Palm for Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  “Amused you?” said Robin.

  “It’s so much more dangerous,” he explained simply. “There was the irony of it, too. I happen to be a member of the Board of Directors, you see. I am so very welcome there.”

  I don’t think we’re going to get out of this, thought Mrs. Pollifax bleakly, and turned her head as the Volkswagen pulled up beside them. Fouad climbed out and went up the steps of the chalet to unlock the door. With the door open he waved them in. The sheik uncrossed his long legs and stepped out of the car. “Sabry?”

  Sabry nodded and brought out a gun. “You will go inside the chalet,” he told them without expression.

  Robin climbed out first, and as he turned to face her for the first time she saw that the right side of his face was scratched and torn, and his right eye swollen almost closed. “Oh Robin,” she said sadly.

  “I’ve obviously lived much too sedentary a life,” he said lightly. “A fact that I intend to rectify at the earliest possible moment if I ever get out of this in one piece.” His hands were also tied but as she climbed out he succeeded in lifting them to touch her arm reassuringly. At the moment it only made her want to cry.

  They moved across the rocks to the wooden steps. Mrs. Pollifax turned for one last look around her but the empty, windswept landscape was so distressingly bleak that she did not linger; she entered the chalet almost gratefully.

  Inside it was midnight, every window shuttered and barred. Fouad was lighting an oil lamp and as it flared up to illuminate the room he looked at her once, briefly, and she saw the hate in his eyes. Then he lifted the lamp and carried it to a table in the middle of the room, his face impassive.

  “Cheerless place,” said Robin behind her. “Rather like a cottage at Brighton in the off season.”

  It was precisely what it did resemble; it still held within it the bone-chilling damp of winter, the furnishings were shabby and dusty and the grate in the fireplace empty. There was a strong smell of cooking oil and mothballs.

  “Planning to stay long?” quipped Robin.

  The sheik moved away from the door as Munir carried in Madame Parviz and lowered her, none too gently, to the couch in front of the fireplace. Because Sabry chose this moment to glance at his watch, Mrs. Pollifax glanced at hers too; it was eight o’clock, which was difficult to realize in this lightless room. Sabry and the sheik began talking amiably in Arabic. The sheik brought out his wallet, counted an enormous number of Swiss francs into Sabry’s palm and wished him well. Sabry went out, closing the door behind him.

  “I wish I knew where he’s going,” Mrs. Pollifax said to Robin in a low voice. “I wish Hafez were here to translate that for us.”

  The sheik heard her and smiled. “But I have no secrets from you,” he said, his eyes twinkling at her. “Ibrahim has gone to bring back a helicopter. You may have noticed that the terrain here is quite suitable for its landing. I’ve no intention of lingering any longer in Switzerland and since I’ve no idea what little hints either of you may have left behind at the Clinic I shall proceed as if the Clinic—as if all of Switzerland!—is looking for me.” He appeared delighted at the thought. “To outwit them—oh superb sport, that.”

  “You’re quite a sportsman,” Robin said dryly.

  “But of course—I am a Bedouin,” he said with dignity. “Sit down, there is no need to stand on ceremony. The chairs are dusty but far more comfortable than standing. Munir—we’ll have food now.”

  Mrs. Pollifax lowered herself into a straight chair near the fireplace, her tied wrists extended awkwardly in front of her. Across the room she met Robin’s gaze and recognized the question in his eyes. She spoke it aloud. “What do you plan to do with us—with Robin, Madame Parviz and me?”

  The sheik walked to the fireplace and rested a hand on the mantel. “I’m sorry you ask,” he said regretfully. “I thought we could enjoy a rather charming picnic here together while we wait. It may be a wait of several hours and unfortunately—” He sighed. “Unfortunately Fouad and Munir have never developed the art of conversation. They remain distressingly utilitarian.” He sighed. “In such bleak surroundings a little conversation helps to smooth the passing of time. Surely we need not discuss such a painful thing as your futures?”

  “They are,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax, “our futures.”

  “Were,” he corrected gently, with a smile. “Now of course they belong to me. We have a proverb that says ‘If you are a peg, endure the knocking; if you are a mallet, strike.’ I hope that you will endure with fortitude the consequences of your meddling.”

  “Haven’t you been doing a little meddling of your own?” inquired Mrs. Pollifax.

  He laughed. “It is all in the eye of the beholder, is it not? However, to answer your question as tactfully as possible, let me say that the helicopter, when it arrives, will have no room for you and Mr. Burke-Jones. There will be space only for Fouad, Munir, Ibrahim, myself and Madame Parviz, who—as you may have guessed—is still of some importance as a hostage. Now please, let us say no more, it becomes distasteful to me. There are always a few who have to be sacrificed for the greater good. We also have a saying ‘What is brought by the wind will be carried away by the wind.’ Ah, good—good,” he said happily as Munir came in carrying firewood.

  Quickly and efficiently Munir arranged the wood in the fireplace and lighted a fire. Once it was ignited he spread a rug on the floor in front of it—a gorgeous Persian rug, Mrs. Pollifax noted—and distributed cushions around it. Incense was placed on the mantel, a match applied to it and the scent of sandalwood met her nostrils. Then Munir retired to the kitchen off to the left and the rattle of cups could be heard. Mrs. Pollifax stood up and walked over to the fire, holding her bound hands out to warm them but it was uncomfortable standing so near the sheik and she retreated to the couch and sat down at the end of it, near Madame Parviz’s feet. The poor woman was still unconscious, her eyes closed, but a second later Mrs. Pollifax glanced again at her and was not so sure. She thought a gleam of light showed between the fringe of her lashes and the bone of her cheek. She did not look again.

  “For the greater good of what?” she asked the sheik. “If we’re to be so lightly sacrificed perhaps you can tell us the great benefit the world is going to gain?”

  “The benefits are Allah’s, I am only the instrument,” he told her sternly.

  Munir returned carrying a tray. On it were tiny cups and a large, beak-nosed brass coffeepot which exuded a spicy fragrance and a cloud of steam. The fire flickered across the rug, picking out its jewel-like colors and the patina of brass. A dusty Brighton cottage was rapidly turning into an Arab tent, she thought, and she couldn’t help but admire this imposing of will upon a shell of a house.

  Robin said stiffly, “If you’re planning to feed us—in the interest of fascinating conversation—we can’t possibly manage with our hands tied.”

  “Quite so,” the sheik said amiably. “They will be untied once Munir has completed his chores.” With a twinkle for Mrs. Pollifax he added, “But you will please notice that Fouad is at the door with his gun.”

  She had already noticed him squatting by the door in the shadows; she took note and glanced away. “These plans you have,” she said to the sheik, looking at him steadily. “You’re responsible for the death of Marcel and you’re responsible for the death of a man named Fraser, and now you would kill us as well. This is what you call being the instrument of Allah?”

  He shrugged. “In war many people are killed, men and women, children, soldiers, and onlookers. But I am surprised that you know about Fraser. How is this?”

  Robin, too, was watching her curiously. “You can’t possibly mean the English chap who was injured at the Clinic last week! Do you mean he was murdered?” he asked the sheik, turning to him. “And it had something to do with you?”

  The sheik smiled. “He was a professional British agent, my dear Burke-Jones. Unfortunately most of his work had been done in the Middle East so that he and Ibrahim had met befo
re. So long as Ibrahim convalesced quietly and took the sun there was no harm in sharing the Clinic. But of course once the Parvizes arrived the situation would have been intolerable. Fraser would have guessed something was up at once. He had to be removed.”

  Robin thought about this for a moment and then said coolly, “I happen to be a British agent, too, you know, and since Mrs. Pollifax has absolutely nothing to do with any of this I insist that you let her go at once.”

  Before Mrs. Pollifax could protest this wasted act of galantry the sheik laughed. “I don’t believe you for a moment, Burke-Jones, and I couldn’t possibly allow her to go free. It’s she, after all, who was found in Ibrahim’s room. She knows too much. Enough of such nonsense.” As Munir poured coffee from the pot into tiny cups he said, “Have you tasted herisa before? It’s an herb coffee, I think you’ll enjoy it. Munir, you may cut their ropes now. It is better there be no marks on their wrists.”

  No marks on the bodies, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and as a second tray was brought in bearing pastries and dates she experienced an almost hysterical urge to laugh. A Persian rug, tiny cups of herb coffee, incense, and a sheik—it was too much. She controlled her wild upsurge of laughter and abruptly felt like bursting into tears. “You travel with originality,” she managed to say.

  The sheik flashed his white smile at her. “We have a proverb, ‘He who has money can eat sherbet in hell.’ Anything is possible with money.”

  “Including the buying of armies and lives?” she said tartly. She held up her wrists to Munir, who carefully severed the bonds around her wrists, and when he had done this she rubbed them, wincing. But she could eat now, and she was grateful.

  The sheik paused with his cup halfway to his lips and smiled, “Only a means to an end, Mrs. Pollifax. You spoke of meddling. Your meddling is destructive—it’s in my way—but mine is constructive.”

  “In what way?”

  “You have a saying, ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares.’ ” He turned his face to her, his eyes remote. “A rabble of men cannot do this, they are insufficiently enlightened but one man can accomplish what has never been accomplished before. I shall bring peace to the world, to the entire world.”

  “If only you could,” she said longingly. “But bloodlessly?”

  He smiled. “We have a saying that first it is necessary to build up the inside of the mosque and then the outside. No, not bloodlessly, because men are children and must have their quarrels.”

  Mrs. Pollifax sighed. “I should have guessed not.”

  “It will be a quick bloodletting, though. I have my own army in the desert, you see, they have been training secretly for some time, as well as collecting other certain—uh—instruments of power. I have scientists, a laboratory, munitions, all bidden away in the desert. All that is lacking now is a country, a base, but it is astonishing how easy it all is. In this materialistic world men will sell their souls for a few dollars. When one has money one can buy anyone.”

  “Apparently you couldn’t buy King Jarroud,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Ah, but I have undermined him,” he said with the flash of a smile, “and that has been far more enjoyable. General Parviz will be no trouble to me, the road to the throne is wide open.” His smile became radiant. “One of the five pillars of the Moslem faith is the people’s willingness to participate in jihad. Do you know what jihad is, madame?”

  “A holy war,” said Robin in a bleak voice.

  “Quite so, yes,” said the sheik. “The redress of wrongs is an act of religious obedience in Islam. I have had a vision—Muhammed came to me in a dream one night—telling me that the time has come, and that I am sayyid.”

  Mrs. Pollifax put down her cup and stared at him, caught by the play of emotion, a look almost of ecstasy on his face. She confessed herself moved by the passion in his voice and the almost hypnotic quality of his words.

  “The Moslems have waited a long time,” he went on, the fire illuminating the fierce profile and flashing eyes. “Nasser promised hope at first but it was Allah’s will that he be struck down. Now Moslems quarrel among themselves. There is Ouadaffi and there is Sadat and Hussein and Jarroud and we are all divided but I shall unite us in jihad—with one stroke—and when we are truly united we will be soldiers together, and when we have won back what is ours we shall impose peace on the whole world.”

  “Impose?” There was silence until Mrs. Pollifax, already guessing the answer, said softly, “How?”

  “By the means given me to impose it.” His smile deepened. “That, dear lady, is too great a secret to divulge but I have the means, never fear, the means to the glorious end promised me by the Prophet Himself. I can assure you the world will pay attention. Allah Akhbar!”

  From Fouad came a resounding, “Allah Akhbar!”

  “Your plans include much more than Zabya, then.”

  He laughed. “Of course. I’m surprised that you didn’t see that at once. Zabya?” He shrugged. “A small desert country with a tiresome, idealistic little king. Who could possibly settle for Zabya? For me it shall be the beginning, a base in the center of an oil-rich continent, a foothold, a foundation on which to build an empire. Mohammed himself began with only the town of Medina, yet before he died he had changed millions of people’s lives and had given us Mecca. After his death his followers carried Islam as far as France.”

  “And so you will be the new Alexander,” said Mrs. Pollifax quietly.

  He leaned forward, his eyes intense. “You must confess—if you consider it honestly and realistically—that what the world needs now—before it destroys itself—is one ruler. One law. One government. It is the only way to survive.”

  “Good God,” put in Robin deflatingly, “you mean one damned bureaucracy to botch things instead of dozens? The red tape staggers the imagination.”

  The sheik ignored him. “The key to it all—the key to the master stroke—lies in that suitcase,” he said abruptly. “You see it standing on the table? You broke open the locks but you couldn’t possibly understand what you saw. I have already tested myself—myself and my cunning—by making fools of high men all over the world. It has pleased me a great deal. It was my first adventure, my beginning.”

  This had the effect of cheering Mrs. Pollifax’s flagging spirits because she was the only one in the room who knew that he was addressing two cans of peaches instead of a suitcase bearing several kilograms of plutonium.

  “You can’t possibly succeed, it’s too outrageous,” Robin said.

  The sheik smiled at him benevolently. “A thief is a king until he is caught.” He rinsed his fingers in a bowl of water and dried them on a towel that Munir held out to him. Rising he said, “Join me, Munir, it’s time.” To Fouad he added, “Remain attentive. Keep your distance and shoot if they move.”

  He and Munir disappeared into another room and she exchanged glances with Robin across the Persian rug. Over by the door, some fifteen feet away. Fouad rose to his feet and leaned against the door, his eyes bored as he watched them. There was silence except for the crackling of the fire until Robin said, “I’m beginning to take him seriously.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  “All this business about peace—it doesn’t sound very peaceful to me.”

  “It’s the latest style of peace,” she said dryly. “It’s called waging peace with limited-duration reinforced protective reaction strikes, low kill-ratio and no incursions.”

  “I see. But not war,” said Robin gravely.

  “Oh, no, not war. Good heavens no.”

  From the next room the sheik intoned in a powerful voice: “La ilaha illa llah, Muhammed rasul allah.”

  “He’s praying,” Robin pointed out. “I daresay we should be praying, too. I mean, it does begin to look a bit final, the three of them against the two of us. And when Sabry gets back with a helicopter there’ll be four of them. Look, there’s something I wanted to mention, not important, I daresay, but something funny about the boot of the
car we came in—or trunk, as you Americans call it.”

  “And something I have to ask you,” she told him.

  Each stopped, waiting for the other, and in the silence a low voice from the couch between them said, “Not two against four. Three.”

  Mrs. Pollifax turned to look at Madame Parviz lying there, her eyes closed.

  Robin said, “Did she—?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  Lips barely moving and eyes still shut Madame Parviz said, “There is a poker on the hearth.”

  “We’d better not look at her,” Mrs. Pollifax advised Robin.

  “A bit of luck having her conscious at last,” he pointed out in a low voice. “I’m not sure I can reach the poker without Fouad seeing me. Have you noticed how carefully they keep their distance from us? It’s like a planned choreography—downright obvious.”

  “They’re aware that I know some karate,” explained Mrs. Pollifax.

  “So that’s it!” said Robin, brightening. “I must say that until meeting you I seem to have led the most commonplace life. You might have told me you knew karate. If that’s the case Madame Parviz can be armed with the poker and all we need are some brass knuckles for me. Stay with us, Madame Parviz!”

  “But there has to be some way to get near them,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.

  “It’s what we’ve got to wait for,” Robin said. “Just one mistake, just one slip and we might be able to jump them. Damn it, I refuse to give up without protest.” He was stretching out one leg so that his foot extended across the Persian rug to the hearth. Very carefully he prodded the tip of the poker, and when his foot only pushed it farther away he swore under his breath.

  “It’s a break not having our hands tied,” Mrs. Pollifax pointed out. “How long do you suppose we have?”

  “You heard the man, until Sabry brings back the helicopter. It’s not hopeless, you know. If we can stall, somehow catch them off balance—”

  Stall, mused Mrs. Pollifax, and it occurred to her there might be a way to confuse the sheik and his men, even to persuade them to postpone their escape. If she could say enough but not too much—Aloud she said, “There’s one thing I could do that might give us a chance to get nearer them.”