The Killing Ground (11 page)

The young men were already sampling wine behind her. When they offered a glass to Hussein, he refused, pointing out that he was flying, but he accepted salad sandwiches in leavened bread and sat eating a couple with Sara, who noticed that when his right trouser leg slid up a little it disclosed an ankle holster containing a Colt pistol. When she asked what it was for, he made light of it, stressing that though it was hardly likely that anything would go wrong, there were Arabs down there whose lives were hardly formal.

On the other hand, he omitted to mention that an ankle holster was the mark of the true professional.

For the moment, she was content and quite thrilled, and gradually, her head went back and she dozed.

C H A R L E S F E R G U S O N ’ S C O U S I N , Professor Hal Stone, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Hoxley Professor of Marine Archaeology, had what was common to most academics in his profession: an almost total lack of money with which to conduct any kind of signifi-cant research.

At Hazar, a diving operation on a World War II freighter had dis-

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closed beneath it a Phoenician trading ship of Hannibal’s era. He could afford only one or two annual visits using local Arab divers operating from an ancient boat called the
Sultan
. On a previous visit, Dillon and Billy, both expert divers, had been able to render him some assistance.

The phone call from Ferguson had sent the good professor into a frenzy of delight. When he wasn’t there, he employed his Arab foreman, a man named Selim, as caretaker. He phoned him with the news that he would be arriving and packed hurriedly.

He hadn’t felt so cheerful in a long time and it wasn’t only because of the prospect of diving. His dark secret was that as a young man, he had worked for the Secret Security Services, and was well aware of the kind of thing Ferguson and his minions got up to. To be involved delighted him.

“Transport provided?” he asked Ferguson.

“Of course. We’ve got a Gulfstream these days. The boys will have to get rid of the RAF rondels. We’ll call it . . . a United Nations Ocean Survey. That sounds good.”

“Absolutely. So . . . the reason your people are going there. What is it this time?”

“Come by my flat and I’ll fill you in.”

Stone hung up and checked himself in the wardrobe mirror. The man who looked out at him was in his sixties, tanned, white-bearded, wearing a khaki bush jacket, khaki shirt and slacks and a crumpled bush hat. He produced a pair of dark Ray-Ban sunglasses.

“That’s better,” he said. “Not exactly Indiana Jones, but not bad. Here we go again then.”

He opened the door to his rooms, got a bag in each hand and left.

R O P E R H A D H A D A F E W P R O B L E M S running to earth the details of the charter plane flying from Kuwait with Hussein and party. The American, Grant, found himself visited by a Captain Jackson of Military Intelligence at the British Embassy, who was delighted to do Charles 90

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Ferguson the favor. The fact that just on the corner of the hangar was a security camera, which on inspection proved to have taken several photos of the entire party, brought Jackson’s visit to a more than satisfactory conclusion. In no time at all, everyone interested was able to examine them as much as they liked.

“The photos of Hussein Rashid are a real bonus,” Ferguson said.

“What do you think of the girl?” Roper asked.

“Typical of these cases, making the girl dress in that way. What about you?”

Roper poured a whiskey. “She has a calm sort of face, a face that doesn’t give a great deal away.”

“I’m not sure it resembles the father to any great degree.”

At that moment, Caspar Rashid hurried in with Sergeant Doyle.

“What’s all this about photos?”

“Here they are,” Roper told him. “Fresh in from our contact in Kuwait.”

Caspar examined them carefully, shuffling the photos several times.

Finally, he said, “It’s amazing to actually have photos taken such a short time ago.”

“How do you think she looks?” Ferguson asked.

“I don’t know, I really don’t. I know I might sound strange saying this, but it’s the clothes she’s wearing. They change her personality so much, or so it seems. Can my wife see these?”

“Good heavens, yes. It’s a real stroke of luck getting such excellent photos of Hussein and his merry men.”

Caspar examined a couple of them more closely. “You know, I barely recognize him. It’s been several years, and then there were those six months in that American prison. I recall him as a very nice boy when young.”

Dillon, who had come in quietly and was looking at the photos, said,

“People change and circumstances change them even more. His mother and father killed in a bombing raid, that six months in jail. It must have

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seemed cruel and heartless.” He helped himself to a shot of Roper’s whiskey. “God knows, I had enough experience in Ireland during the Troubles to see how people can change fundamentally.”

“Well, you would know, Sean,” Roper said. “This Hussein, though, he’s no ordinary one. Judging by his score, he’s almost as good as you.”

There was a heavy silence, for there was not much left for anyone else to say.

S A R A , E N G R O S S E D W I T H H E R M A P R E A D I N G and following the red line, saw the palm trees and the buildings that were St. Anthony’s Hospice before anybody else. She pointed and called out, and Jasmine and the boys stood up and crowded to the windows to see. Hussein went down lower and lower to no more than two thousand feet.

He circled. There was a parapet, several monks on it in black hats and black robes. They waved. Hussein waggled his wings and turned south.

It was perhaps ten minutes later that their luck ran out. Quite suddenly, smoke, black and oily, started to come out of the port engine. Jasmine saw it first and cried out and there was a general disturbance, but no sign of flames, just that heavy black plume of smoke.

Sara, who’d dozed off again, came awake with a start to hear him say,

“Calm down, all of you.”

He switched off the engine and turned on the extinguisher for the port engine. Spray mingled with the smoke, but there were still no flames. “I think I know what it is. The oil seals have gone, leaking oil over the hot engine and creating all that black smoke. Everybody fasten their seat belts and we’ll go down.” He said to Sara, “Follow Grant’s line on the map. We must be close to the oasis at Fuad and Saint Anthony’s Well.”

He went down fast, the black plume of smoke flaring out from the wing, and Sara said calmly, “Over there on the right,” and she pointed through the windscreen.

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“Good girl.”

They went down lower and lower until they were only a few hundred feet above the sand, and the oasis seemed to be coming toward them fast.

Sara saw a clump of palm trees, a small, flat-roofed building to go with it, the clearly defined line of the road marked by the feet of countless travelers over the centuries.

There was a large pool of water, six horses drinking from it, Bedouins in robes beside a cooking fire gazing up, hands raised to shade their eyes from the sun.

Of further interest was a man in black robes, his wrists tied above him as he hung from a pole beside the house.

Hussein dropped the Hawk down on the road and rolled to a halt some distance from the oasis. He said to his three men, “Out you go. Rifles at the ready.”

One of the men by the pool was holding a riding whip. He turned as if ignoring them and slashed it across the monk’s back. The monk’s robe had slipped from his shoulders and they were already bloody.

Sara said, “They can’t do that, he’s a priest.”

“Calm yourself.” Hussein reached for his phone, which rang as his men disembarked, and discovered it was the Broker. “Good,” Hussein said. “I was hoping you’d be available.” He explained the situation with the plane and detailed their position.

“I’ll contact the airport at Hazar and arrange a recovery,” said the Broker. “Probably by helicopter. I’ll call you back when I know more.”

Hussein said, “Let’s get moving, ladies.” He smiled at Sara. “Pass me my jacket, will you?”

As she handed it to him, she saw the maker’s label inside and it said Armani, and she thought it was the most beautiful jacket she’d ever seen and suited him completely.

“Be ready for anything, boys,” he said. “Some bad bastards here, I think. Remember your blood, Rashid, before anything else.”

“As one, cousin, we are with you,” Khazid said, and they started forward, Hussein with Jasmine on one arm and Sara on the other.

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T H E S I X M E N by the pool watched them approach, cradling their rifles, wearing black robes and black-and-white head scarves. The leader, tall and bearded, waited, the whip dangling from his right hand.

“And who have we here?” he demanded.

“Who asks?” Hussein asked, and moved to the right where a pole pro-truded from a wooden fence, and sat on it.

“Mind your manners, pretty boy,” the man said. “I am Ali ben Levi.

I say who comes and goes here. I claim the well and this one cannot gain-say me.”

He turned and slashed the priest across the shoulders again, and Sara cried out, “No.”

“Learn your place, girl. He is only a Christian.”

“And I am Christian, too,” she said in Arabic. “Would you lash me?”

She ran at him, and he grabbed her wrist and laughed. “To do so would give me great pleasure.” He flung her to the ground and raised the whip, and Hussein’s hand fastened on the Colt .25 in the ankle holster and he drew it and fired, catching ben Levi between the eyes, the hollow-point cartridge propelling him backward into the pool and blowing away the back of his skull.

In virtually the same moment, one of the men opposite started to raise his rifle and Hassim shot him just with his AK. There was dead silence. Hussein gestured, the Colt still in his hand.

“On this occasion, I allow you to live,” he told the rest of ben Levi’s men. “So take your dead and go. Go now.”

Hurriedly, they collected their horses, tied the bodies of the two dead men over the saddles of two mares and mounted. They waited for a moment and Hussein spoke.

“I am Hussein Rashid. I am the Hammer of God. I welcome any man of the ben Levi tribe who seeks satisfaction.”

Which they did not, and left. Jasmine was trembling, but Sara was strangely calm. “I’ll see to the priest,” she said and went to him.

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The satellite phone sounded, but there was heavy static. The Broker shouted, “It’s me. Is the static clearing?”

“I’m here.”

“They’re sending a helicopter. Is everything okay?”

“A minor problem. It’s been taken care of.”

“Good. We’ll be needing you soon, Hussein. There’s work to be done, you know that. Osama himself was inquiring about you when we last spoke. He sends you his blessing.”

“Tell him I thank him. Good-bye for now.”

By the pool, Sara and Jasmine tended the priest, Sara washing his back carefully with a cloth from the house.

“Are you truly a Christian, child?” he asked.

“My mother is English, my father Rashid. I am baptized.”

“And yet you wear the clothes of a Muslim woman.”

Hussein and his men sat smoking and listening, and heard her say,

“In the whole of the Koran, there are only two mothers of prophets. The first, the mother of Mohammed, whose name be praised, and the second Mary, the mother of the prophet Jesus. There is good in all things.

I think this is true of the Bible and the Koran.”

“So young and yet so wise.” He counted his beads and started to pray.

She stood up and went and sat on the ground beside Hussein, and the others stood up out of respect and moved away.

“I didn’t know,” she said in English. “About you.”

“Of course you didn’t. You weren’t meant to.”

“I thought I knew you. Now I see I never knew you at all. The Hammer of God.” She shook her head, repeating it in Arabic. “The servants would speak of you and sometimes you were mentioned in newspapers. Strange.” She shook her head again. “I read the news to improve my Arabic and didn’t realize I was sometimes reading about you and your doings.” She changed to Arabic. “The great warrior. Never your face on television, but when you spoke on radio, you always described yourself as the Hammer of God in English. Even the young children learned

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it that way, some of the T-shirts also were printed with the English phrase. Why did you allow this?”

“Personal arrogance—to mock my enemies. In the English papers, the wording would be rather different. Not great warrior, but terrorist, I think.”

“Yes, it’s amazing how much it’s a matter of the words one chooses.”

“How wise,” he said. “Such wisdom in one so young.” In the distance, a sound emerged, the unmistakable stutter of a helicopter. “So, another stage on our journey.” He pulled her up. “Say good-bye to the good father and we’ll be on our way.”

T H E P O R T O F H A Z A R was small, with white buildings and narrow alleys, the vivid blue of the sea contrasting with the whiteness of the buildings.

The harbor was well used, with coastal shipping of various kinds, fishing vessels, old-fashioned dhows and motor cruisers.

They came in from the sea in a half-circle, and about a mile out from the town Sara noticed a big dhow, very ancient from the look of it.

Sara said, “That looks interesting.”

Hussein said, “It is. It’s really being used as a diving platform. They call it the
Sultan
. Some years ago, marine archaeologists discovered the wreck of a freighter about ninety feet down that had been sunk by a U-boat in the Second World War. When they dived on it, they discovered Phoenician pottery from about two hundred B.C. The freighter’s been sitting on a much more interesting wreck.”