Assignment The Cairo Dancers

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Hank? Durell here."

  "Good. Got her?"

  "Both of them."

  The telephone clicked rapidly.

  Durell said: "Are you being bugged, Hank?"

  "Not that I know of. It might be Bellau, though."

  "All right. What did he report?"

  "Not too much. Bellau is cooperating nicely. The medical report on Dorpler shows no knife or gun wounds, only the damage to be expected by a fall from Lisl's window at the Schloss, No sign of violence before his fall, but his eyes show the effects of drugs, so far unidentified, and a state of abnormal excitement. So his faculties might have been impaired."

  "No word on Steigmann?"

  "Bellau thinks he might still be in Munich. So far as we know, the subject hasn't left the country. Every road, train, bus and airline has been double-checked. Bellau is giving out to the press that Dorpler committed suicide, by the way —out of remorse for shaming the German people by letting Steigmann escape. Maybe it's best. But listen, Sam, I think I'm on to something—"

  Durell said sharply: "Bottle it up, if the phone is tapped. We can't trust anyone. Can it wait for an hour?"

  "I suppose so. Meet me at location four, can you?"

  It was the code name for the Deutsches Science Museum. Durell said: "Fine, Hank. Ring off now—"

  He started to hang up. As he did so, the window imploded with a crash of glass; the heavy curtains belled around him, and a bullet sang like a spiteful bee into the room.

  One of the girls cried out, a thin sound of pained surprise, and he saw from the corner of his eye a shade being yanked down in one of the opposite apartments. Glass had showered about his shoulders and crunched underfoot as he whirled. At the same moment, the door which he'd broken the chain of suddenly slammed inward, bouncing against the wall with a crash that brought down a heavy print. A shadow loomed there, dark and ominous. Its silhouette was accented by the quick tongues of muzzle flame from a silenced auto-pistol. The room seemed to blow apart in a cloud of shattered plaster; there was a ringing and clanging as a brass lamp hurtled across the floor. Durell's gun was in his hand. He squeezed off three shots.

  There was no time to think about it.

  The man in the doorway pitched back, his gun spitting flame. Durell jumped past the frozen girls and saw the enemy's face with two small, black holes in the forehead where his shots had gone true. He swore and dragged the would-be assassin inside, then toed the door shut and straightened. His breath came lightly, quickly. The room was filled with a white fog from the blasted wall plaster. His throat was dry. It had been a near one, a fast and accurate two-pronged attempt to eliminate him.

  Or maybe they had tried for the girls.

  Downstairs, a man shouted in hoarse, alarmed inquiry. Durell looked at Lisl and Carole.

  "Are you both all right?"

  Lisl nodded. Her young face was pale. But Carole Bain-bury held her side tightly and said: "I've been hit. It was the first bullet that did it."

  "Can you walk?"

  She was calm. "I think so."

  "Then let's get out. We're sitting quail here."

  He took a moment to fan the dead man's pockets. The face was just a face, swarthy, fleshy-lipped, with black eyes already glazing in the death-stare of universal surprise. There was no identification. The machine-pistol was German.

  "Keep down," Durell said. "The sniper is just across the areaway."

  The girls crouched and watched him with wide eyes, nrhey might have been sisters, in their communion of terror. But Carole was the calmer of the two, despite her wound.

  "Who is he?" she whispered.

  "I don't know. Algerian? One of the Dancers? An Egyptian, maybe."

  Carole nodded emphatically. "Egyptian. He must be."

  "Well, he's in no condition to tell us. Let's go."

  There was confused shouting from the apartments below. Durell eased the door open again, stepping over the dead man. No one was in sight. He signaled the girls to follow. A back stairway led them swiftly to the ground floor. Dim whistles sounded in the street now. The danger lay in the back alley. The sniper might be waiting there, guessing their path of escape. But no shots were fired as he stepped into the warm afternoon air. Sunlight lay in buttery slabs between the old houses. Traffic glittered beyond the end of the narrow back street

  "Carole?"

  "I'm all right. I can follow you."

  She had courage, he decided. He saw blood on her tweed suit, under her tightly clasped arms. He nodded to Lisl to stand by her and then walked carefully to the busy comer and arranged for a taxi to take them to the Bayerischer Hof, his hotel.

  He took a few precious seconds to pick up a bottle of brandy from the bar near the lobby, and as soon as he had locked the door of his room, he filled a glass for Carole.

  "Drink this down. All of it. Then we'll have a look at your wound."

  Surprisingly, she blushed. "But I couldn't—"

  "It's no time for modesty," he said. "Lisl, you've had some training. You can help."

  Lisl nodded and swallowed and watched him with big eyes as he made Carole Bainbury lie down on his bed. He worked swiftly and with some experience, easing off her blouse and then her pink brassiere. The left cup was filled with blood that oozed from the bullet wound. Her breasts were firm and provocative, rising with her quick breath as he searched for signs that the bullet might have gone into her rib cage. But the damage, though jagged, was only a shallow trough across the swelling top of her breast, bleeding copiously but hardly dangerous. He felt relieved. Lisl tore bandages from the bedsheet and murmured about antiseptics.

  "We'll get a doctor later," he said. "One who won't report this to the police."

  While Lisl swiftly turned professional to bandage the wound he tried Henry Gordon on the telephone. There was no answer. He let it ring for some time, then took a brandy for himself and gave another to Lisl, who refused. Then he wondered if he should try Gordon again. It seemed warm in the hotel room. As he turned away from the bed, his toe prodded Carole's big leather bag. He was surprised that she'd had the presence of mind to take it with her. Then he saw her fine tawny eyes widen as he picked it up, and he opened it over her quickly murmured protests.

  There was the usual feminine paraphernalia: a gold lipstick, tissues, powder case, British passport, change in various national currencies—mostly German—a few British half crowns and two Israeli pound notes. A curious smile of resignation moved her mouth. Her hair was disheveled, and a thin sheen of sweat made her face gleam.

  "Please, I also have some aspirin in there."

  She was calm, and she had an unusual combination of courage and intellect. Yet he had the feeling she did not belong in his business, and was not truly a part of it. For all that, he liked her, and felt a kinship that was disturbing. He met her eyes with a level stare.

  "I think it's time you told me about your associates, Carole. You certainly don't work alone, do you?"

  "No."

  "Tell me who your friends are."

  "I can't tell you that now. Not yet."

  He searched further in her bag, opened the wallet, found an international driver's license, a letter of introduction from London that fitted Gordon's information about her, and then he discovered a small snapshot in a side pouch. Carole made a sudden effort to snatch it from him, but he held it back and studied it.

  It was a desert view of what seemed to be an archaeological dig, a bleak and harsh landscape with a wadi in the background and an uncovered, ruined stone dike over the dry watercourse. Tents made black pyramids against the glaring landscape, and he recognized the tents as those of Bedouin laborers. Two figures were prominent in the foreground. One was Carole, in riding breeches and boots and a man's white shirt.

  The man whose shirt she apparently wore stood with his arm possessively about her shoulders.

  Durell looked long at the man's dim face and heard the girl sigh softly, and then she spoke in resignation.

  "Do you recogniz
e him?"

  "I've seen his picture before," Durell said. "In our counterintelligence files. Yes, I know him." He looked at Carole with new respect. "His name is Simon Asche."

  "That's right. That's Simon."

  Something in her voice, a tone of quiet possession and a deeply satisfied warmth in her brown eyes, made Durell look up at her with quick appreciation. Simon Asche was a dangerous man. On the one hand, he was known in the business to be as elusive as a wraith, as insubstantial as smoke; on the other, he was quick, deadly, implacable. Men who had known him, in Durell's business, described him as a dark scowl, a flash of white teeth, solemn black eyes, a sensitive turn of the head. He had been a brilliant desert fighter in Israel, with the rank of a major, and it was said that he had participated in the coup that captured Nasser during the war for independence there, and then agreed to the gallant gesture that granted the Egyptians their parole and set them free. In the K Section files, which Durell was committed to study regularly. Major Asche was described as a burly, hairy-chested former Englishman who had been a heavyweight on the Oxford wrestling team. He was a brilliant scholar, adept at translating ancient scrolls in Aramaic, Egyptian hieroglyphics, classic Hebrew or Attic Greek. After his military service, Asche had returned to his true love, which was archaeology. One notation that Durell remembered in the NSA files was to the effect that Major Asche was currently at work on a dig in the Negev, exploring old Nabatean ruins. The last note stated that Asche was a member of the Shin-bet-Israeli Intelligence Service.

  He replaced the faded snapshot in Carole's bag and met her calm eyes. Some of the color had returned to her cheeks, and she sat up carefully, with Lisl's help. Lisl gave her a Gauloise. The scratch of the match was abnormally loud in the stillness as Carole lit the cigarette.

  "How long have you known Asche?" Durell asked.

  "Simon? A lifetime—yet only moments." Her smile mocked him, but when she used his name, she looked more than lovely. "Simon wanted me to spot you and let you know it, of course. Was I appropriately clumsy?"

  "You were fine. How is he, these days?"

  "Devoted to his work."

  "His archaeology, or espionage?"

  "Simon does what he must, what any man of good conscience must do. If there are monsters in the world, he hunts for them. He heard you were being sent here. He hopes you will work with us."

  She sat up on the bed and swung her legs carefully to the floor, and drew a cautious breath against her wound. She was a lovely, composed girl, intelligent and attractive. She would be efficient at her work, Durell thought, whether it was in Munich or in a desert camp. It was quiet and remote in the hotel room. The only sounds came from the traffic below.

  "Suppose you tell me," he suggested, "what you don't feel free to tell Inspector Bellau."

  "Do you trust Bellau?"

  "He has his job to do, and that includes every effort to preserve West Germany's reformed image. But I don't trust him any more than I can trust you—or Major Asche."

  "Can you divorce yourself from your conscience?" she asked.

  "My job is to find Dr. Steigmann—or find where he's been taken. Is it your conscience, Carole, that made a spy out of you? Or was it because you seem to have fallen in love with the legendary Major Asche?"

  "Simon is no legend," she said quickly. "No more than you are. Since you insist on an answer, I do love him. Highly unprofessional, isn't it? I should be fired from the job, because I allow emotion to be mixed with business. It makes me unreliable, in your eyes, doesn't it?"

  "That depends," he said.

  "And he cares for me. But he doesn't let it interfere with the work he has to do. Simon is a wonderful, sensitive man. I wish sometimes he would look at me as a woman, instead of as a professional associate, either at the dig or on missions like these. I first met him when we worked together at exploring ancient Nabatean ruins in the Negev. The land was once rich and flowering, flowing with the Biblical milk and honey, did you know that? The Nabateans used canals and irrigation systems as efficient as any we could build today. We dig with a purpose, Simon says, to make the desert bloom again. . . ."

  She paused. Her brown eyes were abruptly sad and sympathetic, as she regarded Durell's tall figure. "You never allow yourself such luxuries as emotion or ideals, do you? Is it just a job to you, a contract you fulfill, a piece of work, and no more?" She halted again and looked contrite. "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair of me. And yet I wish there was something in your face that let me know I could reach you."

  Lisl broke in harshly. "Hen* Durell has nothing there. He is a machine only, nothing more. I think he accepts pain for himself as easily as he inflicts it on others."

  Durell did not look at the younger girl. He said to Carole: "According to our records, Major Asche was recently in South America, hunting down a former SS general named Rudolph Gruningen. Were you with Asche then, too? And did you *persuade' Gruningen to put a bullet through his brain?"

  "It was a necessary job. Just as we feel it is necessary to track down Dr. Steigmann. So we are here. But we are not doing as well here as in Argentina."

  He said quietly: "Because of the Cairo Dancers?"

  She considered her cigarette, held somewhat awkwardly between her square fingertips. "We have the same purpose in mind; there is no reason not to share information. The strange thing about this underground railway is that the people they smuggle away just—disappear. They don't show up working for one side or the other. East or West." She paused. "Have you ever heard of a man named Colonel Selim El-Raschid? It's a cover name, we think. We don't know who or what he is. A Syrian national, originally, but an extreme pan-Arabist responsible for several revolutions in the Middle East. He was once accused of trying a coup against Nasser, too. He's a fanatic and a monster, and at the moment, El-Raschid has Dr. Steigmann."

  "To what purpose?"

  "To smuggle him away somewhere. To a place where he and his Dancers rule. We just don't know. But Simon says it's to force from Steigmann everything he knows about American laser developments."

  "Is this Selim El-Raschid in Munich?"

  "Simon thinks so. I will not deceive you. We want Steigmann, of course, if he is a former war criminal. But much more, we must smash the Cairo Dancers before something awful happens to all of us."

  Chapter Eight

  HE LEFT the girls in the hotel room when he went to meet Henry Gordon at the Deutsches Science Museum. They promised to wait for his return and to admit no one to the room under any circumstances. But he didn't know if he could trust either of them.

  Lisl accompanied him to the door. Her young eyes searched his with confused anxiety, and she pitched her voice in a low whisper, so Carole could not overhear.

  "Bitte," she said. "I owe you a debt of thanks. Perhaps I was too cruel when I said you had no emotions. I may be wrong. But I thought I saw everything clearly, and now you have made me doubt it all. I may have made a terrible mistake. But first—shouldn't I go to Inspector Bellau, instead of hiding here, and tell him all I can about Dorpler's death?"

  "I'll take care of that."

  "But what will happen to me now?"

  "For the moment, I only want to keep you safe," he assured her. "Everything will be all right."

  She shook her head, and her pale hair swung about her straight shoulders. "No, I think not. Nothing will ever be the same for me again. Was I wrong to betray my father? Carole suggested it, but—is he really guilty of all the terrible things they say he did during the Nazi regime? When I think of it now, when he first came to me, he—he seemed so lost and frightened. Was I wrong? It all happened so long ago, before I grew up, and now it seems far away, as if those days could never have been."

  "It happened," he said grimly.

  "But you are not sure my father is guilty?"

  "I'm not sure," he said.

  "But what am I to think?" she asked desperately.

  "I can't tell you yet, Lisl. We'll just have to wait and see." He was impatient to go, but the girl
's eyes were helpless and appealing. She touched his face with a wandering fingertip. "I think you may be a good man, after all. I do not understand the life you lead, as Carole does. You may be cruel, but I think ycu can be good, too, and I trust you. I need someone to help me and advise me."

  "Stay with Carole," he suggested. "I think it may turn out all right."

  "I want to see my father again, you understand? I want another chance to listen to him. I never let him speak out, and now I cannot rest until I am sure about him, one way or another. It is you who gave me doubts about his guilt, you see. Will you take me with you, to find him?"

  "I don't know if I can. But I'll try."

  "Thank you so much," she whispered.

  He was surprised when she stood on tiptoe for a brief instant to brush her lips against his. Her mouth was fresh and young and wholesome. He felt a brief pang of guilt, recalling General McFee's orders, back in Washington. Aside from tracing down the missing scientists such as Dr. Nar-dinocchi and Professor Novotnik—ride the underground railway to its end, McFee had said—he had to find Lisl's father and take him home—or kill him.

  He touched the girl's shoulder briefly, in what he hoped was some kind of reassurance, and waited until he heard her throw the bolt after he closed the door. Then he left.

  The afternoon had turned abruptly chilly, and an overcast that hid the Alps threatened imminent rain. He was late for his meeting with Henry Gordon, and traffic to the Isar bridges was congested, delaying him another ten minutes. The rain began to fall, dimpling the gray river with its barge traffic. The monumental mass of the Deutsches Science Museum gleamed with lights in the quick gloom that obscured the city.

  The place where he was to find Hank Gordon was near the model exhibits, those intricately operating miniature mines, industrial plants and oil refineries whose push-button controls and perfect mechanization amazed and delighted the visitors.

  But Henry Gordon was not there.

  He scanned the crowd rapidly, but the pleasant, bald man was not in sight. Worry began to nag at him. He did not linger too long; he did not want to be spotted. And after five minutes he walked out to the main entrance of the museum and turned up his collar against the cold rain that seemed to have settled in for the rest of the afternoon.