The United Arab Emirates was a nation based on commerc>
These men also possessed influence in all facets of the government, spies in the corridors of power, informants in every bastion of life in the Emirates. If Rehan sought information about anyone or anything in the UAE, it was his for the asking.
Which is how he learned that Major Mohammed al Darkur and a British expatriate traveling under a Dutch passport would be landing at Dubai International Airport at 9:36 p.m.
Rehan and his contingent of security and plain-clothed ISI officers were due to arrive in Dubai early the following morning, so the Pakistani general assumed al Darkur and the English spy were in town to get information on him. Clearly al Darkur’s operation in Miran Shah, an op that coincided with his training of the Jamaat Shariat troops at the Haqqani camp, indicated that the young major was investigating Rehan. There was no reason he would show up here, now, unless it involved some further interest in the JIM Directorate.
Riaz Rehan was not worried about the major’s investigation into him. On the contrary, he saw it as incredibly good fortune that the man and his associate had come to Dubai.
Because while confronting the meddlesome major and his foreign ally in Pakistan could have been problematic for the low-profile ISI general, here in Dubai, Riaz Rehan could, quite literally, get away with murder.
Embling and al Darkur took a private car to their apartment at the incredible Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. They were in town to meet with members of The Campus, but for security reasons Gerry Hendley had forbade his operators from giving either Embling or his suspicious ISI informant any information about where they were staying while in Dubai, so al Darkur himself had made arrangements for accommodations. The massive needle-like skyscraper with 163 inhabitable floors (and a forty-three-story spire topping that) was a quick and easy place for them to find quarters. Embling and al Darkur shared a two-bedroom flat on the 108th floor.
Mohammed did not trust most of the ISI any more than did Gerry Hendley. He had used a personal credit card and handled details of the trip on a computer at an Internet café in Peshawar, lest his own organization get wind of his travel plans.
Once settled in at their flat, Embling called a number Hendley had given him. It connected him to the satellite phone of one of the two Campus operators he had met the year before in Peshawar, the forty-something-year-old Mexican-American who went by the name Domingo.
They made arrangements to meet at Embling’s place at the Burj Khalifa as soon as possible.
At the same moment Rehan and company’s Pakistan International Airlines flight from Islamabad landed at Dubai International Airport, Jack Ryan, Dom Caruso, and Domingo Chavez stood in an elevator in the Burj Khalifa. The elevators at the world’s tallest building are, not coincidentally, the world’s fastest, and they jetted the three Americans higher into the gargantuan tower at over forty-five miles an hour. They were let into the apartment and found themselves in a large open room with a sunken sitting area in front of floor-to-ceiling views of the Persian Gulf from an altitude nearly that of the top of the Empire State Building.
Nigel Embling stood in tÀthehe modern living room full of dark wood and metal and glass, in front of the incredible panoramic view. He was a big Englishman with thin snow-white hair and a bushy beard. He wore a slightly rumpled blazer over an open-neck button-down shirt and brown slacks.
“My dear friend Domingo,” said Embling with an air of sympathy. “Before we get into the other disaster that has befallen your organization, I must tell you how sorry I am to hear about this affair involving John Clark.”
Chavez shrugged. “Me, too. It will get straightened out.”
“I’m certain of it.”
“Just don’t believe everything you hear,” Ding added.
Embling waved his hand. “I haven’t heard one bloody thing that doesn’t sound like just another day at the office for a man in Mr. Clark’s profession. I may be old and soft, but I haven’t forgotten the way of the world.”
Chavez just nodded and said, “May I present my associates? Jack and Dominic.”
“Mr. Embling,” Jack said as he shook the older man’s hand.
Of course the Englishman recognized the son of the former and presumed future President of the United States, but he gave off no hint of his making the connection.
He then walked the three Americans over to the only other inhabitant of the apartment, a physically fit cinnamon-skinned Pakistani in shirtsleeves and black jeans.
They were surprised to learn this was the ISI major. “Mohammed al Darkur, at your service.” The attractive man held out a hand to Chavez, but Chavez did not extend his own.
All three of the Campus operators held this man personally responsible for the loss of their friend. While Hendley had been careful not to tip his hat to Embling that he had his suspicions, Domingo Chavez was not about to play nice to the son of a bitch who likely got his colleague killed in the wilds of Pakistan’s lawless tribal region.
“Tell me, Major al Darkur, why I shouldn’t bash your head against the wall?”
Al Darkur was taken aback, but Embling interjected, “Domingo, please understand. You have little reason to trust him, but I hope you have somewhat more reason to trust me. I have made it my mission in the past months to check the major out, and he is one of the good guys, I assure you.”
Dom Caruso addressed the older Englishman: “Well, I don’t know you, and I definitely don’t know this asshole, but I know what the ISI has been doing for the past thirty years, so I’m not going to trust this bastard until we get our man back.”
Ryan did not get a chance to echo the sentiment before the Pakistani replied, “I completely understand your point of view, gentlemen. I have come today to ask you to give me just a few days to work with my contacts in the region. If Mr. Sam is being held by the Haqqani network, I will pull every string I can to either get him released or else get an operation launched to rescue him.”
“You were with him when he was taken?” asked Chavez.
“I was, indeed. He fought very bravely.”
“I heard it was a hell of a fight.”
“Many killed on both sides,” al Darkur admitted.
“Can’t help but notice that you look none the worse for wear.”
“IÀ
“Where are you hit? Bullet wounds? Shrapnel?”
Mohammed al Darkur reddened as his eyes lowered. “It was a chaotic situation. I was not injured seriously, but men on my left and right died.”
Chavez snorted. “Listen, Major. I don’t trust you, my organization doesn’t trust you, but we do trust Mr. Embling. We think it’s possible that you have managed to charm him somehow, but don’t think your trip here is going to charm us. We will respond favorably to results, not promises. If you and your colleagues can find our man, we want that information immediately.”
“And you shall have it, I promise. I have people working on that, just as I have men looking into the Haqqani — ISI connection.”
“Again. Results are what impress me.”
“Understood. I do have one question, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I understand you are in Dubai to monitor General Rehan. Is the rest of your team monitoring him now?”
There was no “rest of” Chavez’s team, but he did not say this. Instead he replied, “Trust me, when he comes to Dubai, we will be on him.”
Now Mohammed al Darkur’s eyebrows rose. “My information is that he arrived in Dubai this morning. I assumed I would help you translate any conversations he has at his safe house.”
Chavez looked to Caruso and Ryan. Their passive monitoring devices were dormant in the air ducts of the Rehan compound. If their target was here in Dubai, then they needed to return to the Kempinski and begin the surveillance.
Ding nodded slowly. “We have translators. My team will know it as soon as Rehan gets to his place.”
Al Darkur seemed satisfied by this, and soon Chavez left the apartment with Caruso and Ryan.
In front of the elevators, Jack said, “If Rehan is here, we could already have missed something important.”
Chavez said, “Yeah. You guys hustle back to the bungalow and get on it. I need to head over to the airport and meet the plane to pick up the equipment, but first I’m going to get Embling away from the major and debrief him thoroughly. I’ll see you guys back at the place in a few hours.”
Chavez spent three hours in discussions in the 108th-floor flat. The first hour was exclusively in a room with Nigel Embling. The British expat spent the vast majority of that time going over everything he had learned about Mohammed al Darkur in the past month and a half. Embling’s other contacts within the PDF had convinced him that neither the 7th Battalion of the Special Services Group, called the Zarrar commandos, with whom al Darkur was aligned, nor the Joint Intelligence Bureau, to which al Darkur had been assigned in the ISI, was overrun or heavily influenced by Islamist radicals, as were many sectors of the PDF. Further, al Darkur’s own actions leading an SSG unit against terrorist groups in the Swat Valley and Chitral had won him commendations that would have made him a target of the “beards” in the PDF.
Last, Embling assured Ding Chavez that he himself had been in the room when Sam Driscoll insisted on going along on the Miran Shah operation. Major al Darkur had been against the American’s participation, and had only reluctantly allowed him to go.
It took the full hour, but finally ChaÀ Amvez was convinced. He spent two more hours talking to al Darkur about the operation on which Sam disappeared, and he quizzed him on his staff and the contacts he claimed to be shaking down to get information on the missing American’s whereabouts. Finally, sometime around noon, Chavez left the men in their apartment and headed to the airport to pick up the sniper rifle and other gear sent in on the Gulfstream.
Ryan and Caruso returned to their bungalow at the Kempinski Hotel & Residences and activated their passive surveillance equipment across the water, and all three cameras came to life. There was definite activity in the house, though at first none of their cameras revealed Rehan to be present. While they waited and watched the feeds from the cameras and listened to various men speaking Urdu stroll through the entry hall and great room, they called Rick Bell. It was just past two a.m. in Maryland, but Rick promised that he, a technical analyst, and an Urdu-speaking translator would be on station at Hendley Associates within forty-five minutes. Ryan and Caruso recorded all received image and audio captures until then, and they fed them on for analysis.
It was after eleven a.m. Dubai time, some two hours after Dom and Jack arrived back at the bungalow, when a flurry of excitement appeared to take over the guard force in the house. Men tightened their ties and took up positions in the corners of the rooms, more men appeared through the front door carrying luggage, and finally a big man with a trim beard came through the front door. One by one he greeted all the guards standing there with a kiss on the cheek and a handshake, and then he and another man, who seemed to be a high-level officer, entered the great room. The men were deep in conversation.
Caruso said, “The big guy is Rehan. Looks about the same as he did in Cairo back in September.”
“I’ll e-mail Bell and let him know you have confirmed Rehan.”
“I should have shot that fucker back then.”
Ryan thought that over. His concerns about Sam in Waziristan and Clark in Europe were eating him up, and he knew it was even worse for his cousin. A year earlier, Dominic’s twin brother had been killed in a Campus operation in Libya. The thought of losing two more operators must have weighed extra-heavy on Caruso.
“We’re going to get Sam back, Dom.”
Dominic nodded distractedly as he watched the feed.
“And Clark will either fix his own situation, or he’ll hang out until my dad takes office, and Dad will look after him.”
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on your dad not to get involved.”
Jack sniffed. “Dad would take a bullet in the chest for John Clark. A few bleeding-heart congressmen aren’t going to stop him.”
Dom chuckled, and they discussed it no further.
Soon Dominic called Ryan over from where he had been sitting in the bedroom, peering through the spotting scope at Rehan’s safe house. “Hey. Looks like everyone is heading back out.”
“Busy fucker, isn’t he?” Ryan said as he hustled back in to watch on the monitor.
Rehan had taken off the suit coat he was wearing, and now he was clad in a simple white shirt and black suit pants. He and the man who was beginning to look like his second-in-command were standing back in the hall with a group of about eight men, most of the guard force that had come with them fromÀnin Pakistan, as well as a couple of faces Ryan recognized as being regulars at the house.
The audio was good, Dominic and Ryan could hear every word, but neither man spoke Urdu, so they would have to wait for the translator in West Odenton, Maryland, to translate the conversation in order to put some context to the scene.
Seconds later, Rehan and an entourage left through the front door.
“Show’s over for now, I guess,” said Dom. “I’m going to make a sandwich.”
Twenty minutes after Domingo Chavez left Embling and al Darkur’s flat, there was a knock at the door. The Pakistani major was on the phone with his staff in Peshawar, so Embling went to answer it. He knew there was security in the building that would not allow anyone off on this floor of private residences who did not have permission from one of the occupants, so he was not concerned about his security. As he looked through the peephole he saw a waiter in a white tuxedo jacket holding a wine bucket full of ice and a bottle of Champagne.
“May I help you?” he asked through the door. Then he mumbled to himself, “By taking that lovely bottle of Dom Pérignon off your hands?”
“Compliments of property management, sir. Welcome to Dubai.”
Embling smiled, opened the door, and then he saw the other men rushing up the hallway. He made to slam the door shut, but the waiter had flung his wine bucket aside, drawn a Steyr automatic pistol, and leveled it at Nigel Embling’s forehead.
Embling did not move.
From around the side of the doorway, hidden from sight from the peephole, General Riaz Rehan of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous appeared. He carried a small automatic pistol himself.
“Indeed, Englishman,” he said. “Welcome to Dubai.”
Nine other men burst into the apartment, past Nigel, with handguns held high.