“That was to help focus your attention,” Saleh offered, his eyes every bit as hard as Thomson’s. “So, if you want to be cute again, Sergeant Sayyid will gladly oblige. I hope you do, because you and your humor are equally repulsive to me.” Saleh was seething. “Who do you think you are? We Egyptians ruled the greatest empire in the world while your ancestors squatted in mud huts and scratched each other’s fleas. You stand there stinking of gin and have the audacity to insult my people? I do not understand it. How could a great power like yours dare send us a piece of dung like you?”
He stared at Thomson hoping for a response, but Thomson was not that stupid. He kept his mouth shut, stone cold sober now. “I thought so,” Saleh said with a faint, sarcastic smile. “Now you will tell me the details of your arrangements with Mahmoud Yussuf — all of them.”
“We had no arrangements.”
“How was it to work?” Saleh hammered away. “Were you to meet him, or was he to meet you? How was it to be done?”
“We had no arrangements! I had just finished telling him I was not interested, when your two men stepped in the front door. Yussuf took one look at them and tore out the back door like a scared rabbit. He left and I stayed sitting right there, all night — and we both know I can prove it! So get off it, Captain. It won’t work.”
Thomson stopped, expecting the grilling to get worse, expecting something, anything; but he did not expect the new, confused expression he saw on Saleh’s face. “Why do you keep saying my men?” Saleh quietly asked. “What men? What did they look like?”
More games, Thomson thought. “They were Goons, two of them, big, but not quite as big as these two of yours. I assume Egyptian — Arabs anyway — with their hair cut short, white-wall military-style. They wore cheap suits with bulges, so they were carrying. What does that make them? Cops? Army? State Security? Take your pick.”
Saleh paused, looking at him intently. “Is that the truth or more of your lies?”
“It’s the truth, just like the rest.”
“We shall see.” He turned and snapped his fingers at Sayyid again. Thomson flinched, but the burly sergeant only smiled and handed him a large manila envelope. “Perhaps this will impress you, Mister Thomson.” Saleh had a strange smile on his lips. “Open it.”
Thomson raised the flap and pulled out another photograph. It was a larger, 8 ½ by 11, much larger than the mug shot of Yussuf, but in the same grainy black and white. Thomson turned it to the light and rotated it, trying to figure out what he was looking at.
“Take your time, Mister Thomson. If I were a CIA agent operating in Cairo and the police found that lying on my doorstep, I would want to be very, very cooperative with them.”
As the visual pieces suddenly fell into place, Thomson’s stomach leaped into his throat. He closed his eyes, but the gruesome image that came into focus would not go away.
“Oh, no, Mister Thomson,” Saleh said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Take another look, a good, long one this time. Remember, I said I was from homicide.”
Thomson opened his eyes. He saw what appeared to be a body lying spread-eagled on its back on a slab of concrete. It looked like a large, lumpy sack of potatoes, with arms and legs poking out at odd, obscene angles.
“Does that photograph disturb you? It is in black and white, which lends it a certain unemotional, artistic detachment. You should have been there to see it firsthand, Mister Thomson, in full living color, as I had to do. Of course, it was not in living color. It was very much dead; but if you had been there to see it first hand, you would understand why I do not find any of this business very amusing tonight.”
Thomson’s stomach lowered itself back into place, enough at least to allow a closer look at the photograph. The body was lying in a huge pool of blood, more blood than he ever dreamed a body could hold. It looked like a shiny, black pond, but that wasn’t the worst part. The body had no head. It sat a few feet away on a concrete step, where some sadist with a terminal case of the funnies placed it so that its vacant eyes could stare back down at its own body. The face was pale and swollen, and very grotesque. The man’s mouth hung open just enough for Thomson to see the glint of a gold tooth inside and immediately know who it was.
“That is your agent Yussuf, correct?” Saleh asked.
Thomson coughed. “Like I told you, he wasn’t my agent.”
“Oh? Then, are you ready for the biggest surprise of all?” Saleh leaned forward, his eyes boring into Thomson. “That photograph was taken right here, in the alley behind this hotel less than an hour ago. Imagine that — and imagine my surprise when I discovered who is staying here.”
Thomson felt drained, barely able to stand and listen, but Saleh was just warming up.
“It appears that someone separated poor Mahmoud Yussuf from his head, right after he had a secret meeting with a CIA agent in a back-street bar. Is that not interesting?”
It was obvious Saleh was toying with him, and Thomson tried hard to keep his composure.
“Please note the cleanness of the cut on the poor fellow’s neck. It almost appears surgical, does it not?” the Police Detective went on. “Can you imagine how powerful an arm and how sharp a blade it took to do something like that — to sever a man’s head from his shoulders with one perfect stroke, slicing through all that muscle and bone and simply lop it off as if it were a ripe melon on a vine? No. I doubt you could imagine that, Mister Thomson. Swords are part of our heritage, so an Egyptian or an Arab might attempt it, but even The Grand Caliph’s High Executioner would have trouble making a stroke like that. You see, this was not some routine back-alley murder. Call it an execution, a punishment, a gesture, a statement, or a message, if you like; but someone had a perverse desire to make a very violent, ritual point of it all. I want to know what that point was, so why not tell me?”
Thomson was stunned. The booze, the hot, foul night air, and now this; like punches to his body, each had taken its toll. “You don’t seriously think I did this, do you?” he whispered.
“You?” Saleh laughed derisively. “Do not be ridiculous. Look at yourself. There is not enough gin in Cairo to give you the courage or the strength to do a thing like that. No, you did not wield that sword; but I think you know who did, and I think you know why.”
Thomson swallowed hard and tried to regain his self-control. “I had nothing to do with this. Yussuf asked me to meet him in the alley later. I didn’t go, but it looks like someone did.”
“Ah, a bit more of the story slips out.”
“He wanted money for the photographs, but I told him no and I meant it. He threatened to sell them to the Russians, but I still didn’t go. I stayed in the bar; check it out.”
“Perhaps you set him up then.”
Thomson tipped his head back. It was his turn to laugh.
“Do you find this amusing?” Saleh grew angry. “Why?”
“Why? Because I thought he was setting me up, that’s why. I thought this whole damned thing was a setup; and until just now, I figured you were the next part of it. But you aren’t, are you, Captain? You’re just another dumb cop who doesn’t know any more about it than I do.”
Saleh’s eyes flared, and he looked over at Sayyid.
“Don’t bother… don’t bother,” Thomson said, waving Sayyid off and shaking his head. “Looks like Yussuf had some good stuff after all, good enough for someone to kill him over, didn’t he? Too bad, but if I had gone for it, you’d have two bodies lying out there on the concrete, wouldn’t you? So go talk to the KGB or your own GIS people. Someone was following him. They chased the poor bastard out of the bar; and they were the ones who killed him, not me. You need to find out why.”
Saleh gave him a quick, angry look; but for once, he was the one who kept quiet. He was considering Thomson’s arguments, and he did not like the conclusions he kept reaching. “I know you are lying, Mister Thomson,” Saleh finally replied as he rose to his feet. “You know a lot more about this, but so be it. You had your chance.�
�� His words were quiet and unemotional, but his eyes raked Thomson like a fistful of nails. “When I get my proof, all the diplomatic immunity in the world won’t save you. I am Bedouin. Do you know what that means? My people spend their lives wandering through the blistering desert dressed in heavy brown robes. Some say it makes us all a bit mad. I prefer to call it determined. Well, every now and then, an old Bedu will stop in his tracks, look up into the blinding sun, and utter a prophecy as if he were reading words carved by God on a stone tablet. Well, Mister Thomson, you have just heard a Bedouin prophecy. Remember it.”
Saleh limped painfully to the door. When he reached it, he stopped and turned back. “Allah permits each man to have one blind, irrational passion in his life, Mister Thomson. Mine is my nation, and I will stop at nothing to protect it. For the first time in over two thousand years, an Egyptian rules Egypt. We are becoming a nation again and nothing else matters — nothing, and certainly not an insignificant piece of trash like you.”
“I’m not involved in this, Captain. Check it out. You’re seeing spies under the bed.”
“Am I, Mister Thomson? We shall see. You must excuse a bit of paranoia among the poor, backward peoples of the world. Nine years ago, it only took five of your CIA agents and ten thousand dollars to overthrow the Mussadegh government in Iran. You hate Gamal Nasser even more, but you are not going to get him, Thomson, not while I live. Remember that.”
Their eyes met and the challenge was understood.
Saleh turned away. He and Sayyid walked out the door, leaving it open behind them.
Thomson reached out and slammed it shut before he slumped back against the wall, shaking with rage, frustration, and not a little fear. They got him good this time, even better than Damascus, and he knew it — but why and why him? Just think, he was the one who wanted back in the game.
CHAPTER SIX
Hung over and chewed out, Thomson’s night had been bad. The next morning, after he passed through the embassy lobby and rounded the corner into the wing which held the General offices, he could see his morning was about to get a whole lot worse. Doris, the section receptionist, did not even let him get halfway to his office.
“Not so fast!” she barked, as her chewing gum snapped off a warning shot. “His Eminence wants to see you, Thomson; and I mean right now.”
“Can the condemned man get some coffee first?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it, honey.” She looked at him over the top of her glasses and shook her head. “My orders are to get your butt up to his office, if I have to get the Marine guards to drag it there.”
“You’re a peach, Doris,” he deadpanned.
“Yeah, I guess I am, aren’t I; so why don’t you do us both a favor and just go, huh?” she answered, extending a limp arm toward the elevator doors.
His shoulders dropped with a heavy sigh, knowing there was no escape. Still, why should he need one, he wondered as he got in the elevator. He had not done anything wrong. By the time he got to the top floor, strode down the long, carpeted hallway, and opened the door to the Ambassador’s outer office, Thomson had worked himself into a good case of outraged indignation. After all, who did Ambassador Kilbride think he was, anyway? Thomson was a senior intelligence field agent, and he hadn’t given them eighteen years and two wives to be treated like some flunky. That’s right, eighteen years! What had he gotten in return? He had nine hundred dollars in the bank, an old Dodge in storage in Virginia, and a couple of Christmas cards from two spoiled brats he would not even recognize. The more he thought about it, he should be the one giving Kilbride a big piece of his mind. Of course, he did nothing of the kind. Kilbride’s office door was flanked by a US flag on a brass stand on one side, a State Department flag on the other, and each accompanied by a large Marine guard at parade rest. Thomson couldn’t remember any other Ambassador who opted for this much of a show inside the embassy itself; then again, he couldn’t remember any other Ambassador with as big a need for it. However, it had its intended effect. It let the steam out of whatever remaining courage Thomson had brought with him.
The Marine on the right turned smartly and opened the door for him, as if he was expected. Inside, the Ambassador’s secretary sentenced him to wait in an uncomfortable, hard-backed armchair in the far corner of the outer office. It must be Kilbride’s Siberia for bureaucrats, he suspected; or perhaps his dunce chair? She was the highest-ranking hen in the coop and she knew it, looking supremely confident behind her big mahogany desk as she painted her nails. Why not. She knew the score of this game, and who would lose. So did everyone else in the office, including Doris. As he waited, the secretary would glance over at him every now and then with an all-too-knowing smirk that said the Ambassador was about to eat him alive, hangover and all.
When the intercom finally buzzed, she didn’t need to say a word. She just cocked her head toward the Ambassador’s office door and sent him on his way with all the warmth and sincerity of a cemetery groundskeeper. As Thomson stepped into Kilbride’s office, he saw he had pegged it about right. First, the room was big enough to host a basketball tournament. Kilbride sat at center court, leaning back in a tall, black-leather chair, where he could survey his empire from behind the brightly polished ramparts of a desk that was big enough to land a B-52 on. Thomson had to admit that the Ambassador did cut an impressive figure. With a flowing white mane, his blue-pinstriped suit, the long, expressive, manicured fingers knit together below his chin, and his pained scowl, Kilbride looked every inch the skilled, powerful diplomat to anyone who didn’t know him or the breed very well. Thomson knew this was Standard Pose #5, “The Angry Ambassador.” It came straight out of the Foggy Bottom Boys School manual. Kilbride had not actually read it, of course; but he might have scanned the pictures or colored them.
To the Ambassador’s right stood the ever-present Collins, probably on the “X” Kilbride had drawn on the carpet just for him. Collins had his arms crossed and was scowling like his boss. They were the Caped Crusader and his Boy Wonder, just as Thomson remembered them.
The Ambassador did not waste any time. “What the hell do you have to say for yourself, Thomson? When I agreed to take you in, they promised me that you’d behave. Well, the goddamn Foreign Minister himself phoned me at the crack of dawn this morning. Can you guess what he had on his mind? You! You and your goddamn CIA, running around town without the brains God gave a Vermont moose, leaving bodies lying on your own doorstep, and being stupid enough to get caught doing it. That’s what was on his mind.”
Kilbride leaned forward, red-faced, using an angry finger as a pointer. “Now, you listen to me and you listen well, lad. I don’t like your outfit; I don’t like surprises; and most of all, I don’t like you. There I was, just starting to make some headway with the guy, and you gotta go crap in his well. Well, he didn’t like that very much, and I don’t like it very much, either.” When he finally came up for air, his eyes were squinting, and his voice had turned even more sarcastic. “Let me put this in itty-bitty words that even a screw-up like you can understand. My job is to get along with these people. I talk their language; not A-rab, of course,” he said, making it sound like two words, “but one back-slapping, big-city, baby-kissing politician to another, and that game’s no different here than it is back home.”
Thomson tried hard to keep a straight face, but he knew the man was serious. Next to ambitious, Kilbride was nothing if he wasn’t serious, which made him doubly dangerous. Thomson focused his eyes on the wall above Kilbride’s shoulder, which held Kilbride’s precious photograph gallery, strategically placed so that no one in the office could avoid seeing it. Somehow, the bastard had managed to pose with every Back Bay and Washington Democratic politician imaginable, from Old Man Kennedy and Jim Curley, to Mike McCormack, Tip O’Neill, all the Kennedy boys, and a gaggle of short, fat mayors, Congressmen, and judges. They were the ones who were smiling, and why not? Kilbride was the white-haired, shanty-Irish businessman writing the checks. Someone told Thomson after Kilb
ride arrived that he had been “big in concrete.” Well, not big enough or deep enough, Thomson thought.
“You know what they sent me this morning?” Kilbride waved a familiar black-and-white photographic print in the air. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! They cut that poor bastard’s head off. Makes me want to puke every time I think about it,” he said as he tossed the print on the desk between them. “Have you people gone nuts or something?”
“I had nothing to do with that,” Thomson answered.
“Don’t insult my intelligence, lad. They said this guy was selling you photographs.”
“And I told them I wasn’t buying.”
“Thomson, that doesn’t wash any better with me than it did with them. Damn it, man!” Kilbride slammed his palms on the desk with a loud slap. “I told Langley I didn’t want you here, but they pushed. I was new and dumb. I wanted to be a ‘team player,’ so I caved. Now look what I got. I ought to ship your sorry ass back to them right now, but I can’t do that, can I? It’d be as good as admitting to the Egyptians that you’re guilty. So, I’m stuck with you at least until things cool down. Damn!” he pushed his chair back and glowered. “As if I don’t have enough problems! So you listen and listen good, mister. If I’m stuck with you, then you are sure as hell stuck with me. This is my embassy,” he said as he poked himself in the chest with his thumb. “I’m in charge here, not a bunch of spooks from Langley. From now on, you don’t go to the can without asking first. Don’t even sneeze or fart loud without a teacher may I. You do, and you’ll be out in the desert with a clipboard counting camels so fast your head’ll spin. You got me?”
Cold War Trilogy - A Three Book Boxed Set: of Historical Spy Versus Spy Action Adventure Thrillers Page 79