The Camel Club

Carter Gray walked down the hallway of an isolated cell area at NIC. He nodded to the guards and the cell door slid open.

“Mr. al-Rimi,” Gray said triumphantly. “Shall we talk?”

There was no response from the burly prisoner who was lying on his bed, the covers over his head. Gray motioned to the guards.

The two men grabbed al-Rimi by the shoulders and attempted to haul him up.

“Oh, shit!” one of the guards exclaimed.

They let go of al-Rimi, and he fell to the concrete floor.

Gray rushed in and stared at the body. Loose strands of medical tape were sticking out of his mouth. He had taken it from his wounded arm, balled it up and crammed it into his mouth, suffocating himself under the cover of his blanket. His body was already cold.

Gray looked up at the video camera hanging in the corner and screamed, “A man chokes himself to death on medical tape, and you saw nothing! You idiots!”

He threw the file into Adnan al-Rimi’s cell. The photos cascaded over the body.

As he stalked off, the glazed eyes of the corpse seemed to follow each furious stride of the intelligence czar. If a dead man could’ve managed it, Adnan al-Rimi would certainly have been smiling.

A half hour later Gray’s chopper landed at the White House. He was not looking forward to this meeting with Acting President Hamilton. He decided to get the worst of it out of the way up front. Gray and Hamilton had never been close. Hamilton was an old political sidekick of Brennan, and he had been openly cool to the close relationship Brennan had with his intelligence chief. And it was still a sore point with Hamilton that the president asked Gray and not him to attend the event in Brennan. And yet that event had radically altered their professional relationship, giving Hamilton the upper hand. Gray assumed his new boss would look for any opening to sack him, and the NIC chief didn’t intend to give him such an opportunity.

He told Hamilton about a prisoner’s suicide, but without informing him of al-Rimi’s true identity. Gray intended to take that secret to his grave. “However, I think we’re making progress, sir,” he added.

Hamilton snapped, “How the hell do you figure that, Gray?” He held up an Islamic newspaper. “You read Arabic, don’t you?”

Gray translated the headline out loud: “They Are Finally Paying for Their Sins.”

Hamilton picked up another paper. “This one says, ‘Maybe Islam Can Turn the Other Cheek.’ That ran in a major Italian daily. And now, while our president is God knows where, the international press is intimating that this is somehow our fault.” He held up a long slip of paper. “In the last twenty minutes I’ve been informed that a Muslim cabdriver was pulled out of his vehicle in broad daylight in New York City and beaten to death. And you know what? He’d served six years in the army. Our army! And two Halliburton executives were snatched out of their hotel in Riyadh; their gutted bodies were found in an alley a half mile away with ‘Death to America’ written across their naked bodies. And that’s just the latest in about a dozen such incidents I’ve gotten today. The Pentagon’s waiting for me to tell them to nuke somebody and my intelligence folks are anything but intelligent it seems. We don’t have one damn lead as to where Jim Brennan is.” He stared at Gray, obviously itching to hear the man’s feeble response so he could pounce.

Ben Hamilton had seemingly aged four years in the brief time since the kidnapping. Gray had never known a president to come into the White House with dark hair and leave with anything less than gray. This was the most impossible occupation in history and, in the strange way the world worked, the most coveted.

Gray said, “Regardless of how this happened, and what the international media is saying about it, dogs don’t change their spots. When the inevitable happens, we’ll have the opening we need.”

Hamilton slammed his fist down on his desk. “I want Jim Brennan back alive! Your previous work for this country means squat to me. This happened on your watch, and I hold you fully accountable for it. The United States has been humiliated by a bunch of damn Arabs. Unless the president is returned safe and sound, you will no longer head this country’s intelligence community. Are we perfectly clear on that?”

“Absolutely,” Gray replied impassively. He knew this to be baseless rhetoric. There was no possible way the acting president could afford to fire his intelligence chief during such a crisis. “But let me point out that there is not one demand of the kidnappers that this country can seriously consider, given our current foreign policies. And we can’t wait one week for his release, not that I believe they will release him. The American people will not tolerate that. And the violence is only going to become worse in the meantime.”

Hamilton snapped, “Well, then I guess you’ll just have to find him on your own.”

Gray studied the man keenly. He sensed exactly what his adversary was thinking; politicians were all too transparent. Ben Hamilton had wanted this job more than anything. He had patiently paid his dues, waiting for Brennan to serve his two terms before it was his turn to wear the American Crown. Now he had the throne, yet could he do the job? In Gray’s mind it wasn’t even a close call. Ben Hamilton didn’t make even a worthy vice president.

The chief of staff suddenly burst into the room with a Secret Service agent hard on her heels. “Sir,” she exclaimed. “This is just in from Al Jazeera. The kidnappers have disclosed the location where the president will be released.”

“Where?” Gray snapped.

“Medina.”

Hamilton exclaimed, “Medina! How in the hell did they get Brennan out of the country and to Saudi Arabia?”

“Private plane and private airport,” Gray answered. “Not that difficult.”

Hamilton’s face flushed. “We spend billions on airport and border security, and they manage to sneak the damn president of the United States to the Middle East.” He stared at Gray as though he meant to fire him right that instant.

Gray spoke quickly. “It makes sense. Medina is the second holiest city in the Muslim world behind Mecca.”

Hamilton looked at his chief of staff. “Get in touch with the Saudis and tell them that Medina is going to be annexed by this country until we get Brennan back.” He eyed Gray. “I want every military and intelligence resource we have in the area focused there.”

“I’m on it, sir,” Gray said, rising from his chair. He wanted to get out of the room as fast as he could.

I serve at your pleasure, Gray thought as he fled the Oval Office.

CHAPTER

61

CAPTAIN JACK SAT BACK IN HIS chair and smiled with excellent reason. He had in his hand the password he needed to set his final plan into motion. Their captive had endured far more torture than had been anticipated, although his North Korean colleagues were very skilled at such exercises. Yet the man had finally broken; they all did eventually. Captain Jack read the Arabic words and smiled.

From a cloned phone that was not traceable to him he made one call. Speaking in fluent Arabic with well- honed inflections, he said what he needed to say and then used the precious password. This authenticated the source of Captain Jack’s statement to the party on the other line, and it would be immediately relayed to the world.

Captain Jack clicked off the phone and used his lighter to burn the piece of paper. If Tom Hemingway thought he had stunned the world, wait until it heard what his old friend had to say.

Secretary of Defense Joe Decker stared across the desk at Acting President Hamilton. They had just been informed of the latest statement issued through Al Jazeera. And they were furious.

“It’s our only choice, sir,” Decker said. “We simply don’t have the troops to deploy there, and frankly, even if we did, it might quickly turn into another Iraq. We have to avoid that at all costs. We can’t afford it.”

Andrea Mayes, the secretary of state, who’d been hovering in the back of the Oval Office, came forward. She