[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Ivy-league American school was anybody's guess, but a thumbnail-sized emerald was one of
better suppositions.
Trained in finance, media, and pragmatism, Hakim Arif again disappeared into the east after
American training but not before leaving indelible memories with a few acquaintances. He qu
the Koran and T.E. Lawrence. He was not exactly averse to carrying large amounts of cash,
protection for it, on his person. He won a ridiculously small wager by chopping off the end
finger. And he was preternaturally shy of cameras.
Hakim and Fat'ah were mutually magnetized by desire and bitterness, but not even Interpol k
how Hakim Arif came to lead a guerrilla band that rarely saw its leader. One thing seemed c
about his emergence: anyone too devious for Carlos Sanchez developed a certain mystique am
the terrorist cadre. Even luna-tics have a lunatic fringe; the Fat'ah group devel-oped a positive ge
for wearing its welcomes threadbare among groups that were only half crazy.
Thwarted by security forces in Turkey, England, Syria, and Jordan, Fat'ah was evidently finge
the tassels at the end of its tether. Perhaps Hakim had peddled his last emerald; the fact seeme
be that the goals of Fat'ah, reachable by sufficient injections of cash into the proper places, w
elusive.
This was not to say that cash could not be raised. According to magazine sources, Lib
President Muammar Qaddafi had shelled out two million dollars to Carlos Sanchez for his Vi
raid on ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in December of 1
Analysts of the Third World eventually shifted from their initial opinion that Qaddafi had acted
of personal pique. The final con-sensus was that Qaddafi and OPEC had simply sustaine
corporate disagreement, just as other businesses sometimes have disagreements. Nothing perso
the bullets and the blood had been merely business. The biggest. As usual.
An even larger investment--some said as large as five million dollars from Swiss acco
controlled by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli had been made toward the massacre at the Olympic Vi
in Munich, in 1972. Hakim Arif had later contrived a brief and uneasy alliance with the B
September movement precisely because of its success; not with the Israelis so much as with
money they had squeezed from Feltrinelli.
Hakim himself was rumored to have a dark angel in the person of a sheikh living in and aroun
English country estate. The anglo-phile sheikh could afford a castle, and walled grounds envied
many a British peer, more easily than the English could afford the sheikh. The nabob had b
gently dissuaded only in 1977 from driving his special-bodied ten-meter Rolls across his ro
meadows in search of the once-tame deer that infested his estate. It was not the speeding tha
neighbors minded; the Rolls was on very, very private property. The complaints stemmed from
submachine gun bullets that sprayed beyond the sheikh's property whenever he sought the d
There may have been no close connection between the sheikh's forced moratorium on the
hunts and his decision, a month later, to put Hakim Arif on salary.
No act of terrorism, of course, would be paid very well by its well-wishers unless it achieved
crucial phenomenon, media coverage. The sheikhs, Qaddafis, and Feltrinellis would pay more
one well-covered disemboweling than for a thousand committed in secret. Media cover
especially on television, gave the criminal a chance to publicize his motives and his potency.
news magazines implied that the emergence of Hakim Arif in the United States was an ome
spilled guts.
They also gave coverage to Hakim's motives, and his potency.
Everett paused in his reading to gaze wistfully out at California's mighty Sierra range that stretc
below the Boeing. Somewhere below, near Lake Tahoe, was a cabin he knew well; hoped to
again. With the dusting of early snow on sawtooth massifs, the Sierra looked as cold and hard as
heart of Hakim Arif. What sort of egoist did it take to shorten his pinkie on an absurd wager
shun photographers? A very special one, at the least. Everett resumed reading.
The conservative Los Angeles Times, the pre-vious Monday, had devoted too much space
strained parallel between law enforcement agencies and Keystone Kops. The smash hit of the
TV season was a Saturday night talk show in which a battery of clever NBN hosts deigned to
live, only with callers who were already in the news. Soon after midnight after the Pueblo disast
caller had identified himself as Hakim Arif. A reigning cinema queen was discussing oral se [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]