Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [72]
“Thank you, but Labib and I have an engagement.” Fajer smiled at his younger brother, who looked as if he needed to be rescued. The businessman accepted the inevitable and excused himself.
“What was that about?” Fajer asked.
“Money. What else? They think we Arabs carry gold bars around in our pockets,” his brother said.
They stepped into the late-night air. It was much cooler now than it had been during the day. Fajer thought for a moment that no city on earth was more beautiful than Paris at night. Darkness masked its few shortcomings as a metropolis, and the city was lit as if for a Hollywood production. The driver opened the door and the two men stepped into the black Mercedes. The heavy car pulled away from the hotel, hesitated, then merged with traffic. A moment later it descended into the same tunnel where Princess Diana had died.
Labib was the second son of their father’s fourth wife. In Saudi families the sons of different mothers didn’t usually bond, but their mothers were cousins who had often visited one another during their childhood. Labib had always looked up to his older brother; when asked to join him in this venture, he’d been thrilled to be included.
While Fajer handled the company’s affairs in the Kingdom, as Saudi Arabia was known, Labib had established the corporate presence in Paris. He’d lived here now for six years and had grown quite comfortable among the French. His wife loved Paris, and their son was thriving in school.
Though Fajer looked very much like their father, Labib, at age thirty-seven, closely resembled his mother. An inch shorter than his brother, he was slender, with a nearly effeminate grace. He’d lost his fourth finger on his left hand in a camel-riding accident with Fajer when they were children, but otherwise was a perfect Arab specimen. He’d earned a degree in computer science at Harvard and had originally worked with his brother as IT manager for the company in Riyadh.
Close as they were, the brothers were different in many ways. Fajer tended to the ostentatious when in the West, and his sexual appetite was nearly insatiable. Labib preferred to live a quiet life, with one woman, and avoided all overt displays of wealth. But they shared much in common. Both hated their father, despised the corrupt Saudi ruling family, and believed the future of the Arab world lay in a return to the old ways and a restoration of the caliphate as the world’s dominant power. Both of them wanted nothing so much as the destruction of America to make that possible.
“And how are things, little brother?” Fajer asked in Arabic. The driver was Polish, so they could speak frankly.
“I believe we will get the contract.”
“Not that. The other.”
Labib glanced at the driver a moment. “It has gone as planned so far. I see no problems.”
“There are always problems, or, at the least, there is the unexpected.”
“Fresh code is going out every day. We’ve confirmed replication. It’s really only a question of how far it spreads before activation, and that we can’t discover in advance without tipping our hand.”
Fajer smiled. “I can hardly wait until the day comes. I will be home in the Kingdom. I suggest you return as well. We will be safe there. Nothing else?”
“No.” Labib stared out the window.
Fajer could sense his uncertainty. “Tell me. Is it the Russian?”
The idea had been spawned high in a remote valley in the Hejaz Mountains near the western coast of Saudi Arabia. There Fajer had long maintained a traditional tribal settlement of about eighty people. Several times a year, especially during the torturous summer, Fajer flew by helicopter to this remote region and lived in a tent, as had his forebears. Here he renewed his ties to the earth and to the traditional ways of his tribe.
These included slaughtering a goat or sheep. He’d learned to cut the throat in the prescribed way, to drain the blood as specified, then to skin the animal before turning it over to the women. He found he took great pleasure