“Yep.” Civilian agents of the Central Intelligence Agency do not particularly like to be on American military bases. It makes them feel exposed, and Jamal had been trained to keep his cover safe by staying away from crowds of Americans, particularly soldiers.
“You have a company credit card?”
“Yep. Visa, AmEx, all of ’em. Platinum cards are almost as good as gold.” They contained neither his real name nor any clue as to his true employer.
“Any objection to taking us for a ride?”
Jamal raised a questioning eyebrow. “Nope.”
“Okay. Wait here a minute. Call downtown to the International and book us a couple of rooms for the night.” Swanson went back into the conference room, where Mishaal was still jawing away with the command and control bunch. It the prince wasn’t careful, he might get swept up in expanded military duties. Maybe that’s what he wanted; to climb the ladder a few more rungs. Kyle didn’t really care.
He pulled a small notebook from his combat vest and scribbled a note:
Mishaal kept an eye on the teleconference screens, where briefers were explaining some charts. He read the note and jotted:
FINE. BUT THIS TIME STAY PUT!
Then he underlined the sentence. Twice.
Within a few minutes, Jamal was driving the Mercedes past the lush King Fahd Park and the bright lights of the Intercontinental loomed like a halo nearby. “And just why are we doing this?”
Kyle squirmed in his seat to get more comfortable. “Well, my young CIA officer, never let the other guy set the timetable for your own operations. We will check into our rooms, so if Mishaal asks to see the register, it will confirm that we are logged in. We take a quick shower and put on fresh clothes, then slip out a side entrance. I’m betting that the prince will be too courteous to interrupt our sleep and, therefore, will not actually call our rooms. That gives us plenty of time to drive to the capital.”
“Riyadh’s only a two-hour drive from here,” Jamal said. “We can be there by four in the morning.”
“Henry Tsang expects us at 0930, but we’re going to be early.”
“Yep.” Jamal pulled into the broad driveway of the hotel.
AN HOUR LATER, THEY joined the stream of traffic highballing along the hardball toward Riyadh. A steady column of headlights approached in the other lane, people traveling in the cool of the night hours, and a scarlet chain of tail-lights reached as far ahead as they could see. Everybody drove like devils were chasing them, racing toward their destination before the sun came up again. The air conditioner whirred in the enclosed Mercedes, not so much to keep out the air as to keep out clouds of diesel fumes from all of the trucks. Jamal had a stack of CDs and Kyle kept the music going. Garth Brooks was on a country-and-western mix, singing about having friends in low places. They buzzed along, taking it easy on the curving mountain roads and through the tunnels, and then hitting about 100 miles per hour where the land flattened and traffic spaced out. Dead snakes that had emerged from beneath the sand when the sun went down in search of food littered the road like sections of loose rope.
“My station chief is not happy that I’m working with you,” Jamal said.
“Bosses aren’t supposed to be happy. For a boss to be happy would mean he is satisfied, and that would mean he did not have enough to worry about. I think he has a few bigger fish to fry right now than bitching about the two of us working together.”
“As long as we get results.”
“Nobody can accuse us of not getting results, pal. They get over being mad.” To Kyle, there was a big difference between following orders blindly and actually accomplishing a mission. It was a matter of control. By definition, plans were made before something happened, as if some planner could peer into a crystal ball and accurately foretell the future. A desk person trying to micromanage a fluid situation in the field would always fail because unexpected events intervened. Situational adjustments had to be made on the fly. Snipers and scouts were trained to think on their own and adapt to a reality that ranged far beyond the scope of the think tanks that originally came up with a mission. Repeated successes in operations had bred in Swanson an attitude of supreme belief in the decisions that he made himself, a deep reservoir of confidence from which he could make withdrawals as needed. He was making just such a withdrawal tonight.
Jamal kept both hands loosely on the wheel as the Mercedes shot passed a tractor-trailer, rocking slightly in the backdraft. “They say you have worked for the Agency before in some tricky situations.”
“Then they talk too much.”
The CIA man nodded and kept his eyes on the road. “How are we going to get to Henry Tsang?”
“Good question. Most of the people who work at embassies do not live in the buildings. Their governments lease apartments nearby and use those residences for everything from storing extra booze for diplomatic parties to providing temporary quarters for transient personnel. They might summon them all into the embassy for protection if the city were burning, but it isn’t, so we won’t have to break into the Chinese Embassy. The apartment building where Tsang lives probably will just have some dude at a desk in the foyer, maybe an armed guard outside.”
“So how are we going to find his place? Just look up ‘Henry Tsang, the Chinese Spy’ in the telephone book?”
“Something like that. The Trident team back in Washington has an electronics intel guy we call the Lizard, who can find a needle in a haystack. He’s already working on the problem. There aren’t too many Henry Tsangs in Riyadh, and he will have left tracks somewhere if he is affiliated with the diplomatic community. Odds are pretty good that the Lizard will find him.” Kyle closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest.
Jamal watched the gray line of pavement unfolding in his lights, stark against the blackness of the sky. “Want me to give it a run through the CIA computer?”
“The Lizard will already have done that. His system sweeps everything our government has, including NSA intercepts, before he really gets down to work. Tsang has had plenty of time to contact his superiors, so he is likely to be catching some sleep before getting started tomorrow. I like to visit people before dawn.”
The luminous blue digits of the clock on the dashboard caught his eye. Sunday morning. He would wait until they entered the city to contact the Lizard, who would still be at his desk although it was Saturday night in the States. The country music went away, replaced by some head-banging rock that snapped them both awake.
Traffic was increasing, so Jamal had to slow his speed as the dome of Riyadh’s city lights became visible, then grew clearer as they came closer. Blinking yellow signals and orange cones marking road work were showing up on their side of the highway and cut off the left lane. Cars and trucks were squeezing over to get through the construction zone. In a couple of miles, another lane was brought to an end and finally there was only one lane left open. It was plugged solid with traffic. Jamal eased off the accelerator.
Kyle turned off the CD player. He had watched the bright warning signs, the cones and the slowing traffic, but there were no bulldozers or paving machines. Not good.
Jamal steered the Mercedes a bit to the left so he could see around the big truck right ahead of them that was blocking the view. A broad swatch of floodlights pooled the area ahead. “Military roadblock. Probably checking for rebel fighters and equipment.”
Kyle automatically withdrew his laminated identification card and gave it to Jamal, who found his own ID and placed them both on the leather-covered dashboard. The line did not really stop, but inched steadily forward, more as if the drivers were gawking at an accident than the stop and go of vehicle searches.
“This line is moving too fast,” he said, straightening up in his seat. “They’re not checking the truck loads.”
The truck ahead accelerated when the guards waved it on. It rolled between armored personnel carriers that were stationed on each side of the road. Bright lights illuminated fifty yards on each side of the checkpoint, and spotlight beams danced across their faces. A Saudi sergeant motioned for Jamal to stop. When an officer approached, Jamal pushed the button to lower the window. Another soldier appeared at the front bumper on Kyle’s side and stopped, a rifle held loosely in his hands. Others approached from each side.
