WASHINGTON DC: The Sadir Affair (The Puppets of Washington Book 1) by Lavina Giamusso Read Free Book Online Page B

spotlight overhead of someone reading a book two rows ahead of his. Talya had appeared often in his dreams of late, and Khalid could not turn away from these as easily as he did from other things, or ignore them. They were out of reach or his control. He got up, went to stand by the galley’s entrance and asked the attendant for a glass of water. He brought it back to his sitting-bed and drank it slowly.
    He could not grasp what was obviously happening to him. He had fantasized vengeance, and his fantasy was now becoming a reality. He was instructed to follow his friend, an assassin, to a duel he only fathomed could take place. He began to realize the enormity of the situation. He had never met this Isaac fellow. He had only heard his other name mentioned in passing, Samuel, which meant God’s Word in Hebrew. Possibly, he was only an agent with no real agenda against him or Talya; he just executed orders as so many others did. However, here he was, on his way to kill the man. He had told Talya one day, if she wanted to take vengeance as a companion, she would have to take the devil as her assistant. Incredible as it was, Khalid was doing exactly that. With vengeance in his heart, he had concocted a devil’s plan to kill a man. It was crazy! He would not be able to go through with this. He couldn’t.
    If he went to Talya, Mossad would claim that Saudi had forged a secret alliance with Israel, and his uncles would think nothing to have Khalid executed as soon as he would return home—to Paris. It would not be beyond expectation if he were to see reprisals exacted on him for meddling in the Saudi Arabian King’s political affairs, or international relations. What’s more, if he killed the man, Mossad and the Australian authorities would hunt him down like an animal, the same way they did with Talya. He was an outsider.
    These tergiversations convinced him that Sadir (or even Fred) had been wrong; there was no way he was coming out of this alive. If he did pull through, he could only look forward to spending the rest of his days in prison, most certainly, in fact.
    Replaying the luncheon conversation he had with Muhammad Sadir in his mind, Khalid asked himself why the man was so intent on baiting him into action. He had used an old trick on Khalid, knowing that he was as stubborn as a mule when it came to obtaining what he wanted in life, nothing on a silver platter mind you, but stubborn enough to get what he was told he could not have. He remembered thinking of the word reversal when Sadir changed tack, and advanced the idea that the CIA should repay a debt to his uncle. What a laugh! The CIA never paid any debt of the sort. They had already forgotten about Uncle Abdullah and his alleged contraband; they had other problems to deal with now, terrorism being one of them.

Chapter 14
     
    “Do you really think he’s going to go through with it?” Thomas asked Sadir as the two of them were drinking their first coffee the morning after Khalid left D.C.
    “Frankly, I don’t know. He’s got one-track mind like most of the men in his family, but it’s hard to say.”
    “How are you going to ensure he’s carrying this out to the end?”
    “Perhaps, Ms Kartz should do the convincing.”
    Thomas’s smirk was indicative of his tacit approval. “And how do you propose to do that? She’s not going to jump at the chance to join her prince in a country that really doesn’t remind her of anything too good, you know.”
    “Let’s not forget our prince has saved her neck more than once…”
    “Yeah, but he’s also left her to deal with a traitor, and I don’t think she’s the forgetting kind.”
    Sadir chuckled. “Ottawa would be only too pleased to erase the slate and have us do the erasing, don’t you think?”
    Thomas raised a questioning eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”
    Advancing his head closer to Thomas’s, Sadir looked into his colleague’s eyes. He didn’t want to say aloud what he was in fact