The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06]

by By Jon Land

  Because you‘re the only one keeping tabs on me, Danielle almost said.

  “But you can see how such a thing would look to those in the ministry who were against your return to begin with, especially coupled with your insistence on looking into an Arab’s murder. I can’t hold them back forever, Danielle, especially without a reason to.”

  “And I thought you asked me here to have coffee . . .”

  Vordi scowled at her. “I’m starting to regret calling you back.”

  “I’m starting to regret coming.”

  Vordi shook his head, slightly disturbing the wavy curls that draped over his ears and hung slightly toward his brow. “You still haven’t learned to choose your battles ... or your friends.”

  “Is that what you want to be, Minister, my friend?”

  “I already am, Danielle. But I won’t be much longer.”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “See, you prove my point for me. Everything to you must be a confrontation. I only want what’s best for the both of us.”

  Danielle felt heat building behind her cheeks. “Which includes having dinner together, or maybe just coffee.”

  “You would prefer we keep things strictly professional, then,” Vordi said, his voice drooped in concession.

  “Yes, I would.”

  Vordi rose, nearly tipping his chair over backward. “Fine. Then understand that conducting unauthorized raids and corresponding with unauthorized parties will no longer be tolerated. I know how much being named commissioner means to you . . . Commander. You would be wise to consider your actions with that in mind in the future.”

  Danielle kept her voice even. “Thank you for your advice, Minister.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 28

  W

  hat now?” Sayeed asked, parked on the street across from the Hyatt Regency-Dearborn, a perfectly manicured lawn separating them from the hotel entrance.

  “As soon as I’m out of the car, drive to the Marriott Hotel, leave the car, get into the next cab that stops there, and go home. Pack up your family and hide.”

  “Hide where?”

  “You have friends in Dearborn, Sayeed. More favors to call in than you could use in a lifetime from people who are good at this sort of thing, and both of us know it.”

  “So my contacts can do some good at last,” Sayeed said ironically.

  “Your contacts are what got you into this.”

  “You think I’ll be targeted?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. There’s someone else involved here besides Khalil, Hamas, and the State Department. And whoever it is killed Latif.”

  “What was this delivery, Bayan? What was Latif talking about?”

  “Let me figure that out. You just worry about getting yourself and your family to safety.”

  Sayeed gazed across the seat, trapped between emotions. “They’re your family too, my brother.”

  Ben managed a smile and tried to look reassuring. “Call my cell phone number when you’re settled. And if something goes wrong, if for any reason you can’t reach me . . .”

  “What?”

  “Get to our cabin on Saginaw Bay.”

  “Of all places,” Sayeed muttered.

  “Exactly. Get to the cabin and I’ll meet you there.”

  Ben tried to open the passenger-side door. The pounding the car had taken made it stick until he thrust his shoulder against it and climbed out, grimacing from a fresh bolt of pain in his leg.

  “Let me help you inside,” Sayeed offered through the open window.

  “No,” Ben ordered, leaving no room for doubt. “Get your wife, my niece and nephew, and our mother, and find somewhere safe to go. Tonight. Now!”

  “Very well,” Sayeed agreed. “Bayan?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Ben stood on the street until his brother drove off. Then he started toward the hotel, taking the circular route to it on the sidewalk. The Hyatt Regency was an anchor of the Fairlane Town Center, a 2,500-acre complex of businesses, shops, and entertainment establishments built directly across from Ford’s corporate headquarters.

  The pain seemed to lessen with each stride, his leg and hip both loosening. His mind was something else again. The fact that the night’s events might have put his remaining family in jeopardy made the events of ten years ago seem like they had happened only yesterday. He had lost his own wife and children then, and forgotten in the years during his self-imposed exile that he had any more family left to lose. The reality that he did struck him hard and fast now as he cursed himself for not standing up to Lewanthall’s veiled threats.

  Lewanthall had come at him with the mentality he had tried to leave behind in Palestine, where individuals shrank next to the awesome power of the state to do to them what it wished. Again and again only the power of Colonel Nabril al-Asi had spared Ben the wrath of his enemies. But this was the United States, where the sanctity of the individual was protected by laws, and rights remained sacrosanct. He had let Lewanthall scare and threaten him. He had let the power of the State Department manipulate him into enlisting his brother’s aid in what had become a life-threatening mission.

  Ben reached the elevator and pressed four. The pain in his leg and hip had been reduced to just a dull ache now, as if his anger had flushed it out. He would call the State Department first thing tomorrow morning, go over Lewanthall’s head, and tell them all to go fuck themselves.

  The thought of doing that actually brought a smile to Ben’s face as he inserted his key card into its slot, watched the light go green, and opened the door.

  “Don’t turn on the light,” a voice he recognized as Alan Lewanthall’s said from the corner of the room.

  * * * *

  Chapter 29

  Y

  ou switched off your phone,” Ben said, closing the door behind him, too startled to let his rage rumble outward.

  Lewanthall sat in a chair he’d moved to the corner of the room facing the door. An overcoat wrapped his body like a blanket. A cloud of smoke hung over him, drifting slowly across the room.

  “I wasn’t alone,” Lewanthall explained, raising a cigarette to his mouth and then flicking the ashes to the carpet. “I couldn’t afford to have any attention drawn to me.”

  “Latif is dead.”

  “I figured.”

  “You knew the men I called you about were killers, didn’t you?”

  “Never mind that.”

  “Answer my question!”

  “I thought there was a pretty good possibility of that, yes.”

  “And you chose not to warn me?”

  “If I had warned you how dangerous this was, would you have gone through with it?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s your answer.” Lewanthall took another drag of his cigarette. “Now, at the apartment, did you find anything, did Latif talk?”

  “He said something about a delivery.”

  “What kind of delivery?”

  “I don’t know. Now it’s your turn. You knew the man who sent Latif here, Akram Khalil, was dead, didn’t you?”

  “Not until last night, after we met.”

  “But you knew Latif was in grave danger. Right or wrong?”

  “It’s not that simple. The possibility existed, yes, only—”

  “Cut the double-talk! I know what this is about now. There’s a plot against America and Latif was in the center of it.”

  Ben could see the shock on Lewanthall’s face from across the room. “How could you know that?”

  “Because Akram Khalil had a fatwa in his Gaza hideout, an edict giving him permission to bring about the Last of Days—here, in the United States.”

  “Oh my God ...”

  “You’re talking to me now, not Him.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand you knew about this plot all along and didn’t mention a damn thing about it in Boston yesterday.”

/>   “Would you like to help me stop it, Mr. Kamal?” Lewanthall asked with a strange calm.

  “Is that what I’m here for?”

  Lewanthall dropped the cigarette to the carpet and stamped it out. “Just answer my questions, starting with this delivery Latif mentioned. Did he say anything else about it, anything at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Think, for God’s sake!”

  Lewanthall started to come out of his chair until Ben stormed forward into the last of the cigarette smoke wafting forward.

  “Listen to me, you son of a bitch, my family’s involved in this now. Our discussion’s finished until you get them to someplace safe, somewhere they can be protected. You hear what I’m saying?”

  Lewanthall sat back down. “Lower your voice. I hear you.”

  “Good.”

  “But there’s nothing I can do.”

  Ben took a few steps closer, the pained grimace on his face adding to the single-mindedness of his order. “I must not be hearing you’’

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t; I said I can’t.”

  “Bullshit! You’re the goddamn State Department! Pick up the phone and call somebody.”

  “There’s no one to call,” Lewanthall said feebly. “No backup, no help, no reinforcements.”

  “You’re not making any sense!”

  “None of this makes any sense,” Lewanthall shot back and instantly lowered his voice. “It didn’t in the beginning and it doesn’t now. We knew that, I knew that, but it didn’t stop me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Kamal.” Lewanthall sighed, no longer trying to sound calm. “This is going to take a while to explain. . . .”

  * * * *

  Chapter 30

  L

  ayla Aziz Rahani had just sat down for dinner at Bolo in the Chelsea section of New York City, when a tall, broad-shouldered man entered from Twenty-second Street and approached her table.

  “Expecting someone, Sayyida Rahani?” he asked, looming over her.

  “Karim Amir Matah . . . What a pleasant surprise! Please, Major, pull up a chair.”

  Matah scrutinized the long, narrow restaurant, scanning those seated at tables as well as those at the bar.

  “It’s you I was expecting,” Rahani continued. “Please, sit down.”

  Matah stiffly took the chair across from her but didn’t pull it in under the table.

  “You won’t need to see a menu because, I suspect, you won’t be staying long.” Layla leaned forward and cupped her chin in her hands. “I’m sure the Saudi secret service will understand. Can I assume you’re here for my protection, dispatched by the royal family to make sure no harm comes to me while visiting the United States?”

  Karim Amir Matah wrinkled his nose, frowning. “In Riyadh, sayyida, wearing those clothes would be grounds for arrest and incarceration.”

  “Which I’m sure you and my brother would be more than happy to arrange.”

  “He has informed me or your father’s . . . condition.”

  Layla tried not to show any reaction. “Tell me, Major, do you remember the last time you came to see me in the United States? I believe it was in the hospital.”

  Matah nodded. “Many years ago, sayyida.”

  “It doesn’t seem like that many to me. You were what, a lieutenant then?”

  “I was.”

  “My father, I believe, was instrumental in securing your current position. He was always grateful for your help.”

  “As I was for his. But you are in this country illegally, sayyida.”

  “Which my brother was kind enough to inform you of, I’m sure.”

  “Your actions disappoint him as well.”

  “Do you know my brother, Major?”

  “We’ve spoken.”

  “Oldest son of my father’s second wife. He would have you believe he is going to take my father’s place in the line of succession.” Layla Aziz Rahani leaned slightly across the table. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Major. My father has left detailed instructions about that line of succession and it is I who has been chosen to succeed Abdullah Aziz Rahani. You would be wise to remember that.”

  Matah sat across from her, unmoved. “Your brother wishes you to return to Riyadh immediately. Your plane is ready. I am to escort you to the airport.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear what I just said, Major.”

  “I heard, sayyida.”

  “Then . . .”

  “It is not for me to say.”

  “What isn’t for you to say, Major?” When Matah failed to respond, Layla Aziz Rahani added. “My father sent you to my side fifteen years ago because he trusted you. May I trust you as well?”

  “I am here at your brother’s bequest,” Matah said stiffly. “I serve at his discretion.”

  “His discretion? What’s happened? What’s going on?”

  Major Matah rose and clumsily smoothed out the folds on his suit jacket. “I will be in a car outside. Please enjoy your meal, sayyida. I’ll be waiting.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 31

  I

  f you wanted to catch terrorists, what would you do?”

  With that question the night before, Alan Lewanthall had begun his explanation of what he had involved Ben in, the truth behind an operation that left the State Department unreachable for them. An hour later Ben left the hotel without checking out, walked five blocks, and hailed a cab, which took him to a small motel with a vacancy sign. He checked in, paid cash for a decent room with cable television, and soaked in bathwater as hot as he could stand, glad to be rid of the smell of his own blood and sweat.

  He lay awake for hours, replaying the final part of his conversation with Lewanthall over and over again.

  “If you wanted to catch terrorists, what would you do?” Lewanthall had lit another cigarette, while Ben considered the answer.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You’d form a group meant to attract the cells that live in the shadows, waiting to be activated. The radicals whose one purpose in life is to do this country harm.

  “Operation Flypaper,” Lewanthall resumed after a brief pause to let his words sink in. “That’s what we called it. We brought Operation Flypaper to the State Department hierarchy in the wake of 9/11 on the pretext of sucking in Al-Qaeda elements, their sleeper cells, and then killing them.”

  “But the hierarchy didn’t go for it, did they?”

  “A few of them did. Not enough. The ones behind us, well, let’s just say they supported our desire to bring it about without sanction.”

  “And without backup,” Ben added, starting to seethe.

  “We had backup. What State wanted was deniability if anything went wrong. You know how Washington works.”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s competitive as hell, and nobody trusts anybody else. Worse, everyone’s afraid to step forward and get things done because it means laying your ass, and your neck, on the line. We didn’t care about that. For us the bigger picture—ferreting out and trapping the terrorists determined to destroy the country and our way of life—was more important.”

  Ben’s eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, enough to see the agitation in Lewanthall’s eyes, not just hear it in his voice. “What went wrong?”

  “Nothing,” the man from the State Department said, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. “The operation went too well. That was the problem.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “We dug deep into their world, laid our own roads over theirs. Put out the word, just the way they do, using many of the same channels and conduits. It began to come together much faster than we’d ever imagined. We had them trapped! Hamas, Al-Qaeda, sucked in by bait they couldn’t resist: the destruction of America.”

  “Every terrorist’s dream.”

  “And we wanted them to think we could make it come true. We had the plan, the bait. It was
risky but, Jesus Christ, the stakes called for it. You of all people should understand that.”