Kabakov, conferring with Corley by telephone, told the FBI agent what Rachel had said.
“That narrows it down to about forty million people,” Corley said. “No, listen, anything helps, for Christ’s sake.”
Corley’s report on the search for the boat was not encouraging. Customs agents and New York City police had checked every boatyard on City Island. Nassau and Suffolk police had checked every marina on Long Island. The New Jersey state police had questioned boatyard owners along their coast. FBI agents had gone to the best boatyards—to legendary craftsmen like Rybovich, Trumpy, and Huckins—and to the lesser-known yards where craftsmen still built fine wooden boats. None of the yards could identify the fugitive craft.
“Boats, boats, boats,” Rachel said to herself.
Kabakov stared out the window at the snow while Rachel fixed dinner. He was trying to remember something, going at it indirectly, the way he would use peripheral vision to see in the dark. The technique employed in blowing up Muzi teased Kabakov ceaselessly. Where had it happened before? One of the thousands of reports that had crossed his desk in the past five or six years had mentioned a bomb in a refrigerator. He remembered that the report had an old-style jacket, the manila kind, bound along the spine. That meant he had seen it before 1972, when the Mossad changed the bindings to facilitate microfilming. One other flash came to him. A memo on booby-trap techniques issued to commando units on his orders years ago. The memo had explained mercury switches, then in fashion among the fedayeen, with an addendum on electrical appliances.
He was composing a cable to Mossad headquarters with the scraps of information he recalled when quite suddenly he remembered. Syria 1971. A Mossad agent was lost in an explosion at a house in Damascus. The charge had not been heavy, but the refrigerator was shattered. A coincidence? Kabakov called the Israeli consulate and dictated the cable. The cable clerk pointed out that it was four a.m. in Tel Aviv.
“It’s oh-two hundred Zulu all over the world, my friend,” Kabakov said. “We never close. Get that cable out.”
A cold December drizzle stung Moshevsky’s face and neck as he waited on the corner to flag a cab. He let three Dodges pass and finally spotted what he was looking for, a big Checker barging through the morning rush. He wanted the extra room so Kabakov would not have to bend his sore leg. Moshevsky told the driver to stop in front of Rachel’s apartment building in the middle of the block. Kabakov hobbled out and climbed in beside him. He gave the address of the Israeli consulate.
Kabakov had rested as Rachel prescribed. Now he would roll. He could have called Ambassador Tell from the apartment but his business required the safest of telephones—one equipped with a scrambler. He had decided to ask Tel Aviv to suggest that the U.S. State Department approach the Russians for help. Kabakov’s request must be cleared through Tell. Going to the Russians was not a pleasant thought from the standpoint of his professional pride. At the moment, Kabakov could not afford professional pride. He knew that and accepted it, but he did not like it.
Since the spring of 1971, the Soviet Komitet Gosudarstven noy Bezopastveny, the infamous KGB, has had a special section providing technical assistance to Black September through Al Fatah field intelligence. This was the source Kabakov wanted to tap.
He knew the Russians would never help Israel, but in light of the new East-West detente, he thought they might cooperate with the United States. The request to Moscow must come from the Americans, but Kabakov could not suggest the move without the approval of Tel Aviv. Precisely because he hated so much to ask, he would sign the message to Tel Aviv himself, instead of putting the primary responsibility on Tell.
Kabakov decided to swear that the plastic was Russian, whether it was or not. Maybe the Americans would swear to it, too. That ought to put the onus on the Russians.
Why such a large quantity of explosives? Did the amount signify some special opportunity the Arabs had in this country? On that point the KGB might be of help.
The Black September cell in America would be sealed off now, even from the guerrilla leadership in Beirut. It would be hell to find. The heat from the woman’s picture would drive the terrorists far down in their burrow. They had to be close by—they had reacted too fast after the explosion. Damn Corley for not staking out the hospital. Damn that pipe-smoking son of a bitch.
What had been planned in the Black September headquarters in Beirut, and who had taken part? Najeer. Najeer was dead. The woman. She was hiding. Abu Ali? Ali was dead. There was no way to be positive that Ali was in on the plot, but it was very likely, for he was one of the few men in the world Najeer trusted. Ali was a psychologist. But then Ali was many things. Why might they need a psychologist? Ali would never be able to tell anyone.
Who was the American? Who was the Lebanese who brought in. the explosives? Who blew up Muzi? Was it the woman he saw in Beirut—the woman who came to the hospital to kill him?
The taxi driver pushed the big car to the limit the wet pavement would allow, slamming over the potholes and nosediv ing to a halt at the first red light. Moshevsky, with a resigned expression, climbed out and got into the front seat beside the driver. “Take it slowly. Neither bang nor jar,” he said.
“Why?” the driver said. “Time is money, buddy.”
Moshevsky leaned toward him confidentially. “Why is to keep me from breaking your fucking neck, that’s why.”
Kabakov looked absently at the crowds hurrying along the sidewalk. Midafternoon and already the light was failing. What a place. A place with more Jews than Tel Aviv. He wondered how the Jewish immigrants had felt, crowded on the ships, herded through Ellis Island, some of them even losing their names as semiliterate immigration officials scrawled “Smith” and “Jones” on the entry papers. Spilled from Ellis Island into a bleak afternoon on this cold rock where nothing was free except what they could give each other. Broken families, men alone.
What happened here then to a man alone who died before he could make a place and send for his family? A man alone? Who sat shivah—the neighbors?
The plastic Madonna on the dashboard of the taxi caught Kabakov’s attention, and his thoughts shifted guiltily back to the problem that plagued him. Closing his eyes against the cold afternoon, he started over from the beginning, with the mission to Beirut that had ultimately brought him here.
Kabakov had been briefed minutely before the raid. The Israelis knew Najeer and Abu Ali would be in the apartment house and that other Black September officers might be present. Kabakov had studied the dossiers on guerrilla leaders known to be in Lebanon until he knew what was in them by heart. He could see the folders now, stacked alphabetically on his desk.
First, Abu Ali. Abu Ali, killed in the Beirut raid, had no relatives, no family except his wife, and she, too, was dead. He—a man alone! Before the thought was completed, Kabakov was rapping on the plastic shield that separated him from the driver. Moshevsky slid open the partition.
“Tell him to step on it.”
“So now you want me to step on it,” the driver said over his shoulder.
Moshevsky showed the man his teeth.
“So I’m stepping,” the driver said.
The Israeli consulate and mission to the United Nations share a white brick building at 800 Second Avenue in Manhattan. The security system is well thought-out and thorough. Kabakov fumed in the confines of the holding room, then went quickly to the communications center.
His coded cable to Tel Aviv regarding Abu Ali was acknowledged in less than a minute. It set delicate machinery in motion. Within fifteen minutes, a stocky young man left Mossad headquarters for Lod Airport. He would fly to Nicosia, Cyprus, switch passports and catch the next flight into Beirut. His first business in the Lebanese capital would be to enjoy a cup of coffee in a small café with an excellent view of the central Beirut police station, where, hopefully, waiting for the statutory period in the police property room was a numbered carton containing the effects of Abu Ali. Now there was someone to claim them.