“You leave that to us. We will have our own chemists and physicists construct the weapon under your supervision.”
“It is not yet ready. The London experiment showed the dispersal rate remains too high.”
“Another batch just like that will be more than enough for our purposes,” said Aseer. “We will finish the refining process as time allows.”
Juba nodded and turned to Saladin. “When do you wish me to start, Father?”
“Immediately, my son. The sooner you complete this, the sooner we can move on.”
They both knew that they would not be moving at all if they remained in the grip of al Qaeda.
“Very well.” Juba slid the note into his jacket’s right pocket. The light was dim and purple in the room as he walked back toward his chair. When his hand emerged from the pocket, there was something in it, invisible in the dying, gloomy light. Passing directly behind Aseer, he moved in a blur and looped the strand of piano wire around the neck of the al Qaeda man and yanked hard on the wooden handle in each hand. The wire sliced into the throat like a razor, and the fat man grabbed at the tightening garrote until his eyes bulged and his tongue hung out.
Juba’s hatred of al Qaeda pulsed through his strong biceps and forearms and hands and into the killing wire as he slowly lifted his victim all the way over the back of the chair while the struggling man clawed to hold on to the life draining away from him. He could have finished it quickly but did not want death to come easily to this piece of al Qaeda filth. He tightened the wire more, strangling the man as he twisted the body out of the chair and let it fall onto a burgundy rug that was almost the same color as the blood oozing from the deep neck wound. Aseer urinated in his pants as he died.
Saladin remained calm. What a macabre pleasure it was to watch his son at work. The moves were so clean and economical and perfect, like a ballet dancer’s, and there was a cold passion to his mastery of so many skills. A maestro of death. “Imagine, Juba, this fool actually believed we were frightened.” He spat on the body.
“They will come after us again.”
“No, I think they will simply become a customer. This death signals that the formula still belongs to Unit 999 and no one else. It took us twenty years to develop, and we have repeatedly had to defend our ownership. Now that we are so close to success, no one can be allowed to stop us.”
Juba washed his hands in the kitchen sink. “I will take care of this one, and our men will remove the two guards.”
“Very good, my son.” Saladin refilled his cup of strong coffee. “The London task was flawless, but of course I expected nothing less from you. I assume the announcement is ready for distribution?”
“Yes. I downloaded the pictures I took in London onto discs and posted them, along with your message, by FedEx, to North Korea, China, Brunei, and Tehran. The packages will arrive at any time and someone will have to sign for them, which guarantees delivery.”
“Then it is done. The word will spread from those seeds. Now we wait.”
“You can wait, my father. I have no time to waste. I will relax when it is all done.”
“Would you rather be back in Iraq, taking target practice?” Saladin teased his assassin.
“No. Paris is better. It is too bad that I cannot stay longer. I long for a few days in which I can just be a pure Muslim and sit at your feet again and study the Koran. Physically I am fine, but spiritually I am an empty vessel. My role is difficult.”
“Which is why you are the only one who can do it,” replied Saladin. “I promise plenty of time in the future for you to walk openly as one of the faithful and even go on a hajj to Mecca and Medina. For now, you must remain who you are. The Prophet bestowed special gifts upon you, Juba. I know your inner struggle and intercede with prayers for you every day. Until the right time comes, you must carry on. You know that.”
“Yes. I am but an instrument of the Prophet. Show me the path and I will follow. But tonight I leave for Iran again to observe one final test. The director of our remaining laboratory there thinks the formula will be complete after a final adjustment improves the staying power of the gel. The gas in London still spread too fast.”
Saladin laughed to break the serious tone. “Good. We are finally so very close to the end. After you dispose of this trash, we can go out and have time for a nice dinner before you leave.”
Juba opened the door and summoned two more men to help with the corpses as the slow sun set and the lights of Paris illuminated the night. Saladin stood at the window, feeling the rhythm of the city alter from a daytime center of commerce to a nightscape dedicated to personal pleasures. He liked this house and decided to stay here for a while.
He heard the men removing the body behind him but did not turn to watch. The al Qaeda fool actually believed an Islamic government could be seated in Paris. It was true that France had more Muslims than any other Western European nation, but that was still less than 10 percent of the overall sixty-four million Frenchmen. Aseer must have thought he commanded some German army. Al Qaeda thought in such small terms.
If Saladin had any real problem that evening, it was the knowledge that he must devote considerably more energy to his protege. Anyone who did not think twice about setting off a device that condemned unknown hundreds of people to painful deaths obviously required careful handling.
He wondered if Juba ever looked deeply into a mirror or thought about the deadly paradox that he had become. The sniper felt betrayed by his home country, England, and most recently by al Qaeda, which had recruited him so many years ago. He had lost
For while he was a skilled assassin and soldier, Juba’s motives were muddled and corrupt. He lived in the moment and was never more alive than when in combat, where his senses tingled with anticipation. He was a perfect fit for the sniper hides and the combat holes, but those assignments did not last forever. In between, in the down time, he had learned to live the good life. He had been ordered to do so and had been declared exempt from violating the Koran! Years of five-star hotels, luxury cars, exquisite tailoring, top-shelf whiskey, and the company of beautiful women in trendy clubs was the lubrication that kept the deadly machine running and ready to strike. The adopted and addictive Western lifestyle cost a great deal of money, and that was the rub: the final rivulet of water needed to bring down his stone bridge back to Islam. Juba had lost his religion, and probably everything else, and didn’t really know it. He had learned to like money more than the stern lifestyle preached by the fanatics.
Saladin played along, keeping him on a leash, just as a snake charmer must carefully play a cobra in a basket. Cobras do not care who they bite, and Juba no longer truly killed for any cause, not even vengeance; he killed because he enjoyed killing.
LEBANON
2002
Saladin remembered his own coming to terms with the future, sweating on the day he stood before Saddam Hussein. At the time, he was just an anonymous lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi army, second in command of the United States Battalion of Unit 999, Saddam’s elite terrorism force. The unit was charged with developing what the Iraqi leader called “special ammunition for special circumstances,” meaning terrible weapons of mass destruction. There were nine battalions in all, up to five hundred men each, based in various regions and countries with orders to strike within those areas if war came to Iraq. Regardless of such a conflict actually on the horizon after the 9/11 attack on America, the crazy dictator was shipping the materials from Iraqi military stores into Syria and Lebanon and even Iran!
Saladin and his commanding officer had been called to one of Saddam’s many palaces to report the status of the United States Battalion’s mission to develop a virulent biochem nerve agent that could be deployed within the United States. The work had been going on since the 1980s, slowly and steadily, but with the many starts and stops of any major scientific research program. Much of the research had even been done within the United States itself, under the noses of the FBI and sometimes with the willing assistance of the CIA. In the years in which Iraq was fighting Iran, and Afghanistan was fighting the Soviets, the United States had been quite helpful.
They snapped to rigid attention before Saddam, who was smoking a cigar as he stared at them. Flanking the dictator were Uday and Qusay, his two murderous sons, and at the end of the table was Ali Hassan al-Majid, the man known as Chemical Ali. Those four had created Unit 999 and kept its terrible objective as a secret among themselves.
