“You can sleep tonight, Cameron. I know what to do. And we want to stop this operation as much as you do.”
Jalil flipped through the stack of colorful Turkish blankets, pulled one off the shelf, studied it for a minute and dropped it into his shopping caddy. The store was crammed full of Turkish products from jars of olives to photographs of the country’s landscapes to woven straw baskets. In the time Jalil had been there he’d looked at everything at least once and worried that if Boris Petrevich did not show up soon, the store personnel were going to become suspicious. The Russian must have made another stop along the way. The thought occurred to Jalil that he and his two partners sent by Abbas Mozedah may have miscalculated: Petrevich may not stop at this border store at all, and it was the last one before the Habur crossing point. This was their first and last chance to confirm that Petrevich was transporting nukes.
Zayed’s resonant, calm voice broke the silence in Jalil’s radio headset. “He’s approaching the store now.”
Jalil glanced out the window and saw the black Volvo he and Zayed and Salim had followed since it exited Russia. Petrevich had wasted no time forging southward across the bleak Russian landscape, through the city of Volgograd and on to the border with Georgia. Abbas’s Russian contacts had tracked him that far — using three different cars in an effort to prevent Petrevich from becoming suspicious. Salim, Jalil and Zayed picked up the Volvo there and shadowed it through Georgia and Turkey to the fuel stop and retail store where Jalil now stood as Petrevich fueled-up.
When Petrevich entered the store Jalil worked his way over to where he stood at a news rack. The Geiger-counter inside Jalil’s back pack was set at maximum sensitivity and as he walked past the Russian, the headphones began to click. It was the sound he had heard at the university where Abbas Mozedah had sent the three of them to learn about the Geiger-counter from his contact there. When the Russian went to the restroom Jalil signaled Zayed to check his car.
“The car is hot,” Zayed said into Jalil’s earphones a minute later. “I will tell Salim.”
Salim stood on the narrow concrete island to the side of one of the checkpoint kiosks at the Habur border gate on the northern Iraqi border and held his AK-47 at the ready. As cars and trucks took their turn through customs Salim wondered how much time he had before one of the other guards realized he wasn’t one of them. He had edged into the more prominent position at the border gate a minute ago when Zayed signaled that the Volvo was on its way and confirmed that the Russian was to be stopped. Salim knew it would have been safer to take out the smuggler somewhere else, but because they had to give the American authorities the opportunity until the very last second to do the job, that course of action was not possible.
The black Volvo was now the fifth vehicle back in the lane to Salim’s left, practically lost among the sea of trucks backed up at the border gate. Unless the FBI were there somewhere and took their own action he would do the job Abbas sent him to do before the Russian was inside Iraq and out of their reach. If Petrevich made it across the border safely, the Iraqi insurgents would be protecting their new assets: The Russian physicist Petrevich and his uranium, the critical component for a deliverable weapon of mass destruction. If the Russian had to be killed, it had to be on the Turkey side where the Iraqi border guards could not take possession of the uranium.
Salim thought of his two young sons and hoped they would live long enough to enjoy peace. He believed in what Abbas was doing and wanted to work with him as long as he could hold a gun. Today would not be the first time he killed, if it came to that. People from his part of the world learned killing when they were young. Maybe what he was about to do would at least slow the accumulation of nuclear materials by terrorists in the Middle East.
Salim tried to appear normal. A Turkish guard wearing a lieutenant’s uniform and dark glasses seemed to be paying him a lot of attention but turned away when Salim looked at him. Salim ran through his escape plan one last time and glanced at the Iraqi guards, who were said to be working in tandem with Petrevich, a few meters beyond the first checkpoint. They too would be watching for the black Volvo and would try to take possession of its precious cargo. That would mean taking out Salim, too, when they realized who he was — but by then he would have disappeared behind a kiosk and the approaching vehicles. Salim knew there was no promise of safety today, but then no such promise ever existed in the fight against forces who would destroy the world to accomplish their own objectives. He tried as hard as he could to steady the trembling in his hands.
Petrevich was now second in line to show his credentials to the guard inside the kiosk a few meters from Salim. There was no mistaking the car. He would wait until the Russian was cleared and about to drive away through the checkpoint. If the FBI were there, they would have acted by then. If not, then Salim would spray the windshield of the Volvo as he counted off the seconds — one…two…three. Then in the ensuing pandemonium he would escape to safety using backed-up cars and trucks for cover. His work there would be complete.
Salim’s eyes narrowed as the memory of the blood-covered body of his younger brother in an earlier operation flashed through his mind. Seconds to go. The trembling calmed. The Russian pulled into position. Moments now, unless the guards decided to do a thorough search on the Volvo. No, they waved him on! It was time. Salim was the final barrier.
Salim had stood with his weapon cradled in his arm so he would not have to attract attention by raising it before firing. Now he placed his finger against the trigger. Before he squeezed it the nightmare he had not planned for became reality. Someone in the lane to his right recognized him.
“Salim! What are you doing there? In that uniform?”
Salim had little time to wonder who had recognized him and the guard wearing the dark glasses didn’t wait for an explanation. He opened fire and Salim’s head fragmented. He flew backwards, his arms and legs dancing to the automatic rifle’s deadly tune, onto the hood of a car in the other lane. All of the guards were distracted for a moment before the hydraulic barricades in each lane had been opened, and by then the Volvo was safely inside Iraq.
Minutes later Abbas received the sorry news that the mission had failed. Jalil and Zayed escaped but his long-time friend and fellow-warrior Salim was dead. He fought the tears that welled up in his eyes as he looked out onto the Paris street in front of his office. Terrorists had won the battle but they had not won the war.
Earl Fullwood sat in his corner office on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and read the report delivered to him minutes earlier. The crossing took place at Habur as expected. A Bureau operative got caught in the crossfire and was killed but the imposter guard who tried to shoot the Russian got it too. When he finished reading, he pulled out a new cigar and stuck it between his teeth. A trace of a smile hit his lips.
Fullwood dialed Paula Newnan’s number. Newnan could get him in to see Cross on short notice. Now, by God, he had a case to take to the president, and Cross had no choice but to back him. Fullwood couldn’t prove anything on Warfield, but he didn’t need to. After all, he was Earl Fullwood, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the greatest investigative organization in the world, and it was time to reclaim the prominence he’d lost at the hand of Cameron Warfield.