“Yessir.” Farnsworth laid the helmet on his desk and started for the door.
“Any new messages on the classified board?” Jake asked before Farnsworth could get out the door.
“Yessir. A bunch. There’s even another intelligence report about a planned raid on the ship by some group or other using an ultralight.”
“Again? How many air raid warnings have we had?”
“I think about nineteen, CAG. Thank God for the CIA.” Jake waved Farnsworth out the door and took the message board into his office. He thought about having a cigarette. There should be a pack in his lower right desk drawer. He remembered putting it there two or three days ago. Well, maybe it was still there. He opened the drawer and glanced inside. Just papers. He stirred them. Aha, the pack of weeds had fallen under this little report with the blue cover. Hiding there, weren’t you, little fellow. Don’t try to get away like that. He closed the drawer and began thumbing through the messages, trying to sort the important ones from the usual reams of computerized goo that constituted the vast bulk of the classified traffic.
He found it difficult to concentrate on the messages with that pack of cigarettes lying down there in the drawer, just waiting. Shit, how long had it been? He looked at his watch. Three hours and fifty-one minutes. No, fifty-two minutes. Almost four hours!
The black Mercedes rolled through the dusty streets on the edge of town as if the streets were empty, which they most certainly were not. Children and men leading laden mules and camels scurried to clear the path of the speeding vehicle with army flags on the front bumper. Dark glass prevented anyone outside the vehicle from seeing the passengers, but most of the people on the street averted their gaze once they ensured they were not in danger of being run over.
The limousine stopped momentarily at two army checkpoints on the outskirts of the city, then rolled through the open gate of an enormous stucco building.
In the courtyard two men stepped from the rear of the car. Both wore Western clothes. A waiting officer wearing a major’s uniform led them through a small door and up a flight of stairs lit only by a naked bulb hanging above each landing. High, narrow windows without glass lined the lengthy corridor at the top of the stairs. Dirt from the desert lay accumulated in corners. Their footsteps echoed on the slate floor. After several turns, the major opened a door and stood aside. The two men from the Mercedes entered a well-furnished apartment. The late afternoon sun shone in the one window, a window in which glass had been installed at some time in the past but which had apparently never been washed.
“Colonel Qazi, Sakol is in the next room. Is there anything further you need?”
“Tell me about Jarvis, the weapons expert.”
“Your instructions have been followed precisely. He was examined by a physician while still sedated after his journey. The physician found him in fair health with no apparent abnormalities, although seventeen kilos overweight. He has been kept naked in solitary confinement and fed precisely one thousand calories a day, with all the water he can drink. The bucket in his cell is never emptied. The light there remains on continuously. No one has spoken to him.”
“Very well. Has Sakol been any trouble?”
“No trouble, sir, although he has asked several times when to expect you.”
“You have guarded him well?”
“Of course. His guards are unobtrusive, but he cannot leave the apartment area where he is staying.”
“Thank you, Major. Bring Sakol in.” Qazi selected a stuffed chair and sank into it. His companion stood against the wall, a man of medium height with short, dark hair and olive skin. He wore dark blue trousers, a white shirt open at the collar, and a lightweight Italian sport coat that had lost its shape at some point in the distant past. He had a large, square jaw which he unconsciously clenched and unclenched rhythmically, making the muscles in his cheeks pulsate. His restless black eyes scanned the room, then steadied on the door through which Sakol, the ex-CIA agent, would enter.
Qazi placed a pack of American cigarettes and some matches on the table before him, then studied his fingernails.
The door opened and a bearlike man in his fifties entered. He had the broad chest and heavy arms of the serious weightlifter, but now the muscles were covered with a layer of fat that made him look even more massive. He stood at least six feet tall. “Ah, Sakol. So good to see you,” Qazi said in English.
Sakol stopped three steps into the room and studied the man against the wall. “Why did you bring this son of a dog?” Sakol asked in Arabic. The expression of the man against the wall did not change.
“Sit here, Sakol.” Qazi pointed to a chair beside him. The American turned the chair so he could see both Qazi and the man against the wall and sat. “You know Ali is indispensable to me. I cannot do everything myself.” English again.
Sakol sniffed several times and said in Arabic, “Ah, yes, I can still smell him.”
“English please,” Qazi said firmly and offered the American a cigarette, which he accepted. Qazi had gone to great lengths in the past to ensure Sakol thought Ali could speak only Arabic, and he was not yet ready to drop the deception. Conspirators felt most comfortable when their secrets appeared safe.
“You have succeeded brilliantly with the Jarvis recruitment. I’ve had good reports.”
“I took a lot of heavy risks pulling it off, Qazi, and earned every goddamn dime of the money you agreed to pay. I assume the money is where it’s supposed to be?”
Qazi extracted a bankbook from his jacket pocket and passed it to Sakol, who examined the signatures carefully, then placed it in his trouser pocket without comment.
“That’s a lot of money, Sakol.”
“I’ve supplied things you could purchase nowhere else. I risked my butt doing it. I earned the fucking money.”
“Indeed. Have you enough money now?”
Sakol pursed his lips momentarily. “Jarvis is a nuclear weapons expert.” He smoked his cigarette while Qazi sat in silence and watched the dust swirl in the sunbeam coming through the one window.
“Your help on my next project would be worth one million dollars,” Qazi said when the burning tip of Sakol’s cigarette had almost reached the filter. “Half in advance.”
“The agency and the Mossad are after us both. They want us dead. Ding dong dead. Blown away.”
“Indeed! What did you expect? Why do you think we paid you so much money?”
“I want two million, half in advance. You Arabs always like to haggle. People eventually forget about stolen antiaircraft missiles and kidnappings, but they won’t forget about anything that smells of nuclear weapons. Not ever.”
“One million real American dollars in your numbered Swiss account, Sakol, and if you are very lucky, you will live to spend it.”
Sakol threw back his head and laughed harshly. “You amaze me, Qazi. You could have killed me anytime, and only now you threaten me. My sheep-fucking Arab friend, you can kiss my ass. I’ve taken precautions.”
“Ah, yes. The letters to be mailed in the event of your death. The ones you gave your sister in Chicago, which she keeps in a safe deposit box at the State Street National Bank. Box number One Five Oh Eight.”
Sakol helped himself to another cigarette. He struck a match and held it to the cigarette with twisted and gnarled fingers without nails. The flame did not waver. He inhaled deeply, then blew the match out with a cloud of smoke that engulfed Qazi. “Two million. You know damn well I’m not scared of you.”
“One million, one hundred thousand. Half in advance. The Americans will learn of your aid to our cause.”
Henry Sakol laughed, a harsh guttural laugh that filled the room. “You really know your bastards, don’t you, Qazi? That’s right! I want those arrogant, snot-nosed, Ivy League pig fuckers to know I helped you screw ’em. Right in their tight little cherry asses.” He slapped the bankbook on the arm of his chair, then handed it over. “What’s the job?”