Aim True, My Brothers

by William F. Brown

  “Who is this Khalidi?”

  “Oh, he is Chief of Security. He’s a nice person, very pleasant…”

  “Hafez! I am not playing bridge with him,” Al-Bari snapped, knowing if Trench Coat worked for this Khalidi, then he was with the Egyptian SSI. That was a complication, which Al-Bari did not welcome. He remembered seeing a photograph of Khalidi back in Beirut. He appeared to be a small, inconsequential man, fastidious to the extreme, but that only proved that photographs can lie worse than a man’s tongue. He also remembered that Khalidi had a formidable reputation and was not a man to be taken lightly.

  “Tell me more about Khalidi. Do you think he can be trusted?”

  “Oh, certainly… uh, but perhaps not the way you mean. He is from an old Cairo family and he is very close to the Ambassador.”

  “Fawzi? He is still the Ambassador?”

  “Yes. And I think he and Khalidi are somewhat pro-American, so…”

  “There is no such thing as being ‘somewhat!’ There are spies and traitors everywhere, Cousin, and I need your help. Our people need your help, and the time is very, very short.”

  “Anything, anything, Ibrahim. You know you need but ask.”

  “Do you have an automobile?”

  “Yes, it is an old Toyota sedan, perhaps not the…”

  “It will do, Hafez. Take me to it.”

  They circled their way back toward the Embassy, staying on the side streets until they reached a large, multi-level city parking garage, where Arazi had parked an old, battered blue Toyota sedan. “You must excuse the car, Ibrahim, but the costs here are…”

  “Of no concern, Cousin. It will be fine. Please drive.”

  “Where… where do you want me to go?”

  “South, through the District, I shall show you where.”

  They drove down Massachusetts Avenue, around DuPont Circle, and continued on Connecticut Avenue, with Al-Bari pointing the way. It was a clear, dark night, and the city's great monuments appeared a pure, unsullied white in the glare of their floodlights. Finally, when they reached Constitution Avenue, Al-Bari told him to stop where he could point across the Ellipse toward the White House.

  “Tell me what you see, Hafez.”

  “See? I see the White House, where the American President lives.”

  “True, but what I see is the beginning of a long pipeline that stretches from here to Tel Aviv. If you close your eyes, you can see all the guns, the bullets, and the dollars which these damned Americans stuff into that pipeline every year. Like a perverted cornucopia, its factories make all the tanks, the jet airplanes, the rockets, and the bombs, and then place them in the hands of our enemies.”

  “Yes, yes, I see it too, Ibrahim.”

  “And they are killing us, Hafez. They are killing our people. I first understood it in the mountain caves of Afghanistan, and then again on that highway near Acre in Israel. If we want to stop it, we must stop it here and we must stop it now. We must, because soon there will be none of us left.”

  “Yes, we must stop them… but how?”

  “By killing the man who lives there,” Al-Bari said, pointing toward the White House, “by killing President Michael T. Wagner, and by doing it in such a violent, destructive way that these arrogant Americans will finally learn that their meddling carries a very, very high price. To do that, Hafez, I need your help.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Washington, D. C., Monday, October 9, 11:45 a.m.

  It was a gray, rainy day in the Nation’s Capital, an unpleasant break in what had been up to then a pleasant Indian summer. With no particularly good reason to go outside, Eddie and Charlie remained at their desks, cleaning up old files on an international car theft ring, when Barnett’s phone rang.

  “Capitol Cleaners,” he said. “You spill it, we’ll get it out.”

  “I truly wish you would not do that,” he heard a distinguished baritone voice with a cultured English accent say. “You know these things are monitored.”

  “Probably at your end, too.”

  “No, I am the one who would do that sort of thing, and unlike you, we do not have that kind of money to throw around. Besides, our people would never understand your humor as I do. Most times, I do not, either.”

  “Just tell them it is part of my deep cover.”

  “Cover for what? Bad standup comedy?”

  “So, what can I do for you on this murky Monday morning, Mouse?”

  “Nice alliteration, Edward.”

  “Yes, but only you Oxford fellows would appreciate it.”

  “True, but you and I must talk. I have some information to pass to your people.”

  “Oh, Jeez, Mouse, you know how things are around here these days. I’m not sure…”

  “Always the jokes, Barnett. Always the jokes. Unfortunately, this is important.”

  “Hold on, let me check my busy schedule. Wait a minute,” he said as he rustled through the papers on his desk for effect. “Here, I think I can fit you in, in say… twenty minutes? In the usual place?”

  “The usual place? In the rear corner, I assume?”

  “Only the finest, most subtle trade-craft will do, when it comes to a master spy like you, Mouse.”

  “I’m not a spy, and you would not know good trade-craft if it bit you.”

  “Twenty minutes, then, just in time for lunch,” Barnett said as he hung up and looked innocently across the aisle at Charlie.

  “Again?” the older agent asked.

  Barnett shrugged. “What can I say? When it comes to National Security, it’s strictly need-to-know, Charlie, life and death stuff, and way above your pay grade.”

  “The Egyptian? You know the Director would have sent you to Poughkeepsie a long time ago if it weren’t for the stuff that guy feeds you. He’d have sent me too, and that would have really pissed off Norma Jean, so don’t push your luck.”

  “He sounded worried this time.”

  “Then watch your ass, Eddie. Those Arabs got grudges on top of their grudges.”

  “He’s Egyptian, not an Arab. They’re different.”

  “If you say so.”

  Eddie Barnett still couldn’t figure out how or why he and Mouse had become such good friends over the past two years. Mouse was from a prominent upper-class Cairo family and had attended some of the best schools in England. Eddie Barnett, on the other hand, was from a long line of Eastern European peasants whose name became garbled at Ellis Island, and had attended the University of Nebraska where he pretended to study agricultural science and criminal justice on a football scholarship. They had few common interests, except an occasional good joke, and stopping bad guys. Barnett was large, rough-hewn, and Midwest crude, while the slender and much shorter Egyptian was the epitome of a smooth, urbane continental. “Mouse” was the nickname he picked up in an English boarding school where the Headmaster could not quite handle Moustapha, and did not even try Amin Bandar Khalidi.

  As Barnett strode through the front door of The Hog Heaven, the place was already about half full with the early lunch crowd. He waved to Lennie the bartender. “Two Diet Cokes and maybe one of your nacho things to my usual table, if you please, barkeep.”

  “Are you expecting Louise again, Eddie?” Lenny shot back. “The boys want fair warning next time so they can be long gone.”

  “What? Do I look like the National Hurricane Center? Sometimes they have a mind of their own, you know.”

  “Anyway, there was a guy in here looking for you a while ago — short, dark, with a geeky little moustache. I think it was that Egyptian guy.”

  “Mouse.”

  Lenny quickly leaned over the bar and looked around the floor.

  “No, no,” Barnett stopped him. “That’s his nickname.”

  “Whatever. He had two big gorillas with him and he said he’d be back. What? You owe him some money or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. Just point him in my direction when he gets here.”

  Ten minutes later, Mousta
pha Khalidi, Chief of Security for the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt, stepped inside the bar and paused. He was dressed for the cover of GQ in a well-tailored pin-striped suit, white shirt, silk tie, and Italian loafers. Coming in behind him and taking their posts on either side of the door were two huge men in suits and dark sunglasses, their arms folded across their chests. Bodyguards. They were a novel twist, Barnett thought. Mouse never came with bodyguards before. The one on the left had his eyes fixed on the dark room, his head slowly turning back and forth like a radar dish, while the other man looked back out the door, his eyes on the street.

  Mouse looked over at Lenny the bartender, who cocked his head toward the rear booth.

  “Hey, Mouse,” Barnett waved at him. “Wuzzup?”

  Mouse quickly joined him, taking a seat with his back to the room, mortified. “This place is appalling.” He quickly turned his head to sniff and glance around the room. “It smells as if a large wet bear has been hibernating in here all winter. I do not suppose you could choose a location that was a bit more discreet, could you, Edward?”

  Barnett looked around the half-empty bar and shrugged. “Discreet? This is a cop bar. What you see are City, State, Capitol Police, US Marshals, FBI, DEA, TSA, INS, ATF, and Smokey the Bear Park Rangers — the whole Federal alphabet soup, and it’s plenty discreet. They’re off duty, so nobody sees nothing. Hell, you could stick the place up, and unless you spill their beer, they wouldn't care. But speaking of large bears,” Barnett nodded toward the two bodyguards at the front door. “What’s with the two Goons?”

  “Goons? Those are Kamal and Gamal from Security. I assure you, they are Ambassador Fawzi’s idea, not mine. They do stand out, don’t they?” he said as he looked back toward the door. “After the murder of our man at the airport, the Ambassador insisted. And they are very competent, I assure you.”

  Barnett took a second look. “And they cast two big shadows that you can stand in on hot summer days. I heard about that murder at the airport. It was strange — mid-morning, a busy crowd, and no one saw anything? The TSA is handling it, but I heard the guy was stabbed with an ice pick at the back of his head.”

  “Yes. A most unusual modus operandi — quiet, very precise, and very deadly.”

  “And pretty skilled and confident to even try to kill someone with one of those. Sounds like a professional hit to me.”

  “That occurred to us as well.”

  “The vic worked for you?”

  “Vic? Ah, yes, on your American television. His name was Tariq, but he had been here in the States for six or seven years.”

  “I heard his papers were gone, passport and wallet and stuff. Took a while to ID him.”

  “Yes. He was what you might call a stringer, or less charitably a gopher. Officially he was not ours, but he did do contract work for us, as well as for the Jordanians, the Saudis, and the Gulf States, I believe. Mostly he did low-level work such as couriering documents, keeping an occasional eye on anti-regime subversives, and picking up visiting businessmen and local politicians at the airport when the permanent staff was busy, that kind of thing. The fellow was polite, punctual, and competent, and that was about all any of us were looking for.”

  “What was he doing at Dulles? Do you think he was tracking someone?”

  “Not that we knew.”

  “Well, someone did.”

  “I am told he was waiting in the airport to pick up the president of a cigarette company from Alexandria, but the flight was late.”

  “I doubt that was what got him killed.”

  “No, but Tariq was frequently back in our Security office, sitting around, waiting for this or that. There is a bulletin board back there with alert sheets and photographs, so perhaps he saw or heard something. I assume the same was true of the other embassies. On occasion, we did instruct him to check out arriving passengers at Immigration. Unfortunately, ill-trained amateurs watch too much TV and often get carried away with themselves. Whatever, he obviously ran into someone a bit more competent and dangerous than he was.”

  “That’s why you really ought to leave that interdiction stuff to our Homeland Security people, Mouse.”

  “We would, if your TSA people had a clue what they were doing. Anyway, that is not why I needed to see you today. We have a somewhat more vexing and embarrassing problem. It appears a member of our embassy staff went missing last night.”

  “It happens. ‘How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen DC?’ ”

  Mouse looked across at him deadpan and shook his head. “You Americans… Anyway, this fellow cleaned out our operating reserve accounts and left with over $300,000 in cash.”

  “Have you looked in Vegas?”

  “We aren’t all sheiks or Saudi princes.”

  “The casinos don’t know that.”

  “As always, I appreciate your logic, Edward, but this fellow also took several Beretta 9-millimeter automatics, two MP5 submachine guns, magazines, and a case of 9-millimeter ammunition from our arms room.”

  “I guess that rules out Vegas.”

  “I suspect it does.”

  “Do you want to talk this over with the District's 'Finest'?”

  “Entirely too delicate a subject for the police,” Mouse said as he reached into his jacket, pulled out an envelope, and slid it across the table to Barnett.

  “Need I ask ‘why me?’ ”

  “Ambassador Fawzi himself has requested your assistance on this matter, Edward. On my recommendation, of course.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “And when you discuss it with your Director…”

  “I’m discussing it with my Director?”

  “Of course you are. You cannot do this by yourself and neither the TSA, the District Police, nor the Airport Police will let you touch it unless your Director tells them to. I assure you it is no different in Cairo.”

  Barnett rolled his eyes. “All right. When I talk to my Director...”

  “The Ambassador said you were to remind him that…”

  Barnett snorted. “Me? Remind the Director? This is getting better by the minute, Mouse.”

  “Actually, I believe the Ambassador already sent him a note.”

  “Oh, he’ll really love that. I’m sure the other agencies will, too.”

  “Your Director and the President are well aware of the assistance the Ambassador provided your government in the Libyan civil war, in the ongoing fighting in Syria, and in the recent ‘troubles’ in Cairo. You are even authorized to mention Ambassador Fawzi's name, if that would help. It might even get you out of the dog's house, as I believe you would call it, a place you seem to perpetually inhabit these days.”

  “Me? I like it there. The rent’s cheap and it’s a good place to hide. Now show me what you’ve got,” Barnett said as he opened the envelope and pulled out an ID photo of Arazi.

  “He seemed like a nice young man,” Mouse stated. “He had none of the usual vices — no drugs, no gambling, and no loose women.”

  “No? Then what is the $300,000 for?”

  “We had intended it for Embassy special projects, charitable contributions, minor purchases, entertainment, things like that.”

  “Bribes, babes, and booze the IRS calls it.”

  Mouse shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “On occasion.”

  “Well, $300,000 buys a lot of it.”

  “Hafez Arazi was not like that. He was very serious — not ‘the brightest bulb in the pack’ as you would put it, but very focused, very serious, and very religious.”

  “So the guns are for what? Guarding the Imam’s collection plate?”

  “No. The real problem, as it turns out, is that Hafez Arazi has an older cousin.” Mouse said as he slid a second photo across to Barnett. It was one of Ibrahim Al-Bari wearing a Syrian Army dress uniform, a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, and an officer’s hat. What immediately caught Barnett’s attention were his eyes — a riveting, angry, deep black.

  “A most formid
able fellow,” Mouse went on. “He is, or was, with Hamas and has spent a number of years in Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. Last spring, he returned to Beirut, where he set about recruiting and training his own operatives for Hamas ‘special purpose’ missions. We understand he was involved in that bloody attack on the Israeli bus near Haifa. It is rumored that two of his brothers died there and that he was the man in charge. After that, he completely dropped off the radar… until now.”

  “What happened?”

  “We don’t have it all yet, but our sources in Beirut tell us that the Hamas leadership, the Shura, was not very happy with him over how the bus incident played out. The word is, he has now broken away from them and has ‘gone hunting’ on his own.”

  “Before they come hunting for him?”

  “Quite likely, but a man like Ibrahim Al-Bari does not hunt small game.”

  “That’s not a good thing. You think he's coming here?”

  “Arazi is a cousin. After all the guns and money went missing…”

  “And after your dead man at the airport?”

  “That too is possible. We know Tariq was a harmless stringer, but he may not have appeared that way to a far more skilled operative on high alert.”

  “So it could have been this Al-Bari?”

  “Prudent men could draw such a conclusion. He hates the Israelis, hates the PLO, probably hates Hamas now too, hates us, and he hates you most of all.”

  “Me? What did I ever do to the guy?”

  “In your case, it would not take much.”

  “Ah! Humor from the Sphinx.”

  “On occasion. That said, it would be prudent for your people to check the TSA, INS, and other airport footage for the past few days, especially at Dulles yesterday afternoon. Al-Bari is said to be an expert with many weapons, including his hands.”

  Barnett nodded, studying the eyes in the photo. “What else do you know about him?”

  “Don’t let the Syrian uniform fool you. He and his brothers are actually Palestinian. He studied mechanical engineering at Cambridge. He is smart and fluent in English and several other languages. With enough time and the guns and money that Arazi stole, he would be a very dangerous adversary here.”