Reprisal (29 page)

Omar had taken a strong liking to one of the family’s teenage boys and talked with him and gave
him cigarettes whenever he could. Omar had managed to rid himself for a few hours of Awad’s almost constant presence and used
this time to contact the Ibrahims. The boy had let it slip. They had an American staying with them. An American living in
a cabin in the City of the Dead! The Egyptian poor would not permit a hippie foreigner to do this. It had to be the one Omar
still thought of as Thomas Lewis, the wheat expert.

If Awad knew this, he would have the Ibrahims detained and Omar would lose their valuable services. He had to find a way to
feed the American to Awad without involving the Ibrahim clan. He could think of only one way. Having taken a notebook from
his pocket and torn out a page, he printed a message in block letters:
URGENT, SEE ME TODAY, OMAR Z.

He folded the paper and gave it to the Ibrahim boy along with a ten-pound note so he could buy himself cigarettes.

Then he rushed off to find Awad.

Abdel Ibrahim struck the youth with his fist on the mouth, splitting his lip. The teenager’s hangdog expression did not change,
and he made no attempt to defend himself, either physically or verbally.

Abdel and Dartley walked away as Abdel said, “That one is no good. He is not my boy—I would beat him unconscious if he were.
He’s my oldest brother’s son. He means no harm, but he is weak. The others will watch him while you are with us.”

“Let’s find Omar and see what this is all about,” Dartley said. Privately he thought it was some other change of mind which
Laforque had to transmit to
him, and the Frenchman had hired Omar to find him again.

Abdel knew Omar’s daily route even better than Dartley did. At this time of day he would be in Garden City, not far south
of the American Embassy. The British had developed this part of the city as living quarters for themselves in the 1930s, and
Garden City remained today as one of Cairo’s most pleasant areas.

Omar was standing by himself on a street corner. The intersection was broad, and Dartley motioned Abdel to pull in the car
on the opposite side.

“Have him cross the street to us,” Dartley ordered, slipping beneath the steering wheel himself as Abdel got out.

Dartley watched Abdel wait for a break in the traffic, then hurriedly cross the street to Omar, who didn’t spot him until
then. Abdel shook hands with Omar and tried to lead him by the arm back across the street. Omar balked. They argued.

It was then that Dartley grew nervous. He threw the car in gear and let it slide forward slowly along the street while he
watched developments on the far side. Only after the car had moved more than twenty feet did he see a fat man with an open
sports shirt hanging over his pants. The man stood back against the building wall, out of Ibrahim’s sight as he talked with
Omar. Dartley would have bet the farm that the fat man had a pistol tucked somewhere in his straining waistband beneath the
loose shirt. And Dartley had a damn good idea who the fat man was waiting for to approach Omar. Himself.

Ibrahim was going too far. The hungry looking
man, who was just skin and bone, was punching the fat cowering Omar and forcing him to cross the street. Dartley cursed. This
wasn’t what he wanted. He had no need to speak with Omar now. Omar had no message for him.

Abdel had forced Omar out into the traffic when the fat man pulled a pistol from beneath his shirt and went after them. Dartley
accelerated the Opel at right angles across the traffic moving in both directions. The Cairo drivers, used to such unpredictable
behavior, honked their horns, but didn’t slow down much as they swerved around him. Dartley stopped the car two-thirds of
the way across the broad intersection. He leaped out, then reached behind the driver’s seat to Ibrahim’s shotgun on the floor.

Dartley’s maneuver with the car had distracted the fat man from shooting Abdel, but now he was lining up the gun barrel on
Dartley’s head. Dartley pumped a shell into the chamber and loosed off a shot at the gunman, which did more damage to the
vinyl on the roof of a passing car than it did to its intended target.

A bullet whistled past Dartley’s ear like a crazed hornet as he pumped another shell into the chamber. He snapped off the
shot without taking aim. The fat gunman was peppered with birdshot, but it had spread out too much to cause him serious damage.
All the same, the stinging impact of a dozen pieces of shot got across the message to him that his pistol was no match for
a pump-action shotgun. The fat man turned and ran.

Dartley reloaded the chamber of the gun and aimed from the hip at Omar. Abdel Ibrahim’s eyes widened in alarm and he backed
off fast to one side.

Dartley’s voice was easy, raised only loud enough to be heard above the honking horns of the traffic which the shooting had
backed up. “Omar, I guess you never heard the good advice to never be the bait in your own trap.”

He loosed off a blast from the gun which caught Omar in the chest, knocking him over like a soda bottle. He sat up in the
roadway, an unrecognizable pulp of blood, hair and gristle. Dartley sent a second load of shot into his half-butchered carcass.

This time the bloodied torso fell back and lay still.

People were screaming, shouting and running from the shots between the cars.

Dartley gestured to Ibrahim with the smoking barrel of the gun. “You drive.”

The elevator was not working in the Adli Street apartment building, which although new was already run down. Richard Dartley
and Abdel Ibrahim climbed a staircase to the seventh floor, where the Pensione Cornwall was located. Other people in the stairwell
gave them no more than a passing glance.

Inside the pensione, which seemed clean and well cared for, there was no one at the reception desk. Dartley hammered on the
formica top with his knuckles.

An Egyptian in shirtsleeves, about thirty, came out and looked over the unshaven American and his emaciated sidekick from
the City of the Dead. “Sorry, we have no rooms left.”

Dartley held out his half of the $100 bill the arms dealer had ripped in a jagged tear across the middle.

The man in shirtsleeves showed no surprise. He took the bill and disappeared back into the pensione. While he was gone, Dartley
slowly lifted the phone
receiver on the reception desk. There was a dial tone. He put it back.

“He might have another line,” Dartley suggested.

Ibrahim shook his head.

In a minute the man returned with the two leather suitcases Dartley had last seen in the trunk of the arms dealer’s green
Mercedes in the underground garage. He decided not to check the contents. Even if everything was gone, replaced by bricks
or rocks, he did not want a confrontation on the seventh floor of an apartment building with no working elevator in the New
City.

He was reaching for the bags and planning a quick exit down the stairs when the man behind the desk spoke in an unexpected
tone in Arabic that Dartley understood.

“Have courage, Abdel Ibrahim.”

“You know me?” Abdel asked, not pleased.

“Our cause is just. Allah will assist us.”

“Mutta shakker,” Dartley thanked him, then hustled Ibrahim out the door in front of him, carrying the lighter suitcase. When
they were out of earshot in the staircase, he asked, “Who was that? Another of our cousins?”

“No,” Abdel replied, not seeing the joke, “I do not know him. Yet he seemed anxious to let us know he was one of us.”

“Too anxious,” Dartley snapped.

“You judge him too quickly. He is a patriot, Terry. He heard about my brothers and recognized me. Can’t you feel it? The people
here have had enough. They are getting ready to rise up against their oppressors.”

“Until the mullahs tell them to sit down again,” Dartley said sarcastically.

“You are mistaken there. We are Egyptians first, Arabs second. We are not like other Arab countries, where what you say might
be true.”

They stopped talking when they heard others climbing the staircase. They passed them by, went out to the street and put the
two suitcases in the Ford hired from Bita. They had turned in the Hertz Opel after the shotgun incident in heavy traffic.
Fortunately, Ibrahim had hired it under a false name, as he did this Ford. Dartley was aware of how adroit Abdel could be
behind his humble appearance.

“Take us out into the Western Desert so we can test-fire these guns,” Dartley said, determined not to be caught a second time
with faulty weapons.

As they crossed the Nile, Dartley returned to their previous conversation. He wanted to make one point clear to Ibrahim. “You
were saying that man in the pensione wanted to let us know he was one of us. Who’s us? Don’t tie me into any of your patriotic
games.”

Ibrahim silently concentrated on his driving.

Dartley went on. “I’m here to do a job for pay. If this job happens to help the Egyptians, that’s great, but it’s a side issue
with me. I’m using you. You’re using me. But we don’t have any purpose in common. Is that clear to you? I’m doing this for
greenbacks. If you want to work for me, that’s your concern. I’m willing to pay. Generously. Like I get paid. Only I don’t
want to hear any shit about me or you dying for the sake of Egypt. Or even getting scratched for Egypt, you hear?”

Ibrahim continued to gaze ahead out the windshield with a confident smile on his face. “It’s too late for you now, Terry.
You cannot back out.”

Anger flashed in Dartley’s eyes. “Like hell I can’t! The guy who hired me thinks I’ve already quit and gone home.”

“You told him you would?”

“Sure.”

“You meant it?” Ibrahim asked with interest.

“Since I got to keep the money, it made sense. Though it kind of bugged me to leave that shithead Ahmed Hasan trailing slime
above the ground. I was going to take time to think about it.”

“So it was Omar and Awad who decided you?”

“Maybe. Is Awad the fat one with the pistol who ran away?”

“Yes. I heard that you killed his partner Zaid.” Ibrahim made a cord of two fingers around his throat and stuck out his tongue.
“I think Awad must be losing his nerve—which is not good when you are a policeman on special assignment to Ahmed Hasan. Do
you think Hasan will let you leave Egypt after you have garroted one of his most feared strong-arm men and publicly humiliated
another, just because you have changed your mind about assassinating him?”

“It’s not as if I’m trapped in a box,” Dartley protested.

“Do you think the person who hired you to kill Hasan believes you will not do so now—after the way you killed Omar Zekri?”

“He can’t be sure that was me.”

Ibrahim laughed. “Terry, who else is there in Cairo
who would try a shootout in the middle of the street? You heard what they called you on the TV news—Jesse James.”

Dartley grunted. This thing was getting way out of hand.

Abdel Ibrahim’s mouth dropped open as Dartley swung in a tight half-circle and chipped pieces from the tops of rocks with
short bursts from the silenced Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. Dartley emptied about twenty of the thirty shots in the
magazine and showed Ibrahim how to fire off the rest. The gun worked faultlessly.

Dartley had expected to work alone, and as a result he had only one submachine gun. He liked to use a Browning Hi-Power semiautomatic
pistol as his backup piece. In fact, he liked the big Browning so much he often carried two of them on a close-combat mission,
one as the primary weapon instead of a submachine gun, and the other as the backup. He had four in the suitcase and he wanted
to test-fire them all. From now on, he and Ibrahim would keep one concealed on them at all times. Dartley was getting on a
war footing. He wanted to wrap this damn thing.

The reliability and simplicity, plus the thirteen-shot magazine, made this 9 mm Browning pistol the handgun of choice for
hostage rescue units and counterterrorist units all over the world. The FBI National HRU used them. So did Britain’s SAS and
Mexico’s Brigada Especial. The Hi-Power was J. M. Browning’s last pistol design. First introduced in
1935, it incorporated what Browning had learned since designing the classic Colt 1911 .45 pistol.

The Browning had no recoil spring plug, and in it the barrel link was replaced by a strong block. The Hi-Power’s slide stop
was placed farther back than the 1911’s, and this helped speed up changing magazines. Dartley didn’t like the Browning’s barleycorn
foresight and U-notch rearsight, but he didn’t expect to be doing any target shooting this time out.

These four pistols were made by FN in Belgium, and accordingly were labeled GP for Grande Puissance instead of HP for Hi-Power.
But they were the same goods, and they had an awful lot of stopping power out to more than fifty yards.

After Ibrahim had emptied several magazines, there was a fighting glint in his hollow eyes. Dartley could see he was going
to be hard to control.

Ahmed Hasan looked up from his desk and said to his aide, “Tell him I won’t see him, that he should be ashamed to show his
face here. You can say to Awad that I wanted to put him to death, but that you and some others persuaded me that I should
let him live because he was the only one who knew this American by sight. Say that you even persuaded me to believe that his
pistol jammed and that this was the only reason he ran away.”

The aide nodded. “Of course, if Awad kills this American, you will reward him well.”

“I will. And I mean that sincerely. Awad was a man I could trust. I need men like that. But he must prove himself first.”

The aide left the presidential office. The president
nodded and two intelligence agents were shown in. They warned Hasan that the renegade American’s reputation was spreading
among underground armed resistance groups, which had been quiet for some time in the capital.

“Now they see things happening they had believed impossible because of our security net,” one agent said. “If we can’t catch
this foreign interloper very soon, we must expect others to imitate his terrorist atrocities.”