The French counter-espionage service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, came close to arresting him in Paris two years later, but Carlos killed two unarmed DST agents and a Lebanese informer. A French judge sentenced him to life imprisonment in his absence in 1992, and there were murder warrants for his arrest issued by the authorities in Austria and Germany and still on file.
By the late Seventies, Carlos had by all accounts retreated from the terrorist scene, and the world’s intelligence services were having a hard time keeping track of him. He was seen in London in May 1978 but there was no trace of him leaving or entering the United Kingdom at that time. Howard wondered if the IRA had helped him.
Satellite surveillance photographs taken in 1983 suggested he was at a Libyan training camp instructing terrorists for Colonel Gaddafi, though the same year he claimed to have killed five people in bomb attacks in France. He forged links with the Hezbollah in Lebanon in their fight to end the French military presence in the country, and, in October 1983, fifty-eight French soldiers died when their barracks were bombed. There were reports that he was in India in 1985, and in 1986 stories circulated in Middle Eastern newspapers that he had been killed and buried in the Libyan desert.
The opening up of the Communist bloc provided evidence that Carlos had spent time in the early Eighties in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and other Communist regimes, but after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Carlos found himself with few friends. In 1991, after relations between Syria and the United States improved following their co-operation during Operation Desert Storm, Carlos was asked to leave Damascus by the Syrians, who sent him to Libya. The Libyans refused to allow him into the country, fearing US and British reprisals. Relations between the US and Libya were already fraught in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing.
Eventually the Yemen offered him sanctuary, but Carlos later moved to the Sudan. Home was a ground floor apartment in the capital, Khartoum, and it was from outside the three-storey apartment block in August 1994 that he was kidnapped by France’s anti-terrorist service, the DST. The DST had drugged Carlos and flown him to Paris where he was placed in solitary confinement in the basement of La Sante prison. The events that followed had been so well publicised that Howard didn’t need to read the end of the file. Carlos’ escape from French custody was still under investigation, with the French blaming the Iraqis, Iraq pointing the finger at Iran, the Iranians accusing Libya, and the Libyans saying it had been the Palestinians. Even the IRA had been mentioned, along with the suggestion that they had masterminded his escape in return for favours he had done the Irish terrorists in the past.
The report was incredibly detailed, but it also contained contradictions. Carlos was said to despise Arabs, yet often countries in the Middle East were his paymasters. Dr Wadi Haddad was a mentor in the early Seventies, yet Carlos was later implicated in the Palestinian guerrilla leader’s assassination. He was not a Communist yet there were suggestions that the KGB were behind several of his operations and he spent long periods hiding in Communist countries. He was the world’s most successful terrorist, yet he also had a reputation for taking chances and for being unreliable. As Sheldon had said, Carlos was one of a number of terrorists who visited Baghdad between August 1990 and January 1991 prior to an Iraqi-sponsored terrorist campaign against Britain and the United States. Yet just ten years earlier he was paid by the Syrians to come up with a plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He was prepared to work for the highest bidder, but had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and had never been short of money.
Howard dropped the file on top of his briefcase and rested his head against the back of the seat. He felt almost light-headed as he realised that he was on the trail of the world’s most wanted man. If he could capture Carlos there would be nothing he couldn’t achieve, inside or outside the FBI. His hands began to shake and he gripped the seat rests. The excitement was almost painful, and so was the apprehension. He wanted a drink. A real drink.
Darkness crept up on Joker as he sat under the chestnut tree watching the brick building which housed Farrell Aviation. There was no point at which he was aware that day had given way to night, it was a process so gradual that it came almost as a shock when he realised that stars were twinkling in the sky and that the moon was hanging overhead, so clear that he could see the individual craters on its surface. A succession of people had entered and left the brick-built building during the afternoon, but there had been no sign of Matthew Bailey. He’d come to recognise two young men in blue overalls bearing the green propeller logo; they’d made several visits to the building and Joker assumed they were mechanics working in the Farrell hangars. Throughout the day several small planes had taken off and landed on the grass strip, including an old biplane which had been towing an advertising banner.
Lights were still on in one of the offices and a blue Lincoln Continental stood alone in front of the main entrance. Joker was waiting for the last person to leave before calling it a night. Stake-outs were nothing new to him. He’d lain in the hills of the Irish border country for days at a time with nothing more than a camouflage sheet to protect him from the bone-chilling winter rain, soaked through to the skin and shivering with the cold. Catching IRA terrorists as they crisscrossed the border between North and South was a matter of infinite patience and concentration, days of inactivity followed by frantic seconds of gunfire. Sitting under a tree on a pleasant evening was a breeze by comparison.
The light in the office went off and Joker put the binoculars to his eyes and trained them on the entrance. After thirty seconds or so the glass door opened and a large man stepped out, a briefcase in his hand. A lone light was on above the door and Joker could see that the man was in his early sixties, grey-haired with ruddy cheeks as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. He was wearing a red polo shirt and white shorts, with knee length socks, and he had a beer drinker’s stomach which hung over his shorts like a late pregnancy. Joker assumed that he was Patrick Farrell Senior, but as he had no way of identifying the man he kept an open mind. He could just be a hired hand. The man locked the door and climbed into his car. A few seconds later he drove off and Joker heard the engine fade away into the distance. He listened to the sounds of the forest: the clicking of insects, the hoot of an owl, the faraway howl of a wild cat, and tentative rustlings in the undergrowth. Joker waited a full thirty minutes until he was sure that the man wasn’t returning. He moved quietly through the trees and out onto the airfield, heading first for the hangars to satisfy himself that all the mechanics had left.
The sliding doors to the hangars were locked and Joker couldn’t see any lights inside. He slipped silently through the shadows to the Farrell building, careful to keep away from the light above the main door. There was an alarm bell high up on the wall and he could see that the windows were wired, but it was a simple system and one which he could by-pass with little trouble. Around the back of the building there was a drainpipe which ran by a small frosted window, probably a bathroom. It looked climbable and when he pulled at it he could feel that it was strong enough to bear his weight. He hoped to get what he wanted without resorting to breaking and entering, but if it proved necessary he wouldn’t have any problems gaining entry to the offices. He headed back to his car. He’d already earmarked a motel a couple of miles away from the airfield where he could catch a few hours’ sleep.