Black Sunday

3

A SOUND LIKE A SLOW roll of thunder shivered the air in the bedroom and the candle flames quivered, but Dahlia and Lander, fixed in each other, did not notice it. It was a common sound—the late jet shuttle from New York to Washington. The Boeing 727 was six thousand feet above Lakehurst and climbing.

Tonight it carried the hunter. He was a broad-shouldered man in a tan suit, and he was seated on the aisle just behind the wing. The stewardess was collecting fares. He handed her a new fifty-dollar bill. She frowned at it. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”

“For two fares,” he said, indicating the big man asleep beside him. “For his and mine.” He had an accent the stewardess could not place. She decided he was German or Dutch. She was wrong.

He was Major David Kabakov of the Mossad Aliyah Beth, the Israeli Secret Service, and he was hoping the three men seated across the aisle behind him had smaller bills with which to pay their fare. Otherwise the stewardess might remember them. He should have tended to it in Tel Aviv, he thought. The connection at Kennedy Airport had been too close to permit getting change. It was a small error, but it annoyed him. Major Kabakov had lived to be thirty-seven because he did not make many errors.

Beside him Sergeant Robert Moshevsky was snoring softly, his head back. On the long flight from Tel Aviv, neither Kabakov nor Moshevsky had given any sign of recognition to the three men behind them, though they had known them for years. The three were burly men with weathered faces, and they wore quiet, baggy suits. They were what the Mossad called a “tactical incursion team.” In America they would be called a hit squad.

In the three days since he had killed Hafez Najeer in Beirut, Kabakov had had very little sleep, and he knew that he must give a detailed briefing as soon as he reached the American capital. The Mossad, analyzing the material he brought back from the raid on the Black September leadership, acted instantly when the tape recording was played. There was a hurried conference at the American embassy and Kabakov was dispatched.

It had been clearly understood at the Tel Aviv meeting between American and Israeli intelligence that Kabakov was being sent to the United States to help the Americans determine if a real threat existed and to help identify the terrorists if they could be located. His official orders were clear.

But the high command of the Mossad had given him an additional directive that was flat and unequivocal. He was to stop the Arabs by whatever means necessary.

Negotiations for the sale of additional Phantom and Sky-hawk jets to Israel were at a critical stage, and Arab pressure against the sale was intensified by the Western shortage of oil. Israel must have the airplanes. On the first day that no Phantoms flashed over the desert, the Arab tanks would roll.

A major atrocity within the United States would tip the balance of power in favor of the American isolationists. For the Americans, helping Israel must not have too high a price.

Neither the Israeli nor the American state departments knew about the three men sitting behind Kabakov They would settle into an apartment near National Airport and wait for him to call. Kabakov hoped the call would not be necessary. He would prefer to handle it himself, quietly.

Kabakov hoped the diplomats would not meddle with him. He distrusted both diplomats and politicians. His attitude and approach were reflected in his Slavic features—blunt but intelligent.

Kabakov believed that careless Jews die young and weak ones wind up behind barbed wire. He had been a child of war, fleeing Latvia with his family just ahead of the German invasion and later fleeing the Russians. His father died in Tre blinka. His mother took Kabakov and his sister to Italy in a journey that killed her. As she struggled toward Trieste, there was a fire inside her that gave her strength while it consumed her flesh.

When Kabakov remembered, across thirty years, the road to Trieste, he saw it with his mother’s arm swinging diagonally across his vision as she walked ahead, holding his hand, her elbow, knobby in the thin arm, showing through her rags. And he remembered her face, almost incandescent as she woke the children before the first light reached the ditch where they were sleeping.

In Trieste she turned the children over to the Zionist underground and died in a doorway across the street.

David Kabakov and his sister reached Palestine in 1946 and they stopped running. By the age of ten he was a courier for the Palmach and fought in the defense of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road.

After twenty-seven years of war, Kabakov knew better than most men the value of peace. He did not hate the Arab people, but he believed that trying to negotiate with Al Fatah was a lot of shit. That was the term he used when he was consulted about it by his superiors, which was not often.

The Mossad regarded Kabakov as a good intelligence officer, but his combat record was remarkable and he was too successful in the field to be put behind a desk. In the field, he risked capture and so he was necessarily excluded from the inner councils of the Mossad. He remained in the intelligence service’s executive arm, striking again and again at the Al Fatah strongholds in Lebanon and Jordan. The innermost circle of the Mossad called him “The final solution.”

No one had ever said that to his face.

The lights of Washington wheeled beneath the wing as the plane turned into the National Airport traffic pattern. Kabakov picked out the Capitol, stark white in its floodlights. He wondered if the Capitol was the target.

The two men waiting in the small conference room at the Israeli embassy looked carefully at Kabakov as he entered with Ambassador Yoachim Tell. Watching the Israeli major, Sam Corley of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reminded of a Ranger captain of twenty years ago, his commander at Fort Benning.

Fowler of the Central Intelligence Agency had never been in the military service. Kabakov made him think of a pit bull. Both men had studied hastily assembled dossiers on the Israeli, but the dossiers were mostly concerned with the Six-Day War and the October War, old Xeroxes from the CIA’s Middle East section. Clippings. “Kabakov, the Tiger of Mitla Pass”—journalism.

Ambassador Tell, still wearing his dinner clothes from an embassy function, made brief introductions.

The room fell silent and Kabakov pressed the switch on his small tape recorder. The voice of Dahlia lyad filled the silence. “Citizens of America…”

When the tape had ended, Kabakov spoke slowly and carefully, weighing his words. “We believe that the Ailul al Aswad—Black September—is preparing to strike here. They are not interested in hostages or negotiations or revolutionary theatrics this time. They want maximum casualties—they want to make you sick. We believe the plan is well advanced and that this woman is a principal.” He paused. “We believe it likely that she is in this country now.”

“Then you must have information to supplement the tape,” Fowler said.

“It is supplemented by the fact that we know they want to strike here, and the circumstances in which the tape was found. They have tried before,” Kabakov said.

“You took the tape from Najeer’s apartment after you killed him?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t question him first?”

“Questioning Najeer would have been useless.”

Sam Corley saw anger in Fowler’s face. Corley glanced at the file before him. “Why do you think it was the woman you saw in the room who made the tape?”

“Because Najeer had not had time to put it in a safe place,” Kabakov said. “He was not a careless man.”

“He was not careful enough to keep you from killing him,” Fowler said.

“Najeer lasted a long time,” Kabakov said. “Long enough for Munich to happen, Lod Airport, too long. If you are not careful now, American arms and legs will fly.”

“Why do you think the plan would go on now that Najeer is dead?”

Corley looked up from the paper clip he was examining and answered Fowler himself. “Because the tape was dangerous. Making it would have been very nearly the final step. The orders would have been given. Am I right, Major?”

Kabakov recognized an expert interrogator when he saw one. Corley was being the advocate. “Exactly,” he said.

“An operation might be mounted in another country and moved here at the last minute,” Corley said. “Why do you think the woman is based here?”

“Najeer’s apartment had been under surveillance for some time,” Kabakov explained. “She was not seen in Beirut before or after the night of the raid. Two linguists in the Mossad analyzed the tape independently and came to the same conclusion: She learned English as a child from a Briton, but has been exposed to American English for the last year or two. American-made clothing was found in the room.”

“Maybe she was just a courier, taking final instructions from Najeer,” Fowler. said. “Instructions could be passed on anywhere.”

“If she were only a courier, she would never have seen Najeer’s face,” Kabakov said. “Black September is compartmented like a wasp’s nest. Most of their agents know only one or two others in the apparatus.”

“Why didn’t you kill the woman, too, Major?” Fowler was not looking at Kabakov when he said this. If he had been looking, he would not have looked long.

The ambassador spoke for the first time. “Because there was no reason to kill her at the time, Mr. Fowler. I hope you do not come to wish he had.”

Kabakov blinked once. These men did not understand the danger. They would not be warned. Behind his eyes, Kabakov saw the Arab armor thundering across the Sinai and into the cities, herding Jewish civilians. Because there were no planes. Because the Americans had been sickened. Because he had spared the woman. His hundred victories were ashes in his mouth. The fact that he could not possibly have known that the woman was important did not excuse him in the slightest in his own eyes. The mission to Beirut had not been perfect.

Kabakov stared into Fowler’s jowly face. “Do you have a dossier on Hafez Najeer?”

“He appears in our files on a list of Al Fatah officers.”

“A complete dossier on him is included with my report. Look at the pictures, Mr. Fowler. They were taken after some of Najeer’s earlier projects.”

“I’ve seen atrocities.”

“Not like these you haven’t.” The Israeli’s voice was rising.

“Hafez Najeer is dead, Major Kabakov.”

“And the good was interred with his bones, Fowler. If this woman is not found, Black September will rub your nose in guts.”

Fowler glanced at the ambassador as though he expected him to intervene, but Yoachim Tell’s small, wise eyes were hard. He stood with Kabakov.

When the major spoke again, his voice was almost too quiet. “You must believe it, Mr. Fowler.”

“Would you recognize her again, Major?” Corley asked.

“Yes.”

“If she were based here, why would she go to Beirut?”

“She needed something she could not get here. She needed something that only Najeer could get for her, and she had to confirm something personally for him in order to get it.” Kabakov knew this sounded vague and he was not happy about it. He was also displeased with himself for using the word something three times in a row.

Fowler opened his mouth, but Corley interrupted him. “That wouldn’t be guns.”

“Coals to Newcastle, bringing guns here,” Fowler said gloomily.

“It would have to be either equipment or access to another cell or to a highly placed agent,” Corley continued. “I doubt that she needed access to an agent. As far as I can tell, U.A.R. intelligence here is a sorry lot.”

“Yes,” the ambassador said. “The embassy handyman sells them the contents of my wastebasket. He also buys from their handyman the contents of theirs. We load ours with junk mail and fictitious correspondence. Theirs runs heavily to duns from creditors and advertisements for unusual rubber products.”

The meeting continued for another thirty minutes before the Americans rose to go.

“I’ll try to get this on the agenda at Langley in the morning,” Corley said.

“If you wish, I could—”

Fowler interrupted Kabakov. “Your report and the tape will be sufficient, Major.”

It was after three a.m. when the Americans left the embassy.

“Oy, the Arabs are coming,” Fowler said to Corley as they walked to the cars.

“What do you think?”

“I think I don’t envy you having to take up Blue Eyes Ben-nett’s time with that stuff tomorrow,” Fowler said. “If there are some crackpots here, the Agency is out of it, old buddy. No fooling around in the U.S.A.” The CIA was still smarting from Watergate. “If the Middle East section turns up anything, we’ll let you know.”

“Why were you so pissed off in there?”

“I’m tired of it,” Fowler said. “We’ve worked with the Israelis in Rome, in London, Paris, once even in Tokyo. You finger an Arab, cut them in on it, and what happens? Do they try to turn him? No. Do they watch him? Yes. Just long enough to find out who his friends are. Then there is a big bang. The Arabs are wiped out, and you are left holding your schwantz.”

“They didn’t have to send Kabakov,” Corley said.

“Oh, yes, they did. You’ll notice the military attaché Weisman wasn’t there. We both know he has an intelligence function. But he’s coordinating the Phantom sale. They don’t want to connect the two things officially at all.”

“You’ll be at Langley tomorrow?”

“I’ll be there all right. Don’t let Kabakov get your ass in a crack.”

Each Thursday morning the American intelligence community meets in a windowless, lead-shielded room in Central Intelligence Agency headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Represented are the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, the Secret Service, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the military intelligence advisors to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Specialists are called in when necessary. The agenda has a subscription list of fourteen. There are many subjects to be discussed and time is strictly limited.

Corley spoke for ten minutes, Fowler for five, and the representative from the Immigration and Naturalization subversive section had less time than that.

Kabakov was waiting in Corley’s small office at FBI headquarters when he returned from the meeting.

“I’m supposed to thank you for coming,” Corley said. “State is going to thank the ambassador. Our ambassador in Tel Aviv is going to thank Yigal Allon.”

“You’re welcome. Now what are you going to do?”

“Damn little,” Corley said, lighting his pipe. “Fowler brought a stack of tapes recorded off Radio Cairo and Radio Beirut. He said they were all threats of various kinds that came to nothing. The Agency is voiceprinting your tape against them.”

“This tape is not a threat. It was made to be used afterward.”

“The Agency is checking its sources in Lebanon.”

“In Lebanon the CIA buys the same shit we do, from a lot of the same people,” Kabakov said. “The kind of stuff that’s two hours ahead of the newspapers.”

“Sometimes not even two hours,” Corley said. “In the meantime, you can look at pictures. We’ve got about a hundred known Al Fatah sympathizers on file, people we think are in the July Fifth movement here. Immigration and Naturalization doesn’t advertise it, but they have a file on suspicious Arab aliens. You’ll have to go to New York for that.”

“Can you put out a general customs alert on your own authority?”

“I’ve done that. It’s our best bet. For a major job they probably would have to bring in the bomb from outside, that is if it’s a bomb,” Corley said. “We’ve had three small explosions linked to the July Fifth movement in the past two years, all at Israeli offices in New York. From that—”

“One time they used plastic. The other two were dynamite,” Kabakov said.

“Exactly. You do keep up, don’t you? Apparently there’s not much plastic available here or they wouldn’t be lugging dynamite around and wouldn’t blow themselves up trying to extract nitroglycerine.”

“The July Fifth movement is full of amateurs,” Kabakov said. “Najeer would not have trusted them with this. The ordnance would be separate. If it’s not already here, they’ll bring it in.” The Israeli rose and walked to the window. “So your government is making its files available to me and telling customs to watch out for fellows with bombs and that’s all?”

“I’m sorry, Major, but I don’t know what else we can do with the information we have.”

“The U.S. could ask its new allies in Egypt to pressure Khadafy in Libya. He bankrolls Black September. The bastard gave them five million dollars from the Libyan treasury as a reward for the Munich killings. He might be able to call it off if Egypt pushed him hard enough.”

Colonel Muammar Khadafy, head of Libya’s Revolutionary Command Council, was wooing Egypt again in his drive to build a solid power base. He might respond to pressure from the Egyptians now.

“The State Department is staying out of it,” Corley said.

“U.S. intelligence doesn’t think they’re going to strike here at all, do they, Corley?”

“No,” Sam Corley said wearily. “They think the Arabs wouldn’t dare.”