Assassin's Strike

by Ward Larsen

  “Jeddah Tower is the most obvious,” she said. “And it happens tomorrow.”

  They went over it all once more, yet the calculus was inescapable: if the nerve agent was used there, with ties to Iran, it would result in a war that would shred the Middle East. Or in Bloch’s words, “… it would do for the Middle East what nuclear power did for Chernobyl.”

  Sorensen and Bloch agreed to leverage their respective agencies for answers.

  When the call terminated, Slaton was staring at Bloch.

  “I’ve seen that look before,” the former spymaster said.

  “While the two of you go about your business … I should get in position.”

  Bloch’s dour expression never faltered, as he said, “I’ll have the Office make the arrangements.”

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Nazir arrived at the apartment just after daybreak the next morning. He looked out the wide window at the tower in the distance, saw it glimmering under the low eastern sun. Rising from such desolate terrain, it looked like the backdrop of a science fiction movie—a great spire of civilization on some bleak and distant planet.

  He turned back inside, went to the kitchen counter and regarded the four drones. He had purchased them individually, two in separate stores and two online. It seemed a necessary precaution: who would buy four identical models given how expensive they were?

  In the last hour Nazir had altered one to make it unique. He checked the hardware one last time, in particular the attach points and valve connections. Everything fit perfectly. The parts had mostly come from work. He’d removed an assembly yesterday from the number 4 jet, and logged the installation of new dispersal hardware. It was a standard repair, every step by the book and signed off by his supervisor. Nothing less was permitted from the elite maintainers in his squadron. Nazir had noted the parts he’d removed from number 4 as damaged. This typically meant they would be discarded, although no one was going to check whether they actually ended up in the dumpster behind the hangar—at least, not until it was too late.

  Looking at the modified drone, he considered testing the servos with the remote. Nazir decided that wasn’t necessary. If they didn’t work, he wasn’t going to fix them. I only work on real airplanes, he mused. His eyes settled on the dispersal fitting, and he noted the color of the stained nozzle: green. It was only a coincidence, but satisfying all the same. It could just as easily have been red or white. As it turned out, green was the signature hue of a nation—and the ever-proud flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  * * *

  The convenience of working with the best intelligence agencies was never appreciated until lost. This was Slaton’s dominant thought as he gazed out the oval window of an Airbus-A321 taxiing to the terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah.

  For the last seven years Slaton had largely been on his own when it came to maintaining identities and procuring forged passports—not only for himself, but for his wife and son as well. He had bought countless burner phones, established credit card accounts, all while trying desperately to not leave a trail. At times, it bordered on a full-time job.

  Yesterday, however, he’d had a welcome return to Clandestine Incorporated. On the way to the airport in Tel Aviv, a young woman had provided him a flawless package: driver’s license, passport, visa to enter Saudi Arabia, credit cards, and the ultimate fringe benefit, a generous wad of cash. He was sure it was all backstopped in databases, and in the worn wallet there were even photos of two children who could have passed for his own, a strikingly attractive faux wife, and an active library card that probably carried one obscure spy novel as slightly overdue.

  Slaton was, if the documents and backstory could be believed, a Swedish journalist arriving to cover today’s grand opening of Jeddah Tower. Sweden had been chosen for his strength in that language, journalism because it would afford him the greatest possible access. Press credentials, for a conservative and little-known Stockholm daily, had thoughtfully been included, along with a high-end digital camera.

  He’d flown last night from Tel Aviv to Dubai, and spent a leisurely night in the kind of airport hotel a feature writer might procure—a decent place, but nothing over-the-top. The layover had been necessary due to the rushed timetable, but also served as a buffer after his initial flight from Tel Aviv.

  Everything had worked flawlessly in Dubai, Mossad’s forgers holding to their unassailable standards. Now it was time to test the documents again. The aircraft drew to a stop at the gate, and the long jetway dinosaured into place.

  Slaton stood and meshed in with the crowd of new arrivals.

  * * *

  Across the community of nations, the sharing of intelligence is undertaken with utmost reticence. The reasons for this reluctance are many and good. Sources can be put at risk, vital information leaked. Lines of communication can be compromised and strategic objectives sacrificed. Yet there is one exception to the greater rule: information was always shared in the face of imminent danger.

  Which was why, in the early hours of that morning, the CIA had taken action. After a briefing from Sorensen, Director Coltrane decided time was critical and elected to bypass the usual channels. Instead of running a presumed threat to the Saudi royal family sideways through the U.S. State Department, the CIA delivered the bad news directly to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, or SANG, the service responsible for protecting the House of Saud. The CIA suggested, with all necessary tact, that security for the Jeddah Tower opening ceremony be tightened, with particular attention given to an attack using chemical weapons.

  The Saudis listened, but were clearly skeptical. The tower’s isolation, in the SANG’s view, was strongly in their favor. Aside from one cluster of mobile construction offices, there was not another building within a mile of the skyscraper. Plans for an eventual subway line beneath the tower, which would connect to the city, were on the drawing board but had gone no further.

  For the sake of due diligence, the tower was searched from top to bottom. Over a hundred men took part, including architects, construction crews, and engineers, all of whom had unique perspectives on dead spaces, access points, and air handling systems. Nothing was found. Every vehicle in the parking garage was searched, and barriers and checkpoints were doubled on the only access road. Those guests planning to arrive by helicopter were quietly told to make new arrangements, and as a matter of convenience another two dozen armored limos were booked. These too were searched.

  In the end, the commander of the National Guard was satisfied, and he declared without reservation to the crown prince, “Every precaution has been taken. The ceremony can proceed as scheduled.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  With the advent of the digital age, raw intelligence for spy agencies relies increasingly on crunching vast amounts of data. Inputs arrive from countless sources. CCTV cameras, mobile phones, computers. Household appliances and industrial software. Photoreconnaissance from satellites and drones. Sometimes the data is accessed willingly and with legal authorization, other times less so. The NSA alone processes so much information that mathematical standards had to regularly be revised to characterize the sheer amount of data collected. The latest nomenclature, gegobyte, involved thirty zeros after the one, a quantification of information incomprehensible to anyone outside the scientific community.

  The dilemma for programmers and analysts had long been sorting through the digital haystack to find the occasional needle. Yet for all that committed processing power, and the endless plethora of sensors, there was another less common source of intelligence that was often overlooked: the eyes and ears of experienced field officers.

  On that morning, as supercomputers in Utah chewed through quintillions of pixelated images and voiceprint comparisons, David Slaton was standing in a fifty-deep line at the immigration counters of King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah. He was stretching his neck, which was still stiff from his swan dive into the Sea of Galilee, when a face in the crowd caught his eye.

  A
lthough it wasn’t quite the face. Slaton was drawn to something familiar in the way the man stood. His posture and bearing, the way his clothes hung on his slight frame like old curtains. Mild alarm was his first instinct, thinking he’d spotted a tail.

  He immediately conjured up the mental map he’d drawn on entering the arrivals corridor. As was his practice, Slaton had already identified every way out of the broad hall. The proper exits were at the far end of the room, rows of wide-open double doors through which arriving passengers exited after clearing one of the twenty-odd immigration booths. These doors were posted with armed guards who seemed alert. Slaton guessed the doors could be locked down quickly, perhaps even remotely. It was an option for egress, but one that came with severe limitations. A second avenue of escape would be to go back from where he’d come, into the terminal. This was generally the least promising option in airports. The best way out, in his view, involved the seven doors on either side. Through these he had watched immigration officers come and go. The doors were labeled NO ADMITTANCE in both Arabic and English, and controlled by a card-swipe lock. He saw two weaknesses in the system. First was that the locks had no keypad for a code. Pilfer an employee ID, and with one swipe, abracadabra. The second shortcoming involved the pneumatic arm attached to each door. These regulated a smooth closure, but also held the door open for a period of time—between four and six seconds, depending on the door. That was more than enough time from where he stood, and all he would need was a distraction. Getting through would be simple, and better yet, the immigration officers he would encounter on the other side were conveniently not armed.

  With all these assessments made, Slaton ventured a second, deeper look at the man to his right. He was wearing Western clothing, a cheap gray coat over standard business casual. Worn leather shoes and wire-rimmed glasses. It was when the man reached up and pushed his glasses higher on his nose that Slaton made the connection. He was looking at the man he’d seen outside Chez Salma, the one who’d risen out of the lead sedan to survey the street.

  If the man was practicing tradecraft, Slaton didn’t see it. For a time he seemed preoccupied with his passport, and later took out his phone and began texting. As his queue advanced, he fell directly under the lens of a ceiling-mounted security camera yet made no attempt to avert his face. Slaton had avoided that line for precisely that reason—its proximity to cameras.

  Given what he knew, Slaton supposed the man was either Syrian Mukhabarat or a midlevel policeman. Had he somehow tracked him here? It seemed doubtful, especially with Slaton standing thirty feet away. It struck him that Syria and Saudi Arabia didn’t have the warmest of relations. Was the man here for some reason tied to this afternoon’s ceremony? Had the Syrian president been invited? All questions that needed answers.

  Slaton was dealt a minor setback when his own line came to a stop: a large family at the booth ahead was having an issue. While a supervisor was called in, the Syrian in the adjacent line edged forward. Slaton had been in the lead, but it now looked like he would be second going through the exit doors. Changing lines was not an option. Too much attention drawn.

  The confusion at the top of Slaton’s line ended, and things began to move. But it was too late. The Syrian cleared customs while Slaton was on deck. He watched the slight man disappear through the nearest paired exit doors.

  Slaton was waved forward. His documents cleared uneventfully, and once again he gave silent thanks to Mossad’s forgers—in his opinion, the best in the world. He hurried to the double doors and set out into the terminal. He bypassed the baggage carousels and went straight to the curb. His eyes swept left and right, searching for the gray coat and wire-rimmed glasses. He finally saw them, moving near the front of the taxi queue. Slaton walked as quickly as he dared, making a beeline toward the lead cab and pulling out his phone. He passed within ten feet as the man slid into a cab, all the time thumbing away as if texting. Seconds later the cab was gone, and Slaton diverted behind a skycap booth and paused to check his work.

  He’d recorded the scene as a video, getting more frames per second than he could possibly get by clicking away. Frame by frame, he flicked through the video and found the two images he wanted. One was a head-on capture of the man’s face as he bent to get in the cab. The other was a perfectly clear picture of the taxi’s license plate.

  SEVENTY

  “His name is Omar Hadad,” Sorensen said. “He’s a detective inspector with the Damascus police, criminal investigations division. He flew in directly from Damascus this morning and landed ten minutes after your flight.”

  “It didn’t take you long to figure all that out,” Slaton said. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of a car he’d just rented, still in the parking garage.

  “We aim to please. The images you sent were good, and I put the highest priority on it. You say you saw him in Damascus?”

  “Yeah, outside the building where Ludmilla was holed up. Two standard-issue government sedans came looking for her, and this guy got out of one to take in the scene. I got a brief look at him.”

  “And now he turns up in Jeddah. Do you think he followed you?”

  “Can’t rule it out, but I don’t think so. He would have had to know where I was going, which means the Syrians have already busted the identity Mossad gave me. I don’t think that’s the case, and even if they did they’d never react so fast. I also didn’t get that feel when I spotted him. If that was his idea of surveillance, he was terrible at it. I think he’s just what he appears to be—a Damascus cop who gets important assignments.”

  “Like hunting Ludmilla Kravchuk down?”

  “And going to Saudi Arabia for … whatever.”

  “Whoever he is,” Sorensen said, “I think we should keep an eye on him.”

  “‘We’ meaning me? It’s a big country. How am I supposed to find him?”

  “You don’t have to—we already know where he is.”

  Slaton grinned. “At this moment?”

  “Twenty seconds ago … that’s the best I can do.”

  “The cab?” Slaton guessed.

  “The company tracks its cars with a software we’re familiar with. The taxi he took stopped in front of a car rental agency along the Jeddah Corniche.” Sorensen provided an address in the city’s shoreline resort district. “And, wait for it … the cab went off duty one minute later.”

  Slaton loaded the address into his map application and started the car. “Why does someone take a cab to a car rental agency? Why not just rent one at the airport?”

  Sorensen backstopped what Slaton himself was thinking. “Because he doesn’t want to leave tracks. I’m betting he used an alternate name to rent the car.”

  “Okay. While you and your supercomputers check on it, I’ll head in that direction.”

  A hesitation on the Langley end. “Time is getting short if Jeddah Tower really is the target. Do you think this is worthwhile?”

  “I have no idea. Honestly, I wish he was Iranian. I wish he’d flown in from Tehran carrying a big Pelican case.”

  “That would make more sense,” Sorensen agreed.

  “Yeah,” Slaton said, wheeling his car toward the garage exit. “As if any of this makes sense.”

  * * *

  Captain Mahrez walked across the tarmac where the squadron’s six jets were lined up. Not seeing who he wanted, he addressed the senior enlisted man in sight. “Where is Sergeant Nazir?”

  A master sergeant who was making a logbook entry stopped what he was doing. “I haven’t seen him since earlier this morning, sir.”

  “Is he not supposed to be on duty?”

  The master sergeant pulled a roster from the thigh pocket of his work overalls. He scanned it quickly, and said, “Yes, he is.”

  Mahrez looked up and down the flight line. He saw fifteen men of various ranks and specialties prepping the aircraft. “Do you have another powerplant specialist on duty?”

  Another check of the roster. “Yes, sir. Tech Sergeant Said is available if
needed.”

  The captain looked relieved, then raised a finger to make his point. “Very well. But when Nazir shows up, tell him I am putting him on report!”

  * * *

  Nazir was at that moment in a gas station restroom on the western outskirts of Jeddah. He’d returned to base one last time, not wanting his absence to be noticed too soon. After eating a late breakfast in the enlisted dining hall, he’d slipped out quietly. Half a mile outside the front gate his transformation began.

  He first abandoned the staff car and retrieved his recently purchased motorcycle. Now, behind the bathroom’s locked outer door, Nazir took off his fatigues and donned civilian clothes from his backpack. He dropped his fatigues in the trash bin, using wadded paper towels from the dispenser to make sure it was concealed. And just like that, his career in the Saudi Air Force, such as it was, reached its inglorious end.

  He went back outside, and at the pump topped off the gas tank on the motorcycle. He next filled a pair of plastic ten-liter gas cans. He loaded these onto the bike, one in each of the paired saddlebags. The bike was a two-year-old Honda CB300F, a standard road bike that got nearly eighty miles to the gallon. With a full tank and two extra cans, he was sure he could reach the Iraqi border. That five-hundred-mile journey would begin later today, and he expected to arrive on schedule, shortly after nightfall. He was to seek out a particular marker along the remote four-hundred-mile-long barrier wall. There he would be met by a driver and spirited into Iraq. By the time he reached Sultan’s palace in Tikrit, sometime around midday tomorrow, his revenge for his father’s death would be complete. The Saudis would find themselves hurtling into a terrible new war. And Nazir would begin life anew.

  With everything ready, he straddled the bike. Nazir donned his helmet, spun the engine to life, and set out one last time for the apartment.