The Assassins (35 page)

“She could’ve easily sold the photo and information to him. Maybe a copy of the CD, too. God knows how many places the flyer’s been distributed.” Eva shook her head. “We just got to Baghdad, and we’re already blown.”

They stared worriedly into each other’s eyes. Perhaps it was the constant strain of being on the run and now finding out the danger was intensifying. Or perhaps it was the frustration that came from two people in love whose paths had intersected for a few unforgettable days and then cruelly, by their own choices, diverged. Whatever it was, Judd was afraid one or both might die before he could tell her how much she meant to him, that he was a sorry-ass fool, that if he had to do it all over again.… He tried to control his pounding heart. Tried not to reach for her. But then he saw something shift in her gaze, a softening, and somehow tension left her face. She stepped into his arms. They stood there in the bright Baghdad sun sheltered between the two big SUVs, holding each other tightly as if nothing else mattered.

“God, you feel good,” she murmured. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“I’d never hurt you, Eva,” he said earnestly. “You’re more important to me than my own life—”

She touched her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true. I want us to be really
us
again
.
”

Suddenly her arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him.

He pulled her into him, crushing her to him, tasting her lips, her mouth, inhaling her rose scent.

She broke away first. “Yes, when—not if—
when
this is all over, let’s try again.”

Then he felt her stiffen. She was looking past him. Bosa and Morgan had arrived, trotting sweaty-faced between the SUVs.

Morgan assessed the situation. “Your timing stinks, but you’re cute.”

“Get in the SUVs,” Bosa ordered. “We’ve got work to do.”

72

Her heart full of emotion, Eva watched through the windshield as Judd drove off in an SUV, with Bosa in the passenger seat. Their speeding rear tires sent gravel pinging against the chain-link fence. The two men were late for their rendezvous in Baghdad and worried their source might leave before they got there.

With effort, she turned her attention to Morgan. They were in the front seat of the other SUV. Morgan had insisted on driving, explaining he had been in Baghdad many times and was fluent in Arabic. He was probably right—but all he was doing was sitting behind the steering wheel and examining the cell phone Judd had found on the dead customs man.

“Let’s go,” she said impatiently. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot al-Sabah at SIL headquarters.”

But Morgan had not even turned on the ignition. “Not yet. I’m working on something. Ah, here it is.
Redial.
” He tapped a button and lifted the phone to his ear. “Trouble!” he announced in panicked Arabic into the phone. “Need help!” He ended the connection.

He had sounded so terrified that she had felt her chest contract.

He glanced at her. “Pretty bloody convincing, aren’t I?”

“Why did you make that call?”

“I want to see how many more of Seymour’s people are around here and what they’ll do.” He opened his backpack and took out a canvas case.

“Now what?”

“Directional mike. Low self-noise, high consonant articulation, and good feedback rejection. Compact and top of the line. Takes video, too. Hope someone shows up.” He rolled down his window and rested the mike on the side-view mirror. All of the windows in the vehicle were darkened, including front and rear windshields.

Jack had already flown the jet away. In the distance, airport personnel were working around the planes parked at the terminal. No one was near the private jets.

And then two men ran out of the terminal. They had cell phones in their hands. Both seemed to be dialing out. Instantly Morgan turned on the mike and aimed it.

The phone lying on the dashboard rang.

“One’s calling here,” Eva said. “The other must be dialing one of the guys who answered the inspector’s call.”

“That’s what I’d do,” Morgan said.

Abruptly the pair stopped and stared down at the tarmac.

As they talked, Morgan translated for her: “They believe they’re looking at blood. They’re wondering where the two other men are.”

The men looked up and yelled what sounded like names. Surveying the area, they ran again toward where the rental jet had been parked. Again they stopped and peered down, this time at the place where the customs inspector had died.

“More blood,” Morgan explained. “One of them is phoning someone named Jabari. It sounds as if Jabari’s important in al-Sabah’s organization. They’re telling him the customs inspector found Greg and Courtney Roman, but now there’s blood in two places, the jet is gone, and the Romans, the inspector, and the two men are missing.” After more gazing around, the two new men looked down again. “There are some drops of blood. They’re following them.” Periodically glancing at the tarmac, the pair ran toward the small hangars. They tried doors. “They’ve found one with a broken lock,” Morgan told her. “Guess why.”

“George and Jack broke it so they could dump the bodies inside.”

“Bingo.”

Because the men were out of sight, there was no way the directional mike would work. Morgan and she sat in silence. He seemed relaxed.

“Aren’t you worried?” she asked.

“About what? Two bungnuts who have to report in to a boss who really isn’t the boss but works for a worse SOB than he ever dreamed of being.”

The men reappeared, talking as they hurried to the terminal.

Morgan aimed the mike again. “They’re leaving the bodies where they are,” he translated, “and they’ll tell the coppers they saw you and Judd kill them.”

She felt a jolt of fear. “That’s just wonderful. Now every policeman in Baghdad will be looking to welcome us.”

Morgan waved at her to be quiet. The men were still speaking. “Ah-ha. Now we’re getting somewhere.” He listened, his gaunt face intense. “They’re going to meet Jabari.” He turned on the ignition. “They’re parked near the front of the terminal. We’ll follow. Call Bosa and tell him what we’re doing.”

73

There had been no bombings in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. People emerged from shops and stores to peer around nervously then move briskly off, heading home, for errands, or perhaps to the local caf
é
. Walking toward a large Shiite mosque with a blue-tiled dome, al-Sabah passed a man with a pushcart kitchen who was slicing thin cuts of meat from a rotisserie for
shawarma,
flatbread sandwiches. The mouth-watering aroma of grilling lamb drifted along the sidewalk. A crowd was gathering. Doing ordinary things helped people to feel normal, al-Sabah noted. The human animal was predictable.

Skirting the group, he stepped through a door into a thousand-year-old Shiite mosque that had been built of stone laid upon stone secured not by mortar but by the finest craftsmanship. Continuing down a corridor, he knocked on a polished wood door and entered a small whitewashed room with large framed portraits of Imam Ali and his son Hussein, the founders of Shiism, on two walls and of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s 1979 revolution, on a third.

Across the room, kneeling on the floor in the traditional pose, his back to the wall, was Ayatollah Abdel-Hussein Gilani. Looking up, he closed the Koran and rose. With his long gray beard streaked with snowy white, his high-bridged nose, and his black, intelligent eyes, Gilani was the picture of a Shiite patriarch. He wore a light gray robe, black loafers, and the black turban that told the world he was a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. At the moment, his gaze was kindly and interested, but Gilani was a follower of Imam Khomeini, who believed all of God’s authority was vested in the supreme leader and senior religious scholars.

They exchanged the usual affectionate greetings.

“Allaa bil-kheir,”
Ayatollah Gilani said. God bless.

“Shall we walk?” al-Sabah, the courteous host, asked.

“Yes, let’s do.”

With a gracious gesture, al-Sabah invited the ayatollah to precede him into the corridor. Like Baghdad’s oldest houses, the mosque was built around a courtyard rimmed by colonnaded porticos. And, too, like the oldest houses, the great building was inward-looking, sealed off from the street on the ground floor except for a single door in each of its four exterior walls, all of which fronted streets. Al-Sabah and Gilani, who was still carrying his Koran, walked beneath an arch and into the central courtyard, an emerald-green oasis of plum, apricot, and walnut trees with winding paths and hard-packed sand areas for prayer rugs. When they saw the ayatollah, the men who had been reading or praying retreated respectfully to the porticos and vanished into the mosque, leaving al-Sabah and Gilani alone.

It had all begun in 2003, when al-Sabah and his boyhood friend Tabrizi had founded the SIL political party in Baghdad, sharing a vision of Iraq once again at the heart of a powerful and important Shiite world. Al-Sabah had used his old Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah contacts to set up meetings with mullahs from Iran’s ruling clerical class.

Over the next few months, both sides grew optimistic that it was possible in their lifetimes. Shiites who had found safety in Iran from Saddam’s persecutions were returning to Baghdad to run the government, to open businesses, and increasingly to fight the Sunni sheiks and military men who did not want to give up the privileges Saddam had lavished on them. The American coalition was losing control of Iraq, while the country disintegrated into violence. For many it was disaster, but for al-Sabah, Tabrizi, and the Iranian mullahs, it was opportunity. That was when al-Sabah began working with Ayatollah Gilani to fund and train Shiite freedom fighters to come from around the world, especially from Iran, to put Iraq finally and irrevocably under Shiite control.

Nothing happened quickly in the Middle East, and certainly nothing as drastic as a political union between the Persians of Iran and the Arabs of Iraq, two ancient civilizations that had warred against each other. But now, at last, they were on the brink of success.

As if Gilani were reading al-Sabah’s mind, he said, “One of my assistants told me yesterday, ‘Iran’s history is so magnificent that the world should listen to us.’”

“Yes, of course,” al-Sabah agreed. “Iranians are nostalgic to be a superpower again.”

Beginning with Cyrus in the sixth century
B.C.
, the Persian empire had become the largest, most powerful kingdom the world had ever seen—the world’s first superpower.

“Mesopotamia had also more than its share of glory,” al-Sabah reminded him, his tone amused at the recurring debate between them. Neither expected to win, and in the process they somehow grew closer by sharing the storied greatness of their ancestors. “More than two millennia before your empire—in fact, in 3000
B.C.
—we gave you writing. We gave you the wheel. We were the cradle of civilization. And by the way, we gave you the Arabic language, too—the language of the Prophet, blessed be His name.”

With a smile, Gilani inclined his black-turbaned head. “And then our kingdoms came together. The Prophet brought us together.”

In the seventh century, after Muhammad’s death, the Islamic armies of the caliphs rode out of Arabia and conquered Mesopotamia and Persia. The vast majority of both countries converted to Islam. Over time, Baghdad became Islam’s capital and intellectual center, the wealthiest and most beautiful city in the world, where art, science, and philosophy thrived.

Al-Sabah and the ayatollah followed their usual path across the courtyard and through an archway into another corridor. It had been a warm afternoon, but the enormous mosque was cool. Pipes on the roof trapped the breezes and circulated them all the way down to the cellar. As they walked downstairs, al-Sabah could feel the whispers of fresh air slipping past the stone walls. It was almost as if the mosque were breathing.

“They are hard at work, as you will see.” Al-Sabah opened one door after another, showing small windowless rooms where clusters of men sat at computers, alternately typing and sifting through documents and printouts. All were Shiites, some wearing the white robes and head cloths that marked them as Arabs, some in the long robes and turbans of Persians. The ayatollah greeted each group and blessed them.

As they left the last room, the ayatollah asked, “How is security?”

“As always, impeccable,” al-Sabah assured him. “They are doing Allah’s work. They won’t betray Him.” In addition, Shiite black hatters had created unbreachable computer security.

Still in the basement, they entered an office, another whitewashed room but large and with a bank of television screens turned to International Al-Jazeera and news stations in both Tehran and Baghdad. All were muted, with captioned translations in Old Arabic, the language of the Koran. In Tehran was a duplicate office where, on alternating months or immediately, if events demanded, al-Sabah and Gilani met to address concerns and continue negotiations and planning.

Two assistants quickly got to their feet, and again the ayatollah greeted and blessed them.

“You have the new opening to the constitution’s preamble?” al-Sabah asked. It had been the cause of much heated discussion and had finally been approved at the highest clerical levels in Iran, and by both Tabrizi and al-Sabah, who, assuming all went according to plan, soon would be running Iraq’s government.

The assistants handed copies to al-Sabah and Gilani. They read silently:

May Allah guide us as we create a living embodiment of the Koran and the Hadith, joining our two great nations, Iran and Iraq, in an Islamic theocratic federation called the Union of Shiite States. Each nation will be partially self-governing, with the division of power between the nations and the central government to be spelled out in our constitution. Just as Islam was born of the fire and blood battles of Mecca and Medina when the Prophet, blessed be His name, stood fast against the infidels, Iran and Iraq will stand fast against all necessary obstacles to create our federation. We hope that this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.