Manhunt Is My Mission

by Stephen Marlowe

  “Doc?” I said.

  Silence for an instant. Then the tent-flap parted.

  Princess Farat crouched through the opening and came in.

  She was wearing a mantle like the woman who had come to fetch Dr. Capehart. With both hands she reached up to remove the fur-trimmed hood. Her long hair spilled out. Even in the light of the petromax lantern it looked blue-black. She smiled at me, but her eyes remained grave. I thought it was a shy smile.

  I got up in my sock-feet, feeling awkward, and turned the lantern up all the way. I cleared my throat. The shy smile became an amused smile. I started thinking of things to say. She had a faint touch of jasmine in her hair. It wasn’t the sort of opening gambit that has bowled women over on four continents, but the only words that came to me were: “That’s nice perfume.”

  The sound of my voice, too loud in the confines of the tent, made her smile go away. She stared at the petromax lantern long enough to make her pupils dilate.

  “Sorry there isn’t any more light,” I said, gambiting magnificently again.

  “No, please. After the sun all day. Could you turn it down, Chet?”

  I turned it down. I stared at my shoes, wishing I hadn’t taken them off. I was wearing a shirt, open at the collar, and slacks. She fingered her mantle. Like her riding blouse, it was made of antelope-skin.

  “It’s warm in here,” she said.

  “Tent keeps out the wind.”

  “Dr. Capehart’s with Teerah,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “A chill.”

  “I know,” I said again.

  “Teerah isn’t so bad,” she said. “You’d be surprised.”

  At the same instant I said: “Between you, me and the tent-flap, Teerah’s an old battle-ax.”

  That broke the ice. Our eyes met, and she was smiling again, and I felt a wide grin on my kisser, and then we both were laughing.

  “Lady,” I said, “one of us is wrong.”

  And simultaneously she said: “Teerah’s bark is very much worse than her bite.”

  “We could draw straws,” I said, “to see who goes first. But I’ve got a brilliant idea; let’s not talk about Teerah.”

  “Good. And say we did.” Her fingers went swiftly down the row of frogs that fastened the mantle in front. “Help me off with this?”

  I eased it off her shoulders from behind. Under it she wore the white silk robe I’d seen first in the palace at Oasr Tabuk. Just as I removed the mantle, she started to turn. My hand touched her throat. She leaned against me heavily for a moment. I breathed the scent of her hair.

  With a lithe movement she sat down on the Persian rug. “You see? I’m warm.”

  I sat next to her. Her knees were up and her arms circled them.

  “Teerah is a positive terror with doctors,” she said.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about Teerah.”

  “I just wanted you to know. She’ll keep him for hours.”

  “That’s what he gets,” I said lightly, “for being rescued by a princess.”

  She turned her head and stared up at me. I could see the lantern reflected in her eyes. Outside a gust of wind moaned through the guy-ropes of the tent.

  “I didn’t do it just for Dr. Capehart—or for you,” she said. “In a way I was selfish. I did it for myself too, you see.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s not easy to say. I don’t know King Khalil. I have no feeling for him, one way or another. I never even spoke to him. All I know about him is the stories I’ve heard.” She shuddered a little and leaned against me. She was warm, all right.

  “He may live or he may die,” she told me. “If he dies, then it is finished. If he lives, I’ll marry him. I had to get away first. Don’t you see? I didn’t want to get to know him as an invalid.”

  There was a silence. “I have an idea as brilliant as yours,” she said finally. “Let’s not talk about King Khalil either.”

  “That strikes me as a brilliant idea. Let’s not.”

  Another silence. “We could talk about the real reason I used Dr. Capehart as an excuse to return home. Dr. Capehart and you.”

  “I thought you just told me.”

  “No. Not really. Because even if the king—I will mention his name this once—wasn’t injured, all of a sudden I knew I wasn’t … well, ready yet. Except for those two years in Switzerland, I haven’t tasted life. And even there it was like being in a convent. I had to get away for a while. I didn’t know why at first, I just knew I had to. I’ll try to make a good queen. I have been bred for it. But I am not a queen yet. I don’t want to be a queen—now. I haven’t wanted to be a queen since …” Her voice had grown softer and softer, and then it trailed off. She sobbed, but when she looked up at me again, though there were bright tears in her eyes, she was trying to smile too.

  “I have done all the talking,” she said. “Like a royal princess, isn’t it? And now you will talk.”

  “Yes, your highness,” I said.

  “I don’t want to be a princess now,” she told me, exasperated. “Not now and not here.”

  “Don’t fight it, Farat,” I said. “You’ll be a princess wherever you are.”

  At first she glared, but then her lips trembled and for the first time that smile really lit up her face. “You mean that the way I think you mean it, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You’re not talking about the royal Husseini blood?”

  My hand touched her shoulder. She nestled against me. I put my arm around her. “I’m just talking about you.”

  She sighed. “I suppose you think it was Teerah who made me keep away from you the last four days.”

  “Sure. Wasn’t it?”

  “Fool. It was myself. You’re the reason. You. I couldn’t stay in Motamar, not yet. Sometimes, when you know you won’t be a part of it, the world seems so large. And sometimes, when you least expect it, the whole world—everything you can never touch or have or experience—becomes … just one person. Does that sound foolish?”

  “Say it again and I’m liable to show you how foolish it sounds.”

  But she didn’t say it again. Instead she said: “Please tell me what it is like to be a private detective in the United States.”

  I told her. In the beginning I intended glossing over it and getting back to Farat who, as a topic of conversation, was much better than the care and feeding of private dicks in a country and a city where private dicks grow on trees. But there was something about the way she listened. When a beautiful woman can listen like that, like a little girl, you talk. I ranted on for fifteen minutes, making with the professional biography of one Chester Drum.

  When I finished she said: “That makes you sound like a very brave man.”

  “It wasn’t meant to. Hell,” I told her, “I’m brave right now, sitting here and talking to you when Teerah’s liable to come prowling around any minute.”

  “No. She won’t. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Teerah. Her bark, you see. It is so much worse than her bite. Teerah isn’t sick.”

  “She isn’t?” I said. Farat couldn’t see my face. I was grinning down at her.

  “Of course not. Dr. Capehart,” she said, “may be a great surgeon, but he” can be an old maid too. Teerah’s chill, that’s to keep him away.”

  “Say that again.”

  “About Teerah?”

  “No. About the world and everything you can never have.”

  Obediently she started to say it. More precisely, she got out three words, and then I had turned her in my arms to kiss her lips.

  She stood up, but not until we were both breathless. “Wait,” she said. I stood up too. The silk robe wasn’t a robe. It was veil atop veil of gossamer stuff, and she whirled, and the first veil came off, and she whirled again, and I removed the second veil, and she whirled a third time, and by then through the remaining veils you could see
the ripe firm curves of her body, and she whirled again, and we each had another turn at a veil, and then there was nothing more to take off. She stood impudently and gloriously, her dark hair free almost to her waist, the rest of her all white and twice dusky-pink tipped and shadow as dark as her hair and as compelling as our desire.

  “The veils,” she said, and suddenly she was crestfallen. “They taught me that … in the palace.”

  “Shut up about the palace,” I growled. “Shut up, Princess.”

  For a moment those dark eyes of hers flashed. You didn’t talk to a princess of the royal Husseini blood like that. She moved a step back away from me, and the petromax lantern sputtered, its light shifting and dancing on the creamy texture of her skin. But then her eyes narrowed and her parted lips looked moist and heavy. She said a few words in Arabic, her voice a throaty purr, and turned away and then slowly back, stretching as thoroughly as a cat stretches and with as much sensuous pleasure; the curves of thigh and hip tautened; a little sound of delight in her throat to tell me I could say or do anything I pleased as long as I didn’t treat her like a princess tonight; her arms upraised and her breasts lifted boldly, too, and tip-hardened with her readiness.

  Then she came to me. It may have been because they had taught her that business with the veils in the palace and everything else that went with it. It may have been because we both knew we had this night only, and afterwards she’d be the queen of Motamar, as cloistered as a harem girl, and afterwards I’d go back to the office on F Street and the bottle of Tennessee Sour Mash in the desk’s deep drawer and the clients who’d fork over a hundred bucks a day for anything you did as long as it wasn’t quite legal. Whatever the reason, Farat had put it into action better than I could put it into words. There was the yielding firmness of Ler body and the shared mounting rhythm and her teeth a gleam of white against my shadow on her face and the glow of those dark eyes just below mine—and the whole world became Farat.

  The next afternoon we reached the Jordanian frontier. Trumpets blared and a flock of horsemen dressed like extras in a Charlton Heston film galloped up and surrounded Farat on her white Arabian stallion. They wheeled, and she rode off with them. Teerah and the camel train followed in their dust.

  They kept Dr. Capehart and me at the border three hours. We had no Jordanian visas. By the time the Jordanian foreign minister and the American consul got their heads together, Farat had probably reached the palace in Amman. I wondered if that was intentional After all, Farat could have vouched for us.

  I decided she hadn’t wanted to say good-bye. I smiled inanely. Dr. Capehart gave me a strange look.

  After last night, who the hell could blame her?

  18

  “WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?” Marianne Baker asked me. “I mean, what really happened, Chet?”

  It was one of those lazy Sunday afternoons in Washington in summer. I’d been back two weeks. Most of the Congressmen were off mending fences in Tarnished Dollar, Nevada or Anatomic City, California, and the steady ninety-degree heat had wilted the enthusiasm of those die-hard tourists who still thought Washington was a swell place to take the kiddies in August.

  We were sitting in the living room of Marianne Baker’s apartment in Georgetown. The housekeeper, Mrs. Gower, had taken the twins, who are my godsons, to Rock Creek Park. Marianne and I were nursing a pair of gin and tonics and had the latest issue of View Magazine spread on the cocktail table before us. There was a double-page spread, a picture of me and Dr. Capehart at Washington National Airport and other shots of the fighting that a View photographer had smuggled out of Motamar. The byline was Marianne Baker’s. The headline said: Washington Investigator Rescues Turner Capehart from Revolution in Motamar.

  “Who’s that handsome devil?” I said, index-fingering the airport picture. “He looks pretty good in there.”

  “You’re changing the subject, Chester Drum.”

  “Me? What subject?”

  Marianne stared at me archly. She was blonde and trim and tanned, and had a penchant for wearing clothes straight out of Vogue. She also had a mind like a well-hidden bear-trap. She was a staff writer for View. Her husband Wally had been their ace photographer, with a Pulitzer Prize to prove it. He’d been killed a couple of years ago when a bomb meant for me had exploded in his car. Marianne and I had seen a lot of each other, not platonically the last year or so, since then.

  “I wrote it,” Marianne said, “just the way you told it. You are now looking at it in black and white. It’s an exciting story, as what story isn’t when you get mixed up in international skullduggery, and I, sir, am grateful for the magazine exclusive. In fact, I think I owe you a dinner.”

  “The Mayflower,” I said promptly, changing the subject again.

  Marianne caught that. She would, of course. “There you go again. Let me finish, okay? I’m grateful, but I wasn’t born yesterday. The thing is, there you were in the royal palace in Qasr Tabuk, and then you made like the Perils of Pauline and with a mighty leap reached the Jordanian frontier.”

  “Oh, that. I already told you. Princess what’s-her-name rescued us. Take a look yourself. It’s in the story. In black and white,” I offered hopefully.

  But Marianne went on relentlessly. “Princess what’s-her-name, is it? She’s only been in the news all week—”

  “Getting married to King Khalil,” I interrupted.

  “—and you make believe you don’t know her name. Now tell me you don’t know what she looks like.”

  “I’d be able to pick her face out of a crowd,” I said.

  “Where were we? Feeling grateful to you and Dr. Capehart, she dropped everything—including her forthcoming groom who happened to be in critical condition—and took you across the desert to Jordan.”

  “Not desert,” I pointed out. “In the south of Motamar they have tufa-stone and low mountains that look like the moon as seen through—”

  “You’re doing it again,” Marianne said ominously.

  “Yes’m. Sorry.”

  “Motivation,” Marianne said, snapping the word out. “The princess had another reason.” I said nothing, and she continued: “I’ve seen pictures of the girl. Everyone has, all week. She doesn’t exactly look like a shrinking violet type.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Oh,” Marianne said, less sure of herself. “Not at all, in the vernacular, raunchy?”

  “Not at all raunchy.”

  “Oh,” Marianne said again. She looked suddenly shy and uncomfortable. “I was going to say, there she was waiting to marry a man she didn’t know and, from the stories going around, had reasons not to like, when along came this footloose private-eye type who has been known to turn a female head or two—”

  “I give up,” I said. “Marianne, you’re too sharp for me.”

  “Oh,” she said a third time, and this time she sounded alarmed. “I was going to say it, but I didn’t. I didn’t say it. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

  Curiosity made the wheels go round inside Marianne’s pretty little head. She knew it, and I knew it, and at the moment she was regretting it. She lighted a cigarette and finished her gin and tonic in a hurry. She cleared her throat. “Those stories about King Khalil,” she said quickly, this time changing the subject herself, “the ones that made the princess figure him for a wrong guy? It looks as if they’re dead and buried, doesn’t it? I mean, Khalil’s finally settling down to the business of running his country. They didn’t even go off on a honeymoon.”

  “He climbed off what almost was his death bed,” I said. “He’s only been up and around—and mostly on a wheelchair at that—a week. I think it’s too early to tell if he’s ready to make like a king or not. Right now, making like a king is something novel to him—like sipping champagne out of a new navel.”

  “I like your turn of phrase,” Marianne said, “but they’d never pass it in View.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “He’s declared political amnesty, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m no
t wild about it. It means specimens like Galib Azam and the fat man—”

  “Baki Osman?”

  “Right, Osman. It means Galib Azam and Osman and El Thamad are still around to tear up the pea-patch. The hell of it is, Farat must have told Khalil how El Thamad tried to murder him. He’s king, for crying out loud, isn’t he? Ordering El Thamad’s execution would be as easy for him as ordering his breakfast coffee.”

  “No it wouldn’t, Chet. Now that Falcon Pasha’s dead, Colonel Azam’s the man to make the former Motamar Legionnaires jump. They’re a potential source of unrest, aren’t they? As for Baki Osman, he’s an oily publicity type, but he knows his way around a press conference. Khalil doesn’t have to worry about him. He’ll blow whichever way the wind blows.”

  “That leaves old corpse-face,” I said.

  “El Thamad? Does he really look like his pictures?”

  “Worse, if anything.”

  “Well, as for El Thamad, he’s the easiest one to figure of all. Khalil can’t have him killed, at least not yet. He’s the commander of the only effective fighting force left in Motamar, now that the Legion’s being disbanded. If he gets it in the neck, every senior officer and junior officer under him would be bucking to wear his uniform. There’d be civil war all over again, and you’ve got to hand it to Khalil for realizing that and restraining himself.”

  “I’ve got to hand it to you for knowing more about Motamar than I do.”

  Marianne shrugged. “It’s my business to know about Motamar. It’s still in the news.”

  “You mean the wedding?” I said, and started thinking about Princess Farat.

  “No. Here’s something I’m sure you don’t know. I just got it myself on the phone before you came. Khalil can’t jail or execute his Unholy Three, but he can—and has—temporarily gotten rid of them. So you see, he’s nobody’s fool.”