James Barrington
Payback
Prologue
It was a little after ten-thirty in the morning of the last day of Saadallah Assad’s life.
A white Toyota Land Cruiser with three men inside, each wearing a gellabbiya and a kaffiyeh, turned off Mu’awia. The driver had no option but to proceed slowly — the streets bustled with people, a colourful throng moving with noisy and cheerful purpose — but even if the roads had been empty he would still have been driving with great care.
Most of the pedestrians were women wearing all-enveloping black chadors and burkas, or at the very least a hijab, and carrying shopping bags already bulging with purchases.
About seventy yards before the Al-Hamidieh intersection, the driver spotted a gap in the ragged line of parked vehicles and steered the Toyota to the kerb. It was already hot, so he kept the engine and the air-conditioning running. This was as close as he could get to the souk that runs from the Omayyad Mosque to Bab Al-Nasr, but it was near enough. It would only be a short walk for the shahid, and as far as the driver was concerned the further away he was parked the better.
For a few moments nobody inside the vehicle moved or spoke. Then the driver and front-seat passenger turned to look at the man sitting behind them.
He was young — no more than twenty — and handsome in the classic Arab mould: deep brown eyes, shaded by impossibly long lashes, a straight nose and full lips. It was the kind of face that — without the embryonic black beard, so sparse and straggly that it appeared to have been applied to his cheeks hair by individual hair — might almost have graced the wall of a Hollywood film studio or some teenage girl’s bedroom.
Almost. What would have prevented it was the expression in his eyes. They glowed with excitement and gave the young man’s face a sense of purpose that was frightening in its intensity. He favoured each man with a brief, almost dismissive, glance, then looked ahead, through the windscreen of the Land Cruiser towards the souk, his gaze distant and unfocused.
‘Are you prepared?’ the passenger asked in fluent Arabic. Like the youth in the rear seat, his features were pure Arab, and his voice still carried faint echoes of Oman, where he had learned the language.
Saadallah Assad looked at him. ‘I’m ready,’ he replied.
‘The Jamiat will be celebrated through your courage, my friend. We’ll send out the video this afternoon,’ the passenger added, ‘while you are becoming acquainted with the chouriyat.’ It was a weak attempt at a joke. ‘Remember to avoid the mosque. It would be better to keep to the main thoroughfare, at the western end.’
‘I know,’ Assad agreed, with a touch of impatience. He glanced down at his watch. ‘It’s time, I think.’
The two men nodded silently. As the young man reached for the door handle, the driver — whose appearance was anything but Arabic, with fair skin and blue-green eyes — spoke for the first time.
‘Jazaka Allahu khayran, Abdullah.’
The youth looked slightly taken aback at this remark, but he responded formally: ‘La hawla wa la kuwata illa b’Illah’.
Any Arabic-speaker might have been puzzled by this reply, since it is normally used by a Muslim only when he has suffered some major misfortune, or his life has been overtaken by events beyond his control, but neither of the other two men looked at all surprised.
Assad stared for a moment at each of them, his expression still confident and almost arrogant, then stepped out of the car. Just before he pushed the door closed, he murmured two words to the passenger, then moved away from the vehicle and headed towards the entrance to the market.
‘What did he say to you?’ the driver demanded, in English.
‘Abdu-baha,’ the passenger replied.
‘Which means what?’
‘It means he won’t let us down.’
As Assad vanished into the crowd, the white gellabbiya flowing smoothly around his slight figure, the driver steered the Toyota away from the kerb and set off for the international terminal. They had confirmed reservations on a flight to Bahrain, with plenty of time in hand, but they wanted to get to the airport as quickly as possible.
The passenger didn’t say another word until they were almost a mile away from the souk. ‘His name was Saadallah,’ O’Hagan remarked.
‘What?’
‘Saadallah. His name was Saadallah Assad. But you called him “Abdullah”. That’s why he looked surprised.’
Petrucci shrugged. ‘Whatever. He didn’t say anything about it.’
‘Of course not. He’s an Arab, and that means he’s polite, especially when he’s dealing with stupid white foreigners. He wouldn’t have dreamt of correcting you.’
‘Will it make any difference to the shahid?’
‘No,’ O’Hagan replied firmly, ‘it won’t make any difference.’
Damascus is the oldest inhabited city in the world, dating back five millennia, but the Al-Hamidieh souk is comparatively new, having existed for only about one hundred and fifty years. It is noted for stalls selling clothes and fabrics as well as merchants offering spices, nuts, fruit and other foodstuffs, which are sold from shallow earthenware bowls or open sacks, and often still weighed on small hand-held brass scales, in a routine familiar to any visitor to a traditional Arab country.
The main entrance to the market is wide and flanked by a pair of lamp-posts, while a high vaulted semicircular metal roof, pierced by tens of thousands of tiny holes, covers and protects the long, straight, central walkway.
Saadallah Assad ignored the approaches of the traders hawking their wares outside the entrance and joined a steady stream of people heading into the cool and welcoming interior. Immediately he was assailed by a conflict of sights and sounds — the babble of Arabic as merchants and shoppers haggled with each other; the intoxicating smell of herbs and spices, and the bustle of shoppers in constant and restless motion. Disregarding all these, Assad threaded his way deliberately through the souk.
He walked as far as the Omayyad Mosque without finding what he wanted, then retraced his steps. At eleven-ten exactly he heard, rather than saw, what he was seeking, and turned round to make sure of it. Several American tourists — he counted at least six of them — were heading towards him in a loose group, ambling uncertainly through the crowded market while commenting loudly to each other, blissfully confident that although their remarks might be overheard, they certainly would not be understood.
Like most of the Syrians in the souk, Assad did not speak or understand English, but he easily recognized the language, and the garish check shorts worn by two of the men provided additional confirmation of their nationality.
For the first time since he’d stepped out of the Toyota, a slight smile crossed the young Arab’s face. He stopped and waited for the Americans to get closer to him, as he had been instructed, and reached into the right-hand pocket of his gellabbiya to clutch a small cylindrical object nestling there.
The man leading the American group noticed the slim young Arab standing in his path and muttered something sotto voce to his male companion, who grinned broadly. Assad had no doubt that whatever had been said was uncomplimentary, but that thought didn’t matter to him in the slightest. Nothing mattered now — or ever would again.