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The next morning, his hotel room smelled like stale liquor and cigarette smoke when Abdula Nassir woke up. He lit a cigarette and looked across the bed at the sleeping woman he paid for last night, and he thought about his situation. Maybe he was too hard on Tariq Amin yesterday. He had to laugh when he thought that even if the old man did pay him in full as he promised, he’d probably still be here lying here next to this same woman. In this business, you always have to play the hard line, if you show fear or if you compromise timidly, you will be thought of as weak and vulnerable. He decided that he might as well stay in Ismailly, spend Amin’s money, and amuse himself by harassing the rich old man as often as he could. The old man seemed weak, and if Abdula could scare him enough, who knows? Amin may even pay him more than the contract required, which would not be a bad thing.
He never had any love for the rich Saudi’s, all they meant to him was a paycheck. Abdula worked his ass off in the dangerous game of gunrunning around the Middle East, and he was both proficient and ruthless with the weapons he sold. His Arab brothers would look at him with sorrowful eyes whenever he held out his hand for his payment for the weapons they bought from him. He would just look them directly in the eyes and tell them that he paid his dues with five years of hard fighting against the Jews, and now he had a large family to feed. A market was a market, whether it was fruit or AK-47 rifles, if there was a buyer, he might as well be the seller.
Abdula always had the knack for being in the right place at the right time. He spent over ten years shipping weapons across the Mediterranean, and this was dangerous work in any season. It didn’t get any easier when the weapons were hauled over land between countries either, Muslim brothers or not, one’s throat could get sliced in a minute for a large cache of valuable weapons. It was never an occupation for the faint of heart.
Abdula had to laugh when he heard that Tariq Amin was looking for someone to purchase some sealed nuclear containers from a farm in Georgia and haul them across the border to Azerbaijan.
The whole thing seemed like child’s play to Abdula, who prided himself on arranging the import of the first Chinese SCUD missiles into the Middle East. Abdula submitted his bid and plans to Amin for the transfer of the cesium, and was accepted within twenty-four hours. He beat all of his competition even though he was not the lowest bidder. It was his reputation for delivering as promised and the well-known fact that he has never been close to getting caught that swayed Tariq Amin.
Abdula took a long drag on his cigarette and thought that maybe he would retire young and take it easy for the rest of his years. He had a comfortable bank account, and the half million U.S. dollars that Amin was paying him was a decent payday for a week’s work. With more terror financiers like Amin coming out every day, Abdula thought he could probably live quite well by only working a few weeks each year. This was his time, he thought, the rich terrorist dreamers needed Abdula Nassir to fulfill their lives at whatever price he dictated. It was lucrative business to be in today.
The only one that concerned Abdula was Amin’s first officer, Tafar Rasulon. There’s a good chance that Tafar was probably the most cold-hearted person that Abdula ever laid his eyes on, and he has seen his share of them. Surely Tafar was capable of handling the transfer of these materials to Batumi and across the Azerbaijani border to Baku and he could have saved Amin a half-million in the process. Why didn’t Tafar insist that he do it himself rather then go out of his way to recommend Abdula for the job?
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