by Dane Hartman
Harry was bemused. What aspects of the case? Until further analyses could be completed by the forensics people, they had no leads to go on—not for who shot the two patrolmen or blew up the international terminal or attacked the Mark Hopkins. The bodies of the gentlemen bandits had yet to be identified. As individuals who were so given to heisting other people’s wallets it was ironic that they had carried none of their own.
Harry had an idea what all this would come to: a great many officials, flashing ID’s and breaking down doors with an abundance of firepower and a paucity of warrants, causing one hell of a commotion while the terrorists went on detonating explosives in public places and blowing holes in people.
But for now there was no sense in protesting. The time might come when the Feds would go home and they could then work on actually solving the case.
“Mr. Callahan?”
Harry turned in his chair to see Brady standing beside him. “I’d like to speak to you a minute if I may.”
Harry shrugged. Didn’t make any difference to him.
“I am told you are an excellent detective, tough, shrewd, and not always disposed to complying with regulations. I was surprised when you brought up the issue of legal technicalities. You don’t have a reputation for worrying about them.”
“That’s true, but I have been made acutely aware of them.”
“Yes, I see your point. Well, no matter, for our purposes I think you will do just fine. I want you to go to Los Angeles for us.”
“Los Angeles? Any particular reason?”
“Naturally. There’s a man we want you to stay on top of. He’s coming into the country tonight. We believe he may be tied into a major terrorist network here.”
“Just how is he tied in?”
“Money. He acts as a conduit for funds emanating from Libya, Yemen, and Cuba. He is quite wealthy in his own right. His name is Gamal Abd’el Kayyim and ostensibly he represents the government in Tripoli. He is here in an official capacity to present a check for five million dollars to the state college system for the establishment of a chair of Arab-American Studies. That’s officially. Unofficially, we believe he is here to pass millions more to the terrorists operating in this area.”
“And how am I to stay on top of him as you put it?”
“Naturally, he expects that the host government will look after his security, particularly in light of his beneficence to our institutions of higher education. I presume that he has security of his own, but it probably will consist of only a couple of bodyguards. We will supplement those bodyguards with some of our people.”
“You want me to pretend to be looking after him as a cover.”
“Exactly. We will provide you with all the proper credentials.”
“Have you any plan in mind if I discover that he is definitely linked to terrorists in this country?”
“Until we know exactly what the situation is, it’s premature to discuss any sort of plan at this stage.”
“That’s just what I thought,” said Harry.
At noon on the dot, she was in his office waiting for him.
“How are you today, Miss Winston?” Harry marveled at how attractive she looked. As far as he knew, journalists often got as little sleep as police officers, but if Ellie contended with long hours it did not reflect in her appearance.
“Ellie, please, and I’m fine.”
“You seem to have made yourself at home.”
She was sitting on the other side of his desk and he guessed that when he entered she’d been trying to read his papers upside down. The woman couldn’t stop nosing about other people’s business to save her life.
“I try hard.”
“I am afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“Oh? You don’t sound unhappy.”
“Bad news for you I said, not me. I have to go away on a special assignment. I can’t tell you how long I’ll be gone.”
“That’s all right.”
“All right?” Was she caving in so easily after last night?
“I’ll go with you. I should have no problem turning my news show over to someone else for the duration.”
“I don’t think you understand. I am going undercover. I am about to stop being Harry Callahan, San Francisco cop, for a while. So it wouldn’t do either of us any good for you to be tailing me around.”
Her face darkened. This would be a difficult one to win.
“But I have the authorization from your superior . . . Lieutenant Bressler . . .”
He didn’t allow her to finish. “It’s been taken out of his hands. It’s gone far beyond Bressler now.”
Though Ellie had suffered a setback, she did not view it as an outright defeat. On the contrary, her resolve was heightened. Yesterday she would have walked away from this assignment, not now; she had too much invested in it. She decided then and there that she would simply have to find out what he was up to and track him down herself.
Six hours later, right on schedule, Gamal Abd’el Kayyim disembarked from the AirFrance Concorde that had conveyed him from Paris, and, accompanied by a pair of strapping mustached gentlemen in olive paramilitary jackets, entered U.S. Customs.
So that there would be no repetition of the bombing that had occurred in San Francisco, the international terminal building had been cleared two hours in advance of Kayyim’s landing and scrupulously gone over by investigators and bomb squad teams of the LAPD. The entire area, even after it was pronounced free of any explosives or concealed weapons, remained sealed off. By the time Kayyim actually arrived, the terminal building was teeming with police, Federal agents, and airport security. Everyone armed to the teeth, everyone striking intimidating poses, their eyes inevitably hidden behind tinted glasses and polarized lenses. No one smiled. Except for Kayyim. He smiled broadly as though this public display for his well-being was vastly amusing.
Like his bodyguards, he wore an olive uniform which, however, bore no insignia of rank. Until Qaddafi had ousted King Idris several years ago, he had been a junior officer. With Qaddali’s ascent, he had advanced to a ministerial position that was vaguely related to foreign affairs. It was believed that he had a great deal to do with ordering the assassinations of dissident Libyan students in Paris, London and elsewhere, but this could not be proven.
The customs authorities were methodical in inspecting the luggage he and his bodyguards had brought with them, but not fanatic. The man had five million dollars in his pocket that he was going to give to a state university and whatever his politics and alleged involvement in murders in far off capitals, that five million dollars evidently entitled him to a certain amount of deference.
Only after he had been passed through customs were newsmen allowed to obtain a glimpse of him. And then only through a glass barrier. Cameras flashed. Abd’el Kayyim smiled more broadly and waved.
He scarcely looked like a sinister assassin. Quite the opposite, television viewers would be reminded of a popular movie actor, for he was extraordinarily handsome, with magnetic black eyes and a radiant expression. Here was a man who a dinner party host wouldn’t mind inviting as his guest of honor.
Trailing in his wake as he proceeded in the direction of his waiting limousine were his bodyguards, supplemented by the police and the security men, all of them looking so glum that they might very well have been marching off to a funeral—perhaps their own.
Among them was Harry Callahan, who for the duration of Kayyim’s stay in this country was to be identified as Dan Turner, one of several detectives recruited from a private agency to insure that no harm came to this important and affluent visitor.
That evening Kayyim threw a party in his suite on the fourth floor of the Beverly Wilshire. This was not a party, however, that people had fought to wrangle invitations for. Many of those present, mainly from academic and political circles, would rather have been elsewhere but in this case, with five million dollars in the offing, obligation took precedence. It was not the lack of food for the food was abundant
, nor was the problem with the quality because it was of the highest and had been provided by one of the county’s major caterers. Nor was it the guest list, for the suite was filled with brilliant conversationalists. No, the problem was that Kayyim had chosen to obey the Koranic injunction against the imbibing of alcohol. There was nothing more stimulating to be had than artificial champagne and fruit juices. This put a damper on the party and the guests, after stuffing themselves on hors d’oeuvres and roast beef, soon found excuses to leave.
But if Kayyim was disappointed by their early flight he gave no sign of it. He signaled all those save his bodyguards to leave the suite promptly at ten o’clock, informing them that they would no longer be required that night. He would see them all in the morning before he was to leave for the campus in Westwood.
“I will be perfectly safe,” he assured them, ignoring their protests. “My men are efficient and most able to defend me without additional reinforcements.”
Harry was the only outsider who remained behind. While he had to leave the suite itself, he did not go far. He had the impression that Kayyim had made other plans this particular night and he intended to find out just what they were.
What he expected was that there would be late night visitors to see Kayyim, but this did not turn out to be the case. Kayyim decided to go out with his bodyguards. No longer in military dress, they wore sports jackets and open shirts, obviously unwilling to attract attention.
Harry was prepared for them as they readied to leave. As soon as he’d left the suite he went directly to the room rented for his benefit by the CIA—naturally under an assumed name that would never be linked with the intelligence agency. There he could listen to every word, fed by taps through an ingenious circuitry into a specially designed monitor. Of course, merely hearing every word they were saying did him no good at all since they spoke in Arabic.
That had been taken into account—the CIA was not as inept as all that—and a young, very intense man of about thirty was seated by the monitor, transcribing the bugged conversations for the sole purpose of interpreting them.
Possibly Kayyim and company sensed they were being bugged, even if they didn’t realize that those doing the bugging were nearby. According to the interpreter, they had said nothing of any interest since the conclusion of the party.
When they got out into the hallway, Harry, opening his door just a fraction of an inch, overheard Kayyim giving instructions to his men, interrupting the flow of Arabic to say, “From hereon in, we speak nothing but English. No matter what happens, nothing but English.”
Then the elevator arrived and they stepped into it. Harry raced out the fire exit and down the stairs, reaching the lobby only moments after Kayyim’s party had marched out.
He’d ordered a car brought around for himself; it was idling directly behind a Seville. The three Libyans evidently meant to use the Seville rather than the limousine, again so as not to invite too much attention despite the fact that a limousine in a town like L.A. was not a rare sight.
As far as Harry could make out, no one in the Seville was aware that he was tailing them. But on the other hand, he wasn’t aware that he was being tailed also.
C H A P T E R
F o u r
“When do you plan on getting out of there, Ellie? Don’t you ever stop? Have you any idea what time it is?”
The fact was that Ellie did not. The newsroom was nearly empty so she supposed it was late, “David, I’ll be there. There are just a few things need finishing up.”
“Well, hurry. I’m beginning to feel like you’re in New York for all the chance I get to see you.”
One of the things that Ellie was finishing up was an analysis of the so-called manifesto the Alpha Group had delivered to the station that afternoon. It was pure gibberish, as far as she could make out, with countless references to colonialism and exploitation of oppressed peoples, but the tortured grammar and execrable spelling robbed the mimeographed document of whatever coherence it might have once possessed. Most significantly, the authors never made it clear exactly what it was they wanted in order for them to cease their terrorist acts. Ellie guessed that in all probability, they didn’t want their demands met because they were too enamored of violence.
At one point she was distracted by the T.V. monitors that were mounted around the perimeter of the newsroom. The eleven o’clock news was on, broadcast from elsewhere in the building; the footage being shown seemed to have been shot in an airport.
Ellie gathered that it was the Los Angeles airport. Some dignitary was advancing across the screen, waving cheerfully and displaying a smile filled with glowing white teeth. Right behind him, Ellie saw a succession of men who were all obviously intent upon getting in the line of fire should anyone attempt to assassinate this dignitary. Suddenly, Ellie spotted a man she was sure was Harry Callahan.
It was difficult to tell; he was a shadowy figure racing quickly across the screen, his head half-turned from the camera. But he had the right build, and from the little she could see, the right face, and certainly the right dour expression.
She took the elevator down to the fifth floor to where the broadcast was originating and prevailed upon one of the technicians to run the tape back again. This time she froze the image and stared at it for several moments. There was no longer any doubt in her mind. It was definitely Callahan. So that was his cover.
“Who is that man?” she asked the technician, pointing to the waving dignitary.
The technician told her. “He’s some kind of Libyan official.”
“Libyan,” she repeated. It was well-known that for years the Libyans had been aiding terrorists around the globe: the Basques, the PLO, the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigade . . . She began to see the connection.
With no hesitation whatsoever, she booked herself a late night New West shuttle to L.A. She had the distinct impression that her story was moving south and when her story moved she moved with it. Tomorrow, from L.A., she would inform her boss and explain her action. She was convinced that he would pose no objection though he might balk a bit when she presented him with her expense account.
Tonight the only person she had to explain anything to was David.
He was not, as she’d surmised, very happy about her decision. But wisely, he saw no point in arguing. Instead, he pleaded with her to let him know where she was staying just as soon as she secured a hotel room for herself.
“I worry about you,” he said. “And I love you very much.”
“I love you,” she said, automatically, so that he didn’t quite believe her as much as she wanted him to.
On the New West flight, she was too tired to read the materials she had brought with her for background use. Her eyes glazed over and she would have fallen asleep if the two-engine jet hadn’t begun its descent only twenty minutes or so after getting up into the air. There was only a scattering of people on this midnight shuttle. And in spite of her celebrity in San Francisco, Ellie was relieved to find that no one recognized her.
As it turned out, however, she was mistaken. Somebody did recognize her. He was a man who was sitting one row behind and across the aisle from her. In his sedentary posture, one wouldn’t have known that he measured only five feet which was why to his associates—for he had no friends—he was known as the Small Man.
After a while, Harry no longer had any notion where he was going, or more specifically, where Kayyim and his faithful pair were going for their direction was one and the same. Harry, to be sure, didn’t know Los Angeles all that well, but he doubted whether most Angelinos—most white, well-to-do Angelinos at any rate—ever strayed this far from home. The four-lane highways turned to two-lanes and then into streets where in the little light that was available, sad crumbling two-story houses could be discerned.
Then, all at once, the neighborhood changed and Harry found he was in what looked like a commercial district, ablaze with flickering neon lights and signs signaling the locations of transient hotels,
bars, laundromats, taco joints, and check cashing establishments. A disproportionate number of these signs were in Spanish. The streets here were crowded with people who seemed to have no perceptible purpose as they moved, many of them shouldering huge radios blasting music that was sometimes Mexican, sometimes a loud convulsive rock.
The Seville began to slow down and finally came to a stop, double-parking in front of a derelict-looking building with a sign in garish pink letters indicating that it was the Avila Hotel.
Harry parked not far away and watched as Kayyim and one of his confederates emerged from the Seville and entered the hotel. Several windows were open, Harry noticed, other windows weren’t open so much as they were blank. The glass had long ago been knocked out of them.
Leaving his own car, Harry circled around and followed them into the hotel. He threw a sidelong glance at the bodyguard waiting in the Seville, but read nothing in the latter’s expression from which to take alarm. There was no reason he should have identified Harry.
The lobby smelled rank, the man at the desk was asleep and beside him on the counter rested an empty bottle of tequila.
The stairs were steep and illuminated by a bare sixty watt bulb. Harry could hear the footsteps of the two men before he could see them.
They weren’t speaking, not in Arabic, nor in English. Harry, his head lowered, a wide brimmed hat pulled over his face so that it was cast well into shadow, kept an even pace behind them. He did not attempt to muffle his own footsteps, why should he? Other people lived in this hotel, and would be expected to come and go at all hours of the night.
At one point, Kayyim’s bodyguard glanced backwards at him, but gave no indication that Harry’s presence concerned him. He might as well have been another drunk shambling home after several hours tossing back whiskys in the saloon around the corner.
