Final Flight (14 page)

He wondered idly what his uncle would have said if
he could have spent a few hours here watching the ducks
upon the limpid blue water and feeling the soft
breeze as it eased the effect of the heat and rustled the
tree leaves.

Waterholes in the desert are always brown, and the
sheep and camels wade in and urinate and stir the
tepid mixture until it resembles thin mortar.
Then in a few days, three at most, the water is
gone, leaving only brown mud cracking and baking in
the sun. Then one must dig, dig, dig, and haul the
water from the well with skin bags. Could the old man
have even fathomed wealth like this?

His uncle had insisted he join the army.
Even though the old man had read only the Koran,
had seen only that one book in his entire life, he
sent Qazi to the city to join the army, the boy who
loved the desert and the eternal wind and the free, wild
life.

They had lain in the sand and stared into the blackness
toward the waterhole. He heard only the wind and the
whisper of sand moving across stone. But his uncle had
announced, “They are there, “and told him to go around the
wadi onto the escarpment, where the old man said he
would be able to look down into the waterhole when the light
returned. He could still remember leading the camel
through the darkness, stumbling over stones while the
animal strained against the leash, smelling the water,
grunting against the rag tied around her muzzle. After
an hour he saw the looming bulk of the escarpment on
his right, darker than the surrounding night. It had
taken hours to feel his way up leading the
reluctant animal. Once on top, he tied the
camel securely to a stone and waited for her to lie
down. He snuggled against her side, his face in his
hanos, exhausted, yet too excited to sleep.
The stars wheeled in the sky above him and the wind sighed
restlessly.

He had spent countless nights watching the
stars and listening to the wind. He had tried to count them
once, spent all night on just one segment of sky,
numbering faithfully as the stars wheeled above him, on
a night so black the stars were just beyond reach in the clear
desert air.

With his back against the earth there were only the stars and
he was one with them, alone and yet not alone, a part of the
undying universe. He had finally given up the
counting. There were too many stars, flung like grains of
sand against the eternal void.

Tonight he glanced at the heavens, but his thoughts were on
the darkness around him. He gripped the rifle and
rubbed the smooth metal, the blueing long worn off
and the scarred wood of the stock. He fingered the notch
of the rear sight and the bolt handle and the trigger. His
uncle had told him not to chamber a cartridge
until daylight, and he obeyed.

Yet the cartridges were in the magazine, all that
remained was the opening and closing of the bolt. He
caressed the rifle and knew its power, its tension, as
he waited impatiently for the stars to complete their
nightly orbit. The tension and the fear and the
anticipation . . . of what he knew not, gave
life a pungency that he had never known existed. At
this time in this desolate wilderness beneath the
eternal stars, here and now he was alive.

A thick figure emerged from the back of the
limousine in the Piazza le Brasile and set off
alone down the sidewalk toward the entrance to the mall
under the Villa Borghese, which also contained the parking
garage where Qazi had changed cars on his arrival
in Rome two days before. The man carried an
attache case.

Qazi checked his watch, then scanned the park in
every direction. The lovers on the blanket near the
lake had been there since he arrived and were sharing
wine. A woman was walking her dog. Most of the
office workers had finished their lunches and were leaving the
area. Fifty feet away a middle-aged woman
sat on a bench and watched two small children play in
the dirt with plastic automobiles.

Qazi watched the traffic in the piazza to see
if any more vehicles were going to stop to discharge
passengers. None did. After five minutes he
arose and began strolling slowly toward the upper
mall entrance, his hands in his pockets, checking
everyone in sight. He was perspiring, perhaps because he was
wearing three shirts in this heat. On the sidewalk
he stopped at a mobile ice cream stand and paid
fifteen hundred lire for a cone, which he
licked as he stood in the shade watching the
pedestrians and the traffic. The ice cream melted
faster than he could eat it. It dripped on his
fingers. When he finished the cone, he returned to the
stand and used one of their napkins to wipe his fingers and
mouth.

Waist-high circular concrete walls sat
amid the grass and trees on the other side of the
street. Beyond these walls, which looked like the ends of
huge concrete pipes set vertically into the earth,
he could see the track and stables where wealthy Roman
girls learned to ride. That area was known as the
Galoppatoio. Qazi knew the concrete walls
encircled shafts that opened on the underground mall and
admitted air and light. Several of the shafts had
stairs to the mall below. He noted that there was no one
standing near the shafts. Without benches to sit on, that
area of the park had only a few strollers.

Satisfied at last, he went down the stairs from
the sidewalk into the mall.

The man from the limousine was standing on the side of the
corridor directly across from an office of the
Bank of Rome. He wore an ill-fitting
suit and his tie was pulled away from his throat, his
shirt collar Open. When Qazi was near,
he could see why the suit did not fit.

The man’s shoulders and chest were massive, rising
from a too-small waist. He was about sixty, with a
tanned head that made his cropped gray hair almost
invisible.

“Buon giorno, General,” Qazi said.

“Aleksandr Isayevich, huh? A priest
today.” He was looking at Qazi’s clerical
collar, black short-sleeved shirt, and trousers.

“When in Rome

“Your man ran me all over the city.”

“He enjoys his job.”

“So what do you and that fanatic fool, El
Hakim, plan to do with this?”

the general asked, nodding toward the attache case
near his feet. His Russian accent was muted but
detectable.

“I thought I might read it.”

“You picked a nice place for this little meet. As
I recall there are at least eight nearby exits
from this rabbit hole.”

“Eight or nine.”

General Simonov removed a packet of
American cigarettes from his pocket and lit one.
He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out
through his nose.

“The Israelis want you very badly. They did
not enjoy reading about their underground weapons facility
in the press.

People were walking by. A young man with a backpack
walked through the double glass doors from the main
entryway and stood behind a gray matron using the
automatic teller. To the right, through the
floor-to-ceiling windows and across the airz shaft,
Qazi could see the entrance to the parking garage and, beyond
that, the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel that led to the
subway station and on to the Piazza di Spagna.

“And you?”

“I’ll admit, that was one of your better shows.
A triumph.”

“Thank you.”

“The CIA is also very unhappy about the
disappearance of one Samuel Jarvis, weapons
engineer. Should I tell them to see you for the
particulars?”

“Come come, General. You didn’t drive all
over Rome on this warm summer day to have an
idle chat.”

The general’s eyes were as gray as Moscow in
winter. “What are you up to, Qazi?
Why did you want the manual delivered in
Rome?”

Qazi had thought long and hard about the wisdom of
seeking the Soviets’ help. He had not discussed
it with El Hakim because if the ruler had approved,
the manual would have been delivered in the capital by a
Soviet diplomat. General Simonov was
nobody’s fool. He would have several working
hypotheses to explain the delivery in Rome, one of
which would be very close to the truth.

“I needed a short holiday on the expense
account, old boy,” Qazi replied lightly.

Simonov’s fingers flipped rhythmically at the
cigarette filter. He glanced at a man in a
dark business suit who had joined the line to use the
money-dispensing machine. “No doubt that’s why you just
spent three days in Naples, Qazi. Ah, and you
thought I wouldn’t know about that.

We have many, many friends in Italy. Old boy.”

No doubt, thought Qazi bitterly as he once
again scanned the area.

Naples has a communist city government. Every
garbageman and street sweeper is probably on
the GRU payroll. And that is where the Americans
anchor their aircraft carriers! “It must
be pleasant to have a post that takes you to the sunny
climate for a change.”

“What do you intend to do with a nuclear weapon?”
Qazi glanced at Simonov. “We do not have a
nuclear weapon, but if we did, its employment
would be strictly our business.”

“That is what El Hakim told our
ambassador this morning.” The general dropped the
cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his shoe.

“Moscow would be very unhappy if any such
device were used in a way that conflicted with Soviet
interests in the Mediterranean. He extracted
another cigarette from his shirt pocket and flicked
a lighter. The youth with the backpack was punching the
buttons of the automatic teller machine. He
wore jeans and running shoes and had unruly, short
black hair. “We’re concerned about El
Hakim’s activities. It would be a great
mistake to think otherwise. A very great mistake.”
The teller machine rejected the young man’s card.
He slapped the machine, then fed the card in again and
pushed buttons. “I think El Hakim is aware
of your position,” Qazi said, “but I’ll tell him
you voiced it, again. But I didn’t know the Kremlin
used you to deliver diplomatic notes
to third-world fanatics, General. I thought they had
better uses for you.”

The man in the suit behind the youth at the machine was
looking around impatiently. The machine had
rejected the youngster’s card for the third time.

“Your El Hakim has spent too many nights
dressed up in women’s clothing. Tell him I said
that.”

The backpack was now under the young man’s left
armpit. His head moved slightly. Qazi realized
he was looking at the reflections in the shiny metal
of the machine.

Qazi bent and lifted the attache case with his
left hand. The youth at the machine was spinning,
falling on one knee, reaching into the open backpack.
The Russian started.

Qazi lunged through the open door to his right,
knocking aside a woman coming in. He ran down
the ramp toward the entrance to the tunnel.

Over his shoulder he saw the youth coming through the
door, a weapon in his hands.

Qazi ran. The tunnel had a flat roof about
eight feet above a floor covered with a rubberized
mat. The mat improved his footing. The walls were
concave, giving the illusion of more space.
The lighting was indirect, from the ceiling.

Not too many people. Qazi scrambled through them and sent
a few sprawling. He ran past the turnoff to the
Galoppatoio exit, and before he reached the next
turn, he glanced again over his shoulder. The gunman
was still coming.

The low ceiling gave Qazi an illusion of great
speed. He shot past an exit to the Via Veneto
on his left and raced toward the moving sidewalk
ahead. He almost lost his balance when he hit it, but
he pushed off on a pedestrian who didn’t hear
him coming and kept his balance. The moving sidewalk
also had a rubberized coating. It descended ahead of
him, seemingly endless. He felt as if he were
literally flying. After fifty yards he glanced
back. The gunman was gaining.

He was running faster than he ever had in his
life. The end of the sidewalk was coming up. He
leaped for the platform and lost his balance and careened
onto the down escalator, into a group of men and
women, bowling them over. He was up before they could
react and taking the moving stairs downward four at
a time.

At the bottom the tunnel ended in a
cross-corridor. He turned left,
toward the entrance to the Metropolitana, the
subway, and buttonhooked against the wall.

He scanned the corridor. Just pedestrians,
walking normally. When the gunman rounded the corner,
Qazi shot him three times with the Walther before he
hit the floor. The falling man lost his weapon,
an Uzi, which bounced off the concrete wall. Someone
screamed. A young man reached half-heartedly for
Qazi and he threw a shot over his shoulder.

Then he ran, away from the subway entrance, down
the corridor toward the Piazza di Spagna. As
he ran he ripped off the clerical collar and the
black shirt. He literally tore the shirt from his
left arm.

When he reached the tunnel exit, he slowed to a
walk. He could hear several sirens growing louder,
a penetrating two-tone wail. The piazza was
full of people strolling and sitting and pointing cameras in
all directions. Qazi walked purposefully but
unhuriedly the hundred feet to the Spanish Steps
and began to climb it toward the obelisk at the top.

The stairs were lined with flowers. He paused and
watched a police car with blue light flashing
proceed through the scrambling people at the foot of the white
marble staircase.

He transferred the attache case to his right
hand, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a
handkerchief, then continued climbing the stairs. Two
carabinieri in khaki uniforms, wearing berets and
carrying submachine guns on straps over their
shoulders, ran down the stairs past him.

Qazi stood on the sidewalk in front of the
entrance to the zoo. A dirty brown sedan, much
battered, stopped at the curb. Noora was at the
wheel. Ali was beside her in the front seat and another
man, about twenty-five, sat in the rear. He
opened the door for Qazi.