The Scientist (Max Doerr Book 2)

by Jay Deb

  THE HOTEL HAD twenty-three floors; a blue neon light on the building top spelled out the word Idris. When Doerr got out of the cab, it was eleven a.m. on Monday. The hotel concierge came to his cab, took Doerr’s suitcase and duffel bag from the cab’s trunk, and placed them on the hotel’s suitcase carrier. Doerr paid the cabbie with a hundred-riyal bill and followed the concierge to the hotel’s check-in counter.

  Doerr signed some papers and gave his credit card to the hotel clerk, and five minutes later, Doerr entered his room on the sixth floor. After watching the view of the city through the window for a while, he went to the lobby downstairs and sat there pretending to read a local newspaper printed in Arabic. He could speak Arabic but could only read slowly. The purpose was to keep an eye on the check-in counter, looking for Rafan. In case he got lucky and saw Rafan, he’d follow Rafan to his room and finish the job in hand – easy enough. But in his experience, a job had never been that simple.

  After sitting there for a half hour, there was no sign of Rafan. Doerr couldn’t sit around in the lobby for too long; otherwise his cover would be blown, and local police would certainly pursue that guy who was in the lobby for hours in the upcoming murder investigation following Rafan’s death.

  Doerr went back to his spacious hotel room, where a fifty-inch flat-screen TV stood on a stand and the large glass window was covered by black and white Islamic-style curtains, which Doerr pushed aside. From his room, he could watch the tower of the Markaz al-Mamlakah.

  He pondered whether to call the techies in Langley to see if they could hack into the hotel computers and get Rafan’s room number.

  There were a few options to get the number of Rafan’s room. One was to bribe a clerk. Second, get into the hotel’s computer. Third, which Doerr liked the most, was to call the front desk, make up some story and get the room number. That way no one would see him and no one else would be involved in the process. But that method had worked at low-priced hotels, and at over two hundred US dollars a night, Idris was no cheap hotel.

  Doerr lay down on the queen-size bed and watched the seven p.m. news for a while.

  Using the agency-provided encrypted cell phone, which would show a random local number as caller ID on the recipient phone’s display no matter which corner of the world he was calling from, he called the hotel reception and pretended to be a relative of Rafan, claiming there had been a family emergency.

  “No, we can’t give the room number. Security.” The hotel employee was stern.

  Doerr’s preferred method didn’t work, and he started pacing in his room. He was feeling frustrated, knowing Rafan was in the same building, maybe having fun with a lady friend. He put on a white thobe, checked his false beard, and then walked out toward the bar, where he ordered a glass of a nonalcoholic beverage and waited. He sipped his drink slowly for a half hour and waited, just in case Rafan showed up in the bar, but that didn’t happen, so Doerr headed back to his room.

  It was eight p.m. and there wasn’t much time to waste. It was discontenting knowing Rafan was in the same building, and Doerr could do nothing at the moment. He picked up his encrypted cell phone and then called a number, his contact at Science and Technology division of the agency.

  “Hello.” It was a young male voice at the other end of the line.

  Doerr explained what he needed, Rafan’s room number from the hotel computers.

  “I’ll see what I can do. When do you need it, sir?”

  “Now. Right now!”

  “That’s not possible. We have to have at least a couple of days’ notice. Hacking into computers isn’t as easy as some people think.”

  Doerr knew that. His deceased wife had been an IT professional. But informing the agency days ahead was risky and detrimental to his mission. “Isn’t there anything you can do quickly?” Doerr pleaded. “The operation is highly critical. Try. Maybe you get lucky.”

  “Let me see. What’s their IP address?”

  Doerr knew what an IP address was, a unique formatted number that identified a computer on the World Wide Web. “No. But I know the hotel’s website. Idrishotel dot com.”

  Doerr heard a sigh at the other end of the line. “Let me see what I can do,” the young man said. “I’ll call you if I find something. But it’s not looking good so far.”

  “Thanks. Please try.” Doerr hung up.

  Doerr heard a knock, and he opened the door gently.

  “Salam Alekum.” It was the concierge, a middle-aged bald man wearing a white tunic, with the food he’d ordered before the call to the agency, a burger and some fries, nothing fancy.

  The concierge walked inside with a cart full of shiny food trays, laid down the tray with Doerr’s food on the table, and stood there with a big smile, expecting a tip.

  Doerr pulled out a hundred-riyal bill and handed it to the concierge. “How is business?” he inquired in Arabic.

  “Good. People like you come here. We’re happy.”

  Doerr showed the concierge a photo of Rafan on his smartphone. “Have you seen him?” Doerr looked at the concierge, and he thought he saw a flicker in his eyes. “He is my friend.”

  The concierge said nothing, and he turned to leave, his face telling Doerr that the man knew Rafan.

  “In which room is he?” Doerr pulled out two more hundred-Saudi-riyal bills and handed them to the concierge. “I have to talk to him about something urgent.” If Doerr was a friend of Rafan, then he should have had Rafan’s cell phone number or the room number. But Doerr hoped that the concierge wasn’t a sharp-thinking man; otherwise he’d not be doing what he was doing for a living.

  The man took the money. “We can’t give customer’s room number. Hotel rule. Manager will be very angry.” The man looked at the ground and seemed to be hesitating, whether to break his employer’s rule for the cash payoff.

  Doerr pulled out two more hundred-riyal bills. But the concierge made up his mind. He returned all the cash Doerr had given him. “I’m sorry. Hotel rule. Cannot tell customer room number.” He turned to leave.

  Doerr had to make a quick decision. A man was standing in front of him who knew Rafan’s room number. Sometimes a bad thing had to happen for a greater good.

  Doerr moved toward the door, closed it with a swing of his hand, jumped in front of the concierge, wrapped his arms around the man, and with a quick swing, he threw the concierge’s heavy body on the floor, a choreographed action sequence he’d practiced a hundred times.

  The concierge’s head hit the leg of the bed, and he started bleeding. Looking stunned, the concierge touched his head and stared at his bloody fingers.

  Doerr pulled out a rope and a roll of duct tape from his suitcase. He’d brought those items, anticipating a situation like this one. Doerr quickly placed some duct tape over the concierge’s mouth and tied him to the bed’s leg. He pulled out his favorite Glock 27 from his pocket and pointed the firearm at the concierge’s head. “You want to live?”

  The man was already crying, and now he nodded.

  “You want to see your kids?”

  The man bobbed his head, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Doerr tucked the hundred-riyal bills into the man’s pocket. “Buy them something nice when it’s all over.”

  Doerr pressed the barrel of his gun against the man’s forehead. “Now are you going to tell me Rafan’s room number or not?”

  Copious amounts of tears were falling down his cheeks, and he shook his head.

  Doerr hit the man’s belly with his fist and the man grunted. “The number. I don’t have much time.” Doerr hit him in the face, held him by his hair, and gave him a vigorous shake.

  Tears mixed with blood covered the concierge’s face, and he looked petrified.

  Doerr raised his hand, about to hit the concierge’s head with the butt of his Glock. “The number!”

  The concierge nodded, indicating he was finally ready to divulge the room number. Doerr jerked the duct tape off the concierge’s face.

  “1078,
” the concierge mumbled. “Don’t tell anyone I said.”

  Doerr tucked the gun in his pocket, opened his suitcase, and pulled out a suppressor. He pulled out a bunch of security cards to be used to open the door of Rafan’s room in case Rafan didn’t open it for a knock.

  Doerr knew Idris Hotel used RFID proximity cards for security. A few hours back, he’d put codes in those security cards in his suitcase, based on the codes on his own room key. Doer knew a few other tricks to open a locked door. But the best way to open it was to have the room’s owner open it from inside.

  Doerr attached an extension cord to the hotel phone and brought it near the concierge, who was sitting on the floor with a bloody face.

  “I’m calling Rafan’s room,” Doerr said as he pressed the black pushbuttons on the phone’s dial. “You tell him that you are the person who delivered food to his room. You are very sorry that you forgot the complimentary champagne, and you’re bringing it now. Okay?”

  When Doerr heard someone at the other end of the line, he put the handset in front of the concierge’s mouth, and the concierge said what Doerr had asked him to say.

  Doerr hung up the phone and returned it to the corner table where it was originally. “Now stay here. No funny business.” Doerr stood up and showed him his large smartphone. “I’ll be watching you. I have a video camera set up in this room,” he lied.

  Doerr put a piece of duct tape on the concierge’s mouth and tightened the rope that bound him to the bed.

  Doerr pulled out a syringe and a bottle of tranquilizer, and filled the syringe with the drug. He kneeled down in front of the concierge, plunged the needle into his left deltoid muscle, and pushed the plunger all the way, injecting the entire drug into the concierge’s body. “Don’t worry. This will keep you asleep for just an hour,” Doerr assured the concierge.

  Doerr rushed out of his room, no time to waste. Doerr’s room was on the sixth floor, Rafan’s on the tenth. He rushed to the stairwell and climbed like a bear charging its target. Soon, he was in front of room 1078.

  He knocked on the door and then said in Arabic, “Room service.”

  The door was opened by a young woman wearing a short skirt and a sleeveless top. The woman could be from one of the secret escort services in the city or maybe one of Rafan’s wives, who had been asked to put on that dress. Doerr put one leg in front of the door, making sure no one was able to close it. The woman took a few steps backward.

  Doerr entered the room and saw Rafan sitting on the bed, enjoying the food that had been delivered by the concierge. The room looked pretty much the same as Doerr’s.

  “Champa–” Rafan did not finish the word champagne; his face paled as soon as he saw Doerr, and Doerr quickly pulled the Glock from his pocket, pointed it at Rafan and said to the woman in Arabic, “Go to the window and turn around. Don’t look at me.”

  Stupefied, the woman stood motionless where she was. Doerr jerked his head toward the window, and then the woman walked to the window and stood there, facing outside.

  With the gun pointed at Rafan’s head, Doerr took a few steps toward Rafan, who sat there unconcerned and unflinching.

  “Who told you I’m here?” Rafan asked in Arabic.

  “Tell me why you killed my wife,” Doerr asked. “Did someone hire you?”

  “Answer me first.” Rafan stood up and started moving toward Doerr. “There is only one person besides her” – Rafan pointed to the woman – “who knows I’m in this hotel room.”

  “Now there are two.” Doerr kept the gun steady. “Stay where you are and tell me why you killed my wife.”

  “Who gave you my address?” Rafan took one more step forward, Doerr a step backward, toward the door.

  “Why did you kill Akhtar?” Doerr asked.

  “Who?”

  “Akhtar Saleb, who refused to give you the building permit. You forgot everything?”

  “I don’t remember any Akhtar.” Doerr and Rafan were standing no more than ten feet apart.

  “Of course you don’t. You killed so many. You don’t remember your victims. Now it’s your time. But I’ll always remember you.”

  Rafan took one more step forward. Doerr said nothing. The talk-time was over. Action time now.

  He firmed his finger on the trigger and squeezed it, his aim perfect.

  The 9mm bullet pierced Rafan’s head and his body fell to the floor like a dropped rock; his dying wish to know who’d given up Rafan’s whereabouts remained unfulfilled.

  Doerr brought the gun down and pointed it at Rafan’s head, Doerr’s heart beating like a steam engine. One more squeeze on the trigger, another hole in Rafan’s skull, Gayle’s face flashed in his mind, and calm spread all over his body. He could feel his heartbeat going down to a normal frequency. He glanced at the dead body of his beloved wife’s murderer, now lying on the carpeted floor, a sizable amount of blood oozing out.

  Doerr had killed many. Some of those had brought the joy of success and some had instilled mixed feelings in his heart. But now, he felt neither joy nor sadness.

  Doerr saw the woman at the glass window shivering, and she turned her head. She was about five feet two inches tall, brown skin, and her face was covered almost entirely with a black head scarf.

  “Don’t look at me.” Doerr didn’t want her to remember his face. The woman turned back to the window.

  It was a hard decision for him. Should he let the woman live? She’d certainly call the cops once Doerr left and tell them what exactly had happened. She might give Doerr’s physical details to the detectives who would be investigating Rafan’s death. On the other hand, if he just killed her, it’d buy him a lot of time – the hotel people might not discover the bodies for a while. There would be no one to detail how Rafan had been killed. Killing the woman was the safest way to ensure the mission’s success, and if he’d asked anyone in the agency, they would instruct him to get rid of the woman.

  “Innocents die all the time. In the history of this world, it’s a common occurrence,” they would have said.

  But realizing the pain Gayle’s death had brought into his life, he was leaning on letting the woman live. She might be someone’s wife, mother to a baby. Typically those women came from poorer countries, trying to earn a few bucks for their starving kids.

  Doerr took out the syringe he’d filled with the tranquilizer and walked toward the woman, who was still shivering.

  “Get down on your knees,” Doerr said, and he placed his hand on her shoulder and pushed her down. “And don’t look at me.”

  “I am going to give you a shot and you’ll be asleep for a couple of hours.” Doerr showed the syringe to the woman. “Don’t tell anyone what just happened here. Tell them you didn’t see anything; otherwise you’ll be in trouble. Understand?”

  She nodded, and apparently, she understood Arabic, a language Doerr had started learning right after 9/11 had happened.

  Doerr raised her right hand and plunged the syringe into her arm. He pushed the tranquilizer into her muscles.

  Doerr waited for a minute until the woman fell to the floor and went to sleep. Doerr stared at the two bodies, one dead and one alive. One would soon wake up and go about with her life; the other one was headed for one of the seven gates in Jahannam.

  Doerr thought of the tied concierge in his room. He unwound the suppressor from his gun’s barrel, and then he exited Rafan’s room, put the do-not-disturb sign on the door’s handle, closed the door quietly and then headed for the stairs. He checked his wristwatch; the whole thing had taken less than four minutes.

  BACK IN HIS hotel room, Doerr saw the sleeping concierge. Now, every second in this hotel room was like a snakebite for him. It could kill him or endanger his life. Someone could be looking for the concierge. Maybe Rafan had an appointment with someone.

  He put the Glock, the suppressor, and the security cards back in his duffel bag, where he had most of his important things like the tranquilizer, another gun, and passports – real and fake. He chan
ged into a white thobe, checked the disguise beard, and rummaged through the large suitcase to see if he was leaving anything important behind. He wasn’t. The big suitcase contained some underwear, shirts, razors, local magazines and similar things. Some items there perhaps had his DNA – underwear and other clothes that could be later found by detectives. But he was willing to take that risk.

  He left his room, carrying the duffel in his left hand, the sleeping concierge still inside. He sauntered through the lobby. It was 9:30 p.m., guests still checking in.

  He walked out the door and felt the hot air. A hotel employee came up and hailed a cab for him.

  “Airport,” Doerr said in Arabic. “I have to pick up a friend.”

  The cab rushed down Airport Road and after about fifteen minutes, took a turn for airport terminal number three.

  Soon, Doerr was inside the terminal, checking the departure schedule. There was a late Gulf Air flight, about to take off for New York at 11:10 p.m.

  Doerr rushed to Gulf Air’s ticket counter.

  Chapter 7 Turin, Italy

  The first few days in the Turin hotel had been good, almost fun. Gibbs was getting Janco omelets for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and pizza for dinner, food much better than what he’d received in prison, and his belly was always full. But a few days later, the omelets were replaced by cereal, fresh burgers and pizza by frozen ones.

  Janco asked for a tour of Turin city, but Gibbs got him a tour guide book instead, and from that book, Janco memorized every map, street, and place to visit in Turin. Janco needed to learn the Italian language from someone because he knew learning a language was an excellent way of keeping the brain busy and sharp.

  But the next day, Gibbs threw an English-to-Italian translation book into his lap. Janco requested alcohol, but Gibbs refused. Janco thought perhaps Gibbs was a man of faith, or it was his way of telling Janco who the boss was. At times, another man was bringing the food, and Janco could never gather enough courage to ask the man anything. Gibbs’s instruction had been clear – don’t talk to anyone but me.