by Ian Barclay
Bradshaw’s face became brick red and he threw down his cards.
To change the subject Bikel said, “They were fortunate to have had no other fatalities with twenty rockets fired.”
“Some of the very badly injured might perhaps have been better off dead,” van Gilder said.
“Perhaps,” Bikel said. “I’ve seen many cases of that. But at least it reverses the score on these Palestinians. We believe the ones killed were fresh from the training camp we hit, sent to Europe without adequate preparation to seek revenge for our raid. Our enemies are highly predictable.”
Bradshaw squinted carefully at Bikel. “Who besides you believes Britain was responsibile?”
“Everyone in the know,” Bikel answered casually.
“I can truthfully assure you that I have not been informed,” Bradshaw said.
“Then I hope for your sake, Bradshaw, it turns out not to be true,” Bikel said kindly, having pulled on the barb firmly enough now to expect an answer. If he knew Bradshaw, a message would be radioed tonight to Whitehall, demanding an answer by tomorrow.
“You believe what the Germans say?” Bradshaw asked, changing the subject in turn.
“They’re telling the truth,” van Gilder answered instead of Bikel. “Because of the refugee problem in West Berlin, the West Germans have set up an efficient monitoring system at Schonefeld Airport in East Berlin. Two Arab males in their twenties, answering the descriptions we circulated, arrived on an Interflug flight from Vienna. An Arab boy and girl in their late teens were also on the flight.”
Bikel nodded. “That would fit in with our information on the Damascus–Rabat flight, which was five males and one female. Take out four at Barcelona, and these two are left. How did they get from Barcelona to Vienna?”
“The West Germans don’t know,” van Gilder answered. “They think they might have flown to Paris and changed planes there for Vienna without trying to enter French territory.”
“That was risky,” Bradshaw said, picking up his cards again and looking at his hand.
“They had good enough reason to be in a hurry to leave Spain,” Bikel said. “They must have believed their cover had been penetrated. I suppose the West Germans are right to believe they’re probably already in Berlin by now. Bradshaw, don’t you think your people should do something about the Berlin situation?”
Bradshaw’s eyes popped and he began to look apoplectic again. “Good God, certainly not, sir. As long as West Berlin remains technically divided into British, American, and French sectors, we are committed to maintaining it as an open city. I know Aeroflot and Interflug raise hard foreign currency by selling tickets in Third World countries and permit them to land without visas in Schonefeld. The East Berlin police even put them on the subway to West Berlin at Friedrichstrasse. The communists want us to react by sealing our side of the border as they have done theirs. That’s what their real strategy is.”
“I agree,” van Gilder said. “I think the West Germans have to negotiate with the East Germans over this. And I believe they were right to announce publicly that the East Germans allowed these four Arab terrorists to cross into West Berlin. It traps all of them there, without their being able to move into West Germany proper.”
“What did you say that damn code word was, Bikel?” Bradshaw asked. “I keep forgetting the bloody thing.”
“Har HaTzofim. It’s Hebrew for Mount Scopus.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” the group-captain said. “How could I have forgotten? Though maybe next time you’ll pick something snappier, what?”
An ambulance marked both with a red cross and a green star and crescent bumped over the stony ground until it came to a halt in front of the wooden gates of the walled compound. The driver and his assistant climbed out and hailed the two guards at the gate covering them with Kalashnikovs. They waved up to the man on the roof, squinting at them down the barrel of his .50-caliber machine gun.
“Why have you come here?” one guard asked.
The driver callously jerked his thumb toward the inside of the ambulance. “He’s one of yours.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t catch his name,” the driver said, opening the rear doors.
He and his assistant slid out a canvas stretcher on which lay a body wrapped in a sheet.
The driver grimaced. “He stinks, this one does.”
The two guards backed off as the ambulance men set the stretcher on the ground. They stared down at the shape bound within the sheet.
“Who is he?”
“A friend of your boss. I told you, I don’t remember his name. You can keep the stretcher, but I wouldn’t leave him lying around very long if I was you.” He got back in the ambulance with his assistant and pulled away across the stony ground back toward the paved road.
All three guards had close family members who were members of various militias. Each stood around waiting for the others to look first.
The youngest moved forward. “He doesn’t smell so bad,” he said. He tried to loosen the sheet, but finally had to slash it open with his bayonet so he could see the dead man’s face.
He had an instant of surprise as he saw, not a ghastly death’s-head but a life-size human form sculptured from putty. This massive charge of plastic explosives was detonated by the trip-wires in the sheet. The blast atomized the three guards, tore the gates off their hinges, and crumpled the entire wall on that side of the compound.
The ambulance was charging back and came to a halt. This time the rear doors were kicked open from the inside and militia men wearing camouflage fatigues came pouring out. Three used their automatic rifles to fire grenades over the remains of the wall into the windows of the house. Fire bloomed in the house’s interior, and long flames came licking out the windows.
“That’s enough,” the militia men’s leader shouted. “If you char him too much, you won’t know him.”
The men swarmed over the wall, ready to deliver bursts from their rifles at any opposition. They caught a swimmer before he managed to climb out of the pool. The house was a blazing inferno, and he seemed the only survivor in the compound. A militia man tied the man’s wrists behind his back, while another went out to the ambulance. By listening to them joke, the man learned that they were Christian Falangist militia men. He recognized the accent of the man they brought from the ambulance as that of an Israeli. The Israeli carried a radio transmitter.
They circulated photographs among themselves and looked at him. “You’ve put on weight, Abu Jeddah,” they taunted.
They knew who he was. He would not give them the pleasure of trying to deny it. He would die like a man, proud of who and what he had been.
The Israeli was no longer paying attention to him, instead fiddling with the transmitter on the ground beside the pool. They were all sweating from the heat of the burning house. A militia man tied a rope several times around an ornamental garden rock. Then he tied the other end around Abu Jeddah’s neck, with a total length of maybe four feet of rope left, so that Abu Jeddah had to stoop.
The militia man picked up the heavy garden rock so that Abu Jeddah could stand upright once more. Then he pitched the rock into the swimming pool. Caught off balance, Abu Jeddah was yanked by the neck into the deep end after the rock.
They watched him beneath the water pass his bound wrists beneath his feet so they were now in front of his body. He swam down to the bottom, scooped up the rock and tried to swim to the surface. However the rock outweighed his body’s buoyancy.
Abu Jeddah dropped the rock and used his teeth to tear savagely at the rope which boùnd his wrists. Then his fingers tried desperately to untie the knot at his neck. He was just about out of air. His feet thrashed at the water’s surface as his head, anchored to the bottom by the short length of rope, could resist no longer and drew in long, cool drafts of chlorinated water into his parched lungs.
By this time the Israeli had got the transmitter working. Using the agreed wavelength, he repeatedly sent out th
e code word: Har HaTzofim.
There were nearly twenty thousand Arabs living in the grimy Kreuzberg district hard by the Berlin Wall, and this wasn’t counting Turks, Armenians, and Iranians, who were also plentiful in the neighborhood.
“It’s a bit of a comedown from our accustomed style of living,” Naim observed humorously as he sat on a lumpy bed with torn sheets and a dirty blanket. “But at least we’re safe here.”
He received a fierce look from Hasan, who despite his proletarian politics had a strong distaste for poverty.
“This place is riddled with informers,” Hasan claimed. “If the Germans offer a reward, we are done for. We can’t move here. We can’t operate. They have us pinned down, just like they want us.”
Naim smiled and nodded. “That’s when they are most vulnerable and we are most dangerous.”
“You can’t be thinking of mounting an operation here,” Hasan told him. “Let us slip back one by one into East Berlin and fly somewhere from there.”
“That’s what they want us to do,” Naim said scornfully. “Run away without striking at them. They can boast they have won this round and say we are seriously weakened, need not be reckoned with. Hasan, you are a patient man and I understand you do not always agree with me. We will run back to East Berlin, because, as you say, we must. But not without drawing blood first. Then the victory will be ours. Even Barcelona was a victory for us.”
“An expensive one.”
“Those were raw recruits who should never have been sent,” Naim said.
“Where are Leila and Mohammed?”
“I sent her to a nice suburb, after first sending her to buy some European clothes and visit a hairdresser. You’ll hardly know her.”
Hasan looked interested but said nothing.
“Mohammed is buying dynamite, detonators, and time fuses, as well as finding us a couple of cars. I told him to steal one of those ivory-colored Mercedes taxis.”
“You think it’s safe to buy dynamite from that Turk?” Hasan asked accusingly.
“No. But if things go wrong, Mohammed doesn’t know where to find me and he can’t tell the authorities much at this point that they don’t already know about us.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” Hasan conceded. “All right, if we’re to strike, let’s do it without delay and get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”
Naim slapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s do that and take a rest. We’ll have ourselves some good times again.”
Richard Dartley was still in Barcelona when the West German government announced that the East Germans had allowed four Palestinian terrorists to infiltrate into West Berlin. No other information was forthcoming, and in Spain a collective sigh of relief took place. Let the Germans deal with them for a while now.
Dartley flew to Frankfurt and changed planes there for Tegel Airport in West Berlin. He stayed at the Kempinski and arranged to have dinner with a senior civil servant in the West German administration, a man he could trust. He told Dartley the news that Abu Jeddah was dead, which was being kept secret for the moment in case it triggered the terrorists into more violence. He also said that the first names of the four were known to their informer: Naim, Hasan, Mohammed, and Leila. They had limitless funds and no shortage of new sponsors in the Middle East.
The four were expected to try to return separately to East Berlin at busy times on the U-Bahn—the subway operated by West Berlin—or the elevated S-Bahn, run by East Berlin. Both transport systems operated throughout the city, although some West Berliners refused to take the communist-run elevated out of principle. The authorities would be watching these trains, and Dartley should stay away in case he got into trouble.
That was all the information anyone had.
Mohammed drove the Mercedes taxi with Naim and Hasan in the backseat. Leila was waiting at the appointed place.
“There is a nice house for sale,” she told Naim.
“Good, I think I would like to buy a house. Show Mohammed the way, Leila, and then come in with me. Hasan, if I send her out alone, it’s on. If we both come out together, pick us up and we will try somewhere else.”
The suburban house had pine trees along one side and privacy behind tall hedges and bushes. Naim and Leila got out of the taxi at the gate and walked to the door. A woman anxiously opened it before they reached the doorstep.
Naim spoke in his slow, careful German. “Your house is advertised for sale. May my wife and I look it over for a moment? We won’t take long. Our taxi is waiting. You see we are in a hurry for a house, and we will pay generously in cash for something suitable.”
The woman practically dragged them inside, introduced her husband and two young children, and told them she had a feeling they would be very happy here.
“Tell the taxi not to wait,” Naim told Leila. He said apologetically to the others, “She doesn’t speak any German yet, but she is a fast learner. I think she will enjoy it.”
“Are you newlyweds?” the woman wanted to know.
“We’ve been married for more than a year,” Naim said. He was enjoying himself.
Leila returned and looked at him puzzled when he carefully translated information to her about the washing machine and the central heating on their tour of the house. It wasn’t until Hasan drove the black Saab alongside the pine trees that Naim took his gun out. He was still very polite and had them sit on armchairs, under guard by Leila, while he and Hasan worked on the Saab’s trunk. When it was ready, Naim came into the room and beckoned the husband. He showed him the many sticks of dynamite bound together. Connected cables led to embedded detonators from two car batteries linked parallel. He explained the timing device and how it would be linked to the trunk door to explode instantly if it was opened.
Mohammed arrived in the taxi. “Thirty-five minutes,” he said. “No more.”
Since he was the only one who spoke German, Naim had to translate all the remarks for the husband. “When you leave in this car,” he explained, “for the Egyptian Museum, which is at 70 Schlossstrasse, opposite the Charlottenburg Palace, I will set the timer for thirty-five minutes. My comrade estimates it shouldn’t take you any longer than that to get there. He will follow you in his taxi to make sure you obey instructions, which are to drive this Saab as close as you can to the main entrance of the museum and run for your life. When you have done this, my comrade will telephone here and I will leave. Your wife and children will be unharmed. If he does not telephone within forty-five minutes or if he does to say you have not followed instructions, then I must remind you of our recent exploits and let you guess what I will do to your family.”
The husband said quietly, “I know who you are now. But why us?”
“By chance.”
“Why the Egyptian Museum?”
“My sense of humor,” Naim replied in a friendly way. “And perhaps a small message to people in that part of the world.”
The husband looked from Naim’s oily smile to Hasan’s lowering scowl. He said, “I’ll do it.”
“Of course you will,” Naim said, as if there had never been any other possibility. “Now come with me into your living room and explain it exactly as I’ve told you to your wife and children. It’s just so they’ll understand what’s happening to them if you fail to obey my instructions.”
Was he justified in murdering other people in order to save his own family? Maybe not, but they could criticize his actions in detail later to their heart’s content when his family was safe. He had to follow instructions to save his wife and children from certain slaughter. The people at the museum would have to take their chances. If he could figure something out to save them, he would. But that young creep was hanging in behind him with the taxi to make sure things went as planned. The taxi had stopped to drop the girl off at a parked car, probably to drive back and pick the others up. They didn’t seem to give a damn about him seeing their faces.
The Arab pair had fooled him totally at first. His wife too, and she was hard to fool
. They had both had visions of unloading the house on the Saudi pair at an outrageous price in hard cash. Their greed had not allowed them to see that all this was too good to be true—especially after all they had seen on television and read in the papers about these terrorists sneaking into West Berlin. But they hadn’t expected them to come out to the suburbs!
He would do his best, that was all. He’d save his family by putting the Saab at the museum entrance, and he’d do what he could from there on. No matter what people were going to say, this was what he would do.
As he neared the museum, the taxi slowed behind him and pulled over to a public phone. He would just have to go ahead and do it. He was surprised to discover he had not been glancing at his watch every minute, counting down till doom. He looked now and saw that he had eleven minutes. He lost seven of those minutes in getting through traffic to the museum entrance. When he jumped out, there were four minutes to go.
He shouted to people outside the museum, “Arab bomb in that Saab!”
The sort of people who would ordinarily ignore such an outburst took themselves off in a dignified hurry. Inside the museum he managed to clear people from the desk and away from the doors and windows. He did a lot of shouting and running. With half a minute to go, all was clear.
“We got one of them,” the civil servant told Dartley over the phone. “The kid named Mohammed. On the U-Bahn. While they were taking him in, he managed to slash his wrists in the police van. He’s dead.”
“Shit!”
“I know. Everyone’s very upset. We think the others are gone now, so there’s relief over that. They didn’t harm the man’s family and no one was even scratched at the Egyptian Museum.”
“I’ll stay on here,” Dartley said. “I need your input desperately. I never even had a crack at them in Berlin. Where would you head?”
“Maybe Greece, except they say they won’t sign. Maybe back home now that Abu Jeddah is dead.”
“How about Yugoslavia?” Dartley asked. “It’s communist, so it would be nothing to go there from East Germany. Then they could easily slip into Italy from there.”
