Charon's Landing

London

After everything had returned to normal at the British Museum, the question would still linger as to who reacted first to the sound of gunfire echoing through the marble halls — the women who started to scream as soon as the shots erupted outside the building or the countless bodyguards, secret policemen, and other security professionals who’d been hired for the event. By the time the terrorist missile had destroyed Khalid’s Daimler limousine, the guards were herding their panicked charges toward one of the “Authorized Personnel Only” areas at the back of the building that afforded the easiest defensible exit.

Most of the well-heeled guests, Arab and English alike, had lived under terrorist threats before, whether Islamic extremists or IRA separatists, and many found themselves behaving much more calmly than they had expected. With an orderliness born from acceptance, they allowed the guards to take them to safety. They talked little as they moved in a large group down long marble corridors, passed glass-faced display cases groaning under the weight of precious artifacts and archaeological treasures. Surprisingly, the Arab couples displayed more affection for each other than their English counterparts, taking their spouse’s hands or muttering reassurances as they were hurried by the urgency of armed guards.

Throughout the ordeal, not a single bullet was directed at the museum.

In the few thriller novels Khalid had ever finished, he’d read that bullets made a whining sound as they passed close by and that sometimes one could feel their passage disturb the air. However, no author had ever mentioned the intense heat as rounds sped by close enough to burn the skin of his face and neck.

Chunks of concrete were gouged from the sidewalk around him as full-metal jackets tore into the cement, stinging his hands and face and eyes. He rolled as fast as he could, trying to minimize his body as a half dozen gunmen advanced on him, their rifles chattering.

Automatic gunfire was now being returned by the police stationed at the barricade farther up Great Russell Street. A deadly cross fire arrowed just above Khalid’s prone form. There was no cover to be found; the burning wreck of the Daimler was too hot to approach, but the oily smoke rising from the twisted mass offered a thin veil in which to hide. A bullet raked across his back, a fiery furrow running from shoulder to hip, as he scrabbled into the smoke roiling from the limousine. Lunging, he managed to roll back into the street, the six-inch curb feeling like the armor of a battle tank compared to the openness of his earlier position.

His suit began to smolder from the heat of the burning wreck and his left hand, the one closest to the car, started to blister. Khalid dared not move.

Two of the gunmen were down, blown back by the scathing fire from an FN FAL rifle carried by a police sniper, and two others were wounded. The terrorists were about one hundred feet from Khalid, but the smoke and fire hid him enough for their bursts to be off by several yards. The gawkers assembled to watch the gala opening of the special exhibit had fled in panic, stumbling and tripping over one another, heedless of those few unfortunates who fell under the mob’s frantic escape.

None of the journalists flinched when the attack began. Ever since Herb Morrison’s eyewitness account of the Hindenburg disaster made him a household name and forever changed journalism’s impact on the world, every reporter’s dream was a moment like this. All of them were making the most of it. As calmly as spectators watching a tennis volley, they collectively turned from a member of Parliament as he alighted from his car toward the carnage just a hundred yards down the road. And as one, their bovine expressions of boredom changed to sanguineous delight as the bullets started to fly. One journalist actually laughed when the Daimler exploded.

Khalid saw none of this as bullets streaked around him, every moment expecting to feel nothing ever again. His eyes were so tightly closed that squiggles of phantom light danced against the darkness of his eyelids. Yet he remained completely still in the gutter of Great Russell Street. Nothing in his experience could have prepared him for this kind of terror, and even as death sought him out, he was amazed at his composure.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it was over. The blistering fire from the police barricade took down the last two charging terrorists only forty feet from Khalid, one felled by a single bullet through his left eye and the other torn nearly in half by a ten-round burst fired by a young Special Branch agent. The whole scene was captured by motor-driven Nikons and Leicas.

Enough rain had fallen so that a tiny stream poured along the gutter, eddying around leaves and bits of loose cement and the twist-off cap of a cola bottle, washing the grit and dirt from the side of Khalid’s face. Its coolness made him moan, not in fear or pain, which would come later, but in the blessed relief that he was still alive.

Police sirens punctuated the silence after the attack. Ambulances too were on their way, and more soldiers and more reporters and more of everybody. Khalid stayed in the gutter, letting the rain drum against his back and snake along his neck before trickling onto the roadway. It was only when he heard someone approach and say, “Jesus Christ,” that he finally tried to get up.

He managed to lever himself only a few inches before choking waves of pain washed over him. He’d been wounded far worse than he realized.

“He’s alive,” the voice shouted. “Get a bloody doctor here, now.”

A steadying hand touched Khalid’s shoulder, and he gasped.

“You’ll be all right, mate,” the voice said with as much reassurance as the sight of so much blood on one man would allow. “You may have more holes in you than the links at St. Andrews, but you’ll be fine.”

“Any idea who he is?” a paramedic asked the soldier as he began his ministrations.

“Yeah, the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen.”

Hasaan bin-Rufti slapped the man before him as hard as he could. While the blow contained as much strength as he possessed, the fat hanging like slabs of suet under his arm prevented his hand from swinging naturally, and much of the force was absorbed by his own considerable bulk. The backhanded follow-through was much more effective, especially when a four-carat diamond pinkie ring flayed a strip of flesh from the other man’s cheek. Delighted with the bloody weal, Rufti slapped him again in much the same fashion. This time, the fat on his finger closed over the stone’s sharp table edge, and it was his own flesh that bled. Cursing, he greedily sucked the finger into his mouth as if afraid he’d lose sustenance with the drops of blood oozing from the cut.

“I have always been surrounded by fools,” Rufti cried plaintively to the two men standing behind the man cowering before him. He pulled his finger from his mouth long enough to ingest a piece of caviar-smeared toast. Rufti replaced the bleeding finger with a loud slurp and continued to speak around it.

“How hard is it to fire a missile at a stationary target? You were told to fire as soon as they stopped, but you decided to wait long enough to let Khuddari escape.”

“But please, the driver, he was like my brother — surely you must know this?” the supine Kurdish freedom fighter wailed.

“I’ve given your organization a million dollars in return for the death of one man, and you tell me you’re not willing to make some sort of sacrifice for your cause? The driver was supposed to die, you both knew that. He was supposed to shoot Khuddari and then die in the missile explosion. His martyrdom was the key to the entire operation. How in the name of Allah and his Prophet do you expect to further your cause if no one even knows who you are? For that you need martyrs.” Rage and frustration caused Rufti’s rubbery lips to flap obscenely. “Did you know in English, with only a slight change in spelling, Kurd is a formation of cheese? With a name like that your people are already a laughingstock. Kurdish homeland. It sounds like a home for dairy cows and cheese makers.”

Rufti looked at his watch, one with a special band to encompass his twelve-inch wrist. “In ten minutes the BBC is going to get a letter stating that tonight’s attack was the work of your organization, Kurdistan United, and that the assaults will continue if your demands for an independent nation are not met. After this fiasco, the world will say, ‘Go ahead, keep attacking. Seven Kurds dead and only a little concrete shot up. In enough time you’ll have no fighters left to carry on, so please keep them coming.’

“Our deal,” Rufti continued to rant, his multiple chins quivering, “was money in exchange for the assassination of Khalid Khuddari. I know that you are too stupid to understand how important his death is for me, but don’t grovel at my feet and whine to me about how you had second thoughts at the last moment.”

In these precious moments, Rufti felt exactly as he saw himself. He had power right now, real power. His two aides would kill the Kurd if he said so, which he would, but the thrill of having the freedom fighter at his feet was too intoxicating to let it end quickly. He would stretch this out, savor it, feel the power he felt he deserved, the power of right and wrong, of life and death. Caligula must have felt like this, he thought.

From the huge Daulton serving platter that Rufti used as an appetizer plate, he selected a water cracker covered with goose liver pâté, cramming it into his mouth so quickly that the second one he brought to his lips disappeared in the same couple of chews. He considered keeping the third cracker in his hand as he pointed at the Kurd still on his knees, but temptation got the best of him, and it too disappeared. He drained a fluted glass of de-alcoholed Brut, so eagerly recharging the delicate crystal that much of the pale faux champagne splashed onto the low settee next to the armchair that cradled his bulk.

When not in conferences with the Iranians and Iraqis, Rufti had spent much of the past several days preparing his speech for tomorrow’s opening ceremonies of the OPEC meeting. He’d carefully blended the right amounts of grief and admiration for Khalid Khuddari, outrage at the senseless attack that took his life, and weary acceptance at becoming the United Arab Emirates’ official representative at the meeting. While the plan for Khuddari’s assassination had been set for weeks, months really, he’d left the writing of his speech for the very end to give it just enough of an impromptu feel to lend credibility.

He felt his bowels give an oily slide when he thought how he’d explain to the Iranians and Iraqis why Khuddari was still alive. The assassination was supposed to trigger so many events that Rufti had a hard time keeping track, and now none of them would transpire. The Iraqis especially would seek retribution. They had put up the lion’s share of the money for training the Kurdish freedom fighters, much of which had ended up in Hasaan Rufti’s personal account, and they were going to want an explanation.

What was it the Iraqi representative had said? Twenty thousand men and eight thousand tanks would be transferred to their southern border upon the announcement of Khuddari’s death. Rufti gulped at his glass again while his smooth, porcine features hardened at the Kurd in front of him. I want to kill this goat fucker with my own hands, he thought.

Far off in the ten-room condominium suite, a telephone rang softly. A moment later, an aide knocked at the door. He held a black portable phone handset on a silver platter, offering it like a piece of dark confectionery.

“What?” Rufti snorted.

“It’s Tariq, Minister. He’s at the hospital where they took Khuddari.” Tariq was one of Rufti’s own people.

“Allah be praised.” Rufti snatched up the phone, shooting a meaningful look at his other men. “At least someone shows a little initiative.”

Into the handset his voice was sharp and authoritative, not petulant as it had been a moment before. “Tariq, tell me you have great news and the jackal has died from his wounds.”

“No, Minister. Khuddari’s still alive, but his condition is listed as critical. When I arrived, an orderly was still mopping his blood from the emergency room lobby.”

Rufti knew that Tariq was speaking to him over an unsecure cellular phone and admonished him for the use of names, then continued as if his own misgivings didn’t pertain to himself. “Listen to me. Stay there at the hospital, but do not approach Khuddari. I can’t have your presence linked to me. What’s security like there?”

“Lax, so far. I don’t believe they know who Khuddari is.”

Tariq put as much nerve into his voice as possible. “I can get to his room easily. What will one more bullet matter?”

“No. Just stay close. I need some time to think. I may send this Kurdish idiot to finish Khuddari once and for all.” Rufti snapped off the phone and pointed at the Kurd still kneeling. “Lock him up for now. I’m not finished with him yet.”

Rufti wished Abu Alam was with him. He would have stormed Khuddari’s room with his shotgun blazing and escaped long before the authorities realized what had happened. Rufti didn’t have the same confidence in his second lieutenant. Tariq was good but cautious. He lacked Alam’s psychotic fever. Yet Alam was needed in Alaska to guard against treachery from Kerikov and to oversee the kidnapping of Aggie Johnston, to make sure her father didn’t get any ideas about backing out of his part of their bargain.

Agony tore at Khalid Khuddari, etching his features so deeply that the pain lines would never fade, dulling his eyes so much that they would never be bright again. The pain. It started at his buttocks and traveled up his back, radiating from his spine along the thousands of nerves that branched away like tangled roots off a plant stem. The pain wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak, crushing him flat to the bed. But it especially centered on his head. His head ached with an unholy agony, as if his brain had swollen and pressed against his skull. His face felt as if it had been stung by an entire nest of desert wasps.

Khalid moaned and a voice said, “Aha!”

He heaved one eye open, fearing that his eyeball would roll out of his head. The owner of the voice was an Indian man, about fifty, with salt and pepper hair and an almost white mustache. His skin was the color of strong tea, and his eyes appeared unfocused behind a pair of wire frame glasses. He wore hospital greens. A stethoscope coiled around his throat like a dead snake.

“I am thinking,” the Indian doctor said in that peculiar blend of snobbish English arrogance and generations of inbred servitude, “that you are in a great deal of pain right now, but I am not knowing if you wish the use of morphine to ease it, most certainly. I am thinking that you are Muslim and your religious beliefs may not allow the use of such drugs, no?”

“Give me the shot,” Khalid managed to croak through gummed lips.

“Oh, most assuredly, I will give you the medication, sir.” The doctor got busy injecting morphine into the plasma bag dangling over Khalid’s bed.

Oh, God, Khalid thought. My life is in the hands of a cliché.

“You are a lucky man, most assuredly. But first, my name is Dr. Ragaswami. I was your emergency room physician. You came to me bleeding most heartedly, I assure you. But not once were you shot through. No, most certainly not shot through. Three bullets grazed your person, some leaving very long scars requiring many stitches, but none of them caused more than superficial harm. I also took nearly forty grams of concrete from you as well, fragments kicked up by the shots fired at you, I am guessing.” Ragaswami watched the heart monitor next to Khalid, satisfied that it was reporting a man on the mend.

“How long?” Khalid gasped.

“It is now ten in the evening,” Ragaswami said in his high-pitched voice, studying the face of a cheap digital watch. “You have been here for more than five hours. It is most amazing that you are even awake right now. You are a very strong man, most assuredly. A lesser man would be unconscious until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Ragaswami would have continued, most assuredly, had Khalid not cut him off. “I need to make a call.”

“Oh, yes, I was just going to come to that. Your identification was lost before you were brought here. We have no way of contacting your family.”

The morphine was starting to kick in. Khalid felt the flames licking at his back subside, the fires slowly extinguishing.

“I have no family here,” Khalid muttered thickly, “but I have a friend, Trevor James-Price. He’s having dinner tonight at Les Ambassadeurs.”

It took a few minutes for Ragaswami to tell a duty nurse to track down James-Price, during which time he examined the superficial wounds that peppered Khalid’s back, mumbling to himself and once exclaiming proudly about the tightness of the stitches he’d laid.

“I’m sorry, but the restaurant didn’t have a reservation for a James-Price,” a haggard nurse said, poking her head into the doorway of Khalid’s room.

“Wait, it’s not his table.” Khalid played back his meeting with Trevor, remembering the woman with him. It didn’t seem as if they’d known each other long, and the dinner was her idea, not his. There was no way someone like Trevor could get a short-order reservation at Les A.

“The table is under Millicent—” He paused for nearly a minute, the morphine taking a stronger hold of his mind, blanking out not only the pain, but his entire consciousness as well. His world was turning… gray. “Millicent Gray, she got the reservation. Tell Trevor I need him.”

Five minutes later, Khalid was on the edge of blackness, a deep void that beckoned him in, one that he desperately wanted to enter but fought off like Saladin against the Crusaders at Ghalali. The nurse finally returned with a portable phone, holding it to the bed so Khalid could speak without moving and possibly tearing the stitches that ran in every direction across his back.

“I say, old fruit, this goes beyond the pale,” Trevor said somewhat sharply. “I thought we were meeting later tonight. It’s not often I get taken out by a bink like Millie.”

“Shut up, Trev,” Khalid moaned. “I’m in trouble.”

“What else is new? You bloody wogs are always in trouble. It’s the Koran, you know, all that jihad rot. It’s too violent by half and you’re all reared on it like it was a children’s story.”

“Trevor, will you shut up?” The drugs were making speech easier, but he was losing track of what he was saying. “I’m in a hospital with an Indian quack, most assuredly. I need you here. And I need your girlfriend too.”

“What are you talking about?” Concern cut through Trevor’s normal cavalier airs.

“I’ve been bloody shot, you ass. I need you to get me out of here. It hasn’t ended. It won’t ever end.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Khalid. Let me speak to the doctor.”

“No,” Khalid said. Ragaswami had left the room with the promise of returning in just a few moments. “Not tonight. I won’t be able to make it. Tomorrow morning you’ve got to come here and bring Millicent Gray. She’s tall enough.”

“What are you talking about, Khalid? Jesus, you’ve got me spooked. Are you all right?”

“They have me on drugs. I can’t talk for much longer.”

Khalid’s speech slurred as he drifted back into oblivion. “Tomorrow morning, I need you here with Mrs. Gray. Dress her in a chador, full veils. She must be covered from head to toe like a devout Muslim woman. Tell them she’s my wife. You understand?”

Trevor heard the desperation in Khalid’s voice. “Trust me, my friend, we’ll be there as soon as they let us. Christ, for you, I’ll wear the fucking veil.”

Khalid had slipped into a drug- and pain-induced unconsciousness. Had he been awake he would have heard those last few words and saved his friend’s life. As it was, he was out, the phone dropping to the floor so hard that the battery pack snapped out from its concealed cradle, cutting the connection as if Khalid had hung up the phone.

Back at Les Ambassadeurs, Trevor handed the phone back to the hovering waiter and turned to his libidinous hostess. “Do you remember my friend at the Savoy? Well, it seems he needs our help.”

“Don’t tell me he knows my husband is a member of Parliament?”

“My dear,” Trevor took one of her slim hands in his, pushing aside a plate of fine Scotch beef to get to what he really wanted. “Nothing so pedestrian. Tomorrow morning, you are going to be a harem master. And I shall be your harem.”

“I thought all members of a harem were virgins?”

“True, but after tonight I fear that you’ll have corrupted me.”