Ultimatum

by Antony Trew

  ‘Have you told him anything?’

  ‘Nothing, Shalom. He thinks I’m a freelance journalist. That I work at home and dart about looking for stories. I help him to believe that.’ She sat on the studio couch. ‘He thinks there’s another man.’

  ‘How d’you get him off that?’

  ‘By telling him there isn’t.’ She looked at him in a curious, puzzled way. ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’

  Shalom Ascher shrugged his shoulders. He was a burly, bearded, stooping man in his early thirties. ‘Don’t ask me. How should I know?’

  ‘Actually, the best way of stopping his questions is to let him talk about himself. Like most men. Their favourite subject. They talk, you listen. As long as you’ve got a pair of ears, a reasonably passable face and body, they’re happy.’

  ‘You’re a cynic, Ruth. Anyway, watch it. He may not be as stupid as you think. Works in an advertising office, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. On the creative side, he says. Not a very important number, I guess. Don’t know why I bother really.’ She poured herself a coke. ‘Like one?’

  ‘No thanks. Why do you bother?’

  ‘Biological fact. Woman needs man. I’ve been in London for six months. Not allowed to mix with our own people. He’s available. Life has to go on.’

  ‘Don’t get emotionally involved. You can’t afford that.’

  ‘I don’t have to. I’m tough. You know that.’

  ‘Do I? I wonder.’

  She stood up, picked up her bag and coat. ‘See you.’ She went through the door into her room.

  He sighed. Ruth Meyer was an attractive woman. Too attractive really. Ascher liked her a lot, but feared involvement. It didn’t go along with the work they were doing, so he did nothing about it. But he didn’t care much for the idea of Johnnie Peters. Shaking off what he suspected was jealousy he went back to the window, leant on the sill and looked down the Thames once again. He decided it was useful therapy for a man with a lot on his mind. Daylight had almost gone. With narrowed eyes he focused on the stream of traffic silhouetted against the lights on the bridge beyond the Houses of Parliament. It looked like a glowing caterpillar moving along a luminous branch, the buses the moving arches of its back.

  He heard her come back into the room. ‘They’re fortunate,’ he said, keeping his eye on the river.

  ‘Who?’ The studio couch squeaked as she sat down.

  ‘The British. To have London, Westminster, the Thames, the bridges. This view. It always reassures me. Like their institutions. The Commons, the Lords. Reflects the character of the people. Solid, unchanging.’

  ‘Nothing’s immutable.’ She put down the paper she’d picked up. ‘Least of all Britain.’

  He moved away from the window and sat at a small table. ‘Right, let’s get on with our own problems.’ He yawned, stretched his arms in one big gesture.

  She slid on to the floor, sat with her back against the couch. ‘Let’s have it,’ she said. ‘What happened from twelve to four?’

  ‘Nothing much. Normal routine. They went out just before one. For lunch, shopping, whatever. Hamadeh and Souref got back at fifteen minutes past two. Hanna Nasour came along soon afterwards.’

  ‘Were they carrying anything?’

  ‘Hamadeh and Souref had newspapers and a plastic carry-bag from Music-Box in the Strand. An LP I expect. Hanna came back with a Marks & Spencer shopping bag. Couldn’t have been much in it, the way she carried it. She also had a newspaper and what looked like a bag of fruit.’

  ‘Any deliveries?’

  ‘No parcels or packages. Zol joined me at four. We sat and chatted. At four-ten a postal messenger delivered a telegram to Mocal. I handed over to Zol a few minutes later and left.’

  ‘Wonder what was in the telegram?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘What a business that must be,’ she said. ‘Limited all right. No customers. No deliveries. No dispatches. No bank account. No telephone. Practically no mail. A staff of three sitting on their backsides doing nothing. It doesn’t add up.’

  Ascher shrugged his shoulders. ‘How do you know nothing? Maybe they play backgammon, make love, drink coffee, whatever. That can be a tough routine. And because it doesn’t add up – well, that’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Lucky them.’ She laughed dryly. ‘No. They’re Arabs. It will be very serious. Endless discussion of the project. How they are to do it? On what day and at what time? And who with. You know.’

  ‘Don’t underrate them, Ruth. They’ve a cause and they’re ready to die for it. Makes them a tough proposition.’

  ‘Well, what are they waiting for? I know Jakob says there’s something brewing. Believes they may be involved. But it doesn’t look like it from here.’

  ‘That’s why we’ve got to get a bug in there. They’re not going to have parcels coming into the place with “Explosives” written on them. The postman’s not going to drop letters on the pavement with coded messages for us to pick up.’

  She stood up, pulled her hair forward over her shoulders and went to the window. ‘What happens tonight?’

  ‘I relieve Zol at eight o’clock. He has something to eat, then comes here. At eleven he goes back to Spender Street. You get there at midnight. I take the tools in. He brings the bugs and a tape recorder. You bring another recorder and the spare tapes. Okay?’

  ‘Yes. Mind if I go to the pictures first?’

  ‘Johnnie Peters?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes. He wants me to see Emmanuelle. Says it’s erotic but beautiful. Thinks it would be good for me.’

  ‘Considerate of him. What time does it finish?’

  ‘About ten-thirty.’

  ‘Be sure to lose him soon after that. We don’t want him tailing you down Spender Street.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know how to get rid of him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A woman’s secret, Shalom.’

  ‘Okay. But we’ve got some too. Don’t take chances.’

  He lit a cigarette, his eyes following the smoke as it drifted to the ceiling in whispy spirals. ‘Now, where was I? Sure. We move into Mocal around three in the morning. Soon as we’ve checked all’s clear. You stay in Fifty-Six keeping a lookout. Anybody, anything, odd turns up you alert us. Use the radio-cab code.’

  ‘Radio-taxi code,’ she corrected. Ascher’s last assignment had been in the United States.’

  ‘Same thing.’ He shook his shaggy head. ‘We’ve already cased the place. The door has a mortice lock with Yale backup. No trouble.’

  ‘Bolts?’ she suggested.

  ‘There aren’t any.’

  ‘Did Ezra have that checked?’

  ‘Yes. Sent in one of his lot, meter reading, ten days ago.’

  She came back from the window, sat on the floor again.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘We’ll allow fifteen minutes to look round the place. Another ten to fix the bugs. Ten to test. We talk, you check the tape. That’s thirty-five minutes. Soon as you give us the okay we come back to Fifty-Six. Any problems?’

  ‘Not yet. After midnight’ll be Tuesday. Should be quiet around three.’

  He nodded, looked at her absentmindedly as if he were thinking of something else. ‘We’ll have to watch it. Leaving the office and coming into Spender Street when it’s all over. Best come out separately. Could be the odd fuzz about.’

  ‘There’s no law against working overtime in your own business,’ she said. ‘Even in Britain.’

  ‘We’ll be careful all the same.’

  Narrow, winding, little-used, Spender Street was one of those quaint old London thoroughfares which seemed no longer to serve any useful purpose. Situated in the triangle formed by Leicester Square, Covent Garden and the Savoy, and more or less equi-distant from them, it snaked a brief course between small, smoke-grimed buildings, most of them struggling for tenants since London’s great fruit and vegetable market had moved from Covent Garden to Nine Elms.

  Number 56, an
old decaying structure of two storeys and basement, was as small and unimportant as the street on to which it faced, but for the Israelis the two offices they rented there were vital. One of these was a general office, the other a stockroom. The sign on the passage door read Ascher & Levi, Music Agents. Once through it, callers were confronted with stacks of LPs and singles in colourful sleeves, hundreds of cassettes, a library of catalogues, two tape-recorders, a hi-fi, desks, chairs, a typewriter, filing cabinets and a telephone.

  The windows were fitted with Venetian blinds, and from them the Israelis could watch unseen the ground floor premises across the street. Their particular interest was number 39, a dark, dingy, brick-fronted place, coated with years of London grime. On its windows, opaqued in dark green enamel, the name MIDDLE ORIENT CONSOLIDATED AGENCIES LTD was lettered in gold.

  5

  Mahmoud el Ka’ed and his men separated on emerging from the alleyway where they’d left the body of Colonel Rashid Dahan. Though they were all bound for the rendezvous behind Shed 27 they went by different routes, swiftly and silently, the sound of their footsteps muffled by rubber-soled shoes. The chosen place was a recess between two stacks of timber, well shielded from passers-by. As each man arrived, no more than a dissembled shape in the night, he answered Ammar Tarik’s whispered, ‘eight-two-one’, with, ‘five-three-nine’, the challenge and reply for the night. Ka’ed and his bodyguard, Abdu Hussein, were the last to reach the rendezvous. Ka’ed saw that the time was 1.48 am.

  ‘Issam and Abu Ali,’ he called in a low voice. The men’s answering ‘Here’ was barely audible in the darkness.

  ‘Go now,’ he said. ‘One to each end of the shed. If you are not back by two o’clock I will assume it is all clear. Then we move in. When you see us come on to the loading platform, you join us.’

  ‘Yes, Mahmoud.’

  ‘In the name of Allah be silent. Your lives will depend upon it.’

  They moved past him and out into the night, and Ka’ed touched their shoulders in a gesture of affection. Like the rest of the party each had in their overalls a Walther automatic with silencer, a cosh in one hand, a combat knife in the other. They were dressed as dock labourers, but for Ka’ed who still wore the uniform of an assistant port captain.

  It was 2 am. Issam and Abu Ali had not returned.

  In the recess Ka’ed whispered, ‘Ready, Ammar?’

  ‘Yes. We are ready.’

  ‘Move now. We shall follow.’

  Ammar Tarik with two men slipped out and made for Shed 27. Soon afterwards, on hearing Ka’ed’s muted ‘Come’, the other men followed him into the darkness.

  The moon had set but the sky was bright with stars, the night air warm. From distant quays came the hum of machinery and the noise of cargo working by the night shift. Occasionally the far-off shrill of stevedores’ whistles pierced the thin curtain of sound.

  Movement could be discerned on the loading ramp along the front of the shed. Dark shapes, hidden in the shadows, pressed against the walls near the main entrance. Others moved along the ramp to join them until there were eight in all.

  When the last man was in position, Tarik knocked on the door. He heard voices in the shed, then footsteps making for the door.

  A man called out, ‘Is that you, Colonel?’

  Tarik replied, ‘Yes,’ and moved to the edge of the loading ramp, five or six metres from the door. He leant over the side, looking down into an empty railway truck on the spur-line feeding the ramp. Behind him he heard bolts being drawn, the sound of a door opening, a voice calling, ‘Colonel?’

  Without turning, Tarik – dressed in the Colonel’s clothing and looking very much like him – hissed, ‘Sheesh!’ and beckoned to the man at the door to join him.

  The Syrian officer came towards him, automatic in hand. He had gone only a few paces when he was struck down by two men who came from the shadows. Within seconds they had stabbed him in the heart and pushed his body into the empty truck. Tarik turned, went back to the half-closed doors.

  The Syrian officer who had answered the knocking was Major Aramoun, the second-in-command. Captain Azhari and the other officers had taken cover behind the trucks in accordance with Aramoun’s orders. They saw him go to the door and call out, ‘Is that you, Colonel?’ They heard the answering, ‘Yes,’ saw him unbolt the door, hesitate and step out, his Stetchkin automatic at the ready. As the door swung back on its hinges he was lost to sight. There were sounds of movement outside. Soon afterwards the door opened again and they saw the Colonel standing in the entrance. With fingers to his lips he signalled silence, while the hand holding the 9mm Stetchkin beckoned them. Worried and mystified, Captain Azhari ordered the lieutenants to go to the Colonel at once. Azhari then took cover behind a truck, some fifty metres from the door. Pistol in hand, he kept a sharp lookout.

  The Colonel was still visible, standing outside the door with his back to the shed. He was stooping as if to be less conspicuous, apparently watching something to his right. Major Aramoun was out of sight.

  While Azhari watched, the two lieutenants reached the door. The Colonel moved to the right, the lieutenants followed, and all three passed out of the captain’s field of vision.

  Puzzled and tense, Azhari waited. Suddenly, and with disturbing clarity, he heard the sounds of a struggle, thumps and a sharp cry, quickly muffled. Moments later men came pouring through the door into the warehouse. Azhari fired three shots and saw a man fall. The Syrian ran round to the front of the truck and jumped into the driving cab. He made frantic efforts to start the engine, hoping in his moment of terror to get the engine going and crash the truck through the closed doors of the shed. But it was a forlorn hope. The intruders were already banging at the doors of the Benz cab. In desperation he put his hand on the horn button but nothing happened, and he realized he’d not switched on. He turned the key as a man smashed the window next to him. Azhari saw the menacing barrel of an automatic pistol, shrank away, lifting his weapon in a futile gesture of defence. As he did so, he was acutely aware of two things: the automatic pointing at him was fitted with a silencer, and a spurt of flame was coming from its barrel.

  Not long after Ka’ed and his men had killed Azhari, a black Benz six-wheeler was driven up the ramp into the shed through the now open doors. On either side of the cab it was lettered in white D. B. MAHROUTTI BROS, beneath that in smaller letters, ‘Agricultural Machinery’. With the aid of a fork-lift truck, two grey packing cases were taken from the new arrival and substituted for two in the trucks already there: one from each of them. These were among the smaller packing cases which had been transported by the Byblos from Marseille to Beirut, but they were identical in size, colour and markings to those just brought into the shed.

  The substitution complete, the bearded man with the scarred neck – lately galley-hand in the Byblos – climbed back into the driving seat of the Benz. One of Ka’ed’s men joined him. The Benz moved ponderously out of the shed and down the ramp. The bearded man steered it across the railway lines and along the service road to the junction with the main road. There it turned right and rumbled down towards the dock gates.

  Ka’ed and his men dragged the dead bodies of Major Aramoun and the lieutenants back into the shed, took the Walther automatic with spare magazines from the body of Abu Ali, placed papers in his jacket and hung an identity disc about his neck. With his combat knife Ka’ed slashed the dead man’s face beyond recognition. He wept as he did so for they were old friends and Abu Ali had been one of his first recruits. When he’d finished, his men shut and locked the doors and with them he disappeared into the night.

  Colonel Rashid Dahan’s body was discovered by a dock labourer soon after eight o’clock in the morning. The police were at once called. There was no ready means of identifying the body which had been stripped of clothing but for its underpants. It was taken to the mortuary and examined by a forensic surgeon who pronounced death to be due to multiple stab wounds. The police assumed the motive for the murder to have been
robbery.

  At that stage, owing to the secrecy which had surrounded the movements of the Syrian officers and the Benz trucks, no thought was given to any connection between the dead man and the Syrians in Shed 27. Indeed their presence there was known only to the Port Captain and his immediate assistants. It was a good deal later, when he learnt that one of the Mahroutti trucks had left the docks with a consignment of agricultural machinery in the early hours of morning, that his suspicions were first aroused. With the police he went to Shed 27. The doors were locked and there was no response to knocking, so they broke in and found the bodies of Major Aramoun, Captain Azhari and the two lieutenants. In addition, that of a man whose face had been mutilated beyond recognition. The documents in his pockets and his identity disc showed that he was an Israeli soldier. It was at this stage they realized that the almost naked body found that morning near the Port Captain’s office was Colonel Rashid Dahan’s.

  The police counted sixteen grey packing cases in the Benz six-wheelers. A quick check with the Byblos’s chief officer confirmed that this was the number which had been off-loaded. Exterior examination of the packing cases indicated that none had been opened or in any way tampered with. A check with the police at the Port Gates revealed that the Mahroutti Bros truck which had passed through in the early morning had the same registration letters as one of the two trucks still in Shed 27. The Chief of Police and the Port Captain lost no time in reporting what they’d found and the conclusions they’d drawn to their respective Ministers – Defence and Transport.

  That night the Lebanese Minister of Defence telephoned his opposite number in Damascus on a scrambler line. The Syrian Minister having expressed shock and indignation, they were soon in agreement that Shed 27 had been the target of a particularly brutal Israeli commando raid. The Syrian Minister suggested that since the packing cases had not been removed or tampered with, the raiders must have been disturbed and obliged to call off their operation.