The Great Heist

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Amman smiled for the first time in the last one and a half hours or so. And knew in some bigger part of him that this was because he had met the Director’s absence in the control room the moment he had walked in and for no other reasons.

Although he had initially returned to the control room to fill him in on the progress of most of the activities he had recently put in motion, he had felt instead instant relief for not meeting him here.

This means a respite from the boring monotonous routines of the last hour!

Wiping the last traces of the smile from his face and ignoring the operator seated dead ahead before the bank of monitor screens, he edged toward the eastern part of the room; where the data analyst sent from HQ, sat ensconced in a chair across a computer screen.

“How’s it coming?” he asked as soon as he was only some inches away from him.

Startled by the sound of the voice, Alsam wheeled around abruptly in his seat to meet the face of his CSO—Chief Security Officer—whom he hadn’t noticed walking into the room.

“Oh, thank God it’s you, sir,” he breathed in relief, placing his right palm over his chest.

“Are you expecting someone else?” Amman asked, confused by the analyst’s queerish reactions.

“Not actually, sir,” Alsam said, “it’s just that the Director stepped out of here just now, and I didn’t hear you walk in.”

Amman brushed this off with a shrug, walking closer to him and leaning in to steal a peek at the screen. “Do you have anything yet?”

Sensing the crisp hardball edge in the CSO’s voice, Alsam quickly composed himself and offered. “Yes, I finally got past the smoke issue of a thing,”

There was a brief instant in which he did nothing other than type in some commands into the computer before he finally added, “But we have a new problem entirely,”

Amman’s jaw dropped the instant he saw what he meant by having ‘a new problem entirely’ on the computer screen across him. From just watching the image on the screen, he felt the little surge of hope he had felt earlier take a complete nosedive.

As he stood there, staring perplexedly at the masked features of the men on the screen; a thought filtered into his mind on the spot:

Well, it appears we are indeed up against a formidable adversary if not even a superior one. And there seemed to be no end to the surprises up their sleeves.

“Those bastards!” was all he could manage to mutter after a long time of protracted silence. “So, what do we do now?” he demanded, after fully recovering from the shock delivered by the unpleasant discovery.

“The Director has asked me to run their faces through FRS,” Alsam explained while typing away on the workstation.

Amman, on the other hand, was taken aback by this and asked, “But, the face masks on their faces, won’t that be a hindrance?”

“They sure as hell are hindrances since no face recognition algorithms can workaround masks. Even pre-treatment with Face Hallucination to remove the masks is a long shot.” Alsam revealed. “But, the Director insisted that I should carry through with the operation and give him something to work with, even though he knew the chances of having an accurate match is lesser than thirty percent.”

Amman drew in a startled breath just then and nodded sagely in acute understanding.

Desperate times, indeed they say needed desperate measures, he reasoned, seeing why the Director, who has always loved and cherished facts, accuracy, and efficiency over any other thing had resorted to this in the first place.

“Well, if that’s the case, I should leave you to it then,” he later said to the analyst, striding away from him to a part of the room where he leaned against the wall.

Relaxing against the wall now and taking his mind off everything else at the moment, Amman thought of what best to do with the time on his hands.

Now that I have the time, how do I put it to good use? he wondered to himself, conjuring in his mind the ideas on how best to spend his little downtime.

Perhaps, I could light a smoke to clear my head? he considered within the corridor of his mind, discarding the thought as soon as it popped up in his head right there on the spot. No, I can’t possibly light a smoke here.

Maybe I should just grab a chair, sit my ass down and rest some. Or, better still, grab a cup of mocha latte to keep my mind and body stimulated.

He scratched off these thoughts and several others that came right after, as they held no appeal whatsoever to him at the moment.

Why not use it to know the media and peoples’ reactions to the disappearance of the World Cup on the internet? He thought after some time spent brooding over the subject.

Bringing his right foot up against the wall in a way that his knee was jutting out in front of him, Amman retrieved his cell phone from his cargo pants; swiped a finger across its screen to unlock it, and launched the browser on his phone.

In no time, Amman was surfing the internet; reading through blog posts, tabloids, and news content from across the world.

At some point in his reading. He turned up at a blog post whose heading drew his attention and made his eyes bulge a little in shock within their sockets.

Needing to be sure he was seeing correctly, he went over the heading once more, taking his time to pore over every word in it:

‘World Cup Trophy missing in Qatar: A mere coincidence or Kremlin’s way of getting back at the world after unfair treatment and heavy sanctions? Russia's possible involvement in the disappearance of the World Cup Trophy —Our theory.’

Fucking unbelievable, he thought with a rueful shake of his head, making no attempt to click on the post as he continued scrolling down the page.

Inconceivable even to think Russia would be the subject of their conspiracy bollocks and click-baiting campaign!

Little less than a minute later, he came across a headline from a news Web site, with a different heading and angle to the former:

‘FIFA should take responsibility for the World Cup fiasco in Qatar’.

This should be interesting, he thought with a wry smile, deciding to click on the Web page with the news article this time.

Amman learned otherwise the instant a new tab came up on the screen, and his gaze settled on the first paragraph in bold print on the news article:

‘World Cup Stolen on the final day of the World Cup tournament in Qatar: FIFA should claim responsibility for this for awarding Qatar the hosting right to the 2022 FIFA World Cup tournament in the first place’.

However, unpleasant and dispiriting reading this may seem to any Qatari Nationals, it came as no surprise to Amman. He had always known conspiracy theorists and the media to always use avenues like this one as an opportunity to drive more traffic to their sites and force their cock-and-bull story down peoples’ throats.

Another crap from loads of bullshit present on the internet these days, he mused.

Without bothering in the slightest to scroll down the Web page, he minimized the browser window and quickly switched over to the Twitter app on his phone. A minute after launching the Twitter app and navigating to the trending tab, he came across a thread:

‘QATAR 2022 FIFA World Cup: Trophy went Missing’.

Led by his own curiosity, he accessed the thread with a click, scrolling down the feeds of several tweets from Twitter users across the world; joining to condemn the acts and pledging their support to the State of Qatar and her Intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Now, this is what we all need, he beamed inwardly as he skimmed through the tweets.

“What is the buzz on the internet?” Commander Ali asked as he stepped into the control room, marching headlong toward Amman’s position.

Taken aback by the Director’s gruff voice and sudden reappearance in the room, Amman quickly looked up from his phone. His gaze came to a rest on the large bulk of the Director looming over him.

“Nothing really much, sir,” he declared. “Just conspiracy theorists and the media being annoying as always.”

“What are they saying?” Commander Ali demanded, his gaze keen on him.

“Something about Russian involvement with the disappearance of the World Cup Trophy. And corruption within FIFA leading to the decision to hand Qatar the hosting right of the prestigious tournament.” He revealed, pocketing his cell phone.

Still unfazed, Commander Ali queried further with a straight face. “Let’s put that aside. What are people saying on social media?”

“For now, people are condemning those responsible and showing us their support on Twitter, sir.”

“The local media; are they still contained as we speak?”

“They’re very much contained, sir,” Amman said, “none of them has yet gone public with anything.”

“Good then,” Commander Ali gave a satisfactory nod to that and added, “well, what have you gathered so far from the stewards?”

“Nothing noteworthy,” Amman replied. “None of them have seen or noticed any new faces among them. I even had an agent pull the records of all accredited stewards. The figures, credentials, and even profiles; everything checks out fine and not a single person is missing.”

“And how’s that even possible?” Commander Ali asked, his expression clouding over in confusion.

However, Amman couldn’t blame the Director for this. He had felt the same way when he had come to the same understanding just a few minutes ago.

“I believe you showed them the picture from the footage,” Commander Ali said, still far from recovering from the daze.

“Every one of them, sir,”

Commander Ali wrenched a long, deep sigh from his chest just then, dropping his arms to his sides in complete frustration.

“If none of the stewards claimed to know those men in steward’s colors from the picture, then, how the hell did they infiltrate the stadium in the first place?” Commander Ali said, airing out the same question that’s been rolling around in Amman’s head for the past twelve minutes.

Stumped as much as the Director on the subject, and with no apparent way out to proffer, Amman stared right back at him blankly.

The odd staring engagement accompanied by a bout of deepened silence between both men lasted for fifty seconds or thereabouts. Until it was finally canceled out by the sound of a voice from nearby.

“Bingo!” Alsam holloaed out in joy from his place before the workstation. “The FRS found a match.” He announced, turning around to meet the faces of both men.

Just like kids at the sight of an ice cream van, both men raced toward the analyst, unminding the presence of the young operator, who was at the other end of the room. Amman damning protocol this once led the way, while the Director followed at his heels.

Even with just the short distance covered, Amman arrived beside the analyst in ragged breaths, hunched over, and peered straight at the computer screen.

“Facial Recognition has an eighteen to twenty-seven percent match on the faces of the five men,” Alsam declared to his superiors, who have crowded in close on either side of him.

At his declaration, Amman looked away from the screen and stared at the Director in a pointed way that subtly goaded him to decide whether to go through with his earlier plans or make a detour.

Oblivious to the little dumb show going on around him, Alsam further said, “The angles, shapes, and contours on their features place them to be seventy percent Europeans, twenty-five percent Africans, and three-percent South Americans.”

Reaching a decision in his mind now, Commander Ali firmly stated to the analyst. “I want you to share these composite images with both local and International law enforcement agencies in Qatar: The police, Al Fazaa, Interpol… Any agency at all concerned with law enforcement.” He continued more emphatically in the same breath. “Make sure you also share them with the Airport authorities, the Metro police, and every unit of the Qatar traffic police.”

“Right on it, sir,” Alsam said, diving right into work.

To Amman, the Director turned and instructed, “Have the police draw up their faces on wanted posters, and paste them on the walls of every street throughout Lusail.”

“Very well, sir,” Amman said, standing at attention.

“I will also need you to assemble a team of sixty to seventy agents. Have them conduct a search in every hotel, motel, bed and breakfast, and any guesthouses across the nineteen districts of Lusail and other neighboring cities. They are to inspect each room and suite and use force if necessary, to go through their logs of check-ins and check-outs, in any case, the thieves were stupid enough to lodge in any of these places in the past weeks or months.”

“Alright sir,” Amman nodded assent and turned away to take his leave.

“No, wait up, Amman!” Commander Ali called after him.

Amman slowed to a stop after barely taking two steps. His gaze narrowed at the Director in earnest.

“I think you should also consider corresponding with the Lusail Real Estate Development Company—LREDC—and the Urban and Housing Development agency to get a list of the estates and villas acquired across every district of Lusail within the last three months.” Commander Ali opined, biting on his fingernails in deep contemplation. “I think that’s another angle we may need to work to get closer to nailing the robbers.”

“It’s the weekend, sir. Both ministries don’t work on weekends. But, anyways I’ll see to it that I correspond with them first thing tomorrow morning, sir,” Amman assured.

“Remember, we can’t afford to let them slip through our grasp now that we have the likeness of what they really are in person.” Commander Ali stressed.

“I get that, sir,” Amman said, excusing himself from the room right after a slight reverential dip of his head at the Director.