The Nylon Hand of God

by Steven Hartov

  “Trigger units, this is Ranger. Wrap it up. We’re on the road.” He paused for a moment as he thought, then he keyed the mike again. “Alpha, you copy?”

  Lane’s voice crackled back. “Loud and clear.”

  “Call Bethesda. Tell the boys, ‘The cookie’s in the jar,’ or some such hokey nonsense. Affirmative?”

  “Roger that,” Lane’s voice replied. There was a smile in it.

  “And Alpha,” the doctor added. “One more thing. Deep-six the IDs. No souvenirs. You read?”

  “Loud and sadly,” said Lane.

  “Out here.”

  The doctor dropped the Uniden back in the box. He sat back and sighed, then dug into his overcoat pocket and came up with a pack of Marlboros. He lit one and rolled the window down a crack, blowing smoke and steam into the frigid night.

  This whole scenario was shaky enough, and he reminded himself to make sure that Sprengel and Lane followed through and destroyed the badges and identification cards. Relations between Langley and the Bureau were always borderline hostile, and it would not be good to have Company personnel caught with forged FBI documents. No, not good at all. As it was, when Jack Buchanan realized that someone had conned his TTF people off a surveillance, he would be running around like a monkey with its tailbone ablaze.

  He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the Cabrini ID, and began bending the plastic rectangle like the credit card of a teenager who had abused the privilege. At his home in Virginia, he kept a secret collection in a floor safe, one small item from each of the covers he had used throughout his career. But this mission was about as unsanctioned as a wiretap on the Pope, and Dr. Kradjel would have to expire without a trace.

  He wondered if it would all be worth the risks, if it would pay off in the desert four thousand miles away. Baum’s fax from Casablanca had been clear enough. It was a desperate request, almost a plea, but the logic seemed sound, and there was nothing to do but go for it. Clever, and still sharp, that Benni Baum. He hadn’t lost it yet, and having no means to encrypt, he had typed out the fax in English characters, phonetically creating a long message in Hebrew.

  “CHAVER SHELI. YESH LI BAKASHAH ELECHAH . . . My friend. I have a request . . .”

  He reminded himself to give a copy to the cipher team, just to watch them sweat over it.

  The rear doors of the ambulance slammed, and the driver hopped up into the cab and started the engine. The Malibu cruised by on the right. The doctor turned to the window at the back of the cab and slid it open as they began to roll. The nurse was seated on a side bench. She smiled and offered a thumbs-up.

  He could see the old woman in the steel chair, its wheels clamped to the floor. She was playing with her treats, excited by the prospect of a small adventure, a respite from her days and nights, one upon the next, all of them the same.

  “Keep her comfortable, Roxanne,” Art Roselli said to the nurse. “Let’s not get ourselves convicted for abuse of the elderly, in addition to kidnapping.”

  Fouad Ibn Khalid Fasjee had not slept in nearly twenty-four hours.

  His eyes stung as he peered out through the blurred windshield of the Honda. The cold rain hammering the roof aggravated his headache tenfold, and the mealy taste in his mouth could not be salved by any food he forced into his jittery stomach.

  It was not that his partner, Fahmi, who was snoring in a sleeping bag on the rear seat, had not offered to stand his share of the watches. It was just that each time Fouad had switched, he found himself tossing inside the damp cocoon like a bagged cat and wound up staring at the car’s ceiling.

  It was madness, to be parked here for days on the grounds of an American naval hospital. Yes, they moved the car from time to time, but they were forced to stay within sight of the main entrance. This, too, was foolishness, for it would have required a team of twenty to properly cover the building exits.

  True, Martina had explained to them that their presence was the essential factor, proof to Colonel Baum that she still maintained a contingent on U.S. soil, a suggestion that he and Fahmi were only the tip of an iceberg of operatives. Yet as each hour passed, it appeared ever clearer that they had been abandoned as sacrifices.

  By now the Americans had surely found the hidden hearse and limousine, taken fingerprints, logged evidence. Composites of himself and Fahmi were certainly in the hands of hundreds of policemen, detectives, intelligence agents. Federal prosecutors had amassed reams of charges, which, including the naval officer and police detective in New York, the Marines in Maryland, and Baum’s daughter, added up to assault, murder, kidnapping, hijacking, theft, sabotage, and Allah knew what else.

  He gripped the steering wheel and stared up at the stone hospital edifice, imagining that behind each darkened window, men with binoculars were laughing at him.

  “Koos ochtach arss,” he cursed under his breath, then immediately admonished himself for his flagging faith. He summoned some logic, dredging up the calm that had saved him from bolting during three endless days and freezing nights.

  He and Fahmi were still there, and unmanacled. There had to be a reason for that. No radio report or newspaper had mentioned any of the dramatic incidents, yet surely if Martina and the other men had been caught or killed, the American media would be celebrating in their typically orgasmic fashion, even if at first their government had suppressed news of the convoy ambush. And if Martina had wanted them to withdraw, she would have made contact through the relays. But the cellular phone in the Honda never rang.

  The silence could mean only one thing. It was a stalemate. Martina still held the Minnow and the girl, Baum was still in his bed, and no one dared ignite a chain of explosive events.

  He looked down at the telephone hidden in a small orange backpack, its wire snaking out toward the cigarette lighter, the plug nearly obscured by a pile of cold butts. Fouad had not smoked in nearly five years, but after the first maddening day on the hospital grounds, he had bought a carton of Kents and begun to ravage it, for there was nothing to do here but smoke. And wait. Yes, there was a way to make contact with Martina, an overseas number he could call to relay a message. But his instructions were clear: to use it only if Baum departed from Bethesda, which to the best of his understaffed knowledge had not happened. What other message could he relay? We are here? Please tell us that you still love us?

  He almost laughed at his own pathetic weakness.

  He relaxed a bit and stretched his sore legs. Next time, he decided, if there is one, and Allah wills it, we shall rent a Lincoln. In his mind he pronounced it Linko-len.

  He reached into a paper bag and came up with a small bottle of orange juice. The citrus burned as it ran into his sleepless belly, and he reminded himself to tell Fahmi to switch to bottled water and buy some Alka-Seltzer.

  He decided to turn the engine over and switch on the radio. Even though the American disc jockeys and the thump of their godless music were annoying, the sounds filled some of the void of his loneliness. He found it difficult to understand the English lyrics of Western pop, so he missed the irony of U2’s soft lament.

  Sleight of hand and twist of fate,

  On a bed of nails she makes me wait . . .

  A stalemate. Well, if they were intended as sacrificial lambs, while roped to this tree they seemed to be serving some purpose. God would surely reward such loyalty.

  Fouad stared across the rain-washed roofs of the other parked cars toward the entrance of the hospital. It was early evening, and the lights blazed behind the high glass facade, the lobby draining of occupants as visiting hours ended. He had come to know the rhythm of the building: when the human traffic peaked and when it bled off; when the military staff changed shifts, the cleaners appeared and departed; how patients being dismissed were always taken to the front door in wheelchairs, no matter their condition.

  In the past few days, perhaps twenty-five men fitting Colonel Baum’s description had been escorted from the facility. For one reason or another, he and Fahmi had eliminated
most of them, comparing the faces to the late Iyad’s surveillance photographs; this one too fat, that one too slim. Some were met by large, happy families, while others had limbs encased in plaster casts. On three occasions, when he was really unsure, he had quickly called the hospital and asked if Mr. Benjamin Baum was still registered. Once, he was inadvertently patched through to Baum’s room, and when the heavy voice answered with a fatigued “Yes?” he hung up.

  Now his eyes suffered the curse of the exhausted watcher, his vision slipping into a watery blur. As he tried to summon the resolve for another painful hour, something behind the glass walls thirty meters away caused his nodding head to stiffen straight up. Without taking his eyes off the building, he gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward, then reached for the wiper switch and swept the blades once across the wavering windshield.

  It was something about the way the three men walked, the composition of the trio. Two American Marine officers were striding across the lobby, approaching the door from the direction of the wards. Between them, they shepherded a third man. He was wearing a blue hospital robe, and the cuffs of his pajamas flapped above slippers. He was slightly shorter than his escorts, or at least appeared to be so, because they wore peaked caps, while he was hatless.

  And rather stocky.

  And bald.

  “Fahmi,” Fouad whispered as he watched the procession. Then, like a man who has lost his way in an unfamiliar suburb, he switched off the radio, as if the silence might help.

  “Fahmi!” He nearly yelled, and he heard the alarmed gasp from behind as his partner jumped up.

  “What? What is it?” Fahmi stuttered, wrestling to the surface of his dreams.

  Slowly Fouad pointed out through the windshield. Fahmi slipped his head between the front seats and rubbed his eyes briskly, forcing them open, wider.

  “Is that him?” Fahmi whispered.

  The three men had reached the double exit of the lobby now. The first set of doors slid open.

  “It is more than possible.” Fouad looked to both sides of the exit, searching for a vehicle at the curb that might snatch Baum away from him. But no such car appeared to fill the role.

  The outer doors opened, and the men stepped out into the driving rain. They did not look up at the sky, or pull their coats or robe closer about them. They did not hesitate.

  They came straight on, heading for the Honda.

  Fahmi spat an Arabic curse and arched back, fumbling on the floor for a knapsack, coming up with the Beretta that Mussa had left behind. He quickly checked the magazine, rammed it home, and chambered a round, the slide ringing like a hammer on a horseshoe.

  “Put it down, Fahmi,” Fouad ordered quietly. The marching men were much closer now, only ten meters away, but the reason for his urgent suggestion became clear to Fahmi as he looked up again.

  From four other vehicles parked close to the Honda—cars that had appeared locked up and empty—other men had emerged, silently taking up positions at short range from Fouad’s car.

  They wore dark clothes and baseball caps, and beneath their open jackets they gripped the gleaming bodies of MP-5 submachine guns.

  Fahmi slowly placed the Beretta on the back seat and raised his trembling palms.

  The strange trio halted just off Fouad’s front left fender. The wide bald man waited while one of the anonymous gunmen posted himself directly in front of the car, fully exposing the barrel of his weapon.

  The bald man approached the driver’s side, and Fouad’s mouth opened even wider. He was stunned that Colonel Baum should have the audacity to confront him so directly, given the value of the human treasure that Martina held in her grasp. The audacity of Israeli officers was legendary, but this one was surely mad.

  He rapped on the glass with a large knuckle.

  Fouad rolled the window down, and his visitor bowed forward, nearly inserting his face into the car. The man was smiling. Not broadly, but the expression was one of great confidence, showing none of the fury that should have been present in the eyes of a nemesis. Rather, it was the arrogant pose of a magician who had just duped a nightclub audience.

  The days of sleepless angst and poor nutrition suddenly fermented in the pit of Fouad’s stomach. He stared up at the smiling face, then snapped his head down to the car seat, flicking his eyes over Iyad’s photographs. Then he looked up again. He felt Fahmi’s hot breath behind his ear.

  The bald man spoke casually, in pure, unaccented American English.

  “As you can see, young man,” said the CIA officer, his voice raised a bit above the drumming of the rain, “I am not Colonel Benjamin Baum.”

  Fouad wanted to reply, to respond to this breach of Martina’s demands with a powerful threat. But nothing emerged from the dry well of his throat.

  “Colonel Baum is in North Africa,” the man continued. “By tomorrow, Ms. Klump’s mother will join him there.” He paused to make sure the facts had been absorbed, then reached into the pocket of his robe and tossed a white card into Fouad’s lap. “Tell your boss that Baum is willing to make an exchange.”

  Fouad forced himself to drag his eyes from the man’s face. He looked down at the card. It held nothing more than a telephone number.

  When he raised his head again, all but one of the men were gone. Vehicles were rolling out of the lot, and the driving rain spattered the hot skin of his cheek.

  The lone gunman remained facing them from beyond the front bumper. He slowly returned his submachine gun beneath his jacket. But before he turned away, he raised his naked finger, pointed it, and shot Fouad between the eyes.

  Chapter 19: The Mediterranean

  General Itzik Ben-Zion was suffering a thundering sensory reminder that, compared to the gnatlike political machinations of the earth’s human nations, the power of the sea was like the hoof of a bull elephant.

  He had almost forgotten, for it had been so many years since that short summer between his high school graduation and his induction into the army. He had found work aboard a Zim cargo vessel sailing out of Haifa, and it was there, aboard that chunk of moaning steel, that he first realized how sailors were like airplane passengers,leaving logic at home while they trusted mechanical concoctions to see them through the cruelest whims of the heavens. He remembered how even the balm of August could suddenly betray. The sun would disappear, the blue sky would blacken, and the summer glass of the Mediterranean would boil into a million foam-topped knuckles. Now, in the midst of winter, the plain before him was a mass of gray-green welts, whipped into frenzy by some cosmic blender.

  He stood just forward amidships of the Aliyah, a Saar 4.5 class missile boat of the Israeli Navy, gripping the starboard rail with his right hand, keeping his combat boots glued to the rolling deck. His left hand floated in the air for balance, a blue baseball cap hooded his eyes, the collar of his officer’s jacket whipped around his neck, and he looked as if he were controlling the pitching vessel with his body.

  Itzik had already spent so much time on deck that the Aliyah’s crew had begun to refer to him as HaGolesh Hametooraf. The Mad Surfer.

  By any maritime standard, the Saar 4.5 was not a large vessel. The shark-gray fast attack craft was merely sixty-two meters from the bow to the stern, where a contingent of naval commandos had lashed their rubber Zodiac and a Snunit assault craft. Yet crammed as she was with a complement of forty-five officers and men, plus four Gabriel Mark II surface-to-surface missile launchers, an OTO-Melara 76 mm gun turret, a Vulcan Air Defense System, a Barak surface-to-air missile system, various 20 mm, 0.5 inch, and 7.62 mm guns, and all the accompanying ammunition, stores, fire-control radar, electronic countermeasures, and antisubmarine warfare systems, her four diesels could still drive her light alloy hull at thirty-two knots. She also doubled as one of Israel’s only “aircraft carriers,” having a landing platform abaft the superstructure to service an Aerospatiale AS-365 Dolphin helicopter, which served a multipurpose role in ASW, target acquisition, and air-sea rescue.

  She was
a fast and formidable offensive craft, and her crew claimed she had all the sailing properties of an inflated condom powered by a skyrocket.

  Itzik watched the bow as it rose lazily into the pale-purple sky, then dove forward into an arching wave, scooping hissing foam onto the deck. While the props struggled for a bite, the ship rolled hard to starboard, then to port, and the whole process began again, with each forward thrust the hull’s impact sounding like an oil drum being pummeled by a rubber mallet. There was no rain from the high flat clouds, but the wind clipped off the wavetops, spewing up horizontal precipitation. Itzik almost smiled as he thought of the environmentalists fretting that man would soon destroy the earth. An hour at sea, and you quickly realized that man would destroy only himself and a few unfortunate fellow creatures, while the earth would hardly notice.

  The ship proceeded on a northwestern course toward the Aegean, accompanied by two smaller Saar 4’s, just dots on the puffy horizon far astern. Although the small patrol’s destination was a point just off Cap Ras-Tarf, Morocco, it would follow a nauseating zigzag for the purposes of deception and arrive on station just an hour before the appointed rendezvous.

  Over the next forty-eight hours, the Aliyah would steam due west past Crete, northwest toward Sicily, and west again between that island and Malta. Then they would turn northwest toward Sardinia, continue west for the Balearic Islands, and finally make a midnight run for the rendezvous point, code-named Gold Ring, just 1.5 kilometers off a deserted strip of Moroccan beach.

  Unless the offer to exchange Dan Sarel for Sheik Sa’id was an Iranian idea of a geopolitical practical joke, a small “Liberian” trawler would be anchored there, and the deal would be consummated.

  Itzik welcomed the cold, salty gusts that slapped his face and tried to take his hat. Unlike many landborne officers who were occasionally called upon to join special operations at sea, he was not on deck because he was ill. He needed to be alone, to ponder the operational pitfalls, and the crowded working quarters of the Aliyah offered no solitude. So he exposed himself to the elements, for he also suspected that he had lost some of his good sense and might benefit from a beating by Mother Nature.