They scanned the crowd for Hafez Ghul. He was difficult to miss, being one of the tallest men in the room. But it still took a few seconds to spot him standing at the back, being loudly harangued by a couple of Arabs in traditional garb. By then the rest of the people in the room had fallen almost completely silent, their eyes fixed on Richter and Jackson, the atmosphere definitely unfriendly if not downright hostile.
Ghul crossed straight over and spoke quietly to Richter. ‘There are some very senior members of the government and police force here, and what they would like to do more than anything else at the moment is arrest both of you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they still believe the terrorists would have kept their side of the bargain and told them the abort code. Because they’d hoped to keep this entire episode quiet, and now that’s impossible because of the carnage you’ve caused at the airport. Pictures of that burning aircraft will appear on news broadcasts around the world within hours, and it will cause untold damage to Dubai’s image. And, finally, because you were specifically instructed to take no action over this.’
‘Right. Come with me,’ Richter said grimly. He marched up the staircase and strode across to the weapon, most of the Arabs reluctantly following him. He fished around in his pocket for the keys and undid both locks, then snapped up the catches, but didn’t lift the lid. ‘If you could please translate, Chief Inspector,’ he suggested, but Ghul shook his head.
‘I think everyone here speaks sufficient English.’
‘Let me explain what happened,’ Richter began. ‘The terrorists told you that they’d set the timer for long enough to allow somebody to enter this suite and disarm the weapon. And they said they’d radio the abort code to you once they were airborne. Correct?’
‘Yes,’ snapped an Arab with a long grey beard. The deference with which the other men in the room looked at him suggested he was the most senior official present. ‘The timer was set for four hours, but your stupid and ill-considered actions have now stopped us obtaining the code. We’re evacuating this area before the four-hour deadline, and now we’ll certainly see the Burj totally destroyed.’
Richter glanced at Ghul. ‘I tried to tell them,’ he shrugged, ‘but they wouldn’t believe me.’
‘You don’t need to evacuate the area, and the Burj Al-Arab is perfectly safe,’ Richter insisted loudly. ‘I’ve already disarmed the bomb.’
‘You can’t have,’ another man said angrily. ‘The only people with the abort code were the terrorists, and now they’re all dead. You’re lying simply to save yourself.’
Richter completely ignored the interruption and continued. ‘This is the bomb,’ he explained. ‘When I open the lid you’ll see two small screens inside. One of them displays a message in Russian, and the other shows the number of seconds before the explosion was due to take place. Four hours is fourteen thousand four hundred seconds, correct?’ After a moment to do the calculation, several heads nodded.
Richter glanced at his watch. ‘The four Americans left this hotel about eighty minutes ago — some five thousand seconds. So, if they’d been truthful and the bomb was still active, the timer should show around two and a half hours, or nine thousand five hundred seconds, remaining before detonation.’
He paused and beckoned them closer. ‘So let me show you what they actually set it for,’ Richter said, and lifted the lid.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Expecting a large turnout, the police had cleared the square of vehicles early that morning. They now roped off an oblong area right in front of the Qasr-al-Adl, the Palace of Justice, in which they laid out a blue plastic sheet some five metres square.
Shortly before the time appointed for midday prayers, a white van arrived and parked outside the Emirate Palace. Four men emerged from it and within about half an hour had set up a professional-quality video camera, a satellite uplink dish on the roof of the van itself and a low-power transmitter that would send a continuous broadcast to a receiver inside the palace.
By the time the mu’addin proclaimed the adhan, everything was in place. The square almost emptied as people departed to perform their ritual cleansing before the jumu’ah, leaving behind just a handful of curious Westerners and non-Muslims, but it quickly filled again once the obligations of religion had been fulfilled.
The crowd parted as two cars and another white van approached, the latter driven by a police officer. The broadcast crew in the square instantly swung the camera round to record their progress. As the van moved through the crowd, an Arab stepped forward, shouting something, and banged his fist on the side panel. Then another did the same, and within seconds everyone who could reach the vehicle was either hitting or kicking it.
The van halted and the crowd fell suddenly silent. The rear doors were opened and two officers dragged out a swarthy Arab wearing a stained white gellabbiya. He was resisting desperately but, with his elbows pinioned behind his back and his wrists tied, it was an unequal struggle.
Most people who arrive in police vehicles at Dira Square on a Friday are clearly drugged and usually blindfolded, but the instructions issued from on high had specified that this man was to receive no such mercy.
The moment the crowd caught sight of him, the yelling started again. The officers marched their prisoner, barefoot and still struggling, to the centre of the plastic sheet, where they forced him down on to his knees, and positioned themselves on either side to stop him rising.
An official from the Interior Ministry stepped forward, waited until the crowd had fallen almost silent, and then extracted a sheet of paper from his pocket. In a loud, clear voice he apologized that, despite prolonged questioning, they had still not discovered what the man’s name was, then read out the offences committed.
Immediately the crowd began shouting again as a tall, strongly built figure stepped forward, followed by a police officer carrying a long sword with a curved blade. Normally the executioner will approach the condemned man from behind, jab him in the back with the end of the blade to make him raise his head, and then decapitate him with a single blow. But on this occasion, the executioner had received special instructions.
He stepped in front of the man once called Saadi, bowed to the crowd, then turned back to the police officer and accepted the sword. He ostentatiously tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb, then swung the weapon a few times, the scimitar hissing through the air, as the crowd roared approval. Then he turned back to the kneeling man, placed the tip of the sword under his chin, and forced him to look up, into the eyes of the man about to kill him.
For a few seconds the two men stared at each other: the condemned criminal and his executioner. Then the tall Arab handed the sword back to the police officer, moved behind his victim and nodded to the other policemen who stood waiting there. One of them positioned a low stool under Saadi’s chest, forcing the bound man down onto it, then ran a rope around his torso to hold him there. A ripple of unease ran through the crowd: this practice was not usual.
Another officer placed a short plank on Saadi’s back, under his bound wrists, so that his hands and forearms were resting on the wood. The executioner bent to check that it was positioned to his satisfaction, then accepted a knife with a long, sharp blade from another officer, and again walked forward to face the camera and the crowd. The people shouted again, with renewed bloodlust, divining the man’s intentions. He paused to let Saadi see the knife clearly, then sliced through the cords securing the prisoner’s wrists.