by Dane Hartman
Then he turned and muttered something to Kayyim in Arabic. Kayyim couldn’t resist the temptation to glance around. When his eyes met Harry’s, he merely smiled and asked if everything were all right, whether he needed more food or drink—(non-alcoholic, naturally)—or perhaps another pillow. Harry assured him that he was fine and Kayyim returned to his mysterious documents.
They were over the first large body of land that Harry had seen since Newfoundland and he assumed it to be Ireland. That meant it was only a couple of hours, at the outside till they made Paris. It was entirely possible that Kayyim would have arranged for one of his agents to meet him at Orly, and not wait for Beirut. It was also possible that if Kayyim suspected that Harry had been involved in last night’s incident, he might see to it that Harry was killed before the plane refueled and the crew changed. Kayyim was undoubtedly adept at plotting assassinations on short notice. He decided that from here on in he would have to stay very much awake. Dozing off for even five minutes might mean a far longer sleep than he had reckoned on.
As the Pan Am jet set down at Orly, the pilot announced that all those continuing on to Istanbul, Beirut, Damascus, Kuwait, and Abu Dubai, while permitted to leave the plane, were obliged to remain in the transit terminal of the airport. There they could dine if they wished and make purchases in the duty-free shop.
Harry waited for instructions from Kayyim as to what he wanted him to do during the stopover.
Kayyim said that he would stay on board and catch up on his work. “I have Achmed with me. I will be safe here, have no worry. Why don’t you get some exercise, stretch your legs?”
Achmed gave Harry such a weird gold-capped smile that Harry was loath to go anywhere. But it would not do to protest. He casually left the two and proceeded to join the others who were filing out of the plane.
It was only after he reached the international transit building that he spied Ellie. Or rather she spied him.
“I don’t believe this,” he said. “No, I take that back. I believe it all right.”
“Surprised?”
She had been confined to the economy class which was why Harry had not seen her during the flight. Her station might spring for a trip to Beirut but not the frills that could go with it.
“Surprised isn’t the word I had in mind, Miss Winston.”
“Shit,” she said, “Miss Winston again. Don’t you ever give up?”
“Don’t you?”
He was walking quickly though there wasn’t anywhere to go and escaping her was patently impossible, particularly in the transit building of Orly Airport.
“You wouldn’t want to tell me what you’ve discovered about Kayyim, would you?”
“No, But I don’t imagine it much matters. You’ll probably find out anyway.”
“I’m telling you, Callahan, we would make a great team, you and I, if you’d let me in on the game.”
“We’re going into a war zone and you’re making it sound like it’s a hockey face-off.”
“You sound just like my boyfriend.”
“Well, that might be because your boyfriend’s a sensible fellow, ever think of that?”
He decided that he had nothing more to say to the relentless anchor woman of Station KCVO and turned away. He started toward the duty-free shop which a horde of tourists had descended upon in hope of snatching up untaxed cigarettes, liquor, and Sony radios. Ellie did not pursue him this time. But she kept watching him.
Suddenly he heard her shout to him.
He whipped about at the sound of his name and saw a man he judged to be about sixty-five, a couple of inches taller than he was, step up to him with a gun so small it almost disappeared in the cup of his hand. The silencer attachment protruding from it gave its presence away.
Harry dived, unbalancing a shopper who lost his grip on a bottle of Bacardi’s. The bottle smashed to the floor and created such a disturbance that no one heard the muffled report of the gun.
The shop window, however, collapsed. Glass slivers went flying among a tour group, leaving many of them with gashes and sharp razor-like cuts.
Harry rolled along the aisle of the shop because no other course of action was open to him. Any number of people were in his way. They protected him, but at the same time were exposed to the line of fire.
The man who’d just tried to kill him had gone. As soon as Harry realized he was safe he got off the floor and, ignoring the protests of the confused travelers on all sides of him, raced from the shop into the terminal proper. Ellie said nothing but pointed out the direction in which the assailant had fled.
Harry rushed headlong in pursuit; the man had only a few seconds on him, and there was no way he could leave this part of the airport without having to pass through customs which would delay him for a considerable period of time
Moreover, the man was tall and should not be difficult to pick out.
Harry did not want to use his gun if he could help it. He was in a diplomatically touchy situation here, on French territory but not yet, officially, in France. Already airport security personnel were heading towards the duty-free shop to see what had been the cause of all this commotion. They would find cut-up people and a window partially shot out and nothing else but witnesses with a great great many conflicting stories.
No one seemed to take notice of Harry, probably assuming that he was simply in a hurry to get to a plane that was minutes away from departing.
He reconnoitered the entire terminal, but the man was nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of him at customs or anywhere else, neither in the shops nor the restaurants nor the kiosks.
As he started back, resigned to losing his quarry, an electronic chime sounded over the speaker system followed by an announcement in French that his Pan Am flight was taking on passengers for the next lap of its journey to the Mideast.
Then he caught sight of Ellie. He realized that she was quietly signaling him. There was one place he hadn’t checked in his search, mainly because he never thought of it as a hiding place for a killer. But he could understand why Ellie had found out about it. She was gesturing towards a door to her right.
The outline of a woman on the door indicated the purpose the room inside served.
Ellie sidled up to him and whispered, “He went in there a few minutes ago. I think I heard a scream, I’m not sure. There may be someone in there with him. Maybe more than one.”
Overhead the speaker came to life again: “Attention. Pan Am Numero Quarante-Six à départer en cinq minutes.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” Ellie said.
“Go back on board. If I don’t get there watch Kayyim for me.”
“Am I to infer that I am now part of the team?”
“It sure looks like it, doesn’t it, Miss Winston?”
She wished him luck, not with words, she said nothing, but with her eyes. She had very expressive eyes. Harry began to understand why she made such a good anchorwoman.
Then she fell in with the rest of the passengers, quickening her pace as she approached the departure gate.
As soon as the corridor emptied and there was no one nearby to observe him, Harry edged open the ladies’ room door, very cautiously, no more than an inch. A sufficient gap was created for him to get an idea of the situation inside.
All he could see was one wall, but this one wall was covered entirely by a mirror. In the mirror the gunman was visible, so was his hostage, a terrified woman whose skirt was bundled up about her knees. There was no question she’d been taken by surprise; her eyes were filled with tears and she was whimpering very softly. Her captor held one hand over her lips; the other had a gun to her head.
He must have heard the door opening for Harry saw he adjusted his position and pulled the woman closer to him as though to make it clear how little mobility she had.
Harry had the advantage of knowing where his opponent was, whereas the gunman could only see the door slightly ajar. He would have no way of knowing who was behind it.
Then
Harry moved, firing his Magnum not at the gunman, who was too well hidden by the woman, but at the mirror. The roar of the Magnum was distraction enough, particularly in such a small space with all the enamel and tiled surfaces to echo off of. But the damage done to the mirror was of greater significance; glass erupted in every direction, raining down on hostage and captor alike, slicing them both so that suddenly their flesh all but vanished under a coating of blood. It was as though they’d broken out in a rash simultaneously. Too bad about the woman, Harry thought, but there was no other way to do it. Better to endure some nasty cuts than die.
As he had anticipated, the gunman had released his hold on the woman, too preoccupied by the pain and by the ringing in his ears to maintain custody of her. When the woman screaming in terror, slipped away from him, Harry fired a second round, this time at the man himself.
The man was struck fatally in the chest and the momentum of the round was powerful enough to send him reeling backwards through the door of one of the stalls, leaving him slumped awkwardly on the toilet with blood dripping steadily down his chest. His eyes were still open and he had the look of a man too long constipated.
The woman fled. The last Harry saw, she was running down the corridor, possibly thinking that he too posed a threat. There was still no one in the vicinity but he did not expect that this state of affairs would last for long; someone must have heard the two gunshots.
Meanwhile, a woman with a very ingratiating voice announced the last call for passengers boarding Pan Am Flight Forty-Six to Istanbul, Beirut, and points further east.
Harry hastily dug through the pockets of the man he had just killed and found two items of interest: a wallet and a passport. He slipped both into his pockets, having no time to examine either, and left the ladies’ room. A wealthy looking woman of advanced years was about to enter. She scowled at Harry when he emerged, no doubt wondering what he was doing in territory off-limits to the male sex.
Harry began to race in the direction of the departure gate, prepared for the scream that he was sure must come as soon as the woman discovered the condition of the ladies’ room and the condition of the man who was still in it. The scream came all right, but it was much louder and higher pitched than he’d have thought humanly possible. It was a scream to wake the dead though not necessarily a man with a slug from a .44 magnum inside him.
But by the time the airport security and police arrived at the scene, Harry was already on board his plane. He was the last person on. The cabin door was closed moments after he entered.
Casually, he advanced along the aisle toward first class which was divided from the economy section by a beige curtain.
Ellie was seated on an aisle seat. She saw him coming but gave no sign of recognition. As Harry approached her, he whispered, “I owe you one.”
“I owed you one,” she replied in an equally low voice, “I was just returning the favor.”
“See you in Beirut,” he said, smiling, and continued on his way.
Achmed and Kayyim were just where he’d left them. They didn’t turn around until he took the seat behind them. They probably hadn’t been expecting to see him back. Achmed’s face darkened at the sight of Harry and he muttered something in Arabic that Harry was certain had to do with his mother. There is an art to cursing in Arabic. With an astonishing variety of abuse possible, an insult might lead to a blood feud persisting for generations. Harry had the sense Achmed was running through the entire spectrum of curses under his breath. Kayyim, on the other hand, being a more reserved sort, responded only with a mild look of reproach, as if it were bad form for Harry to still be alive.
Then, in a very pleasant way, he asked if Harry had enjoyed the stopover.
“Let’s say I got plenty of exercise,” Harry replied, and Kayyim nodded as if he knew exactly what Harry was talking about.
The Small Man hated Muzak. He would willingly have blown out the speakers or blown up L.A.’s airport just as he had San Francisco’s, but neither option was available to him at the moment. For his sole responsibility now was to follow Ellie Winston and keep the Alpha Group aware of her movements. Obviously, he had done a wretchedly bad job because here he was in San Francisco while she was in Paris or wherever she had decided to go to after Paris.
Now he was in a telephone booth attempting once again to contact the unit commander who’d assigned him to track Winston in the first place.
At least this time he had managed to reach the commander who listened impatiently to his account of how he had lost her.
“How was I to know she was going to jump aboard a jetliner to Europe?” he asked plaintively. “San Diego, Vegas, Tijuana, all right, but Europe? I tried getting hold of you, but you were nowhere to be found.”
The unit commander was not interested in his excuses. “You have your credentials in order?”
“Naturally.” He had several different collections of credentials in order, in fact, depending on which alias he chose to use.
“Do you think you can possibly catch up with her?”
The Small Man hesitated, but as he glanced out of the phone booth he caught sight of the man Winston had met in a nearby restaurant just before she embarked on her flight. He now had a small suitcase in his hand which he had not had before. The suitcase not only looked new but there was even a tag dangling from it that the man had neglected to remove after purchasing it. The Small Man had a sense of what this man was up to.
“Well, answer my question.” The unit commander had an imperious nature and infrequently abided undisciplined behavior.
“Yes,” the Small Man said, “I think I can catch up with her. There’s someone here who can lead me right to her.”
“Good then. Check in with me when you have her in contact again.”
The Small Man rung off and stepped out into the lounge. He was no longer so acutely conscious of the dreadful Muzak. He had David Whittier to concentrate on.
C H A P T E R
E i g h t
At the first available opportunity, Harry slipped into the first-class lavatory and inspected the wallet and passport that he’d purloined from the man at Orly.
The wallet contained an interesting sum of money, in several currencies: U.S., French, Lebanese, British, Jordanian, and Libyan. The man traveled a lot, Harry thought, and his conclusion was borne out by the passport which was blurred with indecipherable stamps from a dozen or more countries in the Middle East and Europe. His name was Muhammed Ajai though Harry doubted very much whether it was the name his parents had given him at birth. The passport indicated also that his nationality was Palestinian.
Kayyim must have been responsible for the attack on him; how he had managed to get word to Ajai without physically leaving the plane was the thing Harry couldn’t figure out. Most likely there was a confederate aboard—another passenger or even one of the members of the flight crew—who not only passed on Kayyim’s command, but also pointed out the victim.
Kayyim would have realized by now that the attempt had failed and Harry suffered from no illusions that he wouldn’t try again. In Beirut he would have an easier time of it; there in a city already torn by warfare who would notice one more dead body?
Whatever happened, he prayed that Ellie could be kept out of it. Bad enough he was marked for murder; if she was linked with him in any way she would surely be marked as well.
From the air, Beirut looked peaceful enough. The endless blue skies and the bright summer sun combined to create a deceptive atmosphere of tranquility. One of the flight attendants was heard to remark that the airport had opened only the previous day after a week’s shutdown due to incessant shelling. For some people the very act of landing in a plane is bad enough; to know that somebody might be waiting to blow you to kingdom come once you actually got down, was even more disheartening.
But it was quiet on the airfield. It was quiet even for a normal airfield. That there was very little traffic was understandable; a country doesn’t get a lot of tourists and busin
essmen coming and going in the middle of a war—unless those businessmen happened to be selling weapons of death.
Here is where the shit hits the fan, Harry thought. Kayyim had been told that Harry was supposed to turn right around which would mean that there was no need to leave the airport. Nor did Harry really care to, in spite of the simple curiosity of seeing where Kayyim was going in Beirut.
But it seemed that Kayyim had other ideas. “Mr. Turner,” he said, “would you do me the honor of accepting my hospitality for tonight? After all, you have come all this way and risked your life for me, it is the least I can do. To get on another plane and endure the ordeal of another air flight to the States is foolish. You would feel so much better if you rested tonight and went back in the morning.”
Harry knew he should decline, but something caused him to accept the invitation. Maybe his curiosity was even greater than he thought. In any case, he only hoped that Kayyim adhered to the famous Islamic and Bedouin customs governing the welfare of a guest. A man might be your deadly enemy, but if he came into your house you were obligated to serve him in every way you could; then in the morning, as soon as he was on his way again, you were free to kill him.
Of course, in a city where militiamen break into a hospital and start spraying the patients with machine gun fire you couldn’t count on anything, least of all old Islamic traditions.
Kayyim expressed his delight when Harry agreed though Achmed looked none too pleased which was, for Harry, not a bad sign.
“Good. Then you come with me. We will have no trouble with customs. I am well known in Beirut.”
Before they could disembark, one of the flight attendants approached Harry and surreptitiously deposited a folded piece of paper in the pouch facing his seat, squashing it between the in-flight magazine and the air sickness bag.
When he was certain that neither Kayyim nor his bodyguard were observing him, he retrieved the paper and unfolded it: