Killing Time (23 page)

Slayton nodded. "How many
sorties a day are they throwing at you?"

"We cannot be sure,"
Samad answered, "though yesterday we thought we counted at least
ninety-seven—" He was interrupted as the sudden sound of crashing bowling
pins and very civil applause came echoing down the corridor from somewhere
ahead of us. "Ah!" Samad's face brightened noticeably. "The
general appears to be doing well!"

The bowling alley that we entered
was plushly appointed but nearly deserted. There were two or three groups of
guards placed strategically about the large space, and at one pair of lanes
another group of very well dressed Malaysian officers stood sipping coffee that
evidently came from a large, ornate samovar that stood on the alley's darkened
bar. A small man whose uniform was pressed just a bit more crisply than those
of the others, and whose gold braid and insignia glowed noticeably brighter
than theirs, stood rolling balls down at the pins in one lane. The man was
clearly a beginner, but what he lacked in skill he more than made up for in
enthusiasm.

This, Major Samad announced, was
General Tunku Said, scourge of Kuala Lumpur and bane of the United Nations. The
compact commander, told of our arrival, came bounding over, grinning beneath a
well-trimmed mustache and extending his hand to each of us—save Larissa—as we
were introduced.

"A terribly amusing game, my
infidel friends, this bowling!" he said, speaking in English that was even
better than Samad's. "I am unclear, however, as to its origins—some says
it's a Dutch invention and some that the English devised it. But I suppose it
makes no difference, since both were rulers of Malaysia at one time or
another!"

An enormous explosion outside
suddenly shook the building hard, bringing plaster and concrete dust down from
the high ceiling. As more explosions followed, I became possessed by a desire
to dive ignominiously under a nearby bench; General Said, however, just stood
looking at the ceiling with his hands on his hips. "And now those same
Dutch and English bomb us," he said, both amazed and angry. "And bomb
the marvelous buildings that they themselves built throughout our country. Can
you imagine it, unbelievers? And for what? For the rain forest? For the oxygen?
Nonsense! They are destroying the jungle themselves, and their motive is
nothing more than pride, which is a sin before Allah!" He caught himself
suddenly. "Oh, please excuse me—coffee, infidels? Tea? Perhaps a
game?" We began to move slowly toward the lane where he'd been playing,
which several of the soldiers were clearing of rubble and dust. "It is
said that the Americans are masters of this sport"—he pointed to a large
television above the bar—"and indeed it seems so!" On the huge screen
several professional American bowlers were hard at work. "We have the
Bowling Channel—do you know it? 'All bowling, all the time' is their pledge.
Of course, we catch only glimpses, because the Allies are continually
jamming—" Just as he said the words, the television screen went snowy.
General Said looked for an instant as though he might scream, but he swallowed
the outburst and only sighed. "I realize that we are at war, infidels, but
I ask you—does this not seem somehow gratuitous?"

Larissa stepped forward. "If
you'll permit me, General, I think I can be of some help."

This brought a patronizing
chuckle out of the general, and the rest of his officers picked up on the
laughter. "You really must excuse us, Lady Infidel," Said managed to
say. "It is not your sex that amuses us, although your father or husband
or brother must live in a perpetual state of agonizing shame to know that you
appear in public as you do. But how can one woman—"

Larissa held a hand up and then
turned away, putting the same hand to the collar of her bodysuit and talking
too softly to be heard.

General Said gave Colonel Slayton
a nod. "Ah. She is favored, then."

"Favored?" Slayton
said.

"By Allah," Tarbell
explained with a smiling nod of his own. "The general thinks that Larissa
is feeble-minded."

General Said shrugged. "She
wears the clothes of a man and talks to the air, Dr. Tarbell—can I be
wrong?"

"Apparently you can,
General," I said, looking to the television above the bar. "If you'll
just observe ..." Suddenly the bowling images returned, bringing
delighted shouts and more applause from the officers around us. I'd correctly
surmised that Larissa had asked Malcolm to use one of the Tressalian satellites
to generate a secure signal and beam the Bowling Channel (and how I would have
liked to have seen Malcolm's face when he got
that
request) down to
Kuala Lumpur.

"My distinguished infidel
guests!" Said gushed. "This is really too kind—too kind! You have won
our friendship, doomed unbelievers though you may be! Tell me, what is it we
can do for you? Major Samad says you seek plutonium."

"Actually, we seek a
man," Tarbell said, pulling out a page of his notes on Eshkol, as well as
a photograph of him.

General Said looked confused.
"A man? Not plutonium?"

"The man we seek is in the
market for plutonium," Colonel Slayton explained. "And that's why
we've come to you."

For the first time Said looked
slightly displeased, as though he suspected what our business actually was.
"And what is this man's name?"

Tarbell handed over the photo and
glanced at his notes. "He would be using the name and carrying the
identity papers of a man called Vincent Gambon, who once worked for Doctors
Without Borders."

As one, General Said and his
officers took a quick step back from us, and their formerly friendly
expressions grew hostile. Said put a hand to the sidearm at his waist.
"This man Gambon—he is a friend of yours?"

"No," I said quickly,
sensing that the misunderstanding might easily turn fatal. "He's our
enemy. We're looking for him because he's stolen something of great importance
from us."

Said's expression lightened just
a bit, and his hand moved away from the gun. "Well, then," he said,
"you may be interested in what I have to show you."

The general nodded to one of his
officers, who led us to a doorway behind the bowling alley's shoe rental
counter. As we reached it I thought I made out the sound of muffled screaming;
then the officer threw open the door to the shoe storage and repair room,
revealing:

Eshkol. He was tightly gagged and
strapped into a heavy wooden chair, with his ankles tied firmly to the chair's
front legs. A rotating electric brush with wire bristles had been positioned
beneath his upturned bare feet and was spinning at high speed, slowly tearing
the skin away from his flesh. Saliva was coursing down from the corners of
Eshkol's mouth as he continued to scream, and his crazed eyes were opened wide
in agony.

When I looked at General Said
again, I could no longer see the well-groomed, well-spoken fellow who moments
before had so amused me. It was apparent now why he was feared, and all that
his continued smiling did was remind me that for centuries Islamic leaders had
tortured prisoners in just this manner: by flaying the soles of their feet.

"Here is your enemy!"
the general proclaimed proudly. "And it will no doubt please your infidel
hearts to know that his death will be a very slow affair!"

I was too stunned to move or
speak, and I could see that my three comrades were in roughly the same shape.
We'd spent so many hours preparing ourselves for what we had been sure would be
a violent confrontation with Eshkol that discovering him in such a condition—
and especially in such a place—left us scrambling to determine our next move.
Of course, there was the option of closing the door and letting General Said
finish the job he had so enthusiastically started; but for all our recent
declarations that Eshkol had to be stopped in a permanent way, I don't think
any of us had the stomach for playing a part in his slow death by torture. Then
too, as Malcolm reminded Larissa when she reported in concerning the latest
developments, we couldn't be sure that Eshkol hadn't told anyone else about the
Stalin disc: we needed him to declare those images a hoax to his superiors
before he died in order to prevent the propagation of rumors that would likely
prove even more troublesome than facts. One by one it dawned on each of us that
we were going to have to get him out of that room, that building, and that
town; but it was the ever-wily Tar-bell, not surprisingly, who grasped that
fact first and took hold of the situation.

"Tell me, General," he
said, nonchalantly watching Eshkol writhe in a successful attempt to impress
Said. "What exactly has this man done to you?"

"He is a pig, Dr.
Tarbell!" the general declared, spitting on Eshkol. "To begin with,
he has stirred trouble for me within my family. He came looking for plutonium
and promised a great deal of money for it. Then, on his way here, he murdered
the man I had sent to escort him. Why? I cannot say, and he will not."

"He has killed before, and
just as unreasonably," Tarbell explained. "It is our belief that he
seeks to obscure the trail he leaves behind. He may even have tried to kill
you, after your business was done."

"Me?" the
general
cried, dumbfounded.
"Here?"

Tarbell let out a flattering sort
of laugh. "Absurd, is it not?"

Said began to laugh along with
him. "Yes—absurd! He is a madman, then!" Suddenly the general's
laughter died down, and he looked at Eshkol in an immensely irritated way.
"But the chap he murdered, you see, was my wife's cousin. I had little use
for the man, but how does this make me look? Not only to my family, but to that
unholy mob outside? Very bad, infidels, very bad. Furthermore"— Said
returned to his bowling lane and picked a file up off the scorer's
desk—"we are not without our own ways of gathering intelligence. Were you
aware that this enemy of yours is actually a CIA agent?"

The general placed a sheet of
printout on a lit area of the desk, at which the contents of the page were
projected onto a large screen over the bowling lane. It was indeed a copy of a
Central Intelligence file, which stated that an agency operative calling
himself Vincent Gambon had infiltrated the Doctors Without Borders field office
in the Kurdish sector of Turkey, from which, as I have already noted, Israel
was currently drawing a good deal of its water, much to the displeasure of the
Turks and their American allies. Here, at least, was the probable reason why
Eshkol had killed the real and unfortunate Gambon in the first place, although
Said apparently knew nothing about such matters, as his next words
demonstrated: "No doubt his actual purpose here was to undermine our hold
on this mountain— perhaps by way of the nuclear device we found him carrying!"
Said held up a small rucksack that bore the same Doctors Without Borders logo
we'd seen on Eshkol's clothes. "The very device he intended to arm with
the plutonium
we
had agreed to sell him!" With his free hand the
general grabbed a metal radioactive materials canister and held it up; then he
looked back through the open door of the shoe room. "Oh, this creature's
soul is a pit of evil, infidels, and I intend that he shall regret every minute
of his loathsome existence before he dies!"

"Quite understandable,"
Tarbell said, glancing around the bowling alley and, it seemed to me, silently
calculating just how many Malaysian soldiers were in it.
"Thoroughly
understandable!"
he reaffirmed. Then he looked at Colonel Slayton and Larissa, both of whom
shook their heads as if to say that the idea of some sort of breakout was
unfeasible. Leon acknowledged their assessment with a reluctant nod. "And
yet it seems to me," he went on, turning to Said again, "that you are
missing a most excellent opportunity."

"I?" Said asked.
"How, Doctor?"

"Well, I can certainly
understand your desire to kill this man slowly," Tarbell answered.
"But privately? You yourself have said that the people in this ridiculous
community are a mindless mob. Why not seize the opportunity to tighten your
hold on them?"

General Said pondered the
question, then began to smile once more. "Ah! I see your point, Dr.
Tarbell—a public execution!"

Tarbell grinned back at him.
"Exactly."

Said's face went straight for a
moment. "Would it have to be quick?"

"Oh, no, not
necessarily," Leon answered.

The general began to pace
thoughtfully. "We might do it at the old dinner theater—they love their
theater, these degenerates, and we could give them something special." He
continued to mull it over. "I might crucify him," he said.

Tarbell cocked his head
skeptically. "Well," he said. "It's a bit trite, isn't it? Not
to mention the implications—you don't want him to seem the martyr, after
all."

"Yes, yes, this is so."
Said kept pacing, then finally stopped and turned to Tarbell. "Well, then,
Doctor, I open the floor to suggestions."

Tarbell took the general aside
conspiratorially. "I'm not sure the length of his death is really the most
important consideration. My own idea would be this—have your men escort him to
a high public spot after attiring him in one of your own uniforms."

"
My
uniforms?"
Said protested. "But why should—"

"I assume," Tarbell
interjected soothingly, "that the Americans have you under close satellite
surveillance?"

"Oh, by the Prophet,
blessings and peace be upon him, they do indeed!" General Said looked
momentarily distraught. "Twenty-four hours a day, I can scarcely ever
leave this place—" Suddenly he stopped, getting the point. "Ah!
Excellent, Dr. Tarbell—truly, for an infidel that is inspired!" He moved
toward the shoe room, studying Eshkol. "We shall have to shave his beard,
of course, and neaten his mustache, but other than that..."