Deception Game (39 page)

Hussein Jibril was in darkness. All around him was a void, sheer and absolute. A world without light or colour, sound or shape.

Then vaguely he became aware of a sound. Not a voice as such, but the shadowy resonance of a voice somewhere off in the distance, like the after-echo of footsteps in a great empty mosque.

He heard it again, closer now, louder and more distinct. Concentrating his thoughts, he focussed in on the voice as the discordant sounds slowly merged together to form words. A name. His name.

‘Hussein! Hussein, can you hear me?’

The dark void around him was lightening now, the empty shapelessness of it giving way to a world of sound and sensation.

‘Hussein! Wake up.’

With great effort he forced the darkness back, fighting and railing against it, pushing his mind towards the world beyond. The world in which it belonged.

Blinking his eyes open, he found himself staring into the grim, unshaven face of Bishr Kubar. Stoic and serious at the best of times, he looked even more so now. His dark eyes betrayed anger, confusion and an edge of concern, which only lifted slightly when Jibril showed signs of consciousness.

‘What happened to you? Who did this?’

‘How...how long was I out?’ Jibril asked, fumbling to find the right words. His normally sharp mind was dull and sluggish, and just making his mouth form the right sounds required a great effort.

Trying to sit up, he grimaced as the world swam and lurched in and out of focus, the blood pounded in his ears and waves of pain radiated from inside his skull like the pealing of a bell. Reaching up, he touched his forehead. His fingers came away slick with blood.

‘Who did this to you?’ Kubar repeated.

In a flash, memories of those last few moments before darkness engulfed his world exploded through his mind once more.

‘It was...Tarek,’ he said, swallowing down the rising tide of nausea. He reached down and patted his pockets, feeling for the objects that were supposed to be there but weren’t. ‘He knocked me out, took my phone...and my key card.’

Kubar was moving before Jibril had even finished speaking, abandoning the injured man to reach for his cell phone. He was barely able to hold his wrath in check as he punched in a number and waited for it to connect.

What a fool he’d been! He’d suspected something was wrong the moment he learned of Sowan’s rescue in such deceptively easy fashion. Too easy for the professionals hired to abduct him. It was a play, designed to get him back inside the Mukhabarat, though to what end he had no idea. Only Sowan himself could tell them.

And he
would
tell them. Kubar would make sure of it personally.

At last someone picked up, and Kubar wasted no time on pleasantries. ‘Security? This is Bishr Kubar. The director has been attacked and his key card stolen by Tarek Sowan. I repeat, Director Jibril’s key card has been compromised. Cancel his security clearance, lock down the building and arrest Sowan right away. Move!’

A wide, tree-lined central avenue led away from the main office complex, heading towards the security gate on the perimeter. With bushes and lawns on either side of the road, it was a deceptively pleasant environment considering the compound’s sinister purpose, though Sowan understood the reasoning well enough. The greenery had been put in place for practical rather than aesthetic reasons, helping to screen activity within the compound from prying eyes in the city beyond its walls.

Seated behind the wheel of Jibril’s car, Sowan turned onto this avenue and gave it some gas. It took all his self control not to floor it towards the compound’s exit, as excitement and elation at his approaching freedom vied with the growing threat that it could all come to a crashing halt. Every second that passed carried him further away from the office complex behind, but also increased the chances that someone would raise the alarm.

But he was close now. All that remained was to bluff his way through the security checkpoint at the main gate, and then he could escape into the city beyond. He was almost certain that he could persuade or intimidate the guards on the gate into letting him pass, even if he didn’t have the correct paperwork. After all, he had served here for a number of years and was well known to most of them.

They would let him go. He would make this work.

‘Listen to me, Ryan,’ he said, speaking into the phone that he now had wedged against his shoulder. ‘I was wrong about Faulkner’s involvement. It went even deeper than I thought.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The man you extracted from Paris; he was an American operative. Part of a plan to stage a coup, overthrow the government. Faulkner betrayed him to us, but the Americans found out and demanded my life in return. I think he is trying to play both sides against each other for his own gain.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Drake argued. ‘Recovering him was an Agency-led operation. If the man from Paris was CIA, it would have been red-flagged before we even left Langley.’

‘Then perhaps he was not CIA,’ Sowan suggested. ‘Perhaps this was a private venture. Another group that your Agency wasn’t aware of.’

Whatever the case, the answers they needed lay in the laptop resting on the passenger seat beside him. Getting it to safety and deciphering its contents might well prove to be the only way out of this, both for himself and for Drake.

His thoughts were intruded upon as the main gate rolled into view. A pair of armoured security booths stood on either side of the road, with lowered barriers and a concrete chicane built to control the flow of traffic. Watch towers stood guard over the approach road, ready to take down anyone trying to approach without authorization.

Through the barriers and the concrete roadblocks, Sowan could just glimpse the buildings and streets and fast-flowing traffic of central Tripoli. Barely fifty yards away; so agonizingly close. All that stood between him and freedom was the trio of armed soldiers pulling guard duty, the leader of whom waved him down as he approached.

‘I have to go,’ he said, slipping the phone into his pocket.

This was it. Having emerged onto street level just a couple of blocks away, Drake was afforded a close enough view of the formidable security checkpoint to make out the vehicle that had just slowed to a stop.

He was too far away to see Sowan’s face without binoculars, but he knew it was him. The man, and the evidence he had recovered, were little more than a hundred yards away.

His radio earpiece crackled into life. ‘Monarch, do you have eyes-on?’

‘Affirmative, Envoy. I have him in sight,’ he replied, surreptitiously touching his radio transmitter. ‘He’s stopped at the main gate.’

‘Copy that,’ came McKnight’s reply, the strain in her voice evident now that the time had come. ‘What’s your position?’

‘I’m on an intersection two blocks to the north-east, beside an outdoor cafe.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘What’s to like?’ he bit back. ‘We’re committed now. We have to see it through.’

‘You’re too close,’ she warned him. ‘They have agents all over this area. Back off before they spot you, Monarch.’

‘I told him I’d be here.’

‘And he knows that. He could be using this to draw us in.’ He heard an exhalation of breath. ‘If he screws us, we’re totally exposed here.’

Drake clenched his fists, windblown dust stinging his eyes as he strained to watch events play out, so agonizingly close but so terribly far. The silenced automatic was a cold, heavy weight pressing against his back, hidden beneath his sweat-stained shirt.

In this deadly game of deception, he had nothing left to go on but his intuition. His choice was simple – fold and run, or stick it out and risk everything on this last gamble. Whether his intuition was right or wrong depended on what happened in the next few seconds.

‘Stick to the plan,’ he said quietly. ‘He won’t let us down.’

Forcing calm into his mind and body, Sowan rolled down his window as the officer in charge of the checkpoint came forward to speak with him.

‘Evening, sir,’ the guard said, nodding in greeting. ‘Can I see your ID?’

A young man, probably no more than thirty years old, clean-shaven, tall and in good shape. The kind of man the Mukhabarat liked to have standing at their checkpoints for the rest of the country to see.

Sowan recognized him as a Corporal Ibrahim, and recalled that he’d always been fairly laid back and friendly compared to some of the men who stood this post. The kind of man who might be willing to overlook a few irregularities for a trusted employee.

Perhaps.

Reaching into pocket, he handed over Jibril’s security pass. As he’d expected, it didn’t take Ibrahim long to spot the problem.

‘I’m sorry, sir. This doesn’t seem to be your card.’

Sowan made a face – the pained expression of a man about to make an uncomfortable confession. ‘I know. I lost my own card when I lost my house last night.’

Ibrahim’s eyes opened wider as his words sank in. Like most of his comrades, he had seen the news broadcasts about the attack on a house in central Tripoli the night before; the images of the burned-out shell of the building and the reports of gunfire and car chases during the raid. There had been plenty of speculation that terrorists from Egypt or Chad or even the disgruntled Berber population in the west of the country were responsible, but few solid facts.

The details had been kept as a closely guarded secret, even within the Mukhabarat. The revelation that one of their own had been the victim of this attack was enough to leave the young corporal stunned.

‘I–I’m sorry. I wasn’t told.’

‘I was hoping to take a look at the damage myself, see if anything could be salvaged,’ Sowan went on with grim resignation, capitalizing on the guard’s reaction. ‘Hussein was good enough to lend me his car and his badge for an hour or so. I know it’s not protocol, but it would mean a lot to me if I could go.’

Ibrahim swallowed, clearly torn. What Sowan was suggesting was a breach of regulations, and if he was found out then it could mean serious repercussions for all of them. But Tarek Sowan had served the agency for some time, was well respected and trusted. Aside from that, the man had lost everything. He deserved a little compassion.

‘No more than an hour?’ he asked, uncertain.

Sowan nodded. Ibrahim couldn’t see, but his grip on the steering wheel was so tight that his hands hurt.

‘All right. I’ll swipe you out,’ Ibrahim said, sliding the card through an electronic reader inside the guard hut.

Sowan let out a breath, his heart surging with elation. He’d made it! He was in the clear!

But instead of handing the card back and raising the barrier, Ibrahim frowned, staring at his computer screen with a deep frown creasing his brow. His eyes flicked to Sowan, briefly perplexed, but filled with a growing wariness.

That was when Sowan knew. Something was wrong.

He’d been discovered.

Perhaps someone had found Jibril and realized his ID card had been stolen, or perhaps the man himself had recovered enough to raise the alarm. Whatever the reason, the result was the same. In the office complex behind them, Sowan heard the distinctive wail of alarms blaring out as the complex went into lockdown.

Turning his attention back to the car and its driver, Ibrahim reached for the sidearm holstered at his waist, training and discipline rapidly winning out over compassion and familiarity. ‘Sir, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step out of the car.’

Sowan wasn’t about to wait around for Ibrahim to detain him. Stamping down on the accelerator, he gripped the wheel tight as the car rocketed forwards, breaking through the lowered barrier with such force that it left a spider’s web of cracks across the windshield.

Behind him, he could hear Ibrahim and the other guards on the gate shouting out, commanding him to stop. Sowan ignored them. He was committed now, with nothing left to lose and his future hanging by a thread; to stop would be suicide.

Swinging the wheel hard left, he forced the car through the concrete chicane, wheels skidding and clawing at the dusty road surface as the vehicle’s traction control fought to stop it spinning out. Behind, he heard the distinctive crackle of gunfire, and ducked down as the rear windshield exploded in a shower of glass fragments.

Frightening it might have been, but the fire being directed his way was still panicked and uncoordinated, and unlikely to stop him. All he cared about now was putting distance between himself and the compound before they could organize a pursuit.

Like most facilities of its sort, the majority of its security measures were focussed outward to prevent people getting in, not to keep supposedly trustworthy employees from getting out.

Rocketing down the main approach road at full speed, Sowan swung the car right into the busy main drag beyond, narrowly avoiding a collision with a crowded bus that was heading in the opposite direction. He gritted his teeth and wrestled with the wheel, bringing the fishtailing car back under control and ignoring the angry horn-blasts left in his wake.

Drake watched in disbelief as the Lexus roared away from the vehicle checkpoint, taking small-arms fire along the way before barrelling straight into the main drag beyond. In a matter of seconds Sowan had swung hard right, merged with the busy traffic and disappeared from Drake’s view, though the horn blasts and hard-revving engines announced his progress just as effectively.

Either Sowan had bottled it and panicked, or he’d sensed the game was up and was trying to make good his escape before they could box him in. Whatever the reason, he had played his last hand now. A police chase through the centre of Tripoli could only end one way.

All that remained now was to try to salvage something from this mess.

‘Fuck, he’s going for it!’ Drake spoke quickly into his radio, shoving his way through the crowds that had stopped to rubberneck as the drama unfolded. ‘He’s been compromised.’

‘Are we blown too?’ McKnight asked immediately.

‘Can’t tell. Hang back – I’m in pursuit now.’