The Kobra Manifesto

Chapter Ten: SILHOUETTE

The street was quiet.

Four blacks were standing under the lamp at the nearest intersection, three men and a woman, talking. One swung a guitar case, laughing sometimes, stepping forward again, turning his head to look along the street, talking again, 21:15.

They stood there for another five minutes and then broke up, two of the men going north to the next intersection, the remaining man and the woman turning in this direction and passing the Mustang without glancing in. The man was the one who had been laughing; he swung the guitar case as he walked.

'Okay, he goes for the audition and they ask him who his agent is, an' he says I don't have no goddam agent, an' they throw him out on his ass!'

His laughter rang along the street The woman said something and the man laughed again.

There was nobody else in the street until the first car turned the corner and stopped outside the hotel. When five cars had dropped their passengers I got out of the Mustang and walked back to the traffic lights and bought a late edition of the Post from the box and opened it out as I walked back under the lamplit leaves, checking once, checking twice before I got into the Mustang and shut the door and reviewed the driving mirror for any change in the pattern.

At 21:40 a small police unit was dropped off by a van and took up station: two uniformed officers on each side of the hotel entrance.

Cars began arriving at regular intervals, dropping people off and driving away. Burdick was due to reach the hotel at 22:00 hours.

Ferris hadn't been specific on all points but I hadn't pressed him because my report on Finberg had shaken him and he'd had to get into immediate signals with London via the Embassy radio. I was on what amounted to phase stand-off and feeling very worried because there'd been two fine threads keeping us in contact with Kobra and now one of them had snapped.

Post: Unconfirmed reports attribute Mr Finberg's death to cardiac arrest, and close relatives have spoken on the 'intense strain' he has been under for the past few weeks.

I looked over the top edge of the paper and saw the pattern was a little different: two plain-clothes men were taking up station not far from the police officers, who didn't appear to notice them. If they hadn't in fact been plain-clothes men the officers would have noticed them and moved them on.

Mirror.

A similar pattern change. He was Short, slow-moving, and alone. He came to within fifty yards of the Mustang and then went back to the intersection. I didn't think he was plain-clothes or FBI because he didn't look like that.

21:50.

Ferris had told me to report by phone on the hour at hourly intervals but he never gave me anything useful so I made some enquiries about James K. Burdick, Secretary of Defence, since he was the most interesting man among Fin-berg's acquaintances.

Now I was sitting here wishing to Christ I could get on a plane to New York and take over the Zade surveillance because that was the other thread, the one that hadn't snapped, the one that could snap at any next minute because Kobra had told us before not to get in their way.

Mirror.

The slow-moving man passed the telephone box again, «looking behind him twice in the next fifteen seconds. His image was wrong for an official service operator but he'd undergone basic training. He had noted the Mustang and the fact that I was inside it. He was keeping within the necessary distance of the telephone box and glancing behind him the necessary number of times per minute to ensure that if anyone tried to get into the box he'd be there before them. I assumed that he didn't have to make a call on the hour — in nine minutes from now — but had to make a call when something specific occurred: the arrival of the Secretary of Defence outside the hotel.

I didn't think it was a bracket situation where he was surveying for any form of assassination attempt although information is always information and when he reported Burdick's arrival he could be- triggering any one of a hundred chains of events.

Two identical black Cadillacs turned the corner of the nearest intersection and came towards the hotel entrance, slowing.

At this distance I wouldn't be able to identify Burdick with certainty but the image of the man getting out of the leading Cadillac compared very well with the seventeen photographs I'd studied at the newspaper office. Also he outranked every other guest at the convention dinner by a wide margin and the four uniformed officers were now standing slightly more upright and the two plain-clothes men were turning their heads in a slow sweeping rhythm.

The party of five men crossed the pavement from the leading car into the hotel and I got out of the Mustang and walked back towards the telephone box.

The man inside was talking but I couldn't hear what he was saying. I walked fairly fast, with the paper under my arm. Every one of the twelve cars parked between the Mustang and the first intersection was empty and there were no cars parked along the other side of the street. The man had walked here, turning this corner. He wasn't interested in me. He'd seen me sitting at the wheel of the Mustang but it hadn't meant anything to him: his basic training was narrow focus and all he could think about was obeying orders and his orders were to make a signal when James K. Burdick arrived at the hotel. If the man had been police or FBI or any trained service operator he would have done one of two things: he would have come right up to the Mustang to check or he would have kept out of my driving mirror.

I reached the corner.

Note two people leaving blue Chevrolet and walking south.

Note patrol car heading in this direction from the next intersection.

Note light-haired girl walking north on opposite side.

Fine rain beginning.

Three cars stopped at the traffic lights, this side: two cars stopped at the lights the other side. A cab went through on the green and the lights changed and the patrol car slowed and prepared to stop.

The traffic lights would govern my sequence of actions, then. There was nothing I could do about that.

Red.

The rain began jewelling the green spring leaves above the pavements and drops fell, darkening the ground. There was no need to note consciously that wet stone is more slippery than dry: the body would adjust automatically.

Green.

One of the cars opposite turned south and the other north. On this side two turned north. None of them stopped at the hotel.

Wait.

Assuming it was a genuine case of cardiac arrest I supposed Finberg had been overworking or had been under the strain of what he knew. Or the strain could have been greater than that: he had vital information and had decided to reveal it and knew the consequences would be heavy and when the time came to make his revelation the stress factor rose to fatal levels.

Assuming it was suicide under the guise of cardiac arrest and using some discreet form of cyanide the same considerations were valid: as the time came for making his revelation the stress factor rose and he swallowed something.

Discount possibility of homicide in those high-security environs.

Red.

Four cars pulled up and the patrol car began moving.

The man was still in the box.

Police don't like people standing at corners in the proximity of a place where security is mounted so I turned and walked north towards the telephone box as if waiting to use it. If they were alert to the situation it would appear normal.

A slightly worrying factor was that if the girl saw the occurrence she might scream and the patrol car might still be within hearing distance and I didn't want any trouble because there wasn't time to have Ferris get me out of it.

Consider abandoning.

The police observer was checking me as I opened the paper. The patrol car didn't slow.

The light-haired girl was walking slightly quicker because of the rain. Jeans and a mackintosh and a music satchel.

The two people walking south were out of sight and there was no one else between the two immediate intersections.

The man came out of the box and began walking towards me.

I looked down at the paper.

The time was telescoping to a narrow band of three or four seconds and I reviewed the situation and it was like this: the girl was almost abreast of me on the opposite side of the street and her head was down because of the rain. The patrol car was fifty yards away to the north and if the girl happened to scream it would be heard and the driving mirrors would pick up the occurrence. Given another two seconds the situation would change and the girl would be too far ahead to see anything and she wouldn't scream.

But the man was only one second away from me and we were walking towards each other so I decided not to risk anything and just turned round and walked back towards the intersection, slowing until he came abreast of me.

This would have alerted him despite the fact that he didn't know I was the man he'd seen sitting in the Mustang. Compensation was provided by my now being in a vulnerable position with my back turned slightly towards him and both my hands visible on me edges of the newspaper. In case this wasn't sufficient I swung very fast and obliquely and took him low and brought medium force to the neck as he came down quietly and my right hand cupped his head to stop it hitting the pavement.

Armpit-holstered.22, knife, no wallet, no papers, no chequebook, no identification of any kind.

When I walked back to the Mustang the girl was halfway to the hotel entrance, hurrying because I supposed she'd washed her hair and didn't want to get it wet.

'Where are you?'

'Kennedy Airport'.

Pause.

He was listening for bugs.

That meant he wasn't in one of our safe houses and he wasn't in a hotel so where the hell was he? I couldn't ask. It's all right to be at an airport but not all right to be in a place where you've got to listen for bugs.

'Time check,' Ferris said.

'03:12.'

He paused again.

I couldn't tell what was worrying him.

All he'd said when I rang him at 22:09 last night was get into New York. He hadn't asked for a report or anything. I suppose the Finberg thing had shaken the network badly.

The rest of the passengers from Washington were still coming past and I watched them. I was fairly confident about security but you've got to watch everyone, all the time, wherever you are: men when you notice the same type showing up in two or three different places you know he's watching you.

'Did you get anything?' Ferris asked.

'That's a pretty odd question.'

'No,' he said, 'I'm all right'

Fair enough.

If he'd been talking under duress or in the presence of a third party he would have answered: 'It only looks an odd question.' So whatever was worrying him it wasn't that.

'Yes,' I said. The Secretary of Defence had a tag on him last night at 22:00 hours,'

'What sort?'

'I'd say it was someone from a local cell or someone working for a bigger organization, probably blind or at least without any specific rdv's or cut-outs. Routine training, smaller than a hit-man, bigger than a peep. Gun carried but a lot of trouble taken to remain unidentifiable in case of arrest. His job was to signal when the Secretary of Defence arrived at the Quaker House Hotel and he did it by telephone.'

In a minute Ferris said: 'All right.'

He sounded very tense but I didn't make any comment or ask any silly questions: if your director in the field isn't tense most of the time it means you're not getting warm.

The last of the passengers went past and I memorized them, concentrating on those walking by themselves.

'All right,' Ferris said again. 'You know the objective for this phase.' I began listening very carefully. 'I want you to take him over without letting the other two know.'

'Two?'

'The third one's just been hospitalized in Bellevue. He's in intensive care.'

Shown his hand.

This was conceivably why Ferris sounded so worried.

'For Christ's sake get me running,' I said.

'Yes.' Another brief pause. The objective is in Room 23 of the Lulu Belle Hotel on Broadway and West 69th Street. As soon as you feel you've got full control I'll call the other two off. Questions?'

Couple of dozen but none that I could ask. London was probably in a flap over Finberg but Ferris wouldn't tell me that: it doesn't do the man in the field any good to know the network's got the shakes. My report on Burdick's tag could have been vital or useless and he wouldn't tell me that either unless it would help me to know. What 1 had to do now was go after Satynovich Zade and leave the rest to Ferris. 'No questions.'

05:17.

The place was at the end of a long alley where a group of dustbins stood under one of the three lamps. The cop on the beat had gone past twice since I'd arrived and I kept out of his way. Ten minutes ago I'd located one of our people: he was sitting in a parked VW on West 69th with a long-distance view of the Lulu Belle entrance. The road was up at that point and he was tucked in alongside some machinery in a roped area and I passed across his line of vision only once, He would be using field glasses.

Five minutes later I saw the other one: the pale blob of a face in the corner of a pool-room window. The place looked abandoned and had a padlock and chain across the doors and Ferris must have paid him inside through one of our people in place as an intermediary.

The set-up amounted to a bracket: the only part of the Lulu Belle that neither of them could see was a blank wall at the rear and they could see each other at a distance of some sixty yards with a fairly wide signalling vector if the VW had to move around. They wouldn't have had to rearrange this setup since the third man had been got at, because they'd have been working three-hourly shifts, but it was a good deal more dangerous now. He must have been exposed in some way at his base or en route, or the remaining two wouldn't still be manning the peep: the zone was extremely small and they would have been flushed.

I went back twice to the blue Dodge Charger and moved it a few yards, taking half an hour to work out the optimum station and going on foot from the corner of Broadway and West 69th Street to the next intersection south. I was very restricted because I had to move around without being seen by the two peeps or seen too often by the cop on the beat, but even at this pre-dawn hour there were one or two bums on the street and a group of winos lying in a doorway thirty yards south of the hotel entrance. I don't think it would have been possible to find an effective station without this degree of camouflage.

With the amount of sleep I'd taken in transit from Taiwan to Washington I was good for at least twenty-four hours before performance diminished, and the concussion in Phnom Penh had left me with no after-effects. The only difficulty about the take-over would be to signal Ferris that I was in control of Zade and that could only be done when he stopped moving again. Until then I'd have to run the surveillance in conjunction with the other two people and try not to let them see me.

That could be extremely sensitive and of course dangerous.

Ferris wouldn't normally have gone after a disinformation ploy: it was an ideal, not an essential. But Kobra was running hard and determined to drive any surveillance into the ground before they made their rendezvous: they'd killed three men and put a fourth into hospital and brought Control to the point where he was being pressured to call off the mission and Ferris had been brought in from Tokyo to do two things in New York.

One: to lock me on to Satynovich Zade and keep me with him all the way to the rendezvous.

Two: to let it be thought that the two people now surveying him had lost him beyond any hope of picking him up again.

This was logical. In given circumstances one man can stay with the objective more easily than a dozen: his image is smaller. At the point of locking on the final surveillance Ferris wanted to make it seem that the reverse had happened:.that all surveillance had now stopped. The disinformation component was a refinement: the take-over zone was extremely hot and one of us could be picked up and killed out of hand as in Milan, Geneva and Phnom Penh: but at any phase the Kobra people could try a straight snatch and grill whoever they took, and the disinformation would come up during the interrogation: Zade had been irretrievably lost.

05:43.

First light was touching along the roofs of the buildings.

A work gang had gone past in a truck two minutes ago and I prepared for a sudden rearrangement of the set-up because the VW would have to move off when the road works started up for the day.

The telephone I'd picked was on the other side of a small drug store near the end of the alley, two minutes' walk from die Lulu Belle Hotel. Ferris had told me to signal at ten minutes past each hour, leaving the exact hour interval for the other two.

The cop was still the same one, working die midnight-to-eight.

There was no sign of the opposition.

But they were here.

The deadline for the Kobra rendezvous was close. They hadn't run this far and this fast as a delaying action: they'd done it in an attempt to run our surveillance into the ground. They would zero in to the rendezvous the moment they were satisfied that the field was clear and when Ferris called off the last of the tags and left me in control, it would look like that.

05:49.

Two men.

They hadn't been there before.

I was at the Broadway end of the alley that ran alongside the hotel and I saw them when I checked the south vector. They were keeping to the dark where they could: in the patches of shadow thrown within doorways and in the cover of the hoardings where building was going on in the daytime. They moved about quite a lot but after five minutes I saw they had a focus.

Note. Review. Formulate.

Formulate what action to take if and when they came Work out escape lines. Control the situation to the point where there was nothing they could do without counteraction or a get-out.

That was ideal but of course you can't always do it because you don't always know the terrain well enough to use it for your defence and you don't always know what support they can call on when you select an escape line and find it blocked It was a good suit I'd bought for the interview at the White House and in this area it looked a little incongruous and they could be a couple of muggers.

I didn't think so.

There was a slight problem because the obvious escape lines were along Broadway and 69th Street but if I moved towards them from the alley I would have to cross exposure zones and I'd been avoiding them for the last thirty minutes These zones were the open areas directly opposite the front of the hotel, where anyone in the street could be seen from any one of its windows.

The danger was that the two men could in fact be a couple of muggers. If I could be certain of this, there was no problem. I was ideally placed for a lure situation and if they followed me down the alley I could deal with them out of sight But I couldn't be certain, and if I assumed they were not muggers but hit-men from a Kobra cell I could take escape action that would expose me to actual Kobra surveillance in the area and that was what I'd been taking so much trouble to avoid.

It was a question of identity.

They were still moving.

But nothing had changed: I was their focus.

I waited.

Half a minute later the cop passed between their station and mine. He didn't check them and that could mean they were local and would therefore have nothing to do with Kobra. It was a clue to their identity but not reliable and I began worrying.

Milan. Geneva. Phnom Penh, Gut-think: discount.

The darkness was composed partially of light. The actual sources of the light — the street-lamps — were blinding to the eye and left the shadows almost black in places where doorways were deep and the hoardings threw an angular pattern. I had sufficient cover to use but couldn't reach it without showing my direction.

A Yellow Cab passed between the buildings, sending a wash of light along the walls. The two men turned their backs until it had gone. This was quite a professional move but not all that sophisticated: it was a street-crime skill and it didn't identify them as trained operators.

They were facing forward from the doorway again and watching me. I didn't think there was much chance of identifying them until they came close and if they came close it could be too late because if they were operationally trained they'd know how to kill.

Harrison. Hunter. Chepstow.

Gut-think: ignore.

They moved again, one going north and one south along me opposite pavement. In ten seconds they were out of sight because I was a few yards into the mouth of the alley and was therefore blinkered beyond a thirty-degree vector, I listened for them, Nothing.

Nothing close.

The rattle of a cab.

A Ship on the Hudson, Silence again.

Then their footsteps.

I walked halfway down the alley and turned round.

From this position I could assess their approach and if I thought they were professionals I could turn again and get out of the alley at the other end.

They became visible, their silhouettes moving against the back-lighting of the street behind them. They came quickly but were not running. There was a certain discipline in the way they walked. I couldn't see any sign of a weapon and certainly neither of them was holding a gun: their silhouettes were sharp and I could see their hands swinging freely as they walked.

They looked confident and I now assumed they were professionals. Their quick footsteps were taking on a strange echo and it alerted me: they were closer than they looked. I turned and began my run but stopped dead when I saw the two other men coming the other way.