Sasha Returns Read online

  At last, she heard a snap and felt the plastic break in her mouth. Her breath quickened. She again put her hands down in her lap and rolled over on the seat facing upward. Above the back of the seat, she could see two doors at the rear. She knew she’d only have one chance. She took a deep breath, grabbed the back of the seat and hurled herself over it.

  She found the door latch, pulled it up and felt the rush of cold air. She heard shouting inside the van as the door flew open and she threw herself out.

  “Ooof!” Sasha landed hard, rolled, got to her feet and limped for the side of the road, realizing she was in a residential neighborhood. Her right knee was in crushing pain, but with each stride she was able to put more weight on it. She turned and saw the van—it looked like an American Chevy Suburban—skid to a stop, then start backing up toward her. She leaped over a fence between two houses before the van reached her, then ran through a backyard, over another fence and across another street. She heard men shouting, the doors on the van slamming, but by then she was over another fence, through another backyard and crossing another side street. Had she lost them? She heard voices from the direction of the van, then people running on the street a block away. Yes, they were going away from her up another side street she’d crossed.

  She rubbed her knee. She’d be fine. She shivered, still winded from her run, and pulled her abaya close around her against the chill of the night breeze. Now what to do? Should she run, leave Saudi Arabia? After the hits in Riyadh last night, Tom had provided her a passport as the wife of an oil broker from Cleveland to get her out of the country, but took it back when she’d told him at the safe house that she’d decided to return to Yassar. If she could get to the American Embassy in Riyadh she could contact Tom, so that probably wasn’t a closed door. Then she thought about Yassar. The fact that Nibmar had history with the al-Mujari, and was going about some new business with them could mean that he was in worse danger than before. His first and favorite wife up to no good. It didn’t make sense. Sasha couldn’t think clearly. Maybe the sedative was still affecting her. “Oh, God,” she said aloud.

  “I hear them coming up the street in the back,” she heard a man behind her say. She turned, startled, and saw a young Arab in his early twenties standing in the backyard behind the house where she crouched in the darkness. He said, “Who’s chasing you?” He held an unlit cigarette in his hand.

  She didn’t answer, thinking. She was in Buraida, primarily Shiite Muslim, very fundamentalist and frequently at odds with the Sunni royal family policies.

  “Secret police?” he asked.

  “No, but men hired by the royals.”

  The man nodded as if he understood. He slid the cigarette back into the pack, put it in his pocket and motioned to her. “Follow me,” he said, and walked toward a door at the back of the house. Sasha didn’t move, trying to decide. “Hurry,” he said, and opened the door. She ran inside behind him. He pulled the door closed behind her without a sound. He raised a finger to his lips and motioned with his head toward the hallway. She followed him into a small room with a desk and cot in it, then closed the door.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, in English with a British accent, extending his hand. “I’m Saif Ibn Mohammed al-Aziz.”

  She shook his hand. “Sasha Del Mira.” He motioned for her to sit on the cot and took a seat in a chair by the desk. He was good-looking, with high cheekbones, sharp features and curly brown hair. He had no beard, uncharacteristic of most Arab men, and wore a white, button-down Oxford shirt and Levis. “Your English is excellent,” she said.

  “Thank you. I went to university in England.” He paused, then said, “Now how about you tell me just what’s going on?”

  #

  The man code named Hajar stood looking into one of the closets in the dressing room of his quarters in the Royal Palace in Riyadh. The false back of the closet was open to reveal the ample space where he could conceal himself, as well as the weaponry he had secretly smuggled in over the past year. He’d had the false back installed at the same time he renovated the bathrooms two years ago. It had been a long wait, but now events had escalated. Ibrahim, the righteous Muslim who was to have been the standard-bearer for the Sunni side of the new Saudi Arabia after the al-Mujari liberated it from the royals’ decadence, had been murdered by the whore, Sasha. He was certain the Americans had helped her with the death squad that entered the Royal Palace 24 hours ago, because it was their CIA that coordinated the murders of dozens of his Shiite brothers in Riyadh and Buraida that same night. And so it was time.

  My mission.

  He had been preparing for it for two years, after the jarring realization that he didn’t belong here, or at least that things couldn’t stay the way they were in Saudi Arabia. It was when his father, Prince Dhakir, discovered that his mother, Bana, the fifth of his five wives, had Shiite blood in her lineage and he banished her from the Royal Palace. This, after 20 years she’d been a faithful and obedient wife to him and bore him two exemplary Saudi sons.

  Hajar had appealed to the other senior princes, even requested that the Council of Ministers intervene. When they refused, it was Prince Yassar who delivered the message, his face blank.

  His father, a decadent old man in his 80s, who regularly crossed the border into Bahrain to drink alcohol and smoke. The doddering old man that he hated for who he was as well as what he represented: the moral decay and hypocrisy of the ruling class in Saudi Arabia.

  Hajar had taken his mother north himself, moved her into her sister’s home on the outskirts of Buraida, the predominantly Shiite northern province. He’d intended to stay to live there with her, but she begged him to return to the Royal Palace where he could continue his education and benefit from the higher quality of life that she so much wanted for him.

  He had returned, but with his mind on a different goal. He was one small soldier aligned with the correct path, and would play his role, however small, in bringing about change in Saudi Arabia. He had heard the message of the al-Mujari from Abdul and Waleed, confidants of his fellow prince and friend, Ibrahim. He understood that change was possible, but only if enough soldiers were recruited for the cause and were prepared to make the painful choices, including the wrenching process of tearing down the current regime and replacing it with a righteous one.

  He’d begun training his body as well as his mind upon his return. He’d toned himself in the gym, even learned how to box to improve his poor coordination. He remembered one day finally having the confidence to truly take on his boxing trainer, the smug British blonde with his pretty-boy face who danced around and taunted him in his lessons. It had taken him months to reach the point, but he’d learned to dart sideways to cut down the ring on his trainer, pinning him against the ropes. Headhunting was for fools who didn’t have the strength to punish their opponents with body blows while pressed in close against them. He’d given that lesson to his trainer.

  Hajar, his code name. It meant rock in an older tongue of Arabic. It was fitting, for that is what he was and must continue to be until his mission was completed, at whatever cost.

  He had just received a phone call from Nibmar in Buraida informing him that one of the team assigned to subdue and bring the whore, Sasha, from the Royal Palace to Buraida, had been injured and was left behind, unconscious. He would undoubtedly be tortured by the royals, and would almost certainly talk. That meant Hajar must move quickly or lose the opportunity to serve the righteous cause for an indefinite period of time.

  Even though it was in the middle of the night, he turned and picked up his prayer rug, then unrolled it and knelt. He would cleanse himself so that, if killed, he could go to paradise with a clean soul and be with the virgins that would await him.

  “There is no god but Allah,” he whispered.

  #

  Prince Yassar nodded to the two Royal Guards stationed outside his quarters in the Royal Palace. He’d just been awakened with word that the head
of the Secret Police, Assad al-Anoud, had news: they’d broken the man they called Ghazi, and Assad wanted to personally tell Yassar what they’d learned. Yassar insisted he wanted to hear it directly from Ghazi and walked toward the corridor to the basement dungeons. Two members of the Secret Police fell in behind him. Yassar looked back, annoyed.

  “Director Assad said we must accompany you, Minister.”

  Yassar turned and continued on. Just before leaving the north wing of the private quarters of the royal family members, Yassar stopped in front of a door and knocked. He heard an iron bolt slide back and saw a face peer out at him through a rectangular opening.

  “Hurry,” Yassar said. He heard more bolts sliding back and the door swung open.

  “Which way?” Yassar said.

  The man pointed to a corridor to the right. Yassar turned at the corridor and descended worn granite steps down three flights into the cold, where Assad stood in front of a massive iron door.

  “Minister—” Assad said.

  “I said I want to hear directly from the man,” Yassar cut in.

  “Minister, it isn’t necessary. I think you would prefer not to see what goes on here. It is quite—unpleasant.”

  Yassar said, “I’m aware of most of the means we used to convince prisoners to surrender information. Now, please take me to this man Ghazi.”

  Assad furrowed his brow and looked at the floor for a moment, then nodded. He slid back an iron bolt and pushed the door open, then stood aside for Yassar to enter first. Assad said to his men, “Remain here,” and followed Yassar into a corridor lined with iron doors, half of them with guards stationed outside. Yassar heard muffled moans from behind one door, shrieks of agony from another. The further they entered, the stronger the odors of vomit, urine and feces became.

  They reached a door at the end of the corridor and Assad stepped in front of Yassar to open it. Now the stench was overpowering. Assad offered Yassar a handkerchief but he waved him off. A man was hosing down the floor, pushing the filth on it toward a trough against one wall with openings at each side to carry it out of the room. Three other men stood around a man laying prostrate on a rough-hewn wooden bench, his arms and legs bound to it. He was naked and his body was covered with bruises, burns and bloody sores, his face battered, one eye completely swollen shut. As Yassar approached him his head rolled to the side and his mouth fell open. His one good eye caught Yassar’s gaze.

  Yassar leaned over to look into his face. “I understand you have some things to tell me.”

  The man opened his mouth and began speaking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory. “Nibmar organized it. Her contacts in the al-Mujari were Abdul and Waleed. She was to have assisted Ibrahim once he assumed power after executing you. After Ibrahim’s assassination, Nibmar recruited Ali to continue her plan and is bringing him to meet with Khalid, now in charge of the al-Mujari in Buraida. I was on the team to abduct Sasha from her room in the Royal Palace. She fought us when we entered the room and knocked me unconscious. I awakened here. I can only assume my brothers were successful.” Ghazi’s head rolled to the side. One of the men slapped him in the face and propped his head up to look at Yassar again.

  “There’s more,” Assad said from behind Yassar.

  Yassar said to the man, “What else?”

  “Another man, an assassin is inside the Royal Palace. He is to kill you as soon as possible.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His code name is Hajar. I don’t know his real name or who he is, but he is a prince, a member of the royal family.”

  “Who knows who he is?”

  “Nibmar.”

  “That’s all,” Assad said.

  Yassar turned and left the room, Assad following him. As they walked back down the corridor, the disgust Yassar had felt in standing over this man was replaced with rage.

  All wasted. The tears he’d shed over Ibrahim, his beloved son. The tenderness he’d shown to Nibmar as she sat in their quarters and wailed after hearing of their eldest son’s murder. The loving eyes he cast upon Ali, his second eldest, as he’d also comforted his mother. Betrayers. Traitors.

  Yassar said, “Any ideas who this Hajar might be?”

  “We’ve created a list,” Assad said. “There are 120 princes living within the walls of the Royal Palace.

  “Order it by closeness of kinship to me and bring it to my quarters. And what’s being done about finding Nibmar and Ali in Buraida?”

  “We already have our local Secret Police contingent searching for the building next to mosque that Ghazi told us Khalid operates from. It won’t be long.”

  Yassar nodded and clenched his jaw as they reached the outer door. “Keep me informed,” he said as Assad opened it for him.

  #

  Sasha now knelt in the darkness beside the door that she’d entered hours earlier to Saif’s house. She replayed those hours in her mind, flashes of scenes like photographs at breakneck speed. After Saif had taken Sasha in, she’d told him her story, and he’d agreed to drive her to Khalid’s headquarters to look for Nibmar and Ali. Sasha figured it might be her only chance to stop them. As she got out of the car, Saif said, “You might need this,” and handed her a gun. She’d taken it and examined it, a 9mm semi-automatic Ruger. She’d racked the slide, gotten out of the car and then crept through the alleys to find the Chevy Suburban parked outside a bedraggled mosque. When she’d found Nibmar inside the Suburban by herself, Sasha used the gun to pistol-whip her to get her to talk, although it really hadn’t been necessary. Nibmar was defiant about, even proud of her liaison with the al-Mujari,

  Nibmar said, “My husband is soft. It is within his grasp to rule, but he is too self-effacing to force his cousins aside to accomplish it. I did not marry him to settle for mediocrity.”

  Sasha felt a blast of shock. “So you helped the al-Mujari with their plans?”

  “Don’t be naïve. The plan regarding Ibrahim was my idea.”

  “How could you choose between your husband and your son?”

  “Life is choice, hard decisions forced upon us by impossible situations. I have always adapted and made the best of them.”

  “You’re more of a monster than I thought.”

  “You’re obviously not a mother or you wouldn’t say that. Particularly not an Islamic mother.”

  “And now Ali is inside there cutting his own deal with Khalid.”

  Nibmar glowered. “There’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll be dead before he becomes ruler of Saudi Arabia.”

  Sasha was appalled. She wanted to pistol-whip her again. She looked Nibmar in the eye, forced her head against the window, the gun still pressed against her forehead, made a decision. Then she heard footsteps and men’s voices in the street and changed her mind. She opened the door and ran into the shadows across the street.

  “I should have killed her when I had the chance,” Sasha told Saif when she returned to his house.

  After he’d offered to drive her back to Riyadh to warn Yassar, Sasha had insisted that Nibmar would have figured out a way to poison him against her, that she needed to go back to Khalid’s and intervene to stop Nibmar and Ali herself.

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Saif had said, opening his closet and pulling out another Ruger, handing her extra clips, then four green-skinned concussion grenades. They’d returned to Khalid’s building with a plan that Saif would create a diversion with one concussion grenade, Sasha would break into Khalid’s headquarters, set off another concussion grenade, and then take Nibmar back to face Yassar. But they captured Sasha and bound her to a chair in the mosque. Saif later waltzed in and told Khalid he’d reconsidered his offer to join the al-Mujari. They’d dragged Sasha into the back room and allowed Saif to be the first to rape her before they killed her. Saif had cut her loose, handed her his Ruger, then walked back to the front room and set off another concussion grenade. Sasha had killed the two guards and Khalid, and then after Ali grabbed a gun, him, too. Saif, coming back to conscio
usness, told her, “Go.” She duct-taped Nibmar’s hands together, slapped her awake and dragged her toward Saif’s car, parked a block away. After Nibmar yanked the wheel and crashed them into another parked car, Sasha shot Nibmar dead in the street after she grabbed an AK-47 that Sasha had taken from Khalid’s guard.

  Sasha waited in Saif’s backyard for an hour before he arrived.

  “Are you okay,” he said.

  Sasha was so exhausted and emotionally spent that she only mustered a nod. “You?”

  “I see you broke my car,” he said as he got out his key to open the back door. “I’ll need to borrow my father’s to drive you back to Riyadh. It’s a good thing you’ll be sitting on my right, because I can’t hear anything out of my left ear.”

  Sasha heard a sharp sound off in the distance, a metallic clang. She felt a bolt of alarm and knelt, pulling Saif down with her.

  “Were you followed?” she whispered.

  Saif looked off in the direction of the sound. “I don’t think so,” he whispered back.

  Sasha heard another sound, like someone walking on gravel.

  “I’m unarmed,” Saif said to her.

  Sasha handed him the AK-47 she’d taken from beside Nibmar’s body. “It’s only got about half a clip, maybe 15 rounds.”

  She held up the Ruger, then shoved it inside her abaya and said, “Cover me. I’ll do what I can with hand-to-hand.” She moved toward the back of a shed in the yard next door, beside which a car was parked. She crouched beside the shed and waited, looking into the darkness in the direction the sounds had come from. Thirty seconds later two men emerged. The first headed straight toward her, the other toward the front of the car. Sasha assumed if she could see them that they could see her, so she backed up and crouched down between the car and the shed. She pulled out the Ruger and hefted it, trying to decide, then slipped it inside her abaya and flexed both hands. The man heading for the back of the shed had been in front, so he’d arrive first. Now she heard him coming around the back of the shed. She tried to moderate her breathing, felt her pulse rate escalating.