Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels

by David Drake

  The chair squealed as the shop owner swiveled to watch. Kelly reached into the pocket formed by the middle and bottom layers. He plucked out part of the stuffing and dropped it into Ramdan’s lap. “Forty-nine more where that came from,” the agent said. “Just get me and my friend across one border or the other.”

  The Kabyle’s hands quivered as he opened what had been tossed to him. It is one thing to talk of a million dollars in the abstract. A US hundred-dollar bill, folded into sixteenths, is money in human terms.

  “Just get us out,” Kelly said very softly.

  Ramdan smoothed the bill with the edge of his right hand. “It is . . .” he said, staring at Benjamin Franklin’s face. “Just perhaps. . . .”

  The telephone was in a lower drawer of the desk. The Kabyle took it out and dialed quickly. The instrument was balanced on one knee, the crinkled bill on the other. The phone rang repeatedly. Ramdan looked up in nervous embarrassment. Kelly was buckling his money belt on again.

  “I’m afraid—” the shop owner began. All four men could hear the click of someone finally answering on the other end of the line.

  Ramdan’s eyes immediately flashed down to his lap again, the telephone and the money. He began talking, low-voiced but very quickly. The burr of response was not to his liking. The shop owner began to speak louder and even faster. His voice gained back the timbre and animation it had had the previous day, before a bullet had tempered his spirits in his own blood. He picked up the hundred with his free hand and began to snap it back and forth in the air, as if the person on the other end of the line could see it.

  The exchange in Kabyle was long and heated enough that by the end, the other voice was audible also. Ramdan lowered the handpiece but did not cradle it. He was breathing hard. “All right,” he said, “Tunis. But only one of you. That is all that will be possible for three weeks, perhaps a month. And the money in advance.”

  For the moment, Kelly ignored the demand about the money. He slotted home the tongue of his belt and said, “Why only one? What’s the deal?”

  Ramdan looked at the phone, then the agent. Vlasov was silent in a corner of the room. Only his eyes moved. The older Kabyle said at last, “It is a plane, a very small plane. We must land and take off outside the regular airfields, even in Tunisia. The ground is rough, we must not overload the plane.” He paused, then concluded with a note of anger, “It is only because there is room available that Sa’ad would agree. Not the money. And because he said you fought like a tiger yesterday.”

  Kelly’s smile was as stark as a gun muzzle. “Does he say that?” the agent asked with a mildness that deceived no one. Then, “Well, I don’t try to fight the laws of physics, though. Okay. It’s a deal.” Everyone else in the room tensed. “You land near Tunis, I suppose?”

  Ramdan nodded. The telephone blipped an interrogative. The shop owner snapped back at it in Kabyle without taking his eyes from Kelly’s face.

  “Okay,” the agent repeated. “You’ll take my friend here. We aren’t going to use names, you understand, because I don’t like some of the things that happen when names are used. . . .” He looked at Vlasov. A tiny smile lifted the corner of the Professor’s mouth. “Sure, you hang out with crazy people and you start to get funny yourself,” Kelly added. He rubbed his face with the knuckles of his left hand.

  “My friend will have the money in his pocket,” the agent continued in a stronger, certain voice. “He’ll hand it over as soon as somebody delivers him to Carthage-Tunis airport on”—Kelly looked at his watch—“Monday morning. He’ll also turn over that revolver”—he pointed to the Enfield—“which he’ll be carrying until then.”

  The boy sprang back. “No!” he gasped. He pointed the weapon in what would have been a threatening gesture had it been loaded.

  Ramdan looked up at Kelly and sighed. “In the base of the lamp,” he said, gesturing behind him. “I understand.”

  Kelly nodded and unlocked the porcelain fixture from the wall. As the American slid the fiberboard cover off the bottom, Ramdan went on curiously, “But why at that time? That means we must feed him, hide him two days?”

  There was a tiny Beretta .25 pistol in the lamp base. “Because,” Kelly said as he checked the magazine—it was full—“it’s going to take me that long to get there myself if you won’t take me.” He handed the autoloader to Vlasov. “Tell you the truth, Professor,” he went on in French, “I don’t doubt their honesty or I wouldn’t be doing this at all. But if I can’t be with you myself”—he smiled—“the next best thing is a gun.”

  No one laughed.

  Kelly sobered. “One more thing,” he said. “I’ve got a car of sorts, but I’ll need plates for it. 58 through 60 series’ll do, or out of country—I don’t care which. They just can’t be reported stolen until Tuesday, that’s all.”

  Ramdan still held the telephone. He raised the handpiece and began talking into it in muted tones, looking up at the agent repeatedly.

  “You are going to drive?” asked the boy. Both Kelly and Vlasov stared at him. That was the first connected sentence either of them had heard him speak. “They will stop you at the border if your license and registration do not match.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to think about that one, won’t I?” the agent said. The kid might have a future after all. Not for field operations, though. He was the sort who threw the igniter and crouched down holding the fused satchel charge until it went off.

  Ramdan lowered the phone again. “No more demands, then?” he pressed. “The deal as you leave it now?”

  “Well, clothes—a jacket, hell, that’ll do,” Kelly said. His smile was back and there was at last some humor in it. “And one more thing—a bed for a couple hours. Or a floor where people won’t mind stepping over me.” He stretched. His yawn camouflaged the stabs and ripples of pain that avalanched through his body.

  Ramdan began speaking into the phone.

  Aloud but to no one in particular, Kelly said, “Got a long way yet to go.” His mind chorused from “Sam Hall”—“Now up the rope I go, now up I go. . . .”

  XLIII

  The Temple of Minerva in Tebessa was almost four hundred years older than the city’s Byzantine walls. As one of the best-preserved Roman temples in the world, it was an obvious magnet for tourists passing through the border city. Kelly was pretending to study the Roman funerary monuments in the fenced temple yard when the Renault 18 pulled up across the street beneath the massive wall. The car had Tunisian plates. Even better, they bore a CD prefix—Corps Diplomatique.

  The American agent continued to face the stele as he watched the two couples. They locked up the car, laughing. They were all on the young side, the women in particular. One of them had black hair and a bouncing giggle that cramped Kelly’s groin despite his nervousness. It was the men he needed to concentrate on, however, and one of them would do well, do very well. . . .

  The couples were talking in French as they entered the gate. They passed Kelly with a murmured “Bonjour,” all around:” The temple had become a museum while Algeria was still a French colony, and the Algerians had kept it up to the extent of having a caretaker present.

  The leader of the visiting couples was a half-step ahead of his companions. He was speaking volubly as he waved toward the carven transoms of the pillared but roofless entryway. He was in his mid-thirties with a dark complexion; he was Kelly’s height and weight besides, though he carried more of the latter in a chair-bottom spread. The Frenchman was contrasting the temple with the one they had seen in Djemila, and that was especially good. It meant that they were returning home after a stay of at least several days in Algeria. It would have been more awkward if they had just crossed the border, though you could finesse a lot with a diplomatic passport. . . .

  Kelly strolled out of the temple yard. His hands were in the pockets of the jacket Ramdan had been cajoled into giving him. In the borrowed clothing, Kelly was not a prepossessing figure, but at least he was no longer dressed in blood-stained
rags.

  “Well, I hit him on the head,” the agent sang under his breath, “and I left him there for dead. . . .”

  The hilt of his knife was blood-warm in his hand.

  XLIV

  It was chill and dark in the hour before dawn. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Minh felt as weary and gray as the sky. They had to wait for the other team to get in position in back of the shop, and they seemed to be a long time doing so.

  This was the sixth arrest—or arrest attempt—the Vietnamese officer had participated in during the night. Two of the suspected Kabyle terrorists had been missing. The squad, three civil police under Captain Majlid of the Presidential Security Office, had ransacked the houses and arrested all family members present. That might in time help the local security forces with their Kabyle problem, but it was of small use to Nguyen.

  He had not found the three successful pickups to be a great deal more helpful to him. Nguyen was quite certain from their reactions that two of the Kabyles arrested had known nothing about the plot. The third man had owned the shop through which the kidnapped—or defecting, that was obvious—scientists had been spirited away. The Kabyle was anything but innocent . . . but his claim to have been attending a wedding in Oran would probably hold up. It meant that he had isolated himself from the operation. Whatever the prisoner might divulge in the interrogation rooms next to the Civil Prison, it would not include detailed information about the American operatives and their plans.

  “Allah, four more of these,” muttered the Algerian captain. “And then they’ll add more to the list if I know them.” He took out a French cigarette and looked at it before dropping it back in the packet. The policeman with him at the front door said something in Arabic. Majlid laughed and took the cigarette out again.

  Faintly through the air came the whistle that meant the other two men had found the correct back door. Radios were less common than was needed for them this night in Algiers.

  The captain cursed and threw the cigarette toward the squad’s blue and white Mikrobus. He hammered on the door and shouted in French, “Open up in there! At once!”

  Nguyen stepped instinctively to the hinge side of the shop door. The front wall was mostly display window and no protection, though. The police seemed only tired. The uniformed man clicked off the safety of his sub-machine gun without any apparent concern. Out of deference to his hosts, Nguyen kept his hand away from his own pistol. He was taut, ready to move in whatever direction was required.

  Majlid cursed again. He nodded to the man with the sub-machine gun. The uniformed man stabbed the butt of his weapon through the glazed door panel. He jerked the tube stock up, then sideways, spilling more glass on the floor within the shop. Nguyen thought that he could hear movement inside.

  The Algerian captain reached carefully through the opening to avoid the rippling edges above the putty. He worked the paired locks without haste. When he had turned the knob to actually unlatch the door, Majlid withdrew his hand. He kicked the panel open, shouting, “Come out, Ramdan!”

  There was a crash within the shop as someone met the pair at the back door and tried to retreat. Majlid frowned and took a step into the darkness. He tugged at the pistol in his shoulder holster.

  “Don’t!” Nguyen shouted. His Tokarev was already in his hand. “The light’s behind you!”

  A red cordite flash hit the interior of the shop. The captain’s head snapped up. He toppled against the policeman behind him.

  The Vietnamese officer shot twice, aiming for the muzzle flash. Through the echoing shots cut the howl of a ricochet. That did not mean Nguyen had missed. The high-velocity bullets of his pistol would not have been stopped by anything as slight as a manchest.

  Within, something hard dropped. The uniformed Algerian was trying to clear his own weapon. “Not now!” Nguyen screamed. He dived into the shop just as somebody in back found the switch for the overhead fixture.

  A stepped display platform filled the center of the shop. A boy gripped it to hold himself upright. The revolver with which he had shot Majlid lay on the floor at his feet. The boy’s face was as white as a flag of surrender—except for his lips. His lips were brightened by bubbles of orange pulmonary blood. There were two holes a finger’s breadth apart in the center of the boy’s shirt. In his back would be matching holes.

  The team from the back door was pushing a third, heavy-set Algerian ahead of them. There was blood on the prisoner’s trouser leg. Since there had been no shooting from the rear, it was probably a reopened wound. As the older man was frog-marched in, the boy slumped to the floor of the shop. He covered the revolver with his corpse. The older prisoner wailed and tried to catch him. The policeman holding his arms jerked him back.

  “Are you all right?” cried one of the men from the back. “Look what this one had—good thing he didn’t pull the pin!” He raised a fragmentation grenade with a block of plastic explosive molded around it. The combination would lift the roof of a bunker or spread pieces of an automobile over a square block.

  “Hey, where’s the captain?” asked the man holding the prisoner.

  “Him? Oh, dead,” Nguyen said absently. He threw the safety of his pistol and holstered it without unloading the chamber. Majlid had taken the bullet through the bridge of his nose. His eyes bulged in ultimate surprise.

  The Vietnamese took the bomb from the Algerian who was holding it. The prisoner inches away stank of fear and urine.

  “Yes,” Nguyen said as he examined the explosive, “this is very good. It will save us going back to headquarters to question this one.”

  “Wait a minute,” objected the man with the submachine gun. “You can’t—”

  The Vietnamese colonel turned and looked at him. Words choked in the policeman’s throat.

  After a moment’s silence, Nguyen began to give his instructions.

  XLV

  When the French couples came out of the museum, Kelly was standing on the broad firing step of the city wall. He was gazing out through one of the crenellations. The firing step was a good five feet above street level, so that even though the agent was standing beside the Renault, the grade separation kept him from being a part of the scene. The couples ignored him as he seemed to ignore them.

  The tourist who looked most like Kelly began to unlock the driver’s door. Kelly dropped into the street in front of the Renault. “Excuse me, please,” the agent said with a smile. His hands lay atop one another, waist high.

  The would-be driver scowled at the American. “We don’t need a guide, thank you,” he said, holding the door ajar with his hand. Behind him on the street side stood the black-haired woman. She looked more interested than anxious at the moment. There were other cars, other people, nearby, but no one else was within fifty feet.

  “Oh, not a guide, no,” Kelly said with a chuckle. He stepped around so that the man and woman were to either side of him. Their bodies masked the knife which the agent suddenly displayed. Only they and the other couple, staring across the car’s low roof, could see the steel shimmer in the bright daylight.

  “I am an agent of the Second Bureau,” Kelly continued in soft, persuasive French, “but there is neither the time nor the opportunity for me to make this request through channels. I am so sorry, but three of you”—his smile and the splayed fingers of his left hand indicated the woman beside him and the other couple—“must accompany me back to Tunis.”

  “You’re mad!” blurted the nearest man. “We have done nothing!” The woman beside him had drawn in her breath, but she was staring at Kelly’s battered face and not at his knife. The other couple was straining, wide-eyed, trying to hear what the agent was saying in his deceptively mild voice.

  “Of course you have done no wrong,” the American agreed. “You have by chance the opportunity to serve France at only a slight inconvenience to yourselves. Here, give me the keys—” Kelly did not force the key ring from the other man’s hand, nor was the way his knife rotated actually a threat. Between firm pressure and
the winking edge, however, the Frenchman released what he at first had intended to hold.

  “Madame,” Kelly went on with a nod to the black-haired woman, “if you will enter and admit your friends?” He swung the door open, keeping his body in the opening so that he could not be closed out. Puzzled and hesitant, the three tourists got in the car. The knife was hidden again, but it was more real to the others than was the smile which never slipped from Kelly’s face.

  “And you as well, sir, for the moment,” the agent said to the last Frenchman. The man obeyed awkwardly, because he kept his eyes on Kelly instead of watching what he was doing himself.

  With all four of the tourists inside, Kelly knelt. He braced his left hand on the top of the steering wheel. A small rubber band was wrapped several times around the last joint of his little finger. Blocked circulation darkened and distended the fingertip, “Now, it really doesn’t matter whether you believe that what I am doing is necessary to the survival of France,” the agent continued reasonably. “You can believe I’m a Mossad assassin, if you like, it’s all one with me. But—you must believe that I am serious when I say that none of you will be harmed if you cooperate, yes?”

  The others nodded, mesmerized by the gentle words and the mirror-finished steel.

  “But you are not, I judge,” Kelly continued, “persons used to violence. It is necessary that you believe me utterly when I say that I will kill you all without compassion if there is the least trouble from you.”

  The blonde woman in back nodded again, but the meaning of Kelly’s words had not penetrated the gloss of fear upon her.

  Kelly reached up with his knife. He slashed off the last joint of his own left little finger. The fingertip spun into the lap of the man behind the wheel. The Frenchman sagged as if his spinal cord had been cut. There were tiny droplets of blood spattering the inner slope of the window.