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Thorne boarded a ferry from Cyprus to Latakia, wearing a neatly trimmed beard, sunglasses, and a cheap suit. He pulled a small carry-on behind him containing a change of clothes and personal toiletries.
His papers identified him as Farid Amari, a mid-level official working for the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture as an Inspector of Marine Fisheries. The clothes he wore had been manufactured in Damascus. Dye colored his skin and darkened his hair. Contact lenses changed his eyes from gray to brown. Invisible adhesive pulled his ears close to his head.
No one was likely to suspect a minor bureaucrat of being a spy. He went through passport control with no problems. It didn't hurt that he spoke Arabic with an accent that placed him somewhere near Damascus, a gift from his Syrian stepmother.
He had grown up speaking two languages, immersed in two cultures. His stepmother had given him the knowledge he needed now to pass as Syrian. She'd passed on to him something more precious than the language of her native land, an understanding of her culture.
The culture of Syria had been born out of thousands of years of treachery and war. Life here had always been based on survival. No one could understand Syria or any other Middle Eastern country without understanding that. Survival meant learning to see through the appearance of things to whatever truth lay behind it.
He thought about his stepmother and smiled. Derifa had taught him how to see past the surface, a skill that served him well at Langley, where his independence and intelligence offended those who valued obedience over performance.
A cab dropped him off near an apartment building in the southern part of the city. He climbed to the fourth floor, found the number he was looking for, and opened the door with a key.
The apartment was a safe house, a temporary refuge in a hostile environment. It was hot and stuffy inside, the air stale. The rooms smelled of dust and ancient cooking. Closed blinds covered the windows. Dead flies lined the sill. He considered opening a window and letting in fresh air.
Better leave it. No need to attract attention.
His false identity would only hold up for a while. All entries into the country were scrutinized by the Military Intelligence Directorate, Syria's secret police. Al-Khali's police were good, but the inevitable delay of bureaucracy would give him some time before they discovered no one named Farid Amari worked at the Ministry of Agriculture.
By the time MID started looking for him, he would have left the country. Cameras had recorded his entry at passport control. It had been impossible to avoid them, which meant he was now in MID's facial recognition database. Getting into the country had been easy. If anything went wrong, getting out would be more difficult.
It was obvious to Thorne that the Russians were going to try and take the oil fields. It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention. The only reason he was here in this crummy apartment was because the president wanted to cover his ass. If anything went wrong, it wasn't the president's ass that would end up in a Syrian prison.
There hadn't been a CIA station in Syria for a long time. Al-Khali's thugs had killed or imprisoned everyone identified as an opponent of the regime. There was no one to back him up while he was here.
The asset he was supposed to talk to was Jamal Ali, a mechanic who worked on the Russian airbase. The only way to contact him was face to face. He didn't know Thorne was coming. That might be a problem.
Ali lived alone on the fifth floor of an apartment building on Beirut Street, not far from where Thorne was now. It was late afternoon. Ali wouldn't be home from his job on the airbase for another couple of hours.
Thorne had memorized Ali's file. He was forty-four years old, widowed, and lived alone. The man was a creature of habit. On workdays, he arrived home every evening around six. Sometimes he took an evening walk when the heat of the day had softened. Sometimes he stayed in. Thorne planned to show up at his apartment around seven.
Until then he could stay where he was, but there was nothing to eat in the apartment. He needed food and caffeine. Latakia was a prime holiday destination for Syrians. There were many restaurants scattered throughout the city. He decided to find one and wait there.
Thorne chose a café two blocks away from Ali's building. He sat down at a table on the sidewalk, under an umbrella advertising a popular soft drink. The smells drifting from the kitchen reminded him of his childhood, when Derifa would prepare traditional Syrian dishes.
He missed Derifa. She'd been brought down by cancer, two years before. She'd fought it for five years, but in the end there'd been nothing more to do. Thorne had never thought of her as anything but his mother. His father was still alive, retired in Florida. He hadn't been the same since Derifa had died.
He'd talked to his father a couple of times since then, but he hadn't seen him since the funeral. Thorne felt a brief flash of guilt. He decided to call him when he got back to the states.
Syrian restaurants didn't have menus, but Thorne knew what they'd have. He hadn't eaten since he'd left Cyprus, and he was hungry. He ordered coffee and a bottle of water, a lamb kebab for the main course, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, and bread. Given the Syrian predilection for many appetizers and multiple courses, it was a light dinner.
The food came. He watched the street as he ate.
He dawdled over a second cup of thick, black coffee until it was time to leave, paid his bill, and walked to Ali's building. As he walked, he looked for signs the building was being watched. He looked for people sitting in cars or loitering, anyone who seemed out of place. The street was empty of people. He saw no one. Even so, his scalp prickled. It was the same feeling he'd had in Turkey. It made him uneasy. It made him wish he had a gun.
The entrance to Ali's building was unlocked. Thorne entered the lobby and took the stairs. He didn't like elevators. It was too easy to be trapped in one. With stairs you had choice, you could move of up or down at will. In an elevator you were locked inside a cage, at the mercy of someone's finger on a button.
It was a little past seven when he knocked on Ali's door. A voice came from within.
"Who's there?"
Thorne recognized the accent as from somewhere inland. Maybe Raqqa.
"Karam. I'm a friend of Hassan's."
The phrase identified Thorne as from the Agency.
The door opened part way. Ali looked out through the narrow opening, suspicious.
Thorne said, "Peace be upon you."
"And upon you. Why are you here?"
"I need to speak with you," Thorne said. "Please let me in."
With obvious reluctance, Ali opened the door. Once Thorne was inside, he closed it quickly.
"What do you want?".
"I need to talk with you. My friends want to know what the Russians are doing at Khmeimim."
Ali was a small man, dark-haired and nervous. He had a mechanic's hands, stained with years of working with grease and oil.
"You should not have come here," he said. "I may be under suspicion. Someone has been asking questions about me at work."
"I won't stay long. Is there any chance you can get me onto the base?"
Ali laughed. There was no humor in it.
"Since the Russians began bringing in more people and equipment, they have become obsessed with security. No one is getting onto the base that hasn't been there for years. Everyone is vetted, and everyone is checked two or three times a day."
"Have you noticed anything odd? Something with unusual security precautions? Anything like that?"
Ali walked over to a worn armchair and sat down. He didn't offer Thorne a seat.
"There is an old airplane hangar on the southern part of the base that is off limits to anyone except the Russians. You can't get near it."
"You know what's in there?"
"Only that it's not planes."
"You have no idea?"
"All I know is that two weeks ago one of the big transports arrived. As soon as the plane landed, they sent us away. They unloaded some long wooden crates and took them into the hangar. We were told we had better stay clear."
"How big were the crates?"
Ali spread his hands wide.
"Big. Perhaps eighteen or nineteen meters in length. Two meters high."
Missiles. They have to be missiles.
"Can you remember how many?"
"Many. It took most of the day to move them all."
Sudden, hard pounding sounded on the door.
"Police! Open the door. Now!"
Ali's face drained of color. He jumped out of the chair.
"Allah protect me! You have led them here!"
Someone began kicking the door. Thorne made it to the side as it burst open. The first man into the room held a gun in his outstretched hand. Thorne grabbed his arm as he came through the doorway, twisted and lifted. The elbow broke with a wet, dull sound. The man screamed and went to his knees.
Thorne ripped the weapon from his hand, shot him in the head, then fired two shots at the next man coming through the door. He fell forward. Someone in the hall fired, multiple shots that echoed through the building. A bullet smashed the phone in Thorne's jacket pocket, a second burned across his side. He fired again. The third man went down, a puppet with cut strings.
The silence after the shots was deafening. The room stank of burned powder and the metallic smell of blood. Thorne turned to speak to Ali and saw him lying on his back. He wasn't breathing. Blood spread out onto the carpet beneath him.
There'd been a lot of noise. In a few minutes the place would be swarming with police. Someone would have called them by now. He looked down the hall. All of the doors on the floor were closed.
Thorne was wired. Who'd sent them? He bent over the body in the hallway and pulled an ID case from his jacket. The dead man's face looked back at him. The ID bore the seal of the Political Security Directorate.
Al-Khali's Gestapo.
Thorne moved to the stairs and started down.
His side hurt where the bullet had creased him, but he'd been lucky. A few inches to the right and he'd be lying next to Ali. Blood seeped through his shirt. For the moment, the wound was covered by his jacket.
He reached the ground floor, the gun in his hand. How many rounds had he fired? Five? Six? Thorne was familiar with this model of pistol, a Browning Hi Power.
Good pistol. Nine millimeter. Thirteen round magazine. So, seven or eight rounds left.
Better than nothing.
Instead of heading for the lobby he went the other way, looking for a service entrance in the rear. The cops would come through the front. With luck, they wouldn't be covering the rear yet.
He pushed open a door at the back of the building and stepped into an alley with two overflowing dumpsters. The smell of rotting garbage mixed with the sweet scent of jasmine vines growing along the walls. The sky was red from the setting sun, the alley shrouded in shadows. There was no one in sight.
Thorne turned right, walked to the end of the alley, and turned left on the cross street. He tucked the pistol under his jacket in the small of his back. The next street was narrow, cobbled. He turned onto it. Cars were parked along one side, leaving only enough room for vehicles to pass. He eyed the cars as he walked until he came to an older Toyota sedan.
He paused, looked. There was no one in sight. He drew the Browning, smashed the driver's window of the car with the butt of the gun, opened the door, and slipped in. He took a folding knife from his pocket, jammed the blade into the ignition switch, and forced it forward.
Nothing happened.
He cursed and leaned down under the steering column. The wiring harness was hidden inside. He sat up and worked with the knife on the ignition switch. The point broke off. He kept working until he got the switch out of the column. He pulled the wires out, and started touching them together.
The car started. He took his phone out and looked at it. The bullet had struck it full on. It was useless. He tossed it out the window. If they found it, it would do them no good.
The night echoed with sirens as he drove away. He glanced down at the fuel gauge. Almost full.
Going south wasn't an option, it only led deeper into Syria. Safety meant going north to Turkey. Two roads went north from Latakia. One led to Aleppo, the other to the Turkish border, an hour away. One hour to safety if he kept to the highway, but he couldn't stay on it all the way to the border. That would be asking for trouble.
As he drove, he thought about what had happened at Ali's apartment.
It couldn't be coincidence that al-Khali's thugs had arrived when they did. Thorne didn't believe in coincidences. Someone had told them he was going to meet Ali. There wasn't any other possible explanation. They'd staked out the building and waited for him to show up.
Which meant they had known what he looked like.
Which meant there was a traitor at Langley.
He had to hand it to the opposition, they'd done a good job of keeping out of sight. With his cover blown, he wasn't going to breeze through border control at Nibh Almur using one of his passports. His only option was to ditch the car and cross on foot.
Half an hour later, Thorne passed a road sign.