around Beirut.
As ever, the holdup was caused by a young man driving at a lunatic speed, zigzagging in and out of traffic, and then managing to hit a construction truck head on. The young man was of course the only driver who no longer cared one way or another whether his car started or stopped.
But about three hundred other drivers did, especially Shakira, who was held up for forty minutes, which seemed like six hours. There may have been a better way around the city, but if there was she missed it. Shakira headed north toward the coast, straight down the Rue Damas, and swung right onto the Avenue Charles Hevlou, a wide throughway that became jammed solid after a half mile.
The clock ticked on. It was almost two o’clock. And again they were dealing with an accident. Much of Beirut was still a building site, while contractors attempted to rebuild the shattered city in the long aftermath of the civil war. The crash on Avenue Hevlou was caused by a young man who, apparently inflamed by two huge trucks double parking, had made a break for it around the outside and hit a crane
By the time the accident was cleared, Shakira Rashood had twenty-eight miles to cover in forty-five minutes. Eventually she was compelled to start driving like a native, speeding up the coast road, with the blue Mediterranean to her left and the endless coastal plain in front of her.
The Range Rover raced along in the traffic, often making eighty miles per hour. And the last miles were endless. She sped into tiny Byblos from the east at 3:05 P.M. and followed the tourist signs to the ruins.
It was raining when she reached the parking area and got out of the car. Right next to the entrance was a stationary Peugeot, its hefty, tough-looking occupant just heading into the main door of the castle.
Shakira’s sixth sense, the one that had kept her alive in tougher spots than this, took over. One hundred yards from the man, she began to run, her feet pounding through the puddles, her breath coming in short angry bursts. Her AK-47 was tucked under her right arm, beneath her raincoat, and could not be seen. She was sobbing as she ran inside the castle. Beside herself with fear, she bolted into the dark passageway. Rashood, she knew, was in desperate danger.
Rashood and Gamoudi were cornered, flattened against the stone wall on either side of the door. Their three armed French Secret Service pursuers were gathered outside, and had already decided the best way to get this over was for two of them to come in firing. There was no escape, and whatever happened, there was a two-man backup outside.
There were no windows in the room, but there was a former window, just the bricked-up stone frame five feet above the ground to the left of the doorway looking out. Jammed inside the frame, his feet rammed into the lower corners, was Jacques Gamoudi, in position, on higher ground than his attackers.
The two French hit men came in together. And Gamoudi shouted, “This way!” The man on the right coming in turned, and Gamoudi shot him clean between the eyes. The second man, on Rashood’s side of the doorway, also swung around to his right in search of the person who had shouted.
That was not smart. Rashood blew away the back of his head with a sustained burst from his machine pistol. Both the men slumped down onto the stone floor.
On the steps leading up to the corridor Shakira heard the shots and was gripped by a cold terror she had never before experienced. She kept repeating Rashood’s name over and over, as if it would somehow keep him safe.
The trouble was, Rashood’s cover was blown. Whoever else was outside in the passage now knew that both he and Gamoudi were in there, one on either side of the doorway. Secret Service combat officers have a way of dealing with such matters — possibly a couple of grenades.
The third man who waited outside did not have them. The fourth man coming along the corridor had three. Very calmly he passed one over to his colleague and began to loosen the firing pin.
At which point the near-hysterical Shakira came racing around the corner, tears streaming down her face, but now with her AK-47 raised to hip height.
Both men spun around at the same time. The man she had followed dropped one of the grenades, mercifully with the pin still tight, and swung his rifle straight toward her. Too late. Shakira Rashood opened fire, pouring hot lead into both men, neck and head, just like General Rashood had taught her.
“I told you not to be late,” said the General, in that modulated Harrow School accent. “You could have got us all killed.” Which proved, in a sense, you can take the officer out of the British Army, but you can’t take the British Army out of the officer.
Shakira did not actually care what he said, so long as he was still breathing. She rushed across the floor and hurled herself into his arms, allowing her rifle to drop with a clatter. Over and over, she said, “Thank God…thank God.”
Meanwhile, Jacques Gamoudi, who was still positioned halfway up the wall, cleared his throat theatrically and suggested that they had all better get out of there very fast, before someone charged them with four murders.
He jumped down from the ledge and led the way out into the corridor and down the stone stairway. The place was deserted aside from two groups of tourists. Beirut and its environs had retained its dangerous reputation over the years, and that coastline was still not especially popular among visitors, who thought they might be kidnapped. God alone knew what the first group to go inside would think when they stumbled on the four French hit men lying dead on the second floor, covered in blood and surrounded by hand grenades and rifles. Ravi Rashood mentioned that he was not anticipating a unanimous vote of thanks from the local tourist board.
Rashood told the embassy driver to head straight for the airport. He then used his cell phone to call two of his aides in Damascus and asked them to drive over to Byblos to pick up the Range Rover. The extra key was in the house on Bab Touma Street. Then he called the Saudi pilot and told him to file an immediate flight plan to Marrakesh, refuel the King’s Boeing, and be ready to take off in a real hurry, about one hour from then.
They had traveled six fast miles south before the Hamas General found time to introduce Jacques Gamoudi to his wife. Of course, as a red-blooded Frenchman, or at least a French citizen, Gamoudi had scarcely taken his eyes off the neck-snapping, walnut-eyed, gazelle-legged Palestinian goddess, and when he muttered,
But the situation here in Beirut was now menacing. The three of them sat in tense but companionable silence most of the way to the airport.
“Does anyone know why we’re going to Morocco?” asked Shakira finally.
“Well, it’s been a difficult decision,” said her husband. “Jacques is probably in more danger than we are, because he has the entire French Secret Service trying to kill him. You and I are in no more danger than usual. But Colonel Gamoudi has to get out of the Middle East, somewhere he can lie low for a few months, get his breath back. And his instinct is to fly back to Morocco, to his home up in the Atlas Mountains. No one’s likely to find him there. He and his father were both guides.”
“Are we going too?”
“Uh-huh. We’re staying with Jacques until I know he’s safe.”
“Is that why you wanted all this money — for airfares?”
“No. We’ve got a plane.”
“Will it hold three?”
“It’ll hold two hundred, plus crew.”
Shakira just shook her head. “Well, that’s okay then,” she said. “I was able to get a hundred thousand U.S. dollars from the bank.”
“Shakira,” said Rashood. “Aside from the lateness, I’d have to say you have excelled this morning, as a wife, a financier, and a marksman.”
“Thank you, General,” said Shakira, laughing. “It’s been my pleasure to work with you.”
It was amazing how thoroughly this Palestinian beauty had absorbed that British sense of irony from her husband. It’s not a natural way of thinking for any Arab, but Rashood thought it definitely suited her.
