The Terrorist's Holiday

by Andrew Neiderman

  A small stairway led downstairs to the four sweat rooms, two dry heat and two steam. There was a cold-water plunge, about the size of a small swimming pool, in the middle. There were sinks and needle showers, as well as bathrooms, on the lower floor. Another hallway led off the sweat room area to the indoor pool.

  Nessim got his locker key quickly and went to a far corner to undress. He turned his body so no one would be able to see the bloodstain. When he stripped off his shirt, he stared down at the blood that had seeped through. He was repulsed by it now and wanted to wash his body. He took off all his clothes and followed the stairway down to the sweat rooms, a place he considered perfect for hiding. The room filled with the steam heat was foggy. When he looked through the window in the door, he couldn’t tell if there was more than one man in it. All he saw was one man near the door. He opened it and stepped inside, making his way to the wooden benches.

  The room had a small rock formation in the left corner. He heard the thin stream of water running over it. Clouds of steam rose from the floor. He used the towel to wipe his chest and then sat back, his face in his hands. When he peered around, he saw that three men were sitting across from him, all with their eyes closed. They and the man near the door were the only ones in the room.

  He looked at his watch. The face of it was covered by beads of condensation and when he wiped it, he noted that the condensation was forming on the inside as well. Two of the three men across from him got up suddenly and left the room. The one at the door soon followed. Except for the man now across from him, Nessim was alone. He started to think about the terrible series of events that had taken place. He had hoped he wouldn’t, but the quiet of the steam room encouraged it.

  Upstairs, Trustman stopped at the desk and asked about Nessim. The attendant nodded, recalling him.

  “About ten, fifteen minutes ago. Don’t recall him wearing a bathing suit though. Must’ve gone into the sauna.”

  “Thanks.” Trustman started for the stairway.

  “Sir. You’re not supposed to go down there in clothes, especially wearing shoes.”

  “I just want to locate him.”

  “I could call down for you.”

  A number of men dressing and undressing turned to look at him. Damn, he thought. He didn’t want to attract any more attention than necessary now. He slipped off his shoes.

  “I’ll just be a moment,” he said. The attendant shrugged.

  Trustman walked down the stairway slowly. He stopped at the bottom and studied the area. Some men were in the cold plunge, and a few had come out of the shower area. The door to one of the dry heat rooms across the way opened. He peered through the doorway. It looked crowded. Another attendant came out of the massage room.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No,” he said roughly.

  “Well, you’re not supposed to be …”

  Trustman started away from him.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m just looking for a friend,” he said. He went to the dry heat room and opened the door. A room full of naked men looked his way. He stood there studying them.

  “Close the fuckin’ door,” someone shouted. The rest laughed. He shut it and went across the way to the other dry heat room. Fewer men were there, and he was quick to determine Nessim wasn’t one of them. When he turned around, he saw two men come out of a wet steam room, shortly followed by a third. The attendant, with his hands on his hips, stared at Trustman a moment. Then he shook his head and went back to the massage area. Trustman started across to the wet steam room.

  The man sitting opposite Nessim looked asleep. Nessim wondered how someone could do that in the steam heat. The intensity of the temperature had brought a redness to his body. A wet film of the condensed steam and his own sweat covered him. The man looked as though he was melting. Suddenly, the door opened. Nessim recognized Trustman immediately. Quickly, he buried his face in his towel and leaned over.

  Trustman could see nothing clearly, and the steam annoyed him. He dropped his shoes to the floor and stepped into the room. Two men were on the far side, but one was older looking. The other … It was possible, he thought. He felt for his pistol and started across the tile floor.

  Nessim waited until Trustman was right beside him; then he slid his right leg out and swung it behind his ankles. The blow sat the Israeli security man down with a thud. Instantly, Nessim flipped his towel over Trustman’s head and wrapped it tightly around his throat. Trustman, momentarily dazed by the fall, first struggled against the material choking him, trying to tear it away from his neck. Then he attempted to turn on his stomach. He reached back for Nessim’s arm, but Nessim evaded his grasp. When Trustman, a much more powerful man, did succeed in twisting his body over, Nessim simply moved with him, still maintaining his tension on the towel.

  Trustman coughed and sputtered. The cutoff of air, combined with the terrible heat, weakened him quickly now. He slipped on the slimy tile. Any attempt to take hold of the man’s body failed because he couldn’t swing his arms around far enough, and the man was agile. Why had he come so close to him? What an error. What a stupid error. He made an effort to stand, but he had to pull against the towel to do that, and the effort only aided Nessim.

  Trustman began to swing out wildly, desperate to make contact with the man behind him. He stumbled to his knees and then fell forward, hitting the top of his head on the wooden bench. He felt his eyes bulge and the muscles in his face strain with his efforts. Suddenly his tongue seemed to be crowding his mouth and he opened it to let his tongue rush out. It got caught between his teeth, now clenching, and he tasted his own blood. His head began spinning and spinning. He was blacking out. It was all over. What an ignominious way to die was his final thought.

  Bill Marcus woke with a start. What the hell was going on? It looked like one man humping another fully dressed man right in the steam room. He wiped his face quickly. The dressed man was waving wildly. He heard the sound of choking and then he saw the towel.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, what the …” He stood up. The dressed man went down on the floor. “What the hell’s going—”

  The naked man spun around and hit him right in the Adam’s apple. It was the most shocking, painful thing Marcus had ever experienced, and he crumpled quickly, grabbing at his own throat. He raised his left arm in an effort to keep the maniac away.

  Nessim found Trustman’s gun quickly and stood up again. It was miraculous that no one else had come into the room, but this man he had just hit … He pointed the gun at him. No, he thought, the noise. He leaned over and hit him hard on the back of the head. The man slumped into silence. Nessim took his towel, wrapped it around himself, threw the pistol into the rocks in the corner, and quickly left the room. No one paid any particular attention to him as he went up the stairs.

  Barry had come into the lobby, hoping to find Trustman at the main desk, but only a few guests were gathered there. Mrs. Adelman was explaining something to them in her characteristically patient, but pedantic manner. He approached, looking this way and that for signs of the Israeli security man.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Adelman told him, when Barry asked about Trustman, “he was here a while ago. A Mr. Kleinman had been waiting for him.”

  “Kleinman, yes. Which way did they go?”

  “I didn’t see, I’m sorry.”

  “Get me Mr. Kleinman’s room,” he demanded, picking up the house phone on the counter. Mrs. Adelman looked at him and then told the switchboard operator. When he got Kleinman on the phone, he told him where he had sent Karl Trustman.

  The health club was a scene of bedlam by the time Barry got there. Dozens of naked men stood around the wet steam room entrance. Barry pushed his way through. An attendant stood blocking the door.

  “What happened?” Barry asked. He flashed his badge. “I’m working for the hotel now.”

  “A few guys went in there an
d found this dude, all dressed yet, mind you, out cold on the floor. He looks dead. Another guy was rapped pretty hard on the back of his head.”

  Barry entered. Bill Marcus was sitting up on the bench, holding a towel behind his head. He looked dazed and confused. One of the attendants, a short, thin black man, sat beside him holding his arm. Karl Trustman lay crumpled on the floor; Barry felt for his pulse.

  “What happened here?” he asked, turning.

  “He says two men was fighting,” the attendant replied, acting now like a translator, “the guy on the floor and a naked guy. He saw him gettin’ choked wit’ a towel. The naked guy hits him in his throat and den raps him wit’ somethin’ hard. He thinks it was a pipe. We called hotel security. You wit’ hotel security?”

  Barry nodded, then ordered, “You’d better take this man into one of your back rooms and let him lie down. Then close this room off and cut the steam.”

  “Sure. What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  Barry didn’t reply. He looked at Trustman again. The security man’s face revealed his great struggle for life. It was ugly—the features distorted and exaggerated by the effort. His lips looked swollen, his nostrils wide, his eyes bulged. Barry searched Trustman’s body for his pistol and couldn’t find it.

  “Don’t let anyone else enter,” he told the attendant at the door. “The local police will be here to investigate. I gave the other man some instructions.”

  “Sure.”

  “What went on in there?” a plump man with a towel wrapped around himself asked.

  “A murder,” Barry said. “Some grudge fight,” he added. “Anybody see a tall, well-built, dark-complexioned guy leave the room? See which way he went?” There were no replies. He looked about for a moment and then hurried back up the stairs.

  Lillian Rothberg and a contingent of her followers, including Toby Marcus, had gathered on the lawn outside to greet Chaim Eban as soon as his helicopter landed. She had gotten the musicians who had played in the lobby out there as well. Other guests, seeing the gathering from the windows of the hotel, began coming out. The music began again.

  It was a beautiful spring day. There was only a slight breeze in the air, and the cloudless sky had a rich blue hue. Lillian brushed down her daughter Lori’s dress and looked about her. Her other daughter, Denise, hadn’t been where she told her to meet them. Just like her to miss the important moments, Lillian thought. She couldn’t worry about it now. Her time was about to begin. From this moment on, she’d be at the center of things. A few photographers from the newspapers were here to take pictures of Eban’s arrival. They’ll be in the New York papers tomorrow, she thought. She was anxious to be one of the first at Chaim Eban’s side.

  Suddenly, however, David Oberman was calling to her. He came walking across the lawn rather quickly. She turned and met him halfway.

  “He won’t land here,” he said. She noted the deep seriousness in his face. “For security reasons.”

  “Where then?”

  “On the roof.”

  “On the roof? But …” She turned and looked at the crowd, the musicians, the photographers. “It’s all set …”

  David shook his head.

  “We have a serious security problem,” he repeated. “I don’t even know whether or not he’ll be staying. I advised him not to come.”

  “What!”

  “We’ll contact you later.”

  David walked past her and went to the band to quiet them down. Then he announced that Chaim Eban would land on the roof. There were groans of disappointment. He didn’t answer any of the questions thrown at him. Instead he hurried back to the hotel. Lillian looked after him. Her heart sank. It all had the appearance of a disaster.

  31

  Nessim was tired of running and tired of doing battle. A feeling of hysteria had been building inside him. Normally a stoic man, he was now being ripped apart by his emotions. Kept in check and under strict control for so much of his past few years, the feelings tore loose with a raging intensity. Yusuf and Clea, the two people he loved most in the world, the only people he loved in the world, were dead. He had no one but himself, and he had long ago come to hate himself. He saw at once that his brother and Clea had been two conflicting parts of his own personality. Each had demanded full attention. Now they were both gone, and he was overcome with a great sense of emptiness.

  On top of this, he had been thrown into desperate battles for his life. The animal in him had clawed successfully out of danger each time, and despite his feeling of gloom, he had clung to life with as great a tenacity as a young man with everything in the world going for him. But it had all drained and fatigued him. He moved like a man in a daze. His eyes were red from the strain. His muscles ached with the efforts.

  When the mission had been explained to him and he had contemplated it in all its aspects, he rejoiced in the fact that it was a hit-and-run job. He was to go on. There were things yet to do. His time with Clea had encouraged future imaginings. He had undergone a significant change in the sense that he permitted himself the luxury of hope. Most of the other men he knew who served the organization were men of bleak hearts. They thought of themselves as the walking dead. He had spoken with men who willingly tied bombs to their bodies and walked onto airplanes to detonate and explode, envisioning their bodies, and thus their lives, as extensions of the weapons they threw at the enemy. These people had no personal hope. They didn’t see themselves as having a future. Until he had met Clea, he had begun to move in that direction and have a similar image of himself. She changed it, and now she was dead. The old image was back again.

  He would go downstairs into the darkness of that hotel basement and he would crawl in beside his brother’s body. He would wait in the dark and when the time came, he would detonate the explosives with his arm around Yusuf. His brother had wanted to be beside him when he did it. Now he would be. Nessim was determined that this would be the final scene.

  After he battled Trustman, he went to the locker upstairs quickly and dressed. He heard the voices of shouting, hysterical men downstairs as some of them discovered the bodies. It took everyone’s attention and he walked out unnoticed. He headed for the nearest stairway and went down to the basement. He heard voices all the way down at the end, but other than that, no one was around. Quickly he made his way back to the girders and disappeared under the hotel. No one saw him go there. No one knew what he carried.

  Chaim Eban’s helicopter appeared suddenly over a rim of treetops on the horizon. Guests who were outside saw it approaching and shaded their eyes to watch its descent to the hotel roof. Those guests who had gathered to greet him on the lawn walked about in the hotel in confusion. There were all sorts of rumors and stories. He would be in the lobby in twenty minutes; he would come out to address people on the lawn; he would be secluded in his rooms until dinner. Consequently, groups gathered everywhere.

  Barry was on his way back to David’s office when the helicopter landed. A patrol car from the sheriff’s office had pulled up just outside the front entrance of the hotel, but everyone thought that was all part of the preparations for Chaim Eban’s arrival. Sheriff Balberri and his deputy went directly into the hotel and David’s office and were there only a few moments before Barry arrived. David was on the phone with the security man on the roof.

  “The ’copter’s touched down,” he said. “They’ll bring him directly here.”

  “Then he refused to turn back?” Barry asked.

  “Absolutely. I think he wants to take charge of things personally.”

  “What things?” Balberri asked. He took off his hat and brushed back his long, thin graying hair. A man in his early fifties, Balberri was a man who had devoted all his life to local law enforcement. He began as a village traffic cop, became an active member of the Democratic Party, first as a committeeman and then as its candidate for county sheriff. He was a personable man wh
o became a natural campaigner and had been virtually ensconced in the office. The last few elections found him up against simply names on the ballot. No one bothered to actively campaign against him anymore. He was a phenomenon not unusual in local politics—an unbeatable candidate.

  “Karl Trustman was just murdered in the steam room,” Barry said. David’s face dropped with the shock.

  “No.”

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Balberri looked to his own deputy as if he could see something he missed. The young man just shrugged. “Who was murdered?”

  “Ralph, this is going to be very complicated, but to make things short—you know Chaim Eban, an Israeli military hero, has just landed at the hotel for a night of fund-raising and speeches.”

  “Sure.”

  “Apparently some Arab terrorist organization has plotted his death.”

  “Why weren’t we informed immediately?”

  “We weren’t sure about anything. Then things just started happening quickly. Thanks to Lieutenant Wintraub here, a New York detective, we’ve uncovered them.”

  “But not apprehended them,” Barry said.

  “There was a gun battle on the second floor during lunch and …” David swallowed and shook his head, still unable to believe it. “Tom Boggs and his man, and another security man, were both shot to death.”

  “Tom Boggs!”

  “And now, Lieutenant Wintraub has reported an advance man from Israeli security was killed.”

  “He chased the terrorist to the steam room,” Barry said. “Confronted him there.” Turning to David, Barry added, “One of your guests was hurt too. Hit on the head.”

  “That might be the ball game,” David said. “We’ve been trying to keep the lid on this so as not to panic the people.”