Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [52]
The passenger settled back and closed his eyes. He’d dreaded the six-hundred-mile trip since being told to go to Amman by his superior in the Baghdad office. He might have opted out of the assignment, using his senior status and age in the British Foreign Service—he was within a year of retirement—but decided to make the journey. This was important, he knew. Sending a younger, less experienced case officer would not be prudent. The man was Milton Crowley, the only son of a British father and Jewish mother. The Jewish side of his heritage was seldom acknowledged, especially since being posted to Iraq. The flames were high enough there without fanning them further.
His driver had said little during the leg from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, for which Crowley was grateful. Both he and the driver had been on the alert for any sign of “The Group of Death,” an Iraqi insurgency group that had recently been attacking vehicles on Route 10. Twice they’d had to pull far off to the side of the road to allow U.S. military convoys to pass, their soldiers’ weapons trained on the white Suburban. But now that they were in Jordan, the driver visibly relaxed and became verbose, looking in his rearview mirror while talking although somehow keeping his eyes on the road. Crowley could have done without the chatter. He wanted to nap but knew that was impossible. The endless, singsong flow of words from the driver, coupled with an inborn inability to sleep in vehicles or on planes, kept the slight British diplomat awake the entire trip.
They eventually reached downtown Amman and pulled up in front of the Le Royal Hotel in Jebal Amman, on Zahran Street, the Third Circle. The city’s newest luxury hotel, thirty-one stories high, was the tallest building in Amman. Crowley had stayed there before on a previous trip and suffered the same reaction he always had when in hotels, a profound yearning for his quaint, peaceful cottage on a river in Wareham, Dorset, England. One year to go before returning there permanently. It could not come fast enough.
His senior status would have allowed him to choose one of the suites on a high floor, with sweeping views of the city. But views no longer meant anything to Crowley. You’ve seen one view from a hotel window, you’ve seen them all. Besides, he was uncomfortable being surrounded by windows. A lesser room, on a lower floor, with but a single window was more to his liking.
He napped in the darkened room. Somewhat rested, he showered and shaved. His image in the mirror was not what he wished to see. He showed his age—the chicken neck, the sparse, unruly gray hair, and the gray stubble on his chin and cheeks. A discernible weariness in his eyes testified to there being far fewer days ahead for him than behind.
He dressed in the same wrinkled blue suit and the same shirt and tie he’d worn during the drive and went to one of the hotel complex’s thirteen restaurants, where he had a lager, a pasta dish, and a salad. His watch said he had another hour before he had to leave. He sat in the lobby for a few minutes but found it too busy. Two thousand people attending an affair in the Ishtar Ballroom kept spilling out into the lobby; nostalgia for his idyllic English countryside cottage was almost painful.
He returned to his room and passed the rest of the hour there before taking a cab from the hotel to the town of Debbin, approximately fifty miles to the north of Amman. After consulting a slip of paper, he instructed the driver to let him off at an entrance to the Debbin National Park, thirty miles of pine forest stretching from Debbin to Ajlun. The driver expressed his concern at letting the little Englishman off in such a dark and secluded spot, but Crowley assured him he would be fine. “Someone is picking me up any minute,” he said. The moment the taxi pulled away, a silver Mercedes that had been parked a few hundred feet away, its lights extinguished, came to life and approached. M.T., the burly Brit who’d been Ghaleb Rihnai’s handler, rolled down