The voice on the other end was soft, as tough the man were trying to whisper over the telephone. "There may not be such a man. This is very hard. Six days is nothing."
"If I cannot have him in that time, it will be useless. Much will be lost. I
must
have him. Call me in 24 hours at the alternate number. The priority is absolute."
"I understand," said the voice 6,000 miles away. The line went dead.
Fasil walked away from the telephone and out of the terminal at a lively pace. It was terribly dangerous to communicate directly with the Middle East, but the shortage of time demanded taking the chance. The request for a pilot was a very long shot. There were none in the fedayeen ranks. Flying a cargo helicopter with a heavy object suspended beneath it is a fine art. Pilots capable of doing it are not common. But the Libyans had come through for Black September before. Had not Colonel Khadafy helped with the strike at Khartoum? The very weapons used to slay the American diplomats were smuggled into the country in the Libyan diplomatic pouch. Thirty million dollars a year flows to Al Fatah from the Libyan treasury. How much could a pilot be worth? Fasil had every reason to hope. If only they could find one, and soon.
The six-day time limit Fasil had stressed was not strictly true, since two weeks remained before the Super Bowl. But modifications on the bomb would be necessary to fit it to a different aircraft, and he needed lead time and the pilot's skilled help.
Fasil had weighed the odds against finding a pilot, and the risk involved in asking for one, against the splendid result if one could be located. He found the risk worth taking.
What if his cable, innocent as it appeared to be, was examined by the U.S. authorities? What if the number code for the telephones was known to the Jew Kabakov? That was hardly likely, Fasil knew, but still he was uneasy. Certainly the authorities were looking for the plastic, but they could not know the nature of the mission. There was nothing to point to New Orleans.
He wondered if Lander was delirious. Nonsense. People didn't lie around delirious with fever anymore. But crazy people sometimes rave, fever or no. If he were on the point of blabbing, Dahlia would kill him.
__________
In Israel, at that moment, a sequence of events was underway that would have far greater bearing on Fasil's request than any influence of the late Hafez Najeer. At an airstrip near Jaffa, fourteen Israeli airmen were climbing into the cockpits of seven F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers. They taxied onto the runway, the heat distorting the air behind them like rippled glass. By twos they drove down the asphalt and leaped into the sky in a long, climbing turn that took them out over the Mediterranean and westward, toward Tobruk, Libya, at twice the speed of sound.
They were on a retaliatory raid. Still smoking at Rosh Pina was the rubble of an apartment house hit by Russian Katyusha rockets, supplied to the fedayeen by Libya. This time the reply would not be against the fedayeen bases in Lebanon and Syria. This time the supplier would suffer.
Thirty-nine minutes after takeoff, the flight leader spotted the Libyan freighter. She was exactly where the Mossad said she would be, 18 miles out of Tobruk and steaming eastward, heavily laden with armaments for the guerrillas. But they must be sure. Four Phantoms remained at altitude to provide cover from Arab aircraft. The other three went down. The lead plane, throttled back to 200 knots, passed the ship at an altitude of 60 feet. There was no mistake. Then the three of them were howling down upon her in a bomb run, and up again, pulling three and a half G's as they streaked back into the sky. There were no cries of victory in the cockpits as the ship ballooned in fire. On the way home, the Israelis watched the sky hopefully. They would feel better if the MIGs came.
Rage swept Libya's Revolutionary Command Council after the Israeli attack. Who on the Council knew of the Al Fatah strike in the United States will never be determined. But somewhere in the angry halls at Benghazi, a cog turned.
The Israelis had struck with airplanes given to them by the Americans.
The Israelis themselves had said it: "The suppliers will suffer."
So be it.
CHAPTER 20
"I told him he could go to bed, but he said his orders are to put the box in your hands," Colonel Weisman, the military attaché, told Kabakov, as they walked toward the conference room in the Israeli embassy.
The young captain was nodding in his chair as Kabakov opened the door. He snapped to his feet.
"Major Kabakov, I'm Captain Reik. The package from Beirut, sir."
Kabakov fought down the urge to grab the box and open it. Reik had come a long way. "I remember you, Captain. You had the howitzer battery at Qanaabe." They shook hands, the younger man obviously pleased.
Kabakov turned to the fiberboard carton on the table. It was about two feet square and a foot deep. and was tied with twine. Scrawled in Arabic across the lid was "Personal property of Abu Ali, 18 Rue Verdun, deceased. File 186047. Hold until February 23." There was a hole gouged through the corner of the box. A bullet hole.
"Intelligence went through it in Tel Aviv," Reik said. "There was dust in the knots. They think it hadn't been opened for some time."
Kabakov removed the lid and set the contents out on the table. An alarm clock with the crystal smashed. Two bottles of pills. A bankbook. A clip for a Llama automatic pistol---Kabakov felt sure the pistol had been stolen---a cufflink box without the cufflinks, a pair of bent spectacles, and a few periodicals. Doubtless any items of value had been taken by the police and what was left had been carefully sifted by Al Fatah. Kabakov was bitterly disappointed. He had hoped that for once the obsessive secrecy of Black September would work against the terrorist organization, that the person assigned to "sanitize" Abu Ali's effects would not know what was harmless and what was not, and thus might miss some useful clue. He looked up at Reik. "What did this cost?"
"Yoffee got a flesh wound across the thigh. He sent you a message, sir. He---" the captain stammered.
"Go on."
"He said you owe him a bottle of Remy Martin and---and not that goat piss you,passed around at Kuneitra, sir."
"I see." Kabakov grinned in spite of himself. At least the box of junk had not cost any lives.
"Yoffee went in," Reik said. "He had some funny credentials from a Saudi law firm. He had decided he would try to do it in one move, instead of bribing the clerk ahead of time---so they wouldn't have time to fool with the box and the clerk couldn't sell him a box of garbage. He gave the property clerk in the police station three Lebanese pounds and asked to see the box. The clerk brought it out, but set it behind the counter and said he would have to get clearance from the duty officer. That normally would have only meant another bribe, but Yoffee did not have great confidence in the credentials. He slugged the clerk and grabbed the box. He had a Mini-Cooper outside, and he was all right until two radio cars blocked the Mazraa in front of him at the Rue Unesco. Of course he went around them on the sidewalk, but they got a couple of rounds into the car. He had a five-block lead going down the Ramlet el Baida. Jacoby was flying the Huey, coming in to take him off. Yoffee climbed up through the sun roof of the car while it was still moving and we plucked him off. We came back at about a hundred feet in the dark. The chopper has the new terrain---following autopilot system and you just hang on."
"You were in the helicopter?"
"Yes sir. Yoffee owes me money."
Kabakov could imagine the heaving, dipping ride in the dark as the black helicopter snaked over the hills. "I'm surprised you had the range."
"We had to put down at Gesher Haziv."
"Did the Lebanese scramble any planes?"
"Yessir, finally. It took a little time for the word to get around. We were back in Israel in 24 minutes from the time the police saw the chopper."
Kabakov would not display his disappointment at the contents of the box, not after three men had risked their lives to get it. Tel Aviv must think him a fool.
"Thank you, Captain Reik, for a remarkable job. Tell Yoffee and Jacoby the same for me. Now go to bed. That's an order."
Kabakov and Weisman sat at the table with Abu Ali's effects between them. Weisman maintained a tactful silence. There were no personal papers of any kind, not even a copy of "Political and Armed Struggle," the omnipresent Fatah handbook. They had picked over Ali's belongings all right. Kabakov looked at the periodicals. Two copies of Al-Tali'ah, the Egyptian monthly. Here was something underlined in an interview. "...the rumor about the strength of the Israeli Intelligence Services is a myth. Israel is not particularly advanced in its Intelligence as such." Kabakov snorted. Abu Ali was mocking him from the grave.
Here were a few back issues of the Beirut newspaper Al-Hawadess.
Paris-Match.
A copy of
Sports Illustrated
dated January 21, 1974. Kabakov frowned at it.
He picked it up. It was the only publication in English in the box. The cover bore a dark stain, coffee probably. He flipped through it once, then again. It was mostly concerned with football. Arabs follow soccer, but the principal article was about---Kabakov's mind was racing. Fasil. Munich. Sports. The tape had said, "Begin another year with bloodshed."
Weisman looked up quickly at the sound of Kabakov's voice. "Colonel Weisman, what do you know about this 'Super Bowl'?"
__________
FBI Director John Baker took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "That's a hypothesis of considerable size, gentlemen."
Corley stirred in his chair.
Kabakov was tired of talking into Baker's blank face, tired of the caution with which Corley phrased remarks to his boss. "It's more than a hypothesis. Look at the facts---"
"I know, I know, Major. You've made it very clear. You think the target is the Super Bowl because this man---Fasil, is it?---organized the Black September attack at the Olympic Village; because the tape you captured at Beirut refers to a strike at the beginning of the year, and because the President plans to attend the game." He might have been naming the parts of speech.
"And because it would happen on live television with maximum shock value," Corley said.
"But this entire line of reasoning proceeds from the fact that this man, Ali, had a copy of
Sports Illustrated,
and you are not even positive that Ali was involved in the plot." Baker peered out the window at the gray Washington afternoon, as though he might find the answer in the street.
Baker had Corley's 302 file on his desk---the raw information on the case. Kabakov wondered why he had been called in, and then he realized that Baker, professionally paranoid, wanted to look at him. Wanted to expose the source to his own cop instincts. Kabakov could see a stubborn set in Baker's face.
He knows he will have to do something,
Kabakov thought.
But he needs for me to argue with him. He does not like to be told his business, but he wants to observe the telling. He's got to do something, now. Let him stew about it. It's his move.
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Baker," Kabakov said, rising.
"Just a moment, Major, if you don't mind. Since you have seen this kind of thing, how do you think they would go about it? Would they conceal the plastic in the stadium and then, when the crowd arrives, threaten to blow it up if certain demands are not met---freedom for Sirhan Sirhan, no more aid to Israel, that kind of thing?"
"They won't demand anything. They'll blow it up and then crow about it."
"Why do you think so?"
"What could you give them? Most of the terrorists arrested in skyjackings are already freed. Those at Munich were freed to save hostages in a subsequent skyjacking. Lelia Khaled was freed in the same way. The guerrillas who shot your own diplomats in Khartoum were turned back to their people by the Sudanese government. They're all free, Mr. Baker.
"Stop aid to Israel? Even if the promise were made, no guarantees are possible. The promise would never be made in the first place and would not be kept anyway, if it were made under duress. Besides, to use hostages you must contain them. In a stadium that could not be done. There would be panic and the crowd would rush the gates, trampling a few thousand on the way. No, they'll blow it up all right."
"How?"
"I don't know. With a half-ton of plastic they could collapse both sides of the stands, but to be sure of doing that they would have to put charges in several locations and detonate them simultaneously. That would not be easy. Fasil is no fool. There are too many radio transmissions at an event like that to use a remote electronic signal to set it off, and multiple locations increase the chance of discovery."
"We can make sure the stadium is clean," Corley said. "It will be a bitch to search, but we can do it."
"Secret Service will want to handle that themselves, I expect, but they'll ask for some manpower," Baker said.
"We can check all the personnel involved with the Super Bowl, check hot dog wagons, cold drink boxes, we can prohibit any packages being carried in," Corley continued. "We can use dogs and the electronic sniffer. There's still time to train the dogs on that piece of plastic from the ship."
"What about the sky?" Kabakov said.
"You're thinking of that pilot business with the chart, of course," the FBI director said. "I think we might shut down private aviation in New Orleans for the duration of the game. We'll check with the FAA. I'm calling in the concerned agencies this afternoon. We'll know more after that."
I doubt it,
Kabakov reflected.