A matter of days after this incident, guerrillas in Uruguay stopped a limousine carrying the Israeli ambassador to a reception in the heart of Montevideo. Security police were following the ambassador’s limousine at the time, and the gun battle which ensued claimed the lives of all seven guerrillas, three security policemen, the ambassador, his chauffeur, and four presumably innocent bystanders. While the purpose of the attempted kidnapping was impossible to determine, persistent rumors linked the action to Anselmo.
Within the week, Eritrean revolutionaries succeeded in skyjacking an El Al 747 en route from New York to Tel Aviv. The jet with 144 passengers and crew members was diverted to the capital of an African nation where it overshot the runway, crashed, and was consumed in flames. A handful of passengers survived. The remaining passengers, along with all crew members and the eight or ten Eritreans, were all killed.
Palestinians seized another plane, this one an Air France jetliner. The plane was landed successfully in Libya and demands presented which called for the release of Anselmo and a dozen or so other terrorists then held by the Israelis. The demands were rejected out of hand. After several deadlines had come and gone, the terrorists began executing hostages, ultimately blowing up the plane with the remaining hostages aboard. According to some reports, the terrorists were taken into custody by Libyan authorities; according to other reports they were given token reprimands and released.
After the affair in Libya, both sides felt they had managed to establish something. The Israelis felt they had proved conclusively that they would not be blackmailed. The loosely knit group who aimed to free Anselmo felt just as strongly that they had demonstrated their resolve to free him — no matter what risks they were forced to run, no matter how many lives, their own or others, they had to sacrifice.
“If there were two Henry Clays,” said the bearer of that name after a bitterly disappointing loss of the presidency, “then one of them would make the other president of the United States of America.”
It is unlikely that Anselmo knew the story. He cared nothing for the past, read nothing but current newspapers. But as he exercised in his cell his thoughts often echoed those of Henry Clay.
If there were only two Anselmos, one could surely spring the other from this cursed jail.
But it didn’t require a second Anselmo, as it turned out. All it took was a nuclear bomb.
The bomb itself was stolen from a NATO installation forty miles from Antwerp. A theft of this sort is perhaps the most difficult way of obtaining such a weapon. Nuclear technology is such that anyone with a good grounding in college-level science can put together a rudimentary atomic bomb in his own basement workshop, given access to the essential elements. Security precautions being what they are, it is worlds easier to steal the component parts of a bomb than the assembled bomb itself. But in this case it was necessary not merely to have a bomb but to let the world know that one had a bomb. Hence the theft via a daring and dramatic dead-of-night raid. While media publicity was kept to a minimum, people whose job it was to know such things knew overnight that a bomb had been stolen, and that the thieves had in all likelihood been members of the Peridot Gang.
The Peridot Gang was based in Paris, although its membership was international in nature. The gang was organized to practice terrorism in the Anselmo mode. Its politics were of the left, but very little ideology lay beneath the commitment to extremist activism. Security personnel throughout Europe and the Middle East shuddered at the thought of a nuclear device in the hands of the Peridots. Clearly they had not stolen the bomb for the sheer fun of it. Clearly they intended to make use of it, and clearly they were capable of almost any outrage.
Removing the bomb from the Belgian NATO installation had been reasonably difficult. In comparison, disassembling it and smuggling it into the United States, then transporting it into New York City and reassembling it and finally installing it in the interfaith meditation chamber of the United Nations — all of that was simplicity itself.
Once the meditation chamber had been secured, a Peridot emissary presented a full complement of demands. Several of these had to do with guaranteeing the eventual safety of gang members at the time of their withdrawal from the chamber, the UN building, and New York itself. Another, directed at the General Assembly of the United Nations, called for changes in international policy toward insurgent movements and revolutionary organizations. Various individual member nations were called upon to liberate specific political prisoners, including several dozen persons belonging to or allied with the Peridot organization. Specifically, the government of Israel was instructed to grant liberty to the man called Anselmo.
Any attempt to seize the bomb would be met by its detonation. Any effort to evacuate the United Nations building or New York itself would similarly prompt the Peridots to set the bomb off. If all demands were not met within ten days of their publication, the bomb would go off.
Authorities differed in their estimates of the bomb’s lethal range. But the lowest estimate of probable deaths was in excess of one million.
Throughout the world, those governments blackmailed by the Peridots faced up to reality. One after the other they made arrangements to do what they could not avoid doing. Whatever their avowed policy toward extortion, however great their reluctance to liberate terrorists, they could not avoid recognizing a fairly simple fact: they had no choice.
Anselmo could not resist a smile when the two men came into the room. How nice, he thought, that it was these two who came to him. They had captured him in the first place, they had attempted to interrogate him time and time again, and now they were on hand to make arrangements for his release. It seemed to him that there was something fitting in all of this.
“Well,” he said. “I guess I won’t be with you much longer, eh?”
“Not much longer,” the older man said.
“When do you release me?”
“The day after tomorrow. In the morning. You are to be turned over to Palestinians at the Syrian border. A private jet will fly you to one of the North African countries, either Algeria or Libya. I don’t have the details. I don’t believe they have been finalized as yet.”
“It hardly matters.”
The younger of the Israelis, dark-eyed and olive-skinned, cleared his throat. “You won’t want to leave here in prison clothes,” he said. “We can give you what you wore when you were captured or you may have western dress. It’s your choice.”
“You are very accommodating,” Anselmo told him.
The man’s face colored. “The choice is yours.”
“It’s of no importance to me.”
“Then you’ll walk out as you walked in.”
“It doesn’t matter what I wear.” He touched his gray denim clothing. “Just so it’s not this.” And he favored them with a smile again.
The older man unclasped a small black bag, drew out a hypodermic needle. Anselmo raised his eyebrows. “Pentothal,” the man said.
“You could have used it before.”
“It was against policy.”
“And has your policy changed?”
“Obviously.”
“A great deal has changed,” the younger man added. “A package bill passed the Knesset last evening. There was a special session called for the purpose. The death penalty has been restored.”
“Ah.”