Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

Majid and Ja’far flipped through the digital stills of the camera, absently looking at the pictures. When they were done, Ja’far spoke. “You have your uses, Infidel, but only so many. You have done us a service until today. Now, the killing of the investigator is gathering interest, and you have compounded that by killing an American intelligence operative. What are we to do with you?”

The assassin blinked. Gathering interest? “What the hell does that mean? The Tribunal hit was magic. No way can anyone connect anything with you guys.”

“No. Not magic. Close, but there were two bodies in the wreckage. The investigator and her boyfriend.”

“Yeah? So fucking what?”

“The boyfriend’s face was fractured. Like he’d been beaten.”

He snorted. “Who gives a shit? They died in a gas explosion. Maybe he was hit by some flying debris. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that people are digging now. Because of who the investigator was. We hired you for no fingerprints, and now there are questions.”

“You don’t have any directed at you. There is no connection to you. You’re clean.”

“You’re wrong. There is a connection. We worry about the future. What will the Sidon attack cause? Who will question that? The Americans?”

The assassin stood, edging toward the door. He knew what that meant; he was the connection. “That group was Palestinian, from the camps. At least that’s what you told me they were. I operated on your intelligence and cut off a threat to your operations. The Americans will look no further than the camps and chalk this up to rival groups. In the end, if there was an assassination plot, it’s dead now. Right? Isn’t that what you were afraid of anyway?”

Ja’far stiffened. “We don’t tell you the details. Only what we want done. And in this case, we wanted a recording . Not death. You may have-”

Majid cut him off with a look, and Infidel knew something more was going on. He now worried about getting out of the room alive. He backed toward the door.

“I’m sorry if I did anything to harm your interests. You know that’s not what I do. I’ve shown you my skill. I understand you’re upset, so let’s call the last payment you owe me null and void. We’re even. Okay?”

Majid laughed. “You Americans. It’s always about the money. We don’t care about that. If we wanted to kill you, we would do so right now-regardless of the money.”

Infidel waited, ready to pull the carbon-fiber blade. Now was the go or no-go moment.

“Don’t look so worried. You can go. We just want you to be aware of our concerns. If we are to continue, you need to be more attuned to our needs.”

Ja’far smiled. “Or more attuned to your final wishes.”

Infidel smiled back, a weak grin that made him feel foolish. The guard at the door with the AK-47 saw his trepidation and grinned as well, enjoying the feeling of superiority. The bully in the room liking his torment.

He left down the stairwell in controlled haste. When he reached the bottom, he was followed by the two men who had remained in the cafe. He paid them no outward mind, but caressed his carbon-fiber lucky charm again.

They followed him all the way out of the Dahiyeh . When he hailed a cab, they showed no sign that it was anything other than what they expected. When the cab pulled away, guaranteeing his freedom, he initiated the electronic collection device he’d installed in the wheel well of the vehicle he was leaving behind.

The Ghost checked the security of his hotel room door, deciding it was good enough. If someone wanted to come through the hard way, it would take more than one blow, and that would leave plenty of time to get him out on the balcony, and away.

He’d managed to slip out of Sidon in the chaos of the bombing and had elected not to drive all the way home to Tripoli. He wanted to open the briefcase as soon as possible, but he needed a secure area to analyze the information. He’d stopped in Beirut and rented a room in the Hamra area, next to the university.

He placed the briefcase on the chipped table in front of the television and stared at it for a second. He went into the bathroom, blotted a washcloth in the sink, and returned. He righted the briefcase and cleansed the dried blood from the handle. He wasn’t sure why he did it, but it felt like the right thing.

He placed it back down flat and opened it. Inside was a sheaf of papers, a wallet, a thumb drive, and a passport.

He picked up the passport and wallet first. Credit cards and Saudi Arabian identification for a man named Ahmed al-Rashid. One more name for his record books. He was pleased to see it was a Gulf Cooperation Council country. Being in the GCC would make it much easier to pass across borders of any member state. The passport itself looked official, but was in pieces, with the picture missing. He assumed he would have received instructions on final assembly, but that was obviously not going to happen now.

The credit cards were in the same name, as was the international driver’s license. In the sheaf of papers he found a bank statement, with a balance of fifty thousand dollars. He assumed one of the cards was a debit card from the bank. The money was fine to get started, but he wouldn’t be using the identity of Ahmed for very long. If he decided to continue.

He continued flipping through the papers and found the biography of the United States Middle Eastern envoy. A man named Jeffrey McMasters. Fifty-seven years old, with the face of a distinguished patrician. Gray around the temples and a hint of a smile around the eyes. A professional diplomat with over thirty-five years of service. He noted he was a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and had worked in the Jordanian Embassy, but had done nothing with the state of Israel. That stood to reason because the United States would be looking for someone who understood the area, but who could never be accused of having a bias.

He flipped to the next page and saw the itinerary of McMasters’s Middle East trip. The envoy was hitting quite a few countries over the next seven days. Most stops simply stated the city and duration, but some actually listed the events of the day and the lodging arrangements. The Ghost guessed that the Hamas offshoot group had greater penetration of some countries than others.

He saw the envoy was due to land in Lebanon tomorrow, but would be spending only about eight hours on the ground before leaving again and flying to Turkey. He would visit at least four other countries before his final stop in Doha, Qatar, for the peace talks. The stop before that was Dubai, UAE.

Dubai was one of the few places with a complete itinerary, and the chosen hotel caught his eye. The Al Bustan Rotana, a premier five-star establishment in a city known for five-star establishments. But this hotel had a little extra notoriety, beyond the luxury. It was the same one where the Mossad had assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, chief of Hamas’s military wing, in 2010. A spectacular killing by the Zionists that made the Palestinians look weak.

Using fake passports from at least four different European countries, the hit team had conducted surveillance on Mahmoud for days, penetrated his room in the hotel, waited on him to return, then suffocated him to death.

The irony of the envoy choosing this hotel bit deep. Maybe he would take on the assignment. To kill McMasters in the same hotel as the Hamas operative would send a clear signal-especially if done in the same manner. No giant car bomb. No random slaughter of civilians. A targeted killing in a special place.

He shuffled through the rest of the paperwork, seeing more credit receipts and other useful information, but nothing substantial. In truth, he only half focused on it, his brain turning over the nuances of the attack.