Enemy of My Enemy (35 page)

Jack was stunned. "Whoa. What the hell is this? An alliance of all the people who hate us the most?"

"Sounds like it."

Jack shook his head. "Having the Iranians in this mess makes everything so much worse, particularly because nuclear weapons are involved. The Iranians have money and resources the Syrians can only dream about. They've been financing both Hezbollah and Hamas."

"I'm well aware of what the Iranians want to do to us."

"So what did Nadim and Hashim talk about?"

"They set a meeting. Lunch today at one on the Hassler patio. Nadim wanted to meet earlier, but Hashim's playing hard to get."

 

 

 

Chapter 26

 

Nadim was white with rage. He shook his head in disbelief as he listened on a cell phone in his hotel suite at the Hassler to the report of Robert McCallister's attempted escape. He couldn't believe that officers in the Syrian army could be so incompetent.

"The pilot's perfectly all right now," the terrified commander of the unit guarding McCallister tried to reassure Nadim. "I had two of the best surgeons in Damascus flown up here by helicopter to look at him. They said it's a superficial shoulder wound. 'Superficial' was their word. The bullet exited his body. They're certain of that. They applied ointments and rebandaged it. They have him on a sedative and painkillers. He's in his bed sleeping now. I ordered one of the surgeons to remain here around the clock."

Nadim decided that he couldn't believe the commander. "Who are the surgeons?" he asked. He recognized the name of one of them, the chief surgeon at the largest hospital in Damascus. Nadim asked to talk to him.

"Not a big deal," the doctor said calmly. He then repeated what the commander had told Nadim.

Satisfied, Nadim resumed talking to the commander of the unit. "It's inexcusable that your two men who were supposed to be watching the pilot let him escape. I mean the two who were jogging with him." Nadim's tone was fierce and brittle.

The commander was shaking as he listened. "I know that, sir. They've been reprimanded."

"That's not enough."

"I'll strip them of their rank and post them to a hardship assignment."

Nadim snarled. He was on his way to being president of the country. Soldiers had to understand that they couldn't fail to carry out an assignment because of stupidity. His orders had to be followed to the letter. News always spread through the army like wildfire. How he handled this situation would be a valuable lesson for the entire military. If Ahmed had dealt with the Hama situation firmly in the beginning, the destruction of the town would not have been necessary. "I want both soldiers shot," Nadim said. "In the courtyard of the military school."

"Shot?" the disbelieving commander said.

"You heard me. Executed by a firing squad."

"Both of them?"

"You think that's not enough? Perhaps I should include their commander as well."

"No. No," the commander protested as the muscles tightened up in his stomach so badly that he practically doubled up in pain. "You order will be carried out," he managed to get out of his mouth through clenched teeth.

* * *

"Shot," Jack said to Avi. "He's going to have both guards shot."

They were in the penthouse suite of the Hassler listening to conversations emanating from Nadim's room.

"Why are you surprised? I gave you the bio. Hama. Beirut. God only knows how many people he's had killed over the years."

"He's not someone we want to make a mistake with."

Avi gave Jack a wry smile. "Don't look at me. I'm not dating his girlfriend."

"She's not his girlfriend."

"I hope you're right. Meantime, at least we know Robert McCallister is alive and well, more or less."

"But we still don't know what they're planning to do with him and when."

Avi glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. "One hour to showtime. Hopefully we're going to get the answers to those questions then."

Jack looked out of the window at the patio restaurant below. "I wasn't my sharpest this morning. Run it by me again."

"We've planted a bug in the bowl of flowers on the table, which the maitre d' has reserved for Nadim and Hashim." Avi pointed to the sound equipment on the desk in the suite. "We'll be able to hear and record every word they say. Finally we're going to find out what Nadim's planning."

"What if Nadim or Hashim asks for a different table?"

"The maitre d' will tell them to wait a minute while he finishes setting it. He'll move the flower bowl. Also we'll have a photographer up here in our suite with a telephoto lens to take a picture of them during the meeting so we can have visual confirmation."

Avi could tell that Jack wasn't satisfied. "What do you think I missed?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't know. I just don't have a good feeling about this. Something's going to go wrong. I know it."

"You're worrying too much."

"I hope you're right."

* * *

At the table in the Hassler's patio restaurant, Nadim looked at his watch and cursed under his breath. It was already ten minutes past one. Ah Hashim was playing a game by being late—the same game he had been playing when he insisted that he was too busy for a meeting this morning.
He's trying to show me that I need him more than he needs me.

To calm himself, Nadim ordered a bottle of Vernaccia di San Gimignano. As he sipped the chilled white wine, Nadim looked around the restaurant, which was still only sparsely filled. Italians ate late. That was why he had wanted to meet earlier, when there would be less chance of someone recognizing them. In fact, Nadim had wanted to meet in his suite. Hashim had insisted on the restaurant.
Probably doesn't trust me alone in a hotel room,
Nadim decided.

The patio was surrounded by a garden and a low wall. A light breeze rippled through the trees. It was a magnificent spring day, peaceful on the patio. The smell of fragrant flowers was in the air. They were everywhere in bloom around the patio and in the beautiful compact little centerpiece on each table.

On the other side of that wall, it was a different world. Horns honked vociferously. Cars racing by the Spanish Steps spewed noxious exhaust fumes. Vendors hawked gelato to the tourists, busy snapping pictures.

Twenty-five minutes late, Ali Hashim arrived. He offered no apologies. He declined any wine. "It's forbidden by our religion. Maybe you don't know that," he told the Syrian with contempt.

Nadim would have liked nothing better than to pour the rest of the wine and the ice bucket it was resting in over Hashim's bald head, but that wouldn't get him what he wanted. So he squeezed his fists together tightly under the table and said to Hashim, "Let's order lunch first. Then we'll talk."

The Iranian nodded. Once the waiter departed, Nadim couldn't wait any longer to launch into the discussion. First he glanced around the restaurant to make certain there was no one he recognized and that no one was watching. Then he began speaking softly.

"Is your country in or out?"

Hashim's expression was noncommittal. Inside, he was smiling. Nadim was a brutal killer, but he was a poor negotiator. Everything that he did signaled how much he wanted the deal. By doing that, he lost his bargaining leverage.

"We have some problems with the proposal you presented," Hashim said calmly.

"Problems?" Nadim asked. "What problems?"

"We're willing to give you the five million dollars you want in a Swiss bank account, but we refuse to make an identical payment to Kemal, the infidel."

Nadim didn't like what he was hearing. "Without Kemal, we would never have had the pilot."

"But we have him now. We don't need Kemal any longer."

Nadim realized that he was between a rock and a hard place. If he didn't get the cash payment he had promised Kemal, then the Turk would balk, and under Nadim's plan his participation was still critical. "But we do need him," Nadim said. "The last time we were together you said you had a keen sense of the geography. The only way we can bypass Turkey is by moving through Iraqi territory. That's obviously not a possibility."

Hashim pressed his fat lips together. "Five million for Kemal is too much. A half a million is enough."

I feel like I'm in a bazaar,
Nadim thought. "I could persuade Kemal to take two."

"I'll tell you what I'll do," Hashim said slowly, "and this is my final offer. I'll pay six million altogether. I'll tell my people that you needed another million for baksheesh. We're not paying Kemal anything. You can split it with him however you like. That's your business."

"Done," Nadim said, relieved to be finished with this point. "Now let's talk about the rest of it. Here's my proposal for a time and place for the exchange...."

* * *

In the penthouse suite, Jack and Avi were in a panic. An Israeli technician wearing heavy black glasses with thick lenses and earphones who was operating the sound equipment was shaking his head grimly and saying, "Nothing... nothing... nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing?" Jack shouted at the man.

He took off the earphones and put them down carefully on a table.

"I mean zero. I mean I haven't heard one word that Nadim or Hashim said since they ordered lunch."

"Then you're not recording."

What a stupid comment,
the technician thought. He looked annoyed. "We can't record what we don't hear."

Jack threw up his hands in the air in frustration. "Before Hashim arrived, when Nadim ordered the wine, you heard it all clearly. Even the year."

"True."

"So what happened?"

The technician shrugged. "We're dealing with micro components. An insect could have blocked a critical orifice. Or the tiny microphone could have fallen out of the flowers and into the water. Even with state-of-the-art technology, equipment malfunctions."

Jack watched Avi pacing around the living room of the suite, frustrated, red in the face, shaking his head, seeming as if he would explode. Glumly Jack stared out of the window, through a crack in the curtains, at Nadim and Hashim now locked in intense conversation, and considered their options. Even if the technician had an extra microphone, they could hardly have a waiter rush down and change the flowers. Nadim and Hashim were too smart for that.

As he looked at the two of them deep in conversation, leaning forward, their faces just over that flower bowl centerpiece with its dead microphone, he knew that they were now discussing the very facts that he and Avi desperately needed.

Jack looked at the photographer with his long telephoto lens who was waiting for an instruction from Jack or Avi to take a picture of the two men. Jack thought they should still do it, but without a tape of the conversation, it meant nothing. So what if Nadim and Hashim had lunch in Rome? Big deal.

Jack watched a waiter put two salads down on the table. Nadim and Hashim stopped talking until he was gone. They ignored the food and resumed their conversation.

Suddenly Nadim reached down into the brown leather briefcase resting on the tile floor at his feet. Jack turned to the photographer. "Now. Use your highest magnification. They're going to look at something. Take a picture of it. Be quick."

Jack knew there was a risk of Nadim or Hashim noticing the lens sticking out of an open hotel window through a crack in the curtains, but he had to take that chance. Besides, the two of them were so engrossed in their conversation they might not glance up.

Jack saw Nadim take what looked like a small piece of paper from his briefcase. As he held it out to Hashim, the photographer was clicking away. Hashim was studying the piece of paper. The photographer kept shooting.
Will we be able to see the writing on the document?
Jack wondered.

Avi was standing behind Jack, looking over his shoulder.

"Make sure you get both of them in some of the pictures," Jack said to the photographer. "Will do."

Hashim slipped the piece of paper into his pocket. Now they turned to their salads.

Jack looked at the photographer. "How soon will you have prints for us?"

"Go take a leak. By the time you get back, I'll have them."

The photographer was as good as his word.

In the best picture, Nadim and Hashim were looking at a photograph of a man holding a newspaper. Around his neck hung a sign. The words were difficult to read. With a magnifying glass, which the photographer supplied, they unmistakably read,
Lt. Robert McCallister.
The newspaper was the
Herald Tribune
from a few days ago.

"Well, that's sure something," Jack exclaimed with joy.

"But it's not nearly enough," Avi said. "All we've done is confirm that Robert McCallister is part of the deal. Unless and until we know the rest of it—the time and place of the exchange—we're nowhere. Fucking sound equipment. If it hadn't malfunctioned, we could have—"

Jack interrupted him. "Would have, could have. It doesn't count. We have to find another way to get what we want."

* * *

For the next three hours Jack and Avi remained in their suite at the Hassler trying to decide how they could move up on Nadim and get the information they wanted.