Retribution (4 page)

At the semiprivate room with four beds, one patient was being cared for behind drawn bed curtains. When the nurse finished,
she pushed an instrument tray to one side as she rearranged things. Dartley waited until she left, then quickly and quietly
helped himself to a used syringe with a very fine needle.

Paul Everson awoke and clearly recognized Dartley as the man he had seen at the Thunderhole. He rattled his plaster casts
like an indignant turtle and tried to mumble from between his wired jaws. Dartley gazed calmly into his frightened eyes, then
put the flowers and grapes on his bedside table.

One bed was empty, the curtains remained drawn about another, the guy in the third bed looked tranqued out of his mind. Everson
lay watching him from the fourth, unable to move. An inverted bottle dripped fluids through a clear plastic tube into a vein
in his arm.

Dartley pulled back the syringe plunger, drawing air into the barrel. He looked quickly out into the corridor. No one. He
eased the fine needle into the plastic IV tube and used the syringe plunger to send in a bubble of air. He watched the air
bubble travel slowly down the tube and through the needle into Everson’s vein. The next one he sent was about an inch long
in the tube. Then he gave him seven or eight more, nicely spaced out by the liquid.

The air bubbles clotted the blood inside Everson’s veins and the blood flow moved them to his heart, where they blocked the
flow. While Everson suffered fatal convulsions on the bed, Dartley was in the elevator headed for the ground floor.

Ricard was something like Turkish
raki.
So was Pernod, but Naim Shabaan preferred Ricard and he stopped at various cafés and bars to have one as he walked along
the Paris streets. Earlier he had taken the Metro from Montparnasse to Barbes Rochechouart and walked along toward Place Pigalle
and then Place Clichy. He stopped at various places, regardless of whether they were gaudy tourist traps or rough bars on
side streets. He ignored offers for various kinds of sex and faced down two hoodlums who were thinking about mugging him but
changed their minds because he so clearly was not afraid of them. Mugging people is risky work, and Naim, although he was
not huge, was young and strong—he might be dangerous.

Naim was aware that he gave off an aura of potential violence in spite of the fact that his hair was neatly cut, he wore a
tie, his shoes were shined, he was polite. He decided it might be his eyes. There was
nothing he could do about that because wearing shades definitely made him look sinister. Even he could not deny that.

When he tired of the honky-tonk bright lights, he walked toward the center of the city along streets nearly empty at this
time of night, lined with closed stores. The few cafés that were open were dim, quiet, and depressing, but they did not seem
to affect Naim in any way. He behaved in them just as he had in places with flashing lights and female companions for lonely
men—hardly moving, staring in front of him, sipping slowly on his drink from time to time.

He crossed the Seine by the Pont Neuf and followed the Rue de Rennes back to Montparnasse. He stopped at two more cafés, then
made his way back to the apartment on the Avenue du Maine. The apartment belonged to an Iranian arms dealer who wanted them
gone when he returned in six weeks. He had only loaned them the apartment in the first place so he could boast of it to a
mullah who he was probably overcharging for weapons. Once the deal was made, the gunrunner had tried to get rid of them by
sending a couple of his men to take possession. Hasan stabbed one in the arm, and they decided to back ?ff for a while.

Naim ascended in the elevator to the top floor. He turned the key in the lock and walked in. Bottles, glasses, plates with
food still on them, a hashish pipe, full ashtrays, no one about—it was the usual late night scene. He headed for the bathroom.
As he passed a half-open door, he heard a moan from inside. He
pushed in the door slowly. The soft light of a table lamp illuminated the room.

A naked woman lay on her side on the sheets of the bed. Her neck was arched and her head was flung back. Her hair was stuck
to her perspiring face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open. She moaned softly with pleasure.

Hasan lay on his side, facing her, moving his pelvis against hers. Her upper leg was thrown across his heaving buttocks. He
massaged the flesh of her thigh and growled obscenities in Arabic.

Ali was inserted in her behind, pumping vigorously. His body fitted closely against hers, and he reached a hand around to
squeeze one of her breasts. All three bodies jerked together in spasmodic rhythm.

Ali saw Naim at the door way and stopped. “You want to join us, Naim?”

Hasan stopped too, and this made the, woman cry out in Paris slang, “Keep going, you fuckheads! Don’t stop now!”

The two men returned willingly to their task and she moaned again.

Naim went to his room and lay on his back on the bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. He was dropping off into a deep
sleep sometime later when someone entered his room. Naim roused himself and looked to see who it was.

The naked French woman stood at the end of his bed. She was supporting the weight of her breasts in her hands and looking
down at him.

“What do you want?” he asked, realizing immediately that this was a foolish question.

“Do it to me,” she said.

“I’m sleepy. Go away.”

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Can’t get it up?”

A wave of rage swept through Naim. He tried to control himself. “I want to sleep. Go away.”

She took her hands from her breasts, stroked her pubic hair, and thrust her hips forward at him. She said in a soft, seductive
voice, “Don’t you want some?”

“Get out of here.”

She laughed and taunted him with her body. “Aren’t you able to screw?”

Naim Shabaan’s lips stretched across his teeth in a mask of fury. He leapt off the bed, unbuckled his belt, and pulled it
free from the loops of his pants. Holding the buckle, he lashed the naked woman across the breasts with its free end. She
screamed, hunched to protect herself, and turned her back on him.

With all his strength, he lashed her twice across her back before she managed to run out the doorway.

The French television news said that Margaret Thatcher would announce in the next few days Britain’s intention of signing
the Ostend Concordance. Naim Shabaan turned the television off and searched the radio dial for BBC news. If the government-owned
radio carried the story, it would be confirmation enough for Naim. But the BBC did not mention any possibility of
signing. Naim bought foreign editions of the
Daily Express,
the
Manchester Guardian
and the
Daily Telegraph.
All three ran stones on the probable announcement of Britain’s signing. If it was good enough for English newspapers, it
was good enough for Naim.

“We should leave today,” he told Hasan and Ali. “We’ll travel separately and go by ferry, where they can’t look at our papers
so closely. We’ll use the Greek passports. No weapons, no drugs, no duplicate papers— there must be nothing in our baggage
to arouse suspicion. Bring in whatever booze and cigarettes you are allowed, nothing more.”

They knew all this but listened patiently to Naim. He would accept no excuses if either of them fouled up through carelessness
or stupidity. He was going over things now so there could be no excuses. They had all heard stories of perfectly planned missions
destroyed by one man’s stupid greed or inattentiveness to detail. Naim would be merciless if thwarted in this way. They understood
that. He did not have to tell them.

Naim Shabaan and Ali Khalef hurriedly packed a bag each and rode a taxi to the Gare du Nord. Naim took the 11:25
A.M
. train for London, via Boulogne by Hovercraft to Dover, due at Charing Cross at 3:37. Ali took a train five minutes later,
via Calais by ferry to Dover, due at Victoria at 5:31. Hasan Shawa would not leave Paris until he had received the all clear
from Naim in London. All going well, he would travel overnight, taking the 10:36 from St. Lazare, via Dieppe by ferry to
Newhaven, arriving at Victoria at 7:10
A.M
. next day. All of them had previously stayed at the apartment on Redcliffe Square, just south of Earl’s Court. Naim knew
where to pick up the keys and a wad of British bank notes.

Naim looked out the train window at the mild green countryside north of Paris. Tree-lined ditches made orderly rectangles
of green grass. Even the cows in the fields looked polite—they would never think of chasing anyone and driving their sharp
horns into him. The French took so much for granted. Naim could not help comparing this landscape with the harsh, stony earth
of Gaza, where he was raised. He knew that some of these fields he was passing through had seen some of the worst fighting
of World War I and more battles in World War II. He wondered if Gaza would ever recover from its wounds and look peaceful
again. Had it ever looked peaceful? Naim did not know. He was a child of war.

In June 1967, Israeli troops drove the Egyptian Army from the Gaza Strip and went on to take the entire Sinai desert to the
Suez Canal. The Israelis gave the Sinai back, but the Egyptians didn’t press too hard for the return of the Gaza. No one wanted
the Strip, a twenty-nine-mile-long, five-mile-wide ribbon of desert along the sea. About 600,000 Palestinians were crowded
in there, making it one of the most densely populated areas on earth.

Naim was born and brought up in one of the eight refugee camps, housing 200,000 people, around the
city of Gaza. His camp was known as the Beach, a spread of cinder-block huts with rusty corrugated steel roofs, next to white
sands and blue water. He remembered the last time he was there—the barefoot children lining up for food, donkeys and goats
feeding on garbage, open sewers in the sandy streets. The cinderblock walls were covered with splotches of white paint, which
Israeli troops placed on them to cover the antiIsraeli graffiti painted each night.

The Gaza Strip functioned as a labor camp for Israel. Naim had worked in construction there for fifteen shekels a day, about
ten dollars, leaving Gaza by bus at first light and returning after dark. He was the youngest in the family and his mother
did not want him to follow his three older brothers into Israeli jails. They were all active in the PLO. She arranged for
him to go to the American University in Beirut. His father was dead, but she and his sisters still at home could survive on
the thirty Jordanian dinars a month, about ninety dollars, which the PLO sent her for each of her three sons in jail.

Naim guessed now what had really been worrying his mother then was the way he hung out in pool rooms, drank beer, and smoked
dope. This was dangerous to do because of the extremist Moslem Brotherhood. Life was short for anyone who became a marked
man with the Brotherhood. Naim often wondered later if the Brotherhood had warned his mother to do something about him, perhaps
because of the anti-Israel record of his three brothers.

Getting a passport to Lebanon was a problem. Unlike West Bank Palestinians, who qualified for Jordanian passports, Gazans
were stateless and had to ask Egypt for something called a Travel Document for Palestinian Refugees.

Beirut had not yet been destroyed then, and he was dazzled by its beauty and life in the fast lane. The university was founded
in 1866 by an American misionary, and the city around it was said to be like the Montparnasse area of Paris, which he later
found was true. He studied hard, not so much to be anything in particular, but so he would never have to scrounge for a living
again in Gaza.

As the civil war worsened, he became associated with a PLO group for his own protection. After Arafat’s men were forced to
leave, the split occurred in the PLO. His group was anti-Arafat. They pulled him from the university, where he was contentedly
studying modern languages, and put him in a guerrilla training camp in the Bekaa Valley.

Naim feared for his life, did what he was told, and kept his mouth shut. He dreaded being sent on a suicide mission—and he
feared the worst when he was assigned to a group led by Abu Jeddah. This man he knew to be a superintelligent, superviolent
extremist that not even the regular terrorists at the training camp felt comfortable having around. Naim discovered that Abu
Jeddah wanted him because of the languages he had learned: English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German, as well as Arabic.
He denied knowing Hebrew, although
he understood it, for fear of being sent, on a mission to Israel.

He had just turned twenty-four when Abu Jeddah sent him to Rome. His task was to polish his languages, learn to live like
a European, get to know all the major cities, kn?? how to order in a restaurant, who to tip at a hotel. Money was no problem.
Sometimes he traveled as a student and stayed at cheap hostels. Other times he pretended to be a Lebanese businessman and
went by limousine to the best hotel. He
almost
reached the point of forgetting that he was being trained for a certain purpose.