“Und was ist los, heir?” The sergeant bent down and peered into the front seat, leering at her until he saw that someone was sitting beside her. “Who is this?”
“My friend, and no business of yours, Klaus. So, let me through!”
“I know nothing of any friend,” he said as his finger touched the shoulder of her bathrobe. “When did he arrive?”
“He arrived at noon, before you came on duty. We have been making mad, passionate love all day long. I am surprised a snoop like you didn’t hear my screams of ecstasy from here,” she knocked his hand away and glared up at him. “Now get out of my way, Klaus, and tell Faisal to open the gate, or I shall have another talk with Major Grüber about you.”
Klaus’s round, fat mouth twisted into a vicious snarl. His eyes shifted back and forth from her to Thomson and then back to her again. Finally, he backed his head out of the window. “Sehr gut, Fräulein Fengler. You and your, uh, friend may pass. This incident shall go in my report, however. You may be certain of that, as well as your little jokes. We shall see who has the last laugh then, eh?”
He snapped his fingers, and the terrified Egyptian sentry raised the barrier. She didn’t wait. She pushed the accelerator to the floor and drove off in a billowing cloud of dust. Thomson looked back and saw Klaus fighting the dust and cursing as the car sped away. His face was filled with an animal fury that Thomson did not want to see at close range again.
“Not a good choice, antagonizing him like that,” Thomson said.
“Klaus? He is a pig. I hate him almost as much as I hate Grüber — and now you.”
“But mad, passionate love? That’s a good one.”
She glared at him then jammed the accelerator to the floor. She sped the next half mile down the road until he held up his hand and said, “You can stop here, Ilsa.”
“Here? What next?’’ she demanded. “After burglary and kidnapping, are you going to add rape and murder to your list of crimes?”
“No, no.” He laughed. “I’m far too old for that. You’re just going for a pleasant walk back home on a mild summer’s evening.” He nudged her out of the car with the gun barrel. “You can go back to Papa now, Fräulein Fengler, no worse off than when I found you.”
She took a few steps away from the car and turned back, staring at him, still trying to figure him out. “You will never get away with this, you know.”
“I already have,” he smiled, “and don’t fret your little head about the car. I’ll park it outside the German Embassy and you can get it in the morning. Fair enough?”
“What am I supposed to tell them?” She glanced at the dim glow from the camp above the horizon.
“Tell them the truth. Say I stuck a gun in your ribs and made you drive me out the gate. They’ll find it under the seat. That should be enough to back up your story. Besides, you can blame the whole thing on Klaus. Tell them you tried to signal him, but he never took his eyes off the front of your bathrobe. Tell them he smelled from schnapps.”
For the first time, he saw her smile.
“You know,” Thomson said, “your face doesn’t crack into little pieces when you do that. No telling what some practice would do, so have a pleasant walk home, Fräulein Fengler. Perhaps we can meet under better circumstances next time.”
“Who are you?” she suddenly asked.
“Why? Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Then it’s Thomson. Okay?” He dropped the car into gear and drove off, leaving her standing by the side of the road with another of those silly smiles on her face. Women, he thought. Right now, he needed one like he needed a hole in the head.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Thomson’s night ended late and his morning came far too early. Sandwiched between were a few hours of restless sleep and the same old nightmares. It was dark. He was running down a long, narrow tunnel, desperate and out of breath, and chasing him was a black limousine. The walls on each side of the tunnel gleamed like wet, translucent glass. They rose from the bare earth beneath him high into the gray mists above. He ran faster and faster, but each time he dared turn his head and look back, he saw the bright headlights of a long limousine getting closer and closer. The walls were even more terrifying. He could see through them into dark shadows where some hideously distorted faces were laughing and taunting him, cheering as he ran faster and faster; but they were cheering for the car. Kilbride was there, of course, in the front row. So were Blondie, Saleh, and that fat Arab. He was holding his own severed head high above the crowd so he could watch the show. The Syrian Colonel from Damascus with the sweet tooth was there too, playing catch with a smoking bomb, waving at him. He saw that prim bastard Collins, as well as Doris, snapping her gum at him. Worst of all, Thomson saw his two ex-wives, laughing hysterically and slapping each other on the back. The only one who seemed the slightest bit concerned was Ilsa Fengler. She stood off by herself in her bathrobe and hair curlers, crying. All Thomson could do, however, was to keep running, knowing that no matter how hard he tried, he would lose the race in the end. Still, he could not quit. The car would surely get him, but he could never give those faces the satisfaction of seeing him quit.
The one nice thing about his dream was that he never felt any pain. Every time the car was about to smack into him, he would wake up in a cold, chilling sweat. This time, however, it was a loud pounding on his hotel door that saved him. He threw on a pair of pants and looked out, only to be greeted by the unfriendly mugs of two big security guards from the embassy — and Collins.
“Get dressed, mister,” the Boy Wonder ordered in his best Kilbride impersonation, wedging the door open with his foot. Thomson looked down, sorely tempted to slam it shut and break the fool’s ankle; but one of the two big security guards saw the look and shoved Thomson back into the room. After that, Collins backed off and kept his distance, knowing he didn’t want to get too close to Thomson.
“Collins, it’s the middle of the goddamned night,” Thomson fumed.
“No, it’s 5:00 a.m., and Ambassador Kilbride wants to see you. That’s all the reason you or I need, Thomson.”
Collins was his usual officious self, and he let the security guards do the dirty work. They shoved Thomson into a chair and began tossing the contents of his small dresser and closet into a suitcase. That did not take very long. Thomson could have moved everything he owned in the backseat of a VW Bug and still have room for passengers. In two minutes, they were packed and out the door. One guard had him by the elbow and the other had his suitcase, and then it was the fast lane to the embassy and a slow elevator ride up to the Ambassador’s fifth floor office.
Kilbride was already there, sitting in his big desk chair, looking red-faced and well-rehearsed. “You gotta be certifiably nuts, Thomson,” he began in his loudest, most sarcastic voice. “The Agency shrinks ought to toss you in a rubber room.”
Thomson didn’t respond. He stood directly in front of the Ambassador’s desk, hands clasped behind him, staring down at Kilbride, who appeared relaxed, confident, and bored.
“Damnation! Can you possibly be this stupid, or did somebody back in Massachusetts send you here to get me? Is that it?”
Thomson didn’t rise to the bait, wrecking Kilbride’s script. He continued to stare down at Kilbride, watching the Ambassador shift uncomfortably in his chair.
“I freakin’ cannot believe it.” The Ambassador started to back down. “How could you break into an Egyptian military base and kidnap that young woman? It is too bad she didn’t shoot you. That would have solved my problem the easy way; and by the time I’m finished, you’ll wish she had. I got another phone call from the Foreign Minister in the middle of the night. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I even got one from the German Ambassador! Who’s next, Thomson? The Russians? The British? The goddamned Norwegians?”
Thomson had had enough, more than enough. He leaned forward, putting the palms of his hands on Kilbride’s freshly polished desk and pressing uncomfortably close to t
he Ambassador’s face. “Since you had them all on the line, Mister Ambassador, did you bother to ask them about Fengler and the rest of the Germans who are working out there?”
“Fengler? Fengler?” Kilbride’s eyes bulged.
“Yes, Fengler! You heard me,” Thomson fired back in a tone of voice Kilbride was not accustomed to hearing.
“Nonsense,” the Ambassador snapped back. “I met him at one of their Embassy parties a while back — a mousey little twerp…”
“Did you ask him what he did? Or were you afraid of what he might tell you? Well, let me jam a few facts into that thick Irish skull of yours. There is a bunch of Krauts working at that old RAF base out in the desert. He’s one of them and they aren’t making cuckoo clocks. They’re making rockets — long-range rockets — and they have a small army of goose-stepping SS guards to protect them. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you. No, you don’t want to know about anything that might spoil your neat little plans.”
Kilbride’s face turned red and then white, as he quickly shrank back into the cushions of his chair and turned his eyes away.
That was when it hit Thomson. “Wait a minute. You do know, don’t you?” Thomson asked him in disbelief. “You know, and you haven’t done a damned thing to stop them, have you?”
Kilbride wiped his hand across his lips, looking small and scared with no place to hide. “Jeezuz, Mary, and Joseph, I told you to stay clear of that place, Thomson,” he blustered, trying to regain control. “I swear, if you’ve screwed this thing up, I’m going to have your head on a platter.”
“It’s way too late for threats, Mr. Ambassador. Don’t you understand what they’re doing out there?”
Kilbride leaned forward in his chair, his face livid. “See, I don’t have to understand a goddamned thing, Thomson, except that you’re meddling in stuff you have no business meddling in and disregarding a direct order.”
Thomson shook his head, disbelieving what he had just heard. “You think you can sit here in Cairo and let it happen? What are you going to tell State? Wash your hands and claim you knew nothing about it?”
Kilbride jumped to his feet, his angry expression giving way to a cynical belly laugh. “State? You want to know what I’m going to tell State? You moron! You half-witted, bumbling, old moron!” Then he laughed even harder. “Is that what you think? You think the State Department doesn’t know?”
This time it was Thomson’s turn to be stunned, as the enormity of Kilbride’s words hit him full force.
“You silly son of a bitch,” the Ambassador crowed. “Why do you think I wanted you and your damned CIA to keep out of it? Why do you think it’s so goddamned sensitive? Of course, we know there are Germans out there — Fengler, Höchengler, and all the rest of them; but so what! They brought in a few goose-stepping SS retreads to babysit them. Does that offend your tender sensibilities, Thomson? Well, tough! That war was a long time ago. It’s been over for what… seventeen years now?”
“Not to them. Do you think this is going to help you get along better with the Egyptians? Is that what you think, Mr. Ambassador?” Thomson looked down at him, stunned at what he was hearing. “Why do you think they’re making those rockets? You think they’re saving them for the Fourth of July?”
“Oh, who cares,” Kilbride glared up at him. “They don’t mean a damned thing. What do you think they’re gonna get from those Peenemünde retreads, anyway? We got Von Braun and the pick of the litter back in ’45, and the Russians got the scraps. As for the ones left over, believe me, that bunch of Mister Wizards they’ve got out at Heliopolis couldn’t make good cow shit on a dairy farm. They’re third-rate or worse. All that Nasser’s gonna get for his money is a bunch of V-2s with a fresh coat of paint. As I said, who cares?”
“A lot of people will when they drop one on Tel Aviv.”
“They aren’t gonna do that, Thomson!” Kilbride stubbornly shook his head. “The Egyptians have Russian bombers that carry a bigger payload than one of the old V-2s. Hell, I’m told they only got a couple, maybe three or four, max. When the Germans hit London with hundreds of ’em, they hardly made a dent.”
“Unless it was your house… and you were in it.”
“Don’t go getting all sanctimonious on me. Besides,” he dismissed Thomson’s point with a wave of his hand, “Nasser’s never going to use the damned things. He wouldn’t dare. His people told me so. The Israelis would paste him good, and they know it. So you tell me, what’s wrong with him having a few to show off to his Arab pals? It’s a big status symbol to these people, a matter of national pride, that’s all. What’s the harm? Nasser’s a guy we can deal with. If it pumps him up and makes him happy, then I’m happy.”
Thomson shook his head.
“Okay, they aren’t making airplanes out there, Thomson. I lied. Big deal. Nasser wants some new toys, and we can’t sell him any, not with that Israeli lobby in Congress — but I’ll be damned before I let the Russians get their hooks in him any deeper, either. Do you remember the Aswan Dam? We turned him down, but Moscow sure didn’t. Well, this time it’s going to be different. That’s why his little deal with the Germans solves everybody’s problem, doesn’t it?”
“Do you really think you can keep the genie in the bottle that easily?”
“It’s policy, boy! Mine and Washington’s, so you damned well better believe it’s going to work. Everyone knows about it; and they know when to play dumb, too. I told you before, boy. Jack and Dean told me to get Nasser on our team, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Besides, if Nasser does have a few rockets, it might teach those damned Israelis some manners. The more worried they get, the more they’ll toe our line for a change, not the other way around; so everybody benefits… Well, everybody except you, Thomson.” Kilbride leaned across the desk, his eyes hard and menacing. “That’s why I can’t have some washed-up Sneaky Pete coming in here screwing the whole deal up for me, not now. So, I’m dropping a big lid on you, Thomson.”
“Like you did on Landau and on Yussuf?” Thomson said.
Kilbride dismissed the point with another quick wave of his hand. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“Sure you did. You dropped a big lid on them, too. You fed them to the Egyptians, didn’t you? Landau trusted us. He found out what was going on out there and tried to get the word out, so you set him up, didn’t you? You cynical bastard. Who played Evans?” Thomson asked, then shot a quick glance at Collins. “It was you, wasn’t it? Yeah, I bet it was you, Collins,” he demanded to know, but the young CIA man turned his eyes away. “You’d be the perfect choice — Judas in a three-piece suit!”
“Collins did what he was told,” Kilbride snapped angrily. “You’d be smart to learn that lesson, Thomson. Don’t go laying that dead A-rab at my feet, we had nothing to do with him or with Landau. They did it to themselves, and what happened afterward is none of my doing and none of my business.”
“Oh, bullshit! You were the only ones who did know. Yussuf got in touch with you, didn’t he? He was desperate after I threw him out of the bar, so what did he do? He phoned the embassy, and he probably tried the front door, too, trying to find some guy named Evans. When that did not work, he made the rounds of the bars, hoping the magic word photographs would get him inside to talk to Evans. That’s it, isn’t it? The photographs. That must have scared the hell out of you, so you fed him to the GIS, to State Security, or to Grüber and his SS playmates. All it took was that one little word to the right people, and your problem went away permanently.”
“That’s the Egyptians’ business, not ours.”
“Like hell it is. You let them hang it around my neck, didn’t you? If I hadn’t had an airtight alibi, you’d have let them keep me, wouldn’t you?”
“Ah, what are you complaining about? They let you go, didn’t they?”
“Who killed Yussuf?” Thomson leaned closer. “Who’s behind this?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” Kilbride said in a firm voice
as he turned his eyes away. Firm and insistent — maybe, Thomson thought, but he wasn’t a very good liar.
“If your pals know it wasn’t me, why are the cops still on my tail?”
“Well, they aren’t in on it, you dummy! This thing is way above the police. You ought to know that. Besides, you act as if you’ve never been tailed before. It kept the cops busy and away from what really counts, so you’re in no danger, Thomson. If Saleh got really nasty with you yesterday, we’d have chucked your ass on the first airplane out of town, which brings me to my last point.” Kilbride glanced at his watch and looked up with a satisfied smile. “I hate to end this little confession on a sour note, but that airplane I just mentioned will be all fueled and waiting for you in an hour. So it’s good-bye, Thomson. I wish I could say it was a little slice of Heaven, but it wasn’t. You’re Langley’s problem now, not mine.”
Part of Thomson wanted to fight back, but the rest of him was too fed up to care anymore. Besides, what good would it do? The deck had been stacked from the beginning. What was the saying? Never bet against the house; so he would go along. As he did, however, he glanced back and gave Kilbride one long, disgusted look.
The Ambassador pointed his finger at Collins. “All I want to hear from you, lad, is your happy voice at the other end of a phone telling me that his plane’s in the air; and the big bird is soaring out of sight. You got that, Collins?”
The two security guards were summoned from the outer office. They hustled Thomson out the door and into the service elevator, none too gently. With one of them on each arm, he was in the courtyard and crammed into the rear seat of a waiting car before he even realized it. As they drove away, Thomson slumped back, more angry and frustrated than he had ever been in his life. He had been had; and this time, he wasn’t to blame. Damascus was all his fault, plain and simple, with no excuses. He had blown it and deserved everything he got. Not this time, however. This time he hadn’t done a damned thing wrong. In fact, this was the first right thing he’d done in years.
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