of her team, particularly the couple she had sitting in the restaurant, that the target had arrived.
Turning to Harvath she said, “Now what?”
“Now we wait,” he replied.
The Arabian Courtyard Hotel was built around a grand atrium with glass elevators you could watch ascend. That allowed Cowles, who was seated in the ground-floor lounge, to watch Hanjour cross the marble lobby, get into one of the elevators, and take it up to the Silk Route level. After relaying the target’s movements, he sat back and pretended to enjoy a coffee as he continued to scan the lobby and the front door for any unwanted guests.
“We’ve got him,” the female CIA operative said over her Bluetooth earpiece when Hanjour entered the restaurant. She watched him speak with the hostess and then be shown to a table near the windows.
Hanjour was a balding man of medium height with a thin build. He wore an obviously dyed, tightly cropped black beard and a pair of stylish, frameless glasses. He had paired his khaki trousers with a white, short-sleeved silk dress shirt and a pair of soft leather driving shoes. On his right wrist was a large gold Rolex and on his left pinky finger was a gold signet ring. He wore no other jewelry and carried nothing in his hands that they could see.
He ordered a gin and tonic and surveyed the room as he sipped, waiting for his companion to arrive. The young CIA couple kept him in their peripheral vision, pretending to be more into each other than anything else. The last thing they needed was for him to know he was under surveillance.
When the clock on his phone read two minutes past six o’clock, Harvath texted Hanjour a picture. It showed a pillow on a turned-down bed. Propped up against the pillow were two small plastic bags. One was filled with what looked like meth and the other with what looked like synthetic marijuana. There was a box of condoms and a red rose. The only text that accompanied the picture was the room number, 501.
Hanjour slid the phone from his pocket and read the message. Taking out his wallet, he left some money for the waitress and walked over to the hostess. He said a few words to her and she smiled as he tipped her. Then he exited the restaurant.
The female CIA operative rang Levy. “He just left.”
Levy pinged Cowles down in the lobby and told him to watch the elevators. Raising his coffee cup to his mouth, Cowles turned his attention to the elevators and gave a play-by-play of what he saw, ending with, “The elevator is stopping on five. He’s getting off. Headed in your direction.”
Levy looked at Harvath and said, “Here he comes.”
The door had been propped open using the swing guard lock. When Hanjour entered, he would walk down a short hallway with the darkened bathroom to his right. The bedside table lamps were on, but had been covered with pieces of red fabric to dim their brightness and add to the mood. A small amount of incense had been burned so that it would appear that perhaps Fahad was trying to cover up that he had already started partying and was ready to go right to play mode. The bedspread had been kicked off and dropped on the floor at the foot of the bed. The radio was playing softly.
Dim lights, a little bit of incense, the bedspread on the floor, and music. It was all designed to throw Hanjour off balance; to reinforce in his mind what he wanted to see.
All they needed now was for him to walk through the door, which was exactly what he did next.
CHAPTER 15
* * *
* * *
Khuram Hanjour gently pushed the door open and slipped inside room 501. He saw the bedspread up ahead on the floor. Turning, he locked the door behind him.
He spoke in hushed Arabic as he kicked off his shoes and began unbuttoning his shirt. He had dropped it to the floor and was just unbuttoning his pants when he stepped into the bedroom and saw Anne Levy standing there. In her hands was a suppressed, Elite Dark SIG Sauer P226, the same weapon carried by a lot of Texas Rangers and Navy SEALs. It was pointed right at him.
Hanjour spun, as if to flee, only to see that Harvath had stepped from the darkened bathroom and also had a weapon pointed at him. This one, though, looked different, like something out