Carter Nick : другие произведения.

The Jerusalem File

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Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками
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  FOUR SAVAGE MEN.
  
  LEONARD FOXX — American millionaire, kidnapped in a bloody shootout.
  
  JACKSON ROBEY — AXE's man in Tel Aviv, found dead in an alley, knifed in the back.
  
  AL SHAITAN — leader of a ruthless terror gang, missing along with a billion dollars in untraceable cash.
  
  NICK CARTER — Killmaster, on a lethal mission to rescue the world's ten most important men.
  
  It was to be Nick Carter's most brutal assignment — and it could only end with Killmaster victorious… or dead!
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
   Prologue
  
  One
  
  Two
  
  Three
  
  Four
  
  Five
  
  Six
  
  Seven
  
  Eight
  
  Nine
  
  Ten
  
  Eleven
  
  Twelve
  
  Thirteen
  
  Fourteen
  
  Fifteen
  
  Sixteen
  
  Seventeen
  
  Eighteen
  
  Nineteen
  
  Twenty
  
  Twenty One
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Killmaster
  
  The Jerusalem File
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
  
  
  
  When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them; and bind them in bonds, and either give them free dismission afterwards or exact a ransom…
  
  The Koran
  
  
  
  
  
  Prologue
  
  
  
  
  The air conditioners were working at top speed in the gilded ballroom of the Eden Hotel, but the room was crowded with the two hundred members of a singles party and the smoke and the flesh and the desperation made it feel as hot as the jungle it was.
  
  The big double doors at the end of the room led out to the back, to the rocky path that descended toward the beach, toward the cool fresh air, toward the quiet place where the blue-black ocean met the sandy shore without the help of Sonny, Your Weekend Host.
  
  As the evening wore on, some of the party-goers drifted out The ones who got lucky went arm in arm, the man spreading his jacket on the sand for the girl. The unlucky ones went out alone. To think about why they were so unlucky; to think of money spent and vacation time gone, or to catch some fresh air before trying again. And some just went out to look at the stars before going home to apartments in the States, to cities that don't have stars anymore.
  
  Nobody noticed the tall man in the Cardin jacket who was walking toward the far end of the beach. He was walking quickly, carrying a flashlight, walking with a dog away from the expensive Bahama hotel down to where the beach was darkest and quietest He looked once at the singles in passing. A look that might have been interpreted as one of annoyance. But nobody noticed.
  
  Nobody noticed the helicopter, either. Not until it was so low you thought it was coming straight at you, and if it didn't land fast it was going to go through the big glass doors and land in the middle of the glittering ballroom.
  
  Three hooded men lumped out of the 'copter. They were carrying guns. The man in the Cardin jacket looked up, like everyone else, in quiet amazement. He said, "What the hell! And then they grabbed him, and quickly, roughly, pushed him toward the craft The people on the beach stood immobile, still as the beach palms, wondering if what they were seeing was a dream, and then a small man from Brooklyn yelled, "Stop them!" Something snapped in the quiet crowd, the crowd of hustled big-city losers, and some of them started running toward the dream to fight for perhaps the first time in their lives. And the hooded men smiled and lifted submachine guns and covered the beach with bullets and screams, and under the ratatatat of the guns, the small pop-hiss of a phosphorous grenade, and then the fire-the quick-spreading fire that ate up the dresses bought for die occasion and the little matching sweaters and the rented tuxedos and the small man from Brooklyn and the teacher from Bayonne…
  
  Fourteen dead, twenty-two wounded.
  
  And the man with the dog was taken on the 'copter.
  
  
  
  
  
  One
  
  
  
  
  I was lying naked in the sun. I hadn't moved a muscle in over an hour. I was beginning to like it. I was starting to think about never moving a muscle again. I wondered, if you lay in the desert sun long enough could the heat bake you into a statue? Or a monument? Maybe I could become a monument. Here Lies Nick Carter. I bet I'd make a hot tourist attraction. Families would visit me on four-day weekends and the kiddies would stand around making faces — like they do with Buckingham Palace guards — trying to get me to move a muscle. Only I wouldn't. Maybe I could make the Guinness Book of Records: "The record for not moving a muscle is forty-eight years and twelve minutes as set by Nick Carter in Tucson, Arizona."
  
  I squinted up at the long horizon, at the vaguely blue mountains that ring the desert, and took a deep breath of air so clean it was going to think my lungs were a slum.
  
  I eyed my leg. It was beginning to look like part of me again. At least it was turning the same deep brown as the rest of my body, looking less like a vacuum cleaner hose and more like an actual human leg.
  
  Talking about not moving a muscle, six weeks ago that was a sensitive subject Six weeks ago the cast was still on my leg and Dr. Shilhaus was making clucking sounds and discussing my recovery in "if's" instead of "when's." The bullet that bastard Jennings got lucky with had splintered a bone, and the shards had cut into muscles or nerves or whatever it is that makes a leg do its stuff, and not moving again was something we didn't make jokes about.
  
  I looked back at the view. At the wide world of sand and sage and sun, and off in the distance, a single rider on a bronze mare. I closed my eyes and drifted away.
  
  Whack!
  
  She slapped me with a rolled up paper and woke me up out of X-rated dreams. She said, "Carter, you're hopeless. I leave you for an hour and you fink out."
  
  I opened an eye. Millie. Beautiful. Even in that dopey white nurse's uniform. Big bunch of luscious streaky-blonde hair, gold and platinum and yellow-roses hair, and big brown eyes and a burnished tan and a soft full mouth and then moving down and reading from left to right, two of the world's finer breasts, rich and high and round and then — oh dammit, I moved a muscle.
  
  I groaned and rolled over. "Come on," she said. "Back to work." Work meant physical therapy for my leg. Millie was a physical therapist. For my leg. Anything else was unofficial.
  
  I picked up a towel and wrapped it around me. I was lying on a canvas mat on a massage table on a private balcony off a private bedroom in a sprawling, Spanish mission-style mansion about thirty-five miles southwest of Tucson. Aunt Tillie's Retreat Or as it's less lovingly called, A.T.R. AXE Therapy and Rehabilitation. Nursing home for veterans of cold wars.
  
  I was there courtesy of Harold ("Happy") Jennings, ex-bootlegger, ex-con, expatriate, owner of a tiny inn on the Caicos Islands, just across from Haiti. Happy's inn turned out to be a clearing house for a freelance group called Blood And Vengeance. Its avowed goal was to exact both blood from and vengeance on a selected group of American scientists. The movement was bankrolled by a rich South American ex-Nazi who was making it all worth Happy's while. Blood And Vengeance was a thing of the past, but I'd paid for the victory with a two-week coma and a shattered leg. In return for which, AXE provided me with two months of sun and restorative exercise and Millie Barnes.
  
  Millie Barnes grabbed my left leg and fitted it up with a metal weight. "And stretch," she said, "and flex… and bend… and stretch, two-three — hey! That's pretty good. I bet you'll be walking without crutches next week." I looked at her doubtfully. She shrugged. "I didn't say running."
  
  I smiled. "That's okay, too. I've just decided I'm in no big hurry. I've been lying here thinking that life is short, and too much time is wasted in running."
  
  She raised her eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like a Killmaster line."
  
  I shrugged. "So maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm considering quitting AXE. Lying around. Doing whatever real people do." I squinted up at her. "What do real people do?"
  
  "Lie around wishing they were Nick Carter."
  
  "Like hell."
  
  "Keep moving your leg."
  
  "Who do you wish you were?"
  
  She gave me an open girlish smile. "When I'm with you, I'm happy to be Millie Barnes."
  
  "And when I'm gone?"
  
  "Ah! When you're gone, I shall lock myself in this very room with my memories and my tears and my books of verse." She pursed her lips. "Is that the answer you wanted to hear?"
  
  "I wanted to know what you want out of life."
  
  She was standing to my left, near the balcony rail, arms folded, the sun making yellow stars in her hair. She shrugged. "I haven't thought about wanting things in years."
  
  "…Said Grandma Barnes on her ninetieth birthday. Come on, baby. That's not a thought for a young woman.
  
  She widened her eyes. I'm twenty-eight."
  
  "That old, huh?"
  
  "Keep stretching your leg."
  
  I stretched my leg. She reached out and pushed it up even higher, in a wobbly wrong-end salute to the sun. She took her hands away and I held it up there, a whole lot higher than I'd thought I could. "Next time, push that high yourself." I flexed and bent and pushed that high.
  
  "Millie… If I were to quit…"
  
  "Nonsense, Nick! What you're going through is typical twelfth-week thinking."
  
  "I'll bite. What's that?"
  
  She sighed. "It's simple. First month you guys spend here, you're all in a blazing hurry to get out Second month you concentrate on working hard. Third month — I don't know — your metabolism changes. You get used to all this lying around. You turn philosophical, start quoting Omar Khayyam. Get misty-eyed when you watch The Waltons." She shook her head. "Typical twelfth-week thinking,"
  
  "So what happens next?"
  
  She smiled. "You'll see. Just keep flexing that leg. You'll need it."
  
  The phone rang in my room. Millie went to answer it. I watched the muscles rippling in my leg. It was all coming back. She was probably right. Next week I could throw the crutches away. I'd been keeping the rest of my body in shape with barbells and ropes and a long daily swim, and I still weighed a flat hard 165. The only thing I'd added in my stay at Aunt Tillie's was a fine, ridiculous pirate's mustache. Millie said it made me look Really Evil. I thought I looked like Omar Sharif. Millie said that was the same thing.
  
  She came back out to the balcony door. "Can I trust you to go on working this time? There's a new admission…"
  
  I looked at her and grumbled. "A fine romance. First you leave me for lunch, and now another man. Who is this fellow?"
  
  "Someone named Dunn."
  
  "Dunn from Berlin?"
  
  "The very same."
  
  "Hmm. All things considered, I'm more jealous of lunch."
  
  "Uch!" she said, and came over and kissed me. She meant it to be light. A little joke kiss. Somehow, it turned into something else. Finally she sighed and pulled away.
  
  I said, "Hand me that paper before you go. I think it's time I exercised my brain again too."
  
  She threw me the paper and sashayed off. I folded it back to the front page.
  
  Leonard Foxx had been kidnapped.
  
  Or to put that in the words of the Tucson Sun:
  
  Billionaire hotel czar Leonard Foxx was kidnapped from his Grand Bahama retreat amid a barrage of bullets and grenades.
  
  Carlton Varn, treasurer of Foxx's holding company, received a ransom note early this morning demanding $100 million. The note was signed Al Shaitan, an Arab word meaning "The Devil."
  
  This is the first terrorist act of the group, thought to be a splinter of Black September, the Palestinian commando force responsible for the slayings at the Munich Olympics and the massacres at Rome and Athens airports.
  
  When asked how he planned to raise the money, Varn said the company would have to dump stocks and sell off holdings, "at considerable loss. But," he added, "this isn't the time to think about money. After all, a man's life is at stake."
  
  Yasir Arafat, chief spokesman for the P.L.O. (the Palestinian liberation Organization, steering committee for all fedayeen forces) offered his usual "No comment."
  
  
  
  There was some kind of wild irony in that. Foxx had gone off to the Bahamas in the first place to keep his freedom and his fortune intact. The feds were getting ready to throw the book at him. The leather-bound, gold-engraved Special Edition; the one that lists only the million-dollar crimes — stock fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, tax fraud. But Foxx had escaped. To the safe legal harbor of the Grand Bahamas.
  
  Now for Irony Number Two: Even if Varn paid off the ransom, Foxx's best hope of staying alive was if federal agents kidnapped him back. It was a definitive case of the old idea that the devil you know is better than the devil — or Al Shaitan — you don't.
  
  Washington would get on the case, all right. Not for love of Leonard Foxx. Not even just for the principle involved We'd be on it for the simple self-defensive reason mat a hundred million bucks of American money had to be kept out of terrorist hands.
  
  I started to wonder if AXE was involved. And who at AXE. And what the plan was. I looked out over the sun-baked view and felt a sudden yen for icy sidewalks and cool thinking and the cold hard fact of a gun in my hand.
  
  Millie was right.
  
  The twelfth week was over.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two
  
  
  
  
  Leonard Foxx was dead.
  
  Dead, but he wasn't murdered by Al Shaitan. He simply died. Or as a friend of mine says, "his heart attacked him." After spending two weeks in a terrorist camp, after landing safely at Lucaya's airport, after waving hello to the TV cameras, after paying a hundred million dollars to live — Leonard Foxx died. Three hours home and pfft!
  
  If there's such a thing as Fate, you've got to admit it has a dark sense of humor.
  
  Jehns looked at his cards. "I'm in for a dime.'"
  
  Campbell drew one and bit his Up. Ferrelli said "Stick." I pitched a dime and raised a nickle. A fine looking bunch of gamblers we made. Gathered around a hospital bed. Jehns with his legs attached to the ceiling in that benevolent torture that's known as traction, Campbell with a bandage over one eye and Ferrelli with his fat black four-month beard, sitting in a wheelchair, recovering from all the things that happen when a gang of bullets get you in the gut As for me, I'd walked a mile in the morning and compared with the others, I was feeling healthy.
  
  I turned to Jehns. Our Man In Damascus. Or at least he was till a week ago. He was fairly new to AXE, but he knew the Middle East. "So what do you think they'll do with the money?"
  
  "Match you that nickle." He tossed a nickle onto the bed. "Hell, I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine." He looked up from his cards. "What's your guess?"
  
  I shrugged. "I don't know. But I doubt they'll use it to stock up on canned goods, so I guess we just bought ourselves a big bunch of terror. But what kind of terror?"
  
  Campbell considered playing a dime. "Maybe they'll buy some more SAM-7 missiles. Hit a few planes coming in to land. Hey — when is hunting season on 747s?"
  
  Ferrelli said "Any month with a four in it"
  
  "Funny," I said. "Are we playing cards?"
  
  Campbell decided to pitch the dime. Knowing Campbell, he had a good hand. "Worst part is," he turned to Ferrelli, "whatever kind of terror they decide to buy, they'll be buying it with good old American money."
  
  "Correction. With Leonard Foxx's money." Ferrelli grinned and stroked his beard. "The Leonard Foxx Memorial Terror."
  
  Campbell nodded. "And I don't suppose Foxx is losing much sleep."
  
  "Are you kidding?" Ferrelli folded his cards. "Where Foxx is now, they don't have sleep. The fire and brimstone keep you awake. Man, I hear that was one bad soul."
  
  Jehns looked at Ferrelli Jehns had a British officer's face. Desert tan, sun-bleached blond hair; a perfect foil for the ice blue eyes. Jehns smiled. "I think I detect the green sound of jealousy."
  
  I gave him a frown. "Now who could be jealous of the late Leonard Foxx? I mean, who'd want a couple of billion dollars, a castle in Spain, a villa in Greece, a private plane, a hundred-foot yacht and a couple of world-famous movie star girlfriends? Hell! Ferrelli has better values than that don't you Ferrelli?"
  
  Ferrelli nodded. "Sure. Stuff like that can ruin your soul."
  
  "Right," I said. The best things in life are the sun and the moon and Oreo cookies."
  
  "And my health," Ferrelli said. "I got my health."
  
  "You won't if you don't get back to bed." Millie was standing in the doorway. She walked over to the window and opened it wide. "My God," she said, "who were you electing? This looks like the original smoke-filled room." She turned to me. "Dr. Shilhaus wants to see you in fifteen minutes, Nick." She cleared her throat. "He also wants to see Ferrelli in bed and Campbell in the gym."
  
  "And Jehns?" said Ferrelli. "What would he like to see Jehns in?"
  
  "In drag," suggested Campbell.
  
  "In debt," said Ferrelli.
  
  "Insane," said Campbell.
  
  "In…"
  
  "Out!" said Millie.
  
  They went.
  
  Millie sat down in a black plastic chair. "That's quite some story about Leonard Foxx. I couldn't believe it when I heard the news. What a wild ending."
  
  I shook my head. "It's far from an ending, baby doll. It may be the end of Leonard Foxx, but it's just the beginning of something else. Of whatever kind of capers they're planning with the money."
  
  Millie sighed. "I know what kind of capers I'd plan. Come on, ask me, fellas — mink capers."
  
  Jehns turned and gave her an ice-blue look. "Would you really?" He was suddenly dead earnest. His forehead furrowed into deep lines. "What I mean is — are those things important to you?"
  
  She paused for an instant and her eyes changed. As though she'd read something between the lines. "No," she said slowly. "No, they're not, Ted. Not at all." She switched tones abruptly. "So you think Al Shaitan will spend the money on terror."
  
  Jehns shifted too. "Unless we manage to find them first."
  
  Millie looked quickly from Jehns to me to Jehns again. "By 'we,' I assume you're referring to AXE?"
  
  He looked at his leg hanging in traction from the ceiling. "Well, let's put it this way — I don't mean me. Thanks to that stupid idiot drunk. You know, once upon a time an Arab gypsy told me that Tuesday was my unlucky day. So every Monday night, I clean my gun and I never arrange dark business for Tuesday. So what happens? I'm walking down the street on an innocent errand and a stoned tourist runs me down with his car. When?"
  
  "On a Friday?"
  
  Jehns ignored me. "And I'd give my right foot to be in Syria now."
  
  I looked at his foot. I said, "No one would take it."
  
  He continued to ignore me, and looked at Millie. "Anyway, in answer to your question, love, you can bet your bottom that a lot of guys are looking for Shaitan right now." Now he turned to me. "Christ, they had over two weeks — a whole wide world of hot-shot agents — and they couldn't come up with a damned thing."
  
  "And then Foxx goes and dies before he can talk. I bet Washington really went ape over that." I squinted at Jehns. "You think AXE was on it?" He started to shrug.
  
  Millie said quickly, "About Al Shaitan — what kind of action do you think they're planning? I mean, against whom?"
  
  Jehns shrugged again. "It depends on who Al Shaitan is. There are dozens of factions in the fedayeen and they all have slightly different goals and a slightly different enemy list."
  
  Millie frowned. "Would you mind explaining?"
  
  He gave her a wink. "I love explaining. It makes me feel smart. Look: you've got a couple of extremist groups who not only want to put Israel off the map, they also want to overthrow the Arab regimes — start a whole revolution. And if Al Shaitan is part of that gang, the 'against whom' list can get pretty long. Then, on the other hand, there's Al Fatah, the biggest group. They more or less take a compromise line — which may be a crock. Because Black September — the bloodiest guys in the whole P.L.O. — are supposed to be a part of Fatah." He threw up his hands. "So you try to figure it out."
  
  "But the paper said Shaitan might be part of Black September." Millie looked at me. "What does that say about them?"
  
  I shook my head. "Absolutely nothing. Look, the reason they've got so many factions is that everybody's got his own ideas. So they form a group, and pretty soon the group starts to splinter into groups, and pretty soon the splinters splinter into groups, and for all we know Shaitan could be six silly guys who didn't like what they were getting for supper." I turned to Jehns. "How's that for a theory? A bunch of power-mad vegetarians?"
  
  Jehns was giving me a very strange look.
  
  I frowned at him. "That — in case you didn't get it — was a joke."
  
  He kept on giving me a very strange look. "You might be right."
  
  I turned to Millie. "I think he needs a shot."
  
  "I'm perfectly fine." He was still looking strange. "I'm trying to tell you you might be right. That Al Shaitan could be anything at all. Could want anything at all. Suppose they were only six guys — you wouldn't need more to pull off the Foxx nab…"
  
  "So?"
  
  "So — so maybe they are off on their own. Maybe they do have their own nutty scheme."
  
  "Like maybe they want to legislate carrots?"
  
  "Or maybe they want to blow up the world."
  
  We were suddenly exchanging a long quiet look. We'd come up with one hell of a messy idea. If Shaitan were six crazies off on their own, they'd be a lot harder to second guess. Their moves and their plans could be anything at all Absolutely anything.
  
  I thought about that a few minutes later as Shilhaus was testing and prodding my leg and pronouncing me better. "Much better, N3. Almost a hundred percent" He smiled.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Millie was smiling. "Much better."
  
  I slapped her on her bare beautiful bottom. "Unromantic bitch," I said. "Talking about my leg at a time like this…"
  
  "Oh well," she said archly, "I couldn't help but notice…"
  
  "You're not supposed to notice anything at all. You're supposed to be too busy seeing colored lights."
  
  "Oh those," she said, running her finger down my back, very slowly, all down my back. "You mean those red and blue shimmery things that go on when the bells ring…?"
  
  I gave her a look. "You're just lucky," I said, pulling her toward me, "that J happen to like smart-mouth women." My hands were making a cup around her breasts and my cup was running over with her luscious womanliness.
  
  "Darling?" she said very softly, "Just for the record" — she kissed my ear — "you're a whole spectacular sound-and-light show."
  
  "And would you" — I kissed her breast — "like to play that record again?"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Millie was awake. I felt her eyelashes flick against my shoulder. She was pretending to be asleep and I did her the favor of pretending to believe her. When a woman plays that particular game, she's usually got a pretty good reason. And Millie didn't play pointless games.
  
  It was quiet in the room, and dark, except for the moonlight that slanted through the blinds making a pattern of stripes on the ceiling. The night was cool and the lush brown body that was wrapped around mine was covered over with a dark blue blanket I didn't have to see it. It floated in my mind, danced between strips of moon on the ceiling.
  
  Millie was a paradox. A complexly simple girl. She had an unshakable matter-of-factness. Nothing fazed Millie. She could look you in the eye even if half your face were blown away. And the look wouldn't hold either pity or fear. And you'd know she wasn't putting on an act.
  
  Everything with Millie was matter-of-fact Including us. It was a good deep friendship that included sex, but it wasn't a love affair. Millie had had one love affair once — Sam, but Sam had died.
  
  Only the picture wasn't right Nobody ever "never loves again." If Juliet hadn't bumped herself off, four years later she'd have married someone else, and five'll get you ten, she'd have married for love. Maybe not exactly the same kind of love, but love Just the same. Because loving is like any other talent. If you do something well, you need to do it again. Millie had the talent. She was just scared to use it.
  
  She stirred against my shoulder. "What time is it?" she asked.
  
  It was eleven o'clock.
  
  I stretched out my leg and turned on the television set with my toes. She said, "Stop showing off," and yawned discreetly.
  
  The set flickered on and a woman announced to a sleepy America that she didn't worry about underarm odor. Millie pulled the pillow up over her face. "If you're watching the movie, I'll tell you how it ends. The Americans, the cowboys, and the cops always win."
  
  I said, "I hate to tell you, but I plan to watch the news."
  
  "The same ending. The Americans, the cowboys, and the cops always win."
  
  The newscaster was saying: "Terror is back in the headlines again." I sat up straight. Millie rolled over and back into my arms.
  
  "Three days after Leonard Foxx's death — another daredevil kidnapping. This time on the Italian Riviera, as American millionaire Harlow Wilts was snatched from his private vacation villa. Wilts, who owns the controlling interest in the Cottage Motel chain, had Just arrived in Italy to discuss plans for buying the Ronaldi Hotel." (A shot of Wilts arriving in Italy.) "Chris Walker, in Minnesota, spoke with his wife…"
  
  The camera cut to a palacial living room in a millionaire's suburb in Somewhere, Minnesota, where a weeping Mrs. Wilts told the same cold story. The kidnappers wanted a hundred million dollars. In two weeks. In cash. They called themselves Al Shaitan. The Devil.
  
  Whatever they planned to buy with the money, the price was now up to two hundred million. And if somebody didn't rescue Wilts, there was going to be The Devil to pay.
  
  I closed my eyes. Just what the world needs now. A two-hundred-million-dollar terror spree.
  
  Millie reached over and turned off the set. "Hold me," she said. "Just hold me, will you?"
  
  I took her in my arms. She was really shaky. I said, "Honey — hey! What's all this? Listen, nobody's after you."
  
  "Mmm, I know. But I've got an awful feeling that someone's after you. That this is the last night we'll be together."
  
  I frowned. "Come on. Who's after me? Who in the world even knows that I'm here?"
  
  "AXE " she said quietly. "AXE knows you're here."
  
  We looked at each other for a very long time. And suddenly it wasn't matter-of-fact. Suddenly, it got a lot more than just friendly.
  
  "You know…"she began.
  
  I kissed her. "I know.'"
  
  I pulled her closer, close as we could get, and after that, nothing was matter-of-fact.
  
  Id fact, it mattered.
  
  The next morning, Hawk phoned from AXE in Washington and by nightfall I was flying to the Middle East Assignment: Find and stop The Devil.
  
  
  
  
  
  Three
  
  
  
  
  Rehov Dizengoff is the Broadway of Tel Aviv. Or to be more exact, it's Picadilly Circus, the Sunset Strip, and Miami's Collins Avenue rolled into one. It's cafes, shops, bars, broads, diamonds, denim, music, theatres, lights, noise, cars, crowds, and brand new plastic pizza stands.
  
  I was sitting at a table in an outdoor cafe, nursing my third Gold Star beer and watching the sun set over the city. It was like a fat red beach ball, tumbling slowly through an orange sky.
  
  I was here because Jackson Robey was dead. Robey had been based in Tel Aviv. But he got around. His visa had defined him as an American journalist, Middle East stringer for World magazine. The title allowed him to ask a lot of questions and send back cables, cryptic and otherwise, to Amalgamated Press and Wire Service. Which just so happens to be Washington AXE. His real occupation was an AXE observer.
  
  An observer's job is pretty much what it sounds like. To observe. To know what's up in his part of the world. Which means, among other things, knowing who the informers and hired muscles and local bandits are, as well as finding out who are the guys who can lend you a boat, give you a hideout, or cut out a bullet. Robey was good. Better than good. Robey was a thinker. He had one of those analytic chess-master minds. He'd been at the job for over three years and he hadn't called us a wrong shot yet. So when Robey cabled, in four-star code, "Found the Devil. Send troops," there was only one question left to ask: Was there room on Mount Rushmore for Robey's face?
  
  Only one hour later, Robey was dead. He'd been knifed in the back in a Jerusalem alley. When it had happened, Foxx still had been a captive, but if Robey really had known where the millionaire was, he hadn't had time to tell anyone else. At least he hadn't had time to tell AXE.
  
  It was my job to try to pick up the threads. To follow Robey's trail to the Al Shaitan hideout and rescue the new victim, Harlow Wilts. I'd decided to start in Tel Aviv because that's where Jackson Robey had started. Something he'd learned in Tel Aviv had sent him off on a trail to Jerusalem.
  
  Maybe.
  
  Maybe is the best you get. An agent's job is made of a mountain of maybes, a giant haystack of probabilities. And you're always playing find-the-needle, and you're always playing the game against time.
  
  I looked at my watch. It was time to go. I flagged the waiter and called for the check while the sky produced roses out of thin air and then blushed to a deep purpled pink, as though it heard all the cameras clicking and got self-conscious about the whole thing.
  
  I headed through the crowd toward Allenby Street, watching the girls in the low-slung jeans and the soft, loose, embroidered shirts that hinted at round, bra-less riches. I watched the boys watching the girls, and the tourist women in cotton dresses watching, with equally lusty eyes, the displays of pastries on the cafe carts.
  
  I found a taxi and gave an address — the wrong one — in Jaffa, the old Arab city, which was a few miles south and a couple of centuries back in time. Back into narrow winding streets and vaulted stone alleys and Casbah-like mazes. Back into the real Middle East and away from the Universal Modern that seems to be turning every city in the world into every other city in the world.
  
  I paid the driver and walked the four blocks to Rehov Sheeshim, to the squat, thick-walled, red-roofed building. Through a stone courtyard and up one flight.
  
  I knocked three times on the heavy wood door.
  
  "Mah?" said a voice. It was sharp and deep.
  
  "Gladat vanil," I answered, falsetto.
  
  "Hayeem har?" He was starting to laugh.
  
  "Loh," I sopranoed. "Yorad gehshem."
  
  One translation of that would be: "What?" "Vanilla ice cream." "Is it cold?" "No, it's snowing." Another translation was that I hadn't been tailed.
  
  The door opened. Benyamin was smiling. He gestured me in to a dark comfortable mess of a room. "Every time I have to use one of those codes I feel like a goddamned comic-strip agent. You want some cognac?"
  
  I said I did.
  
  He went to the kitchen and poured two glasses. David Benyamin was a first rank agent of Shim Bet, Israeli intelligence. I'd worked with him about ten years before and I was here because Robey might have worked with him too. A lone AXE observer in a friendly country is bound to cooperate with local agents. And if he hadn't been in touch with Benyamin, then maybe Benyamin would know who he had been in contact with.
  
  He came back with the glasses and the bottle and settled his gangling six-foot frame on the worn brown leather sofa Raising his glass, he said, "Le chaim. Good to see you, Carter." He put his feet up on a scarred table.
  
  Benyamin had changed. He'd lost the glossy young-warrior look with its cool assumptions of immortality. Now he looked like a real warrior. Both harder and softer than the boy he'd been. The face was sculptured down to basic angles and the sea-blue eyes were framed with squint lines. He was wearing an itchy-looking sweater and jeans.
  
  I lit a cigarette. "I told Vadim why I wanted to see you. So I suppose I don't have to start from the top."
  
  He shook his head. "No. I understand the problem. The trouble is that our mutual friend was somewhat lacking in cooperative spirit. Oh yes, of course," he shrugged and leaned back, "if I needed information, if he had it, he'd tell me. If I asked him. He didn't exactly volunteer."
  
  I looked at him and smiled. "Tell me," I said, "if you knew where the Shaitan was hiding, would you rush to a phone booth and telephone AXE?"
  
  Benyamin guffawed. "All right," he said. "So that makes us even. If I knew, I'd go in there with my own men and take them for the greater glory of Israel. But if I knew and you asked me, I'd be honor-bound to tell you. And since I gather you're asking — no. He didn't tell me anything about where Al Shaitan might be."
  
  "Know anyone else he might have told?"
  
  "In Shin Bet? No. If he'd told anybody it would have been me. I did a little bit of digging for you. Came up with something that might mean nothing, or it might be a place to start. Just before Robey left Tel Aviv for Jerusalem, he drew about twelve thousand pounds from his fund."
  
  "Three thousand dollars."
  
  "Yes. Bight"
  
  "Payoff to someone?"
  
  "So I'd imagine. And one thing I know about Jackson Robey. He never paid off till he checked the information. So you have to figure that for three thousand dollars, somebody told him a great big truth."
  
  "Which leaves the question: Was the money for somebody here in Tel Aviv — or for someone he was going to meet in Jerusalem?"
  
  Benyamin smiled. "It does leave that question." He poured another round of the slightly sweet cognac. "And again — if I knew the answer, I'd tell you. And again — I don't" He took a quick swallow and made a face. "Look," he said, "this Shaitan gang has us worried too. My God, we're the ones they're really after. If they get their hands on that four hundred million…"
  
  "Wait a second! Four? Where I come from, one and one makes two. Foxx and Wilts. Two hundred million."
  
  "And Jefferson and Miles. Four hundred million." He crossed the room and picked up a copy of the Jerusalem Post. "Here. Bead."
  
  He tossed me the paper. I read the account Roger R. Jefferson, Chairman of the Board of National Motors. Thurgood Miles, a multi-minion dollar dog food heir. Both had been kidnapped the night before, snatched from the safety of their homes in the States. Now there were three guys I had to rescue. I put down the paper.
  
  "This Shaitan sounds too slick to be true."
  
  Benyamin nodded. "Don't they, though." He smiled grimly. "And the myth of Arab inefficiency takes another major dive to the dust"
  
  I studied him and sighed. "You were saying Shin Bet is worried too…"
  
  "Sure. Somebody's working on it." He shook his head. "But who? Where? I'm as much in the dark as you are. The only thing we can safely assume is that Shaitan's base is not in Israel. That leaves a lot of other choices. Libya? Lebanon? Syria? Iraq? The guerrillas are branching out."
  
  "Okay, so we know it's the Middle East — and Robey's first lead came from Tel Aviv."
  
  "Or Jerusalem. Look, Vadim knows why you're here. You spoke to him today. Vadim is my boss like Hawk is yours. So if he didn't tell you anything, you can either figure he doesn't know anything — or he knows something and doesn't want to tell you. Me, I'm up to here in another case. The best I can do is point you in what might be the right direction and tell you that if you're ever pinned in an alley with your back to the wall and six guns at your gut — if you can get to a phonebooth, call and I'll come."
  
  "Thanks, David. You're a real peach."
  
  He smiled. "They don't come better than me. You want the leads?"
  
  "Do I have to answer?"
  
  "I'd suggest you look up a Sarah Lavie. Allenby Street here in Tel Aviv. American expatriate. A teacher, I think. She and Robey were… shaking up. Is that the word?"
  
  "Shacking," I laughed. "But it's the same thing."
  
  He thought about that for a minute and smiled. Then he started laughing. A low, full, rolling sound. It reminded me of evenings a long time ago. David and his girl. I asked how she was.
  
  His eyes greyed over. "Daphna is dead." He reached for a cigarette, his face made of stone. I knew enough not to say a paltry "I'm sorry." He continued evenly. "I've got another hunch you might want to follow." His eyes were begging me not to make him feel.
  
  "Shoot," I said.
  
  "Restaurant down on El Jazzar Street. And if you want a hint about the neighborhood, El Jazzar is the Arab word for cutthroat Anyway, we've had our eye on the place and Robey was seen going in there once. Maybe he had a contact there."
  
  Another forty-to-one-shot maybe.
  
  He shrugged broadly. "I know it's not much, but it's all I can think of." He leaned back and met my eyes. "My own sources don't know anything useful."
  
  "And if they did?"
  
  He cleared his throat "I'd tell you."
  
  "Honor bright?"
  
  "Go to hell."
  
  I stood up. "Not me. I'm going to heaven. For my clean thoughts and my good deeds." I took a last quick gulp of the cognac.
  
  He held out his hand. "Good luck," he said. "And I mean it Nick. If you need any help, you can count on me."
  
  "I know," I smiled. "As long as I've got a dime for the phone."
  
  
  
  
  
  Four
  
  
  
  
  Talk about Hell. The inside of the Club El Jazzar looked like Dante's Seventh Circle. The spot they reserve for murderers. It was a men-only crowd and to a man they looked like they'd sooner kill you than finish their drinks.
  
  The room was small and crowded and dark, and painted a deep, blistering purple. Scimitars hung from tassled cords, and snakes of smoke climbed up the walls, heading for the low, mottled ceiling where the black wings of the whirling fan clubbed them back into senseless clouds. From somewhere in the back came the twang of an oud and the tinny jangle of a tambourine.
  
  When I walked through the door, everything stopped. Forty pairs of eyes whipped through the air; eighty eyes moving at the same exact instant. You could almost hear them all go whizz. Then the talk began again. Lower. Rumbling. And the tambourine.
  
  A small dark man in a sweat-drenched shirt walked over and gave me a small dark look. He folded his arms and stared at me, too short to make his macho work well. He spat on the floor. Missing my shoe by half an inch.
  
  I smiled. "And good evening to you, too."
  
  He cocked his head. "Amerikani?"
  
  "Right. American. Hungry American. Friend of mine from World recommended you place." I said it loud.
  
  He shifted his weight; erased and then redrew his frown. "You come for food?"
  
  I nodded. "And drink."
  
  He nodded. "Yavoh. We give you good." I already had heartburn from smelling his breath, and from the way he'd said, "We give you good," I guessed it was a good idea I'd decided to carry a bottle of charcoal. Activated charcoal is a damned good antidote for just about any poison or drug that somebody's likely to slip in your drink. Or lace in your stew. A tablespoon in a glass of water and you'll probably live to tell the story.
  
  He led me down the length of the crowded room, past the chorus of whizzing eyes, into a second room in the back. Led me to a wine-colored plastic booth that seemed to be ringside to a small stage. Two young toughs in black satin shirts stood near the stage strumming out music, while a third, in a flowing white burnoose, absently shook the tambourine.
  
  I hadn't an idea in hell where I was. I'd stepped onto somebody's turf all right A gangland den. But what gang?
  
  A big broad guy came over to the table. He was a dark, intense Arab. He reached for my pack of cigarettes, took one, lit it, dragged, sat down, and examined the gold on the mouthpiece tip. "American?" He spoke with a slight accent.
  
  "Me, yes. The cigarettes, no."
  
  "Turkish?"
  
  "Yeah. Right. Turkish." I was waiting for him to get to the point Or at least to what I hoped was the point My plan was simple. Dumb, but simple. I was playing two maybes against the middle. Maybe number one was the double-odds chance that maybe Robey's informer was here and that maybe he'd try to make a contact, hoping to earn another quick three grand. Maybe number two was that maybe Robey's assassin was here. That could save me some big time too. The fastest way to learn who your enemy is, is to walk into an alley and see who tries to kill you.
  
  I studied the man across the table. He was hard, square-jawed and rippling with muscles. Under the tight green cotton t-shirt. Under the bulging faded Jeans. The waiter arrived. I ordered arak. A bottle. Two glasses.
  
  The man across the table said, "Are you slumming?"
  
  "Slumming?"
  
  He narrowed his eyes in practiced defiance. "In case you haven't noticed, this is a slum. No big hotels with oceanfront views. No sunny rooms with private baths."
  
  I sighed heavily. "So where does that lead us? To rhetoric or a fight in the alley?" I shook my head. "Listen, my friend, I've heard it all. I cover the scenes for World Magazine." I let that sink in before I went on. "And I've heard all the words and I've seen all the wars and right now I'd Just like to sit and drink and not get into any hot-breathed hassle."
  
  "World Magazine," he said levelly.
  
  I said, "Uh huh," and lit a cigarette. The arak came.
  
  He said, "What's your name?"
  
  I said, "MacKenzie."
  
  "I doubt it."
  
  I said, "What's yours?"
  
  "Yousef," he told me. "Abu Abdelkhir Shukair Yousef."
  
  "All right," I said. "I don't doubt it"
  
  A bright light cut through the smoke to the stage and the tambourine man yelled, "Naam! Naam!" and went into a palsied frenzy of Jangles. The whistles started before she came out; a dusky girl in a shimmering silver sliver of a top and skirt that fell like a beaded curtain from a band that began way, way below the waist. Rivers of dark hair tumbled down her back, framing a face that was delicate, fine, and almost completely without makeup.
  
  The music started, tuneless almost hypnotic in its monotony. And the girl started, slowly at first. Undulating, flowing, till her body seemed to be made of liquid, and the lights bounced off the silver of her dress like stars in a rippling fantasy sky, and her body kept melting, that incredible body.
  
  Let me tell you about belly dancers. They're usually overweight, greasy broads with four tons of makeup and four bellies. And when ladies like that start throwing it around, you sit there hoping it isn't catching. This girl was something else. You've never dreamt better. Not even in your wildest, horniest dreams.
  
  The dance, if that's what you call it, ended. I turned to Yousef. He was gone. The sweaty proprietor was leaning over the booth instead, his face distorted in a rusty smile. I decided I liked him better when he frowned. "Food," he said. "You say you want food?" I said I did. His smile broadened. "We give you good." It came out like a scale of descending notes. The tambourine Jangled.
  
  He walked away. I sipped my arak, a punchy drink, a little like ouzo or Turkish raki. Three thugs from the bar came cruising past the table, a trio of printed nylon shirts, open to the waist, baring muscles and elaborate medallions. A sullen waiter arrived with the food. Speedy eyes casing me up and down. The food looked okay, meaning I wouldn't need miracle cures. Bromo, yes. Charcoal, no. I started to eat.
  
  The trio came back, taking me in, calculating height and weight and power. They went back to the bar and reported their findings to the others. To the gang.
  
  What gang?
  
  Whatever their game was, it wasn't subtlety. Three other boys from the bar took a stroll. A-one and a-two and a-three and a — strides timed to the Jangling beat. They passed me and turned and sauntered on back. Average height: five foot ten; average age: twenty-one. They reached my table and slumped themselves into the booth around me. I went on eating. They watched. The one in the purple and orange shirt leaned on the table and hunched forward. He had long hair and a fleshy, pouting, tough-guy face. "So," he said in English," you like shashlik?"
  
  Here we go, I thought. It's going to be that kind of a scene. A 1950s hood-style confrontation, dated smart-ass dumb-dumb stuff.
  
  "No," I said. "I ordered mosquitos. But I've learned in life to take what I get. Like you guys, for instance." I went on eating.
  
  Purple-and-Orange turned to Red Stripes. "Smart," he said. "The American is smart."
  
  "Smart," said Red Stripes, who wasn't smart enough to think of something else.
  
  "Now, I don't know…" It was Green Flowers with a wide smirk. "I don't think he's all that smart."
  
  Happy New Year, '53, I said to myself. They weren't armed, that much I knew. The tight shiny shirts and the tight shiny pants were molded so close to their nervous bodies, they couldn't conceal even cuticle scissors. I could take them all on and walk away smiling. But they didn't know it, or they didn't care. They were young and angry and begging for a fight.
  
  "Not so smart," said Purple-and-Orange. I figured he was Leader Of The Pack. (What pack?) "Not so smart to come El Jazzar. You know what means El Jazzar?"
  
  I sighed. "Listen, fellas. I think it's swell of you to come over here. I mean, not many people would take time out just to cheer up a lonely stranger. So I want you to know it's with great gratitude and high appreciation that I tell you now — buzz off."
  
  There was a small conference on the meaning of "buzz off." I let my right hand slip to my lap, in case I had to reach for my Luger. The flash of Wilhelmina would scare them off. They'd be no trouble to take on alone, but once a fist fight started in here, I'd be fighting the entire clientele. And sixty to one are not my best odds.
  
  They de-coded "buzz off" and made their first move-menacing faces, rising haunches. I had my palm on the butt of my gun, but it wasn't Wilhelmina's butt that came to the rescue. The belly dancer came back on the stage. "Gentlemen," she said, in Arabic, "I wish for assistance in special dance. Who gives me help?" She looked around the room. "You!" she said quickly to Purple-and-Orange. She crooked her finger in a come-on gesture. "Come," she coaxed.
  
  He hesitated. Half annoyed, half flattered. "Come," she said again. "Or are you shy? Ah, too shy? Ah, too bad!" She pursed her lips and flicked her hips. "Big man scared of such a little girl?"
  
  The room laughed. That did it Purple-and-Orange leaped on the stage. She ran a hand through his long black hair. "Perhaps you will need your friends to protect you. Come on, friends." She peered through the lights and beckoned with her finger. "Come protect him."
  
  She did a bump. Again, hot laughs from the smoky room. And in few seconds, Red Stripes and Green Flowers were up on the stage.
  
  The music started. Her body started. Weaving and floating around the three men. Arms dipping, flitting, teasing; back arching, hips thrusting. She was thin by Middle Eastern standards. Firm and lithe, with just the gentlest swell of a belly. Narrow waist. Round, gorgeous, melon breasts.
  
  She was looking at me.
  
  She was still looking.
  
  She gestured once, abruptly, with her head. A second later she did it again, looked in my eyes and tossed her head; moved her eyes in the direction of the door. The international language for Scram.
  
  I took her advice. She'd gotten the kiddies off my back. And maybe it wasn't coincidence. Besides, I was finished at El Jazzar. I'd shown my face and flashed my bait. Word would get around. If somebody wanted to find me, he would. And there might be a reason for getting out now. Maybe somebody wanted to meet me. Or maybe somebody wanted to kill me. I threw down a bunch of bills and left.
  
  No trouble getting out through the bar. Nobody's eyes so much as whizzed. That should have been my first hint.
  
  I got to the street. In front of the club, I lit a cigarette. I listened for sounds that might be shoes scuffling on the broken-stone street, a knife blade clicking out of its shell, or a long breath taken before a leap. But I heard nothing.
  
  I started walking. The street was no more than twelve feet wide; wall to wall twelve feet wide. The buildings leaned in. My footsteps echoed. Still no sounds, nothing but the narrow winding streets, the yawl of a cat, the light of the moon.
  
  Blam! He leaped from the arch of a window, a barrel of a man crashing into me, mid-shoulder, taking me with him on a long, spiraling, backward ride. The impact took both of us through the air and rolled us over to the mouth of an alley.
  
  They were waiting, six of them, raring to go. And these weren't eager, sloppy kids. These were the grownups and they knew their stuff. The barrel rolled off and I sprinted up, slicking Hugo, my Stiletto, into my palm. But it was hopeless. Two more guys jumped out from behind, jailing my arms, looping my neck.
  
  I kicked at the first advancing groin and tried to judo my way out of jail. No way. The only thing I'd fought in the last fourteen weeks was the punching bag at Aunt Tillie's. And punching bags don't punch back. My timing stank. They were all over me, butting my gut, blasting my jaw, and somebody's boot howled into my shin, my newly-minted left shin, and if you want to know what happened after that, you'd better ask them. I was out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Five
  
  
  
  
  The first thing I saw was a sea of black. Then, slowly, the stars came out. And a crescent moon. I figured I hadn't died and gone to heaven because I figure when you're dead, your jaw doesn't feel like a bruised melon and your leg isn't sending you Morse code messages of pain.
  
  My eyes adjusted. I was looking through a skylight, lying on a daybed in a large room. A studio. An artist's studio. It was lit by candles on tall stands, and they threw sharp shadows on the bare wood floors and the canvases stacked up against the walk.
  
  At the end of the room, maybe thirty feet away, Abu Abdelkhir Shukair Yousef sat on a chair examining my gun.
  
  I closed my eyes and thought about that. Okay, I'd gone to El Jazzar, brainless and rusty and asking for trouble and the whimsical genie had granted my wish. Three stupid moves in one short evening. Breaking a world's record for stupidity. Quick. Call Guinness. I knew I'd make his record book sooner or later.
  
  First, I'd been set up by a rotten bellydancing broad; second, I'd been beaten up by a gang of thugs in an alley; third, the most stupid of all, I'd thought I was smart Chutzpah, that's the word. More guts than sense. And now I was stuck with playing it out.
  
  I tried to get up. My body didn't think that was such a good idea. In fact, it told my head to take a flying leap. My head was obeying — round and round and round.
  
  Yousef was starting to cross the room. Gun in hand — Luger Wilhelmina.
  
  He said, "It seems you've had a small fight."
  
  It didn't feel so small."
  
  He laughed without humor. "Around here — if you live through the fight, we consider it small." He lotused himself onto the floor and handed me the gun. "I think you lose this." He pulled out my stiletto. "And also this."
  
  "Well, I'll be damned." I took the Luger and shoved it in my waistband and slipped the stiletto back into its sheath. I looked at Yousef. He'd lost the sullen cutthroat look and was watching me with quiet appraisal.
  
  "How did I get here?"
  
  "I thought you would ask. I found you in the alley."
  
  I winced at the phrase. It made me feel like an orange peel, or a bag of leaking coffee grounds. Things you find in alleys.
  
  "I also found your gun behind a pillar. They did a pretty good job on you."
  
  " 'Good' depends on where you're sitting." I met his eyes. "Where are you sitting?"
  
  "You could say I am not a good friend of the gang."
  
  Now. At last. "What gang?"
  
  "Do you want a drink?"
  
  "What gang?"
  
  He got up and found a bottle of vodka. "To start with," he said from across the room, "they call themselves B'nai Megiddo. In English: Sons of Armageddon. And if you happen to remember your Bible — "
  
  "Armageddon is the end of the world."
  
  "You're close. It's where they fight the final war."
  
  "My head is where they fought the final war. Who are those guys? And what have they got against my head?"
  
  He handed me the bottle. I took a belt from it and studied his face. A big, bony, bent-nosed face. Close-cropped hair. Smart-sad eyes. Now they flickered with mild amusement. "Maybe they only wanted to rob you… or maybe they understand who you are."
  
  "Who? Me? MacKenzie of World?"
  
  He shook his head. "And I am King Faisal. I don't think Megiddo knows who you are, but I do. You worked with Robey and so did I. And reporters do not carry Lugers and stilettos. Now, you want to talk business or not?"
  
  "How much does it cost?"
  
  "Five hundred dollars in your kind of money."
  
  "What Robey was paying?"
  
  "Yes. Exactly. I throw in saving your life for nothing."
  
  I took another drink. "How about the vodka? Is that on the house?"
  
  He leaned back and gave me a cool narrow look. "Ah, yes. You resent me for charging. The pure-minded, high-principled American and the nasty, hustling, amoral Arab."
  
  I shook my head. "Uh uh. Wrong. And while we're doing the stereotypes, I resent being thought of as pure-minded." I handed him the bottle. "But you're right about one thing. I am suspicious of guys who sell news because news is something you can sell two times. Once to each side. Neat double profit"
  
  His hand gripped the bottle. His eyes cut mine. "That doesn't apply."
  
  Our eyes dueled for another few seconds. "Okay," I said, "I think I buy that. For openers, tell me — how did you get in the newspaper game?"
  
  "For openers," he repeated, filing the phrase, "I am a Druse. You understand?"
  
  I understood. The Druse are a small Islamic sect, persecuted in most Arab countries. About 40,000 of them live in Israel and live much better than under the Arabs. I let him go on.
  
  "Originally I come from the Golan Heights. The land Israel won in 1967. But I am not a vegetable farmer. And I am not a basketweaver." I glanced quickly at the stacks of canvas. Strong, rocky, black landscapes. "So," he said simply, "I come to Tel Aviv."
  
  "With no love lost for the Syrians, I take it."
  
  "With no love at all. And I am a Syrian." He stared at the bottle he was holding in his hand. "But first I am a man. And second a Druse." He started to smile. "Funny how one becomes attached to one's labels. In truth, I suppose I'm an atheist But they call me a Druse. They persecute me as a Druse. And so I say proudly, I am a Druse."
  
  He took a long swig and put down the bottle. "And that story too is 'on the house.' Now, we discuss B'nai Megiddo."
  
  B'nai Megiddo, Yousef told me, was inspired by a group called Matzpen. Translation: the Compass. They think they're pointing in the right direction. The direction they're pointing is far left.
  
  Matzpen has about eighty members, both Arabs and Jews, and most of them students. They want to see the state of Israel dissolved and replaced by a Communist form of government. They ran a guy for parliament on that idea and got nowhere at all. The fact that their candidate was in jail at the time, accused of spying for Syrian Intelligence, didn't add a lot to their chances.
  
  Terror, however, isn't their style. Not so far. Mostly, they publish in Palestinian papers, aligning themselves with "Communists everywhere" which happens to include the Palestinian commandos. While they were running for office and trying to get their candidate freed, they went around speiling in local bars, hitting on places like El Jazzar Street where the living is hard and the siren song of their manifesto can sound like the lure of the Pied Piper.
  
  And next thing you know, there's B'nai Megiddo. A bunch of frustrated angry kids who think "communism" just means "something for nothing." And not only that. It's also a way to blow off steam, break a few windows, bust a few jaws, and so establish the Better Way.
  
  While we're on the subject, let's discuss the Better Way. There has to be one. There has to be a way to rule out poverty and dead-end slums, and hate and prejudice and all the other age-old evils. But Communist systems — with their purges and labor camps and regimentation, with their own kind of Yellow Brick Road illogic, with their rigid suppression and their king-like states — are not, if you ask me, providing the Better Way.
  
  "And how are they connected with Al Shaitan?"
  
  Yousef shook his head. "B'nai Megiddo? I'm not sure they are. At least not yet. Let me start at the start. I live a few blocks from El Jazzar, so it's easy for me to be in there often. I'm a Syrian, an artist. It's perfectly credible that I'd also be a revolutionary. So I talk party line and they talk to me too. Anyway, a few days before the Foxx kidnap, one of the guys there was talking big. He wanted Megiddo to buy a lot of guns, said he could pick up Kalashnikov rifles for twelve hundred pounds. That's three hundred dollars. Everybody got very excited.
  
  "The thing is, this guy also pushes hashish. He's higher than clouds half of the time, so I thought this was maybe one of his pipe dreams. I said, "Will that money fall from the trees? Or do you plan to rob the vaults of the Hilton Hotel?" He told me no, he has a source of big money."
  
  "And did he?"
  
  "Who knows? It sounded like a lot of pie in the sky. He started talking about his brother who had a friend who was suddenly rich. His brother, he said, asked the friend where he got the money and the friend said he had a job lined up. The work involved a kidnap plan, and the payoff, he said, would be tremendous."
  
  "And Megiddo was involved?"
  
  "Don't jump to conclusions. As far as I know, no one was involved. No one's ever seen the brother or his friend. They live in Syria. Up in a village called Beit Nama. Just a few miles beyond the salient. When I tell you it sounded like pie in the sky I mean it was all a ladder of ifs. If the brother got in on the job, then he'd get Megiddo some work. And if Megiddo got in on the job, then they'd have the money for guns."
  
  "And?"
  
  "And I've seen no money and I've seen no guns and no one in Megiddo has bragged about a kidnap."
  
  "And the guy who was shooting his mouth off about it?"
  
  "Yes. There is that. The guy was murdered."
  
  We were both quiet for a moment, except for the little wheels clicking in our heads.
  
  "And you told this kidnap story to Robey."
  
  He nodded. "Yes. As soon as I heard it."
  
  "And when was the guy with the big mouth murdered?"
  
  Yousef squinted at a spot on the air. "Wait a moment and I tell you exactly." The air-calendar flipped to a date. He snapped his fingers. "The twenty-fifth. Two days before Robey was killed. Four days before Leonard Foxx was returned. But no — to answer your next question — I don't know if there was any connection. I don't know if Robey even followed my lead."
  
  I remembered what Benyamin had said about Robey. That he never paid off until he'd checked the information. "But he paid you?"
  
  "Of course. The day he left town."
  
  "Though, as far as you know, there was no guarantee that the group involved was Al Shaitan or the kidnap victim was to be Leonard Foxx."
  
  He shook his head. "I tell Robey the truth. Whether or not it is useful truth is his business — not mine."
  
  So Robey might have paid him in any case. Good faith. Goodwill.
  
  "Do you know why Robey went to Jerusalem?"
  
  Yousef smiled. "You don't understand. I gave Robey information. Not the other way around."
  
  I smiled back. "It was worth a try." Something bothered me. "The brother's friend who was flashing the money…"
  
  "Yeah. What about him?"
  
  "He was flashing the money before the kidnap."
  
  Yousef squinted. "So?"
  
  "So a hired thug isn't paid before the action. At least nothing big."
  
  Now we both stared at spots of air.
  
  I turned to Yousef. "What was the name of the guy who was killed?"
  
  "Mansour," he answered. "Khali Mansour. The brother, I believe, is called Ali."
  
  "And the brother's still living up in Beit Nama?"
  
  He shrugged. "If the brother's still living."
  
  "Yeah," I said, "I see what you mean. Sometimes death can be contagious."
  
  We arranged a place for me to send the money and Yousef called a friend who had a beat-up truck to come over and pick me up.
  
  The friend was a Syrian but not an artist. He was, to be exact, a kind of a junk man — in the nineteenth-century sense of 'junk' — and the truck was filled with old clothes, dented pots, and a large, stained blue-striped mattress that kept pitching over on his shoulders as he drove. He'd turn around and curse it and punch it away and go on driving with the other hand. His name was Rafi, and when he dropped me off at the address I gave him, I wished him good fortune unto his seventh son.
  
  He sighed and told me he had eight daughters.
  
  
  
  
  
  Six
  
  
  
  
  "Would you like some coffee?" It had been a long night. Coffee was probably a good idea. I said I would and she disappeared, leaving me alone in the usual Universal Modern living room. Brown striped sofa, glass tables, copy of a copy of a Barcelona chair.
  
  Sarah Lavie took doorbells at midnight in perfect stride. In fact, I had a feeling she welcomed the intrusion. It seemed she wasn't trying for sleep these nights. The lights were on all over the apartment and a large needlepoint pillow cover-in-progress was lying where it dropped at the base of the chair, along with tangles of brightly colored wool. Music was playing, a pulsing bossa nova.
  
  She came back with a pot and cups. "I didn't ask — do you take cream and sugar?"
  
  "Sugar if you've got it."
  
  She disappeared in a whirl of skirts. A colorful person, Sarah Lavie. All peasant-skirted and peasant-bloused with giant golden hoops in her ears. The outfit made me think of that paint store in Seattle. The one with the neon sign in the window: "If we don't have the color, it doesn't exist." Her hair was dark, almost black, pulled back severely, which suited her fine — it set off the fair, high-cheekboned face and the great big, lashy, almost black eyes. She was close to thirty and close to being what they call a real woman.
  
  "So World sent you to take Jack's place." She handed me a bowl of sugar and a spoon.
  
  "No small job, from what I'm told I hear he was good."
  
  A small silence.
  
  "There's another reason they sent me," I said "We'd like to know more about… why he died."
  
  Her eyes slid quietly away from mine. She made a small, helpless shrug and then lapsed back into faraway silence.
  
  I said, "I'd like to ask you a few questions. I… I'm sorry."
  
  She looked back up and into my eyes. "I'm sorry" she said. "I didn't mean to act like a delicate flower. Go on. Ask your questions."
  
  "Okay. First of all — do you know what land of a story he was working on?" I had to play along with Robey's cover. The girl either did or didn't know the truth. Most likely, it was both. She did and didn't know. Woman are pros at that kind of thing. They do and don't know when their husbands are cheating. They do and don't know when you're lying.
  
  She was shaking her head. "He never told me about his work…" A slight lift at the end of the sentence, turning it into an unconscious question: Please tell me about his work."
  
  I ignored the undertone. "Can you tell me anything about what he was doing. In general. Say, the week before he left."
  
  Again she looked blank. "There were two nights he stayed out alone for dinner. Didn't get back till, oh, maybe midnight. Is that the kind of thing you mean?"
  
  I said it was. I asked her if she knew where he'd gone those nights. She didn't. She said she never knew. She never asked. She colored slightly, and I thought I knew why.
  
  "I doubt it was another woman," I told her.
  
  She looked at me with a wry expression. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Really." She had to take her eyes away on the "really."
  
  She sipped her coffee and put down the cup. "I'm afraid you'll find me a rather disappointing source of information. There's so little I knew about the rest of Jack's life. And it was part of our — well, 'bargain' — that I never tried to know." She'd been tracing the design on the cup with her finger. She did it again and then she said slowly, "I suppose I always knew it wouldn't last."
  
  That last was an invitation to a conversation.
  
  I asked what she meant.
  
  "I mean, I wasn't very good at it. I knew his rules and I stuck to his rules, but I always wondered why are there rules?" Her eyes were like shiny searchlights on my face. They found nothing. They retreated to the cup. She shrugged, a practiced, graceful loser. "I was never sure. I was never really sure of anything. And Jack was so very sure of himself." She pulled at an earring and smiled wryly again. "A woman can never be sure of a man who's sure of himself."
  
  "Did your mother teach you that?"
  
  "Nope. Learned it all by myself. But I'm sure you're not here to learn about what I've learned about men. So ask your questions, Mr. MacKenzie."
  
  I stopped to light a cigarette. Learning about a dead agent's girlfriend is the first thing I've learned to learn about. Is she smart enough to be an enemy agent? Ambitious enough to sell him out? Stupid enough to give him away? Or angry enough? I doubted Sarah was any of that But she wasn't sure of him. And that made her curious despite herself. And where a woman is curious, she's also likely to be incautious. Despite herself.
  
  "We were talking about his last week here. Do you know anything he did — anyone he spoke to?"
  
  She started to say no. "Well… wait. He did make a lot of long distance calls. I know because we… because I just got the bill."
  
  "May I see it?"
  
  She went over and rummaged through a desk and came back holding the telephone bill. I looked at it quickly. The calls were itemized. Beirut. Damascus. The numbers were listed. I said I'd like to keep it and shoved it my pocket. "His telephone book," I said. "Have you got it?" It was one of the things I'd come to get. The book could give me a line on his contacts. Without that line, I'd be working in the dark.
  
  "N-no," she said. "It was in the box with the other things."
  
  "What box?" I said. "With what other things."
  
  "With his notes and papers. He kept them in the closet in a locked box."
  
  "And what happened to the box?" I said slowly.
  
  "Oh. The other American took it."
  
  "The other American?"
  
  "The other reporter."
  
  "From World?"
  
  "From World."
  
  I'd started this round with a sinking feeling. The feeling was now in the sub-sub-basement.
  
  "You wouldn't happen to know his name?"
  
  She looked at me sharply. "Of course I do. I wouldn't just give Jack's things to a stranger."
  
  "So what was his name?"
  
  "Jehns," she said. "Ted Jehns."
  
  I took a last drag on my cigarette and put it out slowly, slowly in the ashtray. "And when was this… Ted Jehns here?"
  
  She was watching me quizzically. "Three or four days ago. Why?"
  
  "No reason," I said quickly. "I was just curious. If Jehns comes around again, let me know, will you? A couple of things I'd like to ask him."
  
  Her face relaxed. "Of course. But I doubt hell come around. He's in the Damascus office, you know."
  
  I said, "I know."
  
  I decided on another tack. "Aside from the papers that Jehns took, is there anything else of Jack's that's still here? How about the things he had with him in Jerusalem? Were they ever sent back?"
  
  "They were. In fact, they arrived today. The hotel sent them. I've got the suitcase in the bedroom now. I didn't open it. I… I wasn't ready. But if you think it will help…"
  
  I followed her into the bedroom. It was a big airy room with a tempest-tossed bed. She began to straighten the bed. "Over there," she pointed with her chin at a scuffed leather suitcase.
  
  "Keys?" I said.
  
  She shook her head. "Combination. The numbers are 4-11. My birthday."
  
  "Your birthday?"
  
  "It's my bag. Jack's fell apart."
  
  I worked the combination and opened the bag. She'd finished with the bed. "Put it up here."
  
  I lifted the suitcase and put it on the bed. She sat down next to it. I would have liked to tell her to leave the room. Not only so she wouldn't be over my shoulder but also because she was a damned attractive woman. And at the moment, a woman who needed to be held. I started going through Robey's belongings.
  
  No papers. No gun. Nothing slipped in the lining of the bag. Which left the clothes. Jeans. Chinos. A couple of sweatshirts. A dark brown suit. A jacket. Boots.
  
  Boots. Heavy boots. For the city of Jerusalem? I picked one up and looked at it closely, turning it over. There was orange dust clinging to the sole. I scratched it with my finger. Orange dust. And on tie bottoms of the chinos, orange dust. Robey had been someplace other than the city. He'd been on a plain. A plain that had chalky rust-colored rocks.
  
  Sarah was watching me with puzzled alertness.
  
  "Did you hear from Jack while he was away? Do you know if he went someplace out of Jerusalem?"
  
  "Why, yes," she said. "How did you know? He went to Jerusalem straight from here. He stayed at the American Colony Hotel. I know he went there first because he called me that night. And then two nights later… no, three, it was the twenty-fifth. He called me again and said he was leaving for a few days and I shouldn't worry if I couldn't reach him." Again her statements held question marks. I didn't bother asking if she knew where he'd gone.
  
  So all I knew was that Robey had gone from Jerusalem to X and back to Jerusalem. Wherever else he'd gone, he'd come back from there alive. He'd been killed in Jerusalem. On the twenty-seventh.
  
  I went on examining Robey's clothes. With Sarah watching, I felt like a vulture. A cold-blooded bird, feasting on remains. In the pocket of the jacket, I found a matchbook. I palmed it into my own pocket. I could look at it later.
  
  And that was that The last effects of Jackson Robey.
  
  "What about the car? Is it still in Jerusalem?"
  
  She shook her head. "He didn't take the car. He left it with me."
  
  "Wallet, keys, money?"
  
  She shook her head again. "Whoever killed him took everything. His watch, too. That's why I was sure it was — well, what the police said — a robbery. At least… I was sure until tonight" Another question.
  
  I gave her the answer. The answer she would and wouldn't believe. "It probably was a robbery," I said.
  
  I closed the suitcase.
  
  She stayed on the bed.
  
  Music drifted in from the other room. Sexy beat of the bossa nova.
  
  "Well," she said. "If you've finished…" But she didn't move. It surprised her that she didn't move. But she still didn't move. Neither did I. I was looking at her shoulders. The way the smooth curves arched up into her neck, and the long silky neck became a small upturned chin, and the chin led the way to the soft, puzzled lips.
  
  "Yes," I said. "I guess I'm finished."
  
  The week after someone stabs me in an alley, I don't want some other guy messing with my girl. I figured maybe Robey felt the same way.
  
  I said goodnight and left.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seven
  
  
  
  
  It was a big four-course Sunday breakfast and room service set up a table on the balcony. It was late, 10:30. I'd slept a deep, cobwebby sleep and strings of it still tugged at my brain.
  
  The weather was gentle and the sun was out and the balcony faced the Mediterranean. Sound of sea birds. Splash of waves. The day was like a sweet-smiling Mata Hari, trying to lure me away from duty.
  
  I poured some more coffee and lit a cigarette and reached for the papaer I'd ordered with breakfast. A small item gave me the bad news.
  
  Harrison Stol, owner and editor of Public Report, the free-wheeling, truth-telling monthly magazine had been kidnapped. Again by Al Shaitan. Again, for one hundred million dollars.
  
  And four and one make five hundred million. Half a billion dollars.
  
  For what?
  
  I tried something else. I went over the list of kidnap victims. My mind automatically sifted for a pattern. There wasn't any reason for a pattern to exist but my mind is patterned to look for patterns.
  
  Leonard Foxx, hotel czar. Big glass hotels in every city of the world. Giant Coke bottles, littering the skyline. Foxx had been in trouble. Big trouble. Among other things, it was money trouble. A private damage suit for two hundred million; now add what the government was likely to get. A couple of million in back taxes, plus fines on at least a dozen counts of fraud. Foxx had been living high in the Bahamas, but Foxx Hotels Inc. was on shaky ground.
  
  Roger R. Jefferson: National Motors. Minor league car biz, major league headaches. Auto sales were falling for the whole industry from a combination of causes — the energy crisis, rising costs, and the invention of the eight-miles-per-gallon car. National Motors had closed two plants and was currently being struck by a third. Jefferson was just a guy on salary ($200,000 a year). Anyway, he couldn't raise the ransom. The demand had been issued to National itself.
  
  Harlow Wilts: Cottage Motels. The Southwest's chain of one-night stands. Motel business also runs on gas, and folks think twice about taking a vacation when hamburger hits a dollar fifty a pound. And Wilts was already overextended with his plans to buy the Italian Hotel.
  
  Harrison Stol: what they used to call a "crusading editor." Postage and printing had gone so high, he was keeping the Public Report alive by soliciting extra contributions.
  
  So there had been a pattern so far. They were all in money trouble. What did that mean? It meant banks wouldn't make hundred-million-dollar loans. It meant that the companies would have to sell out, that they'd go bankrupt. What did all that mean? Nothing. Why should Al Shaitan care who goes bankrupt?
  
  And there was still the case of Thurgood Miles to complicate the pattern. Miles, of Doggie Bag Dog Food plus boarding schools, beauty shops, clothes shops, gift shops, hospitals, hotels and funeral chapels — all for dogs. And all making profits that could stagger the mind. Thurgood Miles: pattern buster.
  
  And there wasn't any reason for a pattern to exist.
  
  The phone rang. I answered the extension out on the balcony. It was David Benyamin returning my call.
  
  I asked him if he'd check some telephone numbers. Find out who it was Robey had been calling in Beirut and Damascus the week before he died.
  
  He took down the numbers. "Did you find out anything else of importance?" He sounded cagey. Like he knew I knew something.
  
  "Nothing worth telling."
  
  "Hmmp. Are you sure?"
  
  "Sure I'm sure." I was watching the beach, or more exactly, a particular red bikini on the beach.
  
  "So what are your plans? Are you staying in town?"
  
  I ripped my eyes away from the bikini. "No," I told him. "I'm leaving for Jerusalem."
  
  "Well, if you're planning to rent a car, try Kopel on Hayarkon Street. You can get yourself a Fiat 124 and you can change it in Jerusalem for a Jeep… if you need one."
  
  I paused. "Why would I need a Jeep in Jerusalem?"
  
  "You wouldn't need a Jeep," he said, "in Jerusalem."
  
  "Have any other useful suggestions?"
  
  "Eat leafy vegetables and get a lot of rest"
  
  I suggested a thing or two he could do, too.
  
  I rented a Fiat 124 at Kopel Rent-A-Car on Hayarkon Street. Nine bucks a day plus a dime a kilometer. They said I could exchange it for a Jeep in Jerusalem.
  
  I headed southeast down the four-lane highways that span the seventy-kilometer distance. About forty-four miles. I turned on the radio. American rock A panel discussion on fertilizer. I turned off the radio.
  
  I hadn't exactly lied to Benyamin when I told him I'd found out nothing important In fact it was probably painfully true. Five hundred dollars had bought me the name of a corpse's brother in Beit Nama. That was all, and it was probably nothing.
  
  And on the subject of the five hundred dollars, if that was all Robey had paid to Yousef, there was twenty-five hundred left to account for. Somewhere down the line he'd made a bigger payoff.
  
  Who had he paid?
  
  Without his list of contacts, I didn't have a clue.
  
  And without any clues, five guys stood to lose five hundred million. And maybe their lives.
  
  Which brings me to the question, Who had the clues? Who took Robey's things? That one was easy. Jehns. But he was in Arizona tied to a bed. Back to square one. "An American" took them. An agent? A spy? A friend? A foe?
  
  I switched on the radio again, and reached for a cigarette, when I remembered.
  
  The matchbook. The one from Robey's jacket.
  
  The Shanda Baths
  
  78 Omar Street
  
  Jerusalem
  
  
  
  And written in hand on the inside cover, the name Chaim.
  
  And then again, maybe that meant nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eight
  
  
  
  
  The map of Israel reads like an index to the Bible. You can start with Genesis and work your way up through Solomon's Mines and David's Tomb and Bethlehem and Nazareth and end in Armageddon. If you want the short version, come to Jerusalem.
  
  The city knocks your breath out with every step. Because you're standing where Solomon kept his horses, and-now you're walking down the Via Dolorosa, the street Christ walked carrying the cross. And there's where Mohammed rose to heaven. And Absalom's tomb. And Mary's tomb. The Western Wall. The golden dome of the Mosque of Omar; the stained-glass room of the Last Supper. It's all there. And it all looks pretty much the way it did then.
  
  There are 200,000 Jews in Jerusalem, 75,000 Moslems and 15,000 Christians; there are also tensions, but no more now than when the city was divided and the Arabs used to live, under Arab rule, without running water or sanitation.
  
  The part of the city called "East Jerusalem" belonged to Jordan till the war of '67. So did Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. East Jerusalem, then, is Arab in character.
  
  "Arab in character" can be misunderstood. Because the Arab character is misunderstood, at least by most of us in the West Arabs remain in the western mind as The Last True Barbarian Exotics. Four-wived sheiks with legal hash, dubious morals, and bad teeth. Speedy-eyed merchants who'll sell you a "genuine antique rug" and throw in their daughter for two piasters more. The bad guys who torture the good guys in the movies and haven't been up to anything good since the day that Rudolph Valentino died. The terrorists haven't helped the image. In fact, they've even become the image. And that's pretty dumb.
  
  All Arabs aren't violent terrorists any more than all Arabs are sheiks. If I have to generalize about the Arabs — and in general, I loathe generalizations — I'd say they've got exquisite turns of mind, broad humor, magnificent manners, and a friendliness that often borders on excessive.
  
  The American Colony is in East Jerusalem. Once upon a time it was a pasha's palace. A gilded, tiled pleasure dome. Now the rooms go for twenty dollars a day. Huge rooms, with beamed ceilings and oriental traceries around the walls.
  
  I checked myself in, MacKenzie of World, and went out to the sunlit courtyard for lunch. The food is French as well as Middle Eastern. I ordered French food and Israeli wine. It was late for lunch, and most of the tile tables were empty. Across a bed of blooming geraniums, four local businessmen were getting stoned. Next to me, a tanned, expensive-looking couple was staring at a silver espresso pot, waiting for the coffee to blacken to their liking. The man sighed. He didn't like to be kept waiting.
  
  My wine came and the man craned his neck to see the label. I let him crane. I figured if I told him, we'd be doing wine bits for the next half hour. Then he'd want to talk about restaurants in France and the best shirt maker on Saville Row. So I let him crane.
  
  He cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he said. American. Hearty. "I was just wondering…"
  
  "Mikveh Israel."
  
  "I beg your pardon?"
  
  "The wine." I spun the bottle. "Mikveh Israel."
  
  "Oh." He read the label. "Mikveh Israel."
  
  He was dressed in six hundred dollars worth of suit — tan suit, tan shirt, tan skin, tan hair. What you might call a tangible success. The lady at his side completed the image. A Grace Kelly blonde in pale blue silk.
  
  "I was thinking before that you look familiar." She spoke in melodies. The accent, French. "But now I know of who you remind me." The look was flirting. Cool but hot. She turned to the living suntan lotion ad. "Who you think, Bob?"
  
  Bob drew a blank. My food arrived. She leaned over the waiter and put a hand on my arm. "Omar Sharif!" The waiter winked at me and went away. She leaned forward. "You aren't… are you?"
  
  "Omar Sharif. Uh uh. Sorry." I put out my cigarette and turned to my lunch. Bob was eyeing my cigarettes now. In a minute he'd ask to see the pack. He cleared his throat.
  
  "I'm Bob Lamott. And this is Jacqueline Reine."
  
  I gave up. "MacKenzie." We all shook hands.
  
  "You here on vacation?" Bob asked.
  
  I said I was working for World Magazine. I'd said it so often, I was starting to believe it.
  
  He told me he worked for Fresco Oil. I said "Oh," and went on eating. Not, "Oh?" Just "Oh." He was not to be daunted.
  
  "How's the quiche?"
  
  "Hmm?"
  
  He pointed at my plate. "The quiche. How is it?"
  
  "Fine."
  
  "Not as good as Madame Dit's, I bet. You ever been to Madame Dit's in Paris? Best quiche in the world, bar none."
  
  "I'll remember that"
  
  "You here alone?"
  
  "Mmm. Yeh."
  
  "Well," said Jacqueline. "In that case, perhaps…" The look she gave Bob read like teleprompter cards. Bob took his cue.
  
  "Oh… yes. Perhaps you'd like a ticket to the concert tonight? I have a meeting, a business meeting and, well, Jacqueline here wants to go, but it's, well, rather awkward for her to go alone. So uh…"
  
  Jacqueline was giving me a long slow look. A whye-me-cat's-away-what-he-doesn't-know-won't-hurt-him look. Her eyes were green and flecked with gold.
  
  I said, "Gosh, I'm sorry but I've made other plans."
  
  People like Lamott make me say things like "gosh." And women like Jacqueline are bad for the soul. You can hear their wheels click as they plan to hook you, but the subtle perfume, the silky hair, the hand on yours lightly, then flitting away… and next thing you know, you've jumped on the hook. And next thing you know after that, you're back in the ocean.
  
  "Perhaps some other time?" They said it together and then they both laughed.
  
  "Perhaps," I said while they laughed.
  
  I called for the check, paid up, and left.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  There are Turkish baths and there are Turkish baths.
  
  And then there's the Shanda.
  
  Authentic Turkish and authentic baths. No nonsense. Take your pick — steam heat or dry heat, hot pool, cold pool, or medium-warm. The Shanda is housed in another ex-palace. Stained glass windows, mosaic floors, and high, gilded, domed ceilings.
  
  And who in the name of Allah was Chaim? Chaim could work here or just hang around. Chaim could have come just once to meet Robey. Chaim could have never been here at all. Or Robey either. Maybe he'd simply found the matchbook. Pardon me, Miss, have you got a light? Sure. Here. It's okay. Keep them.
  
  I went up to the desk. A battered 1910 office-style desk sitting in the middle of this pasha-style lobby. The sign said Admission IL 5. $1.15. I paid the cashier. He looked like my memories of S.Z. Sakell — a butterball turkey with glasses.
  
  I folded my change and thought for a minute.
  
  "So?" he said in English, "so what's the matter?"
  
  I said, "Do I look like something's the matter?"
  
  "You ever see someone got nothing the matter? Everybody got something the matter. So why are you different?"
  
  I smiled. "I'm not."
  
  He shrugged. "So?"
  
  So why not. I said: "Is Chaim here?"
  
  He said: "Chaim who?"
  
  "I don't know. Who have you got?"
  
  He shook his chins. "No Chaims here." He tilted his head. "So why you're asking?"
  
  "Somebody told me to ask for Chaim."
  
  He shook his chins again. "No Chaims here."
  
  "Okay. Fine. Where's the locker?"
  
  "If you said Chaim sent you, that's something else."
  
  "What something else?"
  
  "If you said Chaim sent you, I'm calling the boss. If I'm calling the boss, you get special treatment."
  
  I scratched my head. "Could you call the boss?"
  
  "To call the boss I'd be happy and delighted. There's just one problem. Chaim didn't send you."
  
  "Look, suppose we start over again. Hello. Nice day. Chaim sent me."
  
  He smiled. "Yes?"
  
  I smiled. "Yes. Will you call the boss?"
  
  "To call the boss I'd be happy and delighted. There's just one problem. The boss isn't here"
  
  I closed my eyes.
  
  He said: Tell you what You go to the steam room. I send the boss later."
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The steam room set was out of Fellini. Round and high like a small coliseum, ringed with circular white stone slabs that rose like bleachers to a high, domed, stained-glass ceiling. With the steam, it was like a surrealist's dream of Pompeii Bodies sprawled on the stone steps came into view through the floating air, but just in time to prevent a collision. The visibility was almost zero.
  
  I'd found the locker and rented a large Persian-printed towel and a stringy scrubber they call a loofah. How the boss would ever find me, I didn't know. I couldn't even find my own feet.
  
  I climbed to a slab about twenty feet up. Steam rises. It was good and hot I thought I could bake out the dents from the previous night Relax the sore muscles. I closed my eyes. Maybe Jackson Robey just came here to relax Maybe he'd come for the steam and the pool and the Chaim-sent-me special treatment.
  
  I had to admit the treatment was special From somewhere out of the Pompeian mists, a pair of arms came fast-flying down. They grabbed me in a hammerlock and Jerked me off balance. It was so damned steamy I couldn't see him. But I know how to buck a hammerlock hold. I can do it as they say, with my hands behind my back.
  
  I countered with a lock-busting piece of Judo and the guy flew off me and over and down and disappeared in a puff of steam.
  
  Not for long.
  
  He came in low with a butt to my ribs (you needed radar to fight in there) and I slip-slid backward against die stone. The towel went flying and there I was naked and then he was coming at me again, a big faceless blob, starting to dive-bomb in for the kill.
  
  I waited until the second his foot left the ground and flip! I rolled down to the step below, and his body slammed into the empty stone. I was on him before he had time to say oof! I went for his throat with the side of my hand but he blocked me with an arm as thick as a tree trunk. He was built like King Kong's under study and a look at his face didn't change my mind. We were practically Indian wrestling until he grunted and bucked and heaved and we both rolled over and over again, and suddenly I was flat down on the step, and be was starting to bang my head on the stone.
  
  Right about then I could have used the help of Wilhelmina. But of course, I hadn't taken my Luger into the steam room — but I had taken Hugo, my trusty stiletto. Unfortunately, I'd concealed it in the waistband of the towel, and it had gone flying when the towel went flying, and I'd lost it somewhere in all that steam.
  
  But as somebody said, seek and you'll find. I felt something pointy prickling my back. That blockbuster had me pinned like a fly and was trying to make chopped liver out of my head, and my own knife was starting to stab me in the back.
  
  I gained enough leverage to make a move. I got my hand on the step above me and pushed away, and we both rolled over and over and down — and now I had the stiletto. But now he had my knife hand and again we rolled over, push-pulling the knife, only now he was on top and pinning my arms. I brought a knee up and his eyes started to bulge, and again we went over. I heard something crack and his breath went whoosh, and his hand went slack. I was closing in and I realized I was pushing a knife at a corpse.
  
  I got up slowly, looking at my assailant. His neck had snapped on the corner of the step and his head was dangling over the edge. I stood up panting. His body collapsed He started to roll. Over and down through the bleachers of white stone steps, down through the rising hell clouds of steam.
  
  I circled the rotunda and went down the steps. I was half out the door when I heard someone saying, "What do you think that noise was about?"
  
  His companion answered: "What noise?"
  
  I decided to pay a visit to the boss. I got dressed and headed for the door marked Director. His secretary told me he wasn't in. I brushed past her desk and her protestations and opened the door to the boss's office. He wasn't in. The secretary was at my elbow; a plump, cross-looking, middle-aged woman, her arms folded fatly across her breast. "Is there any message?" she said. Sarcastic.
  
  "Yeah," I said. "Tell him Chaim was here. And it's the last time I'm recommending his place."
  
  I stopped off at the admissions desk.
  
  "Has Chaim been sending a lot of friends?"
  
  "Nuh-uh," he said. "First one is you. Boss only told me two days ago. 'Be on the look-sharp for someone says Chaim.'"
  
  Two days ago. It started to make its own land of sense.
  
  Maybe.
  
  "So?" he asked me. "Something's the matter?"
  
  "No," I said slowly. "It's fine. Just fine."
  
  
  
  
  
  Nine
  
  
  
  
  Kopel Rent-A-Car couldn't help me. Neither could Avis. I got lucky at Hertz. Yes, a Mr. Robey had rented a car. On the twenty-fifth. At seven A.M. He'd special-ordered a Land Rover. Called in the day before to reserve it.
  
  "And when did he return it?"
  
  She ran her fingers down the filed receipt. A not-gorgeous girl with a bad complexion. She gave me what looked like a rented smile. "On the twenty-seventh. At eleven-thirty."
  
  Twenty minutes later, he'd cabled AXE. An hour after that he was dead in an alley.
  
  She'd started to close the file drawer.
  
  "Can you tell me one more thing?"
  
  The sign on the counter said her name was Miss Mangel.
  
  "Can you tell me the mileage he put on the Rover?"
  
  She flitted her plum-colored spear-shaped nails back through the R's till she came to Robey. "Five hundred forty kilometers, sir."
  
  I put a fifty-pound note on the counter. "What's that for?" she asked, suspicious.
  
  "That's for you never heard of Mr. Robey and no one was in here asking about him."
  
  "About who?" she said, and picked up the note.
  
  I picked up a map from the counter and left.
  
  It was sunset and I just drove around for a while, trying to get my mind unwound and ready for the next big bout of thinking. The city was the color of pink gold, like a giant bracelet thrown between the hills. Church bells tolled, and from gilded minarets, the voice of the muezzin was heard in the land. La ilaha illa Allah. The Moslem call to prayer.
  
  The city itself was like a kind of prayer. Arab women, exotic in veils, balancing baskets on top of their beads, blending with tourists in cut-off Jeans and Eastern Orthodox priests with their long black robes and their long black hair, and men in kafiyas on their way to a mosque and Hasidic Jews on their way to the Wall. I wondered if the city's three-named God would ever flash a mirror down from the sky and say, "Look, folks, this is how it should be. Everybody living together in peace." Shalom Aleichem, Salaam Aleikum. Peace be with you.
  
  I went back to my room and ordered a vodka, then ran a hot bath and took the vodka with me into the tub. Except for the place on the back of my head where it was going to hurt me to comb my hair, my body was forgetting the afternoon. Not forgiving, Just forgetting.
  
  The phone rang. I groaned. In my kind of work, there's no such thing as the possum luxury of letting phones ring or doorbells buzz. It's either someone who needs to get you or else it's someone who's out to get you. And you never know which until you answer.
  
  I cursed and got out of the tub, dripping all the way to the phone, leaving foot marks on the oriental carpet.
  
  "MacKenzie?"
  
  Benyamin. I told him to hold. I said I had some vanilla ice cream. I wanted to get it. I thought it was melting. The comic-strip code: Maybe we're bugged. I'd checked out the room as a matter of course, but a switchboard phone can be monitored from anywhere. And someone in Jerusalem was after me. So I put down the phone and counted twenty and when I picked it up, he said he had to go; his doorbell was ringing. I said I'd call him back. He said to call at ten.
  
  I considered getting back in the tub, but that's like trying to reheat toast — more work than its worth. I grabbed a towel, my drink, and the map, and sprawled myself out on the big double bed.
  
  Robey traveled 540 kilometers, round trip. Two hundred and seventy, one way. Starting at Jerusalem. I checked the scale at the bottom of the map. Forty kilometers to the inch. I measured out 6% inches and drew a circle around Jerusalem; 270 kilometers in each direction. Just about 168 miles.
  
  The circle went north and covered most of Lebanon; east-northeast, it drove into Syria; moving southeast, it took in most of Jordan and a fifty-mile pie-wedge of Saudi Arabia. Due south, it covered half of the Sinai and southwest, it landed on the porch of Port Said.
  
  Somewhere in that circle, Robey found Shaitan.
  
  Somewhere in that circle, I'd find Shaitan.
  
  Somewhere on a plain with orange dust.
  
  First things first. Jordan is enemy turf to commandos, and Egypt is rapidly turning iffy. The Sinai Peninsula is a good place to hide, but it's full of Israelis and U.N. observers and Sadat's Egyptians who are getting pretty cozy with the United States. Mark it a maybe, but not a first choice. Neither was Arabia Which left part of Syria and most of Lebanon, countries with large Palestinian contingents. Syria, whose army was still fighting Israel still hoping to gain ground despite peace talks. Lebanon, a well-known base for commandos.
  
  So figure Shaitan was in Lebanon or Syria.
  
  But were they still where they had been when Robey had found them? Or had they figured they were safe enough to just stay put after killing him?
  
  Lebanon or Syria. Robey made calls to Damascus and Beirut Syria and Lebanon.
  
  Then the maybes started going through my head.
  
  Maybe Benyamin had traced the calls.
  
  Maybe he had some terrific information.
  
  Maybe I ought to get dressed and go to dinner.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The restaurant was called The Arabian Knights and the walls and ceiling were covered with fabric; purple and red and yellow and dizzying. A giant birdcage filled the center of the room, and a purple and red and yellow bird glowered from its perch at the candlelit diners.
  
  I got a table and ordered a vodka and a dish made of mutton, nuts, chick peas and rice and spice and sesame seeds. I said, I want open sesame seeds." The waiter bowed graciously and backed away.
  
  A few minutes later he came back with a drink, and a few minutes later he came back with Jacqueline Reine.
  
  "I thought it was you over here in the corner. You want to be alone, or…
  
  We settled for the "or" and she sat down. She was dressed in Paris and she smelled of Paris and the blonde hair was piled up on her head and falling in little tendrils on her neck. Diamonds glittered slyly on her ears and something else glittered slyly in her eyes.
  
  She lowered them and said, "You don't like me, do you?"
  
  I said, "I don't know you."
  
  She laughed a little harshly. "Is there the expression 'to beg the question? I think you have just begged the question. I put it again. Why don't you like me?"
  
  "Why do you want me to?"
  
  She pursed red lips and tilted her head. "For a man so attractive, that is rather naive,"
  
  "For a woman so attractive" — I was trying to read those glints in her eyes — "you shouldn't have to chase the men who don't like you."
  
  She nodded once, and smiled. "Touché. Now — will you buy me a drink, or do you send me home to bed without any supper?"
  
  I motioned the waiter and ordered her a drink. She was watching the bird. "I was hoping we could be rather nice to each other. I was hoping…" her voice trailed off and stopped.
  
  "You were hoping?"
  
  She showed me her green-gold eyes. "I was hoping you'd take me with you when you go. Away from here."
  
  "From whatsisname?"
  
  She formed a pout and then traced it with her finger. "I do not like what he does to me." I looked at the diamonds glowing on her ears and figured he liked what she was doing to him. She'd charted my glance. "Oh, yes. There is money. There is much much money. But money, I find, is not really all. There is tenderness and bravery… and…" she gave me a long, melting look. "And much, much more." She parted her lips.
  
  Take, and print. It was a bad scene from a bad movie. She had class but she couldn't act And while I admit to being brave and tender and looking like Omar Sharif and all, whatever was shining in her eyes wasn't love. It wasn't even good, clean lust. It was something else, but I couldn't read it.
  
  I shook my head. "Wrong patsy. But don't give up. How about that tall guy over there?" I pointed at a handsome Arab waiter. "Not much money, but I bet he's got a lot of that 'much much more.'"
  
  She put down her glass and got up abruptly. There were tears in her eyes. Real tears. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have made myself a fool. I thought — it doesn't matter what I thought." The real tears were really running down her face and she wiped them away with shaking fingers. "It's just that I… I'm so desperate, I-oh!" She shivered. "Goodnight, Mr. Carter."
  
  She turned and half ran out of the room. I sat there perplexed. I hadn't expected that kind of an ending.
  
  I also hadn't told her my name was Carter.
  
  I nursed my coffee until ten o'clock and went to the phonebooth and called Benyamin.
  
  "Someone's putting the heat on, huh?"
  
  For an answer, I told him the steam room story.
  
  "Interesting."
  
  "Isn't it. D'you think you've got the time to check the place out? Especially the boss? Chaim, I figure, was just a tip word."
  
  "Chaim means life."
  
  "Yes, I know. My life sends me off to a lot of strange places."
  
  A pause. I could hear him striking a match and inhaling on a cigarette. "What do you think Robey was doing with the matchbook?"
  
  I said, "Come on, David. What is this? A freshman year intelligence test? The matchbook was a plant For my eyes only. Someone put it into Robey's luggage knowing that someone like me would find it. And follow it. What I don't like most about that idea is that anything I find now could be a plant."
  
  He laughed. "Very good."
  
  "Huh?"
  
  "On the test. Or at least I come up with the same answer. Anything else you'd like to share?"
  
  "Not at the moment. But you called me."
  
  "Robey's phone calls. I traced the numbers."
  
  I got out my book and a pencil. "Shoot."
  
  "The Beirut number is a Foxx Hotel. The call Robey made was station-to-station, so there's no record of who he was calling."
  
  "How about Damascus?"
  
  "Yes. Got it. An unlisted phone. Private residence. Theodore Jehns. Mean anything?"
  
  Uh oh. I had Sarah's phone bill with me. I checked out the dates of Robey's calls. I'd been playing poker with Jehns in Arizona while he and Robey were supposedly talking.
  
  Which meant what?
  
  That the accident that put Jehns into Aunt Tillie's had been arranged. That Robey had been talking to Jehns's imposter. That some outsider had infiltrated AXE. And the same outsider might have fingered Robey. Unless…
  
  "No," I said. "Means nothing to me."
  
  "Want me to check it?"
  
  "I'll let you know."
  
  Another pause. "You'd make a rotten kibbutznik, you know?"
  
  "Meaning?"
  
  "No cooperative spirit — just like Robey."
  
  "Yeah. You're right. At school I ran track instead of playing football. And the only thing I ever regretted about it is you don't get cheerleaders for track. All those neat little breasts bouncing up and down are strictly for the teammates."
  
  "Speaking of which, I have sent you a teammate."
  
  "You have sent me a what?"
  
  "Don't get excited. It wasn't my idea. I was, as the saying goes, under orders."
  
  "Vadim?"
  
  "Hawk. From your boss to my boss. From me to you."
  
  "What the hell for?"
  
  "For going to Syria — or Lebanon — or wherever else you're going that you're not about to tell me."
  
  "What makes you think I'm going?"
  
  "Come on, Carter. I just traced those numbers to Damascus and Beirut. And besides, if Shaitan is hiding five Americans, they haven't got them in the middle of Israel. Suddenly you think I'm a dummy?"
  
  "Suddenly I need a buddy? What the hell is this?"
  
  "Hey, hold your mouth on. Orders are orders. This 'buddy' I sent you is Arab. Not exactly an agent, but someone who's been helpful. And before you turn your nose, I think you'll need help. And Arab papers. I sent you those too. Try to get across those borders as a Johnny-come-lately American journalist and you might as well just tell them you're a spy."
  
  I sighed. "Okay. I'm a graceful loser."
  
  "Like hell you are. I can hear you smarting."
  
  "So?"
  
  "So it's your move."
  
  "Okay. I'll call you in a day or two. From wherever I am. To see what you've learned about the Shanda Baths." I paused. "I trust your trusty not-exactly agent will keep you well informed about me."
  
  He laughed. "And you said you were a graceful loser."
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I paid my check, got a lot of change, and drove to the Intercontinental Hotel. I found a phone booth and settled in.
  
  First things first. Carefully. I should have done this the other night, but I hadn't wanted to set off alarms.
  
  "Hello?" Another bossa nova in the background.
  
  "Sarah? It's MacKenzie."
  
  "MacKenzie!" she said. "I've been dunking about you."
  
  "You have?"
  
  "I have."
  
  She paused for a two bar rest. "I think I've been stupid."
  
  Two more bars of the bossa nova.
  
  "The other night, when you left, I went over to the window and watched you go. Never mind why. A bad habit Anyway, after your cab pulled away, a car across the street pulled out of the driveway. A black Renault, And suddenly, I realized that that car had been parked there for two days, and always with someone in it. For two days — do you hear me, MacKenzie?"
  
  "I hear you, Sarah."
  
  "The car went away after you left. And it hasn't been back."
  
  Whoever they were, they weren't dumb. They knew someone from AXE would follow Robey and they staked out his place to find out who. That meant they didn't know who I was until after I'd gone to visit Sarah. So they didn't know that I'd met Yousef or seen Benyamin.
  
  Maybe.
  
  "Did you get a look at the guy inside?" I asked.
  
  "There were two. I only saw the driver. A Jack Armstrong type. All-American boy."
  
  "You mean big and blond?"
  
  "Is there any other kind?"
  
  "So now tell me why all this makes you stupid."
  
  She paused again. "I suppose it was all this that made me smart. Stupid is what I've been all along. I know now, MacKenzie. About Jack's Job. And… and yours, I guess. I've always known, really. I knew and I just didn't want to know. It was too frightening to really know. If I'd known, I'd have to worry every time he left the house." Her voice was angry with self-recrimination. "Do you understand, MacKenzie? It was easier to worry about 'other women' or about myself. Nice little, safe little, little-girl worries."
  
  "Easy, Sarah."
  
  She took my words and spun them. "It wasn't easy. It was harder on both of us." Her voice was bitter. "Oh, sure. I never bugged him. I never asked him questions. I just made myself a heroine. 'See how I'm not asking you questions?' And sometimes I'd Just pull myself back. Dive into silence. Oh, that must have made him very happy." My voice was even. "I'm sure you did make him very happy. As for the rest, he understood. He had to. You think he didn't know what you were going through? We know, Sarah. And the way you played it is just about the only way the thing can be played."
  
  She was quiet for a while. An expensive, long, long-distance quiet.
  
  I broke the silence. "I called to ask a question."
  
  She came out of her trance, enough to laugh at herself. "You mean you didn't call to listen to my troubles?"
  
  "Don't worry about that. I'm glad you talked to me. Now I'd like to talk about Ted Jehns."
  
  "The man from World?"
  
  I didn't answer. She said slowly, dawningly, painfully: "Ooooh."
  
  "What did he look like?"
  
  "My God, did I…"
  
  "How could you know? Come on. Tell me. What did he look like."
  
  "Well, sandy hair, blue eyes. He had quite a tan."
  
  "Height?"
  
  "Medium, Medium build."
  
  So far, she was describing Ted Jehns.
  
  "Anything else?"
  
  "Mmm… handsome, I'd say. And well-dressed."
  
  "Did he show you any kind of identification?"
  
  "Yes. A press card from World Magazine."
  
  World Magazine wasn't even Jehns's cover.
  
  I sighed. "Did he ask you any questions? And did you give him any answers?"
  
  "Well, he asked the same things you did. In a different way. But basically he wanted to know what I knew about Jack's work and Jack's friends. And I told him the truth. What I told you. That I didn't know anything."
  
  I told her to be careful, but not to lose sleep. I doubted they'd be bothering her any more. She'd served her function — the link to me.
  
  I was running out of change and I still had another call to make.
  
  I said goodnight to Sarah Lavie.
  
  I fed the machine a few more coins and dialed Jacques Kelly at home in Beirut "Jacques Kelly" describes Jacques Kelly. A wild French-Irishman. Belmondo imitating Errol Flynn. Kelly was also our man in Beirut.
  
  He was also in bed when I called. And by the slur in his voice, I wasn't interrupting either a good night's sleep or the Lebanon Late Show.
  
  I said I'd make it fast and I tried my best. I asked him to check out the Foxx Beirut to get the guest list for the days Robey called. I also told him Ted Jehns had a double. I told him to code-cable that news to Hawk and to make sure that someone nosed around Damascus. AXE would have sent a replacement for Jehns, but I wasn't taking chances trusting a replacement. Not unless I knew who he was, which I didn't.
  
  "How about Jehns himself?" he suggested. "Maybe we ought to do a background on him. Find out bow his boat sprung a leak."
  
  "Yeah. That's next. And tell Hawk I suggest that he use Millie Barnes."
  
  "Who?"
  
  "Millie Barnes. A girl in a position to question Jehns."
  
  Kelly made a pun that isn't worth repeating.
  
  I hung up the phone and sat there in the booth. I realized I was angry. I lit a cigarette and puffed on it angry. All of a sudden I started to laugh. In two days I'd been tricked, trapped, beaten up twice, followed, more than likely bugged, and in general served as a railroad station for incoming and outgoing bad news. But what was it that finally made me mad?
  
  A sex-pun Kelly made about Millie.
  
  Try to figure that out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ten
  
  
  
  
  ISLAMIC CULTUHE; WHITHER GOEST?
  
  2 p.m. tomorrow in the ballroom
  
  Guest lecturer: Dr. Jamil Raad
  
  
  
  "Your change?"
  
  I looked down from the sign and back to the girl at the cigarette counter. She handed me a fifty-agorot coin and my pack of eccentric cigarettes. Only in the Middle East and parts of Paris do they carry my crazy gold-tipped brand at regular hotel tobacco counters. I could do without the gold tip. Not only am I accosted by middle-aged matrons in designer clothes, and hippie young girls with green-painted nails ("Where did you get those dear/groovy cigarettes?") but I've got to watch what I do with the butts. They read like a sign that says Carter Was Here.
  
  I stopped at the desk to check for messages. The clerk was having a giggling fit. He kept giving me coy, knowing looks. When I asked to be wakened at seven A.M., "to get an early start," you'd have thought I was Robert Benchley, perhaps, ripping off one of the better bons mots. I scratched my head and rang for the lift.
  
  The elevator man was in high spirits too. I yawned and said "I can't wait to get to bed," and the giggle-meter registered a fat 1000.
  
  I checked my door before I used the key and — ho-ho — the door had been opened while I was away. Someone had tripped my own special door-bait and paid me a visit behind my back.
  
  Was my visitor still paying me a visit?
  
  I drew my gun, clicked off the safety, and threw the door open with enough force to pancake anyone hiding behind it.
  
  She let out a gasp and rose up from the bed.
  
  I switched on the light.
  
  The belly dancer?
  
  Yes, the belly dancer.
  
  "If you don't close the door, I catch a cold." She was grinning. No, laughing. At me. Her black hair tumbled all over the place. I was still standing in the doorway with the gun. I closed the door. I looked at the gun, then at the girl. She wasn't armed. Except for that body. And that hair. And those eyes.
  
  I met her eyes. "I've already had my fight for the day, so if you're planning on setting me up, you're too late."
  
  She gave me a genuine puzzled face. "I do not understand this…'setting up'?"
  
  I put the gun away and crossed to the bed. I sat down. "Neither do I. So suppose you tell me." She was holding the covers up around her, looking frightened as well as confused. Big topaz eyes, scanning my face.
  
  I ran a hand over my face. "You work for B'nai Megiddo, no?"
  
  "No. What makes you say?"
  
  I sighed. "A clobber on the jaw, a kick in the shin, and a belt in the gut — to name just a few. Suppose we start all over again. Who do you work for and why are you here? And I better warn you. I've also had my Vilma. The Vamp act for today, so don't try to pitch me with your tender young body."
  
  She gave me a long, curious look; head to one side, chewing on a long fingernail. "You talk much," she said slowly. And then another smile, amused, coaxing.
  
  I stood up. "Okay. Up!" I clapped my hands. "Lickety-split. Into the clothes. Out of the door. Out!"
  
  She pulled the covers higher and smiled wider. "I think you do not understand. Didn't David tell you to expect me?"
  
  "David?"
  
  "Benyamin."
  
  Put that together, you get David Benyamin. David — I-am-Sending-You-a-Teammate — Benyamin.
  
  Teammate, hell. This was the cheerleader.
  
  I studied her. "I think you'd better prove that."
  
  She shrugged. "Of course." And got up.
  
  Not naked. She was wearing a clingy, plunging gown. Turquoise blue. Forget the gown. The body… sweet Lord!
  
  "Here." She was handing me an envelope. A note from Benyamin. She was standing no more than six inches away. My blood kept swimming out to meet her. I took the letter. The first part was what he'd told me on the phone. And the rest:
  
  You will no doubt remember Miss Kaloud, our undercover agent at El Jazzar (or should I say our 'uncovered agent'?) She tells me she has already given you help. Your table at the club was set on a trap door, and after you'd swallowed your last bite of food, the floor was planning to swallow you.
  
  
  
  So that's why she gave me the cue to scram. I looked at the woman in front of me and smiled. "If you'd like to change your mind about offering your body…"
  
  She was suddenly indignant. She got back into my bed, crawled under my covers, but still looking indignant. "Mr. Carter," she said, and right away I knew the offer was off, "I am here pretending to be Mrs. MacKenzie because these are my orders. I take these orders because, as an Arab, I despise the things the terrorists do. And because I wish, as a woman, to be free from the tyranny of veil and purdah. Those are my reasons. Political only. You will kindly to keep our relationship political."
  
  She plumped up the pillows and pulled up the covers. "Now," she said, "I would like to sleep." She closed her eyes and then opened them again. Turn off the light, please, on your way out"
  
  I gave her the look I reserve for Martians and certain obscure Cubist paintings. "I think," I said slowly, "we better take that again. This is my room. And that, on which you are lying, is my bed, Mrs. MacKenzie. And even if I could get another room, it wouldn't look right, Mrs. MacKenzie, in terms of our cover, Mrs. MacKenzie, if I upped and ran out on a dish like you."
  
  She sat up and leaned on her elbow and thought "Well… you are right." She threw a pillow down on the floor and started to strip a blanket from the bed.
  
  I threw the pillow back. "Any way we play this, it's going to be adolescent but I'm damned if I'm spending a night on the floor." I hastily started to loosen my tie. The look she gave me was wide-eyed and young. "I… I warn you," she said, trying to keep the tone of a warn, "I… I will not… I do not…" and finally she muttered, "I am a virgin."
  
  My hand got frozen on the knot of my tie. The thing was, I believed her. A twenty-five-year-old, luscious, sexy, bellydancing, spy… virgin.
  
  I left on my underwear and turned out the fight. I sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. "What's your first name?" I asked her softly.
  
  "Leila," she said.
  
  "Okay, Leila. We'll keep our relationship strictly political."
  
  I got under the covers and looked at her quickly. Her back was to me and her eyes were closed.
  
  Politics make strange bedfellows.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eleven
  
  
  
  
  It was just about, but not quite dawn. The lights were still on in the hotel lobby and the night clerk had a hard-day's-night-clerk expression. A maintenance man in a dark green jumpsuit was running a vacuum cleaner over the rug. Its hum echoed in the empty lobby. Correction: the not quite empty lobby.
  
  He had a face like an army recruiting poster. All blonde and blue-eyed and young and cool. Expensively tailored American suit. But a little lumpy under the arm. Right about where a holster would hang. And a little too cool around the eyes. And what exactly was he doing in the lobby reading a paper at five A.M.P The virgin goddess was in my bed, not his.
  
  I knew who he was. Jack Armstrong, the all-American stake-out.
  
  All I'd had in mind when I left the room was a once-around-the-block insomniac stroll. Now I decided to take the car — and do a little sightseeing in the rear view mirror.
  
  And sure enough, A black Renault. He pulled out of a spot across from the hotel. All I got was a quick impression of his looks. Dark-haired and hefty. But he didn't look like an Arab, either. Who were all these guys? And what did they have to do with Al Shaitan?
  
  I made a right on Hayesod Street.
  
  The Renault made a right on Hayesod Street.
  
  Why were they suddenly tailing me now? No one had dogged me on the road from Tel Aviv. And yesterday the road behind me was clear. So why now?
  
  Because they knew where I was going until now. The American Colony. The Shanda Baths. They'd made damned sure I'd go to the Shanda Baths and they figured I'd go to the morgue from there. Now they didn't know what to expect. So I had a shadow on me.
  
  Or did I have a killer on me?
  
  I turned again. He turned again.
  
  I stopped at the far end of Rambon Street, with a view overlooking the still-sleeping city. I left the motor running and pulled out my gun.
  
  The Renault cruised past.
  
  Not a killer.
  
  Not necessarily.
  
  A car had pulled in from Agron Street. Young lovers come to watch the sunrise view.
  
  It was probably time to leave Jerusalem.
  
  If Robey's contact was still here (if Robey had a contact here to begin with) the guy would see the shadows and avoid me like the plague. Shadow the shadows? Not worth the trouble. They were typical small-time hired muscle. The Shanda? Shin Bet would check it out. But chances were it was a minor plot. I was looking for Arab terrorists. And so far I hadn't even seen an Arab.
  
  It was time to leave Jerusalem.
  
  I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
  
  The question was: Did the shadows know?
  
  I fit a cigarette and turned on some music and let the sun hit my face through the window. I closed my eyes.
  
  And Jacqueline Reine danced in my head.
  
  Where did Jacqueline Reine fit in?
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I used a piece of acetate and sprung the lock.
  
  She hadn't been sleeping.
  
  The look on her face when I opened the door was a paradox of serene terror. When she saw it was me, she sighed and fell back against the pillows.
  
  I said, "You wanted to talk."
  
  She said, "Oh, thank God."
  
  I threw a lace peignoir off the chair and sat down. Jacqueline put her finger to her lips. "Careful," she whispered, "Bob — he stays in the room across the hall."
  
  I told her I knew that I'd checked to make sure they weren't registered together. She asked for a cigarette. I threw her the pack. She pushed the blonde hair back from her face, her hand slightly shaky. Face slightly puffy.
  
  She blew out the match. "You take me with you?"
  
  "I doubt it," I said. "But you can try to convince me."
  
  She met my eyes and leaned slightly forward, her breasts spilling out of the green lace gown…
  
  "With logic," I added. "So put your pretty little chest right back where it was."
  
  She pulled up the covers and smiled wryly. "You're all heart."
  
  "I'm all ears. You want to talk — or you want me to go?"
  
  She looked at me and sighed. "Where shall I start?"
  
  "Who is Lamott?"
  
  "I… I don't know."
  
  "Bye, Jacqueline. It's been nice chatting."
  
  "No!" she said sharply. "I don't know. I only know who he says he is."
  
  "How long have you known him?"
  
  "About two months."
  
  "All right. I'll buy that Where did you meet?"
  
  "In Damascus."
  
  "How?"
  
  "At a party."
  
  "Whose house?"
  
  "Not at a house. At a restaurant"
  
  "A private party or a business party?"
  
  "I don't understand."
  
  "A private party or a business party?"
  
  "I don't understand why you ask these details."
  
  Because the best way to find out if someone is lying is to fire off questions like machine gun bullets. It doesn't matter what the questions are. What counts is the speed. Only a pro can He that fast. And only a pro who's been well rehearsed. Jacqueline Reine, whoever she was, was not in any way, a pro.
  
  "Private party or a business party?"
  
  "Business,"
  
  "Whose?"
  
  "An oilmen's conference."
  
  "Name the firms that went to the conference."
  
  "Trans-Com, Fresco, S-Standard, I think. I…"
  
  "How did you get there?"
  
  "I… with a friend."
  
  "What friend?"
  
  "A man. Is it really important? I…"
  
  "What friend?"
  
  "His name is — his name is — Jean Manteau."
  
  A lie.
  
  "Go on."
  
  "With what?"
  
  "Manteau. A friend? Or was he your lover?"
  
  "L-lover." She said in a small voice.
  
  "Go on."
  
  "With what? My god! With what?"
  
  "Lamott You dumped Manteau for Lamott. So what do you know about Bob Lamott?"
  
  "I told you. Not much. I… I just know he's mixed up in something bad. It scares me. I want to get away."
  
  "So? What stops you."
  
  "He… he does."
  
  "How?"
  
  Silence. Then: "He… he has two men who are watching me. I pretend I don't know. But I know. They watch. I think they will kill me if I try to get away. I think they will kill me if they know we talk."
  
  Silence.
  
  "Go on."
  
  "What do you want?"
  
  "The truth. Start at the top. Who were you with at the oil conference?"
  
  For a minute I thought she was going to faint. Her body slumped and her eyelids fluttered.
  
  "You might as well tell me. I already know."
  
  She didn't faint She just collapsed into strangled sobs. She moaned and rolled over, facing the wall.
  
  "Ted Jehns. Right? He works for Trans-Com Oil in Damascus. At least that's part of the work he does. And you sold him out for some diamond earrings." I thought about Jehns questioning Millie. Whether Millie cared about money. It all made sense now, dammit to hell. "And you almost got him killed, you know."
  
  "Don't! Please!"
  
  "You're not too soft to hear about things like that What did you think was going on?"
  
  She sat up limply. "Bob only wanted the keys to the apartment. He said he Just needed to use Ted's apartment That no one would know. That we would be rich."
  
  "What did he do in Ted's apartment?"
  
  She shook her head. "I wasn't there."
  
  "And where was Ted?"
  
  "He… he was in Beirut"
  
  "When did he leave?"
  
  She looked eighty years old. "I don't know. A Wednesday, I think."
  
  "The twelfth?"
  
  She shrugged. "Probably. I guess."
  
  It figured. Jehns left Damascus on Wednesday, the twelfth. He'd gone to Beirut and been hit by a car. On a Tuesday, he'd said. So it must have been Tuesday, the eighteenth. That timed with when he'd shown up in Arizona. The way he'd told it he didn't think it was related to AXE.
  
  Only it must have been.
  
  Maybe even related to Foxx.
  
  Foxx had been kidnapped on the fifteenth. About when Lamott started using Jehns's apartment.
  
  And Robey started getting hot on the case.
  
  And somebody knew be was getting hot. "When did Jackson Robey first call?"
  
  She didn't even hesitate very long. "Late one night. Maybe one o'clock."
  
  "And Ted wasn't there."
  
  She shook her head no.
  
  "And Lamott was."
  
  She nodded yes.
  
  "And you put him on the phone. You said, 'Just a minute, I'll get Ted.' And you put Lamott on the phone with Robey."
  
  She nodded.
  
  "And after that, he asked for the key."
  
  Another nod.
  
  And after that Jehns was run over.
  
  And Lamott had stayed on, taking Robey's calls. Robey's progress reports on the case.
  
  So when Robey found Shaitan, Lamott knew about it And told somebody. And had Robey killed.
  
  "One more question. The first day I got here. That invitation to take you to the concert. Did Lamott really think I'd fall in your arms and start to whisper state secrets in your ears?"
  
  "No," she said slowly. "That was my idea. I told him I thought I could get you tell things. But all I wanted was to get you alone… to ask you for help."
  
  "And you planned to give me some cock and bull story. Damsel in distress."
  
  She closed her eyes. "I am in distress."
  
  I stood up.
  
  Her eyes opened and flashed panic. "Please!" she begged. "You can't just leave me. Ted isn't dead and God knows I'm sorry. I'll make it up. I will. I'll help you."
  
  "Tokyo Rose said the same thing."
  
  "Really! I will. I'll… I'll find out things from Bob and tell you."
  
  I picked up my cigarettes from the bed. I lit one up and pocketed the pack. I seemed to consider her proposition. "You realize," I said, "if your friend Lamott finds out I was here and all of a sudden you're asking questions he's sharp enough to put it together. Which means you're dead."
  
  I crossed to the door and opened it quietly. No one in the hall. No eyes watching. Sounds of snoring from Lamott's room. I walked back in and closed the door. I stubbed my cigarette in the ashtray by the chair.
  
  "All right," I said. "I want some information and I want it tonight."
  
  She swallowed hard. "You're sure that Bob won't know you were here?"
  
  I raised an eyebrow. "I'll never tell."
  
  She sighed and nodded.
  
  I smiled and left.
  
  Either way it worked was all right with me. Maybe she could get some information. I doubted it strongly, but maybe she could. On the other hand — the likelier hand — if Lamott were smart, he'd know I'd been there.
  
  There were two cigarette butts in Jacqueline's room.
  
  The gold-tipped butts that read like a sign. A sign that said Carter Was Here.
  
  I went back upstairs and got into bed. Leila was there, still sound asleep.
  
  I was so damned tired, I didn't care.
  
  
  
  
  
  Twelve
  
  
  
  
  I dreamed I was lying somewhere in the desert, surrounded by huge orange rocks and the rocks turned into the shape of the devil and started breathing fire and smoke. I could feel the heat and I could feel my own sweat, but somehow I wasn't able to move. In the other direction were purple mountains, and cool, and shade, and off in the distance, a single rider on a bronze mare. In front of me a smooth stone rose from the ground. There was writing on the stone. I squinted to read it: Here Lies Nick Carter. I felt something cold at the side of my head. I shook my head. It didn't move, I opened my eyes.
  
  Bob Lamott was standing over me. The "something cold" was the barrel of a gun. I pulled my eyes left. The bed was empty. Leila was gone.
  
  My mind flashed back to an earlier scene. Me, standing in the hall this morning. Standing in front of Lamott's door. Weighing the value of busting in. I'd decided against it. I'd run over the likeliest script in my mind and decided the dialogue wouldn't play.
  
  Me (my gun pointed straight at his head): Okay, Lamott. Tell me who you work for and where I can find them.
  
  Lamott: You'll kill me if I don't, is that it?
  
  Me: That's it.
  
  Lamott: And you'll let me five if I do? I hardly believe that, Mr. 'MacKenzie.'
  
  Me: Take your chances.
  
  Lamott (pulling a knife out of nowhere and making an awkward stab at my side): Ugh! Argh!
  
  Me: Bang!
  
  Not that I thought Lamott was a hero. Men who indulge in fifty-dollar ties like to keep their necks secure. I simply figured he'd figure the odds. If he didn't talk, I'd have to kill him. If he did talk, I'd have to kill him. What could I do? Leave him alive to warn Al Shaitan? They'd move their hiding place before I could get there, and all I'd walk into would be a trap. And Lamott was smart enough to dope that out So instead of giving me any answer — except for maybe the wrong answer — he'd try to kill me and I'd have to kill him. (That was the script with the happy ending.) In any case, I'd get no real information and I might be killing off a valuable clue.
  
  So I'd walked away from Lamott's door, thinking I'd handle him some other way.
  
  So much for that.
  
  "Well, at last you're awake," he said. "Hands up."
  
  Lamott was dressed in a thousand dollars and waves of Zizanie rose off his face. Sarah had said he was "rather handsome" — the man who'd come and posed as Jehns — but he looked to me like a spoiled kid. Lips too soft. Sulky eyes.
  
  "Yeah," I said. "Thanks for the favor. It's hell to wake up to a jangling alarm. So now that I'm up, what can I get you?"
  
  He smiled. "You could die. I think that would suit me."
  
  I laughed. "That wasn't a smart thing to say, Lamott. In the first place, your voice is now on tape. You started the machine when you opened the door." He started to look around the room. "Uh uh," I said. "I doubt you'll find it if you look all day." I bit my lip. "If you five that long."
  
  He wouldn't find it because it wasn't there. I know it isn't nice, but sometimes I lie.
  
  "Now the point is," I went on smoothly, "my friends know the few facts I've gathered so far. Including," I looked at him, "the fact of you. If you kill me, you're dead. If you let me live, they'll let you live, on the chance you'll slip up and lead us to Shaitan."
  
  His eyes narrowed, trying to read me. The gun stayed steady, now aimed at my chest A certain part of me wanted to laugh. The gun was a .25 caliber Beretta. The James Bond gun. But then, of course Lamott would have the James Bond gun.
  
  He was shaking his head. "I don't think I believe you."
  
  "Then why don't you kill me?"
  
  "I fully intend to."
  
  "But not until… what? If all you had in your mind was murder, you would have shot me before I woke up."
  
  He was getting angry. "I don't like to be patronized." He sounded huffy. "Least of all, by incipient corpses. I want you to tell me how much you know. And who, if anybody, you've told."
  
  Me: And you'll kill me if I don't, is that it?
  
  Lamott: That's it.
  
  Me: And you'll let me live if I do? I hardly believe that, Mr. Lamott.
  
  Lamott: Snicker.
  
  Me (my hand crashing forward in a mighty chop that knocks the Beretta out of his hand, my feet pumping forward and onto the floor and my knee coming up to say hello to his belly, and my hand, like a cleaver on the back of his neck while he's still slumped forward from the belly blow): Now — what did you say you wanted to know?
  
  Lamott (going down, but then taking me with him, on top of me now, his hands on my neck and his belt buckle drilling a hole in my stomach): Ugh! Argh!
  
  Me: Bang!
  
  The dumb bastard had taken my gun from under the pillow and jammed it into his jacket pocket. All I did was pick his pocket.
  
  Blood was coming out of his mouth and a stain was forming on the side of his jacket If he were alive he'd be madder than hell. A good suit like that ruined.
  
  I pushed his body over, frisked his pockets and found his keys. Nothing else on him had any meaning. His I.D. read as I thought it would. "Robert Lamott of Fresco Oil." Home address was a street in Damascus.
  
  I started to get dressed.
  
  The door opened.
  
  Leila in a cotton skirt and blouse. Her hair in pigtails. A little spot of sticky strawberry jam resting happily at the side of her mouth. "You're up," she said. "I didn't want to wake you so I went down to break…"
  
  "What's the matter?" I said. "You've never seen a body?"
  
  She closed the door and leaned back against it I could tell she was sorry she'd eaten break…
  
  "Who is he?" she said.
  
  "The man who should have stayed in bed. We'll go into it later. Meanwhile, I want you to do me a favor."
  
  I told her the favor. She went to do it.
  
  I put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and went up to rifle Lamott's room.
  
  Two thousand dollars American cash Fourteen suits, three dozen shirts, and as many ties. A pound and a half of high-grade heroin and a little leather Gucci case with all the shoot-em-up paraphernalia. Not exactly what Gucci had in mind.
  
  Nothing else. No checks. No letters. No little black book with telephone numbers. I went to his phone.
  
  "Yes sir?" The operator sounded cheery.
  
  This is Mr. Lamott in 628. I'd like to know, please, do I have any messages?"
  
  "No sir," she said "Only the one you got this morning."
  
  "The one from Mr. Pierson?"
  
  "No sir," she said, "The one from Mr. el-Yamaroon."
  
  "Oh yes. That one. I did get that one. Operator, what I'd like to know is — I may be checking out tonight and I have to write an expense account — do I have many long-distance calls outstanding?"
  
  She told me I'd have to talk to someone else. So Just a second, sir. Click, click, ring.
  
  There was only that call I'd made to Geneva. I took down the number.
  
  I asked to be connected to an outside operator and made a reverse-charge call to Kelly.
  
  I told him what I'd learned from Jacqueline. Kelly whistled. "It's almost enough to make me sleep alone." He paused and added "Almost, I said."
  
  "Have you had a chance to check the hotel?"
  
  "Yes and no. The place is in an uproar. Some oil sheik from Abu Dhabi is taking up a floor and everybody's time. Guy's got four wives, a dozen yes-men, and a staff of his own personal servants. Even got his own chef."
  
  "So what's that got to do with us?"
  
  "Just thought you'd like to know why your gas and electric bill's so high. Don't be so impatient, Carter. What it has to do with us is that they've got security all over the place on account of the sheik's dough in their vault. And since I can't seem to beg or buy the information, I've got to try to steal it, understand? And the way things are stacked, stealing the guest list for the week Robey called is as tricky as pulling off a million-dollar heist All I can tell you, from asking around, is an oil convention was on that week. The hotel was jammed with American types and a lot of Gulf Coast Arab sheiks."
  
  "How about the hotel employees?"
  
  "Nothing instantly interesting. But a full rundown will take a few days. And by the way — what am I looking for? A friend or a foe? Did Robey call a pal to get information or did he call a suspect to put on the screws?"
  
  "Yeah. Exactly."
  
  "Yeah, exactly what?"
  
  "That's exactly the question."
  
  "You're adorable, Carter, you know that?"
  
  "So I'm told, Kelly. So I'm told."
  
  I hung up and went to Lamott's closet. I'd seen a large Vuitton trunk. Two thousand dollars worth of luggage. You couldn't buy yourself a tonier coffin. Within twenty minutes, Lamott was inside it. The funeral service was simple but tasteful. I said "Bon voyage," and added, "Amen."
  
  Leila came back from her shopping trip. She was carrying a large Druse basket.
  
  "You have any trouble?"
  
  She shook her head.
  
  I looked at my watch. It was one-thirty. "Good," I said. "Then we'd better get going."
  
  
  
  
  
  Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  Over two hundred people had gathered in the ballroom for Dr. Raad's lecture on Islamic culture, filling the rows of folding chairs that faced the draped and microphoned dais, filling the air with polite coughs and the bland odor of polite perfume.
  
  The audience was made up mostly of tourists, mostly American, and mostly women. The lecture must have been part of a package, along with the free transportation from the airport, the bus tour of town, and the special nighttime sightseeing junket. There was also a class of high-school students and a scattering of about twenty Arabs, some wearing suits and white kafiyas, the typical male Arab's headcloth. The others were hidden in flowing robes and fuller headcloths and dark glasses.
  
  And then there were the MacKenzies — Leila and me. Only Leila didn't need dark glasses for disguise. With the gray-black veil and the tent-like cloak, she was practically disguised as a bolt of fabric.
  
  It was the best I could think of and it wasn't bad. I'd remembered the lecture sign in the lobby and sent Leila out to buy us the get-ups and recruit a gang of full-dress Arabs for cover.
  
  A way to leave town without being tailed.
  
  Dr. Jamil Raad was taking questions from the floor. Raad was a small sour-looking man with sunken cheeks and near-sighted eyes. The hafiya that framed his squinting face made him seem to be peering through a curtained window.
  
  Was Islamic culture being Westernized?
  
  No. It was being modernized. The answer droned on. The ladies started creaking around in their chairs. It was four o'clock.
  
  Waiters appeared at the back of the room, bringing in trays of coffee and cakes, setting them up on a buffet table.
  
  A student stood up. Did Raad have a comment on today's kidnappings?
  
  Rumbles in the room. I turned to Leila. She shrugged behind the folds of her veil.
  
  "You refer, I suppose, to the five Americans. Deplorable," said Raad. "Deplorable. Next?"
  
  Rumble-buzz. Most people don't get the news till the evening. The crowd hadn't heard of the kidnappings either.
  
  "What Americans?" a woman yelled out.
  
  "Quiet! Please!" Raad hit the dais. "This is a subject we are not here to cover. Now — let us return to cultural questions." He scanned the audience looking for culture. It hadn't, for the most part, been there to begin with.
  
  The high-school student was still standing. Having clearly lost his battle with acne, he wasn't about to take other defeats. "The Americans," he said, "are five more American millionaires. They were on some kind of annual hunting trip. Alone in some private cabin in the woods. And Al Shaitan got them." He looked at Raad. "Or should I say Al Shaitan liberated' them."
  
  Rumble-buzz.
  
  The kid went on. "They're asking a hundred million dollars again. A hundred million dollars for each man. And this time the deadline is ten days."
  
  Rumble. Gasp. Bang of gavel.
  
  "They've still got those four other men, too, don't they?" It was the voice of a middle-aged woman in the crowd. She was suddenly scared.
  
  So was I. Nine Americans were under the gun and the bottom line was now nine-hundred million. Correction. It was now a fat one billion. Nine zeros with a one at the head. They already had Foxx's money.
  
  And I had ten days.
  
  The high school kid had started to answer.
  
  Raad hit the dais with the flat of his palm, as though he were trying to squash the emotions that were crawling and buzzing around the room. "I think now our meeting here comes to an end. Ladies. Gentlemen. I invite you to stay and partake of refreshments." Raad walked abruptly away from the stage.
  
  I wanted to get the hell out of there. Fast. I grabbed Leila's arm and eyed one of our Arabs. He started, like the rest of us, heading for the door. Like the rest of us, he didn't get very far.
  
  The American women swarmed around us. We were, after all, real Arabs. The real exotic-barbarian thing. Also, currently, the villains of the piece. A woman with a cap of curly white hair and a plastic Hello, I'm Irma sign pinned on her sweater, gave me a look that warned of invasion. Raad was also heading our way. I whispered to Leila to try to divert him. I couldn't cope with playing Arab for Raad. The doors to the lobby were wide open and both known shadows were peering in. Leila managed to bump into Raad. By the time she'd begged him a thousand pardons — one at a time — Raad had been swallowed by a circle of tourists.
  
  Hello, I'm… was working her way up to me. Her full name, it seemed, was Hello, I'm Martha.
  
  The talk around the room was of violence and terror. I got ready for some kind of tight-lipped attack.
  
  "I want you," she began, "to tell me something." She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a pamphlet — Great Works Of Islam, Courtesy of Liberty Budget Tours. "That poem, the one about the ruby yacht…?"
  
  "The Rubaiyat," I said.
  
  "The ruby yacht. What I wanted to know is — who's the writer?"
  
  I nodded and smiled politely: "Khayyam."
  
  "You are!" she blushed. "My goodness! Francis — you'll never guess who I've got here!" Francis smiled and started toward us. Francis was bringing Madge and Ada.
  
  "Ni gonhala mezoot," I said to Martha. "Not speak English." I backed away.
  
  "Oh!" Martha seemed a little confused. "Well in that case, say something Arab for us."
  
  Leila had gathered our exit party. They were waiting for me in a group by the door.
  
  "Ni gonhala mezoot." I repeated the gibberish. Martha readied out and grabbed my arm.
  
  "Nee gon-holler mezoo. Now what does it mean?"
  
  "Ah salood," I smiled. "Ah salood bul zheet."
  
  I broke away and got to the door.
  
  We walked through the lobby, right past the stake-outs; seven Arabs, curtained in cloth, having a loud and heated discussion. "Ni gonhala mezoot," I was saying as we passed them, and we all piled into the dusty Rover that was waiting for us in front of the door.
  
  We got out of town without the hint of a tail.
  
  I felt very clever for a while.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "Where we go now?"
  
  Leila and I were alone in the Rover. We were still dressed as Arabs. We were traveling north. I turned on the radio and found some strumming Middle Eastern music.
  
  "You'll see soon enough."
  
  The answer didn't please her. She tightened her lips and looked straight ahead.
  
  I turned and watched her sitting beside me. She'd thrown back the veil that had covered her face. Her profile was perfect. Straight and regal. I looked too long and she started to blush. "You kill us if you don't watch the road," she admonished.
  
  I smiled and turned back to watch the road. I reached out to change the radio station and she said, "No, I do it. What do you like?"
  
  I told her anything that didn't jangle. She found some piano music. I said it was fine.
  
  We were driving past miles of orange groves, heading up north through occupied Jordan, the area known as the West Bank. Palestinians live here. And Jordanians. And Israelis. Who owns the land and who ought to own it are the questions they've been asking for twenty-five years in conference rooms, barrooms, and sometimes in war rooms, but the land just goes on producing fruit as it has for a couple of thousand years, knowing perhaps, as land always does, that it's going to outlive all its contestors. That in the end, the land will own them.
  
  She reached up and turned the radio off. "Perhaps we talk?"
  
  "Sure. What's on your mind?"
  
  "No. I mean perhaps we talk in Arabic."
  
  "Mmm," I said, "I'm a little rusty."
  
  "Ni gonhala mezoot," she smiled. "No kidding."
  
  "Come on. Be fair. That was just a put-on. In fact, I speak Arabic just like a native." I looked at her and smiled. "A native American."
  
  So we drilled in Arabic for the next half hour and then we stopped at a café for dinner.
  
  The place was Arab café — that's a qahwa — and I ordered the akel from the soufragi in perfectly plausible Arabic, I thought. If my accent was off, it could pass for a dialect. Like a southern drawl might sound to a Yankee. Leila was reaching for the same conclusion. "It's good," she said when the waiter had left. "And you look, I believe, quite… authentic." She was studying my face.
  
  I studied hers, too, across the small candlelit table. Eyes like chunks of smoky topaz, large and round, fawn's eyes; skin like some kind of living satin, and lips you wanted to trace with your fingers to make sure you hadn't just imagined their curves.
  
  And later she'd have to hide it all again under the folds of that black veil.
  
  'Your color," she was saying, "it is also quite good. And goad, also, that it goes all over." She gestured to indicate the length of my body.
  
  I said; "Virgins shouldn't notice things like that."
  
  Her face flushed. "But agents should."
  
  The waiter brought the wine, a good pungent white. I started thinking about the Fates. I wondered if it wasn't all part of their plan. Me, lying naked in the Arizona sun. Had they been getting me ready to pass for an Arab? Even while I'd been thinking of quitting and — what had Millie said — turning philosophical, quoting Omar Khayyam?
  
  I raised my glass to Leila. " 'Drink-for you know not whence you came, nor why; drink — for you know cot why you go, nor where." I emptied my glass.
  
  She smiled politely. "You like to quote Khayyam?"
  
  "Well it's classier than singing 'Old Black Magic' in your ear." She didn't understand. I said, "Never mind." I poured more wine. " There was a door of which I found no key; there was a veil through which I might not see; some little talk a while of Me and Thee there was — and then no more of Thee and Me.'" I put down the bottle. "Yes. I like Khayyam. That's kind of beautiful."'
  
  She pursed her lips. "It's also a very good idea. No more talk of Thee and Me." She sipped her wine.
  
  I lit a cigarette. "That was meant as a reflection on mortality, Leila. My propositions are more direct. Anyway, I'd like to talk about Thee. Where do you come from? How did you get here?"
  
  She smiled. "All right. I come from Riyadh."
  
  "Arabia."
  
  "Yes. My father is a merchant. He has much money."
  
  "Go on."
  
  She shrugged. "I go to university at Jidda. Then I win a scholarship to study in Paris and after much trouble, my father lets me go. Only six months later, he calls me back home. Back to Arabia." She paused.
  
  "And?"
  
  "And I am stilled expected to wear the veil. It is still unlawful I drive a car. I cannot have permission to take a fob." She lowered her eyes. "I am given to marry a middle-aged merchant. The man has already three other wives."
  
  We were both silent. She looked up and I looked in her eyes and we were both silent.
  
  Finally I said, "And Shin Bet. How did you get involved with them?"
  
  Eyes down again. Small shrug. "I run away from home. I go back.to Paris. But this time it's different. I have no school and no friends really. I try to be Western but I am only lonely. Then I meet the Suleimons. An Israeli family. They are wonderful to me. They say, come with us. Come back to Jerusalem. We'll help you get settled." She paused and her eyes got an unhappy shine. "You must understand. They were like my family. Or like the family I always dreamed. They were warm and kind and close to each other. They laugh a lot. I tell them I come. They are flying home and I say I will join them the next week. Only they are killed at Lod Airport."
  
  "The guerrilla attack."
  
  "Yes."
  
  Another silence.
  
  "So I come anyway. I go to the government and offer my service."
  
  "And they make you a belly dancer?"
  
  She smiled slightly. "No. I do many other things. The belly dancing — that was my idea, though."
  
  That was something to think about.
  
  The food came and she turned to her plate, lapsed into silence, blushed when I looked at her. Strange lady. Funny girl. Half East and half West and caught on the cusp of the contradiction.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  A full moon was out. A lover's moon or a bombadier's moon, depending on how you look at things. We drove the final miles in silence and stopped at a moshav, a collective farm, called Ein Gedan. The place had changed in ten years, but I found the right road and the right piece of land and the wooden farmhouse with the sign that said "Lampeck."
  
  I bowed to the man who answered the door. "Many pardons, good sir," I said in Arabic. He nodded briskly and looked wary. I bowed again and pulled off the headcloth. His eyebrows shot up.
  
  "Nick Carter?"
  
  "You were expecting maybe Mrs. Nusbaum?"
  
  Uri Lampeck threw his arms around me and started grinning his wide grin. "You gontza meshuganer! Come on in." He looked at Leila and then back at me. "Still pulling the hardship assignments, I see."
  
  He led us to a small spartan room, offered us tea, cognac, food; told us Raisa, his wife, was asleep; yawned, and said he kept farmer's hours, was it anything urgent or did I just want a bed?
  
  I looked at Leila. "Two beds," I said.
  
  He made a philosophical shrug. "Lucky for you that's all that I've got."
  
  He showed us to a room with bunk-style beds, said "Shalom, boychik," and left us alone.
  
  I took the top bunk.
  
  I closed my eyes.
  
  I kept hearing Leila moving beneath me.
  
  It was driving me crazy that I couldn't see her.
  
  It would have driven me crazy if I could have seen her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  The Salient is the chunk of Syria that Israel occupied in the October war. About ten miles deep and fifteen miles wide, it extends east from the Golan Heights. The edge of the Salient was the cease-fire line. Only the fire hadn't yet ceased. It was many months after "the end of the war" and Syrian artillery was still firing, and people were dying on both sides, only they just didn't call it a war.
  
  Beit Nama was four miles east of the line. Four miles into the Syrian side. Beit Nama was where I wanted to go. Yousef's lead was the best one I had, and Yousef's lead was Beit Nama. Where Ali Mansour, who might or might not have been involved in a kidnap that might or might not have involved Leonard Foxx, might or might not still be living.
  
  And that was my best lead.
  
  Getting there was pretty iffy too.
  
  We debated the subject all morning. Uri and Raisa and Leila and I, over coffee after coffee in the Lampeck's kitchen. My map was spread on the wooden table, collecting souvenirs of coffee stains and jam.
  
  One way was to double back down south and cross into Jordan. No problem there. The Jordan border was business-as-usual. From there we'd go north and cross into Syria — big problem there — and reach Beit Nama through the back door. Mission impossible. Even if our papers got us into Syria, the cease-fire line would be ringed with troops and access to the area would be restricted. We'd be turned back on the road, if not thrown in jail.
  
  The other way was to cross the Heights and go into the Salient on the Israeli side. Not precisely duck soup either. The Israelis, too, were monitoring traffic. And there was no guarantee that a World correspondent or even an American agent could get through. And even if I did get as far as the front, how do you get across a firing line?
  
  "Very carefully," Uri laughed.
  
  "Very helpful." I made a face.
  
  "I say we go the long way. Go through Jordan." Leila sat with her feet rucked under her, perched Yoga-style on the wooden chair. Jeans and pigtails and a serious face. "And once we get to Syria, I'll do the talking."
  
  "Swell, sweetheart. But what will you say? And what will you tell the Syrian army when they stop us cold on the road to Beit Nama? Tell them you're Little Black Biding Hood and we're going to visit our grandma in the hills?"
  
  She gave me what some might construe as a dirty look. Finally she shrugged. "All right You win. So then we're back to your original question. How do we cross in front of the army?"
  
  The worst thing about that sentence was the "we." How I might cross in front of Syrian guns and how toe might do it were two different things.
  
  Uri spoke up. Uri could have doubled for Ezio Pinza. A big strong man with a big strong face, mostly white hair, a prominent nose. "I can see that you get from here to the line. On this side, I mean. If that's any help." He was talking to me but looking at his wife.
  
  Balsa only slightly lifted an eyebrow. Baisa's is one of those rare faces. Weathered and lined and every line makes her seem more gorgeous. That wonderful face, a thin but womanly body, and waist-length red-but-turning-gray hair caught in a clip at the back of her neck. If The Fates let me live to a ripe old age, I want a Raisa for the autumn months.
  
  "I'll get it," she said, and started to get up. Uri stayed her.
  
  "No hurry," he said. "Let Nick make his decision first"
  
  I said, "Did I miss something? What's 'it'?"
  
  Uri sighed. "There's time," he said. "The question still before the house is how you get across the line."
  
  'To hell with it" I said. "I'll get across the line. I don't know how. I'll just have to do it. Listen — Moses parted the sea, maybe hell part the Syrians."
  
  Uri turned to Raisa. "Did this man always make such awful puns?"
  
  "I think so," she said. "But we were younger then."
  
  Uri grunted and turned back to me. "Then that's your decision?"
  
  "That's my decision. Either way, I'll have trouble at the line, but I might as well have friendly guns at my back." I turned to Leila. "How'd you like to spend a few lays on a farm? I'm sure Raisa and Uri would…"
  
  Her head was shaking a definite no.
  
  "Then let me put that another way. You're going to spend a few days on a farm."
  
  She was still shaking nos. "I am given my own assignment to do. I must get over there with you or without you. Better for me if I go with you." She was giving me a fawn-in-earnest look. "And better for you if you go with me.
  
  There was silence in the room. Raisa watched Uri watching me watch Leila. The part about her own assignment was news. But suddenly it made some very good sense. A fast deal between Hawk and Vadim. The bosses scratch each others backs, and I wind up as an escort service.
  
  Uri cleared his throat. "And you, Leila? You agree to Nick's plan?"
  
  She smiled slowly. "Whatever he says will be the right thing." I looked at her and squinted. She looked at me and shrugged.
  
  Uri and Raisa exchanged a look. Forty-seven messages back and forth in the two-second span of that man-and-wife look. They both got up and left the room. To get "it."
  
  I turned to Leila. She was busy clearing the coffee cups, carefully not meeting my eye. When she picked up the cup that sat at my elbow, her hand brushed lightly against my arm.
  
  Uri came back, his hand clenched tightly around "it" "It" was obviously smaller than a breadbox. "It" was also nothing to joke about, judging by the look on Uri's face. "You will guard this with your life and you will get it back to me." He still hadn't opened his fist. "It will get you past any roadblock in Israel, but I warn you, if the Arabs find that you have it, you'd do better to shoot yourself than let them take you." He opened his palm.
  
  A Star of David.
  
  I said, "I appreciate the gesture, "Uri. But religious medals…"
  
  He stopped me with a laugh. A great big barrel-house laugh. He twisted the loop at the top of the medal, the one that joined the disc to the chain. The top triangle of the Star popped up and underneath was engraved:
  
  '/'
  
  
  
  A. Aleph. The first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. A. Aleph. The Israeli counter-terror group.
  
  So Uri Lampeck was at it again. He'd been part of the Irgun in '46. A demolitions expert. A man who wanted an independent Israel and believed in burning his bridges behind him. At the time I met him in '64, he was working with a bomb-detection squad. Now, at fifty, he was back making things go bump in the night.
  
  "Here," he was saying. "You put this on."
  
  I took the medal and put it on.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  We left at night. We were out of costume for the time being, but I had Arab papers, brilliantly forged and weathered looking, and Uri's Star of David around my neck.
  
  You might as well travel the Heights at night. There's nothing to see. A flat basalt-black plateau, littered with the garbage of three wars. Twisted, rusting, burned-out tanks and the wreckage of armored personnel carriers, scattered like tombstones in the rocky fields, along with broken roofless houses, rusting barbed wire and signs that say Danger! Mines!
  
  Yet, back from the roads, eighteen Israeli farms exist, and Arab peasants till their fields and raise their sheep, and run, or don't bother, when the strafing starts. They're all either crazy or just human. Or maybe it comes to the same thing.
  
  We were stopped by a kid with an M-16. I showed my World press pass and he let us drive on. Only twenty yards later, around a bend, a whole blockade was waiting on the road. A .30 caliber machine gun, mounted on a tripod, pointed its angry finger at the Rover.
  
  The Israeli lieutenant was polite but firm. First he told me I was out of my skull to want to go anywhere near the front, that this was a war no matter what they called it and no one could guarantee my safety. I told him I hadn't come to cover a picnic. He still said no. Absolutely not. Loh. I took him aside and showed him the medal.
  
  I got back in the Rover and drove on through.
  
  We stopped at an Israeli position on the lowlands, a few hundred yards from the Syrian line. The place had once been an Arab village. Now it was simply a collection of rubble. Not war damage. After-war damage. The result of daily Syrian heavy artillery fire across the line.
  
  "It's like a weather report on their president's mood," the Israeli soldier was telling me. His name was Chuck Cohen. He came from Chicago. We were sharing some of Raisa's sandwiches and coffee, sitting on a three-foot-high stone fence that once upon a time was the wall of a house. "Ten minutes' fire — he's just saying hello. An hour and he's telling the whole Arab world that they can negotiate all they want but Syria wants a fight to the finish."
  
  "Do you believe it?"
  
  He shrugged. "If they do — we'll finish them."
  
  The Israeli captain sauntered over. The one who'd taken a look at the medal and told me he'd do what he could to help. Captain Harvey Jacobs was thirty years old. A tough, weary, wiry blond who taught Fine Arts at the university when he wasn't called on to fight a war, Leila poured him some coffee from the thermos.
  
  Jacobs asked me how I planned to cross the line. I didn't begin to have a plan, but when I did, I'd certainly tell him. No sense getting shot at from both sides.
  
  Jacobs' attitude toward me was guarded. The Aleph around my neck gave me unquestioned status, but seen from his view, it also spelled trouble. Was I going to ask him for moral support or was I going to ask him for fire support? Jacobs had troubles enough without me. I asked him if he'd simply show me on the map where the Syrian guns were nested. "Everywhere," he said. "But you want it on a map, I'll show you on a map."
  
  We walked through a busted-up marketplace and headed by moonlight for a big stone building, the tallest in town, the old police station. It had made a great lookout, and then a great target. The entrance was all that seemed to be standing. A thick double-door beneath a stone plaque that said Gendarmerie de L'Etat de Syrie and then the date, 1929, a time when Syria was under the French.
  
  We walked around, not through, the door and down some rubble-strewn steps to a basement. To Captain Jacobs' improvised war room. A table, some files, a single bare bulb, a telephone that still, miraculously, worked. I pulled out my map and he slowly filled it with X's and O's; outposts, checkpoints, command posts, tanks. A tic-tac-toe game played for keeps.
  
  I ran my hand over my eyes.
  
  "I assume the girl is combat trained?" He was standing, leaning over the table, the overhead bulb making forty-watt shadows on the shadows that were painted under his eyes.
  
  Instead of answering, I lit a cigarette and offered him one. He took my cigarette for an answer. He was shaking his head. "In that case, you're really crazy," he said.
  
  A soldier appeared in the doorway; stopped when he saw me. Jacobs excused himself and said he'd be back. I asked if I could use his phone while he was gone. I'd tried to reach Benyamin from the Lampeck's farm but I hadn't been able to track him down. This might be my last chance.
  
  Jacobs crossed back and picked up the phone. He jiggled the receiver three or four times and then said "Blum? Jacobs. Listen. I want you to put this call through — " He looked at me. "To where?"
  
  "Tel Aviv."
  
  "Tel Aviv. Top priority. My permission." He handed the telephone back to me, having proved that I was a VIP and that he was a very VIP. He left with his soldier.
  
  I gave Benyamin's red-phone number and ten or fifteen minutes later the quality of static on the phone line changed and through it I heard Benyamin say, "Yes?"
  
  "The Shanda Baths," I said. "What have you learned?"
  
  "Place is a — bwupcrackle."
  
  "Place is a what? All I got was the static."
  
  "Front for a dope trade. Used to be a depot for sending out opium. But after the Turkish poppy fields closed — crackle-bwuprrip — so the boss started dealing in hash instead. Local trade only. Small-time business."
  
  "Who's the boss?"
  
  "Bwup-crackle-bwwwuupp-st-crackle-t-bwup."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Again?"
  
  "Whole thing?"
  
  "Yeah."
  
  "Terhan Kal-rrip-ccrackle. Doesn't own the place, just runs it"
  
  "Is the dope thing his idea or the management's?"
  
  "Probably his. The place is owned by Regal, Inc. Regal, Inc. is a Swiss corporation — bwup. So we can't trace who the real owner is. Now, how about you? Where the — crackle-t?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm…"
  
  "Bwup-crackle-sttt-poppp-buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."
  
  
  
  
  
  Dead line.
  
  Sorry, David. And I would have even told you the truth.
  
  A few minutes later, Jacobs came back. "So?" he said.
  
  I shook my head. "I'll need a few hours to come up with a plan."
  
  "Mmm," he said. "I just want to warn you. They're shooting at anything that moves. I can give you cover from where my guns are, but I can't risk men to go along with you. Not on what's got to be a suicide trip."
  
  "Did I ask you to?" I raised an eyebrow.
  
  "No," he answered. "But now I don't have to worry that you will."
  
  I went back to the Rover and closed my eyes.
  
  It wasn't going to work. The Scarlett O'Hara Battle Plan, the I'll-worry-about-it-tomorrow stuff. Tomorrow was here. And I still didn't have any good ideas.
  
  Plan One: Leave Leila here with the captain. Take my chances of making it alone. To hell with the deal between Hawk and Vadim. If I left her, at least she'd be alive. Which was more than I could guarantee if she went with me.
  
  Plan Two: Turn around. Go back through Jordan or up into Lebanon and try to fake it through the Syrian border. But Plan Two faltered where it faltered before. I'd never even get near Beit Nama. Why was the place so close to the line?
  
  Plan Three: Move Beit Nama. Very funny.
  
  Plan Four — come on, there has to be a Four.
  
  I started to smile.
  
  Plan Four.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The bullets were flying. Missing our heads, but not by enough. It was just dawn and we were easy targets; two Arab figures running through the field. I jumped behind a rock and shot back, carefully aiming my rifle: Crack!
  
  I motioned to Leila to try for more yardage. Whizz! Boing! Bullets splayed the rock I was hiding behind. Much too close. It got me mad. I picked up the rifle and aimed; Crack! The shot whizzed right over Jacobs' head. Rat-a-tat-tat. He got the message. The next round he aimed at me missed by a yard.
  
  The Syrian guns hadn't started yet. They were probably busy doping it out. The Israeli fire wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed — aha! — at two Arab figures running through the field. Idiots! What were they doing? Trying to escape through Israeli lines? Rat-a-tat-tat. Jacobs strikes again. Crack! My shot really went wild. Leila tripped and fell against a rock.
  
  "You okay?" I whispered.
  
  "Damn!" she said.
  
  "You're okay. Let's keep going."
  
  We tried for another five yards. Jacobs' shots stayed a yard away.
  
  And now the Syrians opened fire. But not at us. The plan was working. The Israeli guns now fired at the Syrians and somewhere down the line came a heavy boom boom as 105 millimeters of tank cannon outshouted a Soviet-made T-54. The armies kept each other nice and busy while Leila and I made our way across the lines.
  
  We were suddenly facing a Syrian soldier.
  
  "Mann!" he challenged. (Hark, who goes there?)
  
  "Bassem Aladin," I smiled. My name. I bowed: "Salaam." He frowned. "Imraa?" (The woman?) I shrugged and told him the baggage was mine. He told me to follow him, keeping his machine gun leveled at my side. I motioned to Leila. He motioned no. "Leave the woman."
  
  Now I was entering a Syrian war room. Another stone building. Another piece of rubble. Another table with another bare bulb. Another captain, tired and angry. I prayed to the many-tongued god of Berlitz that my spruced-up Arabic would get me through.
  
  I picked a personality. Humble, eager, slightly foolish. Who else but a fool would do what I'd done? A spy, that's who. I had to be either a spy or a fool. I was counting on the almost-perfect illogic that always dooms the most logical minds. I'd come across the border flagrantly, openly; shot at from behind by Israeli troops. It was such an obvious way to send a spy that no one would believe his enemy would do it. What's obvious, obviously can't be true. So goes the illogical logic of war.
  
  A soldier at the door took my rifle away. I smiled and bowed and practically thanked him. I bowed again to the Syrian captain and began to jabber, smiling, excited, words tumbling out and over one another. Alf shoukur — a thousand thanks; I'd been held by the enemy (adouwe, I remembered), they'd held me in my qarya, my village. Ila arm al-an — till now, they'd held me, but I'd knocked out the hairis and taken his mousadas — I pointed at the rifle I claimed to have stolen — and then, min fadlak, if you please, Good Captain, I'd found my imraa and ran over the jabal. I kept on bowing and smiling and slobbering.
  
  The Syrian captain shook his head slowly. He asked for my papers and shook his head again. He looked at his aide and said, "What do you think?"
  
  The aide said he thought I was a fool with haz. A lucky fool. I kept on smiling like the fool I was.
  
  They asked me where I was going from here. I said that I had a sadiq in Beit Nama. A friend who would help me.
  
  The captain waved a disgusted hand. "Go then, fool. And don't come back."
  
  I smiled again and bowed my way out "Shoukran, shoukran. Ila-al-laqaa." Thank you, Captain; thank you and goodbye.
  
  I got outside the half-blasted building, found Leila, and motioned with my head. She started to follow me, ten steps behind.
  
  We got past the first ring of Syrian troops and I heard her mutter, "Jiyid jiddan". You were very good.
  
  "No," I said in English. "I'm just a lucky fool."
  
  
  
  
  
  Fifteen
  
  
  
  
  A fool and his luck are soon parted. I just made that up but you may quote me if you like.
  
  A mile down the road we were stopped by a road guard. An arrogant, brutal son of a bitch, the kind who's bad enough as a civilian, but give him a gun and a soldier suit and what you end up with is a runaway sadist. He was bored and tired and itching for fun: Tom and Jerry style.
  
  He blocked the road.
  
  I bowed and smiled and said "If you please…"
  
  He leered. "I don't please." He looked at Leila and grinned with a mouthful of black and green teeth. "Does she please? The woman? You find her pleasing?" He elbowed past me. "I think I see if I find her pleasing."
  
  I said, "No you won't, you heap of dung!" Only I happened to say it in English. I pulled out my stiletto and spun him around. "Abdel!" he yelled. "I've caught a spy!" I slit his throat but it was too late. Abdel came. With three others.
  
  "Drop the knife!"
  
  They were holding machine guns.
  
  I dropped the knife.
  
  One of the soldiers walked up and faced me. Dark and dark-eyed; his head in a turban. He socked me across the jaw, saying a word that Leila hadn't taught me. I grabbed him and spun him around in front of me, arms locked behind his back in a twist. In that position, he became a shield. I still had a gun hidden in my robes. If I could just…
  
  Forget it. The machine guns switched their focus to Leila. "Let him go."
  
  I let him go. He spun around and lunged at my throat. He was strong with fury and I couldn't break loose. I used my weight to bring us both to the ground. We rolled around in the rocky dust, but his hands were like steel. They stayed on my neck.
  
  "Enough!" said a gunner. "Abdel! Let him go!" Abdel paused. Just long enough. I rocked him off me with a punch to the throat. He pretzeled in the dust, gasping for breath. Tool!" said the short one. "You'll get us in trouble. The Colonel wishes to question all spies. He doesn't want us to bring him corpses."
  
  I was sitting on the ground, massaging my neck. Abdel got up, still fighting for breath. He spat and called me the intestine of a pig. The tall soldier gave him a sympathetic cluck. "Ah, poor Abdel, don't despair. When the colonel uses his special methods, the spy will wish you'd killed him now." He smiled, a wide black and green smile.
  
  Oh yeah. Terrific. "Special methods." I thought of the medal around my neck. No one had searched me. No one had frisked me. I still had my gun — and I still had the medal First things first Ditch the medal. I reached for the clasp.
  
  "Up!" came the order. "Hands up!" I couldn't find the goddamned clasp! "Up!" It wasn't the time for heroics. I put up my hands. One of the guys put his gun on a rock and came over and bound my hands behind me. He tugged at the ropes and pulled me to my feet. The guy had a face like a chipped plate. Cracked by sun and wind and anger. "Now," he said. "We bring him to the colonel." That's when Leila went into action. Leila, who'd been standing quiet as a rock. Suddenly, she screamed, "La! La" and started toward me, tripped and fell. She was down in the dust now, weeping and wailing, "No! No! Please! No!" The soldiers were grinning their Tartan grins. The guy at the ropes started jerking me back. Leila heaved herself up and ran; sobbing, wild, crazy, finally throwing herself at my feet, grabbing my ankles, kissing my boots. What the hell was she doing down there? Abdel grabbed her and pulled her away. Then he pushed her with the nose of his gun.
  
  "Move!" he said. "We go to the colonel. We go to the colonel in Beit Nama."
  
  Well, I thought, that's one way to get there.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The colonel's office was next to the lobby of what used to be the town's hotel. He and his men had taken it over and the Nama Hotel combined all the worst of brothel, barracks, and interrogation center.
  
  Music was coming from a room down the hall. Loud laughter. The smells of booze. The lobby was filled with local Arabs, some in custody, most on their own, while soldiers patroled with shiny rifles. Leila was led to a seat in the lobby. I was taken to see Colonel Qaffir.
  
  When they first brought me in, I couldn't see him. The colonel was standing with his back to the door. He was leaning over a small mirror, squeezing a pimple with great concentration. He waved the guards out and continued his work. Plop! His face unloaded on the mirror. He sighed with almost sexual pleasure. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I was seated on a chair across the room, my hands still tied behind my back. Again, he studied his face in the mirror, as though it were a map of enemy encampments; the colonel debated where to strike next.
  
  I looked around. The office was lovingly, lavishly done in the grand tradition of Arab gloom. The walls were a deep yellow stucco, hung with grim, dusty rugs. Heavy furniture, carved-wood doors and small, high, stained-glass windows. Barred windows. No exit. The room smelled of dust and piss and hash. A door inside the office was slightly ajar. It led to a bare stuccoed cell. A single chair. And some kind of free-standing metal contraption. Something like a giant steel coat rack with a fat iron bar right-angled at the top. It almost grazed the twelve foot ceiling. A torture machine. "Special methods." Which explained the sour biological smell.
  
  The colonel had made his final selection. He dive-bombed two grimy fingers and struck. Bull's eye! Mission completed. He wiped his chin on the cuff of his jacket. He turned around. An olive-colored man with a sweeping mustache and a painful, lumpy, pock-marked face.
  
  He stood and gave me the kind of look that people must have given him before he was a colonel. He also called me the intestine of a pig.
  
  I had my speech all ready again. The same one I'd used at the firing line. The only guy who'd heard me speak English was the guy I'd murdered back on the road. I'd murdered him because he'd attacked my woman. Me, I was still Bassem Aladin, the foolish, humble, lovable jerk.
  
  What's known in the trade as "fat chance!"
  
  My performance was brilliant and flawless as ever — with one difference. Colonel Qaffir. Qaffir got his kicks by doing torture and he wasn't about to be cheated out of his kicks. The war just gave him a legal excuse. In peacetime, he probably hung around alleys, luring streetwalkers to fascinating deaths.
  
  Qaffir kept telling me to tell him my mission.
  
  I kept telling Qaffir I didn't have a mission. I was Bassem Aladin and I didn't have a mission. The answer pleased him. He was eyeing the coat rack like a fat lady eyes a banana split. A numbing weariness was taking me over. I've been tortured before.
  
  Qaffir got up and called his guards. He opened the outside door of the office and I got a drift of music and laughter, and saw Leila, seated in the lobby, between a pair of vigilant guns.
  
  The guards came in and closed the door. Two unpleasant-looking hunks of beef, uniformed and turbaned and smelling of beer. Now, I was frisked. Quickly, but enough. There went my old friend Wilhelmina. She sat on the desk, on top of some files, as silent and useless as a paperweight.
  
  There was nothing to do. My hands, as the saying goes, were tied. I'd bought it. Whatever the hell it was. And I still had that medal around my neck. Maybe Qaffir would know what it was. Maybe he wouldn't twist the loop. I was down to the bottom of the maybe barrel.
  
  Maybe…
  
  Maybe I just got a good idea.
  
  They led me back into Qaffir's game room.
  
  They threw me on the floor and untied my hands. The colonel tossed me a length of rope. He told me to tie my own ankles together. "Tight," he said. "You make it tight or I make it tight." I tied my ankles together. Tight. I was still wearing high leather desert boots. The colonel also had a thing for my boots. A real, sick jerk. When he watched me do the ropes, he had stars in his eyes. I kept my own expression blank.
  
  He was starting to sweat. He released a lever on the giant coat rack and the bar at the top slid down to the ground. He nodded to his guards. They bound my hands with the same piece of rope that was binding my feet It left me hunched over and touching my toes.
  
  They slipped the ropes over the bar of the rack, and hoisted the bar back up to the ceiling. I was left there hanging like a sleeping sloth, like a side of beef in a butcher's window.
  
  And that's when the medal slipped down and around and showed its face in the middle of my back.
  
  The colonel saw it. He couldn't miss. "Aha! I see. Bassem Aladin with a Star Of David. Very interesting, Bassem Aladin."
  
  There was still a chance. If he didn't find the hidden "A," his finding the medal could actually help. Could fit right in with my good idea.
  
  "So that's what it is," said Bassem Aladin. "A Star Of David!"
  
  Qaffir made a sound like a snort and a giggle. "Soon you will not make many jokes. Soon you will beg me to let you talk. Of serious things. Your mission, for instance."
  
  He pulled out a long, leather whip. He turned to the guards. He told them to go.
  
  The guards went.
  
  The door closed.
  
  I steeled myself for what was coming.
  
  The robe was ripped away from my back.
  
  And then came the lashes.
  
  One.
  
  Two.
  
  Cutting. Searing. Burning. Tearing. Starting in my flesh and exploding in my brain.
  
  Twenty.
  
  Thirty.
  
  I stopped counting.
  
  I could feel the blood rolling down my back. I could see the blood dripping down my wrists.
  
  I was thinking the colonel had worse in mind.
  
  I was thinking my good idea wasn't so good.
  
  I was thinking I needed a little rest.
  
  I passed out.
  
  When I came to, it was hours later and it wasn't any gentle, slow dawning. My back was a small Chicago fire. The bastard was rubbing salt in my wounds. Fine old Biblical torture.
  
  I decided I'd just about had enough. Enough for country, pride, and duty.
  
  I cracked.
  
  I started yelling "Stop!"
  
  He said, "Your mission. You want to tell me about your mission?"
  
  "Yes… yes."
  
  "Tell." He was disappointed. He was still rubbing in the granular fire. "Why were you sent here?"
  
  "To… to make contact. Please! Stop!"
  
  He didn't stop. "Contact with whom?"
  
  My god, it hurt!
  
  "Contact with whom?"
  
  "M-Mansour," I said. "Ali Mansour."
  
  And where is this man?"
  
  "H-here. Beit Nama."
  
  "Interesting," he said.
  
  The fire burned, but it didn't get hotter.
  
  I heard him walking out to his office.
  
  I heard the door open. He summoned his guards. I heard him say the name Ali Mansour.
  
  The outer door closed. His footsteps approached. The door of the game room closed behind him.
  
  "I think you will tell me now the whole story. But first I will give you some more motivation. A little motivation to assure you tell the truth." The colonel moved around and stood in front of me, forehead throbbing, eyes glinting. "And this time I think we'll apply the pressure to someplace… a little closer to home."
  
  He threw back his whip hand and started to aim.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  When the guards brought Ali Mansour to the office, the colonel was standing with his back to the door. He was leaning over the mirror again. He waved the guards out and continued his work. Finally, he turned and faced Mansour.
  
  Mansour's hands were bound behind him but he tried to hold onto a surly expression. Mansour had a round, almost boyish face. A fat, flat nose. Full, twitchy lips. A faceful of fear, posing as defiance.
  
  Qaffir was not about to tolerate defiance.
  
  He greeted Mansour with a whip to the face. "So," he said. "You collaborate with spies."
  
  "No!" Mansour was looking through the door. Looking at the hulk of raw flesh that dangled from a bar on a giant coat-rack.
  
  Qaffir followed the man's glance. "You wish to talk now, or you wish to be persuaded?"
  
  "No! I mean, yes. I mean — I know nothing. There is nothing to tell. I am loyal to Syria. I am with the Palestinians. I believe in the fedayeen. I would not… I have not… Colonel, I…"
  
  "You! You are the intestine of a pig! You have talked to Israelis. To American agents. You have put in jeopardy a certain plan. A kidnap plan. You and your scum of a pig-faced brother." Qaffir menaced his whip through the air. Mansour moaned and shook his head, his eyes like cockroaches, darting back and forth. "No!" he said. "My brother. Not I. And my brother is dead. A! Shaitan kill him. Now. You see. That should prove it. If I had betrayed them, I too would be dead."
  
  "Then why did that meat there that once was an agent tell me his mission was contacting you?"
  
  Mansour was in agony. He kept on shaking his head back and forth. "My… my brother, he talk to American agent. Maybe they think that I talk too. I wouldn't. I die first. I swear. Not me."
  
  "Say what you know, then, about your brother."
  
  "My brother was a fool. I didn't know that when I told him the plan. I said perhaps there would be much money. My brother wants money for buying guns. When the plan falls through, my brother is angry. He says he is going to get himself money. Next thing I know, Khali is dead. They say he had talked to American spy. He was waiting in Jerusalem for the spy to pay him."
  
  The story was falling into place. I gritted my teeth against the pain. Qaffir's uniform was grating on my back. I hoped to hell that I wasn't still bleeding. Though Mansour would think it was someone else's blood. The blood of the man hanging in the game room. The blood of the real Colonel Qaffir.
  
  "What do you mean — when the plan fell through'? The plan, that I know of, is well on its way."
  
  "The plan, yes. Our part in it, no."
  
  I remembered it was Ali's friend who was involved. Not Ali himself. "Your friend," I said. "The one who told you about the plan…"
  
  "Ahmed Rafad?"
  
  "Where is he now?"
  
  "At Rhamaz, I guess. If Shaitan is still there, I would think he is with them."
  
  "And now you will tell me what your brother knew."
  
  Mansour looked at me. "He knew — the truth."
  
  I toyed with the whip. "Don't tell me 'the truth.' I must know exactly the story you told him, so I'll know the story he told the spy. Also what gives you such Emir's pride as to think that you have been told the truth? Huh! You? They told you the truth? Huh!"
  
  His eyes crawled down to the floor. "Perhaps that explains it," he said to the carpet.
  
  "Huh? What? Speak up, you worm."
  
  He raised his eyes and with them, his voice. "Perhaps as you say, Rafad told me lies. Perhaps that is why I have not seen him since."
  
  The plan, as he told it, was to kidnap Foxx. To hold him in the Syrian village of Rhamaz. No, he didn't know which house in Rhamaz. Four men were hired to do the job. His friend Rafad was to fly the plane. "No, not a plane. A…" Mansour wanted to gesture with his hands. His hands were tied.
  
  "A helicopter."
  
  "A chopper," he said. "Is the same thing, yes? Rafad said they pay him a lot of money. Some in advance, more later. They tell him to look for other good workers. Not to hire — just to look." Mansour was looking scared again. "That is all that I know. All that I know."
  
  "And the plan fell through?"
  
  "Rafad said they changed their mind about hiring. They didn't want any others on the job."
  
  "And who are 'they?"
  
  Mansour shook his head. "I don't think even Rafad knows that. They only spoke to him on the phone. They said they thought it was dangerous to meet. They knew he flew choppers. They knew he was loyal. They said that was all they needed to know. As for the rest — they sent him much money, and that was all Rafad needed to know."
  
  I screwed my eyes into nasty slits. "I don't believe you. You know who they are. If they didn't tell you, perhaps you guessed." I suddenly jerked him up by the collar. "What were your guesses?"
  
  "I… I had no guesses."
  
  "Everyone has guesses. What were yours?"
  
  "A… As Saiqa. I thought they were part of As Saiqa. But the papers say they are Black September. I… I guess that also might be so."
  
  I let go of his collar and held him with my eyes. "C-Colonel, please, my brother couldn't tell the Americans much. He only knew the things I told him. And all those things — I have just told you. And — and — in telling my brother, I did no wrong. Shaitan told Rafad to recruit, and Rafad said, yes, I could talk to my brother. I was breaking no trust. I was doing no wrong. Please, Colonel. You let me go now?"
  
  "I let you go now… to the other room."
  
  His eyes bugged. I took him into the other room. I sat him on the chair and bound and gagged him. We both looked up at Qaffir's body. His head was rolled forward and facing the wall. It would be a while before anyone missed him — before they bothered to look at his face.
  
  And when they did, I'd be miles away.
  
  Maybe.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sixteen
  
  
  
  
  You may want to know how I did it.
  
  You have to go back to the scene on the hill, from the point where the gunners said, "Drop the knife," to where Leila groveled at my feet. That was how I got Hugo back. Leila picked it up when she "tripped and fell," and then slipped the stiletto into my boot.
  
  I wasn't sure how I'd use it. Or even if I'd get a chance to use it. I didn't even know when I was in the colonel's office. All I figured when the guards came in was I wouldn't get to go and see Ali Mansour. And then what flashed was the Islamic proverb: "If Mohammed can't come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed." So I decided that Mansour would come to me. That I'd let the colonel do his stuff, that after a while I'd pretend to crack, and mention Mansour, and get him brought in.
  
  The rest of the story was pure luck. The rest of the story is always luck. Luck is how most people stay alive. Brains, muscles, guns, and guts only add up to fifty percent. The rest is luck. Luck was that no one frisked me past the gun, that Qaffir liked to see a guy tie himself up, and that the next move was tying my hands to my ankles. When Qaffir left the room to get Mansour arrested, I grabbed the knife, cut myself loose, hung in there (or up there) as though I were tied, and when Qaffir came back, I jumped him, lassoed him, beat him, and killed him. And the beating, I add, was just to make the body-swap look legitimate.
  
  After I locked up Ali Mansour, I went to the door and called for "the woman." I kept one hand close to my face, and all I had to yell was, "Imraa!" Woman]
  
  When they brought her in, I was back at the mirror. I was even smiling. I was thinking of the write-ups in the medical journals. I'd discovered the world's only cure for acne. Death.
  
  The guards left. I turned around. I looked at Leila and she looked at me and her eyes changed from chunks of ice to rivers, and after that, she was in my arms and the veil fell away and the walls came down, and the lady didn't kiss like a virgin.
  
  She stopped just long enough to look in my eyes. "I thought — I mean, they were talking out there — about Qaffir — about — about what he does…"
  
  I nodded. "He does… But he only got as far as my back. Speaking of which…" I loosened her grip.
  
  She stood back, suddenly playing Clara Barton. "Let me see."
  
  I shook my head. "Uh uh. Seeing is not what it needs. What it needs is Novocaine and Aureomycin and probably stitches and a very good bandage. But seeing is something it does not need. Come on. We've still got work to do."
  
  She looked around. "How do we get out?"
  
  "That's the work we've got to do. Think of a way to get out and then do it."
  
  She said, "There are Jeeps parked out in the front."
  
  "Then all we have to do is get to the Jeeps. Meaning all I have to do is pass for Colonel Qaffir in front of his whole damned platoon. How many guys are out there in the lobby?"
  
  "Maybe ten. Fifteen at most" She tilted her head. "You look like Qaffir?"
  
  "Only a little around the mustache." I explained about Qaffir's distinguishing marks. "He was more in bloom than a park in the spring. And that's not the kind of thing that anyone misses. It just takes one guy to say I'm not Qaffir and they'll figure out fast that Qaffir is dead. And then, my chickadee, so are we."
  
  Leila stopped and thought for a minute. "Unless there is no one looking at you."
  
  "I could always wear a sign that says Do Not Look."
  
  "Or I could wear a sign that says Look At Me."
  
  I looked at her and frowned. In the little silence I heard the music. The music coming from down the hall.
  
  "Leila — are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"
  
  "What do you think I think?"
  
  I ran my hand lightly down her robe-covered body. "How will you do it?"
  
  "I worry about how. You just listen for the proper moment. Then you go out and get in the Jeep. Drive around to the back of the hotel."
  
  I looked doubtful.
  
  She said, "You underrate me. Remember, these men hardly ever see women. They see only walking bundles of cloth."
  
  I suddenly looked even more doubtful. I told her I didn't underrate her at all, but I thought she was underrating those guys if she thought she could do her shimmy-and-shake and just walk away like nothing had happened.
  
  She smiled. "Nothing has happened yet." And then she was suddenly out the door.
  
  I started to rifle the colonel's desk. I found his papers and put them in my pocket. I'd already taken his gun and his holster, my knife was strapped into place up my sleeve and I'd rescued Wilhelmina and slipped her into my boot. I also still had my Hertz map with its coffee stains, jam stains, X's, O's, and the circle I'd drawn to match Robey's trip.
  
  I looked at the map. The tiny Syrian town of Rhamaz fell twenty miles within the circle. I started to grin. With all the odds that were going against me, I just might have turned up the billion dollar maybe. The Al Shaitan camp. The Devil's workshop.
  
  The sound effects in the lobby had changed. The music was louder, but that wasn't all. Sighs, mumbles, whistles, murmurs, the sound of seventy whizzing eyes. Leila was strutting her stuff, all right, doing her El Jazzar belly dance. I waited until the sounds reached a crescendo; then I opened the colonel's door and made my way through the crowded lobby as unseen as a fat girl on a Malibu beach.
  
  The Jeeps in front had been left untended and I drove one around to the back and waited, parked behind a clump of sheltering palms.
  
  Five minutes.
  
  Nothing.
  
  Her plan wasn't working.
  
  I'd have to go in there and rescue Leila.
  
  Five minutes more.
  
  And then she appeared. Running toward me. Dressed in her silver spangled costume.
  
  She jumped in the Jeep. "Go!" she said.
  
  I pulled away and we took off. Fast.
  
  A half mile later she began to explain. "I kept going out through the doors to the garden and coming back in with less and less clothes."
  
  I started to laugh. "And they thought when you went out the final time…?"
  
  She gave me a mischievous look and laughed, tossed her head and let the wind blow her hair all around. I forced my eyeballs back to the road and gunned the Jeep as fast as it would go.
  
  Leila Kaloud. Freudian goldmine. Playing around the edges of sex and never getting close to the real thing. Teasing herself as much as everyone else. I said, "Okay, but cover up now. We don't want a thousand eyes on this Jeep."
  
  She struggled into the sack-like robes and wrapped the veil around her face. "So where do we go now?" She seemed slightly miffed.
  
  "A place called Rhamaz. Southeast of here."
  
  She grabbed the map from the seat beside me. She scanned it and said, "We stop at Ilfidri."
  
  I said, "We do not."
  
  She said, "You are bleeding. I know of a doctor who lives at Ilfidri. It's on the way."
  
  "Can you trust the guy?"
  
  She nodded. "Oh yes."
  
  Ilfidri was a small but dense village of low, squat stone houses. A population of maybe two hundred. We got there at twilight. No one was out on the unpaved streets, but the sound of the Jeep was a major event. Curious faces peered out of windows and over stone walls and out of alleys.
  
  "There," Leila said. "The home of Dr. Nasr." I pulled up in front of a white stone box. "I go first alone and say why we're here."
  
  "I think I'll go with you."
  
  She shrugged. "All right."
  
  Dr. Daoud Nasr answered the knock. A short thin man, wrinkled and robed. He took in my Syrian colonel's get-up and a quick alertness brightened his eyes.
  
  "Salaam, my Colonel." He bowed slightly.
  
  Leila cleared her throat and threw back her veil. "And no salaams for your Leila then?"
  
  "Ah!" Nasr threw his arms around her. Then he pulled back and put a finger to his lips. "Guests are inside. Say nothing more. Colonel?" He gave me an appraising look. "I think perhaps you come to my office?"
  
  Nasr put his arm around my back, his robe covering my bloodstained jacket. He led us into a small room. A worn rug covered the concrete floor where two men sat on embroidered pillows. Two others perched on a pillow-covered bench that was built all around the stone wall. Kerosene lanterns lit the room.
  
  "My friends," he announced, "I present you with my good friend, Colonel…" he paused, but only an instant, "Khaddourah." He reeled off the names of the other guests. Safadi, Nusafa, Thuweini, Khatib. All of them middle-aged, shrewd-eyed men. But none of them looked at me with the alarm that Nasr had eyed me with at the door.
  
  He told them we had some "private business" and, with his arm still draped around me, led me off to a room in the back. Leila disappeared into the kitchen. Unintroduced. Unnoticed.
  
  The room was a crude doctor's office. A single cabinet held his supplies. The room had a sink with no running water and a kind of makeshift examining table; a wooden block with a lumpy mattress. I stripped off my jacket and the bloodsoaked shirt. He sucked in his breath through closed teeth. "Qaffir," he said, and went to work.
  
  He used a spongeful of stinging liquid and took some stitches without anesthetic. I moaned quietly. My back couldn't tell the good guys from the bad. As far as the ends of my nerves were concerned, Nasr and Qaffir were both villains.
  
  He finished his work by smearing some goo on a strip of gauze and winding it around my middle as though he were wrapping a mummy. He stepped back a little and admired his work. "And now," he said, "if I were you, I think I would try to get very drunk. The best help for pain I can give you is aspirin."
  
  "I'll take it," I said. "I'll take it."
  
  He gave me the pills and a bottle of wine. He left the room for a few minutes and came back and threw me a clean shirt. "I ask no questions to a friend of Leila and better you ask no questions to me." He was sponging some liquid onto my jacket and the bloodstains were starting to disappear. "Medically, I advise you to stay here. Drink. Sleep. Allow me to change your dressings in the morning." He glanced up quickly from his dry-cleaning chores. "Politically, you help me much if you stay. Politically, I play a rather complicated game." He said it in French: Un jeu compliqué. "Your presence at my table will help me much… in front of the others."
  
  "The others, I take it, are on the other side."
  
  "The others," he said, "are the other side."
  
  If I read that correctly, my new friend Nasr was a double agent. I raised an eyebrow. "Un jeu d'addresse, go." A game of skill.
  
  He nodded. "You stay?"
  
  I nodded. "HI stay."
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The dinner was a feast. We sat on the floor on embroidered pillows and ate off a cloth that was placed on the rug. Bowls of bean soup, grilled chickens, huge platters of steaming rice. The talk was political. Straight-line stuff. Driving Israel into the sea. Reclaiming all of the Golan Heights. Taking back Gaza and the West Bank to make a home for the poor Palestinians.
  
  I don't dispute the Palestinians are poor and I don't dispute that they've gotten the shaft. What amuses me is the Arab piety, considering their major contributions to the general Palestinian fix. Consider: Gaza and the West Bank were originally reserved for Palestinian States. But Jordan stole the West Bank in '48 and Egypt swallowed the Gaza Strip, and they threw the Palestinians into refugee camps. The Arabs did that, not the Israelis. And the Arabs are the ones who won't let them out.
  
  The Arabs don't even pay for the camps. The food, housing, education, medicine, all that it takes to keep the refugees alive, all of that comes from U.N. money. The U.S. gives $25 million a year and most of the rest comes from Europe and Japan. The Arab nations, with all their talk and their oil billions, kick in a total of two million bucks. And Russia and China, those great champions of the benighted masses, contribute exactly nothing at all.
  
  The Arab idea of helping Palestinians is buying them a gun and pointing it at Israel.
  
  But I said, "Here, here!" And, "Yes!" And, "To victory," and toasted the army and President Assad.
  
  And then I made a toast to Al Shaitan.
  
  Nobody knew much about Al Shaitan. The group I was with was As Saiqa. The Syrian branch of the P.L.O. As Saiqa is the Syrian word for "Lightning." The guys around the table were no bolts of fire. They talked a lot, but they weren't fighters. Planners, maybe. Strategists. Bombasts. I wondered what the Syrian word was for thunder.
  
  The man named Safadi — small, precise mustache, skin the color of a brown paper bag — said he was sure that Al Shaitan was a part of Jebreel's General Command, the Lebanese raiders who hit the Israelis at Qiryat Shemona.
  
  Nusafa frowned and shook his head. "Ach! I beg to differ, mon ami. This is much too subtle for Jebreel's mind. I believe this has the mark of Hawatmeh." He turned to me for confirmation. Hawatmeh heads another fedayeen group, The Popular Democratic Front.
  
  I smiled an I-know-but-I-can't-tell smile. I lit a cigarette. "I'm curious, gentlemen. If the money were yours, how would you spend it?"
  
  There were murmurs and smiles around the table. Nasr's wife came in with a pot of coffee. A chador — something like a full-length shawl — was draped on her head, and she clutched it tightly around her face. She poured the coffee, her presence ignored. She might have been a servant or a shrouded robot.
  
  Thuweini leaned back, toying with his salt-and-pepper beard. He nodded and narrowed his line-ringed eyes. "I think," he said, in a high nasal voice, "I think that the money would best be spent to build a uranium diffusion plant."
  
  No doubt about it, these guys were planners.
  
  "Yes, I think that is very good, no?" He turned to his colleagues. "Such a plant could be built for a billion dollars, and it would be a most useful thing to have."
  
  A do-it-yourself nuclear kit.
  
  "Oh, but my dear and respected friend," Safadi pursed his little mouth, "that is a very long-range plan. And where would we get the technical assistance? The Russians will help our government, yes, but the fedayeen — no — at least not directly."
  
  "And where would we get the uranium, my friend?" The fourth man, Khatib, had added his voice. He held up his cup, while Nasr's woman filled it with coffee and then retreated back to the kitchen. "No, no, no," Khatib was saying. "We need a more immediate plan. If the money were mine, I'd use it to set up fedayeen cadres in every major city in the world. Any country that doesn't help us — we blow up their buildings, kidnap their leaders. That is the only way to justice." He turned to his host. "Or don't you agree, my conservative friend?"
  
  Khatib was watching Nasr with amusement. And under the amusement, his eyes spelled trouble. This is why Nasr wanted me around. His 'conservatism' was under suspicion.
  
  Nasr slowly put down his cup. He looked tired, and more than that, weary. "My dear Khatib. Conservative is not another word for disloyal. I believe now as I have always believed that we turn into our own worst enemies when we try to terrorize the whole globe. We need the help of the rest of the world. We can only earn fear and enmity with terror." He turned to me. "But I believe my friend the colonel is tired. He has just returned from the fighting at the front."
  
  "Say no more." Thuweini stood up. The others followed. "We respect your efforts, Colonel Khaddourah. Our little business here is our own contribution." He bowed. "May Allah be with you. Salaam."
  
  We exchanged salaams and Wa-aleikum as-salaams, and the four polite, middle-aged terrorists retreated into the dusty night.
  
  Nasr led me to the only bedroom. A large, thick mattress on a stone slab, covered with pillows and very clean sheets. He'd accept no protests. His house was mine. His bed was mine. He and his wife would sleep under the stars. It was warm out tonight, after all, no? No, he would hear of no other plan. He would be insulted. And people would talk if they knew he didn't give the colonel his house.
  
  "Leila?" I said.
  
  Nasr shrugged. "She sleeps on the floor in the other room." He raised a hand. "No. Don't give me your Western nonsense. She has not been beaten today, and she will not have to fight tomorrow. You think you get rest with that back on the floor?"
  
  I let him convince me. Besides, it had a trace of poetic Justice. In Jerusalem, she'd told me to sleep on the floor. I shook my head slowly, and thought how impractical virginity is.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I must have been asleep for half an hour. I heard a sound at the bedroom door. I grabbed my gun. Maybe Nasr had set me up. ("Sleep," he'd said. "Sleep. Get drunk.") Or maybe one of his pals had caught on. ("That Colonel Khaddourah's a strange fellow, no?")
  
  The door opened slowly.
  
  I clicked off the safety.
  
  "Nick?" she whispered. I clicked on the safety.
  
  She floated across the dark room. A chador was wrapped around her like a blanket. "Leila," I said. "Don't fool around. I'm a sick man."
  
  She came and sat on the edge of the bed.
  
  The chador fell open. I closed my eyes, but it was too late. My body had already seen her body. "Leila," I said. "You trust me too much."
  
  "Yes. I trust you," she said, "enough."
  
  I opened my eyes. "Enough?"
  
  "Enough."
  
  She ran her fingers down my face, down my neck, down my chest, where the hairs stood up and started dancing. "Define 'enough,' " I said firmly.
  
  Now it was her turn to close her eyes. "Enough to wish… you make love to me."
  
  My hand seemed to have a will of its own. It cupped her breast and drew out a pair of purrs from us both. "Honey," I breathed, "I'm not going to fight you very hard. Are you sure this is what you really want?"
  
  Her neck was arched and her eyes were still closed. "I have never… been surer of anything… ever."
  
  She moved, and the chador fell to the floor.
  
  I suppose it's the universal dream. To be the first. Or, as they used to say on Star Trek, "to go where no man has gone before." But my God, it was sweet. That smooth, ripe, incredible body, opening slowly under my hands, going through motions that weren't just motions, but delighted, surprised first time feelings, reflexive pulsings, eager, intuitive clamping of fingers, ripplings of hip, catchings of breath. At the last moment, on the edge of the cliff, she made a kind of lyrical sound. And then she shuddered into All Grown Up.
  
  We lay there together and I watched her face, and the little pulse that was throbbing in her throat, and I traced her body and I traced the curve of her lips with my finger until she stopped my finger with her tongue. She opened her eyes and they looked at me, shiny. She reached up and ran a hand through my hair.
  
  And then she whispered the single word that said she was a liberated woman now.
  
  "Again," she said.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seventeen
  
  
  
  
  There's a Yiddish expression: Drehrd offen dek. It means, Uri tells me, at the ends of the earth; in the middle of nowhere; to hell and gone. That was Rhamaz. A hundred miles south of Damascus and hundred miles from the Israeli front. The last thirty miles took us through Nowhere. A townless, treeless, lava-spattered Nothing, with hazy skies and silent dust. The landscape was dotted along the road with the rusting bodies of dead tanks and once with a crumbling stone ruin of an ancient Byzantine citadel.
  
  Leila was wrapped in her Arab-lady yardage, which now, at least, had a practical purpose; keeping the dust and the sun away. It wasn't as yet a summer sun, not that pin cushion up in the sky that tosses needles of heat at your skin. But it was hot enough and the dust and the haze scratched at my eyes, even behind Colonel Qaffir's dark glasses.
  
  Leila handed me the water canteen. I took it and drank and handed it back. She sipped and then carefully moistened her fingers and ran cool fingertips over my neck. I looked at her and smiled. Women always want to know if they've "changed." Leila had changed. She'd dropped both the stiff patina of starch and the Rita-Hayworth-playing-Sadie-Thompson routine. She'd stopped playing and was just being. I took her hand from my neck and kissed it. The ground underneath us was like brittle clay and our wheels crushed it, churning up dust. Orange dust.
  
  I pushed on the pedal and picked up speed.
  
  The town of Rhamaz was hardly a town. More like a small cluster of buildings. The typical flat-topped mud-brick huts, some painted blue to ward off evil.
  
  The first Rhamaz citizen to spot us on the road was a man who looked about a hundred and eighty years old. He was hobbling along on a makeshift cane and when he saw the Jeep, he bowed low, a position I thought I'd have to rescue him from.
  
  I stopped short. He seemed surprised. "Welcome," he intoned, "oh most honored Colonel."
  
  I reached over Leila and opened the door. "Get in, old man. I'll give you a ride."
  
  He smiled a glorious gap-toothed smile. "The Colonel does me honor."
  
  I bowed my own head. "It is my good fortune to be of assistance."
  
  "May the blessings of Allah rain on you forever." He creaked, slowly, into the Jeep. I geared up and started down the road to town.
  
  "I am looking for a house in Rhamaz, old man. Perhaps you will know the house I seek."
  
  "Inshallah," he said. If God wills it.
  
  "In the house I seek there will be many men. Some will be American. The rest will be Arab."
  
  He shook his walnut-shell of a face. "No such house in Rhamaz," he said.
  
  "Are you certain, old man? This is very important."
  
  "With no desire to offend the Colonel, Allah has seen fit to leave me my senses. Would a man not be blind to not know such a house if such a house existed in Rhamaz?"
  
  I told him I bowed to his wisdom and Allah's. But I didn't give up. Shaitan headquarters had to be here. Because the middle of nowhere was an ideal place. And because it was the only place I knew of. I asked him if perhaps there were another house — where something unusual was going on.
  
  The old man looked at me with licorice eyes. "There is nothing unusual under the sun. All that happens has happened before. The wars and the peacetimes, the learning and forgetting. All things repeat themselves again and again, from error to enlightenment and back to error." He pointed a bony finger at me and under the sleeves of his loose ragged robe, something silver flashed at the wrist "The only unusual thing on earth is a man with a gladly giving heart."
  
  Ah! The beauty of the Arab mind! I cleared my throat. "I suffer to contradict you, old man, but such glad-giving is met with daily. One has but to ask to discover this is so."
  
  He eyed my hand on the steering wheel. "The Colonel believes what they call mankind is literally made of kind men. But as sure as the heavenly light of the sun is reflected in the jewel of the Colonel's ring, I tell the Colonel that this is not so."
  
  I removed Qaffir's signet ring from a finger. "I don't like to be contradicted, old man. I advise you, on pain of my great displeasure, to accept this ring — a pauper's token, but given gladly — and then to admit that you misjudge your fellows." I reached across Leila and handed him the ring. Again I saw silver flash at his wrist.
  
  He accepted the ring, unwillingly. "I do this only so as not to offend, but perhaps my judgment was wrong after all."
  
  We were starting to approach a small blue house. The old man pardoned me and said it was his house. I pulled up in front and stopped the Jeep. He slow-motioned out and then turned back to face me.
  
  "Perhaps while the Colonel is passing through Rhamaz, he might stop off at the house of Kalooris." He pointed out across the rocky expanse. "The house of Shaftek and Serhan Kalooris is the only yellow house in Bhamaz. In that respect, it is most… unusual."
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  It wasn't exactly yellow. Someone had tried to paint it yellow, but they must have used the wrong land of paint Huge chunks of it had pulled away, baring random patches of stone.
  
  Nor was the house set off by itself. Another two-story sand-colored square sat directly across the road. The only other object on the desolate landscape was a Jagged pile of orange rocks, halfway between the two houses.
  
  My plan was only to case the place. I wasn't intending to bust in alone with a pistol and a line like; "You're under arrest." Still, I'd left Leila back in the Jeep, parked about a half-mile down the road. I'd come the rest of the way on foot.
  
  It was very quiet around the house. Only an occasional whoosh of wind. The house across the road seemed completely deserted; the windows unshuttered, the open door, swinging.
  
  I made a wide circle of the half-yellow house. Its windows were closed and darkly shuttered. In the back was a small, narrow entry, a kind of miniature stone court, maybe five feet deep and five feet wide, roofed over by the second story of the house. A warped wooden door was at the end of the court. I put my ear to it I heard nothing. I knocked, loudly. A Syrian colonel in need of information.
  
  Nothing.
  
  No answer. No noise. No nothing. I drew a gun and threw the door open.
  
  It banged against a wall and then swung back and forth. Creak, creak.
  
  Nothing else.
  
  I walked in.
  
  Bare floors, bare stone walls with bare stone benches built around them. A grimy, black, pot-bellied stove. A kerosene lamp. Four empty beer cans scattered on the floor. A dozen cigarette butts pushed inside them. Charred paper matches on the floor.
  
  Another room, almost identical. Almost, except for one thing. The bare stone bench was mottled with red. A big death-size patch of blood.
  
  One more room on the ground floor. Another pile of beer-and-butt litter. Another ugly death-spattered bench.
  
  Up the narrow steps. Two more rooms. Two more scenes of bloody murder.
  
  And only the sound of the wind out the window and the creak, creak, creak of the downstairs door.
  
  Dammit. Missed. Flubbed it Blew it This had been the Al Shaitan hideout all right Jackson Robey had been here too. And it wasn't just the orange dust that proved it That flash of silver at the old mans wrist was a standard AXE chronometer watch.
  
  I kicked some litter and sat down. A small lacquered table was in front of the bench, its surface covered with beer can rings. Also a pack of cigarettes. A Syrian brand. And a matchbook that read: Always a luxury — Foxx Hotels — Conventions, Vacations.
  
  I cursed and threw the matchbook back on the table. I was through. That was it. The end of the road. And instead of answers, there were only more questions.
  
  I lit a cigarette and kicked a beer can. It rolled over and showed its holes. Bullet holes. One on each side. In one side and out the other. I picked it up and put it on the table. We stared at each other.
  
  It probably didn't make any difference, but if the shot through the can were a shot that had missed…
  
  I stood up and started to calculate trajectories.
  
  The slaughter took place in the middle of the night That had to be it Everyone here had been killed on a bench. Caught napping. By a silenced gun. So figure I'm aiming at the head of a guy who's asleep, there where the blood stain is. There's a beer can on the table. I'm aiming at the guy, but I hit the can instead. So I'm standing… where? I'm standing here, and the bullet would have gone through the can and landed — and there it was. I pried it out of the soft stone. A small .25 caliber bullet. Like Little David. Small, but oh my.
  
  I left the house by the front door. And there was the Jeep parked in the road. And Leila was standing there right beside it.
  
  I started toward her, angry as hell. "Leila, what the…"
  
  "Nick! Go back!"
  
  Crack! Whang!
  
  Gunners on the roofs. "Down!" I yelled to her. Whang! Too late. A bullet grazed her leg as she ducked for cover. "Get under the Jeep!" I ran for the rocks. Crack! Whang! There were four guys up there, two on each roof. I aimed at a gunner across the road. Bull's eye! He tumbled and fell to the dust. Two bullets whanged off the top of my rock. I aimed at another guy and missed by a foot Whang! He missed by less than a foot All of them had the advantage of height Whang! I sprinted for the covered entrance, bullets shooting up the dust at my feet. I dove inside and stood there panting, out of their rifle range. For a while.
  
  I waited for what I knew was coming.
  
  Dead silence.
  
  Door creaking.
  
  No footsteps. No other sound. I heard them only in my imagination. Now, said the time-and-place map in my head. Now they've reached the rock, now they're at the house, now they're — I squatted on the ground and got ready. One, two, three, now. I looked out and shot at the same time. I got him in the center of his clean white robe, and ducked back in time to miss another whanger from the other guy, the other gun. He was moving in from the other side. "Inal abouk!" the gunner yelled. Curses on my father. I shot again, and ducked back into my tiny grotto.
  
  "Yallah!" he called out. Hurry up! And again I saw it played it in my mind before it happened. I took another shot, straight through the doorway. The guy on the roof timed his jump to catch it. Midway, his leap turned from a jump to a fall. By the time he hit the ground he was gushing from the gut. I finished him off with a quick second shot. It was one to one now. One rifleman left. So where the hell was he? The filmstrip in my head was running blank footage. If I were the last guy, what would I do?
  
  I looked around the corner and saw him. Click! My gun was empty. He was suddenly brave. He heard the click and started forward. I ducked back in and cursed out loud and then tossed the useless gun through the doorway. Count of four and he peeked around the corner, a conqueror's grin on his sweating face. Bang! I shot him right in the grin.
  
  Qaffir's gun was empty, but Wilhelmina was not.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eighteen
  
  
  
  
  I checked the bodies. The guy with no face also had no papers. An Arabian Arab, that's all I knew. The face had been Arab and the dialect Saudi.
  
  Body Number Two: The roof-diver. Another nameless Arab.
  
  Body Number Three: I kicked him over with my foot. His checkered headcloth fell away. I whistled softly. It was Jack Armstrong. The big blond stake-out from the hotel lobby. He'd man-tanned his skin but he hadn't dyed his hair. I just walked away, shaking my head.
  
  Body Number Four: In front of the house. My first lucky shot had felled him from the roof. I lifted the headdress. The guy who'd tailed me in the Renault.
  
  I walked slowly toward the Jeep. Leila was already seated in the front I got in the driver's seat and closed the door.
  
  "How's the leg?" I said dully.
  
  She looked at me curiously. "It hurts a little, but it's not too bad."
  
  I was staring ahead at the hazy horizon.
  
  "Nick?" Her tone was careful. "What's the matter with you? You look like… like you're in some kind of a trance."
  
  I lit a cigarette and smoked it all before I said, "I'm stumped, is what's the matter. A million clues and nothing adds up. I'm back at zero."
  
  I shrugged and started to rev the motor. I turned to Leila. "Better have Nasr look at that leg. But first I've got a stop to make…"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I didn't waste time with polite indirection. I barged in the door with my gun in my hand and lifted the old man up from the floor. "Talk," I said.
  
  His story was this:
  
  Late one night a few weeks ago, the old man had heard a sound in the sky. It woke him up and he ran to the window. A giant insect, a monstrous mosquito with huge whirling wings. He saw it drop down, straight from the sky, next to the yellow house of Kalooris. The old man had seen this creature before. It had dropped from heaven in the same way. It carried men in its stomach, he was told, and this, he thought, was undoubtedly true. For the brother of Shaftek and Serhan Kalooris and two of their cousins had appeared at the house.
  
  And an American?
  
  No. No American.
  
  Then what happened?
  
  Nothing much. The brother left. The cousins stayed.
  
  And what about the insect?
  
  It was still here. Living on the plain, two miles east of town.
  
  And the second insect? The one that appeared in the middle of the night?
  
  It flew away an hour later.
  
  And what else happened?
  
  The next day another stranger arrived. An American, maybe.
  
  By insect?
  
  By car.
  
  He also went to the yellow house. The old man followed, his curiosity making him bold. He looked in the window of the yellow house. Shaftek Kalooris was lying on a bench. Dead. Then he saw the stranger enter the room. The stranger also saw him — at the window. The old man was afraid. The stranger held up a silver bracelet and told the old man not to be afraid. The old man took the bracelet and was not afraid. He and the stranger walked upstairs. Upstairs they found the three other bodies. Serbian Kalooris and the two cousins.
  
  And then?
  
  And then the stranger had asked some questions. The old man told him about the insects. And that was all.
  
  "That was all?" I still had the gun pointed at his head.
  
  "By merciful Allah, is that not enough?"
  
  No. It wasn't enough. Not enough to send Robey to Jerusalem to cable AXE that he'd found Shaitan. four dead bodies and no Leonard Foxx? No. That wasn't enough.
  
  But that was all. Robey had looked at the bodies and the beer cans; he'd picked up the cigarettes and the matches. And that was all. That was all. He'd left the house looking angry and confused. The way you look now," the old man observed. But that was all.
  
  "Who buried the bodies?"
  
  A heavier curtain of fear filmed his eyes.
  
  "You have my word they won't harm you."
  
  He looked from my gun to my face to my gun. "Four others came. The next day. They are still there, staying now at the house of Kalooris."
  
  "They were staying there," I told the old man.
  
  He understood.
  
  "Alhamdulilah," he said. Thank God.
  
  Terrific. I'd killed off my last four clues.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The helicopter was out on the plain. Plainly visible. Out in the open. I climbed up the small aluminum ladder. An old machine, but well cared-for. The gas gauge said it was still good for another hundred and fifty miles.
  
  I carried Leila into the cockpit and pulled the ladder back inside.
  
  "You know how to fly this?" She looked a little scared.
  
  I looked annoyed. "Axe you going to be a back-seat pilot?"
  
  "I don't understand this." Her voice sounded hurt.
  
  I didn't answer. My head was too crowded to make room for words. I felt for the rudder pedals at my feet. Better to check the engine first. I locked the wheel brakes and pushed the pitch-control lever down. I switched on the fuel and pressed the starter The engine coughed up orange dust. It sputtered and finally started to hum. I released the rotor brake, twisted the throttle, and the giant rotor blades started their spin, like some gargantuan whirling fly-swatter. I waited till they whirled 200 rpms, then released the wheel brakes and upped the pitch. Now, more throttle and we started to rise. Up up and away.
  
  Right rudder.
  
  Stick forward.
  
  First stop, Ilfidri.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Leila was sleeping on the Nasrs' bed.
  
  She was sleeping in a loose blue cotton nightgown, surrounded by bright embroidered pillows and the shiny billows of her own black hair. She opened her eyes. I sat down on the bed. She opened her arms and I held her, close.
  
  "I'm sorry," I whispered.
  
  "For what?" she said.
  
  "For being somewhere else. I…"
  
  "Don't." She put a fingertip to my lips. "I knew to begin with you didn't love me. And I knew your mind would be on your work. And it's all right. It's really all right. I — I wanted you to be the first one. And maybe the last one for a long time coming. But that is my concern, not yours." She smiled softly. "Soon I think we will part, yes?"
  
  I looked at her. "Where are you going?"
  
  She sighed. "I'll stay here for a few days. I cannot dance with a bandaged leg."
  
  "Dance?"
  
  She nodded. "I come here to work in a Syrian nightclub. A place where the army officers gather."
  
  I frowned sharply. "Leila Kaloud — do you know what you're doing?"
  
  She smiled again. Broadly. "No woman can better protect her virtue than one who has done so for twenty-five years." She kept on smiling. "Didn't I make even you keep your distance?"
  
  "Did you?"
  
  "I mean, when I wanted you to."
  
  I smiled too. I said, "So how's my distance now?"
  
  She didn't smile. "Closer would be nice."
  
  Closer was nice.
  
  I lifted the loose blue cotton gown and pulled it gently until it was gone.
  
  Nice.
  
  Nicer.
  
  Nicest.
  
  Her round breasts flattened against my chest and her body moved like a river under mine; a constant, gentle, rolling river. And then her breath came quick and fast and the river roared and then it was still. I felt her tears against my skin.
  
  "Are you all right?"
  
  She shook her head.
  
  "No?"
  
  "No. I am not all right. I am sad and happy and frightened and alive and drowning and… and anything but all right."
  
  I ran my hand down the straight of her nose and over the curves of her curvy lips. She moved and settled her head on my chest. We lay there like that for a little while.
  
  "Leila, why did you wait so long?"
  
  "To make love?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  From upside down, she looked up at me. "You don't understand me at all, do you?"
  
  I stroked her hair. "Not very well."
  
  She rolled over, onto her elbow. "It's quite simple, really. I was brought up to be a good Moslem woman. To be all the things I knew I was not. Meek, obedient, reverent, virtuous, a bearer of sons, a servant of men. At first I began to hate all men. Then I simply became afraid Because to surrender would be, you see… to surrender everything. Because to be a woman would mean… to be a woman. Do you understand?"
  
  I waited a while. "A little. Maybe, I guess. I don't know. All men don't ask for total surrender."
  
  "I know," she said, "and that, too, is a problem."
  
  I looked at her. "I don't understand."
  
  "I know," she said. "You don't understand."
  
  The problem was, I did understand, but I travel too light to carry a woman's surrender with me. I just kept quiet.
  
  By the time I felt like talking again, she'd fallen asleep, curled up in my arms. I must have dozed. Maybe forty-five minutes. And then the pinball machine in my head started going, click-bang-click; ideas crashing into each other, hitting walls, bouncing back Lamott.
  
  It all somehow led to Lamott. Lamott who'd posed as Jehns; who'd talked to Robey. Lamott, who'd been waiting in Jerusalem for me.
  
  What else did I know about Bob Lamott?
  
  He was hooked on dope, and he'd made a phone call to someplace in Geneva.
  
  Geneva.
  
  The Shanda Baths was owned by a Swiss corporation.
  
  And Benyamin said the Shanda was a front for dope. Opium, till the Turkish fields were closed. Now it was a small-time hashish business.
  
  Yousef said Khali Mansour pushed hash. Khali Mansour, who'd talked to Robey. Whose brother, Ali, had led me to Rhamaz. Was the boss at the Shanda Baths Khali's connection?
  
  Maybe.
  
  Maybe not.
  
  The boss at the Shanda. His name was Terhan Kal — rrip-crackle. The static had ripped through Benyamin's sentence. Terhan Kal — ooris? The third brother?
  
  Maybe.
  
  And then again, maybe not.
  
  The goons I'd shot on the rooftops in Rhamaz — the same guys who'd staked me out in Jerusalem, who'd watched Sarah's place in Tel Aviv. Something told me they were working for Lamott The guys who Jacqueline was afraid of.
  
  Lamott. It all led back to Lamott. Robert Lamott of Fresco Oil. With his .25 caliber James Bond gun. Like the .25 caliber James Bond bullet I'd found on the floor of the yellow house.
  
  Put it together and what have you got?
  
  Nonsense. Chaos. The pieces fit together and formed no picture. I fell asleep.
  
  I was in a plant store. There were cactus and ivy and philodendron and lemon trees. And orange trees.
  
  A salesman came up to me. He was dressed as an Arab and the headcloth and sunglasses hid his face. He was trying to sell me a lemon tree and said he'd throw in three pots of ivy. He was selling hard. "You really must buy," he kept insisting. "Have you read the latest book? They tell us now that plants can talk. Yes, yes," he assured me. "It is quite true." He smiled greenly. Plants were growing out of his mouth.
  
  The orange trees were at the back of the shop. I said I was looking for an orange tree. He seemed delighted. "A fine choice," he said. "Oranges, lemons, they're all the same thing." He followed me back to where the oranges grew. I walked up to a tree and crack! whang! bullets were flying from a roof across the road. I was out in front of the Kalooris house. I was dressed as a colonel. I was shooting back. The four Arab gunmen fell from the roof in nightmare style slow motion. I turned around. The Arab salesman was still there. He was standing by an orange tree and smiling broadly. A gun was in his hand. He was Bob Lamott.
  
  I woke up in a sweat.
  
  Sat straight up in bed and stared at the wall.
  
  And then it came to me. What had to be the answer. It had been there all along. I'd said it myself. "The matchbook was a plant," I'd told Benyamin, and added: "What I don't like most about that is that anything I find now could be a plant"
  
  That was it. It was all a plant. A carefully plotted elaborate plant Every bit of it. From Khali Mansour telling-tales in El Jazzar — plants can talk — all the way up to the house at Rhamaz. Nothing had happened at the house in Rhamaz. Except that four plants had been murdered there. The house was a plant. The whole trail was a plant A smokescreen, a blind, a decoy.
  
  Now all the loose ends fell into place. All the things that hadn't figured. Why a terror group is hiring workers. Why they encouraged loose talk. Because they were building a false lead, and they wanted the story to get around.
  
  The Mansours and Kaloorises were innocent dupes. They believed everything they were doing was real. But they were being used. By people so smart it made the mind boggle. People who knew they were dealing with hotheads and hop-heads and knew pretty much what to expect. They'd figure that Khali Mansour would sell out and they'd kept in touch with Robey to check out their theory. Then they'd killed both of them to give the story weight.
  
  Only Jackson Robey had figured out the truth. On the drive back from Bhamaz, he'd figured it out. Just the way that I had. Maybe I hadn't doped all the details, but with luck I'd have all the answers. Soon.
  
  And how about Benyamin? What did he know? He must have known something. He'd played it too cool and a little too coy. And he'd planted Leila Kaloud at my side.
  
  I shook her awake.
  
  I said, "I smell a rat." I described the rat.
  
  She looked at me gravely and then she nodded. "Yes. You're right. Shin Bet was led on the same trail as Robey. They also found the bodies in the house at Bhamaz. They also figured the trail was a… what you say… a plant."
  
  "So they set me up to follow a dead end, used me to keep Al Shaitan busy so they — the machers at Shin Bet — could go out and find the real trail. Thanks a lot, Leila. I love being used."
  
  She shook her head silently. "You misunderstand."
  
  "Like hell I do."
  
  "All right then, you partly misunderstand. They also know Robey had cabled AXE. So they think that he may have found the truth among the lies. A truth they missed. They thought if you went on Robey's trail that you might find out — whatever it was. Shin Bet is working hard on this, Nick. Almost every agent…"
  
  "Yeah, yeah. All right. If I were Benyamin, I'd have done the same thing. The point is, it worked."
  
  "What do you mean — it worked?"
  
  "I mean I know where Al Shaitan is."
  
  She looked at me wide-eyed. "You do? Where?"
  
  "Uh uh, sweetheart. The next round is mine."
  
  
  
  
  
  Nineteen
  
  
  
  
  We breakfasted on yogurt and fruit and sweet tea. Nasr and I. By the rule of his house, the men ate alone. We discussed As Saiqa, the commando group Nasr had infiltrated. Their actions, lately, had centered on native Syrian Jews. Ghettoed Jews. Forced by law to live in ghettos, prevented from working, curfewed off the streets. Given no passports, no freedoms, no phones. Assaulted in the street, slaughtered at whim. If you want to know what happened to anti-semitism, it's alive and well in parts of the Middle East. Jews can't get into Saudi Arabia and they can't get out of Syria at all. I could easily understand many things about the Israelis by picturing a few thousand years of that.
  
  I asked Nasr why he doubled.
  
  He looked surprised. "You ask why I work as a double agent — I thought we had Just been discussing that." He picked up a small cluster of grapes. "This part of the world is very old. And our soil has always been nourished by blood. Read the Bible. It is written in blood. Jewish, Egyptian, Philistine, Hittite, Syrian, Christian, Roman. And then after the Bible was written. The Moslems. The Turks. The Crusaders. Ah, the Crusaders spilled a lot of blood. In the name of the peace-loving Christ they spilled it." He twirled the grapes around in the air. I am tired of eating food grown in blood. I am tired of the endless folly of men, debating right and wrong as though they really knew it. You think I think the Israelis are right. No. I only mink those who wish to destroy them are wrong." He threw down the grapes and started to smile. "And perhaps by such judging, I commit my own folly."
  
  I said I believed that a man has to judge. People pride themselves on saying I don't make Judgments," but some things really have to be judged. Sometimes, if you don't condemn, your silence is a condonation. Or as someone else who once fought for his beliefs said: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
  
  Nasr shrugged. "And the solution creates a new set of problems. In every revolution is the seed of — what? Of the next revolution! But," he gestured with an airy hand, "we must all make our bid the perfect world, no? And the Fates conspire, at times, do they not? I have been of assistance to you and you have been of assistance to me. When we're lucky we believe God has chosen our side."
  
  "And when we're unlucky?"
  
  "Ah! Then we find out if we've chosen God's side. Meanwhile, your second visit to me, coming from that businesslike helicopter, has undoubtedly added to my store of luck. I wonder, is there more I can do for you?"
  
  "Yes. You can keep an eye on Leila."
  
  "This you need not ask, my friend. Ah!" Nasr looked up over my shoulder. I turned and saw Leila standing in the doorway. Nasr stood up. "I think there is one more thing I can do. I can leave you now to say your goodbyes."
  
  Nasr left. Leila started toward me, limping slightly. I told her to stop. I lifted her and carried her to the bench. The moment seemed to call for some sort of Hollywood dialogue. I said: "Someday, Tania, when the war is over, we shall meet on the steps of Leningrad."
  
  She said: "What?"
  
  I smiled. "Never mind." I set her on the bench and sat down beside her. A funny moment with nothing to say. What do you say?
  
  She said, "The French have a proper word. They say à bientôt. Till the next time."
  
  I took her hand. I said, "Till the next time."
  
  She kissed my hand. Then she said quickly, "Just go, will you?"
  
  There was that one moment when my legs wouldn't move. Then I ordered them to cut out the nonsense. I got up. I started to speak. She shook her head. "No. Just go."
  
  I was almost at the door.
  
  "Nick?"
  
  I turned.
  
  "You won't tell me where you are going?"
  
  I laughed. "You'll do well as a Shin Bet agent. Sure, I'll tell you where I'm going. I'm taking the 'copter and I'm flying away."
  
  To where?"
  
  "Where else? To Jerusalem, of course."
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I flew over Jordan and landed at an airstrip outside of Jerusalem. It wasn't that easy. I had to do a lot of very fast talking. From the 'copter radio to the airport tower. Even then, I faced guns when I opened the door. Considering the Syrian colonel costume, I'd still be going through interrogation if it weren't for Uri's magic Aleph. It worked like a Hebrew St. Christopher medal.
  
  I went back to my room at the American Colony, showered, shaved, ordered smoked salmon and a bottle of vodka, and went to work.
  
  I made a plane reservation.
  
  I made a hotel reservation.
  
  I made a third phone call. I told him what to bring and where and when to meet me. I made a fourth phone call. I told him what to bring and where and when to meet me.
  
  I checked my watch.
  
  I shaved off my mustache.
  
  I cleaned and reloaded Wilhelmina.
  
  I got dressed in my own clothes.
  
  I checked my watch. I'd only used up forty minutes.
  
  I packed and checked out Another half hour.
  
  I went out to the courtyard and ordered a drink. I still had another two hours to kill.
  
  The drink did nothing. I was geared for action. I was already there, busting down the door. They were all there. The nine millionaires. And Al Shaitan. Good old Al S. I had to be right. Because I couldn't afford to be wrong anymore. I'd been dead wrong all along.
  
  Now I had a chance to be dead right.
  
  I drank to that.
  
  And there she was. Jacqueline Reine. A handsome police lieutenant on her arm. The waiter was leading them across the terrace, past my table. Jacqueline stopped.
  
  "Well, hello there, Mr… MacKenzie, isn't it?" She was wearing the same blue silk dress, the same blonde silk hair, the same silken expression. I wondered what her picture in the attic looked like.
  
  "Miss… Snow…" I snapped my fingers. "No. It's Miss Reine."
  
  She smiled. "And this is Lieutenant Yablon."
  
  We exchanged mumbled greetings.
  
  Jacqueline said, "Lieutenant Yablon has been so kind. A friend of mine here… committed suicide. A great shock." She turned to Yablon. "I don't think I could have survived without you." She presented him with a dazzling smile.
  
  "Suicide?" I said, wondering if they thought Lamott shot himself and then walked into the trunk, or walked into the trunk and then shot himself.
  
  "Yes. His body was found on his bed."
  
  And I knew exactly who put it there. I gave her a small appreciative nod. She was growing restless. She turned to her lieutenant. "Well…" she said. The waiter arrived with my second drink. I raised my glass. "Le Chaim," I said.
  
  "Le Chaim?" she repeated.
  
  "To suicide," I said.
  
  The lieutenant looked puzzled.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  At five o'clock, I landed in Beirut.
  
  Uri was waiting for me at the airport, dressed in a dark business suit, carrying a heavy-looking piece of luggage and a beat-up plastic Air France flight bag. We hailed separate cabs.
  
  I drummed on my knee as I rode through the city. Beirut has been called a Middle East Paris. It's also been called a parasite. A trading center, a large boutique; it lives off the products of other countries, acts as a giant way-station, a mammoth import-export office. Strip joints, clip Joints, easy money; then, on the other hand, a volatile Palestinian presence, a presence that erupts in raids across the border, in an agitated, agitating left-wing press, in "incidents" against the ruling regime, which survives under Palestinian blackmail.
  
  My cab pulled up at the Foxx Beirut. I got out and paid while a doorman got a bellboy to get the luggage. I saw Uri walk through the gilded doors. I killed another minute and followed him in.
  
  I walked up to the desk. "MacKenzie," I said. "I have a reservation."
  
  "Mr. MacKenzie." The clerk was a dark, good-looking young man. He fingered through a pile of pink slips. "Ah, here we are. Mr. MacKenzie. A single with bath." I signed the register. He told me to wait. A porter would come and show me to my room. Uri waited too. I lit a cigarette and looked around the lobby. White marble all the hell over the place. White carpets with red borders. White sofas and red chairs. White lacquered tables and red-flowered lamps. Two security guards in dun-colored uniforms, .38s bulging in holsters at their hips. Two — no three — plainclothesmen.
  
  And here comes Kelly. Ten minutes late. Kelly and a scuffed-looking leather suitcase.
  
  The bellboy had Uri's bags on a cart. He was piling my bag on, ready to go.
  
  I stepped up to Kelly.
  
  "Say, aren't you…"
  
  "Of course. And you're…"
  
  "MacKenzie."
  
  "MacKenzie. Of course. You here for the…"
  
  "Yes. Exactly. You too?"
  
  "Exactly."
  
  The desk clerk was handing Kelly a pen. I watched him sign in: Tom Myers.
  
  "And how's Maureen?"
  
  "She's fine."
  
  "And little Tom?"
  
  "He's betting bigger every day."
  
  "My, they do grow."
  
  "Yeah, they sure do."
  
  By now, the desk clerk had summoned the porter, and Kelly's luggage was on the cart with ours. The porter said, "Gentlemen?"
  
  We smiled and stepped forward. The elevator opened. The bellboy pulled in the loaded cart. The porter followed him. Then the three of us. The elevator man started closing the door. A short, thick, middle-aged woman with a lacquered beehive and gigantic breasts squeezed her way in through the closing doors.
  
  "Ten," she said in English, holding up all of her pudgy fingers, flashing diamonds on five out of ten.
  
  The car started up.
  
  "Six," said the porter, looking at our keys. "Six and then seven."
  
  "Eleven," said Kelly.
  
  The operator shot him a look of surprise. "Not possible, sir. Eleven is a private floor. I'm sorry."
  
  "I'm sorry," I said, pulling my gun. Kelly grabbed the operator's arms from behind before he could push any alarm buttons, and Uri grabbed the matron around the mouth before she could let loose a diamond-studded scream.
  
  The porter and the bellboy looked round-eyed scared.
  
  I pressed the Stop button. The elevator stopped. Kelly handcuffed the elevator man and flashed his own police .38. Uri still had his hand clamped over the woman's mouth. "Lady," I said, "you scream and you're dead. You understand?"
  
  She nodded yes.
  
  Uri let her go.
  
  I pressed six. The elevator started. So did the woman's mouth. A mile a minute.
  
  "If you think you can get away with this you're — you're — you're wrong as rain. I'll have you know my husband's an important man. My husband will track you to the ends of the earth. My husband…"
  
  Uri put his hand back over her mouth.
  
  We reached the sixth floor.
  
  Kelly grabbed the three sets of keys from the porter. "All right," he said. "Now we all move out. Quick and quiet. One noise, one gesture, I shoot. Understand?"
  
  The four of them nodded. I told the bellboy to leave the luggage. Uri released his hand from the Mouth. It muttered slowly, "To the ends of the earth."
  
  I opened the door. No traffic out there. Kelly shook the keys and made a half bow. "Room Six Twelve? Right this way, madam."
  
  They marched down the hall. I closed the elevator door. Uri and I dove for the luggage. In Kelly's suitcase were two costumes. Navy blue shirts, pants, and matching Mae Wests. Padded gloves. Tin helmets. Two official-looking I.D. cards. We stripped and started switching to the new clothes. I handed Uri his terrorist medal. "As promised," I said.
  
  "It helped?"
  
  "It helped. You bring the gizmos?"
  
  "Gizmos is right. You put in a big tall order, boychik. You give me four hours to get over the border and tell me you want to pose as a bomb squad."
  
  "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 put 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 running, 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.
  
  To answer both those questions together," he took a bite, and a spray of caviar scattered on the desk like beads from a broken necklace. He took a sip of vodka to clear his palate. "One doesn't run opium in the Middle East without knowing who is a U.S. agent Lamott was working for my organization. The Damascus branch. He knew about Jehns. And Lamott was hooked, dependent on me. Not only for heroin, but for big money. Money he needed to feed his other habit"
  
  "Yeah. He was also a clothes horse."
  
  Foxx smiled. "Yes. Exactly. When our opium business dropped off, Lamott was scared. He couldn't afford both his chemical habit and also his… shall we say, fashion sense. Not even on his salary from Fresco Oil, which I assure you, was rather large. Now, Jehns. We had some background information on Jehns. We knew that he had a restless mistress. A woman who also had a fashion sense. How easy for Lamott to woo her away. Actually, it wasn't much fun for poor Bob. His taste didn't run to the female sex. But men have done worse things for heroin and money, so Bob seduced this Jacqueline — and got her to betray her ex-lover. At first we considered using Jehns as our dupe. But there was a mix-up. The rumor we'd arranged to drop in Damascus reached a CIA man instead. But then — what luck. Your Robey heard the rumors in Tel Aviv."
  
  "The rumors Mansour told in El Jazzar…"
  
  "Yes. Robey heard them and met with Mansour. Then he tried to telephone Jehns in Damascus. From there I think you know what happened. But Robey got suspicious. Not of Mansour, but of Jehns/Lamott He placed a call here, to the Foxx Beirut, where the real Jehns was staying for his oil conference…"
  
  "And where a black Renault ran him over in the street."
  
  "Mmm. Didn't kill him, but that was all right. At least he never got to talk with Robey."
  
  "And you were here at the hotel all along."
  
  "All along. Disguised, even then, as an oil sheik. But you must have figured out some of that"
  
  "Yep. The clue wax the security guards. I heard they were here to guard a sheik's money. Money that was stashed in the hotel vault. That was Just a little too eccentric to be true. Gulf sheiks bring their money into Lebanon, but they put it in banks like everybody else. So it suddenly hit me. What money wouldn't you put in a bank? The ransom money."
  
  "But why me, Nick? After all — I was dead."
  
  "Not necessarily. You arrived in Bermuda alive, on a plane. That much, the television cameras showed. But you left Bermuda in a closed coffin. No one saw the body except your 'close associates.' And a closed coffin is a good way to get a live man off an island. Now I have a question. When did you decide to kidnap the others? It wasn't part of the original plan."
  
  Foxx shrugged. "Yes. You're right again. I got the idea during my… captivity. I sat in this room for those two weeks and I thought about all the people I disliked. And I thought — ahah! If the scheme works once, why won't it work again and again. Voila! Al Shaitan became big business. But now I think it's time you told me…"
  
  "How I found out"
  
  "How you found out I trust you won't mind telling me, Nick?"
  
  I shrugged. "You know me, Al." I looked at the carpet and then at Uri. Foxx and his desk were too far away. He was keeping us both at a good safe distance and under the threat of a double cross-fire. I was giving up hope of reaching the boxes. Which left Plan Two. I could talk Foxx to death. If Kelly weren't signaled in one more hour, he'd go ahead anyway and do his stuff.
  
  I cleared my throat "How I found out. I don't know, Foxx. A bunch of little things. Once I knew Rhamaz was a blind alley, that the whole thing was phony from beginning to end, the other pieces started falling into place. Or at least I could see what the other pieces were. For instance, one of the reasons you're in trouble with the feds has to do with tax evasion. Rumors about your Swiss corporations and tricky deals to make dirty money clean. So where were you getting all the dirty money? Not from hotels. It had to be from something illegal. Something like dope. And what do you know? Three of the pieces in my Al Shaitan puzzle all had something to do with dope. Mansour was a pusher. Lamott was a Junkie. And the Shanda Baths was a front for a ring. The Shanda Baths — owned by a Swiss corporation. Your Swiss corporation. And Lamott had made a phone call to Switzerland. Perfect circle. Round One.
  
  "Now, for Lamott. He was up to his neck in Al Shaitan. I also figured he shot the guys at Rhamaz. Not many terrorists carry .25s. But it didn't figure. Lamott working with the P.L.O.? It didn't make sense. But then, a lot of things didn't make sense. AH the Americans who kept turning up. And all the money flashing around. The commando troops aren't hired thugs. They're dedicated hard-hating kamikazes. The pieces didn't fit — not if the puzzle was tided Al Shaitan. But change the title to Leonard Foxx…"
  
  Foxx nodded slowly. "I was right in judging you a genuine adversary."
  
  I played for more time. "There's one thing I don't think I understand. You spoke to Lamott the morning he died. He got a call from Sheik el-Yamaroon. Why did you tell him to pull strong-arm with me?"
  
  Foxx raised an eyebrow. "I was getting rather tired of Mr. Lamott. And he told me he thought you suspected him of something. And I thought, what better way to keep you in the dark than to force you to kill off your only real lead."
  
  "You knew I'd kill him?"
  
  "Well I really didn't think he'd succeed in killing you. But on the other hand, if he did… well, that's life." He raised his brows again. "Is your story over, or is there anything else?"
  
  "One thing more. The kidnap victims. At first it drove me crazy. Trying to figure out why those particular guys. Then I thought, well — no reason. Whimsy. But once I started suspecting you, the fist made a pattern. Wilts, who outbid you on the Italian hotel. Stol, who exposed you in his magazine. Whatsisname, the dog foodguy — your neighbor on Long Island. Then figure things like the five hunters. The location of the lodge was a deep dark secret Even their wives didn't know where it was. Arab terrorists wouldn't know. But I remembered reading that your hobby was hunting. That you once belonged to an exclusive little hunting group."
  
  "Very good, Nick. Really good. That article about my interest in hunting must have appeared, when — ten years ago? But there's one man you skipped. Roger Jefferson."
  
  "National Cars."
  
  "Mmm. My grudge against him goes back twenty years. More. Twenty-five. As you say, I drove a truck once. A National Truck. And I had an idea. I went to Detroit and met Roger Jefferson. At the time, he was the head of the trucking division. I presented him with a new truck design. A design that would have revolutionized the business. He turned me down. Coldly. Rudely. Laughed in my face. In fact, I think he only agreed to see me to have the fun of laughing in my face."
  
  "Yeah. Well, you certainly got the last laugh."
  
  He smiled. "And they're right. It is the best one. And just for the record, Thurgood Miles, the dog food man, isn't on my list because he was my neighbor, but because of the way his clinics treat dogs. Instead of just putting the sick beasts to sleep, they sell them to colleges for vivisection. Barbarous! Inhuman! He had to be stopped!"
  
  "Mmm," I said, thinking of the servant salaaming to the floor, thinking of the dupes slaughtered at Rhamaz, and the innocent people killed on the beach. Foxx wanted dogs to be treated like humans, but he didn't mind treating humans like dogs. But as Alice said: "I can't tell you now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit."
  
  We sat in silence for a few minutes. Uri said, "I'm starting to feel like Harpo Marx. Don't you want to ask me something? Like how a smart genius like me got into a mess like this? Or maybe you'll answer me something. What are you planning to do with us now?"
  
  "A good question Mr…?"
  
  "Mr. Moto. But you may call me Quasi."
  
  Foxx smiled. "Excellent," he said. "Really excellent. Perhaps I should keep you both around as my court jesters. Tell me," he was still looking at Uri, "what other talents have you got to recommend you?"
  
  "Talents?" Uri shrugged. "A little song, a little dance. I make a nice omelet."
  
  Foxx's eyes chilled. "That will be enough! I asked what you do."
  
  "Bombs," Uri said. "I make bombs. Like the one that's sitting in the box at your feet."
  
  Foxx's eyes widened before they narrowed. "You're bluffing," he said.
  
  Uri shrugged. "Try me." He looked at his watch. "You've got half an hour to see if I'm lying. You think we'd walk in here, two crazies alone, without any aces to pull in a Jam? You think that one over, Mr. Leonard Foxx."
  
  Foxx thought it over. He looked under the desk. His dog was also under the desk. He snapped his fingers and the dog ran out, scampering over to Foxx's knee, jumping up and watching him with canine love. Foxx picked him up and held him in his lap.
  
  "All right," he said. "I'll call your bluff. You see, nothing holds me in these hotel rooms. I'm Sheik Ahmed Sultan el-Yamaroon, I can come and go. But you, on the other hand…" He snapped for his guards. "Tie them to their chairs," he ordered in Arabic. He turned back to us. "And I assure you, gentlemen, if the bomb doesn't kill you in half an hour — I will."
  
  Uri started to dive for the boxes. I stood up and punched him silly in the jaw, as three guns fired, crack-crack-crack — missing him only because I'd changed his direction.
  
  Stupid move. He'd never have made it. The boxes were well over ten feet away. And not worth dying for, in any case. There was no bomb in them, only a remote. It's not that I don't believe in heroics. I just believe in saving them for one of two occasions. When you can't lose. And when you've got nothing left to lose. I didn't make it out as either — yet.
  
  I figured Foxx would take his guards and go. And somehow, even tied to the chairs, the two of us could manage to get to the boxes and press two buttons. The first to warn Kelly who'd be sitting in the lobby and the second that would, two minutes later, set off a noisy explosion in the flight bag. Not a real bomb. Just a big bang. Enough to rip open the plastic bag. Enough to send black smoke shooting in the air. And enough to summon the Beirut police, whom Kelly would direct to the eleventh floor. A do-it-yourself police raid.
  
  Plan Two, the if-you-don't-hear-from-us-in-an-hour-get the-cops-anyway plan, didn't have much of a chance of working. Not if Foxx was good to his word. If the bomb didn't kill us in half an hour, he would. The cops would still come, but they'd find our corpses. An excellent illustration of a Pyrrhic victory. But a lot can happen in half an hour. And there was plenty of time to go for heroics.
  
  We were tied to the chairs, our hands to the chair arms, our feet to its legs. Uri came to just as Foxx and his goons were departing. Foxx stuck his head back through the door.
  
  "Oh, one thing I didn't mention, gentleman. We found a friend of yours sitting in the lobby."
  
  He opened the door a little wider. They tossed Kelly onto the Persian carpet. He was bound, hand and foot, his hands behind him, and black and blue bruises were rising on his face.
  
  "Now he tells us," I said to Uri.
  
  Foxx closed the door. We heard him lock it.
  
  "All right," I said. "Now here's the plan…"
  
  They both looked at me as though I really had one.
  
  "Sorry," I said. "Gallows humor. Where's the bag, Kelly?"
  
  Kelly painfully rolled himself over. "Okay, Pollyanna. Here's your good news. It's still in the lobby."
  
  "And here's your bad news, Mr. Big," Uri was giving me the angry uncle look. "Even if we manage to make it go boom, the cops wouldn't know to come up here. Why did you slug me, you stupid jerk? We had a better chance when we weren't hobbled."
  
  "First of all" — I was getting mad, too — "what better chance? Considering Kelly was already gone."
  
  "Okay. But you didn't know that then."
  
  "Okay. I didn't know it, but I still saved your life."
  
  "For a half an hour, it was hardly worth the trouble."
  
  "You want to spend your last moments raking me over?
  
  Or do you want to do something about trying to live."
  
  "I suppose I can always rake you over later."
  
  "Then move toward the box and set off the bomb."
  
  Uri started walking his chair to the boxes. It was inch by inch "Favus?" he said. "Why am I doing this? So the Beirut police can get a little outing?"
  
  I was walking my chair over toward Kelly, who was bellying his way over to me. "I'm not sure why," I grunted at Uri. "Except Leonard Foxx and his troup of blue goons won't go further away than the lobby. They'll be sitting there counting up half an hour. Maybe they'll get scared when they see the cops. Make a dash for it. Leave the hotel. Or maybe they'll somehow lead the cops here. Or maybe they'll think we've got bombs all over."
  
  "The cops will think or Foxx will think?" Uri was still four feet from the boxes.
  
  "Hell, I don't know. I'm Just saying my maybes."
  
  "You forgot one," said Kelly, from a foot away now. "Maybe this is all just a bad dream."
  
  "I like that," I said, tipping my chair so it fell on the floor. "Now maybe you'd like to try and untie me?"
  
  Kelly inched up till his hands were near mine. He started, awkwardly, to grapple with my ropes. Uri reached the spot next to the desk and dive-bombed his chair onto the floor. He nudged at the open box with his chin. It tipped forward, spilling its contents. The remote plopped out and fell beside him. "No!" he said suddenly. "Not yet We've got twenty-three minutes to set off that bomb. And maybe, as our master is fond of saying, maybe the explosion will send Foxx up here. Better we try to get a little loose first."
  
  Kelly wasn't getting me any looser. Uri eyed the random junk on the floor. "I got it," he said. "I got it, I got it."
  
  "Would you like to say what?"
  
  "Wire cutters. I remember I threw in some wire cutters. There's just one problem. The wire cutters are in the second box. And the damned box is too far under the desk. And I can't get in there, tied to this chair." He turned his head in our direction. "Hurry up, Kelly. I think I need the luck of the Irish. The luck of the Jews is running out over here."
  
  Kelly started crawling over toward the desk. It seemed like a football field away. Finally, he got there. He used his bound feet like a probe, and nudged the box out into the clear.
  
  Uri stared. "My god. It's locked."
  
  Slowly I said, "And where are the keys?"
  
  "Forget it. The keys are on a chain around my neck."
  
  A long moment of terrible silence. "Don't worry," I said. "Maybe this is all just a bad dream."
  
  Another silence. We had ten minutes.
  
  "Wait," Uri said. "Your box was locked too. How did you open it?"
  
  "I didn't," I said. "I threw it at a guard and it opened by itself."
  
  "Forget it," he said again. "We'll never get the leverage to toss the thing."
  
  "All right. The aerial."
  
  "What about it?"
  
  "Get it."
  
  He grunted. "Got it. What now?"
  
  "Fish for the box. Scoop it up by the handle. Then try to flip it as hard as you can."
  
  "Dammit. You may not be so dumb."
  
  He did it. It worked. The box crashed against the side of the desk, opened, and rained all the junk on the floor.
  
  "That's really a terrific lock, Uri."
  
  "You're complaining?" he asked.
  
  Kelly was already cutting him free.
  
  "Ouch!" he said.
  
  "You're complaining?" Kelly asked.
  
  We made it with almost five minutes to spare. Perfect timing. We set off the flight bag. The cops would arrive in less than five minutes. We headed for the door. We forgot it was locked.
  
  The other doors weren't The ones that led into the rest of the suite. I found Wilhelmina on top of a dresser, and tossed my stiletto over to Uri Kelly took a knife from a kitchen drawer.
  
  "The phone!" I said. "My god, the phone!" I dove for the phone and told the operator to send up the oops. As she was saying "Yes, sir," I heard the explosion.
  
  All the doors to the hall were locked. And all of them were made of unbreakable metal. All right. So we'd wait We couldn't lose now. We were back in die drawing room, the place where we'd started. Uri looked at me. "You want to scatter or stay together?"
  
  We never got to decide.
  
  The door flew open and the bullets started flying. A submachine gun, ripping up the room. I dove behind the desk but I felt the bullets burning my leg. I shot and got the gunner through his blue-robed heart, but two reinforcements were coming through the door, spitting bullets all over the place. I fired once and they both fell.
  
  Wait a second.
  
  I'm good, but not that good.
  
  A long moment of eerie silence. I looked around the room. Uri was lying in the middle of the carpet, a bullet hole gouged in the padded vest. Kelly's right arm was all red, but he'd dived for cover behind a sofa.
  
  We looked at each other and then at the door.
  
  And there was my old pal, David Benyamin.
  
  He was smiling a damnedable one-up smile. "Don't worry, ladies. The cavalry is here."
  
  "Go to hell, David."
  
  I dragged myself over to Uri's body. My leg was leaving a bail of blood. I felt for his pulse. It was still there. I opened the vest. It had saved his life. Kelly was holding his own bloody arm. "I think I'll get a doctor before it starts to hurt." Kelly wandered slowly out of the room.
  
  The Shin Bet guys were all over the hall now. Opening and the Lebanese cops made a fairly interesting combinadoors, taking prisoners. And then came the cops. The Beirut police. Talk about strange bedfellows, the Shin Bet tion.
  
  "Lebanon will use this story for years. They'll say 'How can you accuse us of helping Palestinians? Didn't we work with the Shin Bet once?' By the way," Benyamin added, "we got Leonard Foxx. Beirut is happy to give him away. And we'll give him back to America gladly."
  
  "One question, David."
  
  "How did I get here?"
  
  "Right."
  
  "Leila got me word you were going to Jerusalem. I alerted the airstrips to tell me when you got there. Then I had you tailed. Well, not exactly tailed. The army car that took you to your hotel was ours. So was the cab that drove you to the airport. The driver saw you get on the plane for Beirut After that it wasn't too hard. Remember — I checked Robey's phone calls for you. And one of the numbers was the Foxx Beirut. I never figured Al Shaitan was Leonard Foxx, but I did figure out you were corning here and I figured you could use a little help from your friends. We've got a guy at the Beirut Airport — well, we had a guy — his cover's blown now. You're turning green, Carter. I'll try to finish fast so you can pass out Where was I? Oh yes. I was waiting in the lobby. Three guys with me. We found out MacKenzie wasn't in his room. So where was MacKenzie? One guy went to look for you in the bar. I went to check the operator. Maybe MacKenzie called another roam."
  
  "All right. Don't tell me. You were talking to the operator when I called for the cops."
  
  "All right I won't tell you. But that's how it was. You're very green, Carter. Kind of green and white. I think you'll pass out any minute now."
  
  "In a pig's eye," I said. And passed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Twenty One
  
  
  
  
  I was lying naked in the sun. Out on a balcony. I was thinking what I'd do with a billion dollars. I probably wouldn't do anything different. What's there to do? Own fourteen suits like Bob Lamott? Own a palace in Arabia? Nah. Boring. Travel? That's the other thing people do with money. Travel is something I get plenty of anyway. Travel and adventure. Lots of adventure. Let me tell you about adventure — it's a shot in the arm. Or the leg.
  
  I keep picturing that money. Half a billion dollars. Five hundred million. The money they'd taken from Leonard Foxx's vault. The ransom money. Five hundred million dollars in fifties. You know how many bills that is? Ten million. Ten million fifty-dollar bills. Six inches a bill. Five million feet of money. A little less than a thousand miles. And the moral is, it can't buy happiness. At least not for Foxx. It can't even buy him bail. First of all, because the money was returned. And secondly, the Judge, in a fit of legal slapstick, set Foxx's bail at one billion dollars.
  
  There were no takers.
  
  The phone rang. It was lying next to me out on the balcony. I checked my watch. Noon. I poured myself a glass of Polish vodka. I let the phone ring.
  
  It kept on ringing.
  
  I picked it up.
  
  Hawk.
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  "You enjoying yourself?"
  
  "Uh, yes, sir… You called to ask if I'm enjoying myself?"
  
  "Not exactly. How's the leg?"
  
  I paused. "I can't lie, sir. It'll be okay in a couple of days."
  
  "Well I'm glad to hear you can't lie to me. Some other people think you're on the critical list."
  
  I said: "I can't imagine how that rumor got started."
  
  "Neither can I, Carter. Neither can I. So let's talk about your next assignment. You wrapped up the Foxx case yesterday so by now you ought to be ready for the next one."
  
  "Yes, sir," I said. I didn't expect the Nobel Prize, but a weekend off… "Go on, sir," I said.
  
  "You're in Cyprus now. I want you to stay there for the next two weeks. At the end of that time I want a full report on the exact number of Cyprus trees in Cyprus."
  
  "Two weeks, you said?"
  
  "Yes. Two weeks. I don't want any shoddy quick count."
  
  I told him he could certainly count on me.
  
  I hung up and took another dollop of caviar. Where was I? Oh yes. Who needs money?
  
  I heard the sound of a key in the door. I grabbed the towel and rolled over. And there she was. Standing on the threshold of the balcony door. She looked at me wide-eyed and ran to my side.
  
  She kneeled on the mat and looked me over. "I'll kill you, Nick Carter! I really think I'll kill you!"
  
  "Hey. What's the matter? Aren't you glad to see me?"
  
  "Glad to see you? I was scared half to death. I thought you were dying. They woke me up in the middle of the night and said, 'Carter's wounded. You've got to fly to Cyprus.'"
  
  I ran my hand through her yellow-rose hair. "Hey, Millie… hello."
  
  For a minute she smiled a lovely smile; then her eyes started blazing again.
  
  "Okay," I said, "if it makes you feel better, I am wounded. Look under that bandage. It's all cruddy in there. And is this how you treat a wounded hero — injured in the line of protecting his country? Or let me put that another way. Is this how you treat the particular man who got you a two-week vacation in Cyprus?"
  
  "Vacation?" she said. "Two weeks?" Then she made a face. "What was the first price?"
  
  I pulled her closer. "I missed you, Millie. I really missed your sassy mouth."
  
  I let her mouth know how much I missed it.
  
  "You know what?" she said softly. "I think I believe you."
  
  We kissed for about the next hour and a half.
  
  Finally she turned and lay against my chest. I pulled a handful of her hair to my lips and inhaled its perfume and stared out across the Mediterranean, thinking we'd somehow made a full circle.
  
  Millie was watching me watch the sea. "Thinking of quitting AXE again?"
  
  "Uh uh. I guess this stuff is my fate."
  
  "Too bad. I was thinking you'd be nice to come home to."
  
  I kissed the top of her sweet yellow head. "Honey, I'd make a lousy civilian — but I tell you what I bet I can arrange to get seriously wounded at least once a year. How about that?"
  
  She turned around and bit my ear.
  
  "Hmp," she said. "Promises, promises."
  
  
  
  
  
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