His new routine . . .
The space between Drummond’s building and its southern neighbor was a mess of weeds, nice and soft on the feet, and quiet. No lights on in any of the units.
As the city slept . . .
He continued to the back, scoped out the parking slots. He’d made several passes back there, but just in case. No sign of the white Honda, Drummond’s space was empty.
Stahl hustled over to the building’s rear entrance.
Locked, single dead bolt. An alarm sticker was pasted across the wood, but Stahl knew, from prior research, that it was false advertising. No wires, no open account at the alarm company. He removed his kit, pulled out his high-focus, narrow-beam penlight, inspected his collection of key specimens, eyeballed the slit in the bolt. Two blanks looked promising. The first one fit.
The Army had taught him how to play with locks. And all sorts of other skills.
He’d used these particular skills only once. In Riyadh, the heat and the sand nearly unbearable, the relentless sun bleaching his retinas. Despite all the high-rises and conspicuous consumption, the availability of American food on the base, the city had never been anything to Stahl but a desert hellhole.
The lockpick assignment in Riyadh had been part of a bigger plan: breaking into the penthouse of a Saudi prince who’d seduced the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the military attachés at the U.S. embassy.
Skinny, plain-looking blond girl, borderline I.Q., subterranean self-esteem. The prince, handsome, rich, soft-spoken, had sweet-talked her into sex-on-demand at his place and fed her dope. Now feathers were being ruffled. Royal family feathers: consorting with a girl of such obvious inferiority could prove harmful to the prince’s image, but no way would the Saudis move on their golden boy. Dirty work was always left to foreigners.
“Think of it this way,” Stahl’s C.O. told him. “She’s getting off easy, being American. She was Saudi, they’d stone her to death.”
Officially, the prince lived with his family in a palace. His fuck pad was a white marble paradise atop one of the highest-rises, the delivery door of which just happened to have been left open and unguarded on a certain night.
Same night the prince was due to dine with a couple of the State Department flunkies everyone despised. Accompanied by one of his three wives, but that afternoon he’d stashed the American girl in the f pad, plied her with pills, left her there, supervised by one female Filipina servant, to be available when he dropped in for a sexual nightcap.
Stahl staked out the high-rise and saw the prince stash his slut: a yellow Bentley Azure pulled around to the building’s delivery entrance. The prince, dressed in a white silk shirt and cream slacks, got out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open. An attendant rushed to close it, but the car didn’t move. Five minutes later, the left passenger door opened and two men in suits emerged with a bundled figure that they hustled into the building. The same attendant was ready for them, too, holding the door.
An hour later, the prince, decked out in long, white Arab robes and a gold-banded kaffiyeh, got behind the wheel of the Azure and sped off.
Twenty minutes later, the two men in suits left on foot, got into a black Mercedes parked nearby, and drove away.
Soon after dark, Stahl was inside the building, lifting the skirts of his own robe and climbing twenty-eight flights to the prince’s digs.
A sleepy guard was stationed on the other side of the stairwell door. Stahl walked toward him, muttered a few memorized Arabic phrases, flipped the guy around, put on the chokehold, dragged him into the stairwell and bound his arms and legs with plastic ties. Then he pulled out his pick kit and flipped the lock. Expensive digs, but cheap lock. No reason for Talal to feel insecure.
The girl was in plain sight, lolling on a purple brocade sofa, naked, stoned, eyes fixed on satellite-delivery MTV.
“Hi, Cathy.”
The girl stroked her breasts and licked her lips.
The Filipina maid appeared. Stahl gave her a puff of whatever was stored in the little blue inhalator the med officer had slipped him and she nodded out and he placed her in a chair. Peeling off the Arab robes, he continued working in his black T-shirt and jeans. Wrapping Cathy in the same blanket the prince’s guys had used, slinging her over his shoulder and getting the hell out of there.