‘Convenient,’ said Weingrass. ‘Can you get us the updated structural plans, including the fire and security systems? I read those things pretty well.’
‘At this hour?’ cried the official. ‘It’s after three o’clock in the morning! I wouldn’t know how—’
‘Try a million dollars, American,’ broke in Manny softly. ‘I’ll send it from Paris. My word.’
‘What?’
‘Split it up any way you like. That’s my son in there. Get them.’
The small room was dark, the only light the white rays of the moon shining through a window high up on the wall—too high to reach, for there was no furniture except a low-slung cot with ripped canvas. A guard had left him a bottle of seeber-too ahbyahd, a numbing local whisky, suggesting that what faced him was better faced in a drunken stupor. He was tempted; he was frightened, the fear consuming him, causing him to sweat to the point where his shirt was drenched, his hair soaking wet. What stopped him from uncorking the bottle and draining it were the remnants of anger—and one last act he would perform. He would fight with all the violence he could summon, hoping, perhaps, in the back of his mind for a bullet that would end everything quickly.
Christ, why did he ever think he could do it? What possessed him to believe that he was qualified to do what far more experienced people thought was suicidal? Of course, the question was the answer: he was possessed. The hot winds of hate were burning him up; had he not tried they would have burned him out. And he had not failed entirely; he had lost his life but only because he had achieved a measure of success. He had proved the existence of the Mahdi! He had hacked a trail through the dense jungle of deceit and manipulation. Others would follow; there was comfort in that.
He looked at the bottle again, at the white liquid that would put him out of it. Unconsciously, he shook his head slowly back and forth. The Mahdi had said his gestures were as pathetic as his words. Neither would be pathetic on that plane flying over the shoals of Qatar.
Each soldier of the Masada Brigade had understood from the beginning and each checked the plastic tape around his left wrist to make certain the cyanide capsule was in its small, exposed bubble. None carried papers or any traces of identification; their ‘working’ clothes down to the shoes on their feet and the cheap buttons on their trousers were all purchased by Mossad agents in Benghazi, Libya, the core of terrorist recruitment. In these days of injected chemicals, the amphetamines and the scopolamines, no member of the Masada unit could permit himself to be captured alive where his actions could be even remotely connected to the events in Oman. Israel could not afford to be held responsible for the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-six American hostages, and the spectre of Israeli interference was to be avoided even at the cost of the unholy suicide of each man sent to Southwest Asia. Each understood; each had held out his wrist at the airfield in Hebron for the doctor to secure the ribbed plastic tape. Each had watched as the doctor swiftly brought his left hand to his mouth where hard teeth and the soft rounded bubble met. A quick puncture brought death.
The Tujjar was deserted, the street and lamps muted by pockets of mist drifting in from the Persian Gulf. The building known as the Sahalhuddin was dark except for several lighted offices on the top floor and, five storeys below, the dull wash of the foyer neons beyond the glass entrance doors where a bored man sat at a desk reading a newspaper. A small blue car and a large black one were parked at the curb. Two uniformed private guards stood casually in front of the doors, which meant that there was probably security at the rear of the building as well. There was a single man. Codes Grey, Black and Red returned to the broken-down taxi two hundred yards west at the corner of Al Mothanna Road. Inside, in the back seat, was the wounded Yaakov; in front, Ben-Ami and Emmanuel Weingrass, the latter still studying under the dashboard lights the structural plans of the building. Code Grey delivered the information through an open window; Yaakov issued their instructions.
‘You, Black and Red, take out the guards and get inside. Grey, you follow with Ben-Ami and cut the wires—’
‘Hold it, Eagle Scout!’ said Weingrass, turning in the front seat. ‘This Mossad relic sitting beside me doesn’t know a damn thing about alarm systems except probably how to set ’em off.’
‘That’s not quite true, Manny,’ protested Ben-Ami.
‘You’re going to trace pre-coded wires where they’ve been altered on purpose, heading to dummy receptacles just for people like you? You’d start an Italian festival down here! I’m going with them.’
‘Mr. Weingrass,’ pressed code Blue from the back seat. ‘Suppose you begin coughing—have one of the attacks we’ve all sadly observed.’
‘I won’t,’ answered the architect simply. ‘I told you, that’s my son in there.’
‘I believe him,’ said Grey at the window. ‘And I’m the one who pays for it if I’m wrong.’
‘You’re coming around, Tinker Bell.’
‘Will you please—’
‘Oh, shut up. Let’s go.’
If there had been a disinterested observer in the Tujjar at that hour, the following minutes would have appeared like the intricate movements of a large clock, each serrated wheel turning another which, in turn, sent motion back into the frenzied momentum of the mechanism, no cog, however, flying out of sequence or making a false move.
Codes Red and Black removed the two private guards in front before either knew there was a hostile presence within a hundred metres of him. Red took off his jacket, squeezed into the tunic of one of the guards, buttoned it, put on the visored cap, pulled it down and quickly ran back to the glass doors, where he tapped lightly, holding his backside with his left hand, pleading in the shadows with humorous gestures to be permitted inside to relieve himself. Frustrated bowels are a universal calamity; the man inside laughed, put down the newspaper and pressed a button on the desk. The buzzer was activated; codes Red and Black raced inside, and before the all-night receptionist understood the mistake he had made, he was unconscious on the marble floor. Code Grey followed, dragging a limp guard through the left door, which he caught before it swung shut, and behind him was Emmanuel Weingrass carrying Red’s discarded jacket. On cue, code Black ran outside for the second guard as Weingrass held the door. All inside, codes Red and Grey bound and gagged the three security personnel behind the wide reception desk while Black took a long, capped syringe from his pocket; he removed the plastic casing, checked the contents level, and injected each unconscious Arab at the base of the neck. The three commandos then pulled the three immobile employees of the Sahal-huddin to the farthest reaches of the enormous foyer.
‘Get out of the light!’ whispered Red, the command directed at Weingrass. ‘Go into the hall by the elevators!’
‘What…?’
‘I hear something outside!’
‘You do?’
‘Two or three people, perhaps. Quickly!’
Silence. And beyond the thick glass doors, two obviously drunken Americans weaved down the pavement, the words of a familiar melody more softly spoken than sung. To the tables down at Mary’s, to the place we love so well…
‘Son of a bitch, you heard them?’ asked Weingrass, impressed.
‘Go to the rear,’ said Grey to Black. ‘Do you know the way?’
‘I read the plans, of course I do. I’ll wait for your signal and take out the last one. My magic elixir is still half full.’ Code Black disappeared into a south corridor as Grey raced across the Sahalhuddin’s lobby; Weingrass was now in front of him heading for a steel door that led to the basement of the building.
‘Shit!’ cried Manny. ‘It’s locked!’
‘To be expected,’ said Grey, pulling a small black box from his pocket and opening it. ‘It’s not a problem.” The commando removed a puttylike gel from the box, pressed it around the lock and inserted a one-inch string fuse. ‘Stand back, please. It won’t explode, but the heat is intense.’
Weingrass watched in amazement as the gel first became bright red upon firing, then the bluest blue he had ever seen. The steel melted before his eyes and the entire lock mechanism fell away. ‘You’re something, Tinker—’
‘Don’t say it!’
‘Let’s go,’ agreed Manny. They found the security system; it was contained in a huge steel panel at the north end of the Sahalhuddin’s underground complex. ‘It’s an upgraded Guardian,’ pronounced the architect, taking a pair of wire cutters from his left pocket. ‘There are two false receptacles for every six leads—each lead covering fifteen to twenty thousand square feet of possible entry—which, considering the size of the structure, means probably no more than eighteen wires.’