They felt the concussion all the way across Jaffa Harbor. When the C-4 detonated, it shot fiery parts of both automobiles a thousand feet into the air. Debris was later found a quarter mile from the explosion. . But nobody ever found the remains of the Ghost or his associates. And nobody ever found Solomon Leeland Kazorowski. He was gone-off the planet. He was in the crowded bar at the big Howard Johnson's, waiting for his check-in, a smile on his face, having his first Jack Daniel's in ten years.
Chapter 62
The blast knocked out some of the windows in the Bach house. Cole and Ryan had watched from the garage door. One graphic detail would haunt both of them for th e r est of their lives. High above the colony of houses, th e b lack and green hood of the taxi shimmered in the sun, twisting and turning, caught in a terminal updraft. It kite d o ut over the harbor.
'Son of a bitch,' Cole said in awe as debris started to rain down in the yard.
Ryan and Cole turned and saw Lucinda standing behind them, her hand to her mouth.
'Let's get moving. We gotta get out of here,' Ryan said, coming to his senses first.
They moved back inside the house on rubbery legs, gathered up their things, and stuffed the tapes and film back into the bag. Within a few minutes, they were walking down the long driveway. A small fire had started in the trees and people were beginning to come out of their houses and stare in disbelief at the site of the explosion.
The three of them walked out of the development and finally hitched a ride in the back of a citrus truck.
They rode in silence back to Tel Aviv. All of them were thinking about Kaz.
The corner room at the Carlton seemed littered with Kaz's meager possessions. Lucinda started collecting everything while Cole tried to get Naomi Zur on the phone. It was hard to believe the big, rumpled ex-fed in the Hawaiian shirt was gone. He had saved Ryan's life and Cole's. He had provided them with field savvy none of the rest of them possessed. They felt sad and vulnerable.
Cole finally got one of the Reuters staffers to give him Naomi's home number. She had just stepped out of the shower when she took the call and was dripping water on her floor.
'You need what?' she said to Cole.
'I need to listen to some tapes, transfer some film, and have you get me out of Israel, all as fast as possible.'
'Here's how you accomplish that, Cole. . First you go to a TV station and pay somebody to transfer the stuff, then you. go to Ben Gurion Airport and you buy a ticket.'
'Naomi, my partner was just killed. I may have the biggest story of my career. I'll cut you in, but you have to help me and then smuggle three of us outta here on a private bird.'
'Why can't you go commercial?'
'Because, every time we. travel commercial, some goombah hitter is standing outside the gate with an Uzi.' 'Where are you?'
'We'll come to you. Pick a place.'
'There's an entrance for Reuters in the underground garage. Park in one of the yellow spaces, go to the elevator farthest away from the parking stalls. There's a keypad there, punch in the numbers three-six, then PYD. That'll get you in. I'll meet you on the fourteenth floor in twenty-five minutes.'
'You're a doll.'
'This better be the best damn story since Watergate,' she said and hung up.
When she finally heard it, even Naomi, who had covered some of the biggest stories of the decade, knew that, if true, it was huge.
The four of them were sitting in the Reuters conference room and she was looking at Ryan and Lucinda, who she thought looked way too pretty to be players in this drama. She listened to the entire backstory. This time, Cole told her everything, including the fact that Haze Richards was a mob-controlled candidate. . The canvas bag had been emptied and the tapes and film were on the conference table between them.
'I can transfer the film to videotape but, shit, Cole, I haven't seen that size audiotape in five years. Engineering could transfer it, but it's gonna take a couple of hours. They're gonna have to send it out.'
'No fucking way this tape leaves my sight.'
She looked at the reels again. 'We turned our seventh-floor library into a stockroom for outdated equipment. . Maybe some of the old tape equipment is down there.'
'Let's go.'
As they headed down the hall to the elevator, Naomi found herself walking next to Lucinda. She looked at the strikingly beautiful girl and wondered what she was made of. 'Are you our cheerleader?'
'You should always try to eat a good breakfast. It'll keep you from getting bitchy,' Lucinda said, deadpan.
Naomi smiled, thinking that they would get along fine. The four of them got in the elevator and headed down to the seventh floor.
The library was a clutter of old machines, desks, and out-of-date supplies. They finally found a Wollensak tape recorder with no cord. The reels were too small, but the tape size was perfect.
'I can straight-wire it,' Ryan said, examining it. 'We just gotta pray the tubes are all right.'
They got back in the elevator and rode up to fourteen, where Ryan grabbed a desk lamp out of an office and, with his pocketknife, cut the cord off. He used the blade to take the back off the tape machine. He found the female electrical feed, stripped the lamp cord, and attached it to the Wollensak. He wrapped the new connection with Scotch tape and set it down on the conference table.
While he had been doing all of this, Cole had been taking the audiotape off the plastic reel and rewinding it on the smaller reels from the Wollensak. He wound it till it was to the lip and then left the rest of the tape on the conference table, strung out in rows. Ryan plugged in the small reel-to-reel recorder and let out a sigh of relief as the red power light went on.
Cole fed the end of the tape into the little Wollensak. 'Okay, Ryan, hit Play and pull it through.'
They turned on the tape recorder and, miraculously, the little unit worked. The speakers were more or less blown, giving the recorded phone taps a fuzzy quality, but it was possible to hear everything that was being said. The tape ran past the head, and as Ryan pulled, it spooled out onto the floor. Each tape was vocally slated by the agent monitoring it.
'January sixteen, 1966,' a long-ago voice said. 'Agent Peter Lawson. This is a wiretap on M. Lansky's Fontainebleau Hotel suite. Day shift, nine A. M.,' There was a hiss. Then the same voice came back on. 'Day shift, ten A. M. No contacts.'
Cole explained that the voice slates every hour were for the log and that he remembered his old research said Meyer often checked into the Fontainebleau under an assumed name to do business.
Then another hiss and suddenly the sound of a phone ringing. Then Meyer's voice came on the phone. The mob financier sounded tired and angry. 'Yeah,' he sighed into the phone.
'Meyer, it's Augustus. Just checking in. How's Buddy?'
'Buddy is Meyer's son who's in a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis,' Cole volunteered.
'How's Buddy? Shit, gimme a break with this, will ya?
Fucking guy. . fucking moanin' all the time. I got my hands full.' And then he screamed, 'Hey, Teddy, turn down that radio, will ya?' And then he was back. 'Whatta you need, Augie?'
'This line clean?'
'Yeah. I got a guy comes in every morning and sweeps the place.'
Cole picked up Ryan's questioning look. 'This kind of bug doesn't put out a power charge unless somebody's speaking on the phone. It's voice-activated, so it was missed by debugging equipment. Voice-activated bugs are common now, but back in the seventies, the mob didn't know this shit existed.'
The conversation continued. . 'Meyer, we're having some trouble in Philly with Castanga an' all them fucks up there. Every time I wanna move product, he's got his hand in my pocket and I'm thinkin', this here ain't in the spirit
