A Gentleman's Game Read online

  “All you have to do is sign off on the proposal and you’ll have his answer,” Crocker said.

  Barclay, now on his feet, glared at Crocker in what could only be described as a mixture of amazement and fury.

  “Every time I believe I’ve seen the limits of your arrogance, you delight in proving me wrong,” Barclay said. “Yes, Crocker, I know how to make my Prime Minister happy. But I’m not about to offer him hollow comfort, not if it’s liable to come back and bite this Government in the ankle, or somewhere higher.

  “You think you can trump me, that I will bow to pressure from above. You’re wrong. I assure you, I will happily weather any dressing-down Downing Street delivers, rather than authorize an operation the scope of which I am unaware.”

  The two men glared at each other, until Crocker slid his eyes away, looking past Barclay’s shoulder.

  “Very well.” Barclay closed the folder, all but tossing it back at Crocker. “Tanglefoot is denied. Come up with something else.”

  “There won’t be another opportunity for months, if not years.”

  Barclay, already settled again behind his desk, reached for the stack of papers awaiting his attention to the left of the blotter. Without looking up, he said, “Pity.”

  Crocker turned the folder in his hands, thinking. Barclay’s head remained bowed as he began reading the latest needs projections from the East Asian desk.

  “That’s all,” Barclay said, still engrossed in his reading. “You’re dismissed.”

  Crocker sighed, dropped the proposal down once again in front of Barclay. “Muhriz el-Sayd.”

  Barclay took his time, leaning back in his chair. He kept the look of satisfaction on his face in check, but enough of it survived the process to make it plain they both knew who had won the round.

  “Go on.”

  “He’s EIJ, commands tactical operations,” Crocker said. “The Mossad wants him dead. He’s the man Faud will be meeting in Yemen.”

  “Landau wants us to do the job on both men. Is that it?”

  Crocker shook his head. “Landau had the itinerary, but not the dates. In exchange for us providing him with the dates of travel, his people would take Faud when they hit el-Sayd.”

  “Much to the chagrin of the Americans.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “So Chace is going as backup to a Mossad hit squad?”

  Again Crocker shook his head. “Chace is going to assassinate Faud, that’s all.”

  “You expect me to believe that she’ll leave el-Sayd alone?”

  “She’ll be ordered to take no action in the pursuit of el-Sayd,” Crocker said, picking his words carefully.

  Barclay gave him a look of thinly veiled suspicion. “So you’re just going to forget that the Mossad expected something in return for their information?”

  “I made no promises to Landau, sir. If he assumed we had an arrangement in place, that’s his error, not mine, and not the Firm’s.”

  “He won’t like it,” Barclay mused. “If he realizes what you’re up to, he’s liable to send in people of his own to go after el-Sayd. That could foul the attempt on Faud.”

  “It is a possibility,” Crocker said.

  Barclay fingered the proposal, considering, then plucked his pen from its holder and scribbled his signature on the last page.

  “You should tell him that Chace will be going after el-Sayd,” Barclay said. “He doesn’t need to know that we’ve no intention of pursuing it, and it could keep the Mossad off our backs.”

  “That was my plan, sir.”

  “Then for once we’re in agreement.” He handed the proposal back to Crocker. “Copies to Downing Street and the FCO by close of play, if you please.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Don’t leave just yet.”

  Crocker tucked the folder under his arm, waiting for the rest of it.

  “I want a success on this, Paul,” Barclay said softly. “You’ve just been handed an opportunity to prove the worth of your precious Special Section, not just to me but to the Government. This is an assassination, nothing less, and anything less than Faud’s death will result in mission failure. Whatever it takes, Faud doesn’t leave Yemen alive.”

  “There are limits to what even Chace can do.”

  “She’s the leader of the Special Section,” Barclay said. “I think it’s high time she proves just how special she is.”

  15

  Saudi Arabia—Tabuk Province,

  Residence of Prince Salih bin Muhammad bin Sultan

  3 September 1404 Local (GMT+3.00)

  For Sinan, it had been two-plus weeks of growing disgust and frustration, watching the Prince pay lip service to everything they believed, everything they had been taught, only to swiftly pivot and shamelessly bury himself in behavior that should have cost him his head, literally. That Abdul Aziz had condemned both Matteen and him to bear witness made him feel further betrayed, and bewildered.

  Had he not proven himself in the West Bank? Had he not gone to act with Hamas as ordered, and had he not further culled the weak from their pack with the removal of Aamil? Abdul Aziz had told him, in front of the camp, that he had done well, that he had acted as a jihadi should. He had, in front of the camp, declared Sinan bin al-Baari a True Warrior in the name of Allah, all mercies upon him.

  Had Abdul Aziz lied? Was he still condemned as an outsider—a Muslim, yes, even a Wahhabist, yes, but not an Arab—and therefore never to be fully trusted?

  It had occurred to Sinan that this might be a test. If so, he reflected, it was a particularly grueling one. The Prince seemed eager to violate every prohibition in Islam short of eating pork, and Sinan suspected that, at some point, the Prince had probably violated that prohibition as well.

  After Abdul Aziz had departed with the others from the camp, the Prince had ordered Hazim to show Sinan and Matteen to their rooms, wishing them both a good night and a pleasant rest under Allah’s watchful gaze and inviting them to join him for breakfast the next morning. Hazim had guided them to “modest guest rooms,” which had been anything but. Sinan’s bed had been the largest he had ever seen, and with a water-filled mattress, to boot. The bathroom had been larger than the admittedly small house he’d been raised in near Sheffield, and after enjoying the luxury of a shower, he had tried to sleep for the few hours that remained of the night. After months of his cot in the camp, the bed had seemed a tempting proposition.

  A false temptation, much to his surprise. He’d ultimately wrapped himself in a blanket on the carpeted floor, sleeping in that fashion until he’d been woken by the muezzin’s call to prayer, played through speakers outside the mansion. He had roused himself, dressed, and prayed toward Mekkah, then donned his Kalashnikov and cautiously emerged from his room.

  Matteen had emerged at the same time, and together the two men had gone in search of their breakfast, not wishing to insult the Prince by appearing tardy. Hazim was nowhere to be found, but another servant, Hazim’s age and just as attentive, had offered to guide them. While the boy led them through the maze of the house, Sinan and Matteen had talked of how they would approach their duty.

  “We are not guards,” Sinan had muttered. “This is not our work.”

  “I don’t believe we’ll have to worry about that,” Matteen had replied.

  •

  Matteen had been correct.

  From the moment they sat down to dine on a breakfast of dates, figs, pastries, and tea with the Prince, the Prince made it clear what he wanted from them.

  “Your battles! Tell me everything,” he said. “I want to hear it all, every detail! I want to hear your stories as if I was there, beside you. I want to hear them so that your memories become my own. So that we will be brothers, truly.”

  Matteen and Sinan had exchanged looks then, and Sinan had known they both thought the same thing. Sinan was proud, very proud, of what he had done, and had hopes for what more he would do. But what he had done, he had done in the name of jihad, to fight for t
awhid, for the belief in the Oneness of God, as Wahhabism required.

  It was not done for bragging rights, for gloating, for anyone or anything. It was done for Allah, praise Him, and that any man, beggar or Prince of the House of Saud, would want to lay claim to it as well bordered on blasphemy.

  He was relieved when, at the Prince’s insistence, Matteen began telling him some of what had happened in Tora-Bora.

  “You saw the picture?” the Prince interrupted. “In the study?”

  Both men knew exactly the one the Prince meant, and Matteen nodded.

  “That was in ’98,” the Prince said, and the practiced nonchalance with which he said it made Sinan want to spit out his meal and toss the mess across the table. “I brought Usama a check, stayed with him at the camp outside Asadabad, in Kunar province. We flew falcons together. He’s a gifted falconer.”

  The Prince smiled at them, waited for an acknowledgment.

  “I didn’t know that,” Sinan said.

  “Oh, yes. Loves falcons, ever since he was a boy.”

  “Do you keep falcons, Your Highness?” Matteen asked after another painful pause.

  “I do. Would you like to see them?”

  “If it wouldn’t interfere with our duties for you, yes, please.”

  “No, no, don’t worry about that. I have bodyguards, they are the best, you know. No, that’s not why you’re here. You’re here so we may get to know one another, so that we may become friends, brothers in arms.”

  Sinan had nodded, finishing his tea, and thinking that if Allah were truly merciful, he would strike the Prince down very soon indeed.

  •

  So for two-plus weeks, Sinan and Matteen had been the Prince’s friends. They had stayed with him in his palace. They had enjoyed his hospitality at royal insistence, sharing their stories again and again. Sinan discovered that the Prince seemed never to tire of hearing about Ma’le Efraim. They prayed five times a day, dined on lavish meals, played football on the remarkably green lawn in the incredible heat of the afternoon, accompanied the Prince as he flew his falcons, and watched sports and movies in the Prince’s study.

  Sinan hated all of it, but especially the time in the study, and the films. Action films with explosions and gun battles and special effects, where American heroes laid low all who opposed them, then returned home to sleep with some eager whore who had spent most of the movie half-dressed at the most.

  But the Prince had other films as well, and after their first week, he broke those out. These were home movies, videos shot in Monaco and Beverly Hills and Marbella, where the Prince and other members of the royal family went to pursue all those things forbidden at home. That the Prince would show these films to them troubled Sinan, until he realized the Prince’s thinking.

  Sinan and Matteen were not Saudi, after all. Sinan, in particular, had come from the West. Whether the Prince mistakenly took that to mean that Sinan had shared in the things he was showing them, Sinan didn’t know, but it was clear that the Prince felt that not just he but they, Sinan and Matteen too, were held to a different standard.

  In the home movies, the Prince rode Jet-Skis and played roulette and purchased Rolexes and danced with blondes who wore little more than the jewels the Prince himself had given them. So did the other princes and their families. One of the videotapes was nothing but footage of the women the Prince had taken to his bed in these places, alone or two or three at a time.

  Sinan knew the Prince was married, and had three wives, and ten children by those wives. He knew that the Prince believed himself to be righteous, even as he showed them these movies, twisting in his leather chair to hide his erection.

  If Allah were merciful, Sinan vowed again.

  •

  In early September—Sinan wasn’t sure of the date—the Prince presented Matteen and Sinan with gifts. This wasn’t new. He had already given them new Kalashnikovs, and new pistols, too, Glocks that could weather almost anything the desert would throw at them. But this time he presented them each with a small white box, not much larger than Sinan’s hand, nor much thicker, and wrapped with a green silk bow.

  Inside, each of them discovered a passport for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  The documents were real, not forgeries, and Sinan’s had his name, his true name of al-Baari, and the surge of gratitude he felt when he saw that confounded him. That the Prince would do this for him, after all he had thought of the man, gave him guilt.

  “We are taking a trip,” the Prince told them. “We are going to Yemen.”

  16

  London—Vauxhall Cross, Operations Room

  3 September 1555 GMT

  Chace beat Crocker to the Ops Room by a minute, was getting a light from Ronald Taylor at the Duty Operations Desk when he entered.

  “D-Ops on the floor,” Ron said.

  Crocker made a beeline to them, dropped the folder in his hand into Taylor’s lap, saying, “Designation is Tanglefoot, Minder One allocated.”

  “Operation: Tanglefoot,” Ron echoed.

  “Lex? Put it up.”

  At the MCO desk, Alexis tapped on her keyboard, and the plasma screen representation of the world redrew itself, now with a lime-green halo surrounding Yemen. The call-out appeared beside it on the map, and Chace watched as the letters, one by one, appeared.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean I’m liable to be tripped up,” Chace said. “Tanglefoot.”

  “It was either that or Lemontree,” Crocker said. “I hate that fucking computer.”

  Chace chuckled. Contrary to popular belief, mission names were chosen entirely at random, from a computer-generated list of suggestions. It was a mystery to her exactly for what criteria the computer searched, and she suspected—as did most of the Ops Room staff—that the nameless technician who had written the program in the first place had done so with a Pythonesque relish of the absurd. She had, in her time, been associated or instrumental in such operations as Shoebox, Tanlines, Eyefire, and, personal favorite, Laceboy.

  Tanglefoot was positively tame in that light.

  Crocker turned from the plasma wall, apparently only marginally satisfied by Lex’s execution of the order, and glared at Ron. “Mission Planning’s delivered the brief?”

  “Right here, sir. Minder One departs Heathrow oh-seven-fifteen tomorrow the fourth, BA flight 902, arrives San’a’ via Frankfurt twenty-three-twenty local, same day.”

  “Long flight,” Chace observed.

  “At least you’re going first class.”

  “And coming back steerage.”

  Crocker’s look was icy. “Continue, Ron.”

  “Arriving San’a’, Minder One checks in to the Hotel Taj Sheba. It’s on the outskirts of the old city, ten kilometers from the airport, but it places her centrally, and it’s popular with the tourists, so she’ll fit right in.”

  “Five star, is it?” Chace kept the sarcasm mild.

  “Actually, yes.”

  Crocker snapped his lighter closed, jetted smoke from his nostrils. “Cover?”

  “Given the nature of the mission and the possible length of stay in country, Mission Planning felt it would be best for Minder One to be working with fresh papers.” Ron sorted through a briefing file on his desk, settled on a new sheet. “Diana Kelsey in Documents is doing the passport right now, going with the Italian romance-novel cover.”

  “I’ll pack my most billowy blouses.”

  “You’re traveling as Adriana Maribino, from Como, in the north. Should help explain your looks some.”

  “And I thought I’d have to dye my hair.”

  “That’s enough,” Crocker snapped. “You’re as bad as Wallace ever was.”

  Chace doubted that. There had been times when Wallace so completely undermined the seriousness of a briefing, he’d reduced the room to stitches, leaving Crocker glaring at a sea of faces, all trying to stifle the giggles. It had earned Wallace a dressing-down by D-Ops on more than one occasion.

  “Sorry, sir,” she said, unre
pentant.

  Ron hesitated, glancing from Crocker to Chace, then back again, before resuming. “Miss Maribino is single and works as a waitress at one of Como’s finer dining establishments, the Trattoria del Gesumin. Restaurant favorites are the salmon tagliatelle, saffron risotto, and osso buco. This is a big trip for Miss Maribino, and she’s splurged, registered with FST Arabia for a fourteen-day ‘Roads of Arabia’ package. The first week is centered in and around San’a’, with trips to Ar-Rawda and Wadi Dhahr, so it’ll support your cover.”

  “Procedure,” Crocker demanded.

  “The Yemen Number Two, Andrew Hewitt, is the pointer. As soon as he can confirm that Faud has arrived and can provide a location, he’ll contact Minder One by phoning her room at the Taj Sheba between oh-seven-ten and oh-seven-twenty.”

  “My wake-up call,” Chace murmured.

  “He’ll only call once, and only after he has the information, so it’s vital you be in the room at those times.”

  “Understood.”

  “Hewitt will ask how Minder One slept. If she replies that she slept well, he’ll come around immediately and deliver the gun and what intelligence on the target he’s been able to gather. If Minder One feels that she has been compromised in any way, either by local security or opposition forces, she will respond that she slept poorly and needs to go back to sleep.

  “In that instance, fallback is three hours plus seven minutes from the time of call, at a teahouse on Az-Zubayri Street, just south of the medina wall and east of the Sa’ila.” Ron checked another of the sheets arrayed before him on the DOO desk. “Incidentally, there’s a chance of rain, so the Sa’ila may be running. Otherwise your weather is in the low twenties.”

  Which meant the nights would be colder, Chace told herself, and reminded herself to pack a sweater.

  “Failing the first fallback, the Station Number Two will load a dead-drop in the Qat Suq, in which Minder One will find the weapon and a briefing on the target’s location and movements. Details on the drop are still being worked out, but we’ll have them before her departure.”