O'Leary, Haytham, Moody, and Wydrzynski let out a big laugh. Captain Stein tried not to smile. Jack Koenig was not smiling, and therefore neither was Alan Parker. Mr. Harris, too, did not seem amused. Kate . . . well, Kate was getting used to me, I think.
Captain Stein said, "Thank you, Mr. Corey. I'm sorry I asked." David Stein concluded the meeting with a few words of motivation. "If this bastard strikes again in New York metro, most of us here should think about calling their pension office. Meeting adjourned."
CHAPTER 37
On Monday morning at 6:00 A.M., Asad Khalil answered the ringing telephone and a voice said, "Good morning."
Khalil started to reply, but the voice continued without pause, and Khalil realized it was a recorded message. The voice said, "This is your six A.M. wake-up call. Today's temperature will get into the high seventies, clear skies, chance of a passing shower late in the day. Have a nice day, and thank you for choosing Sheraton."
Khalil hung up the phone and the words Yob vas came into his mind. He got out of bed, and carried the two Glocks into the bathroom. He shaved, brushed his teeth, used the toilet and showered, then touched up the gray, and combed his hair with a part, using the wall-mounted hair dryer.
As in Europe, he reflected, there were many luxuries in America, many recorded voices, soft mattresses, hot water at the turn of a faucet tap, and rooms without insects or rodents. A civilization such as this could not produce good infantrymen, he thought, which was why the Americans had reinvented warfare. Push-button war. Laser-guided bombs and missiles. Cowardly warfare, such as they had visited on his country.
The man he was going to see today, Paul Grey, was an old practitioner of cowardly bombing, and now had become an expert in this game of remote-control killing, and had become a rich merchant of death. Soon, he would be a dead merchant of death.
Khalil went into the bedroom, prostrated himself on the floor facing Mecca, and said his morning prayers. When he had completed the required prayers, he prayed, "May God give me the life of Paul Grey this day, and the life of William Satherwaite tomorrow. May God speed me on my journey and bless this Jihad with victory."
He rose and dressed himself in his bulletproof vest, clean shirt and underwear, and gray suit.
Khalil opened the Jacksonville telephone directory to the section he had been told to look under—AIRCRAFT CHARTER, RENTAL LEASING SERVICES. He copied several telephone numbers on a piece of notepaper and put it in his pocket.
Under his door was an envelope, which contained his bill, and a slip of paper informing him that his newspaper was outside his door. He peered through the peephole, saw no one, and unbolted and opened his door. On the doormat was a newspaper, and he retrieved it, then closed and rebolted his door.
Khalil stood by the light of the desk lamp and stared at the first page. There, staring back at him, were two color photographs of himself—a full-face view and a profile. The caption read: Wanted—Asad Khalil, Libyan, age approximately 30, height six feet, speaks English, Arabic, some French, Italian, and German. Armed and dangerous.
Khalil took the newspaper to the bathroom mirror and held it up to the left of his face. He put his bifocals on and peered through the clear tops of the lenses. His eyes shifted back and forth between the photographs and his own face. He made several facial expressions, then stepped back from the mirror, and turned his head slightly to one side so he could see his profile in the wraparound wall mirror.
He put the newspaper down, closed his eyes, and created a mental image of himself and the photographs. The one feature that stood out in his mind was his thin, hooked nose with the flaring nostrils, and he had mentioned this to Boris once.
Boris had told him, "There are many racial characteristics in America. In some urban areas, there are Americans who can tell the difference between a Vietnamese and a Cambodian, for instance, or between a Filipino and a Mexican. But when the person is from the Mediterranean region, then even the most astute observer has difficulty. You could be an Israeli, an Egyptian, a Sicilian, a Greek, a Sardinian, a Maltese, a Spaniard, or perhaps even a Libyan." Boris, who stank of vodka that day, had laughed at his own joke and added, "The Mediterranean Sea connected the ancient world—it did not divide people, as it does today, and there was much fucking going on before the coming of Jesus and Muhammad." Boris laughed again and said, "Peace be unto them."
Khalil clearly recalled that he would have killed Boris right then and there had Malik not been present. Malik had been standing behind Boris, and Malik had shaken his head and at the same time made a cutting motion across his throat.
Boris had not seen this, but he must have known what Malik was doing, because he said, "Oh, yes, I have blasphemed again. May Allah, Muhammad, Jesus, and Abraham forgive me. My only god is vodka. My saints and prophets are deutsche marks, Swiss francs, and dollars. The only temple I enter is the vagina of a woman. My only sacrament is fucking. May God help me."
Whereupon Boris began weeping like a woman and left the room.
On another occasion, Boris had said to Asad, "Stay out of the sun for a month before you go to America. Wash your face and hands with a bleaching soap that you will be given. In America, lighter is better. Also, when your skin darkens from the sun, those scars on your face are more visible."
Boris had asked, "Where did you get those scars?"
Khalil replied truthfully, "A woman."
Boris had laughed and slapped Khalil on the back. "So, my holy friend, you've gotten close enough to a woman for her to scratch your face. Did you fuck her?"
In a rare moment of candor, because Malik was not present, Khalil had replied, "Yes, I did."
"Did she scratch you before or after you fucked her?"
"After."
Boris had collapsed into a chair, laughing so hard he could barely speak, but finally he said, "They don't always scratch your face after you fuck them. Look at my face. Try it again. It may go better next time."
Boris was still laughing when Khalil came up to him and put his lips to Boris' ear and said, "After she scratched me, I strangled her to death with my bare hands."
Boris had stopped laughing and their eyes met. Boris said, "I'm sure you did. I'm sure you did."
Khalil opened his eyes and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror of the Sheraton Motor Inn. The scars that Bahira had inflicted on him were not so visible, and his hooked nose was perhaps not so distinguishing a feature now that he wore eyeglasses and a mustache.
In any case, he had no choice but to go forward, confident that Allah would blind his enemies, and that his enemies would blind themselves by their own stupidity, and by the American inability to focus on anything for more than a few seconds.
Khalil took the newspaper back to the desk and, still standing, he read the front-page story.
His spoken English was good, but his ability to read this difficult language was not so good. The Latin letters confused him, the spelling seemed to have no logic to it, the phonetics of letter groupings, such as "ght" and "ough," provided no clue to their pronunciation, and the language of the journalists seemed totally unrelated to the spoken language.
He struggled through the story, and was able to comprehend that the American government had admitted that a terrorist attack had taken place. Some details were provided, but not, Khalil thought, the most interesting details, nor the most embarrassing facts.
There was an entire page listing the three hundred and seven dead passengers, and a separate listing of the crew. Missing from all these names was a passenger called Yusef Haddad.
The names of the people whom he had personally killed were listed under a caption titled Killed in the Line of Duty.
Khalil noted that his escorts, whom he knew only as Philip and Peter, were surnamed Hundry and Gorman. They were also listed as Killed in the Line of Duty, as were a man and woman identified as Federal Marshals, who Khalil had not known were on board.
Khalil thought a moment about his two escorts. They had been polite to h
im, even solicitous. They had made certain he was comfortable and had everything he needed. They had apologized for the handcuffs and offered to let him remove his bulletproof vest during the flight, an offer that he declined.
But for all their good manners, Khalil had detected a degree of condescension in Hundry, who had identified himself as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hundry had been not only condescending, but at times contemptuous, and once or twice had revealed a moment of hostility.
The other one, Gorman, had not identified himself beyond his name, which he gave only as Peter. But Khalil had no doubt that this man was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. Gorman had shown no hostility, and in fact, seemed to treat Asad Khalil as an equal, perhaps as a fellow intelligence officer.
Hundry and Gorman had taken turns sitting in the seat beside their prisoner, or their defector, as they referred to him. When Peter Gorman sat beside him, Khalil took the opportunity to reveal to Gorman his activities in Europe. Gorman had been at first incredulous, but finally impressed. He had said to Asad Khalil, "You are either a good liar, or an excellent assassin. We'll find out which you are."
To which Khalil had replied, "I am both, and you will never discover what is a lie, and what is the truth."
Gorman said, "Don't bet on it."
Then, the two agents would confer quietly for a few minutes, and then Hundry would sit beside him. Hundry would try to make Khalil tell him what he told Gorman. But Khalil would only talk to him about Islam, his culture, and his country.
Khalil smiled, even now, at this little game that had kept him amused during the flight. Finally, even the two agents found it amusing, and they made a joke of it. But clearly, they realized they were in the presence of a man who should not be treated with condescension.
And finally, just as Yusef Haddad went into the lavatory, which was the signal for Khalil to ask permission to use the facility, Asad Khalil said to Gorman, "I killed Colonel Hambrecht in England as the first part of my mission."
"What mission?" Gorman asked.
"My mission to kill all seven surviving American pilots who participated in the air raid on Al Azziziyah on April fifteen, nineteen eighty-six." He added, "My family all died in that attack."
Gorman had remained silent for a long moment, then said, "I'm sorry about your family." He added, "I thought those pilots' names were classified as top secret."
"Of course they are," Khalil had replied. "But top secrets can be revealed—they just cost more money."
Then, Gorman had said something that even now bothered Khalil. Gorman said, "I have a secret for you, too, Mr. Khalil. It concerns your mother and father. And other personal matters."
Khalil, against his better judgment, was baited into asking, "What is it?"
"You will know in New York. After you tell us what we want to know."
Yusef Haddad had exited the lavatory, and there was not a minute to spare to pursue this. Khalil requested permission to use the lavatory. A few minutes later, Peter Gorman took his secret and Khalil's secret to the grave with him.
Asad Khalil scanned the newspaper again, but there was little of interest beyond the one-million-dollar reward, which he thought was not much money, considering all the people he had killed. In fact, it was almost an insult to the families of the dead, and certainly a personal insult to himself.
He threw the newspaper in the trash can, gathered his overnight bag, looked out the peephole again, then opened the door and went directly to his car.
He got in, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot of the Sheraton Motor Inn, back on to the highway.
It was 7:30 A.M., the sky was clear, and the traffic was light.
He drove to a shopping strip that was dominated by a huge supermarket called Winn-Dixie. They had told him in Tripoli that coin telephones could usually be found at gasoline stations or near supermarkets, and sometimes in post offices, as was the case in Libya and Europe. But the post office was a place he needed to avoid. He saw a row of telephones against the wall of the supermarket near the doorways, and parked his car in the nearly empty lot. He found coins in the overnight bag, put one of the pistols in his pocket, got out of the car, and went to one of the telephones.
He looked at the numbers he had written down and dialed the first one.
A woman answered, "Alpha Aviation Services."
He said, "I would like to hire an aircraft and pilot to take me to Daytona Beach."
"Yes, sir. When would you like to go?"
"I have a nine-thirty A.M. appointment in Daytona Beach."
"Where are you now?"
"I am calling from Jacksonville Airport."
"Okay, then you should get here as soon as possible. We're located at Craig Municipal Airport. Do you know where that is?"
"No, but I'm coming by taxi."
"Okay. How many passengers, sir?"
"Just myself."
"Okay . . . and will this be round-trip?"
"Yes, but the wait will be short."
"Okay . . . I can't give you an exact price, but it's about three hundred dollars round-trip, plus waiting time. Any landing or parking fees are additional."
"Yes, all right."
"Your name, sir?"
"Demitrious Poulos." He spelled it for her.
"Okay, Mr. Poulos, when you get to Craig Municipal, tell the driver we're, like, at the end of the row of hangars on the north side of the field. Okay? Big sign. Alpha Aviation Services. Ask anyone."
"Thank you. Have a nice day."
"You, too."
He hung up.
They had assured him in Tripoli that renting an aircraft and pilot in America was easier than renting an automobile. With an automobile, you needed a credit card, a driver's license, and you had to be a certain age. But with a piloted aircraft, you were asked no more questions than if you were taking a taxi. Boris had told him, "What the Americans call General Aviation—private flying—is not subject to close government scrutiny as it is in Libya or my country. You need no identification. I have done this many times myself. This is an occasion when cash is better than a credit card. They can avoid taxes if you pay cash, and their record keeping of cash is not so meticulous."
Khalil nodded to himself. His journey was becoming less difficult. He put a coin in the telephone and dialed a number that he'd memorized.
A voice answered, "Grey Simulation Software. This is Paul Grey."
Khalil took a long breath and replied, "Mr Grey, this is Colonel Itzak Hurok of the Israeli Embassy."
"Oh, yes, been waiting for your call."
"Someone from Washington has spoken to you?"
"Yes, of course. They said nine-thirty. Where are you now?"
"Jacksonville. I have just landed."
"Oh, well, it's going to take you about two and a half hours to get here."
"I have a private aircraft waiting for me at the Municipal Airport, and I understand that you live at an airport."
Paul Grey laughed and said, "Well, you could say that. It's called a fly-in community. Spruce Creek, outside of Daytona Beach. Listen, Colonel, I have an idea. Why don't I fly to Craig and pick you up in my plane? Meet me in the lounge. It's less than an hour flight. I can be airborne in ten minutes. Then I can fly you right back to Jacksonville International in time for your flight back to Washington. How's that?"
Khalil had not anticipated this and had to think quickly. He said, "I have already engaged a car to drive me to the Municipal Airport, and my embassy has prepaid for the aircraft. In any case, I am instructed to accept no favors. You understand."
"Sure. I understand that. But you have to have a cold beer when you get here."
"I am looking forward to it."
"Okay. Make sure the pilot has the info he needs to land at Spruce Creek. Any problem, just call me here before take-off."
"I will do that."
"And when you land, give me a call from the fuel and maintenance facility at the center of the airport, a
nd I'll come over and pick you up with my golf cart. Okay?"
"Thank you." He said, "As my colleague told you, there is a degree of discretion in my visit."
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Right. I'm alone."
"Good."
Paul Grey said, "I have a hell of a show set up for you."
And I for you, Captain Grey. "I look forward to it."
Khalil hung up and got into the Mercury. He programmed the Satellite Navigator for Craig Municipal Airport, and got onto the highway.
He headed east from the north side of Jacksonville, followed the instructions of the Satellite Navigator, and within twenty minutes approached the entrance to the airport.
As they said in Tripoli, there were no guards at the gate, and he drove straight through, following the road that led to the buildings around the Control Tower.
The sun glared here, as it did in Libya, he thought, and the land was flat and featureless, except for clusters of pine trees.
The buildings were mostly hangars, but there was a small terminal building and a car rental agency. He saw a sign that said FLORIDA AIR NATIONAL GUARD, which sounded military and which caused him some anxiety. Also, he hadn't realized that individual states had their own military. But he thought perhaps he was misinterpreting the sign. Boris had told him, "In America, the meaning of many signs is not clearly understood, even by the Americans. If you misinterpret a sign and make a transgression, do not panic, do not attempt to flee, and do not kill anyone. Simply apologize and explain that the sign was not clear, or you did not see it. Even the police will accept that explanation. The only signs Americans see and understand are signs that say, Sale, Free, or Sex.—I once saw a road sign in Arizona that said, 'Free Sex—Speed Limit Forty Miles an Hour.' You understand?"
Khalil did not, and Boris had to explain it to him.
In any case, Khalil avoided the area that said AIR NATIONAL GUARD, and soon saw the large sign that said
ALPHA AVIATION SERVICES.
He also noticed that there were many license plates of different colors in the parking lot near the car rental agency, so that his New York plates did not stand out.
He pulled the Mercury into an empty space some distance from where he needed to be, took his overnight bag that contained the second Glock and the spare magazines, exited the car, locked it, and began his walk to Alpha Aviation.
Nelson Demille - [John Corey 2] Page 33