The Terrorist's Holiday

by Andrew Neiderman

  They watched the bellhop enter and then followed him. When he got to table 34, he stopped and asked for Brenda Casewell. Barry watched closely as a woman in her late thirties, early forties, with short hair looked up to respond. Both he and Boggs studied her face as she read the message and then handed it back to the bellhop, smiling. Then they quickly left the dining room.

  “Whaddaya think?” Boggs said as they walked to David’s office. “Ever see her before?”

  Barry just shook his head. David was waiting at his desk. They sat down and once again described how they found the gun. David took on a posture and expression of Kennedy-like seriousness. It reminded Barry of some pictures he had seen of the young president alone in the White House, seated at his desk, contemplating some national problem.

  “We’re not supposed to be searching rooms without a search warrant,” David said, more like a thought spoken aloud than a revelation of new facts. “This could really be sticky.”

  “Of course,” Boggs said, “she could have a permit for that gun and it could all be on the up and up.” He waited for some support, but Barry just smirked. “Maybe she’s afraid she’ll be mugged in her room. Some of these New Yorkers live in constant terror.”

  “But if we ask her about it, she’ll know we were in her room, and if she is innocent, I could get myself into some kind of a legal hassle,” David concluded. He turned to Barry. “What are your thoughts?”

  “I don’t think she’s innocent, but I’d like to play it cool for the next twenty-four hours at least and see if she contacts anyone else in the hotel. She checked in by herself, but others could have checked in separately. She’s never been here before, according to your records.”

  “We’d have to shadow her constantly,” Boggs said. “I’ll put Hardik and Cooper on it, split shift. And we’ll keep track of all her phone calls. We’ll start immediately.”

  “And after this day or so?” David asked. “What then?”

  “I have an idea,” Barry said. “It’s a little outlandish, perhaps, but …”

  “Go on.”

  “We’re interested in neutralizing this woman and the potential evil she could do. Let’s get her into a compromising situation. Have her arrested for something else … like stealing. An accusation will be made, the room searched, the gun will be found …”

  “Stealing? But how …”

  “Just leave that part to me,” Barry said. “We’ll wait until the morning of Chaim Eban’s arrival. That way, whoever’s behind this won’t have much time to reorganize plans.”

  David stared at him and thought.

  “Can you do this without a major scene in the hotel?”

  “No problem,” Barry said. “I did something similar last month, using a policewoman as the supposed victim.”

  “All right,” David said. “Tom, get right on it.”

  Barry and Tom Boggs stood up.

  “We’ll fill in the man from Israeli security as soon as he arrives tomorrow,” Barry said. Since the discovery of the gun he felt he had to take more of a leadership role. He could see that David Oberman appreciated it.

  “When I first spoke to you, I thought, well, things like this are happening now. I’ll take precautions, but honestly, I never deeply believed …”

  “I know,” Barry said. “No one ever seems to believe it will happen to them. It’s like there’s something working inside us, a defense mechanism, linebackers,” he said, looking at Boggs, “keeping us from facing ugly truths.”

  “You’ve got a great responsibility, Tom,” David said, turning to Boggs. He nodded.

  “I know. Nothing like this ever touched me. Only thing I can compare it to is the Super Bowl game I was in.”

  Barry laughed. There was a moment of comic relief. Then the three men looked at each other. It was as if they all felt a fourth presence, one that would leave darkness and death.

  20

  The excitement of opening night in the New Prospect’s nightclub was electric. The anticipation was visible in everyone’s conversation. After dinner, most of the guests relaxed in the lounges. Some visited the stores. Others took walks through the hotel and around the grounds. Many went back to their rooms to change again for the show. Reputed to be one of the world’s largest nightclubs, the Astro Room, as it was now called, had a dome ceiling filled with hundreds of colorful small lights that gave it the appearance of a Technicolor night sky. It was dazzling.

  Small tables were set on tiers around the lower floor. There was a large clear area in front of the gigantic stage. This was used for ballroom dancing, usually during the intermission between the first and second shows.

  Keeping more or less within the theme of the holiday, David had booked Darnel and Dede, a pair of Israeli singers who were exploding onto the scene and gaining fame and fortune on their American tour. Their single records, which preceded their arrival, sold in the millions. Darnel was a tall, handsomely built Sabre whose dark hair floated over his forehead in a gentle wave. Thousands of women had fallen in love with his picture on the front of Time magazine. And Dede, a Middle Eastern version of Cher, only with smaller facial features and a slightly fuller figure, had already made her Israeli army pants and jacket into a popular new fashion item. Some of the guests in the audience wore modified versions of her outfit.

  Besides singing their hit records and talking in conversational style about Israel, their act consisted of taking popular American songs and singing them in Hebrew. They had arranged a number of songs so they could harmonize, one singing in English, the other singing in Hebrew. Crowds loved it, especially in the Catskills. Because of their growing fame and fortune, the duo had to expand their act to include their own accompanying band.

  Nessim sat back and blew smoke from his cigarette with cool indifference. The longer they were at the hotel, the more powerful and godlike he felt. From their table on a raised tier, he could look down at the buoyant crowd. He fantasized deific actions. Perhaps he would arrange it so that particular woman or that particular man would not be killed. He could perform miracles. Any moment these people might turn in his direction and go down on their knees to beg for mercy.

  “Nessim? Nessim?” Clea said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You looked … so deep in thought. It was frightening. You didn’t hear a word I said.”

  “I was in deep thought, like you said.”

  “The longer we’re here, the stranger you become,” Clea said.

  He touched her hand. “Don’t worry. What were you saying?”

  “Those two down there, by the stage. The ones just sitting down now. They’re the owners of the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they will be with Chaim Eban when you … when it happens?”

  “Yes.”

  “It gives me the chills.”

  “Think about your mother and father and it won’t,” he said harshly. He crushed his cigarette viciously in the ashtray. She looked away. In a moment he regretted his anger. “Actually, I’m glad we made this show. I’ve heard these people sing, have I not?”

  “On the radio. They’ve got a good sound, but whenever I hear them, I think about going back to the Middle East.”

  “Maybe we will. After … after this is all over.”

  “Really?”

  He smiled at her obvious happiness. “I think so. We will have done our work here.”

  The thought comforted her somewhat and she turned to watch the show. Nessim caught sight of Brenda Casewell at a floor table to the right of the stage. He watched her more than he watched the performers, waiting to see if she would look up at him. Her presence was still very annoying to him.

  Boggs’s man Hardik sat just one table behind her, but there wasn’t any way Nessim could tell he was watching her. She had come in by herself and now sat with two other women. Apparently, from
what Hardik could see, she did not know them before she had joined them at the table.

  Of course, Nessim thought, there is always the possibility they did that as a precautionary measure. These people are clever. He recalled headlines and television shows.

  Barry had made up his mind he would give Shirley a good evening. After all, he thought, things might become hairy during the next few days and he wouldn’t be able to spend much time with her. When the babysitter arrived, they left quickly to go to the nightclub for the show. Shirley wore her new outfit, and he had complimented her twice on how nice she looked. All his antics before and after dinner seemed forgotten. She hadn’t even asked him what he meant by his using her in the case. She was too excited about going to the nightclub.

  “I called my mother,” she said, “at my brother’s house.”

  “So?”

  “You know my mother.”

  “Whaddaya mean? She was mad?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “She didn’t enjoy dinner there?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “You know.”

  “If I know, why am I trying so hard to find out?”

  “She asked me if we enjoyed the First Seder and I said we did. I guess I said it too enthusiastically.”

  “Why?”

  “She wanted to know how I could enjoy a Passover eating with a bunch of strangers.”

  “What about the meal your brother’s girlfriend cooked?”

  “All she would say is nice, and you know what nice means.”

  “No, I don’t. What does nice mean?”

  “It means she wasn’t crazy about it.”

  “That’s what nice means?” He thought for a moment. “So that’s what she meant when she said I provided you with a ‘nice’ home.”

  “Well, sometimes ‘nice’ means other things to my mother. You can’t go by one ‘nice.’”

  They joined a couple from Philadelphia who had a two-drink start on them. Offering up only first names, Larry and Ellen, they avoided substantial conversation and only joked and laughed. He was a rather loud, chubby man with dark hair who shouted back at the comedian. She laughed at almost everything her husband said or did; Barry and Shirley got more entertainment out of them than they did the show.

  Barry spotted Hardik a number of tables down to his right and followed the line of vision until he located Brenda Casewell. They had decided that, for the time being, Barry would stay away from the other plainclothes security men, avoiding any possibility whatsoever of anyone’s suspicions and fears being aroused. He forced himself to listen to the comedian, for his mind was reluctant to do so. He had the increasing tendency to look around the room analytically, searching for a clue, a lead, an inclination. Ever since he had discovered the gun in Brenda Casewell’s room, he had the growing feeling that something way beyond his wildest imagination was going on here. Something … terrifically … terrible.

  At eleven o’clock, Toby Marcus excused herself from her table, whispering into Bill’s ear that she thought she was about to get her period. Besides being a way for her to get away from the table, it was an ingenious way of avoiding him sexually and saving herself completely for Bruno. She told Bill to stay there while she went up to their room to check things out. He nodded quickly, lost in conversation with another couple. She made her way up the aisle and rushed out to the lobby. Frantically, she looked around, her heart beating madly. Then she saw him. He was standing by the main desk talking to one of the receptionists. He saw her too.

  She headed for the elevator, not looking back at him. When she stepped in, she saw him turn away from the main desk, that powerful shoulder of his moving slowly around. The door closed, but not before she caught sight of his face and clicked his smile into her mind. It carried her up the elevator shaft with as much lift as the elevator.

  Bruno and she had developed a kind of visual language between them. It was a system of communications necessary to people screwing around on the sly. A look, a glance, a smile, a movement of the head—any and all of it were just as effective as complete sentences, even paragraphs. They could tell each other in a moment if or when getting together was possible. She was somewhat proud of this body talk that had grown between. It added a nice touch of excitement to the whole affair.

  Getting out of the elevator quickly, she fumbled through her pocketbook for the room key. She left the door slightly opened and moved through the suite, closing and locking the door to Dorothy’s room out of some moral instinct rather than out of any practical necessity. Then she got out of her dress, unfastened her bra, and quickly slipped off her panties. She’d be naked by the time he came through that door.

  When the first show ended, people in the audience began to pay more attention to one another. Some took advantage of the hotel orchestra and went up to the dance floor. Others, feeling high and quite jovial, went right onto the stage to dance and clown around. The rest of the guests milled about their tables, ordered drinks, or left the dining room to stroll through the lobby.

  Nessim saw no point in staying around and inviting the interest of hotel guests. He decided they should return to their room. “I want to sleep for a while,” he said. He could sense the tension growing in Clea.

  She nodded and remained silent until they paid their check and left the nightclub. Actually, Nessim wanted to study the photos and diagrams some more before he descended into the basement. It would be best if he knew exactly what he was looking for and where it would be. Because he would plant the explosives and detonators tomorrow night, it meant that the materials would be there for an entire day, and the possibility of someone discovering them would be that much greater. Obviously, he had to do the work at night when he would be assured of greater privacy. What he would do tonight was mark out the spots where the explosives would be placed on the cement footings. He’d want them as hidden as was possible.

  According to what Tandem had told him, the area had little human traffic, but there was some. Chambermaids went through the hotel that way, large carts filled with sheets and pillowcases were pushed into the big laundry rooms on the other side of the building, and service personnel occasionally went into storage rooms to gather supplies. He also had to look out for custodians who maintained the great boilers that sent heat up through twenty floors of the main building.

  Of course, few, if any, of these people would be down there in the late hours. Once the packets were well placed and the receivers were set, he could detonate the explosives whenever he wished. What Nessim had created was not really as innovative as it seemed. However, the command was very pleased with the potential of his work.

  Plastic explosives have to be detonated by an electrical impulse. In this case, it need be no greater than that of a penlight battery. The battery was activated by a simple switch that moved on the command of an FM frequency. The detonators had tiny receivers in them, built to respond to only one frequency, a frequency beyond the range of ordinary radio FM transmission. When the detonators’ receivers received the frequency message, they would close the switch, activating the penlight batteries, thereby sending enough electrical impulse to detonate the plastique. The explosion could be commanded and controlled from a safe distance, limited only by the power of the FM transmitter. The whole process was similar to the radio processes used by space experts to order and manipulate machinery on the moon and on Mars.

  Since the methodology of this sabotage was somewhat involved and unique, Nessim had agreed to utilize a more conventional system for the backup explosion at Chaim Eban’s table. The Claw’s great reliance on caution required it. If something happened to the transmission, or for some unknown reason, the detonators did not function properly, or only a few did, Nessim would have a different system for the plastique under the table. After all, all the packets would have to explode simultaneously in the basement for the plan to wo
rk. The building would have to be unsupported on all sides at the same instant.

  He would use a watch to trigger the detonator under Chaim Eban’s table. This meant that he had to plant that bomb during the course of the day of Eban’s arrival. There were times when the dining room was completely empty—a good one being right after the staff had set the tables for dinner and left. He would do it then. It was the most dangerous part of his work, as far as he was concerned, for if he were caught doing that, he couldn’t detonate the major explosions later.

  All these thoughts played on his mind now and he wanted to devote all his attention to them. Suddenly, the noise and the excitement of the hotel had become annoying. He had to get away, go up to the room, and relax a little before his first exploratory trip to the basement.

  Clea felt the tension building and walked quietly beside him. She began to feel a greater and greater separation building between them. Nessim was leaving her spiritually, becoming this second individual she had really never grown to know. In time, he would become the complete stranger and she would be alone. During those hours by herself, she would wonder about many things and she was afraid now of what the conclusions might be.

  She wanted to love him.

  She wanted to think only of her parents.

  She wanted to believe in their cause.

  She wanted to be happy for their success.

  But how she had enjoyed the singing of the two Israeli performers in the nightclub… .

  21

  After it had come to life with such a dynamic force, the hotel was reluctant to go to sleep. The lounge bar closed at three, but the band played on for another hour. Their music, although quiet and subdued, catering now to the slow-moving couples who embraced to dance, traveled out the door and made its way across the lobby and into the immediate darkness around the hotel. The hotel staff wound down slowly. Many of the dining room personnel and bellhops stayed up late to play cards, drink, and talk over the day’s labor. Naked lightbulbs dangling in the help’s quarters remained lit, and the low murmur of voices continued in nocturnal rhythms punctuated by an occasional loud laugh or heavy curse.