The Great Heist

Chapter Four

“Thirty minutes after an explosion and a smoke incident here at the Lusail Arena, the World Cup Trophy is still nowhere to be found.” Liam was saying into the microphone before the wails of sirens speared through the air around the stadium.

Acting out of pure curiosity like the true journalist that he was, he removed his gaze fastened on the camera’s focus and turned around to the source of the recent explosion of sound in time to notice the motorcade arriving in the distance.

“It appears we have new arrivals on the scene now,” when his voice returned over the microphone, the camera’s focus had tilted away from him, and now covered the procession of vehicles arriving in the stadium’s parking lot. “There’s a higher chance that one of the concerned officials in the Qatari law enforcement agencies just arrived in a motorcade. But, the big question remains; who amongst these men just arrived in that motorcade? The city’s Commissioner of Police, or perhaps the Qatari Inspector General of police himself? Could be anyone really. For now, we’re as good as guessing. But I think we wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find out.”

The camera which was removed from him for a considerable length, swept farther away into the distance; picking up the face of the dashing young man in a custom-made plaid suit flocked around by a handful of cops. 

“Oh, you ain’t really gonna believe this,” Liam's voice returned yet again over the microphone with a thrill. “The face of the man who just stepped out of the Porsche Cayenne in the entourage does not belong to any of the names I mentioned earlier. Nor does it belong to anyone from any law enforcement agencies here in Qatar. But rather, it belongs to one of the top boys from Intelligence. And that’s none other than the Director of the Qatar State Security. Commander Ali Daei.”

The camera zoomed in as the Director progressed toward the Gate Four entrance with a covey of cops trailing behind him. 

“The thirty-year-old Director, who was a Pilot Officer in his two years’ service at the British RAF is one of the new crops of youngsters in the corridor of power in the new era ushered in within the state of Qatar.” Liam effused in the grand fashion customary to all pressmen. “Normally, it isn’t really a thing of surprise seeing the young Director here, given that the situation of things around here concerned him as much as it does the Inspector General of police and every other top person charged with security and law enforcement across the country. The surprising thing, however, is, seeing him as the first top law enforcement official to report here at the scene.”

“Trust me, if this means anything at all, it’s to show us the amplitude of the situation we have at hand at the moment at the Lusail Arena.” He droned on in the background as the camera zoomed further out, to capture the scene of the Director speaking with one of his inferiors.

“I think it’s already set then. The Director just walked into the stadium through the entrance Gate Four with a handful of cops at his wake.” Liam was saying just as the camera cut across from the distance back to him.

Within a few minutes of that, another wave of sirens' wails crackled through the Lusail air as troupes of police and Al Fazaa cruisers ripped away from the stadium’s parking lots into the Al Khor coastal road.

The camera darted away from Liam that instant, veering wildly sideways to cover a longitudinal shot of the cruisers zooming off in the distance.

Liam’s face came over the camera once more just as the last wisp of the cruisers’ shrilly wails died down in the distance. His voice, on the other hand, came over the microphone a bit later.

“It gets no realer than this,” he began flatly this time, “Believe me, from what we have witnessed just now, I think it’s safe enough to revert to my earlier statement that; ‘the hunt for the World Cup Trophy has just begun.’”                                            

                            

                                                              ***

Commander Ali hunched over the large console. His coal-tar eyes roved owlishly over the footage displayed across the grid of colored CCTV monitors in the expansive control room.

Ever since locating the control room with the help of one of his agents some ten minutes ago, and turning loose every one of them, the young director had busied himself with watching the footage of the events leading to the disappearance of the World Cup trophy. And now has at the moment, three viewings in total.

Done with the first golden rule of any procedural investigation, which imperatively is—familiarizing yourself with the situation—he turned away from the grid of monitor screens and looked pointedly at the young operator calmly seated beside him for the first time today.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll have the chair now.” He said genially, indicating the cushy swivel chair, which he had modestly declined at the generous offer of the operator earlier.

“Not a problem, sir,” the young operator returned jumpily, scrambling out of the chair and out of the director’s way. 

With a wan smile, Commander Ali navigated his way to the chair and sank into it in the graceful motion of a cat’s. 

Lifting his toned, lithe arms off the branches of the chair, he said. “Can you please call up the frame when the bomb first went off? I’d like to watch from thereon.”

“Hasanan lak sayidi,” the operator said diligently beside him and quickly set to work. Alright, sir.

Just a few clicks and taps here and there on the control panel and the operator cued up the required timestamp on the screens and said. “There you go, sir,”

Ready and set to put into practice the next rule in the playbook—which undoubtedly is evaluation and judgment, Commander Ali tossed a bob of acknowledgment the operator’s way, mooring his attention on the monitor screens yet again. 

“The explosion, I think was just a decoy created by the robbers to draw away the attention of the police and agents from their main target—the stadium.” He thought out loud a few minutes into watching the screens, showing different angles of the scenes from when the blast had sent nearly everybody in the stadium into hysteria.

Unbothered in the slightest by the operator’s presence, Commander Ali continued his observation of the footage in a similar fashion. “And the smoke was just another trick of the robbers to get securities and stewards to initiate standard security protocol throughout the stadium, which of course, they used to their advantage.” He paused his assessment just as thick layers of smoke shrouded the stadium on the screens across him, making it plain hard to see anything at all.

“The smoke? How do you get that much smoke in a setting like this one?” he pondered out loud in deep contemplation.

Reduced into the background already, the operator, who had taught the question was directed at him looked startlingly across the room. His seemingly young face, a live tile of puzzles.

However, his befuddlement was cleared seconds later when the Director answered his own question. “To create a wall of smoke thick and dense as that, you’ll need an incendiary device, and that would be a lot of smoke bombs and grenades, maybe some flares too. Which clearly points at something pre-planned for weeks, months perhaps.” 

“And having thought of that, a new question arises; How do you get that many incendiaries into the stadium?” 

When yet another question dropped this time, the operator didn’t bother proffering an answer to it, taking it for what he thought it really was—a rhetorical question— content at staying calm as a lake at dawn in the background.

As he had done through the duration of his deep mentation, Commander Ali followed up on his own question again. “There are a thousand ways in which incendiaries could be smuggled into the stadium and plenty of days to choose for such an occasion. But today is definitely not one of those days. Given the heightened security around the stadium today, bringing something incriminating as that within the premises of the stadium will be a straight-up suicide mission. That leaves us with the safer and plausible option of the incendiaries being brought into the stadium before today, which in every word makes a whole lot of sense.”

“That’s it!” Commander Ali piped with a sudden snap of his fingers and reared up to his feet. 

Startled by the older man’s reflexive movement, the operator shuffled back a few feet. His countenance showed the faintest traces of the shock registered just now.

“I’m sorry, but you must understand I didn’t mean to startle you.” Commander Ali offered brusquely, throwing his palms open harmlessly.

However, this time, the Director waited for a docile nod from the young operator before he continued. “If you will permit my troubling you—” There was a short pause with which a glance at the name badge on the operator’s uniform revealed his name to the Director. “Amal, is it?” 

“No—I mean, yes sir.” The young man—Amal said with another curt nod of his egg-shaped head.

“Okay, Amal. I’m going to need you to pull all the logs of the activities carried out around the stadium before today. I will also be needing the logs of all the accessways and entrances into the stadium. I want to know what comes in and out of the stadium from a week ago.” Commander Ali said in a tight, authoritative tone. “Mind you, I’ll be needing all that pretty fast and soon.” He finished, redirecting his attention to the screens.

“Freeze the frame there on Cam #25!” Commander Ali interjected, pointing at the monitor screen on the top right corner of the wall of monitors.

Amal swung right into action mechanically, reaching over the control panel in one stretch of his long arms to pause the footage on that particular monitor. 

Unlike the pictures captured on the other cameras, the one on Cam #25 offers a much better angle of a group of stewards marching onto the pitch from the tunnel to remove the World Cup trophy from the pedestal it was placed on, and later retreating into the tunnel.

“Can you zoom in a little on that?” Commander Ali asked, riveted still.

With all but a click of a button on the control panel, Amal brought this to bear, zooming in on the still frame on the screen to the last possible fit.

Unable to get a clearer view of the men in green bibs and black baseball caps of stadium stewards in the smoky background of the screen, Commander Ali scrunched up his nose and stared at Amal in that pointed manner of his. 

“Well, well, I guess that’s about as far as useful that picture goes,” Commander Ali said with a ring of disappointment. Unyielding still, he continued. “Since they seem to be heading into the tunnel in that frame, why don’t we have a look at the cameras in the tunnel? I’m certain there should be one down in the tunnel that captures the faces of those men.”

In mute understanding, Amal saw to it that the Director’s wish was done within the blink of an eye.

Eyes flitting from one monitor screen to another, Commander Ali watched the feeds rendered on the cameras stationed in the tunnel show successive pictures of the same group of stewards progressing down the teeming tunnel into a corridor. 

The strange thing about the feeds, however, is, that none of the cameras were able to get a clear shot of any of the faces of the men. The five men, like the mechanism of a machine, moved in synchronicity and close-quarters down the tunnel, their features hidden from the cameras placed within every twenty paces of the tunnel. The closest any of the cameras came to capturing any of them was only their backs. 

For a minute there or two, Commander Ali stood breathless, and motionless, in a daze of disbelief, unable to grasp the realities of what he had just seen. The disappointment was clear as day on his face as he considered it all over again in his head. 

Each frame from the footage he had just watched seemed staged… As if every man from the group of stewards knew precisely where the CCTV cameras' blind spots were; what to do, and when exactly to do it. And that made him feel terribly uneasy. 

“Well, it seems they know exactly what they are doing. Don’t they?” he finally said once he recovered from his momentary shock. “But this changes nothing. In addition to your long list of tasks, I will need you to scrounge through the footage of every other camera within the premises of the stadium. There should be a place where one of those men slipped and was caught on tape.”

Again, there was a feeble nod of agreement from Amal.

“I don’t suppose you can do any other thing to fine-tune the image earlier from Cam #25; you know, to give us a clearer view of the shot, and maybe a chance to at least do something like scanning the faces of those men and running it against several databases for facial profiling. Or, can you?” 

“Not quite, sir,” Amal blurted out fast.

“I thought as much,” Commander Ali said, squeezing his face. “Well, it’s really nothing to worry about. I will find someone else who can help out.” He added with some conviction, turning away from the screen and the young operator.

“Anyways, I must commend you for your diligence and hard work. I hope you will keep that up.” He remarked cursorily as he put some distance between himself and the younger man.

“Shukran lak sayidi,” Amal said from behind him with a slight bow. Thank you, sir.

But the Director was done with him and wasn’t listening anymore.

I need to find Amman, he reminded himself the instant he stepped out of the control room. And fast!