MacMurphy and Santos drove west, skirted north around the airport, and turned onto Ouzai Highway, which ran north and south along the coast. They located a modern shopping mall where they grabbed a quick lunch of falafels and beer and found a department store that sold all sorts of things, including a whole line of fashionable dishdasha man-dresses.
“Looks pretty good on you,” said MacMurphy. Santos had exited the changing room modeling a white dishdasha robe with black piping.
“Really?” said Santos, mock posing in front of a tall mirror.
MacMurphy leaned toward him and whispered, “Actually you look pretty much like a terrorist. Great cover for action.”
“You need to get one too. Look, you can conceal a whole armory of weapons under one of these things.” He demonstrated the roominess of the robe and was careful to keep his voice down. They were drawing attention from gawking customers and staff.
MacMurphy laughed. “Good idea.” He signaled for the hovering, little sales clerk, also dressed in a dishdasha robe, to come over. He asked, “Do you have one just like this in my size?” He thought for a moment and then added, “And how about a couple of matching, what do you call them, beanie hats?”
“Kufi,” said the sales clerk. “It’s called a kufi.”
Santos rolled his eyes. “Whatever . . .”
Fed and purchases made, they headed back to Lailake to continue their sporadic surveillance. On their second pass, they saw the same bearded man squatting in front of the building smoking a cigarette.
“You think he belongs in that building?” asked Santos.
“Could be,” said MacMurphy. “Maybe one of the guards.”
“I’m really afraid we’re going to heat this place up if we keep doing this for much longer. Why don’t we limit our passes to one an hour, each time coming from a different direction?”
“Yeah, this is too risky. Damn!”
They continued their surveillance at the new pace and noticed lights in a window facing the street came on at dusk. Later, during a pass a few minutes before eleven in the evening, the lights went out. This was a good indication that at least one of the apartments was occupied.
They saw the bearded man in the white dishdasha robe several times, always squatting and smoking in the same place. But aside from these sightings they noticed nothing unusual, nothing to give them a clue as to whether Yasmin Ghorbani was inside.
They decided to knock it off for the day and put a full press on tomorrow when they would have Kashmiri and his vehicle at their disposal and would be wearing their own dishdasha disguises.
They were up early the next day and grabbed a quick breakfast before meeting Kashmiri in the hotel parking lot. They hardly recognized him. He was leaning against a dark gray Nissan sedan and was dressed like a Shia cleric in a black robe and turban. His usually well-trimmed moustache and goatee were surrounded by two day’s worth of stubble.
MacMurphy did a double take and then approached him. “You look like a Mullah, Hadi.”
“I just hope I’m not asked to say any prayers. I’m a Coptic Christian. How do you like my dulband?”
“What’s a dulband?”
Kashmiri touched his head. “My hat, my turban.”
“I like it!” MacMurphy laughed and motioned in Santos’s direction. “Hadi, this is my partner, Culler Santos.”
They shook hands. Kashmiri looked thoughtful and then remarked, “Culler? That’s an unusual name . . .”
Santos started to reply but MacMurphy interrupted him. “It’s a nickname. He got it when he was a kid growing up in a rough neighborhood south of Boston. He enjoyed kicking the crap out of bullies. He used to say his goal in life was to cull the world of all the assholes. That’s still his goal: hence the name Culler. It just stuck.”
Kashmiri laughed, “Well, pleased to meet you, Culler. That’s an admirable goal and I’d like to help you achieve it.”
Grinning broadly, Santos said, “Well, you just might get your chance, Mr. Kashmiri. If we’re lucky, that is . . .”
“I’m feeling pretty lucky. So, what’s the plan, gentlemen?”
“I’ll brief you on the way over,” said MacMurphy. Then he turned to Santos and said, “Let’s change into our robes in the car. Hadi and I will follow you over. Let’s make one pass so I can point out the address to Hadi and then meet up at that gas station at the southern end of Lailake.”
It was a few minutes past seven o’clock in the morning and the roads were already beginning to fill with rush hour traffic. As planned, MacMurphy, Kashmiri, and Santos rendezvoused at the gas station and gathered between their two vehicles.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” said MacMurphy. “Hadi, take your car and find someplace to park in the area. Then walk around as if you’re shopping, but try to keep the target apartment in sight. If you see someone like that guy I told you about—the one we think may be a guard who smokes in front of the building—try to approach him. Ask him about the building or for directions. Something like that. The goal is to find out what he is doing there and what’s going on inside.”
Kashmiri nodded. “I understand.”
“Culler, I’ll drop you in the neighborhood. Walk up and down the street on the opposite side of the target for as long as you can. Try to coordinate with Hadi so that one of you has the target in sight at all times. I’ll try to do the same thing after I’ve found a place to park. We’ll coordinate with our cell phones.”
Santos nodded and said, “Let’s do it.”
The boredom of surveillance sets in fast. The hours tick by without anything happening. Annoyances stack up. Impatience builds. Then a single movement releases an avalanche of adrenaline.
The rush occurred three hours into their surveillance. Kashmiri was the first to notice a woman in a headscarf drive by the safe house in a dark Ford Focus. She squeezed into a tight parking place a few meters past it. Something about the way she slowed and looked at the building as she drove past made him notice.
He watched the woman exit the car, speak to a couple of young kids who ran up to greet her and then walk back to number 67. She hit the buzzer on the door jam, pushed open the door, and entered the building.
Four minutes later, a white Range Rover Evoque parked behind the woman’s Ford Focus. A young man in a white dishdasha man-dress stepped out of the SUV and removed a black duffle bag from the passenger seat. The street urchins swarmed him as he locked the car.
He had a strange smile on his face as he crouched down to speak to them. When he gestured to his bag, the children’s eyes grew wide and they backed away from him. Free to move again, he straightened and walked to number 67 without any further delay. Like the woman, he pressed the door-jam buzzer and stepped inside.