The Secret Soldier (38 page)

“We have a speech we want you to make.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Please don’t argue. We just want you to say a few words, and then you can eat. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

“No.”

“Your wife will want to see you’re all right.”

Barbara. Kurland was ashamed to realize that he’d forgotten her these last few minutes. She must be terrified. A place beyond panic. Even if he was already dead, he had to hang on as long as possible for her.

“What is it you want me to say?”

EVEN FROM FIVE MILES OFFSHORE, THE CRISIS WAS UNMISTAKABLE.
Graham Kurland had been kidnapped a day earlier. Now police and National Guard helicopters circled low and slow over downtown. A Saudi navy destroyer sat at anchor outside the harbor, broadside to the city, its radar winding slowly. Wells wasn’t sure what good the destroyer would do in finding Kurland, but he didn’t have to worry about it. He and Gaffan had their own escort, two Saudi National Guard speedboats armed with .50-caliber machine guns. They were bound for Abdullah’s giant palace on the Red Sea.

Gaffan steered the boat between two jetties and into a basin outside the palace’s high gray walls. An officer in a khaki dress uniform waved them toward a pier, as a machine gun tracked their progress from a turret atop the wall.

“Happy to see us,” Gaffan said. He brought the boat to a bobbing halt by the pier, and Wells hopped out.

“Good to be back on solid ground.”

“Is that where we are?” Gaffan said.

The officer stepped toward them.
“Salaam aleikum.”

“I’m Colonel Gharib. Your passports, please.”

Wells handed them over. Gharib flipped through them, nodded at Meshaal.

“Who’s this?”

“We found him in Lebanon. We’re bringing him home.” Meshaal shrank backward, toward the cruiser.

Gharib shook his head at the explanation, but all he said was, “This way.” They followed him into the compound through heavy black gates. A golf cart waited. Gharib waved them in and motored south, past date palms and the largest swimming pool Wells had ever seen. The southern edge of the compound held buildings that looked to be staff quarters and infrastructure. Wells picked up the faint odor of a sewage treatment plant. Gharib stopped outside a windowless one-story building, unlocked the door, motioned for them to go inside. “You wait here—”

“There’s no time—” But the door had already closed, and the dead bolt thunked shut from the outside.

 

 

THEY’D SAILED FROM CYPRUS
two afternoons before, less than two days after reaching the island. Within twelve hours of their landing, Wells knew they couldn’t stay long. The local papers reported that the police were investigating three men who had attacked a couple on a deserted beach and stolen their car. And the boat they’d ditched had a Lebanese flag and registration. The cops had no doubt already asked the police in Beirut for help in tracking it down.

Soon enough, the Lebanese would discover Gaffan’s name on their ship registry and connect the boat to the attack in the Bekaa. Then the Cyprus police would be after them for murder. Cyprus wasn’t big enough to hide them from a full-scale manhunt. As the Mossad agents who had recently assassinated a Palestinian guerrilla leader in a hotel in Dubai had learned, international passports, databases, security cameras, and facial matching software had made black ops harder and harder to pull off cleanly.

The Dubai police had now issued bulletins for the Israelis involved in the hotel killing, including photos, aliases, and in many cases real names. Of course, the Mossad agents had carried out the assassination on Israeli government orders. They were safe from extradition as long as they stayed in Israel. They could even travel on diplomatic passports without too much hassle, though they would be wise to avoid connecting through Dubai.

But Wells and Gaffan couldn’t count on government protection. So far, the CIA hadn’t stepped up for them. “Still waiting,” Shafer said, when Wells called him the night after they landed.

“Ellis. Maybe I haven’t been clear enough about what we found.” In fact, Wells had told Shafer exactly what he’d discovered, the passports, manuals, and fake uniforms. Even “42 Aziz 3,” the mysterious code he’d found in the notebook
.
“You need to get it in the system so you and the NSA can look it over.”

“Then leave it at the embassy. And the kid, too.”

But doing that would cost Wells his only leverage. He needed a guarantee that the CIA would provide clean papers for him and Gaffan, or even a presidential finding that would backstop the killings as acts of war justified under U.S. law—no different than drone strikes in Pakistan.

“You know I can’t. Not until we have a deal.”

“It’ll happen, John.”

“When?”

“Soon. I don’t know.”

“Duto’s enjoying letting me twist, isn’t he? Never gets old for him.”

Shafer’s silence was answer enough.

THEY COULDN’T COUNT ON
Abdullah for help, either. Wells had hoped that in a worst-case scenario they could stay in the king’s palace in France while they planned their next move. The morning after they landed, Wells called Kowalski.

“Tell him we found the place we were looking for.”

“I hate to tell you. I don’t think he cares. Our mutual acquaintance”—Kowalski meant Miteb—“says that when his granddaughter died, it knocked the fight out of him.”

Wells thought of the way Abdullah had acted in Nice. The king had been furious, desperate to put his son on the throne. Alia’s killing should have made him angrier. Not broken him. “That’s not possible.”

“Our friend was surprised, too. Said he expected the opposite. But you know, a man who’s nearly ninety, a shock like this—nature takes its course. Even the tallest tree falls eventually.”

“Spare me the circle-of-life wisdom. Just give me Miteb’s number so I can talk to him directly. I should have had it from the get-go.”

 

 

WELLS COULDN’T HELP FEELING
personally betrayed. He’d risked his life and Gaffan’s for the king. Now Abdullah was dismissing Wells like a servant who had outlived his usefulness.

Wells told Gaffan what Kowalski and Shafer had said, their legal limbo.

“You think it would get this messy?” Gaffan said.

“Truth. I wouldn’t have gotten you involved if I had. I thought we’d be okay, even without Abdullah. Or without the agency. Didn’t count on us losing both. Guess I’m too used to having janitors.”

“So we’re looking at murder charges dogging us forever?”

“I don’t think so. In the end, Duto’ll thank us for hitting these guys.” Wells wished he was as certain as he sounded.

“I’ll have to make space in my cabinet for all the medals we get.”

“Exactly. But it may take a couple days. And I don’t think we want to be stuck here while we wait.”

The next question was where to go. And how to get there. Wells could use his last clean passport to fly out. But Gaffan and Meshaal couldn’t count on clearing airport security. Their best answer looked like another cruise. At noon on their second day in Cyprus, they went shopping. Money wasn’t a problem. They still had the million dollars that Wells had left for Gaffan in the safe-deposit box, and Cypriot boat dealers were as friendly as the Lebanese to cash buyers.

For three hundred thousand dollars, they picked a forty-nine-foot cruiser with all the trimmings, satellite television and phone, a fancy autopilot, and enough fuel tanks to get them to Cape Verde and then across the Atlantic. The boat was new, so they didn’t have to worry about the air-conditioning. It even had three cabins, so they wouldn’t have to share.

The Saudi money greased everything. By late afternoon, the cruiser was fueled, insured, titled, and ready to go. It even had a name inked on its hull in six-inch black letters:
Judge Wapner.
Gaffan had insisted. Wells could almost hear the announcer’s stern warning:
Don’t take the law into your own hands....

“Very nice,” Meshaal said, as they boarded.

“Glad you approve.”

“Are we going to Gaza? Finally?”

“Maybe not right away.” Wells could not imagine what the kid had made of the last seventy-two hours.

They headed south, toward the Suez Canal, at a steady twenty knots. They couldn’t get through the canal until morning, so they had no need to speed. The cruiser more or less steered itself. As the Cyprus coast disappeared behind them, Wells decided to take another look at the stuff he’d found at the farmhouse. He spread the passport and manuals and notebook on a teak table in the rear of the cabin. He and Gaffan read in silence. Meshaal joined them a few minutes later. “What’s this?”

“From your camp. Any of it look familiar?”

Meshaal flipped through the passports. “We had to give them in. Is mine here?”

“Yes. I’ve got it. For safekeeping. What about this?” Wells held up the green notebook from Talib’s bedroom. Meshaal shook his head. “Does the phrase
forty-two Aziz three
mean anything? Some kind of code?”

“Not to me.”

“But your leader called himself Aziz.”

“But the way you say it, it sounds more like an address. In Buraydah, the town near where I grew up, there’s King Abdul-Aziz Boulevard.”

The kid might have just paid his freight. Wells had been thinking of the phrase as a code. But every village in the Kingdom must have had a road named after Aziz. “Do you know where it might be?”

“The three at the end ... Some Saudi cities have a system where the numbers start again in each district. Or it could be a city with three different roads named after Aziz. Or even a building with three floors.”

“That’s good. Thank you, Meshaal.”

They leafed through the papers as the boat chugged south but found nothing more of consequence. Around midnight, Gaffan and Meshaal headed to their bunks. Wells turned out the cabin lights and called Anne. They hadn’t spoken in a week, since he left Cyprus for Lebanon.

“John.”

“Lovely lady.”

“‘Lovely Rita, meter maid.’”

“You’re way too young for that song.”

“I’m on a Beatles kick. Very retro. Though to be honest, I don’t get why everybody thought they were so great.”

“Once upon a time, they were bigger than Jesus. John Lennon said so himself.”

“We’ll find out in a couple thousand years. I don’t even think they’re bigger than The National anymore.”

“The who?”

“Not The Who, either. Those guys fill stadiums.”

Wells smiled in the dark. He’d missed talking to her. “Who’s on first.”

“They came to see me, John.”

“I hate to start this again, but who?”

“They said they were FBI, but I’m not sure. They wanted to know if I’d heard from you, if I knew where you were.”

“I hope you told them the truth. On both counts.”

“I did. Yes and no.”

“Then it’s fine. If they’re agency or FBI, they can’t hurt you as long as you’re honest.”

“I wish I could see you.”

“I wish I could see you, too. I wish you were here. You’d be having fun with this.”
Parts of it, anyway,
Wells didn’t say.
Maybe not the part where I killed the six guys.

“Are you in trouble, John?”

“The usual.”

“These guys said you were in serious trouble.”

“I’d call it the usual. Maybe a little more. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Pulled over a drunk on Main Street two nights ago—”

“You’re never going to let me live that down—”

“No, wait. And I swear, by the time I got him in the back of the cruiser, he told me I looked great in the uniform, and that if there were more girls in the bar like me he wouldn’t have gotten himself arrested, because he’d still be there.”

“Sounds like a real charmer. You give him your number?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t remember it. I have so many phones now. He was cute, though.”

“I’d better get home soon.”

“You’d better.”

 

 

BY SIX A.M. THEY
had docked at Port Said, the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. While Egyptian land surrounded the canal on both sides, they didn’t need Egyptian visas to pass through it. According to international law, the Suez was open to vessels of any nationality, even during wartime—a rule meant to discourage any country from blockading or bombing it.

Normally, boats had to wait at Port Said for at least twenty-four hours, but thanks to a liberal application of Saudi cash, the
Judge Wapner
avoided the usual delays and hitched onto the morning’s southbound convoy. An Egyptian pilot came aboard to steer them behind a half-dozen ships stacked high with containers. The canal had no locks. But to keep the big ships from damaging its banks, the convoy crawled along at eight knots. Traveling a hundred twenty miles would take fourteen hours. They would reach Suez, the city that marked the southern end of the canal, around midnight.