Retribution (10 page)

These thoughts went through his mind as he ran across the field, the blood pounding in his temples, gasping for breath. He
knew he was not as graceful as those horses they had seen galloping earlier. In fact, he was a lot less fit these days than
he had been after coming out of the training camp. The months of easy living in Europe had softened him. If only he could
have gone on like that, without these stupid attacks which would gain his people nothing except everyone’s fear and dislike…
He had never wanted to kill anyone. No, he must not allow himself to think like that. It was
a true sign of weakness. He was becoming corrupt. He must be hard and pure, burn like a flame….

Dartley steadily gained on the man fleeing across the field. Although his line of sight was clear, the moving man was too
far away for an accurate revolver shot. Dartley could see that he was not going to reach him before he made the cover of the
trees and scrub on the small hill, but by then he would be no more than a hundred yards behind him. After that it would get
interesting.

The Palestinian stopped at the base of the hill, just before he reached cover, and ran to the left. Dartley didn’t know why
he did this. He cut across and gained further on his quarry. Then Dartley saw what had made the Palestinian turn. A small
but deep stream wound around the base of the hill, almost invisible from a distance in its grass banks.

The Arab seemed headed now for a rectangular stone ruin that stood the height of a modern six-story building. Dartley supposed
it was a Norman keep—certainly those who built it were expecting trouble from their neighbors. Its stone walls rose sheer
from the ground, pierced by slits for archers and spearmen. The Palestinian ran into a small doorway at its base, stood there
looking back at Dartley for a moment, then disappeared inside.

Going in that doorway would be suicide. Presumably the man was armed. Dartley raced for the walls before his opponent could
gain a vantage point from
which to pick him off as he approached. He came around one corner of the keep and saw in the next wall that the stones had
fallen out in the one part, revealing a staircase. This hole in the wall was about fifteen feet above the ground. Dartley
climbed up the fallen rubble and found toeholds in the massive building blocks. He crawled into the stone staircase on his
hands and knees. The staircase wound tightly like a corkscrew, from left to right. It smelled dank and was cold, dark, and
silent.

Dartley climbed the carved stone steps that wound in a spiral. Two openings led to passageways, and he followed one until
he came to an opening that looked into the interior. The roof and floors were gone, the inside was open to the sky, grass
and nettles grew at the bottom. The passageway in which he stood led through the thickness of the wall. He could see from
other openings that it went around all four walls and returned to the staircase that he had ascended. Above him openings around
the hollow interior indicated the presence of two more passageways like this. There was probably at least one other staircase
as well—the one the Palestinian was using.

As Dartley searched with his eyes for any movement and listened for any sound, he did not realize that he was presenting himself
as a target. Ali, on the same level and on the opposite side, watched him through a bowman’s slit carved through solid rock.
He propped the butt of his Llama pistol on the bottom of the niche, squinted along the top of the barrel until he found the
American’s chest, then squeezed off three rapid shots.

The three bullets cracked off the stone next to Dartley’s left shoulder, bounced off the wall behind his head, and sang over
his right shoulder as they traveled back into the keep’s interior. He figured that this was unintentional hustler stuff—that
the Arab hadn’t wanted to show off, only to plug him. And he had been dumb enough to show himself as a full-length portrait
in a stone frame.

He raced back along the passageway and up the stone stairs, ignoring the next pair of passageway openings, and the next, climbing
until he came to the battlements. These were no more than the flattened top of all four walls, bordered on the outside by
a waist-high wall of foot-thick rocks. Opposite his position the other staircase opened on the battlements. There were only
two staircases, but the Palestinian could change from one to the other on any of the levels, unseen by Dartley, through the
passageways inside the walls. He could also sneak off along the fields, leaving Dartley king of the castle.

Dartley looked down over the outer wall at the green grass far below. He could see across the countryside for miles. The horse
trainer’s mansion was visible and also the burning Audi beneath its column of black smoke. Workers were throwing buckets of
water on it. Along a road far across the fields, he saw a large car of a distinctive maroon color. He guessed they had lost
the BMW and were returning. Maybe they’d be in time to help out here. Dartley’s hands were busy pushing fresh .357 cartridges
into the chambers of his revolver.

He waited, peeping into the interior, and then looking out over the battlements into the fields. He saw nothing and heard
nothing. He might have been imagining things were it not for the haze of blue gun smoke slowly rising in the keep’s interior.
Careful of his movements, because a number of the smaller rocks had become loose up here, he warily circled the battlements.

Finally he saw the Palestinian. He had come out of the entrance and was making his way furtively around the base of the keep
walls before making a break for the open field or an attempt to cross the stream. A rock moved in the wall beneath Dartley’s
left hand. He pocketed his revolver, picked the rock up with both hands, and moved quickly along the battlements so that he
was a few paces in front of the man beneath. He dropped the rock over the side.

Considering its weight, about twenty pounds, it took a long time to fall. Dartley watched it drop silently down, close to
the immense keep wall, and saw the man walking beneath, watchfully keeping close to the wall. The rock kept growing smaller
and smaller as it dropped and dropped, and the Arab kept taking paces farther on. It seemed impossible now that rock and Arab
would coincide.

But Dartley’s initial judgment had been sound. The plummeting limestone block hit, glanced off the Palestinian’s head, and
rolled down his back.

Dartley charged down the spiral staircase so fast he could hardly stand upright when he emerged into the field. The Palestinian
lay facedown, the back of his
head pushed in. Dartley felt his spine. It was shattered. He did not move the body to look at the face. He found nothing of
interest in the man’s pockets, apart from two spare magazines for his Llama pistol, all of which Dartley took. His raincoat
and jacket had been bought in Milan, and the shoes looked Italian also. There was no wallet, no identity papers of any kind.
He seemed to have nothing in his possession to identify him as an Arab.

Naim found the
Irish Times
at an international newspaper stand in Paris. A brief account on an inside page mentioned that the body of an unknown man,
possibly a foreigner, had been discovered at a ruin on the lands of J. J. Fitzpatrick, the well-known racehorse trainer. Mr.
Fitzpatrick and many of his employees viewed the body. They stated that the man was unknown to them. It was thought that he
might have been killed accidentally by a falling stone in the ruin. An inquest was to be held.

Naim wondered what had happened to the Audi. No mention of that. Or of Ali’s pistol. Somebody was hiding things. Morton Schiff’s
men or the Irish government? He showed the news item to Hasan.

“At least he will say nothing,” Hasan said with relief.

“Do you think they got anything from him before he died?” Naim asked.

“Maybe.”

“I’m willing to take a chance that he didn’t. I don’t want to give up this apartment yet.” Naim smiled. “It’s too comfortable.”

“Let’s stay here. If the bastards come after us here, we’ll be waiting for them. I’m going to miss Ali.”

Naim nodded. “You think either of us will get out of this alive?”

“Depends how long we go on at it, I suppose. Sooner or later, no matter how careful we are, things will go wrong. How long
do you think it will last?”

“Well, yesterday Greece announced it wouldn’t sign the concordance. That’s one down, with eleven to go. We don’t have to stop
them all. We win if Britain, France, Germany, or Italy refuses to sign.”

“France is the most likely to back down,” Hasan said.

“I agree. Maybe we should do something about it.”

“Have you had clearance on that?”

“No,” Naim said, “and we shouldn’t wait for it. Abu Jeddah told me he does not tolerate failure. We failed in Ireland and
lost one man. We need to show the Front we have not lost our nerve or our touch. When we have a string of successes to our
credit, we will go back there to avenge Ali.”

“Maybe even get Morton Schiff next time,” Hasan said enthusiastically.

“We don’t have to wait to go back there to get
Schiff. If he dares show his face in any country that we’re in, we will get him there.”

“Ali will smile down on us from Paradise,” Hasan said devoutly, which was unusual for a dedicated communist.

“Allah be praised.”

They were walking down the Champs-Elysees, beneath the chestnut trees with new leaves, close to the Place de la Concorde.
They crossed the Place, with its charging streams of traffic, into the formal gardens of the Tuileries. They stood by a pond
with a fountain at its center, on which small boys sailed boats. Neither were armed, because of frequent spot checks by the
police.

Naim knew this was worrying Hasan. “They said there will be three of them, two men and a woman. I refused to meet with any
more. The fewer that see our faces, the better. But as a group, Direct Action has proved its worth to our cause. We have nothing
to worry about in meeting with them.”

Hasan only grunted and shot some wary glances around them.

“We’re a little early,” Naim said. “If they’re here, they’ll want to check us out first before approaching us.”

“I don’t like them coming up to us like this, instead of us being able to check them first,” Hasan grumbled.

“You’re quite right. Except this time we’re the ones asking the favors, and they’re the ones making the
conditions. Look, the only danger we face from members of Direct Action is that of them describing us to the police if they
get caught. I’ll keep them at arm’s length, you’ll see. I’m not arranging anything with them behind your back. You’ll be present
during all my talks with them, Hasan. That’s a guarantee.”

“I suppose we need them,” Hasan conceded.

“Yes, we do. Abu Jeddah must not get the impression that we have weakened. First we will strike again, and only after that
will we ask for a new man on the team. But we are not pleading for help. We two can operate alone. I don’t want to waste any
time. You’ll see how much use I will be able to put these Direct Action people to. I think that’s them over there, carefully
not looking in our direction. They will ask us for the rue de Rivoli. We will advise them not to go there. My name is Abdullah,
yours is Ahmed.”

The three that Naim suspected finally came over and used the password. The big bearded one said he was Jean-Paul, the small
one with spectacles Marcel, the woman Claudine. She was very pretty. Naim figured her as Jean-Paul’s wife or lover, which
might have been what brought her into the movement. Jean-Paul was a leader, a doer. Marcel was the intellectual. Naim felt
comfortable with them and saw that Hasan’s suspicions did not seem aroused by them in any way.

“You have the motorbike?” Naim asked.

Jean-Paul glanced at his wristwatch. “In fifteen minutes it will be dropped off to Marcel on the quainear
the Solferino bridge. He will hold it for you. Maybe you had better be going, Marcel.”

Marcel nodded and left.

“And the gun?” Naim asked.

“It will come with the bike,” Jean-Paul answered. “It’s a Polish M63 machine pistol, 9 mm, twenty-five rounds, weighs under
two kilos. It’s a bit awkward, but it’s the best we could do for a throwaway weapon. Cost us four hundred American dollars.”

Naim didn’t believe this for a moment, yet he did not hesitate to take out a wad of American bills, peel off twenty twenties
and hand them to Jean-Paul. “Is the M63 tricky to fire?” he asked.

“If you want to use it as a submachine gun, lower the forward grip until it locks at a ninety-degree angle to the barrel.
The butt is folded along either side of the pistol body, so you just pull it back and revolve the butt plate into position.
You fire from an open bolt position. There’s no selector switch—automatic fire relies on finger pressure on the trigger.”

“It sounds like a piece of shit,” Naim said.

Jean-Paul shrugged cheerfully.

“I have someone I want you to look for. He is an American CIA man and he has been following us. He doesn’t know where we are
right now, but as soon as we strike, he will come sniffing around. When we saw him once, he had his hair dyed gray or had
a wig and wore false bushy eyebrows. But let me draw the outline of his face for you and his mouth and eyes.” Naim had a natural
talent for sketching. In a minimum of practical
strokes on a sketch pad from his pocket, he used a felt pen to catch an excellent likeness of Dartley’s face. “Look for the
high cheekbones and blue-green eyes. He’s tall, very fit, muscular, alert. Don’t try to take him. Leave him to us.”