1

THE LIGHT WAS FADING ALONG HAIFA STREET, AND IT was almost impossible to spot any Westerners in that seething, poor section of Baghdad. Men in djellabas, long loose shirts, occupied much of the dirty sidewalks, sitting cross-legged, smoking water pipes, selling small items of jewelry and copper. On one side of the main thoroughfare, dark narrow streets ran off toward the slow-flowing Tigris River.

Tiny car workshops were somehow crammed along there between the cramped decaying houses. The stifling smell of oil and axle grease mingled with the dark aromas of thick, black, sweet coffee, incense, charcoal fires, cinnamon, sandalwood, and baking bread. Not many children wore shoes, and the dress was Arab.

He should have stood out a mile, wearing a smoothly cut, grey Western suit, as he hurried out from the inner canyon of a green-painted garage. The club tie should have given him away; certainly the highly polished shoes. But he turned around as he walked out, and he embraced the elderly, oil-coated mechanic with warmth and affection. And he stared hard into the man's eyes—an unmistakable Arab gesture, the gesture of a Bedouin.

No doubt, the man was an Arab, and he caused few heads to turn as he headed back west toward Haifa Street, cramming a length of electrical wire into his pocket. He seemed at home there in that crowded, sprawling market, striding past the fruit and vegetable stalls, nodding at the occasional purveyor of spices or the seller of rugs. He held his head high, and the dark, trimmed beard gave him the facial look of an ancient caliph. His name was obscure, foreign-sounding to an Arab. They called him Eilat. But, in the circles that knew his trade, he was formally referred to as Eilat One.

He made just one more stop, at a dingy hardware store 40 yards before the left turn onto the Ahrar Bridge. When he emerged ten minutes later, he was carrying a white box with a lightbulb pictured on the outside, and a roll of heavy duty, wide, grey plastic tape, the regular kind that holds United Parcel packages together all over the world.

Eilat kept walking fast, sometimes straying off the sidewalk to avoid stragglers. He was thickset in build, no more than five feet ten inches tall. He crossed the bridge into the Rusafah side of Baghdad and made his way up Rashid Street. In his left jacket pocket there was a small leather box containing Iraq's national Medal of Honor, which had been presented to him personally that morning by the somewhat erratic President of the country. The coveted medal counted, he feared, for little.

There had been something in the manner of the President that he had found disturbing. They did not know each other well, but there had been an uneasy distance between them. The President was known for his almost ecstatic greetings to those who had served him faithfully, but there had been no such display of emotion that morning. Eilat One had been greeted as a stranger and had left as a stranger. He had been escorted in by two guards and was escorted out by the same men. The President had seemed to avoid eye contact.

And now the forty-four-year-old Intelligence agent experienced the same chill that men of his calling have variously felt over the years in most countries in the world—the icy realization that no matter what their achievements, the past had gone, time had rolled forward. The spy was being sent back out into the cold. Or, put another way, the spy had gone beyond his usefulness to his master. In the case of Eilat One, he might simply have become too important. And there was only one solution for that.

Eilat believed they were going to kill him. He further believed they were going to kill him that same night. He guessed there was already a surveillance team watching his little house, set in a narrow alley up toward Al-Jamouri Street. He would be wary, and he would be calmly self-controlled. There could be only one possible outcome to any attempted assassination.

Still walking swiftly, he reached the great wide-open expanse of Rusata Square. The streetlights were on now, but this square needed no extra illumination. A 50-foot-high portrait of the President was floodlit by more voltage than all the city streetlights put together. Eilat swung right, casting his eyes away from the searing dazzle of his leader, and he pressed on eastward toward the great adjoining Amin Square, with its mosques and cheap hotels.

He walked more slowly, tucking his white box under his arm and staying to the right, hard against the buildings. The traffic was heavy, but he had no need to leave the sidewalk, and unconsciously he slipped into the soft steps of the Bedouin, moving lightly, feeling in the small of his back the handle of the long, stiletto-bladed tribal knife, his constant companion in times of personal threat.

He followed the late shoppers into Al-Jamouri Street and slowed almost to a stop as he reached an alleyway beside a small hotel. Then he quickened again and walked straight past, with only a passing glance into the narrow walkway, with its one dim streetlight about halfway along. He saw that the alley was empty, with two cars parked at the far end. They were empty, too, unless the passengers were curled up on the floor. Eilat had excellent eyesight, and he was good at remembering pictures in his mind.

He stopped completely, standing, apparently distracted, outside the hotel, looking at his watch, checking the passersby, watching for someone who hesitated, someone who might slow down and stop, just as he had done. Twenty seconds later, he moved into the alley and walked slowly toward the narrow white door that opened through a high stone wall and led across the courtyard into the Baghdad headquarters of Eilat One.

He heard with satisfaction the rusty grind and squeak of the hinges on the outside gate. He walked past an old bicycle and opened the door to his dark, cool house noiselessly. I wonder if they'll come in friendship, he wondered to himself. Or will they just come busting in with a Kalashnikov and blow the place apart.

He turned on the light in the wide downstairs hall and checked the setting on the low laser beam he had installed to inform him whether anyone had entered during his absence. There had been no one. And the white light on the wall panel, which flickered red if anyone opened a window, was steady.

On reflection, he thought, they will probably try to take me out in the small hours of the morning. Stealth will be their method, and I suspect they will use knives. Messy, but silent. At least, that's what I'd do, were I a simple paid assassin. I can't see them risking gunfire, and I can't imagine them confronting me, even in friendship. Not with my current reputation.

It was after eight o'clock, and Eilat went to work with two screwdrivers, a large one for driving a bracket into the wall, a small one, for electrical connections. "The key to murder in the dead of night," he muttered, "is vision. Night vision."

When his tasks were completed, he placed a solid wooden chair behind the door, turned out every light, drew the shades across the windows, and there, in the pitch-black, settled down to wait. With his eyes open wide, straining through the dark, he tried to make out shapes, but it took a full twenty minutes before he could distinguish the curved outline of the water pitcher on the table at the end of the hall.

Midnight came and went. And still Eilat waited calmly. He hoped there would not be more than three of them…but…if there were…Well, so be it. At 1:00 A.M. he stood up and walked to the pitcher and poured himself a drink, splashing the water into a stone cup without spilling it. Then he walked back to his chair behind the door without crashing into it. His night vision, which was perfect now, he would use to best advantage. The last thing he wanted was equal terms.

Copyright © 1999 by Patrick Robinson