by Len Levinson
Butler shivered, for it gets cold on the desert at night. He wrapped his robes around him and sat on the sand. Taking out a protein bar, he unpeeled the wrapper and commenced to eat. Farouk and Wilma did the same, sitting near Butler.
“I think we’re lost,” Wilma said, munching her protein bar. “We should have gone that way.” She pointed to the east, where a full moon was rising.
“If you want to go that way, go ahead,” Butler told her.
“It’s too late now,” she said.
“It’s never too late for anything,” Butler replied.
Farouk took out a cigarette and lit up, smoking while eating his protein bar. “I don’t know which way we should go, but we surely should have reached the Damascus Road by now.”
Butler decided to say nothing. He was getting sick of arguing with his two companions. Bumming an Egyptian cigarette from Farouk, he leaned back against the sand dune and smoked it.
“I’m getting cold,” Wilma said, rubbing her shoulders.
“No fires,” Butler replied.
“It’s strange how hot the desert is during the day, and how cold it gets at night.”
“That is the way of the desert.” Farouk said.
“But what is the way to the Damascus Road?” Wilma asked.
Butler pointed in the direction they were going. “That way.”
“Wanna bet?” Wilma asked.
“No, because women never pay their debts. I recently won one hundred rubles from a woman and never got a penny of it.”
Wilma stiffened her smile. “That remark is a slur against women everywhere.”
Butler groaned and lay back. “Shut up—I’m going to sleep.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up, you beast!”
“I just gave you a direct order. Shut your mouth.”
Wilma harumphed and began making a smooth spot for herself on the sand. Farouk curled up like a cat right where he was. Wilma lay on the sand and closed her eyes.
“Good night, Farouk,” she said.
“Good night, Wilma.”
Butler rolled over and closed his eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard faint strains of music on the desert. It was as though the silence of the desert was producing its own subtle sounds, the melody of a flute and the timbre of a lyre, sounds from long ago, of forgotten caravans and mighty sheiks.
Chapter Twenty-One
Butler heard the sound of a small engine. Opening his eyes, he saw that it was light out. The sun was rising in the east and Butler peered over the sand dune in the direction of the engine’s sound.
He blinked his eyes because it appeared that coming from his left was a man on a motorcycle. The motorcycle was moving fast and the man was hunched over the handlebars, wearing a black helmet and black one-piece riding suit. The motorcycle and rider whizzed past Butler, not more than thirty yards away, and Butler read the name Honda on the gas tank. Butler watched in amazement as the motorcycle receded into the shimmering sands of the desert.
Was that a mirage, he wondered, and if so, do mirages make sounds?
“What was that?” Wilma asked, raising her head from the sand.
“A motorcycle,” Butler replied.
“A motorcycle?” Farouk asked, still in a ball on the sand.
“That’s what I said.”
“It couldn’t be,” Wilma said.
Butler rose from behind the sand dune and walked quickly to where the motorcycle had passed. As he drew closer to the spot he saw black asphalt, and his heart leapt for joy, for it was the road to Damascus. He stomped his feet on it and jumped up and down. It was a real road, and that had been a real motorcycle. Butler had been leading his quarrelsome companions in the right direction, after all. He had been right again.
He returned to the area behind the sand dune, where Farouk and Wilma were getting up and shaking the sand out of their robes.
“It really was a motorcycle,” Butler told them. “The road to Damascus is just yonder.”
“No kidding?” Wilma asked.
“I wouldn’t kid you, baby.”
“Well, what do you know about that.”
They had a breakfast of protein bars and water, then walked to the road and headed toward Damascus. At around ten o’clock an old green bus came along, and they hailed it down. They got aboard and joined a bunch of peasants with chickens, goats, and sheep. The bus started up and continued on its rickety way toward Damascus. Farouk and Wilma chatted animatedly with the passengers, and Butler pulled his burnoose over his face and fell asleep again. He wasn’t that tired, but he wanted an excuse so that he wouldn’t have to talk to anybody and reveal that he didn’t speak Arabic. That might make people suspicious, and he didn’t want people to be suspicious of him while he was carrying so much explosives on his person.
The bus rolled into Damascus at four o’clock in the afternoon and passed a broken-down slum district before reaching the downtown area of modern new hotels and office buildings existing next to ancient mosques and palaces. The sidewalks were thick with people in flowing robes and burnooses. Among them were some men in western dress, and soldiers in khaki.
Butler, Wilma, and Farouk got off the bus at the central terminal and checked into an old hotel nearby. They took baths in a yellowed bathtub down the hall and hid their explosives underneath the mattresses on the beds. After they cleaned up, they returned to the bus terminal and called the Institute from a public telephone. Butler spoke in code to the person who answered, because the Institute wanted no formal connection with the three secret agents, in case the latter got caught. Arrangements were made to meet an official of the Institute at a coffee house not far from the bus station.
The coffee house was on a street corner in a neighborhood of old hotels and garish .movie theatres. It had two big windows in front and between them a door that led to the smoky interior where men smoked pipes and drank coffee or tea while playing checkers with each other and talking about the war in Lebanon.
Butler, Farouk, and Wilma sat at a table in the darkest available corner, and when the old mustachioed waiter came over they ordered a pot of coffee and plate of pastries.
The man from the Institute showed up after a short interval, and he wore a white suit with a red carnation in the lapel. He had sandy hair and a thick mustache, and was twenty pounds overweight. They spoke the appropriate code words to each other and then he introduced himself as Harper, the director of the local Institute branch. He sat with them and opened the attaché case he had with him.
“I can’t stay long,” he said, “because we want to minimize contact between the Institute office and yourselves. However, I think we’ve got something useful for you.” He looked around, and when satisfied he wasn’t being observed, he took out a photograph from his attaché case. It showed a thick-set man with blonde hair walking down a street. “This is Dmitri Marakazov, the chief engineer on the Doom Machine project at the Abdul Faheem Munitions Factory. We have been observing him, and he’s totally woman-crazy. He’ll attempt to have intercourse with any woman from eight to eighty, blind, crippled or crazy. He’s forty years old and married, but his wife is in Moscow. This is the first chance he’s ever had to mess around, and he’s making the most of it.”
“But with whom?” Butler asked. “I thought that Arab women don’t fool around like that.”
“They don’t, but there are many western women here, particularly American female tourists. Let’s face it; American female tourists can be had.”
Wilma wrinkled her nose. “What are you all looking at me for? I’m not a tourist.”
“That’s true,” Butler said. “You’re our Mata Hart.” He studied the photograph, then turned to Harper. “Does he speak English?”
“Yes, but I understood the lady here speaks Russian.”
“I do,” Wilma said.
“But I’ll assist with the interrogation.” Butler said, “and it’ll go easier if the sonofabitch speaks English.”
“Oh, yes, the interro
gation,” Harper said. He reached into the attaché case and took out a brown paper bag. “Here’s a hypodermic needle and our very latest truth serum. Just give him a shot of this and he’ll tell you anything you want to know.” Harper snapped closed his attaché case and looked at Butler. “If you have no further questions, I’d better be on my way.”
“Do you know when Lover Boy gets out of work?”
“He’s on the day shift—usually gets out at five o’clock.”
“That’s all I need to know,” Butler said. “How about you two?”
“I have no questions,” Wilma said.
“Me neither,” said Farouk.
“Good luck,” Harper said. Then he stood and walked out of the coffee house. Seconds later he was swallowed up by the crowd on the sidewalk outside.
Butler turned to Wilma. “It’s all up to you now,” he said through the smoke and aroma of coffee.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a quarter to five in the afternoon of the next day. Wilma walked down the street opposite the Abdul Faheem Munitions Factory, wearing blue jeans and denim jacket, her cowboy shirt unbuttoned midway down her breasts, taking pictures of the surrounding buildings with her new Canon F-l.
Butler and Farouk were standing nearby, watching her to make sure nothing went wrong. Earlier in the day they’d checked into the kind of hotel where American tourists would stay, with Wilma getting a big room all for herself. They’d shopped for special clothes for Wilma, and bought her the Canon F-l with three supplemental lenses. She was going to portray an ordinary tourist taking pictures of Damascus, and she was going to bump into Lover Boy by “mistake” and vamp him.
The factory was a huge complex of buildings behind a chain fence, and across the street were cafes, grocery stores, and cheap hotels. It was located near the north of the city, and in the distance you could see the Taurus Mountains.
“Here they come,” said Farouk.
Butler looked, seeing men stream out of the buildings toward the main gate. Wilma saw them too and headed in that direction, snapping pictures of the plant, the mountains, and the cafes, just like a shutterbug American tourist. As the workers began filing out of the gate, she started taking pictures of them. Some smiled and waved at her. Others said obscene things. She smiled because she was a tough little cookie and things like that didn’t bother her. She kept peering through the reflex system of the camera, searching for the meaty face of Dmitri Marakazov, the Moscow Lover Boy. Somebody pinched her and she went eek, but kept on taking pictures. Finally, after several moments had passed, she saw him come through the gate, dressed in baggy gray slacks and a white shirt open at the collar. He carried his suit jacket over his arm.
Wilma made her way toward him, aiming the camera at his face. He spotted her and smiled. She took his picture and then nodded her head as if to say thank you.
“You are American?” he asked, swaggering toward her. He spoke with a thick Russian accent in a deep baritone voice.
“Why, yes,” Wilma replied, fluttering her eyelashes. “Are you an Arab?”
“An Arab? Don’t be ridiculous. I am a Russian.”
“Oh, for goodness sakes. I never met a Russian before.”
He laughed heartily at her consternation. “I hope you are not afraid of me.”
“Why, no. At least I don’t think so. Well, maybe just a little.”
He looked her over, and she stuck her breasts out a little. She wore no bra, and didn’t have to.
“You are a tourist?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“All alone in this strange country?”
“I’m here with some of my girlfriends, but they wanted to go to the Karmlaki Museum today, and I wanted to take pictures of factories. I love factories. I think they’re poetic.”
“That’s probably because you never worked in one,” he replied, laughing heartily again. She realized he had a tendency to laugh heartily.
“Probably.”
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I’m a schoolteacher, and when I get back home I’m going to show color slides of my trip to my students.”
“Where are you from?”
“Chattanooga, Tennessee.”
“That is in the south of your country?”
“Yes.”
“You are in the Ku Klux Klan?”
“No, silly.”
“But I thought everybody who lived in the south of your country belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.”
“Oh, no. Not anymore.”
Dmitri touched his upper lip with his finger and thought for a few seconds. “You are a very attractive young woman,” he said.
“Why, thank you,” she replied, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Do you think perhaps we could have dinner together?”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“Right now?”
“Why not?”
“But I hardly know you.”
“What better way would there be for you to know me?” He laughed heartily.
Wilma looked at him and found him utterly disgusting, but the fate of the world hung in the balance there. “Well, all right,” she said.
“Is there any particular restaurant where you’d like to go, or should I take you to the Red Star, where all we Russians go to listen to the music of the balalaika.”
Wilma wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like balalaikas,” she said. “Could we go to the Habib?” That was a restaurant where she felt certain she wouldn’t get ptomaine poisoning.
“The Habib? I don’t believe I know the place.”
“It’s only a few blocks from my hotel.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Let me get us a cab, and we’ll go there right away.” He raised his hand and waved.
The street was thick with pedestrians, buses, and automobiles. A cab detached itself from the traffic and steered toward them, stopping a few feet away. Dmitri gallantly opened the door and Wilma scurried inside. Dmitri joined her and told the cabbie the name of the restaurant. The cab moved off into the smoky, honking traffic.
Butler and Farouk came out of the doorway, brushing the dust off their Arabian robes. Butler raised his hand and hailed down a cab. He and Farouk piled in.
“Follow that cab,” Farouk told the driver.
“Which cab? There are a hundred cabs out here.”
“The one opposite the hydrant, straight ahead.”
“Ah, that cab.”
And thus Butler and Farouk followed Wilma and Dmitri through the streets of Damascus. They passed the huge Christian church built by Emperor Theodosius I in the year 375 A.D., now known as the Great Mosque of Damascus. They passed steam baths ornate as palaces, office buildings that could have fit on Park Avenue in New York, and the old square buildings built by the French colonials when they governed Syria. Finally they came to the classy downtown area where all the nice hotels were. Wilma’s cab stopped in front of the Habib, a modern chromium restaurant, and she got out with Dmitri. They entered the restaurant and then the second cab arrived, disgorging Butler and Farouk.
They looked through the window of the restaurant and saw Dmitri and Wilma being seated at a corner table. Everything seemed to be going okay, but they decided to hang around for a while anyway before going back to the hotel and waiting for Wilma to arrive with Dmitri. They hunched back and forth on the sidewalk like typical Arabs begging for alms, while inside Wilma and Dmitri dined on roast lamb and couscous, Dmitri made numerous lewd and salacious remarks to Wilma, which she responded to by giggling, though she would have liked to crown the sonofabitch with the bottle of Vichy water that sat on the table.
Finally the meal reached its dessert and coffee stage, and Butler decided it was time for him and Farouk to return to the hotel and lay their trap for the unfortunate Dmitri. They walked down the sidewalk to the hotel, which was only a few blocks away. Butler hoped that Wilma would be able to handle the big Russian ail right
. He didn’t want anything to happen to her.
In the restaurant, Dmitri’s face was flushed from drinking numerous cups of coffee and eating countless slices of baklava. His eyes glittered and he panted like a dog, for Wilma had removed her denim jacket, and now her luxurious breasts could be seen in all their splendor. Dmitri couldn’t take his eyes off them, and Wilma wiggled from time to time so he’d stay entranced. Like most women, she’d learned as a teenager to make the most of what she had in order to confuse and befuddle men and thus make them do her bidding.
“You appear to have lost your train of thought,” Wilma told him.
He blinked. “Ah, yes. What was I saying?”
“You were saying that Russia is a great country.”
“Oh, yes, Russia is a great country. We produce economic miracles there daily. No Russian worker goes without medical care for lack of money, as people do in your country where every doctor is virtually a millionaire because of the fees they charge. Moreover there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. Everybody has a right to a job, unlike your country, where everybody has to scramble for work, and those that don’t find it live in the most squalid poverty. And moreover, there are no slums in the Soviet Union. While it’s true that few Russians live as well as many Americans, it’s also true that few Russians live as miserably as many Americans, like your blacks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos, for instance. By the way, may I take you to your hotel room now?”
“My hotel room!” Wilma placed her hand on her breast and looked shocked.
“Why, yes.”
“But we hardly know each other!”
“Don’t be silly,” he said in his deep baritone voice. “Of course we know each other. Why, we’ve just eaten each other... uh... I mean we’ve just had dinner together.”
“But to my hotel room? What will people think?”
“People don’t have to know.” He leaned toward her and leered. “Let’s end this beautiful evening with the rites of love.”
“The rites of love!”
“Yes. You know what I mean.” He winked.
She looked at the ceiling. “Well, I don’t know.” She was trying to drive him insane with lust so that his suspicions would be inhibited.