Ahmed looked down at the valet. A knife was sticking out of the base of his head, blood gurgling out from the wound and onto his uniform and on the concrete. The thought floated through Ahmed’s mind that Saif knew his business: the valet, or whoever he was, had been half dead before he had hit the ground.
“Iranian,” Saif said. “Qods. He’s been shadowing you for a couple of days. Waiting for the right opportunity.”
And you’ve been shadowing him, Ahmed thought. Or me.
“Thank you,” Ahmed said simply, hoping his voice didn’t sound as shaky as he felt.
Saif nodded. “Go. I’ll clean up and follow.”
Ahmed got into his BMW and drove quickly through the Manama traffic, fighting his shock, increasingly feeling a sense of vulnerability and dread. What if Saif hadn’t been there? How long had the Iranians been planning to kill him? Would they try again? He had been so stupid: the amateur spymaster. Ahmed violently shook his head, refusing to give in to fear. There was no time. Not now. So this was what his brother dealt with every day of his life. So now it was his turn. Good.
He wove rapidly through the late-afternoon flow, south toward Sitra, the industrial area near the refinery. Fifteen minutes later, he pulled another cell phone from the console between the front seats and hit a speed-dial number. “Two blocks out,” he said and disconnected.
As the blue BMW approached the faded warehouse, a metal door rolled up. It closed again after Rashid was inside. He took the stairs inside the warehouse two at a time to an office looking down on the darkened interior.
“You used the emergency code phrase, Fadl,” Ahmed said as he came through the office door. “What is your definition of an emergency?”
“Saif ’s device in the Qods Force office…he put it in their printer, we downloaded it…two hours ago and it…” Fadl was flustered, stammering. He handed a paper to Ahmed bin Rashid.
Ahmed took the paper and studied Fadl. He was certain that the young man’s distress had nothing to do with what had happened at the hotel. Fadl didn’t know. Ahmed decided to keep it that way. He looked at the paper.
“This is incomprehensible, Fadl. What am I supposed to…” Ahmed said, squinting at what looked like some sort of message format. Fadl stood next to him and pointed at a paragraph toward the bottom of the page and read aloud, “ ‘Karbala team to move to site by 16 this day, board and take down without alarm, and set sail no later than 1730. Jamal 2157 will proceed out as normal to marker red twelve, then turn north with maximum speed to ASU. Ram DD if possible or drive on to land, then ignition.’ ”
The doctor stared at the earnest young man in front of him. “What is that supposed to mean, Fadl? Who is Jamal 2157? Do you even know him? And Karbala, why do I care what happens at some Shi’a shrine in Iraq?”
The door opened and Saif joined them. “Jamal is not a person, brother Ahmed. It is a Japanese ship with 2157 painted on its side. The Qods drove two trucks to a pier here in Sitra this afternoon. Taha, from our group, followed them. He said the Qods had Iraqis with them. He said they took two harbor service boats out to the ship an hour ago. He is on a roof near the dock now, keeping watch.”
Ahmed swallowed. “Let me see the message again. What kind of a ship is this? What are they smuggling into Bahrain, explosives?”
“Type? Taha said it is very large…” Saif responded.
Ahmed looked anxiously around the office, filled with books, boxes, and papers. “The computer, is it connected to the Internet?” He typed “www.google.com” and then “Jamal 2157.” In twenty seconds, the screen changed and a list of Internet pages appeared. Ahmed clicked on the first listing. Another screen appeared with a picture of a large ship with five spheres protruding from the deck. On the side of the red ship were the white letters “LNG Jamal.”
“Allah help me,” Ahmed gasped. “Liquid natural gas! Where is this ship now?”
“Taha said it is offshore, tied up to a special floating dock or point of some kind. I will call him.” Saif quickly changed the SIM chip in the back of his phone and punched in a number. He mumbled a few words into the mouthpiece, listened for a minute, then quickly disconnected. “They are beginning to move the ship, to untie lines. They did not unload explosives into Bahrain. Taha…Taha thinks they brought explosives out to the ship. Some of the Qods people left the ship, left the Iraqis on board.”
Fadl had taken a maritime map down from the office wall and was laying it out on the table in front of Ahmed. “Here is where they are now,” Fadl said, pointing to a channel off the Sitra oil and gas facility.
Ahmed looked at the navigation chart and saw a red triangle with the notation “R-12” east of the ship’s location. From there the channel went east to the Persian Gulf. Directly north of that buoy, however, was a notation, “NOMAR: Permanently Restricted Military Area.” Above the Notice to Mariners notation was Juffair, and the American naval base called the ASU.
“Who do we know in the harbormaster’s office, the port police?” Ahmed asked, moving to the door.
“We have a source in the traffic police…” Saif was saying.
Ahmed bin Rashid stood in the office door at the top of the stairs. “Send out the emergency signal to all of your people, tell them go to ground, disappear, no communication for five days. And get out of here, drive inland, to the west coast. Now!” He ran down the stairs and searched frantically in the BMW’s console for the card that Kate Delmarco had given him.
As the metal door lifted and he backed the BMW out of the warehouse, he punched in her Dubai number. It took what seemed a long time and many clicks before it rang. She answered on the fifth ring. “Kate Delmarco.”
“Kate, don’t say anything, just listen. I am the man you had coffee with an hour ago. Don’t speak my name. Are you with your dinner date yet, just yes or no.”
“Yes, yes, we are having cocktails, yes…” she answered uncertainly.
“Listen to me. You must persuade him that at this minute a liquid natural gas tanker in the harbor, the LNG Jamal, has been seized by Iranian commandos and is about to sail into the Americans’ base and explode the liquid natural gas. The blast will go for miles, like a mini-Hiroshima. There is no time to ask questions. Don’t hang up, just put down the phone on the table so I can hear him.”
There was a long pause. He heard music and clinking. Then he heard Delmarco’s voice, made out some of what she said: “Good source, Johnny… intelligence… right now a gas tanker which has been seized could be, no is, is actually… right now…driving toward ASU….I am serious, very…. Look, just check, call, you can call…what do you have to lose?”
He was driving erratically, with one hand holding the phone, speeding toward the hospital. If his call failed to persuade them, as he thought it would, there would be thousands of people in need of emergency medical attention shortly. There was only music and noise coming over the phone.
He ran a red light and sped into the traffic circle, almost getting hit by a bus. He dropped the phone onto the floor. On the other side of the circle, he pulled into a parking lane and stopped, searching for the phone. He put it to his ear in time to hear a man’s voice say in American-accented English, “…may be something wrong… be right or regret… going to Threatcon Delta…my word… drill… SEAL…you stay put…be back…”
Then he heard Kate clearly; she was speaking to him. “He just left. He’s pissed as hell, but his duty officer seemed to think something was wrong, so he has ordered something. He thinks I set him up. Did I?”