by Jeff Gulvin
Moore leaned against him. ‘I’ve got a feeling we’re close now,’ he said. ‘I always knew he had a refuge high in the mountains.’
The Cub was watching the faces of their escorts and the sudden restlessness told him that Moore was right. Ten minutes later, the tunnel of rock widened and the trucks rolled to a stop. They were either very sure of themselves, or this location was not that important, because there had been no blindfolds since dawn broke. The Cub gauged the time and the probable truck speed, and therefore the distance. It was hard to calculate in this type of terrain, but so long as that tracker was working, the NSA would have it down to the last centimetre. Their guards trooped out first and then manhandled them down, and The Cub took in their surroundings. The tunnel of rock had opened into a sort of amphitheatre, with cliff walls rising in a natural circle about them. He noticed wooden walkways strung across the walls and rope ladders that climbed to makeshift goon towers, where men stood with AK47s bearing down on them. Men were everywhere, as were jeeps and trucks, and in one corner of the rock floor, a herd of camels chewed hay. Moore stood with his hands on his hips, shading his eyes from the sun, and also took in the surroundings.
The floor was perhaps a hundred yards wide at the widest point and, on each side, natural caves in the walls had been filled in with breeze blocks. Bulldozers sat idle, together with dump trucks, some still loaded with great lumps of rock. The Cub realised that this was no temporary hideout and the adrenaline eased into his veins. There was only one way in that he could see: the narrow stretch of road forming a natural choke point. The rock walls rose up like a funnel and he noticed that all the vehicles and buildings, even the walkways, were set under the lee of the actual walls. Very clever, he thought. An AWACS flying high overhead would pick up the natural formation but nothing else, except maybe a camel wandering loose.
The public schoolboy in the turban walked past him and The Cub caught his arm.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Where’s my camera?’
The boy looked at him then and said nothing. Something in his eyes was disturbing and The Cub’s instincts were suddenly heightened. He gazed round the walls and noticed various heated discussions going on between their escorts and the men of the encampment. Glances were cast their way from all directions and, looking up, he could see that every step they took was being traced by the goon squads.
The Cub looked over at Moore. ‘They don’t seem that pleased to see us,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t worry about it. We’re westerners, Terry. They’re going to be on edge.’
They stood for five minutes longer, before the public schoolboy came back and gestured to a cave with a wooden door built into the concrete blocks that fronted it.
‘You can rest in there.’
‘Where’s Bin Laden?’ Moore said.
The boy just looked at him and motioned with his rifle. Inside the cave, it was quiet and naturally cool. Electricity had been rigged up via a whole raft of diesel-driven generators and the cave was well lit. Two sleeping mats lay on the floor, together with a water jug and a portable toilet. The Cub drank a long draught from the jug and then lay down on the mat. ‘Wake me when the action starts,’ he said, and, rolling on his side, went to sleep. When he woke up it was dark, and their bags and his camera case were standing in the middle of the floor. Moore was looking through the hole that formed the permanently open window. The Cub ignored him, and, laying his camera case flat, he unfastened the catches and checked the contents. The cameras and lenses had been taken out of their casings and replaced somewhat haphazardly—he could tell that much—along with the collapsible tripod and the plastic boxes of film. He checked them all carefully and then set them back in their allotted pockets of foam. When he looked up, Moore was watching him.
‘All set?’ Moore asked him. The Cub nodded, and Moore returned to the window once again. The Cub moved to the door, opened it a fraction and saw the elbow of the guard poking out from where he stood alongside. Through the crack he could see little hives of activity all along the walls. Gasoline was being pumped from a truck into the jerrycans attached to the back of a jeep. Everywhere he looked, men were hurrying back and forth waving weapons, shouting; and then the choked atmosphere of the amphitheatre would suddenly be split by a burst of gunfire as some hothead loosed off his weapon. Ill disciplined, The Cub thought, and closed the door.
Something was brewing, that much was clear, although Moore didn’t seem to be aware of it. Perhaps he thought this was normal. Perhaps it was. He was standing by the window again, looking at his watch.
‘I don’t think he’s here,’ The Cub told him.
Moore looked up. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, I don’t think he’s here.’
‘Of course he’s here. They wouldn’t have brought us all this way if he wasn’t. Relax. This is how it was the last time.’
The Cub sat down on his mat and filled his claystone pipe, lit it and drew the acrid smoke deep into his lungs. He sat cross-legged like his mother and meditated quietly, allowing his heart rate to slow so he could still his being and consider what was going on around him. Bin Laden was not here. He knew it with as much certainty as he knew he was sitting on cold stone. He had never been here. It had never been his intention to be here. He considered the jeep and he wondered.
At 10 p.m., a great hubbub of noise started up outside, shouts and yelling followed by the rattle of automatic rifle fire. The Cub shook his head sadly. If they popped enough tracer fire up into the air, the AWACS could get a fix on that alone.
Moore was on his feet, fiddling with his recording gear and his notepad. ‘I hope he answers the questions properly this time,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to have to wait until I get back home to translate them.’
‘You don’t need to worry.’ The Cub was watching the door. ‘He isn’t here.’
‘Will you stop saying that.’ Moore stared at him then, face bunched up. ‘You’re beginning to piss me off.’
The Cub smiled, smoked his pipe and tugged his ponytail out so that his hair fell across his shoulders, very thick, very black and very long.
The door opened suddenly, harshly, with a rattle of the handle, and then it swung in on them soundlessly and four men with Kalashnikovs came into the room. The Cub stood up and reached for his camera gear. Moore smiled at him. ‘See,’ he said. ‘It’s showtime.’ He grinned at the four men and they stood aside as he eased past them. The Cub followed him outside.
The night air had cooled considerably, the amphitheatre not holding anything like the level of heat as the scrubbed high desert. The Cub followed Moore past one of the canvas-covered trucks. In his hand was a black circular tube that housed 35mm film. Only this one was different, and he let it slip with an imperceptible flick of his palm and it rolled out of sight under the truck. He walked on, shouldering his bag and calculating exactly how much time he had. They passed the jeep with the three full jerrycans strapped to it and he noticed the public schoolboy sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked tired, but as they passed, his dark eyes met those of The Cub and a scowl itched away at his lips. The Cub slipped the empty clay pipe into his shirt pocket and followed Moore across the yard.
Given the amount of gunfire that had gone off earlier, Bin Laden’s men were now surprisingly careful. They were crossing open ground to the other side of the amphitheatre, and open sky, stitched with stars, stretched above them. They carried no torches and there was no shooting, and the whole place seemed to have descended into a strange, unworldly silence. The escort of guards stopped on the far side of the arena where the camels grazed, and The Cub looked quickly back the way they had come. The rock floor was empty again and lights burned only dimly on the far side where their room was housed. Somebody said something guttural and unintelligible to him and he felt the barrel of an assault rifle jab him in the ribs. Moore was silent and they both had to duck their heads as they were shown into another cave. The floor was completely cove
red with matting this time and there were a variety of Persian-looking cushions to sit on.
Moore laid down his gear. ‘He’ll be along in a minute,’ he said.
‘Right.’ The Cub quickly, expertly, scanned the room for weapons. Nothing caught his eye. Tripod: he opened his case and laid it on the floor alongside him. Three black rubber bungs formed the feet of the hollow alloy tubes. While Moore was busy testing his tape recorder, The Cub slipped off one of the bungs and peeled the stiletto blade from where it was taped to the inside of the leg, then slid the blade up his sleeve. At that moment gunfire sounded again, deafening in the confines of the room as it echoed off the walls outside.
‘They’re bringing him,’ Moore said. ‘I told you. They shoot their guns instead of clapping. They’re bringing him in now.’
The Cub nodded, sat back on his haunches and waited.
The door flew open and two men with rifles came in. One of them had a sort of kukri knife in his rope belt and the other a 9mm pistol. Then another, very tall figure ducked his head and entered the room. He was wearing the same knee-length shirt as the rest of them, with a muslin shawl about his shoulders. Moore got to his feet, a smile of anticipation on his face. The Cub got to his feet, the point of the stiletto pressing against the heel of his right palm. The tall man straightened and the lamps on the walls lit his face. The expression on Moore’s face was replaced by one of puzzlement. The Cub felt his heart move in his chest. At six foot three, the man was as tall as Bin Laden, and at forty-two, he was also the same age. But Bin Laden was Arabian to look at, with a long, wide-nostrilled nose and heavy black beard. This man’s skin was black, and his beard was short and cut square to his face. He was heavier set than Bin Laden and his eyes were black and dead in his face. He stood there, towering over his guards, looking down on the two westerners. The Cub had seen him before—only once and a long time ago. He was Mujah al-Bakhtar, the Butcher of Bekaa.
The Cub said nothing. He held his camera. Moore opened his mouth to speak, but al-Bakhtar raised a hand for silence. His face was impassive, expressionless. He was a Somali national, but like his mentor he had left his homeland some years ago, and he, too, had embarked on a battle with the Russians. Unlike Bin Laden, he had no wealth and had always been a front-line fighter. Halfway through the war with the Russians, he left Afghanistan for the training camps of the Bekaa Valley, where he ritually slaughtered meat for the various Muslim factions. They gave him the nom de guerre. The word from the ISA had been that he was back with Bin Laden, but no one had been able to verify it until now. The Cub eased his weight gently to the balls of his feet. Now he knew for certain that Bin Laden was not here, although he would be close by. The two men were rarely seen in the same place, but al-Bakhtar was, to all intents and purposes, Bin Laden’s most trusted bodyguard.
‘Please.’ His voice was soft yet deep, welling up from his chest. ‘Sit.’ He gestured to the cushions and then moved to the far side of the room, so he could sit with his back against rock. He lowered his massive frame and drew his heels together. Still, his face betrayed no expression. Two guards flanked him and two more stood behind the two journalists. The Cub guessed at least two more would be stationed on the door, and then there was the small matter of the five hundred or so gathered in and around the base.
Al-Bakhtar was silent now, not looking at either of them, his chin low to his chest so his eyes were hidden, as if he was deep in concentration. When he did speak, his voice had lowered another octave and he did not look up. ‘Unfortunately, gentlemen,’ he began in perfect, accented English, ‘the interview with Mr Bin Laden cannot go ahead as planned.’
The Cub said nothing. Moore shifted restlessly and let go a stiff little sigh. Al-Bakhtar looked up at him, slowly, like a snake’s laconic movement before it strikes. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Why?’ Moore said. ‘What’s the problem? I thought we had ironed everything out.’
Al-Bakhtar was looking at The Cub then and his eyes took on a glazed expression. ‘You don’t look like a man from New Zealand,’ he said.
The Cub looked evenly back at him. ‘Filipino and Samoan,’ he said. ‘You don’t look like an Afghan.’
Al-Bakhtar laughed then, a slow hollow sound that burbled in his throat, but had no effect on his face or eyes. He stopped the sound as suddenly as it started and looked back at Moore. ‘And you’re from Australia.’
‘Yes.’
Al-Bakhtar nodded. ‘Gentlemen, it is unfortunate,’ he said. ‘But we have to be extremely careful about these things. You see, the devils from America would like nothing better than to see Mr Bin Laden dead, and it’s come to our attention that an assassin has been loosed against us.’ He stopped talking and looked from one of them to the other. The Cub held his eye and considered how good Bin Laden’s intelligence actually was. The finding would have been signed by the President after it was drawn up by Birch. The only other people who would know it existed at that point would be the DCI and possibly the national security adviser. Post-signature, they may even have bypassed the Senate and House intelligence committees, but if they didn’t, then Wendell Randall had the provision in law to inform only four people on each committee—the chairman and vice-chairman and the leaders of the two parties. A maximum then of twelve. Nobody in IAD knew what his mission was, only that they had to furnish him with his home and cover in Islamabad. Twelve people from the White House to here, and yet the Butcher of Bekaa was calmly telling them that it had come to their attention.
Moore was stunned, visibly. The Cub considered his own demeanour and decided it did not matter any more. The Butcher was here because neither of them were leaving, so reaction now was irrelevant. ‘I don’t understand,’ Moore was saying. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
The Cub knew from hearsay that al-Bakhtar got tired of people easily and he wondered how much of Moore’s whining the man would put up with. He eased the stiletto further down his palm and judged the distance between himself and the man behind him.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you believe one of us is a CIA assassin?’ Moore’s voice was incredulous.
Slowly, a little wearily, al-Bakhtar nodded. Moore blinked several times, and The Cub counted down the seconds it would take him to think back and figure how his buddy had gone off to Alaska, and, albeit by a circuitous route, he wound up with a Kiwi already based in Islamabad. On the count of five, Moore’s head tilted his way, and The Cub rolled backwards, stabbed one of the guards in the heart and ripped the AK out of his hand.
Al-Bakhtar leaped to his feet, grabbing both Moore and another guard as shields. The third guard took a heel kick in the testicles and lost his gun as The Cub stepped out of the door. He shot the remaining guards, then ran round the outer perimeter as fast as he could. The gunfire brought no one running right away, clearly because they heard a lot of it in this base. By the time the shouts rang out from the room and the lights came on in the goon towers high on the walls, The Cub was by the truck where he had dumped the film case. He pointed an AK47 into the face of the public schoolboy, who still sat in the jeep. ‘I hope you can drive,’ he said.
9
HARRISON FLEW BACK TO New Orleans with Jean, having spent two nights in Spokane. He was troubled. Together with Detective Spinelli, they had been out to the freight yards and spoken with a number of ageing hobos whom Spinelli had befriended. Harrison liked Spinelli. He was a straight, honest cop who had been looking into this thing pretty much of his own volition. The murder victims were vagrants, so nobody gave a damn—the Spokane police department and the FBI in particular. Normally, with a bunch of potentially related interstate murders, the VICAP co-ordinator in some field office or other would run a mini task force linked to the behavioural profilers at Quantico. But not in this case.
They had learned quite a bit from the hobos who were prepared to talk. The word was that the FTRA killed you if you were black, Asian or Hispanic, just because they wanted to. But it was not only ethnic minorities that were turning
up dead, with their pants round their knees and their shirts up over their heads. A hell of a lot of people must have been killed simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Harrison had talked to the old-timers himself. They told him that every year there was a hobo convention at Britt, a nothing town at the end of one of the Midwestern lines in Iowa. For years, that place had been the gathering point for hobos from all over the country. They would come together to play music, to sell the odd trinket or leatherwork, and generally have a good time. But the FTRA had come muscling in, dealing dope and other stuff to the ‘Flintstones’, or younger hobos—the twentysomething generation, drawn to the railheads by stories of old-timers, like latter-day Jack Kerouacs.
Harrison had questioned an old man about the dope, and told him in great detail about the lazy-eyed Limpet and the psychopathic gangbanger they were looking to nail in New Orleans.
The old man, rheumy-eyed and with grey hair tied in a ponytail like Harrison’s, had pursed up his toothless mouth and nodded. ‘I figure they run shitloads of drugs,’ he said. ‘I figure that’s why so many of us get killed. If they’re doing their thing and you get in the boxcar, they don’t take no chances. They just dump your ass right there.’ He flapped out a hand. ‘Who the hell’s gonna give a goddamn. Just more homeless vermin taken care of. Lotta people’d be happy at that.’