by Ian Barclay
He was reaching for the bags and planning a quick exit down the stairs when the man behind the desk spoke in an unexpected tone in Arabic that Dartley understood.
“Have courage, Abdel Ibrahim.”
“You know me?” Abdel asked, not pleased.
“Our cause is just. Allah will assist us.”
“Mutta shakker,” Dartley thanked him, then hustled Ibrahim out the door in front of him, carrying the lighter suitcase. When they were out of earshot in the staircase, he asked, “Who was that? Another of our cousins?”
“No,” Abdel replied, not seeing the joke, “I do not know him. Yet he seemed anxious to let us know he was one of us.”
“Too anxious,” Dartley snapped.
“You judge him too quickly. He is a patriot, Terry. He heard about my brothers and recognized me. Can’t you feel it? The people here have had enough. They are getting ready to rise up against their oppressors.”
“Until the mullahs tell them to sit down again,” Dartley said sarcastically.
“You are mistaken there. We are Egyptians first, Arabs second. We are not like other Arab countries, where what you say might be true.”
They stopped talking when they heard others climbing the staircase. They passed them by, went out to the street and put the two suitcases in the Ford hired from Bita. They had turned in the Hertz Opel after the shotgun incident in heavy traffic. Fortunately, Ibrahim had hired it under a false name, as he did this Ford. Dartley was aware of how adroit Abdel could be behind his humble appearance.
“Take us out into the Western Desert so we can test-fire these guns,” Dartley said, determined not to be caught a second time with faulty weapons.
As they crossed the Nile, Dartley returned to their previous conversation. He wanted to make one point clear to Ibrahim. “You were saying that man in the pensione wanted to let us know he was one of us. Who’s us? Don’t tie me into any of your patriotic games.”
Ibrahim silently concentrated on his driving.
Dartley went on. “I’m here to do a job for pay. If this job happens to help the Egyptians, that’s great, but it’s a side issue with me. I’m using you. You’re using me. But we don’t have any purpose in common. Is that clear to you? I’m doing this for greenbacks. If you want to work for me, that’s your concern. I’m willing to pay. Generously. Like I get paid. Only I don’t want to hear any shit about me or you dying for the sake of Egypt. Or even getting scratched for Egypt, you hear?”
Ibrahim continued to gaze ahead out the windshield with a confident smile on his face. “It’s too late for you now, Terry. You cannot back out.”
Anger flashed in Dartley’s eyes. “Like hell I can’t! The guy who hired me thinks I’ve already quit and gone home.”
“You told him you would?”
“Sure.”
“You meant it?” Ibrahim asked with interest.
“Since I got to keep the money, it made sense. Though it kind of bugged me to leave that shithead Ahmed Hasan trailing slime above the ground. I was going to take time to think about it.”
“So it was Omar and Awad who decided you?”
“Maybe. Is Awad the fat one with the pistol who ran away?”
“Yes. I heard that you killed his partner Zaid.” Ibrahim made a cord of two fingers around his throat and stuck out his tongue. “I think Awad must be losing his nerve—which is not good when you are a policeman on special assignment to Ahmed Hasan. Do you think Hasan will let you leave Egypt after you have garroted one of his most feared strong-arm men and publicly humiliated another, just because you have changed your mind about assassinating him?”
“It’s not as if I’m trapped in a box,” Dartley protested.
“Do you think the person who hired you to kill Hasan believes you will not do so now—after the way you killed Omar Zekri?”
“He can’t be sure that was me.”
Ibrahim laughed. “Terry, who else is there in Cairo who would try a shootout in the middle of the street? You heard what they called you on the TV news—Jesse James.”
Dartley grunted. This thing was getting way out of hand.
Abdel Ibrahim’s mouth dropped open as Dartley swung in a tight half-circle and chipped pieces from the tops of rocks with short bursts from the silenced Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. Dartley emptied about twenty of the thirty shots in the magazine and showed Ibrahim how to fire off the rest. The gun worked faultlessly.
Dartley had expected to work alone, and as a result he had only one submachine gun. He liked to use a Browning Hi-Power semiautomatic pistol as his backup piece. In fact, he liked the big Browning so much he often carried two of them on a close-combat mission, one as the primary weapon instead of a submachine gun, and the other as the backup. He had four in the suitcase and he wanted to test-fire them all. From now on, he and Ibrahim would keep one concealed on them at all times. Dartley was getting on a war footing. He wanted to wrap this damn thing.
The reliability and simplicity, plus the thirteen-shot magazine, made this 9 mm Browning pistol the handgun of choice for hostage rescue units and counterterrorist units all over the world. The FBI National HRU used them. So did Britain’s SAS and Mexico’s Brigada Especial. The Hi-Power was J. M. Browning’s last pistol design. First introduced in 1935, it incorporated what Browning had learned since designing the classic Colt 1911 .45 pistol.
The Browning had no recoil spring plug, and in it the barrel link was replaced by a strong block. The Hi-Power’s slide stop was placed farther back than the 1911’s, and this helped speed up changing magazines. Dartley didn’t like the Browning’s barleycorn foresight and U-notch rearsight, but he didn’t expect to be doing any target shooting this time out.
These four pistols were made by FN in Belgium, and accordingly were labeled GP for Grande Puissance instead of HP for Hi-Power. But they were the same goods, and they had an awful lot of stopping power out to more than fifty yards.
After Ibrahim had emptied several magazines, there was a fighting glint in his hollow eyes. Dartley could see he was going to be hard to control.
Ahmed Hasan looked up from his desk and said to his aide, “Tell him I won’t see him, that he should be ashamed to show his face here. You can say to Awad that I wanted to put him to death, but that you and some others persuaded me that I should let him live because he was the only one who knew this American by sight. Say that you even persuaded me to believe that his pistol jammed and that this was the only reason he ran away.”
The aide nodded. “Of course, if Awad kills this American, you will reward him well.”
“I will. And I mean that sincerely. Awad was a man I could trust. I need men like that. But he must prove himself first.”
The aide left the presidential office. The president nodded and two intelligence agents were shown in. They warned Hasan that the renegade American’s reputation was spreading among underground armed resistance groups, which had been quiet for some time in the capital.
“Now they see things happening they had believed impossible because of our security net,” one agent said. “If we can’t catch this foreign interloper very soon, we must expect others to imitate his terrorist atrocities.”
Ahmed nodded his agreement. “You make a good point there. We must make an example of this infidel assassin. Yet we must not seem to be worried by him. Our attitude must always be that he is merely a flea, a minor irritant, on the great hide of the state. I will not change my routine. Don’t let your extra efforts be too visible—that will panic our supporters and give hope to our enemies. Watch the American Embassy.”
“We have been, sir. But I think he keeps well away from Maglis el-Sha’ab Street.”
“Laforque, the French special attaché, warned me that this American was on loan from the Mossad to the CIA,” Hasan said. “He won’t be working through normal channels.”
After the two intelligence officers left the office, one said to the other, “He’s so damn calm today. He’s weird when he gets like that.”
His companion laughed. “Yes, I feel safer too when Ahmed is shouting and waving his arms.”
Awad heard the radio call and raced to the scene. The dead foreigner still lay on the roadway next to a Volkswagen van with German plates. A woman with long blond hair wept and argued with plainclothesmen standing sheepishly about, passing papers to one another.
When one of them saw Awad, he rushed forward to explain. “We ordered the van to stop and we fired only when the driver laughed at us and kept on going…”
Awad brushed him aside, reached down and pulled back the blanket that covered the body. The subject had a mustache and a few days’ growth of beard, the hair was right, and the general build and height—but it was not the American.
Awad let the blanket fall to re-cover the body on the street. He shook his head and turned to leave.
Jacques Laforque was in a grim mood as he left the Hotel des Roses. Out of pride, he had turned down Ahmed’s offer to him to ride with Egyptian government agents in search of the American. Ahmed placed great value of Laforque’s eyeball identification of the American at the presidential palace reception, but so far seemed to have no suspicion that the Frenchman and the American had any connection with each other. Would the American talk if they took him alive? Of course. They all did. That might cost Paris the contract for the new reactor.
“Baksheesh! Baksheesh!”
Laforque ignored the urchins running alongside his long strides. If a foreigner gave something to one, the others would pester him nonstop until they too got something, while meantime others gathered from nowhere like vultures around carrion.
Paris was taking the situation seriously. In their last message to the French Embassy in Cairo, they had included a mild rebuke to him for informing them that the American assassin was withdrawing from Egypt. Why hadn’t he just gone home? Why had he killed Omar? There was no doubt it was the same man—a hundred people had seen him gun down Omar in the street. Jesse James, they called him now. Paris was concerned, so the undersecretary had said when they shook hands at their embassy. Laforque noticed from the cable that no one was asking for his analysis of the situation now. They were sending down two men from the Gendarmerie Nationale counterterrorist unit, the GIGN, where he had once been the top assault man. The message was clear—all he had to do was find the American and the two GIGN men would do the dirty work. It was plain they no’ longer considered him capable of doing it himself.
The begging children stayed with him, shouting and looking up into his face as he walked along. He knew they would give up once they realized that they could not harass him into giving them money. He hadn’t seen street kids as persistent as these in years. A sign of the times…
Laforque had no idea where he was going, though out of habit he paced forward very purposefully. The only approach he could think of was to look up as many of the shady characters who trafficked in miscellaneous things around the suqs and bazaars and offer to buy information from them. They would all, of course, have previously been pressured by government agents and the secret police. However, the promise of hard cash sometimes turned up things faster than threats from the authorities. He would be open about it, say that France was helping Hasan against his enemies.
He finally began to pay attention to the tallest of the urchins pestering him. He noticed that she spoke good English.
“Sir, take a taxi to the Al Azhar Mosque. Your American friend will meet you there.”
He offered the children an Egyptian pound, which they refused before walking away in their rags with a dignified air.
As he sat back in the taxi, Laforque surreptitiously checked his French army pistol. It was the larger, fifteen-round version of the 9 mm MAB. Unusual for a pistol, it operated on the delayed blowback principle. The barrel was prevented from recoiling relative to the receiver, and in addition, initially locked the slide. The initial gas pressure rotated a barrel lug in a cam slot and released the slide to complete the mechanical cycle When the pressure was at a safe level.
It would be a patriotic act for him to use this French pistol to fire a French 9 mm parabellum at this paid American assassin who was no longer of use to France. Apart from that, his taking care of the unruly Yank on his own would show Paris he was still a first-class field operative. Also, it would show his old pals at GIGN that he could manage without their help, merci beaucoup.
There was no sign of the American outside the Al Azhar Mosque. Was he inside? Surely not.
Two teenaged boys approached. They wore Western clothes, but looked poor and malnourished.
“Mr. Laforque? I will take you to your American friend.” He turned to his companion. “Telephone them now.”
The other boy ran off and the one with him told him to hail a taxi. They climbed in and the boy spoke to the driver in such fast, colloquial Arabic that Laforque could not catch what address he had given. He wasn’t much worried, not with the secure deadweight of the big MAB in his shoulder holster.
He tried to talk to the boy further in English, but could not extract another word from him. Laforque was struck by the fact that the boy had spoken in the same excellent English as the little girl he had thought a beggar outside his hotel. They could even be brother and sister—they had the same strange, hollow eyes and starved look.
When they left the cab at a cafe near the southern edge of the city, Laforque was met by still another teenager with the family likeness.
“Your American friend will be here in a few minutes.”
Laforque nodded, left them behind and went into the cafe. He sat at a table with his back to the wall where he could see the door. He slid the MAB from its holster and, keeping it under his jacket, he released the safety catch and eased a shell in the chamber. Then he slid the pistol back into the holster, repositioning the gun so it was loose and easy to draw. He sat back and tried to relax.
Dartley did not keep him waiting long. From a parked car, Abdel Ibrahim had been watching the Frenchman through high-power binoculars and guessed what he had been adjusting beneath his jacket at the cafe table. Dartley set up his Browning for instant fire, dropped it back in his shoulder holster, winked at Ibrahim and got out of the car. He threaded his way through the traffic to the cafe across the street.
“Bonjour,” Laforque greeted him politely and stood to shake hands with him. Dartley was reminded of how the handshake evolved in the first place, as a way for meeting swordsmen to keep everyone’s right hand in view.
Dartley ordered coffee and Laforque remarked casually that he thought Dartley would have left for home by now.
“Just a few minor complications in the travel arrangements,” Dartley remarked. “Like I think I’d have to seize the airport before they let me on a plane.”
Laforque dutifully smiled at this little display of humor. “Too bad.”
“Looking back on a lot of recent difficulties I’ve had, I think now I have you to thank for them.”
“If you’re talking about that woman in Aqaba—”
“And other things,” Dartley went on calmly. “For instance, I thought when you hired Omar Zekri to find me, it was a dumb move on your part since it exposed France’s involvement in the affair to a paid gossip. But you saw that the Egyptian government agents would not take Omar’s word for that. What Omar would do was tip off the government to my presence. You had no way of knowing that Omar already knew about me.”
“He was harmless,” Laforque said. “Why did you kill him?”
“Because he was very good at finding me.”
“That was enough to make you kill him?”
“Of course,” Dartley smiled glacially. “I never allow anyone to get in my way.”
“Is France in your way?” Laforque asked in an amused tone.
“I don’t think in such big terms. I think in terms of you, Laforque. And if I want to send France a message, I’ll do it in terms of you, Laforque.”
The Frenchman’s humor suddenly evaporated. He grew tense. “There was n
ever anything personal intended in my handling of your case. I see no need to get personal now.”
Dartley spat out the words angrily. “Up till now, you’ve been behaving like the servant of someone so important it gave you immunity, too. You thought you were so big you could fuck me over, and even if I did survive it, I could do nothing about it. You wanted me, as an American, to make an attack on Ahmed Hasan and, of course, fail. But you wanted me to get caught or killed and have the CIA blamed. You would have found a way to make France look good, a Western nation coming to aid its Arab friends. Nukes in exchange for oil. I was never meant to get Hasan—you saw to that, first at Aqaba and then at the presidential palace. I was only meant to try and fail. Laforque, you set me up as a sacrifice.”
“So what?” Laforque shrugged. “I can arrange safe passage out for you now. Why not go? Why keep after Hasan?”
“When there is some genuine change in my sponsor’s plans, usually I’m pleased to oblige,” Dartley said. “But when I find out I was never meant to do what I was hired to do because someone thought I couldn’t do it, I get tempted to prove him wrong. I’m not out to kill Hasan because he’s an asshole despot. I’m going to kill him to show your people in Paris not to fuck with me.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone with an ego as big as that,” Laforque said goadingly.
“When an American tells you not to tread on him, he’s not just pulling some kind of personality trip on you. You’re in my way, Laforque. I’m going to send you as my first message to Paris. Hasan will be the second. Draw!”
“Pardon?”
Dartley laughed harshly. “Let me explain it to you. In a few seconds I’m going to reach for the gun in my shoulder holster. I know you’re carrying one too.” Dartley tried not to let his eyes follow Laforque’s right hand as it glided off the table and began to move across his body. “Doing the gentlemanly thing, I’m giving you notice of my intentions and a split-second advantage to get started. You ready? Now, drawl”
Laforque couldn’t believe what was happening to him, but he had been around long enough to know when a man was serious. He went for the big 9 mm MAB in his shoulder holster, his right hand already more than halfway there.
