Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 39

The lone assassin entered Saudi Arabia just as before, via a series of intermediaries and paid conspirators along the Yemeni border. As with the previous mission in Medina, the objective was the same — wreak maximum terror and maximum devastation. This time it would be at Mecca, the very heart of the Muslim world.

The silver-eyed terrorist carried neither identity papers nor documents that could be linked to the Hand of God organization. Saudi Arabia would know the Hand of God had been on their soil only if the mission was successful. Should the assassin be killed or captured along the way, the authorities would never comprehend the full picture. Neither the most vigorous of interrogations nor the most thorough of background checks would reveal anything. In essence, the highly skilled operative was nothing short of a ghost — a wraith borne straight out of the Saudi royal family’s worst nightmare.

It was widely known that King Fahd had abandoned the title of “His Majesty” for “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” a reference to the mosques of Medina and Mecca. Tying himself to the holy sites and his people’s faith was a desperate attempt to tighten a slipping grasp on the legitimacy of his monarchy. As the importance of Muslim clerics grew in the daily lives of the Saudi people, less reliance was placed upon the king. The less the people relied upon their king, the greater the threat that one day they would wake up and decide they did not need a king anymore. Fahd and the royal family could easily wake up one morning and find themselves on the outside looking in, exactly as the Shah of Iran had. It might take more work to get rid of the Saudi royal family, but it was amazing what a populace, especially one infused with religious fervor, could do when their minds were set to a task. This was the ever-present reality the Saudi monarchy lived with and feared, day in and day out.

As guardian of two of the holiest sites in the Muslim world, King Fahd took his responsibilities very seriously and had beefed up security at pilgrimage sites around the country. For Fahd, it wasn’t a question of if the Al-Haram Mosque at Mecca, the holiest place on earth to Muslims, akin to what the Vatican was for Catholics, would be attacked, but when. It was the final jewel in the triple crown of terror that he knew the Jewish Hand of God organization had planned. They had made the battle personal by murdering his son, Prince Khalil, in Paris and he was bound and determined not to let them succeed in any further efforts to harm any part of the Muslim world under his protection.

The king had dispatched increased numbers of police, as well as members of the Saudi National Guard, the Special Security Force, and even members of the elite Special Warfare Unit to watch over the great mosque at Mecca, as well as other holy sites along the great pilgrimage trail. His efforts, though, were all for naught.

After murdering Prince Khalil in Paris, the assassin had traveled to Montpellier by train. There, it was a short car ride to the seaside home of Jacques Thevenin. Thevenin had been a member of France’s fabled counterterrorism team known as the GIGN. In 1979, the Saudis had called in the GIGN to help dislodge several hundred armed Muslim extremists who had taken over the sacred mosque at Mecca and who were holding thousands of pilgrims hostage in the sixty square kilometers of tunnels and passageways beneath the mosque.

Through a thoroughly detestable little man, known as the Troll, who dealt in the purchase and sale of highly classified information, the assassin discovered that against strict operational policy, Thevenin had kept the plans of the 1979 takedown of the mosque, as well as detailed blueprints of the tunnels beneath, as a souvenir.

Thevenin was still a relatively young man, only in his mid-fifties, but he had gotten soft and careless. To his credit, he did put up some resistance, but only a token amount. The assassin had only begun to fillet his left foot, with a long fishing knife from the kitchen, when Thevenin gave up the location of the plans for the takedown and the schematics of the tunnels. The man also provided the assassin with updated security measures being employed by the Saudis, to which he was privy, having been hired by their government in the last several years as a security consultant.

This last bit of information was an unanticipated bonus. Thevenin had proffered it in the hope that he would be able to save his own life. The hovering specter of death had a way of encouraging dramatic confessions and efforts at bargaining. This was precisely why, whenever possible, the assassin didn’t kill instantly. So much more could be gained by taking one’s time.

When the skin up to Thevenin’s knees was peeled back and most of the flesh had been cut away, the assassin realized the man had nothing more to give. It wasn’t that Thevenin hadn’t tried. He had offered a wealth of information, but none of it was useful to his inquisitor. The assassin removed a long garrote wire from the backpack resting against the chair to which Thevenin had been duct-taped, and wrapped it quickly around the man’s throat. The razor-sharp wire cut into the former counterterrorism operative’s neck as if it were nothing more than a wheel of soft Camembert cheese.

Thevenin’s schematics turned out to be even more helpful than the terrorist had thought they’d be. Not only were the tunnels beneath the Al-Haram Mosque accurately detailed, but structural comments littered the diagrams as well. It only took the assassin one visit inside the labyrinth of passages to understand that the attack would be a huge success.

Knowing where all of the security measures were made the assassin’s job that much easier. The terrorist was able to proceed at a relatively leisurely pace, confident that none of the Saudi security forces knew what was going on beneath the mosque and its grand courtyard.

The assassin placed bombs strategically throughout the tunnels and enhanced their deadly force by adding aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. While normal high explosives had a velocity of at least three thousand feet per second, these bombs would detonate with a velocity of over fifteen thousand. To add to the devastation, the assassin also lashed canisters of sodium cyanide to the bombs directly beneath the mosque in the hope that the fumes would vaporize and be sucked up into the ventilation and air-conditioning systems, as well as the stairwells and passenger tunnels — killing scores more.

The assassin knew that there was a reason what was about to happen had to happen. No longer blinded by youth and naiveté, the assassin saw the world as it was, stripped of all its pretense. It had been a mistake to think that some of those people were different. They had no hearts. They were incapable of feeling. They were not even people. They were animals who deserved to die. And they would die. All of them. It was only a matter of time.

As much as the terrorist wanted to stay to watch the explosion and its deadly aftermath, training and a strong instinct for self-preservation dictated leaving the country as quickly and as quietly as possible.

The assassin stopped at a postbox and deposited a letter to each of the most widely read Arabic dailies, Ar-Riyadh and Al-Jazirah. By the time these letters were received, the damage would already be done and the world would be closer to embracing the inevitable.