Rogue Hercules

by Denis Pitts

  ‘There’s a logical explanation for all of them,’ reasoned Martin.

  Harry pulled himself up to an upright position and turned to his captain.

  ‘How did the Russians know our call sign?’

  ‘They overheard us talking to ground control at Karachi.’

  ‘That’s crazy and far-fetched and you know it. We were unscheduled if you remember.’

  ‘Not at the outset. We began the day as Juliet Mike Oscar.’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s too hot for paranoia,’ said Martin sharply. ‘What’s the great phrase in your language? You’ve got bubbles in your think-tank, Harry my boy. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better.’

  The cab was entering the city. The Sudanese driver held his thumb on the horn ring, scattering goats and chickens which ambled on the main road. A string of worry beads hung from his driving mirror and swayed as he flicked the steering wheel casually, narrowly avoiding parked vehicles. The city was still fast in its siesta. Beggars curled in the shade. The only human life that they saw from the taxi was an idiot who stood in the middle of the road, cackling toothlessly and waving at them with both arms.

  The hotel lobby was deserted. Martin had to bang the bell-push several times before the elderly concierge staggered yawning from his cabin at the rear of reception.

  When they had signed the registration form the old man took two keys from the rack of pigeon holes behind him. There was a yellow envelope in one of them. He handed it to Martin.

  ‘This came from the airport, Monsieur,’ he yawned.

  Martin opened the envelope. It was a cable signed ‘Murphy’. It said, ‘Await my arrival Djibouti before proceeding.’

  *

  The hotel room was large and cool with a glistening white marble floor with strips of patterned rush matting on either side of an austere double bed. The heavy wooden shutters were firmly down against the glare of the late afternoon sun. There was a ceiling-high mirror set in exquisitely carved mahogany on one wall and a cooling Utrillo print of Montmartre in the snow on the wall facing it. The room was French Colonial and functional and a big ceiling fan, whirring at sixty revolutions per minute, barely stirred the fetid air.

  Martin Gore, naked and still wet from a long, cold shower, sat on the bed and held the receiver of the oldest telephone he had ever seen. It was fashioned from metal and patterned porcelain and it had taken him several minutes to comprehend that he had to press a small red button with his thumb in order to speak to the shrill voiced Arab operator in the administration below. He had woken the operator and she was making the call as difficult as she possibly could for him.

  It took almost thirty minutes for him to make contact with the international operator, but he remained cool and easy tempered. After the nightmare of the interrogation room nothing, he decided, was going to shake him.

  He booked a call to Naples. The operator told him that the circuit for Europe did not open until nine o’clock that evening.

  ‘Okay, keep it in please,’ Martin told the man.

  He replaced the receiver and lay on the bed and gazed up at the stuccoed ceiling and made patterns in his mind from the cracks in it.

  He took two cables from the bedside table. They were both from Murphy. The first, which had been delivered to the airport earlier, simply informed them that the engine would be arriving in mid-evening. That was good. Stubbles had a complete ground crew organised to help him replace the damaged engine which had already been removed and crated. The second cable worried him. Just what the hell was Murphy doing? Was it a cash problem? Or was Harry right? Was there some deeper, sinister shadow hanging over this journey?

  Sorrel would know, or at least she’d have the kind of intuition which he lacked. But where the hell was she? Since the blue movie show in his mind, Martin had managed to screen Sorrel completely out of his imagination. Marceau knew nothing of the girl. He could only assume that there was a big scene happening somewhere with the blond Frenchman. He had forced himself into not giving a damn about her.

  He was still trying hard to force himself when fatigue overtook him and he fell asleep.

  He had been sleeping for fifteen minutes exactly when the telephone began to ring. He lifted it and, once again, was confused with the red button. He said, ‘Who’s that?’ several times and there was no reply. Then he heard a click at the other end.

  He turned and went immediately back to sleep.

  He was in a deep, profound sleep when there was a loud knocking on the door. He almost fell from the bed and wearily padded across the marble which was pleasantly cool on his feet. He was still naked when he opened it.

  It was Marceau who stood in the corridor, still looking elegant and pristine as he had at the airport.

  He coughed apologetically and Martin looked down at his own body and smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was asleep. Come in.’

  He took a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it round himself.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ asked Martin.

  ‘We have trouble, a lot of trouble I think.’ Marceau looked about the room and then turned to the captain.

  ‘Just who exactly knows what your cargo is, Captain Gore?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

  ‘You know the Russians are interested?’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Well, they are. You have brought a load of trouble with you, Mr Gore. I told you it is very hot and I do not want life disturbed in my little province. Telephone calls which I do not like. A great deal of radio traffic which is unusual. My informants tell me of meetings which again I do not like. Captain Gore, just how quickly can you get your new engine fitted and get the hell out of my territory?’

  *

  Two hours earlier in Naples a chambermaid, obeying the rule of the hotel, disregarded the ‘Do Not Disturb’ notice on room 6003 and tapped on the door with her keys. There was no reply. She listened carefully for a few moments and then, still obeying the rules of the hotel, called the housekeeper from the other end of the corridor. The housekeeper, in turn, telephoned the Assistant Manager on the ground floor who gave her permission to accompany the maid into the room.

  The two women found James O’Keefe Murphy sitting in a bedside chair next to the body of the girl. His hands and legs had been tied and his head had been tied into a static position by a thin piece of nylon cord around his forehead and eyes. Twelve of his teeth had been removed and lay on the blood-stained carpet around him.

  Murphy had been shot three times in the chest. The Beretta pistol had then been placed in the dead girl’s hand and her head had been turned to face her lover.

  The screams of the two women shattered the peace of the hotel that afternoon, and the Assistant Manager had spent much of the rest of the day pacifying other hotel residents.

  No one had noticed a slender man leave the hotel lobby. Still unnoticed he had made his way to the helicopter landing area above the maritime railway station in Naples and taken a 3,000 lire ticket to the airport where almost immediately he was able to board a domestic Alitalia flight to Rome, where he was fortunate to find a British Airways VC 10 about to board passengers for Cairo.

  Even three days later, the Criminal Investigation Department of Naples confided to the press that it was ‘completely baffled’ by the killings at the hotel.

  *

  Only the most practised stranger could decipher the change of mood which came over the city as darkness enveloped it that evening. Those who lived there, whose sixth sense was attuned to the pulse of the city, felt it immediately. It was not yet tension, but there was something ominous about the feeling of expectancy which began to flitter quickly with the night bats from street to street, from suk to suk across teeming Arabtown until every inhabitant was aware of it, but aware only that something was going to happen.

  There was nothing tangible, not even the kind of rumour which usually spread like a fast, virulent fever through
the city at any time. It was no more than a hint, the first quickening of a pulse. You sensed it in the cries of the beggars, who chanted in an almost imperceptibly higher key, their tempo just marginally faster than normal, and in the absence of laughter in the Arab cafés which were more crowded than usual that evening, the customers talking quietly among themselves with none of the raucousness which usually celebrated the end of the afternoon heat.

  The stranger would not notice these things. He would not notice the increase in the clatter of dishes in the hotel kitchen, or the slight tremor in the hands of the waiter who served him, or the unaccustomed loudness of the voices of the legionnaire officers at the corner table.

  They knew that something was afoot in the city that evening. They assumed that it had to do with the unwelcome visitors at the airport, but at that time they knew only that something was wrong with the normal rhythm of the city, that something was going to happen.

  At exactly seven o’clock local time that evening, after a slow and uneventful flight down the length of the Red Sea, a Super Constellation of Arab Airways landed at Djibouti Airport. There were twenty-one passengers, who included a French diplomat and his family who had been on leave in Brittany, several Arabs on a pilgrimage to Mecca, three Nestorian nuns and a relief Air France crew. The twenty-first passenger, who had joined the flight at the very last minute in Cairo, was thin and well tanned and wore a white golfing jacket and blue jeans.

  He was questioned for several minutes by the immigration officers in the airport building. They were anxious to know why he did not have any baggage. He explained in poor French with a heavy Italian accent, and with frequent and angry gesticulations, that his suitcases had been mislaid in transit between airlines.

  The immigration desk examined his passport with considerable care and finally satisfied themselves that he was, indeed, Michele Vincento, aged thirty, a ventilation engineer of Naples who was in possession of more than enough money in lire and francs not to become a burden on the territory. They stamped his passport with a seven-day temporary visa and allowed him in to Djibouti on condition that he reported to the Prefecture twice daily.

  One hour later, stopping at a small general store in the city centre where he bought a shirt, some socks, toiletries and a kitchen knife, together with a cheap plastic suitcase, Vincento checked into the hotel Charles de Gaulle and was being ushered to a room three doors away from the room in which Martin Gore was sleeping.

  It was only when he undressed for a shower that he noticed his vest was heavily smeared with blood.

  *

  As Alexander Turok snored and sweated and turned continually in an uneasy, trouble-filled and drunken sleep, the leader of the Somali United Front Party was addressing a meeting of his committee in a small house in the centre of the city. The committee room was lit only by a candle which added to the conspiratorial atmosphere. ‘I have talked to the drunken Russian,’ said the secretary. ‘He makes no sense, as usual. Something is happening and if we wait for him we would be losing a major opportunity for a great demonstration. He would have us wait. I do not trust him.’

  ‘What do we demonstrate against?’ asked a committee member.

  ‘It is that which I want to know.’

  ‘The city seethes with rumours about an aircraft which arrived today. The army has surrounded it. The pilot is under arrest.’

  ‘What kind of aircraft?’

  ‘A big American transport.’

  ‘Military?’

  ‘It would appear thus.’

  ‘An American military aircraft,’ mused the secretary. ‘That would appear to be justification enough. The men are ready?’

  ‘And the weapons.’

  *

  Martin was wakened from a deep sleep by the sound of breathing close to his face. He turned quickly, ready to spring. Immediately he felt the soft warmth of a woman’s body. He leaned over and switched on the bedside light. Sorrel was sitting on the side of the bed.

  She was wide awake, wearing a demure, virginal white nightdress.

  She said, ‘Hi.’

  He rolled over and looked at the fan turning slowly above him.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘I would have thought you would have had enough today.’

  ‘Take that hate out of your voice,’ said Sorrel softly. ‘I didn’t get laid, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘That’s what I meant. What were you doing?’

  ‘Getting you a twelve-hour stay.’

  ‘And you’re telling me that the Frenchman didn’t?’

  ‘He couldn’t.’

  Sorrel held up her hand and let her little finger droop.

  ‘He blamed it on the heat,’ she said, and giggled.

  Martin was wide awake now. He looked at his wristwatch.

  ‘Don’t you realise that we need sleep, all of us? Just what do you want?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you while the other two weren’t here.’

  Martin eyed her suspiciously. ‘I think they should be here,’ he said. ‘If you’re playing a game of divide and conquer, darling, forget it.’

  Her breasts were clearly outlined through the thin fabric of the nightdress. Even in that surprised state, Martin found himself wanting her. Her eyes continued to mock him.

  She held up her arm. There was a blackening bruise where Martin’s hand had clenched it earlier.

  ‘You don’t like me one little bit, do you,’ she said. It was a statement.

  ‘What a time to start this kind of thing,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the way you look at me. I don’t like the contempt in your face.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never intended contempt.’

  ‘You certainly delivered it,’ said Martin. He was wary, not sure of what was coming next.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a direct tone.

  He realised suddenly that she meant it.

  ‘It’s just that it’s the way I look at men,’ she said. ‘It keeps them at a distance. There’s no involvement. I’ve had bad experiences of men.’

  Martin remained entirely on his guard. He knew he had to keep her at arm’s length. But he was finding it more and more difficult to stifle the urge to pull her under the thin coverlet which concealed his nakedness.

  ‘It’s very easy to misread people,’ he said.

  ‘I read you very well,’ said Sorrel, looking directly into his eyes. ‘You’ve had a bad experience with women or a woman, haven’t you?’

  ‘Two years ago, yes.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘A woman. She came into my life and we fell very much in love.’

  ‘You miss her?’

  ‘Sometimes, very much. Look,’ he said. There was exasperation in his voice. ‘Why have you come to this room? What have you come to say?’

  ‘I came to say that there’s a full security alert at the airport and it’s everything to do with our aeroplane. That much I did learn from the Foreign Legion.’

  ‘So what can we do about it now?’

  ‘I just thought you ought to know. You’re the captain.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sorrel. Sleep is more important at this moment. What else did you want?’

  ‘To get laid,’ she said softly and began to take off the nightdress.

  Later, Martin leaned over Sorrel who was just about to fall asleep. He took Murphy’s telegram from the table on the other side of the bed and showed it to her.

  She read it and smiled. ‘So Murphy’s coming here,’ she said. ‘You cunning, English sonofabitch. You waited.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ asked Martin.

  ‘I think it means we’re in big trouble,’ she said.

  *

  In a similar room four doors down the hotel corridor, Harry Black found it impossible to sleep. The ceiling fan in his room did not work and he lay, his face glistening with sweat, and listened to the street noises outside. His body was pained with tiredness but his mind was infuriatingly active.

  He was tortured
by a string of doubts about the whole enterprise, and he was aware now of the taunting conscience.

  The money had been too good to turn down. He had not cared, he did not particularly care now, what happened to the weapons.

  But he was a black man.

  Harry Black, gun-running for whitey.

  So what, he said to himself, I’m no racialist. I’ve taken more shit from my black brothers then I ever did from the white man.

  Whitey made me a major and they gave me good money and aeroplanes to fly. It was a black airline that fired me because the passengers wanted white pilots, a black dictator who threw me into prison and black warders who kicked me about. A black landlord who foreclosed on my old man.

  Here was the conscience.

  No, George Washington Black, good and Godly citizen of Houston, Texas, he wouldn’t approve of his son carrying guns for the crackers. George Washington Black, retired now, a champion of the Civil Rights movement, a lay preacher, a man with a fierce pride in his only son.

  Harold Black, Major, USAF, AFC.

  Who was humping enough weaponry to bury half the black population of southern Africa, his cousins indeed.

  He, Harry Black, little Harry who had walked between the lines of paratroopers to school, his chin thrust out, blood streaming from a head cut, while white kids jeered and hurled rocks and bottles at him and the others.

  He, the great-grandson of a slave, carrying the white man’s shit.

  For money. For Martin Gore.

  For him, you’d do almost anything. He sprang you from the jail and brought you away from that madman and he looked after you, nursed you, fed you, got you this job, got you enough money to get home, see the Old Man right.

  Now he’s crazy, that Martin. He’s committing treason and he knows it, and you, Harry, you’re committing ethnic suicide. Can’t you see it in the papers now? Except, who cares, man?

  He said it aloud.

  ‘Who cares? Who gives a monkey’s left tit?’

  A voice, cold and void of any emotion, spoke in the silence of Harry’s room.

  ‘Mr Ragnelli cares.’

  The light at Harry’s bedside flicked on. Vincenzo knelt by his bedside. He held a long kitchen knife at a point immediately over Harry’s carotid artery. Harry saw the man only from the corner of his eyes.