Assignment The Cairo Dancers

by Edward S. Aarons

  Nothing stirred in the ruins high above. No animal, bird, or insect sounded; no blade of grass gave relief to the rocky shale under his booted feet.

  He had never felt lonelier.

  Always before, however solitary his mission, he had been among people, in places built and traversed by man. Now he felt small and helpless in this emptiness that oppressed the soul and sent fingers of unreasoning fear into his mind. He was not at all as confident as he had sounded to Simon when he insisted that El-Raschid would accept him, alive, into that strange stronghold high above. What terror waited for him up there? But somehow in that grim fastness was Dr. Steig-mann, with his knowledge of new and deadly weaponry, and scores of other men missing from the normal worid these past few months.

  This was the end of the underground railway he had been sent to travel. Madness and egomaniacal power waited for him on that windswept crag. It could not be permitted to flourish and perpetrate crimes against humanity.

  He walked on.

  The opposite slopes of Djebel Kif were not as sheer as those they had faced from the north, and now at last he saw the path, little more than a goat run, squirming and doubling upon itself in its climb to the summit. Less than an hour of daylight remained when he reached its base and paused.

  He knew that careful eyes watched him, although he could not locate them, and little bristles at the nape of his neck began to prickle with that sixth sense that told him of it. Where were they? He could hear nothing that might betray the Dancer guards. But they were there, looking down on his remote figure as he began his solitary climb.

  It seemed endless.

  At any moment, he expected to feel the mortal blow of a bullet tearing through his flesh and bone. El-Raschid was unpredictable. His confidence began to ooze away as the shadows darkened and he reached the halfway mark to the top of the mountain.

  And still there was no sign of life, no challenge, no attack.

  Was Ben-Haakim mistaken? Had they fallen for a false clue in the Byzantine medallion of the Dancing Monks?

  He climbed farther.

  Now he could see the crumbling ruins clearly in the last flare of sunlight from the west. The sky beyond was alive with desert colors, harsh and ominous. The wind was stronger here, as hot as if from the furnaces of hell. Above, the Byzantine arches of a cloister stood black against the colors of the sky. Part of one tower, perhaps a belfry, still stood here, forming a gateway at the top of the treacherous path he followed. The arched entrance was like a black maw, beckoning to him.

  The last hundred yards were the worst. The feeling that he was covered by several weapons, that at any instant he would suffer the instantaneous shock of death, grew stronger. He forced himself to climb faster, heedless of the wind or the uncertain footing. And at last he stood before the arched, crumbling ruin, where blackness darker than any night waited to swallow him.

  And a voice said:

  "Welcome, Mr. Durell. Welcome, indeed."

  He did not allow his relief to show as he walked forward to greet Selim El-Raschid. His brief encounter with the Second Prophet in far-off Munich had made an indelible impression on him, and his memory of this man's magnetic power wasn't false. In this place he wore again his costume of the ancient Caliphate, richly embroidered with gold and glittering with jewels like a magnificent peacock. But the self-styled Prophet needed no decoration to make himself impressive. His towering height and hawk's face dominated and stunted everything else. The impact of his assurance, the shine of malevolent intelligence in his dark eyes, and the confidence with which he waved a brown hand to beckon Durell inside was like a physical blow.

  "We have been expecting you at Djebel Kif, Mr. Durell, for as you see, we never underestimated you. We know your value, and welcome you to our ranks."

  Two shadows stirred restlessly behind the giant Prophet. The killer hounds. The twin Dancers he had bested back in Munich, and whose straining impatience showed they had not forgotten his insults, were ready to leap and tear him to pieces. El-Raschid checked them with a murmur. Durell did not look at them again.

  Durell eased up a bit.

  "You came a long way to satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Durell, and survived several trials," El-Raschid said. "I am sure we may have more surprises for you. But you must remember, you are not forgiven for the way you have annoyed me, and there must be suitable punishment which you will accept, I am sure, as a brave and clever man."

  "It's not just my curiosity that brought me here," said Durell. "I want Dr. Steigmann and his daughter."

  "Indeed? You make demands? Alone, like this?"

  "Is Lisl here?"

  "Naturally. And my confederate, Herr Bellau. A very clever little man, and most accommodating. Come with me. For the moment, we will postpone our judgment upon you, and ignore your bravado."

  The hounds closed in on either side. Durell nodded and stepped forward before they could touch him. There was a stone path through the crumbling, arched entrance, and he saw that the top of Djebel Kif was relatively flat, once he was within the high walls of the monastery. A master of camouflage had concealed the helicopter landing area with paint and netting, and a small two-seater rested there in the shade. There was an old well and a pond and a garden bordered by squat, bulbous stone columns and arches, and El-Raschid led the way, with a thin smile of amusement, toward the vaulted, dusty stones that once held the monastic cells of the Dancing Monks.

  Durell walked between the two Dancers, along a narrow stone gallery and down a circular flight of steps worn smooth by a thousand years of sandaled feet, and then they paused before a heavy wooden portal. The light was almost gone from the sky, glimpsed through the broken, timbered roof. Shadows waited ahead. El-Raschid laughed softly.

  "You are honored, Mr. Durell, by my personal greeting. It is not for everyone that I come up here. Do you find this place so strange?"

  "No stranger than your dreams of immortality as a Second Prophet."

  "But stranger than anything you have seen before, I promise you. We are self-suflScient and impregnable here, beyond reach of any power to obstruct us. Please go in."

  The hawk's face was mocking and amused. One of the twin guards opened the wooden door set in the crumbling wall. And when Durell walked through, it was like entering another world, a world of Sindbad, and the Thousand and One Nights, of Omar Khayyam, of Baghdad and all its fabulous wonders.

  The mountain was honeycombed with cells and passages under the monastery ruins. Soft lights and a sweep of cool, air-conditioned air indicated a power source that El-Raschid quietly identified as a small atomic reactor, built by German and Egyptian technicians who had joined the Dancer cause. How many hours of man-killing labor, Durell thought, had gone into the embellishment of natural caves in this volcanic mass of stone! The walls were tiled in Moorish patterns, with blues and pinks and antique designs that rivaled the finest mosques of Istanbul. Soft Persian carpets muffled their steps. Then an elevator, with a golden fretwork like that of a giant birdcage, whisked them gently downward for an incalculable distance. He made no move to resist when the hounds searched him, but they neglected to check the hollow heels of his shoes. His only resource was the small tube of nerve gas cached in his left heel. He had small hope it would remain undiscovered for long. And as the elevator sank downward, his hope for success in this place sank alarmingly with it. The elevator seemed to be the only way in or out of this devil's eyrie, and when they stepped from its golden embrace, it was as if they were in another world.

  There was intense activity in the corridors and rooms they passed. He glimpsed men in white smocks at work in mysterious laboratories, the costumed Dancers with their scimitars were everywhere, and then, to his shocked surprise, they came face to face with Mademoiselle Zuzu, of the Munich pavilion.

  Durell halted.

  "Hello, there."

  She looked different, but he was certain she was the same girl who had stabbed the needle into the back of his neck at the Oktoberfest, She wore a plain blue
cotton smock that offered tantalizing suggestions of the magnificent figure he had seen once and still remembered. Her Nordic beauty had suffered in this past week, however. There were ugly bruises on her face, and for all he knew, equally ugly scars and bruises on her rich body.

  Her blue eyes flashed with shocked recognition, and then she bowed her head and tried to hurry on.

  "No hard feelings," said Durell. "You remember me, don't you?"

  She looked agonized, wet her lips, and again tried to move around him. El-Raschid said gently: "Alida, whom you call Zuzu, has been punished for certain infractions of our rules. She is not permitted to speak to anyone. You may go about your duties, my dear."

  The girl looked grateful, shot Durell another look, and hurried on. Durell was pushed ahead by one of the hounds into a huge, softly lighted chamber where the eye was instantly drawn to a thronelike chair with huge oval plaques above it, inscribed in Arabic with writings from the Koran. To the honest Bedouins of Ben-Haakim's tribe, he was sure this place would indeed be considered subverted into a pit of Shaitan. Music floated from behind carved ivory fretwork, the thin reedy wail of flutes and the thud of tambours. The air was softly scented. Servants hurried forward, bowing abjectly, as El-Raschid in his magnificent tunic made his appearance.

  "Be at ease," he murmured. And to Durell, he said: "Are you weary? Would you rest and be refreshed, or does your hot American impatience drive you to further examination of my citadel?"

  "I came to see all I can," Durell returned.

  "But you have had a long journey, a truly trying time. Your friends out in the desert—yes, we know of them—cannot help you, you know. They are no danger to us here, and so we shall let them be, unless they become provocative. On the other hand, I must apologize for the unintentional trials you suffered as a prisoner. It was not meant to be. But even in Paradise, those who dance for Allah sometimes make a misstep. Those responsible were punished, of course. Perfection is not for mortals. They are taught to hope for such achievement in another life."

  "And they die willingly?"

  "Of course." El-Raschid's smile was thin and cruel with irony. "Just as my little community of scientists works willingly to create the world I shall conunand."

  "Out of fear? Or due to your drugs?"

  "Some of both, I admit. And a little surgery often helps. Come, you will see for yourself."

  For the next hour, Durell was taken up and down the honeycomb of corridors and chambers, some elegant, some antiseptically simple. Everywhere there was an ominous sense of hurried activity. In one room he recognized Dr. Paolo Nardmocchi of Italy, and Kingsley-Smythe, the rocket fuel expert of London; in another he glimpsed Professor Anton Novotnik of Czechoslovakia, and Dr. Sung Laio, of Communist China. They were all busy, with single-minded purpose, in their various laboratories.

  "You seem to be pushing for something," Durell said to El-Raschid.

  The big man smiled. "We are ready."

  "For the end?"

  "The end of the world as you Westerners know it. Come, you shall see the ultimate weapon now, in miniature. Dr Steigmann proved to be the expert trigger we needed."

  "Did he cooperate with you?"

  "Now that his daughter is in our hands, he had little choice. He is a sentimental man, but brilliant in laser techniques and weaponry development. We had Francois LeBec here, the French optical man, and Dr. Okira Mayashi. But LeBec, the silly fellow, became recalcitrant. The lobotomy we performed was not a perfect work of surgery. He had to be killed."

  "You induce these great scientists to work for you by surgical means?"

  "We make them amenable to suggestion, you may say. It was really Bellau's idea. He knew each man's failing—and they are human, after all. It was either money, food, women —^we pander to all their tastes—or surgery as a last result. Bellau's files were invaluable in this respect."

  "Bellau." Durell paused. "He was your partner from the begirming, then?"

  "In many ways. I found it amusing that you and your Western intelligence agencies depended so heavily on him and his dossiers."

  Durell nodded. It was clear now. Somewhere in this palace of a Thousand and One Nights was his real enemy, the evil genius who no one had recognized in Munich. Bellau! He felt rage rise and then subside in him. He could allow no emotion to sway him now. Time was running out. It amused El-Raschid to reveal everything to him, but there was no mistaking the quality of anticipation and preparation that filled the air here. Something was going to break—soon.

  He considered his chances. The hounds were alert, as always—^monomaniacal in their watchfulness. El-Raschid's geniality was sinister in its cheer. Obviously, he was not going to be permitted to see Lisl. He might have to sacrifice her, if forced to make his play too quickly. Simon wouldn't like that, and when he thought of the major and his vengeful Bedouins, he hoped they would somehow find the rumored entrance to the natural caves that tunneled this mountain, and at least create a suitable diversion. But he could not count on that. He was on his own. He had walked like a fly into the spider's web, and the path ahead looked sticky indeed.

  They passed more girls, some in servants' clothing, plain blue and shapeless, with dull eyes and sullen mouths. Others wore the filmy accouterments by which El-Raschid had recreated the fabled era of Islam's Caliphate glory. They all looked like drugged automatons. The only one who had shown a flash of intelligence and independence was Zuzu, whose real name apparently was Alida. He filed the thought away for future reference.

  Torture and "persuasion" had created a small empire here, headed by a madman and his dwarf accomplice. The eagle and the toad, in league with each other, to gobble up an unsuspecting world! Durell's stomach churned uneasily. No one in Washington suspected the true enormity of the movement that had gathered its momentum in this place. No one was alerted.

  He was alone in a world of insane dreams and deadly design.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  HE SLEPT uneasily. The bed was a soft divan covered with silk and brocades, in a chamber that might have been in a sultan's palace. His mind struggled to recall all that El-Raschid, in his pride, had shown to him. There was a surgery, gleaming and antiseptic, where a tiny, faintly humming laser was being manipulated by a white-smocked surgeon, to act in place of a scalpel in a brain operation on yet another unfortunate, captive mind. And from an opening in the craggy walls of Djebel Kif, he had seen a much larger version of the laser beam gun, surrounded by a crew of technicians who were rapt in purposeful activity.

  "Does it really work?" Durell had asked El-Raschid.

  "It will shine invisibly, like the sword of Allah, and cut a path through the cities both east and west of this place, as a demonstration of our power. It will not take much, if your Western conscience troubles you. A few million people, who will die by incineration so swiftly they will never know it, is a small sacrifice to show the world what I mean to do. You wince at the number? But people are cheap. There are so many of them now, on this small globe. It is the illness of your times, this lowering of moral standards everywhere in the West, because, with such a surplus, the value of human life goes down."

  "One small atomic bomb will make Djebel Kif only a memory," Durell had suggested. "How long do you think it will be before a SAC bomber or a rocket comes over to put an end to it?"

  "You truly think so? But what of the diplomatic furor, the U.N. debates, the embassy messages, back and forth, until the time for action passes and the movement has gone beyond hope of any recall?"

  Durell had been silent. He knew the truth of the man's words. In today's state of the world, swift reprisal was almost beyond hope. Too many factors—world opinion, blind retaliation, the endless arguments and charges and countercharges, the enigma of what was really happening—would stall any such hope as he had suggested. El-Raschid was right. The enemy would win, if he got in the first blow.

  But he could not let it happen. Somehow, he had to stop it.

  As he sat up, there was a light ra
p on his door. He called out in English to come in, and Zuzu—or Alida— entered, carrying a breakfast tray, with an ornate brass coffee pot, croissants, fresh butter, English jam, fresh scrambled eggs. He was enormously hungry. He started out of bed, realized he was nude, and used the silken sheet to cover himself. The girl paid no attention. He looked for his shoes at once, thinking of the tube of nerve gas in his left heel. They were gone. Soft Moroccan slippers waited for him, and he groaned inwardly, but showed nothing on his face.

  "Good morning, Zuzu. Or is it Alida here?"

  "Alida is my real name," she replied tonelessly. "Alida Johannsen. But I am not permitted to talk with you. I was sent merely to bring your breakfast."

  "Does everyone get this royal treatment?"

  "Not at all. You are highly privileged."

  "You're the only one around here who seems to be allowed full possession of your faculties. Why is that?"

  "It amuses the Prophet. I must go now."

  "Wait a moment, please."

  "I cannot. I'm afraid."

  "What have they done to you?"

  She shuddered. The bruises he'd seen on her face were fading, but there was a dead look in her lovely eyes and a lack of hope there that he did not like. He gave her his most disarming smile.

  "You don't really think the Prophet is touched by the divine, do you, Alida?"

  "He is a man," she said bitterly. "He taught me that—as part of my punishment."

  "But what did you do to displease him?"

  She shrugged. She wore her hair loose, except for a blue-beaded band that held the long, golden strands in a heavy braid down her back. He had not really had a good look ati her during those hurried moments in Munich, over a week ago. She was a remarkably beautiful giri. Her Scandinavian eyes were of the purest blue, and her figure could have been that of a Norse goddess of the wild seas.

  "How did you ever get into this mess?" he asked.

  She shrugged again. "Like most of the other girls here, I wanted to dance, to be in the entertainment world. I answered an advertisement in Stockholm and was recruited for a traveling entertainment troupe, and little by little became a part of the Dancers."