“Sure, Mad Dog.”
As Jake went out the door the crowd was rigging up the videotape monitor to watch the tape from the aircraft that recorded the radar and IR displays, the computer readouts, and the cockpit conversations. Maybe they could learn more about the sunken boat.
* * *
“So how did it go?” Cowboy Parker asked. The two men were in the admiral’s cabin. Jake sat beside the desk watching Parker shave at the little sink.
“They must have been packing a boatload of explosives. It was one big blast. Either the Rockeyes or the fire set the stuff off, or they blew it up themselves. They were on a suicide mission.” Jake took a deep breath. “Good thing for us that someone got trigger-happy.”
“That lot would have been pretty spectacular going off against the side of a ship.” Parker rinsed his razor and attacked his chin. He eyed Jake in the mirror. “Damn good thing for us that someone got shook when you turned on your lights and headed right at them.”
“Hmmm. Even I was surprised when I did that.” Jake chewed on a fingernail. “We don’t have any evidence except our word that it was a terrorist boat. They may announce that the U.S. Navy just offed some poor fishermen, all good Moslems on a sailing pilgrimage to Mecca by way of Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope. And if those guys had succeeded in damaging an American ship, well …”
“You boltered twice tonight.” Cowboy was examining his face in the mirror, trying to find if he’d missed a spot.
“Yeah. I couldn’t see jack.” Jake stared at his toes.
“Mode One didn’t work, huh?”
“Quit on me at a mile.” Jake sighed. “I’m going to ground myself at night and send a message asking to be relieved. The good part is that this little incident will improve morale on this tub. Everyone can see what we’re up against and they’ll keep their noses firmly on the grindstone.”
“Quitting smoking hasn’t helped the eyes?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“A tough way to end a flying career.” Cowboy rinsed his face and dried it on a towel.
“Cowboy, if I didn’t ground myself, you’d ground me. I know you. You’re yuks and giggles and Texas corn off duty, but you can slice the raw meat when you have to, whether it’s living or dead.”
Parker snorted and sat down at his desk. “I wish you were writing my fitness report.”
Jake rubbed his chin. Over eighteen hours had passed since he had shaved and his face felt like sandpaper. “Those Arabs. Suicides earning their way to Allah’s big tent in the sky. Damn, that’s scary. What would you have done if he hadn’t started shooting?”
Parker stroked his forehead with an index finger. “I’m not going to take a missile hit before I open fire. I don’t give a damn what Washington thinks or how it reads in the newspapers. Every ship in the force was at general quarters tonight. Every gun was ready to fire. The battlewagon was ready with sixteen-inchers and Harpoons. If one of these boats uses a radar on the proper frequency, points its nose at a ship and holds that heading to stabilize the gyros in a missile, I’m going to blow him out of the water. Right then and there.”
“The next guy won’t panic and start shooting,” Jake said. “They learn real fast.”
“We never suck it up and go after these guys. For the life of me, I can’t see why it’s better to drop bombs from an airplane or shells from a ship’s gun than it is to just hunt the terrorists down and execute them on the spot. Our response to hijackings and murder is to merely send some more ships over here to wave the flag. And salt a bomb around every now and then.”
“Where is all this going, Cowboy?”
The admiral scowled and his right hand became a fist. “Israel wants us in bed with them. The terrorists are trying to push us there. The Soviets are hoping to catch us there. Iran claims that’s where we’ve been all along.” His hand slowly opened. “It’s Vietnam all over again, Jake. Our politicians have gotten sucked into taking sides, so our diplomatic options have evaporated. Now the only American card left is the military one, and sooner or later Washington is going to play it. Just as sure as shootin’.” The hand was a fist again, rapping on the desk. “And the politicians aren’t going to do any better here than they did in Vietnam. Those people never learn.”
Jake Grafton’s shoulders rose a half inch, then subsided. “Everybody but us will have God on his side. And we’ll be in the middle.”
“If only we were in the middle,” the admiral mused, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop. “And everyone knew it.”
Jake stood and stretched. “Thanks for giving me the chance to ground myself.”
The admiral’s lips curved into a hint of a smile. “I know you, Jake.”
9
Thirty seconds after Colonel Qazi stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the terminal at Leonardo da Vinci Airport with his jacket hanging over his shoulder and his tie loosened, a sedan slid to a halt near the curb. He tossed his valise on the backseat and climbed in. The woman driving had the car moving in seconds.
“How was your trip?” she asked as she deftly worked the vehicle through the gears. Her hair was cut in a style common in Europe this year, medium length and swept toward one side. She was wearing a modest, medium-priced tan dress and casual shoes.
Qazi scanned the back window. “I was recognized at the airport.” He checked the road ahead. “Drive on into Rome.”
The driver glanced at her rearview mirror. “How do you know you were recognized?”
“I saw it in his eyes. It was the gate attendant, as all the passengers filed past him.” He sighed. “Ah, Noora. I’m too well known. It’s time for me to retire.”
Noora concentrated on her driving, checking the mirror regularly. The daughter of a rich Arab carpet merchant, she had grown up in Paris. She had studied dance seriously, and chucked it all after the allowance from her father dried up when her affair with a fellow female student became common knowledge in the Arab expatriate community.
She was belly dancing in a cabaret in Montmartre when Qazi recruited her. He had had misgivings then, and they still nagged at him occasionally. She was physically attractive, though not too much so, and she meshed into her surroundings anywhere in Europe, but try as he might, he could not break her of her distinctive heel-and-toe dancer’s walk, the smooth, muscular flow of which made her stick in an observer’s memory. While high heels helped her gait, they also emphasized the molded perfection of her legs. He used her sparingly, only when he had to.
“Your pistol and passports are in the glove compartment.” The weapon and passports had come into Italy in the diplomatic pouch and Noora had picked them up at the embassy.
Qazi removed the Walther PPK from its ankle holster and checked the magazine and the chamber. It was loaded. He pulled up his right trouser leg and strapped the holster on. The silencer went into a trouser pocket. Then he carefully scrutinized both the passports, especially the photographs.
One passport was British, for Arnold MacPhee, age forty-one, six feet tall, residing Hillingdon, Middlesex. Inside was an international driver’s license and a membership in the British Automobile Association. The other passport was for an American, occupation priest, one Harold Strong of Schenectady, New York. This passport contained a New York driver’s license and a medical insurance card from a large American firm. The passports were genuine. They had been stolen, of course, and all the pages were genuine except for the pages that contained the physical description of the bearer and the photograph. The paper for the new pages had been stolen from the manufacturers who supplied the very same paper to the governments involved. No cheap forgeries, these; they had been manufactured in the state passport office by men who had spent their adult lives printing genuine passports.
The documents contained in the passports were forgeries, but good ones. They would pass the scrutiny of immigration officials whose expertise was passports.
Qazi slipped the documents into his jacket pocket and sat back in the seat. He adjusted
one of the air conditioning vents to blow the air on him. The heat here was less oppressive than in North Africa, but the air-conditioning of the airplane had lowered his tolerance. “Where will Yasim meet us?”
“The parking garage under the Villa Borghese.”
They came into Rome on the main thoroughfare from the airport, which was on the coast, near the mouth of the Tiber. The hills around Rome were partially obscured by thick haze. A typical September day in Italy, Qazi thought.
Soon the car was embedded in heavy traffic — buses, trucks, automobiles, and motor scooters. The exhaust fumes pumped through the car’s air conditioning system made his eyes sting. They passed the Circus Maximus and circled the Coliseum, then weaved through boulevards until they were on the Via Veneto. Ahead, the tall umbrella pines and huge oaks punctuated the open expanse of the Villa Borghese, the Central Park of Rome.
“I don’t think we are being followed by a solo vehicle,” Noora said.
Qazi said nothing. With enough vehicles and two-way radio communications, a surveillance team would be almost impossible to detect. One never knew if the airport watchers had enough time to alert such a team. The only safe course was to always assume the surveillance team was there, undetected and watching.
Immediately after crossing the Piazzale Brasile, Noora slipped the car into the lane that led down to the entrance to the underground parking garage under this section of the Villa Borghese. On the second level down, near the back of the garage, Noora slowly crept by a parked limo. A uniformed chauffeur was dusting the vehicle. He wore a cap and did not look up from his task. Noora continued on, apparently hunting for a parking place. She descended to the third level of the garage, drove up and down the rows, and returned in about five minutes to the second level. This time the chauffeur’s cap was on the fender. No one was in sight. Noora stopped as the limo backed out of its parking slot and the trunk sprung open.
Qazi leaped from the sedan and tossed his valise into the open trunk. Noora threaded the sedan into the vacant parking space. Then Qazi and the girl lay down in the trunk and the chauffeur slammed the lid closed. The transfer had taken forty-five seconds.
The trunk was dark and their positions were cramped, although they were lying on a blanket. Qazi and Noora tried to ease themselves into comfortable positions as the vehicle swayed and bounced. The safe house was only three miles away, but the circuitous route the driver would take would stretch the ride to almost an hour.
“Welcome to Rome, Colonel,” Noora whispered as he helped her unfasten the buttons on her dress. She wore nothing under it. As she fumbled with his trousers, Qazi tried to decide if wearing a bra would make Noora more or less noticeable in a major European city. He lost his train of thought when her lips found his.
* * *
The man in the gray wool suit cut in the English style paused briefly in the door of St. Peter’s and quickly scanned the tourists, then stepped to his right and let the people behind him enter. He moved further right and scrutinized each person coming in while he pretended to consult a guidebook. Finally the book went into his pocket. He stood with his left arm folded across his chest, his right hand on his chin, raptly examining the architectural features of the great basilica as if seeing them for the first time. On his right, near the Pietà, he saw a man in a rumpled black suit, with close-cropped hair and fleshy lips. This man was also engrossed in a guidebook.
After another minute of wondrous contemplation, the man near the door crossed to the left side of the basilica and strolled slowly toward the high altar. He circled it completely, appearing to examine Bernini’s bronze baldachin from every angle, his restless eyes actually scanning faces and the niches and cornices above where conceivably a man might observe the crowd.
The crowd was thin today, perhaps owing to the summer heat outside. Colonel Qazi checked his watch as he consulted his guidebook again. With the book closed in his left hand, he walked slowly back toward the main entrance, his eyes moving, his pace slow and even.
The man in the black suit with the fleshy face was still near the Pietà, yet he was well behind and away from anyone using a camera to photograph the sculpture. Qazi paused near him and opened the guidebook.
“I see we are using the same book,” the man said in English.
“Quite so,” Qazi replied. “Most informative.”
“Thorough, although there are not enough illustrations.” He had a slight accent, hard to place.
“Yes.” Qazi placed his book in his pocket and walked toward the nearest door.
Crossing St. Peter’s Square, the man in the black suit was fifty feet behind. Qazi paused at the colonnades on the north side of the square until the man joined him. Then he turned and proceeded north through the colonnades, the other man at his side.
“Where are we going?”
“You will know when we get there. What should I call you?”
“Chekhov.”
“Someone in the GRU has a sense of humor. This shatters my preconceptions. One hopes the rot has not spread too far. As it happens, I am called Solzhenitsyn. You are perspiring, Chekhov.”
“It is very warm.”
“They should let you leave Moscow more often,” Qazi said as he glanced over his shoulder. “And how have you found the Roman women?”
The Russian did not deign to reply. In a few minutes they reached the entrance to the Vatican Museum and Qazi paid the admission fee with lire for both of them. Once inside he paused where he could watch the door and consulted his guidebook. The Russian looked about dourly and stepped across the room, where he became absorbed in a dark medieval painting with little to recommend it.
Finally Qazi replaced the book in his pocket and wandered away, the Russian a few paces behind. After five minutes of this he entered a men’s room. Qazi stood beside a heavy Italian at the urinals while Chekhov used a stall. When the Italian departed, the door to the stall opened and the Russian exited to find Qazi pointing an automatic pistol with a silencer screwed into the barrel.
“Very slowly, Chekhov, lean against the door. We don’t need any visitors.” The Soviet’s face reddened and he started to speak. Qazi silenced him with a finger. “Do it, or this will be a very short meeting.” Chekhov slowly placed both hands against the door. “Feet wider apart. That’s right. Like in the American movies.” Satisfied, Qazi patted the man down. “What, no gun? A GRU man without a gun …” Qazi carefully felt the man’s crotch and the arms above the wrists. “First humor and now this! The GRU will become a laughingstock. But of course there is a microphone.”
Qazi lifted all the pens from the Russian’s shirt pocket and examined them, one by one. “It had better be here, Chekhov, or you will have to part with your buttons and your shoes.” It was in the third pen. “Now turn around and sit against the door.”
The Russian’s face was covered with perspiration, his fleshy lips twisted in a sneer. “The shoes.”
Qazi examined them carefully and tossed them back. “Now the coat.”
This he scrutinized minutely. From the uppermost of the large three buttons on the front of the coat a very fine wire was just visible buried amid the thread that held the button on. Qazi sawed the button free with a small pocketknife, then dropped the pen and button down a commode. He tossed the coat back to Chekhov. “And the belt.”
After a quick glance, Qazi handed it back. “Hurry, we have much to say to each other.” He unscrewed the silencer and replaced the pistol in his ankle holster. He opened the door as the Russian scrambled awkwardly to his feet.
An hour later the two men were seated in the Sistine Chapel against the back wall, facing the altar and Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Last Judgment behind it. On the right the high windows admitted a subdued light. Qazi kept his eyes on the tourists examining the paintings on the ceiling and walls.
“Is it in Rome, as General Simonov promised?”
“Yes. But you must tell us why you want it.”
“Is it genuine, or is it a masterpiec
e from an Aquarium print shop?” The Aquarium was the nickname for GRU headquarters in Moscow.
The Russian’s lips curled, revealing yellow, impacted teeth. This was his smile. “We obtained it from Warrant Officer Walker.”
“Ah, those Americans! One wonders just how long they knew about Walker’s activities.”
The Russian raised his shoulders and lowered them. “Why do you want the document?”
“El Hakim has not authorized me to reveal his reasons. Not that we don’t trust you. We value the goodwill of the Soviet Union most highly. And we intend to continue to cultivate that goodwill. But to reveal what you do not need to know is to take the risk that the Americans will learn of our plans through their activities against you.”
“If you are implying they have penetrated—”
“Chekhov, I am not implying anything. I am merely weighing risks. And I am being very forthright with you. No subterfuge. No evasion. Just the plain truth. Surely a professional like you can appreciate that?”
“This document is very valuable.”
“Perhaps. If it is genuine, it certainly has some potential value to El Hakim or we would not desire to obtain it. If it is genuine, El Hakim will no doubt be grateful in proportion to the value it ultimately has for us. If it is not genuine, the Americans have made very great fools of you. And of us, if we do not factor in that possibility.”
The Russian slid his tongue out and moistened his lips. “El Hakim has yet to approve the treaty granting the Soviet Navy port facilities. Anchoring privileges are very nice, but we need the warehouses and dock space provided for in the treaty.”
“Your masters should reconsider their position. A strong, united Arab people friendly to the Soviet Union and hostile to American imperialism would certainly fulfill many of the Soviet Union’s long-range diplomatic objectives. Yet, you ask for the politically impossible now as your price to assist in a great effort which will benefit you in incalculable ways.”
Final Flight jg-2 Page 12
