“That’s the law, Mr. Feldman. We’ve been after them since last night and managed to locate four of them thus far.”
“That isn’t a law! It’s a fucking covenant for a suicide pact.”
Michael Bannion turned to his angry Chief of Detectives, anxious to calm him and at the same time intrigued by what had just been said. “You know, Al, you’d have to be interested by the fact that the Arab community in New York is within walking distance of the Brooklyn docks. Do we have anything on PLO activity over there?”
“Not a helluva lot,” Feldman replied. “There are a couple of bodegas, little family grocery stores, we suspect are fronting a gun traffic that may have PLO ties. When Arafat came to the UN, his bodyguards gave our people the slip a few times and wound up over there. Now, you might think they went over for a cup of coffee. Or you might choose to think they went to set up some sleepers.” Feldman shrugged. “Take your choice.”
“Do your people have any penetration into the PLO?”
Bannion turned to the speaker, Clifford Salisbury, an assistant director of the CIA, specializing in Palestinian affairs. “The only penetration activity we’re allowed these days is against organized crime. Besides,”
Bannion added acidly, “I can’t afford two patrolmen in my police cars. I’m certainly not going to waste money trying to penetrate the PLO.”
What the Police Commissioner did not bother to add was that there were only four Arabic-speaking officers among the 24,000 men and women on his force, and none of them was assigned to cover Palestinian activities. The fact was, Brooklyn’s Arabic community had always been notably law-abiding. There had been, since the early sixties, a sharp rise in immigration, many of the newcomers Palestinian; still, there had been only one recorded incident of attempted PLO terrorism in the New York area.
Dewing, the deputy director of the FBI, rapped his knuckles on the conference table. “Gentlemen, we’ve got to get this search organized and under way as fast as we can. Can we agree, in view of the words `New York Island’ in Qaddafi’s threat message, to concentrate NEST’s efforts on Manhattan?”
There was a mumble of agreement.
“Booth will run his operation independently for secrecy’s sake. We’ll support him with drivers to protect his men.”
The scientists had chosen to work with the tight-lipped agents of the Bureau rather than local police officers since they had begun operations.
“Where do I start?” Booth wanted to know. “The Battery or the Bronx?”
“I’d suggest the Battery,” Bannion said. “You’re closer to the waterfront down there. They would have had less distance to carry that thing. Besides, everybody hates Wall Street.”
“Right,” the deputy director rejoined. “Second: manpower. We’re running an ‘All Hands’ on this, bringing in five thousand agents. I’ve ordered Treasury, Customs, Narcotics and the Task Force on West Fifty-seventh to make their personnel available. Commissioner, can we have the services of your Detective Division?”
“You’ve got them.”
“If Washington wants us to be discreet with this, what are we going to use for communications?” Feldman asked. “Too much traffic on our frequencies will make the guys in the press room at headquarters sit up. The family fights, the horseshit jobs’ll pass right over their heads. But something like this they’ll pick up right away. The volume would be a tipoff.”
“We’ll use our gold band,” Dewing said. The FBI employed ten frequencies, five locally in their blue band, five nationally in what was referred to as their gold band. “And whenever possible the telephone.”
“Al,” Hudson turned to the Chief of Detectives, “what’s the best way to set this up?”
“I’d recommend a one on one,” the Chief replied. “One fed with one of my men. That way you can pair up your feds who don’t know the city with my guys who do.
“We’ll break them down into task forces,” he continued. “Assign one the docks, a second the airports. We’ll have a third task force to systematically comb all the usual places, hotels, car-rental agencies.”
Feldman bit down on his cold cigar. “Arabs coming into this town, they go to Queens and it’ll be ‘Oh-oh, there goes the neighborhood,’ right?
But like the PC says, over there in Arab town Brooklyn they’d blend in. We ought to start our third task force there. Search the place inside out. See if we can find anything out of synch.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Hudson said.
Feldman was leaning back, thinking. “We’ve got to narrow this thing down if we’re ever going to get anywhere. Get a tighter focus on the kind of people we’re looking for. What the hell kind of people are they, anyway?”
Hudson turned a commanding eye to the Bureau’s Palestinian expert.
“Well, as a general rule,” Farrell noted, “they tend to live pretty well on assignments. They have plenty of money. They go middle class, which most of them are anyway. I mean, they usually don’t go hiding out in slums or rabbit warrens. They learned a long time ago the best way to blend into the stream is to posit yourself just above the middle-class level. The other thing, they tend to stay pretty close to their own kind. Don’t seem to trust the other ethnics very much.”
The Chief of Detectives digested his words. “Something else too, I’d say.
If you wanted to pull off a caper like this, you’d put it in the hands of someone who knew his way around, been here before. Otherwise, your people’d leave a string of clues behind them. Blow the operation right away.”
“Mr. Feldman has a very good point.” It was Salisbury, the CIA representative. “We can also assume, I think, that the kind of people who would do this would be sophisticated, cold-blooded and smart enough to realize that their chances of success lay in holding it very, very tight.
I’m convinced we’re looking for a small, coherent group of intelligent, highly motivated people.
“And,” he continued, “I’m also convinced the kind of person Qaddafi would assign an operation like this to would have already left his — or her-traces somewhere in one of the world’s intelligence services. We’re in touch with every intelligence agency in the world that has files on Palestinian terrorists. They’re sending us descriptions and photographs of everyone in their files. I suggest that we separate out those who have spent time in this country and are intelligent, sophisticated and educated, and concentrate on them.”
“How many do you figure that would be?” Feldman demanded.
Salisbury made a few silent calculations. “There are about four hundred known and identified Palestinian terrorists at large. My guess is we’ll find fifty to seventy-five of them who meet our specs.”
The detective shook his head in dismay. “That’s too many. Too fucking many.
Job like this, you gotta get it down to two or three to have a chance. If we’re going to save this city, my friend, we’ve got to have one or two faces, not a portrait gallery.”
The first of the two agents flashed his gold shield at the desk clerk so discreetly that the young man didn’t realize who his visitors were until he heard the words “FBI.” Then, like most people confronted with a federal law-enforcement officer, he came quickly to attention.
“May we see your register, please?”
The clerk dutifully submitted the black bound guest register of the Hampshire House to the agents’ scrutiny. The index finger of the senior man ran down the pages, then stopped at the address Hamra Street, Beirut, Lebanon, after the name Linda Nahar. Suite 3202, he noted, and glanced up at the key bank. The key was missing.
“Is Miss Nahar in 3202 in?”
“Oh,” replied the clerk, “you just missed her. She checked out forty minutes ago. She said she’d be back, though. In a week.”