Reprisal

by Ian Barclay

  “Here,” Awad called, and Zaid pulled the van to the side.

  Zaid climbed out and opened the rear doors. He said to the four men who emerged, “Remember, take him alive. That’s why there’s four of you.”

  The van waited until the men had disappeared over the wall and then drove slowly on down the empty road. The men had a wait of three hours in front of them, so they settled themselves comfortably in the shade behind the wall, with one posted as a lookout in the branches of a tree where he could see up and down the road.

  Dartley showed a little before time. At least the lookout figured it had to be the American they were waiting for—he had a description and this Westerner fitted it—and what other American could be expected to be walking along this particular high-class, residential road at this particular hour, not even with a limousine or taxi? He called down softly from the branches to the three other men.

  It was Dartley all right. He was expecting the worst as he walked along the deserted road with its high walls, big gateways into hidden residences and tropical shade trees. Omar Zekri would have gone to Pritchett at the embassy, and Pritchett would have said keep away or play him along without giving him anything or chase him out of town, maybe worse. Omar wasn’t capable of doing any of these things except keeping away, and so it was no surprise to Dartley not to find the Egyptian at their arranged meeting place.

  Dartley looked at his watch. He was ten minutes early. He’d give Omar or whoever was going to show an hour. In the meantime it made no sense for him to stand out like a bowling pin in an empty alley. He took a short run, gripped the top of the stone wall with his fingers, hauled himself to the top, rolled over and landed on his feet on the other side.

  Dartley found himself standing among four startled Egyptians, strong-arm types not given to conversation.

  “Masa’ al kheir.” Dartley wished them good evening.

  They said nothing. But their muscles were twitching. Any moment now, their brains would be working.

  Dartley’s hands came from his pockets. He flipped the top off the pen in his right hand and sprayed Clorox in the faces of the two nearest men from the can in his left hand.

  As those two staggered about, yelping and wiping their eyes, Dartley advanced fast on the next man. Holding the penlike handle of the Tekna Micro-Knife between the first two fingers of his clenched first, he punched at the man’s throat. He missed the first time. The second time the man’s arm took the blade and he clutched at the wound, leaving his neck open. The third time Dartley hit home.

  He punched the short blade into the man’s throat just to one side of his windpipe. Then he thrust sideways and the blade’s serrated edge ripped through the windpipe, artery and veins, leaving his neck looking like a ripped open phone cable, not counting the blood.

  Dartley lost his grip on the knife and had used up the spray can on the first two men, so he had to take the fourth man with his hands. The guy must have been slow or had been doing one thing and took the time to change his mind and try another. He was still in the act of drawing an automatic pistol from his shoulder holster. He nearly had the weapon drawn—Dartley could see it was taking him an extra second because of a silencer which extended the length of the barrel and had maybe gotten delayed in the holster.

  The man was right-handed. As he drew the pistol from under his left arm, Dartley checked his right arm with a left-hand pressing block. Simultaneously, Dartley delivered a right vertical flatfist to the back of the Egyptian’s gun hand.

  Keeping his grip on the man’s right arm with his left hand, Dartley grabbed the right side of his collar with his other hand. He wrenched his head and neck downward, positioning him nicely for a right knee kick to the groin.

  The knee in the balls seemed to knock the joy of life out of his opponent. Dartley grabbed his right wrist with both hands and used a reverse twist throw to bring him down on his back. He freed the gun from the holster and put a bullet between the Egyptian’s eyes at point-blank range, like putting away a sick animal. The guy kicked and stiffened. That was all.

  The two Clorox customers were still blindly thrashing about and complaining. They didn’t even see Dartley put the gun to their heads to relieve their discomfort.

  He glanced at the gun out of interest. It was a 7.65 mm Manurhin, which was the French licensed version of the German Walther PPK. The silencer was big and clumsy, but effective. Dartley was tempted to keep the weapon. He decided against it, wiped his prints from it and carefully replaced it in its dead owner’s shoulder holster.

  Knowing there was nothing to learn from the four bodies, Dartley searched for the spray can, the knife and its top. When he pocketed them, he pulled himself to the top of the wall and spotted a black van traveling slowly, too slowly, in his direction some distance down the road.

  He jumped down inside the wall again, crossed some more compounds, found another road and waited until dark before slipping out of the area.

  The meeting was going badly for Aaron Gottlieb. The Russian contingent was giving him the most trouble. The bastards had barely learned Hebrew and eased off moaning about the beauties of Mother Russia when they were trying to take over the kibbutz already. Aaron Gottlieb was a Sabra. Born right here on this kibbutz. Father and mother both American citizens. Grandfather and grandmother well-to-do German Jews prominent enough to be forced out by the Nazis in the 1930s before the ovens were built. He, Aaron Gottlieb, had fought for the entry of these Russian refugees into the kibbutz when they had no where else to go and neither spoke Hebrew so you could understand it nor knew how to work the land. Couldn’t tell a chicken from a pigeon—of course they might be the same thing in Russia. Anyway, he had helped them—and now that they had found their feet, they turned on him, accusing him of ordering them about and calling him behind his back “the kibbutz commissar.” Truth was, he had a brain and was not afraid to use it. A lot of the other young people with brains had left the kibbutzim for the city. He had stayed, when he wasn’t away on missions…. One old Russian—who, God forgive him, Stalin should have liquidated—was droning on in his weird accent.

  “For this we come to the Promised Land? We return to the soil. We should have cows and orange groves and chickens. We should irrigate the soil, make the desert green. We should give thanks to God, humbly, and labor in the fields under the open sky. This is what we are told we will find. Is this what we find? I ask you that. Is this what we find? I say to a stranger who does not know this place, ‘Would you believe alligators?’ He says to me, ‘Like crocodiles?’” The Russian shook his backside and snapped his teeth. “Alligators in freshwater ponds, crawling around among the palm trees and bougainvillea. This is a kibbutz in Zion! ‘This is not all,’ I tell this stranger, whose mouth is already hanging open because he cannot believe such things about the Jewish homeland. ‘You think we show you temples the prophets may have preached in? No, we don’t care about those! We dig up a Roman theater and build a museum for a pagan culture and other Jews pay to see how these godless butchers sacrificed our people to wild animals.’ And the stranger says to me, ‘Leave this crazy place, go to another kibbutz.’ And I say to him, ‘Where? In Givat Haim they have Arabian horses, breeding horses for the sport of kings on a kibbutz, if you can believe it. In Haon they have ninety members and eighty ostriches.’ For this we come to Zion? To raise show horses for aristocrats and pluck ostrich feathers for showgirls?”

  The Russian sat down and the others slapped his back and said things to him in Russian, obviously pleased with his performance.

  Aaron Gottlieb stretched wearily to his feet. As he did so, a figure outside the south window of the kibbutz community hall caught his eye. It was Nabel. Looking a year older, unshaven, his gut hanging out over his belt, the scar a livid white across his tanned cheek. Nabel saw him look out and nodded to him.

  The kibbutzniks knew Nabel and no one came up to ask him what he wanted, waiting outside the hall. Everyone knew he had served his country from the days with Menachim Begin
against the British to more recent times with Ariel Sharon against the Arabs in Gaza. They also knew that he came for Aaron Gottlieb maybe once or twice a year and that Aaron went with him and would be gone often for weeks on end, to come back quiet and touchy, wanting to lose himself in hard work at the kibbutz. No, no one said anything or wanted to know anything about Nabel, and were happy when neither their sons nor daughters wanted to know either.

  There were times when Nabel’s unannounced appearance at the kibbutz had caused Aaron’s heart to sink, and other times when his arrival was a clear trumpet note in his dusty, workaday existence. Today Nabel was all trumpet.

  Aaron’s resentment at the Russians had ebbed completely in the time it took him to get to his feet. “I think we should listen closely to these objections and decide on them. We all know that we raise alligators for their hides as we might raise sheep for their hides. It’s true that at Givat Haim they raise Arabian horses which only rich people can buy. Why do they do this? Because they have the special conditions and skills to supply a special need which rewards them with a better income and allows the young people on the kibbutz to use their education from agricultural colleges. Some of the old people do not like to see the young with things they never had and do not now understand. We raise alligators because we have free water from Lake Kinneret and young people who want to learn new things. You know what a friend at Haon told me? One ostrich egg makes thirty omelets. But we are here to talk about” —he wiggled his ass and snapped his teeth in imitation of the Russian—“alligators in Zion. Before we had alligators, we depended mostly on turkeys—and they came from America, too, along with alligators, and I never heard anybody claim there was something non-Zionist about turkeys. I have to leave now and, as you know, I’ll abide by any vote you take. I’m willing to go back to milking cows and feeding turkeys, if that’s what you want. But ask yourself one question before you vote: Which is the outside world more likely to be willing to buy from us, alligator hides or more Israeli cheese and frozen kosher turkey meat?”

  “Egypt?” Aaron said to Nabel.

  “Egypt,” Nabel confirmed.

  “Why me?”

  “You’re the best available on short notice,” Nabel informed him.

  “You could find someone better if you had a little more time?”

  Nabel twitched his mouth to one side, which was his gesture toward a smile.

  They walked over the dusty ground toward one of the big ponds.

  Nabel gazed at the alligators sunning themselves shoulder to shoulder along the bank, with the tips of their tails stretched back into the water. He said, “I remember when you people used to tend sheep in the hills like Arabs.”

  “Those were the good old days,” Aaron observed. “Before my time.”

  Nabel looked once more at the alligators and shook his head in disgust. “What’s wrong with ordinary farming?”

  Aaron said with an edge to his voice, “Let’s talk about something you do know about. What’s in Egypt?”

  “This one will be easy. Bloodless. A CIA agent with their embassy in Cairo has an American there with false ID who said to someone he was CIA. He’s looking for an Egyptian nuclear physicist who’s presently making an A-bomb for the meshugannah who seized power there. You should know that we’ve briefed the Americans on what is going on. The CIA and the Department of Defense agree with us. Their State Department doesn’t. What the Agency man in Cairo wants to know is, who’s this Yank working for? State? Defense? Some game the CIA is playing on its own agents? The Agency’s men are stretched thin these days in Egypt, and besides, they want a non-American to approach him.”

  “A Lebanese banker?”

  “The Egyptians believed you were that every other time we sent you in,” Nabel said.

  “You believe this story the Americans handed you?”

  “I think so. Pritchett is the one I talked with and you can see him if you need to.” When Aaron Gottlieb shook his head, Nabel went on. “I agree. No unnecessary contact. But Pritchett will be there at the American Embassy if you need backup. I don’t have to remind you the Egyptians have closed down our embassy and I’m not going to put you in touch with any Mossad people in place there. I think Pritchett’s only covering his ass—as the Americans say—by finding out who this operative is. And we’re helping him because it’s to our advantage when the Americans listen to their own intelligence agency on Egypt. Find out who he works for in Washington. Help him if you can. Nothing more.”

  “When do I go?”

  Nabel pointed at his car and glanced at his watch. “Hurry. Get your things. We’re late.”

  Dr. Mustafa Bakkush started nervously at the sound of steel-tipped boots on the stone floor behind him. A private he had seen before in the Citadel came to a halt with a final rasp of his boots. The soldier nodded to Dr. Bakkush with disrespectful familiarity. “He wants to see you.”

  The soldier did not have to say who it was that wanted to see him. Mustafa asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “They don’t tell me.”

  “All right,” Mustafa said. “Wait a few minutes and I’ll be with you.”

  The private grinned. “I pick up a lot of people to come to President Hasan, and that includes cabinet ministers and generals, and they all drop everything and come at a run. You’re the first who’s ever had something more important to do than answer the president’s summons without delay.”

  Mustafa stiffened in anger at this soldier’s leering informality. “Leave now, if you must. You may inform the president that I had to complete an essential task before coming.”

  The private was awed. No one had ever dared say such a thing before. “I’ll wait, sir.”

  “Then wait outside. You’re distracting me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ten minutes later, they left Bakkush’s office in the Citadel and walked down a staircase instead of along the series of corridors that led to Hasan’s quarters. Mustafa was surprised that the president was not already at the Citadel. He asked no questions, merely followed the soldier down the staircase which he knew led to a courtyard where Jeeps were parked. He guessed they were on their way to the presidential palace. This would be his first time there, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. They climbed in a Jeep, and the driver wove through the Cairo traffic at a speed that suggested he was trying to make up for lost time. They were stopped at two checkpoints on the way into the palace and then had to pass sentries and metal detectors in the entranceway. Mustafa was searched twice, each time courteously. His driver was left behind in the palace lobby and Mustafa was led by three soldiers past many doorways, then up a staircase, then told to follow a long corridor alone and go through a door at its end. Before he reached the door at the end of the corridor, he heard shouts and laughs coming from behind it. The sound of laughter came as a relief to Mustafa, although it occurred to him that this indeed might be some truly diabolical scene. Certainly something was happening on the other side of that door. What had it to do with him? He tapped timidly on the heavy wood, realizing as he did so that they would be unable to hear him. He looked back and saw that his three-man military escort was still standing there watching him. One of the soldiers stabbed his finger forward several times, meaning for Mustafa to go through the door. He put his hand on the brass handle, turned it and pushed the door inward.

  Mustafa Bakkush had never before seen any woman entirely naked, except his wife. And he had never seen her dancing without any clothes. To now see five naked women—beautiful women with large breasts that bounced as they moved, with narrow waists, swelling hips over smooth-skinned thighs, little black triangles at the base of their bellies, and inviting eyes heavily outlined—five naked women who all gave him alluring looks and gyrated their full, voluptuous bodies at his own thin delicate frame, made him wonder whether to cover his eyes or run back through the doorway. He did neither. He stood unmoving as a lizard trying to escape the eye of a hawk and he watched them as they came closer to him.
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  “Come in! Come in!” Ahmed Hasan boomed. His tall, spare body was naked also, and he sat on a big cushion next to a large hookah pipe.

  Mustafa stepped forward. The five dancing women parted to let him through and then formed a circle to cavort obscenely around him. Mustafa felt dizzy and he could not feel the floor under his feet—though this might have been caused by the extra thick pile of the carpeting as much as his mental state.

  “This is the famous scientist, Dr. Bakkush,” Ahmed announced. “He has returned to us after being abroad. I think he may have picked up some corrupt Western customs. I feel sure he has a taste for Scotch. Someone get him a glass of whiskey.”

  Mustafa did not drink alcohol, even when he had been at social gatherings in Cambridge. He saw one of the president’s bodyguards—this one fully dressed in combat fatigues, bush hat and jungle boots with submachine gun strapped over his shoulder—approach him with a bottle and a tumbler. Even Mustafa knew that whiskey wasn’t sloshed into a big tumbler like beer, but he watched impassively as the youth emptied a third of the bottle into the glass. He put the tumbler to his mouth and tried to keep his face from puckering up at the smell and taste of the foul, burning liquid. The attention of Ahmed Hasan had already wandered elsewhere, perhaps out of disappointment at Mustafa’s seeming lack of outrage or protest against what he was being subjected to. Mustafa had little doubt that Ahmed would get around to him again in good time.

  Apart from the five dancing women, who to Mustafa’s relief were now over on the other side of the huge room, everyone else present seemed to be Ahmed’s bodyguards, including the two playing guitars. Three remained dressed and combat-ready; one of these had given him the whiskey. The rest were in various states of disarray, both mental and physical. Six of the bodyguards were women and they, like the men, were half disrobed or fully naked. Aside from himself and Ahmed, Mustafa decided that no one in the room was beyond his or her early twenties, and two of the female bodyguards looked to be fifteen or sixteen. Most were smoking marijuana and drinking from beer bottles. Unable to bear the reek of the straight whiskey in the tumbler, Mustafa put it on a side table. He loosened the knot in his necktie—then tightened it again immediately in case his action might be misinterpreted as a gesture that he too wanted to shuck his clothes. That would be going too far! In spite of the close atmosphere in the room, he intended to keep his jacket on. He even buttoned one button to show his determination.