Besides, as soon as Saul began hitting the Jews things would start happening fast, things that would keep Oscar very busy. He wanted to take care of some other matters, besides raising the seed money for Saul, first. One of those things was an assignment Ryan had given him in a telephone call two days before Easter.
XXVI
The Agency for Public Security — “the Agency” as Ryan always referred to it now, just as he always had referred to the FBI as “the Bureau” before — had made rapid strides since its creation and Ryan’s appointment a little over four months ago. He had taken some 800 special agents and nearly 1,000 clerical and other support personnel from the FBI — virtually the entire Anti-Terrorism Section — as the nucleus of his new organization, giving him instant operational capability.
And he had made extraordinarily skilful use of the news media, holding weekly press conferences at which he gave dramatic accounts of his activity. They were staged almost like wartime Army General Staff briefings, with Ryan giving the latest battlefield summary of the Agency’s war on terrorism during the past week, then calling in his battle-group commanders to give sector reports. Ryan himself carefully avoided any appearance of grandstanding; he maintained a sober, almost grim demeanor and came across on the television screen as a self-effacing but highly capable and energetic military commander waging a determined war of annihilation against the sinister forces of terror which threatened the nation. It was clear to Oscar that Ryan’s immediate aim was to make himself and the Agency seem indispensable and at the same time to convince everyone that they posed no threat to right-thinking, law-abiding citizens or to the established power structure.
Oscar marveled at how well Ryan already had succeeded in this aim. In just a few months he had managed to magnify the specter of terrorism in the public mind to such a degree that most people accepted the need for a special governmental body to combat it the same way they accepted the need for a fire department to put out fires. In accomplishing this feat he had made the best possible use both of the few genuine opportunities for suppressing terrorism which existed and of the remarkable freedom from restraints under which the Agency operated in order to create additional opportunities. And he had exercised diplomatic finesse in choosing his targets, balancing the interests and prejudices of various groups.
He had staged a spectacular raid on a nightclub which served as the headquarters of an organized-crime gang in New York City whose members were all Israeli or Soviet Jewish emigres and which heretofore had operated with impunity, depending upon protection from corrupt officials in New York and Washington. The FBI, ever wary of offending Jews, had held back from taking action against the gang, even though it had become notorious for the magnitude of some of its rackets and the ruthless brutality it displayed in killing witnesses and potential informers. But because it engaged in some activities which Ryan interpreted as “terroristic” and therefore within his purview, his men had gone in with shotguns and assault rifles blazing, killing 14 of the gang members and taking more than 30 captive, while television teams recorded it all for the evening news.
Two days later, just as the complaints about “excessive force” and “police brutality” were picking up volume, his agents arrested nine members of a Palestinian group in Detroit, nearly killing two in the process, and Ryan appeared on television that evening showing off a small arsenal of captured weapons and claiming that the Palestinians had been preparing to assassinate Jewish leaders in the United States. As if by magic the whining about the Agency’s alleged civil rights violations in the New York raid stopped.
Then there was a shootout in Chicago with a heavily armed White supremacist who was wanted for questioning about an attack on a mixed couple. He had barricaded himself in his home, and both he and his wife were killed in the ensuing exchange of fire with Ryan’s men. In the press conference which followed, Ryan said that the Agency had evidence that the man had traveled to Washington several times in recent months. He was believed to have been in Washington at the times of both the Horowitz assassination and the bombing of the People’s Committee Against Hate and was, therefore, a prime suspect in both of those terrorist acts. Oscar took note of how neatly Ryan had wrapped up those loose ends. Dead men make such convenient scapegoats — and they tell no tales.
There were a few persistent media critics of Ryan and the Agency — commentators who still questioned the wisdom of putting such unrestrained police power into the hands of the Federal government — but the man in the street had no such qualms. Neither the violence of Ryan’s operations nor his freedom from the restraints under which other police agencies operated seemed to bother the average citizen; in fact, John Q. Public loved it. For too long, it seemed to him, the bad guys had been getting away with murder; now the time had come to take off the gloves and do whatever needed to be done to restore law and order. Ryan’s own sentiments on that matter seemed an accurate reflection of the public’s.
Ryan, of course, had a lot more in mind for the future than merely cracking down on terrorists. One of his principal worries now was that he might run out of terrorists — and justification for the continued buildup of the Agency. His solution to that problem was to have Oscar begin striking Mossad targets and leaving clues that would implicate Palestinian groups. When the Mossad hit back at the Palestinians, as it inevitably would, Ryan would have a pretext for a massive move against the Israeli organization. Meanwhile, a terror campaign between Israelis and Palestinians waged in the streets of America’s cities certainly couldn’t hurt his plans.
In his telephone call, Ryan had told Oscar to choose half a dozen or so Mossad agents and offices and take them out in a high-profile manner that would guarantee plenty of media coverage. Ryan’s final words to him had been: “You can stretch this thing out over a couple of months if you have to. It’ll take me at least that long to solidify my position enough to be able to take on the Mossad. But get started on it right away. And, Yeager! Be careful, but make it as messy as you can: lots of property damage, innocent bystanders, and so forth. I want as much public outrage as we can get. And don’t be too slick; make it look amateurish, if you can. That’s the way those dumb Arabs do things.”
Oscar was not happy to have this assignment. He considered the possibility of terminating his partnership with Ryan. Unfortunately, that would be much more difficult to do safely now than it would have been before Ryan became head of the Agency. Ryan could have him killed fairly easily, but it was no longer so easy for Oscar to get to Ryan. Besides, Ryan clearly was headed upward, and the connection might be very valuable in the future.
He thought it over for a week before making up his mind on the matter. His decision was to go with the Mossad project and to get it over with as soon as possible, before Adelaide moved in with him — and before the television project with Saul started occupying even more of his time. He also decided that it was about time for the partnership to begin providing some help with his own plans. He called Ryan back early on Friday and told him that he was ready to proceed but would need operating funds.
“No problem,” Ryan responded. “You can have $50,000.”
“Not enough,” Oscar replied. “I’ll need $250,000.” He had added what he needed for Saul to what seemed a reasonable amount for dealing with the Mossad.
There was silence at the other end for a few seconds, then Ryan answered tersely: “You’ve got it.”
In another call that evening Oscar was directed to a pickup point where he found a large package containing not only 25 banded bundles with 100 used $100 bills in each, but also three radio-controlled detonating devices, a dozen time-delay detonators, a kit of high-tech burglar tools, a large set of master keys for vehicles of various makes and vintages, and several other useful odds and ends of gadgetry. Finally in the package were a ball-point pen with an imprint in Arabic on it, three Syrian coins, and a tattered pocket edition of the Koran in Arabic: items to be discreetly left at the scenes of one or more of the actions. Oscar was imp
ressed by Ryan’s thoroughness and by his speed in delivering the requested money.
Over the weekend he went carefully through the dossier Ryan had given him earlier and tentatively chose as his first target an office-supplies store in downtown Washington which served as a reporting point for the Mossad’s many non-Israeli spies in the area, primarily Jews with U.S. citizenship who worked for the Federal government or for government contractors and had copied or stolen documents or other information of interest to the Israelis. To avoid an embarrassingly heavy traffic into the Israeli embassy, they took their information to a complex of offices in the back of George’s Stationery on K Street, where a dozen Mossad agents worked full time debriefing them and handing out new espionage assignments.
It was a large, modern store with lots of plate glass, Oscar noted during a reconnaissance visit on Monday. It would be fairly easy to surreptitiously leave a briefcase full of explosives in one of the aisles, but the layout was such that probably not much damage would be done to the rear offices. A more daring approach would be to actually take a bomb into one of the Mossad offices, but he didn’t like the risks involved in that. There were a couple of sharp-eyed characters near the back of the store, ostensibly rearranging stock on the shelves but actually scrutinizing everyone who approached the door leading into the rear hallway. During the three or four minutes that Oscar pretended to be examining an automatic telephone-answering device on display he saw five men and three women go into that hallway, most of them distinctly Jewish looking. All had come in from the street, and four were carrying attache cases. Two of them were stopped by the pseudo-employees. One was permitted to proceed almost immediately, but the other was detained until one of the door-watchers had gone into the rear and returned, apparently with an okay for the visitor.
Oscar was amazed at the size of the operation. The arrogance of the Israelis, carrying on their espionage activities on such a scale right under the nose of their goyische benefactor and supposed “ally” was breathtaking. They must be pretty sure that they had the fix in and would not be called to account. He felt his resolve harden: it would be satisfying to teach these uppity aliens a little humility.
He went outside and walked around the corner and into the narrow alleyway which ran behind the stores on the block. Making his way around huge, metal trash bins and delivery trucks with engines idling, he found George’s delivery entrance in a recess just large enough to accommodate a medium-size truck. The door was sheathed in steel and locked, with a push button beside it to summon an employee. To the left of the door was a small, grimy window protected by steel bars. Beginning about 25 feet to the right of the parking recess were eight much larger windows, also barred, all of them with tightly closed venetian blinds. He took a quick look into the small window. He could see the shelves of a the store’s stockroom, with a double swinging door leading out onto the display floor. To the right he could see a wall of the stockroom, about where the larger windows began. So they had to open into the offices used by the Mossad; it was the only thing that made sense. It took him only a few more seconds to finish sizing up the job and make his decision: Ryan wanted a high-profile operation, and so high-profile it would be.
XXVII
The next day Oscar busied himself with preparations both for the stationery store job and for Saul’s program. First, with an eye toward the future when he would be sharing his house with Adelaide, he drove out to Manassas, in the Virginia countryside some 25 miles west of Washington, where he rented a nice, sturdy double garage.
Then he bought himself a used Chevrolet pickup. With the pickup he drove to a large feed and fertilizer store on the edge of town and bought 15 bags of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate. He would have bought more, but 1,500 pounds was about as much as he estimated he could manage in one load without damaging his truck. After unloading that in the garage, he stopped at a hardware and farm-supply store and bought two 50-pound cases of Tovex cartridges and a box of electric detonators. Tovex was an aluminized water-gel dynamite commonly used by farmers and contractors for blasting stumps and boulders.
He knew he would have to show a driver’s license and have his name, address, and social-security number recorded when he made that last purchase, and so he had used the license he had taken from David Kaplan’s wallet three months earlier. He also had worn the brunette wig he had bought for the Horowitz job, but Kaplan’s photograph on the license still bore very little resemblance to Oscar. That discrepancy gave the clerk no pause, however.
These preliminaries done, he gave Harry a call to schedule a meeting and headed back toward Washington. He would need the better part of a day to prepare his bomb, and he would have to steal a suitable truck to pack it in first. Perhaps he could handle those things tomorrow, if he got an early start. Meanwhile, he was eager to push ahead with Saul’s television career.
When Harry looked into the paper bag Oscar handed him and saw that it was full of $100 bills, he was speechless for a few seconds. He dumped the money out onto the coffee table, quickly estimated the amount, and whistled. “How did you raise 200 grand so quickly?” he asked, his voice conveying mixed feelings of awe, elation, and dark suspicion.
“A friend owed it to me for some contract work I’m doing for him and finally paid me off the other night,” Oscar answered unconvincingly.
“Does he always pay you in cash?”
“Actually, the less said about that the better. Just take my word for it: the money’s real. How’ve you been doing with the preparations for Saul’s introductory tape?”
“We can do it in a day or two — as soon as Saul and I can set aside two or three hours on the same evening for the taping. Maybe tomorrow. Saul has been rehearsing his material and is ready to go. I’ve been talking with Capitol Productions, and they can schedule us almost anytime. They do top-quality work, and I’ve known the people there for years. They’re expensive, but it looks like we can swing their fee now.” Harry grinned. He apparently had decided not to worry about how Oscar had gotten his money. “The financing is really all we were waiting for.”
They discussed related matters for nearly an hour, and Oscar was pleased by the progress which was being made. Harry estimated that with a portion of the money Oscar had brought he could have the League’s video recording studio up to broadcast standards within ten days. He was so confident of that, in fact, that he would have Colleen schedule Saul’s first broadcast on Washington’s WZY-TV for two Sundays hence.
One of the most important developments, Oscar learned, was that reporters for the tabloids had been trying to reach Saul. Caldwell’s secretary had received more than a dozen calls from the National Enquirer and three or four of the other checkout-stand papers which specialized in the bizarre and the sensational. So far Saul had not returned their calls.
Oscar called Saul from Harry’s house. “Hey, this is a great opportunity for us. Have you thought about what you should say to the reporters?”
“Do you really think I should talk to those jerks? Don’t you think it’ll lower our credibility if we get a big write-up in the cretin papers?”
“Listen, Saul. The people who believe the stories in the National Enquirer are exactly the ones who’ll believe that Jesus has returned to cleanse the nation. If you play it right, you should be able to get front-page publicity where it’ll do the most good and still keep a certain amount of your dignity. And it certainly won’t hurt our campaign to get you on as many stations as possible.”
“So you believe I should act like a simple, sober soul who is still shaken by his experience on Easter morning and doesn’t know why Jesus chose him as a medium?”
“Exactly! You can even give ‘em a detailed description of what it felt like when Jesus took over your body at the microphone. Just act a little shy and embarrassed by the whole thing, but nevertheless determined to keep spreading the word to the boobs — and even to let Jesus speak through you again if he wants to. You know: sort of a combination of ‘Why me, oh Lord?’ and �
��Thy will be done.”
“Okay. I’ll call them back tonight. I’ll tell them 1 couldn’t call sooner because I was fasting and meditating. How’s that?”
“Right on!”
Later that evening with Adelaide he watched the national television news. The latest unemployment figures had just been released and were causing a stir: there had been an increase of seven-tenths of a per cent last month, to 7.9 per cent. Some members of the Congress were charging that the actual unemployment rate was even higher and that the Hedges administration was juggling the figures to keep the public from knowing how bad things were. The economic analysts were predicting that as much as ten percent of the work force would be unemployed by mid-summer and that no improvement was in sight. Furthermore, the trade deficit and inflation were both up sharply, making an exceedingly grim overall picture.
Ryan was in the news again too. He announced the arrests of 42 members of a militant anti-abortion group, the Pro-Life Commando, which was suspected in the bombing of several abortion clinics and a Planned Parenthood office. Elsewhere on the terrorism front, an interracial couple had been gunned down by an unknown sniper in Chicago, and Blacks were rioting in a Miami suburb, after ambushing and killing two White policemen.
It would be interesting to see how Ryan would deal with that last situation. Heretofore he had gone after individuals and organized groups; he had not yet had to counter unplanned mob violence. Oscar was confident, however, that very shortly the rioting Blacks in Miami would be wondering what had hit them. Ryan clearly was a cop who meant business and knew how to get results. It was amazing to Oscar what foresight the man had. People had been making gloomy economic forecasts for years, but not with the definiteness Ryan had when he had told Oscar back at the end of last November that the economy would be out of control by this summer. It looked now as if he would be right on target. Would that 1 had asked him what stocks I should invest in, Oscar thought ruefully.
Hunter Page 23
