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Ten minutes passed, and I was thinking of getting Mustafa, my kids and just flee the goddamn hotel, but the elevator doors opened, and two people came out. It was Sami with Tony. I stayed out of sight and saw Sami talking to Tony who didn't walk all the corridor towards the room. Sami knocked and went inside the room. When the door closed, Tony strolled towards the door. I could see the gun he was tucking in his pants. I didn't think the plan was to get the money and leave. Mustafa was never going to leave this hotel alive.
I hoped Sami was planning on minimizing the number of witnesses he would bring with him. I had Franz monitor the cameras at the entrance to see how many people there were with Sami. I waited for a word from Franz, the text finally appeared on my phone. Sami came as I expected with the only person he needed for the job. He didn't want a lot of witnesses, and I doubted they were going to do it here, but I wasn't planning to let him leave the hotel, either. I entered my room without letting Tony see me.
I called the hotel security and told them I saw a man in the corridor with a gun, so I was afraid and left the hotel. Then I came quietly towards the door between the two rooms while I kept my eye on the screen showing what was happening outside our doors. I could hear Mustafa and Sami in the other room. I just hoped the security would show up in time before Sami left.
"Are you going to count the money now?"
"What's rush, Mr. Mustafa. You wouldn't want to rush this deal, especially this one." For once I found myself agreeing with Sami. What happened to stall him for as long as you can.
"It seems the money is in order. So, just out of curiosity, how are you that stupid to stay here and pay me? I thought you would run."
"You know what. Fuck you both, you and George. I'm just a man who knows economics. I don't play your dirty games."
"Come on now, don't play the innocent sheep here. Weren't you the one who hired Tony to get information about us, and then you double-crossed him, and you suddenly grew balls the size of this hotel and came to do business with us. What were you thinking? I am still curious what you were hoping to get from this espionage mission George set you out to do?"
Mustafa didn't say a word. He was expecting me to come in, but I couldn't see the security yet; I couldn't risk coming into the room before the security arrived.
"Or maybe, you were planning for some old-fashioned revenge. What? Were you thinking of hiring some hitmen to kill us or something?" The good news was that he didn't seem to know yet about our hacking his own private server.
"I'm afraid this is the end of the road for our business here. I will happily take the money from you as a token of your stupidity, and sadly enough for you and George, evil always wins."
I heard Sami close the money case, but my adrenaline rushed all over my body when I saw three security guards coming out of the elevator towards Tony. I couldn't wait for a second longer. I opened the door and rushed in, held Sami from the back while putting my hand on his mouth and dragged him back to my room. He was wriggling like a fish in my arms, so I hit him on his head and dropped him on the floor unconscious. The whole thing didn't take more than a few seconds, but I wasn't sure that was fast enough before the hotel security came knocking on the door of Mustafa's room.
"Sorry to disturb you sir, but this gentleman here is saying that he is the bodyguard of a person who just came in your room. We need to come in and search the room."
"Please, go ahead. I have seen this man before here in the hotel, and he offered to be my bodyguard and provide me with some other special services while I was here in Lebanon, but I said no to him. There is nobody in the room, please go ahead and search the room." I wanted to see the look on Tony's face when he would find out Sami just vanished. I might have underestimated him at the beginning, but the one thing I counted on was that Tony would do anything to get himself out of this mess. He would be the first to abandon Sami, but we needed to act fast because the next person in line would be Tarek. However, I noticed that I left the door between our rooms unlocked.
I was lucky they started on the other side of the room that gave me enough time to quietly lock the door again.
It didn't take them more than a minute to search the big room.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience sir." The door closed in the other room. I watched the hotel security drag Tony with them. I waited until I saw them get in the elevator.
I tied Sami to a chair in my room and unlocked the door again. There he stood at the door. I wouldn't want anyone to see the CEO of our company shaking this much. I rushed to Mustafa and held him as I felt he was about to collapse to the floor. It worked, but we both knew this gambit we were playing might end up so badly for us if it didn't work the way we planned. We still had a lot to do with the scumbag tied to a chair in the other room.