The major change was the look in his eyes. On the cruise liner he had been a man on a carefully controlled military mission, but now he was a wild animal, scarcely in control of himself, poised to strike at anything that crossed his path. A Bengal tiger who was disappointed and angry because he had missed his kill, he was extremely dangerous as a result.
A minute later the steward came over with two pieces of matched Louis Vuitton luggage and placed them in the trunk.
The solidly built, capable-looking driver, dressed in a Western business suit, handed a sealed manila envelope — addressed to Ibn Rashid care of the Sheraton Karachi — over the seat to Khalil, who accepted it without a word. Inside were Khalil’s new passport, stamped by Pakistan customs, as well as several other identity and credit documents.
Thomas Isherwood, who had traveled to and from Alaska, and Thomas Powers, who had made his perfect escape here to Karachi, no longer existed. Those identities were as false as the Rashid persona.
In fact, Khalil thought, he sometimes had trouble remembering his real identity, his real background. Since he received the call fifteen years ago and slipped underground, he had become a man with no name and no past.
The name “Khalil” had been assigned by the CIA simply as a code word, a way to identify him. He had found out about it from a source in the Egyptian Embassy in Washington and had adopted it as his own.
Very few people outside the business even knew that code name.
All that would change when the director of the Central Intelligence Agency lay at his feet, the rich, red American blood flowing like a river. What sights would be seen in McGarvey’s eyes at the time of his passing.
The car was waved through the airport security gate, and Khalil settled back, not noticing the slums they had to pass through to get into the city proper. Most people in Karachi were desperately poor and filled with a religious fervor. They were a dangerous force, like dynamite near an open flame, ready for one spark to set them off.
He was in a very dark mood this evening, mostly because of his failure, but also because of his impatience to get on with the task he had set himself to do: kill Kirk McGarvey.
Impatience was rare for him, and whenever the mood arose, like now, he stopped to closely examine its cause. In his business inattention to detail could get you killed.
On the desert, where the nearest oasis might be one hundred kilometers away, and where noontime temperatures might reach fifty-five degrees Celsius, to make an error in judgment because the wanderer was in a hurry was a sentence of death.
He had never failed before, nor had he ever been bested by anyone. Bin Laden had warned him that if he ever came up against McGarvey to kill the man immediately. He had been unable to do that, and the only reason had been his own weakness, his lack of ability He was desperate to right that wrong.
He looked at his reflection in the window. Perhaps he had lost his edge. Perhaps he had been away from the desert for too long.
Not yet, not yet. There was at least one more battle to be won.
His real age was nearer to fifty than the CIA guessed, but he looked thirty-five. Tall, with an olive complexion, dark flashing eyes, and a feline grace, Khalil could project an intimate warmth if the circumstances dictated it, but could in an instant become as cold, indifferent, and deadly as a king cobra ready to strike.
His family had been Bedouin, wanderers on the open deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. They had a tradition of being tough, heartless people who had to be that way in order to survive the harsh conditions, not only of the desert, but also of the constant internecine fighting of the royal family, of which they were a minor branch.
It was a way of living that had been bred into them over the generations. And like theTikritis of Iraq, which spawned such warriors as Saddam Hussein, Khalil’s family had been exceedingly strong and close knit, in contrast to the modern Saudi family that was as often as not dysfunctional and scattered.
Since the oil boom many of the royals had spent untold billions of dollars on hedonistic pleasures around the world — yachts, jets, mistresses.
All that time Khalil’s family believed that the royals needed to pay more attention to their internal affairs and to the principles of Wahhabism, the strictest and harshest form of Islam.
Only through Allah will the world be saved.
As a child growing up in the late sixties and early seventies, Khalil was trained to be a true Bedouin. A hard, religious fundamentalism was beaten into him by his masters. He learned to be heartless when it was needed, cruel when it was called for.
The Bedouins’ philosophy, and Khalil’s, was a stern obedience to the fatalism of a harsh environment.
Even in this modern age a true Bedouin is able to harden his heart in order to kill his own daughter as an offering to Allah.The refinements of modern life are nothing more than the effeminate devices of degenerate men.
Khalil had never been able to think in any other way, though he could easily slip into the role of the playboy if and when the need arose.
And during the rare times he went home, he acted the role of a kind, loving husband to his wife, and a compassionate father to his children.
To his house staff and servants, he was by all accounts a considerate man. His third cousin, Prince Faisal, once told him that a man could be judged by how he treated his inferiors.
It was important that a man do the correct things when important people were observing, and do the necessary things when important principles were at stake.
Khalil looked up out of his thoughts long enough to realize they had already driven past the Chaukhandi Tombs, because they made the turn on Shahrah-e-Faisal Road directly into the heart of the modern city with its luxury hotels and high-rise commercial buildings. Away from the outlying districts, Karachi could be a large city almost anywhere in the world.
Yet it was here, right in the capitalistic heart of Pakistan, and not in some mountain hideaway as Western intelligence thought, where the real planning for the jihad had taken place well before 9/11.
President Musharraf and his National Command Authority were happy to cooperate with the American CIA’s hunt for terrorists in the remote mountains of Drosh, Chitral, and Shoghot on the far north border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was an open secret among Muslims that only the bandits and Kashmir rebels were left up there. But it occupied the Americans, who thought they were making real progress in their “war on terrorism,” and Pakistan benefited because American aid was starting to flow.
The faint trace of a smile briefly crossed Khalil’s face. The early days of the movement in the mountains of Afghanistan had been a wild adventure. Khalil, like many Saudis, longed to go back to nature. It was no different than Americans who camp in the woods. For many Saudis, including Khalil, it was going back to the desert to a simpler time when religion and a respect for the land were important.
If the oil were to be permanently shut off, the West would be forced to return to its roots, just as the Saudis would have to return to the desert.
It was an intriguing thought.
Downtown on M. R. Kayani Road near the red sandstone pile of brick cupolas and balconies that housed the Sind Provincial Assembly, the driver slowed the Mercedes and entered a parking-garage ramp beneath the modern glass-and-steel, forty-eight-story M. A. Jinnah Commercial Centre.
“Were we followed?” Khalil asked, softly.