Success of a Mission

by Dennis Lynds

  The door into the windowless file room was open. Hareet fitted a small light to his head and crouched to inspect the vault. It was a simple key-locked vault from British days such as the peddler had reported. Hareet picked the lock with no trouble, swung the door open.

  The documents he needed were neatly filed in their proper places. The folders were sealed with a wire-and-plastic seal that had to be broken to open the folder. Hareet broke the seal and removed the documents. They felt faintly slippery to his touch. Tomorrow, ultraviolet light would reveal Hareet’s prints, but that would not matter.

  He photographed the documents with the miniature camera that had been hidden in the built-up heel of his boot. There were ten lists with maps and dated overlays. The overlays were all new and dated that day. Hareet photographed each document. They became faintly darker under the heat of his intense light. He unloaded the roll of microfilm and placed it in its container in his breast pocket.

  He took a second roll of film from his other heel, reloaded the camera and took a second set of photographs.

  He returned the documents to their files, resealed the folders as best he could, replaced the folders in the vault and relocked the vault.

  He left the file room.

  Behind the door of the dark office he sat at the general’s desk, smoked a slow cigarette, looked around this high-level office of the enemy and waited for the guard to make his next round. It took a second and a third cigarette. He smoked deeply, enjoying the relaxation.

  When the guard had passed, he slipped out of the office of the chief of supply, relocked the office door and walked openly again to the lounge for officers. Inside a booth once more, he sat and went to sleep with his head against the wall.

  * * *

  Dawn arrived soon after five o’clock that morning.

  The building came slowly to life. Vehicles drove up and parked outside. Orders were shouted all through the courtyard and at the gates. The corridors echoed with the smart clicking of heels, and the morning greetings of the elite officers. Heavy-booted footsteps rang all through the building. Office doors opened and closed like the ragged sound of small artillery.

  Hareet waited until just after six o’clock when the initial chaos had slowed to a steady sound of routine.

  Inside the booth he took a large piece of wrapped halvah from his pocket, unwrapped it, and embedded the second roll of microfilm inside until it was completely covered with the soft confection.

  He left the booth, went out into the lounge that was still empty at the early hour and returned to the corridor.

  Hareet walked calmly toward the front door. Visiting officers were being checked in by the sleepy night-shift guards. Excitement and confusion were high at the door—the fever of impending war in any army. The day-shift guards were forming in the courtyard. The ragged fellahin servants were sweeping the courtyard, watering it down in preparation for the heat of the day to come.

  Already the sun was up. It was going to be a dazzling day. Far across the courtyard at the front gate, Hareet could see the night-shift guards stretching the weariness from their bones, waiting for their relief. Vehicles coughed and sputtered in the morning air. The officers continued to pour in. No one was going out.

  * * *

  Hareet waited until the day-shift guards forming outside began to march to the posts to make the official transfer with the night-shift guards. He placed his pistol in his pocket, checked the film in his breast pocket, and when a large group of officers came across the courtyard and approached the front entrance, strode out and walked straight up to the door.

  The officers thronged in the entrance.

  A guard turned around to check Hareet’s credentials.

  There was a faint click somewhere in the wall, and an alarm began to sound, echoing through the building and out across the courtyard. The guard at the door stared at Hareet.

  Hareet stabbed him in the heart, held the man’s body close against him, and walked out into the courtyard through the confused group of incoming officers.

  For a long moment, as the alarm continued to sound through the headquarters and over the courtyard in the bright morning, the officers and guards milled around and shouted and no one noticed Hareet walking across the courtyard away from both the building and the front gate still carrying the dead guard upright against him as if they were hurrying together toward some important official duty.

  Then the officer of the guard saw them out there all alone and going in the odd direction, saw that one man was holding up the other. He ran after them, shouting, “You out there! You, Major! Stop where you are! Stop—”

  Hareet dropped the dead guard, drew his pistol and shot the running officer of the guard. Then he turned and ran on across the courtyard toward the small barred side gate where he knew there was only one guard.

  Pandemonium flowed through the building and the courtyard as the guards and officers all grabbed for their weapons. Quickly the day-shift and night-shift guards all spotted Hareet and began to converge on him. The guard at the side gate fired and missed.

  Hareet shot the guard down.

  He leaped for the wall. A bullet hit him in the leg, buckled it. He collapsed, rolled, and struggled up again. He grasped the bars of the gate and hauled himself up toward the top of the wall. Outside the wall, the two armored cars on patrol both careened into the street. Hareet reached the top of the wall.

  A burst of fire struck him in the back. The machine guns on the armored cars cut him in two. Two rifle bullets exploded in his head. His body, at the very top of the wall, fell back to the stones of the courtyard.

  * * *

  The night-shift and day-shift guards stood all around Captain Hareet’s body, uncertain what to do, perhaps awed by the daring escape that had failed.

  A colonel of military police pushed through the guards and shot Hareet in the head again.

  The colonel bent down, searched, and found the microfilm in Hareet’s breast pocket. The colonel laughed and kicked the dead body. Some soldiers laughed now, spat on Hareet’s lifeless eyes.

  “Cut his head off,” the colonel of military police ordered. “Hang it on the gate with a sign: Pig of a Spy!”

  A general of the staff walked slowly up, and the soldiers and other officers gave way. The general looked down at Hareet’s body. The colonel of military police handed the general the roll of microfilm.

  “Take his body and identify it, Colonel, before you cut off any heads,” the general said. “A very stupid attempt, but well done. He very nearly escaped.”

  “A desperate attempt,” the colonel sneered. “A hopeless attempt. They are afraid of us, General.”

  “Of course they are afraid of us, as we are afraid of them,” the general said almost wearily. “Find out what it was they wanted, Colonel, what he has on that microfilm. Not that it matters now, but they might try again.”

  “They will always fail,” the colonel insisted. He did not like to be told he was afraid of the enemy. That was weak, defeatist talk. He would watch the general. But now he looked down again at the dead body. “The fool never knew it would have done him no good to succeed. We would locate what he took even if he had escaped, and instantly change our plans.”

  The colonel laughed. Hareet’s body was taken away. The chief of supply quickly identified the enormity of the theft and posted a twenty-four-hour guard at his door. Even though, he explained to the army commander, there was no way anyone could get that data without the chief of supply knowing it instantly and changing it. In any event, the chief of supply assured the army commander, the data was still secret and safe, there was no need to change the vital plans with so little time left. The army commander was relieved, such a change could have delayed them for days.

  Captain Hareet was soon identified, and his head cut off and hung on the gates for the fellahin to jeer at.

  * * *

  The headquarters returned to its routine. Officers came and went in a steady stream. The fellahin servants
cleaned the courtyard while the officers prepared for war. The hardworking, important and excited officers ignored the ragged peasants. One of the fellahin swept up a large piece of discarded halvah. He dropped the halvah into his trash sack. Eventually he took the sack to a trash box near the small barred gate in the side wall where Hareet had died.

  Soon, a truck picked up the trash boxes and drove them to the city waste dump. Out at the dump, a ragged peddler scraped among the boxes. Later, the same peddler hawked wares in front of a hotel near the eastern edge of the city.

  A pretty Italian tourist woman bought a small urn from the peddler.

  * * *

  That evening, the pretty Italian tourist checked out of her small hotel and drove from the city to a deserted beach. On the beach, she stripped down and swam out to sea.

  Thirty-six hours later, the attack was launched. Ten hours after that, the war was essentially over. All the supply depots, ammunition dumps and fuel centers of the attacking army were destroyed within ten hours of the initial attack.

  * * *

  Some weeks later, Lieutenant Greta Frank sat alone on a hill in the north of her country and looked out toward the border beyond the orange trees and olive groves. The border was quiet. It was not yet safe, but it was becoming safer.

  Greta cried.

  The minister came up the hill and squatted down in the dry dust. His hard gray eyes looked out toward the border.

  “There was no other way,” the minister said. “They had to be convinced that he had tried and failed. They had to catch him—and not alive. He knew it was the only plan that would work.”

  “And you knew,” Greta said.

  “I knew.”

  “You knew before we went.”

  The minister drew patterns in the dust with his walking stick.

  “Why didn’t you go there and do it yourself?” Greta asked. “The great minister who won the war.”

  “I could not have done it.”

  “No, you could not have done it, and I could not have done it, and the peddler, whoever he really is, could not have done it. Only Paul could have done it,” Greta said. She studied the patterns drawn in the dust by the minister. Ancient patterns like the sun and moon of cavemen, hieroglyphics. “He knew he was the only way.”

  Below, among the orange trees, two young boys ran and shouted, played soldier.

  * * * * *

  Author Biography

  Dennis Lynds, aka Michael Collins, wrote the Dan Fortune series that began in 1967. There are now nineteen Dan Fortune books, the most recent being Fortune’s World, a collection of short stories spanning from 1963 to 2000. His most recent thriller, The Cadillac Cowboy, featured a new protagonist whose name may or may not be Ford Morgan. As Mark Sadler, John Crowe, William Arden and Carl Dekker, he published another eighteen crime novels and thirteen juvenile crime novels. As Dennis Lynds, he published three novels and two collections of stories, the most recent being Talking to the World. Lynds won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar and has been nominated for two more. Born in St. Louis, he was raised in England. Later, his parents, both English actors, returned to the States and he grew up in Los Angeles, Denver and New York City. Sadly, Dennis died in August 2005, leaving behind his wife, bestselling novelist Gayle Lynds.

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  ISBN-13: 9781488094477

  Success of a Mission

  Copyright © 1968 By Dennis Lynds

  First published as part of an anthology of works entitled Thriller in 2006.

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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