by Nick Carter
NINE
The building complex behind the barbed wire bristled with armed guards and defenses, making General Djenina’s stronghold look like a resort hotel by comparison. The barbed wire hung on a steel fence approximately twelve feet high, and evenly spaced insulators along the posts convinced me that it was electrified. Two of Djenina’s soldiers stood on duty at the gate, with the usual submachine guns slung on their shoulders. There were at least two other guards visible from our vantage point—men who walked the perimeter of the complex with big dogs on chain leashes.
Actually, the place consisted of three buildings that had been joined together with covered walk-ways to form a single, closed complex. A military vehicle sat at the front entrance, and there were two large trucks visible at one side.
“It looks formidable,” Gabrielle’s voice came in my ear.
I took the high-powered binoculars from my eyes and turned to her. “We can be sure that Li Yuen has a few of his own men inside to handle stray visitors. Remember, this is the most important scientific facility the Chinese have at the moment.”
We were crouched behind a rock outcropping about three hundred yards from the lab, the Cit-roen parked close behind us. A dusty, rocky road curved in a wide arch to the gate. A single vulture could be seen flying in a large circle off in the high, cloudless sky to the east.
“Well, we’ll drive back to the clump of trees, where I’ll wait for the barber. If he comes early. . .”
A sound behind us stopped me. I whirled around, and Gabrielle followed my stare. There, not more than fifty yards away, moving toward us on the road, was a three-man patrol. The small breeze that had come up, had carried the sound of their approach away from us. Now it was too late. The leader of the patrol had spotted us. He was ex-claiming in Arabic and pointing at us.
Gabrielle started a panicky move toward the car, but I grabbed her arm in a hard grip and held her motionless.
“They’ve seen us!” she whispered harshly.
“I know. Sit down and act as calm as you possibly can.” I forced her back to the rock. Then I waved casually toward the small knot of uniformed men as the leader drew a pistol from a belt holster and the other two unslung long rifles.
Then moved toward us warily, looking at the Citrõen with malice. I called out a greeting to them in Arabic as they approached. “Asalaam ‘alaykum!”
They made no response. As they arrived beside the car, I rose to my feet. Gabrielle remained seated. She was hiding the binoculars under her full skirt.
“What are you doing in this place?” the leader of the squad asked in thick-accented English, his broad face full of hostility.
This was a very bad development and rotten luck. I tried to keep the disappointment out of my face. “We were just out for a drive in the country,” I said. The two other soldiers were already peering suspiciously into the Citrõen. “I hope we’re not on private property.”
The man with the pistol looked over at Gabrielle without answering me, while the soldiers with the rifles moved closer, forming a semicircle around us. In a moment the stocky one in charge turned back to me arrogantly.
“You choose a bad place, I think.” He waved the pistol toward the facility. “It is prohibited to be here.”
I glanced casually toward the building. “Oh, really? We had no idea. We’ll leave immediately.” I extended my hand to Gabrielle to pull her to her feet and saw her move the binoculars under some dry brush as she rose.
“Let me see I.D.,” the stocky soldier said to me.
“I.D.?” I said. “What the devil for? I told you we’re just out for a ride.” I was tensing inside. This man had been told to be suspicion of everybody found on his patrol, and looked as if he’d make trouble.
He raised the muzzle of the pistol until it pointed to a spot just over my heart. The other two tightened their grips on their rifles. “I.D., please,” he repeated.
I reached into my pocket and withdrew my wallet with phony identification in it. I offered the wallet to him, and he examined the cards while the other two men continued to hold the rifles on us. My mind was working overtime. There was Gabrielle to worry about. I would not have brought her even this far, but I wanted her to know where the laboratory was located. Also, if one of these guns went off, even if we were not killed, everybody at the facility would be alerted.
“Interesting,” the broad man was saying now. He looked up at me suspiciously, then pocketed my wallet. “You will come with us.”
“Where?” I asked.
He pointed to the lab. “They will want to ask you questions.”
I wanted in, but not this way. And certainly not with Gabrielle along. I looked at the pistol pointed at my chest. “This is an outrage,” I said. “I have friends in Tangier.”
The smug look was offensive. “Nevertheless,” he said. He turned to one of the soldiers and spoke in swift Arabic. He was telling the man to go back down the road to see if there was anyone else about. The soldier turned and moved off in the opposite direction from the lab. “Now, come,” the stocky one said.
I sighed and motioned for Gabrielle to follow his orders. This was tricky. If we moved more than ten yards down the dusty road toward the lab, we would be in clear view of the gate, where there were armed guards.
As Gabrielle started to walk toward the buildings, I stopped her with a hand on her arm and turned back to the stocky, leathery-faced soldier.
“Are you familiar with General Djenina?” I said to him, knowing that Djenina had been his commander.
“Yes,” he said in a surly tone.
“The general is a good friend of mine,” I lied, watching the third soldier disappear slowly around the bend in the road. “If you insist on taking us to this place for questioning, I will speak to him personally. It will not go well with you, I assure you.”
That made him think a moment. I saw the soldier beside him look questioningly into his face. Then the stocky man made up his mind.
“It is the general’s specific orders that we are following,” he said. His hand waved toward the facility. “Please.”
I made a movement as if to step past him to the road. When I was close beside him, I suddenly slammed the heel of my hand down onto his arm.
He uttered a small cry of surprise, and his pistol thumped to the sand at our feet. I jammed an elbow into his chest and he gasped loudly. He went stumbling backward and sat down hard on the ground, his jaw working as he struggled to pull air into his lungs.
The other soldier, a tall, thin young man, raised his rifle so that it almost touched my chest. He was going to blow a hole through my middle. I heard a small gasp from Gabrielle behind me. I grabbed at the muzzle end of the rifle, and before the young Arab could squeeze the trigger I pulled hard on the barrel of the gun. The soldier came flying off his feet past me, hitting the ground on his face and losing the rifle. He was just struggling to rise when I brought the stock end of the gun down onto the back of his skull. There was an audible cracking of bone as the fellow slumped back to the ground, motionless.
I was about to turn around when the stocky leader came at me, crashing into my chest with his head down. He was a tough one. I lost the rifle as we went down together. We rolled in the dust and sand, his thick fingers gouging at my face and eyes. I smashed a right fist into his face, and he lost his grip on me and fell to the ground. I got to my knees and looked around for the rifle to use as a club, but he was on me in a second.
I struggled up with him on my back, punching and tearing at me. I spun around in a tight circle and threw him against the rock outcropping near us. He thumped hard against the stone, and an involuntary grunt came from his throat his grip on me loosened as I threw my arm around into his face.
He slumped heavily against the rock, his broad face bloody. But he was not finished. He swung a fist at my head, and it glanced off at the temple. I moved a muscle in my right forearm, and Hugo slid into my hand. As the man flailed another fist at me, I thrust the stiletto into
his chest.
He stared at me in surprise, then looked down at the handle of the knife. He tried to say something nasty in Arabic, but not much came out. I withdrew the stiletto as ho slumped to the ground— very dead.
I pulled the two Arabs behind the rocks, hiding the bodies. “Get in the car, Gabrielle. I want you to follow me,” I said. “Wait ten minutes, then drive slowly along the road till you spot me. Okay?”
She nodded.
I left her and went after the third soldier. I jogged along the road in the brightening sun, watching ahead of me. In just a few minutes I found him. He had checked the road as far as he thought was necessary and had just turned back toward the lab. I flattened myself behind a rise of ground to the left of the road and caught him as he passed. I grabbed him from behind and drew the stiletto across his throat in one quick movement It was all over. By the time I had hidden this body, Gabrielle was there with the Citrõen.
“Now go back to town,” I told her. “I’m going to wait here for the barber. I hope to get into the laboratory by late morning. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow noon, return to Tangier as we planned.”
“Maybe you should not go in there alone,” she said.
“It’s a one-man job,” I said. “Don’t worry. Just do as we’ve agreed.”
“All right,” she said reluctantly.
“Good. Now get going. See you in Mhamid.”
She responded weakly to my grin. “In Mhamid.”
Then she was gone.
I sat for over an hour beside the road, and no traffic came by from either direction. The sun was hot, and the sand burned my thighs through my pants as I waited. I was sitting under a clump of palms, a small oasis in the barren, rocky terrain. In the distance was a line of low hills, mostly sand, and beyond them were the homes of the Blue Men, the nomadic tribes of Ait Oussa, Mribet, and Ida ou Blal. It was wild, desolate country, and I could not help wondering why anyone would want to live in it. I was just marveling at Li Yuen’s decision to set up the lab there when I heard the choking, sputtering engine of an automobile coming along the road from Mhamid.
In a moment the van came into view. It was a rusty relic of uncertain make, and it seemed to despise the desert as much as the grumbling barber who was driving it.
I stepped out onto the road and stopped the decrepit van. It halted in a whoosh of steam and foul odor, and the barber angrily stuck his head out the window. He did not recognize me,
“Get out of the way!” he shouted.
As I moved around to his door, I saw the weathered lettering on the side of the van, in Ara-bic: HAMMADI. And underneath: HAIR CUTTER.
“What is this you do?” he shouted belligerently. Then he squinted at my face. “I see you sometime before, I think.”
“Get out of the van, Hammadi,” I said.
“Why? I have business.”
“You have business with me.” I opened the door and pulled him from the vehicle.
He looked at me, fear in his eyes. “Are you a bandit?”
“Of a sort,” I answered. “Go over behind the trees and take off your clothes.”
“I will not!”
I pulled out Wilhelmina to impress him. “You will.”
He scowled at the gun,
“Move,” I said.
He reluctantly followed orders, and in a few minutes he was sitting on the ground in his underwear, bound and gagged with what I had at hand. He watched with fascination as I donned his dirty, smelly clothes and his red fez. I tried not to think about the odor. When I was dressed, I threw my shirt and jacket beside him.
“These are yours,” I said. “And believe me, you’re getting the best of the trade.” I applied some light stain to my face and my hands, and I was ready. I reached into a pocket in the djellaba and found a pass made out to Hammadi. I stuck it back into the robe, climbed into the van and drove off.
When I arrived at the gate, two guards on duty had been joined by a soldier with a dog. They all looked mean. One of the guards remained talking with the soldier while the other guard came to the van.
“Good morning,” I said to him in my best Arabic. “It is a fine day.” I handed him the pass.
He took it but did not look at it. Instead he narrowed his eyes. “You are not the regular bar-ber.”
“That is true,” I told him. “Hammadi was taken ill this morning. I am also a hair-cutter and was sent in his place. He said I would be admitted with his pass.”
The soldier looked at the pass, grunted and handed it back to me. “What illness are you talking about?”
I gave him a grin and leaned down toward him. “I suspect it is just a matter of too much k’fta and wine last evening.”
He hesitated a moment, then returned the grin. “All right. You may go in.”
The tightness inside my chest loosened a little. I put the old van into gear and moved slowly through the gate. I nodded at the men and moved the van into the compound. I was finally inside the Mhamid facility. It was an unsettling thought.
TEN
I wheeled the old van to a parking area near the front entrance of the building complex. A hundred things I didn’t know could cause suspicion at any moment. I wondered if the van should be parked out in front or if Hammadi was expected to enter the lab through some other entrance. There was no way of finding out these details, so I had to proceed on bluff, which was not exactly a new experience.
I didn’t even know what equipment the barber took into the building. When the van was parked, I climbed out, opened the rear doors and saw a sizable carrying case inside. It contained barber’s tools.
There were several people in sight. Two uniformed soldiers stood smoking cigarettes and talking together at the corner of the building, and a white-frocked technician moved quickly past me with a clipboard under his arm.
The front entrance stood wide open, but there was a guard just inside the door, sitting at a small table. He was a black African dressed in plain khaki pants and a shirt open at the neck. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses, and he had a precise, professorial air about him.
“Pass, please,” he said in perfect Arabic.
I handed the card to him. “I am cutting hair for Hammadi today,” I told him in an offhand manner.
He took the pass and stared at me. I wondered if he thought I did not look like an Arab. “He has been told, I’m sure, that passes to this facility are not transferable to other individuals.” He glanced at the pass as if he had seen it many times previously. “But you may have clearance this time. Next week, have Hammadi report directly to me before he goes to the cutting room.”
“Yes, sir.”
He handed the pass back to me. “And you had better be good, brother. The standards here are high.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
He pointed to his clipboard. “Sign on the first empty space.”
My written Arabic was lousy. I signed Abdul Marbrouk and handed the clipboard back. He nodded for me to proceed into the building.
I thanked him and moved on down the corridor. The place was brightly lit inside, with no windows. The walls were painted a dazzling white.
I passed through double doors in the corridor into another section of the building. I had no idea where the “cutting room” was and cared less. But I could not let anybody catch me going in the wrong direction. There was an occasional white-coated staff member in the corridor, but there people hur-ried past me without a second glance. Some of the doors had glass windows in them, and I saw employees inside the offices doing administrative work. In one room there was a console computer, and several technicians moved about near it. That expensive piece of machinery would be there to help Zeno check his calculations.
I walked through another set of doors and found myself in the main section of the building complex. A sign above the doors stated, in three languages, Authorized Personnel Only. This wing would undoubtedly be where Zeno’s and Li Yuen’s offices were located and possibly the lab where Zeno conducted
his experiments.
I had just passed a door marked Service when a white-coated man with a yellow badge on his chest came hurrying out of a room and almost knocked me down. He was a tall fellow, about my height, but with narrow shoulders. His long face showed mild surprise when he saw me.
“Who are you?” he asked in Arabic. He looked German or possibly French. I wondered whether he was one of the many on this project who, like André Delacroix, knew nothing of its real purpose.
“I am the hair-cutter,” I said to him. “I am . . .”
“What do you think you are doing in Section One?” he said irritably, interrupting me. “You must be aware that you do not belong here.”
“Is this Section One, sir?” I said, stalling.
“Yes, you idiot!” he replied. He turned partially away from me. “The cutting room is in the other wing. You go back through these . . . .”
I brought the edge of my right hand down in a swift chop at the back of his neck, and he collapsed into my arms. I dragged him to the closet door and turned the handle. It was locked. I swore under my breath. Somebody else could appear in this corridor at any moment, and I would be stuck with the body. I fumbled in the djellaba I was wearing and came up with the lock-picker I had taken from my clothes along with Wilhelmina and Hugo. In a moment I had the door open. But another door opened twenty feet down the corridor while the lab man was still on the floor in the hallway. Another white-frocked man came out but turned the other way without seeing us and strode quickly down the hall. I let my breath out. I grabbed the unconscious body and pulled it into the closet after me, turning on the light inside after I closed the door.
The closet was tiny, with hardly enough room for two people. I quickly stripped off the barber’s clothing and dumped it into a pile in a corner with mops and pails. Then I moved to the small sink behind me, turned on the water and scrubbed the washable stain from my face and hands. I dried with a utility towel from a stack on a stand nearby. I took off the man’s coat, shirt and tie. I’d kept my own pants in the previous exchange. I put the new clothes on, removing and replacing the holster and stiletto sheath. In a moment I was a white-coated technician. I bound my man with the utility towels, gagged him, left the closet and locked it behind me.
