Gathering Storm

The item showed a bullet-riddled car skewed across a street. Doors were open and bodies were seen in the vehicle or hanging half out of it. There were also three bodies on the road. The whole scene was familiar to the Stony Man crew. An ambush, the car riddled with autofire and the passengers killed before they could react.

“Do we know who the victims are?” Price asked.

“UN personnel based in Baghdad. The three on the ground outside the car were Iraqi police. They were in the car just showing on the right side of the picture.”

“Did this actually happen in Baghdad?” Schwarz asked.

Kurtzman nodded. “Our mystery players are starting to get confident. No more hiding in dark alleys. They’re showing they can do this with impunity. In broad daylight.”

Phoenix Force came into the War Room at that point, taking their places at the table.

“We miss anything?” David McCarter asked.

Brognola indicated the screen image. “Aaron was just showing us the latest incident in Baghdad. UN team ambushed and shot. Three Iraqi police officers, as well. That’s on top of the Kurdish attack on a Turkish military post.”

“From intel reports we’ve been monitoring there seems to be a lot of activity in the Middle East region,” Price said. “Now, I understand there’s always something going on, but in the last week or so, this activity has gone up a notch. There’s a concentration around Iraq. Attacks on U.S. and U.K. personnel. The UN. Covert intelligence suggests there’s a deal of background rumblings in the major Iraqi cities. And we’ve all heard about the renewed incidents in Israel and Palestine. We have information on recruitment in the Mideast and Europe of hard-line Ba’athist supporters. Loyalists of Saddam’s regime. All low-key at the moment. We were hard put to get a trace on the who and the why, but these photos have kind of got us on track.”

Price spread out copies of Abe Keen’s prints.

“Khariza?” Manning said. “He’s supposed to be dead.”

“Looks anything but deceased to me,” Calvin James remarked.

“The journalist—who took these—Abe Keen, was found murdered in his apartment in London the same night he got back from Italy where he had taken the photos,” Brognola said.

“Aren’t those others from his old group?” Blancanales asked, glancing up from examining the prints.

Brognola nodded. “They’re all there except one. And we know where he was.”

“Kamal Rasheed. Brokering a deal for arms in Santa Lorca,” McCarter said by way of explanation.

“Phoenix broke up the connection in Santa Lorca and got a name. Luiz Santos. Aaron ran a make and it seems he’s been in the business some while. The information we got was that the weapons Rasheed has previously bought went via Santos into the U.S. What we need now is where they went after that and what they are going to be used for. The organizer Phoenix found in Rasheed’s attaché case may give us some answers about Rasheed’s dealings.”

“Anything from it yet?” James asked.

“Most of the entries were in Arabic script. They’re being translated now. If and when we get anything useful, it will be sent to the appropriate team,” Kurtzman said.

“Are we looking at anything significant time-wise?” Gary Manning asked. “What I mean is, are we looking at a special date? A reason to launch any possible attacks on a particular day?”

Price shook her head. “There is a significant Iraqi election of provincial leaders coming up. It’s taking time to build the permanent inner council to run the country. You all know the timetable. A couple of less-than-successful attempts. Clashes between political and religious thinking. Intertribal rivalry. Only this time ’round, everyone is hoping the various parties can reach an amicable working agreement. If these incidents keep occurring they could throw the various groups into doubt. And that would go down a treat with Khariza’s group.”

“So an incident on the day of the election would give cause for concern,” Manning said.

“It’s a point worth noting,” Brognola said.

Calvin James stood to fetch a cup of coffee.

“They’ll be voting Saddam back into power next.”

“May not be as wild as you think, Cal,” Price said. “Not Saddam Hussein, but members of his old regime may be trying to get sympathizers into the ruling party, even if it has to be by the back door. That came from our Israeli sources. They have confirmation on ex-fedayeen behind troubles on the Gaza Strip. Stirring things up among the Palestinians.”

“I wondered when that bunch would stick its head over the parapet again,” McCarter said.

“We knew the fedayeen wouldn’t just fade out of existence,” Brognola said. “They cut and run, but they’re still out there. They won’t quit. Not as long as there’s even the remotest chance they might be able to get back into power again.”

“Bit like the Nazis.”

“David has a point,” Brognola said. “Look how long they carried on after WWII. Even though they were scattered all over the globe, they plotted and planned their comeback. Okay, it didn’t amount to much in terms of retaking power, but they still recruited believers and kept the old guard protected while they were able.”

“The Nazis had a lot going for them,” Encizo pointed out. “Look at the money they had salted away. That gave their organization a lot of clout. Enough money can buy you a lot of power.”

“We’ve already seen an example of Khariza’s fedayeen shopping for weapons,” Brognola said. “This was small-scale dealing. I figure they’re using money they managed to haul out of Iraq once the war started to go against them.”

“Small change,” Kurtzman said. “Cash they kept around for emergencies.”

“The money recovered in Iraq is nothing to what the regime hid over the years,” Brognola said. “Now that we have intel that Razan Khariza is on the scene, it suggests he and his crew are making moves. The big accounts have enough cash in them to buy a couple of small countries. If the fedayeen get their hands on those they’ll have finance to run a war. But until they get their hands on the real money, they are going to use every means available to them. Beg, steal or borrow, Razan Khariza isn’t going to sit back and wait. Hence the weapons deal Phoenix interrupted.”

“What kind of money are we talking about?” Manning asked. “How big does it go?”

“I doubt if anyone knows exactly just how much money the regime salted away over the years,” Brognola said. “It’s common knowledge that the money came from a variety of sources. In the region of $2 billion was literally stolen from the shah of Iran some years back. Then there was oil revenue. Kickbacks on deals. Money siphoned off aid programs. Back-door deals. The regime had backing from investors who helped them negotiate special terms. Even banks chipped in. We’ve had figures of $30 billion in total, but the stuff is so spread about we may never know the actual figure.”

Kurtzman opened one of his files.

“Money was handled by agents, brokers, companies created so that cash could be made to vanish. The regime made extensive use of electronic cash transactions. They were able to move it back and forth across the globe. In effect, the cash was being laundered.”

He brought up an image on one of the large wall screens.

“From Iraq to London. Across to South Africa. Hong Kong and Japan. Even Russia. Down to the Balkans.”

“Looks like it’s done some traveling,” James said. “Aaron, isn’t it possible to follow the electronic trail?”

Kurtzman sighed. “Not as easy as it sounds. The way the money has been pushed around lessens the chances of tagging it. Each transaction weakens the electronic trail. One big chunk would be broken up and distributed among a number of recipients. They would push it further along the path. Some would be put into legitimate businesses. It’s like shuffling a pack of cards before you deal. There’s no way of knowing where a particular card will show up. By the time the cash comes together again, no one knows where it originated.”

“The whole system was designed to conceal what was being done,” Brognola added. “And to make it difficult for what is being attempted now. M-I6, Mossad, CIA, they all have teams out looking for the regime’s missing billions. One thing we did come up with. Aaron put names and faces through the system—Saddam’s agents, his brokers, whatever you want to call them. Key individuals have disappeared. Others we know have died in suspicious circumstances. The conclusion is they were killed by regime hit men as a way of guaranteeing their silence, preventing them giving any information as to where the money might be.”

“If Khariza was such a big noise,” Manning asked, “how come he doesn’t have access to at least some of the cash?”

“Small amounts, no problem,” Brognola said. “But he’ll need the big money to broker his main deals, the kind of money he can’t get without access to the right accounts.”

“Our friend from Mossad, Ben Sharon, has a contact who might be able to give us some guidance,” Price said. “His name was mentioned in Rasheed’s organizer.”

Brognola nodded. “Aaron.”

The screen image changed to show a head-and-shoulders shot of a man in his forties—black hair, clean-shaven, a lean face, bright eyes staring directly at the camera.

“Ibn el Sharii. According to background checks, he was part of Khariza’s staff,” Kurtzman said. “Big Saddam loyalist until the regime had his brother executed as a traitor just before the war. Something about him having been caught in meetings with pro-Western groups. Rumor has it Khariza carried out the execution personally. Insider information tells us that Sharii took the news badly. He realized his own time was running out, so he got out of Iraq before he went the same way as his brother. Before he left he set up a virus in the computer program where the access numbers and codes were stored. The moment anyone tried to access the system to get the account codes, the virus would just corrupt the whole thing and wipe it completely. Sounds like he wanted to leave the regime something to remember him by.”

“Giving the finger to the fedayeen isn’t a good way to stay healthy,” James said.