“Let’s do this, then.”
They opened their doors. Eddie adjusted his hat and dark glasses, the only form of disguise he was using to hide his Asian features. Both men wore baggy tan slacks and open-necked shirts, which was about as anonymous as one could get in many quarters of the Middle East.
As they strolled past the van, Eddie palmed a disposable cell phone off on one of the gang members. He whispered, “Push back your perimeter, and watch that red Fiat we drove here. Speed-dial one is my phone.”
The Chinese youth gave no indication he heard anything other than the slam of the van’s hood. Eddie and Hali walked on without breaking stride.
The front door to their target building wasn’t locked, but there was a watchman in a dark uniform sitting on a sofa in the lobby, reading a newspaper. The pair had walked in as if one of them had just told a joke. Both were laughing, and they ignored the guard when he set aside his paper and asked something in Arabic that neither man understood.
Hali never saw the move. He didn’t believe they were even close enough.
Eddie had lunged like a fencer, the fingers of his right hand held stiff and ridged. He connected with the hollow of the guard’s throat just below the Adam’s apple. He could have killed the man had he wanted, but the strike was measured. The Libyan started to gag, and Eddie threw another blow, the edge of his hand connecting on the side of the man’s neck. The watchman’s eyes rolled up until only the whites showed, and he crumpled back onto the couch.
Seng glanced out the glass door to see if anyone was paying attention, and then with Hali’s help he dragged the unconscious watchman into a back room, where one wall was lined with mail cubbies.
“How long will he be out?”
“An hour or so.” Eddie rifled the man’s pocket, looking for ID. It said the guard’s name was Ali. “Come on. Assad’s on the fourth floor, front-side corner.”
Both men drew their pistols as they climbed an interior stairwell. They weren’t concerned about running into anyone. People who lived in buildings like this invariably used the elevator.
Eddie cautiously opened the door on the fourth-floor landing. The hallway beyond was carpeted and lit with wall sconces. The six apartment doors were solid, made of heavy carved wood—left over from a time of superior craftsmanship. He was relieved the doors didn’t have peepholes.
He approached the door to the mistress’s apartment and rapped respectfully. A moment later, he heard a muffled woman’s voice. He assumed she was asking who it was, so he said, “Ali, sayyidah.”
She spoke again, most likely asking what he wanted, so Eddie said the first thing that popped into his head, and prayed his pronunciation was close. “Al-Zajal, sayyidah.” Federal Express, ma’am. He’d seen their distinctively colored trucks all over the city.
Eddie mouthed “Stay back” to Hali, while inside the apartment a chain rattled and a pair of locks disengaged. He slammed his shoulder into the door, meeting more resistance than he’d expected but managing to shove the woman aside. He dove low, and a bullet from a silenced pistol cut the air inches over his shoulder.
The woman screamed. Seng rolled once, coming to his knees behind a couch. “Tariq, don’t shoot.” He kept his voice as calm as the adrenaline dose would allow. “Please. We’re here to help.”
The woman’s cry turned into slow blubbering, as a few seconds ticked away on the grandfather clock pressed up against one plaster wall.
“Who are you?” Tariq Assad asked.
“A couple of nights ago, you made arrangements for us to unload a large truck in the harbor.”
“The Canadians?”
“Yes.”
“Who was I contacted through?”
“L’Enfant.”
“You may stand,” Assad said.
Eddie got to his feet slowly, making certain Assad could see his finger was nowhere near his pistol’s trigger. “We’re here to help you get out.”
Hali entered the room cautiously. Assad watched him for a moment, then turned his attention back to Eddie. Seng had removed his hat and glasses so the harbor pilot could see his features. “I recognize you from that night. You acted as helmsman. You know, since then I thought I was going insane. I’ve had the feeling of being watched, and everywhere I turn I see young Chinamen acting strangely. I guess you are the explanation.”
“I hired some local boys to keep tabs on you,” Eddie said, slipping his pistol into the waistband of his pants.
Assad crossed to the crying woman, helping her up onto her piano legs. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, smearing a wet trail through her fine mustache. Eddie guessed she tipped the scales above two hundred, and standing at a little over five feet she looked like a basketball in her burnt orange robe.
Tariq Assad was no Adonis, with his graying hair and single dense eyebrow, but he had a good personality and Eddie thought he could have done better than this rather bovine woman. If not love or lust, he guessed information. She was the wife of a judge, after all.
As the Libyan muttered reassurances into her cauliflower ear, Eddie surveyed the apartment. The judge’s home was well furnished, with a new leather sofa and chairs and a marble-topped coffee table with a neatly arranged fan of glossy magazines. There was an impressive oriental rug on the hardwood floor, and shelves for matching leather-bound books. The walls were adorned with intricate needlework of geometric design framed under glass. Her handiwork, he assumed. A breeze worked the gauzy curtains near the balcony, and the apartment was high enough that the traffic below was a low-register thrum.
Assad patted his mistress on her ample rump to send her back to the bedroom.
“She’s a good girl,” he remarked before she was out of earshot. “Not too bright, and a little rough on the eyes, yes, but a veritable tiger where it counts.”
Eddie and Hali shuddered.
“May I get you gentlemen a drink?” Assad offered when the bedroom door closed. “The judge favors gin, but I brought Scotch whiskey. Oh, and I am sorry for firing at you. It was reflex. I thought it was him.”
“I think you can drop the act, Mr. Assad.”
No one spoke for a few seconds. Eddie could read Assad’s face. He’d been out in the cold, in spy parlance, for a while, and was debating if the two strangers represented a way out.
His shoulders sagged slightly. “Okay. No more act.” Though he still spoke English with an accent, it was subtly different. “I’m pretty screwed no matter what happens now, so it doesn’t really matter anymore. Who are you people? I figured CIA, when I met with you on your ship.”
“Near enough,” Eddie replied. “That’s Hali Kasim. My name’s Eddie Seng.”
“You’re in Libya to find out what happened to your Secretary of State?”
“Yeah. But the mission’s also morphed into a hunt for Suleiman Al-Jama.”
“As I figured it would. His organization is like an octopus with its tentacles wrapped all through the Libyan government. They work in the shadows, infiltrating one high-ranking office after another.”
“Who are you and what’s your deal here?”
“My name’s Lev Goldman.”
Understanding hit Eddie like a punch to the gut. “My God, Mossad. We have information that says you’ve been here five years.”
“No. My cover goes back that far. I arrived in Tripoli eighteen months ago. Tel Aviv suspected Al-Jama was going to take over a North African country through slow subterfuge. They sent deep-cover agents into Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and here to keep an eye on the government. When it became clear that Libya was the target, the other agents were pulled and I remained.”
“So these women?”
Goldman lowered his voice even further. “Lonely housewives of powerful men. Oldest trick in the book.”