Assignment The Cairo Dancers

by Edward S. Aarons

  He turned to the stairway on the right. A squad of male dancers followed the girls oflfstage, clad in baggy silk pants and short, gilt-embroidered red vests straight out of The Arabian Nights. They wore short, ugly scimitars in jeweled belts, and they all looked like tough and burly characters. Durell deliberately bumped one and felt the curved blade at the fellow's hip. His thumb began to bleed. The scimitars were real, and razor-sharp—hardly a normal prop for a legitimate belly-dance troupe. He began to feel more hopeful, and at the same time felt apprehensive warnings cool the nape of his neck. He wondered which one of these tough, sweaty men might have slit Carole Bainbury's throat an hour ago.

  A plump little man in a blue pinstripe business suit waved jeweled, fluttering hands before him and spoke in a falsetto voice. "No, no! Please, no entrance, effendi. You must wait outside."

  "I have an appointment with Mademoiselle Zuzu."

  The man sneered. "Indeed? She did not tell me."

  "Does she tell you everything?"

  The plump man started to reply, checked himself, and said, "One moment, please," and called something in guttural Arabic to one of the male dancers, shrilling criticism of the man's performance. Blue Pinstripe was obviously a choreographic director, to judge by his blast at the panting man. Durell's Arabic was a bit rusty, but he gathered enough of the spit of words to understand that much. He waited with just the right touch of impatient uncertainty that a man with his appointment might show. The choreographer then turned back to him with a hint of asperity and some condescension.

  "Now, sir, what is it you wish?"

  "I told you, I have a date with Mademoiselle Zuzu."

  "So you stated. Are you quite certain of this?"

  "Why shouldn't I be?"

  "She did not record it with me, that is why."

  "Are you the date bureau for this harem?"

  The face smiled, but the eyes were like chips of black stone. "You may say so, yes, Mr.—"

  "Durell," he said.

  "Durell?"

  "That's right."

  Nothing changed in the round, brown face. "I am sorry, sir, there must have been a mistake. Zuzu sees no one tonight."

  "Look, I paid good money—"

  "I am sorry. The doorman will refund your bribe."

  It sounded as if Blue Pinstripe meant it. No tickets were for sale—not at this wicket, Durell decided. But he could not turn back now. He knew he was in the correct station.

  The upper floor seemed to be distinctly off-bounds for most of the entertainment troupe, although some of them had not been warned. Two girls, wearing scanty skirts hung on round, plump hips, their eyes brilliant with kohl, started up past Durell with sidelong, speculative glances, only to be halted by another spate of high-pitched objections from Blue Pinstripe. This time the name of El-Raschid came into play. The girls turned away promptly and, with obvious alarm, hurried off. Durell drew a long breath.

  "If I cannot see Mademoiselle Zuzu—"

  "You cannot, sir."

  "Then I'd like a chat with Herr Doctor Hubertus Steigmann."

  This time there was a momentary widening of the annoyed black eyes in the suet face. A small sound bubbled in the wattled throat. "I beg your pardon, sir?"

  "I think you heard me correctly." Durell moved closer to the bulging belly. "Lead the way like a good chap, eh?"

  His gun exerted just enough pressure in the soft, sexless flesh to make the plump man wince. Panic, and then a malicious pleasure came and went across the moon face.

  "My employer will not like this," he said softly. "You are a very foolish man."

  "Is El-Raschid here?" Durell asked.

  "His Holiness is present. But no one—none of the common people—may see him. Nor will you."

  "I think I will," Durell said. "Even if I have to blow a hole through your blubber to peek through."

  There was a hesitation, a flicker of pink tongue across brown lips, then a slow nod. "My life is of little importance. But if you say your name is Durell—"

  "It is."

  "Then perhaps you are expected."

  "I have no doubt," said Durell. "Up we go."

  He managed to herd the man up the temporary stairs without attracting attention or raising an alarm either onstage or in the back corridors. Music clashed, cymbals banged, and flutes began again as the next number started. The dancing girls hurriedly lined up behind the curtain, adjusting flimsy straps, jeweled belly-bands, and feathered headdresses as Durell went up the steps behind the broad, waddling rump of the man in the pinstripe suit. He did not allow himself to be distracted by the girls. His stomach tightened, and every nerve tingled.

  At the head of the stairs, one of the Dancers armed with a scimitar waited for them.

  "It is all right, Abdulla," said his guide. "I vouch for this American."

  "His Holiness expects him?"

  "It is Allah's will."

  The guard stepped aside. Durell followed the dancing master down a flimsy maze of temporary corridors in the pavilion above the audience hall. The appreciative applause of the all-male spectators down there was only a dim sound, like a distant thunderclap, muffled by infinite distance. He turned one corner, then another, each seemingly more dimly lit than the other. He began to think he was meant to be the victim of a delusion act when his unwilling guide halted and sighed.

  "In here, sir."

  The door was just another door.

  "You first," Durell suggested.

  "I am not permitted such a transgression."

  "You already have many sins to explain to Allah," Durell said gently. "One more will hardly matter."

  The man's hands trembled with genuine fear as he opened the door. Durell put a palm flat against the broad back and shoved hard, then followed inside, took a step to the right, and put his shoulders against the wall. But the others—or perhaps it was one man, he couldn't be sure—were waiting.

  Blue Pinstripe gave a feminine squawk of terror and stumbled to his knees. Durell glimpsed a primitive room framed by rough, portable partitions—windowless, with only a cot and a hard chair and an unshaded electric bulb that dangled from the ceiling. Then something slashed at his gun wrist with stunning speed, and from the tail of his eye he saw a sap descend for the back of his head. He ducked, just enough to make the blow a glancing one, but pitched forward on his face as if his knees had been knocked out from under him. He let his gun go and saw a brown hand scoop it up. There was a mutter of disdainful Arabic as the fat choreographer was ordered to get up and get out of there.

  "I—I did my job well!" Pinstripe stuttered.

  "Perhaps it was too easy. We will leave them alone for a moment and see, before we decide."

  "D-decide what?"

  "Whether or not to slit the American's throat. Now move on, and go about your work."

  Durell never saw the man who clobbered him. He did not try to. It would have interfered with his act to make his stunned helplessness seem genuine. He was grateful that no one kicked him or ground a heel on his hands. But perhaps it meant that they had no use for him—as he hoped to convince them they might—and merely intended to execute him with the same despatch shown with Carole Bainbury.

  When he judged the time was proper, he groaned and struggled up to a sitting position and looked at the man who cowered on the cot in the little prison cubicle.

  His hunches had been right.

  His first hunch was that the Dancers would be ready and waiting for him.

  His second hunch, also turned out right on the nose, when he recognized his cellmate as Dr. Hubertus Steigmann.

  Chapter Eleven

  IT DID not take much acting to pretend that his head ached. It did. He groaned and swayed, observing the man who shrank back on the cot in the makeshift cell. The glare of the single overhead light was blinding. Durell allowed himself a moment, as if to get his bearings, to assess the barriers that kept him prisoner. The partitions were flimsy enough; the door might resist him, however. But one good yank on
the dangling light cord would give him a weapon in the form of electric wire that could be turned swiftly into a lethal garrote. The knowledge of this reassured him. In any case, he did not wish to escape; he merely wanted to stay alive.

  "You're Dr. Steigmann," he said to the man on the cot. He made his voice vague and uncertain. "Aren't you?"

  The other nodded. His English was still tinged with heavy Teutonic gutturals. "I am. What have they done to you? Are you a prisoner, too?"

  "It seems so."

  "You made them angry, young man, and that was very foolish. These are dangerous, fanatic people." The laser expert shook his bearded head. "Are you an American agent, sent to find me? I have been expecting it to happen."

  "My name is Durell—Sam Durell."

  "It was hopeless. They have sent you to commit suicide."

  "Well, I found you, didn't I?" Durell said loudly. He put a hint of bravado and asperity in his tone. He would have bet all his prospects of survival on the fact that listening devices were pinned to the thin walls around them. All his plans depended on it. "It wasn't too hard. Dr. Steigmann. After all, we have almost enough on this Dancers outfit to hang them from the maypole."

  Dr. Hubertus Steigmann was a solid, middle-aged man with a bristle of Hindenburg iron-gray hair and large Prussian-blue eyes. He had a sensitive mouth and a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard. His dark, double-breasted suit was rumpled and stained by what he had been through these past two or three days. There was a mottled bruise on his cheekbone that stood out sharply against the waxen pallor of his skin. His face was remarkably unlined, however. He did not move. He seemed to be a man who knew how to contain himself; his body was without motion, at rest on the cot; and yet the hands folded on his knee trembled a little.

  Worst of all, Durell thought, were his eyes. They were wide and childish, when they should have been sharp with cold intelligence. They looked stunned and blinded, as if by some deep, tragic grief, reflecting a wound to the mind behind them that might be beyond repair. Steigmann stood up like a sleepwalker, then paused two paces from Durell.

  "Yes, you were foolish, young man. Durell, you say? How could your people have known anything about the Dancers?"

  "I'm here, aren't I? It wasn't difficult. As I said, Washington has plenty of hot dope on this outfit."

  "But what can Washington know? They are diabolical, these people, a mixture of religious fanaticism and political ambition that defies prediction."

  Durell hoped that his listeners were hard at work. "Oh, we have our plans," he said airily. "The crackdown is due shortly, and I don't think you and I have much to worry about. There are others coming after me, you know."

  "That is good," Steigmann whispered. He nodded his bearded head once, then again, and stepped back, still facing Durell, to sit down heavily on the cot. His face was all highlight and shadow in the sharp light thrown by the ceiling bulb. Durell moved toward him and let the top of his head graze the bulb and send it swaying back and forth, to make the shadows slide crazily across the cell. "That is good," Steigmann sighed again. "But I am afraid it is too late for me."

  Durell rubbed the back of his aching head. "It's never too late. Doctor. You did a fool thing, coming here to Germany to see your daughter. But we'll straighten it all out."

  Something flickered in the round, stunned eyes. "You— you saw Lisl?"

  "A fine girl. Very lovely."

  "She detests me," Steigmann said hoarsely. "My own daughter, my little Lisl—she calls me a monster, a depraved beast."

  "Well, whatever you did in the past . . ."

  "But I did nothing! She would not let me explain!"

  "All of you have explanations for the atrocities you C3m-mitted," Durell said, shrugging. "Usually, you all claim ySu were merely obeying military orders."

  "But I had nothing to do with such things! Lisl would not listen. The way she looked at me!" The bearded man suddenly buried his face in his hands, and something like a sob escaped from between his shaking fingers. "And so she denounced me to the police and spoke of me as if I were less than human—"

  "You should have told her the truth," Durell said symr pathetically, stabbing at the unknown.

  "How could I? That would have been even worse."

  "How, worse?"

  Steigmann shook his head, like a wounded animal trying to shake off pain. "I cannot tell you."

  "You'll have to, when we get out of here."

  "We will never escape from the Dancers."

  "But mv people know I'm here." He could not pretend to too nuich naivete, so he added: "Listen, Dr. Steigmann, they're probably getting every word we say, so we must be careful. And there isn't much time. They put us together to get information, you understand, so be careful in your replies. You know what I want. You have data on the laser beam developments; you took the stuff to London. None of my people can find it now."

  "I took it with me, yes," Steigmann whispered. "It was a mistake."

  "What was in the papers?" Durell asked harshly.

  "Formulae, notes—^just scribblings I made to illustrate some points to my London colleagues. I assure you, they will be intelligible to no one but myself."

  "Only you could explain them?"

  "Yes, that is so," Steigmann sighed.

  "Have you been asked to interpret your formulae?"

  "Not yet. But it is coming, I am sure."

  "Will you do so?"

  Steigmann looked up, and for the first time there was life behind his wounded, stunned eyes. "What else can I do? They offer me friendship^ safety, a place where I wUl not be falsely accused, a place where I can work—"

  "Where?"

  "I do not know. It is with the Dancers."

  Durell said angiily: "And you'll work with them? Give them all you know?"

  "I have nothing left but my work, young man. If that is taken from me, I can only die."

  "That could happen, too," Durell said. He did not like the drift of Steigmann's thoughts, and he had hoped to find more resistance in the man. But whatever had happened since Steigmann's denunciation by his daughter, and his arrest and escape, his morale had been undermined until he was nothing but putty in the hands of any strong-minded man who wished to manipulate him. It added complications to his job that he'd hoped he could avoid. He said: "What did your papers consist of, exactly?"

  "A folder of scribbled notes. They were in my pockets when I was arrested by Inspector Bellau."

  "Did he take them?"

  "No. I was treated courteously and searched only for arms. I had none, of course."

  "So your notes were with you when the Dancers got you?"

  "Yes."

  "And the Dancers have them now?"

  "Yes."

  "Listen, you must have more hope, you must trust me. My people know enough about the Dancers to—"

  There came the interruption that he'd been expecting for the past few minutes. He did not know if his gambit had been successful. Everything he had said was designed to make his listening captors anxious to learn more about what K Section might know about the Dancers outfit. If he had won their curiosity, he might also win a respite on his own execution. But if he wasn't believed, then the man in the doorway behind him might snuff out his life with a snap of his fingers.

  He turned slowly, with a smile of confidence he did not feel.

  Chapter Twelve

  HE KNEW at once he was facing Selim El-Raschid.

  Two armed Dancers flanked the man, and these were a different breed from those who doubled as performers on the public stage below. Their glittering eyes betrayed total scorn for life, either their own or other's. They were like twin hounds, and they looked enough alike to have been identicals, as perhaps they were. They were honed to a sharp tautness, as if held in check by a steel leash. A sense of death moved into the little cell with them, like a breath of icy wind.

  Big as these men were—taller than Durell, who was imposing by any standards—the figure between them was even more powerful and
dynamic than his guards, shrinking them mto relative insignificance. Where the guards wore European clothes of dark color, Selim El-Raschid preferred the traditional, even medieval, costumes of the ancient Caliphate. One would have thought this might give the man the look of a masquerade, but the opposite was true. The thought flickered through Durell's mind that here was a person designed to march across the stage of history with devastating effect. Everything was exaggerated in him: the hawk's face, the intelligent, almond eyes, the brown smooth skin, the powerful body that towered in egomaniacal strength. An electric aura charged the air of the room. Mighty Saladin might have looked like this, or Charlemagne, or any of half a dozen conquerors whose histories had shaken the foundations of the world.

  "On your knees!" one of the guards barked. "On your knees before the Second Prophet of Allah!"

  Dr. Steigmann had experience with the order, and dropped at once into an astonishing, groveling posture.

  Durell remained standing.

  "On your knees!" the second guard shouted.

  Selim El-Raschid lifted a strong, brown hand that sparkled with jewels. "It is not necessary. He does not yet understand. It may not be seemly, but we will speak with the dog, Mahmoud."

  "Holy One—"

  "Be silent."

  The guard fell quiet, but a trembling possessed him, and again Durell thought of a deadly hunting animal straining to have his leash slipped. He knew he had to be careful in executing the plan he had formed—more than careful. His life in the hands of these twin assassins could hang by a most delicate thread. But he remained on his feet.

  Selim had a cultured, Oxonian accent. "Mr. Sam Durell, of course. Field chief for K Section of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, sometimes operating out of Geneva Central. On assignment to recover poor Dr. Hubertus Steigmann, and cooperating with members of the Sherutei Betahan, the Israeli Intelligence. You may stand, Dr. Steigmann."

  Steigmann scrambled to his feet with labored breath. El-Raschid smiled gently. He had a thin black moustache that joined an elegant, small black beard. His hawk's nose was pinched at the nostrils, betraying the only emotional tension Durell could detect in him.