“You the boss.” Goran climbed into the Bugatti and drove it forward a few feet. Ben locked down the tires to make sure the vehicle wouldn’t budge.
The Bugatti Chiron was a mid-engine automobile. Its V-16 quad-turbo engine weighed one thousand pounds alone and was situated behind the passenger compartment on an elevated transverse mount. Ben removed the transparent plexiglass bonnet and handed it to Goran. The air intakes were shaped like hollow gourds and sat on top of the engine, one to either side. Each was thirty inches in length, forged from stainless steel, and painted glossy black.
“Where the present?” asked Goran, plugging in a variable-speed impact wrench and revving it.
“Left air intake,” said TNT.
Goran removed the bolts that attached it to the chassis. He handed the wrench to Ben, then freed the intake valve from its clamps. “Heavy,” he said.
“Thirteen pounds,” said TNT.
“Lot of jewels,” said Goran.
“You a thief?” asked Ben aggressively, which was what they took for humor.
Goran carried the intake to a trestle table. Bending at the waist, he peered inside. He barked instructions to Ben, who handed him a Phillips screwdriver. A minute later, Goran withdrew a slim, rectangular item wrapped in black Plasticine. The “present” was seventeen inches long, three inches wide, and four inches deep, more or less the size and shape of an ingot of gold. “I allowed to ask what is?”
“No,” said TNT.
Goran tossed it halfway across the bay to Ben. “Fragile, eh? What you think?”
Ben shook the package, then put it to his ear. “Candy,” he said.
“You’re right,” said TNT. “Candy.”
The Slavs laughed.
“You promise your horse gonna win?” said Ben, clutching the package to his chest.
“Promise,” said TNT.
“Here you go.” Ben tossed the package to TNT. It was a lousy throw, too short and too low. TNT jumped forward and fell to a knee, getting his hands under it a moment before it hit the floor.
“What are you waiting for?” he said, standing up, smiling uneasily. “Put the car back together.”
He entered the men’s private office and shut the door. After setting the package on the table, he took a seat and leaned back, exhaling, staring at the ceiling.
When did it all begin? This scheme of his. This vision. This bold adventure.
A dinner in Doha. A seasonable night in February, always the nicest month of the year. Dinner at the restaurant Nobu in the Four Seasons Hotel. A table overlooking the water on the shore of the Persian Gulf. A view up the coastline to the business district. One skyscraper more modern, more daring than the next. A sight to make a Qatari heart proud.
It was his turn to dine the delegation from Hamas.Hamaswas the acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, which was, more specifically, the Palestinian nationalist Sunni political party that had governed the Gaza Strip since 2006.
It was Hamas that, on October 7, 2023, sent its soldiers rampaging across the Israeli border to kill and capture as many Jews as possible. The action was viewed as a reprisal by those who ordered it and an act of war by those who had been attacked. The Israelis took their time to fashion a response. When it came, it was more thunderous than even the most pessimistic minds had foreseen. First there was artillery, then the campaign from the air, then the invasion.
The interesting thing about Gaza was that it belonged to no one. Not to Egypt, which bordered it to the south. Not to Israel, which surrounded it to the east and north. It was not even its own sovereign state. It was just a strip of land twenty-five miles long and four or five miles wide. One hundred forty square miles in total area and home to two million Palestinians no one wanted.
Nearly as soon as the conflict began, all concerned parties sent representatives to Doha—spies, government officials, business leaders, whatever—though even now Tariq wasn’t sure why. No one seemed to want an end to the killing, at least at first. Israel was hell bent on massacring every last fighter in Gaza, Hamas or not. And Hamas was happy to let them try, hoping that as many civilians as possible were killed along the way. Hamas might lose the military campaign, but would be damned if it lost the public relations campaign. Besides, Tariq mused, a few thousand more martyrs sent to heaven meant a few thousand fewer mouths to feed on earth. No one said Hamas wasn’t practical.
Doha was like a watering hole in Africa, where at dawn and dusk all the animals—predators and prey—could congregate without fear of being eaten or attacked. Hamas was camped at the St. Regis. Hezbollah at the Four Seasons. The Emiratis had taken over the Ritz-Carlton, and the Saudis were at the Mandarin Oriental. Israel, whose delegation paradoxically was the smallest, housed its people in hostels and guesthouses. Even if no one was ready to negotiate, they could at least exchange a few words over coffee.
Back to the Nobu. It had been a contentious day. TNT had no recollection of what had been agreed or refused by whom. The men he was dining with were in a particularly irascible state, which if one knew anything about Hamas—for which the go-to solution to any problem was to blow it up—was saying something.
“We must kill them. Kill them all.” No need to reveal the man’s name. TNT would call him Abdul. “I know how,” said Abdul, in a fury.“We have one of theirs. A bomb. We can use it. Boom. All gone. The Knesset. King Saul Boulevard. Take your pick.”
“That would end things,” said Tariq, agreeably, though he was wary of any further escalation. He knew better, however, than to talk logic; not with someone with hate oozing from his every pore. “What do you have in mind?”
“They call it ‘Samson,’” said Abdul.
