The Godless One (3 page)

"But if it’s Uday behind this, as you
say, no one at internal security will protest."

"Do any of us know where our orders
originate? No, not really." Ghaith stared out the window as they
passed one of the dilapidated housing projects Saddam Hussein had
let fall into disrepair once he decided there were more urgent
matters to attend to than poor Shia. "I wonder what the Boss will
say once he finds out about this. Don’t forget, Uday spent three
months in prison after killing that man at the grand fête. I like
to think I have more status than a valet."

Abu Rahman, distracted by
what he was hearing, found it difficult to negotiate the left at
Maysaloon Square, onto Palestine Street. "You
know
him?"

"Actually, not very well. Uh…better
stop here. We don’t want Sabri Khalil’s men to see an army coming
for them, do we? Just up this way. House Number 22."

"How do you—" Abu Rahman bit his lip.
Ghaith was toying with him. He pulled into a side road and the
other cars fell in behind. He spoke into his radio and the drivers
scattered to whatever parking space they could find. "I won’t let
it happen, Colonel," Abdul Rahmal said earnestly. "I’ll post
snipers. I’ll have men covering—"

Ghaith said, "Look…"

The white gate at House Number 22 had
opened and a plump man carrying a basket in each hand sauntered
out. He sat the baskets down. Immediately a group of children raced
up to greet him. He began distributing apples, figs, grapes,
mangoes.

"Quite a gardener, and he gives most of
his produce away to his neighbors." Abdul Rahmal watched the man
throw back his head, joining in with the laughter of the children.
"Hard to believe this is the guy who buried men alive with pipes
down to their mouths so they could breathe and be given water. Once
the Revolutionary Council passed the death sentence, he’d stick a
gun in the open end and pull the trigger. And since he ran the
Council, it was perfectly—" His throat constricted at
’legal’.

"He’s put on weight since I last saw
him," Ghaith observed. "Lost some off the top, too."

"When did you last see him?" asked a
startled Abdul Rahman.

"At the border when he came back to
Iraq," Ghaith answered blandly. "I gave him his Yemeni passport.
Fake, of course."

A man wearing a
thawb
approached the
gate and greeted Abu Nidal, who called out to someone beyond the
wall. A moment later a servant emerged with another basket and held
it up before the newcomer.

"Fresh falafel," said Ghaith, a little
dreamily.

"And he makes a first-rate
rice pudding, too," said Abdul Rahmal. "Since he left his wife and
family behind in Jordan, he’s become an excellent chef. That man
over there is
Muyassar
al-Katheli
, his landlord."

"Does he know…?"

"You mean
you
don’t know?" Abdul
Rahmal teased harshly. "No, he doesn’t have a clue. None of them
around here do. They think he’s ‘Abu Ali’. Back on September 11,
2001, the Boss sent the police here. He was trying to find out if
Abu Nidal had anything to do with the hijackings in America. As
soon as he figured out it was bin Laden, the house arrest ended.
Abu Nidal went around giving cakes to his neighbors and telling
them he had requested police protection from a merchant who wanted
to kill him for some reason or another."

The baskets were emptied. The servant
brought out more.

"They say he’s sick," Abdul Rahmal
continued. "Skin cancer. Even leukemia. I don’t see why we can’t
just wait and let him drop dead."

"That leukemia story came out years
ago," Ghaith chuckled. "If it had been true, he would have been
dead ten times over by now. So…"

"Why does the Boss want him dead, now?"
Abdul Rahmal shrugged. "Any number of reasons. They say he’s been
working for the Saudis, the Jordanians, even the
Americans."

"Mossad?"

"Like I said, the
Americans."

"I think the Boss is making a mistake
if he’s doing this to get the Americans off his back," Ghaith said
conversationally. "Those bastards are coming, no matter what. And
they don’t want Abu Nidal dead. They want to find out how many ANO
men are running around half-cocked in the States. Oliver North put
an alarm system in his house to protect his family from this guy.
He testified before Congress about it."

"I don’t speculate about international
diplomacy," said Abdul Rahman glumly.

"No, the
Mukhabarat
just kills
internationally."

"You should know," Abul Rahman shot
back. "You’ve worked for us enough times."

Ghaith shrugged. "There he
goes…"

All of the baskets were now empty. The
landlord and children departed and Abu Nidal turned back through
the gate. Ghaith stepped out of the car.

"You’re in a rush?" Abdul Rahmah asked,
surprised.

"We might as well get this over
with."

To Abdul Rahmah’s astonishment, the
colonel had resumed his grin.

"But my men aren’t in
position!"

"Hurry them along, then."
He paused a moment, looking through the passenger window at Abdul
Rahmah. The
Mukhabarat
agent wondered if he was going to ask for the loan of a gun.
This would open his betrayal to the light of day. But Ghaith seemed
to need no more evidence. With a twist of his lips, he stood and
walked down the narrow street. As Ghaith passed through the line of
parked cars, Abdul Rahman signaled to the Office 8 car nearest him.
Omar Pachachi got out and ran over to the Audi, sliding into
Ghaith’s vacated seat.

"You want me to get the men ready?" he
asked tentatively, leaving the door open. "You said you
might…"

"That was until I learned who was
behind this," Abdul Rahman answered bitterly. "He’s been a fool. He
offended—"

Both men jumped when Ghaith suddenly
reappeared next to the car.

"Here," he said, tossing a
wallet carelessly onto Omar‘s lap. The wallet bounced off Omar’s
knee onto the floor of the car. "Ah!
Samehni…"
Omar tensed when Ghaith
brushed against him as he reached down and retrieved the wallet.
"Please take this to my wife, in case I meet the well-deserved fate
of a foolish man."

"Colonel," Abdul Rahman
began.

"I might trip over my own feet and
break my neck, so please see that she gets this little memento. And
give her my love."

This surprised Abdul Rahman, as it
would have surprised most other men with his background. In the
land of Bait-al-taa (House of Obedience) men said little about love
for their wives, especially after almost twenty years of marriage.
If they mentioned love at all, which was not likely, they would
send it to their fathers and sons, with perhaps a rhetorical peck
to beloved members of their tribe, most particularly their tribal
leader. This decadent farewell set Abdul Rahman aback. He could
only conclude that it was an artifact of misplaced sentiment left
over from some American movie Ghaith had seen as a
child.

"Don’t forget, Uday wants a corpse, not
a hero. If I live, you're in the shit."

"Colonel, I swear I will
help—"

"I see," smiled Ghaith, looking at the
Office 8 men sitting immovable in their cars.

"The price of failure is steep," said
Abdul Rahman almost angrily.

"And success is just as dangerous,"
said Ghaith.

Both men fell silent and looked at
Omar, as though sharing a ‘what-a-world’ moment. Then Ghaith made a
farewell gesture that was vaguely insulting, almost as if he had
held up his palm in front of Abdul Rahman’s face. Abdul Rahman felt
like shooting him in the back as he walked away with so much
confidence the trees lining the street seemed to genuflect. It was
hard to mourn for the very man over whose fate he was weeping just
minutes ago. And then it struck Abdul Rahman that the colonel was
putting on a show to mask his terror. Certainly, it was an odd
show, very unlike the usual boastful avowals of men striking out
for the front, chastising dread and thanking Allah for the
privilege of dying in His cause. But it was a show, nonetheless.
Abdul Rahman sighed and withdrew his mental reservations. He had no
choice in the matter, in any event.

"Mmmm, fancy," said Omar,
flitting through Ghaith‘s Moroccan leather wallet. "It's our job,"
he added in response to a dark glance from Abdul Rahman, though
with a smirk that added:
and isn't that a
kick
? He gave a sudden shout and pulled
out an American Express card. "What the hell is he doing with
this?"

Abdul Rahmal’s grin vanished quickly
when Omar sensed something amiss and grasped his side. His Tariq
9mm was gone.

"He stole my gun! But that‘s
impossible! I can‘t—it‘s impossible!"

Abdul Rahmal gripped the steering wheel
and leaned forward to look through the windshield. It was too late.
The colonel had already gone through the gate. His head floated
upwards behind the broad leaves of a fig tree as he ascended the
steps to House Number 22.

Ghaith assumed he had been under
observation from the upper story ever since he passed through the
line of parked cars. He would have been hidden temporarily by the
wall surrounding the house, but once he opened the white gate he
would be in clear view of all the front windows. There was no real
point in trying to sneak up on the place. Nor was there time, not
with two and a half dozen Office 8 assassins less than a block
away, impatiently cooling their heels.

So he did what any self-respecting
citizen with nothing to hide would do: he knocked.

The door began to inch open. This was
good. He could use it as a weapon.

He kicked it in. The guard tried to
jump back but he was one step short of safety when Ghaith’s
stiffened fingers buckled his windpipe. Ghaith grabbed him as he
staggered and gathered him in as he pulled Omar’s gun from his
waistband. It was up and pointed at the middle of three men as he
twisted the injured guard like a top and locked him in his forearm.
The man began to sag. Ghaith braced him up.

"Hold it!" he shouted as the others
raised their guns. One had a pistol, a Tariq just like the one in
Ghaith’s hand. The other two had Kalashnikovs. They could have
riddled him on the spot, but they were obviously concerned for the
welfare of their compatriot.

These were not the men Ghaith had been
hoping to confront. Before coming to Iraq, Abu Nidal had spent some
time in Libya and Egypt. It would have been normal for him to hire
a few poor street thugs from the streets of Benghazi or Cairo as
personal bodyguards. Young dimwits who would have been susceptible
to a bribe. But these men were in IPS uniforms. Ordinary cops, but
with better character.

Perhaps.

"There are thirty agents from Office 8
outside right now. I could probably kill all of you—that’s what
I’ve been trained to do. But I’d rather talk. New! Inventive! But
that’s the way I am."

One of the men raised his rifle a
little higher.

"And even if I lose…I might, I’ll grant
that…they’ll be coming for you."

"Why should we worry about them?" the
man with the pistol said. "Let go of Karim. Then we can
talk."

Karim. Ghaith’s son’s name. What an
ironic world.

Karim, in fact, was beginning to choke.
Ghaith did not think he had dealt him a killing blow, but there was
always room for error. He eased his forearm and the young man
seemed to breathe more easily.

"They’ve come for that Palestinian
bug-eater," said Ghaith. "But why would they send an assassination
team—and a large one, at that—if all they had to do is ask you boys
to step aside and let them do their job? One or two would be enough
to do finish off Abu Nidal, with or without your help. Thirty?
That’s a big production."

The three men ranked against him began
to look doubtful.

"Right," Ghaith continued. "You’re
targets, too. And I bet I can guess why. You’re a bunch of
fuck-ups, aren’t you? You pissed off your commander, and he
punished you by giving you this shit assignment, guarding an old
man. Did your gun accidentally discharge into someone’s foot? Did
you fart in front of the Boss when his cavalcade went by? I
wouldn’t be surprised if every one of you is Shia. They’d want to
get rid of you for that, alone."

Their furtive, exchanged glances told
Ghaith he was on the right track. They had griped to each other
about their missteps and unfair punishment. They knew they were
flawed. And now they realized their flaws might be
fatal.

"The Boss wants to get rid of Abu Nidal
because he’s a dangerous embarrassment. He wants to make a big show
of it: gunfire, screaming, blood on the walls. The ANO won’t like
it, but the West will ejaculate with glee. And if there are four
dead cops on the scene, that will just prove how serious the Boss
is about eliminating terrorism from this lovely
country."