Prime Target

by Hugh Miller

  He screamed.

  Still twisting the thumb, Sabrina lowered her head and butted him twice on the nose. He fell against her, howling, blood running from his nostrils. Sabrina wrapped her legs round his waist.

  ‘Cut the noise,’ she said close to his ear.

  He howled louder. She tightened the grip of her legs, pinching his kidneys. As he began to roar she thrust her head forward again, splitting his lips.

  He stopped howling and began to gasp. Still holding him with her legs, Sabrina slid her hand quickly from his thumb to halfway along his hand. She took a tight grip, compressed her strength in her shoulder and twisted his wrist past its limit, tearing the flexor tendons.

  The man passed out.

  She pushed him on to his back, got his keys and freed her left hand. She removed the cuffs from the waste-pipe, rolled him on his face, cuffed his hands behind him and rolled him on to his back again. Blood still trickled from his nose.

  She stood up, stretching her legs carefully, flexing them, then she slowly raised her arms and stretched them above her head.

  She stood in the middle of the floor, fingering the bump on her head as she slowly rotated her pelvis, feeling the bones of her spine line up. She shuffled round the room a few times until her circulation stabilized, then she drank more water.

  It was getting dark, the sunlight turning deep gold. She peered through the slats at the window and saw a path leading away from the building, up past a stand of dusty trees that screened the place from the road. Fifty metres beyond the trees she could see the front end of an old Citroën 2CV.

  She turned her attention to the man. He was still unconscious and breathing erratically. Blood oozed from his nose and down over his cheek, making a pool on the floor at the side of his head. She picked up the jug and threw the remaining water in his face.

  He came round coughing and spitting, jerking his head from side to side. Sabrina watched as the pain reasserted itself. His eyes opened wide.

  ‘How’re you feeling, pal?’

  ‘Let me up!’ he hissed at her.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I will kill you!’

  ‘Not shackled like that, you won’t.’

  He shouted something in Arabic.

  ‘Was that an insult?’

  ‘My hand is injured! You must let me up! The pain is unbearable!’

  Sabrina knelt and rolled him on his side. ‘Curl your knees, that’ll stop you rolling over again.’

  His relief was visible. Even so, Sabrina thought, the pain must still be severe, judging from the way his hand had swollen and the thumb hung down.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ she said, bunching her skirt, cushioning her knees from the floorboards.

  ‘I am called Sayed.’

  ‘Well Sayed, I want to know all about Yaqub Hisham.’

  ‘I do not know the name.’

  Sabrina reached out and jerked his arm. He roared with pain.

  ‘A brief word about me, Sayed.’ She waited until his noise died to a groan. ‘I’m not the kind of woman you’re familiar with. I’m not subservient. I don’t find your maleness daunting. More to the point, I’m vindictive, irritable, pushy and given to excessive violence.’ She leaned close for emphasis. ‘Just so you understand the scale of things, I’ll warn you I haven’t started to hurt you yet.’

  She sat back on her heels. ‘Now. One more time. Tell me about Yaqub Hisham.’

  Sayed coughed, blowing a puff of dust across the floor. ‘He was a freedom fighter.’

  ‘A terrorist. I know that. Why did he go to England? Who was he working for?’

  ‘I am only a messenger, I do not know these things.’

  ‘Do you swear that?’

  ‘I swear.’

  Sabrina took hold of his elbow and jiggled his arm up and down. He howled again and this time a tear ran along his cheek.

  ‘Do you still swear?’

  ‘He … he was here, in Tetuán. He had to hide, you see. Then a man came looking for him. An American.’

  ‘What was the American’s name?’

  ‘I don’t know. I swear it,’ Sayed added hastily. ‘I never heard his name. But he had a letter of introduction from a senior officer of Hezbollah.’

  ‘Now tell me how you know that.’

  ‘I am a member of a freedom movement which Yaqub Hisham supported.’

  ‘He trained you, did he?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sayed paused and took a painful breath. ‘He was our teacher, and also our cousin. We are a movement amassed from his family.’

  ‘Amassed? How many?’

  ‘Thirty, perhaps more. We are small, but our determination is great.’ For a moment he looked defiant, turning his head to look up at Sabrina. ‘The strength of our will overcomes any oppression.’

  ‘Whatever gets you through the day, Sayed. Go ahead with the story. What did the American want with Yaqub?’

  ‘He wished to give him a professional commission. In England. Yaqub had strong doubts, but he needed money.’

  ‘And what was the commission?’

  ‘I swear, I do not know the details.’

  Sabrina looked at him. ‘Sayed, that’s not completely true, is it?’ She moved his arm the smallest fraction. ‘Is it?’

  ‘The commission was to eliminate certain members of an organizaiton.’

  Sabrina waited. ‘Well?’

  ‘I have told you.’

  ‘What organization?’

  ‘The name was difficult, I do not -’

  He cut off and clamped his mouth shut as Sabrina reached for his arm. She saw he was determined to stay quiet on this one. Using both hands she pushed him sharply on to his back, making him groan. She held his head steady with one hand, leaning her weight on his forehead. She pushed the forefinger of the other hand in under his eyelid. He whimpered and tried to twist away.

  ‘Bank on what I tell you, Sayed. If I don’t get a believable answer in the next five seconds, I will pull your eye out.’ She pressed hard against the eyeball, making him gasp with pain. ‘If that isn’t enough, then I’ll take out the other eye. Now again, what’s the name of the organization Yaqub was gunning for?’

  ‘It… it is an emerging Jewish group, based in Germany. They are called Juli Zwanzig. It means July twentieth.’

  Sabrina remembered the photograph from the strong-box, the initials JZ on the banner. She withdrew her finger from his eye and sat back. He blinked furiously.

  ‘Yaqub was given a - what is it called? - a paper with events he had to observe.’

  ‘A timetable.’

  ‘Timetable, yes. And first he had to go to London, and there he would stay for a time, and he would use credentials supplied by the American.’

  ‘So that’s when Yaqub became Kamul Haidar?’

  ‘He had passport, visa, all necessary identifications. He was supplied with a gun, special model, easy to smuggle.’ Sayed raised his head from the floor. ‘Can I turn on my side? My hand hurts like fire.’

  Sabrina rolled him on to his side and stood up.

  ‘One more question. How many people was Yaqub supposed to kill?’

  ‘I swear by Allah, I do not know.’

  ‘Two? More than two?’

  ‘Yaqub was not told. The American would only say that leading members of Juli Zwanzig were to be his target. He would learn more when he reached England.’ Sayed rolled his eyes sideways, trying to see Sabrina’s face. ‘He believed the visit to Europe was bad luck.’

  ‘He was right on that one.’ Sabrina rattled through the bunch of keys she had taken from Sayed and found one for a Citroën. I’ll be leaving now.’

  ‘But you must release me!’

  ‘I don’t must do anything. Just you lie still and try to feel lucky I didn’t kill you.’ She stood up. ‘One piece of advice before I go, Sayed. Next time you eat a skunk, try peeling it first.’

  As she hurried out through the outer room a man coming in from outside nearly collided with her. He stared, leaped back and pu
lled a curved knife from his belt.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ Sabrina said, crouching, spreading her arms, getting the car key positioned in her fist like a spike. ‘Just back off.’

  The man lunged with the knife. Sabrina jumped aside then leaped forward as the knife swung past her face. She jerked out her fist and felt the key penetrate his cheek. He screamed. She drew her fist back. As he swung the knife again she jabbed the key into the space between his collarbones, splitting the cartilage between his larynx and his windpipe. He dropped the knife and fell back, clutching his neck. Sabrina kicked open the door and ran for the car.

  She was back at the National by nine o’clock. The drive across dusty roads filmed her skin with fine sand the colour of terracotta. At reception the old Indian told her a visitor was waiting. He did not look as if he approved.

  She went to the tiny bar and found Nat Takahashi sitting in the corner reading a copy of the local evening paper. When he saw her he looked shocked.

  ‘What happened? Did a bus hit you, or what?’

  ‘Just everyday UNACO business. We don’t mind getting our hands and all our other bits dirty. What brings you here, Nat?’

  ‘I thought I’d buy you dinner before you went back.’

  ‘You’re an angel,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’

  ‘But promise me you’ll clean yourself up first. I have a reputation to look after.’

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ she promised, going to the stairs. ‘You won’t believe the change.’

  Nat sat down to finish reading a late news item, printed in red on the back page, about two Peruvians being fished dead from a well in the Medina quarter that afternoon.

  Upstairs Sabrina entered her room, thinking how good it would be to talk to Nat about what had happened since the last time she saw him. But that was out of the question. Rules were rules, her lips were sealed.

  ‘He wouldn’t believe a word of it, anyway,’ she said, heading for the bathroom.

  16

  By 7.00 a.m., one hour after Sabrina had boarded her early flight out of Tangier, Mike Graham was in the bushes on the fringe of a public park in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. He was positioned directly opposite a squat, black-walled block of high-security apartments at Scharweber Strasse. The front door of number 17a was angled fractionally towards his vantage point, and the view was unobstructed.

  The official start of spring was only a few days off, but it was a cold morning nevertheless, and since dawn it had been raining. Mike wore the latest in lightweight, one-piece, low-reflectance thermal suits, and he had brought a flask of coffee, but by 8.30 he felt distinctly chilled.

  Beside him in the bushes, mounted on top of a garden cane stuck in the ground, was a high-frequency sound assimilator with its viewfinder fixed on the lock panel at number 17a. He had prepared for this morning’s work with a drive-by the previous day; a quick look had told him the door lock was sonic, with a deadlock back-up. In addition to the assimilator, he had brought a selection of deadlock skeletons plus a keyform profiler, with two blanks and a selection of carbon steel files, in case the deadlock was cleverer than it looked.

  At 9.10 a woman wearing a fashionable variation of a duffel coat came out of the apartment, pulling up her hood before Mike got his monocular to his eye. She closed the door, turned and pointed her sonic key at the panel. Mike pressed the button on top of the assimilator and heard it peep softly to confirm it had collected the signal.

  The woman pocketed the key, turned and went down the steps. All Mike saw of her face was a firm mouth with bright lipstick, before she turned at the foot of the steps and walked away from him. He pulled the assimilator off the cane and put it in his pocket.

  He waited and watched. On a basis of averages, it was safe to assume the flat was now empty, but waiting did no harm, except to his hands and feet, which appeared to have been isolated from his circulation.

  At ten o’clock he crossed the road and went up the steps to number 17a. It was raining heavily now and no one was about. He looked right and left, keeping his chin tucked in and leading with the top of his head so the camera above the door wouldn’t identify him. He brought out the assimilator, pointed it at the lock panel on the door and pushed the TRANSMIT button. The machine emitted a crisp beep, a duplicate of the sound the woman had used to lock the door. He was pleased she hadn’t troubled to use the deadlock key. A light push and the door opened.

  He slipped inside and shut the door behind him. For a minute he stood still, eyes shut, conditioning them to the dark. In secure premises without windows the lights were often wired to alarm systems. If an intruder switched them on, a signal was sent to the local police station. It was best to move around in the dark, using a torch any time a strong light was needed.

  When he opened his eyes he saw a dim red night light above the front door. He could see across the hall and part of the way into the room opposite, which looked like the sitting room. He went in there and switched on his little MagLite torch.

  The place was furnished with heavy modern pieces, mostly finished in black lacquer, the up-holstery covered in black and dark-blue canvas. Above the fake fireplace was a painting in a frame with a dim picture light above it. He stepped forward and looked. The painting was not good, but it was a true enough likeness for him to identify the subject as Erika Stramm.

  A sideboard along the wall opposite the door had a cupboard at one end and drawers at the other. He put the torch between his teeth and slid open the bottom drawer. It was crammed with books, perhaps a hundred of them, all paperbacks, all new, all in English, and only two titles: Armageddon in the East and The Abuses of Power, both by Erika Stramm. The drawer above held a drawing board, professional-looking drawing instruments and several dozen sheets of self-adhesive lettering.

  The top drawer looked more interesting. The torch beam picked out a stack of notebooks at the back, all well thumbed, held together with a rubber band. He put them on top of the sideboard for further examination. He also took out a ledger and a ring-binder full of invoices.

  As he probed the back of the drawer, carefully sliding a sheaf of papers past a stapler and a bottle of ink, he failed to hear a man come out of a bedroom adjoining the sitting room. He approached Mike slowly from behind, raising a walking stick in the air above his head.

  The stick came down and Mike dropped to his knees and rolled sideways. The move was instinctive, triggered every time he heard the whoosh of a blunt object moving fast. The walking stick crashed on the top of the sideboard. Simultaneously Mike kicked the feet from his assailant, knocking him on his back.

  ‘Kak eto nazy -’

  There was a scrambling, a thud as a heavy chair went over, and suddenly a terrible weight landed on Mike’s chest. Hands gripped his neck, trying to strangle him. He smelled good cologne and a trace of stale brandy.

  ‘Take it easy…’

  They wrestled in the dark, rolling across the floor until the open door stopped them. Mike’s head cracked on the other man’s cheek, making him howl and let go. Mike jumped to his feet, feeling his leg grabbed. He kicked out with the other foot. While it was still travelling his static foot was jerked forward and he landed on his back. His head struck something hard and for a moment his senses swam.

  He was aware the other man was up on his knees now and punching. Mike forced himself up, taking the blows, feeling the impact on his face and ribs. With an effort he drove himself to his feet, grabbed the man’s hair and with the other hand jabbed him in the gut. The man folded, groaning.

  Mike turned, looking for the door. He saw it but never took the first step towards it. A bunched fist hit the back of his skull and put him on his knees. He was hoisted, punched again, dumped into a chair and felt himself being tied there. There was no longer any strength in his arms to resist.

  The light came on. Mike raised his head slowly and saw the man he had fought. He was big, very big, with a shaved head and a nose that must have been broken at least three times. He
wore a blue athletic singlet and tracksuit bottoms. He was standing by the settee, looking at Mike as if he would like to hit him again.

  ‘Hi,’ Mike said.

  The man turned and walked out of the room. A moment later, Mike heard a telephone being lifted and a number tapped in.

  The dove-grey Lear jet taxied off the apron and waited to line up with the runway take-off lights. Malcolm Philpott and C.W. Whitlock were the only passengers on board.

  ‘I find executive flights soothing,’ Philpott said. He squirmed his shoulders against the sculpted padding of the seat. ‘Lots of leg-room, every convenience within reach…’ He pointed at the panel beside them. ‘Video, reading light - a really good reading light - window shades, music, even a direct line to the pilot. When you eat it’s individual attention, as enriching an experience as you’ll have in any restaurant.’

  ‘You like being pampered,’ Whitlock said.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘It’s good of you to let me share your just desserts.’

  They were flying to Dallas-Fort Worth International airport, one of the busiest in the world, where Philpott was sure their arrival would pass unnoticed.

  ‘It would have been nice if we’d been able to stay at the same hotel,’ Philpott said. ‘But the scenario hardly permits that.’

  Whitlock took a slip of paper from his pocket and read it. ‘I’m boarded somewhere off the LBJ Freeway. How far does that put me from you?’

  ‘Not far. I’m at the Fairmont on North Ackard Street - the number’s at the bottom of your bit of paper.’

  ‘And you’re Mr Beamish.’

  ‘That’s correct, Mr Tait.’

  There was a sudden roar, blanking out every other sound. The plane surged forward and bumped across the runway seams, each one shaking the cabin, and then the speed increased and they were sailing down the runway. After only a few seconds they were airborne and the noise in the cabin settled to a hum.

  ‘I’m still nervous about doing this ahead of any word from Sabrina or Mike,’ Whitlock said. ‘It’s like going on stage without any lines.’