Fiction

By Charles Barker
(First of Two Excerpts)

The following comes from The Brown Envelope Club (2010, Inkstone Books, Hong Kong, 267 pages), a novel by British-born hotelier Charles Barker about some surprising plots for revenge following warfare in the Middle East. This excerpt appears with the author’s permission.


Amman, Jordan

Captain Al Rahman was frightened.  It was not so much the idea of dying that worried him.  He was, after all, a professional soldier and trained to expect a sudden and violent death.  No, it was more the way in which he might die and the time it would take that upset him which, if he fell into the wrong hands, would assuredly be excruciating and long. 

After his unexpected visitor at the Hishan Hotel, he realised he could not go anywhere in public and so determined to risk contact with an old acquaintance from his early army days. Brigadier Samir Raslam was a bluff old warrior who claimed to have survived more campaigns in the region than historians had documented. Whether or not he had ever been a brigadier was similarly ill-documented. He sported an enormous handle-bar moustache and had a perpetual air of apparent good will about him, an impression rapidly dispelled when one saw his eyes which were black and humourless.

He was currently the Chief Security Officer at the InterContinental Hotel in Amman where he was feared and despised by the management and staff alike, including the general manager. He led a soft and easy-going life there, fabricating and arranging the occasional arrest of certain staff to secure his position. 

Al Rahman had met Raslam whilst he had been on a training secondment to Iraq in the late eighties, when still a serving officer in the Jordanian army. Al Rahman had been a good student, and it was largely thanks to his mentor that he later had secured his post in the Republican Guard. It was thus to his former teacher that he now turned.

When his office phone rang, the security chief could not remember his caller, but pretended he did. The young Iraqi officer asked for a meeting outside the hotel, but the older man insisted that he should come in and see him in his office.

“After the meeting, then we will have some lunch.”

He was not going to miss a chance to show off his nice desk and office and sign the bill in the restaurant to this lad. One never knew how important chance contacts like this could turn out, and it so was necessary to impress -- pleasant also. 

When the captain arrived in the hotel, there was no sign of Raslam in the lobby as he had promised. Al Rahman prowled restlessly around, his anxiety mounting and eventually went to the porter's desk to have him paged. 

If there were networks covering small hotels, such as the Hishan, Amman's larger hotels were riddled with them. Several people had noticed the nervous-looking man who seemed uncomfortable in the rarified atmosphere of an international hotel lobby. However, it was the head porter who noticed the dark stain on the underside of the sleeve and elbow, and after paging the security chief, made a more discreet call, this time not through the hotel operator. 

The call was answered in old downtown Amman in a small and shabby, yet completely legitimate, gun dealer's shop run by Rashid Masri. He was an old and wizened man, seemingly with a perpetual-running nose and rheumy eyes, who appeared on the face of it to be as decrepit as his squalid little shop. Of Palestinian origin, he was also a clever and deep cover agent who ran Mossad's operations in Jordan. 

He received the news of the visitor to the InterContinental Hotel dispassionately, thanked his caller, who he had never actually met but sent regular and generous payments to, and dialed the British Embassy. He politely asked for the second secretary, commercial department, a Mr Prendergast, proposed a potentially lucrative business opportunity for the United Kingdom and could perhaps the second secretary meet him at his head office forthwith?

Prendergast was well aware of Masri and held him in high esteem…. If Masri was asking for a meet now, it must be of the highest priority, so Prendergast left the embassy and soon entered the seedy shop downtown.

Mr Masri was at that moment praying. Prendergast was obliged to contain his curiosity for a further five minutes, wondering as he did so to which God and religion his host was actually communicating. He surveyed the old guns, some rusted and useless, some weather-beaten and worn, all second-hand with highly questionable mechanisms; dust-covered cartridge cases piled up haphazardly, old shotguns and the occasional ancient rifle. There was even an old bolt-action, Lee Enfield .303 which quite took him back to his school-corps days. 

His reverie was interrupted by a croaking, old voice. “Nice to see you again, Mr Prendergast. Tea or coffee?”

“Hello, Mr Masri. Er, tea please, thank you. How are you?”

“I'm well, thank you, well.” He broke into a bronchitic coughing fit. He then poured some tea from a dirty, old pot, which seemed to be constantly simmering, into two chipped glasses and passed one to his guest.

“Thanks awfully, Mr Masri,” said Prendergast, anxious to find out the reason for his summons. “So what is it you wish to discuss?”

So Masri relayed the message from the InterContinental Hotel’s porter. “Could be the one we’re all looking for. Maybe an idea to check it out before the others do. If we know, others will too.”

“Quite, quite. I'll get onto it straight away. Can I, er, use your phone a moment?”

“Help yourself.”

Prendergast made a phone call and discreetly arranged to meet his deputy at the InterContinental Hotel’s lobby in 15 minutes. Just then, another customer entered the shop and, without pausing for thought, old Masri passed a pack of fifty 9mm cartridges over to Prendergast and said, “Thirty dinars, please.”

“Old crook!” thought Prendergast, but duly paid and left. Anyway, they were the right shells for his own gun so they would not be wasted.

Prendergast arrived a little later than his deputy who had already marked their target. Sitting in the coffee shop, the old war-horse with the enormous moustache stood out a mile, and his nervous and twitchy guest even more so. Raslam had not so much as asked after his visitor's health or circumstances, preferring infinitely more the sound of his own voice.

Prendergast and his deputy took a table nearby and ostensibly began considering the menu. “Tell you what. Go back to the lobby and think up some ruse to get Raslam out of here. I'll then make the approach on chummy.”

“You sure that's wise, chief?” asked the junior officer. “He's already killed one person, and he looks about ready to do it again.  Better if I stayed, don't you think?”

“We haven't got time -- just get back as soon as you can. Now go.”

The younger man left, but instead of going to the lobby, went through a service door from which some staff member had just emerged. He briskly walked a short way down a rather dirty corridor and soon found what he wanted. A couple of employees passed, but did not so much as look at him. Once the passage was empty, his elbow smashed the glass of a fire-call point alarm. He then quickly retraced his steps to the coffee shop.

Raslam was reacting slowly to the fire alarm which, although not loud in the public areas, was still quite audible. He shoveled in another mouthful of food, and as he rose to leave, said to his visitor, “Don't worry. It's just another false alarm. I'll be back soon.”

Al Rahman seemed unconvinced and decided to leave. Things were not going as he had hoped. He was about to rise when two rather odd-looking westerners sat down at his table and, with huge smiles and flawless Arabic, extended to him a warm and friendly greeting.

“Hello, Captain Al Rahman. I'm John Smith from the British Embassy,” lied Prendergast smoothly, showing the surprised captain one of his embassy identification cards. “This is my assistant Mike Jones. We know you've been having a little trouble and would like to be able to help.”

Everything had happened so quickly that Al Rahman barely could muster his thoughts. The stress of the last few days finally overcame him and he sank back in his chair with a deep sense of relief. Seeing the tension go out of the man, Prendergast too relaxed somewhat. Contacts such as this, with highly nervous and unpredictable targets, could be very dangerous, particularly without time to prepare, and they were glad to see the fight go out of their man.

“Tell you what, Captain. It's a bit public here, and one never knows who else is around. Why don't we go off to our embassy? You'll be completely safe there, and we can have a little chat in peace.”

Al Rahman looked at the two agents and merely nodded. The idea of moving was making him feel uncomfortable again, but he realised he could not stay where he was much longer. 

“Good show,” continued Prendergast. “Mike, why don't you get the car round and see that the coast is clear? I'll be out with the captain in a jiffy.”