by Dalton Fury
“We will pay four hundred thousand dollars each for sixty weapons.”
The Libyan cocked his head, tried to read the man across the table. Finally he said softly, “You are serious.”
David Doyle leaned forward. “Contingent on the successful test-firing of one weapon against a commercial aircraft.”
Saleh said, as much to himself as to his customers, “Twenty-four million dollars.”
Haroom corrected him. “We will pay for the test SAM, as well. So, twenty-four million four hundred thousand.”
“I see,” said Saleh, his voice registering his amazement. “I think this can be arranged with some effort and research.”
For a chance at $24 million, Aref Saleh would find these boys a damn airplane to blow out of the sky.
SIX
Tripoli, Libya
Dr. Renny Marris had been in this line of work long enough that he should have felt the eyes on him, but he felt nothing but the warmth of the Mediterranean sun on his face as he stepped out of the massive Corinthian Bab Africa Hotel, just two blocks from the Mediterranean seashore. It was just past eleven a.m. and he had been hard at work with neither food nor drink since daybreak, so he decided to get out of his dark suit and into the bustling streets for lunch, even if he’d have to bring some of his work along with him.
Marris walked past the taxi stand in front of the hotel and then continued on foot up the steps to the parking garage. Over his shoulder he wore a worn canvas messenger bag that bulged with files and folders full of his work. He knew better than to take these documents out of his suite, but time was short and he had a lot to do, so he allowed himself this transgression with barely a moment’s thought.
Marris was a man who lived more in his work than in the world around him.
He slid into the driver’s seat of his two-door Mazda with some effort. He was a big man, a shade over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds, much of it a thick middle that seemed to spread more and more each month since he’d reached the age of fifty, five years prior.
The burly Canadian drove out of the hotel grounds, then headed east through thick midday traffic on the palm-tree-lined Al Kurnish Road. The blue waters of the Med were on his left, and on his right was the Medina, the old city. A massive array of tightly packed whitewashed buildings and narrow streets and alleys that covered several square kilometers, it had begun as an ancient settlement by the Phoenicians in the seventh century, and now comprised just a tiny tip of Tripoli’s wide oceanfront.
Though he was not a particularly fit man, he was not worried about venturing out among the locals. Apart from the petty crime rife in many Third World cities, Tripoli, Libya, was safe enough for most of the thousands of Westerners living and working there, now one year after the overthrow and death of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.
It was safe enough for most Westerners. But it was not safe at all for Dr. Renny Marris.
He was blissfully unaware of any danger. He’d been wrapped up in his duties of late, and he’d been lulled into such a comfortable relationship with Tripoli, working here for a year with no major personal security problems, that his mind did not wander into the realm of threat perception.
As he turned into the Medina, behind him a pair of vans followed him closely.
Another car followed these two.
Oblivious to his long tail, Marris drove on, deeper into the shadows of the tight streets and alleyways of the Old City.
Many of the roads did not have street signs, but Renny knew where he was going. He loved the hustle and bustle of the Third World, the Arab world, and he’d found this little hidden courtyard café populated by locals and intrepid expats some months back while meeting with a shadowy contact. He’d returned every week or two since. He enjoyed the food, the atmosphere, the feeling that he could leave his office or his busy hotel suite full of computers and fax machines and sat phones and disappear into the belly of ancient North Africa in just a matter of minutes.
But he was wrong. He was hardly disappearing.
Dr. Renny Marris was a lead investigator for the United Nations, and he was a natural for the position, as he possessed a PhD in mechanical engineering and a reputation as being an ardent pacifist. Young Dr. Marris had served several stints working for aid agencies and human rights groups around the world, becoming an expert in land mine eradication in the 1980s. In the nineties he branched out into stopping the illegal trade of other forms of conventional weaponry. Now, into the second decade of the new century, he had been working in the field of antiproliferation of conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction for over two decades.
He’d spent his career in Ethiopia, the Congo, the Balkans, the former Soviet satellite states, Iraq, and Central America.
But these days, ground zero for a man in Marris’s field was Libya.
As the rebellion against the Gaddafi regime intensified, heavily guarded defense depots were abandoned by soldiers fleeing for their lives. Many of these soldiers took valuable weapons with them, and many of the rebels plundered the abandoned depots clean of the remaining war booty as soon as they could.
While the revolution was still in full swing, Dr. Marris and the UN arrived in-country to look for evidence of the chemical weapons Gaddafi was rumored to have produced and stockpiled over the years. But the Canadian inspector and his team found no evidence of a chemical program. This was good news, but it was followed quickly by bad news. Renny and his team heard rumors of the disappearance of conventional weapons in mind-boggling quantities. They began moving across the country, even as battles still raged, attempting to secure loose tank shells, land mines, artillery pieces, and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
It was these SAMs that produced the biggest threat to the world at large. The missing high-tech Russian-made Igla-S shoulder-fired rocket (its NATO designation was the SA-24 Grinch) was a terrorist’s dream weapon; a single shooter with a single rocket and a single tube, a weapon system that weighed just over forty pounds, could take down a 747 full of passengers flying at ten thousand feet.
And hundreds of these weapon systems were missing around the nation.
Marris’s investigation had led to the capture of many of the lost missiles. Poorly organized gangs had taken some of them, and others were stolen by individuals who were caught when they tried to sell them on the crude black market that had developed. The new weapons bazaar of Tripoli was unorganized and insecure, and Marris and his team had scooped up tons of dangerous contraband with ease.
Other munitions were intercepted by Egyptian or Tunisian officials over the border or by U.S. or other Western powers on the open seas.
But a few months back all parties had been given a grim reminder of the high stakes of this game of cat and mouse. One of the dangerous Iglas-S systems had slipped through the grasp of all the entities trying to recover them. The SAM was bought and sold and transported, and then bought and sold and transported again. And then an Airbus A330 owned by Indonesia’s national carrier, Garuda Indonesia, had been shot down shortly after takeoff in Jakarta, killing all 266 aboard.
Dr. Renny Marris himself had arrived at the scene of the crash site within twenty-four hours, there to see if Libyan munitions were involved. He confirmed this by forensic testing on the impact point of the missile, and it was soon determined that the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah had been responsible for the unspeakable crime.
That much of Gaddafi’s conventional weaponry had been stolen was not news around the world. At first there was panic around the globe with the news that up to twenty thousand surface-to-air missiles had been stolen and were on the loose. But as many of these and other arms had been recovered, the story died down.
And there were no chemical or nuclear or biological weapons involved, which greatly affected the sex appeal of the news story. The Jakarta incident was front-page news for a few days, but then the story faded as the media minimized the continued threat.
But while it was true that the maj
ority of the weapons were back under the control of the Libyans in power, or had never been stolen in the first place, or had been scooped up by Western parties once they were in transit out of Libya, Dr. Marris and his staff knew that these were the low-hanging fruit. There still remained in excess of a thousand missing Igla-S’s and enough artillery shells to fuel IEDs around conflict zones for fifty years.
So Marris left the low-hanging fruit to the Americans or the Libyans or whoever else wanted to get involved, and he stayed in Tripoli, working the hard cases.
Within the last month he had discovered that, along with other arms traders who had poured into the nation after the revolution, a tight-knit organization made up of former members of the JSO, Gaddafi’s external intelligence service, were behind the bulk of the smuggling. These spies had survived the rebellion by using their tradecraft and now they were either in hiding in Libya or over the border in Egypt or Tunisia or Algeria, facilitating the sale of all types of conventional weaponry that had been hidden around North Africa after their government’s downfall.
Marris’ efforts were bringing him closer and closer to the JSO ring’s leadership.
His staff worked at his downtown office, but most days he stayed in his suite at the Corinthian, sat in front of his laptop, and reported via webcam to the UN in New York or conducted online meetings with government officials or Human Rights Watch or sat for interviews with Western news organizations. As the pace of his investigation increased, he found himself in higher demand.
An investigation such as the one Marris and his team had been involved in would, of course, draw attention from the criminals as well. And it was no surprise that a couple of his investigators had been roughed up in the past month. But to Renny this was good news. It meant he was getting closer to a breakthrough, closer to the JSO men who were, as far as Marris was concerned, much more afraid of him than he was of them.
Once again, Dr. Renny Marris was dead wrong.
* * *
He pulled into a parking lot near the Old British Consulate, in the center of the Old City, and he hefted himself and then his satchel out of his car. He crossed the street and entered his destination, and soon found a table at the large bustling courtyard café.
Marris sat in the quietest corner of the courtyard and ordered a lunch of skewered lamb and rice along with a cup of strong coffee. He opened his satchel and arranged a sheaf of papers in front of him, and then began reading, losing himself in his data.
He had a videoconference with New York this afternoon. In the meeting he would update UN leadership about a recent snag in his investigation. One of his confidential informants, a general in the Libyan army, had gone missing. Marris felt certain the man had lost his nerve and broken off contact, so scared was he about possible reprisals by the JSO.
It was a setback, no question. Marris had relied on the general’s cooperation, and now that the man had disappeared, Marris would need to find new access into the shadowy organization of ex-spies controlling the export of illegal weapons out of the nation.
This new access would not come without a great cost in bribes, and he needed the UN to foot the bill. So now he read up on the facts and figures he would use this afternoon in his case to the UN so they would give him the money he needed to retool his inquiries.
Renny’s food came and he ate it while he worked. He ordered a second coffee after his meal, and he sipped while he continued to read the reports before him.
While working, even while working out in the open like this, Renny took no notice of his surroundings. He had not a clue of his own personal security.
It was only when he looked up from his work to rub his eyes that he noticed a young, well-dressed black man sitting across from him at his table.
The man offered a toothy grin and an extended hand. “Dr. Marris. Good to see you again. Donald Meriwether, from the conference in Bruges last September. You are looking well.” The man spoke English with an American accent.
Renny had been to a conference in Bruges the previous September, but he did not remember this man. Still, he took the man’s hand and shook it. “Nice to see you. Meriwether, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“Yes.” Marris, suddenly aware that much of the paperwork in front of him was highly confidential, began stacking the sheets as if he were about to leave.
“Can I buy you another coffee?” the American asked.
“Oh … thank you, but I need to get back to work. Um … I am sorry. Bruges is a bit of a blur. I can’t say I remember meeting you. What do you do?”
“Much the same as yourself, at the moment. In fact, I’d love a couple minutes of your time to chat about a topic of mutual interest. Maybe we could step over to the lounge?” Just off the courtyard was a dark room full of cushions and low tables. Here men sat in the dimness and smoked from hookahs and drank tea and coffee.
“Why?” asked Renny Marris, on guard now.
“Please. I’d appreciate a quick word.” The man stood, beckoned Marris to follow.
By the time they had settled into the tobacco-scented cushions in the dimly lit long and narrow lounge, the Canadian weapons expert had determined he had not, in fact, met this man in Bruges. He had also decided that this was no chance meeting. This man would be some sort of American agent — CIA or military intelligence or something along those lines.
He groaned inwardly. He had few hard and fast rules, but he had made one, an ironclad oath to himself that he would have neither contact with nor connections to the American government.
The CIA had been running around Libya on the same mission as Marris and his team for the past several months. They had had some successes, successes Marris chalked up to the easy-picking variety. But in this work the CIA had ruffled more than a few feathers along the way.
Marris had worked around CIA and other intelligence agencies in all the places in which he’d plied his trade for the past thirty years and, as far as the Canadian peacenik was concerned, American intelligence was an enemy who, for their own benefit, occasionally worked toward the same goal as did the good guys.
Marris asked the man in front of him, “Why don’t you just tell me who you are?”
The young man said, “I read your article last month in Foreign Policy. Very interesting.”
Marris adopted a skeptical, slightly sarcastic tone. “Would you like my autograph? No? I asked who you are.”
The American’s comfortable smile dropped off. “I’m with the U.S. Embassy.”
Renny Marris did not blink. “You are CIA.”
The black man did not blink, either. Instead he just repeated, “With the embassy.”
“What do you want?”
“Associates of mine are big fans of yours.”
Renny clutched the strap of his bag tighter. “I am certainly not doing what I do so that I can generate fans in American intelligence. The proliferation of U.S. weapons is tenfold more harmful to the world than these Libyan arms.”
“Agree to disagree,” said the American, displaying no outward reaction to the insult. “Look. I’m not here to tell you about everyone who loves your work. I’m here to tell you about a few who do not.”
“Who?”
“The JSO guys you have been tracking.”
“How do you know who I am tracking? Do you have spies in my operation?”
“We have feelers in their organization, same as you. And we have learned something recently. They know about your investigation, and they know you are close to identifying their leadership. That puts you in the crosshairs.”
“And?”
“We want to help you out of the crosshairs.”
Marris laughed, a touch of anger along with it. “I do not need a babysitter from the CIA watching over me. And I certainly am not going to be recruited by you. You want to control conventional weaponry so that you will have the biggest guns on the block. That isn’t peace. That is force. That is domination. I work for the good of all mankind, which means I do
n’t work with or for America.”
“‘The good of all mankind’?” The American chuckled and clapped his hands together. “That was a fabulous speech, Doc. I bet that goes over well at the UN or at UC Berkeley or pretty much anywhere in Europe. But, brother, you are in Tripoli at the moment, and ‘all mankind’ around here isn’t so appreciative of your efforts. Look, we are glad you are here and doing what you are doing. But that’s us. The two vans that followed you here into the Old City and the three goons in the lime-green four-door outside the café are a subset of mankind who don’t take kindly to your nosy nature.”
Marris looked out toward the courtyard for a long moment. Only a sliver of the street was visible through the entrance of the café. “I don’t see them.”
“You will when you go outside. Big guys in bad blue suits, one eyebrow each. You need to start opening your eyes when you leave the sanctity of the Corinthian.”
“I’ve been followed before. It is part of my work. You followed me here yourself, did you not?”
“I did,” the man conceded. “But not to slide a knife across your throat. You need to take my word for it. Tripoli is not safe for you anymore. Not safe for you or your investigators.”
Marris swatted away the comment with an annoyed hand, but the American continued his pitch.
“You are doing good work, but you could be doing more good. If you had a little more money, more physical and capital assets helping you out. We want to get the rest of the loose munitions off the market. Just like you.”
Marris just rolled his eyes. “Do you think you are the first American spy to try this pitch on me?”
“I know that I am not. I am, however, the first to tell you this while in a position to protect you from immediate harm.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Warning you. Know the difference. They will kill you. The guys out front or men just like them.”
“It sure sounds like a threat.”
“It is an informed observation, Doc.”