Authors: James Barrington
The minigun fell silent as the last shell was fired, but Richter had done more than enough. The Gulf-stream was going nowhere now. The nose slowly lifted, then the weakened fuselage crumpled
behind it, the aircraft seeming almost to fold backwards. It lurched sideways, one wingtip hitting the ground, and then cartwheeled, spraying debris, bodies and boxes of money and bullion and
gemstones as it left the runway. The tanks had been full and, even before the wreckage came to rest, a spray of fuel from a ruptured line caught fire and turned the tumbling aircraft into an
inferno.
‘May Allah forgive me,’ the pilot murmured, as he watched the pyre with horrified eyes. Fire engines and ambulances appeared as if from nowhere, converging on the
blazing wreckage.
‘You stopped them,’ Jackson observed, her voice sounding husky on the intercom.
‘I guess I did,’ Richter replied. ‘Let’s get back to the Burj straight away. I have a feeling this is not a good place for us to be right now.’
Burj Al-Arab Hotel, Dubai
Richter and Jackson took the elevator from the roof down to the Royal Suite. Its lobby was a scene of noisy chaos, a crowd of Arabs in
gellabbiyas
and
kaffiyehs
, others in suits, milling around with uniformed police officers. All of them seemed to be talking at once, either to each other or into mobile phones, or both at the same time.
They scanned the crowd for Hafez Ghul. He was difficult to miss, being one of the tallest men in the room. But it still took a few seconds to spot him standing at the back, being loudly
harangued by a couple of Arabs in traditional garb. By then the rest of the people in the room had fallen almost completely silent, their eyes fixed on Richter and Jackson, the atmosphere
definitely unfriendly if not downright hostile.
Ghul crossed straight over and spoke quietly to Richter. ‘There are some very senior members of the government and police force here, and what they would like to do more than anything else
at the moment is arrest both of you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they still believe the terrorists would have kept their side of the bargain and told them the abort code. Because they’d hoped to keep this entire episode quiet, and now
that’s impossible because of the carnage you’ve caused at the airport. Pictures of that burning aircraft will appear on news broadcasts around the world within hours, and it will cause
untold damage to Dubai’s image. And, finally, because you were specifically instructed to take no action over this.’
‘Right. Come with me,’ Richter said grimly. He marched up the staircase and strode across to the weapon, most of the Arabs reluctantly following him. He fished around in his pocket
for the keys and undid both locks, then snapped up the catches, but didn’t lift the lid. ‘If you could please translate, Chief Inspector,’ he suggested, but Ghul shook his
head.
‘I think everyone here speaks sufficient English.’
‘Let me explain what happened,’ Richter began. ‘The terrorists told you that they’d set the timer for long enough to allow somebody to enter this suite and disarm the
weapon. And they said they’d radio the abort code to you once they were airborne. Correct?’
‘Yes,’ snapped an Arab with a long grey beard. The deference with which the other men in the room looked at him suggested he was the most senior official present. ‘The timer
was set for four hours, but your stupid and ill-considered actions have now stopped us obtaining the code. We’re evacuating this area before the four-hour deadline, and now we’ll
certainly see the Burj totally destroyed.’
Richter glanced at Ghul. ‘I tried to tell them,’ he shrugged, ‘but they wouldn’t believe me.’
‘You don’t need to evacuate the area, and the Burj Al-Arab is perfectly safe,’ Richter insisted loudly. ‘I’ve already disarmed the bomb.’
‘You can’t have,’ another man said angrily. ‘The only people with the abort code were the terrorists, and now they’re all dead. You’re lying simply to save
yourself.’
Richter completely ignored the interruption and continued. ‘This is the bomb,’ he explained. ‘When I open the lid you’ll see two small screens inside. One of them
displays a message in Russian, and the other shows the number of seconds before the explosion was due to take place. Four hours is fourteen thousand four hundred seconds, correct?’ After a
moment to do the calculation, several heads nodded.
Richter glanced at his watch. ‘The four Americans left this hotel about eighty minutes ago – some five thousand seconds. So, if they’d been truthful and the bomb was still
active, the timer should show around two and a half hours, or nine thousand five hundred seconds, remaining before detonation.’
He paused and beckoned them closer. ‘So let me show you what they actually set it for,’ Richter said, and lifted the lid.
Friday
Dira Square, Riyadh
Expecting a large turnout, the police had cleared the square of vehicles early that morning. They now roped off an oblong area right in front of the Qasr-al-Adl, the Palace of
Justice, in which they laid out a blue plastic sheet some five metres square.
Shortly before the time appointed for midday prayers, a white van arrived and parked outside the Emirate Palace. Four men emerged from it and within about half an hour had set up a
professional-quality video camera, a satellite uplink dish on the roof of the van itself and a low-power transmitter that would send a continuous broadcast to a receiver inside the palace.
By the time the
mu’addin
proclaimed the
adhan
, everything was in place. The square almost emptied as people departed to perform their ritual cleansing before the
jumu’ah
, leaving behind just a handful of curious Westerners and non-Muslims, but it quickly filled again once the obligations of religion had been fulfilled.
The crowd parted as two cars and another white van approached, the latter driven by a police officer. The broadcast crew in the square instantly swung the camera round to record their progress.
As the van moved through the crowd, an Arab stepped forward, shouting something, and banged his fist on the side panel. Then another did the same, and within seconds everyone who could reach the
vehicle was either hitting or kicking it.
The van halted and the crowd fell suddenly silent. The rear doors were opened and two officers dragged out a swarthy Arab wearing a stained white
gellabbiya
. He was resisting desperately
but, with his elbows pinioned behind his back and his wrists tied, it was an unequal struggle.
Most people who arrive in police vehicles at Dira Square on a Friday are clearly drugged and usually blindfolded, but the instructions issued from on high had specified that this man was to
receive no such mercy.
The moment the crowd caught sight of him, the yelling started again. The officers marched their prisoner, barefoot and still struggling, to the centre of the plastic sheet, where they forced him
down on to his knees, and positioned themselves on either side to stop him rising.
An official from the Interior Ministry stepped forward, waited until the crowd had fallen almost silent, and then extracted a sheet of paper from his pocket. In a loud, clear voice he apologized
that, despite prolonged questioning, they had still not discovered what the man’s name was, then read out the offences committed.
Immediately the crowd began shouting again as a tall, strongly built figure stepped forward, followed by a police officer carrying a long sword with a curved blade. Normally the executioner will
approach the condemned man from behind, jab him in the back with the end of the blade to make him raise his head, and then decapitate him with a single blow. But on this occasion, the executioner
had received special instructions.
He stepped in front of the man once called Saadi, bowed to the crowd, then turned back to the police officer and accepted the sword. He ostentatiously tested the sharpness of the blade with his
thumb, then swung the weapon a few times, the scimitar hissing through the air, as the crowd roared approval. Then he turned back to the kneeling man, placed the tip of the sword under his chin,
and forced him to look up, into the eyes of the man about to kill him.
For a few seconds the two men stared at each other: the condemned criminal and his executioner. Then the tall Arab handed the sword back to the police officer, moved behind his victim and nodded
to the other policemen who stood waiting there. One of them positioned a low stool under Saadi’s chest, forcing the bound man down onto it, then ran a rope around his torso to hold him there.
A ripple of unease ran through the crowd: this practice was not usual.
Another officer placed a short plank on Saadi’s back, under his bound wrists, so that his hands and forearms were resting on the wood. The executioner bent to check that it was positioned
to his satisfaction, then accepted a knife with a long, sharp blade from another officer, and again walked forward to face the camera and the crowd. The people shouted again, with renewed
bloodlust, divining the man’s intentions. He paused to let Saadi see the knife clearly, then sliced through the cords securing the prisoner’s wrists.
The executioner nodded to the police officers standing on either side of the bound man. They looped lengths of cord around Saadi’s forearms, a few inches above the wrists and pulled them
tight into rudimentary tourniquets to ensure that he wouldn’t pass out from loss of blood. Then they forced his arms down firmly against the wood. With the efficiency of a butcher
dismembering a carcass, the executioner sliced though Saadi’s left wrist and tossed the severed hand onto the plastic sheet. The crowd roared again, shouts of ‘
Allahu
Akbar
’ – God is great – echoing from the buildings around the square. The executioner cleaned the blade of the knife on the back of Saadi’s
gellabbiya
, then
proceeded to sever his right hand.
An officer repositioned the plank, and the procedure was repeated on each of Saadi’s legs. The double-amputation took longer, but within ten minutes both severed feet were also lying on
the plastic sheet right in front of the condemned man.
By now, Saadi was hoarse from screaming, the incredible pain from his mutilated limbs worse than anything he could ever have anticipated. But his yells were easily drowned out by the roars of
approval from the crowd.
Only then did the executioner stride around to the front of the sheet again and retrieve the long sword from the police officer. Again the tall Arab stared down at his victim with a smile of
satisfaction. Everything had been done precisely as his instructions had specified. That just left the finale.
He turned the sword over in his hand so that the sharpened edge of the blade faced upwards, then slid it underneath Saadi’s throat and pulled it up and backwards. The blade cut deep into
the bound man’s throat, severing his windpipe and producing a new gush of blood. Just as the executioner had anticipated – he’d been allowed to practice the manoeuvre on two
condemned men of no importance three days earlier – Saadi’s head jerked back. With one swift movement, the executioner lifted the scimitar high above his head, turned the blade again,
and brought it slicing downwards, severing the Arab’s neck with a single blow.
Saadi’s head flew off, followed by a huge spurt of bright arterial blood. The head bounced three times before rolling to a stop at the very edge of the plastic sheet. Two men in the crowd
leant forward, then hawked and spat directly at it, while behind them the roar of the people in the square rose higher and higher – ‘
Allahu Akbar
,
Allahu Akbar
’.
Saturday
Dubai International Airport
‘I’ll see you around, I guess,’ Carole-Anne Jackson said, picking up her new Gucci weekend case. Stuffed full of brand-new clothes, it was the evidence of her
finding enough spare time to enjoy a little retail therapy. They were sitting over a coffee in the food court on the first floor of the International Airport, and the check-in desk for
Jackson’s flight back to Manama had just opened.
‘You’ve got my numbers in London, so whenever you feel like taking a look around the old country, just give me a call. I can’t promise you this kind of luxury’ –
Richter waved his hand in a vague gesture that implicitly encompassed the whole of Dubai – ‘but we could still have ourselves a good time.’
It had been a very busy week. The Dubai government had settled Richter’s bill at the Crowne Plaza and moved the pair of them, free of charge, into the second Royal Suite at the Burj
Al-Arab. Then government officials had wined and dined them at every opportunity, whisking them by Rolls-Royce from restaurant to reception to restaurant to hotel. It had been an exhausting
gastronomic feast, and Richter was delighted it was finally over. All he was really looking forward to now was beans on toast and a cup of instant coffee.
In between engagements, he and Michael Watkinson had helped government officials prepare a statement, explaining that the unfortunate crash at the airport had been caused by a mechanical failure
that had tragically resulted in the deaths of all those on board the Gulf-stream. The government also sent an official message of condolence to the CIA.
Richter had already briefed John Westwood, using the secure facilities at the British Embassy, to ensure that Langley knew what had really happened. He guessed that the four real CIA agents had
probably been buried somewhere in the desert near Cairo, and their bodies might never be found. He also suggested that Westwood should contact the Gulfstream Corporation and explain exactly why
their almost-new thirty-five-million-dollar executive jet had burst into flames on take-off.
The suitcase nuclear weapon had been removed from the Burj Al-Arab, and delivered to the local CIA officers for transfer to Langley for specialist examination.
The good news for the Dubai authorities was that they had recovered all of the bullion and gems from the wreckage of the Gulfstream, and most of the cash too, because it was locked inside steel
boxes and had survived the fireball with only slight charring. The majority of the financial instruments had been incinerated, which meant they couldn’t be exercised, so that was entirely
satisfactory. Those documents that had survived would probably be destroyed anyway.