Wyatt's Revenge: A Matt Royal Mystery (16 page)

“We’re here. Herr and Frau Blattner, you’ll be safe in this house. It’s owned by my agency and is staffed with a maid and a bodyguard. I’ll help you with your bags. Matt, you and Jess stay here. I won’t be but a few minutes.”

They unloaded the bags from the trunk of the Mercedes and disappeared into the house. They were expected. I turned to Jessica. “Are you really okay?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen anybody shot before. That’s all. It took the wind out of my sails. Who is Jock?”

“My best friend.”

“Do all of your friends go around killing people?”

“Jock is different. He works for our government and does things that nobody wants to talk about. They’re things that have to be done, people who have to be neutralized for the good of our nation.”

“By neutralize, you mean kill people.”

“Sometimes. When it’s necessary. Like today. If Jock hadn’t been willing to kill the Arab, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d be dead. People like Jock do what they do so that the rest of us can live like human beings.”

“I know you’re right, and I know we have to have people who do the dirty work. I’ve just never thought much about it, and I certainly never thought I’d be a part of it.”

“It’s a tough world, Jess. Somehow we’ve gotten caught up in a very dark side of it.”

Jock came out of the house and leaned into the car. “We can stay here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll try to figure out who’s after us. Come on in.”

We ate a quiet supper of lasagna and fresh Italian bread. The woman, who ran the house, did the cooking and cleaning and took care of the occasional guest, ate with us. A man carrying a sidearm in a holster at his hip stayed in the living room. He would be relieved in another hour by another armed man.

We went to our assigned rooms, Jessica across the hall from me. I took a shower and fell into bed exhausted. I dropped off into sleep, burrowing into the bed. Time passed, I wasn’t sure how much. I was sleeping on my right side, blankets pulled to my chin. I awoke immediately when I heard the door to my room open. I lay perfectly still, trying not to vary my breathing, pretending to sleep. I opened my left eye to a slit, trying to see the intruder, ready to pounce. It was Jessica.

She slipped into bed beside me, facing me, and put her arm over my shoulder. She was shivering, and she was naked. “You didn’t need whiskey after all,” she said.

I held her, burying my face in that sweet part where her neck met her shoulder. She was still shivering slightly. I could feel the tremors gently shaking her body.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“No. I’m scared. No, not scared, nervous. Maybe. I don’t know what I am. I almost died today, and I saw a man killed. I’ve never seen anyone die before.”

“It’s okay. You’re having a reaction to terrifying events. It happens to us all.”

“I want you, Matt. Does that make me a slut?”

“No. I’m glad you’re here. But the need for sex is sometimes part of the reaction to almost dying. I don’t want you to do anything you’re going to regret.”

“I won’t regret it.”

“You might.”

She laughed. “If I do, I won’t tell you.”

We made love, an intense, quick, urgent coupling. She was frantic in her need for an orgasm, and she wanted it immediately. She groaned when she came and held onto me for a long time, not moving, just lying there quietly. I started to say something, and she put her finger to my lips. “Not now,” she whispered. “We’ll talk later.”

We made love again, this time at a more languid pace, taking our time, exploring, tasting, and finally bringing each other to vivid climaxes before sliding gently down that slope of post-coital torpor.

We drifted off to sleep wrapped in the warmth of each other. I dreamed of being chased by men in burnooses riding camels.

The chirp of my cell phone woke me. It was still dark outside, and my watch told me it was six in the morning. Jessica was gone. I opened the phone. It was Chief Bill Lester of the Longboat Key police.

“Matt, where are you? Never mind. I don’t want to know. I’ve got some information on that bomb that took out your Explorer.”

“Good morning, Bill. I’m in Germany. It must be midnight where you are.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been waiting all evening to call. I knew you were somewhere in Europe, and I didn’t want to wake you in the middle of the night. I got a report from ATF on my desk late this afternoon, and I thought you’d want to hear about it as soon as possible.”

“What?”

“It’s strange. The signature on the bomb belongs to some unknown bomber who’s blown up several people in the last couple of years. All in Europe.”

“Nothing else in the U.S.?”

“No. There were two bombings in Madrid, one in Paris, one in Naples, and one in Munich. A terrorist group that calls itself Allah’s Revenge claimed responsibility.”

“Tell me how the ATF knows this?”

“Each bomb maker has a unique signature. It has to do with how certain wires are cut or looped, the angle of switches, the material used to create the bombs, tool marks on metal parts that survive the blast. There is a worldwide database with all this information in it. The ATF boys are almost certain that the guy who made your bomb made those in Europe.”

“But no others in the States.”

“Not yet anyway.”

“Thanks, Bill. How’s the weather there?”

“Sunny and low seventies.” He hung up.

Jessica, Jock, and I ate breakfast in the kitchen. The woman who ran the place put plates of eggs, sausages, and sweet rolls on the table and pointed out the coffee pot. She left us alone. I related my phone call from Lester. Jessica kept her head down, concentrating on her food. She looked up at me once, smiled, and reddened a little.

Jock grinned. “Did you guys sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” I said.

He chuckled.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” He tried to get serious, but kept grinning.

“What is wrong with you this morning?” I asked.

“Nothing. You just look a little tired. Like something kept you awake most of the night. What about you, Jess?”

She looked up from her eggs, smiling. “I have no regrets.”

I laughed.

Jock swallowed a bite of sausage and changed the subject. “I talked to my office in Washington last night. A Saudi named Mohammed Allawi
owns the house where we left our pursuers. He uses it when he’s visiting Frankfurt. The CIA suspects him of having ties to Islamic terrorists, but they can’t pin it down.”

“That might explain the bombs in Europe, and the one in my car.”

“Maybe. If this guy is hooked into the terrorists, he’d have access to bombs and the guys who make them.”

“Why does Allawi have a house in Frankfurt?” I asked.

“He owns oil-drilling supply companies and banks all over the world. One of his banks is in Frankfurt, and he comes here for regular physicals. Bad heart. He had triple bypass surgery about three years ago. He was only in his early fifties; young for such a bad ticker. I guess it’s easier to have a house here than stay in hotels.”

Jessica looked up from her plate. “Could his bank have ties to the Confederated Bank Suisse?”

“De Fresne’s bank,” I said.

“I didn’t think to ask,” Jock said. “I’ll check on it.”

“Did you find out anything about the guy you killed?” I asked.

“Nothing on him in our system or anybody else’s. He’s a cipher.”

He excused himself from the table and left the room. He was back in a few minutes. “No direct connection between the banks, but Allawi’s father opened his first bank in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, right after World War II and immediately established a corresponding relationship with CBS.”

kiswe, syria
april 1945

The sun baked the afternoon air, turning the cell into a furnace. No breeze blew through the barred window overlooking the courtyard of the mud fortress. But the sound of rifle fire did. Outside, against the mud wall that enclosed the dusty space, men were placed one at a time, hands bound behind their backs, hoods over their heads. A volley of shot would ring out, and then a detail of prisoners would appear to drag the body of the executed man out of view.

Abdul el-Gailani had made a mistake, the biggest of his life, and surely the last one. On the morrow he would join the men at the wall, and a life full of promise would be no more. He was a small man, standing only about five foot six, and he wore the flowing robes of the desert Arab. His beard was full and black, untrimmed. The area around his dark eyes was wrinkled from years of squinting into the sun. He was dirty and sunburned, the result of weeks of hiding in the merciless wasteland that was the Middle East.

El-Gailani paced his cell, trying to make his last day on earth one of reflection. It had only been ten years ago that his government had sent him to Paris to study finance. He was a nineteen-year-old boy, a Saudi whose family was close to the House of Saud, the royals. Some largesse flowed from that relationship, but not enough to make them rich. But he did have the benefit of good schooling in the English run academy in Riyadh, and he was handpicked by one of the princes to go to Paris for study.

He returned to the Saudi capital in 1939, just as war was enveloping
Europe. His prince embraced him and sent him to a bank in Damascus that was owned by the Saudi royal family. Although Syria was nominally an independent country, France had never ratified the treaty that would free Syria from French control. El-Gailani was not much bothered by this, as he had become a Francophile while living in Paris. He was convinced that French culture was superior to any in the world, and he was taken by the fact that France was an anti-Semitic country. He hated the Jews with the same intensity, and had once considered joining the Palestinians in their attempt to keep their land from Jewish hands.

After the fall of Paris in July 1940, Syria came under the control of Vichy France. When the Free French and British invaded and occupied Syria a year later, el-Gailani went underground. He became a guerrilla fighter, supporting the Syrian nationalists and the Germans. Finance was forgotten. He learned to blow up things and kill people, and he excelled at it, taking the nom de guerre of Rashid Ali.

In February of 1945, Syria, which had been recognized by the Allies as an independent republic, declared war on Germany and Japan. El-Gailani went farther underground, hiding from the authorities who had sentenced him to death in absentia. His war was over, and he wanted to go home to Saudi Arabia. He planned to resume his identity and seek the protection of his princely sponsor. The name el-Gailani did not appear on any list of subversives, only Rashid Ali. Once back in Saudi Arabia, it would be impossible to connect el-Gailani to the acts of Rashid.

But he had made a mistake. He was riding with a trucker whom he had met in a small town outside Damascus, heading for the Trans-Jordanian border. He’d agreed to pay the driver an exorbitant amount for the trip, but he was in a hurry to get out of Syria. His plan was to cross the neck of Jordanian land that separated Syria from Saudi Arabia, and then get in touch with his family in Riyadh. Somehow, they would be able to get him to the capital.

There was a roadblock at the border, manned by the Desert Patrol, an elite unit of the Trans-Jordanian army known as the Arab Legion. El-Gailani had not expected them on the Syrian side of the border, but he was not particularly concerned. He still had the documents that identified him by his real name and as a Saudi banker posted to Damascus. This
wasn’t the first roadblock they’d come to, and he’d had no trouble from the Syrians posted at the others.

They were ordered out of the truck, their papers scrutinized. There were three other trucks parked on the side of the road, each pointed toward the border. The soldier who held their papers motioned for them to follow him. “We will have to wait until our officer returns before we can let you go on. It shouldn’t be long.”

The soldier led them to a large Bedouin tent and motioned them inside. The space was plush, with carpets covering the sand floor and large pillows arranged for lounging. A samovar sat on a table in the center, teacups surrounding it. A dozen men were there, sipping tea, talking quietly.

One of the men looked up from the group. His beard covered only half of his face. The rest was scar tissue, the eye milky and without sight. The scars ran down his neck and into the filthy robe he wore. He’d been terribly burned.

The scarred man looked directly at el-Gailani and smiled crookedly. “Rashid, my old comrade, come join us.”

“My name is Abdul el-Gailani. You have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Nonsense, Rashid. Do you not remember the explosion that took part of my face? We were there together. It was fantastic.”

“You are mistaken. I am a banker from Damascus.”

The man’s one eye held a glint of insanity, or maybe confusion. His smile disappeared. “You are Rashid Ali, a hero of the Resistance.”

The soldier had been standing just inside the tent’s entrance, listening to the exchange. He unslung his rifle and pointed it at el-Gailani. “You had better come with me.”

El-Gailani turned. “The man is mad. You can see that. You’ve seen my papers. I am not this Rashid fellow.”

“Come with me. My officer will sort this out.”

The officer didn’t sort things out. He simply put el-Gailani in the back of a truck, trussed like a goat, and sent him back to Kiswe. He’d been hauled before a court and given a cursory trial. It hadn’t taken an hour. Three of his old comrades were in custody, and they identified him as
Rashid Ali. He was sentenced to death, the execution to be carried out in one week.

Yes, he’d made a fatal mistake. He should have walked across the desert as his ancestors had done for thousands of years. He should not have put himself in a position where soldiers could check his identity at roadblocks.

His week was about up. He’d watched many men die at the wall while he waited. Now it was almost his turn. Well, he’d go out with dignity.

Night comes quickly in the desert. One minute the sun is hanging low on the horizon and the next minute darkness falls. There were few lights in the compound where el-Gailani was being held, and the stars were bright against the night sky.