by D S Kane
Get away now, but don’t run. She walked a few blocks until she found a convenient dark alleyway. Cassie stripped off the spandex and re-dressed in Western clothing. The tool kit and the alternate identities she’d already used went into a trash bin that was nearly full and ready for pickup.
She kept the passport for “Chrissie Card,” packing it into a hidden pocket in her purse and extracted a new one, for “Darla Kidon,” a diplomatic attachée for the Canadian Embassy. That old one would yet prove useful. She stuffed the new passport into the purse and placed the purse in her backpack.
Cassie, now “Darla,” reached into her backpack and pulled out a tiny glass vial. She twisted the top of the vial, dropped it into the trash bin, and walked away. It would take several minutes for the vial’s contents to destroy everything in the bin.
No longer rushed, her escape from Karachi was her new priority as she walked to the Sheraton on Club Road. Cassie entered the hotel from the rear and took the stairs to its basement.
One last time, find a wireless connection for my notebook. Before McDougal had rushed her to Karachi, she’d been scheduled to work an assignment in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She confirmed her seat on the Air France flight to Riyadh at 6 a.m.
She wiped the contents of all the non-hidden folders in the notebook’s hard disk and then took the elevator to one of the upper floors, to the snack machine vestibule. Safest place to spend the early morning hours. Cassie chewed candy bars until 4 a.m., then took the elevator to the lobby. The quiet stillness of early morning slowed her heartbeat. It’s over.
On the line with other business executives waiting for taxis to the airport, she pulled Evan’s photo from the backpack. A teardrop fell onto her sleeve. I wish he was still alive. She let her mind drift back to their lives before things blew apart and he somehow morphed into the guitar she’d bought after his death. Funny thought.
For Cassandra Sashakovich, it was just another day in the life.
Chapter Three
June 3, 6:58 p.m.
Room 307, third floor, Golden Tulip Andalusia Hotel, Olaya Street, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Cassie had flown direct from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia five days ago, her cover once again Chrissie Card, an econometric consultant. Early this morning, she’d delivered the report she’d written on the growth in demand for electricity. Now, after bidding her client farewell, she’d returned to her hotel room and packed for the early morning flight back to Boston and the Brewster Jennings satellite office in Washington the following morning.
The Minister of Public Utilities called with a question on population dynamics, and she held the landline receiver to her ear. “Yes, Minister. I’ll find out for you and contact you after I return to our office back home. Thanks, and goodnight.”
Her last night in this barren place. One more evening suffering the overpowering street-side scents trapped in her hair. Her overactive sense of smell was overwhelmed with the stench of nearby oil refineries, the aromas of food vendors, and the stink of rancid camel dung. She wondered why she found the intense street odors so offensive, while the whiffs of exotic food were so satisfying.
Cassie had played her recycled “Chrissie Card” cover during the daylight hours and hacked into bank computers at night from her hotel room.
She ordered dinner from room service in perfect Arabic. The Defense Language Institute in Monterey had been anything but West Coast laid back. Classes in Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, Dari, Farsi, and their corresponding Middle Eastern cultures two years ago had left her fluent, able to operate nearly unseen among the locals.
She counted the hours before she left for America as she searched the room-service menu. Eating dinner in her hotel room would save her time and was almost as good as Baalbek, her favorite restaurant on Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Road. Without a client to accompany her, she had no choice. Women didn’t venture out at night alone here.
This assignment was more benign than the previous one, in Karachi. Things there had gotten complicated. Burning down two buildings in the financial district had made headline news.
In comparison, this was a breeze. Sixty million US dollars equivalent routed from Islamic extremist bank accounts back to the bank of her agency; four separate hacks, each complex but not terribly difficult..
Her reward, excellent food, would soon come through the door. She looked forward to the savory pigeon soup with its musky, gamey chicken nada flavor it had taken months getting used to. Now, she loved its symphony of flavors. She licked her lips, anticipating the bastia, a powdered-sugar-crusted pastry stuffed with savory cinnamon-flavored meat.
She reached for her attaché case and dug through her papers. She was jarred to see Evan’s photograph. Her heart ached for her dead lover. It’s exactly two years tonight. Done with him. He’s haunted me long enough. Damn him for wanting to fight. She tore the photo into pieces.
A single tear escaped. Just one.
There was a knock on her door. She peered through the peephole. A tall man dressed in a white jacket waited outside with a cart carrying her dinner. She opened the door, took a deep breath of the aromas of spices and smiled.
The attractive olive-skinned man wheeled her dinner to the table. She found him staring at her and gulped, examining the man in front of her more closely. Was he a threat? Something didn’t feel right.
She handed him a small stack of bills, cocked her head and spoke in Arabic. “Thanks. You can go now.”
His gaze shifted away from her, but then he seemed to reconsider. He reached out and touched her arm. Alarmed, she faced him, standing crouched to defend herself.
“Swiftshadow.” Although he barely whispered, she gasped audibly and sank back into her seat.
“What did you say?” she whispered back. Alarm bells shrieked in her head. He knew her agency call sign.
“I am a NOC. My name is Abdul Hassain.” He was claiming he was an asset of her intelligence service, with “non-official cover.” He tilted his head and his eyes shifted down. “I have urgent material for you to deliver to the agency. Your call sign. I was given that to identify myself as your legitimate contact.”
Her throat was suddenly dry. It hurt to swallow. Her mind raced on without focus. Who the hell is he? How can he know something no one knows unless told by my handler? Calling the agency to find out if he’s legitimate will divulge more than just my cover. Is he someone and is this something I should attend to? What should I do?
I’m not trained as a courier. I’m an economist, a banker, and a hacker. I’ve had negligible training in self-defense or situational analysis. What if he isn’t who he claims, and carries a handgun? I’ve had minimal training in weapons and close-quarters combat. Only had two weeks at Camp Cleary. Most of my training was at The Farm, and that was in computer hacking and counter-surveillance. Totally useless here.
I’m unprepared to analyze this situation. She tried to quiet her Uncle Misha’s voice in her head telling her not to do this. Not safe. I don’t have access to the diplomatic pouch without permanently blowing my cover. If I take anything from him, it would have to go through customs with me.
But what if his intel is critical? What he wants to pass to me must be important if he’s broken protocol. Does my country need me to take this risk?
Take a deep breath. Refocus.
No. I can’t take the intel.
Her attaché case sat open on the desk. In clear view, pieces of Evan’s ripped photo. Worse, work papers peeked from under the photo. He spoke English, so it was likely he could read it as well. “Just a sec.”
He nodded.
She walked to the case. The report under the photo was her “Forecast of Electricity Demand,” just completed for the Saudi government, with its twelve pages of text, graphs, and tables of statistics. It was her cover assignment. The banner of the report showed the contact information for her Chrissie Card cover identity.
But what she most needed to hide from Abdul was a folder with her notes, peeking out from the end
of the case. Its label was visible: “Muslim Extremist Bank Account Data.” It contained the locations, names, account numbers, and the associated SWIFT codes for the banks that housed accounts of Muslim extremists. Cassie’s copy of the code manual, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, based in Belgium, would be suspicious to anyone familiar with her cover assignment, which had nothing to do with banking or computer hacking.
The left half of Evan’s face grinned back from one of the torn photo’s pieces. Another piece bore a word of his printed message pledging his love. She almost flinched. Another deep breath to refocus.
Abdul can’t see any of this. She slammed the lid closed on the attaché case, latched it.
Cassie turned and found Abdul inches away. She jolted, startled, and then resettled herself. Shook her head. “I won’t act as your courier. When I return to Washington, I’ll tell my handler to send a courier.”
Abdul frowned. “Then at least we can enjoy ourselves before I leave.” He moved aggressively toward her. She moved back.
“Not interested.”
He was taller and heavier than her, and moved as fast as a cat. Before she could counter his move, he was holding her with one arm as he ripped her blouse off with the other.
He trapped her arms with one large hand. Desperate, she sank her teeth into his upper arm as deep as she could, gripping him, her jaw rigid as he yelled. She didn’t let up.
Abdul hit her in the face with his fist and her world went black.
She saw the laughing face of Uncle Misha telling her, “You’re beyond your depth. Tonight you die!”
Now, she rocked back into contact with the world and felt hands probing her body.
Fully conscious, naked, she was under Abdul’s body. Her right cheek burned where he’d beaten her into unconsciousness. His heavy body anchored her, controlled her. She tried to shift her head and saw the hairs on the hand that held a knife against her throat as he pumped his body deep into her.
Through the searing pain, she couldn’t tell if wetness underneath was her blood on the sheets, but then the odors hit her. The sickening street smells from the open window and spicy odor of the dinner trays mingled with the tangy odor of body fluids seeping from inside her into a sickening repulsive mélange. Not the coppery odor of blood. Sex.
She gagged but he didn’t seem to notice. Outrage mingled with shame, overshadowing the fear she’d felt.
He squeezed her tiny breasts no bigger than a boy’s, breasts Evan had loved. Blind fury overwhelmed the pain between her legs. She wanted to make him suffer and screamed as loud as she could.
Abdul clamped a hand atop her mouth. Cassie struggled but Abdul tightened the knife against her neck. She could feel her blood drip down her neck from the shallow cut. “Silence, or you die right now.”
She stopped yelling.
“That’s right, don’t move. You—American women—you’re meant to submit. It will be easier for you if you do.”
Submit? Crap! She did resist, her scream muffled by his hand. She tried to deny the reality of being raped, but each pummel of her body was an affront, and her screams melted into crying.
“Submit, Cassandra or I will kill you now instead of later.”
He knows my real name! She forced herself to deal with the obvious: He wasn’t sent by the agency. This isn’t just a rape. Shit! Cover’s blown. He’s here to murder me.
She felt her assassin’s body reach deep inside her, penetrating her, just as he soon would with his knife. She forced herself to concentrate. She had no idea who created this situation or why, but the list of people wanting her dead was growing ever longer. Her work for the agency left every terror group with fewer resources as she stole their money.
She’d let death into her hotel room.
She assessed her situation: Hassain was six feet tall, muscled and heavy. At five-feet-six and about one-hundred-twenty pounds, Cassie was wiry but not strong. No match for her assassin. A tiny voice that sounded like she’d imagined her Uncle Misha’s did, screamed inside her head, you idiot! You’ve no way to fix this.
Or did she? She thought about Evan’s death in Iraq. For so long she’d wanted to die instead of living without him. But now, when death faced her now, she chose life. How to fix this?
It was her rapist or her.
I need a plan to defend my life. There was none apparent. The voice in her head spoke again: Use your body as a weapon to buy yourself time.
Rape is about control. She needed time to craft a plan. She let out a sigh and then closed her eyes tight, forcing her body to go as limp as a rag doll. No further resistance at all from her.
She’d never killed anyone before, but tonight she’d have to. Focus!
She opened her eyes to slits and looked for a weapon. The nightstand held an alarm clock, too light to inflict damage. She saw a telephone, a hotel pen, and a glass half-filled with diet soda. She wished for something sharp or heavy, like the chef’s knife from her apartment back in DC. Cassie thought about using the pen to pierce his temple, but it was too flimsy. Its point might bend or snap rather than penetrate his skull.
The plan formed in her head. To distract him, she tightened her thighs as hard as she could. Keep him from moving and provide me with a better point of balance. But holding him so tight and drawing him deeper inside her triggered his spasm into orgasm. As he ejaculated into her, Abdul momentarily loosened his hold. It was the break she needed. In one fast movement she grabbed the phone’s base and slammed it hard against his left temple. His eyes bulged, then closed. The knife fell from his hand, bouncing onto the carpet.
She squeezed out from under him and wrapped the twelve-foot-long cord around his neck. Pull it tight. Tighter!
His eyes popped open. She saw him reach for the knife and smashed his nose flat with the palm of her hand.
He screamed as he stepped back, blood streaming down his face. In less than a second, he recovered and cornered her, using one hand to loosen the phone cord from his neck.
Cassie kicked him in the head and then connected a second time, her bare foot hitting him hard in the crotch.
Abdul doubled over. His arm swept low, grabbing the knife from the carpet and hissing as in one swift move he swung it into her and opened a gash in her shoulder. As she backed away, he moved the knife to cut the phone cord.
She jumped on him, grabbed the hand he used to hold the knife and bit into it hard as she could. Her jaw locked onto him while he smashed her head several times, but the knife dropped and bounced under the bed.
Now I see the opening! Cassie ripped the other end of the phone cord from the wall and swung its base over the bathroom door. She ducked inside, closed the door with him outside, pulling the thin cable tight over the top of the door. Wrapped its loose end around her waist. Dropped hard onto the floor, hoisting his body by the neck. She knew his toes were off the ground, with her hands gripping the bottom of the door. No time to think.
She was stretched out upside down, every muscle tense for what seemed like hours, until he stopped struggling.
She dropped to the floor and unwrapped herself. Crawling around the door, she checked him for a pulse. Abdul was most definitely dead. As she let his body down, she heard his bowels open. She tried to ignore the odor, and knew she needed to get away from his corpse fast, before she vomited.
She looked down and saw the condom stuck halfway inside her. Why had he bothered? But then she realized since he was here not to rape her but to execute her, the murder would be investigated. “Condom” equaled “no DNA evidence.” Cassie pulled it from her. Its tip had ripped open. She went to the bathroom and wiped away the white fluid dripping from her. She sighed and looked in the mirror. Blood seeped from her neck, more from her shoulder. It was just clotting. Now she felt pain.
She had killed a man. Couldn’t focus. Her knees buckled and she hit the floor, gasping. Scenes flowed through her head, aromas and emotions traveled with them. The room-service foods versus Abdul’s sten
ch. The odor her own body emitted during the rape, the stink from the street outside. Abdul’s face when he entered her room versus Evan’s destroyed photo. It was too much; she gasped for breath.
Mark McDougal, her boss and handler had told her, “We haven’t hired you for black ops, just technical assignments. You’ll never kill anyone. You’ll just be a hacker.” The irony of her situation was obvious to her. She staggered, empty and cold, still perspiring. The voice in her head jabbered, barging unwanted thoughts into her mind. Ugly thoughts. In Saudi Arabia, they behead murderers. Cassie imagined herself, hands bound behind her back, body laid down with her head locked into the stone block for decapitation in public view at “Chop Chop Square.” Her throat went dry. Panic threaded out from her core. It took all her self-restraint to choke back tears. She fell back to the floor, the room going tilt-a-whirl.
The cold tile floor of the bathroom returned the world to something she could deal with.
I must flee. Time is my greatest enemy. What to do first? How to prepare? Cassie tried to remember what she’d learned at The Farm, the spy school used by all the secret police forces of the United States. She’d been given just basic training, nothing more. A tad of self-defense, a bit about handguns and covert tradecraft, but because she’d not be used for black operations, the focus was more on covert counter-surveillance than hard-core combat. I wish I’d paid closer attention.
But the basic hand-to-hand combat she’d learned there had just saved her life. Surely, the other tactics she’d need tonight were somewhere within her.
Didn’t work. Her mind swirled. Leave right now!. No, that would be a mistake. What if my assassin has coworkers in the hotel, watching, waiting for me?
She needed a plan. Best to determine his orders. Look for clues. Why did this happen? She used a dry-cleaning bag from her closet to keep her fingerprints and DNA from contaminating the objects she searched. His clothing contained a note, written in Arabic. Scribbled there was someone’s or some location’s initials and phone number. A local number: 966 1 405-5811. His pockets held a new cell phone—battery fully charged—but no list of recent calls and no address book.