The Nylon Hand of God

by Steven Hartov

  He rolled onto his back and she came with him, her hair cascading over his face as she gripped his waist with her thighs and bent to him again. He was conscious of the blood rising in his groin, but it was her face, that face that he longed for, had wanted to touch from the second he first saw it. And now he was free, released at last from a prison of propriety, and as they kissed again he touched her cheeks, swept the backs of his fingers across her neck. And then he gripped her shoulders and gently pushed her away, because he had to see her eyes again.

  She opened them. They were even bluer than before, wide with her breathing. She sat up and swept her hair up and back with a forearm, and they both shuddered for a moment.

  “You’re warm,” Ruth decided hoarsely. She reached down to his waist, and he arched as she pulled the turtleneck over his head in one determined sweep. Then she looked down at the red-blond hair of his chest.

  “So are you,” he said, and they both reached for the hem of her sweatshirt.

  She sat up straight again. She was wearing a modest white brassiere, yet such was her figure that no undergarment had a hope of stemming desire.

  “Oh, Lord,” Mike whispered as he looked at her, wild strands of hair across her flushed face, her wide navel fluttering with the sprint of her heart above his belt buckle.

  He wanted to wait, to please her, to take his time. As long as it would take her to be ready, to signal him, to draw him into her. It would be her decision. He wanted to give her patience, gentleness, the conviction that he was there for her first, and for himself only after that.

  It was as if she read his mind.

  “I know who you are, Michael O’Donovan,” she said. “What kind of man you are.” She kissed him softly. “Don’t show me your patience. I want you now.”

  Crushing his mouth with her own, she reached up behind her back with one hand, and the white cotton fell away. The rest of their clothes came off without their lips ever separating. Their electrified skin suddenly encountered the bristle of the carpet, and all at once Ruth rose, took his hand, and walked quickly to her bedroom. She flicked off the light as she turned to catch him.

  They stood beside the bed for a moment, lips more gently together again. Then they fell onto Ruth’s white sheets like trapeze lovers drifting onto a net, and after a moment they both arched and gasped as they were joined in a stunning relief of plunging heat.

  When it was over, so quickly that it had seemed like a lightning strike, they lay there bathed in a sheen, their limbs entwined as they listened to the echoes of their ragged lungs inside the small bedchamber. Her damp hair was draped across his neck and shoulders, and as they peered through the dark at each other’s faces, each doubted that the other could possibly have climaxed in so short a time. It had been like a traffic accident, a volatile burst of energy leaving only fleeting images of the event, the reverberations of the physical impact, and a flood of adrenaline.

  As with all first-time lovers, the tension had been slain, the doubts dispersed. Now they could take their time and drive anticipation back to its peak.

  They began once more, with light touches, kisses that drifted from their joined mouths to find and taste the unlearned planes of their bodies. After a long while, their mouths met again. Ruth slithered above Mike, her breasts brushing his chest as she began slowly to rock, then she groaned as she swept him up and posted like a determined equestrian. He held her face, kissed her chest, watched her, knowing that he could give her what she wanted. Her eyes squeezed shut, her long eyebrows nearly met as a deep crevasse formed above her nose, and she began to whisper in Hebrew as her hair whipped.

  “An ba’a. Ani ba’a.”

  She threw her head back and her arms went stiff as stone, and as she trembled there, Mike suddenly heard an echo to her ecstasy.

  It was another cry. Similar, yet without pleasure. The long pleas of a woman’s voice. But it came from outside, from the hallway beyond the apartment door. He pulled Ruth down to him and hugged her hard, and as she began to speak, he said, “Shhh.”

  She lifted her head to listen. “I hear it too,” she whispered.

  They lay still as hunters in the undergrowth. It came again, a thin female cry, a long stream of “Ohs,” each one punctuated by a small bang, as whoever was out there pounded weakly on Ruth’s door.

  She pushed herself up onto her hands. “Yo,” she whispered, an Israeli exclamation of discovery. “Maybe it’s Lisa.”

  She sprang off him and bolted to her bedroom door, yanking a white terry-cloth robe from its peg. Quickly she slipped into it and tied the belt at her waist as Mike lifted up on his elbows.

  “Doesn’t she have a key?” he asked, assuming correctly that Lisa was Ruth’s “perfect” roommate. It struck him as more than odd that the woman would reappear near midnight, bleating outside her own apartment.

  Yet Ruth was already striding for the door, perhaps bolstered by the presence of “her” detective. Mike was not so reassured, and as he watched her peer briefly through the peephole and quickly turn her dead bolt, he leapt from the bed and struggled into his underwear, thinking of the backup .38 in his jacket pocket.

  The hallway light spilled into the living room, and for a moment, before Ruth sprang forward and knelt, he could see the small soles of a woman’s sneakers. The scuffed cleats were punctuations to a curled-up fetal ball, a body writhing in pain.

  He was shamed by his momentary suspicion. Striding across the carpet, he could see the entire length of the corridor. Not a single door had opened. New Yorkers, he thought with disgust.

  As he reached the doorway, seeing Ruth kneeling over the sufferer, he felt a swell of pride rise in his chest. A surprising wave of elation brought a smile to his face, a conviction that this night was the beginning of something wonderful.

  He stepped through the doorframe, and a ten-inch iron bar blurred from the left and cracked against the bridge of his nose. He actually heard the ring of metal against his bone, the massive explosion inside his head as a flash of yellow lightning burst behind his eyelids. His hands flew out as he reeled backward, and as his wrists smacked the doorframe he reflexively gripped for a hold. Yet another blow came from the right: a fist, a foot, the butt of a brute head—he would never know, for the impact to his solar plexus sent him hurtling. Now another blow as his spine met the floor, yet another as his head bounced. He opened his mouth to yell Ruth’s name, but no breath remained in his lungs, and his naked arms were gripped, his shoulders pulled to the nauseating tear of muscle, and he was dragged.

  Ruth barely had the time to turn her head.

  She had been trying gently to uncurl the groaning woman, to examine her face huddled behind an arm. Reaching out, she had stroked the tangle of black hair, for she could see the smear of blood below her nose. The pathetic figure was wearing a stained gray coverall and a purple ski cap.

  Ruth was whispering, “It’s all right. We’ll get an ambulance,” when she heard the rush of clothing behind her and a smacking blow that snapped her head around. Seeing the two huge men pummeling Mike, she froze for just a split second, then opened her mouth to scream.

  All that emerged was a choking gasp as a hand locked around her throat. She twisted back toward the prone woman, while her eyes bulged and the tears welled, and she felt herself being lifted, her hands scratching and pummeling at the viselike wrist.

  Martina’s thumb was embedded so deeply in the soft flesh that no sound at all escaped Ruth’s gaping mouth. She flailed with her arms, tried to kick out with her feet, but Martina, her teeth set in a death’s-head grimace, lifted her and propelled her backward toward the open door.

  Ruth’s fright flooded into panic, yet she managed to lock her fingers on a clump of the woman’s hair, and for a split second she had hope as she yanked with every vestige of her strength. But the hair and the hat came away, and a gurgling, silent cry leapt from her, for at the root of that powerful arm, the face from the German prison photo grinned wickedly.

  Martina pushed
Ruth’s failing form easily into the apartment now. She kicked the door closed with her foot, raised her free hand, and struck down with a glass syringe, plunging the needle through Ruth’s robe and into the flesh below her collarbone.

  It was not the drug that had an instantaneous effect.

  Ruth fainted from the horror.

  Chapter 11: Brooklyn

  The polished wooden beads of a masbaha clicked together inside Mussa Hawatmeh’s hand, the muted chatter of the rosary like a string of worries being counted on the abacus of a doubtful Oriental accountant. He was no more cognizant of his fingers fiddling with the spheres than he was of his own bare footfalls across the floor, the bristle of the carpet between his toes, or the Persian pattern as it blurred in his vision and he strove with all his will to forgo another glance at his wristwatch.

  He reckoned that in all the violent seasons of his life, no lethal device had ever so unnerved him as this small clock at the end of his arm, in the midst of this endless night. The tires of an automobile whispered from the street, and for a moment he paused, gripped the beads, raised his head, and listened. Yet the watery light rippled quickly across the curtained windows, and hope faded.

  Mussa sighed and resumed pacing his cage, the long sitting room of a dilapidated house at the corner of Carlton and De Kalb in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. It was one of many such neglected homes, abandoned by owners who had watched the crime encroach upon their lives and fled to sunny parcels of orange groves and armadillos. The elderly couple who had gratefully accepted six months’ rental in advance no longer viewed their property the way Martina Klump did—as a safe house.

  The four stories of chipped red brick and gabled roofs sat upon a raised copse of frozen and neglected gardens, the image of a haunted lair enhanced by a black ironwork fence. The isolation had attracted Martina, for she was unconcerned by the plague of roaming hooligans, confident that potential vandals would test her men only once. Instead, it was the curiosity of neighbors that could thwart her, and to that end the massive, bolted driveway gate had sealed her choice. The macadam curved from the side street into a large two-car garage, from which a walled-in portico led to the kitchen. If one was careful, the troupe of a small circus could reside here, with no comings or goings observed except for the occasional movement of vehicles.

  Although their time in residence was to be very short, Martina had instructed that no member of Yadd Allah was to use the front door of the house. That privilege was reserved for herself, as resident of lease, and Fouad and Iyad, who always entered and exited in painters’ coveralls. A sign announcing Renovations by McFee and Sons had been posted on the frosted weed crop, and a thick sandwich of plywood was propped against the front porch next to a pile of two-by-fours. All of this would serve to cover the occasional buzz of saws from inside and the ring of hammer heads on steel.

  For the sake of cover and camouflage, it might have seemed a wiser choice to set up camp in the Moslem enclave of Jersey City or among the pita and halâwi merchants of Atlantic Avenue, where a few more Levantine faces would blend like pebbles in a rock garden. Yet those neighborhoods were rife with FBI watchers and Mossad informants, while here in this forgotten strip of Brooklyn, Martina and her HOGs would remain unnoticed. She had also chosen the secluded outpost for psychological reasons, wanting her men to remain alert in their discomfort, their senses undulled by familiar sounds, smells, or tastes. She wanted them sharp as commandos behind enemy lines, reflexes wound to a high pitch in isolation.

  Thus far, she had been correct. No breach of privacy had sent them scurrying, no friendly neighbor or beat policeman with a curious nose. Now just a single hour remained, and the undisturbed preparations for Unternehmen Skorpion—Operation Skorpion—boded well for its success. However, Mussa was not heartened by the progress, for the Scorpion herself was late.

  He succumbed to his nerves and raised his wrist, staring at the steel face of his watch. Five minutes past two. In the same hand he held a short-range Motorola, and he pressed the transmit button and whispered.

  “Ashma kân?”

  He looked up at the high ceiling, trying to discern on which floor Muhammed paced, peering from the darkened windows. After a moment, the walkie-talkie crackled.

  “Mâshi. Nothing.”

  Mussa frowned and looked around his jail, thinking that at worst, Martina’s failure to appear would mean a closure of this verse, the freedom to abandon and “disinfect,” each man to make his own way home. If that was God’s will, they would someday reconvene on a hill in Lebanon to ponder the “what if”s. And if she had been taken, then it was not for lack of warnings on his part, her vengeful digressions having led her into ambushes he could not describe vividly enough to frighten her. And no failure could be placed at the pious feet of Yadd Allah, for despite her driving them like exhausted cattle, they had accomplished each and every task in perfect detail.

  He watched them proudly now as they moved quickly, shadows laboring in silence. In the center of the sitting room sat a long dining table, upon which the black dress blazer of a naval officer gleamed beneath an aluminum reflector. Nabil, the group’s technician, who held degrees from Cairo University, was wearing jeweler’s spectacles and inspecting a complex set of wiring and antennae sewn into the jacket lining. His small body darted from the uniform to an open black attaché case, its exposed false bottom lined with a slab of dull yellowish clay. Next to the attaché lay a modified electronic address book, from which two short wires led to a small bulb. Nabil flitted back to the uniform, squeezed something with his fingers, and watched as the bulb glowed brightly and burned out with a pop.

  The engineer nodded, switched off the palm computer, secured its button with electrical tape, and carefully replaced the bulb with a pair of small brass tubes. Then he gently buried the tubes in the clay, replaced the false bottom of the case, and folded the wires, laying the computer inside. A sheaf of papers and a text on U.S. naval operations joined the lot, and he closed the case and snapped the catches.

  He peered up at Mussa over the tops of his spectacles, and as he pointed with one finger at the case, with another he wagged the warning Be very careful, my friend. Although the device was now disarmed, once Mussa threw the computer’s switch, he would be carrying his own death at the end of his arm.

  Mussa turned to where Salim, Ali, Jaweed, and Yaccub knelt on the floor of the sitting room beside a gleaming mahogany coffin. The men wore olive-drab T-shirts and camouflaged fatigue trousers, but they had not donned their boots, for they had yet to pray. Their hair was cropped, their beards gone. The fair-complexioned Ali had dyed his crew cut to wheat blond. Jaweed was born of a half-Circassian father, and his red hair and freckled face would have made an O’Malley proud. The other men looked like muscular American boys of Italian or Puerto Rican descent.

  Their breaths clouded the chill air as they bound and tagged folded bundles of black mourning suits, each identified by number to avoid a mixup. Along the wall of aging flowered paper, six M-16A1 rifles were racked, butts to the floor, each flash suppressor capped by a mottled Marine fatigue hat, each butt stock taped with two magazines of 5.56 mm ammunition. Nearby, six Motorolas identical to Mussa’s sat in recharging cuffs.

  In America, you can buy an army, Mussa thought with a blend of cynicism and gratitude. But you can’t buy this. He turned to a pair of carpenter’s horses supporting a long slab of plywood, which was covered in thin mattress foam and tailored with billows of white nylon. In the middle of the slab lay a headless body, in fact a medical mannequin whose posterior half had been shaved off with a surgical bone cutter. This left the chest, abdomen, frontal thighs, shins, and the full feet and arms intact.

  The body had been slipped into a white neoprene diving suit to give the “corpse” the feel of rigored flesh. It was now clothed in an ebony burial suit, the white-gloved hands lacing fingers across the chest, the polished shoes poking up from depressions. With the soft nylon caressing its sides and legs, the half-man o
ffered a convincing illusion. Except for the final detail. Just above the empty collar, a cantaloupe-sized hole in the wood remained unfilled. It would be up to Iyad to provide that distasteful punctuation, and God help him if he failed.

  The four “Marines” had laid their bundles in the bottom of the coffin, and now they walked to the slab, lifted it, and returned to the sarcophagus. They carefully lowered the “deceased,” and his nylon quilt married perfectly to the coffin’s lining.

  The whine of a laser printer drew Mussa’s focus, and he walked out through the archway of the sitting room, past a curved stairway, toward a rectangle of light. Inside a former sewing room, a tall and spindly boy named Fahmi sat before an IBM PS2 and a color Textronix printer, at each elbow a tilted drafting table. The worktops held reams of colored papers and purloined letterheads, but the bottles, brushes, and styluses of a classic forger were not in evidence, for Fahmi was a technical artist of the modern world.

  Most of his works were now complete, creations that would prove their artistry by being glossed over as genuine. The license plates were nothing short of spectacular, alphanumeric portraits designed on graphical software. The letters and numbers appeared to be raised, for each character was shadowed. He had printed them on heavy plotter stock, trimmed and glued them to aluminum rectangles, applied three layers of clear lacquer, and finally smeared the finished products with dapplings of mud.

  Mussa’s naval credentials required no alterations, for they belonged to the genuine Lieutenant Rick Delgado. However, Fahmi had made good use of the officer’s civilian documents as samples. There was now a driver’s license and registration for the hearse, limousine, Ryder rental truck, and a late-model Chevrolet repainted as a navy staff car.