by Ty Patterson
A full hour later, he had moved up from the feet to the neck. The prince had not moved impatiently once during his entire examination.
You don’t get to wield that power without learning to be patient.
‘Anything found in his blood?’
‘No. He didn’t take any drugs. Nothing suspicious was found.
Zeb turned off the lights in the room, paused when the doors suddenly opened and the guards came in brandishing guns. They scurried out at a gesture from the prince and he turned back to the body.
He examined the body with just his flashlight and then made a second and third pass after fitting various filters on the light.
It was on the last pass, with a special filter, that he spotted it.
The faintest discoloration on the back of the neck.
Chapter 11
The prince sensed something in him and peered over his shoulder. ‘What? What is it?’
Zeb shook his head. The idea was floating in his mind, but he needed more than a discoloration for it to weigh down firmly. He ran the filter over the knees and elbows and found what he was seeking.
He turned on the lights in the room and found the hawk eyes trained on him.
‘I know you’ve found something.’ There was a deep satisfaction in the prince’s voice. ‘I knew you were the right man for this.’
Zeb responded with a question. ‘Can I see the prayer room, Sir?’
‘Yes. Anything you want.’
He led them out, snapped his fingers and the guards straightened. Zeb stopped him before he issued instructions. ‘Could they wait for some time? They can ready the body as soon as I check something out. It shouldn’t take more than an hour.’
The guards bowed at a hand signal from the prince and secured the room.
The prince took them up the same flight of stairs, steered him past a gaggle of children who looked wide eyed at the white man beside the royal, to a door in a hallway.
A guard straightened when they approached, bowed and stepped out of the way.
‘Only the royal family is allowed to open and shut these doors,’ the prince murmured and pushed them open.
Zeb was impressed with the simple décor of the room. It had none of the fancy gold lining and elaborate lighting in the rest of the palace. Its walls were white, its floor was plain and bare, and the windows were plain glass set in wooden frames.
He removed his shoes and stepped deeper and examined the room. It was fifteen feet long, ten feet across and had just the one entrance. A prayer mat was a few feet in front of him.
‘Where was he found?’
The prince pointed to a spot on the mat on which Zeb lay down, curled his body in a couple of positions and at the last contortion, got a nod from the royal.
He inspected the lock on the door, a simple one that could be picked from the outside or the inside.
He went out in the hallway, looked at the ceiling. ‘No cameras?’
‘No. We never felt the need, not with these many guards around always.’
‘How many guards were stationed here on that day?’
‘Two.’
He led the prince back to the body, turned it over and pointed to the discoloration on the back of the neck. The prince squinted and looked at the skin from several angles but didn’t spot it. He breathed sharply once Zeb lit the filter and the darker skin jumped out.
‘What is it?’ The Prince whispered.
‘It can happen when a particular lock is applied.’ He demonstrated with his hands but when the prince’s eyes remained uncomprehending, he stood behind the royal and with a May I gesture, placed his hands on Prince Abdul.
‘Any kind of killing leaves marks,’ Zeb explained after demonstrating the hold. ‘Even the most accomplished killers leave something behind on the body, but since the death looks natural, those signs aren’t picked up.’
Zeb followed the prince outside, letting the royal think furiously, making the connections for himself.
‘But—’ the prince swallowed, ‘that’ll mean the killer had to have contact with my brother.’
‘Yes,’ Zeb said grimly. ‘And that’s the problem. The prayer room has no place for concealment. There’s no way the killer could have hidden there. The guards would have spotted anyone approaching.’
‘Unless—‘' He stopped and shook his head. Are you looking for conspiracies where none exist?
‘Unless what?’
‘Sir, that mark could have a perfectly innocent cause.’
The Prince waved his words away. ‘I’m aware of that, Zeb. But let’s explore all possibilities. What were you leading to?’
‘The killer could be someone familiar. Someone they see regularly, someone who doesn’t stay in the memory.’
The Prince dismissed his idea and continued toward the prayer room. ‘Every family member was accounted for. We know where exactly everyone who works in the palace was. We interrogated the guards, they are blameless.’
They paused outside the prayer room where Zeb broke off to examine the corridor and to check out the passages that lead away from the main hallway. He shook his head in frustration when he knocked on the walls.
Concrete. No place to hide here.
Even if the killer hid somewhere, how did he escape?
He rejoined the prince, but his eyes were on the guard who was staring straight ahead. ‘Your guards maintain logs? They record everything that happened on their watch?’
‘Yes,’ the prince led him back to his chambers where he snapped orders and presently a lean, clean shaven, uniformed man appeared. The prince introduced him as Aaban Khalili, the head of security.
Zeb saw the competent look in the man’s eyes, recognized the epaulets on Khalili’s shoulder. Colonel. Their palace guards are some of the toughest soldiers. He shook hands with the man once the prince had finished introductions and asked him in fluent Arabic. ‘Can I see your logs?’
Khalili quickly concealed his surprise at Zeb’s command of the language and natural accent, turned his head away and whispered in a radio.
The security detail maintained a handwritten ledger and backed that up with computer records. ‘Redundancy,’ Khalili explained, ‘but also accuracy. If the two logs don’t match, we investigate.’
Zeb nodded and skimmed through the pages till he found the date he was looking for. The logs started at 00.00 hours each day and ended at the same hour the next; they covered every minutiae of royal life and recorded in great detail the movements and all happenings in the palace.
He stilled when he saw an entry, read back several pages, went forward a few more and finally looked up, his eyes distant, lost in thought. He came back to the present when Khalili cleared his throat, and reaching for a pen, he circled several names on the logs.
‘Can you get me their records?’
Khalili glanced at the names, nodded, bowed, and disappeared.
Prince Abdul stirred when the head of security had gone. ‘You’ve found something my friend? You’ve got the look of a wolf.’
‘I wish I hadn’t found it, Sir. Unfortunately, your suspicions are true. Your brother was killed.’
Prince Abdul’s eyes narrowed to fierce points of light. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I will be once I see those logs and check a couple of things more. But I am certain I am not wrong.’
The prince’s fist clenched once and loosened. ‘Let’s be sure. Then we’ll find the killer.’
The personnel records didn’t have anything incriminating, but Zeb wasn’t expecting the killer to be revealed so easily. He singled out two records, handed the rest back and asked the colonel to lead him to the false alarm incidents.
Zeb made to deter the prince when the royal accompanied them, but a glance at the set jaw told him it would be futile.
Khalili led them to several hallways, pointed to the alarms that had gone off irregularly and finally came to the prayer room. He silently pointed at the alarm in the ceiling, just a few yards away from the
doors to the room.
At Zeb’s request, a step ladder appeared. He climbed up, took the alarm apart, but found nothing in them.
‘Those are the new alarms,’ Khalili told him, ‘but even those went off irregularly.’
‘They didn’t,’ Zeb replied grimly. ‘They stopped going off the day after the prince’s death. Since then, not a single false alarm went off.’
A dawning light appeared in Khalili’s eyes. ‘You think—’
‘I think this hallway needs to be searched thoroughly. Can you have some men go through every square inch of the ceiling, walls and floor within twenty feet of this detector?’
Khalili turned to issue orders, halted when Zeb stopped him.
‘Maps. Are there maps of all the passages and rooms in the palace?’
Khalili hesitated and looked at the prince. Zeb read his indecision. There are probably secret passages within the palace for the royals’ use.
Prince Abdul’s voice was steel. ‘Anything Mr. Carter wants, he will get.’
Zeb stopped Khalili again. ‘One last thing. I want security camera logs for the day of the death, as well as for the day before and day after.’
‘You know who this killer could be? I am told there aren’t many such men in the world.’ The prince asked Zeb once Khalili had left.
‘I don’t, Sir. Such men hide their identities for obvious reasons. But once Khalili comes back, I can show you the killer.’
The assassin had finished a job in Berlin, the emissary, and was now in the U.S.
The emissary had to die of course. The only people who saw the assassin’s face and lived were those who had nothing to do with his business. He was bemused how the emissary had thought he could meet the assassin and live.
Not my problem. He’s no more a risk.
He had grabbed the emissary when the man was returning from work, had bundled him into an SUV and had taken him to a remote, industrial park outside the city. There, he had interrogated the emissary, and hadn’t been disappointed when the emissary didn’t have anything more.
The emissary had never met the sponsor. His only contact was with a voice with whom he had gone through an extensive credentials check. The emissary shared the sponsor’s views with a burning intensity. He had articulated those views in a few select private dinners and one day the voice had reached out to him.
I don’t need to know who’s paying me. I have to make sure I am safe.
He applied advanced interrogation methods and the emissary babbled that he had left no incriminating documents, emails, recordings of photographs. The assassin believed him. Nothing but the truth came out of people once the assassin worked on them.
The assassin killed the emissary and arranged the death to look like an extreme sexual activity. Given the remoteness of the site, it was likely that the body wouldn’t be discovered for days, by then the assassin would be out of the country.
He then searched the messenger’s apartment, his work place and confirmed for himself that the emissary had been telling the truth.
The next day he boarded a flight to America.
A week later, his cutout reached him there and handed him his next assignment. Another high profile, political target, but this time the time scales were compressed. This time the sponsors wanted results in weeks.
The cutout didn’t mention the dead emissary and the assassin didn’t bring it up. They discussed timelines, payments and when the assassin hung up; an email arrived from the cutout, bearing a dossier on the target.
The target was the Venezuelan Oil minister who was due to attend an oil industry conference in Texas in three weeks’ time.
The assassin studied the dossier, noted the minister’s diet, sexual habits - a mistress in Caracas, the state of his marriage and when he had absorbed everything, booked a flight to Texas.
‘That’s the assassin,’ Zeb pointed at a security camera image of Mohammed Rauf, the personal trainer, three days later.
In the still image, Rauf was standing in the security enclosure, laughing at a joke as he was frisked by a guard.
Zeb was with Prince Abdul and Khalili as he walked the royal through his findings.
The electrical devices, still in place in the various hallway walls that fooled the fire alarms into going off. The forgotten room in the passage next to the prayer room. The logs that showed the personal trainer in the vicinity of the alarms when they went off.
‘Most importantly, he has disappeared.’ Zeb concluded. ‘Rauf paid his respects to the family the next day, but from then on, hasn’t been seen or heard from.’
The Prince’s face was pale in shock when he rose, shut the door to his chamber and faced Zeb and Khalili. ‘You’re sure, Carter? This man was trusted by us. He was a trainer to several members in the family; in fact my wife and I used his services several times.’
Zeb nodded silently without replying. The assassin’s hands were on him. He could’ve been killed.
Khalili protested his face dark with anger and embarrassment. ‘You must be mistaken, Mr. Carter. Rauf went through extensive checks and only then was he admitted inside the palace. We don’t allow any random trainer to work with the royal family.’
‘You have got DNA records for him, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ the security chief replied. ‘We maintain records for everyone who enters, works or lives in the palace. We’ve got yours too.’
Zeb removed an envelope from inside his jacket and handed it over to Khalili, who stared at it for a second and then opened it. He extracted a sheet of paper, frowned in bewilderment for a moment, turned to a file beside him, flipped pages rapidly and sucked in a breath sharply.
His fingers had the faintest tremble in them when he folded the sheet and started putting it back in the envelope.
‘Look inside.’
He opened the envelope wider, and withdrew a plastic bag. He held it against the light, squinted and turned to Zeb. ‘They’re his?’
‘Yes.’
Prince Abdul’s voice cut through impatiently. ‘What’s that? What did you find, Zeb?’
‘Mohammed Rauf’s hair, Sir, they were found on a laundry sheet. Luckily, the sheet hadn’t been washed yet. Their DNA matches Khalili’s records.’
The Prince thought for a moment and shook his head when it didn’t make sense to him. ‘Explain.’
‘The killer hid in the utility room either before or after the killing and then hid himself in the dirty laundry to escape. He probably expected the laundry to be washed immediately.’ Zeb’s voice became grim. ‘We got lucky. Rauf didn’t know the contractor had a broken washer and the washing was delayed.’
The royal sat motionless for several minutes it was only when faint voices from outside intruded that he stirred. His stern gaze moved to Khalili. ‘Where is he?’
A faint sheen of sweat broke out on the colonel’s forehead, but his voice was even. ‘My men are looking into that, Your Highness. I have also asked the Mabahith to investigate.’
The Mabahith, the General Investigative Directorate, was the kingdom’s secretive counter-intelligence agency. Zeb had met a few of its agents in a training exercise and he had a high regard for their capabilities.
‘No one has to know why we are seeking him,’ Prince Abdul warned Khalili and dismissed him.
The prince was silent for a long time and Zeb knew what was going through his mind. He had wanted to eliminate assassination when he had called on Zeb, but deep down he wanted Zeb to prove the death was natural. Assassination opened an ugly can of worms. The thought that a killer could reach the inner sanctum was terrifying. That the killer was so accomplished was scary. Fear battled with anger at the security lapses.
‘He did everything right.’ Zeb addressed Prince Abdul’s thoughts.
They both knew he was talking about Khalili. ‘The trainer’s legend was watertight. I would have accepted it. The fire alarms - going by what he knew - there wasn’t any reason to rip apart the walls. Khalili’s a great securi
ty head; I have the utmost faith in his competence.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Zeb did. He had gotten Broker to run Khalili through Werner and his entire intelligence network. All reports came back positive; everyone who knew the colonel had high regard for him.
The prince didn’t change expression or posture, but he seemed to breathe easier.
His fingers toyed with a gold ceremonial dagger in his waist, his thumb idly rubbing over a gleaming red emerald. ‘This assassin – he would have gotten away if you weren’t here. How would you have done it?’
‘Come now, Zeb,’ the prince chided him gently when Zeb didn’t respond. ‘I hope you aren’t going to say you don’t know what you are talking about.’
Zeb smiled briefly. ‘There are other ways.’
He had spent years when that had happened, traveling for months in China, Japan, Kerala, Peru, Indonesia, in forgotten parts of the world. He had lived with remote communities no one had heard of, with people, some of whom were so old their skin was translucent.
They had taught him about the insignificance of life and of death. They had taught him what mattered and what didn’t. Some had taught him about killing in ways the rest of the world never knew of.
Zeb finally spoke when the prince’s probing eyes didn’t leave him. ‘I wouldn’t have killed when he was alone.’
The royal frowned. ‘In the presence of others? But how?’
Zeb had killed another royal, in another country, in just that manner, but Prince Abdul didn’t need to know anything more.
The prince accepted his reluctance to answer and changed the topic. ‘You’ll be leaving now?’
‘Tomorrow, Sir.’
The House of Saud could track the killer now. They had his photographs and with their unlimited wealth, there weren’t many doors that would stay closed.
Elena Petrova, on the other hand, wasn’t a royal, but to Zeb she was more important. He wouldn’t rest till she rested in peace.
Prince Abdul summoned his assistant who left after a murmured conversation. The assistant returned minutes later bearing a golden tray. On it was an ornate golden necklace from which hung a large, gleaming medallion.