Three Weeks in Washington, page 36
part #3 of Titus Ray Series
Evidently, Jamal was simply engaged in a bit of old-fashioned blackmail.
Marwan asked, “What do you want, Jamal?”
“One of the gold nuggets you brought back from Venezuela.”
Marwan was quiet for a few seconds. “I can do that. When I return from Caracas, I’ll bring you one.”
“No, you can’t put me off. We’re going over to your apartment. You can give it to me before you leave.”
Marwan laughed. “You think I have gold nuggets just sitting around my apartment?”
“I’m sure you have at least a couple for yourself. If you want me to keep quiet about the lie you told the sheikh, you’ll do what I say.”
By this time, I’d crept around the Mercedes.
Now, I was crouched at the front bumper, and Jamal was just a few feet away from me. However, his back was to me, so when I stood up, he couldn’t see me.
On the other hand, Marwan immediately saw me, and although he didn’t give me away, he suddenly became emboldened. “Tell the sheikh whatever you want. I’m going back inside now.”
With that, Marwan turned and started walking back toward the entrance to Bakdash.
Jamal immediately pulled a revolver out of his pocket and pointed it at Marwan. “Get in the car or you’ll regret it.”
When Marwan didn’t even bother to look back at him, Jamal raised the pistol to a firing position and said, “Come with me, Marwan, or I swear I’ll shoot you.”
“Drop the gun,” I said.
The moment Jamal whirled around and pointed the gun at me, Marwan turned and rushed back towards the Mercedes.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion after that.
When he saw Marwan running toward him, Jamal immediately pivoted and fired a shot, barely missing his head. Meanwhile, I aimed my gun at Jamal and pulled the trigger.
Jamal slumped to the pavement in a pool of blood.
It wasn’t my shot that killed him, though.
The Makarov had jammed on me.
* * * *
As I bent down to check Jamal for a pulse, Carlton walked over. He still had the Sig in his hand.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
I nodded.
Marwan looked down at Jamal and then over at Carlton. “Mr. Chessman, what are you doing here?”
Carlton holstered his gun and immediately grabbed his phone, instructing Dave to come to the east parking lot. He never responded to Marwan’s question.
I went through Jamal’s pockets and took out his cell phone and his wallet. Inside his shirt pocket, I found the general’s cream-colored business card.
On the back was Mohammed’s phone number.
As I pocketed the card, Carlton asked, “Where’s Keever?”
At that moment, Pike drove up in the Renault, jumped out of the SUV, and ran over to the Mercedes.
After taking one look at Jamal, he looked over at the Makarov in my hand and said, “Aren’t you glad I insisted you take the Makarov?”
Chapter 47
After Pike arrived, Carlton started issuing orders and giving instructions. Managing a crisis was in Carlton’s wheelhouse, and he was at his best in such an environment.
A few minutes later, Dave drove off in the EAI van with Jamal’s body inside, while Finn left in the Mercedes.
After Carlton pointed out there were no surveillance cameras in the parking lot and no witnesses to the shooting, he said he didn’t believe the mission had been compromised, so we’d stick to the original POA and head for Beirut.
When we cleared the outskirts of Damascus, I gave Marwan a change of clothes, and he handed me his white thobe, along with the two cell phones he had on him. He spoke very little after that and eventually fell asleep. I suspected the events of the last few days had taken their toll on his psyche.
We were almost to Beirut before Pike brought up with Carlton his proposal to return to Langley with us. Carlton immediately shut him down and refused to even listen to the rationale for his proposal.
When Pike and I said goodbye to each other at the Beirut airport, he seemed genuinely confused as to why his persuasive arguments hadn’t worked with Carlton.
I told him I was still trying to figure out the guy myself and couldn’t help him.
After we shook hands, Pike said, “Thanks for putting up with me. I know I’m not the easiest guy to work with. Of course, people say the same thing about you.”
I knew that couldn’t be true, but I didn’t have time to argue with him.
* * * *
When we met up with Sam Wylie at the airport in Barcelona, he assured Marwan he’d made arrangements for his wife and daughter to be at the airport in Caracas to meet him.
As happy as Marwan appeared to be when he heard that news, he seemed equally as pleased when Carlton told him the Agency planned to relocate him and his family to another country once the threat to Washington had been eliminated.
When he began quizzing Carlton about those plans, I pulled Wylie aside and asked him if he’d like to go grab a cup of coffee before his flight began boarding.
“Shoot, yeah. You know me. I never turn down a free cup of coffee.”
“Did I say anything about free coffee?”
“I know you must want to pick my brain about something, so while you’re at it, you should at least pay for my coffee.”
I ended up paying for two coffees, and we sat down together in a corner of the snack bar.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Douglas won’t tell me a thing about what’s going on with Ben. Do you know what the SOF unit found when they got down to Santiago?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s good news, amigo. They haven’t located him yet, and you know what that means.”
I nodded. “He’s either dead, or the cartel’s holding him for ransom.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it was the latter. A Senator’s son would yield some mighty big bucks.”
“Yeah, but the question is, would the Senator be willing to pay the big bucks?”
* * * *
When Wylie and I returned to the concourse, I walked over to say goodbye to Marwan, who was sitting all by himself in a long row of seats.
“Mind if I sit down?” I asked.
“Would it matter if I did?”
I ignored his response and sat down anyway.
“I want to thank you for doing an excellent job getting us the information we needed from the general.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my wife and daughter.”
“I know that, and believe me, Marwan, if there had been another way to ensure your cooperation, I would have taken it.”
“That almost sounds like an apology.” He shook his head. “Even if it were, I wouldn’t accept it.”
“Doesn’t the Prophet tell you to accept the apology of another?”
He looked surprised. “You know the Quran?”
“Until recently, I knew more about the Quran than I did about the Bible.”
He seemed intrigued by my statement. “How do you compare the two?”
“They have much in common, but there are at least three things mentioned in the Bible that aren’t in the Quran. If you were to believe them, you would join me in heaven.”
“Only three?”
“I know the Quran presents Jesus as one who did great miracles, who was born of a virgin, and who was sinless, but what it doesn’t tell you is that he died for our sins, he rose from the grave, and he ascended to heaven.”
“Jesus was a prophet, nothing more.”
“More than a prophet, he was a mediator. You remember when I showed you the pictures of your wife and daughter when I was questioning you in Buenos Aires and you begged me not to harm them?”
“How could I forget?”
“You were acting as a mediator then. You were intervening on their behalf. That’s what Jesus did for us. He’s more than a prophet. He’s a mediator. He intervened with God on our behalf.”
Marwan didn’t comment on my statement, but he did question me about some of the Quran’s other teachings. I knew he was just testing me to see how much I really knew about the Quran, but I’m sure I passed the exam.
When I heard his flight called, I asked him if he’d ever read the Bible. He shook his head.
I challenged him to do so.
He didn’t say he would, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t.
“Have a nice flight,” I said, as he started to walk away.
He turned and faced me. “I know you were just doing your job, so I accept your apology.”
I said a prayer for him as he walked away.
* * * *
There was a two-hour delay before our flight left for Washington. Carlton spent most of it on the phone with the Ops Center discussing the intel we’d received from Naballah’s meeting.
Soon after leaving Damascus, I’d given him General Suleiman’s business card, the one I’d discovered in Jamal’s pocket with Mohammed’s number on the back, and he’d already sent the number to Katherine’s ASA office to see if the number was traceable.
I had a feeling it wasn’t.
I suspected the phone was a burner, a one-time use cell phone paid for with cash and virtually untraceable. In that case, until someone called that number, there was no way of knowing if it belonged to Khouri or not.
When Carlton opened his briefcase to put away his phone, he looked over at me and said, “I know you have an idea about how you want the rest of the operation to play out, so you might as well tell me about it now. If it’s feasible, I’ll try to sell it to the DDO when we get back to Langley.”
I pointed to Marwan’s personal cell phone tucked inside Carlton’s briefcase and said, “Franco Cabello said he would text Marwan on his cell phone in a few days. As long as the Agency remains in possession of that phone, then I believe the DDO can justify having the operation run on American soil. I realize the Legal Department will have to give their opinion on that, but let’s say Legal gives the DDO the green light to continue running the operation from Langley.”
“Let’s say they do.”
“In that case, I’d like to see the DDO propose a joint task force made up of agents from the Bureau, as well as Agency personnel. I know the Agency has no legal basis for confiscating the shipment of canisters or arresting the members of the Baltimore cell, so the feds could work that end of the operation, while the Agency goes after Mohammed.”
“How would that work?”
I pointed to Marwan’s phone again. “Once Franco Cabello texts the location of the truck carrying the weapons, we’ll pass that information along to the Bureau. We’ll do so with the understanding there won’t be any news releases about the discovery of the chemical weapons or any publicity about the arrests of the terrorists connected with them until we locate Mohammed.”
Carlton nodded. “You don’t want Mohammed to know he’s never going to see those weapons.”
“Right. Mohammed expects to receive a call from Naballah after the canisters have arrived in the area. Once he receives that call, he’ll tell Naballah where the canisters should be delivered. However, Naballah won’t be making that call. Someone from the Agency will be making that call.”
Carlton considered my proposal, rhythmically tapping his finger on his briefcase. “Your plan needs a lot of tweaking, but at least you’ve given me a framework I can use.”
Despite what he said, I knew Carlton loved my plan.
PART SIX
Chapter 48
Monday, July 6
It had barely been a week since I’d last seen Frank Benson, but when I encountered him in Conference Room C on the ground floor of Agency headquarters, I could have sworn it had been much longer.
Benson was part of the Joint Task Force the DDO had hurriedly put together on Sunday once Carlton and I had arrived back at Dulles.
We’d come straight to Langley after receiving a message from the DDO telling the two of us to meet him in his office the moment we landed.
The meeting hadn’t lasted long—at least not the one I was in.
He’d dismissed me as soon as I’d made the pitch to him about letting Operation Citadel Protection continue to play out on the domestic front.
After his curt, “you can go now,” he’d asked Carlton to remain behind.
Later, Carlton had called to let me know the DDO had agreed with my proposal. He’d also told me to be back at Langley the next morning to meet with the DDO and the Joint Task Force he was putting together.
Following his call, I’d gone out to The Meadows and slept for twelve hours. I’d thought about calling Nikki, but I knew I was too jet-lagged to talk to her.
Now, after seeing Frank, I wished I had.
Frank had shaved off his scruffy-looking whiskers, and today he was dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue-striped tie. I was dressed in more casual attire, and I felt shabby standing next to him.
“I see you survived Damascus,” he said, stirring cream in his coffee with a swizzle stick. “Are things as bad there as I’m seeing on the news?”
“If you’re seeing thousands of refugees and bombed-out buildings, then you’re getting the true picture.”
Although we were standing off to the side, away from anyone else in the room, Benson leaned in closer and whispered, “Nikki’s had a tough first week, but she’s doing a fantastic job. She’s a quick learner, and I don’t believe she’ll have any problem passing the course.”
I murmured something inane like “good” and moved away from him, wondering what I’d been thinking when I’d asked him to keep his eye on her.
The official name of Operation Citadel Protection’s joint task force was Citadel Protection Joint Task Force Inter-Agency Collaboration, but everyone in the room was calling it the Joint Task Force.
It primarily consisted of Agency personnel and FBI agents, but once the meeting got started, two representatives from the Department of Homeland Security showed up.
One of the DHS people turned out to be Carlton’s friend, Arnie, who didn’t look too pleased to see me.
The feeling was mutual.
* * * *
The DDO himself chaired the meeting, but he did very little talking. Instead, he asked Carlton to summarize the intel the Agency had obtained when General Suleiman had met with Hassan Naballah to finalize his plans for mounting an attack on the nation’s capital.
As Carlton outlined the facts, he didn’t mention the intel he was sharing was the result of his own operation, or that the intelligence officer, who had been part of that operation, was sitting in the room.
Once Carlton had wrapped things up by explaining how the gas canisters had already made their way into the U.S., the DDO invited Frank Benson, who was serving as the FBI’s spokesman, to address what the feds had found out about the weapons.
Since the Ops Center had already told the FBI about how the cartel had smuggled the canisters across the border through a tunnel in San Diego, that’s where Benson began.
“At Deputy Ira’s request,” Benson said, gesturing toward the DDO, “we won’t be shutting down the cartel’s tunnel in San Diego until after we’ve secured the chemical weapons. For obvious reasons, we don’t want to alert Los Zetas we’re aware of its existence until then. And, along those same lines, we want to keep a low profile as we try to identify the semi-trailer truck transporting the canisters. At least fifty trucks go in and out of that industrial complex in San Diego every day, so we may not know which one it is until after Franco Cabello discloses the truck’s license number.”
When Benson reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, I figured he was about to lay a bunch of his Egyptian hieroglyphics on the group.
Instead, he read off a list of names and explained these were people in the Baltimore area on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. He said after learning a Hezbollah cell in Baltimore would be taking possession of the canisters, all the individuals on the list had been put under twenty-four-hour surveillance, particularly their cell leader, Leandro Manolo, the person Naballah said he would contact once he’d heard from Marwan.
Benson sat down and the DDO addressed the group.
“As Douglas just told you, the head of the Quds Force in Iran, General Suleiman, appears to be the mastermind behind this attack. We believe his asset, a man he’s identified as Mohammed, is, in fact, Walid Khouri, a Jordanian photographer who arrived in the United States ten years ago. I’m sure some of you may have heard of him.”
Carlton gestured over at Katherine. “I’ve asked Ms. Broward, the head of our Strategic Analysis Division, to provide you with the data showing why we’ve come to the conclusion Walid Khouri is Mohammed.”
Katherine was dressed in her lawyer-looking black suit today. She appeared more subdued than the last time I’d seen her, and it was difficult for me to tell if this was because of the group she was addressing or the sobering topic under discussion.
At any rate, there was no smile for me today.
As she briefly outlined the biographical facts on Khouri, I noticed Benson was listening to her intently, and, once she got to the part about Khouri’s recent overseas trip, I saw him pull out his fact sheet on Reyes Valario and Walid Khouri.
Katherine said, “Khouri was recently in Dubai for a fashion shoot, and we believe he met with General Suleiman to receive his final instructions for the attack at that time. When Khouri returned to the States, a large sum of money was deposited in his Swiss bank account, and a few days later, he made contact with a Hezbollah recruit from South America, a college student at the University of Arkansas by the name of Reyes Valario. As I’m sure you’re all aware, Valario has been identified as the shooter in the Navy Yard incident.”
At this point in her presentation, I was surprised to see Katherine smile. I was even more surprised when Benson turned out to be the recipient of that smile.
