Halls double-clicked on the ‘Dubai’ directory and leant back in her chair. ‘That,’ she explained, ‘is what I meant when I told you there’s rather less here than I was hoping.’
The ‘Dubai’ directory was empty but for a single Word file.
Chapter Sixteen
Richter woke early, despite having finally left the embassy well after midnight. His evening had been considerably improved by the sight of Carole-Anne Jackson waiting for him in the lobby when he arrived at the hotel, an empty coffee cup and a pile of magazines in front of her. She’d hopped a flight out of Manama, but hadn’t called Richter because she guessed he’d be busy.
The Word file retrieved from Holden’s computer had contained two brief but alarming sentences: ‘Dubai hotel, close to the water. Very big bomb, maybe nuke.’ Halls had been thorough, so he felt confident there were no other files hidden in the ‘Dubai’ directory. Further wildcard searches of the entire hard drive for any mention of Dubai had come up with nothing useful.
The only thing they now knew for certain was that the next target was Dubai itself, and not some other city in the Gulf.
Not that the information helped particularly. Dubai was full of hotels, the vast majority of them on the coast, including the developments running from Jumeirah to Umm Suqeim and from Deira towards the Al-Mamzar Beach Park and Sharjah. And as Watkinson had pointed out, apart from the Gulf itself, ‘the water’ could also mean the Dubai Creek, which added even more potential targets to the list.
It had been a frustratingly inconclusive end to a fairly promising day.
The six detectors provided by the CIA were E-3500 units manufactured by Scintrex Trace. This model was one of the latest, most advanced, and — at around thirty thousand dollars each — most expensive units available, designed to detect all threat compounds, including radioactive sources. The device itself looked something like a hand-held vacuum cleaner, but with a probe instead of a suction intake, and a digital display in front of the handle.
It took Richard Wilson only minutes to master the basics, and after an hour he felt ready to pass himself off as an expert.
O’Hagan had handed him a small plastic container with a snap-on lid. He opened this and extracted a man’s gold ring bearing a large and rather vulgar red stone, and a package wrapped in aluminium foil. Inside the latter was a piece of Semtex plastic explosive.
Wilson slid the ring onto the third finger of his left hand. He was right-handed, and it had to be worn on his non-dominant hand. The ring had been made to O’Hagan’s precise design by a jeweller in Ohio nearly a year earlier. The mount carrying the stone was hinged on one side, the hinge itself hidden within the tiny cup that was revealed when the ring was opened, and also sprung, so that any pressure on the stone would compress the space below it. The mount was virtually airtight until the stone was depressed, when the downward movement exposed three small holes in the sides. This meant that the ring acted like a tiny pump, pushing air out of the internal cavity every time pressure was applied to the stone.
Wilson removed a tiny piece of the Semtex and tucked it into the cavity, making sure that the stone still moved freely. He then took the E-3500 into the furthest corner of the bathroom and carried out a sweep, but the detector registered nothing. After twisting the ring round until the stone was on his palm side, he moved his left arm casually up and across the front of the detector, while pressing gently on the stone with his left thumb. Scanning again, the detector scored a hit this time, and Dawson smiled, because now everything was ready.
After packing the unit away in its case, he called Dawson’s room using his CIA alias. ‘It’s Andy Franks, sir. I’m pretty much ready.’
‘Right. I’ll contact Inspector Hussein and see if we can get started tomorrow.’
Dawson rang off, took out the card Hussein had given him and rang the police officer’s home number. His call was answered almost immediately.
‘Good afternoon, Inspector, this is Grant Hutchings. We were wondering if we could start checking the first of the hotels tomorrow. I suggest we start with the biggest and most distinctive, like the Burj Al-Arab and the Jumeirah Beach. If I was a terrorist, those are the ones I’d go for.’
Hussein’s reply was apologetic. ‘This Sunday is not a good day because of the World Cup race meeting this weekend. All the hotels are full, and we wouldn’t wish to alarm any of our important guests. But most of them will be leaving once the racing has finished, so might I suggest Monday morning instead?’
Dawson wasn’t in a position to push things, and was fully aware how heavily Dubai relied on its tourist industry. On a day like that, the local authorities certainly wouldn’t want to see a bunch of armed Americans wandering about looking for explosives in their most prestigious hotels. He bowed to the inevitable.
‘No, that’s no problem, Inspector. Monday morning it is.’
‘I’ll have a car sent to your hotel at nine.’
‘Better make it two cars, because there’ll be the four of us, plus the explosive detectors and a bunch of other equipment as well.’
‘That won’t be a problem. Two cars at nine on Monday, then.’ Dawson could hear the sound of pen on paper as Hussein made a note.
‘We’d prefer to start in one of the hotels straight away, without a prior demonstration. The detectors are easy to use, so we can show your men how to operate them in a realistic environment.’
‘Agreed. I’ll contact both hotels and tell them to expect us on Monday.’
Dawson put down the phone, paused for a second, then picked it up to call Alex O’Hagan’s room and give him the news.
After that, he lay down on his bed and for a few moments stared up at the ceiling. Two years of meticulous planning and scheming, and by Monday midday they would almost certainly have entered the final phase. Nothing could stop them now — the endgame was so close he could almost taste the money.
Richter waited until late that afternoon before he decided to call London, and walked outside the hotel to use his mobile. Local time in Dubai was four hours ahead of London, making it early afternoon there, and he briefed the duty officer because he guessed Simpson probably wouldn’t be at Hammersmith over the weekend.
‘The James Holden thing was a red herring, and he was actually working with the terrorists,’ he began, then explained the situation to date.
‘So what was the point?’ the duty officer asked. ‘Why were they using him to leak information?’
‘We’ve no idea, but we do know that their next target is a hotel here in Dubai. What little we found on the cloned hard drive confirms that, and the fact that Holden’s killer went to such lengths to destroy it suggests this information was genuine — not disinformation.’
But even as he spoke this last word, Richter suddenly thought he glimpsed something of the truth, or at least something that might make sense of the inconsistencies. He ended the call quickly and returned to the hotel.
‘Carole, we need to talk,’ he began.
She looked puzzled, but nodded, and followed him to a couple of chairs in the far corner of the lobby. Richter leant forward and began speaking in a low voice. Four minutes later he sat back and waited for Jackson’s response.
‘Yes,’ she conceded, ‘that makes a certain sense, but it’s still pretty unbelievable. Two bomb attacks set up in two different countries, just for this? I hear what you say, but I’m not convinced.’
‘I don’t have any better ideas,’ Richter said, ‘so I’m going to have to try it out on Watkinson, and quickly, because the clock is running. You coming?’