by Jim Case
He had begun to grow more than a bit skeptical by the middle of this second day. The police knew about Christus, certainly, though knowing and proving were two distinctly different kettles of fish.
Christus had come to police attention several times, relating to both drug and weapons smuggling, and had been under surveillance from time to time, though not by Rallis’s unit, but nothing had ever come from it. The importer was as careful as he was rumored to be successful in the black-market underworld and so far he had not spent one night in jail, though Rallis knew of several underworld murders that could be laid at his doorstep, probably carried out by his henchmen, but much as this present supposed opportunity to close Christus’s career once and for all appealed to him, it actually paled to insignificance next to the real reason he had put himself on the front line on this stakeout when he could have been safely riding it out behind his desk at Headquarters.
A chance at closing in on the Palestine Liberation Guerrilla Force meant a chance to arrest Farouk Hassan and his unit, the prime movers of the PLGF, and that, Rallis knew, would be just the ticket to make his superiors overlook his practically nonexistent progress thus far in tracking down and rooting out the terrorist cells known to be operating in this city.
The Greek government had its antiterrorist division, of course, but they had been of little help to Rallis since they really knew little more than he did, and in any event you could not expect a government agency to be overly cooperative with a unit with a similar function at the local level.
He had come to the conclusion that hunting terrorists was like hunting shadows. They had no set base of operations, being constantly on the move, totally mobile, and generally the participants of any action—like the Rome or Vienna airport massacres, converged on a city from different points of origin—generally traveling on Syrian or Iraqui passports, sometimes days, sometimes only hours, before the action was to commence. You did not know what they were up to until the guns opened fire and the innocent went screaming and dying with blood splashing everything in sight.
Rallis noted the van up ahead picking up speed, unable to travel very fast but weaving more between the hubbub of vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians.
“Don’t lose them,” he rasped at the driver.
Detective Giorgios steered through an opening in the traffic where a tourist bus was loading near Omonia Square.
“I won’t, Inspector. Do you really think Christus will lead us to al Hussan?”
“He’d better,” growled Rallis. “This is the only lead we’ve got.”
As far as he could tell from the skimpy dossier on the PLGF, Farouk Hassan was the Palestinian Liberation Guerrilla Force; a wily, ruthless mass-murderer whose rage was fueled by memories of the humiliations his own people had suffered over the years.
As the unmarked police car threaded through the traffic, Giorgios staying back far enough so as not to crowd the van up ahead and yet always keeping the van in sight, Rallis reflected on the kind of man he hoped to apprehend this day.
Hassan had been born about the time of Israel’s war of independence, and the boy’s family had been forced from their home in Galilee to settle in the yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus. Hassan’s dossier had informed Rallis that even as a boy, little Farouk had loved to play hide and seek, staying hidden long after everyone had ceased searching for him.
Farouk had gone on to attend Damascus University, where he received a degree in Arabic literature, though much of his time had also been spent consuming and absorbing the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, which had resulted in a prominent role in student politics.
He took a job for a short time as a schoolteacher, but it had not been long before Hassan had signed up as a foot soldier in the Palestinian struggle, at first assigned to hunting recruits in the Palestinian camps in Jordan, and receiving his first taste of combat during King Hussein’s Black September war on the PLO in 1970. Up to this point, Rallis knew Hassan’s b.g. had been not very different from thousands of other young men of Palestinian descent in the Mideast, but his interest had perked when he’d read about Hassan being sent to the Soviet Union for training as a battalion commander, after which Farouk had commanded a topflight combat unit along Beirut’s Green Line until the early 1980s when a group of disenchanted guerrillas broke away from the PLO to form the PLGF, and Farouk had gone along to sign on as their operations chief and secretary-general.
Since then, Farouk Hassan had left his mark on the pages of Mideast history with a list of terror atrocities that had an effectiveness unrivaled in their design to attract world media attention instantly and completely.
It was rumored, but not substantiated, that Farouk’s younger brother, Ali, had lately joined the ranks of the PLGF’s strategists.
To Rallis, these were enemies worth the effort it would take to catch them.
The van with Christus and Apodaka, one block ahead, turned onto Pireos after leaving the Square, traveling southwest.
Rallis wondered if this would prove to be what the Americans called a wild goose chase, but for some reason he did not think so. Athens is a compact city nestled on the sea, its central area small, and he knew it would not be long before the van’s destination became apparent if their destination was somewhere in Athens, as he was sure it would be.
“Radio the other units,” he instructed Giorgios. “Tell them to stand by and to be ready for anything.”
Tahia Ahmed, sitting on the floor of the back of the van, said sternly to the new man, “Najib, you must stop your fidgeting.” She turned to the man behind the steering wheel of the parked vehicle. “Ali, tell him to relax. He will draw attention to us the minute we step out of the van, the way he’s shaking.”
Najib Yaqub, rail thin with a harsh, thin-lipped visage, lost some of his nervous demeanor, glaring at her.
“Mind your tongue, woman. I—”
Ali Hassan turned sideways in the front seat to look back at Yaqub, who sat with his back against the opposite side of the inside of the van from Tahia.
“She’s right, Najib. I know this is your first mission for the organization, so—”
“You are not such a battle-hardened veteran yourself, Ali,” Najib bristled.
“I have enough experience to have been placed in charge of this operation,” Hassan snapped. “I forgive your loose tongue and account it to a case of nerves on your first assignment. We all experience that the first time. Allah will grant you strength when the time comes.”
Najib lowered his eyes contritely.
“Of course, Ali, I spoke out of turn. It would perhaps ease my mind, though, to know more about what I am a part of.”
Hallah al Molky snorted from where he sat in the passenger seat, an Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun resting on his lap beneath view of passersby on the sidewalks.
“Have you not been told, Najib? This is how we operate, and we would have it no other way. You and I arrived in Athens this morning from Damascus. Ali and Tahia arrived here this morning from Istanbul. We pick up these weapons from Christus, as you’ve been told, then Ali drives us to where his brother is staying and after we connect with Farouk and Abdel, then the four of us learn why we have been brought to Athens, and not a moment before. You had your chance to back out long ago.” Hallah turned his attention to watching the busy street scene outside. “You’ll be making me nervous before you’re done.”
Tahia Ahmed chuckled good-naturedly.
“That would be a change, seeing our young hotblood Hallah nervous. You wish the action had already begun, don’t you, Hallah?”
Al Molky, slightly built, not out of his teens, said in a man’s voice, without hesitation, “I live to slay the enemies of Allah and our people.”
“As do we all,” nodded Ali. He wore a Beretta in a concealed shoulder holster. He glanced at his wristwatch, then back out through the windshield at where Pireos street merged with Ermou at the foot of the Acropolis hill, near where a dozen or more workmen labored near their vehicles, vans lik
e this one, apparently on some sort of restoration project by the Agora, the original marketplace where Socrates met with his students; where vehicular traffic had to wind its way through workmen and a human ocean of tourists and throngs of peddlers and street merchants, the air a lively human babble.
“Christus should be here by now.”
No one answered him.
Ali and Hallah kept watching the street for some sign of the Greek arms dealer’s vehicle, while Najib only stared down as if in contemplation of the floor of the van.
Tahia moved to kneel, looking out the back windows of the van, watching down the crowded street in either direction with the thought that the Greek arms dealer might choose not to follow the orders Ali had telephoned a short time before. She gripped a 9mm Czech-made pistol. She suddenly wished very much that it was this time yesterday and that she and Ali were still back at that hotel in Istanbul, in bed, making love.
Tahia loved Ali Hassan as much as she loved the cause to which she had dedicated her life; a love that had unexpectedly made of life a precious thing, something it had not been for her before she had met him, and she found herself wondering if, at this moment, he was thinking of her as she thought of him.
Hallah’s excited laugh interrupted her reverie.
“There they are! Christus may be late but by Allah he has not let us down.”
Tahia watched a commercial van glide from the opposite oncoming lane of traffic and ease to a stop, its rear end several feet behind the back of their van.
“Everyone out,” ordered Ali. “Farouk has already taken care of the payment. We pick up what Christus has for us and get away as quickly as possible. Act naturally, but keep your eyes open.” He added as they began debarking from the van, “There is always the chance of trouble.”
Rallis unholstered his pistol from its shoulder holster when he saw the van up ahead, the one that read Christus Imports on the side, pulling up back-to-back with a van parked at the curb amid the flow of crawling motor traffic and tourists.
“This is it,” he hissed.
The two detectives in the backseat unholstered their pistols.
“Gutsy bastards,” one of them said. “We can’t very well turn the Acropolis hill into a shooting gallery.”
“We can’t let them get away, either,” the other man in back pointed out with no enthusiasm.
“What should we do, Inspector?” Giorgios asked from behind the steering wheel.
A half block ahead, Christus and Apodaka were debarking from their van, while three young Arab men and an Arab woman stepped from the van that had been parked, waiting.
“We can’t very well let them escape, either. Pull in, fast. Get ready, men. This won’t be easy. I’ll radio in backup. If we can just get the drop on them close up by surprise, we may be able to keep the lid on.”
He did not think he sounded very convincing.
Giorgios floored the car’s accelerator when a break in the crowd parted and sent the police vehicle zipping forward to close the distance on the two vans.
Rallis reached for the dashboard transceiver to broadcast to the backup units to close in, a rage coursing through him that had nothing to do with his job of closing in on criminals.
He hated these terrorist vermin for desecrating this sacred place that stood as a monument to the glory and genius of men; a shrine to lovers of beauty for more than 2,500 years: the Parthenon, the finest building of the ancient world; the Theater of Dionysus, dating to the fourth century B.C., where were first presented the plays of Sophocles and Euripides; the Temple of Athena Nike. All of it desecrated by animals who dealt in the slaughter of innocent civilians.
Rallis and the three men in the car rocked backward under the forward momentum as the unmarked vehicle barreled forward.
“Police!” snarled Apodaka, and he pawed for his shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
Tahia and Ali had reached into the back of Anton Christus’s van as Christus held one of the doors back for them. Tahia and Ali’s eyes had connected once across the box as they reached to take opposite ends of it in order to slide out the weapons and ammunition, but she had not been able to read what she saw in the brief look that passed between her and this man she loved so much.
Then everything fell apart as Christus’s driver cried the alarm.
She and Ali spun away from the truck, the box of weapons and ammo temporarily forgotten, reaching for their weapons.
Christus, and Hallah and Najib, who had been holding open the back door of the other van, did the same.
A sedan screeched to a stop, its tires shrieking on the pavement, nosed in toward the scene of these “laborers” transferring one box of “tools” from one of their trucks to another, the four doors of the sedan flapping open even before the car had braked to a full halt, four men from inside spilling out with pistols in their hands.
The one who had to be in charge, an older man who hopped out from the front passenger seat, started to shout, “Stop where you are, all of you! You’re under—”
Apodaka pulled off the first shot.
The policemen scattered for cover behind the open doors of their car.
Ali cleared his Beretta of its leather and fired a round that caught one of the men in the chest.
The policeman, who had jumped from one of the back doors of the car, flew into a wide-armed backward fall to the pavement.
Screams of hysteria and surprise erupted from the touristy crowd that began scrambling in every direction for the nearest cover.
The policeman from the opposite rear side of the car, and the plainclothesman who had been driving, returned Apodaka’s fire at the same time, and so Tahia could not tell whose bullets sent Christus’s driver slamming backward into the side of the van, projectiles coring his body, splashing his guts across the lettering that read Christus Imports.
Christus dodged behind the van, undercover.
Tahia saw the policeman she had guessed to be in command raised his pistol on Ali. She started to bring her own weapon up and shouted a warning to Ali at the same time.
The policeman fired a single shot that drilled Ali through the stomach, jackknifing Ali al-Hassan to the ground, where he spasmed into a fetal ball.
“Oh!” Tahia shrieked. ‘Wo!”
She rushed over to Ali’s side while Hallah stepped forward, his Ingram MAC-10 tracking toward the police car.
“Get him in the van!” the youth screamed at her. “We’ve got to get out of here! Najib, help her!”
Hallah triggered a nonstop burst from the Ingram MAC-10, the automatic fire spewing wildly at the police care and beyond.
The police car’s windshield shattered under the fusillade that pockmarked the frame of the car and began toppling people across the street among the wildly scattering crowd of pedestrians.
Tahia and Najib scrambled to each lift one of Ali’s arms around them, tugging the wounded man between them toward the back of their van. Tahia caught one glimpse of the gruesome horror that was her lover’s abdominal area. She averted her eyes with a small shriek, fighting off panic while one small part of her mind kept telling her no, no, this was not happening, though the noisy chatter of Hallah’s MAC-10 spraying everything in sight was a fearsome reminder that yes, the world had gone crazy around her.
She and Najib lowered Ali onto his back upon the floor of the van, then she turned to Hallah, yelling, “He’s in…let’s go!”
Najib jumped into the back of the van, slamming shut his side of the back doors, pressing himself to the floor of the van, a look of naked fear across his face.
Tahia crouched and pulled her door most of the way shut with one hand. Steadying herself, she opened fire with her pistol on the police car.
Hallah ran to the driver’s seat, hopped into the idling vehicle and upshifted so abruptly that Tahia was almost pitched out of the van, but she kept on firing.
The police, who had not shown themselves from behind their cover during the twenty seconds or so that Hallah had th
em pinned down, now realized that the incoming fire was from a weapon of less firepower, and the three surviving cops showed themselves at the same moment that Tahia’s pistol clicked on empty.
Projectiles pierced the back-door windows, zinging high through the van.
She slammed shut her side of the van’s back door as the vehicle sailed away from there. She threw herself across Ali, who lay on his back, tremoring with terrible shudders, holding his stomach wound. His blood smeared her.
With everything happening, she forced herself to keep in mind what was most important of all.
“Ali…dearest,” she whispered close to his ear. “Tell us where to go…where is Farouk?”
She placed her ear close to his red-specked mouth and listened as he told her. She realized tears were pouring from her eyes, down her cheeks. She cried out the address to Hallah as the police gunfire from behind them died down.
She placed her arms around Ali as the van rocketed away and then hugged her lover to her, knowing he was dying; knowing that the tears and the killing would not stop.
Pandemonium reigned, the air filled with the moaning of the dying and the civilian survivors, the street at the foot of the Acropolis hill dotted with bodies, the sirens of squad cars arriving too late, noisy above everything else in the white heat of midday.
Rallis went over behind the Christus Imports van to where the surviving detective from the backseat of the unmarked car had Christus under cover on the side of the van where Christus had remained during the shooting.
Rallis saw the van with the terrorists picking up speed as it tore away down the street.
Christus saw the look in Rallis’s eyes.
“I’m not armed!” the importer screamed.
“Where are they going?” Rallis demanded.
“I don’t know, I swear I don’t know!”
Rallis had not time to believe or disbelieve that.
He charged to the police car where Giorgios stood from examining the fallen policeman.