“Why can’t you join me?”
Tandem smiled slowly.
“You guys didn’t think of that before, did you? You used me, got all the information, pictures, and diagrams. I steered you in and out, made it all possible for ya, but no one said, ‘You go along, Tandem. You earned it. You be there.’ No sir.”
“We thought you’d be seen. It would raise questions. You yourself said …”
“Maybe, or maybe you were all just finished using me. I want to be the one holding that transmitter,” he said, pointing his thumb at himself. “I’ll press the button that brings down this hotel. No one else. I earned it, damn it,” he said, his face straining. Clea shook her head and backed against the wall. “Now give me that fuckin’ device. NOW!” he shouted.
Nessim looked at him for a few moments and then moved slowly to the suitcase. He opened it and took out a small leather pouch. The transmitter was actually a modified FM wireless microphone. It was no bigger than the palm of his hand. As he took it out of the pouch, he considered leaving the battery out of it so Tandem couldn’t trigger the detonators on his own, but then he realized he’d eventually check for that and what if he didn’t get the battery to him—the explosives wouldn’t be set off and all the work would be wasted. No, he had to give him the loaded device. He stared at it for a moment and then turned to give it to Tandem.
“Easy,” Tandem said. “Put it on the bed there.”
Nessim placed it on the blanket. Tandem looked at it for a moment and then looked at Nessim.
“Is the battery in there too?”
“No.”
“Put it beside it. Go on,” he demanded. Nessim reached into the pouch and took out the small round, flat-surfaced battery and placed it beside the transmitter.
“You must be sure that the transmitter is not on when you put the battery inside it; otherwise, the mere contact of the points will send out the signal.”
“I know, I know,” Tandem said. He was hypnotized by the device.
Nessim considered jumping him. Tandem seemed to sense it. He raised his pistol again.
“Step back now. Back.”
Nessim obeyed. Tandem reached out and took the transmitter into his left hand. Then he scooped up the battery and put it into his shirt pocket.
“Where will you wait?”
“I told you. In the basement.”
“They’ve been inspecting it—security guards.”
“Have they?”
“Someone might have seen me or Yusuf enter the basement.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll never find me.”
“How will I find you?”
“I’ll be right outside the basement entranceway at 7:20 p.m., but I won’t wait for you. Be there on time or you won’t get to see me trigger it,” he said, smiling, and looked at the transmitter again. “It’s like having a small atom bomb in your hands.”
“You can’t detonate until 7:20 because I’ll have the secondary explosion set for that time and I don’t want it to go off before or after,” Nessim said. “We’d better synchronize our watches.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tandem said, but he looked uninterested. Nessim worried about that. He walked over to his suitcase again and took out a small watch without a wristband.
“This is the one I will be using on the packet I place in the dining room,” Nessim said approaching. “Put out your watch.”
Tandem did so, but he held the pistol straight up, pointed at Nessim’s head.
“Careful, buddy. I know you people are trained to cut throats quickly.”
Reluctantly, Nessim synchronized the two watches, winding both to be sure they would not run out. Then he stepped back, looking at Clea. She was frozen in her position and wore an expression of horror and fear. At that moment, Nessim hated Tandem more than anyone else in the entire hotel, in fact, in the whole occupied territory which included Israel proper.
“Great,” Tandem said. “Everything’s cool now.” He stood up. “Don’t do anything stupid. Move back to that bed and sit down. Do it,” he commanded. Slowly, Nessim backed up to the bed and sat. “It’s all going to work out the way you planned it anyway, so don’t go callin’ in the dogs. Hear?” He walked to the door. “See ya at 7:20,” he added, smiling as he backed out of the room. When the door was closed, Clea began to sob.
“Bastard,” Nessim said. “I knew he was dangerous. I knew he couldn’t be trusted. He’s a man crazed with revenge.”
“How are you any better?” she said, looking up through tear-filled eyes. “You’re planning on killing all those people, Nessim. All those people!”
“You knew it.”
“Maybe deep in my mind I feared it, but I prayed it wasn’t true. You told me you were here to kill one man. Of course some would die with him, but all of them? My God, Nessim, there are so many children.”
“There are so many children in Jordan and Palestine and Syria. What about our children?”
She shook her head and walked away. He got up and followed her, angry now that she was so outraged.
“You live in a dream. What did you think my work was—a game of checkers? You always knew what I had to do in this country and how I had to do it. Why this sudden remorse?”
She didn’t respond. Instead she went into the bathroom and ran the water to splash her face. He followed, worked up now by what had happened with Tandem and by how she was acting toward him and the mission. He had never felt so frustrated.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know. Suddenly, looking at that man’s face when he spoke about the death of three thousand people—his sense of pleasure.” She turned to him. “You’re united, both out to do the same thing.”
“But for different reasons.” He nearly shouted.
“Will that really matter after it’s done?”
“Of course. It’s a blow for the cause, for our people, for my father,” he said, pounding his fist into his hand. “For your father,” he added softly.
“My father would never want this,” she replied.
He stared at her. He realized now he had been wrong to hide the details, the intentions, the full significance of the mission from her. Instinctively, he had played it down, knowing all along how she would react. And he was afraid of her reaction, afraid of what it would awaken in him.
It was a mistake to have met her, a mistake to have fallen in love, to have taken her with him to America. Sardin was right. She would make him hesitate, reconsider. She was soft and human and kindled compassion within him. It was the one thing a terrorist could not tolerate, the one thing a terrorist must smother inside of himself—compassion. A front fighter for the cause must only think of the cause. They were the enemy—all of them, the entire hotel’s population. To think of them as just ordinary people would be tragic and self-defeating, and that’s just what she was causing him to do. He hated and loved her for it.
“You don’t understand,” he finally said and turned away. She stepped out of the bathroom and touched his shoulder. He looked at her, but only for a moment. There was too much soft beauty confronting him.
“Oh, Nessim, what have you become?” she asked.
“I was always what I am now, ever since the first day you met me. You were either deliberately blind to it or …”
“Or you hid it well from me. And if you did, you knew yourself you were something you hated. Because if I hated it, you hated it.”
“Leave me be,” he said, pushing her away.
“You’re right. I knew, but I refused to know. I suspected, but forced myself to believe other things—thinking of you as just a different kind of soldier doing your duty as you were commanded to do it. I’m partly to blame, but looking at that man …”
“I’m not like him,” he insisted. They stared at each other for a moment.
“I pray to God y
ou’re not,” she said.
He turned away from her and began to undress again. He wanted to get back into bed and think. Everything was going crazy around him. Tandem’s betrayal, Clea’s shock and outrage, his own new doubts—all of it happened too quickly. He had to digest it. Then he thought of Yusuf’s pleasure and eagerness, how that always annoyed him, terrified him. He saw part of himself in his brother and he hated it.
After a while, Clea turned the lights out and lay down beside him. He felt her hand search for his and find it. They lay there in the darkness, silent.
A new thought made its way into his visions of tomorrow. Tandem now had the massive lethal capability in his possession. What was to stop him from triggering it at any time, during breakfast or lunch? What guarantee was there that he would sit it out in that basement and wait for dinner? How important was the death of Chaim Eban to Tandem anyway? He wasn’t in this for the political reasons. He was only out for some crazy vengeance. He could grow impatient, eager. Perhaps he would put the battery in prematurely and accidentally set off the plastique. Anything was possible.
And then, Clea and he would be in that dining room, potential victims of his own creative death. What irony! When he closed his eyes, he saw the ceiling and fixtures coming down on them. He saw Clea’s broken body bleeding beside him. Earlier, when he had envisioned it all in the dining room, he hadn’t even looked up over his own table. What was above it? Was there a chandelier there? A heavy beam? Was the boiler directly below them? He couldn’t remember.
All this happened because the command made use of a man like Tandem. That had bothered him from the start. Where was their sense of principle, their ideals? They corrupt and destroy themselves by choosing madmen for allies. His father once told him that men on a battlefield were indistinguishable from men in asylums. They babble, they talk to themselves, they defecate in their pants, they see visions. Perhaps Clea was right, but even if she was, it was too late.
I have to get that transmitter back, he thought. I have to. And then he thought, But even if I do and we’re not in there at the time, the explosion is going to kill us because it will kill what we had between us. Her fingers tightened on his hand. But that’s our sacrifice for the cause, he concluded.
He tried desperately to remember his father in death, but he could only think of him in life. He had Yusuf on his shoulders and was bouncing him as they walked. Yusuf screamed with delight and his father laughed. Yusuf’s small hands had clumps of his father’s hair between the fingers as he grasped it for security. The memory made Nessim smile and then it tore at his heart. He wanted to cry, he wanted to be afraid, he wanted to be sorry, but most of all, he longed for the protection of his anger and his dedication. Where was it when he needed it the most?
Clea’s fingers loosened their grip, but he clung to them. He clung to them desperately, like a man clinging to life. He finally found sleep, and when he awoke in the morning, her fingers were still entwined in his.
25
Yusuf hesitated when the entranceway through the garage came into view. He heard voices and stopped. As he waited, he began to think. They had experienced a close call back there. Those two security men had been inches away from discovering the plastique. What if they had? The project would have been aborted and all the planning lost. Perhaps they would have had to shoot their way out of the hotel and either Nessim or he or both of them might have been killed. It was too close, and considering how near they were to the time of the explosions, what a shame it would have been. He looked back down the dark basement corridor. What if the guards or someone went back to that spot before Nessim triggered the plastique?
The material remained exposed. Granted, it wasn’t easy to see it, but someone might. They should have planned for that. There should have been some consideration of the possibility.
True, the Claw had asked Nessim to plant a backup device, but that was only designed to kill Chaim Eban and a few people at his table. The main thrust of the project could be lost.
Yusuf knew what he had to do, despite the fact that Nessim wouldn’t approve and no one had suggested it. He had to go back there and guard the explosives, linger in the darkness, well hidden, and wait. It was a considerable time, but he could do it. Afterward, they’d all be grateful to him, and it would have been his way of really making up for his mistakes in the city. They would especially be grateful if someone did discover the plastique and he stopped him before he could report it.
Hamid would wonder why he didn’t return. At first, they would be worried that he had been caught leaving the basement, but after a while, they would realize that wasn’t the case and they would know he was still in the hotel. They’d realize what he was doing. They might send Tandem back for him. That was always a possibility; but if he came back, Yusuf would explain it to him.
He turned away from the entrance to the garage and scurried back up the basement corridor. When he got to the girders again, he stopped and considered the possible hiding places from where he could observe. He decided to go in a ways and sit behind one of the girders. It was very late now, so he could get a few hours of sleep. In the morning, he’d watch and he’d wait.
When neither Yusuf nor Tandem returned, Hamid could only think of one reason—they had been discovered. It meant, of course, that Nessim wouldn’t plant the explosives. The entire project was ruined. He shook with disappointment and got into the front of the car to drive away. He’d have to report this failure to the Claw. He wondered what sort of danger Nessim would be in now and if they would be able to get him out of the hotel safely.
It was probably all Tandem’s fault. Somehow he had messed things up, Hamid was sure of it. He drove back toward the hotel slowly, expecting all sorts of police cars parked in front of the garage entrance, their roof lights turning. But it was deadly silent and deserted there. The pale, sickly glow of lights coming from the garage lit an empty area. There wasn’t a man in sight. He hesitated, wondering. Perhaps they were discovered inside. But Tandem wasn’t to go inside. It was very confusing. All he could do was report to the Claw and wait until morning. Then he would risk a call to Nessim.
Paul Tandem clutched the transmitter closely to his body and came down a side stairwell as slowly and as cautiously as he could. There’d be no mistakes now. He had planned it all this way. As soon as he had understood their strategy and realized the potential in it, he plotted his betrayal. Of course, it really wasn’t a betrayal. He was just changing the order of things. What difference did it make how it was done as long as it was done? They’d hate him for it, and they might even want to kill him for it, but he’d be ready for them later on. Right now he couldn’t think of that. He had what he wanted.
Holding the transmitter and having the small battery in his pocket wasn’t enough, though. He had to see the plastique planted and confirm in his mind that it was all there, ready to blow the building and kill the people. He’d inspect Nessim’s work and then he’d go into hiding. There was a rather large shelf near the ceiling in one of the storage rooms. He’d make a spot for himself up there and sleep and wait. When he was ready, he’d come down to do the job.
Yusuf heard footsteps and pressed his body hard against the wall behind him, staying safely in the protection of the darkness. While he did so, he took out his knife and released the blade. The cool metal reassured him. He waited. Lucky he had made this decision, he thought. Lucky he was here. A figure appeared on the right, moving slowly, suspiciously. Was it Nessim returning to check something? This man approached in an unusual manner. He wasn’t a custodian or a security guard. Who was it?
He leaned out of the shadows to get a clearer view. When the figure moved into the light, he saw that it was Paul Tandem. Back for him already? And coming from the opposite direction? It didn’t make sense. He didn’t want to call out for fear that someone else somewhere in the basement would hear him. So he moved silently down the side of the wall toward Tand
em.
Tandem stopped at the first girder and knelt down to study the plastique packet and the detonator. He smiled appreciatively and touched the plastique. Then he looked up the girder and nodded to himself. Yes, it was all going to go. Everything was ready. He looked down at the transmitter and then put it safely into his top pocket, next to the battery. Just then, he heard someone in the shadows. Feet scraped against the concrete floor. He peered into the darkness and saw Yusuf beckoning.
“What the hell are you doing here yet?” he asked.
Yusuf raised his finger to his lips. “Shh.” He continued to beckon for Tandem to approach.
Could Nessim have called out for help? Did he somehow make contact with Hamid already and did Hamid send Yusuf back? How could they do it? Yet he had to be careful. A man with Nessim’s capabilities might have done anything by now. They were pretty damn sneaky people. They might have had some code all along and never told him. Maybe they had anticipated his action and were set for it.
Tandem fingered his pistol. No, he wouldn’t shoot the bastard. That would bring people down the corridor. The sound would reverberate against these walls and bounce up and down the basement. Yusuf continued to beckon. Why didn’t he just come out? He wanted him to go into the darkness too. He was acting strange. Tandem smiled to himself. All right, buddy, he thought, we’ll play it your way.
He moved toward him slowly. Yusuf remained crouched against the wall. When Tandem got closer, he saw the knife in Yusuf’s hands. Yusuf held it to his side. He wasn’t thinking about it, but to Tandem it appeared as though Yusuf was trying to be sneaky, keeping it down against his thigh.
“Where are you comin’ from?” Yusuf asked. “Did Hamid send you?”
“Hamid?” Tandem stood a foot back.
“Yes. I’m staying here,” Yusuf said with determination. “To make sure nothing goes wrong with the plan.”
The Terrorist's Holiday Page 19
