Retribution

by Ian Barclay

  “Tell him there’s no truth to those rumors.”

  “But, sir,” van Heerden insisted, “he doesn’t know what to say anymore and he has to tell them something. He complains he knows absolutely nothing about what’s going on.”

  The senior man smiled grimly. “That’s why he’s our spokesman.”

  While it still drizzled heavily in The Hague, the rain had stopped in Amsterdam and the spring air had a warm, moist breath. Potted geraniums stood on windowsills. Flaxen-haired young people cycled bicycles over the cobblestones. Bronze statues of men on horseback and of kings looked at the horizon. Tourists stared at the tall gables of old houses with copper roofs. Sight-seeing barges plied the canals.

  Naim Shabaan kept the little yellow Renault circulating with the traffic, unhurriedly following a wide circle through the area. Ali and Hasan were to take no action until they received his signal. Things needed to be exactly right. If not today, they would act tomorrow— though he would be pleased to have finished here today because Holland was a small country, Amsterdam a regional city, not somewhere easy to fade or blend into. He and the others were already receiving wary, though not hostile, looks because of their Mediterranean appearance. It would be only a matter of time before one or more of them was stopped by the police for an identity check. Their fake passports were top quality— Naim had no worries about that. None of the three of them were wanted by the police in any country. They had nothing to fear. All the same, Naim wanted to be somewhere big like Paris or London, where they would not stand out so much. But first he had work to complete in Holland.

  He drove by the canal. Two pleasure launches and a sight-seeing boat moved slowly in his direction. He decided not to risk waiting. A car parked here for any time might bring police attention. He put the Renault in first gear, eased out the clutch pedal, and moved into the traffic again.

  Hasan, Ali, and he were keeping apart. They had their instructions. Unless everything went exactly according to plan, they were to do nothing. Hasan was reliable. Naim was worried about Ali. He had hardly spoken a word since hearing about his brother’s death at Ain Khilwe, except to curse the Dutch and Americans, although the Israelis admitted that they were responsible for the attack.

  “The Dutch pigs asked them to do it,” Ali growled. “The Yankees dogs paid for it.”

  Naim granted that he might be right. “All the same, we have our work to do and we cannot let private grief or rage affect our judgment. I have to be able to rely on you wholly to obey my orders exactly, Ali, and not to try to strike in blind anger at our enemies.”

  Ali grunted and said nothing.

  Naim decided that if Ali caused any trouble, he would execute him immediately and make it look like an Israeli hit. He missed no opportunity to embarrass the Zionists. But first he would give Ali a chance. It had been Naim’s experience that someone who enjoyed life as much as Ali quickly recovered from mourning. To relieve Ali’s feelings, Naim had given him the chance to act first today. But only on Naím’s signal…

  He had completed another circuit in the city traffic and was back at the canal edge again—for the fifth time. A sight-seeing barge, crowded with tourists, chugged placidly along. The barge had already passed the place at which he had pulled over the Renault and would shortly pass beneath the arch of a picturesque bridge. Everything was exactly right.

  Naim got out of the car, walked to the canal’s edge, and looked down into the water. He remained there motionless for some moments, then walked quickly back to the car— just before the barge reached the bridge.

  Hasan Shawa had no view of the canal or the bridge from where he sat in the café. He could see the quai edge on which it was illegal to park. A few cars had stopped there from time to time, and the yellow Renault had stopped twice very briefly. Hasan assumed it was Naim’s yellow Renault, although he could not be sure since his brother fighter had not emerged. Then, at last, after so many cups of coffee, he saw the Renault stop and the door open. Naim got out and stood at the edge of the quai. Hasan pulled out his money and put thirty guilders in notes on the table—too much money but better that than have an irate waiter chase after him. He tensely watched Naim stand looking down at the water. When Naim turned back toward the car, Hasan rose quickly from the table and hurried out of the café. Everything had been worked out and carefully timed.

  He saw Ali on the other side of the bridge, just about to walk onto it. Under Ali’s arm was the large sketch pad on which he had been rendering architectural details of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses while he waited. Hasan darted across the street and walked onto the bridge. The yellow Renault was already approaching.

  Looking over the bridge wall, Hasan saw the barge beneath. The front of the long narrow craft had not yet disappeared beneath the arch. He slowed his steps. Ali was coming toward him on the same sidewalk. Naim said he was to let Ali go first.

  Hasan slipped his right hand into his side pocket. He felt the two metal spheres there, each no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball with a lever attached. They were painted military green, with white letters: NWM and V40-HE. Naim had gotten them someplace, two for Hasan and two for Ali. Naim was amused that these V40 high-explosive fragmentation hand grenades were of Dutch manufacture, made in ’s Hertogenbosch by NWM de Kruithoorn.

  “You have a four-second delay,” Naim warned.

  Hasan faced the bridge wall so that passersby would not see what he was doing as he took the two miniature grenades from his pocket and held them in his right palm. He made sure that the two levers were pressed tightly against his hand. Ali was almost beside him, and the barge with its load of tourists was passing directly beneath them. Some looked up at them. When he saw Ali’s right arm raised, Hasan pulled back from the parapet to avoid the blast. He heard two explosions, a fraction of a second apart, then a moment’s silence before the screams and shouts. He looked over.

  The V40 contained prefragmented metal and had a lethal radius of five meters and a maximum effective zone of twenty-five meters from the point of detonation. Each grenade produced 400 to 500 fragments.

  Hasan gagged as he saw the whole front section of the tourist crowd lying at all angles, their flesh ripped by the white hot flying metal fragments, their skin and clothes and the deck spattered with bright blood.

  Those toward the back, most of whom had escaped, being shielded by the bodies of those less fortunate, clung to each other or simply stared transfixed. Hasan pulled the safety pin from each grenade, dropped them, and turned away instantly.

  The yellow Renault was at the edge of the bridge sidewalk behind him, its door open, Ali already inside, as the grenades detonated. Hasan jumped in and pulled the door closed as the Renault shot forward to the other side of the bridge where traffic was much lighter and they were sure of a clean getaway.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The defense contractor that Paul Everson worked for guessed that there must be some human interest story behind why Everson was selling military secrets to the Russians, but he didn’t want to hear it. If the Department of Defense got to hear about Everson, they’d cancel all five of his company’s contracts. A friend put him in touch with Charley Woodgate.

  Paul Everson had bought a Saturday 10:35 A.M. ticket from New York’s La Guardia to Portland, Maine. Richard Dartley had gone on the 8:10 A.M. plane. Before Everson’s flight arrived in Portland, Dartley was seated in his own rented car in the Hertz compound, reading a newspaper. Everson had reserved everything. in advance through a travel agent, who Dartley found easy to persuade.

  In his early forties, Dartley had a crew cut and his face was raw-boned and square-jawed. He had high cheekbones and hooded eyes, which were light gray? green. He was a large-framed man, spare and trim. He saw Everson arrive and pick up his car. Dartley put away his newspaper and drove out of the lot after him, each being stopped by the guard at the exit to check their rental papers.

  Dartley hung back as far as he could, which wasn’t very far because he didn�
��t know Portland. Apparently neither did Everson since he continually slowed, stopped, and drove on again. At first Dartley thought he was checking for a tail, then he realized that Everson was looking for someplace. Dartley hoped he’d find it soon—he could hardly expect to go unnoticed by Everson for much longer.

  Things would be all right if Everson located what he was looking for soon. Dartley started to hope that the Russian was very nearby and that he could get this finished with quickly. His hope increased when Everson seemed to find his bearings and took off in his car. Then he discovered what Everson had been looking for—L. L. Bean’s. Everson was a practical man. When in Portland on his way to sell secrets to the Russians, why not stop off first at the renowned outdoors outfitter?

  Dartley watched Everson’s car while he prepared a small radio transmitter, good for at least forty-eight hours, fitted with a magnetic attachment. Dartley made a trial transmission and adjusted his receiver to pick up the signal. This had been Malleson’s suggestion. Dartley hadn’t wanted to bring the equipment because he had been stopped at airport security once before with a transmitter and receiver in his hand luggage. The security personnel had been convinced it was a bomb, and he was taken to a small room at gunpoint and missed his plane while he was being held for questioning. Malleson had put the miniature equipment in a suitcase packed with newspapers, and Dartley had checked the suitcase on his flight. Checked-in baggage on commercial flights was not X-rayed unless some suspicion was aroused. Dartley had had no problems and was glad now that Malleson had insisted. He crossed the parking area, stooped for a moment at the back of Everson’s car, and placed the magnetic attachment device against the bottom of the gas tank.

  There was always a chance Everson was meeting the Russian inside. Dartley guessed not and returned to his car. Almost half an hour passed before Everson emerged with shopping bags in each hand.

  Dartley muttered out loud, “You’re never going to get a chance to wear all that shit if you go ahead and meet any Russians today. I’ll see to that.”

  He let Everson drive clear of the parking area before he followed him. Now he could stay back, out of sight most of the time, and rely on the strength of the signal to tell him how close he was to Everson. But there was one danger. He couldn’t tell whether Everson turned left or right. All he would hear would be a fading signal, without any direction indicated. When Dartley saw they were nearing Route 95, the north-south turnpike, he established visual contact with Everson’s car once more and followed it onto the northbound side of 95. Then he dropped back and kept half a dozen or so cars between them.

  Seeing the branch-off for Route 1, the coast road, coming up, Dartley got him in view again and followed him off the turnpike. Dartley hoped Everson wasn’t going to drive all the way to Canada. After a hundred miles of nonstop driving it had begun to look that way, when the radio signal on Dartley’s transmitter suddenly began to fade. Everson had turned off the two-lane highway unnoticed by him. Dartley slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel around, causing his car to spin through 180 degrees and point in the direction he had been coming from. This caused the driver of the car behind him so much surprise that the man pulled over to the side of the road in order to recover.

  Speeding back Dartley found a crossroads at Ellsworth. Everson could either have gone west to Bangor or east to Bar Harbor. Deciding that if Everson had wanted to go to Bangor, he would have stayed on Route 95, Dartley tore down Route 3 toward Bar Harbor. He noticed the signal on the receiver grow stronger. He breathed easy once more and slowed when the loudness of the signal indicated that Everson was not far ahead.

  Dartley went down some concrete steps to where the surf was beating against the rocks. The concrete walkway ran down alongside a cleft in the rock into which the sea pushed, foaming. Paul Everson stood at the railing looking at the water rushing into the inlet. Next to him stood a red-faced, jowly man in a heavy, square coat that was tailored no farther west than Warsaw.

  Dartley walked up to them and said to the red-faced man, “What’s this supposed to be?”

  Everson spoke up instead of the red-faced man. “It’s the Thunderhole. At a certain point of the tide, the surf makes a booming noise like thunder when it’s trapped in this cleft. I guess we came here at the wrong time. Well, I should be moving on.”

  Dartley watched him go, wondering if he had spooked him or if the transaction had been completed before he arrived. The red-faced man seemed in no hurry to move. He was sizing Dartley up. Everson was such a cocksure nerd, he didn’t think to question why a stranger would show up in a place like this on a cold spring day, but the red-faced man wasn’t buying it. He was carefully eyeing Dartley with his little watery blue eyes.

  Dartley asked him, “Have you heard the water booming?”

  The man shook his head.

  Dartley tried again. “I want what Mr. Everson gave you.”

  The red-faced man lunged at him with a side chop to the neck. Dartley used his upright left forearm to block the blow, and the callused edge of his assailant’s hand almost fractured his two arm bones.

  The man half-tried a kick, but his cumbersome, heavy coat trammeled his movements too much and he gave up. Dartley seized this moment to throw a lung-deflating straight right to the solar plexus, a short, stabbing punch with his full body weight behind it and enough power to stop a horse. The body blow connected, but this time the Warsaw-bloc coat saved its wearer, its thick material and awkward cut absorbing most of the punch’s force. All the same, the red-faced man staggered backward and would have fallen over the edge of the rocks if it hadn’t been for the railing.

  Dartley was upon him before he could recover. He kicked him sharply on the left ankle, knocking his feet from under him. The man in his heavy coat fell on the concrete walkway like a teddy bear. Dartley knelt on his chest and rapped the back of his head against the concrete until his, watery blue eyes rolled back in their sockets and he lost consciousness.

  Dartley searched him. No weapons. He found a sheaf of papers, photocopies of electronic circuit designs—scores of little boxes and odd shapes, some labeled by initials, connected to one another. Each sheet had a code designation in the top left corner and no other identification. Dartley found a Canadian passport. A naturalized citizen, born in Russia. So if he had spoken, Dartley would have heard his unmistakable Russian accent. The passport might be a fake. More likely it was genuine and this man had never freed himself of his Soviet masters. Dartley pocketed the papers and the passport.

  After a quick look around for park rangers or anyone else, Dartley rolled him to the edge of the walkway. No one was around on a day like this. Even the sea gulls had found someplace warmer than here. Some blood was drying in the man’s hair, but he was breathing evenly. Dartley rolled him over the edge. His body bounced twenty feet down the rocks and hit the water. A wave surged into the inlet and smashed its soggy burden against the rocks. As Dartley walked away, snow began to fall.

  After Bethesda–Chevy Chase High School, Richard Dartley had continued his education in Vietnam. This was for him a place where bad things happened, a time about which he avoided speaking. The killer hidden in Dartley emerged there. He saw terrible things and then saw that he was capable of them himself. Having come back from there, he went from job to job, woman to woman, drink to drink, never staying long enough in one place for lasting attachments. That life lasted until the day of his father’s funeral.

  On September 11, 1976, Richard Woodgate, Charley’s brother, was shot once in the middle of the forehead by a gunman waiting across the street from the American embassy in Buenos Aires. The weapon used was a Soviet-design Kalashnikov assault rifle, and the dead man was officially described as a security adviser. He had said nothing to his wife about going to Argentina. She thought he was in Florida.

  A short time previously an ex-CIA agent had written a tell-all account of his intelligence activities, which included a list of CIA men currently active overseas. Richard Woodgate’s na
me was on that list. Within a month of its publication four of the men on the list had been assassinated. Richard Woodgate was Richard Dartley’s father.

  At the funeral he listened to the Vice-president of the United States describe his father as a “courageous warrior.” He had always regarded him as a cautious time-server in the government bureaucracy and was stunned to find that he had been a major CIA operative. At the age of thirty Dartley pulled his life together. He took a one-room apartment over a store on K Street in Georgetown. He ran every day alongside the C&O Canal, quit drinking and smoking, lost twenty-five pounds over three months. He asked his uncle for advice, and Charley tried to find him a position in the CIA or the Treasury Department. But his war record went against him—insubordination and unauthorized killings being the two main things listed in his disfavor. He was not someone they could mold to their needs.

  He changed his name to Richard Dartley, moved into a studio converted from the barn loft at his uncle’s farm, and helped him out by delivering customized weapons and picking up payments for them. All the time he was on the lookout for an opportunity to work as an assassin. He persuaded his uncle to find him a job through one of his customers. This took a year because no one wanted to hire someone without a history of success and reliability. Jobs were few and far between at first, until the slow accumulation of faultlessly completed assignments resulted in a reputation for him.

  Nowadays Dartley was reputed to be among the two or three top assassins in the world. He demanded and received top money. He took only those assignments that he judged to be in the common good. A lot of people had heard of him and would have liked to hire him—only a few knew how to make contact.

  Dartley expected he would have to wait for Paul Everson near his Long Island home. It would have been good to nail him up in Maine, but that wasn’t essential. The Russian had needed to be removed from circulation—he might have been the contact for a half dozen Eversons. Dartley hadn’t been paid to take him out. That kind of hit he did as a public service.