Racing with the Devil Ch. 07-08

Garfeh couldn't disguise his shock.

"Just as I suspected; we have them all. And as you can surmise, you never did have Sean Caldwell here."

She turned to point to Sean, who had been fast on her heels coming down the corridor, but who had stopped several paces back and was showing signs of being in shock himself.

"I'm sorry, Sean," she said. "I couldn't tell you. Your father got wrapped up in this too. But I'm sure he didn't know all that he was involved in—unlike my husband. He was doing this because he thought you had been caught up in Garfeh's trap. He was trying to protect you. It won't go as hard for him as for the others." She hadn't been truthful about what she knew of Ambassador Caldwell's involvement in the terrorist conspiracy—and the reasons he had been caught up in it. But Sean wouldn't know if she could help it. He had come to them when Garfeh first recruited him, back in Sanford, and had been working with the Agency on this ever since. She would protect Sean from the truth as long as she could. She only wished there was someone who would and could protect her from the truth about her husband, Tyler.

Garfeh was deflated and quiet as they waited for an elevator. But in a whisper, he asked, "You have Amir?"

"Yes, we have your cousin."

"But his father . . . Amir has immunity."

"No one has immunity from my people," Haskell answered, her voice hard. "No one will even know where to start looking for him."

"Where have you taken him?"

"The same place we're going to take you. Someplace where you won't know where you are. Someplace that almost no one else will know where you are. You have a long, painful journey ahead of you, Professor Garfeh. There is so much we want to know from you—so much I'm sure that you'll tell us . . . eventually."

* * * *

Standing, unnoticed by anyone passing by, in the lobby of the Sharm El Sheikh Four Seasons hotel, was the Filipino houseboy, Ferdinand. He kept a hand in his pocket, cradling the plastic gun that had been delivered to him in his room in the night. Since then he'd moved around the hotel at will. He was just a Filipino servant. Nobody saw Filipino servants. They were just like the wallpaper—there when needed, but unseen.

He knew he was needed now. He'd stood by and seen the various men hustled here and there by mean-looking men wearing black suites that, impressively, he thought didn't need to be pressed despite how forcefully the men were moving about. The men they were pushing around included his own employer, Ambassador Caldwell. Hunter Caldwell was in handcuffs and his head was hanging low as he was manhandled through the hotel lobby. Ferdinand had never thought he'd see the day of the ambassador being brought so low. It sent a little chill of pleasure through his body. The man was a cold fish. Just a user. Just like all of the rest.

Ferdinand has been indoctrinated well by the Islamist extremist Abu Sayyaf terrorist group back in the Philippines, a group with close ties with al-Qaeda. Abu Sayyaf had sent Ferdinand to the Middle East to help support an important al-Qaeda operation. Ferdinand hadn't been told the full objective here, but he was no fool. He'd heard the ambassador say who would be here—the vice president of the United States, the prime minister of Israel, and the president of Egypt. It didn't take more than a mere servant to know who were the targets here.

He knew that he probably would not survive beyond the first break taken by the leaders meeting in the conference room. And he knew that he wouldn't be able to take them all out before he died. But he also knew that getting just one would make this operation a success and that his own name would be emblazoned across the sky as a Muslim martyr of note. What was it his cell leader had told him before he had left to worm his way into the service of the ambassador? Ah, yes, he had told Ferdinand that he would be racing with the devil. That's who he was racing with—the devils of the West. It would be a race he would win to a lesser or greater extent—as soon as those in the conference room started coming out to take a break from their talks.

What Ferdinand didn't know, though, was that this was a sham conference. A conference was being held, sure enough. There would always be rumors flying around about such a conference. For believability, there needed to be a conference. It just wasn't here. It was close by, certainly, but still a world away. The U.S. vice president was brokering talks between the Israeli prime minister and the Egyptian president, but it wasn't the Egyptian president who was hosting the conference in Sharm El Sheikh. It was the Israeli prime minister who was hosting it at the Israeli resort city at the top of the nearby Gulf of Aqaba—where the CIA's Middle East chief, Tony Jacobs, had had the Santag Oil Company's jet fly him earlier in the day.

The men posing as the leaders here in Sharm El Sheikh were body doubles. And it was, indeed, possible that one or more would lose his life at the hand of Ferdinand—the wallpaper terrorist who had been overlooked—but there would never be a whisper in the media or, if the United States could help it, in the intel talk around the world, of anything that had transpired here in Sharm El Sheikh.

- FINI -