The captain worked for TransAvia, a Belarusian cargo airline based in Minsk. For thirty years he had hauled all manner of suspect loads to airfields across the world. Smuggled oil drillinghardware to Russia’s Far East, crates of guns to Africa, banned electrical transformers to Cuba. He thought he’d done it all.
But this was in another league.
The shipping party listed on the manifest was laughable. He’d seen his share of sham companies, but whoever had contracted this shipment hadn’t even bothered to list a contact address. TransAvia had given him a flight plan with an indirect route that avoided the airspace of certain countries. If he had to divert for an emergency, he’d been told to land only at military bases in Russia or a handful of other countries: Azerbaijan, Cyprus, or Syria. And in an unprecedented preflight briefing, his chief pilot had instructed that if none of those places were reachable in a crisis, he was to ditch his aircraft at sea.
The forklift backed out of the cargo bay, and as the last cask was being tied down by the loadmaster, his copilot appeared at the entry door. He’d been preforming a preflight inspection in preparation for departure.
“Captain, something you should see.”
The skipper, already in a sulfurous mood, glared at his copilot. The young man was competent, but his penchant for going by the book was grossly overdeveloped.
“Don’t tell me you have found another minor dent on the fuselage.” That had been the issue last week, a ding in the hull similar to what a car door would suffer in a parking lot. A jet this old had hundreds of them.
“No, it is more important,” the kid said.
The captain followed his second down the stairs and onto the tarmac. The pressure to stay on schedule was intense, and the nature of their cargo only added to the tension. He was in no mood for delays.
The copilot led around to the far side of the big jet. There wasno need to point out the problem. The captain stopped in his tracks. The main landing gear consisted of twin sets of eight wheels, one on either side of the broad fuselage. One of the four tires on the forward starboard truck was completely flat, and an adjacent tire appeared to be damaged.
“Shit!” the captain muttered.
He went closer and studied the mess. They had arrived three hours ago, a rushed crossing from Minsk, and on the inbound taxi there had been no irregularities. No steering issues, no thumping of damaged tires. Then he saw the culprit. Wedged between tires two and three was the twisted remains of a pickax. Like everything in Siberia, the airport at Novy Urengoy was in a perpetual state of repair. He imagined the tool had fallen off a truck driven by a drunken work crew.
“We have to call a mechanic,” the copilot said.
The captain gave him a withering look. Instead of slapping the kid, satisfying as that would have been, he pulled out his phone and placed a call to TransAvia. While the call was routed to the maintenance section, he said, “Call the tower, tell them to keep our flight plan open.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then go find some gloves and get back here.”
“Gloves?” the copilot inquired.
“Unless you want to get your lily-white hands dirty. When the mechanic shows up, he’s going to need some help.”
43
The Medina
Tangier, Morocco
0640 Local Time
When Gunther Klaus awoke, he felt prickly and tired, another poor night’s sleep adding to his collective fatigue. The room had no windows and one door. The only light came from a naked overhead bulb and a slit of light beneath the door. He estimated the dimensions of his quarters to be roughly ten by thirteen feet. Nearer a closet than a place to live. The shared bathroom was two floors down, and the only appliance, an electric hot plate in one corner, was perilously close to the sheetless stained mattress. The mattress reeked of bodily fluids and hashish.
Depressing as all that was, for the last eighteen hours there was no place on earth Klaus would rather have been—or at least, no place in Tangier. Because aside from the bartender, who would be sound asleep at this hour, no one knew where he was.
The tiny room was situated above the Kasbah Bar. Alcohol was an acceptable vice in Morocco, although generally kept indoors out of respect for Islamic sensitivities. Klaus had patronized theKasbah a number of times. He wasn’t a regular by any means, but he’d been here enough to know that the owner, who tended the bar most nights, kept a handful of rooms for rent on the top floor. Klaus had seen cash deftly change hands, and watched customers creep up the narrow staircase. Some did so in the company of prostitutes. Others were more guarded—gaunt, ebony-skinned men from the south awaiting their final push to Europe.
Tangier’s geographic position was unique. Less than twenty miles across the Strait of Gibraltar was Punta de Tarifa, Spain, making this the nearest jumping-off point between the continents. For that reason, Tangier was a natural hub for human trafficking. And the old medina, as had been the case for a thousand years, was central to the action. Its maze of streets and alleys—some too narrow for people to pass shoulder to shoulder—were all but impossible to police. The Kasbah Bar, Klaus had decided, was the perfect place to hole up for a night. Any longer, however, was out of the question. If all went to plan, today he would reconnect with the Americans.
He’d spent a largely sleepless night weighing how to make that happen. Countless ideas had rushed into his head and vaporized just as easily. The sticking point was always the same. He had to leave a message where the Americans would see it, yet do so under the noses of the Russians.
It was at dawn, with the morning call to prayer reverberating against the ancient stucco walls, that he’d finally come up with a plan. He’d lain still for a time, working through the angles. It wasn’t perfect, but no plan was. As Klaus put on his shirt and shoes, details fell into place. His cash was running desperately low, but he thought he might pull it off.
He went downstairs in a hurry. An old woman sweeping thefloor of the deserted bar shot him a disapproving look. Nothing good ever went on upstairs. Klaus returned an empty smile and continued outside.
The dawn air was cool, and as he walked south kernels of the basic tradecraft he’d been taught took hold. He had made his most important purchase the previous afternoon. Feeling exposed on his way to the Kasbah, he’d stopped at a souvenir shop and paid cash for a cheap gray hoodie. Today it seemed like the best investment in clothing he had ever made, surpassing so many fine suits from Armani and Saint Laurent.
