Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

When Martin was changed, bin Selim handed him a new headdress, the red-flecked keffiyeh of a Gulf Arab, and the black cord circlet to hold it in place. “Better,” said the old man when his guest had completed the transformation. “You will pass for a Gulf Arab, save when you speak. But there is a colony of Afghans in the area of Jeddah. They have been in Saudi Arabia for generations, but they speak like you. Say that is where you come from and strangers will believe you. Now let us sleep. We rise at dawn for the last day of cruising.” The Predator saw them weigh anchor and leave the islands, sailing gently round the rocky tip of Al Ghanam and turning southwest down the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

There are seven in the UAE, but only the names of the biggest and richest- Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah-spring to mind. The other four are much smaller, much poorer and almost anonymous. Two of these, Ajman and Umm al-Qaiwain, are cheek by jowl alongside Dubai, whose oil riches have made it the most developed of the seven.

Pujairah alone lies on the other side of the peninsula, facing east onto the Gulf of Oman. The seventh is Ras al-Khaimah.

It lies on the same coast as Dubai, but far up along the shore toward the Straits of Hormuz. It is dirt-poor and ultratraditional. For that reason, it has eagerly accepted the gifts of Saudi Arabia, including heavily financed mosques and schools-but all teaching Wahhabism. Ras al-K, as Westerners know it, is the local home of fundamentalism and sympathy for Al Qaeda and jihad. On the port side of the slowly cruising dhow, it would be the first to be reached. This occurred at sundown.

“You have no papers,” said the captain to his guest. “And I cannot provide them. No matter, they have always been a Western impertinence. More important is money. Take these.”

He thrust a wad of UAE dirhams into Martin’s hand. They were cruising in the fading light past the town, a mile away on the shore. The first lights began to flicker among the buildings.

“I will put you ashore farther down the coast,” said bin Selim. “You will find the coast road and walk back. I know a small guesthouse in the Old Town. It is cheap, clean and discreet. Take lodgings there. Do not go out. You will be safe, and, inshallah, I may have friends who can help you.” It was fully dark when Martin saw the lights of the hotel and the Rasha slipped toward the shore. Bin Selim knew it well; the converted Hamra Fort, which had a beach club for its foreign guests, and the club had a jetty. After dark, it would be abandoned.

“Fle’s leaving the dhow,” said a voice in the ops room at Edzell air base. Despite the darkness, the thermal imager of the Predator at twenty thousand feet saw the agile figure leap from the dhow to the jetty, and the dhow reverse her engine and pull back to the deeper water and the sea. “Never mind the boat; stay with the moving figure,” said Gordon Phillips, leaning over the console operator’s shoulder. The instructions went to Thumrait, and the Predator was instructed to follow the thermal image of a man walking along the coast road back toward Ras al-K.

It was a five-mile hike, but Martin reached the Old Town section round midnight. He asked twice, and was directed to the address of the guesthouse. It was five hundred yards from the family home of the al-Shehhi, whence had come Marwan al-Shehhi, who flew the airliner into the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. He was still a local hero.

The proprietor was surly and suspicious until Martin mentioned Faisal bin Selim. That and the sight of a wad of dirhams cleared the air. He was bidden to enter, and shown to a simple room. There were seemingly just two other paying guests, and they had retired.

Unbending his attitude, the room keeper invited Martin to join him for a cup of tea before turning in. Over tea, Martin had to explain that he was from Jeddah, but of Pashtun extraction.

With his dark looks, full black beard and the repeated references to Allah of the truly devout, Martin convinced his host that he also was a true believer. They parted with mutual wishes for a good night’s sleep. The dhow master sailed on through the night. His destination was on the harbor, known as “the Creek,” in the heart of Dubai. Once simply that-a muddy creek, smelling of dead fish, where men mended their nets in the heat of the day-it has become the last “picturesque” sight in the bustling capital, opposite the gold soukh, beneath the windows of the towering Western hotels. Here, the trading dhows are berthed side by side, and the tourists come to stare at the last portion of “Old Arabia.”

Bin Selim hailed a taxi, and instructed the driver to take him three miles up the coast to the Sultanate of Ajman, smallest and second poorest of the seven. There, he dismissed the taxi, ducked into a covered soukh of twisting alleys and clamoring stalls and lost himself to any following “tail,” should there have been one.

There was not. The Predator was concentrating on a guesthouse in the heart of Ras al-Khaimah. The dhow master slipped from the soukh into a small mosque, and made a request of the imam. A boy was sent scurrying through the town and came back with a young man who genuinely was a student in the local technical college. He was also a graduate of the Darunta training camp owned and run by Al Qaeda outside Jalalabad until 2001.

The old man whispered in the ear of the younger, who nodded and thanked him. Then the dhow master went back through the covered market, emerged, hailed a taxi and returned to his freighter in the Creek. He had done all he could. It was up to the younger men now. Inshallah.

That same morning, but later due to the time difference, the Countess of Richmond eased out of the estuary of the Mersey and into the Irish Sea. Captain McKendrick had the conn, and took his freighter south. In time, she would, keeping Wales to her left, clear the Irish Sea and Lizard Point, to meet the Channel and the eastern Atlantic. Then her course lay south, past Portugal, through the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal, and thence to the Indian Ocean. Belowdecks, as the cold March seas flew up over the bow of the Countess, was a cargo of carefully protected and crated Jaguar sedans, destined for the showrooms of Singapore.

FOUR DAYS passed before the Afghan sheltering in Ras al-Khaimah received his visitors. Following his instructions, he had not gone out, or at least not as far as the street. But he had taken the air in the closed courtyard at the rear of the house, screened from the streets by double gates eight feet high. Here various deliver)’ vans came and went.

While in the courtyard he was seen by the Predator, and his controllers in Scotland noted his change of dress.

His visitors, when they came, did not arrive to deliver food, drink or laundry, but to make a collection. They backed the van close to the rear door of the building. The driver stayed at the wheel; the other three entered the house. The lodgers were both away at work, the room keeper by agreement out at the shops. The team of three had their directions. They went swiftly to the appropriate door and entered without knocking. The seated figure, reading his Koran, rose to find himself facing a handgun in the grip of a man trained in Afghanistan. All three were hooded.

They were quiet and efficient. Martin knew enough of fighting men to recognize his visitors knew their business. The hood went over his head and fell to his shoulders. His hands came behind his back, and the plastic cuffs went on. Then he was marching-or being marched-out the door, down the tiled corridor and into the back of the van. He lay on his side, heard the door slam, felt the van lurch out of the gate and into the street.

The Predator saw it, but the controllers thought it was another laundry delivery. In minutes, the van was out of sight. There are many miracles that modern spy technology can accomplish, but controllers and machines can still be fooled. The snatch squad had no idea there was a Predator above them, but their shrewdly choosing midmorning for the snatch rather than midnight fooled the watchers at Edzell.