To the Death

When she retrieved her luggage downstairs, just one suitcase, there would be another passport tucked away inside, with only three changes: birth date, birthplace, and name. This one would be in the name of Maureen Carson, born in Michigan, a year younger. This one would be used only to exit the country. The Americans, like all other nations, are disinterested in who’s leaving. Only in who’s trying to break in.

Carla walked down the steps and waited for her suitcase. Officials with dogs were working around the baggage conveyor. When she grabbed her suitcase and lifted it onto her cart, no one took any notice. She walked to the exit door, where the customs official took her form and nodded briskly.

Outside the terminal, she waited for a few moments on the sidewalk, and then a jet-black Buick pulled up alongside her. The driver stepped out and opened the rear door before loading her luggage into the trunk.

When he was back behind the wheel, Carla said quietly, “Thank you, Fausi. Am I ever glad to see you!”

“Was it nerve-racking?”

“Very. I was terrified he’d notice the variations in the picture. She looks a bit like me, but not that much.”

Fausi, a dark, swarthy intelligence officer at the Jordanian embassy in Washington, chuckled. “I knew you’d hold your nerve. And everything was on your side. All the numbers, codes, and details in that passport were absolutely correct and legal.”

“I know. But the photograph was my weak point. What if he’d noticed, accused me of being a different person? Arrested me? Traveling on a false passport.”

“He’d have refused you entry,” replied Fausi. “And they would have put you on the next plane back to London. It’s not a hanging offense. And you’re not a known criminal. It would just have been a plan that went wrong. Inconvenient, but not life-threatening.

“Besides, you carried with you a Carla Martin Social Security number, three Carla Martin credit cards, and a Carla Martin Maryland driver’s license. Everything was in your favor, photograph or no photograph. It was a slight risk, and you took it very well.”

“Thank you, Fausi. I’ll leave the rest of the journey to you.”

The Jordanian agent gunned the car out of Boston, straight down to the Massachusetts Turnpike and southwest to Hartford, Connecticut, and New York. Four hours later, they hit traffic coming to the Triboro Bridge, and it was almost 7:30 in the evening when Fausi pulled up outside the Pierre Hotel.

His passenger left him there, and, as the doorman took her suitcase, she called out, “Early start tomorrow.”

Fausi answered as he drove off down Fifth Avenue. “No problem, Shakira, right here, nine o’clock.”

One hour later, the beautiful Shakira Rashood walked elegantly into the Pierre Hotel’s dining room and joined a smoothly dressed Arab sitting at a corner table, nursing a glass of chilled white wine.

He stood up as she approached, smiled, and said, “So you are the legendary Shakira. I was told you were very beautiful, but the description did not do you justice.”

“Thank you, Ahmed,” she said. “I have heard many good things about you too.”

“I hope from your husband. He is a great hero, both to me and many other devout Muslims.”

“Yes,” she replied. “And he is very impressed with your work here on our behalf.”

“And now you must remember,” he said, “as we all do in the USA, to take extra care at all times. The Americans are a friendly, trusting people, but if the authorities here get a smell that something is wrong, they are absolutely ruthless in hunting down their enemy.”

“And that would be us, correct?”

“That would most certainly be us.”

The waiter poured Shakira a glass of the wine and took their order, grilled sole for both of them. She listened while Ahmed explained how his duties in the Jordanian embassy as a cultural attaché allowed him access to many American institutions.

His embassy, situated just along the road from the Israelis on International Avenue in Washington, was mostly trusted, although not by the CIA. And definitely not by Admiral Morgan. But, broadly, Ahmed was allowed access to any cultural affairs in the nation’s capital and in New York. It had been his job to set up Shakira in the correct place to carry out her mission.

And he had achieved that, more or less accidentally, by attending a recent cocktail party for a cancer charity at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, right on the Georgetown Canal behind the Watergate complex.

To his utter delight, he realized Admiral Morgan and his wife were in attendance, and he was swift to move into prime position for an introduction to Mrs. Morgan, who served on the committee. The Jordanians were often extremely generous in their support of these Washington charities.

It was obvious, in the first few moments, that the admiral was bored sideways by the small talk, and he swiftly left to speak to an official from the State Department.