‘Shit,’ Richter said. ‘That’s what I was afraid of. Thanks, Michael. We’re on our way out there right now. You’d better brief the consul and get him moving. I know this may look like the beginning of something, but actually I think it’s the end of a long, clever and very carefully planned operation.’
‘What do you think these bastards want?’
‘My guess,’ Richter replied, ‘is money. Lots and lots and lots of money. This is going to make the Great Train Robbery look like a couple of kids knocking over the sweet shop on the corner.’
Chapter Twenty
The Americans were busy. Wilson and Dawson were running through the operations to get the nuclear weapon ready. Petrucci was preparing a charge of plastic explosive, taken from one of the cases which had been wrapped, Hussein noticed with sick realization, in exactly the way Wilson had described minutes earlier. O’Hagan was checking the entire suite to ensure there were no other entrances they hadn’t secured.
Hussein was lashed to an upright chair, on the suite’s upper level, watching the four Americans with shocked and helpless disbelief. He’d seen the ID carried by Hutchings when they’d arrived in Dubai aboard an aircraft the CIA had told him to expect, yet they had to be impostors. There must have been a substitution, somehow and somewhere.
Not that there was anything he could do about it, because he could barely move. His hands and feet were already numb, but even if by some miracle he managed to free himself, there was no way he could overpower four armed men. They would kill him instantly, the same way they’d shot down his men outside.
The man Hussein had known as ‘Roger Middleton’ — Alex O’Hagan — stepped across and stood in front of him.
‘Inspector Hussein, let me explain a few things to you. That device over there is a tactical nuclear weapon. It has a yield of about one kiloton, meaning one thousand tons of TNT, and we’ll detonate it, right here in this suite, unless your government agrees to our demands. If that happens, this hotel will cease to exist. The Jumeirah Beach Hotel and many other nearby buildings will also be destroyed or badly damaged. I don’t know the exact blast radius, but I can assure you the explosion will be devastating. Dubai will be finished as a financial centre, wiped out as a tourist attraction, and contaminated by radiation for years to come. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Hussein nodded dumbly. He understood only too well the relative fragility of Dubai, a small strip of desert relying on tourism and high levels of outside investment. The moment confidence in the place was lost, the smart money would leave. All of the country’s most ambitious projects would fail, leaving Dubai in the doldrums.
‘Now,’ O’Hagan continued, ‘our demands are simple enough. We don’t personally care whether anyone knows what’s happening or not, but we’re quite sure your government will want to keep this incident as secret as possible. So no police cars, no fire appliances, no helicopters. Do you understand?’
Again Hussein nodded.
‘Make sure you do, because in a few minutes you’ll be relaying everything we’ve said to the most senior police officer you know. We’ll provide you with the serial number of the nuclear weapon, together with details of the location from which it was obtained. That will allow your security people to verify that the weapon is exactly what we say it is.
‘You’ll make it clear to them that we aren’t suicide bombers, but we’ve all risked our lives to get this far, and if we’re captured we can expect execution, so we’re quite prepared to end this operation here. That means if we’re attacked, we’ll explode the device.
‘We’ll be setting this weapon to detonate on a four-hour timer. Then we’ll leave here by car — one of those Rolls-Royces outside will do — and drive to the airport where our Gulfstream jet will be fully fuelled and ready to go. Only when we’re clear of your airspace will we transmit the abort code enabling you to deactivate the weapon. If any attempt is made to intercept us on the way to the airport, or if our aircraft is targeted either before or after it gets airborne, we won’t transmit the code, and the weapon will explode. Is that absolutely clear?’
Hussein couldn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded again. This was, he knew, all his fault and, whatever happened in the immediate future, his head was almost certainly going to roll. If only he’d taken the time to check the Americans’ identity documents properly when they arrived… He forced his mind back to the present.
‘The last thing we want is fairly predictable. We need a payment of three billion American dollars in the form of easily negotiable and untraceable assets. Gold, silver and platinum bullion, and diamonds would do, plus cash in American dollars, Euros, pounds Sterling and Japanese yen only, bearer bonds and other financial instruments. Because of the aircraft’s weight limitations, we’ll accept no more than five per cent as bullion, and another five per cent as cash.’
He paused to ensure what he was saying was being understood by the bemused-looking police officer. When Hussein nodded, O’Hagan continued.
‘This sum must be delivered to our aircraft within twenty-four hours — that’s by twelve noon tomorrow. We’ll leave the Burj Al-Arab when we’ve received confirmation from our associates that the total sum is on the plane. We have scanners on board that can detect forged banknotes, and assay equipment to check the bullion. For every attempt to provide forged currency or any kind of counterfeit asset, the sum demanded will increase by one hundred million dollars. If the ransom isn’t delivered by the deadline, a penalty of one hundred million dollars will be added for every hour that it’s delayed. OK, is there anything you don’t understand?’
‘No,’ Hussein replied, finally finding his voice.
‘Now we want you to explain everything I’ve told you to a senior police officer. And please don’t say anything stupid,’ he added.
‘And I’ll know if you do,’ Petrucci warned him from across the room, in fluent Arabic, and Hussein realized then that he had no options left.
Richter told the taxi driver to stop, and he and Jackson climbed out of the vehicle. For a few moments they stood looking at the huge offshore hotel.
‘It’s big, all right,’ Jackson remarked.
‘You’ve seen it before, obviously.’
‘A couple of times, but I’ve never actually been inside. So what the hell do we do now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richter admitted. ‘It all looks peaceful enough over there, but if Watkinson’s right, that’s deceptive.’
‘You’re sure this is extortion?’
‘Yes. If it was a terrorist attack, they’d just have positioned the bomb somewhere and triggered it. And the perpetrators don’t fit the profile. They’re American, for starters, highly prepared and well organized, and this operation has been planned for a long time. Just finding out where those suitcase nukes were stored must have taken them months. I mean, the West only heard about the weapons a few years ago, and until now the Russians have never officially admitted they even existed. Then they had to work out some way of getting themselves into the CIS and stealing one. If they’d just intended to blow up something, they could have fabricated an IED in a couple of days. And why choose Dubai? It’s not exactly a hotbed of Muslim extremism. It’s a tolerant and cosmopolitan city that welcomes all races and religions. But Dubai has one thing that probably attracted them more than anything else.’
‘Money,’ Jackson said.
Richter nodded. ‘Exactly. The city is enormously wealthy, and I’m certain that this is all about money. Let’s get out of this heat. I’ll buy you a drink.’