Reprisal (4 page)

Mid-twenties, athletic build, brown hair and of course the suit with the blue and white vertical stripes. He was easy to spot,
like Malleson said. The subject knew his way and made straight for the stop for the rent-a-car courtesy trams. Avis and Budget
trams came before the Hertz showed, and the subject let them go. He seemed relaxed and in no hurry.

After the subject boarded the Hertz tram, Dartley followed it at a distance, drawing close only when it
stopped so he could see if anyone got off. No one did. When the tram left the airport area, he passed it and headed for the
Hertz compound on Airport Boulevard, where he himself had rented his Lincoln a few days previously. He waited inside the compound
until the subject found his assigned car, a blue Chrysler Le Baron. Dartley drove quickly to the exit and showed his Hertz
agreement to the guard, who lowered the set of spikes in the road. He drove a short distance north on Airport Boulevard, pulled
over, and waited for the blue Le Baron to appear.

While he waited, he drew his revolver from his shoulder holster and checked it. It was a Smith & Wesson M38 Bodyguard “Airweight”
with a two-inch barrel. He spun the five-round cylinder and snapped it back in place. This short-barreled .38 was a backup
gun rather than a main weapon, in Dartley’s opinion, but more than adequate for his present purposes, where concealment and
reliability were more important than firepower.

The blue Chrysler Le Baron turned south. Dartley made a U-turn, followed the subject west on Century and south again on Sepulveda,
into the tunnel beneath the airport runways. Through El Segundo and past Manhattan Beach, Dartley hung back and let the Chrysler
take a big lead. Dartley guessed he didn’t have to be so cautious, since the subject seemed as carefree and unwatchful as
before.

“This one’s a total amateur or he’s a genius,” Dartley muttered out loud.

He speeded up when the subject pulled off at Hermosa Beach and located him again on a road parallel but nearer the water.
The subject turned
right into a narrow road. Dartley nosed the front of his Mark VII around the corner, saw the Le Baron parking, and reversed
to the curbside where he was hidden around the corner. Then he nosed around the corner again and saw the subject walking farther
down the street. The man in the striped suit crossed another street and entered a pedestrians-only walkway to the beach.

Dartley dumped the Lincoln, grabbed his combat magazine, and headed for the beach like he was looking forward to a peaceful
read. The houses on each side of the walkway were tiny and squeezed together in a hodgepodge of architectural styles, each
with its miniature but highly individual garden of flowering bushes and tropical flowers, or stones and cacti. Down a gentle
slope, the peaceful blue sky hung over the calm Pacific.

The guy in the striped suit stopped outside a house, looked back, and saw Dartley. He froze. Dartley kept on, strolling casually,
magazine in hand. It was no good, and Dartley knew it. The guy was now staring at him, standing stock-still, his mind racing.

As he neared, Dartley smiled in a friendly way at the man still staring at him. He twisted the magazine into a tight roll.

“Who are you?” the subject asked in a fearful voice, aware that somehow things were coming to pieces, but unsure in what way.

Dartley thrust the rolled magazine into the man’s face. The top edge of the reinforced tube caught him at the base of the
nostrils. His only sound was a
whimper. Confused by pain, blinded by tears, swallowing his own blood, the man staggered.

Dartley slammed home a knuckles-up, straight right karate punch into his solar plexus, which knocked the air out of him with
such explosive force, Dartley and the walkway behind him was spattered by blood.

When the subject half turned as his knees gave way beneath him, Dartley chopped him over the left kidney. The guy in the striped
suit collapsed like a wet paper bag.

Something caught Dartley’s eyes. A figure in the window of the house. A man with a big head had a big automatic pistol in
his right hand and was leveling the barrel, steadying his right hand in his left palm… Dartley fell. Two bullets passed over
him like crazed hornets a microsecond before he heard the shots and the window glass shattering.

He crawled the hell out of there, grabbing his magazine as he went. When he was clear of the house, he got to his feet and
ran as hard as he could back to the Mark VII. His Smith & Wesson M38 Bodyguard “Airweight” was snug in his shoulder holster,
but it was no good in this situation. Getting into a shooting war with that dude in the house would have led him into too
many unknowns. First, he had no idea how many adversaries were in the house. Second, he had no way of knowing if the senator’s
daughter was in the house. If she were, he would be endangering her by opening fire. Third, he’d end in the hands of the LAPD
no matter how things went and be hanging out in precinct houses for months on end, explaining who, what and why, his cover
blown.

The fella in the house might have his problems too, Dartley decided as he ran. If he had the girl in there, he would have
to surface soon and move out. The gunshots could be enough to have the place surrounded in ten minutes—though Dartley had
noticed no bystanders and knew how things like afternoon gunfire often seemed to go unnoticed in residential districts, dismissed
as something innocuous. If the girl were in that house, he had to move, knowing that a stranger was onto the place. Dartley
looked back before he reached his car. No one was moving yet. The man in the striped suit was still facedown in the walkway.

Dartley opened the trunk, tossed the magazine in, and took one of the two M16s. This automatic rifle had a Laser Arms Corporation
laser gunsight mounted on the rear sight. Now, if the girl was in the house and there was no back exit, he might be in business.

Sure enough, in half a minute the man with the big head came out of the house, pistol in hand, pushing a girl in front of
him as a shield, his long hairy left arm around her waist.

Dartley set the rifle barrel on the top of a fence. He touched the remote button on the laser gunsight and angled the barrel
about until the red laser dot crossed and recrossed the kidnapper and his captive. Dartley knew he would have to be careful,
since the red dot projected by the laser gunsight was much harder to see in sunlight than in the shade or, of course, by night.

Dartley’s advantage was that the kidnapper stood head and shoulders above his victim, giving Dartley
some real estate to play with. He threw the red laser dot right on the middle of the man’s large face. That should be exactly
where the bullet would impact when he fired the weapon. He squeezed the trigger.

The small, high-velocity bullet cracked open the kidnapper’s massive forehead. The lead projectile twisted into a shapeless
mass and turned end over end through the brain tissue before bounding off the inside rear wall of the skull and plowing back
through the brain again.

Sight faded from the kidnapper’s eyes and his mouth dropped open. The dead nerves loosened his fingers and the pistol fell
from his grip. Then he collapsed stone dead at the girl’s feet.

She started to scream.

Dartley charged forward, grabbed her arm and shook her until she stopped.

“Who are you?” she demanded to know.

Dartley didn’t seem to hear. He was looking at the man in the blue-and-white striped suit, who was lying facedown, unmoving
but breathing regularly. Dartley raised his right foot and brought his heel down in a vicious stomp on the back of the man’s
neck.

The neckbone snapped with the crack of a dry branch.

The girl looked in Dartley’s cold, wolflike eyes and started screaming again.

“Shut up, bitch, and move your ass,” he said.

Awad and Zaid stood at a respectful distance from the president’s desk, silent, keeping their eyes on the richly carpeted
floor in front of them or looking
out the window. They did not let their presence intrude on the president’s consciousness as he sat working on papers. They
could have stood like this for many hours without attracting attention to themselves. They had been summoned and they had
come. That was enough. When Ahmed Hasan was ready to tell them what he wanted, that would be the time most suited to them.

Awad smelled of stale sweat. A sports shirt hung loosely over his big belly, and his baggy pants were held up uncertainly
by a belt that went beneath rather than across his abdomen. His lips were thick and moist, his jowls unshaven, his teeth broken
and green. Sunglasses hid his eyes.

Zaid was a walking cadaver. His sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, stooped shoulders, narrow bony hands, collapsed chest, and fleshless
thighs made him look like a concentration camp victim or a hunger striker far gone. His tan suit looked as if it had been
made for someone else, as it had, and one could easily imagine Zaid stripping it from a dead body for his own use, which he
had. He had also killed the man, though not for the suit.

They waited quietly at a respectful distance from the president’s desk, enjoying the air conditioning and the opulence of
the office, which reminded them of pictures they had seen of the interiors of great sheiks’ tents long ago, priceless carpets
strewn everywhere, cushions, brasswork, scimitars… The president’s office had all these, plus teak and mahogany furniture
in Western style, a stereo, color television, video recorder, plus closed-circuit TV, electronic security devices and other
Western things they hardly
understood. Zaid had once said to Awad that being in this office with Ahmed Hasan gave him a feeling even more powerful than
he got when he stood in Sayyida Al-Hussein, praying at the shrine that held the head of the Prophet’s grandson, which had
been carried to Cairo in a green silk sack. Awad saw what Zaid meant, but he himself was more inclined to Sayyida Zeinab,
the mosque which contained the tomb of Muhammad’s granddaughter.

It was another ten minutes before the president acknowledged their presence. He gestured to them to be seated on a leather
couch, and they helped themselves to cigarettes on a glass table while Ahmed Hasan had coffee served. The three men sat together,
exchanging courtesies over the thimblefuls of bitter black brew before Hasan got around to what he wanted them to do.

“I have a list of CIA dogs who do their master’s bidding in Cairo and elsewhere. The Russian Embassy supplied me with the
names of active CIA agents in the American Embassy here, and we watched which Egyptians and foreigners met with them regularly.
So now we know who the Americans use to gather information in our country.”

Awad and Zaid, like hounds sniffing blood, grew more alert.

Ahmed noticed this, smiled and held up a hand. “No, my friends, I must disappoint you. I am not ordering their wholesale slaughter.
Not today anyhow. You’ll have noticed I said these dogs gather information. It puzzled us that none of these CIA hirelings
had sensitive government or military positions. What could they know that would be of value
to the CIA? But that was their only role—not to provide information, only to gather it. We had them watched and saw military
officers, engineers, government bureaucrats, spies and traitors in all walks of life come to these information gatherers.
Rather than make an American at the embassy conspicuous by meeting with Egyptians outside diplomatic circles, the CIA had
these Egyptian traitors funnel their information to one of these gatherers inconspicuously. Are you following me?”

Zaid and Awad nodded eagerly.

“Good.” Ahmed rang a brass bell for more coffee and passed about the cigarettes. After they were served, he continued. “Every
system has its strengths and its weaknesses. Only a foolish man fights against another’s strengths. The thoughtful man seeks
his opponent’s weaknesses and strikes there instead. The weakness of this CIA system is clear. The information gatherer is
a node and thus a possible filter of the information. They are Egyptians, and so without American protection from our government.
They are traitors to their country and to Islam, so that no penitence is too drastic for their sins. I say we must strike
them in the name of Allah!”

“May He always be praised,” Zaid said reverently.

“We will disembowel the dogs,” Awad promised fervently.

Ahmed held up his hand once again. “Someday, my friends, someday, but not at present. We have other uses for these vermin.
Only four have high military contacts. I want you to persuade these four men to give you the military information they collect
before they pass it on to the Americans. You in turn
will bring it to a certain colonel who will change what needs to be changed. In this way we will control the military information
which is fed to the CIA without interrupting its flow and alerting them that anything is wrong. To ensure that the Americans
suspect nothing, I want information on other subjects to go through untampered. This colonel knows what to change at the military
level. Otherwise it will go to the CIA unchanged, even if we might prefer it did not. This is because one important secret
must be concealed from the Americans without them realizing it. If they should discover everything else we do not want them
to know, we must permit them to do so if it means we can keep this one secret from them.” Ahmed paused and stared at each
of them in turn to impress his seriousness upon them. “I tell you this only because, I must warn you not to be too ambitious.
Nothing matters except this thing, which you cannot be told. You must persuade these four men to cooperate in the next few
days. Only the highest military levels are involved. You
must
let everything else through, even when it would be easy for you to prevent. You must practice restraint, in the expectation
that the day of retribution will come. Everything is set down on these papers for you.”

Ahmed Hasan looked after them as they left his office, mildly amused that he had to rely on “reformed” street criminals for
highly delicate matters of state. They could be relied on to deliver exactly what had been requested, whereas intelligence
officers and military men were so blinded by their own ambitions they were apt to bungle anything which involved judgment.
Not Awad and Zaid. They knew
for certain that they would never sit in parliament or be appointed an ambassador in London.