Inside the shabby room they’d taken the night before, everything was as they’d left it — the voice recorder, the timers, the cameras, their change of clothes…
Mark walked to the big front window, cracked it open, and pulled back the curtain. The sweet and fruity smell of hookah smoke drifted up from a nearby café. Car horns were honking. They were in an old part of Dubai where the streets were narrower, the sidewalks cracked, and the buildings less glitzy. It was a part of the city that had just evolved gradually over the years, instead of being planned out and built overnight by global construction firms.
Daria came to his side and for thirty seconds or so they pretended to have a real conversation, so that Holgan’s men — who had followed them from the mall to the hotel — would report back to their boss that Daria Buckingham and Mark Sava were in hiding together, unprotected. They’d say, Sava thinks he’s evaded us. He suspects nothing.
When Mark was reasonably certain he and Daria had been spotted together, he closed the curtains and donned a woman’s black chador, headscarf, and veil. Daria put on tight black jeans, a sleeveless red blouse, Prada sunglasses, and a New York Yankees baseball cap.
They left via a store in the back of the hotel and individually made their way to another dumpy hotel across the street. In a room on the third floor, Daria sat down on a frayed easy chair and stared at the LCD screen of a digital camera. She had slipped the camera’s long telephoto lens under the bottom left-hand corner of one of the closed window shades. Slipped underneath another window shade was a digital camcorder, held in place with a tripod.
“We got movement?” Mark asked, after she clicked a few photos.
“Just the team that followed us here. They have all the exits covered.”
“Give it a half hour. They’ll be replaced.”
“We’ll see.”
“No way those clowns are breaking down doors.”
Mark had pegged the team that had followed them to and from the mall as Holgan’s regular security detail. But he was certain that once Holgan was told that Daria Buckingham had been found, and that she was with Mark Sava, Holgan would send a different team to execute a takedown — he wouldn’t be able to resist trying to save himself $4 million and a potential headache. The new team would be an elite force, probably comprised of people already in the know about the uranium, people Holgan trusted to keep their mouths shut no matter what they heard.
Those were the guys Mark was after.
On a table in the center of the room, a laptop computer played live video and audio from a wireless webcam hidden in the corner of their room at the Gold Souk Hotel.
Over the laptop audio, Mark heard his own voice declare, “I’m going to take a shower.”
The digital voice recorder they’d purchased the night before at a Radio Shack was set on playback. Anyone trying to listen to what was going on in the room would hear the occasional sound of Mark and Daria walking around, using the bathroom, or discussing the logistics of the $4 million cash transfer they believed would take place at five o’clock that evening.
The attack came at half past two that afternoon. Mark almost missed the initial entry, it was so subtle — just a quick popping sound as the weak door was forced open with a crowbar, followed by the soundless entry of three men, each of whom held a silenced pistol.
An unshaven guy with an angular face and jet-black hair ordered the other two to search under the bed and in the bathroom. What struck Mark most was that the guy spoke in fluent Farsi.
All the men were professional, communicating with hand signals and holding their weapons like soldiers. Definitely not MEK, Mark judged. Instead they reminded him of Yaver.
“You fucker,” he said, thinking of Holgan. He wondered whether Holgan had cut a deal with the Iranian regime.
After it became evident that the room was empty, one of the men noticed the hidden webcam on top of a curtain rod. The leader picked it up, turned it over in his hands, and then threw it into the wall.
But it was too late.
Daria replayed the video of the attack. Whenever she had a good view of one of the attackers’ faces, she paused the recording, cropped and expanded the image, and then saved the file as a still photo.
Seeing how fast she worked made Mark feel old.
After she’d compiled decent head shots of all three, he said, “All right then, let’s get these to Bowlan.”
61
Mark slid the cash-stuffed briefcase to the side of Holgan’s desk.
He’d shown up at Holgan Industries headquarters at five o’clock as though nothing had happened and he was just there to collect his money. Only instead of taking off with the cash, he’d demanded to see Holgan again. Jimmy Jr. wouldn’t kill him now and risk exposure, he knew. Not with Daria at large again.
Where the briefcase had been, Mark placed a laptop computer, turned it so that the screen faced Holgan, and pushed Enter.
“I’d like you to take a look at this,” he said, and then he methodically walked Holgan step by step through the evidence that he and Daria had accumulated related to the path of the stolen uranium. There were copies of the plans for the hollowed-out tail ballast, of the flight records at Sulaimaniyah Airport, of information about the Lockheed Jetstar that proved the Doha Group had bought the plane from a company controlled by the MEK…Finally there were photos from that afternoon that tied Holgan to a Revolutionary Guard hit squad that had shown up at the Gold Souk Hotel just a few hours ago.
Holgan, however, didn’t appear particularly threatened, or even interested. He observed the presentation sitting far back in his chair, twirling a gold pen around in his hand and occasionally glancing at his watch. When Mark started explaining how the CIA had helped him identify the leader of the hit squad — evidently he was well-known on the streets of Dubai — Holgan, with little enthusiasm, said, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lie with dogs you’re gonna get fleas. You’d be one of the dogs, by the way. A mangy two-pound poodle. Just take the damn money and get the hell out of here, Sava. You’ve done all right for yourself considering you’re dealing with shit you don’t understand.”
“It’s not about the money.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“I won’t take the money.”
“Now you’re breaking new ground.”
“I want to know what happened to the stolen uranium. And if I don’t get what I want, I’m going public with all I just showed you as soon as I walk out this door. Or Daria Buckingham will if I can’t.”
Holgan cradled his head in his hands for a moment. Sounding tired and a little annoyed, he said, “OK. You win. You want information, you got it. It’s not my fault that the National Security Council didn’t send the memo to the CIA.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the only reason I came up with the cash that’s in front of you now is that James Ellis — that would be the president’s goddamned hand-picked national security advisor! — asked me to. Which is the same reason I bought that plane with the uranium on it — paying forty million for it when the plane itself is worth maybe a quarter of that. And I didn’t even get to keep the damn plane! Furthermore, I didn’t know there was uranium on the thing until you showed up. But I refuse to put Holgan Industries at risk anymore by playing the middle man between all you bumbling government idiots. I’m out — I’m not carrying Ellis’s water anymore. It’s just not worth it.”
“You know, I’m gonna need more information than that. Because I don’t have a clue as to what the fuck you’re talking about.”