The evidence of the magazine, supplemented by Fasil’s track record, began to loom large and was extrapolated by the men in the meeting room. Once the possibility of danger was admitted, one official would not call for less stringent measures than the next: Why just the Super Bowl as a possible target? The magazine showed a packed stadium—why not any packed stadium? My God, the Sugar Bowl is New Year’s Eve-day after tomorrow—and there are bowl games all over the country on New Year’s Day. Search them all.
With apprehension came hostility. Suddenly Kabakov was acutely aware that he was a foreigner, and a Jew at that. Kabakov was instantly aware that a number of the men in the room were thinking about the fact that he was a Jew. He had expected that. He was not surprised when, in the minds of these men with their crisp haircuts and law school rings, he was identified with the problem rather than with the solution. The threat was from a bunch of foreigners, of which he was one. The attitude was unspoken, but it was there.
“Thank you, old buddies,” Kabakov said, as he sat down. You don’t know from foreigners, old buddies, he thought. But you may find out on January 12.
Kabakov did not think it reasonable that, once Black September had the capability to strike at a stadium, they would hit one that did not contain the president in preference to one that did. He stuck with the Super Bowl.
On the afternoon of December 30 he arrived in New Orleans. The search was already under way at Tulane Stadium in preparation for the Sugar Bowl. The task force at Tulane Stadium was composed of fifty men-members of the FBI and police bomb sections, police detectives, two dog handlers from the Federal Aviation Administration with dogs trained to smell explosives, and two U.S. Army technicians with an electronic “sniffer” calibrated on the Madonna recovered from the Leticia.
New Orleans was unique in the fact that Secret Service personnel aided in the search and in the necessity for doing the job twice—today for the Sugar Bowl and on January 11, the eve of the Super Bowl. The men went about their work quietly, largely ignored by the crew of maintenance men putting the final touches on the stadium.
The search did not interest Kabakov much. He did not expect the searchers to find anything. What he did was stare into the face of every employee of Tulane Stadium. He remembered how Fasil had sent his guerrillas to find employment in the Olympic Village six weeks ahead of time. He knew the New Orleans police were running background checks on stadium employees, but still he stared into their faces as though hoping for an instinctive, visceral reaction if he saw a terrorist. Looking at the workers, he felt nothing. The background check exposed one bigamist, who was held for extradition to Coahoma County, Mississippi.
On New Year’s Eve, the Tigers of Louisiana State University lost to Nebraska 13-7 in the Sugar Bowl Classic. Kabakov attended.
He had never seen a football game before and he did not see much of this one. He and Moshevsky spent most of the time prowling under the stands and around the gates, ignored by the numerous FBI agents and police in the stadium. Kabakov was particularly interested in how the gates were manned and what access was allowed through them after the stadium was full.
He found most public spectacles annoying, and this one, with the pom-poms and the pennants and the massed bands, was particularly offensive. He had always considered marching bands ridiculous. The one pleasant moment of the afternoon was the flyover at halftime by the Navy’s Blue Angels, a neat diamond of jets catching the sun during a beautiful slow roll high above the droning blimp that floated around the stadium. Kabakov knew there were other jets too—Air Force interceptors poised on runways nearby in the unlikely event that an unknown aircraft approached the New Orleans area while the game was in progress.
The shadows were long across the field as the last of the crowd filtered out. Kabakov felt numbed by the hours of noise. He had difficulty understanding the English of the people he heard in conversation, and he was generally irritated. Corley found him standing at the edge of the track outside the stadium.
“Well, no bang,” Corley said.
Kabakov looked at him quickly, watching for a smirk. Corley just looked tired. Kabakov imagined that the expression “wild-goose chase” was in wide use at the stadiums in other cities, where tired men were searching for explosives in preparation for the games on New Year’s Day. He expected plenty was being said here, out of his hearing. He had never claimed that the target was a college bowl game, but who remembered that? It didn’t matter anyway. He and Corley walked back through the stadium together, heading for the parking lot. Rachel would be waiting at the Royal Orleans.
“Major Kabakov.”
He looked around for an instant before he realized the voice came from the radio in his pocket. “Kabakov, go ahead.”
“Call for you in the command post.”
“Right.”
The FBI command post was set up in the Tulane public relations office under the stands. An agent in shirtsleeves handed Kabakov the telephone.
Weisman was calling from the Israeli embassy. Corley tried to deduce the nature of the conversation from the brief replies Kabakov made.
“Let’s walk outside,” Kabakov said, as he handed back the telephone. He did not like the way the agents in the office pointedly avoided looking at him after this day of extra effort.
Standing at the sideline, Kabakov looked up at the flags blowing in the wind at the top of the stadium. “They’re bringing in a helicopter pilot. We don’t know if it’s for this job, but we know he’s coming. From Libya. And they’re in a hell of a hurry.”
There was a brief silence as Corley digested this information.
“How much of a make have you got on him?”
“The passports, a picture, everything. The embassy is turning our file over to your office in Washington. They’ll have the stuff here in a half hour. You’ll probably get a call in a minute.”
“Where is he?”
“Still on the other side—we don’t know where. But his papers will be picked up in Nicosia tomorrow.”
“You won’t interfere—”
“Of course not. We are leaving the operation strictly alone on that side. In Nicosia we’re watching the place where they get the papers and the airport. That’s all.”
“An air strike! Here or somewhere. That’s what they had in mind all the time.”
“Maybe,” Kabakov said. “Fasil may be running a diversion. It depends on how much he knows we know. If he is watching this stadium or any stadium, he knows we know plenty.”
In the New Orleans office of the FBI, Corley and Kabakov studied the report on the pilot from Libya. Corley tapped the yellow Telex sheet. “He’ll be coming in on the Portuguese passport and leaving on the Italian one with the U.S. entry stamp already on it. If he flashes that Portuguese passport at any entry point, anywhere, we’ll know it within ten minutes. If he is part of this project, we’ve got them, David. He’ll lead us to the bomb and to Fasil and the woman.”
“Perhaps.”
“But where were they planning to get a chopper for him? If the target is the Super Bowl, one of the people here has it set up”