Thieves Fall Out (Hard Case Crime)

by Gore Vidal

  “What a fool you are, Peter! But not foolish enough, perhaps, for now you must be killed.”

  “Go ahead.” Pete had got his wind back; he was able to straighten up, the sharp pain succeeded by an ache.

  “But at least it would have been better to die ignorant at Mohammed Ali’s hands.” She laughed. “Now it will be worse. Especially since you think you’re in love with that German tramp. Oh, I’ve heard. Not that it prevented you from feeling just a little excité with me.” She laughed contemptuously.

  He saw her through a darkening rage that made even the lights of the room grow dim. All he could see was that mocking vivid mouth. But he controlled himself and spoke quietly. “I guess nothing worked out right,” he said. “Even us.”

  “No, not even us.” She smiled. “I had always looked forward to it, chéri. One of those things that I thought might be enjoyable.”

  “Maybe it’s not too late for that.”

  She looked at him curiously. “You could still…after all this? And after her?”

  He nodded. “You saw a minute ago; you could tell.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not so easily tricked.”

  “You’ve got the gun. What are you afraid of?”

  “No one can make love with a gun,” she said, but she moved closer to him. “It is a pity such a handsome animal must die,” she murmured.

  It happened easily. One swift blow of his left fist aimed at the mouth and she fell to the floor without a sound. He kicked the gun from her nerveless fingers. Then the lights went out and the hotel rocked, as a thunderous noise sounded outside in the street. A bomb had gone off and all the windows were shattered. The sudden darkness was pierced by screams and shouts.

  He lit his cigarette lighter and made a feverish search of the room. There was no necklace. He wondered if she had been telling the truth, if Said still had it. He kept an eye on her but she was unconscious, her face covered by her heavy silken hair. In the dressing table he found the jewel box from which she had taken the money to pay him. This would do, he thought grimly, and he stuck it in his pocket. Then he left the room and walked quickly down the hall.

  The lobby was a nightmare of screaming women and shouting men. In the street outside a sharp crack of rifles told him that the mob had got through at last. Shepheard’s was being attacked.

  He had to find Anna. Seizing a torch from a frightened servant, he pushed his way through the milling crowd.

  The refugees had moved from the front lobby to the center one and to the bar at the back of the hotel, away from the street and the guns.

  Hands clutched at him, as though for support. Men shoved him as they tried to get from the main lobby to the comparative safety of the bar. Bullets raked the front of the hotel. A woman crumpled to the floor beside him, whether dead or only fainted he had no time to find out. He found Anna standing in an alcove near the bar. The light of his torch illuminated her face suddenly, briefly. He fought his way through a tangle of people to the alcove where she stood.

  “Peter!” She fell into his arms and for a brief moment they stood there in the center of a panic, aware only of one another, but the crash of a grenade outside in the street brought him back to reality, to a frightening reality. “Where were you? I looked all over.” They stepped into the alcove as a group of sweating, wild-eyed soldiers fell back into the central lobby and took up a tentative position, their rifles pointed at the main door.

  “Telephoning. The German boy, the flier who brought us from Luxor. He’s waiting for us, Peter. Right now, at Giza.”

  “He’s going to—”

  “Fly us to Naples, yes. But we have only two hours to get there, to get outside Cairo.”

  “Come on, then.” Hugging the wall, they moved toward the bar, where Pete remembered a door led into the garden. There was just a chance that the garden was not surrounded. If so, they could climb the iron fence and slip into a side street.

  Before they had got to the door, however, an explosion that shook the building to its foundations threw them sprawling onto the floor. There was a sudden ghastly silence, then moans and cries of pain as a sheet of flame swirled up the walls of the front lobby, casting a lurid glow over everything, like a scene in hell. The hotel was on fire.

  “Are you all right?”

  Anna nodded, getting to her feet dizzily, holding her head. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Come on. Before this place blows up.”

  Others now had the same idea he had had. They were swarming into the garden, climbing the tall iron fence, their figures curiously distorted by the flaring light of the now flaming hotel.

  Halfway across the garden, they encountered Hastings. He looked as cool, as hard as ever, in spite of the revolver he held in his hand. “Hand it over, Wells.” For a second they faced one another in the ruddy light.

  “Hand what over?”

  There was a perceptible click, a small sound but ominous, audible beneath the shouts and noise of firing in the street. Hastings aimed carefully at Pete’s heart. Anna, who had been standing nearest Hastings, threw herself upon him like a lioness, pushing his arm up. The pistol went off into the air. Hastings reeled under the attack. Before he could take aim again, Pete was upon him.

  With the hilt of his own revolver, he clubbed the Englishman into unconsciousness. Then he seized Anna by the arm and together they ran toward the garden’s gate and into the street.

  They ran several blocks without stopping; then, suddenly, both exhausted, they stopped and leaned against the shuttered window of a shop until they had got their breath.

  Pete looked about them at the darkened street. No street lamps were on and the starlight was dim. A murky red haze in the sky to the west marked the flaming ruins of Shepheard’s Hotel.

  “Where do you think we are?”

  Anna shook her head. “I’m not sure. I don’t know this quarter. But we must find some way to get across the Nile.”

  “How far is Giza?”

  “Several miles from Mena House, on the other side.” She pushed her tangled hair back from her face; a smear of soot darkened her pale forehead. Pete was aware that his own clothes were torn and smelled of smoke and gunpowder. The jewel box was still in his pocket.

  “Our only stunt is to get a car. Would you know the way if I drove?”

  “I think so, yes. But we don’t have—”

  “We’ll find one. I used to be kind of good at that sort of thing.” They moved cautiously back toward the firing, circling the hotel, keeping to arcades and dark side streets.

  They did not see one human being until they had got onto the main boulevard, which crossed the street on which Shepheard’s had been. Here they found themselves in the center of the government forces. Jeeps with searchlights patrolled the streets. Convoy trucks rushed soldiers to a barricade, which they could just make out at the end of the wide boulevard, but the firing that had been so noticeable earlier was growing more sporadic, fainter.

  In front of a shattered store front, they stopped; a column shielded them from the searchlights raking the streets. Two dead men were sprawled before the store, as though caught in the act of looting. Across the street a single jeep was parked, and beside it a group of uniformed men were talking excitedly. Farther down the street more jeeps had gathered and there was occasional firing; it sounded to Pete as if snipers were being picked off.

  “You drive?” he whispered. She nodded. In a low tense voice he explained to her what he would try to do. It was dangerous, but if she was frightened she did not show it.

  They separated then. She moved down the arcade to the opposite corner while he crossed the street a half block above the point where the jeep was parked. The searchlight was trained on the second floor of a building across the street, leaving enough darkness to cover him. The men by the jeep, four of them, were still arguing.

  He waited until he was sure Anna was within a few yards of the jeep; then he opened fire on the men, aiming just above their heads. His first bulle
t ricocheted with a whine into the street. The men, startled, fell back against the wall and returned the fire with their carbines. Pete retreated. They followed, creeping with bellies against the walls of buildings, pausing in occasional doorways to fire. When he had got them a dozen yards from their jeep, he made a break for it.

  He ran the remaining few feet of the arcade with the chilling noise of bullets around him, like deadly bees. Then he ducked into the side street that he had noticed from the other side. Praying that it would double around the way he had calculated, he ran with all possible speed down the dark tunnel-like street, stumbling over the uneven pavement. He was closely pursued; they had taken the bait. He was thankful for the darkness of the night and the narrowness of the street. No starlight lessened the gloom; visibility did not extend more than a few yards. He was invisible to his pursuers and they to him except when the red flash of a carbine shattered the darkness behind him.

  The break in the street came at about the point he had expected, a block and a half below the place where the jeep had been parked. Panting, his shirt clammy with sweat and his lungs burning, he ran into the boulevard just as Anna passed him in the jeep. He shouted to her, a noise more like an animal’s than a man’s.

  She stopped and began to back up. With two long strides and a jump he was in the seat beside her. She was shifting gears with a screech as the soldiers came out onto the boulevard. One opened fire but his aim was wild and the jeep had turned the corner on two wheels before the others had got the range.

  They traded positions and Pete drove according to her directions.

  They kept to deserted streets as much as possible, moving toward the river, away from the fighting and the burning hotel.

  They encountered no police until they came to the bridge that crossed the Nile. As Pete had feared, a dozen men held the bridge, checking all traffic.

  He made a lightning decision. His only alternatives were both risky: either to stop and bluff his way across or to drive straight through the cordon of men. He stopped.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he shouted in a loud bullying voice. The two policemen who were closing in on the jeep fell back, confused, not understanding English but recognizing the tone of authority,

  “I am in charge, sir,” said a voice in English, and out of the shadows stepped Mohammed Ali. He was as startled as Pete. Inadvertently he shied back when he saw the American, his hand leaping to his holster.

  “I’m taking Miss Mueller to Mena House, where she’ll be safe. They’ve set fire to Shepheard’s.” Pete knew his bluff was doomed from the start.

  “I’ll be happy to escort her, Mr. Wells,” said Mohammed Ali and he turned to Anna. “Please get down.” The moment the Inspector turned his glance away from him, Pete shifted into first, his foot pressed hard on the clutch. Before Mohammed Ali had time to notice what he had done, Pete said, “They gave us this jeep at Shepheard’s. I have an authorization.” Mohammed Ali looked startled; the revolver he had had trained on Pete wavered. “Where is your driver, then?”

  “They weren’t able to give us one. Too much going on. I was told to take her across the river.” Pete spoke quickly.

  “I should be very interested in seeing the authorization,” said the Inspector. He grinned slyly as he released the safety catch on his revolver.

  “I’ve got it right here,” said Pete, reaching into his coat. Then, in one instant, synchronizing his foot on the clutch with his hand on his pistol, he fired through his coat at the Inspector and drove the jeep straight through the line of policemen, who ran, yelling, for cover. Mohammed Ali spun and fell face downward on the bridge. The jeep was halfway across the bridge when the police started firing.

  Pete shoved Anna to the floor; then, crouched over the wheel, expecting death at any minute, he drove at top speed across the bridge and onto the main highway beyond. A sharp retort told him that one of his rear tires had been shot. But he drove on, the tire flapping against the pavement until only the metal rim was left.

  Luckily, there was neither fighting nor police on this side of the river. The streets were empty in the gray dawn. The police on the bridge did not follow. They drove on into the desert toward Giza.

  A few miles beyond the last suburb, they saw the plane parked on the side of the road. “Thank God, he’s still there,” murmured Anna.

  The pilot was relieved too. “I thought it was bad news,” he said as he helped Anna out of the jeep. “We start now, before daylight.”

  While he revved up the engines, Pete and Anna got into the plane. Anna immediately took up the earphones and switched on the radio while Pete pulled out the jewel box and pried it open with his pocket knife.

  There, among the diamonds and sapphires of Hélène de Rastignac, was the necklace of Queen Tiy, intricate and magnificent, its single ruby gleaming like firelight. Anna saw it, too, her attention diverted from the radio, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  Pete told her, told her how much it was worth and what it would mean to them. She touched it curiously. “And the rest of these things?”

  “A present to me from Hélène.”

  “You stole them?”

  “No. I took them in exchange for services rendered. I expect I got them as honestly as she did.” And, as well as he could above the plane’s roar, he told her about the conspiracy to get the necklace out of Egypt with himself as decoy and fall guy. But before he had finished, she had pushed the earphones back over her ears. He could tell by her face that the news was not good.

  “Do you think they’ll catch Le Mouche?” he asked when she had switched off the radio.

  She shook her head. “No, he will disappear into the old quarter of the city, until the next time.”

  “You think there’ll be a next time?”

  “Oh, yes. The Farouks never last long, even in countries like Egypt.”

  “A place we’ll never see again.”

  She smiled at last. “Is it so wonderful, really, your country?”

  “You’ll see.” The plane had now taxied into the wind and was taking off. The last stars of the night were burning out in the gray sky.

  “I’m so tired,” she murmured, and he took her in his arms.

  “It’s all over,” he said soothingly, “it’s all over.” She fell asleep then, her head against his chest, unaware that a new white sun had risen, striking silver on the land before them.