Reprisal (13 page)

Mustafa, even in his least pious imaginings, had never dreamed Arab womanhood could ever have come to this.

Richard Dartley was pleasantly surprised by the Egyptians he met each day. They seemed to hold no hatred for him as an American,
despite the almost constant diatribes against the United States over the government-controlled TV and newspapers. The ordinary
people reminded him of people in the Soviet Union in the way they did not take seriously anything their political leaders
said. Religion was another thing. Dartley took care to stay away from mosques and anywhere he might run into fanatics.

He was totally unaware that he had anything to us
fear from the Egyptians. He knew nothing of Awad and Zaid. He assumed that Omar Zekri had sent the four men to Zamalek Island
to lie in wait for him and that Omar was obeying Pritchett’s orders. He had checked out of the Nile Hilton and was now staying
in a small hotel in the New City, only a few blocks from where his weapons were stashed (he hoped). The place was shabby,
none too clean, and badly run—so badly run, in fact, that the desk clerk had not bothered to demand his identification, which
suited Dartley fine.

Believing that it was his fellow countrymen who had set the trap for him, Dartley set himself one rule for survival in Cairo:
keep away from mullahs and Americans.

He had no idea he was the target of a manhunt led by Awad and Zaid, who combed the ancient monuments and museums for him,
circulated his description at luxury hotels and expensive restaurants, and questioned car hire people and taxi drivers.

Dartley hid himself in the anarchy of the city streets. At first the crowds, noise and exhaust fumes bothered him. After a
few days he hardly noticed the traffic-clogged streets and accepted that cars often ignored traffic lights, that pedestrians
were responsible for their own safety and could not reasonably expect a driver to slow or swerve to avoid them. He too, like
any Cairo resident, walked casually into the stream of cars, donkey carts and bicycles, dodged, ran and jumped, breathing
the polluted air, half-deafened by the honking of car horns.

He practiced his rudimentary Arabic and learned many new words. He kept out of tourist spots and
ate in quiet neighborhood restaurants. He knew enough to avoid the food offered by street vendors, because no matter how tempting
and good it looked, an unacclimatized Western stomach could not handle the bacteria that came with it. So he picked out clean,
quiet places and feasted in them with no ill effects. The food was not hot and spicy, as he had expected. Instead, it was
rather bland. He ate kebab, beef or mutton chunks grilled on a skewer, served with a salad, pita bread and tahina dip. He
also ate what seemed the two most popular dishes with Egyptians, fuul and kushari. Fuul was brown beans with occasional pieces
of egg or meat, and kushari was a mixture of lentils, macaroni and rice in tomato sauce; at least that was what they looked
and tasted like.

Not knowing that Egyptian government agents were searching for him made him take many of the wrong precautions. Besides, he
was almost entering the lion’s den by hanging around the Citadel so often. Awad and Zaid operated from the Citadel, sending
out men to search for him, while he observed the Citadel to wait for Mustafa Bakkush. Dartley positively identified the Egyptian
scientist and was putting a plan into operation when disaster struck.

One of Awad and Zaid’s men decided to question Dartley. This did not alarm Dartley. He had been questioned on the street a
number of times, as he had seen other foreigners, including other Americans, questioned briefly. On previous occasions he
had shown his papers in the name of Thomas Lewis, employee of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement
Center. The papers and some baksheesh soon overcame whatever doubts the policeman or government agent had about him. This
time it was different.

The man was short, immaculately dressed in a cream colored, Western-style suit, with close cropped hair and a neatly trimmed
mustache. He spoke English and showed Dartley his official ID. Dartley hardly glanced at it because he knew that Egypt had
a tangle of security enforcement agencies, including nine different police forces of more than a quarter million men in a
country that had very little crime.

Dartley showed him his papers in the name of Thomas Lewis. When the man in the cream colored suit saw the name, he suddenly
became agitated. His mustache twitched as he struggled to calm himself. It was clear to Dartley that this man had been startled
to find so easily what he was looking for, and that it was the name of Thomas Lewis rather than Dartley’s appearance which
had struck him so forcibly.

“You must come along with me,” he said to Dartley, holding his passport and entry papers. “There are irregularities.”

“Certainly,” Dartley said agreeably. “But I suppose I should sign this before I go.”

He reached for one of the papers from the man’s hand and took the top off his pen.

Dartley hit him with the miniature blade of the Tekna Micro-Knife in the left eye. The razor-sharp steel punctured the eyeball,
it popped, and the fluid inside ran down the man’s cheek.

That was enough. Dartley had no need to butcher the man. He picked the passport and papers up from
where the stricken Egyptian had dropped them as he staggered backward, clutching his head.

In a few moments Dartley was walking down the street unhurriedly, as if he’d had nothing to do with the man in the cream colored
suit, who was now leaning unsteadily against a building with a palm clasped over one eye. But Dartley was out of luck. He
had been seen by two men prepared to do something about it. They jumped in a little yellow Fiat and speeded after the American
until they drew level with him. As the car stopped, Dartley saw a long-barreled revolver in one man’s hand. He himself had
no gun.

Dartley ran. The first bullet bit stucco out of a building wall above his head and whined off in a ricochet. Dartley used
passersby as cover, trying to keep them between him and his pursuers. This didn’t faze the gunman, who shot at him regardless
of innocent bystanders, using the revolver’s long barrel for accuracy in aim. In all, six bullets smashed into walls or windows
in front of, behind and above the weaving, running American.

After the sixth shot, Dartley heard the roar of the little Fiat’s engine as they closed the distance again between them and
him. Only one was shooting. Right now he would be reloading as the other one drove. The Fiat screeched to a halt no more than
twenty feet from him.

There was no place for Dartley to go except through a large gateway that led into a courtyard. He might be trapped in there
or he might not—but it was his only alternative right now to dodging bullets at a few paces’ range on an open sidewalk.

The gunman stepped out of the Fiat and raised the revolver’s barrel at him. Before Dartley could reach the courtyard and before
his pursuer had the gun leveled on him, someone in a gray business suit at the edge of the sidewalk shot the Egyptian. He
slumped back against the Fiat and slid down into a sitting position on the road, his head nodded onto his chest, his big pistol
lying now in a slack hand.

This new gunslinger sent three rapid shots through the open door of the Fiat, and the driver fell forward onto the steering
wheel.

Dartley saw the tall man in the gray suit—he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties and was not Egyptian—run
around the front of the car, open the door on the driver’s side, pull the dead man out and discard him on the street. He beckoned
to Dartley.

A crowd was gathering about Dartley on the sidewalk. They looked frightened, but also unhappy at the sight of foreigners gunning
down their fellow Egyptians. Dartley was not in a position to explain. He made for the car.

“Have you contacted Mustafa Bakkush?” his rescuer in the gray suit asked Richard Dartley. These were the first words the man
had spoken to him, apart from some comments about the traffic and the suggestion that they have a coffee.

“Bakkush?” Dartley said, apparently unfamiliar with this name.

The young man smiled. “From what I hear, you’ve been asking all over town for him. Let me introduce myself. I am Pierre Giraud,
a Lebanese banker. Maronite Christian, I should add.”

“A banker,” Dartley said in open disbelief.

“In much the same way as you are a wheat expert.”

That shut Dartley up. They had driven across Cairo and dumped the Fiat some distance from where they now sat at a cafe table.
This man had been as careful as Dartley to wipe his prints from the car as they left it.

Dartley was already considering how best to kill
this man because he knew too much. It mattered nothing to Dartley that the man had in all probability saved his life. Dartley
knew that this action had not been a heroic gesture, but the impersonal, calculated move of a trained professional. Dartley
owed this man nothing. Especially not information.

The stranger probably sensed from Dartley’s demeanor that it might be dangerous to tease him further with his mysterious knowledge.
He said, “Pritchett said to help you.”

“Pritchett is the one who hires these hitmen,” Dartley snapped, acknowledging at least that he knew who Pritchett at the American
Embassy was.

“Look, I’m Aaron Gottlieb, Israeli intelligence—Mossad. You’ve heard of us, I believe. Now you level with me.”

“Savage. Paul Savage. CIA. Pleased to meet you.”

“How come Pritchett doesn’t know who you are?”

“I’m on a special job,” Dartley said. “Don’t want to stir up mud for the men posted here.”

“Seems like you’ve raised quite a bit of mud already.”

“Not my fault. That fool Pritchett hit on me first day I was here and stuck me with one of his Egyptian contacts named Omar
Zekri. If it wasn’t Pritchett who called out the hounds on me, then it had to be Zekri.”

“Those two I killed back there, and the one you disabled further back on the street, are all government agents. I know the
type.”

“Which means that Pritchett’s man Zekri is a double agent,” Dartley said. “You might mention that to him when you tell him
to stay out of my way.”

“I will,” Aaron Gottlieb agreed mildly. “You want help on Bakkush?”

“I work alone.”

“It doesn’t make sense for you to turn down help offered by an experienced man,” Gottlieb pointed out. “Do you want to hear
my background in Egypt?”

“It’ll help pass the time,” Dartley grunted, making it clear that that was all it would be. He knew that Gottlieb had not
bought his story about being a CIA agent as easily as he pretended. The Israeli’s strategy now would be to hang as close as
he could to Dartley in order to find out what was going on. Dartley himself was reasonably sure that Gottlieb was a genuine
Mossad agent—perhaps even a CIA agent. Either way, he didn’t give a damn so long as the Israeli did not interfere or continue
to ask questions which could not be answered.

“First, I think you should know about Israel’s first intelligence operation in Egypt, back in 1962, when I was in elementary
school. Nasser, who was the Egyptian president then, launched four rockets. Two of them had a range that could have reached
Tel Aviv. As could be expected, the Israelis were worried, since Nasser had promised to drive the Zionists into the sea. When
the Mossad discovered that ex-Nazi German scientists were developing these rockets in Egypt and were working on nuclear warheads
for them, they had a strong suspicion in which direction the rockets would be aimed. Instead of going after the hardware or
the Egyptians, the Mossad decided to concentrate on the German scientists. One bomb that arrived in the mail killed five people.
There were other deaths and maimings from booby-trapped
devices. Threatening letters to the Germans promised more of the same. Their children were threatened, in Egypt, Germany and
elsewhere. These scientists and their families knew who was after them, and that didn’t give them much comfort either. Most
quit. With their departure, Nasser’s rocket program collapsed. There were a lot of complaints about Israel in the world press,
but no nuclear missiles on Tel Aviv.”

Dartley nodded noncommittally and sipped the bitter black coffee from his tiny cup.

Gottlieb went on, “You may wonder what this has to do with what’s happening today. I think Ahmed Hasan learned his lesson
from what happened back in 1962. This time he is seeing to it that it is the Egyptian president who is applying the pressure
on the scientists.” He told Dartley briefly how Bakkush had been forced to return through his wife and children being shipped
in crates from London to Cairo. “So that when you meet with Dr. Bakkush and try to turn the screws on him, you will find he
is already under maximum pressure and has no more give. It is the same with most of the other scientists working on Hasan’s
nuclear project, so far as we know. Apart from some inexperienced junior scientists who are enthusiastic because they are
fools, all the senior men have been bullied or blackmailed into joining the project.”

“You seem certain that Hasan has a nuclear bomb in the works,” Dartley observed.

Gottlieb laughed. “If that’s all you want to verify, your task will be easy. Is that all you need to know?”

“Just a few details,” Dartley said, to keep Gottlieb
thinking that the bomb was the chief purpose of his mission rather than the bomb’s maker, Ahmed Hasan. “You were going to
talk about your background here in Egypt.”

“I speak Arabic fluently. I happened to learn it from someone brought up in Beirut, so that I speak it with Lebanese overtones,
just as I speak English with American overtones. I also speak fluent French and spent two miserable years working in a bank.
So here I am, a Lebanese Maronite Christian, who are bankers to the Arab world today, just as Jews were once bankers to medieval
Christians. Needless to say, I am welcome in Egypt. Ironically, on previous visits, I have arranged actual loans for Egyptian
businesses with Beirut banks through Mossad contacts.”