If only he could get the fucking plane into the air and on its way to Abu Dhabi City.
The phone recessed into the armrest of his seat bleated like a lamb, a discreet chirp that he almost ignored in his agitation. On the fourth ring he finally picked it up.
“What?”
“Sir, it’s Tariq.” After Abu Alam, Tariq was Rufti’s most trusted lieutenant. An orphan from Lebanon’s brutal civil war, raised in the refugee camps on a diet of hatred and death, Tariq was fiercely loyal and utterly without morals. When it came to killing, Abu Alam did it with the burning need of an addict, but Tariq carried out his duties with the coldness of a professional. Rufti had sent him to the hospital as a backup to the idiot Kurdish national.
“What is it?”
“I’m on the motorway, headed toward Heathrow Airport following a blue Bentley.” His voice was distorted by the cellular phone connection. “Shortly after the Kurd went up to Khuddari’s room, two people left the hospital garage, two women, one western, one Arab. The Arab woman was dressed in a chador, her face veiled. I’d seen them enter the hospital garage earlier. It appeared that the vehicle belonged to the Arab woman, for she drove here, but when they left, it was the Western woman who was behind the wheel and she didn’t seem familiar with the car’s controls.”
“Get to the point, Tariq,” Rufti snapped.
“I believe that the robes are a disguise and that I’m following Khuddari as he attempts to flee the country.”
“Are you certain?” The glimmer of hope Tariq offered reminded Rufti that he hadn’t eaten for nearly thirty minutes. As he continued the conversation, he rang for the steward. “Is it really Khuddari?”
“My instincts tell me yes.”
“How far are you from Heathrow?”
“Only about ten minutes from the main gates. I suspect that they’re headed to the international terminal, Terminal 4.”
“Yes, yes, yes, let me think.” There wasn’t time before Khuddari entered the secure perimeter of the airport to launch an attack. What Rufti needed now was a way to delay Khuddari in London for a few hours, enough time for him to get to the UAE and put into motion his side of the coup. “Do you have any explosives with you?”
“I have just a couple of grenades,” Tariq admitted, his voice breaking up as the radio waves of his cell phone encountered the pulsing radar beams given off by Heathrow Airport.
“Perfect,” Rufti glowed. The steward put an entire salmon before him, the flesh of the fish so pinkish and light that the slit along its flank resembled the intimate lips of a woman. “After I hang up, call that Kurdish fool and relay my orders. Now here’s what I want you to do…”
While the Bentley had seen its finer days nearly a decade earlier, such a luxury vehicle still commanded respect as it hissed along the M-4, just east of Heathrow. Millicent was now familiar enough with the automobile to intimidate other drivers into giving her the slight advantage she needed to edge the old Bent forward another spot or two on the clogged expressway. A tandem trailer truck honked at her aggressive driving, which she riposted with an unladylike curse and the extension of her middle finger. She apologized to Khalid for the gesture but explained that no one ever complained when she drove her Rolls Silver Cloud so martially.
Khalid had been silent for most of the drive, consciously fighting the pain that flashed like sheet lightning across his back and lower legs. One moment, he could keep it at bay, forcing it back with sheer will, and then suddenly it would peak. There was so much he was supposed to be thinking about, so many plans he had to make, but his mind was too addled to concentrate. He could feel Millicent Gray glance at him every once in a while, but he could not bring himself to turn and look back at her.
They swerved through the sweeping curves of the access road, patches of lawn and shrubbery giving way to great expanses of asphalt and corrugated steel warehouses. Millicent followed the overhead signs toward International Departures, jinxing around the buses that dominated the narrow roads, their backsides belching clouds of smoke on their endless loops around Heathrow’s thousands of acres.
“Which airline?” Millicent asked as they neared Terminal 4.
“It doesn’t matter,” Khalid replied listlessly, slipping out of the chador. “Once inside, I can call a reservation number to get me the next flight to Abu Dhabi.”
“Are you sure about this?” She eased the Bentley up to the curb before one of the numerous British Airways doors, tucking neatly behind a motor coach disgorging dozens of poorly dressed people finishing their whirlwind European package tour. “I can take you to a different hospital or maybe to the trauma station here at the airport. I’m sure they have a doctor on duty.”
From his pants’ pocket he pulled a twist of tissue, which he opened to reveal a few capsules. “I’m sure,” he said, swallowing them in a quick movement. “I’ve been saving these, Percodans, I believe. They should see me through.”
“Wait, shouldn’t there be some security people waiting for us here?” she asked.
“That was a bluff on Trevor’s part to get you to cooperate. He wouldn’t have had the time to set up something like that. I have to go now.” Khalid opened the passenger door. “Thank you, Lady Gray. I think very soon you will see the results of your act this morning.”
He stepped from the car, gingerly testing his strength before taking the first tentative steps to the terminal building, oblivious of the throngs jostling around him. Once within the building, he was swallowed by the crowds, invisible, just another face to the thousands of passengers and well-wishers milling and queuing up. His legs trembled and the clothing touching his back and shoulders scalded the multiple wounds even through their thick bandages. If the pills didn’t kick in soon, he would collapse.
It took him a few minutes to secure a seat on the next flight to Abu Dhabi by way of a British Airways flight to Riyadh. He need only produce his passport at the VIP lounge to get his ticket. It was the first time he’d ever used such a diplomatic privilege, and he vowed that he wouldn’t ever make a habit of it — but it was reassuring to know he could.
Trevor had thoughtfully placed a handful of twenty-pound notes in the pants pocket, one of which he used to buy a stout umbrella and a pair of sunglasses. He used the umbrella like a cane so he could keep his weight off the worse of his two legs. While the large glasses didn’t hide all the wounds on his face, they camouflaged a couple of them, and with his hair raked forward, he could almost pass as the victim of a recent auto collision.
At the top of an escalator, just before the security X-ray machines, a young woman in a blue uniform approached him.
“Minister Khuddari, my name is Vivica Smith.” The British Airways hostess smiled brightly. She was young, barely in her twenties, with bobbed blond hair and soft eyes. She checked his passport against the information given to her by the airline’s executive ticketing service. Seeing how he hobbled, Vivica Smith called over one of the airport’s electric carts to carry them to where a Boeing 767 was waiting for its final passenger.
“Thank you for your prompt attention, this is really quite welcome,” Khalid said. The painkillers were finally beginning to take effect, blunting the edges of his sharper wounds. While they trundled down the carpeted hallways, he borrowed Vivica’s cellular phone to call Colonel Wayne Bigelow in Abu Dhabi. The old desert rat wasn’t in his cluttered bachelor’s apartment, but Khalid left word on his answering machine that he would be arriving in a few hours, giving the particulars of the flight and asking Bigelow to pick him up at the airport.