Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"Fellow
freedom fighters," he continued, "this is not yet the time for me to
tell you the precise details of our mission.
For reasons of security you will all understand, that information must
be withheld until shortly before the day of action.
Meanwhile, though you are all experienced and
battle-hardened veterans, you will be trained to a peak of even greater combat
effectiveness.
As you do this, you may
care to reflect not only on the glory that will be attained from this mission
but on the one hundred thousand American dollars you will each receive upon its
successful completion."
This time the
applause was considerably more enthusiastic.
There were further bursts of Kalashnikov fire.
Kadar reflected that experienced and trained
by the liberation camps though his men might be, too many of them had become
lax and overemotional in their reactions.
The raw material was there, but it needed to be subjected to ruthless
discipline if his plan was to succeed.
His orders must be followed unhesitatingly; obedience must be
absolute.
The only way to achieve this
within the limited time available was to instill a terrible fear of the alternatives.
He had dangled the carrot in front of them;
now was the time for the stick.
He had
stage-managed the demonstration for maximum impact.
He held up his
hand for silence, and the cheering ceased.
He spoke again.
"Brothers
and sisters, we are faced with implacable enemies.
Our war is unceasing.
Constantly they try to destroy us.
They send their warplanes against us; they
raid us from the sea; they fill the airwaves with their foul propaganda; they
manipulate the media to distort the truth of our cause; they send spies and
sowers of discord among us."
There was a
ripple of reaction from the ranks of fighters:
fists were shaken; weapons were raised in the air.
"Silence!"
he shouted.
A hush fell over the
terrorists.
The group was still.
They were used to savage and sometimes
arbitrary discipline but also to the informality and frequently free and easy
life of guerrilla units that, whatever they boasted to their womenfolk, spent
little of their time in actual combat.
They sensed that this mission would be different.
Kadar raised
his right hand.
Instantly the floodlights
illuminating the parade ground were extinguished.
The group was gripped by fear and an awful
curiosity.
Something terrible was about
to happen.
It would concern the figure
spread-eagled on the metal frame, but what it might be nobody knew.
They waited.
Kadar's voice
came out of the darkness, hard, ruthless, and resonant with authority.
"You are about to witness the execution
of a Zionist spy who foolishly attempted to infiltrate our ranks.
Watch and remember!"
His voice rose to a shout and echoed around
the parade ground.
A single
spotlight came on and illuminated the figure stretched out on the frame.
He was naked and gagged; his eyes bulged with
fear.
A tall man in the white coat of a
doctor came out of the darkness.
He had
a syringe in his hand.
He held it up in
front of him and pushed the plunger slightly to clear the needle of air; a thin
spray of liquid could be clearly seen by the onlookers.
Carefully he injected the contents of the
syringe, then stood back and consulted his watch.
Several
minutes passed.
He stepped forward and
examined the naked man with a stethoscope, followed by a close inspection of
his eyes with the aid of an opthalmoscope.
He left the stethoscope hanging around his neck and replaced the
opthalmoscope in the pocket of his white coat.
He nodded to Kadar.
Kadar's voice
rang out in the darkness:
"Proceed."
The man
reached into the pocket of his white coat and held an object in front of
him.
There
was
a
perceptible click, and the harsh
light of the single spotlight glinted off the white steel of the blade.
He held the knife in front of the prisoner's
eyes and moved it to and for; the panic-stricken eyes followed it as if
hypnotized.
The assembled terrorists
waited.
Kadar's calm
voice could have been describing a surgical operation.
"You may care to know the significance
of the substance injected into the bloodstream of the prisoner.
It is a highly specialized drug obtained from
our friends in the KGB.
It is called
Vitazain.
It has the effect of
heightening the sensitivity of the body's nervous system.
In one situation the gentlest caress results
in intense pleasure.
In a situation of
pain the effect is at least as extreme.
It magnifies pain to a depth of horror and suffering that is almost
impossible to comprehend."
The atmosphere
was electric.
One figure in the rear
rank began to sway but was instantly gripped by his comrades on either
side.
The most hardened terrorists there
— used to the carnage of the battlefield — were chilled by the cold, deliberate
voice.
The man in the
white coat stepped forward.
His knife
approached the eyes of the panic-stricken man again, and its tip rested just
under the eyeball for several seconds.
It pulled back and flashed forward again; this time the blade severed
the cloth gag that had prevented the prisoner from screaming.
The man in the white coat removed the gag and
dropped it on the ground.
He took a
flask from his pocket and held it to the man's parched lips; he drank
greedily.
Faint hope flickered in his
eyes.
The flask was removed, and the
prisoner was left alone in the pool of light.
A second
spotlight came on, spreading an empty circle of light about thirty meters in
front of the prisoner.
All eyes looked
at the space.
They heard a faint
shuffling sound, like a man struggling with a heavy burden.
A shape appeared in the pool of light and
came to a halt.
He turned to face the
prisoner.
He lifted the riflelike
launcher and pointed it at the condemned man.
The watchers looked from one lighted area to the other.
Screams of terror, unending screams, filled
the air, and the prisoner's body bent and twisted as he tried in vain to get
loose.
The operator
of the Russian LPO-50 manpack flamethrower readied his weapon; with the
thickened fuel he was using, he could blast the flaming napalm up to seventy
meters.
He was carrying three cylinders
of fuel — enough firepower for nine seconds of firing, far more than would be
necessary.
He waited for Kadar's signal.
"Kill
him," said the voice.
The man with
the flamethrower fired.
16
Ambassador
Harrison Noble, deputy director of the U.S. State Department Office to Combat
Terrorism (OCT), put down the report with a gesture of disgust.
He was a tall,
thin career diplomat with more than a passing physical resemblance to the economist,
author, and sometime ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith.
In his late fifties, his hair now thinning
and silver gray, he was a distinguished-looking man.
Women still found him attractive.
Before joining
the State Department in the 1950s, Noble had been a much-decorated fighter
pilot in Korea with eleven confirmed kills to his credit, palpable proof to his
recruiters at the time — who were still smarting from the witch-hunting of the
McCarthy era — that here was one man who certainly wasn't soft on communism
and, by implication, anything else un-American.
The ambassador
sighed at the possible implications of the report that lay on the polished
surface of his otherwise empty desk.
He
leaned back in his soft leather swivel chair and looked at his assistant.
He could just see her knees from this angle,
and very pretty they were, too.
At least
his was a comfortable way to fight terrorism.
"An execution by flamethrower," he said.
"Quite revolting.
What is the source of this report?"
"The
Israelis have one of the instructors in the camp on their payroll," said
the assistant.
"Since
the Israelis told us that, and since they have little respect for our security,
it probably isn't true; but at lest they seem to be taking the situation
seriously."
"Does nobody
in this business tell the truth?"
"Its'
about the same as diplomacy," said the assistant dryly.
She was a determinedly ambitious woman in her
late thirties.
She had made it clear
that she had a certain interest in the deputy director, who for his part was
still debating the issue.
A discreet
affair surely qualified as quiet diplomacy.
However, he was far from sure it was possible to do anything discreetly
in
He eased his
chair up for full tilt, and more of her elegant legs slid into view.
It was proving to be a satisfyingly sexual
conversation.
"So what
do you make of it?" he asked, gesturing at the TOP SECRET folder in front
of him.
It seemed a ridiculous way to
label something that was really secret.
"A hijack?"
"Unlikely.
There are at least seventy being trained in
that camp."
"Maybe a series of hijacks?"
"Perhaps,
but it doesn't seem likely.
They're
being trained as an integrated team.
It's more like a commando raid."
"An embassy?"
He hoped not.
Well over a hundred
million dollars had recently been spent on improving security at U.S.
diplomatic missions abroad, but he knew full well that this had been designed
with security as a top priority, and modifications were difficult to implement
while at the same time staff carried out traditional diplomatic and consular
duties.
There was also the problem of
modern firepower:
bulletproof glass in
windows and reception areas and armor plate on vehicles were not enough when a
pocketful of explosives, properly placed, could bring down the front of a
building or transform an armored vehicle and its occupants into bloody scrap.
It's still a
large group for an embassy," she said.
"The normal practice is to infiltrate small picked teams.
It's just not that easy to deploy seventy
armed terrorists.
In fact, that's one of
the most puzzling aspects of this thing:
how are so many people going to be put in place without being spotted at
the airport checks and borders?
It is
not as if these seventy are all new faces; on the contrary, it's a select
team.
We have records on many of
them."
"If I
weren't a diplomat," said Noble, "I'd suggest we take them out at
source — a preemptive surgical strike, Israeli style."
"Bomb
said the assistant.
"No
way.
The President would never
agree."
"Not to
mention the political fallout that would result.
Our European allies do so much business with
rest of the Arab world that they regard a certain toleration of terrorism as an
acceptable price.
And they have a
point:
terrorism gets publicity, but it
doesn't actually kill many people or cost an impossible amount.
Seen on a wider scale, it is tolerable."
"Unless
you're a victim," said the assistant.
Noble glanced
at the report again.
"I see our
source thinks this thing will probably go down in May."
He smiled.
"Every cloud has a silver lining.
If the source is right, I won't be here.
The hot seat will be all yours.
I'm going away from all this hassle to visit my son at school and do a
little quiet fishing."
He played an
imaginary fishing rod back and forth and mentally landed his fly precisely on
target.
He could almost feel the wind on
his face and hear the faint splash of an oar and the squeak of an oarlock as
the gillie adjusted the drift of the boat.
"Where
are you going?"
"