Executive Actions (42 page)

H
e was being watched. But he didn’t know if the eyes belonged to Abahar Kharrazi’s men. And he couldn’t figure out which would be worse: The Secret Police personally torturing him with electrical devices or Walid cruelly clubbing him into submission. Sami desperately wanted out of Tripoli, but he couldn’t act hastily.

Instead, he took the path of least resistance. He casually sauntered around, spending his evening reading the books he bought and drinking the spiced teas that he had come to enjoy.

After three days he clearly identified the principal spooks; six of them playing a tag team game of hide and seek. They weren’t particularly good at what they were doing, which was to Sami’s benefit. So he decided to point that out.

“Why am I being followed?”

“What?” Walid Abdul-Latif answered. For the first time in memory, an underling actually dared to challenge him.

“I said, why am I being followed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go back to work.”

Sami stood his ground.

“I demand to be told.”

“You demand? Is that what you said?” Walid put down the German photo magazine he’d been reading. He pushed his chair away from his desk and stretched his legs out on the desktop.

“Yes, because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Walid laughed. “So, you’re being followed. Everybody’s watched at one time or another.”

“I don’t need to be watched. I work for you. You work for Abahar, son of our Great Brother Leader. We’re on the ‘inside.’” Sami defiantly declared.

Walid laughed. “Quite right. But it was your turn. I’ve had mine. But since you’ve smoked out your tails, probably more out of their ineptitude than your brilliance, perhaps you’re owed a break.”

“Get them off me. There is no reason.”

“Oh, there is always a reason. But you won’t see them again,” Walid said. “And like I said, get back to work.”

Sami nodded once and returned to his desk aware that he’d have to be even more careful next time. He couldn’t risk a contact today. And none tomorrow. Or the day after. ‘
You won’t see them again,’
is what Walid said. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be out there.

“Al salaam a’alaykum,”
the stranger said in greeting. “Is this seat taken, my friend?”

Sami looked around. There were other empty seats at the café, but the man was already pulling out the chair expecting certain hospitality. He looked to be forty years old, but maybe younger, definitely tired, weather beaten and haggard under his loosely fitting dirty sand-colored robe. The only thing odd was his beard. It seemed only recently grown where his overall impression suggested he should have been covered in a knotty growth.

“No. Help yourself.”

“Thank you. I am visiting from Ghadames and I am looking for work. Soon it will be too hard to find. Ramadan begins only two days from now.”

The man seemed to be telling him like he didn’t know.

“Yes,” said Sami. “We won’t be drinking like this in the daytime.”

Ramadan, the holiest of all Muslim holidays lasted a month. The devout fast from dawn to sunset for an entire month, eat only small meals and visit with friends at night. The observance falls on the ninth month of the Muslim calendar and much of the day-to-day life comes to a halt, replaced by a time of deep worship and personal contemplation.

“Much to pray for this year,” the man commented. “Praise be to Allah. Perhaps this new American president may be our hope for peace.”

“If he can be trusted,” Sami proposed.

“Ah, quite right. There is a saying, ‘Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.’”

Sami laughed. “The Great Satan would have us believe that all is well, then send our camels galloping away. Only to cause us further despair.”

The man signaled to a waiter for the same drink that Sami was sipping. A red tea. “But what if the Great Satan needed to hear something we said.” The man leaned into Sami. “How would such a message be communicated. A whisper may not be heard.”

Sami suddenly felt he was being lured in by an expert.
A false flag? One of Kharrazi’s men trying to trap me? Maybe.

“But we must always rely on our Leader, my friend,” Sami said cautiously.

“A great leader indeed, with rival sons.”

Why would he say that?
wondered Sami.
I am being baited.

“Perhaps we may one day chose between them. A difficult decision.”

“Allah has a saying about choosing leaders of peoples,” Sami responded straightening his body. “‘And your Lord creates and chooses whom He pleases, to choose is not theirs.’”

“Your knowledge of the Holy Qur’an is impressive, my friend. But what does Allah see for you? A trip perhaps?”

Sami Ben Ali froze. The question was much too pointed for a rhetorical aside.

“Who are you?”

The waiter arrived with the tea. The unknown man smiled. Sami noticed he had perfectly capped teeth and silver fillings; definitely not the work of an inadequately equipped Libyan dentist’s office.

“I am someone who seeks to learn from you.”

Sami asked his question again. “Who are you?”

“Someone who brings you news of lions that dare strike this year. They may fulfill their destiny.”

If Sami knew one thing, it was that the Detroit Lions were indeed vying for a playoff birth. The team that dominated football in the early 1950s had failed in all the years since. CNN International reported that it looked extremely possible this season.

The man speaking to him now in perfect Arabic probably could put him into a great 50-yard line seat at the Super Bowl.
He’s American.

“There is a story from the desert,” Sami offered more confidently. “It is a story of Imam Ali, who at the gate to the City of Knowledge, used to tell the Shiites who gathered, ‘Ask me about anything, for the Messenger of Allah taught me about one thousand doors of knowledge, each one of which opens one thousand more doors.’”

“It is enough that we meet one another now. We shall fast and worship. Join me in two days. Then the doors of knowledge will open for both of us.”

Sami smiled and thought about going home. He found a friend in his midst, hiding in plain sight

The mountain had just come to Mohammed.

Jack Evans was used to moving mountains to get what he needed. He literally dropped his man back into Libya three days earlier, forty-eight kilometers west of Tripoli along a secluded beachhead. An Army Apache attack helicopter off the USS
Carl Vinson
, literally hugged the ocean, before depositing Vinnie D’Angelo on the sand. The insertion took less than fifteen seconds and the copter never touched the ground. D’Angelo proceeded on foot to various check points and found Sami Ben Ali with relative ease. He also discovered the people following him, and he had to wait for a safe time to step out of the shadows. The extra days it took also allowed him to steal into an open apartment and shower away the sand which had weighed him down after his trek.

D’Angelo slept in the streets of the medina, as many did. He brought no particular attention to himself. He was sure of that. He looked completely different than his last visit, when, as Tomás Morales, he didn’t speak a word of Arabic. Now his mastery of the language, something he even kept from Roarke, served him on this visit.

At one point the day before, he saw his inquisitor from his previous mission. Colonel Yassar Hevit. He considered a swift act of revenge, but his sense of duty kept him focused.
Another day
, he promised himself. And so he lurked, watching and waiting for the chance to talk with Sami.

After the encounter, D’Angelo returned to a secluded park on the outskirts of Tripoli. He hadn’t been there before, but he had memorized the exact location where a hand held PDA/satellite with a floppy drive and e-mail capability had been stuffed arms’ length up a hollow tree trunk in a grove. He spent four hours in the park, resting, walking, praying on the rug he carried, and talking to himself before he made his way to his destination.

It was 2145 when he found the tree he sought. D’Angelo was certain he was alone, but to be safe he decided to take a long, refreshing pee. Should anyone be watching, a begger was just relieving himself. Simultaneously, he reached inside a hole in the tree at shoulder level and began groping for the device left for him.

D’Angelo felt a creepy tingling sensation.
Oh Christ, ants!
At first only a few, then dozens, then hundreds, crawling on his arm, up his sleeve and into his armpit. He closed his eyes, which helped him resist yanking his arm out. He had experienced worse. Far worse. But the sensation was unnerving.

Just then his fingertips touched a plastic bag. The CIA operative forced his arm in further, ignoring the bites of the ants. In one quick motion, he jerked the bag out.

D’Angelo shook the ants off and hoped that any eyes that might be trained on him would simply think he was shaking off his dick. He matter of factly tucked the bag under his garment, put himself back together and started away from the tree, flailing his arms every few seconds to get rid of the remaining ants.
There’s got to be a better way to earn a living.

An alert chimed from Jack Evans’ Cambridge Soundworks computer speakers. It signaled the delivery of a high priority encoded e-mail.

For the fourth straight night Jack Evans slept on the brown leather DeCoro couch opposite his desk. At least after the third night he ordered up sheets and blankets to make himself more comfortable. He figured over the next few weeks he’d be spending a lot more time at work than at home. While the subject of Sandman’s discovery remained unknown, Evans’ experience left him with an ever-nagging concern of its importance.

The CIA director wiped his eyes, got his bearings, and typed his password into his computer.

Most messages were deciphered by his staff under the strictest secrecy. But the president told him to keep this close to the vest. Very close. He never took exception with Morgan Taylor’s requests. And at this point he knew full well how explosive any information from Sandman would be.

The DCI copied the e-mail to a special program protected by multiple fire walls, and entered a number and letter sequence that would translate D’Angelo’s message. The process took two minutes, enough time for Evans to start a latte dripping on his coveted Baristacoffee maker.

By trade he was not a nervous man. He couldn’t be. But today he felt his heart pounding quicker as he waited to read the report.

Contact. Shrt. Watchrs. Xpct 2 days.

Evans had hoped for more, but the communiqué from the field reinforced what the CIA chief had seen over the live real-time satellite pictures. A tiny GPS radio transponder implanted in D’Angelo’s shoulder constantly signaled his location to the eyes and ears orbiting high above him. A satellite camera tracked him, down-linking the pictures without sound to a dish at Langley.

Evans had followed D’Angelo for days. The pictures clearly showed the operative’s insertion by the Apache, then his movements from the beach to Tripoli. He watched him sleep on the streets and finally sitting down with his contact. Evans even saw him shake off the ants, though he didn’t know what he was doing until an aide explained.

“Watchers.”
The word disturbed him. But two days was encouraging…
if it were true.

“It’s not good news.”

“Go.” Evans said gruffly.

“It’s rare, but it happens.”

“What happens?”

“Well, we don’t normally talk about the Mediterranean Sea in terms of hurricane force storms, but…”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Well, there’s an event I’m tracking. A band with potential cyclonic activitity,” the man said pointing to his charts. “And it looks like they’re in for a bad spell.”

Jack Evans was getting a primer on weather patterns in the Mediterranean Sea from Dutch Tetreault, the Company’s resident meteorologist. The fifty-nine-year-old metropolitan DC forecaster had worked for more than two decades in local television. However, when forty-eight was getting too old for TV he took his skills to a place where age didn’t matter. Now, eleven years later, Tetreault was an invaluable resource. Director Evans only wished he had a sunnier forecast.

“Most of the year, the Med is warm and comfortable. Of course, during the summer the Sahara is hotter than blazes. And winters get a little wet, particularly along the shore. Tripoli’s annual precipitation averages 380 millimeters. That’s a hair under fifteen inches.”

“And this winter?”

“Like I said. I think they’re on a massive storm track, Mr. Director I’ve asked for the Marine Meteorology Division at the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey to get me regional history and current analysis. They’re working it up.”

“It’s the fucking desert, for Christ’s sake, Dutch.”

“You’re right, but North Africa is prone to some real weather. It can get pretty blustery in the winter and spring. The Hamson or Scirocco winds originate when the hot, dry desert air flows northward into the southern Med. They often reach cyclone strength.” Tetreault pointed to a map on his computer screen. “Strong southwesterly winds at the surface start driving toward the sea. Desert sand and dust kicks up below. It’s rare, but those winds have lasted for weeks without abating. Visibility can be poor to nonexistent. Flying? Not a good idea.”

Tetreault inputted another computer depiction. “Then at other times there are even more wind regimes. The
bora
flows from the Adriatic, the
estesian
channels through the Rhodope Mountains, the
levante
cuts southeast across the Strait of Gibraltar, the
mistral
pushes south from the coast of France. There’s real weather there.”