was just entering the bathroom. He half expected that Millie had returned for a good-bye kiss.
He was actually smiling as he turned. A fusillade of hastily fired nine-millimeter rounds tore into the bathroom door, one catching him squarely between the eyes. The wound didn’t bleed, for his heart had already stopped pumping, and only a few drops scattered as he pitched to the hard linoleum floor.
The assassin glanced back into the deserted corridor. Seeing that no one had heard the shots, he entered the room, letting the door silently close behind. Before examining the body, he lowered the cocked hammer of the automatic and slid the weapon back into his coat. Only then did he realize he’d made a critical mistake. The man on the floor was not Khalid Al-Khuddari.
The phone in his pocket shrilled.
He reached for it and activated the unit but did not speak. Suddenly his voice had gone, abandoning him as he realized the seriousness of his failure.
“Well?” It was Hasaan bin-Rufti. The Kurd hoped it would have been Tariq, for the man seemed a little easier to deal with than his corpulent superior.
Without thinking, the gunman told the truth. “He has escaped,
“What?” Rufti roared into the phone.
“He had already left the hospital by the time I arrived. I don’t know when or where he’s gone.” Lying was the only way the man could think to save his life. Rufti would kill him for his failure.
“Find him, or by the blood of the Prophet, I’ll flay you alive and use your skin as a car-seat cover.” Hasaan Rufti slammed down the phone and turned to the steward hovering over him, the man’s jacket so snowy white it almost gave off a light of its own. “Tell the pilot that if he doesn’t take off within the next sixty seconds…” Rufti paused, and when he couldn’t come up with a really good threat, he repeated himself. “Tell him I’ll flay him alive and use his skin as a car-seat cover.”
“Yes, Minister,” the steward said, bowing like the toady he was. He slunk forward through the cabin of the Hawker Siddeley private jet, ducking his head to pass into the cockpit.
While the appointments of the aircraft were the finest that the Hawker company offered, Brazilian woods and Turkish leather, there was no escaping the fact that the plane was small, headroom sacrificed for the sake of economy. Most people would have been thrilled to have such a plane at their disposal, but Rufti was chafed by the Hawker. Khuddari rated a Boeing for his personal use, if the fool ever chose to use it, a wide body with almost enough room to install a trampoline if the mood struck him.
That plane should belong to someone who would appreciate it, Rufti thought. Someone like himself.
They were still on the apron at Gatwick Airport, delayed now for two hours because an El Al flight had declared an emergency on its inward leg to Heathrow and had opted to land at Gatwick instead, stacking up dozens of aircraft and delaying the takeoff of dozens more, including Rufti’s HS 125 600. He was supposed to be in Abu Dhabi by ten, and the way it was looking, he would be at least four hours late.
“Fucking Jews,” he muttered darkly, as if that one oath covered all his problems.
Kerikov was set to detonate the icepacks attached to the pipeline in Alaska, the Iranians and Iraqis were poised to start their troop movements at a moment’s notice, and he was stuck on the ground waiting for a bunch of rich Jews to get off their plane and buy up more of the world. He had two hundred of his own troops waiting for him in the Gulf, ready for him to lead them on the glorious taking of the United Arab Emirates from the puppet the British had set up in the 1970s.
The Crown Prince, though wary, was not suspecting a revolt. Rufti knew that the early timing of his revolution was the key to taking the Persian Gulf. To delay, while Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE geared up for the changes brought about by the suspension of U.S. oil imports, would only hamper his cause. He must strike now, while the governments were unsure of what the future would bring.
Rufti didn’t remember where he’d first heard the adage, but it was one that served him now: A hungry man is easy to lead and a confused one is easy to defeat.
The Gulf was confused right now, governments in turmoil, ripe for his plucking. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Over the past year, ever since buying into Ivan Kerikov’s scheme to cripple the Americans’ domestic oil resources, Rufti had worked tirelessly, sub rosa, to make his grand scheme a reality. Without Iran and Iraq, he could never really hope to usurp the throne of the UAE and keep it for himself. Yet if he failed to produce the agreed upon trigger, Khuddari’s death, he could forget about ever ruling in the Middle East. In fact, he could forget about seeing too many more sunrises either. The Iraqis especially had warned that if he failed, Rufti would die.
Iraqi tanks were ready to roll into Kuwait once Rufti neutralized the American threat. By taking out the pipeline, he would create a domestic crisis within the United States that would leave them unable to counter the invasion. Kuwait would fall within a few days, Saudi Arabia just a week or so later. A few anthrax-laden Scuds targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the war would be over. America would have no bases from which to launch a counteroffensive, and they would never resort to nuclear weapons to dislodge the Iraqis and their newly allied Iranian comrades.
Without oil from Alaska, and having a strategic reserve that would last for only a month or two, the United States would be forced to deal with the new Middle Eastern triumvirate of Iran, Iraq, and the UAE. Rufti envisioned a tenfold increase in oil prices. And that was just the beginning. He saw himself becoming one of the richest men in the world. And with billions of barrels of oil in reserve under the scorching sands of the Emirates, he could do it.
If only he could get the fucking plane into the air and on its way to Abu Dhabi City.
The phone recessed into the armrest of his seat bleated like a lamb, a discreet chirp that he almost ignored in his agitation. On the fourth ring he finally picked it up.
“What?”
“Sir, it’s Tariq.” After Abu Alam, Tariq was Rufti’s most trusted lieutenant. An orphan from Lebanon’s brutal civil war, raised in the refugee camps on a diet of hatred and death, Tariq was fiercely loyal and utterly without morals. When it came to killing, Abu Alam did it with the burning need of an addict, but Tariq carried out his duties with the coldness of a professional. Rufti had sent him to the hospital as a backup to the idiot Kurdish national.
“What is it?”
“I’m on the motorway, headed toward Heathrow Airport following a blue Bentley.” His voice was distorted by the cellular phone connection. “Shortly after the Kurd went up to Khuddari’s room, two people left the hospital garage, two women, one western, one Arab. The Arab woman was dressed in a chador, her face veiled. I’d seen them enter the hospital garage earlier. It appeared that the vehicle belonged to the Arab woman, for she drove here, but when they left, it was the Western woman who was behind the wheel and she didn’t seem familiar with the car’s controls.”
“Get to the point, Tariq,” Rufti snapped.
“I believe that the robes are a disguise and that I’m following Khuddari as he attempts to flee the country.”
“Are you certain?” The glimmer of hope Tariq offered reminded Rufti that he hadn’t eaten for nearly thirty minutes. As he continued the conversation, he rang for the steward. “Is it really Khuddari?”
“My instincts tell me yes.”
“How far are you from Heathrow?”
“Only about ten minutes from the main gates. I suspect that they’re headed to the international terminal, Terminal 4.”
“Yes, yes, yes, let me think.” There wasn’t time before Khuddari entered the secure perimeter of the airport to launch an attack. What Rufti needed now was a way to delay Khuddari in London for a few hours, enough time for him to get to the UAE and put into motion his side of the coup. “Do you have any explosives with you?”
“I have just a couple of grenades,” Tariq admitted, his voice breaking up as the radio waves of his cell phone encountered the pulsing radar beams given off by Heathrow Airport.
“Perfect,” Rufti glowed. The steward put an entire salmon before him, the flesh of the fish so pinkish and light that the slit along its flank resembled the intimate lips of a woman. “After I hang up, call that Kurdish fool and relay my orders. Now here’s what I want you to do…”
While the Bentley had seen its finer days nearly a decade earlier, such a luxury vehicle still commanded
