Flicker of Doom Read online

  "Forgotten an atomic bomb? Don't talk nonsense."

  Hakim's expression grew obstinate. "It isn't nonsense. It's happened before. The Americans lost an atomic bomb once. It was missing for a year. They found it in a dump. They probably just misplaced the forms for this one."

  The other made up his mind. "I'll send Youssef in here to see if he can start the truck. In the meantime, cover the rocket with a tarpaulin. I don't want anyone to see us driving away with a rocket."

  The other men were almost through with the loading when the alarm went off. The other end of the training field was suddenly alive with a line of troops. There were forty or fifty soldiers, moving cautiously toward the warehouses.

  The Arab guerrillas stopped their work. They stood there, making themselves visible, as they'd been briefed to do. No shots were fired. Their hands were in plain sight, empty.

  The NATO soldiers grew confident. They advanced across the parade ground, guns ready.

  In the truck, the computer reached into its electronic memory and pulled out a map of the human brain. Like a miser, it began to dole out tiny, measured doses of current to the device that was plugged into it.

  The truck headlights blinked. Their color turned pinkish. The blinking grew rapid, seven flashes per second. There were subtle variations in the rhythm, correlated with changes in the intensity and wavelengths of the light.

  The advancing wave of men stopped as if it had run into a brick wall. There were men lying all over the ground, having convulsions. They writhed horribly, like maggots that had been sprayed with insecticide.

  Some of the soldiers were still on their feet. They staggered back and forth in random agitation. One soldier, a murderous expression on his face, was trying to strangle the man next to him. Another was flailing around with his automatic rifle, using it like a club. A third was laughing insanely, firing short bursts into the bodies on the ground. Then, one by one, even these few were on the ground, swallowing their tongues, their limbs jumping uncontrollably.

  It was all over in a couple of minutes.

  The Arab driver said, "Let's get out of here." The convoy of army trucks began to move, swaying like canvasbacked elephants, across the field. The Honest John mobile launcher followed at the tail of the procession, a bulge showing along its spine where a tarpaulin had been tied over the nuclear rocket.

  They lumbered through the gate into the Belgian dawn, past the scattered bodies. Some of the soldiers were still twitching.

  * * *

  "A million dollars," the airline president said. "That's what we're betting on their lives."

  "The poor bastards," said the vice president in charge of European operations. "They should have been told, don't you think?"

  The airline president looked out through the big glass wall at the runways beyond. "We've been through all that with the board," he said.

  The PR man who had been brought over from New York nodded, eager to agree. "No sense in giving us a bad image. It's probably a hoax, anyway."

  "But at least we should have warned the captain and the flight crew," the V.P. persisted.

  The president looked annoyed. "We're taking every precaution we can. There's no sense in causing a panic." "But…"

  "We can't give away a million dollars to everyone who says he's going to make one of our planes crash."

  The three of them turned their faces toward the floor of the terminal. It was swarming with tourists in bright clothing and sunglasses, ready with their cameras and guidebooks for anything Spain had to offer, or going back to northern climes with their expensive tans and cheap souvenirs. There seemed to be an unusual number of Spanish policemen around. And if you looked closely, you could also see a heavy sprinkling of grim, gray men in drab suits who didn't seem to belong to the holiday crowd. They loitered with ferret eyes near doorways and ticket counters, looking over the passengers and porters.

  "We've got half the police force of Barcelona in here," the PR man said. "We're spending a fortune on plainclothes security guards. We've examined every piece of luggage for bombs, and we've triple-checked the passengers."

  The president laughed. "And in case we've missed anything, we've got a public relations team standing by to explain away the crash."

  The PR man looked hurt. "Just staying on top of the situation," he said.

  The V.P. seemed unconvinced. "These Arab terrorist groups have access to rocket launchers these days. A luggage check won't do much good if they plan to shoot the plane down from the ground."

  "PAFF!" the president snorted. "Pan-Arab Freedom Fighters! Nobody ever heard of them. Any weirdo could have sent that blackmail note!"

  The PR man gestured. "Just in case," he said, "we've got men checking the windows of every building near the airport. The police are cooperating. They're stopping suspicious vehicles. And nobody with a package more than two feet long gets anywhere near the terminal without being checked out."

  The V.P. sighed. "Maybe I'm being nervous. But when you think of a 747 crashing with four hundred people aboard…"

  "We're all nervous," the president said. "The damn things cost us twenty-nine million dollars apiece."

  "Look!" the PR man pointed. "There's our bird now!"

  They looked through the glass wall toward the runway. The jumbo jet was picking up speed, looking impossibly huge, even at this distance. It was hard to imagine how something that big — more than 230 feet from nose to tail — could ever get off the ground.

  It was growing larger, coming on a course that would send it sweeping past the observation wall at an angle. The whine of the engines was deafening, even through the glass. People were crowding the windows, watching the takeoff.

  The V.P. was looking glumly at the spectators. "Take that fellow," he said. "The one with the camera. He looks like an Arab. Suppose he were one of these PAFF people…"

  "For heaven's sake!" the president said, exasperated. "Southern Spain is full of Arabs! Algeria and Morocco are just across the Mediterranean!"

  He glanced impatiently at the man with the camera. He was a young, slim, swarthy fellow, pointing a long zoom lens at the taxiing jet. He was using a lot of expensive attachments, including what looked like a complicated electronic flash unit resting by his foot and connected to the camera by a cable.

  "Besides," the PR man laughed, "even if that were a bazooka, he couldn't shoot it through the glass…"

  The Arab was tracking the jet as it lifted off the ground, clicking away like any photography nut. The PR man had just enough time to wonder why on earth the man was using a flash unit in bright sunlight, when the enormous wings began to wobble and jerk.

  "Oh, my God!" the president whispered.

  From an altitude of two hundred feet, the jumbo jet stood on its nose and drove straight toward the ground with all the thrust of its four enormous engines. You could hear the explosion twenty miles away.

  * * *

  "Biting people?" said the Officer in Command of Apes. "What the bloody hell do you mean, biting people?"

  He glared furiously at the Corporal, a stolid young Yorkshireman named Willoughby. Willoughby shifted his feet and stared down at the limestone floor of the cave that served as the OCA's office.

  "It's just like I said, sir. There was this party of tourists, see, taking pictures. Americans. And then the apes started acting peculiar like."

  "Peculiar? How? Speak up, man!"

  Willoughby looked uncomfortable. "Well, sir, they were twitching."

  "What's peculiar about that? The bloody beasts have fleas. I'd find it most peculiar if they didn't twitch."

  "Yes, sir. Only it wasn't that kind of twitching. It was more like a kind of tic."

  "A tic, was it?" the OCA said with heavy sarcasm. "Then what?"

  "Well, sir, they had a fit of temper." The corporal paused for emphasis. "All at the same time."

  "Even Harold?" the OCA said with sudden interest.

  Harold was at the bottom of the totem pole in the apes' social struc
ture. Harold never showed any temper. And if any of the other males showed irritation, he always assumed a submissive posture.

  "Yes, sir. He bit Tony."

  "And what did Tony do?"

  "He didn't seem to notice, sir. It was like he was in a rage, like all the others. They were biting each other, and biting themselves, sir."

  "Most unusual," the OCA said slowly.

  He began to get worried. As Officer in Command of Apes, he took his job seriously. And the British Army took it seriously, too.

  There was a legend that when the last of the Barbary Apes disappeared from the Rock of Gibraltar, the British would be driven out. During World War II, when the ape population of Gibraltar had fallen to only seven, Winston Churchill himself had ordered that "urgent measures" be taken to increase their numbers. A special subsidy was granted to feed them. An Officer in Command of Apes was permanently written into the chain of military command at Gibraltar. The Master Gunner took on the additional job of keeper.

  Anything that threatened the Barbary Apes threatened the British presence in Gibraltar. Perhaps it was superstition, but with the Spanish agitating to drive Britain from the Rock, any problem with the apes could have serious political repercussions.

  Could it be a distemper epidemic? Or rabies? Not likely. It wouldn't have struck all the apes simultaneously, or so suddenly. In any case, the veterinary surgeon had pronounced all the animals healthy during his last inspection only a few days ago.

  "Perhaps we'd better have a look, Corporal," the OCA said.

  He got to his feet. Willoughby followed him through the maze of limestone tunnels leading to the upper Rock. Gibraltar was an impregnable fortress, with its enormous caves and galleries containing storehouses, barracks, magazines, garages. It commanded the straits between Spain and Morocco. But if anything happened to the apes…

  They paused at the outer entrance, blinking at the sunlight. There was a salt tang to the air. The Mediterranean stretched beneath them, blue and sparkling.

  "You say the apes attacked a party of tourists?" the OCA said.

  That was very odd, too. The apes were tame. Docile, in fact.

  "Yes, sir," Willoughby said. "There were lots of them, taking pictures. Americans, some Germans, Norwegians. A couple of city Arabs, standing further back. They acted like they were afraid to get too close. The Americans were the closest. They acted like they thought it was funny when the apes started biting each other, but then the apes went after them, too."

  "Not serious, I hope."

  "One chubby bloke got a chunk out of his arse, excusing me, sir, and a girl got bitten on the arm. They were taken down to the hospital for tetanus shots. But before the apes could do any real harm, they fell over. Lost their senses, they did."

  It was looking more and more serious. "Let's hurry. Corporal." They climbed to St. Michael's Cave and looked around for the apes.

  It was worse than he feared. Three of the apes were lying there, dead. The rest were sitting around, looking dazed and fearful. Tony, the leader of the pack, was trembling and making pathetic whimpering noises.

  "Blimey!" Willoughby whispered.

  The OCA turned on his heel. "Get the veterinary surgeon up here to look after them, Corporal," he said. "I'm going to send a cable to London."

  * * *

  In Barcelona, a Spanish politician named Juan Delegado had a fit during a bullfight and died in full view of the audience. In the minute and a half before he died, he made a violent attack on his bodyguard, who had been assigned for his protection ever since the assassination of Premier Carrero Blanco by Basque nationalists. The bodyguard was sent to the hospital with a fractured cervical vertebra and other injuries. The bullfight spectators were told by the police that the assault they had witnessed had not taken place.

  * * *

  In Morocco, a moderate member of the parliament named Rashid el-Hamad disgraced himself during a public debate by uttering obscene words, defiling his clothing and attempting to bite the throat of a political opponent. He was led away, appearing dazed. Afterward, he asserted he could remember nothing of his shocking behavior.

  * * *

  There was a strange occurrence aboard a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier cruising the Mediterranean, which was immediately hushed up. All the sailors on deck facing the starboard side began to exhibit irrational and violent behavior. They attacked fellow crew members in a seeming rage, uttered obscenities, complained of unpleasant odors or appeared to be having visual hallucinations. Some fell to the deck in an apparent fit. Others simply jumped overboard. The most dangerous aspect of the episode occurred when a starboard gunner named Halloran attempted to fire on a Soviet destroyer that was patrolling the area. A Board of Inquiry was appointed.

  * * *

  In New York, London, Paris and Rome, airline officials received identical blackmail notes from an organization that called itself PAFF — the Pan-Arab Freedom Fighters. The notes threatened each of the airlines with the crash of a passenger jet unless a million-dollar ransom was paid. To show it meant business, PAFF claimed credit for the recent crash of a Boeing-747 jumbo jet taking off from the Barcelona airport. But air crash investigators for the Spanish government and the United States National Transportation Safety Board had established that the 747 crash had been caused by pilot error. The cockpit voice recorder had survived the crash and explosion. It showed that the captain had suffered some kind of a violent seizure, and had deliberately crashed the aircraft. His voice was heard uttering obscenities and complaining about flashes of light — both among the symptoms of psychomotor epilepsy — and there were the sounds of a brief struggle with other crew members for possession of the controls. Relieved, the airline officials declined to pay the blackmail. The next day there was another crash at Rome.

  A minor highway accident along the road between Perpignan and Marseilles in southern France resulted in the deaths of a television cameraman and a technician from Italian state broadcasting. They had been covering a speech by Gaston Leclerc, who had died while they and newsmen from a dozen other nations were filming it. The driver's neck was broken, and his chest had been crushed by the steering wheel. The other Italian had suffered a broken skull when he was dashed against the windshield.

  * * *

  "The President is determined to attend the conference," said the thickset man at the head of the conference table. "I tried to talk him out of it, the Secret Service tried to talk him out of it and his wife tried to talk him out of it. But he's made up his mind to go."

  "I don't like it," said the CIA director. "Tangier is a hotbed of intrigue. Every one of those goddamned Arab terrorist groups operates there."

  "Well, he's going," said the thickset man, "and that's that. We take it from there. Any suggestions?"

  He looked around the conference table, waiting. His face wore the expression of professional amiability that the press and the public were familiar with. But beneath the amiability was the hard fact of power. He was the President's Man, and everyone present knew it.

  The other members of the Special Group looked back at him. Power was something they all had good reason to respect, because they themselves wielded a large measure of it. There were five of them: the directors of the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency; the Deputy Secretary of Defense; the man from the State Department's intelligence operation.

  The conference room they met in every week was the most bug-proof room in the world. It was a windowless box buried deep within the steel-and-concrete headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. The walls were sandwiched with electronic baffles, buffered with materials that absorbed vibrations and further shielded on all six faces by devices that generated ultrasonic waves, microwave interference and coherent light designed to foil laser taps. As if that weren't enough, the 980-foot corridor outside was patrolled by a small army of armed Marine sentries.

  The man from State cleared his throat. "The President has to go to Tangier
. The Arab oil ministers won't deal with anyone else. They made that clear."

  "Cheeky bastards!" snorted the Admiral who currently headed the DIA. "They just want to humiliate the United States — show the President going begging with a cup in his hand, pleading with them to fill it with oil."

  State looked uncomfortable. "We have advance assurances from the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries that the conference will be a success. After all, they want to sell their oil. OAPEC just wants to put on a show, squeeze us a little."

  The President's man nodded. "At the conclusion of the conference, the President will go on global TV, via satellite, and make the announcement personally. It'll give him a tremendous shot in the arm politically. He'll have brought off a miracle, and the whole world will be watching."

  The director of the National Security Agency stretched his long legs under the table. He had a lean, intelligent face and a commanding manner that went with the rank of Air Force General that he still held.

  "And that's when he'll be most vulnerable," he said. "There'll be crowds, newsmen, photographers…"

  "We're doing everything we can to control the situation," CIA broke in. "The President will be behind a transparent, bulletproof shield. The Moroccan government is beefing up security. And we've been riding herd for weeks on every known Arab terrorist organization and splinter group."

  "What about this new group that's surfaced — the one that calls itself PAFF?" said the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

  "We don't think they exist," CIA said.

  "We think differently," the NSA director said politely. "We think they were behind the raid on the NATO arsenal in Belgium last week, the one where they got the atom bomb."

  "Good God!" said the Admiral. "You don't think they'd go after the President with an atom bomb? They'd have to destroy the entire city of Tangier to kill one man — kill a quarter-million of their fellow Arabs, including the entire ministerial council of OAPEC."