by Ian Barclay
Meanwhile, each day a Polaroid was mailed in a street box in a different part of L.A. The photo always showed a pretty nineteen-year-old with that day’s issue of the Los Angeles Times, to prove to Pop she was still alive and well. The FBI were intercepting these envelopes now in L.A., but this brought them not one step closer to rescuing the girl.
There was something the senator hadn’t told anyone. Like any good politician, he was wary of what he said. The first phone call had reminded him of something… The second made it clear. He knew who was calling him, demanding the ransom. The voice was disguised—yet it was the way the man had of speaking, the grammatical sentences, the way he paused to select the right word, which gave his identity away. He was an old boyfriend of his daughter’s. The senator remembered that he hadn’t approved of the young man as his daughter’s escort, suspecting that he was on drugs. The senator now reasoned that if his daughter had been kidnapped by someone known to her, she could not be expected to survive the kidnapping after the ransom was paid.
The FBI would play this by the book. They would get their man all right, and in all probability he would lose his daughter. He had one other alternative. He could hold back on this man’s identity and go after him by other means—with no holds barred, with none of the legal restrictions to which law enforcement agencies were subject.
The senator had once heard that his friend Charley Woodgate had a contact, some kind of paid assassin. He was careful how he asked so that this killer would not do a job on him for knowing too much. He explained to Charley Woodgate how he had heard disturbing stories and how he had used his senatorial power to quash them. He’d be pleased to do the same for the foreseeable future if Charley would do something for him in return. Money would not be involved. Charley was to regard it as an arrangement between gentlemen and friends.
Charley took the arm-twisting pretty well. His reply the next day was simple. His contact was happy to do the senator a favor. He would place himself in Los Angeles and have the suspect put under surveillance in Washington. The assassin’s name was Richard Dartley. Charley Woodgate told the senator that he couldn’t be of any more help except to pass on urgent messages to Dartley. The senator nodded his agreement, wondering secretly if this Dartley were imaginary—and if he were real, whether he was actually doing what Charley claimed he was.
Dartley was real and he was on the job. He hired outside help to do the surveillance, professionals who didn’t know or care who they were watching. Malleson took care of information flow. Dartley himself bided his time in Beverly Hills.
Every kidnapper’s great moment of vulnerability was the ransom pickup. That went wrong more times than anything else. Dartley’s plan was to hit them before they psyched themselves up for the pickup. He had no idea how many were involved—at least two, one in Washington and one in L.A. to hold the girl. The trunk of his burgundy Lincoln Mark VII—a nicely anonymous car in Beverly Hills, hired under a false name—was loaded with gear he might need, from rope ladders, two M16 automatic rifles, smoke grenades through ten-gallon containers of fresh water and gasoline to gas masks and an inflatable rubber dinghy. He had only to phone down for the car and it would be waiting for him in the area between the old and new sections of the Beverly Wilshire.
The plane was due in at 3:15. He allowed himself plenty of time—he knew how a small unexpected thing like a traffic jam or minor accident, even a flat tire, could spike a whole operation if time had not been allowed for unscheduled nuisances. He left his hotel, drove along Wilshire to Santa Monica Boulevard, and then the San Diego Freeway to the airport, exiting at La Tijera.
At thirty-seven, Richard Dartley was a little thick through the middle and his black crewcut was thinning a bit. His square jawed face had prominent cheekbones and hooded eyes, which were gray-green, like a wolf’s. His torso and limbs were muscular. He looked like—and was—the kind of man who ran ten miles a day, could party all night and work hard the next day, could come three times in a night with a hot chick.
He pulled the Mark VII to the curb where he could see the exit doors from TWA incoming flights. Things weren’t busy and he guessed he wouldn’t be hassled if he stayed with the car and kept out of the way. He passed the time flipping through the pages of a combat magazine in which jokers claimed to have single-handedly overwhelmed Cuban units in Angola and later in Nicaragua, decimated Viet Cong battalions and all the usual gung ho hero stuff that anyone who knew the real thing could see was plain bullshit.
Mid-twenties, athletic build, brown hair and of course the suit with the blue and white vertical stripes. He was easy to spot, like Malleson said. The subject knew his way and made straight for the stop for the rent-a-car courtesy trams. Avis and Budget trams came before the Hertz showed, and the subject let them go. He seemed relaxed and in no hurry.
After the subject boarded the Hertz tram, Dartley followed it at a distance, drawing close only when it stopped so he could see if anyone got off. No one did. When the tram left the airport area, he passed it and headed for the Hertz compound on Airport Boulevard, where he himself had rented his Lincoln a few days previously. He waited inside the compound until the subject found his assigned car, a blue Chrysler Le Baron. Dartley drove quickly to the exit and showed his Hertz agreement to the guard, who lowered the set of spikes in the road. He drove a short distance north on Airport Boulevard, pulled over, and waited for the blue Le Baron to appear.
While he waited, he drew his revolver from his shoulder holster and checked it. It was a Smith & Wesson M38 Bodyguard “Airweight” with a two-inch barrel. He spun the five-round cylinder and snapped it back in place. This short-barreled .38 was a backup gun rather than a main weapon, in Dartley’s opinion, but more than adequate for his present purposes, where concealment and reliability were more important than firepower.
The blue Chrysler Le Baron turned south. Dartley made a U-turn, followed the subject west on Century and south again on Sepulveda, into the tunnel beneath the airport runways. Through El Segundo and past Manhattan Beach, Dartley hung back and let the Chrysler take a big lead. Dartley guessed he didn’t have to be so cautious, since the subject seemed as carefree and unwatchful as before.
“This one’s a total amateur or he’s a genius,” Dartley muttered out loud.
He speeded up when the subject pulled off at Hermosa Beach and located him again on a road parallel but nearer the water. The subject turned right into a narrow road. Dartley nosed the front of his Mark VII around the corner, saw the Le Baron parking, and reversed to the curbside where he was hidden around the corner. Then he nosed around the corner again and saw the subject walking farther down the street. The man in the striped suit crossed another street and entered a pedestrians-only walkway to the beach.
Dartley dumped the Lincoln, grabbed his combat magazine, and headed for the beach like he was looking forward to a peaceful read. The houses on each side of the walkway were tiny and squeezed together in a hodgepodge of architectural styles, each with its miniature but highly individual garden of flowering bushes and tropical flowers, or stones and cacti. Down a gentle slope, the peaceful blue sky hung over the calm Pacific.
The guy in the striped suit stopped outside a house, looked back, and saw Dartley. He froze. Dartley kept on, strolling casually, magazine in hand. It was no good, and Dartley knew it. The guy was now staring at him, standing stock-still, his mind racing.
As he neared, Dartley smiled in a friendly way at the man still staring at him. He twisted the magazine into a tight roll.
“Who are you?” the subject asked in a fearful voice, aware that somehow things were coming to pieces, but unsure in what way.
Dartley thrust the rolled magazine into the man’s face. The top edge of the reinforced tube caught him at the base of the nostrils. His only sound was a whimper. Confused by pain, blinded by tears, swallowing his own blood, the man staggered.
Dartley slammed home a knuckles-up, straight right karate punch into his solar plexus, which knocked the air out of
him with such explosive force, Dartley and the walkway behind him was spattered by blood.
When the subject half turned as his knees gave way beneath him, Dartley chopped him over the left kidney. The guy in the striped suit collapsed like a wet paper bag.
Something caught Dartley’s eyes. A figure in the window of the house. A man with a big head had a big automatic pistol in his right hand and was leveling the barrel, steadying his right hand in his left palm… Dartley fell. Two bullets passed over him like crazed hornets a microsecond before he heard the shots and the window glass shattering.
He crawled the hell out of there, grabbing his magazine as he went. When he was clear of the house, he got to his feet and ran as hard as he could back to the Mark VII. His Smith & Wesson M38 Bodyguard “Airweight” was snug in his shoulder holster, but it was no good in this situation. Getting into a shooting war with that dude in the house would have led him into too many unknowns. First, he had no idea how many adversaries were in the house. Second, he had no way of knowing if the senator’s daughter was in the house. If she were, he would be endangering her by opening fire. Third, he’d end in the hands of the LAPD no matter how things went and be hanging out in precinct houses for months on end, explaining who, what and why, his cover blown.
The fella in the house might have his problems too, Dartley decided as he ran. If he had the girl in there, he would have to surface soon and move out. The gunshots could be enough to have the place surrounded in ten minutes—though Dartley had noticed no bystanders and knew how things like afternoon gunfire often seemed to go unnoticed in residential districts, dismissed as something innocuous. If the girl were in that house, he had to move, knowing that a stranger was onto the place. Dartley looked back before he reached his car. No one was moving yet. The man in the striped suit was still facedown in the walkway.
Dartley opened the trunk, tossed the magazine in, and took one of the two M16s. This automatic rifle had a Laser Arms Corporation laser gunsight mounted on the rear sight. Now, if the girl was in the house and there was no back exit, he might be in business.
Sure enough, in half a minute the man with the big head came out of the house, pistol in hand, pushing a girl in front of him as a shield, his long hairy left arm around her waist.
Dartley set the rifle barrel on the top of a fence. He touched the remote button on the laser gunsight and angled the barrel about until the red laser dot crossed and recrossed the kidnapper and his captive. Dartley knew he would have to be careful, since the red dot projected by the laser gunsight was much harder to see in sunlight than in the shade or, of course, by night.
Dartley’s advantage was that the kidnapper stood head and shoulders above his victim, giving Dartley some real estate to play with. He threw the red laser dot right on the middle of the man’s large face. That should be exactly where the bullet would impact when he fired the weapon. He squeezed the trigger.
The small, high-velocity bullet cracked open the kidnapper’s massive forehead. The lead projectile twisted into a shapeless mass and turned end over end through the brain tissue before bounding off the inside rear wall of the skull and plowing back through the brain again.
Sight faded from the kidnapper’s eyes and his mouth dropped open. The dead nerves loosened his fingers and the pistol fell from his grip. Then he collapsed stone dead at the girl’s feet.
She started to scream.
Dartley charged forward, grabbed her arm and shook her until she stopped.
“Who are you?” she demanded to know.
Dartley didn’t seem to hear. He was looking at the man in the blue-and-white striped suit, who was lying facedown, unmoving but breathing regularly. Dartley raised his right foot and brought his heel down in a vicious stomp on the back of the man’s neck.
The neckbone snapped with the crack of a dry branch.
The girl looked in Dartley’s cold, wolflike eyes and started screaming again.
“Shut up, bitch, and move your ass,” he said.
Awad and Zaid stood at a respectful distance from the president’s desk, silent, keeping their eyes on the richly carpeted floor in front of them or looking out the window. They did not let their presence intrude on the president’s consciousness as he sat working on papers. They could have stood like this for many hours without attracting attention to themselves. They had been summoned and they had come. That was enough. When Ahmed Hasan was ready to tell them what he wanted, that would be the time most suited to them.
Awad smelled of stale sweat. A sports shirt hung loosely over his big belly, and his baggy pants were held up uncertainly by a belt that went beneath rather than across his abdomen. His lips were thick and moist, his jowls unshaven, his teeth broken and green. Sunglasses hid his eyes.
Zaid was a walking cadaver. His sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, stooped shoulders, narrow bony hands, collapsed chest, and fleshless thighs made him look like a concentration camp victim or a hunger striker far gone. His tan suit looked as if it had been made for someone else, as it had, and one could easily imagine Zaid stripping it from a dead body for his own use, which he had. He had also killed the man, though not for the suit.
They waited quietly at a respectful distance from the president’s desk, enjoying the air conditioning and the opulence of the office, which reminded them of pictures they had seen of the interiors of great sheiks’ tents long ago, priceless carpets strewn everywhere, cushions, brasswork, scimitars… The president’s office had all these, plus teak and mahogany furniture in Western style, a stereo, color television, video recorder, plus closed-circuit TV, electronic security devices and other Western things they hardly understood. Zaid had once said to Awad that being in this office with Ahmed Hasan gave him a feeling even more powerful than he got when he stood in Sayyida Al-Hussein, praying at the shrine that held the head of the Prophet’s grandson, which had been carried to Cairo in a green silk sack. Awad saw what Zaid meant, but he himself was more inclined to Sayyida Zeinab, the mosque which contained the tomb of Muhammad’s granddaughter.
It was another ten minutes before the president acknowledged their presence. He gestured to them to be seated on a leather couch, and they helped themselves to cigarettes on a glass table while Ahmed Hasan had coffee served. The three men sat together, exchanging courtesies over the thimblefuls of bitter black brew before Hasan got around to what he wanted them to do.
“I have a list of CIA dogs who do their master’s bidding in Cairo and elsewhere. The Russian Embassy supplied me with the names of active CIA agents in the American Embassy here, and we watched which Egyptians and foreigners met with them regularly. So now we know who the Americans use to gather information in our country.”
Awad and Zaid, like hounds sniffing blood, grew more alert.
Ahmed noticed this, smiled and held up a hand. “No, my friends, I must disappoint you. I am not ordering their wholesale slaughter. Not today anyhow. You’ll have noticed I said these dogs gather information. It puzzled us that none of these CIA hirelings had sensitive government or military positions. What could they know that would be of value to the CIA? But that was their only role—not to provide information, only to gather it. We had them watched and saw military officers, engineers, government bureaucrats, spies and traitors in all walks of life come to these information gatherers. Rather than make an American at the embassy conspicuous by meeting with Egyptians outside diplomatic circles, the CIA had these Egyptian traitors funnel their information to one of these gatherers inconspicuously. Are you following me?”
Zaid and Awad nodded eagerly.
“Good.” Ahmed rang a brass bell for more coffee and passed about the cigarettes. After they were served, he continued. “Every system has its strengths and its weaknesses. Only a foolish man fights against another’s strengths. The thoughtful man seeks his opponent’s weaknesses and strikes there instead. The weakness of this CIA system is clear. The information gatherer is a node and thus a possible filter of the information. They are Egyptians, and so without
American protection from our government. They are traitors to their country and to Islam, so that no penitence is too drastic for their sins. I say we must strike them in the name of Allah!”
“May He always be praised,” Zaid said reverently.
“We will disembowel the dogs,” Awad promised fervently.
Ahmed held up his hand once again. “Someday, my friends, someday, but not at present. We have other uses for these vermin. Only four have high military contacts. I want you to persuade these four men to give you the military information they collect before they pass it on to the Americans. You in turn will bring it to a certain colonel who will change what needs to be changed. In this way we will control the military information which is fed to the CIA without interrupting its flow and alerting them that anything is wrong. To ensure that the Americans suspect nothing, I want information on other subjects to go through untampered. This colonel knows what to change at the military level. Otherwise it will go to the CIA unchanged, even if we might prefer it did not. This is because one important secret must be concealed from the Americans without them realizing it. If they should discover everything else we do not want them to know, we must permit them to do so if it means we can keep this one secret from them.” Ahmed paused and stared at each of them in turn to impress his seriousness upon them. “I tell you this only because, I must warn you not to be too ambitious. Nothing matters except this thing, which you cannot be told. You must persuade these four men to cooperate in the next few days. Only the highest military levels are involved. You must let everything else through, even when it would be easy for you to prevent. You must practice restraint, in the expectation that the day of retribution will come. Everything is set down on these papers for you.”
