The Assassin's list

tracked him down. He had worked with the Mufti to plan the liquidation of the Jewish population in the Middle East after Hitler won the war. Those participants the Jews found, they killed, often in front of their families. Barak remembered. He had watched his father, on his knees in the street in front of their home, still cursing the Jews when he was executed. He would never forget. It was a memory he kept alive each night, as part of his evening prayers.

With the help of the Muslim Brotherhood, his mother fled to France and opened a small village bakery. A lot of Arabs were in France after the war, and Barak assimilated easily and did well in school. After de Gaulle rose to power, France reached out to the Middle East to assist it in limiting the powers of Russia and America. Barak was soon courted by the military for service in its special operation forces. His ethnicity and physical prowess were factors, of course, as well as his reputation for a fierce determination to win at any cost. While still in secondary school, his red flags playing soccer were legendary.

After the selection process and recruit training, he was given specialized training to work with foreign local forces that France wanted to support militarily, especially in the Middle East. Colonialism was a thing of the past, but providing the assistance of its Quiet Professionals, as its special forces were known, often reaped some of the same benefits.

While he was in Iran working with the Shah to assist the Sultan of Oman to put down a rebellion, he came to the attention of the movement. When the Shah fled Iran in 1979 and the Savak, Iran’s secret police, was dissolved, Barak and other foreign sympathizers were imprisoned. When his true sympathies were discovered, albeit under torture, he was asked to join the Islamic fundamentalist movement. He hadn’t hesitated.

In the end, a farsighted plan was approved with his unique gifts in mind. It required him to assume a new identity and move to America, to establish a base for training fifth column forces capable of striking deep into the heart of the Jews’ ally.

With a nest egg of twenty-five million dollars and twenty-five years, he had accomplished everything that had been asked of him. Now he was directed to discuss it all with someone he’d never met and had little reason to trust.

When his United Airlines flight landed at Aeropuerto Internacional Reina Beatrix in Oranjestad, Aruba, Barak collected his Hartmann carry-on and deplaned. After passing through customs, he made his way directly to the taxi area in front of the island airport. Waiting beside a white Mercedes S600 sedan he saw a driver wearing the dark green cap he’d been told to look for. He nodded to the man and glanced around. Several men seemed to be interested in the Mercedes, but no one seemed to be overly interested in its passenger. Aruba was only twenty miles long, and six miles wide at its widest point, so the five hundred ten horsepower of the S600 Mercedes was transportation overkill on the small island.

The chauffeur opened the rear door without offering to take his carry-on. They drove east and then southeast on a road to Boca Daimari, a beach area on the rugged east coast of the island. The terrain was mostly flat, with few hills and only scattered vegetation. It offered little in the way of scenery to enjoy.

As they neared the sea, however, the view of the Caribbean along the highway south was breathtaking. The ocean stretched to the east as far as the eye could see, and small beaches carved from the black rock of the island’s crust passed by on the left. Occasionally, he saw a villa or small resort perched on a rocky outcropping, isolated and private. At least Ryan understood their need for privacy.

Beyond a desolate stretch of shoreline, a white villa came into view atop a rocky finger reaching out into the sea. Its outline suggested Moorish architecture, with square lines, a scalloped roof, and arched windows. The white-graveled drive leading to it from the highway was lined with palms. The villa itself was surrounded with beds of bougainvillea, hibiscus, and frangipani.

When the chauffeur pulled to a stop in front of the villa, a tall blond man stood in the shadows of the arched portico spanning the front of the villa. He wore white linen slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Large aviator sunglasses hid the color of his eyes, but Barak knew they would be blue. The man was a poster boy for the Aryan race, military bearing and all.

Barak got out of the Mercedes and walked to greet the man in the shadows. As he approached, the man turned and led him into the interior of the villa before turning and extending his hand.

“I never know which of our enemies might be watching. I’m Ryan. Did you have a pleasant flight?” he asked.

“I usually don’t fly commercial. It was a long flight.”

“Quite. Sorry it was necessary. Travel here is carefully monitored, thanks to the antics of Venezuela’s El Presidente. The Americans were used to watching Cuba, but when Chavez invited the Cubans to run his intelligence apparatus, you don’t fly down here without caution. That’s why we’re here instead of Isla Margarita. Hamas and Hezbollah are almost as numerous there as they are in the Middle East. Come, sit by the pool and we’ll talk.”

With that, Barak’s host turned and led him through the villa. Dark-tiled floors and heavy, dark wood furniture contrasted with the alabaster walls and drapery. Bright floral paintings, however, gave the place vibrancy and spirit. If the villa wasn’t someone’s permanent residence, it certainly was a beautiful safe house.

White tiles outside the villa surrounded a large zero-horizon pool. Ryan, or the Aryan, as Barak was beginning to think of him, signaled a servant and a tray of beverages and appetizers was brought to their umbrella table. He saw his host knew he drank Glenmorangie Scotch, but he didn’t recognize the small potato tapas that filled the serving platter.

“I thought you might be hungry and, perhaps, thirsty. Salud,” Ryan said.

“Salud. Do you come here often?”

“Shall I call you David or Barak?” Ryan asked.

“Barak will do.”

“I know you have many questions. I will answer the ones I can. It isn’t important how often I come here, who owns this villa, or who I am. You trust the people who told you to come here, just as I trust the people who told me to meet with you. I was told to find out if there are services you might provide us, in exchange for financing your cause.”

“My company provides security services and sometimes business intelligence for our international clientele. What services are you interested in?”

“Barak, let’s not play games. Your company, ISIS, was started with a twenty-five million dollar stake from the Muslim Brotherhood. You were sent to gain a foothold, to develop a front capable of carrying out strikes against America. You have done that remarkably well. But, plans change. I’m here to see if you are flexible enough to take on more than you were originally asked to do.”

Barak had assumed as much. What he didn’t know was whether he could trust this man, or the men he was fronting for.

“And why would you want to do that? You seem to know a lot about me, but I don’t know a thing about you. What do you care about my cause?”

The man calling himself Ryan smiled and helped himself to a relleno.

“You should try one of these, mushroom stuffed with chorizo, excellent. To answer your question, we need someone to provide the services you have trained your elite recruits for, assassinations. Some of our clients have a clumsy way of dealing with adversaries. Their methods need to be more sophisticated, if you will. As for your cause, your enemy has been our enemy for a very long time. We failed before, and now we may have another chance.”

Barak picked up his crystal tumbler and swirled the scotch around the ice that remained. The tropical climate had many attractions, but ice lasting more than a couple of minutes wasn’t one of them. From what he was told, Ryan’s organization was powerful in Europe, North Africa, and Latin America. Its specialty was money laundering for major crime syndicates, and it owned or controlled banks around the world, originally financed with stolen Jewish money and gold from World War II. After the war, it had developed a relationship with the Brotherhood. What he didn’t know was what the Alliance was doing these days, and what their ultimate goal was.

“Ryan, you are quite the diplomat. If I hadn’t lived in America for nearly half my life, I would enjoy continuing to beat around the bush, as we say. So let’s speak plainly. You want me to provide assassins for your drug cartel clients, in exchange for money you’ll funnel to me. Why?”

His blond host took off his sunglasses and smiled.

“I have lived in South America as long as you have lived in America. Perhaps I am used to speaking obliquely.