by Nick Carter
"So?"
"So — there's only so far I'm willing to push it. I came over the border disguised as a Junk man. And what I brought with me, sweetheart, is Junk." He was standing there in his hairy chest and shorts, struggling into the navy blue shirt.
"What kind of junk?" I said.
"Junk. TV aerial. Typewriter roller. But don't laugh. You run that aerial over a wall, they'll think it's some land of divining rod."
"I wouldn't like to bet my life on that. What else did you bring?"
"I don't even remember. So wait a while. You'll be surprised."
"Good. I Just adore surprises."'
He raised an eyebrow. "You're complaining?" he said. He threw his shirt and Jacket in the suitcase. "Except for your mouth and your big ideas, what did you bring along to this party?"
"The potato salad."
"Funny," he said.
A knock on the elevator door.
"What's the password?"
"Screw you."
I opened the door.
Kelly was in the elevator operator's getup. He stepped in quickly and closed the door. I officially introduced him to Uri, finally, while I strapped on the heavy padded vest.
"How are our friends?" I said to Kelly. "You keeping them busy?"
"Yep. You might say they're all tied up."
"Poor lady," I said.
"Poor husband, you mean."
"To the ends of the earth," Uri intoned.
Kelly picked up the plastic flight bag. "Radio's in here?"
Uri said, "Eight. Sit in the lobby and wait for the signal. After that — you know what to do."
Kelly nodded. "Just don't get in trouble in the first ten minutes. Give me time to change clothes and get to the lobby."
I said, "I think you're lovely just the way you are."
He made an obscene gesture.
I turned to Uri. "I think you better tell me how to signal Kelly."
"Yeah, yeah. Sure. In your box is something that looks like a gauge. There are two buttons. Press the top one and you'll signal Kelly."
"And the bottom one?"
He smiled. "You'll signal the world."
Uri was unpacking the two metal boxes. They looked like over-sized khaki lunch pails.
Kelly shook his head. "You're nuts. Both of you."
Uri looked at him. "And you're Mr. Sane? So what are you doing here, Mr. Sane?"
Kelly smiled his Belmondo smile. "It sounded like too good a show to miss. Either way. If Carter's right, it's the greatest wild kidnap plot since Aimee Semple McPhearson disappeared. And if he's wrong — which I think he is — well, that alone is worth the price of admission."
Uri was sifting the contents of his box. "Americans," he sighed. "With your competitive spirit, it's a wonder you guys ever won a war."
"Now, now. Let's not knock the competitive spirit. After all — it produced the Edsel and Diet Cola."
Uri handed me a metal box. "And the Watergate."
I shrugged. "And its remedy." I turned to Kelly. "So what should we expect? Upstairs, I mean."
Kelly shrugged. "Trouble."
Uri shrugged. "So? What else is new?"
"Guards," Kelly said. "I expect we'll see guards when we open the door. There are thirty rooms on every floor." He handed us each a master passkey.
I looked at Uri. "You take the right side, I'll take the left."
He said, "I think we ought to go together."
"Uh uh. We'll cover more ground my way. Besides, my way, if one of us is caught, the other can still have a chance to signal."
Uri pushed the goggles down over his face. "And suppose they catch us but they're not Al Shaitan. Suppose they're exactly what they say they are. A bunch of sheiks from — " he turned to Kelly, "from where did you say?"
"From Abu Dhabi. And it's one sheik. Ahmed Sultan el-Yamaroon. The other guys are flunkies and servants and wives."
"His wives are guys?"
"Terrific," I said. "What the hell is this? Abbott and Costello meet Al Shaitan? You go right and I'll go left but for god's sake let's go." I pushed the button.
We started up.
Eleven.
Kelly opened the door.
Two uniformed guards were standing in the hall. Official looking. But then, so were we.
"Bomb squad," I said, flashing my card. I started out the door. A guard blocked the way.
"Hold it," he said. "What's this about?"
"Bombs!" I said rather loudly. "Out of our way." I turned to Uri and jerked my head. We both started moving in opposite directions. The guards exchanged looks. Kelly closed the elevator door. One of the guards started dogging my feet "B-b-but," he said. "We received no word."
"That's not our problem," I said gruffly. "Somebody planted a bomb in this hotel. If you want to help us, make sure that everyone stays in his room." I'd reached the place where the corridor turned, and looked at the guard. "That's an order," I said. He scratched his nose and backed away.
I followed the red and white carpet to the end. The door marked Stairs was firmly locked, locked from the inside. I knocked at the last door along the line. No answer. I pulled out a passkey and opened the door.
A man was deeply asleep on the bed. A hypo rested on the table beside him. Signs and symbols. A locked stairway. A hypodermic needle. I had to be right. The kidnapped Americans had to be here. I walked to the bed and rolled the man over.
Harlow Wilts. Millionaire owner of Cottage Motels. I remembered his face from the television shots.
The connecting-room door was slightly ajar. Behind it, I heard a television set blaring the calls of a soccer game. Behind that, the sounds of a shower running and the baritoned bars of a pornographic song. Wilt's keeper, taking a break. I peered through the crack. An Arab burnoose, a checkered headcloth, and a .38 sat on the bed.
This was it. Pay dirt. The Al Shaitan hideout. Nice going, Al. It's a gorgeous idea. A private floor in a busy hotel. Using the cover of an oil-rich sheik. Private servants, private chef. All of it intended to keep strangers away. Even the management wouldn't know the truth. But Robey had doped it, and so had I. Because once you'd figured out who Al Shaitan wasn't, you were free to figure out who Al Shaitan was.
Okay. What next? Get Uri, find the mastermind, and wrap it all up.
It didn't happen in exactly that order.
I stepped out in the hall and into a guard.
"The sheik wants to see you."
I wasn't ready to see the sheik. I tried to play Bomb Squad a little longer. "Sorry," I said, "I don't have the time." I knocked on a door across the hall. "Police," I yelled. "Open up."
"Who?" A woman's voice, confused.
"Police," I repeated.
The guard pulled a gun.
I swung with the metal box in my hand, and the comer of it gouged out a chunk of his cheek as the contents of the box scattered on the floor. The guard fell backward against the wall, his gun shooting wild and raising the devil — at least, the devils handmaidens. Four doors opened and four guns pointed and four goons started heading my way, including the wet one, fresh from his shower. The odds for trying a shootout were bad. I was trapped at the narrow dead end of the hall.
"Who?" the woman's voice repeated.
"Forget it," I said. "April fool."
I went, like the man said, to see the sheik. Mr. Al Shaitan himself.
It was the Royal Suite. Or one room of it, anyway. A forty-foot room, with gilded furniture, damask upholstery, busy Persian rugs, and Chinese lamps. The predominant color was turquoise blue. Uri was seated on a turquoise blue chair, an armed Arab guard on either side of him. Two other guards flanked a pair of double doors. They were wearing dark blue with turquoise headcloths. Yes sir, the rich really do have taste. Who else would have a color-coordinated goon squad?
My own entourage frisked me quickly, found Wilhelmina, and then Hugo. I'd been disarmed so often in the last week, I was starting to feel like Venus de Milo. They shoved me into a turquoise chair and pu
t my "bomb box" up beside Uri's, on a desk about ten feet away. They'd gathered the contents up from the floor and shoved them hastily into the box. The lid was open, exposing the Molly screws and typewriter rollers, which looked exactly like Molly screws and typewriter rollers. Something told me the gig was up.
Uri and I exchanged shrugs. I eyeballed the boxes and then looked at him. He shook his head. No, he hadn't signaled Kelly either.
Double doors opened at the far end of the room. The various guards stood at attention. The ones with robes, the two in uniforms, and the one from the shower with the towel at his waist.
Through the door, in a silk robe, a silk headcloth with a golden agal, with a black poodle tucked under his arm, came The Wizard of Oz, the terrorist leader, Al Shaitan, Sheik el-Yamaroon:
Leonard Foxx.
He took the seat behind the desk, set the dog on the floor by his feet, and proceeded to look from me to Uri to me to his guards, a smile of triumph on his thin lips.
He addressed the guards, dismissing them all, except the four blue-on-blue gunners. He repositioned the two who had been at Uri's side by the door to the hall. Foxx was about forty-five, his last twenty years spent as a millionaire; the last ten, as a billionaire. I studied the pale, almost lime-green eyes, the thin, sharp-featured, well-barbered face. It didn't fit together. Like a portrait painted by two different painters, the face seemed somehow to clash with itself. The eyes had a gleam of hungry wonder; the mouth was posed in permanent irony. A war between amusement and obvious delight. His child's dream of untold wealth had been made a childish reality, and somewhere he knew it, but he'd ridden his dream like a man rides a tiger, and now, at the mountain top, he was its prisoner. He looked at Uri and then turned to me.
"Well, Mr. Carter. I thought you'd come alone."
I sighed. "Which means you thought I'd come. Okay, I'll bite. How did you know I was coming? I didn't even know till last night And I wasn't tailed, that much I know."
He reached for a solid gold box on the desk and pulled out a cigarette. My brand. He offered me one. I shook my head no. He shrugged and lit up from a gold lighter. "Come now, Carter. I didn't have to tail you. My guards downstairs have memorized your face. I've had your picture since Tel Aviv. And I've known of your remarkable talents since Izmir."
"Izmir."
He squinted and blew a cloud of smoke. "Five years ago. You closed down a Turkish opium ring."
"Yours?"
"Unfortunately. You were very clever. Very clever. Almost as clever as I am." A smile flickered, like a tic of the lips. "When I learned they sent you to follow Robey, I had a moment of true alarm. Then I rather began to enjoy it. The idea of having a genuine adversary. A real test of my wit. Al Shaitan versus Nick Carter, the only man smart enough to even begin to figure out the truth."
Uri gave me vaudeville looks of admiration. I squirmed in my chair. "You forget something, Foxx. Jackson Robey was onto you first. Or didn't you know that?"
He threw back his head and laughed with a Hah! "So. You really believed that. No, Mr. Carter — or may I call you Nick? No. That was part of the decoy too. We were the ones who cabled AXE. Not Robey."
I took a beat. "My compliments, Foxx-or may I call you Al?"
The lips ticked again. "Joke all you like, Nick. The joke was on you. The cable was all part of the plan. A plan to keep AXE on the wrong track. Oh, not just AXE. I managed to trick a lot of agents. Shin Bet, Interpol, the CIA. They all, very cleverly, found their way to Rhamaz. Some saw the bodies, some just saw the blood. But they all left convinced they were on the right trail. That they'd just missed finding Al Shaitan. Then it was time to cover my tracks."
"To kill the geese who laid the golden goose eggs."
"Yes."
"Like Khali Mansour."
"Like Khali Mansour and his counterparts. The men I used to drop the first hints. And of course, we had to kill one of the agents. To make it seem as though by knowing of Rhamaz, he knew too much."
"Why Robey?"
He stumped the cigarette in a jade-ringed bowl. "Let's just say I had an AXE to grind. One more way to humiliate Washington. One more way to slow you all down. If Robey were dead, you'd send another man. To start all over again — the wrong way."
"So you could make double fools of us."
"Double fools? No. More than double, Carter. The first foolish thing that Washington did was to try to persecute Leonard Foxx."
Uri gave me a raised eyebrow look.
I answered Uri. "Remember what happened to the Edsel," I muttered.
Foxx smiled. Tic and hold. "If you're trying to make an analogy to me, you're wrong. Quite wrong. My dreams are neither too big nor too rococco. And as for my pitch, everyone buys it. Leonard Foxx is dead. And Arab terrorists are kidnapping people."
Uri cleared his throat "While we're on the subject, what are your dreams?"
Foxx gave Uri a disapproving look. "Perhaps dreams was a bad choice of words. Flans would be closer. And my plans are rapidly becoming a reality. I've already received half the ransom money. And in case you haven't been reading the papers, I've sent a notice to those involved that none of the victims will be released until all the money is in my hands. Excuse me. In the hands of Al Shaitan."
"And how will you spend it?"
"As I've always spent it. In pursuit of the good life. Just think, gentlemen, a billion dollars. Tax free. I'll build myself a palace, maybe in Arabia. I'll take four wives and five in a splendor unknown in the West Power? I shall have it. Unlimited power. Feudal power. The power only Eastern princes can wield. Democracy was such a tacky invention."
I shrugged. "Without it you'd still be a — a what? What were you when you started? Truck driver, wasn't it?"
I've received a few friendlier looks in my day. "You're confusing democracy with capitalism, Nick. I owe my good fortune to free enterprise. Democracy is what wants to put me in jail. Which proves that democracy has its limitations." He suddenly frowned. "But we have a great deal to talk about and I'm sure you gentlemen would like a drink. I know I would."
He pressed a buzzer and a servant appeared. A barefoot man who salaamed to the floor.
"You see what I mean?" Foxx gestured at the floor. "Democracy has its limitations. You don't find servants like that in the States." He ordered quickly and dismissed the man, who cleared our metal boxes away and put them on the floor under the desk. Out of reach and now, out of sight.
Neither Uri nor I were very worried. Foxx was busy spilling his guts, we were both alive and still in good shape, and we knew we'd find a way to contact Kelly. And how could we lose? Foxx didn't even know about Kelly. Let alone about our wacky scheme.
Twenty
The servant pattered back with a huge brass tray bearing Polish vodka and Baccarat crystal, a football size mound of Beluga caviar, onions, chopped eggs, and wedges of toast He salaamed to the floor on his way out. Foxx poured a round of icy vodka. An armed guard crossed and handed us glasses.
Foxx cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair. "The planning began months in advance…" He looked at me quickly. "I assume you want to hear this story. I know I'm eager to hear yours. So. As I was saying, the planning began months in advance. I was bored in Bermuda. Safe, but bored. I'm a man accustomed to traveling all around the world. Travel, adventure, deals. That's my life. But suddenly I was limited to very few places. And my funds were limited. My money was tied up in litigation, invested in property, lost to me, really. I wanted my freedom. And I wanted my money. I'd been reading about Palestinian terrorists and suddenly I thought, why not? Why not arrange to have myself kidnapped and make it look like the Arabs did it? I had a lot of contacts in the Middle East. I could hire men to make it look legitimate. And there are so many Arab extremist groups, no one would know where this one came from. And so — I invented Al Shaitan."
He paused, and took a long sip of vodka. "My best base here was the Shanda Baths. I trust you know of my connection there. Part of the opium network I was runni
ng, with the money filtered through Swiss corporations. The Shanda was my… let's say, 'employment agency.' Kalooris, the front man, could easily buy me an army of thugs. Pushers, who'll do anything for a price. And junkies who'll do anything for their junk."
"Not exactly a dependable army."
"Ah! Precisely. But I turned that liability into an asset. Let me continue. First, I asked Kalooris to recommend men. The job, at that point, was simply the job of staging my kidnap. We were going over a list of names and he got to the name of Khali Mansour. Kalooris knew Khali had connections with a street gang and also a brother who was living in Syria. He thought that it might make a good blind, just in case somebody started to trace us. But then he said no. Khali Mansour was unreliable. He'd sell us out if the money was right And that's when I got the real idea. Let Mansour sell us out I knew there'd be agents coming on the case, and with unreliable men like Mansour, I could make sure the agents went the wrong way.
The Mansour matter was very delicate. I wanted to provoke him. Tease him into treason. Lead him on and then disappoint him. But I had to go about it with great caution, to make sure he wouldn't know a trace of the truth. So I went about it through the back door. We started with a man named Ahmed Rafad, a friend of Khali's brother in Beit Nama. Rafad flew the 'copter that took me from Bermuda. But that was later on. First we told Rafad and a few other men to help us recruit some other workers. By recruiting, they helped spread a wave of rumors. Rumors that reached the proper ears. The ears of informers. We also knew Rafad would recruit his friend Ali. And that Ali, in turn, would recruit his brother, Khali."
"And that Khali, when provoked, would sell you out."
"Exactly."
I shook my head and smiled. I think it was Lawrence of Arabia who said, "In the East they swear that by three sides is the decent way across a square." In that case, Foxx had a true Eastern mind, raising indirection to a high art."
I lit a cigarette. "Now tell me how Lamott fit in. And Jehns."
Foxx scooped a huge tennis ball of caviar and proceeded to spread it on a wedge of toast.
