by Nick Carter
Peace. Rest. It was wonderful. He lay face down and felt his mind drifting, drifting… No! Get up and go! Get up, you goddamn legs move! Open, bastard eyes, and stay open! He drew a deep, painful breath, then another and another, calling on his last resource of Yoga-trained strength and will to pull himself off the littered sidewalk and back onto his feet.
His leaden legs ran painfully for one more block and took him to a wider street that led into a noisy, pungent market place busy with the evening trade. Nick slowed to a walk and lumbered into the crowd like a man wallowing through muddy water. He threaded his uncertain way through groups of veiled Tuaregs and tanned, proudfeatured Moors, past the flower stalls and the displays of exquisite silverware and bizarre amulets, away from whatever hunted for him in the narrow back streets. Stopping at a stall that steamed with hot foods and hotter liquids, he bought a mug of sweet, strong coffee and made himself look back for pursuers. If they were still after him, he could no longer see them. The coffee scalded a path down his throat and into his stomach. He drank as much as he could bear of the hot, sweet stuff and then moved on. Across the square and down the block. Across the street and down another. He saw a battered taxi bustling by and longed to hail it. But it passed him by before he managed to raise an arm to flag it. The red haze settled back into his head and pressed down on his shoulders. Walk! he told himself fiercely. Walk, damn you, and keep on walking.
At last the heavy legs that seemed to belong to some recalcitrant robot took him to broad streets lined with shining pink and blue houses; past the houses and their flowered balconies to the wide business streets; past the statues in a city square; past the small Parisian stores and into a street that gave him a message of comfort and familiarity.
It was impossible to manage the last few steps between the corner and the welcome, open doors of the Majestic. A man could only do so much, and then his poisoned body had to rest or drop…
A shout sounded behind him. It was like the gust of wind that had helped to galvanize him once before. Then huge Senegalese soldiers strode down the sidewalk ahead; he summoned enough strength to dart in front of them, forcing himself to maintain a steady stride so that they remained behind him as a human shield until he reached the hotel doors.
A newspaper was the last thing in the world that he wanted at the moment but he forced himself to stop at the lobby newsstand while he waited to see if anyone came after him. Three lady tourists and a naval officer wandered in. He went upstairs without asking for his key and let himself in with his own door opener. The bed was soft… comfortable… treacherously inviting… Nick turned down the invitation and called Room Service. He paced the floor until the coffee came. Then he double-locked the door and drank and probed his throat with a shaking finger and drank some more and retched. He walked and drank and walked and probed and poured his insides out into the bathroom until a more natural tiredness overtook him. And then, at last, he let himself sit down and rest.
* * *
Special Ambassador Nicholas Carter stepped briskly into the Hotel Senegal shortly after the late sunset and the sudden onslaught of dark night, making no attempt to hide or disguise his arrival but not precisely flaunting himself for the benefit of bomb throwers or other possible assassins. He walked across the lobby with the crowd and he waited until his elevator was almost full before he entered it. A laughing young couple got out with him and stopped three doors before his own, partially blocking the view of the watcher at the opposite end of the hallway but giving Nick a chance to see himself being watched.
He rapped the "Lizzie Borden" signal on his door before releasing the two locks — the standard fixture, and his own — and entering, his mind on Hakim and various other people and his hand on Wilhelmina.
Hakim tossed aside his newspaper as Nick entered.
"Ah! The wanderer returns, looking a trifle pale. May I recommend to you a medicinal portion of your very excellent Scotch?"
Nick noticed the glass on the table beside his cross-eyed colleague and he saw that Hakim had been concealing a formidable snub-nosed weapon behind his newspaper. He reset the door locks and nodded enthusiastically.
"You can. You can even pour it. Is the man down the hallway something to do with you, or does he come with the hotel?"
Hakim looked up from his pouring and glanced at Nick sharply with his one good eye. "So he's still there, is he? No, he's not mine."
"But he's seen you coming and going, huh? Thanks." Nick swallowed gratefully and lowered himself into an easy chair. "And he knows you have access to the room even when I'm not here?"
"I'm not so sure he does." Hakim flung himself comfortably into his chair. "I made great play of knocking and being let in by you, and I think I had him fooled until you came back. He must be feeling quite confused by now."
Nick grinned. "Maybe we ought to give him even more to think about by luring him in here and inviting him to talk. But I doubt if he's got much to offer."
Hakim made a face and nodded. "It would be an entertainment, certainly, but he has the look of a rather stupid underling and he may as well stay out there as be replaced by a tougher customer. Perhaps it is best for me to handle him tonight with our other departing friends." He jerked his evil head in the direction of the closed bathroom. "Unless you think he will make difficulties for you when you leave here again?"
"I'll manage. Now what about your arrangements for the evening? All set?"
The incredibly ugly face contrived a look even more appalling than usual. "Ah, yesss!" the cockeyed one hissed with hideous glee. "The bodies move tonight!"
Nick raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Of their own volition, no doubt? May I ask…?"
"No, friend, you may not. Evil genius must have its secrets. By the way, I have good news. The grapevine tells me that President Makombe has passed the crisis and shows every sign of making a good recovery."
"Thank God for that," Nick said sincerely. "That means we have some hope of cleaning up this mess. But what's your contact with the grapevine? I thought you weren't known in these parts?"
Hakim closed his good eye in a mysterious wink and let the other stare up at the ceiling. "I have my methods. Now perhaps instead of asking me all these awkward questions you will tell me how you spent your day and why you look so pale and interesting."
Nick told him, in brief but vivid detail. Hakim listened with growing interest and made little sucking sounds of appreciation.
"Allah and all his little ones be praised!" he said admiringly. "You must have a head that would bend bullets. But what a pity that we could not call on Honest Abe to raid that stinkhole and flush out all the rats."
"Yeah, well, the only one who got flushed out was me," Nick said sourly. Then he smiled reflectively. "I did make one anonymous phone call on my way here — to the local cops. Actually, it wasn't quite anonymous. I mooed at them hysterically and told them that my name was Madame Sophia and that there'd been a murder at my innocent establishment, the Hop Club. Would they hurry, please, because the murderer was still about and had even attempted an assault on me, Sophia. Then I screamed and hung up rapidly." Hakim's fact split into its incongruously attractive grin. "I don't know what good it'll do," Nick concluded, "but at least it should harass them. And a little harassment can sometimes be a very handy thing."
"I must say you're a most unusual Ambassador." Hakim's tone conveyed both compliment and query. "Is this the way you always conduct your delicate negotiations?"
"We diplomats must be adaptable," said Nick. "And you're not my idea of a typical professor. Let's have another drink."
They drank to the health of President Julian Makombe, and Nick changed into his evening clothes. He made a small adjustment on his cane, told Hakim to enjoy his evening's entertainment, and very quietly let himself out into the hallway.
The watcher was no longer at his post.
Nick frowned to himself. It suited him not to have to deal with the man but — where had he gone, and why? Nick's silent progress d
own the hall was even more circumspect than usual. But he was still alone when the elevator came, and just as much alone when he stepped into the car.
Except, of course, for the elevator operator.
The doors closed silently behind him and he turned to face the front.
The operator took the car down less than one floor and pressed the stop button. The car shivered to a halt.
"Trouble?" Nick said mildly. But his every sense was tingling and alert.
"Much trouble," agreed the operator. Something metallic appeared in his hand and he turned to Nick. "The trouble is, you die." The gun in his hand was equipped with the usual semi-silent silencer.
"I what? Are you mad?" Nick raised his cane as if involuntarily.
"You die," the man repeated implacably. "Striking me will not help you." He raised the gun.
"Buy why?" said Nick, and fired first. The metal sliver of death flew into the man's bare throat with the velocity of a bullet. The gun hand jerked upward as Nick leapt aside, and the strangled cry almost drowned out the popping sound of the wild bullet as it left the gun. The shot slammed high into the wall of the wood-paneled cage. And something went "ting! ting!" The elevator operator's knees buckled. He tore frantically at his throat, and dropped heavily. Only meticulous inspection would show how the man had died.
"Ting!"
Nick thought rapidly. He thrust the gun into his pocket and glanced at the numbered lights. Floors eleven, seven, five… ting!… and eight were calling. He stepped over the body and applied himself to the elevator switches.
The car started with a petulant grunt. Nick took it down to the third floor and prayed.
He stepped out into the carpeted hallway of the third floor and breathed a sigh of relief. A waiter was intent on maneuvering a service cart from a room several doors down, and apart from him nothing stirred in the hall. Nick kept his face turned away from the waiter and made for the stairway with casual haste. Then he took the remaining flights downstairs at a gallop.
The lobby stirred with nothing more than its usual activity.
Nick strolled through it and out into the night. A line of taxicabs was waiting at the curb.
He decided to walk. Fortunately, the Kilimanjaro was within easy strolling distance. For this he was grateful — he was in no mood for either unknown taxi drivers or marathon walks. And if Rufus Makombe's recommended place of entertainment was anything like his recommended hotel, Nick would be needing all the energy and wits he had.
It was a place with an unobtrusive exterior and simple furnishings. But it was big and airy, its customers were many cuts above the habitués of the Hop Club, and it throbbed with life.
Nick ordered wine and a selection of the "sample regional specialties" suggested by President Makombe's younger brother. The service was swift and cheerful, and both food and wine were excellent. A group of singers, accompanied by a fantastically versatile drum, was singing with youthful vitality laced with talent and the fresh sophistication of a new, exuberant world. The audience — black, white, cream-beige and darkly tanned, dressed to the nines or in the simplest of street clothes — tapped feet and clapped hands with a spontaneity that made Nick feel, for moments, as carefree as they were. It was an effort for Nick to remember that he had a job to do, although how the job could possibly tie in with this joyful place and crowd was still a mystery to him. But no doubt the mystery would clear if he stayed with it long enough.
The performers bowed and went their way to the sound of thunderous applause. Nick sipped his wine and waited.
All the lights went out. All the laughing stopped.
An invisible drum began to beat a slow, insistent rhythm. It was quiet at first, as if coming from the distant hills, and then it grew nearer while its beat built into a pattern of urgency.
A low voice throbbed into being, met the drumbeat, murmured rings around it and soared high into the air as if there were no ceiling but only open sky above. It hung there for a long moment, sweet and clear as a wild bird's song, and then it fell gently in a series of low sighs like a river flowing downstream over small, smooth stones.
It seemed to Nick that a sigh shivered through the darkened room. It blew through him like a breeze in a forest of young trees, and he felt his blood run hot and cold. A dim light, at first no more than the glow of torchlight in a mist, softened the darkness in the center of the room. It grew gradually as the voice soared and sang in words that were strange but in sounds that told of remembered sorrows and dark valleys, of jungle creatures and cool lakes and sunlit mountain tops and new loves and primitive passions. As the torchlight grew into full light it showed a woman with her arms outstretched, a tall woman with a crown of night-black hair and a face that men would dream of till they died, a full-bodied, full-blooded woman, whose exquisite form swayed and trembled with the passion of her song. She shimmered and burned so brightly with the light of her own sensual beauty that she put the artificial light to shame.
The houselights lowered to a candleglow. The song faded down to join the drum and stayed with it. A whisper of male voices rose from somewhere in the darkness. The whisper grew into a word breathed by a chorus, and the one word was her name. "Mirella… Mirella… Mirella…" The chorus faded like a breath of wind. The drumbeat quickened.
Mirella danced. Her own voice and the single drum were her accompaniment; the dance began with a slow quivering of muscles and built into an ecstasy. And while she danced she was the center of the earth and all eyes in the room caressed her. Her own eyes sought nothing; they had already found it. Her eyes, her movements and her pulsating voice were concentrated on one being.
She was looking only at Nick.
They Call the Dream Mirella
He was mesmerized by her.
There was a magnetism about her that was almost supernatural. But there was nothing supernatural about her perfectly formed limbs or the way they moved. It was not a dance so much as a suggestion, and not a song so much as an intimate invitation. Intimate, subtle, unmistakable and irresistible.
Nick felt her spell bewitching him and found himself incapable of fighting it off, of even wanting to fight. His will melted as he gazed at her, absorbing her compelling beauty with all his senses. Her luminous, hypnotic eyes, all the more dazzling for the kohl-touched fids, caught his and wrapped them up.
The drumbeat and her palpitating movements changed again. This time she spoke in a lovely liquid accent he found hard to place, though the burnished copper of her skin suggested both North Africa and the Middle East. She would sing, she said, of warriors and a lion hunt, of how they tracked and ran and speared and fought until at last they returned in triumph to their homes, panting from their labors.
At first her lithe movements and the low throbbing of her voice suggested stealth and caution. Gradually they built into the intensity of the hunt and then the kill, and her voice soared to incredible heights before ending with a shuddering sigh. Her feet stamped lightly in a sort of triumph and her hips twitched rhythmically while her breath gasped out its message of exhaustion. Nick had seen young warriors at the end of hunting and he knew her artistry was incredible; and yet to him the movements were not only suggestive of the climax of a hunt but also of a climax far more sensual and ecstatic. At last she closed her eyes and let her arms and head fall back as if into a sleep, and a contented smile played about her lips. Then she was no longer warrior but a woman dreaming of her lover. Her arms rose languidly and began to caress her own body. A veil floated lightly to the floor.
Nick was conscious for the first time of what she was wearing, and even then he could not have described it. It was something shimmering and yet diaphanous when she raised her arms against the lights. It was full, yet molded to her body; and instead of being the single flowing garment he at first thought it was, it was a multiplicity of separate folds and veils. One by one they floated free, and the lovely body swayed and gyrated. A little pulse hammered in Nick's temple. The woman was incredible; voluptuous without vul
garity, giving of her beauty without shame but not shamelessly; impersonal, almost mysterious, yet warm and infinitely desirable. Somehow all the Yoga training in the world failed Nick at this moment. Breath control be damned! he thought, and felt himself come close to panting.
She looked at him again through long, thick lashes, and he thought he saw a smile that was meant for him alone. Perhaps they all thought that. But he also felt a sense of his own destiny, and knew that she was part of it.
The longest veil wafted to the floor. The drumbeat quickened and the long, lovely hips quickened with it. Another and another twitch of filmy cloth and gracefully spasmodic movement… and she was almost naked in all her female glory. The houselights died silently and the one big beam began to dim. She stretched out her arms imploringly in a gesture that could have meant she'd had enough, or wanted much, much more. Then she tore the last strips off her body almost savagely. An animal grunt swept through the house. For a fractional beat of time she stood there with her magnificent body completely bared and almost still but for a tiny muscular quivering that was far more provocative than the most blatant of sexual gestures; and then the light went out.
Nick felt the breath go out of him like air out of a balloon and he knew from the gusty sounds around him that every red-blooded male in the place was having the same reaction. He felt oddly jealous.
A saxophone crooned into the darkness and the lights came on one by one. Mirella and all her veils had gone. A thumping, clapping, cheering audience demanded her return, but Mirella, said the giant Senegalese emcee, did no encores. One act like hers was all any man deserved, he said, and rolled his eyes. The males in the audience cheered.
The small band was good and a little dark-skinned crooner sang the latest hits from Ghana, the lyrics of which were apparently packed with sly meaning and good humor. Gradually, Mirella's exotic aura faded and a hundred male dreams melted in the air. Feet tapped, hands clapped, full glasses clinked.
