Purpose of Evasion (9 page)

12

A GOLDEN,
late morning sun streamed through the curtained windows of Stephanie Shepherd’s kitchen.

She was loading the dishwasher when the phone rang.

“Stephanie?” the congressman said in his gregarious rumble. “Jim Gutherie. Glad I got you. Why don’t we have lunch and finish that interview?”

“I’m up against a deadline on a story,” she fibbed, “but I can drop by your office this afternoon.”

“My afternoon’s jammed. I’d sure like to knock this off today.”

She paused, her lips tightening as she wrestled with the decision. She’d be less than truthful if she denied she was flattered by the congressman’s attention; less than truthful if she denied she didn’t sometimes feel left out of her husband’s life. Oh, she was still madly in love with him; but over the years she’d come to realize that Walt loved his country, the air force, his F-111, and his wife in that order. She didn’t really mind, she just longed to be a part of it; to share it; to better understand it and him. Writing for the base newspaper was a less than satisfying attempt to do so. Funny, she thought, the things that made Walt so special to her were the things that got in the way. “Why not, Jim?” she finally replied.

“Good,” Gutherie enthused. “Twelve-thirty, Cafe Promenade at the Hay Adams.”

Stephanie showered and was wrapping herself in a bath towel when she caught sight of her naked torso in the mirror and poked an accusing fingertip into a ripple of flesh. The first time someone said she and her daughter, Laura, looked like sisters, she was flattered. But down deep, she knew it was because they dressed alike. Stephanie had been living in jeans, sweatshirts, and running shoes, and rarely dressed up anymore. She hated middle age. A harmless lunch would ease the pain of it.

She had just finished dressing and was evaluating the effect
when the phone rang again. It was the gymnastics coach at Camp Springs Junior High.

“I’m afraid Laura took a little fall during practice this morning,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Oh my . . . Is she all right?”

“She’s fine; twisted her wrist when she landed. I think it’d be a good idea to have it X-rayed.”

“Of course. Thanks. I’m on my way.”

Stephanie called Gutherie’s secretary and canceled the luncheon; then, she left Jeffrey at the base day care center, and headed for Camp Springs Junior High.

It had never been any different, she thought. As soon as Walt left, the catastrophes began. It was the children’s way of letting him know he was needed. The syndrome was all too common among military families.

A half hour later, Stephanie had picked up Laura and returned to Andrews, driving directly to Malcom Grow Medical Center on Perimeter Road.

The emergency room doctor looked young, she thought. Too young, like a high school debater. He snapped Laura’s X-rays in front of a light panel and indicated a gray line on a bone just above her wrist, pronouncing it a hairline fracture of the lower radius.

It wasn’t a serious injury, but to a budding gymnast who had been training hard, it was terribly upsetting not to be able to compete.

At home, Laura settled gloomily in the kitchen with a tin of chocolate chip cookies.

“Builds strong bones,” Stephanie chided, pouring her a glass of milk.

“I really miss Dad,” Laura said wistfully, making circles in the crumbs on the counter.

“Me too. What do you say we call him?”

The teenager’s eyes brightened. “Mean it?”

“Of course. The number’s in the—” Stephanie cut off the sentence as Laura bolted from the kitchen. “Easy! You’ll have a cast on the other wrist,” she cautioned, hurrying after her.

Laura quickly found the package of transfer data and read the digits aloud as her mother dialed.

“Forty-eighth TAC,” a woman’s voice answered.

“May I speak with Major Shepherd, please?”

“Major Shepherd,” the woman said, encoding at a keyboard filling her computer screen with names. “I’m sorry but I don’t list an extension for him.”

“Are you sure? I talked to him last week.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, scrolling through the names again. “Let me transfer you to Personnel.”

Personnel had no trouble at all finding him. “Ah,” the clerk said, pulling the file up on her screen. “He’s right here on my transfer roster.”

“He’s been transferred?”

“To Upper Heyford. I have the number if you like.”

“Of course, please.” That’s odd, Stephanie thought, as she jotted it down. It wasn’t like Walt. He always let her know how to reach him. “Could it be temporary?” she asked, thinking that might be the reason.

“I doubt it. He’s got a new CO. According to his file, he reports to a Colonel Richard Larkin now.”

Stephanie wrote down the name, hung up, and called Upper Heyford. Informed Major Shepherd wasn’t in his quarters, she left a message.

AT ABOUT
the same time 90 miles west of London, the haunting whistle and rhythmic clack of a freight train, snaking through the Buckingham countryside, greeted the early twilight.

Shepherd thought he had died and gone to heaven, which he was surprised to discover smelled like a beer hall. The tangy scent of lager, strong and tart, the way he liked it, filled the air.

He was lying on his stomach, atop a mountain of hops in an open freight car, one of many on their way to a London brewery. As he slowly regained consciousness, his mind filled with confusing flashes of memory: the scream of grinding steel, the pain of brutal, bone-jarring impact, the sting of searing sheets of flame.

His presence on the train was a matter of simple physics and decisive action. For as the locomotive collided with the rear of the tanker truck, knocking it out of its path, the front went pivoting around back toward the tracks. The vehicle came to rest on its side, the cab literally within inches of the passing train. The impact had torn open the driver’s door, wrenching it back on its hinges into a nearly horizontal position; and while the flame and smoke from the roaring inferno at the rear of the tanker blocked Larkin
and Applegate’s view, Shepherd pulled himself out of the cab and climbed onto this “platform.” He was spattered with burning fuel; but his flight suit, made of Nomex—the same fireproof material used to outfit astronauts and race drivers—protected him. Despite the pain from the battering he’d taken in the tumbling cab, he was fully conscious and able to think. He had no doubt the men who had tried to kill him were waiting on the other side of the tracks; he also knew, injured and unarmed, he didn’t stand a chance on foot. He crouched there staring at the wall of flames shooting up around him, then glanced to the open gondolas rushing past just below and made his decision. The inferno was literally licking at his heels, as he crawled to the edge of the door and jumped.

He landed in one of the gondolas atop a mound of hops. It cushioned the impact, but couldn’t overcome the momentum of the train. He clutched desperately at the crumbly cones that offered no handhold and went rocketing into the steel sidewall. His head smashed against it, knocking him unconscious.

Hours later, he was still out cold when British Railway officials, who had been dispatched from London, arrived on the scene, disconnecting the damaged locomotive and detaining its crew for questioning. The train spent the night on a siding, as did Shepherd, who was concealed in one of the forty gondolas. He slipped in and out of consciousness several times, though he had no recollection of it.

The following morning another locomotive and crew were assigned to take the cargo to its destination.

Now, as the freight moved slowly through the countryside, Shepherd was gradually accepting that he was alive. His head pounded. His bruised muscles protested the slightest movement. His mind fought to comprehend what had happened to him. He turned over and struggled to a sitting position. Excruciating pain shot through his battered limbs. Everything began whirling about. He fought the rising nausea and put his head between his legs, which steadied him. Slowly, methodically, he undid the zippers of his G-suit and discarded it. He made his way through the hops to the edge of the open gondola and peered over the side.

The darkened countryside whistled past in a blur.

The right-of-way ran parallel to the A40 motorway. An illuminated sign at an interchange was visible through a break in the
trees. The letters were three feet tall but a severe case of double vision prevented Shepherd from reading them. He shook his head, trying to clear it, to no avail. Finally, he covered one eye with his palm and squinted. The jumble of letters merged. For a brief instant he could make out:
LONDON 45K.
The letters gradually blurred and everything started spinning again. He slumped against the side of the gondola and passed out.

A short time later, he awakened beneath a star-dotted sky. The temperature had plummeted and he was shivering from the dampness and cold.

The piercing sound of an air horn announced that the freight was entering the yards just south of Hackney Wick Stadium on the desolate eastern outskirts of London. The engineer began guiding it through the myriad of signals and switches.

Shepherd crawled to a standing position. Lights from distant buildings looked like tiny balls of illuminated fuzz. The canted roofs of sheet metal warehouses marched into the gritty darkness, blending with the endless acres of rolling stock parked on sidings. Shepherd swung a leg over the side of the gondola and fought to keep his balance while his foot searched frantically in the darkness for the first tread on the ladder. Finally secured, he straddled the edge for a moment, then swung his other leg over and began making his way down.

The train snaked between darkened maintenance sheds, then jerked through a series of switches.

Shepherd lost his grip on the ladder and started falling backward. The train lurched in the opposite direction, propelling him toward the ladder again. He clung to it fiercely, waiting for the freight to slow. An eternity passed before it braked to a 5 MPH crawl.

A flickering light on the other side of the yard pierced the ground fog that draped over the tops of the buildings and boxcars. It caught Shepherd’s attention. He could vaguely see several figures gathered around it. Trainmen? Yard workers? A conductor? he wondered, his spirits rising as the ghostly forms seemed to materialize, then vanish in the haze.

Shepherd didn’t have the strength to jump. He let go of the ladder and hit the ground hard, rolling across the chunky gravel and tall weeds sprouting between the ties and spurs. His aching body came to rest against the ungiving concrete base of a yard
signal. He lay there for a moment gathering his strength, then pulled himself upright and leaned against it, squinting into the darkness to get his bearings.

The light was on the other side of the yard.

Shepherd took several deep breaths and started walking toward it. A sharp ringing rose in his ears. Light reflecting off the landscape of polished steel rails intensified the serpentine pattern, heightening his feeling of vertigo. He began swaying but pressed onward, struggling to maintain his balance.

The flickering light came closer and closer.

It came from a fire in a trash pail just outside an abandoned switchman’s shack—a source of warmth for the derelicts huddled around it. One wore a rumpled military surplus officer’s cap. The other had a filthy ponytail and was snaking uncontrollably, not from the cold but from heroin withdrawal. He wrapped a tattooed fist around the neck of an empty beer bottle and watched expectantly as Shepherd stumbled toward him.

13

“WHERE IS HASAN?”
Abu Nidal asked as he stepped from the gunboat onto the dock at Casino du Liban. The meeting with Qaddafi, Assad, and Arafat was that afternoon; and he had expected Hasan to drive him to Damascus.

Katifa thought Nidal would be flat on his back in his cabin. For two days he had been injecting himself, not with insulin but milky water. She couldn’t believe he had held on this long.

“We haven’t seen Hasan for days,” one of the young terrorists replied with a baffled shrug.

“Not since you chastised him,” Katifa responded, feigning she was equally perplexed.

Following the confrontation at her apartment, she and Moncrieff had bound and gagged Hasan’s corpse and left it in the trunk of an abandoned car in the Ammal sector, making it appear he had been killed by enemy militia.

Katifa, Nidal, and his bodyguard walked up the gangway and through the casino onto the grounds. They were approaching her car when Nidal stumbled.

“Are you all right?” Katifa asked, alarmed. The words rang true, despite her relief that he was, at last, on the verge of acute ketoacidosis, a condition that occurs when blood cells are forced to burn fat and protein instead of glucose which requires insulin. As a result, the blood becomes saturated with glucose and potentially lethal waste products called ketones.

“I feel lightheaded,” Nidal explained, as they steadied him. “It’s been like this for several days.”

“Are you taking your medication?”

“Of course,” the terrorist leader snapped, impatient with his poor health. “It doesn’t seem to help.”

“Perhaps I should drive you to the clinic?”

“When I return from Damascus. Should Assad and the others learn of my illness, your prophecy might come true.”

“If Hasan were here, he could go in your place,” she suggested, planting the idea of a substitute.

“Hasan isn’t ready yet. He may never be,” Nidal replied, his eyes considering the obvious alternative.

“I’d prefer to remain with you,” Katifa said, not wanting to appear eager.

“You shall,” Nidal said decisively. “Someone has to drive me.” Then, iron will supplanting the lack of insulin, he began walking toward her car.

Damascus was 50 miles southeast of Beirut beyond the Bekaa Valley on a flat expanse of Syrian desert. It was well over two hours by car from the casino.

Nidal was sitting alone in the backseat, fighting a rising nausea as the Mercedes crossed the Beirut River and headed south on the Gemayel Motorway, skirting the city.

Katifa glanced often and anxiously to the rearview mirror as she drove. If Abu Nidal prevailed, if he somehow made it to the meeting, he would voice his opposition to the plan, forever destroying it. Her mind raced to find a way to make sure he didn’t.

“How is he now?” she prompted the bodyguard sitting next to her, purposely distracting him. The instant the burly fellow turned to check on Nidal, she reached to the dash and turned on the car’s heater.

Soon, the warm air coming from the floor vent had Nidal sweating profusely. His tongue thickened, as did his saliva, which was now the consistency of honey.

They had just turned into Rue de Damas, the boulevard that leads to the Damascus Motorway, when the bodyguard felt the air rising. “You have the heater on?”

“No, the control is broken,” Katifa lied boldly, jiggling the levers. “It doesn’t work when it should and does when it shouldn’t.”

The bodyguard grunted and rolled down the window.

Abu Nidal leaned forward, letting the breeze blow against his face. But a tingling sensation was already creeping up his legs into his torso; shortly, everything went black and he slumped against the seat.

Katifa saw him in the mirror. “He’s lost consciousness,” she said with alarm.

The guard glanced back at Nidal. “To the hospital, immediately,” he blurted, clearly shaken.

Katifa made a U-turn and drove straight to the Turk Hospital on de Mazarra. By the time they arrived, Abu Nidal was in a severe diabetic coma.

As always, he was admitted under a pseudonym.

After handling the paperwork, Katifa left Nidal with the body-guard and drove to Damascus.

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON
when Katifa arrived at Hafiz al-Assad’s villa; its limestone walls radiated the pale peach tones of fading sunlight. She was shown to an opulent meeting room, where Assad, Muammar el-Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat, and their aides were gathered in front of several large maps of Libya that stood on easels along one wall. On each, various sites for the proposed Palestinian sanctuary had been delineated. After the introductions had been made, they dispensed with the maps and took seats around a conference table.

Katifa began by explaining Abu Nidal’s absence.

Arafat lightly drummed his manicured nails on the arm of his chair as he listened. “I’m sorry he’s not well,” he said when she finished.

“As am I,” Assad declared, clearly annoyed. Syria’s president had a retiring demeanor that belied his ruthlessness. An inordinately large cranium capped his narrow face. “We certainly can’t proceed without him.”

“We must,” Qaddafi retorted, flicking a veiled glance to Katifa. “I must have a decision today.”

“You can have it now,” she offered. “Abu Nidal’s instructed me to approve the plan on his behalf.”

“Then it’s settled,” Qaddafi said, relieved.

“One moment,” Assad countered. He crossed to the wall of limestone arches that framed the windows and looked out over the rugged countryside, deep in thought.

For decades, his confrontational policies had neatly meshed with the Soviet Union’s Middle East strategy. Moscow supplied the weapons, Assad the turmoil that kept the United States mired in the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians. Forced to take sides, the Americans appeared anti-Arab, giving the Soviets the Middle East entrée they sought. But Moscow’s priorities had changed rapidly. Fueling regional conflicts wasn’t high on Mikhail
Gorbachev’s agenda. Assad knew that without Soviet backing, the Palestinians would soon become a thorn in
his
side—the hostages more so. And he saw the deal as a graceful way to dump both on Qaddafi. But the scope of the decision made him cautious. He knew of Katifa’s lineage; knew she had authored the
Intifada.
He had no reason to doubt she was Abu Nidal’s bona fide emissary; indeed, no reason whatsoever to suspect she was conspiring against him; but this was no time for expedience. “No offense,” he said to Katifa as he turned from the window. “But I can’t approve this without speaking to Abu Nidal.”

“The man is incapacitated,” Qaddafi protested, his cape whirling about him. “I don’t have time for this.”

“I agree,” Arafat chimed in, getting to his feet. “We’ve missed too many opportunities.” For years he’d been criticized for backing proposals that went nowhere. This one had promise; and now that it had come this far, he was determined it succeed. “You have Abu Nidal’s decision,” he said to Assad sharply. “Act on it.”

“Not without confirmation,” the Syrian replied, with the even temper of the fighter pilot he once was.

“This is a delicate linkage,” Qaddafi complained, confronting him. “And your foot-dragging is going to—”

“Gentlemen? Gentlemen, please?” Katifa implored in a soothing tone, unshaken by Assad’s demand. She and Moncrieff had foreseen the possibility. They also knew that Damascus and Beirut had outdated telephone equipment. The fidelity of transmissions was predictably poor, exacerbated by the fact that the system in war-torn Beirut wasn’t well maintained. “Abu Nidal said we were to call him if there were any problems,” Katifa went on, jotting the number on a slip of paper that she handed to Assad. “He’s in room seven thirty-six. Under an assumed name, of course. Ask for Mr. Bargouthi. Farouk Bargouthi.”

Assad went to the phone. Qaddafi picked up an extension.

“Turk Hospital private clinic,” the switchboard operator answered after the connection was made.

“I would like to speak to one of your patients, please,” Assad said. “A Mister Bargouthi.”

“That would be room seven thirty-six,” the operator said over the crackle on the line. “Just a moment.”

“Yes?” a weak voice said after several rings.

“This is Assad calling. I’m sorry you’re not well.”

“Thank you, brother. I’m just tired, very tired.”

“I’m sure you’ll be yourself again soon,” Assad said reassuringly. “I won’t keep you long. I just wish to verify that Katifa Issa Kharuz speaks on your behalf.”

“Yes, of course she does,” came the tired reply.

“And you’re in favor of this proposal?”

“Yes, yes, fully.”

“Thank you, brother. Take care of yourself,” Assad said, ending the call.

“I always do,” Saddam Moncrieff said to himself with a smile after hanging up the phone in hospital room 736. It had been years since he’d had a complete physical. And several days before, when Katifa warned that someone at the meeting might insist on confirmation from Abu Nidal, the Saudi decided the solution was to check into the Turk Hospital’s private clinic and get one. He did so under the name Farouk Bargouthi. Of course, Assad had no idea he had just spoken to Moncrieff, and not Abu Nidal.

In a room on the floor below, the steady drip of an IV alleviating his severe dehydration, the diabetic terrorist leader was sleeping like a baby.

Moncrieff swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed, lifted the phone again, and dialed. “Yes, I would like to send a cable, please?”

Before the meeting adjourned, Katifa suggested that that evening when the Exchequer contacted Casino du Liban, the call be routed to Assad’s villa so Assad could give the order to release the hostages. Indeed, she knew that Nidal couldn’t contact the Exchequer, though she didn’t know why; and, despite the hostages’ being under Syrian control, she had correctly assumed that Assad couldn’t either.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Assad responded with a thin smile, surprising her. “The Exchequer makes
two
calls each evening.”

ALMOST
forty-eight hours had passed since the USS
Cavalla
had put to sea. Proceeding at top speed, 200 meters beneath the surface, the submarine had crossed the Biscay Abyssal Plain and was off the coast of Portugal entering the complex range of trenches just west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Commander Duryea scooped up the phone in the command center. “Sonar? Conn. Where’s Alpha now?”

“Bearing one seven nine, range ten miles,” Marv Cooperman reported. The patient sonarman had spent the better part of two days in his electronics-lined cubbyhole, tracking the Redfleet boat on the towed array.

“Stay on him,” Duryea said, then whirling to McBride he ordered, “Break out a brit.”

The AN-BRT1 was a radio-transmitting buoy that contained a cassette recorder and laser transmitter capable of sending a four-minute message. Transmission could be delayed up to an hour. This meant a submarine could be far from the source of the signal when sent, thereby communicating without revealing its position.

Duryea shrewdly planned to do just the opposite. He drafted a short message and gave it to the radio officer. “Set the timer for max delay,” he ordered.

A short time later, the BRT was released through an aft airlock. It rose to the surface and was carried south by the swiftly moving Canaries current.

“Where’s the TC?” Duryea asked, referring to the thermocline, a layer of abrupt temperature change between colder bottom and warmer surface currents; it acted as a barrier to active sonar, deflecting outgoing signals and trapping returns from the few that managed to penetrate.

“Three hundred forty meters, sir,” McBride replied.

“Okay, let’s see what he’s made of,” Duryea said. “Rig for dive and take her down to four hundred.”

The
Cavalla
’s ballast tanks filled, her dive planes angled sharply, the propeller cut a massive vortex in the water, and she headed for the bottom.

The Alpha’s sonarman detected the surge in cavitation and change in depth, and then the silence. “We’ve lost contact, Comrade Captain,” he soon reported.

“Thermocline,” Solomatin scowled, knowing that pursuit would be futile. Once lost, the
Cavalla
could run in sea trenches undetected. It was up to Redfleet strategic reconnaissance to pick up her trail now.

Cooperman’s sonar arrays were strangely, pleasantly silent. “Clear water astern,” he reported.

“He’s waiting and wondering,” Duryea said to McBride firmly. “Come to zero six five. All ahead full.”

The
Cavalla
turned hard to port, steam from her reactor driving the twin turbines ever faster. Now, dead-centered on the Straits of Gibraltar, she began proceeding east toward the Mediterranean at top speed.

An hour later, when the BRT transmitted Duryea’s message, the swift currents had already swept it more than 15 miles south of the Straits. SSIX, a satellite dedicated to submarine communications—one of five in geosynchronous orbit that made up the fleet satellite communications system—received and relayed it.

Seconds later, inside a massive concrete blockhouse at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the ground link where intelligence from spy satellites is gathered, a high-speed printer in the message center came to life.

FM: USS CAVALLA

TO: RTS KEYHOLE/FORT BELVOIR

REQUEST PRIORITY UPDATE COURSE AND POSITION OF REDFLEET ALPHA.

LAST CONTACT 354012N/072823E. COURSE 015.

A clerk tore the cable from the printer and took it to a tracking room, where pensive technicians sat at rows of consoles, studying their VDT screens.

The RTS prefix stood for real time surveillance. Keyhole series satellites used a charged couple device to provide it. The half-inch-square CCD contained 640,000 pixels that continuously collected and transmitted data—which meant these were real time images.

The technician monitoring the sector of ocean in question was given Duryea’s cable. He entered the geographic data on his keyboard, directing the satellite’s optical system to the appropriate grid square and coordinates; then he began searching for a specific surface pattern created by a dived submarine’s propeller.