Qazi bent and lifted the attache case with his left hand. The youth at the machine was spinning, falling on one knee, reaching into the open backpack. The Russian started.
Qazi lunged through the open door to his right, knocking aside a woman coming in. He ran down the ramp toward the entrance to the tunnel. Over his shoulder he saw the youth coming through the door, a weapon in his hands.
Qazi ran.
The tunnel had a flat roof about eight feet above a floor covered with a rubberized mat. The mat improved his footing. The walls were concave, giving the illusion of more space. The lighting was indirect, from the ceiling.
Not too many people. Qazi scrambled through them and sent a few sprawling. He ran past the turnoff to the Galoppatoio exit, and before he reached the next turn, he glanced again over his shoulder. The gunman was still coming.
The low ceiling gave Qazi an illusion of great speed. He shot past an exit to the Via Veneto on his left and raced toward the moving sidewalk ahead. He almost lost his balance when he hit it, but he pushed off on a pedestrian who didn’t hear him coming and kept his balance. The moving sidewalk also had a rubberized coating. It descended ahead of him, seemingly endless. He felt as if he were literally flying. After fifty yards he glanced back. The gunman was gaining.
He was running faster than he ever had in his life. The end of the sidewalk was coming up. He leaped for the platform and lost his balance and careened onto the down escalator, into a group of men and women, bowling them over. He was up before they could react and taking the moving stairs downward four at a time.
At the bottom the tunnel ended in a cross-corridor. He turned left, toward the entrance to the Metropolitana, the subway, and buttonhooked against the wall.
He scanned the corridor. Just pedestrians, walking normally.
When the gunman rounded the corner, Qazi shot him three times with the Walther before he hit the floor. The falling man lost his weapon, an Uzi, which bounced off the concrete wall. Someone screamed. A young man reached half-heartedly for Qazi and he threw a shot over his shoulder.
Then he ran, away from the subway entrance, down the corridor toward the Piazza di Spagna. As he ran he ripped off the clerical collar and the black shirt. He literally tore the shirt from his left arm.
When he reached the tunnel exit, he slowed to a walk. He could hear several sirens growing louder, a penetrating two-tone wail. The piazza was full of people strolling and sitting and pointing cameras in all directions. Qazi walked purposefully but unhurriedly the hundred feet to the Spanish Steps and began to climb it toward the obelisk at the top. The stairs were lined with flowers. He paused and watched a police car with blue light flashing proceed through the scrambling people at the foot of the white marble staircase.
He transferred the attache case to his right hand, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief, then continued climbing the stairs. Two carabinieri in khaki uniforms, wearing berets and carrying submachine guns on straps over their shoulders, ran down the stairs past him.
Qazi stood on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the zoo. A dirty brown sedan, much battered, stopped at the curb. Noora was at the wheel. Ali was beside her in the front seat and another man, about twenty-five, sat in the rear. He opened the door for Qazi.
As soon as the car was in motion, Qazi opened the attache case. It was empty except for a stack of paper almost two inches thick, held together with rubber bands. He pulled away the top sheet, which was blank, and examined the next. He was looking at a copy machine copy of a photograph. The photo was of the cover of a document marked “Mk-58” and “Top Secret” in inch-high black letters. On the lower right was a printed four-digit number and a hand-lettered inked notation “2 of 3.”
Qazi placed the document in an empty shopping bag that sat waiting on the floor. He passed the attache case to the man beside him. “Wipe it off.”
In the front seat, Ali turned and watched with raised eyebrows.
“A man watched my meet with the general. He chased me. I shot him.”
“We heard the sirens.”
“Who?” Ali asked.
“I don’t know.”
The car stopped shortly thereafter and Ali walked over to a large green trash barrel near a cross walk, deposited the attache case, then returned to the car.
At the next traffic light, Ali looked over his shoulder at Qazi and said, “The
“For how long?”
“The hotel reservations are for eight nights.”
“Any particular hotel?”
“Over a dozen reservations at the Vittorio Emanuele. Some reservations elsewhere.”
“Noora,” he said to the girl, “get us two rooms at the Vittorio. Suites, if possible, doubles at least. And stay out of sight.” She nodded.
Qazi turned to the young man beside him. “As soon as you learn which rooms will be assigned to the Americans, Yasim, wire as many as possible.” Yasim was a rarity, an Arab with mechanical talent. He had been the star pupil of the national university’s engineering department when Qazi had discovered him.
“Ali, you set the plan in motion. I will join you at home tomorrow.” Qazi kept checking the rear window as Noora threaded through the traffic onto the Via Tiburtina eastbound. When they came to the limited-access highway that circled Rome, Noora merged with the traffic in the high-speed lane headed south as Qazi checked behind them repeatedly.
An hour later Noora dropped Qazi near Castel Sant’Angelo and sped away. The colonel now wore a short- sleeve, open-neck pullover shirt with a little alligator on the left breast. He walked west on the Via della Conciliazione. Old medieval buildings rose four and five stories above the street on either side, while ahead of him he could see the facade of St. Peter’s. Several blocks short of St. Peter’s Square, he turned right into a side street. He walked under the ancient Roman wall that arched above the street and kept going, into one of the more expensive quarters of Rome. After several blocks, he entered a quiet hotel with a tiny lobby.
“I say, old chap,” he hailed the desk clerk. “Have you any messages or calls for me? Name’s MacPhee. Room 306.”
“No, Signor MacPhee,” the clerk said after looking in the key box. “There is nothing.” Qazi would have been astounded if there had been. No one, not even Ali, knew he was here. He had checked in this morning, before he walked the three miles to the Villa Borghese.
“
Dusk had fallen and the street below his window was lit with lights from the bar across the street when Qazi finally tossed the last of the photocopied pages on the bed and gazed out his window. Without conscious effort his gaze moved from figure to figure on the sidewalk below, then roved over the parked automobiles.
His eyes ached from four hours of reading. He stretched, then slouched down in a chair and stared at the manual lying on the bed. After a few moments he picked up his pistol from the writing desk where he had been reading, turned off the light and stretched out on the bed. He laid the pistol on top of the manual.
When he awoke, the room was illuminated only by the glare of streetlights coming in the window. He checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. He lay in the darkness listening.
After twenty minutes he arose, tucked the pistol into its ankle holster, and placed the manual back in the shopping bag. He locked the room door behind him and descended the maid’s staircase all the way to the basement. The hallway was silent and dark. The eyes of a scurrying mouse reflected the glare from his pocket flashlight. The coal furnace was in the second room on his right. It looked exactly as it did two months ago when he selected this hotel because it had this furnace.
He opened the chimney flue and the firebox door. He placed a dozen pages inside the firebox. Soon the fire was burning nicely. He fed the pages in a few at a time. It took half an hour. When all the pages were cold ashes, Qazi latched the furnace door, closed the flue, and climbed the stairs back to his room.
There was a telephone book in the nightstand beside the bed. Qazi looked up a number and dialed it. After two rings a man’s voice said in English, “You have reached the Israeli embassy. May I help you?”
