“I think Benyoussef Ben Krim is around here somewhere. We’d better have a net. Photo and description to the airports particularly—he’s probably on his way out if he hasn’t left already.”
Chad Hill said, “I thought Benyoussef was the guy who supplied the boat.”
“He was.”
“But that was in Spain. What makes you think he’s up here?”
“Somebody left the car and the note for Mezetti.”
“Why Benyoussef?”
“He used to be Sturka’s errand boy. It looks as if he still is.”
Chad Hill was still puzzled and Lime explained it. “Mezetti’s fingerprint in the garage was deliberate—Sturka’s idea. Sturka watched him switch off the light but didn’t tell him to wipe it.”
“So?”
“We were supposed to identify Mezetti,” Lime said. He struggled to his feet; sitting in the chair was too dangerous. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep just yet.
Eighty-seven hours to inauguration. He arched his back, bracing his fists against his kidneys; heard the ligatures crackle. “Have we got that Concorde?”
“It’s in Helsinki,” Hill said.
“Good. We’d better get to it.”
“You need sleep. You look like a corpse.”
“I’ll sleep on the plane.”
“Where to?”
“Algiers,” Lime said. “That’s the place to start.” It was the place he should have started in the first place. Satterthwaite had been right. Sturka was a pro; a pro was somebody who didn’t make stupid mistakes. The fingerprint in the garage—you’d have to practice to get that stupid. Except that it wasn’t a mistake.
So the red herring had drawn them off all the way to Finland and in the meantime Sturka was down in the Western Desert all the time. Benyoussef was the evidence that supported that. If Sturka was using the members of his old Algerian cell then that was where he had to be.
The old stamping grounds. The place where Sturka had outwitted Lime every time.
MONDAY,
JANUARY 17
3:20 A.M. EST The preparations had been completed and tonight Riva’s part of the plan went operational.
Riva had watched the weather forecasts and timed the action to coincide with the arrival of the low-pressure front over Washington.
The temperature was 34 degrees and that made it a wet snowfall, the flakes congealing in lumps and splashing where they struck. The thick flurries made bad visibility and that was what Riva wanted.
They were working in two cars, Kavanagh and Harrison in a Chevrolet and Riva in the Dodge. They had ten of the molded satchel charges in the Chevrolet. Riva had fitted together a hosepipe bomb and had put it on the seat beside him under a folded newspaper.
The attack on Milton Luke was the key to the rest; it had to work; yet of them all it was by far the most difficult since none of the others would be half so well guarded.
Luke lived in a top-floor apartment in a high-rise on Wisconsin Avenue. It was virtually impossible to penetrate into the apartment itself; Secret Service had people everywhere in the building.
So they’d ruled that out. It was always senseless attacking the enemy at his most strongly guarded points. Luke was the key target but there were satellite targets and the thing to do was to hit some of them first because they would help act as diversions.
So they hit Senator Hollander’s house first. The idea was to shake up the old fascist but not hurt him. Riva drove by first. The big Georgian house was set well back from the street; its porch lights flickered through the snowfall and he could make out the heavy outline of the Secret Service van in the driveway. It looked like the same van they used to post at Dexter Ethridge’s house before Ethridge died.
He drove straight past at a steady twenty-five and picked up the walkie-talkie when he had gone by. Spoke one word: “Copasetik.”
He drove the Dodge on, heading for Massachusetts Avenue, listening for the walkie-talkie to reply. It would take a few minutes. The Chevrolet would drift past Hollander’s house and Kavanagh would toss the satchel into the shadows. They had picked the spot for it earlier. It wouldn’t do too much damage—perhaps uproot some shrubs and clang bits and pieces of shrapnel against the house and the Secret Service van—but it would wake everybody up and it would bring a great many cops up this way.
The satchel had a half-hour time fuse and that would give them plenty of leeway.
“Copasetik.”
He glanced at the walkie-talkie on the seat. It resumed its silence. He turned three blocks up the avenue from the massive apartment building that housed a Senator and two Congressmen and the Secretary of the Treasury. Parked and turned the interior dome-light switch to the off position before he opened the car door and stepped out into the falling snow.
It was a corner building and had two entrances, one on either face. There was also a service ramp that gave access to the basement in the rear. All three entrances were guarded: the Executive Protection Service had a man on each door and the two main entrances had armed doormen as well.
Riva went softly into the service drive, a muffled figure moving without sound. He lifted the gun—a .32 caliber revolver with a perforated silencer screwed to the barrel. He cocked the hammer and then held the weapon down at his side where it was covered by the flapping skirt of his coat.
The cop saw him approaching. Straightened up and stepped out under the light with his hand on his gun. “Hi there.” Friendly but cautious.
“Hi,” Riva said and shot twice.
The shots made little puffs of sound and the cop sagged back against the brick wall and slid down to the pavement. He left a glossy smear on the wall.
Riva dragged the cop into the shadows and put the cop’s cap on his own head. From a distance it would do. He took up a post by the door with the cop’s key ring in his pocket.
Americans had such childish ideas about security.
A car turned in at the far end of the service drive. It flicked its lights. Riva lifted his left hand high over his head. The Chevrolet backed out of the driveway onto the street, pulled forward along the curb, backed into the driveway and came all the way to the service ramp in reverse.
The lights went out and the car doors opened.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
It might have been one cop talking to another—his relief.
Riva used the cop’s key to open the service door. “Easy now.”
“Sure—sure.” Kavanagh and Harrison went inside lugging the five satchel charges.
Riva checked the door to make sure it could be opened from inside without a key. All they had to do was push the crossbar down. He tossed the key ring on top of the dead cop and walked up the service drive past the Chevrolet. Its engine was pinging with the sound of cooling contraction. He wiped a droplet of snow off his nose and walked unhurriedly out to the street, around the corner, across the street and down the block to the Dodge.
He sat in the car for thirty-five minutes—the length of time they had judged it would take. There was no reason to expect any trouble. There were no hallway guards in the apartment house and the various dignitaries didn’t have sentries posted at their doors. Americans couldn’t stand living that way. So all you had to do was get into the building; from there on you would be undisturbed.
The bombs probably wouldn’t waste them all. Senator Grant’s bedrooom was in an outside corner of the building on the top floor and the nearest hallway was one room removed from the bed. The bomb would make a shambles of Grant’s kitchen and it would make him good and angry. That was just as good. With any luck the Treasury Secretary would get buried under a good deal of heavy debris. The satchel charges in the trash chutes next to the bedrooms of Congressmen Wood and Jethro would almost certainly kill both Representatives and their wives. As for columnist J. R. Ilfeld he would lose the priceless art works in his sybaritic parlor and that would serve to inflame his rage beyond reason.