(1982) The Almighty (38 page)

He went toward them with Pagano, shaking hands with both Cooper and Quiggs before sitting down in a straight chair across from them.

‘I want to thank you for everything you’ve done,’ said Armstead. ‘I’ve never dreamed it could go that smoothly.’

‘Sorry about Lourdes,’ Cooper apologized. T didn’t like the odds. Better a miss than a mess.’

‘You made the right decision. But all the others were fine.’

‘Planning,’ Cooper said. ‘We’re proud we pulled each one off without detection. We did have six fatalities, five on their side, one on ours, but that’s a low rate of loss in this business.

We hope you got full value for your money.’

‘No complaints,’ said Armstead. Then, with a lilt of amusement in his voice, ‘I’m sure you’ve already guessed why I commissioned the operations and what I’ve been after.’

‘We may have speculated,’ said Cooper evenly, ‘but we’ve never tried to find out. We wouldn’t want to be in the position of being tempted to blackmail a client. We feel we’ve upheld our end, and we’re pleased you’re happy with your end of the bargain. You’ve paid us handsomely and we thank you.’

‘We all thank you,’ said Quiggs.

‘Not yet,’ said Armstead. ‘It’s not quite over with. I have one more job for you, one last one before we thank each other and our partnership is dissolved.’

‘One last one,’ said Cooper. ‘Fine. I assume it must be an operation of importance to bring you over here personally.’

‘It’s important all right, the most important job of all,’ said Armstead, fishing into the pocket of his suit coat. He withdrew a folded sheet of bond paper, and slowly unfolded it. ‘I don’t believe in committing my assignments to paper. Never have, until now. This one I typed out myself after checking in. I wanted every aspect of the operation to be perfectly clear. Once you’ve read it, I’ll tear it up and flush it. Here it is.’

Extending his hand for the sheet of paper, Cooper said, ‘Sounds like a blue-ribbon one.’

‘The most useful one of all, for my purpose,’ Armstead said.

Cooper and Quiggs read the typed page together. Armstead glanced at Pagano nervously, and then watched Cooper and Quiggs in silence.

After they had scanned the page together, Cooper reread it by himself. At last he neatly folded the sheet once, twice, and handed it back to Armstead. Cooper’s soft voice ended the stillness in the room. ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Cooper. ‘Can’t do it. Not in our line. Too tough.’

Armstead was breathing quickly. ‘You have to do it. You did the others.’

‘This one is different.’

‘You can’t be objecting to the idea.’

‘Christ, no. We don’t give a damn about the operation or

the victim. They’re all more or less the same to us. That’s not it. I’m simply saying this one is too difficult.’

‘Even for double the money? I’d guarantee you ten million dollars.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘For no amount of dollars. It is basically a technical problem. We’re not equipped to undertake this kind of operation. We couldn’t get the plane. We couldn’t get the pilot you’d need. In fact, no one could -‘ He hesitated. ‘- except, of course, Carlos. I’ve heard he had this kind of person in Japan. Carlos and his gang could probably pull it off. In fact, I’m sure he could. But not anybody else. Certainly not us.’

Armstead had taken grasp of something. ‘But you think Carlos and his gang could do it?’

‘I’m certain they could. But they wouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

Cooper spoke with evident sincerity. ‘Put it this way. Me and my boys, we’re in business. We’re sensible businessmen. For us, most operations are a living. Not so with Carlos and his loonies. They’re not businessmen. They’re fanatics. Your money would never impress them. They’re political creatures who perform for causes, like it’s a religion. They’d find no real cause involved in this, so they’d have no reason to want to do it.’

Armstead was staring at Cooper through his eye slits. ‘I could give them a reason to do it.’

Cooper was at once surprised and curious. ‘What possible reason?’

Armstead continued to stare at Cooper. T could ask you to kidnap a man they’d do anything to get their hands on. I could ask you to kidnap this man, and the ransom would be to pull off my blue-ribbon operation. I know where the man to be kidnapped is this minute. I’d pay you the ten million to grab him.’

Interest showed in Cooper’s face. ‘Grab who?’

Armstead swallowed. ‘Carlos,’ Armstead said.

The other three were all staring at him now.

Armstead swallowed again. ‘Grab and hold Carlos,’ he repeated. ‘His gang will do anything I want to get him back. What do you say?’

Slipping into his lightweight plaid topcoat, which had been purchased three years earlier when he was corpulent and was now too large for him, Carlos emerged from the driveway of No. 10 Rue Martel. Automatically he glanced to his left, to his right, both sides empty of pedestrians except for some young woman window-shopping at the corner of the Rue de Paradis.

Satisfied, Carlos took one sniff of the fresh early afternoon air, cleaned by the previous night’s rains, and proceeded to the Citroen idling at the curb. Carlos noted that a meter had been installed in the sedan, to camouflage it as a Paris taxi, and the job was a realistic one. Yanking open the back door, Carlos climbed into the rear.

His driver sat stonily awaiting instructions. The driver, wearing a heavy overcoat, a woolen scarf wrapped around his neck and the lower part of his face, his usual cap pulled down to his ears, had a fit of coughing.

‘Sound like you’ve got a cold,’ said Carlos.

The driver nodded, coughing once more into his handkerchief.

‘Let’s go, Jean,’ Carlos ordered. ‘De Gaulle. Turkish Airlines - THY. No rush. No risks. I’ve left myself plenty of time to make one stop on the way, then check in, pick up some reading.’

Continuing to nod, trying to muffle his cough with the handkerchief in his free hand as he shifted gears with the other, the driver pulled the car away from the curb and started ahead.

Abruptly at the next driveway, which led into the courtyard of No. 12, the driver gripped the steering wheel with both hands, wrenched the car to the left into the darkened entrance, and once off the street jammed on the brakes.

Thrown forward, trying to regain his balance, Carlos

bawled, ‘You son of a bitch, what the hell’s going on?’

As Carlos started to speak to Jean again, the driver whirled around, scarf thrown aside, and it wasn’t Jean at all but a stranger. He stuck an arm over the back of the front seat and in his hand was an Astra .357 Magnum. He pressed the muzzle of the gun against Carlos’s forehead. ‘Shut up,’ the driver commanded. ‘One move and you’re dead.’

The trunk of the Citroen was already open, its lid pushed high. A man crawled out, slammed the lid shut as another man joined him, and then both dashed for the rear doors of the car and ducked in, one on either side of the stunned Carlos.

‘What is -?’ Carlos had started to say, when the Astra was pulled away from his forehead and a swab of ether clamped over his mouth and nose. Carlos attempted to wrestle free, but the powerful men on both sides had him pinned back, while the hand of one exterted pressure on the soaked rag of ether covering his mouth and nostrils.

In short seconds Carlos’s resistance subsided and he went limp and unconscious, sagging against one of his abductors. With practised hands the man ran his fingers over Carlos’s body, until he found and removed the Skorpion YZ61 gun.

Together, the pair pushed Carlos off the car seat and rolled him over and down to the floor.

‘On our way,’ one of them called out.

The driver put the Citroen into reverse, and backed slowly out of the driveway into Rue Martel.

As the driver shifted into first, a voice in the rear shouted, ‘Hold it - here comes Pagano!’

Across the street a figure had materialized from the shadowed doorway of a closed shop and was running toward the car. The front door on the passenger side had been thrown open for him, and Pagano leaped in beside the driver and signaled ahead.

Stepping on the gas, the driver asked, ‘Anyone at No. 10 see this?’

‘Nobody,’ Pagano assured him. Pagano turned to the pair in the back seat. ‘You got the carcass, Quiggs?’

‘In dreamland,’ said Quiggs, poking his shoe into the unconscious lump on the floor. He looked up with a broad

smile, exulting, ‘Boy, this was a piece of cake for ten million American smackers.’

Accelerating, the Citroen sped up the Rue Martel.

Seconds later, a red Renault turned into the Rue Martel, with Victoria at the wheel and following.

When Carlos completely opened his eyes and his head began to clear and he focused, he realized that two men were standing over him, observing him. He also realized that he was strapped tightly into a sturdy chair, his wrists tied behind the chair, his ankles, in front of the chair, also tied.

Carlos had difficulty speaking. His tongue was thick. With effort, he managed to articulate a question. ‘Who are you?’ He turned his head in either direction. He was in a darkened room, a shabby living room, and he was aware that there were other persons somewhere in the room behind him. He managed another question. ‘Where am I?’

‘Never mind where you are,’ said the taller of the pair, settling down in a chair directly in front of him. ‘Since we’ll be together a little while, we don’t mind introducing ourselves. I’m Cooper. This is Quiggs.’

Carlos had found his voice. ‘You’re going to pay for this, you dirty fuckers.’

‘I’m not exactly worried,’ said Cooper. ‘I think you’re the one to start worrying - if you don’t cooperate.’

Carlos’s eyes smoldered. ‘Carlos doesn’t cooperate with anyone, if he doesn’t want to. And I don’t want to, not with a bunch of tinhorn scum and mercenaries. You let me go or -‘

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll see that each one of you is hunted down and cut to ribbons.’

Cooper reached for Carlos’s throat, placed his fingers around it, pressing his thumb against the terrorist’s Adam’s apple. When Carlos gagged, Cooper released his grip. ‘Listen to me, you fatheaded skunk, you’re not going to see to anything, now or ever. You’re going to have your head blown away. You’re going to have your corpse, in chains, at the bottom of the Seine.’ Cooper straightened. T don’t want any more crap from you. Either you cooperate or you’re wasted. You’ve got exactly one minute. Which is it?’

Carlos stared at him coldly, and at last gave a short shrug of surrender. ‘What do you want?’

‘Your gang,’ said Cooper.

‘You off your rocker, or what?’

‘We need your men for an operation,’ said Cooper. ‘We want your gang, and your gang will be wanting you. We have a special operation in mind. We’re not equipped to do it. Your men are. We want your men to pull it off. That’s our ransom demand. Your men pull this off for us, and we’ll set you free, return you to them.’

Carlos fixed on Cooper with his lethal stare, lips compressed. Finally he spoke.

‘What do you want done?’ said Carlos. ‘Obviously I can’t help. If you want something done, you’ll have to put it up to my men, not to me.’

Quiggs came closer, bending low. ‘Who do we contact?’

‘I don’t know. My partner, maybe. Without me there, he’s the only one who can speak for the others. Robert Jacklin’s the one.’

‘Where is he?’ Cooper demanded. ‘At your hideout in the Rue Martel?’

‘No,’ said Carlos. ‘Jacklin is in Istanbul laying the groundwork with the Turkish Popular Liberation Front for something of our own.’

Quiggs displayed a Turkish Airlines ticket. ‘You were on your way to meet him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do we contact him in Istanbul with the ransom demand?’ Cooper wanted to know.

‘You can’t. He has no address in Istanbul.’

‘But you were on your way to see him,’ said Cooper. ‘Where?’

Carlos grimaced and squirmed. ‘Will you loosen these goddam straps?’

‘In due time,’ said Cooper. ‘Where were you meeting Jacklin?’

‘Inside a mosque - the Blue Mosque - tomorrow - eleven in the morning.’

‘Where inside the mosque?’

Carlos was reluctant to answer. He glared at his

tormentors, and finally gave in. ‘In front of the chanter’s balcony.’

‘You’ll have to explain that in a minute,’ said Cooper. ‘How do we identify Jacklin?’

‘A scar - he has a scar on his right cheek.’ Carlos continued to glare at Cooper and Quiggs. ‘You know he won’t talk to you.’

‘He will,’ said Cooper, ‘if he sees a ransom note from Carlos, a note in your own hand. You better play along with us, Carlos, if you want to see tomorrow.’

Carlos had begun to calm down. His predicament seemed to amuse him. A ghost of a smile played across his features. ‘I guess I have no choice,’ he said.

Cooper stood up, indicated the Turkish Airlines tickets that Quiggs was holding. ‘Give Gus these tickets. Tell him to get ready to take off soon as we get him the note. Tell him to inform our principal about the delay.’ He raised his hand to read his wristwatch. ‘Still time to make the three o’clock plane if he moves fast. I want him in Istanbul.’

An hour ago, probably less, Victoria had seen most of the action in the Rue Martel. Standing at the corner, she had seen a man in a plaid topcoat emerge from No. 10 and enter a Citroen taxi, a car that resembled the auto that had whisked Nick away from the Champs-Elysees, only this one had been a taxi. She had been unable to identify the lone passenger exactly, although from Nick’s earlier description and from her research notes he suspected that it might have been the world’s most wanted terrorist, Carlos.

She had seen the vehicle dart away from the curb, brake, skid, and plunge into the next driveway out of view. Moments later she had seen it back out, but this time there had been three men in the rear seat instead of one, and suddenly the one in the middle had been pushed down out of sight.

Victoria had veered off, eased casually into the Rue de Paradis, then run to her Renault and got it started. When she careened into the Rue Martel, the taxi had nearly reached the far end of the block and was turning the corner. Grimly, Victoria had followed.