The only sounds inside the blockhouse were the faint hum of the generator and the whir of the exhaust fans. Fengler stood behind Grüber’s chair as if he were in a trance. Wide-eyed, he stared down at Grüber’s body, then at the Luger in Thomson’s hand, and finally at the firing button on the control panel. Thomson could tell he longed to reach out and push it, but he was no fool and remained where he was.
“Go ahead, Papa,” Thomson offered. “I’m starting to like this.”
The physicist’s face turned pale as he stared down the pistol barrel. Thomson had it pointed at the bridge of the German’s nose; and from the look in the American’s eyes, Fengler could see he would not need much of an excuse to shoot. Fengler was not that stupid, however, and was not about to give him one. He pulled his hands away from the control panel and held them high over his head as he backed up against the wall.
The long empty silence ended when Ilsa pushed herself off the floor and saw Grüber’s body. She screamed and twisted her head around toward Thomson, seeking help, but she only saw the gun in his hand and the look of anger in his eyes. She screamed again, and her father’s nerves shattered.
“Ilsa, Ilsa… What have they…”
Her head whipped around, and she glared across the room at him. She raised her hand and silenced him. “They? They?” she asked. “They did nothing except stop you, Grüber, and Rashid from going through with this madness, and I can only thank God that they did.”
“The rockets,” Thomson said in a tired voice. “I was too late. Grüber fired the first one before I could stop him.”
“Oh, no!” She cupped her hands over her ears, her fingers tearing at her hair as her face filled with anguish. She slid halfway across the floor on her knees, getting even closer to her father. “You must stop it, Papa! Do you hear me? Destroy the rocket, now!” she demanded, but he refused to look at her.
“Stop it? Stop the rocket?” Thomson quickly demanded. “Can he do that?”
Ilsa did not answer. Her eyes remained riveted on her father, pleading with him as if this was a private conversation between the two of them. “Papa, Grüber is dead. They cannot force you to do these evil things any longer.” Her voice became more desperate as he continued to refuse to look at her. “Papa, please! I know there is a destruct button. Use it. Destroy the rocket before it gets out of range. They will hang you if you do not.”
Thomson watched as Fengler’s terrified eyes finally looked down at her. The American wanted to do or say something, but he was afraid to move. It was all up to Ilsa now. The old bastard would never do it for him, but maybe he would do it for her. Fengler swallowed hard. He took the first halting step toward the console and then another. He probably would have taken the rest, if a fierce pounding of rifle butts on the blockhouse door had not interrupted him.
“Damn!” Thomson cursed his bad luck. They had been living on borrowed time ever since he forced his way inside the blockhouse. He knew the soldiers would arrive sooner or later, but why now?
Startled, Fengler paused and stopped walking. He turned and looked at the door, then down at Ilsa, and finally at Thomson.
“You!” he shouted. “You filled her head with lies and took her away from me.”
While it sounded as if half the Egyptian Army was swarming around the blockhouse, they had not managed to break in, not yet anyway. The metal door was heavy, and Thomson had thrown the security bolts when he shut it behind them. That would slow them down, but it would not keep them out for much longer. The pounding finally stopped, proving they were not complete morons, but that only meant they were regrouping and probably coming back with something heavier. The door’s steel frame and heavy hinges had taken a severe beating from the Fiat and were bent and twisted. They would not take much more before they gave way completely, not if the soldiers really made a concerted effort to beat it down and get inside.
Fengler knew that, too. His eyes suddenly cleared, and he thrust his chin in the air, supremely confident once again. He refused to look at his daughter now. “Destroy it, my dear? You ask me to destroy the rocket and my warhead?” He shook his head, his voice sounding incredulous. “You don’t know what you are asking. This is the test, Ilsa! This is the moment I have worked for — no, the moment I dedicated my entire life to bring about. Destroy it? You cannot be serious. You cannot ask me to do such a thing.”
“Papa,” she pleaded. “This is not a test. I know it is not. That warhead is live. It will kill many people, if you don’t destroy it. Now! Please, Papa, do it. Destroy that damned rocket before it is too late.”
“Do what she says, Fengler,” Thomson warned as the pounding on the door resumed with a new ferocity. He saw the door shake. The soldiers were throwing their shoulders into it repeatedly, and the hinges were beginning to bend. The door would not hold them out much longer, only seconds at best. Thomson raised the barrel of the Luger and pointed it at Fengler’s head. “Do it now, or you’ll never live to see the results.”
Fengler never wavered. He looked down at Grüber’s body and shook his head. “Do you think he made me do this? Don’t be foolish. Grüber could never make me do anything I did not want to do. This is my work — mine — and I will die before I see it ruined.” He folded his arms across his chest and backed away from the console, resigned to let events sweep him along, whether that meant being shot or being rescued.
Thomson leaned forward, grabbed Ilsa by the hair, and pointed the Luger at her head. “Okay, Papa!” his sarcastic voice challenged him. “Tell you what, I won’t shoot you after all. That would be a waste of time. I’m going to shoot her instead, so take your pick. Your precious daughter or your new toy — which is it going to be?”
Fengler’s eyes narrowed, appearing cold and hateful, as he shook his head. “You would not do that,” he said, trying to convince himself.
“Why not?” Thomson leaned forward and pressed the barrel into her cheek, hurting her until she cried out in pain. “I’m a dead man anyway,” he said as he cocked his head toward the door, “so, which of your babies dies with me?”
Fengler cursed, and his lips quivered with hatred. Finally, he took that first, fateful step toward the command console. His hand shook as he pulled a brass key from his pocket and jammed it into the top of a small red plate. The plate popped up. From the agonized look on the German’s face, Thomson knew there was a destruct button beneath it. Fengler’s hand reached out for it and then stopped. His fingers were suspended in midair, as if something had grabbed his arm and was holding it back. He looked down at Thomson and at Ilsa, but he could not make his hand move and destroy his rocket.
Whether Fengler could not or would not do it, Thomson neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that the button had not been pushed.
Ilsa knew that, too. “Papa!” she screamed in anguish, as she broke free from Thomson’s grasp. She threw herself forward and lunged at her father like a desperate animal. He raised his arms in defense, startled by the onslaught; but she pounded on his chest and arms with both fists and drove him away from the console. He staggered backward, his eyes filled with shock and horror as she turned, fell across the console, and reached for the destruct button.
“No, Ilsa,” he cried, grabbing for her and hitting her on the back with his fists. “Stop, stop, do not destroy it!” he begged as he tried to pull her away.
Thomson did not wait. He aimed the Luger at Fengler’s legs and pulled the trigger. The heavy 9 mm bullet struck the German in the thigh and knocked his legs out from under him. He fell to the floor but kept reaching out for her, his desperate hands pulling at her leg, still screaming, “Ilsa, no! No!” as she pushed the red destruct button.
Gamal Abdel Nasser collapsed against the metal railing of the reviewing stand. Like everyone else, he stared down in shock at the body of Ali Rashid lying at his feet, and took several deep breaths to clear his head. He knew instinctively that if he did not quickly regain control of the situation, he would lose it forever. As he pushed himself uprigh
t, he heard the sharp crack of an explosion followed by a low rumble high in the sky above the desert horizon. Nasser raised a hand to shield his eyes and looked up, trying to locate the source of the loud noise. His eyes followed the rocket’s fading vapor trail as it rose from the desert and stretched across the bright blue sky, where it suddenly ended in a dense cloud of orange flame and black smoke. The sharp explosion faded as quickly as it had come, leaving the crowd standing in stunned silence. Nasser nodded and ran his tongue across his parched lips, quickly collecting his thoughts. He said nothing, not yet.
Once more, he looked down at Rashid’s body, then out at Hassan Saleh, sprawled on the sand in front of the reviewing stand. “Send for a doctor. Quickly!” he ordered in a harsh, commanding voice, raised his head, and straightened himself up to his full height. Only then did he turn and let his powerful brown eyes scan the faces in the crowd standing around him one at a time. They were the eyes of the prosecutor and the hangman as they passed from face to face and finally came to rest on General Rafiq al-Baquri.
“General,” he began calmly but authoritatively, “it appears this demonstration of yours and Rashid’s has now been concluded. Do you not agree?”
Al-Baquri shrank back, trying to think; but events had moved far too fast for him. He had always left the thinking and planning to Rashid. That was his job, and the Colonel never tolerated any interference. That was why al-Baquri so desperately needed time to collect his thoughts. Unfortunately, Nasser’s powerful brown eyes closed in around him and began to suffocate him. He felt rattled and could not think clearly. He turned his eyes and looked up at the stands, searching for help from the other conspirators, but he found none. They had cheered him on easily enough for days and weeks now, both him and Rashid; but failure was an orphan with a very short memory. In every face, all al-Baquri saw now was hostility, not that he was without resources. His troops still surrounded the reviewing stand. They were the ones with all the guns; but he saw his junior officers begin to back away from him. They exchanged worried glances, and his enlisted troops quickly followed, looking shocked and confused as they deserted him, one by one. What else could he expect? They saw the fear in their General’s eyes, and they saw the rising power radiating from Nasser’s. Al-Baquri held all the cards — the troops, the tanks racing toward Cairo, and the guns — but he no longer had Colonel Ali Rashid to follow. It was called leadership. Against even an unarmed Gamal Nasser, it was no contest; and everyone in the crowd could see his humiliation. Al-Baquri suddenly found he was alone and he was unprepared for that. The day belonged to the President, and all the General could do was nod his assent.
“Good,” Nasser said as he nudged al-Baquri back into his seat with the tip of a finger and turned to the crowd. In a loud, expansive voice, he added, “General, I want to thank you and your men for the excellent job you all did today. You are dismissed now and you may return to your barracks.”
Al-Baquri nodded again. Too much thinking made his head ache. He slumped in the seat and lowered his eyes to the ground as he heard the heavy footsteps of Nasser’s bodyguards coming up behind him. Rough hands gripped his arms and he felt himself being led away — dazed, pale, and shattered.
“Quickly!” Nasser snapped his fingers and began to shout angry orders at the gaggle of army staff officers standing near him. “Get some men and take control of that blockhouse immediately. Arrest everyone inside.”
Nasser watched the Colonels push and shove each other aside, scrambling over fallen chairs as they tried to be the first to show their loyalty and carry out his orders. Finally, he turned back to the desert and looked up at the drifting black cloud of smoke in the sky. He could only wonder what lucky star or kind god had saved this day for him, but in his heart he knew. He bent over at the waist, squeezing his large frame between the metal railings at the front of the reviewing stand and jumped to the ground. With three loping strides, he reached Hassan Saleh’s unconscious body. He knelt on the sand next to him and raised his old friend’s head into his lap.
Three medics ran over and joined him, and he supervised their every move. Two of them wrapped bandages around the bullet wound in Saleh’s shoulder while the third man struggled to open a stretcher. Nasser locked his powerful eyes on each of them in turn. “Do your jobs well, my friends — because I hold the three of you personally responsible for this man’s life. Is that clear to you?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Thomson? Well, I’ll be damned,” Jeremy called out as he stepped through the front door and quickly headed for his usual rear table. “I ain’t seen you for what? Two weeks, now? Not since you dragged yourself out of here with that Wog copper. So, you gonna tell me about it?” Jeremy asked as he followed and set a drink down in front of the American. “Or, are you gonna sit here and keep playing dumb?” It was dark in the rear corner, and as the Englishman got closer, he leaned forward and saw yellowing bruises on the American’s face, the two fading black eyes and a white Band-Aid that stretched across the bridge of his nose. Broken? Undoubtedly. Frustrated, Jeremy flipped his towel over his shoulder, bent down, and whispered in Thomson’s ear, “You owe me the straight story, you know. You owe me that much.”
Thomson picked up the glass, nodded, and set Jeremy’s face on the rim. “What’s to tell? I got hit by a truck. Don’t I look like it?”
“Was it the same truck what ran over Reggie Perper?”
Thomson took a small sip of gin and winced as he set the glass down in disgust. “Did you make this batch yourself, or dip it out of the sewer?”
“You never complained before.”
“That was then; now’s now,” Thomson answered quietly as he glanced around the nearly empty bar. Funny, but he never noticed how seedy the place really was. That showed it never pays for a drunk to let himself get too sober.
“Look, Thomson, you run out the door half carrying that Saleh bloke and then disappear without so much as a peep. What’s a man supposed to think? Besides, you ain’t been around to hear all the crazy stories.”
“Stories?” Thomson asked innocently.
“Yeah, soon as you two left, the Wogs started arresting everybody and tossing a bunch of foreigners on the next plane out of the country — even your Ambassador, I heard tell. There’s been army troops all over town, and Nasser canned half of his government. Me? I been sittin’ here with my goddamned passport in my pocket, waitin’ for the meat wagon. After all, I figured the two of you were dead, and they’d toss my ass in jail any minute. Then, nuthin’ — absolutely nuthin’, until you come waltzing in here tonight and have the nerve to just sit there lookin’ back at me like the rear-end of a four-car smashup.” Thomson knew the Brit was pissed, and he was just getting started. “And after all I done to help you out? A Christian man would at least tell a mate the bleedin’ story.”
Thomson looked up and opened his mouth to talk, but Jeremy cut him off. “Oh, I know, I know,” he fumed, “you’re gonna blame it all on your goddamned CIA, ‘National security’, and all that, so your bleedin’ mouth’s been sewn shut. Well, don’t you worry. Old Jeremy Throckmorton’s learned not to expect a damned thing from an ingrate like you.” The Englishman pulled the towel off his shoulder and snapped it at a pair of flies sitting on the next table. “Even a simple word of thanks or one of your smart-mouthed jokes would be better than nuthin’. At least I’d know the Wogs didn’t drag you down to one of their dungeons and chop off your private parts with one of those big curved swords of theirs. But if that’s too much to ask, then you can go bugger yourself.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” Thomson said, trying not to laugh at the performance. “I quit, okay? I’ve still got all my private parts; but if you want more jokes, go watch Benny Hill on the telly, ’cause I’m fresh out. Two weeks in one of their stinking jail cells can do that to the best of us.”
Jeremy backed off, somewhat appeased. “Two weeks, eh?” he shrugged, “but I know you, Thomson. When you start actin’ nice, something’s wrong.”
Two weeks, Thomson realized, as Jeremy turned and walked away. Not that the time in the Egyptian jail had been all that bad, at least after the first few days. In the beginning, they were rough on him after half the Egyptian army broke into the blockhouse and used him as a punching bag. Three days later, they suddenly eased up and began treating him like their long lost cousin Akbar. They gave him clean clothes, and sent in a doctor and hot food. One of the guards said it came from the officer’s mess and they even asked him if there was anything special he wanted, like a woman, one of them hinted. He did, but not one who they could provide, so he lay back and let them sew up his leg and set his broken nose. It was all quite impressive to a guy who expected a firing squad. The guards even became strangely polite and friendly, as if they were now afraid of him. They refused to say why, to tell him much of anything, or to answer his questions about what had happened, but at least they weren’t pounding on him any longer.
Thomson still hurt everywhere a man could hurt, but that kind of pain he could take. What bothered him worst was the way he had left things with Ilsa. It was strange that she mattered so much to him now, but she did. The last time he had seen her, she was sitting on the floor of the blockhouse, staring up at him, her face pale and drawn.
“That gun — would you, Richard? Would you really have shot me?” she asked.
He never had time to answer before the Egyptians poured into the blockhouse. Three of them jumped on him and began swinging. That was all he remembered.
Thomson had kicked himself in the head a hundred times a day ever since, thinking of all the clever things he could have said to her but did not. No, he should not have said something clever, even if he could. That was a reflex, his defense to keep him from getting hurt again. What he should have said was something serious; but after all the years, he had forgotten how. Now, it was too late. Ilsa had gotten to him. He found something fragile yet strangely strong about her, and he wanted to know more.
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