THE TASTE OF FEAR
***Read the first three chapters of The Taste of Fear below. If you enjoy them, and would like to continue reading, you can download a full copy of the novel FREE from www.jeremybatesbooks.com***
PROLOGUE
Thursday, December 26, 5:53 p.m., 2008
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
The assassin stared at the TV set in the hotel room, his face impassive.
“At least twenty-three people have been killed in the duel attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,” the suit-and-tie anchorman said.
He stood before a video image of the United States Embassy emblem. The ticker read: “Breaking News.”
“Our African correspondent, Sebastian Briers, has the latest from Dar es Salaam. Sebastian, good evening to you.”
The camera jumped to a somber-looking field reporter dressed in khaki pants and a white linen shirt. “Good evening, Cary. The attacks, which seem to have involved car or truck bombs, both occurred inside the periphery gates of the embassy compounds. There were, as I believe you said, twenty-three casualties so far counted. Eleven of those were here in Dar. Four are believed to have been the Marine Security Guards stationed at the front gate. Witnesses reported hearing a short burst of gunfire, followed by a loud blast, what was likely a grenade attack on the gatehouse. Then came a much louder explosion which could be heard miles away.” The camera jumped again to shaky, low-resolution video footage of the embassy complex. It was crowded with emergency response teams. Billowing clouds of black smoke trailed into the air. The anchorman said in voiceover: “The images you’re seeing were captured on a cell phone immediately after the attack and played on a Gulf news channel. But this was not the first time attacks have been carried out on the American embassies in these two countries. Exactly ten years ago truck bombs exploded out front—”
The assassin flicked the channel.
“—various claims of responsibility have already begun to surface on jihadist websites from groups with Al Qaeda connections. One has threatened more attacks against American and British interests overseas. Despite recent efforts to suppress militant groups, today’s events are a grim reminder that cells are—”
Click.
“—though it hasn’t been confirmed by official sources yet, we have just gotten word that American actress Scarlett Cox and her husband, American billionaire hotel tycoon Salvador Brazza, were among those kidnapped today in what appears to be a fresh Al Qaeda tactic. Sasha, what do you make of this new approach?”
“We can only speculate, Nicole. But if you remember the 1998 bombings, of the more than two hundred casualties, only twelve were American. Embassies nowadays—especially these two, which have just been recently rebuilt—are constructed to withstand bomb blasts. Consequently, the majority of those injured are people passing by on the street or workers in the adjacent buildings. So what we’re seeing here seems, as you said, like an entirely new plan of attack. An initial bomb to create as much destruction and confusion as possible before terrorists pour in to take hostages.”
“A one-two punch.”
“You got it. And you also have to remember there are literally hundreds of terrorist attacks around the globe every year. The media only covers the biggest ones intensively, and even those get old after a day or two. I mean, does anyone remember much about the attack on the American Embassy in Islamabad back in July? On the other hand, when there are hostages involved, the story is often covered until the situation is resolved, like we saw in Mumbai in September. So I think that, yes, it is definitely a new strategy we’re seeing here. And whoever turns out to be responsible seems to have hit the jackpot. You couldn’t have asked for two more high-profile Americans short of the president and the first lady themselves.”
“Unfortunately, I would have to agree. Thanks, Sasha. Coming up next, we’ll go live to our freelance correspondent, Kim Berkoff, who has information on what exactly Scarlett Cox and Salvador Brazza were doing in the Dar es Salaam embassy in the first place—”
The assassin snapped off the TV and remained sitting on the bed for a long while, thinking. His job, it seemed, had just become a hell of a lot more difficult.
CHAPTER 1
Sunday, December 22, 1:44 p.m.
Los Angeles, California
Four Days Earlier
If Scarlett Cox knew she would be careening down a forty-foot ravine in the next sixty seconds or so, she probably would have put on her seatbelt. As it was, she wasn’t clairvoyant, and she pushed the white Aston Martin Vantage up to fifty, fifteen over the limit. She knew she shouldn’t be speeding. She’d just passed the intersection with Mulholland Drive, and there were a lot of hairpin turns and potholes coming up. But she felt comfortable behind the wheel of the Vantage. The salesman had told her it was a front-mid-engine sports car, which meant the engine was positioned low behind the front axle, just before the cabin, dropping the car’s center of gravity and boosting the handling and traction. Besides, she’d just finished production on her latest film. She was feeling good, liberated. She eked the needle up to fifty-five.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, she used the other to turn down “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf, which was playing on the radio, loud. Was there any other way to listen to music when the top was down? She scrounged around for her cell phone inside her handbag on the passenger seat. The salesman had also told her the Vantage had a Bluetooth thing that could sync her phone’s signal with the car’s voice recognition technology and speakers. That was all too Knight Rider for her, so she checked her voicemail the old-fashioned and illegal way: punching numbers in to the phone’s keypad. Three new messages. The first was from her hairstylist, confirming her appointment at two thirty. Goodbye blonde, hello red, she thought. The other two were from Gloria, her publicist, wanting to clarify details about the birthday party this evening. Number thirty. Christ. It seemed as though she’d just celebrated twenty-nine. She pressed End and tossed the phone back in the bag.
Scarlett swooped around a sharp bend and found herself closing quickly on a black pickup truck. She’d known her luck wasn’t going to last forever. Traffic on the stretch of Laurel Canyon Boulevard between San Fernando Valley and West Hollywood was sparse in the middle of the afternoon, but going fifty-five in a thirty-five zone, you were bound to run up someone’s tail sooner or later. She thought about passing the pickup, but only for a second. The road was divided by solid double yellow lines. She might speed when she could get away with it, but there were some things she didn’t mess with: pit bulls, blondes with chips on their shoulders—real blondes, which she was not—and double yellow lines.
The pickup was an old Chevy with a tall CB antenna poking up from the roof and white silhouettes of women in provocative poses on the mud flaps. The two stickers on the chrome bumper read: “My Other Car is a Hybrid” and “If You Can See My Mirrors Show Me Ya Tits!”
Classy.
Scarlett slowed to forty, keeping one car length between them. Any closer and she’d likely catch an STD. Her thoughts turned to her husband, Sal, and she realized with apprehension that tonight would be the first time in over a month they would see each other. The time apart had been their marriage counselor’s idea. She’d said it would do them good. Give them perspective on their relationship. Admittedly, it had been good for them—at least it had been good for Scarlett. She still hadn’t forgiven Sal for what he’d done. But she’d believed him when he said he was committed to saving the marriage, and during their time apart she’d come to the conclusion she wanted to save it as well. They weren’t back to how it had been before, and they likely never would be, but they had gotten out of the mucky waters and were now schlepping their way up onto dry ground.
The Chevy’s brake lights flashed, tugging Scarlett’s wandering mind back to the road. She tapped her brakes and kept pace. Another flash. She frowned but didn’t slow. They were on a relatively straight stretch of road. Then a man’s stringy, tattooed arm extended
from the driver’s window. His middle finger uncurled from the fist. Scarlett rolled her eyes. Nevertheless, she eased back to give the good ole boy his room.
The Chevy swerved.
Scarlett thought Bubba was playing another game when a large pothole appeared directly in front of her. The Vantage thumped up and down, jolting her in the seat and reawakening the migraine which for the past hour or so had settled to a low, dull throb she could almost ignore. She grimaced. Sometimes the migraines were mild and bearable. Sometimes they made her grind her teeth and rub her head while watching the minute hand on the clock do its rounds, as if that would somehow pass the time more quickly. And sometimes they made her feel as though a little gnome were riding a jackhammer through her skull and into her brain, grinning sadistically the entire time. Today had been one of those gnome-on-the-jackhammer days.
She reached into the handbag again and fiddled around until she found the aspirin bottle she’d brought from the trailer on the CBS lot in Studio City. She tried to thumb the cap off, but couldn’t budge it. Then she remembered it had one of those safety lids meant to prevent four year olds from developing aspirin habits. She lined the arrow on the cap up with the arrow on the bottle and tried again. This time the cap popped like a firecracker. Pills went everywhere. She cursed. When it was one of those days, it was one of those days. She glanced down at the triangular wedge of red leather between her inner thighs. Two white tablets were sliding toward the depression her rear was making in the seat. She scooped them up and returned her attention to the road—
Her eyes bugged out. Her mouth dropped open. A loud, hollow sound filled the air as the Vantage exploded through the cable-and-post guardrail. She stamped the brake, but that did nothing. There was no longer any road beneath her.
Scarlett had the sickening, unnatural sensation of going airborne, and for a split second she thought she must be dreaming, because the reality was too frightening to immediately comprehend. Then the hood of the sports car nosed forward. The gray sky disappeared. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Not a single breath. Fear had stolen her voice.
This was how she was going to die, a car accident, a statistic.
The Vantage crashed back to earth with jarring force and plunged wildly down the ravine through a blur of crackling vegetation. Then, abruptly, the greenery parted to reveal the black trunk of a massive tree.
Impact.
Sunday, December 22, 9:30 a.m.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
“There are two police officers here to see you, sir,” Salvador Brazza’s secretary, Lucy, informed him over the intercom.
“Did they say what it concerned?”
“No, sir, only that it’s urgent.”
“Send them in.”
Sal swiveled his high-backed chair to face Edward Lumpkin, a tall, pale American lawyer who’d been in Dubai for the last six years and Oman for four before that. They’d been discussing the merits of a legal system, free of charge, for future guests of the hotel who were bound to cross cultural taboos while visiting the Emirates. “Why don’t you stick around for a few minutes, Ed,” he told the lawyer. “I might need your advice.”
The door to the office opened, and Lucy showed the two police officers inside. Sal and Lumpkin stood. The taller man introduced himself as Brigadier Khaled Al Zafein, the Deputy Director of the General Department of Criminal Security. He was dressed formally in a peaked cap and a light brown uniform with rank badges on the shirt collar and a red band looping under the left arm and through the left epaulette. The short fat one said he was Inspector Abu Al Marri. His beret was cocked rakishly, and he had a smug smile on his ugly moon face. Sal disliked him on sight. “To what do I owe the honor, gentleman?” he said without offering them a seat.
“I’m afraid we have some rather disconcerting news, Mr. Brazza,” Al Zafein said in fluent British English. “It concerns the fire at the Prince Hotel earlier this month.”
Sal frowned. “I’ve already spoken with the fire investigators.”
“Yes, of course. However, circumstances have changed. New evidence has surfaced that leads us to believe the fire might not be a result of faulty wiring, as initially believed.” He paused. “It’s now thought to have been set deliberately.”
“Arson?” Sal said, unable to conceal his surprise. “What are you talking about?”
Al Marri spoke in English as fluent as his superior’s: “Let me begin, Mr. Brazza, by saying that arson is one of the easiest crimes to perpetrate, but one of the most difficult to identify and verify.”
“Forgive my bluntness, Inspector,” Sal said, “but I don’t need a lesson on arson.”
“Please, sir, if you would allow me to explain?” He smiled apologetically. “Generally speaking, investigators begin their investigation of a fire in a V-like pattern, from the area of least damage to that of the most damage, which is usually equated with the point of origin—and which, in the case of Room 6906 of your hotel, was the wall surrounding the electrical socket with the purportedly faulty wiring.”
“I’m aware of all this. As I’ve said, I’ve already spoken to the fire investigators.”
“Please, sir?” Al Marri offered up his practiced smile once more. It squashed his thick mustache between his upper lip and nose, giving the mustache the appearance of a fat, black slug.
“I said the area of the most damage is usually the point of origin. But that is not always the case. There are any number of circumstances that can change the dynamics of the fire. Ventilation, for example. Or fuel load. Or the unique characteristics of the environment in question. Even the water and foam used by the firefighters can confuse typical burn pattern interpretation. In many cases—as was the case with Room 6906—the fire can reach the post-flashover stage, whereby it gets hot enough to destroy vital evidence and mimic the effects that can be caused by ignitable liquids, such as charred patterns on the subfloors, and concrete spalling. What is my point in all this?” He opened his small, neat hands, as if in prayer. “It has recently come to our attention that one of the first firefighters through the door claims to have seen black smoke near the electrical socket in question. Now, wood and most other combustible items in Room 6906 burn brown-gray smoke. Accelerants—including chemicals with low ignition temperatures such as gasoline, kerosene, and alcohol—burn black. In light of this new information, the investigators were forced to take a second look at the evidence. They reassessed their original conclusion of faulty wiring in favor of the theory that someone had been trying to make it look like an electrical fire.”
Sal gave himself a few seconds to let this information sink in, a kind of delayed bewilderment washing over him. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would someone want to set a fire? The hotel was—still is—unoccupied. Why would someone want to burn it down?”
“According to your statement,” Al Marri said, “not all the rooms were unoccupied.”
“Of course they were—” Sal clamped his mouth shut. The hotel hadn’t been completely unoccupied. He had been staying in it for most of December, in the Royal Suite, which was on the seventieth floor, directly above 6906. The night of the fire the alarm had woken him at 4:12 a.m. By the time he’d gotten dressed, the stairwell had been full of smoke. He couldn’t go down, so he went up, to the roof. Fifteen minutes later his ex-Mossad security chief, Danny Zamir, picked him up in a helicopter and got him the hell out of there. From the air he had a clear view of the blaze, which by then had consumed the top two floors and the one-hundred-foot script sign. If Danny had been even a few minutes later, he knew he likely wouldn’t have made it.
“So you’re telling me someone was trying to murder me, Inspector?” Sal shook his head. “Forgive my skepticism, gentlemen. I find that extremely difficult to believe.”
“We have already ruled out the motive of financial gain,” Al Marri said. “That leaves either random violence or pyro-terrorism or revenge.”
“Do you know of anyone who might have some sort o
f vendetta against you, Mr. Brazza?” Al Zafein asked.
“I’m not in the business of speculation, Mr. Zafein.”
“You should know, sir,” Al Marri added gravely, “that this has become an attempted murder investigation. It would be in everyone’s best interest to get it solved.”
“I’m not a crook, Inspector. Nor do I associate myself with criminals.”
Al Marri glanced briefly at the deputy general, then returned his attention to Sal. “I am sure you are a very busy man, sir.” He handed Sal a business card. “If you should think of anything, anything at all, please do not hesitate to contact me.”
The two police officers left.
Edward Lumpkin shifted in his seat, his gangly arms folded across his chest, his face pulled down in thought. “Christ, Sal. I don’t know what to say.”
“Will this have any impact on the hotel’s opening?”
“Hard to say, but I’d keep an eye on the reservations during the first few weeks of operation. An attempted murder in the hotel could potentially turn off a lot of families. Thankfully, that’s not our core demographic.”
“This is going to be a bloody circus.”
“I heard what you told the cops, Sal. But be straight with me. Can you think of anyone who might have a bone to pick with you?”
“Everybody has enemies, Ed.”
“But someone serious enough to, you know, want you dead?”
Sal didn’t reply.
“Could it be a union thing?” Lumpkin asked suddenly.
When Sal went non-union with the Prince last summer, labor picketed and sent death threats. One had threatened to blow up After Taxes, his $60-million, 155-foot yacht docked over at the Marine Club, while another had promised to gouge out his eyes while he slept.
“These union guys, they talk the talk,” Sal said simply. “But they’re neither inclined nor capable of pulling off something like this.” He shook his head. “If you’ll excuse me, Ed, I have some calls I need to make. Write up what we discussed, and we’ll get together again next week.”
Six Bullets Page 5