Agent of Influence: A Thriller (7 page)

Aman would never forget the look of steely determination on Hussan’s face. It immediately endeared him to the cause before he even fully understood what he was getting himself into. A true Muslim Caliphate had not enjoyed real global power for hundreds of years. The Caliphate reached its pinnacle only years after the death of Mohammad, and its power
was slowly drained until it no longer existed. The Caliphate’s fate followed the same downward spiral as the Muslims themselves.

Aman remembered the man’s cracking voice as he continued his pleas. “Your father did much for our cause and …” Hussan had hesitated as he struggled to find the words.

“What?” Aman remembered spitting out the word with a mixture of anger and disbelief. He could still remember Hussan’s hesitation, followed by the man’s body shaking violently.

“He was about to ask you to begin working with us when he was murdered. That was why he moved you and your family to
America. He was not running from the war, but embracing it. Burrowing himself in the den of the enemy. Studying their true strengths and vulnerabilities. He realized the truth; the truth that killing Jews was pointless, regardless of how good it made some of our countrymen feel. Hitler learned this the hard way. To truly bring the Muslim faith back to prominence, the entire animal of the West would have to be slaughtered, not just the Jewish parasite invading it.”

***

It was over sixty years later and Aman still marveled at the forbearance of his father and Hussan. If organizations like Arafat’s Fatah movement would have adhered to similar principles, then the world could have been a different place. It was just as well, Aman thought to himself. The glory was his for the taking, and now was the time to seize it.

Alex’s eyes popped
open, interrupting what was quickly becoming a horrific nightmare. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and turned down the thermostat. The wall-mounted air conditioner kicked to life. He slowly got out of bed. The late night dinner he treated himself to with his winnings had finally caught up with him, and he groped in the dark towards the bathroom. After five minutes on the toilet, he felt human again. He stared into the mirror, closely scrutinizing the beginning of a beard. He had dreamed that his ex-wife was the unknown woman who dropped the cell phone in his pocket, and that she was actually a spy who was going to be his boss at the CIA. She was taking him to work attached to a leash when he woke up in a cold sweat.

              The nightmare reminded him of his strange encounter at the airport. He grabbed the blue jeans sitting across the chair and felt inside the pocket until he found the cell phone. He forgot about it after all the excitement in the casino. He pulled the phone out and gave it a close examination. It did not appear to be anything out of the ordinary.  He scrolled through the numbers and names saved in it, but saw nothing that caught his attention. If they are looking to jump-start my learning curve, this was certainly a novel approach, he silently admitted to himself. 

The question that plagued him though was how to handle it? If this was a test, what should he do about it?
His instincts still told him to be patient. The woman would have to appear again and point him in the right direction. He just needed the first signal to get the ball rolling.

Thirty minutes later, and feeling much better after a scalding shower followed by an ice cold rinsing, h
e lounged on his bed reading a biography of Winston Churchill. A few pages into it he set the book down, unable to concentrate. He continued to work through the different scenarios the unknown woman could potentially try. “Just let her come to me,” he said aloud to himself. A familiar voice in the hallway interrupted him.

“Hey, you awake in there?” The knock on the door brought Alex out of his haze, and he stuffed the cell phone into his pocket before letting Michael into the room.

“You feeling all right? You didn’t get trashed after we left did you?” Michael asked.

“No, I stuck around for another hour though. Luck held up, and I got a bite to eat before going to bed. Been paying for it.”

              “No kidding! I noticed the foul smell as soon as I stepped through the door,” Michael responded with a laugh. “That’s sweet that you made some more money. Lunch is on you then. How much did you clear?”

“I haven’t counted it all yet, but I think it’s over three hundred,” Alex replied as he pointed towards the wad of crumpled bills sitting on the table.
Alex always found their adolescent banter amusing. The fact that they were both professionals did not prevent them from falling back into the same immature patterns from college as soon as they got to together.             

              “I know where you are heading tonight. Which strip club you gonna blow those winnings at?”              

 
              Alex gave his friend a wry smile. “I’ll decide that later,” he replied. “What’s on tap for today?”

“How about breakfast?” Michael suggested. “Cindy is taking a shower. She will be at least an hour. We can eat and do a little more blackjack until she’s ready. Then we can check out the new hotels on the strip. Sound good?”

              “Sure. Let me grab a few things first,” Alex said as he stepped into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later they were devouring a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast from the hotel buffet. Between bites, Alex noticed a large man sitting several tables away. The man was methodically nibbling on fruit and cereal. The haggard look on his face, and the crumbled clothes he wore suggested his long night had tu
rned into an early morning. He did not notice the caramel colored suit coat hanging over the empty chair opposite the man. 

Zachariah Hardin un-tucked his lime green golf shirt and let it fall over his waist as he paced back and forth across the floor of the penthouse suite of the Desert Dust Inn. They were going to be late for their tee time. Zachariah glanced at his watch and fiddled with his khaki pants. He cursed the stripper for her boldness and his adoptive father for his tardiness in successive breaths. The annoying part of it was that he knew Aman was right. He pushed his luck too far, and it finally caught up with him. He was the President-Elect of the United States and would officially take the oath of office in less than a month. He should be more careful. The more dangerous half of his personality still thought he deserved to have some fun. He spent more than ten years of his life married to a woman he absolutely despised just so he could keep up the proper appearances. Was he not entitled to a good lay now that she was dead and the election was over? He knew what Aman’s response would be; he would tell him the mission should always come first. 

             
He thought Aman was being overly cautious. There was nothing that could stop them now. Their plan was in its final stage, and they had succeeding in sneaking their Trojan horse into the city walls. The thought of their plan unraveling now was horrifying, but the death of his wife had already confirmed their destiny as far as he was concerned. Still, he vowed to be more cautious and stick to the girls with whom he was familiar. One of his friends from the Senate had suggested a platinum blonde call girl who was especially good at her job. He would ring her up as soon as he got back to the capitol city.

He glanced at his Secret Service agents who were standing vigil by the elevator. Their robotic movements and lifeless stares gave him a chill, as if they could read his soul. He turned around so he did not have to face them and stared at the
Las Vegas landscape. The selection of this city as the base of operations for Aman’s empire was either the ultimate irony or a brilliant stroke of luck. The city was the perfect representation for the decadence of the West. Aman always refused to divulge how he got his start here. All Zachariah knew was that his adoptive father had lived here almost since the city’s infancy, and his influence and power grew along with the burgeoning strip of casinos in the desert.

The first hotel to be constructed in Vegas, the Flamingo, opened in 1947 thanks to Bugsy Siegel and his financial backbone Frank Costello. The idea of the “city of sin” originated with Meyer Lansky, who ran the books for Costello. In 1938 Lansky worked for Lucky Luciano in
New York, and he traveled to Cuba at the behest of his boss to meet with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. They came to an agreement that Lansky would take over control of all the casinos in Havana from the military, which was inefficient at running a business. Lansky turned Havana upside-down as the excitement of his casinos attracted American film stars and numerous other upper crust individuals looking for a good time in an exotic locale. This experience served Lansky well when he and Bugsy Siegel decided to open up a casino in the barren desert of Las Vegas. Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, but no one tapped the potential of this golden opportunity until the mob stepped in.

Zachariah knew that Aman entered this environment soon thereafter with funds given to him by friends in
Cairo. He did not know where the money came from, but he guessed it came from hordes of Nazi gold. Aman’s benefactors in Cairo all made their fortunes selling information during the crazy and dangerous days of World War II. Whether that information was true or not did not matter.

By the 1950s
Las Vegas was the place where the rich and famous went to party. The fact that the city was controlled by gangsters gave it a hint of danger that everyone seemed to relish. Zachariah remembered Aman telling him the story of his early days in Las Vegas. Aman purchased a hotel called the Desert Dust Inn from one of the first Italian mobsters to try and give up his life of crime. From there, Aman made numerous connections around town while keeping a low profile. Some of the other casino owners tried to quietly inquire about partnerships, but they were politely rebuffed. When some mobsters mistook Aman’s quiet demeanor for weakness and tried to move in on his expanding empire they quickly discovered that Aman was not someone they wanted to mess with. Zachariah could understand and sympathize with their mistake. He tested his adoptive father at the very beginning of their relationship as well and paid a steep price. He learned not to cross his father unless he was prepared to deal with an angry hornet’s nest of a man.

Aman learned the workings of the mob in Vegas, and by the early 1960s he was a well-known figure who worked both sides of the city. All the important “friends” in town knew him, but did not interfere with his business. They had their hands in enough crimes, and wanted no part of the rumors that were floating around regarding his burgeoning empire. The values of the Desert Dust Inn, and the two other smaller casinos he took over soared along with the rest of the prime real estate in
Las Vegas. With the massive amount of income being generated by his small cluster of casinos, Aman officially became a major player in Nevada politics by 1960. He began to cultivate relationships with the appropriate people in preparation for an entry into national politics. Zachariah knew those greased hands were the catalyst that helped launch his own political career. He picked up the photos of Aman’s parents and studied their proud faces. They reminded him of his first mentor; Aziz A’zami. Aziz must be almost ninety years old now, Zachariah realized as he did the math in his head. He longed to see the old man one more time before he passed on.

The noise of the elevator caught his attention. The doors slid back, and the portly figure of Aman motioned for him. Zachariah hurried towards his mentor.
“It’s about fucking time,” Zachariah said with authority as they crowded into the elevator with the two Secret Service agents. “Let’s go. We can’t keep the bigwigs waiting.” They descended to the basement of the hotel in silence where an armored limousine was waiting to whisk them off to the golf course to make their tee time.

                   “You okay, man?” Michael asked as he adjusted his glasses and stirred his second mug of coffee. The waitress had just removed their empty plates and they were relaxing for a few minutes before heading to the casino.

              “Yeah, just still wound up from last night,” Alex explained. “You know how I get when I win, always afraid I’m going to lose it right back.” Alex sipped his orange juice. He never could adjust to the horrible taste of coffee, and he preferred starting the day with something that was actually healthy instead of an artificial caffeine high that lasted fifteen minutes.

“You’re
about to become a spook, for crying out loud
.
You need to relax some if you want to keep the world safe.”

             
“I know. I tell myself the same thing. Eventually I’ll learn,” Alex responded as he shook his head.

“Don’t take me too seriously. I would imagine a little paranoia in a job like that is a good thing. Keeps you one step ahead and keeps your name out of the newspaper,” Michael said with a nervous smile. Alex knew his friend was trying to be positive, but he also knew his new job scared his friend. Michael saw the devastation of the
Twin Towers up close and personal, and he understood the immense evil that perpetrated the heinous acts.

He still thinks I’m a little nuts for wanting to go toe-to-toe with them, Alex thought to himself before
replying. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. That case I worked on opened my eyes though. You have no idea what these types are capable of.” Alex downed the last of his orange juice. “Forget about it. We have three days of fun ahead of us. We can talk about the other side of life later. Let’s go gamble,” Alex said as he tossed his napkin onto the table and stood up to leave.              

The early morning was a dead time for the casino, and Alex and Michael quickly found two seats at a blackjack table near the f
ront entrance of the hotel. The night owls had just gone to sleep a few hours ago, and the casino would not pick up until the early afternoon gamblers came in. They sat down at a five-dollar minimum table with a lady who looked to be about sixty years old. The two large stacks of chips in front of her looked impressive, but her stoic face gave no hint as to whether she was winning or losing. Alex slipped his six-foot frame into the middle chair at the table, and Michael took the seat to his left.

“Damn, it’s cold in here,” Alex said quietly. The frigid air of the casino was a jolt to his system this early in the morning. Still, he knew the cargo shorts he was wearing
were a necessity if they planned on walking outside in the desert heat. Looking at his watch, he saw that Cindy was not due to meet them for another twenty minutes. He palmed a fifty-dollar bill onto the table, figuring that should be more than enough to occupy his time until she arrived.

             
After fifteen minutes of playing, Alex’s good fortune still stood intact and he gave his friend a look of confidence just before the dealer busted again, making his hand of thirteen a winner. The dealer placed another thirty dollars worth of chips in front of him. Years of playing blackjack had taught him to ignore his hunches and follow the percentages no matter what he tried to talk himself into. It did not always pay off. It was gambling after all, however he found that if you randomly made decisions, your odds grew progressively worse.  A quick accounting of his stack showed that he was ahead another ninety dollars since they sat down at the table. The weekend seemed destined to be a profitable one.