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Hanley asked, “What about you?”
“I’m going to call Langston and convince him to stick to my script. Then I want Doc Huxley to look at where I gouged out my subdermal transmitter and give me another dose of local. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
EDDIE SENG GENTLY CLOSED HIS CELL PHONE AND THOUGHT he’d contained a sigh, but from across the sweltering hotel room Hali Kasim asked, “What’s up?”
Max had already briefed the pair about what had been happening, so the call had lasted for less than five seconds, but from the look on Seng’s face the news couldn’t be good.
“The Chairman wants us to grab Tariq Assad.”
“When? Tonight?”
“Now.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t ask.”
Because the dingy room they rented from the Chinese gang lacked air-conditioning or even running water, both men were stripped down to their boxer shorts. Both their bodies ran with sweat, although Hali seemed to be suffering the worst. His chest and upper shoulders were a matted pelt of hair, a legacy of his Lebanese heritage.
Eddie had been leaning against one of the single bed’s headboards when his cell had chimed. He stood and started getting on his clothes. He shook out the cockroaches before legging into his pants. A trickle of aromatic steam from the restaurant below the room rose from a seam in the old wooden floors.
“Are we really doing this?” Hali asked, a fresh wash of perspiration slicking his face.
“Juan says that Assad’s the key, so, yeah, we’re doing this.”
“The key? Assad’s the key? The guy’s nothing more than a two-bit, two-timing corrupt official.”
Seng looked across at the Corporation’s communications specialist. “All the more reason to wonder why they’ve staked out his house, and his office at the dock. Max said yesterday that their government thinks he’s tied in with Al-Jama’s crew, even though that makes no sense. Assad’s lifestyle is too conspicuous for him to be a terrorist. Real tangos don’t carry on a half dozen romantic liaisons and draw potential police interest by taking bribes.”
Hali thought for a moment. “Okay, I’ll buy that. So if he’s not with Al-Jama, why do the Libyans want him so badly?”
“For the same reason Juan does. He knows something about this whole mess, only no one knows what.”
Kasim was on his feet, securing a compact Glock 19 to an ankle holster before slipping on his pants. “This is why I stay on the ship. There my job is easy. Radio call comes in, I answer it. Someone wants to talk to a guy on the other side of the world, I make it happen. Shore Operations need encrypted phones that look like cigarette packs, I can get ’em. Skulking around in broad daylight trying to abduct a man wanted by the Libyan secret police isn’t exactly my cup of tea.”
Putting on the accent of an elderly Chinese sage, Eddie said, “Broaden your appetites, grasshopper, and the world will feed your soul.”
Seng was not noted for his sense of humor. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy a good joke but that he was rarely the source, so Hali’s laugh was disproportionately loud and long. Telling it had been Eddie’s way of reassuring Hali that he knew what he was doing.
“Don’t worry. Our last report puts Assad at the house of girlfriend number three. The Libyan authorities are nowhere near there. By now, he has to know he’s a wanted man, so anyone offering him a lifeline is going to seem like a godsend. We’re just going to stroll up, explain to him he’s out of options, and bring him back here. Piece of cake.”
Assad’s third mistress, the Rubenesque wife of a judge, lived with her husband in a neighborhood of
four- and five-story buildings built of stone covered with stucco and dating back more than a hundred years. The windows and balconies were protected by wrought-iron grilles, and the flat roofs were seas of satellite dishes. The ground floors of most of the buildings were shops and boutiques that catered to the upscale residents.
The sidewalks were wide and generous, while the roads were narrow and twisting, a leftover from when the neighborhood was serviced by horses rather than cars. The meandering nature of the streets gave the neighborhood a feeling of exclusivity, a quiet little enclave in the otherwise bustling city.
The Chinese gang members they had hired to track Tariq Assad hid in plain sight with a broken-down delivery van. They were parked opposite the mistress’s building, with the hood up and engine parts spread across a tarp on the nearby sidewalk. Men and women, some dressed in robes, others in Western fashion, moved around them without a glance.
Eddie found a spot for their rental car in front of a small grocery store down the street from the van. The smell of oranges from bins flanking the door filled the air.
He fumbled in the glove compartment while focusing on the street, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing seemed out of place, and his instincts, which had served him well over the years, told him the area was clear. The two old men playing backgammon at an outdoor café were what they appeared to be. The stock boy dusting a table in the front window of a furniture store kept his eyes on his job and not on passing traffic. No one was just sitting in his car as the afternoon sun beat down mercilessly. Other than the gang members, there were no vans for an observation team to use as a base.
At the end of the block was a large construction site with a crawler crane, hoisting material up the ten-story, steel-and-concrete framework of what would soon be luxury condominiums. Again, Eddie saw nothing suspicious about the parade of cement mixers and trucks moving through the gates.
“Ready?” he asked Hali.
