The Mack Reynolds Megapack

by Mack Reynolds

  “So?” Homer didn’t get it.

  “So from now on, you’re going to have an infiltration of cloak and dagger lads from every outfit with an interest in North Africa. Potential traitors, potential assassins, subversives and what not.”

  Homer was scowling at him. “Confound it, what do you suggest? That these Johnny-Come-Latelies be second-class citizens?”

  “Not exactly that, but this isn’t funny. We’ve got to screen them. The trouble with this movement is that it’s a one-man deal, and has to be. The average African is either a barbarian or an actual savage, one ethnic degree lower. He wants a hero-symbol to follow. O.K., you’re it. But remember both Moctezuma and Atahualpa. Their socio-economic systems pyramided up to them. The Spanish conquistadores, being old hands at sophisticated European-type intrigue, quickly sized up the situation. They kidnaped the hero-symbol, the big cheese, and later killed him. And the Inca and the Aztec cultures collapsed.”

  Homer was scowling at him unhappily.

  Dave summed it up. “All we need is one fuzzy minded commie from the Soviet Complex, or one super-dooper democrat who thinks that El Hassan stands in the way of freedom, whatever that is, and bingo a couple of bullets in your tummy and the El Hassan movement folds its tents like the Arabs and takes a powder, as the old expression goes.”

  “You have your point,” Homer Crawford admitted. “Follow through, Dave. Figure out some screening program.”

  * * * *

  Cliff came in. “Hey, Homer. Guess what old Jake has done.”

  “Jake Armstrong?”

  “He’s swung the Africa for Africans Association in New York over to us. They’ve raised a million bucks. What’ll we do with it? How can he get anything to us?”

  “We’ll have him plow it back into publicity and further fund raising campaigns,” Homer said. “That’s the way it’s done. You raise some money for some cause and then spend it all on a bigger campaign to raise still more money, and what you get from that one you plow into a still bigger campaign.”

  Cliff said, “Don’t you ever get anything out of it?”

  Dave and Homer both laughed.

  Cliff said, “I’ve got some still better news.”

  “Good news, we can use,” Homer said.

  * * * *

  The big Californian looked at him in pretended awe. “A poet no less,” he said.

  “Shut up,” Homer said. “What’s the news?”

  The fact of the matter was, he was becoming increasingly impatient of the continual banter expected of him by Cliff and even the others. As original members of the team, they expected an intimacy that he was finding it increasingly difficult to deliver. Among other things, he wished that Cliff, in particular, would mind his attitude when such followers as Guémama were present. The El Hassan posture could be maintained only in never to be compromised dignity.

  Bey had once compared him to Alexander, to Homer’s amusement at the time. But now he was beginning to sympathize with the position the Macedonian leader had found himself in, betwixt the King-God conscious Persians, and the rough and ready Companions who formed his bodyguard and crack cavalry units. A King-God simply didn’t banter with his subordinates, not even his blood-kin.

  Cliff scowled at him now, at the sharpness of Homer’s words, but he made his report.

  “Our old pal, Sven Zetterberg. He’s gone out on a limb. Because of the great danger of this so-far localized fight spreading into world-wide conflict—says old Sven—the Reunited Nations will not tolerate the combat going into the air. He says that ifeither El Hassan or the Arab Legion resort to use of aircraft, the Reunited Nations will send in its air fleet.”

  “Wow,” Homer said. “All the aircraft we’ve got are a few slow-moving heliocopters that Kenny brought up with him.”

  Dave Moroka snapped his fingers in a gesture of elation. “That means Zetterberg is throwing his weight to our side.”

  Homer was on his feet. “Send for Kenny and Guémama and send a heliocopter down to pick up Bey and rush him here. He shouldn’t be more than a day’s march away. I wonder what Elmer is up to. No word at all from him. At any rate, we want an immediate council of war. With Arab Legion air cover eliminated, we can move in.”

  Cliff said sourly, “It’s still largely rifles against armored cars, tanks, mobile artillery and even flame throwers.”

  * * * *

  All the old hands were present. They stood about a map table, Homer and Bey-ag-Akhamouk at one end, the rest clustered about. Isobel sat in a chair to the rear, stenographer’s pad on her knees.

  Bey was clipping out suggestions.

  “We have them now. Already our better trained men are heading up for Temassinine to the north and Fort Charlet to the east. We’ll lose men but we’ll knock out every water hole between here and Libya. We’ll cut every road, blow what few bridges there are.”

  Jack Peters said worriedly, “But the important thing is Tamanrasset. What good—”

  “We’re cutting their supply line,” Bey told him. “Can’t you see? Colonel Ibrahim and his motorized column will be isolated in Tamanrasset. They won’t be able to get supplies through without an air lift and Sven Zetterberg’s ultimatum kills that possibility. They’re blocked off.”

  Jimmy Peters was as confused as his brother. “So what? to use the Americanism. They have both food and water in abundance. They can hold out indefinitely. Meanwhile, our forces are undisciplined irregulars. We gain a thousand recruits a day. They come galloping in on camel-back or in beat-up old vehicles, firing their hunting rifles into the air. But we also lose a thousand a day. They get bored, or hungry, and decide to go back to their flocks, or their jobs on the new Sahara projects. At any rate, they drift off again. It looks to me that, if Colonel Ibrahim can hold out another week or so, our forces might melt away—all except the couple of hundred or so European and American educated followers. And, cut down to that number, they’ll eliminate us in no time flat.”

  Homer Crawford was eying him in humor. “You’re no fighting man, Peters. Tell me, what is the single most fearsome enemy of an ultra-mechanized soldier with the latest in military equipment and super-firepower weapons?”

  Jimmy Peters was blank. “I suppose a similarly armed opponent.”

  Homer smiled at him. “Rather, a man with a knife.”

  The expressions of the Peters brothers showed resentment. “We weren’t jesting.”

  “Neither was I,” Homer rapped. He looked around at the rest, including Bey and Kenny. “What happens to a modern mechanized army when it runs out of gasoline? What happens to a water-cooled machine gun when there is no water? What use is a howitzer when the target is a single man in ten acres of cover? Gentlemen, have any of you ever studied the tactics of Abd-el-Krim or, more recently still, Tito? Bey, I assume you have.”

  He had their attention.

  “During the Second War,” Homer continued, “this Yugoslavian Tito tied up two Nazi army corps with a handful of partisans—guerrillas. The most modern army in the world, the German Panzers, tried to ferret him out for five years, and couldn’t. There are other examples. The Chinese operating against the Japs in the same war. Or one of the classic examples is Abd-el-Krim destroying two different Spanish armies in the Moroccan Rif in the 1920s. His barefoot men, armed with rifles, took on Primo de Rivera’s modernized Spanish armies and trounced them.”

  Bey said, “Homer’s right. Our only tactics are guerrilla ones.”

  Homer Crawford looked at Guémama, who had been standing in the background, unfamiliar with the language these others spoke, but holding his dignity. Crawford said, diplomatically, “And what sayest thou, O chieftain of the Tuareg?”

  Guémama was gratified at the attention. He said in Tamaheq, “As all men know, O El Hassan, we now outnumber by thrice the Arab giaours may they burn in Gehennum. Therefore, let us rush in and kill them all.”

  Bey shuddered.

  Homer Crawford nodded seriously. “Ai, Guémama, that would be the valorous
way of the Tuareg. But the heart of El Hassan forbids him to sacrifice the lives of his people. Consequently, we shall use the tactics of the desert jackal. Instruct those of your people who are most cunning, to infiltrate Tamanrasset in the night. Let them not carry arms for they may well be searched by the Arab meleccha.”

  The Tuareg chieftain was intrigued. “And what shall they do in Tamanrasset, El Hassan? Suddenly seize arms, one night, and rise up in wrath against the Arab dogs and kill them all?”

  Homer was shaking his head. “They will address themselves to the Haratin serfs and spread to them the message of El Hassan. They will be told that in the world of El Hassan each man shall be free to seek his own destiny to the extent his mind and abilities allow. And no man shall be the less because he was born a serf, and no man the more because he was born to wealth or power in the old days.”

  “Aiii,” Guémama all but moaned. “But such a message—”

  “Is the message of El Hassan, as all men know,” Homer Crawford said flatly. He turned to Kenny Ballalou. “Kenny, take over this angle. We want as many propagandists in that town as possible. It’s already choked with refugees, most of them not knowing what they’re fleeing. We might get recruits there, too. But mostly we want to appeal to the sedentary natives in town. They’ve got to get the dreams, too. Promise them schools, land…I don’t have to tell you.”

  “Right,” Kenny said.

  Isobel said, “Maybe I ought to get in on this, too. The women might do a better job than men on this slant. It’s going to take a lot to get a Tuareg bedouin to sink to talking to a Haratin on an equal basis.”

  Bey and Homer had bent back over the maps, but before they could get back into the details of guerrilla warfare against Colonel Ibrahim and his legionnaires, they were halted by a controversy from without.

  “What now?” Homer growled. “This camp is getting to be like a three-ring circus.”

  The entrance flap was pushed aside and three of Bey’s Sudanese tribesmen half escorted, half pushed a newcomer front and center.

  It was Fredric Ostrander, natty as usual, but now in khaki desert wear. He was obviously in a rage at the three rifle-carrying nomads who had him in charge.

  Bey spoke to the Teda warriors in their own tongue. Then to Homer in Tamaheq, which he assumed the C.I.A. man didn’t know, “They picked him up in the desert in a hover-jeep. He was evidently looking for our camp.” He dismissed the three bedouin with a gesture.

  Ostrander was outraged. He snapped at Homer Crawford, “I demand an explanation of this cavalier attack upon—”

  His face expressionless, Homer held up a hand to quiet the smaller man. He looked at Jack Peters and raised his eyebrows. “Kion li la fremdul diras?”

  Jack, serious as ever, replied in Esperanto, then turned to the American C.I.A. man and said, “El Hassan has requested that I translate for him. He speaks only the official language of North Africa to foreign representatives. Undoubtedly, sir, you have proper credentials?”

  Had Fredric Ostrander been of lighter complexion, his color would have undoubtedly gone dark red.

  “Look here, Crawford,” he snapped. “I’m in no mood for nonsense. The State Department has sent me to your headquarters to make another attempt to bring some sense home to you. As an American citizen, owing alliance—”

  Homer Crawford spoke in Esperanto to Jack Peters who nodded seriously and said to Ostrander, “El Hassan informs you he owes alliance only to the people of North Africa whose chosen leader he is.”

  Ostrander knew they were kidding him, but at the same time the stand being taken was actuality. He glared at the Americans present whom he knew, Bey, Isobel, Cliff and Kenny. He snapped, “Very well, but I repeat what I told you when last we met. The State Department of the United States of the Americas will not stand idly by and see this area taken over by elements dominated by red subversives.”

  “Holy Mackerel,” Cliff growled, “are you still tooting that horn?”

  Dave Moroka said sarcastically, “It’s an old wheeze. The definition of a red subversive is anybody who doesn’t see eye to eye with the United States. They’ve been pulling the gag for decades. Remember Guatemala and Cuba? Do anything that interferes with American business abroad and the cry goes up, he’s an enemy of the free world!”

  Ostrander spun on him, his eyes narrowing.

  Dave laughed. “The definition of members of the free world, of course, being anybody who follows the American line. Anybody is free, Spanish and Portuguese dictators, absolute monarchs in Arabia, Chinese warlords, if they’re on the American side.”

  Ostrander snapped, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Moroka made a sweeping bow. “I’m afraid we don’t move in the same circles. I’ve spent possibly a third of my life in prison—”

  “Undoubtedly,” Ostrander snorted.

  “… Put there by people such as yourself—in various countries—because I was fighting for my own version of freedom.”

  “Communism, undoubtedly!”

  Moroka said softly, “I’m a South African, sir. Both my parents were killed in the 1960 riots. It seems that they had dark skins—even as you and I—and weren’t able to see why that should keep them from freedom.”

  Fredric Ostrander spun back to Homer Crawford. “I’m not here to quibble with self-confessed malcontents. I’ve been sent to represent the State Department, to report to them, and, above all, to do what I can to prevent your activities from redounding to the further advantage of the Soviet Complex. I assume you can assign me quarters.”

  Straight-faced, Jack Peters translated this into Esperanto, and, straight-faced, Homer answered in the same language.

  Jack turned back to the impatient C.I.A. man. “El Hassan welcomes the representative of the United States of the Americas and hopes this will be the first step toward diplomatic recognition between North Africa and your great country. He has instructed me to find you quarters, which, possibly you may have to share with delegations from Common Europe or”—Peters cleared his throat—“the Soviet Complex. He further suggests that it might be well, if you maintain communications with your superiors, to have sent to you books on Esperanto, the official language of North Africa.”

  Dave Moroka put in, “By the way, we’ll have to go through your things. We can’t allow any radio communication from El Hassan’s camp, except through official El Hassan channels—for obvious military reasons.”

  Ostrander snorted, stared indignantly at Homer again, spun on his heel and stalked from the tent. Jack Peters followed him but not before tipping an uncharacteristic wink at Homer.

  When they were gone, Homer sighed and looked at Dave Moroka. “That reminds me, how are our other delegations coming?”

  The South African grinned ruefully. “They’re playing it cool. Waiting to see what way to jump. Give El Hassan some real success, and they’ll probably jump at the chance to be first to recognize him. Especially these Soviet Complex opportunists. They’d just love to suck you into their camp.”

  Isobel looked at him. “After that tearing down you gave poor Ostrander about the United States, now you rip into the Soviet Complex. Just where do you stand, Dave?”

  Dave shrugged her question off, as though there were more important things. “I’m an El Hassan man,” he said. “Let those two overgrown powers handle their own troubles.”

  Jimmy Peters spoke up for the first time since Ostrander entered the tent. “You know,” he said, seriously, “I’m beginning to wonder if the world can afford nationalistic patriotism. Haven’t we gone too far along the road to think of ourselves any longer as Americans, or Russians, or French, or West Indians, or whatever? Hasn’t the human race grown up beyond that point?”

  Kenny said mockingly, “What! Aren’t you proud of being a West Indian, and a loyal subject of Her Majesty?”

  Peters ignored his tone. “Why should I be proud of my country? It was an accident of birth with which I had nothing to do, that made me a West Indian, rathe
r than a Canadian, a Chinese, a Norwegian, or whatever. Intelligently, I should be proud only of things that I, myself, have accomplished.”

  Bey said, “If we can stop waxing philosophic for a while and get back to how most efficiently to clobber these Arabs—”

  * * * *

  The Hindu entered Kirill Menzhinsky’s small office behind the Indian souvenir shop in the Tangier Zocco Chico and said, “The operative Anton is on the receiver.”

  The agent superior of the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya for North Africa looked up from his desk and grunted acceptance of the message. He came to his feet and followed the other into a back room and took his place before a mouthpiece and screen.

  The man whose party name was Anton nodded a greeting.

  Kirill Menzhinsky said, “It’s about time I heard from you, Anton.”

  “Yes. But the situation has been such that it was not easy to report.”

  “And now?”

  “Briefly, I am at El Hassan’s headquarters. You were correct. He is in actuality Homer Crawford. The others you mentioned are also with him, including the traitor Isobel Cunningham.”

  The Soviet Complex’s agent allowed his eyebrows to rise.

  Anton said flatly, “The dame has evidently renounced the party and now holds high rank in Crawford’s inner circle.”

  “And you?”

  “I am rapidly becoming his right-hand man. I am his press secretary and in charge of communications. Early in our acquaintanceship I was able to engineer an attempted assassination. I was able to, ah, save the life of El Hassan.”

  The Russian’s eyes narrowed. “The assassins? Is there any chance that they might reveal your little trick?”

  Anton grimaced. “I am not a fool, Kirill. Both of them were killed in the assassination attempt. El Hassan was most grateful.”

  “I see. And how would you sum up the present situation?”

  “This area is swinging rapidly to El Hassan, but any sort of defeat and undoubtedly his followers would melt away. The bedouin are too volatile. Before he ever makes any real headway he will have to take the major commercial and industrial cities such as Dakar, Kano, Lagos, Accra, Freetown, Khartoum, and eventually, of course, Cairo, Casablanca, Algiers and so forth.”