The Killing Ground Part 10

"Are you guys expecting a war or something?"

"I thought there was always a war of some kind in the Empty Quarter."

"That's true."

"My family is Rashid Shipping. As I'm sure you know, piracy is not unheard of."

"Tell me about it. If you'd just sign the manifest, you can be on your way."

Hussein was the last to board, heaving up the steps and closing the hatch behind him.

Jasmine and Sara had already discovered a large basket and were examining it. "Plenty of food in here and good bread," Jasmine said. Sara opened another one and took out a bottle. "You can tell he was American," she said. "Wine, red and white, whiskey and brandy. Hardly what the Prophet, whose name be praised, would recommend."

"I've always found the Prophet very understanding," said young Hamid, who had been an artist before taking up the gun.

"Well, each man makes his own arrangements." Hussein eased himself into the pilot's seat. He unfolded the map Grant had given him and Sara said, "Can I get in the copilot's seat?"

"Why not."

She did and he said, "You can help navigate. Just follow the red line that the American, Grant, has drawn."

"What's this?" she asked and ran her finger a good hundred miles or more along the line.

"Saint Anthony's Hospice. It's a Christian monastery that's served the trunk road across the desert since before Islam. There are only twenty or thirty men there now, Greek Orthodox in strange black robes. Fifty miles further on is the Oasis of Fuad with what's called Saint Anthony's Well. In ancient times, they served travelers of all religions."

He pressed the starter and the engines rattled into life, first the port, then the starboard. "Fasten your seat belts," he called, as he boosted speed and they roared down the runway. Sara was excited and grabbed his arm.

"Oh, this is so thrilling." She stared out at great mountains of sand dunes extending into infinity.

"A bit different from Baghdad."

"Oh yes, very different. No war."

He leveled out at ten thousand feet and put the automatic pilot on. Although there was air conditioning, on such an old plane it was not perfect. Hussein was wearing dark aviator's sungla.s.ses and a tan suit of fine Egyptian linen. He removed the jacket and revealed a shoulder holster under his left armpit holding a Beretta pistol.

Sara looked upon him. Hussein had been very careful in his dealings with her during the months she had been at the villa. As far as he was concerned, she knew nothing of his background other than the fact that he'd attended Harvard to qualify as a doctor and the war had prevented it.

But she was a remarkably astute young lady, soon to be fourteen, as she was fond of pointing out to people, and could not fail to notice the enormous respect with which he was treated by other people, and not just at the villa. Even important politicians and imams treated him as special. The truth was that she loved her father very dearly and he had been the most important man in her life. He had strong principles; you somehow took it for granted that anything he did was exactly the right thing for you. No argument needed.

Hussein was exactly the same. By religion, she had been baptized and raised as a Christian. She had no intention of changing that, although she had never argued about it with her grandfather, being perceptive enough to realize it would get her nowhere, and intelligent enough to understand she was embroiled in a complicated problem. She liked Hussein very much as her cousin, but the idea that at an appropriate age it would lead to marriage was something she had no intention of taking seriously. Her father would find a solution; all she had to do was wait.

The war, of course, was the war, but she was in a strange position. It was on the television every time you turned it on and it was also on the streets, very real, and it wouldn't go away. Even the death of her grandfather had failed to shock her. Many members of the household staff had been killed on the streets one way or another during her time in Baghdad.

The young men were already sampling wine behind her. When they offered a gla.s.s to Hussein, he refused, pointing out that he was flying, but he accepted salad sandwiches in leavened bread and sat eating a couple with Sara, who noticed that when his right trouser leg slid up a little it disclosed an ankle holster containing a Colt pistol. When she asked what it was for, he made light of it, stressing that though it was hardly likely that anything would go wrong, there were Arabs down there whose lives were hardly formal.

On the other hand, he omitted to mention that an ankle holster was the mark of the true professional.

For the moment, she was content and quite thrilled, and gradually, her head went back and she dozed.

CHARLES FERGUSON'S COUSIN, Professor Hal Stone, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Hoxley Professor of Marine Archaeology, had what was common to most academics in his profession: an almost total lack of money with which to conduct any kind of significant research.

At Hazar, a diving operation on a World War II freighter had disclosed beneath it a Phoenician trading ship of Hannibal's era. He could afford only one or two annual visits using local Arab divers operating from an ancient boat called the Sultan Sultan. On a previous visit, Dillon and Billy, both expert divers, had been able to render him some a.s.sistance.

The phone call from Ferguson had sent the good professor into a frenzy of delight. When he wasn't there, he employed his Arab foreman, a man named Selim, as caretaker. He phoned him with the news that he would be arriving and packed hurriedly.

He hadn't felt so cheerful in a long time and it wasn't only because of the prospect of diving. His dark secret was that as a young man, he had worked for the Secret Security Services, and was well aware of the kind of thing Ferguson and his minions got up to. To be involved delighted him.

"Transport provided?" he asked Ferguson.

"Of course. We've got a Gulfstream these days. The boys will have to get rid of the RAF rondels. We'll call it ...a United Nations Ocean Survey. That sounds good."

"Absolutely. So . . . the reason your people are going there. What is it this time?"

"Come by my flat and I'll fill you in."

Stone hung up and checked himself in the wardrobe mirror. The man who looked out at him was in his sixties, tanned, white-bearded, wearing a khaki bush jacket, khaki shirt and slacks and a crumpled bush hat. He produced a pair of dark Ray-Ban sungla.s.ses.

"That's better," he said. "Not exactly Indiana Jones, but not bad. Here we go again then."

He opened the door to his rooms, got a bag in each hand and left.

ROPER HAD HAD A FEW PROBLEMS running to earth the details of the charter plane flying from Kuwait with Hussein and party. The American, Grant, found himself visited by a Captain Jackson of Military Intelligence at the British Emba.s.sy, who was delighted to do Charles Ferguson the favor. The fact that just on the corner of the hangar was a security camera, which on inspection proved to have taken several photos of the entire party, brought Jackson's visit to a more than satisfactory conclusion. In no time at all, everyone interested was able to examine them as much as they liked.

"The photos of Hussein Rashid are a real bonus," Ferguson said.

"What do you think of the girl?" Roper asked.

"Typical of these cases, making the girl dress in that way. What about you?"

Roper poured a whiskey. "She has a calm sort of face, a face that doesn't give a great deal away."

"I'm not sure it resembles the father to any great degree."

At that moment, Caspar Rashid hurried in with Sergeant Doyle. "What's all this about photos?"

"Here they are," Roper told him. "Fresh in from our contact in Kuwait."

Caspar examined them carefully, shuffling the photos several times.

Finally, he said, "It's amazing to actually have photos taken such a short time ago."

"How do you think she looks?" Ferguson asked.

"I don't know, I really don't. I know I might sound strange saying this, but it's the clothes she's wearing. They change her personality so much, or so it seems. Can my wife see these?"

"Good heavens, yes. It's a real stroke of luck getting such excellent photos of Hussein and his merry men."

Caspar examined a couple of them more closely. "You know, I barely recognize him. It's been several years, and then there were those six months in that American prison. I recall him as a very nice boy when young."

Dillon, who had come in quietly and was looking at the photos, said, "People change and circ.u.mstances change them even more. His mother and father killed in a bombing raid, that six months in jail. It must have seemed cruel and heartless." He helped himself to a shot of Roper's whiskey. "G.o.d knows, I had enough experience in Ireland during the Troubles to see how people can change fundamentally."

"Well, you would know, Sean," Roper said. "This Hussein, though, he's no ordinary one. Judging by his score, he's almost as good as you."

There was a heavy silence, for there was not much left for anyone else to say.

SARA, ENGROSSED WITH HER MAP READING and following the red line, saw the palm trees and the buildings that were St. Anthony's Hospice before anybody else. She pointed and called out, and Jasmine and the boys stood up and crowded to the windows to see. Hussein went down lower and lower to no more than two thousand feet.

He circled. There was a parapet, several monks on it in black hats and black robes. They waved. Hussein waggled his wings and turned south.

It was perhaps ten minutes later that their luck ran out. Quite suddenly, smoke, black and oily, started to come out of the port engine. Jasmine saw it first and cried out and there was a general disturbance, but no sign of flames, just that heavy black plume of smoke.

Sara, who'd dozed off again, came awake with a start to hear him say, "Calm down, all of you."

He switched off the engine and turned on the extinguisher for the port engine. Spray mingled with the smoke, but there were still no flames. "I think I know what it is. The oil seals have gone, leaking oil over the hot engine and creating all that black smoke. Everybody fasten their seat belts and we'll go down." He said to Sara, "Follow Grant's line on the map. We must be close to the oasis at Fuad and Saint Anthony's Well."

He went down fast, the black plume of smoke flaring out from the wing, and Sara said calmly, "Over there on the right," and she pointed through the windscreen.

"Good girl."

They went down lower and lower until they were only a few hundred feet above the sand, and the oasis seemed to be coming toward them fast. Sara saw a clump of palm trees, a small, flat-roofed building to go with it, the clearly defined line of the road marked by the feet of countless travelers over the centuries.

There was a large pool of water, six horses drinking from it, Bedouins in robes beside a cooking fire gazing up, hands raised to shade their eyes from the sun.

Of further interest was a man in black robes, his wrists tied above him as he hung from a pole beside the house.

Hussein dropped the Hawk down on the road and rolled to a halt some distance from the oasis. He said to his three men, "Out you go. Rifles at the ready."

One of the men by the pool was holding a riding whip. He turned as if ignoring them and slashed it across the monk's back. The monk's robe had slipped from his shoulders and they were already b.l.o.o.d.y.

Sara said, "They can't do that, he's a priest."

"Calm yourself." Hussein reached for his phone, which rang as his men disembarked, and discovered it was the Broker. "Good," Hussein said. "I was hoping you'd be available." He explained the situation with the plane and detailed their position.

"I'll contact the airport at Hazar and arrange a recovery," said the Broker. "Probably by helicopter. I'll call you back when I know more."

Hussein said, "Let's get moving, ladies." He smiled at Sara. "Pa.s.s me my jacket, will you?"

As she handed it to him, she saw the maker's label inside and it said Armani, and she thought it was the most beautiful jacket she'd ever seen and suited him completely.

"Be ready for anything, boys," he said. "Some bad b.a.s.t.a.r.ds here, I think. Remember your blood, Rashid, before anything else."

"As one, cousin, we are with you," Khazid said, and they started forward, Hussein with Jasmine on one arm and Sara on the other.

THE SIX MEN by the pool watched them approach, cradling their rifles, wearing black robes and black-and-white head scarves. The leader, tall and bearded, waited, the whip dangling from his right hand.

"And who have we here?" he demanded.

"Who asks?" Hussein asked, and moved to the right where a pole protruded from a wooden fence, and sat on it.

"Mind your manners, pretty boy," the man said. "I am Ali ben Levi. I say who comes and goes here. I claim the well and this one cannot gainsay me."

He turned and slashed the priest across the shoulders again, and Sara cried out, "No."

"Learn your place, girl. He is only a Christian."

"And I am Christian, too," she said in Arabic. "Would you lash me?"

She ran at him, and he grabbed her wrist and laughed. "To do so would give me great pleasure." He flung her to the ground and raised the whip, and Hussein's hand fastened on the Colt .25 in the ankle holster and he drew it and fired, catching ben Levi between the eyes, the hollow-point cartridge propelling him backward into the pool and blowing away the back of his skull.

In virtually the same moment, one of the men opposite started to raise his rifle and Ha.s.sim shot him just with his AK. There was dead silence. Hussein gestured, the Colt still in his hand.

"On this occasion, I allow you to live," he told the rest of ben Levi's men. "So take your dead and go. Go now."

Hurriedly, they collected their horses, tied the bodies of the two dead men over the saddles of two mares and mounted. They waited for a moment and Hussein spoke.

"I am Hussein Rashid. I am the Hammer of G.o.d. I welcome any man of the ben Levi tribe who seeks satisfaction."

Which they did not, and left. Jasmine was trembling, but Sara was strangely calm. "I'll see to the priest," she said and went to him.

The satellite phone sounded, but there was heavy static. The Broker shouted, "It's me. Is the static clearing?"

"I'm here."

"They're sending a helicopter. Is everything okay?"

"A minor problem. It's been taken care of."

"Good. We'll be needing you soon, Hussein. There's work to be done, you know that. Osama himself was inquiring about you when we last spoke. He sends you his blessing."

"Tell him I thank him. Good-bye for now."

By the pool, Sara and Jasmine tended the priest, Sara washing his back carefully with a cloth from the house.

"Are you truly a Christian, child?" he asked.

"My mother is English, my father Rashid. I am baptized."

"And yet you wear the clothes of a Muslim woman."

Hussein and his men sat smoking and listening, and heard her say, "In the whole of the Koran, there are only two mothers of prophets. The first, the mother of Mohammed, whose name be praised, and the second Mary, the mother of the prophet Jesus. There is good in all things. I think this is true of the Bible and the Koran."