Carrion Comfort (79 page)

“End of hypothetical discussion,” said Saul and Natalie guessed from his tone of voice that he had known everything Cohen had told him.

“This is where we get off,” said Cohen and headed up an exit ramp. The sign had said San Juan Capistrano. They stopped at an all-night gas station and Cohen paid with his credit card. Natalie got out and stretched her legs, still fighting sleep. The air was cool now and she thought she could smell the sea. Cohen was getting a cup of coffee from a machine as she walked up to the station.

“You’re awake,” he said. “Welcome back.”

“I was awake in the car . . . most of the time,” said Natalie.

Cohen sipped his coffee and made a face. “A bizarre conversation. Have you discussed Saul’s plans?”

“Yes, we worked on them together.”

“And you know the kinds of things that are in the back of the van?”

“If they’re what were on our list, yes,” said Natalie.

Cohen began walking toward the vehicle with her. “Well, I hope you both know what you’re doing.”

“We don’t,” said Natalie and smiled at him, “but we
do
appreciate your help, Jack.”

“Uh-huh,” he said and opened the door for her, “as long as my help doesn’t end up letting you kill yourselves faster.”

They drove eight miles up Highway 74, away from the sea, and turned north through scrub forest before stopping at the farm house. The building was dark, set a quarter of a mile down a narrow lane.

“It used to be used by our West Coast people as a safe house,’ said Cohen. “No one’s had a reason to use it for the last year or so, but somebody keeps it up, mows the yard. Locals think it’s a summer house owned by a couple of Anaheim Hills young professional types.”

There were two floors, with too many cheap beds in the upstairs bedrooms. A dozen people could sleep in the three bedrooms. Downstairs, in an addition on the back of the old frame building, a one-way mirror looked into a small room with couches and a low coffee table. “This was put on for one long summer of interrogation of a member of Black September who thought he had turned himself over to the CIA. We helped keep him away from the big, bad Mossad until he’d told us everything he had. I thought this room fit your specifications rather nicely.”

“Perfectly,” said Saul. “It saves us weeks of preparation.”

“I wish I was going to be here for the fun,” said Cohen. “If it’s fun,” said Saul, stifling a huge yawn, “we’ll sit down and tell you all about it someday.”

“That’s a deal,” said Jack Cohen. “What do you say we each choose a room and get some sleep? I have an eleven-thirty
A.M.
flight out of L.A. tomorrow.”

Shortly after eight
A.M.
, Natalie awoke to the sound of an explosion. She looked around, not registering where she was for a few seconds, and then found her jeans and pulled them on. She called Saul’s name, but there was no answer from the room next door. Jack Cohen was not in his room.

Natalie went downstairs and out the front door, marveling at the blue sky and warm air. Some sort of low crop stretched away toward the road they had come in on. She went around behind the house and found Saul and Cohen crouching over an old door that had been propped sideways against a fence. A ten-inch hole had been blown in the center panel of the door.

“
Plastique
seminar,” Cohen said to her as she came up. He turned to Saul. “That was less than half an ounce. You can guess what your forty pounds would do.” He got up and brushed his pant legs off. “Breakfast.”

The refrigerator had been empty and turned off, but Cohen carried in a large cooler from the van and for twenty minutes all three were busy digging out pans and coffeepots, taking turns at the stove, and generally getting in each other’s way. When order returned, the kitchen smelled of coffee and eggs and the three of them sat at the table by the large bay window in the dining room. In the middle of the idle breakfast conversation, Natalie felt a deep and sudden twinge of sadness and realized that the room had reminded her of Rob’s house. Charleston seemed ten thousand miles and twice as many years away from her at that minute.

After breakfast they emptied the van. It took all three of them to carry in the large crate with the electroencephalograph in it. The electronic equipment also went into the room on the observer’s side of the one-way mirror. They set the boxes of C-4 and the larger crate of detonators in the basement.

When they were finished, Cohen set two small boxes on the dining room table. “This is a gift from me,” he said. Inside were two semiautomatic pistols. The markings on blue steel read: COLT MK IV SERIES GOVERNMENT MODEL 380 AUTO. “I would have preferred giving you the forty-five-caliber version I carry,” said the Israeli. “Something with real stopping power. But each of these is almost a pound lighter than a forty-five Government Model, the barrel’s almost two inches shorter, it holds seven rounds rather than six, it’s got lower recoil for beginners, and it should be easier to conceal. And, used close in, it should still get the job done.” He laid three boxes of shells on the table. “The hardware can’t be traced,” he said. “It was part of an intercepted I.R.A. shipment that got lost in the shuffle somehow.” He lifted a larger box onto the table and removed a long, heavy weapon that looked like a toymaker’s caricature of a gun. The grip was dwarfed by the long, metal rectangular prism of the barrel. It might have been some sort of prototype of a submachine gun except for the tiny muzzle opening and lack of an ammunition clip. “I almost had to call Martin Perkins before I could find one of these with a range over ten feet,” said Cohen. “Most of the game people use specially made rifles.” He broke the weapon and lifted a dart from the box, inserted it in the single-shot breech. “CO
₂
cartridge is good for about twenty shots,” said Cohen. “Want to see it in operation?”

Natalie stepped off the front porch, looked at the van, and started laughing. The lettering was yellow on blue.

JACK & NAT’S POOLS

INSTALLATION AND REPAIR

HOT TUBS AND SPAS OUR SPECIALTY

“Did it come this way or did you have it decorated?” Natalie asked Cohen.

“I did.”

“Won’t it be a bit conspicuous?”

“Perhaps, but I hope it will serve the opposite purpose.”

“How so?”

“You’re going into a definite high-rent neighborhood,” said Cohen. “It has one of the most security-conscious local police forces in the country. Plus the community is paranoid. If you’re parked somewhere for half an hour, people will notice. This might help.”

Natalie chuckled and followed them around to the barn. A small pig trotted toward them in the pen. “I thought the farm wasn’t used anymore,” said Natalie.

“It’s not,” said Cohen. “I picked this fellow up yesterday morning. It was Saul’s idea.”

Natalie looked at Saul. “He weighs about a hundred forty pounds,” said Saul. “You remember the problems Itzak discussed at the Tel Aviv Zoo.”

“Oh,” said Natalie.

Cohen lifted the air pistol. “It’s awkward, but you aim it about the same as any pistol. Just pretend the barrel is your forefinger, aim, and shoot.” Cohen lifted the bulky pistol and there was a loud
pffft
. The small dart with its blue-feathered tail appeared in the center of the barn door fifteen feet away. Cohen broke the pistol and opened the box of darts. “The blue row on top here are the empty ones. Mix up your own solution. The red row are the fifty cc syringes, the green row are forty cc, the yellow thirty cc, and the orange twenty cc. Saul has the extra vials if you want to mix your own.” He lifted a red dart and inserted it in the breech. “Natalie, you want to try?”

“Sure.” She closed the air gun and aimed it at the barn door. “Uh-uh,” said Saul. “Let’s try it on our friend here.”

Natalie turned and looked dubiously at the pig. Its snout flared at her as he snuffled the air.

“The compound is based on curare,” said Cohen. “Very expensive and nowhere near as safe as the wildlife specials suggest. You have to have the right amount for body weight. It doesn’t really knock them all the way out . . . it’s not a tranquilizer, really . . . it’s more like a specific nerve toxin that paralyzes the nervous system. Too little and the target feels a sort of novocaine numbness but can hop away. Too much and it inhibits breathing and heart rate as well as the voluntary functions.”

“Is this the right amount?” asked Natalie, looking at the dart gun. “One way to find out,” said Cohen. “Porker here is the weight Saul specified and the fifty cc dart was recommended for animals that size. Give it a try.”

Natalie walked around the pen to get a clear shot. The pig poked its head through the slats as if expecting a treat from Saul and Jack Cohen. “Any special spot?” asked Natalie.

“Try to avoid the face and eyes,” said Cohen. “The neck can give problems. Anywhere on the torso is fine.”

Natalie lifted the air pistol and shot the pig in the rump from twelve feet away. The pig jumped, squealed once, and gave Natalie a reproachful look. Eight seconds later its hind legs gave way, it made a half circle with its front legs, and it fell over, sides heaving.

All three got in the pen with it. Saul laid his palm on the pig’s side. “Its heart is going crazy. This amount may be a bit too concentrated.”

“You wanted it fast acting,” said Cohen. “This is as fast as it gets without killing the animal you’re capturing.”

Saul looked into the pig’s open eyes. “Can it see us?”

“Yes,” said Cohen. “The animal may fade in and out, but most of the time the senses are working. He can’t move or make noise, but old Pork-er’s taking down your names for future reference.”

Natalie patted the paralyzed pig’s flank. “His name isn’t Porker,” she said.

“Oh?” Cohen looked at her with a smile. “What is it?”

“Harod,” said Natalie. “Anthony Harod.”

J
ack Cohen thought about Saul and Natalie during his entire flight east. He worried about them, unsure of what they were planning or of their ability to carry it out. In his thirty years of experience in intelligence, he knew it was invariably the amateurs who ended upon the casualty list at the end of an operation. He reminded himself that this was not an operation.
What was it
? he wondered.

Saul had been concerned— overly concerned, Cohen thought— about the agent’s efforts to elicit information about Barent and the others. Had Cohen taken every precaution not to be discovered during his computer searches? Had he been cautious enough during his trips to Charleston and Los Angeles? Cohen finally had to remind the psychiatrist that he had been carrying out this kind of work since the 1940s.

As the plane approached Washington, Cohen realized that he was feeling the rising anxiety and vague guilt that he associated with running an operation where civilians were being used. He reminded himself for the fiftieth time that he was not using them.
Are they using me?

Cohen was certain that a rogue element in Colben’s wing of the FBI counterintelligence team had killed Saul Laski’s nephew and Levi Cole. The murder of Aaron Eshkol’s entire family, however, was incredible and inexplicable. Cohen knew that the CIA might blunder into a situation like that through losing control of its contract people—Cohen himself had watched an operation in Jordan go sour at the expense of the lives of three civilians— but he had never heard of the FBI acting so blatantly. Once pointed out by Laski, however, the ties between Charles Colben and the billionaire, Barent, quickly had become visible. Cohen was committed to tracking down the last bit of evidence relating to the murder of Levi Cole. Levi had been Cohen’s protégé, a brilliant young operative, temporarily placed in communications and ciphers to get the necessary experience but destined for big things. Levi had possessed the necessary qualities of that rarest of species— a successful field agent. Levi was instinctively cautious but responded to the lure of the pure game, the intricate and often boring matching of wits between adversaries who would never meet and probably never know the other’s true name or position.

Cohen looked down and saw afternoon sunlight on new buds and blossoms. He had his own theory as to why the FBI might have gone mean so quickly. Cohen thought it was possible that Aaron and Levi’s unintentional fumblings had tipped Colben to Operation Jonah, a seven-year infiltration of American counterintelligence agencies. In the arrogance of the months following the Six Day War, a plan was proposed in Tel Aviv to tap into the main channels of U.S. intelligence by placing moles and paid in for mants in key positions. Infiltration of the CIA and other agencies was not necessary; the Mossad had analyzed where to tap into the FBI and other domestic agencies sources of information on the competing groups. Besides giving access to sources of electronic intelligence far beyond the Mossad’s capability, the argument had gone, placing key sources in the FBI would offer avenues of domestic American information— specifically dossiers on key po liti cal figures that the Bureau had been collecting in its own interest since the early days of J. Edgar Hoover— that would provide incalculable leverage when American congressional or executive support was needed in future crises.

The operation had been considered too risky— as insane as Gordon Liddy’s Gemstone plan— until the terrifying surprise of the Yom Kippur War had shown the old men in Tel Aviv that nothing less than the survival of Israel depended upon access to such improved and extensive intelligence as only the Americans could provide. Operation Jonah was begun the same month Jack Cohen had become Head of Station in Washington in 1974. Now Jonah had become the whale that had swallowed the Mossad. A disproportionate amount of time and money had been put into the project— first to expand it, then to cover it up. Politicians in Tel Aviv lived in constant fear that the Americans would discover Jonah at a crucial moment when U.S. support was critical. Much of the information that flowed from Washington could not be used because it might expose the existence of the penetration itself. Cohen thought that the Mossad had begun acting like the classic adulterer— dreading the day his affair would be exposed but feeling so guilty and tired of feeling guilty that he half welcomed the exposure.

Cohen considered his options. He could continue his liaison with Saul and Natalie, keeping a formal distance between the Mossad and their puzzling amateur endeavors, and see what resulted. Or he could intervene now. Have at least the West Coast station take a more active role. He had not told Saul that the safe house was bugged. Cohen could have three people take the Los Angeles communications van out to the woods a mile from the safe house and set up a real-time link over secure lines. It would mean active involvement by at least half a dozen Mossad personnel, but Cohen saw no alternative.

Saul Laski had talked about no longer waiting for the cavalry to come chasing over the hill, but in this case, thought Cohen, the cavalry was coming whether the wagon train wanted it or not. Cohen could see no connection between Operation Jonah and the Barent-Colben contacts, nor between Laski’s absent and possibly mythical Nazi and the rest of the insanity occurring in Washington and Philadelphia, but
something
was going on.

Cohen would find out what it was and if the director objected, so be it. Cohen had brought a single, small bag but had not carried it on because it held his .45 automatic. Airline security was, Cohen decided as he waited at Dulles baggage claim carousel, a pain in the ass.

He felt good about his decision as he carried his bag out to the long-term lot where he had left his old blue Chevrolet. He would call John or Ephraim in Los Angeles that afternoon, alert them to the use of the safe house, and have them begin surveillance. If nothing else, Saul and Natalie would have a backup team in what ever they were doing.

Cohen squeezed between his car and the one next to him, unlocked the door, and tossed his bag onto the passenger’s seat. He looked back in irritation as someone stepped into the narrow space with him. They would have to wait until he backed out. . . .

It took Jack Cohen a second before old instincts took over, another second before he made out the man’s face in the dim light. It was Levi Cole.

Cohen’s hand still went into his sports coat before he remembered the.45 was packed away under his socks and shorts. He brought his hands out in a defensive position, but the fact that it was Levi Cole confused him. “Levi?”

“Jack!” It was a cry for help. The young agent looked thin and pale, as if he had spent weeks in a locked room. His eyes seemed shocked, almost blank. He raised empty hands as if to hug Cohen.

Cohen stepped out of his defensive stance but stopped the young man with palm on his chest. “What is going on, Levi?” he asked in Hebrew. “Where have you been?”

Levi Cole was left-handed. Cohen had forgotten. The spring-loaded scabbard slipped the short-bladed knife into Levi’s palm without a sound. Levi’s arm and hand came up so quickly that the movement was almost spasmodic, followed two seconds later by Cohen’s own involuntary spasm as the blade passed up under his rib and into his heart.

Levi eased the body into the front seat and looked around. A limousine pulled up to idle behind the Chevrolet, blocking the view from the rear. Levi removed Cohen’s wallet, took the money and credit cards, searched the dead man’s sports coat pockets and the suitcase, tossing clothing into the backseat. He came away with the .45, Cohen’s airline tickets, money, credit cards, and an envelope of receipts. Levi rolled the body to the floor, locked the Chevrolet’s door, and walked to the waiting limousine.

They left the parking garage and drove toward Arlington on the expressway.

“Not much here,” Richard Haines said into the radio telephone. “Two receipts for gas at the San Juan Capistrano Shell station. Hotel receipts, Long Beach. Mean anything?”

“Put your people on it,” came Barent’s voice. “Start with the hotel and gas station. Is it time for the swallows to return to Capistrano?”

“I think we missed that,” Haines said on the secured line. He glanced at Levi Cole sitting next to him, staring straight ahead. “What do we do with your friend here?”

“I am finished with him,” said Barent. “For today or for good?”

“Completely finished, I believe.”

“Okay,” said Haines. “We’ll take care of it.”

“Richard?”

“Yes?”

“Do begin your inquiries at once, please. What ever attracted the curious Mr. Cohen’s interest out there has certainly captured mine. I expect a report by Friday at the latest.”

“You’ll have it,” said Richard Haines. He placed the phone in its cradle and watched the Virginia countryside pass by. A large jet flashed overhead, gaining altitude, and Haines wondered if it was Mr. Barent’s aircraft on its way somewhere. Through the heavily tinted glass, the clear sky appeared to be the color of brandy, shedding a sick copper light that made one think that a terrible storm was brewing.