Aim True, My Brothers

by William F. Brown

  That got their attention, he thought. “It’ll give us a stable source of supply and economic alliances with the conservative Gulf States. It’ll isolate the radicals and put us rather than the Iranians in the position of power over there. It’s got to be fair and equitable to Israel, but we can’t keep grinding along at a snail’s pace forever. They still haven’t gotten beyond the preliminary stages of West Bank autonomy talks and they never will if they aren’t pushed and pushed hard on it. They think they have inviolable borders, but with the North Koreans’ and Pakistanis’ help, the Iranians will soon have rockets that can drop heavy payloads right over those walls, even atomic weapons, and then it will be game over for everyone.”

  As several of the people around the table began to speak at once, he cut them off with a wave of his hand. “Not yet. I don’t want the ‘why-it-won’t-work’ stuff. Think it over, and each of you work out a framework for a settlement in your own mind. Don’t worry about how it could be implemented. At this point, I just want half a dozen formulas that you think might work. Let’s meet next Friday, same time, same place, and every few days after that until we hash it out.”

  “You know this will put a big target on your back, Mr. President,” Winston Fields said.

  “A bunch of them,” Anna Korshak added.

  “Then we’ll just have to hope they can’t shoot straight,” Wagner laughed. The others smiled, but no one else was laughing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dulles Airport, Monday, October 8, 2:45 p.m.

  If America is indeed a melting pot, its eclectic ingredients can be found in the Customs and Immigration lines at Dulles Airport. There are Hindus in saris, with red caste marks on their foreheads, Japanese tourists with cameras slung around their necks, Turks with bushy moustaches, Africans in dashikis with tribal scars on their jet-black skin, Sikhs with turbans, Chinese business men with bad haircuts, and tall, blond Swedes — all trying to get in.

  Ibrahim Al-Bari finally reached the head of one such long line and stepped up to the INS immigration clerk. Dark-skinned and athletic-looking, he was now clean-shaven, with a perfectly trimmed haircut. His $2,000 Savile Row business suit, Cartier watch, expensive attaché case, matching leather overnight bag, and Jordanian passport created the impression of a very successful Middle-Eastern business executive. The truth was in the eyes, however, as it always was. Like a lean hunting hawk, Al-Bari’s never stopped moving as they scanned and rescanned the big hall, noting each entrance and exit, the security guards, cameras, and any set of eyes taking too much notice of him. As they passed back and forth, they came to rest for the briefest of instants on a thin man with dark complexion and a pencil-thin moustache. He wore a cheap beige London Fog trench coat, and stood on the other side of the glass doors in the terminal’s public arrival area. Clearly, he was an intelligence operative of some kind, but not a very good one. He was trying too hard to look as if he was not watching Al-Bari. From his complexion and dark brown eyes, it was obvious he was Arab, but for whom did Trench Coat work? The Iranians? Egyptians? Saudis? Or for Hamas itself? But how could any of them know so soon? If his cover was already blown, he must find out.

  A bored Immigration Clerk glanced up as Al-Bari stepped forward, checking out his clothes and watch. Smiling politely, Al-Bari handed the clerk his passport.

  “Jordanian?” the clerk asked as he thumbed through the pages, looking at other entry stamps and visas.

  “Why yes, yes I am.”

  “And it looks like you travel around, Mr.… Rashid?”

  “Yes, yes I do.”

  “And the purpose of your visit?”

  “Oh, uh, business. You see, I am an architect, here to consult on…”

  The clerk nodded, but she was no longer listening. She was already eyeing the next person in line as she pounded her stamp on a blank page in Al-Bari's passport. “First table on the left. Have your bags ready for inspection. Next!”

  The search of his attaché case and overnight bag was even quicker. An equally bored Customs Agent probed the layers of clothes, but Al-Bari did not match the profile and she waved him through. As he closed the bag, he glanced up at the surveillance camera hanging from the ceiling near him. “Amateurs,” he said under his breath as he smiled into the lens.

  Picking up his bag, he passed through the doorway into the busy public terminal beyond. Off to his left, Trench Coat had moved and now pretended to look at a rack of postcards in a souvenir shop. Al-Bari walked past him and ducked behind a bank of public telephones. Pulling out a few coins from his pocket, he dialed a number from memory, as he remained hidden, but peeked around the corner to keep an eye on Trench Coat. He was not trying to lose the fellow, merely to observe his reactions for the moment.

  The Egyptian Embassy is a large, attractive Georgian row house on a quiet, tree-lined street in central DC. Like all foreign embassies, rich or poor, whether they like us or not, they all have their own security people inside, nondescript private security guards at the front gate, a Capital Police car parked in front, and a large, brightly polished brass plate next to the door. In the case of Egypt, it reads, “The Arab Republic of Egypt” in English and Arabic, and a large red, white, and black Egyptian flag flying overhead.

  Inside the large building, if you took the elevator up to the third floor and walked through the tightly packed administrative offices to the rear cubicles designated for the Cultural Affairs Section, you would come to the one marked “Hafez Arazi, Special Assistant to the Deputy Cultural Attaché.” While this might mark him as a low and rather inconsequential staff member, to get a permanent government position in Egypt, especially an overseas one in a prize location like the United States, revolution or not, still had everything to do with family ties and politics. And unlike Eddie Barnett’s, Hafez Arazi’s small cubicle even had a window. True, his looked out over a few trees, the embassy trash dumpsters, and some sagging telephone and power lines to one of the city’s grimier neighborhoods beyond; but it was a window and they were trees.

  Ever since the early twentieth century, the Cultural Affairs Section of any embassy was synonymous with espionage, and Cultural Affairs Officers were assumed to be spies. Egypt was no different. Like many other poor countries, it had an over-abundance of rich, spoiled, and lazy sons of their business and government elite who needed jobs in order that the system could perpetuate itself. The government developed the novel approach of filling the rear offices with them, giving them job titles, which everyone assumed meant they were intelligence operatives, and assigning them minor research to keep them busy. They became window dressing that drew off the host country’s counter-intelligence resources and gave the real spies greater room to operate. Of course, it did not do much for the morale of the phony spies, but they had jobs in the West, and who could complain about that?

  That afternoon, like most of the ones before it, Hafez Arazi sat at his open window. Leaning back in his desk chair with his feet propped on the window ledge, he sat quite still with his chin resting lightly on the tips of his fingers. He loved to daydream and could sit like that for hours without moving, envisioning happier times and happier places, when he would have important things to do. He dreamed of great causes and great battles from which he would emerge triumphant with his sword held high over his head. From the piles of unread reports and paper on his desk, it was apparent Arazi had done little else but daydream for a long time. In the cubicles around him, the other Special Assistants to the Deputies, Special Undersecretaries, and Deputy Assistant Envoys were doing much the same, playing with apps on their I-phones, or watching porn on their computers. He could not care less, and no one else in the Embassy appeared to, either.

  Arazi received very few phone calls. Most were wrong numbers or someone wanting him to do a task he did not want to do, so he frequently ignored them. This time, the ringing seemed unusually insistent, so he twisted in his chair, stretched out an arm, and answered it.

  “Cultural Affairs, Arazi, may I help…”


  “I hope, so, Cousin,” Arazi heard a voice say, one he had not heard in years, and he nearly fell out of his chair. He spun around, sat upright, and covered the mouthpiece with his hand as he whispered, “Ibrahim?”

  “Careful, Cousin, the American NSA has big ears. So do your own walls.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. My God, they said you were dead.”

  “Many times, but not quite yet.”

  “But Jamil and Ahmed, even little Kadri…”

  There was a painful pause before Ibrahim could answer. “Yes, all of them. Sometimes, we are asked to pay a heavy price.”

  “Where… where are you?”

  “Not as far away as you might think,” Al-Bari answered, as he saw Trench Coat walk past the telephones, the man’s eyes frantically searching the terminal. Al-Bari turned away, so Trench Coat would not find him, not yet anyway.

  “Here? You mean you are here in America? That is wonderful, but how…”

  Trench Coat finally spotted Al-Bari talking on the telephone, turned and slipped into a gift shop, where he continued watching from behind some shelves. That told Al-Bari all he needed to know for the moment.

  “I shall explain everything later. For now, I need your help.”

  “Anything, anything…”

  “At precisely 7:00, when it is dark, I want you to leave the Embassy and walk east.”

  “East? Why?”

  “Just do what I say. And do not look for me, I shall find you.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “And Hafez, tell no one I called. No one, do you understand?”

  “Of course, Ibrahim, whatever you say.”

  “Have faith, Cousin. Allah has great plans for you… I have great plans for you,” Al-Bari said as he hung up.

  He knew Trench Coat was watching him closely now, but Al-Bari did not look back as he walked away and headed down a side corridor toward the Men's Room. There were security cameras all over the airport, but he knew there would be none in the restrooms. The Americans were such fools. They had no aversion to firing Hellfire missiles from their drones and filming whole families of men, women, and children being incinerated, but their delicate sensibilities would not allow them to film normal bodily functions. The restroom was small, with three stalls and three urinals along the left wall and a bank of sinks along the right. Two men were inside as Al-Bari walked in. One was standing at a urinal and one was sitting in the end stall as Al-Bari slipped into another stall with his bags and waited. As he did, he pulled a fountain pen from his shirt pocket, pulled off the cap to reveal a five-inch-long ice pick, and jammed its base into the cap. Outside the stall, he heard a shuffling of feet as the man at the urinal finally left, followed seconds later by the flushing of the end toilet. Soon, that door opened; he heard more shuffling, running water in a sink, and the sound of a paper towel dispenser as he too left. Finally, silence. Al-Bari waited for what seemed like an eternity until he heard hesitant footsteps and another set of shuffling feet. He peeked out through the gap between the door and the frame and saw a flash of beige as Trench Coat stepped to the urinal on the opposite side of the partition.

  Al-Bari did not wait. Trench Coat was still at the urinal as Al-Bari slipped out of the stall like a sleek, powerful cat and stepped behind him. His left hand snaked around Trench Coat’s shoulder and closed over his mouth. The man struggled for a second and even managed a muffled scream, but Al-Bari's powerful body leaned into him hard, pressing him up against the urinal so he could not move.

  “You know what they say about curiosity, my careless friend?” Al-Bari whispered as he jammed the ice pick into the base of Trench Coat's skull, and twisted. The man's body snapped upright, and his eyes bulged out as Al-Bari dragged him back into the stall. Al-Bari yanked the ice pick out of the man's neck, spun him around, and dropped him on the open toilet seat, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and stone dead.

  Quickly, Al-Bari rifled through Trench Coat's jacket, pulling out a passport and a wallet, which he shoved into his own pockets. Propping Trench Coat up against the toilet tank, he grabbed his own suitcase and briefcase, backed out of the stall, and closed it behind him. He strolled out of the restroom, smiling and whistling as another man walked in. The ruse would not last long, but it would last long enough. He continued through the crowded terminal at a leisurely pace, pausing at a magazine rack to glance around, checking his reflection in the shop windows to see if Trench Coat had a partner or if anyone else was following him. He saw nothing but businessmen and harried tourists. Behind him, he heard excited voices and running feet. Someone must have found the body. Before the alarms went off and they shut down the terminal, Al-Bari turned and headed for the front doors.

  Outside, he walked to the far end of a long queue of taxicabs, opened the rear door, and threw his bags inside. The startled cabbie looked up over a Bengali newspaper and said, “Oh, I am so sorry, Sir, but you must go to the…”

  Al-Bari dropped a $50 bill into the driver's lap. “Drive. Into the District, now!”

  The driver looked at the money and smiled. “Of course, there are always exceptions,” he said as he started the cab, pulled out into the through lane, and drove off, ignoring the curses and gestures of the other drivers as he slipped into the dense, late-afternoon traffic. Al-Bari turned and glanced back through the rear window, but he saw nothing. It was just like Iraq and Afghanistan. The reactions of American security were always slow. They would throw tens of billions of dollars at yesterday’s problems, but they could prevent nothing. Nothing! With the ease by which he entered the country and eliminated the first threat that came after him, Al-Bari felt like a large, hungry wolf who had walked into the chicken coop. They would soon regret the day they did not bolt the door.

  He relaxed, reached into his pocket, and pulled out Trench Coat's passport and wallet. From the seal on the cover, he saw the passport was Egyptian. Unless it was a forgery, in all likelihood the man was with Egyptian State Security, the SSI. Supposedly, it had been disbanded after the March Revolution. As was the tradition in the Middle East, however, it had been quickly reconstituted under a new name, with the same old dogs doing the same old tricks. Al-Bari opened the cover and saw Trench Coat's photo and the name Mohammed Tariq. In his wallet were an International Driver's License and business cards, which listed his occupation as Special Advisor to the Deputy Ambassador for Agricultural Affairs — all nonsense, of course. He remembered the man’s hands. They were as soft as a woman’s and this fellow had not spent a day in a cotton or rice field in his life. The wallet contained a few domestic photographs, a thick wad of American money and credit cards and licenses listing a local address and phone number in Virginia, not the Embassy’s.

  Al-Bari pulled out the money and the man’s credit cards and driver’s license, and shoved them into his pocket. He checked the rear window again, leaned back in the seat, and took a long, second look at Trench Coat’s passport. His face grew troubled. How could they be on him so quickly? Had there been a leak? How? No one knew he was coming here, much less where or when. Bad luck then? Coincidence? That could well be the answer, except Ibrahim Al-Bari did not believe in luck or coincidence. He also did not believe in trusting anyone or believing anyone anymore. All he believed in was success or death.

  Slipping the wallet and passport back into his jacket pocket, Al-Bari looked ahead through the cab’s front windshield and saw the large white dome of the US Capitol and the Washington Monument rising over the city. Slowly, he smiled. America! He was here. Complications or not, nothing was going to stop him now. He would have his revenge.

  It was after dark when Hafez Arazi stepped out the side service exit of the Egyptian Embassy. He paused nervously for a moment before he turned east and walked up the sidewalk as Ibrahim had directed him to do. One block, then two. He crossed several streets and reached a strip of darkened offices and retail shops. As he passed the third doorway, an arm reached out, pulled him into the shadows, and slammed him against the wall. Even with their fac
es only inches apart, it took Arazi several seconds to realize it was a clean-shaven Ibrahim Al-Bari. He pressed into him with his forearm holding Arazi against the wall while he quickly frisked the smaller man for weapons and listening devices.

  “Ibrahim! My God, it really is you?” he asked as he felt something pointed and sharp against his throat and he saw a savage look in Ibrahim’s eyes. “What are you…?”

  “You don’t have anything on you, Cousin? You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “On me? You mean like a bug or something? No, of course not.”

  “Did Security follow you? Have they been watching you?”

  “Security? You mean our Embassy people? No, why would they?”

  Al-Bari ignored the questions. “Were you careful? Did you check?”

  “Yes, of course, Ibrahim.”

  “Good, good,” he said as he backed away. “From now on, you must be even more vigilant,” he said as he took the ice pick away from Arazi’s throat. He separated the two pieces and clipped it into his shirt pocket again.

  “That is a clever weapon, Cousin. Clever. Have you had to use it?”

  “Only on spies and traitors,” Al-Bari said as he studied him again. “They are looking for me, and they hope you will be stupid enough to lead them to me.”

  “Me? How? I thought you were dead, everyone thought you were dead.”

  “No, not everyone, Hafez. Are you sure you told no one that I called you? No one at the Embassy?” Al-Bari asked, as he looked deep into his cousin’s eyes.

  “No, Ibrahim, I swear it!”

  Al-Bari pulled out Trench Coat’s driver’s license and showed it to Arazi. “Then who is this man? Tell me.”

  “Him? His name is Mohamed Tariq. He works at the Embassy. I don’t think he is on the payroll, but he does odd jobs for Moustapha Khalidi.”