Payback (31 page)

Nad Al-Sheba Racecourse, Dubai

Saadi stopped the car about two hundred yards from the racecourse, switched off the engine and extinguished the lights. For a few minutes the three men sat there, letting
their eyes adjust to the darkness. Under their white
gellabbiyas
, each was dressed in black clothing: trousers, polo-neck jumpers and trainers.

‘It’s time,’ Saadi said, finally.

Massood walked to the back of the car and opened the boot. Inside it were four large grey rucksacks. On top of them were two rolled-up rope ladders, each secured by cord. He handed the ladders
to Bashar, then pulled out the rucksacks. All three men pulled off their
gellabbiyas
and placed them in the boot.

‘Remember,’ Saadi hissed, barely louder than a whisper. ‘If possible, avoid contact with the guards. If you’re spotted and have to take action, use a garrotte or knife.
And don’t forget to bring the body back here.’

As he locked the car, Massood and Bashar each shrugged on a rucksack and picked up a second one. Saadi took the two rope ladders and led the way down the road, keeping close to the boundary
fence until they reached the spot he’d selected earlier.

The fence was about nine feet high, a simple chain-link structure supported by concrete posts. Saadi stopped beside one of these and, as he untied the cord securing one ladder, Massood scrambled
up the fence. When Saadi tossed him the end of the ladder, he looped it over the top of the post, letting it dangle against the outside of the fence. Then he repeated the operation with the second
ladder, on the inside.

Within minutes, all three men and their bags were inside the racecourse. They concealed the ladders in a hollow dip in the ground a few yards away. Each man pulled on a rucksack and then Massood
and Bashar seized the straps of the fourth one, and they followed Saadi towards the Millennium Grandstand. Within seconds, all three figures had vanished into the gloom.

British Embassy, Dubai

‘You said there were a couple of things we had to talk about,’ Richter reminded Michael Watkinson. ‘What was the other?’

‘I had a call from Saeed Hussein. The forensic people went over the horsebox. They found no definite evidence of explosives, but there were traces of two different types of oil on the hay.
One was definitely gun oil, but the second proved more difficult to identify. There were only very slight traces and, in their estimation, it was probably the kind you find on oiled paper of the
sort used for wrapping military ordnance.’

Richter nodded. ‘That makes sense. Modern explosives come in either plastic or oiled paper wrapping. It’s confirmation, I suppose, that our deduction was right, but we’re no
nearer finding the terrorists or discovering what their target is. But if they risked bringing weapons and explosives into Dubai, the target must be here.’

The knock on the door was quick and urgent. Before either Watkinson or Richter had time to respond, it opened and Chris Halls burst in.

‘I’ve found it,’ she said simply.

Nad Al-Sheba Racecourse, Dubai

Less than an hour after Saadi and his companions had vanished into the night, they reappeared, empty-handed. They climbed back over the perimeter fence, walked up the road
to the parked Renault, stowed the ladders in the boot, and pulled the
gellabbiyas
back on over their clothes.

Saadi started the engine, and three minutes later the road was empty.

British Embassy, Dubai

‘It
was
a hidden partition,’ Chris Halls explained. ‘He used a program called Steganos Safe.’

‘Is it unusual?’ Watkinson asked.

Halls shook her head. ‘No, but Holden did his best to make it as difficult as possible to find. He renamed the program file and tucked it away deep inside the operating system in a hidden,
read-only folder, which is why it took me so long to find it. Then I had to crack the password to get in, but I’ve got a couple of tools that helped me do that fairly quickly.’

‘So what’s inside it?’ Richter asked.

‘Not as much as I was hoping,’ Halls replied. ‘Let me show you.’

She led the way to her office, sat down and touched the space-bar to remove the screen-saver. They stood on either side of her as Halls double-clicked a new icon – a tiny representation of
a safe – on the desktop.

A box popped up listing a single secure partition: drive Z. Halls clicked the ‘open’ link beside it and immediately a password prompt appeared. She typed rapidly, pressed
‘OK’ and a directory listing appeared on the screen. There were just three names in it – ‘Damascus’, ‘Manama’ and ‘Dubai’.

‘That looks promising,’ Richter observed.

Halls double-clicked ‘Damascus’.

‘As I said, there’s not that much in here, but it proves that Holden
was
being fed information.’

The screen display changed to show six filenames. The first five mini-icons represented images, and the final one a Microsoft Word document. Halls double-clicked the first image, and a
photograph of the entrance to a
souk
filled the screen.

Watkinson looked closely. ‘That’s the Bab Al-Nasr end of the Al-Hamidieh
souk
.’

Halls nodded. ‘Three of the other pictures show different views of the interior, including one of the roof.’ She quickly flicked through them.

‘And the last picture?’

‘That,’ Halls said, ‘is Saadallah Assad.’

An image appeared of a handsome young Arab boy with a slightly arrogant expression, looking off to the left. It wasn’t a portrait, so Richter guessed it had been taken surreptitiously with
a small digital camera.

For a few moments the three of them stared at the photograph of the young man who, just days or hours later, had caused the deaths of nearly thirty innocent people.

‘He could almost be an actor,’ Halls observed. ‘I bet he had no shortage of female admirers.’

There wasn’t anything Richter or Watkinson felt like adding to that remark.

‘The Word document,’ Halls continued, while opening the file, ‘is entitled “Damascus data”.’

It contained three short paragraphs. The first gave Assad’s name and a brief word-picture, and the second a very abbreviated history of the Society of Muslim Brothers. The third listed a
date, the same day Assad had triggered his suicide bomb, and a single, chilling sentence: ‘Gonna be a big one!’, and a brief instruction: ‘Don’t tell them it’s
Damascus. Just describe the
souk
and leave it at that.’

‘Well, that’s certainly clear enough,’ Watkinson said bitterly. ‘Let’s see the Manama files.’

Halls opened the second directory. The contents looked very similar to the first – four image files and a Word document. She double-clicked the first photograph to reveal a street with
cars parked along each side.

‘That could well be Al-Mutanabi Avenue,’ Richter remarked, ‘but I was only there after the explosion, so I can’t be sure.’

‘It
is
Al-Mutanabi,’ Halls confirmed, ‘and the Word file makes that clear. The next two pictures are of the same road, apparently taken at about the same time, because
the parked cars are identical in each. The last one is a street map of Manama.’ The images appeared, one after the other. ‘This Word file is also fairly short.’

There were just two paragraphs this time. The first described the bomb vehicle as an old American car that would be positioned by two men wearing traditional Arab dress, and confirmed that it
would be left somewhere on Al-Mutanabi Avenue. The second paragraph instructed Holden to suggest that the location was Manama, but not to mention it by name, only by reference to a landmark. The
last sentence read: ‘Think of an extra piece of information – maybe the airport on Muharraq Island or the Al-Fateh Mosque – and give them that.’

‘You were right, then,’ Watkinson said grimly. ‘Hol-den
was
a mouthpiece for this bunch of terrorists, but I
still
don’t understand what their motive was.
Why were they using him?’

‘The obvious answer is to establish Holden’s credibility as a psychic, though I have no idea why that should have been so important. But that theory falls rather flat since
he’s just been murdered, probably by these same people. We’re obviously missing something here – some other factor.’

‘Exactly,’ Watkinson sighed. ‘Right, Chris, let’s see the “Dubai” files.’

Halls double-clicked on the ‘Dubai’ directory and leant back in her chair. ‘That,’ she explained, ‘is what I meant when I told you there’s rather less here
than I was hoping.’

The ‘Dubai’ directory was empty but for a single Word file.

Saturday
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dubai

Richter woke early, despite having finally left the embassy well after midnight. His evening had been considerably improved by the sight of Carole-Anne Jackson waiting for him
in the lobby when he arrived at the hotel, an empty coffee cup and a pile of magazines in front of her. She’d hopped a flight out of Manama, but hadn’t called Richter because she
guessed he’d be busy.

The Word file retrieved from Holden’s computer had contained two brief but alarming sentences: ‘Dubai hotel, close to the water. Very big bomb, maybe nuke.’ Halls had been
thorough, so he felt confident there were no other files hidden in the ‘Dubai’ directory. Further wildcard searches of the entire hard drive for any mention of Dubai had come up with
nothing useful.

The only thing they now knew for certain was that the next target
was
Dubai itself, and not some other city in the Gulf.

Not that the information helped particularly. Dubai was full of hotels, the vast majority of them on the coast, including the developments running from Jumeirah to Umm Suqeim and from Deira
towards the Al-Mamzar Beach Park and Sharjah. And as Watkinson had pointed out, apart from the Gulf itself, ‘the water’ could also mean the Dubai Creek, which added even more potential
targets to the list.

It had been a frustratingly inconclusive end to a fairly promising day.

Al-Khaleej Hotel, Dubai

The six detectors provided by the CIA were E-3500 units manufactured by Scintrex Trace. This model was one of the latest, most advanced, and – at around thirty
thousand dollars each – most expensive units available, designed to detect all threat compounds, including radioactive sources. The device itself looked something like a hand-held vacuum
cleaner, but with a probe instead of a suction intake, and a digital display in front of the handle.

It took Richard Wilson only minutes to master the basics, and after an hour he felt ready to pass himself off as an expert.

O’Hagan had handed him a small plastic container with a snap-on lid. He opened this and extracted a man’s gold ring bearing a large and rather vulgar red stone, and a package wrapped
in aluminium foil. Inside the latter was a piece of Semtex plastic explosive.

Wilson slid the ring onto the third finger of his left hand. He was right-handed, and it had to be worn on his non-dominant hand. The ring had been made to O’Hagan’s precise design
by a jeweller in Ohio nearly a year earlier. The mount carrying the stone was hinged on one side, the hinge itself hidden within the tiny cup that was revealed when the ring was opened, and also
sprung, so that any pressure on the stone would compress the space below it. The mount was virtually airtight until the stone was depressed, when the downward movement exposed three small holes in
the sides. This meant that the ring acted like a tiny pump, pushing air out of the internal cavity every time pressure was applied to the stone.

Wilson removed a tiny piece of the Semtex and tucked it into the cavity, making sure that the stone still moved freely. He then took the E-3500 into the furthest corner of the bathroom and
carried out a sweep, but the detector registered nothing. After twisting the ring round until the stone was on his palm side, he moved his left arm casually up and across the front of the detector,
while pressing gently on the stone with his left thumb. Scanning again, the detector scored a hit this time, and Dawson smiled, because now everything was ready.

After packing the unit away in its case, he called Dawson’s room using his CIA alias. ‘It’s Andy Franks, sir. I’m pretty much ready.’

‘Right. I’ll contact Inspector Hussein and see if we can get started tomorrow.’

Dawson rang off, took out the card Hussein had given him and rang the police officer’s home number. His call was answered almost immediately.

‘Good afternoon, Inspector, this is Grant Hutchings. We were wondering if we could start checking the first of the hotels tomorrow. I suggest we start with the biggest and most
distinctive, like the Burj Al-Arab and the Jumeirah Beach. If I was a terrorist, those are the ones I’d go for.’

Hussein’s reply was apologetic. ‘This Sunday is not a good day because of the World Cup race meeting this weekend. All the hotels are full, and we wouldn’t wish to alarm any of
our important guests. But most of them will be leaving once the racing has finished, so might I suggest Monday morning instead?’

Dawson wasn’t in a position to push things, and was fully aware how heavily Dubai relied on its tourist industry. On a day like that, the local authorities certainly wouldn’t want to
see a bunch of armed Americans wandering about looking for explosives in their most prestigious hotels. He bowed to the inevitable.

‘No, that’s no problem, Inspector. Monday morning it is.’

‘I’ll have a car sent to your hotel at nine.’

‘Better make it two cars, because there’ll be the four of us, plus the explosive detectors and a bunch of other equipment as well.’

‘That won’t be a problem. Two cars at nine on Monday, then.’ Dawson could hear the sound of pen on paper as Hussein made a note.

‘We’d prefer to start in one of the hotels straight away, without a prior demonstration. The detectors are easy to use, so we can show your men how to operate them in a realistic
environment.’

‘Agreed. I’ll contact both hotels and tell them to expect us on Monday.’

Dawson put down the phone, paused for a second, then picked it up to call Alex O’Hagan’s room and give him the news.