To the Death am-10 Page 13

  And traveling, moreover, in a car that would not attract a throng of stone-throwing youths once they reached their destination. That only happens to cars bearing the yellow Israeli license plate.

  They covered the thirty-eight miles to Jerusalem in a half hour, moving swiftly along the highway. From the Holy City, it was a two-hour run to the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean coast. They went through the Israeli military checkpoint with barely a word, thanks, no doubt, to the blue license plates. From there into the town of Gaza was a matter of minutes, and in mild traffic they proceeded to the long Omar el-Mokhtar Street, which runs out of the main Shajaria Square all the way to the seafront.

  Gaza has been destroyed by war more than any other town in the world, occupied in its long history by Crusaders, Turks, Muslims, the British, and even by Napoleon’s troops.

  As befits an endless battle zone, Gaza is a coastal eyesore, a squalid place of ruined buildings and constant running fights, Arab against Israeli, Palestinian gangs against the IDF, the haves against the have-nots, right against wrong, neither side prepared to give an inch, which is, of course, the trademark of all wars.

  Ravi and Shakira drove through the sandy streets, past people who had somehow lost everything and whose presence now renders Gaza the “Soweto of Israel.” Arab women, clad in black robes, balancing baskets on their heads, walked through the streets, heading mostly for one of the eight refugee camps, lending a biblical mood to a vicious, thoroughly modern conflict. These are the displaced Palestinians, thousands of them refugees, blaming the West, blaming especially America and Great Britain, blaming the Israelis. None of it without reason.

  Yet this was the spiritual home of Ravi Rashood, the Iranian-born, Harrow-educated British Army officer, who had answered the mystical call of the desert, and its people, after rescuing a Palestinian girl, whom he later married.

  For here, in the 3,500-year-old city, lay the roots of his new calling, the foundations of the terrifying fundamentalist organization, Hamas. It all began right here in Gaza, in 1987, when this often-savage branch of the Islamic Resistance Movement was born, created by the fanatical Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

  The word Hamas means enthusiasm and exaltation of the Prophet Mohammed, whose grandfather Hamesh is entombed somewhere here in the city. The organization has always claimed much more modern roots, however, with connections to the fabled Muslim Brothers formed in Egypt in 1929.

  It is best known for sensational acts of violence, bombs, shooting, and general mayhem against Israel. Hated by the rest of the country, Hamas operated for years in some kind of chaotic murder rampage. It was not until the former SAS major Ray Kerman appeared, first as an experienced officer and then as their fully fledged C-in-C, that Hamas truly did replace the Palestine Liberation Organization as the undisputed front-line muscle of the movement.

  In a sense, as they drove through the dusty streets of Gaza, Ravi and Shakira were both coming home. They had spent little time here since Major Kerman first fled the authorities with his young bride-to-be. But now they both sensed a warm welcome awaited them behind these rubble-strewn living areas.

  And as they drove on toward the relatively less damaged area of Omar el-Mokhtar Street, they found themselves in a kind of suburb, with white-walled courtyards, palm trees, and green shrubs.

  Shakira, who had been born here in the city, just smiled and said, “I always liked it here, Ravi. I think we’ll be very happy.” Ravi, ever the pragmatist, still shaken by the mini-atom bomb which had nearly sent him over the bridge into the arms of Allah, looked nothing like so sure, and not even remotely cheerful.

  The car turned into a side street, and then into a labyrinth of small apartment blocks. At the end of the second street, they pulled alongside a high wall, this one red brick rather than whitewashed cement. In the center, it contained a glossy black-painted wooden gate with a six-inch-square door placed in the center around head height.

  The chauffeur climbed out and tapped on the big gate. The smaller door opened inward and a voice spoke in Arabic.

  “Please, sir, madam, you come now,” said the chauffeur, and they both stepped out of the vehicle into the bright sunlight. The big gate opened and a sentry, holding an AK-47, saluted as Ravi and Shakira walked through into a shaded stone courtyard with a large fountain splashing in the center.

  “Perhaps you would like some water,” said the sentry. “Please wait, sir, while I fetch the colonel.”

  Ravi filled two small stoneware cups from the fountain, handed one to his wife, and glugged the other one himself. Almost immediately, the door to the house, which was situated at the north end of the courtyard, opened and Colonel Hassad Abdullah emerged, an old comrade of Ravi’s from the attack on the Nimrod Jail.

  The two men stared at each other in the unmistakable way of the Bedouin, and then they clasped hands and hugged with the reserved joy of fighting men who somehow had lived to tell the tale.

  “General Rashood!” exclaimed the colonel. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am you came today. We will dine together tonight. But then I must go. I think you understand that our High Command is very concerned about the bomb that almost killed you. Well, they’ve appointed me to investigate. I leave for Damascus early tomorrow.”

  “Now, that is very sad,” replied Ravi. “I was hoping we might have a few days together. Talk over the past, and, of course, the future.”

  “Alas, we have only this evening,” replied the colonel. “That bomb in Bab Touma has sent shockwaves through our entire community.”

  “I suppose they still have no idea who was responsible?” asked Ravi.

  “No one’s told me. But I have been posted immediately to Damascus.”

  “Who does that leave in this house?”

  “Just the servants, and two guards at all times. Only you and Shakira.”

  “You think it’s safe here?”

  “Oh, most definitely. Particularly since no one has even the slightest clue who you are.”

  0900 Sunday 12 February Bab Touma Street, Damascus

  Colonel Hassad Abdullah had been patrolling the street since first light, trying to ascertain where the men who had tried to blow up General Rashood had been stationed. The police report, stressing that the bomb had gone off within minutes of the arrival home of Shakira and Abdul, made it absolutely certain in the minds of the Hamas High Command that someone had been watching.

  Only by discovering from where they had watched could the Hamas colonel work out who might have done it. There must be clues. There were always clues. The issue was, where to find them.

  Right now he had narrowed it down. The forensic investigators had ascertained that Abdul had been in that front room when he died. So had the bomb. The shards of a big table were so small that it had definitely been right in the upward path of the explosion.

  Therefore, whoever had watched had had their eyes on that room. That meant the opposite side of the street, which narrowed down the options. There were only about three places where a would-be assassin could observe the Rashood residence. And only one of them was empty.

  Colonel Abdullah had been met with total noncooperation from the real estate agent, and that heightened his suspicions. Which was why he and a young Hamas freedom fighter were about to break into the back entrance of the apartment block lately vacated by the Mossad hit team. In fact, the younger warrior had just wrenched the back door lock open, and was now beckoning the colonel to join him in the building.

  Five minutes later, they were both outside the top-floor apartment. The building was quiet, and the colonel himself, using a small crowbar, ripped open the lock to the sound of splintering wood, and they were in.

  Silently they moved through the deserted rooms. All empty. Too empty. Someone had wiped out everything. At first sight, there was not a trace that anyone had ever been there, and Colonel Abdullah stood gazing out of the window, muttering to himself, “These were real professionals.”

  For in his honed, alert, and instinctive terro
rist soul, he sensed he was in the right place, enjoying a perfect view of the gaping hole where once there had been a house, right across Bab Touma Street.

  Quietly, he drew back the curtains. Very slightly. They were made of brand-new material, too good for an old slum of a place like this. And then he peeped through the space between them, thinking to himself how little he would have liked that, even if the room was dark. Anyone looking out of the old Rashood residence could have seen the telltale gap. And perhaps wondered who was up there, spying. Especially if they were trained security guards.

  And then Colonel Hassad Abdullah spotted a flaw in the obviously new curtain material. Not so much a flaw, actually: a hole, very deliberately cut. And not just one hole. Two of them, about four inches apart.

  He poked his fingers through, and tried to look through, out across the street. But the holes were too wide apart. Hmmm, he thought, perhaps just right for binoculars.

  They searched for another half hour, but Jerry had been thorough. There was indeed nothing to discover. This had been a ruthlessly planned, most daring and savage attack on the commander in chief. Hamas, in their bloodthirsty and vengeful creed, were vowed and determined to catch, and execute, whoever had been responsible.

  But all Colonel Hassad Abdullah had to show for his investigation were two small holes in the curtains. And in his opinion, that was quite sufficient.

  Because that apartment had confirmed a great deal. First of all, the place had been rented for only one month. Second, the other apartment on the top floor had been purchased by the same people, and was now for sale. The real estate agent had provided at least that.

  Third, it was the perfect observation post. Those three facts alone suggested that the attempt on General Rashood’s life had been conducted by a professional organization, almost certainly state-sponsored. The newly cut curtains, the sheer size of the explosion, the perfection of the cleanup. It was all carried out with absolute professionalism.

  This was no murder attempt by a bunch of hoodlums. This was military. And that really narrowed it all down. Because in all the world, General Rashood had only two copper-bottomed, grudge-bearing, rich, relentless enemies — the United States of America, and Israel’s Mossad. No one else could possibly hate like them.

  In the city of Gaza where the High Command of Hamas was ensconced, the first minister, Commodore Tariq Fahd, was already following the case along those lines. And he had a set of circumstances that were leading him ever onward.

  He called a meeting at the secret underground situation room in the house where Ravi and Shakira lived. Colonel Abdullah was back from Damascus; his second in command, Major Faisal Sabah, was in the city; and two other senior Hamas councillors, Ahmed Alaam and Ali al-Fayed, were also summoned.

  They gathered together at 10 A.M. on Wednesday, February 15, six jihadist warriors, plus Shakira, who would, if required, kill her Western opponents without mercy.

  There were no chairs in the room, just a table. They sat beneath plain whitewashed walls on big colored cushions set upon the sandy floor. There was no window in the room, but there was a stone air vent which led outside into the garden. Lengths of four-inch-thick wood had been carved into elaborate double doors, beyond which were four armed guards.

  Commodore Tariq Fahd greeted everyone, and the house servants came in with pots of Turkish coffee, served in plain glasses set into silver holders. They also brought two trays of the sugared, almond-flavored pastries that are so favored in that part of the world.

  “It is, of course, obvious now, certainly to all of us, that someone has tried, very determinedly, to execute our commander in chief. Thankfully, we are all able to welcome him and Shakira here today, and to swear, by the blood of the Prophet, vengeance upon these enemies.”

  He hesitated for a moment and sipped his coffee. “I should like, if I may, to outline the sequence of events that I believe will lead us to an inevitable conclusion. I should add that I am using only known facts rather than any form of supposition.

  “Therefore, I will begin in the small hours of January 15, when we know beyond any doubt that our brother Ramon Salman made a call of confirmation to our command headquarters on Sharia Bab Touma. General Rashood himself took the call and was informed the attack on the Boston airport was a go.” General Rashood nodded in agreement.

  “A few hours later,” continued Commodore Fahd, “that attack was foiled, principally because our senior operations man somehow allowed the briefcase carrying the explosive to fall into the hands of a policeman.

  “We were then delivered two terrible blows. Our second field operator was shot dead by the Boston police, and the injured Reza Aghani was taken into police custody. We know he went into Massachusetts General Hospital, but from there we are ill-informed.

  “Our lawyers say Aghani was almost immediately removed from the United States judicial system. Which most certainly means he was transferred to a military interrogation center. In the opinion of our lawyers, that most certainly means Guantánamo Bay, given the enormity of his potential crime.

  “For the purpose of this meeting, we will assume he reached Cuba by January 18. And then, in a very bizarre twist of fate, the New York police picked up Ramon Salman in the Houston Street apartment within a day of that happening. He too was removed from the U.S. justice system, and that much is definite. We have no proof he was also transported to Guantánamo Bay, but our American lawyers say he almost certainly was.

  “So we may assume that by January 23, after three days of torture and brutal U.S. interrogation, Ramon Salman may have told them what they wanted to know.”

  Commodore Tariq Fahd paused theatrically, and then said, “Four days later, installed in the house directly opposite General Rashood’s residence on Bab Touma, there is a hit team which makes a thoroughly professional attempt on his life, murdering his guards first, in the classic manner of trained Special Forces.”

  Colonel Abdullah turned to Ravi and said, “How good were your guards? Are you surprised they were dispensed with so efficiently?”

  The terrorist C-in-C looked pensive. Shakira stood up and walked to a table and poured more coffee for her husband. “On reflection, Colonel,” he said, “I am extremely surprised. One of those two guards had fought with me at the Nimrod Jail, and you may remember him yourself. He was the one in the hood, the one who hit the gatehouse, blew away the guards, and smashed the communications system. He was top-class.”

  “Of course,” said the commodore, “it’s always easier to succeed when you have the element of surprise on your side. At the jail, the man in the hood had every advantage. Not so on Sharia Bab Touma, hah?”

  “Correct,” replied Ravi. “Nonetheless, it remains difficult to imagine how my highly trained bodyguards could have succumbed so quickly to an outside attack.”

  “The men who killed the guards were either Israeli or American,” said the commodore. “Of that we can be certain. I do not think the Americans would have moved Special Forces into Damascus so quickly. But I accept they might have.”

  General Rashood added, “Whoever it was had all the skills of U.S. Navy SEALs. It was either them or the Mossad. No one else.”

  “How about Great Britain’s SAS Regiment, which did so much for the Israelis?” asked Colonel Abdullah, smiling. “Could they have done it? I am sure the general here will attest to their efficiency.”

  “I think they could most certainly have done it. But that last Labour government in Westminster did so much damage to the armed forces, I don’t think they’ve ever recovered. Or ever will. No, the Brits could no longer move that fast. Only the Israelis or the Americans.”

  “And which one would you favor?” asked the commodore.

  “I’d say it was a combination,” said Ravi. “The Americans have the peace talks coming up in a few weeks. The last thing they need is to get caught blowing up hunks of historic old Damascus.”

  “Well, if I had to guess,” said Tariq Fahd, “I’d say the hideous Americans
tortured our people, wrung the information out of them, and then tipped off the Israelis to come in and nail the Hamas C-in-C, the man Ramon Salman telephoned the night before the Logan airport bomb.”

  “I’d go with that,” said Ravi. “And I should remind all of you, the Mossad always favors the bomb against the bullet. And I doubt they have ever forgiven me for the death of their senior operatives in the restaurant in Marseilles.”

  “Not to mention wiping out the entire jail staff at Nimrod, and, in one hit, liberating every last one of the most sworn enemies of Israel.” Tariq Fahd looked wistful.

  “Do any of you think we should seek revenge, on behalf of Allah and the Prophet?”

  “Always,” said General Rashood. “We should never accept a strike against us on this scale without an immediate response. The problem is, the Mossad probably considers its operation in Bab Touma to have been the most terrible failure. And anyway, you all understand how difficult it is to mount an attack on the Israelis. They’re liable to come back and flatten this entire city. If they suspect Hamas.”

  “They won’t just suspect Hamas,” said the commodore. “If anything happens to them, they’ll know it was us, before the dust clears.”

  “Nonetheless, I think we should most certainly devote some time toward planning a major strike against either the Mossad or the USA,” said Ravi. “Something devastating, something that will surely grab the headlines. Make ’em sit up and listen to us, as they have never really done since 9/11. Never done since our beloved Osama bowed out.”

  “Could we blow up their entire headquarters on King Saul Boulevard?”

  “Only if we did not mind losing possibly twenty of the highest-qualified personnel we have,” replied General Rashood. “Because that’s what it would take, and that’s what would happen. We’d never get out alive.”