Hyena’s head was throbbing. He felt sick to his stomach and the room was rocking in and out of focus. The bearded man screwed off the top of the hilt of the knife and removed a small round honing dowel. He began to sharpen the knife. The blade rang in the air like a bell as he swept it back and forth across the stone.
Is he going to cut my throat? Hyena wondered. Good God, who is he? Will I die without knowing who killed me?
The bearded man stared at him, still half smiling, and said softly, ‘You will never sire another child killer.’
He shoved his knees between Hyena’s knees and spread Hyena’s legs with his own. He placed the knife flat against Hyena’s crotch. The razor edge rested against Hyena’s penis.
‘The bomb?’ the bearded man whispered in Hyena’s ear. He twisted the knife slightly so it bit the flesh. Hyena’s good eye closed with pain.
‘Quickly,’ the bearded man whispered. ‘I am running out of time and patience. Tell me, and I will cut your throat and you will hardly feel it and you will be dead very quickly. Otherwise, you die with humiliation. The Hyena will go to heaven as a eunuch.’
Hyena swallowed. Sweat poured down his face and chest in rivers. His eye throbbed with pain. He could feel the blade of the knife slicing into the side of his manhood. He opened his remaining eye and looked toward the bed.
The bearded man pulled back the mattress. A small black briefcase lay between mattress and springs. He took the key that had been fastened to Hyena’s wrist and unlocked the case.
The bomb was impressive and formidable. Plastique and a lot of it, enough to take out the Eiffel Tower. The case contained both a radio control unit and a timer. The bearded man turned back to Hyena and smiled.
‘I am a man of my word,’ he said quietly. He grabbed a handful of Hyena’s hair and pulled his head back. Hyena’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a fishing cork in his throat. The bearded man slit Hyena’s throat to the jugular.
He closed the case, threw the mattress back in place, untied Hyena and let him fall in a pile on the floor. He removed the bomb carefully from the case and left the radio device in it. Then he laid the floor plans of the West German embassy on the bed, crossed to the door and looked cautiously into the hall. Empty.
He left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and walked down two flights of stairs to his own room and entered it. He was already packed, and the room had been charged in advance to a blind account with a Geneva address. He had one small suitcase and the black tool chest when he left the hotel. He went straight to the airport and checked his bag, went to the men’s room, opened the tool chest and took out a pair of overalls and put them on. Then he took another cab to the West German embassy.
He showed the security guard the false credentials identifying him as an electrician, opened his case and lifted the drawer out so the guard could see the tools in the compartment under it. The guard waved him on. He entered by the side door, went straight to the storage room, took the tall ladder and went quickly to the crowded reception room and set it up. A rigid-looking German approached the bearded man as he started to climb up to the towering chandelier. The bearded man held up a light bulb and pointed to the chandelier, and the German shrugged and went away
He removed the drawer of his tool chest, reached under it, and pulled free the bomb that was attached to the underside of the drawer by small suction cups and carefully attached it to the pipe that supported the giant glass dome. He set the timer for 6:30P.M.
Five minutes later he had replaced the ladder and was gone. He walked four blocks, hailed a cab and returned to the airport, where he retrieved his suitcase and left the tool chest in the same pay locker. He went into a stall in the men’s room and opened the suitcase. There was a small battery-operated makeup mirror and a makeup kit inside, and he removed his wig and makeup, pulled off the overalls and stuffed them in a brown bag with the makeup. He put on a white shirt, blue tie and a sports jacket and closed the suitcase. When he left the stall, he dropped the bag with the makeup in it in a trash can.
The American ambassador was a tall, deeply tanned man, who, although in his sixties, was in excellent physical condition and looked forty-five. And he could be persuasive. Tonight was an extremely important reception, for his mission was to convince the representatives of several European countries that terrorism had reached epidemic proportions. In effect, it was time to declare war on terrorists, although he knew that several of the countries had been spared any terrorist attacks and were reluctant to incur the ‘wrath of the Arab killers by making any overt moves on them.
At six-five, as he was getting ready to leave for the reception, he received an urgent phone call on his red phone. There was reason to believe that an extremely dangerous Libyan terrorist known as Hyena was in Paris, he was told. This was confidential information, but security would be critical and extra precautions were being taken at that very moment. The phone call went on for ten minutes as a state department under-secretary explained in boring detail what was going to be done.
‘Listen here,’ the ambassador said impatiently, ‘I’m going to be late for a very important reception. Can’t we discuss this first thing in the morning?’
The flustered secretary apologized and rang off.
‘God, these officious little pipsqueaks in State drive me mad,’ he complained to his wife. ‘Now we’re going to be late.’
‘Let’s twist its tail tonight, Geoffrey,’ he told his driver as they got in the limousine. ‘We’re running late.’
A block later an accident delayed them another ten minutes. The ambassador glared at his watch.
‘Damn,’ he said to his wife, ‘we’re going to be almost a half hour late. Damn, damn, damn!’
Ambassadors from Finland, France and Holland were in the receiving line when the bomb exploded. There was a moment of deafening sound, of fire and light, as the crowded room was illuminated and assaulted simultaneously. The boom of the bomb was followed almost immediately by shrieks of pain and terror. The chandelier had shimmered and burst, its hundreds of glass ornaments reduced to thousands of gleaming shards.
The deadly glass darts projected by the force of the explosion streaked down into the crowd below. Like chunks of diamond shrapnel they ripped into the dignitaries. Pale women in expensive gowns, their faces suddenly shredded by bits of glass and metal, staggered into one another. Ambassadors in cutaway coats were driven to their knees and assassinated by glittering arrows of death. And in the momentary silence that follows any shock and before chaos breaks out, the chandelier, weakened by the explosion, swung feebly and then its support snapped and it plunged down on top of the dead and wounded in a great splash as the rest of the glass shattered on impact.
‘M-my God,’ the American ambassador cried out as they turned off the main street into the drive of the embassy. Ahead of them in the garish beam of their headlights, people in their evening finery, bleeding and blind, were staggering out of the shattered reception hail into the street.
KLONG GIRL
Sy was in a small park across the street, practicing his moves. He looked good, a quick jabber with good legs. Hatcher reached in the car window, tooted the horn and the driver came immediately.
‘I am looking for a girl named Sukhaii who works on the Phadung Klong near New Road,’ Hatcher said.
‘Is she a whore?’
‘Yes,’ Hatcher replied, repeating the girl’s description from the police report. ‘Five two, sixteen years old, ninety pounds. A real princess, they say.’
‘Of course she is a real princess,’ Sy said with a shrug. ‘Who would go with an ugly whore?’
‘That’s very philosophical,’ Hatcher said.
‘It may take a little time to find her,’ Sy said, ‘the water babies do not stay in the same place on the klong.’