Keys to the Kingdom (10 page)

CHAPTER 13

Antwerp

Michel Vonk sat in the headquarters of the Commissariaat-Generaal Special Unit and stared at the computer as the last file on Irish terrorists flashed onto the screen. His eyes felt like two piss-holes in the snow. He rubbed them and yawned. It had been a hell of a long day.  As his concentration on the files lapsed, he was suddenly aware of the smell of body odour, testosterone and cheap cigars that permeated the room. The Squad Room smelled like a shithole. The CGSU were the elite of the Belgian Federal Police but since the cutbacks by the Government they were beginning to feel they had been forgotten. An operation like the one Vonk was planning would put them back centre stage and might squeeze a few more Euros from the pockets of the stingy politicians.

‘He’s not fucking here,’ he said over his shoulder to the man who stood directly behind him.

‘Maybe he’s not Irish,’ Major Geskens said laying a hand on Vonk’s shoulder. He had a great deal of respect for men like Vonk. They put themselves on the front line for a lousy 1800 Euros a month. ‘The accent might have been a put on. These fuckers can be bloody devious.’

‘No, I’m sure he’s Irish. He just isn’t in any of the fucking files,’ Vonk was frustrated by his inability to locate the picture of the man from Het Roode Leeuw in the computer files. ‘Maybe the bastard belonged to the INLA or one of the splinter groups that hasn’t given up the fight.’ He could smell that this was the big one. A 3-month operation leaning on de Wolfe had produced a few petty criminals but this was the one that he had been praying for.

‘Our friends across the Channel don’t have a line on every terrorist in Ireland,’ Geskens looked at Vonk’s strained features. ‘This assignment with de Wolfe has you a bit on edge. Maybe the old bastard is a dead end. Don’t forget, not every operation works out.’

‘Take my word for it. De Wolfe is going to be a gold mine,’ Vonk closed the file and switched the computer off.  He turned to face his superior. ‘I’ve never had this feeling about anyone before. You should have seen how the bastard handled the skinhead in the Lieuw. He didn’t even break sweat and he was prepared to take the others if they’d been stupid enough to make a move. He’s the real deal and he knew de Wolfe. Knew him personally I mean. The old bastard thinks that he recognised the buyer but he just can’t remember who or when. Put it all together and you come up with the conclusion that the guy is in the terrorist game and that there’s a good possibility that he’s big time. The look in his eyes made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.’ Vonk shivered involuntarily. ‘I want this one but we’re going to have to set it up just right. I wouldn’t want this bastard to get the feeling that he was being set up. Something tells me that someone is going to get very badly hurt if we don’t slap the cuffs on this guy.’

‘Set it up the way you want,’ Geskens said. ‘I don’t want anybody hurt so make sure that the team are clued in. There’s only one condition. Fill the boxes with any shit you like but don’t give this fucker any explosives. Just in case. Understood.’

‘I want at least six men in the back-up,’ Vonk could feel the butterflies in his stomach. He knew that he would be the one who would eventually have to face the buyer. That was going to be one dangerous operation. ‘I’d prefer to use real Semtex in the shipment if that were possible. This guy even thinks that something is up then he’ll be out of there and we’ll have lost our fish.’

‘No way,’ Geskens said. ‘Something goes wrong then we’ve handed this guy enough explosives to start a small war. It goes down my way or it doesn’t go down at all.’ He watched Vonk fidget with the papers on his desk. He’d never seen him so much on edge. Maybe being constantly undercover was getting to his best officer. He made a mental note to insist that Vonk take a vacation when the de Wolfe sting was over. ‘Why don’t you go over to the computer nerds and get them to work up a computer picture of this guy. He may not be on the file but we can circulate the picture and maybe we’ll get a fix on him from somewhere else.’

‘Why not,’ Vonk stood up. He hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. Either he was going to have to hit the pillow soon or he was going to have to pop an upper. What the hell was he doing in this business, he asked himself. I’m dog-tired and I’m about to go up against a guy who scares the living shit out of me. I’ve got to be fucking crazy. Was it any wonder that Lisa had left him?

‘When will our boy contact you?’ Geskens asked.

‘To-morrow morning.’

‘Okay, do it. And when this is over I’m closing the de Wolfe operation down. I want you to take a couple of weeks off. Right.’

‘Yeah. If I get this fucker behind bars then I’ll take a couple of weeks of sunshine in Tenerife.’

‘Get the picture made and then go home and get some sleep. You look like shit. Set the operation up for to-morrow night.’ Geskens started towards his office at the end of the room. ‘And keep me informed.’ 

CHAPTER 14

London

Worley woke with a start. He immediately looked around the room. There was nothing. He sighed with relief and forced his eyes open. He thought he caught a flash of movement at the foot of his bed and rubbed his eyes. Someone had been in his room again. The apparition or whatever it was had disappeared and he was alone in the pitch-black master bedroom of his small house. The digital clock beside his bed registered three twenty one. He switched on the bedside lamp. It had been a nightmare and the fleeting movement at the foot of his bed had been part of it. He was beginning to doubt his sanity. He wondered which of his many ghosts had come to visit him. Robert had long since faded from his memory but since his sighting of Gallagher his younger brother had been constantly on his mind. The thought of Robert always left him with bittersweet memories. The weight was very definitely on the sweet. They had been close friends at boarding school. Cast adrift by their father, they had found solace in each other. He was well aware that for many years Robert had looked at him as his surrogate father. It was a burden that he would have wished to avoid. The brothers who had been so close at school had drifted apart when he had gone to university. He had mixed with the arty set while Robert was more into rugby, women and lager. The slow drift away from their earlier closeness had not bothered him. He had loved his brother but as the years had passed he realised that they were the opposite sides of the same coin. The bitter aspect of their relationship was much more difficult to dwell upon. He remembered their last meeting in the small sitting room of the house where he now lay. Robert was drunk and ranting about the effect his parents had on his life. His father had rejected him. His mother had been weak. Worley had stood up for their mother and the brothers had clashed. In the resultant fight Worley had held his own due to his brother’s drunken state. They both ended up bruised and angry. In the following weeks, Worley had called Robert’s barracks on more than a hundred occasions trying to speak to his brother but there was always some reason why Robert was unavailable. Eventually he had given up and Robert had received his fateful posting to Northern Ireland. It pained him that their last meeting had been their most acrimonious. When he had heard the news that Robert had gone missing he had begged God that it shouldn’t be so. He needed to see his brother at least one more time so that he could make his peace with him. But that wasn’t to be. Robert had never come back and he had never had the opportunity to tell him just how much he loved him. He picked up a handkerchief from the bedside table and wiped the sweat from his face. Somewhere deep inside he felt that he owed Robert. The events of that fateful night were still burned into his mind. He had quizzed everybody concerned with Robert’s final mission. The conclusion everybody had come to was that his behaviour in walking alone into one of the most infamous bars in Crossmaglen had been nothing short of suicidal. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Robert’s behaviour had something to do with him. More than twenty years of guilt leaned heavily on him. He pushed the button on the light and plunged the room into darkness again. It was time to banish the ghosts that would haunt him for the rest of his life. He doubted whether he would ever know a good night’s sleep again. But one thing he did know was that he would sleep sounder knowing that Robert’s murderer had been brought to book.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Rookie Congressman dips finger into Foreign Policy and upsets White House

Rookie Congressman Rick Bradley caused chaos on the Hill yesterday by moving an amendment to the Budget Bill that would force the government of Saudi Arabia to repay the $9.3 billion they owed US defence contractors. Bradley’s amendment would give the Saudis a scant six months to come up with the cash.

‘This country can’t afford to bankroll the rich of the Middle East,’ Congressman Bradley said at a press conference also attended by hard-line Speaker Greg Rickly. ‘It’s time to call in our markers. American industry is in the business of making money, not giving handouts. Either these people start paying their debts to American companies or we stop dealing with them. It’s time to get tough with America’s debtors. The Saudis squeezed us in 1973 and 1978. Now the boot’s on the other foot.’

Bradley has managed to collect a large degree of support for his amendment and more than two hundred of his Republican colleagues have associated themselves with his initiative. Speaker Rickly’s attendance at yesterday’s press conference is widely seen as a measure of support from the leadership of the Party for Bradley.

At the White House, George Barton, the President’s Spokesman said that the President was dismayed at Bradley’s interference with what is essentially a foreign policy issue. ‘The Saudis are one of our closest allies in the region,’ Barton said. ‘We depend on their good offices in our pursuit of peace in the Middle East. We have extensive on-going defence contracts with the government of Saudi Arabia.’ Barton pointed out that it is common practice in such trading arrangement to extend a level of credit to the buying nation. This amendment to the Budget Bill will lead to a considerable amount of friction between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Some arms contracts could be cancelled with consequent negative effects on defence employment.

The President will meet with Speaker Rickly in the next few days in an attempt to have Bradley’s amendment removed. However, the President may find himself between a rock and a hard place. He desperately wants the Federal budget to be passed soon and he may be forced to sacrifice Saudi-American relations on the altar of expediency.

CHAPTER 15

Riyadh

Rosinski had been on edge since the party at the Princess’ house. She hadn’t felt like this since she’d waited a month for Joey Sabulski to ask her to the senior Prom. She wondered what had happened to Joey with his film star good looks and the body of a Greek God. It was anybody’s guess but she was willing to bet that several hundred gallons of Budweiser had put a dent in both. Joey had been her first and some days she wished she had stopped there. She looked around the tiny office that had been assigned to her at the Embassy. Gilman must have looked long and hard before he had found a room that approximated a cell in Levenworth. She had taken to calling her office ‘the Hole’ after the small cell inhabited by Steve McQueen in the ‘Great Escape’. The tiny space was constricted by the presence of a battered steel desk, an office chair grade zip and a filing cabinet that had been recuperated from the trash. It was all only temporary and she had to make do with ‘the Hole’. Rosinski had dressed in a white silk blouse and a black skirt that came about one inch above her knee. She normally didn’t care how she dressed but today she wanted to feel good about herself and that meant that she was pissed off dressing like Mama Cass. She was forty-two years old and needed to feel sexy occasionally. Since she’d arrived in Riyadh, and in deference to the instructions from State, she had been depending solely on her ‘frump’ wardrobe. As long as she didn’t have to leave the Embassy or meet any Saudis, she could probably get away with it. Repression wasn’t really her bag and she was beginning to feel the pressure of having to behave like a Saudi chattel. She sat behind her desk and read through the latest online edition of the Washington Post. Somebody Stateside had decided to put a little pressure on the Saudi government. The Post ran a major piece on the level of arms contracts where the Saudis had ‘neglected’ to make payments. The story had gone big time and both Time and Newsweek picked it up and the Congressmen at the centre of the debate were being hailed as heroes for trying to rake in the much needed dollars the Saudis owed the richest country on earth. Those dollars wouldn’t make much of a dent in the deficit but this was politics and therefore irrational. Rosinski was old enough to remember when people used to wonder how in hell all those petrodollars that the OPEC countries were going to collect would be re-cycled. That was before the West discovered the Saudi penchant for buying the very latest in weaponry. God bless undemocratic regimes and their insatiable need for the weapons to keep themselves in power. Long may they remain in power. Rosinski shut down her computer. She doodled for a few minutes on the pad in front of her and then got up, walked to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup of the thick black liquid. The coffee tasted like someone had laced it with crude oil. She threw the plastic cup into the metal trashcan beside her desk. You’ve got to get a grip of yourself, lady, she said. If only the boys back in Langley could see her now. There was not a single doubt in her mind what they would have prescribed to quell the unease she was feeling. More than once her colleagues had suggested that they had the magic cure in their pants for everything that was ailing her. She smiled as she thought that this time maybe the bastards might just be right. It was more than a year since she’d had sex and it was beginning to feel like it. However, her lawyer had been adamant. You bring a case against the ‘Company’ then there was no way that your whole life wasn’t going to be exposed in a courtroom. So she’d had to stay pure and virginal since the papers had been lodged with the court. She looked at her reflection in the mirror on the corner of her desk. Some Polak gene had left her with skin that was smooth and wrinkle-free. Not bad for a forty year old she thought sucking in her stomach slightly. She hadn’t been short of offers since she arrived in Riyadh and after being propositioned by all of the Marine Guard at the Embassy she could attest that the libido of the average G.I. hadn’t changed much since they were overpaid, oversexed and over there. The Saudi males she met hadn’t been shy in requesting her to perform. Even in her ‘frump’ wardrobe the male population seemed to loose control of their passions wherever she was allowed to appear in public. She ran her hands through her thick blond hair. It had been cut short and it suited her. In two or three months she would be out of this shit-hole with a cartload of the Company’s money. Then it was going to be six months in the Caribbean with lots of seafood and rum punches and just maybe a bit of romance thrown in. She was going to soak the ‘Company’ out of her bones and if the bastards didn’t force a silence clause on her she was going to write a bestseller about how her employers fucked her and how she turned the tables on them. But all that was in the future.  She let out a sigh and wondered if it had been captured on tape for posterity. Right now she had a possible opportunity to embarrass her employer with more than a court case. She straightened her hair and ran some lipstick over her lips before pouting for the mirror. It was time for her weekly pow-wow with the boss. Gilman liked to keep tabs on her. He had been entrusted by the boys in Langley with keeping the bitch on ice until they could deal with her in court and he was going to damn well come up trumps. She closed the door and smiled to herself as she contemplated whether she should stick a strand of hair between the jam and the door. Why bother. There was nothing in her office worth looking at and she didn’t need confirmation of the fact that she was being watched.

Gilman’s office, whether by accident or design, was at the far end of the building from hers. If he was trying to distance himself from her both physically and psychologically, he couldn’t have done a better job. She pushed open the door, said ‘Hi’ to Gilman’s male secretary and walked straight into her boss’ office.

‘I’ll get back to you,’ Gilman said quickly into the phone as he looked up and saw Rosinski enter. He slammed the phone into the cradle. ‘You ever hear of fucking knocking. I was on a very important call.’

‘Sorry,’ Rosinski said looking around Gilman’s plush domain. The office befitted the exalted status of its occupant’s position. It was anything from five to ten times larger than ‘the Hole’ and included a seating area with sofa, two easy chairs and coffee table. To the left of Gilman’s desk there was a state of the art computer and printer while a television at the far end of the room brought an image of Wolf Blitzer from halfway around the world. If there was going to be another American invasion of country X, Clark Gilman knew where he would hear about it first. He was wearing a tailor-made red and white striped cotton shirt and an Italian silk tie loosened at the neck. A pair of white braces completed his ensemble. Somebody had forgotten to tell him the Gordon Gekko look was passé.

‘When the clock strikes three on a Wednesday afternoon I know that it’s time to report to my keeper.’

‘Cut the crap and sit down,’ Gilman said and nodded to the chair before his desk. ‘Sometimes you don’t look half bad, Rosinski.’ He looked at her legs as he withdrew a cigar from a leather holder on his desk. ‘I bet you swung that butt of yours when you passed the Marines out there. It must be drivin’ them crazy.’

Rosinski pulled her skirt self-consciously over her knees. ‘Anybody ever tell you that you have a foul mouth?’

‘Yeh, an’ most of them loved it,’ Gilman laughed as he lit his cigar. He silently cursed the Director of the Agency. The fucker had landed him with this ball-breaker and he needed her like he needed a hole in the head. ‘Don’t give me the shit that you’re dressed like that because the weather is hot,’ he sucked on the cigar until the tip glowed. ‘It’s my guess that you’re feeling the pressure, lady.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s gotta be six months or more and you ain’t had no lovin’ since you boarded the plane at Dulles. Unless you joined the Mile High Club en route.’ He shot her an inquiring glance that she ignored. ‘So you gotta be pantin’ for it by now.’ He let his eyes run over her body. She was a good-lookin’ woman for her age. ‘Don’t you forget now that ol’ Clark would be more than willin’ to help you out if you ever find yourself in need.’

‘You’re so damn predictable, you offensive prick,’ she gave him her most withering look.

‘Sticks and stones will break my bones,’ Gilman shot back.

‘As far as your offer is concerned, I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’

‘So sue me,’ Gilman roared with laughter. ‘Oh I forgot you’re already suin’ half the Agency. Addin’ me to the list might just keep you in court for a day or two extra. Anyway I was only jokin’.’

‘Yeh, weren’t they all.’

‘Were you born with that bug up your ass or did you develop it along the way? You’ve reported in now get the hell outta here.’

She re-crossed her legs and watched Gilman’s eyes follow the movement. They were all the same, the young, the old, and the semi-senile. She could make ten of Gilman but nobody was ever going to put her in charge of the Riyadh station.

‘How does it feel, Clarke?’ she said. ‘You’d do anything for the ‘Company’. Wouldn’t you? I bet you’ve lied, stolen, pimped, and procured. Right now you’re my probation officer.’

Gilman sucked on his cigar. ‘Whatever it takes, babe.’ He glanced at the gold Rolex on his wrist. ‘It’s a shitty job but somebody’s got to have the balls to do it. This meeting is terminated.’

‘What do you hear about the Ikhwan?’

‘Group of old desert shits with scraggy beards and sackcloth garments, the most fanatic Muslims in a country of fanatical Muslims. Hit the library, babe, if you want to read the history of Saudi, we’ve got everything you need.’

Rosinski promised herself that if he called her ‘babe’ one more time she was going to leap across the desk and throttle the old bastard. ‘What about the new Ikhwan?’

Gilman placed his cigar carefully in the ashtray and looked hard at Rosinski. ‘I got a real bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that you could cause me mucho trouble and I don’t like that. You left all that spyin’ shit back in Langley. We both know why you’re here and the last thing we need is some silly broad spookin’ the locals. You’re on holiday, Rosinski. Take the salary and enjoy the view. As soon as our legal eagles pick all the holes in this shitass case of yours, you’re outta here and so quick your ass won’t even touch the tarmac. In the meantime, stay out of the fuckin’ way. This country is crawling with ‘Company’ employees. There’s always been a ‘new’ Ikhwan but that’s just the Al Sauds wanking the honchos from the desert. If anything was goin’ on here, I’d know about it five seconds after the fuzzy beard had the thought. Capisce. You leave the spookin’ to me. You hear now.’

‘What about the move in Congress to make the Saudis pay up on their debts?’

‘Hot fuckin’ air from a bunch of crackerbarrels that nobody gives a shit about. Saudi Arabia and the Al Sauds are goin’ to be around long after you and the shits in Congress are fuckin’ history.’ Gilman could feel his blood pressure rising. The bitch’s stare was cutting through him. Why him? What had he ever done to those bastards in Langley? Why had they dropped this pariah bitch in his lap? ‘I want you to keep your fuckin’ nose clean while you’re here. Forget about the Ikhwan. Forget about the Congressmen. Forget fuckin’ period. Soon as your business with the ‘Company’ is sorted out, you’re outta here.’

‘I’m with you, Clark,’ she said sarcastically. ‘It’s a holiday. I should drive to the beach every day and get a tan in the places where the sun don’t shine. Or maybe I should go wandering downtown, buy myself a McDonalds and a Coke before taking in a movie. Get real, Clarke. I’m an intelligence agent. Although you may not like it too much, it’s what I do best.’

Gilman’s patience was running out. This dame was trouble on the hoof and he didn’t need her fucking things up on his patch. He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Who’s been pissing in your ear? What sort of fucking problem are you goin’ to give me before the legal people finally put the deep fuck into you?’ Someone else had mentioned the ‘Ikhwan’ to him recently but he couldn’t think who it was.

‘You say the sweetest things, boss,’ Rosinski said smiling. She was revelling in Gilman’s discomfort. She was going to enjoy exposing him for the incompetent he was. Handing over the Princess to Gilman was right out of the question. She looked into his face. Veins were standing out on his forehead. His cheeks were purple and puffy. There was a possible heart attack on the cards. ‘I don’t suppose I should have expected anything else. After all how does a pimp and a procurer talk back home. You’re just one step away from the gutter, aren’t you? Just because some backwoods college was stupid enough to give you a degree why should I possibly expect them to have turned you into a gentleman in the process. I’ve been watching you over the past few months Clarke. You get off on being the Al Saud’s boy. You’d sell your own son or daughter to them if the price was right. They need arms. You get them for them. Drugs. You’re their man. Women, boys, children, I bet you don’t give a shit who you hand over to them or what becomes of the people you’ve procured.’

‘It’s that shitass Worley, isn’t it?’ Gilman said. His taut face muscles relaxed appreciably. He had suddenly remembered who had been quizzing him. ‘That stupid asshole has been fillin’ your poor excuse for a mind with some kind of conspiracy shit. I shoulda known right off. The Goddamned Brits have been tryin’ to undermine us for years and Worley is just smart enough to have stumbled onto good ol’ Mizz halfass here.’ A smile broke out on Gilman’s face. ‘You’ve been taken, sweetheart and it sure feels good.’

Rosinski watched her boss without emotion. She had learned a long time ago that when a colleague had shot himself in the foot and was smiling about it that he should be left in ignorance. Gilman was the kind of complacent asshole who refused to believe anything that they didn’t come up with themselves. It was an example of the ‘groupthink’ that the ‘Company’ was justly famous for and had led to a series of screw ups dating back to the Bay of Pigs. At least she had established that he hadn’t an idea what was about to go down. That was if anything was going to go down, she reminded herself. Gilman was so attached to the ‘Oasis of Security’ theory that he would refuse to believe that Saudi was a prime candidate for an Iranian style revolution. Rosinski thought that the station chief and his staff in Tehran had had exactly the same thought on the eve of the Shah’s departure in 1979.