Reprisal (3 page)

Bigglesley looked pleased and surprised. “Very good, John, you hit the nail on the head. Now it’s up to us to back Ahmed Hasan
all the way, as the only moderate between us and the Light of Islam. We’ve got to save Egypt.”

Keegan took a deep breath. “The CIA says Egypt’s already lost, Conrad. I’m not saying I agree with that, but let me assume
the role of devil’s advocate for a moment. Ahmed Hasan is a butcher. He’s very possibly insane—at the least he can be described
as mercurial. And he’s building an atom bomb with France’s help because they are dependent on Arab oil. Defense wants to do
something about it before it’s too late—meaning before they put that bomb together. Our position at State is that this is
all lies, fed to the CIA by the Israelis in collusion with the Department of Defense.”

“Correct.”

Keegan was a little taken aback by so ready an answer. “In spite of British intelligence’s report that Mustafa Bakkush has
gone back to Egypt under duress? I take it you saw the report from that physicist at MIT who said they don’t need anyone else
to make an atom bomb once they’ve got Bakkush. The Israelis didn’t invent this.”

“Let me spell it out for you, John. Where do you live and for whom do you work? Simple. Washington, D.C., the Department of
State. You do not live in the eastern Mediterranean and you do not work
for the Department of Defense. Therefore, you will support Ahmed Hasan until further notice.”

“Clear as glass, Conrad.”

“Great. I hope you and Alice can make it tomorrow night to the reception. Henry Kissinger will be there.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

A sand-yellow Jaguar XJ-S drew up before the huge western gateway of Bab al ’Azab, into the Citadel complex, the high walls
of which dominated the Islamic section of Cairo. The car’s V-12 engine purred as it waited for the gates to be unlocked. This
was the part of the Citadel which no tourists visited. Its purpose today was the same as it had been for centuries—a dungeon
for political prisoners. The gates opened, soldiers with M16 automatic rifles peered into the sleek sportscar, then snapped
to attention in a rigid salute. The Jaguar crept inside the walls of the Citadel, followed by a Jeep Cherokee, and the gates
closed behind them.

The Jeep Cherokee had inch-thick Plexiglas in its windshield and windows. Heavy steel plates were welded inside the vehicle’s
walls, under the roof, and beneath the chassis. Eight men and women, hardly out of their teens, dressed in combat fatigues
and toting Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, spilled out of the Cherokee and fanned out about the courtyard. They assumed
relaxed crouches, in contrast to the ceremonial bearing of other troops in the courtyard.

The Jaguar also had bulletproof Plexiglas windows, but no sign of armor plating was evident. Presumably,
the plates were concealed beneath the fine leather upholstery, wood-trim paneling and plush carpeting.

The color of President Ahmed Hasan’s military uniform exactly matched that of his car. He unfolded his long, lean, angular
body out of the bucket seat and looked about him critically at each of the regular soldiers in the courtyard, standing chest
out, chin in, eyes front. The president wiped the brass above the peak of his cap on his sleeve before placing the cap on
his head. Then he crossed the courtyard and entered the old fortified building through a stone archway, preceded and followed
by his bodyguards.

The jailers were expecting him and had the prisoner prepared. This man was flabby, middle-aged, and obviously American. He
sat on a hard, upright chair until the army officer next to him poked him. Then he stood to acknowledge the president’s entry
into the large, high-ceilinged room.

Ahmed Hasan spoke in Arabic. “So you are the CIA spy.”

The army officer translated this into English.

“Nothing of the kind, sir,” the American responded in English with a strong Alabama accent. “My name is Wendell Ray Oliver
and I’m a Baptist preacher come to bring the word of the Lord to sinners the world over. He who has ears to hear, let him
hear.”

The president smiled sardonically and continued in Arabic, plainly having understood the English. “In Egypt, eighty-five percent
of the people are Sunni Muslims and most of the rest are Coptic Christians. I am told you speak neither Arabic nor Coptic.
How
do you hope to bring the word of anybody to them if you do not speak their language?”

“Through the gift of tongues,” the Alabaman said confidently. “When the time is right, the spirit will descend upon me and
all men shall understand my words.”

Hasan nodded slowly. “This isn’t much of a cover for an employee of the great CIA. Surely they can do better than ask their
agents to pretend to be madmen. You were found in a zone in which foreigners are not permitted to travel without a permit.
You made an effort a week ago to get this permit, and when it was denied, you traveled into the forbidden zone anyway. So
you cannot plead ignorance. What were you doing there?”

“Bringing the word of the Lord to unworthy sinners.”

A look of irritation flickered across Ahmed Hasan’s face.

The military officer spoke urgently to Wendell Ray Oliver. “You are trying our great leader’s patience. He is a busy man and
has taken time away from the affairs of state to deal with your case. If you appreciate his effort and kindness toward you
by cooperating immediately, he will be merciful to you. But if you continue to insult him with your lies and trickery, he
will stomp on you as he would on a disgusting insect.”

Oliver looked from the military interpreter to the uniformed president and said, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

Hasan scowled. He produced a yellow, unsharpened pencil, tipped by an eraser, from inside his tunic and handed it to the American.
“Read aloud what’s on it.”

“Eberhard Faber MONGOL 482.”

“Anything else?”

Oliver looked at the pencil closely. “U.S.A.”

“Precisely. An American pencil for an American confession.” Hasan laughed harshly, and in one fluid, lightning movement whipped
out a gravity knife and dropped open its fixed blade close to the throat of the startled American.

“The pencil, please,” Hasan requested in a low, polite voice.

The American handed it to him with a trembling hand, glancing at the gleaming blade before his face.

As the president sharpened the pencil, the honed razor edge shearing away the wood around the lead, he spoke in a cold, commanding
tone. “While I wait here to witness your statement, you will write a short summary of your association with the Central Intelligence
Agency and the purpose of your mission here—particularly why you were in that zone where you had been denied admission.”

He released the catch, folded the blade, and put the knife away. Then he held the pencil in his right fist, its newly sharpened
point upward, and thrust it toward the American.

Wendell Ray Oliver stared back at him fixedly and made no move to take the pencil.

The military interpreter shifted uncomfortably in the silence that followed.

Not a muscle moved on Ahmed Hasan’s face.

He drove the pencil in his fist up through the underside of the American’s jaw, through the soft palate in the roof of his
mouth, and deep into his brain.

Wendell Ray Oliver collapsed dead at Hasan’s feet.

The president turned quickly and made for the door with his bodyguards scampering around him.

As he went, he shouted a single word in English over and over: “Spies! Spies! Spies! Spies!”

Richard Dartley checked by phone from his room at the Beverly Wilshire. The TWA flight from Washington, D.C., was due on schedule
at LAX, 3:15. Malleson had called previously. He had not been very informative. All he could say was that the man on the TWA
flight was alone and presumably unarmed since he had to pass through a metal detector in order to board the plane. He was
about twenty-five, athletic build, brown hair, no distinguishing features except for his strikingly fashionable two-piece
suit of blue and white vertical stripes. He had no luggage, and so he presumably could not change clothes in midflight, unless
this distinctive suit could be turned inside out to another pattern, which Malleson doubted. There was no way Dartley could
miss him. One other thing—he had a Hertz car reserved.

A suit as eyecatching as a semaphore signal and a Hertz car reservation! Dartley wondered if any kidnapper
could be that dumb. Yet the man had no reason to believe he had been detected and identified.

The victim had been grabbed in the parking lot of a swank shopping mall at Newport Beach, on the southern edge of Los Angeles.
She was the daughter of a U.S. senator. The ransom call had come from a Washington, D.C., public phone to her father’s Senate
office, and one of his aides had put the caller through to the senator himself. A quarter mil. One week to raise it. Any tricks
and the girl was dead.

The FBI, LAPD, California State Police and D.C. cops were all working twenty-four-hour days on the case. They made so little
progress, the media never caught on that something had happened.

The second phone call to the senator’s office on the Hill was also labeled a local call. The grab on the West Coast and the
ransom demand on the other side of the continent broke all the kidnap patterns on FBI books. The senator was told to be ready
to drop the money in L.A. The notes, none new, none over a hundred, were to be in a suitcase. The LAPD figured the senator
would be told in some last-minute phone call to drop the suitcase from an overpass to the side of a freeway beneath. No date
had been set.

Meanwhile, each day a Polaroid was mailed in a street box in a different part of L.A. The photo always showed a pretty nineteen-year-old
with that day’s issue of the
Los Angeles Times,
to prove to Pop she was still alive and well. The FBI were intercepting these envelopes now in L.A., but this brought them
not one step closer to rescuing the girl.

There was something the senator hadn’t told anyone. Like any good politician, he was wary of what
he said. The first phone call had reminded him of something… The second made it clear. He knew who was calling him, demanding
the ransom. The voice was disguised—yet it was the way the man had of speaking, the grammatical sentences, the way he paused
to select the right word, which gave his identity away. He was an old boyfriend of his daughter’s. The senator remembered
that he hadn’t approved of the young man as his daughter’s escort, suspecting that he was on drugs. The senator now reasoned
that if his daughter had been kidnapped by someone known to her, she could not be expected to survive the kidnapping after
the ransom was paid.

The FBI would play this by the book. They would get their man all right, and in all probability he would lose his daughter.
He had one other alternative. He could hold back on this man’s identity and go after him by other means—with no holds barred,
with none of the legal restrictions to which law enforcement agencies were subject.

The senator had once heard that his friend Charley Woodgate had a contact, some kind of paid assassin. He was careful how
he asked so that this killer would not do a job on him for knowing too much. He explained to Charley Woodgate how he had heard
disturbing stories and how he had used his senatorial power to quash them. He’d be pleased to do the same for the foreseeable
future if Charley would do something for him in return. Money would not be involved. Charley was to regard it as an arrangement
between gentlemen and friends.

Charley took the arm-twisting pretty well. His reply the next day was simple. His contact was happy
to do the senator a favor. He would place himself in Los Angeles and have the suspect put under surveillance in Washington.
The assassin’s name was Richard Dartley. Charley Woodgate told the senator that he couldn’t be of any more help except to
pass on urgent messages to Dartley. The senator nodded his agreement, wondering secretly if this Dartley were imaginary—and
if he were real, whether he was actually doing what Charley claimed he was.

Dartley was real and he was on the job. He hired outside help to do the surveillance, professionals who didn’t know or care
who they were watching. Malleson took care of information flow. Dartley himself bided his time in Beverly Hills.

Every kidnapper’s great moment of vulnerability was the ransom pickup. That went wrong more times than anything else. Dartley’s
plan was to hit them before they psyched themselves up for the pickup. He had no idea how many were involved—at least two,
one in Washington and one in L.A. to hold the girl. The trunk of his burgundy Lincoln Mark VII—a nicely anonymous car in Beverly
Hills, hired under a false name—was loaded with gear he might need, from rope ladders, two M16 automatic rifles, smoke grenades
through ten-gallon containers of fresh water and gasoline to gas masks and an inflatable rubber dinghy. He had only to phone
down for the car and it would be waiting for him in the area between the old and new sections of the Beverly Wilshire.

The plane was due in at 3:15. He allowed himself plenty of time—he knew how a small unexpected thing like a traffic jam or
minor accident, even a flat tire, could spike a whole operation if time had not
been allowed for unscheduled nuisances. He left his hotel, drove along Wilshire to Santa Monica Boulevard, and then the San
Diego Freeway to the airport, exiting at La Tijera.

At thirty-seven, Richard Dartley was a little thick through the middle and his black crewcut was thinning a bit. His square
jawed face had prominent cheekbones and hooded eyes, which were gray-green, like a wolf’s. His torso and limbs were muscular.
He looked like—and was—the kind of man who ran ten miles a day, could party all night and work hard the next day, could come
three times in a night with a hot chick.

He pulled the Mark VII to the curb where he could see the exit doors from TWA incoming flights. Things weren’t busy and he
guessed he wouldn’t be hassled if he stayed with the car and kept out of the way. He passed the time flipping through the
pages of a combat magazine in which jokers claimed to have single-handedly overwhelmed Cuban units in Angola and later in
Nicaragua, decimated Viet Cong battalions and all the usual gung ho hero stuff that anyone who knew the real thing could see
was plain bullshit.