by Allan Topol
Joyner gave him a wry, intelligent smile. "That's precisely why it's a good metaphor."
Childress winced at her. "Except for one fact."
"What's that?"
"I've had marine units and helicopter gunships at Karshi-Kanabad in Uzbekistan on alert. I figured it would come down to this. So we're not buried in a sand trap. We might just make that eagle. On the other hand, Baku's not an easy place for our troops to reach without getting shot down by hostile forces."
Chapter 37
Oliver guided Layla each step of the way. He took her into a shop on Avenue Bosque that sold nurse uniforms. He picked up an empty brown paper shopping bag from a fruit vendor and told her to stuff the uniform inside. Pretending to be a member of the Syrian embassy staff, Oliver learned that Nadim was in room 321 at the hospital.
Their last stop was the pharmacy at Hospital St. Lazare, across town. Oliver had forged the papers Layla needed to emerge from the shop with a bag of potassium chloride solution and a syringe.
"You don't have to worry," he said. "When I was writing the scene for Cops on the Loose, I had the lead actress actually run through it incognito at another hospital. It worked like a charm. Security at hospitals in this city is a joke."
Finally, when he pulled into the parking garage for University Hospital, Oliver said to Layla, "Okay. Showtime. I'll be waiting here for you."
"I'm not sure I can do this," she said.
He reached over and squeezed her arm for encouragement. "Of course you can. Go get him."
As Layla left the car, holding the nurse uniform in the brown bag in her hand, her mind was focused on Nadim and how horrible he was. By the time she walked through the front door of the hospital, she was determined to succeed. The righteousness of her cause gave her strength.
Nadim was responsible for the deaths of hundreds, even thousands of people—her people. What she was doing was totally justified.
She had wondered what security would be like in the reception area of the hospital. There was none. The young woman behind the desk was engrossed in a personal call. Walk as if you belong, Oliver had told her. As if you know where you're going.
She saw a sign for elevators that pointed to the right.
Clutching the brown bag tightly, she took that path, rounding a corner out of sight of the young woman. Opposite the elevator doors were toilets.
Layla ducked inside and looked around. The room was deserted. Before anyone else could enter, she went into a stall. Quickly she pulled off her clothes and put on the nurse uniform. She slipped the syringe and the potassium chloride into her pocket. Once she put her own clothes into the shopping bag, she looked in the mirror. Not bad, she thought. She started toward the door; then it hit her: Nurses on duty didn't carry shopping bags. She had to stash it somewhere until she was finished with Nadim and ready to leave the hospital. But where?
She spotted a trash bin open on top in a corner of the rest room. She'd have to take a chance that it wouldn't be cleaned out before she returned. Unable to think of a better solution, she stuffed the brown shopping bag with her clothes into the bin. She straightened up her uniform and walked outside into the corridor.
In the elevator there were visitors for patients, as well as doctors and nurses. Two exhausted-looking residents with bloodshot eyes were discussing how many admissions they had gotten last night. As they yawned, she wondered how such tired doctors could care for their patients. Nobody stared at her, as she had thought they would. Layla was relieved that she didn't stand out, but she knew the tough part was still ahead. What if a doctor or a nurse stopped and asked her to assist in treating a patient? What would she do then?
Layla exited the elevator on the third floor and followed the signs leading her to room 321.
I can't believe I'm doing this, she thought, but then she remembered everything else that had happened to her in the last couple of days since she had met Jack at the wine dinner at L'Ambroise.
Announcements were continually blasting over the loudspeaker: "Code blue, room two-ten"... "Dr. Benoit, call two-four-six-seven." Nurses scurried down the hall and nodded to her. A patient on a gurney went whizzing by, surrounded by four urgent-looking medical personnel.
She was looking at the room numbers as she passed. Room 321 should be around the next corner to the right. She was about to make the turn when she heard Moreau's booming voice coming from that direction. "Listen, Doctor, I want you to call me when he regains consciousness. I'll be right over. I have to talk to him."
Oh, my God, he's coming this way, Layla thought. I have to get out of this corridor, and fast. She looked around, on the verge of panic. There were a couple of patient rooms on the left. She could head for one of those, but the doors were open. She would be visible to Moreau from the corridor. On the left she spotted a door marked, Linen Room. She ran that way and grabbed the doorknob. Please let it be unlocked. It was.
Inside the darkened room, she collapsed onto a pile of clean sheets and tried to listen through the closed door. A few seconds later she heard the sound of Moreau's voice—albeit softly, muffled by the wooden door—as the SDECE agent passed by.
Layla breathed a sigh of relief. She decided that she'd better wait a couple more minutes before exiting the closet.
To her horror, the door opened. A medical orderly, a young man, dark complexioned with curly black hair, entered the room and turned on the light. He saw Layla and gasped. "What are you doing in here in the dark?"
Layla stood up and took a deep breath. "Just resting for a couple of minutes. I worked a double shift. I'm exhausted."
"You okay? Should you see a doctor?"
"I just have to finish up, go home, and get some sleep. I'll be okay."
He bought her story. "The administration's so fucked-up here. They know they need more nurses, and they refuse to hire them. This place is run by imbeciles."
Layla smiled. "You can say that again."
She decided to exit quickly, lest he try to draw her into a more detailed discussion.
Out in the corridor she rounded the corner. Room 321 was on the right. Before entering, she peeked in. As she had hoped, Nadim was alone. He was in bed with monitors hooked up to his body. His burned hand was wrapped in layers of sterile white gauze. His wrists were restrained to the bed. He had a central line in his right subclavian vein. From one of the ports he was getting fluids. The other two ports were clamped. Perfect, she thought. That was exactly the way Oliver had described it to her.
Nadim's eyes were closed. Judging from what Moreau had said, he was still unconscious. That was too bad. She wanted him to see her, to know what was happening.
Approaching the bed, she stared at his face. Waves of revulsion surged through her body as she thought about that dreadful evening with him in his apartment and everything he represented.
When she reached into her pocket for the syringe, her hands began shaking. Stay focused, she admonished herself. In another minute it will all be over.
She moved close to him with the needle in her hand. Suddenly his eyes fluttered open. He was moving into that foggy state of semiconsciousness, gradually emerging into the realm of the conscious.
He recognized her. Her name emerged in a low murmur from his lips: "Lay-la."
His eyes were pleading with her. He feebly attempted to jerk his wrists forward to free himself, but the restraints held him back. She stifled a scream. Then, acting on instinct, with sure, deft fingers she unclamped a port with one hand, while she injected the potassium chloride through the port into his vein with the other. Oliver had told her this would go straight to his heart and kill him.
From his eyes, she knew that he realized what was happening, but he was powerless to do more than raise his head slightly.
"You won't be able to harm me or anyone else," she said in a quiet whisper.
She replaced the empty syringe in her pocket and reclamped the port. She wanted to bolt from the room before someone came, but she willed herself to stay. She had
failed to kill him once. She wouldn't fail this time. Calmly she stood, staring into his face with one hand on his pulse, until his heart stopped beating.
Then she moved quickly, exiting the room. Her clothes were waiting in the trash bin on the ground floor. Once she was in Oliver's car, she made a call to David Navon at the Israeli embassy. "This is Layla Gemayel. Please help me."
* * *
Michael's cell phone began ringing fifteen minutes after his plane touched down in Baku. He was still in the terminal when he heard the familiar beep... beep... beep. He whipped it out of his jacket pocket, hoping that, however improbable, Irina was calling.
She wasn't. Rather it was her good friend Natasha. He began walking toward a deserted area of the terminal as he listened.
"Have you heard from Irina?" she asked with panic in her voice.
"No, and I'm concerned." Rather than tell her any more, he decided to stop talking and hear what Natasha had to say.
"I think we have something to worry about."
"What happened?" he asked anxiously.
"I was out all night with one of my men. When I got home this morning I had a message on my machine from Irina."
"When did she call?" Michael asked frantically. He was hoping that Irina had found a way to escape. Maybe there was a secret tunnel out of the building.
"Yesterday afternoon."
"Oh," Michael said. He felt like a balloon that had just deflated.
"Yeah, on the message she said that she had tried to call you, but your cell phone was busy."
"Damn," Michael cursed. "What was the message?" he asked. He was dreading what was coming next.
"Oh, my God, it's awful." Natasha started to cry.
"Tell me, please."
"You don't want to know."
"Natasha, please, tell me already."
Natasha blew her nose, then continued while sobbing. "She said that she was locked in a closet in the office. Suslov had found out about her and you. She said he was going to kill her." Natasha's cries became louder. "It's so horrible."
Michael's heart was pounding with anger and grief. "Did she say anything else?" he asked weakly.
"Just one thing I didn't understand. So I listened to it three times... and wrote down her words."
"What'd she say?" Michael had the phone plastered against his ear, not wanting to miss a word.
Natasha picked up the paper and began reading. "Tell Micki that Dimitri tricked me. The information he gave me about a single bodyguard has to be false. And tell him I love him."
Michael was touched that Irina had used her last breath of life to try to help him. She wasn't just the vapid airhead that she had seemed. The call made him hate Suslov even more. No way would that Russian bastard leave Baku alive. Even more important, the message confirmed how right he and Joyner had been to treat Suslov's words as misinformation. Suslov would be coming to Baku in force.
Chapter 38
Jack stood at the window of the suite in the Hyatt Regency and looked down eight stories at the old town of Baku. The city lay on the south coast of the Abseron Peninsula, which reminded him of a hook extending out into the Caspian Sea from the western shore.
Standing out among the winding narrow cobblestone alleys of the old town with its mosques and monuments was the Maiden's; Tower, a massive stone lookout post built in the seventh century. Behind it were stately buildings and tree-lined streets from the first oil boom, a hundred years ago. Still farther were the industrial monstrosities erected during the Soviet rule, when the land and its resources were plundered and looted. Oil-drilling rigs were everywhere. Huge, ugly, block-style apartments for the workers stood one next to the other—a testimony to the Communists' indifference to aesthetics.
Jack raised his eyes over the polluted landscape marked by oil slicks and factories with uncontrolled emissions, to the lush countryside beyond and the high mountains of the eastern Caucasus, its peaks still snow-packed, leading to Russia in the north. The route of the convoy of nuclear weapons from Volgograd was over those mountains.
Jack wheeled around and looked at Avi, who was examining a map of the area.
"When does Igor get to the hotel?" Jack asked him anxiously.
Avi checked his watch. "In about an hour."
"Good. It's a real break for us that Moshe found an Israeli who was born and lived in Baku before emigrating to Israel... once the USSR collapsed and the gates opened for the Jews to get out."
"What did he tell you about Igor?"
"In Moshe's typical way, not much. He said that Igor's an engineer. A virgin—no prior Mossad work. Knows nothing about the assignment except that he's driving for us. Moshe told him it's important for the state. That was all it took."
An hour later they met Igor in the lobby of the hotel. He was a big, strapping man, six-foot-four with a bulging gut, beefy arms, and a large, round face with a reddish glow.
"I rented a car at the airport," Igor said. "It's parked in front."
"Good, let's take a drive," Jack told him.
Once the three of them piled into the Lada, Jack, who was in the front, explained to Igor what they had heard on the recording of Nadim's conversation with Ahmed. "We're looking for a truck stop at a key crossroads fifty miles northwest of Baku. Can you find that for us?"
Igor gripped his chin in a large palm and pondered the question for a couple of minutes. Finally he said, "I have an idea, but we have to take a look. A lot could have changed in the ten years since I left."
"Ever been back?" Jack asked.
"Are you kidding? My whole family left with me. Why would I possibly return? The locals were nice, but when the Russians ruled they were such bastards to everybody, particularly the Jews. I don't have good memories."
Igor turned over the engine. For the next half hour they drove west to the end of the peninsula through an industrial cesspool worse than anything Jack could have imagined. Oil derricks, chemical plants, and decrepit buildings littered the landscape, polluting the air and the ground with chemical waste that flowed into the Caspian.
"Fucking Russians," Igor cursed. "This was a beautiful place. They took the oil and left this crap behind. The area's one big sewer."
From the backseat, Avi interjected, "Now that Azerbaijan is independent, are they trying to clean it up?"
Igor held out his hand and rubbed his thumb against two fingers. "There's no money."
"Where did you work when you lived here?" Jack asked.
"For an oil company in exploration. It was a cinch. Everywhere we drilled, we found black gold." Igor shook his head. "The problem is, we couldn't move it out of here fast enough."
As they rode away from the sea, crude-oil factories on the landscape gave way to green fields. Farmers were plowing, buds were breaking out on the trees, baby birds were in their nests.
Approaching an intersection, Igor braked and pulled over to the side of the road. "This is the one I thought of," he said. "But the truck stop that used to be here is gone." He pointed to a three-story gray cinder-block structure. "That apartment building is on the space."
From the backseat, Avi looked at Jack. "Are you sure Nadim said the exchange will take place at a truck stop?"
Tired and irritable, Jack didn't like being questioned on such a basic issue. "Positive," he said in a sharp tone.
"Okay, just checking. Don't blow your top."
Ignoring the two of them, Igor pulled a map out of the glove compartment. Again with his chin in his hand, and furrows on his wide forehead, he studied it. "There's another location," he said, and shifted the car into gear. "Let's try it."
Jack was very happy Moshe had sent Igor.
Twenty minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of a truck stop at the intersection of two main roads. There was a restaurant and gas station with a large oil-coated dirt area for truckers who wanted to sleep for a few hours on a long haul.
"This has to be it," Igor said.
"Are there any other possibilities?" Jack asked.
"Not within a fifty-mile radius."
"We'll go inside the restaurant," Avi said. "See what we're dealing with."
"You two do that," Jack told him. "I want to walk around out here and check out the area."
Jack climbed out of the car, stretched his legs, and surveyed the scene. The truck stop was on the northwest corner of the intersection. On the diagonal across from it was a combination office building and workshop that belonged to Spartan Oil, an American company based in Houston. On the third corner fruit and vegetable vendors were hawking their wares. The fourth one was the site of some type of building under construction, with much of the concrete structure in place.
Jack crossed the two roads and pretended to be casually walking past the two-story gray stone Spartan Oil building while he studied it. There were people in the office. Outside in the yard in the rear, mechanics were working with pipe and repairing machines. This should be perfect for us, Jack thought.
Walking back to the truck stop, Jack thought about Layla. Where was she now? He hoped they had been able to get her out of France.
When they were back in the car and Igor was driving toward town, Avi said, "A nice woman and her husband run the joint. They open at four in the morning. Most of their customers are people making deliveries of equipment for companies in the oil industry."
"You think they're on the take from Suslov?" Jack asked.
"What's your opinion, Igor?" Avi asked.
"I doubt it."
"What about the cops and the army?"
"In Azerbaijan, they're mostly honest and honorable people. They hate the Russians, who have been trying to control them for thousands of years." Igor took his eyes off the road for a second and looked thoughtfully at Jack. "Still, like people everywhere, there will be some who are corrupt if the price is right. That's the way of the world."
"So we have to assume," Jack said, "when we square off with Suslov and his troops tomorrow, that the cops and army won't be anywhere nearby."
Avi agreed. "A fair assumption."
Igor was beginning to catch on to some of what was happening. "The woman who runs the restaurant and her husband won't become casualties, will they?"