State of Honour (27 page)

Rahul Al-Dhakheel was sitting at an ornate desk in a high-backed chair, the rosewood-panelled walls half covered with photographs of him shaking hands with the famous people he’d met in his career.

The room was the ambassador’s study, with numerous leather-bound religious books in gilded cases. It was also a showcase for his collection of Islamic antiques: engraved brass coffee pots, calligraphic panels, silver vases and valuable murals; all protected from the world behind locked glass cabinets. He’d spent hours reading here; hours admiring the skills of the artisans who had created such exquisite works, too. But now his mind was on pragmatic matters.

The two-thousand-strong House of Saud had ruled his country since the kingdom had been established in 1932. Back then, he knew his nomadic grandfathers would’ve gladly traded land for camels; water, even. Now the absolute monarchy had the world’s second largest oil reserves, and was ranked sixth in terms of natural gas. Allah had willed that they live in a desert, but He had buried enormous wealth beneath it.

They had used that wealth to expand their influence and defeat their enemies, usually by proxy, spending twenty-five billion dollars to support Saddam Hussein in his war with Shia Iran. That backfired after the tyrant attacked Kuwait. They feared they were on his target list. As a result, the then Saudi king invited 400,000 US troops onto their sacred land, an act that prompted bin Laden to become radicalized and led ultimately to 9/11. The ambassador knew the unofficial reason was that the White House believed that the invasion of Iraq would produce a Shia regime to be a pro-Western counterbalance to a Shia Iran. But the opposite happened. The Iraqi president was a friend of Iran, who’d backed the Russian opposition to the West’s intervention in Syria. Added to which, the US removal of Saddam both led to the Sunni-Shia civil war that was raging in Iraq, and sparked the current region-wide Shia revival to get back at the Sunnis. But the world was changing and with it those who wielded power. The new king’s links with the US were in danger of blinding him to that. Besides, as the ambassador knew well, within a few years the US would be almost self-sufficient in oil, due to its fracking operations.

As a result, he had decided to work closely with the so-called Brothers of Faith, a group of five of the king’s nephews who were opposed to the monarch’s lack of vision and decisive action. Just as Saddam’s Iraq had been a threat, Iran had replaced it. But apart from encouraging the US to go to war, the king had refused to bend to the Brothers’ promptings to go down a unilateral route. He wasn’t alone. Without the US, many in the House of Saud believed that their influence in the Middle East would dwindle.

But the future lay, Rahul believed, with China. The Iranians knew that, too. China now imported fifteen per cent of its oil from Iran. Although the US was encouraging the Chinese to wean itself off this supply, the opposite was happening. China had become the world’s largest importer of oil, and was hungry for natural gas. Due to geographical necessities, only Iran could pipe in the seemingly insatiable demand. The Chinese saw Iran as the new power in the region, and would, in time, protect them with its enormous and expanding military, he believed. Just as the US had protected his own country for decades, and for just the same reason. Military security for energy security.

Knowing he was already a trusted confidante, the Brothers of Faith had asked him what should be done about all this. To some, this would have been treasonous. But he’d convinced himself that it wasn’t the case. The line of succession in Saudi Arabia was based on agnatic seniority, whereby the crown passed to the king’s younger brother, rather than his eldest son. And since the Brothers were the king’s nephews, one of their fathers would eventually succeed. In this way, Rahul was just protecting his future, too. And he’d been promised a ministerial post if everything panned out, something that had seemed unreachable in the past.

He had thought about the Iranian conundrum for a full four months. The Saudis had already stoked the sectarian divide in Pakistan, using the Madrassas, agitators, and pamphlet propaganda, together with carrying out bomb attacks on sensitive Sunni sites and blaming it on the indigenous Shia. That had been a successful strategy, leading to the military assuming temporary power and, in turn, sabotaging the Iran-Pak pipeline. But more had had to be done to paralyze Iran’s exports and secure Saudi wealth and, more importantly, political influence in the Middle East.

The answer had come to him one night as he’d lain awake, listening to the chirping of cicadas. It was a simple matter of duplication. Turn Iran into something akin to the bloody chaos that was Iraq, the country’s infrastructure so decimated by the US and the ensuing civil war that Iraqis had to heat their food in darkness over makeshift braziers.

The only way to do that, he’d told the Brothers of Faith, was to get the US to do it for them, and the only way to do that was to make the US fear and hate them. The Brothers accused him of being as weak as the king. But he outlined the full extent of his geopolitical plan. The Iran nuclear programme, which the Saudis were eager to exaggerate, although the threat was potentially extreme, went a long way to securing the former. The abduction and execution of the US Secretary of State would go a long way to securing the latter, he ventured. The Brothers had, of course, agreed.

He stood now and walked to the huge oblong window that overlooked the embassy gardens. He pulled a weighted string and the slatted blinds flicked open. The early-morning sun poured in. He smiled. His youngest son was riding on the back of an Irish wolfhound. His favourite hunting dog. His favourite son. The boy exuded a near-primal vitality. He was laughing, flinging his head back as he rode. The dog sensed it, too, obeying his son’s every prompting. Both, he concluded, wondrously unsullied by the world around them.

Brigadier Hasni had told him once that he’d sent his son, Mahmood, to Harvard to enable him to think like the Americans. Rahul had decided to bypass that. His son would one day simply act like them: imperious and feared.

The three French DCRI operatives had done some initial covert surveillance of the chateau, with high-powered scopes and long-range listening probes, after getting the call from Crane hours ago. The operative in charge was called Philippe, a fifty-two-year-old with a weather-beaten face and the flattened nose of a boxer. He’d worked with Crane on a number of occasions, and both liked and trusted him. But something wasn’t right. The men who’d rented the chateau had looked to him like flabby desk jockeys, rather than hardened mercenaries. There were no visible signs of an attempt at securing the place, either. Satellite observation had likewise come up blank as far as incriminatory evidence was concerned.

After checking in with HQ at Levallois-Perret, Paris, and saying that he felt they had the wrong location, he’d been ordered to make sure. He’d risked calling the local gendarmes, and had asked them to feign a casual passport-checking exercise, the law demanding that all nationals and visitors had to prove their identity if asked.

When HQ had scrutinized the names that had been emailed through, he’d gotten a call to say the men were all bona-fide computer-inkjet salesmen from Marseilles, who were on a team-building retreat. They were going to have some downtime in Paris before flying home.

But half an hour later, he’d taken another call on his smartphone, and this time the news had been positive. The Normandy connection that Crane had filled him in on was crucial. On the strength of that, he’d rung Crane a few seconds after coming off the phone with HQ.

Philippe had told him that the DCRI had gotten a tip-off that something had gone down in Abu Dhabi. The source was a suspicious caporal-chef, who’d decided that national security overrode personal ambition, although the DCRI had asked that his unofficial smoking break be overlooked. The info had led to a search of the flight records. When the destination of the French Air Force transport plane had become known, the base’s CCTV cameras had been checked. They had shown a civilian van.

After Crane’s reference to Évreux had been factored in, the plate had been picked up by a traffic-monitoring camera as the van had left the capital en route to Normandy. Following an external search of chateaux within a thirty-mile radius by unmarked police cars, they had found one that might fit the bill. Men on the gate. Razor-wire. CCTV cameras. It was only twelve miles south from the chateau they had under surveillance. Finally, Philippe had given Crane the directions for a new rendezvous point where Tom should meet him.

Philippe had already agreed to meet up with Tom after the initial call from Crane, who’d asked him a special favour and had promised that the head of the secretary’s protective detail wouldn’t interfere. He was a loyal man, and deserved to be there when she got out. If it weren’t for him, Crane said, they would never have known where she was. Besides, the DS special agent knew something that could ensure her identity. Following the most recent call from Philippe, Crane had phoned Tom.

By this time, Tom, Lester and Karen had reached the outskirts of Évreux. Crane told Tom that the chateau had been checked out by the DCRI already. That was the bad news. The good news was that the French had found a chateau where she might be. But due to logistical considerations and the fact that it could be another dead end, no roadblocks had been set up as yet. The gendarmes were searching for other potential sites as he spoke. Then he told Tom the new location, saying that only the three DCRI operatives had arrived there so far.

“You can meet up with the DCRI at an intersection about a half-mile from the chateau,” Crane said. “The road that passes due west by the chateau forks a hundred metres from the end of the perimeter wall. The left-hand road leads to a copse of trees with a rest stop about twenty metres beyond that.”

“Thanks,” Tom said.

“But listen to me, Tom. When you get there, you wait with the DCRI operatives, you hear? If no other sites are found and it turns out to be the right place, French Special Forces will go in.”

“What’s their ETA?” Tom asked.

“An hour, give or take.”

Tom turned to Karen and gave her the details. After checking out satellite maps on her laptop, she said that the rest stop wasn’t too far away. She gave Lester the location of both the chateau and the rest stop and he punched them into the Land Rover’s sat-nav.

Twenty minutes later, Lester drove Tom through the narrow lanes near Évreux, the ancient oak trees overlapping above them and making it dark enough to warrant the headlights being on. Karen had been left a few miles back with the equipment, sitting in a field beyond a rusted gate that hung off its hinges by a piece of frayed rope. Tom had told her that if anything went wrong, she should call Vice Admiral Theodore Birch, the head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in DC, and had given her the number to ring. He’d said to tell him everything, then hand-deliver a note he had sealed in a manila envelope, which stated everything else that she didn’t know.

Lester stopped the van at the entrance to a farm track that ran the length of a field where cows grazed. He slipped out and Tom got into the driver’s seat, his mind fixed on finding the secretary and taking her home. He could sense that the next ten minutes or so would be vital in achieving that aim. After remaining at the track while he’d watched the second hand on his watch tick away for three minutes, he drove off. He figured he’d reach the rendezvous point in less than sixty seconds.

There were three men, just as Crane had said there would be, their hands clasping stubby Heckler & Koch MP7A1 sub-machine guns fixed with suppressors, extended magazines and EOTech holographic day-sights. They were dressed in black fatigues, standing in front of a dark-blue Citroën van with tinted windows.

Tom steered the Land Rover into the leaf-strewn rest stop. As he got out the man he took for the trio’s leader stepped forward, a man well over six feet tall with a thin mouth like a snake’s.

“Mr Dupree?”

“Oui, je suis Monsieur Dupree.”

“Parlez-vous français?”

“Oui, je fais.”

They proceeded to speak in French.

“You’re a foreign national. I’m afraid I will have to escort you to a hotel until this is over.”

A set-up, then, Tom thought. He caught a glimpse of a French Foreign Legion tattoo on the well-muscled forearm of one of the men on the right, a green-and-red triangle containing the grenade emblem. He was a stocky guy all over, with sandy hair and ruddy cheeks.

“Did Crane send you?” he asked Snake Lips. He figured the only person who knew he was going to be there was Crane, and that he’d betrayed him. These guys weren’t DCRI operatives. They were mercenaries.

“I don’t know anyone called Crane.”

“No, ‘course you don’t.”

Snake Lips grinned.

“How about Peter Swiss?” Tom turned to the guy with the tattoo. “He’s one of you, 2nd Rep.”

The man shook his head.

“Is my French not good enough?” Tom asked.

“Your French is good,” Snake Lips said. “But that doesn’t change anything.”

“You came from the chateau, right.” Tom guessed that Crane had gotten these guys to take out the DCRI operatives.

Snake Lips smiled, revealing a gold molar. “On your knees. Hands behind your head, if you please, Mr Dupree.”

Tom assumed the position on the ground.

The tattooed man walked forward, flex-cuffs in his hand. As he bent down to restrain Tom his head jerked back, a spout of blood ejecting from his left temple. Tom sprang up and flung himself at Snake Lips, just as the second man, who’d turned in the direction of the suppressed discharge, was hit in the neck. He collapsed to his knees, his hand grasping his shattered carotid artery, as blood gushed over his fingers.

Tom had hit Snake Lips in the solar plexus with his forehead, winding him and pushing him backwards. As the Frenchman fumbled for his MP7, Tom launched himself into the air. He brought his knee up and simultaneously clasped the man’s head in his hands, pulling his face down onto his rising lower thigh. His thigh impacted Snake Lips’ nose with a loud crunch, and Tom knew the bone had shattered. As he collapsed sideways Tom finished the Frenchman off with a hook to the jaw. Snake Lips hit the ground in a twisting motion, groaning. Tom stooped down and pulled the gun strap over the man’s head before slinging the weapon over his shoulder. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

He crouched back down again. “
Parlez-vous anglais
?” he asked, quietly.

“Yes,” Snake Lips grunted, face up in the dirt and leaves.

“You wanna live?”

“Yes.”

“Good answer.”

Lester stepped out from behind an ivy-clothed tree trunk. A suppressed Marine sniper rifle, the bolt-action M40A5, with a scout sniper day-scope, held before his chest, the strap still wrapped around his left forearm.

Looking over, Tom said, “Nice shooting.”

“Old habits,” Lester replied, his face showing no emotion.

“Our French friend here would like to stay alive.”

“He better be a talkative Frenchy, then.”

“I don’t think there are any other kind,” Tom said.

They half carried the injured man into the surrounding undergrowth, and onto the edge of an evergreen forest about thirty metres from the rest stop. Lester secured him to a tree with a length of rope, the man’s head lolling to one side, the blood still falling in clots from his broken nose.

“You do that so you ain’t the only ugly one?” Lester said to Tom, gesturing to the man’s broken nose.

Tom smiled.

After walking back to the rest stop, he and Lester carried the two corpses into the forest. Stripping them down to their underwear, they hid the bodies among nettles and long grasses. They picked up their fatigues and weapons, and walked over to where Snake Lips was tethered, squatting down either side of him.

Tom grabbed the man’s cheeks with his hand, pushed his head back against the gnarled trunk roughly. “My friend here is going to work on you if you go dumb on us. Understand?”

“Yes,” the man said, his eyes rolling as if concussed.

“Let’s keep it short and painless and you’ll survive this. You have my word. And my word is good. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Tom leaned in close. “Is the Secretary of State still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Do they intend to kill her today?”

Snake Lips nodded, dimly.

Tom slapped his face. “Stay with me. When?”

“Half an hour or less.”

Jesus, Tom thought. They’d brought the timeframe forward by more than four hours. “How many men are guarding her?”

“Nine.”

“Be specific.”

“Two on the gate. The other seven are dispersed inside. One is a tech.”

“At the chateau close by?”

He nodded.

“Weapons?” Tom asked, grabbing the man’s jaw and jerking it up ninety degrees.

“Same as me. MP7s.”

“Where is she in the chateau?”

“Basement cell.”

“Locked?” Tom asked, staring into the man’s eyes.

“Yes.”

“Who has the key?”

The man closed his eyes, clearly feigning unconsciousness. Tom jabbed his finger into the pressure point under the Adam’s apple, where the trachea passed just below the surface of the skin. Snake Lips began spluttering and shook his head.

“Proctor,” he croaked.

Tom let go of him. “Proctor. An American?”

“English.”

“Where are the DCRI operatives?”

“Dead.”

“Whose orders?” Tom asked, readying himself to inflict more pain. But it wasn’t necessary.

“Proctor’s,” Snake Lips replied.

“How did he know they’d be here?”

“I don’t know. I swear.”

Tom believed him. “You did good,” he said, patting Snake Lips on the shoulder. “You’ll live.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

He sighed long and hard.
“Merci
.
”

“But if you’re lying, my friend will come back and give you a double tap. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Don’t forget that now, Frenchy,” Lester said.

Tom and Lester stood up and began to undress. They changed into the fatigues and walked back to the Land Rover, the dead men’s MP7s over their shoulders.

“You drive the van,” Tom said to Lester.

“You okay, Tom?”

“The CIA man I mentioned told me where to hook up with the French,” Tom said, referring to Crane.

“He did?”

“The only person who could’ve turned this rotten is him. He thinks I’m working alone, so they were only expecting me.”

“You figure he’s some kinda double agent?” Lester asked.

“I’m not sure what he is. But I now know he’s not to be trusted. And, Lester–”

“Don’t say it. Just between us.”

“Thanks, man.”

Driving back to where Karen was waiting with the equipment, Tom rang Birch on his hands-free. He told him what had just transpired and how Crane had to have set him up. “He’s a traitor, sir. I don’t know who else in the CIA might be involved, so I suggest we keep it in the DS.”

“I don’t get it. Crane called in French Special Forces. No question,” Birch said.

“I guess he was covering his ass. He knows they won’t get here in time.”

“They will, Tom. I’m sure of that.”

“I …”

“What is it, Tom?”

“She’ll be dead by then.”

“I’m telling you not to do anything by yourself. You could endanger Lyric’s life. And if you do, I won’t be able to save you. That’s a direct order, Agent. Stand down.”

“Yes, sir.”

But given the reduced timeframe, Tom knew he had to act.

He spent the next five minutes putting together a simple rescue plan. He was glad that Lester had pushed to show them how to use the weapons, because, apart from sounding seriously effective, they were of the disabling variety rather than lethal, and there was no way of knowing whether or not the secretary’s location inside the chateau had changed.