The Mordida Man (4 page)

So an unofficial twelve-man delegation headed by Libya's new Minister of Defense, Major Ali Arifi, had been dispatched to the United States on an informal exploratory window-shopping expedition. And since it was all totally and determinedly unofficial, the President had slipped his brother in as tour guide, thus separating the administration nicely from any official recognition of the junket, but pleasing the Libyans enormously because Bingo McKay, although burdened with no government post, was usually regarded to be either the third or fourth most powerful man in Washington. Many even said second.

The junket had gone nowhere near Washington, of course. Instead, it had started in Houston, where the much maligned oil companies, anxious now to scramble back into the administration's grace and favor, had laid on a lavish reception. After Texas, it was straight out to Southern California for a demonstration of the new F-18a fighter, which the Libyans were known to covet, even lust after, feeling that the new plane would give far more pause to their increasingly jingoistic Egyptian neighbor than did their current fleet of aging Soviet MiG 25s.

The fighter demonstrations were scheduled for the next day at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and after that there was to be a quick side trip up to Northern California, to San Jose—or Silicon Gulch—where the latest in electronic wizardry would be wheeled out for inspection—and possible barter.

But first there had to be the de rigueur visit to Disneyland, which Bingo McKay had lied his way out of and turned over to his twenty-eight-year-old assistant, Dr. Eleanor Rhodes, whom he had hired fresh out of Johns Hopkins with the promise that “I can't guarantee you anything except money and the fact that you're gonna be close to the nut-cuttin', if that's the kinda stuff you're interested in.”

Since her doctoral dissertation had been entitled “Parameters of Deception in the Second Nixon Administration,” it was, indeed, the kind of stuff Eleanor Rhodes was interested in; and her quick mind and remarkable memory had for five years now helped Bingo nearly double his own political acumen, which was immense.

Then, too, he was probably half in love with her, but he had never done anything about it because (1) she was too young and (2) she couldn't remember World War II and (3) he suspected that she was one of the President's occasional bed partners, which was something Bingo had decided to keep his mouth shut about unless the Guteater brought it up. The Guteater was Dominique McKay, the President's one-quarter Choctaw wife.

It was shortly after 5
P.M.
(on the day that the man called Felix fell almost a mile into the sea) when the ten-car Libyan caravan, sprinkled with eighteen Wackenhut security men, returned to the Marriott from Disneyland. Members of the delegation immediately retired to their rooms to rest until dinner at eight, when their hosts would be executives of the McDonnell Douglas and Northrop corporations, joint developers of the new F-18a.

At 6
P.M.
the call came from Tripoli. The call was from Libya's new ruler, Colonel Youssef Mourabet. It was taken by his Minister of Defense, Major Ali Arifi. They spoke for nineteen minutes in Maghribi, a Bedouin dialect.

At 6:24
P.M
., Ali Arifi summoned Eleanor Rhodes to his suite. He spoke for five minutes without stopping or allowing questions. At 6:33
P.M.
Eleanor Rhodes was knocking on Bingo McKay's door.

After Bingo opened the door, he started to say something sardonic about Disneyland, but changed his mind when he saw the grim expression on her face.

“There's a problem,” she said once the door was closed.

“How bad?”

“Bad enough. They're going to Vegas tonight—for gambling. You'll notice I didn't say they'd
like
to go. They're going.”

“Well, maybe I'd better go try and persuade 'em to change their minds.”

She shook her head. “I don't think I'd try, if I were you.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Like that. They're leaving at eight.” She headed for the telephone. “We're invited, but they're going whether we do or not.” She picked up the phone.

“You calling the Wackenhut folks?”

She shook her head again. “They don't want them along. I'm calling Milroy in Vegas.” Frank Milroy was the Las Vegas Chief of Police.

“Tell him to make it tight,” McKay said. “Tell him I want three on one at least.”

Eleanor Rhodes nodded and started dialing. By 6:50
P.M
., security arrangements had been completed in Las Vegas, the Northrop-McDonnell Douglas dinner had been canceled, and the nineteen Wackenhut security men had been recalled to form an escort for the Libyans from the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim to Los Angeles International Airport, where the delegation would board its especially equipped Boeing 727 for the short flight to Las Vegas. The 727 had been the personal plane of the late Colonel Qaddafi and was manned by a Libyan crew that had been trained by Pan American.

The Libyans were already in their cars when Bingo McKay and Eleanor Rhodes came out of the hotel and climbed into the last limousine in the procession. Five miles from the airport the caravan picked up a four-man motorcycle escort provided by the Los Angeles Police Department, which led it onto the field. The Libyans got out of their cars and hurried up the ramp into the plane. Last to start up the ramp were Bingo McKay and Eleanor Rhodes.

As they entered the plane, they were greeted by a smiling Ali Arifi. “I'm delighted that you both decided to join us.”

“Kind of sudden, wasn't it, Minister?” McKay said.

Arifi shrugged. “Who can tell when luck will beckon?”

Bingo McKay began to suspect that something was wrong, extremely wrong, twenty minutes after the 727 took off from the Los Angeles airport. But it wasn't until ten minutes later that he knew positively that their destination that night would not be Las Vegas. For by then the plane was headed due east, and the lights of Las Vegas could be seen glittering five miles below and two miles back.

The Libyans had all gathered in the forward compartment, leaving McKay and Eleanor Rhodes alone in the lounge. McKay nudged Rhodes and made a sharp pointing movement down. She looked through the window and turned to stare at him. There was no need for questions.

“Reckon I better go see what those suckers have got in mind for us,” McKay said as he rose.

She nodded warily. “Yes, maybe you'd better.”

McKay made his way to the forward compartment and tried the door. It was locked. He knocked and it was quickly unlocked and opened by Ali Arifi, still wearing a broad smile.

“Come in, Mr. McKay,” Arifi said. “We were just talking about you.”

McKay went in and heard the door being closed and locked behind him. He didn't turn around to look because a gun was being poked into his back, just above his belt. But it wasn't just the gun that kept Bingo McKay from turning. Of equal interest was the tray that had been pulled down from the back of one of the seats.

It was an ordinary tray, the kind on which meals are served during commercial flights. This one was covered with a clean white cloth. On the cloth was an arrangement of surgical instruments. Standing next to the instruments was the delegation's physician, Dr. Abdulhamid Souri, who held a syringe in one hand. Dr. Souri raised his eyes from the syringe to look at Bingo McKay.

“Well, hell, fellas,” McKay said.

Dr. Souri smiled. “It's not going to hurt, Mr. McKay,” he said softly. “I promise you that it won't hurt one bit.”

5

It had been a curious, roundabout message, perhaps garbled in its transmission, but still urgent enough, even desperate enough, to cause the Nigerian Ambassador, His Excellency Olu-femi Dokubo, to rouse himself from a sound sleep in his Washington residence on Woodley Road, summon his principal aide and a driver, and arrive at Dulles International Airport at 4
A.M
., shortly before the Libyan 727 touched down for refueling.

The message had been radioed to the control tower at Dulles, where it had been passed on by phone to the night duty man at the Nigerian Embassy on 16th Street Northwest. The night duty man was a twenty-three-year-old Ibo from Enugu and a student of economics at Georgetown University.

The student had been reluctant to call the Ambassador, so he had roused the Ambassador's principal aide instead and read him the message.

“It says, and I wrote it down exactly, ‘Imperative you be at Dulles to meet our plane. Estimated time of arrival 0400. Fate of civilization may hang in balance.' It's signed Ali Arifi.”

There was a long pause and then the aide said, “Are you positive about that last part—that fate of civilization thing?”

The student giggled, but quickly recovered himself and said gravely, “Yes, sir. I made them repeat it three times.”

The aide grumpily thanked the student, hung up, and then sat on the edge of his bed staring at the message he had copied down. All Libyans are mad, he told himself. It was a conclusion he had come to after being heavily involved during the past several months in the conduct of their affairs in the United States, a chore the Nigerian Embassy reluctantly had taken on after the rupture in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Libya.

Still, the message had been signed by Ali Arifi, and garbled or not, it was apparent that something had gone seriously wrong with the Libyans' junket, which the aide also had had a major hand in arranging. He sighed and picked up the phone again, first glancing at his watch. Two-thirty. The old man is going to be absolutely livid. Reluctantly, the aide began dialing.

With the light, almost non-existent traffic, it had taken them only thirty-three minutes to reach the airport. By the time they arrived, there was another urgent message from the Libyan 727. It was a request for the Ambassador to arrange for refueling and customs and immigration clearance. Ambassador Dokubo had gone about this in his usual skilled, even suave manner, exuding his famous charm, which in the more than twenty-one years since independence, had carried him to near the very top in his country's diplomatic service.

After the refueling was almost completed, and the suspicious customs and immigration people mollified, Ambassador Dokubo was driven out to the 727 by an airport official who continued to complain about the irregularity of the Libyans' proposed departure. Ambassador Dokubo smiled and nodded sympathetically, finally observing that, “Well, one must remember, Mr. Druxhall, that most Libyans are just a bit odd. All that desert, probably.” The airport official had nodded his gloomy approval of the Ambassador's assessment.

The ramp was already in place by the time they arrived at the plane. The airport official waited in the car while the Ambassador went up the ramp and into the 727. The lounge section was empty save for the Minister of Defense, Ali Arifi, who rose and nodded slightly, not quite bowing.

“So, Minister,” Ambassador Dokubo said, glancing around the empty compartment, “I hope you can enlighten me about what I should do to help save civilization at four o'clock in the morning.”

“You found my message melodramatic?”

“A bit.”

Arifi waved the Ambassador to one of the lounge chairs. The Ambassador was a large, heavy man of fifty, quite tall, with a globe of a head whose chocolate cheeks were serrated with Yoruba tribal scars. He had a famous white smile, which he now turned on as he sank down into the chair, not taking his eyes off Arifi. He's nervous, the Ambassador thought. No, it's more than nerves. It's fear.

Arifi had lowered his lean rump to the edge of the chair closest to the Ambassador. He leaned forward, his arms resting on bony knees, a slight tic twitching at the corner of his left eye. It was a dark hollowed-out face whose dominating feature was a heavily boned nose that poked itself out and then down toward a wide mouth that was almost lipless, like a fish.

“I must make this one point first,” Arifi said, his excellent English bearing heavy Italian overtones and his voice curiously deep for so slight a man. “The request I make of you comes not from me, but from Colonel Mourabet.”

“The Colonel is in excellent health, I trust.”

“Yes, his health is excellent, praise be to God.”

“And his family, they, too, are well?” the Ambassador continued, even at four in the morning the total diplomat.

“They, too, through God's beneficence, enjoy excellent health.”

“I am delighted to hear so. Now, how may I be of service to the Colonel?”

“He would be forever in your debt if you were to deliver to President McKay a message and a small package. They must be delivered to the President only. Again, I must emphasize—to the President only.”

“A small package, you say,” Ambassador Dokubo said, immediately suspecting a bomb. “How small?”

Arifi pulled out a drawer from a built-in cabinet and removed a small Gucci box, approximately three inches square and one inch deep. It was tied with red string and sealed with pink chewing gum. He offered it to the Ambassador almost apologetically. “I regret we had no sealing wax.”

Dokubo accepted the box gingerly. “A gift?” he said, knowing it wasn't.

“More a token, I would think.”

“In appreciation of your tour.”

“The tour was not a success,” Arifi said stiffly. “We found it necessary to terminate it.”

“I am sorry. I was hoping it would prove successful.”

“Perhaps another time.”

“Yes, perhaps. But you also mentioned a message.”

Arifi nodded and withdrew a stiff buff-colored envelope from his inside breast pocket and handed it over. It also was sealed with a wad of pink chewing gum. The Ambassador sniffed and could smell cinnamon.

“It, too, of course, is confidential,” Arifi said, the tic near his left eye now throbbing erratically.

“But of vital importance to—uh—civilization?”

“Colonel Mourabet thinks so,” Arifi said in a cold voice. “If I were you, Your Excellency, I would not discount the importance of our request because of its melodramatic nature. Great events often seem melodramatic while happening, but tragic in retrospect.”