“Amy Carol Grafton. When do we get her?”
“Oh, Jake,” Callie exclaimed and dashed around the table. She sat on his lap and enveloped him. People at the neighboring tables applauded enthusiastically as Callie gave him a long, passionate kiss. After all, this was Italia.
Qazi leaned back against the sink. Noora and Ali sat at the kitchen table with Youssef and the senior helicopter pilot.
“So Sakol and Yasim are dead?”
“The police radio says they are.”
“Sakol is no loss,” Ali sneered. “But Yasim is. Who were these people?” Ali asked the question of Qazi.
“I don’t know. I heard the silenced automatic weapon in the courtyard. I heard them speaking English. I looked. One of them was a woman, perhaps Judith Farrell. We had finished listening to the tapes Yasim had flagged, and Sakol had left.”
“Why did you let him leave?” Ali asked. “He could betray us.”
“My judgment. My decision. We shook hands and he left. A few moments later we heard the shots and I looked out the window. We ran toward the stairwell and started down. Then we heard someone running up. So I went up onto the roof. Yasim must have decided to go back through the corridor and take the elevator down to the lobby. He probably figured it would be safe with all the people there.”
“So they killed him in the lobby.”
“Apparently. He isn’t here and the police are telling each other there are two bodies.”
“Yasim is a martyr,” Youssef said. “He’s on his way to paradise.” Youssef was a Palestinian, the senior man in the PLO contingent that El Hakim had foisted on Qazi. Political considerations. The PLO needed a success just now, and El Hakim would need the PLO if this operation was to pay the kind of dividends the dictator hoped it would. So the PLO should earn a share of El Hakim’s glory. Not too much of it, of course, but an expedient little bit of the shine. Too bad, Qazi thought bitterly, that the Palestinians’ primary asset was enthusiasm.
“What do the Americans know?” Ali asked.
“This afternoon Captain Grafton and his wife discussed the fact Farrell is not a native English-speaker. Apparently they were worried she would entrap Lieutenant Tarkington, one of the officers from the ship. Grafton had the Americans searching for Tarkington this afternoon, apparently without success. Then the Graftons went out. Grafton is suspicious and worried, but he really knows nothing.”
“Someone knows something,” Ali said. “If that assassination team is waiting at the helicopters or the Americans are warned or the Italians are alerted, we won’t succeed.”
“At last,” Qazi said acidly, “you begin to appreciate some of the basic facts.”
Ali said nothing.
“I’m worried about the weather,” the pilot said. “The winds are going to get gusty, and we’ll have rain showers under a low overcast. It may get very rough in the air tonight.”
“Is it possible to fly?”
“Yes, it’s possible, if the forecast is accurate. But if the weather is worse than forecast, it will be dangerous. There will be no margin for error.”
“And in Sicily?”
“The weather should be better there. That is the forecast, anyway.”
“So there are many factors we cannot control. We knew that when we were planning.”
Youssef spoke. “The PLO does not want this mission to fail. The chairman has given the orders. My men and I are ready to proceed regardless of the danger.”
Qazi ignored him.
“Could we wait a day?” Noora asked. “The weather might improve.”
“They may dispose of the crate on the ship. The carabinieri or the GRU or the CIA or the Mossad or the Mafia may catch on.” Qazi ticked them off on his fingers. “There is already at least one assassination team out there on the hunt. And Yasim or Sakol may still be alive, and the police-radio conversations just a ruse. If either is alive, he can be made to talk. The risk increases every minute we wait. It’s now or never. Do we go?”
Noora and Ali looked at each other, then back at Qazi. They both nodded yes.
Qazi slapped his hands together. “Okay. Youssef, load the vans. Noora, get Jarvis to supervise the loading of the trigger. Then line the men up for inspection. Ali and I will check every man. When that is done, we’ll pull in the guards and be on our way.” He looked at his watch. “We leave in twenty-seven minutes. Go!”
19
Qazi and Ali sat in the front seat of the van and stared through binoculars at the gate in the chain-link fence and the helicopter pad beyond. Nothing moved under the lights on the corner of the hangars. Qazi aimed his binoculars through his open window at the guard shack. The old man was inside. He still had a two-day growth of beard.
The colonel turned in his seat and examined the tops of the warehouses across the street. No heads or suspicious objects in evidence. He scanned the windows.
“What do you think?” Ali asked.
Colonel Qazi laid the binoculars in his lap and sat watching the scene. “Go,” he said at last.
Ali stepped from the van and eased the door shut. He walked past the edge of the nearest warehouse and on across the street, where he was limned by a streetlight. Qazi could hear his footsteps fading. He raised his binoculars and scanned the warehouses again, trying to detect movement. There was none. He swung the glasses to the guard shack and watched Ali walk up to the window. The guard opened it. Ali reached through the window. Qazi knew he was cutting the telephone wire. Then Ali walked on toward the hangar.
“Sentries out.” Qazi told the people in the back of the van. He heard the rear door open and saw, in the rearview mirror, a man in black clothing with a submachine gun post himself against the large metal trash box on the edge of the alley. Another man dressed similarly trotted past the front of the van and disappeared around the corner; his post was opposite the gate.
“Anything on the scanner?” Qazi asked over his shoulder.
“No.” It was Noora. She was monitoring the police and carabinieri frequencies.
Through his binoculars Qazi could see Ali working on the doorknob to the office of the helicopter company. The hangar windows were all dark. Then Ali opened the door and disappeared inside. In a moment the lights in the office shone through the windows. Since this was normal when the company was waiting for a late-night passenger, it should arouse no comment. One of the two hangar doors slowly slid open.
Qazi raised a hand-held radio to his lips. “Van two, go.”
In a few seconds he heard the engine of the other van. It came down the street past the alley and turned in at the gate. Qazi had instructed the driver to pause at the guard shack, and he did so. Then he drove past two parked helicopters and through the open hangar door.
“Van three, go.”
Almost a minute lapsed before this van passed the alley where Qazi sat. It also came to a brief halt at the gate, then threaded between the helicopters and entered the hangar. Now the door slid shut.
They waited.
“Nothing on the scanner,” Noora told him.
At last the door to the office opened and a man appeared. Qazi could see that he wore the same uniform as the gate guard. This man walked the hundred feet across the tarmac to the guard shack.
Qazi turned in his seat. “Noora, it’s time,”
She took off the earphones and gathered her shoulder bag.