Retribution (9 page)

Frankie Grady was washing glasses when Richard Dartley walked into the Stag and Hounds next day. He sat on a barstool opposite
Grady and waited without saying anything. The place was again nearly deserted, with no one in earshot.

“I was able to get you something,” Grady said, concentrating his efforts on a pint glass. “Some units are for these Arab fellas
and some are against—there’s been big arguments over it. The Arabs are going to kill Morton Schiff, the Wall Street financier.
Him being an American and a Jew, they kill two birds with one stone.”

“Where?” Dartley asked.

“He has a horse in a big race at the Curragh tomorrow. They wanted to do it there, but the top men said no. You know what
we Irish are like about racehorses. The IRA would be blamed and it would turn the entire country against us. We made that
mistake before when we killed the Aga Khan’s horse.”

“Where is the hit set for?”

“I don’t know that. Schiff arrives on his private jet in Dublin sometime today. He owns a castle in County Waterford, so I
suppose he’ll stay there tonight and tomorrow night. I have a Dublin phone number where you can arrange to buy a gun. That’s
all I know, except that there’s three men involved. They were taken into Ireland last night on a fishing boat to the Waterford
coast. It can’t be far from Schiff’s castle. They might be setting up a reception party already for him. I had to tell my
connection that an American was out to get these Arabs. You owe him a favor for his information.”

“Who is it?” Dartley asked.

“You’ll be the first to know when he needs your help.”

Dartley couldn’t remember for the moment what alias Grady knew him under. He was certain Grady had no way of contacting him.
That would be one favor hard to call in.

“Do you have change for the phone?” he asked. “A lot of change, enough for a transatlantic call.”

Instead of using the phone in the Stag and Hounds, he went down the road to a public call box.

* * *

Naim had been handed an envelope by his contact in London. It was filled with newspaper clippings about the financier and
bloodstock-owner Morton Schiff. Because of his hostile takeovers of major companies, there was plenty written about him, but
mostly business articles of little value to Naim. There were a number of pictures of him, though none of good quality. Photographs
taken at race meetings in both Europe and America showed him and his wife with trophies. He had gray hair and bushy black
eyebrows, was in his late fifties, was tall, had an aggressive thrust to his chin. Naim learned things about his personal
life from gossip columns and articles in magazines.

All Schiff’s cars were maroon Rolls-Royces. He was always accompanied by two armed bodyguards, having been the object of a
failed kidnapping attempt in Italy and a failed assassination attempt by a deranged accountant in Chicago. He loved horses
but had never ridden one. He bred them, bought and sold them, and raced them in six countries. His castle in County Waterford
was a fortress with walls of stone six feet thick. He slept only four or five hours a night, and when in Ireland he could
be counted on appearing at his trainer’s each day for the dawn gallop. Naim found some pictures of the trainer, J. J. Fitzpatrick,
who had a hooked nose and a tweed cap.

The fishing boat set them down on a granite jetty in a deserted cove. They had to walk a mile through drizzle to a farmhouse,
where they slept for most of the
day. They had a BMW and an Audi at their disposal, three Armalite automatic rifles, .38 ammo for their Spanish pistols, smoke
grenades, plastic explosives, electronic time-delay detonating devices, and hand-held transmitter-receivers.

“I say the hell with what they want,” Hasan said. “We should kill him and a lot of others before the big race. They might
even catch it live on television. We couldn’t get wider coverage than that.”

It was tempting. Naim thought it over. “We’re depending on the Provos to supply that boat to take us from here to France.
There’s a good chance they won’t cooperate if we break our agreement with them. Then we’ll be stuck here, on an island, with
all ports and airfields watched. We can’t risk it.”

“They’d still have to help us escape,” Hasan argued. “If we get caught, there’s always the chance we’ll say the Provos helped
us get here. We’d certainly be tempted to reveal their role if we got caught because they let us down. They can’t take a chance
on that. They have to help us to France.”

Naim laughed. “You assume they’re all rational. You know even better than I do all the crazy things that have happened in
the PLO. Why do you think the IRA is any saner? We both have a lot of loose cannons and quick tempers. I say don’t cross these
IRA people if we don’t have to. Let’s hit Schiff at dawn at his trainer’s gallop. If we don’t get a chance then, at least
we tried. So we can say we had to do it at the big race.”

They left the farmhouse long before first light next
day, Naim and Hasan in the BMW, Ali behind in the Audi. Although Schiff was not far from them and might be taking the Same
road, they decided against an ambush when there was a much easier way. They would just walk up to him and shoot him.

J. J. Fitzpatrick’s place was in County Kildare, less than two hours away. It was located somewhere outside Athy, a small
country town. The streets were empty and the stores still closed at this early hour. They stopped a slow-moving truck loaded
with hay bales and the driver gave them directions. He said to look for a big gateway with stone lions on each side. They
turned in at the gateway, passing over the parallel steel bars that prevented horses and cattle from going in or out. Trees
lined a long gravel drive, branches meeting overhead. The drive forked, the left side heading for a large gray house. Hasan
took the right fork, and Ali followed.

They left the cars in a gravel lot and walked to an archway. Through it they saw a square lined with long, low buildings on
all four sides. The buildings had red wood doors, with independently opening top and bottom halves. Horses’ heads looked out
of many open top halves. Other horses, some in blankets, were being led or ridden in the open space. Small, lightweight men
and young boys hurried around, some carrying metal pails, others riding crops.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The harsh challenge in the voice startled them. Hasan’s right hand dived into the pocket of his raincoat. Naim stepped forward
to meet the light-footed short
man who had come up behind them unexpectedly. He had the battered face of an old pro boxer—or a jockey.

“My name is Abdullah al-Shatila,” Naim said smoothly, shaking the man’s hand. “My associates and I represent the interests
of Sheik Ibn-Saud.”

That was all he needed to say. The man saw oil-rich Arabs with an interest in thoroughbreds, a welcome sight in this part
of the world at any hour of day.

“The boss is out looking at a new filly, sir. He should be back in half an hour or so. Do you mind waiting?”

“Not at all,” Naim answered. “May we look around?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. Not without the boss’s permission. You’ll understand that, I’m sure.”

“You’re quite right,” Naim said approvingly. “If the sheik had horses here, he would not want strangers roaming around. We’ll
wait here for Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

This was going exactly the way they wanted. They hoped the trainer would be in no hurry back. It was a clear, dry morning
with a nip in the air. If what the magazine writers said was true, Morton Schiff should be along very shortly in one of his
maroon Rolls-Royces.

While they waited, Naim detailed what they would do. “Hasan, you sit behind the wheel of the BMW. Any trouble, you come to
our aid. Ali, you and I will let Schiff come as close to us as possible—wait until you hear me say the word
now.
Then we draw our pistols. You shoot the bodyguard on your side, I’ll take
the one on mine. Then we both empty our guns into Schiff.”

“First we take out the bodyguards,” Ali confirmed.

“If there are more than two or if we bungle things,” Naim went on, “Hasan uses an Armalite from inside the car. If all goes
well, we leave the same way as we came in, return to the farmhouse, and take the boat to France after dark.”

“Sounds good,” Hasan said and got behind the BMW’s wheel. He rolled down the windows fully.

After a short while they heard the thud of hooves from the field next to them and saw three horses thunder by, their riders
standing in the short stirrups so that they were not actually sitting on the horses’ backs. The animals’ snorting and panting
were even louder than the pounding of their hooves on the dirt. They moved away across the field again with amazing speed
and grace, their manes and tails flaring.

The three men grew alert when they heard the sounds of tires on the gravel drive. Without pretending to be looking, they waited
to catch sight of the car as it emerged from the trees lining the drive. It was a Land Rover—followed by a maroon Rolls-Royce.

The driver of the Land Rover got out and casually looked them over. Then the Rolls driver emerged and held open the back door.
A gray-haired man with black bushy eyebrows and an aggressively thrusting chin climbed out. Morton Schiff was younger looking
and stronger looking than his newspaper photos indicated. He was alone in the back of the car.

“Let them come closer,” Naim said softly in Arabic to Ali, who was getting jumpy.

Both of them stood holding their cocked pistols in raincoat pockets. It would only require a second to draw the weapons and
another second to fire them.

Schiff and his two bodyguards, one on either side of him, came closer. When they were about twenty paces away, Schiff said
something to them. In an instant the three of them had drawn revolvers and were pointing them at Naim and Ali.

“Freeze, you motherfuckers!” Schiff rasped. “Move one muscle and I’ll blow you apart. You in the car, let me see your hands.”

Naim and Ali stood motionless, their concealed right hands holding their pistols.

“Hey, I’ll nail you if I don’t see your hands in another second, bastard!” Schiff shouted to Hasan in the car.

An object flew out of the BMW’s side window and landed almost at Schiff’s feet.

“Grenade!” Schiff yelled. “Cover!”

He and the two bodyguards threw themselves behind their vehicles about a second before the grenade burst into a thick cloud
of harmless yellow smoke.

Dartley, lying facedown in the dirt behind the Rolls, heard the BMW’s engine start. He yanked off one of the bushy false eyebrows
which had slipped down over his left eye. He called to Schiff’s two
bodyguards, “It’s only a smoke grenade. Don’t let them get away.”

As he ran through the blinding smoke in the direction of the engine’s sound, he heard the second car start up. This was nearer.
He would have a better chance at it. He changed direction slightly and ran like hell so he could get out of the smoke and
make visual contact with a target.

By the time Dartley found his way out of the smoke, the first car was already headed for the drive. The second car’s driver
accelerated too fast and the wheels spun on the gravel before gaining traction. Dartley fired a slug through the rear window
but missed the driver. He had only five shots left in his .357 Magnum and he couldn’t afford to waste any. He dropped to the
ground, held the revolver in both hands, balanced on his elbows, and blasted off three shots just beneath the car’s rear fender.
One or more bullets punctured the gas tank. The heat of the slug rupturing the steel tank wall ignited the gas, which expanded
explosively in the tank’s enclosed space.

The Audi’s back end lifted off the ground on a ball of flame. The car crashed down and slowed to a stop as it burned vigorously.
The driver opened his door and ran for the cover of the tree-lined avenue. Once more Dartley’s vision was obscured by smoke,
this time pungent black smoke from the burning Audi. He began to run after the man but stopped when he saw the two bodyguards.

“Take the Rolls,” he shouted to them. “Go after the two in the BMW. I’ll handle this one here.”

The two bodyguards did what he said, having been instructed by Schiff to take orders from Dartley. Dartley’s transatlantic
call from London had been to Charley Woodgate. Charley had contacts and managed to reach the financier by phone after the
market closed and before he left for Westchester Airport, north of New York City. Charley told him to stay home and just send
his plane and bodyguards. But Morton Schiff was made of sterner stuff than that: he wanted to see his horse race and no one
was going to stop him from doing so. Dartley had some trouble persuading him not to come along to his trainer’s that morning.

When the fleeing Palestinian heard the Rolls come down the drive, he ran between the trees, climbed the white-painted wood
fence, and cut across the field, heading for another fence and a wooded hillside. If he reached that cover, he would be hard
to find and would have the advantage over the searchers.

Dartley saw him go and went over the fence after him.

Ali cursed himself for not having jumped in the BMW with Naim and Hasan. He did not want to be captured now—before they had
really begun their campaign of terror against the treaty signers. Think what an honor it would be for the three of them to
terrorize the twelve Common Market countries into obedience to the June 4–New Arab Social Front! Three individual freedom
fighters against all the European colonialists, the pigs who had bled the Arab world dry all these years, who had stolen their
oil while winking at the Zionists. They had helped the Israelis kill his brother—he was sure of it. He could not let his glorious
struggle end so quickly. He must not be captured!

Besides, he was looking forward to some more good times. They would be back in the Montparnasse apartment the day after tomorrow,
and it would be time to celebrate. Those girls were expensive, and so too was vintage champagne, fine old cognac and high-quality
hashish. But Hasan and he didn’t have to worry about cash. Since they started reporting to Naim, money had been more plentiful
than ever. That was too good to give up. He would enjoy it all the more after having nearly lost everything here. Ali was
always like that. A thing had almost to be taken from him before he valued it. He must not be captured!