Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler) (19 page)

“I will tell you more about it in privacy. But if Mohd indeed lives in this area, then let’s knock on his door and ask him what he knows.”

The chief looked at his large gold watch. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. “At this hour? There is such a thing called respect for your elders,” the chief joked. The private investigator and counsel was more than a dozen years younger.

Tariq smiled back. “Well, if he helped you before, then why not apologize for your urgency. We can tell him that we meant to seek his advice on this matter much earlier, but that time got away from us. Nevertheless, this matter is still urgent, particularly to consult with a man of your respect and influence.”

Ali laughed at his clever reasoning. He placed a kind hand on Tariq’s shoulder and said, “When are you coming back to the force? We could always use you. You know I plan to retire soon.”

Tariq chuckled. “I think I like to
choose
my work a lot more than I like it being assigned to me. I also prefer to work without the hassles of so many reports.” He pointed to his head with his index finger and concluded, “I like to file what I know right here.”

“You mean you like to be lazy while choosing to work for more money. I can’t argue with that, my friend.”

Tariq continued to counter him. “I don’t consider sixteen straight hours on the job as lazy. But your point about choosing to make more money is a fact.”

Ali reached out to touch Tariq’s casual clothes and said, “Although I cannot tell from your style of dress. Maybe that’s something else you don’t want to do.” The chief clapped his powerful hands. “Anyway, let’s give Mohd a visit tonight and see what we can find out.”

*****

As soon as the chief and his men located Mohd Ahmed Nasir’s building from their inquiries on the street, Tariq followed him and several UAE police officers into the gray cement apartment complex and up to the top floor in search of the Egyptian.

They all walked up to room 519 in unison and knocked on the door several times, with no answer.

“Hello. Mohd?
Hotepl”
the chief shouted through the locked door. He could be a loud and abrasive man, even after midnight.

He looked back at Tariq. “What do you think now? Should we break in the door? He simply may not be home.”

Tariq shrugged. “He may have left earlier, at the same time that your men chased and killed the innocent laborer.”

A few of the lower-ranking police officers fidgeted in embarrassment, but Tariq owed them no allegiances or kindness. They were men in need of more seasoning.

“It was a perfect diversion.”

Before Ali could argue his point otherwise, someone cracked the door up the hallway. Tariq and Ali both looked and spotted a small Muslim woman inside the hall.

“He left,” she whispered tersely in English. “He and his men.” She then pointed at his door, shaking with fear.

Understanding the woman’s bravery, Ali nodded and signaled for her to close her door back. She had said enough, and she did not need to make herself a target.

“Shukran jazeelan,”
he thanked her in Arabic.

When the woman closed her door back, the chief went immediately into action.

“Okay, break it in,” he told his men.

Three eager policemen prepared to smash down Mohd’s apartment door with force before Tariq stopped them.

“What if there was an explosion behind the door?”

The men stopped in terror and looked toward Ali.

Ali took another look at the door wedge and assumed that everything was normal. Then he sniffed the door and smelled nothing peculiar.

Without another word to anyone, the police chief pulled out his pistol and kicked the door open, using his right foot with the force of a mule. His young policemen drew back, as if expecting a bomb to go off. But with no big boom of explosion, Ali aimed his gun inside the room before entering.

Tariq walked in behind his fearless veteran friend, followed by the shaken officers.

The apartment was empty with only scented candles on the floor. They were equally placed around the room. The chief continued to sniff around the premises, picking up the hovering aroma of hard steel and gunpowder. He knew the cold metal smell and ammunition of high-powered artillery without a need for dogs.

Even Tariq could smell it.

He nodded and stated the obvious. “They tried to cover up the scent with candles.”

Ali placed his gun back inside of his hip holster. “I guess we have our man. But this looks like a lot more than just knives.” He thought about it and stated his own obvious conclusion. “Something much bigger is being planned.”

The police chief looked back at Tariq, expecting another big idea from him.

The private investigator and counsel concluded, “It’s all about the workers. This entire area is filled with nothing but laborers. And those who were killed obviously knew too much.”

Ali paused. “Well, now we need to find out who else knows and see what they’re after,” he commented, “and
quickly.”
He eyed Tariq and asked him, “How many hours of sleep do you need?”

At first Tariq hesitated. Then he answered, “None. Let’s just keep working.”

Chapter 20

Tariq sat inside Ali’s unmarked police vehicle so he could tell him in private all that he knew about Mohd Ahmed Nasir and his vendetta against
Emirati
builder Abdul Khalif Hassan. He figured their dispute from years ago could now elevate into a much larger national concern.

Ali listened to it all while sitting in the driver’s seat of his parked car, and he nodded. “Interesting. Indeed, I admit the
Emirati
practice of using so much cheap immigrant labor for construction has caused many issues with fair employment and wages. Even these man-made islands from the Nakheel Properties have been built from nearly
all
immigrant hands and have created new real estate and tourism for mostly foreigners.”

“Precisely. And how much of this is enough?” Tariq questioned. “How much of the population of Dubai is even local to the Middle East?”

Tariq’s own family was from the neighboring Muslim nation of Oman.

Ali shrugged and asked, “So what do you think Mohd and his followers are up to? You think he wants a workers’ revolt or an uprising against Abdul and his properties? How many men do you believe Mohd has?”

Tariq thought about it and answered, “A few dozen men with assault weapons would be more than enough.”

Both of them understood the strict gun and firearms laws of the United Arab Emirates, but where there was a will there was a way. Desperate men found ways to break laws all over the world.

Ali asked, “You think he has that many men?”

“He could very easily,” Tariq answered. “If he has a dozen men here in Deira, a dozen in Sharjah and a dozen somewhere else, they could easily reach fifty.”

“With weapons? And then what? Shut down Abdul’s new construction sites?”

“Apparently, they have already begun to shut down Abdul’s sites. Many of the men have quit since last week. But the guns now confuse me. That would lead me to believe that it is more serious than that,” Tariq commented.

Ali paused before asking the unthinkable. “You don’t believe Mohd and his men would try anything to harm Abdul’s wife or his family, do you?”

A wife-for-a-wife proposition was not out of the question. However, Tariq shook his head immediately, doubting that extreme.

“That would be highly unlikely,” he answered. “And I am sure that Abdul has already prepared for it. His wife and child are both very young.”

“And his wife, from what I have heard, is also very outspoken,” the police chief added.

Tariq grinned and thought of his own wife and young daughter. “They will all be that way very soon. It is the natural influence of the world. Women are regarded much more highly than they used to be. But where do we start now—in Sharjah? We need to go find him.”

Tariq wanted to return to the business at hand with Mohd, but Ali looked very weary behind his wheel. He exhaled and was ready to rest for the evening.

“Since you are now able to pick and choose when and what you work on, you can also choose when you would like to rest. But I do not have that choice, and I have already been called out of bed tonight. So if you are determined to drive out to Sharjah this evening, I can have some of my men go with you there, and I will have more the first thing in the morning when I arrive. But as of right now …”

Ali looked at his watch again. It was closing in on two o’clock in the morning.

“I pray to Allah that they don’t try anything tonight. But I seriously doubt they will. And we will have a few full days to figure out everything starting tomorrow.”

Tariq considered the time as well. He had been working on sheer adrenaline all day long, but maybe it was best to rest up and think things through for the next day.

“I hope you are right. And we’ll both go to bed then and start things off fresh tomorrow.”

“That would be best,” Ali assured him. “We can only do so much in a day.”

The two men shook hands as Tariq climbed out of the chief’s car and walked across the street in the night to his own, a black Saab. Once he sat inside behind the wheel, Tariq called his wife.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m on my way home now.”

His wife told him to drive safely, and Tariq started up his engine.

*****

As the early morning sunlight began to rise that Saturday, airplanes landed and took off from the airport, trucks and cars made their way in out and around Dubai, and the early shift workers began to arrive at work, while the night shift left, particularly at the countless hotel buildings.

Trucks with fresh food, new sheets and towels and boxes of cleaning utilities with bathroom supplies would pull up early and often. Supply trucks in downtown Dubai were perfectly normal. So no one became alarmed when the two trucks from the warehouse in Jebel Ali drove into the loading areas at the back of the International Suites. However, instead of a driver or two to unload supplies, the trucks were full of armed men. They backed into the loading gate, where the security guards and storage workers had been tied up and locked into a small bathroom from the early morning and the night before. The hotel’s surveillance room, filled with dozens of security camera monitors, was the first thing they had sabotaged. That allowed Heru’s men to watch everything going on in and around the hotel, including the movements of the United Arab Emirates police force.

“Hurry up and move into place,” the men were told in several languages as they filed out of the two trucks, all dressed in hotel staff and technician uniforms. Several different groups of men split up and hurried to the hotel stairs to enter the building. Another group of men entered the electronics room to disable the phones, Internet and satellite communications systems, all when ready.

Back at the loading gate, the same soldier from the warehouse the evening before had a private conversation with the lead organizer.

“Heru, your father asked us where you were last night, and he did not seem so eager to move forward with our plans.”

Heru was taller and younger, with a slight beard, and he was much more rugged than his father. Now in his early thirties, Heru’s fierce brown eyes hinted that he was more capable of intense violence as well. He had already shown his lethal combat skills and speed with his knife the night before in Deira.

“That’s because my father is still a man of reason. He is completely broken from his tragedy, yet he remains peaceful. As for me, I have not been blessed with the gene of peace. And I assume that my father asked for a private moment to pray.”

The soldier smiled and confirmed it with a nod. “You know your father well.”

“Of course I do. And my father also knows me. That is why he began to pray. He knows that there is no turning back from this. And we will make our presence felt today.”

*****

At the warehouse near the foot of Jebel Ali’s industrial park, Mohd awaited a call on his cell phone. A half a dozen men were still there to protect him, while Mohd remained upstairs in his small office, running out of valuable time. Time was of the essence.

“May Allah choose to be merciful,” he mumbled to himself.

I fear we may need a miracle to stop my son from his misguided madness,
he thought.

*****

Back at the Hilton downtown, Gary began to stir from his sleep. His cell phone was buzzing louder and louder from the nightstand to wake him, but he tried his best to ignore it.

Gary rolled over and slapped it with his hand to shut it off, as if it was an old-school alarm clock. But the cell phone continued to buzz.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

He grabbed the phone to view the call. It was Jonah. Gary checked the local time before he decided to answer. He had no choice. “Okay, what time is it over there, eleven o’clock at night?”

“Wow, you’re good. Are you looking at the time translations off your phone?” she asked him.

“No, I’m guessing. But it’s only seven in the morning over here, and I’m dead
tired.
So what is it?” he snapped.

“Actually, I just wanted to call and make sure you still had your phone on you.”

“Didn’t you hear my snoring?” he joked.

“Actually, no. From what I’ve been able to hear, you’re a pretty quiet sleeper.”

Gary shook his head and still couldn’t believe that he was being tracked like an animal, even halfway across the world.

“Do other people know about phones like these?”

“Those who need to know.”

“Yeah, so I guess I get to be one of the first guinea pigs.”

“Actually, your father just wanted me to check back in on you, and I told him that I would.”

“Oh, it’s him again. I guess you told him I’m in Dubai.”

“Of course I did. I can’t lie to him. But he considers Dubai to be pretty safe. He’s been there himself a few times. He believes you’ll get into less trouble with the women there.”

Gary thought about that and grinned. Had he still been a wreckless dating man, there was plenty of trouble he could get into with the foreign women of Dubai.