*****
The Pharaoh made another call at twelve o’clock, then he’d moved off westward out of view from the internet bar. Cameron had seen enough. The man was on a two hour reporting schedule, but there would be no chance of his discovering Fahd here. He did not want to run foul of the big Egyptian, and in any case he had things to do. Leaving the Pharaoh to the empty Hotel Agora, he walked south to the Metro station at Maubert
It took twenty minutes and two changes to arrive at the Filles du Calvaire station in the Marais District. Up on the street he turned north toward the tall pillar and statue in the Place de la Republique, but at the first café he encountered he turned in and took a table near the windows to watch the traffic for a bit.
The destination for the moment was the Hotel du Vieux Saule and General Fahd, but he would not go straight there, both for safety and because he needed to think. He was also hungry. He ordered a steak with green peppercorn sauce and a side order of fried potatoes. Sipping on a coke, he watched intently out the window.
Foot traffic was heavy, motor traffic heavier. Cameron slipped quietly into his state of un-focus and began a sweep of all that he could see. On this side of the street the view was pretty restricted. There was a news seller on the sidewalk next door, but he seemed very comfortable with his business, and at least one buyer appeared to know him and call him by name. A regular customer; this guy is OK. On the other side of the wide boulevard people flowed steadily in both directions, very few even pausing to look in the shop windows, nobody loitering. He looked up the facades of the buildings, finding mostly curtained windows. He scanned the roofline for a half block north and south. Nothing.
The phone on his hip vibrated once, then twice, shocking him out of his near trance. He popped it from the cradle and answered, “Hello?”
“Hello,” said a voice in American English, he thought. Cosmopolitan, though, no definite accent, perhaps just a hint of the mid-West. “What is the title of T.E Lawrence’s book about his time with the Arab revolt?”
Cameron nearly inhaled the mouthful of Coke, managed to clear his nose, coughed hard a couple of times. The voice on the end of the line was silent. Finally he gave the reply “Seven Pillars of Freedom.”
“Excellent Mr. Cameron. My name is Patrick Ripley, Mr. Smith gave me this number. The other you will already have recognized. I believe you wanted to meet?”
“Yes,” Cameron replied, trying to get his brain working. He hadn’t thought much about this, although he knew it was coming. He was very surprised it’d come so quickly.
“Will you pick the place, or shall I, Mr. Cameron?”
“I’ll pick the place, Mr. Ripley,” Cameron said. He paused a moment, and decided it was as good as anything else he was likely to come up with. “OK, listen. On the Boulevarde Du Strasbourg, number thirty-nine, about two blocks west of the Gare de L’Est, there is an Aikido dojo. It’s a martial arts thing, Ripley. There is a class at four o’clock today. We’ll meet there. Do you have a baseball cap?”
“Sure,” came Ripley’s reply. “Boston Red Sox. The dojo on Strasbourg, four o’clock, then. See you there, Mr. Cameron. Here’s my number in case you need to get hold of me before then.” He read off the number and Cameron wrote it down, then they rang off.
The food came as he continued to think. He’d found the dojo while at the internet bar this morning. Practicing on the road had become something of a hobby for him, and usually when he was on business he’d try to find a club where he could get at least one workout. It helped him stay in shape, otherwise the restaurant food would turn him into a marshmallow man. There were numerous internet sites that could search for Aikido dojo’s worldwide, so finding one in Paris had been easy, and he’d even been lucky to find one of his own style. The dojo would be a nice, public place to meet this Ripley, and the members of the club would be on “his” side, just in case. Aikido people were like that, in his experience. It would be a good place to meet.
Now he was munching on the fries and sorting through the next few days. There were three problems that wanted solving. First, this group in Paris. It would be nice to deal with them somehow, and he was counting on Ripley, or acquaintances of his, to come up with something on that front. Then, there was the problem for Fahd back in Saudi Arabia. Last, there was the problem of these teams of young Saudis. Those two problems could clearly not be solved in Paris, and no matter how else he tried to think of it, he always came back to the same place. He and Fahd would have to go to Saudi Arabia.
There was just no way around it. The best connection they had to help them find the network was Fahd’s nephew Saad, who was now, if the plan had been followed, holed up in the family compound in al-Ha’il. Saad was the link to the teams, the teams the link to the network, the network the key to a return to something like normal life for Fahd and family. The two problems were really pieces of one problem, Saad the key to both. There was no way around it. But, how to get there without being seen? How to work once they got there? These things he would have to ask Fahd, and perhaps Ripley. Alone, Cameron felt he was at the end of what he could do. It was time to play a team game.
Across the street, Rene LaPlante rounded the corner and turned south, then paused abruptly, his mind working at full speed. Something was not right, something had seized his attention, a half-remembered face, something out of place. He collected himself and began walking again nonchalantly, until he came to the first shop window and peered in to collect himself. “What is it?” he asked himself? “A face? But what did I see, and where?” It was part of the curse of his photographic memory: his eyes might see something, his brain recognize it at a subconscious level, and he was left with the eerie, almost frightened feeling that he was forgetting something important. Now he had that same feeling, but he was conscious that he was exposed here on the street, he’d made an obvious movement that would have been seen by anyone the least bit experienced. He could afford only a few more moments at this window, so he focused on its surface, using it as a mirror.
Behind him was empty sidewalk, the same on the opposite side of the street. He began a mental replay of his movements, trying to sort out when the warning signal in his head had fired. He shifted a step or two to his left, to get an angle in the glass that would let him look back up the street from where he’d come. He spotted the windows of the restaurant, the news seller on the street in front, no customers now. He could see nothing unusual in the restaurant windows, the angle was wrong for most of them, the sun glinting off them now made them as much mirror from here as was the glass a foot in front of his face. He considered retracing his steps, but thought better of it: too obvious. Instead, he chose to simply stow the eerie feeling as he very often had to do; there was no way to deal with it today in any other way. However, he made a mental note to be more observant when he passed this way again tomorrow, as he did every day, and to look into that restaurant for a cup of coffee in the morning to see if there might be anything helpful there. Nothing more could be done here, so he slumped his shoulders and shrugged the collar of his coat up higher on his neck against the gathering chill in the shade of the buildings, and turned along his way south toward home.
In the restaurant Cameron peered cautiously from behind the menu and saw LaPlante retreating down the sidewalk. Time to move, right now. He signaled for the bill, finishing his Coke, collecting coat and briefcase. He didn’t know the man’s name, of course, and he scolded himself that if there hadn’t been the abrupt movement, he would not have noticed him at all. But there was no doubt it had been the watcher from the airport . . .”was that just yesterday?” he wondered, confused by the jet lag and a little groggy from the heavy meal. It was nearly two o’clock, he wondered that he’d been here so long. “Lots to think about, I need sleep and tonight’s not going to be great for that, and that is one scary guy if it was me that made him start so,” he observed. In a few moments he was on the street
, walking with a feigned but noticeable limp and a little stooped, but briskly north to put distance between himself and the watcher, in case the latter might have doubled back.
He turned right at the first corner, looking for a metro station, preferably one with two lines and an interchange, but this wasn’t his part of Paris, so he would not be choosy. Nothing here. A block East and he turned North again, looking back West to clear his tail, which looked OK. He fell back into his own fluid walk. From the Metro system map in his pocket he chose the Republique station, two blocks away. It was perfect, six lines there. He stopped abruptly and moved between two parked cars, checking traffic both directions, but again clearing his tail. He crossed. Two minutes later he descended the steps to the station, wound through the maze standing on first one, then another platform, a third, and finally boarding the gold number three line for Arts et Metiers.
On the way he resolved to be more attentive despite the fatigue, and emerging onto the street once again he half-feigned confusion to give the place a good look-over. It was only one block to Fahd’s hotel, but fifty yards along this side of the street was a small grocery; he ducked in to buy some mints to clear his head and to watch for anything unusual for a moment. In Spanish he asked the clerk if he knew the phone number for the Vieux Saule, and in a moment he was dialing. Another pause and Fahd said, “Na'am?”which is “Yes?”
“Fi inglesi, ana abu Sean,” Cameron responded in Arabic. “In English, it’s me, father of Sean.”
“Paul, my friend, I was beginning to worry about you. All is well, I hope?” Fahd said in English.
“Fine, fine, abu Mohammed. Listen, I’m just down from your hotel, and I’ll be there in a few moments. Anything unusual there today?”
“No, no nothing, we are bored to tears, as you Americans say, nobody has been out all day, nobody has used the phone. Where are you calling from?”
“I’m just down the street at a grocery, but I have a cell phone, also one for you. Can you meet me in the lobby to talk for perhaps thirty minutes?
“Of course, I will see you there directly. You have not attacked anyone else today, have you now Paul?”
Cameron chuckled. “No, no I have not, not yet at least, but the day is still young, Abu Mohammed. I’ll see you in the lobby in five minutes. Masalaama.” He rang off. He’d been peering out the grocery window as he spoke, surveying the pavement, looking for anyone unusual. For some reason he was worried about the Pharaoh, the big Egyptian, and half-expected to find him lingering here in front of Fahd’s hotel, informed by some unbelievable providence of the new address. The sighting of LaPlante from the airport had shaken him, he did not believe in coincidence, not in a place as big as Paris, and he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do with the Egyptian if he was here. He was running out of time in any case, he had a meeting to make at four.
But the Pharaoh was either still in Saint Germaine outside the Agora or he’d given up for the day, in any case he was not to be seen here, so Cameron crossed to the other side of the street and walked into the Vieux Saule.
The lobby was small, like most such hotels, with polished sandstone floors inlaid with diamond-shaped tiles that looked like black slate. The ceiling was low and paneled in dark wood, but bright recessed lights cast a gleam off the brilliant floor and made the whole space seem alive with light. A heavy and gorgeous burled reception desk stood on his right, and a pretty receptionist smiled at him on the point of asking if he could be helped when the elevator opened and disgorged the smiling General Fahd.
The two shook hands warmly, as old friends, the receptionist looking on sat wondering, captivated by something in the man who’d just come in from the street. She could not quite place it, he moved with an air that contained both grace, speed, and . . .power? Perhaps that was it, that and the warm smile, the shining, piercing blue eyes. She wondered still as they disappeared into the small café.
“Listen, Abu Mohammed” Cameron began. “I have to get moving again soon, I am sorry to be in a rush. There is much to be done. First, I was at your hotel this morning, the other one, and there was someone there to watch for you, an Egyptian, I think. A big man, rough looking, nasty piece of business. Keep an eye out for him here, anytime before you leave the hotel, and if you see anyone like him, you should call me and remain indoors.”
Fahd looked concerned, but resolute. He said, “I shall. And you mentioned some mobile phones?”
“Yes, yes, here is one for you, and here is the number for mine. That one will need to be charged I think. Now, I’ve been thinking, Fahd. If ever we are to have you living in safety at home again, I think we’re going to have to go to Saudi Arabia, and soon. Have you talked to your son Ali? Have they made their move to Ha’il?”
“No, I have done nothing today but read newspapers and sleep, God preserve me. May I use this phone to call, Paul?”
At this Cameron smiled broadly, “Yes, courtesy of the US government.” He chuckled. “I seem to have an expense account of some size. Yes, call them after I’ve gone, and then call me and let me know how you find things there. I think we should probably go to Ha’il for starters, but I’m not sure how to get there. What I am pretty sure of is that we should not go by way of Riyadh or Dhahran, by airline I mean. What can you suggest in the line of another route?
Fahd thought a moment, the barest hint of a smuggler’s sly grin creasing the corners of his mouth. “Paul, I find you’ve become something entirely different from the honest fighter pilot I knew years ago. Well, we shall talk of that in my house in al Ha’il, with a great khopsa before us and all my relations around to eat it. Here is how we will do it, my friend . . .”
X. Saudi Arabia/Paris/Langley
The day had developed into one of those truly horrible days along the Persian Gulf coast: hot, the dry-bulb temperature around one hundred seventeen degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity was hovering at ninety three percent. The sky was not clear, but rather a milky haze seemed to cover it all around so that it looked white instead of blue, but there was no shade, at all, the merciless sun glaring through the shroud piling heat upon heat.
The blast of it took Mohammed’s breath away for a moment as he opened the door of the apartment in Al-Jubail, thirty kilometers north of Dhahran. The door closed quietly behind him, and he stood there on the balcony, adjusting his eyes to the glare and his lungs to the suffocating heat. He did not like the coast. His family came from the interior, Nejd, north of Riyadh, where the air was dry and even on a day like today the sky would be a deep blue, the hot breezes felt like a furnace blast but at least they did not leave you soaking with filthy sweat from your small clothes right through a freshly pressed thob. He found his sunglasses, adjusted his igaal to hold his head cloth at the just the jaunty angle he liked, turning to find the stairs for the four-floors’ walk to the street below.
As miserable as the heat made him, he was having a good day, now that he was over his misgivings with this mission. He still thought Khalid was asking him to take an incredible risk, but he had convinced himself it could be done, and his meeting here had set the last pieces in motion. The two brothers, Basir and Hamid, would help. They rounded out his team of six men, and together, they could take the General’s house and his family.
He hoped. But they could not do it tonight, which would not please Khalid, but as God willed, it could not be done. The other three men would come, but they were in Taif far to the West, and it would take them until tomorrow morning to arrive. Then there was preparation, planning, perhaps some shooting practice in the desert, food and sleep. Tomorrow night it would have to be, God willing. And, he had many things to think about. He’d already driven by the house once today, where all was quiet, but that was to be expected on such a filthy day. The women and the little ones would not want to be outdoors. They would sleep, eat, play, but all indoors. He had drawn a map, taken a few digital pictures, and he had a plan of attack and escape in his mind. B
ut he’d had to do this first, to be sure of the two brothers. Now he would return to his own apartment, in Khobar, to sketch out the plan, rehearse it in his mind, looking at the map and refining both so that he could show the men how it must be done. He needed to organize the weapons still this evening; not a difficult thing, but not simple either. He wanted pistols, all the same caliber, with silencers if he could get them, and knives for all the men. “Unlikely, though,” he thought ruefully. Their weapons were always a polyglot of whatever could be found, and nobody knew how to make a proper silencer anymore. “It is the price we pay for jihad, and God will reward us with victory, however.”
With this thought he reached his car and welcomed the steady flow from the air vents when it was running. Soon he was driving South on the four-lane highway, the high-rises of Khobar and Dhahran just visible in the heat-shimmer on the horizon. He was confident: all was progressing well, and he’d accomplished much in only a short afternoon. But he found himself thinking again, unbidden as he often did these days, of the sword flashing down in a wide arc to remove his head, his body buried in an un-marked grave, his mother wailing in their home in the north. He shook his head, muttered some verses from the Quran, forced the image away for the hundredth time. “By the Grace of God,” he said aloud, “we are the defenders of the faith. Allah will give us victory.” The speedometer said he was moving at one hundred thirty kilometers an hour. He squeezed down harder on the accelerator and the needle swung upward to one-sixty