The obese Arab waddled down the street to the Mosque of Sayyada al-Hussein, his body waggling with every step as huge sacks of extra flesh slid against each other. His face was round with an almost childlike openness.
According to his KGB dossier, Suleiman was far from the fool whose image he projected. He had distinguished himself in two of the wars against Israel and in the subsequent years had established a relationship with nearly every terrorist organization on the planet. The KGB figured that Suleiman’s personal wealth was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred million dollars.
Too nice a neighborhood for a stinking Arab, thought Lurbud as he crossed the now empty street.
Lurbud paused by the door. The streets were now eerie. He had been watching Suleiman’s shop since noon from various vantage points, and during that entire time the streets had been crowded and loud. There was no one about now; even the countless cats that skulked through the alleys had vanished. Since crime is nearly nonexistent in the Khan, there was no need for elaborate security systems. Lurbud expertly picked the frail lock to Suleiman’s shop.
He knew from the dossier that the Arab always returned to his shop for a few minutes after prayer before leaving the Khan for his home on Shari El Haram, the road which leads to the Great Pyramids at Giza. Lurbud closed and locked the door after once again checking the empty street.
Inside the shop, Lurbud passed display cases that gleamed with gold in the dusty light that streamed in through the transomed windows. The setting sun cast long shadows across the room. Lurbud eased a Takarov pistol from its holster under his jacket and parted the beaded curtain that led to Suleiman’s back office.
A battered wooden desk, covered with stacks of books and a gold measuring scale, occupied the center of the small office. A coffee urn, tarnished and pitted, sat on a low settee against one wall. The room smelled of dust mingled with the sweet odor of hashish. Lurbud sat behind the desk, the pistol in his lap. For twenty minutes, until Suleiman returned from prayer, the only movement in the room was the occasional blinking of Lurbud’s dark eyes. He waited with the same patience as the Sphinx just outside the city.
Lurbud’s entrance had disturbed the room, its air pattern, its volume, its feel. As he remained, motionless, the room had calmed, accepting his presence. This was a skill he had learned at a training camp on the shores of the Black Sea, where students were put into a completely dark maze. The one who walked out alive, graduated.
He remained motionless even when he heard the front door of the shop open and close. An instant later Suleiman’s immense bulk parted the curtain separating his shop from his office.
Suleiman had grabbed a demitasse of coffee and was almost upon Lurbud before he noticed the intruder. The thimble-sized cup fell from his pudgy finger, shattering on the stone floor. Behind his beard, Suleiman’s face drained of color and he staggered back several paces.
“I read in your dossier that you are never guarded here in the Khan.” Lurbud spoke fluent, unaccented Arabic. “You believed that your standing in the bazaar would protect you, yes?”
“Who are you?” Suleiman demanded, recovering from his initial shock.
“My name means nothing to you, Suleiman el-aziz,” Lurbud spoke without emotion. “You were hired to supply and ship nearly a thousand tons of arms, ammunition, and material to Hawaii. Is this not true?”
“I know not what you talk about.”
“I believe that you do. The order was placed by Takahiro Ohnishi possibly several weeks or months ago.”
“I am a simple jeweler. I don’t understand.”
Lurbud continued as if Suleiman had not spoken. “I represent a group that does not wish to see this order filled. We don’t want those arms shipped to Hawaii. In fact, we don’t want you to have any further involvement with Ohnishi at all.”
“Who are you to tell me how to run my business?” Suleiman retorted with a sneer.
“Ah, so no longer are you a simple jeweler.” Lurbud’s smile was devoid of amusement.
“I know your type,” Suleiman said, his tone scornful. “You’re some soldier of fortune who happened on that piece of information. Do you think you can blackmail Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman?”
“I am not here to blackmail you. I’m here to tell you that the order is canceled.”
“You are too late, mercenary. Those arms are on a freighter halfway to Hawaii.” Sweat had beaded on Suleiman’s creased forehead.
The Arab was lying. Suleiman hadn’t even purchased the arms yet. He was currently using Ohnishi’s deposit money to push up the bond prices of a hydroelectric project in Sri Lanka. Because of his contacts in the terrorist underworld, Suleiman knew that Tamil separatists were going to bomb the huge network of dams within two weeks. By pushing up the bond price and then selling at a slight discount just prior to the attack, Suleiman stood to quadruple the money. Only then would he put together Ohnishi’s order for weapons.
“I believe that you’re lying, Suleiman.” Lurbud brought the Takarov into view for the first time. “But to be honest, I don’t really care what the truth is.”
For such a large man, Suleiman’s reaction time was incredibly fast. He dove across the room, his body sailing through the air like a giant zeppelin.
Lurbud swung his pistol in an arc matching Suleiman’s leap, but his first shot amazingly missed the huge target. Suleiman crashed against the wall near the settee, one arm sweeping the coffee urn to the floor. Coffee flooded across the floor in a thick black tide. Suleiman’s hands, made dexterous through years of precision jewelry making, tore at a pistol which had been taped to the back of the old urn.
Evad caught a look of murderous rage in the Arab’s eyes as Suleiman torqued his huge body to bring the gun to bear. Lurbud fired an instant before the muzzle of Suleiman’s automatic caught a bead on him. The shot tore into the arms merchant’s body, the fat rippling in shock waves around the impact.
Suleiman’s arm was thrown up by the shot, the tiny Beretta spinning from his hand. Lurbud fired again, and again. The killing light in Suleiman’s eyes began to fade. Lurbud came around the desk, his pistol aimed directly at the Arab’s head.
With his free hand the Russian pulled a flask from inside his jacket. He unscrewed the lid from the pewter flask and knelt next to the dying Muslim.
“As a final thought, Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman,” Lurbud began, pouring the viscous red liquid from the flask onto Suleiman, “you will meet Allah with your body covered in pig’s blood.”
Suleiman opened his mouth to scream at this ultimate desecration, and Lurbud fired one more round down the gaping throat. The blood of the dead Muslim mingled with that of the unclean pig on the hard floor of the office.
Lurbud reholstered his gun, noting for the first time the thick pall of cordite smoke that hung in the air. The room reeked of smoke, but beneath that odor he detected the smell of blood and Suleiman’s voided bowels.
At the front door of the shop, he paused. There were a few people on the street, mostly old men heading back to the coffeehouses and their hookahs. The thick stone walls of the shop had muffled any sound from the silenced Takarov. Lurbud eased out of the shop and mingled with the crowd as best he could. Ten minutes later he was out of the bazaar, searching for a cab. He had two hours to dispose of the pistol and get to the airport before his flight to Hawaii.
The White House
There was a stunned silence in the Oval Office after Mercer made his revelation. He watched as everyone’s expression turned from surprise to confusion and finally to doubt.