Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish

by Dorothy Gilman

  Carstairs swore. "What matters is that my agent Mrs. Pollifax would have turned over the names and photographs of all seven informants to him, which means death to seven people and probably for Mrs. Pollifax as well." He added bitterly, "He has also killed our man Janko, I assume?"

  Fadwa broke in to say, "I felt it compulsive that you know the worst at once but there is still some hope."

  "We could use that hope," Carstairs told him curtly.

  "Already one miracle has occurred, our man survived what should have been a horrible death. He was thrown down an empty elevator shaft. We understand there was confrontation and Flavien arranged this, and since it occurred on the tenth floor, this Flavien—" he spat out the name, "assumed him dead, but Janko survived. A miracle, as I say. He clung to a beam on floor eight for two hours and was rescued by workmen. He called the office from the airport moments before flying off to Fez to look for Flavien. Not in good shape, you understand, but alive."

  Carstairs whistled. "Good man! And then?"

  Fadwa sighed. "There ends the miracle. I delayed my call, expecting to hear from Janko once he reached Fez. I have heard nothing."

  "Not good."

  "No. If you read his dossier you know he is very good in the office with the documents, the books, the languages, the codes, but not experienced in the fieldwork. He left with two cracked ribs, he said, and there must surely have been some shock. Worse, he left with no gun. He may have had trouble securing a gun in Fez, and without a gun he would have been a fool to confront this Flavien in the hotel, considering who the man must be. One can only hope he did not."

  Carstairs sighed. "I understand."

  "I can tell you this, however," continued Fadwa, "that in repeated calls to the Palais Jamai hotel in Fez we have learned that a Mr. Max Janko and a Mrs. Reed-Pollifax each checked out of the hotel at 5 a.m, yesterday."

  "Five a.m.! At least she was still alive then," Carstairs said with some relief. "But if she left with the wrong Max Janko—if she left with this Flavien chap—then damn it, Fadwa, my agent has no idea she's traveling with the wrong man." He stopped as a more bitter thought overtook him.

  It was Fadwa who expressed the thought. "Or she was disposed of once the hotel was left and is not traveling with him at all. One must prepare oneself . . . Once she turned over the list and the photos she would have been of no use to him at all."

  Disposed of, thought Bishop, he's speaking of Mrs. Pollifax, he's saying she may have been murdered, why does he use such a hideous phrase "disposed of" it sounds inhuman, he means dead, he means that she may be dead at this very minute, never understanding why or what we sent her into, and in another minute Pm going to be sick . . .

  Carstairs had drawn out a file and was saying, "We mustn't assume anything, Fadwa, we've got to do what we can and use that hope of yours. You weren't given the names of the informants, I'm going to give you the name of one of them now. Can you write this down?"

  "Anything—just tell me." For the first time there was emotion in Fadwa Ali's voice and Bishop understood his stress, too.

  "I'm going to give you the name of the informant in Fez and I want you to find out by hook or by crook—in this kind of emergency you have permission to break telephone silence, although God only knows if there are telephones in the medina —I want you to somehow find out whether informant number one in Fez is alive and well."

  "Good. Give it to me."

  "His name is Hamid ou Azu," he said, spelling it out, and he gave instructions as to where the souk could be found.

  "I have it written," said Fadwa. "I have also a contact in that area who can visit this souk within the hour—very discreetly, you understand, no questions asked why. It will be carefully done, I assure you."

  "Good—call me back the minute you hear."

  "Of course. Any other names:"

  Carstairs said quietly, "You know the need for secrecy, I'm risking a great deal sharing even this by telephone. Just find out if number one is safe. If not—"

  "Yes?"

  He said wearily, "If not, we're in even more trouble, we rethink the situation and begin again."

  When he had hung up Bishop said savagely, "Damn."

  Carstairs nodded. "My sentiments precisely but there's no point in giving up Mrs. Pollifax for dead until we have more information." He gave his assistant a rueful, twisted smile. "We've sat here a hell of a lot of times mourning her, Bishop, and somehow she's always made it."

  "Not like this time," snarled Bishop. "You heard Fadwa Ali, we delivered her into the hands of a bastard who tosses people down elevator shafts. As soon as she turned over that list of names to him, and above all the photographs—as we instructed her to do, damn it—"

  "Softly, softly," chided Carstairs.

  "But there must be something we can do!"

  Carstairs said quietly, "Yes, we can get back to work and wait to hear from Fadwa."

  Bishop gave him a furious glance and strode toward the door to his office.

  "Bishop."

  Reluctantly he turned.

  "You know as well as I do this is a dangerous business and that Mrs. Pollifax understands this."

  "Does she?" Bishop said stiffly. "Maybe she did in the beginning but she's had such a run of success and luck I'll bet she's forgotten failure is also a possibility."

  Carstairs patiently repeated, "There's nothing just now that any of us can do, Bishop."

  "Except wait," he complained bitterly.

  But it was not necessary for them to wait even the promised hour. Because the news was bad, Fadwa's return call was being scrambled only forty minutes later. There had been no need for his Fez contact to personally look for Hamid ou Azu. "Everyone in the medina knows he is dead," said Fadwa in a dreary voice. "He was murdered Sunday afternoon, in his souk, in the light of day. A knife in his back. No one knows who killed him, no one saw."

  "I see, yes," said Carstairs, blinking. "Yes, that does change matters, doesn't it."

  "I am without hope," said Fadwa. "He will have murdered your agent now, too."

  With a glance at Bishop's stunned face Carstairs said smoothly, "The agent I sent is no fool, Fadwa, let us not give up hope yet."

  "But you said she was—a woman?"

  Carstairs smiled faintly, and with his eyes on Bishop he said firmly, "A woman who once led an escape party out of Albania with two wounded men in tow, and against all the odds in the book. There may not be many of us, Fadwa—and this may be the end for Atlas—but there is the seed of an idea growing in my mind. It needs some thinking."

  "You said from Albania?" echoed Fadwa in disbelief.

  "From Albania, yes."

  "But what can be done now?"

  "Give me some time, Fadwa, I'll get back to you soon."

  When he put down the phone Bishop said suspiciously, "What 'seed of an idea'? Was that to cheer up Fadwa or me? There's no one to appeal to for help. You know how small the Atlas group is, you can't even take this to Upstairs because Mornajay's gone off on holiday."

  Carstairs said lightly, "Yes, Mornajay is surprising, isn't he, this man who never took a vacation until that abrupt and mysterious trip he made to Thailand a year ago? And since then he's taken a week's holiday in July and has departed now for two weeks in January. Very healthy change, don't you think?"

  Bishop gaped at him. "We're talking about Mornajay's health at a time like this?"

  Carstairs smiled. "Shame on you, Bishop, you've forgotten where he's vacationing . . . He's in Spain, Bishop—Spain, just across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco. Call his secretary, will you, and find out where he can be reached today."

  Bewildered, Bishop said, "But what can he possibly do?"

  Carstairs sighed. "Bishop, until the tape runs out on this, until we hear otherwise, we'll proceed—we must proceed—as if Mrs. Pollifax is alive. In trouble perhaps but alive. If she survives we know where she'd be heading. We dare not wire photographs but we have the names of the villages on her list. We can send a m
an to the end of the line, to Zagora and to Rouida, in case she makes it through."

  "You really think—but who?"

  "Mornajay, of course," said Carstairs, and sat back comfortably in his chair. "Mornajay is CIA and he's also Atlas, and he's one of the Upstairs people, he's got clout and he has experience. Vacation or not, we need to know what's happening and he's the man to find out."

  "Thank God," murmured Bishop, and leaned over the intercom, punched a double-digit number, reached Mornajay's secretary and handed the receiver to his superior.

  A moment later Carstairs was saying, "Mrs. Hudson? Carstairs here, and can you tell me, please, how to reach Mornajay as quickly as possible, definitely today, preferably within the next hour, if not in the next five minutes?"

  9

  They had been driving in silence for some time, but it was a comfortable silence as each of them digested the events of the past hours. Mrs. Pollifax was full of questions but was ignoring them, she was still experiencing the surprise and the joy of being alive and this brought a flood of pleasurable sensations about her new companion and about the country through which they were passing. It was true they were driving through a bleak and stony wasteland that stretched flat as a carpet flung down between distant mountains. It was a schema limited to only two colors but those two colors were the sapphire blue of sky and mountains, and the rich terra-cotta of earth. Feeling admitted to life once more, not only in the largest sense but in the sense of being acknowledged by the man sitting next to her, a man who was open to response and communication, she postponed thinking for a little while of the odds against them and of their chances of evading the authorities. She was happy.

  They were passing now a line of conical shapes in the sand, like small volcanoes interrupting the endlessly flat surface, and Max slowed the car to peer at them through the window. "I believe those are wells—maybe foggaras," he said. "Mind if I stop and dash over to look?"

  "I'll dash with you," she told him. "But what are foggaras?"

  "Ancient irrigation systems dating back centuries," he flung over his shoulder as he raced across the road to the small hills with their cone-shaped peaks. Climbing to the top of one he called down to her, "They're certainly wells, or used to be.

  They're all choked with sand now. It was the slaves who did all the incredible digging to tap underground water and any number of them died of suffocation when the walls caved in on them."

  Mrs. Pollifax climbed to the top of the one next to Max, looked down into its sand-filled crater and hastily drew back. Watching her he nodded. "Exactly. It could happen to you too if you fell in—like quicksand, I imagine."

  He slid down to join her on solid ground and they stood a minute looking around them, at the incredibly blue sky and the expanse of stones and sand. "What a savagely beautiful country," she murmured, "and yet—why does it seem so dark in spite of the bright sun and sky?"

  "Its history is dark, that's what you feel," he said. "Morocco is actually a country quite new to the modern world, it entered it just before the First World War and this particular part of it wasn't tamed for another three decades. At the beginning of this century—and well into it, as a matter of fact—there were neither maps nor roads in all of Morocco, only caravan trails." He stretched one arm toward the high and distant mountains to the east. "On the other side of those mountains the Sultans lived in sybaritic splendor—in Fez, Meknes, Rabat and Marrakech—but this part of the country was called the bled-el-siday the lands of dissidence."

  "They didn't like Sultans?"

  He grinned. "Oh, they honored the Sultan as Commander of the Faith, they simply refused to pay taxes to him. The tribal chiefs built their castles and fortresses high up in the Atlas mountains and happily fought their blood feuds and wars of honor in their own ways. So occasionally a Sultan would make a procession over the mountains to collect the taxes personally. He would bring his wives, his concubines, slaves, ministers, armies and hundreds of tents and horses—can you imagine that?—and he'd meet with the tribal chiefs and demand their allegiance and their taxes."

  "All the way from the north?" she said in astonishment. "From Fez or Rabat?"

  He nodded. "All the way. Not often, obviously, since it took the better part of a year."

  "And they would pay?"

  "Not always willingly," he said. "From what I've read the Sultan would decapitate those who refused to pay, after which the heads would be salted and taken back to Fez to be hung on the gates of the palace."

  Mrs. Pollifax shivered. "I hope that was a very long time ago."

  He shrugged. "On the contrary, this side of the Atlas mountains wasn't tamed by the French until 1934—and I might add the French were no less cruel, seldom taking prisoners."

  Puzzled she said, "But why did France want it?"

  "Oh everyone wanted it," he said, "and that's what kept it from being conquered for so long. Morocco lies at the head of the Mediterranean, you see, only thirty miles away from Gibraltar, with Spain beyond it, but the French especially wanted it because they'd already taken over Tunisia and Algeria, and adding Morocco made a nice little basket of goodies." He shook his head. "The conquest of Morocco—and it took decades—was a bloody bloody one, full of treachery, betrayal and cruelties on both sides."

  She said soberly, "That certainly explains what I've been feeling. I thought at first it was all the negatives that Janko emitted—or Flavien—but it's been lingering. You're much pleasanter to travel with, you know—he merely grunted."

  Max smiled. "Perhaps my greatest charm is that I've no interest in killing you."

  "That is important in a friendship," she told him gravely, with a twinkle in her eye, and they retraced their steps to the car.

  As they set out again for Tinehir she said, "But you must explain to me why on earth any Polisarios would ever trust this Atlas group."

  "That's easy," he told her. "I gather that it's due entirely to the Carstairs chap who sent you here. How well do you know him, did you know he began intelligence work in the OSS during World War II?"

  "Yes I did," she said, smiling as she remembered how she'd learned of Carstairs' history during her second adventure. "He worked in Occupied France smuggling out people and information and his code name was Black Jack."

  Max gave her a startled glance. "Good heavens, you know quite a lot about him, and certainly more than I do! But he didn't spend all the war years in France, you see. Later, as a sort of rest cure, he was sent to North Africa as a liaison officer, because of his fluent French, except it wasn't long before he was given charge of a commando raid on a Tripoli ammunition dump—I suppose because of his earlier experience in Europe."

  "After becoming thoroughly rested, one hopes," she put in.

  "Well yes, one does hope that," he said, "because it meant an endless trek across the desert in Land Rovers, and then sneaking unseen into a dark city occupied by the enemy. But that's where he worked with a mixed bag of Europeans and North Africans, one of them a Moroccan who saved his life."

  Startled, she said, "My goodness, what happened?"

  "As I understand it, they found the ammo dump and set the charges, the dump was due to blow up in seconds and they all raced away, except that Carstairs fell over an ammo crate and broke his leg. It was his Moroccan companion who came back for him, risking his own life to do it, and carried Carstairs out of Tripoli while all hell broke loose."

  She said softly, "And if he hadn't gone back for him—"

  "Exit Carstairs."

  She nodded. "So he owes his Moroccan friend all the years of his life since then."

  "Yes."

  She thought of how knowing Carstairs had changed her own life, and of the work he'd done since then, and of the others whose lives he must have changed or saved, and she felt again that small shiver that occurred to her when events hinted at a destiny being played out, of unseen forces intervening. She said soberly, "It would certainly be a privilege to meet a man like that, who would risk his own life for
a friend."

  He gave her a quick glance. "It's possible that we may both meet him because I've a hunch he's one of the informants. It was this man whom Carstairs approached, of course, when he thought of setting up this particular network. They've kept in touch over the years, you see."

  She was not surprised. "It would have to be like that, yes, for such trust to have been established." With a stab of anxiety she added, "I do hope he wasn't the Hamid ou Azu who was murdered in Fez."

  "I hope so, too."

  The mountains had begun moving in closer, sending out great tentacles of stone in the shape of flat-topped mesas. Trees were beginning to appear in the distance and soon they were passing a compound of adobe houses, with a cow tethered to the wall and a girl standing next to it wearing a long red skirt over bright pink pants and a green scarf around her head. The desert had receded, to be replaced by fields that grew increasingly lush and green.

  "Grain for couscous," Max said. "I think we must be nearing Goulmima, halfway to Tinehir."

  "Does that mean food?" asked Mrs. Pollifax wistfully. "I'm so very hungry."

  "I know you are," he said, "and I'll risk looking for some edibles but I think you stay in the car and hide under the blanket in the back. You've got to keep in mind that you may already be of great interest to the police."

  "Do you think they’ve found Flavien's body vet? It's only been what, a few hours?"

  "Intelligence agents and police can do a hell of a lot if they're worried enough. My guess is that it's too early and they haven't found him yet but we mustn't count on it." He added soberly, "But it's not just that . . . When I followed you out of Er-Rachidia you were trailed only a short way by the police. You remember the military compound we passed before we stopped for coffee?"

  She winced. "I didn't notice."

  "Understandable," he said, "it looked like any other adobe compound except for the insignia on the gate. My guess is that an arrangement was set up to keep track of your progress without actually tailing you in a car, which would certainly be conspicuous in this sort of pre-desert country. I think once your departure was established you were only followed for a few miles and then a phone call was made to the next military headquarters and a lookout posted."