Final Flight jg-2

by Stephen Coonts

  “If it succeeds.”

  “First you must plant the potatoes, Anton.”

  The Russian sneered. “We have it and you want it. The treaty must first be approved.”

  Qazi stared into the Russian’s eyes. Then the Russian felt a sharp pain on the inside of his thigh. He looked down and saw the knife, ready to open an artery. “Your belt,” Qazi said.

  “What?”

  “Take off your belt and give it to me.”

  Chekhov complied slowly, his eyes reflecting dismay. Qazi knelt as if to pray with the buckle a few inches from his lips. His eyes swept the chapel. “General Simonov, I would like to take delivery of the manual for the Mark 58 device tomorrow. I shall call the public telephone on the north side of Piazza Campo dei Fiori at ten o’clock. Please follow the directions you are given and come alone.”

  Qazi laid the belt in Chekhov’s lap. The Russian watched him join a group of American students and leave the chapel. Chekhov slowly worked the belt with the transmitter in the buckle through the loops in his trousers as he wondered what General Simonov was going to say.

  * * *

  Qazi sat on a bench watching the lovers and office workers eating lunch near the lake. Through the trees he could see the Galleria Borghese and traffic in the Piazza le Brasile. This great green park in which he sat, the Villa Borghese, was one of his favorite places in Rome. The magnificent pines and oaks, the strolling lovers, and the squealing children seemed to him to epitomize the best of European civilization.

  He sat on a bench under the trees. This walking area was covered with a mixture of dirt and pea gravel. When someone walked through a shaft of sunlight, he could see the little dust clouds rising every time a foot came down. Beyond the walkway there was grass, but it was spotty; the city didn’t water the grass and it suffered from the heat and too much traffic.

  He wondered idly what his uncle would have said if he could have spent a few hours here watching the ducks upon the limpid blue water and feeling the soft breeze as it eased the effect of the heat and rustled the tree leaves.

  Waterholes in the desert are always brown, and the sheep and camels wade in and urinate and stir the tepid mixture until it resembles thin mortar. Then in a few days, three at most, the water is gone, leaving only brown mud cracking and baking in the sun. Then one must dig, dig, dig, and haul the water from the well with skin bags. Could the old man have even fathomed wealth like this?

  His uncle had insisted he join the army. Even though the old man had read only the Koran, had seen only that one book in his entire life, he sent Qazi to the city to join the army, the boy who loved the desert and the eternal wind and the free, wild life.

  * * *

  They had lain in the sand and stared into the blackness toward the waterhole. He heard only the wind and the whisper of sand moving across stone. But his uncle had announced, “They are there,” and told him to go around the wadi onto the escarpment, where the old man said he would be able to look down into the waterhole when the light returned. He could still remember leading the camel through the darkness, stumbling over stones while the animal strained against the leash, smelling the water, grunting against the rag tied around her muzzle. After an hour he saw the looming bulk of the escarpment on his right, darker than the surrounding night. It had taken hours to feel his way up leading the reluctant animal Once on top, he tied the camel securely to a stone and waited for her to lie down. He snuggled against her side, his rifle in his hands, exhausted, yet too excited to sleep. The stars wheeled in the sky above him and the wind sighed restlessly.

  He had spent countless nights watching the stars and listening to the wind. He had tried to count them once, spent all night on just one segment of sky, numbering faithfully as the stars wheeled above him, on a night so black the stars were just beyond reach in the clear desert air. With his back against the earth there were only the stars and he was one with them, alone and yet not alone, a part of the undying universe. He had finally given up the counting. There were too many stars, flung like grains of sand against the eternal void.

  Tonight he glanced at the heavens, but his thoughts were on the darkness around him. He gripped the rifle and rubbed the smooth metal, the blueing long worn off, and the scarred wood of the stock. He fingered the notch of the rear sight and the bolt handle and the trigger. His uncle had told him not to chamber a cartridge until daylight, and he obeyed. Yet the cartridges were in the magazine; all that remained was the opening and closing of the bolt. He caressed the rifle and knew its power, its tension, as he waited impatiently for the stars to complete their nightly orbit. The tension and the fear and the anticipation … of what he knew not, gave life a pungency that he had never known existed. At this time, in this desolate wilderness beneath the eternal stars, here and now he was alive.

  * * *

  A thick figure emerged from the back of the limousine in the Piazza le Brasile and set off alone down the sidewalk toward the entrance to the mall under the Villa Borghese, which also contained the parking garage where Qazi had changed cars on his arrival in Rome two days before. The man carried an attaché case.

  Qazi checked his watch, then scanned the park in every direction. The lovers on the blanket near the lake had been there since he arrived and were sharing wine. A woman was walking her dog. Most of the office workers had finished their lunches and were leaving the area. Fifty feet away a middle-aged woman sat on a bench and watched two small children play in the dirt with plastic automobiles.

  Qazi watched the traffic in the piazza to see if any more vehicles were going to stop to discharge passengers. None did. After five minutes he arose and began strolling slowly toward the upper mall entrance, his hands in his pockets, checking everyone in sight. He was perspiring, perhaps because he was wearing three shirts in this heat. On the sidewalk he stopped at a mobile ice cream stand and paid fifteen hundred lire for a cone, which he licked as he stood in the shade watching the pedestrians and the traffic. The ice cream melted faster than he could eat it. It dripped on his fingers. When he finished the cone, he returned to the stand and used one of their napkins to wipe his fingers and mouth.

  Waist-high circular concrete walls sat amid the grass and trees on the other side of the street. Beyond these walls, which looked like the ends of huge concrete pipes set vertically into the earth, he could see the track and stables where wealthy Roman girls learned to ride. That area was known as the Galoppatoio. Qazi knew the concrete walls encircled shafts that opened on the underground mall and admitted air and light. Several of the shafts had stairs to the mall below. He noted that there was no one standing near the shafts. Without benches to sit on, that area of the park had only a few strollers.

  Satisfied at last, he went down the stairs from the sidewalk into the mall.

  The man from the limousine was standing on the side of the corridor directly across from an office of the Bank of Rome. He wore an ill-fitting suit and his tie was pulled away from his throat, his shirt collar open. When Qazi was near, he could see why the suit did not fit. The man’s shoulders and chest were massive, rising from a too-small waist. He was about sixty, with a tanned head that made his cropped gray hair almost invisible.

  “Buon giorno, General,” Qazi said.

  “Aleksandr Isayevich, huh? A priest today.” He was looking at Qazi’s clerical collar, black short-sleeved shirt, and trousers.

  “When in Rome …”

  “Your man ran me all over the city.”

  “He enjoys his job.”

  “So what do you and that fanatic fool, El Hakim, plan to do with this?” the general asked, nodding toward the attaché case near his feet. His Russian accent was muted but detectable.

  “I thought I might read it.”

  “You picked a nice place for this little meet. As I recall there are at least eight nearby exits from this rabbit hole.”

  “Eight or nine.”

  General Simonov removed a packet of American cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He in
haled deeply and blew the smoke out through his nose. “The Israelis want you very badly. They did not enjoy reading about their underground weapons facility in the press.”

  People were walking by. A young man with a backpack walked through the double glass doors from the main entryway and stood behind a gray matron using the automatic teller. To the right, through the floor-to-ceiling windows and across the airshaft, Qazi could see the entrance to the parking garage and, beyond that, the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel that led to the subway station and on to the Piazza di Spagna.

  “And you?”

  “I’ll admit, that was one of your better shows. A triumph.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The CIA is also very unhappy about the disappearance of one Samuel Jarvis, weapons engineer. Should I tell them to see you for the particulars?”

  “Come come, General. You didn’t drive all over Rome on this warm summer’s day to have an idle chat.”

  The general’s eyes were as gray as Moscow in winter. “What are you up to, Qazi? Why did you want the manual delivered in Rome?”

  Qazi had thought long and hard about the wisdom of seeking the Soviets’ help. He had not discussed it with El Hakim because if the ruler had approved, the manual would have been delivered in the capital by a Soviet diplomat. General Simonov was nobody’s fool. He would have several working hypotheses to explain the delivery in Rome, one of which would be very close to the truth.

  “I needed a short holiday on the expense account, old boy,” Qazi replied lightly.

  Simonov’s fingers flipped rhythmically at the cigarette filter. He glanced at a man in a dark business suit who had joined the line to use the money-dispensing machine. “No doubt that’s why you just spent three days in Naples, Qazi. Ah, and you thought I wouldn’t know about that. We have many, many friends in Italy. Old boy.”

  No doubt, thought Qazi bitterly as he once again scanned the area. Naples has a communist city government. Every garbageman and street sweeper is probably on the GRU payroll. And that is where the Americans anchor their aircraft carriers! “It must be pleasant to have a post that takes you to the sunny climes for a change.”

  “What do you intend to do with a nuclear weapon?”

  Qazi glanced at Simonov. “We do not have a nuclear weapon, but if we did, its employment would be strictly our business.”

  “That is what El Hakim told our ambassador this morning.” The general dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his shoe. “Moscow would be very unhappy if any such device were used in a way that conflicted with Soviet interests in the Mediterranean.” He extracted another cigarette from his shirt pocket and flicked a lighter. The youth with the backpack was punching the buttons of the automatic teller machine. He wore jeans and running shoes and had unruly, short black hair. “We’re concerned about El Hakim’s activities. It would be a great mistake to think otherwise. A very great mistake.”

  The teller machine rejected the young man’s card. He slapped the machine, then fed the card in again and pushed buttons. “I think El Hakim is aware of your position,” Qazi said, “but I’ll tell him you voiced it, again. But I didn’t know the Kremlin used you to deliver diplomatic notes to third-world fanatics, General. I thought they had better uses for you.”

  The man in the suit behind the youth at the machine was looking around impatiently. The machine had rejected the youngster’s card for the third time.

  “Your El Hakim has spent too many nights dressed up in women’s clothing. Tell him I said that.”

  The backpack was now under the young man’s left armpit. His head moved slightly. Qazi realized he was looking at the reflections in the shiny metal of the machine.

  Qazi bent and lifted the attaché case with his left hand. The youth at the machine was spinning, falling on one knee, reaching into the open backpack. The Russian started.

  Qazi lunged through the open door to his right, knocking aside a woman coming in. He ran down the ramp toward the entrance to the tunnel. Over his shoulder he saw the youth coming through the door, a weapon in his hands.

  Qazi ran.

  The tunnel had a flat roof about eight feet above a floor covered with a rubberized mat. The mat improved his footing. The walls were concave, giving the illusion of more space. The lighting was indirect, from the ceiling.

  Not too many people. Qazi scrambled through them and sent a few sprawling. He ran past the turnoff to the Galoppatoio exit, and before he reached the next turn, he glanced again over his shoulder. The gunman was still coming.

  The low ceiling gave Qazi an illusion of great speed. He shot past an exit to the Via Veneto on his left and raced toward the moving sidewalk ahead. He almost lost his balance when he hit it, but he pushed off on a pedestrian who didn’t hear him coming and kept his balance. The moving sidewalk also had a rubberized coating. It descended ahead of him, seemingly endless. He felt as if he were literally flying. After fifty yards he glanced back. The gunman was gaining.

  He was running faster than he ever had in his life. The end of the sidewalk was coming up. He leaped for the platform and lost his balance and careened onto the down escalator, into a group of men and women, bowling them over. He was up before they could react and taking the moving stairs downward four at a time.

  At the bottom the tunnel ended in a cross-corridor. He turned left, toward the entrance to the Metropolitana, the subway, and buttonhooked against the wall.

  He scanned the corridor. Just pedestrians, walking normally.

  When the gunman rounded the corner, Qazi shot him three times with the Walther before he hit the floor. The falling man lost his weapon, an Uzi, which bounced off the concrete wall. Someone screamed. A young man reached half-heartedly for Qazi and he threw a shot over his shoulder.

  Then he ran, away from the subway entrance, down the corridor toward the Piazza di Spagna. As he ran he ripped off the clerical collar and the black shirt. He literally tore the shirt from his left arm.

  When he reached the tunnel exit, he slowed to a walk. He could hear several sirens growing louder, a penetrating two-tone wail. The piazza was full of people strolling and sitting and pointing cameras in all directions. Qazi walked purposefully but unhurriedly the hundred feet to the Spanish Steps and began to climb it toward the obelisk at the top. The stairs were lined with flowers. He paused and watched a police car with blue light flashing proceed through the scrambling people at the foot of the white marble staircase.

  He transferred the attaché case to his right hand, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief, then continued climbing the stairs. Two carabinieri in khaki uniforms, wearing berets and carrying submachine guns on straps over their shoulders, ran down the stairs past him.

  * * *

  Qazi stood on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the zoo. A dirty brown sedan, much battered, stopped at the curb. Noora was at the wheel. Ali was beside her in the front seat and another man, about twenty-five, sat in the rear. He opened the door for Qazi.

  As soon as the car was in motion, Qazi opened the attaché case. It was empty except for a stack of paper almost two inches thick, held together with rubber bands. He pulled away the top sheet, which was blank, and examined the next. He was looking at a copy machine copy of a photograph. The photo was of the cover of a document marked “Mk-58” and “Top Secret” in inch-high black letters. On the lower right was a printed four-digit number and a hand-lettered inked notation “2 of 3.”

  Qazi placed the document in an empty shopping bag that sat waiting on the floor. He passed the attache case to the man beside him. “Wipe it off.”

  In the front seat, Ali turned and watched with raised eyebrows.

  “A man watched my meet with the general. He chased me. I shot him.”

  “We heard the sirens.”

  “Who?” Ali asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The car stopped shortly thereafter and Ali walked over to a large green trash barrel near a cross walk, de
posited the attache case, then returned to the car.

  At the next traffic light, Ali looked over his shoulder at Qazi and said, “The United States will anchor in Naples seven days from now.”

  “For how long?”

  “The hotel reservations are for eight nights.”

  “Any particular hotel?”

  “Over a dozen reservations at the Vittorio Emanuele. Some reservations elsewhere.”

  “Noora,” he said to the girl, “get us two rooms at the Vittorio. Suites, if possible, doubles at least. And stay out of sight.” She nodded.

  Qazi turned to the young man beside him. “As soon as you learn which rooms will be assigned to the Americans, Yasim, wire as many as possible.” Yasim was a rarity, an Arab with mechanical talent. He had been the star pupil of the national university’s engineering department when Qazi had discovered him.

  “Ali, you set the plan in motion. I will join you at home tomorrow.” Qazi kept checking the rear window as Noora threaded through the traffic onto the Via Tiburtina eastbound. When they came to the limited-access highway that circled Rome, Noora merged with the traffic in the high-speed lane headed south as Qazi checked behind them repeatedly.

  An hour later Noora dropped Qazi near Castel Sant’Angelo and sped away. The colonel now wore a short-sleeve, open-neck pullover shirt with a little alligator on the left breast. He walked west on the Via della Conciliazione. Old medieval buildings rose four and five stories above the street on either side, while ahead of him he could see the facade of St. Peter’s. Several blocks short of St. Peter’s Square, he turned right into a side street. He walked under the ancient Roman wall that arched above the street and kept going, into one of the more expensive quarters of Rome. After several blocks, he entered a quiet hotel with a tiny lobby.

  “I say, old chap,” he hailed the desk clerk. “Have you any messages or calls for me? Name’s MacPhee. Room 306.”

  “No, Signor MacPhee,” the clerk said after looking in the key box. “There is nothing.” Qazi would have been astounded if there had been. No one, not even Ali, knew he was here. He had checked in this morning, before he walked the three miles to the Villa Borghese.