Direct Action

by John Weisman

  11:34 P.M. The trousers were about two inches too short for the Israeli and the waist was at least three inches too big. But at any distance more than six feet away, even in daylight, Tom had to admit Reuven Ayalon would pass for Yahia Hamzi’s twin.

  That was because the Israeli understood two of the basic principles of disguise. First, he understood that the object of disguise is to play a trompe l’oeil with the mind of the observer by allowing the observer’s mind to

  think it sees what it is seeing. Reuven had studied enough psychology to understand that the human mind views the world in patterns; patterns that allow every one of us to make the scores of intuitive shortcuts we make on a daily basis. These patterns are because one particular memory section of the brain has the ability to draw a firm conclusion based on experience and patterns without having to go through endless comparisons. Thus, when someone is asked to identify a photograph of a mustached man in a bowler hat and striped baggy trousers who is holding a cane, the brain skips the intermediate steps of trying to identify every single person with a mustache we’ve ever seen because the memory section remembers watching The Gold Rush and tells the mouth to say “Charlie Chaplin.”

  Why? Because that’s the pattern the mind has been programmed to accept. The pattern is preconditioned by prior experience, prior exposure.

  Reuven understood that if a disguise reinforces the key elements of appearance, it will fool the brain into jumping to the right—which will be the wrong—conclusion. Two and two will equal four. In Hamzi’s case, the key elements were the Moroccan’s curly, pseudo-Afro hairstyle, his heavy-framed, rose-tinted eyeglasses, and his habitual light-colored suit. All three of those elements had stuck, Tom remembered, in Dianne Lamb’s memory.

  So even if Reuven was a few centimeters taller than Hamzi and twelve kilos lighter, if he built his disguise around that basic trio of key elements, the brains of anyone who knew Hamzi would instantaneously fill in the blanks and send the Yahia Hamzi recognition signal into that person’s consciousness.

  Second, Reuven understood the quacks-like-a-duck rule. If he looked like Yahia Hamzi, and he drove Yahia Hamzi’s car, and he was schlepping barrels of Yahia Hamzi’s Boissons Maghreb olives, then he had to be—quack-quack—Yahia Hamzi.

  Tom watched as the Israeli squatted and arranged the hairpiece’s ringlets in the Citroën’s rearview mirror. Then Reuven stood up and theatrically whipped Hamzi’s overcoat around his shoulders just the way the Moroccan did. Reuven struck a pose. “Not bad for quick-and-dirty, eh?”

  He pulled two pairs of flesh-colored latex gloves out of the satchel Milo had brought, pulled one pair on, and handed the other to Tom. “You’ll need these.” Reuven put two fingers into his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. “Time to move, boys.”

  38

  11 NOVEMBER 2003

  12:09 A . M .

  RUE LAMBERT

  REUVEN PULLED THE MERCEDES up onto the curb in front of L’Étrier. The bistro was shut down for the night. The street was empty—no watchers visible, although both men understood they were probably being surveilled. The Israeli switched the headlights off and popped the trunk. He swiveled toward Tom and spoke in soft French. “You remember the number?”

  “Three zero six seven nine.”

  “Justement.” He cracked his door, turned to Tom, and snapped his fingers. “Nazuz, habibi.”

  Tom nodded and exited, went to the rear of the car, which was directly opposite the front door of the safe-house building, undid the bungee cord, retrieved two of the blue plastic barrels, and hefted them into his arms. They were cumbersome, not to mention the fact that they weighed fifteen kilos each. Salah had given Tom a short black leather jacket, a black mock T-neck sweater, a pair of dark trousers that almost fit around the waist, and a light prosthetic that altered Tom’s appearance and hairstyle. Since it was one of those one-size-fits-all apparatuses, Tom felt conspicuous wearing it. But Reuven had insisted.

  They’d discussed the plan on the way over. Tom would help carry the barrels upstairs. Then he’d leave, drive Hamzi’s car away, stash it close by but out of sight, and return to the safe house by clambering up the damnable water pipe. Only this time Reuven would have dropped a climbing rope to make the ascent easier.

  Reuven slammed the driver’s-side door. The Israeli had all of Hamzi’s pocket litter—including his fist-size clump of keys. He followed Tom to the trunk, picked up one of the barrels and his black satchel, then slammed the trunk shut and hit the remote. The Mercedes’s lights blinked twice. With his head, Reuven signaled Tom to follow him. The Israeli cradled the barrel in his left arm. In his right was Hamzi’s key chain.

  There were two dozen keys on the big ring. But Reuven had decided that only three could be the safe-house front-door key. Because the building was being renovated, the original wood door had been removed. In its place was a utilitarian steel slab with sprung hinges, wide enough for wheelbar-rows to move through, and a big, industrial-strength latch-bolt lock.

  Since Ben Said would have the safe house under surveillance, everything Reuven did had to be self-assured. No fumbling, no awkwardness. He’d rearranged the keys so that the three prime candidates were right on top of the pile.

  With Tom in tow, Reuven went up the two steps to the door and inserted a key. It didn’t fit. He cursed in Arabic, hefted the barrel, shook the key ring in obvious frustration, selected a second key, and slid it into the lock.

  The cylinder ratcheted as it turned, making more noise than Tom would have liked. Reuven scowled, pulled the door open, held it while Tom went through into the entryway, then followed, pulling the metal-reinforced wood shut firmly behind him. “Mahmoud, you wait,” Reuven said in Moroccan-accented Arabic. “I’ll get the minuterie.” He fumbled slightly, then found the button and pressed it. “Come,” he growled. “Follow me.”

  The building was a wreck. The ground-floor walls had been demolished. There was plaster and dust everywhere. Bare bulbs hanging from exposed wires provided the illumination. The hallway smelled of stale cigarette smoke and old cooking oil. “The French,” Reuven said, continuing his Arabic monologue. “They live like dogs.”

  He led the way to a narrow stairway, the marble treads concave with age and thick with plaster and wood shavings. “Up,” he said, reverting into French, “deuxième étage.”

  12:13. Tom’s shoulders were burning by the time they reached the third floor, but happy to be past the construction that clogged the ground and first floors. At the landing, Reuven stopped long enough to let the lights go out. Then he pressed the minuterie.

  Reuven peered down the hallway. It was deserted. He scanned the black-and-white tile flooring, saw something, tapped Tom’s arm, and pointed. There were footprints in the fine dust.

  Reuven’s hand instructed Tom to stay where he was. The Israeli crept forward. Then he straightened up and signaled for Tom to follow.

  12:14. They stood in front of the safe-house door. Tom leaned against the wall, eased into a squatting position, and let the olive barrels slide down gently onto the corridor’s tiled surface. “Heavy, Yahia,” he said, wiping at his face with the patterned handkerchief that Salah had pre-positioned in his right-hand trouser pocket.

  Reuven grunted. He’d placed the blue barrel on the floor next to his leg, although the black satchel still hung over his shoulder.

  Now he produced a tiny LED flashlight in his left hand. Where it had come from Tom had no idea. The Israeli cast his eye down at the keys in his hand, looked at the single lock on the door, and selected the one he hoped would fit.

  Tom watched as the Israeli shone the red light on the door lock. The door itself was nothing special—solid wood, with a brass escutcheon and a single-cylinder dead-bolt lock of the most common type. He glanced up and down the door frame. There was no keypad for the security device. And then he took a quick glimpse up and down the hallway and understood Ben Said’s thinking. Every door had only one lock. And there were no burglar alarms visible anywhere. />
  So the security device would be inside. The question was, where had Ben Said put it—and if they didn’t get to the damn thing in time, where would the alarm go off?

  Well, they’d find out soon enough.

  12:14:41. Reuven turned the key. Tom heard the dead bolt click three times. That was unusual. Most dead bolts opened on two turns of the key.

  Reuven pressed the handle down and pushed the door inward.

  Tom heard a muted but unmistakable electronic squeal from inside the safe house—as if an infrared beam had tripped an alarm box.

  12:14:50. Reuven stepped across the threshold. Tom followed. The Israeli closed the door behind them and panned the light, moving it quickly but evenly left to right, right to left.

  Tom followed the light as it played back and forth. In the corners of the foyer, he glimpsed an infrared beam projector. The receiver base would be just opposite. If the door was even cracked, the beam would be interrupted.

  They were in a narrow foyer perhaps eight feet square. To Tom’s left was a short corridor. Straight ahead was a long, narrow room, the entrance to which was blocked by a sheet of clear plastic attached to the wall by wide, dark tape. It didn’t take Tom more than a millisecond to get his bearings. The drainpipe he’d climbed was straight ahead and to his right. Beyond the plastic sheeting were the tables with the backpacks, detonators, and the pasta machine that Ben Said used to roll out his explosives.

  12:14:53. Reuven hissed, breaking Tom’s concentration. The Israeli was shining his light on the floor molding to their right. Taped to it was a four-inch block of plastic explosive. Wires from the explosive led to what looked like a cell phone.

  The beam from Reuven’s light played on the left-hand floor molding, revealing a second, identical IED.

  12:14:55. Reuven shifted the light. Straight ahead, on a small wood table—the kind that flanks sofas and holds a lamp—sat a rectangular dark box about the size and thickness of a paperback book. There was a calculator keypad embedded into the top of the box.

  12:14:57. Reuven went to the box, picked it up, and punched the five-number code onto the keypad. The wailing, which was coming from somewhere beyond the plastic sheeting, stopped, and Tom reveled in the sudden silence. He inhaled deeply—realizing at that instant that he hadn’t taken a breath since they’d crossed the threshold.

  12:15:02. Reuven flipped Tom the keys to Hamzi’s Mercedes. Using his hands, the Israeli signaled Tom to go back downstairs, get the last of the olive containers, and bring them all into the safe house, but not to close the door until he’d finished.

  12:15:44. Reuven examined the box. The keypad indeed belonged to a cheap calculator—the kind you could find at any office-supply store for less than five euros. The box itself weighed about half a pound. It was made of some sort of injection-molded carbon fiber or preformed Kydex-like material. The seams were bonded—invisible. Reuven guessed that there was either a self-destruct or a doomsday device inside, which would go off if any attempt was made to get inside.

  He dropped the box into the pocket of Hamzi’s suit coat and went to the explosive charge, dropped to one knee, checked it, and removed the detonator, rendering the IED safe.

  Next, Reuven took a look at the safe-house door. He focused his light on the bolt hole and peered inside. The hole had been chiseled out much deeper than usual. At its rearmost point, Reuven could see a metal contact plate to which a pair of black wires had been soldered.

  Obviously, when the dead bolt was turned three times a contact was made and the keypad box armed itself.

  Reuven closed the door then searched the short corridor, his LED probing the floor and walls inch by inch. There was a bathroom on the right-hand side. He entered it and found nothing untoward. Next to the bathroom was another door. Carefully, the Israeli opened it. When he shone the light down, he discovered another infrared-triggered IED, which he disarmed.

  When Reuven was confident there were no more active booby traps, he returned to the foyer and focused his attention on the plastic sheeting. Carefully, he went to the left-hand corner of the arch leading to the next room, pried the end of the tape that sealed the sheeting to the floor, and gently pulled it free. Carefully, he worked his way across the six-foot opening until the entire bottom flap of plastic had been unfastened.

  He repeated his action with the left-hand-side vertical strip, pulling just over four feet of tape free of the wall, turning when he heard Tom’s shoes scrape across the floor as the American carried the first of the blue olive barrels into the safe house.

  Reuven stood. “Bring that second barrel at once, Mahmoud,” he said. “Don’t dawdle like an Egyptian.”

  Tom gave the Israeli a dirty look.

  12:22 A.M. Tom stacked the last of the barrels in the foyer. He nodded at the plastic where Reuven had removed the tape. Reuven nodded and shone the red LED around the seam, then, tucking the big black satchel under his arm like a football, led the way into the room with the tables of detonators and knapsack bomb components.

  12:27:16. Obviously, they were in what had been the salon. To the right was a small kitchen. Straight ahead was the window adjacent to the drain-pipe Tom had climbed. Reuven pointed the light at the far wall next to the windows. Flanking each windowsill, hidden from outside view and undisturbed by the plastic sheet that covered the window, were more infrared sensors and receptor units. Taped six inches below the bottom edge of the sill apron were small explosive charges hardwired to the receptors.

  Reuven pulled a small monocular from his trouser pocket, examined the right-hand-window booby trap, quickly established that it, too, was inert, and pulled the detonator out. Then he repeated his action on the left-window unit.

  Before Tom had time to think about the nasty possibilities had he broken into the safe house the other night, Reuven tapped his shoulder. The Israeli pointed at the sidewall.

  Tom shrugged, asking, “What the hell do you want now?”

  Reuven demonstrated by pulling up one of the strips of tape that held the plastic sheeting to the wall. He motioned for Tom to do the same on the opposite side.

  Tom complied. They removed the roughly eight-by-twelve-foot section of plastic from the wall. Then, under Reuven’s direction, they laid it on the floor and retaped it securely. They repeated the sequence with a second piece of plastic sheeting, covering most of the salon and about half the foyer flooring.

  12:40 A.M. They examined the detonators on the kitchen towel. “Merde.” Reuven frowned. He didn’t like what he saw. There were five detonators and components of eight knapsacks—perhaps even nine. The numbers didn’t add up. Well, there was no way to deal with the problem now.

  Reuven scooped up the detonators, produced a handkerchief, and carefully folded them into it. He pulled Tom close, stuffed the package into the American’s pocket, and whispered into his ear, “Handle carefully. We’ll want to dissect one of these and see how he designed them.”

  12:42. Reuven went to the long table that held the sewing machine and the pasta maker. He removed all of Ben Said’s carefully rolled-out explosives, wadded them up, wrapped them in the plastic sheeting he’d removed from the window, and handed them to Tom, who took one of the empty olive barrels from under the picnic table and dropped the package into it.

  The Israeli pulled a pocket secretary and a pen from his breast pocket and wrote a short note, which he showed to Tom. Tom’s expression told Reuven that he’d received the message loud and clear.

  The Israeli reached into the waistband of his trousers, retrieved the Glock with its stubby suppressor. He demonstrated to Tom that the weapon was loaded by easing the slide back about half an inch and displaying the 9mm round in the pistol’s chamber. Then he closed the slide and handed the pistol to Tom, who somewhat self-consciously stuck the gun inside his waistband, positioning it in the small of his back, just as Reuven had done.

  12:44. Tom played with the weapon’s position until he found the most comfortable one. Then he tightened his belt one n
otch and jiggled his body. The gun was secure. He pulled Hamzi’s keys out of his trouser pocket and showed them to Reuven.

  In Arabic, Reuven said, “You take the car, Mahmoud. Leave it in the usual spot. I’ll find my own way home.”

  “Yes, Yahia.” Tom turned to go. Reuven pointed at the barrel that held Ben Said’s explosives. Tom picked it up and tucked it under his arm. Then Reuven handed him the plastic box with its security keypad. Tom squeezed through the flap of plastic sheeting, resecured the tape in position, placed the box on its table, then headed for the door.

  “Lock the door securely closed behind you, boy,” Reuven’s voice commanded.

  12:47:15 A.M. Tom was just below the first-floor landing when he heard someone turn the front door lock noisily. He’d been making his way foot by foot in the darkness, picking his way over the construction detritus, counting the steps to monitor his progress. It was easier than he’d thought: his night vision was sharp enough that he could make out more or less where he was going.

  Now all of a sudden the minuterie below came on and for an instant he was blinded. He heard voices stage-whispering in Arabic and French. There was a bump—as if a suitcase had been dropped—and then he thought he heard a voice mutter, “Khara alaay—well, shit on me.” The words were indistinct. But they told him there was more than one person down there.

  My God. Ben Said. And he’s not alone. Holding tight to the barrel under his arm, Tom raced up eight steps to the first-floor landing, trying to remember where the obstacles were. At the top he adjusted his load, then dashed tippy-toe thirteen paces to the stairwell leading to the second floor, praying that he wouldn’t trip. As he went, he worked Hamzi’s keys out of his trouser pocket, trying desperately to keep them from jingling, fighting to make no sound whatsoever—not even daring to breathe.