Naji Abdalla climbed out first. A slender young man in his early thirties, he had a swarthy look, with dark skin and a classic semitic face. His angular jaw seemed fixed in an expression of singular determination. His dark eyes took in the greeting party with caution.
Ted stepped forward, smiling, and reached out his hand. "Welcome. I'm Ted. You must be Naji."
The Palestinian accepted the handshake but did not return the smile. Ted did not expect one. Having read detailed dossiers on all the players, some compiled with help from the KGB, he knew Abdalla took nothing, and no one, at face value. It had helped assure his survival in the fratricidal madness of the Mideast.
"I am Naji Abdalla," he said. "I am at your service."
He stepped aside to make way for his seat mate, a massive man with hard gray eyes. The second passenger personified the term "gorilla," as applied to big ugly men with brutal tendencies. He had one striking characteristic that separated him from the animal species of the same name — he was completely devoid of hair, right up to the crown of his shiny head, which appeared to bear a large lump. His one-sided smile seemed almost grotesque.
The man might have been a fugitive from some Stephen King horror story, Ted thought as he took the large, outstretched hand. The broad smile attested to his elation at having escaped from his recent past, when his freedom, and most likely his life, had been at peril in his native land, formerly known as the Democratic Republic of Germany. Among the typical assignments he had carried out, according to his file, was rigging a bomb in Hamburg to eliminate a troublesome East German defector.
"Hans Richter," he said in a gruff voice. "A pleasure to meet you, sir."
"Glad to have you aboard, Hans."
Ted turned to greet the pilot, who climbed down from the cockpit. "Smooth landing, Bob. Good to see you again."
Robert Jeffries gave a brief salute and stuck out his hand. "Hi. I trust you got all that stuff I sent down."
Boyishly handsome despite being in his late forties, his hair a thick mop of wavy brown, Jeffries wore a light blue sport shirt with a stylized "RJ" monogram over the pocket. A contrasting navy blue scarf swung around his neck, a la the Red Baron. He had the easy look of born wealth and an air of cocky confidence he had cultivated as an F-4 Phantom pilot in Vietnam. At the peak of his career, he was ready to make the move up to president of Rush Communications, a key element in the Wizcom communications empire ruled over by his autocratic father-in-law, Franklin Wizner.
Jeffries looked across at the former Marine he had known through association in business and political circles. "Looks like a helluva place to spend a vacation, Blythe,” he said, grinning. “What kind of an island are you running here? I didn't see any sign of a bar. No girlie shows."
Ingram shook his head. "From the looks of all those boxes and crates packed in that truck, you're not going to have much time for bars and girlie shows."
Jeffries shrugged. "Wouldn't you know. Just my luck."
Ted made introductions all around, then flashed a smile that indicated satisfaction with the payoff of all the months of painstaking planning and preparation.
"Gentlemen, the Jabberwock is ready to whiffle and burble."
Chapter 7
Cameron Quinn parked the dust-shrouded rental car beside a clump of pine trees just off the narrow road. That was giving the dusty graveled trail that angled near the small rock-bound cove a little more formality than it deserved. This deserted section of beach on the Turkish sector coast would not have been his choice of a meeting spot. The pebbled shoreline lay conspicuously open. Only occasional modest-sized trees some thirty yards back from the breaking waves offered any sort of cover. Even worse, a hill rose behind it, with several rocky outcroppings that would provide ideal concealment for anyone wanting to observe or, for that matter, ambush the rendezvous.
He had been given no choice, however. Everything had been settled before his arrival. The caller to the Nicosia embassy, directed to its CIA station, had specified that he would talk only to "Pachinko." The chief of station, an old-timer, knew that Pachinko, the Man with Steel Balls, was a nickname Cameron Quinn had picked up years ago as one of the main contacts with the Mossad under legendary counterintelligence chief Jim Angleton.
Quinn glanced back at the road. He had come exactly one mile past the ruins of a small Orthodox church, found the stand of pine beside a small cove. This was the spot all right. He glanced at his watch. He was right on time. The sun was settling behind the mountains that rimmed the seacoast, leaving the beachfront disarmingly bathed in the soft afterglow of twilight. He'd have preferred to scout out the area earlier, but that wasn't possible. He had landed in Nicosia barely three hours ago.
Quinn wore a lightweight navy blue jacket, the right-hand pocket sagging slightly with the weight of a small semiautomatic. The fact that his pants matched the jacket was no indication of sartorial taste but a desire to become as inconspicuous as possible in the semi-darkness. A man of medium height and thinning gray hair, he reflected that he had spent a considerable portion of his life cultivating a look he chose to call "commonplace bored." The fact that he was substantially overweight did not render him notably uncommon. Anyway, he preferred to think of his size in more genteel terms, like portly.
He had a round Irish face and a nose that was either overly sensitive to the sun or reacting to uncounted years of regular patronage at the pubs. His sensitive nostrils twitched at the salty odor of the sea breeze, then turned up in a gesture of disapproval. He didn't like the setup. It had more holes in it than a fish net. Besides the obvious shortcomings of the site, he had no backup. On that, the anonymous contact had been clear. Come alone.
His instincts screamed at him to abort. He had overruled them, though, seeing it as the best possibility to learn the meaning of Jabberwock. And Jabberwock, whatever it was, had become crucial to his future.
He saw a shadowy figure move out into the open near the trees about fifty yards along the curving beach. There was a brief hand wave. Checking the area above the shore and finding no sign of activity, he walked toward the figure. Was he being overly cautious, he wondered? Since his OSS days in World War II, he had made countless agent contacts under worse conditions.
Had it been nearly forty years? His body assured him that it had as he quickened his pace along the uneven surface of the beach. His breathing became a bit more labored. Too many years of too many gourmet delicacies and too many Scotch on-the-rocks had added too many pounds for his five-foot-eight frame. But years of dedication, training, and experience quickly overcame his physical deficiencies, heightening his senses to the sharpness of a boxer entering the ring.
The man walking toward him was tall and thin, black-haired, dark-skinned, with a square-jawed, hawkish face. He looked like the reincarnation of some exotic bird of prey. Quinn half expected to find talons instead of fingers protruding from the black tunic he wore over baggy gray trousers.
After studying the solemn face for a moment, Quinn made a judgment that he was dealing with an Arab. "I don't recognize you," he said in fluent Arabic. It was one of six languages he spoke almost without flaw. "Where did you get my name?"
The dark eyes widened at the unexpected sound of his native tongue. "I come from Sur. Tyre, you may call it, in the south of Lebanon. I deal in various goods between Lebanon and Israel. Also information. One I deal with is called Shadrach, the Fiery One."