by Matthew Dunn
In Arabic mythology, a nasnās was half human, half creature, incredibly strong, could kill someone just by touching them, and was believed to be the offspring of a demon.
No doubt, whoever had written it was a teenager who was daring his friends and others like him to enter, and that they’d done, because there was more graffiti inside the doorway, food wrappings and other litter on its stone floor, plus even less pleasant evidence that humans had spent time here.
I stood at the threshold and looked inside. There were tall metal cabinets to my left, flush against the corridor’s wall. That was where Roger and his colleagues had stored their files containing data on their Hamas targets. The files were now safely secured in the archives of the agencies that had worked in this establishment. Immediately to my right were the burned remains of the sofa that had caught fire from the sparks produced by the CIA officers’ blowtorches. And at the end of the corridor were four rooms. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. In one of them, the gunfight had happened. I didn’t want to go in that room, but I had to.
Even though I knew the CIA team who’d breached the complex had examined every inch of the corridor’s walls, floor, and ceiling, I reexamined them, desperate to find something they’d missed, hoping to find evidence that someone had forced their way into the site and killed Roger and his men. I wasn’t surprised that my search was in vain, but nevertheless felt tremendous disappointment. Unless there was something to be found in the rooms ahead, what I was seeing was proof positive that Roger had killed his colleagues.
Using the flashlight to guide my way, I proceeded to the rooms. The first belonged to the MI6 officer. It had cheap furniture inside, but was otherwise bare of all the equipment that would have been housed here. I spent thirty minutes examining the thick stone walls. Nothing. Ditto the second and third rooms, which had been used by the DGSE officer and Roger, respectively. They were all identical in size—tiny, no windows. After examining Roger’s room, I stood for a moment, imagining how he must have felt working day and night shifts in this claustrophobic cell. I knew how I felt just being in here for a few minutes. I wanted to get out.
I entered the last room. It had belonged to the Mossad officer. It was where everyone had died.
I shone my flashlight over the walls. More graffiti, some of it obscene, written on places where blood might have splattered. Like everywhere else in the complex, it smelled musty and rank in here. That was to be expected in a place that received no ventilation except through its single entry door. The kids who dared each other to come in here probably didn’t mind; it added to the scary ambience. But as I stood in this room, I thought I smelled human death and decay. It made me want to vomit, because one of the men who’d died in here was my dear friend.
I spent nearly an hour in the room, occasionally hearing my surveillance team relay updates to each other while I examined everything. The CIA team had done an excellent job sanitizing the place. There was no evidence that a gunfight had taken place in the room or that four men had died here. I imagined what it must have looked like in the site before and after the fight had taken place.
Roger working the night shift, sending Langley the telegram about the Hamas meeting the following day, being in the complex alone, waiting for his colleagues to arrive the next day, shooting them, and them returning fire before they died.
That’s what everyone believed.
I recalled what the CIA technician had told me.
I think being in that place day and night sent Roger Koenig mad.
I reentered the corridor and stood motionless, staring at the broken entrance at the other end. I pictured the DGSE, MI6, and Mossad officers turning up for work and walking down the hall. No doubt they had security protocols in place wherein they had to arrive separately and at slightly different times. When the last of them arrived and reengaged the door’s seven bolts, it would have been standard practice for the night-duty officer to brief his day-shift colleagues on any highlights from the night before. Maybe their coffee machine was in the Mossad officer’s room, they had all convened there, and Roger had pulled his gun. Or maybe Roger had attacked the Mossad officer while he was alone in his office, and the others came to the Israeli’s rescue. It was impossible to be sure.
I was certain that third parties hadn’t forced open the door and shot the men. They’d have left too many obvious traces. And the CIA techie I’d spoken to was adamant that the locks hadn’t been picked because they were impossible to reach from the outside, let alone unlock. I walked to the entrance and shone my torch around the edges of the steel door that were still in place around the door-frame. They were hermetically sealed. The technician was right.
I turned to look at Gray Site one last time. I had to accept that what had happened in here wasn’t a mystery. Roger was a murderer. What remained a mystery was why he’d killed his colleagues.
I asked myself, What if everyone was wrong about Roger and he didn’t kill his colleagues? It was probably a foolish question.
I moved my flashlight around. I turned the light off so I was in pitch darkness, my mind working fast.
“May have something.” The voice in my earpiece was a male in the surveillance team. “Guy I spotted earlier in the souk and farther down the street. He’s back, near the house.”
I remained where I stood, desperate to gather my thoughts.
“Time for you to leave,” the female team leader said to me.
“Not yet,” I muttered into my throat mic.
“Description?” she asked her colleague.
“Tall, athletic build, I’d say in his late twenties or early thirties, slacks and shirt. And he’s blond and has a small satchel over his shoulder.”
Shit! Like the man who attacked me in Highgate. “I need more time!” I said.
“Where is he now?” the team leader asked.
“Right by the house. He’s looking around.”
The team leader sounded like she was running. “I’m not close enough.”
“He’s going into the house.”
“Kamal, Mansur: both of you get in there and put him on the ground!”
I opened my eyes and turned the flashlight back on, shining it over everything in front of me.
“Kamal, Mansur: Do you have him?”
There was no response.
“Do you have him?” The team leader’s tone was urgent. “I can see him! He’s running out of the house! On the street, heading north. All of you: get after him.”
It was time for me to go. I ran up the stairs. Two men were lying on the ground in the center of the first floor, both writhing in pain.
A woman rushed into the building from the street and crouched by the men. “Mansur, Kamal. What happened?”
One of them answered, “He . . . he dropped us.”
“With a weapon?”
“With his hands and legs.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
They both nodded.
The woman looked at me with a venomous expression. “Did you know about this threat?”
“I thought it possible.”
She gestured to the men. “These are my brothers. They’re both black belts in karate. Not that it’s helped them today.”
I pulled the men to their feet and said to them, “Get checked out in case you’ve got fractures.”
They nodded.
The team leader paced back and forth as she spoke into her throat mic. “Update.”
One of her men pursuing the blond man was almost breathless as he replied, “We lost him. He vanished.”
The woman kicked soil off the ground, her frustration evident. She walked up to me. “The man who took down my brothers was coming for you. You’re in significant danger. Harry only released us to you for this afternoon. We can’t watch your back any longer. If I were you, I’d get on the next available flight out of Beirut.”
I returned to the Cavalier Hotel, with no intention of departing Beirut just yet. I remained in Leb
anon for two reasons: one of them would likely see me dead very shortly; the other was because of an idea I had that could potentially make the impossible possible.
I was cautious as I approached the hotel, fully aware that the blond man might be back on my tail and the other assassin watching me from a hidden location. But there was no point in me conducting countersurveillance. There were thousands of nearby places a professional could hide. I didn’t stand a chance in hell of spotting anyone.
The receptionist called to me as I walked past.
She was smiling. “Mr. Oaks. You have a letter.” She handed it to me.
All that was written on the envelope was my fake name. There was no stamp, no address. “Hand delivered?”
She nodded.
“One of your regular local couriers?”
“Oh, no. He was an Englishman.”
I had a sinking feeling. “Short man, gray hair, a bit fat?”
“No. Tall, brown hair, with . . .” She rubbed the side of her face, her expression quizzical. “What do you call these things in English? Not a beard.”
“Sideburns.”
“Burns?” Her smile broadened. “That’s appropriate, good name, because his were red.”
“Thank you. If you see him around here again, can you let me know? Discreetly?”
Her smile vanished. “Is he trouble? I can inform hotel security if we have a problem.”
I tried to make my expression reassuring. “It’s nothing like that. Most likely he works for one of my Lebanese business associates.” I waved the envelope and grinned. “This is probably an invitation to one of his tedious cocktail parties.”
In my hotel room, I examined the envelope. It was too light to contain explosive that would detonate when the parcel was opened. But its contents might have been saturated with poison or a hallucinogenic that, when contact was made with my skin, could be sufficiently powerful to incapacitate me, thereby enabling a man to come into my room and easily finish me off. I placed a pair of socks over my hands and opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper. Written on it were words that made me involuntarily drop to my knees.
Mr. Richard Oaks
You would do well to know that your former colleagues Alistair, Patrick, Laith, and Suzy are dead. So too is Mrs. Koenig. I have erased all links to your professional past. Others will die if you persist in your investigation in Lebanon. You live in West Square, London. I believe your neighbors are dear to you. You must weigh that value and compare it to the value of your work.
I forced myself to my feet, my hands shaking as I dropped the paper, ripped the socks off my hands, withdrew my cell phone from my bag, and inserted its battery. Moments after it powered up, I was deluged by voice mail alerts. I ignored them and called Admiral Mason.
He replied on the third ring. “Where the hell have you been?”
I felt like my heart was going to burst through my chest, it was beating so fast. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“I’ve just received a letter. Anonymous. It says . . . it says . . .”
Mason’s tone was sympathetic when he asked, “Does it tell you about death?”
“Yes. Lots of it. My colleagues. My friends.”
With deliberation, Mason said, “Whoever sent you that letter is a coldhearted bastard. He or she is taunting you. Probably trying to get you to stop.”
“Is it true?!”
Mason was silent for what felt like an age. “Son, it’s true. Your former team is dead.”
I felt like my soul had been ripped from my body. Images raced through my distraught brain. Alistair and Patrick, both young, driving with my father in Iran in 1979, all of them anxious because the country was in a state of revolution, but my father telling his more junior colleagues that everything was going to be all right. My father surrendering himself at a checkpoint so Patrick and Alistair could escape. Laith sitting on a sidewalk near a snowy Saranac Lake, clutching his gut because he’d been stabbed, and telling me he knew exactly what to do. Suzy using her vast intellect to identify a Russian spy catcher. Roger calmly calling in his instructions in the world’s most hostile locations. And his wife asking me, “Why does everyone assume Roger shot the English, French, and Israeli guys?”
“How did it happen?”
Mason gave me details and then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know until you’d finished. That wasn’t right.”
I didn’t blame the admiral for attempting to withhold the information. I’d have probably done the same thing in his shoes, because so much was riding on this investigation into Gray Site before Israel went to war. Time was running out. Israel would mobilize in less than four days.
The admiral asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Do you have a high-ranking contact in the U.K. Special Forces?”
“No, but I know men who do.”
“I need a team of SF men to ensure no one goes near my neighbors.” I gave him Dickie, Phoebe, and David’s identities and addresses. “Can you do that for me?”
“Sure. I guess that means you’re not coming home.”
“Soon, I will be. First, I’ve two things I have to do.”
I ended the call and sat on my bed. Nothing felt real. My head was giddy, my body shaking. Shock was kicking in; I rushed to the minibar and grabbed a can of Coke, quickly opening it and swallowing the liquid fast to get sugar inside me. Then I had to run to the bathroom, where I vomited in the toilet. I ran a sink of water, silently telling myself to hold it together, at least for just a few more days. After washing my face, I looked in the mirror and saw grief written across my face.
That had to go.
I owed it to my friends.
Mason had told me that the press had no inkling about the deaths of my former colleagues. That meant that whoever sent me the letter was their killer, or a close associate of the murderer. Perhaps it was the blond man who’d fought me in the cemetery and today had got very close to me. More likely it was the man who’d delivered the letter—a tall individual with facial hair that the hotel receptionist thought resembled burns. I wondered if he was the sniper who’d blasted chunks off Roger’s headstone.
Clearly, the letter was designed to throw me into a state of panic.
The author underestimated me.
Gradually I was getting out from under my grief, getting focused, and getting ready to make someone suffer very badly.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The White House Situation Room was at full capacity. Middle-aged men and women sat at the rectangular table, smiling insincerely and exchanging pleasantries with people they hated. Wall-mounted TV screens showed images of technicians testing the quality of the audio and visual links before moving out of the way to allow the premiers of Britain, France, and Israel to take seats in front of cameras. The American president and his chief of staff walked into the room. The chief of staff remained standing; the president sat at the head of the table, a camera pointing at his head so he could be seen by the foreign heads of state.
Admiral Mason was sitting at the opposite end of the room, quietly observing. The diminutive naval officer loathed being surrounded by the egos and agendas of politicians, though he empathized with the president’s desire to have his most insightful aide present. Mason was neutral, and he looked at the world in a different way from most. The president relied on Mason’s left-field thinking. And though he was high ranking, Mason was a military man, which meant he was acutely aware that there was always someone more senior than him. That reality came with the demand that he do his duty and follow orders.
But he had never been very good at following orders.
By chance or providence, this mind-set had benefited his career, rather than leading to a court-martial for disobedience.
The chief of staff called for order in the room and asked the Israeli premier to provide an update on Israel’s intentions.
The Israeli prime minister spoke for fifteen minutes, saying that Israel w
as going to war in three days and that its military would occupy Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank until such time as every Hamas member was incarcerated or dead. A heated debate ensued, some arguing that Israel’s actions were likely to fuel fundamentalist terrorism and broader regional conflict, others saying that Israel had a right to protect its citizens and borders. The Israeli premier was silent throughout the debate, though when the room was silent he said that Israel’s intended course of action was necessary, justified, and proportionate to the threats it faced. He added that America of all countries knew that the war against terror could not be avoided.
The hawks in the room took his side; the doves urged restraint.
Mason watched the president, trying to discern what he was thinking. The man looked troubled and uncertain as he listened attentively to everyone’s point of view. Mason didn’t blame him. There were no easy choices to be made.
The president looked directly at Mason. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully, because only a handful of individuals knew the admiral had tasked Will Cochrane to try to find evidence as to whether Hamas had killed the Israeli ambassador. All of those individuals were U.S. nationals. “Do you have anything to add, Admiral?”
Mason shook his head, indicating to the president that no progress had been made.
The room was silent as the president turned his attention to the Israeli premier. “In the absence of any evidence casting doubt on whether Hamas killed your diplomat in Paris, my decision is that the United States of America will back your war.”
THIRTY-NINE
Monsieur de Guise cleared away empty dishes that he’d used to serve a breakfast of fresh croissants and pain au chocolat, purchased from one of the nearby patisseries in Rennes, then followed Safa into the living room. “Safa, I must administer your medication earlier than usual today.” He smiled. “The good news is, they will be your last pills and injections. Your mind and body are fully recovered.”