Dirty Harry 10 - The Blood of Strangers (7 page)

But if Kayyim was disappointed by their early flight he gave no sign of it. He signaled all those save his bodyguards to leave the suite promptly at ten o’clock, informing them that they would no longer be required that night. He would see them all in the morning before he was to leave for the campus in Westwood.

“I will be perfectly safe,” he assured them, ignoring their protests. “My men are efficient and most able to defend me without additional reinforcements.”

Harry was the only outsider who remained behind. While he had to leave the suite itself, he did not go far. He had the impression that Kayyim had made other plans this particular night and he intended to find out just what they were.

What he expected was that there would be late night visitors to see Kayyim, but this did not turn out to be the case. Kayyim decided to go out with his bodyguards. No longer in military dress, they wore sports jackets and open shirts, obviously unwilling to attract attention.

Harry was prepared for them as they readied to leave. As soon as he’d left the suite he went directly to the room rented for his benefit by the CIA—naturally under an assumed name that would never be linked with the intelligence agency. There he could listen to every word, fed by taps through an ingenious circuitry into a specially designed monitor. Of course, merely hearing every word they were saying did him no good at all since they spoke in Arabic.

That had been taken into account—the CIA was not as inept as all that—and a young, very intense man of about thirty was seated by the monitor, transcribing the bugged conversations for the sole purpose of interpreting them.

Possibly Kayyim and company sensed they were being bugged, even if they didn’t realize that those doing the bugging were nearby. According to the interpreter, they had said nothing of any interest since the conclusion of the party.

When they got out into the hallway, Harry, opening his door just a fraction of an inch, overheard Kayyim giving instructions to his men, interrupting the flow of Arabic to say, “From hereon in, we speak nothing but English. No matter what happens, nothing but English.”

Then the elevator arrived and they stepped into it. Harry raced out the fire exit and down the stairs, reaching the lobby only moments after Kayyim’s party had marched out.

He’d ordered a car brought around for himself; it was idling directly behind a Seville. The three Libyans evidently meant to use the Seville rather than the limousine, again so as not to invite too much attention despite the fact that a limousine in a town like L.A. was not a rare sight.

As far as Harry could make out, no one in the Seville was aware that he was tailing them. But on the other hand, he wasn’t aware that he was being tailed also.

C H A P T E R
F o u r

“W
hen do you plan on getting out of there, Ellie? Don’t you ever stop? Have you any idea what time it is?”

The fact was that Ellie did not. The newsroom was nearly empty so she supposed it was late, “David, I’ll be there. There are just a few things need finishing up.”

“Well, hurry. I’m beginning to feel like you’re in New York for all the chance I get to see you.”

One of the things that Ellie was finishing up was an analysis of the so-called manifesto the Alpha Group had delivered to the station that afternoon. It was pure gibberish, as far as she could make out, with countless references to colonialism and exploitation of oppressed peoples, but the tortured grammar and execrable spelling robbed the mimeographed document of whatever coherence it might have once possessed. Most significantly, the authors never made it clear exactly what it was they wanted in order for them to cease their terrorist acts. Ellie guessed that in all probability, they didn’t want their demands met because they were too enamored of violence.

At one point she was distracted by the T.V. monitors that were mounted around the perimeter of the newsroom. The eleven o’clock news was on, broadcast from elsewhere in the building; the footage being shown seemed to have been shot in an airport.

Ellie gathered that it was the Los Angeles airport. Some dignitary was advancing across the screen, waving cheerfully and displaying a smile filled with glowing white teeth. Right behind him, Ellie saw a succession of men who were all obviously intent upon getting in the line of fire should anyone attempt to assassinate this dignitary. Suddenly, Ellie spotted a man she was sure was Harry Callahan.

It was difficult to tell; he was a shadowy figure racing quickly across the screen, his head half-turned from the camera. But he had the right build, and from the little she could see, the right face, and certainly the right dour expression.

She took the elevator down to the fifth floor to where the broadcast was originating and prevailed upon one of the technicians to run the tape back again. This time she froze the image and stared at it for several moments. There was no longer any doubt in her mind. It was definitely Callahan. So that was his cover.

“Who is that man?” she asked the technician, pointing to the waving dignitary.

The technician told her. “He’s some kind of Libyan official.”

“Libyan,” she repeated. It was well-known that for years the Libyans had been aiding terrorists around the globe: the Basques, the PLO, the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigade . . . She began to see the connection.

With no hesitation whatsoever, she booked herself a late night New West shuttle to L.A. She had the distinct impression that her story was moving south and when her story moved she moved with it. Tomorrow, from L.A., she would inform her boss and explain her action. She was convinced that he would pose no objection though he might balk a bit when she presented him with her expense account.

Tonight the only person she had to explain anything to was David.

He was not, as she’d surmised, very happy about her decision. But wisely, he saw no point in arguing. Instead, he pleaded with her to let him know where she was staying just as soon as she secured a hotel room for herself.

“I worry about you,” he said. “And I love you very much.”

“I love you,” she said, automatically, so that he didn’t quite believe her as much as she wanted him to.

On the New West flight, she was too tired to read the materials she had brought with her for background use. Her eyes glazed over and she would have fallen asleep if the two-engine jet hadn’t begun its descent only twenty minutes or so after getting up into the air. There was only a scattering of people on this midnight shuttle. And in spite of her celebrity in San Francisco, Ellie was relieved to find that no one recognized her.

As it turned out, however, she was mistaken. Somebody did recognize her. He was a man who was sitting one row behind and across the aisle from her. In his sedentary posture, one wouldn’t have known that he measured only five feet which was why to his associates—for he had no friends—he was known as the Small Man.

After a while, Harry no longer had any notion where he was going, or more specifically, where Kayyim and his faithful pair were going for their direction was one and the same. Harry, to be sure, didn’t know Los Angeles all that well, but he doubted whether most Angelinos—most white, well-to-do Angelinos at any rate—ever strayed this far from home. The four-lane highways turned to two-lanes and then into streets where in the little light that was available, sad crumbling two-story houses could be discerned.

Then, all at once, the neighborhood changed and Harry found he was in what looked like a commercial district, ablaze with flickering neon lights and signs signaling the locations of transient hotels, bars, laundromats, taco joints, and check cashing establishments. A disproportionate number of these signs were in Spanish. The streets here were crowded with people who seemed to have no perceptible purpose as they moved, many of them shouldering huge radios blasting music that was sometimes Mexican, sometimes a loud convulsive rock.

The Seville began to slow down and finally came to a stop, double-parking in front of a derelict-looking building with a sign in garish pink letters indicating that it was the Avila Hotel.

Harry parked not far away and watched as Kayyim and one of his confederates emerged from the Seville and entered the hotel. Several windows were open, Harry noticed, other windows weren’t open so much as they were blank. The glass had long ago been knocked out of them.

Leaving his own car, Harry circled around and followed them into the hotel. He threw a sidelong glance at the bodyguard waiting in the Seville, but read nothing in the latter’s expression from which to take alarm. There was no reason he should have identified Harry.

The lobby smelled rank, the man at the desk was asleep and beside him on the counter rested an empty bottle of tequila.

The stairs were steep and illuminated by a bare sixty watt bulb. Harry could hear the footsteps of the two men before he could see them.

They weren’t speaking, not in Arabic, nor in English. Harry, his head lowered, a wide brimmed hat pulled over his face so that it was cast well into shadow, kept an even pace behind them. He did not attempt to muffle his own footsteps, why should he? Other people lived in this hotel, and would be expected to come and go at all hours of the night.

At one point, Kayyim’s bodyguard glanced backwards at him, but gave no indication that Harry’s presence concerned him. He might as well have been another drunk shambling home after several hours tossing back whiskys in the saloon around the corner.

Then they turned and by the time Harry reached the landing—and he didn’t want to risk quickening his pace—they were standing in front of a door that resembled all the other doors along the fourth floor corridor. It too could have done with another coat of paint.

The bodyguard knocked. The door came open, cautiously at first, a man peeked out, then they were permitted to enter.

Harry continued down the hallway till he stood in front of the door. He pressed his ear to it. He heard voices which he could not initially make out. He feared that the conversation might be conducted in Spanish, then recalled that the visitors would be no more likely to know Spanish than their hosts would Arabic. English was what they would probably speak and English it was. Unfortunately, as soon as the words were distinct enough to be understood, Harry was interrupted.

A man in a windbreaker, his mouth invisible behind its upturned collar, was standing opposite Harry, separated by several yards of threadbare carpeting, with what looked like an automatic.

Harry did not know exactly what this man expected, but he wasn’t inclined to stay where he was and find out. He threw himself to the floor a fraction of a second before a sizeable hole appeared in the door he’d just been standing in front of. There was more noise from the splintering of wood than from the detonation itself which led Harry to conclude that his assailant was using a silencer. Not that this knowledge would do him much good. He’d be just as dead if he was struck by a bullet that came soundlessly as by one that didn’t.

The assailant, perhaps regretting his hesitancy in firing, came running down the hall. At the same time, the occupants of the room—undoubtedly disturbed by the shot that had torn a chunk of wood out of their door—appeared, a half dozen of them bristling with arms.

“Que es esto
?” someone called out.

There was a response but Harry was not interested in it, being too preoccupied with the business of getting out of the Avila Hotel reasonably intact.

With his attackers thrown into confusion, Harry enjoyed a temporary advantage. He exploited it as much as possible, rushing down a corridor that lay perpendicular to the one he’d just traversed. The only difficulty with this route was that it culminated in a dead end. There was a window there, with a sick pinkish light emanating from it, and nothing else.

Harry kept low, zigzagging in expectation of the fire he would soon draw. And he did all right. The bullets sent a considerable amount of plaster cascading down around him, covering his head and shoulders, but failing to do him harm. There was no chance to return the fire; by the time he would have gotten his gun out, he would have been dead.

This whole affair was producing an enormous din. The staccato of automatic fire in such confined circumstances was bad enough, but besides that, everyone was shouting and yelling with great fervency. There was no doubt that this racket would awaken even the soundest sleeper. Even in the best of times, voices carried through the walls and down the airshafts in this place.

As Harry approached the window, he realized why there was so much pink light. It was coming from the neon sign that advertised the name of the hotel. He hoped there was something beyond the window to break his fall because there was simply no other alternative than to jump out of it. Fortunately, it was open, letting in the stifling summer night air.

He didn’t think, he just hurtled himself through the narrow opening the frame of the window provided. The crackle of gunfire followed him.

Anticipating a free, if rather awkward fall of four floors, Harry was gratified to find that he’d landed on a rusting fire escape. His acrobatics had exacted a price, straining ligaments that weren’t designed to be strained and leaving unseemingly bruises on his flesh that were accompanied by a sharp pain.

But he could hardly pause to consider the extent of his injuries. Immediately, he was on his way down the fire escape, leaping from one step to the next, and as before, keeping low so as to give his enemies as small a target as possible. He registered the inquisitive, if slightly accusatory, looks he drew from many of the hotel’s residents who were at their windows seeing what all the commotion was about.

There were now gunshots ringing painfully off the railings of the fire escape. The result was a kind of demented symphony—a succession of wild and improbably discordant notes.

The loud metallic clatter of boots above signaled to Harry that he was being pursued, that these lunatics were not going to settle for just firing down on him from any fourth floor window.