Vulcan's Forge

Cairo, Egypt

The sun was still a sizzling torture over the crowded city streets despite the onset of evening. The Arabs in their long white galabias seemed immune to the hundred plus heat, but the Westerners in the city suffered. Evad Lurbud bought a cup of warm date juice from a passing vendor who had a huge pewter urn strapped to his back. The juice tasted awful, but his body needed the fluids.

Lurbud stood on Shari al-Muizz Le-din Allah, the main road in the Khan el-Khalili, a huge sprawling bazaar located three miles and about a thousand years from modern Tahrir Square at the center of Cairo. A rabbit warren of twisting alleys choked with people, the Khan is the true shopping center for the locals. Harried, red-faced tourists make it an obligatory stop after the pyramids, the necropolis at Memphis, and the crowded Cairo Museum.

Founded by Sultan Barquq’s Master of Horse, Garkas el-Khalili, in 1382 as a way station for camel caravans, the Khan had grown enormously over time. By the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, items from as far away as England were being traded in the sprawling bazaar. The Ottoman sense of order established a guild system within the bazaar that is still evident today. Perfume sellers congregate just south of the Khan’s main crossroads. Gold and silver are sold in specific areas, while carpet merchants are found in another. The heady aromas from spice merchants and food sellers compete throughout the Khan while tourist curio shops cling to the Khan’s perimeter.

There were no cars in the Khan, but the din of the pedestrian traffic more than made up for the lack of engine noises. Hawkers touted their wares and the Arab tradition of haggling reached a great cacophony. The loudspeakers of the two mosques just outside the bazaar throbbed with cries of “Allah Akbar” with pious regularity.

Soon, Lurbud knew, the Muslims would close up their shops and head to the mosques for sundown prayer. He scoffed at the notion of a God, especially one that demanded prayer five times a day, yet he respected their fealty. As a veteran of the Afghani campaign, he knew full well the strength the rebels derived from their religion. The Mujahedeen called their resistance a “Holy War,” and whipped the tribes into an amazing, cohesive force that possessed the power to resist the largest army ever maintained.

Lurbud had spent his first tour of the war as an intelligence operative for the KGB, spending weeks and sometimes months away from the relative security of Kabul on deep cover insertions. Because of his swarthy complexion and knack for languages, he could ingratiate himself with a rebel band and act as one of their own while gathering data on their strengths and weaknesses, assessing the future plans of other groups of resistance fighters. When his task was complete, he would call in the feared helicopter gunships. The craft would thunder into an encampment where he was a trusted member and kill every man, woman, and child in sight. Lurbud would conveniently be on patrol during these massacres. During the two years he spent on this duty, Lurbud’s Afghani compatriots never once suspected that he was the cause of the devastation.

His amazing nerve caught the eye of the KGB hierarchy, especially Ivan Kerikov. After one helicopter attack, when Lurbud couldn’t extricate himself from a rebel village yet managed to survive the scathing fire from the Hind-D gunships, Kerikov pulled him from the ranks of field operatives and seconded him to his personal staff in Kabul.

There, Lurbud’s chief function was breaking captured rebels in the dank prisons the Soviets had established. Lurbud learned that the binding force that held the Mujahedeen together was also a major weapon in the interrogation rooms. The Muslim faith forbade the devout from coming into contact with swine, and even the threat of such contact was enough to break the hardest rebels Lurbud faced. It amazed him how the most solid fighter would panic when threatened to be placed inside the decayed carcass of a pig.

What kind of God made men fear hogs, considering so many of them lived just like them? Lurbud wondered idly.

The voice of the Muezzin blared from speakers high above the streets in the minarets, calling the faithful to prayer. Lurbud crouched deeper in an alley, shrinking into the shadows of stacked spice bags as the streets began to empty. The smell of saffron was nauseating. Glancing at his feet, he saw that he’d stepped into a pile of dog shit. He muttered in disgust and smeared the filth against one of the bags.

Looking up, Lurbud recognized his quarry as the man left his shop across the Khan’s main road. The sign above the shop’s door stated that Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman was a jeweler, and the size of his shop indicated that he was prosperous. Evad Lurbud knew differently.

Suleiman was one of the richest arms merchants in the Middle East. Not having the notoriety and ostentation of other death merchants, Suleiman had been able to practice his trade unmolested by the United States or Western Europe. Although his arms were used to fight in Beirut, Italy, Ireland, Germany, the drug-choked cities of America, and countless other places, he had never once been questioned by the authorities.

The obese Arab waddled down the street to the Mosque of Sayyada al-Hussein, his body waggling with every step as huge sacks of extra flesh slid against each other. His face was round with an almost childlike openness.

According to his KGB dossier, Suleiman was far from the fool whose image he projected. He had distinguished himself in two of the wars against Israel and in the subsequent years had established a relationship with nearly every terrorist organization on the planet. The KGB figured that Suleiman’s personal wealth was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred million dollars.

Too nice a neighborhood for a stinking Arab, thought Lurbud as he crossed the now empty street.

Lurbud paused by the door. The streets were now eerie. He had been watching Suleiman’s shop since noon from various vantage points, and during that entire time the streets had been crowded and loud. There was no one about now; even the countless cats that skulked through the alleys had vanished. Since crime is nearly nonexistent in the Khan, there was no need for elaborate security systems. Lurbud expertly picked the frail lock to Suleiman’s shop.

He knew from the dossier that the Arab always returned to his shop for a few minutes after prayer before leaving the Khan for his home on Shari El Haram, the road which leads to the Great Pyramids at Giza. Lurbud closed and locked the door after once again checking the empty street.

Inside the shop, Lurbud passed display cases that gleamed with gold in the dusty light that streamed in through the transomed windows. The setting sun cast long shadows across the room. Lurbud eased a Takarov pistol from its holster under his jacket and parted the beaded curtain that led to Suleiman’s back office.

A battered wooden desk, covered with stacks of books and a gold measuring scale, occupied the center of the small office. A coffee urn, tarnished and pitted, sat on a low settee against one wall. The room smelled of dust mingled with the sweet odor of hashish. Lurbud sat behind the desk, the pistol in his lap. For twenty minutes, until Suleiman returned from prayer, the only movement in the room was the occasional blinking of Lurbud’s dark eyes. He waited with the same patience as the Sphinx just outside the city.

Lurbud’s entrance had disturbed the room, its air pattern, its volume, its feel. As he remained, motionless, the room had calmed, accepting his presence. This was a skill he had learned at a training camp on the shores of the Black Sea, where students were put into a completely dark maze. The one who walked out alive, graduated.

He remained motionless even when he heard the front door of the shop open and close. An instant later Suleiman’s immense bulk parted the curtain separating his shop from his office.

Suleiman had grabbed a demitasse of coffee and was almost upon Lurbud before he noticed the intruder. The thimble-sized cup fell from his pudgy finger, shattering on the stone floor. Behind his beard, Suleiman’s face drained of color and he staggered back several paces.

“I read in your dossier that you are never guarded here in the Khan.” Lurbud spoke fluent, unaccented Arabic. “You believed that your standing in the bazaar would protect you, yes?”

“Who are you?” Suleiman demanded, recovering from his initial shock.

“My name means nothing to you, Suleiman el-aziz,” Lurbud spoke without emotion. “You were hired to supply and ship nearly a thousand tons of arms, ammunition, and material to Hawaii. Is this not true?”

“I know not what you talk about.”

“I believe that you do. The order was placed by Takahiro Ohnishi possibly several weeks or months ago.”

“I am a simple jeweler. I don’t understand.”

Lurbud continued as if Suleiman had not spoken. “I represent a group that does not wish to see this order filled. We don’t want those arms shipped to Hawaii. In fact, we don’t want you to have any further involvement with Ohnishi at all.”

“Who are you to tell me how to run my business?” Suleiman retorted with a sneer.

“Ah, so no longer are you a simple jeweler.” Lurbud’s smile was devoid of amusement.

“I know your type,” Suleiman said, his tone scornful. “You’re some soldier of fortune who happened on that piece of information. Do you think you can blackmail Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman?”

“I am not here to blackmail you. I’m here to tell you that the order is canceled.”

“You are too late, mercenary. Those arms are on a freighter halfway to Hawaii.” Sweat had beaded on Suleiman’s creased forehead.

The Arab was lying. Suleiman hadn’t even purchased the arms yet. He was currently using Ohnishi’s deposit money to push up the bond prices of a hydroelectric project in Sri Lanka. Because of his contacts in the terrorist underworld, Suleiman knew that Tamil separatists were going to bomb the huge network of dams within two weeks. By pushing up the bond price and then selling at a slight discount just prior to the attack, Suleiman stood to quadruple the money. Only then would he put together Ohnishi’s order for weapons.

“I believe that you’re lying, Suleiman.” Lurbud brought the Takarov into view for the first time. “But to be honest, I don’t really care what the truth is.”

For such a large man, Suleiman’s reaction time was incredibly fast. He dove across the room, his body sailing through the air like a giant zeppelin.

Lurbud swung his pistol in an arc matching Suleiman’s leap, but his first shot amazingly missed the huge target. Suleiman crashed against the wall near the settee, one arm sweeping the coffee urn to the floor. Coffee flooded across the floor in a thick black tide. Suleiman’s hands, made dexterous through years of precision jewelry making, tore at a pistol which had been taped to the back of the old urn.

Evad caught a look of murderous rage in the Arab’s eyes as Suleiman torqued his huge body to bring the gun to bear. Lurbud fired an instant before the muzzle of Suleiman’s automatic caught a bead on him. The shot tore into the arms merchant’s body, the fat rippling in shock waves around the impact.

Suleiman’s arm was thrown up by the shot, the tiny Beretta spinning from his hand. Lurbud fired again, and again. The killing light in Suleiman’s eyes began to fade. Lurbud came around the desk, his pistol aimed directly at the Arab’s head.

With his free hand the Russian pulled a flask from inside his jacket. He unscrewed the lid from the pewter flask and knelt next to the dying Muslim.

“As a final thought, Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman,” Lurbud began, pouring the viscous red liquid from the flask onto Suleiman, “you will meet Allah with your body covered in pig’s blood.”

Suleiman opened his mouth to scream at this ultimate desecration, and Lurbud fired one more round down the gaping throat. The blood of the dead Muslim mingled with that of the unclean pig on the hard floor of the office.

Lurbud reholstered his gun, noting for the first time the thick pall of cordite smoke that hung in the air. The room reeked of smoke, but beneath that odor he detected the smell of blood and Suleiman’s voided bowels.

At the front door of the shop, he paused. There were a few people on the street, mostly old men heading back to the coffeehouses and their hookahs. The thick stone walls of the shop had muffled any sound from the silenced Takarov. Lurbud eased out of the shop and mingled with the crowd as best he could. Ten minutes later he was out of the bazaar, searching for a cab. He had two hours to dispose of the pistol and get to the airport before his flight to Hawaii.