by Larry Bond
Shaken by the explicit threat, the Russian general fought hard not to show his fear. He knew the German well enough to know that he never made idle threats. “You cannot afford to have me disappear, Herr Reichardt. That would only draw more unwanted attention to this base.”
Reichardt laughed derisively. “More attention? How could we possibly get any more publicity? “Arms Inspection Team Crashes After Visiting Russian Bomber Base,’” he quoted. “Your blunder is now front-page news!”
Serov hesitated for a moment, marshaling his arguments carefully now.
“We had no choice in the matter. We could not let them return to Moscow — not with what the American had discovered.”
“You mean, after the American had detected your foolish mistake!”
Reichardt’s voice was low and menacing — like the growl of a lion closing in on its prey. “So now the Americans or the MVD will send more people to probe your activities here. And this time they will sweep Kandalaksha from one end to the other!”
Serov nodded stiffly. “Yes, that is a possibility.” With an effort, Serov tried to regain his composure and put himself back on an equal footing with the German. “But I have taken additional steps to ensure that any official investigation will find nothing of interest. After all, the American, Avery, only stumbled across our operation by chance. We can withstand additional scrutiny.”
“So you hope,” Reichardt replied icily. He paused a moment, considering. “But if you are right, then this crash investigation is our biggest remaining problem.”
Serov felt himself starting to relax. The phrase “our problem” reinforced his growing belief that the other man had decided against liquidating him — at least for the time being. He leaned forward.
“They should find nothing incriminating in the wreckage. Captain Grushtin is an efficient officer. He does not make mistakes.”
Reichardt frowned. “A purely Russian investigation of this air crash would not trouble me, Serov. Such an investigation could be controlled.”
He scowled, thinking aloud now. “But I find the American presence worrying. Managing them will require activating special assets I had hoped to preserve for another day.”
Serov kept quiet. The German had already made it very clear that security arrangements beyond Kandalaksha were not Serov’s concern.
Reichardt shrugged. “That is another matter.” His voice sharpened.
“You are quite sure there are no more ‘mistakes’ waiting to be found at your end of the Operation?”
Increasingly confident, Serov nodded. “My officers and I have taken every possible precaution, Herr Reichardt.”
He froze, suddenly aware of Reichardt’s cold gray stare boring into him., “Do not try my patience, Serov. You promised me perfection once before. You failed. And your failure placed this entire operation in jeopardy.”
Reichardt paused, then took two steps closer to the Russian, bringing them only an arm’s length apart. He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Let me be very, very clear, Feodor Mikhailovich. One more error. One more accident. Anything. Anything at all. If this transaction is compromised in any way by your actions or those of your men, you will die.”
The German smiled cruelly. “And I promise you that your death will be painful, as will be the deaths of your wife and daughters.” He let that sink in, watching the horror spread across Serov’s face with satisfaction. “Sergeant Kurgin is not my only agent on this base. I will be watching you, Feodor Mikhailovich. Remember that.”
Reichardt turned abruptly and strode toward the door. Serov followed him, moving slowly on legs that felt shaky.
At the door, the German issued one final warning. “Your only chance of survival is to keep this operation secure and secret.
And you had better hope to God the investigators find nothing incriminating at that crash site.”
He rapped on the door twice, and it slid open. Kurgin came in and walked over to the staff car. Another car was waiting outside.
Without another word, Reichardt turned his back on Serov and climbed into the second car. Moments later it sped off, leaving the Russian general and his new orderly alone.
Stunned, Serov shuddered.
Then, aware that Sergeant Kurgin was watching him, he fought for control over his expression. You knew what you were undertaking, he told himself sternly. He was not a child who could run home crying because the game had suddenly turned sour.
As a fighter pilot, Serov had developed a reputation as a skilled gambler — as a man always willing to push his aircraft to its limits in pursuit of victory. Nothing in his personality had changed with increasing age and rank. And, despite Reichardt’s threats, the Operation still appealed to him. The risks, even now, were manageable, and the rewards-he allowed himself to visualize a vast estate perched above sunlit Caribbean waters — the rewards were dazzling.
No, Serov told himself again, nothing had changed. Not really.
Nothing except that he now knew with absolute certainty that Reichardt would kill his entire family without remorse — should he fail. Well, he should have anticipated that. The stakes were high, very high, both for winning and for losing.
MAY 26
Near Tail, Saudi Arabia (D MINUS 26)
Prince Ibrahim al Saud’s country estate covered several hundred acres of rolling hillside south of Taif. Located in the foothills of the Asir mountain range paralleling the Red Sea, the town was a popular summer getaway for many Saudis. It provided a restful contrast to the bustling cities of Jedda and Riyadh. The higher elevation made it marginally cooler, and irrigation held the sun-baked brown rock of the surrounding landscape at bay.
Entirely surrounded by a low rock wall, Ibrahim’s estate was almost a small town in its own right. Marble from Italy, wood from Turkey, and coral from the Red Sea merged in a series of buildings that were more than a mansion but less than a palace. Outbuildings for the servants and security staff, a garage for a small fleet of luxury automobiles, a helicopter pad and hangar, and a private mosque all surrounded the central residence.
Ibrahim al Saud knelt in the mosque now, facing northwest, toward Mecca. His entire staff, save only the security guards actually on duty, knelt and prayed beside and behind him. By Islamic law, only the noon prayers on Friday required attendance at a mosque, but Ibrahim carefully cultivated his public image as a man of deep religious faith.
As a member of the vast Saudi royal family, he felt it important to maintain the proper appearances in this intensely conservative Islamic land. His various business and other enterprises ran smoother without attracting the unwelcome attention of the Kingdom’s fanatical religious monitors.
He finished the rakat — the cycle of prayer — and stood. Tall and slim, Ibrahim’s dark hair and complexion framed a pair of even darker, penetrating eyes. None of his staff liked to attract his attention, because that meant being pierced by those eyes, searched for flaws, and studied as an object to be used — or discarded.
Barefoot like the rest of the worshippers, the prince turned and watched his staff quickly disperse. He moved toward the door outside, retrieved his own sandals, and walked the fifty meters to the south wing of his residence.
The mansion’s white marble walls reflected the fierce sun, but stepping into the shady portico that surrounded the singlestory building brought instant relief from the glare and the noonday heat. Ibrahim sat down at a small table facing an immaculately landscaped garden — a fantastic mix of flowers and shade trees that would never have survived the Arabian peninsula’s harsh climate without massive irrigation and constant care.
He had never asked how much maintaining this garden cost.
Whether a hundred thousand or a million dollars, the figure was immaterial — a tiny droplet from the boundless sea of his personal fortune.
Like all the Saudi princes, Ibrahim had been born to wealth.
And like them, he had been well educated, schooled first in Cairo, then in Oxford, and finally at Harva
rd. Unlike most of his royal peers, however, he had demonstrated an uncommon flair for organization and finance.
Over the past thirty years, he had painstakingly built an international business empire that now ranked second to none in Saudi Arabia — Caraco.
Most of the corrupt and foolish members of the Saudi royal family had only parlayed their vast oil wealth into still vaster debts — mortgaging their kingdom to the West for fancy automobiles, aircraft, showcase cities, and other baubles.
But Ibrahim and his allies had carefully diversified their own holdings before the worldwide slump in oil prices. Now Caraco’s yellow-and-black corporate logo flew over banks, engineering firms, transportation companies, and import-export enterprises around the globe.
By blood, he was merely one of several thousand princes — a minor member of Saudi Arabia’s sprawling elite. But when money and personal power were thrown into the equation, Ibrahim al Saud could walk as proudly as any of the great kings of antiquity.
A servant appeared with lunch followed by Hashemi, his personal secretary, bearing the usual thick sheaf of faxes and phone messages.
Ibrahim studied the first and most important: “Mr. Lahoud of the Persian Gulf Environmental Trust will arrive in Taif at one o’clock this afternoon. He requests the honor of an appointment with Prince Ibrahim al Saud — at the prince’s convenience.”
Ibrahim looked up at Hashemi. “Arrange for Mr. Lahoud to be brought to the estate as soon as he arrives in Taif. I will meet with him as soon as he has refreshed himself.”
“You have appointments at two and three this afternoon, Highness,” the other man gently reminded him.
“Reschedule them,” Ibrahim said.
Hashemi nodded silently and glided away to obey his orders.
Ibrahim was still at work an hour later when Hashemi reappeared.
“Mr. Massif Lahoud,” the secretary announced.
The prince rose to greet his visitor, a shorter, darkerskinned, and older man. He noted the armed guards hovering in the background and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Their presence was customary when he met men who were not members of his personal household, but he would dispense with custom whenever it interfered with operational security.
Ibrahim smiled thinly. He trusted no one absolutely, but he considered Lahoud levelheaded and discreet.
An Egyptian by birth, Lahoud had been handpicked to head the Persian Gulf Environmental Trust by Ibrahim himself — as had all the trust’s personnel. It was a separate company, privately held by Ibrahim. Its public charter proclaimed a determination to counter the rampant pollution in the Gulf by funneling a fixed percentage of Caraco’s corporate profits into worthy environmental efforts.
“You found your trip a pleasant one, Mr. Lahoud?” Ibrahim asked, signaling Hashemi for coffee.
Lahoud nodded. “Both pleasant and speedy — thanks to your generous assistance, Highness.”
A Caraco helicopter had been waiting at Taif when Lahoud’s plane landed — bringing him directly to the estate.
“And your family? They prosper?” the prince continued.
“They do, by the grace of God,” Lahoud answered.
Ibrahim let the conversation drift through the pleasantries that always preceded any meeting in the Middle East for several more minutes before turning to more serious matters. “I assume the trust has been approached to fund another special endeavor, Mr. Lahoud?”
“Indeed, Highness.” The Egyptian handed him a slim manila folder. “A most worthy venture in my judgment.”
Ibrahim flipped it open. A single cover sheet moved straight to the heart of the matter.
Project Summary
The Radical Islamic Front has learned that Anson P. Carleton, the American Undersecretary of State for Arab Affairs, will visit Riyadh from June 6 to June 8. Carleton’s mission is to press the Saudi government for a renewed rapprochement with the State of Israel.
Among other incentives, he intends to offer an extensive military aid package conditioned only on an agreement by Saudi ministers to meet directly and covertly with representatives of Israel — either in Washington itself or in an undisclosed neutral capital.
The Front has developed a plan to assassinate Carleton as soon as he arrives on Saudi soil. They seek the funds necessary to carry out this action.
Ibrahim turned to the detailed proposal attached to the cover sheet.
He studied it intently in silence and then nodded. The Radical Islamic Front was a small group — a breakaway faction of the much larger and more loosely organized Hizballah. They were known to have good intelligence sources, and it looked as though they’d scored quite a coup this time.
The Front’s plan was a clever one — simple, direct, and with only a minimal chance of detection by the Saudi security services.
And he agreed wholeheartedly with their choice of target.
He’d followed this American’s activities closely now for a number of months. Carleton had apparently dedicated himself to restarting the perennially stalled Middle East peace process once again.
The thought of instigating Carleton’s assassination intrigued Ibrahim.
The man was one of the U.S. State Department’s rising stars, and his official visit would naturally be made under tight security. Killing such a high-ranking diplomat would not only embarrass the Americans and the Saudi security services, it would also make them afraid — unsure of where the next terrorist blow would land. It was also guaranteed to paralyze American policy-making in the region for weeks or months — at least until a new undersecretary was appointed to fill the dead man’s shoes.
All of which would dovetail rather nicely with his own larger plans, Ibrahim decided.
He smiled thinly, imagining again the horror that environmental scientists with Persian Gulf Trust grants would feel if they ever learned they shared funding with some of the world’s most ruthless terrorist organizations. Not that they ever would. He had spent most of a lifetime living and working in two very separate worlds — one the world of international business and finance, and the other the armed struggle against Israel and its allies in the West.
Only a handful of men still living — all of them his most trusted servants knew that Prince Ibrahim al Saud, the chairman of Caraco, was also the hidden financier of international terrorism. For year after year, he had funneled money into carefully selected terrorist operations — always laundering his contributions through a labyrinthine maze of front organizations and other cutouts. And, as other sources of funding for terrorism had dried up, the prince had gathered more and more of the reins of power into his own carefully concealed hands. His word was fast becoming law for terrorist groups as diverse as Hizballah, Hammas, ‘the Radical Islamic Front, Japan’s Red Army, and Colombian’s M19 guerrillas.
Month in and month out, year in and year out, the cycle continued.
Proposals for major terror actions percolated their way upward through his networks until they reached his desk. And then orders issuing the necessary funds filtered back down to the men carrying the guns or bombs. Sometimes Ibrahim felt as though he had been fighting his covert war with America, Europe, and Israel forever — that the long, weary struggle stretched from the moment of his birth and would last until his death.
But he knew that was not so.
Ibrahim could pinpoint the instant, the very second almost, that his hatred for the West had first flared to life.
His eyes closed briefly. Even now the memories were painful.
He had been just seven years old. His father, a farthinking man in many ways, had seen the outside world fast encroaching on Saudi Arabia’s isolation — run by the oceans of oil beneath the Kingdom’s desert sands. Oilmen from Texas, Great Britain, and other Western countries were pouring money into the once impoverished land at a fantastic clip — altering age-old patterns of life in the span of just a few years. To prepare his oldest son to meet the challenges of this new age, Ibrahim’s father had arranged for him to b
e taught English and schooled in the ways of the modern world.
But his father, so wise in many things, had been so weak and so foolish in others.
The memory stabbed at Ibrahim yet again.
It had been early in the evening. He had come into the room his father used to entertain his prized Western guests — eager to show off the top marks he’d just received from his tutor. Two American executives were there. Americans who worked for one of the major oil companies. Both of them stood looking down at his father with expressions of utter contempt on their faces.
And his father? His once-loved father lay in a drunken stupor on a divan, still clutching the bottle of forbidden whiskey his “guests” had plied him with.
Ibrahim’s stomach churned. It was almost as if he could smell the smoky reek of liquor still hanging in midair.
He remembered one of the Americans glancing quickly toward him, then swinging back to his companion with a harsh, muttered laugh. “No problem. It’s only the sand nigger’s boy.”
From that moment, Ibrahim’s path — his duty — had been clear to him.
His formal education gave shape, form, and purpose to his hatred.
During his years at university in Cairo and Oxford, he gravitated toward fellow students and teachers who preached the need for radical change — first by words and then by violence. Their creed was simple, strident, and seductive. Israel, its American and European backers, and those Arabs and Muslims corrupted by Western money were the source of all that was wrong in the Arab world. Only by armed struggle could the peoples of the Middle East throw off the shackles of their Western exploiters and regain their true place in the world order.
Determined to play a leading role in this new war, Ibrahim had even spent a summer training at one of the new terrorist camps springing up across the Middle East. The men masterminding the resurgence of Arab radicalism had been delighted to find a scion of the House of Saud among their disciples. But they had quickly made it clear to him that he was too valuable an asset to be used as a gun-or bomb-carrying foot soldier. Instead they had given him special skills and training — teaching him how to organize self-contained terrorist cells, intelligence networks, and moneylaundering operations. He had been schooled in the arts of command and deceit and then sent back to Saudi Arabia to put those lessons into practice.