Black Sunday Read online

  “Just a moment, Major, if you don’t mind. Since you have seen this kind of thing, how do you think they would go about it? Would they conceal the plastic in the stadium and then, when the crowd arrives, threaten to blow it up if certain demands are not met—freedom for Sirhan Sirhan, no more aid to Israel, that kind of thing?”

  “They won’t demand anything. They’ll blow it up and then crow about it.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “What could you give them? Most of the terrorists arrested in skyjackings are already freed. Those at Munich were freed to save hostages in a subsequent skyjacking. Lelia Khaled was freed in the same way. The guerrillas who shot your own diplomats in Khartoum were turned back to their people by the Sudanese government. They’re all free, Mr. Baker.

  “Stop aid to Israel? Even if the promise were made, no guarantees are possible. The promise would never be made in the first place and would not be kept anyway, if it were made under duress. Besides, to use hostages you must contain them. In a stadium that could not be done. There would be panic and the crowd would rush the gates, trampling a few thousand on the way. No, they’ll blow it up all right.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. With a half ton of plastic they could collapse both sides of the stands, but to be sure of doing that they would have to put charges in several locations and detonate them simultaneously. That would not be easy. Fasil is no fool. There are too many radio transmissions at an event like that to use a remote electronic signal to set it off, and multiple locations increase the chance of discovery.”

  “We can make sure the stadium is clean,” Corley said. “It will be a bitch to search, but we can do it.”

  “Secret Service will want to handle that themselves, I expect, but they’ll ask for some manpower,” Baker said.

  “We can check all the personnel involved with the Super Bowl, check hot dog wagons, cold drink boxes. We can prohibit any packages being carried in,” Corley continued. “We can use dogs and the electronic sniffer. There’s still time to train the dogs on that piece of plastic from the ship.”

  “What about the sky?” Kabakov said.

  “You’re thinking of that pilot business with the chart, of course,” the FBI director said. “I think we might shut down private aviation in New Orleans for the duration of the game. We’ll check with the FAA. I’m calling in the concerned agencies this afternoon. We’ll know more after that.”

  I doubt it, Kabakov reflected.

  21

  THE SOUND OF ABDEL AWAD’s endless pacing was beginning to annoy the guard in the hall. The guard raised the slide in the cell door and cursed Awad through the grate. Having done that, he felt a little ashamed. The man had a right to pace. He raised the slide again and offered Awad a cigarette, cautioning him to put it out and hide it if he heard approaching footsteps.

  Awad had been listening for footsteps, all right. Sometime—tonight, tomorrow, the next day—they would be coming. To cut off his hands.

  A former officer in the Libyan Air Force, he had been convicted of theft and narcotics trafficking. His sentence of death had been commuted to double amputation in view of his former service to his country. This type of sentence, prescribed by the Koran, had fallen into disuse until Colonel Khadafy assumed power and reinstated it. It must be said, however, that in line with his policy of modernization, Khadafy has replaced the axe in the marketplace with a surgeon’s knife and antiseptic conditions at a Benghazi hospital.

  Awad had tried to write down his thoughts, had tried to write to his father apologizing for the shame he had brought on the family, but the words were difficult to find. He was afraid he would have the letter only half-finished when they came for him and he would have to mail it that way. Or finish it with the pen held between his teeth.

  He wondered if the sentence permitted anesthesia.

  He wondered if he could hook one leg of his trousers on the door hinge and tie the other around his neck and hang himself by sitting down. For a week since his sentencing he had entertained these considerations. It would be easier if they would tell him when. Perhaps not knowing was part of the sentence.

  The slide flew up. “Put it out. Put it out,” the guard hissed. Numbly, Awad stepped on the cigarette and kicked it under his cot. He heard the bolts sliding back. He faced the door, his hands behind him, fingernails digging into his palms.

  I am a man and a good officer, Awad thought. They could not deny that even at the trial. I will not shame myself now.

  A small man in neat civilian dress came into the cell. The man was saying something, his mouth was moving under the small mustache. “... Did you hear me, Lieutenant Awad? It is not yet time to—it is not yet time for your punishment. But it is time for a serious conversation. Speak English, please. Take the chair. I will sit on the bunk.” The little man’s voice was soft, and his eyes were constantly on Awad’s face as he spoke.

  Awad had very sensitive hands, the hands of a helicopter pilot. When he was offered a chance to keep them, to gain full reinstatement, he was quick to agree to the conditions.

  Awad was removed from the Benghazi prison to the garrison at Ajdabujah, where, under tight security, he was checked out in a Russian MIL-6 helicopter, the heavy-duty model that carries the NATO code name “Hook.” It is one of three owned by the Libyan armed forces. Awad was familiar with the type, though his experience was mostly in smaller craft. He handled it well. The MIL-6 was not exactly like the Sikorsky S-58, but it was close enough. At night, he pored over a Sikorsky flight manual, procured in Egypt. With a careful hand on the throttle and pitch controls and a vigilant eye on the manifold pressure, he would be all right when the time came.

  The reign of President Khadafy is a strongly moralistic one, backed by terrible penalties, and as a result certain crimes have been sharply repressed in Libya. The civilized art of forgery does not flourish there, and it was necessary to contact a forger in Nicosia for the manufacture of Awad’s papers.

  Awad was to be thoroughly sanitized—no evidence of his origin would remain on his person. All that was necessary, really, was sufficient identification to get him into the United States. He would not be leaving, since he would be vaporized in the explosion. Awad was not aware of this last consideration. In fact, he had only been told to report to Muhammad Fasil and follow orders. He had been assured that he would get out of it all right. To preserve this illusion it was necessary to provide Awad with an escape plan and the papers to go with it.

  On December 31, the day after Awad’s release from prison, his Libyan passport, several recent photographs, and samples of his handwriting were delivered to a small printshop in Nicosia.

  The concept of providing an entire “scene”—a set of mutually supportive papers such as passport, driving license, recent correspondence properly postmarked, and receipts—is a relatively recent development among forgers in the West, coming into wide practice only after the narcotics trade was able to pay for such elaborate service. Forgers in the Middle East have been creating “scenes” for their customers for generations.

  The forger used by Al Fatah in Nicosia did marvelous work. He also supplied blank Lebanese passports to the Israelis, who filled in the details themselves. And he sold information to the Mossad.

  It was an expensive job the Libyans wanted—two passports, one Italian bearing a U.S. entry stamp and one Portuguese. They did not quibble at the price. What is valuable to one party is often valuable to another, the forger thought as he put on his coat.

  Within the hour, Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv knew who Awad was and whom he would become. Awad’s trial had received considerable attention in Benghazi. A Mossad agent there had only to look in the public prints to find out Awad’s particular skill.

  In Tel Aviv, they put it together. Awad was a helicopter pilot who was going into the United States one way and coming out another. The long line to Washington hummed for forty-five minutes.

  22

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF DECEMBE
R 30, a massive search was begun at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans in preparation for the Sugar Bowl Classic to be played on New Year’s Eve. Similar searches were scheduled for December 31 at stadiums in Miami, Dallas, Houston, Pasadena-every city that would host a major college bowl game on New Year’s Day.

  Kabakov was glad that the Americans finally had marshaled their great resources against the terrorists, but he was amused by the process that prompted them. It was typical of bureaucracy. FBI Director John Baker had called a top-level meeting of FBI, National Security Agency, and Secret Service personnel the previous afternoon, immediately after his talk with Kabakov and Corley. Kabakov, sitting in the front row, felt many pointed stares while the assembled officials emphasized the flimsiness of the evidence pointing to the target—a single magazine, unmarked, containing an article about the Super Bowl.

  Each of the heavyweights from the FBI and the National Security Agency seemed determined not to let another out skepticize him as Corley outlined the theory of an attack on the Super Bowl game in New Orleans.

  Only the Secret Service representatives, Earl Biggs and Jack Renfro, remained silent. Kabakov thought the Secret Service agents were the most humorless men he had ever seen. That was understandable, he decided. They had much to be humorless about.

  Kabakov knew that the men in this meeting were not stupid. Each of them would have been more receptive to an uncommon idea if the idea were presented to him in privacy. When surrounded by their peers, most men have two sets of reactions—the real ones and those designed for evaluation by their fellows. Skepticism was established as the proper attitude early in the meeting and, once established, prevailed throughout Corley’s presentation.

  But the herd principle also worked in the other direction. As Kabakov recounted Black September’s maneuvers before the strike at Munich and the abortive attempt on the World Cup soccer matches six months ago, the seed of alarm was planted. On the face of it, was an attack on the Super Bowl less plausible than an attack on the Olympic Village? Kabakov asked.

  “There’s not a Jewish team playing” was an immediate rejoinder. It did not get a laugh. As the officials listened to Kabakov, dread was present in the room, subtly communicated from one listener to the next by small body movements, a certain restiveness. Hands fidgeted, hands rubbed faces. Kabakov could see the men before him changing. For as long as he could remember, Kabakov had disturbed policemen, even Israeli policemen. He attributed this to his own impatience with them, but it was more than that. There was something about him that affected policemen as a trace of musk carried on the wind sets the dogs on edge, makes them draw closer to the fire. It says that out there is something that does not love the fire; it is watching and it is not afraid.

  The evidence of the magazine, supplemented by Fasil’s track record, began to loom large and was extrapolated by the men in the meeting room. Once the possibility of danger was admitted, one official would not call for less stringent measures than the next: Why just the Super Bowl as a possible target? The magazine showed a packed stadium—why not any packed stadium? My God, the Sugar Bowl is New Year’s Eve-day after tomorrow—and there are bowl games all over the country on New Year’s Day. Search them all.

  With apprehension came hostility. Suddenly Kabakov was acutely aware that he was a foreigner, and a Jew at that. Kabakov was instantly aware that a number of the men in the room were thinking about the fact that he was a Jew. He had expected that. He was not surprised when, in the minds of these men with their crisp haircuts and law school rings, he was identified with the problem rather than with the solution. The threat was from a bunch of foreigners, of which he was one. The attitude was unspoken, but it was there.

  “Thank you, old buddies,” Kabakov said, as he sat down. You don’t know from foreigners, old buddies, he thought. But you may find out on January 12.

  Kabakov did not think it reasonable that, once Black September had the capability to strike at a stadium, they would hit one that did not contain the president in preference to one that did. He stuck with the Super Bowl.

  On the afternoon of December 30 he arrived in New Orleans. The search was already under way at Tulane Stadium in preparation for the Sugar Bowl. The task force at Tulane Stadium was composed of fifty men-members of the FBI and police bomb sections, police detectives, two dog handlers from the Federal Aviation Administration with dogs trained to smell explosives, and two U.S. Army technicians with an electronic “sniffer” calibrated on the Madonna recovered from the Leticia.

  New Orleans was unique in the fact that Secret Service personnel aided in the search and in the necessity for doing the job twice—today for the Sugar Bowl and on January 11, the eve of the Super Bowl. The men went about their work quietly, largely ignored by the crew of maintenance men putting the final touches on the stadium.

  The search did not interest Kabakov much. He did not expect the searchers to find anything. What he did was stare into the face of every employee of Tulane Stadium. He remembered how Fasil had sent his guerrillas to find employment in the Olympic Village six weeks ahead of time. He knew the New Orleans police were running background checks on stadium employees, but still he stared into their faces as though hoping for an instinctive, visceral reaction if he saw a terrorist. Looking at the workers, he felt nothing. The background check exposed one bigamist, who was held for extradition to Coahoma County, Mississippi.

  On New Year’s Eve, the Tigers of Louisiana State University lost to Nebraska 13-7 in the Sugar Bowl Classic. Kabakov attended.

  He had never seen a football game before and he did not see much of this one. He and Moshevsky spent most of the time prowling under the stands and around the gates, ignored by the numerous FBI agents and police in the stadium. Kabakov was particularly interested in how the gates were manned and what access was allowed through them after the stadium was full.

  He found most public spectacles annoying, and this one, with the pom-poms and the pennants and the massed bands, was particularly offensive. He had always considered marching bands ridiculous. The one pleasant moment of the afternoon was the flyover at halftime by the Navy’s Blue Angels, a neat diamond of jets catching the sun during a beautiful slow roll high above the droning blimp that floated around the stadium. Kabakov knew there were other jets too—Air Force interceptors poised on runways nearby in the unlikely event that an unknown aircraft approached the New Orleans area while the game was in progress.

  The shadows were long across the field as the last of the crowd filtered out. Kabakov felt numbed by the hours of noise. He had difficulty understanding the English of the people he heard in conversation, and he was generally irritated. Corley found him standing at the edge of the track outside the stadium.

  “Well, no bang,” Corley said.

  Kabakov looked at him quickly, watching for a smirk. Corley just looked tired. Kabakov imagined that the expression “wild-goose chase” was in wide use at the stadiums in other cities, where tired men were searching for explosives in preparation for the games on New Year’s Day. He expected plenty was being said here, out of his hearing. He had never claimed that the target was a college bowl game, but who remembered that? It didn’t matter anyway. He and Corley walked back through the stadium together, heading for the parking lot. Rachel would be waiting at the Royal Orleans.

  “Major Kabakov.”

  He looked around for an instant before he realized the voice came from the radio in his pocket. “Kabakov, go ahead.”

  “Call for you in the command post.”

  “Right.”

  The FBI command post was set up in the Tulane public relations office under the stands. An agent in shirtsleeves handed Kabakov the telephone.

  Weisman was calling from the Israeli embassy. Corley tried to deduce the nature of the conversation from the brief replies Kabakov made.

  “Let’s walk outside,” Kabakov said, as he handed back the telephone. He did not like the way the agents in the office pointedly avoided looking at him after this day o
f extra effort.

  Standing at the sideline, Kabakov looked up at the flags blowing in the wind at the top of the stadium. “They’re bringing in a helicopter pilot. We don’t know if it’s for this job, but we know he’s coming. From Libya. And they’re in a hell of a hurry.”

  There was a brief silence as Corley digested this information.

  “How much of a make have you got on him?”

  “The passports, a picture, everything. The embassy is turning our file over to your office in Washington. They’ll have the stuff here in a half hour. You’ll probably get a call in a minute.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Still on the other side—we don’t know where. But his papers will be picked up in Nicosia tomorrow.”

  “You won’t interfere—”

  “Of course not. We are leaving the operation strictly alone on that side. In Nicosia we’re watching the place where they get the papers and the airport. That’s all.”

  “An air strike! Here or somewhere. That’s what they had in mind all the time.”

  “Maybe,” Kabakov said. “Fasil may be running a diversion. It depends on how much he knows we know. If he is watching this stadium or any stadium, he knows we know plenty.”

  In the New Orleans office of the FBI, Corley and Kabakov studied the report on the pilot from Libya. Corley tapped the yellow Telex sheet. “He’ll be coming in on the Portuguese passport and leaving on the Italian one with the U.S. entry stamp already on it. If he flashes that Portuguese passport at any entry point, anywhere, we’ll know it within ten minutes. If he is part of this project, we’ve got them, David. He’ll lead us to the bomb and to Fasil and the woman.”