The Nylon Hand of God

by Steven Hartov

  “Knives to sharpen?” Denny Baylor speculated scornfully. He had once wanted to be a SEAL himself but he had been cut during “Hell Week” in Coronado.

  “Gold,” Buchanan said to his deputy. “We’d better get in touch with our people in Germany. What’s the nearest major city to that port?”

  “Hamburg,” Benni offered, but watching the Americans take his and Arthur’s bait, he desperately wanted them to be on their way, for his urge to come clean was powerful. He moved his hand to the nurse’s call button and surreptitiously pressed it.

  “I’ll contact the consulate there,” said Gold.

  “And let’s put the Pomonkey descriptions together and fax ’em,” Buchanan added. “No, better, let’s get the airfield people to D.C. and work the Identi-Kit.”

  “Right,” said Gold as he jotted on his pad.

  Benni suffered a chill as he pictured an image of Ruth’s face being distributed along with those of the other “suspects.”

  “Think I’ll head over to the Pent,” said Hal Novak, pulling on a tan trench coat. “See if they’ll take some suggestions.”

  “You do that,” said Buchanan with inappropriate authority. Novak looked up with a reproachful glare.

  The door was suddenly thrust open, yet this time no timid nurse appeared. The woman who entered wore olive slacks and a lime-colored, epauletted uniform blouse. She was tall and officious, with short brown hair cut close to a handsome face. She wore captain’s bars and a stethoscope, and she marched over to Baum’s bed carrying a clipboard.

  “What’s the problem, Colonel?” she asked as she glanced at his chart.

  “No problem, Doctor,” Benni said, as if he had punched the call button inadvertently. “I am feeling a bit tired, though.”

  She walked to his side, flipped his wrist over, pressed two fingers to the pulse, and looked at her watch. After ten seconds she issued an order without glancing up. “Everybody out.”

  Dr. Carswell snapped up from the other bed and began gathering his papers as if he had been scolded by a nun. The other men stole looks at each other, yet they also began to file toward the door. Roselli and O’Donovan hung back.

  “We have work to do,” said Buchanan, turning back to Baum from the door. “But don’t go anywhere.” He was eyeing Roselli suspiciously.

  “I would not dream of it,” Benni promised, and as the FBI man squinted at him and finally left, he blew out a sigh.

  “Seems fine.” The doctor removed her hand. “Any difficulty breathing?”

  “No,” said Benni.

  “Pain?”

  “Negative.”

  “That’s U.S. military parlance.” She almost smiled at him. “Very good. How do you say it in Hebrew?”

  “Shlili.”

  “Nachon,” she replied in the same language—“Correct”—and in response to Benni’s stunned expression, she explained, “Three months in Haifa with the Sixth Fleet.”

  “Wow,” Roselli exclaimed. “See, Baum? You can never be too careful.”

  The doctor frowned at the two remaining interlopers. “You too,” she said as she flipped a thumb toward the door and gathered her clipboard. “He should rest.”

  “I just want to chat with them,” Benni begged. “A few minutes.”

  “Just a few,” said the captain, backing toward the door. “While you’re in here, Colonel, your heart is mine.”

  Baum smiled and saluted as she departed.

  “Your heart is mine?” Roselli whispered to Baum through a grin.

  Benni shrugged, while the CIA officer’s smile faded as he recalled the details of the Klump case that Baum had painfully revealed only yesterday. The issues of the hijacked Minnow, Ruth’s kidnapping, and the secret prisoner exchange were bad enough, but they were layered over a background that made Baum’s position impossible. He felt great sorrow for Baum. He had met Benni’s daughter on more than one occasion in Jerusalem, and he could imagine the excruciating crush of conscience gripping the old warrior’s heart.

  Michael O’Donovan was standing back from the foot of the bed, examining his shoes. Benni looked at the young detective’s battered face, the bruises set off by the pallor of his winter skin. He recognized the genuine pain of a remorseful lover, and he was about to speak, when O’Donovan looked up.

  “Colonel, I don’t know how to say this . . .”

  “Then don’t say it, Michael.” Benni absolved him. “What’s done is done. You can share the details of it later, if it will help us. We have to move forward now, and quickly.”

  O’Donovan looked at him for a long moment. “Right,” he said.

  Benni motioned for Roselli to come closer, for he was genuinely tired and had to lie back on the pillow.

  “What now, Arthur?” he asked in a near whisper. “Eckstein is on the way to Casablanca, though God only knows what he expects of me there.” He pinched the end of his bulbous nose as if to ward off emotion. “I am afraid to move from here.”

  O’Donovan slipped up to the bed and also lowered his tone. “You really think she’s got watchers here, Colonel?”

  “The agents confirmed it, Michael.” Benni sighed. “She left men behind.”

  “Yeah,” Arthur agreed. “We have to assume that.” He reached for Benni’s telephone and dialed a number.

  “So why don’t you have your people just pick them up?” O’Donovan asked Roselli impatiently. “They must be right around here somewhere, staying close to the colonel.”

  “It’s Benni, for God’s sake,” Baum admonished yet again. “And he cannot just pick them up. That could cause Martina to act. . . .” He trailed off and frowned at his clenched fists.

  “My people have other ways,” said Roselli. Then he spoke into the telephone. “Okay, Tripod,” he said, and hung up. “Can you smoke in here?”

  “Only if you want to die by that woman’s hands,” Baum muttered, meaning his hard-nosed physician.

  “Could think of worse ways to die.” Roselli laughed, but he put the Marlboro box away in his pocket.

  None of the men spoke for a moment, each of them lost in his own inner conflicts. Benni turned to O’Donovan.

  “Don’t you have to get back to New York, Michael?”

  “Sick leave,” said O’Donovan.

  “Uh huh,” Benni grunted. Then he sputtered with exasperation. “Ani moochrach livroach me po. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Savlanoot. Patience,” said Roselli, which surprised O’Donovan, as he had no knowledge of the agent’s stint in Jerusalem.

  The door opened to the sound of the Marine guard’s uniform snapping as he came to attention, and three men strode crisply into the room. They wore the spotless green tunics of Marine Corps officers, and Benni cursed under his breath as he suspected another delegation arriving to plunder his mind. He reached for the call button, but Arthur quickly stayed his hand.

  “Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” said Roselli with a bright smile.

  The men grinned back as one of them saluted and clicked his heels in Chaplinesque style. Baum and O’Donovan peered at the men more closely.

  The first officer was a lieutenant colonel, the second a major, and the third sported gleaming captain’s bars. Each wore a peaked cap, and their physical similarities to one another were obvious. None of them over five feet eight inches tall, they had broad shoulders and heavy, muscular girths. They were clean-shaven, and their wide faces shone with rain and mischievous expressions.

  “Remember Flute?” Roselli asked Baum as he looked his men over with pleasure. “Gave me an idea.”

  Baum squinted at his friend, confused by his reference to the operation in 1986 when the two had cemented their bond. Then he realized the nature of Roselli’s gambit, and he snapped his head back to the three “Marines.”

  “Shell game.” Roselli crossed his arms. “Gentlemen,” he said to the officers. “This is Mike O’Donovan, and the prone fellow is Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Baum.”

  The three men nodded politely.
They were Agency employees, men who had worked for years with Roselli in various clandestine capacities. The “captain” smiled.

  “I’m Moe,” he said.

  Next to him, the “major” picked up his cue. “I’m Larry.”

  “So I guess I’m Curly,” said the third man, as he reached up to remove his colonel’s cap. His head was almost completely bald, except for a few fringes of gray straying back behind his large ears. Both O’Donovan and Baum gaped at the evident similarity between the CIA man and Benni.

  “Just did it this morning,” said the “colonel” as he ran one beefy hand over his freshly shaved pate. “My wife hated it.”

  The other two officers began to laugh. Roselli followed suit, and both O’Donovan and Baum were unable to suppress their own wide grins.

  “It looks very attractive to me,” said Benni. “Very.”

  The laughter settled into throat clearing, a lighter mood of cautious optimism as the burly agent stepped forward. A strange air of witchery hovered as his and Baum’s faces, like those of brothers reunited after a spell of decades, neared each other.

  “Well, Colonel,” said the agent as he began to unbutton his tunic and pointed at the hospital mattress, “hope that bed’s comfortable.”

  Chapter 15: The North African Coast

  The Dassault Falcon 900 executive jet soared on a surface of frigid black air, its mirror-sharp chestnut underbelly nudging the buffets at 33,000 feet, its steel wings swaying from port to starboard as it dodged the peaks of Atlantic winds. The sleek nose and polished windshields of the mechanical hawk reflected a hard high moon as it dove through waves of stratosphere, and the thundering heat of its tri-jets left a long, curving wake of vapor behind the blade of its tail.

  The falcon flew effortlessly tonight, yet no higher than the spirits of Martina Ursula Klump. She watched the reflection of her own smile in the porthole, an expression that finally showed release from months of tension. Yet as her eyes flicked down through the quilt of clouds to the surface of a darkened sea, her body refused to be still.

  She reclined in a butter-cream leather seat that would have seduced most travelers to sleep, but the toe of her boot tapped the air, her shoulders and thighs swayed beneath the dark wool of her long dress, and as the crescendos of the Allegro assai of Beethoven’s Ninth filled her headphones, she began to conduct. Her eyes closed, her head bobbed, the black bangs of her wig thrashed across her forehead, she lifted her fists, and the London Festival Orchestra and Chorus were hers. She commanded them, drove them on until they obeyed, melded with their maestro, and finally roared together in a stunning Germanic climax.

  She slumped back, breathless, and as she tore the headphones off she opened her eyes to find Salim across the cabin isle, frozen to his own seat as he regarded his commander with shock. She began to laugh, and then she threw her head back and let it come, roaring until the tears streamed into her ears.

  At last she recovered, laced her fingers together, and stretched. Just above her a video monitor displayed the progress of the Falcon, a white line crawling over an electric-blue map toward the green contours of the Strait of Gibraltar. Past the monitor, the crystal cabinets of the jet’s galley reflected the blinking diodes of a CD player, and through the forward door she could see Mussa’s wing tips resting on the cockpit floor, his body hidden behind a bulkhead in the crewman’s jump seat. Just past his legs, the starched white shirts of the pilots framed a carnival of cockpit displays.

  Martina pivoted and continued to survey her vessel. She had chartered the French-built aircraft solely for its size and range, yet the airborne estate was fit for a duchess.

  I have done it. She slapped her thigh as once more Salim came into view, his body cocked, prepared to spring to her command. She smiled at the contrasting posture of Muhammed, asleep in the bucket facing Salim, arms dangling, fingers brushing the rich red carpet. I fooled them all, escaped the chase of a hundred American hounds, took their precious toy, and left them ranting to themselves.

  She stopped turning and faced fully aft, adoring the men who occupied this luxury so well deserved. The cabin walls tunneled away, brocaded in a cream material of irregular texture like the skin of a rare animal. The curved ceiling held panels of reading lamps and air nozzles plated in gold, while the lower walls were lined with polished cabinets of red gum wood. Four more leather seats surrounded a thickly grained dining table extending from the port fuselage. Yaccub, Jaweed, and Ali played a game of cards on half its surface, while Nabil sat next to them, ticking quietly on the keyboard of a Compaq laptop. The cabin was cool, and the men still wore the dark jackets of their “mourning” suits, their activity suggesting wealthy young princes aboard a flying casino.

  Beyond them, half a bulkhead obscured most of the Falcon’s small bedroom, yet she could see the thick black pipes of Riyad’s and Youssef’s trousered legs, and across from them, on a couch whose lush upholstery matched the carpet, the soles of the girl’s shoes.

  Once I trusted Baum, she remembered, the bitterness diluted by sweet vengeance. Now I’ve trussed him. She slid back a gold ashtray cover, lit up a slim Du Maurier, and depressed the button to recline her seat, indulging the nostalgia of Skorpion’s first-stage success.

  We are all here. And alive, she marveled, like an outrageously lucky combat commander. Then she frowned at the thought of Iyad. Well, not all so lively. His head had made the trip, but his body was folded into a refrigerator in the basement of the Brooklyn safe house. Yet in death, Iyad had proved himself to be ten times more useful than when he still drew breath. Martina’s smile returned again as she recalled the American customs inspector, briefly raising the coffin lid, then dropping it again as if he had glimpsed the corpse of Count Dracula himself.

  Without that final touch of verisimilitude, who could say where they would be now? She could not be judged by the moral tenets of Judeo-Christian ethics, that phrase itself being laughably oxymoronic. Any Imam who witnessed the blind faith and selfless courage of Yadd Allah would have blessed her act as a necessity of Jihad.

  Of course, it was also not wholly true that all of her men had made the roll call. Fouad and Fahmi had to remain behind to drive the limousine and hearse from the scene, because abandoning the vehicles would have alerted inquisitive minds at the airport, and Baum also had to be convinced that an observation post remained on American soil. There was the risk that they might be captured, but absolutely none that they might talk. And they would be reunited, all of them, she assured herself. They would sip mint tea on the balcony of the Imperial in Beirut, their faces aglow with the sun sliding into the Mediterranean as they laughed together and remembered.

  How smoothly it had all run, more like a Hollywood film than an actual mission, which were usually fraught with mishaps. She saw herself again, walking through the black smoke of the burning Hum-Vee, unstoppable as a battle tank. She saw her men flooding toward her, drawn by her power as they swept human encumbrances aside and executed their moves. The wind buzzed through her sweat-soaked hair again, whipping into the staff car as they sped from the ambush site.

  And then they were off the road, in a secluded copse behind a barn, having all switched costumes inside the vehicles, submerging the uniforms and weapons in weighted duffels to the bottom of a pre-reconnoitered pond, bolt-cutting the Minnow from its cradle, snuggling the fish into the coffin, the coffin back into its idling caisson, then each man checking his own and his partner’s attire and documents, looking for potential giveaways. And they were off again, for the airport.

  They had stopped once more at the roadside, for she had to be certain, and she marched around the vehicles, peering in the windows. “Straighten your tie,” she instructed Jaweed. “Your shoes are muddy,” she informed Riyad. “Don’t carry the girl,” she coached the men again. Ruth was conscious, but her glassy eyes and limp head warned of a potential swoon, too much melodrama for even the most bereft young widow. “Just grip her elbow, and make sure she knows I will shoot her if she ma
kes trouble.” She handed Ali an ammonia capsule to break under the girl’s nose, and he took it as he said, almost apologetically, “Your wig is crooked.” Martina thanked him and spent the last minutes before the arrival at the airstrip preening, while the men cleaned their hands and faces with alcohol wipes.

  She barely remembered the boarding of the jet, just snatches of images, like those of her own wedding. It all proceeded in slow motion, because that was the pace she had demanded. After all, it was a funeral procession, not a bank heist. The airstrip personnel were not accustomed to hosting wealthy clients or aircraft of the Falcon’s size, yet because of the solemn nature of the business, the crop-duster pilots and weekend Cessna jockeys kept a respectful distance. Only Martina and Mussa spoke, and though the Falcon pilots doubted that the coffin would fit into the rear cargo hold, Nabil had researched it to the last centimeter. He had bought a folding metal stand for an electric piano and now set it against the forward bulkhead of the hold, propping one end of the coffin on it, the angle allowing the outer door to close with a pneumatic hiss.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” the chief pilot exclaimed, scratching his head.

  “Blessed, I should think,” said Martina as she thanked the customs inspector, who just shrugged, still confused as to why he had been summoned by this aristocratic woman, when he usually found himself engaged in nasty exchanges with irate travelers.

  She remembered, with a sense of pride, the faces of Fouad and Fahmi, resolute, chins uplifted, as they stood by the hearse and limousine and watched her walk toward the jet’s stairway. She could not bid them farewell, hug them as she wished, but at the last second she found the excuse. She walked to them, proffering a “tip” as would befit a customer of her stature, and as the hundred-dollar bills were exchanged, she shook their hands with such power that the squeezes would remain in their memories.

  And then the door closed, the Falcon turned onto the single long runway, and she held her breath until it finally rose into the early eastern sun, barely clearing the Maryland pines. . . .