The sun had been up for just over an hour when the van pulled onto the drive of the townhouse and Ibraham Khalil pushed the button to raise the automatic garage doors. As the van rolled into the garage and the doors closed behind it, Almussab got out and said to the others, ‘Unpack the van, then get some sleep. We start work again in four hours.’
‘I slept in the van on the way back,’ said Rahan Hussein. ‘Put the holdalls on the floor, I’ll start work on them.’
‘How long will it take you?’ asked Almussab.
‘Five bags, mixing and checking the proportions are correct, wrapping and re-bagging them, about two hours. If I don’t get interrupted.’
‘Go into the house,’ said Almussab to the others, ‘no-one comes into the garage until Hussein comes out.’
Rahan Hussein erected a trestle table wiped clean of prints that had been left against the garage wall. From a suitcase she had taken from the van, she took two reading lamps and set them at each end of the table, and tilted the shades to form a pool of bright light in the centre of the table. From the suitcase she took a blender, a large mixing bowl, a set of electronic scales and a bundle of wooden spoons and spatulas. Finally, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves and a face mask. She stood back and looked at the table. When she was satisfied, she bent down and opened the nearest holdall.
For the next ninety minutes she mixed together chemicals she took from the holdalls and repackaged the mixture in five packets, wrapped in clear polythene secured with strips of wide parcel tape. She placed one package in each of the holdalls and carried the mixing tools into the kitchen to be washed. Before turning off the garage light she carefully wiped the table down with hot soapy water, dried it with kitchen towels, folded it and put it back against the wall.
Almussab was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen when Rahan Hussein walked through the door from the garage.
‘It’s ready,’ said Hussein.
‘Then Khoklar can take it to the safe house.’
‘Why don’t I take it?’
Almussab fixed her in a baleful stare with his dark, menacing eyes.
‘Because Khoklar is expendable.’
Two hours later Abu Almussab woke Waheed Khoklar and the pair of them went to the garage where they loaded the five holdalls into the back of the van and covered them with a blanket. Almussab gave Khoklar directions to Mohammed Jawwad’s shop. Khoklar understood why he was going alone and why only he and his leader knew where he was taking the holdalls. If one of them was killed, the other still knew where they were. If any of the other four were captured, they could not tell their captors where the holdalls were hidden.
He drove through the late morning traffic to Decater Street and parked behind the shop. He took his time looking around the neighbourhood. He hadn’t been followed and there didn’t appear to be anyone watching him, so he pulled one of the holdalls from under the blanket and walked casually round the block to the front of the printing shop. He looked through the window: only Jawwad behind the counter and some scruffy kid in the back, operating the machines. He ignored the kid. It was a mistake.
Jefferson Davis Parker was in his final year at high school. Although he hated and despised Jawwad, he worked in his shop two nights a week and most Saturdays. He was looking forward to his graduation, but had no ambition to go on to college, he had never been academic or good at sports. He thought about joining the police, but his father wanted him to go into the Marines as he had done.
He was a pleasant looking young man, tall and lean with a freckled, open face and an easy smile. He had Southern manners and charm, a slow way of speaking and a self mocking sense of humour. He was popular at school with both boys and girls, mainly girls. But Jefferson had two secrets: from his father he had inherited the white supremacist opinions of a racist bigot and through his best friend he had acquired a heroin addiction.
He told himself that the addiction was under control, the money he earned at Jawwad’s was enough to pay for the small wraps of brown powder he bought on a dark street corner in Vine City. But it was getting worse and he had started to steal small amounts of money from his parents and the shop till.
When he was a child he had crooked teeth, just like his parental grandfather and his mother had paid thousands of dollars to an orthodontist to straighten them. The heroin had lead to gingivitis developing in his gums and he knew that soon he would lose some of his white, even teeth. He worried about how he would explain that to his mother.
Jeff Parker was working at the back of the shop when Waheed Khoklar came in, carrying a holdall and spoke quietly to Jawwad, who walked to a door under the stairs and, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket which were attached by a chain to his belt, he selected one and unlocked an industrial padlock. Parker had seen the padlock and the heavy stainless steel hasp which Jawwad had fitted to the door two days ago and wondered what was so valuable in the space under the stairs. He pretended to punch numbers into the computer on the printing machine, but watched the two men furtively through the open door into the hallway. He saw Khoklar carry four more holdalls into the shop and put them under the stairs, then he stood back as Jawwad padlocked the door shut and put the bunch of keys back in his pocket. Without a word, Khoklar turned and walked out of the shop. The two men did not shake hands and Jeff Parker couldn’t help noticing that there was no friendship or warmth between them. As Jawwad went back to stand behind the counter and look through the order book, Parker came from behind the printing machine and told him that he was going to take his morning break.
He went through the back door to a small walled area where the large green dumpsters were kept. There were two of them, their lids wedged open by the piles of paper and cardboard in them, like two enormous singing frogs. Someone had placed an old chair beside them and Parker sat on it, put his feet up on the side of the nearest dumpster and took a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
He lit the cigarette and, by the pressure off his feet against the dumpster, pushed the chair backwards onto its back legs. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and thought about what he had just seen. He was certain that there were drugs in the holdalls and that they had to be worth a lot of money. If he could get them out of the shop they would keep his heroin habit satisfied for a very long time. But nothing was ever that easy. If the drugs went missing he would be the main, or only, suspect and if the man who delivered the drugs was an example of the people who owned them, he didn’t give much for his chances of surviving for long. So, either he had to find a way to put the blame on Jawwad, or find himself a watertight alibi and get someone else to steal them.
By the time he finished the cigarette he had the answer. His father had never said he was a member of the Klan, but he certainly knew a lot of people who didn’t hide the fact that they were. So the Klan could take the drugs, sell them and give him a percentage for his trouble. And they had all the experience and firepower to protect him, if necessary. So everyone was a winner, except a bunch of coloured foreigners who shouldn’t be in this country anyway. He would talk to his father tonight.