by Dan Simmons
“You’re changing the subject,” Cohen said flatly. “I’ve done these things because I liked your nephew and loved Levi Cole like a son and I believe you’re after who killed them. This is true?”
“Yes.”
“And the woman you think has returned to Charleston, she is part of it, not a victim?”
“Part of it, yes,” said Saul. “And your Oberst is still killing Jews?”
Saul hesitated. “He is still killing innocent people, yes.”
“And this putz in Los Angeles is involved?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” said Cohen, “you will continue to have my help, but some day there will be an accounting.”
“If it helps,” said Saul, “Natalie and I have left a sealed letter with David Eshkol. Even David does not know the details of this nightmare. If Natalie and I die or disappear, David or his executors will open the letter. They are directed to share the contents with you.”
“Wonderful,” Cohen said again. “I can hardly wait until you are both dead or missing.”
They drove in silence toward Los Angeles. Natalie dreamed that she and Rob and her father were walking through the Old Section of Charleston. It was a beautiful spring evening. The stars burned behind palmettos and new buds; the air smelled of mimosa and hyacinth. Suddenly a dog with a light-colored head on a dark body came from out of the darkness and growled at them. Natalie was afraid, but her father told her that the dog only wanted to make friends. He knelt and extended his right hand for the dog to smell it, but the dog bit it, bit and kept chewing, growling and swallowing until the hand was gone, his arm was gone, and then her father was gone. The dog had changed then, become much larger, while Natalie realized that she had grown smaller, become a little girl. The dog turned on her then, its incongruously white head glowing in the starlight, and she was too terrified to turn or run or scream. Rob touched her cheek and stepped in front of her just as the dog leaped. It struck him in the chest and knocked him down. As they struggled Natalie noticed that the dog’s strange head was growing smaller, disappearing. Then she realized that the dog had chewed and burrowed its way through Rob’s chest. She could hear the noise of its eating.
Natalie sat down heavily on the sidewalk. She was wearing skates and the blue dress she had received from her favorite aunt on her sixth birthday. Rob’s back was in front of her, a large gray wall. She looked at the pistol on the holster at his hip, but it was secured by a flap of leather and a snap and she could not bring herself to reach for it. His body shook with the violence of the animal’s movements and she could hear the chewing, snapping sounds very clearly.
She tried to rise, but each time she got her feet under her the skates would fly out and she would sprawl on her behind again. One of the skates had come loose now and hung by a green strap. She rolled to her knees and was only inches from Rob’s impossibly tall, gray back when the dog’s head burst through. Fibers of flesh and shirt clung to the thing’s cheeks and teeth. It thrashed to widen the hole; its eyes gleaming madly, its powerful jaws working like a shark’s.
Natalie crawled backward two feet, but could move no further. Her attention was riveted on the dog as it growled and snapped and burrowed to get at her. Its neck and shoulders were through the opening now. Saliva and blood splattered her. She could see the dark, matted fur of the thing’s shoulders and forelegs as it fought to free itself of its fleshy burrow. It was like watching some terrible, nightmarish birth, all the while knowing that its birth meant one’s own death.
But it was the face that riveted Natalie, froze her into immobility and made the weakness of terror rise in her throat like vomit. For above the dark fur of the powerful, thrusting shoulders and scrabbling paws, above where the blood-streaked fur paled to blue-gray, there began the whiteness— the deathmask whiteness of Melanie Fuller’s face distorted by its insane grin and the poor fit of the gigantic, oversize dentures that came to gleaming white points inches from Natalie’s eyes.
The dog-thing let out a howl, convulsed its entire body in a feral, bloody thrust of effort, and was born.
Natalie snapped awake, gulping air. She extended her hand to the van’s dash and steadied herself. The wind blowing through the open window carried the scent of sewage and diesel fumes. Headlights flared at them across the median of the interstate.
Saul was saying in a low voice, “Perhaps the advice I need is how to kill someone.”
Cohen gave him a sideways glance. “I am not a killer, Saul.”
“No. Nor am I. But between us we have seen a lot of killing. I have seen it cold and efficient in the camps, fast and fleeting in the forests, hot and patriotic in the desert, and random and mean in the streets. Perhaps it is time I learned how it is done professionally.”
“You want a seminar on killing?” asked Cohen. “Yes.”
Cohen nodded, fumbled a cigarette out of a pack in his shirt pocket, and used the van lighter on it. “These things will kill,” he said, exhaling smoke. A semitrailer going 75 m.p.h. passed in a rush of wind.
“I was thinking of something faster and less injurious to innocent people in the vicinity,” said Saul.
Cohen smiled and talked with the cigarette still in his mouth. “The most efficient way to kill someone is to hire someone who is good at killing.” He glanced at Saul. “I’m serious. Everyone does it— KGB, CIA, all the little fish in between. Americans were upset a few years ago to discover that the CIA was hiring Mafia hit men to take out Castro. When you think about it, it makes sense. Would it have been more moral to train people in an agency of a demo cratic government to go out and gun people down? The James Bond stuff is sheer crap. Professional killers are controlled psychopaths, about as sympathetic as Charles Manson, but in tighter control. Using Mafia people might just have got the job done and also kept those particular psychopaths from killing other Americans for a few weeks.” Cohen drove in silence for a moment, his cigarette glowing each time he inhaled. Finally he tapped the ash out the window and said, “We all use mercenaries when it comes to premeditated killing. One of my jobs when I worked in-country was to turn young PLO recruits to carry out executions of other Palestinian leaders. I would guess that a third of the internecine hits within the terrorist community are a result of our operations. Sometimes all we have to do to eliminate A is to take a wild potshot at D, then get the word to D that C was paid by B to eliminate D on the orders of A, and sit back and wait for the fireworks.”
“Assume that hiring someone is out of the question,” said Saul.
Natalie realized that from their quiet tones that they thought she was asleep. She realized that her eyes had almost closed again, the headlights and occasional overhead lights filtering through her eyelashes. She remembered dozing in the backseat of the car as a child, listening to the soft monotone of her parents’ conversation. But their conversation had never sounded like this.
“All right,” said Cohen, “assume that you cannot hire someone for politi cal, practical, or personal reasons. Then things get complicated. The first thing one must decide is whether or not you are willing to trade your own life for your target’s. If you are, then you have a great advantage. Traditional methods of security are essentially useless. Most of the great assassins of history have been willing to give up their own lives . . . or at least to be apprehended immediately . . . in order to carry out their sacred missions.”
“Assume in this case that the . . . killer . . . prefers to stay at large after the deed is performed,” said Saul.
“Then the difficult becomes more difficult,” said Cohen. “Choices: Military action . . . our F-16 strikes into Lebanon are nothing but indiscriminate attempts at assassination, selective use of explosives, rifles at a distance, handguns close in with an avenue of escape prepared, poison, knives, or hand-to-hand combat.” Cohen tossed out the stub of the first cigarette and lit another. “Explosives are in vogue at present, but they are very tricky, Saul.”
“How so?”
“Take the
C-4 that you have ten years’ supply of in the back right now. Safe as silly putty. You can bounce it, mold it, submerge it, sit on it, shoot it, or use it as caulking compound and it will not ignite. What ignites it is nitric acid, the explosive in the deadly little detonators packed away very, very carefully in a special box set in plastic noodles in another box back there. Have you ever used plastique, Saul?”
“No.”
“God help us,” said Cohen. “All right, tomorrow at the safe house we will have a plastique seminar. But say you have the explosive set in place, how will you detonate it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the choices are infinite— mechanical, electrical, chemical, electronic— but none are safe. Most explosive experts die preparing their little bombs. It is the single greatest killer of terrorists next to other terrorists. But let us say that you manage to plant your plastic explosive, attach the detonator, rig an electrical trigger to your detonator— to be activated by a radio signal from a transmitter— and everything is ready. You are in a car a safe distance behind the target’s vehicle. You will wait until his vehicle is in the country, away from witnesses and innocent bystanders. Instead, with your transmitter off, his car blows up while passing a school bus full of handicapped children.”
“Why?”
Natalie could hear the fatigue in Saul’s voice and she realized that he must be as bone tired as she was.
“Garage door openers, aircraft transmissions, children’s walkie-talkies, citizen-band radios,” intoned Cohen. “Even a television remote control device could set off such a trigger. So you work with a minimum of two switches on your plastique, a manual one to arm it and a line-of-sight electronic one to trigger it. The chances of failure are still great.”
“Other ways,” said Saul. “The rifle,” said Cohen. The second cigarette was almost gone. “It grants the safety of distance, allows time for retreat, is selective, and almost always efficient when used correctly. The weapon of choice. Endorsed by Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray and countless unsung others. A few problems, though.”
“What?”
“First of all, forget all that television crap about the sniper bringing his weapon somewhere in an attaché case and snapping it together while the target obligingly gets into position. A rifle and scope have to be sighted in, adjusted for distance and angle and wind velocity and the vagaries of the weapon itself. The marksman needs to have experience with that weapon and with distance and velocity ratios. A military sniper works at distances where the target has time to walk three paces between the shot and the impact. Have you had experience with rifles, Saul?”
“Not since the war . . . the European war,” said Saul. “And then never to kill a man.”
“That is all they are good for,” said Cohen. “I have things on your list back there . . . eighteen thousand dollars of your money invested in the damndest selection of things I’ve ever had to track down . . . but no rifle.”
“What about security?” said Saul. “Yours or theirs?”
“Theirs.”
“What about it?”
“How does one deal with it?”
Cohen held his cigarette European-style and squinted at the tunnel of light the headlights burrowed through the night. “Security is . . . at best . . . a doomed attempt to postpone the inevitable if someone is intent on killing you. If the target has a public life— commitments—the best security can only make it difficult for the successful assassin to escape. You saw the result last month when an untrained punk decided he wanted to shoot the American president with a .22 caliber popgun . . .”
“Aaron told me that you train your agents to use .22 Berettas,” said Saul.
“We have in recent years,” said Cohen, “but they used them close in, where knives might be expected, in situations that call for lack of noise or quick handling rather than firepower. If we sent a team in to kill someone, it would be a team . . . after weeks of following the target, rehearsing the operation, and testing the escape route. This boy who shot your president last month did so with no more preparation than you or I would use to go down to the corner to buy a newspaper.”
“So what does that prove?”
“It proves that there is no such thing as security when one’s movements are predictable,” said Cohen “A good security chief will allow his client to abide by no timetables, follow no routines, and make no engagements that might become public knowledge. Unpredictability saved Hitler’s life half a dozen times. It is the only reason we have not terminated the top three or four Palestinians on our official shit list. Whose security are we talking about in this hypothetical discussion?”
“Hypothetically?” said Saul. “Let us hypothetically discuss the security of Mr. C. Arnold Barent.”
Cohen’s head snapped around. He flicked his cigarette out the window and did not light another one. “This is why you asked for the files on Barent’s Summer Camp?”
“We are speaking hypothetically,” said Saul.
Cohen ran his hand through his hair. “Good God, man, you are insane.”
“You said that security is a hopeless attempt to forestall the inevitable,” said Saul. “Is Mr. Barent an exception?”
“Listen,” said Jack Cohen, “when the president of the United States travels anywhere . . . anywhere, even to visit leaders of other countries in secluded security zones . . . the Secret Ser vice shits bricks. If it was up to them, the president would never leave the sub-basement of the White House and they’re not very pleased with that location. The one place . . . the one place where the Secret Ser vice breathes a sigh of relief, is when a president spends time with C. Arnold Barent . . . which presidents have been doing for thirty-some years now. In June, Barent’s Heritage West Foundation throws its annual summer camp and forty or fifty of the most powerful men in the world will be kicking off their shoes and letting their proverbial hair down on his island. Now does that tell you anything about the man’s security?”
“Good?”
“The best in the world,” said Cohen. “If Tel Aviv sent the word tomorrow that the future of the state of Israel depended upon C. Arnold Barent’s sudden death, I would call in the best men we have from Israel, alert the commando teams that made Entebbe look easy, pull our revenge squads in from Eu rope, and still not give us a one-in-ten chance of coming close.”
“How would you try?” asked Saul.
Cohen drove in silence for several minutes. “Hypothetically,” he said at last, “I would wait until he was dependent upon someone else’s security . . . like the president’s . . . and try then. My God, Saul, all this talk of killing Barent. Where were you last March thirtieth?”
“In Caesarea,” said Saul. “In full view of witnesses. What else would you try?”
Cohen chewed his lip. “Barent flies constantly. Whenever there are aircraft involved there is vulnerability. The security on the ground would almost certainly preclude smuggling explosives aboard, but that would leave interception or ground-to-air missiles. If you knew where the aircraft was going to be ahead of time, when it was taking off, and how to identify it once airborne.”
“Could you do that?” asked Saul. “Yes,” said Cohen, “if we had all of the resources of the Israeli Air Force tied in with electronic intelligence ser vices and the help of American satellite and NDA intelligence and if Mr. Barent obliged us by flying over the Mediterranean or extreme southern Eu rope with a flight plan filed weeks ahead of time.”
“He has a boat,” said Saul. “No,” said Cohen, “he has a two-hundred-sixteen-foot yacht, the Antoinette, that cost sixty-nine million dollars twelve years ago when it was sold to him by a certain late unnamed Greek shipping magnate best known as the second husband of an American widow whose first husband got too close to a rifle that had been well sighted in by an ex-marine marksman.” Cohen took a breath. “Barent’s ‘boat’ has as much security aboard and around it as one of his residential islands. No one knows where it is bound or when the man will
be aboard. It has landing pads for two he li cop ters and speedboats that serve as outriders whenever there is traffic near. A torpedo or Exocet missile might sink it, but I doubt it. It has better radar, maneuverability, and damage control systems than most modern destroyers.”
“End of hypothetical discussion,” said Saul and Natalie guessed from his tone of voice that he had known everything Cohen had told him.
“This is where we get off,” said Cohen and headed up an exit ramp. The sign had said San Juan Capistrano. They stopped at an all-night gas station and Cohen paid with his credit card. Natalie got out and stretched her legs, still fighting sleep. The air was cool now and she thought she could smell the sea. Cohen was getting a cup of coffee from a machine as she walked up to the station.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Welcome back.”
“I was awake in the car . . . most of the time,” said Natalie.
Cohen sipped his coffee and made a face. “A bizarre conversation. Have you discussed Saul’s plans?”
“Yes, we worked on them together.”
“And you know the kinds of things that are in the back of the van?”
“If they’re what were on our list, yes,” said Natalie.
Cohen began walking toward the vehicle with her. “Well, I hope you both know what you’re doing.”
“We don’t,” said Natalie and smiled at him, “but we do appreciate your help, Jack.”
“Uh-huh,” he said and opened the door for her, “as long as my help doesn’t end up letting you kill yourselves faster.”
They drove eight miles up Highway 74, away from the sea, and turned north through scrub forest before stopping at the farm house. The building was dark, set a quarter of a mile down a narrow lane.
“It used to be used by our West Coast people as a safe house,’ said Cohen. “No one’s had a reason to use it for the last year or so, but somebody keeps it up, mows the yard. Locals think it’s a summer house owned by a couple of Anaheim Hills young professional types.”