Was al-Zayani a terrorist financier? The money trail seemed to lead to him, but on the face of it, he didn’t seem the type. Too cultured, too refined; and he seemed to enjoy the luxuries of his position a little too much to lead a second life as a believer of extremist ideals. But then you could never be sure about anyone, Cole knew; he himself was hardly what he seemed, after all.
Cole’s plan was simple; he had gained access to al-Zayani’s office, and would now try and engineer a situation where the man would have to leave him alone, giving Cole access to his computer. He hoped to find evidence there of who al-Zayani was linked to, and where the money was going.
‘Do you play golf?’ al-Zayani asked when the assistant had gone.
‘Golf?’ Cole asked, caught off-guard. He’d been mentally rehearsing the hundreds of facts and figures he had memorized for the business deal they would be discussing, and looking for a way of being left alone in the office, and wasn’t sure where al-Zayani was leading the conversation.
‘Yes,’ al-Zayani said with a big smile. ‘Golf. It is the national sport of businessmen in your country, no? Don’t they say that more deals are done on the fairways than in all the boardrooms of America?’
Cole laughed. ‘They do say that,’ he said. ‘And it’s true. Yes, I admit we’re guilty of that at Texas Mainline too.’
Al-Zayani’s smile beamed even wider. ‘Excellent,’ he said happily. ‘Have you ever played at the Colonial Country Club?’
Cole nodded. If he remembered correctly, Dan Chadwick had a much-valued membership there. Cole had learnt the game during his semi-retirement in the Caribbean, and had enjoyed it. It had been Sarah who had taught him initially, coming as she did from a moneyed family for whom golf was a way of life; but he cut off his thoughts about her immediately, before they rose too far to the surface and put him off his game.
He hadn’t ever played at the Colonial himself, but knew enough about the place to be able to lie effectively if he needed to. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘in fact I play there regularly, I’m a member there.’
Al-Zayani looked impressed. ‘I love that course,’ he said. ‘I’ve played there myself when I’ve visited other companies. A wonderful place,’ he said wistfully. ‘We have a course here,’ he continued after taking a sip of his coffee. He replaced the cup on its tiny saucer and held out his hands apologetically. ‘Nothing like the Colonial of course, but we get by.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘So,’ al-Zayani said with a raised eyebrow. ‘Shall we?’
‘Shall we…?‘ Cole asked, raising an eyebrow of his own.
‘Have a game?’ al-Zayani asked, Abu coming through the door at the same time, as if linked psychically to his boss. ‘Abu here will escort you back to your hotel to change, and we will meet at the course in’ — he checked his watch — ‘shall we say one hour?’
Obviously, al-Zayani wasn’t about to take ‘no’ for an answer, and so — with a last longing look out of the corner of his eye at the computer which lay on the huge desk behind them, just out of reach — he nodded his head in confirmation. ‘Sounds like a great idea,’ he said happily, rising from the couch and allowing Abu to guide him out of the office. ‘I’ll see you there.’
‘I am looking forward to it,’ al-Zayani said, and Cole couldn’t tell if the man suspected something and wanted Cole out of his office, out of Saudi National Oil headquarters altogether, or if he actually did just want a game of golf.
But either way, Cole knew he was going to have to change his plans.
The wind whipped through the Black Hawk’s open doors, the sky dark and the mountain forests below even darker.
Jake Navarone nodded to his men, who stood ready by the jump doors. This was it; soon there would be no going back. It was into the lion’s den, the forbidding mountain fortresses of North Korea.
The chopper’s infiltration of the paranoid nation had gone well so far, or at least it had appeared to; the stealthy bird with its reflective black paint and its muffled rotors hadn’t been picked up by radar or human eyesight, and it had followed its winding, circuitous, nauseating route through valleys and canyons at a height the SEALs could scarcely believe; it was literally hugging the tree-tops, and Navarone was sure he’d heard the scrape of branches on the undercarriage more than once.
Navarone had to trust that they were unobserved, that the North Koreans weren’t tracking them in order to arrest them as soon as they made it to the ground.
But now they were approaching the drop-zone, and Navarone had to ignore such feelings as he and his men got on with the job at hand.
Instead of parachute insertion, they were going low enough to use fast-ropes, abseiling down to the forest floor at high speed.
He looked towards the jumpmaster, who held up a hand, fingers spread.
Five.
One finger went down.
Four.
Another finger, and Navarone did a last minute visual check of his equipment to make sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind.
Three.
Two.
One.
The men in front of him stepped out of the now hovering helicopter, and Navarone watched as they disappeared into the darkness.
And then he felt the jumpmaster’s hand clapping him on the back, and he launched himself out of the Black Hawk, holding the rope with his thick gloves, and rappelling at high speed down to the enemy country below.
He could see nothing below him, only a few feet of rope before it was swallowed in the dark, but had to trust the pilots had stopped at the correct place — a small clearing in the forest identified by satellite reconnaissance.
If they’d got it wrong, he would know about it when he hit the tops of the trees instead; his legs would be broken, and the mission would be over before it had even begun.
But an instant later, his descent slowed and his boots hit the ground. He instantly moved off to let the Chinese liaison officers behind him land safely, and took out his night vision goggles.
In the eerie green light of the device Navarone saw his men already making a security perimeter, their own goggles on, weapons aimed out at the surrounding forest. And then the last two men landed, and Navarone watched as the helicopter — near silent — lifted off and disappeared into the night.
Navarone did a quick count of his men, and gave a hand signal to Frank Jaffett, the team’s lead scout.
Without a word, Jaffett checked his compass and headed off noiselessly into the forest, the rest of the covert SEAL team slipping into the tree-line behind him like silent wraiths.
Navarone’s nerves buzzed within him, senses so alert, so completely involved in the moment that — despite the danger — there was nowhere else on earth he would have rather been.
4
The heat was intense, although Abdullah al-Zayani tried to assure Cole that it wasn’t yet the hottest part of the day. But it was a dry heat at least, and was more tolerable than the incredibly close humid atmosphere of Southeast Asia where he’d spent the past few months.
The course itself was nice, huge rolling green lawns at once out of place in the desert which made up the majority of the country, and yet at the same time very much in-keeping with the decidedly western Dhahran community.
It was obvious that al-Zayani had no wish to conduct business in his office, and so Cole had used the time back at his hotel to come up with a new plan. And as al-Zayani signed him in and they strolled onto the fairway, Cole made a start with it.