Thomas Harris - Black Sunday

He wondered if Lander was delirious. Nonsense. People didn’t lie around delirious with fever anymore. But crazy people sometimes rave, fever or no. If he were on the point of blabbing, Dahlia would kill him.

In Israel, at that moment, a sequence of events was under way that would have far greater bearing on Fasil’s request than any influence of the late Hafez Najeer. At an airstrip near Jaffa, fourteen Israeli airmen were climbing into the cockpits of seven F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers. They taxied onto the runway, the heat distorting the air behind them like rippled glass. By twos they drove down the asphalt and leaped into the sky in a long, climbing turn that took them out over the Mediterranean and westward, toward Tobruk, Libya, at twice the speed of sound.

They were on a retaliatory raid. Still smoking at Rosh Pina was the rubble of an apartment house hit by Russian Katyusha rockets, supplied to the fedayeen by Libya. This time the reply would not be against the fedayeen bases in Lebanon and Syria. This time the supplier would suffer.

Thirty-nine minutes after takeoff, the flight leader spotted the Libyan freighter. She was exactly where the Mossad said she would be, eighteen miles out of Tobruk and steaming eastward, heavily laden with armaments for the guerrillas. But they must be sure. Four Phantoms remained at altitude to provide cover from Arab aircraft. The other three went down. The lead plane, throttled back to two hundred knots, passed the ship at an altitude of sixty feet. There was no mistake. Then the three of them were howling down upon her in a bomb run, and up again, pulling three and a half G’s as they streaked back into the sky. There were no cries of victory in the cockpits as the ship ballooned in fire. On the way home, the Israelis watched the sky hopefully. They would feel better if the MIGs came.

Rage swept Libya’s Revolutionary Command Council after the Israeli attack. Who on the Council knew of the Al Fatah strike in the United States will never be determined. But somewhere in the angry halls at Benghazi, a cog turned.

The Israelis had struck with airplanes given to them by the Americans.

The Israelis themselves had said it: “The suppliers will suffer.”

So be it.

“I TOLD HIM HE COULD GOto bed, but he said his orders are to put the box in your hands,” Colonel Weisman, the military attaché, told Kabakov, as they walked toward the conference room in the Israeli embassy.

The young captain was nodding in his chair as Kabakov opened the door. He snapped to his feet.

“Major Kabakov, I’m Captain Reik. The package from Beirut, sir.”

Kabakov fought down the urge to grab the box and open it. Reik had come a long way. “I remember you, Captain. You had the howitzer battery at Qanaabe.” They shook hands, the younger man obviously pleased.

Kabakov turned to the fiberboard carton on the table. It was about two feet square and a foot deep and was tied with twine. Scrawled in Arabic across the lid was “Personal property of Abu Ali, 18 Rue Verdun, deceased. File 186047. Hold until February 23.” There was a hole gouged through the corner of the box. A bullet hole.

“Intelligence went through it in Tel Aviv,” Reik said. “There was dust in the knots. They think it hadn’t been opened for some time.”

Kabakov removed the lid and set the contents out on the table. An alarm clock with the crystal smashed. Two bottles of pills. A bankbook. A clip for a Llama automatic pistol— Kabakov felt sure the pistol had been stolen—a cuff link box without the cuff links, a pair of bent spectacles, and a few periodicals. Doubtless any items of value had been taken by the police and what was left had been carefully sifted by Al Fatah. Kabakov was bitterly disappointed. He had hoped that for once the obsessive secrecy of Black September would work against the terrorist organization, that the person assigned to “sanitize” Abu Ali’s effects would not know what was harmless and what was not, and thus might miss some useful clue. He looked up at Reik. “What did this cost?”

“Yoffee got a flesh wound across the thigh. He sent you a message, sir. He—” the captain stammered.

“Go on.”

“He said you owe him a bottle of Remy Martin and—and not that goat piss you passed around at Kuneitra, sir.”

“I see.” Kabakov grinned in spite of himself. At least the box of junk had not cost any lives.

“Yoffee went in,” Reik said. “He had some funny credentials from a Saudi law firm. He had decided he would try to do it in one move, instead of bribing the clerk ahead of time—so they wouldn’t have time to fool with the box and the clerk couldn’t sell him a box of garbage. He gave the property clerk in the police station three Lebanese pounds and asked to see the box. The clerk brought it out, but set it behind the counter and said he would have to get clearance from the duty officer. That normally would have only meant another bribe, but Yoffee did not have great confidence in the credentials. He slugged the clerk and grabbed the box. He had a Mini-Cooper outside, and he was all right until two radio cars blocked the Mazraa in front of him at the Rue Unesco. Of course he went around them on the sidewalk, but they got a couple of rounds into the car. He had a five-block lead going down the Ramlet el Baida. Jacoby was flying the Huey, coming in to take him off. Yoffee climbed up through the sun roof of the car while it was still moving and we plucked him off. We came back at about a hundred feet in the dark. The chopper has the new terrain-following autopilot system and you just hang on.”

“You were in the helicopter?”

“Yes sir. Yoffee owes me money.”

Kabakov could imagine the heaving, dipping ride in the dark as the black helicopter snaked over the hills. “I’m surprised you had the range.”

“We had to put down at Gesher Haziv.”

“Did the Lebanese scramble any planes?”

“Yessir, finally. It took a little time for the word to get around. We were back in Israel in twenty-four minutes from the time the police saw the chopper.”

Kabakov would not display his disappointment at the contents of the box, not after three men had risked their lives to get it. Tel Aviv must think him a fool.

“Thank you, Captain Reik, for a remarkable job. Tell Yoffee and Jacoby the same for me. Now go to bed. That’s an order.”

Kabakov and Weisman sat at the table with Abu Ali’s effects between them. Weisman maintained a tactful silence. There were no personal papers of any kind, not even a copy of Political and Armed Struggle, the omnipresent Fatah handbook. They had picked over Ali’s belongings all right. Kabakov looked at the periodicals. Two copies of Al-Tali‘ah, the Egyptian monthly. Here was something underlined in an interview. “… the rumor about the strength of the Israeli Intelligence Services is a myth. Israel is not particularly advanced in its Intelligence as such.” Kabakov snorted. Abu Ali was mocking him from the grave.

Here were a few back issues of the Beirut newspaper Al-Hawadess. Paris-Match. A copy of Sports Illustrated dated January 21, 1974. Kabakov frowned at it. He picked it up. It was the only publication in English in the box. The cover bore a dark stain, coffee probably. He flipped through it once, then again. It was mostly concerned with football. Arabs follow soccer, but the principal article was about—Kabakov’s mind was racing. Fasil. Munich. Sports. The tape had said, “Begin another year with bloodshed.”

Weisman looked up quickly at the sound of Kabakov’s voice. “Colonel Weisman, what do you know about this ‘Super Bow!’?”

FBI Director John Baker took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That’s a hypothesis of considerable size, gentlemen.”