December Ultimatum (8 page)

CAIRO

‘One helluva story’

It was 87 degrees Fahrenheit and still Egyptian women covered them in blankets and forced hot cups of coffee into their hands. Egyptian immigration officials demanded passports from the sick on stretchers, ignoring the shouts from the American medical orderlies to let them be. The tired, the injured, the frightened and the wounded who had arrived in Cairo aboard the
USAF
Galaxies, sedated and comfortable, were suddenly confused and in pain again. Walking wounded sat down in one place and were asked to move to another only to be moved on again. A stretcher was put down in one corner of the airport arrivals hall and seconds later picked up and put somewhere else. There were a dozen different men in a dozen different uniforms and each was in charge. An American stood on a chair and shouted out names and instructions to American citizens but no one could hear him and the tension and anxiety increased so that women suddenly screamed and sat on the floor and sobbed as their children lost themselves, and scattered across the hall. Men wandered in no particular direction hoping to be stopped and told what to do and where to go, and the sick on the stretchers stared at the ceiling and at nothing as flies settled on the caked blood of their bandages. And all the time the women of the Egyptian Red Cross put their blankets around hot and sweating bodies and held scalding mugs of coffee to broken parched lips.

Franklin sat by the air conditioning unit. The cuts in his head and face had been cleaned again with new dressings but the after-effects of the painkillers given him aboard the evacuation plane had made him dizzy and every now and then he could feel his gorge rise. He had to stand up and walk some yards then sit again as his legs began to shake. He watched Egyptian immigration officers stand on the seats shouting out passport numbers and names.

‘Franklin?’

The man went down on one knee close to him and held out the slim green American passport. A second man stood behind him.

‘You Franklin?

‘That’s right.’

‘
New York Times
?’

‘That’s me.’

‘I have a letter for you. It’s a kinda introduction.’

‘From New York?’

‘From Washington.’

Franklin looked up. The man was dressed in a lightweight wash’n’wear tan suit. His face was the same colour. The man behind him could have been his brother. Franklin took the envelope, held it up to the light to see the shadow outline of the letter inside and tore open the end. He pulled out a single sheet of paper, headed United States Cairo Embassy. It was from the State Director of the Washington Bureau.

‘Glad you are out. Good rovers never die, they say. The Mid East has gone sour and our advice too lately accepted. It’s now spreading and need immediate conversation with you so call me from Embassy soonest. Cheaney will explain. Regards, Heinzerling.’

Franklin held out his hand and the man helped him up. ‘You Cheaney?’ And the man nodded.

‘You’ve something to tell me?’

‘Sure,’ said Cheaney. ‘We have a car for you. Let’s talk on the way to the Embassy. This is Joe.’

‘They always are.’

Joe smiled back.

‘Can I get a shower?’

‘Sure. Just about everything here my friend, except tail, but I reckon we could manage that at a push. D’you know Joe here tells me he can even get pretzels nowadays. Can you imagine pretzels in Cairo? They’ll be selling baskets of fruit for Yomtov next.’ He grinned. He had a fat shiny face as if it had been regularly polished and small bullet eyes deep set and green. His paunch fell over his trousers. Joe ate pretzels. Cheaney looked as if he was fond of Budweisers.

‘I’d be happy,’ said Franklin, ‘with a shower and a change of clothes. And perhaps a quick call home.’

‘You betcha,’ said Cheaney. ‘Joe here will look after everything. Leave it to him.’ Joe smiled again, the same broad grin on the same fat, polished face.

Joe manoeuvred the black Embassy Chevrolet through the mass of bodies in the road outside the arrivals hall. Passengers hauled luggage away from porters, taxi drivers hawked their girlfriends, tin-chinking beggars masqueraded as totally blind and terribly crippled. He swung the car through a gate marked in English
‘SECURITY AREA. NO ENTRY’
then through another with the same sign, halting only for a moment as the red and white painted barrier was raised by a saluting security guard. Then on to the tarmac of the apron, within fifty yards of the refuelling Galaxies, past the cargo shed and a sudden right turn on to the main Cairo road. Joe knew the airport, and the airport security men knew the Chevrolet.

‘You know the President’s going to make a speech?’ Cheaney asked. He lit a Camel cigarette and handed it to Franklin.

Franklin inhaled and then filled the car with heavy purplish smoke.

‘Yes?’ he said, inhaling once more. ‘Be one helluva lot of bullshit.’

‘Maybe,’ said Cheaney.

‘Five months in office and already playing the odds.’ ‘Finding his feet, perhaps,’ said Cheaney.

‘He reckons the Saudis are going to be frightened off? Who’s advising him?’

‘Who’s advising the Saudis?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Somebody is. This Rahbar guy is not doing this on his own.’

There was a pause before either man spoke again.

‘How much does the Agency know?’ Franklin turned in his seat to face Cheaney.

‘We’re still struggling, but it’s piecing together. One helluva jig-saw, though.’

‘How much d’you know?’ Franklin asked again.

‘We know who started the coup. We know that Gaddafi did the footwork and we think we’ve got most of the names who met at that hotel in Baghdad. What we don’t know is which one of them is working for Moscow. Do you?’ Franklin drew on the cigarette again and Cheaney’s fat face, wet and shining now with sweat, was hidden for a moment in the smoke.

‘Yesterday, Cheaney, I had an audience with the King. The Agency had given the Saudis my cover, so he called me in. He was a very worried man.’

‘That
OPEC
planned Rahbar
’s coup?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that it really wasn’t
OPEC?
That somebody else was behind it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Who?’

‘Karim, Iraq’s defence minister. He’s been with the
KGB
since 1962. It’s been Moscow’s idea for a long time. Suddenly they found a way using Gaddafi. They had a man in Lagos who’s been pushing the Nigerians. Same in Caracas. It’s a big operation, Cheaney. They’ve been working on this for years. They knew Afghanistan was as near as the limit of their confrontation. From then on in it had to be done underground. Iran, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, working from the inside out. But the Royals had Saudi Arabia all tied up and Moscow couldn’t find a way in, until the Crown Prince became an Islamic freak.’ Franklin then repeated what Fahd had told him.

Twenty minutes later Cheaney said, ‘You got all this from Fahd?’

‘A couple of hours before the start. The first rockets hit the place about midday.’

‘How did he get it so wrong?’

‘Wrong?’

‘So late. How come he knew all this but didn’t splash it sooner? Expose them?’

‘Very simple, Cheaney. So simple it breaks your heart. He got his timing wrong. His family had been in charge for so long they reckoned they controlled time. His service reports were coming in, intelligence was being slowly put together, the fingers were being pointed. Fahd thought he would choose the time when he would come down on them and wipe them out. He got it wrong. He was behind time, not in charge of it.’

Cheaney lit another cigarette, took the half-smoked one from Franklin and gave him a fresh one.

‘You always so agreeable, Cheaney?’ But Cheaney didn’t answer. For a minute or more he looked ahead, over Joe’s shoulder, his chubby face lit up by oncoming car headlamps. Then he turned in his seat and faced Franklin.

‘You heard of Schneider? Anna Birgit Schneider?’

‘Sure. West German. Red Army.’

‘Ever seen her?’

‘No.’

Cheaney touched his arm. ‘She’s on her way to kill Fahd.’ Franklin drew on the cigarette. It was too strong and was beginning to make him feel sick again. Some miles ahead he could see Cairo, the city’s lights reflected in the pollution haze, hanging over it like a low yellow cloud.

‘Is Schneider on her own?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Cheaney. ‘If we did we’d be halfway there already.’

‘And where are you exactly?’

‘Nowhere, Franklin. Shit scared and nowhere.’

‘Where is Fahd?’

‘England. Somewhere north called the Lake District.’

‘So why the Agency? It’s a British problem.’

‘Wrong, Matt. It’s everybody’s problem, but most especially it’s an American problem. Director Johns wants Fahd back in Saudi Arabia and he wants him back there quickly.

‘Johns is mad. If he understood anything about that country he wouldn’t bother. The King’s gone, like the Shah, like King Farouk, like King George out of Boston. There’s been a special revolution with some very special backers and Johns mustn’t imagine we can pull the strings any more. Rahbar is not Thieu or Lon Nol or anyone of the Agency’s puppets. Fahd has lost. So have we. It’s history. Rahbar and his Revolutionary Council have taken over and there’s nothing Johns or the President of the United States can do about it.’ ‘Wrong again, Matt. There’s a lot the President can do, you can bet on it. And there’s a lot he will do. None of us know exactly what, but we’re guessing and the prospects are bright. What we do know for sure is that getting Fahd back on his throne is vital to whatever the President has in mind. You wait for his speech.’

‘I said it’d be bullshit.’

Cheaney leant forward in his seat, rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands so that the tips of his fingers touched his nose. For a moment Franklin thought he might be praying.

Then he said quietly. ‘Let me tell you about Schneider.’

‘Not for publication?’

‘Most certainly not for publication. In this car, Matt, you’re an Agency man—but we’ll talk about that later.’ He lit another cigarette and wound down his window and threw out the match. A narrow blast of warm air hit them.

He said, ‘West German police in Bonn have picked up the body of an Arab. Shot once in the head at close range.

Through the left ear. Seems he once worked for the Saudi Embassy in Bonn as a cypher clerk and got fired for drugs four months ago. The Germans found him by a fluke. He had been dumped inside a mould for one of the concrete supports of a new building, but there was bad frost overnight and the workmen had to break open the scaffolding because the cement had cracked. The Arab fell out.’

‘The Saudis sacked him four months ago and he was still in Bonn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Schneider’s bullet?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can you be sure? A cypher clerk with info is dangerous on the loose, especially one on dope. Could be the Saudis.’

‘No,’ said Cheaney. ‘That’s what the Germans thought at first until their ballistics checked the bullet. It was from a Tokarev 762. It’s the one Schneider uses. There’s a defect on the ejector. Leaves a scar on the shell. The one in the Arab’s head matched others they’d had from Schneider’s gun. Same scar.’

‘Cheaney,’ said Franklin. ‘Why are you telling me this? Why am I interested in a German terrorist who kills an unimportant Arab?’

‘Not unimportant, Matt. He’d been fired for drugs and for sure he ought to have been back home. But instead he’s been selling information and codes to anyone who wanted them, including the East German Abteilung and the
KGB.
The fact he was killed by Schneider means the Red Army made contact for a special bit of information.’

‘About Fahd?’

‘About Fahd.’

‘He knew where the King had gone?’

‘He knew that if he went to England he’d go to his Lake District hideaway.’

‘How would he know?’

‘He worked in cyphers, and he was into traffic between Riyadh and Europe, particularly between Riyadh and London, so he knew government interests there, especially the King’s. When Khalid bought his estate in the Lake District, he ordered a complete security checkout and turned it into a fortress. Now, most of the detailed plans went in the diplomatic pouch; but later alterations, and the King’s changes of mind, were passed on to the London Embassy by coded telex and he was clever enough to know their value. He took photostats of those telexes and when he was fired he kept his cypher book. It’s all been changed since, but whoever shot him has the photostats and the cipher decode book. And knows the layout of Fahd’s little fortress.’

‘Schneider will kill Fahd?’

‘Without him the Saudi Royal Family stand no chance of a comeback and Rahbar is safe. That’s contrary to our plan. We’ve got to get the King back on his throne—for reasons I don’t know about yet—but he’s vital, absolutely vital to us.’

‘Cheaney,’ said Franklin. ‘I think you’d better know that—’

‘Another thing,’ interrupted Cheaney. ‘We reckon Schneider’s already on her way, probably via Greece and Italy. Security’s lax at those places and she’ll try and slip through. Again, she may want us to think exactly that and fly direct to London. There are a dozen routes she could take and I wouldn’t bank on us stopping her at any of them.’

‘Cheaney—’

‘Let me finish. We—that’s you and us—have one thing going for us. Schneider speaks English with a strong accent; and, okay, so do a million Germans in and out of London. But she has a new scar, the West Germans are convinced of it. They had a shoot-out with her last September in Leipzig. They don’t think they hit her, but they did hit a doorframe where she was standing. Took out a large piece of wood. They found a long splinter, covered in blood, from the doorframe taken out about shoulder-neck level. Their forensic said there were no cloth fibres in the splinter, just tears of skin, which convinces them that she was torn in open flesh and the wound will show, possibly her face or neck, and on her left side. A bad gash. So we’re looking for a tall thin blonde German who speaks like Mai Zetterling with a scar and carries a Tokarev 762.’

‘That’s all, Cheaney?’