Kabakov, despite Rachel’s objections, left the hospital bed she had set up in her spare bedroom and went to Sullivan’s bedside at noon the following day. He was beyond rage and had throttled despair. Sullivan was strong enough to use an Identikit, and he had seen the woman, both full face and profile, in good light. Together, with the Identikit and a police artist, Kabakov, Sullivan, and the hospital security guard put together a composite picture that strongly resembled Dahlia Iyad. When the three p.m. police shift turned out, every patrolman and every detective had a copy of the composite. The early edition of the Daily News carried it on page two.
Six policemen from the Identification Division and four clerks from Immigration and Naturalization, each with a copy of the picture, pored over the Arab alien file.
The connection between the hospital incident and Kabakov was known only to head nurse Emma Ryan, the FBI agents working on the case, and the highest echelon of the New York Police Department. Emma Ryan could keep her mouth shut.
Washington did not want a terrorist scare and neither did the enforcement agencies. They did not want the media breathing down their necks in a case that could end as badly as this one. Police pointed out publicly that the hospital contained both narcotics and valuable radioactive elements, that the intruder might have been after these. This was not entirely satisfactory to the press, but in the crushing workload of New York City news coverage, newsmen can easily forget yesterday’s stories. Authorities hoped that in a few days the media’s interest would flag.
And Dahlia hoped that in a few days Lander’s anger would subside. He was enraged when he saw her likeness in the paper and knew what she had done. For a moment, she thought he would kill her. She nodded meekly when he forbade any further attempt on Kabakov. Fasil stayed in his room for two days.
David Kabakov’s convalescence in Dr. Rachel Bauman’s apartment was a strange, almost surreal time for her. Her home was bright and oppressively orderly and he came into it like a grizzled tomcat home from a fight in the rain. The sizes and proportions of her rooms and furnishings seemed all changed to Rachel with Kabakov and Moshevsky in the place. For large men, they did not make much noise. This was a relief to Rachel at first, and then it bothered her a little. Size and silence are a sinister combination in nature. They are the tools of doom.
Moshevsky was doing his best to be accommodating. After he had spooked her several times, appearing suddenly in the kitchen with a tray, he began clearing his throat to announce his movements. Rachel’s friends across the hall were in the Bahamas and had left their keys with her. She installed Moshevsky in that apartment after his snoring on her couch became unbearable. Kabakov listened respectfully to her instructions regarding his treatment and followed them, with the one angry exception of the trip to Sullivan’s bedside. She and Kabakov did not talk much at first. They did not chat at all. He seemed distracted, and Rachel did not disturb his thoughts.
Rachel had changed since the Six-Day War, but the change was one of degree. She had become more intensely what she was before. She had a busy practice, an ordered life. One man, two men over the years. Two engagements. Dinners in smart and hollow places, where the chefs put coy signatures of garnishment on uninspired dishes—places chosen by her escorts. None of her experiences roared in her ears. Men who could have struck fire from her, she rebuffed. Her only high was the best one—working well—and that sustained her. She did much volunteer work, therapy sessions with ex-addicts, parolees, disturbed children. During the October War of 1973, she worked a double shift at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York so that a staff doctor with more recent surgical experience could go to Israel.
Externally she was molding fast. Bloomingdale’s and Bon wit Teller, Lord & Taylor and Saks were the touchstones in her Saturday rounds. She would have looked like a trim Jewish matron, expensively turned out and just a little behind the trends, if she had not spoiled the effect with defiant touches, a hint of the street. For a time she had resembled a woman fighting her thirties with her daughter’s accessories. Then she didn’t give a damn what she wore anymore and lapsed into quiet business dress because she didn’t have to think about it. Her working hours grew longer, her apartment grew tidier and more sterile. She paid an exorbitant price for a cleaning woman who could remember to put everything back precisely as it had been before.
Now, here was Kabakov, poking through her bookshelves and gnawing on a piece of salami. He seemed to delight in examining things and not putting them back where he found them. He had not put on his slippers and he had not buttoned up his pajama jacket. She would not look at him.
Rachel was no longer so concerned about the concussion. He did not seem to worry about it at all. As his periods of dizziness grew less frequent, then abated altogether, their relationship changed. The impersonal doctor-patient attitude she had tried to maintain began to soften.
Kabakov found Rachel’s company stimulating. He felt a pleasant necessity to think when talking with her. He found himself saying things that he had not realized he felt or knew. He liked to look at her. She was long-legged and given to angular positions, and she had durable good looks. Kabakov had decided to tell her about his mission, and because he liked her he found it difficult to do. For years he had guarded his tongue. He knew that he was susceptible to women, that the loneliness of his profession tempted him to talk about his problems. Rachel had given him help when he needed it, immediately and with no unnecessary questions. She was involved now and could be in danger—the reason for the assassin’s visit to the radiology lab was not lost on Kabakov.
Still, it was not his sense of justice that led him to tell her, no feeling that she had a right to know. His considerations were more practical. She had a first-rate mind and he needed it. Probably one of the plotters was Abu Ali—a psychologist. Rachel was a psychiatrist. One of the terrorists was a woman. Rachel was a woman. Her knowledge of the nuances of human behavior, and the fact that, with this knowledge, she was a product of the American culture, might give her some useful insights. Kabakov believed that he could think like an Arab, but could he think like an American? Was there any way to think like an American? He had found them inconsistent. He thought that perhaps when the Americans had been here longer, they might have a way of thinking.
Sitting by a sunny window, he explained the situation to her as she dressed the burn on his leg. He started with the fact that a Black September cell was hidden in the Northeast, ready to strike somewhere with a large quantity of plastic explosive, probably half a ton or more. He explained from Israel’s point of view the absolute necessity of his stopping them, and he hastily added the humanitarian considerations. She finished the bandaging and sat cross-legged on the rug listening. Occasionally she looked up at him to ask a question. The rest of the time he could only see the top of her bent head, the part in her hair. He wondered how she was taking it. He could not tell what she was thinking, now that the deadly struggle she had witnessed in the Middle East had come home to this safe place.
Actually, she was feeling relieved about Kabakov himself. Always she wanted to know specifics. Exactly what had been done and said—especially just before the blast at Muzi’s house. She was glad to see that his answers were immediate and consistent. When questioned at the hospital about his most recent memories he had given the doctor vague replies, and Rachel could not be sure whether this was deliberate evasion or the result of head trauma. She had been handicapped in evaluating Kabakov’s injury by her reluctance to ask him specifics. Now, her minute questioning served two purposes. She needed the information if she was to help him, and she wanted to test his emotional response. She was watching for the irritability under questioning that marks the Korsakoff, or amnesic-confabulatory syndrome, which frequently follows concussion.
Satisfied with his patience, pleased with his clarity, she concentrated on the information. He was more than a patient, she was more like a partner as the story was completed. Kabakov concluded with the questions that were eating at him: Who was th
e American? Where would the terrorists strike? When he had finished talking he felt vaguely ashamed, as though she had seen him crying.
“How old was Muzi?” she asked quietly.
“Fifty-six.”
“And his last words were ‘First there was the American’?”
“That’s what he said.” Kabakov did not see where this was leading. They had talked enough for now.
“Want an opinion?”
He nodded.
“I think there’s a fair probability that your American is a non-Semitic Caucasian male, probably past his middle twenties.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know, I’m guessing. But Muzi was a middle-aged man. The person I described is what many men his age call an ‘American: Very likely, if the American he saw was black, he would have mentioned it. He would have used a racial designation. You spoke English the entire time?”
“Yes.”
“If the American was a woman, very likely he would have said ‘the woman’ or ‘the American woman.’ A man of Muzi’s age and ethnic background would not think of an Arab-American or an American Jew as ‘the American.’ In all cases, black, female, Semitic or Latin, the word American is an adjective. It’s a noun only for non-minority Caucasian males. I’m sounding pedantic probably, but it’s true.”
Kabakov, conferring with Corley by telephone, told the FBI agent what Rachel had said.
“That narrows it down to about forty million people,” Corley said. “No, listen, anything helps, for Christ’s sake.”
Corley’s report on the search for the boat was not encouraging. Customs agents and New York City police had checked every boatyard on City Island. Nassau and Suffolk police had checked every marina on Long Island. The New Jersey state police had questioned boatyard owners along their coast. FBI agents had gone to the best boatyards—to legendary craftsmen like Rybovich, Trumpy, and Huckins—and to the lesser-known yards where craftsmen still built fine wooden boats. None of the yards could identify the fugitive craft.
“Boats, boats, boats,” Rachel said to herself.
Kabakov stared out the window at the snow while Rachel fixed dinner. He was trying to remember something, going at it indirectly, the way he would use peripheral vision to see in the dark. The technique employed in blowing up Muzi teased Kabakov ceaselessly. Where had it happened before? One of the thousands of reports that had crossed his desk in the past five or six years had mentioned a bomb in a refrigerator. He remembered that the report had an old-style jacket, the manila kind, bound along the spine. That meant he had seen it before 1972, when the Mossad changed the bindings to facilitate microfilming. One other flash came to him. A memo on booby-trap techniques issued to commando units on his orders years ago. The memo had explained mercury switches, then in fashion among the fedayeen, with an addendum on electrical appliances.
He was composing a cable to Mossad headquarters with the scraps of information he recalled when quite suddenly he remembered. Syria 1971. A Mossad agent was lost in an explosion at a house in Damascus. The charge had not been heavy, but the refrigerator was shattered. A coincidence? Kabakov called the Israeli consulate and dictated the cable. The cable clerk pointed out that it was four a.m. in Tel Aviv.
“It’s oh-two hundred Zulu all over the world, my friend,” Kabakov said. “We never close. Get that cable out.”
A cold December drizzle stung Moshevsky’s face and neck as he waited on the corner to flag a cab. He let three Dodges pass and finally spotted what he was looking for, a big Checker barging through the morning rush. He wanted the extra room so Kabakov would not have to bend his sore leg. Moshevsky told the driver to stop in front of Rachel’s apartment building in the middle of the block. Kabakov hobbled out and climbed in beside him. He gave the address of the Israeli consulate.
Kabakov had rested as Rachel prescribed. Now he would roll. He could have called Ambassador Tell from the apartment but his business required the safest of telephones—one equipped with a scrambler. He had decided to ask Tel Aviv to suggest that the U.S. State Department approach the Russians for help. Kabakov’s request must be cleared through Tell. Going to the Russians was not a pleasant thought from the standpoint of his professional pride. At the moment, Kabakov could not afford professional pride. He knew that and accepted it, but he did not like it.
Since the spring of 1971, the Soviet Komitet Gosudarstven noy Bezopastveny, the infamous KGB, has had a special section providing technical assistance to Black September through Al Fatah field intelligence. This was the source Kabakov wanted to tap.
He knew the Russians would never help Israel, but in light of the new East-West detente, he thought they might cooperate with the United States. The request to Moscow must come from the Americans, but Kabakov could not suggest the move without the approval of Tel Aviv. Precisely because he hated so much to ask, he would sign the message to Tel Aviv himself, instead of putting the primary responsibility on Tell.
Kabakov decided to swear that the plastic was Russian, whether it was or not. Maybe the Americans would swear to it, too. That ought to put the onus on the Russians.
Why such a large quantity of explosives? Did the amount signify some special opportunity the Arabs had in this country? On that point the KGB might be of help.
The Black September cell in America would be sealed off now, even from the guerrilla leadership in Beirut. It would be hell to find. The heat from the woman’s picture would drive the terrorists far down in their burrow. They had to be close by—they had reacted too fast after the explosion. Damn Corley for not staking out the hospital. Damn that pipe-smoking son of a bitch.
What had been planned in the Black September headquarters in Beirut, and who had taken part? Najeer. Najeer was dead. The woman. She was hiding. Abu Ali? Ali was dead. There was no way to be positive that Ali was in on the plot, but it was very likely, for he was one of the few men in the world Najeer trusted. Ali was a psychologist. But then Ali was many things. Why might they need a psychologist? Ali would never be able to tell anyone.
Who was the American? Who was the Lebanese who brought in. the explosives? Who blew up Muzi? Was it the woman he saw in Beirut—the woman who came to the hospital to kill him?
The taxi driver pushed the big car to the limit the wet pavement would allow, slamming over the potholes and nosediv ing to a halt at the first red light. Moshevsky, with a resigned expression, climbed out and got into the front seat beside the driver. “Take it slowly. Neither bang nor jar,” he said.
“Why?” the driver said. “Time is money, buddy.”
Moshevsky leaned toward him confidentially. “Why is to keep me from breaking your fucking neck, that’s why.”
Kabakov looked absently at the crowds hurrying along the sidewalk. Midafternoon and already the light was failing. What a place. A place with more Jews than Tel Aviv. He wondered how the Jewish immigrants had felt, crowded on the ships, herded through Ellis Island, some of them even losing their names as semiliterate immigration officials scrawled “Smith” and “Jones” on the entry papers. Spilled from Ellis Island into a bleak afternoon on this cold rock where nothing was free except what they could give each other. Broken families, men alone.
What happened here then to a man alone who died before he could make a place and send for his family? A man alone? Who sat shivah—the neighbors?
The plastic Madonna on the dashboard of the taxi caught Kabakov’s attention, and his thoughts shifted guiltily back to the problem that plagued him. Closing his eyes against the cold afternoon, he started over from the beginning, with the mission to Beirut that had ultimately brought him here.
Kabakov had been briefed minutely before the raid. The Israelis knew Najeer and Abu Ali would be in the apartment house and that other Black September officers might be present. Kabakov had studied the dossiers on guerrilla leaders known to be in Lebanon until he knew what was in them by heart. He could see the folders now, stacked alphabetically on his desk.
First, Abu
Ali. Abu Ali, killed in the Beirut raid, had no relatives, no family except his wife, and she, too, was dead. He—a man alone! Before the thought was completed, Kabakov was rapping on the plastic shield that separated him from the driver. Moshevsky slid open the partition.
“Tell him to step on it.”
“So now you want me to step on it,” the driver said over his shoulder.
Moshevsky showed the man his teeth.
“So I’m stepping,” the driver said.
The Israeli consulate and mission to the United Nations share a white brick building at 800 Second Avenue in Manhattan. The security system is well thought-out and thorough. Kabakov fumed in the confines of the holding room, then went quickly to the communications center.
His coded cable to Tel Aviv regarding Abu Ali was acknowledged in less than a minute. It set delicate machinery in motion. Within fifteen minutes, a stocky young man left Mossad headquarters for Lod Airport. He would fly to Nicosia, Cyprus, switch passports and catch the next flight into Beirut. His first business in the Lebanese capital would be to enjoy a cup of coffee in a small café with an excellent view of the central Beirut police station, where, hopefully, waiting for the statutory period in the police property room was a numbered carton containing the effects of Abu Ali. Now there was someone to claim them.
Kabakov was on the scrambler with Tell for half an hour. The ambassador expressed no surprise at Kabakov’s. request for roundabout Russian aid. Kabakov had the feeling that Yoachim Tell had never been surprised in his life. He thought he had detected a bit of extra warmth in the ambassador’s voice as he said goodbye. Was it sympathy? Kabakov reddened and stalked toward the door of the communications center. The telex in the corner rattled and the clerk’s voice stopped him in the doorway. An answer was coming to his query about the Syrian bombing in 1971.