The Mark of the Assassin (31 page)
“There he is, next to the rail, in the gray raincoat,” she said, a hint of Beirut in her English. “Approach him slowly. Please refer to him only as Ibrahim. And don’t try playing the hero again, Mr. Osbourne. I’m well armed, and Ibrahim has ten pounds of Semtex strapped to his body.”
Michael found the face vaguely familiar, like a boyhood friend who materializes in middle age, fat and balding. He had seen the face many times before but never close and certainly never in person. He had seen the hazy right profile snapped by the shooters of MI5 during one of Awad’s visits to London. The fuzzy full face captured by the French service during a stopover in Marseilles. The old Israeli mug shot of the young Awad: stone thrower, expert maker of Molotov cocktails, child warrior of the Intifada who nearly beat to death a settler from Brooklyn with a chunk of his beloved Hebron. The Israeli photo was of limited value, for the Shin Bet had got to him first and left him nearly unrecognizable with bruises and swelling.
For a long moment Michael and his quarry stood side by side at the rail, each fixed on his own private spot of the swirling Channel waters, like quarreling lovers with nothing left to say. Michael turned and looked at Awad once more.
Please refer to him only as Ibrahim.
For an instant he wondered if the man truly was Muhammad Awad. Wheaton’s tedious admonitions echoed through Michael’s head like boarding announcements at an airport.
Please refer to him only as Ibrahim.
For an instant he wondered if the man truly was Muhammad Awad. Wheaton’s tedious admonitions echoed through Michael’s head like boarding announcements at an airport.
To Michael, the man standing next to him looked like Awad’s older, more prosperous brother. He was dressed for business in a costly gray overcoat and tasteful double-breasted suit visible beneath. The features had been altered by plastic surgery. The effect was to erase his Arabness and create something of uncertain national origin—a Spaniard, an Italian, a Frenchman, or perhaps a Greek. The prominent Palestinian nose was gone, replaced by the narrow straight nose of a northern Italian aristocrat. The cheekbones had been sharpened, the brow softened, the chin squared, the deer brown eyes washed pale green by contact lenses. The back teeth had been pulled to give him the feline cheeks of a supermodel.
Muhammad Awad’s life read like a pamphlet of radical Palestinian revolutionary literature. Michael knew it well, for he had compiled Awad’s biography and résumé for the Center with help from the Mossad, the Shin Bet, MI6, and half the security services in Europe. His grandfather had been driven from his olive and orange groves outside Jerusalem in 1948 and cast into exile in Jordan. He died the following year of a broken heart, according to the Awad legend, the keys to his home in Israel still in his pocket. Another branch of the Awad clan had been massacred at Deir Yassin. In 1967 the family was driven out again, this time to refugee camps in Lebanon. Awad’s father never worked, just sat in the camp and told stories of how it had been for him as a boy, tending the olives and the oranges with his own father. Paradise lost. In the 1980s, young Muhammad Awad was indoctrinated in the radical Islam of south Lebanon and Beirut. He joined Hezbollah. He joined Hamas. He trained in Iran and Syria—small arms, infiltration tactics, counterintelligence, bomb making. When Arafat shook Rabin’s hand at the White House, Awad was outraged. When Arafat’s security forces came after Hamas, at Israel’s behest, Awad swore revenge. Together with fifty of the best Hamas guerrillas, he formed the Sword of Gaza, the most deadly Palestinian terror group since Black September.
Wind gusted over the deck. Awad put a hand inside his coat. Michael flinched but resisted reaching for the Browning. “Easy, Mr. Osbourne,” Awad said. “I just had the urge to smoke. Besides, if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”
The English was perfect, light accent indistinguishable to an untrained ear. The cigarettes he produced from the breast pocket of his coat were unfiltered Dunhills. “I know you smoke Marlboro Lights, but perhaps these will do, yes? Your wife smokes Benson and Hedges, doesn’t she? Her name is Elizabeth Cannon-Osbourne, and she practices law for one of those large firms in Washington. You live on N Street in Georgetown. You see, Mr. Osbourne, we have our own intelligence and security service. And we get a good deal of help from our friends in Damascus and Tehran, of course.”
Michael accepted one of the Dunhills and turned into the wind to light it. When Awad raised his hand to light his own cigarette, Michael could see the bomb trigger in the palm of his right hand.
“You’ve proved your point, Ibrahim,” Michael said.
“I realize it was a tedious demonstration, but I did it only to impress upon you that I mean you and your family no harm. You are not my enemy, and I have neither the time nor the resources to engage you.”
“So why the Semtex strapped to your waist?”
“One must take precautions in a business such as this.”
“You’ve never impressed me as the suicidal type.”
Awad smiled and blew smoke from his sculpted nostrils. “I’ve always believed I was more useful to Allah alive than dead. Besides, we have no shortage of volunteers for missions of martyrdom. I believe you spent some time in Lebanon as a child. You know the conditions in which our people live. Oppression can breed madness, Mr. Osbourne. Some boys would rather die than spend a lifetime in chains.”
Michael looked to his left and saw the woman from the train, leaning against the rail twenty feet away, smoking, eyes flickering over the ferry.
“I thought you believed a woman’s place was in the home, shrouded by a chador,” Michael said, looking at the girl.
“It is unfortunate, but sometimes this business requires the services of a talented woman. For the purposes of this conversation, her name is Odette. She is Palestinian, and she is very good with her gun. The old West German security service issued orders to shoot the women first. In Odette’s case that would be very good advice indeed.”
“Now that we’re all acquainted,” Michael said, “why don’t we get down to business? Why did you want to talk?”
“The attack at Heathrow yesterday was the work of the Sword of Gaza. We staged the attack to avenge your ridiculous air strikes against our friends in Libya, Syria, and Iran. You were quite the hero yesterday, Mr. Osbourne. Your presence was coincidence, I assure you. Frankly, I wish you had killed them both. Men in custody always make me a bit nervous.”
“Actually, the interrogation is going very well,” Michael said, unable to resist the opportunity to toy with Awad. “I understand he’s providing a tremendous amount of information on your organizational structure and tactics.”
“Nice try, Mr. Osbourne,” Awad said. “Our organization is highly compartmentalized, so he can do little damage.”
“You just keep on believing that, Ibrahim. It will help you sleep at night. So you asked to see me so you can claim responsibility for the terror attack at Heathrow?”
“We prefer to use the term military action.”
“There’s nothing military about killing unarmed civilians. That’s terrorism, pure and simple.”
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, but let’s not get into that silly debate now. There isn’t time. Your air strikes on our bases were ridiculous because there was no justification for them. The Sword of Gaza did not fire the missile that brought down Flight Double-oh-two.”
Michael suspected the same, but he was not about to let that show in front of Muhammad Awad. “The body of Hassan Mahmoud, one of your most accomplished action agents, was found on the boat from which the missile was fired,” Michael said, voice low but edgy with emotion. “The launch tube was next to his body. A valid claim of responsibility was received in Brussels.”
Awad’s face tightened. He took a long pull at his Dunhill and tossed the butt into the water. Michael looked away from Awad and saw a motor yacht shadowing the ferry, behind a veil of mist.
“Hassan Mahmoud has not been a member of the Sword of Gaza for nearly a year. He was a fucking psychopath who would not accept the discipline of an organization such as ours. We discovered he was secretly plotting to assassinate Arafat, so we threw him out. He’s lucky we didn’t kill him. In hindsight we should have.”
Awad lit another cigarette.
“Mahmoud moved to Cairo and fell in with the Egyptian fundamentalists, al-Gama’at Ismalyya.” Awad reached into his pocket once again, this time removing an envelope. He opened the envelope, removed three photographs, and handed them to Michael. “These were provided to us by a friend inside the Egyptian security service. That man is Hassan Mahmoud. If you run this photograph through your files you will discover the second man is Eric Stoltenberg. I trust you recognize the name.”
Michael did, indeed. Eric Stoltenberg used to work for the East German Ministry of State Security, better known as the Stasi. He worked for Department XXII, which ran Stasi support operations for national liberation movements around the world. His portfolio included notorious terrorists like Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal and groups such as the IRA and Spain’s ETA. Michael examined the photographs: two men seated at a chrome-topped table at Groppi’s café, one dark-haired and dark-skinned, the other blond and fair, both wearing sunglasses.
Michael held out the photographs to Awad.
“Keep them,” Awad said. “My treat.”
“These prove nothing.”
“As you probably know, Eric Stoltenberg has had to find work elsewhere,” Awad said, ignoring Michael’s remark. “After the Wall came down, the Germans wanted his head because he helped the Libyans bomb the La-Belle nightclub in West Berlin in 1986. Stoltenberg has been living abroad ever since, using his old Stasi contacts to make money any way he can—security, smuggling, that sort of thing. Recently he came into a fair amount of money, and he’s not done a very good job concealing it.”
The motor yacht had moved closer to the ferry. Michael looked at Awad and said, “Mahmoud carried out the attack, and Stoltenberg helped with the logistics—the Stinger, the boats, the escape route.” Michael waved the photographs. “This is all a lie, because you’re afraid we’re going to strike back again.”
Awad smiled with considerable charm. “Nice try, Mr. Osbourne, but you know the Sword of Gaza better. You know we have no cause to blow up an American jetliner, and you know someone else did. You don’t have the proof, though. If I were you, I’d look closer to home.”
“Are you saying you know who did?”
“No, I’m just saying you should ask yourself a few simple questions. Who gained the most? Who would have reason to do such a thing but keep their real identity secret? The men who did this have a great deal of money and enormous resources at their fingertips. I swear to you that we did not do this. If the United States does not retaliate for Heathrow it ends now. But if you hit us again we will have no recourse but to hit back. Such is the nature of the game.”
The motor yacht had closed to within fifty yards of the ferry’s port side. Michael could see two men atop the flying bridge and a third near the prow. He looked to his left, toward the woman, and found her wide-eyed, pulling a small automatic weapon from her handbag. He spun round and looked past Awad, down the port railing, and saw a squat, powerfully built man, gun drawn, head shrouded by a balaclava.
Michael grabbed Awad by the shoulders and screamed, “Get down!”
Two rounds burst through Awad’s chest and embedded themselves in Michael’s bulletproof vest. Awad collapsed onto the deck. Michael reached inside his coat for the Browning, but the Palestinian girl was ready first, gun leveled in outstretched hands, feet apart. She fired twice quickly, blowing the hooded gunman off his feet.
Awad lay on the deck, glaring at Michael, blood in his mouth. He held up his right hand, showing Michael the bomb trigger. Michael dived through a doorway into the passenger lounge. Graham Seymour was there, weapon drawn. Michael grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him to the floor as the bomb exploded and glass shattered overhead. For a few seconds there was almost complete silence; then the wounded began to moan and scream.
Michael scrambled to his feet, shoes slipping on shattered glass, and charged onto the deck. The force of the explosion had obliterated Awad. Odette, the Palestinian girl, lay on the deck, blood streaming from a head wound. The hooded gunman must have been wearing a vest because he had managed to jump over the rail, and the motor yacht was making its way toward him. One man stood on the flying bridge, two on the aft deck. Michael raised his Browning and opened fire on the craft. The two men on the aft deck produced automatic weapons and returned fire. Michael dived for cover.
Odette had pulled herself upright and was sitting with her back to the rail. She held a gun in her outstretched hand, leveled at Michael, her face very calm. Michael rolled away as she squeezed off the first shot. The round struck the deck, missing him. She fired twice more as Michael scrambled helplessly for cover. Suddenly, her body shuddered violently and she slumped forward. Graham Seymour stepped out onto the deck, gun in hand, and knelt down beside her. He looked at Michael and shook his head.
Michael got to his feet and ran to the rail. The motor yacht was idling in the choppy seas. The two men aft were pulling the gunman from the sea. Michael raised his gun, but it was an impossible shot; the ferry’s forward progress had carried it about a hundred yards past the stationary yacht. When the gunman was safely on board, the yacht turned away and disappeared behind a curtain of fog.
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