In every operation Khalil made certain that the men feared him more than they feared the mission itself. He had worked with Zahir on previous operations, but for the other men he’d instilled that fear on the very first day of their training by selecting the most battle-hardened of the recruits and challenging him to a hand-to-hand combat exercise. With the same indifferent cruelty that a cat shows for its prey, or that a Bedouin father shows for a physically flawed daughter, Khalil took the man apart piece by piece, until in the end he was reduced to a sobbing, bleeding hulk, begging for mercy.
“I do not reward failure by anyone,” Khalil, speaking in a calm, reasonable tone of voice, told the recruits assembled at the desert camp. He grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, pulled his head back, and in several deft moves, the cuts so swift and the knife so razor sharp that the man had no time to react, Khalil removed his nose and his lips, and then peeled the skin from his face as if he were skinning a dead animal.
The man reared back suddenly, screaming in abject horror at what was being done to him. Blood flowed from a dozen wounds in his body.
“Go into the desert now and die,” Khalil told the man, and he turned to the recruits. “Now we will have a meal together, and you will tell me why you think that you could be loyal soldiers in Allah’s struggle for justice.”
The wounded man, having nothing left to lose, his eyesight obscured by blood, reared up, stumbled into Khalil’s back, pulled a pistol from the holster at the hip of his tormentor, and then stepped back.
Khalil calmly turned to face the man, and looked directly into the muzzle of the gun. “You have two choices now, Achmed. Either shoot me, thus putting an end to our just and godly mission, or turn the pistol to your own head and pull the trigger.” Khalil shrugged indifferently. “Of course, no matter what you decide, you will die tonight.”
The soldier turned to his comrades, but no one raised a hand to help him. He looked again at Khalil, then stepped back another pace, not at all certain what he should or could do.
As the man hesitated, Khalil pulled a pistol out of his tunic and shot him in the head at point-blank range.
“Never trust in chance,” Khalil told his men, and from that moment they were his, body and soul.
That was eleven weeks ago. They would not let him down tonight.
The cruise ship was well aft of their beam now. Zahir glanced at the radar image, then at Khalil, and nodded. He was very frightened, but he looked determined.
“Now,” Khalil shouted over the wind. He feathered the props as Zahir hauled the boat into a tight turn to starboard. For several breathless seconds it seemed as if they would be caught with the seas on their beam. The Nancy N. heeled sharply to the right, practically burying her gunwales in the black water of Frederick Sound, but at the last moment Khalil gunned the starboard engine. The prop on the low side bit, and the boat spun around as if it were on a pivot, came upright, and suddenly shot downwind as if it were a lemon pit squeezed out between a thumb and forefinger.
The motion was still lively but they were no longer taking a pounding, and the Spirit of ’98’s bright stern lights were suddenly very close.
“Good work,” Khalil shouted.
“We were lucky,” Zahir replied, without breaking his concentration, though the water was getting much calmer in the lee of the island.
The answer was irritating, and Khalil was instantly enraged. But he gently patted his lieutenant on the shoulder of his uniform blouse. “I disagree my old friend; it was not luck, it was your skill. Now take us the rest of the way.”
He took a walkie-talkie out of a pocket, and hit the push-to-talk switch. “Charlie, any luck catching fish tonight?”
“I’m checking the bait now,” Abdul Adani radioed from where he waited at the stern of the ship. They spoke in English in case the frequency was monitored.
Khalil switched on the Nancy N.’s navigation lights for just a moment, then shut them off. “Try the back spinner on about two hundred yards of line.”
“Good suggestion. I’ll drop the hook in the water now.”
Khalil pocketed the walkie-talkie, and as they closed on the cruise ship he could see a boarding ladder being lowered over the stern. He ducked below. “Take your positions,” he told his operators.
The six men, all dressed in ship’s uniforms, packs and weapons slung over their shoulders, scrambled up on deck. One of them took over the helm for Zahir.
The new man matched the speed of the cruise ship, then nudged the Nancy N. to within reach of the boarding ladder and the thick towrope and bridle that had been lowered with it.
Khalil went out on deck, Zahir right behind him. Abdul was looking down at them from the cruise ship’s rail fifteen feet above. He gave the all-clear sign, and Khalil clambered up the boarding ladder.
Abdul stepped aside for him, and once Khalil was on deck, six of his operators started up.
“Have you or your men come under any suspicion?” Khalil asked.
“None,” Abdul said. He was a slight man, and was dressed in the white jacket and dark trousers of a steward’s mate. But he was a fearless and deadly knife fighter from Cairo. “They are all in position, awaiting your signal.”
Khalil hesitated a moment as the remainder of his operators came aboard. He could hear music coming from the salon, and the sounds of laughter. All of that was about to come to a very abrupt end.
The last man up the ladder had secured the towrope to a heavy cleat amidships just forward of the pilothouse. The man at the helm would stay with the small boat. He reduced the engines to idle speed and shifted the transmission to neutral. The Nancy N. bucked and heaved as if she were a wild horse suddenly put to the bridle, but then she settled in a reasonably docile fashion to be towed by the cruise ship.
Everything was set. Khalil turned back to Abdul. “Now,” he said.
FOUR
A fine mist rose over Lake Lucerne in the predawn darkness, as if a fire had been lit beneath the bedrock and the expanse of water was coming to a slow simmer. The midnight-blue Mercedes CLK320 cabriolet, its top snuggly up against the chilly morning air, made its way smoothly along the lake road south of the city, Mount Pilatus rising more than two thousand meters from the Swiss plateau off to the west.
An attractive blond woman in her early thirties, with a finely defined face, high narrow cheekbones, and wide, pale blue eyes, was at the wheel, her small shoulders thrown back defiantly. She wore sandals, a short khaki skirt, and a light pullover. Her 7.65mm Walther PPK and her Swiss Federal Police wallet, which identified her as Sergeant Liese Bernadette Fuelm, were in the black leather purse on the seat along with several fat file folders. Her position on the force as a watch officer was hard won because of her sex, something she had been reminded of the previous evening during drinks with her boss, Captain Ernst Gertner, the Kanton Nidwalden Polizei commander. Because of their conversation she had spent a sleepless night, memories piling on memories coming back at her, some of them hurtful, a few of them erotic, but all of them filling her with a crushing sense of loneliness.
“So, Liebchen, I’m hearing that you are dissatisfied with your little assignment.” Gertner had come directly to the point as if he had read her mind. He was a slick career officer, very nearly a politician in his outlook, and she hated it when he talked to her with his annoying diminutives.
“It’s nothing but a simple surveillance operation, captain,” she said. “I have more experience than that. Almost twelve years, as a matter of fact.”