58 Minutes (Basis for the Film Die Hard 2)

by Walter Wager

  He reached him as people began to come through from Aerovias Flight 16. Among the first was a shining-eyed young nun, as pretty as the actresses who played such parts on the screen. Sister Teresa wasn't playing. She was intensely serious about the photos and microfilmed reports in the envelope taped under her breasts. In a few minutes, she would give them to the assistant head of her order, who was waiting in the lobby. In a few days, this hard evidence of the jungle massacres of defenseless Indians would be released to the world.

  The Aerovias steward was thirty yards behind her. He walked with a confident gait, unaware that a dozen employees of the Drug Enforcement Administration were nearby, eagerly anticipating his delivery of the cocaine. Two of the biggest narcotics importers on the East Coast and a lot of other people would be in jail before morning.

  "Those reporters want to talk to you," Hamilton said to Malone, and waved the cigar smoke away.

  The detective puffed on the Don Diego and shook his head.

  "Why don't you go out for just a minute?" Hamilton suggested.

  "Because I've got something more important to do. Tell them I'm invoking my constitutional right to free speech."

  "Free speech?"

  "Yeah, I'm free not to talk to anyone I please," Malone explained.

  "It's a great country, isn't it?"

  "Terrific. Listen, they're not going to give up," Hamilton warned.

  "Let them talk to the commissioner. He speaks very well. I think he took elocution lessons."

  "They want you. You're the guy who took out Staub, dammit."

  "That's one of the things I don't want to talk about. Here comes another bunch."

  It was the British Airways passengers and crew. The blond stewardess was escorting the old Russian woman. Behind her two male flight attendants had firm grips on the arms of the man who had gotten hysterical.

  "I'm not mad, you know," he said firmly. "I'm just utterly terrified of flying. Please let me go. I must delivery my case to the CBS chaps immediately. It contains the master tape of the next album of a very important rock group. I'm not at liberty to mention the name."

  "Is there a policeman about?" one of the stewards asked and nodded toward the still distraught passenger he held.

  "About fifty-six of them—out there," Malone replied.

  The frazzled courier was still protesting volubly as they led him away. Another score of passengers passed by before Malone recognized a familiar face.

  "Good evening, Frank," the British member of the U.N. Security Council said brightly.

  "Good evening, Brian. You're in pretty good spirits for a gent who almost got killed."

  Sir Brian Forsythe smiled.

  "I'm in excellent spirits," he confided.

  "That's more than I can say for one of your countrymen," Malone joked. "He seemed—may I say agitated—when the stewards took him by ten seconds ago."

  "Say anything you please," the diplomat replied. "Excuse my manners, Frank. I'd like to introduce Ellen Jenkins. She's the person who disabled that odd gent with one blow."

  "I'm impressed, Miss Jenkins," Malone said politely.

  "She's very impressive," Forsythe declared.

  "Sir Brian's terribly generous," she demurred.

  "And grateful," the senior diplomat added. "I hear that we owe you a great deal, Frank. A first-class dinner at the very least."

  Then he took her arm.

  "Not tonight, of course," Sir Brian Forsythe said briskly. "I'll phone you, Old Boy."

  "That's the U.N. guy," Hamilton said a moment later. "He called you Frank."

  "You can call me Frank, too, Ben"

  More passengers from BA 126 . . . and still more.

  Then the police commissioner of New York City came up from the lobby, smoothing his tie as he hurried. He stopped abruptly and showed a low of perfectly capped teeth—his version of a sincere smile.

  "Ah, Your Highness," he said in a cloud of expensive and refined after-shave lotion, "Welcome to New York."

  Malone turned the other way. He saw six male Arabs. Four carried West German MP-5 submachine guns. The fifth wore a military uniform with the fancy gold epaulets of an aide to somebody senior. The sixth was clearly that person. Hawk-faced and radiating power, he even looked like royalty.

  "Prince Omar, I'm Bruce Allan Shaw, the police commissioner of New York City."

  Then Omar said something in Arabic.

  "His Highness thanks you for your kindness in coming to meet him," the aide translated.

  "He might also want to thank one of the outstanding members of my department—a man who did a great deal to smash this terrible plot and save His Highness's life. He personally killed Willi Staub. Yes, I can safely say that Captain Malone is one of New York's finest."

  As Omar spoke again in Arabic to his aide, Hamilton saw something change in Malone's eyes. Now they looked like the muzzles of pistols—steely and dangerous.

  The aide nodded deferentially, reached into the leather dispatch case he carried and took out a small rectangular box.

  "His Highness has asked me to present this modest token of his profound indebtedness," the aide announced as he held out the box to Malone.

  "No, thanks," Malone said harshly.

  Everyone else looked startled.

  "But, Captain," the commissioner protested.

  "It's a watch, isn't it?" Malone said. "A solid gold Rolex."

  "As a matter of fact it is," the aide replied.

  "I've got a watch," Frank Malone announced.

  Shaw was sweating visibly.

  "If Prince Omar wants to make this very friendly gesture, Captain," he began.

  "There is something else he can do for me," Malone broke in bluntly. "I think he knows General al-Khalif of Soraq."

  "They are acquainted," the aide admitted cautiously.

  "And the general is coming here next week for the U.N. meetings."

  "I believe so."

  "Would Prince Omar be kind enough to let the general know that it could be a very serious mistake to come here?" Malone asked.

  "Might I tell His Highness why, Captain?" the uneasy aide wondered.

  "Because some people think that he was behind this thing tonight . . . and somebody might put a fucking bullet in the general. Maybe two."

  "The captain means that there could be an attempt," Shaw intervened smoothly, "and he'd rather avoid such an incident. If the general comes, we'd certainly be able to protect him. We have an excellent police department with a top-notch antiterrorist team. Captain Malone's in charge of that unit himself."

  "I'll be on vacation next week," Malone said. "My daughter just flew in from California on TWA, and I'll be on vacation in about five minutes when she walks through that door."

  The crown prince of Tarman nodded in comprehension.

  He understood this even better than he knew oil and banking.

  It was something he'd learned—absorbed—as a child.

  Blood feud.

  The blue-eyed policeman was saying that al-Khalif had endangered the life of his child, and he would be held ac-countable. That was as it should be, Omar thought.

  It was a simple matter of family and honor, two subjects that Omar knew were nonnegotiable. There was no way to argue with the law of blood feud. It was more than a tradition. It was a fact. The military aide put the watch away before he spoke.

  "I'll give your message to His Highness," he promised.

  "You don't have to," Malone said. "He spoke perfect English at Stanford not so long ago."

  Prince Omar smiled.

  "What if the general comes here next year, Captain?" he tested.

  "I could be on vacation then, too," Malone answered.

  Then a small tanned girl ran down the corridor with her arms outstretched. Malone swept her up and kissed her.

  "Your daughter?" the prince guessed.

  Malone nodded and kissed her again.

  "Kate, this is Prince Omar of Tarman," the detective said a few seconds
later after he put her down.

  "I'm pleased to meet you, sir," she responded courteously.

  "The pleasure is mine," he told her. "It was a pleasure to meet you, too, Captain. It is always a pleasure to meet a man of honor."

  Now he saw the question in Frank Malone's hard eyes.

  "You have my word that your thoughtful advice will reach General al-Khalif within twenty-four hours," Omar pledged.

  He turned to Shaw.

  "And I'll be sending a contribution to your fund for widows and orphans, Commissioner," the heir to the throne announced.

  "That would be splendid," Shaw responded enthusiastically as he visualized the press conference. "Well, we'd better go now. If you'll come with me, Your Highness, there are some press people who'd like to talk to you."

  "Of course. Good-bye, Captain. We shall meet again."

  "Inshallah" Malone replied.

  "Yes, if Allah wills it," Omar of Tarman agreed.

  Then he walked away with Shaw, the aide and four bodyguards following. Frank Malone introduced his daughter to Hamilton, and she began telling them, in an eight-year-old's breathless detail, what had happened on the flight and how passengers had reacted.

  "Then they told us to take the sharp things out of our pockets, and one of the motors stopped about a minute later. I wasn't scared, Daddy, but a lot of grown-ups were."

  "I'd have been scared," Benjamin Hamilton told her.

  "I was a little scared," she admitted.

  Now she remembered—relived—those terrible minutes when the situation looked hopeless and death seemed imminent.

  "People were screaming when the other motors stopped," she continued. "Not everyone . . . but some people."

  She paused for a moment before she took her father's hand.

  "I was a lot scared, Daddy."

  Malone picked her up again, held her close.

  She felt him struggle to suppress a shudder.

  "It's all right, Daddy," she said. "Let me tell you the rest of it."

  Her father kissed her, put her down and listened. As she recounted the dramatic events—with gestures—more people just off TWA 22 Heavy were moving down the passage. A bearded young man carrying a large Styrofoam box relentlessly pushed and bumped other passengers aside as he strode forward.

  "Out of my way! Out of my way!" he ordered imperiously.

  He was bulling ahead, just a few steps from Kate Malone, when he saw a stocky Hispanic man in a rain slicker walking toward him. The slicker was marked MOUNT SINAI, and the ambulance driver who wore it was being escorted by two uniformed Port Authority police.

  "There you are!" the man with the Styrofoam box accused. "Took your own sweet time, didn't you?"

  Before he could continue his diatribe, a sleekly attractive TWA flight attendant who looked oriental tapped his left shoulder lightly. He turned and glared at her.

  "I told you," he snapped. "It's a kidney."

  "Okay. Are you really a doctor?" Samantha Wong challenged.

  "I'll have my doctorate in biochemistry next year," the courier announced haughtily. He brushed past her and resumed his verbal assault on the ambulance driver as they marched off to the parked vehicle.

  "He's not a doctor-doctor at all," Samantha Wong said in a tone of outrage. "Hell, he's just a creep."

  "I hear there's one on every flight," Hamilton told her.

  "Sometimes more" the chic flight attendant confided. "I'd give this job up if I weren't so good at it," she announced, and strode off purposefully to keep her date with a highly talented and sexually indefatigable sculptor.

  She was still in sight when Hamilton remembered.

  "Good Lord!" he said and pointed at a pair of pay phones on the wall. "I never called my wife. I was due home almost three hours ago.

  She probably thinks I smashed up the car in this storm."

  "Not if she's got the radio or TV on," Malone said as they began walking to the telephones. "You're the good fellow who was interviewed. Word of your heroism must be flooding the airwaves."

  Hamilton groped in his pocket, and took out the coin he needed.

  "Not a chance, Frank," he replied cheerfully. "My mama brought me up right. I told them all the whole thrilling truth about what you did. You're the hero, Frank."

  He didn't give Malone a chance to answer. Hamilton reached the telephone, pushed in the quarter and dialed his home number. He was talking to his wife when Frank Malone guided his daughter to the adjacent phone.

  "I already called Mom to say your plane was down safely," the detective told his daughter, "but I suspect she won't breathe right until she speaks to you."

  That happened thirty-five seconds later.

  Kate Malone was still talking to her mother in Malibu when Hamilton hung up the other phone and walked across the corridor to join the detective.

  Both men heard the eight-year-old girl say it.

  "He's a hero, Mom. . . . Yes, he is. . . . He is. Turn on the radio!"

  Hamilton saw Malone flinch.

  "It's perfectly normal for a little girl to love her father, Frank," the Port Authority lieutenant declared.

  "That's not what's bothering me."

  "What is?"

  "She's going back to her mother in California in ten days. I don't know when I'll see her again. She may not even want to see me again," Malone said.

  "You divorced?"

  "Separated. We're about to get a very civilized annulment," the detective explained bitterly. "Kate could have a new stepfather in a few months. That bothers me."

  "I can see why," Hamilton answered compassionately.

  "And there's still the nasty loose end here," Malone continued.

  "What loose end?"

  "We haven't finished with this operation tonight, dammit," the detective declared.

  "Staub's dead, his people are in custody and all the planes have landed safely. It's over, Frank."

  Malone shook his head. There was a fierce look in his eyes, and Hamilton wondered whether the detective might be confused by exhaustion.

  "It won't be over till we nail Staub's spy in The Cab," Frank Malone insisted. "Don't argue with me! It isn't over at all!"

  41

  IN THE CAB, the watch supervisor hung up the telephone, the instrument over which Willi Staub had made his demands. She looked at it for several seconds.

  "I think we'd better tell Captain Malone," she told Pete Wilber slowly. "He's got a right to know."

  "Take your break now," Wilber said. "I'll come with you."

  A Port Authority policeman on the balcony of the arrivals terminal used his walkie-talkie to find Hamilton, who said that he was with Malone at the baggage carousels waiting for the child's suitcase. When Annie Green and Wilber got there, they saw Hamilton first.

  "He's over there," Hamilton said and pointed. Wilber and the watch supervisor turned in time to see Malone pick up a twenty-six-inch valise of blue nylon. With his blond daughter at his side, he walked over to Annie Green and sighed.

  "In case you're wondering why my friend is so down," Hamilton said to her, "it's because he thinks we haven't won the whole ball of wax. He's got no proof, you understand, but he's convinced that the late Mr. Staub had a spy in The Cab. Wild idea isn't it?"

  "Absolutely," Wilber answered. "Wild—and right."

  "And there's proof," Annie Green added. "You weren't being paranoid, Frank. I suppose we owe you an apology."

  "I'll settle for the facts," Malone responded.

  "A police lieutenant named Arbolino found the spy, not us. He called us over a phone in some warehouse. He said to tell you that the Bomb Squad had cleared out the charges, and he was up in the main control room with the electronic equipment."

  "What about the spy?" Malone asked tensely.

  "I'm coming to that, Frank," she replied. "Lieutenant Arbolino explained that he was standing beside a loudspeaker. He then proceeded to recap everything we'd said in The Cab in the previous three minutes. He'd heard it all over the speake
r!"

  Now she held out her right first and opened it.

  Malone recognized the object in her palm immediately.

  "In your phone?" he asked.

  "In the outside line. We had some noise on that line about two weeks ago, and a man came to fix the instrument. He must have put this in the mouthpiece, turning it into a round-the-clock listening device."

  "So Staub's people heard everything said in The Cab for two full weeks before the attack ... and everything else until we hit that warehouse," Frank Malone analyzed. "Very cute."

  "It still isn't over," Hamilton announced. "How did Staub screw up the phone in The Cab, and how did the terrorists slip a phony repairman with fake ID through our security?"

  "Maybe your security is like the air traffic control system," Malone said softly. "Nearly perfect."

  "Our system's fine," Wilber defended loyally, "and it'll be even better when OMB releases the eight billion dollars and we get the advanced equipment."

  "The federal government's warehousing eight billion dollars collected in user's fees from airlines," Annabelle Green translated. "The Office of Management and Budget won't let us spend that money because it wants to make the national deficit look smaller."

  "That's crazy," Malone said. Then he noticed that his daughter was whispering something to Annie Green.

  "Excuse us, Frank," the watch supervisor said. "We have to wash our hands. We'll meet you at the main door out front."

  As they walked away, Wilber spoke again.

  "Thanks for what you did tonight, Captain," he said sincerely.

  "Don't worry about our system."

  "Couldn't happen again, right?"

  "Let's say that we understand what happened, and we know how to prevent a repeat," Wilber declared.

  "Let's say I certainly hope you're right," the detective replied as they shook hands.

  The FAA official started back to The Cab, and Frank Malone nodded toward the lobby. The music that he'd been hearing from there seemed to be getting louder.

  "Somebody's having fun," the detective said to Hamilton as they walked toward the sound.

  "I wanted to talk to you about that," Hamilton replied.