I Am Pilgrim (74 page)

little guy with all his heart to have risked everything for a phone call. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it at all – I knew from shooting the Rider of the Blue that if you’re going to kill a man, far better it’s a monster than a loving father.

I flew up the steps of the hotel, burst into my room, threw a change of clothes into a bag and grabbed my passport. I knew the Saracen’s surname now, the same as his sister ’s – al-Nassouri – and I knew where the family came from.

I was going to Saudi Arabia.

Part Four

Chapter One

TURKISH AIRLINES FLIGHT 473 took off from Milas airport, banked hard through the setting sun and headed across a corner of the Mediterranean towards Beirut.

After leaving the hotel, I got in the Fiat, drove hard to the airport and took the first plane that was heading south – anything that would get me closer to Saudi Arabia.

My idea was to save as much time as possible. While I was in the air I would call ahead and organize for a US government jet to rendezvous with me halfway there – on the runway in Lebanon.

No sooner had the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean come into view and the FASTEN SEATBELT

sign been turned off than I took my cellphone and headed for the bathroom. With the door locked and

no time to worry about who might be eavesdropping, I called Battleboi in New York. First, I had to

know where the hell in Saudi I was going.

Rachel-san picked up. ‘It’s me,’ I said, without further identification. ‘I need to talk to the big guy.’

‘Listen,’ I said, as soon as he had come to the phone. I didn’t have time for small talk. ‘You said you found the woman’s application for a driver ’s licence—’

‘That’s right.’

‘She was born in Saudi – where? What town?’

‘Hold on,’ he said, and I could hear him padding his way towards his office.

‘The application’s in front of me,’ he said after a short break. ‘ “Jeddah”, it says. A place called Jeddah.’

‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘Great work.’ I was about to hang up, but he got in first.

‘Did you hear what happened?’ he asked.

‘About Leavenworth?’

‘Yeah. I told you they’d bleed me out then double-cross me. I hate this but … I have to ask … I need help.’

There was a catch in his voice, and he had to pause to master his emotions. ‘I can do it – do the time, I mean – but I’ll lose Rachel. She wants kids – I can’t ask her to wait and give it up. Five years’

reduction is all I’m asking. I don’t know who you really are but—’

‘That’s enough,’ I said, more harshly than I meant, but I couldn’t allow him to go anywhere near

the topic of my identity in case somebody was listening. ‘I know people,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I promise –

I’ll do what I can.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ he said sarcastically and, while I understood that he had been used and screwed, I didn’t appreciate it.

‘I’m not like the people who nailed you,’ I said, voice rising. ‘If I give you my word, I mean it. I’ll do
everything
possible. Okay?! Now, I’ve got a few problems of my own—’

‘Sure, sure,’ he said. I think he found my anger more reassuring than any words I could have said,

and I hung up.

My next call was to Whisperer. Again, there was no need for introductions. ‘I know his name,’ I said quietly.

I don’t think in the history of covert intelligence such a bombshell had ever been met by so much

silence. After what seemed like an eternity, Whisperer responded: ‘You mean the guy in Afghanistan?’

‘Yeah. Name of al-Nassouri. He’s the cop’s brother.’

There it was – done. The organism had fulfilled its fate; it had relayed the information. If I had died then, it wouldn’t have mattered – the mission would survive.

‘What else?’ Whisperer asked.

‘Not much yet – born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,’ I said.

‘Saudi? Ask me why I’m not surprised,’ Whisperer replied.

‘Another few hours and I should have his full name and date of birth. I’m hoping to get a photo.’

‘Where the hell are you?!’ he asked suddenly. For only the second time in recorded history he had

raised his voice. I figured that the automatic trace on my phone had just appeared on his computer screen and it was showing that I was in the middle of the Mediterranean. But it wasn’t really about him being alarmed by my location – the emotion, the stress, the relief, had broken through for Dave McKinley. We had a name, we had an identity, we had a man to hunt. Now it was just a matter of time.

‘I’m on board TA473 en route to Beirut,’ I said. ‘I need assistance getting to Jeddah and a lot of help on the ground when I get there.’

‘We’ll talk about that in a minute. First, how long before you can give me an update with the rest of the details?’

I looked at my watch and did a fast calculation of flying time and document searches. ‘Twelve hours – I should have what we need by then.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m at the office now,’ he said, ‘but I won’t be then. I’ll be down the road – you know the place.

We’ll be waiting for your call.’

He meant the White House, and he’d be in the Oval Office with the president.

Chapter Two

I UNLOCKED THE bathroom door and came face to face with half a dozen pissed-off passengers who had summoned a flight attendant. It was clear from the tilt of her jaw that she had justice on her mind.

‘People have been knocking on the door,’ she said icily.

‘Yes, I heard ’em,’ I replied. It was true, but what was I gonna do – hang up on the director of intelligence?

‘You know it’s an offence to use a cellphone in flight.’

I nodded. God, I was tired. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know.’

‘And you saw our video making that clear?’

‘Sure, lady. But you know something – I don’t care.’

The passengers glared at me, speaking in Turkish or Lebanese, as I went to my seat. Another ugly

American, I guessed was what they were saying.

It was with some satisfaction then – after we had touched down in Beirut a short time later – that I realized we weren’t heading to a gate. Instead we stopped out on the apron as a motorized cherry-picker, three police vehicles and half a dozen black SUVs headed out fast to meet us.

As the passengers and cabin crew looked out the windows, wondering what the hell was happening,

getting scared, the icy flight attendant approached me.

‘Mr Wilson?’ she asked. ‘Could you come with me, please.’

A British guy sitting in the next row stared at the squads of armed cops approaching. ‘Jesus – all

that for using your cellphone? The Lebanese don’t screw around, do they?’

He was joking, and it made me smile as I grabbed my carry-on and followed the ice maiden down

the aisle. Two of her colleagues were already turning a handle and releasing one of the cabin doors.

As it slid open, the platform of the cherry-picker rose into place.

Standing on it was a middle-aged guy in a dark suit. He looked into the cabin and saw me. ‘Brodie

Wilson?’ he said.

I nodded.

‘Got your passport?’

I pulled it out and handed it to him. He checked the photograph, the physical description on the data page and entered the serial number into his cellphone. A moment later he got a Code Green and handed the book back.

‘I’m Wesley Carter, Commercial Attaché at the Embassy,’ he said. I had never seen him before, but I

knew it wasn’t true – without doubt, he was CIA station chief, Beirut. ‘You wanna come this way?’

Watched by everybody on board, the ice maiden looking embarrassed, I stepped on to the platform

and the cherry-picker lowered us to the ground. There were four more Americans in suits standing at

strategic points around the SUVs, and I knew they were armed security. They watched as Carter shepherded me into the back of one of the vehicles and signalled to the Lebanese cops in the squad

cars.

They hit their flashing lights and, travelling at high speed, we charged across the asphalt towards

an adjoining runway.

‘We’ve arranged a private jet for you,’ he explained. ‘It belongs to an Arab arms dealer, a sort of

friend of ours. It was the only thing we could get at short notice. The pilots are ours, though – ex air force, so they’re good.’

I looked through the armoured glass and saw a black G-4 corporate jet with an extended fuselage sitting in the distance with its engines running. I wondered how many rocket launchers you had to provide to the CIA’s friends in the Middle East to afford one of those.

Carter spoke quietly. ‘Whisperer told me you were way off the books, said you were looking for

the nuclear trigger.’

I nodded. ‘Isn’t everybody?’

He laughed. ‘You can double-down on that. Three thousand out of Beirut station alone – everybody

in the region’s helping. Nothing anywhere, though. What about you?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing yet.’

‘I think he’s flying solo.’

‘Who?’

‘Nuclear-boy.’

I turned to him. ‘Why?’

‘Human nature, I guess – if he wasn’t, we would have heard something. People always talk; everybody gets sold out. Not far from here, there was a revolutionary guy – not a bomb-thrower but a fanatic, a lot of people said. He had a dozen followers who worshipped him, and they went through

hell together. Even so, one of them sold him out. You know the story – Judas betrayed Jesus with a

kiss.’

Now it was my turn to laugh.

‘It was two thousand years ago,’ Carter continued, ‘and nothing’s changed – not in this part of the

world anyway.’

The SUV pulled to a halt at the steps of the G-4, and I grabbed my bag. ‘Good story,’ I said, and

shook his hand.

I opened the door and ran for the steps. I heard Carter calling after me. ‘Don’t forget – those guys where you’re going, they’re garbage wrapped in skin. Good luck.’

I smiled – I didn’t need luck. Even if the Saracen was flying solo, it didn’t matter. In another few hours I would have his full name, date of birth, a history of his early life and probably a photo. That would be enough for Carter and a hundred other station chiefs like him to mobilize their men and those of other nations – the whole secret world, in fact – to find him.

Forty-eight hours was my estimate. In forty-eight hours we would have him: we were going to do it

in time.

Chapter Three

ALL THE LABELS on the tiny glass bottles were in place. And the Saracen had done it right on schedule.

He had worked tirelessly, but luck had also played a part – one of his colleagues had been in a car

wreck and that had allowed him to pull a series of double shifts.

Right from the outset, he had organized the work like a production line, setting himself up in a section of the storage area hidden behind towers of flattened packaging. Undisturbed, he had a garden hose, a waste drain, a trash compactor, a commercial glue gun and various large plastic tubs at hand.

He filled the tubs with the chemical solvent, slit open the shrink-wrapped slabs of legitimate drugs and immersed the tiny glass vials in the solution for two point five minutes – the optimum length of time, he had found, for floating off the labels. He then laid the labels out in front of a space heater for two minutes to dry – the same time it took him to feed the unwanted bottles into the compactor, crush them to oblivion and hose the liquid drug they had contained down the waste drain.

The slowest part of the process was coating the back of the labels with the glue gun then reattaching them to his own glass vials. At first he had thought it was so slow that he would never make his deadline, but he soon found that not overthinking it, getting into a rhythm, treating himself like a robot with a glue gun, increased the throughput dramatically.

Fortunately for him, the warehouse had its own shrink-wrap machine to repair any packaging which had become damaged during the manufacturing and dispatch process. As a consequence, the Saracen had no difficulty in re-sealing his deadly bottles into the correct packaging.

By the end of his first evening’s work he had one thousand tiny glass vials which were, for all practical purposes, identical to those used by Chyron. They were filled with a similar-looking clear fluid, fitted with the correct labels for a widely used drug, sealed in genuine plastic packs and plastered with legitimate bar codes, serial numbers and dispatch dockets. The only difference, impossible to detect by any other means than sophisticated chemical analysis, was that a potentially lifesaving agent had been replaced by the Saracen’s home-made apocalypse.

Being a doctor, he knew the exact process that would occur once the vials hit America. A medical

practitioner or a suitably qualified nurse would insert a syringe with a needle length of one inch or longer into the top of the bottle. The needle length was important, because the material they thought they were injecting had to be administered by what was called the intramuscular route. It would be injected into the deltoid muscle of the upper arm, and a needle of at least one inch was necessary to penetrate the muscle tissue of adults and older kids properly. In the case of infants and young children, a needle length of seven eighths of an inch was sufficient, but the injection would be given in the rear of the thigh.

No matter the age of the patient or the site of the injection, once the virus was in someone’s body –

and, with an intramuscular injection, there would be no misses – that person could not be saved. They could be described, totally accurately, as a zombie – one of the walking dead.