The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  “I wish to destroy them. I am glad you understand that — but not surprised. You are a ruthless man in the business world. It had even occurred to me that you are ruthless enough to have ordered the assassination of my wife and son, simply to influence me to join you. But I do not believe you are that ruthless. And I believe you and I want to destroy the same people.”

  “Excellent. First, there are some things I should explain.” Becker sat down beside the general.

  “You are right. I am as anxious to wipe out such people as you are. I myself lost a wife and son, whom I loved dearly, in an act of terrorism. I have perhaps prepared my revenge ruthlessly. But I have not given way to animal anger. We will destroy those who killed our innocents. But we will not destroy innocents ourselves.

  “Let me tell you about Standfast. It is a member company of the Becker Group. It is answerable only to me. There are twelve subsidiaries of Standfast throughout Europe. The organization is primarily concerned with the protection of property and the security of money in transit, although we have such other interests as the care of individuals whose lives have been threatened, the guarding of airlines and shipping companies, and a substantial department concerned with the prevention of fraud.

  “Standfast has more employees in this country than there are policemen, and our total European force now outnumbers the combined armies of Britain and Germany. As Europe is forced to slash away at its police and armed services, we thrive and increase. It is a wholesome tribute to private enterprise.”

  “But you don’t carry arms?”

  “Not in this country. The law does not allow it.”

  “Then how can you hope to take on well-armed thugs?”

  “We will discuss that. Our European companies have sidearms and shotguns. I suspect that you, as a soldier, do not approve of civilians bearing arms?”

  “Not the sort of bastards who killed my wife. Mind you, a lot of my attitudes were changed at my son’s funeral. But tell me, Becker, what you want of me.”

  “General Appleyard, our intelligence unit is composed of three divisions: industrial, economic and political. The political branch has five hundred operatives who have infiltrated every left-wing, right-wing, anarchist, Trotskyite, conventional and unconventional activist group in this country and on the Continent.

  “Various counterespionage organizations of Europe and Britain probably know of this, but they are reluctant to act — because of lack of funds, or political corruption, or downright apathy.”

  Appleyard watched a passing pleasure boat on the river below. He felt for his pipe.

  “I’m a soldier, not a politician,” he said. “What use could I be to you?”

  “We’re looking for a soldier, General. More evidence of your need will be revealed to you in the coming weeks.”

  “Will it reveal the names of the bastards who killed my family?”

  Becker stood up. “Come with me, please, General.”

  Appleyard followed him through the anteroom, where two secretaries sat typing. He was led into a long, narrow room, curtained at one end, with several luxurious armchairs on the opposite side.

  “Please sit down.”

  Becker stationed himself at a control console. Lights dimmed and the curtains slid quietly open. Becker said: “The preview theater. We have one in every major capital of Europe. Everything seen here can be repeated all over the Continent simultaneously. A useful device.”

  The projector hummed quietly from behind Appleyard.

  “I’m going to show you the assassins of your son and Lady Appleyard,” said Becker. His tone was almost offhand.

  Numbers on the screen counted down to six. There was a soft bleep on the speakers.

  “This will not be pleasant, General. I ask an assurance that any action you take will be in concert with me.”

  Appleyard’s mouth was dry.

  Becker pushed a button on the console and the film began to roll.

  The first sequence was of a young man with a thick mustache and unkempt hair, wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt decorated with a picture of Yasser Arafat. He wore sandals and no socks. His arm was around a girl with long blond hair, dressed in a kaftan of printed cotton. She was barefoot.

  The film had clearly been taken in the main departure lounge of London’s Heathrow Airport number-two terminal.

  The man carried a copy of the Daily Mail. Appleyard could read the headline: GENERAL’S WIFE SLAUGHTERED AT SON’S GRAVESIDE.

  The young man was laughing. The girl beside him smiled.

  Becker pressed another button, and the smiling face of the young man was held in a frozen frame. Appleyard noted that the teeth were bad.

  “Munthe. Eric Carolus,” said Becker. “Aged thirty. Occupation, student and truckdriver. Home address, Norrkoping, Sweden. Four convictions for political terrorism. Explosives expert. Last sentence, life, for murder by bombing American consul in Copenhagen. Escaped from prison last year.”

  The film flickered, and then the girl’s face took its place on screen.

  “Kristina Mueller. Aged twenty-two. Occupation, student. Home address. Baden Baden. No convictions, but suspected of complicity in three bombings in Paris and Lyons, and wanted for interrogation by police in France and Germany.”

  Appleyard sat very still.

  “These are ...”

  “The killers of your son, General. The girl worked as an au pair for an Eton College master and his wife. She had given notice two weeks before the bombing and her departure was not particularly noted. The man stayed at the Star and Garter Hotel in Windsor, working as a temporary porter.

  “We have forensic evidence taken from both their rooms that proves conclusively that chemicals of the type used in the manufacture of this bomb were in their possession.

  “There is other evidence, General, in the files you will be provided with. We pass on.”

  The girl’s face disappeared from the screen. There were a few seconds of blankness and a new film appeared. A middle-aged man walked slowly along a street that was recognizably a suburb of Paris. He was a small man, with a heavily pockmarked face. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and tie.

  Becker stopped the frame.

  “Mohammed Abdul Hasik. Aged fifty-five. Native of Palestine. Member of Palestine Liberation Organization until dismissed. Thrice captured and convicted for hijacking offenses. Thrice freed after international hostage-taking. Expert marksman. Believed responsible for three political assassinations in Greece, Ghana and Bolivia.

  “The weapon used in the killing of your wife was a .300 Armalite rifle. Hasik was known to be in possession, until two weeks ago, of such a gun, serial number 386957(35). The weapon is now missing from his room in Montmartre.

  “Again, there is further evidence which I will readily furnish.”

  The curtains closed and the lights came on. Appleyard continued to look at the curtain.

  “I see what you mean about private enterprise,” he said. “It seems to work. Special Branch assumes that it was the work of Irish terrorists.”

  “A natural assumption. Come, General. Now I think you do need a drink.”

  In the boardroom, on the second floor of the house, Becker studied the general’s face with care. One thing was certain in his reading: the general had been greatly impressed by what he had seen.

  “The British government would pay millions for an intelligence network that produced results like that,” Appleyard said.

  “They wouldn’t,” said Becker, “They haven’t the millions to spend. This particular intelligence was gathered at speed because, first, we happened recently to have infiltrated certain groups to whom these three people were attached, and second, to impress you.”

  “Where are these people?”

  “You’ll know in just a moment. As you said, your Special Branch assumed it was an Irish revenge by Irishmen. Unfortunately, it is going to take a long time before the authorities accept the fact that cooperation among terrorist organizations
in Europe has become close, effective and highly sophisticated. We are absolutely certain that many gunmen in Northern Ireland are from all parts of Europe, just as we know that Irishmen are serving in, say, German groups. They are serving with dubious distinction with the Bader Meinhoff Brigade, the Maquis de Corse, the Fifty-six Commando in Calabria and so on.”

  “Question,” said the general. “Why not give these names to the police?”

  “Your scrupulous nature once again,” said Becker. “Arrest them — and then what? Life sentences and they immediately become martyrs. Six months later, some poor British or American or Swedish consul is kidnapped and the prisoners are released and flown off to Libya to a hero’s welcome. We’ve seen it all before. Too often.”

  Chivers joined them. He, too, looked carefully at Appleyard’s face.

  “Well, General?” he said quietly.

  “I am impressed.”

  Becker poured a brandy into a glass for Appleyard, and added a small measure of soda. Chivers asked for orange juice. Becker poured himself a dry sherry. Handing the drink to the general, he spoke softly, with compassion in his voice.

  “One thing I have learned from grief,” he said, “is that none of the kind clichés offered by friends about time’s healing have any truth. All my life since that time has been governed by a fearful urge to avenge. I know exactly where to find the men and women who plotted the hijacking of the aircraft in which my wife and child were killed. I know their names, the cafés they inhabit, every detail of their lives. I could, with absolute ease, pick up a telephone in this room and guarantee their deaths within twenty-four hours — deaths that could take the most monstrous forms I chose.”

  Appleyard was motionless.

  “You have seen the killers of your family. Eric Munthe and the girl are living in one room at four Rue des Alpes in Grenoble. They are known as Herr and Frau Krebs. The Arab, Hasik, returned today to Frankfurt, where he is in transit for Libya. His address is Apartment four-B, Viktorstrasse, over a Dr. Mueller’s sex shop.

  “General, you are in possession of a remarkable armory at your home. It has been noted by our detectors that you are armed at the moment, probably with a Webley service-issue revolver. You are free, if you choose, to destroy these people at your leisure.”

  “You surely wouldn’t blame me?”

  “No, sir. The desire for vengeance can be all-consuming. It is also usually self-destructive and counterproductive. If acted upon in fury, that is. But if it’s directed by cold and merciless logic, it can be a tremendous force — which should be harnessed for the public good.”

  Appleyard drank his brandy.

  “Vengeance is not exactly English, Becker.”

  Becker burst out laughing.

  “You mean it’s the sport of only wogs and wops? Come, come, Appleyard. I have every reason to seek vengeance — but I also have a major business combine to protect. That’s why I would like you to conduct my vengeance for me. I’m just a businessman. You are a trained soldier.”

  “The job?”

  “To organize Standfast as an efficient counterterrorist army, trained in complete secrecy. They must be prepared to wipe out all terrorist organizations, simultaneously, on a given day one year from now.”

  The general finished his brandy in a gulp. He stood up. “Christ,” he said.

  “There are three hundred terrorist cells in Europe,” said Becker. “Fifty of them are active, the other quiescent. When the heat grows too fierce, they change roles. Men of violence become allegedly innocent trade-unionists and devote themselves to industrial disruption.

  “A Breton nationalist bomb squad in St. Nazaire will disband quietly and a few weeks later there’s a renewal of bombings and riots in Glasgow and Calabria.

  “You have seen the pattern in Ireland. A short cease-fire, during which both sides have time to rearm and re-group, and then the bloody war is on again.”

  Chivers had sat quietly through all this, watching the general’s face.

  Appleyard had followed the arguments keenly, nodding occasionally, his eyes never leaving Becker’s.

  “It would be a hell of a bloodbath if it happened,” he said.

  “When it happens.”

  “We would need to be absolutely sure we were hitting the right people.”

  “We will be.”

  Chivers stood up and walked to the window.

  “Your car, General ... a Morris?”

  “Yes. Olive green. Is the meter running out?”

  “Did you ask the Automobile Association to look at it?”

  “Don’t belong to them. RAC, myself.”

  “Take a look.”

  Appleyard looked down at the street below. A mini-van in the bright colors of the AA was double-parked alongside his car. Two men in the green-yellow AA uniform stood by it. One seemed to be watching the house; the other stood over the opened engine hood.

  Chivers walked to a sideboard and spoke into an intercom.

  “Two men in a phony AA van, index number Mike Oscar Bravo two-one-zero Queenie outside. Probably planting a turnip. Watch, but don’t detain. Await instructions.”

  Becker held his glass of pale sherry to the light. “Your car has been bombed, General. It’s an interesting development, indeed, which will help me show you the way we think.

  “We could very quickly detain these men and question them. They wouldn’t give away a lot under interrogation, even with so-called truth drugs. If we follow them — as we can, most efficiently, from here to the other side of the moon if necessary — we will probably learn a great deal more. Slowly, maybe, but at the end of the inquiry we will probably have another forty or so names on our computer.

  “By knowing those people, and being in a position to attack them in one concerted movement, we will eventually save a great many innocent lives and ensure a much happier Europe.”

  Becker sipped his sherry.

  “General? Your decision?’

  Appleyard looked down at the two men by his car. “Follow them. You are quite right.”

  “Welcome to Standfast, General Appleyard. Chivers, will you organize the rest as far as those two men are concerned. And make sure that the general’s car is cleaned. We don’t want to lose our new commander-in-chief.”

  OVER ELBA, 0000

  The ease with which they had succeeded so far brought a feeling almost of anticlimax to the men in the aircraft. Tiring now, they spoke little. They had been in flight for seven and a half hours.

  Becker sent them to rest in shifts. He alone seemed to have gained energy from watching the pattern of victory chatter out on the machinery in the aircraft.

  In the past two hours, with the military safely contained, he had watched the computer report the steady stream of arrests taking place throughout Europe. There had been no need to detain the entire French cabinet, or to rout each member of the Italian House of Deputies from their homes and beds. Europe had known too many nights of long knives to take kindly to a private concern that smashed down doors and hauled helpless men and women into trucks in the middle of the night.

  Becker had whittled a list of thirty thousand politicians, union leaders and known industrial agitators down to fewer than four hundred. Each arrest was ordered to be made “with maximum discretion.”

  Without an army, without television, and with sixty per cent of the newspapers and radio stations in Europe in Becker’s control, how effective could any liberal politician be?

  It was past midnight.

  He called the captain of the Petite Concorde on the intercom and asked how much fuel they had left.

  *

  The principal studios of the European Broadcasting Union had once been situated in the production complex of the Radiodiffusion Television Belge, in the suburbs of Brussels. But with increasing political pressure exerted by certain member states of the Common Market, a new center had been built, sufficiently separate from Radiodiffusion Television Belge to satisfy the critics. It was newly situated near Wat
erloo.

  This block of buildings was the center of news and documentary material gathered from members of the Union; it acted as a relayer of news from communist countries via their network, Intertel. Eurovision had been under attack for political bias, even though it was a completely nonpolitical organization. Its employees were fierce in its defense, for they, more than most, realized the potential of their position.

  The Eurovision satellite could transmit a picture simultaneously to an audience of over three hundred million people. It allowed for fifty-voice channels, which meant it could accompany that picture in all of the European languages via the individual television stations that made up the Eurovision grid.

  Tonight, there were only ten men in this normally crowded building. They sat at large control consoles facing a gleaming cliff of television monitors. One studio was passing a performance of Don Giovanni, recorded earlier that evening at La Scala, Milan, from the transmitter of Radiotelevisione Italiana by land line to the studios of Nederlandse Televisie Stichting in Hilversum. In an adjoining room, others were trying to trace a color fault in the satellite’s transmissions to Great Britain and Sweden. The complete system had been thoroughly checked during the day. There would be a massive audience for tomorrow’s football match. It had to be right.

  As the opera came to an end and the cameras turned on an ecstatic La Scala audience, the first controller watched the RAI credits appear on the screen. From a separate loudspeaker he heard the voice of the Italian vision mixer calmly counting the seconds to the end of the program. Exactly on cue, he superimposed the starstudded emblem of Eurovision on the screen as a final credit. He talked briefly to the director in Milan and complimented him on the production. Then they both waited as Hilversum made a spot check of the videotape.

  The Italian was already in his raincoat when the Dutch technician called through the speaker and confirmed that all was well. As the Italian left the studio, his colleagues next door, having traced the color fault, were signing off to London and Stockholm.

  A few minutes later the entire production complex was empty except for one night watchman. Financial stringency had forced Eurovision to dismiss the former uniformed guards.