Arabian Deception

by James Lawrence

  Pat handed the equipment to the younger guy, who had not been introduced.

  Wasserman asked, “Is this everything?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What about the computer? If you uploaded it using a laptop, we’re going to need that too.”

  “That’s not going to be possible.”

  “I’m going to have to insist.”

  Both men were wearing loose polo shirts over khaki pants. If they were carrying weapons, they were in concealed holsters in their waistbands under the shirts, which would make them slow to the draw. Pat had purposely given the equipment to the young guy, who he knew would never let go of the video they had come to get. In a fight, the young guy might have been a challenge, Harold, on the other hand, was a cupcake.

  “You have what you came for. You can leave now.”

  Senior government bureaucrats didn’t like to be pushed around, especially in front of subordinates. Pat could see Harold wanted to force the issue, but fortunately he had the good sense to realize it would be a painful mistake. The two government agents turned around and left the boat without another word.

  Pat went downstairs to the owner’s stateroom and went to sleep. He woke at three in the afternoon and went upstairs to the salon, where he poured himself a double Macallan 18 and turned on the TV. It was Thanksgiving, and Pat had nothing to do and no place to be. Holidays were the worst for him. They were when the estrangement from his wife and separation from his kids hurt the most. His sudden melancholy might be worsened by postmission letdown, or a profound sense of guilt from executing three men. Pat didn’t know. None of the three men had put up much of a fight, but they had all gotten what they’d deserved. Either way, the matter was finished, and Pat was glad to have it behind him. Bandar had alluded to other conspirators at the end of his interrogation, but that was all Pat could understand, and at that point, he had lost his faculties.

  Pat got dressed at nine o’clock and walked half a mile down the street to the Hilton for dinner. It was a Thursday night, and the bars and clubs would fill to capacity by eleven. Fortunately, it was early, so he’d have little difficulty getting a table. The Hilton was on the water on the Corniche. It was one of the oldest hotels in Abu Dhabi. Despite many newer and more upscale hotels, it retained a loyal following. Pat walked through the front lobby to the very back and threaded his way through Hemingway’s, a pub with a mostly male British clientele, to the Jazz Bar. The Jazz Bar was not a jazz bar but an aspiring upscale nightclub with rotating live acts from South Africa that were always very good. The Jazz Bar had a full menu, and because it was part of one of the better hotels in the city, it offered a decent wine list.

  The thought of eating and drinking alone in a nightclub on Thanksgiving made Pat feel even sorrier for himself. A waitress seated him and handed him a wine list and a menu. He didn’t recognize any of the wines on the list, which was unusual. Pat ordered a bottle of Chateau Gruaud-Larose Saint-Julien, only because it was the most expensive, and when it came to wine, he believed cost equaled quality.

  The band played its first set at nine thirty. The first set tended to be slower music, and the black female singer did a decent impression of Sade’s “Smooth Operator.” She even looked the part. At eleven thirty, still feeling morose after a bottle of very good wine and an uninspiring steak, Pat paid the tab and walked back to the marina.

  He walked along the access road to the Intercontinental and took the shortcut along the footpath, which brought him into the end of the parking lot near the Fishmarket restaurant away from the entrance. As he threaded through the parked cars, he noticed the lights on in his boat. He stopped and watched and then wound his way between cars until he reached within thirty yards of the yacht. He saw a figure moving around inside the salon area. The parking lot didn’t have any lights except from the surrounding buildings, and he stayed in the shadows, trying to find a lookout. To his left, about 150 yards from the hotel, Pat spotted a man watching the entryway to the parking lot. He had his back to Pat.

  Pat approached slowly from behind. When he got within five feet, the man sensed his approach and quickly turned his head, but it was too late. Pat hit him with a right cross to the jaw, and he was out. Pat did a quick search of the body and found a small ICOM radio with an earpiece and a Glock 9mm.

  With the Glock in his right hand, Pat approached the yacht. The tinted glass and indoor lighting made it impossible for anyone inside the salon to see outside. He moved fast to the edge of the dock. Stepping cautiously through the stern gateway, he could see the intruder searching. He was lying on the floor, holding a small flashlight in his right hand while feeling under the couch with his left.

  Pat stepped in and spoke softly to the man, who was still lying flat on his belly and unable to turn his head to see him. He told him to slide back and put his hands on his head. Not knowing if there was someone else downstairs, Pat was walking toward the intruder to restrain him when he heard movement behind him. He felt a blow to the back of his head, and the lights went out.

  Pat awoke late the next morning facedown on the hardwood floor of the salon. The back of his head and one side of his face were caked with blood. There was a small puddle that was congealing where his head had lain. After a couple of attempts, he brought himself up to a kneeling position and tried to clear the nausea and dizziness. He stumbled downstairs and took a shower.

  The cut on the back of his head could have used stitches. He made a mess of things trying to make a butterfly bandage through his hair but finally managed to close the wound working with the mirrors in his bathroom. He had a bad concussion, his balance was off, and the wooziness wouldn’t go away. He managed to clean up the blood on the salon floor and do a brief inventory before he ran out of gas and went back to sleep. The only items he noticed missing were electronics. His laptop, phone, and iPad were all gone.

  The next time Pat woke, it was Saturday morning, a full day later. The nausea was gone, but the dampening fog-like effect from the concussion persisted. Pat wasn’t sharp, but he could discern footfalls on the deck above. Here we go again, he thought. Pat went looking for a weapon and chastised himself for not thinking of that much earlier.

  “Pat, are you down there?” Mike yelled.

  “Yeah, I’m coming up.”

  Pat dressed in gym shorts and a T-shirt and put on a red Davidson College baseball cap to hide his sloppy bandage. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw Mike, already with a cup of coffee, sitting at the galley nook.

  “You look rough. Let me guess—there’s a pair of dominatrix twins downstairs, and last night you forgot your safe word.”

  Pat shook his head. “I should be so lucky. Nothing like that. I had a rough Thanksgiving.”

  Instead of sitting in the galley, Pat went over to the big U-shaped couch in the salon and lay on his back in the middle. Mike came over and sat down on the other couch.

  Despite Pat’s degraded condition, Mike asked to do a debrief. Pat got up and took two Tylenol Extra Strength and then returned to the couch with a large bottle of sparkling water and a glass, which he set on the cocktail table. Mike placed a digital recording device on the table next to the water, and for the next three hours, Pat told his story, beginning with the launch of the Zephyr and ending with his waking up in a puddle of blood, facedown on the salon floor.

  When Pat was finished, Mike made some observations but didn’t offer any conclusions. He kept the recorder on, because his intent was to send his observations back to Langley for analysis.

  “Professor Forrest and GSS likely have MI6 associations. British involvement is a possibility,” he said. “During your interrogation of Bandar, you never pressed him on American connections. He implied several times in his responses that he was under US protection, but you never followed up. At the end of the interrogation, he said America and then became incoherent.

  “Harold Wasserman is not CIA. He works for the State Department Diplomatic Security Service, and he’s assigned to the UA
E embassy. Nobody from CIA asked State to retrieve the hard copies from you. Nobody from State should have been aware of what you were doing, much less the existence of the Bandar video confession. Last time, I picked the hard copies up myself. Why would it be different this time?”

  “That was my mistake. The video was so much more explosive than the Sheik Rasheed confession, I assumed it would be treated differently, and I didn’t expect anyone from the embassy to brandish CIA credentials. State Department seemed right.”

  “The guys who jumped you were Americans, top-level operators, I imagine. Even after a bottle of wine, you’re not an easy target. Wasserman was tasked by someone, probably at State, to collect any copies you might have had. That team might have been connected to him and given the task of finishing the job.”

  Pat sat up on the couch for the first time in hours and poured another glass of water. He hadn’t eaten in two days, and his energy level was reaching a critical low.

  “It looks as though the State Department and CIA are at cross purposes on this thing. I was in too much of a hurry with Bandar. I regret not pursuing an American connection to his activities, but that idea is so far-fetched, it’s hard for me to take it seriously. I figured Bandar was just deflecting. Plus, I can’t see the motivation for US involvement.”

  Mike walked to Pat’s fridge in the galley and retrieved a Sam Adams. With an open bottle in hand, he sat back down across from Pat. “As revolting a thought as it may be, the United States defense spending that following the attacks on September eleventh exceeded six trillion dollars.”

  Pat nodded. “Yeah, I can definitely see how a conspiracy theorist could put these facts together. I punched Bandar’s ticket, so he’s done talking. Whoever was responsible for attacking me must know there’s nothing incriminating about them on the Bandar confession. They’re safe. Bandar didn’t mention any Western involvement in his crimes.”

  “Once Bandar admitted to involvement in the 9/11 attacks, you should have changed mission and held on to him.”

  “I considered it, but the problem was I had no backup. It would have been easy to get him across the border, but after I did, where was I going to take him? Plus, I was worried about implicating the Emiratis.”

  “Forcing you to work alone guaranteed that outcome. The decision not to assist you came after a big fight. I was strongly in favor, as was just about everyone within the Agency. The decision was made at the political level.”

  Pat lay back on the big white U-shaped couch and let his dizziness dissipate for a minute. “So, what now?”

  “Within the CIA, the number of people who’ve been read in on your activities as they relate to Rasheed, Meshal, and Bandar is limited. I’ll go back and put everyone through a mole hunt protocol and find the leak. Until we know the players and links, we can’t do anything. We need to be very cautious. I need to talk to the senior people I trust before I do anything.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Take a vacation, get some rest, restore your health. Stay out of trouble, and don’t take any risks. The situation in the UAE should be safe for you now. If they believed you knew or heard something from Bandar beyond what was on the video you made, they would’ve killed you to keep you quiet.”

  “Would it help to identify the guys who were on my boat last night?”

  “Of course. If we could get a line on them, we could pull on that thread and see where it takes us.”

  “I would’ve thought of this earlier if I weren’t starving and my head wasn’t pounding. The marina has security cameras that have a view of my boat. The Fishmarket restaurant was still open and lit up when this happened. We should see what was captured on the security tape. Let’s go get lunch and then talk to security at the Intercontinental.”

  “Will they help?”

  “I know the management. I’m fairly sure they will.”

  “Let’s check the tape first and then have lunch,” said Mike.

  Two hours later, after getting approval from the hotel general manager, Mike and Pat were behind the console in the Intercontinental security room, reviewing the marina parking lot security-camera footage. Only two cameras had a vantage point of Pat’s boat, and since they had a good idea of the time frame, they got to the relevant footage quickly.

  One camera was mounted on the Fishmarket restaurant and aimed toward the line of boats, including Pat’s. They watched two men enter the boat and then saw the lights turning on. Twenty minutes later, the footage showed Pat enter the boat, and two minutes after that, a third intruder came into view. Because of the tinted windows in the boat, it wasn’t possible to see the attack on Pat, but soon after the third intruder entered, all three departed. The camera had captured face shots of all three people. Pat was able to get a USB drive of the entire scene from the helpful security supervisor. There wasn’t any footage of the fourth intruder, the one that Pat had put down in the parking lot.

  It was almost five o’clock when they finished with security, and they moved to the coffee shop in the Intercontinental lobby. Pat had a turkey panini sandwich and an American coffee. He could feel his vitality returning. The images of the three intruders were high-quality enough to perform face recognition. The UAE, like most countries, conducted a biometric face scan at passport control, and hotels required passport scans at check-in that were all entered into a central computer. In the UAE, it was easy for the government to track visitors. The three intruders had the look of American operators. They were white guys in their thirties, all fit and heavily muscled, all sporting the obligatory Special Operations beard.

  “The Emirates will not be too impressed that someone is conducting operations in their country. I should take that USB to my friends at the Special Operations Command and ask for help tracking those guys down.”

  Mike considered the idea. “Let’s keep it low-key. I’ll send the images back to Langley, and they’ll ID them and follow up on the lead. Those guys are probably just grunts, so don’t expect much to come of it. I know you want to go into Godzilla mode with these guys, but we need to be cautious. The possibility that Bandar had American support is an explosive idea. We need to find out what we’re up against before you start shooting people.”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior. I have a lot of work to do this week with Trident and Falcon, and then I’m going to take a vacation. I’ll be in the United States and the Bahamas during the Christmas holidays.”

  “A vacation is a good idea, Pat. You’ve had a stressful few months. We may be on to something bigger, but it could also turn out to be nothing. Don’t jump to any conclusions. The Trident operation remains important. Keep that going, and try not to make too much money.”

  Chapter 25

  600 miles west of Azores, Atlantic Ocean

  Pat sat up in the helm station on the flybridge. He was on day twenty-one of the trip from Abu Dhabi to Bahamas. The first leg was a clockwise circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula from Abu Dhabi, UAE, through the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea. He’d refueled at the Egyptian Sharm el Sheikh Marina before the second leg of the voyage had taken me through Gulf of Suez and into the Suez Canal. At Port Said, Egypt, he’d refueled again and begun the third leg of the trip through the Mediterranean and the Straits of Gibraltar to the Portuguese Azores Island of Ponta Delgada, located three hundred miles west of the Portuguese mainland. Now, on the fourth and most challenging leg of the trip, he was beginning his third day of a seven-day Atlantic crossing from the Azores to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  It was December, and the weather was partially cloudy and a chilly twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Pat was wearing a black ski jacket with blue jeans, duck boots, black hot-finger ski gloves, and a purple watch cap with the Furman University logo on it. After three weeks of growth, he had a decent salt-and-pepper beard going. His eyes were covered with black climbing sunglasses. He had a thermos cup of hot coffee with milk and sugar in his hand. The autopilot was steering the yacht. Pat’s only role was to monitor the engine levels, na
vigation system, and radar. This was his first true blue-water sailing experience, and he was exhilarated.

  Three days in, Pat was averaging four hours of sleep each day. There was a storm coming, and he had been debating what course of action to take for the past several hours. He could turn around and head back to the Azores. Sam Houston had the speed to outrun the storm, but he’d lose six days in the process, and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t hit another storm on the restart. He could turn south and avoid the storm, but even with the extra fuel bladders secured in the crew compartment, he had barely enough range to make it to Halifax on a straight shot. Bypassing the storm would require a refueling in the mid-Atlantic, which, depending on the seas, could exceed Pat’s seamanship skills. The final option was to sail straight into the storm and deal with it. The Azimut 64 had a top safety rating; the composite materials in the structure and extra strong doors and ports had been advertised as being designed to handle any sea. When Pat was in the Army, option three had been called FIDO (fuck it, drive on).

  After an uncharacteristic amount of vacillation, Pat decided to trust Sam Houston’s builders and power through the storm as fast as possible. The rolling seas had increased over the past several hours to ten to twelve feet, and Pat’s heading is straight into the westerly wind. With the heavy clothes and the protection of the helm windshield, he was still very comfortable. Looking at the weather radar on his iPad, he thought he had a few hours until the snow drove him into the protection of the wheelhouse inside the main cabin.

  Pat was outside because he believed it was going to be the last of the fresh air for a while. He had done a walk-through earlier and made sure everything was properly stowed and tied down. The tender was secured on the hydraulic platform on the stern, and he had an inflatable emergency raft, complete with immersion suit, rations, water, and locator beacon, stowed on top of it. If the yacht went over, Pat could inflate the raft and survive easily enough.