Scott Matthews: The Assassin's list

David Barak was known as Malik, or the Leader, to his followers. They knew him by no other name. He was traveling to meet the man coordinating the war against the West from the Tri-Border Area of South America. Of the three-quarters of a million residents there, more than twenty-five thousand were Arabs. In that number, a significant number of jihadists and international terrorist organizations were represented.

Western intelligence hadn’t been able to identify all the players in the TBA because it was a wild frontier, for the most part lawless. The various agencies knew the cartel and jihadist organizations were getting along, or at least cooperating with each other in unusual ways. The reason, Barak knew, was that one entity, known as the “Alliance,” coordinated the efforts of the cartels and the worldwide Islamist jihad for their mutual benefit. It also took a healthy profit for doing so, but it was deserved.

Barak took a glass of champagne from the first-class attendant and considered what little he knew about the upcoming meeting. The encrypted message from his sponsors simply directed him to the island of Aruba and a villa on the eastern shore. There, he was to meet a man who would identify himself only as Ryan. He was instructed to brief the man on plans he’d been putting in place for twenty-five years. Actually, longer than that if you counted all the years since he’d decided to become a warrior. That was two days after his eleventh birthday, when his father had been hunted down and assassinated. The Jews had learned of his father’s close relationship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the head of Hitler’s SS Muslim Panzar Division in World War II, and had sent a team of young Israelis to kill him. Barak had vowed his revenge on the Jews.

His father had fled to Egypt after WWII. He lived under the protection of Gamal Abdul Nasser, until the Jews 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.