A Gentleman's Game (16 page)

17

Israel—Tel Aviv, Mossad Headquarters,
Office of the Metsada Division Chief
6 September 1956 Local (GMT+3.00)

Borovsky sat with his
gangly legs crossed at the ankles and propped on Landau’s desk, oblivious to the folders he toppled every time he moved his feet. The desk lamp threw long shadows on the cinderblock walls of the office.

“You know, the Arabs think by doing this, with my feet like this, I’m saying you’re like the dirt on which I walk.” Borovsky grinned. “They would say it was an insult, Noah, that I’m saying you’re less than dirt.”

Landau, still on the telephone, glared at Borovsky in the hopes that the look alone would shut the man up. It seemed to work, but not until Borovsky had barked another of his laughs. He didn’t move his feet, however, until Landau was off the phone.

“That was your new friend at SIS?” Borovsky asked.

“Crocker, yes.”

“They’re going to do it?”

“They’ve already started. Their agent arrived in San’a’ Saturday night.”

Borovsky’s face seemed to grow even narrower as he pondered this. “We have no intelligence that Faud’s even left that fucking desert he hides in as yet. And fuck only knows if el-Sayd is on the move.”

Landau didn’t speak.

Borovsky shook his head. “They don’t have a date. They’re shooting in the dark.”

“No, Crocker would not allocate an agent on a hunch. Not even for Faud.”

“You’re sure?”

“I wouldn’t. He won’t.”

“Who did he send?”

“He did not say, but I think it would be Chace, the head of his Special Section.”

“He any good?”

“
She
is the head of his Special Section, Viktor.”

Borovsky’s surprise was apparent but short-lived. “That’s smart, that’s clever. We need more women, you know that? The women, they can be fucking vicious.”

Landau ignored him, pinched the bridge of his nose above his eyeglasses, trying to think.

“You think Crocker just told us to grab our ankles?” Borovsky asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. It was always a possibility.”

“I think we’re about to grab our ankles.”

“Why?”

“We’re Jews, Noah. If history has shown us anything, it’s that we get screwed in the ass at every opportunity. You gave the British a gift, a chance for
revenge,
in exchange for which we asked for the opportunity to
defend
ourselves. What do you think will happen?”

“The decisions are political, not personal.”

Borovsky shook his head, looking at Landau sadly. “Killing Faud is purely personal. It will not prevent another attack like they suffered. Faud is not the planner, he is the cheerleader. They’ve already cut us out, Noah. They sure as hell aren’t going to expose themselves to take el-Sayd, too.”

“No, we know Faud and el-Sayd are going to meet. That’s the logical time to strike.”

“You put too much faith in the British.”

“Faith has nothing to do with it. You’re Intelligence, Viktor, look at it logically.”

“No, logic is for planners. I don’t plan, I interpret, and that is something else.” Borovsky folded his hands behind his head, sighing up at the ceiling. “We’re going to get screwed.”

Landau nodded slightly, conceding what Borovsky had said. He’d known when he’d gone to Crocker that there was the possibility the Mossad would be left out of the loop, and he’d understood that risk. El-Sayd would never be London’s priority the way Faud was, and Landau could hardly fault the people at SIS for that. Each group ostensibly did what its commanding government felt was in its best interests. He bore Crocker no ill will.

But just as SIS had to serve England, Landau and the Mossad had to serve Israel.

“It’ll have to go past the Chief,” he said after a moment longer.

“What will?”

“Action.” Landau reached for his phone again. “Put together a briefing, Viktor. I want our man in Yemen by tomorrow night.”

18

Yemen—San’a’, Taj Sheba Hotel
8 September 0711 Local (GMT+3.00)

“Ciao?”

“Miss Maribino?”

“Sì?”

“How did you sleep?”

“Fine, fine.
Grazie per chiedere.
”

“Glad to hear it. Enjoy your stay.”

•

Seventeen minutes later Chace heard two firm but gentle raps at her hotel room door. She rose from where she had been seated on the bed, cross-legged, going over her tourist map of San’a’, and moved to the short entry hall, pressing herself against the wall as she reached its end, to keep out of the line of sight from the peephole. It was a Wallace move, and in a situation like this, pure paranoia, but, she rationalized, paranoia keeps you alive a few minutes longer.

Not that she had any reason to be paranoid. She’d been in Yemen for four days, and so far the greatest dangers had come from the potential of nonpotable water and the rather unsubtle advances of a young Frenchman from her tour group who had insisted on using her to practice his Italian.

“Sì?”
she called through the door.
“Chi è?”

“Miss Maribino? Mr. Hewitt. We met at the Al Dobaey restaurant last night?”

Chace reached out, silently turned the deadbolt on the door back, pulled the lockbar, and then rotated the doorknob just far enough to dislodge the latch. Finished, she slid back, stepping into the doorway of the bathroom. It wouldn’t buy much time, but if it wasn’t Hewitt, the extra time would give her the initiative should it turn out to be needed.

“Entra,”
she said.

The door opened, and Andrew Hewitt stepped into the room, searching for her behind his thin glasses. When he saw her watching him, he smiled in cheerful greeting, then stepped the rest of the way inside before closing the door after him. Chace waited until he threw the locks before she moved back to the bed, retrieved her cigarettes from the nightstand, and then resumed her previous posture and position. She lit a smoke, watching as Hewitt stepped out of the small hall, taking stock of the accommodations as she took stock of him.

She put him in his early thirties at the most, and better-looking than his file photograph had made him out to be. Five foot eight, broad from the shoulders down, light brown and curly hair, eyes so light blue as to have moved on to gray. His skin, which back in England had probably been quite fair, had acquired the tan and character that come from exposure to strong sun for extended periods. He wore a tan linen coat over his lightweight suit, the shirt white, the tie blue, the belt black, as were his shoes, though a thin coating of dust clung to the latter. He carried a small briefcase, oxblood-colored leather, in his left hand.

When he’d finished taking in the room, he smiled cheerfully at Chace a second time, then laid his briefcase on the foot of the bed and quickly worked the locks until they released. He lifted the lid, then turned the case to show Chace the contents. Inside, restrained with elastic straps to keep them from rattling about within, was a box of ammunition in .22, a Walther TPH that could easily have been the very same gun Chace had trained with at Fort Monkton, a Gem-Tech Vortex suppressor, a box of surgical gloves, and a rolled-up poster.

“I trust you’ve been enjoying Yemen?” Hewitt said. “You’re still clean, I take it?”

“Pristine.” If anyone had been going through her room or her things aside from the maid while she’d been out and about, they were better at hiding that fact than she was at spotting it. It wasn’t a real concern; there’d been no sign whatsoever that the Yemeni authorities even knew she existed, and a random wiretap on an Italian tourist visiting San’a’ was out of the question. They could speak freely here.

Cigarette in her mouth, Chace reached into the case. She took two of the gloves first, setting them aside, then removed the Walther, the box of ammunition, and the suppressor, laying them out on the map before her. English was common enough in Yemen that the switch in languages didn’t throw her too much, but nonetheless, it took an effort not to answer him in Italian.

“You’re certain?” Hewitt asked.

“Positive,” she told him as she began checking the weapon. “No trouble at the airport, no shadows on the way to the hotel, nothing since. There’s a Frenchman in the group named Billiery; at first I thought he might be a plant. He’s not. He’s a student.”

“Keeping his hands to himself, I hope?”

“He is now,” Chace said. “I think it’s safe to say that the only people who know I’m here are the two of us and a handful of people in London.”

“And another handful in Tel Aviv.”

Chace looked up from the gun in her hand. “That suspicion or something more?”

“Straight from D-Ops. I don’t know why he wanted it passed along, but there’s a lot I don’t know. Presumably it means something to you.”

The cheerful grin came back, and Chace wondered if it was affect or sincerity. It didn’t much matter to her, and she wasn’t inclined to answer, so she shrugged and went back to examining the Walther. Content that it would do its job when called upon, she set it aside and moved onto the task of loading the clip.

“What’s the word on Faud?”

“Normally we’d lay down a bundle of riyals and buy information,” Hewitt said. “But London told us to go softly, so it proved a little more difficult. He arrived yesterday with his bodyguards, six of them. He’s staying with Saleh Al-Hebshi, in the Old City. Al-Hebshi is one of the louder resident Wahhabist
imams,
normally works out of the Al-Jami’ al-Kamir—the Great Mosque—but seems to be favoring the Qubbat Talha Mosque a little more of late. Hebshi was linked to one of the Yemenis who rammed the USS
Cole
in 2000.”

“When yesterday?”

“Did he arrive? Late afternoon. Arrived on a private jet from Jeddah, landed fifteen-forty, was met by Al-Hebshi at the airport. Taken by four-wheel-drive convoy to Al-Hebshi’s home.”

“How large was the convoy?”

“Three vehicles. Al-Hebshi had two guards of his own.” Hewitt’s look was full of sympathy. “I’m afraid you’re going to find it very hard to get Faud alone.”

Chace finished with the clip, set it aside, and put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand, then gave Hewitt a reappraisal. Number Twos were the legmen for London, while the Number Ones maintained cover and attended the day-to-day running of the Station. Most every One, and quite a few Twos, viewed a Minder’s arrival in their terrain with hostility or loathing or both. Minders were trouble for a Station, sent in to do a job, to get a result, and then to depart once more. For the Station, that quite often meant the residents had a mess to clean up, a politically sensitive, potentially law-breaking mess.

So Chace was used to dealing with recalcitrant Twos and bitter Ones who wanted nothing more than for her to leave them alone.

Hewitt didn’t seem to be one of those, and while she didn’t show it to him, she appreciated the fact.

She swept the box and suppressor from the map, saying, “Show me where Al-Hebshi lives.”

“I’m ahead of you there.” Hewitt removed the poster from the case, slid the elastic off its end and onto his wrist, and then unrolled it in front of her, revealing a detailed map of the Old City. He used the gun and the box of ammunition to weigh the ends down. “Think you’ll find this a bit more useful than that one provided by the General Tourism Authority. You’ll see I’ve already marked the key spots.”

She stared at him. “All of them?”

Hewitt seemed confused for a second, then shook his head. “No, not all of them. The place you’re thinking of, I think, would be right about here.”

He set an index finger on the map, indicating a block well outside the walls of the Old City. There was no other indication of the safehouse aside from the pressure of his finger on the paper.

Chace nodded, and Hewitt retracted his finger. She studied the map, noting the streets and the street names, and particularly how the same street seemed to switch identities several times within the space of only a few blocks. The Great Mosque was marked, as was the Qubbat Talha. She stayed focused on the map for several minutes, long enough for Hewitt to realize that no questions were immediately forthcoming, and so he moved to one of the two chairs in the room, beside the television, and settled himself.

It wouldn’t do, Chace decided. She had to get into the Old City away from the tour, learn the lay of the land herself. She’d have to see Al-Hebshi’s place, to verify what she already suspected: there was no way she’d be able to get to Faud as long as he was inside. And if Faud’s travel in San’a’ was, as she suspected, going to be conducted via four-wheel drive, she wasn’t likely to get a crack at him in transit, either. At least not a crack at him where a twenty-two-caliber semiautomatic with seven shots would make a difference.

So far, almost every excursion she’d made had been within the confines of the tour group, an act to maintain cover more than anything else. The thought of wandering through San’a’ alone didn’t bother Chace; this wasn’t Saudi, and while women here still lived very different lives apart from the men, the same rules simply did not apply to foreign women, seen as a strange kind of “third sex.” As long as she remained culturally sensitive, traveling alone through the Old City wouldn’t be a problem, and she had packed the wardrobe to do just that. A long skirt that fell to her ankles, a loose top that fell almost to midthigh and would remain unbelted to hide her shape, and a scarf to conceal her hair were all that modesty demanded.

Yemeni women, on the other hand, moved through their days hooded in their black
baltas,
shapeless cotton coat-slash-cloak combinations that effectively hid any body beneath. Almost all of them wore veils as well. It was deception of an entirely different sort, a public modesty in the face of a private vanity. Chace knew for a fact that most of the women she’d seen on the streets wore midriff-baring tops and tight designer jeans beneath their
baltas.

Chace rolled the map once more, offered it back to Hewitt. “Anything else?”

“Sorry, that’s all. When I left it this morning, Hebshi and Faud were still at the house, though I suspect they went to the Great Mosque for their morning
ziryat.
”

“Why the Great Mosque and not the other one?”

“I would think its name would tell you everything you need to know. It’s truly spectacular, what little I’ve seen of it, and I’ve seen very little, and I’ve been here two years, now. It was built sometime around
A.D.
630, when the Prophet was still living, just after Islam had come to Yemen. Man like Faud, I can’t imagine him being content to worship anywhere else.”

Chace considered that, then nodded. “You’re a perceptive fellow, Mr. Hewitt.”

He lifted the case in his hand, smiled again. “Perceptive enough to know that I’m desperately hoping I won’t be seeing you again.”

“It’s mutual, I assure you.” Chace followed him down the hall, unlocked the door so he could exit.

“Best of luck,” Hewitt said.

Chace locked the door again after he’d left.

•

She started the walk through the Suq al-Milh, literally the salt market, though as far as Chace could ascertain, salt was a very small part of what was for sale. In truth, the
suq
seemed comprised of dozens of other, smaller markets, with vendors selling everything from silks to jewelry to uniquely curved tribesmen’s daggers called
jambiya.
It was warm but not uncomfortable, and Chace assumed the sky was blue, but Ron’s projected rain hadn’t come, and as a result, clouds of dust hung endlessly in the air, kicked up by foot traffic or, worse, vehicle traffic.

Chace made her way through the noise, jabbered conversations, and blasts of music played from boom boxes, bootlegs sold by vendors. Men sat in the shade at the sides of the streets, talking, smoking, chewing
qat,
others walking hand in hand, showing their friendship. A few were armed, sporting antique carbines and rifles, weapons left over from the Ottoman occupation that had ended in 1911, as well as the modern Middle Eastern mainstay, the Kalashnikov AK-47.

She drew the eyes of everyone, some briefly, others longer. Chace found it necessary to remind herself that she was a curiosity, even in her modest dress. Near Bab al-Yaman, two very excited young boys ran up to her, shouting in Arabic, “Welcome to Yemen!” and then repeating it in English before darting away again.

“Shukran,”
she called after them, then paused on the street, trying to reorient herself. From the hotel, the minarets and structures of the city were clearly visible. Standing in the Old City, however, the houses were crammed together, built five and six stories high, and blocking any view of the horizon. From where she stood, the Great Mosque could only be a few hundred meters to the west of her, but looking around, she saw no sign of it.

An older man, in
futa,
shirt, and jacket, passed on her left.
“Haram,”
he growled.
“Haram.”

Chace glanced down, couldn’t see what had caused the offense. Her skirt fell to her boots, the only skin she was showing at her face and her hands.

“Ismahlee,”
she said, trying to apologize, not certain why.

The man stopped, gestured roughly at her face with the back of his hand, then moved back into the crowd. Chace reflexively put a hand to her head, felt the scarf in place, ran her fingers along its edge. Some of her hair had crept loose at her temple, and she quickly tucked it back into place.

Crisis averted,
she thought, and made the turn north out of the square, and instantly became certain that she was being followed.

The street narrowed, and the air thickened with a collision of spices: cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, pepper, mint. Chace passed a group of three women, clad in black, and she identified them as San’ani from the red and white eyes marked on their black veils. She offered them a smile, saw the lines curve at the corners of their eyes as they answered the expression with smiles of their own, and then continued moving north, threading through the stalls and shacks. Over the sounds of the market, she heard a speaker blaring the muezzin’s call, glanced down, and pulled back her sleeve enough to read her watch. Noon call to worship.