“I’ve been doing it for many years. You know I know,” she said, starting to become frustrated with the way he was questioning her knowledge and ability.
“Here is a third list of commodities on which I want you to go short, and a fourth list for long. Can you do that too, starting now? Again, everything on margin.”
With each request, her response became a little less eager, her smile a little smaller. “Yes, Yousseff. Yes, I can do that too. I will get some more coffee, and will sleep less. I can also do this for you,” she said, sighing.
“And Rika, I know I am asking much. But you must use different banks and offshore institutions than with the other transactions. And it can’t be done all at once. There must be different paths. You realize that, right?”
“Yes, Yousseff, but can we talk about something else now? This is much that you ask. Yes, I can do it, but I’m tired of talking about it.”
“There is one last thing,” added Yousseff.
“There is more?”
“Only a little thing. We need an exit strategy.”
“There you go again,” she pouted.
“Business, Rika. Business. The Americans are very clever. They will throw great resources at the perpetrators of my plan. There have to be a few sacrificial lambs. You know how they are. There always has to be a ’bad guy,’ like in the movies. We need to create one. I need money deposited in these bank accounts, in these amounts, via the following banking trail. Can you do that too?”
“What, you are giving money to Nooshkatoor?” Rika asked, glancing at this newest list. “Are you crazy? After what he did to Kumar’s family? Why give the bastard any money?” Rika couldn’t see the sense in it.
“Rik, use your head. What do you think is happening here, exactly?” asked Yousseff.
For a moment she looked perplexed, and then a smile started to play about her face. “Ah. I see it. I see.”
Yousseff gave her a few more instructions. She took his sheets of transfers, purchases, and sales. She whistled to herself. This was nothing short of a multi-billion dollar bet. She smiled to herself at Yousseff’s audacity, to be planning such a thing. But then she saw how much work it would be. She would need to be at it for most of the next 48 hours. Forty-eight hours without sleep.
Suddenly the smile was gone. There was weariness in her features, and wrinkles appeared around the down-turned corners of her mouth. “Yes, Youss. Yes. Why don’t you just ask me to refinance General Motors while I’m at it?”
“Rika, there will be time for pleasure in a week or two. When this is all done, you can take $100 million for yourself, if you like. There should be money to spare.”
“It’s not the money, Youssi. It never is, for me. We need more time to talk. To catch up on old times, and what is going on today. To be real people, with real lives and real relationships. That’s what I need. That’s what I want, Youssi.”
“I know. I know. I will see you in a few days. Please do this for me.”
He kissed her on the forehead, and then was gone, vanishing like smoke. “No different than 30 years ago,” she whispered to herself as she saw the outer door swing shut. “Always with an exit strategy, and leaving the rest of us in the dust.”
They came by separate flights, though both came through Heathrow. Both came with superbly forged passports. Vijay arrived as Donovan Smith, computer systems specialist. Ghullam had adopted the identity of David Priestley, security specialist.
Ghullam was of Pashtun heritage, from the Northwest Frontier Province. He’d been assisting Marak for years, doing whatever it took to ensure that Yousseff’s heroin shipments were the only ones that made it down the Indus to Hyderabad or Karachi. He possessed a multitude of skills, many of which had been honed to perfection by his mentor. He was a gifted marksman, able to use almost every firearm imaginable. He was physically imposing at 6′1″, and was in peak physical condition. He was the master of many forms of martial arts, and possessed the same reptilian gaze as his master. He could pick any lock, break any bone, and kill in a thousand different ways. Some of the deaths on his list of accomplishments included government officials, rival drug lords, and rivals in Yousseff’s vast commercial affairs. He found killing up close to be especially satisfying. To feel the fear, and to see the look of death, to touch it… that was almost sexual for him. He was Marak’s star pupil. He was the one that was sent when there was killing to be done.
Ghullam met Yousseff at his small suite in the Long Beach hangar. Yousseff had just traveled from Los Angeles and was already exhausted. Much had happened since they had last met, in an almost identical apartment, in Islamabad, Pakistan. But this was just the beginning, and there were still many details to be discussed and attended to. Yousseff skipped the pleasantries and started giving orders the moment Ghullam entered the room.
“Here are three telephone numbers,” he said, handing Ghullam a sheet of paper with the names and numbers of the Emir’s LA-based sleeper group. “The leader’s name is Ray. He’ll be at one of these three numbers. Identify yourself as the Emir’s messenger. Then give him the following numeric sequence.” He read the numbers and made Ghullam repeat them back to him. “I will call you in exactly 24 hours, with your instructions. These men must begin their journey the moment I call.”
“Yo. Ray here,” came the thoroughly American trucker’s voice, with a hint of southern twang. The man who answered the phone had shoulder-length black hair, peppered with gray, and combed back into a ponytail. He wore faded jeans and a black T-shirt with the moniker of the Orange County Choppers emblazoned across its shoulders. His hat had the insignia of the White Sox stitched across the front. He listened to the other voice on the phone for a moment, and the smile disappeared from his face. The day and the hour had come. He had known that it would. He had been following the newscasts, and had seen the image of his master many times of late. He’d heard the Emir’s messages, along with billions of others. He’d been wondering if he had a role to play in the great attack the Emir had so publicly promised.
For the first five years after coming to America, Ray had read the Koran daily, and kept up with his prayers in the privacy of his apartment. He’d eaten only appropriate foods, avoided women, and had no alcohol. He met with his three comrades as often as he could, to share memories of their homeland. It had been a painful, lonely journey, and each evening had been a disappointment when the call still hadn’t come. Each dawn had brought the hope of a call to arms.
Slowly, however, the task of fitting into the mosaic of a new country began to erode the hard enamel of his beliefs. Ray came to know the joy of a cold Budweiser and a rare steak on the balcony on a Saturday evening. The serene rhythms and spiritual cadences of the music of the high Afghan deserts were slowly replaced by the decidedly more lively rhythms of Jamaica and Nashville. Then there were the women. A nibble here and a bite there had turned into an orgy of feasting. He knew the Emir would not approve, but, as the Americans would say, “Fuck him.”
This lusty embrace of what he assumed to be the American lifestyle was brought to a screeching halt by this one telephone call.
“Come to the Day’s Inn in Glendale, Room 237,” the man said.
“When?” Ray asked in Urdu.
“Now.”
The telephone clicked, and there was silence. The Emir’s messenger. The assigned sequence of numbers, which he’d memorized years ago. This was not a joke. Ray knew too well what the call implied. He remembered the day that he had looked into the one living eye of the Emir as if it was yesterday. The eye was dark, black even, and immensely powerful. At that time the Emir had been the lord of a princely realm in Kabul, as opposed to what Ray assumed was now a home somewhere in the caves of the Sefid Koh. Even then, Ray had known that the earthly trappings had meant nothing to the holy man. Kabul had been a convenience, with its wider streets, its airport, and its communications. The Emir was every bit as powerful in some cave or desert hovel as he had been when he was at the center of civilization. To do something to endanger the mission of the Emir would mean certain death and, most likely, a slow and painful one. He had very little choice about responding. The call to arms had finally come, after ten long years, and its announcement after all this time was definitely unwelcome.