“More money will be sent to you in due time. It is suspicious if you travel with more than ten thousand dollars. It arouses suspicion and sends up red flags. So spend a couple of hundred in the duty-free stores. This way you will be able to truthfully say that you have less than ten thousand dollars.
“In fact,” said Zeid, “you could say that your mission is in two parts. The first is to make sure you are not followed or caught, and the second part of your job is to complete the task with your mortars. Without succeeding at the first job, you will not succeed at the second task. You understand the importance of this mission: under no circumstances whatsoever are you to be caught alive. Don’t think that the Americans will not get you to talk, because they will. They may not use some of the methods we do, they may not break your finger bones or pull your toenails out, but believe me, what they will do to you can be just as convincing. So let me be 100 percent truthful with you: do not let them catch you, and if they do, don’t let them catch you alive.”
Laura and Kevork Nazarian watched from a distance as Omar emerged two hours later escorted by a man with a slightly disfigured face. Laura recognized the man with the scars from photographs she had seen of him. He was the public face of the FSF, a man called Basil Sharraf. Also known as Zeid.
The two men shook hands, embraced, and kissed. Then Omar got into a white Peugeot with three other people. The three men, as well as the driver, were armed. The driver of the gray Mercedes slammed his fist into the steering wheel. Picking up Omar was now impossible. He remained three or four cars behind, and followed. They could be going anywhere, and the man was afraid to lose them. If they headed into the camps, it would be suicide to follow. There was only so much he could risk. There were areas in the camps that were even off-limits to the average Palestinian. At the end of Avenue Mazraa, the car turned left and followed the coastal road south, then turned left again. They passed in front of the Kuwaiti embassy and then veered right toward Beirut International Airport. The driver of the gray Mercedes prayed that they would not go into Chatilla, one of the largest refugee camps. No, thank God, the car kept going straight, to Beirut Airport. The driver of the gray Mercedes was thankful for that. The airport was neutral ground and there was always a crowd there. It was easy to follow someone without being noticed.
Outside the airport, Omar left his escort and walked unaccompanied inside the terminal building. The driver of the Mercedes dropped Laura off in front of the departures area, parked his car, and followed inside. The two were joined by two more of Laura’s recruits, also former Lebanese Forces fighters, Nabil Khoury and Tony Helou. Omar checked in at a Middle East Airlines counter. The crowds at the airport were greater than usual and this helped Laura and the driver blend in. It allowed them to then remain a few discreet steps behind their package without being noticed. Omar did not seem concerned by his surroundings; he walked straight ahead without looking behind to see if he was being followed. He headed for the Middle East Airlines desk, where passengers traveling to Brussels were checking in. Laura told the Armenian driver to remain in the queue behind Omar. She was going to get a seat on the same flight. When Omar presented himself at the counter, Laura was by a stroke of luck at the adjoining counter. She tried looking to see what name and what nationality the man she was following was traveling under, but was unable.
The flight to Brussels was fully booked. Laura tried to get a seat in first or business class, to no avail. There was not a single empty seat on the plane. She tried to bribe the desk agent, but that didn’t work. Next she tried offering money to several passengers to give her their seats, but this didn’t work either. She asked the Armenian to see who he could bribe, convince, cajole, or even threaten, if need be. Meanwhile, she called Langley on her cell phone.
The Armenian came up to Laura with a big grin on his face. “Madame Laura, I have one my cousins, his name is Harout, he going on same flight to Brussels. He okay for giving you his seat for one thousand dollars.”
“Tell him it’s a deal.”
Kevork motioned to someone standing in the queue, who came over and was introduced to Laura. “Madame Laura, this my cousin, Mr. Harout. Mr. Harout, this my lady boss, Mrs. Madame Laura.” The two then went into what seemed to be an interminable discussion in Armenian, and the cousin finally said to Laura, “Okay, we go tell agent you take my seat.”
16
BEIRUT, LEBANON
Dr. Hawali found the Thinker in a jovial mood, which was unusual.
“My dear Doctor,” said the Thinker, looking up from his desk, “we shall have our weapon on time. The backup facility in Kabul is proceeding at full strength. Our dear sheik in Cairo has agreed to continue funding the project completely. Even the attempt on his life last week did not deter him. He is convinced it was the Israelis who tried to kill him. So now he is more than ever committed to seeing the project through. If all goes well, we can have enough material within a few months.”
“That is good news, but let’s make sure it is no longer than two months. We are on a tight schedule.”
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
It was Omar’s first time in Europe, and it felt strange. It was all the more strange because this time he had to impersonate someone else. He not only had to use someone else’s name, but he had to begin thinking like someone else, too. He scanned his environs, moving his gaze from left to right and back. The area seemed clean, but there were numerous places where someone could hide, should they need to. Omar took in the scenery around him. Everything seemed in perfect working order. Everything was clean and tidy, everything seemed to be in its place, almost like those small dollhouses he often saw some of the younger girls in the camps play with. People were well dressed and they all seemed to have somewhere to go. No one lingered at street corners, like in the camps, or in most Arab cities. Even the cars looked new and polished; it was hard to find one that was dented or dirty. Drivers stopped at red lights, although there were no policemen at intersections to enforce the law. And car drivers didn’t honk their horns, unless it was a real emergency.
For a while, it seemed to Omar, now travelling as Issam, as if this was a perfect world: clean, tidy, orderly, and elegant. But then a voice inside of him told him no. No! It was most certainly not! It was because of them, the Imperialists, the Europeans, the friends and allies of the dreaded Zionists that he, Omar, was a refugee, a man without a nation. He was obliged to travel on false documents, using a forged Jordanian passport, or, in this case, a stolen passport. Otherwise these nice people wouldn’t even let him into their silly little country. Palestine and Iraq were synonymous with terrorism! And still, the Belgian embassy in Beirut had refused him a visa. The Arabs were not liked very much either. He finally obtained a Dutch visa. Since the establishment of the European Union and the signing of the Phares Schengen Zone, internal borders between the signatories were abolished. A visa from any one Schengen nation allowed the holder to travel to the other countries freely.
Suddenly Omar felt even more hatred for these so-called civilized people. Why should they enjoy their lousy little unimportant lives when his people had no country to live in and were forced to survive in refugee camps in filth and squalor? But now he had an important job to do and decided to concentrate on the task ahead. There would always be more time to hate later.
Once the seat belt sign was switched off, Omar started walking casually up and down the aisles of the plane as if he was stretching his legs, as many passengers tend to do on a long flight. But Omar had another reason to do this. He was studying the passengers, scrutinizing every face and mentally placing them in one of two categories. He was looking for those who could be a possible tail and those who could not. The ones who were obviously too old or too young to be spies he placed in the second category and discarded. In that second batch went also those who were obviously traveling with their families. Pregnant women (there were three). That left him with a good twenty-four people, among them Laura Atwood, whom at first he almost placed in the second
category. But he caught a quick glimpse of her eyes and that made him change his mind. There was something about those eyes, thought Omar. They seem to be hiding something.
Omar first noticed the woman from the airplane before he noticed the man outside the airport. He initially put it off as paranoia. It was his first time outside the Middle East. No one knew him. No one outside a group of trusted people knew he was going to Brussels.
The man was definitely not on his flight from Beirut. Then he spotted the same man outside the Hotel Métropole in the center of Brussels. The man was sitting in a café adjoining the hotel. He was sitting outside, even though it was too cold and he should have been sitting indoors, as all the other patrons were. When Omar left the hotel, the man quickly paid for his coffee and followed. A car driven by a woman raced up to the curb and the man jumped inside. Omar felt, more than saw, the man behind him. But instinct and training told him the man was there. There was no rush, he said to himself. He had plenty of time before meeting his contact. It was Sunday and there were few cars on the streets of the Belgian capital.
How could they be on to him so soon? Omar pondered. Could it be the Israelis, or the Americans had somehow managed to infiltrate the Front? That was always possible. The Doctor was always worried that the Front could be infiltrated by double agents. Anyway, Omar was not worried. Let them follow me; for the moment I don’t need to lose them, he thought. There is plenty of time for that later.
He walked from the hotel to the large open-air vegetable market near the Gâre du Midi train station. Omar was amazed by what he saw. The place resembled a Middle Eastern market, with hundreds of vendors, mostly Arabs, selling their produce in this weekly makeshift market. Thousands of housewives, Europeans, Arabs, Turks, and Africans mingled, jostled, and bargained for fresh produce. This was better than he had expected. He started to laugh. Whoever was following him would have a great time trying to identify his contact, as the sheer number of Arabs present in the market gave the young Palestinian a great idea. It was better than to try and lose his tail. He would confuse him. If he lost the man now, they might put another on him, and it would take Omar longer to identify a new tail. Omar stopped at almost every stall, looking at the fruits, vegetables, and flowers, inquiring about the price, chatting in Arabic with the vendors. What a great place to meet another Arab. There were even some pro-Nasserites selling political newspapers and arguing with passersby. Omar bought a few bananas from one vendor, an apple from another, some sunflower seeds from a third, and Arabic sweets from yet another. He shook hands with every vendor and tried to make it seem like everyone he spoke to was his intended contact. An hour later, at exactly eleven thirty, Omar made his way to a stand selling french fries on the southern end of the marketplace. It was easily recognizable by the large sign advertising FRITES ET MOULES ALI BABA. An Arab-looking man and two women, probably the man’s wife and daughter, were busy cooking and serving French fries in large paper cones which were then topped with mayonnaise and other bizarre looking sauces. Omar waited until he had the attention of the man and asked for “one fries and one falafel.”
The man behind the counter hardly reacted. “We have no falafel. Only frites and mussels.”
“But they have no mussels in the Arab world,” replied Omar in Arabic.
“Then have some frites,” the man said.
“OK, give me the largest Ali Baba fries you have. Without mayonnaise.” The man handed Omar a paper cone filled with French fries. Had anyone bothered to hold the cone, they would have noticed that it was slightly heavier than other cones of the same size. Omar paid and left. He continued to walk, eating some of the fries. A few minutes later he placed the rest in one of the plastic bags with the fruits he had bought earlier and slowly made his way back to the Hotel Métropole. Omar went to his room and locked the door. He placed a newspaper on the desk by the bed and emptied the remaining French fries onto it. At the bottom of the pile, sealed in a small plastic bag, were the pieces of a 7.5 mm pistol wrapped in an oilcloth and a Moroccan passport stolen a day earlier from a hotel, where the passport’s owner would not miss it or report its loss for another week. This would give Omar ample time to get to London and then discard the stolen passport.
Omar donned a pair of surgical gloves he had bought earlier at a pharmacy, and in less than two minutes had cleaned and assembled the pistol. The last item in the plastic bag was his itinerary for his flight to London and the name and address of his contact in the British capital. He memorized them, placed the papers in an ashtray and set them on fire, then crushed the ashes and flushed them down the toilet. But first he needed to lose whoever was following him. He packed his overnight suitcase and disposed of the fruits and seeds bought earlier along with the newspaper and gloves. He put on a pair of black leather gloves and balanced the gun in his hand. It was a small caliber, but Omar trusted it would do the job. He was confident that despite the fact that he was being followed, he could still pull it off. In fact, the Brussels and London stops were intended specifically to weed out potential tails. Yes, he could do the job well.
He had studied the map of Brussels for more than a week now and knew the streets he needed to know by heart. It was simple. He’d even foreseen the possibility of being followed and it would take him little time to lose his tail. He went downstairs, paid his bill in cash, and left.
His pulse was beating faster now. His mission was in sight. Omar drove his rented car from the Hotel Métropole to the vast underground parking garage that ran the whole length of Rue de la Loi. He parked near the Avenue des Arts entrance and walked up the staircase leading to the street next to the Banque Bruxelles Lambert. Instead of going straight out onto the avenue, Omar waited quietly at the top of the staircase. This was the heart of the business district and was totally deserted on Sunday. Omar didn’t have to wait long before his tail ran up the stairs trying to catch up with him. The hit came so suddenly that the man never had enough time to react. As he rounded the corner onto the landing, Omar jammed his outstretched hand into the man’s throat, slamming the man’s windpipe between his thumb and forefinger. The powerful blow stunned the man, allowing Omar enough time to immediately follow with a powerful karate kick into the man’s groin and a side kick into his chest. The triple blows sent the man crashing down the concrete staircase. The hit to the throat had cut the airflow, momentarily paralyzing the man. Omar followed the American agent down the stairs and before the agent could regain his balance, Omar snapped his neck in one quick motion. The only person in Europe able to identify the Palestinian was now dead. But then he recalled the driver. The woman who picked up the agent he had just killed. She had seen his face.
He concluded that the fact he was being followed, and not killed or arrested, indicated that the Americans were not sure it was him they were after. Or that they did not have the support of their local allies, otherwise they would have had the Belgian authorities pick him up. But on what charges? Traveling with fake documents? He would spend a few nights in detention and then be expelled. They really had nothing on him, and the fact that he was still free proved it.
They couldn’t tie him to the death of the agent in the underground parking garage on the Rue de la Loi because no one saw him do it. He left no clues, no fingerprints, he wore gloves the whole time, and hadn’t fired his weapon.
Omar needed time to think through his next step. Maybe the frites vendor had given him away. He didn’t think so, but it was a distinct possibility. He was the only one to know of Omar’s arrival in Belgium and that he would be visiting his stand in the marketplace at the Gâre du Midi. Still, Omar’s instincts told him otherwise. Getting back to his car was too dangerous, as the body might have been found by now. He decided that he would change his travel plans. The airline schedule given to him by the frites vendor would have to be changed, just in case. Omar decided he would take the Chunnel train to London instead of flying. Considering the time needed to go to and from airports in Brussels and London, the boarding and dep
laning, the security checks at airports, and the fact that one needed to be at the airport several hours prior to departure, the trip from Brussels to London aboard the Eurostar was about the same in cost and time required. Omar took a taxi to the train station, where he boarded the next train for London. But before boarding, he went into the men’s room and disposed of the pistol he had been given by the frites vendor. He broke it down and dropped the pieces in the toilet flush tank. It would probably be several years before anyone would find it. And if and when they did discover the gun, there was nothing in the world that tied him to it.
By the time the Belgian police were alerted that there was a dead man in the staircase of the Rue de la Loi parking, Omar was already in France heading for the Chunnel, the high-speed train linking England to the Continent. The police had a hard time identifying the body because the victim carried no identification on him: no ID, no passport, no credit cards, no driver’s license, not even the obligatory residence card issued to every foreigner in the country that Belgian law dictated everyone had to carry at all times. By the time it was discovered that the man with the broken neck was an American and the embassy responded (it was Sunday, after all), Omar was safely lost in the perpetual crowds of British railway stations.
The Palestinian terrorist was exhausted both mentally and physically by the time he reached London. The look in the American’s eyes as he snapped his neck had remained with him throughout the train ride to London. For some strange reason, he could not rid himself of that image. The dying man’s stare haunted him and kept him awake. Every time he dozed off, the frantic eyes popped back into his mind. He would relive that scene over and over and over, all in slow motion. Omar would see the face of the American agent he had killed appear in his dreams, but the face would be underwater and it would drag the young Palestinian with him. Omar felt he was suffocating, he felt that he could not breathe. And then he would wake up. When he arrived in London, he got in a taxi and asked to be taken to a pub.
Inauguration Day Page 9