“I see.”
“Which brings me to why I came here in the first place. You’ve got two choices. The first is that we play it straight. Meaning you tell me why you bought the uranium from the MEK and what you did with it. Eventually — after I’ve concluded my investigation — I’ll report what you’ve told me, along with everything else I’ve learned, back to the CIA. At which point you can deal with Langley and all the questions they’ll have.”
“Seeing as I don’t have the information you’re looking for, I’m afraid that’s not a viable option.”
“I’d think about it.”
“I have.”
“The second choice is that both Daria Buckingham and I break off all contacts with the CIA and go to work for Holgan Industries. Of course, we would abide by whatever confidentiality agreement you should see fit to impose. Including one that forbids us from discussing the story I just told you.” Mark looked past Jimmy Holgan Jr., out at the sea of construction cranes dotting the Dubai skyline. Eventually he said, “Naturally, Ms. Buckingham and I would expect to be compensated.”
Jimmy Holgan Jr. was perfectly motionless as he stared down Mark. “How much?” he said after a time.
“Four million dollars. Cash will do. Dollars or the equivalent in euros.” Holgan was about to respond when Mark said, “You don’t have to answer now — I’ll come back today at five o’clock. Send one of your representatives to the lobby downstairs to meet me.”
He paused to let his words sink in before adding, “Of course, if anything were to happen to me in the meantime, Daria Buckingham will issue a preliminary report to both the CIA and appropriate media outlets detailing how Holgan wound up buying stolen uranium from the MEK.” Mark checked his watch. “In fact, she’s prepared to deliver such a report within a half hour if she doesn’t hear from me.”
“You insult me.”
“Think it over.”
Holgan stood up and pressed the intercom button on his deck. “Mr. Sava will be leaving now,” he said, glowering at Mark as he spoke. “Please arrange for an escort.”
59
Mark stepped out of the ground-floor lobby of the Iris Bay Tower and was blasted by heat so oppressive he felt as though he’d stepped into a steam room.
He turned right and began walking down a palm-lined sidewalk, staring straight ahead and not even trying yet to get a make on the men he was certain were following him. After a hundred yards or so he hailed a taxi.
“Mall of the Emirates.”
They pulled onto Sheikh Zayed Road and soon were speeding past gleaming new buildings and bleak plots of undeveloped land where foundations for even more new buildings had been laid but where construction had come to a halt. In between were a few construction sites teeming with Indian and Pakistani and Iranian workers, all covered in cement dust. The taxi driver played Arabic techno music and the air conditioner was going full blast. The cloudless sky was an angry gray-blue.
All over the road, cars darted in and out of crowded lanes. Mark used the rearview mirror to note the make of several behind him.
“Slow down a bit, would you?”
The driver shrugged and eased off on the accelerator.
“A bit more, if you could.”
The car directly behind them honked and then veered to the side to pass. In the taxi’s rearview mirror, a blue Mercedes sedan about a hundred yards behind them slowed down.
In front of the main entrance to the Mall of the Emirates were a few benches and a fountain that squirted blasts of water timed to the beat of a digitized version of the “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Mark paid the taxi driver, sat down on one of the benches, and called Daria.
“At least two,” he said.
“I’ve got a visual on you.”
She was behind him, somewhere inside the mall, and he was relieved to be in her orbit. Working in the field with someone was a dance routine of sorts, part choreographed, part improvised, with an underlying rhythm that both partners needed to feel for it to work. The night before on their training run, they had both felt it.
“Can you see the blue Mercedes?”
“I have it,” she said.
“That’s our tail. Point was a gray Lexus that came in just before me.”
“Was there a wing?”
“Don’t know.”
“They rotating positions?”
“Can’t tell yet.”
The blue Mercedes had pulled over to the curb not far from the turnoff that led to the mall parking lot. Two men still sat in the car. The gray Lexus had disappeared after rounding a corner on the north side of the building. Mark watched the footpath leading from that corner.
Soon a man in a blue pinstripe suit, wearing a maroon Sikh turban, appeared from that direction. He passed by Mark without even a glance and went into the mall.
“Our point,” said Mark.
“Got him.”
Mark snapped his cell phone shut. The domed entrance leading into the mall resembled that of a nineteenth-century European train station. He walked through it and toward the shops beyond.
Daria would be watching from one of the upper levels, wearing a sequined green Muslim robe, a green veil, and shoes with two-inch heels. In her purse would be a red veil, a light black silk robe, a spare pair of flat-heeled shoes, and a digital camera.
Mark took an escalator to the second floor and walked a quarter mile or so deeper into the mall. Just beyond an Adidas store he came to a public bathroom where he locked himself in one of the back stalls and called Daria again.
“There’s a wing,” she said. “The point stayed on the ground floor and the tail is a couple hundred yards behind you, but your wing, she surfaced and stuck.”
“She?”
“High heels, blue blouse. Tan purse. Looks young and slutty. Waiting right outside the men’s room.”
“She reeling in the rest of the team?”
“Uncertain.”
A little while later Daria said, “She just slipped on glasses.”
“I’m coming out.”
Mark walked quickly now, at a pace that stood out. He headed past a Chili’s restaurant and on to the five-star Kempinski Hotel. A red-liveried doorman greeted him as he stepped into the second-floor lobby. He took an elevator to the fifth floor, then quickly descended a stairwell to the ground level where there were seven ways to exit the hotel; it would be impossible for his pursuers to know which one he was going to pick.
He left via a service exit, made his way back into the mall, and called Daria.
“I think you’re clear,” she said. “I’m on the wing right now, she’s questioning the valet parking guy in front of the Kempinski. As for the tail and point, I had a visual on them a minute ago and I don’t see how they could have picked you up. How do you feel?”
“Like I’m good. I’m gonna hole up for a while.”
Daria’s next call came ten minutes later. “Your tail is staking out the main entrance by the fountain. The point is at the hotel entrance, and the wing is between the car park entrance and the entrance to the indoor ski area, trying to do double duty.”
Once they’d lost him, Holgan’s surveillance team had spread out and covered the multiple exits as best they could. The way Mark had suspected they would.
As he exited the mall he intentionally passed within fifty feet of the point man, who was sitting at a bench near the musical fountain.
“He has you,” said Daria.
Mark climbed into a taxi. “The Gold Souk Hotel,” he said.
60
The Gold Souk Hotel stood adjacent to the gold souk itself — a massive shopping bazaar crammed with shops where people from all over the Middle East came to buy and sell gold jewelry. There was no doorman at the hotel, only a sullen-looking Indian guy at the front desk who didn’t even glance up at Daria and Mark as they passed.