Circle Around the Sun

by M. D. Johnson

  The beauty and clarity of her voice was magnificent and when she reached the poignant lines, “I will go far away; alone like the echo of the hallowed bell, up there amidst the white snow. I’ll go alone and far away up among the golden clouds,” you could hear a pin drop as two hundred people held their breath and Emily let her tears flow freely.

  Callas continued with, “Tu che invoke con orrore” from Spontini’s La Vestale.

  “Thou, whom I call upon in terror,” Cowan translated. “Now that’s Madame Callas at her best.” He applauded appreciatively when she had finished, “The priestess giving the golden rod of guardianship to her illicit lover. She is a stunning woman, as they say here, ‘Une belle laide’, literally beautiful and ugly at one and the same time, but that titian hair makes her every inch the pagan priestess, d’you not agree?”

  But Emily was elsewhere in thought, staring across the room as the tanned, handsome figure of Tony Shallal approached her.

  “Well, well, Amina Desai. What are you doing here? And what’s this new get up, my dear? Bitch in black?”

  He leaned over to kiss her cheek while his hand slid to the back of her neck and purposely undid her chignon allowing her hair to fall carelessly around her neck.

  “How dare you, you prick!” she hissed between her teeth. “Are you drunk?”

  “Not a chance darling,” he sounded sarcastic now, “I just I like it better this way.” as she struggled to contain the thick hair now billowing down to her shoulders.

  “Please excuse me,” she said to Cowan as she left hurriedly, moving towards the powder room next to the adjacent library.

  “Hello. I’m Tony Shallal. Paris Station,” he said offering his hand to Harrison Cowan, “I’m a close friend.”

  “Harrison Cowan, Cowan Security International. Prospective suitor. Now do us both a favor and do fuck off.” He smiled, bowed his head and left in the same direction as Emily.

  Emily passed Madame Callas on her way out of the room. The diva left her admirers, walked towards Emily, lightly kissed her cheek and whispered, “Now what was it you said about the cost to your spirit being too much? Les Liaisons Dangereuses perhaps? I’m sure we will meet again when you are next in Paris.”

  “I hope so Madame,” Emily angrily wiped an escaping tear from her cheek, “Please excuse me, Madame.”

  Emily found the powder room and knotted her hair as best she could. It looked fuller perhaps but still manageable. When she opened the door to the hallway she found Harrison Cowan smoking a cigarette and talking to her aunt.

  “Ah, you have returned, my dear. Mr. Cowan was just telling me that you were leaving before the ceremony to join him for dinner. I’m sure you will be missed, but I suppose it is rather boring for you. Have a wonderful time,” she said turning to face Cowan with a knowing look. “Be sure to bring her back to the hotel before midnight, Mr. Cowan or she will become Cinderella.”

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  In the months that followed Emily saw Harrison Cowan on a regular basis. Occasionally they had dinner but more often than not they simply shared themselves, becoming comfortable companions. Theirs was an easy going, and honest relationship without expectation. Cowan had two children, Fiona aged thirteen and Andrew aged eleven, who lived in the United States and attended boarding school in rural Virginia. During the summer vacation the children stayed with their father in Maryland on the western side of the Chesapeake Bay in a small shoreline community by the name of Cape St. Andrew. The Cape, as it was affectionately called was also a stomping ground for former military, political and intelligence types who had retired from their respective services and settled there because of its close proximity to both Washington and Baltimore. Of considerable interest to all intelligence services was the Soviet compound on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, as well as rudimentary American and British safe houses, all of which were situated conveniently ten minutes away from the Cowan residence.

  Cowan had been fortunate. His uncle, another Scot who had married well had inherited a substantial piece of waterfront overlooking the Magothy River and having no heirs himself, willed the property to Cowan in 1970. Had the miserly individual realized that with the increased demand for housing in the area it would become a multimillion dollar estate over the next thirty years, he might not have been so altruistic. But in 1972 it was just a large, comfortable house complete with spectacular view, a sprawling beach and private dock.

  Cape St. Andrew was the type of community where one didn’t lock up at night and fishing tackle was left outside the door. There was a community club house for private parties; one church hall used alternately by Catholics and Methodists for worship and an excellent elementary school feeding into the larger educational systems. The town center had a large supermarket, a drug store, one restaurant, a bar used by local fishermen, a real estate office and two beauty shops. There was little if any crime, and two World Wars as well as the Viet Nam conflict had been barely noticed.

  It was the opinion of Harrison Cowan, who fished, hunted and was a member of the local Rod and Gun club that this place with the spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay was his personal paradise. Cowan Industries had proven very successful; he had made many contacts in his few years at MIT, several of them in Washington where he now consulted for a living. What would become known as the Baltimore Washington high tech corridor was in its infancy in 1972. Interest in data management systems was just beginning and start up consulting companies, eventually known as ‘Beltway Bandits’ had just begun to recruit the finest information academics as well as the upper six percent of computer science graduates. What was sadly neglected in those days was computer security. Industrial espionage within the United States and Western Europe was at an all time high and it was in this area that Cowan Industries would lead the way for the next three decades. Harrison Cowan’s opinions were much sought after, particularly within government circles and he frequently was asked to advise other nations on the simple task of covering ones assets or words to that effect. Cowan was well known in the Middle Eastern countries and conversely, he had on several occasions earned the trust of upper echelon politicos of the State of Israel. He was a man with worldwide connections but as many would discover, Harrison Cowan was also moral, ethical, and had been raised on the standard WASP principle of hard work being rewarded. In short, Cowan was an honest man and unlike many in the intelligence game, he could not be compromised.

  When Cowan returned to the United States in the early summer of 1972, he left Emily Desai secure in the knowledge that they would indeed meet again. He had asked her to reflect on their friendship over the summer and assured her that if she cared to visit in the fall with or without the children, she most certainly would be welcome. His ancient housekeeper, he had explained, would look after the children while Emily sought employment opportunities if that was her desire. He had, without hesitation, told her his intentions were honorable, although he was many years her senior with two motherless and demanding children, he was, he insisted proudly an honest, and decent man who loved her with all his heart and was prepared to be patient. She had accepted the purity of his intentions and agreed to consider it carefully. Emily explained that she had married once in haste and as had been expected, definitely repented at her leisure.

  Emily was kept busy after Cowan left, accepting new clients searching for rare object d’art and for her own edification keeping in touch with her contacts at British intelligence to pass on occasional bits of useful information from time to time. She prided herself in being able to keep both aspects of her life totally separate. In 1972 the focus of most young Europeans was the onset of the Olympic Games and Emily was no exception. Germany was feeling somewhat safer since the arrest of Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof in June of that year. Emily had been notified, as a security measure by the “Firm”, shortly after the arraignments had taken place and was, to say the least relieved. She still could not help feeli
ng a certain amount of sympathy for Ulrike Meinhof who, no longer arrogant, now resembled a caged animal and looked utterly confused throughout the judicial proceedings.

  It was readily understood in intelligence circles that offshoots of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and The Red Army Faktion had developed and were now interacting with Palestinian and IRA sponsored groups to confuse the authorities ever on their heels. The central Baader-Meinhof organization, even without their leaders were still funded for the most part by the KGB supported Berlin “Stasi”, the Ministerium fuer Staatsicherheit or Secret Police for the communist controlled German Democratic Republic. The role of the Stasi was to supervise internal affairs and collect external intelligence from a vast network of informants to use against potentially errant citizens of the East Zone. In 1972 the East German Stasi boasted of having one informant for every hundred citizens. Their targets were United States Forces in Berlin as well as United States and North Atlantic Treaty Alliance Organizations forces stationed throughout West Germany and Western Europe, as well as the West German Government.

  The Stasi had not only funded the Baader-Meinhof and RAF terrorists groups, they had also provided the terrorists with homes throughout the East Zone, fake passports, false identification papers, vehicles, bank accounts, money, weapons and terrorist training. They also served as a nexus within international terrorism, introducing terrorists and freedom fighters of different organizations to each other. One such powerful alliance, Emily had discovered, was between members of the Baader-Meinhof/RAF, Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as “Carlos the Jackal”, Dr. George Habash, Leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and his chief of operations Wadi Haddad.

  Emily was researching the ever expanding global terror network and continued reporting to Archie Beresford and his superiors. There were, she maintained, several ongoing long-term relationships, including one between Carlos the Jackal and Muhammed Boudia, his old school friend from Moscow’s premium terrorist training Patrice Lumumba University. This link was furthered by Boudia’s relationship with Yuri Kotov, an expert in Middle East Affairs who was a Soviet Foreign Ministry Attaché, and a KGB Station Officer to Israel. Kotov, it was alleged, had in turn sponsored Carlos into the KGB political terror structure on Boudia’s recommendation.

  Emily also found that groups such as the Japanese United Red Army (URA) with an illustrious terror membership like her former training camp compatriot Fusako Shigenobu, had developed their own brand of ideological brainwashing, selecting for recruitment only the misfits from college campuses.

  In May of 1972, Fusako and her husband Tysuyoshi Okudaira were introduced to George Habash and together they planned what became known as the Lod Massacre, on May 30th 1972 in Lod International Airport in Tel Aviv. The passengers of Air France Flight 132 for the most part were returning home from their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They did not reach their destination.

  Dissent was developing between the various groups. Some regarded themselves as anarchists, others were proletarian, but all were slowly and surely becoming very discontent. Emily noted many similarities within terrorist methodology and realized to her surprise that almost all of the most prominent members were disgruntled women. This very issue would later become the reason why Emily would leave the safe and secure world of researching antiques acquisition, art and history to research Political Sociology, Economics and Criminal Justice. Emily’s personal experience later served as the foundation of an alliance between “Cowan Industries” and her own Investigative Research and Analysis company. Her company, International Security Information Systems, Incorporated eventually became known simply as ISIS, Inc. The name reminded her to thank that particular deity each morning as she walked into her own small but efficient office in the Heidelberg Hauptstrasse, conveniently located in several rooms above a Chinese restaurant.

  Following the arrest of the founding members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Heidelberg student sympathizers who once surrounded the group like rats following the Pied Piper, dispersed and went underground. Emily encountered Axel Stadler and his wife from time to time and would report his whereabouts to German, American and British authorities as she had been told to do. It bothered her considerably that he was never arrested. His picture appeared on wanted posters all over Europe, but he could be seen in ‘The Cave’ or ‘The Catacomb’, seemingly invisible to the authorities. His wife continued to work for the same American company in Wieblingen and received by all accounts much emotional and some financial support from friends and colleagues, which led Emily to the conclusion that one or both of the Stadlers were probably informants.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  On September 5th, 1972 Emily’s thoughts were suddenly diverted from reruns of the handsome American swimmer Mark Spitz winning his final medal of the 1972 Munich Olympics when the telephone rang interrupting her carefully planned viewing. It was Colonel Beresford at the Embassy, on speakerphone as usual, with the recently knighted Sir Anthony Wallace-Terry, Wilfred de Crecy and Tony Shallal as a background chorus.

  “Emily, have you heard the news?” Beresford began rather nervously. “At roughly 4:30 this morning five Arab terrorists got into the Olympic Village apartments at Kusoczinskidamm where they met several others already working on the inside who had a passkey. They got into one of the apartments on Connollystrasse and it seems that an Israeli referee heard them talking in Arabic and assumed the worst. The poor bastard tried to get his roommates out by pushing his body against the door. We understand that he was quite a big chap but only one of his roommates succeeded in actually getting out. The, what do they call themselves Tony?”

  “Fedayeen,” came the bland response, “It means literally ‘Men of Sacrifice’ or ‘Martyr to the Cause’, sir.”

  “Anyway they took five Israeli team members.”

  “Who?” Emily inquired.

  “Does it make a difference?” butted in Anthony Wallace-Terry.

  “Certainly, Sir Anthony! I have it on very good authority that there are Mossad posing as Israeli security agents,” Emily answered with a certain amount of satisfaction.

  “Do you indeed? I won’t ask where the information came from.”

  “Probably just as well, sir.”

  “Amitzur Shapira, track coach, Andrei Spitzer fencing master, weight lifting judge Yacov Springer, a rifle coach named Schorr, and Yossef Gotfreund.”

  “I can confirm sir, that one of those mentioned is a security agent for the State of Israel.”

  “Bloody marvelous! Let’s hope he’s well trained,” Beresford added.

  “My understanding, sir, is that there is one more on-site, and he will be easily recognizable by you Tony, as one of the guards who beat up Leila Khaled on the Amsterdam flight a few years ago. Personally I don’t think he’s such a great loss to mankind. Not that it’s my place to make a comment. But there it is anyway.”

  “Emily, we have been told that the terrorists went through the Israeli sector of the complex and took six more athletes. Another wrestling coach named Weinberger returned to one of the apartments they raided and was attacked. Weinberger fought back though, they didn’t expect that. Poor bugger kicked one of the bloody sods, knocked him completely out and one of the others shot Weinberger in the face. He actually kept fighting them and knocked another one out cold, we hear, they shot him in the chest two or three times more and he still refused to die until one of them fired point blank into his head.”

  Tony Shallal took over the story, “A weightlifter, David Berger and a teammate named Rommano tried to get out through the window. It appears that Rommano didn’t make it out in time but he found a bread knife on the table underneath the window and as the other chap got out, Rommano stabbed one of the terrorists in the forehead with it. Rommano was blasted to smithereens by another of the terrorists armed with a Kalashnikov.”

  “Oh God, this is terrible! What’s going on now? Has anyone claimed responsibility yet?”

  “At the last count
, Emily, less than an hour ago they’d killed two Israelis and captured nine. Two of the athletes escaped. It looks like this is the work of Black September and they were clearly after the other Israeli athletes in the complex. There has been no official response or demands from anyone yet.”

  “How come none of the other athletes in the complex got involved?” Emily wanted to know.

  “No one heard anything. Those that did thought it was just high spirits and fireworks. No one suspected a terrorist attack. The German anti-terrorist sharpshooters are on standby but we would all like to avoid Israeli interference on German territory,” Tony Shallal interrupted as the phone rang in the background.

  “Shallal, don’t be bloody ridiculous!” Emily yelled into the phone, “The last country the Israelis need emotional or physical rescue from is the Bundesrepublik.. It’s a matter of national pride. Don’t forget it was only thirty-five years ago when the Jews were being carted off to hospitable accommodation like Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. This is a golden opportunity for them to show the Germans up while knocking off a couple of Arabs as well. By the way, is this an official call or are you giving me advance warning not to travel outside my house. Have they stopped the games incidentally?”

  “We feel very strongly that there’s a connection to the Baader-Meinhof Gang,” said Shallal.

  “Not possible. They’re too fractured right now. They’re arguing internally on leadership, aims and goals, that sort of stuff,” Emily replied, her eyes now glued to the television screen for more information.

  “Emily, go out today, visit the old haunts, ask questions, get involved in conversation. Archie will be at his usual hotel and will visit you later. This is the last time!” Tony Shallal said, almost convincingly.