by Nick Carter
Ashad, who had been left to watch over me, was the one who had done me the most damage, all from behind. While he sat down to take his ease in the chair Doosa had vacated, I went into the cubicle designated as a salle de bain and cleaned up the wreckage. Aside from a bruised lip I didn't look much worse than usual.
Ashad was watching me with a sneer as I bent to pick up my handkerchief. "Your mother was a dung eater," I said in Arabic.
He couldn't believe he had heard me right. He came up out of the chair, mouth wide, eyes full of rage, and I launched with leap and karate kick. My foot caught him at the apex of neck and jaw, and I felt the bones go as his head nearly came unstuck. He went over the back of the chair, slammed against the wall, and hit the floor with a crash that rattled the crockery.
For the second time that day I put a corpse to bed. Then I changed my clothes, donning black suit with matching turtle neck shirt. It wasn't that I was in mourning, but the color suited the occasion.
When I departed I took the backstairs to my room on the second floor. There I recovered my equipment and deposited the bag and attaché case. From the case I extracted some necessities — an extra two clips for the luger, one of them incendiaries. Behind my knee I fastened a special AXE button-sized homing device. Should the need arise, its signal would summon a 600-man Ranger battalion from the Sixth Fleet. A spare Pierre went into an inside pocket. Finally, the neatly compacted thirty foot length of nylon rope, with its fail-safe attachment, went around my middle as a second belt.
Chapter 9
I left the hotel by the alley, and keeping to similar alleys, reached the Presidential Palace at its north wall. The wall was a half mile long with guard boxes at either end and two in between.
The guards did not mount a continuous patrol. Every ten minutes or so two-man teams would march out in opposite directions, meet their compatriots and return to home base. Although the street paralleling the wall did have overhead lights, I could see that getting through the perimeter was not going to present much of a problem. It was a matter of timing. The street lights did little to illuminate the wall. However, the wall was a good twenty feet high and white. Dressed in black, I was going to look like a tarantula going over it.
I waited until the center team had completed its halfhearted patrol, then I moved from the ditch, where I had taken cover, in a fast sprint to the wall itself. There were low scrubs along it, and I settled down in them to ready the rope.
When I was set I moved to a point directly behind the center guard box. The two occupants were sitting in front of it, talking. I could see the glow of their cigarettes and hear their muted voices. Only if they turned around would they see me.
I stood, checked, and made my cast. The rope went up and over. There was a faint clunk as its special attachment automatically dug in on the far side. The sound did not disturb the smokers. I gave the rope a testing tug and then walked on up. I made a note to congratulate AXE Supply on its field operations shoes. The soles were like magnets.
As is the custom in the East, the top of the wall was littered with shards of broken glass. I carefully slithered over, reversed my position, and using the rope as a break, dropped down into the parkland of the Presidential grounds.
There had never been a president in the country's history, but once it became the NAPR, in respect to the meaninglessness of political agitprop, the name had been changed from Royal Palace to Presidential. By whatever name, it was quite a piece of real estate. In the darkness it gave the impression of being on a par with the grounds of Versailles.
I headed toward the faint glow in the sky that indicated the location of the palace. There were night birds but no guards and no dogs patrolling. This reinforced my feeling that Tasahmed wasn't really anticipating opposition from anyone.
I was almost relieved to see that the palace proper was under a guard of sorts. It was on a par with the boys manning the outer wall. I went through them like Scotch through cracked ice. My point of entry was over another wall, this one only about ten feet high. It concealed a courtyard that was off limits to all but Shema Mendanike and her ladies, kind of women's lib in reverse. I hoped none of them would be waiting as I scaled its protective arm. One side of the courtyard was palace wall, and AXE blueprints indicated that Shema's quarters were in that wing.
The courtyard smelled of jasmin. It had cloistered walkways and a centering fountain. It also had a vine-covered, ladder-like trellis that climbed the high side of the palace wall to a point below a window in which a dim light glowed. How could a wandering agent ignore it?
By concentrating on it I nearly finished Nick Carter and an evening of Douglas Fairbanks. The whole thing had been much too easy, and I didn't see him in the dark of the cloistered walk. My break was that he didn't see me until I landed in a crouch in the flower bed.
If he had been smart he would have waited where he was until he could nail me from behind. That, or beat on a brass gong and summon a lot of help. Instead, he came rocketing out of the walkway with a bark like a walrus, part surprise, part anger.
I saw the flash of knife in his hand and took the coward's way out. Time was of the essense, and I didn't want to meet his friends. Hugo's flight was short and true, penetrating to the hilt at the vulnerable point where the throat joins with the apex of the sternum.
He went down choking in his blood, crashing about in the flowers. While he kicked out his last, I double-checked the courtyard to make sure we were alone. When I returned he had managed to claw Hugo from his throat. It was his final piece of management. I wiped the stiletto on his shirt and got down to cases with the trellis.
It felt strong enough to take my weight. I left the rope in the vines and like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk, went on up.
Before I was in reach of the window I could hear voices, a woman's raised and a man's low. To reach the window I saw I was going to have to balance on the top of the trellis, my body pressed against the wall, hands overhead, stretching for the ledge. It was one of those deeply indented affairs with a long slanting sill and a pointed arch. There was nothing to grip. Purchase would have to come through fingers and feet. The sound of the voices convinced me that using the rope was no alternative. If the attachment hit the glass or clanked against something, that would be that. I had to do it the hard way.
By standing on my toes, with Hugo between my teeth, I was able to hook my fingers on the ledge. Then I had to chin myself, my toes curled against the wall but not pushing the lower part of my body outward. When I got my chin on the ledge, I let it take some of the weight as I let go with my right hand and reached to grab the inside of the sill.
The rest was a matter of getting into the room without making any noise. It was a casement window, opening inward, and I went through it like a badger trying to go through a mole's tunnel. At the end of it I could see that the light was not coming from the room I was about to enter but off of it. That's where the voices were coming from, too.
This, I realized, was a bedroom, and from the size of the bed and the subtle odor of perfume, it was a woman's boudoir. A mirror that covered all of one wall caught my reflection and momentarily checked me.
Through the open door I looked out on to a much larger room, a proper royal salon. However, its size and furnishings simply registered as I took in its occupants, particularly the female one.
She was elfin, raven-haired, black-eyed, and probably related to a humming bird. She was wearing a one-piece gold lamé kaftan, fastened at the throat. Even so, in her anger, her breasts were accented, and the way she moved about in quick swirls and darts accented the rest of her perfectly proportioned body. "You're a goddamned liar, Tasahmed;" she snapped in French.
The AXE Indentdex of the General needed updating. He was putting on weight. His face was too full, there was a good start on a second chin, and he was beginning to puff out his uniform where it should have been tucked in. He was still a handsome man; tall, light on his feet, heavy-featured with a scrub mustache. He had an olive complexion, a
nd there was some distinguished gray at his temples.
He was obviously not bothered by Shema Mendanike's manner or words. In fact, he was both amused and enjoying her movements. "My dear Madame," he smiled, "you simply fail to understand the nature of the situation."
"I understand it well enough." She planted herself in front of him, glaring up. "You're holding me prisoner here until you're sure you're in control!"
"You make it sound like some kind of melodrama," he chuckled. "Of course, I have to assume control. Who else could?"
"Indeed who else could! You got rid of old pigeon feathers and…!"
He let out a belch of laughter and tried to put his hands on her shoulders. "Madame, that is no way to speak of your late husband or of me. As I have told you more than once, I knew nothing about his flight before I was informed of its termination. His death is as Allah wills."
"Even if I did believe you, what's that got to do with keeping me in this place?"
"Shema!" Again he tried to put his hands on her. "I'm not keeping you anywhere. But right now it is dangerous to leave, and tomorrow is the funeral."
"This afternoon I wished to go to the Pakistani Embassy to send word to my father. You prevented me from going. Why?"
"As I have said," he sighed, a man ill used, "for your own protection. We have reason to believe that Ben d'Oko was killed by outside forces. We have no way of knowing that they wouldn't attempt to kill you, too. Do you think for one minute at this time I would risk a hair of your precious head?" He reached out to pat it, but she flitted away. He was beginning to stalk her.
"What outside forces?" she sneared.
"The CIA, for one. They have long wanted to remove Ben d'Oko." He shook his head sadly.
"Did they want to get him as much as you did?"
"Why are you so unkind to me? I would do anything for you."
"Do you want me for your second, third, or fourth wife?"
That brought some color to his face. "What have I to do to convince you that I have your best interests at heart?"
"Do you really want to know?" She was back in front of him again.
"Yes." He nodded, looking down at her.
"You can order me a car to take me to the Pakistani Embassy."
"At this hour, my dear? It's out of the question." And now his hands were on her shoulders. She tried to pull away, but he had her.
"Let go of me, you dung eater!" she snarled, struggling to break free.
As he tightened his hold, she tried to knee him in the groin, spitting in his face and butting him with her head. She was not going to give up without a fight, even though he was too strong for her.
Tasahmed got her up off the floor, and while she fought and kicked and swore, he headed for the bedroom. I flattened myself against the wall by the door. But at the moment he wouldn't have seen me if I had been wearing fire-engine red and been lit up with neon lights.
He flung her on the bed and said something through his teeth about the need for understanding. He had plenty of need for that. She got a hand free and clawed him as he tried to pin her down. He swore and swung. She let out a yelp and he gave her two more for good measure. She began to sob, not in defeat but in fury and frustration. I heard the kaftan rip as he pealed it from her and now he was muttering heatedly in Arabic. The way to paradise was pitted with a resisting houri.
Physical strength and weight finally overcame spirit and determination. He got his knee between her legs and forced her thighs apart. With his left hand he held her wrists above her head and with his right he pulled his own clothes away. Her only remaining weapon was her hips. She kept thrusting them up at him, arching her back, trying to buck him off. The movement only excited him further. She was cursing and sobbing, and he was kneeling between her legs when I broke it up.
He never knew what hit him, which was the way I wanted it. I stunned him by clapping my palms against his ears. As he stiffened from the shock, I put thumbs to the pressure points on his neck. Then it was a matter of rolling him off and keeping Shema under control.
"Flower of the night," I said in Urdu, as I hauled Tasahmed clear. "Trust me, I am a friend."
In the half light the whiteness of her body was like quicksilver. For the moment all she could do was suck in air and stare at me.
"I am here to help you." I scooped up the ruin of the kaftan and tossed it to her. She didn't seem to be in a hurry to put it on. She sat rubbing her wrists, and I could sympathize with the general's intentions.
She finally found her tongue and said in British English, "The bloody sonofabitch! The goddamned pig! The dog!"
"He wasn't very polite, particularly for a general." I said in English.
She angrily pulled the kaftan around her. "Who are you? Where did you come from, and what do you want?"
"I'm a friend. And I want to talk to you."
She looked over the side of the bed. "Did you kill the bastard?"
-"No, I just put him out of his misery for a while."
She jumped off the bed. "Misery! I'll show him some misery!"
I heard her foot hit home. The general's body jerked spasmodically. He didn't know how lucky he was to be somewhere else. She glided away toward her dressing room alcove. "Get out of here while I put something on," she said.
I took care of Tasahmed while she took care of covering up. I used his neck piece for a blindfold, his handkerchief for a gag, and his belt to tie his wrists. He came well equipped.
She turned on the overhead light as I finished, and we re-examined each other across the over-sized bed. She had put on a pale blue negligee made out of spun sugar candy. It didn't hide what was beneath. It just made sure you knew it was all there. Her inspection of Nick Carter was equally thorough.
"You're the first American man I've met who looked like a man," she said. "Where did you learn to speak Urdu?"
I took a post graduate course at Islamabad Tech. Where did you learn to speak English?"
"I had an English governness who was married to a sergeant major, or didn't anyone ever tell you about the Empire? You still haven't answered my questions — who are you? If I call the guards they'll cut your bloody throat!"
"Then I wouldn't be able to tell you who I am."
She grinned, looking fey and cagey at the same time. "And I wouldn't be able to thank you for getting that pig off me."
"So why don't we sit down and start from the bottom."
"I must say I've never been introduced to a man in my bedroom before. But since we began here." She sat down on her side of the bed and gestured for me to sit on mine. "Now, begin."
"I came through that window," I said, "hoping to find you at home."
"What did you do, fly through it on your magic carpet?" she snapped. "Don't try to fool me."
"I didn't fly, I climbed, and I don't have time to fool you."
"You're one of those bloody agents the general was talking about."
"I'm someone who wants to ask you a couple of questions. Then I'll get on my carpet and go."
She got up and crossed to the window and leaned out. Her movements accentuated a derriere any poet could have written a sonnet to.
"I'll bet you'd be good on Nanga Parbat," she said coming back to the bed. "This is a strange happening but I owe you something. What do you want to know?"
"Why was your husband in such a hurry to get to Budan in the middle of the night?"
"Hah! That queer boy! He never told me why he was going anywhere. Usually, he'd just send word for me to come along. He liked to show me off, to make everyone think he knew how to pick a wife, a sexy, rich Pakistani who'd gone to London finishing school. Little boys were what he liked."
"So you didn't have much communication with him, and you didn't see him before he left on his flight?"
She stood up, holding her arms at the elbow and began the humming bird routine. "Yes, as a mater of fact, I did see him. He woke me up. He was frightened. Of course, he was like an old woman, but maybe I should have paid more atte
ntion to him then."
"Can you remember what he said?"
"Of course, I can! What do you think I am, stupid! He said if anything happened to him I should go to my country's embassy and have Ambassador Abdul Khan give me protection. I said, 'Why, where are you going?' He said, 'I'm going to Budan to meet Abu Osman.' I could see why he was frightened. The shiek had threatened to castrate him, although I don't know if that would have been possible. I said, 'Why are you going to see that murdering old sheep cover? He didn't give me an answer. He just said something about it being Allah's will. I was half asleep anyway and not very happy to have been awakened. Maybe I should have paid more attention." She sighed. "Poor old Ben d'Oko, if he'd only been half as good in bed as he was bouncing up and down on the U.N. podium. Imagine, chasing choir boys when he could have had any woman in the country!"
"Frankly, I don't have that kind of an imagination, Shema."
She sat down on my side of the bed. "Do you know, I've slept in this bed alone for four years!" She said it like it was my fault, glaring at me, the nipples of her breasts trying to burrow through the cobweb material of her negligee. "What is your name?"
"Ned Cole."
"All right, Edward," she put her hands on my shoulders. "It's my turn, now, and if we don't put an end to four years of emptiness, I'll call the guard and help him make an end of you."
You've heard the old saw about the woman who was a tiger in bed. Shema would have made her look like a pussy cat. We kissed, and she got hold of my tongue, sucking it with a subtle tugging motion. As my hands found her breasts, her hands went after me as though they were furious with my clothing. In four years of celibacy she had not forgotten how to unfasten a belt and unzip a zipper. As I moved to reciprocate, she pulled her head back.
Her eyes were wide and bright, her lips pouting. "You are my guest!" she panted in Urdu. "It is a custom of the East to entertain your guest. This is my bed, and you are here at my invitation."
