"Should you meet a cobra and a Reguiba, spare the cobra."
* * *
"Welcome to Al Khobaiq, Mr. Fletcher. I'm Wooten. Greer sent me to drive you into town."
"Pleased to meet you," Carter said.
This time out, he was under light cover, posing as one Lewis Fletcher and carrying ID to match. His papers identified him as a high-ranking CIA official to whom every assistance would be rendered. He outranked Greer, who was the Company's representative in Al Khobaiq. Only the CIA's Director of Operations and a handful of his most trusted aides knew that AXE used their agency to provide cover for agents on special assignment, such as Carter.
They weren't happy about that use, but they accepted it as one of the unfortunate facts of life in the current political climate. The difference between the CIA and AXE was like the difference between a big-city police department with its thousands of employees, and a SWAT team.
AXE was no intelligence collector, though that was part of its mission. AXE was an enforcement arm, carrying out the covert activities that the CIA could no longer undertake. The CIA was a sieve, leaking like crazy.
In all fairness, Carter often wondered how enthusiastic he would be about carrying out his assignments if he, like his CIA counterparts, had to worry about his actions being the stuff of congressional hearings and front-page headlines at some future date.
Therefore, he was Lewis Fletcher, CIA, for as long as the guise proved useful.
Carter bypassed customs courtesy of Emir Bandar al Jalubi, the absolute ruler of the tiny state, whose servitors had arranged for the Killmaster to be waved through the time-consuming red tape afflicting ordinary visitors. Emir Bandar liked to think of himself as all-powerful, but if he really were, he wouldn't be sweating the threat of Reguiba.
This was Carter's first visit to Al Khobaiq, though it was far from his first encounter with the Arabian peninsula. Technically, the emirate was independent of, though closely allied to, the House of Saud, but they shared an identical culture. It was a strange land to a Westerner, a puritannical land where customs officials tore out photographs of bikinied beauties in American news magazines, yet where executions by beheading were broadcast live on state-controlled television. Like other sexually repressed cultures, it seethed with torrid passions that could boil over into outbreaks of frightful violence.
Carter met Wooten under a big sign proclaiming in English and Arabic: WARNING! DRUG SMUGGLERS WILL BE EXECUTED!
Wooten was in his mid-forties, big, beefy, red-haired, broad-shouldered. He wore a sweat-stained khaki shirt and slacks, red bandanna, and thick-soled boots.
They shook hands. Carter typed Wooten as a macho man who'd put all other males to the test, so he was braced when Wooten tried to apply a bone-crushing grip.
Wooten felt as if he'd caught his hand in a hydraulic press. Carter continued smiling blandly as he applied the pressure, making the burly man squirm. Past experience had taught him that it was best to establish his dominance at the start with Wooten's type of aggressive he-man. When he thought the lesson had been learned, he let go of Wooten's hand, now red and throbbing.
"No, don't bother, I'll carry my own bag, thanks," Carter said.
Wooten hadn't offered; it was just Carter's way of giving him the needle.
"Quite a grip you've got there," Wooten said. When Carter wasn't looking, he flexed his numb hand to restore its circulation.
Suitcase in hand, Carter followed Wooten across the broad expanse of the terminal, out the front doors. It was like stepping into an oven.
Now it was Wooten's turn to grin. "Mild day. Shouldn't reach more than a hundred degrees in the shade. Of course, there's no shade to speak of."
Carter wore a lightweight safari-style jacket, open-neck short-sleeved shirt, loose-fitting tan trousers, cotton socks, and desert boots. When he stepped into the sun, it was almost like a physical blow. At least his tropical clothes would trap the sweat and keep it from evaporating too fast. Dehydration and heatstroke could easily afflict an unacclimatized man, and not even the hot sun of the Mediterranean could prepare a man for this heat.
Not to mention the fact that the safari jacket hid Wilhelmina in her shoulder harness.
The car was a long pearl-gray limo with tinted windows. Making a show of service, Wooten opened the rear door for Carter. "Your chariot awaits."
Carter tossed his suitcase in the back, then went to the front door on the passenger side. "The Arabs reserve the back seat for their womenfolk, I believe. The men always sit up in front."
"Right you are, mate. But we're not Arabs."
"Still, I wouldn't want to lose face among the locals." Carter climbed in the front seat.
Wooten slammed the back door. "Anything you say, Fletcher. You're the boss. That's what Greer told me, anyhow." He got behind the wheel, started the car, and drove off.
An eight-lane superhighway connected Dharbar Terminal to the seaport city of Al Khobaiq, the provincial capital and only real city of note. The impressively engineered ribbon of road had little traffic to speak of. A fraction of the population owned cars, but those few who did drove big twelve — and sixteen-cylinder tanks like the limo. It took a mighty motor to power a heavy vehicle with the air conditioner roaring at full blast.
The only speed limit was how fast a car could go. Wooten took brutal pleasure in manhandling the machine at high speeds over the roadway's long, banked curves. If he thought to make Carter nervous enough to request that he please slow down, he was crazy. The Killmaster was in a hurry himself.
The roadside was dotted with the burnt-out, ruined wrecks of crashed cars. "The Khobaiquis haven't quite gotten the hang of safe driving yet," Wooten said and grinned.
Nearing the city, they passed shapeless, black-clad figures, barefoot females leading mules and camels. In a land that jealously guarded its females, women were completely veiled.
They rolled through the rugged mountain ranges west of the city, which served to trap moisture blown in from the Gulf, accounting for the pale green scrub of the coast. Between the ridge and the city, the plain was covered by a sprawling shantytown, looking like a collage made from bits of rubbish, teeming with the desperately impoverished.
There was a potential trouble spot for the Emir, thought Carter. One of many.
Then they were in sight of the Gulf and the city fronting it, a city that had existed since the days of the frankincense trade over two thousand years ago.
Al Khobaiq looked like an illustration from Tales of the Arabian Nights. A dazzling cluster of white cubes, bristling with spiked domes and minaret spires. A cat's-cradle of telephone and power lines threaded the seaport.
A closer approach revealed the intricate detailing of broad market squares, souks, bazaars with countless tented booths offering their wares. If you wanted to look for Aladdin's lamp, that was the place to do it, thought Carter.
The harbor was crowded with boats of all types, from oil tankers to dhows, with their graceful triangular lateen sails, unchanged since the days when Sinbad set forth on his legendary voyages.
A closemouthed man, Wooten unbent enough to allow, "Quite a sight, huh, Fletcher?"
"Quite."
* * *
Unlike CIA men in mellower political climes, Greer was not attached to the U.S. embassy in Al Khobaiq. Ever since the original Iranian hostage crisis, the word had gone out to Islamic radicals that a sure source of American spies could be found at the local diplomatic mission.
Greer's cover job was a suitably vague position with a dealership supplying pricey consumer goods to wealthy Arabs and the PXs and commissaries operating in Petro Town near the oil fields.
Greer's office was located in the newly built business and governmental district north of the city proper, planted on a hillside some distance from the waterfront.
"The air's a whole hell of a lot cleaner up here," Wooten said. "You get the sea breezes but not the stink of the city."
The hilltop had been flattened and covered wi
th concrete. Rising around the central square was a collection of modernistic office buildings that would have looked at home in any industrial park in the world. Surrounding them were parking lots crammed with cars, few of them American-made, Carter noted.
The construction was new, but it showed much pitting from wind-blown sand scouring the surfaces. Greer's office windows were sand-blasted to near opacity, spoiling what otherwise would have been a spectacular fourteenth-floor view of the city.
The office was standard issue. There was the same desk and furniture, lighting, neutral pastel walls, and mediocre abstract art that Carter had seen in scores of similar offices worldwide.
Greer was in his mid-thirties, with thinning brown hair, a round pink face, and a trim sandy mustache. He met with Carter while Wooten cooled his heels in the outer reception area.
After the ritualized formality of exchanging recognition codes, Greer said, "You're a heavy hitter, Mr. Fletcher."
"What makes you say that?" Carter asked.
"One of the emir's people called, asking if there was anything they could do to expedite your mission. Very impressive! I've been here for over eighteen months now, and I can't even get the undersecretary to the vizier to return my phone calls. By the way, he didn't say just what your mission is."
"Then I won't either," Carter said.
Greer was not offended. "All very hush-hush, hmmm? Fine. In that case, I'll ask no questions so you won't have to tell me any lies. Regional Control says I'm to extend full cooperation. You must rate pretty high in the Company, too. So, what can I do for you?"
"I'd like to talk to Howard Sale, please," Carter said.
Greer looked blank. "Who?"
"Howard Sale. He's the local dealer for Securitron. He supplied the security system for this layout."
"Oh, you mean Howie!" Greer smiled. "Sure, I know Howie! It just took me a minute to connect the name with the face. Howie Sale, sure! He's a green kid, but I like him. Haven't seen him since the fire."
"What fire?"
"There was a pretty bad fire in his office last week," Greer said. "I haven't seen Howie since then, so I thought he got recalled home by the Company. I don't mind telling you, it made me nervous. The fire, that is. I hope the system he installed in here doesn't short out and burn the place down."
"I'd really like to get hold of Howard Sale. Do you have his office address?"
"Sure. You won't have to go far, either. It's right across the square."
"I'd also like his home address. And the names of any of his friends and associates."
"Can't help you on that last," Greer said. "Howie's a one-man operation, and he held down that office by himself. As for who his friends might be, that's a mystery to me."
"Maybe you could ask around."
"I'll do that. As for his home address, I know he had bachelor quarters over in Petro Town. I can give them a call over there and nail it down for you if you'd like."
"I'd like," Carter said.
Ten
Carter paused at a pay phone in the lobby.
"You could have called for free from Greer's office," Wooten said.
"I'm trying to save the taxpayers a little money."
"Or maybe you didn't want Greer to listen in on the extension." Wooten hovered at Carter's back, craning his neck to see what number the Killmaster was calling.
"You don't mind if I make this a private call, do you?" Carter growled.
"Top-secret stuff, huh?" Wooten said. "Suit yourself." Shrugging, he shuffled a few paces away. "Lotsa luck on making your connection. The phone service isn't so hot around here."
Wooten was right. Working from memory, Carter punched the number Hawk had given him. Five frustrating minutes later, when he was half convinced that his memory might not be so hot anymore, he connected with Prince Hasan's answering service. Carter began in Arabic, but the voice on the other end of the line replied in English.
Prince Hasan was out of the city and temporarily unavailable, but if the caller would leave a message stating where he could be reached, the prince would contact him at the earliest opportunity.
Carter gave his Lewis Fletcher name and said he could be reached after six in the evening at the Grand Sojourn Hotel.
With Wooten in tow, he crossed the square to the building housing Howard Sale's office.
The Securitron office was a burnt-out suite of gutted, fire-blackened rooms. The smell of charred debris still hung in the air, a week later. Plywood panels were nailed up where the doors used to be in a makeshift attempt to seal off the rooms. A quick peek through a chink in the barrier was enough to determine that everything inside was totally destroyed.
That made Carter feel a bit better.
The short-lived, high-intensity fire had sizzled Securitron to a meltdown, while barely touching the neighboring offices.
"That's suspicious as hell, if you ask me," Wooten said. "I make it arson."
He was right, but not in the sense he meant. Howard Sale was an AXE operative, a field agent whose cover was as a local representative of Securitron, selling electronic security devices. There really was a Securitron, home-based in Lowell, Massachusetts. It was an AXE proprietary company, whose real business was producing high-resolution cameras for orbiting spy satellites. The research was so hush-hush that no civilian company could enforce the needed security measures. Therefore, AXE owned the company outright. Securitron also marketed a line of burglar alarms and smoke detectors as a sideline, to camouflage the company's true purpose.
The office had been destroyed not by an arsonist, but by an arson machine, a last-ditch self-destruct mechanism linked to sophisticated computer terminals on the premises. Some unauthorized person had tried to access the computer memory banks without the correct password codes and entry keys, triggering the white-hot incandescent blaze that left the machinery so much useless slag, as well as burning up the office.
"I've seen all there is to see around here," Carter said. "Let's go."
"Where to?" Wooten asked.
"Petro Town."
* * *
The man-made oasis of Petro Town stood some twenty miles northwest of the city. Getting there was no problem. The emirate had one of the best highway systems the Killmaster had ever encountered, and traffic was light.
Petro Town rose within sight of the southern rim of the Zubeir Depression, one of the most oil-saturated places on the planet. A handful of pumps stood sentinel along the perimeter.
Support personnel are required to operate a field of that magnitude — engineers and administrators, mechanics, drivers, loaders, pipe fitters, hydraulics experts, geologists, and many others. The majority of the technologically sophisticated staff had to be imported from overseas.
Petro Town existed to house and serve them. It was a startling slice of Americana set down in the desert, an enclave of over thirty-five hundred souls. Its layout was similar to military posts in other parts of the world, and it boasted all the comforts and conveniences of home: a giant PX, schools, churches, two movie theaters, even a bowling alley.
Here, security was a concept, not a reality. Carter winced at the site's aching vulnerability, the sketchiness of the fence surrounding it, the lackadaisical good humor of the hot, tired, bored guards, few in number.
He hated to think of what a suicidal car bomber could do here, or the havoc a few well-placed rockets could wreak. What a prime target!
A gate guard directed Carter and Wooten to Howard Sale's residence. While not an oil man, Sale lived in Petro Town to be among his countrymen.
He lived in a small, neat, flat-roofed bungalow fronted by a square of parched lawn in a section relegated to the bachelors. A tract on the other side of the avenue held the family men with their wives and children. After Al Khobaiq, where the few females abroad were wrapped and veiled in the traditional chador, it was a bit of a thrill to see women and girls openly strolling about clad in halters and shorts and slacks.
Superintending the bachelor quarters was
a transplanted American couple, Gus and Millie Ferguson. He was a former oil field roughneck who had semiretired into this maintenance job. He had a gray crew cut and a belly that said that here was a man who bought his beer not by the sixpack, but by the case. Millie was fleshy, flushed, sweaty, and irritable at having to come out in the heat of the day to let Carter and Wooten into Howard Sale's quarters.
"Don't rightly know as I should let you in," Millie said, fumbling with her ring of keys. "What with Mr. Sale not being here, I mean."
"That's why we're here, Mrs. Ferguson," Carter said. "We're a bit worried about Howard. His folks haven't heard from him for some time. I'm sure you'll be happy to help out."
"Well, when you put it that way…"
"I been a little concerned about the kid myself," Ferguson said.
"Why is that, Mr. Ferguson?"
"Call me Gus."
"Glad to," Carter said. "You've been worried about him, you said?"
"Yeah. He always struck me as a decent sort — nice, quiet, regular hours. You know. But in the last few weeks, he changed. Stayed away for days at a time, came in at midnight only to go right back out again. That sort of thing."
Millie sniffed. "I didn't care for the company he was keeping. There was one fellow who came here a few times, a fancy-talking Ay-rab I didn't cotton to."
"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?" Carter asked.
"Land sakes, no! I can't tell one of 'em apart from the other!"
"You couldn't forget that slick car of his," Ferguson said. "Big red sports car, looking more like a goddamned spaceship than an automobile."
When Millie turned the doorknob to fit the key in the lock, the door opened. "Well, that's funny! It wasn't locked. I hope nobody took anything."
"Much theft around here?" Carter asked.
"Just from the whites," Ferguson said. "The Arabs don't steal nothing. Penalty for stealing is to get their hand chopped off."
"That would be a deterrent."
Millie said, "If anything's missing, we're not responsible for it. We can't go around checking doors to make sure they're locked."
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