The Heat of Ramadan Read online

  The Heat of Ramadan

  Steven Hartov

  Also by Steven Hartov

  The Nylon Hand of God

  The Devil’s Shepherd

  In the Company of Heroes

  The Night Stalkers

  Afghanistan on the Bounce

  Copyright © 1992 by Steven Hartov

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Writers House LLC at 21 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously for purposes of verisimilitude. Any resemblance to any organization or to any actual person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  eISBN 978-0-7867-5405-2

  Print ISBN 978-0-7867-5404-5

  Cover design by Michael Scowden

  Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services

  Contents

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Note on Ramadan

  Epigraph

  Bogenhausen

  Part One: Passed-Over

  1: Jerusalem

  2: A Small Town in Israel

  3: Jerusalem

  4: London

  5: Jerusalem

  6: Europe

  7: Munich

  8: Cyprus

  9: Cairo

  Part Two: Ramadan

  10: Jerusalem

  11: Ramallah

  12: Jerusalem

  13: Bethlehem

  14: Jerusalem

  15: The Dead Sea

  16: Jerusalem

  17: Tel Aviv

  18: Jerusalem

  19: Jerusalem

  20: Hadassah Hospital

  Epilogue

  This book is dedicated to:

  Oren, Jesse and Lia,

  for always being there

  * * *

  and to the memory of

  Mike “Nachum” Katzin

  He loved his family,

  he loved his work,

  and he loved his country.

  Author's Note

  Although The Heat of Ramadan is essentially a work of fiction, certain details are fact-based. Therefore, in order to protect those professionals who must continue to operate in a precarious world, I have changed certain military unit names, intelligence terms and operational techniques. For the sake of the drama, I have also moved some locales and altered dates. Finally, the entire work has been reviewed by the IDF Military Censor, which is a requirement with which I must comply, given my background.

  New York

  January 1992

  The Hartov espionage trilogy is comprised of The Heat of Ramadan, The Nylon Hand of God, and The Devil’s Shepherd. This new release reflects the original hardcover manuscript, unedited and unabridged. For the many loyal fans who’ve inquired about the fates of Eytan Eckstein and Benni Baum, their adventures will continue in an upcoming book. For more information, please visit the author’s site: www.stevenhartov.com.

  RAMADAN: The ninth month of the Islamic year, often falling at the height of the summer’s heat, and observed as sacred with fasting practiced daily from dawn to sunset.

  There’s crazy people walkin’ round,

  With blood in their eyes . . .

  Wild-eyed pistol wavers,

  Who ain’t afraid to die.

  From “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.”

  Written by Danny Kortchmar

  © 1984 Kortchmar Music.

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Bogenhausen

  January 1985

  FROM THE MOMENT ECKHARDT PULLED THE TRIGGER, he knew he was killing the wrong man.

  In the universal concept of time, it was merely a bisected second. Yet it was also one of those horrific moments of a man’s life when another dimension seems to encroach upon reality, cruelly elongating a seizure of pain so that it might be experienced in all of its tortured glory.

  Ecstasy seems to be gone in a flash.

  Agony goes on and on and on.

  It was, as Eckhardt would always remember, a moment full of sorrow. Swollen with hatred at first, then a sudden instinctive withdrawal as the realization began to surge from somewhere within his brain. And suddenly the portent of the error smacked against the inside of his eyes like a judo student being slammed to the mat.

  Yes, he had killed before. He had done so in combat, with the fury of the charge and the smoke and the gunfire and the screaming. And yes, he had killed in other ways, stealthily, with the dark heart of the saboteur, removed from the scene but accepting that the deed was his own. And yes, this was also not his first elimination at close range.

  But before, Eckhardt had always been sure that his cause was righteous, his aim was true, his victim deserving of his fate. And in the past, in those face-to-face encounters, the Team’s human targets had displayed many instinctive reactions to their precipitous demise. Shock. Horror. Anger. Certainly dismay before dying.

  Yet now, if there was a God in heaven or hell, and if nature and Eckhardt’s vision were not deceiving him, this man’s twisted visage registered something frighteningly different . . .

  Complete and utter surprise.

  So once again, Eckhardt’s aim was true. Too true. For he knew that as sure as the night would soon devour Munich, he was making the mistake of his life. But it was too late. The bullet was flying from the gun. It could no more be recalled than could the finest, most well-disciplined racehorse once the bell had clanged and it was out of the gate, dashing for the finish.

  Still, ever the professional, committed to the battle, trained to suppress all self-doubt at this crucial juncture, Eckhardt pressed on with the attack. He could feel, rather than see, Rainer Luckmann beside him. The barrel of Luckmann’s Beretta hovered inside his peripheral view, bucking slightly and spewing grey smoke as Rainer emptied his pistol. And Eckhardt watched his own weapon, trembling at the end of his arms. He registered, against his will and for all eternity, the face of the wrong man as the victim covered it with his hands and then sat down hard on the sidewalk, his brown paper parcels of fresh rolls spilling over the legs covered in fine tweed trousers.

  Eckhardt stepped forward, seeing his own fists drawing his Beretta down toward the man’s chest, hearing the distant scream of someone else, someone witnessing the pornography of violence. Knowing that person, too, would forever share his horror.

  He fired three more rounds.

  “Genug,” he whispered to Luckmann. Then he said it again, louder, almost booming, so that the language would register to witnesses. “Genug!”

  He turned to walk across the street. He knew that Luckmann was keeping pace, he did not check; he saw nothing but the blue Ford Fiesta waiting for him. He longed for its comfort, the whine of its small engine. Unthinking, his hands their own masters, he released the clip from the Beretta, put it in the pocket of his leather coat and reloaded the pistol with a fresh magazine from his belt.

  As he reached for the door handle of the car he thought, How the hell could it have all gone so wrong?

  For up until that very moment, Operation Flute had, as they liked to say at Headquarters, “Ticked over just as it must.”

  * * *

  It was cold in Munich that morning. Raining, but without snow. It was still early, yet the light would remain the same all day, like mottled pewter or a North Pole night.

  Tony Eckhardt sat at a small table in a safe house in Unter Sendling. The table was ugly, a stained round formica top and peeling brown metal legs, but it was good enough for a student. At the moment, Eckhardt wished that he were a student.

  He
looked out the small, lead-glass window, yet he could see nothing of Unter Sendling, for the kitchen faced the stone facade of the other half of the building. The flat had been carefully selected. Second floor—you could jump from the kitchen if you had to. Wooden stairs—you could hear anyone on the landing. There was only one set of “scenic” windows, and they were at the front of the salon facing St. Stephen’s Pfarrzentrum. If you set up camp across from a church, anyone who wanted to observe you would first have to get past a Bavarian priest.

  These things were always well thought-out.

  Eckhardt sipped at a cup of Alvorada. But he could not eat.

  Rainer Luckmann, on the other hand, seemed to be having no trouble at all. Luckmann’s side of the table looked like a ravaged Konditorei platter. He had finished a half-liter of orange juice and was on his third cup of the rich coffee. Before him sat a large dish with two half-boiled Eier im Glas, into whose bright yolks he was violently jabbing the buttered stump of a Semmel roll. Adding to Eckhardt’s gastronomic disbelief, Luckmann punctuated his “light” breakfast with gnashing bites from a greasy Weisswurst.

  “Guten Appetit.” Eckhardt’s tone was veined with disgust, though he knew that he was simply jealous. He wished he could eat too.

  Luckmann looked up. He swept his shaggy brown hair back over his forehead and stared out innocently from his bright green eyes. His mouth was full.

  “Bist du nicht hungrig?”

  Eckhardt smiled and shook his head. “Du bist eine Sau. Wirhlich.”

  Luckmann shrugged, taking no offense. “Okay, so I’m a pig.” He returned to his plate. Then he reached across the table, picked up his packet of Schwarzer Krauser No. 1, and began rolling a cigarette. That was another thing that Eckhardt could not fathom. Food that could sink a battleship, tobacco that could burn through asbestos. Iron stomach. Iron lungs.

  Then as if to dispel Tony’s envy, Rainer glanced up again, grinned sheepishly, and said, “I guess I’m nervous.”

  “Ja.” Tony nodded, pleased to be once more in the company of a human. “Ich auch.” You see, everyone had his own way of dealing with pre-combat jitters.

  Eckhardt pushed his cup away, got up, and walked through the salon to the front window. He looked at his watch for the twentieth time. It was still only 9:00 A.M.

  He put his hands on hips and stared through the freckled glass at the St. Stephen’s Church, whose red peak wavered like a dream castle behind the smoky sheets of water that coursed over the window. He blew out a sigh and turned to gaze at the small flat.

  Everything was German. The furniture, the books, the piles of Stern, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the dichotomous volumes of Goethe, along with the occasional Heinrich Böll. His clothes were German, and Luckmann’s as well, right down to the underwear.

  The only foreign items were their Italian Berettas, yet these too were accompanied by forged licensing documentation associating both men with GSG9, the West German anti-terrorist team. Even the subsonic ammunition was West German—designed to kill, but not to penetrate the Target and possibly injure a wide-eyed passerby.

  Someone was brilliant enough to think of everything, which allowed Eckhardt a certain relief from responsibility. Yet it also caused him to feel rather primitive.

  The Doberman at the end of a leash.

  Something was gnawing at the pit of Eckhardt’s stomach. He swore to himself, for the hundredth time, that he would give up drinking that corrosive poison as soon as the mission was over. He was too damn jumpy. He had to begin changing gears, closing down emotions. The mission’s team leader had to command with cool objectivity and sharp reflexes, all the while seeming to his subordinates to be in complete self-control. As he had done many times in the past, Eckhardt now searched for a focus which would help him attain this Zen-like state.

  On the far wall of the flat was a large poster framed in glass and aluminum. It was a soft-focus photograph, warm and colorful, of the lush green lawns and bird-bedecked ponds of the Englischer Garten. Stroked across the picture in bright pastels were the words of the poet Eugen Roth:

  The chance, the luck, of a Munich address

  Spares you half of life’s storm and stress.

  Eckhardt had seen the poster countless times, but it was only now that he really noted the irony. He laughed out loud.

  “Was ist los?” Luckmann called from the kitchen.

  “Sssshhh.” Eckhardt continued to stare at the poster. He had broken his mood.

  He dropped his hands to his sides, willing the arms to relax, the fists to open, the fingers to dangle. He narrowed his eyes and saw his own reflection in the glass. Short blond hair, grey-blue eyes, a strong neck, and below that, the mid-length black leather coat.

  His image reassured him. Smoother, calmer now, he directed his mind to Operation Flute.

  Amusing, that Hans-Dieter Schmidt had chosen such a name for this mission. In Arabic, the word for flute was halil, and the sound of that word was really too much like the Target’s real name. But since you never, ever, chose an operational code that remotely resembled reality, Hans-Dieter had surely done so intentionally. In this business, to be predictable was to be finished, and Schmidt was never predictable.

  By now, Eckhardt was sure, Hans-Dieter would have been in his office for over two hours. Eckhardt was equally sure that the mission commander had been “arriving for work” at that hour since he had rented the vacant import/export suite, if for no other reason than to quell any suspicions regarding his early arrival on this particular day.

  The office was situated close to the expansive Munich Trade Fair and Exhibition Company, the MMG, for obvious cover reasons. But the precise choice of SchiessStatt 13 seemed to have been selected to satisfy Hans-Dieter’s sense of the comical-ironic. For Hans insisted on calling it ScheissStrasse, in keeping with his oft-repeated opinion that espionage was a “shitty business.”

  Eckhardt began to review the pre-mission details.

  Ettie Denziger would be moving into position, setting up her easel on her glassed-in veranda, which overlooked Barbarossa Strasse in the quiet borough of Bogenhausen. Eckhardt had not, of course, ever set foot in Ettie’s flat, but her detailed descriptions enabled him to picture the environment.

  Wearing a voluminous green cardigan, she would encamp in her large wooden rocker. A telephone—not purely a social device—would be at her side, next to a large pot of black coffee. Her petite blonde head would sport a number of items—dangling chain-and-ball silver earrings, the earphones of a Walkman, and on her crown a pair of half-spectacle, half-opera glasses. The veranda would not be heated today, so that the window glass would remain clear. Ettie would shiver, along with the leaves of her veritable greenhouse, as the cold January wind invaded through the sill cracks.

  As befitted an art student, she would have tens of brushes, tubes, trays and inks surrounding her legs. And as befitted the Team’s Communications Officer, her artwork would suffer today as she looked and listened in a coldly unaesthetic manner. After a month of work the large canvas of Bogenhausen’s Barbarossa Street was still only half-finished. Had Ettie not been quite so attractive, friendly and aggressively eccentric, her neighbors might have asked why it was taking her so long.

  Eckhardt did not allow his thoughts to linger with Ettie, for he had feelings for her that were somewhat less than professional. . . .

  Peter Hauser. Now, there was a man who could not possibly sit and wait; and fortunately for him he would not be required to do so. Hauser’s triple duties as Transportation Officer, Primary Tail and Back-Up would keep him moving all day long.

  Already at dawn, Hauser would have commenced his check of the “motor pool.” There were, to the dismay of the Department’s comptroller, ten rental vehicles involved in Flute, as well as a purchased truck and an ambulance. Each vehicle had to be inspected for fuel, oil and water, then started and warmed to attest to its health.

  All of the rental vehicles had been hired from different firms with one of thre
e Swiss VISA cards, which were linked to relatively small cash accounts in Geneva banks. Throughout the early morning, Hauser would have gone systematically from glove compartment to glove compartment, inserting typewritten notes into each rental agreement. Long after the cars were abandoned, and hopefully recovered by their irate owners, the messages in German would intentionally appease:

  “Terribly sorry for the inconvenience. Please forgive and charge our account.”

  Eckhardt had developed a consummate respect for Hauser, and he trusted his technical judgments implicitly.

  He could picture the diminutive, muscled ex-motorcycle racer gleefully flying through the rainy streets of Munich, flitting from one machine to another, fretting like a pit manager at Le Mans. . . .

  Then there was Francie Koln.

  As Secondary Tail and Emergency Decoy, Francie was going to have an extremely unpleasant day. She would spend all morning outdoors, within five hundred meters of the Marienplatz, wearing her Walkman, waiting for her cue. If she had ever harbored fantasies about the romantic life of an espionage agent, today she would surely be cured of such notions.

  Francie’s tasks were somewhat more difficult than Ettie Denziger’s, inasmuch as she was the Team’s “character actress.” Inherently she possessed all of Ettie’s dynamic qualities, yet she could play against her own type and was therefore called upon to do so with regularity. Her specialty was going completely unnoticed, and she had practiced donning this cloak of invisibility until details of her physical and personality traits were obscured, and encounters with her quickly forgotten.