Black Sunday by Thomas Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

bought from Al Fatah sources. Instead he found plastique, and then Hassan was there, going for his pistol like a fool. Plastique was heavy business, not like a normal drug deal where friends could put the squeeze on one another.
    Larmoso hoped that Muzi could solve the problem with the guerrillas and still turn a profit on the plastique. But Muzi would be furious at him for fooling with the crates.
    If Muzi did not want to cooperate, if he refused to pay off Larmoso and make amends to the guerrillas for him, then Larmoso intended to keep the plastique and sell it elsewhere. Better to be a wealthy fugitive than a poor one.
    But first he must take an inventory of what he had to sell, and he must get rid of certain garbage in the hold.
    Larmoso knew that he had hit Hassan squarely. And he had given him plenty of time to die. He decided he would sack up Hassan, weight him in the harbor at Ponta Delgada while there was only an anchor watch aboard, and dump him in deep water when he cleared the Azores.
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    Muhammad Fasil checked the cable office in Beirut hourly all day. At first he hoped Hassan's cable from the Azores had only been delayed. Always before, the cables had come by noon. There had been three of them---from Benghazi, Tunis, and Lisbon---as the old freighter plowed westward. The wording varied in each, but they all meant the same thing---the explosives had not been disturbed. The next one should be "Mother much improved today" and it should be signed Jose. At 6 P.M., when the cable had still not arrived, Fasil drove to the airport. He was carrying the credentials of an Algerian photographer and a gutted speed graphic camera containing a .357 Magnum revolver. Fasil had made the reservations as a precaution two weeks before. He knew he could be in Ponta Delgada by 4 P.M. the next day.
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    Captain Larmoso relieved his first mate at the helm when the Leticia raised the peaks of Santa Maria early on the morning of November 2. He skirted the small island on the southwest side, then turned north for San Miguel and the port of Ponta Delgada.
    The Portuguese city was lovely in the winter sun, white buildings with red-tiled roofs, and evergreens between them rising nearly as high as the bell tower. Behind the city were gentle mountain slopes, patched with fields.
    The Leticia looked scalier than ever tied at the quay, her faded Plimsoll line creeping up out of the water as the crew off-loaded a consignment of reconditioned light agricultural equipment and creeping down again as crates of bottled mineral water were loaded aboard.
    Larmoso was not worried. The cargo handling involved only the aft hold. The small, locked compartment in the forward hold would not be disturbed.
    Most of the work was completed by the afternoon of the second day, and he gave the crew shore leave, the purser doling out only enough cash to each man for one evening in the brothels and bars.
    The crew trooped off down the quay, walking quickly in anticipation of the evening, the foremost sailor with a blob of shaving cream beneath his ear. They did not notice the thin man beneath the colonnade of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, who counted their as they passed.
    The ship was silent now except for Captain Larmoso's footsteps as he descended to the engine room workshop, a small compartment dimly lit by a bulb in a wire cage. Rummaging through a pile of castoff parts he selected a piston rod, complete with wrist-pin assembly, which had been ruined when the Leticia's engine seized off Tobruk in the spring. The rod looked like a great metal bone as he hefted it in his hands. Confident that it was heavy enough to take Hassan's body down the long slide to the bottom of the Atlantic, Larmoso carried the rod aft and stowed it in a locker near the stern along with a length of line.
    Next he took from the galley one of the cook's big burlap garbage bags and carried it forward through the empty wardroom toward the forward companionway. He