They came for him at precisely nineteen minutes after 2:00 A.M. Eilat heard the gate squeak and the doorknob turn. The first man entered silently, dressed in dark combat gear with desert boots. A second man, sensed rather than observed, followed the first; and Eilat remained by the door, standing with his eyes clenched shut, his hands covering his face, protecting his night vision from the glow of the city outside.
Suddenly, very suddenly, without opening his eyes, he moved. Raising his right foot, he booted the door shut with a shuddering impact. Then he turned toward the wall again, his eyes still clenched tight.
The two visitors turned automatically to the slammed door, and, as they did so, the big theater lightbulb set above it came on with blinding brightness, catching them in its ferocious glare. For a split second the two men stood transfixed, like rabbits in a spotlight. Their hands flew to their faces, but it was too late. The bulb had been on for only two seconds, but their night vision was completely lost, at a vital moment for them both. And Eilat still had his.
He moved quickly behind the unseeing first man and crashed a smooth, heavy glass paperweight into the critical nerve center behind the right ear. Then he delivered the same blackout blow to the second assassin, after which he turned and softly opened the door. “I suppose they have a lookout,” he muttered. “I may have to kill him as well.”
Walking swiftly across the yard, he ignored the gate and climbed to the top of the wall, using an old wooden bench. For two minutes he scoured the alley, watching for a movement, any movement, a person, any person. But there was nothing.
Finally, he stepped down and walked back into the house, into the main room, switched on a small desk light, and collected his roll of sticky plastic packing tape. Slowly, with steady efficiency, he bound together the wrists and ankles of the unconscious intruders, using layers of tape. Then he placed one wide, thick piece right across each of their mouths and arranged the two inert bodies to his satisfaction. One, he dragged down the middle of the hall. The other, he lifted and carefully arranged, resting the man’s head and shoulders across the first man’s chest.
Right after that he went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee that had been percolating for several hours. It was exactly eleven minutes since Eilat had floored his assailants. He returned to the hall holding his knife and positioned himself right behind the head of the uppermost man, who was just regaining consciousness.
Leaning over, he made a small incision in the left-hand side of the throat. With a surgical twist of the knife, he severed the jugular vein, stepping back quickly to avoid the spurting blood from the third largest blood vessel in the human body. Then he walked back to the kitchen and finished his coffee.
Grunts from the prostrate man on the floor drew him back to the hall a few minutes later. The lead assassin’s eyes were wide-open with terror, as his colleague bled messily to death all over him. There was almost a half gallon of blood now saturating the two men, and it was still pumping out of the neck wound.
“
Eilat walked away, seemingly indifferent to the frenzied head-shaking, two-footed kicking, and muffled screams of the man who still lived. But when he returned he was once more carrying the knife.
Again he leaned over, careful to avoid getting blood on his suit, and placed the sharp tip of the weapon firmly against the assassin’s neck. And now he spoke with a hard edge to his voice. “If you want to live, you will tell me precisely who sent you, you will tell me precisely who issued your orders, and from where they came. You will speak softly when I remove the tape on your mouth. If I suspect a lie, you’ll be off to join your colleague. If you speak too loudly, you’ll meet him even quicker. It takes about eight minutes, you know.”
With his left hand, he slowly ripped the tape-gag from the man’s lips. Then with his right, he pressed the knife harder into the neck, without making a cut, and said, “Speak, softly and truthfully.”
“President, sir. He ordered it,” he blurted. Trembling uncontrollably, gibbering, and begging, he poured the facts out. “Nossir…please don’t kill me…I have wife…children, please not, sir…yes, President…he tell my boss…I saw you in the office today…the man you kill on top of me was one of your escorts…yessir…President…yessir…he say you die after midnight…quietly…please, sir…please don’t kill me…I had no choice but to obey.”
Eilat removed the knife and stuck a new piece of tape hard across the man’s mouth. Then he walked back into the main room and took from a drawer three passports and some documents from a travel agent. He straightened his tie, buttoned his jacket, and moved back into the hall, putting the passports and documents on the table by the water pitcher, in plain view of the blood-soaked, but still-living, assassin.
He went into the bathroom and collected his shaving gear, toothpaste, and soap, and reemerged holding a small smart-looking leather case. Then he turned out all the lights and sat quietly in the dark for fifteen minutes while the irises in his dark eyes slowly grew larger, restoring his night vision. Eventually he stood up, and said casually, “Well, I’m going now. And I won’t be back for a while…rather a long journey…I expect they’ll send someone for you in a few hours…By the way, you don’t have a lookout posted in the alley, do you? Don’t lie to me, because if I have to kill him, I’ll return immediately to this room and kill you.”
He felt the man shake his head feverishly. “Very well, old chap,” said Eilat. “I expect you won’t want to see me again. Nor will you, unless, of course, you have lied to me.”
The petrified palace guard nodded firmly. Eilat stepped out into the courtyard and swiftly took off his suit, shirt, tie, and shoes. From a cloth bag behind the bicycle he produced old, soiled Arab robes, with a turban and leather-thong shoes. He stuffed his Western clothes into the sack and slung it over his shoulder. Then, adopting the stooped posture of an elderly man, he pushed the bike out into the alley and made his way, limping painfully, to the far end, away from Al-Jamouri Street.
The disgustingly dirty little garret he had rented for more than a year was on the top floor of a small block of apartments, less than 50 yards from his house, on the same tiny street. Within moments, Eilat had left the bicycle in the downstairs hall and climbed the three flights of stairs.
Once inside, he shaved his beard, leaving just a thick black moustache, and prepared his mind and person for his chosen new life — as a street peddler — which would see him plying his wares in Rashid’s copper and gold bazaars for at least the next month.
During this time, the president’s security men would place an iron grip on every airport, seaport, bus and rail terminal in the country, while they tried to run down Iraq’s most wanted Intelligence officer. The one with the three passports.
Baghdad had simmered for four days in flaming June temperatures of around 110 degrees. Not even the nights had brought in a cooling breeze off the eastern edges of the Syrian desert. There had been terrible dust storms out in the central plains all week, and the winds were hot, and Baghdad’s population of four million was wilting under the anvil of the sun. Nonetheless, Eilat had to go.
He waited until ten o’clock on the night of June 26, then gathered up his heavy cloth sack and cleared his room. He collected his bicycle from the downstairs hall, and the heat hit him like a blast from a furnace as he shambled out into the dark alley.
By the time he reached Al-Jamouri Street he was already sweating heavily. But once on the wide thoroughfare, he mounted the old bike and set off slowly, in a southeasterly direction, heading for the great bend in the Tigris, where it suddenly swings west around the university, and then east again, in a 9-mile loop out on the southern edge of the city.
Eilat was fit, but he was deliberately overweight. In the past month he had gained 14 pounds on a careful diet of chicken, lamb, rice, and pita bread at least twice a day. Finally, he was leaving, and, as he had remarked to the man whose life he had so carefully spared a month before, he might not be back for some time.
He pedaled gently, making for the long sweep of the Dora Expressway, right where it crosses the river. The city was darker and quieter down there, along Sadoun Street, and only a few people were walking in Fateh Square. Eilat kept going until he could make out the huge yawning overpass of the expressway, just as it becomes a truly spectacular bridge.
He dismounted there and turned off the public roads, pushing the bike in the dark until he came into the
