Doctor Smythe came back to Meg’s suggestion. “Needless to say, Doctor, your services are welcome. Are you a specialist?”
She shook her head. “A general practitioner. Place me at any task you wish.” Her eyes went to Isobel. “At one time you say you are against the West and the civilization of the whites, but here you are, making every effort to bring it to North Africa.”
Isobel smiled at that and said, “Not exactly. Possibly it’s according to what you mean by civilization. Modern medicine, obviously, we want, along with agricultural techniques, irrigation, afforestation methods, and many other modern developments. But we can do without such things as, say, American-type television, which exists primarily for profit reasons, any entertainment or educational value being incidental.”
“Above all,” Jimmy Peters said, “we don’t wish to bring to Ifriqiyah the suicidal waste of your so-called civilization. Just take one example. Every year your Detroit spends hundreds of millions in re-tooling to turn out automobiles that look somewhat different. The height, the length, the color, the shape of fenders, the upholstery, the number of lights. It’s largely for something the advertising men can spend additional hundreds of millions upon, touting the product.”
Isobel said, “The one I like is the electric Martini-stirrer. It took a sharp idea man to conceive of it. Skilled engineers to design it. Competent technicians to tool up for it. Trained workers to operate the factory in which it was built. Highly paid publicity and advertising personnel to bring it before the eyes of the public. Probably millions were involved before it was through. All for what? What in the world good is an electric Martini-stirrer save for humor, or as a status symbol? Of course, it most likely made a profit, and that’s all that counts in your so-called Western civilization.”
Meg had to laugh. “All right,” she said. “I’ll have to believe you, I shouldn’t doubt. You want the blessings of civilization…”
“Modern technology,” Jimmy Peters corrected lowly.
“… without its curses.” She looked at Doctor Smythe again. “I’m ready to go to work at any post you assign me.”
Later that evening, just before sunset, Meg, Sean Ryan, Bryan O’Casey, Paul Bazaine and Lon Charles met in the mess tent of the mercenaries. Half a dozen of their men were nonchalantly lolling around outside, covering the tent from each direction. They were guards, albeit unarmed, and stationed to give warning should any outsiders approach.
The five sat at two of the folding tables, on camp chairs. Lon Charles, in his wanderings about the souk and cafés in Tamanrasset, had located, of all things, a bottle of cognac, which had probably been in the town since French occupation days. They had split the astronomical cost of the bottle five ways and now sat around it with tin cups.
Bryan had in hand his Peterson shell briar and had just filled it from the leather pouch he had carried since his first mercenary job in Angola, many years before. In actuality, it wasn’t leather, it was human skin and he would never have let Meg know the fact. One of the boys under his command had carefully cured it, had his wife sew it, and had presented it to a then horrified Bryan as a gift. It was a perverse fascination that caused him to continue using it, down through the years.
Sean opened the discussion by saying, “Does anyone have any reason to believe that this tent might be bugged?”
They thought about it.
Paul Bazaine said, “I doubt it. In all my years in North Africa, I have never heard of an electronic bug. They might have them in Algiers, or Casablanca or Dakar, but it seems unlikely out here. If El Hassan’s ambitious gang actually did come to power, in a year or so they might introduce such niceties. But now? It’s unlikely that such equipment was in Tamanrasset before they took over and doubly unlikely that Reunited Nations teams would have been carrying them; Besides, such devices need trained technicians to install and operate. No, this tent is not bugged.”
“I think you’re right.” Sean said. “Let’s get down to our council of war. This not being able to contact El Hassan or find out where he is has its ramifications. Suppose that his adherents overrun Adrar before we can pull off the job? What happens to our getaway aircraft and pilots in that case?”
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Bryan growled unhappily, tamping down the tobacco in his shell briar.
Sean said, “I got a tightbeam from Saul Saidi this morning. He’s gnawing his nails about our holdup. It seems that El Hassan’s movement is spreading like a brush fire. If he manages to consolidate all of what they call Ifriqiyah before we do him in, then it might be too late. He might become a martyr and elements among his followers take over.” He dwelt upon it inwardly. “As a matter of fact, these charismatic leaders are sometimes better off dead, after a certain point. If they lived, possibly their followers would begin to detect feet of clay. But dead, nobody can say a word against them.”
“Examples?” Bryan growled.
“There’s lots of them” Sean told him. “Take Jesus. Suppose that he had lived on, instead of being crucified as a young man, so that Paul and others could defy him and knock together a viable program. Jesus, himself, never had one, or, if he did, it was evidently edited out of the gospels.”
“Why, Sean,” Meg said, twisting her mouth. “You’re absolutely blasphemous.”
Major Ryan ignored her and said, “Lenin’s another example. Suppose he had lived? Stalin and the boys must have blessed their lucky stars when he kicked off. If he hadn’t, when he did, they probably would have had to take steps to accomplish it.”
“Very well,” Raul Bazaine said impatiently. “And where do we stand now? Have we any information all aren’t acquainted with?”
Sean looked at Lon Charles. “You’ve been given the run of Tamanrasset. Have you learned anything?”
The black sergeant shook his head. “I don’t speak any of their languages, or even French. The only thing I’ve noticed that kind of set me back, is that they all seem caught up in this El Hassan idea. I’ve been in a lot of backward countries, in my time, and I found out they got one thing in common, a dislike of work.”
Meg said, “People ridden with everything from pellagra to hookworm haven’t got much energy or ambition.”
Lon looked over at her. “You’re the doc. But somehow these people are different. They’re all working like bastards. Uh, sorry…”
Meg snorted at the apology.
Sean turned his eyes to Raul Bazaine. “I noted you talking to El Hassan’s secretary. Did you pick up anything?”
The Frenchman snorted. “The little cocotte is tight-mouthed. However, perhaps she let a little something drop.”
Meg said, “That’s hardly the term to describe Miss Cunningham. I found her a cultivated, sincere and idealistic woman.”
The four men took her in, empty-faced.
But Sean said to Bazaine, “Dropped what?”
“Possibly she let slip that El Hassan and his closest aides are not in the vicinity of Tamanrasset at all but have gone off somewhere. This so-called ekhwan, the great council, they are supposedly holding, doesn’t ring true, at any rate, n’est-ce pas? How could but four men take this long to talk things over?”
Sean pursed his lips and looked unseeingly out of the side of his eyes toward the tent opening. He poured himself another slug of the cognac—which he knew he shouldn’t do—and then one each for the others.
Then he said, “I’ll be thinking that possibly fits in with something Saul Saidi told me this morning. Remember the rumors we heard in the north about some Algerian tribesman proclaiming he was a second coming of some Moslem religious figure and was being taken up by all the marabouts and so forth? His program was anti-El Hassan; in fact he was proclaiming a jehad holy war against him and had captured one of El Hassan’s closest followers.”
“That’s right,” Bryan said. “He was a Chaambra, wasn’t he? And his name was Abd, something or other.”
“Abd-el-Kader,” Bazaine said. “He’s been a minor celebrity among the
Arabs and other nomads in the northwestern Sahara for some time. A real bandit before he got this religious, ah, kick as the Americans say.”
“At any rate,” Sean said. “Somehow this vizier of El Hassan has been rescued and the light of the self-proclaimed religious leader has gone out like a skyrocket.”
They all looked at him.
Sean said, “My guess is that was El Hassan and his men we passed near In Salah and that they were on their way north to confront this upstart. If so, they succeeded and it’s to be assumed that they’re on their way back.”
Bryan relit his pipe thoughtfuly and said, “If this was anything more than a guess, the thing for us to do would be to head north—there’s only one road, or what passes for a road—and intercept him somewhere along the way. In that manner we’d be up against only the four of them, not the whole of Tamanrasset and Fort Laperrine. That rescue aircraft of ours can sit down just as easily anywhere along the route as it can in this vicinity.”
“That’s the trouble,” Sean growled, wanting another drink and steeling himself against taking it. He had ruled himself onto the waterwagon as long as this assignment was underway and this was his first deviation. “It’s only an educated guess, and we can’t spare the time to drive all the way up that god-forsaken road, and then come back again if he doesn’t show. Besides, it would look suspicious to Isobel Cunningham and the rest.”
They all mulled that over awhile, without result, and then Sean turned to Megan McDaid. “Did you have any luck getting information when you volunteered your services as a doctor?”
Meg had been unhappy at the proceedings of this whole war council and now she let it come out.
She said,“I found out one thing. When we started down here I was of the opinion that El Hassan and his closest followers were all adventurers. But in talking to Isobel Cunningham, Doctor Smythe and the Vizier of Education, Peters, I reversed my engines. They’re idealists.”
Sean looked at Bryan O’Casey, holding his own peace.
Bryan stared down into the dottle of his pipe. “It’s an elastic word,” he said finally. “But they’ve evidently convinced you. However, in these things it’s difficult to tell who is in the right and who the wrong. If either side is right—or wrong. As soldiers of fortune, we are unconcerned with such matters. Let history decide which side was right and which wrong. And even history doesn’t do a very good job. If General Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the other so-called revolutionary forefathers of the United States had lost their war and been hanged how do you think history would now read? They would be considered a bunch of rebels who had revolted against their king and had come to their just desserts. We’re mercenaries, Meg. We fight for money. We’re not basically interested in who is right or who wrong.”
She looked into her lover’s eyes. “Do you really subscribe to that?”
He knocked the ash out of his pipe, momentarily considered his tobacco pouch but then returned the briar to a pocket of his bush jacket. “It’s one of the reasons I retired from the game, mavourneen. But, to raise our nestegg, I returned for one last job—the most lucrative I’ve ever been offered. And now I’ve taken his money and owe my allegiance to Saidi. It’s the code of the mercenary.”
She looked at the four men, one by one. Only Lon Charles avoided her challenging stare. She said, “So, if Hitler had hired you for some similar assignment to this, you would give me the same argument?”
Bryan said patiently, “If I had signed up with Hitler, yes. The thing is, I wouldn’t have signed up with him in the first place. Even we mercenaries do have a choice.”
Sean leaned forward and took over earnestly, “Meg, this El Hassan is a malcontent and an opportunist, no matter what opinions you might have come to to the contrary. He’s upsetting this whole part of the world, which was just beginning to show some signs of progress, what with the oil and mineral developments. I, for one, have no compunction against hiring out as a soldier of fortune to his political enemies.”
Meg made a rude noise. “I wonder if Saidi actually represents political elements, or profit-conscious corporations who don’t like El Hassan’s program. We don’t even know who he represents. We accept his money and embark upon what amounts to an assassination assignment.”
Raul flicked a fingernail along his blonde wisp of French mustache and murmured, “I don’t know about this assassination thing. I strongly suspect that before this is all through, we shall see actual combat. He is too well guarded to expect that ordinary assassination would be practical—that is, if we are expectant of making our, ah, getaway.”
Sean took it up again. “Meg, so far as assassination is concerned, you mentioned Hitler a moment ago. In July of 1944, a group of German generals attempted, and failed, to assassinate him. Don’t you wish they had been successful? Had they been, millions of lives would have been spared. It’s according to who is being assassinated, whether or not the act is despicable.”
She came to her feet and let her eyes go over them, one by one, as she breathed deeply. “I’m confused,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to think.”
Bryan said gently, “Meanwhile, Meg, if you let anything drop about our mission, it will undoubtedly mean the lives of all of us. Men of the El Hassan caliber are noted for their ruthlessness.”
She turned and left the tent. “Les femmes,” Raul Bazaine murmured.
Sean Ryan turned his eyes to Lon Charles and said, “You’re havin’ the run of Tamanrasset. Tomorrow, when you’re in town, hire yourself a camel or horse and take a short trip up the road in the direction of In Salah. Find some sort of a clearing, or area, large enough for our aircraft to land in but small enough that our forces can defend it for a maximum time. It must be close enough to this fort and to Tamanrasset that our long distance rifle grenade launchers will reach to the city and fort. Is that possible?”
Lon twisted his face and said, “It should be. Miss Cunningham said I had the freedom of Tamanrasset though she didn’t say anything about taking a horse out into the desert. I don’t know how to ride a camel and don’t expect to start learning now. I don’t think I oughta have any trouble.”
Bryan said glumly, “Now we have to keep our fingers crossed that they’ll return our weapons when they kick us out.”
XVIII
EL HASSAN
When El Hassan’s hoverlorry entered the main gate of Fort Laperrine, it was unescorted. Homer Crawford and his companions had met a gown of Guémama’s camel corps several kilometers out, but had waved off the desire to accompany their ultimate leader and his viziers.
The vehicle came to a temporary halt immediately inside the entry and the four occupants in the front seat looked out over the parade ground. Less than precision drill was going on. What were obviously older veterans of desert warfare were putting younger tribesmen through European type evolutions.
Bey, who was bandaged at the waist but otherwise didn’t look the less for wear, said, “Who in the hell are they?” indicating with a thumb.
They were some twenty white men, dressed in a wide variety of desert uniforms and sitting on the ground before three vehicles and four tents, over against the non-com quarters. On the faces of some were expressions of undisguised contempt of the efforts of the desert men.
“Damned if I know,” Homer said. “Let’s see what’s going on.” He drove the hoverlorry toward the administration building.
Isobel came running out anxiously, to be followed at slower pace by Jimmy Peters.
The four emerged from the lorry and grinned at the girl.
She said, looking as though she didn’t know which one of them to grab and hug first, “You’re all right?” Her eyes went to Bey and they were wide. “You’ve been wounded. What happened?”
“I should have zigged instead,” he told her. “I’m all right.”
She grabbed Homer’s arms. “Elmer?”
He put his arms around her and bussed her firmly. “He’s in the back of the truck. Mostly exhaustion.”
Cliff said, “He’s eating us out of house and home. Where’s the Doc? Hey, how about me? I’ve known you longer than Homer has.”
Jimmy Peters came up with his shy, slow smile. “It’s about time you blokes got back. This place has become a bedlam. Elmer’s all right, what?”
Isobel said hurriedly, “I’ll get Doctor Smythe and a couple of nurses,” and started to turn.
But, from the back of the hoverlorry, Elmer said, “The hell with the bloody nurses—unless they’re good looking. I can walk.”
He had managed to get out of the desert vehicle from the rear. He looked emaciated, the appearance enhanced by the clothes Homer and the others had brought for him. They were several sizes too large and he looked like a black scarecrow.
They hurried toward him, Isobel and Jimmy Peters muttering soothing inanities.
Bey said, “Hey, here I am. I feel worse than he does. All’s wrong with him is he’s hungry and sleepy.”
They ignored him and shortly the whole group moved toward the administration building, Elmer being aided by Jimmy and Isobel.
Elmer grinned at her. “You look even better than I remembered, old girl. You haven’t got a friend have you?”
“Yes,” she said, “You. Oh, Elmer, you’re so thin!”
He grinned again, even as he stumbled along. He still didn’t have complete control of his legs, which had been cramped so long. He said mockingly, “Oh, indeed? I saw the way you leeched onto Homer.”
They disappeared into the administration building.
Across the square, in the door that led into the non-commissioned officer’ billets, Captain Bazaine watched. When they were gone, he turned and sauntered into the non-com mess where Sean Ryan and Bryan O’Casey were slumped in ennui over age-old copies of European magazines, largely French and German.
They looked up at his entry and Sean said, “Something new?”
The Best Ye Breed na-3 Page 19
