Assignment The Cairo Dancers

by Edward S. Aarons

  "It wasn't exactly a scientific dosage," he admitted. His head was splitting, with a score of tribal drums beating an ungodly rhythm against his skull. "I think I'm all right now."

  He lay back, panting for air in the windowless cell. The room was not large, not more than eight feet square, with its hard dirt floor that clenched in its solidity the stench of urine and dung. The single slit of light came from a wooden door that felt, to his exploring touch, a thousand years old and as tough as steel. The hinges were on the outside. He knelt and hunted with his fingers for a keyhole, and found one, bound in a greasy brass plate; but when he put his eye to it, he could not understand what he saw: a slash of blue, a splash of green, some gray images that refused to focus. He thought he heard a camel braying, and then he was sure he heard a car engine, perhaps a jeep, start up.

  The voices he heard, however, reassured him. They were Arabic, but too far away to interpret.

  He continued his circuit of the cell while Lisl crouched with legs tucked under her and watched, her face turning in the dimness to follow his stubborn moves. There was no crack or crevice in the walls. They were sun-baked clay, with vague designs stenciled on them. He couldn't scratch a hole in them when he dug with his fingernails. He had nothing else to use at hand. His gun, keys, money, pen—everything was cleaned out. The room had a high, beamed ceiling he could not reach. Pausing, he shrugged off his coat and then his shirt. He felt as if he were drowning in the heat. With no windows and no opening in the solid plank door, the room was like an oven collecting the sun's venom.

  "How many times do they feed the animals in this zoo, Lisl?" he asked.

  "Once each day. Two days, in all. When it was cool, so 1 think it was early morning. Are you hungry?"

  He ignored her question. "What kind of food was it?"

  She shook her head. "Lumps of lamb, I think."

  "Any left?"

  "No, it is taken away."

  "Who has that job?"

  She seemed reluctant to speak of it. "He's an Arab, I think. He's a little crazy. He smells and he always giggles and he tries to—to make love to me."

  From the sounds outside and the crude stencils on the wall, he was sure they were prisoners in some desert oasis. But where? He couldn't guess. And speculation was useless. He leaned back to conserve his strength in the dark heat. Every breath was an effort that brought a searing pain in his chest. But after a time his headache eased. He sipped more of the rancid water, but decided to save as much as he could.

  "How did they get you here, Lisl?" he asked.

  "I am not sure what happened, to be truthful. I'm afraid I was stupid. When Carole left your hotel room—"

  "Why did she go? I told her to stay."

  "She changed her mind and decided to speak freely to you. She said she'd hidden some material you would want in the bed, while we attended to her bullet wound—"

  "Yes. Have they told you about Carole?"

  "No. I know nothing."

  He said blundy: "They murdered her. Not very nicely, either. Just as they kidnapped you, because you didn't obey my instructions, and let someone into the room."

  "Carole? She's dead?"

  "Yes."

  "But I thought—when someone knocked, and spoke to me, it was a woman, and I thought she was returning, so I opened the door—"

  Durell remembered Mademoiselle Zuzu at the Oktoberfest pavilion. It seemed long ago, lost in the past that lacked reality against the starkness of their prison here. Of course, he could not complain. He had asked and hoped for the trip. But he did not like the added complication of Lisl's presence. She was too vulnerable, too lovely and young, and had no real part in the struggle that engaged him. He'd have been happier without her, and yet he was grateful for her company in this place. Then he heard her weeping.

  "Take it easy."

  "But Carole was my friend."

  "She was a Shinbet Agent—Israeli Intelligence Service," he said harshly. "It's a rough business. She knew the risks and the price she might have to pay."

  "How can you be so calm, so cruel, like a machine—"

  "That's how to survive," he said.

  She was silent, plucking at the ragged hem of her skirt hiked above her knees. When she spoke again, her voice was controlled as she told how she had opened the hotel-room door in Munich, expecting Carole, only to feel a blinding pain in her breast and fall unconscious.

  "I woke up here. I don't know what happened. I was lying beside you, and I thought you were dead; you didn't seem to be breathing. I tried to get out. I guess I was hysterical and screaming, and that guard came and began to—began to—" She paused and swallowed noisily, like a child fighting hiccups. "Someone else came and stopped him just in time. So he satisfied himself by kicking you a few times."

  Well, Durell thought angrily, that explained his bruised ribs that stabbed him every time he took a breath. He began to look forward to seeing this guard Lisl described. He was silent, and Lisl cried softly again, and he was satisfied with that, since it served to release her tensions. Alone here, with only his unconscious body for company, constantly fearing the unnatural attentions of the Arab guard, it was a miracle she hadn't cracked and succumbed to total hysteria.

  After a time, she said quietly: "I am sorry, but it is not easy to accept this sort of thing. Carole was my friend, and I cannot put her aside as readily as you do. Everything has happened so quickly and changed so much, since she first came to me and told me about my father . . ."

  "Have you seen him?" Durell asked.

  "My father? No."

  "Not at all? Not since you woke up here?"

  "No."

  He did not like that. It meant there was another spur line on the underground railway, and perhaps he was on a side track, and Dr. Steigmann had been expressed right to the end of the line, which he wanted to reach himself. But that could not be helped. He had come part of the way, and he was still alive—somewhat to his surprise. There was nothing to do but await developments.

  He knew how to be patient, although it never came easily to him. Time in the hut seemed as meaningless as when he was under the influence of the needle that had wiped out everything while he was transported here. The day was endless, but he could judge its progress by the way the heat slowly increased until his senses made everything unreal, and all that was important was the effort it took to take the next tortured breath. There seemed to be no end to the way the temperature soared, but there was certainly a limit to what he and the girl could endure. He became lost in a hot haze of unreality, drifting through oceans of molten lava, when his only focus was the next breath, the girl's gasps, the occasional image of her face and half-naked body drenched in sweat as the day wore on.

  No one came to look at them.

  No one fed them.

  Once, Lisl tore a strip of cloth from her skirt and moistened it in their precious clay water bowl and bathed his forehead with it. He made her squeeze out the smelly stuff and replace it in the drinking bowl, after wetting her lips with it and taking a few drops in his ovm mouth. She had lost her modesty now, in her desperate effort simply to stay alive. But when his hand brushed her hip accidentally, she remembered, and shrank away.

  The dim light in the door faded, the temperature began to drop, and he revived a little. He pushed himself up and went to the wooden panels and tried to look out through the crack. But he still could not define anything out there. He hammered on the door with the heel of his shoe, but no one came.

  He was hungry now, with a three-day hunger that grew ravenous as the day's heat slowly evaporated and was replaced by a growing chill. Darkness flowed into the hut. He took off his shoe and twisted the right heel and found the little tool kit in there that the gimmick boys of K Section's lab had given him. The girl watched with careful eyes. A few quick manipulations gave him a tiny lever and screwdriver; but there were no screws in the door, and the chrome-steel pry-bar was too small to be effective. There was a tiny flashlight, but he didn't use it. As
a last resort, there was a cyanide pill and a tiny tube of nerve gas. He pocketed the tube, thinking he might use it soon, and replaced the pill. He never liked to touch it. The girl spoke tonelessly.

  "We'll never escape, will we?"

  "I'm not sure I want to," Durell admitted.

  "What does that mean?"

  "If we're to find your father, the best chance we have is that they'll take us to him."

  "I think I'll never see Papa again. Even so, how could I face him, after doing all this to him?"

  "It wasn't your fault."

  "Oh, yes. I betrayed him. He came looking for me out of love, I see that now; but I called him terrible things and handed him over to these people. I forced him to it. Where else could he go? I don't blame him if he cooperates with them now."

  "Do you think he will?"

  "Cooperate?" The word was something filthy, the way she said it. She spoke bitterly. "I drove him to it. What else can he do?" She hugged herself and shivered. In the dim hut, the chill gathered like a pool of icy water on the hard floor. They had no blankets to protect themselves against the coming night. "I think," she said slowly, "Papa is innocent now, mainly because you do. Isn't that strange?"

  "I'd like to prove enough to acquit him, Lisl," Durell admitted. "But I wouldn't want to hang by the thumbs until that happened."

  She seemed not to hear him. "Carole and Major Asche used me, and people lied to me and made me do things I never should have done. Perhaps I'm too naive to get along in your world, with people like you. It's a very ugly world you and your people have made."

  "We didn't make the world the way it is. Neither must I accept it, any more than you. Facing reality is always difficult, Lisl. My job is just to keep things on a reasonably sane level. That's all I know how to do."

  "Oh, yes, you know the tools of your trade. I'm a tool for you, and so is Papa, and you don't hesitate to break us if it serves your purpose, isn't that right?"

  "Sometimes."

  It was markedly colder in the hut, now that the sun was down. The girl shivered again. He gave her his coat. He was sure now they were in some desert oasis, to judge by the occasional grunt of a nearby camel. He smelled the smoke of a cooking fire nearby. From far off he heard the guttural murmur of Arabic, but he could not tell how many men were there. The cell grew dark, and he couldn't even see Lisl beside him.

  There was nothing to do but wait.

  It didn't take long.

  Chapter Fourteen

  HE HAD DOZED, with his back braced against a corner of the hut, while the girl kept carefully to her side. He didn't know if it was modesty or resentment that made her keep her distance, and he went to sleep wondering where his responsibility for her began and ended. There was no privacy in their cramped cell, and it probably amused their primitive captors to do this to them, he thought vaguely. He heard her teeth chattering in the cold, when only two hours ago they had gasped in the heat. But there was nothing more he could do for her.

  He awoke to the sound of a soft, sucking giggle from the open doorway.

  The only move he made was to slowly open his eyes. The girl slept, her body dimly curled into a ball, in the starlight that seeped through the opening in the hut. The man's bulk seemed to fill all of the low rectangle of the doorway, looming dark and heavy and infinitely dangerous. A smell of sweat and feces came into the hut with him.

  Through slitted eyes, Durell watched him swing his head toward the sleeping girl. It was the guard. There was a note of drugged indecency in the sound of his laughter. He wore a dirty rag of a burnous and an equally dirty white robe; he carried no visible weapon.

  Again there came the animal giggle, a wet sound from the black, open hole of his mouth. Durell did not move. The creature lurched toward the sleeping Lisl, and reached—

  The girl awoke with a scream of terror.

  Her reaction was swift and instinctive, and her foot lashed out against the shadow that loomed over her. She caught the man's wrist as he groped over her body, and screamed again. But her resistance had no effect. The man threw himself on her with a grunt, panting, as she tried to writhe away.

  "Sam! Sam!"

  Durell got smoothly to his feet and rapped out a command in Arabic. "Get away, dog. And be careful."

  The man had thought he was still unconscious. But whatever his surprise, he reacted as swiftly as a rattlesnake. Durell might have played for freedom at this moment, using the girl, but this wasn't his aim. And he could not abandon her, in any case. The guard, in a swift flowing motion, had yanked Lisl to her feet and used her as a shield before him, and almost with the same gesture, he put a glittering knife to her throat and held it there.

  Durell froze.

  The man giggled again. "So the effendi is awake, as Allah desired."

  "Let her go."

  "And if I do not?"

  "Your masters will kill you, if I do not."

  The man spat at him. "It is you whom Allah has marked for death, not I. As for the houri—"

  "You live in a dream. The girl is desirable, true, but you are not yet in Paradise, dog. And never will be, if you disobey the Prophet's command and break your vows as a Dancer for Allah."

  "Eh?" The Arab was confused. "And what do you know of such things?"

  "Enough. Let her go," he said again.

  Lisl's face was white as she faced him with the guard's knife at her throat. "Be careful," she gasped. "He is not sane."

  Durell replied harshly in English. "He's sane enough to guess what I'm talking about."

  It was an impasse. He could not be sure the guard understood him. The man dragged Lisl to the door and then, giggling suddenly, shoved her with a swift forward thrust that made her stumble against Durell. Before he could disentangle himself from her, the heavy door slammed shut, a bolt grated, and all that could be heard was the guard's shrill curses in Arabic, promising all the tortures of the damned to Durell.

  Durell held the shuddering girl tightly; he was bathed in a cold sweat. Lisl clung to him as if she would never let go, and gasped: "Thank you. That was the worst yet. He will find some way to kill you, now—some way in which he will not be blamed for your death."

  "Don't worry about that."

  "Hold me," she whispered. "I'm so cold."

  Her teeth chattered, and she was wracked by her convulsive shivering. He eased her to the floor in his corner of the hut and held her close to give her body warmth. Her soft, thick hair was a pale aura against his cheek. Her tears slid with warm saltiness against his mouth. He kissed her gently.

  "Is he the only guard you've seen?"

  "Y-yes."

  "Where have the others gone?"

  "I heard someone t-talking English—yesterday, perhaps. I'm not sure when. There is some difficulty in transport, he said. A delay. He—he didn't say how long."

  "I heard a jeep earlier."

  "It is gone. There is only the camel now." She paused. "He will kill you somehow, Sam. I know it. He just w-wants me. . . .

  "Everything will be all right," he said softly.

  But now he did not think so.

  Lisl slept in his arms, curled tightly against him. He thought wryly of other times and other women with whom he had spent the night, but he had never imagined a night like this, or a woman like Lisl. She moved him by her confusion and her need to orient herself in a world that had suddenly turned a brutal, unexpected face to her. He did not know how to comfort her; he couldn't even reassure her about her father. Obviously, Dr. Steigmann had been spirited out of Munich by another route on the underground. Where Steigmann might be was anyone's guess. The surrounding desert was hostile and enormous in its emptiness.

  He might be anywhere within an area covering hundreds of bleak miles. Even if Durell wanted to escape now, he might find he had exchanged the relative safety of this miserable hut for a painful death from thirst, heat and cold.

  He could have done without the complication of Lisl's presence, but as he held her sleeping body close to him, he
felt a need to protect and help her. It was not her fault that she had been tricked into this affair. Part of the responsibility was his. True, in his business, you could not worry about the next man. You carried on, and if your friend was in trouble, you could not save him at the risk of blowing the assignment. He could not begin to explain this to the girl. Nor could he explain to himself why he felt this urgent need to respond to her. He only knew he could not leave her unguarded to the future.

  He dozed and awoke and slept again. The hut was cold. Now and then, the girl in his arms whimpered as nightmares touched her. At dawn she awoke with a small scream and leaped away from him, wriggling across the floor to her own corner.

  "I'm sorry—I didn't mean—"

  "Everything was quiet, Lisl. Don't be afraid."

  He saw her dimly in the dawn light that seeped through the crack in the door. She made ineffectual attempts to straighten her pale hair. Her days in the hut had taken their toll of her clothing, and she was no longer the proud, straight-shouldered girl of Munich.

  "I'm sorry to be so much trouble. If only I knew why 1 was here!" she protested.

  "Well, they know your father loves you, and if he doesn't cooperate with them, they'll use you to make him do so." She looked as if she didn't understand, and he added: "They'll threaten to harm you, to make your father do as they wish."

  "But why should he do anything for me now?" Her voice was a mournful query. "Why should he care about me, after what I did to him?"

  "Lisl, the fact that they took you is the best hope you have that your father is really innocent. It means he didn't plan this and didn't come with the Dancers willingly, don't you see? Otherwise, they wouldn't need you."

  She was thoughtful. "But then, why are we here in this place, instead of being with him?"

  "I don't know. You heard them say something about a snag in their transport system?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Then we'll just have to be patient."

  It was easier to suggest than to practice. An hour after dawn, the Dancer guard opened the door carefully and shoved in two evil-smelling bowls of fatty lamb and a third bowl of stagnant water. Durell tried to glimpse the outside area beyond him, but the light was blinding after the darkness of the hut, and he could only make out a cluster of date palms, a tangled mass of oranges and figs behind mud walls, a few square, yellow houses and a fence of barbed wire. A high, dazzling ridge of sand loomed beyond the village. The sand was helpful. The deserts of the Middle East varied from flinty rock to semi-grassed areas, aside from the oceans of drifting sand. It gave him a better idea of their locale.