AllFreeNovel
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He starts opening the cardboard. “I will sacrifice almost anything for Queen and country, save for my digestion. Especially when the host country makes the best combat rations in the world.”
A while later we’re eating at a small kitchen table. My meal today is a duck mousse appetizer, followed by Alsatian pork stew. Across from me Jeremy is dining on an appetizer of venison terrine and a meal of white bean, sausage, and duck casserole. We’re both drinking warm flat water with our meals.
There are black locked cabinets against two of the walls, shelving, and two single beds. The lighting is recessed and comfortable, and the air is dry and cool.
Jeremy says, “While you were using the WC, I checked in with the home office. Rashad is in the UK. Possibly going to London.”
“Then let’s get moving,” I say.
He nods. “Over in that corner there, we have photo equipment to give us both new passports. You feel like being Canadian?”
“Why not, ’ey?” I ask. “But I need a bit more information before we head out. That runway attack. Nice way to spoof you and the French, and come close to killing you and maybe Victor. But was that a one-off? Was it just Rashad looking for revenge? Are you still certain he’s planning a mass attack?”
“I am,” he says.
“Then share,” I say. “If this op is going to nail Rashad Hussain before he attacks New York City, I’m in one hundred percent. I don’t care if I’m smoked and depending on you for food, shelter, and travel. The stakes are that high. But if this is just a deal to settle a grudge because he killed your dad, then I’m out.”
Jeremy says, “Fair enough.” He takes another bite of his casserole. “We’ve been following him for years. Rashad was always one to be in the shadows, staying aside, not even pulling the strings…but pulling the strings of someone else who was pulling the strings. A suicide attack on a hotel in Mumbai. A bomb at a cruise-ship terminal in Marseilles. A sarin-gas attack in the Tokyo subway. The perpetrators would be captured, and their paymasters and organizers would be identified, and then…the trail would stop. But always, always, Rashad Hussain was there in the far background. One of his corporations or companies or business interests would be nearby, serving as a paymaster. A place for research. Or a gathering point. But nothing that would stand up in the usual court of law.”
“What kind of businesses is he involved in?”
Jeremy smiles. “Not oil or anything petrochemical. Amusing, isn’t it? Plastics, software development, transportation, computer hardware…even construction equipment and machinery, like the bin Laden family. And for the past year the chatter has increased, saying those working with Rashad were going after something big, something to happen on May 29. And this time he won’t be in the shadows. He’ll be right in the middle of it. Almost like all of his earlier activities were just practice drills, until this, the main event.”
“And your father? And his father?”
“They both attended Sandhurst. He was from Saudi Arabia, my father from…well, what passes for the nobility in dear old England. They both went into their respective militaries, and then into government service. They kept in touch over the years—both of them using each other, I suppose, in the service of their nations.”
“Were you and Rashad friends?”
Jeremy grimaces. “That would have been a storybook tale, correct? Two lads from different worlds, finding a common bond from their fathers. But we never got along, because Rashad hated his father and couldn’t understand why I didn’t have the same attitude toward my own. You see…Rashad is illegitimate. He couldn’t get over the shame. He has three half-sisters, but they’ve always ignored him. I think he hated me for having a relatively normal family life, and he hated my father because he was friends with his own pater.”
I finish off my stew, wondering if I can order these French rations for my future overseas ops—that is, if I ever get my smoke order reversed. “And he killed both of them?”
A slow nod. “Yes. Rashad’s father was a pilot. One day during a visit, he took my father up for a flight from Jeddah, over the Red Sea, flying his private Learjet 40. A nice, safe, routine flight, but they never came back. A wing was found, nothing else. And later…when I met with Rashad following the air-and-sea search, he smiled and shrugged and said, ‘Engine failure. Poor repairs, no doubt.’”
I think about that and say, “He was taunting you. The aircraft they were on…it was sabotaged. By recent maintenance work.”
Jeremy says, “By an aircraft-maintenance company owned by Rashad.”
“No real proof.”
“Real enough,” he says.
I take in our comfortable little safe house, eager to get the hell out, and look to the stairway leading up to the first floor. Just one way in and one way out. I don’t like it.
“And what of New York?”
Jeremy now looks troubled—a look I’m not used to. “I know he’s after it.”
“How?”
“Because he told me,” Jeremy says.
Chapter54
RASHAD HUSSAINis sipping from a small cup of tea in the foyer at the Claridge Hotel in London’s Mayfair section when Marcel Koussa sits down across from him. The ivory-colored room has high windows, sculpted arches, and Roman-style columns in the corners.
“Are they ready?” he asks, gently setting the teacup down in a fine China saucer.
