“The weight won’t be too much for the roof?” asked Paco. “You’ll have to drive to the hospital with it open.”
“No, we strengthened it,” said Bruno. “The circuits are wired together, so all the rockets fire at the same instant. When they hit the hospital, they’ll tear a hole the size of the van right through the side. We’ll go in shooting.”
“Good,” said Paco. “Remember one thing; the timing. You fire your rockets from the corniche road at exactly 0852. You must be inside the building, shooting and throwing grenades, at 0857. I want noise, noise, noise.”
Paco turned to the two Iranians. They actually came to attention when he looked in their direction, like Gungha Din in his rags, ready to die for the regiment.
“I will be in the operating room in the basement,” Paco said. He pointed to the plan of the hospital taped to the side of the van. “What’s your name?” he said to the less intelligent of the Iranians.
“Espendiar.”
“Okay. Espendiar. You come straight to the operating room. You’ll have a Skorpion. Use it. Kill everyone in your way. I want you rolling grenades into every room as you go by. By the time you get to the operating room, I will have killed all the doctors, all the nurses. Espendiar, you will give the shah his drink of water. Then I will kill him.”
“But if he is being operated on, he’ll be unconscious when I offer him the cup of water,” Espendiar said.
“The noise will wake him up,” said Paco.
Since the day of his arrival in Cairo, Paco had been wearing a black beret. He took it off and put it on the head of Expendiar. “Wear this at all times,” he said. “I want you to be recognizable.”
* * *
—
Paco could hear his own breathing inside the mask. It was terribly hot inside the wet suit, inside the drain that led into the Nile. He had swum two miles under the brown tumbling water and found this tiny opening by luck as much as anything else. He had had good frogman training under the Cubans at the Raz Hilal camp near Tokra, in Libya, but he had never liked being underwater.
He used his light to find the fluorescent marks on the wall. Sewage—who knew what unimaginable foul sewage laden with disease—flowed around him. He was under the hospital. He found the mark. The advance diving team had done a good job. They had been the back-up team for the frogman who had blown up Lord Mountbatten’s yacht, using one of Flaherty’s splendid waterproof bombs. Carlos got out his tools, unscrewed the bolts, and pulled off the hatch the ETA bombers had made.
He slithered feet first into the basement room, clumsy in his fins and wet suit. His mask was fouled and he could hardly see. He knew what he was going to smell like when he took off the mask and respirator. Sewage was pouring out of the drain into the room. He ripped off the mask.
On the stairs, above the flooding floor, stood a small figure wearing a black chadar, the all-enveloping Islamic costume for women in purda.
Paco stripped off his wet suit and waded, naked, toward her. She held something in her hand. He saw what it was—a fire hose—and grinned. Layal turned the hose on him, washing the filth from his body. Under the chadar, Layal carried a change of clothes for Paco and the other things they would need: two Makarov pistols, two Skorpions, all with silencers, plastic explosive and detonators. She kept one Makarov and handed the other to Paco. Hers was marked with a tiny strip of tape on the butt.
“Did you load these yourself?” Paco asked.
Layal nodded. She dropped the chadar again, to conceal the weapons. With Layal leading, they went up the stairs, then through a maze of cellars with pipes overhead and dust everywhere, arriving at last in a small, windowless room. There was no electric light. Layal shone a torch and Paco saw the holes in the wall, drilled by the ETA frogmen after they came out of the drain.
Layal stripped off her chadar and handed Paco a pair of earphones. He put them on. She had wired the wall, drilling through the mortar and threading a pencil microphone into the outside world. He could hear as well as if he were standing on the beaten dust in the hospital courtyard. He heard the soldiers outside talking in slurred Upper Nile Arabic.
Through another pair of earphones he could hear the American doctors as they worked on the shah in the operating room beyond the wall in which the holes were drilled.
Layal began, methodically, to fill the holes in the wall with plastic explosive. She inserted the detonators and strung the wire. When the plastic blew, it would open a hole three feet in diameter. Paco would duck through, shooting as he went. He smiled in pleasure. In his mind’s eye he could see the profile of the shah, like the head of a dead chicken, lying on the table. And, already, he could hear the shrieks of panic—he had heard the shrieks so often before.
* * *
—
Eleazar and his team were waiting on the corniche, dressed as Elite Guards. They wore big, inefficient Tokagypt automatics, relics of Egypt’s arms deal with the U.S.S.R., in holsters on their belts, and concealed small 9-mm automatics in the palms of their hands. Inside their truck were more useful weapons.
They stopped the Volkswagen van. Eleazar had not shaved, and he had washed out his mouth with raki. Bruno, at the wheel of the van, noticed these signs of corruption. His papers were perfectly in order. In the back of the van, dressed as Arabs, were the other Italians and the two Iranians. Eleazar saw the beret on Espendiar’s head, as Paco had meant him to do.
At this moment, one of Eleazar’s team, dressed as a sergeant in the Elite Guard, said something to Eleazar. Eleazar flew into a rage. He screamed at the sergeant in Arabic, he stood him at attention. Finally, in a gesture of discipline that has all but disappeared from the Egyptian army, he commanded the sergeant to open his mouth. Eleazar spit into the sergeant’s mouth, to show him that he could do anything he liked to him.
Eleazar waved the Volkswagen van by. In the mirror, Bruno could see this mad Egyptian, still shouting at his sergeant. It was the last thing he saw. Just as the island that splits the Nile opposite Maadi Military Hospital came into sight, the magnetic radio-controlled bomb that another of Eleazar’s men had fastened to the gas tank of the van exploded. The Volkswagen vanished as the combined force of the Israeli bomb, the gas in the tank, the ammunition in the interior, and 12 RPG-7 rocket grenades produced an explosion that looked, just for an instant, like the sun reddened by a sandstorm, only brighter. The air over the Nile was filled with the smoky trails of exploding rounds.
Paco heard the racket through his earphones, strangely muffled. He heard the soldiers shouting, the beat of their running feet, and a burst or two of small arms fire. He ripped off the headset. It was only 0846.
“They’re early, the fools,” he said to Layal “Blow it now!”
Layal ran backward—he had to admire her physical capabilities even in such a moment—playing out the detonator wire from a spool. Paco followed her, a Makarov in his right hand.
Outside the door, they met a man. He held an Uzi submachine gun, an Israeli weapon, in his hands, and he had the look of a Jew; something about the mouth and eyes, the contempt, the intelligence: Paco could always tell.
Paco lifted the Makarov, clumsy as it was with the long silencer attached to the end of the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. The pistol exploded in his hand. In the same microsecond, Paco looked at his mangled hand, and also saw Layal shoot the intruder in the exact center of the forehead with her own Makarov. The intruder was Espendiar, without the black beret Paco had given him. Fool.
Paco was whimpering. He had no right hand. He couldn’t look at it. Blood spurted from the shredded crimson thing at the end of his arm.
“Layal,” he said, in a voice that sounded to him as thin as a thread. “What happened?”
“Special ammunition,” she replied. Then, for the first time ever, she smiled. “Special for you, comrade.”
Layal held her razor in her square small hand.
Ah, Paco thought, she is going to save me, she is probably a surgeon too. Then he remembered! “Special ammunition.”
Layal had loaded his Makarov. She had booby-trapped it. He tried to seize her weapon with the hand he had left. She stepped easily out of his reach.
He could feel, actually feel, his heart emptying through his wrist. “Not me,” he said, in a strong voice, his last words.
Layal watched him die. Then she picked up his left hand and bent it backward at the wrist. As if she were disjointing a chicken, she cut off the hand with the razor.
She pinned a note, written in her beautiful Arabic script, to Paco’s shirt. It read: “Islamic justice has cut off the hand of a thief who stole from the revolution.”
* * *
—
The woman Paco had known as Layal drank an ice-cold Coca-Cola straight from the can while her American case officer, working cheerfully, fingerprinted the severed hand.
“Was he Carlos or was he not?” asked the case officer.
“He never actually claimed to be,” Layal said. “He had all the mannerisms, all the skills, all the ego. All the vices, too. I can’t get the taste of Martell brandy out of my mouth or the smell of Gauloise Disques Bleus out of my hair.”
The case officer examined the card smudged with the fingerprints. “If these don’t belong to the Carlos of Paris or the Carlos of Vienna, we may have to believe that the KGB or George Habash are outwitting us,” he said. “Or somebody.”
“Outwitting us was his thing. Paco thought it was easy.”
“Is that what he said about us?”
“That’s what they all say about us.”
“What good news.”
The case officer had a charming smile. “I can hardly believe the things they will believe.”
He shook his head. The Japanese girl who was such a perfect American type smiled back at him, her eyes alive with humor and affection and a touch of mockery. She liked this outrageous Wasp with his St. Grottlesex accent and his sense of fun. The worst part of being out in the desert with crazed louts like the Bedouin band was their solemnity. The case officer dropped Paco’s hand into a Ziploc plastic bag.
“But then again,” he said, dropping the hand into his out basket, “where would we be, love, if strangers, men we’ll never know, didn’t give us a hand now and then?”
NEIGHBORS
JOSEPH FINDER
ALTHOUGH RECRUITED by the Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph Finder (1958– ) decided he would rather write about spies than work as one. His university credentials, first at Yale, where he majored in Russian Studies, then at Harvard, where he got his master’s degree from its Russian Research Center, provided a solid foundation for his first book, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen (1983), which famously revealed Dr. Armand Hammer’s connection to the KGB, making headlines.
Perhaps more significantly, when considering the direction of Finder’s career, his deep understanding of Russia and its intelligence agencies informed The Moscow Club (1991), which accurately predicted a planned coup d’état that would doom the Soviet Union. Publishers Weekly ranked it as one of the ten best espionage novels of all time.
Finder’s second novel was Extraordinary Powers (1994), a thriller in which the head of the CIA dies in an apparent car accident, though there are questions about who might have wanted him dead as rumors swirl about the possibility of his being a double agent.
High Crimes (1998) is the story of a powerful attorney who is forced to defend her husband when he is arrested by government agents for having been responsible for the massacre of a village when he was in the marines. It served as the basis for a 2002 film of the same title that was directed by Carl Franklin and starred Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Jim Caviezel, Adam Scott, and Amanda Peet.
Another film based on a book by Finder is Paranoia (2004), released on the big screen in 2013, which illustrates that industrial espionage can be as fearsome as international undercover work. Directed by Robert Luketic, it starred Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, and Harrison Ford.
Finder is a founding member of the International Thriller Writers Association.
“Neighbors” was originally published in Agents of Treachery (New York, Vintage, 2010).
NEIGHBORS
JOSEPH FINDER
“I CAN’T SHAKE the feeling that they’re up to something,” Matt Parker said. He didn’t need to say: the new neighbors. He was peering out their bedroom window through a gap between the slats of the venetian blinds.
Kate Parker looked up from her book, groaned. “Not this again. Come to bed. It’s after eleven.”
“I’m serious,” Matt said.
“So am I. Plus, they can probably see you staring at them.”
“Not from this angle.” But just to be safe he dropped the slat. He turned around, arms folded. “I don’t like them,” he said.
“You haven’t even met them.”
“I saw you talking to them yesterday. I don’t think they’re a real couple. She’s, like, twenty years younger than him.”
“Laura’s eight years younger than Jimmy.”
“He’s got to be an Arab.”
“I think Laura said his parents are Persian.”
“Persian,” Matt scoffed. “That’s just a fancy word for Iranian. Like an Iraqi saying he’s Mesopotamian or something.”
Kate shook her head and went back to her book. Some girl novel: an Oprah Book Club selection with a cover that looked like an Amish quilt. At the foot of their bed, the big flat-screen TV flickered a blue light across her delicate features. She had the sound muted: Matt didn’t get how she could concentrate on a book with the TV on.
“Also, does he look like a Norwood to you?” Matt said when he came back from brushing his teeth, a few stray white flecks of Colgate on his chin. “Jimmy Norwood? What kind of name is Norwood for an Arab guy? That can’t be his real name.”
Kate gave a small, tight sigh, folded down the corner of a page and closed her book. “It’s Nourwood, actually.” She spelled it.
“That’s not a real name.” He climbed into bed. “And where’s their furniture? They didn’t even have a moving van. They just showed up one day with all their stuff in that stupid little Toyota hybrid sardine can.”
“Boy, you really have been stalking them.”
Matt jutted his jaw. “I notice stuff. Like foreign-made cars.”
“Yeah, well, I hate to burst your bubble, but they’re renting the house furnished from the Gormans. Ruth and Chuck didn’t want to sell their house, given the market these days, and there’s no room in their condo in Boca for—”
“What kind of people would rent a furnished house?”
“Look at us,” Kate pointed out. “We move, like, every two years.”
“You knew when you married me that was how it would be. That’s just part of the life. I’m telling you, there’s something not quite right about them. Remember the Olsens in Pittsburgh?”
“Don’t start.”
“Did I or did I not tell you their marriage was in trouble? You insisted Daphne had postpartum depression. Then they got divorced.”
“Yeah, like five years after we moved,” Kate said. “Half of all marriages end in divorce. Anyway, the Nourwoods are a perfectly nice couple.”
Something on TV caught Matt’s eye. He fumbled for the remote, found it under the down comforter next to Kate’s pillow, touched a button to bring up the sound.
“—officials tell WXBS NightCast that FBI intelligence reports indicate an increased level of terrorist chatter—”
“I love that word, chatter,” Kate said. “Makes it sound like they bugged Perez Hilton’s tea set or something.”
“Shh.” Matt raised the volume.
The anchorman of the local news, who wore a cheap pin-
striped suit and looked as if he was about sixteen, went on, “…heightened concerns about a possible terrorist strike in downtown Boston just two days from now.” The chyron next to him was a crude rendering of a crosshair and the words “Boston Terror Target?”
Now the picture cut to a reporter standing in the dark outside one of the big new skyscrapers in the financial district, the wind whipping his hair. “Ken, a spokesman for the Boston police told me just a few minutes ago that the mayor has ordered heightened security for all Boston landmarks, including the State House, Government Center, and all major office buildings.”
“Isn’t it a little loud?” Kate said.
But Matt continued to stare at the screen.
“—speculates that the terrorists might be locally based. The police spokesman told me that their pattern seems to be to establish residence in or near a major city and assimilate themselves into the fabric of a neighborhood while they make their long-range plans, just as law enforcement authorities believe happened in the bombing in Chicago last year, also on April nineteenth, which, though never solved, is believed to be—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate said.
“Shh!”
“—FBI undercover operatives throughout the Boston area in an attempt to infiltrate this suspected terrorist ring,” the reporter said.
“I love that,” Kate said. “It’s always a ‘ring.’ Why not a terrorist bracelet? Or a necklace.”
“This isn’t funny,” Matt said.
* * *
—
Matt couldn’t sleep.
After tossing and turning for half an hour, he slipped quietly out of bed and padded down the hall to the tiny guest room that served as their home office. It was furnished with little more than a couple of filing cabinets, for household bills and owner’s manuals and the like, and an old Dell PC atop an Ikea desk.
He opened a browser on the computer and entered “James Nourwood” in Google. It came back:
The Big Book of Espionage Page 118
