Traitor (18 page)

The driver pulled away when the last of the gunmen climbed onto the back for a bumpy ride ahead of them.

“How far?” asked Nick.

The driver shrugged his shoulders. Nick repeated his question in Arabic.

“One hour.”

“How long you been here?” asked Nick.

“Five months.”

“And these jokers?” Nick gestured to the six in the back.

“Not long enough!” the driver said, perceptively.

Nasim agreed wholeheartedly. Nick nodded. He was worried. This was one of the major training camps that would prepare his warriors. Deep in the Sudanese desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest living soul, they all had the space and privacy they could ever want. With millions of square miles of bland, featureless terrain, the chance of being spotted even by satellite was so remote, it wasn’t even a concern. However, if the men who were training there were of the caliber of their reception team, it was a wasted journey. Nick needed only the best and most dedicated followers of Allah for his plan.

After an hour, they arrived. The light on the horizon began to creep into the darkness at the impending dawn. The camp was impressive. The huts and buildings were colored to blend in with the surroundings. Even the equipment was painted to ensure it blended seamlessly with the environment. It was an impressive sight but not as impressive as the men who were filling the area ahead of them. Nick stood and watched. Proud, strong and well-disciplined soldiers. Their exercise routine would have been worthy of any forces Nick had ever served with. They were hardened men, whose faces bore the determination of true warriors.

Nick had expected about fifty good men at the camp. What faced him was a small army of almost three hundred men, ready to fight and die for Allah.

Nick smiled.

Thanks to Carson, a slightly smaller VIP aircraft of the USAF touched down at 07:30 at Istres-le Tubé Air Base in the South of France, twenty miles northwest of Marseille. The C40B Clipper was a military version of the Boeing Business Jet based on the Boeing 737 and had more than enough room for Frankie, Reid, Flynn and the Delta team.

“Bonjour, Madame,” greet Captain Leclerc when Frankie stepped onto French soil at the bottom of the steps.

“Bonjour, Monsieur,” she replied politely, shaking the offered hand.

“Captain Jean Leclerc at your service, Madame. We have been asked by our Minister of Defense to offer you whatever assistance you require.”

“I’m Frankie, this is Sarah, and this is Flynn,” she replied, introducing her colleagues in turn. “And Flynn’s team,” she added as the Delta team began to emerge from the rear of the plane after gearing up.

“Can we offer you breakfast, coffee or any refreshments?” asked Leclerc.

“No thank you, we just need to get to this Crédit Agricole, asap,” said Reid, handing over the address written on a slip of paper.

Captain Leclerc looked at the address and motioned them onto a small bus that awaited their arrival. A two-minute ride had them on the other side of the airport and surrounded by helicopters.

“At this time in the morning, traffic is horrendous for getting into the center of Marseille. This will be far easier.” He motioned towards the smaller helicopters, Eurocopter Fennecs. “I believe time is of the essence?”

“Absolutely,” replied Frankie, moving towards the small chopper.

“Three of these should fit us in,” he said, holding the door for Frankie, Reid and Flynn to board the first chopper before jumping into the pilot’s seat.

Frankie listened intently to the captain instructing French police to clear a section of road on the Vieux Port. Her Swiss finishing school training, taught almost entirely in French, insisted on by her mother, was finally paying off.

“The Vieux Port?” she asked, once Leclerc had ended his call.

“The old port,” he replied in English for the benefit of the others. “It’s a large harbor, mainly leisure boats now but it’s in the heart of Marseille, the oldest city in France. The premier port of France and the gateway to the world,” he smiled, proud of his native city.

With a history lesson en route, the journey was over in no time. They neared the magnificent sight of the port and a police cordon was already in place to allow them to land on the road outside the Crédit Agricole. Reid reached into her bag and gave Frankie and Flynn each a small white facemask. They both looked at it and then at the crowd that had already gathered around the perimeter of the cordon.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, nor whether it will make any difference” said Frankie.

“Good idea or not, we should take precautions,” insisted Reid.

“I agree with Frankie,” said Flynn handing his mask back. “This will cause panic and to be honest, I’m not sure it would do much good anyway!”

Frankie handed hers back too.

Reid looked at them both and shook her head in disgust but also replaced her mask in her bag. “But I’m keeping them close,” she said, laying them carefully at the top of her bag. “One whiff of disease and you’re putting them on!” Flynn told the Deltas to wait in the helicopters while they followed Leclerc into the bank. The General Manager of the bank had already been alerted by the police of their arrival but, as he had been given no information other than senior investigators were about to arrive to speak to him, he was a bag of nerves by the time Frankie and Reid approached him.

“
Vous parlez Anglais?
” asked Frankie.

“
Oui
, a little,” he replied nervously.

“Please don’t be worried,” said Frankie, reassuringly. “You have done nothing wrong, we just want to ask you about a customer of yours.”

The bank manager relaxed slightly but given banking laws and the requirements to vet customers’ identities, his concerns were not entirely alleviated.

Reid took the photo of Nick Geller from her bag and showed it to the manager. Relief flooded across his face. “
Non
,” he said emphatically. “He is no customer of mine.”

Reid produced some of the mock-ups. The manager paused briefly at one of them.

“You recognize this man?” prompted Frankie when she noticed the pause.

“
Non
, just a little familiar,” he said.

“Familiar how?” she pressed.

“One of my clients, a rich man, Monsieur…”

“Jacques Guillon?” “
Oui
,” he replied. “But if you already knew, why—”

“We wanted to put a face to the name and not the name to a face,” replied Reid. They had agreed in advance that an independent verification of Nick was going to be far more convincing than giving the name and seeing if Nick’s disguise matched one of the mock-ups. Plan A was to see if the manager recognized Nick. Plan B was to give him Jacques Guillon’s name and hope it was Nick.

“But Monsieur Guillon is older, with a limp,” he said.

“Older? His hair is graying at the temples?” asked Frankie.

The manager nodded.

“And the limp, Flynn?” she asked.

Flynn limped across the room, almost identical to Nick’s limp. “Street Surveillance 101. One of our first lessons in how to change our appearance.”

“
Merde!
” exclaimed the manager.

“We need every transaction he’s made. Locations, times, amounts, currency, anything you have,” Reid urgently requested.

“Of course, Madame,” replied the manager. “And his safety deposit box?”

“He has a safety deposit box?” asked Frankie.

“
Oui
, he arranged it yesterday when he was here.”

“He was here
yesterday
?!” they said in unison.

“
Oui.
He had a small metal briefcase with him. I didn’t see it when he left, I assume he left it here.”

Reid reached into her bag and withdrew the small white paper masks, including one for the manager.

“I suggest you tell your staff to wait outside the branch while we check the safety deposit box,” suggested Reid, handing out the masks.

The manager’s face suddenly paled at the realization of what the mask meant. “You think he could have given us that disease? Like the man on the video?”

“No,” lied Frankie. “We just have to take precautions, health and safety laws.”

From the expression on the manager’s face, acting was not a line of work Frankie could fall back on. He tentatively and after some persuasion took them down to the basement and into the vault that housed the safety deposit boxes, his mask fixed tightly to his face.

Flynn pulled the box out of the wall and with all three of them looking on, each holding their breath, he opened the lid.

With sunrise just minutes away, the training camp came to a standstill for Salat Al Fajr, the morning prayer, to be said in unison by hundreds of trainees. Nick felt at one with the group as they faced Mecca to the east and the words of the Quran echoed around him in a predawn chorus. As the final words died away, the sun peeked over the horizon and gave the worshippers a hint of the power that Allah possessed. It was as though he had heard their thanks and praise of him and rewarded them with a sunrise in their honor.

“Nick, my brother,” said the man who had led the prayer, embracing Nick warmly.

Nick stood back and held the man at arm’s length smiling into the face of a fellow warrior. “Ibrahim, my brother.”

“You broke my heart, brother,” he continued somberly. “But then,” he smiled, “you put it back together and now it is much stronger!”

Nick knew he was referring to his killing the Caliph and then the shooting of the President. One act explained another.

“I wished I could have told you, but the Americans needed to believe I was their hero. I needed their trust and I needed my shot at the President. Why my bullet didn’t fly true, only Allah can know.”

“Allah wants the man to witness the disaster that will befall his corrupt and evil empire. Death would have been the easy route. Allah wants to punish him more,” Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim had been another of the men he had met on that fateful night in Afghanistan a year earlier; another man whose family had lived thanks to Nick’s quick thinking. A former Pakistani soldier, Ibrahim had joined the cause to fight the infidels who were destroying their world. Meeting Nick had been a turning point for Ibrahim, a young raw soldier. He’d been destined to join many of his friends and family in an early grave. Under Nick’s tutelage, however, he had grown to become a feared warrior, leading and training warriors of the future. It was thanks to Nick that he had been sent to the Sudanese camp to train their newest and most promising recruits to continue the struggle.

“Impressive!’ said Nick focusing on the many men before them in the desert.

“Thanks to you, my brother, we select only the most devoted and most capable, just as you instructed us,” replied Ibrahim proudly, watching the men go through a further exercise routine before they would be rewarded with breakfast.

Nick turned towards the body of the camp and spotted the group that had met him at the aircraft and gestured toward them, squinting his face in question.

“Hmm, yes, a rich benefactor’s wayward son and friends,” he explained. “Even within our cause we have to play the political game.”

“Send them home. They have no place in our army,” said Nick.

Ibrahim shook his head. “I have tried, brother. The boy’s father is too powerful. They are here on the request of the new Caliph.”

Nick paused. He had not known a new Caliph had been selected. A number of candidates had stepped forward to fill the shoes of Zahir Al Zahrani, the Caliph he had assassinated. These candidates would follow Al Zahrani’s path of uniting the jihadist world to form one united and far stronger army. A few far more radical candidates favored a much more insular approach, by increasing the number of low scale attacks to initiate a war of terror from within America. They all seemed to agree that the war needed to be taken to the Americans; it was just the methodology that differed. Nick’s plan rested on the grand-scale approach. He had hoped to have achieved consensus before a new Caliph was announced, during the mourning period, and ultimately in the memory and honor of Caliph Zahir Al Zahrani. Nick had made promises to Caliph Al Zahrani that he had every intention of keeping. A new Caliph could put an end to everything, particularly if he disagreed with unification.

“I am speaking out of turn, the decision has not yet been finalized,” said Ibrahim, regretting his indiscretion.

“I must meet with who you believe will be the new Caliph and I must convince him to follow Caliph Al Zahrani’s plan,” said Nick, his concern growing over the potential for a major upset to the Caliph’s plan.

Ibrahim smiled. “Well you are in the right place, my brother, he will be here tonight.”

“Here? In this camp?”

“Yes and I don’t think it is a coincidence. I’ve only just been told of his arrival. I imagine he wishes to meet you too.”

Nick felt a sudden lump in his stomach. The list of candidates was long and illustrious within Al Qaeda with many men more than capable of taking over the head of the organization. However, one name stood out and Nick began to panic.