by Ian Barclay
He stood by himself, close to one wall, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. None of them paid him any more attention. He gathered from the relaxed atmosphere that he had arrived shortly after some climactic stage in this orgy and that everyone was presently resting. Except, of course, the five crazy dancing girls, who were probably hired for the occasion. Mustafa considered that Ahmed had summoned him as some kind of butt for their jokes. He was pleased that, so far, he had not satisfied their expectations.
To Mustafa’s alarm, one of the women bodyguards broke away from a group and cruised past him, giving him the eye. She was dressed only in a camouflage shirt, unbuttoned down the front, and held a joint in her right hand and a beer bottle in her left. Her long black hair tumbled to her shoulders, her sensuous mouth smiled at him and the brown tips of her titties peeped through the open army shirt front. After she had passed him once, she came by again. She was less than half his age and everything his strict upbringing had taught him to despise—yet he could see how a man other than himself might be attracted to her. She had soft feline movements and, yes, Mustafa had to admit, she had certain things about her which could appeal to him were he not a happily married man who disapproved of women like this. Mustafa was not able to keep his eyes off her, and he saw the knowing smile on her face as she came up to him. When she offered him her joint and he shook his head, she dropped it in the neck of the beer bottle and put that next to his whiskey glass on the side table. Then she placed her left hand on his right wrist.
When Mustafa tried to stop her taking off his necktie, she put pressure on his wrist which almost immobilized him. Then she relaxed her crippling grip. He moved in protest again when she unbuttoned his shirt, and he felt her fingers tighten on his wrist until he changed his mind. She peeled his shirt and jacket off him and pressed her bare breasts and belly against him, her thighs against his, then tried to insert the tip of her tongue between his lips. Mustafa was virtuous and would not allow her to invade the privacy of his mouth, but in spite of his strong will, he could not prevent his erection from forming. She felt it against her and gave him a triumphant smile as she reached between them with one hand and unzipped his fly.
Mustafa felt his belt being unbuckled and then his pants drop around his ankles. He tried to push her away from him with his left hand—and she used his own force against him to flip him on his back on the floor. She ripped down his jockey shorts, bobbed her mouth a few times over the head of his distended member. Then, still holding him almost immobile by her stranglehold on the nerves in his right wrist, she mounted him, slid his member deep inside her and rode him with powerful thrusts of her hips.
Mustafa, even in his least pious imaginings, had never dreamed Arab womanhood could ever have come to this.
Richard Dartley was pleasantly surprised by the Egyptians he met each day. They seemed to hold no hatred for him as an American, despite the almost constant diatribes against the United States over the government-controlled TV and newspapers. The ordinary people reminded him of people in the Soviet Union in the way they did not take seriously anything their political leaders said. Religion was another thing. Dartley took care to stay away from mosques and anywhere he might run into fanatics.
He was totally unaware that he had anything to us fear from the Egyptians. He knew nothing of Awad and Zaid. He assumed that Omar Zekri had sent the four men to Zamalek Island to lie in wait for him and that Omar was obeying Pritchett’s orders. He had checked out of the Nile Hilton and was now staying in a small hotel in the New City, only a few blocks from where his weapons were stashed (he hoped). The place was shabby, none too clean, and badly run—so badly run, in fact, that the desk clerk had not bothered to demand his identification, which suited Dartley fine.
Believing that it was his fellow countrymen who had set the trap for him, Dartley set himself one rule for survival in Cairo: keep away from mullahs and Americans.
He had no idea he was the target of a manhunt led by Awad and Zaid, who combed the ancient monuments and museums for him, circulated his description at luxury hotels and expensive restaurants, and questioned car hire people and taxi drivers.
Dartley hid himself in the anarchy of the city streets. At first the crowds, noise and exhaust fumes bothered him. After a few days he hardly noticed the traffic-clogged streets and accepted that cars often ignored traffic lights, that pedestrians were responsible for their own safety and could not reasonably expect a driver to slow or swerve to avoid them. He too, like any Cairo resident, walked casually into the stream of cars, donkey carts and bicycles, dodged, ran and jumped, breathing the polluted air, half-deafened by the honking of car horns.
He practiced his rudimentary Arabic and learned many new words. He kept out of tourist spots and ate in quiet neighborhood restaurants. He knew enough to avoid the food offered by street vendors, because no matter how tempting and good it looked, an unacclimatized Western stomach could not handle the bacteria that came with it. So he picked out clean, quiet places and feasted in them with no ill effects. The food was not hot and spicy, as he had expected. Instead, it was rather bland. He ate kebab, beef or mutton chunks grilled on a skewer, served with a salad, pita bread and tahina dip. He also ate what seemed the two most popular dishes with Egyptians, fuul and kushari. Fuul was brown beans with occasional pieces of egg or meat, and kushari was a mixture of lentils, macaroni and rice in tomato sauce; at least that was what they looked and tasted like.
Not knowing that Egyptian government agents were searching for him made him take many of the wrong precautions. Besides, he was almost entering the lion’s den by hanging around the Citadel so often. Awad and Zaid operated from the Citadel, sending out men to search for him, while he observed the Citadel to wait for Mustafa Bakkush. Dartley positively identified the Egyptian scientist and was putting a plan into operation when disaster struck.
One of Awad and Zaid’s men decided to question Dartley. This did not alarm Dartley. He had been questioned on the street a number of times, as he had seen other foreigners, including other Americans, questioned briefly. On previous occasions he had shown his papers in the name of Thomas Lewis, employee of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. The papers and some baksheesh soon overcame whatever doubts the policeman or government agent had about him. This time it was different.
The man was short, immaculately dressed in a cream colored, Western-style suit, with close cropped hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He spoke English and showed Dartley his official ID. Dartley hardly glanced at it because he knew that Egypt had a tangle of security enforcement agencies, including nine different police forces of more than a quarter million men in a country that had very little crime.
Dartley showed him his papers in the name of Thomas Lewis. When the man in the cream colored suit saw the name, he suddenly became agitated. His mustache twitched as he struggled to calm himself. It was clear to Dartley that this man had been startled to find so easily what he was looking for, and that it was the name of Thomas Lewis rather than Dartley’s appearance which had struck him so forcibly.
“You must come along with me,” he said to Dartley, holding his passport and entry papers. “There are irregularities.”
“Certainly,” Dartley said agreeably. “But I suppose I should sign this before I go.”
He reached for one of the papers from the man’s hand and took the top off his pen.
Dartley hit him with the miniature blade of the Tekna Micro-Knife in the left eye. The razor-sharp steel punctured the eyeball, it popped, and the fluid inside ran down the man’s cheek.
That was enough. Dartley had no need to butcher the man. He picked the passport and papers up from where the stricken Egyptian had dropped them as he staggered backward, clutching his head.
In a few moments Dartley was walking down the street unhurriedly, as if he’d had nothing to do with the man in the cream colored suit, who was now leaning unsteadily against a building with a palm clasped over one eye. But Dartley w
as out of luck. He had been seen by two men prepared to do something about it. They jumped in a little yellow Fiat and speeded after the American until they drew level with him. As the car stopped, Dartley saw a long-barreled revolver in one man’s hand. He himself had no gun.
Dartley ran. The first bullet bit stucco out of a building wall above his head and whined off in a ricochet. Dartley used passersby as cover, trying to keep them between him and his pursuers. This didn’t faze the gunman, who shot at him regardless of innocent bystanders, using the revolver’s long barrel for accuracy in aim. In all, six bullets smashed into walls or windows in front of, behind and above the weaving, running American.
After the sixth shot, Dartley heard the roar of the little Fiat’s engine as they closed the distance again between them and him. Only one was shooting. Right now he would be reloading as the other one drove. The Fiat screeched to a halt no more than twenty feet from him.
There was no place for Dartley to go except through a large gateway that led into a courtyard. He might be trapped in there or he might not—but it was his only alternative right now to dodging bullets at a few paces’ range on an open sidewalk.
The gunman stepped out of the Fiat and raised the revolver’s barrel at him. Before Dartley could reach the courtyard and before his pursuer had the gun leveled on him, someone in a gray business suit at the edge of the sidewalk shot the Egyptian. He slumped back against the Fiat and slid down into a sitting position on the road, his head nodded onto his chest, his big pistol lying now in a slack hand.
This new gunslinger sent three rapid shots through the open door of the Fiat, and the driver fell forward onto the steering wheel.
Dartley saw the tall man in the gray suit—he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties and was not Egyptian—run around the front of the car, open the door on the driver’s side, pull the dead man out and discard him on the street. He beckoned to Dartley.
A crowd was gathering about Dartley on the sidewalk. They looked frightened, but also unhappy at the sight of foreigners gunning down their fellow Egyptians. Dartley was not in a position to explain. He made for the car.
Chapter
6
“Have you contacted Mustafa Bakkush?” his rescuer in the gray suit asked Richard Dartley. These were the first words the man had spoken to him, apart from some comments about the traffic and the suggestion that they have a coffee.
“Bakkush?” Dartley said, apparently unfamiliar with this name.
The young man smiled. “From what I hear, you’ve been asking all over town for him. Let me introduce myself. I am Pierre Giraud, a Lebanese banker. Maronite Christian, I should add.”
“A banker,” Dartley said in open disbelief.
“In much the same way as you are a wheat expert.”
That shut Dartley up. They had driven across Cairo and dumped the Fiat some distance from where they now sat at a cafe table. This man had been as careful as Dartley to wipe his prints from the car as they left it.
Dartley was already considering how best to kill this man because he knew too much. It mattered nothing to Dartley that the man had in all probability saved his life. Dartley knew that this action had not been a heroic gesture, but the impersonal, calculated move of a trained professional. Dartley owed this man nothing. Especially not information.
The stranger probably sensed from Dartley’s demeanor that it might be dangerous to tease him further with his mysterious knowledge. He said, “Pritchett said to help you.”
“Pritchett is the one who hires these hitmen,” Dartley snapped, acknowledging at least that he knew who Pritchett at the American Embassy was.
“Look, I’m Aaron Gottlieb, Israeli intelligence—Mossad. You’ve heard of us, I believe. Now you level with me.”
“Savage. Paul Savage. CIA. Pleased to meet you.”
“How come Pritchett doesn’t know who you are?”
“I’m on a special job,” Dartley said. “Don’t want to stir up mud for the men posted here.”
“Seems like you’ve raised quite a bit of mud already.”
“Not my fault. That fool Pritchett hit on me first day I was here and stuck me with one of his Egyptian contacts named Omar Zekri. If it wasn’t Pritchett who called out the hounds on me, then it had to be Zekri.”
“Those two I killed back there, and the one you disabled further back on the street, are all government agents. I know the type.”
“Which means that Pritchett’s man Zekri is a double agent,” Dartley said. “You might mention that to him when you tell him to stay out of my way.”
“I will,” Aaron Gottlieb agreed mildly. “You want help on Bakkush?”
“I work alone.”
“It doesn’t make sense for you to turn down help offered by an experienced man,” Gottlieb pointed out. “Do you want to hear my background in Egypt?”
“It’ll help pass the time,” Dartley grunted, making it clear that that was all it would be. He knew that Gottlieb had not bought his story about being a CIA agent as easily as he pretended. The Israeli’s strategy now would be to hang as close as he could to Dartley in order to find out what was going on. Dartley himself was reasonably sure that Gottlieb was a genuine Mossad agent—perhaps even a CIA agent. Either way, he didn’t give a damn so long as the Israeli did not interfere or continue to ask questions which could not be answered.
“First, I think you should know about Israel’s first intelligence operation in Egypt, back in 1962, when I was in elementary school. Nasser, who was the Egyptian president then, launched four rockets. Two of them had a range that could have reached Tel Aviv. As could be expected, the Israelis were worried, since Nasser had promised to drive the Zionists into the sea. When the Mossad discovered that ex-Nazi German scientists were developing these rockets in Egypt and were working on nuclear warheads for them, they had a strong suspicion in which direction the rockets would be aimed. Instead of going after the hardware or the Egyptians, the Mossad decided to concentrate on the German scientists. One bomb that arrived in the mail killed five people. There were other deaths and maimings from booby-trapped devices. Threatening letters to the Germans promised more of the same. Their children were threatened, in Egypt, Germany and elsewhere. These scientists and their families knew who was after them, and that didn’t give them much comfort either. Most quit. With their departure, Nasser’s rocket program collapsed. There were a lot of complaints about Israel in the world press, but no nuclear missiles on Tel Aviv.”
Dartley nodded noncommittally and sipped the bitter black coffee from his tiny cup.
Gottlieb went on, “You may wonder what this has to do with what’s happening today. I think Ahmed Hasan learned his lesson from what happened back in 1962. This time he is seeing to it that it is the Egyptian president who is applying the pressure on the scientists.” He told Dartley briefly how Bakkush had been forced to return through his wife and children being shipped in crates from London to Cairo. “So that when you meet with Dr. Bakkush and try to turn the screws on him, you will find he is already under maximum pressure and has no more give. It is the same with most of the other scientists working on Hasan’s nuclear project, so far as we know. Apart from some inexperienced junior scientists who are enthusiastic because they are fools, all the senior men have been bullied or blackmailed into joining the project.”
“You seem certain that Hasan has a nuclear bomb in the works,” Dartley observed.
Gottlieb laughed. “If that’s all you want to verify, your task will be easy. Is that all you need to know?”
“Just a few details,” Dartley said, to keep Gottlieb thinking that the bomb was the chief purpose of his mission rather than the bomb’s maker, Ahmed Hasan. “You were going to talk about your background here in Egypt.”
“I speak Arabic fluently. I happened to learn it from someone brought up in Beirut, so that I speak it with Lebanese overtones, just as I speak English with American overtones. I also speak fluent French and spent two miserable years
working in a bank. So here I am, a Lebanese Maronite Christian, who are bankers to the Arab world today, just as Jews were once bankers to medieval Christians. Needless to say, I am welcome in Egypt. Ironically, on previous visits, I have arranged actual loans for Egyptian businesses with Beirut banks through Mossad contacts.”
“You risk this cover by openly telling me you’re an Israeli agent?”
“You’d hardly speak to me about Bakkush if you thought I was a Lebanese banker, would you? I can help you. But you say you want to work alone. Very well. I like to do that where it’s possible. For you, an American in Cairo, it’s impossible. How can I help? First, I can find out who is hunting you. If it’s at a high level, this information will cost very generous baksheesh. Can you spare five hundred dollars?”
Dartley peeled off five notes under the table and slipped them to him, well aware that by doing so he was accepting Aaron Gottlieb as an accomplice and possible back stabber. But Dartley knew he could not afford to turn down his help at this point. He decided to make a gesture toward him.
“Can you meet me tomorrow at noon?” He described a little cafe almost in the shelter of the Citadel wall, only a few streets away from where the Egyptian agents had confronted him earlier.
Gottlieb raised his eyebrows. “I can’t say I’d have chosen that area myself.”
Dartley got to his feet and left an Egyptian pound on the table. “Don’t be late.”
The Israeli made no attempt to follow him.