The Fanatics of Al Asad Page 3

  I took the dossier from him. It was a thick one. I skimmed through it rapidly.

  "Where's Poganov now?"

  "Teaching at the University of Kansas," he said.

  "How'd you bury him?"

  "Half a dozen changes of identity," Carpentier replied. "We started him off as Eduard Dupre in France, who then went to England and became Oliver Marberry. Six months later, Marberry was brought to the United States and was provided with the necessary papers and background to become Charles Benton. Poganov speaks perfect English, so there was no difficulty at all. We got him a full-time appointment to the faculty as of last September. He teaches international political affairs."

  "Photographs?"

  Carpentier handed me a sheaf of 5×7 glossy pictures. The first one showed a strong-jawed, hard-faced man of middle age with closely cropped, bristling black hair. One by one, the photographs showed a gradual transformation.

  Poganov now had sunken cheeks, long, thinning grey hair and a softness around the jowls.

  I knew the technique. Most of it is dentistry. They pull a few of your back molars, cap your front teeth so that the new ones push out your upper lip. That makes your jaw look smaller. Minor plastic surgery makes the nose look completely different. They build up your eyebrow ridges — or cut them down if they're prominent.

  Electrolysis gives you a new hairline and new eyebrow shape. They finish up by bleaching and dyeing your hair, giving you a different haircut and tinted contact lenses. You'll never know yourself when they get through.

  The dentistry even affects your speech so you won't even sound the way you did before all this took place.

  In the last picture, Poganov looked like a gentle, academic type who'd spent his entire life on one campus or another.

  "When can I get to see him?"

  General Snowden looked at his watch.

  "It's almost one-thirty in the morning," he said. "We'll fly you out there, the first thing. Get some sleep in the meantime. Be at Andrews Air Force Base by six-thirty. We'll have you in Topeka in an hour and a half. The strip at Lawrence won't take a jet, so we'll shoot you over in a single engine Bonanza. You'll be there in time for breakfast with Poganov."

  Carpentier spoke up hesitantly. "Look," he said, "try not to blow his cover, okay? So far, he's cooperated with us completely. He's an example. If others behind the Iron Curtain see that one man got away with it successfully, then more of them will be tempted to defect. Otherwise…" he shrugged, "…we won't get any of them."

  "I know the score," I assured him. I put Poganov's dossier on the table. "Have a copy of this for me to read on the plane."

  I got to my feet. Carpentier held out his hand.

  "No hard feelings?"

  I didn't take it. "We'll see when it's over," I said coldly and left.

  It was two o'clock in the morning when I let myself into my suite at the hotel. In the living room, only one small lamp was lit. The door to the bedroom was closed.

  I don't like situations like that. I slipped Wilhelmina from her holster and cocked the action. With the Luger in my right hand, I cautiously pushed the door open with my foot. The bedroom was blacked out. I flicked on the light switch quickly, and relaxed.

  Tamar was asleep in my big, king-sized bed. The sheet covered her only from the waist down. For a moment, I stared at the slim torso and the bold, full breasts. Tamar stirred in her sleep because of the light, so I switched it off and went back into the living room, but the after-image of her lush body burned itself into my mind. Logic struggled with desire — and logic won out. I was tired. I knew I'd be able to catch less than three hours of sleep before I had to be awake again to be at Andrews Air Base.

  I dropped my clothes in a pile on the rug. I put Wilhelmina away, along with Hugo, the slim stiletto I carry strapped in a chamois sheath to my forearm, and with Pierre, the tiny gas bomb usually taped to my groin. I showered quickly in the guest bath.

  At first, I was going to sleep on the couch in the living room. Then I said the hell with it. The king-sized bed was a hell of a lot more comfortable and it would hold both of us with plenty of space left over, so I padded into the bedroom on bare feet and slipped under the sheet at the far side of the bed. I adjusted the pillows under my head and began the mental Alpha bio-feedback countdown technique that clears my mind for sleep in just a few minutes.

  Somewhere, there's always one part of us that's really never asleep. It can be trained to sense danger and to awaken us whenever there's another body nearby. I'd been trained to come awake instantly. Tamar was a Shin Beth agent. She'd picked up part of the sensitivity. She sighed, came partially awake, started to fall asleep again, and then came fully awake, launching herself at me in a sudden, furious attack.

  I caught her arms and held her helplessly against me.

  "Hey, it's just me," I reassured her. I could feel the tautness in her arms and legs. Her heart thumped away against my side. She was breathing quickly in shallow, tense intakes of air.

  "Nick?"

  "Yes. Were you expecting anyone else?"

  In the gloom, I saw her shake her head to clear her mind. She exhaled a long breath as she relaxed.

  "I've lived with danger for so long," she said tiredly. I thought of what a hell the past two years must have been for her, existing in daily fear of being exposed and executed. The Arabs don't just kill a woman like Tamar if they find out she's an Israeli spy. They enjoy them first in a hundred, cruelly painful, torturous ways.

  I snuggled her into my shoulder.

  "Go back to sleep," I said. "We've got to be up at five. We're scheduled for Andrews Field at six."

  "I'll try," she said.

  She didn't move away. In fact, she burrowed herself closer into my shoulder, putting her arm across my chest.

  All my Alpha mind-clearing exercises didn't do me one damn bit of good. Not with a lusciously trim, warmly female body like Tamar's lying nude against my own nude body.

  I tried. I really wanted to go to sleep. I made no move to stroke her or to do one damn thing to stimulate either of us, except to hold her. But it was an impossibility. Not when her arm began to slide up and down my rib cage, her fingers gently feeling the contours of my body from neck to hip.

  She turned her face up to mine to be kissed.

  "You know what you're doing?" I asked.

  The little laugh that came out of Tamar's throat was one of pure delight.

  "It's been more than two years since I've been able to go to bed with a man like this," she said, breathlessly awake and fully alive. "I'm a healthy woman with healthy instincts."

  My mouth closed over hers almost before she had time to finish her sentence. Her tongue was on my lips, pressing them determinedly apart. Our mouths opened simultaneously. The exploration began.

  Her hair was silken under the cup of my hand against the back of her head. I touched and traced the contours of her cheekbone and jaw line with my fingers. All the while her tongue teased and demanded, setting a fire raging inside me that reached down to my loins.

  We pressed our bodies together in one long sensuous length of skin, touching as closely as we could. My leg pressed itself between hers and then we were fully entwined. I kissed her ear; she moved her head and twisted and bit at my neck.

  My hand left her face, moving to feel the softness of the hollow of her collarbone covered with the thinnest of muscle tissue and the smoothest of skin. Tamar let a sound come trickling out of her throat. My hand moved down to feel the weight and heat of her breast. She twisted in my arms to expose herself to my touch, and then there was the fullness and roundness of her breast covered by the palm of my hand, the hardness of her nipple pressing into the center of my palm demanding attention, demanding to receive the kisses I had given her mouth. I slid down in the bed, taking her breast to my mouth, my tongue rolling her nipple between my lips.

  Tamar sighed and arched her back and put both her hands behind my head, pulling me tightly to her, running her fingers through my h
air, touching my cheeks with the palms of her hands. Her body began to make involuntary movements of its own unconscious volition.

  I slid down even further, and there was the moisture of another mouth and hair as silken as that on the crown of her head. Tamar made small, whimpering cries aloud.

  I raised myself at Tamar's urging. She reached for my groin, taking me into her hands to explore and stroke, and then brought herself to me, touching me gently at first with her lips and with her tongue. A total warmth and wetness suddenly engulfed me. When she had brought me to the ultimate hardness, she twisted her body under mine so that, as I moved, I moved into her in one long, wet, silken, fiery sheathing of a blade.

  Tamar's arms came around my back; her fingernails dug rakingly along the length of my spine. Her small teeth caught my shoulder so that her cries of pleasure were muffled.

  What had begun in gentleness turned into a conflict, fierce and angry and full of antagonism that merely heightened the pleasure we felt. Unconsciously, she was determined to prove the totality of her feminine sexuality and to challenge my maleness. And I, as angry as she, as fierce as she, would be content with nothing less than her complete surrender to me!

  I lifted my torso, leaning on my elbows. I held her face between my hands in a savage, powerful grip so that, from inches away, I could watch every expression on her face. She closed her eyes. Little by little, her face indicated that she was losing her battle against me. I kept up a slow, pulsating rhythm against her pelvic arch that built up into a long, rolling surge, until, finally, there came that moment when Tamar bucked frantically under me and opened her eyes and glared wildly at me and pounded on my shoulders with her small fists before she collapsed in total surrender to herself and to me.

  Now, her body made only spasmodic flexings, each less intense than the other, the intensity of the pleasure she felt subsiding into a complete suffusion of feeling.

  Then, having proved whatever it is that men have to prove to themselves, I took my own pleasure deep within her.

  Afterward, until it was time to shower and dress, we held each other closely, more relaxed than we would have been had we spent those few hours in sleep.

  Chapter Four

  Thursday. 9:14 a.m. Lawrence, Kansas.

  Lawrence, Kansas, is on the banks of the Kaw River, halfway between Kansas City and Topeka. The land is gently rolling, not like the great flat plains to the west. The University of Kansas is on top of a hill — Mount Oread — that marks the southernmost advance of the last great glacial ice age. The streets of the old part of town are named after the states.

  All around the town, the farmlands have rich, black soil, like the soil of the Ukraine, and the small towns like Olathe, Osage City, Council Grove and Osawatomie echo the heartland of the U. S.

  Poganov, alias Charles Benton, lived in a small, frame house on a street on the northern slope of the hill. On the surface, he had become as American as any other Kansan. We sat in his book-lined den — Tamar, myself and Poganov's contact man from the CIA who was there to identify us and vouch for us.

  I found it hard to believe that this gentle, scholarly looking man had really been a Soviet Lt.-Colonel in Military Intelligence. But, in five minutes of talk, I was reassured. While he spoke about his former life, the stoop unconsciously began to disappear from his shoulders and his voice grew more authoritative. An air of command began to emanate from him. I could see the kind of dynamic power that lay buried within him.

  "Yes," he said in answer to a question from Tamar, "you're quite right. That particular Surah is the key to this group of fanatics. There are twenty-eight of them who formed it. Twenty-eight for Surah Twenty-eight. They are the top echelon, each one dedicated and sworn to lay down his life for the cause. Below them are some 114 members who eventually will be cadre members for the expanded movement."

  "Any significance to the number of one hundred and fourteen?" I asked Poganov.

  He looked at me as if I were not particularly bright. "There are 114 Surahs in the Quran," he reminded me. "Eventually there will be as many leaders as there are 'ayahs', verses, in the Quran — and there are several thousand verses. Each Verse' leader is someday to command a body of a thousand men!"

  I multiplied a thousand by several thousand came up with several million. Poganov went on. "The leader of Al Asad is a man by the name of Sharif al-Sallal. He's about my height — five feet ten inches. His face is dark and heavily pock-marked. He wears a moustache. He's heavy-set but not overweight. His aide, who is always with him, is a younger man named Yousef Khatib."

  I interrupted him. "I've been told that Khatib was trained by the KGB in assassination techniques."

  Poganov said coldly, "He didn't need any training." He continued his lecture. "Sharif al-Sallal is a complete, total fanatic. He believes that he, and only he, is the true leader of Pan-Arabism. That's why the name, 'Al Asad' — The Lion. It refers to him. He sees himself as a reincarnated Mohammed. He is the Prophet of a New Islam religion. How much do you know about Islam?" he asked me abruptly.

  "I speak Arabic," I pointed out in answer.

  "Then you know that 'islam' means an act of submission to divine will. Sharif al-Sallal is convinced that he is the voice of the divine will of Allah. The New Islam is complete submission to the desires and whims of Sharif al-Sallal personally.

  "The assassination of the President and Vice-President and the kidnapping of the Speaker of the House was given the operational code name of 'Fat'ha' — the Opening, as in the first book of the Quran, because Sharif al-Sallal is leading a new Jihad — a holy war against the infidels of the West. Two years ago, I learned of the code name. I didn't know to what it referred, unfortunately."

  Poganov described the breaking off of the group from the PLO because they did not think that even the most violent of the PLO groups went far enough.

  I broke in on him. "Where do you think I would find them?"

  He thought for a moment. "New York City."

  "Why New York?"

  "The Arab groups in Los Angeles have been under surveillance by the FBI ever since Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan," he said. "San Francisco has too many radical groups of every sort, which means it's infiltrated with government agents and informers, all keeping an eye on the dissidents, revolutionary or otherwise. New York is your city, Mr. Carter."

  "Is there a contact there I should know about? Someone in one of the Arab communities, perhaps?"

  Poganov shook his head.

  "No. They will stay away from everyone. It is the best way for them to hide. Another Arab would betray them, even unwittingly. Arabs love to talk. He would brag to his friends that he's met someone from Al Asad. In turn, they would talk to others about knowing a man who's been in contact with Al Asad. Within a day or two, word would get around. No, the group is in Manhattan, but they will stay away from any Arab community there."

  "Were you in on this operation when you trained them?"

  "In no way at all, Mr. Carter. I told you I learned of the operational code name, but I did not know to what it referred. I despise their tactics. I would have had nothing to do with them if I had known that this is what Sharif al-Sallal had in mind. I'm merely giving you my best guesses as to how they think, based on my talks with Sharif al-Sallal himself two years ago. I was with them, however, long enough to learn that they do not think the way we do."

  He paused, hunting for the right expression. "I said that they are all fanatics. For each one of them, his participation is what a Moslem would call 'al-amr-bi-l'maruf.' Do you know the phrase?"

  I nodded. "It means a moral obligation."

  Poganov praised me with a smile. "Exactly right."

  "This aide — Yousef Khatib. Tell me about him."

  Poganov reflected a moment. A shadow crossed his face. "Khatib is a pathological killer. He is uncontrollable except by one man — Sharif al-Sallal. I remember one time in a training session one of our best men attempted to teach hand to hand combat. Unfortunatel
y, he chose Khatib to act as his opponent. Khatib doesn't know how to 'pull his punches' as your phrase goes. My sergeant made just one feint before Khatib was on him. He slit the man's throat with a knife!"

  Poganov shook his head as if to clear away the memory.

  "What was most remarkable, Mr. Carter, was that we could in no way convince Khatib that he had done anything wrong! I think that should give you an indication of the kind of man he is."

  By then, I knew I had all the information that Poganov could give me. I got to my feet. Tamar and the CIA contact left the house with me. As we walked down the steps, Poganov came to the edge of the porch. Once again, he was a drab, gentle academic. He smiled a small smile at us and waved as we got into the car to begin our drive back to Topeka and the waiting Air Force jet.

  * * *

  Thursday. 2:43 p.m. Manhattan

  The brownstone was on the upper West Side, off Columbus Avenue. The street was littered with the usual debris, dog droppings and filth of a New York City neighborhood. Four young men sat on the stairs that led up steeply to the narrow doorway. Two were black, two were Puerto Rican. They looked at me as I walked up the cracked stone steps and pushed open the vestibule door.

  The Air Force jet had taken us from Topeka to La-Guardia. A limousine brought Tamar and myself to the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue at 61st Street. We registered as Mr. and Mrs. Julian Stratton, of El Paso, Texas. Five leather and fabric suitcases accompanied us, supplied by the CIA. God knows what was in them. I gave Tamar a little more than a thousand dollars of AXE's money in cash and told her to go shopping, since she hadn't brought along anything more than the dress she was wearing when she left Damascus. Then I caught a cab to a block from the street I wanted, getting out of it on Amsterdam Avenue.

  The inside hallway of the building had a stale smell to it, a smell compounded of fat-fried food, broken plumbing, dirt and grime that had taken years to accumulate. The steps to the second floor were warped, the railings greasy. At the end of the corridor, I rang the bell beside a shabby, paint-peeled wooden door.