Gary Haynes - State Of Attack

Habib nodded. “There’s a rumour that he is protected by the Turkish mafia, and by the militant arm of Hamas in the Palestinian territories,” he said, referring to the Sunni terrorist group. “There are also rumours that he has strong links with Al-Shabaab in East Africa.” He puckered his lips. “Rumours, general, are very dangerous things, are they not?”

The general eyed the younger man. That was a helluva statement, he thought. He made sure his face didn’t show any emotion. “What are my chances of finding him?”

Habib snickered. “Zero, my friend,” he said. “You will never find him. He is a shadow, they say, a puff of grey smoke in the great conflagration that is the warring Middle East. But he has eyes and ears all over, by all accounts. Why do you want to find this man? I mean, apart from the fact he is a terrorist?”

Good question, the general thought.

Chapter 8

Tom had driven for nearly an hour. It was dawn, the muted outline of the fading crescent moon flanked by rolling cumulous clouds. His retreat seemed as if it was in the remote countryside, despite being only about a mile from Arlington County. A hundred-year-old, two-storey farmhouse surrounded on three sides by cornfields and elm coppices. Situated on the banks of the Potomac River, which was a natural border between Virginia and DC, its location was just about perfect for him.

He parked his ten-year-old silver Buick Century and got out. He walked over the flint-ridden path to the porch, admiring the apple orchard nearby. It was skirted by a tarmac walkway that led to a narrow road. On either side of the path, a pristine lawn sloped gently all the way down to the tree-lined banks of the river.

He could just about make out a patch of water in the half-mile-wide stretch. He could relax here and forget about the world of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, at least for as long as he wasn’t contacted via his secure cellphone. He paid a part-time gardener to look after the grounds and keep an eye on his collection of bonsai trees, the man’s wife helping out with cleaning now and then; but apart from them, people rarely visited. He lived alone.

When he couldn’t afford the time to drive up here he stayed in his small redbrick townhouse in Columbia Heights, a couple of blocks from the Metro station, located in the north-west quadrant of DC. It was an ethnically diverse neighbourhood that had been left semi-derelict for decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1968. But the last twenty years had seen significant redevelopment, with a burgeoning middle class and an influx of brand names. But he still felt solitary, even there.

The farmhouse was voluminous, some three thousand square yards, with high ceilings and moulded cornices. It had been bequeathed to him from his paternal grandfather, although they had only met on a couple of occasions, due to his sporadic relationship with the general. Once inside, he turned on a lamp and drew the heavy drapes, before tossing his laptop case onto a sofa and tugging at his silk tie. Strolling to the pastel-blue kitchen, with a Picasso calendar on the wall, he glanced at the time on the microwave on the polished granite tabletop, beside the digital radio: 05:12.

After eating a three-egg omelette, he stood up and strolled through the archway into his study area, holding a mug of black coffee. The house seemed overly large now, and he only used a few of the rooms. Switching on the ceiling light, he walked over to the leaded window, made an opening in the off-white Venetian blinds.

Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the windowpane, he thought he looked tired and apprehensive. Moments later, the local fox emerged from a small copse of trees. It had something in its mouth that looked like the carcass of a dead rodent. Something it had hunted down and killed, rather than scavenged. It looked up at him for a few seconds before returning to the shadows.

Two of the study’s walls were lined with bookshelves, containing numerous first editions that had belonged to his grandfather. On the third, hanging at a height of two yards above a console table nestled against the wall, was an original by Tsuguharu Foujita, a Japanese artist who’d applied traditional Oriental ink techniques to French themes. The painting was of a blonde, bare-breasted woman, her head turned to one side. He considered it exquisite. A painting he said expressed perfectly his dual love of European and Far East art. Like all the other art in the house, the Foujita was his.

Sitting at the table, he fired up his home laptop. The screensaver was a photograph of the Empire State Building. An avid collector of trivia, he still marvelled at an extraordinary fact every time he looked at the image. The skyscraper was one hundred and two storeys high. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber had crashed into the side of it by accident, killing fourteen people. Remarkably, the elevator operator, one Betty Lou Oliver, had survived a descent of seventy-five storeys, actually inside the elevator. It was still the longest recorded fall of its kind.

He grinned, as he always did when he recounted her unintended escapade.

He didn’t like to check his private emails on his work smartphone and considered it inappropriate to carry a separate private one, so having a laptop here and at the townhouse was his way of keeping in touch with his few friends. Lester Wilson, an ex-US Marine who owned a private security business, and the only man Tom could call a true friend, had sent him a series of un-PC picture jokes. He knew he did it partly to wind him up and partly to loosen him up. There was no malice in Lester, except if someone was stupid enough to cross him. His punch was like a kick from a tormented mule.

After reading a few other emails from service providers and deleting promotional spam, he closed the laptop down, thinking that he hadn’t seen Lester in a while, despite both of them being based in DC, and made a mental note to catch up once he’d seen his father.

He stretched his arms up involuntarily and yawned loudly. He hadn’t slept in twenty hours but he was almost beyond it. He decided that he’d check on his bonsai plants, try to relax his mind and then hit the sack.

Chapter 9

Habib flipped open a silver casket and fingered a cigarette rolled with brown paper that he seemed desperate to smoke. He didn’t replace it. The general couldn’t figure out if he was trying to give up the habit or if he was just being polite. Maybe it was just a ritual, or another kind of habit. It didn’t matter. He’d had the same negative response concerning Ibrahim from every intelligence man he’d spoken with in Ankara. He brushed his slacks with his right hand before speaking.

“As I said, he’s come up on our radar, nothing more. Why are they protecting him?”

Habib shrugged. “Political and religious allegiances. And money. What else is there?”

“Can you give me something else?”

Habib closed his mouth, drew in his lips and shook his head.

Thinking the guy was overdoing the histrionics, the general said, “I could really make it worth your while.”

“A bribe, general?”

The general felt like saying: what the hell are you talking about? We both know I agreed to pay you a bribe already. But instead he decided to play along in the game a little. He sensed that Habib would enjoy it, that somehow he demanded it. But more importantly, the general believed that it would facilitate a positive outcome.

“Did I say that?” he said.

“It’s a fair question.”

“Let’s just call it a gift from one intelligence professional to another,” the general said, although in his mind he said, You want me to give you a goddamned contract signed in blood, or what?

“Then I accept this gift in friendship and cooperation, but only as such. A man told another man who told his brother who told me that a baba called Maroof, has, well, certain knowledge concerning this man. I dismiss it as mere speculation and womanlike gossip, of course,” Habib said, waving the unlit cigarette between his slender fingers in front of him sanctimoniously, yet with an effete air.