Final Flight

9

Thirty seconds after Colonel Qazi stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the terminal at Leonardo da Vinci Airport with his jacket hanging over his shoulder and his tie loosened, a sedan slid to a halt near the curb. He tossed his valise on the backseat and climbed in. The woman driving had the car moving in seconds.

“How was your trip?” she asked as she deftly worked the vehicle through the gears. Her hair was cut in a style common in Europe this year, medium length and swept toward one side. She was wearing a modest, medium-priced tan dress and casual shoes.

Qazi scanned the back window. “I was recognized at the airport.” He checked the road ahead. “Drive on into Rome.”

The driver glanced at her rearview mirror. “How do you know you were recognized?”

“I saw it in his eyes. It was the gate attendant, as all the passengers filed past him.” He sighed. “Ah, Noora. I’m too well known. It’s time for me to retire.”

Noora concentrated on her driving, checking the mirror regularly. The daughter of a rich Arab carpet merchant, she had grown up in Paris. She had studied dance seriously, and chucked it all after the allowance from her father dried up when her affair with a fellow female student became common knowledge in the Arab expatriate community.

She was belly dancing in a cabaret in Montmartre when Qazi recruited her. He had had misgivings then, and they still nagged at him occasionally. She was physically attractive, though not too much so, and she meshed into her surroundings anywhere in Europe, but try as he might, he could not break her of her distinctive heel-and-toe dancer’s walk, the smooth, muscular flow of which made her stick in an observer’s memory. While high heels helped her gait, they also emphasized the molded perfection of her legs. He used her sparingly, only when he had to.

“Your pistol and passports are in the glove compartment.” The weapon and passports had come into Italy in the diplomatic pouch and Noora had picked them up at the embassy.

Qazi removed the Walther PPK from its ankle holster and checked the magazine and the chamber. It was loaded. He pulled up his right trouser leg and strapped the holster on. The silencer went into a trouser pocket. Then he carefully scrutinized both the passports, especially the photographs.

One passport was British, for Arnold MacPhee, age forty-one, six feet tall, residing Hillingdon, Middlesex. Inside was an international driver’s license and a membership in the British Automobile Association. The other passport was for an American, occupation priest, one Harold Strong of Schenectady, New York. This passport contained a New York driver’s license and a medical insurance card from a large American firm. The passports were genuine. They had been stolen, of course, and all the pages were genuine except for the pages that contained the physical description of the bearer and the photograph. The paper for the new pages had been stolen from the manufacturers who supplied the very same paper to the governments involved. No cheap forgeries, these; they had been manufactured in the state passport office by men who had spent their adult lives printing genuine passports.

The documents contained in the passports were forgeries, but good ones. They would pass the scrutiny of immigration officials whose expertise was passports.

Qazi slipped the documents into his jacket pocket and sat back in the seat. He adjusted one of the air conditioning vents to blow the air on him. The heat here was less oppressive than in North Africa, but the air-conditioning of the airplane had lowered his tolerance. “Where will Yasim meet us?”

“The parking garage under the Villa Borghese.”

They came into Rome on the main thoroughfare from the airport, which was on the coast, near the mouth of the Tiber. The hills around Rome were partially obscured by thick haze. A typical September day in Italy, Qazi thought.

Soon the car was embedded in heavy traffic — buses, trucks, automobiles, and motor scooters. The exhaust fumes pumped through the car’s air conditioning system made his eyes sting. They passed the Circus Maximus and circled the Coliseum, then weaved through boulevards until they were on the Via Veneto. Ahead, the tall umbrella pines and huge oaks punctuated the open expanse of the Villa Borghese, the Central Park of Rome.

“I don’t think we are being followed by a solo vehicle,” Noora said.

Qazi said nothing. With enough vehicles and two-way radio communications, a surveillance team would be almost impossible to detect. One never knew if the airport watchers had enough time to alert such a team. The only safe course was to always assume the surveillance team was there, undetected and watching.

Immediately after crossing the Piazzale Brasile, Noora slipped the car into the lane that led down to the entrance to the underground parking garage under this section of the Villa Borghese. On the second level down, near the back of the garage, Noora slowly crept by a parked limo. A uniformed chauffeur was dusting the vehicle. He wore a cap and did not look up from his task. Noora continued on, apparently hunting for a parking place. She descended to the third level of the garage, drove up and down the rows, and returned in about five minutes to the second level. This time the chauffeur’s cap was on the fender. No one was in sight. Noora stopped as the limo backed out of its parking slot and the trunk sprung open.

Qazi leaped from the sedan and tossed his valise into the open trunk. Noora threaded the sedan into the vacant parking space. Then Qazi and the girl lay down in the trunk and the chauffeur slammed the lid closed. The transfer had taken forty-five seconds.

The trunk was dark and their positions were cramped, although they were lying on a blanket. Qazi and Noora tried to ease themselves into comfortable positions as the vehicle swayed and bounced. The safe house was only three miles away, but the circuitous route the driver would take would stretch the ride to almost an hour.

“Welcome to Rome, Colonel,” Noora whispered as he helped her unfasten the buttons on her dress. She wore nothing under it. As she fumbled with his trousers, Qazi tried to decide if wearing a bra would make Noora more or less noticeable in a major European city. He lost his train of thought when her lips found his.

The man in the gray wool suit cut in the English style paused briefly in the door of St. Peter’s and quickly scanned the tourists, then stepped to his right and let the people behind him enter. He moved further right and scrutinized each person coming in while he pretended to consult a guidebook. Finally the book went into his pocket. He stood with his left arm folded across his chest, his right hand on his chin, raptly examining the architectural features of the great basilica as if seeing them for the first time. On his right, near the Pietà, he saw a man in a rumpled black suit, with close-cropped hair and fleshy lips. This man was also engrossed in a guidebook.

After another minute of wondrous contemplation, the man near the door crossed to the left side of the basilica and strolled slowly toward the high altar. He circled it completely, appearing to examine Bernini’s bronze baldachin from every angle, his restless eyes actually scanning faces and the niches and cornices above where conceivably a man might observe the crowd.

The crowd was thin today, perhaps owing to the summer heat outside. Colonel Qazi checked his watch as he consulted his guidebook again. With the book closed in his left hand, he walked slowly back toward the main entrance, his eyes moving, his pace slow and even.

The man in the black suit with the fleshy face was still near the Pietà, yet he was well behind and away from anyone using a camera to photograph the sculpture. Qazi paused near him and opened the guidebook.

“I see we are using the same book,” the man said in English.

“Quite so,” Qazi replied. “Most informative.”

“Thorough, although there are not enough illustrations.” He had a slight accent, hard to place.

“Yes.” Qazi placed his book in his pocket and walked toward the nearest door.

Crossing St. Peter’s Square, the man in the black suit was fifty feet behind. Qazi paused at the colonnades on the north side of the square until the man joined him. Then he turned and proceeded north through the colonnades, the other man at his side.

“Where are we going?”

“You will know when we get there. What should I call you?”

“Chekhov.”

“Someone in the GRU has a sense of humor. This shatters my preconceptions. One hopes the rot has not spread too far. As it happens, I am called Solzhenitsyn. You are perspiring, Chekhov.”

“It is very warm.”

“They should let you leave Moscow more often,” Qazi said as he glanced over his shoulder. “And how have you found the Roman women?”

The Russian did not deign to reply. In a few minutes they reached the entrance to the Vatican Museum and Qazi paid the admission fee with lire for both of them. Once inside he paused where he could watch the door and consulted his guidebook. The Russian looked about dourly and stepped across the room, where he became absorbed in a dark medieval painting with little to recommend it.

Finally Qazi replaced the book in his pocket and wandered away, the Russian a few paces behind. After five minutes of this he entered a men’s room. Qazi stood beside a heavy Italian at the urinals while Chekhov used a stall. When the Italian departed, the door to the stall opened and the Russian exited to find Qazi pointing an automatic pistol with a silencer screwed into the barrel.

“Very slowly, Chekhov, lean against the door. We don’t need any visitors.” The Soviet’s face reddened and he started to speak. Qazi silenced him with a finger. “Do it, or this will be a very short meeting.” Chekhov slowly placed both hands against the door. “Feet wider apart. That’s right. Like in the American movies.” Satisfied, Qazi patted the man down. “What, no gun? A GRU man without a gun …” Qazi carefully felt the man’s crotch and the arms above the wrists. “First humor and now this! The GRU will become a laughingstock. But of course there is a microphone.”

Qazi lifted all the pens from the Russian’s shirt pocket and examined them, one by one. “It had better be here, Chekhov, or you will have to part with your buttons and your shoes.” It was in the third pen. “Now turn around and sit against the door.”

The Russian’s face was covered with perspiration, his fleshy lips twisted in a sneer. “The shoes.”

Qazi examined them carefully and tossed them back. “Now the coat.”

This he scrutinized minutely. From the uppermost of the large three buttons on the front of the coat a very fine wire was just visible buried amid the thread that held the button on. Qazi sawed the button free with a small pocketknife, then dropped the pen and button down a commode. He tossed the coat back to Chekhov. “And the belt.”

After a quick glance, Qazi handed it back. “Hurry, we have much to say to each other.” He unscrewed the silencer and replaced the pistol in his ankle holster. He opened the door as the Russian scrambled awkwardly to his feet.

An hour later the two men were seated in the Sistine Chapel against the back wall, facing the altar and Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Last Judgment behind it. On the right the high windows admitted a subdued light. Qazi kept his eyes on the tourists examining the paintings on the ceiling and walls.

“Is it in Rome, as General Simonov promised?”

“Yes. But you must tell us why you want it.”

“Is it genuine, or is it a masterpiece from an Aquarium print shop?” The Aquarium was the nickname for GRU headquarters in Moscow.

The Russian’s lips curled, revealing yellow, impacted teeth. This was his smile. “We obtained it from Warrant Officer Walker.”

“Ah, those Americans! One wonders just how long they knew about Walker’s activities.”

The Russian raised his shoulders and lowered them. “Why do you want the document?”

“El Hakim has not authorized me to reveal his reasons. Not that we don’t trust you. We value the goodwill of the Soviet Union most highly. And we intend to continue to cultivate that goodwill. But to reveal what you do not need to know is to take the risk that the Americans will learn of our plans through their activities against you.”

“If you are implying they have penetrated—”

“Chekhov, I am not implying anything. I am merely weighing risks. And I am being very forthright with you. No subterfuge. No evasion. Just the plain truth. Surely a professional like you can appreciate that?”

“This document is very valuable.”

“Perhaps. If it is genuine, it certainly has some potential value to El Hakim or we would not desire to obtain it. If it is genuine, El Hakim will no doubt be grateful in proportion to the value it ultimately has for us. If it is not genuine, the Americans have made very great fools of you. And of us, if we do not factor in that possibility.”

The Russian slid his tongue out and moistened his lips. “El Hakim has yet to approve the treaty granting the Soviet Navy port facilities. Anchoring privileges are very nice, but we need the warehouses and dock space provided for in the treaty.”

“Your masters should reconsider their position. A strong, united Arab people friendly to the Soviet Union and hostile to American imperialism would certainly fulfill many of the Soviet Union’s long-range diplomatic objectives. Yet, you ask for the politically impossible now as your price to assist in a great effort which will benefit you in incalculable ways.”

“If it succeeds.”

“First you must plant the potatoes, Anton.”

The Russian sneered. “We have it and you want it. The treaty must first be approved.”

Qazi stared into the Russian’s eyes. Then the Russian felt a sharp pain on the inside of his thigh. He looked down and saw the knife, ready to open an artery. “Your belt,” Qazi said.

“What?”

“Take off your belt and give it to me.”

Chekhov complied slowly, his eyes reflecting dismay. Qazi knelt as if to pray with the buckle a few inches from his lips. His eyes swept the chapel. “General Simonov, I would like to take delivery of the manual for the Mark 58 device tomorrow. I shall call the public telephone on the north side of Piazza Campo dei Fiori at ten o’clock. Please follow the directions you are given and come alone.”

Qazi laid the belt in Chekhov’s lap. The Russian watched him join a group of American students and leave the chapel. Chekhov slowly worked the belt with the transmitter in the buckle through the loops in his trousers as he wondered what General Simonov was going to say.

Qazi sat on a bench watching the lovers and office workers eating lunch near the lake. Through the trees he could see the Galleria Borghese and traffic in the Piazza le Brasile. This great green park in which he sat, the Villa Borghese, was one of his favorite places in Rome. The magnificent pines and oaks, the strolling lovers, and the squealing children seemed to him to epitomize the best of European civilization.

He sat on a bench under the trees. This walking area was covered with a mixture of dirt and pea gravel. When someone walked through a shaft of sunlight, he could see the little dust clouds rising every time a foot came down. Beyond the walkway there was grass, but it was spotty; the city didn’t water the grass and it suffered from the heat and too much traffic.

He wondered idly what his uncle would have said if he could have spent a few hours here watching the ducks upon the limpid blue water and feeling the soft breeze as it eased the effect of the heat and rustled the tree leaves.

Waterholes in the desert are always brown, and the sheep and camels wade in and urinate and stir the tepid mixture until it resembles thin mortar. Then in a few days, three at most, the water is gone, leaving only brown mud cracking and baking in the sun. Then one must dig, dig, dig, and haul the water from the well with skin bags. Could the old man have even fathomed wealth like this?

His uncle had insisted he join the army. Even though the old man had read only the Koran, had seen only that one book in his entire life, he sent Qazi to the city to join the army, the boy who loved the desert and the eternal wind and the free, wild life.

They had lain in the sand and stared into the blackness toward the waterhole. He heard only the wind and the whisper of sand moving across stone. But his uncle had announced, “They are there,” and told him to go around the wadi onto the escarpment, where the old man said he would be able to look down into the waterhole when the light returned. He could still remember leading the camel through the darkness, stumbling over stones while the animal strained against the leash, smelling the water, grunting against the rag tied around her muzzle. After an hour he saw the looming bulk of the escarpment on his right, darker than the surrounding night. It had taken hours to feel his way up leading the reluctant animal Once on top, he tied the camel securely to a stone and waited for her to lie down. He snuggled against her side, his rifle in his hands, exhausted, yet too excited to sleep. The stars wheeled in the sky above him and the wind sighed restlessly.

He had spent countless nights watching the stars and listening to the wind. He had tried to count them once, spent all night on just one segment of sky, numbering faithfully as the stars wheeled above him, on a night so black the stars were just beyond reach in the clear desert air. With his back against the earth there were only the stars and he was one with them, alone and yet not alone, a part of the undying universe. He had finally given up the counting. There were too many stars, flung like grains of sand against the eternal void.

Tonight he glanced at the heavens, but his thoughts were on the darkness around him. He gripped the rifle and rubbed the smooth metal, the blueing long worn off, and the scarred wood of the stock. He fingered the notch of the rear sight and the bolt handle and the trigger. His uncle had told him not to chamber a cartridge until daylight, and he obeyed. Yet the cartridges were in the magazine; all that remained was the opening and closing of the bolt. He caressed the rifle and knew its power, its tension, as he waited impatiently for the stars to complete their nightly orbit. The tension and the fear and the anticipation … of what he knew not, gave life a pungency that he had never known existed. At this time, in this desolate wilderness beneath the eternal stars, here and now he was alive.

A thick figure emerged from the back of the limousine in the Piazza le Brasile and set off alone down the sidewalk toward the entrance to the mall under the Villa Borghese, which also contained the parking garage where Qazi had changed cars on his arrival in Rome two days before. The man carried an attaché case.

Qazi checked his watch, then scanned the park in every direction. The lovers on the blanket near the lake had been there since he arrived and were sharing wine. A woman was walking her dog. Most of the office workers had finished their lunches and were leaving the area. Fifty feet away a middle-aged woman sat on a bench and watched two small children play in the dirt with plastic automobiles.

Qazi watched the traffic in the piazza to see if any more vehicles were going to stop to discharge passengers. None did. After five minutes he arose and began strolling slowly toward the upper mall entrance, his hands in his pockets, checking everyone in sight. He was perspiring, perhaps because he was wearing three shirts in this heat. On the sidewalk he stopped at a mobile ice cream stand and paid fifteen hundred lire for a cone, which he licked as he stood in the shade watching the pedestrians and the traffic. The ice cream melted faster than he could eat it. It dripped on his fingers. When he finished the cone, he returned to the stand and used one of their napkins to wipe his fingers and mouth.

Waist-high circular concrete walls sat amid the grass and trees on the other side of the street. Beyond these walls, which looked like the ends of huge concrete pipes set vertically into the earth, he could see the track and stables where wealthy Roman girls learned to ride. That area was known as the Galoppatoio. Qazi knew the concrete walls encircled shafts that opened on the underground mall and admitted air and light. Several of the shafts had stairs to the mall below. He noted that there was no one standing near the shafts. Without benches to sit on, that area of the park had only a few strollers.

Satisfied at last, he went down the stairs from the sidewalk into the mall.

The man from the limousine was standing on the side of the corridor directly across from an office of the Bank of Rome. He wore an ill-fitting suit and his tie was pulled away from his throat, his shirt collar open. When Qazi was near, he could see why the suit did not fit. The man’s shoulders and chest were massive, rising from a too-small waist. He was about sixty, with a tanned head that made his cropped gray hair almost invisible.

“Buon giorno, General,” Qazi said.

“Aleksandr Isayevich, huh? A priest today.” He was looking at Qazi’s clerical collar, black short-sleeved shirt, and trousers.

“When in Rome …”

“Your man ran me all over the city.”

“He enjoys his job.”

“So what do you and that fanatic fool, El Hakim, plan to do with this?” the general asked, nodding toward the attaché case near his feet. His Russian accent was muted but detectable.

“I thought I might read it.”

“You picked a nice place for this little meet. As I recall there are at least eight nearby exits from this rabbit hole.”

“Eight or nine.”

General Simonov removed a packet of American cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out through his nose. “The Israelis want you very badly. They did not enjoy reading about their underground weapons facility in the press.”

People were walking by. A young man with a backpack walked through the double glass doors from the main entryway and stood behind a gray matron using the automatic teller. To the right, through the floor-to-ceiling windows and across the airshaft, Qazi could see the entrance to the parking garage and, beyond that, the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel that led to the subway station and on to the Piazza di Spagna.

“And you?”

“I’ll admit, that was one of your better shows. A triumph.”

“Thank you.”

“The CIA is also very unhappy about the disappearance of one Samuel Jarvis, weapons engineer. Should I tell them to see you for the particulars?”

“Come come, General. You didn’t drive all over Rome on this warm summer’s day to have an idle chat.”

The general’s eyes were as gray as Moscow in winter. “What are you up to, Qazi? Why did you want the manual delivered in Rome?”

Qazi had thought long and hard about the wisdom of seeking the Soviets’ help. He had not discussed it with El Hakim because if the ruler had approved, the manual would have been delivered in the capital by a Soviet diplomat. General Simonov was nobody’s fool. He would have several working hypotheses to explain the delivery in Rome, one of which would be very close to the truth.

“I needed a short holiday on the expense account, old boy,” Qazi replied lightly.

Simonov’s fingers flipped rhythmically at the cigarette filter. He glanced at a man in a dark business suit who had joined the line to use the money-dispensing machine. “No doubt that’s why you just spent three days in Naples, Qazi. Ah, and you thought I wouldn’t know about that. We have many, many friends in Italy. Old boy.”

No doubt, thought Qazi bitterly as he once again scanned the area. Naples has a communist city government. Every garbageman and street sweeper is probably on the GRU payroll. And that is where the Americans anchor their aircraft carriers! “It must be pleasant to have a post that takes you to the sunny climes for a change.”

“What do you intend to do with a nuclear weapon?”

Qazi glanced at Simonov. “We do not have a nuclear weapon, but if we did, its employment would be strictly our business.”

“That is what El Hakim told our ambassador this morning.” The general dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his shoe. “Moscow would be very unhappy if any such device were used in a way that conflicted with Soviet interests in the Mediterranean.” He extracted another cigarette from his shirt pocket and flicked a lighter. The youth with the backpack was punching the buttons of the automatic teller machine. He wore jeans and running shoes and had unruly, short black hair. “We’re concerned about El Hakim’s activities. It would be a great mistake to think otherwise. A very great mistake.”

The teller machine rejected the young man’s card. He slapped the machine, then fed the card in again and pushed buttons. “I think El Hakim is aware of your position,” Qazi said, “but I’ll tell him you voiced it, again. But I didn’t know the Kremlin used you to deliver diplomatic notes to third-world fanatics, General. I thought they had better uses for you.”

The man in the suit behind the youth at the machine was looking around impatiently. The machine had rejected the youngster’s card for the third time.

“Your El Hakim has spent too many nights dressed up in women’s clothing. Tell him I said that.”

The backpack was now under the young man’s left armpit. His head moved slightly. Qazi realized he was looking at the reflections in the shiny metal of the machine.

Qazi bent and lifted the attaché case with his left hand. The youth at the machine was spinning, falling on one knee, reaching into the open backpack. The Russian started.

Qazi lunged through the open door to his right, knocking aside a woman coming in. He ran down the ramp toward the entrance to the tunnel. Over his shoulder he saw the youth coming through the door, a weapon in his hands.

Qazi ran.

The tunnel had a flat roof about eight feet above a floor covered with a rubberized mat. The mat improved his footing. The walls were concave, giving the illusion of more space. The lighting was indirect, from the ceiling.

Not too many people. Qazi scrambled through them and sent a few sprawling. He ran past the turnoff to the Galoppatoio exit, and before he reached the next turn, he glanced again over his shoulder. The gunman was still coming.

The low ceiling gave Qazi an illusion of great speed. He shot past an exit to the Via Veneto on his left and raced toward the moving sidewalk ahead. He almost lost his balance when he hit it, but he pushed off on a pedestrian who didn’t hear him coming and kept his balance. The moving sidewalk also had a rubberized coating. It descended ahead of him, seemingly endless. He felt as if he were literally flying. After fifty yards he glanced back. The gunman was gaining.

He was running faster than he ever had in his life. The end of the sidewalk was coming up. He leaped for the platform and lost his balance and careened onto the down escalator, into a group of men and women, bowling them over. He was up before they could react and taking the moving stairs downward four at a time.

At the bottom the tunnel ended in a cross-corridor. He turned left, toward the entrance to the Metropolitana, the subway, and buttonhooked against the wall.

He scanned the corridor. Just pedestrians, walking normally.

When the gunman rounded the corner, Qazi shot him three times with the Walther before he hit the floor. The falling man lost his weapon, an Uzi, which bounced off the concrete wall. Someone screamed. A young man reached half-heartedly for Qazi and he threw a shot over his shoulder.

Then he ran, away from the subway entrance, down the corridor toward the Piazza di Spagna. As he ran he ripped off the clerical collar and the black shirt. He literally tore the shirt from his left arm.

When he reached the tunnel exit, he slowed to a walk. He could hear several sirens growing louder, a penetrating two-tone wail. The piazza was full of people strolling and sitting and pointing cameras in all directions. Qazi walked purposefully but unhurriedly the hundred feet to the Spanish Steps and began to climb it toward the obelisk at the top. The stairs were lined with flowers. He paused and watched a police car with blue light flashing proceed through the scrambling people at the foot of the white marble staircase.

He transferred the attaché case to his right hand, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief, then continued climbing the stairs. Two carabinieri in khaki uniforms, wearing berets and carrying submachine guns on straps over their shoulders, ran down the stairs past him.

Qazi stood on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the zoo. A dirty brown sedan, much battered, stopped at the curb. Noora was at the wheel. Ali was beside her in the front seat and another man, about twenty-five, sat in the rear. He opened the door for Qazi.

As soon as the car was in motion, Qazi opened the attaché case. It was empty except for a stack of paper almost two inches thick, held together with rubber bands. He pulled away the top sheet, which was blank, and examined the next. He was looking at a copy machine copy of a photograph. The photo was of the cover of a document marked “Mk-58” and “Top Secret” in inch-high black letters. On the lower right was a printed four-digit number and a hand-lettered inked notation “2 of 3.”

Qazi placed the document in an empty shopping bag that sat waiting on the floor. He passed the attache case to the man beside him. “Wipe it off.”

In the front seat, Ali turned and watched with raised eyebrows.

“A man watched my meet with the general. He chased me. I shot him.”

“We heard the sirens.”

“Who?” Ali asked.

“I don’t know.”

The car stopped shortly thereafter and Ali walked over to a large green trash barrel near a cross walk, deposited the attache case, then returned to the car.

At the next traffic light, Ali looked over his shoulder at Qazi and said, “The United States will anchor in Naples seven days from now.”

“For how long?”

“The hotel reservations are for eight nights.”

“Any particular hotel?”

“Over a dozen reservations at the Vittorio Emanuele. Some reservations elsewhere.”

“Noora,” he said to the girl, “get us two rooms at the Vittorio. Suites, if possible, doubles at least. And stay out of sight.” She nodded.

Qazi turned to the young man beside him. “As soon as you learn which rooms will be assigned to the Americans, Yasim, wire as many as possible.” Yasim was a rarity, an Arab with mechanical talent. He had been the star pupil of the national university’s engineering department when Qazi had discovered him.

“Ali, you set the plan in motion. I will join you at home tomorrow.” Qazi kept checking the rear window as Noora threaded through the traffic onto the Via Tiburtina eastbound. When they came to the limited-access highway that circled Rome, Noora merged with the traffic in the high-speed lane headed south as Qazi checked behind them repeatedly.

An hour later Noora dropped Qazi near Castel Sant’Angelo and sped away. The colonel now wore a short-sleeve, open-neck pullover shirt with a little alligator on the left breast. He walked west on the Via della Conciliazione. Old medieval buildings rose four and five stories above the street on either side, while ahead of him he could see the facade of St. Peter’s. Several blocks short of St. Peter’s Square, he turned right into a side street. He walked under the ancient Roman wall that arched above the street and kept going, into one of the more expensive quarters of Rome. After several blocks, he entered a quiet hotel with a tiny lobby.

“I say, old chap,” he hailed the desk clerk. “Have you any messages or calls for me? Name’s MacPhee. Room 306.”

“No, Signor MacPhee,” the clerk said after looking in the key box. “There is nothing.” Qazi would have been astounded if there had been. No one, not even Ali, knew he was here. He had checked in this morning, before he walked the three miles to the Villa Borghese.

“Grazie!” the new Signor MacPhee murmured as the clerk handed him the key.

Dusk had fallen and the street below his window was lit with lights from the bar across the street when Qazi finally tossed the last of the photocopied pages on the bed and gazed out his window. Without conscious effort his gaze moved from figure to figure on the sidewalk below, then roved over the parked automobiles.

His eyes ached from four hours of reading. He stretched, then slouched down in a chair and stared at the manual lying on the bed. After a few moments he picked up his pistol from the writing desk where he had been reading, turned off the light and stretched out on the bed. He laid the pistol on top of the manual.

When he awoke, the room was illuminated only by the glare of streetlights coming in the window. He checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. He lay in the darkness listening.

After twenty minutes he arose, tucked the pistol into its ankle holster, and placed the manual back in the shopping bag. He locked the room door behind him and descended the maid’s staircase all the way to the basement. The hallway was silent and dark. The eyes of a scurrying mouse reflected the glare from his pocket flashlight. The coal furnace was in the second room on his right. It looked exactly as it did two months ago when he selected this hotel because it had this furnace.

He opened the chimney flue and the firebox door. He placed a dozen pages inside the firebox. Soon the fire was burning nicely. He fed the pages in a few at a time. It took half an hour. When all the pages were cold ashes, Qazi latched the furnace door, closed the flue, and climbed the stairs back to his room.

There was a telephone book in the nightstand beside the bed. Qazi looked up a number and dialed it. After two rings a man’s voice said in English, “You have reached the Israeli embassy. May I help you?”

Qazi cradled the receiver. He stared at the listing in the telephone book and repeated the number several times to himself. Then he replaced the book in the nightstand.

“But he did not have the manual when he got off the airplane this afternoon,” Ali protested.

El Hakim set his jaw. “What did he do with it?”

“Your Excellency, he must have read it and destroyed it”

“Why?”

“He obviously has no further use for it, Excellency.” Ali shrugged helplessly.

I’m sure he doesn’t, El Hakim thought savagely. Qazi has just made himself the indispensable man. This little episode is his life insurance- El Hakim smote the table with his fist, then rose and went to his large world globe. He twirled it with a finger and watched it spin. He hated to be thwarted by anyone, but especially by one of his lieutenants whom he did not trust. It was infuriating. He slapped the globe and it spun so fast the colors blurred. He adjusted the collar of his fatigue shirt and his pistol belt as he watched the globe spin down. He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and tried to think like Qazi. Qazi was a devious man, a dangerous man. A far too dangerous man.

“Jarvis,” he muttered finally under his breath. He turned and grinned wolfishly at Ali. “Jarvis,” he repeated aloud.