Thomas Harris: Black Sunday

“Let’s see if I can walk.”

“We should wait—”

“I want to know now if I can walk. Help me up.” He sat on the side of the hospital bed. “Okay, here we go.” He put his arm around her shoulders. She held him by the waist. He stood and took a shaky step. “Dizzy,” he said. “Keep going.”

She felt him trembling. “Let’s go back to the bed, Michael.”

“Nope. I can make the chair.” He sank back in the chair and fought down a wave of nausea and dizziness. He looked at her and smiled weakly. “That’s eight steps. From the bus to the cockpit won’t be more than fifty-five. This is January fifth, no, the sixth, it’s after midnight. We’ve got five and a half days. We’ll make it.”

“I never doubted it, Michael.”

“Yes, you did. You doubt it now. You’d be a fool not to doubt it. Help me back to bed.”

He slept until midmorning, and he was able to eat breakfast. It was time to tell him.

“Michael, I’m afraid something is wrong with Fasil.”

“When did you talk to him last?”

“Tuesday, the second. He called to say the truck was safe in the garage. He was scheduled to call again last night. He didn’t.” She had not mentioned the Libyan pilot to Lander. She never would.

“You think he’s caught, don’t you?”

“He wouldn’t miss a call. If he hasn’t called by tomorrow night, then he’s taken.”

“If he was caught away from the garage, what would he be carrying to give it away?”

“Nothing but his set of keys. I burned the rent receipt as soon as I got it. He never even had that. He had nothing that would identify us. If he had anything and he was caught, the police would be here now.”

“What about the hospital telephone number?”

“Only in his head. He picked pay telephones at random to call here.”

“We’ll go on then. Either the plastic is still there, or it’s not. The loading will be harder with just the two of us, but we can do it if we’re quick. Have you got the reservations?”

“Yes, at the Fairmont. I didn’t ask if the blimp crew was there. I was afraid—”

“That’s all right. The crew has always stayed there when we flew New Orleans. They’ll do it again this time. Let’s walk a little.”

“I’m supposed to call the Aldrich office again this afternoon and give them your condition.” She had introduced herself on the telephone as Lander’s sister when she reported him ill.

“Say I’ve still got the flu and I’m out for at least a week and a half. They’ll keep Farley on the schedule as chief pilot and Simmons as second officer. You remember what Farley looks like? You only saw him once, when we flew the night-sign run over Shea.”

“I remember.”

“He’s in some of the pictures at the house, if you want to look at him again.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll go to the house tomorrow. You must be sick of this dress.” She had bought underclothing at a shop across the street from the hospital, had bathed in Lander’s bathroom. Otherwise, she had not left his side. She laid her head on Lander’s chest. He smiled and rubbed the back of her neck.

I can’t hear him bubbling, she thought. His chest is clear.

THE PRESENCE OF FASIL ANDAwad in New Orleans left no doubt in the minds of the FBI and the Secret Service that the Arabs had planned to blow up the Super Bowl. The authorities believed that with the capture of Fasil and Awad the prime threat to the Super Bowl was blunted, but they knew they still faced a dangerous situation.

Two persons known to be at least peripherally involved in the plot—the woman and the American—were still at large. Neither had been identified, although the officers had a likeness of the woman. Worse, more than a half ton of high explosive was cached somewhere, probably in the New Orleans area.

In the first few hours after the arrests, Corley half-expected a shattering blast somewhere in the city, or a threatening telephone call demanding Fasil’s release as the price of the guerrillas not detonating the bomb in a crowded area. Neither occurred.

New Orleans’ thirteen-hundred-man police force passed the duplicate padlock keys from shift to shift. The instructions to try them on warehouses and garages were repeated at every roll call. But New Orleans has a small police force for its size, and it is a city of many doors. Throughout the week the search went on, amid the Super Bowl ballyhoo and the crowds that swelled as the big weekend approached.

The crowd coming in for the Super Bowl was different from the Sugar Bowl group that preceded them. This crowd was more diversified in origin, the clothes were smarter. The restaurants found their customers less relaxed and more demanding. Money always flows freely in New Orleans, but now there was more of it to flow. The lines outside Galatoire’s and Antoine’s and the Court of Two Sisters stretched for half a block, and music spilled into the streets of the French Quarter all night long.

Standing-room tickets had been sold, bringing the total expected attendance at the Super Bowl to eighty-four thousand. With the fans came the gamblers, the thieves, and the whores. The police were busy.

Kabakov went to the airport on Thursday and watched the arrival of the Washington Redskins and the Miami Dolphins. Itchy in the crowd, remembering how the Israeli athletes had died at the Munich airport, he scanned the faces of the fans and paid little attention to the players as they came off their planes, waving to the cheering crowd.

Once Kabakov went to see Muhammad Fasil.

He stood at the foot of Fasil’s bed in the infirmary and stared at the Arab for five minutes. Corley and two very large FBI agents were with him.

Finally Kabakov spoke. “Fasil, if you leave American custody you are a dead man. The Americans can extradite you to Israel to stand trial for Munich, and you will hang within the week. I would be happy to see it.

“But if you tell where the plastic is hidden, they’ll convict you here on a smuggling charge and you will serve some time. Five years, maybe a little more. I’m sure you believe Israel will be gone by then and will be no threat to you. It won’t be gone, but I’m sure you believe it will. Consider that.”

Fasil’s eyes were narrowed into slits. His head jerked and a stream of spittle flew at Kabakov, speckling the front of his shirt. The effort was painful for Fasil, strapped in his shoulder braces, and he grimaced and lay back on his pillow. Corley moved forward, but Kabakov had not stirred. The Israeli stared at Fasil a moment longer, then turned and left the room.

The expected decision came from the White House at midnight Friday. Barring further developments, the Super Bowl would be played on schedule.

On Saturday morning, January 11, Earl Biggs and Jack Renfro of the Secret Service held a final briefing at New Orleans FBI headquarters. Attending were thirty Secret Service agents, who would supplement the squad traveling with the president, forty agents of the FBI, and Kabakov.

Renfro stood before a huge diagram of Tulane Stadium. “The stadium will be swept for explosives again beginning at sixteen hundred today,” he said. “The search will be completed by midnight, at which time the stadium will be sealed. Carson, your search team is ready.” It was not a question.

“Ready.”

“You will also have six men with the sniffer at the president’s box for a last-minute sweep at thirteen forty tomorrow.”

“Right. They’ve been briefed.”

Renfro turned to the diagram on the wall behind him. “Once the possibility of concealed explosives in the stadium is eliminated, an attack could take two forms. The guerrillas could try to bring in the explosive in a vehicle, or they could settle for coming in with as much as they can conceal on their bodies.