Fasil had never before presumed on Najeer’s Libyan connections. He would not dare to do it now, if Najeer were still alive. Fasil had only picked up the plastic explosive in Benghazi after Najeer’s arrangements were made, but the code name “Sofia,” coined by Najeer for the mission, had opened the necessary doors for Fasil in Benghazi. He had included it in his cable, and he hoped it would work again.
At nine thirty-five a.m., the telephone rang. Fasil picked it up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Yes, I am trying to reach Mrs. Yusuf.” Despite the scratchy connection, Fasil recognized the voice of the Libyan officer in charge of liaison with Al Fatah.
“You are calling for Sofia Yusuf, then.”
“Go ahead.”
Fasil spoke quickly. He knew the Libyan would not stay on the telephone long. “I need a pilot capable of flying a Sikorsky S-58 cargo helicopter. The priority is absolute. I must have him in New Orleans in six days. He must be expendable.” Fasil knew he was asking something of extreme difficulty. He also knew that there were great resources available to Al Fatah in Benghazi and Tripoli. He went on quickly, before the officer could object. “It is similar to the Russian machines used on the Aswan High Dam. Take the request to the very highest level. The very highest level. I carry the authority of Eleven.” “Eleven” was Hafez Najeer.
The voice on the other end was soft, as though the man were trying to whisper over the telephone. “There may not be such a man. This is very hard. Six days is nothing.”
“If I cannot have him in that time, it will be useless. Much will be lost. I must have him. Call me in twenty-four hours at the alternate number. The priority is absolute.”
“I understand,” said the voice six thousand miles away. The line went dead.
Fasil walked away from the telephone and out of the terminal at a lively pace. It was terribly dangerous to communicate directly with the Middle East, but the shortage of time demanded taking the chance. The request for a pilot was a very long shot. There were none in the fedayeen ranks. Flying a cargo helicopter with a heavy object suspended beneath it is a fine art. Pilots capable of doing it are not common. But the Libyans had come through for Black September before. Had not Colonel Khadafy helped with the strike at Khartoum? The very weapons used to slay the American diplomats were smuggled into the country in the Libyan diplomatic pouch. Thirty million dollars a year flows to Al Fatah from the Libyan treasury. How much could a pilot be worth? Fasil had every reason to hope. If only they could find one, and soon.
The six-day time limit Fasil had stressed was not strictly true, since two weeks remained before the Super Bowl. But modifications on the bomb would be necessary to fit it to a different aircraft, and he needed lead time and the pilot’s skilled help.
Fasil had weighed the odds against finding a pilot, and the risk involved in asking for one, against the splendid result if one could be located. He found the risk worth taking.
What if his cable, innocent as it appeared to be, was examined by the U.S. authorities? What if the number code for the telephones was known to the Jew Kabakov? That was hardly likely, Fasil knew, but still he was uneasy. Certainly the authorities were looking for the plastic, but they could not know the nature of the mission. There was nothing to point to New Orleans.
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.
20
“I TOLD HIM HE COULD GO to 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.”