The Mercenary (12 page)

Within a year, after completing several other
contracts, he was ready to move on. With a clean police record from St. Kitts,
professionally altered under another name, he'd applied for a second passport
under the new name with the Irish government. Ireland, like several others, did
not require a national identity card and would also permit the purchase of
citizenship. Ireland also did not use biometrics.

The Sandman was able to procure several other
passports utilizing the same method. In all cases, the passports issued were
genuine—only the supporting documentation had been altered. In each case,
citizenship had been legally purchased under an assumed name, and supported by
flawless paperwork. Once entered into the issuing nation's system, the person
became authentic—the computer said so. In each case a country had been chosen
that permitted economic citizenship, had fairly porous borders, and did not
require national identity cards.

Lebanon was one of these.

And Jean Elias Karam was a citizen.

Both men walked around the desk and entered a
hallway off the main lobby. Like the rest of the bank it was slightly overdone.
A bit too much marble, too much polished wood paneling and entirely too much
gold trim. Middle Easterners had few reservations about flaunting wealth and did
so at every opportunity. Though well accustomed to it, he felt more comfortable
with the understated style found in European banks.

At the end of the hallway they stopped before a
vault which Mr. Haddad opened with his electronic swipe card. The heavy door
swung inward, and the Sandman found himself in a cool, low-ceiling room with
beige marble floors. The walls were honeycombed with brass-fronted safety
deposit boxes of various sizes. The only marking on each box face was a
four-digit number.

The concierge paused politely and the mercenary
walked to the end of the room and turned right to box 4813. Both he and Mr.
Haddad inserted their keys and the lock clicked.

“Please sir, if there is anything else you require
or when you wish to leave just ring the call button on the wall.”

The Sandman shook his hand and nodded. The
concierge bowed again and left. Alone, he opened the box, removed the inner tray
and placed it on a convenience table near the wall. There were four sealed
courier pouches inside the tray. He opened them one by one to check the
contents. Satisfied, he transferred two of them to his attaché case and replaced
the tray in the wall box. He then locked both the box and attaché case and
walked back to the entrance.

A bare thirty seconds after pressing the button,
the big door swung open and a smiling Mr. Haddad once again led him back into
the lobby.

“Now sir . . . you mentioned the
Executive Club? I have taken the liberty and opened Parlor Three for you.
Everything is in readiness. You are familiar with the club elevators? Good.
Again sir, if there is anything you require . . .”

The Sandman shook his head. “Thank you, but no.
Your service was perfect, as always, Mister Haddad. I will be sure to pass my
compliments to the director later this week.” He had no intention of returning
on Thursday but it did no harm for the concierge to think so.

That said, the mercenary crossed the polished floor
to the gleaming, brass-fronted elevator. There was no card or passkey as it was
operated solely from the concierge station. Exiting on the fourteenth and top
floor of the bank, the mercenary walked through an alcove expensively paneled in
dark walnut with heavy brass carriage lamps on each wall.

To the right of each lamp on each wall was a
six-foot-wide door. They were heavy and also finished in dark wood. There were
no markings save for a brass plaque with a number etched onto it. Number Three
was on the left wall of the alcove. He pushed the doors open and stepped
inside.

The parlor was fairly small, about twenty feet
square, and dominated by an enormous mahogany desk. Two floor-to-ceiling windows
flanked it and lit up the rather dark interior. Like the alcove, it was finished
in hunter greens, oiled wood, and brass fixtures—British club chic
.

The Sandman crossed the floor and sat at the desk.
It contained everything the modern businessman might require. Powerful computer,
high-speed Internet access, scanner, and a bank of telephones—all secure and
capable of encryption. There was also a fax machine, shredder, and a copier
tucked discreetly into a small closet. A full bar was built into the wall beside
the closet and there were several bowls of fresh fruit on the counter.

Clicking on the international standard ‘e' symbol,
the Sandman typed in an address and sat back. On the other side of the world, a
computer in the British Virgin Islands responded. The mercenary managed his
affairs from anywhere in the world through one of a dozen email forwarding
services and was virtually untraceable. These transactions were generally
financial and never directly referenced actual events. They were simply referred
to by contract numbers that he himself randomly assigned.

There were only two or three organizations capable
of breaking the encryption algorithm and, if even they did, the messages were
numbers, financial amounts, or benign plain text. On the several occasions
contractual matters had been discussed, he'd immediately closed the anonymous
account and opened a replacement. In any event, he never used an account for
more than sixty days.

There was nothing at the first address, so he
accessed another and reached for an apple.

Inbox (2)

The first message was a deposit receipt from a
holding account with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Per his standing instructions, £1,832,460 had
posted that morning at 0941 Greenwich Mean Time and had been immediately rewired
to a numbered account with Audi Bank in Beirut. Islamic banks were among the
very few remaining financial institutions that had not sold their secrecy to the
United States and the European Union. Nor would they.

He frowned. That was only 3.5 million dollars, and
less than half of what he was owed. The mercenary took a bite and opened the
second email.

BALANCE TO YOU FOR DELIVERY. LOCATION YOUR
CHOICE.

KSH ENDS.

So.

The Chinese would either pay up or attempt to
recover the DTC while eliminating him. Probably the latter, he smiled. But that
was nothing new. He'd have to think about that.

There was one further email account to check, but
first he reached for the plain buff-colored envelope given him by the bank
concierge. It was addressed through the bank to Mr. Jean Elias Karam and had
been postmarked ten days earlier. The return address was a box number within the
Jordan Kuwait Bank here in Amman. There was no name but he knew who had sent the
envelope. The heavy sheet of expensive linen paper inside contained a single
line of numbers.

451389706

He got up, walked to the ornate tea service, and
poured a cup. Standing at the window, the mercenary watched the busy street
below and thought about the numbers. He had several “fixers” in different areas.
Two men and a woman who had extensive connections among foreign governments,
international business cartels and various militaries. They had the quiet
reputations and discreet behavior much valued by the world's movers and shakers.
They were the people others came to with a problem and lots of money to spend on
a solution. They were people who knew men who solved problems. Men like himself.
Rama Buradi was just such a fixer.

A half Arab from the Basra marshes in southern
Iraq, Buradi had made his first fortune as a smuggler. With two modified power
boats he brought in electronics, alcohol, and recreational drugs for the ruling
elite of Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. The silk carpets and artifacts he received
fetched huge returns in the underground markets of Europe and America. When the
Iran-Iraq war erupted, Buradi switched to gunrunning for hard currency. Raw
opium from Afghanistan came through Iran to be traded for the American arms that
Tehran preferred. The opium was then sold to processing plants in the Sudan and
Somalia for the Russian equipment favored by Iraq. Baghdad's gold and hard
currency went straight into banks beyond the Middle East and was used, in part,
to buy more weapons.

The CIA knew all about his operations and allowed
him to continue as a surrogate. His operation helped their larger plans in
several important ways. The Taliban grew into an effective anti-Russian fighting
force by the funding gained from Afghan opium. Arms flowing into Iraq kept the
war going, killed Iranians and gave America a useful strategic ally in Saddam
Hussein.

But the first Gulf War had drastically altered the
landscape of the Middle East. The House of Saud, the spiritual and secular
guardians of Islam's most holy sites, openly admitted it needed the protection
of a western, infidel coalition. For the first time in several generations
western troops were openly stationed in the region, not just Egypt or Jordan,
but on the holy dirt of Arabia. The United States, in particular, emerged as the
visible power for all others to contend with, and the opportunities were
enormous.

Iraq was increasingly isolated and Saddam became
increasingly desperate. Buradi had run the American blockade for a brief period
in the mid-nineties, bringing luxuries to the Iraqi elite. French champagne,
Belgian chocolates, and eastern European prostitutes got top dollar in Baghdad.
Like everyone else, Buradi had assumed that the Americans would lose the will to
continue their armed embargo and eventually go away. But when they didn't, he
was glad he hadn't trafficked in the anti-aircraft weapons, yellowcake, or
biological agents Saddam had been frantic to acquire.

So he'd quietly entered the information business.
The Americans were desperate for real-time intelligence and paid dearly for it.
Anyone with eyes and a functional brain could see that another war was
inevitable, so Buradi set himself up to profit from it. Returning to Basra, the
smuggler used his network of family and friends to gather information on the
Iraqi defenses around the city.

Renewing his contacts with the CIA, Rama Buradi
sold the position of the Hammurabi Division Headquarters to the Americans and
British. It was not where they'd believed and planned for. Fearing American
bombs and remembering the lessons from the First Gulf War, General Mahmoud
al-Tikriti had located his staff in a nondescript suburb of the city that was
impossible to identify from the air but easily recognizable to a local on the
ground. Buradi also provided personal information about key Guards officers who
might defect if the situation was favorable.

And Basra fell. In the weeks that followed the
American advance up the Tigris River, Ramadi provided information on Iraqi
supply lines, weapons caches and, most importantly, morale. Whole units
surrendered once certain officers had a way to communicate with the
Americans.

Which led to an equally profitable sideline. Buradi
also provided a way out of Iraq for those willing and able to pay. Of course,
the way out for most was a slit throat, and more than a hundred men, women, and
children ended up as decomposing corpses in the Shatt al Arab marshes.

The Sandman finished the tea and turned from the
window. Buradi was a coldhearted bastard but could be absolutely counted on for
one thing. Money. As long as he smelled money he was reliable. Not that the
mercenary trusted him, but they understood each other, and Buradi would never
sell out his golden goose. Unless, of course, another goose came along with more
gold. That, the Sandman knew, was always worth remembering.

Walking to his attaché case, the Sandman removed a
copy of the
Eyewitness Travel Guide of Jordan
.
Placing it on the desk, he looked at the row of numbers again.

451389706

The first and last pair meant nothing, so he lined
through them. The next three numbers, plus the postmark date, would tell him
which page was being used. The postmark was for the seventh, so he opened the
book to page 145. The page showed a frontal view of the Temple of Hercules on
the Jabal al Qala, also called the Citadel, in downtown Amman.

It was a good location. Lots of tourists. Western
tourists who flocked to the site because of its biblical significance. There
were many places to observe without being seen and unlimited escape routes into
the neighborhood warrens surrounding the hill.

The next digit, a nine, was added to the postmark
date and gave the time of the meeting: 1600. Four in the afternoon, local time.
The last digit in the sequence denoted the day, or days, that Rama Buradi would
be at the temple at four
P.M.

Seven. Any day ending with a seven. The Sandman
smiled and lit a match from the book on the desk. Today was the seventeenth so
there would be no delay. He ran the paper through the shredder, then opened the
basket and retrieved the pieces. Dropping them into an ashtray, he burned them.
Placing the travel book in the attaché case, he then opened the last email
account.

There was only one message, from an informant who
provided specific information about persons of interest. The man had no idea to
whom he sent these odd bits of information, and for the stipend he received,
couldn't have cared less. Several years ago he'd received a list of names and a
request for any information relating to them. He had various methods for
accomplishing this. If he discovered anything, he sent it to a forwarding
account and it disappeared into cyberspace. Not even he could track it.

In this case it was simply a link to a week-old
online edition of the
U.S. Air Force Times
. For five
minutes, the mercenary scanned the contents, articles, and editorials. Finally,
at the end where transfers, retirements, and promotions were listed, several
paragraphs caught his eye. This was plainly the reason the link had been sent,
and for a long moment he stared at the screen.