9
Thirty seconds after Colonel Qazi stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the terminal at Leonardo da Vinci Airport with his jacket hanging over his shoulder and his tie loosened, a sedan slid to a halt near the curb. He tossed his valise on the backseat and climbed in. The woman driving had the car moving in seconds.
“How was your trip?” she asked as she deftly worked the vehicle through the gears. Her hair was cut in a style common in Europe this year, medium length and swept toward one side. She was wearing a modest, medium-priced tan dress and casual shoes.
Qazi scanned the back window. “I was recognized at the airport.” He checked the road ahead. “Drive on into Rome.”
The driver glanced at her rearview mirror. “How do you know you were recognized?”
“I saw it in his eyes. It was the gate attendant, as all the passengers filed past him.” He sighed. “Ah, Noora. I’m too well known. It’s time for me to retire.”
Noora concentrated on her driving, checking the mirror regularly. The daughter of a rich Arab carpet merchant, she had grown up in Paris. She had studied dance seriously, and chucked it all after the allowance from her father dried up when her affair with a fellow female student became common knowledge in the Arab expatriate community.
She was belly dancing in a cabaret in Montmartre when Qazi recruited her. He had had misgivings then, and they still nagged at him occasionally. She was physically attractive, though not too much so, and she meshed into her surroundings anywhere in Europe, but try as he might, he could not break her of her distinctive heel-and-toe dancer’s walk, the smooth, muscular flow of which made her stick in an observer’s memory. While high heels helped her gait, they also emphasized the molded perfection of her legs. He used her sparingly, only when he had to.
“Your pistol and passports are in the glove compartment.” The weapon and passports had come into Italy in the diplomatic pouch and Noora had picked them up at the embassy.
Qazi removed the Walther PPK from its ankle holster and checked the magazine and the chamber. It was loaded. He pulled up his right trouser leg and strapped the holster on. The silencer went into a trouser pocket. Then he carefully scrutinized both the passports, especially the photographs.
One passport was British, for Arnold MacPhee, age forty-one, six feet tall, residing Hillingdon, Middlesex. Inside was an international driver’s license and a membership in the British Automobile Association. The other passport was for an American, occupation priest, one Harold Strong of Schenectady, New York. This passport contained a New York driver’s license and a medical insurance card from a large American firm. The passports were genuine. They had been stolen, of course, and all the pages were genuine except for the pages that contained the physical description of the bearer and the photograph. The paper for the new pages had been stolen from the manufacturers who supplied the very same paper to the governments involved. No cheap forgeries, these; they had been manufactured in the state passport office by men who had spent their adult lives printing genuine passports.
The documents contained in the passports were forgeries, but good ones. They would pass the scrutiny of immigration officials whose expertise was passports.
Qazi slipped the documents into his jacket pocket and sat back in the seat. He adjusted one of the air conditioning vents to blow the air on him. The heat here was less oppressive than in North Africa, but the air- conditioning of the airplane had lowered his tolerance. “Where will Yasim meet us?”
“The parking garage under the Villa Borghese.”
They came into Rome on the main thoroughfare from the airport, which was on the coast, near the mouth of the Tiber. The hills around Rome were partially obscured by thick haze. A typical September day in Italy, Qazi thought.
Soon the car was embedded in heavy traffic — buses, trucks, automobiles, and motor scooters. The exhaust fumes pumped through the car’s air conditioning system made his eyes sting. They passed the Circus Maximus and circled the Coliseum, then weaved through boulevards until they were on the Via Veneto. Ahead, the tall umbrella pines and huge oaks punctuated the open expanse of the Villa Borghese, the Central Park of Rome.
“I don’t think we are being followed by a solo vehicle,” Noora said.
Qazi said nothing. With enough vehicles and two-way radio communications, a surveillance team would be almost impossible to detect. One never knew if the airport watchers had enough time to alert such a team. The only safe course was to always assume the surveillance team was there, undetected and watching.
Immediately after crossing the Piazzale Brasile, Noora slipped the car into the lane that led down to the entrance to the underground parking garage under this section of the Villa Borghese. On the second level down, near the back of the garage, Noora slowly crept by a parked limo. A uniformed chauffeur was dusting the vehicle. He wore a cap and did not look up from his task. Noora continued on, apparently hunting for a parking place. She descended to the third level of the garage, drove up and down the rows, and returned in about five minutes to the second level. This time the chauffeur’s cap was on the fender. No one was in sight. Noora stopped as the limo backed out of its parking slot and the trunk sprung open.
Qazi leaped from the sedan and tossed his valise into the open trunk. Noora threaded the sedan into the vacant parking space. Then Qazi and the girl lay down in the trunk and the chauffeur slammed the lid closed. The transfer had taken forty-five seconds.
The trunk was dark and their positions were cramped, although they were lying on a blanket. Qazi and Noora tried to ease themselves into comfortable positions as the vehicle swayed and bounced. The safe house was only three miles away, but the circuitous route the driver would take would stretch the ride to almost an hour.
“Welcome to Rome, Colonel,” Noora whispered as he helped her unfasten the buttons on her dress. She wore nothing under it. As she fumbled with his trousers, Qazi tried to decide if wearing a bra would make Noora more or less noticeable in a major European city. He lost his train of thought when her lips found his.
The man in the gray wool suit cut in the English style paused briefly in the door of St. Peter’s and quickly scanned the tourists, then stepped to his right and let the people behind him enter. He moved further right and scrutinized each person coming in while he pretended to consult a guidebook. Finally the book went into his pocket. He stood with his left arm folded across his chest, his right hand on his chin, raptly examining the architectural features of the great basilica as if seeing them for the first time. On his right, near the
After another minute of wondrous contemplation, the man near the door crossed to the left side of the basilica and strolled slowly toward the high altar. He circled it completely, appearing to examine Bernini’s bronze baldachin from every angle, his restless eyes actually scanning faces and the niches and cornices above where conceivably a man might observe the crowd.
The crowd was thin today, perhaps owing to the summer heat outside. Colonel Qazi checked his watch as he consulted his guidebook again. With the book closed in his left hand, he walked slowly back toward the main entrance, his eyes moving, his pace slow and even.
The man in the black suit with the fleshy face was still near the
“I see we are using the same book,” the man said in English.
“Quite so,” Qazi replied. “Most informative.”
“Thorough, although there are not enough illustrations.” He had a slight accent, hard to place.
“Yes.” Qazi placed his book in his pocket and walked toward the nearest door.
Crossing St. Peter’s Square, the man in the black suit was fifty feet behind. Qazi paused at the colonnades on the north side of the square until the man joined him. Then he turned and proceeded north through the colonnades, the other man at his side.
“Where are we going?”
“You will know when we get there. What should I call you?”
“Chekhov.”
“Someone in the GRU has a sense of humor. This shatters my preconceptions. One hopes the rot has not
