Assignment The Cairo Dancers

by Edward S. Aarons

  In the shadows of the next dune he watched again, keeping himself in apparent repose. After a moment he caught the shadow again, a ghost of substance, and then again the glint of glass reflecting the waning moonlight. They would soon move into the darkest period before dawn. It was now or never, he decided.

  "Lisl, I'm going to leave you for a few minutes. Stay here and don't move, and act as if you're asleep."

  "That will not be difficult. But what is it?"

  "I'm not sure. If I don't come back—"

  It was a mistake to alarm her. She started up with a betraying jerk, and he held her down roughly. "Be still. We're being watched."

  "Watched? By whom? What—?"

  "Keep your voice down. It carries in a place like this. Just do as I say."

  "But I don't want you to leave me!"

  "It will be all right."

  He had chosen the deep shadow of a dune in which to halt, and he did not think the secret observer on the other side of the sand trough, where the road meandered, could see them clearly. He walked off, holding the Russian rifle in his left hand, and followed the long shadow for several hundred yards, until he was sure he could not be seen crossing the path. Then he darted over, crouching low, and climbed through the yielding sand of the opposite dune, open to the moonlight.

  He flattened down just below the crest and waited for more long moments. Now he heard a sound other than that of the wind and the whispering sand. A dog barked, far away.

  His feet kept sliding in the yielding dune. It seemed a long way back as he progressed. Pausing, he searched the opposite side of the sand valley for Lisl, and it took some time to locate her. Oriented by her position, he circled wide and climbed again, cursing the sand that slid and hissed from under his feet.

  Finally he saw the shadow, lying prone on the crest above him, night glasses glued to his face, watchful and dangerous. Only one of them. Good. Everything about the man indicated complete attention on Lisl's dim shadow. Durell shifted the gun to his right hand and climbed up behind him. He took his time. He saw the shine of moonlight like a wet fingertip running along the barrel of the other's rifle. And then he was close enough—

  The sand betrayed him at the last moment, but it was too late for the silent watcher. He grunted and twisted about, booted foot upraised as Durell leaped for him. A hard heel caught him in the knee, but the blow was short and not strong enough to affect him. As the man twisted on his back, his face a bearded mask in the pale starlight, Durell landed on him with all his weight, the rifle held horizontally now, and he slammed the barrel down across the thick throat.

  The yielding sand kept him from crushing the man's larynx and killing him outright. But it was enough to make him helpless instantly.

  "Hold it, hold it," Durell whispered.

  A gurgle of pain came from the watcher. He jerked about, trying to get free, and clawed for his rifle in the sand nearby, and then lay still and quiet and utterly motionless as Durell pinned him. A sound like odd laughter came from him.

  Durell eased up a bit.

  "Sam? Sam Durell?"

  He eased up a little more. "Turn your head."

  The man turned so his face was exposed to the moonlight. He was smiling ruefully.

  It was Major Simon Asche.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DURELL let him up. After the shock of the brief attack, his nerves were jangled. Asche was still the barrel-chested man of Munich whom he had last seen in stunned grief over Carole Bainbury's murder. But there were subtle differences. He had let his beard grow in the past few days, and his clothes, which were still vaguely European, now had that secondhand shabbiness of those worn by most city Arabs. His eyes had changed the most. This man, with his reputation as an archaeologist and soldier, who perhaps by nature was a mild and gentle person, wishing only for his scholarly pursuits, seemed buried behind the cold and impersonal look in his brown eyes. His mouth smiled, and it meant nothing.

  Simon guessed at his reaction.

  "What do you see, my friend?" he said quietly.

  "I'm not sure. I didn't expect you. Are you alone?"

  "Quite alone, here. But we have friends waiting for us in Cairo. It's not far."

  "Egypt is dangerous for you," Durell said.

  Simon's laugh was a harsh bark. "I'd be shot out of hand as a spy, if they caught me. But they won't. I'll see to that. Anyway, I couldn't leave you here, could I?"

  "How did you find us?"

  "I had five days—quite enough. Will you let me up, please? We're allies, after all, whether you like it or not."

  "I don't object to that. But answer my question."

  Asche considered Durell for a moment. "When they took you at the Cairo Dancers' pavilion in Munich, it was easy to trace you. I admit I was slow—I was stunned and not quite professional in my attitude about Carole's death. But I put some pressure on our mutual collaborator, the little Inspector, Herr Bellau."

  "I can't imagine anyone pressuring him."

  "There are ways, if you have information. He is not to be trusted, but then, who is? He was most useful. We traced you in a shipment of theatrical goods to Alexandria, and then by lorry across the Nile and then south to here. We lost you for a day or so, and then used our charts to eliminate all possible drop-points where they might be hiding you. And so we finally came here."

  "Does the Egyptian government know all this?"

  "Nothing at all. There has not been the slightest ripple of interest in official circles yet, according to our informants. I told you, when it comes to a question of our freedom—no, more than freedom, our lives and our country, we go to any extreme of danger and risk. The results are sometimes quite effective."

  "Then Cairo isn't in on this?"

  "Nasser long ago declared Selim El-Raschid a stinking dog and an enemy of all Islam and Arab peoples." Asche spoke wryly. "On the other hand, since he is such a weathercock between East and West, we can hardly appeal to the Egyptians for help, can we?"

  "All right. Get up. How long were you following us? And why did you watch us for so long?"

  "I wasn't sure what you were up to. You might have been part of a trap, set by the Dancers."

  "You mean you still don't trust me."

  Asche said coldly, "And should I?"

  Durell smiled. "We're in a rotten business, Simon. I suppose we just have to make the best of it."

  Simon's equipment was as efficient as promised. He led them a mile south, to a jeep parked behind a dune that followed a macadam road westward. In the jeep were clothes of both Arab and European design. There was also water and sandwiches and a medical kit to dress Durell's arm. Simon was quick at it, glancing now and then at the sky.

  "It will soon be light. We're not far from the valley of the Nile, even though you probably felt we were on the surface of the moon. We'll reach the river by dawn."

  Durell was content to let him have his way. More than content, he was grateful, for Lisl's sake. She was at the end of her strength, and he knew that if they'd had to spend this day in the desert, she would have been finished.

  Simon drove the jeep. It had no muffler, and their progress was noisy. As the light strengthened, they saw increasing vegetation, high palms behind mud walls, then one village and another, noisy with naked, tumbling children infested with sores and covered with flies. Fields of rice suddenly appeared, a startling green after the barren brilliance of the sand dunes. Irrigation ditches led like arrows to the east, where more palm trees were fringed by the light of the rising sun appearing behind them. At the third village, Simon stopped the jeep beside a water wheel, where three men dressed in the traditional burnouses and chechias of Bedouin nomads were waiting for them. There were houses with red and orange glass windows, and an odor of filth in the air; scores of children ran shrieking and naked, playing with garbage. The three Bedouins were smoking cigarettes as Simon halted.

  ''Salaam," one man said.

  They looked like three of the most desperate rogues Durell h
ad ever seen, two gaunt ones and one who panted with his fat, but who slung a heavy crate into the back of the jeep as if it were a bag of feathers. He was the leader, one-eyed, with a drooping moustache and beard, an eagle's nose of tremendous proportions, and a mouth as cruel as the slash of a dagger. Simon introduced them casually.

  "This is Ibrahim Ben-Haakim," he said, touching the fat, one-eyed man. "His son Josef is one of the first Bedouins to give up the nomad life and attend our University of Jerusalem. He's studying medicine there imder a grant from the State of Israel. The Bedouins sorely need their own professional men. If you know them, you will realize what a departure Josef has made from his traditional way of life."

  Durell returned the greetings, saying, "Peace," and the fat man touched his forehead and lips gravely.

  "Whatever we seem to you outwardly," Ben-Haakim said, 'Ve are friends, and we follow Major Asche wherever he leads us, even into the heart of those who make a sacrilege of Islam."

  Simon's eyes flickered. "These men are devout Moslems, Durell. They're not taken in by all the rumors about a new prophet about to take the place of Mohammed. If anything, they hate El-Raschid more than you and I."

  The village was astir with dawn life, but none of the fellahin going to their fields paid any attention to the noisy jeep and the Bedouins around it. It was as if they were invisible, Durell thought, and he gave due respect to Simon and his organization. Whatever showy progress had been made in the big cities, this viQage reflected the same filth and poverty the fellahin had suffered for five thousand years. From the single Arab cafe came a blare of radio propaganda, and over the ragged awning of reed mats was a faded photograph of Nasser, with a background of militia behind him like a crown of bayonets. Some villagers sat at the cafe, drinking mineral water, while the flies buzzed, crawled, and clustered in black heaps on the garbage in the street.

  In the square, Ben-Haakim's men squatted and brewed tea over a charcoal fire, drinking it from small brass cups with sprigs of mint in it. The men ate and drank quietly,; and there was no mingling with the villagers. After half ani hour, Simon gave a signal and they all crowded on the jeep.

  It was a short trip to the Nile. The green of cultivated fields on each side of the great river valley was startling after the desert glare. At another village, a felucca waited for them at a rickety dock, manned by what seemed to be another quartet of the one-eyed relatives of Ben-Haakim. Now they were out in full view of river traffic, which consisted of more feluccas, steamers, tugs and barges moving up and down the vast stream. An Army convoy in trucks roared by the landing, the troopers in smart berets and khaki uniforms, with arms slung over their shoulders. But no one gave their little group a second glance.

  It was a three-hour trip down the river to Cairo. Ben-Haakim gave them food and fresh water, and Lisl curled up on a prayer rug and slept in the shade of the tattered sail. Durell felt the effects of the long days and nights, too; his eyes felt as if sand had scratched them, and he was content to let Simon and his ragamuffin desert friends take charge for the time. Simon seemed unperturbed by the danger of discovery by river patrols. He was lost in thoughts of his own, his broad face ravaged, his intelligent eyes turned inward on vengeful grief. Durell doubted the man's emotional stability. Simon's cold efficiency was unnatural and might yield to a violent explosion in the time ahead that could betray them all.

  Cairo had not changed much since Durell's last visit some years ago, but he was impressed by the new urban sprawl, the air of the cosmopolitan business section that shocked one's sense of orientation with a mingling of ancient and medieval Mohammedan culture in bazaars and shops and glittering modernity in hotels and corporate office buildings. When they arrived at noon, the heat had slackened some of the waterfront activity. Two more of Ben-Haakim's tribesmen waited for them, looking like the waterside loafers idly watching the barges that unloaded drums of pesticide and flour. Many of the bags of flour had burst on the dock due to careless handling, and the air was filled with a white haze that settled on everything within a quarter of a mile of the corrugated-tin warehouses.

  Simon spoke rapidly to Ben-Haakim, who nodded and gave orders to his followers. In a moment a big Chrysler wheeled up on the dock and Simon, Ben-Haakim, Lisl, and Durell got in behind a uniformed chauffeur.

  "Our plane doesn't leave until evening. The reservations are all in order—I was optimistic, you see—and I have British passports for all of us at the hotel, as well as some fresh clothes to make us presentable as tourists. We'll have to fly by way of Athens, of course."

  "And our final destination?"

  "We are at a dead end here. We'll have to approach from the other direction to get at Raschid."

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "I can make an educated guess. Ben-Haakim has been a fountain of information for us. As you see, he has no love for upstart prophets, and his people wander freely over the borders of the Middle East." Simon smiled. "It is useful. They are loyal, since the Bedouin and the Druse tribes never quarreled with us, and make up some of our best citizens."

  The big limousine moved smoothly through the tangled traflSc of metropolitan Cairo. There was the usual din of clanging trolley bells, buses, and taxis, and in the narrower streets, donkeys and foot traffic contesting the way amid a bedlam of hooting, honking and cursing. Along the open bazaars and shops, nearly naked shoeshine boys squatted on their boxes, too lacking in energy to wave away the flies that clustered on their faces. They passed cafes that smelled of urine, stale wine, and hashish smoke, narrowly avoiding a stream of cats darting across the street, then an open rug market where small girls worked at the looms, their henna-stained fingers nimble on the colored threads. They passed the Hilton, near Tahreer Square, and swung into Elhamy Street on the bank of the Nile, with its tall, graceful palms on a green screen of lawn against the busy river. Beyond the Semiramis, which also overlooked the Nile, was the new hotel that was their goal, a glittering glass-and-aluminum tower that looked as if its plaster hadn't yet dried. The chauffeur swung the car smoothly to an elegant side entrance between towering oleanders and traveler palms.

  "Here we are," Simon said cheerfully. "A hot bath and fresh clothes will make new people of us all—not to mention new identity papers and passports."

  It was strange to have traveled from the savage desert to the luxury of soft carpets, red-jacketed busboys, indirect lighting, and piped Western music all in the space of a few hours. Lisl moaned ruefully and smoothed her heavy blonde hair, then gave it up and tried to carry off her entrance as, best she could. The side lobby did not take them directly through the main public rooms, fortunately, and one of the elevators whisked them swiftly up to the fourteenth floor. The operator with his red pillbox cap and gilt-embroidered uniform did not even seem to see them. Simon had prepared the way quite well.

  Perhaps too well, Durell thought.

  He was not accustomed to putting his life and his chances for success in the hands of another. Because of Lisl, he had been content to let Simon lead them from the desert to safety. But from the moment of the Israeli's appearance, he had waited to take command of his own destiny again.

  It was interesting, too, that since they had reached the comparative safety of civilization, Lisl's attitude toward him had changed subtly. In the limousine, as they watched the contrasts of abysmal poverty and glittering wealth, Lisl had tended to pay more attention to Simon.

  Simon, too, had regarded her with odd speculation. At one point, before they reached the hotel on Elhamy Street, Simon said: "Carole was fond of you, Lisl. She always hoped to make amends for using you. I trust you can find a way to forgive me, too."

  "You did what was necessary," Lisl murmured. "I understand it better now. But you're wrong, you know. I'm sure now that my father is innocent of all the charges that were made against him."

  Simon had glanced briefly at Durell. "Does our American friend make that claim?"

  "I do," Durell said.

  "Perhaps you only wish to salve
your American conscience for employing such people. Isn't that possible?"

  "I think Hubertus Steigmann is someone you've confused with another," said Durell. "I don't yet know who, or how it happened, but I'm convinced of it."

  "Do you say this to get Lisl on your side, Sam?" The Israeli's dark eyes smiled, but his voice was caustic. "We are allies for the moment. Must we quarrel over this?"

  "We don't quarrel," Lisl said. "But neither do you put me on a plane for Europe. Wherever you go, I go, too. I want to find my father."

  "So you shall," Simon said. "You remind me, rather painfully, of Carole, you know."

  "Painfully?"

  He hesitated. "You are very much like her."

  Thereafter Simon spoke little, but Durell did not miss the way Lisl stole long, speculative glances at the man's blunt face. Women, he thought with an inner sigh, were never to be understood. Give them a man suffering grief over another woman, and they yield sympathy like melting butter. Lisl might be naive, but she was very much a woman, and Simon had just flattered her in a manner perhaps intended to win her over to his future needs. But he decided to let time settle the matter....

  Now, as they stood outside the door of Simon's suite on the fourteenth floor of Cairo's newest hotel, he determined to take over again.

  But it was almost too late.

  Simon opened the ornate door with a key and stepped aside to let Lisl enter. Durell held her back.

  "Wait. We may have company."

  He moved in fast, kicking the door hard inward, then stepping quickly to one side, flat against the wall of the lavish suite, his eyes fanning the big, sunny, air-conditioned room with a quick sweep that focused instantly on the gnome-like figure who sat in a deep armchair, waiting for them.

  It was Inspector Franz Bellau.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SIMON had not expected the dwarf. His blunt face reflected dismay, and a gun jumped like magic into his hard fist. Durell pushed it down with a calm he did not feel.

  "You move quite fast, Herr Inspector," he said quietly. "Very fast, and very cleverly."