“What’s the news, Aram?” Brazhnikov asked.
Kugav handed him a transcription of a signal that had come down from the communications room upstairs. “It was passed down about fifteen minutes ago,” Kugav said.
The information had come via Moscow, where it had been routed across Chelenko’s desk. It was from a source in Tel Aviv, undisclosed but given a confidence rating of over 80 percent by Moscow, and stated that an Israeli special-duty paratrooper unit was planning an operation aimed at lifting some unidentified “merchandise” out of a remote location in Syria. Chelenko had attached a note instructing Brazhnikov to contact him via a high-security satellite link.
“Merchandise?” Brazhnikov repeated aloud as he reread the transcript.
“It has to be the missiles,” Kugav said. “Either as parts, or assembled. That’s where they’ve been brought together.”
Brazhnikov crossed to the map and stood staring at it. It seemed unlikely, to say the least, that the Israelis would be working in conjunction with the Palestinians. The more likely explanation—which Chelenko agreed with—was that some Arab faction had organized the thefts somehow, the Israelis had found out about it in the same way that they seemed to find out about everything, had waited to let the Arabs labor to bring the parts together for them. Now they intended to steal the fruits. They had pulled off more audacious stunts than that in the past.
Chelenko, with the blessing of Goryanin and whoever gave approvals above him, did not intend to simply sit back and watch it happen. If the presence of the missiles at Glinka was established beyond reasonable doubt, he would send in his own force to take them back again—they were Soviet property, after all. And even if their existence was not certain, but any of the Western powers seemed about to intervene there, he would give the order to go, anyway, in case they knew more than he did. Accordingly, he had arranged for the Third Battalion VDV, special assault-trained airborne troops, based in southern Armenia, only four hundred kilometers away, to be held in readiness. It seemed to Brazhnikov that the second of those conditions was close to being fulfilled.
He called Chelenko as instructed a few minutes later. “I agree that it is time to move,” Chelenko said. “We will proceed with phase two of the Blue plan as a precaution now, without waiting further. So you can make your preparations to move out, Major.”
That meant that a small force of Vysotniki—the Russian equivalent of the British SAS infiltration and sabotage troops—would be put down on the ground to reconnoiter the area, observe the disposition and strength of the potential opposition, and generally prepare the way for a possible assault group. Because of his knowledge of the overall situation, Brazhnikov would be flown up to Armenia to go in with the reconnaissance force. Chelenko would come down to coordinate the operation locally from Damascus. One of the reasons for sending Brazhnikov ahead to Damascus had been to enable him to set up a base and operations group for Chelenko to work with when he arrived.
• • •
The telephone rang in a room above a carpet-mender’s shop in a narrow, nondescript alley in Tel Aviv. Dave Fenner reached an arm out from the iron-frame bed where he had been lying, staring at the ceiling and thinking. “Yes?”
“Who is this who speaks?”
“This is Benjamin.”
“There is a message from Gypsy.”
Fenner took a pad and pen from the table by the phone. “Go ahead.”
“The message is as follows: Sheldon Q. never talked to the doctor. It was the wife of the professor who lived on the beach. Message ends.”
Fenner frowned, stared at it, and then, slowly, a stunned look came into his eyes as the meaning sank in. All these years, and he’d never suspected. He would have to go over everything again in his mind now, looking for anything that could have been compromised. It made it doubly important that he remain out of sight and stay away from Jerusalem and the American group.
“Is there a reply?” the voice inquired.
“Not for now. I’ll let you know if that changes.” He hung up.
There was no need for any reply. He knew what he needed to know.
CHAPTER 59
Hamdi Kemmel drove Mel out of Cairo in the Fiat van, and then northward for three hours through the flat country of the delta, crisscrossed by a bewildering network of irrigation channels and waterways, past innumerable villages, plantations of maize, rice, cotton, and fruit trees, and fields of cattle. Eventually they came to a small harbor village on an inlet of the sea, which Kemmel said was close to the port of Damietta, on the northeast side of the delta.
He drove through outskirts of reasonably modern-looking shops and bungalows to the older core of crumbling traditional yellow-brick dwellings stacked in a disorderly heap on the waterfront. There, he pulled up outside a store that sold marine equipment and had several boats moored to a jetty at the back. Kemmel introduced Mel to “Akhmet,” who had been expecting them. He was a small, gnarled, crouching man of an age impossible to guess, with disintegrating teeth and a face like a simian walnut. Akhmet would take Mel out that night, to be picked up by an Israeli vessel twenty kilometers offshore. Akhmet said that the latest weather forecasts weren’t promising, but agreed to give it a try. After staying for a meal of fish salad, fish soup, a fried fish-and-millet preparation, and fish, Kemmel said his farewell, wished Mel good luck and a favorable nod from Allah, and left to drive back to Cairo.
With two other men to help, Akhmet and Mel boarded one of the boats, a tall-masted felucca, traditionally a sailing vessel but assisted by an engine, and put out a little before midnight. A light rain was falling by then, and the wind had been rising for several hours. Mel found that he didn’t have a sailor’s stomach, and consigned his fish feast back whence it had come. Conditions got worse, they missed the rendezvous, and arrived back in harbor shortly after dawn. Mel went to bed to sleep or die, not caring especially which. When he woke up in the early afternoon, there were no books or backgammon partners to help pass the time. He sat in a dingy back room watching the harbor, while Akhmet made innumerable comings and going to the only telephone in the vicinity, the location of which seemed to be a closely guarded secret, somewhere along the street. At last he announced that they would try again that night. Later, he produced a steaming concoction in a large dish, which he said was a fish-and-octopus casserole. It smelled dreadful. He invited Mel to share some dinner before they set out again. Mel declined as politely as he could.
The sea was calm that night, however, and Mel felt no discomfort this time. It was well into the early hours of the morning when Akhmet gave a shout and pointed, while one of the other hands signaled with a lamp. Mel stood up and saw the sleek, black outline of an Israeli Navy patrol launch turning toward them, silhouetting guns mounted fore and aft and moving almost noiselessly, cutting a white wave from its bow. The launch cut its engines and hove alongside, and moments later strong, sure hands were helping Mel, still with his suitcase, aboard. He was taken below and offered hot cocoa and beans with toast, which he accepted gratefully, his appetite now restored.
Then they gave him a sweater and a hooded topcoat to wear. He went back up and stood for a while on the bridge, exchanging intermittent words with the captain and watching the sea race by and the straight, foamy wake rolling away into the night behind. But sustained talk was impossible over the roar of the wind, plus four engines with a combined output of sixty-five thousand horsepower, and eventually he went back below. One of the sailors gave him some blankets and showed him to a spare bunk in the forward quarters, which also accommodated three of the crew. They chatted with him for a while and seemed suitably impressed when he took off his jacket and removed his harness and shoulder holster before settling down. Mel rather enjoyed the feeling it gave him. Then, lulled by the steady drone of the engines and the powerful, eager thrusting of the ship through the waves, he dozed off.
A drop in the note of the engines awakened him. The boat was slowing down. He put on his things and went back up to f
ind that it was daylight, and they were just off a coast. There was a headland to the right, formed around a large central mountain with streets and buildings gleaming in the sun all the way to the top, and merging ahead of the boat into a city that was etched into mountainsides and overflowing in every direction around a vast, sweeping bay. His watch told him it was 9:15 a.m. They were at Haifa, Israel’s main port. The mountain behind the headland, one of the crew informed him, was Mount Carmel.
Mel wasn’t sure what he should expect next. He had vaguely anticipated some kind of questioning by officials, followed by transportation to Jerusalem, where McCormick and his party should have arrived late the evening before last. He was surprised, therefore, to be met at the quayside by two Israeli paratrooper officers with a staff car and driver. It didn’t seem to matter much where Mel might have had thoughts of going. They were heading for Tel Aviv, fifty miles south. To his mild bemusement, which if he’d thought more about it would have crossed the borderline into apprehension, they addressed him respectfully as “Mohican.”
• • •
A corporal sent by the officer of the watch in the duty room delivered a message to the group gathered in a briefing room at the headquarters of the Fifth Parachute Brigade, and handed it to Colonel Hariv. Hariv read it and announced, “They’ve landed at Haifa. He should be here in about an hour.”
There had been a lull in the talking, which had been going on since early morning. Dave Fenner got up from his chair to stretch his legs. Although he had committed the information to memory long before, he walked to the head of the room to study again the map showing the details of operation “Haymaker.” It was just habit, something to do while they waited. It was now the sixteenth of January, and McCormick and his people had been in Israel for two days. Stephanie would have told McCormick about Mustapha, and the role she had agreed to play of acting as a link between him and the Israeli intelligence group. Also, she would have given McCormick the line to include in his broadcast, signaling that such a link had been completed.
“Dervish,” the Mossad agent in Egypt who had passed the line to Stephanie and been detailed to keep an eye on her, had also radioed a coded report on the incident at the Omar Khayyam Hotel, which had taken everyone by surprise. The frightening thing was how near the plan had come to succeeding. If it hadn’t been for the sudden materialization of some superprofessional whose existence even Dave hadn’t been told of, the whole thing would already have been a disaster. It looked as if maybe the “Colonel,” back in his dungeon beneath the Pentagon, was even shrewder than Dave had given him credit for. Or had it been someone put in by the Constitutional people? He had no way of knowing. But at least it was nice to think that there was a department left somewhere that knew what it was doing.
“So, who is this mysterious Mohican, who appears out of nowhere at the last minute and saves the Egyptian foreign minister’s life?” a voice inquired.
Dave turned to find that Yigal Uban, the Mossad representative, was standing beside him. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I was just wondering the same thing. It sounds as if he was flown straight in from the States to do the job. I don’t think it can be anyone I’ve met.”
“Dervish rates him highly, ” Uban said. “And Dervish is good. This man must be quite somebody.”
“Who was the woman that he killed?” Dave asked. “Is there any more news on her yet?”
“We have a contact in the Cairo police department, but it doesn’t sound as if they’ve made a lot of progress,” Uban said. “She was staying at the Nile Hilton, and she entered from Athens on a false passport. Her belongings indicate that she traveled from the States. That’s about all anyone really knows. But from some of the things in her possession, she was no amateur. She was going to use ricin and DM SO. There can be little doubt that she meant to take out both of them.”
“Both?”
“The minister and the American girl. Obviously they wouldn’t want her able to talk.”
That fitted, Dave thought to himself. Planting drugs was something she could have agreed to go along with plausibly, even if she hadn’t meant it; but never something like an assassination. But according to Dervish’s report, Mohican suspected that even that in turn had been intended as a diversion from something else. A triple-level deception. Mohican sounded like the only person who really understood what was going on. As Uban had said, he must be quite somebody.
“But he got her, eh?” Dave murmured, half to himself. He found himself thinking that perhaps he was just beginning to realize how much Stephanie had taken on. This was Eva’s line of work, not Stephanie’s. He put out of his mind any thought of what would have happened if Mohican’s plane had been late getting in. Some things just didn’t bear thinking about.
• • •
The staff car carrying Mel and the officers entered the outskirts of Tel Aviv and headed for the eastern fringes of the city. They passed some industrial building set well back from the road with a lot of tractors and other farm machinery lined up in a fenced area outside, and then turned off the main road by some fields where schoolboys were playing soccer. Mel had quickly realized from the conversation during the drive from Haifa that some garbled account of his doings at the Omar Khayyam must have preceded him, doubtless from Hamdi Kemmel. If so, this wasn’t the place to try and straighten it out, he decided. So, he sat back and watched the scenery, wondering in his mind at the strange string of events which in the space of a month had transformed him from a respectable young Boston lawyer into an unshaven gunman being smuggled out in the middle of the night to rendezvous with a Navy boat off the coasts of the Levant.
They came to a military barracks, with a high wire fence and armed sentries at the gate. One of the officers in the car said something to the duty officer in the guardhouse, who picked up a telephone. They passed through, and drove across a parade ground, and then between a two-story office building and a transportation depot to some buildings at the rear. They got out, and the two officers conducted Mel through a door, into a corridor with brick walls painted glossy lime green to half height and cream above, past brown doors and red fire extinguishers, everything looking scrubbed and clean. They went up a flight of steel stairs to a junction of two more corridors, and followed one of them to a door with guards outside. One of the officers said something in Hebrew, and showed a pass, the guard knocked on the door and opened it, and Mel was ushered through.
There were a dozen or so men sitting and standing around the table inside, a couple in civilian clothes, the rest wearing the dark khaki of the Israeli military, with insignia and badges of rank that Mel was unable to interpret. They all looked bronzed, capable, confident. A large map was pinned to a board on one wall, some pictures that looked like satellite photographs, and a chart showing columns and numbers, which could have been a timetable. Mel saw the intrigued looks that greeted him from every side and sensed that they had been waiting for him. A tall, gaunt-faced officer with thick-rimmed spectacles introduced himself as Colonel Hariv, “Shlomo to everyone here.” One of the civilians was Mr. Uban, from Mossad, and another of the officers, Captain Rachmin… but Mel lost what Hariv was saying at that point, when he saw Dave Fenner, standing across the room in a plain uniform without Israeli insignia. Mel shook his head in astonishment.
But it was nothing compared to the gaping, wide-eyed disbelief that Fenner seemed to be experiencing at seeing him.
“You two already know each other?”
Fenner recovered first. “Yes… it goes back a long time.” And then to Mel, “I never expected to bump into you here.” Hardly a necessary statement, mainly for everyone else’s benefit. Mel was still having to bite his lip to stop himself from breaking into laughter at the look on Fenner’s face.
“Good to see you,” Mel said. “Er… what do I call you here?”
Fenner shrugged. “How about Benjamin this time?” Some of the others in the room exchanged knowing smiles. Cool, cool…
Hariv completed the intr
oductions, most of which Mel failed to register, and then concluded, “Gentlemen, Mohican.” There was a general murmuring that sounded approving, and someone near the front clapped his hands in applause. Mel, dazed by it all, was shown to a seat by Fenner. Hariv looked at the officers who had brought Mel from Haifa. “Is General Lurgar joining us?”
“We had the guardhouse call him when we arrived. He’ll be about ten minutes,” one of them replied.
General? Mel thought. Christ, what had he gotten into now?
“I trust your voyage was pleasant?” Hariv said to Mel.
“Fine, compared to when they tried last night.”
“Mohican didn’t come in yesterday, then?” one of the Israelis said to Hariv.
Hariv shook his head. “They missed the rendevous in the storm the other night. He’s come straight here this morning.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t look like that all the time,” Hariv said. “You’ve been watching too many American gangster movies, Moshe.” He paused, then looked around the room and raised his voice. “Gentlemen, could we have silence, please?… Thank you. If we have a few minutes, I’d like to run briefly through the plan for those of you who haven’t been involved so far, and for Mohican’s benefit, before Shimon gets here.”
Did Mohican know about Mustapha? Hariv asked. Mel glanced at Dave, uncertain of whether he was supposed to know or not, but Dave gave nothing suggestive of a warning signal. Mel said that he did, which seemed to raise his status even further, and Hariv went on to explain that they had been considering a plan to get Mustapha out. The plan would involve some help from an agent referred to as Pierrot, whom Mossad had managed to put inside, and Fenner would be going along too. Good luck, Dave, Mel thought as he listened. The plan was only tentative at this stage, however, pending orders that might or might not come down from the high command. Hariv was evasive about the background to that.
The Mirror Maze Page 45