CHAPTER NINETEEN.
1.00am. Off Beirut, 10/26/02.
Willy sat patiently in the canoe, making occasional paddle strokes to keep on station. After what seemed like an age a red glow shone out of the blackness. He counted the seconds; eight, and the red light shone again. Time to go in. Silently he paddled in towards the city’s glow, and soon found himself entering a cleft under the cliffs. The bow of the canoe was grabbed, and Jim’s wet, black, rubber-covered head bobbed up alongside.
Neither man spoke; they went silently into the next phase of the operation. The canoe was unloaded, its buoyancy vented and the cargo-carrying area filled with stones. As it sank it was guided into a cleft in the rocks, and the swaying masses of weed were draped over it. Several marine creatures immediately took up residence. Willy and Jim held a line between them and, towing their waterproof equipment hold-alls, set off to the south parallel to the beach.
A one and a half kilometer swim due south took them past the old Saint-Simon resort area to a point where the beach curved in slightly. They surfaced, checked their bearings yet again, submerged and carefully swam in to the beach. No one was around. Easing off their flippers and masks, they opened the containers and removed their silenced Uzi assault pistols. They were ashore in enemy territory, and like black shadows moved warily and silently across the deserted sands and into the dunes.
2.00am. St.Georges Beach, Beirut.
While Willy kept watch, Jim quickly removed his rubber dry suit, straightened his dark clothing, and added more camouflage cream to the exposed parts of his body. Then he slipped on his kit, conveniently stowed in a multi-pocketed slip-on waistcoat, and put on his waist belt carrying five full water bottles. His sacking cloak with the rubbish carefully stuck and sewn to it he draped over his shoulders. He quickly scraped away a large quantity of dry sand, and then dug down into the base of the dune. Taking a thin cane, he pushed it deep into the sand, marking the position of the hole. His flippers, dry suit, oxygen re-breathing apparatus and facemask were all sealed in the waterproof hold-all. The hold-all went into the hole and was buried in the sand. The dry surface sand went back on top. A short length of bamboo stuck out of the sand next to a clump of tough grass. Anyone would have to look hard to spot it. Jim hoped he wouldn’t need the equipment again, but it might provide a way out if things did not go according to plan. Anyway, he could not leave it on the beach like a calling card.
The offshore breeze began to obliterate the marks in the dry sand. Moving up to Willy’s position, Jim tapped his shoulder and took over the watch-keeping. Willy quickly followed the same routine; it was second nature after the hours of practice on the beach near Anna’s house.
When Willy was ready the two men made a final check of each other’s camouflage arrangements, and jumped up and down to make sure nothing about their persons rattled or clinked. Satisfied, they slung their bundles, picked up their weapons, and moved off.
They went cautiously through the newly bulldozed ruins of the shanty towns that had grown up on the former resort area, going towards the Avenue Ramlet el Baida that ran due South parallel to the beach. They waited a few minutes, watching for any movement.
Willy stayed put, weapon at the ready, as Jim sprinted silently across the road. Jim disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the highway and Willy waited a few moments to give him time to take up a suitable position. Then he also silently crossed the deserted road. The two men followed this pattern of movement for the whole of their advance into this hostile territory. As one moved, the other watched. It took longer, but it was prudent. Their object was reconnaissance, to get in unseen, to observe unnoticed and to leave un-remarked. They had one and a half kilometers to cover to their objective, and they had five hours of darkness left. Some of that time had to be allowed for the setting up of hides in suitable observation positions, but even so they were in no hurry.
Their prime concern was to avoid contact with any of the armed groups of West Beirut. Amal Militia, Lebanese Army, PLO terrorist factions, any or all were dangerous and nervous of each other. These people wouldn’t ask questions, they would open fire first.
Cautiously they crossed some broken ground between the coast road and the Avenue Camille Chamoun then crossed this road too, exactly as before. Just south of the City Sports Centre and crossing more open ground, they came to the edge of a built-up area. This was going to be the hard part. Who could say what eyes were peering out into the darkness?
They crouched and looked for a long time into the dark corners of the massed buildings. Suddenly in the blackness a match flared.
Cupped in the hands of the smoker, the light was muted to a dim glow, and then the match arched out to the ground, going out half way through the arc of its fall. The end of a cigarette glowed as the smoker drew on it. It moved and glowed a second time and then moved back again. Two men were sharing it.
Jim nudged Willy and pointed to the left. A narrow street opened out onto the waste ground. Some burnt out vehicles lay there. Willy nodded and moved quickly across and into the darker shadow of the nearest vehicle. Jim followed. The two guards, their night vision ruined by the flare of the match, saw nothing.
Crouching beside the burned out vehicles, Willy and Jim each pulled out a black and white Keffiyeh. Quickly wrapping their heads in the Keffiyehs they walked quietly down the narrow alley in the darkness. If anyone saw them they would look as if they belonged.
Moving rapidly, they passed unchallenged through several small streets of damaged buildings and then stopped abruptly.
In front of them was an open area, piles of rubble from shelled buildings littered the ground, and across the open space stood a damaged apartment building. Both men recognized it from Ben Levy’s photographs. In the service area below that building should be the Blood of Shatila headquarters.
4.00am. Shatila.
Jim and Willy split up, each heading for a suitable area in which to set up an observation hide. They used every scrap of cover and every patch of shadow that the broken ground provided, crawling on their stomachs, moving only one limb at a time in their careful advance across the open rubble-strewn area in front of the terrorist HQ. Then cloud covered the moon and no moonlight filtered down, enabling them to make expert use of the black darkness.
Jim selected a place in the angle of a ruined wall in which to construct his hide. A pile of rubble formed a vee shaped hollow with the wall. It was well away from any vehicle access or from any well-trodden footpath. A rough straggling shrub growing tenaciously out of the wall would provide some shade from the heat of the next day’s sun. Jim rearranged the rubble underneath to make it level and made a hip scrape to make it as comfortable as possible; he would be lying on it for long hours to come. Quickly and expertly, he laid his canes over the hollow and against the wall, and then spread his wire mesh over the top. The plastic sheet went on top of that, then a variety of light rubble pieces, completely covering it from even the closest scrutiny. Next he carefully built a jagged opening at the front through which he could observe the terrorist HQ. Satisfied with his efforts, he wormed his way in through the opening, feet first.
Willy moved to a position on the other side of the open area, chosen so that he could see things that Jim couldn’t see. His OP was in a patch of thick weed and scrub. A shallow trench ran through the middle of the weedy plot, and Willy quickly removed the growth from the forward section of it. He too built his cane support frame with great care, covered it with wire mesh and plastic sheet, and re-laid the rough weed clumps on top of it all. He checked to make sure no mesh or cane showed, and put his equipment and weapons in place. ‘A place for everything - everything in its place - you won’t be able to shine a torch to find what you want. Make sure you put every item in a set place, always put it back where it belongs, be certain that you know exactly where any given item is at all times so that you can put your hand on it immediately in the dark.’ His SBS instructors, and more recently Jim, had hammered the point home. The last thing to
do here was to shine a light to look for things. Quietly he wriggled into his hide and settled into position. He set up his night vision equipment and began a slow and careful sweep of the area in his field of view.
There was the entrance to the terrorist HQ. The defensive sangars were there just as they had built them at their practice site at Lod; staggered and fifty yards apart, either side of the road leading to the ramp down into the Blood of Shatila HQ. A vague shape was mounted on a tripod in each sangar. They would be machine guns, heavy caliber jobs Willy thought, judging by their size.
A battered Land Rover drove up flaring the night vision scope. Willy protected his eyes. He couldn’t see how many men were inside it, but the wash of light from the headlamps illuminated distinctive longitudinal flanging on the shapes in the sangars. Russian Goryunov SGM’s, 7.72mm caliber, belt fed, with a cyclic rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute. The mounts on them could be quickly altered for anti-aircraft use. Willy made rapid notes. A look through the telephoto lens of his camera in daylight would confirm his observations. Also visible were a rocket-propelled grenade and its launcher. It looked like a standard Soviet RPG7V anti-tank weapon. Where there was one of those there would probably be many, they were cheap to make and effective. Willy studied the sangars carefully for a long time. There should be just two men in each according to the information supplied by Najib Shawa. The information proved to be correct; there were two men in each sangar. Willy looked down the road away from the damaged apartment building. A double pair of offset rubble and sandbag barriers were built across the road to cause approaching traffic to slow down in order to negotiate the sharp ‘S’ bends thus formed, and then a timber and barbed wire barrier lay across the road. Two men were slumped on the ground at the barriers; they looked as if they were asleep.
Willy began a slow and systematic visual search of the building above the parking garage. He soon spotted the glow of a cigarette, there should be an additional health warning to sentries on the packet, he thought wryly. This man was on the near side of the block looking out over the approach to the Headquarters entrance.
Jim Savage had spotted a second lookout from his position; again his task had been made easy by the glow of a cigarette. ‘Very careless, very slack, very convenient,’ he thought, ‘and they wouldn’t have very good night vision if they kept on lighting smokes. That would make things easier in the coming operation.’
According to Najib Shawa’s information there should be at least two more sentries, where were they? Patiently, Jim kept searching. Eventually they gave away their positions and Jim made another note in his log book.
6.00am. Shatila.
In the early morning dark Jim checked with his compass, adjusted his satcom dish and switched on the burst transmission radio. Whilst it warmed up he coded a series of messages and loaded them into the memory. Checking his watch, he waited for the correct time and pressed the transmit button to send the first message. A brief burst of radio waves a fraction of a second long, scrambled and compressed, shot out at the speed of light to be picked up by the relay satellite. Ben and John would know in seconds that they were in position and undetected. Gradually the sky began to lighten and as the dawn broke he folded the dish and pulled it inside the hide. The hot sun began to dispel the cloud, and the heat intensified. Both Jim and Willy took time to eat some of the hard dry mountaineer’s emergency rations they were carrying as a food supply and washed it down with precious bottled water. The small rectangular packages were made up on the old North American Indian principal of parched corn ground fine, and each package contained two thousand calories. They were dry and not very tasty, but they were light, easy to carry and would keep them going. Every scrap of the wrappings had to be carefully packed away to be taken back with them. They would leave no telltale traces of their visit.
As the early morning light strengthened, two armed men emerged from the underground car park and ambled over to relieve the men at the road barriers. The men at the road barriers drifted in and took over the two sangars, and the men in the sangars went up to relieve the men on lookout duty. The men on lookout duty came down into the underground car park. They moved briskly, their stint of duty finished they were going off watch.
Najib Shawa had said that the guards worked a six-hour rota. Two hours on the barriers, two hours in the sangar followed by two hours on the roof on lookout duty. Each two-hour change of duty was to relieve boredom and keep the guards awake. It didn’t seem to be having the desired effect. Jim watched carefully to see if this routine was adhered to. So did Willy; separately they confirmed and noted that it was so, and made entries in their logs.
As the first light of dawn broke over the damaged city, Willy used his camera lens as a high powered telescope to look at the machine guns. They were Goryunov SGM’s all right, an old design but very effective. ‘Where the hell did they get those from?’ he wondered. The rocket-propelled grenades were the RPG7V’s, as he had thought, simple and fairly accurate. Predictably the guards were all carrying AK47 assault rifles as personal weapons. The sangar defensive positions were well built, well located, and each had an open field of fire. Any attempt at a direct assault would be seen by the lookouts and would prove very costly against such defenses and weapons.
8.00am. Athens.
To help camouflage his enquiries, Mike asked Anna to go with him to visit the property agency that had written to Andreas Kokalis and, as Mike’s plan to allay suspicion was to play the wealthy tourist, so Anna dressed to look a little over the top. Mike gave the taxi driver the address from the letter that Effi had shown him. They walked into the property agency’s smart modern office, Mike playing the tourist abroad, and asked the young girl at the desk for details of any large villas they might have for rent. The girl was there on her own and, offering them seats, she went to a filing cabinet and took out several files. She placed the details of four properties on the desk in front of them. The villa in Politia was the third one in the pile.
Anna had been well briefed. ‘This one looks suitable honey; it’s in the right area too.’
The girl was eyeing Anna’s jewelry. These were obviously wealthy clients. ‘Yes, it ver’ nice, and is empty now,’ she said. ‘Was use for a month recently, so is been aired, but we put cleaner in to give it clean. Is lovely property.’
Mike thought rapidly. The recent let would have been to Andreas Kokalis, he had rented it for a month, and then he had disappeared.
‘You like view it?’
Mike gave an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders, palms up. ‘Sure would, what the lady wants the lady gets.’
Anna fluttered her eyelids at him, laying it on thick. ‘Gee honey, you’re so wonnerful, let’s go now.’
‘Okay babe. We’ll take a look at this one right now, young lady.’
‘Ahhh, is problem sir, I on my own. I not can leave the office, you come back later maybe?’
Anna pouted at Mike. He looked at her and back at the salesgirl. ‘No way, you wanna do a deal, we do it now.’
‘Well... well... I no can just go out there with you and leave office, maybe if...’
‘Tell you what sweetheart,’ Mike interrupted her, ‘just give us the keys and we’ll mosy on out there on our lonesome and take a lil’ ole looksee.’
Anna frowned, she thought Mike was laying on the tourist act a bit too thick, but the girl seemed not to notice. Maybe too polite to react, Anna thought.
‘Er... Well, maybe you leave deposit? You get back, when you bring keys. Oh, an’ we take passport details too,’ the girl said hesitantly.
‘No problem, here y’are,’ Mike handed the eagle crested document over to her, ‘and how much do you want as a deposit?’
The girl told him.
‘Hell, I don’t got any drachmas; honey do you have any change in your purse?’ Anna shook her head. ‘Well, hell, it’s refundable, ain’t it? Here, take this.’ Mike thrust a hundred-dollar bill, equal to twice the required amount of drachmae, across the desk at the
girl. ‘Never mind the change, we’ll be back in an hour and you can give us this back.’
The girl was pleased, the office would stay manned, and there was a chance of some commission if the villa was let. Without further ado she handed over the keys and gave him the particulars. She excused herself for a moment, made photocopies of Mike’s passport, and gave it back to him.
‘Hey, great job.’ Mike and Anna left and went in search of a car hire office.
‘I don’t seem to be making much of a contribution, so I’ll act as transport manager,’ Anna said as they left the property agency. Her Hertz credit card took care of the car hire and provided a powerful Mercedes saloon to take them out to the suburb of Politia.
They reached the road in which the villa stood and drove slowly past it. There was no sign of life; the place looked closed and empty, as it should. Anna kept on taking left turns until they came again to the road outside the villa. She pulled into the curb and parked. Mike got out.
‘Be careful,’ Anna told him.
‘Don’t worry, I will,’ Mike said, and set off at a slow stroll. He turned into the villa grounds and walked around the house, looking at it in the way a prospective client would. Eventually he arrived back at the front door. Taking the keys from his pocket he unlocked it and stepped inside. There was no sound, no sign of any life at all. Every surface gleamed and there was a strong smell of polish. The place did look as though it had been thoroughly cleaned recently. Being careful not to touch anything, he did a tour of all the rooms. All the interior doors were open to allow air to circulate. There was nothing untoward to be seen. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and using it to open the latch he went out through the kitchen door and looked at the rear of the building. Over to one side were the garbage bins. A thought struck him. How often was the garbage collected, how often from a property that was only occasionally occupied? Lifting a lid, he looked inside. The rubbish had not been collected. Walking back to the car he told Anna to drive round to the rear of the villa. Following her he pulled the black bin liners out of the bins and quickly tying the necks of the bags, he put them in the trunk.
‘Drive round to the front door while I lock up,’ he told Anna, and walked back through the villa, locking the rear and front doors as he did so. They drove back into the centre of Athens, and much to the disappointment of the girl in the property agency they declined to rent the villa.
Mike was silent during the drive back; it was possible that there would be a lead to the previous occupants in their rubbish, but to establish that he would need some help, specialist help, maybe from the Greek police sergeant.
It was late morning when they arrived back at their hotel and passed the car over to the head porter on the main door. Mike phoned the taverna from the desk and asked for Sergeant Joanidies.
‘Isa no ere.’
‘Okay, its Mike Edge, tell him to meet me for lunch, usual place.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Thanks.’ Mike rang off.
As Mike and Anna crossed the foyer a taxi drew up at the main entrance. A figure, clad in a black chador, walked unobtrusively out to the taxi that had followed them very discreetly to both locations. Money and information changed hands.
12.00am, Plaka District, Athens.
Mike drove his car with the rubbish bags in the trunk through the heat of the morning to the square by the taverna for his meeting with Sergeant Joanidies. Sergeant Joanidies was already there and in the process of ordering a lunch of fetta cheese, fresh tomatoes, olives, crusty bread, and chilled white wine for both of them.
‘Scene of crime expertise cost money,’ the sergeant said, with a sardonic smile.
‘How much?’
Sergeant Joanidies shrugged. ‘Depends; what you want done?’
‘I have some bags of garbage that I’m pretty sure was from the hijacker’s base here in Athens, and I’m willing to bet they didn’t wipe their trash.’
Sergeant Joanidies pursed his lips. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a complete waste of time after all. ‘How many bags?’
Mike told him.
‘I’d have to pay out a lot of money to get the forensic officers to do that amount of work.’
Mike’s bargaining position was weak, and the sergeant knew it.
Sergeant Joanidies mentally upped the price he had in mind. He named a figure.
‘Okay; half now, half when you deliver, but I want the results by the end of the day.’
Mike left the taverna reflecting on how easy things became when you had unlimited money.
11.45pm. Plaka District, Athens.
Later that evening Mike handed over the balance of the cash and picked up the forensic report back at the taverna. One of the bags had contained a man’s bloodstained clothing, shoes and a few possessions. The clothing was crudely cut as if removed from an accident victim. Inside the shirt collar and cut in half was a laundry tag. According to the laundry the tag number was for the Hotel Grande Bretagne. Andreas Kokalis came immediately to mind. His thoughts racing Mike read on. The bloodstains on the shirt had also proved to contain fine particles of bone and human brain tissue. It was likely that the owner of the clothes had died from a gunshot to the head. The clothes had been cut up the back and roughly ripped away, actions consistent with the removal of clothing from a body lying face down on the ground. The shoelaces had been cut. Whoever had done it had been in a hurry and had been brutally efficient.
Gradually, a pattern began to form in Mike’s mind. The man known as George Liani had hired Andreas. To do what? What had Andreas done? He had rented a large villa and he had hired a couple of cars. He hadn’t stayed at the villa but several other men had, and one of them had been responsible for the brutal murder of a family of simple hard working country people. A print from the rubbish matched the print on the cartridge case in Dimitris Kosovos’s old shotgun. The man of the murdered family had been forced to put the weapons and explosives on the ill-fated Olympic Airways flight. George Liani must have used Andreas Kokalis as a front man to rent accommodation and transportation; to set up a base for his team, Mike reasoned. He had then killed him, disposed of the body somehow, and had thrown away his clothes expecting the refuse collection service to remove them. The other bags contained ordinary domestic rubbish, including toothbrushes and razors that could give DNA samples, and on some items of the rubbish fingerprints had been found, prints from several different men. It seemed that the man who had followed Dimitris Kosovos and butchered his family had stayed in the villa, together with a group of other men. What if he had seen the prints before, possibly from the dossier he and Anna had compiled during the hijack? Were they the same as the prints taken from the glass, the comb, the photograph and everything else he had collected? If so it would be confirmation that the hijackers or at least some of them had stayed in the villa. And as soon as he had his base set up by the unfortunate Andreas the man known as George Liani must have searched for another suitable person, an airport worker, to put the weapons and explosives on the plane. He’d found Dimitris Kosovos and forced him to co-operate by taking his wife and children hostage. Then they too had been brutally killed. The police file contained photographs of the scenes at the Kosovos farm. Then George Liani had watched the hijacked plane take off, had come back and cleaned out the villa, maybe with some help, and cleaned and returned his car. But he hadn’t thought it necessary to clean the rubbish. He had made just one mistake in relying on the refuse collectors to remove the rubbish on a regular basis from a villa that was only occasionally occupied. Even so it was a dead end. All the leads were dead ends. Andreas Kokalis had vanished without trace, probably dead. Dimitris Kosovos was dead, his family dead, and the hi-jacking was history. The perpetrators were long gone and the man known as George Liani, the man who had so carefully set everything up with no connections to himself had vanished without trace. Mike reviewed his findings grimly. He now knew what had happened, but he was no nearer to the person behind it all. He was up against a pr
ofessional, an utterly ruthless individual who took few chances, and left no one alive to talk. Using a pay ’phone he rang John Henderson.
‘John, I’ve obtained some information, but I’ve reached a dead end.’
‘It’s okay, we have a new lead. Fly to Istanbul, Ben and I will join you there. Check in to the Topkapi Saray Hotel.’