“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.