Charon's Landing

London

The hospital lobby was a strange combination of institutional coldness and the grief of those forced to wait within it. Families clustered in tight enclaves of nervous expectancy and wailing. Amid the sanitized tiled walls and threadbare carpet paced by innumerable feet, Lady Millicent Gray cut a striking figure. Her long legs, mostly hidden beneath a loose-fitting linen dress, slid with an easy grace, the magnificent cinnamon mass of her hair flamed like a beacon. Her face, beautiful even at this early hour, with only subtle traces of makeup to mask the more obvious signs of the previous night’s sexual excesses, radiated the right trace of God-given confidence and royally appointed favor. Heads that until a moment before were bowed with grief came up and regarded her openly, their pain forgotten if only for the instant of her passage.

If asked later, none of the forty or so people who saw her stride through the lobby’s double glass doors would have remembered the figure who walked with her, an Arab woman fully covered and veiled as was proper for the more conservative sects of Islam.

At the hospital’s security desk, Millicent spoke to the figure at her elbow out of the corner of her mouth. “I hope you know, Trevor, that I want to wear that outfit when we’re finished here and I want you to ravage me like some Barbary pirate.”

“Are you kidding?” Trevor James-Price quipped quietly. “I may never give it up. I know why women wear skirts now. My God, the breeze blowing up to my bollocks feels wonderful. The old clappers have never known such freedom.”

“God, you’re incorrigible.” Millie Gray smiled.

The security guard at the duty nurses’ station didn’t question Millicent about her connection to Khalid Khuddari or why she was here. He could barely tear his eyes away from her breasts long enough to notice she wasn’t even alone. He tripped over his tongue telling her that Khalid had a private room on the fourth floor. Millicent Gray and the disguised Trevor James-Price veered toward the elevators, both of them suppressing the desire to hold hands. Lord Harold Gray would be back from his African hunt in fifteen days, and any second of their affair they squandered would never be recovered.

Five minutes after Trevor and Millie stepped onto the elevator, an intense young Kurd walked into the lobby. The lump bulging out the left breast pocket of his khaki overcoat was a folding cellular phone. The lump at the right was a silenced Sig Sauer P220.

Tariq had met him in the parking garage in front of the massive hospital and told him Khalid’s room number, having learned it last night after a lengthy reconnoiter. The Kurd had exactly twenty minutes to reach Khuddari, kill him, and make his way back to the parking garage where Tariq waited to drive them away. The young man paused in the lobby, squandering five of his minutes trying to steel his courage. Security was lax, but there were two burly guards at their station, talking easily with reporters who were waiting to get a statement from the unknown victim four floors above.

The gunman decided that now was his time to strike. If he was somehow caught, he knew he would take his own life, redeeming himself for the failure yesterday. His martyrdom would be secured. The silencer attached to the big automatic had never been used; it would work at optimum efficiency. The shot would be undetectable from more than a couple of yards from Khuddari’s room. The guards didn’t even glance in his direction as the gunman headed for the multiple banks of elevators.

Khalid Khuddari had been awake for nearly two hours, pain insidiously bringing him out of his drug-induced sleep. The scabs on his back felt hot even through the layers of gauze protecting them, and they itched fiercely. Every time he blinked, the delicate muscles around his eyes pulled against the raw wounds on his face, bringing fresh tears streaming down his cheeks. And when the tears stung the cuts, it was quite literally adding salt to a wound.

The thought made him chuckle painfully.

“You can’t be that hurt if you can manage to laugh at this ungodly hour.”

Khalid looked across the room. He barely remembered Millicent Gray, but he knew the voice from under the veils. He hadn’t heard them enter. Trevor James-Price pulled the black veil of the chador from around his head, his fine hair dancing with the motion before falling naturally over his boyish face. Despite his cocksure smile, there was true concern behind his bluer-than-blue eyes. “God, Khalid, you look terrible, even for a wog.”

“You have no idea.”

“I won’t be pedestrian and ask you how you feel. And since I talked to that obtuse doctor last night and read the papers this morning, I don’t need to ask what happened either. All I need to know is why you wanted me here and why this outrageous getup? By the way, do you know that security here is an absolute joke?”

“Not surprising. No one knows who I am, and I want to keep it that way until after I’m gone.” Slowly, like an old man near death, Khalid struggled into a sitting position, each movement deepening the grimace on his face. By the time he got his feet dangling over the edge of the high hospital bed, he was out of breath and sweating freely.

“Easy, old fruit.” Trevor crossed the room and laid a hand on Khalid’s shoulder. Khalid winced at the slight touch.

“I have to get out of here, Trev,” he panted, his face deathly pale, his lips appearing blue. “I need to get back to the UAE.”

“I don’t think you should be going anywhere,” Millicent offered, moving next to Trevor. Although she didn’t know Khalid, it was hard not to look at him and feel anything less than total sympathy.

“I am going, Lady Gray. Trevor can explain why, but right now I need your help, not your pity,” Khalid said with a dedication that chilled the room.

Trevor was already pulling the black robes over his head. Contrary to his earlier tease to Millicent, beneath them he wore the suit pants and white shirt he’d had on the night before. There was a lipstick smear on the right collar of the Turnbull and Asser shirt. “What do you need her to do?”

“She should have worn the chador. I told you that last night.” Khalid was bothered that they hadn’t listened to him.

“Doesn’t really matter, old boy,” Trevor said flippantly, trying to soothe his friend. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to try cross-dressing.”

Khalid didn’t say anything further as Trevor produced a bundled package of clothing pilfered from Lord Gray’s dressing room. Millicent Gray’s husband was a large man, with a waist size that could accommodate two of Khalid with a little room to spare. After helping Khalid to dress, Trevor slipped the robe over his head, pulling it down so that only his shoes were visible below the black cotton. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Khalid. You’re in no condition to leave this room, let alone fly back to the UAE.”

“I don’t have a choice.” Khalid rode another wave of pain, each crest being just a little easier than the last. It was hard to believe, but his body was becoming accustomed to his injuries.

Millicent stepped forward quickly and grasped the arm of the swaying Khalid. “Trevor, you shouldn’t be helping him. He’s half dead.”

“There are more lives at stake than just his, Millie,” James-Price said with quiet understanding. “I’m sorry to get you involved like this. I’ve no right, but I ask you to please help us. The men who came after him yesterday at the British Museum will most certainly have another go. He’s a target sitting in this room.”

“Why not inform your Embassy?” she asked.

“Because I don’t know whom there I can trust right now. This is the best way,” Khalid replied.

“But he won’t be able to get a flight without reservations.” Millie continued to talk to Trevor as if Khalid wasn’t there.

“Diplomatic passport. He’ll get a flight.” Trevor held up the slim volume he’d taken from Khalid’s hotel room. “That’s where I went earlier this morning. Since the hospital didn’t know who he was last night, I figured he’d left his ID in his hotel.”

Khalid nodded gratefully to his friend, taking the passport. “The only perk better than the diplomatic license plates on the embassy cars I get to use. Lady Gray, I’m sorry, but there’s no other way. And like Trev said, there are a lot of lives at stake.”

“All right, I’ll help. But Trevor, you make bloody sure that there are security people waiting for us at Heathrow. And a doctor too.” While she thought the two men were being overdramatic, she would go along with it, if for no other reason than that she was the trophy wife of a millionaire member of Parliament and bored out of her beautiful skull.

“It’s best that she stays, Trevor,” Khalid said. “We could be followed once we leave the hospital.”

“Nonsense,” Trevor said, pulling the veil over Khalid’s head. “No one is going to pay you the slightest heed.”

He fished out the keys to the old Bentley he’d been driving since his divorce and placed them in Millicent’s waiting hand, caressing the tight junctures between her fingers. She smiled at the intimate gesture and he winked wolfishly. “Can you manage to get him out of the hospital? I could give you a hand down to the car.”

“No!” Khalid said. His voice was muffled by the veil but still carried the weight and fear of his words. “Two people came into this place together and two are going to leave. We don’t want to attract attention. I’ll make it.”

At the door, Khalid paused and turned back to thank his friend. The pale sunlight streaming through the window gilded James-Price’s hair. “I’ll see you soon, you bloody Pom bastard.”

“Take care of yourself, you stinking wog.”

Falling into the role of a bereaved family member leaving a dying relative and trying to remain as erect as possible, Khalid allowed Millicent Gray to lead him from the room. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to the trench-coated man headed down the hall toward them. Millicent had no idea how to spot any sort of trouble, and Khalid was struggling not to faint. Had they turned, they would have seen the man reach into his coat as he approached the door to Khalid’s room. They might have saved Trevor.

When the heavy door of the room swung inward against the articulating arm of the automatic closer, Trevor was just entering the bathroom. He half expected that Millie had returned for a good-bye kiss.

He was actually smiling as he turned. A fusillade of hastily fired nine-millimeter rounds tore into the bathroom door, one catching him squarely between the eyes. The wound didn’t bleed, for his heart had already stopped pumping, and only a few drops scattered as he pitched to the hard linoleum floor.

The assassin glanced back into the deserted corridor. Seeing that no one had heard the shots, he entered the room, letting the door silently close behind. Before examining the body, he lowered the cocked hammer of the automatic and slid the weapon back into his coat. Only then did he realize he’d made a critical mistake. The man on the floor was not Khalid Al-Khuddari.

The phone in his pocket shrilled.

He reached for it and activated the unit but did not speak. Suddenly his voice had gone, abandoning him as he realized the seriousness of his failure.

“Well?” It was Hasaan bin-Rufti. The Kurd hoped it would have been Tariq, for the man seemed a little easier to deal with than his corpulent superior.

Without thinking, the gunman told the truth. “He has escaped, effendi.”

“What?” Rufti roared into the phone.

“He had already left the hospital by the time I arrived. I don’t know when or where he’s gone.” Lying was the only way the man could think to save his life. Rufti would kill him for his failure.

“Find him, or by the blood of the Prophet, I’ll flay you alive and use your skin as a car-seat cover.” Hasaan Rufti slammed down the phone and turned to the steward hovering over him, the man’s jacket so snowy white it almost gave off a light of its own. “Tell the pilot that if he doesn’t take off within the next sixty seconds…” Rufti paused, and when he couldn’t come up with a really good threat, he repeated himself. “Tell him I’ll flay him alive and use his skin as a car-seat cover.”

“Yes, Minister,” the steward said, bowing like the toady he was. He slunk forward through the cabin of the Hawker Siddeley private jet, ducking his head to pass into the cockpit.

While the appointments of the aircraft were the finest that the Hawker company offered, Brazilian woods and Turkish leather, there was no escaping the fact that the plane was small, headroom sacrificed for the sake of economy. Most people would have been thrilled to have such a plane at their disposal, but Rufti was chafed by the Hawker. Khuddari rated a Boeing for his personal use, if the fool ever chose to use it, a wide body with almost enough room to install a trampoline if the mood struck him.

That plane should belong to someone who would appreciate it, Rufti thought. Someone like himself.

They were still on the apron at Gatwick Airport, delayed now for two hours because an El Al flight had declared an emergency on its inward leg to Heathrow and had opted to land at Gatwick instead, stacking up dozens of aircraft and delaying the takeoff of dozens more, including Rufti’s HS 125 600. He was supposed to be in Abu Dhabi by ten, and the way it was looking, he would be at least four hours late.

“Fucking Jews,” he muttered darkly, as if that one oath covered all his problems.

Kerikov was set to detonate the icepacks attached to the pipeline in Alaska, the Iranians and Iraqis were poised to start their troop movements at a moment’s notice, and he was stuck on the ground waiting for a bunch of rich Jews to get off their plane and buy up more of the world. He had two hundred of his own troops waiting for him in the Gulf, ready for him to lead them on the glorious taking of the United Arab Emirates from the puppet the British had set up in the 1970s.

The Crown Prince, though wary, was not suspecting a revolt. Rufti knew that the early timing of his revolution was the key to taking the Persian Gulf. To delay, while Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE geared up for the changes brought about by the suspension of U.S. oil imports, would only hamper his cause. He must strike now, while the governments were unsure of what the future would bring.

Rufti didn’t remember where he’d first heard the adage, but it was one that served him now: A hungry man is easy to lead and a confused one is easy to defeat.

The Gulf was confused right now, governments in turmoil, ripe for his plucking. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Over the past year, ever since buying into Ivan Kerikov’s scheme to cripple the Americans’ domestic oil resources, Rufti had worked tirelessly, sub rosa, to make his grand scheme a reality. Without Iran and Iraq, he could never really hope to usurp the throne of the UAE and keep it for himself. Yet if he failed to produce the agreed upon trigger, Khuddari’s death, he could forget about ever ruling in the Middle East. In fact, he could forget about seeing too many more sunrises either. The Iraqis especially had warned that if he failed, Rufti would die.

Iraqi tanks were ready to roll into Kuwait once Rufti neutralized the American threat. By taking out the pipeline, he would create a domestic crisis within the United States that would leave them unable to counter the invasion. Kuwait would fall within a few days, Saudi Arabia just a week or so later. A few anthrax-laden Scuds targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the war would be over. America would have no bases from which to launch a counteroffensive, and they would never resort to nuclear weapons to dislodge the Iraqis and their newly allied Iranian comrades.

Without oil from Alaska, and having a strategic reserve that would last for only a month or two, the United States would be forced to deal with the new Middle Eastern triumvirate of Iran, Iraq, and the UAE. Rufti envisioned a tenfold increase in oil prices. And that was just the beginning. He saw himself becoming one of the richest men in the world. And with billions of barrels of oil in reserve under the scorching sands of the Emirates, he could do it.

If only he could get the fucking plane into the air and on its way to Abu Dhabi City.

The phone recessed into the armrest of his seat bleated like a lamb, a discreet chirp that he almost ignored in his agitation. On the fourth ring he finally picked it up.

“What?”

“Sir, it’s Tariq.” After Abu Alam, Tariq was Rufti’s most trusted lieutenant. An orphan from Lebanon’s brutal civil war, raised in the refugee camps on a diet of hatred and death, Tariq was fiercely loyal and utterly without morals. When it came to killing, Abu Alam did it with the burning need of an addict, but Tariq carried out his duties with the coldness of a professional. Rufti had sent him to the hospital as a backup to the idiot Kurdish national.

“What is it?”

“I’m on the motorway, headed toward Heathrow Airport following a blue Bentley.” His voice was distorted by the cellular phone connection. “Shortly after the Kurd went up to Khuddari’s room, two people left the hospital garage, two women, one western, one Arab. The Arab woman was dressed in a chador, her face veiled. I’d seen them enter the hospital garage earlier. It appeared that the vehicle belonged to the Arab woman, for she drove here, but when they left, it was the Western woman who was behind the wheel and she didn’t seem familiar with the car’s controls.”

“Get to the point, Tariq,” Rufti snapped.

“I believe that the robes are a disguise and that I’m following Khuddari as he attempts to flee the country.”

“Are you certain?” The glimmer of hope Tariq offered reminded Rufti that he hadn’t eaten for nearly thirty minutes. As he continued the conversation, he rang for the steward. “Is it really Khuddari?”

“My instincts tell me yes.”

“How far are you from Heathrow?”

“Only about ten minutes from the main gates. I suspect that they’re headed to the international terminal, Terminal 4.”

“Yes, yes, yes, let me think.” There wasn’t time before Khuddari entered the secure perimeter of the airport to launch an attack. What Rufti needed now was a way to delay Khuddari in London for a few hours, enough time for him to get to the UAE and put into motion his side of the coup. “Do you have any explosives with you?”

“I have just a couple of grenades,” Tariq admitted, his voice breaking up as the radio waves of his cell phone encountered the pulsing radar beams given off by Heathrow Airport.

“Perfect,” Rufti glowed. The steward put an entire salmon before him, the flesh of the fish so pinkish and light that the slit along its flank resembled the intimate lips of a woman. “After I hang up, call that Kurdish fool and relay my orders. Now here’s what I want you to do…”

While the Bentley had seen its finer days nearly a decade earlier, such a luxury vehicle still commanded respect as it hissed along the M-4, just east of Heathrow. Millicent was now familiar enough with the automobile to intimidate other drivers into giving her the slight advantage she needed to edge the old Bent forward another spot or two on the clogged expressway. A tandem trailer truck honked at her aggressive driving, which she riposted with an unladylike curse and the extension of her middle finger. She apologized to Khalid for the gesture but explained that no one ever complained when she drove her Rolls Silver Cloud so martially.

Khalid had been silent for most of the drive, consciously fighting the pain that flashed like sheet lightning across his back and lower legs. One moment, he could keep it at bay, forcing it back with sheer will, and then suddenly it would peak. There was so much he was supposed to be thinking about, so many plans he had to make, but his mind was too addled to concentrate. He could feel Millicent Gray glance at him every once in a while, but he could not bring himself to turn and look back at her.

They swerved through the sweeping curves of the access road, patches of lawn and shrubbery giving way to great expanses of asphalt and corrugated steel warehouses. Millicent followed the overhead signs toward International Departures, jinxing around the buses that dominated the narrow roads, their backsides belching clouds of smoke on their endless loops around Heathrow’s thousands of acres.

“Which airline?” Millicent asked as they neared Terminal 4.

“It doesn’t matter,” Khalid replied listlessly, slipping out of the chador. “Once inside, I can call a reservation number to get me the next flight to Abu Dhabi.”

“Are you sure about this?” She eased the Bentley up to the curb before one of the numerous British Airways doors, tucking neatly behind a motor coach disgorging dozens of poorly dressed people finishing their whirlwind European package tour. “I can take you to a different hospital or maybe to the trauma station here at the airport. I’m sure they have a doctor on duty.”

From his pants’ pocket he pulled a twist of tissue, which he opened to reveal a few capsules. “I’m sure,” he said, swallowing them in a quick movement. “I’ve been saving these, Percodans, I believe. They should see me through.”

“Wait, shouldn’t there be some security people waiting for us here?” she asked.

“That was a bluff on Trevor’s part to get you to cooperate. He wouldn’t have had the time to set up something like that. I have to go now.” Khalid opened the passenger door. “Thank you, Lady Gray. I think very soon you will see the results of your act this morning.”

He stepped from the car, gingerly testing his strength before taking the first tentative steps to the terminal building, oblivious of the throngs jostling around him. Once within the building, he was swallowed by the crowds, invisible, just another face to the thousands of passengers and well-wishers milling and queuing up. His legs trembled and the clothing touching his back and shoulders scalded the multiple wounds even through their thick bandages. If the pills didn’t kick in soon, he would collapse.

It took him a few minutes to secure a seat on the next flight to Abu Dhabi by way of a British Airways flight to Riyadh. He need only produce his passport at the VIP lounge to get his ticket. It was the first time he’d ever used such a diplomatic privilege, and he vowed that he wouldn’t ever make a habit of it — but it was reassuring to know he could.

Trevor had thoughtfully placed a handful of twenty-pound notes in the pants pocket, one of which he used to buy a stout umbrella and a pair of sunglasses. He used the umbrella like a cane so he could keep his weight off the worse of his two legs. While the large glasses didn’t hide all the wounds on his face, they camouflaged a couple of them, and with his hair raked forward, he could almost pass as the victim of a recent auto collision.

At the top of an escalator, just before the security X-ray machines, a young woman in a blue uniform approached him.

“Minister Khuddari, my name is Vivica Smith.” The British Airways hostess smiled brightly. She was young, barely in her twenties, with bobbed blond hair and soft eyes. She checked his passport against the information given to her by the airline’s executive ticketing service. Seeing how he hobbled, Vivica Smith called over one of the airport’s electric carts to carry them to where a Boeing 767 was waiting for its final passenger.

“Thank you for your prompt attention, this is really quite welcome,” Khalid said. The painkillers were finally beginning to take effect, blunting the edges of his sharper wounds. While they trundled down the carpeted hallways, he borrowed Vivica’s cellular phone to call Colonel Wayne Bigelow in Abu Dhabi. The old desert rat wasn’t in his cluttered bachelor’s apartment, but Khalid left word on his answering machine that he would be arriving in a few hours, giving the particulars of the flight and asking Bigelow to pick him up at the airport.

Heavily burdened passengers parted before the cart as they glided past the duty-free shops, countless magazine stands, and elegant boutiques that were the pride of Terminal 4. It took just a few minutes for them to reach Khalid’s gate. Vivica Smith jumped from the cart and swung around a wheelchair that had been left by the gate’s entrance. With a minimum of fuss, he was wheeled to the aircraft and led to his first class seat. To get such a seat on this short notice and to have the plane delayed until he was aboard cost nearly ten times the regular ticket price. Privilege wasn’t cheap.

No longer able to remain awake, Khalid fell into the blissful sleep he’d been fighting as the big jet lumbered away from its hard stand.

The delaying fuse of a Czech-manufactured RGD-5 grenade had been altered from its normal four seconds to a full sixty, making it an ingenious terror weapon for crowded areas where more sophisticated devices could be detected if left for too long. Waiting until the second hand of his watch made the final tick of their schedule, Tariq slurped down the remainder of a container of soft drink, pulled the grenade from his coat pocket, and dropped both items into the trash bin he’d been waiting near for fifteen minutes. Calmly, he meandered back out of the airport and headed toward his car stowed in short-term parking. Even if someone recognized him as the man who’d planted the device, this was his first action outside the Middle East and it was improbable his description would lead the authorities to him.

Fifty-nine-point-eight seconds after the grenade’s handle released, the 120 grams of TNT within its rounded body exploded, embedding the lid of the trash container in the terminal’s ceiling. The concussive force also blew outward, the weapon’s fragmentation liner dicing the weapon’s outer casing into hundreds of tiny shrapnel shards. A nineteen-year-old Norwegian au pair returning home caught the brunt of the blast, larger portions of her dismembered body landing yards from the explosion. Eight other people were wounded by the blast. One of them, a Nigerian priest, would later die in the airport’s medical facility.

Even before panic could ripple through the large building, the phone in the airport administrator’s office rang. Already in a foul mood because of the traffic reroutings caused by the El Al emergency landing at Gatwick, Geoff Wilberforce didn’t want to answer his extension.

“What?” he barked, expecting some spineless air traffic controller at Gatwick.

“At the precise moment your phone rang, an explosive was set off in Terminal Four’s main concourse. The blast was small in comparison to what we have planted throughout the airport, including several of the aircraft waiting clearance to take off.

“If any planes attempt to leave Heathrow after two minutes of the termination of this call, I will detonate the rest of the bombs. The blood of the innocents will be on your hands. I will allow aircraft to land for the next hour, but if any planes attempt to do so after that, I will detonate the remaining explosives. Heathrow Airport is shut down on order of Kurdistan United.”

The caller cut the connection, leaving Wilberforce listening to the steady drone of a dial tone, much like the flat-line sound on a heart monitor. He was just getting to his feet when his secretary burst into his office. She was near tears.

“Geoff, there’s been an explosion.”

The big engines of the British Airways Boeing 767 were still idled to a low whine as the huge craft moved across the taxiways behind a New York-bound jumbo. They were fourth in line for takeoff when suddenly the engines were cut to dramatic silence. The cabin lights dimmed and the air-conditioning units switched to their much weaker internal power.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I’m afraid there is a mechanical problem here at Heathrow. The main radar unit just died and took the computers with it. We may be stuck here for a little while until they can sort everything out. On behalf of British Airways, I and the rest of the crew apologize for this slight delay, and I will certainly pass on any information as I receive it. In the meantime, I’ve authorized the flight attendants to start a complimentary beverage service. Thank you.”

Khalid Khuddari slept through the entire announcement.