The Jamahiriyyah Guard were essentially Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s own personal Special Forces unit, composed of two thousand or so men drawn from his own backyard, the Surt region of Libya. The Jamahiriyyah were good, Clark knew, and well supported with their own in-house logistics and intelligence units, but the Jamahiriyyah were not known for their discretion, nor for any deep concern for collateral damage, inanimate and animate alike. With the Jamahiriyyah making the assault, the Swedes were likely to lose a fair number of staff.
An interesting bastard, Qaddafi, Clark thought. Like much of the U.S. intelligence community, Clark had his doubts about Qaddafi’s recent character transformation from bad boy of North Africa to humanitarian and denouncer of terrorism. The old phrase “a leopard can’t change its spots” might be a cliché that rang false for some, but as far as Clark was concerned, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi, “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution,” was a leopard through and through, and would be until the day he died of natural causes or not-so-natural causes.
In 2003, at Qaddafi’s command, the Libyan government officially informed the United Nations it was prepared to accept responsibility for the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie some fifteen years earlier and was further prepared to compensate the victims’ families to the tune of nearly $3 billion. The gesture was immediately rewarded with not only praise from the West but also the lifting of economic sanctions and diplomatically couched “attaboys” from many European countries. And the leopard didn’t stop there, first opening up his weapons programs to international inspectors, then denouncing the 9/11 attacks.
Clark had a guess about Qaddafi’s change of heart, and it had nothing to do with the mellowing of old age but rather with plain old economics. In other words, oil prices—which had plummeted throughout the ’90s, leaving Libya poorer than it had been since camels and not black gold had been king in the desert nation, and less able to fund the Colonel’s pet terrorist projects. Of course, Clark reminded himself, Qaddafi’s nice-guy routine was probably helped along by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which he probably saw as just a preview of what could happen to his little fiefdom. In fairness, Clark conceded that it was always better to have a leopard only pretending to change its spots as long as its fangs were in fact blunted. The question was, now that oil prices were back up, would the Colonel be feeling frisky again? Would he use this incident to roar?
“Of course, the Supreme Command in Stockholm wants to call in their own blokes, but Qaddafi is having none of it,” Stanley continued. “Last I heard, Rosenbad Street was talking to Downing Street. At any rate, we’ve been put on standby. Herefordshire is putting out the call for the rest of the team. We’ve got two on leave—one medical, one on holiday—but the bulk of them should be assembled and equipped within the hour and en route to us shortly after that.” Stanley checked his watch. “Say, seventy minutes to wheels up.”
“You said ‘staged,’” Chavez said. “Staged where?” Time was critical, and even in the fastest of transports, London to Tripoli was a long hop—perhaps longer than the hostages inside that consulate had to live.
“Taranto. The Marina Militare has kindly offered to put us up until the pols sort things out. If we get the call, we’re just a skip across the water to Tripoli.”
16
LIEUTENANT OPERATIVNIK (Detective) Pavel Rosikhina pulled back the sheet—a tablecloth, really—that some kind soul had draped over the body and stared into the wide-eyed face of what he’d assumed was yet another Mafia execution. Maybe not. Despite the man’s pallor, it was clear he wasn’t Chechnyan or an ethnic Russian, which surprised him, given their location. A Caucasian Russian. Interesting.
The single bullet had entered the man’s skull just above and an inch forward of his left ear and exited. . . . Rosikhina leaned over the table, careful to touch nothing but the tablecloth, and peered at the right side of the man’s head, which lay resting on the booth’s cushioned upper edge. There. An egg-sized exit hole behind the man’s right ear. The blood and brain matter splattered on the wall behind the booth fit with the bullet’s trajectory, which meant the killer would have been standing . . . here. Right in front of the kitchen door. How close would be a matter for the coroner to decide, but looking at the entry wound,