He had expected to find a whopping shipment of hashish, a commodity Muzi often bought from Al Fatah sources. Instead he found plastique, and then Hassan was there, going for his pistol like a fool. Plastique was heavy business, not like a normal drug deal where friends could put the squeeze on one another.
Larmoso hoped that Muzi could solve the problem with the guerrillas and still turn a profit on the plastique. But Muzi would be furious at him for fooling with the crates.
If Muzi did not want to cooperate, if he refused to pay off Larmoso and make amends to the guerrillas for him, then Larmoso intended to keep the plastique and sell it elsewhere. Better to be a wealthy fugitive than a poor one.
But first he must take an inventory of what he had to sell, and he must get rid of certain garbage in the hold.
Larmoso knew that he had hit Hassan squarely. And he had given him plenty of time to die. He decided he would sack up Hassan, weight him in the harbor at Ponta Delgada while there was only an anchor watch aboard, and dump him in deep water when he cleared the Azores.
Muhammad Fasil checked the cable office in Beirut hourly all day. At first he hoped Hassan’s cable from the Azores had only been delayed. Always before, the cables had come by noon. There had been three of them—from Benghazi, Tunis, and Lisbon—as the old freighter plowed westward. The wording varied in each, but they all meant the same thing—the explosives had not been disturbed. The next one should be “Mother much improved today” and it should be signed Jose. At six p.m., when the cable had still not arrived, Fasil drove to the airport. He was carrying the credentials of an Algerian photographer and a gutted speed graphic camera containing a .357 Magnum revolver. Fasil had made the reservations as a precaution two weeks before. He knew he could be in Ponta Delgada by four p.m. the next day.
Captain Larmoso relieved his first mate at the helm when the Leticia raised the peaks of Santa Maria early on the morning of November 2. He skirted the small island on the southwest side, then turned north for San Miguel and the port of Ponta Delgada.
The Portuguese city was lovely in the winter sun, white buildings with red tiled roofs, and evergreens between them rising nearly as high as the bell tower. Behind the city were gentle mountain slopes, patched with fields.
The Leticia looked scalier than ever tied at the quay, her faded Plimsoll line creeping up out of the water as the crew off-loaded a consignment of reconditioned light agricultural equipment and creeping down again as crates of bottled mineral water were loaded aboard.
Larmoso was not worried. The cargo handling involved only the aft hold. The small, locked compartment in the forward hold would not be disturbed.
Most of the work was completed by the afternoon of the second day, and he gave the crew shore leave, the purser doling out only enough cash to each man for one evening in the brothels and bars.
The crew trooped off down the quay, walking quickly in anticipation of the evening, the foremost sailor with a blob of shaving cream beneath his ear. They did not notice the thin man beneath the colonnade of the Banco Nacional Ultra marino, who counted them as they passed.
The ship was silent now except for Captain Larmoso’s footsteps as he descended to the engine room workshop, a small compartment dimly lit by a bulb in a wire cage. Rummaging through a pile of cast-off parts he selected a piston rod, complete with wristpin assembly, which had been ruined when the Leticia’s engine seized off Tobruk in the spring. The rod looked like a great metal bone as he hefted it in his hands. Confident that it was heavy enough to take Hassan’s body down the long slide to the bottom of the Atlantic, Larmoso carried the rod aft and stowed it in a locker near the stem along with a length of line.
Next he took from the galley one of the cook’s big burlap garbage bags and carried it forward through the empty wardroom toward the forward companionway. He draped the bag over his shoulder like a serape and whistled between his teeth, his footfalls loud in the passageway. Then he heard a slight sound behind him. Larmoso paused, listening. Probably the noise was only the old man on anchor watch walking on the deck above his head. Larmoso stepped through the wardroom hatch into the companionway and went down the metal steps to the level of the forward hold. But instead of entering the hold, he slammed its hatch loudly and stood against the bulkhead at the foot of the companionway, looking up the metal shaft to the hatch at the top of the dark steps. The five-shot Smith & Wesson Airweight looked like a child’s licorice pistol in his big fist.
As he watched, the wardroom hatch swung open and, as slowly as a questing snake, the small, neat head of Muhammad Fasil appeared.
Larmoso fired, the blast incredible inside the metal walls, the bullet screaming off the handrail. He ducked into the hold and slammed the hatch behind him. He was sweating now, and the rank smell of him mixed with the smells of rust and cold grease as he waited in the darkness.
The footsteps descending the companionway were slow and evenly spaced. Larmoso knew Fasil was holding the railing with one hand and keeping his gun trained on the closed hatch with the other. Larmoso scrambled behind a crate twelve feet from the hatch Fasil had to enter. Time was on his side. Eventually the crew would straggle back. He thought of the deals and excuses he might offer Fasil. Nothing would work. He had four shots left. He would kill Fasil when he came through the hatch. It was settled.
The companionway was quiet for a second. Then Fasil’s Magnum roared, the bullet blasting through the hatch and sending metal fragments flying through the hold. Larmoso fired back at the closed hatch, the .38 special bullet only dimpling the metal, and fired again and again as the hatch flew open and the dark shape tumbled through.
Even as he fired the last round, Larmoso saw by the muzzle flash that he had shot a sofa pillow from the wardroom. Now he was running, tripping and cursing, through the dark hold toward the forward compartment.
He would get Hassan’s pistol. He would kill Fasil with it.
Larmoso moved well for a big man, and he knew the layout of the hold. In less than thirty seconds he was at the compartment hatch, fumbling with the key. The stench that puffed over him when he opened the hatch gagged him as he plunged inside. He did not want to show a light, and he crawled across the deck in the black compartment, feeling for Hassan and muttering softly to himself. He butted into the crates and crawled around them. His hand touched a shoe. Larmoso felt his way up the trouser leg and over the belly. The gun was not in the waistband. He felt on either side of the body. He found the arm, he felt it move, but he did not find the gun until it exploded in his face.
Fasil’s ears were ringing and several minutes passed before he could hear the hoarse whisper from the forward compartment.
“Fasil. Fasil.”
The guerrilla shone his small flashlight into the compartment, tiny feet scurrying from the beam. Fasil played the light over the red mask of Larmoso, lying dead on his back, then stepped inside.
Kneeling, he took the rat-ravaged face of Ali Hassan in his hands. The lips moved.
“Fasil.”
“You have done well, Hassan. I’ll get a doctor.” Fasil could see that it was hopeless. Hassan, swollen with peritonitis, was beyond help. But Fasil could kidnap a doctor a half hour before the Leticia sailed and make him come along. He could kill the physician at sea before the ship reached New York. Hassan deserved no less. It was the humane thing to do.
“Hassan, I will be back in five minutes with the medical kit. I will leave the light with you.”
A faint whisper. “Is my duty done?”
“It is done. Hold on, old friend. I will bring morphine now and then a doctor.”
Fasil was feeling his way aft through the dark hold when Hassan’s pistol went off behind him. He paused and leaned his head against the ship’s cold iron. “You will pay for this,” he whispered. He was talking to a people that he had never seen.
The old man on anchor watch was still unconscious, with a swollen lump on the back of his head where Fasil had slugged him. Fasil dragged him to the first mate�
�s cabin and laid him on the bunk, then sat down to think.
Originally the plan was to have the crates picked up at the Brooklyn dock by the importer, Benjamin Muzi. There was no way of knowing if Larmoso had contacted Muzi and enlisted his aid in this treachery. Muzi would have to be dealt with anyway because he knew far too much. Customs would be curious at the absence of Larmoso. Questions would be asked. It seemed unlikely that the others on the ship knew what was in the crates. Larmoso’s keys were still dangling from the lock on the forward compartment when the captain was killed. Now they were in Fasil’s pocket. The plastique must not go into New York Harbor—that was clear.
First Mate Mustapha Fawzi was a reasonable man and not a brave one. At midnight when he returned to the ship, Fasil had a brief conversation with him. In one hand Fasil held a large black revolver. In the other he held two thousand dollars. He inquired about the health of Fawzi’s mother and sister in Beirut, then suggested that their continued health depended largely on Fawzi’s cooperation. The thing was quickly done.
It was seven p.m. Eastern Standard Time when the telephone rang in Michael Lander’s house. He was working in his garage and picked up the extension. Dahlia was mixing a can of paint.
From the amount of line noise, Lander guessed the caller was very far away. He had a pleasant voice with a British clip, similar to Dahlia’s. He asked for the “lady of the house.”
Dahlia was at the phone in an instant and began a rather tedious conversation in English about relatives and real estate. Then the conversation was punctuated with twenty seconds of rapid-fire slangy Arabic.
Dahlia turned from the phone, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.
“Michael, we have to pick up the plastique at sea. Can you get a boat?”
Lander’s mind worked furiously. “Yes. Make sure of the rendezvous point. Forty miles due east of the Barnegat Light a half hour before sunset. We’ll make visual contact with the last light and close after dark. If the winds are over force five, postpone it for exactly twenty-four hours. Tell him to pack it in units one man can lift.”
Dahlia spoke quickly into the telephone, then hung up.
“Tuesday the twelfth,” she said. She was looking at him curiously. “Michael, you worked that out rather quickly.”
“No, I didn‘t,” Lander said.
Dahlia had learned very early never to lie to Lander. That would be as stupid as programing a computer with half-truths and expecting accurate answers. Besides, he could always tell when she had even the temptation to lie. Now she was glad that she had confided in him from the beginning on the arrangements for bringing in the plastique.
He listened calmly as she told him what had happened on the ship.
“Do you think Muzi put Larmoso up to it?” he asked.
“Fasil doesn’t know. He never had a chance to question Larmoso. We have to assume Muzi put him up to it. We can’t afford to do otherwise, can we, Michael? If Muzi dared to interfere with the shipment, if he planned to keep our advance payment and sell the plastique elsewhere, then he has sold us out to the authorities here. He would have to do that for his own protection. Even if he has not betrayed us, he would have to be dealt with. He knows far too much, and he has seen you. He could identify you.”
“You intended to kill him all along?”
“Yes. He is not one of us, and he is in a dangerous business. If the authorities threatened him on some other matter, who knows what he might tell them?” Dahlia realized she was being too assertive. “I couldn’t stand the thought of him always being a threat to you, Michael,” she added in a softer voice. “You didn’t trust him either, did you, Michael? You had a pickup at sea all worked out in advance, just in case, didn’t you? That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, amazing,” Lander said. “One thing. Nothing happens to Muzi until after we have the plastic. If he has gone to the authorities, to get immunity for himself in some other matter or whatever, the trap will be set at the dock. As long as they think we are coming to the dock, they are less likely to fly a stakeout team out to the ship. If Muzi is hit before the ship comes in, they’ll know we’re not coming to the dock. They’ll be waiting for us when we go out to the ship.” Suddenly Lander was furious and white around the mouth. “So Muzi was the best your camel-shit mastermind could come up with.”
Dahlia did not flinch. She did not point out that it was Lander who went to Muzi first. She knew that this anger would be suppressed and added to Lander’s general fund of rage as, irresistibly, his mind was drawn back to the problem.
He closed his eyes for a moment. “You’ll have to go shopping,” he said. “Give me a pencil.”
5
NOW THAT HAFEZ NAJEER AND Abu Ali were dead, only Dahlia and Muhammad Fasil knew Lander’s identity, but Benjamin Muzi had seen him several times, for Muzi had been Lander’s first link to Black September and the plastic.
From the beginning, the great problem had been obtaining the explosives. In the first white heat of his epiphany, when he knew what he would do, it had not occurred to Lander that he would need help. It was part of the aesthetic of the act that he do it alone. But as the plan flowered in his mind, and as he looked down on the crowds again and again, he decided they deserved more than the few cases of dynamite that he could buy or steal. They should have more attention than the random shrapnel from a shattered gondola and a few pounds of nails and chain.
Sometimes, as he lay awake, the upturned faces of the crowd filled his midnight ceiling, mouths open, shifting like a field of flowers in the wind. Many of the faces became Margaret’s. Then the great fireball lifted off the heat of his face and rose to them, swirling like the Crab nebula, searing them to charcoal, soothing him to sleep.
He must have plastic.
Lander traveled across the country twice looking for plastic. He went to three military arsenals to case the possibilities for theft and saw that it was hopeless. He went to the plant of a great corporation that manufactures baby oil and napalm, industrial adhesives and plastic explosives, and he found that plant security was as tight as that of the military and considerably more imaginative. The instability of nitroglycerine ruled out extracting it from dynamite.
Lander checked newspapers avidly for stories about terrorism, explosions, bombs. The pile of clippings in his bedroom grew. It would have offended him to know that this was patterned behavior, to know in how many bedrooms sick men keep clippings, waiting for their day. Many of Lander’s clippings carried foreign datelines—Rome, Helsinki, Damascus, The Hague, Beirut.
In a Cincinnati motel in mid-July the idea came to him. He had flown over a fair that day and was getting mildly drunk in the motel lounge. It was late. A television set was suspended from the ceiling over the end of the bar. Lander sat almost directly beneath it, staring into his drink. Most of the customers were facing him, turned on their stools, the bloodless light of the TV playing over their uplifted faces.
Lander stirred and came alert. Something in the expression on the faces of the customers watching television. Apprehension. Anger. Not fear exactly, for they were safe enough, but they wore the look of a man watching wolves from his cabin window. Lander picked up his drink and walked down the bar until he could see the screen. Film of a Boeing 747 sitting in the desert with heat shimmer around it. The forward end of the fuselage exploded, then the center section, and the plane was gone in a belch of flame and smoke. The program was a rerun of a news special on Arab terrorism.
Cut to Munich. The horror at the Olympic village. The helicopter at the airport. Muffled gunfire inside it as the Israeli athletes were shot. The embassy at Khartoum where the American and Belgian diplomats were slain. Al Fatah leader Yasir Arafat denying responsibility.
Yasir Arafat again at a news conference in Beirut, bitterly accusing England and the United States of aiding the Israelis in terrorist raids against the guerrillas. “When our revenge comes, it will be big,” Arafat said, his eyes reflecting double moons from the television lights.
A statement of support from Colonel Khadafy, student of Napoleon and Al Fatah’s constant ally and banker: “The United States deserves a strong slap in the face.” A further comment from Khadafy—“Goddamn America.”
“Scumbag,” said a man in a bowling jacket who stood next to Lander. “Bunch of scumbags.”
Lander laughed loudly. Several of the drinkers turned to him.
“That funny to you, Jack?”
“No. I assure you, sir, that is not funny at all. You scumbag.” Lander put money on the bar and walked out with the man shouting after him.
Lander knew no Arabs. He began to read accounts of the Arab-American groups sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinian Arabs, but the one meeting he attended in Brooklyn convinced him that Arab-American citizens’ committees were far too straight for him. They discussed subjects such as “justice” and “individual rights” and encouraged writing to congress-men. If he put out feelers there for militants, he rightly suspected, he would soon be approached by an undercover cop with a Kel transmitter strapped to his leg.
Demonstrations in Manhattan on the Palestinian question were no better. At United Nations Plaza and Union Square he found less than twenty Arab youngsters surrounded by a sea of Jews.
No, he needed a competent and greedy crook with good contacts in the Middle East. And he found one. Lander obtained the name of Benjamin Muzi from an airline pilot he knew who brought back interesting packages from the Middle East in his shaving kit and delivered them to the importer.
Muzi’s office was gloomy enough, set in the back of a shabby warehouse on Sedgwick Street in Brooklyn. Lander was shown to the office by a very large and odorous Greek, whose bald head reflected the dim overhead light as they wound through a maze of crates.
Only the office door was expensive. It was of steel with two deadbolts and a Fox lock. The mail slot was belly-high, with a hinged metal plate in the inside that could be bolted shut.
Black Sunday Page 5
