really the only major shipper in much of the Arab world. Still, the data-miners would get little information if all parties to the transactions took the proper precautions. As for the private army … the holy warriors could and would deal with them, if they should become a nuisance. He had made a good bargain with Petrou, receiving very valuable information for a relatively modest sum. As he dined, Qasim marveled again at what a low price most people put on their honor, and their souls.
December
Abdul-Zahra Mohammed drank the last of his tea as he stood looking through the dirty, fly-specked window at the crowds in the narrow street below. Two- and three-story flat-roofed buildings lined the street in the Old Quarter, which had stood essentially unchanged on the flanks of the hill under the mosque for almost five hundred years.
The crowds in the street… they, too, looked as they had for generations, with only a few changes. Many of the men and all of the women wore robes, and the women were veiled, yet here and there a man, usually young, usually a common laborer, wore trousers and a loose shirt. The street was too narrow for vehicles; instead of the mules, donkeys and camels that had hauled food and merchandise through the Old Quarter since the dawn of time, most haulers used a bicycle, a motor scooter or even a motorcycle.
The window was open a few inches, admitting the smells and sounds of the quarter. Spices, unwashed humans, leather, animal dung, smoke from cooking fires, spoiling meat and fruit — it was a heady aroma, one Mohammed rarely noticed anymore. He was used to the sounds, too, a cacophony of voices, power tools, small gasoline motors, and whirring fans.
Abdul-Zahra Mohammed had spent his life in this quarter. Born in the back of his father’s shop, educated in the mosque, he left the quarter only when he needed to meet with people in the movement who could not or did not want to come here.
The quarter was watched — Mohammed knew that. Everyone did. The entrances to the narrow streets of the Old Quarter were under constant government surveillance.
The followers of Abdul-Zahra Mohammed also watched the entrances, but from the other side. Keeping the quarter safe for the faithful and as a base for holy warriors to rest, equip and train was an essential task.
Still, today Abdul-Zahra Mohammed was uneasy. It wasn’t the crowds — the people looked like they always did. The rug merchant, the boy on his bicycle carrying fruit, the man who made “genuine” leather souvenirs for sale to infidel tourists — who used to come to the quarter but were no longer welcome — the butcher, the imam and his students.. Mohammed knew or recognized most of them.
The air smelled the same, the noise was the same …
And yet… something was wrong! What, he didn’t know.
Ah, he was getting old. The government didn’t molest him because he and his organization didn’t cause trouble in-country. Their efforts were directed against infidels abroad.
Someday, someday soon, the government’s turn would come. The generals and faithless would be unable to resist the power of the organization, the might of the faithful focused in holy zeal. Someday soon.
Abdul-Zahra Mohammed finished his tea and left a coin on the table. The proprietor nodded at him, as he always did. They had known each other since Mohammed was a boy and his father brought him here. Mohammed descended the narrow stairs and paused in the hallway, which was empty. There was a gentle breeze here, just the laden air in steady motion, coming through the open door. He stood listening to the voices, the shouting, cajoling, earnest conversations, some light, some serious, some haggling over prices.
The merchants had been haggling for as long as Mohammed could remember. Mohammed’s father had been good at it, and loud, and hearing his voice rise and fall, ridiculing ridiculous offers and pleading for justice, was among Mohammed’s first memories.
So what was troubling him?
He stood in the hallway, just out of sight of people on the street, as he weighed his feeling of unease.
Abdul-Zahra Mohammed took a deep breath, exhaled and stepped through the door into the crowxl. He went to the corner, avoided a bicycle loaded impossibly high with copper pots and strode along by the leather merchants and their customers, who were fingering the merchandise and haggling.
Something — or someone — was behind him.
He could feel the danger, the evil.
Mohammed glanced behind him and saw the cloth on the head of a man at least three inches taller than the people surrounding him. A strange face, a tall man..
Mohammed pushed his way into the crowd, galvanized by a sense of urgency and fear. Yes, he could feel the fear. It surged through him and stimulated him and made him breathe in short, quick gasps.
He glanced over his shoulder again, and the tall stranger was still there, only a few steps behind. It was an evil face, the face of the Devil, the face of the enemy of God.
He tried to run, but the crowd was too thick. Too many people! Get out of the way! Let me pass. Don’t you understand, let me through!
Now he felt panic, a muscle-paralyzing terror that made him lose his balance and stumble and grab at the people around him like a drowning man. He was drowning — drowning in his own fear and terror.
He sucked in a deep breath to scream and opened his mouth, just as an unbelievably sharp pain shot through his chest. A hand roughly grabbed his upper arm.
He had been stabbed! The realization came as he felt the knife being jerked from his body with a strong, steady stroke.
He staggered, felt his legs wobbling, felt dizzy.. then the knife was rammed into him again. He looked at his chest and saw the shiny steel tip of the knife protruding from his robe. Blood … there was blood!
The pain! He felt the knife being twisted by a savage hand. The pain was beyond description! He couldn’t draw breath to cry out.
The world turned gray as his blood pressure dropped. Then the light faded and he passed out.
Abdul-Zahra Mohammed didn’t feel the hand on his arm release him, nor did he feel himself fall to the stones of the street. Nor did he feel his heart stop when his chest filled up with blood.
The man who had killed Mohammed walked on in the crowd, his brown eyes roving ceaselessly, taking in everything and everyone. He was in no hurry, merely moved with the crowd.
He did hear the excited exclamations and shouts behind him as the crowd became aware of the body of Abdul-Zahra Mohammed lying in the street. He kept going.
Five minutes after he knifed Mohammed, Ricky Stroud, former master sergeant, U.S. Army Special Forces, now just plain Mr. Stroud, walked out of the Old Quarter. He hailed a taxi and told the driver in perfect Arabic to take him to the bus terminal.
Sitting in the taxi, he realized the sleeves of his robe were spotted with blood. A spray of red droplets, hardly noticeable … yet the cab-driver was looking, glancing in his rearview mirror.
He shouldn’t have pulled the knife out for a second thrust. That had been a mistake; he realized that now as he looked at the tiny red stains on the dirty white robe. Ricky Stroud hadn’t been sure of the placement of the first thrust, so he had surrendered to temptation and tried to improve his chances of killing Abdul-Zahra Mohammed. He and his three comrades had worked for two months to set up that fleeting opportunity in the street, and he wasn’t willing to take the chance that Mohammed would survive. So he jerked the knife free and put the second thrust dead center in Mohammed’s back, just to the right of the backbone, between the ribs, and gave the blade a savage twist to cut and tear tissue, speeding the loss of blood.
“You pays your money and takes your chances,” he said silently to himself, and forgot about it.
At the bus terminal he paid the cabbie and disappeared into the crowd, went into the station and out a side entrance and kept going. He walked for a mile, hailed another cab, then another, and finally arrived at the safe house where he was staying.
There was another man there, also former Special Forces. His name was Nate Allen.
“Get him?”
‘Yep. And I got photos of the two guys who left the tea joint before he did. I think I recognized one of them.” He held out his digital camera.
Oh, yeah,” Allen said when he looked at the shots. “I recognize this second dude. He’s a bomb maker.”
“Got some blood on me,” Ricky Stroud said. He sighed and pulled off the robe.
“How’d you do that?”
