The Screaming Eagles (10 page)

Michael knocked again on the door of room 412. Louder this time, a polite but determined workman’s knock. He was a workman in a hurry. The sweat on his forehead threatening to fall through his eyebrows into his eyes was from fear, not heat. An automatic pistol in an ankle holster chaffed up against his leg, the knife strapped to his arm above his wrist, was causing an itch. He fought the impulse not to scratch, rubbing it instead against his hip. Les’s overalls, which were at least a size too large, covered both weapons.

The door finally opened a crack and a voice asked irritably, “What you want?”

“Lawrence’s Spray on Shine Services. Good morning sir, sorry to disturb you, sir, but I must do insect exterminating in your kitchen.”

“We do not need. We have no insect here.”

“Sorry, sir, hotel rules. It takes less than five minutes, but hotel management insists that it’s done now.”

The door opened further. “Come later,” said the man, who was now getting annoyed.

Michael returned the stare trying not to drop his eyes. With deference yet authority he said, “I can’t, sir. Yours is the last room on this floor. I must insist sir. I’ll be as quick as I can. We have a terrible roach infestation on three floors, and your room must be disinfected immediately. The City Health Department has insisted this be done immediately and given us only a few hours to comply.”

“Wait.” The door closed.

Michael adjusted his cap gripping the spray equipment tighter. He was about to knock again when it suddenly opened. “Please. Come inside, please.”

Opposite the door where he entered four men were sitting on sofas, the two he’d followed still had their jackets and ties on. Five small identical suitcases were stacked neatly near a coffee table in the opposite corner. The men watching him were tense, their uneasiness evident in each face as they followed his progress into the room. Trying to act deferential and harassed, he touched his cap in a sort of greeting to them, bowing his head slightly as he walked into the kitchen. If they’d baited a trap, the next few seconds would show him. He’d placed a transmitter into the heel of his right shoe which would let Hanan know where he was if he was taken by them to another location.

Following closely behind him was the man who’d opened the door. He had a cluster of moles above his left eyebrow. Long hairs grew out of them. Obviously he wasn’t self-conscious by his mole cluster, for he didn’t comb his hair down to try to hide it.

Michael knelt down and opened each cupboard door below the sink. Unpacking pots, pans and various crockery items he placed them onto the counter stacking them in neat piles above each cupboard. Directing the rubber tubing that extended from a large nozzle at the top of the tank, he began spraying into each cupboard working as slowly as he could. Sliding along the floor on his knees, he moved to the stove, dishwasher and refrigerator spraying behind each appliance aware that they might attack him at any moment. Coughing intermittently, holding a handkerchief in front of his mouth, the man was watching his every move. One man had risen from a sofa and was standing on the far side of the counter, watching Michael intently. Their eyes met briefly as he lit a cigarette. He stood calmly with one hand in his pocket. Out the corner of his eye as he stood up to open the cupboards above the sink Michael saw that a man was now standing by the door. Another had moved to a window, glancing out, moving each curtain slightly with his thumb, looking to see if any unusual activity was taking place outside the hotel.

They were getting restless as he continued opening cupboard doors and spraying. Finally, he began to replace utensils back into the cupboards.

A tension seemed to be building because of the time he was taking. “How much longer do you take?” asked the man on the other side of the counter pointing with his cigarette, the other hand still in his pocket.

“Nearly finished sir, just one more spray. Will be as quick as I can. Sorry sir but the spray must evaporate and dry first before I can spray the second time.”

Suddenly a telephone rang. Loud and urgent, the rings continued shrilly.

The men who’d been standing next to Michael strode toward the sideboard where the telephone continued to ring. One of them picked up the receiver. Inhaling a quick deep breath, Michael set down a large frying pan next to a bowl of fruit. Watching them intently as they moved toward the phone, he withdrew a small ashtray from his pocket. Carefully he placed it on the kitchen counter behind the bowl of fruit. Satisfied that it would seem if he’d overlooked it when replacing the utensils into the cupboards, he started packing away pots and pans as fast as he could. If they didn’t stop him when he tried to leave, he’d be safe.

Speaking in Farsi, the man who’d answered the telephone asked the caller to wait.

Michael stood up, grabbed his equipment and walked to the door. He touched his cap, opened the door and let himself out.

Leaning heavily against the wall his head near the doorframe, he heard a dead bolt sliding into place. He closed his eyes for a second his heart racing, hammering loudly against his ribs.

He’d done it. He’d planted a microphone.

Motionless, still sweating profusely, he stood for a few more seconds feeling a trace of sweat sliding down his back into the cleft where his underpants clung to his waist. He took a deep breath, felt for his key and opened a door alongside theirs.

He entered room 410.

*

Taking off Les’s cap, working as fast as he could, he activated the tape recorder and switched on the transmitting receiver at the same time putting on headphones. Through a transmitter in the ashtray, he could hear perfectly what was being said in room 412 as he taped their conversation. There was no static. The high frequency transmitter was a Penstar India-Probex microchip, powerful enough to pick up their breathing. The man with the cluster of moles was talking. Overly polite and obviously receiving instructions from the telephone caller, his responses were curt and to the point.

“Yes, Excellency, I repeat. The times are tomorrow, Wednesday 3:40 p.m. Delta. 2:36 p.m. American. 12:40 p.m. American. 2:42 p.m. Northwest. 12:38 p.m. United Global.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, Excellency, we have checked everything. Excellency, please, we have gone over our checklist at least a hundred times. You know you can count on me, Excellency, I am very precise, I am very thorough.”

The man who had been talking must have handed the telephone to each of the others in the room. After a minute or so a different voice answered with the words, “Thank you, Excellency.”

Finally the phone must have been handed back to their leader. “Excellency, please convey to all of our families that to the very end of our lives, which we will end willingly tomorrow in this evil country, we respected and loved them greatly. Please tell them that in the same way we love them, we also love our country. We are ready to sacrifice our lives tomorrow so that our children can live good lives and all the children who are yet to be born can thrive in our motherland. Our deeds and our bravery will be told from one generation to the next. My men and I thank you a thousand, thousand times for choosing us to do Allah’s work so that our beloved country can defeat the Satan of all Satan’s. May Satan and his American offspring rot in a thousand hells. Allah be with you, Excellency, and your mission to liberate our motherland. We will do our part in Chicago to perfection, Excellency. By the time the sun will set tomorrow night, we all without exception will have accomplished your brilliant plan. We will have died so that the New World you will lead can begin to be born. Allah Akbar, God is Great.”

The man put down the telephone. There was silence. Tensely Michael listened beginning to become unnerved by a silence dragging on far too long. Maybe one of them had found the transmitter. Nervously he glanced at the door to see if the dead bolt was on. He could hear no sounds from the room next to his.

Suddenly the leader spoke.

“Take your cases, men. Our time of greatness is now upon us. Our destiny is death. We will make glorious history for our beloved country. Leave now.”

In unison the others said, “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar.”

Michael heard their door open, then close. Taking off his earphones, he moved toward the door holding the gun and knife in each hand. Back against the wall, standing next to the door, he crouched, waiting for them to attack, ready in case they broke down the door.

They walked past his door, their shoes swishing loudly on the passage carpet. No one spoke. Slowly their sounds floated away. Still crouched and watching the door intently, he heard clicking and whirring sounds coming from the tape recorder as it methodically recorded silence. Outside the door, nothing. Continuing to breathe carefully through his nose, he began to feel the pressure of endless anxiety building all around him as quietness settled inside the room.

He made his way back to the chair walking softly and sat down. Sitting upright in the chair he watched the tape rewind. Suddenly without warning a nervous tic in his left eye jerked his eyelid surprising him with its fierceness. Stomach beginning to knot savagely, he panicked knowing what was happening, terrified that it was returning. The tic became more pronounced. His fingers shook. He started to tremble, first his hands then it took hold of his entire body. He was aware of a train rolling over him, the pounding of wheels in his ears. He recognized instantly the signs leading to a massive panic attack. Desperate, he searched his mind to recall what to do, trying to remember what the Israeli army psychiatrists had advised him to do when a panic attack began. They’d warned him such a long time ago that he’d forgotten it could come back at any time if he was under stress. Quite by chance, painful memories had been resurrected.

Amazed by its suddenness, he set about desperately doing the prescribed mental exercises trying to remember exactly what he had to concentrate on, fearful that after such a long time, he might have forgotten the sequence of each exercise.

Iranians talking about dying with the same fanatical fervor and grim determination he’d been subjected to as the flames of a revolution ignited and burnt everything in its path. The first time Michael had been surrounded by this atmosphere of hate and waiting for something catastrophic to happen, were during his last days in Teheran. It had taken years for the nightmares to finally disappear, to cease being a major part of his existence. Losing all his money and his wife, who’d swiftly divorced him once she heard they were poor and she’d have to go to work, was only a small part of the reason that caused him to have a near nervous breakdown.

No matter how hard he tried to make the pain go away, it was there every waking minute and every night. It was there when he slept. He had slowly returned from a life of black, desolate darkness and depression into a sort of despairing, half-living. Sanity and insanity fought and jockeyed for his mind, whispering solutions?one trying to get him to take an easy way out and just give up; the other telling him to hold on by his fingernails, to fight back, to try to go on living. The worst was an overpowering tiredness and lethargy. Sometimes he slept for days on end. When he awoke, his bed stank of urine and sweat. He didn’t remember his name or where he was, so he slept again, always a dreamless sleep.

Months later, or was it years, while he slept recovering and weaning himself off medication and pills, his sleep was no more dreamless. Without the help of the pilns he became helpless, defenseless and out of control as dreams ferociously attacked him, devouring him, leaving him no place to escape to, or to escape from. His subconscious savagely explored torturous, frightening places that terrified him and made him cry. He cried like a small child screaming in the night, waking many times with a scream vividly on his lips. Lying in bed half-asleep or half awake, the scream surrounded him, was in his mind and contorted on his face, wrapped tightly around his body like a vise. Involuntary muscle spasms made him cry out from fear, his chest moving with the rhythm of his sobbing. It sometimes took hours of desperate silence to free himself from the scream for it was so alive and so frightening, it echoed over and over in the quietness of his bedroom as he waited fearfully for the sun to rise and lighten the deep darkness of his room.

Michael put his shaking hands under his thighs, placed them in the positions his psychiatrists had taught him. He took deep breaths, holding his breath until he had to expel the air slowly, letting it escape through his nostrils. His brain concentrating mightily on directing heat to his thighs. Soon they would feel warm, soon they would stop his shaking. He closed his eyes sucking deep breaths, greedily taking in huge amounts of air allowing it to course through his body. Frantically he worked at directing his mind, urging it to warm his hands and to search for that peaceful place, the safe harbor where he was once again calm, once again in control, once again without terror and fear.

It took a long time for him to find that place.

It also took a long time for his hands gripped tightly together under his thighs to stop shaking and begin to feel warm.

Many hours passed before the tic stopped for it had been nearly twenty years since his last attack.

“Shalom Hanan, long time no see.”

“Shalom stranger. Where the hell have you been?”

“Around. You know me I’ve got to look after my little nest egg. I’m not a big shot military attaché at the Israeli embassy like you.”

“Come, come. When we were working together in Teheran, we saw each other often. I take it you are either ashamed of me, or as usual, you found a new girlfriend.”

“You got it. How did you guess? I’m ashamed of you.”

They both smiled. Hanan had been head of Merhabad Airport security in Teheran during the time Michael lived in Iran. On occasions Hanan had discreetly made use of Michael’s high level Iranian business contacts when matters requiring quiet diplomacy were needed in case of suspected terrorist attacks on Israeli targets. Hanan was now the assistant to the top Mossad operative in the States.