Читать книгу State Of Attack - Gary Haynes - Страница 22

Chapter 13

The general had reported to the Pentagon on the position regarding the likely protection of Ibrahim by the Turkish mafia and the Muslim terrorist groups via a secure satphone a couple of minutes ago. He’d left Habib’s office and had snuck into a nearby alcove, anxious neither to be seen nor heard. Now, after stepping out of an old-fashioned cage elevator, he walked across the dull grey flagstones to the revolving exit doors, nodding to the two plainclothes operatives sitting behind a desk to the right beneath a wide staircase.

Outside, the heat was still oppressive and the general was glad that his chauffeur had had the wits to park the black Mercedes limo beneath the splayed branches of a deciduous tree in the small courtyard. The chauffeur was standing with a couple of police outriders that MIT had seconded to protect the limo, but which the general felt were unnecessary.

But he was a three-star general now, the de facto head of operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he conceded the security went with the territory. Besides, Turkey wasn’t Switzerland, and suddenly he had a nagging feeling concerning what Habib had told him about Ibrahim, despite the bribe. In retrospect, he wondered if it had been given too eagerly, and he felt the ice on that metaphorical frozen lake shift a little beneath his feet. He felt played in a game within a game.

As he walked down the stone steps to the gravel at ground level, he focussed on the trio of men in front of him, seeing that they were smoking foul-smelling Turkish cigarettes in the shade beneath an overhang. But they stubbed them out quickly when he called out to them, and scampered over to where the limo and the motorcycles were parked like rebuked teenage kids. It was a scene he’d seen many times in foreign countries. Those at the top were treated with deference, irrespective of their vices, and outside of the States he always had the feeling of stepping back in time.

The chauffeur opened the back door, the general dipped in, leaving the seatbelt hanging, and he was driven out of the building’s courtyard. As the limo passed between the wrought-iron gates that abutted a tarmac slope leading to the street proper, he considered the possibility that MIT was protecting Ibrahim, too. There wasn’t a lot of logic to it other than some overarching but misguided geopolitical strategy regarding the Sunni-Shia conflict, and, for now at least, there was nothing to be done. He was doing his job and, after just four more appointments today, he would soon be home to spend some downtime with Tom.

He was looking forward to seeing his son. He knew he’d been through a helluva lot before he’d come of age, most of which, he, as his father, had been responsible for. He’d read a bit about how kids were affected by the break-up of their parents and how an absent father was about as healthy for a teenage boy as a diet of fries and pizzas, but he had vowed to change that a while back and they were now forming something that could be termed a wholesome relationship. And, less than two years off a retirement, which he intended to spend sailing in the Caribbean and playing golf in Palm Springs, he could involve his son in that, as and when time permitted.

As the outriders stopped oncoming traffic at intersections, the general glanced outside the limo’s smoked-glass window. Old men in flat hats were sitting under the awnings of hookah bars, puffing on the pipes and drinking the sticky coffee. Tired-looking women swept store fronts clean of dust and garbage, and young men sat astride mopeds, wearing shades and tight jeans, pretending, he guessed, that they were in a photo shoot.

But there was a distinct lack of females wearing the hijab, and he guessed that the metropolitan people of most countries tended to value personal freedom above tradition. It was different in the rural provinces, a fact that was being exacerbated by the rift between modernists and Islamists, something, he knew, that would dominate politics in the Greater Middle East for maybe the next twenty years. That and the other two main fault lines: the schism in the Muslim faith between Sunnis and Shias, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian issue.

After about ten minutes, the limo took a sharp right and, slowing down to take account of the motorcyclists’ sudden reduction in speed, seemed to crawl along at no more than fifteen miles per hour. The general thought the road looked like a back alley, bordered by the rear of rundown apartment blocks and derelict warehouses. But as he looked ahead and saw that it led to a well-populated square with squat palm trees, he figured it was a shortcut.

The chauffeur, who had several chins and a neatly trimmed moustache, and who the general had secretly nicknamed Oliver Hardy, turned his head forty-five degrees, and spoke pidgin English. “This Alevi part of city. Many problems. They like to fight police. No respect for government.”

The general kept silent. He’d read about the Alevi as part of his substantial briefing on the country before he’d left the States. It was a sect that had evolved from Shia Muslims in a Sunni dominated country. Some referred to them as Sufi-Shia, due to their unorthodox spiritual practices.

Even before the recent outbreaks of sectarian violence, they’d existed alongside the Sunnis in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and loathing. They’d always seen themselves as a pragmatic counterbalance to Sunni extremism. But they had strong ties with the Shia-based Alawites in Syria, even if many of them didn’t agree with Assad’s tactics, and this had literally enflamed the enmity with the Sunnis.

But something else was bothering him, too. He couldn’t pin it down, and wasn’t anything more than an ill-defined notion. Somehow the general felt that this Ibrahim would pose a whole new threat. Even if it was just a whim, he knew that in his business something akin to an animal sixth sense could save your life if you let it, and his was just about to spike.

As the car reached the edge of the square, and turned right along the one-way street that edged it, the general heard the motorcycle engines revving little more than a split second before the MIT outriders sped away.

“They crazy men,” the chauffeur said, raising a hand in the air.

Not crazy, the general thought, but in on it. He knew something bad was about to happen. He just didn’t know if it would be an assault by submachine gun-wielding assassins, an IED, or a kidnapping attempt.

“Stop the damn car and run,” he shouted as his left hand went for the door handle.