Numbered Account

Mevlevi returned his attention to the papers in his lap. His eye wandered from top to bottom. It began with the heading, written in large Cyrillic script and emblazoned in maroon ink across the top of the page. He knew it to read "Surplus Arms Warehouse." A polite introductory paragraph written in English followed. "We sell only the finest new and used armaments, all in perfect operating order." He half expected to see a disclaimer informing him that he could return the merchandise after thirty days if he was in any way dissatisfied. The Russians were giving international commerce their best shot. He turned the page and reviewed the list of the material he had purchased.

Section I: Aircraft. Item 1. Hind Assault Helicopter Model VII A (the winged beast of Afghan fame). Price: $15 million per copy. He'd taken four. Item 2. Sukhoi Attack Helicopter. Price: $7 million. He'd taken six. Item 3. Unpronounceable air to ground missiles at fifty thousand a pop. Two hundred sat in his hangar. Turn the page. Section II: Tracked Vehicles. T-52 Tanks at $2 million apiece. He had a damned fleet of them, twenty-five in all. Mobile Katyusha Rocket launchers. A bargain at half a million per. He'd taken ten. Next to item seven, page two, the Zhukov armored personnel carrier with rear-mounted quad.50-caliber machine guns on sale at $250,000 per, there was a star and a handwritten addendum: "Still in use by the Russian Armed Forces- spare parts available!!!" He'd taken a dozen. The list went on and on. A devil's cornucopia of deadly toys. Field artillery, mortars, machine guns, grenades, mines, t.o.w.'s. Enough weaponry to fully equip two reinforced companies of infantry, a company of armored cavalry, and a squadron of attack helicopters. Six hundred men in all.

And to think they were only a diversion.

Mevlevi laughed slyly while he turned to the final page of the document. The main event, as it were. He moved his eyes across the page. The words leaped up at him as if it were the first time he had seen them, and not the hundredth, causing his scrotum to tighten and his skin to bristle with goose bumps.

Section V. Nuclear Ordnance. 1 Kopinskaya IV two-kiloton concussive bomb. Mevlevi's mouth grew dry. A battlefield nuclear weapon. An atomic device no larger than a mortar shell carrying one tenth the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb with only one fiftieth the radioactivity. Two thousand tons of TNT with hardly a stray atom.

It was the only item he had not been able to purchase. It would cost him roughly eight hundred million Swiss francs. He would have the money in three days' time. And the bomb in three and one half.

Mevlevi had chosen the target with great care. Ariel- an isolated settlement of fifteen thousand Jews in the occupied West Bank, constructed even as the Israelis proclaimed their good faith in negotiations concerning their withdrawal from that exact area. Did they think the Arab stupid? No man builds a town he will leave in one year. Even the name was perfect. Ariel- no doubt in honor of Mr. Ariel Sharon, the Israelis' most belligerent Arab hater, the beast who had personally supervised the massacres at Shatila and Sabra in 1982.

Ariel- the name would come to symbolize the Jews' woe.

Mevlevi yawned unexpectedly. He had risen at 4:00 A.M. to conduct a predawn review of his men on the main training field. They had looked magnificent, clad in their desert warfare utilities. Row upon row of inspired warriors, ready to advance the work of the prophet; ready to give their life for Allah. He walked their ranks, offering words of encouragement. Go with God. Inshallah. God is great.

From the field, he continued on to the two immense hangars he had had carved into the hills at the south end of his compound five years ago. He entered the first hangar and was deafened by the roar of twenty battle tanks conducting final checks on their transmission and drive trains. Mechanics swirled around the mighty beasts, asking drivers to rev the engines and rotate the turrets. Last measures of petrol were added to the lumbering giants, jerricans strapped to their steel hulls. He stopped to admire the immaculate paintwork. Moshe Dayan would turn over in his grave. Every tank had been painted to the exact specifications of the Israeli Army. Each carried an Israeli flag to be raised at the moment of the attack. Confusion was a raider's greatest ally.