Barry Wine was a perfectionist, so he didn’t like face pulling. It offended his dignity and professionalism. Face pulling was a crude and thuggish procedure that any high school art student could do. If you were a serious professional, you did a “fab”—a complete fabrication of the passport. But a perfect fab took two to three weeks. And that was only if you could get your hands on the right kind of paper.
“Did I ever tell you about that Bulgarian passport I did for our mutual friend?” Barry Wine said. “The Bulgarian passport—it’s the one and only artistic achievement of any note in the entire history of the Bulgarian people. Absolute work of art. The flash page is intaglio printed if you can believe that. All the paper is manufactured at this very small factory near the Turkish border. Seven unique colors of hand-dyed security threads. Silk threads. They even have a security feature that’s unique to the Bulgarians. An integral magstripe made from powdered magnetite that’s literally impregnated into the paper. Impregnated! No plastic film involved. None whatsoever. I had to paint it in with this tiny hog-bristle paintbrush—”
The bearded man looked at Barry Wine with his empty black eyes.
“Sorry,” Barry Wine said. “Sorry. I just need to get your picture inserted in the passport. It’ll take awhile. Feel free to grab some lunch and come back.”
The bearded man didn’t move.
The artist was eager to do anythisoe D‡ng that would get the man’s eyes off of him. He pushed the Gucci bag with the rest of the documents in it across the table toward the man in the camouflage hat. “It’s all there. Feel free to review them. Company IDs, Social Security card, credit cards, you name it. I even threw in a library card from the Baton Rouge Central Library. Which I thought was a nice touch.”
Barry Wine waited for some kind of approval or appreciation for his extra effort. But all he got was a tight nod. So he returned his attention to the passport.
He sharpened his X-Acto knife on a 1200-grit diamond stone using a small jig of his own design and then carefully slit the plastic that sealed Cole Ransom’s picture into the passport. It took about twenty minutes to affix the new image. He used a special solvent he’d developed himself to make the line between the new overseal and the old overseal fade away. You could never make it completely disappear of course. It would get his client past most customs agents and border patrol checkpoints, but Wine still scowled at the passport. Hackwork. This was absolute hackwork and butchery. Nobody cared about quality anymore. Back when he’d started you actually had to learn your craft. Engraving, printing, dye work, the list went on and on. But now all these assholes wanted you to do was slap something in a copy machine. You might as well just go to Kinkos!
He slid the face-pulled passport across the table to his customer. “Here. Notice what I did with the—”
The bearded man swept it up and stuck it in his pocket.
“You’re not even gonna look at it?”
The man reached across the table, picked up the X-Acto knife.
“Careful,” Barry Wine said. “That’s very sharp.”
“I know,” the bearded man said, before he plunged it deep into Barry Wine’s left eye.
Two hours later Detective Senior Grade Wafiq Kalil walked into a small office in central Kota Mohan with a sign that said B. WINE DESIGN on the door. A handful of blue-clad state policemen were milling around the room aimlessly. Wafiq knew the older of the two men, a sergeant named Mustaffa.
“What have we got, Sergeant?”
“An American named Barry Wine,” Sergeant Mustaffa said. He beckoned Wafiq over and said, “You’ll want to see this.”
Wafiq peeked over the counter in the front of the room. A dead white man lay in a pool of blood. Some kind of thin metal cylinder was sticking out of his eye. Before he had died, though, he had apparently managed to write something on the floor in his own blood.
Wafiq squinted, trying to make out the bloody letters. It was not easy. The dead man’s handwriting left a little to be desired.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
The sergeant said, “I think it says ‘Abu Nasir.’”
Now that the sergeant had said it, he could see the letters, too. “Clear this room,” Wafiq shouted. “Now!”
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN GIDEON AND PARKER d m T‡deplaned, they were greeted by a furnace blast of muggy air and a phalanx of heavily armed soldiers who had formed two parallel lines, creating a corridor between the plane and the gleaming modern air terminal. They wore tropical tan uniforms and olive drab berets. They faced outward, their eyes scanning for potential threats.
“These guys look serious,” Gideon said.
“They are,” Parker muttered.
A small Mohanese man in a military uniform burst out of a doorway from the terminal, trailed by four more uniformed men. Gideon counted four stars on his epaulets. Clamped between his teeth was a corncob pipe, canted at the same angle favored by General MacArthur, which he removed as he shook Parker’s hand.
“Mr. Parker,” the military man said. “A pleasure as always.”
“General Prang, this is Gideon Davis.”
Prang studied Gideon’s face as they shook hands.
“This way, please.” The general indicated a Range Rover parked near the jet. Flanking the Range Rover were two Chevy Suburbans and a Lincoln Town Car. Next to each Suburban stood more uniformed men. They all carried MP5s and wore small earpieces and throat mikes. These were elite commandos, not the ceremonial window dressing typically sent to impress visiting dignitaries.
Parker turned and said to Gideon, “General Prang will brief you on the operational details, and we’ll meet after you’ve picked up your brother.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m picking up our ambassador, then heading out to the Obelisk.”
“What for?”
“That’s where we’ll meet once you’ve got Tillman. I set up an official state visit as a cover for the exfil operation. I’ll be making a public statement to the media about our solidarity with the Sultan and our pledge of continued economic support—all the usual bullshit. Your brother will be safer on the rig than on the mainland, until we transport him to a U.S. naval vessel.”
“Fine. Except I still haven’t heard how this is going to happen.”
“I told you, General Prang will explain everything.” He leaned toward Gideon and lowered his voice. “Prang’s a good man. Tillman trusts him—as much as he trusts anybody right now. Do what he says, and he’ll get you to Tillman.”
Gideon studied Parker for a moment before he nodded his okay.
“Good luck,” Parker said. Gideon watched him get into the waiting Lincoln Town Car, which sped away.
“This way, Mr. Davis. Please.” General Prang was gesturing impatiently toward the Range Rover. His accent was more English public school than Southeast Asia. “Not to rush you, but the longer we stay here the more exposed we are.”
“Exposed?”
Prang took his pipe out of his teeth and swept the horizon with it. “Snipers.”
“Is it really that bad hheiá that badere?”
“Just precautions, Mr. Davis. Just precautions.”
As soon as Gideon climbed into the idling Range Rover, the door slammed, and the motorcade leapt forward.
Gideon turned to Prang. “Tell me where I’m meeting my brother.”
The general took off his sunglasses and wiped each lens carefully with a small handkerchief before placing the glasses in his breast pocket. His eyes never left Gideon’s.