Matt grabbed the keys and drove away.
"Do not go back to the hotel tonight, nobody gets home this late, you will be noticed" said Tommy obviously in pain from his ankle.
"Where do we go then?" asked Matt.
"Do you have your passports with you?"
"Of course" explained Natasha.
"Drive to the airport. I know some people not far away."
Tommy directed Matt to a small old hotel only a couple of miles from the flight path.
Matt helped Tommy out of the vehicle, and he pounded on a door at the rear of the hotel. Shortly a light came on then the door opened.
An old man peered out into the darkness and beckoned them in when he spotted Tommy.
"Omar, my friends here need some help. They need a shower, and somewhere to sleep tonight."
"Of course Tommy, no problem. The hotel is full but I have a spare room here in my apartment" said the old man.
Tommy pushed a roll of money to the man.
"Get them to the airport tomorrow. I need to go and get my ankle strapped."
The room was more than adequate and the shower was hot. Most of the dust from the explosion came off their clothes with a damp towel.
Matt was anxious to take a look at the documents in the bag.
He laid all the stuff out on the floor, but Natasha was not much help since she could not read anything.
The Hamas folder seemed to be the most useful. Inside were bank records showing yearly deposits of five million dollars from a bank in Switzerland.
Eventually they both needed sleep.
When they awoke the next day, waiting outside their door were all their belongings from the hotel.
Chapter 95
At the airport the next morning Matt was able to get slow a wireless internet connection.
He logged in to the CIA secure virtual private network, and sent a message to Bill Simpson.
Matt: We are headed home. I need you to find out everything you can on Balances Bank in Lucerne Switzerland. They have been sending money to Iran to finance Hamas insurgents in Gaza.
A few minutes later Matt received his reply.
Bilclass="underline" Ok, we are on it. Hopefully we will have something for you by the time you get home. If I get anything sooner, I will send it to you.
Matt and Natasha sat in the lounge waiting for their flight which was due in four hours. They were able to get a snack of sandwiches and a coke and watch a rerun of Hogan’s Heroes in Arabic.
With only an hour before they were due to board the plane, Matt’s inbox chirped with a message.
Bilclass="underline" Very little information on the financial institution is available, it is a private bank. Shareholders are Juergen Miltser, a Swiss national and Kamal Pashwari, a Saudi Arabian citizen.
Matt instantly remembered the KP notes in the transfers from the Caliph hotel in Riyadh.
Matt: Bill, I think we struck gold on this one. I think this Pashwari may be our guy. Please check him out and find out everything you can about him before we get home. We are about to board.
Bilclass="underline" Have a good flight, see you soon.
Chapter 96
"This Pashwari guy is seriously rich" said Bill Simpson reading from a printed dossier.
"Is there anything linking him to this?" asked Matt.
"Maybe, I would say him owning the Swiss bank is strike one."
"We did a complete background check on Pashwari. Pashwari studied electrical engineering in the U.S. at M.I.T. in Boston."
"Here, you take a look" said Bill passing the documents over to Matt and Natasha.
"It says he is the major shareholder in the Caliph Hotel, strike two" noted Matt.
"I agree" said Bill "we have searched everywhere in the world. Kamal Pashwari has vanished. He flew to Russia nearly three months ago on his private aircraft. He has not been seen anywhere since. His passport has not been scanned in any country since then. That might be strike three."
Inside was an old picture of Pashwari taken at the opening of the Caliph Hotel.
Natasha fired up her computer and brought up the picture sent from the boatyard in Russia. It appeared to be the same man.
"I have had people working his background since I got your message, but he seems to keep a low profile. As I said, we can’t find him. But I did get something on his son Muhommad. There was a charge to his Visa card on the day before the attack on the Ronald Reagan. It was to a flying school."
"Looks like we got that part right, he was the Cessna pilot. What about his business empire?" asked Natasha.
"That is the strange part. It seems that just before he flew to Russia, he stepped down as CEO of his business empire and appointed his brother to run things. The brother is no Rhodes Scholar. Seems he has already lost a fortune doing some speculation in the markets. Our best guess is that he does not plan on coming back to his business."
"Bill, is there anything else we can look for?" asked Matt.
"Here is a copy of the psychological profile our shrink ran on him. It says that basically he is a candidate for Mensa, a super high achiever, but he is extremely emotional."
"I gave the psychologist the background of his son being killed by one of our missiles and I asked what he was capable of in retaliation. " God help us" was his reply".
"Let’s run through what we have" suggested Matt.
"We know some whacko has a bomb on a boat. Pashwari is candidate #1 for the guy on the tiller. With our navy on high alert, there is no way he is going to get close enough to a ship to do any real damage even with a nuke. He must have another plan."
"Absolutely" said Bill. "I also asked the shrink for an idea of the targets Pashwari might go for. He told me it would be something very big. My best guess is that there are three possible targets."
"The first and easiest is a U.S. cruise ship, thousands of people and unprotected. They are sitting ducks, but you would not need a nuke to sink one. Sabotage would be much easier, no need for the mushroom cloud."
"Second would be a major icon, something near the water like the Statue of Liberty. It’s pretty well protected, but an outside chance, so I have alerted the New York authorities to a potential threat."
"The third scenario is the hardest to cover. That is a high value personal target. The ultimate prize is President Connolly, and my money is on Pashwari going after him. Second pick is the British Prime Minister."
"Sounds right to me, have you advised the President and the Secret Service?" asked Matt.
"Not yet, someone else will be doing that later this afternoon."
"Who gets the booby prize?" asked Matt.
When Bill didn’t answer, Matt wished he hadn’t asked the question.
Chapter 97
It was too early for the Presidential briefing, so Matt was sitting at his computer still checking out Kamal Pashwari.
In desperation he decided to do a routine police check. He was surprised when he got a hit. Pashwari was noted as a "person of interest" in a missing person case years before.
It took Matt nearly an hour of phone calls to finally track down the detective that made the report. He had been promoted since then.
"Homicide. Lieutenant O’Brien."
"Lieutenant, this is Matt Peterson with the CIA. I need to ask you a couple of questions."
"I will call you back" said O’Brien as he hung up.