by Ty Patterson
They were traveling as aid workers, Beth’s idea, affiliated with an international organization that did a lot of work in the region. Zeb had arranged for fake papers for all of them, with Middle Eastern sounding names. The twins and Burke had dyed their hair the previous night and with their naturally dark skin tones, the four of them looked as if they belonged in the region.
The Petersens and Burke took turns changing in the bathroom and emerged wearing abayahs, black garments that covered them from shoulder to toe. They wore dark scarves over their heads, shades to cover their eyes and would pass for Middle Eastern women to casual onlookers.
Kowalski changed into a dishdasha in the bathroom, the white robe Arab men wore, and wore a gutrah, a white scarf, on his head.
Their aircraft rolled to a VIP reception area where three SUVs were waiting for them. One vehicle was from the State Department. A casually dressed man approached Burke and shook hands with her.
He introduced himself as Smith and didn’t give a first name. ‘There might be eyes and ears on us,’ he said cryptically, showing no surprise at their appearance. ‘You are aid workers, these vehicles are registered to aid agencies.’
Burke scanned the VIP area quickly, professionally. It was empty, but for them. ‘Won’t people know who you are?’
‘I’m an oil company worker,’ Smith’s white teeth flashed, ‘my company works with your organization.’
‘Anyone tell you this’s a bad idea?’ he enquired quizzically.
‘Several did,’ Burke replied drily.
‘Well, let me tell you this; in all my years at State, this has never happened. I got orders to verify you folks were who you were, and then stand down. Security would be arranged, I was to ask no questions.’
He jerked his head at the two SUVs hanging back. ‘That’s your security. I don’t know them. All I know is someone well above my paygrade appointed them.’
‘Don’t ask me. I’m as clueless as you are.’
Smith checked their papers and when he was sure they were in order, stepped back and motioned at the other vehicles. They rolled forward and from it emerged six men, heavily armed, and Arabic looking. Two men, the drivers, remained in the vehicles, their eyes watchful, moving ceaselessly.
The men didn’t speak as they hurried the new arrivals to the lead vehicle, and arranged themselves in the two rides and within minutes of landing, they were off.
‘You guys have any names?’ Burke met the driver’s eyes in the mirror. He didn’t reply.
Another man in the front spoke in heavily accented English, without turning around, ‘Call Carter.’
Meghan dialed Zeb who picked up immediately and activated the camera on his phone.
‘We’re with your friends, Zeb, at least I hope they’re friendly.’
‘Pass the phone to each one of the men.’
Meghan handed the phone to the men behind, one of whom cracked a joke in Arabic and got a laugh from Zeb. The phone went from the back to the front and when Zeb was satisfied, it came back to Meghan.
‘Who’re these men?’
‘You can trust them. They’ll take you to Azzi and drop you back to the airport when you’re done,’ and with that he disconnected.
‘You knew about these arrangements?’ Burke fingered her Glock under her robe, its heavy weight reassuring her.
‘Nope,’ Meghan replied. ‘We’re as much in the dark as you are. He said he’d take care of everything.’
‘We traveled around the world just on his word,’ Kowalski whistled in bemusement.
‘That’s enough for us,’ Meghan settled back comfortably and closed her eyes. R&R was to be grabbed whenever and wherever they could, when on a mission.
The vehicles moved swiftly, forcing their way through dense traffic of all kinds. Trucks carrying goats, Toyotas that were well past their use-before dates, military vehicles, buses, cabs, and police cruisers. There was noise, a cacophony of horns and tires rumbling on concrete, shouts from the few pedestrians who braved the heat. Armed policemen stood guard at regular intervals, hands on their guns, their eyes watching the traffic.
Meghan woke at a nudge from Beth to see three more black SUVs had joined them, all identical looking, all changing places randomly.
‘Reinforcements, decoys,’ she whispered to her sister. Burke and Kowalski were glued to their windows, rapt fascination on their faces.
‘First time in the Middle East, Sarah?’
‘Doesn’t it show?’
‘For me too,’ Kowalski added, ‘Join the FBI, travel the world, the recruiting poster said.’ He shook his head in mock sorrow, ‘somehow it didn’t turn out that way.’
‘Stick with us, Mark, you’ll see places you dreamed of. Some you wouldn’t want to visit even in your dreams.’
‘Remember, I’m your bag carrier. I’ll be sticking closer to you than a saddle burr.’
‘Holy smokes,’ he exclaimed suddenly when they drove on the Al Jadriyah Bridge, ‘is that the Tigris below?’
‘One of the two major rivers here,’ one of the men from the front answered him. ‘Lot of trade because of it. Not much now.’
The vehicles exited the bridge and proceeded for several more minutes and then hung a sudden right and entered a narrow residential street. It had earth colored houses lined up on both sides, many of them two stories high, gated, and with visible security.
Two SUVs roared past them and blocked the far end of the street, two hung back and blocked the entrance. Their vehicle rumbled along and came to a stop in front of a modest looking house.
The driver lifted a hand in a universal gesture, Stop.
They waited for five armed men from the other vehicles to join them, one of whom tapped once on their ride.
Their protection detail alighted first, and eight men surrounded them when they exited. Their ring of men hustled them to the gate where a short conversation occurred. It swung open to reveal a concrete yard leading to the house.
Five men watched them from inside the compound, all armed, all alert. They didn’t come forward, neither did they stop the visitors.
A man was waiting at the door; he swung it wide to allow them inside and shut it behind them. He patted them down, didn’t twitch a muscle at their handguns, and merely lifted an eyebrow at the contents of the briefcase Kowalski was carrying.
‘That way,’ he pointed to a corridor that branched out from the central hall they were in.
Meghan had an impression of white walls, bare of any decoration, no furniture. Basic accommodation. A familiar odor assailed her nostrils as they were herded to a room in front of which two men stood guard.
Smells like a hospital.
One of the guards pointed his gun at the room, they entered it and stopped suddenly. Meghan took in the machines against one wall, tubes coming out of them and disappearing beneath the bedspread under which a man lay.
Yusri Azzi! She recognized him immediately from the photographs Jack Minter had shared.
Azzi was a pale shadow of himself; he looked frail, emaciated, though his eyes were bright. His beard was grey, untrimmed and the hair on his head was thin. His face was covered with wrinkles and scars. One eye drooped lower than the other.
He half rose at their presence and his lips twisted to reveal bad teeth. His voice was rough and accented when he spoke.
‘Carter didn’t tell you I was dying?’
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘No, he didn’t,’ Meghan replied, shocked but not letting it show. Azzi had two men in the room, one who seemed to be a nurse and the other a guard.
The guard was in the corner of the room, his hands on his assault rifle, the nurse hovered close to the foot of the bed. Neither of the men seemed to find anything strange in visitors garbed in traditional clothing and speaking in American accents.
Meghan went closer to the bed, close enough to smell perspiration and body fluids and stopped herself from wrinkling her nose with an effort. ‘What are you dying of?’
; ‘Does it matter now?’ Azzi laughed hoarsely which triggered a coughing fit. The nurse rushed over and held a glass of colorless fluid to his mouth. He swallowed noisily and waved the attendant away when he started patting Azzi’s lips.
‘Liver cancer,’ the warlord answered finally. ‘I have no more than three or four months.’
‘You know why we’re here?’ Burke joined Meghan at the bedside and took over the questioning.
‘Carter said you wanted to ask some questions. Which of you are the FBI agents? If I had known I would have female visitors, I would’ve cleaned up.’ The hoarse laugh was more of a whisper this time.
‘We all are from the FBI,’ Burke replied brusquely. Zeb had made the ground rules clear; they were all to pose as FBI agents. They were not to mention their names nor dawdle for any reason. Question him and then get out, he had repeated firmly.
‘Do you have Calliope Minter?’ she asked him bluntly, not waiting for him to reply.
‘Who?’
‘Calliope Minter, Jack Minter’s daughter, the UN Investigator who you hounded. Surely you haven’t forgotten him?’
‘Ah, Jack. I haven’t forgotten him. How could I?’ Azzi’s eyes turned baleful, ‘I am here because of him.’
‘He caused your cancer?’ Beth couldn’t contain herself.
‘Not the cancer,’ Azzi’s bed protested as he raised himself higher to look past Burke, at the twins. ‘Minter is why I lost everything–’
‘Do you have Calliope Minter?’ Burke stopped his diatribe mid-sentence. ‘That’s all we want to know.’
‘No. I don’t have her. I know she’s missing, but I didn’t kidnap her. I had no hand in anything that happened to her.’
Azzi was a terrorist, a warlord, a murderous thug, yet Burke couldn’t help believing the ring of truth in his voice.
My believing isn’t important. She gestured at Kowalski who opened his briefcase and set up the polygraph it contained.
‘You know what this is?’ Burke asked the warlord.
‘I’ve seen it on TV. You came all this way to ask me this question?’ The bad teeth came on display again, this time accompanied with a burst of sour breath.
Burke nearly flinched before her training and discipline took over. She couldn’t, however, resist goading him. ‘Carter said he would come and ask you. I put a stop to that. You might not have survived his questioning.’
Kowalski attached probes to Azzi’s fingers and with the help of the nurse, strapped his chest and abdomen. More sensors were attached to the terrorist’s feet, legs, back, and forehead. Very little of Azzi’s body was uncovered by probes by the time Kowalski finished.
He unfolded a metal stand on which he mounted several miniature cameras, all pointed at Azzi, in different angles.
He sat on a chair, turned the screen towards himself, nodded at Burke, and the questioning began.
A polygraph recorded an interviewee’s breathing rate, pulse, blood pressure, and perspiration, and from those indicators, an experienced interrogator could identify if the candidate was deceiving.
Polygraphs weren’t foolproof, but the machine Kowalski had set up, came as close to being unbeatable. It didn’t just record the standard indicators. It analyzed voice and detected imperceptible changes to tone, pitch, pauses, stress, among many other vocal parameters.
The cameras monitored a subject’s body language, a twitch of an eyelid, a muscle tic, a turn of the head, and separated involuntary motions from normal behavior.
A powerful algorithm took all these feeds and told the operator if the subject was lying or deceiving.
Burke was a practiced interviewer. She started off slowly, with questions about Azzi, his background, his activities, answers to which were well known. She went into his harassment of the Minters, introducing subtle variations to her questions, questions that would catch out deception.
Two hours later, Azzi’s strength and concentration was flagging. His nurse was looking increasingly concerned even though he kept silent. From the corner of her eye, Burke saw Kowalski make a discreet sign.
Kowalski was done. Azzi, probably for the first time in his life, was speaking the truth. He wasn’t connected to Cali’s disappearance.
They packed up swiftly, Beth and Burke helping Kowalski put away his equipment. Meghan pitched in to help and was shooed away by her sister. She drifted to Azzi’s bed and adjusted a drip that the nurse was trying to reach.
‘Why did you harass Jack Minter?’
‘I would’ve kept after him even in Hell,’ he whispered vindictively. ‘Maybe I still will. It was because of him, I lost everything. He exposed me, got my men arrested. Some of them were killed by rivals because of his investigation.’
‘I was powerful once. Feared. Hated.’ His clenched fists loosened. ‘Now, what have I got?’
It’s called retribution, Meghan nearly spat out. She bit her tongue and asked another question. ‘How did you reach out to him in the U.S?’
Azzi turned sly, ‘You would like to know, wouldn’t you?’
His ego got the better of him when Meghan didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I’ve supporters in your country. It wasn’t difficult to find where Minter lived. Every year one of my admirers there, prints out a letter and sends it to Minter.’
‘It’s my love letter to Jack,’ he cackled.
Meghan leaned over him and held his eyes till they dropped. ‘It stops now. Tell your friends.’
‘How will you make me?’
‘I’ll send Carter.’
It was Beth who asked the question that was on everyone’s minds. Their gear was packed, their protection detail was hovering impatiently, when she turned to Azzi one last time.
‘How do you know Carter?’
All of them waited for Azzi to reply, who lay with his eyes closed for a long while. They were dark and haunted when he opened them. ‘He came to kill me.’
Whoa, that’s some curveball! ‘Carter?’ Beth exclaimed, ‘how come you’re still alive then?’
‘He found out I was dying. I wasn’t worth the bullet.’
He raised himself on an elbow and addressed the three of them. ‘Did I pass?’
Burke didn’t bother to hide the contempt in her voice. ‘Yeah, you passed the interrogation. Given that you’re dying, it looks like you didn’t pass God’s examination.’
The rest of the day was uneventful for Azzi, though the men around him couldn’t stop talking about the visitors. Their arrival, the security detail around them, their vehicles… all smacked of audacity and immense confidence in their own capabilities.
Azzi lay resting and heard his men chatter excitedly. He didn’t add to their conversation. He alone knew of the man behind that kind of organization. He had stared into the brown-haired man’s eyes and had gone cold.
He, Azzi, murderer, had lain in fear when he had come across Carter that day in Aleppo, as he had come out of his doctor’s clinic. Carter had grabbed him in an alleyway and had held a knife to his throat. He was preparing to sink it in Azzi’s neck when the captive had found his voice.
‘I’m dying,’ he had shouted, knowing none of his men could hear him. If Carter had grabbed him, they were dead. Then, he didn’t know the man’s name. He had found his attacker’s identity only several years later.
His attacker had paused, had dragged him back to the doctor, and only when he was satisfied, had he released Azzi.
He had then disappeared, but not before planting two bullets in each of Azzi’s thighs. He had removed his magazine and had drawn out a third bullet and had given it to Azzi.
‘I can return anytime, wherever you are. That bullet will be for you,’ the brown-haired man had said in fluent Arabic with a Syrian accent.
Years later, Carter’s call had come, with a request to entertain visitors. Azzi knew it wasn’t a request. It was a command. He had agreed, knowing he had no choice.
Azzi didn’t know what woke him in the night. His men were snoring. The nurse, that dog of a man who was
supposed to be awake all the time, was dozing in his chair.
No, not dozing, he was slumped in his chair.
Azzi raised himself and peered through the gloom. Yes, the man was out cold. With a sudden certainty, he turned his head and felt cold shock race through his body.
Carter! He was right there, standing motionless inside the room.
‘Were you telling the truth?’ The man asked him in Arabic, conversationally, as if he had nothing to fear.
He had nothing to fear, Azzi realized when the man held something up in his hand from which the sound of snoring came.
Azzi licked his lips but no words came from his mouth. He tried again. ‘Yes. I swear.’
‘You still have the bullet?’
Azzi nodded vigorously. ‘Yes.’
‘Remember my promise.’ Shadows moved in the darkness and swallowed the brown-haired man.
One more thing to do, Zeb thought, on exiting the warlord’s house. He ran down the street, three houses down, and tossed an earth colored GPS transponder in the yard of the fourth house. It didn’t matter if it was discovered. What mattered was that the location of the house would go into an encrypted database.
He had arrived before the Gulfstream had, and kept watch on Azzi’s house and the street. None of the houses in the street were damaged, none bore marks of bombings.
Curious, he had started observing all the houses when his patience had been rewarded. A bearded man, surrounded by bodyguards, had emerged from the fourth house.
Zeb knew the bearded man. Intelligence agencies in the West knew that man. He was a senior lieutenant in ISIS. Zeb had taken photographs and had sent them to Broker.
Someone, somewhere in one of the Western intelligence agencies would spot the photograph and the GPS signature. A meeting, a very brief one, would take place and a satellite, high up above, would change its orbit and start surveillance.