by Judith Price
“One world power and all,” Leila quoted with her fingers in the air. “That guy hasn’t been laid for a century. Wound tighter than a drilled screw in hardwood.”
“You know he was right though, Lei. I’ve heard this before too. One world power, the Freemasons are well known for this term. Even the likes of Hilary Clinton referenced it. One God's rule.” Jill whispered.
“One president of the whole world—my colleagues and I have joked about that so many times,” Leila chimed. “But it’s usually after a few drinks and a discussion about our overbearing boss.”
The thrum of the engines helped move their thoughts forward. Then it came fast, like an epiphany. Based on her SOG work, Jill knew what it was instantly when the thought entered her mind. “What if my viewing is accurate and Stan was buying uranium?”
Leila listened intently. She may be beautiful and brash, but it was Jill that had the gift and Jill’s brain was ticking fast now. “There is only one reason someone would be buying uranium, Lei. And if that someone wants to dominate with a one world power …”
They sipped again, silently trying to digest this thought.
Jill’s foot tapped and after another sip, their glasses were empty. Leila lurched upwards and hit the call button, sat down fast and said, “Operation Silhouette, what does this have to do with Stan and him buying uranium, Jill?”
“Don’t know, a distraction maybe, but I do know David thought Stan was evil.” Jill almost felt guilty for saying it. “If David was right then he is capable of pretty much anything. And Lei,” Jill sighed hopefully, “one thing I do know. If Stan is in Dubai, then so is David.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
13:42 Zulu Time—DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
The day was almost over when they landed in Dubai. They had passed through immigration painlessly enough, and after Jill had done her scans, they jumped into the first of a long line of idling taxis.
The city beamed, bright sunshine reflecting off modern, glass buildings. The time on the dashboard read 18:12. The taxi driver honked his way through construction site after construction site before he sped along the main road. The odd-shaped buildings glimmered beside the likes of Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and even a Waitrose supermarket.
“So this is Dubai,” Leila said, as they passed yet another cosmetic surgery billboard. “Not really an Arabian experience, is it? And who names a hotel The Address?” Leila snorted.
Jill shrugged. “Johan recommended it so I am sure it'll be nice.” They merged right towards a large off-ramp, crossed over a long bridge, and watched a high-speed subway train pass over ahead.
There, towering over the city, was a vast structure. Through the rear-view mirror the driver noticed their wide eyes and explained, “World’s tallest building.” His head bobbled. “The name is Burj Khalifa after an Abu Dhabi sheik, you know. The hotel where you are staying is at the base of it just over there.” He pointed with a crooked brown finger. “Abu Dhabi had to bail out Dubai since the real estate bubble burst,” he babbled.
The car popped over several speed bumps before trailing up the drive to the doors. Jill noted that there were no security checks, just bling bling bling everywhere she looked.
“Holy shit, Jill,” Leila said as she kicked off her shoes in their hotel room, plopping down onto a cushy bed. Jill was already looking out the window and stretching her neck hard in an attempt to view the top of the tower. Leila walked over and mirrored Jill.
“Hocus pocus my ass,” she said. “This is real shit; that’s your sketch, Jill.”
“Yeah.” Jill was disheartened. The realization hit her the moment she saw it. She knew now what was happening. She was in Dubai to find David and her viewings were guiding her every step of the way. But it was more than that now, and Jill knew that too. Find Stan and I find David. Find Stan and stop a major catastrophic event. It was her job, after all. Survive!
“You’re in Dubai?” Karine said softly, annoyed after being awoken by Jill’s unexpected phone call. “Cool.” Jill could hear her stretch.
“Yeah, sorry to call you so early but it’s important and I was sure Eric would be in the office being that he is in Virginia. We believe David’s here somewhere too.” Jill briefed Karine and then said, “Right now I need to you translate my RV to Eric.”
“You sure that’s a good idea, Jill?” Karine queried.
“Right now I have no choice. I’ll take the hit if there is one. Just do it, okay Karine?” There was no fussing from Karine, so Jill continued, “Tell Eric that I believe that Stan Brown has just bought, or is going to buy uranium from Petrovich—the transaction that I believe was supposed to happen last night in Germany. The buy didn’t happen. Tell him that I think Stan is behind Operation Silhouette too. I don’t know where the bars are now or how he plans to fuse the WMD, but get Eric to run Matta Al Jazerra—Al Qaeda’s leader. Karine, I think Stan is playing his own big boy game and that Al Qaeda is not involved. Oh, and also find out the last known whereabouts of Dr. E.—the uranium doctor. Get a list of known labs that can test uranium. Tell him to do a sweep of them. And Leila is with me—let Eric know. You can call her phone since you have her number.” Jill hung up the phone.
“We need to go see Zayed,” she said, turning to Leila.
“Ever heard of a shower first?” Leila moaned.
Jill gave Leila an eye roll. “Come on, Leila, we don’t have time.”
Once they were outside on the curb—still unshowered—Jill hailed a taxi. “American International Hospital,” Jill chimed to the driver. He sped along the main road and Jill began to think of Zayed. It was strange that her first thought was of Zayed meeting Leila, and what he would think of her.
The traffic was a bumper-to-bumper, parking lot of vehicles. While they chugged along, they had time to appreciate the scenery. The buildings were tastefully designed for the most part. There were giant pictures, of what appeared to be royal family members decorating the glass some fifty stories high. Tall points shot up to the sky on some buildings, and there was even a building with a large round ball on the top. Their taxi honked its way for miles before it pulled off the main road and headed over an overpass leading to the hospital.
The large brown building sat alongside a wide river. Inside the hospital was a scene that Jill had never experienced before.
“This is a hospital?” Leila exclaimed. “Nice!”
It looked more like a glamorous hotel than a medical facility. Large wing backed chairs were scattered around. Over-sized plants gave a homey appeal, along with a fake fireplace. A uniformed man walked around the chaired area asking the waiting patients if they wanted something to drink.
After a stop at the reception desk, they found Zayed’s room on the third floor. “Hello?” said Jill hesitantly before they walked through the door. There was only one bed in the posh room, and Zayed’s eyes peeled open as they stood in front of him.
“Hello, Miss Jill. I was hoping to see you again.” His right eye twitched. “I was told that you might pay me a visit. Guess you have good connections to find me so fast.” He caught his breath then looked at Leila. “And who is this?” Zayed purred.
“Leila Sorel.” Leila pushed forward past Jill. Zayed had a bandage around his neck and an IV drip stuck in his left arm. Other than his bandaged state, nothing about the décor would have given a clue that this was a hospital room.
Jill’s brow furrowed at the introductions and got to the point. “Have you seen David, have you heard from him?”
“I haven’t seen him. Little hard to get around these days.” Zayed looked up at the bag of fluid.
“I know why you couldn’t tell me when we were together that you were Goddamn babysitting me.” Jill’s anger spilled. “Was it fun watching me or did you actually care about David’s wellbeing? I know you’re a NOC, Zayed.” Jill’s stance shifted.
Zayed rustled beneath his bed sheets. “Don’t take it personally, Jill. It’s just a job. I was hired to monitor you while attempting to f
ind David. That’s all. Oh, and for the record … they may call what I do a NOC. But I don’t work for any particular agency. I like to call myself a free agent. An independent contractor of sorts.”
Leila seemed to be perturbed about how the conversation was going and pressed for details. “Who were you working for? Who hired you to manage Jill?”
“Miss Leila, they told me about you, the people who hired me. You’re a NOC just like David. “How long have you worked for the OGA, other government agency?”
“Look, Mr. Zayed,” Leila spat, “we need information and we need it now. There is more at stake here than just finding David.”
It took a minute and then Zayed said, “I know.”
“Why were you extracted from Kushka? Why were Russian ops there in the first place?” Jill demanded.
“Oh, I don't know, Jill. They didn’t bother to tell me when you left me there bleeding to death.” Zayed glared at Jill squarely. “My guess is they were there for the same reason as David was. Look, ladies, I gather information for the people who pay me. One of my best clients is the US. They pay very well. This client gently asked me to share what I know, because someone you know has wasta.”
“Wasta?
“It means someone with clout. You know, a big shot at the CIA. I’m not happy about it, but I’ve been paid so who cares.” Zayed motioned Jill to close the door. “My client,” Zayed continued, “and its allies have a concern. So do the Russians.”
“With what?”
“Grozny.”
“Grozny?”
“Grozny is the capital of Chechnya. It has a significant oil pipeline. It’s currently under the control of the Chechen Mafia. The Russians want control back. They need the export energy to catapult them into a full resurgence to gain back their position as a world power.” Zayed looked out the window to the water below and then back at them. Jill wondered if he was doing his surveillance scan. “The Gulf states are getting worried. There’s been intel that the Chechens are getting ready to do something with the pipeline.” Zayed’s mouth crinkled on the right side when he said, “The Russians think they are working with the good old US of A. But I know different. Oil is money, ladies. And money is power.”
Leila looked at Jill. Jill could almost read her mind.
“What does this have to do with David?” Jill probed.
“Two words,” Zayed snidely said. “Stan Brown.”
“That’s just stupid,” blasted Leila. “What drugs do they have you on? If they wanted Stan Brown, they could easily pick him up.”
“Well, that’s the forty-three-million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Zayed mocked. “I get paid to gather information, nothing more. Our Mr. Brown is clean. He's been interrogated before and I don’t mean the pretty little girl kind of interrogation. Still, no agency has ever been able to get anywhere. He’s protected.”
“No one’s protected, Zayed,” Leila asserted, clearly ticked off. “The CIA can pluck him anytime they want.”
Zayed just smirked.
“You think he has something to do with the Chechen Mafia?” Jill asked. “Do you think that has something to do with why the Chechens were following us, Zayed?”
Zayed lifted his hand and brushed the bandage on his neck lightly. “Not me, Jill … you.”
“What … why?” Jill thought out loud. “Because they think I know where David is? If they are following me …” Jill thought of Hamburg and looked at Leila.
“If they were following Jill,” Leila interrupted, “they would know that David wasn’t with her.”
“But they would not know if he’d been in touch. If he’d said something or given you something, Jill,” surmised Zayed. “Do you have something of his Jill?” Jill didn't answer that question and could only think back to the question Stan had asked her regarding possession of some documents.
“David must have something, something on Stan Brown or something about Grozny, and it seems an awful lot of people are in the race to find it.” Then a flash of the schematic passed Jill's vision.
“I heard that David may be here in Dubai. Strange Stan had just arrived too, if it’s true, don’t you think, ladies? So how long have you known David,” Zayed peered in Leila’s direction, “Miss Leila?”
“Two and a half years or so. He recruited me.” She sounded proud. This news pricked at Jill.
“Not a long time to know someone well, is it?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I don’t think it was such a good idea to tell Zayed where we are staying.” Jill voiced her concern to Leila as they walked through the hospital lobby. “We can’t trust the little prick. I wonder if he has ever met David really. And what was all that smoke and mirrors bullshit?”
“We can take care of ourselves from Mr. Hotty Pants. You said you shared a room with him. Yummy!” Leila licked her lips in an exaggerated fashion. “Anyway, don’t pay attention to what he was saying about David. The guy's an idiot, all that independent contractor crap.” They walked a few more steps before Leila asked, “Where are we going now?”
Jill stopped abruptly. “Let me see your phone. I need to call Karine.”
“I don’t think she’s up yet.” Leila pointed to the clock on the wall that read 6:43 p.m. Jill sat down on one of the bright blue chairs and Leila found one next to her. “Why do you need to speak to Karine all of a sudden?”
“I found a drawing in Kushka. It was in Russian. Karine was having it translated.”
“What was it a picture of?”
“It could have been anything. It had boxes and arrows and Russian words. It was a computer printout, I think.”
“You found this in that guarded villa? Why would they leave something if it was that important?”
“Well, David’s notebook was there. The schematic was crumpled up like it was trash.” Jill squished her hands together miming snowball and continued, “Maybe David left it as a clue, like the writing in the notebook.” Jill hesitated. “Maybe.” But she really didn't know what to think. Her mind was on Zayed. Her mind was somewhere else. Could she have been so stupid? After seeing Zayed and hearing what he had to say, she’d felt something when she stood in his room. The nagging feeling was doing more than annoying her. A shot of pain pulsed in her head. She needed to get back into the tunnels. She needed to think this through.
“Why would someone be guarding an empty villa full of trash?” asked Leila.
“I wouldn’t call it guarding; he was more like a watchman.”
The two sat for a few more minutes before deciding that they were hungry. They needed to wait until Karine was able to get into the office anyway, and Jill couldn’t handle Karine when she was tired and grumpy. She would likely have to contact the translation department anyway, which didn’t open until nine o’clock.
They walked outside. Jill hadn’t realized that the hospital sat in the middle of a construction zone. They needed to hail a taxi, but there were none in sight. In the distance beyond the construction site fence was the main road. The streetlights were already burning brightly.
“Shit, it's like breathing in water,” Leila complained in the humidity of the evening air.
“It’s hot, but let’s walk over there.” Jill pointed towards the road past the construction lot. “We might be waiting here all night and the sun is almost down.” Jill’s stomach grumbled. She hadn’t eaten much in the past week and her clothes were beginning to droop.
“Your rib okay?” Leila asked, casting a worried look at Jill. Jill just nodded.
They turned the corner, walking past large tin signs, then further past tall tin paneled fences that housed the construction site. Leila saw it first. Dust flew as a black SUV screeched to a stop fifty meters in front of the curb. Coming up fast behind them was a white Land Cruiser with dark tinted windows. Two men jumped out of the first car and shouted at them.
Before Jill could think, before she could plan, she yelled, “Run!” She turned and darted in between the two pieces of metal fence. Her sh
oulders brushed the metal and Leila followed.
Jill’s heart raced and adrenaline overcame her tiredness. She had to hold her stinging side as she jumped over pieces of concrete. They were zigzagging through the construction obstacle course when Jill heard the second car squeal to a stop. She heard someone yell in a Slavic language. Even with a good head start, a bullet whizzed past Jill’s head. It was too dark for her to have seen the water before she tripped over the edge of the bank and fell in. The putrid water met her nose as she spat it out of her mouth. Her feet hit rock in the waist deep pool. What the hell … and where the hell is Leila? “Shit!”
Jill crouched further into the water when she heard more yelling. Chechens. Jill could swear she heard a car racing away. She concentrated on her heavy breathing; she had to be silent, but she needed air. Will they hear me, can they see me? She had no way to defend herself. She was a sitting duck in the water. She had to move, she had to find Leila. She had to survive.
All she could see was the darkness of the land. She was no more than five feet from the water’s edge. Shouting. They were getting closer. Think, Jill, think! She looked around and hoped for some recognition of her surroundings. She saw streetlights at a short distance, but the bank she fell from blocked her view of the men with the silent guns. Jill slowly turned around to scan her perimeters, and as she looked behind all she could see was a large body of water, a river. Maybe she could feel a current. There were lights on the other side of the shore. She couldn’t swim with her rib; it was too far. Jill searched her brain for answers – where was she and what should she do next?
Jill was about to swim closer to the bank when she was startled by the sound of pebbles tumbling and plunking into the water with her. She dared not move as she crouched in the water. Then she heard a whisper. “Jill?” It was Leila, who squatted below the four-foot bank. Jill stood, showing herself to Leila. Then she silently lowered back into the water. Inch by inch she began to move in Leila’s direction. Time moved in slow motion.