“There’s one other thing. One of them is a woman, as you know.” Kabakov looked down for a moment and cleared his throat. When he spoke again his voice was louder. “In Beirut once, I looked at her as a woman rather than as a guerrilla. That’s one reason we are in this position today. Don’t make the same mistake.”
The room was very still when Kabakov sat down.
“One backup team is on each side of the stadium,” Renfro said. “They will respond to any alarm. Do not leave your position. Pick up your ID tabs at this desk after the meeting. Any questions?” Renfro looked over the group. His eyes had the finish of black Teflon. “Carry on, gentlemen.”
Tulane Stadium late on the eve of the Super Bowl was lit and quiet. The stadium’s great spaces seemed to suck up the small noises of the search. Fog rolling off the Mississippi River a mile away swirled under the banks of floodlights.
Kabakov and Moshevsky stood at the top of the stands, their cigars glowing bright in the shadowed press box. They had been silent for half an hour.
“They could still pack it in, some of it,” Moshevsky said finally. “Under their clothes. If they weren’t carrying batteries or sidearms it wouldn’t show on the metal detectors.”
“No.”
“Even if there are only two of them, it would be enough to make a big mess.”
Kabakov said nothing.
“There’s nothing we could do about that,” Moshevsky said. Kabakov’s cigar brightened in a series of angry puffs. Moshevsky decided to shut up.
“Tomorrow I want you with the backup team on the west side,” Kabakov said. “I’ve spoken to Renfro. They’ll expect you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If they come with a truck, get in the back fast and get the detonators out. Each team has a man assigned to do that, but see to it yourself as well.”
“If the back is canvas, it might be good to cut through the side going in. A grenade could be wired to the tailgate.”
Kabakov nodded. “Mention that to the team leader as soon as you form up. Rachel is letting out the seams in a flak jacket for you. I don’t like them either, but I want you to have it on. If shooting starts, you’d better look like the rest of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Corley will pick you up at eight forty-five. If you are in the Hotsy-Totsy Club after one a.m. tonight, I’ll know it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Midnight in New Orleans, the neon lights on Bourbon Street smeared on the misty air. The Aldrich blimp hung over the Mississippi River Bridge, above the fog, Farley at the controls. Great letters rippled down the airship’s sides in lights. “DON’T FORGET. HIRE THE VET.”
In a room two floors above Farley’s at the Fairmont Hotel, Dahlia Iyad shook down a thermometer and put it in Michael Lander’s mouth. Lander had been exhausted by the trip from New Jersey. In order to avoid New Orleans International Airport, where Dahlia might be recognized, they had flown to Baton Rouge and come to New Orleans in a rented car with Lander stretched out on the backseat. Now he was pale, but his eyes were dear. She checked the thermometer. Normal.
“You’d better go see about the truck,” he said.
“It’s there or it’s not, Michael. If you want me to check it, of course I will, but the less I’m seen on the street—”
“You’re right. It’s there or it’s not. Is my uniform all right?”
“I hung it up. It looks fine.”
She ordered hot milk from room service and gave it to Lander with a mild sedative. In half an hour, he dropped off to sleep. Dahlia Iyad did not sleep. In Lander’s weakened condition, she must fly with him tomorrow on the bomb run, even if it meant leaving a section of the nacelle behind. She could help him with the elevator wheel, and she could handle the detonation. It was necessary.
Knowing that she would die tomorrow, she wept quietly for a half hour, wept for herself. And then, deliberately, she summoned the painful memories of the refugee camp. She went through her mother’s final agonies, the thin woman, old at thirty-five, writhing in the ragged tent. Dahlia was ten, and she could do nothing but keep the flies off her mother’s face. There were so many suffering. Her own life was nothing, nothing. Soon she was calm again, but she did not sleep.
At the Royal Orleans, Rachel Bauman sat at the dresser brushing her hair. Kabakov lay on the bed, smoking and watching her. He liked to watch the light shimmer on her hair as she brushed it. He liked the tiny hollows that appeared along her spine as she arched her back and shook her hair over her shoulders.
“How long will you stay after tomorrow, David?” She was watching him in the mirror.
“Until we get the plastic.”
“What about the other two, the woman and the American?”
“I don’t know. They’ll get the woman eventually. She can’t do a great deal without the plastic. When we get it, I’ll have to take Fasil back to stand trial for Munich.”
She wasn’t looking at him anymore.
“Rachel?”
“Yes.”
“Israel needs psychiatrists, you know? You’d be astounded at the number of crazy Jews. Christians, too, in the summertime. I know an Arab in Jerusalem who sells them fragments of the True Cross, which he obtains by breaking up—”
“We’ll have to talk about that when you are not so distracted, and you can be more explicit.”
“We’ll talk about it at Antoine’s tomorrow night. Now that’s enough talking and hairbrushing, or shall I be more explicit?”
The lights were out in the rooms at the Royal Orleans and the Fairmont. And around them both was the old city. New Orleans has seen it all before.
26
ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, the red sun rising silhouetted the New Orleans skyline in fire. Michael Lander woke early. He had been dreaming of the whales, and for a moment he could not remember where he was. Then he remembered, totally and all at once. Dahlia was in a chair, her head back, watching him through half-closed eyes.
He rose carefully and went to the window. Streaks of pink and gold lay along the east-west streets. Above the ground mist he could see the lightening sky. “It’s going to be clear,” he said. He dialed the airport weather service. A northeast wind at fifteen knots, gusting to twenty. That was good. A tailwind from Lakefront Airport to the stadium. Wide open, he could get better than sixty knots out of the blimp.
“Can you rest a little longer, Michael?”
He was pale. She knew that he did not have much strength. Perhaps he would have enough.
The blimp was always airborne at least an hour before game time to allow the TV technicians to make final adjustments and to let the fans see the airship as they arrived. Lander would have to fly that long before he came back for the bomb.
“I’ll rest,” he said. “The flight crew call will be at noon. Farley flew last night, so he’ll sleep in, but he’ll be leaving his room well before noon to eat.”
“I know, Michael. I’ll take care of it.”
“I’d feel better if you had a gun.” They could not risk carrying firearms on the flight to Baton Rouge. The small arms were in the truck with the explosive.
“It’s all right. I can do it all right. You can depend on me.”
“I know it,” he said. “I can depend on you.”
Corley, Kabakov, and Moshevsky set out for the stadium at nine a.m. The streets around the Royal Orleans were filled with people, pale from last night’s celebrations, wandering the French Quarter with their hangovers out of some sense of duty, a grim determination to see the sights. Paper cups and bar napkins blew down Bourbon Street in the damp wind.
Corley had to drive slowly until they were clear of the Quarter. He was irritable. He had neglected to get himself a hotel reservation while the getting was good, and he had slept badly in an FBI agent’s guest room. The breakfast he had been served by the agent’s wife was pointedly light. Kabakov appeared to have slept and breakfasted well, adding to Corley’s irritation. He was further annoyed by the smell of a cantaloupe
Moshevsky was eating in the back of the car.
Kabakov shifted in his seat. He clanked against the door handle.
“What the hell was that?”
“My dentures are loose,” Kabakov said.
“Very funny.”
Kabakov flipped back his coat, revealing the stubby barrel of the Uzi submachine gun slung under his arm.
“What’s Moshevsky carrying, a bazooka?”
“I have a cantaloupe launcher” came the voice from the backseat.
Corley shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand Moshevsky easily at the best of times and not at all when his mouth was full.
They arrived at the stadium at nine thirty. The streets that would not be used as the stadium filled were already blocked. The vehicles and barriers that would seal off the stadium when the game began were in place on the grass beside the main traffic arteries. Ten ambulances were parked close to the southeast gate. Only outbound emergency vehicles would be allowed through the blockade. Secret Service men were already in place on the roofs along Audubon Avenue overlooking the track where the president’s helicopter would land.
They were as ready as they could get.
It was curious to see sandbag emplacements beside the quiet streets. Some of the FBI agents were reminded of the Ole Miss campus in 1963.
At nine a.m., Dahlia Iyad called room service in the Fairmont and ordered three breakfasts to be delivered to the room. While she was waiting for them, she took a pair of long scissors and a roll of friction tape from her bag. She removed the screw holding the scissors together and put a slender, three-inch bolt through the screw hole in one half of the scissors, binding it in place with the tape. Then she taped the entire handle of the scissor and slipped it up her sleeve.
The breakfasts arrived at nine twenty a.m.
“You go ahead, Michael, while it’s hot,” Dahlia said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She took a breakfast tray to the elevator and descended two floors.
Farley’s voice sounded sleepy as he answered her knock.
“Mr. Farley?”
“Yes.”
“Your breakfast.”
“I didn’t order any breakfast.”
“Compliments of the hotel. The whole crew is getting them. I’ll take it away if you don’t want it.”
“No, I’ll take it. Just a minute.”
Farley, hair tousled and wearing only his trousers, let her into the room. If someone had been passing in the hall they might have heard the beginning of a scream, abruptly cut off. A minute later, Dahlia slipped outside again. She placed the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob and went back upstairs to breakfast.
There was one more piece of business to be settled. Dahlia waited until she and Lander had finished eating. They were lying on the bed together. She was holding Lander’s mangled hand.
“Michael, you know I want very much to fly with you. Don’t you think it would be better?”
“I can do it. There’s no need.”
“I want to help you. I want to be with you. I want to see it.”
“You wouldn’t see much. You’ll hear it wherever you go from the airport.”
“I’d never get out of the airport anyway, Michael. You know the weight won’t make any difference now. It’s seventy degrees outside and the aircraft has been standing in the sun all morning. Of course if you can’t get it up—”
“I can get it up. We’ll have superheat.”
“May I, Michael? We’ve come a long way.”
He rolled over and looked into her face. There were red pillow marks on his cheek. “You’ll have to get the shot bags out of the back of the gondola fast. The ones beneath the backseat. We can trim it up when we’re off. You can go.”
She held him very close and they did not talk anymore.
At eleven thirty Lander rose and Dahlia helped him dress. His cheeks were hollow, but the tanning lotion she had used on his face helped disguise the pallor. At eleven fifty she took a syringe of Novacaine from her medical kit. She rolled up Lander’s sleeve and deadened a small patch on his forearm. Then she took out another, smaller hypodermic syringe. It was a flexible plastic squeeze tube with a needle attached, and it was filled with a thirty milligram solution of Ritalin.
“You may feel talkative after you use this, Michael. Very up. You’ll have to compensate for that. Don’t use it unless you feel yourself losing strength.”
“All right, just put it on.”
She inserted the needle in the deadened patch on his forearm and taped the small syringe firmly in place, flat on his arm. On either side of the squeeze tube was a short length of pencil to keep the tube from being squeezed by accident. “Just feel through your sleeve and press the tube with your thumb when you need it.”
“I know, I know.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “If I shouldn’t make it to the airport with the truck, if they are waiting for me—”
“I’ll just drop the blimp into the stadium,” he said. “It will mash quite a few. But don’t think about the bad possibilities. We’ve been lucky so far, right?”
“You have been very clever so far.”
“I’ll see you at the airport at two fifteen.”
She walked him to the elevator, and then she returned to the room and sat on the bed. It was not yet time to go for the truck.
Lander spotted the blimp crew standing near the desk in the lobby. There was Simmons, Farley’s copilot, and two network cameramen. He walked over, exerting himself to put on a brisk manner.
I’ll rest in the bus, he thought.
“My God, it’s Mike,” Simmons said. “I thought you were out sick. Where’s Farley? We called his room. We were waiting for him.”
“Farley had a rough night. Some drunk girl stuck her finger in his eye.”
“Jesus.”
“He’s all right, but he’s getting it looked at. I fly today.”
“When did you get in?”
“This morning. That bastard Farley called me at four a.m. Let’s go. We’re late now.”
“You don’t look too good, Mike.”
“I look better than you do. Let’s go.”
At the Lakefront Airport gate, the driver could not find his vehicle pass and they all had to show their credentials. Three squad cars were parked near the tower.
The blimp, 225 feet of silver, red, and blue, rested in a grassy triangle between the runways. Unlike the airplanes squatting on the ground before the hangars, the airship gave the impression of flight even when at rest. Poised lightly on its single wheel, nose against the mooring mast, it pointed to the northeast like a giant weathervane. Near it were the big bus that transported the ground crew and the tractor-trailer that housed the mobile maintenance shop. The vehicles and the men were dwarfed by the silver airship.
Vickers, the crew chief, wiped his hands on a rag. “Glad you’re back, Captain Lander. She’s ready.”
“Thank you.” Lander began the traditional walk-around inspection. Everything was in order, as he knew it would be. The blimp was clean. He had always liked the cleanliness of the blimp. “You guys ready?” he called.
Lander and Simmons ran down the rest of the preflight checklist in the gondola.
Vickers was berating the two TV cameramen. “Captain Video, will you and your assistant kindly get your asses in that gondola so we can weigh off?”
The ground crew took hold of the handrail around the gondola and bounced the airship on its landing wheel. Vickers removed several of the twenty-five-pound bags of shot that hung from the rail. The crew bounced the airship again.
“She’s just a hair heavy. That’s good.” Vickers liked the blimp to take off heavy; fuel consumption would lighten it later.
“Where are the Cokes? Have we got the Cokes?” Simmons said. He thought they would be airborne for at least three hours, possibly longer. “Yeah, here they are.”
“Take it, Simmons,” Lander said.
“Okay.” Simmons slid into the single pilot’s se
at on the left side of the gondola. He waved through the windshield. The crewmen at the mooring mast tripped the release, and eight men on the nose ropes pulled the blimp around. “Here we go.” Simmons rolled back the elevator wheel, pushed in the throttles, and the great airship rose at a steep angle.
Lander leaned back in the passenger seat beside the pilot. The flight to the stadium, with the tailwind, took nine and a half minutes. Lander figured that, wide open, it could be done in a shade over seven minutes, if the wind held.
Beneath them, a solid stream of traffic jammed the expressway near the Tulane exit.
“Some of those people are gonna miss the kickoff,” Simmons said.
“Yeah, I expect so,” Lander said. They would all miss half time, he thought. It was one ten p.m. He had almost an hour to wait.
Dahlia Iyad got out of the taxi near the Galvez Street wharf and walked quickly down the block toward the garage. The bomb was there, or it was not. The police were waiting or they were not. She had not noticed before how cracked and tilted the sidewalk was. She looked at the cracks as she walked along. A group of small children were playing stickball in the street. The batter, no more than three and a half feet tall, whistled at her as she went by.
A police car made the players scatter and passed Dahlia at fifteen miles an hour. She turned her face away from it as though she were looking for an address. The squad car turned at the next corner. She fished in her purse for the keys and walked up the alley to the garage. Here were the locks. She opened them and slipped inside, closing the door behind her. It was semidark in the garage. A few shafts of sunshine came in through nailholes in the walls. The truck appeared undisturbed.
She climbed into the back and switched on the dim light. There was a thin film of dust on the nacelle. It was all right. If the place were staked out, they would never have let her get to the bomb. She changed into a pair of coveralls marked with the initials of the television network and stripped the vinyl panels off the sides of the truck, revealing the network emblem in bright colors.
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