Benny’s information had forced the directors of the search operation to make some fast decisions. It was unlikely that the Arab had picked up the truck himself. He looked like an intermediary, a buried sleeper with street contacts to whom someone who knew the right words bad come for help. But he was clearly the only link to the man who had rented it. The FBI had wanted to bring in the bartender right away and grill him. Bannion and Feldman of the NYPD had objected strenuously. Benny and guys like the bartender made it a point not to know each other too well. Jump the barman and you might let the word out that the bar was hot, scare away the Arab and wind up with no lead to the renter of the van. They had recommended the trap waiting in the street below, assuming the Arab would keep to his normal routine and show up for his evening drink.
Nothing down on Union Street would have indicated to the untrained eye that anything unusual was going on. Yet the neighborhood was alive with detectives and agents. The Con Ed FBI crew was still there busily tearing up the pavement. They had been reinforced by three real Con Ed men who knew how to operate a jackhammer. In relays, they’d begun to drift into the bar for a drink, and three of them in blue overalls sat by the bar now nursing Miller Lites. An Econoline van belonging to a Queens television repair shop was parked behind the bar. Four agents were inside staring out of its one-way windows, guarding the rear of the bar. The trio of blacks Angelo had spotted earlier were jiving now at Sixth and Union, blocking that escape route.
By five minutes after five, there was still no sign of the Arab. Suddenly behind him, Angelo heard Benny growl, “There he goes.”
He pointed to a slender young man in a sheepskin jacket walking past the flashing red Budweiser sign into the bar. Rand rose.
He was wearing an Army fatigue jacket, blue jeans and a turtleneck someone had found for him, looking, Angelo thought uncharitably, like a stockbroker ready to go slumming. He headed down the stairs. A minute later, Angelo followed him.
As soon as he opened the door of the bar he saw the Arab alone on a stool halfway down the counter sipping his Seven-and-Seven. Rand was two stools away. Angelo strolled casually down the bar until he was behind the Arab.
Gently but firmly, he pressed the muzzle of his .38 to his back while, at the same time, with his left, he gave him a flash of the shield.
“Police,” he said, “we want to talk to you.”
The Arab twisted around to face him. Rand was already off his stool, his own arm discreetly drawn, blocking one way out. Three fellow FBI men in Con Ed overalls shifted into a half moon to seal off the other.
“Hey,” gasped the Arab, “what’s all this about?”
“We’ll tell you downtown,” Angelo said.
Outwardly, General Henri Bertrand appeared as composed as ever, the expression on his face set in the weary, inscrutable gaze for which he was so well known. Inwardly, he was seething with frustration. For almost an hour, PaulHenri de Serre had been sitting at his Boulevard Mortier desk going through the SDECE’s collection of photographs of Arab terrorists and scientists, trying to find a familiar face. He had found none.
The General had no doubts about the sincerity of his efforts. The man was ready to do anything to mitigate the consequences of what he had done in Libya. Bertrand was also sure, as a result of a few questions in his car en route to the office, that de Serre was innocent of any involvement in the death of his colleague Alain Prevost. That, like the manner in which the Libyans had set de Serre himself up, had to be the work of Qaddafi’s secret service. The bastards, he reflected, are getting better. Maybe the KGB is training them. A point, it suddenly occurred to him, to run down when this was over.
He looked at his scientist. De Serre was completing his second run-through of the pictures. “Still no one that looks familiar?”
De Serre shook his head apologetically. “Nobody.”
“Damn.” The Gauloise in the corner of Bertrand’s mouth wriggled as he inhaled. He was sure every photograph available was there on his desk. The CIA wouldn’t have held out on him, not on this. He relations with Israel’s Mossad were extremely close, as they had been for over thirty years. He was certain they would come up with everything they had. They could try to do an Identikit portrait of the Arab scientist, but Bertrand had little confidence in such portraits. They could tell you what a man didn’t look like, that he didn’t wear glasses or have a beard, but they were quite ineffectual when it came to providing a description of what he did look like.
Suddenly, the General stopped his measured pacing of the office and picked up his telephone. The Palestinian had spoken excellent French, hadn’t he?
Those most likely to hold something back in sensitive matters, he had learned long ago, were those usually closest to home. It took him several minutes to locate his friendly rival, Paul-Robert de Villeprieux, the director of France’s internal-security agency, the DST.
“Tell me, cher ami,” he asked when Villeprieux came to the phone at the Neuilly apartment in which he was dining with friends, “would your people be apt to have anything, anything at all, on Arabs, Palestinians probably, involved in nuclear matters, which just might not be available in my dossiers?”
The suspicion of a satisfied smile appeared on Bertrand’s face at the long silence which greeted his question.
“I shall have to call you back on that, I’m afraid,” Villeprieux finally replied.
“Don’t bother,” Bertrand said. “Just call the secretary general of the P-lysee and ask for the President’s authorization to send me whatever you have. Immediately.”
Half an hour later two gendarmes from the DST’s headquarters delivered another locked attache case to Bertrand’s office. It contained a thick envelope bearing a red wax seal and the legend “The contents of this envelope are not to be divulged without the express authorization of the President of the Republic or, in his absence from the country, the Minister of the Interior.” Inside was the long-suppressed story of the Dajanis’ unsuccessful effort to steal plutonium from Cadarache and their expulsion from France.
Bertrand handed Whalid Dajani’s picture to de Serre. “Was this your man?”
The scientist paled. “Yes,” he answered. “That’s he.”
Bertrand passed Kamal’s photograph across the table. “How about him?”
De Serre studied the terrorist’s picture closely. “Yes, I think he was one of the people I noticed at the reprocessing plant.”
“And her?” Bertrand gave him Laita’s picture.
De Serre shook his head. “No. There were never any women around.”
Bertrand was already on his phone. “Open up a photo-facsimile line to Langley,” he ordered, “and tell our friend Whitehead the photos of the people he is looking for are on their way to Washington.”
Why the hell doesn’t he hurry? Laila Dajani fumed. I stand out on this street like a Saudi prince in a synagogue. It was seven-thirty, and West Eighth Street swarmed with NYU students, shoppers, late-night bargain seekers. Finally, Laila saw Kamal drifting out of the pizza joint, his checkered cap jammed onto his head, his black leather jacket’s collar turned up, a rectangular box of pizza under his arm. They fell into step and started down West Eighth, moving away from Fifth Avenue.