Sword of Allah

by David Rollins

  Daisy was excited. She bounded up to the door before it was opened, pawing it, and ran back and forth. She wanted in. Craig and Robert knew it was just her natural exuberance. The inexperienced uniformed cops thought the dog’s behaviour was confirmation that a major find lay on the other side. The customs officers knew what they were looking for anyway, and didn’t need Daisy. But they were curious to see if, given a second chance, she could find what they already knew to be there.

  The door opened with a rusty groan and the officers walked in, their flashlights searching the blackness of the far end wall. Daisy raced from pot to pot, running her nose over every item. ‘Here’s your chance to get even with those pesky snooker tables, mate,’ said Robert. The state police were right behind them and the darkness was suddenly chased away by electric lights powered by a portable generator. The two customs officers strode up to the tables, Daisy on point. The dog wandered through the legs of the tables and put her nose up, under and around them, but failed to find anything suspicious. She sat, tail wagging, panting, as if to say, ‘Nothing here, boys.’ But there was something there according to firm leads.

  Craig took a pocket knife and cut under the baize. He then ripped it off. Nothing. Well, nothing but slate. ‘These are very good tables,’ he said. ‘Look at the thickness of that slate. The cheap ones just have wood bases and –’

  Robert swung the hatchet down onto the slate and discovered it wasn’t so thick after all. Craig winced, uncomfortable with the symbolism of the destruction. The slate base shattered away easily, revealing yellow bricks of epoxy resin beneath. Craig shone his flashlight down onto one of these bricks. Encased within it appeared to be a white core. ‘Bingo,’ he said. ‘Strike one up to the Feds.’

  Half an hour later, the police had removed the epoxy bricks from the six tables and loaded them into a police security van for transport to a high security lockdown. One of the bricks had been split open and the central core held a tile of compressed heroin of the highest grade. Depending on how it was cut, the street value of the haul was estimated to be more than ninety million Australian dollars.

  The state police asked Tadzic if she wanted to make a statement for the television cameras on behalf of the AFP, but she declined. The limelight would have made her uncomfortable. She’d done her job and more on this one. Time to let it go.

  Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

  The heat from the sun was ruthless despite the midmorning hour, and already the bitumen joins in the concrete slabs of the airport tarmac had softened to the consistency of sticky black treacle. Atticus Monroe and Tom Wilkes sat under a banyan tree, its hanging roots a screen around them, keeping the worst of the heat at bay as they half-heartedly brushed at the swarms of flies. They sat mostly in silence in the shade, trying to conserve energy, watching the flights come and go across the other side of the apron, the civilian side, and occasionally picked over mission details. Between them, back on Flores, they’d managed to figure out the terrorists’ real intentions at the last minute, saving many lives. Monroe had received a personal call from the D-G of the CIA, passing on the warm regards of the President of the United States himself. That felt good, the recognition of a job well done. Wilkes’s boss, Colonel Hardcastle, had said, ‘Good onya, mate,’ or words to that effect, and that had been the sum total of the official appreciation of the man who’d literally saved the day.

  ‘You Aussies sure have a low-key way of showing your gratitude,’ Monroe had said after the connection with Canberra had broken. It hadn’t seemed to trouble Wilkes, though. He just went on with the job – business as usual. And the business was still unfinished: a certain loose end by the name of Duat that needed tying up. The terrorist had completely disappeared. Was he dead, killed somehow by persons unknown, or still alive waiting to pop up sometime in the future with a new plan for death and destruction?

  Several soldiers from the PNG army wandered around, ignoring their presence, coming and going from the large hangar that doubled as a storage facility and garage for various army vehicles. A flight from Mt Hagen in the highlands arrived, a largish Saab turbo prop. The stairs were wheeled across, the door opened and a small number of passengers disembarked: Europeans, PNG businessmen and several highland tribesmen compete with bird of paradise feathers and boar tusks through their broad noses, and the ubiquitous koteka, an incongruous clash of the ancient with the present. Wilkes was in the middle of wondering whether the tribesmen had been offered tea and coffee along with the other passengers when he was distracted by the arrival of an executive jet reversing its engines on the runway.

  The Cessna Citation rolled off onto the taxiway that would bring it to the banyan tree that Wilkes and Monroe had retreated under. The door in the fuse cracked open and the co-pilot popped his head out and then exited, offering a hand to a woman dressed in military fatigues who was descending the narrow stepladder. She declined assistance.

  Wilkes watched her as she walked towards them, a backpack over one shoulder, M4 over the other. She seemed comfortable enough. ‘Morning. Lovely day,’ she said, swinging her pack off her shoulder and placing it beside Wilkes’s and Monroe’s gear.

  ‘Gia,’ said Monroe, standing and giving her a blokey handshake. ‘Glad you could make it.’

  Wilkes settled for a simple ‘Hi.’ He’d told her where they were off to and the reasons why, and the deputy station chief had immediately demanded to come along. Wilkes was unsure about her presence. The New Guinea highlands were tough going at the best of times and they were headed way off the beaten track. ‘Don’t worry about Gia,’ Monroe had said. ‘She knows her limits.’ Ferallo was plainly determined and had more than enough seniority for Wilkes’s initial reluctance to metamorphose into a shrug.

  ‘You boys look thirsty,’ she said, breaking out Cokes from her pack, tossing one each to Wilkes and Monroe. ‘The bird has a fridge,’ she explained, gesturing at the jet behind her.

  The Citation’s engines throttled up, the noise killing any attempt at conversation. Monroe and Wilkes sat, backs against the tree trunk, leaving room between them for Ferallo. The executive jet’s nose wheel turned as the throttles were goosed, the pilots waved, and the aircraft swung away on its short taxi to the runway.

  ‘So, what gives?’ said Monroe suddenly. There were ten minutes or so before the helo was due to arrive to take them up to the Western Highlands – another of Monroe’s CIA specials, no doubt, thought Wilkes – and so there was time to pump Ferallo for details of the mission Wilkes would not normally be privy to.

  ‘About what?’ said Ferallo, blinking innocently, face blank.

  ‘C’mon, Gia, don’t be shy. We’ve been jumping out of planes, playing Johnny Adventure…what’s been going on?’

  Ferallo belched quietly, the back of her hand attempting to politely disguise the fact as she put the empty Coke bottle on the ground. She’d been authorised to debrief them and there was no time like the present. ‘Okay, well, the biggest development? When it’s all said and done, it turns out Duat was just a patsy, a flunky used in a scam,’ Ferallo said as the heat caught up with her and the beads of perspiration began to gather on her forehead.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Monroe said.

  ‘He was being used.’

  ‘How…?’ asked Wilkes.

  ‘Before we knew what this was all about, Kadar Al-Jahani met up with three men at a cafe in Rome. We – the CIA – caught some of that meeting on tape. You remember, Atticus?’

  ‘Yeah, I remember,’ said Monroe, brushing the flies away from his face in a constant salute.

  ‘At the time, we didn’t know what the conversation was about, did we? But, with the benefit of hindsight and a dash of insight, well, we’ve filled in the gaps. There was a Saudi, a Yemeni and a Palestinian –’

  ‘Hey, is this the one where they each jump out of a plane and yell, “God, save me”?’ said Monroe.

  ‘Not unless all three were financiers of terror.’

  ‘You’re getting it mixed up
with the one about an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman,’ said Wilkes, taking a swig of his Coke.

  ‘Guys?’ Ferallo was doing her best impression of an impatient assistant deputy CIA chief.

  ‘Sorry, it’s the heat,’ said Monroe. ‘So, they were financiers?’

  ‘Yep. They were known to the Israelis. Mostly, they underwrote the purchase of weapons for the Palestinian Intifada against Israel. They gave Kadar Al-Jahani a bunch of money ostensibly to set up a second Islamic front. The stated objective of this front – and a very noble one in the eyes of their associates in Hamas and Hezbollah – was to divert attention and resources away from the Middle East, and thus give everyone there a little more room to move.’

  ‘To make more murder and mayhem,’ Monroe added unnecessarily.

  ‘One would assume so,’ Ferallo said, now also swatting at the flies. ‘It appears these associates in terror supplied Kadar with the VX and the drone. Launched against the appropriate target, so the idea was, this WMD would be the catalyst for Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to rise up and create the South East Asian Islamic super state.’

  ‘Hit an oil field and ignite a whole region,’ said Monroe.

  Ferallo nodded. ‘Only Kadar Al-Jahani and his financier friends forgot to mention to Duat that they were also business partners. In oil.’

  ‘What?’ said Monroe, frowning, the revelation throwing him somewhat.

  ‘I think I get it,’ said Wilkes, shaking his head in amazement.

  ‘Well then, can you help me?’ Monroe said.

  ‘Did they buy shares in Saudi Petroleum or something?’ said Wilkes.

  ‘Sort of. They bought “warrants”. In Exxon. For a small outlay, a warrant gives you a large exposure to the market, so you can make a lot. You can also lose everything. Only these guys had no intention of losing. They bought several million of these warrants, over a short period through various intermediaries,’ said Ferallo. Wilkes impressed her. He was an action man with, obviously, something solid between the ears. She’d asked him to have a drink with her several months ago and he’d declined because he’d become engaged to his TV-land girlfriend. A pretty reasonable excuse. Particularly as Ferallo remembered having a little bit more in mind than a cocktail. Now she wished she’d pushed him a bit harder. And there was news on the engagement front – apparently, the wedding was off.

  ‘Think insider trading, Atticus,’ said Wilkes. ‘If a WMD is launched against an entire oil field, then everyone’s going to think terrorism has a new focus – interrupting the world’s oil supply. National economies would teeter. After an initial dip oil prices would go through the roof, as would oil shares. If you know that’s going to happen beforehand, you could make a killing.’

  ‘Appropriate for a bunch of terrorists,’ said Monroe with a snort.

  ‘If the price went up thirty percent as the result of the attack, a conservative rise experts tell us, Kadar Al-Jahani personally would have made around five hundred million US,’ said Farallo.

  Monroe whistled.

  ‘And Duat knew nothing about any of this?’ Wilkes asked.

  ‘No. We believe he wasn’t part of the deal. Kadar was siphoning off money for the purchase of these warrants from the money made running guns and smuggling drugs. Not even the moneyman we arrested in Sydney was in on it.’

  ‘So, how do you know what Kadar was up to?’ asked Monroe.

  ‘Do you remember the Defence Intelligence Organisation guy – Felix Mortimer?’

  Wilkes nodded.

  ‘Yep, I remember him. Big guy, smart, bad dresser,’ said Monroe.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ferallo. ‘He figured it out. Kadar Al-Jahani gave up a series of numbers when he was being interrogated. Everyone thought it was some kind of code that would lead to the location of the weapon, the Sword of Allah.’

  Monroe had wondered what the Arabic lettering on the nose of the UAV in the photos had meant.

  ‘Sword of Allah. He was a general in the time of the prophet Mohammed, and Kadar Al-Jahani was big on the legends,’ Ferallo continued. ‘Anyway, the numbers represented a swift code. That’s a code used to identify a bank and its branch. The numbers were a simple exposition to letters in the alphabet, minus one then plus one for each subsequent number.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Monroe.

  The frown on Wilkes’s face told Ferallo he didn’t either.

  Ferallo retrieved a notebook from a side pocket of her

  pack and flipped it open. ‘I thought you might like to see this,’ she said. Hand-drawn on the page was a grid of numbers and letters.

  ‘Okay, look here. These were Kadar Al-Jahani’s numbers: 1511472723.’ Ferallo wrote the numbers down, then underlined and circled various numbers and figures on a grid while Wilkes and Monroe looked over her shoulder. ‘Start with the number 1. Add one and the corresponding letter is B. Subtract one from the number 5 and the corresponding letter is D. Follow the series and the 11 becomes an L. “BDL” is the acronym used for the Banco di Luca in its swift code. Once you get a grip on that, the rest is easy. The full swift code is BDLCHZ2D, a particular branch of the Banco di Luca in Zurich.

  ‘The password to Kadar Al-Jahani’s account was “Khalid bin Al-Waleed”, otherwise known as…’

  ‘The Sword of Allah,’ said Wilkes.

  Ferallo smiled. ‘Give that man a cigar. The numbers given up by Kadar meant absolutely nothing until we knew what we were looking for. And we’ve got Mortimer to thank for that.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Wilkes, shaking his head in disbelief. Wilkes remembered the flight to Guantanamo Bay and the conversation he’d had with Kadar Al-Jahani. He never would have guessed that the man’s motives had been anything other than idealism. ‘When this is all over, Atticus, we should buy Mortimer a beer.’

  ‘That might be a bit hard to arrange,’ said Ferallo.

  ‘Why?’ asked Atticus.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Ferallo said.

  ‘Oh?’ Wilkes swatted at the flies. ‘How? What happened?’

  ‘Had a heart attack,’ said Ferallo. ‘Lots of stress, bad food and no exercise.’

  ‘That’ll do it,’ Monroe agreed.

  Ferallo continued: ‘Anyway, Duat’s motivations in all of this were pure, if you can call wanting to kill a lot of innocent people in a most unpleasant way pure,’ said Ferallo, as the familiar beat of a helicopter’s rotors signalled the arrival of their transport.

  ‘So it was just about money?’ said Monroe.

  ‘No, it was about kingship. Kadar Al-Jahani would have been extremely wealthy and, if the other half of the plan had worked and they’d ended up with a fundamentalist home in Asia, he and his cronies would have ruled it.’

  ‘And everyone would have lived happily ever after,’ said Monroe.

  ‘Everyone except Duat. He’d have figured the doublecross sooner or later…if they’d ever let him live long enough, that is.’Wilkes stood as the helo approached, taxiing towards them in a slow hover three metres above the blistering blacktop.

  ‘Do you feel sorry for him?’ Ferallo asked.

  ‘Who, Duat?’ said Wilkes. ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘You know muruk means “cassowary” in Pidgin?’ said Gia Ferallo as they stopped for a rest on one of the high passes that separated Muruk’s village from their destination.

  ‘The bird? No, I didn’t know that,’ said Wilkes, looking down on the jungle spread out below them. He had a vague feeling of déjà vu, accentuated by the presence of Timbu and Muruk, the chief’s young son. ‘And I didn’t know you spoke the local lingo either.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s here, in the tourist phrase book.’ Ferallo held up the small booklet she’d been reading and wiggled it.

  Wilkes felt more relaxed about the trek this time, partly because they weren’t on the tail of a hostile war party, but mostly because he was in-country on official business at the invitation of the government of Papua New Guinea, and was therefore entitled to carry the M4
/203 and the ugly sawn-off Remington pump strapped to his pack. And he was wearing military fatigues.

  Atticus and Ferallo also carried M4s, not because the rifle was necessarily their preferred choice of weapon but because it was light and reliable. When Wilkes had told them how hard the going would be, Ferallo was disbelieving. But she was a believer now, stripped down to a navy singlet soaked with sweat. And featherweight though it was, the Bushmaster M4’s seven kilos loaded had become a dead weight as they trudged the narrow, slippery mud paths that snaked up and down the hills. Yet Ferallo hadn’t complained about the mud, the climb, the weight, the mosquitoes or the leeches, and Wilkes had to admit he was impressed. And surprised.

  ‘So why would the chief name his son after the cassowary?’ Ferallo asked Timbu.

  ‘Well, the cassowary is a big, flightless bird. Weighs around sixty-five kilos and stands around one and a half metres tall,’ said Timbu, amused at Ferallo’s naivety. ‘And the thing has a temper. When it’s pissed off, it can be pretty frightening. Has a sharp toenail over a hundred millimetres long that it uses like a dagger. Corner one and it’ll kick you, and maybe disembowel you. Don’t think of it as being like an oversized chook.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ferallo, giving Muruk a friendly, respectful smile he readily returned.

  Timbu took a long drink of water from his canteen and ate some yam to keep up his energy levels. The interpreter was keen to return to the highlands when Wilkes had put it to him. Resolving unfinished business was just part of it. After the last trek with Wilkes where he witnessed first hand the damage being done by the flood of weapons, Timbu had decided to enter politics, to defend the rights of the highland people, and try to stop the gunrunning.