He put his hand over hers. "And I for you, but you are the best thing that ever happened to the United Nations. I won't be the cause of your downfall."
"So you walked out," she said, a hurt look growing in her eyes. "How very noble of you."
"Yes," he said without hesitation. "To avoid headlines reading, `Secretary General of the UN revealed as mistress to French intelligence agent working undercover in the World Health Organization.' My superiors at the Second Division of the National Defense Staff wouldn't exactly be overjoyed at my exposure either."
"We've kept our relationship a secret until now," she protested. "Why not continue?"
"Impossible."
"You're well known as a Turkish national. Who could possibly discover the French recruited you when you were a student at Istanbul University?"
"If someone digs deep enough they'll strike secrets. The first rule of a good agent is to operate in the shadows without being too furtive and too visible. I compromised my cover at the UN when I fell in love with you. If either British, Soviet, or American intelligence get even a whiff of our relationship, their investigation teams would never stop until they filled a file with sordid details which they would then use to extort favors from your high office."
"They haven't yet," she said hopefully.
"No, and they're not going to," he said firmly. "That's why we must not see each other outside the UN building."
Hala turned away and stared through the rain-streaked window. "Then why are you here?"
Yerli took a deep breath. "I need a favor."
"Something concerning the UN or your French bosses?"
"Both."
She felt as if she were being turned inside out. "You only use me, Ismail. You twist my emotions so that you can play your petty little spy games. You are an unscrupulous rat."
He didn't speak.
She gave in as she knew she would. "What do you want me to do?"
"There is an epidemiology team from the WHO," he spelled out, his voice suddenly businesslike, "which is investigating reports of strange diseases in the Malian desert."
"I recall the project. It was mentioned during my daily briefing several days ago. Dr. Frank Hopper is directing the research."
"That is correct."
Hala nodded. "Hopper is a well-respected scientist. What is your involvement with his mission?"
"My job is to coordinate their travel and see to their logistics, food, transportation, lab equipment, that sort of thing."
"You still haven't made clear what you want from me."
"I'd like you to recall Dr. Hopper and his investigators immediately."
She turned and looked at him in surprise. "Why would you ask that?"
"Because they're in great danger. I have it on good authority they are to be murdered by West African terrorists."
"I don't believe you."
"It's true," he said seriously. "A bomb will be placed on their plane, set to explode over the desert."
"What kind of monsters do you work for?" she snapped, her voice shocked. "Why come to me? Why haven't you warned Dr. Hopper?"
"I've tried to alert Hopper, but he has ignored all communications."
"Can't you persuade the Malian authorities to relay the threat and offer protection?"
Yerli shrugged. "General Kazim looks upon them as intruding foreigners and cares less about their safety."
"I'd be a fool if I didn't think there was more intrigue here than a simple bomb threat."
He looked into her face. "Trust me, Hala. My only thought is to save Dr. Hopper and his people."
Hala wanted desperately to believe him, but deep inside her heart she knew he was lying. "It seems everybody is searching for contamination in Mali these days. And they all urgently require salvation and evacuation."
Yerli looked puzzled but said nothing, waiting for her to explain.
"Admiral Sandecker of the United States National Underwater and Marine Agency came to me and requested approval for the use of our Critical Response and Tactical Team to rescue three of his people from Malian security forces."
"The Americans were searching for contamination in Mali?"
"Yes, apparently it was an undercover operation, but the Malian military intercepted them."
"They were caught?"
"Not as of four hours ago."
"Where exactly were they searching?"
Yerli seemed upset, and Hala detected the strained urgency in his tone. "The Niger River."
Yerli clutched her arm and his eyes turned deadly. "I want to know more about this."
For the first time she felt a chill run through her. "They were hunting for the source of a chemical compound that is causing the giant red tide off the coast of Africa."
"I've read about it in the newspapers. Go on."
"I was told they used a boat with chemical analysis equipment to track the chemical to where it emptied into the river."
"Did they find it?" he demanded.
"According to Admiral Sandecker, they had traced it as far as Gao in Mali."
Yerli didn't look convinced. "Disinformation, that has to be the answer. This thing must be a cover-up for something else."
She shook her head. "Unlike you, the Admiral does not lie for a living."
"You say NUMA was behind the operation?"
Hala nodded.
"Not the CIA or another American intelligence agency?"
She shook her arm free and smiled smugly. "You mean your devious intelligence sources in West Africa had no idea the Americans were operating under their noses?"
"Don't be absurd. What spectacular secrets could an impoverished nation like Mali possibly have that would attract American interests?"
"There must be something. Why don't you tell me what it is?"
Yerli seemed distracted and did not immediately answer her. "Nothing . . . nothing of course." He rapped on the glass to get the driver's attention. Then he motioned to the curb.
The chauffeur braked and pulled to a stop in front of a large office building. "You're tearing yourself away from me?" Her voice was thick with contempt.
He turned and looked at her. "I am truly sorry. Can you forgive me?"
Something inside her ached. She shook her head. "No, Ismail. I won't forgive you. We will never meet again. I expect your resignation letter on my desk by noon tomorrow. If not, I will have you expelled from the UN."
"Aren't you being a bit harsh?"
Hala's path was set. "Your concerns are not with the 'World Health Organization. Nor, if they only knew it, are you even 50 percent loyal to the French. If anything, you're working for your own financial ends." She leaned over him and pushed open the door. "Now get out!"
Silently, Yerli climbed from the car and stood on the curb. Hala, with tears forming in her eyes, pulled the door shut and never looked back as the driver shifted the limousine into gear and merged into the one-way traffic.
Yerli wished he could feel remorse or sadness, but he was too professional. She was right, he had used her. His affection toward her was an act. His only attraction for her was sexual. She had simply been another assignment. But like too many women who are drawn to aloof men who treat them indifferently, she could not help herself from falling in love with him. And she was only now beginning to learn the cost.
He walked into the cocktail lounge of the Algonquin Hotel, ordered a drink, and then used the pay phone. He dialed a number and waited for someone to answer on the other end.
"Yes?"
He lowered his voice and talked in a confidential tone. "I have information vital to Mr. Massarde."
"Where do you come from?"
"The ruins of Pergamon."
"Turkey?"
"Yes," Yerli cut in quickly. He never trusted telephones and hated what he thought were childish codes. "I am in the bar of the Hotel Algonquin. When can I expect you?"
"One A.M. too late?"
"No. I'll have a late dinner."
Yerli hung up the
phone thoughtfully. What did the Americans know about Massarde's desert operation at Fort Foureau? he wondered. Did their intelligence services have a hint of the true activities at the waste disposal plant and were they snooping around? If so, the consequences could be disastrous, and the fall of the current French government would be the least of the backlash.
Behind him was black darkness, ahead the sparsely scattered street lights of Gao. Gunn still had 10 meters to swim when one of his kicking feet dug into the soft riverbed. Slowly, very cautiously, he reached down and grabbed the silt with his hands, pulling himself through the shallows until he was lying at the waterline. He waited, listening and squinting into the darkness shrouding the bank of the river.
The beach sloped at an angle of 10 degrees, ending at a low rock wall that bordered a road. He crawled across the sand, enjoying its heat against the wet skin of his bare arms and legs. He stopped and rolled onto his side, resting for a few minutes, reasonably secure that he was only an indistinct blur in the night. He had a cramp in his right leg and his arms felt numb and heavy.
He reached back and felt the backpack. For a brief instant, after he had struck the rushing water like a cannonball, he thought that it might have been torn from his back. But its straps still clung tightly to his shoulders.
He rose to his feet and sprinted in a crouching position to the wall, dropping to his knees behind it. He warily peered over the top and scanned the road. It was empty. But a badly paved street that ran diagonally into town had a fair amount of foot traffic. Out of the upper edge of one eye he caught a dim flare and looked up on the roof of a nearby house in time to see a man light a cigarette. There were others dim figures of people, some illuminated by lanterns, happily chatting with their neighbors on adjoining roofs. They must come up like moles, Gunn surmised, to enjoy the cool of the evening.
He studied the stream of the pedestrians on the street, trying to absorb a rhythm to their movements. They seemed o glide up and down the street in their loose, flowing garments on silent feet like wraiths. He unstrapped the backpack, opened it, and removed a blue bed sheet. He tore art of it in a crude body pattern and then draped it around himself in the style of a djellaba, a long-skirted garment with full sleeves and a hood. He wouldn't win a local fashion award, he thought, but felt reasonably satisfied it would pass unnoticed in the dimly lit streets. He considered removing n is glasses, but decided against the idea, positioning the hood to cover the rims. Gunn was nearsighted and couldn't see a moving bus 20 meters away.
He slipped the backpack under the robe and strapped it around his front as if it was simply a protruding stomach. He then sat on the wall and swung his legs over to the far side. He casually stepped across the road and up the narrow street, joining the citizens of Gao who were out for their evening stroll. After two blocks he reached a main intersection. The only vehicles prowling the streets were a few dilapidated taxis, one or two run-down buses, and a few scattered motorbikes and a bevy of bicycles.
It would be nice to simply hail a cab for the airport, he thought wistfully, but that was inviting attention. Before abandoning the boat he had studied the map of the area and knew the airport was a few kilometers south of town. He considered stealing a bicycle, but quickly eliminated the idea. The theft would have probably been noticed and reported, and he wanted no trace of his presence known. If the police or security forces did not have reason to think there was an illegal alien wandering in their midst, they would have no cause to search for him.
Gunn leisurely walked through the main section of town, past the market square, the decrepit Hotel Atlantide, and the merchants hawking their wares from stalls under arches across from the hotel. The smells were anything but exotic. Gunn welcomed the breeze that fanned most of the town's odors into the desert. Signposts were nonexistent but he navigated down the sandy streets by occasionally glancing up at the north star.
The people dressed in a blaze of green and blues and a smattering of yellow. The men were dressed in some form of djellaba or caftan. A number wore western pants and tunics. Few were bareheaded. Most male heads and faces were heavily swathed in blue cloth. Many of the women were covered in elegant cloaks, others long, flowered dresses. Most all were unveiled.
They all chattered constantly in strange low tones. Children ran everywhere, no two dressed alike. Gunn found it hard to imagine such social activity and congeniality in the middle of great poverty. It was as though nobody informed the Malians they were poor.
Keeping his head down and face covered by the hood so the white skin of his face wouldn't show, Gunn merged with the crowd and made his way out of the busy part of town. No one stopped him and asked awkward questions. If for some unexpected reason he was apprehended and interrogated he would claim to be a tourist on a hiking trip along the Niger. He did not dwell on that possibility for long. The danger of being stopped by someone who was looking specifically for an illegal American was nil.
He passed a road sign with a pointing arrow and a drawing of an airplane. He was making his way toward the airport easier than he expected. His luck hadn't skipped out on him yet.
He walked through the more affluent merchant-owned neighborhoods and into the surrounding slums. From the time he left the river, Gao had given him the impression of a town where, with the coming of darkness, some unseen horror crawls up through the sandy streets. It seemed to him a town drenched in the blood and violence of centuries. His imagination began to work overtime as he walked the dark and nearly deserted streets, beginning for the first time to see curious and hostile looks from people sitting in front of their crumbling houses.
He ducked into a narrow alley that looked to be empty and paused to take a revolver from the backpack, an old, snub-nosed Smith & Wesson 38-caliber Bodyguard model that had belonged to his father. His instinct told him that this was a place you didn't walk at night if you expected to see the dawn.
A truck rumbled past, stirring up the fine sand, its flatbed piled with bricks. A quick realization that it was going in his direction, and Gunn threw caution to the desert winds. He took a running leap and scrambled up the back of the truck. He came to rest flat on his stomach on top of the bricks facing forward and looking down on the roof of the cab.
The smell of the exhaust from the diesel engine came as a relief after the aroma of the town. From his vantage view atop the truck's cargo, Gunn picked out a pair of red lights blinking a few kilometers ahead and to his left. As the truck bounced closer, he could see a few floodlights mounted on a terminal building and two hangars across a darkened field.
"Some airport," he muttered to himself dryly. "They turn out all the runway lights when it's not in use."
A dip in the road showed in the truck's headlights, and the driver slowed. Gunn took advantage of the decreased speed and hit the ground running. The truck rolled on into the darkness, sand streaming from its tires, the driver blissfully unaware he'd carried a passenger. Gunn followed the truck's taillights until he came to an asphalt side road and a wooden sign painted in three languages that advertised the Gao International Airport.
"International," Gunn read aloud. "Oh how I hope so."
He walked along the side of the entry road, keeping off to one side in the remote chance a vehicle might happen by. There was little need for caution. The airport terminal was dark and the parking lot totally empty. His hopes took a downturn at a close-up view of the terminal building. He'd seen better-looking condemned warehouses than the wooden structure with a rusting metal roof. It took a brave man to climb and work in the nearby control tower sitting precariously on support girders that were almost eroded through. He walked around the buildings onto the dead and darkened tarmac. Across the field, illuminated by floodlights, sat eight Malian jet fighters and a transport plane.
He stood motionless as he spied two armed guards sitting outside a security shack. One was dozing in a chair, the other was leaning against the shack smoking a cigarette. Great, he thought, just great. Now he had to contend with the m
ilitary.
Gunn held up his Chronosport dive watch and peered at the dial. It read twenty past eleven. He suddenly felt tired. He'd made it this far only to find a deserted airport that looked as if it hadn't seen an arriving or departing airliner in weeks. If that wasn't bad enough, the field was guarded by Malian air force security. No predicting how long he could sit it out before being discovered or expiring from lack of food and water.
He resigned himself for a long wait. Not good to hang around during daylight. He moved 100 meters into the desert before stumbling onto a small pit half filled with debris from some long-forgotten shed. He scooped out a depression in the dry sand, climbed in, and pulled several rotting boards over him. The hole could have been filled with ants or scorpions for all he knew, but he was too tired to care.
He was asleep within thirty seconds.
Roughly manhandled by Massarde's crewmen, Pitt and Giordino's wrists were cuffed, and they were forced in a kneeling position by short chains that wound around a steam pipe. They were helplessly confined in the bilge area below heavy steel plating that served as a deck of the engine and power-generating room above. Overhead, a guard armed with an automatic machine pistol slowly paced back and forth, his shoes clicking on the steel floor. They knelt in the dank bilge of the houseboat, their wrists chafing in the tight handcuffs, bare knees below their shorts only a few degrees from being burned by the hot metal flooring.
Escape was impossible. It was only a matter of time before they were turned over to General Kazim's security police, and their existence would end with a virtual death sentence.
The atmosphere in the bilge was stifling and nearly unbreathable. Sweat streamed out their pores from the damp heat that radiated from the steam pipe. The torment increased with each passing moment. Giordino felt badly weakened and debilitated, his strength almost totally sapped away after two hours of confinement in that hellhole. The humidity was worse than any steam bath he had ever sat in. And the loss of body liquids was driving him half mad from thirst.
Giordino looked across at Pitt to see how his self determined friend was taking this torturous confinement. As far as he could tell, Pitt showed no reaction at all. His face, soaked in perspiration, looked thoughtful and complacent. He was studying a row of wrenches that hung neatly in a row on the aft bulkhead. He could not reach them because the chain on his cuffs was stopped from slipping along the pipe by an overhanging brace. He thoughtfully measured the distance that stretched beyond his touch. Every so often he turned his attention to the grating and the guard, then back to the wrenches.
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