Final Flight

waited for her to lie down. He snuggled against her side, his rifle in his hands, exhausted, yet too excited to sleep. The stars wheeled in the sky above him and the wind sighed restlessly.

He had spent countless nights watching the stars and listening to the wind. He had tried to count them once, spent all night on just one segment of sky, numbering faithfully as the stars wheeled above him, on a night so black the stars were just beyond reach in the clear desert air. With his back against the earth there were only the stars and he was one with them, alone and yet not alone, a part of the undying universe. He had finally given up the counting. There were too many stars, flung like grains of sand against the eternal void.

Tonight he glanced at the heavens, but his thoughts were on the darkness around him. He gripped the rifle and rubbed the smooth metal, the blueing long worn off, and the scarred wood of the stock. He fingered the notch of the rear sight and the bolt handle and the trigger. His uncle had told him not to chamber a cartridge until daylight, and he obeyed. Yet the cartridges were in the magazine; all that remained was the opening and closing of the bolt. He caressed the rifle and knew its power, its tension, as he waited impatiently for the stars to complete their nightly orbit. The tension and the fear and the anticipation … of what he knew not, gave life a pungency that he had never known existed. At this time, in this desolate wilderness beneath the eternal stars, here and now he was alive.

* * *

A thick figure emerged from the back of the limousine in the Piazza le Brasile and set off alone down the sidewalk toward the entrance to the mall under the Villa Borghese, which also contained the parking garage where Qazi had changed cars on his arrival in Rome two days before. The man carried an attache case.

Qazi checked his watch, then scanned the park in every direction. The lovers on the blanket near the lake had been there since he arrived and were sharing wine. A woman was walking her dog. Most of the office workers had finished their lunches and were leaving the area. Fifty feet away a middle-aged woman sat on a bench and watched two small children play in the dirt with plastic automobiles.

Qazi watched the traffic in the piazza to see if any more vehicles were going to stop to discharge passengers. None did. After five minutes he arose and began strolling slowly toward the upper mall entrance, his hands in his pockets, checking everyone in sight. He was perspiring, perhaps because he was wearing three shirts in this heat. On the sidewalk he stopped at a mobile ice cream stand and paid fifteen hundred lire for a cone, which he licked as he stood in the shade watching the pedestrians and the traffic. The ice cream melted faster than he could eat it. It dripped on his fingers. When he finished the cone, he returned to the stand and used one of their napkins to wipe his fingers and mouth.

Waist-high circular concrete walls sat amid the grass and trees on the other side of the street. Beyond these walls, which looked like the ends of huge concrete pipes set vertically into the earth, he could see the track and stables where wealthy Roman girls learned to ride. That area was known as the Galoppatoio. Qazi knew the concrete walls encircled shafts that opened on the underground mall and admitted air and light. Several of the shafts had stairs to the mall below. He noted that there was no one standing near the shafts. Without benches to sit on, that area of the park had only a few strollers.

Satisfied at last, he went down the stairs from the sidewalk into the mall.

The man from the limousine was standing on the side of the corridor directly across from an office of the Bank of Rome. He wore an ill-fitting suit and his tie was pulled away from his throat, his shirt collar open. When Qazi was near, he could see why the suit did not fit. The man’s shoulders and chest were massive, rising from a too-small waist. He was about sixty, with a tanned head that made his cropped gray hair almost invisible.

“Buon giorno, General,” Qazi said.

“Aleksandr Isayevich, huh? A priest today.” He was looking at Qazi’s clerical collar, black short-sleeved shirt, and trousers.

“When in Rome …”

“Your man ran me all over the city.”

“He enjoys his job.”

“So what do you and that fanatic fool, El Hakim, plan to do with this?” the general asked, nodding toward the attache case near his feet. His Russian accent was muted but detectable.

“I thought I might read it.”

“You picked a nice place for this little meet. As I recall there are at least eight nearby exits from this rabbit hole.”

“Eight or nine.”

General Simonov removed a packet of American cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out through his nose. “The Israelis want you very badly. They did not enjoy reading about their underground weapons facility in the press.”

People were walking by. A young man with a backpack walked through the double glass doors from the main entryway and stood behind a gray matron using the automatic teller. To the right, through the floor-to-ceiling windows and across the airshaft, Qazi could see the entrance to the parking garage and, beyond that, the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel that led to the subway station and on to the Piazza di Spagna.

“And you?”

“I’ll admit, that was one of your better shows. A triumph.”

“Thank you.”

“The CIA is also very unhappy about the disappearance of one Samuel Jarvis, weapons engineer. Should I tell them to see you for the particulars?”

“Come come, General. You didn’t drive all over Rome on this warm summer’s day to have an idle chat.”

The general’s eyes were as gray as Moscow in winter. “What are you up to, Qazi? Why did you want the manual delivered in Rome?”

Qazi had thought long and hard about the wisdom of seeking the Soviets’ help. He had not discussed it with El Hakim because if the ruler had approved, the manual would have been delivered in the capital by a Soviet diplomat. General Simonov was nobody’s fool. He would have several working hypotheses to explain the delivery in Rome, one of which would be very close to the truth.

“I needed a short holiday on the expense account, old boy,” Qazi replied lightly.

Simonov’s fingers flipped rhythmically at the cigarette filter. He glanced at a man in a dark business suit who had joined the line to use the money-dispensing machine. “No doubt that’s why you just spent three days in Naples, Qazi. Ah, and you thought I wouldn’t know about that. We have many, many friends in Italy. Old boy.”

No doubt, thought Qazi bitterly as he once again scanned the area. Naples has a communist city government. Every garbageman and street sweeper is probably on the GRU payroll. And that is where the Americans anchor their aircraft carriers! “It must be pleasant to have a post that takes you to the sunny climes for a change.”

“What do you intend to do with a nuclear weapon?”

Qazi glanced at Simonov. “We do not have a nuclear weapon, but if we did, its employment would be strictly our business.”

“That is what El Hakim told our ambassador this morning.” The general dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his shoe. “Moscow would be very unhappy if any such device were used in a way that conflicted with Soviet interests in the Mediterranean.” He extracted another cigarette from his shirt pocket and flicked a lighter. The youth with the backpack was punching the buttons of the automatic teller machine. He wore jeans and running shoes and had unruly, short black hair. “We’re concerned about El Hakim’s activities. It would be a great mistake to think otherwise. A very great mistake.”

The teller machine rejected the young man’s card. He slapped the machine, then fed the card in again and pushed buttons. “I think El Hakim is aware of your position,” Qazi said, “but I’ll tell him you voiced it, again. But I didn’t know the Kremlin used you to deliver diplomatic notes to third-world fanatics, General. I thought they had better uses for you.”

The man in the suit behind the youth at the machine was looking around impatiently. The machine had rejected the youngster’s card for the third time.

“Your El Hakim has spent too many nights dressed up in women’s clothing. Tell him I said that.”

The backpack was now under the young man’s left armpit. His head moved slightly. Qazi realized he was looking at the reflections in the shiny metal of the machine.