CHAPTER

84

OTHER THAN NORTH KOREA AND IRAN, Syria was arguably the most difficult country in the world to escape from for a westerner.

Foreigners were inherently suspect.

Americans were hated.

American operatives who had just killed a potential Syrian leader were good for only one thing: execution and then being dragged through the streets headless.

The only positive element was that Syria’s borders were not secure. They were flimsy and ever-changing, just as the politics of the moment were, in one of the countries constituting the “cradle of civilization.”

Robie and Reel understood this fully.

They had a chance, a slender one.

Reel had delivered the kill shot from a building across the street from where Ahmadi had been about to get into his limo. It would have been easier to don a full burqa face covering and escape that way. However, Syrian women didn’t wear traditional Islamic garb for the most part. And full facial veils had been banned in universities and other public settings by the increasingly secular government, who felt it was a security risk and promoted extremism. Thus putting one on would have been a red flag, not a disguise.

But she could still wear a hijab. This would reveal part of her face, but she had stained it darker and simulated wrinkles and sun damage. And in the long black robe she had incorporated a harness and padding that added about sixty pounds to her frame. She stooped as she walked and looked as though she were about seventy.

She picked up a market basket and left the room, waiting patiently at the elevator with another man who was standing there. The elevator doors opened and she got into the car. It headed down. When it reached the ground floor she stepped off.

She was swept to the side as police flooded the building. They grabbed the man who had been in the elevator car with her and pulled him, as well as several other Syrian men, along with them. They stormed into the elevator and up the stairwell.

Reel waited for a few moments and then continued on. When she got outside, police cars were everywhere. Swarms of people were screaming. People were crying. Others were marching in the streets, chanting.

A car caught on fire. Guns were racked back and fired into the air. Shop windows were smashed. There was a small explosion down the street.

Reel followed another group of women down the street and into an alley.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been unthinkable for men to search a woman on a Syrian public street.

These were not normal circumstances.

Police swept into the alley and started grabbing everyone, pulling at their clothing, looking for weapons or other signs of culpability.

One man had a knife. The police shot him in the head.

A woman ran screaming. She was repeatedly shot in the back and dropped to the pavement with blood pouring from multiple wounds.

The police were now closing in on Reel. She didn’t look like an assassin. She looked like a fat old woman. But the police apparently didn’t care. They were only a few feet from her as she backed away.

Her hand reached inside her basket.

They were just about to surround her, their guns drawn and pointed at her.

Her back was against a brick wall. One of the police reached out to grab her arm. Once they saw the padding, it would all be over. They would shoot her right on the spot.

The loud voice reached to the alley.

The police stopped, turned.

The voice yelled out again and again. In Arabic it said, “We have the shooter! We have the shooter!”

The police turned and ran back down the alley toward the voice.

The crowd closed in on Reel. Sobbing people bent down to the dead bodies.

Reel pushed backward, away from the crowd, and managed to ease into a sliver of a side alley.

She walked quickly down it and reached another street, a busy thoroughfare. A taxi pulled up to the curb and she climbed in.

“Where to?” the bearded driver asked in Arabic.

“I think you know,” she said in English.

Robie hit the gas and the cab sped off.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Close?”

“Close enough,” she said.

She pulled the remote from her basket and held it up. “This came in handy. Once they find the source of the ‘We have the shooter’ voice they won’t be happy.”

“A little boom box in the street never hurts,” said Robie.

As they rounded a turn she tossed the remote out the window.

He looked in the rearview mirror again and saw the crowds spilling into the streets behind them. “They’ll know the shooter got away. So we’re not free and clear yet.”

“Face it, Robie, we’ll never be free and clear again.”

“They found the sniper’s nest. Even though you didn’t fire from it.”

“Big surprise. But at least it validates what your guy told us about the double cross.”

“I wonder how they felt back in the ops room watching?”

“One of my greatest regrets in life will be missing the looks on their faces. Especially Tucker’s.”

He turned right and then left and sped up again. Traffic was lighter now. But Robie could envision roadblocks being set up right this minute.

Damascus to Israel was a short trip, but that would be the exit the Syrians would be expecting. And also the one designed by the CIA. So that option was out.

The trip to Amman, Jordan, was a little over a hundred miles. But the border between the two countries had been strengthened, with limited crossing points. So that was also out.

Iraq was to the east. It was a long border with many ways across. But neither Robie nor Reel saw much advantage in sneaking across the northern border of Iraq. They would most likely die there.

That left one option. Turkey, to the north. It was also a long border, hundreds of miles. The closest major Turkish city was Mersin, about 250 miles distant. There was a shorter route they could take through a narrow section of Turkey that poked like a misshapen finger into Syria a little north of Al Haffah. But Mersin, though farther away, would have more options for their onward travel, and a large city was easier to hide in. Besides, Robie wanted to put greater distance between them and the Syrians than the finger of Turkish land provided.

But they had to get there first.

And though the border had many holes in it, Syria and Turkey were also informally skirmishing with each other. Bombs dropped from planes and guns fired by roving packs of soldiers were becoming the standard of the day around the border. Plus there was a lot of illegal activity involving the trafficking of drugs, immigrants, guns, and other contraband through the region. And the criminals typically had one response to pesky witnesses.

They killed them.

“On to Turkey,” said Robie.

“On to Turkey,” she parroted back.

She didn’t take off her disguise. Not yet. She had papers, in case they were stopped. She had to hope they would be good enough.

As Robie looked up ahead, he knew they were about to be tested.

He had shaved his head, grown a trim beard, and stained his entire body darker. His blue eyes were hidden by tinted contacts. He could speak Arabic fluently, with none of the accent of a westerner. Reel, he knew, could as well.

The checkpoint had been set up quickly, faster than Robie had thought possible. He wondered if the double cross had anything to do with that.

Security checkpoints were far more frenetic in the Middle East than in other parts of the world, barely controlled chaos where guns were pulled at the slightest misstatement or an ill-timed glance.

Robie slowed his taxi to a stop. There were three cars and a truck in front of his. The guards were searching vehicles, and Robie saw one of them with a glossy piece of paper in his hand.