us of this?" asked Guiderone.

  "As my name is Al Khabor Hassin, which you well know, and therefore also know that I am the Protector of the Hassinites, from which you Westerners derive the word assassin. Never underestimate our power of death
."

  "That's very enlightening, as well as quite melodramatic," said Julian softly, his right hand reaching unobtrusively under his robe.

  "And do you feel, as Protector of the tribe of the Assassins, that you will have lived up to your position?"

  "Naturally! It is my victory over the despised Israel!"

  "And no one can do it but you?"

  "My troops are in place. The seas will have no night, for weeks, even months! The fires everywhere, from the gulfs to Cairo, will light up the land like the morning sun. Everywhere in the Middle East. It is our victory!"

  "Whose victory, Al Khabor Hassin?" asked Guiderone quietly.

  "Ours. All of ours. And mine, above all mine! For I am the leader!"

  "That's what I thought," said the son of the Shepherd Boy as he raised his automatic above the table and fired twice, the shots muted by the caliber, but accurate. Al Khabor Hassin, killed instantly, fell to the floor, blood pouring from two holes in his forehead. The remaining three at the table shot back in their chairs, stunned, their bodies rigid, their dark eyes staring at Guiderone.

  "He would have destroyed us all," said Julian, "for his cause was himself. Never trust a leader who proclaims himself a leader before anyone else does. His maniacal ego gives away too much. He cannot control it."

  "What should we do with him?" asked the practical engineer.

  "Take him out to his desert and let the carrion decide."

  "And then what?" said the physician from California.

  "Reach his second in command and send him to me. I'll evaluate him and if he's acceptable, I'll explain that the overstressed Al Khabor Hassin suffered cardiac arrest. It's not difficult."

  "Nothing else has changed, I trust," said the medieval scholar from Germany.

  "Not a thing," answered Guiderone.

  "Al Khabor was correct. Whole areas of the Mediterranean will not see the dark of night for weeks as the fires burn. It will be a symmetry of horror, all the instruments reaching a crescendo of terror. It will also be the same in the North Sea, oil rigs by the dozens blown up by our personnel in Scotland, Norway, and Denmark. When the fires die, the civilized world as we know it will be in chaos. It will be ours to control ... on a rational, therapeutic basis. For above all, we are benevolent."

  "When do you project that will be?" asked the terrorist scholar.

  "The first of the New Year," replied Guiderone.

  "We begin the countdown tonight."

  Cameron Pryce knocked on the door of Scofield's suite in the main house. It was five-thirty in the morning and Antonia, suppressing a yawn, admitted him. She was in flannel pajamas, for which she apologized.

  "I'll put on a bathrobe and tell the grouch you're here. I'd also better put on some coffee; he's a monster without it."

  "That's not necessary, Toni-" "Of course it is," she interrupted, "maybe not for you, but for him.

  You wouldn't be here at this hour unless it was necessary."

  "It is."

  "Then come on in, but plug up your ears while I start the coffee and wake him up." Pryce followed her into the tiny kitchen alcove.

  "He's that tough?"

  "Imagine a gargoyle roaring. He's used to tropical hours, Cam. Ten or ten-thirty is synonymous with the break of day."

  "You know, you speak English so terribly well."

  "Blame it on Bray. When we decided we should stay together, he flew in dozens of those records, then tapes on How to Speak, et cetera, et cetera. He went to Harvard, but now claims my grammar is better than his. Frankly, he's right. He doesn't know a dangling participle from an adverb."

  "Neither do I," said Cameron, sitting down at the small table as Antonia manipulated the coffee machine.

  "But if you'll allow me a moment of curiosity-which you damn well may refuse-how did you decide to 'stay together," as you put it?"

  "I suppose the obvious thing is to say love," answered Antonia, turning away from the white plastic coffee appliance and looking at Pryce.

  "And certainly there was that, both physically and emotionally, but there was more, so much more. Brandon Scofield was a man in turmoil, hunted by both his superiors and his enemies, each wanting his execution. He could have made-he and Taleniekov could have made numerous compromises that would have eliminated those demands for their deaths. Neither did, for they had found the truth of the Matarese.

  The truth, Cameron. So many in private life and in governments were afraid to follow them, for too many had been corrupted.. .. Bray and Vasili said to hell with them, and they never stopped. Taleniekov died so we could escape the carnage, and I was left with a giant, an unassuming, thinking man, in many ways a gentle man until violence is required, and he was perfectly willing to give his life for me. How could I not love that man, how could I not revere him always?"

  "He doesn't strike me as a man who wants reverence. He seems to reject it."

  "Of course he does. Because it reminds him of the bad days, as he calls them. The days when the gun was the equalizer-you killed, for if you didn't, one of your own would be killed."

  "Those days are in the past, Toni. The Cold War is over. That isn't done anymore."

  "In nightmares he still remembers. He cut short the lives of the young and the old with a bullet. It never leaves him."

  "If he hadn't, our own would have been killed. He knows that, too."

  "I suppose he does. I think it's the young fanatics who have always bothered him. They were too young, too vulnerable, to be responsible for their insane commitments."

  "They were killers, Antonia."

  "They were children, Cameron."

  "I'm not equipped to solve Bray's problems, and incidentally, that's not why I'm here."

  "Of course not. Why are you here, at this hour?"

  "Why don't you get the gargoyle up? It'll save time and I won't have to repeat myself. Frankly, I don't want to stay here too long in case I'm under someone's scope."

  "Really?" said Toni, her eyes locked with Cam's.

  "Really," replied Pryce softly.

  Five minutes later a disheveled Scofield walked into the alcove, followed by Antonia. Both were in bathrobes-Toni's a neat white terry cloth; Brandon's a relic, clean but torn in several places.

  "If we'd gone to a decent hotel," he said curtly, "I could have stolen a robe.. .. What the hell is this, son? It better be good or I'll put you on report or whatever these military idiots do-where's some coffee?"

  "Sit down, darling, I'm getting it for you."

  "So talk, Cam. I haven't willingly gotten up at this hour since a bad night in Stockholm when a young lady had the wrong room but the right key."

  "Braggart," said Antonia, bringing two cups of coffee to the table as she sat down.

  "None for you?" asked Pryce, nodding at his cup.

  "I'm a tea drinker and I'm out-" "And I'm pretty damned curious," Scofield broke in.

  "Speak, young man."

  "You remember my telling you that our Lieutenant Colonel Montrose appeared to be dogging my tracks?"

  "Sure, and I recall suggesting she had the hots for you."

  "Which I dismissed out of hand, she didn't. Believe it or not, I know the signs and we're not in Stockholm. So when Bracket was killed last week and she was put in command of security, I figured it was a good time to reverse the procedure. She had far more responsibilities and her concentration had to be split tenfold, besides which she's an overachiever and wants to make her mark at the Pentagon."

  "So you began tailing her, right?" Brandon leaned forward, his wrinkled eyes over the coffee cup suddenly alive.

  "Yes, very carefully and mostly late at night. Twice, the first time at three o'clock in the morning, the second at four-fifteen the next night, she left her quarters and walked down to the boathouse. There's a single, wire-meshed light in the ceiling over the Chris-Craft; both times she turned it on. I crept up to the small right window and looked inside. On each occasion she pulled out her cellular phone and made a call."

&nbs
p; "That's goddamned stupid," said Scofield.

  "Those frequencies can be picked up by anyone with a radio scanner! They're only to be used as communications of last resort."

  "That's what I thought," agreed Pryce.

  "I was also given to understand that only she and Bracket and you and I had those phones."

  "Exactly," confirmed Bray.

  "All other telephones are monitored, courtesy of Frank Shields. I wonder who she was calling."

  "That's why, using my authority as the CIA senior officer, I drove into Easton this afternoon, ostensibly to pick up newspapers and magazines."

  "Why the hell did you get me U.S. News and World Report and those financial rags? You know I don't give a damn about that stuff."

  "They didn't have Penthouse, the National Enquirer, or any comic books. However, the literature notwithstanding, that wasn't why I went into town. I used a pay phone, called Frank in Langley, and asked him if he could trace the numbers called on Montrose's cellular. He said sure, all calls were billed. He told me to hang on, and in a minute or two he was back."

  "What did he find out?" asked an impatient Scofield.

  "Who'd she call?"

  "That's the funny thing. No one."

  "But you saw her," insisted Toni.

  "I certainly did, and I was emphatic about it. Shields told me to hold on again, and when he came back, he had some startling information.

  No calls were listed on Montrose's phone, but three were on Colonel Bracket's."

  "Those phones all look alike," said Bray.

  "She switched them!"

  "But why?" pressed Antonia.

  "Obviously to cover her ass, luv. But she didn't count on Bracket being killed. His cellular, at least the one he had with him, went back to Langley with the body, didn't it?"

  "Another surprise," said Cameron.

  "It didn't. Frank assumed that since you and I reached Bracket's and Denny's bodies first, one of us took it."