The Cabal km-14

by David Hagberg

  He looked up and nodded toward the chair across the table.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Sandberger said, sitting down.

  “We have mutual friends, and perhaps a problem that will result in a mutual benefit to both of us. What is it that you want? Exactly.”

  The waiter came and Sandberger ordered a cold beer then outlined what probably would happen in the next twenty-four hours or so. “Do you know McGarvey?”

  “I’ve heard of the man. But why is he coming here to assassinate you? And what has he done that his government is charging him with treason?”

  “He wants me dead because he believes I murdered his son-in-law. Which is a lie, I was here in Baghdad at the time. But exactly why he’s being charged with treason I’m not sure. I only know that the FBI wants him for questioning, as does the U.S. Federal Marshal’s office. Apparently he shot a marshal when he escaped a few days ago.”

  Sandberger’s beer came, and Kabbani turned to look at something across the river. He remained silent like that for several long moments before he turned back. “Which would be more to your advantage? Kill him or arrest him?”

  “That’s totally up to you, Captain. But if only half of what I’ve heard about him is true, it might be easier all around to shoot him as he was trying to escape.” Sandberger looked across the river, but he couldn’t make out anything that might interest the policeman. “I’m sure his U.S. warrant has shown up on Interpol’s net, which you should have access to. I suggest you print out the warrant and photo or photos and watch for him.”

  “Will he have help here?” Kabbani asked. “Does he have contacts with the military, or perhaps with the State Department?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Again the policeman hesitated. Clearly he was weighing his options. “At one time Mr. McGarvey was the director of the CIA. It is a powerful position. He must still have many friends in Washington.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Killing him will not be without political risk.”

  Sandberger sat back. “I was told that you would help.”

  “Such an operation could bring about certain expenses not in my budget,” Kabbani said, leaving the thought hanging.

  Sandberger smiled. “Something will be arranged. I signed a new contract for services.”

  “Yes, I know. Could you be more specific?”

  “How many men will you require?”

  “I think six—”

  Sandberger interrupted. “Make it twelve. But the Basra Highway from Kuwait will have to be watched. We don’t think he’ll be flying in.”

  “Then I will send some men out to meet him. Not policemen. Perhaps we will be able to deal with the problem before it arrives here.”

  “Call me as soon as you have the situation in hand,” Sandberger said. He got up and started to leave, but Kabbani stopped him.

  “McGarvey’s wife and daughter lost their lives in an IED explosion at Arlington Cemetery,” the policeman said. “It is a very bad business involving a man’s family.”

  Sandberger started to protest, but Kabbani held him off. “I will take care of this problem for you. Administrative Solutions will be here for at least one more year. It could be I will require a favor in that time.”

  “All you have to do is ask, Captain,” Sandberger said, and he turned and walked back across the lobby and out of the hotel, where a valet parker brought his Humvee.

  Driving away he promised himself that Chief of Police Mustafa Kabbani would lose his life in an unfortunate accident before the month was out, that is if McGarvey didn’t kill him first. It was a matter of sanitation.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Kuwait International Airport was ten miles south of the city center, and the highway leading from the hotel branched east toward the Persian Gulf and west toward the city of al-Jahrad, at the head of al-Kuwait Bay, before it turned due north through the oil fields toward the border with Iraq.

  It was getting dark when McGarvey emerged from the Crowne Plaza and walked across the broad driveway covered by a canopy to the dark blue soft-top Range Rover, and got in on the passenger side, Hadid at the wheel. The backseat was empty.

  “I thought your son Saddam was coming along,” McGarvey said.

  “Wait,” Hadid said, and he pulled away from the hotel, down the long driveway, and out onto the west highway, the airport lit up behind them; the city of al-Kuwait sparkling to the east.

  Traffic was heavy, and everything seemed to move at breakneck speed. But there were no military vehicles, nor could McGarvey pick out any obvious signs of damage from the first Gulf War. Kuwait was a tiny but modern oil-rich country apparently no longer affected by what was happening in Iraq.

  Once they had reached the head of the bay and made the turn north, the border fifty miles away, everything changed. From here nearly everything moving on the road was a military supply transports of one sort or another, many of them eighteen-wheelers, all of them traveling in groups of eight or ten vehicles accompanied by several RG-33s, which were mine-resistant, light-armored vehicles equipped with M2 heavy machine guns. The peace had been all but won, but the road to Baghdad was still dangerous and would remain so for the foreseeable future.

  “Are you expecting trouble tonight?” McGarvey asked.

  “If we were military we might expect something interesting, Mr. Tony, but since we’re simple civilians we will be reasonably safe from the insurgents,” Hadid said. “Our only real concern will be bandits.”

  “Have they become a problem?”

  “Always a problem,” Hadid said, checking his rearview mirror, and he slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road, nothing in any direction out here except the waste gas flames atop oil rigs in the distance.

  A minute later one of the convoys passed, raising a storm of dust.

  When they were gone Hadid powered down the soft top, jumped out, and went around back where he opened the rear hatch to an empty space.

  McGarvey got out and came around to the back as Hadid undid a pair of concealed fasteners and the carpeted floor slid out revealing a long space the width of the car and all the way forward to just behind the front seats. A young man with the wisp of a beard on his chin nimbly hopped out, a big grin on his face, his dark eyes large and round.

  “Good evening, Mr. Tony,” he said, his English passable. “I am Saddam.” Like his father he wore a dark robe and headdress, sandals on his feet.

  Hadid reached inside the dark space and helped a slightly built figure out and over the lip of the rear bumper. For a moment McGarvey thought it was another, much younger son, until he realized it was a woman.

  “My wife, Miriam,” Hadid said proudly.

  Her face was perfectly round, her complexion smoky, her smile as bright as her son’s. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Tony,” she said, her accent British. She, too, was dressed in a dark robe, her hair covered.

  McGarvey suddenly had a very bad feeling. Inside the hidden compartment he could make out at least three AK-47s, and a couple of canvas bags that almost certainly held spare magazines. “I appreciate the help, but I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he said.

  “Is it my son, or are you a chauvinist American?” the woman asked.

  McGarvey nodded toward the weapons. “I don’t want to be the cause of a woman going into harm’s way. I’ll get to Baghdad on my own.”

  “Then you are merely a sad American. We heard of your loss. It must be terrible.”

  “We will present less of a threat, a family traveling with an American journalist,” Hadid said.

  “People are expecting me in Baghdad. There’ll be trouble.”

  “Once we get you there you’ll be on your own until it’s time to return,” Hadid said. “You’ll stay at the Baghdad Hotel, while we’ll stay with my wife’s uncle. When it’s time for you to leave we’ll come back in the same fashion, but you will cross the border with a new identification, and appearance.”

/>   McGarvey looked over his shoulder the way they had come, and he could see the glow of al-Kuwait on the horizon. Getting back to the city would be a problem, but he’d faced worse. Once back at the Crowne Plaza Otto could arrange for something else. Anything else.

  “What explanation will you give when you are picked up by a military patrol, unless of course you are murdered first?”

  “We’ll take your wife back to the city, and start over,” McGarvey said.

  “Have you been to Baghdad before?” Miriam asked.

  “Once, a long time ago.”

  “But not since the war, and the chaos left behind when Uncle Saddam was caught and executed. You don’t know the full extent of the troubles between the Sunnis and Shi’ites.”

  “Believe me, Mr. Tony, my wife and I have worked together ever since our marriage sixteen years ago,” Hadid said. “She is an unusual woman for an Iraqi. She was educated in England, and her father was a general in Saddam’s army. She knows her way around. In the beginning it was I who was learning from her. She worked on the outside of the palace while I worked on the inside. We are a team.”

  “It will be better for you if we do this together,” Miriam said. “And if I thought the danger would have the possibility of becoming overwhelming, do you think I would allow my son to ride with us?”

  “Be sensible,” Hadid said.

  The situation sounded anything but sensible to McGarvey, but it was far too late for him to back down. Sandberger was the tie to Foster and the Friday Club. Almost nothing else mattered.

  “Do you have a weapon for me?” he asked after another hesitation, and Hadid looked relieved.

  “You may have your sat phone now, you will have your weapon once we cross the border.”

  The last thirty miles up to the border was heavy with traffic, only one vehicle out of fifty a civilian car. The Baghdad road wasn’t exactly the gateway to the country. But it was bandits who gave civilians trouble, while it was the Sunni and Shi’ite radicals who targeted the military and Iraqi police.

  “Saddam and I are actually quite good marksmen in our own right,” Miriam said conversationally at one point.

  “Unusual for an Iraqi woman,” McGarvey said.

  “Not as unusual as you might expect, but we don’t parade in the streets firing into the air like the men. When we shoot it’s from concealed positions at a specific target.”

  A conglomerate of lights in addition to the red taillights of the trucks heading north, and the headlights of vehicles heading south, straddled the highway. Northbound traffic was backed up for one hundred yards or so, which according to Hadid was nothing compared to the delays during daylight hours when most convoys preferred to run. Then traffic could be backed up for miles.

  “Are your passport and Army credentials in order?” Hadid asked.

  “Yes,” McGarvey said, uncomfortable that he wasn’t armed.

  “You will need to show them to the Kuwaiti Army patrol on this side of the border and then to the Iraqi police on the other side.”

  “What about the Americans?”

  “Delta Company, First Light Armored Recon Battalion. But they’re on standby with fifty-caliber Sasser sniper rifles in case someone tries to make trouble.”

  “You have good information,” McGarvey said, impressed.

  “It’s my part of the world,” Hadid said. “My life depends on good information.”

  They moved forward slowly, until ten minutes later they reached the border crossing and a pair of Kuwaiti army border guards, armed with American M16s, asked to see their papers.

  Hadid’s and his family’s papers raised no interest, but McGarvey’s passport and especially his U.S. Army credentials did, and one of the Kuwaiti border guards took the documents across the road to a low concrete block building, with machine-gun emplacements looking north on the roof.

  Traffic began to back up behind them, and a U.S. Army captain jumped out of his RG-33 at the head of a convoy and came up to them.

  “What’s the trouble up here?” he demanded, and he spotted McGarvey in the backseat. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m an American freelance journalist,” McGarvey said, meeting the officer’s eyes.

  The captain held out a hand. “Let’s see some ID.”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “And I suggest you get back in your fucking thirty-three until we’re cleared here.”

  At that moment a Kuwaiti officer came from the concrete block building, and ignoring the American officer, looked in at McGarvey. “You have an American Army pass. Why is it you didn’t fly direct to Baghdad?”

  “I’m doing a piece on convoys traveling the Baghdad Road,” McGarvey said. He glanced at the captain. “And the men running them.”

  The Kuwaiti officer handed McGarvey’s papers back. “You may pass,” he said, smiling slightly. “Good luck.”

  “Is there something we should be aware of tonight?” Hadid asked, but the Kuwaiti had turned and headed away.

  “Maybe I’ll see you in Baghdad, Captain,” McGarvey told the American. “What’s the name of your CO?”

  The captain turned and stalked off, and Hadid moved past the barrier where they were stopped by a pair of Iraqi police who inspected their papers. When they looked at McGarvey’s he was sure they recognized the name, but they handed the papers back, stepped aside, and waved them through.

  “They might be expecting me,” he told Hadid when they were on the other side and accelerating into the dark night.

  “I saw it, too,” Hadid said. “But I have a few tricks up my sleeve, you’ll see.”

  FORTY

  Kangas and Mustapha had flown first class from Washington and had fully indulged in the free bar service, so that by the time they touched down at Baghdad’s International Airport, if not drunk they were certainly less than sharp.

  Their contact man at Dulles had assured them that McGarvey was traveling undercover as a freelance journalist by the name of Tony Watkins, and was driving up from Kuwait, which gave them a twelve-hour head start. They weren’t worried. It wasn’t often that the cheap bastards handling travel arrangements for Admin sprung for first class, and they’d meant to enjoy every minute of it, because once they got to Baghdad they figured they’d be put up in some shit hole of a hotel.

  It was early evening and the airport terminal was fairly busy. Since the so-called peace, a lot of international business was returning to the country, especially people interested in oil.

  Through passport control and customs a young man came up to them and without a word handed Kangas a thick manila envelope then turned around and walked away, lost in the crowd almost immediately.

  “Welcome to the hot zone,” Mustapha said. “Make sure it isn’t a fucking letter bomb, because that kid was for sure not our quartermaster.”

  “Too light,” Kangas said, and he and Mustapha went down the corridor to an empty boarding area and opened the envelope. Remington had provided them with five thousand in U.S. currency, mostly hundred-dollar bills, a pair of presumably untraceable credit cards, and confirmed reservations for a suite at the new Baghdad International Airport Hotel and Business Center, along with a photo of Harry Weiss, their on-the-ground Admin contact, who would meet them once they checked into the hotel.

  “This keeps getting better,” Mustapha said.

  “There’s always a catch,” Kangas said. He was beginning to get a seriously bad feeling between his shoulder blades. He’d never really trusted Remington, and with this added luxury he was becoming even more distrustful.

  “Yeah, taking McGarvey down,” Mustapha said. “We’ve already seen the bastard in action.”

  “He won’t be expecting us,” Kangas said, but he wasn’t so sure.

  The hotel was on the airport property and just down a walkway from the terminal. Big and ultra modern, especially by present-day Iraqi standards, the place reminded Kangas of hotel/business centers in places like Dubai. Everyone was in a hurry, everyone seemed to have bags of
money, and everyone smiled at everyone else without meaning it. It was, he suspected, a dangerous place. But it was handy to the airport, so once their business in town was finished they could get back here and get out on the first available flight. Admin had provided them with open-ended tickets, which meant they could hop aboard any flight. Their first-class status gave them priority.

  The lobby was plain and functional, yet luxurious at the same time. The clerks, almost all of them young, dressed in identical gray blazers with gold buttons, bustled seemingly everywhere.

  The clerk at the reception desk brought their reservations up on his computer, printed out the arrivals document, and had Kangas sign it. “Welcome to the Baghdad International Airport Hotel, gentlemen. A credit card will not be necessary, your firm has arranged for all of your expenses.”

  “Right,” Kangas mumbled.

  The clerk handed them each a key card. “Will you be needing help with your luggage?”

  They had each carried only a single overnight bag. They’d be staying only as long as was absolutely necessary. Hopefully they’d be in and back out in twenty-four hours or less. “Not necessary,” Kangas said.

  They took the elevator up to their twelfth-floor suite, the balcony looking toward downtown Baghdad, about fifteen miles away. In addition to a pair of bedrooms with king-sized beds and separate Jacuzzis, the sitting room was well furnished with a modern couch and chairs, a desk, a large HD plasma television, and a well-stocked minibar. A guest half bath was just inside the entry hall.

  The red message light on the telephone began blinking at once and Kangas answered it.

  “Message from Mr. Weiss. Please meet him in the lobby bar at your soonest convenience,” a recording of a woman’s voice said. “If you would like to hear this message again, please press one.”

  “Our quartermaster wants to meet downstairs in the bar,” Kangas said hanging up.

  “That was quick,” Mustapha said.

  “The sooner the better.”