Exactly fifty-six seconds, she thought. Better than the first.
She was sure she could hear her blood. It was near to a fluttering of wings.
At home in his study late that night, Henry Durning felt Mary Chan Yung’s two phone calls gnawing at him like a pair of angry
ulcers that needed soothing.
How had she known of his involvement? And if
she
knew, who else knew?
It made him wonder if he’d made a mistake in telling her that he was interested in a deal. It was the same as an admission
of interest in the hunt for Vittorio Battaglia and all its potentially lethal undercurrents.
It made him wonder, too, about Mary Yung herself. Exactly who and what was she?
In reviewing her FBI short-form file printout, the whole thing had suddenly struck him as curiously superficial, even
false. A call to Brian Wayne for more of an in-depth probe produced a wholly different image of the woman.
For one thing, she was no jet-set glamour girl out of Hong Kong money.
Quite the opposite. Everything about her, even the air she breathed, entered Durning’s brain with a history of pollution and
the compromised souls of numberless dead.
Born to Chinese parents in Saigon, Mary Yung, at the age of three, sailed out of Vietnam’s mortal bloodfest during the open
season on boat people and ended up an instant orphan when her leaking, overloaded rust bucket foundered with almost all on
board. She was later passed from one foster home to another, until finally disappearing into the rat- and oach-infested alleys
of a street-gang social order so bizarre and ruthless that its very existence seemed to have broken home unwritten law of
survival. Unmarried, but never at a loss for men. No criminal record, although not infrequently picked up for questioning
and released. Occasional talk of her being a possible police informant, but Durning’s in-depth researcher didn’t believe it
for a minute. Had there been the slightest truth to the rumor, said his report, she’d have turned up dead years ago.
Durning’s FBI source also had described Mary Yung as an exceptionally beautiful, shrewd, and potentially dangerous woman.
Since Durning had already seen her picture and heard the way she pitched him on the phone, none of these things were hard
to believe.
All of which added up to what?
Easy.
A woman off the mean streets, on the make, looking for a big score.
Good, someone like that… she might just end up with velvet to sell.
In the nighttime quiet of his study, Durning sat staring at empty space. He stared until he filled the darkness with Mary
Yung’s presence. But she remained amorphous in his sight, shadowy and remote, an image suspended in dust.
Still, she was aware of him. She had risked something in just calling.
There was a measure of promise in simply that.
P
ETER
W
ALTERS’ REACTION
to his first live sighting of the infamous, even legendary Abu Homaidi was a surprised
How ordinary he is.
It often happened that way with a long-anticipated target. Emotion created its own advance images.
In reality, Homaidi was a thin, almost concave-chested young man with a scraggly beard who limped slightly as he came out
of his house onto the busy Barcelona street. Two men and a girl had preceded him onto the sidewalk, a second girl was close
beside him, and two more men followed as backup. When they strolled in the direction of The Ramblas, they kept this same formation.
Moments later, another young man left the house and trailed the others.
Nine in all, including Homaidi. A lot of firepower.
Parked a short distance down the block, Peter got out of his car and followed the last one at an interval of about fifty yards.
It was a Saturday night and the sidewalks, cafes, and restaurants along The Ramblas were more crowded than usual after a day
and a half of rain. In Barcelona, as in most Spanish cities, people rarely went out to dinner before eleven, and Vittorio
assumed that was where Homaidi and his people were headed now.
So far, no surprises.
He had flown into Barcelona less than twenty-four hours ago and found a car left for him as expected, in section 34, row 5,
of the airport parking lot.
In its trunk was a large suitcase packed with all the weapons that airport security made it impossible for him to fly in with
himself. Included were a disassembled sharpshooter’s rifle with scope sights, two automatic pistols with holsters and silencers,
and an ankle holster with a snub-nosed police special. Additionally, there were a few boxes of ammunition, a hunting knife
in a belt sheath, and a wire gar-rote. Some of the ammunition had explosive tips.
Half-a-dozen grenades were in form-fitting holders. Three
were fragmentation and three were tear gas. There also was a gas mask.
The tools of his trade.
Yesterday afternoon and evening had been spent settling in and familiarizing himself with the area and pertinent locations.
He had one of the Company’s more comfortable
safe
apartments just off Catalonia Square. It was the nerve center from which Barcelona’s largest streets branched out, and the
dividing line between the old city and the new.
Abu Homaidi and his people occupied a collection of rooms on the two top floors of a narrow, five-story building less than
half a mile away. A detailed scale layout of the place had been left for Vittorio in his weapons suitcase, with Homaidi’s
own room outlined in red. There too was an outline of some of the group’s living habits: the approximate times of their comings
and goings, the cafes and restaurants they favored, the places where they did their marketing.
The rest would be up to him.
As Cortlandt had indicated, Homaidi was never alone. Not even in bed, where the woman he slept with doubled as a security
guard. As did the other women in the group. They were all Palestinians, born into exile and the
intifada.
Wanton terror, the deaths of others, was their reason for living. They had made a significant discovery. What the world respected
most was killing. Violent death got people’s and nations’ attention faster, and held on to it longer, than anything else known
to man. All the words, reason, logic on earth were nowhere near as persuasive as a single bloody corpse.
But this was something Vittorio Battaglia, now Peter Walters, had discovered for himself a long time ago. He, too, considered
himself a soldier in an unending, undeclared war. Except that he recognized certain necessary restrictions. Certainly those
applying to unarmed noncombatants. Abu Homaidi and his people recognized nothing but their own purpose.
It was a cool night, but Peter was wearing the Kevlar vest under his jacket in deference to Peggy, and he was uncomfortably
aware of his own body heat. I’
m wearing it for her,
he thought, and this amused him. Was the chance that the armor might save his life really more important to Peggy
than it was to him? Or did he just consider himself invulnerable?
Neither, he decided, and settled for the kind of long-term fatalism taken on by most of those in the dangerous professions
as their personal security blankets.
It’ll happen when it’ll happen.
Talk about dumb.
Peter trailed the extended group along The Ramblas in the direction of Barcelona’s port, barely keeping Homaidi in view through
the teeming sidewalks.
Near the harbor itself, he saw them stop at an outdoor cafe, put together a few tables, and draw some chairs around them.
A moment later he passed them by and kept walking for about another hundred yards.
Then he turned around, came back, and took a small table at an adjoining outdoor cafe where he could sit and watch them with
little likelihood of being noticed.
He ordered a carafe of the local wine and paella and studied Abu Homaidi and those with him.
The bitter truth was, they might have been just another one of any number of similar groups of young people out for a Saturday
night of fun. Talking and laughing, it was hard to imagine them with anything more threatening on their minds than the latest
soccer scores and who would be in bed with whom later that night.
From where Peter sat, Homaidi himself seemed to appear a lot more attractive then he had earlier, with an easy laugh and manner
that made him the focus of the group’s attention. The girl seated at his side couldn’t seem to keep her eyes and hands off
him. Grudgingly, somewhat sadly, Vittorio thought she was lovely, a delicately put together blonde whose every move and gesture
was touched with grace.
Sorry, girl. You just happened to pick the wrong guy this time.
Then he caught the flash of a plain gold band on her finger and blocked out whatever else he might have been thinking.
Peter Walters looked dimly off toward the water.
In the near distance, he could see the dramatically floodlighted masts and bows of Christopher Columbus’
Santa
Maria,
where the great man’s faithfully reproduced flagship was tied up as a kind of floating museum.
More than five hundred years. Imagine. That little wooden cockle shell and a crazy Italian.
Some men live and leave such marks.
And me?
I live and leave dead bodies.
Peter slowly shook his head, the motion that of an old man no longer able to comprehend the behavior of himself and the world
about him.
Then two things happened at once.
Something hard was pressed against the back of his neck, and a woman’s voice whispered into his ear from over his right shoulder.
“What you feel is the muzzle of a gun,” the voice said in good but foreign-accented English. “It’s hidden in my purse and
has a silencer attached. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll shoot you here and now and be gone before anyone notices you’re dead.
If you want to live, you’ll put some money on the table for your bill, stand up, and walk slowly toward the harbor. I’ll be
close behind you.”
She paused. “Which will it be?”
“I’ll live.”
“Then do it.”
Peter carefully put money on the table, rose, and began walking toward the harbor as instructed.
Passing Abu Homaidi’s group, he saw that no one there as much as glanced in his direction. If that meant they weren’t connected
with this, there might yet be some hope. But not really expecting that, his brain sought other solutions.
“Turn into the alley on your left,” the woman’s voice said.
Peter did it and found himself in a dark, damp, cobble-stoned walk between rows of shuttered old buildings. The air stank
of sewage.
“Stop here and put your hands on your head.”
He silently obeyed and felt cold metal against the back of his neck. The gun apparently was out of her purse.
Then she patted him down and felt his body armor and his hip- and shoulder-holstered handguns. She left the guns where they
were.
“Who are you?” she asked and the metal was withdrawn from his neck as she took several steps backward.
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Why are you following and watching those people?”
“What people?”
“I’ll give you five seconds to answer. Otherwise, I shoot.”
He knew she meant it, and wondered how well the Kevlar would hold up at point-blank range. But of course she’d be putting
it into his neck or head, not his body.
“I was hired to do a surveillance on them,” he said.
“On the whole group?”
He nodded stiffly.
“Who hired you?”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s an American company operating in Saudi Arabia. I was contacted and paid in cash by an agent. He
said it was confidential and I was to make my reports only to him.”
“Name those you were hired to watch.”
Walters slowly recited six of the current aliases he had been given for Homaidi and five of his people. He was surprised he
remembered them.
Then still stalling for time, he said, “I thought I was doing OK. How did you make me?”
“I was covering their backs and saw you get out of your car. You made your move a little too fast.”
“And how did you know to speak English to me back there?”
“Because that’s how you spoke to the waiter when you ordered. Though your clothes are Italian.”
“You’re good,” Peter said flatly.
“In this, if you’re not good, you’re dead.”
“You mean like me?”
She was silent and he could almost feel her beginning to work up to it now.
“I guess you didn’t believe a word I said, did you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then maybe I can do a little better for us both with the truth. If you’ll give me a few minutes.”
Again she was silent and Peter braced himself for the impact of the bullet. He knew she was that close to it.
“All right,” she finally said.
He felt his legs go weak. “Can I turn around?”
“Why?”
“It’s different when you’re looking at someone.”
“Go ahead. But slowly.”
Hands still on his head, he turned.
She looked no more than nineteen. But he guessed that was how they all looked when they were young and you were near forty.
This one had dark hair and the kind of steady, deep-set eyes that seemed to live for a contest. She wore jeans and a sweater
and carried an oversize shoulder bag that left both hands free for the automatic and its silencer that she kept aimed, stiff-armed
straight between his eyes.
And the only thing on her mind is killing me.
“Are you Palestinian?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You speak English very well.”
“It’s important to know the language of your enemy.”
“America isn’t your enemy.”
She tossed her head impatiently. “I’m waiting for your truth. Not more lies and propaganda.”
“Sure,” he said, and saw little hope for him in her eyes, which had already bought, sold, and closed him out. “The truth is,
I’m here to kill Abu Homaidi.”
In the dark translucence of the alley, her face almost gave off a light.