The Assassins (33 page)

A retired history professor smiled broadly, the money in her hand. “I remember the seventies. Iraq was so wealthy, obesity was a national health concern.”

“Ali never gives me any money for myself,” a second said. “This is
fabulous.
Thank you!”

The women talked and laughed. Zahra knew some, perhaps most, would “donate” their gift money to trips to Dubai to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman. As she watched, several checked their iPhones for the time.

“Thank you for coming,” she called out. “Please give Siraj’s and my best regards to your husbands. Good-bye. Safe travels.”

Servants brought in the women’s
abayas
and
hijabs
. Chatting, they arose, covering their feminine clothes, hiding their coiffed hair, putting sunglasses over their glamorous eyeliner and shadow.

At the front door, Zahra hugged them and said individual farewells. With the exception of two, all told her their husbands were already considering changing their political allegiance. Like dark sailing ships, they glided toward the Bentleys and Volvos and Humvees parked along the palm-lined residential street, where their armed drivers were holding passenger doors open. The women had been sophisticated and magazine-pretty in Zahra’s sitting room. They were wives, grandmothers, mothers, and daughters—women with responsibilities—and with each day of violence their fear deepened.

Now that her duties were finished, Zahra gripped the door jamb, awash with the pain of losing Katia. Through the years, Zahra had sent emissaries secretly to photograph and talk with Katia, without Katia ever realizing they were reporting back to the mother she thought dead. Knowing Katia had a safe life in Maine had been everything to Zahra. Her throat thickened, and she blinked back tears.
She’d failed Katia.
Her daughter’s life had not been safe enough.

She forced herself to go inside. With each step, she told herself to grow stronger, that her spine must be steel. She still had her husband. She must focus on him now, help him to fulfill his dream.

68

If you were running for office in Iraq, one of your must-do appearances was on
Today’s Lunch,
a daily TV, radio, and online show that boasted the highest midday ratings in the country, reaching some two million people. The show was hosted by Hydar Aadil, a chubby man with red cheeks, who approached each interview as if his guest were not being invited to his lunch table, but to be on it, served up in a boiling stew.

In the studio greenroom, al-Sabah and Zahra sat on folding metal chairs, watching through the glass, as Tabrizi arrived, fresh from noon prayers. He looked every bit the modern Iraqi politician in his dark blue pin-striped suit, starched white shirt, and blue silk tie. He was slender, whippetlike. Age lines crisscrossed his long, narrow face. His dark olive-shaped eyes were large, almost liquid behind rimless glasses. And his hair—more gray than black—had receded beyond the top of his head. Half Dome, some of his less-than-admiring colleagues called him.

The interviewer and the candidate sat across from one another. Aadil started the interview at full speed: “You’re putting together a strictly all-Shiite coalition, Mr. Tabrizi. What about the Kurds and Sunnis? Are you telling the Iraqi people that if you’re not Shiite, you’re nothing?”

Al-Sabah saw Tabrizi start to bristle, but when he spoke, it was calmly, almost with kindness. “Of course Sunnis and Kurds will have positions in an SIL-led government. But first, Shiites need to pull together for the good of Iraq, and then we’ll be able to bring in everyone.”

The interviewer stabbed an index finger down onto the table. “Prime Minister al-Lami’s coalition includes all minorities. New businesses are opening. Oil profits are growing. The stock market is righting itself. Iraqis are returning home after years abroad. There were pessimists and troublemakers who predicted the current terrorist attacks would stop everything. Obviously, they were wrong. The prime minister is doing a lot of things right.”

Tabrizi did not hesitate: “Everything good that he’s done is small. There’s no sweeping change. Count the potholes in the streets—they’re big enough to swallow tires. Dead bodies lie in the parks for days and are discovered by our children. We don’t have reliable electricity, gas, phone service, or water. He can’t even protect government buildings—today not one but
two
were bombed. Iraq will never be great again while mortars and RPGs and bombs and automatic weapons kill people and destroy property day after day after day. Do you disagree?”

“Of course not, but—”

In a show of power, Tabrizi faced the camera and spoke passionately to viewers: “I promise security … true security … to all the people of Iraq. Prime Minister al-Lami has put your lives and your children’s lives in danger. Will you be the next to die because of his inadequacies?” There was an audible gasp in the studio for the baldness of his question. “If you want safety, tell your MP to vote for me. As your new prime minister, I’ll lead you back into Allah’s hands and into a better day worthy of our legendary history.”

*   *   *

They left the television studios together, al-Sabah and Tabrizi in their business suits, Zahra between them in her
abaya
and headdress. The noontime sun reflected like white heat from the glassy high-rises around them. The trio went to Tabrizi’s car.

Without a camera recording him, Tabrizi’s expression returned to its usual severity. His face was like glazed concrete. In the center of his forehead was a callus. To al-Sabah, that was what really identified Tabrizi. Westerners might think the callus was a blemish, but to those in the world of Islam, it was a mark of piety. It meant Tabrizi had prayed several times a day, 365 days a year, for most of his life. At every prayer session he had prostrated himself at least twice, touching his forehead not to a rug but to a
turba,
a rough clay tablet made in the holy city of Najaf, as Shiites had done for centuries. Al-Sabah had seen Tabrizi look in a mirror and touch the callus, then smile quietly to himself.

As they walked, al-Sabah delivered their news: “The Carnivore is on his way here. We have visuals and names for two of his employees. We’ll be able to track him through them.”

“Good. We can end this at last. It will be a relief. What do you think, Zahra?” Tabrizi asked politely.

Her hands knotted. “We’ll kill that bastard Carnivore.”

Tabrizi winced. He did not approve of words like
bastard,
especially from a woman.

Zahra was so distracted by her grief she did not seem to notice, but al-Sabah did. He changed the subject: “Your interview was good, Tariq. It will help. We’re close to having a majority coalition, but the prime minister is creeping up in numbers, too.”

“Tonight, we’ll crush him,” Tabrizi said with conviction.

Al-Sabah nodded. Tonight’s event would shock and terrify the populace, cow the MPs, and prove without any doubt that the current prime minister was inadequate to protect anyone, including himself.

As they reached Tabrizi’s armored black limousine, the driver jumped out. He was a beefy specimen with a pistol on his belt. Al-Sabah knew he kept a fully loaded AK-47 on the passenger seat beside him.

The trunk opened. Inside was a large cardboard box labeled
BOOKS
. Al-Sabah surveyed the parking lot as the driver leaned over and opened the box flaps. Inside, stacks of greenbacks appeared on the left, and stacks of euros on the right.

Zahra reached inside and touched the cash.

“How much?” al-Sabah asked.

“What you said you needed—ten million dollars.” Tabrizi smiled a real smile. His intense pleasure in the money was palpable. He had spent most of his life in the twilight world of international finance, where the big players seldom slept because somewhere around the globe markets and banks were open. When he was finally worth billions of dollars, he had found it too dangerous to continue. Quitting, he left London for Iran but felt lost without his old world, a rich man whose riches did him no good because he could no longer play the high-stakes money games that had made life exciting. He needed a new challenge, something hard, something complicated, something verging on the impossible. When you have all the money in the world, all that is left to want is what you cannot buy.

Then the Americans and Brits invaded Iraq. The invasion was the chance for which Tabrizi had hoped. He moved across the border to Iraq, to Basra, where he had grown up with al-Sabah, to pursue something so priceless it could not be purchased—governing an Islamic nation. He intended to become prime minister.

In some ways, it was like the old days for him—he was gambling again. Ballot boxes could be stuffed, but they might not stay that way. Votes could be bought, but someone else might come along and offer a higher price. He was an MP eleven years, long enough to learn who had profited by working with Saddam, who had collaborated with the CIA and MI6, with Iran or Russia or both, who was most corrupt, who had fomented revolution, and who had led death squads. If he were to become prime minister, he knew what his altruistic goal was: to make Iraq stable and safe and take it back to Allah.

Al-Sabah had been with him through all of it because of three simple facts: Tabrizi had needed someone he could trust, al-Sabah wanted the opportunity to have a public career, and he also wanted the enormous fortune his old friend had promised him. The money would be wired into al-Sabah’s Cayman Islands bank account when Tabrizi became prime minister.

Al-Sabah’s iPhone vibrated. Seeing it was Jabari, he answered.

“We’ve made flyers with a photo of Greg and Courtney Roman and a phone number to call to get a reward for finding them,” Jabari told him. “Our people are taking copies into all the transportation hubs—airports, bus stations, car rental agencies, taxi servers—and they’re staying on hand to watch. The ten-thousand-euro reward gets people’s attention.”

“Remember,” al-Sabah warned, “the Carnivore’s stock in trade is deviousness. Don’t take anything for granted.”

“It’d help if we knew what he looked like,” Jabari said.

“No one knows. Just find the Romans, they’ll lead you to him.”

Al-Sabah relayed Jabari’s report to Tabrizi and Zahra.

“Tell me as soon as you learn anything.” Tabrizi climbed into his limo. “Good luck, and God bless.”

Tabrizi’s limo drove away as al-Sabah and Zahra climbed into their Land Rover. That was when they heard the first explosion quickly followed by a second. Smoke billowed up toward the blue sky. The afternoon bombings had begun.

69

Aloft over the Middle East

Sunlight flooded the corporate jet as it sped on toward Baghdad. Talking about the fact that Seymour had a new identity as Siraj al-Sabah, Eva, Judd, Bosa, and Morgan sat facing one another.

“Why do you think Seymour really started the game?” Eva asked.

Bosa uncrossed his legs and stretched. “As al-Sabah, he appears to feel safe from detection in Iraq, but if he wants to travel and work outside the country, then he’s going to be a lot more vulnerable. He’s got to be worried about us spotting him.”

“You mean identifying him the way you did when you saw his walk and other motions on video,” Eva said.

“People’s bodies always betray them,” Bosa explained. “Believably changing one’s posture, gait, and gestures takes a lot of training, but none of us can maintain the changes indefinitely just as no one can stay on high alert indefinitely.”

“Seymour was always a bossy bloke,” Morgan ruminated. “But never stupid. My take is he created the game so we’d kill each other off for him.”

Bosa gave a sober nod.

Judd had been listening quietly. “Tucker was worried this situation was a lot bigger than just six assassins fighting over pieces of a broken cuneiform tablet. I’m beginning to wonder whether the SIL has a role in it, too. We all know the international picture—Iraq and Iran are primarily Shiite, and together they’re a political island surrounded by an ocean of Sunni-dominated countries. Tabrizi is a highly conservative Shiite. In fact, he was one of the Shiites who left Iraq for Iran while Saddam was in power. Now, for the first time, the SIL has a very good chance of winning the office of prime minister and all that comes with it—appointments, patronage, policy, power.”

“You think Seymour started the game to protect the SIL,” Eva said.

Judd nodded. “Seymour cofounded the SIL, so he’s invested in it and probably has political ambitions of some kind. The last thing he or his party needs is for word to get out that it was created by a freelance assassin who’s murdered hundreds of people for profit.”

Holding up a bony finger, Morgan said, “I can see his slogan now—‘Vote for me, or I’ll erase you.’” He grinned.

Bosa shook his head at the black humor, then he laughed.

“I never saw worse violence in Baghdad than I did over the past month,” Judd went on, “and it was all in the buildup to the elections. Some assaults were obviously meant to intimidate Sunnis and keep them out of the political process—for example, jihadists were bombing Sunni polling stations. Other attacks, like the ones on Shiite religious sites, were meant to get the Shiite-dominated security apparatus to crack down harder on the Sunnis. The result was no party won a conclusive majority.”

“And the violence is continuing while Tabrizi and the current prime minister fight it out over the winning coalition,” Eva said. “If the SIL takes over Iraq’s government, Seymour will be in line for any job he wants. Can you imagine him as ambassador to the U.N. and sitting on some kind of human rights committee? God-awful irony.”

They were silent.

“Do you see any way Seymour could’ve found out we’re flying to Baghdad?” Bosa asked Morgan.

“I’d like to believe we’ll surprise him,” Morgan said soberly, “but optimism where he’s concerned is never a good idea.”

70

They were flying at 37,000 feet. Judd gazed down, seeing only a sea of white clouds, the earth invisible beneath. In the cabin, Eva, Bosa, and Morgan were at work on their laptops.