Now he lay in a small date grove some miles north of el Quantara, where a branch of the Sweetwater Canal greened the desert. He had hoped for rest here, on his way to Port Said and the refuge of the American consulate, but there had been precious little as he dozed minute by minute.
He gazed up through the fronds. The khamsin wind had died and left a lemony tan dust suspended in the evening sky. The heat had dropped to something just endurable, and he was aware of sweat and grime that caked every pore.
Something was wrong.
He did not know what, but felt he must move on.
Quickly and silently, all alert now, he crossed through the undergrowth and scanned a flat, irrigated field of berseem clover that stretched bright green against the chocolate earth on the other side of the oasis.
The Russians were some sixty yards away, four of them in a bunch, grim and wary.
They trailed his footprints along the bank of a broad irrigation ditch that ran from a railroad culvert where he had eluded them an hour ago. They were superior trackers, and determined. A short whip antenna wobbled from a walkie-talkie that one carried slung over his shoulder. Durell suspected there was more than one team on his trail, but they all looked alike. He had learned that they carried their pistols stuffed under their belts, inside their shirts, but he judged it little mattered if it were for cosmetic effect. So long as they contained him to the desert and among the smaller villages, they could haul a howitzer without it ever getting back to the authorities.
At least Lazeishvili was beyond their reach, gone with Link and Sirena, Durell thought. He took satisfaction in that.
With hurried care he crossed back through the grove and weighed the possibilities, aware that the Russians grew closer every moment. A group of chanting fellahin nearby hacked and yanked at lavender water hyacinths, clearing a drainage ditch. Some wore loose-flowing galabia robes and skull caps. Others, down in the water, had stripped to undershirts and knee breeches, as they heaved the plants out to be piled onto a donkey cart.
Flies swarmed and bit as Durell wistfully regarded the cast-off robes. There seemed to be no way of getting his hands on one of the robes without being seen.
Beyond the fellahin was a man who drove a gamoos buffalo that powered a creaking waterwheel. Then came a cluster of mud houses, spread out on either side of the big irrigation ditch, where children swam as bullocks cooled themselves, and camels and sheep drank the muddy water. A pair of black-draped women pattered down a dusty lane, water jars balanced on their heads, leaving other women to gossip at the community water spigot in the shade of inclining date palms. A boy in striped pajamas played with a white Puppy.
All peaceful enough. For the moment.
He unholstered his .38 S&W and dangled it beside his thigh, just as a crackle of fallen leaves and dead twigs came to his ears. He looked back: the Russians were inside the grove, but he could not see them yet. The pistol grip was heavy and wet in his palm. He brushed sweat from his eyes.
He had no choice but to run for it, hoping to be screened by the foliage long enough to get away.
The little oasis was shaped like an eye, and he decided his chances were better if he fled from its tip, near the village. He turned from the bushy verge, bent low, hustled along a sandy track, his breathing light and calm. He gave a thought to the dead already left behind and tensed himself against surprise. The Russians meant business, as always. The sun cast yellow wafers amid green shadows, as he scuffed along. Sand on the trail whiffed and flew into his shoes and grated against his heels.
The Russian materialized out of the leafy foreground, right in front of him.
It was like a picture flashed suddenly on a screen.
He was short and meaty, all his weight in chest and shoulders, with a stubble of beard and high, straw-colored brows. Surprise pushed his eyes out at the sight of Durell.
Durell’s shoulder slammed into him and bowled him over, but the Russian got a grip, and they went down together, pounding and groping in a swirl of hot dust and straw. Durell came up on top, but the Russian was strong and almost threw him off with the first heave of hia broad chest. Durell hurled a knuckle punch at his windpipe, missed, felt a steely fist crash into his temple. Sparks floated behind his eyes and he went over. They rolled, cursing and groaning, breath bursting and hissing, and the Russian got astraddle of Durell. Blood dripped from the tip of the Russian’s nose. He whimpered and dug his thumbs at Durell’s throat, trying to crush his larynx. There was a gleam of bloodshot exultation in his eyes. Durell made no effort to break his grip, but drew his chin down to protect his throat as best he could and slid his palm over the other’s face, smothering mouth and nostrils. The Russian’s face tilted back, and he spoke against Durell’s palm: "Die!” he said. ' Die! Die!”
Durell sank thumb and forefinger of his other hand into the man’s neck, beneath the corners of his upturned jaw, squeezing the flow of blood to his brain. The man’s thumbs brought a bruised pain to Durell’s windpipe as they dug and dug. He had judged his opponent correctly. The Russian was overzealous; maybe that was why he hadn’t called to the others for help. He was refusing to turn Durell loose, even as his head reeled and his eyes glazed.
With a sudden kick, Durell hurled him aside, grabbed a handful of hair, slammed his head against the ground. Still clutching the Russian’s hair, he lay back, slid a leg under the dazed man’s neck and slammed the other leg down on the soft arch of his exposed throat, then locked his ankles and tightened a lethal scissors-hold.
"Die!” he rasped, sweat stinging his eyes, grit between his teeth. "Die! Die!”
A quick shuffle of movement came from behind, and Durell heard someone say: "Release him immediately, or you die!” The English came in thick, Slavic accents.
Durell sensed despair, then anger with himself as he loosened his hold and turned his head to see the speaker.
The toe of a boot crashed between his eyes.
Durell made no effort to move. His head throbbed, and he was glad just to lie on the warm sand without having to run. When he opened his eyes, all he saw was a yellow and green blur. Vision returned slowly through a dazed glare over the passing seconds. The Russians seemed patient enough.
Their leader, a man they called Lieutenant Maximov, had the long, sunburned face and serious eyes of a farmer. His cheeks were drawn, his eyes ringed with fatigue, and he seemed glad the fight was over. He cursed the man Durell had killed, calling him a fool, and ordered the two remaining team members to strip the corpse of identification and bury it. While they did that, he reported Durell’s capture over the walkie-talkie.
Shadows were long when they escorted him from the date grove. There was a tang of cooking smoke in the air, drifting from the village. Fields, goldened by the low sunlight, stretched to a far rise of desert. Mud walls of the village reflected a burnt orange color from the setting sun. The group approached the flat-roofed houses in a casual manner. No one was in sight along the single street, but voices came from behind walls in rippling Arabic, the only language in twenty-five hundred years of foreign rule that had managed to supplant the Coptic of pharaonic times.
The Russians kept their guns out of sight as Lieutenant Maximov banged on a rickety plank door. The ululating strains of a ballad, accompanied by a rabab violin, came dimly from a radio within.
When no one answered his knock, Maximov pushed and the door swung open on leather hinges. He entered cautiously, flagged the other two to follow, and one of them shoved Durell into the gloom. They were in a small room, like an entranceway. Beyond was a courtyard. The music came from there, with the bleat of a goat and clucking of chickens. The courtyard had doors to rooms on each of its sides, and a plastered mud stair at the rear led to the roof, where stored jumble was visible over the eaves. A chicken coop, baking oven, goat shed and family latrine cluttered the courtyard, where two black-robed women, probably mother and daughter, prepared rice and lentils over a fire of dried cotton branches and maize leaves.
"I w
ouldn’t go in there,” Durell said.
Maximov sneered. "Wouldn’t you?”
"Go ahead,” Durell said.
Maximov studied him briefly, then stepped through followed by the other two with Durell in the middle. A man in striped pajamas stood nearby, caressing a pigeon; he had not been in sight from the entranceway.
"You there,” Maximov called in Arabic.
The women looked up startled, rose, covered their faces.
The man tossed the pigeon into the air. He was hollow-chested; his face looked nearly fleshless and his forehead was deeply furrowed. He might have been thirty-five or fifty-five. "What are you doing in my house?” he snarled, showing long, yellow teeth.
"I wish to borrow it for a little while.”
The Egyptian snapped a command, and the two women hastened out of sight. "Get out, foreign dog. How dare you intrude upon my womenfolk!”
"Here.” Maximov held a fistful of fifty-piaster notes. "I give you money to let me use your house.”
The Egyptian slapped his hand and sent the currency fluttering to the dung-strewn earth. Maximov seemed stunned by the man’s vehemence as he brandished a stick and shouted invective that was beyond following or comprehending. The Lieutenant glanced uncertainly at his subordinates. They shrugged, looked embarrassed.
Durell said: "He’s Moslem. His women are secluded, and you’ve violated the taboo. Didn’t they teach you anything at the Institute for International Studies, Lieutenant?”
"He’ll have to make the best of it,” Maximov growled, and pulled a blunt, 9mm. Makarov pistol out of his shirt. "Out!” he shouted. "Out, all of you! Take your pest-ridden females!”
The Egyptian stepped back at sight of the gun, but a blood fury glowed undiminished in his black eyes. He called his women, who rushed past and outdoors with hidden, downcast faces. The man left in a storm of curses and threats.
Maximov swung the gun irately on Durell. Durell swallowed hard, before the man checked his temper and told him to move into the courtyard. "Squat,” he ordered. He glanced nervously toward the street entrance, then back at Durell. "Clasp your hands behind your head,” he said.
Durell did as he was told. The place smelled like a barnyard, bird and goat droppings everywhere. The rice and lentils, burning in the pot, added their dark odor. It was twilight; the small cooking fire cast short, ragged shadows. One of the Russians struck a match to the wick of a kerosene lantern. Another turned off the Egyptian’s 1930s radio.
They seemed to be waiting for something,
Durell did not care to speculate on what it was, and he was in no hurry to find out. About fifteen minutes passed, then:
"Ho! Comrade Cajun. Is it really you?”
The enormous bulk that filled the door belonged to an old opponent.
It was Colonel Cesar Skoll of the KGB.
12
"Stand up, old friend,” Colonel Cesar Skoll told Durell.
"Not friends, I’ve told you before.”
"You don’t look so well. My men . . . such peasants! Have they mistreated you? It’s all a misunderstanding, Comrade Durell.”
He watched through slanted Siberian eyes, his bald head gleaming, as Durell rose warily. Durell's joints were stiff; he felt sore all over. Exhaustion fogged his vision briefly, and he shook it away.
Skoll grinned. "You led us a merry chase. Now it’s over. So?”
"So?”
"Where is Aleksei Lazeishvili?”
Durell shook his head. "Don’t know.”
There was a hard burst of pain behind his left knee. His legs buckled, and he sprawled on the filthy earth. The piercing torment of a kick to the kidney convulsed his frame. He lay still, gasped for breath, waited. Skoll was bellowing at his men, dressing them down as if they were raw recruits. Then Durell felt the touch of one of his big paws. "Come, 'tovarich.’ Up again. Up now.”
Shakily, Durell managed to raise himself to his feet once more. Colonel Skoll watched him carefully, his pale eyes flat and hard, like Siberian ice. He was reminiscent of a big circus bear in the rumpled uniform of a Greek merchant marine officer. A sweat-sodden undershirt showed beneath the unbuttoned tunic. Durell did not have to remind himself how dangerous the man was. He was the Soviet KGB’s best counterpart of himself, and as such was not to be taken lightly. They had crossed paths before, in Morocco, Japan, Sri Lanka. Somehow, it usually turned out they were on the same side; first against the incredibly evil Madame Hung, then her ruthless successor, Dr. Mouquerana K. V. Sinn.
But not this time.
Durell was certain in his bones.
"You are all right?” Skoll was saying. "My men are angry, impatient to kill you. Do you understand me, Comrade Durell?”
"I understand,” Durell said, his voice toneless.
"Then please . . .” He drew a breath into his massive chest. "I must question you. I do not think you will talk willingly, but the matter is most serious—”
"And you’re not sure how long you can hold your murdering little band off my back, right?” Durell said.
"Ha! Exactly, my friend.” He wreathed his Tartar face in smiles. "You will cooperate?”
"I told you—”
"Please, Comrade Colonel,” Lieutenant Maximov interjected, "let me have this dung for five minutes, and he will provide you with answers, or—” Maximov made his voice gritty—"his scrotum for a change-purse!” "Shut up!” Skoll barked. "Barbarian! Keep your knife in your pocket.” Then, to Durell: "Sincerely, old friend, I may have difficulty controlling my men. Please, behave now, or they will keep you—”
"The man you want has vanished,” Durell said. Lieutenant Maximov stuck his long, farmer’s face into Durell’s, and snarled: "That won’t do, capitalist dog. Do you value your privates?”
Skoll shoved the Lieutenant away. "I promise you my protection, if you talk,” he said, his face earnest.
Durell remained silent.
Maximov made a sound of disgust through his nose. "Let’s burn him. Slowly. He’ll babble like a brook.”
Colonel Skoll spoke in a low voice. "The smell of burning flesh, it is so unpleasant. It stays with you, in your nostrils.” He smiled encouragingly, and said: "Let us begin again. Where is Aleksei Lazeishvili, please.”
"I don’t know,” Durell said, aware of the ache in his kidney, the tired buzz in his ears.
"Truthfully now,” the big Siberian urged.
"Truthfully, it’s a mystery.”
Durell did not see Maximov’s kick; it sent him to the earth, just as before. Then there was a crashing pain in his spine, followed by the numb shudders of blows all over. He protected his head as best he could beneath folded arms.
"Enough!” Skoll bellowed.
The word was barely audible to Durell. Then he felt someone clutch the scruff of his collar and pull him roughly into a sitting position on the dung-littered yard.
Skoll knelt beside him, his round face close. Durell twisted his head toward the dim outline, let it fall limply away, sagged, was aware of someone propping his back.
Skoll spoke in a way that conveyed anguish and sorrow, but fuzzily Durell was unconvinced. "It’s a misunderstanding, as I told you,” Skoll said. "I assure you. Aleksei Lazeishvili had a change of heart. He told us so . . .”
There was a long moment’s pause. Durell could not have put two words together if he’d wanted to. He kept his eyes closed as he sought something firm in a heaving, whirling world. The scent of blood touched his nostrils.
"What’s that?”
Durell detected a sharp fragment of alarm in Skoll’s voice. He looked up, saw the big Russian standing, face tilted slightly up and swinging from side to side. Then it came to Durell: the rumble of many voices, somewhere down the village street.
Quickly, Skoll turned back to Durell. "Try again, old friend,” he said. "You know the question by heart.”
"Does it look like I have Lazeishvili?” Durell growled.
"He would not have gone willingly from the ship. You must have him
a prisoner somewhere.”
"He went willingly from Russia,” Durell replied.
"There was another man with you; he has him?”
Lieutenant Maximov intervened. "The villagers are coming up the street, Comrade Colonel.”
Skoll swung around to view the street entrance. "Bar the door,” he ordered.
"Allow me to use my knife on this class-enemy scum—”
Skoll spoke rapidly. "Shut up! Bar the door.” Then, back to Durell: "Where are they, this accomplice of yours and Lazeishvili? There isn’t much time, 'tovarich.’ ”
"Far away, I’m sure.”
"Our reach is long enough, as you know. Where? Before I allow my men to take extreme measures.”
Durell wiped his lips and drew a thin line of blood across the back of his hand.
Maximov was back. "Answer!” he screamed.
Durell kept his silence.
He did not know how long it lasted this time. After the first blows, he was effectively out. There was a dim knowledge of pummeling. Bursts of pain came like knifepoints through his dazed senses. Then, there was a respite when he seemed to be suspended on air in a darkness not quite pure. Irritating noises turned gradually into the sound of voices. Screams and curses came from beyond the courtyard, muffled somewhat by the wall. From nearer came the hearty, commanding tones of Cesar Skoll: "We clear out, then. You know the rendezvous point . .
Durell felt the earth against his cheek, peered up from the corner of his eye. Skoll towered above, a dark thunderhead presence in the afterglow of sunset. He handed a walkie-talkie back to Lieutenant Maximov.
"What shall we do with him?” Maximov tilted his head toward Durell.
The street cries increased in volume; Durell heard a battering noise at the wooden door.
Skoll said: "Leave him.”
"I protest, Comrade Colonel. He should be eliminated,” Maximov argued.
Skoll spoke with quick anger: "Listen to that rabble! You’ve brought the whole village down on us by dishonoring the man who owns this house. But for once, I can be thankful you are such a fool. The fellahin out there will finish him for us; we needn’t have his murder on our hands if we run afoul of Egyptian authorities after getting out of here.”
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