Assignment The Cairo Dancers

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Did you not expect me?" Bellau smiled cheerfully. "But it was not too difficult to trace you to Egypt."

  "To this hotel? To this room?" Simon demanded.

  "My dear Major Asche, we are all of us very clever people, are we not?" Bellau was ingratiating. "We have our information sources, our files on our friends and enemies. How is Ibrahim Ben-Haakim, by the way? I do not see him with you."

  Simon swore thickly. Durell closed the door and said: "I think we can all use some food and a tall, cool drink, Simon. Will you call down for something?"

  The Israeli said angrily: "But no one could know of our plans, or this suite. Why is this man here? Did you tip him—?"

  "How could I?" Durell asked. "Let's not quarrel for the amusement of the Inspector."

  "Exactly," said Bellau. He looked as he had been in Munich. His round, gnome's head was still too large for his pipe-stem neck, and his tiny feet, in shining patent-leather shoes, dangled several inches from the floor as he sat at ease in the big chair. He wore what seemed to be the same theatrical, flowing ascot of blue polka-dots. His antique walking stick with its gold knob supported his chin, and only the yellow tiger's eyes betrayed the real danger in the man as he considered Durell, Asche and the girl. "We must not quarrel," he said. "We have one goal in common, nein? We all seek the Second Prophet and his crew of murderous Dancers, and whatever else we do not have in common, we surely have this. My files on Major Asche are quite complete, and include his Bedouin friends and his apparatus here in Cairo. I put one and two together"—he nodded to Asche, then to Durell and Lisl—"and came here to wait for your arrival. I must congratulate you on your success to this point."

  "What do you want?" Durell asked bluntly.

  "Merely to join your effort, as I said. And I must suggest that your presence illegally in Egypt, whose government, like most dictatorships, is paranoiacally suspicious of illegal entries and espionage, is utterly dangerous."

  "The security police here are not alerted."

  "How can one know?" Bellau asked blandly.

  Simon asked angrily: "Did you alert them?"

  "Please, I told you, we are allies."

  "Only because it suits your dirty little schemes, Bellau," Simon said. "We have our dossier on you, too, and not much of it is good."

  "Did I not cooperate with you in Munich? Is it my fault that Dr. Steigmann escaped our custody?"

  Durell said: "I've been thinking about that, and by all the laws of probability, I'd guess it was your fault."

  "My dear Mr. Durell—"

  "Just one moment," Durell said.

  The atmosphere of suspicion and anger had built up too rapidly, Durell decided. He smiled, and again told Simon to order food and drinks, and suggested that Lisl take a shower. Simon remembered he had fresh clothes for all of them, and while he produced them, Durell checked the lavish suite with meticulous care. He was always careful, and his reflex alarm bells were clamoring in the back of his mind as he made a swift search of the hotel rooms. There was a bath and bedroom and the sitting room they first entered, with all the windows overlooking Elhamy Street and the rich lawns that swept down to the banks of the Nile. He checked the bath before Lisl, with a timid and grateful smile, edged by, only too anxious to shed her tattered clothing and try on the outfit Simon had procured for her. He found nothing. The bedroom was also clean. There was a small balcony, reached through sliding glass doors, but no one could get on it from those on either hand on the same floor, and those above were staggered so that it would take an extraordinary acrobat to swing from one to another, and then only with the utmost risk. Durell did not count it out, but no one was there, and everything seemed safe.

  Bellau watched him as he went about the sitting room, upturning chairs, looking behind the prints on the walls, unscrewing bulbs in the ornate brass lamps, checking under the Persian carpet and testing the ivory inlay of a hexagonal Bombay table. He found nothing, and this struck a wrong note. He respected the Egyptian security apparatus, knowing them to be neither stupid nor careless. Possibly, the listening devices had been installed when the hotel was being built. Very few new buildings in foreign capitals were neglected at that stage by security police. But his uneasiness persisted.

  He changed clothes, accepting the dark British-made suit that Simon tossed to him, and put on a fresh cotton shirt with gratitude. The passports Simon produced had authentic photographs of himself and Lisl; they were described as British subjects on a BEA tour of the Near East.

  "It's good work, Simon," he admitted. "How long do we stay here?"

  "Until after dinner. We shall eat in the suite, and then Ben-Haakim will drive us to the airport."

  "Then we must wait six hours, at least."

  "It cannot be helped," Simon said.

  "And what do you propose to do with Bellau?"

  Simon shrugged. "Accept him as one of us, I suppose."

  "I think not," Durell said flatly.

  The tone of his words made the dwarf raise his chin from the golden head of his walking stick.

  "My dear Durell, you are right to be suspicious, but your suspicions should not be directed at me. The Egyptians also hunt the Dancers, naturally, and they mean to smash this self-styled Second Prophet. Some years ago, the man who was then known as Colonel El-Raschid tried an unsuccessful coup against Nasser and almost succeeded in an assassination attempt, in order to seize political power here. Such matters are not lightly forgotten, and never forgiven, in Cairo. El-Raschid is known for his lust for power and his grandiose schemes to write his name into history. This scheme is already operative, and no doubt has gone successfully beyond its first stages. He has gathered men who share his fanaticism, and he uses religious zeal and frenzy to equate his use of the finest minds on this planet with his own stature. You may rest assured that his danger is recognized here in Egypt."

  "And Egypt," Durell said flatly, "also knows the value of the power he's gathered in his hideout, wherever it is. Egyptian security doesn't hunt him for altruistic motives. From the past record, it's a moot point as to which hands may prove most dangerous, given this power. Nasser wouldn't lightly give up the men and devices that El-Raschid has stolen."

  Bellau sighed gently and considered his elegant walking stick. "You must learn to trust Simon."

  "I do trust him. But I don't trust you. I have the feeling we're being listened to, and I also have the feeling that you made this long trip to satisfy your greed for information, Inspector Bellau, which you can use in your notorious files that have saved your skin so often in the past. What do you want from us?"

  "Like all Americans, you are blunt. But I do prefer honesty. It is refreshing, I must say, in our business."

  "What do you want?" Durell insisted.

  "Everything you know, all that you have learned in these past few days." Bellau's yellow tiger's eyes glistened. "After all, I may prove to be helpful."

  "I doubt that. And if we don't share what we know?"

  Bellau rubbed his chin with the gold head of his stick. "Are you proposing a bargain?"

  "I'm asking what you hold over us as blackmail. What if we just kick you out of here and tell you to go about your business?"

  "Then I should be forced to do just that."

  "Meaning—?"

  "One call to the Egyptian security office here and none of you will ever board that plane tonight."

  Simon Asche growled angrily in his bull's throat. In the bathroom, the long hiss of Lisl's shower finally ended. It was quiet then. Durell moved with care to the center of the room, facing the exquisite little man.

  "Bellau, you haven't been honest with us from the start, even though you say honesty is refreshing. Let's have some clean air in here. You have files on Dr. Steigmann that could give us the truth about him. Lisl is risking her life to learn that truth. You know whether Steigmann is innocent or guilty of war crimes. Give us the answer now."

  "I am sorry; that is not possible."

  "Simon?" Durell said.

/>   Simon nodded and moved to the other side of the dwarfs chair. The round head came about to survey both men. Bellau leaned on his stick and slid his tiny feet to the floor.

  "I seem to be surrounded. I do not like threats, gentlemen. I'm afraid all deals are now off."

  "Yes, they are," Durell said. "Especially since you've been betraying us from the moment we came in here."

  "I do not understand."

  "Give me your stick, Inspector."

  "My stick?"

  "Your pretense of stupidity is foolish. And we know you're not a fool, only a self-seeking egotist balancing your life on a pile of secret dossiers that give you extraordinary power, both East and West. Give me the stick."

  Bellau started his move, and he was fast, but Durell was faster. As the dwarf drew back on the gold head of the cane, exposing a flash of steel from the hidden sword inside, Durell jumped and caught his wrist and wrenched hard. Bellau was surprisingly strong, but he lacked the weight to counter Durell's leverage. He cried out something that was not in German, but Arabic; he tried to lunge away, twisting the long tongue of steel out of Durell's grip and slashing the air before him with swift, whipping gestures that could have been murderous. Lisl cried out in alarm, and Durell leaped over the chair to take Bellau from the side. The sharp tip of the sword-cane hissed dangerously near as Bellau backed for the door. Durell came in under his guard at the same moment that Simon struck from the other side. The sword went spinning in a deadly arc across the room. Bellau gave a high-pitched yelp and tried to evade Durell's grip. But Durell picked him up and slammed him without ceremony into the deep armchair. The little German bounced, tried to rise, and looked into the muzzle of Simon's gun, and then into Durell's equally deadly blue eyes.

  "Enough," Bellau gasped. "Bitte. I yield!"

  Durell let out a long breath and picked up the gold-handled sheath of the sword. "It isn't the steel I'm worried about, Bellau. It's your transmitting radio."

  He wrenched at the golden griffin head on the cane and unscrewed it swiftly, exposing a tiny broadcasting outfit that hummed when he put it to his ear. Small wonder he'd found no microphones in the suite! From the moment of their arrival, Bellau had been broadcasting every word they had spoken! But to whom? And where?

  Simon's breath exploded in a gust of anger. "The little swine has betrayed us. Let me kill him, Sam."

  "One moment."

  "We cannot let him live!"

  "We can't let him die, either, Simon." Durell surveyed the gnome gravely. "Tell us about Steigmann, quickly."

  Bellau's face had turned a pasty gray with fear. His yellow eyes were bloodshot, jerking from one ominous figure to the other. "There were two Steigmanns—brothers—very close in age and appearance. One was in charge of a prison camp, an SS colonel as well as a scientist, and the other specialized in optics and electronics. Both brilliant men. We know that one was killed. The other made it to the West in safety and was employed by the AMG. But which one? I still do not know."

  Durell said thinly: "This is no time for lies. Which was innocent?"

  "I swear, it is all confused, and I would like to know the truth myself!"

  Durell glanced at Lisl and saw the sudden hope flicker across her tense face. He nodded briefly. "All right, we'll drop it for now. Who was at the other end of your little broadcasting system?"

  Bellau was silent.

  Simon said: "I'll give the swine five seconds. One—two— three—"

  Bellau spread his small hands in a defensive gesture as if to push away Simon's threat. "Wait, I know when I am defeated. I have my own people here in Cairo—"

  "You're sure it wasn't the Egyptians?"

  "They cooperate with us, but I was not yet ready to advise them of what I know."

  "If you're lying and we're caught," Durell said decisively, "you'll die first, do you understand?"

  "I am not lying."

  "Then let's get out of here. Simon, can you get Ben-Haakim?"

  "He is downstairs in the lobby."

  "Get the car. We'll have to change our hideout."

  "And Bellau?"

  "We take him along." Durell looked angrily at the dwarf. "We'll use him as hostage for a safe passage."

  Chapter Twenty

  THE ROOM was Small and smelled of stale food, sweat, urine, and dust. Inspector Bellau protested with fastidious distaste when Ben-Haakim led them through a crowded rug bazaar and the back rooms of phony-antique merchants who seemed to close their eyes to their presence. Through the small, barred windows of the room came the clanging of trolley bells and auto traffic as the shops reopened after their one-o'clock pause in the heat of the day. Ben-Haakim, fat and sweaty, brought them couscous and water in mineral flasks and handed Durell a bottle of American bourbon with a small, knowing smile on his villainous face. Durell accepted it gratefully, not surprised that the Bedouin knew his personal taste; Simon would have briefed him long ago.

  He sat with his back to the wall, watching the others through the weary hours of the afternoon, and tried not to feel trapped by their circumstances. He had done what he could. It was not Simon's fault that Bellau had wrecked their escape plan. But he felt impatient to get on with it, knowing it was more necessary than ever to recover Professor Steig-mann and clean up the Dancers.

  Lisl and Simon talked together m low whispers for endless hours. He could tell by the girl's soft and gentle face that Carole Bainbury was one topic of discussion, and their own problems another. He felt rueful about their intimacy. Yesterday, Lisl had depended on him for every move; today, all her interest was centered on the Israeli agent. Not that she was fickle—and even if she were, it would be a matter of relief to him not to be responsible for her. But she was like a lost child, trying to find her way home where she could know herself and feel safe and have a purpose that had not existed before. On the other hand, he was pleased that Simon's eyes had lost their dead bleakness, and showed some flickers of animation as he talked to the girl. Durell sighed. He was not in the business as a matchmaker. None of it would matter if they did not escape from Cairo tonight. ...

  At dusk, the one-eyed Ben-Haakim appeared with two of his tribesmen. He reported the city quiet, with no unusual police activity. Bellau seemed relieved. He insisted that his game with the radio transmitter had been only to relay information to one of his personal aides in his Cairo apparatus. But it still remained to be seen, Durell thought, who really had been listening and what action might follow.

  A different car was used to take them through the streets of Cairo to the airport. Lisl sat next to Durell. She was silent, but her eyes kept watching Simon. Noise and lights flashed by in dizzy patterns. Ben-Haakim had given them all new arms, but Durell wondered about the validity of the passports Simon had provided. He studied Bellau, whose reputation as a baleful spider sitting amidst his secret microfilmed records was known to every espionage agency in the world. Surely Bellau knew his life was at stake, if he were lying. Would he run such a desperate bluff, if his radio had contacted only his own people, and they tried to pull him free at the airport? Durell did not know. The dwarf's face gave nothing away.

  It was easy, after all. Perhaps too easy. His suspicion never faded as they entered the air terminal and waited for their BEA flight to Athens. The airport was crowded with all the colorful costumes and variety of faces of the Near East. The noisy babble never relented. And yet the Egyptian customs scarcely glanced at their papers as they filed aboard the waiting jet. It was not until they were airborne that Durell permitted himself to relax. He noted with wry amusement that Lisl maneuvered herself into a seat beside Simon Asche. Bellau did not struggle against Durell's gun in his back. He did not create a scene about his forcible "abduction."

  But Simon protested with quiet anger. "Why take him with us? The creature is better off dead, as far as we are concerned."

  "He can still be useful," Durell said.

  "What can he know? If we try for the Dancer hideout from the Negev, he may betray us again."
/>
  "Have you pinpointed this hideout, Simon?"

  Simon shrugged. "Judging from where they took you, we can conclude it is somewhere in the Sinai Desert. It is a rocky wilderness, of course, but Ben-Haakim's people know it well. He will meet us at the camp where we've been digging in the Nabatean ruins. It's a perfect cover. He'll have the help and information we need."

  Durell went along with it. He had reached the same conclusions himself, and was not about to give up at this point. But from what he knew of the Sinai, it was a vast, tortured area of flinty mountains, without roads, settlements, water, or food.

  The prospects of digging El-Raschid out of there seemed rather slim.

  Athens was a brief reminder of turbulent glory, a glimpse of the floodlighted Acropolis from the air, and contact at last with a K Section resident. Mike Xanakias met Durell ten minutes after receiving his call from an airport booth. He was a dark, vital man whose whole being seemed to strain at the problem with single-minded purpose. He took Durell's report on the Dancers on a portable tape recorder and promised to send it at once by scrambler to Washington.

  "Bellau must have been telling the truth in Cairo, then," Xanakias said. "He was only relaying information to his own people, and perhaps the Gehlen Bureau he nominally works for near Munich. Will they interfere?" "I don't know. We'll wait and see." "And you, Cajun? You go on with these people?" "There's no other way to get at the Prophet." "But they are dangerous company. I can arrange to put another man on it with you."

  "Thanks, Mike. No. Don't look so worried." "Geneva Central raised hell when you vanished in Munich. They wanted to spot your movements along the Dancer railway."

  Durell grinned. "Well, I happened to get on a dead-end line, it seems. We'll have to tackle it from another direction now. And I think we've pulled Bellau's teeth. I want him with me because I've got a lot of pumping to do at that well, before he goes dry."

  Mike Xanakias looked at him with mournful Greek eyes and hurried off to send Durell's report on to Washington.

  They took an El Al jet to Tel Aviv from Athens within the hour, and landed in Israel shortly after midnight. They were in Simon's territory now, and Major Asche took over with harsh efficiency. Lisl looked disappointed when Simon hurried them into a car and directed the military driver to take the coastal road south, away from the shining new city.