Carter Nick : другие произведения.

The Fanatics of Al Asad

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  Annotation
  
  
  MORTAR ATTACK ON WHITE HOUSE!
  
  PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED!
  
  HOUSE SPEAKER KIDNAPPED!
  
  Four-inch headlines screamed from the front pages. There was only one way to save American democracy-find the Speaker of the House before the insane terrorists carried out their ultimate threat…
  
  The trail of terror led to New York. Somewhere in Manhattan lurked "The Lion" — Al Asad — the name of the group of fanatics who thought they had a divine mission: terror, assassination, and international blackmail.
  
  It was a job for one man — alone. But even when Killmaster found them, any wrong move would mean instant death for the next President of the United States!
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Chapter One
  
  Chapter Two
  
  Chapter Three
  
  Chapter Four
  
  Chapter Five
  
  Chapter Six
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Killmaster
  
  The Fanatics of Al Asad
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  OCR Mysuli: denlib@tut.by
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  Wednesday. 3:46 p.m.
  
  
  
  The smell in the room was antiseptic, hospital clean. The walls were pale hospital green like the sheets and like the gown the doctor wore and like the one I wore, too.
  
  He lay in a narrow hospital bed with chrome tubing at the sides to keep patients from falling out of bed. Only this patient wouldn't fall out because he was strapped down. One broad, webbed strap was across his chest and arms, another was across his thighs. The third bound his calves. All he could move was his head and eyes, which were glazed, the pupils dilated. The straps really weren't necessary. He was dying despite the IV tubing that dripped plasma into his veins.
  
  He was a young man, no older than his mid-twenties, swarthy and strongly built.
  
  The doctor stepped back from the bed and shook his head at me.
  
  "I can't give him any more without killing him," he said glumly. "He's pretty far gone as it is."
  
  "Let's take that chance. He's got to talk!"
  
  The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "It's your decision."
  
  I heard the patient mutter something.
  
  "Ask him again," said Hawk. He was slumped in a chair in the corner of the room. His haggy suit was even more rumpled than usual, and he was smoking one of his foul smelling cigars in violation of all the hospital rules.
  
  I went over to the bed, catching the young man's face in my hand, cupping it by the chin and turning it to face me. I shook it hard. The glazed eyes began to focus on me.
  
  "What is your name?" I asked.
  
  The mouth opened. A thin trickle of saliva ran down one corner of his mouth. I relaxed my grip so that he could move his lips.
  
  "Ah… Ah…" he croaked.
  
  "What is your name!"
  
  "Ah… Ahmad," he said, still fighting to remain silent.
  
  In the corner, Hawk grunted.
  
  "What is the name of your organization?" I asked. Beside the bed, on the small hospital table, the cassette tape recorder spools rotated slowly. The microphone was close to his face.
  
  "What is the name of your organization!"
  
  I could see him try to close his mouth. The struggle was a powerful one, but he lost. Scopolamine works when you want to get the truth from someone. The drug the doctor had administered was more potent than scopolamine, but it was trickier to administer.
  
  "Ta…" he said.
  
  It meant nothing to me. I looked at Hawk. He shrugged his shoulders.
  
  "…Sin…" said the young man. Tears welled up in his eyes. He knew he was talking in spite of himself.
  
  "He's not making sense," growled Hawk.
  
  "…Mim…" said the voice brokenly. Ahmad began to cry soundlessly.
  
  "Chinese?" asked Hawk, puzzled.
  
  "I doubt it," I answered. I bent down to the strapped figure. "Tell me about the organization!"
  
  The struggle showed itself on his face. Again, he lost.
  
  "…Su… Surah…" he muttered unwillingly.
  
  I began to get the first faint glimmerings of an idea.
  
  "Allah Akbar. Allah is great" I said. My Arabic has a Cairo accent.
  
  "Bismallah," I said.
  
  His eyes had closed. He heard only my voice.
  
  "…Fat'hah," he answered.
  
  I took a deep breath and a big chance. In Arabic, I began to recite what every Muslim boy learns from childhood on.
  
  "Bismallah," I said again. "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate."
  
  The mouth began to twist in a smile of pleasure.
  
  "Pu… Praise belongs to God," he responded in a whisper, also in Arabic but with a Syrian accent. "The Lord of All-Being, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate, the Master of the Day of Doom."
  
  Fat'hah means 'the Opening' in Arabic. It's the name of the first Surah of the one hundred and fourteen Surahs of the Quran, which we call the Koran. All but one of the Surahs, or chapters, begin with Bismallah — In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
  
  But, what did it mean? Hawk and I both knew it had a meaning out of the ordinary for this terrorist the only one to survive out of the dozen who had carried out their attack successfully.
  
  They were fanatics, young men every one of them, who knew they hadn't a chance and yet had gone ahead with the craziest plan in the world.
  
  Only three hours before, as the Vice-President and the President of the United States had come out of the White House, blinking in the bright sun that hit the Rose Garden, a mortar shell had landed and killed them both.
  
  They died along with three Cabinet members — one of whom was the Secretary of State — several newspapermen and most of a television camera crew. In all, four mortar shells landed in ten seconds.
  
  In one explosion, the country's leaders had been wiped out. The Speaker of the House was now the President — and he was missing!
  
  Twenty minutes after the event, Hawk had me sitting in his office while he spelled out the details.
  
  And not one of the details meant a thing. There had been an explosion. Five Secret Service men had died along with the others.
  
  The shells had been fired from a slowly moving, open-bodied Army truck. Five men in green Army fatigues rode in the back. The truck and the fatigues had been stolen from Fort Meade two days earlier. When the truck reached the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street, the truck came to a halt. The men in back whipped tarpaulins from two mortars. Everything had been carefully calculated so that from that location they were sure to hit the Rose Garden. Four rounds were fired in ten seconds, the big mortar shells looping up in a high parabola to come slamming down onto the White House grounds. Almost immediately, the truck was thrown into gear and started off again.
  
  At New York Avenue, Secret Service men blew out the tires of the truck. One rammed it with a car to immobilize it and died from the concentrated fire of the commando group's automatic rifles. When the fire fight was over, there were some forty dead, including a score of innocent passersby. Only one terrorist was still alive — the young man now dying in front of us on the hospital bed, his veins pumped with truth serum.
  
  But, Ahmad was as good as dead. He knew it, and the knowledge seemed to please him.
  
  "…Ta…" he muttered again.
  
  "…Sin…" he said.
  
  For two and a half hours, the doctors had fought to save him so that he could talk. He wanted to die. Now, Ahmad had beaten them.
  
  "…Mim…" he said and died.
  
  The doctor rushed to the bed as Ahmad's head lolled limply to one side. He slapped his stethoscope onto Ahmad's bare chest. He listened for a minute, then straightened up.
  
  "He's gone."
  
  Hawk rose to his feet, motioning me to follow him. I slipped the tape recorder cassette into my pocket. Together, we walked out into the corridor and down the hallway lined with Secret Service agents.
  
  Halfway down, the head of the Presidential Detail came rushing up to us.
  
  "Send them home," Hawk told him bluntly, before he could speak. "The man's dead."
  
  Outside, we got into Hawk's car and drove back to the AXE office in Dupont Circle. We said nothing to each other during the entire trip.
  
  Inside, Hawk sat wearily at his desk. I had never seen him so despondent before. He acted as if, somehow, the whole affair was his fault.
  
  Finally, he lifted his head and stared at me.
  
  He said slowly, "Where in the hell is the Speaker of the House? Goddamn it, hasn't he been told? Doesn't he know he's now the President of the United States?"
  
  Angrily, he reached out for the direct line to the Oval Room. From my chair on the far side of his office, I couldn't hear what he was saying until the very end. Then his voice rose.
  
  "…No! For God's sake, no! It's not the Russians! Get word to the Pentagon! Get them to stand down! Do you want to trigger an atomic war?"
  
  Hawk glared at me as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line.
  
  "Yes," he said finally, in answer to a question. "We're sure it's not the Soviets. It's an Arab terrorist group… What's that?… No, we don't have all the information yet. What I want to know is, where the devil's the Speaker of the…"
  
  He broke off, his eyes growing slightly wider in surprise. Hawk listened for a moment — a long moment — before he gently put down the phone. With Hawk, that meant he was doing his best to control his fury.
  
  I kept my mouth shut. Hawk would tell me if he felt I ought to know.
  
  "They've just received a ransom note," he said, looking down at his clenched hands on the desk top. "The Speaker of the House was kidnapped at exactly the same time the President and Vice-President were killed. It's a terrorist group who calls itself 'Al Asad'…"
  
  "…'The Lion'," I translated automatically.
  
  Hawk paused to take out and fight one of his cheap cigars. Two matches broke off in his hand. I'd never seen him so upset.
  
  "They promise to kill him in three days if we don't come up with their ransom demands." The strain in his voice was barely concealed. "And, I swear to God, I don't see any possible way for us to do so."
  
  He stood up. "Let's get over to the White House, Nick."
  
  * * *
  
  Wednesday. 8:32 p.m. The White House.
  
  
  
  The Israeli ambassador put the formally typed and bound folder on top of the polished mahogany of the conference table almost as if he wanted nothing more to do with it. We had been waiting several hours to get this reply, but now none of us sitting around the table made a move to pick it up. At 4:12 p.m., the ransom note from the terrorists had come in. Half an hour later, the Israeli ambassador was brought to the White House in a Presidential limousine and was informed of the contents of the note. He said nothing at the time.
  
  Now, some four hours later, he was back again. The group was small. He looked around at us and said, somberly, "Gentlemen, this is my government's response to your request to our Premier. I conveyed it to him this afternoon. He convened a special urgent meeting of the Knesset, our Parliament. His reply has the full, unanimous backing of every member of the Knesset, I might add. There was not a single dissenting vote.
  
  "Under no conditions will we consent to the return of arms already delivered to us by your country. As for the stoppage of arms deliveries presently agreed upon by our two countries, we would consider it a violation of the treaties that exist between us were such a thing to happen."
  
  No one said a word. None of us had believed that the Israelis would consent to the ransom demands made by the Al Asad terrorist group, but we had had to go through the motions.
  
  The Israeli ambassador went on. "Personally, we have found that there is only one way to deal with terrorists. Not just an eye for an eye, but retribution to a degree that makes the tactics of terror not worth it. We level an entire village that harbors terrorists! It works. Guerrilla warfare can be stopped only when you do not allow them the environment they must have in which to exist!"
  
  General Standish, Chariman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke up. "And what is that, sir?"
  
  "Arab terrorists follow the teachings of Mao on guerrilla warfare. 'Swim like a fish among other fish.' They breed fear among the villagers so that they can hide among them as part of them. The villagers fear us more. Any house that shelters a terrorist is razed to the ground. Reprisal, General! Swift and terrible as an avenging sword! Remember, you cannot deal logically with fanatics!"
  
  Senator Connors, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cleared his throat. "Mr. Ambassador, we're in a different situation here. The ransom note for the safe return of the Speaker of the…"
  
  "…he's now President of the United States," interrupted John Briarly, the new head of the National Security Agency. "Let's think of him in those terms."
  
  "You're right," said the Senator. "The terrorists hold captive the President of the United States. It's just not an ordinary citizen whose life we're talking about! Our country would be leaderless!"
  
  "You are asking for the life of our country," the Israeli ambassador replied bluntly. "We are not prepared to sacrifice an entire nation for just one man, no matter how important he might be!"
  
  He indicated the folder on the table.
  
  "You tell us that the terrorist group who kidnapped your President wants one hundred million dollars in cash. I'm sure that presents no problem to your government.
  
  "They want an end to arms shipments to our country. We tell you plainly that it would mean the total end to diplomatic relations between us.
  
  "Finally, they want the return of all American arms that have already been sent to Israel. We answer you that these men are insane! There is no possible way for us to accede to that demand. It would leave us completely helpless to Arab attack!"
  
  Paulson took his pipe from his mouth. The head of the CIA asked quietly, "Mr. Ambassador, has your country taken any overt action as yet?"
  
  The Ambassador turned to him. His brown, desert-worn face carried a long scar along its left side. I knew he'd gotten it as a tank commander in the '67 war. He held the rank of Brigadier General in the Israeli Army, and had spent his entire life in defense of his country. There was regret and compassion and pity in his eyes, but there was also cold, tempered steel in them, too.
  
  He nodded, grimly. "We have, indeed. Immediately after I informed my government of what had occurred today, and of the contents of the ransom note you received this afternoon from the terrorists, we began to arm our Pershing missiles with nuclear warheads. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you that we've had nuclear capability for quite some time. Israel is on full, war-time alert as of this moment!"
  
  A gasp ran around the room.
  
  The ambassador went on, his harshly accented English making the words sound even grimmer.
  
  "Israel is a nation of scientists and engineers. We also have long-range missiles. These, too, have been armed with nuclear warheads."
  
  He paused, his eyes going around the room, taking in each one of us in turn.
  
  "We would like you to let it be known to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan that our short-range missiles are targeted on Cairo, Damascus, Beirut and Amman. As for the Russians — and we are sure that in some way they are involved in this — you may inform them that our long-range missiles, our ICBM's, are aimed at Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad and other key Soviet cities!"
  
  We sat in silence as he went on remorselessly. "Any indication that the Americans will insist" — he accented the word — "upon carrying out the instructions of the ransom note will lead us to trigger these devices."
  
  His eyes went around the room again.
  
  In a slightly more personal tone of voice, he said, "I, myself, regret the necessity of this response, but we have no other choice. My government shares my feeling. We cannot put an end to our country, or to allow the ensuing slaughter of our people. Not for one man, gentlemen, even if he is your President! We have lost too many of our own to make one man's life so important!"
  
  He stared at us. Almost as if lecturing, he said, "One of your own Presidents once said, in a similar situation, to the pirates of Tripoli, 'Millions for defense, not a penny for ransom!' Has America completely lost its manhood? Are you men going to capitulate to the demands of a few fanatics? If you do that, gentlemen — then, were I an American I would be ashamed of my country and its leaders! And if I were any one of you here now" — again he looked around at us — "I could never hold up my head in pride again!"
  
  With that, he gathered up his briefcase, nodded to his attaché and stalked out of the conference room.
  
  Hawk was the first to speak up.
  
  "The man's right. We can't give in to them."
  
  One by one, beginning with General Standish, each man in the room nodded his head in agreement.
  
  Briarly, the NSA head, said, "They've given us only three days before their deadline to execute the President, gentlemen. That's not much time."
  
  Senator Connors got to his feet. He was well over six feet in height, rangy, ruddy-faced from the wind and the western sun of his native state.
  
  "Then, god damn it, find them!" He pointed to each man as he named the agency. "CIA! FBI! National Security! Army Counter-intelligence! Navy Counter-intelligence! There are enough of you! Find them!"
  
  The head of NSA spoke up. "That's the assignment, gentlemen." He, too, looked around the room, as if to ask if there were any questions.
  
  The FBI chief crushed out his cigarette.
  
  "Who's going to run this operation?" he asked, without looking at anyone, but the tone of his voice suggested that he fully expected the FBI to be named.
  
  The National Security Director answered him.
  
  "AXE," he said, looking at David Hawk. "It's their kind of work."
  
  Hawk didn't let a flicker of emotion show on his face. He merely nodded his acknowledgement.
  
  "How many men will you need for this assignment?" Senator Connors asked.
  
  Hawk gestured at me with the butt of his chewed cigar.
  
  "One," he said. "Nick Carter."
  
  Each face around that table took on a different expression of surprise.
  
  "One?" repeated the Senator in amazement.
  
  Hawk got to his feet. So did I.
  
  "He's enough, Senator. That's why he's Killmaster N3."
  
  Hawk touched me on the arm.
  
  "Let's go, Nick," he said. "You heard the man. Time's getting short."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Two
  
  
  
  
  Wednesday. 11:02 p.m. The Mayflower Hotel.
  
  
  
  Her name was Tamar. She sat in the living room of my suite at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, her long, slim legs crossed demurely. Her hair was cut short in a boyish fashion, framing an oval face with the most beautiful doe eyes I had seen in years. The face said youth; the eyes said maturity.
  
  When I had gotten the call from Hawk to expect a Shin Beth agent the Israelis were sending over, I hadn't expected anyone like this. Certainly not a girl; definitely not one as beautiful as this Sabra.
  
  "Tamar." I repeated the name. "What's your last name?"
  
  "It makes no difference," she said with a slight, impatient shrug of her shoulders. "I have many. Do you need one?"
  
  "Why did they send you? What kind of help do they think you can give me?"
  
  Unruffled, Tamar took a cigarette from her purse and lit it.
  
  "This morning," she said, in a soft voice, "I was in Damascus, where I have spent the last two years infiltrating a Palestinian revolutionary group. I have an extensive knowledge of the complexities of the various Palestinian organizations, the countless splinter groups, and how they are interrelated. I speak fluent Arabic. The Arabs do not know that I am Israeli — they'd kill me if they even suspected it, of course. General Ben-Chaim had me catch a plane to Athens. I was flown here by supersonic military jet. Does that answer your question?"
  
  "How much of the background do you know?"
  
  "I was briefed on most of it on the way. However, I must say I have never heard of 'Al Asad.' It's a new group."
  
  I settled back in the armchair on my side of the room and lit one of my own, special gold-tipped cigarettes.
  
  "Tell me about these splinter groups."
  
  Tamar began her lecture. "In brief, we can forget about most of the Palestinian organizations and concentrate on Al Fatah, which is the largest and certainly the most important of the fedayeen organizations. Al Fatah was formed by a small group of Gaza Strip Palestinians during the 1950s. The name 'Fatah' — by the way — means 'conquest' in Arabic. The Palestinian Liberation Movement is 'Harakat at-Tahrir al-Filistani.' Reverse the first letters of each word and you have the acronym, Fatah."
  
  "Are you saying that Al Fatah is behind the assassination and kidnapping?"
  
  She shook her head. "No, I'm not. It's probably one of the ultra-violent splinter groups that broke off from Al Fatah. It was a group similar to this that I'd been infiltrating in Damascus. They are small, but dangerous because there is no way to control or even influence them."
  
  "Your ambassador said at our meeting that he felt the Russians somehow had a hand in all this. What did he mean by that?"
  
  "Well," said Tamar reflectively, "as you may know, as far back as 1970, the KGB began to smuggle arms to the PLO guerrillas. We learned of the activity immediately but no one would believe us. By September of 1973, the facts became so widespread that even The New York Times had an article that quoted Palestinian guerrilla sources as saying the Russians had supplied arms to Al Fatah directly and openly! This was just two weeks after the Black September group of Al Fatah murdered eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympics at Munich!
  
  "Furthermore, the GRU — Soviet Military Intelligence — brought more than thirty Palestinians to Russia to train them in guerrilla warfare. I'm certain the Soviets had a hand in training your 'Al Asad' terrorists!"
  
  It was hard for me to concentrate on what she was saying. My eyes kept taking in her slim figure and full breasts under the thin jersey blouse she wore. Tamar was completely unselfconscious about her body or the sexuality she exuded.
  
  "Assassination training — or guerrilla warfare training?"
  
  Tamar thought for a moment. "Both, I think," she replied.
  
  I thought about that for a moment and then went to the telephone. My suite at the Mayflower is special. It's not only reserved for me alone, but it has direct, clean lines to AXE, to the Pentagon and to the FBI. The rooms are electronically swept twice a day. The telephone has a scrambler system.
  
  The first call I made was to the CIA. Ever since Hawk and I had left the meeting, there had been a CIA agent assigned to stand by that telephone. It was picked up immediately.
  
  "Vladimir Petrovich Selyutin," I said. "He's a member of Department V, as in Victor, of the KGB. I want to know if he's in the United States. Shall I hold on — or do you want to call me back?"
  
  He said I could hold on. He'd have the information for me in a minute or two.
  
  Department V is the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. It's the "executive action" department. While most of the KGB has moved its offices from 2 Dzerzhinsky Square to a new building on a highway just outside the city limits of Moscow, Department V is still quartered in the old building.
  
  There are a lot of bureaucratic names for killing. Somehow, they all hate to use the word assassination. "Executive action" is one term. The Russian phrase is "mokrie dela." A "wet affair." Wet affairs come in under Department V.
  
  Vladimir Petrovich Selyutin was a KGB assassin. One of the best they had. We knew him and what he'd done but we could never pin anything on him.
  
  The new boss of Department V, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, is a heavy-set Georgian named Mikhael Yelisovich Kalugin, who looks like an overweight Rotarian from the mid-west. He wears rumpled suits, horn-rimmed glasses and an almost perpetual smile on his round face. He blinks out at you from behind the thick lenses and his lips are so wide that they look like a frog. Ever have a genial frog smiling at you? That's Kalugin. He issues the orders to kill.
  
  And Selyutin reports directly to Kalugin.
  
  The CIA agent came back on the line and reported that Selyutin was in this country.
  
  "I want him picked up immediately" I ordered. "If you know where he is, I want to be talking to him in the next hour, understand?"
  
  He did. I hung up, knowing that I'd soon be face to face with Tovarich Selyutin within the next hour if he were anywhere within several hundred miles of us.
  
  * * *
  
  I put the miniature Panasonic tape recorder on the table beside Tamar, slipping the cassette into the recessed chamber.
  
  "I want you to listen to this," I said, and pressed the PLAY button.
  
  "What is the name of your organization?" My voice came through the small speaker loud and clear.
  
  "Ta…" said Ahmad's voice. "…Sin… Mim…"
  
  We heard Hawk's voice and then mine and then Ahmad's again.
  
  "Su… Surah…" he said.
  
  I played the rest of the recording through for her. When it was done, I snapped off the machine.
  
  "Well, what do you think it means?" I asked.
  
  Tamar's brow wrinkled in thought. She tapped a fingernail against her teeth.
  
  "I think…" she began, and then nodded. "Yes, I'm sure of it. The Surah refers to the Qur'an, as you know."
  
  "What about the rest of what he said?"
  
  "Ta… Sin… Mim… They're letters of the Arabic alphabet. Almost all of the Surahs of the Qur'an are labelled with one or more letters. Almost like chapter titles."
  
  "Do you know which one this refers to?"
  
  Tamar nodded. "Yes. I've memorized the Qur'an. Old fashioned Moslem women aren't supposed to be literate. I'm the new breed — the emancipated Arab woman. That's why I was accepted by the troup in Damascus."
  
  "Then what chapter is it? What does it mean?" I asked impatiently.
  
  "The Twenty-eighth Surah," Tamar said. "It's called The Story.' It's about Moses and Joseph."
  
  "What has that got to do with this group?" I was irritated. I spoke Arabic, and I knew much of the Qur'an but I had never memorized it. Neither had most native Arabs.
  
  "Let me think a minute," said Tamar. She closed her eyes. Her lips moved soundlessly. She was mentally reciting the Qur'an. Finally, she opened her eyes.
  
  "It's verses eighty-five and eighty-six," she said. "A rough translation would be, 'Allah who gave you the Qur'an shall restore you to your homeland.'"
  
  I could see that that phrase could be the rallying cry of any Palestinian group. The word from the Prophet Mohammed that Allah himself had promised their return and take-over of all of Palestine.
  
  The telephone rang. The CIA agent was on the other end. "We've got your man," he said. "The FBI picked him up in New York. They're on their way down to Washington with him right now. By the time you get here, he'll be on tap for you to question him."
  
  By "here" I knew he meant a CIA safe house in Virginia. It was a perfect place to question a man and not have to worry about cleaning up the mess afterwards.
  
  * * *
  
  Thursday. 12:08 a.m. Near Maclean, Virginia.
  
  
  
  Vladimir Petrovich Selyutin was a pale-faced, slender man in his middle thirties. Looking at him, at his broad forehead, his slim, straight nose and delicately boned chin, with his hair brushed straight back, you'd never have thought him capable of violence. He looked like a musician — a violinist, perhaps, or a flutist. His slender, long-fingered hands were delicate. Even his eyes had a poetic, compassionate quality in them.
  
  We were alone in the room. The room was soundproofed. I leaned my back against the wall and said, "Hello, Vladimir Petrovich."
  
  Vladimir sat erect in the only chair in the room, a straight-backed, hard, wooden chair bolted to the floor.
  
  "My name is Arthur…"
  
  I stopped him.
  
  "Don't lie, Vladimir Petrovich. This time your arrest is not official. Well play by my rules. You're Vladimir Petrovich Selyutin, a member of Department V of the KGB and you're a very capable assassin. Someday, in the line of duty, I may have to kill you. I don't want to do that now. I want information from you. That's all."
  
  Vladimir smiled gently at me.
  
  "That is the truth?"
  
  I nodded.
  
  "No beatings first? No torture? No truth drugs?"
  
  "Do you want me to use them?"
  
  Vladimir shook his head. "No. Certainly not. What land of information do you want from me?" He cocked his head, looking shrewdly at me.
  
  I knew that he was prepared to tell me a certain amount. Beyond that, beyond the line where he would consider himself a traitor to his country, he would not talk no matter how much we tortured him.
  
  "You know what happened yesterday?" I asked him.
  
  "Those crazy Arabs," he muttered, shaking his head.
  
  "Yeah, those crazy Arabs. They were Russian trained, weren't they?"
  
  Cautiously, Selyutin nodded his head. "Yes," he said. "You could say that."
  
  "By your department?"
  
  He smiled at me. "Which department is that?"
  
  "Department V, as in Victor," I repeated. "First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Mikhail Yelisovich Kalugin is your boss."
  
  "Oh," said Selyutin. "So you know about us."
  
  "I know about you, too, so kindly stop the cat and mouse game. I want answers!"
  
  "Yes, we trained some of them," Selyutin admitted reluctantly.
  
  "You, personally?"
  
  "No," he said. "Except for one man, I wasn't involved. I knew about the activity, however. It was about two years ago."
  
  "They were trained in assassination techniques?"
  
  "Yes." He hesitated and then said, "They have done a stupid thing. To kill the President and the Vice-President of the United States could lead to an atomic war between our countries. I was opposed to the whole idea from the beginning. I could not say much, though. To me, terrorists are too hot-headed. Especially this group. One cannot control them. Kalugin thought differently. I think…" He smiled, a deadly, executioner's smile. "I think that Kalugin will pay for his mistake. He'll be lucky if they kill him. I, myself, would prefer death to life imprisonment in a camp in Siberia."
  
  "Selyutin," I said, "using a mortar is not a usual assassination technique, is it?"
  
  "No," he answered.
  
  "Then there was another department involved?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Which?"
  
  "Not one of ours," Vladimir Petrovich replied quickly. "We had them for a few days only. Then the GBU took over."
  
  The GBU competes with the KGB. GRU — "Glavnoye Razvedynoye Upravleniye." It's the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff, and it's completely separate from the KGB. Its field is anything military.
  
  "So it was the GBU that trained them in guerrilla warfare tactics, including how to use mortars?"
  
  "Yes, you could say that."
  
  "Did you know any of the men in this Al Asad terrorist group?"
  
  Selyutin shook his head. "As I said, I was not involved — except for one man. He was the only one I worked with. I tell you this, my friend, he is a dangerous man. He's one of the best I have ever come across. There was really very little that I could teach him."
  
  He paused and smiled, a sad, rueful twist of his lips. "He likes to kill. He enjoys it intensely. To him, it is better than sex. If you ever come across him, be careful. His name is Yousef Khatib."
  
  "What else, Vladimir Petrovich?"
  
  "Nothing — from me. But, I am puzzled, gospodin. Why do you not talk with Poganov?"
  
  "Poganov?"
  
  "Poganov. Andrei Vasilovich Poganov. He is the one who trained them."
  
  I laughed. "Selyutin," I asked "do you think I can get into the USSB to interview him?"
  
  Selyutin stared at me in disbelief. Then he, too, began to laugh.
  
  "Tovarich, our countries are not so dissimilar after all. One government agency keeps secrets from the next! Lieutenant-Colonel Andrei Vasilovich Poganov, formerly of the GBU, defected to the United States last year. Your CIA 'buried' him somewhere in this country under an assumed name and identity. Ask your CIA where he is!"
  
  I began to understand something else, too.
  
  "And the reason you are in this country is to find Poganov?"
  
  Selyutin made no answer.
  
  "And to kill him?" I added.
  
  Selyutin's face was a frozen mask, revealing nothing.
  
  "Go home," I said tiredly. "Go back to Russia. Your mission's blown."
  
  "You are very generous," Selyutin replied. "In our country, were you in my place, we would not let you go. We would kill you."
  
  I didn't tell him that that's exactly what would happen to him before he left the safe house grounds. But, then, there's no sense in making a man suffer unnecessarily.
  
  Out loud, I said, "Poganov. Andrei Vasilovich Poganov. He would know about the terrorists?"
  
  "Yes," said Selyutin. "Poganov would certainly know about them."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Three
  
  
  
  
  Thursday. 12:47 a.m. Near Maclean, Virginia.
  
  
  
  I left Selyutin in the interrogation room. Jonas Warren was waiting for me outside the door. I was madder than hell. I should have been informed about Poganov's defection when it occurred. I'm the guy out in the field whose neck is on the line to be chopped off. You think the Russians take the defection of a key man like Poganov lightly? No way! Not a GRU officer with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel! One of our side is going to "defect" willingly of unwillingly to even the score. I knew that David Hawk hadn't been told either or he'd have let me know. The damned CIA had played the affair too close to their vests. Interservice rivalry may have its place in the scheme of things. Here it had caused us a six- to eight-hour delay and there hadn't been that much time to start with.
  
  "Well?" asked Warren.
  
  "Where's Poganov?" I demanded.
  
  He tried to evade my question.
  
  "What's Poganov got to do with this?" He didn't deny knowing about Poganov, I noticed.
  
  "Damn it, I want to know where Poganov is right now! I want to talk to him!"
  
  "I'll have to clear it with the top brass," said Warren nervously. He was a nice, Ivy League type who really didn't belong in the type of work we were in. Administration, not field work, was his forte.
  
  I spun around on him.
  
  "You'll clear it with no one!" I snapped at him. "Right now, you get your ass in gear and get me the files on Poganov. Then you make arrangements to get me to him in the shortest possible time! You understand that?"
  
  "I'm really not sure…"
  
  "Oh, for crissake!"
  
  I walked into the nearest room and picked up a telephone. I dialed an outside line and then the AXE number and got to Hawk immediately. Briefly, I explained the situation to him.
  
  "They're supposed to be cooperating," I said angrily. "I've got a low-level flunky without authority as coordinating officer. I want someone who can say 'frog' and have everyone within earshot jump as high as he can!"
  
  Hawk calmed me down.
  
  "Just be in Conference Room B at the Pentagon," he said. He told me the wing and the floor. "By the time you get there, you'll have the man you want."
  
  I hung up and walked outside. Jonas Warren trotted beside me like a puppy eager to please but not knowing which master he was responsible to.
  
  The CIA agency staff car was waiting for me outside. Still too angry to talk to Warren, I got in and told the driver where I wanted to go. Warren was still trying to placate me when we took off.
  
  Hawk was right. By the time I got to the conference room, there was both a senior CIA official who'd been routed out of bed, and a Brigadier-General from the Air Force waiting for me. General Snowden was liaison with the National Security Agency. I couldn't have had a better man.
  
  Harry Carpentier was the CIA official.
  
  "Here's the dossier on Poganov," Carpentier said as I came into the room. "Sorry you ran into difficulty down in Maclean."
  
  I took the dossier from him. It was a thick one. I skimmed through it rapidly.
  
  "Where's Poganov now?"
  
  "Teaching at the University of Kansas," he said.
  
  "How'd you bury him?"
  
  "Half a dozen changes of identity," Carpentier replied. "We started him off as Eduard Dupre in France, who then went to England and became Oliver Marberry. Six months later, Marberry was brought to the United States and was provided with the necessary papers and background to become Charles Benton. Poganov speaks perfect English, so there was no difficulty at all. We got him a full-time appointment to the faculty as of last September. He teaches international political affairs."
  
  "Photographs?"
  
  Carpentier handed me a sheaf of 5×7 glossy pictures. The first one showed a strong-jawed, hard-faced man of middle age with closely cropped, bristling black hair. One by one, the photographs showed a gradual transformation.
  
  Poganov now had sunken cheeks, long, thinning grey hair and a softness around the jowls.
  
  I knew the technique. Most of it is dentistry. They pull a few of your back molars, cap your front teeth so that the new ones push out your upper lip. That makes your jaw look smaller. Minor plastic surgery makes the nose look completely different. They build up your eyebrow ridges — or cut them down if they're prominent.
  
  Electrolysis gives you a new hairline and new eyebrow shape. They finish up by bleaching and dyeing your hair, giving you a different haircut and tinted contact lenses. You'll never know yourself when they get through.
  
  The dentistry even affects your speech so you won't even sound the way you did before all this took place.
  
  In the last picture, Poganov looked like a gentle, academic type who'd spent his entire life on one campus or another.
  
  "When can I get to see him?"
  
  General Snowden looked at his watch.
  
  "It's almost one-thirty in the morning," he said. "We'll fly you out there, the first thing. Get some sleep in the meantime. Be at Andrews Air Force Base by six-thirty. We'll have you in Topeka in an hour and a half. The strip at Lawrence won't take a jet, so we'll shoot you over in a single engine Bonanza. You'll be there in time for breakfast with Poganov."
  
  Carpentier spoke up hesitantly. "Look," he said, "try not to blow his cover, okay? So far, he's cooperated with us completely. He's an example. If others behind the Iron Curtain see that one man got away with it successfully, then more of them will be tempted to defect. Otherwise…" he shrugged, "…we won't get any of them."
  
  "I know the score," I assured him. I put Poganov's dossier on the table. "Have a copy of this for me to read on the plane."
  
  I got to my feet. Carpentier held out his hand.
  
  "No hard feelings?"
  
  I didn't take it. "We'll see when it's over," I said coldly and left.
  
  It was two o'clock in the morning when I let myself into my suite at the hotel. In the living room, only one small lamp was lit. The door to the bedroom was closed.
  
  I don't like situations like that. I slipped Wilhelmina from her holster and cocked the action. With the Luger in my right hand, I cautiously pushed the door open with my foot. The bedroom was blacked out. I flicked on the light switch quickly, and relaxed.
  
  Tamar was asleep in my big, king-sized bed. The sheet covered her only from the waist down. For a moment, I stared at the slim torso and the bold, full breasts. Tamar stirred in her sleep because of the light, so I switched it off and went back into the living room, but the after-image of her lush body burned itself into my mind. Logic struggled with desire — and logic won out. I was tired. I knew I'd be able to catch less than three hours of sleep before I had to be awake again to be at Andrews Air Base.
  
  I dropped my clothes in a pile on the rug. I put Wilhelmina away, along with Hugo, the slim stiletto I carry strapped in a chamois sheath to my forearm, and with Pierre, the tiny gas bomb usually taped to my groin. I showered quickly in the guest bath.
  
  At first, I was going to sleep on the couch in the living room. Then I said the hell with it. The king-sized bed was a hell of a lot more comfortable and it would hold both of us with plenty of space left over, so I padded into the bedroom on bare feet and slipped under the sheet at the far side of the bed. I adjusted the pillows under my head and began the mental Alpha bio-feedback countdown technique that clears my mind for sleep in just a few minutes.
  
  Somewhere, there's always one part of us that's really never asleep. It can be trained to sense danger and to awaken us whenever there's another body nearby. I'd been trained to come awake instantly. Tamar was a Shin Beth agent. She'd picked up part of the sensitivity. She sighed, came partially awake, started to fall asleep again, and then came fully awake, launching herself at me in a sudden, furious attack.
  
  I caught her arms and held her helplessly against me.
  
  "Hey, it's just me," I reassured her. I could feel the tautness in her arms and legs. Her heart thumped away against my side. She was breathing quickly in shallow, tense intakes of air.
  
  "Nick?"
  
  "Yes. Were you expecting anyone else?"
  
  In the gloom, I saw her shake her head to clear her mind. She exhaled a long breath as she relaxed.
  
  "I've lived with danger for so long," she said tiredly. I thought of what a hell the past two years must have been for her, existing in daily fear of being exposed and executed. The Arabs don't just kill a woman like Tamar if they find out she's an Israeli spy. They enjoy them first in a hundred, cruelly painful, torturous ways.
  
  I snuggled her into my shoulder.
  
  "Go back to sleep," I said. "We've got to be up at five. We're scheduled for Andrews Field at six."
  
  "I'll try," she said.
  
  She didn't move away. In fact, she burrowed herself closer into my shoulder, putting her arm across my chest.
  
  All my Alpha mind-clearing exercises didn't do me one damn bit of good. Not with a lusciously trim, warmly female body like Tamar's lying nude against my own nude body.
  
  I tried. I really wanted to go to sleep. I made no move to stroke her or to do one damn thing to stimulate either of us, except to hold her. But it was an impossibility. Not when her arm began to slide up and down my rib cage, her fingers gently feeling the contours of my body from neck to hip.
  
  She turned her face up to mine to be kissed.
  
  "You know what you're doing?" I asked.
  
  The little laugh that came out of Tamar's throat was one of pure delight.
  
  "It's been more than two years since I've been able to go to bed with a man like this," she said, breathlessly awake and fully alive. "I'm a healthy woman with healthy instincts."
  
  My mouth closed over hers almost before she had time to finish her sentence. Her tongue was on my lips, pressing them determinedly apart. Our mouths opened simultaneously. The exploration began.
  
  Her hair was silken under the cup of my hand against the back of her head. I touched and traced the contours of her cheekbone and jaw line with my fingers. All the while her tongue teased and demanded, setting a fire raging inside me that reached down to my loins.
  
  We pressed our bodies together in one long sensuous length of skin, touching as closely as we could. My leg pressed itself between hers and then we were fully entwined. I kissed her ear; she moved her head and twisted and bit at my neck.
  
  My hand left her face, moving to feel the softness of the hollow of her collarbone covered with the thinnest of muscle tissue and the smoothest of skin. Tamar let a sound come trickling out of her throat. My hand moved down to feel the weight and heat of her breast. She twisted in my arms to expose herself to my touch, and then there was the fullness and roundness of her breast covered by the palm of my hand, the hardness of her nipple pressing into the center of my palm demanding attention, demanding to receive the kisses I had given her mouth. I slid down in the bed, taking her breast to my mouth, my tongue rolling her nipple between my lips.
  
  Tamar sighed and arched her back and put both her hands behind my head, pulling me tightly to her, running her fingers through my hair, touching my cheeks with the palms of her hands. Her body began to make involuntary movements of its own unconscious volition.
  
  I slid down even further, and there was the moisture of another mouth and hair as silken as that on the crown of her head. Tamar made small, whimpering cries aloud.
  
  I raised myself at Tamar's urging. She reached for my groin, taking me into her hands to explore and stroke, and then brought herself to me, touching me gently at first with her lips and with her tongue. A total warmth and wetness suddenly engulfed me. When she had brought me to the ultimate hardness, she twisted her body under mine so that, as I moved, I moved into her in one long, wet, silken, fiery sheathing of a blade.
  
  Tamar's arms came around my back; her fingernails dug rakingly along the length of my spine. Her small teeth caught my shoulder so that her cries of pleasure were muffled.
  
  What had begun in gentleness turned into a conflict, fierce and angry and full of antagonism that merely heightened the pleasure we felt. Unconsciously, she was determined to prove the totality of her feminine sexuality and to challenge my maleness. And I, as angry as she, as fierce as she, would be content with nothing less than her complete surrender to me!
  
  I lifted my torso, leaning on my elbows. I held her face between my hands in a savage, powerful grip so that, from inches away, I could watch every expression on her face. She closed her eyes. Little by little, her face indicated that she was losing her battle against me. I kept up a slow, pulsating rhythm against her pelvic arch that built up into a long, rolling surge, until, finally, there came that moment when Tamar bucked frantically under me and opened her eyes and glared wildly at me and pounded on my shoulders with her small fists before she collapsed in total surrender to herself and to me.
  
  Now, her body made only spasmodic flexings, each less intense than the other, the intensity of the pleasure she felt subsiding into a complete suffusion of feeling.
  
  Then, having proved whatever it is that men have to prove to themselves, I took my own pleasure deep within her.
  
  Afterward, until it was time to shower and dress, we held each other closely, more relaxed than we would have been had we spent those few hours in sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Four
  
  
  
  
  Thursday. 9:14 a.m. Lawrence, Kansas.
  
  
  
  Lawrence, Kansas, is on the banks of the Kaw River, halfway between Kansas City and Topeka. The land is gently rolling, not like the great flat plains to the west. The University of Kansas is on top of a hill — Mount Oread — that marks the southernmost advance of the last great glacial ice age. The streets of the old part of town are named after the states.
  
  All around the town, the farmlands have rich, black soil, like the soil of the Ukraine, and the small towns like Olathe, Osage City, Council Grove and Osawatomie echo the heartland of the U. S.
  
  Poganov, alias Charles Benton, lived in a small, frame house on a street on the northern slope of the hill. On the surface, he had become as American as any other Kansan. We sat in his book-lined den — Tamar, myself and Poganov's contact man from the CIA who was there to identify us and vouch for us.
  
  I found it hard to believe that this gentle, scholarly looking man had really been a Soviet Lt.-Colonel in Military Intelligence. But, in five minutes of talk, I was reassured. While he spoke about his former life, the stoop unconsciously began to disappear from his shoulders and his voice grew more authoritative. An air of command began to emanate from him. I could see the kind of dynamic power that lay buried within him.
  
  "Yes," he said in answer to a question from Tamar, "you're quite right. That particular Surah is the key to this group of fanatics. There are twenty-eight of them who formed it. Twenty-eight for Surah Twenty-eight. They are the top echelon, each one dedicated and sworn to lay down his life for the cause. Below them are some 114 members who eventually will be cadre members for the expanded movement."
  
  "Any significance to the number of one hundred and fourteen?" I asked Poganov.
  
  He looked at me as if I were not particularly bright. "There are 114 Surahs in the Quran," he reminded me. "Eventually there will be as many leaders as there are 'ayahs', verses, in the Quran — and there are several thousand verses. Each Verse' leader is someday to command a body of a thousand men!"
  
  I multiplied a thousand by several thousand came up with several million. Poganov went on. "The leader of Al Asad is a man by the name of Sharif al-Sallal. He's about my height — five feet ten inches. His face is dark and heavily pock-marked. He wears a moustache. He's heavy-set but not overweight. His aide, who is always with him, is a younger man named Yousef Khatib."
  
  I interrupted him. "I've been told that Khatib was trained by the KGB in assassination techniques."
  
  Poganov said coldly, "He didn't need any training." He continued his lecture. "Sharif al-Sallal is a complete, total fanatic. He believes that he, and only he, is the true leader of Pan-Arabism. That's why the name, 'Al Asad' — The Lion. It refers to him. He sees himself as a reincarnated Mohammed. He is the Prophet of a New Islam religion. How much do you know about Islam?" he asked me abruptly.
  
  "I speak Arabic," I pointed out in answer.
  
  "Then you know that 'islam' means an act of submission to divine will. Sharif al-Sallal is convinced that he is the voice of the divine will of Allah. The New Islam is complete submission to the desires and whims of Sharif al-Sallal personally.
  
  "The assassination of the President and Vice-President and the kidnapping of the Speaker of the House was given the operational code name of 'Fat'ha' — the Opening, as in the first book of the Quran, because Sharif al-Sallal is leading a new Jihad — a holy war against the infidels of the West. Two years ago, I learned of the code name. I didn't know to what it referred, unfortunately."
  
  Poganov described the breaking off of the group from the PLO because they did not think that even the most violent of the PLO groups went far enough.
  
  I broke in on him. "Where do you think I would find them?"
  
  He thought for a moment. "New York City."
  
  "Why New York?"
  
  "The Arab groups in Los Angeles have been under surveillance by the FBI ever since Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan," he said. "San Francisco has too many radical groups of every sort, which means it's infiltrated with government agents and informers, all keeping an eye on the dissidents, revolutionary or otherwise. New York is your city, Mr. Carter."
  
  "Is there a contact there I should know about? Someone in one of the Arab communities, perhaps?"
  
  Poganov shook his head.
  
  "No. They will stay away from everyone. It is the best way for them to hide. Another Arab would betray them, even unwittingly. Arabs love to talk. He would brag to his friends that he's met someone from Al Asad. In turn, they would talk to others about knowing a man who's been in contact with Al Asad. Within a day or two, word would get around. No, the group is in Manhattan, but they will stay away from any Arab community there."
  
  "Were you in on this operation when you trained them?"
  
  "In no way at all, Mr. Carter. I told you I learned of the operational code name, but I did not know to what it referred. I despise their tactics. I would have had nothing to do with them if I had known that this is what Sharif al-Sallal had in mind. I'm merely giving you my best guesses as to how they think, based on my talks with Sharif al-Sallal himself two years ago. I was with them, however, long enough to learn that they do not think the way we do."
  
  He paused, hunting for the right expression. "I said that they are all fanatics. For each one of them, his participation is what a Moslem would call 'al-amr-bi-l'maruf.' Do you know the phrase?"
  
  I nodded. "It means a moral obligation."
  
  Poganov praised me with a smile. "Exactly right."
  
  "This aide — Yousef Khatib. Tell me about him."
  
  Poganov reflected a moment. A shadow crossed his face. "Khatib is a pathological killer. He is uncontrollable except by one man — Sharif al-Sallal. I remember one time in a training session one of our best men attempted to teach hand to hand combat. Unfortunately, he chose Khatib to act as his opponent. Khatib doesn't know how to 'pull his punches' as your phrase goes. My sergeant made just one feint before Khatib was on him. He slit the man's throat with a knife!"
  
  Poganov shook his head as if to clear away the memory.
  
  "What was most remarkable, Mr. Carter, was that we could in no way convince Khatib that he had done anything wrong! I think that should give you an indication of the kind of man he is."
  
  By then, I knew I had all the information that Poganov could give me. I got to my feet. Tamar and the CIA contact left the house with me. As we walked down the steps, Poganov came to the edge of the porch. Once again, he was a drab, gentle academic. He smiled a small smile at us and waved as we got into the car to begin our drive back to Topeka and the waiting Air Force jet.
  
  * * *
  
  Thursday. 2:43 p.m. Manhattan
  
  
  
  The brownstone was on the upper West Side, off Columbus Avenue. The street was littered with the usual debris, dog droppings and filth of a New York City neighborhood. Four young men sat on the stairs that led up steeply to the narrow doorway. Two were black, two were Puerto Rican. They looked at me as I walked up the cracked stone steps and pushed open the vestibule door.
  
  The Air Force jet had taken us from Topeka to La-Guardia. A limousine brought Tamar and myself to the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue at 61st Street. We registered as Mr. and Mrs. Julian Stratton, of El Paso, Texas. Five leather and fabric suitcases accompanied us, supplied by the CIA. God knows what was in them. I gave Tamar a little more than a thousand dollars of AXE's money in cash and told her to go shopping, since she hadn't brought along anything more than the dress she was wearing when she left Damascus. Then I caught a cab to a block from the street I wanted, getting out of it on Amsterdam Avenue.
  
  The inside hallway of the building had a stale smell to it, a smell compounded of fat-fried food, broken plumbing, dirt and grime that had taken years to accumulate. The steps to the second floor were warped, the railings greasy. At the end of the corridor, I rang the bell beside a shabby, paint-peeled wooden door.
  
  I didn't let the looks of the door fool me. I'd been there before. The inside of that door was lined with sheet steel and had three locks — one of them a Fox police lock with a solid steel rod that hooked into the door and was anchored to the floor. Nothing short of a fire-axe or acetylene torch was going to take down that door — and, even then, it would take five to ten minutes to do it.
  
  I heard footsteps. Then a pause. I knew someone was looking at me through the small one-way mirror of the peephole. I heard bolts being drawn back; the door finally opened.
  
  A slender, young black man stood in the doorway. His face wore a big smile.
  
  "Hey, man!" he exclaimed delightedly as he pulled me inside. He slammed and locked the door shut behind me. Turning, he said, "Gimme five, man!"
  
  I slapped palms with him.
  
  "You're up early," I remarked.
  
  "Feel up today," he announced. "Feelin' high today, man! Kinda day to feel that way, right?"
  
  I nodded.
  
  He canted his head and stared at me.
  
  "Ain't no social visit, is it?" he asked.
  
  I shook my head. "No, it isn't. You still pushing, Duane?"
  
  His lips cracked in a big smile.
  
  "Ain't sayin' yes, ain't sayin' no," he said. "How come you ask that?"
  
  "It's important," I told him.
  
  "Come an' sit down. We ain't had a heavy rap for, hey, must be a couple of years!"
  
  I didn't move.
  
  "I asked if you were still pushing," I said again.
  
  Duane's smile disappeared. "You gonna bug me?"
  
  "No. I just want to know if you still have contacts."
  
  Duane nodded slowly. "I got me all the contacts I need."
  
  I looked around the room. It was still as ratty as it had been two years earlier when I had gotten Duane off a police bust because of the help he'd given me. He faced a ten- to fifteen-year stretch. He didn't even get probation. Duane hadn't forgotten it.
  
  "How're you doing, Duane?"
  
  "Fine, man." He caught my eyes roaming over the crummy living room and burst out laughing. "Hey, man, this ain't my pad! I gotta take you there sometime. This is just where I wheel and deal."
  
  "And cut the stuff? And bag it?"
  
  Duane shrugged, amused. "It's how I make my bread. You know how it goes, man."
  
  "You dealing in hard stuff, Duane?"
  
  His eyes got cold. "You mean horse man? The big H? Real hard shit?"
  
  I nodded.
  
  "No way. Just pot and some coke."
  
  "That doesn't make you a big dealer," I prodded at his self-esteem and pride.
  
  "Big enough so's I don't have to peddle bags. Get yourself too big, you get busted. You don't get busted, the big boys come after you, they want a piece of your action. Me, I'm just the right size. Don't get hassled by nobody."
  
  His eyes began to show an uncomfortable look.
  
  "Hey, man, I was feelin' real up just before you come in. Had me a nice high goin'. Now, you bringin' me down," he accused.
  
  "I want help from you," I said.
  
  "What kinda help?" He was wary. I knew he was going to be difficult to deal with if he got more depressed.
  
  "Take a snort," I said, "and we'll talk about it."
  
  "Not so sure I have any 'round," he said cautiously.
  
  "I'm not here to bust you, Duane. You know that."
  
  "Yeah," he admitted grudgingly. "I know that."
  
  "Then go take a snort."
  
  Duane suddenly grinned at me. "Don't have to go nowhere," he said, taking a small phial out of his pocket. He pulled at the thin, gold chain looped around his neck. At the end of it hung a miniature spoon. Carefully, he untwisted the top of the vial, dipping out a tiny spoonful of white, crystalline powder. He held it to one nostril, inhaling strongly. The powder disappeared. He did the same to his other nostril. Then he repeated the process.
  
  "You taking two and two now?" I asked, meaning two snorts for each nostril.
  
  Duane nodded. "Got more kick that way, man. Seems like I need it with all the heavy hasslin' goin' round."
  
  He held out the vial and the spoon. "You want some? My treat. It's the best around."
  
  I shook my head. "You know I don't touch it, Duane."
  
  "It's really good stuff, man," he said.
  
  I had no reason to doubt that Duane's stuff wasn't good. Big chemical companies… make it legally under license by the United States government for hospital and medicinal use. It gets into illegal channels by theft from drug wholesalers, druggists and hospitals. It's highly refined cocaine and therefore has a pure, white crystalline powder form. You can see tiny, sharp crystals in the powder. It can be cut with milk sugar to a greater degree than can other cocaine. Most of the cocaine brought into the States illegally comes from South America. It's not completely refined and has a brownish tinge to it, and it isn't as potent. But every pusher brags that his stuff is pure mere whether it is or not.
  
  "Forget it," I said. "I told you I want your help."
  
  "You got it, if I can give it," Duane said cautiously.
  
  "I'm looking for a group of Arabs," I said. I told him about Al Asad. That is, as much as I thought he should know.
  
  "Them the mothers that killed the President and Veep yesterday?" He was shocked.
  
  "They are." I told him I thought they were holed up in Manhattan. "I want to find them."
  
  "Ay-rabs!" said Duane in amazement. "What I got to do with Ay-rabs? Nothin', man! I don't know no Ayrabs!"
  
  "You've got contacts," I said. "I want the word spread through every pusher you know — and through everyone he deals with. Dig? Anyone sees or hears or even smells anything out of the ordinary, I want word to get back to you like right now! And you get that word to me!"
  
  Duane started to grin. "Shee-it!" he exclaimed. "You askin' me to help the fuzz? Man, where's your head at?"
  
  "I'm asking you to help me, Duane."
  
  He stopped laughing. Carefully, he considered the statement before he committed himself. Finally, he nodded his head.
  
  "Right on! Under that honky skin, man, you a brother. That's why I'm gonna do it."
  
  We slapped palms again.
  
  "One more favor, Duane," I said.
  
  He eyed me askance.
  
  "Who's top pimp, now?" I asked. "I want to talk to him, too."
  
  Duane shook his head admiringly.
  
  "Man, you goin' all the way! Cat named Wesley — he's top pimp. Least, he got the biggest stable."
  
  "I didn't say the biggest stable, Duane. I want the man with the best stable. All high class chicks. No one out on the street. Call girls. The ones with the best clientele — like United Nations diplomats."
  
  "Um-m-m," said Duane. "I dig. That's still Wesley. All that cat's got is top girls. Got 'em each her own apartment. Every one of them's on the East Side. You see some of them foxes, you never believe they're in the fife!"
  
  "Can you set it up for me?"
  
  Duane nodded. "Yeah. You be where I can call you 'round five o'clock. Let you know then."
  
  He walked me to the door and unbolted each of the three locks. I walked down the steps, past the two blacks and the Puerto Ricans, who eyed me coldly a second time but made no move.
  
  * * *
  
  Thursday. 2:11 p.m. East 53rd Street
  
  
  
  Frank DeGiullio came out of the restaurant, his bodyguard a step behind him, and turned east away from Madison Avenue toward Park. He was balding and the slight wind ruffled his hair. He put up his hand to smooth down the few strands. DeGiullio was about five-nine, stocky, and dressed expensively in a custom tailored suit. His shoes were handmade. So was his necktie.
  
  His bodyguard was well over six feet tall, in his early thirties and muscled like a wrestler.
  
  I fell into step behind them. There weren't many pedestrians. We walked about half a block that way, then, suddenly, I cut in front of the bodyguard, muttered an apology for bumping into him, and, as he continued walking, I stuck out my leg and tripped him.
  
  He stumbled. Pretending I was trying to catch him, I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and ran him off-balance across the sidewalk head first into a light pole. The sound of his skull ramming into the steel pole was like a melon being struck with a bat. He collapsed in a tangled heap of arms and legs. When a big man goes down, people notice it. DeGiullio stopped and spun around, glaring. I held out my hands apologetically.
  
  DeGiullio knelt quickly beside his man. Half a dozen people gathered around. Two of them bent solicitously over the unconscious body. I came up close to DeGiullio and touched him in the back of the neck. His head twisted quickly so that he stared into my right hand only inches away from his face.
  
  What he saw was the short barrel of a small .32 caliber Beretta automatic pistol. The rest of the gun was in my fist, hidden from the view of the gathering crowd.
  
  "Let's go, Frank," I said softly. My words carried only a short distance. It was far enough. DeGiullio looked up into my face.
  
  "What the hell…"
  
  "Now!" I said. "Unless you want it right here, Frank."
  
  DeGiullio didn't even bother to shrug. He rose to his feet, dusted off the crease in his trousers and walked along beside me.
  
  "Whose beef is it?" he asked, looking straight ahead and talking out of the side of his mouth. "I can square it, if somebody got a beef. I got influence."
  
  "Not enough. Just shut up and let's get to your car."
  
  DeGiullio owned a black Mercury sedan. His bodyguard usually drove it, only he wasn't around right now to perform that chore.
  
  The car was parked in a no parking zone, but that didn't mean anything to a guy like DeGiullio. Nor did the parking tickets he got. We climbed in and started off through the traffic.
  
  "You gonna tell me what this is all about?" DeGiullio asked, nervously.
  
  "Keep driving."
  
  We worked our way through the heavy traffic of mid-Manhattan, then through the Queens Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway.
  
  Every once in awhile, DeGiullio would start to say something, and I'd press the muzzle of the Beretta against his temple. After a while, his forehead was wet with glistening drops of sweat.
  
  We took Francis Lewis Boulevard, crossing Northern Boulevard, into Flushing and close to the College Point area. We drove around for a long time until I found what I wanted — a dead end, an almost deserted street with a few old, abandoned buildings.
  
  "Pull over," I said abruptly.
  
  DeGiullio stopped the car. He looked around, not liking what he saw.
  
  "This a hit?" His voice could barely make it out of his dry throat.
  
  "Get out," I told him.
  
  DeGiullio got out of the car. As he did so, I slid over behind him and shoved him hard with my leg, the flat of the sole catching him in the middle of his back. He went stumbling helplessly to the ground.
  
  I let him get to his knees. This time I had Wilhelmina, my 9 mm. Luger in my fist and that is a mean looking gun. It's big. It was built to do just one thing — kill.
  
  DeGiullio looked at the muzzle of the pistol I held only inches away from his forehead. I stood over him, my legs spread apart. There's a terrible psychological advantage you have when you stand that way over a man who's down on both knees. You strip him of every vestige of his pride and manhood. You've degraded him as completely as a man can be degraded, because he sees himself as being thoroughly helpless at the same time he sees you as being totally powerful. There's also a sexual connotation that he can't help being aware of no matter how hard he tries to shove it out of his mind. For a man like DeGiullio, brought up in a culture that stresses machismo, it is the most sickening feeling of all.
  
  DeGiullio's hand-tailored suit was grimy. Patches of sweat had soaked through the armpits of his jacket. His sharp body odor seeped through his clothes, stinking of fright.
  
  I swung the barrel of the Luger down across his collar bone because I didn't want to mark up his face, but that's a painful place to hit someone. It can paralyze the entire arm if you do it hard enough.
  
  DeGiullio let out a moan. He shut his eyes.
  
  "Open your eyes, Frank."
  
  He looked up at me, fearfully. His collar tabs were turned up, his necktie knot was awry. "You want me to beg?" he asked brokenly. "Okay, I'm begging."
  
  "You want to live, Frank?"
  
  He swallowed hard and nodded.
  
  "Enough to do what I tell you?"
  
  Again he nodded.
  
  "I want you to take me to Big Sal."
  
  "Oh, Jesus," whispered DeGiullio. "He'll kill me!"
  
  "So will I."
  
  "You got a contract on him?" DeGiullio asked hoarsely.
  
  "You ask too many questions. I told you I want you to take me to Big Sal. What's the difference if he kills you or I kill you? You're just as dead."
  
  DeGiullio measured me with his narrowed eyes. In spite of his fear, his shrewd mind began to figure the odds. I knew exactly what he was thinking. The longer he could stay alive, the better were his chances of getting away from me.
  
  "You want me to take you to him — or you want me to bring him to you?"
  
  "Don't play games, Frank. I'm not dumb enough to let you go just because you're going to tell me you'll get Salvatore. I said I want you to take me to him."
  
  "Big Sal never leaves the office except to go home," he said. "There's maybe ten, fifteen guys around the place all the time. You'll never make it. You gotta be nuts."
  
  "I'll make it," I said tersely. "Are you going to take me to him?"
  
  DeGiullio made up his mind. I could see him figuring that the odds in favor of his staying alive were a lot better if he could get me to where he could count on help.
  
  "I'll take you," he said quickly.
  
  "Get up."
  
  We walked over to the car. DeGiullio brushed himself off as best he could and started to get in.
  
  "Wait a minute, Frank," I said, putting a hand on his arm to stop him. "I want to show you something."
  
  I pointed out an empty, one-quart motor oil can lying on top of a broken wooden box. "You see that?" He nodded.
  
  "Watch," I said, and swung the Luger and fired and swung it back to his head again in one quick motion.
  
  I had a load of hollow point cartridges in the pistol clip. A hollow point is a nasty bullet. It mushrooms the second it hits anything — a tin can, a body or a human head. The can literally exploded into the air, ripped apart by the impact of the bullet.
  
  DeGiullio's eyes grew wide. He swallowed hard.
  
  "I got the idea," he said. "I don't need no more convincing."
  
  We drove back through Queens and took the expressway to Brooklyn, DeGiullio's confidence growing with every mile we drove. We finally wound up in a warehouse section of town near the waterfront. DeGiullio drove across a broken, asphalt paved parking lot and around behind the building.
  
  As we walked in through a side door, half a dozen men looked up at us. DeGiullio paid no attention to them.
  
  "That's the door," he said, as we walked toward it. My Luger was concealed under my coat.
  
  "You first," I said.
  
  I closed it behind me. Two men were in the office. They looked at DeGiullio's face and started to reach inside their jackets for their guns.
  
  I let them look at Wilhelmina and said, "Don't."
  
  They froze.
  
  "It's no hit," I told them. "Just tell Big Sal to come out."
  
  They looked at each other. One of them nodded to the other and picked up an interoffice telephone. He spoke quietly into it in Sicilian.
  
  The office door opened a second later and a short, chunky young man walked out. He looked at me appraisingly, taking in the Luger in my hand, DeGiullio's frightened face and the quietly waiting two men.
  
  "Who the shit are you?" he asked bluntly.
  
  "Tell Big Sal I want to talk to him. Tell him it's Nick Carter. He knows me."
  
  The chunky young man walked back into the office leaving the door open. A moment later I heard a big, booming, angry roar, and then Big Sal was in the doorway.
  
  The reason they call him Big Sal is because of his weight. He's only about five-feet-seven-inches in height, but he weighs close to two hundred and eighty pounds — all of it fat. He has triple chins that reach almost all the way around his fat throat and spill over onto his shirt collar. His suit bulges at the seams. He's a balloon mounted on sausage legs with sausage arms bursting his sleeves. And he's completely bald.
  
  Big Sal said, "Hello, Carter."
  
  "Hello, Salvatore."
  
  He looked around at his men. "A bunch of bums, that's what they are," he said sourly. "Some protection they gimme."
  
  "You get what you pay for."
  
  "Screw you, too, Carter." He shook his head in disgust. "You wanna talk in private?"
  
  "Yeah."
  
  He turned and waddled back into his office. I followed him, shutting the door in the face of the chunky young man who tried to follow us in.
  
  "Who's that one?" I asked Big Sal as he seated himself heavily behind his desk.
  
  "Him? That's my oldest son. Good boy. He got what it takes. He's not like the others. Whadda you want?"
  
  I made myself comfortable in a leather armchair. I took out and fit one of my gold-tipped cigarettes.
  
  "How big are you now, Sal?"
  
  He frowned. "Whatta you talkin' about?"
  
  "How many soldiers do you have? How big is your family?"
  
  "Big enough." He evaded the question.
  
  "I hear you're a capo di capi these days."
  
  Big Sal shrugged his massive shoulders. "Could be. Some people talk a lot, you know what I mean."
  
  "The word is you carry a lot of weight around town. They listen when you say something."
  
  "Could be."
  
  "And you're number one in numbers and loan sharking."
  
  He made no answer. His small, hard eyes travelled over my face like he'd never seen it before and didn't like what he saw now.
  
  "I want your help, Salvatore," I said. "That's why I'm here."
  
  He grunted. "You sure picked some way of getting here. What the shit did you do to DeGiullio?"
  
  "I scared him a little," I said, smiling, but without any humor.
  
  "You scared him a little, huh? DeGiullio's supposed to be one of my toughest men. Now, he's no good to me no more."
  
  "So find another one."
  
  "You wanted to show me you could get to me, huh? Is that it? You hadda show me no matter what, you could get through to me?"
  
  "That's it, Salvatore."
  
  "So if I don't give you no help, you gonna come after me?"
  
  "Personally," I said.
  
  He sighed. "You're a crazy son-of-a-bitch, Carter. I wish to hell you was my man. Gimme a hit man as good as you, I'll make us both rich. Okay, you got my help. Whadda you want?"
  
  I told him about Al Asad. Not all, just that I needed to find them fast and that they were in Manhattan. "I want to know where," I said.
  
  "They the ones that did it? The Arabs?"
  
  "They're the ones."
  
  He shook his head again. "A President, a Vice-President, a couple of Cabinet members — Jesus! What the fuck's the country comin' to? Nobody's safe no morel"
  
  I didn't answer.
  
  "What kind of help do you think I can give you, Carter?"
  
  "You reach down into every comer of Manhattan," I said. "Between your loan shark collectors and your numbers runners in every bar and cigar store, you got your fingers into every neighborhood in town. I want to know what's going on in the East Side. Nobody blows his nose without you knowing how many pieces of Kleenex he used. I want that information. I want you to pass down the word that anybody hears anything about this group of Arabs, he picks up the telephone and lets you know as fast as he can get a dime out of his pocket!"
  
  "And I pass it on to you?"
  
  "That's the idea."
  
  Big Sal ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He sucked on a tooth. Finally, he nodded. "Okay."
  
  I got to my feet. "That's it, Sal."
  
  Big Sal sat where he was.
  
  "You're not going to walk me to the door?"
  
  "You come in by yourself, you make it out by yourself."
  
  I paused at the door. "Don't be too hard on DeGiullio," I said.
  
  Big Sal made an obscene gesture at me with his middle finger, so I shut the door behind me and walked out through the factory. No one even as much as looked at me.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Five
  
  
  
  
  Thursday 4:47 p.m. The Georgian Hotel. Park Avenue
  
  
  
  The FBI contact was waiting for me in the lobby when I came in. I'd known him before. His name was Clement Taylor. He was one of their best. We went up to my suite. Taylor looked tired; there were dark circles under his eyes and his face had a drawn, taut look to it.
  
  He handed me a sheet of paper. "This list might be of help to you," he said. "We got Immigration into the act. We've been working on it since last night, all night long. First, we pulled a computer print-out on everyone entering the country from the Middle East for the last three months. That included "tourist visas, student visas — the whole works. Subtracting those who left the country, we still had a few thousand names. Early this morning, we instigated the most massive manhunt this country's ever seen. Every Federal and State law enforcement agency has been involved. Counting the local police forces, I'd say there were several hundred thousand men working on this assignment today."
  
  He touched the paper in my hand.
  
  "So far, we've located every one of the names on our original list — except for these. As for the rest, they're clean so far as we can check them out."
  
  "You're not telling me that all of these names are involved, are you?"
  
  Taylor shook his head. "No. Just that we either can't find them or that they can't prove they're clean. Personally, I'd say that most of them are not involved in Al Asad. I've put an asterisk next to the names of those in the New York area — or who have dropped from sight."
  
  "What if they used European passports?" I asked.
  
  Taylor shrugged resignedly. "Then we're out of luck."
  
  I scrutinized the names on the list. One leaped out at me immediately: Yousef Khatib. And then another: Sharif al Sallal.
  
  I pointed the names out to Taylor. "These two. Concentrate on them. I want to know when they came into the country, where they went, who they saw, what they did. Everything!"
  
  Taylor wrote down the names. Still writing, he asked, "Are they in it?"
  
  "Sallal is top man," I told him.
  
  "They have gall," Taylor commented. "They used their real names, right?"
  
  "It's more than gall," I said, thinking about the implications. "It shows that they're proud of what they've done. They want the world to know about them. No skulking around. No masks, no faceless terrorists. They're out to make it big or die in the attempt."
  
  Taylor got to his feet and went over to the telephone. His whole body was stooped with exhaustion.
  
  He came back to me. "We're on it," he said. "Every man in the New York office as well as the New York Police. If there's anything to find, we'll find it."
  
  They would, but how long would it take them, I wondered. We had precious little time! Well, it wouldn't hurt. Let them do their best. Even one clue would help.
  
  Taylor rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.
  
  "No sleep?" I asked him.
  
  "Not even a nap," he said wearily.
  
  I didn't tell him I'd been up all night, too. It wouldn't have been fair. Taylor had been working his ass off while I had been holding Tamar's golden body in my arms.
  
  "That's the way it goes," I commented noncommittally.
  
  "Yeah."
  
  Tamar came in less than five minutes after Taylor had left. She was followed by two bellhops carrying cardboard boxes and packages. She gave me a quick kiss. In two minutes, the bedroom was a swirling mass of torn tissue paper and clothes scattered around on the bed. Henri Bendel, Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue and a dozen exclusive boutiques were represented by the labels on the clothes and the printing on the boxes.
  
  "These were all I could get in so short a time," she said to me over her shoulder. "The rest will be coming in later. Thank God, I can get away with clothes that need practically no alterations."
  
  I started to reply when the phone rang.
  
  It was Duane.
  
  "You be at Riverside Drive at 88th Street," he said. "You be there in forty-five minutes. That cat Wesley, he don't like to wait, you dig?"
  
  "How will I know him?" I asked.
  
  "He drives a white Lincoln Mark IV. You ain't gonna miss it, man. Not unless you're blind."
  
  He hung up before I could ask him anything more.
  
  * * *
  
  Thursday. 5:53 p.m. Riverside Drive.
  
  
  
  The Lincoln Continental Mark IV was brand-new and white and freshly washed and polished. There was gold pin-stripe scroll work along the sides, across the hood and around the tire hump of the trunk that makes the Mark IV so distinctive. The windows were tinted glass. The interior was upholstered in white imitation fur, even to the steering wheel cover. The car announced to anyone looking at it that it belonged to a pimp and that he was doing well.
  
  Wesley was as black as the car was white. He was dressed in a white, Ultrasuede bush jacket and flare bottomed slacks cut and stitched to resemble bleached, natural denim. His shirt was flame red raw silk with extra-long collar points. Perched at the rakish angle atop his carefully coiffed Afro hairdo was a white safari hat with a wide, gold moiré cloth band. A matching red feather stuck up jauntily out of the left side of the band. Wesley was rangy with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. He was good looking, and he knew it, but the mean hardness of him came through the surface.
  
  And he was suspicious of me.
  
  A block away, on Henry Hudson Parkway, the homeward bound traffic was crawling along bumper to bumper. We sat in the car, smoking. I smoked one of my gold-tipped cigarettes. Wesley smoked a joint. The slightly acrid smell of his marijuana filled the interior of the car, even though he had the air conditioner going. It was an act of defiance on his part.
  
  "Duane says you want to rap with me," he said, finally. "Start rappin'."
  
  I could feel the antagonism emanating from him. Antagonism, suspicion and resentment. I was white. He didn't like me, and he didn't try to hide it. It was as simple as that.
  
  Wesley was tough. He didn't get to be a top pimp in a tough world without being tougher than his competition.
  
  I knew immediately that I could have talked myself blue in the face and his answer would have been, "Bug off!" I decided to cut to the core of the matter. Action speaks a hell of a lot louder than words.
  
  "Let's take a short walk," I said.
  
  He eyed me. "Where to?"
  
  "Just to the corner."
  
  He took a minute to make up his mind, wondering what the hell I wanted to do that for. Then, he opened the door on his side of the car and stepped out into the road. He slammed it shut. I waited until he was in front of the car radiator before I reached into the breast pocket of my jacket. I took out a slim ball-point pen. While it would actually write, the ink tube was less than an eighth of an inch long. The rest of the barrel was crammed with a special compound the AXE "specialty" boys had rigged up for me.
  
  I pressed down the plunger on the end and dropped the pen on the floor behind the front seat as I swung open the door. Shutting it firmly behind me, I joined Wesley on the sidewalk and started to walk down to the corner.
  
  Wesley fell into step beside me. Uneasily, he looked around. The block was empty except for the two of us and the cars driving past.
  
  "You looking for the fuzz?" I asked.
  
  "Yeah."
  
  "There's no fuzz," I told him. "Just you and me."
  
  Wesley stopped in his tracks.
  
  "How come we're takin' this walk?" he asked.
  
  I didn't answer. I just kept on walking. Grudgingly, Wesley caught up with me and fell into step, moving in a rhythmic strut. We went about two-thirds of the way down to the corner before I stopped and turned around. Wesley did the same. I looked back at the car.
  
  "Man, what is it with you?" he demanded. He was street-wise and street-smart and the situation was one that he instinctively felt was all wrong. He was getting bad vibes and that meant danger but he couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was. What made him most uncomfortable was being in a situation in which he felt he was losing control. He didn't like that. It made him uneasy.
  
  "That's some car you got there," I said.
  
  "It sure is. Just got it last week. Goin' to be the fanciest set of wheels in town when I get through."
  
  "I don't think so," I said.
  
  Wesley looked puzzled. "What you talkin' about?"
  
  "Look at the car," I said. He turned his head just in time to hear the soft whoo-oof of the explosion and to see the huge, bright, orange and yellow-red burst of flame that welled up, filling the interior and blowing out the glass of the windows, engulfing the car in a deadly embrace of fire. Up and down the street, traffic came to a halt.
  
  Wesley was stunned. He stared at the flames and then turned his head toward me. He looked back at the car again as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Then he looked at me and said, "Man…"
  
  The gas tank went up with a roar that lifted the rear end of the car, slewing it around and dropping it back heavily to the pavement at an angle. The flames leaped higher.
  
  "You mother…" said Wesley, hatred filling his voice with acid.
  
  "Don't finish it," I warned him. "I hate that word."
  
  Wesley shut up. Swiftly, his right hand swung back to his hip pocket.
  
  "If you take out that knife, I'll tear your balls off," I told him, without making a move. His hand froze.
  
  Wesley's narrowed eyes measured me. I hadn't made a move. He took me in from head to toe and measured me a second time and his mind went jumping back and forth. He'd tested other men and been tested by them from the days when he was a kid on the streets of the black ghetto. Most of the time, his life depended on his judgment. He made up his mind about me.
  
  "You carryin' iron?" he asked slowly.
  
  I nodded. "But I won't need it," I said. "I'll do it with my hands."
  
  He believed me because he knew it was true.
  
  "You goddamn honky son-of-a-bitch," he said, his voice thick with rage. "You white bastards are all alike!"
  
  "I don't like you either," I said coldly. "Now that we got that out of the way…"
  
  "…just because I'm black…"
  
  "…because you're a pimp," I told him, cutting him off in mid-sentence. "I hate pimps. Black, white, pink or yellow, I hate pimps. You dig?"
  
  Wesley stared at me.
  
  "Then what you want with me, man?"
  
  "Before I tell you that," I said, knowing I couldn't trust Wesley's rebelliousness and that he'd turn on me the first chance he had, "I'm going to tell you what will happen to you if you so much as even think of crossing me!"
  
  In words of one syllable, using street language, I told him. When I got through, I asked, "How many girls you think you're going to pick up looking like that?"
  
  Wesley's face was impassive. He didn't move a muscle.
  
  "None, I guess," he said stoically, but I knew that he was churning inside.
  
  "You think you're going to be able to keep the girls you have now?"
  
  "No."
  
  "You believe I can do it, Wesley?"
  
  That was the crucial question. I could see his mind carefully weighing every aspect of the problem. He eyed me again. I don't think he was afraid. If he was, he hid it. Like anyone who grew up on the streets and fought and clawed his way to the top, he was a realist. You've got to be tough to be a pimp of Wesley's caliber. If you're not, the others will take away your girls. No pimp can afford to have that happen to him even one time. Word gets around. The pimp fives in a peer group that has no mercy on the weak. They don't call Harlem "the jungle" for nothing.
  
  Wesley made lip his mind.
  
  "Yeah, I think you can do it." The admission came reluctantly. It was a painful thing for him to acknowledge.
  
  "You're going to help me?"
  
  "Depends if I can," he said.
  
  "How many girls you got in your stable?"
  
  "Five real top chicks," he said.
  
  "What land of trade do they have?"
  
  "Only first-class," he said, a glimmer of pride coming through his voice. "The best. Some of them got three- and five-hundred-dollar Johns, that's what they've got. They're all white chicks, too, 'cept one. She passes for South American."
  
  "Who's your old lady?"
  
  He told me.
  
  "You got her working, too?"
  
  "Man, all my chicks work! I got big expenses."
  
  "This is what I want, Wesley." I told him about Al Asad. "I want to hear about them. I want you to pass the word around to the other pimps you know. I want every one of their girls — she hears something, she passes back the word. Arab. If she's got an Arab John, or knows about one — I want to hear about it. You got that, Wesley? Arab is the word."
  
  He nodded his head. "I dig, man."
  
  He took a deep breath and stared into my eyes. "You one tough honky," he said, forcing himself to say the words. "I guess you're really not puttin' me on about what you'd do if I cross you?"
  
  I didn't answer.
  
  "I don't like what that cat Duane did to me," Wesley said softly.
  
  "Duane's my man," I answered. "Anything happens to him, I come after you."
  
  Wesley just stared at me. I locked eyes with him. A long minute passed.
  
  "Damn!" He swore without taking his eyes away from me. "You jus' don' give a man a chance, do you?"
  
  "Not if I can help it."
  
  He turned away from me more in disgust at his own helplessness than at me. He'd thought he was tough. And he was — in his own world. But his universe wasn't mine. He hadn't ever dealt with professional assassins — the best in the world — and beaten them again and again. He wasn't Killmaster N3. I was.
  
  Wesley swore quietly for a moment, but he wasn't going to let a white man see how much it had affected him. In his own way, he had a fierce pride in himself. I had trampled it into the ground.
  
  If he were to be any good to me, I had to restore it, so he could be as tough with the other pimps as I had been with him.
  
  "Wesley?"
  
  Reluctantly, he turned back to me.
  
  "I get paid to kill," I said quietly.
  
  His mind took in the words, turned them over and around and squeezed out the full meaning of what I'd said.
  
  "I never did have a chance with you, did I?" he finally said.
  
  "No."
  
  "Okay," he said. "I'll pass the word."
  
  By this time, the crowd that had collected around the burning car was ten deep, all standing at a safe distance across the street. From several blocks away, we heard the whining, high pitched, rising and falling wheep-wheep of police car sirens and the wailing, imperative, hysterical squawking of fire engines.
  
  "Let's get the hell out of here," I said. We cut diagonally across the street and around the corner, picking up a cab on West End Avenue.
  
  "Where we goin'?" Wesley asked.
  
  I leaned forward and gave the driver an address. Wesley sat back in his corner of the seat as far from me as he could get, not looking at me, staring out the window on his side of the cab. The shock of losing his Mark IV was beginning to hit him fully.
  
  It took us almost thirty-five minutes to get across town to the auto dealership. I got out of the taxi, paid the driver and crossed the sidewalk to the show window, with Wesley beside me.
  
  The showroom was huge — and plush. There were eight or nine Rolls-Royces on the floor; some the latest model, other were classics of their kind: Silver Ghosts and Phantom IVs.
  
  I had used the stick on Wesley. Now it was time to use the carrot.
  
  "You see that white Rolls?" I asked. He could hardly miss it. It stood elegantly proud in the middle of the floor.
  
  "Real leather on the inside," I said. "Right hand drive, too."
  
  "Right hand drive?"
  
  "Yeah. And brand-new. They put your initials on it in 24 carat gold leaf right under the window."
  
  Wesley didn't say anything. I could sense his imagination beginning to run away with him. I could almost feel the desire build up in him, it was so palpable. Wesley would have given his soul for that car. I knew that in his mind he was picturing himself driving around town in that white Rolls-Royce with his old lady beside him. There wouldn't be a pimp in town who wouldn't burn with envy. And he knew it.
  
  "What's your last name, Wesley?"
  
  "Henderson."
  
  "W. H. That's what they'll put on it."
  
  Wesley turned to face me. "What are you talkin' about? Wheels like that take a lot of bread, man!"
  
  "I get your help, Wesley, and you get that car," I said. "That's what I'm talking about. And how you got it will be just between you and me."
  
  Wesley showed no emotion.
  
  "You still a honky bastard," he said. "The worst kind."
  
  I nodded my head.
  
  "I still hate your white guts," he said, mean and hard and fully meaning every word he said, his voice resentfully angry.
  
  I nodded again.
  
  "But I'll do it," he said. "Anything comes up, you'll hear from me."
  
  He didn't offer to shake hands when we parted.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Six
  
  
  
  
  Thursday. 7:10 p.m. The Georgian Hotel. Park Avenue.
  
  
  
  The two phone calls came within a few minutes of each other. Rig Sal's was first. He wasted no time.
  
  "I get word maybe you can find those guys in the Fifties, around First Avenue," he said, without bothering to say hello.
  
  "That takes in a lot of ground."
  
  "Some creeps like you been lookin' for was seen around there in the last couple of days, that's the word I get," he said, his voice a growl in my ear. "I hear anything more, I give you a call."
  
  And that was the extent of Rig Sal's conversation.
  
  The girl was next. Her voice had a slightly excited, breathy quality to it.
  
  "Hi, honey. This is Shelley. A mutual friend of ours told me to call you if anything came up," she said. "You know who I mean?" I knew she had to be one of Wesley's girls.
  
  "That's nice," I said. "What's up?"
  
  "A friend of mine has invited me out for dinner, and he likes for me to get another couple. The dinner part is just social, if you know what I mean. You want to join us?"
  
  "If you think I should."
  
  "Yeah, I think so. You got a girlfriend?"
  
  I looked across the room at Tamar.
  
  "I can get one for you, if you haven't," she said. "Real cute, too."
  
  "I've got a girl. Who's your friend?"
  
  "Well, right now, he's on his way over to see me. I haven't heard from him in almost a year, and out of a clear blue I get a call a few minutes ago. He wants to see me — if you know what I mean."
  
  I knew what she meant.
  
  "He's real generous," she said. "He likes to take me out to dinner. I guess he likes to show me off because I'm so blonde and he's so dark."
  
  "Are you telling me he's an Arab?"
  
  "I think so," she said. "He comes from one of those Middle East countries. I was introduced to him about three years ago when he had something to do with some kind of a delegation to the United Nations. He was kind of keeping me, if you know what I mean. Then, last year, he left the country, so I lost track of him. Not even a letter or a postcard. Now, tonight, he calls and asks if I'm free. I wasn't. I had another date. One of my regulars. But Wesley told me that it was real important so I cancelled the other date."
  
  "You won't lose out," I promised. "I'll make up the difference."
  
  She laughed. "Hey, you sound like a great guy," she said. "I'm looking forward to meeting you."
  
  "Where?"
  
  She told me. It was a restaurant in the Forties between Second and Third Avenues. I knew the place. It was expensive, but the food was good.
  
  "What time do we meet you?" I asked her.
  
  "Oh," she said, "give us at least a couple of hours, okay? He sounded real horny on the telephone. Let's say around ten o'clock."
  
  Then, suddenly, she said, "Hey — I just remembered. You're supposed to be an old friend. But he won't like it when he sees you're a man. He doesn't like the idea of my seeing other men, even though he knows about me. How about I tell him I know your girlfriend — and she's bringing you along?"
  
  "That's a great idea."
  
  "What's her name?"
  
  "Sa'ida," I said.
  
  "What?"
  
  I pronounced it again for her. "Tell him she's Syrian. She comes from Damascus."
  
  "Hey, that's wild! She really Syrian?"
  
  "That's right."
  
  "Can she talk that crazy language? Arabic, I mean?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "He's going to like that, I can tell you." Shelley sounded pleased. "Hey, one other thing. This chick — is she in the life?"
  
  I didn't think an Arab would like the idea of being seen socially with an Arabian prostitute.
  
  "Tell him she's straight. She's just a girl you know who doesn't even know you're a working girl. You must have some straight friends, right?"
  
  Shelley giggled. "Beautiful! He'll dig that. Listen, I'll see you about ten o'clock. What do you two look like so I'll be able to recognize you when you come in?"
  
  I described Tamar to her.
  
  "She sounds like a great looking chick," Shelley said. "If she were in the life, I bet she could make a fortune!"
  
  There was nothing I could say to that.
  
  "What do you look like?" Shelley asked. I tried to be objective in describing myself. Shelley giggled again. "Hey, if you look like that, I might swap."
  
  "Keep your mind on your work," I told her. "You want a bonus, don't you?"
  
  "Damn right!"
  
  "Tell your friend I'm Sa'ida's Arab fiancé."
  
  "Got it."
  
  "And just in case — what's this guy's name, so I can ask for you two at the restaurant?"
  
  "Hakeni," she said. "Hamal Hakeni. I don't know if it's his real name or not. Most Johns don't like to give you their real names. Anyhow, it's the one he's always used with me."
  
  "I'll see you later," I said, and we hung up.
  
  "What was that all about?" Tamar asked from across the room. I didn't answer. I was too busy scanning the list of names that Taylor had left with me.
  
  Hakeni. Hamal Hakeni.
  
  There it was! That made three of them. Yousef Khatib. Sharif al Sallal. Hamal Hakeni. Or did it? Hakeni might have no connection with the Al Asad terrorists at all. On the other hand, his name was on the list of those who'd come into the country in the last several months and had dropped out of sight. It was something to think about. Hell, it was all I had to go on!
  
  Tamar asked me again about the phone call. I told her.
  
  "Sa'ida," she repeated. "It's Arabic enough."
  
  "Yeah."
  
  I looked at my watch. It was only seven-fifteen and I was dead tired. I started to take off my clothes.
  
  "What are you doing?" asked Tamar.
  
  "I'm going to take a nap," I told her. "I think you ought to take one, too. God knows when we'll have another chance to get some sleep."
  
  By the time I had turned down the bed and turned off the lights, Tamar had peeled off her dress and underclothes. She squirmed up against me, drew a long, deep breath and put her arms around me. She put her mouth against my ear and blew into it gently.
  
  Mischievously, she murmured, "We'll both sleep more soundly if you make love to me first, darling."
  
  I was going to protest, and then her hands and her mouth and the soft fullness of her breasts prevented me from speaking. Tired as I was, she aroused me to a fever pitch of impatience. There was no dallying, no foreplay, no lovemaking. There was just the furious thrust and repulse of our bodies mating in an animal beat. In minutes, we simultaneously built to a peak and simultaneously clutched at each other in an explosive spasm of released passion.
  
  Tamar let her body relax with a long, convulsive sigh. She opened her eyes just long enough to gaze amusedly at me and said, huskily, "Missionary!"
  
  I didn't answer. I was asleep almost as soon as she was, my arms around the soft, female curves of her breasts, the heat of her warm body warming me, lulling me to sleep.
  
  * * *
  
  Thursday. 10:15 p.m. East 48th Street.
  
  
  
  The two of them were seated at a semi-secluded table for four when Tamar and I came into the restaurant. The blonde had long hair and a pale complexion and was wearing a low cut dress that pushed her breasts together into a pronounced cleavage. She had been looking toward the door as we entered so she spotted us immediately. She left the table, came rushing over to Tamar, throwing her arms around her and kissing her on the cheek as she made happy, meaningless sounds of greeting.
  
  The man at her table didn't move from his seat. He waited for her to bring us to him. Shelley was right. He was as dark as she was blonde. The swarthiness of his skin was olive brown, and his short, neatly trimmed beard was jet black and wiry. He seemed to be in his middle thirties.
  
  As we came up to the table, Shelley had one arm around Tamar.
  
  "This is my good friend, Hamal," she said, introducing him. "Hamal, I told you about Sa'ida. I haven't known her very long, but she's really a sweet girl."
  
  Hamal glanced quickly at Tamar but he stared at me carefully. I have brown hair and regular features that could be taken for almost any nationality. Even so, just before Tamar and I had left the hotel, I'd taken time to rub a skin dye into my face and hands that darkened them several shades more. My hair was now jet black.
  
  "And this is Sa'ida's fiancé," Shelley burbled on. "Sa'ida, introduce him, will you. I can never remember his name."
  
  "Mah'moud el Zaoumi," I said, bowing slightly. And then, in Arabic, I added, "Ahalen wa-Sahalen, ya Sheikh!"
  
  Hamal's fake broke into a smile of pleasure at my words of welcome.
  
  "Salaam Aleikum," he replied.
  
  "Sala'am."
  
  "You are Egyptian?" he asked, in Arabic.
  
  "From the desert," I replied.
  
  "Ah," said Hamal with satisfaction. "Then you are Bedouin?"
  
  "We are all believers in the Prophet," I answered evasively.
  
  He gestured for me to sit down beside him. Shelley sat on the other side of him. Tamar sat between Shelley and myself.
  
  "Can I order a drink for you?" Shelley asked Tamar.
  
  "I'll have a gin and tonic," said Tamar before she realized what she was saying.
  
  Hamal's face froze. He waited for me to order. I shook my head.
  
  "I am not allowed to drink alcohol," I said to Shelley. I turned to Hamal. "Sa'ida is of the Allawi sect," I said in explanation. Hamal relaxed. The Allawi are allowed to have alcoholic beverages, unlike the average Moslem.
  
  "She is Syrian, Shelley tells me."
  
  I nodded. "Yes."
  
  "Is that where you met?" Hamal was still slightly suspicious of me.
  
  "Yes. Her father was an officer at Sheba'im," I told him. Hamal nodded his head. Apparently, he knew of the Syrian Army prison that's located just outside of Damascus.
  
  "Why were you there?" he asked.
  
  I smiled without humor. "They didn't like my politics," I said ruefully. "I was too revolutionary for even Al Fatah. The Ba'athist regime arrested me on a trumped up charge. I spent five months in Sheba'im before I was released. By coincidence, Sa'ida's father was a secret sympathizer. When I was released, he brought me home. That's when I met her."
  
  "And what are you doing here in the United States?" Hamal asked, still curious about me.
  
  I let my face take on a stern look.
  
  I lapsed back into Arabic. "I have been commanded to make an Iqra — a speaking out." Iqra means to recite, to cry out. It's from the same Arabic verb — 'qar'a' — from which the word Quran, or Koran, comes. Qu'ran means "The Recitation."
  
  Hamal lifted an eyebrow, questioning me.
  
  "Surely you know the ninety-sixth Surah of the Qu'ran," I said pointedly.
  
  Hamal shrugged. "I am not that learned in the words of our Prophet."
  
  I quoted, "Oh, Prophet, struggle with unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them!" I stressed the last phrase.
  
  Hamal said carefully, "It is mabim — evident — that you are a learned man, Mah'moud."
  
  I shook my head. "I am a fighter," I said.
  
  Hamal began to smile.
  
  "Ta… Sin… Mim…" I said deliberately, staring boldly into his face and watching his expression carefully. "There are words in the twenty-eighth Surah that I live by. The Prophet has promised us we shall regain our homeland! I am a Palestinian!"
  
  I could see the struggle going on inside Hamal's mind. He didn't quite know what to make of what I had said. It was obvious that the words had had a powerful impact on him. They were the pass words of Al Asad. He couldn't make up his mind whether to acknowledge the pass words or to be silent and let them go by.
  
  "The new Prophet has promised us a 'homecoming' soon!" I exclaimed, watching the struggle in Hamal grow stronger. There is a compulsion among Arabs to talk. Talk is food and drink to an Arab. Words are ideas that free his soul. Hamal could resist no longer. He threw a glance at Tamar.
  
  "Does Sa'ida know?" he asked in a conspiratorial whisper. I nodded. "She knows."
  
  "Then you are both followers of the new Prophet?" he asked, still in a whisper.
  
  "Yes, we follow the teachings of Sharif al Sallal," I said.
  
  Hamal's face turned almost white when I spoke the name aloud. He clutched at my sleeve.
  
  "By the beard of Allah!" he swore at me, "do not mention that name aloud!"
  
  "And you?" I asked, ignoring his outburst.
  
  He nodded his head. "I, too, my brother," he said, still speaking Arabic. "From the beginning, when we lived as children on the Gaza Strip, I have followed him. He will restore us to our Palestinian homeland. He will do away with even the last of the accursed Jews who sit on the ground that is rightfully ours!"
  
  "Insh'allah!" I said impassively. "As God wills!" But I meant it in a way that was completely different from the way Hamal took it.
  
  Hamal beamed at me. "I will have news when I see him next." Even indirectly, he couldn't help boasting that he was in communication with Sharif al Sallal. He wanted to impress me with the fact of his importance to the organization.
  
  I looked properly impressed.
  
  "Will you see him soon?"
  
  "Before the night is over," Hamal bragged. "He is like my own brother."
  
  "I thought Yousef Khatib was closest to him." I thrust the verbal dagger into him, pin-pricking his ego with its sharp tip.
  
  Hamal turned his head and spat on the floor. He uttered a curse.
  
  "That fornicator of camels!" he swore. "Al Sallal keeps him around as one would keep a watch dog. For no other reason!"
  
  "It is not what I have heard."
  
  "I speak the truth! There are others closer to al Sallal than that jackal Khatib!"
  
  I put an expression of tolerant disbelief on my face. It stung Hamal even more than had I put it into words.
  
  "Abdul Latif Hashan and Nasser as-Din Waladi are but two of the many who are close to the new Prophet," Hamal said, forcefully. "Even as I am!"
  
  I nodded, pretending that I knew the names. As I filed them away in my mind, I said, "Words from your mouth can only be the truth."
  
  The waiter came up, handing menus to each of us. Hamal bent his head over the heavy, engraved paper. Shelley leaned close to him, touching her head to his and whispering in his ear. Quietly, I said to Tamar, "Make some excuse to leave. Follow Hamal when he comes out of here, but — for God's sake — don't let him catch you at it!"
  
  Under the tablecloth, Tamar touched me on the thigh to indicate she understood.
  
  Hamal beckoned to the waiter. Tamar stood up and smiled at Shelley. "The ladies room?" she asked.
  
  Shelley said, "That way, honey." Hamal broke off ordering dinner to watch Tamar's lithe figure sway across the room. She turned the corner and disappeared.
  
  "You are fortunate, my friend, to have such a woman," he said to me admiringly.
  
  I said, "You are to see al Sallal before the night is over, is that true?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "I would like to give him a message."
  
  Hamal lifted an eyebrow.
  
  "Tell him that he is not safe where he is."
  
  A look of consternation spread over Hamal's face. "They have learned where he is in hiding?"
  
  "Not of this moment," I said, "but they will know soon."
  
  Hamal frowned. "I don't understand."
  
  "Believe what I tell you," I said, calmly. The calmness of my voice lent verification to what I said. It was the best assurance he could have had that I was telling the truth. Hamal looked anxiously at his watch.
  
  The waiter said, "What would the lady like to order?" indicating Tamar's empty seat.
  
  "She will not be coming back," I told the waiter.
  
  Hamal gazed at me in astonishment. The waiter shrugged and moved away.
  
  Hamal had trouble in controlling the emotions that had begun to churn in him. I had meant to disturb him deeply and I had succeeded. His guard was down completely. One moment, he had been self-assured and confident enough to confide in me like a brother. Now, his inbred suspicious nature took over. He was swung on the rope of his emotions as violently and wildly as a child on a swing pushed by forces beyond his control. Fear and anxiety alternated with antagonism and anger.
  
  The two of us might have been sitting in a cafe in Cairo or Amman or Damascus, plotting over small cups of thick, bitter coffee, playing verbal games with the truth as a shuttlecock that we hit back and forth over an invisible net, saying one thing, meaning another and thinking a third.
  
  "She will not be back," he repeated uneasily. "What do you mean by that?"
  
  "Hey, what's going on?" asked Shelley.
  
  "Shut up!" Hamal turned and slapped her violently across the face.
  
  He turned back to me, his eyes glaring wildly.
  
  "Why will she not be coming back?"
  
  "She has gone to tell the authorities," I said calmly.
  
  "She has — what!"
  
  "She has gone to tell the authorities that you are a member of al Asad! I would guess that the police will be here to arrest you in a matter of minutes!"
  
  Hamal was thunderstruck. His face paled beneath the swarthiness of his skin.
  
  "In the name of Allah — why would she do a thing like that?"
  
  "Because she is an Israeli spy," I told him, not raising my voice.
  
  "You… you said her father was an officer in the Army…"
  
  "True. He never knew about his daughter."
  
  Hamal shook his head in disbelief.
  
  "That's why I've done my best to win her confidence. That's why I became betrothed to her. She is our pipeline to feed false information to the Mossad — the Israeli Intelligence!"
  
  I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes in deliberate surprise. "You fool! Didn't you suspect? Why do you think I was talking the way I did? What I said was to throw her suspicions onto me! If the police arrest me, they will learn nothing that they do not already know! But you — you had to brag about your importance! You had to announce that you know the whereabouts of our leader, al Sallal! Even worse, you cry out like a muezzin atop a mosque at prayertime that you will be seeing Sharif al Sallal tonight! Eater of camel dung! How can you be so stupid!" I lashed at Hamal with every insult I could think of.
  
  Shakily, he got to his feet. He pushed his chair violently away from the table.
  
  "Wait!"
  
  Hamal stopped.
  
  "Pay the bill," I commanded.
  
  Hamal was too shaken to think clearly. He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and started to reach into it. Then he stopped. His eyes glared at me furiously. If he had had a knife he would have tried to plunge it into me. Instead, he spat on the floor in helpless rage and ran out of the restaurant.
  
  Shelley was rubbing her cheek where Hamal had slapped her.
  
  "What the hell's going on? That's a three hundred dollar date you just blew for me!"
  
  I pulled out my own wallet, counting out five, crackling, crisp new one-hundred dollar bills. Shelley's eyes were on the money. I folded the bills in half, pushing them across the table to her.
  
  "That take care of it?"
  
  I guess so.
  
  I added another fifty.
  
  "That's to take care of the bill."
  
  Shelley was left sitting by herself as the waiter came up with the first of our dinner orders. As I left the restaurant, she was shaking her head in complete incomprehension at what had happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  
  
  
  Friday. 12:28 a.m. East 61st Street.
  
  
  
  There's a little coffee shop that's open all night on the corner of 61st Street and First Avenue. Just as you come in the door, there's a public telephone. It was from there that Tamar had called me at the hotel where I'd gone after Hakemi had run out of the restaurant in such haste. The Georgian is only four blocks away at the other end of 61st Street at Park Avenue, so it took me less than ten minutes to get to her. Tamar was sitting in the second booth on the right, dawdling over a cup of coffee.
  
  I slid into the booth across from her, scowling angrily.
  
  "What took you so long?" I demanded impatiently. "It's been more than an hour and a half since you left the restaurant. Did you follow Hakemi?"
  
  Tamar nodded. "Yes. He was really upset when he left. He walked for three or four blocks before he caught a cab. I was lucky. I got one right behind him. Hakemi had the driver take him all around town. He wasn't hard to follow. The driver I had was better than his."
  
  "Did he catch on that you were tailing him?"
  
  "I don't think so. We went up to Yorkville and then across Central Park to the West Side, and then back down and across the 65th Street transverse to Second Avenue. Hakemi dropped off the cab at 58th Street. He walked the rest of the way."
  
  "Where is he now?"
  
  "With the others, I think. He walked back up Second Avenue to 60th, cut over to First Avenue and then down to 56th. There's a three story building a couple of doors from the corner. On the ground floor is a store, and some kind of offices are on the second floor. The third floor is a photographer's studio. It takes up the entire floor. That's where they are." She paused and added, "I think the place is pretty well guarded."
  
  "What did you see?"
  
  Tamar shrugged. "There were two men in a car near the front of the building. They were just sitting there and smoking. I think they're lookouts."
  
  Her report was good enough for me. Tamar was a trained Shin Beth agent. "I want you to go back to the hotel and wait for me there," I said. "You've done your job."
  
  She shook her head, her black hair flipping easily and gracefully across her face. "No. I'm seeing it through with you."
  
  I started to object. Tamar cut me off. "You'll need me," she said.
  
  I thought about it for a moment. It would have been easy to call Taylor at FBI headquarters. Within twenty minutes, the place would be surrounded by FBI agents and New York City police — and that would be like signing a death warrant for the Speaker of the House. The men of Al Asad would execute him at the first indication that they were in a trap with no hope of escape. They were fanatics prepared to die so long as they could carry out their mission.
  
  No, the only way to save him was a quick hit-and-run raid by one man who could get to him before they could cut his throat. And I knew that that one man would have to be me.
  
  But Tamar was right. I could use help. I didn't know how many of them there were in that loft. I wouldn't know when one of them might come popping up at me out of nowhere. I could use a trained agent to protect my rear — or at least to give me some kind of warning that unexpected danger was threatening me. Even though I hated to jeopardize her life, I knew — and, damn it! so did she — that she was necessary to me right then.
  
  Tamar smiled assuringly at me.
  
  "I'm armed," she said. "I have a gun with me."
  
  "Have you ever used it?"
  
  "You mean, have I ever killed with it?"
  
  That's exactly what I meant. I waited for her answer.
  
  There are a lot of people who know how to fire a handgun. Many of them are fine shots. They'll hit the bull's-eye nine times out of ten when they're shooting at a paper target. But there's something about aiming a gun in cold blood at a man's head and pulling the trigger with the full conscious realization that you mean to kill him, and that the bullet that hits him will be ripping through skin and shattering bone into fragmented, splintered shards and that a thick gout of bright red blood will come erupting out of the hole you've just punched into him.
  
  Most people can't do it.
  
  There's only one way to find out if you're cold-blooded enough to kill without qualms of hesitation. And that's to do it. To kill.
  
  Tamar said, "Yes."
  
  It was answer enough.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 12:45 a.m. East 56th Street.
  
  
  
  There was no moon. The sky was overcast with a heavy, solid layer of cloud. The night was as dark as any Manhattan night can get. Even the fights on the street cast only narrow pools of illumination around their bases, and the darkness that stretched from one to the next was ominously threatening. Both sides of the street were lined with parked cars. Two men were in the sedan directly in front of the building that Tamar had described to me. Cigarette smoke drifted out of a partially open side window.
  
  We walked by, arm in arm, on the opposite side of the street. I left Tamar at the end of the block and circled three-quarters of the way around the back to the First Avenue corner. I lounged in front of the bar for a few moments, taking time out to figure how I'd get onto the roof of the building that housed the photographer's loft.
  
  I knew I couldn't just walk in the front door of the building. I also knew I couldn't go in the back door, either. The loft was on the top floor. The only logical access was the roof, and getting onto the roof meant that I would first have to get onto the roof of an adjoining building to cross over.
  
  Most of these old New York blocks on the East Side between Lexington and York Avenues, especially the converted tenement buildings between Second and First Avenues, are usually built in a square. You'd see it best from a helicopter or low-flying small plane going over the city. The tenement entrances are on the numbered streets, the stores front on the avenues and the backs of the buildings face a rectangle that's divided by fences into back yards.
  
  Getting into the enclosed rear area is usually the hardest part. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can find a service alley or lane. If not, then you have to get in through one of the buildings themselves.
  
  I was lucky. I found a service alleyway behind the bar on the corner. It saved me a lot of time, because the alleyway ran the full width of the store and led into the rear area of the buildings on that block.
  
  At the end of the alley, I came to a stop. Standing in the dark, in the deeper, blacker shadows of packing crates piled randomly one on another, I examined the layout carefully. Lights were on in some of the windows on all sides of the backyard area. Most of them were dark that late at night. The building walls were zigzagged with the black framework of metal fire escapes. I could have taken any one of them to get to the roof-tops of the buildings I wanted. I didn't. I was sure that if Al Asad had lookouts on the street, they would also have guards posted on the rooftop of the building they were in. Anyone climbing a fire escape at almost one o'clock in the morning would be certain to attract their attention. And that's what I had to avoid at all costs.
  
  Before I moved out of the protective blackness of the alley, I checked my equipment. Hugo slid easily in and out of the chamois sheath that held the deadly stiletto strapped to my forearm. Pierre, that small, innocuous gas bomb, was tucked away in my groin. I took Wilhelmina out of the shoulder holster and snapped out the clip of the 9 mm Luger. The action was smooth and slick; the solidness of the gun in my hand felt good to me. I put the clip back into the butt, hearing the faint snik-tik of the snap-lock catching the metal of the magazine.
  
  From the breast pocket of my jacket, I took out a pencil flashlight. It's just an ordinary, slim tube with two AA batteries that you can buy in almost any drugstore or five and dime, but I had painted the tiny bulb with a red nail polish so that not even a faint gleam of white light came through its tip. It's amazing how much light it gives off, once your eyes get accustomed to the darkness. Best of all, it doesn't destroy your night vision. Nor does it attract attention from anyone who isn't looking directly at the area you're shining it on.
  
  Using the light, I checked to see that there were no obstacles that would trip me up as I made my way to the first cellar door. I shone the light over it.
  
  Someone had installed a heavy, sheet metal plate over the door and had put in flush locks. I could have picked it open but it would have been taking too much of a chance. If they'd gone to the trouble of putting in a door like that, chances were damned good that they'd also installed an electronic alarm system. I didn't want to waste the time necessary to find and disconnect the alarms.
  
  Keeping close to the walls, I moved on to the second building, crossing the broken fence that separated the two properties. The beam of the flashlight splayed over the doorframe — old, wooden, warped and not too securely bolted.
  
  I knew that getting in would be no problem, but with a door like that, the hinges would be rusted and it would squeal like hell if I pushed it open. Sound carries at night, especially the higher frequencies. The screech of metal from those rusted hinges would be guaranteed to attract the attention of the guards on the roof of the next building.
  
  Once again, I reached into my pocket. This time the implement I took out was a slender, metal, plunger-type syringe. Watchmakers and camera repairmen use them. It holds just three or four milliliters of fine oil. The tip of the needle is small enough to probe into all but the tiniest of openings. The one I carry doesn't hold oil. It's a special liquid compounded for me by the AXE technical group. I guess you could call it either a liquid plastique or a very stable form of nitroglycerine. Take your choice. Whatever you call it, it's a highly concentrated, extremely potent explosive. It doesn't take much to do the job.
  
  Carefully, in the dim red glow of the pencil flashlight, I inserted the tip of the syringe into the gaps of the worn hinge pins that held the door to its frame. Three small squirts of liquid into each hinge was enough. I put away the container and took out an ordinary matchbook. Ironically, this one was from the restaurant where I'd met Hakemi earlier.
  
  I tore off four paper matches. I inserted three of them into the hinges by the torn ends. I tested them. They'd stay. Although I knew it couldn't be seen by anyone overhead, I still shielded the flare of the flame with my cupped hands as I lit the fourth match and touched it in turn to each of the phosphorus heads of the other three matches.
  
  I spun away from the doorway and slammed my back flat against the side of the building. The three, separate, muffled crumps sounded off in about six seconds as the match heads burnt down to their bases and touched off the liquid explosive. The sound wasn't loud nor was it sharp. Even from fifty feet away you couldn't have told from what direction it came from, but as I moved back to the entrance, I knew that the door would be askew, hanging on only by the bolt catch.
  
  Carefully, I moved the door just far enough to slither through in a twisting motion.
  
  The basement was grimy and dirty, filled with trash of every kind. I made my way around old barrels, a broken refrigerator and three rusted, old cast iron radiators that had been there for so long they were covered with layers of dust.
  
  At the far end of the basement, there was another door. This one was partially open. It lead me to the corridor of the ground floor. There was no one there. I turned the corner and started up the stairs, placing my feet on each step as close to the wall as possible to avoid any noise. I met no one on the way up.
  
  There was a last flight of stairs that led to the roof door. Getting out onto the roof would be easy because the door was locked from the inside to keep out would-be prowlers. I didn't open it. Not just yet.
  
  The building I wanted to get to was next door. I felt sure that guards would be on the roof and that the moment I opened the door the sudden spill of light would be like a beacon at sea on a pitch-black night. It would be certain to attract their attention.
  
  I went back down the flight of stairs to the landing below. Wrapping my handkerchief around my fingers, I reached up and unscrewed the naked bulb from its socket. The hallway went dark. I went up to the roof landing again. The bulb in the ceiling there was just as easy to unscrew.
  
  Now, in pitch darkness, I eased open the door inch by inch, hating to take up precious moments to do it, but knowing that in this case haste could mean more than waste. It could mean my death.
  
  When the door was ajar enough for me to move out, I lay down and squirmed my body out onto the rooftop. Even when it's too dark to make out objects, movement will attract attention. If I were spotted by a guard, he'd open fire. By training, a man will shoot at your midsection or torso first, since it's the largest part of your body and the easier to hit. If anything went wrong and there was shooting, I wanted the fire to go over my head.
  
  There was no sound of alarm. I came out onto the roof in an infantryman's crawl, made it halfway across to a large, cylindrical, galvanized-iron ventilator that jutted up from the tarred roof surface and hunkered down on my haunches for a long minute. Slowly, blending in with its silhouette, I came fully erect.
  
  Now I could see onto the roof of the building next door — and what I saw didn't make me too happy. There was not just one, but two guards walking the roof.
  
  Each of them was armed with an automatic rifle.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 1:04 a.m. East 56th Street
  
  
  
  Wilhelmina would do me no good. Not against automatic rifles. Pierre needed a confined space to contain his lethal vapor. Only Hugo's deadly, sharp and silent steel could be of help to me now, but even then I first had to get close enough for the stiletto to be effective. Close meant thirty feet for throwing; body reach for stabbing.
  
  But first I had to get onto the roof next door without being seen by either of the two watchful Palestinian terrorist guards.
  
  There was no way for me to make a direct approach. A frontal attack would be sheer suicide. I needed to catch them off-guard.
  
  As carefully as I could in the darkness, I examined the layout of the roofs. Both were flat-topped and were approximately on the same level. A brick ledge ran along the front and back of each roof. The two roofs were separated by a waist-high, concrete block partition. If I tried to go over that, I'd be spotted immediately.
  
  I looked at the ledges again. They ran in an even line along the edges of both buildings.
  
  Regretfully, I came to the conclusion that, risky as it was, I had no choice. I lay down prone again, squirming my way across the black tar of the roof, moving as slowly as I could, keeping close to the concrete block partition to hide my movements. It took a full five minutes to get to the far corner of the rooftop.
  
  Slowly, I raised my torso only to the height of the brick coping and rolled over onto it. I twisted my body over the edge of the roof, and — hanging on only by my hands — I let my body hang free on the far side of the wall. Below me was a sheer, three story drop onto the broken concrete paving of the backyard. If I slipped, it would be the end of me.
  
  Moving one hand and then the other, first my right and then my left, I inched my way along the edge of the roof toward the building next door. In what seemed to be seconds, the strain on my arms and wrists became acutely unbearable. The rough texture of the bricks began to rub at the skin of my hands. There was more than thirty feet of roof to cover, and there was no way in which I could do it faster or easier — not unless I wanted to be seen by the guards. I tried to close my mind to the growing pain in my hands and the aching muscles of my forearms that had begun to scream out their protest at being misused so painfully.
  
  I shut off my mind to the soreness, the pain and the time it was taking. Again and again, almost like a robot, I moved each hand sideways in spastic grasps, hanging on by only one arm for that brief second it took to release the grip of one hand, move it six inches to the side and grab the brick coping again.
  
  I didn't dare rest. I knew that if I paused even for a moment, I could never bring myself to start again.
  
  My torso and legs dangled in space, bumping occasionally against the side of the building, threatening to tear loose the precarious grip I had on the building edge.
  
  Time slowed to a crawl and then slowed even more, finally coming to a complete rest — but my hands kept moving. Release and grab. Release and grab. Again and again. The world was nothing but sheer, torturous pain — and still my hands kept moving as if they had an independent stubborn will of their own. My grip became slippery. I knew it wasn't just the perspiration of my palms. It was too sticky a feeling for that. The skin of my fingers and palms had finally been worn raw enough for blood to ooze out.
  
  Release and grab. Release and grab. Over and over again, time without end. Inch by inch. Grasp by grasp. The world was a black void in which I dangled precariously with only the burning sensation in my palms to remind me of what I was doing, of what I had to keep on doing no matter how intense the punishment.
  
  And then — long after I had ceased to think consciously, long after my back muscles and shoulder muscles and arm muscles had blended into one solid agony of intense, sharp achingness, I reached out my hand for one more grip only to find nothing. Frantically, I clawed at the brick of the coping corner with my right hand, caught my grip and drew a long breath of relief.
  
  I had reached the far corner of the building I wanted to get to.
  
  And still there was one more physical effort I had to make. Slowly, ignoring each new protest of my muscles, I drew my chest and torso up over the coping. For a moment, I balanced there, then I rolled my legs onto the edge of the roof and lay without moving, the sudden ending of the strain coming almost too fast. I drew another deep breath, wondering if I had been spotted as I came onto the roof.
  
  Turning my head, I looked for the guards. They were still where they'd been when I began my dangerous journey. They still were unaware of my presence.
  
  I moved down off the edge to the flat of the roof corner, protected now by the darkness and by the half a dozen projections rising from the roof in odd positions that lay between us.
  
  Easing out my handkerchief, I wiped the palms of my hands dry. Now, the salt of my perspiration began to sting painfully where I'd rubbed the skin of my hands raw. I flexed my fingers again and again, driving the ache out of them. I massaged the muscles of each arm and shoulder in turn, bringing back a surging, needle-pricking flow of blood. Alternately, I stretched and relaxed my back muscles.
  
  For a full ten minutes I lay there, knowing I could not afford the luxury of impatience, breathing deeply, inhaling as much air as I could into my lungs, knowing that in the next few moments — depending upon how fast and how efficiently I could move — I would either live or die.
  
  I didn't dwell too long on the thought. I had other things to think about. Like how I was going to take out the guards, one at a time.
  
  Christ! If only I could use Wilhelmina, it would be so easy! Two shots would do it!
  
  But without a silencer on the end of the pistol, those two shots would alert the rest of the Al Asad terrorists in the loft directly below us, and that would blow my mission!
  
  It wasn't enough for me to kill the guards.
  
  It wouldn't be enough for me to get down into the loft.
  
  I had to do the whole job silently and fast. Fast enough to get to the Speaker of the House before one of the fanatics who'd kidnapped him had a chance to slit his throat!
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  
  
  
  Friday. 1:35 a.m. Rooftop on East 56th Street.
  
  
  
  The guards were well-trained. They walked the roof in random patterns, always so that one protected the other's back. They stayed away from the edge. They kept in the cleared area, away from the ventilators and the elevator shaft machinery shed behind which I was hiding. There seemed to be no way that I could get at them simultaneously.
  
  But there had to be a way. Otherwise, all I had done was to trap myself.
  
  I looked at my wristwatch. The damn second hand looked like it was whipping around the dial at five times its normal speed. Determinedly, I pushed all thoughts of time out of my head, concentrating on finding some way to eliminate both guards at the same time.
  
  My mind told me that there had to be a way that would be fast enough to immobilize both of them in the same instant; fast enough to keep them from giving out a warning shout or firing a shot. All I had to do was to discover it.
  
  I lay crouched in the dark shadows of the corner of the roof, concealed by the ventilator and the small cluster of pipes and the shed-like structure that housed the lift machinery of the freight elevator, while a hundred ideas flashed through my mind. One at a time, I rejected each of them. Idly, I glanced at the pattern of telephone wires strung to each building from poles in the center of the backyard area. The heavier black lines were the thicker wires of the power lines feeding each of the buildings.
  
  At first, they meant nothing to me, but my eyes kept coming back to them again and again. I don't know how long it took before the idea finally came to me. Not all at once, just a bit at a time. I worked it out once, and then I reviewed it in detail, planning it step by careful step because if it weren't done in the right order and in the right way, I'd kill myself instead of the two Al Asad terrorist guards.
  
  I checked out the idea until I was satisfied with it. Still without moving, I surveyed the roof area one more time, but now I was searching for specific items. I saw the first. And then I made out the second. Both were within easy reach of me.
  
  There was one more thing to look for. If I found it, my scheme stood a damn good chance of working.
  
  I found it.
  
  All three were within ten feet of where I lay within easy crawling distance so that I wouldn't have to expose myself to the guards.
  
  The first was the wire supporting the metal T-frame of what once had been one end of a clothes line frame. I inched my way over to the base of the frame. Two separate wires were twisted around eyebolts fastened to the roof and then looped up to the back of the frame and down again to a second set of eyebolts. Carefully, I began to untwist them, ignoring the sting in my raw fingertips as I bent each wire straight and pushed it free of the eyebolts. Both fines came loose in my hands. I pulled them from the T-frame, crawled over a foot or so and untwisted the other end of the wires from the eye-bolts they were fastened to.
  
  I now had two lengths of bare, braided wire, each about twenty feet long, that I coiled in separate, loose loops.
  
  The second thing was an old television antenna — bent, rusted and long out of commission, it would still work perfectly for my purposes.
  
  I carry a flat screwdriver head in my keycase. It's come in handy on more than one occasion in the past. Taking whatever time was necessary, I loosened the clamp screws that held the rod of the antenna to the metal bands encircling the chimney. Gently, slowly, I lowered it to the roof.
  
  On my back, leaning against the wall, I fastened one end of a wire to the antenna.
  
  I inched myself over to the power line terminal block. I didn't touch it. Two hundred and twenty volts is something you don't play with — you treat it with a lot of respect or it will kill you. The dim red glow from my miniature flashlight gave me more than enough light to examine it carefully, tracing the wires without the light being seen by either of the guards.
  
  The power for the building came in from a pole in the central court of the backyard area to the terminal block I was looking at. From there, one line snaked back over the roof edge. A second line went up about five feet along a wooden standard and looped over to the adjacent building to provide power for that building. It was the second line I needed. I didn't want to blow the fuses in the building I was on.
  
  The third item was an ordinary water tap. At one time or another, someone had extended the cold water line from inside the building through the roof, either to provide a water supply to hose down the rooftop or to water a roof garden or for some other purpose. It didn't really matter why they'd done it. The fact that it was there made my whole plan operable.
  
  Now came the delicate part of what I had to do. Carefully keeping the coils of wire apart, I took one end of one wire and fastened it to the iron water pipe, wrapping it around and around the pipe to be sure I had a good contact. Crawling back to the terminal block, I tied the other end of the wire into the middle wire of the three-wire system. The middle wire in a three-wire, 220 volt system is the common-ground line. As long as I avoided contact with either of the other two wires, the circuit wouldn't be complete and I would be as safe as if I were handling ordinary baling wire.
  
  When I completed that chore, I took the second braided wire loop and fastened one end of it to the antenna. I put the antenna on top of the elevator machinery shed. Now, with the utmost care, I slithered back to the terminal block, paying out the wire slowly as I crawled along the roof, keeping the wire taut so it ran in a straight line from shed to terminal block without sagging.
  
  I tied-in the end of that wire to both of the hot lines. I wanted the full 220 volt current. I estimated the amperage for the building at somewhere between three hundred to four hundred amps because of the heavy load of the freight elevator. That kind of amperage would be more than enough to do the job. It's the amperage that kills, not the voltage.
  
  Now the antenna became an extension of the hot 220-volt line; dangerous, but safe enough to handle with my bare hands unless I accidentally touched a ground. In which case, I'd electrocute myself.
  
  I took time out to check over the jury-rigged system I'd created. Everything seemed to be all right.
  
  There was still one final step that had to be completed before I could spring my trap. The faucet of the water tap was only a foot above the level of the roof, but if I turned it on, the guards would be sure to hear the splashing of water falling from the tap to the surface of the roof. I had to prevent that.
  
  Hugo slid into my hand easily. I used the sharp blade of the knife to cut off the left sleeve of my jacket. I returned Hugo to his sheath and tied one end of the severed sleeve to the faucet, letting the other end he flat on the roof surface.
  
  With infinite slowness, I turned the handle. Not very much, just enough to let a gentle flow of water seep down the cloth of the sleeve and onto the roof. I watched it for a moment, then turned the tap open slightly more until it was adjusted to my satisfaction.
  
  I made my way back to the shadows of the elevator machinery shed, easing myself onto its wooden roof, keeping my body down to prevent being silhouetted against the sky. I lay flat on the shed roof, the antenna beside me.
  
  The preparations were over. Now I had to wait until the moment was right to spring the trap.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 2:10 a.m. Rooftop at East 56th Street.
  
  
  
  Forty-five minutes had gone by from the time I started putting together the elements of my surprise package for the two terrorists. It was almost too long a time. Yet, despite the pressure of each passing second, I still had to remain patient for a while longer. I had to wait for the water to spread out and cover the surface of the roof with a film of moisture deep enough to wet through the shoe soles of the guards. Beside me was the antenna, the wire from it stretching back to the terminal block in a tight, straight line. If it touched the roof surface it would short out.
  
  Five minutes went by, and then ten. Mentally, I pictured the slight slope of the roof. In my mind's eyes, I could see the slow, steady flow of water spreading out in a gentle, growing puddle that silently covered a greater and greater surface with each passing moment.
  
  Twenty minutes went by before I cautiously lifted my head. From the oblique angle I was at, I could make out the shine of light reflections on the film of water that, by now, covered most of the roof.
  
  The guards were still slowly walking back and forth, oblivious of the water that was under their feet.
  
  Still I waited. I would have only one chance at them. Before I acted, I had to be sure.
  
  And then, finally, I heard one of the guards utter an exclamation in Arabic. The water had finally wet through his shoe soles. He stopped his pacing, swore again, and bent down to look at the roof surface. The second guard spun around as he heard his companion swear.
  
  That's when I stood up and heaved the antenna into the shallow puddle of water.
  
  There was no explosion. There was just a sudden, bright, intense flare of pure, blue-white light shot through with flashes of red and huge sparks that burnt themselves into my eyeballs! It was like looking into a giant stroboscopic flash. The light froze the bodies of the two men in a grotesque, antic position at the moment they died.
  
  And then the braided wire lines to the terminal block burnt out, the surge of current too much for them to carry.
  
  The light ceased almost as quickly as it had sprung up. The charred bodies of the two al Asad terrorists collapsed — black, burnt masses of scorched flesh — on the tar surface of the roof.
  
  The whole thing took no more than an instant — but the job was done. The guards were dead. The way to the loft below lay open to me.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 2:53 a.m. East 56th Street.
  
  
  
  I left the bodies of the two terrorist guards where they lay. For a moment, I was tempted to pick up one of the automatic rifles, but even as the thought entered my mind, I dismissed it. There was just no way in the world I could shoot my way into the loft floor, find out where the Speaker of the House was being held prisoner, and free him before someone would shove a knife into him or blow his brains out with a burst of rifle fire.
  
  I climbed down off the shed roof. Even though I knew that the puddle of water was no longer dangerous because the lead wires had burnt themselves out, I carefully skirted the water, walking along the perimeter of the roof to get to the doorway that led downstairs.
  
  Not a hint of warning preceeded the attack, not even the rush of footsteps. Only at the last fraction of a second was there a sudden, atavistic, subconscious awareness of danger. It was like walking down a dark city street late at night and you suddenly realize that someone is behind you. The realization comes not through your mind but through the fine hairs on the back of your neck and the pricklings of your skin. When you turn, even though the shock of someone being within a foot or two of you pounds at your heart, there isn't any surprise. You knew before you turned that you'd see someone. Their bodies have come too close; they've violated your private, personal, do-not-invade territory.
  
  Even though no threat has been made, let alone an actual, overt attack, your physical system screams out danger] Seconds before you see them, your adrenalin glands have been activated. Instantaneously, your muscles tense, ready to ward off a blow, to fight tooth and nail, and with any other weapon you can lay your hands on, for your life.
  
  Only years of being indoctrinated with non-violent response, of being taught to restrain your animal instincts, to substitute talk for physical reaction, stops you from leaping at whoever it is who's invaded your "territory" past the danger point with the full intent of killing him before he can harm you.
  
  In my years with AXE, those civilized reactions have been trained out of me. That's why I carry the designation of Killmaster N3.
  
  Automatically, I react to the immediate sensing of danger by acting to protect myself first and then leaping in to kill. Sometimes simultaneously, because attack is still the best defense.
  
  That's what happened this time. The sensing of danger was time measured in milliseconds. My reaction was immediate. I dove to one side, curling my body in midair, striking the roof in a rolling dive that carried me ten feet away.
  
  Even at that, I wasn't quite fast enough. The edge of a knife caught me as I started to move, laying open my jacket and slicing through skin and flesh in a long, burning cut that ran from my left shoulder down to the base of my spine.
  
  Catlike, I came to my feet, Hugo leaping into my right hand from his sheath on my forearm. For a second, I made out a slender, shadowy figure half a foot shorter than I am. Then he was on me in a rush, his knife hand held low, the blade whipping in at my guts.
  
  I sucked in my stomach muscles. He missed by less than an inch. I tried to counter his blow with a thrust of my own. He blocked my arm with his elbow. Sliding away, crouching, he circled around to my left.
  
  There was a glimpse of white teeth in a dark face, a half crescent of a smile like that of a man whose pleasure in his work is so great it's almost sexual in its intensity. Crooning sounds came out of his throat.
  
  "Come closer, my little one," he said in Arabic. "I will send you to Paradise with my blade. Allah is waiting to take you!"
  
  I saved my breath.
  
  He came at me again. This time, his knife ripped the cloth of my left sleeve. I tried to step into him, lunging with the long blade of the stiletto. He let out a quiet laugh, stepping away easily and danced around me again, always to my left, to my far side.
  
  He was good. He was one of the fastest and deadliest men I'd ever faced. He didn't waste a single motion. There was a smooth rhythm to the way he moved as if he danced to a deadly Touareg desert war song, his feet keeping quick time with the quick beat of the drums and his hand whip-whipping to the punctuation of the tambourines.
  
  Even in the dark, he was surefooted, constantly aware of his surroundings and of obstacles I knew damn well he couldn't see.
  
  He feinted at my groin, and when I instinctively cringed in a protective movement, he slashed up at my face. The edge of my left hand barely deflected the blow, catching him glancingly on his wrist. If it hurt, he gave no sign of it.
  
  Most of all, he had an air of complete and utter confidence and assurance. It was as if there was absolutely no question in his mind that he was going to kill me. It was just a matter of a few minutes one way or another before he got me.
  
  That kind of attitude is what makes a killer. The singleminded certainty, the fixed knowledge that he is better than anyone else. He can't even conceive of defeat. It just never enters his mind.
  
  I have it, too.
  
  Again came a thrust and a feint and, so fast that it was part of the same motion, came another lunge at me. Again he missed, but only because of the darkness in which we fought our duel.
  
  Khatib! Yousef Khatib!
  
  It could be no one else but him. I'd never met a man as good as he was.
  
  I remembered what Poganov and Selyutin had told me about him. They hadn't lied or exaggerated. If anything, Khatib was better than they had said he was.
  
  I was just damned lucky to have escaped his first attack. My shoulder hurt. It was like a long, narrow, deep burn had been branded all along my back from shoulder to hip. I could feel the blood flowing stickily from the open wound.
  
  Khatib came at me again and again, first at my gut and then at my throat, my face, my eyes — and then down to my gut and groin again.
  
  My own reactions were slowed by the tiredness of my muscles after the exertion of the hand over hand crawling along more than thirty feet of rooftop ledge. My shoulder muscles still ached. And I couldn't hold the stiletto too well in my fingers because the skin had been rubbed so raw. I'd lost the fine feel that told me where Hugo's deadly point was. I gripped the blade with the palm of my hand and ignored the stinging pain. But it made me slow.
  
  It gave Khatib the edge he needed to kill me. Again and again, I was barely able to parry his thrusts. The darkness didn't help, either. Only the occasional glint of light on the honed edge of his knife blade showed me where it was as it danced a deadly, intricate pattern in the air — like a firefly whose least touch meant instant death!
  
  I knew my slowness would mean my death. Somehow, I needed to speed up my reaction time, even by a fraction of a second. Because that's all it takes with a knife fighter like Khatib. Whichever of us gained — or lost — a fractional, split second of time would make us the winner — or loser — in this merciless pas de deux of hard, cutting steel and soft, helpless flesh!
  
  There was only one way to do it.
  
  I stopped thinking and let my neural system take over control of my body.
  
  Years of drill and training, and hour after hour in the gym with the best teachers in the world, had taught me every trick in knife fighting. We had gone through the motions of every attack and defense move — slowly at first and then more rapidly and, finally, so fast that our response and reaction, our parry and thrust, were so fast no human eye could distinguish the individual moves.
  
  But it takes time for the brain to recognize a movement, realize its meaning, evaluate its danger, recall the appropriate defense move and then send a message to the body. And it takes more time for the body to respond to the message it just received from the brain along the spinal cord and through the nervous system.
  
  There's a way to shorten the time. You let your eyes see, but you let your neural system respond directly. In effect, you've by-passed your brain and the delay of having to think about what's happening.
  
  It's only a fraction of a second, but that fraction of a second can save your life.
  
  Over and over, Khatib danced around me, lunging in for a feint, followed by the killing move in a series that flowed one into the next. Each time I parried and riposted, he was either not there, or his hand or knife knocked mine away.
  
  But I was moving faster now. Khatib had stopped his low singing. The smile had vanished from his face. He was beginning to grunt.
  
  "Dung eater!" I swore at him. "Eater of camel turds! How many dogs have used you to fornicate with?"
  
  Khatib began to lose the smoothness of his rhythm. His arm moved jerkily. He stumbled once, swearing in anger.
  
  And that's when I got him!
  
  Hugo's point caught the inside of his forearm at the elbow. Viciously, I twisted my wrist, driving the blade in further. As he tried to pull away, I hooked the stiletto back toward me.
  
  It was like gutting a fish. The blade moved point first into his knife arm, into the soft skin and thin tissue of the inside of his elbow. It severed one of the tendons before moving down toward his wrist, skin and flesh parting before the razor edge of my knife blade in the same way you lay open the soft underbelly of a fish before you fillet it.
  
  The blade hit bone at the base of his palm and came out, but by then his entire right arm was a useless helpless limb.
  
  Involuntarily, the knife dropped out of Khatib's hand.
  
  He could still have gotten away. Quick as he could move, he could have escaped me, even though his arm was so badly gashed.
  
  If he hadn't so totally believed that he couldn't be defeated, he would have lived. For a moment, unmoving, he stood there staring down at his badly wounded arm and at the knife that lay at his feet. The discovery of learning that he was not the best, that there was someone better than he, came as more of a shock than the ghastly wound itself.
  
  In that moment, when Khatib's mind froze, when his body came to a complete, unmoving standstill, I drove Hugo deep into his gut, at the juncture of his rib cage. My hand angled the blade upward with all the power of my right forearm, biceps, shoulder muscles and back.
  
  The blow literally lifted Khatib off his feet, impaled on the long blade of the stiletto that was now buried deeply within him under his rib cage, through a lung and into his heart.
  
  I let him slide off my knife to strike the roof surface in an inert mass.
  
  For a long time, I didn't move. I stood in silence on that rooftop with three dead men around me while I breathed in deep, hurtful gasps, breathing as much air as I could, thinking only that Khatib had almost achieved what so many other men had tried to do — kill me.
  
  I was shaken at the knowledge that Khatib had been a better natural knife fighter than I was. By every rule in the book, he should have killed me in that first, lunging attack. The only thing that had saved me was the years of stripping away my veneer of civilized behavior to get down to the primitive, animal man that lies deep within everyone of us.
  
  Silently, I thanked every one of my instructors and training partners for the tricks they'd taught me, for their patience and for their unrelenting insistence that I spend so many hours practicing each move until it became completely and totally an automatic response and reaction.
  
  The cut on my back hurt. Yet what shook me even more was the sudden loss of my own self-confidence. It came back almost immediately, but I realized my own vulnerability. Khatib had come so close to killing me that — and I couldn't deny the dispiriting truth — it was really just a trick of fate that Khatib now lay dead instead of me.
  
  Without complete confidence in myself and in my abilities, I would be useless. There would be no sense in my going on with the mission — and I had to go on! There was no one else! Even if there was time to bring in another agent, there would be no time to brief him. No time to convey to him what I'd learned and how to use the contacts I'd set up. No time to put him on that rooftop on East 56th Street in my place.
  
  It was more than just myself and my ego and my shattered confidence that was at stake.
  
  It was the life of the Speaker of the — no, damn it! I'd better stop thinking of him that way. He was now the President of the United States!
  
  That fact, and the knowledge that it was only I who could prevent his death — was all that sustained me.
  
  And, once again, even though the pressure of time permeated every thought, I took the time to clear my mind and to put myself into a state of mental calmness. I had to convince myself that I was capable of carrying out the mission in spite of the odds, in spite of the dangers.
  
  Fact: Khatib had been the best.
  
  Fact: Khatib was dead. He lay at my feet.
  
  Fact: I had beaten him.
  
  Conclusion: I was better!
  
  I drummed that thought into my mind relentlessly, pushing aside every other emotion.
  
  In the dirtiest, toughest knife fight I'd ever been in, against a man who was faster than I and more totally a killer than I — damn it, it was he who was dead and not me!
  
  Slowly, the intellectual, logical reasoning process began to change into a gut feeling, and my confidence began to flow back into me.
  
  I began to accept fully the idea that whatever came up, I was more than capable of coping with it.
  
  No matter what the terrorists attempted, I was more than a match for them.
  
  I was going to get through every obstacle, every guard, everything and anything that stood in my way to rescue the President of the United States!
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  
  
  
  Friday. 3:07. a.m. Rooftop on East 56th Street.
  
  
  
  As I turned toward the doorway and the stairs that led down to the loft, the door opened, spilling a dim light onto the roof.
  
  A voice called out. "Khatib?"
  
  Khatib lay at my feet. I didn't dare answer for him.
  
  "Fawzi?"
  
  I began moving quietly toward the doorway, Hugo's lethal steel blade in my hand reversed for throwing.
  
  "Abdullah?"
  
  I didn't see the low, metal cap of the vent pipe. It caught the toe of my right shoe and I went crashing face down on the tar of the roof.
  
  A flashlight splayed out its beam, catching me on my knees as I started to rise. The light moved. Now it illuminated the three bodies. It hesitated there as if its holder couldn't believe what he was seeing. In that moment, I made a break for the low dividing wall that separated the building from the next.
  
  I knew that if the Al Asad guards had carried automatic rifles, the chances were that this one, too, was armed. I was right. Even as I made a leap over the wall, there was the chatter of a rifle burst exploding the air with its sharp, staccato crack-crack-crack. As I dropped below the wall ledge, the bricks behind me took the impact of the bullets meant for me.
  
  A second burst of fire came hard on the heels of the first as" he swept the length of the parapet with lead.
  
  The sound of muffled shouts came from below. The Arab on the roof fired another burst of bullets that whistled inches over the low wall. I moved in closer for protection.
  
  Now there were other, excited, shouting voices on the roof, all demanding to know what was happening. The relief guard tried to explain. Cursing, one of them interrupted him. "You are a fool! What you saw was most likely only a prowler! Did you have to shoot at him? Now the police will come to investigate! Your imbecilic actions mean we shall have to leave here!"
  
  "Ya aini!" the first one cried out protestingly in Arabic. "Upon my eyes! I saw the man! He was no prowler. He is still somewhere on that roof."
  
  Excitedly, he ranted on. "If I am a fool, then I am blessed by Allah! Look at Fawzi and Abdullah! Look at Khatib! Fool that I am, I'm still alive!"
  
  There was a pause, then: "My pardon, Fuad. You are right! Keep watch! Kill him if you can!"
  
  I heard footsteps racing down the stairs to the loft. Slowly, I crawled along behind the protection of the brick parapet to the far wall of the roof of the second building. It overlooked East 56th Street, three stories below. Rising to my knees, I peered over the edge.
  
  Within minutes, I saw three men run out of the entrance toward the sedan that had been parked in front of the building. Simultaneously, the rear doors of the car were flung open. Two of the men scrambled into the back of the sedan. The other jumped in beside the driver.
  
  Only seconds later, two more terrorists came out of the front door. Between them, staggering, blindfolded, hardly able to move of his own volition, was the man I'd been trying to rescue — the President of the United States.
  
  Two Al Asad Palestinian terrorists supported him by his armpits, one on each side of him. He sagged limply between them, barely moving his legs. Even from this height, and in the dark, I could see by his jerky, uncontrolled movements that he'd been drugged. The thought flashed through my mind that he was probably still unaware that he was now the head of the government of the United States.
  
  Roughly, they threw him head first into the back of the sedan, slamming the door shut just as the car pulled away from the curb. The two of them ran to a second car, parked directly behind where the sedan had been. One scrambled into the driver's seat. The other flung open the near side rear door just as four more of the Al Asad terrorists raced out of the building. Hastily, they flung themselves into the second sedan. I watched them pull away, helpless to act as the car roared off down the dark street, hard on the heels of the first vehicle. I watched until the cars reached the corner and turned out of sight.
  
  I was sick.
  
  I had been so close. Now it was all in vain. The Al Asad killers had escaped, together with their kidnap victim.
  
  I was now no better off than I had been twenty-four hours earlier. Perhaps even worse off, because the terrorists were alerted to the fact that we knew that they were hiding out in Manhattan and that we had almost closed in on them.
  
  If only that relief guard had been delayed by just a few minutes!
  
  If only Khatib had not been on the roof, lurking unseen and unmoving in the shadows as back-up for the guards!
  
  If only…
  
  Determinedly, I made myself stop thinking about what might have been and began to concentrate on what I had to do next.
  
  I needed to know where they were headed for. It was obvious that they must have a second hide-out prepared in case anything threatened the security of their first choice.
  
  Where was it? How could I find it?
  
  Even as the questions leaped into my mind, I realized that the man they'd left behind on the roof would know. They expected him to join them, didn't they?
  
  All I had to do was to get that information from him.
  
  The problem was that he had an automatic rifle, and he'd blast me with it if he even so much as caught a glimpse of me! Once again, I was hampered by the fact that I couldn't kill. I had to take him alive.
  
  And quickly.
  
  I was sure he wasn't going to hang around much longer — not with police sirens screaming their urgent cry in the distance and closing in on us.
  
  Sliding Hugo back into his sheath on my forearm, I reached under my jacket. My fingers curled around the butt of the 9mm Luger almost caressingly as I drew out the pistol.
  
  Now the advantages were more to my favor. I was hidden by the shadows and by the night, while the terrorist was still carelessly outlined by the light streaming out of the doorway behind him. He made a perfect target for me.
  
  I wasn't going to shoot to kill. I needed him alive. But I didn't give a damn how badly I was going to cripple him so long as he was in a condition to talk. I wanted the address of the fallback hideout — and come hell or high water, no matter what I had to do to him, I was going to get it!
  
  Carefully, I took a bead on his right shoulder. It was almost like being on a pistol range and shooting "slow fire." I had the time to take deliberate aim. The fight behind him made him a perfect silhouette. The distance was shorter than on the range. I couldn't miss.
  
  My grip tightened on the gun, my forefinger squeezing the trigger gently, my mind tensing expectantly for the sound of the shot.
  
  And then — at the last second, barely in time for me to relax my grip and hold my fire — he sagged to the roof. I held my aim, waiting, wondering what the hell had happened.
  
  Tamar came into view, instantly recognizable in the fight spilling out of the stairwell.
  
  "Nick?" she called out. "Are you all right? Answer me if you're out there!"
  
  I stood up.
  
  "I'm here," I replied.
  
  Hurdling the low wall, I came running to where Tamar was standing.
  
  In the dark, her eyes were luminous, fit by the wild fight of excitement and danger.
  
  "I've been hiding in the hall of a building near the corner," she explained breathlessly. "I practically went out of my mind waiting for something to happen! And then I heard that shooting! I thought they'd gotten you! And then I saw them all come running out of the building! I was sure they'd killed you. I thought…"
  
  She broke off, her eyes glistening with the wetness of tears she refused to shed. Suddenly, her arms were around me, and she was kissing me fervently. She whispered into my chest, "I can't tell you how I felt, except that I wanted to kill every one of them!"
  
  Still without looking up at me, she went on. "I almost ran into the building. It's completely empty, even the loft floor. Then I saw the stairs to the roof, and I saw him standing out here with a rifle in his hands. At first, I was going to shoot him. I don't know why I didn't, but I took the chance of trying to capture him alive. He didn't hear me come up the stairs, he was so intent on trying to locate you. I hit him with my gun."
  
  "I'm glad you didn't kill him," I told her. "I need him."
  
  "To find out where they've gone?" Tamar stepped away from me, all business once more.
  
  "Exactly."
  
  Tamar didn't have to ask any more. She knew the drill. She was aware of what I was going to have to do to extract the information from the terrorist who lay unconscious at our feet. The knowledge didn't faze her in the least. No wonder the Israelis considered her one of their top agents.
  
  "How do we get him out of here?"
  
  I bent to pick him up. Despite the sudden, fiery pain along the length of my back from Khatib's stab wound, I slung the man over my shoulder in a fireman's carry.
  
  "Downstairs," I said. "You lead the way."
  
  We passed the loft. The door was wide open. I could see the lights all burning brightly. The place was in a mess. We walked down the second flight of stairs, and then to the ground floor.
  
  As Tamar opened the door for me, the sound of police sirens filled the night with ear punishing wails. Squad cars came racing in from both ends of the street.
  
  One came to a tire squealing stop directly in front of us, the doors bursting open, cops tumbling into the street with guns in their hands.
  
  A voice shouted, "Drop that man! Get your hands in the air!"
  
  I just stood still, Tamar at my side.
  
  A police captain came running up, followed by two uniformed officers, their service revolvers aimed at me.
  
  "Put him down easily," he said, his voice taut with restrained emotion that showed how keyed up he was. "Don't make any sudden moves!"
  
  "I'm Nick Carter," I told him. "You've been informed about me."
  
  I couldn't make out the captain's face too well because of the glare in my eyes, but I could see the gold on his cap and the insignia on his uniform. "Are you in charge?"
  
  "Yes. I'm Captain Martinson," he said brusquely, suspicion in every word he said.
  
  "Look in my hip pocket," I directed. "There's an ID case to prove who I am."
  
  Hawk had had the card issued for me to carry. Normally, no AXE agent carries anything that will even indicate the existence of our organization or the fact that he's an agent, at all. AXE is so supersecret that only a very few of the most influential people know about us.
  
  This card carried three countersignatures: the scrawls of the heads of the FBI, CIA and NSA. It directed all law enforcement officers not only to cooperate with me, but to obey any commands that I might issue.
  
  Martinson snapped an order. "Leary, get that ID!"
  
  One of the patrolmen moved around behind me. One hand lifted the flap of my jacket to extract the card case from my hip pocket. All the while, the barrel of his .38 Police Special was pressed roughly into my back. I ignored the spasm of pain as the muzzle of his gun raked across the wound. I hoped Leary wasn't new on the Force. I didn't want a bullet in my back by a nervous, itchy-fingered cop. Even by mistake.
  
  Leary moved away from me, the gun in his hand no longer quite so threatening. Handing the ID case to Captain Martinson, Leary stepped to one side, never once having once taken his pistol off me for a second.
  
  Martinson flipped open the leather wallet to look at the laminated ID. He stepped close to me to hold the picture up beside my cheek. Carefully, he compared my face to the photo on the ID card.
  
  Finally, he nodded. He held out the ID case to me. I took it with my free hand. The terrorist was still draped over my shoulder. I shoved the case into my pocket.
  
  "Okay," said Martinson. "The word's come down about you. I've been told to give you my full cooperation if I ever ran into you. How can I help?"
  
  "Take your men out of here, but leave an unmarked police car behind. I'll need it."
  
  Martinson studied me for a second. He reached out. Grabbing the unconscious terrorist by the hair, he turned his head so that he could look at the man's face. He satisfied himself that the man was not the new President of the United States.
  
  The captain let go his grip and the terrorist's head fell limply.
  
  "You're not going to bring him in?"
  
  Captain Martinson was quick. He'd sized up the situation in -a single instant.
  
  "Maybe," I said.
  
  "Maybe?"
  
  "If he's still alive."
  
  I waited for Martinson's reaction. He didn't show any. He just nodded his head. Casually, he took out a handkerchief. Wiping his hand slowly, he said, "There's blood on that wallet. If it's yours, I can get a doctor to you in less than five minutes."
  
  "Later," I said curtly. I didn't want Martinson to know where I was going with the Al Asad fanatic.
  
  Martinson's answer was to spin away, shouting orders to the cops covering the street. One by one, squad car doors slammed, cars turned and left. In less than a minute, the street was empty except for Tamar, myself, the Palestinian terrorist slung unconscious over my shoulder and one empty Plymouth sedan with its engine running.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 3:27 a.m. East 56th Street. Manhattan.
  
  
  
  I threw the limp, unconscious figure of the Al Asad terrorist into the back of the sedan. Tamar and I climbed into the front. We turned out of 56th Street onto Second Avenue, heading toward the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Tamar kept looking out the back window to see if we were being followed by Martinson's men.
  
  "They won't tail us," I told her. "Captain Martinson's smart enough to know when something's too big for him to fool around with."
  
  Tamar turned back.
  
  "Where are you going?"
  
  I spotted what I was looking for. I pulled the sedan over to the side of the street, next to a public pay phone.
  
  "Keep an eye on him," I told her as I stepped out of the car. "I don't trust these bastards an inch. He may be faking it."
  
  Tamar nodded, turning to face the unconscious Arab, the automatic pistol in her hand pointing steadily at his head.
  
  The telephone had one of the new, all-metal, stainless steel push button mechanisms. I punched the number with my forefinger and waited while it rang twelve times. The voice that answered finally was filled with sleep — and irate. It spewed out a torrent of abuse.
  
  "Knock it off, Sal," I interrupted. "I need you."
  
  Big Sal fell silent. He knew when to talk and when to listen. This was one of the times to listen. I spelled out what I wanted from him.
  
  There was a minute of quiet on his part, then he said, with surprise in his voice, "You really want a man like that, Carter?"
  
  "I wouldn't ask for him if I didn't. Don't tell me you can't produce him. I know better."
  
  I could almost hear the sigh of resignation as he gave in. He said gruffly, "All right, he's yours. Take down this address. From where you're calling me, it's maybe a forty-minute drive. Just watch the streets at the end. You could get yourself lost if you ain't careful."
  
  I wrote down the directions and repeated them out loud.
  
  "You got it," Big Sal said. "The guy you want will be waiting there for you. He'll do the job. Just do me one favor, okay?"
  
  "What's that?"
  
  "Don't ask him his name. When he's through, let him go and, for God's sake, don't try to follow him! He's funny that way. He don't like for no one to know too much about him."
  
  "You pampering your button men these days, Sal?"
  
  "Button man! Christ, he's no button man, Carter. He's crazy, that's what he is! And he's good at what he does. He's the best. You can't find guys like him no more! That's why nobody hassles me. They gimme any trouble, they know I'm gonna turn him loose on them!"
  
  "All right, Sal," I promised. "I won't say a word to him."
  
  I hung up and went back to the car.
  
  Big Sal hit it on the nose. It was exactly thirty-seven minutes later when we pulled up behind a big, ramshackle warehouse. Three tractor-trailers were parked randomly near the loading docks. Near one end of the building, there was a doorway cut into a huge, overhead steel shutter.
  
  I parked next to the nearest of the trucks and heaved the Arab onto my shoulder again. Tamar led the way, her pistol still in her hand. Six steps led up to the loading dock platform. The door was open. We went in.
  
  Inside the warehouse, there were only a few electric drop-lights shedding a filtered, yellow light that barely dispelled the gloom. Most of the interior was in darkness. Without warning, a shadowy figure stepped out in front of us. I came to a halt.
  
  He was skinny. I doubt if he was more than five-feet-four in height. His face was so pitted with old acne scars that it looked like he'd been savaged with baseball cleats by a madman.
  
  He gestured at us to follow him, and, without waiting to see if we would, he turned and walked back into the depths of the warehouse. Along each side of the long aisles, running the length of the warehouse, crates were stacked to the height of a two story building. The Arab's weight grew heavier on my shoulder. The wound along the length of my back began to throb in painful waves. My overstrained arm and shoulder muscles started to cramp up.
  
  The room we finally came to was tucked away in the inner recesses of the warehouse, the aisles forming a maze that made it impossible for anyone to find it unless he knew exactly where he was going.
  
  Inside the room, Big Sal's man indicated that I was to put down my burden. I dropped the still unconscious terrorist onto the floor.
  
  "You want she should stay?"
  
  I was surprised at his voice. It was light and pleasant, without overtones of menace or threat.
  
  I turned to Tamar. "It's not going to be anything nice to watch," I said, waiting for her to react.
  
  Tamar's nod was matter of fact. "I'll wait outside."
  
  She shut the door behind her, the gesture acknowledging her acceptance of what had to be done and making no judgments about it. Big Sal's man looked at me. "You gonna watch?"
  
  "I want to ask him some questions," I said, meeting his eyes.
  
  He thought about it for a moment. "Okay," he said. He bent down beside the Arab, flipping the body over so that the terrorist was on his back. Swiftly, he bound the man's legs at the knees and ankles with two lengths of thin, nylon cord. He turned him over onto his back, tying his arms in front of him with lashings at the man's elbows and wrists. When he was through, it looked as if the terrorist's arms were held together in prayer.
  
  "Put him over there," Big Sal's man said.
  
  I lifted the Arab, slinging him into the chair. It was a monster, made of solid oak, braced and bolted to the floor. Directly overhead was a droplight with a green shade directing its fight downward in a stark, powerful beam.
  
  Big Sal's man moved swiftly. It took him only seconds to bind the Arab upright in the chair. The man might be able to squirm, but that would be about all he could do. No matter how much he tried, he wouldn't be able to move more than an inch.
  
  "Now?"
  
  I nodded. "Go ahead."
  
  Big Sal's man took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. He turned to the Arab. Almost gently he touched the burning tip of the cigarette to the man's hand and held it there.
  
  The Arab's unconscious body jerked involuntarily. Big Sal's man knocked the ash off the end of the cigarette. Deliberately, he drew on it until it glowed red. His left hand pulled apart the terrorist's bound hands and he thrust the burning coal into the man's right palm.
  
  A scream burst from the Arab's throat as he came awake. His body thrashed violently against the nylon cord that held him helpless.
  
  Once more, Big Sal's man drew on the cigarette, paying no attention to the screams that came one after another from the terrorist's mouth. This time, he pulled the man's head back. He thrust the red hot cigarette end against the man's left cheek.
  
  A desperate sound, like the high pitched whinny of a horse in sudden agony spewed frantically from the man's strained vocal cords. His head twisted spastically from side to side in a tendon straining effort to get away from the pain.
  
  Big Sal's man stepped back and looked at his victim. He threw the cigarette butt on the floor, crushing it out with the heel of his shoe.
  
  "Try him now," he said. There was no emotion at all in his voice.
  
  I stepped up to the Arab.
  
  "Where did they go?" I asked in Arabic.
  
  His screams turned to curses. Vitriolic, passionate filled with hatred, he cursed me with a fluency I hadn't heard since I was in the bazaars of Cairo. Blindly, he spat at me.
  
  "I think you better let me at him again." Big Sal's man had a slight smile on his face. "I don't think he's ready to talk yet."
  
  As I stepped away, a slim knife appeared in his hand. It was a simple pocket knife, the kind you can buy in almost any tobacco or notions store for about a dollar and eighty cents. However, I noticed that the blade had been filed down so that it wasn't any more than a quarter of an inch wide and barely three inches long.
  
  Big Sal's man leaned over the terrorist. It seemed as if he just touched the honed blade to the fingers of the Arab's right hand, drawing the blade across the pulp of his fingertips. Skin and flesh opened smoothly under its touch. Blood welled out in a long stream. He made another cut and another, never stopping his actions for a moment. The weapon became a miniature flaying knife, and all the while his movements were so smoothly coordinated that they seemed almost rhythmical. In seconds, the terrorist's hand was slashed to ribbons.
  
  I turned away, disgusted.
  
  In my time, I've seen and done one hell of a lot of things. I knew that this was just the beginning. The Palestinian was tough, and Big Sal's man enjoyed his work. I suddenly realized that he had no intention of bringing the terrorist to the breaking point any sooner than he had to.
  
  Taking out one of my cigarettes, I lit it and tried to block my ears against the inhuman sounds that were beginning to come from behind me.
  
  Kismet is an Arab belief in the inevitability of Fate. I was struck by the strangeness of coincidence and circumstances that had brought these two together in this isolated room — one from halfway around the world, from a teeming, crowded, poverty-stricken refugee camp in the Middle East, the other from the swarming streets of a Brooklyn neighborhood that was just as poverty-stricken in its own way.
  
  The Palestinian and Big Sal's man were about the same age. They were both in their late twenties. The Palestinian had a blind, fervent belief in the fanatical teachings of Sharif al-Sallal, the new Prophet leading a holy Jihad against Israel, who had promised his followers a land of their own. That neither Jordan nor Egypt — nor Lebanon nor Syria — would accede even an inch of their own territories made no difference to the Palestinian. The Jihad gave him an excuse to kill, not caring whether his victims were innocent women and children or fighting men. What he was after was the deep-rooted, gut satisfaction he found in the act of killing savagely. Al Asad gave him a moral flag to wave; to use the words "loyalty," "patriotism," and "piety" as a cover for his vicious instincts.
  
  He liked to kill. It was that simple.
  
  And Big Sal's man, who had no deep-rooted beliefs, was — in his own way — as fanatical as the terrorist. He killed and tortured for the simple, sadistic pleasure he got from it but he required someone to give him the order to do it. Today, he gave his loyalty to Big Sal. Tomorrow, it might be someone else. On his own, he could not justify his twisted desires to cause pain and hurt to others. Big Sal had told him to make the terrorist talk. He would do his best — which was damn good — to see that the man talked, but first he would satisfy his blood lust.
  
  That was the key word. Blood-lust. The two of them had it. And the world was full of others like them.
  
  Blood lust.
  
  Christ!
  
  I included myself. I used Big Sal, so, in effect, his man was acting for me. And through me, he was no more than a tool for the government of the United States. We needed the information locked in the mind of the terrorist. The end justifies the means. Right?
  
  It was a hell of a thought to play with.
  
  Behind me, the screams began to sound hoarse. I turned back and touched Big Sal's man on the shoulder. I'd had enough.
  
  "Let me talk to him again."
  
  He looked up at me, the smile on his face changing to disappointment, but he was just as polite as before.
  
  "Go ahead," he said easily, turning away.
  
  I could hardly look at the terrorist as the Arabic words came out of my mouth. Both his eyes were closed, burned shut by a cigarette. His face had been slashed to bits, shreds of skin and flesh hung slackly from his forehead and cheeks. His hands were still bound in an attitude of prayer, only now they looked like a sculpted carving of pure, bright ruby, washed by the red liquid of blood.
  
  His breath came in deep, uncontrolled gasps.
  
  "Where are they?" I asked. He tried to shake his head.
  
  I said, "If Allah had not willed it, you would not be here."
  
  I said, "If it was not to be, it would not be. It is your Kismet."
  
  In Arabic, the words sounded musical. He responded to his ingrained beliefs with almost a sigh of relief.
  
  This time, when he spoke, the words were not curses, but I could hardly make out what he was saying. I asked him again.
  
  "Where are they?"
  
  Brokenly, he repeated the address. It was an apartment house in the mid-eighties on the Upper East Side.
  
  "What is the number of the apartment?"
  
  "Twelve-H," he gasped.
  
  "Tell me about the place."
  
  "I have never been there," he gasped, trying to shake the pain. "I cannot tell you."
  
  I stood back.
  
  "You want me to go on?" asked Big Sal's man. I shook my head.
  
  "No."
  
  "You through with him?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  He waited for me to tell him that he could have him — or that I would take him with me. He wanted me to make the decision for him, and I was damned if I would.
  
  I just turned and walked out of the room, leaving the two of them together.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  
  
  
  Friday. 5:30 a.m. The Georgian Hotel. New York.
  
  
  
  After the doctor finished working on the wound in my back, I put in a call to Hawk. It went through immediately, in spite of the early morning hour. I knew Hawk would be wide awake. The tension of the last two days must have been grueling for him, keying him up to a point where sleep would be impossible.
  
  Briefly, I outlined what had happened. Hawk interrupted me.
  
  "We know," he said, angrily. "We've received a message from the terrorists not more than half an hour ago. Nick, they're madder than hell at what you tried to do!"
  
  "It almost worked," I pointed out.
  
  "Almost isn't good enough," Hawk snapped back brusquely. "Results are all that count."
  
  I still hadn't told him about the Palestinian I'd taken with me nor about the information he was forced to reveal. Somehow, my instincts made me keep my mouth shut for the time being. I let him go on.
  
  "They've cut back on the deadline, Nick," he said somberly. "They want an answer from us no later than noontime today!"
  
  "What's the answer going to be?" I asked.
  
  "The same as before," said Hawk. "You know that we can't knuckle under to their demands. What it means is that the President of the United States dies at noon today…"
  
  "…unless I can rescue him before then," I pointed out.
  
  "No," said Hawk firmly. "Not you. The NSA and the FBI are against your going on by yourself. They want to throw their own manpower into the situation."
  
  "That's stupid," I said angrily. "Give them enough time, and maybe they could possibly work something out. The trouble is that we don't have any time! Not one extra minute!"
  
  "It's the way they feel, Nick."
  
  "Are you telling me that I'm off the assignment?"
  
  "Not exactly. They're sending up a team of hand-picked men for you to brief. After that, you'll be pulled out."
  
  "It's wrong. It's wrong because it won't work," I protested, still angry and resentful. "You know that as well as I do."
  
  "I was outvoted." That was all the explanation that Hawk would give, but it was enough to tell me that he was still on my side.
  
  "Then until they get here, it's still my assignment?"
  
  "They're on the way, now," Hawk informed me.
  
  "Is it still my assignment?" I wanted a definite answer from him.
  
  "It is — until they get there," Hawk said. "What do you have in mind?"
  
  "I know where they're hiding out," I told him. "I want another chance at them."
  
  "Is that why you didn't bring in the terrorist, Nick?" Hawk must have gotten a copy of Captain Martinson's report telexed directly to him from NYPD Headquarters the moment Martinson turned it in.
  
  "Yes."
  
  "He told you where to find them?"
  
  "Not willingly."
  
  "Why didn't you bring him to the hospital, Nick? It wouldn't have been so messy — or taken you so long."
  
  Damn Hawk! He didn't need to be shown pictures to know that I'd had to torture the terrorist to get the information out of him.
  
  "Is this line clean?" I asked abruptly.
  
  "There's no one here listening to our conversation, if that's what you mean," Hawk answered. "Who is it that you don't trust?"
  
  "I don't know, yet," I replied. "Anyhow, that's why I didn't bring the man to the hospital. I can't prove it, but I have a damned strong feeling that Al Asad was expecting me!"
  
  "Say that again?" Hawk said in surprise.
  
  "They were waiting for me," I said bluntly. "That setup on the roof of the building they were in — it was a trap for me! I got to thinking about it later on. With two armed guards patrolling the roof, why would this Khatib character be lying back in hiding — except to set up an ambush? You don't do that unless you know someone's going to come along. The guards were only bait, sir; and it almost worked. Khatib came pretty damn close to knocking me off!"
  
  "Are you implying that someone here tipped them about you?"
  
  I was angry enough not to pull any punches. "I'm not implying it, sir; I'm making a flat statement! Someone told them to expect me!"
  
  "Who?"
  
  "I don't know."
  
  "You think there's a traitor among us?"
  
  "Figure it out for yourself, sir. How'd they know far enough in advance that the President and the Vice-President would be meeting the press in the Rose Garden at that exact time? They had to be able to open fire at the precise moment the President and the Vice-President were there talking to the reporters. They could have driven that route a hundred times or more, firing off mortar shells every damn time they came to the intersection — and still not have hit anybody because most of the time no one's there to be hit! Someone had to give them a signal!"
  
  There was a long pause. Then, Hawk said calmly, "Go on, Nick."
  
  "How'd they know exactly how to time their activities to be able to kidnap the Speaker of the House simultaneously? Who told them where he'd be? I'll buy one coincidence, sir. Not two! And definitely not three!"
  
  "Three?"
  
  "The trap on the roof. They sent a knife fighter after me. Not a gunman. They'd been told enough about me to know that, if possible, I can't help taking on a man with the same kind of weapon he uses to come after me. I know it's a bad habit, but I have it. I could have shot the son-of-a-bitch, you know. Wilhelmina packs enough of a wallop to blow a man apart with one bullet in the head. Sure, it would have alerted the others, but I wouldn't have been risking my life the way I did. That Khatib was good with a knife, sir! One of the best! They were told about me — and my habits!"
  
  "You have any ideas on the subject?"
  
  "Try the State Department," I said. "There are still a few, die-hard pro-Arabists tucked away in there. And there's still a hell of a lot of oil money around with a lot of influence in Washington that doesn't give a damn about what happens just as long as their profits keep rolling in. Arabian oil is more important to them than anything else — including our country!"
  
  "That's a serious accusation, Nick."
  
  "If you don't like the State Department, try the Pentagon, sir. Too many of those generals and admirals are not exactly gung-ho about supporting the Israelis. They may admire them for the kind of efficient army they have, but that's as far as they'll go. They'd rather train and support the other side."
  
  Grudgingly, Hawk conceded the point. "All right, Nick. How deep do you think the leaks go?"
  
  "I think that word of everything I do is reported to the terrorists, sir, starting from the time we got the information from that boy in the hospital."
  
  "Is that why you didn't take him there?"
  
  "Yessir! If I'd taken that Al Asad guard to the hospital, I might have gotten the information out of him with serum a lot sooner than it took, but I'm damn sure the other side would have learned about it in no time at all! And they'd be off and running!"
  
  "All right," said Hawk. "What do you want to do?"
  
  "Go after them," I said simply.
  
  "Alone?"
  
  "That's the only way to get him out alive!" I was angry. Not at Hawk, but at the whole situation. At the kind of organizational thinking that believes if one man is good, then two are better and ten is best. Committee thinking and group action. Chain of command, flow chart, divided responsibilities, reports in quadruplicate initialed as having been read and approved before being passed up the line! "If they send an army of cops and Federal agents, they'll get the man killed!"
  
  Without too much reluctance, Hawk agreed with me.
  
  "Well," he said, "I've already told you that you're in charge until their men get there. What can I do to help you right now?"
  
  "I need some special equipment just as soon as you can get it to me."
  
  As briefly as I could, I told Hawk what it was I wanted. When I was through talking, he said, "You'll have it. I'll need an hour for the AXE lab men to assemble it. Figure another hour to get it to Andrews Air Force Base and then to New York by military jet. Where do you want to meet the courier plane?"
  
  "LaGuardia."
  
  "Be there in an hour and a half. Let's say, seven o'clock. Well deliver."
  
  "I appreciate it," I said. Hawk knew I meant his support.
  
  He hesitated. Then he said, "I think it's a damn clever scheme, Nick."
  
  "If it works," I pointed out. "As you said, nothing counts but results." I hung up before I heard his reply.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 5:45 a.m. The Georgian Hotel.
  
  
  
  If Big Sal was unhappy the first time I awoke him a few hours earlier, he was livid with rage when I made my second phone call to him. He calmed down only when I told him how important it was to me, and that I'd leave him alone after this.
  
  "A van? Painted white with a sign on it? At this time of morning?"
  
  "You've got three hours," I told him. "That should give you enough time to pick one up and to have it painted."
  
  "You don't care it's goin' to be hot?" he ventured cautiously.
  
  "I don't care if you steal it from the Police Department! Just get it for me!"
  
  "Anything else?" he asked sarcastically.
  
  "Yes. I want a white coverall uniform. With the same kind of lettering stitched on it that you put on the van."
  
  Big Sal let out a roar.
  
  "For Christ's sake, Carter! Maybe I can get you a van, maybe not. It all depends on my boys. But the coveralls? The embroidered letters? I don't have no tailors workin' for me!"
  
  "Pick it up from a laundry, Sal. They start early in the morning. One of the girls will do the sewing."
  
  "That's all you want, huh? You sure, now?"
  
  "For the time being," I said. "Have the van and the uniform on the 61st Street side of the Regency in three hours. Near the garage entrance."
  
  Big Sal let loose a few swear words in Italian, so I reminded him that I spoke the language. He hung up irritably.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 66:02 a.m. The Georgian Hotel.
  
  
  
  Duane was even harder to get on the telephone at that hour than Big Sal, I let the phone ring until I finally heard his sleepy voice in my ear.
  
  "Hey, man," he said, not too happily, when he identified my voice, "how come you gettin' this cat out of his nice warm bed this time a' day?"
  
  "I need your help, Duane."
  
  "Oh, wow, man! Like I almost had Wesley try to cut me bad 'cause I turned you onto him. What're you tryin' to do to me?"
  
  "Nothing like that, Duane. This one should be easy."
  
  I told him about the apartment house in the mid-eighties. "I need a floor plan of that building, Duane. I need to know the layout of apartment twelve-H. You have any customers in that building?"
  
  Duane came wide awake. Warily, he said, "Man says somethin' to you just one time — I got me a big mouth an' you got a long memory! Gonna keep it shut from now on. Yeah, I got a client lives in that buildin'. How come you askin' that?"
  
  "I want to know where the service entrances are located. Can I get in through the garage entrance? Where are the service elevators? Most of all, I have to know the layout of the apartment. I need your help, Duane."
  
  "You askin' me to take you there?"
  
  "That's right."
  
  "Sheet, man," he muttered, "now I know I gonna keep my mouth shut from now on!"
  
  "You know the layout of the H-line apartments?" I asked.
  
  "Hell, you know I know the layout," Duane answered, still with a touch of surliness in his voice. "Them H-line apartments all the same. Mah man lives in one of them. Ten-H. Hows about I just draw you some pictures?"
  
  "I'll pick you up around eight o'clock," I said, ignoring his request and hanging up.
  
  I called Big Sal back. Without giving him a chance to explode, I said, "Sal, make that two uniforms," and pushed down on the disconnect bar of the phone, cutting off his angry protests.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 7:06 a.m. LaGuardia Airport.
  
  
  
  Tamar drove the unmarked police car that Captain Martinson had left for us. During the twenty-minute drive to LaGuardia I forced myself to relax. I had had less than four hours sleep in the last two and a half days. My fingertips were still raw from the hand over hand climb along the bridge escarpment that ran from one building to the next. My shoulders and arms were knotted tight with the dull ache of overstrained muscles, and all down the length of my back, the knife wound burned in spite of the local anesthetic the doctor had applied before he stitched it up and taped on a dressing.
  
  I wasn't just tired. I was burned out. Yet, I still had to face almost five more hours of tension and danger. After that, it wouldn't matter. The President would either be alive and safe — or he'd have been executed by the Al Asad terrorists.
  
  Twelve o'clock. That was the deadline hour. Whatever I had to do had to be done by that time — or it wouldn't matter at all.
  
  Slumping down in the front seat of the car beside Tamar, I forced my mind into an Alpha-state to clear it of the myriad of problems chasing themselves around in my brain. And then, with my mind cleared, I sank into a brief, but intensely restful sleep induced by auto-hypnosis.
  
  When we pulled up in front of the terminal building, I left Tamar in the sedan while I headed for a bank of telephones.
  
  I called Hawk again.
  
  "Where are you?" was his first question.
  
  "LaGuardia. Is the equipment on its way?"
  
  "It should be there by now. The courier jet took off more than half an hour ago. Have you checked the Butler Aviation ramp?"
  
  "Not yet. I'm calling to give you the address I'm headed for. But, before I do, I'd like your assurance that you won't pass it along to the FBI or National Security until I've had a crack at them."
  
  "You think something might happen to you?"
  
  "It's a possibility," I admitted.
  
  "What are the chances of that happening?" Hawk asked dispassionately.
  
  "Damned good," I said. "The odds are all in their favor. There are at least eight of them — maybe more-holed up there. They've been alerted to me. They know that I'm right on their heels. And they've had time to set up a defense against me."
  
  I didn't add that I was completely exhausted, both physically and mentally. Or that I was wounded. I didn't want Hawk to pull me off the assignment. He was the only one with authority to do so. Not only did he have the authority, but he also had the knowledge of how I planned to get into the terrorists' stronghold. He could easily substitute another AXE agent to carry out my plan.
  
  Almost anxiously, I waited for him to make up his mind.
  
  "How tired are you, Nick?" he asked quietly.
  
  Damn Hawk! It was as if he had a sixth sense that could read my mind.
  
  "I've been more tired than this, sir," I said, avoiding a direct answer.
  
  "Hurt?"
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  "How badly?"
  
  He was forcing me to make an objective evaluation of myself. I didn't want to do that. I knew that if I did, in all honesty I would have to ask for a replacement.
  
  "I've been hurt worse before, sir." Again, I avoided answering his question.
  
  He threw the big one at me.
  
  "Do you want a replacement?"
  
  At least he trusted my judgment enough to let me make the decision.
  
  "No, sir," I said, in complete honesty.
  
  Hawk had phrased the question so that I could give him that answer. He could have asked me if I thought another AXE agent could do the job more efficiently. In all honesty, at this point, I'd have had to answer yes. Mentally, I went through a list of at least four other AXE agents, all of whom were good enough to be trusted with the assignment now that I'd set it up. None of them needed sleep as desperately as I did. None of them were tired and wounded.
  
  My answer to Hawk was truthful. I didn't want a replacement!
  
  I said again, "No, sir, I don't want a replacement. I think I can do the job."
  
  "That's good enough for me," Hawk said.
  
  We dropped the subject. I gave him the location and apartment number of the new Al Asad hideout. If Hawk didn't hear from me by eleven o'clock, federal agents would be swarming all over the building. Not that it would do the kidnap victim any good. No frontal assault could rescue him alive. All that would happen is that the terrorists wouldn't escape. They were fanatical enough to kill him and take their chances with their own fives.
  
  Our single and only objective was to save the life of the new President of the United States — the man who'd been Speaker of the House until two days ago.
  
  When we finished talking, Hawk said only one word: "Luck."
  
  We both knew that I'd need it. Good as my scheme was, it still boiled down to one man invading a stronghold defended by armed and desperate men who would shoot to kill on the slightest suspicion. And right now, after my last attempt, they were trigger-happy!
  
  Soberly, I hung up the telephone and went back to the sedan.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  
  
  
  Friday. 7:21 a.m. LaGuardia Airport.
  
  
  
  The pilot of the military jet was an AXE agent. Hawk had taken no chances that the other services would try to take over my assignment. Actions speak a hell of a lot louder than words do. This was his reassurance that he'd keep his promise to me until the last possible minute.
  
  I didn't know the pilot's name, but I'd met him in Hawk's office a few times when Hawk had me brief the man for a mission.
  
  No identification was necessary, and he made no attempt to introduce himself. Shoving the heavy, black fabric suitcase at me, he said, "It's all in there. Everything you asked for." Then, grinning, he commented, "It's a hell of an idea. Frankly, I'd never have thought of it myself."
  
  I made no answer. I was too busy unzipping the fid of the suitcase to check its contents. It seemed to be all there, but whether it was in working condition I wouldn't know until the time came to use it. I'd have to trust implicitly in the AXE lab men, because if it didn't work — it meant my life!
  
  Zipping up the lid, I hefted the suitcase, said "Thanks," and brought the bag back to the waiting sedan. Tamar had remained inside, and had kept the motor running. I tossed the suitcase onto the back seat. As I climbed in beside her, she spun the car around and headed for the West Side.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 7:43 a.m. Manhattan.
  
  
  
  Duane was waiting inside the vestibule, looking out the glass door panels of the old brownstone building where he lived. Tamar pulled the car in toward the curb. I pushed the door open. Duane recognized me and came trotting down the long flight of outside steps. The two blacks and the Puerto Ricans weren't in sight. Maybe it was too early in the morning for them. Duane bent his lanky body, climbing into the back seat beside the fabric suitcase. He didn't look especially happy to see me. He made no pretense of trying to smile.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 8:02 a.m. 61st Street at Park Avenue.
  
  
  
  We turned off Park Avenue onto 61st Street and came to a stop just in front of the white van, double parked beside the garage entrance to the Georgian Hotel. Tamar blew the horn twice. I waved my arm out the open window for the van to follow us.
  
  Tamar made another right turn onto Madison Avenue, the van right behind us. We went on up Madison Avenue, past 72nd Street, past the Whitney Museum on 75th Street and P. S.6 at 82nd Street. A few blocks further on, I directed Tamar to make another right turn. We came to a stop on a quiet street.
  
  I climbed out of the sedan and walked back to the van which had come to a stop directly behind us. Big Sal opened the door and got out, blinking in the sunlight.
  
  I looked the van over. It was a standard Econoline van, exactly like tens of thousands of others like it. The only difference was the paint job. This one was painted white, and on the sides and along the back were the letters that spelled out EXTERMINATING SERVICE.
  
  There was even a company name and address, which was more than I'd asked for.
  
  It was a perfect job. Much better than I'd hoped for. I turned to tell that to Big Sal. He was holding out two pair of white coveralls. The same lettering — EXTERMINATING SERVICE-was stitched on the back of each coverall, and over each breast pocket was a first name, embroidered in script with red thread.
  
  "You didn't have time to paint that lettering," I commented.
  
  "I didn't steal it, either," said Big Sal. Like Duane, he wasn't in a happy mood this morning. His voice was unfriendly and sour. "A couple of my boys went over to the place and talked nicely to the manager." Big Sal smiled at me without humor. I could see why most people didn't like him to smile at them. It would scare the hell out of the average guy. "He said there wasn't no rush about bringin' it back. He even threw in the coveralls for free."
  
  "Your boys are pretty good talkers," I said sarcastically.
  
  Big Sal stared right back at me. "Naw, they don't talk much, but they get the idea across real fast, you know what I mean?" back. Unstrapping the piece of equipment, he handed it to me. I slung the heavy, cylindrical container over my shoulder by its canvas strap.
  
  Duane came out onto the sidewalk. He stood beside me, shaking his head.
  
  "Man, I just don't like this scene," he muttered almost to himself. "Jus' don't like it at all!"
  
  Neither did I. But it had to be done. There was no other way to get to them.
  
  "Let's go," I said again, curtly. Duane shrugged and started for the service entrance beside the garage.
  
  The service entrance led into the basement. There was a short corridor between the outer door and the inner door, and at the inner doorway there was a half-desk manned by a neatly dressed security attendant. He was wearing a crisply pressed uniform with a badge pinned to his chest, but he carried no weapon on his belt. He looked up questioningly at us.
  
  " 'sterminators," said Duane.
  
  The security attendant was black. He looked Duane over with hard eyes. Then he looked at me.
  
  "You ain't the regular exterminators," he said suspiciously. "How come?"
  
  Duane shrugged. "Man, I don't know nothin'. We just get a name 'n address, we go there. You dig?"
  
  In a rough voice, I snapped at Duane, "Let's get the shit out of here. I ain't gonna fight to get into no buildin' where they don't want me. The boss can argue it out with them. We got other places to do this morning."
  
  The guard's suspicions were partially allayed.
  
  "What apartment?"
  
  Duane gave his client's apartment number and name.
  
  "Ten-H," he said. The guard checked the name on his master list.
  
  Grudgingly, he gave in. "I guess it's okay," he said.
  
  "But, I better ring them first to let them know you're on the way up."
  
  He was reaching for the phone when I shoved Tamar's automatic pistol under his nose. He stared at the round, menacing barrel of the .32 Beretta that was just inches from his face.
  
  "Don't touch it," I said, coldly. The guard looked up at me, pure hostility shining out of his eyes. Slowly, he took his hand away from the interphone.
  
  Duane let out a sound.
  
  "Take him out to the van," I told Duane. "Tie him up and leave him in the back."
  
  The guard's face was a study in hatred.
  
  "You're gonna cost me my job," he said, making it a statement of fact, but not asking for pity. The man had pride.
  
  I shook my head. "No," I said. Still keeping the gun on him, I took out and showed him the special ID card I'd been carrying since I started on the mission. He read it carefully. He looked up at me.
  
  "That real?"
  
  "It's real."
  
  "Then you can put the gun away," he said. "I won't cause you no trouble."
  
  I knew that if I had Duane take him out to the van and tie him up, I'd be playing it safe. But something in the man's face told me that I'd be crippling him as a person if I did that.
  
  I returned the pistol to my hip pocket. The guard had gotten to his feet.
  
  "Sit down," I said. "I'll take a chance on you."
  
  Mistrustfully, his eyes examined my face. "You're not gonna have me tied up?"
  
  "Do I have to?"
  
  Slowly, he shook his head. "No. Ain't no need to do that. Just one question. This have anythin' to do with what I been readin' in the papers 'bout the President?"
  
  I knew he meant the assassination, not the kidnapping. For the past two and a half days, news of the kidnapping of the Speaker of the House had been kept from the press. No one knew how much longer it would be before the story broke wide open. In the meantime, the Presidential Press Secretary had been telling reporters that, because of stringent security precautions, the new President was at Camp David and would not make public or private appearances until events had settled down. As far as the public was concerned, no one knew about Al Asad's kidnapping of the man who was now Chief Executive Officer of the United States.
  
  "That's right," I said.
  
  The guard sat down in his chair. "You just tell me what I can do to help," he said, his eyes cold. "I was in Nam with an infantry outfit."
  
  "Just do your regular job," I told him. "And thanks."
  
  He shrugged it off. Duane and I left him sitting there as we headed down the corridor toward the service elevator.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 8:51 a.m. Upper East Side. Manhattan.
  
  
  
  The apartment dweller in Manhattan is a strange breed. He's more security conscious than anyone else in the world when it comes to protecting his abode. Two locks on his door are normal, three locks are more usual. Electronic alarms sell very well.
  
  The New York apartment dweller has every right in the world to be fearful. Break-ins are a normal way of life for him. He lives in daily fear of it happening to him personally. Every day, the newspapers print gory tales of apartments being broken into. Robbery, murder and rape are the results. Every New Yorker has friends whose apartments have been burglarized. Some several times. His insurance rates are high — if he can get insurance — because, in practically no case has there been a recovery of what was stolen.
  
  The average New York City apartment is locked, bolted and barred. First by a standard combination door lock and handle latch. Then there's the dead-bolt lock with its separate key. Between the dead-bolt lock and the door lock, you'll find a Fox police lock which traps a solid steel bar between the door and a metal plate recessed into the floor so that no one can smash down the door without using an axe or burn his way in with an acetylene torch.
  
  On the outside of the door, locks are often surrounded by a steel cover plate to prevent them from being ripped out of the door by an extractor tool. The bolts that hold the plate to the door have unslotted heads.
  
  A New Yorker's home is not only his castle, it's his fortress I Once he's inside, no one can get at him, with all the bolts and bars and chain locks he's put on his door.
  
  If you want to get in, trickery is the only way. He'll never open his door without first checking through the peephole to see who it is. Even then, he won't let you in. He'll open the door only to the width the chain guard allows, something like three inches.
  
  And he won't even open the door that much to someone he doesn't know.
  
  There's just one exception to the rule.
  
  New Yorkers not only fight a constant defensive battle against burglars — they fight a never-ending war against another enemy as well.
  
  Cockroaches.
  
  There's not a town house, tenement or apartment house — no matter how new — that doesn't have roaches. Roaches outnumber New Yorkers by thousands to one! They breed in the kitchens and basements of restaurants, diners and coffee shops that swarm all over the city. They breed in the garbage, in the cellars and in the very walls of the buildings themselves.
  
  Tear down an old structure to put up a new one, and the roaches escape to the buildings on each side. Put up a building and in no time the roaches are back again.
  
  There is an atavistic hatred and instinctive loathing for roaches that goes back in man's original pre-history, for the cockroach is the only land creature that's remained unchanged over the millions of years since life was formed on this planet. A female roach lays hundreds of eggs each time she drops them. In just a matter of days, each newly hatched female roach can drop hundreds of eggs of her own!
  
  Give them half a chance and they'll swarm you under. That's why the exterminator is the one man that every New Yorker is happy to see.
  
  He's the one man they'll open their doors to without question. He's the one man who has automatic entry into every apartment in the city.
  
  No one ever questions his credentials. His uniform and his cylindrical spray pump container open doors for him everywhere. That's why the "special equipment" I'd asked Hawk to provide me with was an exterminator's spray pump.
  
  Only this pump didn't contain insecticide.
  
  The liquid in it was a pressurized gas, developed by AXE lab technicians, that acted instantaneously. One whiff — no matter how slight — was enough to knock out anyone for at least twenty-four to thirty-six hours!
  
  The exterminator's uniform was my pass to get into the apartment now occupied by the fanatics of Al Asad. Once I got in, the gas in the spray pump would be the most effective weapon I could use against so many opponents! For my own protection, there was a miniature mask that barely fitted over my nostrils.
  
  * * *
  
  By now, the elevator approached the twelfth floor. Duane was sweating. I watched him carefully out of the corner of my eye and came to a decision.
  
  At this moment, he was worse than useless to me. I knew I wouldn't be able to depend on him in the slightest. What I had suspected before, now became a certainty in my mind. Duane was a junkie!
  
  He was hooked on the habit! In spite of his protests about not dealing in heroin, I could see by his nervous gestures and twitches, and by the perspiration breaking out on his face, that he needed a fix — and he needed one right now, badly.
  
  The doors slid open. Duane started to move. I caught him by the arm, stepping past him into the corridor.
  
  "Stay on," I said, pressing Tamar's gun into his hand. "Take this back to the girl in the car. And then, get the hell away from here!"
  
  The last glimpse I had of him was of a face paralyzed by fear. The elevator doors slid together, cutting him off from me.
  
  I set off down the corridor, the heavy canister slung over my left shoulder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  I knew they were watching me through the peephole. They probably had a man stationed there watching the corridor to see who got off the elevators. After what almost happened on East 56th Street, I was sure that they'd be more alert than ever before, and here in the apartment building they wouldn't be able to set guards in the hallway without attracting attention.
  
  I came up to the door and rang the bell. They made me wait a minute before opening it, pretending that someone had to come from the other room to answer the bell. All the time, I knew I was being carefully scrutinized.
  
  The door opened a few inches, to the limit of the brass chain.
  
  "Who is it?"
  
  "Exterminator," I said gruffly.
  
  "One minute, please."
  
  The door swung shut. I heard muffled voices and then the door swung partially open.
  
  A swarthy-faced young man in his late twenties stood blocking my view. He was dressed in a loose white shirt and dark grey trousers that didn't fit him too well. His black moustache disappeared into a three day growth of heavy black stubble.
  
  "We did not call for an exterminator," he said with a strong accent. His eyes probed mine suspiciously.
  
  I shrugged. "All I know is that you're on my list for this morning. Maybe somebody made a mistake."
  
  Pulling out a slip of paper from the breast pocket of my coveralls, I pretended to look at it. "That's what it says here," I told him, stuffing the paper back into my pocket. "Twelve-H. Friday morning."
  
  I started to turn away. "If you people don't want the place exterminated, it's no skin off my nose."
  
  He was in a quandary. He knew that turning away an exterminator would be strange behavior. He didn't want to call attention to apartment 12-H.
  
  "Come in," he said, finally making up his mind. He held the door wide. I walked in.
  
  "Where's the kitchen?" I asked.
  
  He gestured.
  
  I went out of the foyer into the living room. Two men sat sprawled in armchairs. One smoked a cigarette. He stared with animosity at me through the heavy fumes. I caught the distinctive smell of Gauloise tobacco. The pungent, almost acrid aroma made me recall the cafes of Algeria and Morocco. The men in the cafes look at strangers with the same kind of suspicion and hostility that he was showing now. Everyone not a friend was an enemy.
  
  Two men were standing by the picture windows that covered the far end of the living room wall. The drapes were almost completely drawn. One of the men stood in front of the narrow gap, peering down at the street twelve floors below with a pair of high-powered Navy binoculars. The other man turned and stared at me as I crossed to the kitchen.
  
  There was a feeling of tension in the room. As if all four of them were keyed to the breaking point. As if they were just waiting for something to trigger them into violence. As if they were anxious to release their frustrations by killing. There was death in the air in that room.
  
  In the kitchen, three men sat at the table over the remains of breakfast. Dirty dishes were piled on top of one another. They looked up at me as I came into the room, their eyes filled with the same suspicion and the same hostility that the others had shown.
  
  The man who'd opened the door for me was right on my heels.
  
  "It's the exterminator," he said, almost apologetically.
  
  One of the men at the table growled in Arabic. "You are stupid, Mashir. He could be any one. You take too many chances."
  
  One of the men came in from the living room. He came up to me, not stopping until he was a foot away. I caught the strong smell of body odor. Not only hadn't he shaved, he hadn't bathed in days. Without smiling, he stared into my face and snarled in Arabic, "Your mother is a dung-eating fornicator of wild donkeys! Your father was a diseased jackal! And you, yourself, are a foul-breathed sodomite and pederast!"
  
  I didn't let a flicker of expression show on my face. I smiled at him.
  
  "You got to speak English to me, Charlie," I said. "What's the trouble? You got roaches in the other rooms, too?"
  
  He let loose another flow of vile, Arabic insults, still staring angrily into my eyes. If he had said these words to anyone who knew Arabic, they'd have tried to kill him right then and there. I just shrugged my shoulders and turned to the man who'd let me in.
  
  "What's he saying?" I asked. "I can't do my job if I don't know what the complaint is."
  
  "He speaks no Arabic, Sulieman," Mashir said. "If he did, he would have tried to slit your throat."
  
  Sulieman shrugged. "It makes no difference. You shouldn't have let him in."
  
  They were speaking in Arabic. The two at the table were following every word. I stood there looking at one, then the other, as if I were completely befuddled.
  
  "I could not turn him away," Mashir protested. "It would have aroused comment."
  
  "We cannot let him go," Sulieman said.
  
  "Of course not," Mashir agreed. "To see so many foreigners in one apartment would certainly cause him to talk."
  
  One of the men at the table spoke up.
  
  "Kill him," he said. "Get him out of the way."
  
  "Later," said Mashir. "When we kill our prisoner."
  
  The words hit me like a trip hammer blow: when we kill our prisoner! They had no intention of releasing the President! They'd already made up their minds that our government's answer would be a refusal to comply with their demands. They were waiting only until the twelve o'clock deadline before assasinating him!
  
  They spoke freely, fully convinced that I didn't understand a word they were saying. I turned my back on all four of them, squatting down as if to look under the sink. I opened the cabinet door. Quickly, I slid the miniature gas mask over my nostrils, pressing the rubber edges to my nose and upper lip. The adhesive compound stuck tightly to my skin, forming an airtight seal.
  
  Not bothering to rise, I twisted the nozzle of the spray pump so that it faced in their general direction and pulled the trigger lever.
  
  There was the faintest hissing, a sound I could hardly hear. And then, almost instantaneously, as the pressurized gas jetted out into the room, out of the corner of my eye I saw the two men at the table slump forward, their heads striking hard on the breakfast plates in front of them.
  
  Mashir and Sulieman tumbled to the floor a second later, as limp as puppets whose strings have been carelessly dropped.
  
  I stood up.
  
  From the other room, someone called out, "What happened? What is that noise? Sulieman? Mashir?"
  
  "Come quickly!" I shouted in Arabic.
  
  I heard footsteps approaching at a run.
  
  I met him at the door with a squirt of gas in the face. He was one of the men who'd been at the window. The one who'd stared at me. The gas hit him full on. He rolled up his eyes, staggered and fell prone. His feet stuck out into the other room.
  
  Someone let out a shout of warning. I heard a bedroom door being flung open with a crash, and footsteps, muffled by carpeting, came running down the corridor.
  
  "Careful!" A voice shouted the warning in Arabic. "He has some kind of weapon!"
  
  More footsteps came running down the corridor. There was an excited babble of unintelligible ranting and shouting going on in the living room. I wished I could see what was happening. I still didn't know how many of the Al Asad terrorists were left.
  
  One voice rose hysterically above the others. "Do not leave the prisoner alone! If he comes after him, kill the man! Do you understand? Kill the prisoner!"
  
  That was it! I couldn't wait any longer. With the cannister banging at my hip, the slender tube of the long nozzle held ahead of me and with my finger holding down the release lever to spray gas fumes ahead of me, I ran out into the living room.
  
  One of them had time to get off a shot at me. It missed. I spun around in time to catch a man leaping at me, a knife in his hand. The gas hit him in mid-stride. He landed in a crumpled, unconscious heap at my feet.
  
  I'd have liked to lock down the trigger and roll the tank out into the middle of the room, but there was no latching device on the mechanism. I had to hold it down by hand.
  
  Crouched on the floor behind an armchair, I waited. Mentally, I counted. Four in the kitchen left three out there. Two of the three were down. Where was the last man — the one who'd fired at me?
  
  And how many were in the bedroom with their captive?
  
  Time was running out. I had to get to the guards in the bedroom while they were still in a state of confusion, before they could get themselves organized.
  
  I took the gamble. Rising to my feet with the spray nozzle in one hand ready to let loose another blast, I stepped into the middle of the living room floor.
  
  Nothing happened.
  
  I looked around, counting bodies. One lay by the kitchen entrance. The second man was still curled on the floor where he'd landed as he'd tried to attack me with his knife. The third man — where was he?
  
  I finally saw him. On the far side of the room, almost hidden by the floor length window drapes, his body lay inertly atop a Kalishnikov automatic rifle. He'd had only time to fire one shot at me before the gas had hit him.
  
  I'd gotten them all.
  
  Or had I?
  
  Cautiously, I began backing toward the corridor that led to the bedrooms. There still might be one in the living room that I couldn't see. Or one of them might be playing possum. I didn't have time to check them out.
  
  I turned and ran down the corridor. Quickly, I checked out the two bedrooms in which I knew the prisoner was not being held. If any of the terrorists were there, I wanted to know.
  
  They were both empty. So were the connecting baths.
  
  I checked out the guest bathroom. Empty.
  
  Now, I went back to the door of the room in which the President was being held captive.
  
  I didn't dare try the knob. I remembered what the orders to the guards had been: "If he comes after him, kill the man!"
  
  Quietly, I knelt down on the floor, trying to see if there was space enough between the bottom of the door and the sill, so that I could insert the tip of the nozzle. If I could do that, I could spray the room full of gas and knock out the guards before they knew what was happening. The gas wasn't lethal. All it would do would be to render them unconscious for twenty-four to thirty-six hours.
  
  Which meant it wouldn't harm the President either.
  
  There was practically no room. The bottom edge of the door actually pressed down the high pile of the wall-to-wall carpeting. I knelt down on both knees, putting my head close to the floor as I tried to slide the quarter-inch tip of the spray nozzle under the door.
  
  The brass tubing scraped gently along the bottom of the door. It was the faintest of sounds, but I stopped and waited, my breath coming in shallow, slow inhalations because of the tension built up in me. Every nerve was on edge.
  
  Nothing happened.
  
  Once again, I began to push the brass nozzle under the door, trying to get it into the room.
  
  And then, suddenly, the door was ripped back, flung wide open in one swift motion.
  
  I had barely time enough to see a hand swinging down. There was a gun in the hand and a frenzied face floating in the air above it.
  
  As if in ultra-slow motion, everything that happened to me in that fraction of a second seemed to take an eternity to occur. Each movement was like a long, drifting ballet movement performed under water.
  
  I tried to rise to my feet, to throw myself backwards away from the blow.
  
  The gun and the hand holding it slid smoothly out of my angle of vision. My head twisted away from the weapon. A knee floated into view and caught me under the chin. My head drifted up and to the side.
  
  Still in the slowest of slow motions, the downward sweep of the arm and hand and gun came back into my sight again, growing larger and larger until it filled my sight from horizon to horizon. An enormity of fist and gun and white, tensed knuckles swept inexorably toward my skull.
  
  Blackness enfolded me, lit by pinpoints of brilliant flashes of crimson and bright white, like an electronic strobe winking rapidly on and off in a desert night.
  
  For one millisecond, I felt my muscles suddenly and unwillingly relax, and then I was so deep into the blackness that I knew no more.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 10:42 a.m. Apartment 12-H. Upper East Side.
  
  
  
  The face looming in my sight was dark and heavily stubbled with a two day growth of beard. It was as if I were looking at it on a giant movie screen from the first row. I could see every hair magnified to an enormous size.
  
  There was a moustache under the hooked, Semitic nose, and the face was oval, with a weak, receding chin.
  
  Then the face drew back and I could see the pear-shaped, heavy body on which it rested.
  
  Sahrif al-Sallal! The leader of Al Asad.
  
  I'd never expected to see him. Not in a situation like this. Surely, he must know that he and his men could never escape from this last hide-out. Or did he believe differently? If he didn't, if he knew he couldn't escape, it could only mean that he expected to die — that he sought martyrdom deliberately.
  
  The brown eyes never stopped watching me. Now he said, "You are awake?"
  
  I didn't have to make a reply.
  
  My eyes flicked around the room. I was back in the living room, lying on the oversized sofa, my arms and legs bound. The miniature gas mask was gone from my face. I smelled the sharp odor of the ammonia which they'd pressed under my nose to bring me back to consciousness.
  
  Sharif al Sallal stood over me. About ten feet away, holding an automatic rifle trained on my gut, was a terrorist. His white shirt was baggy around the middle. His black pants were held up by a knotted necktie. They were wrinkled and too long for him, sagging over his shoes. Like the others, he needed a shave. And like the others, he had a wild, merciless look in his eyes.
  
  Sallal spoke gravely, his voice high-pitched for a man as heavy set as he was.
  
  "I have been told that you are Nick Carter. Is that true?"
  
  "Yes." I wondered where he'd gotten that information.
  
  He rubbed the stubble on his face with his right hand. Being unshaven, and yet beardless, seemed to be a symbol among the Palestinian guerillas. Yasir Arafat had set the style for them just as Fidel Castro's beard had been a symbol for Latin-American revolutionaries.
  
  He turned serious eyes on me.
  
  "Are you Jewish, Carter?"
  
  What the hell kind of a question was that to ask?
  
  I shook my head. "No."
  
  Al Sallal seemed puzzled. "Then why are you fighting for them?" he asked. "Why do you oppose the destiny of a people who are fighting for a land of their own?"
  
  I was confused until I realized that he was talking about the Palestinian refugees, not the Israelis.
  
  "Allah has promised us our Own land," he intoned, switching to Arabic, his eyes beginning to take on a fanatical gleam. "I have been sent by Allah, Himself, as the new Prophet, to lead my people in a holy Jihad against the infidel Jews! We shall slaughter them! Every one of them! None shall be spared! Not only the men, but the children because they grow up to be men! Not only the children, but the women and girls because they breed men! There will be a bloodbath from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem! From Syria to Sinai! This is the land that is rightfully ours! It can only be cleansed by the blood of the accursed Israelis!"
  
  Spittle began to form in the corners of al Sallal's mouth as he ranted on. Arabic is the language of the poetic Thousand and One Nights. It's a language designed to inflame the passions of men by the beauty of its imagery. The words form themselves into a rising and falling rhythmic chant that carries the listener away so that he is controlled by his emotions rather than by reason.
  
  It's a language of superlatives and hyperboles and exaggerated metaphors. It's dramatic and colorful, and to swear in Arabic makes swearing in any other language drab and lifeless.
  
  Arabs admire orators. Sharif al Sallal was among the best I'd ever heard — and I'd heard them from Rabat to Damascus. I could easily imagine him shouting to a surrounding throng of wild-eyed refugees in a marketplace in Beirut or Amman, sweeping them along with him in a flood by the sheer power and excitement of his words.
  
  "We shall carry the word of the Qur'an into every village! We shall bring death to every infidel who desecrates our holy Land of Palestine with his presence! The country shall be ours! Allah has promised it. In the Twenty-eighth Surah of the Quran are the very words!"
  
  He closed his eyes and recited, "Allah who gave you the Quran shall restore you to your homeland!"
  
  In my mind, I heard Tamar's voice as she recited the same words back in Washington. It seemed like an eternity ago. Yet it was only last Tuesday night.
  
  Sharif al Sallal stopped talking.
  
  He stared down at me. I could read my death sentence in his eyes.
  
  Before he could speak, I cut in, sharply. "Why did you come back here?" I asked boldly, taking the chance that al Sallal hadn't been anywhere in the apartment when I'd come in.
  
  "To show my followers the sword of Allah," he replied simply.
  
  I was puzzled. What sort of allusion was this?
  
  "The sword of Allah?" I asked.
  
  In answer, al Sallal turned away. He strode to the corner of the room and picked up an object.
  
  "This!" he said exultantly, unwrapping the cloth that surrounded the object.
  
  "Behold! The sword of Allah!"
  
  The scimitar he held up flashed in the fight, its blade a gleaming curve of polished steel. Its haft and hilt were inset with rubies and emeralds. The metal of the blade was chased with delicate engraving.
  
  "The sword of Allah!" he shouted again, his voice rising to a scream.
  
  The man was a complete lunatic, as much a prisoner of his own rantings as the most credible of his followers!
  
  Sallal looked across the room at me. "It must drink the blood of an infidel!"
  
  I began to get the idea he had in mind for me, and I didn't like it at all.
  
  Sallal came over to the couch, looking down on me. I could understand why his followers succumbed to his personality. The man radiated a charisma of repressed violence. He gave off waves of sheer animosity and anger that would have the strongest of all appeals to men frustrated by a lifetime of poverty.
  
  He had grasped the scimitar in his right hand. Now he turned his fist down to aim the blade at my throat. Slowly, he lowered the blade until the point rested on the skin of my throat.
  
  Forcing myself to be calm, I said in Arabic, "What you plan to do with me would defile the sword of Allah. Would you put a curse on it?"
  
  I caught him by surprise. His eyes widened. He released the pressure of the blade on my throat.
  
  "What do you mean?"
  
  "The sword of Allah was carried by the Prophet himself," I pointed out. "It drank blood only in battle."
  
  For a moment, al Sallal pondered what I'd said. Then he nodded soberly. "You are right. Only in battle."
  
  He took the blade away from my throat. I swallowed hard. The man was crazy, but there was enough rationality left in him so that he could think logically.
  
  "We will fight," he said simply. "Yes. We will fight."
  
  I laughed at him.
  
  "What kind of a fight would that be?" I taunted. "I'm tied hand and foot with no weapon to defend myself with. You make a mockery of the sword of Allah!"
  
  The words got under his skin.
  
  The scimitar blade flashed in the air, sweeping down at me before I could draw a breath. The keen edge of the blade slit the ropes holding my wrist with the first slash, the second cut the bonds at my ankles. Cleanly severed, the bindings dropped away.
  
  Slowly, stretching my muscles, I sat up.
  
  "On your feet!" al Sallal ordered. I stood up.
  
  The guard across the room lifted his automatic rifle higher, keeping the muzzle still trained on me. I was sure he had the selector lever set on automatic fire.
  
  "I have no weapon," I reminded al Sallal.
  
  Sahrif al Sallal let out a muttered curse. Holding the point of the scimitar at my throat, he shouted an order to the guard.
  
  "By the beard of the Prophet, get him a blade!"
  
  The guard didn't hesitate one second. Sharif al Sallal's slightest whim was his command. He ran out of the room. In a moment, he was back, carrying a second scimitar.
  
  It was a plain blade, yet as he handed it to me, I noticed that the edge had been newly honed to razor sharpness. I hefted it in my hand. It had a decent balance. I looked at the blade and then at al Sallal, lifting my eyebrow quizzically.
  
  He nodded. "Yes. We were going to use it to kill your President. Until this morning, when a courier from my headquarters in Damascus brought me this one." He held up the jewelled scimitar in his hand.
  
  Again the look in his eye held a growing gleam of madness as he stared at the naked steel in his hand.
  
  He stepped away from me.
  
  "Now," he said, "now, the sword of Allah will drink the blood of an infidel in battle."
  
  Without warning, he swung at me.
  
  He nearly caught me off guard. At the last second, I leaped away, barely avoiding the blow.
  
  My muscles were stiff from having been tied up. The circulation in my arms and legs was sluggish. I ached all over from the exertions of the night before. The wound in my back pained me. I could feel the stitches tear loose as I leaped violently away from al Sallal.
  
  He swung twice at me, the blade first sweeping horizontally at my midsection, and then at the end of the short swing, a quick reversal of the blade edge and a backhanded blow swinging at my face.
  
  A scimitar has a long, deep curve to it, with the convex edge sharpened to microscopic thinness. A good blade of Damascus steel can be honed so sharp that you can shave as closely with it as with a barber's razor.
  
  Dueling with a scimitar isn't like fencing with an epée or a foil. It's more like a saber, although with a scimitar it's a slashing blow that does the damage. You can use the point, too. Both are lethal.
  
  Sharif al Sallal's blade was made of the finest Damascus steel. The blade I had was shoddy compared to it.
  
  Once again, he swung at me. I parried desperately. Steel clashed in ringing blows as the blades slammed into each other time after time.
  
  Sallal drove me back step by step around the room. I had to keep one eye out for the furniture as I backpedalled. One trip or slip or bump that threw me off balance could mean instant death for me. Sallal was superb with a scimitar.
  
  He knew how good he was. I could see the mad gleam in his eyes as he attacked again and again. With a growing, sick feeling, I realized that he was toying with me, playing a game for his own malicious amusement, knowing all the time that he could put me away any time he felt like it!
  
  I retreated more. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the guard. He was in a corner of the room where he would be out of the way. His rifle was still aimed at me.
  
  I called al Sallal's attention to him, jeeringly.
  
  "Do you need a man to shoot me in the back so you can defeat me?" I asked mockingly. "And if I injure you — will he kill me? What kind of bravery is that?"
  
  Sharif's face turned hard with anger.
  
  "I need no help!" he shouted at me.
  
  "You insult the sword of Allah!" I sneered at him, my breath coming in gasps. "It is being held by a coward."
  
  Sharif cursed me again.
  
  "Are you brave enough to tell him to put down his rifle?" I demanded. "Or are you all words? Show me, Sallal! Talk is for women, not men!"
  
  Without turning his head, al Sallal screamed at the guard. "Put down that rifle! I do not need you to protect me!"
  
  Hesitatingly, the guard slowly lowered the gun.
  
  "He still holds it," I pointed out sharply to al Sallal. "Even your own man does not believe you are brave enough to fight me without his protection!"
  
  Sharif's voice rose to a frenzy.
  
  "I shall have you castrated!" he screamed at the guard. "Put away that rifle!"
  
  The guard flicked the lever onto "safety" and bent forward to place the rifle on the floor. At that moment, when his torso was at an angle to the floor, with his head outstretched, I leaped past al Sallal, swinging my scimitar as hard as I could.
  
  The blade flashed down with all the power I could muster in my back and arm. The keen edge met the back of the guard's neck cleanly, like a butcher's cleaver chopping a rib joint, cutting between two vertebrae, severing the spinal cord, neck tendons and windpipe in one blow!
  
  His head fell away from his body, like a ripe melon dropping from the vine. Blood leaped out of the severed arteries and veins, splashing bright red gouts as he fell.
  
  I spun back to meet Sharif's furious attack. He let out an enraged cry and sprang at me, his scimitar a whirlwind of bright, dangerous steel flashing around my head. I parried blow after blow until my right arm felt numb and almost useless.
  
  On the floor, staring sightlessly up at us, the guard's severed head lay several feet away from his body — a grotesque, horrible spectator to our battle.
  
  Blood flowed down my back where the stitches in Khatib's knife wound had parted. My shoulder muscles and arm, already wearied by the efforts of the last twenty-four hours, refused to go on much longer.
  
  Al Sallal cut viciously at my legs. I sprang to one side and leaped back again, only to throw myself in a sprawl on the floor because his backhanded blow nearly took my head off! Time after time, my parries were almost too late. Our blades clashed ringingly against each other again and again, and each time, al Sallal drove me back.
  
  A steady, chanting flow of Arabic poured from his lips as he fought. Sharif al Sallal was lost in some inner world of his own, seeking the mad pleasure of killing the infidel enemy, offering his own death if he were bested. To die in battle sends the Moslem warrior directly to Paradise.
  
  I ducked desperately away from his slashing, cutting attack, using an armchair as protection. I leaped away from it as al Sallal swung his scimitar in a frenzied flail of steel.
  
  By now, I could hardly see straight. My head hurt from the gun butt blow that had knocked me out. My eyes saw Sallal only through a haze of double images, flashes of brightness and tiny blackouts, first in one eye and then in the other.
  
  I didn't know how much longer I could go on defending myself. Sallal was so much better with the scimitar than I was. It was as if he'd been born with the damn weapon in his hand and had spent his life perfecting the rhythm of attack and counterattack.
  
  As he lifted his scimitar for another series of attacks, I made a dive for the dead Palestinian's body sprawled headlessly some ten feet away from us. Beside it was the automatic rifle he'd been carrying. It was the only weapon in sight.
  
  Sallal saw my intention and reacted almost as fast as I did. He leaped after me, his scimitar swinging as he howled the name of Allah. He cried it aloud in the same way that the great hordes of Mohammed did on their sweep across the barren wastes of the Sahara! As they did when they took Cairo and Alexandria! As they did when they conquered almost all of Spain!
  
  "Allah, il Allah! Allah, il Allah!"
  
  Sharif's blade missed me only by a fraction of an inch as I hit the floor beside the terrorist's body. Instinctively, my eye froze a picture of his legs slightly off balance. In an instantaneous muscle reaction, my right leg kicked out, catching him on the ankle, kicking his feet out from under him.
  
  Sharif crashed to the floor.
  
  Scimitar still in hand, I twisted toward him, lashing out in a desperate thrust to strike him anywhere that I could. There was a reddish film over my vision. Blindly, I struck in a lunge as hard as I could. I felt the blade strike, and suddenly there was a violent, furious thrashing on the end of my sword.
  
  Boiling away, I let go of the blade, grasping sightlessly for the automatic rifle, finding it, rolling away with the rifle in my hands, my thumb seeking the lever, flicking it to "auto" fire, and then — on my knees, the rifle aimed in Sallal's direction, I waited.
  
  There was no sound in the room except for the deep, rasping inhalations of my own tortured lungs and the throbbing pound of my pulse beating frantically in my head.
  
  I kept waiting for him to move, to make a sound. There was nothing.
  
  Slowly, the red haze cleared from my eyes.
  
  Sharif al Sallal lay on the floor, his arms thrown wide, the sword of Allah still clutched in his right fist.
  
  But the scimitar he had given me was now in him. By the sheerest fluke, its point had gone straight into his mouth, opened wide in a dervish chant of death at the very moment I struck!
  
  The blade had gone out the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord, killing him instantly. He lay inert, his head twisted to one side, the sword extending from his mouth, his lips around the steel in an obscene kiss of death.
  
  With the automatic rifle still in my hands, I made my way down the corridor to the bedroom where the President lay captive.
  
  I came to the door and kicked it open, the rifle held at the ready, my finger curled around the trigger, ready to blast anyone who stood in my way.
  
  In the fraction of a second as the door crashed wide open, the thought flung itself into my mind that perhaps I was already too late. I had been unconscious for God knows how long. Certainly long enough for Sallal to have had him killed.
  
  And then the door was open to its full width. I could see into the room. There was only one person in it.
  
  The figure that lay on the bed was bound hand and foot. His mouth had been stuffed with a gag. His head was propped up by a pillow. The hair was silver, the eyes blue and penetrating and unafraid.
  
  We looked at each other for a long minute. I put the rifle down and went back into the living room. Tiredly, I bent and pried the sword of Allah out of Sharif al Sallal's hand.
  
  When I cut the ropes away, I was as careful as I could be.
  
  After all, the man was the President — even if he hadn't yet been sworn in.
  
  * * *
  
  Friday. 12:00 noon. The Ambassador Hotel. Park Avenue.
  
  
  
  The magistrate occupied a bench in one of the lowliest of the New York court systems. He was ill at ease as he read the prescribed words of the Oath of Office. Magistrates usually never get a chance to swear in a President of the United States.
  
  On the other hand, the voice of the man who recited the oath after him was strong and clear.
  
  "…to protect and defend the Constitution of these United States of America. So help me God!"
  
  Hawk caught my eye. His head nodded slowly in a gesture of complete approval. It was as much as he'd ever say about what I'd accomplished.
  
  But it was enough to make me feel pretty damn good!
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  "We'll never find out who it was who helped them," Hawk said to me. We were back in the AXE offices in Dupont Circle in Washington. "You know that, don't you."
  
  "I know it, sir," I answered. "It's a damn shame, though."
  
  Hawk fit up one of his cheap cigars. The strong aroma filled the office. He ignored my wrinkled nose. He blew out the match and puffed a cloud of smoke at me.
  
  "It's only in stories that all the loose ends get tied up neatly," he said. "Never in real life."
  
  "Yes, sir," I said and waited.
  
  Hawk looked quizzically at me.
  
  "I suppose you're waiting to find out how much time I'll let you have in which to rest up?" he asked.
  
  "That's the idea, sir," I said. "I was hoping for at least a month."
  
  "Will you settle for three weeks?"
  
  I pretended to think about it. Three weeks was the most I'd expected from him. But then, you always ask for more than you expect to get.
  
  "Three weeks will be fine."
  
  Hawk got to his feet.
  
  "I've taken the liberty of sending airline tickets to your suite at the hotel," Hawk said as he walked me to the door.
  
  I stopped.
  
  "You care to tell me where you're sending me?" I asked.
  
  "You'll find out when you get back to the hotel," said Hawk cryptically.
  
  There was an iced bottle of Dom Perignon champagne sitting on a table in the living room. A single lamp provided the only illumination.
  
  Tamar came out of the bedroom as I closed the foyer door behind me. She was wearing a long, black, filmy pegnoir. Her hair fell in a smooth sweep on each side of her face. As she stepped in front of the lamp to come to me, her body was outlined so that I could see she wore nothing beneath the pegnoir.
  
  She came up to me, putting both arms around my neck.
  
  I cocked my head and looked at her.
  
  "Hawk said…" I began. She put a finger to my lips.
  
  "I have the tickets, darling," she said. "I also have three weeks leave — a gift to us from our Ambassador."
  
  She kissed me gently.
  
  As she took her lips away, I asked, "Where are we going?"
  
  Tamar smiled a secret smile that fit up her eyes mischievously.
  
  "Not until we're ready to board the plane," she said, like a little girl with a secret. "You'll never know until then."
  
  She leaned back, her arms still around my neck, gazing intently and provocatively into my eyes. The tip of her tongue came out and wet her lips moistly.
  
  Her voice dropped to a husky whisper as she said, "In the meantime, since the plane doesn't leave until tomorrow afternoon, could you take me as far as the bedroom, right now?"
  
  
  
  
  
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