Soft Targets Read online

  Talith knew her fingers trembled on the coffee cup, knew young Jamie Hilborn was watching her. He did that a lot. She folded the letter away, inched her left hand downward, began to stroke the flesh of her thigh just above the knee as though unconscious that Hilborn's gaze had fol­lowed her hand. Presently she stretched her legs, exercising the calf muscles. Jamie Hilborn would not be taking many notes this day, or thinking about her letter.

  Talith did not return to the seminar after its intermission, but hurried to her apartment near the park on South Sixteenth. It was typical of Fat'ah to disguise even the envelope, and as she locked her doors she was giddy with anticipa­tion. She drew the massive zip-code book from a shelf and started to scribble numbers next to the towns listed.

  Grand Rapids, North Dakota did not matter except that it provided its five-digit number: 58446. Virgin, Utah and Maryville, Missouri were equally insignificant. The numbers were all that counted.

  Leah Talith felt hunger pangs before she had all two hundred and thirty numbers. It was a long message, the longest she had ever received. Her instructions in July, before the Phoenix attempt, had been much more succinct. She ig­nored the growl in her belly and, from her tam­pon cassette, took the one-time pad.

  The one-time pad is not the only unbreakable code system, but it is easily the simplest to use. Talith's pad was written in washable ink on the backs of postage stamps in a stamp roll, and had to be kept absolutely dry. Each stamp carried twenty of the five-digit numbers, and somewhere one of Hakim Arif's Fat'ah men had an identical grouping of numbers. The groupings they coded and sent were not precisely the same; indeed, the difference between a given zip-code and the next number on Talith's one-time pad varied between one and twenty-six. The twenty-six variations made letters in English, the language used because it employed many terms that ill-suited Arabic. Despite the bril­liance of cryptanalysis techniques, they fail before the one-time pad. In the message to Talith, the vowel e occurred seventeen times. It oc­curred as seventeen different five-digit numbers, so that a frequency count was not possible—or, at any event, nonproductive. The one-time pad was not as sophisticated as indeterminate qua­dratics. It did not have to be. Talith licked twelve stamps that evening, erasing the sequences after their one-time use. Then, for the first time, she read the message for its content.

  The message left her little room for improvisa­tion; it even specified the model numbers of the necessary equipment to be purchased. But that would be Rashid's problem, since he controlled the funds. She could improvise in site selection, at least, before signaling readiness of their Fat'ah cell for its distinguished visitor. She felt certain that the Pueblo telephone number was that of a public telephone booth. She would either call at the proper time or not at all.

  Trained by Fat'ah lieutenants after her re­cruitment from Neturay Karta, she had never seen Hakim Arif, had seen only half of his other followers. But Talith knew that the demands of Fat'ah in communication skills were refractory, as Hakim was refractory. If Hakim was sending an aide to prepare for his coming, the contact number would be no private one.

  Hakim Arif's man would arrive on Saturday, 25 October, expecting videotapes of the day's news as well as a cell meeting. Rashid would be glad to abandon his studies in California State University at Northridge, several hundred ki­lometers away. She could only guess at the willingness of the motorcycle mechanic, Bernal Guerrero; but while he occasionally questioned an order, he was a complete professional. She was not so sure about Chaim.

  Talith frowned as she sought the address near the village of Felton where Chaim Mardor might, or might not, be found. He had always been mercurial, a temperamental link in Fat'ah's be­havioral chain-mail. After she had driven him bleeding and frenzied from the center of Pheonix on that disastrous day in August, he had become more reclusive. Talith told herself she would cover for any cell member with emotional lapses, and knew that she lied. Chaim would have been eliminated by now, were it not for her. Chaim was a problem that must be faced; but Chaim was also, with Talith, Neturay Karta. She would give him time to recover, to realize his full potential.

  As a weaver among counterculture people in California's Santa Cruz mountain communes, Chaim was accepted. His gentle fingers teased lovely portraits from yarn, driftwood and feathers; and occasionally they squeezed a trigger. He lived with a brace of young women who found in his quiet intensity a strangeness enough for two. Chaim found himself a capable respondent because, apart from their camouflage value, their combined significance was zero. Talith had begun to suspect that he was impotent with her because she was significant. This, she felt, was a great pity: one of the pleasant articles of her new Fat'ah faith was its demands on her body.

  Talith put the apartment in order before driv­ing her small van into the southern mountains toward Felton. Chaim might not be roused by the visit of a Fat'ah lieutenant, but the message had suggested something that would. Chaim could always be galvanized by the verbal trigger, Hakim Arif. Though the fact had not emerged clearly enough for her to deny it, the same was true of Leah Talith.

  SATURDAY, 25 OCTOBER, 1980:

  At the first buzz of his phone, Everett decided to ignore it. He had planned his selfish Saturday since the Anaheim trip, determined that official business would positively not deflect him from one last October day in the high country. Everett lived his fantasy whenever he could—briefly by necessity, alone by choice. It was not until the third buzz, as he struggled into a forest green pullover, that he recognized the buzzer tone of his unlisted number. Only his informants, and probably a few old colleagues of David Engels, had access to that number, a tenuous link be­tween newsmen and the federal government.

  Everett spoke briefly, listened long, and promptly forgot the Rockies that stretched in sere majesty across his horizon near Colorado Springs. "You're already there, are you," he said, thrusting the earpiece between head and shoulder as he tugged on heavy socks. "But why the Shoshone-Beardsley intersection? Doesn't the parade go through the center of Pueblo?" A pause. "Sure; handy for you and me, and for the tactical squads too. Those mothers must be aw­fully confident. You have any idea at all what kind of trouble's brewing?" A final pause. "So we'll have to wing it. I'll make it in maybe fifty minutes if I take the superskate, but I haven't a CB rig in it. My problem anyhow. And thanks, Leo—really."

  Once before he hit U.S. Route Eighty-seven and twice after, Everett was noticed by Colorado Highway Patrol cruisers. The Mini was in racing tune again, though he rarely had time for his infatuation with the little freeway raptor. The big cruisers invariably saw his honorary highway patrol decals, fell back to check his plates, then let him continue fleeing south at nearly three kilometers a minute. A Commissioner was supposed to be circumspect, but Everett used this special privilege only in the line of duty.

  He took the second off-ramp at Pueblo as if the curve were a personal affront, then eased off as he entered boulevard traffic. According to the newsman's tip, he would have time to find the intersection before the terrorist demonstration. Briefly, Everett was reminded of Charlie George, who had sat near him at—what was it, the As­sociated Press convention? The comedian had opined in his laconic drawl, "TV will still play whore to any pimp with a machine pistol. We're the tush of terrorism." Everett had laughed at the remedy Charlie had proposed. But then, you were supposed to laugh at Charlie.

  He spotted vehicles of two different networks as he neared the target area, and forgot about comedy. The van, he overtook; the big Honda bike overtook them both, more by maneuverabil­ity than speed. The van gets you status, the bike gets you there first, he mused. Newspeople could do ENG with two-wheeled vehicles though the Honda did not carry powerful transmission equipment. Everett kept the van in his rearview and when it stopped, he found a niche for the Mini. From that point on, he was in enemy country.

  One of the most disturbing things was that the enemy, while promising a news event to media people, had not identified itself. That could mean a hoax by some amateuri
sh crank—or it could mean the precise opposite.

  Everett hesitated a moment in choosing decoy emblems. His was a camouflage problem: he wanted to avoid a make by newsmen, and a few knew Maury Everett on sight. But he also wanted to avoid getting himself killed. He donned wraparound dark glasses for the first criterion, and an armband over his rough leather jacket to meet the second. Terrorists generally knew who their friends were: the armband said simply, PRESS.

  Following a National Broadcasting Network cameraman on foot, Everett wished he too had a lightweight videotape rig—even a dummy Ora­cle Micam would do. It was rare for a terrorist to deliberately down a media man and when it happened, it was usually a revenge killing. But Everett's informant could not predict details. Everett remembered the videotapes he had seen in Anaheim; it was prudent to suspect gunfire.

  The boulevard was lined with spectators enjoying that foolish marvel of autumn anachronism, a homecoming parade. Everett could not pause to enjoy the brassy polychrome of as­sembled high school bands that high-stepped, a bit wearily by now, between wheeled floats. He focused instead on the ENG people. One, a bulky Portacam slung over his back, clambered atop a marquee for a better view. Two others from com­peting stations took up positions nearer the in­tersection, almost a block from Everett. The com­forting mass of a stone pillar drew Maury Everett into its shadow. He could see a thousand carefree people laughing, pointing, children darting after stray float decorations, cheering at discor­dances in the music of these devoted amateurs. Was the tip a false alarm? If not, Everett thought, this happy setting might be shattered within minutes. And he was powerless. He smiled without mirth: Bureaucracy giveth, and bu­reaucracy taketh away. Blessed be the name . . .

  Watching nubile majorettes cavort despite a chill breeze on their naked arms and legs, Maury Everett faced his personal dilemma for the hun­dredth time since his appointment. Newsmen dubbed their solution `disinvolvement.' You have a job and you assume its risks. If you are government, you stay in your own bailiwick and off the toes of other bureaucrats. If you are busi­ness, and most explicitly media business, you rise or fall chiefly on informal contacts—and in newsgathering, you do not interfere with the news event. You do not divulge sources for two reasons. The legal reason is backed by the Su­preme Court, and the selfish reason is that fin­gering a contact is professional suicide.

  If Everett somehow interrupted the impend­ing show after its careful leakage to ENG people by some unknown malcontent, his sources would evaporate instantly, permanently. Free­dom of reportage, even when irresponsible, was a fundamental function of American media. John Rooker called it surveillance. Everett called it hellish.

  The Portacam man had shifted position to a second-landing fire escape next to the synagogue. A thorough pro, he was taking footage of the parade so that, whatever happened, he would be able to salvage some sort of story. Everett saw that all of the floats featured the same general theme: athletics. Lumbering beyond him was a float honoring the 1980 Olympics winners, a crudely animated statue labeled `Uri' waving three gold medals. That would be Yossuf Uri, Israel's surprise middle-distance runner. The hulking mannikin beside it represented the Soviet weights man, whose heart had later failed under the demands placed upon it by too many kilos of steroid-induced muscle tissue.

  The casual connection of death with the float display goaded Everett's mind toward a casual inference, but he froze for too many seconds while the details linked in his head. A synagogue on the corner, an Israeli hero ap­proaching it, and a vague tipoff by a terrorist naming the intersection. No matter how little the ENG people knew, Maurice Everett clawed his way to a terrible conclusion.

  Later, he could regain an uneasy sleep whenever he awoke streaming with the perspira­tion of guilt—for he had vaulted the horns of his dilemma. "Stop," he bawled, and knew that his voice was hopelessly lost in the general clamor. Everett sprinted between bystanders, knocked a beldame sprawling, caromed into the side of another float. He was still on his feet, still shout­ing for attention, when the great torso of Yossuf Uri came abreast of the synagogue and disap­peared in a blinding flash. A wall of air tossed Everett halfway across the street.

  * * *

  How Jewish can you get? The stable manager fingered the crisp twenty-dollar bill, smiling down at the signature. "I've saddled up a perty spirited mare, Mr. Rabbinowitz," he said, taking in the wistful smile, the olive skin, the dark hypnotic eyes. "Sure that's what you want?"

  "Precisely," the little man said, and paced out to the corral. He mounted the mare quickly, gracefully, and cantered her out along the rim of the arroyo. The stableman watched him, puz­zled. He was certain he had seen Rabbinowitz before. As the figure dipped below his horizon in the afternoon sun, the stableman laughed. Meticulous silken dress and manner had made the illusion even better, a youthful cosmetic ver­sion of a man more character than actor. "George Raft," he murmured, satisfied.

  The mare was no filly, but she had Arabian lines. The rider held her at a gallop, imagining that he was in Iraq and not California. He savored the earthy scents of this, a small pleasure he could justify in terms of security. No one, he felt certain, would bug a bridle trail. Presently he came in view of San Jose rooftops and at that moment—precisely—knew that he was being watched.

  He made an elaborate show of patting the mare's neck, leaning first to one side and then the other, scanning—without seeming to—every mass of shrub cover within reasonable pistol shot. Nothing. His heels pressured the mare. She was already plunging ahead when he heard the girl cry out behind him. He had passed her without sensing her? Most disturbing.

  He wheeled the mare and returned, erasing his frownlines for the girl. She was clapping now, a jet-haired comely thing, slender-boned, with the lustrous eyes of a drugged fawn. "Ayyy, que guapo," she laughed aloud, showing a pink tongue between dazzling teeth. The gold cross at her throat, the peasant blouse: a latina.

  He misjudged her in two ways: "You like the mare?"

  "The combination," she answered, growing more serious. Her hands were clearly in sight and he did not see how she could hide a deadly weapon while showing so much youthful flesh. But still—Now she stroked the mare's nose, looking up at him. He liked that. "Like music," she said, and waited.

  The formula should not have surprised him so. "Music by Sedaka?"

  "Imsh'allah," she said. How convenient that a popular composer's name should also, in several related tongues, mean 'gift.' Well, this one would give. Her stealth and cover identity had been, if anything, better than his own. He did not admit to irritation in his response.

  He complimented Talith in her deception, dismounting, walking with her to a tree-shaded declivity. The mare tethered, they sat, and now her slight advantage in height disappeared.

  "Curious," he began, "how my appetites are whetted by a job well-done." They spoke English and then Arabic, softly, warmly, and when he remounted it was not on the mare. He forced into her immediately, a pain she ignored in her joy to serve. He coupled like a ferret, grinning fiercely, his need unsullied by affection, and Talith knew that she would not be required to simulate orgasm. She extended her tonguetip between her teeth, her own grin lewd in his face, and reached down to find him. She began to contrive for him that redoubled rapture, a Florentine. His restraint was no match for this and, in moments, he was spent.

  Presently they drew apart. The girl combed her hair with impatient fingers. "You have seen the media coverage of the Pueblo operation this morning?"

  "There was no time for that," he yawned. "I nearly missed my flight to San Jose. But I did hear a bulletin. Did Fat'ah obtain suitable coverage?"

  She nodded gravely. "Hakim will be pleased."

  "Of that, I am certain." Their great bituminous eyes locked for a moment before, toying with her, he persisted. "But Hakim must have a media center. You are prepared?"

  "Prepared? When I hailed you," she riposted, "did you or did you not think I was a local chicana?"

  Echoes of repugnance
clashed like scimitars behind his quiet words. "You are clever, you are willing. I speak of greater things than—" and paused after using a grossly sexist Bedouin term for his recent use of her. He saw her pupils ex­pand. Pleasure or pain? "I must know whether you have the site, the men, and the equipment Fat'ah requires."

  "I cannot say. My instructions are to provide only for the leader himself. He may not arrive, as you know. Or he may." She shrugged.

  "You are clever. But you are prepared for Hakim Arif?"

  "We are Fat'ah."

  "And who am I?" He removed his left small finger at the last joint, replaced the prosthetic tip while she regained her composure. "In our telephone arrangements I spoke to you as 'Rab­binowitz'."

  "But I thought you would first send—sire, you are Hakim Arif," she murmured, seeming to grow smaller.

  "So I am. And angry at continued small talk, and impatient for my media. We have another demonstration to plan, depending on the results we see from this morning's work. You have pro­vided for me, you say? Then show me, Talith."

  She quickly explained the route to the site she had prepared, naming each landmark three times. He did not remind her of his old familiar­ity with travel in the United States, but listened with critical approval. It was best to arrive after sunset, she said, which also gave her time to alert the others.

  "Chaim and Rashid know you," she added. The third, Bernal Guerrero, had been recruited in Damascus, as Talith herself had been, after Hakim Arif's last sojourn there. Hakim had read impressive reports on his new followers, and chose not to say so.

  "They will serve," he said, rising to collect the somnolent mare some distance away. He flung over his shoulder: "Better perhaps than a woman who deflects my questions." She could not read the satisfaction in his face. He wheeled the mare and trotted her back to the girl. Again he stared down from a commanding height, stern, refrac­tory: the visage of Fat'ah. "Soon, then," he said, eyeing the sun.

  "Sire," she stammered. Her body was controlled; only her voice betrayed her. "I was led to expect a lieutenant. Your face is known to few in Fat'ah."