Текст книги "The Radioactive Camel Affair"

Автор книги: Peter Leslie

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

For a long time he huddled there in wakefulness, listening to a family of baboons coughing and chattering uneasily somewhere in the rocks above him and the occasional scuttling noise made by a prowling jerboa—the desert rat which somehow eked out an existence in the wilderness. He would have liked to call Solo on the radio—but Napoleon had asked him to keep radio silence until he himself called: the bleep of the receiver might attract attention in the caravan. His progress report, and the problem of the inexplicable absence of news from Waverly, would have to wait. At last he fell into a fitful sleep—to awake what seemed an age later, shivering with cold. He pulled another blanket from the roll and looked at the illuminated face of his watch: it was still only a quarter past ten.

By midnight he was asleep again. But he awoke finally before dawn and waited in a fury of impatience for the sun to rise. It was still extremely cold. Moisture had penetrated the perspex side-screens, beading the dashboard instruments and controls and chilling him to the marrow.

He flung off the blankets, clambered stiffly to the ground, and stamped up and down on the barren earth in an attempt to restore his circulation and bring some warmth back into his body. The baboons chattered with anger and swung away over the top of the rocks. The sky was becoming visible at last—a dirty gray expanse tinged with saffron above the scrub to the east. Slowly the mountains he had crossed the previous evening assembled themselves in undulations of purple and ultramarine. By the time the sun eventually jerked into sight above a charcoal-colored cloudbank, Illya was already in the driving seat with the ignition key inserted.

But the Landrover was reluctant to start. The extremes of heat and cold had made the engine temperamental. Fearing that he might exhaust the battery, he got out again and swung it with the handle.

At his fifth attempt, the motor caught. He scrambled back inside and revved the accelerator for a few minutes to warm up the engine compartment and chase the moisture from contacts and leads. Then, bumping over the stony ground, he steered slowly around the rocks and back onto the road.

Strung out across it in two lines, barring his progress in either direction, were a score of African soldiers armed with Belgian FN automatic rifles.

Chapter 8

A Question of Identity

WADI ELMIRA WAS a jumble of flat-roofed, mud-walled buildings spilling down the side of a valley gashed at the bottom by a stony ravine. At the foot of the ravine a trickle of brown water, later to become a tributary of the Bahr-el-Ghaza river, slid among the rocks. The caravan reached the place at nightfall, passing through the arched gate in the walls and turning aside soon afterwards to halt in a wide, open space before a domed mosque.

As soon as the beasts had been fed and watered, most of the members of the caravan plunged into the narrow streets of the town. Only the pilgrims, sitting quietly among their bedrolls, the women, and some old men were left under the date palms in the dusk. When the train split into two portions the following morning, each was to be escorted by a squadron of Sudanese cavalry—so it was more than ever important that Solo should locate the canister that night and identify the camel carrying it. Tomorrow might be too late.

For a while he debated with himself whether he should stay as he was or conduct his researches in different clothes. He was stuck with the facial disguise, for he would never be able to reapply it once it had been removed. And as far as garments went, a burnoose would undoubtedly be the most anonymous—but on the other hand it would restrict his movements if he was spotted, and it might lead any pursuers back to the caravan. Eventually he decided to dispense with it. He had erected his bivouac close to a crumbling wall which bordered on one side of the open space where they were camped. The pack camels were lying near the tethered horses, some way beyond the trees on the far side. Inside the low tent, he wriggled out of the headdress and Arab robes, drawing on a pair of khaki shorts and a bush shirt. He was wearing rubber-soled sneakers. The Mauser was too conspicuous, he decided, and would have to be left behind.

Cautiously lifting the back flap of the bivouac, he crawled out and stood between tent and wall, listening. From somewhere over the rooftops reflected light from naptha flares flickered and there was a gabble of voices from the bazaars. Nearer at hand in the darkness only an occasional murmured conversation and the movement of tethered beasts broke the silence.

It was now or never. Flexing his knees, he sprang lightly upwards and grasped the top of the wall. A moment later he had hauled himself up and dropped to an evil-smelling alley choked with refuse on the far side. He ran swiftly along the lane between the wall and the backs of a row of mean houses. A hundred yards further on, the passage twisted away from the square around the bulk of the mosque and eventually emerged into a narrow street. Solo paused, looking up and down. To his right, the street led towards the hubbub and the bright lights of a market place; to the left, it curved away into shadows. If he were to turn left, and left again somewhere, he should be able to double back and reach the square on the far side from his bivouac. He turned and hurried on.

There were many people in the street, most of them drifting towards the bazaar, but few gave more than a second look at the bearded Arab in the bush shirt: the town was full of merchants, soldiers, refugees from the rebel country to the southwest, and country people in for the market.

Solo plunged down another alleyway to the left, squeezed past a veiled woman leading a donkey with bulging panniers, and ran on. Soon he was back in the square, crouched down behind the nearest line of recumbent camels. Fortunately, many of the traders in the caravan had unpacked their rolls to take samples to the bazaar, and to that extent his task was easier: the lead canister would be concealed somewhere in an untouched bale.

Furtively, crawling on hands and knees across the beaten earth between camel and camel, he searched and prodded and investigated with exploring fingers. After an hour he was halfway along the third line of animals. The great beasts chewed noisily on the cud, turning their eyes to gaze incuriously at the crouching man. He was enveloped in the rank odor of their fetid breath.

Towards the end of the line, he fell forward as his wrist turned under him on a loose stone, and lurched against a bulging bale of merchandise still harnessed to a dromedary. The pack swung away from him in an odd manner: it didn’t move as a tightly folded wad of materials should move…

Feverishly, he turned towards it. In a moment its secret was revealed. The thin layer of cloths on the outside was stretched over a wickerwork cage: inside, the bale was bulked out with some light substance like cotton wool—and, buried in the center, his fingers slid down the cold, greasy surface of a lead container.

He let out his breath in a long sigh. Unbuttoning the flap of his breast pocket, he drew out a small leather case containing two metal devices about the size of a matchbox. One of them emitted a continuous radio signal; with the dial of the other correctly tuned, one could follow the movements of the first one from a distance by taking the direction in which the bleeps were the loudest. For a moment he hesitated, wondering where to conceal the homing device. Its magnetic limpet attachment would be useless on lead. Finally, he shrugged and thrust it as far as he could into the cotton beneath the canister. At least now he would be able to keep track of the camel carrying the deadly load, even if he had to leave the caravan when the two portions split up. The homer had a range of over thirty miles. Just in case, though, he permitted himself the briefest flash from a pencil flashlight. Between the bogus bale carrying the canister and the balancing pack on the animal’s other side, a blanket in yellow, red and black striped material was rolled. This would give him a visual check as well.

Carefully he replaced the coverings over the wicker cage, tightened the retaining straps, and crawled back the way he had come. He was just rising to his feet at the end of the line when a flashlight beam blazed at him from behind a tree trunk.

“What are you doing?” a harsh voice snarled. “Stay still or I shall shoot.” There was a movement towards him in the shadows.

Solo froze. “Pardon,” he said in French. “I was trying to find my way to the central bazaar. Perhaps Monsieur could direct me?”

“On your hands and knees? A likely story! Come here and let’s have a good look at you. The police and the military here do not look too kindly on thefts from caravans.” The man holding the flashlight advanced. It was Ahmed, the camel-master.

Solo went slowly forward, thankful that he had had the foresight to change clothes. “I assure you, Monsieur, that there was no question of theft,” he said. “I had lost my way and I fell. When you saw me, I was just rising again…”

“We shall see about that,” the other sneered. “Put up your hands and we shall find out what you have thieved.”

The agent raised his arms, standing where he was. Ahmed came closer, circling him warily, the barrel of a revolver gleaming in the beam from the flashlight. He patted Solo on both hips and under the arms, running his fingers expertly up the inside of his thighs and across his stomach. “At least you’re not armed,” he said. “That should get the sentence reduced by perhaps five years—Aha! What have we here?” His hand had touched the hard bulge of the leather case in Solo’s breast pocket.

“A transistor radio,” Solo said truthfully.

“I shall believe that when I see it. Let’s have it.”

“You want me to take it out?”

“Quick.” The gun jabbed Solo hard in the small of the back.

He lowered his right arm slowly and unbuttoned the flap of the pocket, drawing out the case with the homer in it between finger and thumb. Then, before the exclamation of satisfaction had left Ahmed’s lips, he dropped the case and his hand streaked down and behind him, knocking the other’s gun arm aside. The heavy caliber revolver roared as Solo whirled and grasped the hand holding it in both of his own. He jerked the man’s arm up and then down, exerting a paralyzing judo grip on the wrist. As the barrel pointed at the ground, the pistol exploded again, the ricochet whining away among the trees from the stony terrain.

As the weapon finally dropped from his nerveless fingers, Ahmed slammed the heel of his other hand under Solo’s chin, thrusting back the agent’s head with agonizing force. Solo went with the thrust, letting go of the man’s wrist and rolling backwards. At the same time, he brought up his knees, set his heels on Ahmed’s stomach and then suddenly straightened his legs. The camel-master flew over his head and crashed to the ground behind him with a clatter which echoed around the square.

In a flash Solo was on his feet again and running towards the alley by which he had entered the place. This was no time for a prolonged combat: all that mattered was that he should get away and back to his tent before he was recognized. Aroused by the shots, people were already running towards them from the encampment. Pausing only to scoop up the leather case he had dropped and boot the revolver into the shadows, he dashed for the corner. Before he reached it, Ahmed was shouting abuse at him while he scrambled after the gun. A moment later a third shot rang out. The wind of the bullet fanned Solo’s left shoulder. Then he was around the corner and pelting down the alley towards the street which led to the bazaar.

Before he reached the second corner he stopped abruptly and melted into the shadows of a doorway. Half a dozen soldiers with drawn pistols clattered into the alley from the street and ran past him towards the confused shouting in the square.

Once they had gone, Solo slid out of his hiding place and walked rapidly away from the noise. “But you must have passed him,” he could hear Ahmed furiously calling as he turned the corner. “He ran down that passage only a few seconds before you arrived…”

The agent joined the throng moving towards the bazaar and strove to conceal the fact that he was hurrying. Arab women veiled in black, fellaheen in striped shifts and tarbooshes, peasants in rags and Bedouin in flowing white robes jostled against him as he walked. Somewhere in the crowd behind, he could sense, there was an eddying and a commotion as Ahmed and the soldiers ran back into the street. Dimly over the general noise he could hear voices raised in argument and shouts of protest.

In the market place, the shuffling of feet was drowned in the cries of barkers and the traditional haggling of merchants and customers. Hands gesticulated, fingers wagged, palms were upraised in the suffocating press among the stalls of fruit, vegetables, cloth and hardware under the flares. He had almost shouldered his way through to the far side when three shots rang out above the heads of the crowd. There was a screaming and a stampede as everybody fought to get away from the center of the market. A great stand of copper pots and pans near Solo careened over as half a dozen robed Arabs forced their way between two stalls.

“…where you are. Don’t leave the market place!” a voice was shouting over the clangor of falling hardware and the furious protests of the stallholder. “There is a foreign thief at large here and we want to find him. This is the military. Stay where you are—you have nothing to fear.”

Feeling as though he had suddenly been exposed in the glare of a searchlight, Solo slunk around behind the stall and made for a street twisting away into the shadows. If he was to go a hundred yards down there and then find a right turn, he might be able to circle around and find the lane leading to the wall sheltering his bivouac.

“Over there!” another voice was shouting. “Look—on the far side of the bazaar. Quick! After him!”

He glanced over his shoulder. The owner of the hardware stall, his arms full of saucepans, was dancing up and down and pointing towards him. Beyond, advancing rapidly down a lane between the striped awnings, Ahmed and tile soldiers came running. He broke into a run himself and plunged into the dark street. A fusillade of shots erupted behind him as he gained the shadow. Bullets spurted the dust on either side of his pounding feet; another chipped plaster from the wall by his shoulder.

Solo hared around the first bend in the street. There was no turning off to the right. The roadway led towards the lights of another square. He dashed into an entry on the left, ran up a flight of stone stairs, crossed a wider street and plunged through an archway into a maze of unlit alleyways. Behind him, the footsteps and voices of the hunters approached. There had been plenty of people in the street he had crossed to point out the way he had gone.

He ran on, down a second flight of steps, and found himself in a narrow lane with street lamps at dim intervals. All around him a faint murmur of voices behind closed shutters stirred the warm air. Music rose and fell in the distance.

He halted, panting.

“Why do you not come inside, stranger?” a soft voice intoned in Arabic at his elbow.

He swung around. There was a click. The upward-directed beam of a small flashlight illuminated the upper half of a girl’s body. The gleam of teeth and the highlight on a full lip shone through the shadows.

Solo hesitated. The sounds of pursuit were only one corner away. Already feet were scrambling down the steps.

“All right,” he said huskily, making up his mind. He stepped towards the doorway. The light vanished. A door creaked open into darkness.

Solo brushed past the girl and stood waiting as she closed the door. In the airless dark of the passage, the perfume of some exotic, cloying cosmetic washed over him. Outside, footsteps scraped to a halt. He could hear the voice of Ahmed: “…a foreigner. Medium height, bearded, and wearing western clothes.”

Somebody mumbled a negative.

“But he must be here somewhere. He can’t have got away…I’ve seen that man before somewhere, but for the moment I just can’t place him. There’s something familiar about him all the same…”

“He could be anywhere here,” another voice chimed in. “You know where we are? This is the street of—”

“It doesn’t matter what street it is,” a third voice, clipped and commanding, interrupted. “We’ll post sentries at either end and search it house by house.” The footsteps moved away decisively.

The girl, whose breath had hissed in sharply the first time Ahmed had spoken, now moved past Solo towards the back of the building. She said in a low voice, “This way. I will show you….”

Light stabbed the blackness as she switched on the flashlight and shone the beam at the floor behind her to light the way. Solo followed her to the end of the passage and up a flight of stone stairs. Apart from the clip-clop of the girl’s slippers and the swish of garments against her legs, they mounted in silence. At the top of the stairs a dimly lit foyer appeared with a number of doors opening off it. He followed the girl through one and found himself in a tiny room about eight feet square, furnished with nothing more than rugs and cushions upon the floor. As she crossed to draw heavy drapes across an arched window embrasure, Solo closed the door silently and leaned against it.

“I am sorry,” he began, “I only want to…”

For the first time, the girl turned to face him. It was Yemanja—the belly dancer from the caravan who had been giving him the come-on throughout the journey.

“So,” she said softly. “It is you!”

“Yemanja! I didn’t recognize you. I—”

“Why would you, my friend? How could you recognize that which you will not see? But I recognize you—although evidently Ahmed does not…yet.”

“I do not wish you to misunderstand me, Yemanja. When I came in here—”

“I know. If you had recognized me, you would have run away—the way you always retreat with your eyes when I look at you. Why do you rebuff me, my friend? Am I not beautiful? Am I not desirable?” The girl sank down on a pile of cushions, staring at him with her enormous eyes.

“You are very beautiful,” Solo said, “and very desirable. I swear it.”

“Then…?”

The agent hesitated. Could he trust the girl? If she had taken such a fancy to him, it might be worth the risk. On the other hand, a woman scorned…Mentally, he shrugged. He really had no choice.

“I am engaged upon a certain mission,” he said carefully. “In order to complete this successfully, it is vital that I do not in any way attract attention while I am with the caravan.”

“So? You are running away, are you not? It was you that Ahmed and the soldiers were chasing, no? Evidently you are on some secret business, for you are dressed as an effendi. But this is no concern of mine. Why do you not stay here with me? Come—sit here beside me and I will send for some refreshment.”

“Yemanja, I cannot.”

“But I wish it. You are beautiful. You have a kind and gentle face. You are different, my friend. In my life I have not met men like you. If you find me pleasing, why do you reject me—”

“If I become ‘friendly’ with you, it will make Ahmed jealous. And if he becomes more jealous than he already is, he will notice me all the more in the caravan—and that must not happen. Because, you see, he does not yet connect the man he is chasing tonight with the man his woman so obviously likes in the caravan.”

“Ahmed!” The girl’s voice was full of scorn. “He is a brute, that one. He beats me. Look—I will show you…”

“No, no,” Solo said hastily. “I believe you.”

“Anyway, I wish to leave him. I do not understand this of the caravan and your private business. I have said it does not concern me. You need not be afraid of Ahmed: he is a bully, all brag and no courage.”

“I am not afraid of him. It is just that he must not notice me.”

“Well, he cannot notice you here,” the girl cried triumphantly.

She broke off abruptly. From somewhere below a persistent hammering was echoing up the stairway. Yemanja rose on to her knees, her eyes wide with alarm. “The soldiers,” she whispered. “They said they would search every house…”

“Oh, no! Not again!” Solo said in English.

“You are right, my friend. They must not find you here. You must go.”

“Yes, but how?”

“Nobody saw you come in. So far as they know, I have been here alone all the time. If you leave through this window…”

“Does Ahmed know you are here?”

“Of course. I am here at his command. Where do you wish to go?”

“I want to get back to a lane which runs behind the wall at one side of the square where the encampment is.”

The girl drew back the curtain over the window embrasure. “Out here is a flat roof. Beyond is an alley. You cannot get back directly without crossing the street in front here. So take the alley in the opposite direction and you will find you are in the street circling the town inside the walls. Turn right along this and you will find that the—one, two, three, four, yes, fifth—the fifth turning will lead you to the mosque. And from there, the lane you speak of—”

“Yes, yes. I know the way from there,” Solo said. The hammering had stopped and there was the sound of many voices below. He swung a leg over the window-sill, and then turned back towards the girl.

“You are very beautiful and very kind,” he said. “I am grateful. If ever there is anything I can do…”

“You know what you can do,” the girl said.

Solo grinned, leaned inwards and kissed her briefly on the lips.

“I will not forget you,” she said softly. “You will see me again, my friend. I am a determined woman…”

Solo waved and jumped lightly to the flat roof. The curtain slid back over the window.

The drop to the alley was about fifteen feet. Even in his rubber-soled sneakers, he seemed to himself to make quite a noise when he landed. But nobody appeared to have heard; no voice questioned him and no footsteps advanced. After waiting a moment, listening, he ran lightly off in the direction the girl had suggested. The beaten earth road inside the wall of the town was deserted. Just before he got to the fifth turning, he saw the back of a patrolling sentry silhouetted against the sky on top of the wall. But he had reached the safety of the corner before the man had reached the end of his beat.

The mosque was nearly a quarter of a mile down the quiet street. There was one dangerous spot, when he had to cross an open space between the end of the street and the domed building—but the few passersby were all facing towards the lights of the bazaar, which showed through an archway on the far side. Shouts of command from the soldiers could still be heard above the hubbub of the market.

Solo passed noiselessly behind the watchers and turned the corner of the mosque. Two minutes later, he was jumping for the top of the wall bounding the encampment. Peering cautiously over the top, he saw that he had overestimated the distance by about two yards. He dropped back into the lane and climbed up again behind his bivouac. Then, lowering himself quietly behind the tent, he lifted the back flap and crawled inside with a sigh of relief.

As soon as he had stripped off the bush shirt and shorts and resumed the burnoose, he looked out across the square from the front. Flares had been set up where the beasts were tethered. One of the horses was restive, snorting and rearing on the end of its rope. There was a group of soldiers lounging by the entrance to the alleyway down which he had made his escape, and, nearer at hand, Ahmed was pacing up and down with a tall, dark man in Arab robes.

“I don’t see how he can have got away,” the camelmaster was saying angrily. “We had the whole street bottled up….I don’t think it likely, but just in case he did come from here, I am asking the soldiers to arouse all these people”—he gestured towards the corner of the encampment where Solo and the other pilgrims were quartered—”and get them out so we can have a look at them.”

The tall man took his arm. “It is not necessary,” he said. “There are plans, my friend, of which you know nothing. Leave it.”

Solo withdrew like a tortoise into his bivouac and rolled himse1f in his sleeping bag. Ten minutes later, he was asleep.