State of Attack (35 page)

A man from the rear stepped forwards. “Wait,” he said.

Crane saw him looking down at him. “What is this man’s name?” he said.

“What difference does it make? Something’s not right here, and he will die,” the knife man said.

The other man walked forwards, bent down and snatched away the knife like a father taking a stick from his son. “His name?” the man said, ignoring the protestations of the other.

Crane felt he didn’t have a choice and there was something about the tone of the man’s voice that impelled him to speak, even if it cost him his life. “Ibrahim. He’s name’s Ibrahim.”

“What does he look like?” the man asked.

Crane just about detected the heightening sense of emotion in the man’s voice and demeanour. If this man knew of him, it was likely he knew him from the Middle East, not as a Caucasian.

“Six-three. Lean. Long hair. A beard.”

“Osama bin Laden is dead,” another man said.

Some laughed. But the man asking the questions did not. He said, “What else?”

Crane racked his brain. “Ibrahim always carried a sword into battle.”

The others were silent and the knife man had retreated back to the others. There was an air of anticipation. And, as Crane knew well, there was no anticipation like a man answering questions that could either save him or lead to him being food for worms.

“Did he fight in Syria? Is he a leader of men?” the man said, almost imploringly.

“Yes,” Crane said.

“Where did he go then?”

“Gaza.”

“Is he known by another name?”

Crane didn’t know, but then remembered what the jihadists called him and what the director had said in the secure conference room at Langley. “He’s sometimes known as the Sword of Allah.”

The man stepped forwards and removed his ski mask. “I am a Syrian,” he said. “A Christian. My name is Basilios Nassar. Ibrahim destroyed my town and killed my people. But he let me live.”

Chapter 100

Basilios had handed Crane back his cellphone and Crane had pulled up an image of Ibrahim that had been obtained by the Mossad via a deceased agent with optical nanotech in Gaza. Basilios had confirmed that that was the man he’d seen in Syria, and had given him some other identifying information about him, too.

His abductors were Christians then, Crane thought, probably Maronites, who’d historically pledged allegiance to the Pope rather than the Greek Orthodox Church. After the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, due to the continuing presence of the PLO, the massacre of thousands of Palestinians in Beirut’s refugee camps had occurred, carried out by the Christian Phalange, an ultra-nationalist organization made up mostly of Maronites. Today, he knew, the Phalange, known officially as the Kataeb Party, had taken up arms again, to protect themselves from the warring factions and the threat from Syrian jihadists and the Islamic State group.

He knew, too, that the Phalange had been allied to the Israeli Defense Force in the Lebanese civil war, and as a CIA operative he was safe, especially with the man Basilios among them, which was something he hoped to utilize.

They took him in the pickup to the coast, but this time he was sitting in the passenger seat next to Basilios. The man had saved his life and en route he asked him how he came to be in Beirut.

Basilios told him about the details of the assault on his Christian town in Syria and why Ibrahim had let him live. He said that he’d travelled from Syria to Lebanon after settling his mother and sisters and the others in a refugee camp in Jordan, the safest place he knew. He’d come to Lebanon to find the only indigenous Christian army in the Middle East who would fight the Sunni jihadists.

He’d travelled back across the northern Jordanian border to southern Syria. He’d headed east, tracing the length of the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau covering seven-hundred square miles, two-thirds of which had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967, and had been annexed since 1981 when the construction of Israeli settlements had begun. At its northernmost point, he’d crossed the pale limestone foothills descending from Mount Hermon over into Lebanon.

Crane knew the official US position was that the Golan Heights were Syrian, and that the application of Israeli law there was a violation of international law, both the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. So much for law, he thought. On the ground here, the law was the gun.

But he knew that most people in the West cared less about that than the latest cliffhanger on the most popular soap opera. Life had never ceased to amaze him, never ceased to inspire or shock him. As Basilios turned into a back street leading to a safe house near to the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean, Crane had two thoughts. First, he wondered if he deserved to live while at least some of his boys had died; and, second, he was certain Tom did.

Chapter 101

Tom had been picked up by Basilios and five Christian militia men after they had been sent the GPS location from the Mossad due to Crane’s credentials. He’d been just half a mile from the coast, squatting beside the stump of a palm tree in an alley as the red sun had been coming up.

He’d drawn his Glock when he’d seem them coming down the alley, swinging their AK-47s, after a car had skidded to a halt and had blocked off the other exit. But they had laid down their weapons and one, who he took for the group’s leader, had called out his name and had said that Crane had sent them.

Tom had shouted out that they should stand still, but then the leader had said that Crane had told them something only he knew and Tom had listened. He’d said that Tom was going to go on vacation with his father before the CIA had found out about Ibrahim and that, unfortunately, his father had died, God rest his soul. On hearing that, Tom had lowered his gun hand and had walked towards them.

When he and Crane had met up at a safe house, a small peach-coloured villa owned by a Christian businessman at the edge of the peninsula, they’d hugged with sheer relief.

They were sitting now in low-slung chairs on a small terrace, the morning sun shaded from their eyes by a floppy canopy. Crane had been given morphine and had had the bullet removed, the wound attended to by a woman doctor, who’d he’d said had been tender and perhaps the most beautiful woman he had seen. They were awaiting a motor cruiser that would take them down to the Israeli coast, and, after boarding a CIA jet, they’d fly home to the States.

Crane said that he was going to retire from the CIA after they’d found Ibrahim and he’d gotten his boys out. But Tom didn’t believe him. Like his father, he knew, Crane would die on the job. And like his father, the veteran didn’t have anything else in his life, not even a son he’d been estranged from for most of his life.

Tom knew that Crane had already reported the fate of Gabriel and his men to Langley, and that it was a priority. Basilios had said that he and his men would do their utmost to find out where they had been taken. There was already a rumour that three had been taken alive after they’d run out of ammo. The others, though, had died where they’d fought.

But Tom didn’t mention it, knowing that Crane felt relatively safe here, with the sea breeze in his face and a dozen armed Maronite guards positioned around the villa. There was nothing Crane could do for now beyond what had already been done.

“So this is it? We go home.”

“It’s never it, Tom.”

“But Ibrahim has disappeared,” Tom said.

Crane took out a cigar, given to him by Basilios, who he’d said was a man who personified everything good and decent about the Middle East, irrespective of his religion. As he lit it, Tom turned and looked out at the beach, at the waves lapping in, the whole potential of a place that had been ravaged by decades of war, and he felt a sudden empathy for these people. They had so much, and yet they had nothing.

“Basilios told me something interesting,” Crane said. “Ibrahim has three faint scars in a triangle just above his right wrist.”

Tom nodded.

“That ain’t all. We got a Somali in a…well, whatever, we got him in protective custody,” Crane said. “It’s a long shot, but Ibrahim has to be somewhere. He ain’t safe in the West, or the Middle East. Those guys who came after you in France were Somalis, right?”

“One at least,” Tom said.

“Well that’s where we’ll start.”

“What’s this all about?”

“A nightmare is what it’s all about. The Mossad found a guy in the rubble of a house they targeted. He was a Saudi. He had a very particular virus. Our people have analysed it. It’s toxic. It’s lethal. It’s incurable. No vaccine. No vaccine on the horizon.”

“So you think Ibrahim is contaminated by this virus?” Tom asked.

“Well it ain’t a freakin’ matter of speculation, you ask me. The director, God bless her, is a politician now. She’s a fine woman, the finest I’ve ever known. And brave, goddamnit, ain’t no man I know braver. She’s gotta report to the president, and I’ve told her it isn’t over, but as far as she’s concerned Ibrahim’s gone off the radar, so he’s just another terrorist with a something stuck inside him, ‘cept he ain’t.”

“So she’ll say there’s no direct threat?”

“Likely, but there is, and you know that. That piece of shit that killed your father is threatening our boys and girls in uniform. He’s still out there and he’s coming to America. But there’s an incubation period for this virus before it takes effect. So he’s holed up somewhere. Somewhere he feels real safe. Somewhere remote. Somewhere he thinks we won’t consider. I know it. I know it like I know if I don’t use a certain brand of razor I’ll cut my neck and blood will flow.”

Chapter 102

Tom and Crane had been taken from Lebanon down the Mediterranean coast to the port city of Haifa, built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, northern Israel, where a CIA jet had been waiting to fly them to the Ronald Reagan National Airport in DC. They’d both slept well after being given sleeping pills following a meal of steak and eggs.

After disembarking, a CIA limousine had driven them both to the black prison masquerading as a high security military base. Crane had told Tom how the interview with the Somali terrorist, called Harrah, who’d been picked up down in Lafayette, was going to pan out. He’d told Tom that the Somali in custody had been sleeping with a CIA PA, and that had been a good thing as it turned out.

They were sitting on metal chairs at the desk in the shabby interview room. Crane had told the two guards, who had walked with them through the interior of the prison, to leave after they’d brought in Harrah, and they hadn’t argued. Crane had walked awkwardly with a stick from the limo to the security clearance point, but he’d left it on a bench there, and Tom had figured he didn’t want to appear in any way vulnerable.

“You remember my face, son?” Crane said to Harrah.

“I do.”

“You remember the last conversation I had with you?”

“I do.”

Tom thought he looked thin and drawn.

“Now let me tell you somethin’. I don’t care which bug reaches the top of your cell first tonight, I don’t care at all. But what I do care about is what you say into your cellphone the moment I pass it over it you. You fuckup, as I said before, you’ll never see a woman’s skin again, you hearing me, son?”

“I hear you.”

Crane nodded to Tom. “In point of fact my friend here said why don’t we just leave that piece of garbage, and that’s you, in case you were wondering, to rot here? I said, hell no, that ain’t the American way. Everyone has a chance to redeem themselves, everyone has a chance to see the sun again and feel a woman’s skin. But then I’m compassionate that way.”

“Tell me what to say on the cellphone as you asked before, and I will say it,” Harrah said, moving his thumbs over his long fingers. “Just tell me what you want.”

“Want? Now there’s the rub. I asked my friend here what he wanted. You know what he said? Course you don’t. He said send his ass to Egypt. I said, we don’t do that any more, not with our new government and all. But he said we can still ship out shit like this. That’s you. We can still do it, because nobody cares about ghosts. And that’s what you are, son. A ghost. The un-dead. And those Egyptians have changed. They don’t like you Muslim terrorists any more. But their habits haven’t, if you get my drift.”

“I’m not a terrorist.”

“Well not any more you ain’t. But that’s cuz your ass is here. The closest you’ll get to a warzone is playing on a games console. That’s if you had one, which you don’t. All you got right now is me and my compassionate side, though I got another side, too, of course.”

The Somali clenched his fists and banged them on the table. “I’m a US citizen now. I’m not a terrorist. Just tell me what to say.”

Crane laughed. “Those Egyptians don’t care if you’re a terrorist or if you run a candy store in Disneyland. They love it, son. They’ll beat you, electrocute you, fuck you up every which ways. And you know it. And there’s a plane waiting on the runway just for you, so what’s it gonna be, huh?”

Tom knew that despite the Somali’s willingness, if he said something different to what Crane wanted, the lead would be lost for good. Crane was just making sure he knew the consequences.

Harrah held his head in his hands. When he brought them down to the table again, he murmured, “I will make the call. I’ve told you already.”

“All right then, but listen up. Now that cellphone of yours has a number on it. It just happens to be the same number as a very particular number. You see, a Somali who came after my friend here, and got a bullet for his trouble, well he had a cellphone, too. No big surprise there, you might say. But the NSA got all sorts of ways to track cellphones, even when GPS settings and the mobile data networks are turned off. But when the cellphone is a disposable one and the battery has been taken out, well, it’s just about impossible; can’t even get an old-fashioned pinpoint via mast triangulation. That’s the case with the guy’s phone that got the bullet. But the NSA checked his cellphone’s history and guess what? It had a number on it that matches one on your cellphone. That was the number I showed you the first time we met, and you know that number, don’t ya? You said as much the last time we met.”