Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

The rest of the time he saw no master plan and had no need to search for one. The existential act of terror, theatrical as thunder, seemed to him to be a perfectly satisfactory end in itself. Let the children bleed at the roadside. Let the plane explode overhead. Let the rifle crack.

Let the world take note.

He turned once more to the window but left the curtain in place, merely testing the texture of the burlap with his fingertips. Out there in the darkness. Troops, police officers. Should he wait in the shadows for them to pass? No, he decided quickly. The village was small and they could search it house by house with little difficulty. He could pass as an Arab — he was garbed as one now — but if he was the man they were looking for they would know him when they saw him.

He could send these five out, sacrifice them to suicidal combat while he made good his own escape. It would be a small sacrifice. They were unimportant, expendable; he was Anselmo. But if the Jews had encircled the town a diversion would have little effect.

He snapped his head back, thrust his chin forward. A sudden gesture. Time was his enemy, only drawing the net tighter around him. The longer he delayed, the greater his vulnerability. Better a bad decision than no decision at all.

“Wait here for me,” he told his men, his Arabic low and guttural. “I would see how the wind blows.”

He began to open the door, disturbing the rest of a scrawny long-muzzled dog. The animal whined softly and took itself off to the side. Anselmo slipped through the open door and let it close behind him.

The moon overhead was just past fullness. There were no clouds to block it. The dry wind had blown them all away days ago. Anselmo reached through his loose clothing, touched the Walther automatic on his hip, the long-bladed hunting knife in a sheath strapped to his thigh, the smaller knife fastened with tape to the inside of his left forearm. Around his waist an oilcloth money belt rested next to his skin. It held four passports in as many names and a few thousand dollars in the currencies of half a dozen countries. Anselmo could travel readily, crossing borders as another man would cross the street. If only he could first get out of Al-dhareesh.

He moved quickly and sinuously, keeping to the shadows, letting his eyes and ears perform a quick reconnaissance before moving onward. Twice he spotted armed uniformed men and withdrew before he was seen, changing direction, scurrying through a yard and down an alleyway.

They were everywhere.

Just as he caught sight of still another Israeli patrol on a street corner, gunfire broke out a few hundred yards to his left. There was a ragged volley of pistol fire answered by several bursts from what he identified as an Uzi machine pistol. Then silence.

His five men, he thought. Caught in the house or on the street in front of it, and if he’d stayed there he’d have been caught with them. From the sound of it, they hadn’t made much trouble. His lip curled and a spot of red danced in his forebrain. He only hoped the five had been shot dead so that they couldn’t inform the Jews of his own presence.

As if they had to. As if the bastards didn’t already know...

A three-man patrol turned into the street a dozen houses to Anselmo’s left. One of the men kicked at the earth as he walked and the dust billowed around his feet in the moonlight. Anselmo cursed the men and the moonlight and circled around the side of a house and slipped away from the men.

But there was no way out. All the streets were blocked. Once Anselmo drew his Walther and took deliberate aim at a pair of uniformed men. They were within easy range and his finger trembled on the trigger. It would be so nice to kill them, but where was the profit in it? Their companions would be on him in an instant.

If you teach a rat to solve mazes, presenting it over a period of months with mazes of increasing difficulty and finally placing it in a maze which is truly unsolvable, the rat will do a curious thing. He will scurry about in an attempt to solve the maze, becoming increasingly inefficient in his efforts, and ultimately he will sit down in a corner and devour his own feet.

There was no way out of Al-dhareesh and the Israelis were closing in, searching the village house by house, moving ever nearer to Anselmo, cutting down his space. He tucked himself into a corner where a four-foot wall of sun-baked earth butted against the wall of a house. He sat on his haunches and pressed himself into the shadows.

Footsteps—

A dog scampered along close to the wall, found Anselmo, whimpered. The same dog he’d disturbed on leaving the house? Not likely, he thought. The town was full of these craven whining beasts. This one poked its nose into Anselmo’s side and whimpered again. The sound was one the terrorist did not care for. He laid a hand on the back of the dog’s skull, gentling it. The whimpering continued at a slightly lower pitch. With his free hand, Anselmo drew the hunting knife from the sheath on his thigh. While he went on rubbing the back of the dog’s head he found the spot between the ribs. The animal had almost ceased to whimper when he sent the blade home, finding the heart directly, making the kill in silence. He wiped the blade in the dog’s fur and returned it to its sheath.

A calm descended with the death of the dog. Anselmo licked a finger, held it overhead. Had the wind ceased to blow? It seemed to him that it had. He took a deep breath, released it slowly, got to his feet.

He walked not in the shadows but down the precise middle of the narrow street. When the two men stepped into view ahead of him he did not turn aside or bolt for cover. His hand quivered, itching to reach for the Walther, but the calm which had come upon him enabled him to master this urge.

He threw his hands high overhead. In reasonably good Hebrew he sang out, “I am your prisoner!” And he drew his lips back, exposing his bad teeth in a terrible grin.

Both men trained their guns on him. He had faced guns innumerable times in the past and did not find them intimidating. But one of the men held his Uzi as if he was about to fire it. Moonlight glinted on the gun barrel. Anselmo, still grinning, waited for a burst of fire and an explosion in his chest.

It never came.

The two mensat in folding chairs and watched their prisoner through a one-way mirror. His cell was as small and bare as the room from which they watched him. He sat on a narrow iron bedstead and stroked his chin with the tips of his fingers. Now and then his gaze passed over the mirror.

“You’d swear he can see us,” Gershon Meir said.

“He knows we’re here.”

“I suppose he must. The devil’s cool, isn’t he? Do you think he’ll talk?”

Nahum Grodin shook his head.

“He could tell us a great deal.”

“He’ll never tell us a thing. Why should he? The man’s comfortable. He was comfortable dressed as an Arab and now he’s as comfortable dressed as a prisoner.”

Anselmo had been disarmed, of course, and relieved of his loose-fitting Arab clothing. Now he wore the standard clothing issued to prisoners — trousers and a short-sleeved shirt of gray denim, cloth slippers. The trousers were of course beltless and the slippers had no laces.

Grodin said, “He could be made to talk. No, nahr, I don’t mean torture. You watch too many films. Pentothal, if they’d let me use it. Although I suspect his resistance is high. He has such enormous confidence.”

“The way he smiled when he surrendered to us.”

“Yes.”

“For a moment I thought—”

“Yes?”

“That you were going to shoot him, Nahum.”

“I very nearly did.”

“You suspected a trap? I suppose—”

“No.” Grodin interlaced his fingers, cracked his knuckles. Several of the joints throbbed slightly. “No,” he said, “I knew it was no trick. The man is a pragmatist. He knew he was trapped. He surrendered to save his skin.”