Foxcatcher

by William H Hallahan

  Dmitri in Alexandria had a sobering message. He told Rock how the girl’s uncle, Fawzi, was killed by her family. In detail.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rock said. “Inhuman bastards, aren’t they?”

  The only other conversation of interest to McCall was about binary explosives.

  Rock was speaking to a man named Beeldad in Madrid: “I have to deliver some binary stuff to six different locations in the next two weeks for you-know-who. So you have to get me what we talked about within the next few days. Can do?”

  Beeldad assured Rock he could do. He was delighted to be working once again with such an old friend.

  “Meet me in Paris,” Rock said, “and we’ll talk.”

  There were twenty-three phone conversations on the tape, but at the end Rock had not revealed where he would be on November 26. Probably because he himself didn’t know. Yet.

  The moment McCall had been dreading had arrived. It was time to sign up two assassins, one for Rus and one for Slane. And he knew just whom to turn to. He told his secretary to book a flight to Paris with a stopover in London.

  At the end of a long day McCall picked up his phone and called Borden. “Have you any news about Attashah yet?”

  “We’re still working on it,” said Borden.

  McCall sat back wearily at his desk, rubbing his eyes and gathering himself for the drive through traffic to his home. Where the hell was that wily Iranian? Had he signed anyone up yet?

  Without preamble, the Tumbler shouted his last mortal utterance, falling, falling, falling. Silence.

  Late October in the Baja Californian desert: It reminded Slane of home—the Australian Outback.

  He stepped down from the truck and felt his boot-soles crunch on the wind-polished hardpan. Before him stood the abandoned barracks and service buildings. The terrain rippled away in all directions, a desert dotted with saguaro cactus. The sun made him squint.

  Behind him, coming up the road, the other trucks whined, laden with military matériel, movie equipment, and base supplies.

  He was following the dictator’s original route to the presidential palace of the Leeward Island Free State. Using the man’s own map to the vault.

  On November 26 he would be dining in the presidential palace, a very wealthy man.

  “Now, Major,” said Peno Rus, “we must make this the most impressive seminar on arms planning and usage ever offered. After it is over, I want a spontaneous outcry from all those who weren’t invited, demanding a repeat performance.”

  “Time is very tight, isn’t it?” Major Mudd asked. He looked at the unwavering small brown eyes of his employer. Mongol blood in there somewhere.

  “Yes, Major, but we can make it. Understand, please, that in a very short time we will be the world’s leading independent small arms merchant. I want our customers and prospects to turn to us not only for their hardware needs but with their problems. This seminar will establish our expertise.”

  “I’m talking about issuing the invitations. November twenty-second is a very short time away.”

  “Ah! That’s no problem, man. We are limiting this first seminar to less than one hundred. I’ve already chatted informally with dozens of our best customers, including Ney. The danger is we’ll be oversubscribed. By the way, who do you suppose was one of the first to sign up?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Ney himself. Even he can see the times are changing.”

  “What will the fee be?”

  “Five thousand pounds per head.”

  Abruptly a man was standing in front of Rock’s table in the Café Chanticleer in Paris.

  “Mr. Rock, may I have a few words with you?”

  The guy looked as if he might be an American businessman. Tall, thin, and fair-haired, he wasn’t an arm-bender and certainly not an Egyptian. Rock said, “That depends. Who are you?”

  “May I sit down? My name is Rumbh.”

  Rock and Rumbh drank new Beaujolais and talked the evening away.

  Rumbh said, “I have an assignment that only you may be able to handle. But first let me give you some background. Recently I used a group that calls itself the Third of September. You know them?”

  “No,” Rock said. “There are hundreds of gangs like that.”

  “I gave them a car bomb assignment from my client. They made three attempts and failed. Their leaders are in jail. And in the last bombing attempt their explosives expert blew all the fingers off his right hand.”

  Rock grinned at him. “Sounds like you need help.”

  “Wait. There’s more. My explosives vendor has also let me down. Bad merchandise. His bombs go ffffffft! I get blamed. My batting average is down around my socks. And my reputation is damaged.”

  “Things are no longer the way they were,” Rock said. “You can’t use amateurs anymore.”

  “Tell me about it,” Rumbh said.

  “With all the terrorist groups that are active,” Rock said, “you have to have a higher kill rate just to get in the papers. And if you want front-page stuff, you need state-of-the-art binary explosives that can really take out a lot of people in one shot. One or two deaths and a lost leg won’t do it anymore. You have to blow away forty, sixty at a time. I don’t think the papers in New York, London, or Paris will touch the ordinary bombing with less than sixty dead anymore. I’m talking front page. You can’t trust that kind of heavy-duty hitting to the nonprofessional. Especially since security is tighter than a flea’s ass. And getting tighter every day. You see what I’m saying?”

  Rumbh nodded.

  “I can’t sell sticks of dynamite out of the back of a truck anymore,” Rock said. “And you can’t hire guys to just jump on the nearest airplane with a suitcase full of explosives anymore, either. Opportunism is for small fry. This is the age of the specialist. You know what I mean?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  Rock pushed his wineglass out of the way. “No, it’s not obvious. Look. Suppose I sell a man a bomb to tuck under the chair of his enemy. And the bomb goes off. But if his enemy’s not in the chair at the right moment, it’s no consolation to my client that he got the bomb from the lowest bidder. It didn’t get the job done. His enemy is still living. All my client got for his money was a loud noise. I’ve sold him a perfectly good bomb but I haven’t solved his problem.”

  “So—”

  “So I don’t go in and say, I can sell you your bomb cheaper.’ No. I say, ‘What do you want the bomb to do? What is your problem? Let me help you solve it.’ Once he tells me, I can see he has the wrong plan. All his bomb is going to do is make chair splinters. Do you see what I am saying, Rumbh?”

  Rumbh grunted. “Go on.”

  “So I sell him a package—not just a bomb. And not just a criticism of his plan. I give him a plan that will work. I find out when the enemy is scheduled to sit on the chair. I discover how to get into the building and out again. I make maps and timetables. I plan the entire operation. And I deliver the explosives that will do the job. And no junk either. Nobody knows more about binary bombs than I do. I handle only the best stuff. Okay. What I’ve given him is a plan that will work. You see? He didn’t want to buy a bomb. He wanted to buy an assassination. My competitors sell him a bomb. I sell him a dead enemy.”

  “What makes you think you can make a better plan?”

  “Because I’m an expert. Your September guys don’t have access to the information I do. Or the knowledge and skill. All you have to do is follow my instructions, and I have a satisfied customer.”

  “I see.” Rumbh scratched his cheek thoughtfully.

  “Okay. Tell me what your problem is.”

  Rumbh cleared his throat. “My clients want to plant a bomb in a hotel in Cairo.”

  “Cairo?”

  “Right down your alley, Rock. I want to disrupt a love feast.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “A regional conference between rival factions,” Rumbh said. “They’re going to bury the hatchet.”

/>   “Go on.”

  “I want to break it up. I want them to get suspicious of each other. You read me? I want a bomb planted that they find before the big sit-down.”

  “Find?” Rock held up a hand. “You mean you don’t want it to go off?”

  “Oh, no. That’s the whole idea. Each side will accuse the other of planting it. It took the State Department nearly two years to get this sit-down. After they find the bomb, it’ll take State ten years to get these gooks to come within ten miles of each other.”

  “Okay,” Rock said. “What’s the big challenge?”

  “Getting the explosive into the hotel. The security is tighter than the skin on a snake. You may just be the only guy in the whole world who can get the bomb into that conference room.”

  “What hotel is it?”

  “Hotel Royal Nile.”

  “Well, it’s all very tempting, Mr. Rumbh. But the answer’s no.”

  “Come on, Rock. I haven’t even put the money on the table yet.”

  “Sorry, but Cairo is off-limits.”

  “Off-limits? What does that mean?”

  “Just that I don’t go there lately.”

  “Okay. Look. I need this job done. If you have a problem with some people in Cairo, I can take care of things for you. You read?”

  “You will, ha?”

  “Just give me the name and address, wait a day, and send a funeral wreath.”

  “Hmmm. That’s interesting. There’s more than one.”

  “How many?” Rumbh asked.

  “A family. Six or eight. Goddammed monsters, the lot of them. They just hacked a family member to pieces with swords.” “Swords?” Rumbh smirked at him.

  “So help me,” Rock protested. “They’re right out of the fourteenth century. These people don’t know what the word civilized means. But I don’t want them dead. I mean, there’s a girl and she’d hate me if—you get my drift?”

  “Okay. Listen, I can arrange to have the whole crew locked up for a few days so you can get in, plant the bomb, and get out again. All except the girl. What does that do for your libido?”

  “How do you arrange that?”

  “Friends in high places. I want this job done on November twenty-sixth. So tell me now who you want me to take care of.”

  Rock thought about the girl. Quickly he pulled out a pencil and a pad and wrote on it. Then he handed it to Rumbh.

  Rumbh stood up and pushed back his chair. “I’ll be back in a couple of days. Where do I reach you?”

  “Call my answering service.” He wrote the number down for Rumbh.

  “I’ll be back,” Rumbh said. “Pack your bags for Cairo.”

  Rock watched the man leave the restaurant. Was he really going to see her again?

  10

  Part #2XJT557 turned out to be a nightmare.

  Brewer’s first problem was identifying the maker. After searching through a number of directories and parts catalogues, he finally found the maker’s name in the Technical Resources Library of the American Microminiature Engineering Society on West 38th in Manhattan.

  Their “Annual Directory of Microchips” gave a brief history: #2XJT557 was an eighteen-year-old microchip and had recently been removed from seven different classified military parts lists. It had been used in only one piece of equipment, a military radar unit. Just below the entry for #2XJT557 was an entry for a second-generation chip—#2XJT557/A—listed as classified. Brewer had hit his first serious problem—and maybe his ultimate one: #2XJT557 was listed as a discontinued part. Finding one hundred new ones was out of the question.

  He sat by a library window in brilliant sunshine, watching a janitor across the street push-brooming autumn leaves into the gutter. When he finished he went down a flight of basement steps. The wind blew the leaves back onto the walk.

  Dice asked him: “If that chip is so hard to find, why don’t we get another model?”

  “Different circuits,” Brewer said. “No other chip will operate the equipment.”

  “Then let’s get a blank chip—a prom, I think they call it—and make all the copies you want.”

  “You don’t know much about military chips, do you, Dice?”

  “Nah. It’s not my rice bowl. Too complicated.”

  “Well, once upon a time the Russians were able to duplicate a top-secret military computer by buying a kid’s video game computer in toy stores. The toy had the same chip. Ever since then, more and more military chips are coded to prevent duplication. And that includes 2XJT557.”

  “Then let’s get a chip house to make a copy.”

  “To make a copy of that chip, we’d have to get the original tapes and masks from the manufacturer. Or we’d have to get the original chip and make accurate photographic blowups of it. Then we’d have to hire a semiconductor outfit to copy it, set up production, and make us a few hundred. Cost would be out of sight. And even if my client was willing to pay it, no company would make it; the penalties are very stiff, and most semiconductor makers have more business than they can handle anyway.”

  “Okay okay. I thought I’d ask.”

  Brewer drew a square on a bar napkin, one-quarter inch by one-quarter inch. “That’s all it is, not much bigger than a pinhead. And that little chip is a whole computer—a microprocessor. In that tiny area are maybe a couple of hundred thousand transistors that operate thousands of integrated circuits. And I need one hundred of them programmed as number 2XJT557.”

  “So where do we go from here?” asked Dice.

  “Try to buy used units from surplus dealers.”

  The next morning, Brewer and Dice sat down in adjacent hotel rooms, each with a directory of military surplus dealers. They worked steadily, calling cities across the country from the East Coast to the West Coast and asking each dealer in turn for used rebuffered slave radar units. They were finished by two in the afternoon; they hadn’t found one unit.

  Dice sat slumped back in his chair, wearily. “Now what?”

  “I have just one move left. You wait here until I get back.”

  This was one move Brewer dreaded.

  He took a cab over to the East Side and got out in front of an old high-rise residential building on 24th Street. He took the elevator to the tenth floor and, after pausing, reluctantly knocked on the door just below the nameplate: MYRON ELANDER.

  “Come in. It’s open.”

  The place hadn’t changed a bit. Elander’s apartment was as neat as a box of checkers except for the second bedroom. That was Elander’s office.

  A long white Formica counter that ran the length of one wall held a row of thick industrial-parts directories, each on a metal lectern. Elander sat at the counter, wearing a telephone headset and deftly turning the pages of one of the directories as he talked into the phone. He was sitting in a chrome and leather motorized wheelchair.

  All around him on the floor were piles of telephone directories from all over the world. Behind him, at a console, a woman sat typing invoices into a computer.

  When he saw Brewer he stopped in mid-sentence and gaped.

  “Listen, Anthony,” he said into the phone, “I’m going to have to get back to you. In an hour or so.” He looked again at Brewer. “Lucy,” he said to the secretary, “why don’t you take that stuff to the bank?”

  The two men watched her leave. The front door closed softly behind her.

  “Is my mouth hanging open?” Elander asked him.

  Brewer raised a limp hand in reply.

  “I never thought I’d see you again.”

  Brewer nodded mutely.

  “It must be important,” Elander said. “This is no social call. Right? Right?”

  “Business looks good.”

  “Well, now that you ask. If I was still with the Feds, I’d be earning the usual fishcake. This year I’ll probably make more than seven agents together. But if it’s any consolation, I’d go back to the way things were before—before the accident.”

  He looked old—much older than his
thirty-five years. And he looked unhealthy. A roll of fat bulged over his belt, something he never would have tolerated a few years before. His face had the colorless chalky finish one sees on hospital patients.

  “It still haunts me night and day,” Elander said. “And it’s going to hound me into my grave. Four years and eleven days,” Elander said.

  “Enough,” Brewer said.

  “It still hurts you? Think how it hurts me. She was my sister.”

  “Enough.”

  “What do you mean, enough? It’s never enough. Every day, day after day, life extracts another pound of flesh from me. There’s never enough penance.”

  “No one dumped that booze down your throat,” Brewer said, “or put you in that car but you.”

  “Tell me about it. That’s big news to me.”

  “Enough. Enough,” Brewer said.

  “No. It isn’t. It was very bad around here eleven days ago. That would have been the fourth wedding anniversary for the two of you.”

  “Mike,” Brewer said. “I can’t handle this.”

  “Then what did you come here for?” Elander waited for Brewer to speak, then said, “Well, there must be some reason you walked through that door on this particular day at this particular hour. Am I supposed to guess? Let’s see. You came to hear me apologize again. You came to make sure I’m not enjoying a minute of my life. Maybe, even, you came to forgive me. That it? Forgiveness?”

  “I came for a chat,” Brewer said.

  “A chat. That’s nice. I like chats. What do you want to chat about?”

  “I’m looking for a part.”

  “A part? You came for a part? Be damned. I was right. It’s not a social call. You came because you need something.”

  “That’s it, Mike. One part.”

  “A part. We don’t see each other or speak for—how many years now? And what do we talk about? A part. Welcome to the Court of Last Resort. That’s my business motto: If I can’t find the part, it doesn’t exist. Elander the pack rat.”

  Brewer said, “You look terrible.”

  “Go look in the mirror. I wrote you three letters during your trial. I wrote you two letters in prison.”