“You’ll do the transfer, period.”
“No! No, I won’t! I
Ellis waited, praying that Han agreed.
“You will hear something in the next few days. Then I will hear you tell me the aircraft is on the way.”
Ellis hung up the phone and sagged onto his bed with his head in his hands.
I entered my room on the seventh floor and found Knuckles already there.
He asked, “How’s it look?”
“Not too bad. The front’s got plenty of standoff for any sort of vehicle-borne IED, and the circular drive has a pretty good chicane leading up to the front door. The south side’s the issue. It butts up right against an alley, with a neighborhood starting right on the other side. Easy to get a large VBIED there. What about you?”
“Interior security’s pretty good. X-ray and metal detectors on all doors, and manual baggage checks for any workers coming in. I talked to the concierge. They’ve stepped it up some because of the guests, doubling the security force.”
When Kurt had diverted us to keep an eye on Noordin, he’d also tasked us with checking out the security posture of the congressional delegation’s hotel. Knuckles and I were doing that while Bull and Jennifer went to the Cairo convention center to get a handle on our target.
“So,” I said, “all we need to do is make sure that none of the delegation has rooms on the south side. I’ll pass that and let Kurt sort it out.”
I heard someone fumbling with a card key outside and opened the door. Jennifer came through, smiling like she’d found another hominid.
“I take it things went well?”
Bull said, “Better than well. We’ve got him for the next few days with little work on our part.”
Jennifer said, “He’s going on sightseeing trips. Tomorrow’s the pyramids, then a day trip up to Alexandria on the coast.”
Bull said, “Koko here got us on the same trips. So we don’t have to work at all to keep him in sight,
Jennifer’s smile left her. “Okay, I get the use of a call sign on the radio, but would you please use my name in normal conversation. Koko’s a damn gorilla.”
She didn’t understand that the call sign was a good thing. Something that was earned and proof of further acceptance. I let it ride.
“Did you get a facial ID?” I said, meaning did they have a photograph.
“No,” Jennifer said. “But I did see him. He was wearing a name tag for the convention.”
“Did he see you?”
“No. I was in a crowd walking by. No way he saw me.”
“Okay, you two stand down. I don’t want to risk burning you. Knuckles, head over to the convention and get a shot of everyone in his booth. We’ll have Jennifer ID the right guy, then we’ll all know what he looks like.”
20
The bus ride up to Alexandria went the same as our entire day at the pyramids — uneventful. Noordin had stumbled around gawking like every other tourist, taking pictures and paying outrageous prices for bottled water from the swarms of Egyptians just outside the gates. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t in Cairo on legitimate business.
Our first stop was the Library of Alexandria. Jennifer had given all of us a history lesson on how the Greeks had ruled Egypt and built this incredible library, only to see it destroyed. She was itching to get a look at the remains. Instead, we pulled up to a huge, modern-day library. We thought maybe they’d built a new library around the old one, but no, it was just a library — albeit one that commemorated the spirit of the original.
The entire bus spent about five minutes inside, apparently wondering, like us, why the tour guide thought we might want to check out some modern-day books. Noordin bought some more trinkets at the souvenir shop and we left scratching our heads.
Jennifer said, “The catacombs had better be real.”
Our next stop was a burial site called Kom el-Shoqafa. Apparently a great historical find, and something that Jennifer was looking forward to. We’d already gotten the classes on it from her.
I said, “We’re probably going to a modern cemetery. Don’t get upset.”
The bus wove its way into a densely packed neighborhood, with the buildings an arm’s length apart. We eventually stopped outside a simple metal gate. We let Noordin exit first, then followed. Getting inside, there was nothing to see. Just a ticket booth. There were some artifacts around the grounds with a couple of Asian tourists taking happy snaps of each other around them.
The tour guide led us to a circular stairwell, and before I knew it, we were about sixty feet below ground level inside what was definitely an ancient catacomb. Small hallways branched out in all directions, with the walls hollowed out at regular intervals as final resting spots.
We listened to the tour guide give his class, which wasn’t as good as Jennifer’s, and waited for him to let us wander around on our own.
As the crowd split up, I took the first shift, bringing Bull with me and staying about thirty feet back from Noordin. He broke from the pack and began to explore by himself, forcing us to lose sight of him as he wound through the small hallways. We turned one corner and almost ran into him and another man, an Arab. The section we were in was covered in water, with planks allowing tourists to crouch over and walk without getting wet. We did a dance around them, hopping from plank to plank, and kept going. Noordin paid us no mind, but his friend did.
Once we turned another corner, I said, “You recognize that guy? Is he on our trip?”
Bull was thinking the same thing I was. “No. I’m sure he’s not with us.”
I immediately tried to contact Knuckles and Jennifer to get them in position, but the small covert radios we had wouldn’t function in the catacombs.
I didn’t want to risk burning ourselves, and a sure way to do that was to have the same people walk by the target over and over again. If something nefarious was going on, they’d be looking for it. I knew damn well Noordin’s friend would. He just gave off that vibe.
I started walking again, saying “Maybe this thing dead-ends. That would give us a reason to go back.”
It didn’t dead-end, but it did get messy enough for anyone to plausibly turn back, with the decrepit boards dipping into the water.
“Okay, when we go by, I’m going to completely ignore them because I got eyeballed. See what you can see.”
We retraced our steps and found them both in the same location, apparently fascinated by one of the tombs that looked exactly like every other one of the hundreds down here. Something was going on.
We slipped by them, with Bull saying, “Sorry. Don’t go that way. It’s blocked.”
Reaching the main hall, I asked what he saw.
“When we turned the corner, the Arab handed something to Noordin. He did it quickly, like he was trying to hide it. And Noordin jammed it in his pocket immediately. They also weren’t saying anything. Nothing about the tombs or other tourist stuff. It’s like they shut up when they saw us.”
We found Knuckles and Jennifer and laid out what we’d seen.
Knuckles said, “So you want us to take the new guy? See where he goes?”
“Yeah… Shit, that’s not going to work. If they’re up to no good, he’s going to stay down here until the bus leaves. I won’t be able to point him out to you because I’ll be on the damn bus following Noordin.”
Knuckles said, “How bad is your heat state?”
“Radioactive. Bull and I both got close enough to bump asses with them.”
“Well, we could blow off Noordin. You could finger the Arab and we’d just meet back at the hotel.”
