The Cabal

by David Hagberg

  “Not surprising. But they have a twelve-hour head start. And I think they’re smart enough to sober up in the meantime.”

  “Don’t you think first class was a little excessive?”

  Remington chuckled, his English superiority showing again. “Last banquet for the condemned men,” he said. “They haven’t strayed from their quartermaster have they?”

  “Not yet. But I’ve put someone else on the job. Could be McGarvey will never reach Baghdad.”

  “That might not have been the best call, Roland,” Remington cautioned. “It’s not our people, I hope.”

  “Captain Kabbani is handling it for us.”

  “The man’s a buffoon.”

  “Yes, and just as expendable as Kangas and Mustapha, and a hell of a lot less expensive. We’re not running a goddamned charity.”

  “Don’t lecture me,” Remington shot back. “You’re gone and I covered for you at the Club. That’s what partners are for. And we are partners, unless you want to dissolve the arrangement, a move I would not strenuously object to.”

  Sandberger realized that once again he’d gone too far, but the Foster contract had been a constant drain on his nerves from the start nearly two years ago. If he had known then what he knew now, he would have turned it down, no matter how fabulous the money was. But now he and Remington were in it up to their necks, and they would have to see the business through until Foster reached his ultimate goal—something that gave Sandberger nightmares.

  “Sorry, Gordon, it’s the pressure,” he said.

  “I understand,” Remington said reasonably. “By this time tomorrow the issue will be resolved.”

  One way or the other, Sandberger thought but didn’t say. “I’ll call you.”

  “Do,” Remington said and he rang off.

  Leaving Sandberger to pour a stiff brandy and stare out the window at the river and try to quell his rising concern that this business with McGarvey and the Friday Club was a very long way from any sort of acceptable resolution.

  A couple of minutes before midnight, as Sandberger was getting set to go up to the poker game in Jerry London’s suite, Captain Kabbani called on the house phone.

  “I’m in the lobby. We need to talk.”

  “Is there trouble?” Sandberger asked, a tightness gripping his chest.

  “It’s better if you come downstairs.”

  “I’m on my way,” Sandberger said. He went to the bureau in the bedroom, and got his SIG-Sauer P226 pistol and shoulder holster. If they were going to talk it would not be in the one of the hotel’s public spaces, nor was he having the captain up here. It meant the streets, and for this business he would go without his bodyguards, as he had when he initially met the cop.

  Kabbani, dressed in robes instead of his khaki policeman’s uniform, was seated near the doors, and Sandberger passed him without a greeting and walked outside and headed down the street.

  The cop caught up with him half a block away. “I received word a half hour ago that eight Sunni rebels working for Saddar Mukhtar were found shot to death on the north road outside Basra.”

  Sandberger had almost expected the news. But eight-to-one odds were too lopsided even for McGarvey. “He must have had help.”

  “Almost certainly. And it could have been a trap if there was a leak in your company. This man could have been waiting for them.”

  “If there’s any leak it’s in your police barracks,” Sandberger retorted angrily. “But there wasn’t any. The people you hired were not good enough. And I warned you.”

  “What about my money?” Kabbani said. “I have debts.”

  “So do I.”

  “This is still my country, my city. Accidents do happen.”

  At this moment they were alone on the sidewalk, though there was traffic on the street.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what I’m saying, Mr. Sandberger,” Kabbani said. “And this evening you do not have your bodyguards with you. Perhaps that was a mistake.”

  Sandberger lowered his eyes and nodded. “I thought it might come to this with a bastard like you.”

  “It’s the cost of doing business in Baghdad since the war and the pullout of most of the American soldiers. Not so easy for men such as yourself to call for help.”

  “The cost of doing business in Baghdad,” Sandberger repeated. He glanced up as a police car, its blue lights flashing passed by without slowing.

  Kabbani pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Sandberger’s chest. “I hope for your sake that you brought my money with you.”

  Sandberger smiled inwardly, but he nodded, a grim set to his lips. “As a matter of fact, I thought it would come to this,” he said. “But not out here in plain sight. And put that gun down, as you say my bodyguards aren’t with me and I’m not armed.”

  Kabbani concealed the pistol in a fold of his robes and motioned toward a narrow alley nearby. “In there,” he said, glancing around to make sure no one had spotted the exchange so far. But except for the traffic on the street, no one was nearby.

  The narrow alley was dark, littered with garbage and the burned-out remains of an automobile chassis that had been dragged off the street a couple of weeks ago.

  “Here,” Sandberger said reaching into his jacket. He pulled out his pistol and before Kabbani could react he shot the cop once at point-blank range in the forehead. The man fell backward, dead before his body hit the ground.

  Sandberger waited several seconds to make sure no one had heard the shot and was on the way to investigate. But Baghdad was still in a state of siege. Gunshots in the night were common, even in the peace. Curiosity was practically nonexistent.

  Holstering his pistol, Sandberger went through the cop’s robes to see if he’d been carrying a wire or anything else that might incriminate Admin. But he’d not even carried his police card. Just the pistol and a set of car keys.

  Sandberger slipped out of the alley and headed back to the hotel, satisfied that he would only be fashionably late for the poker game.

  FORTY-THREE

  Hadid said nothing for the remainder of the trip up to Baghdad, which they finally reached late in the morning. Instead of driving straight into the city, Hadid headed west through Saddam City to a neighborhood called Quds. The busy streets were rat warrens of narrow lanes that twisted through mostly one- and two-story ramshackle concrete-block buildings. Most of them were private homes and some had small gardens off rear courtyards, others had retail businesses on the ground floors.

  He called someone on his cell phone and at the end of one very narrow street he stopped at a corrugated-metal gate, blew the horn once, and moments later the gate swung inward and Hadid drove through into a dusty courtyard. He turned around so that the nose of the Range Rover was pointed toward the gate being closed by an old man with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.

  “That is my uncle Fathi,” Hadid said. “I told him about Miriam and Saddam and he has agreed to help. His wives will make my family ready for burial, which must be completed before sundown today. You understand?”

  “Yes,” McGarvey, thinking about the funeral for his wife and daughter. “What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Tony. You will remain here in the car, you will speak with no one, you will make no eye contact, you will make no moves. Do you understand this completely?”

  “Yes.”

  “This will not take long and then I will take you to the al-Zuhoor where you have a suite.”

  “I thought it was the Baghdad Hotel.”

  “It is the same. But the name in Arabic is The Flowers Land. And it is in its own compound along with the Hamara Hotel, where most of the western journalists who do not want to stay in the Green Zone have rooms. It is also where many of the contractors stay. And for that I have a plan.”

  His uncle came over with three other men as Hadid got out of the Range Rover and went around back and opened the hatch. No one looked at McGarvey in the passe
nger seat. Before they had entered the city, Hadid had stopped and raised the top.

  “Do we need to hide the weapons?” McGarvey had asked.

  “Here it is not necessary,” Hadid had told him, and once inside it became obvious why. Every third or fourth person seemed to be carrying a weapon of some sort, either a pistol or a Kalashnikov. The peace was still an uneasy one.

  The four men removed the bodies of Hadid’s wife and son and carried them gently across the courtyard and into the house. The Range Rover’s windows were down and McGarvey heard a keening wail coming from inside, and he understood what these people were feeling now; he really understood them, and it hardened his heart further for the business ahead.

  Hadid came out of the house, his face an unreadable mask, got in the car, and started it as his uncle came out and opened the gate. “Now it is time for you to go to work, or rest if need be. But if I may suggest, you should complete your business as quickly as possible. This evening. And I will come back after the funeral.”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “The rest I will do alone until it’s time to leave the city.”

  The al-Zuhoor was a shabby six-story hotel at the end of a street partially blocked by two concrete blast walls, almost directly across the Tigris River from the Green Zone. Next to it, but behind the same blast barriers, were the two large buildings of the Hamara Hotel.

  Hadid slowed down at the gap in the walls, and eased through the opening and stopped. A pair of stern-looking men armed with Kalashnikov rifles materialized, one of them on the driver’s side, the other a few feet and slightly behind McGarvey.

  “What do you want?” the guard asked Hadid in English.

  “I am this man’s driver. He has a reservation here.”

  “Name?”

  “Mr. Tony Watkins. He is a freelance journalist.”

  “American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Release the hood and rear hatch,” the guard said, which Hadid did.

  Two other men came over, one of them searching under the Range Rover’s hood and in the back, while the other checked the undercarriage with a slanted mirror attached to the end of a long aluminum pole as the two armed guards stayed where they were.

  The man at the back of the car said something, and the guard near Hadid raised his rifle a fraction. “There is blood in the back.”

  “We were on the road from Basra last night,” Hadid said. “There is blood and shell casings in the backseat, and, as you can see, bullet holes in my car. But no explosives.”

  The hood and rear hatch were closed and the men with the rifles stepped back.

  Hadid drove up to the glass-fronted entrance, next to the restaurant. A big awning covered what had apparently once been a sidewalk from the street that was now blocked off by a chain. No one seemed to be around, and the restaurant was empty.

  “Take one of the rifles and a couple magazines,” Hadid suggested.

  “Let’s save them for the return trip,” McGarvey said. He had the Glock, the silencer, and three magazines of ammunition. Enough for tonight.

  Hadid nodded. “I will wait for your call, Mr. Tony. Good luck.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife and son.”

  “They are in Paradise now, waiting for me.”

  McGarvey’s reservation for five days was in order, and the bald clerk sitting on a stool behind the counter in the tiny lobby checked him in and handed him a key. No porters were around, and except for the clerk and one man who was a westerner in jeans and a light sweater sitting reading a New York Times, the lobby was deserted. The man never looked up.

  His suite on the sixth floor, had a view of the concrete blast barriers, and consisted of a sitting room, small bedroom, and bathroom. The place was shabby but fairly clean, and the wheezing air conditioner kept the rooms reasonably cool.

  McGarvey laid his overnight bag on the bed and phoned Rencke, who answered, as usual on the first ring.

  “Oh, wow, you made it,” he said. “Louise said that one of her KH-elevens picked up some trouble on the Basra Highway about the time you should’ve been there.”

  “That was us. Hadid brought along his wife and son, and both of them were killed. Did you know him?”

  “Not personally. But he’s done work for us since before the first Gulf War. He came highly recommended. Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” McGarvey said. “I just want to do what I came to do and then get the hell out of here. Where’s Sandberger staying?”

  “He has a suite in the new Ritz-Carlton. Eight-eleven. But he almost always surrounds himself with bodyguards. And honest injun, kemo sabe, if you get into a shoot-out you’ll be outnumbered and outgunned.”

  “I want to get his attention,” McGarvey said. “I want him to know that I’m here, and why. And I want that to get back to the Friday Club in spades.”

  “Go easy.”

  “I want to hurt him,” McGarvey said.

  “Jesus.”

  McGarvey broke the connection then lay down on the bed to get a few hours’ rest, something, it seemed, that he hadn’t gotten for a very long time. But this evening he would need to be in top form.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Sandberger had just sat down for lunch alone at a table in the Ritz-Carlton’s dining room and ordered a Bombay martini straight up with a twist when his encrypted sat phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Weiss calling from the Baghdad Hotel across the river.

  “He showed up a couple of minutes ago,” he said. “I waited to see what room he was given. He’s in suite six-oh-seven.”

  “Did he come in alone?” Sandberger demanded.

  “Wait, there’s a lot more. You said he was coming in under the name Tony Watkins, a freelance journalist, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would never have recognized him from the photographs I’ve seen. He’s in a disguise and a damned good one. Not so obvious so you wouldn’t take a second glance. I was close enough to the desk to hear the name, otherwise I would have missed him.”

  “Did he make you?”

  “He glanced over at me, but there was no reaction that I could see. He just got his key and went up. Elevator straight to the sixth floor, no stops in between.”

  “Was he carrying any hardware that was obvious?”

  “Probably a pistol, unless he’s crazy. But his only luggage was a small nylon overnight bag.”

  “What else?”

  “He came into the hotel alone, but I got a look at the car and driver who dropped him off. Didn’t get the tag number, but the guy driving was obviously an Iraqi.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “I never saw him before. Anyway he just dropped McGarvey off in front and then drove off. The car was a Range Rover and shot up pretty good. Holes looked recent. Still shiny metal. Bandits on the Basra Highway, I imagine.”

  Sandberger gripped the telephone a little tighter, checking his anger. It was the outcome he’d expected, because Kabbani had been an incompetent fool. Now the police chief was dead, the people he’d hired down south probably dead as well, and McGarvey was here in Baghdad. But it was not the outcome he’d hoped for.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Call Kangas and Mustapha. But wait until nightfall. I don’t want them doing a daylight operation. They can go in after dark. But you’ll have to stick it out there to see which way McGarvey moves, and keep us advised. But I’d rather you lose him than have him spot you. Are you clear on that point?”

  “Yes, sir,” Weiss said. “But you have to understand that if I do lose him, and our guys miss, he’ll come after you.”

  “Not the worst-case scenario,” Sandberger said, and he glanced over at his personal bodyguards, Carl Alphonse and Brody Hanson, seated at one of the tables by the entrance. Unlike the idiots Kabbani had sent to ambush McGarvey, and even Kangas and Mustapha, the two men with him now were among the best he’d ever worked with. Tough, ruthless, and, above all, capable. If they had any fault it was their arrogance. But
they had the skills and experience to back it up.

  McGarvey was here and he would not live through the night. Sandberger found that he was looking forward to getting back to Washington. He and Gordon would have to make a decision about Foster and the Friday Club. The money was fabulous but the risks were beginning to rise to an unacceptable level. Time to get out, he decided. But in order to do that Admin would have to manage a number of erasures.

  Kangas and Mustapha were about to go downstairs to the bar for a couple of drinks and something to eat when the phone in their suite rang. This day had been long and boring, and at one point Mustapha had suggested they say the hell with it and head back to the States. Kangas answered and he recognized Weiss’s voice.

  “He’s at the Baghdad Hotel as we thought he would be. He’s in six oh seven.”

  “Did he come alone?”

  “An Iraqi driver brought him in, but left immediately. And it didn’t look as if he was carrying any heavy hardware, though he’s almost certainly armed.”

  “Where are you?” Kangas asked. He snapped his fingers and gestured to Mustapha that the mission was a go.

  “Somewhere near enough so that I can watch his movements. He went upstairs around noon, and he hasn’t come down since.”

  “Did he spot you?”

  Weiss had supplied them with Knight’s Armament PDWs that, on full automatic, fired the 6 × 35mm cartridge at seven hundred rounds per minute, and three thirty-round magazines each. With the stock folded and the suppressor removed the super-compact weapon was less than eighteen inches long. Mustapha was fixing his weapon diagonally across his chest with a big Velcro pad.

  “He saw me, but I don’t think he felt that I was any sort of threat or he would have done something about it by now,” Weiss said, and he gave Kangas a description of McGarvey’s new look.

  Kangas had another thought. “Where will Mr. Sandberger be tonight?”

  “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

  “Yes, it is. This guy came here to take him out. If we get over to the hotel too late he might be on his way over to wherever the boss is staying.”