The Phoenix Affair

by Paul Clark

  *****

  Khalid fought to control himself as he re-read the message from Paris. His mouth was strangely dry, his breath came shallow, and he could feel perspiration on his forehead despite the air conditioning working overtime in the internet café. He looked up from the screen to sweep the room, all young Saudi men surfing the web. Nobody else was sweating, but nobody was paying any attention to him, either.

  He looked back at the screen, blinked away his disbelief, and read the message for a third time. Network destroyed, probably, Ibrahim’s apartment searched by Americans, probably CIA. The General was almost certainly alive since there’d been no phone call from Salah to crow over the success of the murder attempt. Ibrahim on a train by now headed for Germany, his telephone number compromised. Unbelievable. How could his best man, his protégé, have failed so utterly? He stared at the screen, but in a few moments he realized that he was replaying the dreaded image in his head again, the one where he knelt on the stone square, hands bound behind him, the grate in the stone before his eyes and the headsman above him holding aloft the great sword. He shook himself, wiped his brow, and sat back.

  Up until this he’d had the beginnings of another good day. He’d prayed at dawn, thanks be to God, then slept well until nine. After a breakfast of bread, cheese, oranges and some tea he’d bought another ten airline tickets for his men. That, at least, was progressing according to plan. In another two or three days he’d have enough to get half the force out of the Kingdom and they’d be safe.

  “Well, why should it take so long to do?” he asked himself. “Of course, it need not,” he answered. Instead he resolved that he would find one more travel agent here in Riyadh today, buy ten more tickets. Then, he’d arrange for his men to begin moving some of the “assets” elsewhere in the Kingdom, smaller towns where they would clear Security for the international flights and avoid doing so at the major departure points like Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dhahran. Taif, in the mountains above Mecca would do. Then Tabuk, up north by the Jordanian border, a nice, provincial town, very quiet. He had people there, he had people everywhere in the Kingdom. He had another thought, and decided it was a good time for him to see the mountains of Hejaz himself. “Perhaps it’s time to do something a little more complex, just in case.” He’d drive West to Taif this evening, buy more tickets there tomorrow, then to Tabuk the next day to buy the rest. He’d be finished quicker, he’d feel safer knowing his men could begin moving, and he’d have broken up the pattern considerably. The picture of the grate flashed through his mind again very briefly.

  “Yes, that is a good plan,” he gloated. It did not escape his notice that he’d be on the road, or far from the power center of Riyadh, at least, when Mohammed attacked the troublesome General’s house in Dhahran this evening.

  He looked up again at the sound of movement, and saw that many of the other customers were shutting down and moving to the counter to pay for their time. Right then the call to noon prayer, is-salat id-zohr, issued from the loudspeaker of the mosque a half-block down the street from his chair, a penetrating, clear tenor voice, and others took up the call a fraction of a second later. “God is most great, God is most Great, come to prayer . . .” Khalid had too much to do to spend the next thirty minutes at prayer, but it was after all a part of the rhythm of his life, and he would be conspicuous if he tried to avoid the mosque right here. In any case, the café would close, the clerk was already beckoning frantically at him and another man to shut down and pay so he could shutter the shop.

  He killed the cursed message and the browser, and shut down the computer as quickly as he could. Reaching into the pocket of his thob as he stood he produced two ten-riyal notes, waving them at the harried clerk. The man nodded with a grateful smile, and Khalid left the notes next to his machine.

  Out on the street men flowed in a heavy stream toward the mosque on his right, and he blended in with the crowd. It would be good to pray again today, it would calm him, Allah would give him wisdom and strength. He reached into his left pocket for the phone, dialed Mohammed in Dhahran, and walked toward the mosque.

  “Nam?” the voice answered.

  “Mohammed, may God give you life, brother,” Khalid said cheerily. How was your preparation last night? I hope your mother is well?

  “God gives you life, brother,” the other replied. She is well, praise be to God, but the mullah here is about to begin the prayers. Can it wait, I must turn off my phone.”

  “And here, my friend, here as well of course. I was just wondering if you still plan to call on my nephew tonight as we agreed. It’s very important to me that he receive my greetings tonight.”

  “Yes, yes my friend, it will be done. I’m looking forward to, ummm, seeing him. It should be an exciting party, I doubt he’s expecting it at all.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” he said in a tone he hoped conveyed a warning. He had a strange feeling about this, such was the effect of Ibrahim’s failure. “If you want it to be a true surprise, you must be careful. He’s a clever boy like his father, my brother. You have help, do you not?”

  “Yes, I do, it will be a good surprise. Now I must go.”

  Khalid had reached the door of the mosque, and men filing past him through the door looked disapprovingly at his phone. He heard the beginnings of the mullah leading prayer over the phone just as it went dead.

  He closed his own, pocketed it, and joined the flow of men into the cool interior of the mosque. The entry hall was littered with shoes already, and he removed his own sandals, putting them aside in a corner where he was pretty sure he’d find them. He padded forward on the cold tiled floor to the ablution stations, thinking as he always did that the Prophet, Peace be upon Him, had been wise to ensure that the prayers happened at the same time of day, by the sun, everywhere on earth rather than at the same time by the clock. Thus, prayers were about five minutes earlier on the coast, in Dhahran, than they were here in the center of Arabia. When his turn came he stepped up to the long ceramic-tiled trough with a fountain of water spilling into it from a large perforated pipe above, and he performed the ritual washing that always preceded prayer. First his hands up to the wrists, and then he took water into his mouth three times, spitting it into the trough each time. Next, he snuffed water into his nose three times from his right hand, blowing it out each time with the aid of his left. Then he washed his face from ear to ear three times, and from chin to forehead three times, from wrists to the elbows three times, from the forehead to the back of his neck and back three times. Next he washed each ear with the corresponding hand, first finger brushing the inside of each ear while the thumb ran along the rear of the outside of the ear. Finally, he washed each foot, beginning with the right, leaving them damp, and spoke in a whisper the ritual kalimatus shahda: ash-hadu alla ilaha illallahu wa-ash-hadu an-na muhammadan 'abduhu-wa-rasuluh, there is no God but God and Mohammed is His Messenger. He was ready, clean, and pure to hear and speak the words of the Holy Q’uran.

  Khalid followed the men ahead of him into the mosque proper to find a place to pray. As it often was with small, out of the way mosques, while the building was dusty stucco on the outside, plain and a little unkempt, inside it was magnificent. Thick carpets covered the floor, many of them clearly very old, but thick and soft nonetheless, in many patterns, but most of them dark reds, blues, blacks. Khalid recognized them as Afghan rugs. In a richer mosque they would most likely be made in Iran, but this was a place for common men. Men lined up to pray across the front row from right to left, regardless of rank, and filled the rows behind as necessary. He took his place, standing, and waited quietly. Above him the interior of the dome of the mosque loomed far above, worked in beautiful tiles, geometric designs and intricate calligraphy of the verses, the sura, of the Holy Book. From the ceiling hung massive, ornate chandeliers. In another minute the leader at the front, before the mihrab, a door-shaped niche facing toward the Ka’aba in Mecca, began
to pray by raising his hands, palms forward, and saying aloud “Allahu akhbar”, God is most Great. Khalid fell into the routine automatically, as he had done five times a day every day from the time he was five years old until he became occasionally too busy doing the work of God. But it was automatic, unconscious, ritual, and he fell into the rhythm and peaceful bliss of the prayer, standing there in the sight of Allah with his fellows, humble before their God.

  Thirty minutes later he came back out onto the street, waited for the shopkeepers to hustle past him, and decided it was time to check his email again, just in case. The drive to Taif could wait until the cool of evening, and it was only just before one. Khalid was seated at the same machine a few minutes later drinking a cold Pepsi when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

  “Nam?” he answered.

  “Hello Khalid, this is Mohammed calling. How are things in Riyadh?”

  “Very well, my friend, very well. How are your plans progressing?”

  “That is what I’m calling about, coincidentally, I couldn’t talk earlier. Were you aware that your nephew is not in Dhahran today? I stopped by your brother’s house, may God protect him, earlier today to make sure we would not be a bother if we came to give our birthday wishes tonight, and nobody was home. It looks like the whole family has left for the summer or something. Did you not know your brother was leaving town?”

  Khalid frowned and began to perspire again, thinking hard. First Ibrahim had been destroyed, less than eight hours ago. The Saudi general was at large in Paris, probably, or at least he had to assume he would be. As far as he knew the rest of the family had been at the Dhahran house yesterday, although now he thought of it, there was no way to be completely sure of this, either. If they were gone, either they were warned yesterday or this morning, but perhaps they’d left even earlier? He shook his head. Too many unknowns.

  “Khalid?”

  “Just a minute, I’m thinking, err, of where he could be. I did not know my brother was planning to travel this week.” He tried to focus. Someone was screwing with him, fast and hard, that much had to be assumed. The grate in the plaza flashed across his mind yet again, but he brushed it aside. This was the kind of thing he was good at, although he felt like he was behind, and he was not accustomed to being behind. He had no idea where the family might have gone, anywhere in the Kingdom as far as he knew. It occurred to him that this call was lasting too long.

  “Mohammed, I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I regret any trouble you may have gone to, and I appreciate your willingness to help me wish my nephew happy birthday. I will remember your kindness, my friend. For now it appears that I will miss that honor, but perhaps I will make a late acknowledgement to my brother some other time. Is there anything I can do for you in Riyadh, or perhaps Taif? I find I need to go to the mountains tonight or tomorrow?”

  “No, no, Khalid, there is nothing, but thank you for your kind words. I’ll be in touch, then?”

  “Yes, Mohammed, I will talk with you soon. Thank you again, my friend. Goodbye.” He stabbed the “End” button before he heard a reply.

  There had been no more email from Ibrahim, but that was no real surprise, the man should be on a train halfway across France by now. Khalid struggled with the feeling that everything was falling in on him, from every direction, and that he was losing control of things. Was that true? Maybe it was time to leave Saudi Arabia after all, maybe for just a little while to see if things settled down? At least until he knew how deeply he was penetrated by—who? The Americans? He looked at his cellular phone suspiciously, thought of Ibrahim’s phone compromised in Paris. Could they do that here, in the middle of Saudi Arabia? Surely not? He made a mental note to make fewer calls, just in case. It would be an awful lot of trouble to get a new phone and get the number into the hands of all the people who would need it.

  Energized by a sense of disarray and doom, Khalid got moving. In five minutes he was in his car, driving West on the Mecca Highway toward the Al-Khariyya mall and a travel agent he knew would be there. He was determined to finish his ticket buying today, tomorrow, the next day at the latest in Tabuk. As he drove he decided he would buy one more ticket, for himself, although he could not think of anywhere he wanted to go.