He continued his brisk pace. Instead of converging on him they had exchanged tails, which meant he was expected to lead them—whoever they were. They did not move like divinity students. Federals, probably, judging from the cut of their suits. He tested the notion of the Jewish Defense League, a distinct danger in Manhattan, and felt perspiration leap at his scalp. But their methods were usually more direct, and the tail he had picked up must have mooched around the bank for days. And that meant inefficiency, which implied government. He cursed the over-coat that impeded his legs in November cold, then saw the third-rate hotel.
The sandy-haired man entered the lobby as Hakim was leaving the stair onto the filthy mezzanine and wasted seconds on two other pas-sages; seconds that saved him. Hakim found the fire exit, burst the door seal, and slithered past the metal grating to drop into the alley. He sprinted for the street, adjusted his breathing again as he slowed to a walk, then turned another corner and risked a peek over his shoulder. The Camaro was following with its lone driver.
Hakim had nine minutes and needed seven. He wanted that rendezvous, not relishing the alternative risks of public transportation to Long Island. Nearing the next corner he noted the lack of pedestrians and made his decision. He broke into a run, turned sharply, ran a few steps, then turned back and melted into a doorway. He did not want the driver to pursue him on foot and knew this would be the next option.
A small girl sat on the stair in his doorway at Hakim's eye level, licking fingers sticky with candy, watching silent and serious as he fumbled in his coat. The silencer slowed his draw. He flashed the little girl a smile and a wink. The Camaro squalled around the corner. Hakim gauged his move to coincide with commitment to the turn, made five leaping paces, and fired as many times. The parabellum rounds pierced glass, cloth, flesh, bone, upholstery, and body panels in that order, each round making no more noise than a great book suddenly closed.
The Camaro's inertia carried it into a forlornly stripped foreign sedan. Hakim held the sidearm in his coat and retraced his steps, winking again at the little girl just before he shot her. Then he reseated the pistol, careful to keep the hot silencer muzzle away from the expensive shirt.
Seven minutes later Hakim hurried up another alley, squirmed into a delivery van, and nodded at the sturdy Guerrero who lazed behind the wheel in coveralls as the engine idled.
The van's engine was mounted between front seats with an upholstered cover. Bernal Guerrero had built an extension toward the rear just long enough to accommodate a small Iraqi; the makeshift upholstery would pass casual inspection. Kneeling with the extension cover up, reluctant to relinquish control to the latino, Hakim urged caution. "Drive south first; I was followed." He did not elaborate.
For a time, Guerrero attended strictly to driving as Hakim directed him to the bridge approach. Once over the East River, in heavy traffic, Hakim began to relax but did not stir from his position. Guerrero adjusted an inside rearview. "The funds were on hand, then."
Hakim met his eyes in the mirror. "Was that a question?"
"Deduction, Hakim. The briefcase seems heavy—and you are smiling."
"A wise man smiles in adversity," Hakim quoted, reloading six rounds into the clip.
"I trust Rashid was smiling at the last," Guerrero said obliquely. "We shall miss him."
"Rashid was a fool. You cannot load down an underpowered aircraft and maneuver it, too."
"A fool, then," Guerrero shrugged. "I agree that a satchel charge would have been simpler."
Hakim's irritation was balanced by the utility of the sinewy Guerrero. The Panamanian's suggestions were good, and he did not press them. Yet his conversation always provoked broader answers than Hakim cared to give. "You agree with whom? Have you toured the Statue of Liberty, Guerrero? A satchel charge might disfigure the torch; nothing more. The thing is full of steel girders inside. I planned to destroy it utterly. Think of the coverage," he breathed, and chuckled.
They were past Queens, halfway to the site of Farmingdale on Long Island, before Hakim spoke again. "The new funds," he said as if to himself, "will pour into accounts for Fat'ah exactly as long as our coverage is adequate. But our supporters may not enjoy last night's media sport at Fat'ah expense."
Guerrero nodded, remembering. But to prattle is to reveal, and this time Guerrero said nothing. Amateur films had caught the hapless Rashid, his handmade bomb shackles hopelessly jammed, as he veered away after his first pass over the great green statue, the previous day. The canister weighed nearly three hundred kilos and as it dangled swaying from the little Piper, Rashid must have seen and accepted his imminent death; must have known he could neither land, nor long maintain control. To his credit, he had fought the craft into a shallow turn and straightened again, many kilometers from his target but prepared for another and more suicidal assault. With any luck he might have completed his run, barely off the surface of the harbor, to crash directly into the Statue of Liberty. But the new fireboat hovercraft were very quick, faster under these circumstances than the Piper that careened along at all of ninety kilometers per hour.
Hakim sighed. What ignominy, to be downed by a stream of dirty salt water! Still, "The network commentator made Rashid a martyr," he asserted.
"To what? Idiot liberation, he said. And," Guerrero reminded him, "NBN news did not carry the story well. `A terrorist quenched with a water pistol,' indeed. It is la palabra, the word? Provocative."
"As you are," Hakim said shortly. "Let me worry about media, and let the Americans worry about our next demonstration."
"Our next demonstration," Guerrero echoed. It was not quite a question.
"Soon, Guerrero, soon! Be silent." Again Hakim felt moisture at his temples, forcing him to acknowledge a sensation of pressure. Harassment was the guerrilla's tool; when he himself felt harassed, it was better to cancel the operation. Yet he dared not. Something in Guerrero's attitude, indeed in Hakim's own response to the smug mockery of television, said that Hakim must choke that dark laughter under a pall of smoke.
He shifted his cramped legs to sit atop the briefcase as they skirted Mineola. Soon they would roll into the garage at Farmingdale, soon he would bear the briefcase inside with a show of indifference, reviewing the site again to assure its readiness for—for whatever; he did not know what.
Fat'ah must be ready with only four members now, and he could not easily muster more on short notice. The Syrian site would again be secure for a time, now that Hakim could furnish bribes; but Damascus is not Farmingdale, New York and Hakim knew that he was improvising. Fat'ah could not afford always to improvise. Nor could it afford to delay vengeance for the Rashid defeat.
The double-bind was adversity. Hakim forced himself to smile, thinking of smoke. Of black smoke and of media, and of Leah Talith who would be warm against him in the chill Long Island night. He vowed to deny himself the third, which facilitated the smile, and knew that he could now concentrate on the first two.
* * *
Forty kilometers away in an office of The Tombs, Manhattan, Assistant Chief Inspector Dolby was slavering into his telephone. "Because it doesn't make any goddam sense, that's why," he snarled. "If you were gonna heist a Zee Twenty-Eight Camaro, why pick one that'd just tried to hump a stripped Volkswagen? And when you figure that one out, tell me why you'd take the Volks too. I mean, where's he gonna fence fresh junkers, Damico?"
He listened for long moments, nodding, tapping his teeth with a pencil. "Okay, I'll tell you what I think, I think the officer on duty is also on dago red." Listening again, he began to tap on his cheek. "I don't give a rat's ass how many eyewitnesses he claims, total strangers don't just rush up three minutes after a crash and bodily, BOD-i-ly, pick up two tons of crunched Camaro coupe and cram it into a truck."