report it, but no one on duty could understand him, so eventually he got an interpreter from his embassy and made a statement. He confirms the Irishman's story.'
'I thought diplomats were good at languages.'
The Bear laughed. 'I think the delay here had more to do with his having to get rid of the woman in his room first,' he said. 'That's what the word is from the night staff at the hotel.'
'Somebody's wife?' said the Berp.
'No,' said the Bear. 'That wasn't the problem. It was one of the local hookers.'
'So?'
'Our visiting diplomat is from the Vatican,' said the Bear. 'He's a Polish priest.'
The Berp grinned. His chair was tilted back as far as it would go. 'Sometimes I enjoy this job.'
'You'll fall,' warned the Bear. He was too late.
Kilmara read the telex from Bern a second time. He looked out the window: gray skies, rain falling in sheets, damp, cold weather.
'I hate March in Ireland,' he said, 'and now I'm beginning to hate April. Where are the sunny days, blue skies, and daffodils of my youth? What have I done to April for it to behave like this?'
'It isn't personal,' said Gunther. 'It's age. As you get older, the weather seems to get worse. Older bones cry out for sun and warmth.'
'Cry out in vain in this bloody country.'
There was a slight click from the video machine as it ceased rewinding. 'Once more?' said Gunther.
Kilmara nodded, then looked again at the high-resolution conference video screen. The video had been taken by a four-man Ranger team that had been instructed to treat the whole matter as a reconnaissance exercise.
They had parachuted onto the island at night using HALO – high altitude, low-opening – techniques. Equipped with oxygen face masks and miniature cylinders clipped to their jump harnesses, they had jumped from an army transport at 22,000 feet. They were using black steerable rectangular ramjet parachutes but had skydived for most of the distance, reaching forward speeds of up to 150 miles per hour and navigating with the aid of night-vision goggles by comparing the terrain with the map they had studied and the video made by a Ranger reconnaissance plane the night before. Electronic altimeters clipped to the tops of their reserve parachutes flashed the diminishing height on glowing red LED meters. At 800 feet the Rangers pulled their D rings and speed-opened their parachutes.
The fully flared parachutes had the properties of true airfoils and could be turned, braked, and stalled by warping the trailing edge with the control lines. Even so, this high degree of maneuverability was scarcely enough. Reports had forecast low wind for the time of year in the area, but there was heavy gusting, and it was only with great effort and not a little luck that the team landed near the drop zone on a deserted part of the island. Making use of their night-vision equipment, the men had then hiked across the island to DrakerCollege. They had constructed two blinds and by dawn were completely concealed, with the two entrances to the main building under observation.
For five days and nights they saw nothing unusual, but on the sixth night their strained patience was rewarded. The video had been shot using a zoom lens and a second-generation image intensifier. It had been raining heavily at the time, so detail was not good, though it was reasonable given the conditions. Nevertheless, what the observation team had photographed was startling enough.
Shortly after midnight, with one more night of long and monotonous observation to go, a single figure was seen slipping out of the side entrance of the college. The image was scarcely more than a blurred silhouette at first, since the camera lens was set at normal pending a specific target. The figure reached the cover of some gorse bushes and crouched down, blending into the surroundings. One disadvantage of the image intensifier was its inability to show colors; everything showed up in contrasting shades of greenish gray.
The camera operator began to zoon in to get a closer look with the powerful telephoto lens but then paused to pull back slightly to cover two more figures, who left the side entrance and ran, crouched down, to cover. There was a wait of perhaps half a minute before two more figures appeared. Several minutes passed. The camera zoomed in to try to get a close-up, but the bushes were in the way, and only small glimpses of human forms through the gaps in the foliage indicated that they were still there.
Kilmara imagined what it was like for the Rangers waiting in the blinds. Holes had been dug in the ground, making use of any natural features that could be turned to the diggers' advantage, such as an overhang to prevent observation from the air or a fold in the ground to hide the entrance. The top sods had been removed intact, and the undersoil dug out carefully and concealed. The holes were covered with a frame of reinforced chicken wire, which in turn was surfaced with the original sods to match the surrounding terrain. The result could be stood upon without detection and would be virtually invisible from even a few yards away.
Routine observation was kept through a miniature lens mounted at the end of a fiber-optic cable that would peer periscope style through the roof of the blind. The incoming pictures could be monitored on a pocket-size television. The technology had been adapted from that used in microsurgery.
The first figure emerged from behind the clump of bushes, followed at twenty yard intervals by the others. In single file they headed for the wood. The picture on the screen dissolved into an out-of-focus blur for a few seconds before sharpening again into close-up. Kilmara felt the same shock that had struck him at the first viewing. The face on the screen was not human. He was looking at the body of a man and the head of some monstrous, unrecognizable animal: fur and matted hair, short, curving horns, a protruding muzzle fixed in a snarl. It was an image from a nightmare.
The camera surveyed each figure in turn. Each wore a different and equally bizarre mask. They vanished into the wood.
'Two suicides by hanging and the accidental death of the headmaster,' said Gunther, 'and now this?'
'Well, at least we now have a pretty fair idea of what happened to Fitzduane's goat,' said Kilmara, 'but dressing up isn't a crime.'
'So you think all is in order?'
'Do pigs fly?'
The camp was more than two hundred kilometers south of Tripoli and had been built around a small oasis, its date palms and patch of dusty greenery now submerged in a forest of prefabricated single-story barracks, concrete blockhouses, weapons ranges, parade grounds, and assault courses.
Two four-meter-high barbed-wire fences secured the perimeter. The outer fence had been electrified, and watchtowers equipped with KPV 14.5 mm Vladimorov heavy machine guns were placed at two-hundred-meter intervals. Missile batteries augmented with mobile radar-guided four-barreled ZSU-4 antiaircraft guns guarded the approaches.
The cam could hold as many as a thousand trainee freedom fighters, and over the years since its construction many times that number of members of the PLO, the Polisario, and the myriad other violent groups supported by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi had passed through its gates.
Slightly depleted by a steady drain of fatal casualties experienced in live-ammunition training, they emerged after intensive indoctrination in guerrilla tactics and terrorist techniques, including refinements such as constructing car and letter bombs, concealing weapons and explosives aboard aircraft, getting the maximum media reaction from a terrorist incident, torture, and the handling and execution of hostages. The instructors were proficient, experienced, and impersonal. They lived apart from their trainees in luxury air-conditioned accommodations outside the camp. The languages heard around their Olympic-size swimming pool amid the clinking of glasses, the laughter, and the splashing were those of East Germany, Cuba, and Russia.
There were other such camps in Libya and indeed in South Yemen, Cuba, Syria, Lebanon, East Germany, and Russia. Camp Carlos Marighella, named after the Brazilian author of one of the most famous urban terrorism handbooks, had been chosen because it was isolated and secure, and the project had the personal support of Muammar Qaddafi.
