Yet the absence of a public accusation did not comfort her. She eliminated all the journalistic clutter, distilled the facts, and assumed unpublished details. She knew the minds of Israeli professionals, who had once splashed her photograph across worldwide newspapers after a similar bombing in Buenos Aires. And since she had prepared that device, she had not minded the strange sensation of having her scent sniffed publicly by bloodhounds. Here the very absence of her name was more ominous, and she could picture the fingers flipping through her file in Jerusalem.
A lone suicidal bomber, a clever and concealed device of molded C-4 or Semtex, a mule in a guise that would grant him close proximity to a wary target. When the modus operandi was examined, she knew that she would be there on the top-five list of suspects.
She certainly could have done it.
But she had not.
The waiter crossed the floor, carrying a silver tray of appetizers and an Empanada Argentina, a steaming meat pie shaped like a clam. He placed the tray before Martina and stood back, smiling as he asked, a little too familiarly, “¿Qué tal, señorita?”
“Bien, gracias,” she said, and although her mouth made something like a smile, her eyes stayed fixed on his so long that he blushed, bowed, and fled back to the bar.
Her gaze was useful as a tool of measurement, for persons of weak character were quickly unnerved by it, and the low voice that emanated from her wide throat could also be unsettling. To Argentines her Spanish pegged her as a stunning compadrita, while Germans equally assumed her to be one of their own. Her English had been eroticized by years in Paris, and Americans often thought that she was French, Belgian, or even Scandinavian. The camouflage was useful.
Martina watched the waiter scurry to a family of new customers, and she almost wished he had been someone more magnetic. Her work surrounded her with men she could not touch.
As she moved her chair closer to the table and smoothed a napkin over her lap, she felt the small pucker scar beneath her skirt, just below her navel. The hole was the result of a small-caliber wound she had acquired during her escape from Bruchsal, and since then she had allowed few men to see it. Those with whom she had slept since that frantic flight from Germany had all been fascinated by the hard nipple of pink flesh.
Her late husband had always glossed over the wound, because he had scars of his own.
She flushed the thoughts of failed erotic ventures from her mind and broke the back of the empanada, forking bits of smoking meat into her mouth. Something else pricked the inside of her nostrils, and she looked up to see a woman at a nearby table lighting up a filterless with a match. The scent of sulfur sent her briefly on a flickering excursion, the smells and sounds rushing by like scenery past a roller coaster car. . . .
She felt her fingers trembling over deadly clay, and faraway concussions smacked her ears. The oily stench of motorcycle rubber breached her woolen mask as sweat stung the skin beneath her leathers and her pistol bucked in the speeding wind. Nausea rose with the sickening wrench of tearing muscle, the snarl of dogs, the clang of gates and locks, and then the dawn air thrilled her over the pounding of her sprint and she tumbled with a punch of soaring power in her groin. The agony gripped her again, the cold steel of a truck bed, the torture of pocked roads, the blessed stab of a needle into flights of soaring darkness. And finally the whiteness of the Levantine sun, the throb of sinews on the mend, the gentle popping of distant rifles. And the smell of sulfur from the guns . . .
In the halving of a second her eyes refocused on the newspaper. But for a moment she saw the glossy pages of another publication. It had been more than a decade since that copy of Stern had screamed its story, yet she remembered every word and photograph. Hers, and those of Friederike Krabbe, Barbara Meyer, and Inge Viett, all splashed beneath a banner, DIE FRÄULEIN AUS P-38—The Girls from P-38—as if their favorite pistol were an alien planet. And for her talents with sophisticated destructive devices, she had been anointed with her nom de terror: “Frau Seafore.” Mrs. C-4. The Bride of the Plastic Explosives.
Yes. She could have done it.
But she had not.
And for once she could not identify the motive, and certainly not the capability, of any other competitor. She knew the secret of the Hizbollah prisoner exchange with the Israelis and was sure the fundamentalists would hold their radicals in check. The Arafat camp was already waving a white flag, and they would hardly sully it with Jewish blood. Most of the anti-PLO rejectionists were well intentioned yet ill equipped to handle such audacity. They could not even properly hijack a boatload of senile tourists.
Martina had herself been contracted to scuttle the upcoming exchange, and she assumed her employers to have tactical wits, so it made no sense that they would muddy up the playing field and make her mission doubly hard to execute. Yet her own technique had been mimicked in this bombing, and the imitation infuriated rather than flattered her. Someone not only had stolen her thunder but might cause the enemy’s wagons to be drawn into an impregnable cordon.
The appetizers had lost their attraction. Martina’s stomach fluttered, and she dropped the fork on the plate, sat back expelling air between her lips, and finished off the red Traviche in one long swallow.
“Unwichtig. Unimportant,” she whispered with forced conviction. “Der Fisch muß flußaufwärts schwimmen. The fish will swim upstream.”
From the telephone and toilet alcove of the restaurant, a man emerged into the dining area. He looked around, was brought up sharply by his own image in the mirrored wall behind Martina’s head, then came forward to her table.
Mussa Hawatmeh was clearly ill at ease in his new pin-striped navy suit, white shirt, and gray silk tie, but Martina had insisted that he learn to eschew jeans and leather jackets for such businesslike occasions. He unbuttoned his suit coat and took the seat at her right elbow, while she examined his freshly cut and gelled hair, the closely shaven olive skin, his dark eyes and youthful features. She was pleased, for he looked like the wealthy cousin to a prince of the House of Saud, or perhaps an ethnic businessman from Rio de Janeiro, or even Tel Aviv.
He settled stiffly in his chair, folded his fingers together, and placed them on the table edge. Then he glanced over at Martina and frowned, like a boy whose mother was forcing him to wear short pants to school.
Martina laughed and raised a finger that brought her waiter at a trot.
“¿Por favor, señor?” The waiter this time stood a meter from the table, as if staying outside the range of her gaze. He looked only at Mussa.
“He’ll have an Escudo,” said Martina, and when Mussa began to raise a hand in protest, she caught his wrist in a swift, firm grasp. “Yes,” she emphasized. “And bring him also a bife de chorizo. Medium rare.”
“Muy bien.” The waiter walked away.
Mussa raised his eyes to the ceiling. He appeared to be praying for clemency.
“Escudo is a good beer,” Martina said in the measured German that Mussa had learned under her tutelage. “And you must learn to drink it, along with anything else that is offered you in company.” She paused when he seemed to be ignoring her instruction. “Sieh mich bitte an.”
He obeyed and focused on her, and her tone returned to one of sympathetic coaching.
“In America,” she continued, “a man who refuses a drink can only be one of two things; an ex-alcoholic or a Moslem. There is a time to put aside the rules of the Sharia in favor of the mission.” She touched Mussa’s hand again, this time more gently. “This is something that your enemies have always understood. How else could the Jews do battle on the Sabbath?” Her solid stare bored into Mussa’s softer gaze as the waiter placed a tall glass of amber liquid on the table. “You must, at the very least”—she whispered now—“match them faith for faith, and will for will.”
Mussa took the glass and with nauseous anticipation swallowed a gulp of the blasphemous brew. Martina smiled and swept the foam from his upper lip with her finger.
So much work, she thou
ght. So many barriers to penetrate. She wondered if her men could ever rise to the occasion, put aside the superstitious tenets of their culture and religion to serve the greater purpose of Koranic laws that she, too, respected, yet saw as latticework on which to climb to greater glories.
In Lebanon, she had adopted these fledglings and transformed them, taught them languages and foreign cultures, electronics and improvisational ordnance. She had instructed them not only in the offensive driving of cars and trucks and motorcycles, but also in the mechanics of enhancement and repair, the crucial tactics of mobility. She had slapped them for the rust upon their gun barrels, and had she not been a woman in a Moslem world, she would have kissed them when their AK-47s were oiled and on target.
It was Martina who had seen the lack of foresight of their masters, the weakness in the hierarchy of Hizbollah that bound the anxious fingers of her warriors. It was she who had taken them away, formed an impenetrable cell of guerrillas whose ideals could never be subverted. They looked upon their mentor as something of a queen, while she viewed herself as more the mother of this group that called itself Yadd Allah. The Hand of God.
It was a name that she knew was probably at this very moment being whispered in the operations rooms of worldwide Western intelligence agencies. But if her men would live up to the promise of their title, they had to learn that Allah’s will was sometimes best served when his laws were subverted.
They had learned to lie for Him. They had learned to kill for Him. And now that they were here upon the ramparts of his enemies, could she teach them to ignore Him?
There was so little time.
“Is he coming?” she asked as Mussa took another, smaller sip of the beer.
“Yes, he’s on his way,” he answered sullenly, as if he had suffered a reprimand.
She wondered for a moment if she had not erred, selecting for her pack of wolves all males. Their dedication and courage were unmatched, yet they lacked the finer instincts and determination of their female counterparts. She had worked for many years with the women of the Rote Armee Fraktion and knew that in a pinch, when all seemed lost, no man could match a woman for the ferocity of a cornered lioness. But on the other hand, those dens where females ruled were volatile, and no one woman kept control for long. Here, the boys bent quickly to her will.
With the exception of the legendary terror mistress Leila Khaled, there were few women on this earth who had successfully commanded groups of Moslem warriors. And although the boosting of her own ego was not the object of Martina’s efforts, with some modest satisfaction she had allowed her men to anoint her with the code name “Leila.”
She looked up at the entrance to the Pavillion. A small man stood next to the bar. His hair was white like seagull feathers, swept back from a brow made leathery by wind and sun. His vested gray wool suit, white collar, just a bit too large, and plain black tie were caped by a long blue winter coat. His gold-framed spectacles gave him the air of a Zurich clockmaker. When he saw Martina, he picked up the soft attaché at his feet and started forward.
Martina noted that the man she knew as Omar had replaced his plain brown cane with a less modest walking stick. This one was straight and tapered, with a polished metal tip. She had often wondered why such a sprightly fellow would need an aid at all. Now she decided that it was just a decorous weapon.
She reappraised the man who had been functioning as cutout, hiring her services for a third party, negotiating and consulting with her for many months. She had come to regard him as merely a pleasant messenger, but given the recent explosive events, she wondered now if his harmless demeanor camouflaged a threat, like a carnivorous flower.
As the dapper Arab bowed and took the seat facing her, she saw that the stick’s ivory pommel was a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven.
“And you have good taste in music,” she opened in English without greeting or preamble.
“I am of that generation.” Omar shrugged as if apologizing, while he set the briefcase between his feet.
“A drink, señor” The waiter was at his shoulder.
“Too strong for this heart.” The old man waved a hand politely, and as the waiter left he added, “And bad for the soul.”
Mussa grunted and removed his hand from the glass of Escudo.
“And a good evening to you, my young friend.” Omar bowed to Mussa, who just dipped his head in reply.
“He is not feeling very well,” Martina explained.
“Oh, I am so sorry.”
“Actually, neither am I,” she added.
“Is it the weather?” Omar turned his head, offering a sympathetic ear, but the disarming smile beneath his slim white mustache did not fade. “At times, this city can make Hamburg seem like a summer playground.” He pronounced it “bley-ground,” the substitute of b for p the clue that gives away all speakers for whom Arabic is the mother tongue.
“It is the political winds,” Martina said, and she glanced down pointedly at the New York Post. The waiter returned with sirloins for her and Mussa. She forked her strip of meat and cut across its backbone, the blood welling up around her blade.
Omar watched her hands, and she studied his face, but she found only inquisitive interest, with no hint of guilt or discomfort.
Martina did not absolutely know who Omar represented, which was standard field procedure. He was of Palestinian descent, so she assumed his master to be of the ilk of Abu Nidal, or perhaps Abu Ibrahim, whose chief bomb maker, Mohammed Rashid, had once been tutored by her very own RAF cell in Germany. One of these men, who would loathe an Israeli-Arab rapprochement of any kind, might well have suggested her for the job, and she was wise enough to understand the use of this elderly buffer. But she would have been a fool to allow propriety to prevent her from some accusative probing.
“I wonder who might be so foolish as to commit so terrible an atrocity,” she wondered in encoded politesse.
“It is a shame,” said Omar, taking up her tone.
“Especially when peace seems in the offing.”
“Perhaps close at hand.”
Martina chewed a piece of meat, while Mussa watched his elders like a silent ball boy. He had quickly lost interest in his own meal.
“Such secret deals are precarious enough,” Martina continued, a thin reference to the prisoner exchange.
“A house of cards,” Omar agreed.
“Then who would do this strange thing now? This thing that so resembles my cachet. What would your guess be?”
The old man stirred in his seat, repositioning a troublesome limb. He touched his mustache, pursed his lips, and looked up at the ceiling.
“Our troubled King of Babylon?” he posited, thinking of Saddam Hussein.
“Too busy licking his wounds to risk a final retaliation for his recent Scud festival.”
Omar nodded and refocused on Martina’s face, where he was met with an accusatory glare.
“I assure you, my daughter,” he said—and Martina stiffened at the parental endearment—“that I am no wiser than you on this matter. But since we know about the secret arrangements that will soon take place, it is good sense to think that others might know too. Not so?”
She did not answer. Except for the rippling of her jaw muscles, she moved no more than a hunting cat.
“This act,” Omar continued as he tapped the Post with a finger, “seems quite desperate. It is surely an attempt by someone who objects to the coming arrangement to throw the train and all its passengers from the track.”
“And are you saying that it might succeed?” Martina whispered, sensing Mussa’s body go stiff as he, too, understood the implication. “Are you saying that I may soon find myself on line at the New York Unemployment Office?”
Omar laughed. He could not help himself, for the image of Martina, in her fashionable clothing, filling out a form where under “Skills” she might write, “Terrorist—References available upon request,” filled his eyes with tears that he dabbed away with his handkerchief.
His amusement did not improve Martina’s mood, for the idea that the prisoner exchange might be canceled due to the consular attack would mean that her own contract would be voided. Yadd Allah would be left begging at the back door of some mosque in Jersey City. However Omar answered now, if it was a lie, she would have to read it on his face, in his body.
He leaned toward the table, placing his fingertips together as if in prayer, and he spoke into Martina’s eyes like a kindly old professor imparting wisdom to a doubtful student.
“Politics has many levels, my dear, and the animals of politics have their public voices. Below those voices, they have spirits, where their truths live. The voices, so I hear, are even now hurling accusations at the United Nations. But the spirits carry on unchanged. You, too, are expected to carry on, despite some fears that you may have now.”
Mussa recoiled into the back of his chair. He suddenly had to pee, in part reaction to the beer, but mosdy because he had witnessed Martina’s rage before, and this old man’s deprecation of her courage could ignite unpredictable reactions. But her hand reached out and held him still.
“I assure you, Omar, that I am not a nervous bride,” she said. “However, it is a common fact that men do often panic just before the wedding. Their own fears that they cannot possibly be faithful cause them to cheat, to commit dangerous dalliances, sometimes on the brink of the ceremony.”
“Well, this groom is true to you,” Omar insisted, finally showing some impatience.
“Then who is insulting me with imitation? I do not mind the chase, Omar, but I wish to be told when the dogs are running.”
“I do not know,” he snapped. “But I suggest you just ignore it.”
Omar’s vehemence seemed genuine, and Martina finally nodded, the matter closed. She waved at the waiter, then mimed the bringing of a handled cup to her lips, formed a C with her hand, and held up three fingers.
The Nylon Hand of God Page 5