Peace on Earth. Gordon Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the police car, ignoring him, ignoring the Granada, already pulling away. Six miles, three-lane motorway into two lanes. Almost too bloody late. The Granada beginning to accelerate again. Not quickly enough, the coach still too close. The cameras, one facing west, the other east. Never much time, he thought, almost no time at all.

      The blind spot, the two hundred yards between the cameras. He pulled the wheel violently to the left, and jerked the hire car across the inside lane, braking hard. Behind him the coach driver slammed on his brakes, the children tumbling forward. In his rear view mirror Haddad saw the coach suddenly fill the entire frame. The Granada was pulling away, three hundred yards, almost four hundred. Bloody drivers, the coach driver was shouting at him, waving his fist. The Granada five hundred yards away, nearly six hundred. The children picking themselves up from the floor. Madman, the driver was gesticulating at him, bloody loony. He changed into third, accelerating away from the coach. Seven miles, onto the flyover, the office blocks on either side. The Granada was three hundred yards ahead, two hundred. The road in front and behind clear. Almost out of distance, he thought, almost out of everything. Eight miles, off the flyover and past the Granada. A hundred yards, two hundred yards clear, closing on another group of cars. In his rear view mirror he could see the Granada clearly.

      He reached across to the passenger’s seat and unfolded the newspaper.

      * * *

      Pan Am flight number PA1 arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport on time, taxied across the runway, and began disgorging its three hundred and fifty-two passengers into the terminal building. Three hundred and fifty-one of them were innocent citizens, the three hundred and fifty-second was Abu Nabil. By six thirty he had cleared immigration and customs, using the passport he had used in Paris and London, and taken a cab to the Plaza Hotel. He checked into his room, switched on the early evening news programme and made a single telephone call confirming his meeting for the following morning.

      The third item oh the news bulletin was the assassination in London of the PLO spokesman Hassan Nabulsi. The report showed video pictures of the remains of the man’s Ford Granada motor car, on the M4 motorway near Heathrow Airport. He had just returned from a meeting with Yasser Arafat, the report continued, adding that unofficial sources had confirmed that the type of bomb used was believed to be identical to that used by the IRA in Northern Ireland. The reporter, standing at the side of the motorway, the wreckage of the car behind him, speculated that the assassination was the latest episode in the struggle for supremacy within the various factions of the Palestinian movement. More sinister, he suggested, his collar turned up against the biting wind and the first cutting flakes of sleet, was the possibility of a link-up between the IRA and one of the extremist Palestinian groups.

      If Haddad was to end it, Nabil had thought to himself in Damascus, then Haddad may as well start it. He flicked between the channels, catching the same report on CBS and NBC. Haddad had now started it.

      He showered, took a light supper of cold meats and salad, and went to bed.

      He woke at four, a combination of the time difference between Damascus, London and New York, and the air conditioning, which he found oppressive, slept fitfully for another two hours and rose at six. He left the hotel and spent the next ninety minutes walking the streets. The weather was brisk and cold. On the corner of Times Square he bought copies of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal.

      He was getting hungry. In a delicatessen six blocks from the hotel he took lox and bagels, sitting in the seat farthest from the window. The service was friendly, he wondered for the briefest of moments what the shabab, the boys, would have thought, how the owners would have reacted, if they had known that he, Abu Nabil, planner of death, executioner of violence, survivor of at least three Israeli attempts on his life, was breakfasting in a Jewish deli in New York, served by a smiling Jewish waiter whom he called David and whom, as he left, he would tip and who would tell him to have a good day. His battle, however, had never been personal. Besides, the lox was good and the second cup of coffee was free. And the place was warm and crowded. He thought, not for the first time that day, of the photograph he had again left in the emptiness of his flat in Damascus and turned to the newspapers.

      The assassination in London featured on the front pages of both the Times and Tribune and the international page of the Journal. On the front page of the Herald Tribune there was also a photograph, taken two nights before, of the moment in Northern Ireland when a British soldier had saved the life of the son of a leading member of the IRA. The British government, the article said, had declined to comment on press speculation that the soldier concerned had been a member of the Special Air Service, the SAS.

      The waiter refilled his cup. He drank it slowly then rose to leave, paying the bill and leaving a good tip. As he left, the man he had called David told him to have a good day.

      At eight thirty that morning, Paris time, the head of arms sales for the French government, General René Audran, was shot dead at his home outside Paris. An hour later, in a communiqué to the Paris and Rome offices of Agence France Presse, responsibility was claimed jointly by Action Directe and the Red Brigades. Forensic tests conducted within twenty four hours established that the weapon used appeared to match that used in the murder of a magistrate in Turin the preceding August.

      Two hours later a West German industrialist, Hans Martin Schneider, was murdered when he answered the door to an attractive young woman claiming to be a friend of his daughter.

      In the next forty-eight hours there were bombings in West Germany and Belgium; in West Germany the targets were the American companies of Litton, MAN and Honeywell in that order; in Belgium the targets were the American companies of Litton, MAN and Honeywell, also in that order. In all the attacks, it was suggested, the explosives came from the same source: 816 kilos of plastic explosives stolen at Ecoussines, in Belgium, six months before.

      The meeting with the industrialist Ahmad Hussein was at ten; it was almost seven weeks since they had met on the quai at St Germain-en-Laye, on the outskirts of Paris. Nabil walked to Macy’s, enjoying the Christmas decorations, and bought two gifts, one of them a chess set, asking for both to be wrapped, then took a cab to the block which housed the offices of the businessman. His host was waiting. He poured them coffee from a percolator in the corner and asked whether Nabil had breakfasted. Nabil confirmed that he had without saying where.

      The room was comfortable, well furnished, a Persian rug on the floor and three paintings of Jerusalem by Suleiman Mansour on the walls.

      ‘A sad affair in London,’ Hussein suggested, handing Nabil a coffee.

      ‘A sad affair indeed.’

      For the next ten minutes they discussed the implications of the London assassination; when they had finished Hussein unlocked the top right drawer of his desk and took a file from it.

      ‘In January,’ the industrialist began, establishing the background, ‘Ronald Reagan will officially begin his second term as president of the United States. He will be seventy-four years old when he starts, seventy-eight at the end. For reasons of his age, and because he cannot, under the Constitution, hold office for a third term, many people believe the next four years will be what Americans like to call a lame-duck presidency.’ He paused. ‘In Paris, we agreed this would not be the case. In Paris, we agreed that, partly because of his own background, partly because it is what every president wants, Reagan will seek to do something that will allow him to go down in history. In Paris,’ he concluded, ‘we also agreed that the obvious area is foreign policy. Within this, we agreed, Central America was too controversial, too many comparisons with Vietnam. The obvious area, therefore, other than any agreement with the new Russian leadership, was the Middle East.’

      He moved the file to the centre of the СКАЧАТЬ