Nick Carter

The Omega Terror

ONE

Nobody was supposed to know I was in Madrid, and I tried to make sure nobody did. I wasn’t expecting attention, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. I was meeting Hawk in less than an hour and couldn’t take the chance of leading anyone to him.

After dinner I walked back to the Hotel Nacional instead of taking a taxi. I looked over my should der a couple of times but couldn’t spot anyone suspicious. At the hotel I asked the desk clerk if there had been any inquiries for me, as a double check for safety. The clerk’s reply was negative, so I took an elevator to the fifth floor and went to my room.

I was just about to insert the key into the lock when I noticed that somebody was already inside.

I had left a fine coating of powder on the knob of the door before I went out, and that powder had been disturbed by the grasp of a hand. There were probably prints on the knob somewhere, but in my job I rarely have time for following that line of identification. Things move too fast for detective work.

Looking up and down the corridor, I saw that I was alone. I drew the 9mm Luger, the gun I called Wilhelmina, from its holster, and started to try the door. I stopped and glanced at the overhead corridor light just a few feet away. There was a straight chair beside a table not far from the light. I got the chair, put it underneath the fixture, and climbed onto it. I reached up, removed a couple of < screws, the protective glass, and the bulb. The corridor was plunged into darkness.

Back at the door, I turned the knob slowly. As I suspected, the door was unlocked. I twisted carefully so that there would be no noise. Wilhemina was snugged in my right hand as I shoved the door open a few inches.

It was black inside. I listened for a moment and heard nothing. I opened the door a few more inches, then slipped quickly into the room.

There was still no evidence that anybody was in the place. No movement, no sound. My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out black hulks of furniture and a dim light from a curtained window. I eased the door shut behind me.

It was possible that a maid had come into the room during my absence. Or that there had been an intruder, but he had looked around and left. Still, I couldn’t take any of that for granted.

I had a small suite, and I was now in the sitting room. There was a bedroom and a bath at either end. I moved to the bathroom first, the Luger poised in front of me. If anybody was still here, he would kill to protect his identity.

There was no one in the bath. That left only the bedroom. I went cautiously across the sitting room to the bedroom door. On the way there, I stopped again. The room was in perfect order, except for one thing. The Madrid newspaper I had left on the small sofa had been moved. Only about six inches, but it had been moved.

I went on to the partially open bedroom door. If there was someone still here, this was where he had to be. When I got to the door, I reached carefully inside with my left hand, snapped on the bedroom light and slammed the door open all the way.

The bed was slightly mussed, but there was no-body on it. Then I heard a sound from the corner to my right.

I whirled in a lightning movement, my finger tightening on the trigger of the Luger. I stopped the squeeze just in time. My jaw dropped open slightly as I focused on the girl sitting in the overstuffed chair.

Her eyes opened slowly and, when she saw the gun, they popped wide. She was very awake now. I set my jaw hard.

“You just damn near got yourself killed,” I said. I lowered the luger and looked around the rest of the room to make sure she was alone. She was.

“I hope you’re not angry with me, Senor Price,” the girl said. “The bellboy, he…” her voice trailed off.

I almost laughed with relief. The enterprising bellboy of the Hotel Nacional seemed to have decided tired, lonely Bob Price, the alias I was wearing, could use company tonight. I would be properly grateful in the morning for his thoughtful surprise. I wondered how he got away with it in puritanical Spain.

I turned to the girl. There was genuine fear on her face and her eyes watched the gun warily. I bolstered the automatic, moving closer to her and softening my voice.

“Look. I’m sorry, I’m just not interested. You’ll have to leave.”

She was a good looking little piece, and I could have become very interested, given half a chance. But it was late, and David Hawk was expecting me. He had flown to Madrid especially to brief me on my next assignment.

A long leg dangled from under her coat as the girl reclined in the chair, and she swung it slowly. She knew all the moves, and I’d bet she’d be great in bed.

I smiled in spite of myself. “What’s your name?”

“Maria,” she said.

I reached down, pulled her to her feet, and she came just to my shoulder. “You’re a very pretty girl, Maria, but as I said before, I’ll have to look you up some other time.” I gave her a gentle shove towards the door.

But she wasn’t having it. She moved to the center of the room and, as I watched, unbelted the coat and opened it wide, revealing a beautiful, naked body.

“Are you sure you’re not interested?” She smiled.

I watched as she walked toward me. Every curve was sleek, every inch of flesh was smooth, taut, and supple. It made a man hungry. My mouth went slightly dry when she reached me, still holding the coat wide open. Then she dropped it to the floor and pressed herself against me.

I swallowed hard as she entwined her arms around my neck. I touched her waist and wished I hadn’t. Just the touch set a fire in me. I knew I had to end this idiotic game, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. While I hesitated, she placed her mouth on mine.

The taste of her was delicious. With more will power than I thought I had, I pushed her away, reached down, and grabbed at her coat while I could still think straight. I draped the coat on her and she reluctantly pushed her arms through the sleeves. I tied it at the waist.

“Now get out of here,” I said huskily.

She looked up at me with one last appeal. “Are you sure?”

“Jesus,” I mumbled. “Of course I’m not sure. Just go.”

She smiled, knowing she had gotten to me. “All right, Mr. Price. Don’t forget me when you are in Madrid again. You promised.”

“I won’t forget, Maria,” I said.

She turned and left the suite.

I sat down heavily on the bed, loosening my tie. I tried to keep myself from thinking of how Maria would have looked on the bed. Damn Hawk, damn AXE, damn me. I needed a cold shower.

I undressed quickly and moved across the main room of the suite to the bath. When I got in there, «I saw that the door of the medicine chest was open slightly. I was sure I’d closed it before I left earlier. And it was difficult to imagine why Maria would have nosed around in there.

I opened the chest door cautiously. Apparently there was no booby trap. Then I saw the note taped to the inside of the door. There was a message scrawled on it I didn’t think Maria had written it because the scrawl was very masculine:

Get out of Madrid. If you don’t, you will die.

Something tightened inside my gut. Obviously, I’d had two visitors that evening.

TWO

I was about fifteen minutes late for my appointment with Hawk, and he had chewed three dead cigars down to stubs while he paced the floor waiting for me.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he said sardonically after he admitted me to the rather squalid hotel room.

I suppressed a small grin. Hawk was in one of his moods. “Good to see you again, sir,” I told him, “Sorry about the delay. I had a small problem.”

“The Russians?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.” I told him about the message scrawled on the note.

He grunted. “I know Madrid is not the safest place for you at the moment, but it was convenient for both of us right now, and I had to speak with you quickly.”

He turned and moved to a small, rickety table on which were spread several official-looking papers. He sat down and shuffled the papers absently while I slumped onto a straight chair near him.

“I think you’ve heard me refer to an American defector named Damon Zeno,” Hawk began.

“A research microbiologist,” I said. “You figured he was doing some work for the Russians a while back.”

“That’s right,” Hawk said quietly. “But now he’s on the Chinese payroll. They set up a research lab for him in Morocco, and he’s been doing work on a tropical bug called bilharzia. Are you up on your tropical diseases?”

“It’s a flatworm,” I said. “A parasite that eats away at a man from inside. You pick it up in water, as I recall. Has Dr. Z done something to this bug?”

Hawk stared at the remains of his cigar. “Zeno took the bug apart to see what made it tick. And he found out. Our informant tells us that he’s developed a mutation of the normal flatworm, an almost indestructable strain of bilharzia. He calls it the Omega Mutation. Since Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet, we figure Zeno took the designation from his own last name.

“At any rate, if what we’ve learned is correct, the Omega Mutation is particularly virulent, and it multiplies at an almost unbelievable rate. It resists all known drugs, antidotes, and water purifiers currently in use.”

I uttered a low whistle. “And you think Zeno means to use this bug against the U.S.?”

“He’s admitted as much. America is to be the proving ground for any effective biological weapon he’s developed. A handful of enemy agents could easily infect our lakes and streams. Even after we learned of the bug’s presence, we could do little about it. Within days — not months or weeks— within days of contamination, most of us would have contracted the disease. In another few days, we’d be dead.”

“I guess I go visit Zeno in Morocco,” I said.

Hawk fiddled with the cigar again. “Yes. We believe the L5 man who runs the operation, by the name of Li Yuen, has personal ties with a couple of Moroccan generals who still have aspirations for a leftist coup. He may have made a deal with them; we don’t know yet. In fact, we don’t even know exactly where the lab is located.”

I shook my head. There was no advantage to being AXE’s Number One man except for the pay, and a man had to be a fool to do what I did for any amount of money. “I suppose time is of the essence?”

“As usual. We think Zeno is just about ready to make a final report to Peking. When he does, he will undoubtedly send the results of his experiments along with it. I’ve made reservations for you on a flight to Tangier tomorrow morning. You’ll meet Delacroix, our informant there. If you can bring Zeno back to us, do so. If not….” Hawk paused. “Kill him.”

I grimaced. “I’m glad you haven’t set my goals too high.”

“I promise you a good rest when this one is over, Nick,” Hawk said, moving his thin-lipped month into a small grin. Sitting there across the table from me, he looked more like a Connecticut farmer than a powerful intelligence chief.

“I may get a longer one than I want,” I said, returning the grin.

THREE

Iberia Airlines flight 541 arrived in Tangier late the next morning. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I noticed that it was warmer than in Madrid. The air terminal was a fairly modern one, and the uniformed Moroccan girls at the desks were friendly. There was a reservation booth for hotels, and I arranged for a room at the Velasquez Palace, in the French Quarter.

On the balmy ride into town, along a tree-lined but dusty road, I reflected on the note I had found in my room. Did the Russians leave it to let me know they were on AXE’s trail? Or was it a message from the Chicoms? Maybe, the Chinese L5 had gotten wind of AXE’s renewed interest in the Omega experiments, and an agent was trying to frighten us off until Zeno got his report to Peking.

The Velasquez Palace sat on a hill overlooking the harbor and Straits of Gibraltar and the med-ina section of Tangier, with its crammed-together ancient buildings and narrow streets. Tangier was a sparkling white-washed city set against the greenery of the hills behind it and the cobalt blue of the Straits. It had been a center of trade for over a thousand years, the meeting place of European and Asian commerce where Berbers and Bedouins mixed with merchants from every corner of the world. Smuggling and shady deals had flourished in the narrow streets of the medina and casbah until new laws were passed just after the Second World War.

When I called Delacroix from my hotel room, a young woman answered. The voice was filled with emotion as soon as I asked for André Delacroix.

“This is his real estate agent?” she asked, using the identification code that Delacroix had been given.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said.

There was a short pause. “My uncle has met with an accident. Perhaps we can meet to discuss the matters you wanted to take up with him.”

That was one of the problems with this kind of work. No matter how carefully you planned, an unknown factor was always being thrown at you. I hesitated before I spoke.

“Mr. Delacroix is unable to see me?” I asked.

Her voice was trembling slightly. “Quite un-able.” She spoke with a French accent.

“All right. Where would you like to meet to discuss the matter?”

Another slight pause. “Meet me at the Cafe Tingis, in the medina. I will be wearing a green dress. Can you be there by noon?”

“Yes, noon,” I said.

And then the phone was dead.

As I left my European-style hotel, a boy in a beige djellaba and a brown fez tried to sell me a taxi tour, which I declined. I walked along the Rue Velasquez to the Boulevard Pasteur and made a right to the Place de France. A couple of blocks later I entered the medina through an ancient archway.

As soon as you step into the medina you sense the chaos. The narrow streets are crowded with robed Moroccans. It is all winding streets and overhanging balconies and dark doorways leading to shops that sell brass and leather goods of all kinds of exotic things. As I moved along toward the Little Socco, oriental music assailed my ears from a shop somehwere, and strange but fascinating odors reached my nostrils. Veiled women wearing gray kaftans stood and spoke together in hushed whispers, and two American hippies stood in front of a dilapidated hotel, arguing with the proprietor about the cost of the room.

The Cafe Tingis sat at the end of the Little Socco. It was a large place inside, but nobody ever sat there except Moroccans. Outside on the sidewalk were tables with a wrought-iron railing in front of them to separate the patrons from the masses of humanity.

I found Delacroix’s niece seated at a table next to the railing. She had long straight, flaming red hair and wore a green dress that showed plenty of long white thigh. But she seemed completely un-aware of how beautiful she looked. Her face was tense with worry and fear.

“Gabrielle Delacroix?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, relief starting to show on her face. “And you are the Mr. Carter that my uncle was supposed to meet?”

“That’s right.”

When the waiter came, Gabrielle ordered a Moroccan mint tea, and I ordered a coffee. After he was gone, she turned large green eyes on me.

“My uncle is — dead,” she said.

I had guessed as much from the way she talked on the phone. But hearing her say it gave me a small empty feeling in my chest. I did not speak for a moment.

“They killed him,” she said, tears forming in her eyes.

Hearing the grief in her voice I stopped feeling sorry for myself and tried to comfort her. Placing my hand on hers, I said, “I’m sorry.”

“We were quite close,” she told me, dabbing at her eyes with a small lace handkerchief. “He came to see me regularly after my father died and I was all alone.”

“When did it happen?” I asked.

“A couple of days ago. He was buried earlier this morning. The police think the killer was a burglar.”

“Did you tell them otherwise?”

“No. I decided to do nothing until you tried to contact him. He told me about AXE and a little about the Omega project”

“You’ve done the right thing,” I told her.

She tried a smile.

“How did it — happen?” I asked.

She looked past me into the square toward the Cafe Fuentes and the Boissons Scheherazade. “They found him alone at my apartment. They shot him, Mr. Carter. Over and over.” She looked down at the small table between us. “Je ne comprends pas.”

“Don’t try to understand,” I said. “You’re not dealing with rational men.”

The waiter came with our drinks, and I gave him some dirhams. Gabrielle said “Mr. Carter” again, and I asked her to call me Nick.

“I don’t know how they found him, Nick. He seldom left the apartment.”

“They have ways. Have you noticed anyone hanging around your place since your uncle’s death?”

She made a little grimace. “I was sure somebody was following me when I went to police headquarters. But it’s probably my imagination.”

“I hope so,” I murmured. “Look, Gabrielle, did André tell you anything specific about the place where he worked?”

“He mentioned some names. Damon Zeno. Li Yuen. I have never seen him in such a state. He was afraid but not for himself. This Omega thing they are working on there, I think that’s what frightened him.”

“I can well imagine,” I said. I sipped the thick coffee, and it was terrible. “Gabrielle, did your uncle ever mention anything about the location of the lab to you?”

She shook her head. “He flew here from Zagora, but that is not where the facility is located. It is near a small village down closer to the Algerian border. He did not mention its name to me. I suspect he did not want me to know anything that could be dangerous.”

“A smart man, your uncle.” I stared out across the square to the Bazar Rif, trying to recall the names of villages along the border in that area. A caramel-faced Moroccan wearing a knit cap passed, pushing a handcart of luggage and followed by a sweating, red-faced tourist. “Is there anybody else around here that André might have confided in?”

She thought a moment. “There is Georges Pierrot.”

“Who is he?”

“A colleague of my uncle, a Belgian like us. They were school friends in Brussels. Uncle André visited him just days before his death, after he had made his escape from the research facility. It was about the same time that he spoke to Colin Pryor.”

Colin Pryor was the man from DI5, formerly MIS, that Delacroix had contacted in Tangier to get to AXE. But AXE knew everything that Pryor knew, and that did not include the location of the facility.

“Does Pierrot live here in Tangier?” I asked.

“Not far away, in a mountain town called Tetuãn. You can get there by bus or taxi.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. If Delacroix had gone to see Pierrot in the short time he was in this area, he might have told him pertinent things. “I’ll have to go see Pierrot.”

Gabrielle reached over and put her hand on mine. “I’m very grateful that you are here.”

I smiled. “Until this is over, Gabrielle, I want you to be extremely careful Call me if you see anything suspicious.”

“I will, Nick.”

“Do you work in Tangier?”

“Yes, at the Boutique Parisienne, on Boulevard Mohammed V.”

“Well, go to work every day as you normally would, and try not to think about your uncle. It’s the best thing for you and if anybody is watching you, it may lead them to believe that you are not suspicious about your uncle’s death. I’ll contact you after I’ve spoken with Pierrot.”

“I will be looking forward to it,” Gabrielle said.

She was not the only one who would anticipate the next meeting with pleasure.

That afternoon I walked down to the bus station and found out that it took over twice as long to get to Tetuãn by bus as by taxi, but I decided to go at least one way by bus because it would be less conspicuous. I was told to arrive at the station early the following morning to catch the Tetuãn bus at 6:30. The tickets could not be purchased in advance.

That evening I placed a call to Colin Pryor, the DI5 agent. There was no answer, even though the operator let the phone ring a number of times. I remembered that there was a recently established drop site in the newer part of town, and around mid-evening I walked over there and checked it, out. There was no message.

I didn’t like it. Delacroix dead, Pryor not available — I was beginning to smell a rat. And then, as is too frequently the case, something happened to confirm my suspicions. I was making my way back to the hotel, walking along a dark street with almost no pedestrian traffic. It was an area of new construction where shops were going into renovated buildings. Not ten seconds after I had passed a dark alleyway, I heard a sound behind me. I ducked low as I spun on my heel, and a silenced shot thumped in the blackness.

The slug from the gun dug into the brick of the building near my head and zinged off into the night. Just as I drew Wilhelmina, I saw the shadowy figure move quickly into the alleyway.

I ran back to the alley and peered down its black length. The man was not in sight. The alley was a short one and opened onto an interior court.

I started into it but stopped short. It was a kind of parking lot for several buildings. At the moment it was full of heavy equipment, including a big crane with a demolition ball on the end of a long cable. The crane looked American-made.

A wall of one building to my left had been partially torn down, and there was a lot of rubble around. The shadowy figure was nowhere in sight. But I felt he was there somewhere, hiding in the rubble or equipment, just waiting for a second, better opportunity to get me.

Everything was deadly quiet. My eyes swept over the black hulks of heavy machinery as I moved past them, but I saw no human shape. It was possible that my assailant had gone into the rubble of the damaged building. I went slowly toward the demolished wall, watching my footing carefully.

Suddenly I heard the engine break the silence with its rumbling roar. I whirled around quickly, at first unable to tell which piece of equipment the sound was coming from. Then I saw the boom of the crane move and the enormous iron ball raise slowly off the ground. Blinded by the crane’s headlights, I squinted at the cab of the machine and could just barely make out a dark figure in there.

It was a clever idea. The crane stood between me and the alley exit, and I was trapped in a corner of the building complex with no place to hide. I moved along a back wall, holding the Luger ready.

I aimed toward the cab of the crane, but the ball was between the cab and me and was swinging toward me. It came with surprising swiftness and seemed as big as the crane itself when it arrived. It was between two and three feet in diameter and had the speed of a small locomotive. I dived headlong into the rubble, and the ball swung past my head and crashed into a wall behind me. Glass shattered and stone and brick crumbled as the metal ball demolished a section of the wall. Then the boom of the crane was pulling the ball back for another try.

The ball had missed me by inches. I reholstered Wilhelmina and clambered out of the rubble, spit-ting dust and swearing to myself. I had to get around that damned crane somehow, or I would be smashed like a bug on a windshield.

I ran to my left, toward the corner away from the crane. The big ball swung after me again, and the operator’s timing was almost perfect. I saw the black, round mass rushing toward me like a giant meteor. I threw myself to the ground again but felt the massive sphere graze my back as I went down. It crashed loudly on the wall behind me, rending and tearing metal, brick, and mortar. A couple of windows popped open in the building at the right of the court, and I heard a loud exclamation in Arabic. Apparently there were people still living in that building, despite the demolition on the far side of the court.

The man in the crane ignored the shouts. The engine thudded purposefully on, and the ball swung back to strike out a third time. I struggled to my feet and continued toward the far wall. Again the ball came, black and silent, and this time I stumbled over a piece of broken concrete just as I was about to make my attempt to avoid the round hulk. I was thrown off balance for just a split second before I could dive away from the ball, and when it came I had not quite gotten out of its way. It grazed my shoulder as it went past, throwing me violently to the ground, as if I were a cardboard doll. I hit the rubble hard and was dazed for a moment. I heard the crane operating again, and when I looked up, the ball was poised about ten feet above my chest.

Then it dropped.

The thought of being mashed on that broken pavement by that descending spherical terror galvanized me into action. As the ball plummeted out of the night at me, I made a frenzied roll to my left. There was an ear-splitting crash beside my head as the ball hit and debris rained around me, but the ball had missed.

The man in the crane apparently could not see that he had not hit me because he descended cautiously from the cab as the dust cleared. I grabbed a hunk of broken wood and lay very still as he approached. The engine was still throbbing behind him. He had raised the ball up about six feet, and it hung in mid-air. More windows had been opened in the building and there was the sound of many excited voices.

My assailant was standing over me. I swung the piece of wood at his knees. It connected solidly with his kneecaps, and he yelled aloud and slumped to the ground. He was a big, ugly Moroccan. Covered with dust and dirt, I leaped up and onto him. He met my attack, and we rolled on the ground to a spot under the big metal ball. I saw the ball slip down six inches, and I swallowed hard. He had not quite gotten the pulley apparatus into gear before he left the cab of the crane.

I rolled quickly out from under the ball, the other man with me, hitting at my face with a big heavy fist. Then he was on top of me and had a good hold on my neck. His viselike grip closed, and he was cutting off my wind. He had more energy left than I, and his hands felt like steel bands around my throat.

I had to get him off or suffocate. I jabbed stiff fingers into a kidney, and his grip loosened some. With a violent movement, I managed to jam a knee into his groin. The grip on me was lost, and I sucked in a big lungful of air as I shoved the Moroccan off.

I grabbed at my stiletto, which I called Hugo, but was never able to bring it into play. Just as the big man hit the ground the ball jerked again and fell on him.

There was a dull crunch as the ball hit his chest. The dust cleared quickly, and I saw that he had been cut almost in half, his body mashed by the ball.

I struggled to ray feet and heard someone say something about the police.

Yes, there would be police. And they would find me there if I did not move fast. I sheathed Hugo and, with one last look at the dead man, left the scene.

FOUR

“André Delacroix? Yes, of course I knew him. We were close friends. Please step into the library with me, Mr. Carter.”

I followed Georges Pierrot into a comfortable, small room of his Moorish-style home. The room was all books and ornate carpet and wall maps of various areas of Africa. Pierrot had carved out quite a niche for himself in Morocco. He was a chemical engineer for a private industrial firm in Tetu&n.

“May I offer you a drink?” Pierrot asked.

“I’ll take a glass of brandy if you have any.”

“Of course,” he said. He went to a built-in bar on one wall, opened carved doors, and withdrew two bottles. Georges Pierrot was a small man in his mid-fifties with the look of a French university professor. His face was triangular with a goatee on the end of it, and he wore spectacles that kept slipping down on his nose. His dark hair was streaked with gray.

Pierrot handed me a glass of brandy and kept a Pernod for himself. “Were you also a friend of André?”

Since Pierrot was close to Delacroix, I answered, with at least some of the truth: “I’m the help he was looking for.”

His eyes studied me more carefully. “Ah, I see.” He looked down at the floor. “Poor André. All be wanted was to do good. He was a very dedicated man.” Pierrot spoke with a heavy French accent.

We had seated ourselves on a soft leather sofa. I sipped at the brandy and let it warm my insides. “Did André discuss the facility with you?” I asked.

He shrugged thin shoulders. “He had to talk to somebody. There is his niece, of course, a lovely girl, but he seemed to feel the need to confide in another man. He was here less than a week ago, and he was very upset.”

“About the experiments at the lab?”

“Yes, he was quite despondent about them. And, of course, he barely escaped from there with his life. They knew he was suspicious of what was going on, so when he tried to leave one night, they followed him with guards and dogs. They shot at him in the darkness, but he got away — only to have them find him in Tangier.” Pierrot shook his head slowly.

“What else did he tell you when he came here?” I asked.

Pierrot looked up at me tiredly. “Not a great deal. Probably nothing you do not already know. That the Chinese were working on a terrible biological weapon and that they had moved the laboratory to this country recently to conclude their experiments. He admitted to me that he was working with the Americans to keep a watch on the project. I am sorry if it was wrong of him to speak so openly, but as I said, he felt the need to talk to somebody.”

“Yes, of course.” It was one of the troubles with depending on amateurs.

“Did he mention the location of the laboratory to you?” I probed on.

Pierrot paused a moment. “He did not speak of the exact location, Monsieur Carter. But he mentioned that the facility was close to a village down near the Algerian border. Let me think.”

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, pushing the spectacles down farther, and closed his eyes in concentration. “It was — the one south of Tamegroute — it begins with an ‘M.’ Mhamid. Yes, Mhamid, that is the village he mentioned.”

I made a mental note. “And that’s down near the border?”

“Yes, on the other side of the Atlas Mountains, in dry, arid country. There is almost no civilization there, monsieur. It is the edge of the desert.”

“A well-chosen spot,” I mused. “Did André describe the personnel of the facility to you?”

“Only briefly. He told me of an American scien-tist”

“Zeno,” I said.

“Yes, that is the name. And, of course, the Chinese who is the administrator of the facility. Li Yuen, I believe he said the name was.”

I sipped some more brandy. “Did André talk of Li Yuen’s personal ties to Moroccan generals?”

Pierrot’s face lit up. “Yes, he did.” He looked around the room conspiratorially as if there might be someone lurking behind the draperies. “There are two names André spoke of, men he saw at the facility, conferring with Li Yuen.”

“Who are they?”

“I remember both names because they were in the news here fairly recently. You will remember the uprising of the generals? The coup was put down by King Hassan in a bloody reprisal. The two military men that André saw were among the ones accused at first, but later they were cleared. Many believe that they were the real leaders of the coup and that they are even now waiting their chance to make another attempt to overthrow the Moroccan government and establish a leftist regime. They are General Djenina and General Abdallah,” Pierrot said. “It is believed that Djenina is the leader.”

“So Djenina promised protection to the laboratory for a limited period,” I guessed aloud, “in return for financial backing from the Chinese for a second and more efficient coup.”

I still had to have a better description of the location of the facility. I could not go down to the border and roam around in the desert for a week trying to find the lab. By then it might be too late.

General Djenina knew where it was located. And if he was like most army men, he had a written record of it hidden away somewhere.

“Where is this Djenina now?” I asked.

Pierrot shrugged. “He commands an imperial army in this area and has his headquarters in Fez. But I have no idea where he makes his home. It would undoubtedly be near Fez.”

“And it’s his home where he would keep anything important, away from official eyes,” I said. I set the brandy glass down and stood up. “Well, I want to thank you for your cooperation, Monsieur Pierrot.”

Pierrot rose to see me to the door. “If you are going to Ibn Djenina,” he said, “you had best take care. He is a ruthless, dangerous man who wants to be dictator of this country.”

I extended my hand to the Belgian, and he took it. “I promise to be careful,” I said.

As soon as I got back to Tangier, I went to the Velasquez Palace to clean up and make another call to Colin Pryor. When I entered my room, I stopped short.

The place was a mess. My one piece of luggage was open, and the contents were strewn all over the floor. The bedding was in shreds and the drawers of the chest had been pulled out and flung across the room. It seemed someone wanted to know how much information I had at this point and thought my belongings might tell him. But the action was also a terror tactic, a show of muscle. When I went into the bathroom, I found another note, in the same scrawl as in Madrid, this time taped to the glass of the mirror over the washbowl. It said:

You’ve been warned. The girl is next. Read tomorrow’s newspapers to her.

I didn’t understand the last part. I stuck the note into my pocket, went to the phone and called Pryor. This time I got him. His accent was distinctly British.

“Good to hear from you, chappie,” he said when I had identified myself to him in code.

“Same here. I’m seeing the sights. How about taking them in with me tonight? We could meet around 11:00.”

“Sounds good. I have to stop to see a friend first, but I can meet you after that.”

“Right. See you later.”

I hung up after we’d arranged to meet at a small sidewalk restaurant on Mohammed V, a site used previously by both DI5 and AXE. Then I called Gabrielle Delacroix and was relieved to find that she was all right. I asked her to join me for dinner at Detroit Restaurant, in the casbah, at eight and she agreed.

My last call was to Avis Rent-A-Car, to see whether they would be open for a while. They said they would. I took a taxi and rented a Fiat 124 convertible. The car had five forward gears as standard equipment and was just right for driving in the streets of Tangier. I drove up the hill to the casbah, through the narrow winding streets of the medina, and met Gabrielle at Detroit. The restaurant was perched atop an ancient fortress building that had been a sultan’s palace. Three walls of the dining area were glass and gave an incredible view of the Straits of Gibralter. I found Gabrielle at a window table. She was white-faced and looked very different from the way she had sounded on the phone.

I sat down at the low round table and studied her. “Is everything all right?” I asked.

“I turned on the car radio on the way here,” she said in a monotone.

“Go on.”

“There was a brief news item from Tetuãn.”

My stomach tightened automatically. “What was it, Gabrielle?”

The green eyes looked up at me. “Georges Pierrot is dead.”

I stared at her, trying to grasp what she had said. It seemed impossible. I had left him just hours ago. “How?”

“The police found him hanging from a short rope in his garage. They are calling it suicide.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I am very scared, Nick.”

Now I knew what the note had meant. I was just about to speak when the waiter came along, so I stopped and gave him our orders. Neither of us was very hungry, but I ordered two pots of Moroccan couscous with a light wine. When the waiter left, I took the note from my pocket.

“I think you ought to see this, Gabrielle,” I said, handing the paper to her. “I found it in my hotel room.”

Her eyes skipped across the message, and as they did so, a glaze of raw fear came into her eyes. She looked back at me.

“They are going to kill me too,” she said hollowly.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I assured her. “Look, I’m really sorry that you and Pierrot had to get mixed up in this. But that all happened before I got here. Now that they know about you, the only thing we can do is take special care that you don’t get hurt. You may have to move out of your apartment for a while until this blows over. I’ll register you in a hotel this evening.”

She had gotten control of herself now, and there was no more hysteria in her eyes. “My uncle fought these men because he knew they must be fought,” she said slowly. “I will not run away.”

“There’s no need for you to do any more than you’ve done already,” I told her. “I’m leaving Tangier soon to find the research lab. You’ll be alone, and the only thing you have to do is stay out of sight for a while.”

“Where is the facility?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet, but I think I know somebody who can tell me.”

We finished the meal in silence, left the restaurant, and got into my rented car. We drove through the ancient archway to the casbah, over the rough cobblestones, back down through the medina toward the French Quarter. But before we got out of the medina, we found trouble. I had been followed.

It was on a narrow, dark street, away from the shops and people. We were almost at the Old City gates when it happened. A boy came up the street from the opposite direction pulling an empty handcart, the kind used for luggage by the hotel porters. There was plenty of room for us to pass, but suddenly he veered the cart sidewise in front of us, blocking the street. Then he ran into the shadows.

I jammed on the brakes and jumped from the car to yell after the boy. In the next instant a shot barked out in the night from a nearby balcony. The slug ripped into the roof of the car beside my left arm and spent itself somewhere inside. I heard Gabrielle give a sharp little yell of fright.

I ducked to one knee, going for the Luger as my eyes sought the blackness of the balcony. I saw a shadow move. A second shot rang out and tore at the sleeve of my jacket, smashing window glass in the car beside me. I returned fire with the Luger but did not hit anything.

“Get down!” I yelled at Gabrielle.

Just as she obeyed, a shot exploded in the night from the opposite side of the street. The slug ripped through the windshield of the Fiat and missed Gabrielle’s head by inches. If she had been sitting upright, it would have killed her.

I fired back toward the sound of the shot, then swung back behind the open door of the car. I heard a voice shout loudly in Arabic, calling to someone behind us. They had laid a trap for us and had us boxed in.

“Keep down!” I yelled to the girl again. I climbed back into the driver’s seat just as another shot was fired from the balcony and shattered the glass of the driver’s window.

I crouched low on the seat, holding onto the Luger all the while, and started the car. Another shot came from the opposite side of the street, and I could see that the gunman was in a doorway. But Gabrielle was between us. I ripped the gears as I shifted into reverse, and with both of us ducked down low in the front seat, I roared backwards down the narrow street.

The figures came out of the deep shadows and fired openly at us as we moved away. Two more shots shattered the windshield as I tried to keep the car from running into a building. I reached out the vent window with the Luger and returned fire. I saw the man who had jumped from the balcony to the street go down holding his right leg.

“Look out, Nick!” Gabrielle yelled.

I turned and saw a man in the middle of the street, aiming a gun at my head through the rear window. I ducked lower as he fired and the slug shattered both the rear window and the windshield.

Then I stepped hard on the accelerator. The sports car jumped backward. The gunman tried to get out of its way, but I followed him. The car hit him with a thump, and I saw him fly over the left side of the Fiat and hit the pavement against the side of a building. We reached a small intersection, and I backed into it, then slipped the Fiat into first and shot away toward the bright lights of the French Quarter. We drove onto Rue de la Liberty, the Fiat limping on a flat tire, its glass spider-webbed with cracks and holes. I pulled over to the curb and looked at Gabrielle to see if she was all right.

“I see you came through it,” I said, giving her a reassuring grin.

I thought she would be scared speechless, considering her reaction earlier to the killing of Pierrot, but she was looking at me clear-eyed and calm.

She reached over and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. “That’s for saving my life.”

I said nothing. I got out of the battered car and went around and helped her out. Curious passersby were already pausing to look at the Fiat, and I guessed the police would be in the area very soon. I took Gabrielle’s arm and rushed her around a corner and onto the Rue Amerique du Sud. In the shadow of a sapling, I stopped and pulled her close to me.

“This is for being a good sport about everything,” I said. Then I kissed her. She responded completely, pressing her body close against me and exploring my mouth with her tongue. When it was over, she just stood there looking up at me, her breath coming shallow. “That was very nice, Nick.”

“Yes,” I said. Then I took her hand. “Come on, we have to find you a place to stay tonight.”

FIVE

We walked a complicated route through the French Quarter, and when I was sure we were not being followed, I settled Gabrielle into a small hotel called the Mamora, not far from the Velasquez Palace. Then I kept my appointment with Colin Pryor.

The cafe we met at was not heavily visited by tourists, although located on the Boulevard Mohammed V. There was a single row of tables jammed up against the outside of the building to avoid the heavy evening pedestrian traffic. Colin Pryor was already there when I arrived.

I joined Pryor with just a mutual nod of our heads. We had met previously, in Johannesburg, but he looked heavier and out of shape now. He was a squarish Briton who might have been a champion soccer player.

“Good to see you again, Carter,” he said after we had ordered tea from a harried waiter.

I patched the crowd before us in their djellabas and fezzes and veils. “How are they treating you?” I asked.

“They keep me hopping, old boy. And the pay’s the same.”

“Same here.”

It was a perfect place for a meeting. The noise from the crowd drowned out our voices to anybody but each other, and since complete strangers sat at tables together because of a lack of chairs, there was no good reason for an observer to conclude that we knew each other.

I spent the first ten minutes telling Pryor how I almost got killed a couple of times in a couple of hours. He already knew about Delacroix and Pierrot. There was little he could add to my own meager store of information.

“What do you know about the Moroccan general staff?” I asked next.

“Not a great deal. What do the generals have to do with the Omega project?”

“Maybe very little. But Delacroix thought there might be a tie-in.”

“The army leaders are hiding under their desks at present, hoping the king doesn’t decide to bring charges against them. He believes there are still traitors in the army who plan to overthrow him.”

“Has he given Djenina a clean slate?”

Pryor shrugged. “Ostensibly. Djenina was at the state reception where the previous coup attempt was made. A bloody affair. Djenina killed several of his colleagues and helped prevent the coup, they Bay.”

I mused “Before or after he saw how badly it was going for them?”

“Good point. But so far, Djenina is in the clear. He and General Abdallah.”

That was the other name Pierrot had mentioned. “Abdallah was at this reception, too?”

“Yes. He shot a fellow officer in the face.”

I grunted. “Delacroix believed that Djenina was one of the conspirators in the first coup and that he’s now planning a second one.”

“He bloody well might. But what does this have to do with your problem, old boy?”

“Djenina has been seen at the research lab with the leaders there. It’s possible that Djenina is scratching the backs of the Chinese so that they’ll scratch his. I understand Djenina commands from Fez.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Does he live off the military base?”

“He’s furnished a place on the base, I believe,” Pryor said. “But he’s never there. He has a fancy estate up in the mountains, near El Hajeb. Keeps a cadre of troops to guard the place. It’s rumored that Hassan is going to take his personal guard away from him, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“How would I find his place?”

Pryor looked at me quizzically. “You’re not going there, old chap?”

“I have to. Djenina is my only contact with the lab. He’s been there and knows its exact location. If Djenina has any records about his association with the Chinese, I think he would keep them at his home. They just might give me a clue as to where the site is located. Or Djenina himself might.”

“Are you planning a burglary?” Pryor asked.

“That seems easier than deception, under the circumstances.”

His eyebrows raised. “Well, you’ll need luck, old boy. The place is a veritable fortress.”

“I’ve been in fortresses before,” I said. Pryor began drawing on a napkin, and I watched him. In a moment he was finished.

“This will get you to the general’s estate. It’s not much of a map, but it should give you a fair idea.”

“Thanks,” I said, tucking the napkin into a pocket. I finished my tea and prepared to get up.

“Carter, old man.”

“Yes?”

“This is a big one, isn’t it?”

“Damned big.”

He grimaced. His square-jawed face was somber. “Well, take care,” he said. “What I mean to say is, we’d hate to lose you.”

“Thanks.”

“And if you need me any time, just whistle.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Pryor. And thanks.”

When I left Pryor, I decided to check in on Gabrielle, to see that everything was all right. I made sure I was not being tailed, then went to her hotel. It took her several minutes to answer the door, and she listened carefully to my voice before she opened it. When I saw her, I must have stared for a moment. She was wearing a sheer peignoir, a pale green that brought out the color of her eyes, and her red hair was streaming over her almost-bare shoulders. The cloth revealed a lot of Gabrielle underneath.

“I must have gotten you out of bed,” I said. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see that you were settled in.” I wondered, even as I spoke the words, whether that was my only reason for being there.

“I am very glad you came back, Nick. I had not gone to bed yet. Please come in.”

I stepped into the room, and she closed and locked the door behind me. “I had a bottle of cognac sent up,” she said. “Would you like a glass?”

“No, thanks, I won’t be long. I wanted to tell you that I’m going up into the hills tomorrow, near Fez, to locate the general who knows where the lab is.”

“Djenina commands that area. Is it him?”

I sighed. “Yes, and now you know more than you should. I don’t want you to become any more involved, Gabrielle.”

She sat down on the edge of the double bed and pulled me down beside her. “I’m sorry I guessed, Nick. But, you see, I want to be involved. I want to make them pay for my uncle’s death. It is very important to me to help.”

“You have helped,” I told her.

“But I can do more, much more. Do you speak the Almohad dialect?”

“Straight Arabic is tough enough for me.”

“Then you need me,” she reasoned. “The general’s guards are Almohads from the High Atlas. Might it not be important to be able to communicate with them in their own language?”

I was going to give her a quick “no” but thought better of it. “Are you familiar with the area around El Hajeb?” I asked.

“I was raised around there,” she said with a broad, disarming smile. “I went to school in Fez as a child.”

I took the map from my pocket. “Does any of this look familiar to you?”

She studied the map silently for a long moment. “This map tells how to get to the old caliph’s palace. Is this where Djenina is living?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“My family used to go there every Sunday.” She beamed smugly. “The place was open to the public for a while, as a museum. I know it well.”

“You’re familiar with the interior?”

“Every room.”

I returned the broad smile. “You’ve just bought yourself a ticket to Fez.”

“Oh, Nick!” She threw her long white arms around me.

I touched a curve of soft flesh under the sheer cloth when she kissed me, and the touch seemed to set her afire. She pressed more closely against me, inviting further exploration with her hand, as her lips moved on mine.

I did not disappoint her. When the kiss was over, she was trembling. I got up from the bed and snapped the light off, leaving the room in dim shadow. When I turned back to Gabrielle, she was slipping the peignoir off her shoulders. I watched the liquid movement. She was a voluptuous girl. “Take your clothes off, Nick.” I smiled in the dark. “Anything to oblige.” She helped me, her body brushing against me as she moved. In a moment, we were locked in another embrace, standing, her long thighs and full hips pressed against me.

“I want you,” she said so softly I could hardly hear the words.

I picked her up, carried her to the big bed, laid her down on it, and studied the soft, light body against the bedcovers. Then I moved onto the double bed beside her.

Later Gabrielle fell asleep in my arms, like a baby. After lying there with her beside me for a while, thinking of Djenina and Li Yuen and Damon Zeno, I finally slipped away from her, dressed, and left the room silently.

SIX

The next day we drove through the hills and mountains of northern Morocco to Fez and El Hajeb. We were in Gabrielle’s Citrõen DS-21 Pallas, a high-performance luxury car that hugged the mountain curves well. I drove most of the way because time was important to us and I could push the Citrõen harder.

For the most part it was dry, rocky country we went through. The scrawny greenery clung to the harsh terrain with a fierce determination to survive that was matched only by the Berbers who eked out a kind of living from the mountain rock. Goatherds stood tending flocks in lonely fields, and farmers were wrapped completely in their brown djellabas so that a passerby could not see their faces. Women sold grapes by the side of the road.

We drove directly to the mountain village of El Hajeb. It looked a thousand years old, the crowded-together houses of the medina showing crumbling, ancient brick. We found a small cafe where we took our chances on a lamb kebab lunch with a local wine. Gabrielle had a glass of tea afterward, and it turned out to be a frothy mixture of hot milk and weak tea, which she sipped and then left.

We got the map out and started off again into the mountains. This time we had to leave the main road and drive over some very primitive paths. They were rocky and bumpy, with craggy outcroppings of rock surrounding us at times. As we rounded a curve onto a green plateau, we saw the, estate.

“That’s it, Nick,” Gabrielle said. “It used to be called the Caliph Hammadi Palace.”

I pulled the Citrõen over toward a clump of trees at the side of the road. I did not want the guards spotting us just yet. The old palace was very large. Made of brick and stucco, it was all arches, wrought-iron gates, and balconies, with mosaic tile decorating the facade. It was an appropriate home for a very powerful man.

Around the palace were gardens that extended for about a hundred yards in a wide perimeter. This garden area was enclosed by a high iron fence. There was a big gate on a drive that led into the grounds, and I could see a guard in a military uniform on duty.

“So that’s where Djenina hangs out,” I said. “It makes a nice summer cottage, doesn’t it?”

Gabrielle smiled. “Generals are important in this country, despite the recent uprising.” This one is more important than anyone on his staff imagines.”

“The place appears heavily guarded,” Gabrielle said. “Even if we manage to get in, how will we get out?”

“We will not get in or out,” I said to her. “I win—”

I squinted into the lowering sun and saw a long, black car coming from the garden on the way to the front gate.

“What?” she asked.

“Unless I’m badly mistaken, here comes the general,” I said.

The black limousine, a Rolls-Royce, had stopped at the gate while the soldier, a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, unlocked it.

I shifted the Citrõen into low gear and twisted the wheel as the car shot forward. We moved off the road into high bushes just beyond the level shoulder, where the Citrõen was hidden from view.

The Rolls glided past on the dirt road, moving swiftly but almost noiselessly, raising a great cloud of burnt umber dust behind it. Soon it was gone. I climbed from the Citrõen, and Gabrielle followed.

“That was the general, all right,” I said. “I got a glimpse of him and saw the insignia. He looks like a tough hombre.”

“He has a tough reputation.”

“I just hope he’s decided to leave for the evening,” I said, glancing again at the peach-hued sun, already dipping behind the mountains that circled the palace. I looked down the road to a high, rocky escarpment that abutted the estate grounds. “Come on.”

I grabbed Gabrielle’s hand and pulled her along after me to the road, across it, and into the brush. We walked through low greenery for a hundred yards, always heading uphill, and found ourselves in rocks. We continued climbing until we crested the escarpment and moved out onto a rocky ledge that overlooked the palace and grounds, giving us a good view of the place.

We lay on our bellies on the rock, studying the scene below. Besides the guard at the gate, we saw at least two other armed soldiers up near the building itself.

The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and the sky was losing its warm colors and deepening to mauve and a pale lemon hue. It would soon be dark.

“Did you say I could not go in with you?” the girl asked.

“That’s right,” I told her. “It’s a one-man job once I get past that fence. But you’re going to give me some hints about what I’ll find inside. And you’re going to help me get in.”

Gabrielle looked over at me and smiled. Her hair was done up in a knot at the back of her head, and some strands had come loose. It was very becoming. “How, Nick? How can I get you in?”

“By using your Almohad dialect on that guard at the gate. But let’s talk about the palace first. I presume the third floor is primarily a storage area?”

“The top floor was never used for living quarters, not even by the caliph,” she said. “Of course, the general might have renovated it. The second floor consists of bedrooms, with a small study at the northeast corner.”

“And the first floor?”

“A reception hall, a kind of throne room, a ballroom for entertaining European visitors, a library, and a big kitchen.”

“Hmm. So the library and the second-floor study would be the most appropriate rooms for an office, unless the general wanted to renovate a guest room?”

“I believe so.”

“All right. I’ll go to the library first. That would seem to suit the grand style of a general. But it may be pretty difficult to get in on the first floor without breaking a window, so I’ll have to try the roof.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Don’t worry about my part. You’re going to have enough to do yourself. I’ll tell you the details when we get back to the car. But we might as well wait here until it’s dark.”

We lay there in the encroaching dusk, watching the outlines of the estate emerge into shadow. A moon was rising behind us, and a cricket had begun rasping away in a nearby thicket.

Gabrielle turned to me, and my arms went around her. Our mouths met, and my hand found its way inside her dress, caressing the soft warmth of her breasts. She sighed, her legs parting almost automatically. She raised her hips to help me as I peeled off her panties, and then I moved onto her. She moaned as I reached deep inside her and then there was nothing for me, nothing for her, but our bodies and the need to be satisfied again and again.

She was silent when it was over, and we lay once more side by side. We stayed that way for a long time. Finally I touched her shoulder gently. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get there.”

We drove slowly down the road toward the gate to the estate. Gabrielle was at the wheel, and I was crouched low in the back seat. It was black now, with a dull moonlight. As we approached, the olive-drab soldier moved from a small gatehouse, unslung the submachine gun, and aimed it at Gabrielle.

“Keep cool,” I whispered from behind her. “Drive right up to him.”

The car moved on to the gate. There was a hissing from the radiator and when we stopped just a few feet from the sentry, it steamed up angrily from under the hood, just as I planned.

Gabrielle spoke to the man in his native dialect. She gave him a disarming smile, which seemed to remove the scowl from his face, and I saw him look her over appraisingly, even as he held on to the gun. She mentioned car trouble and asked if he could help.

He hesitated, then answered her uncertainly.

Gabrielle got out of the car, and he followed her movement suspiciously with the big gun. She was speaking and gesturing, the smile turned on him, her eyes pleading.

He returned the smile and shrugged his shoulders. He was a slim mountain man with a dark beard. He wore a fatigue uniform and cap, with a cartridge belt at his waist. As Gabrielle walked to the front of the car, he followed her, the gun hanging at his side. She raised the hood, and he ex-claimed and gestured at all the additional steam that was released.

He was obviously a simple man who knew little about machines, but he would not want this beautiful woman to know that.

The sentry looked under the hood with Gabrielle. I climbed quietly from the Citrõen, Hugo in hand, and made a circle around him and Gabrielle, on his blind side. I was behind him as he leaned over the car.

He was speaking to her, gesturing to the radiator, apparently explaining the problem. His dialect was fast and slurred, and I was glad Gabrielle was so good with it. I could understand nothing of what he was saying, but one thing was clear: he was caught up with Gabrielle completely.

I moved up closer, grabbed him with my left arm, pulling his head back as Gabrielle stepped away from us. He tried to bring the gun into play but couldn’t. I drew Hugo across his throat with my right hand. He made a muffled sound and slumped to the ground.

I touched Gabrielle’s arm. “Go open the gate while I get him over to this clump of bushes.”

She hesitated only a moment. “All right.”

I dragged the soldier out of sight, then stripped the clothes off him. Gabrielle came back, and I handed them to her. She began putting the uniform on over her own short dress.

“This is just to reassure whoever is looking toward the gate from the house,” I told her. “If the General’s car should return before I get back, run. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Hide, and fire a warning shot from this.” I pointed to the submachine gun.

“All right.” She buttoned the shirt over her full breasts and stuck most of her red hair under the cap. I gave her the gun and she slung it over her shoulder. From a distance she would look enough like the sentry to get away with it.

We moved back to the gate, and she took up her position. I climbed into the car, drove it behind a small clump of trees off to the left outside the guardhouse, and then entered the grounds past Gabrielle. She closed the gate behind me.

“Good luck, Nick.” she said.

I winked at her and moved on down the drive toward the palace.

In a few moments I was crouching behind a square-pruned hibiscus bush near the building. There was a small portico on the front of the place, under a Moorish arch, and big double doors behind it leading into the glittering interior. The doors were open this balmy night, and I could see two soldiers standing in the entrance hall, talking and smoking. There might be others in there, too. Looking up at the second floor, I saw that there were few lights on. There were probably no guards up there.

I left cover momentarily and ran in a crouched position to the corner of the building. The arched portico ended there, in a bramble of bougainvillea. I planned on going around to the rear of the place, hoping to find a way up to the roof.

When I turned the corner of the building, I al-most walked right into a guard who was standing outside smoking. He had not seen or heard me, and when I stopped short just inches from him, his eyes went wide in surprise, then narrowed quickly as he dropped his cigarette, reaching for a big military pistol on his belt.

Hugo slipped into my palm. The man was just drawing the big automatic to fire when I stepped even closer and shoved Hugo in under his ribs.

The pistol thumped to the ground and the soldier looked at me in disbelief. I withdrew the stiletto as he grabbed at his side. He slid down the side of the building, his face twisted in death.

I cleaned the stiletto on his uniform and returned the blade to its sheath. Looking down the side of the building, I saw a small wheelbarrow covered with a tarpaulin. I got the tarpaulin and threw it over the fallen guard. Then I moved to the rear of the place.

As I suspected, there was a trellis on the back wall. The vine that grew on the trellis was not thick at this time of the year, and that helped. I climbed the trellis quietly until I reached a second-story roof over a kitchen area. From there I climbed a drain pipe up to the top roof.

The roof was on several levels, and there were open spaces across an interior court and between the different levels. I started working my way toward a service hatch but found that a ten-foot space separated me from the section I wanted to reach.

The surface of the roof was curved tile, and it was difficult to perform acrobatics on it. Also, I didn’t want to be heard downstairs. I took a long hard look at the open space, backed up a few feet, ran, and sprang across the black gulf. I landed on the very edge of the other roof. I almost lost my balance and fell backward, so I leaned far forward at the waist. But that made my feet slip under me. In a split-second I was sliding off.

I grabbed frantically as I slid, but my fingers found nothing to hold on to, and I was going over.

Then, just as I was sure I was on my way down, my hands caught the eave trough which drained rainwater from the roof. It groaned and bent under my weight as my body jerked to an abrupt halt. My weight pulled my left hand free, but the right one held. The gutter let go at a bracket near me and dropped me another foot. But then it held tight.

I closed my left hand over the trough, waited half a minute for some strength to return to my arms, then did a slow chin-up. From that position I hooked my arms into the gutter and pulled myself arduously back onto the roof.

I squatted up there, sweating. I hoped things would go better when I got inside. Slowly and cautiously I moved over the slippery tile to the closed hatch. Kneeling beside it, I pulled on it. It seemed stuck at first, but then it pulled open, and I was looking into blackness.

I lowered myself into the dark room below. It was an unused, attic-type place, and it had a door that led to a corridor. I moved out into the corridor which was also dark, but I could see light coming from the bottom of a stairwell. I went down the stairs, which were dusty and full of cobwebs. The railing was all hand-carved hardwood. When I reached the bottom, I was standing in the second-floor corridor. It was fully carpeted, with mosaic decorating its walls. There were rooms with heavy wooden doors off each side of the corridor. The study Gabrielle had mentioned was to my right, and I tried the door. It was open. I entered and snapped a light on.

I had been right. The room was not used as the general’s office. Undoubtedly he did his work in the library downstairs, where the guards were. But the room was still interesting. The walls were covered with maps of Morocco and adjacent countries, the military installations marked with pins. One large map showed the pattern of fighting in a recent military exercise, a war game. Then I saw it. In a corner of the room, stuck on the wall with thumbtacks, was a small map, a map drawn by hand, but expertly done.

I went over and took a good look at it. It was of a part of southern Morocco, the dry arid area that André Delacroix had talked about. On the left edge of the map was the village of Mhamid, the one Delacroix had described to Pierrot, the one near the laboratory. There was a road drawn from that village, and at the end of the road was a simple circle with an “X” in it. There seemed little doubt of it: the mark revealed the location of the super-secret laboratory of Damon Zeno and his L5 boss, Li Yuen.

I tore the paper from the wall and stuffed it into a pocket. Then I turned the light off and left the room.

There might have been other information on the facility in the General’s office downstairs, but I had as much as I needed. I had the map and all I had to do was get out with it.

There was a broad, elegant stairway down to the reception hall from the second floor. I stood at the top and peered below, the Luger in hand. I did not see the guards who had been standing there earlier. Maybe they were having a snack in the kitchen.

I moved slowly down the steps, one at a time. It was uncomfortably quiet. Just as I reached the bottom and stood looking out through the open front doors, I heard the double roar in the night. Gabrielle had fired the gun.

I started to run outside when the voice came from behind me. It spoke in English.

“Stop! Do not move!”

There were at least two of them. As I whirled around, I dropped to one knee. There was a thin, tall one and a stocky one — the men I had seen before. As my eyes focused on them, I automatically looked for weapons. The thin one had his out already. It was a heavy military automatic, similar in style to the U.S. Army .45. The big gun banged loudly — and missed because I had crouched low as I spun. I squeezed the trigger of the Luger and it barked its angry reply. The slug caught the thin soldier in the gut, picked him a foot off the floor and slammed him back against the bottom post of the staircase.

The stocky soldier threw himself at me. He had not yet gotten to his gun. I turned the Luger toward him, but he hit me before I could fire. I fell to the floor under the impact of his body and felt a big fist crunch into my face.

His other hand was going for Wilhelmina. We rolled toward the open doors and then back to where we had fallen. He was strong, and his grip on my right wrist was turning it. My hand struck the wall and the Luger slipped from my grasp.

I slugged him hard, catching him full in the face, and there was a crunch of bone in his nose. He fell heavily off me, his nose bleeding. He muttered something as he went for the gun on his belt.

In the ensuing split-second I glanced around and saw an urn sitting on a shelf beside me. I grabbed the urn, which was heavy, and threw it hard toward the stocky man just as his gun cleared the holster. It hit him in the face and chest and broke into pieces as he went down under its impact. There was a low grunt from him as he hit the floor and then lay still.

At that moment the second man aimed his gun at me and fired. The slug chipped into the wall between my right arm and my chest; it would have killed me if it had been a few inches to the left.

As I dropped the stiletto into my hand, the thin soldier propped himself onto his elbow for another shot. He re-aimed just as I released the knife. The gun fired, creasing my neck, and the knife hit him over the heart. He fell back to the floor.

Getting to my knees to retrieve Wilhelmina, I thought it was over, but I was wrong. There was a wild yell behind me from the direction of the hallway to the kitchen, and when I turned I saw a heavy man swinging a meat cleaver toward my head.

This was obviously the general’s cook, who had been brought to the front of the place by the gunfire. The cleaver descended on me, glistening brightly in the light. I ducked backward and the blade struck the ornament on the stairway post behind my head, completely severing it.

I rolled away from the next blow, and it chopped a small hall table in half. He was fast with the weapon, and I had no time to make any but defensive moves. The third chop with the heavy, silver-gleaming cleaver came right at my face. I was against a wall, and I moved to my left just a split-second before the weapon buried itself in the wall behind me.

In the moment it took him to try to wrench the cleaver free, I pulled a leg up close to my chest and kicked out, hitting him hard over the heart.

His jaw flew open as he released his hold on the buried cleaver and fell backward to the floor, making ugly grunting gasps.

I saw the Luger near me and stretched out my arm to retrieve it.

“That will be quite enough!” the loud voice commanded.

I turned and saw the tall, husky General Djenina standing in the doorway. In his hand was one of the bulky automatics, and it was aimed at my head. Behind him, in the tight grasp of an orderly, was Gabrielle.

SEVEN

“I am sorry, Nick,” the girl said.

Another uniformed man, probably the general’s chauffeur, moved into the hallway. He held a gun on me too, as he came over and kicked the Luger out of my reach, glancing at the men on the floor. He muttered something in Arabic.

“They warned me about you,” Djenina said, striding toward me. “But it appears I did not take you seriously enough.” He spoke excellent English. He was a tough-looking man in his fifties, with a square jaw and a scar across his left eye. He was about my size, and he looked as if he kept in shape. He had a way of pulling his chin up as he talked, as if he were wearing too tight a collar. His uniform was covered with braid and ribbons.

“I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you,” I said.

He stood ominously over me with the automatic, and I thought for a moment that he might pull the trigger. But he replaced the pistol in a big holster on his hip.

“Stand up,” he ordered.

I did and felt a throbbing along my neck where the slug had grazed me. Blood had caked on my neck and collar. While I stood with the chauffeur’s gun on me, the general searched me. He found the map in my pocket. He looked at it and grinned. Then he turned to the chauffeur.

“Handcuff him and bring them into my office.” He was speaking in Arabic now. “And take care of these people.” He gestured indifferently toward the soldiers and cook on the floor.

A few minutes later, Gabrielle and I were sitting in the big library. I had guessed right about its being the general’s office. Djenina sat behind a long, highly polished wood desk, tapping a pencil on a pad before him and regarding us somberly. He was a light-skinned Moroccan, probably a Berber or a descendant of the fierce Almohads. He was as tall as I, and probably outweighed me by twenty pounds.

Gabrielle and I were on straight chairs in front of the desk. They had not bothered to handcuff or bind her. The soldier who had been holding Gabrielle was on guard at the door to the library. He still had a gun on us.

“So you know about Li Yuen’s little project?” Djenina said, still tapping the pencil.

“We know,” I said. “You made a serious error, General, aligning yourself with the Chinese in such a situation. Did you ever get hard cash for the protection you gave them?”

The general seemed nettled by the question. “Li Yuen keeps his word, my friend. Soon we will have the capital necessary to finance a real coup, not a farce like the last one.”

“Which you also led?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed on me slightly. “I was not the moving force in the unsuccessful one. The next time I will do the planning.”

“And perhaps someone in your group will turn on you at the last minute, when things look black, and shoot you as you did the first leader.”

Djenina smirked arrogantly. “Very clever, wasn’t it, to kill those inept bunglers and save myself from the firing squad.”

“It depends on which end of the gun you were on, I suppose.”

Djenina did not acknowledge my sarcasm. “They deserved exactly what they got, Mr. Carter,” he said to me. “Their weak leadership led us into a position in which all of us almost lost our lives. That will not happen again.”

“Do you really think you’ll get another rebellion off the ground with the Chicoms backing you?” I asked.

“I am counting on it,” he said coldly, pulling the big chin up and jutting it forward, Mussolini-style. He had removed the braided cap, revealing thick, dark hair that was graying at the temples.

“And it doesn’t concern you what Li Yuen and Dr. Zeno are concocting down there under your protection?”

“But, Mr. Carter,” Djenina smiled slyly, “they are establishing a health clinic for the poor de-prived citizens of the area.”

“If the Chinese succeed in their Omega project” I said to the General, “no people or country will be safe. Not even Morocco. You have the proverbial tiger by the tail, Djenina. At the moment the tiger is using you for his own purposes. Later he may turn and bite your head off.”

“That is always a possibility, of course,” he said smoothly. “But this country is different from yours. Here one does not get ahead by hard work. I enjoy my present rank and position because I was born into the monied class and because I was strong enough to take what I wanted. You get only what you can grab from somebody else. I do not intend to be caught short when the grabbing is over, Mr. Carter, even if I have to deal with the Chinese to get the help I need.”

I decided it was pointless to discuss the matter further with Djenina. He had long ago rationalized his motives, and he could not be reached with reason now.

“What do you plan for us?” I asked him frankly, I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted his confirmation before making any plans.

“He will kill us,” Gabrielle said. “I know it.”

She still wore the guard’s uniform over her clothes. I could not help thinking how helpless she looked, sitting there blurting out her fear to the man who had so much power over her.

“Yes,” the general agreed casually with her, “I may have to kill you. After all, you have invaded my home, killing several trusted men and injuring others. You deserve to be summarily shot. Moroccan military law demands it.”

He had not yet said that he definitely intended to shoot us, however, and that surprised me somewhat. “I didn’t know you cared all that much for the law,” I said with an edge to my voice.

He was wearing that damnable grin again. The scar that ran across his left eye appeared more livid in this light. “I utilize it when it serves my purpose,” he said. “I also break it when it serves my purpose. And I am prepared to do so now, Mr. Carter, to save your life. Your lives, perhaps I should say.”

“You know I’m in no position to make deals, General.”

“What I had in mind was more involved than a deal.”

I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“I respect you for your peculiar talents, Mr. Carter,” he said, his eyes serious now. “Not many men could have gotten in here the way you did and accomplished the damage you managed to accomplish with what you had to work with.”

The compliment surprised me.

“Li Yuen has mentioned you,” the general continued. “It seems he, or rather L5, has a rather large file on you.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said.

“I am impressed with what I was told and what I have seen,” Djenina continued. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “The West has lost the struggle, Carter, with Damon Zeno’s discovery. I don’t have any real idea what it is, because they won’t tell me, but I know it is very powerful.”

“I’m sure it is.” I managed a shrug.

“And where will that leave you, my friend? Very probably dead, on the losing side.”

“I’m not going to buy a cemetery plot just yet,” I answered.

He leaned forward even farther. “I will offer you your life, Carter, in more ways than one. I need a man like you. You can work for me. If I trust you, Li Yuen will. I can arrange a commission for you and have you assigned to my personal staff. How does Colonel Carter sound?”

My inclination was to smile at the incongruity of it all, but I thought better of it. Instead of telling him that I was not interested in leftist coups, that L5 in Peking had a red sticker on my file and my photographs posted in their training school, and that Li Yuen was obligated to kill me where and when he could manage it, I decided to show an interest in Djenina’s offer.

“Colonel Carter,” I repeated slowly. I looked at his eager face. “You need me for the coup, you say?”

“With your help, Carter, we can bring Hassan to his ugly knees. I will rule Morocco, and you will be my minister of state security.”

He watched my face closely for a reaction. Gabrielle looked at me, too, and there was dismay on her face. “Nick,” she began, “you are not….

I kept my eyes on Djenina. “You make a very persuasive case.”

“Nick!” Gabrielle said loudly.

I did not look at her. “What would my pay amount to, as colonel?”

Djenina smiled. “Americans are always so practical when it comes to money.” Then he shrugged. “A full colonel here probably makes no more than you do now. But I could, and would, make a special arrangement so that you would earn twice the usual pay, for special duty on my staff.”

I sat there silent a moment, as if I were considering all angles. “And if the coup were successful, I would definitely be head of intelligence and security?”

Gabrielle tried to interrupt again, but I wouldn’t let her. “Be quiet,” I said harshly. Then I looked back at Djenina. “Well?”

Djenina was enjoying Gabrielle’s discomfort. He smiled again as he spoke to me. “You have my word for it. I will put it in writing.”

I paused. “I’ll have to give it some thought.”

The smile faded slightly. “All right. You may have all night. Tomorrow morning you must give me an answer.”

“And the girl?”

“We will not harm her.”

I studied his face and it had all the honesty of a desert bandit. But I had gained us some time, hopefully. Until dawn tomorrow. Anything could happen during the night.

“And what happens to us tomorrow morning if I refuse your offer?” I asked.

The smile widened slightly. “There will be a small firing squad, I’m afraid. I’ve already sent for a detachment of men, just in case. It will all be very official, of course. You will be shot as spies, which you most certainly are.” His voice softened. “But I think you will not be so foolish, Carter. I think you will do what is best for you.”

“I’ll give you my answer in the morning,” I told him.

“Fine. Ahmed, take them upstairs. Leave Mr. Carter handcuffed for the time being. You will station the corporal outside the palace on that side, and you will take up a position outside their locked rooms.” He looked at me to see my reaction to his thoroughness. “Good night, to both of you.”

We were led upstairs, and on the way Gabrielle would not look at me, let alone speak. I tried to recall the details of the map Djenina had taken back from me, so I could have them in case we ever got away from here. Upstairs we were ushered into adjoining rooms, and the doors were locked tight.

My room was a large one with a bed, a small sofa, and an overstuffed chair. The ceiling bore a mural depicting a scene from old Morocco. There was a bathroom off the room, and it was decorated with mosaic tiles.

I went over to the window and looked out. It was a long drop to the ground. The other soldier was already outside, walking his post along the side of the building, a submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

I sighed heavily. I wondered what I had really accomplished. With a guard outside the windows and doors and my wrists in cuffs, it suddenly seemed pretty unlikely that I could find a way to get Gabrielle and myself out of this place alive.

I lay on the bed, trying not to notice the way the handcuffs bit into the flesh of my wrists. Gabrielle was just beyond the thick wall across the room, but there was no way to get to her. If time were not so important, and if I could be sure he would not hurt her, I could have given Djenina an affirmative answer immediately and played along until I could get away from him or kill him. But I had to get out of here by tomorrow morning if I was to have any chance of reaching the lab in time.

I lay there thinking. If I could pick the lock on the cuffs, I would have some freedom. But how do you pick a lock on your own bound wrists? It was a nice question.

Maybe the answer was to forget the handcuffs. I could do plenty with them on, if I could just get out of this room. I decided to wait until the early hours of the morning, when the guards would be half asleep. Then I would try to get the guard outside in the corridor to come in here, on his own, without calling the general. Maybe he would see no harm in taking me to Djenina for another private talk, without the girl. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.

But my plan was never to come off. General Djenina had ideas of his own. About midnight I heard a knock at my door, a murmured command to the guard, and the door was unlocked. Djenina opened it and stood in the doorway for a moment as I sat on the edge of the bed.

“I would like to have another talk with you,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“I was expecting you,” I said.

He strode across the room with his hands clasped behind him, an imposing figure with his black-belted uniform and his shiny, high boots over military breeches. He stood at the window, looking out into the blackness.

“It was difficult to speak frankly with the girl there,” he said. He turned to me, his eyes boring into mine. “You have the qualities I like in an associate, Carter. And you have the know-how to make a coup work for us. In addition to the extra pay I mentioned downstairs, I can see that you receive many other — fringe benefits, I believe you would call them Gifts from grateful political leaders, who are protected by my troops. A fine home, Carter, and a fine American car at your disposal, with a chauffeur if you wished. Women. All the women you will ever want. And when you become my minister of state security, you will have extraordinary power. You will be a force in Moroccan politics and history.”

“You make a good case for your side,” I said with a small grin.

“You will have a greater career than you ever imagined. This is not a pipe dream. I can make it all come true, with your help.

“On the other hand, if you were to insist on retaining your previous questionable loyalties, you would be putting me in an awkward position. I cannot afford an enemy like you, Carter. But with you on my side, and the capital which will be forth-coming shortly from Peking, I can find my destiny in this country, and you can be a part of it.”

He came and stood beside me. “What do you think? Will you take this opportunity? Only you can put the cloak of greatness on you, Carter.”

I looked at the floor for another moment, then rose to meet him eye to eye. “There seems to be little choice.”

A look of smug satisfaction came over his square face. “Then you will come with me?”

“Yes,” I said. “But what about the girl?”

The smile faded from his lips, his eyes locked with mine, and I knew with an awful certainty how miserable it would be to be under the influence and power of this man. “The girl is quite another matter,” he said coldly. “The girl must die.”

I looked away. That was what I had figured.

“And you must do it.”

I looked back at him and tried to hide my hatred. “You want too much.”

“Do I?” he said flatly. “In return for your own life? For riches and power? Do I really ask too much, Carter? No, I think not. Because killing the girl will be your act of fealty to me. It will be your way of showing me that you’ve really changed loyalties. Kill the girl, who means very little to you, and we will ride the wind together.”

Now the bastard was getting poetic. I looked back into his eyes, and I think it bothered him a little that I was at his level. He was accustomed to looking down on people.

“How?” I asked.

He grinned again. He drew the big automatic from its holster at his side. “Would this do?”

I looked at the gun. A slug from it would tear Gabrielle in half. But I had to make him think I was willing to do it. It would give us both an opportunity to fight back, anyway, if luck was with us. “I think that ought to be sufficient,” I said. “When do I do it?”

“As soon as possible,” he said.

I thought a moment. Now was as good a time as any to make a break for it. Maybe the darkness would help if I could get outside.

“I’ll do it now,” I said, putting an edge of tension in my voice.

Djenina looked surprised. “Very well.”

“I want to get it over with,” I said. “But I want to do it my way. Leave the cuffs on me,” I told him. “Take us both outside together into a remote corner of the garden. I want her to think that you’re executing us both. Take the cuffs off at the last moment and give me the gun while she’s facing away from me. I don’t want her to know I’m doing it.”

Djenina had an ugly look on his face. “I didn’t put you down as a squeamish man, Carter. Not after the killing you have obviously done.”

“Let’s just say that I’ve been intimate with her too recently,” I said.

“Ah. I see your point.” He seemed to accept the explanation. “It is difficult to dispose of a mistress, I agree. Very well, let’s get the girl”

We went into the hall, and the situation was explained to the soldier on guard there who then unlocked the door to Gabrielle’s room. She was sitting in a chair when they went to get her.

“Come with us,” the guard commanded.

When she got out into the hall she looked at the handcuffs still on my wrists. “What is happening?” she asked.

“They’re taking us for a walk in the garden,” I said.

“Then you did not accept his offer?”

“No,” I said honestly.

I thought I saw a slight smirk on the soldier’s mouth.

“The two of you leave me no choice,” Djenina said to Gabrielle. “Come. Let’s get on with it.”

“I’m sorry, Gabrielle. That it turned out this way, I mean.”

We moved down the stairs and out of the house. Both Djenina and the soldier had their guns out.

At the corner of the house we were joined by the chauffeur-soldier who had stood guard outside the building. He unslung the submachine gun and moved beside us with the ugly muzzle pointed at my chest. There were three guns on us, all capable of blowing holes the size of Moroccan tea saucers in our bodies.

In just moments we were in a lonely corner of the grounds. There was plenty of shadow and cover, if I got the opportunity to use it. But in the clearing where we stood, the high moon cast a silver, eerie light on all of us. In the cut shrubs nearby, a cicada rasped in the darkness.

“This is far enough,” General Djenina said. He had just whispered something into the chauffeur’s ear, and I hoped he had told the man not to use the submachine gun on me so long as I shot the girl. “Remove Mr. Carter’s handcuffs. A man should not have to face his maker bound like an animal”

The orderly stuck the automatic pistol into his belt and took a key from his pocket. Djenina was watching my face closely, and I noted that his gun was on me. He had no intention of trusting me until I had killed the girl. And maybe not even then. Anyway, I did some more acting for him. I sneaked a look at Gabrielle when she was not looking, a guilty look, and I sighed heavily.

“All right, stand together beside that tree there,” Djenina commanded. We did as he said. Gabrielle’s face was drawn taut with fear. She was certain she was going to die. And I knew there was at least a good chance of it.

The man with the submachine gun had the weapon aimed at us. Djenina and the orderly stood somewhat closer, flanking us.

“The girl first,” Djenina said. “Turn around, you.”

Gabrielle glared at him. “I will not. You must face me if you will kill me.”

Djenina saw an irony in her words, since it was I who had said I did not want to face her. He grinned slightly at me, and then the smile dissolved. “All right, Carter. No more games. Do what you have to do.”

Gabrielle looked at me quizzically. The orderly came over, studied me for a moment as if he did not trust me, then handed me the automatic. Gabrielle looked at me and I returned the look.

“What is this, Nick?” she asked.

“You don’t need to explain, Carter,” Djenina said harshly. “Just kill her.”

Gabrielle’s mouth fell slightly open. “Mon dieu!” she breathed. Then she hauled off and slapped me hard across the face. “Go ahead, you bastard. Pull the trigger!” she hissed.

Her reaction to the situation helped the credibility of the whole thing. The chauffeur laughed and dropped the level of his gun slightly.

“All right, I will,” I said grimly. I winked at her. Before she had a chance to grasp the meaning of that gesture, I shoved her to the ground.

In the same movement, I dropped into a crouch, whirled toward the chauffeur and squeezed the trigger of the big pistol. If the general had just been testing me, and the gun was empty, I was in big trouble. But the gun exploded in the clearing, roaring in our ears. The chauffeur was hit in the chest. He jumped straight back but didn’t fall His hand tightened in a reflex action over the submachine gun, and it began chattering in the night, spraying the area with lead.

The general, meanwhile, had returned fire with his service pistol as soon as I shot the chauffeur. A slug ripped across my side, tearing flesh under my shirt and knocking me to the ground beside Gabrielle.

It was probably fortunate that the general hit me. In the next split-second, the submachine gun sprayed the place where I had been crouching, chipping into the tree trunk behind us. The General and the orderly hit the ground too, as the big gun clattered in a wide circle, the chauffeur’s eyes glazed as the crimson stain brightened the front of his shirt. Bullets whined and spattered around us, but nobody was hit. Then the chauffeur fell onto his back and the firing was over.

“Get behind the tree!” I yelled at Gabrielle.

The general was aiming at me again and swearing violently under his breath. He was cursing himself, I figured for trusting me. But just as he was about to fire again, the orderly dived at me from my blind side and bowled me over.

Luckily, I did not lose the gun. We rolled and thrashed on the ground, and I caught a glimpse of the general moving about, trying to get a shot at me. I slugged the orderly in the face, but he hung on to me desperately, grabbing at the gun in my hand. He smashed my hand back against the tree trunk, and my grip loosened on the pistol, but I didn’t lose it.

Gabrielle had followed orders and crawled behind the tree. As Djenina found me in his sights again, she stood up quickly and hurled a chunk of dead wood at the general. She hit him on the shoulder, not hard enough to hurt him, but his attention was temporarily distracted.

Djenina fired at Gabrielle, and I heard the slug chip into the wood of the tree trunk near her. Then she ducked back behind cover.

Now Djenina turned the pistol toward me again, anger flaring in his eyes. He found me again in the sights as the orderly and I struggled for possession of the other gun. At that moment, I smashed my left fist into the orderly’s throat. He gasped and lost his balance. I twisted him between Djenina and myself just as Djenina fired once more.

The gun roared, and the orderly’s eyes saucered. He gasped and blood spurted from the corner of his mouth. He slumped against me, dead.

The general swore aloud again and then began to run toward the clipped hedges that surrounded us. I moved the body of the orderly off me, aimed after Djenina, and fired. But I missed. I could hear him crashing through a thicket, and then his footsteps echoed, on a gravel walk that led back to the palace.

I put my hand at my side and came away with blood on it. The wound was just a flesh wound, but it burned like hell. I struggled to my feet, and Gabrielle was beside me.

“Get to the Citrõen,” I told her. “And wait there for me.”

I started after the general. By the time I got to the wide drive in front of the palace, Djenina was nowhere in sight. Then I heard the roar of the engine in the parked limousine nearby. I looked and saw the general behind the wheel. The big Rolls-Royce suddenly shot forward and came right at me.

As the black limousine hurtled toward me, I aimed the pistol in my hand and fired. The shot shattered the windshield, but missed Djenina. I dived to the ground as the car roared past, grazing my thigh as it went.

Djenina kept right on the circular drive and headed toward the road and the gate. I got up onto one knee, steadied my hand on my forearm, and aimed at the left rear tire. But the slug only dug up gravel beside it.

I got up and ran after the car. I was hoping that Djenina would not find Gabrielle on the drive or at the gate. He would probably kill her if he did.

I arrived at the gate a few moments later, holding my side and grimacing in pain. The limousine was just disappearing around a bend in the mountain road, the road we had come over earlier. I heard the Citrõen’s engine and saw Gabrielle backing the car out of the underbrush where we had parked it. I ran to her side of the car.

“Move over!” I yelled.

I climbed into the driver’s seat, strapped in, and roared off down the dirt road. In seconds I had shifted into high gear, and the car was hurtling along the bumpy bed of the road, throwing us around inside. We traveled for a couple of miles with no sight of the limousine, but we finally saw the red tail lights ahead of us.

“There he is!” Gabrielle said tensely.

“Yes,” I answered. My hand, which had touched the wound, was slippery on the steering wheel. I pushed the accelerator down all the way and the car shot forward, veering crazily around a sharp curve the general had just navigated.

In another couple of minutes, we had pulled to within twenty yards of the limousine, which could not corner like the Citrõen. On our right was a rise of rocky abutment, and on our left was a steep drop-off to a lower road. There were no guardrails and no pavement for the tires to grab. We rounded another sharp curve, and the limousine skidded and weaved and almost threw a wheel off the road as it moved awkwardly around at high speed. We followed, a little more successfully, but I felt the wheels skid under us, too.

I picked up the automatic on the console between us and steered with one hand while I stuck my left hand out the open window and aimed the gun toward the other car. I fired twice, kicking up gravel just behind the limousine.

“You are short,” Gabrielle said.

“I want to be,” I answered. I was hoping that just one of the slugs would ricochet off the gravel and up under the speeding Rolls. Just one was all I needed.

I fired again, and the gravel kicked up behind the rear bumper of the other car, and then there was a sudden, dazzling, ear-splitting explosion from under the rear of the limousine. The big car swerved wildly as flames engulfed it. I had hit the gas tank.

Gabrielle gasped as the car ahead of us swerved even more wildly, flames streaming out behind it. Then the car veered erratically to the right, hit a rocky outcropping, and bounded back to the sheer drop-off on the other side of the road. In another second it was plummeting over the edge.

We pulled up beside the spot where the Rolls had just gone over. The big car was still crashing down the mountainside, end over end, completely engulfed in flames. Finally, it smashed on the rocks far below, and there was a tearing of metal as the flames spurted even higher. The Rolls lay there, burning brightly in the night. There was little doubt about the fate of General Djenina. It was impossible to survive what the limousine had gone through.

“Did he get out?” Gabrielle asked.

“No,” I told her. I started turning the Citrõen around on the narrow road. “I’m going back to get my weapons. I don’t want anybody to know I was there. Even if the cook or the other soldier lives, neither of them will know who I am.”

“Then what, Nick?” Gabrielle asked as I headed back toward the general’s estate.

“Then we go south to Mhamid,” I said, “to the research facility of Damon Zeno and his friends. You’re going to wait for me nearby. If I don’t make it, I’ll be counting on you to get word to my contacts so they can take care of the lab.”

EIGHT

It was a long drive to Mhamid. Gabrielle became very sleepy about dawn, and I pulled over for a while so we could get a couple of hours’ sleep. When we started off again, the sun was high in the sky.

The wound Djenina had inflicted on me was clotting and looked pretty good, but Gabrielle insisted on stopping in a mountain village around noon to put a proper bandage and some medication on it. For a good part of the afternoon, we drove through mountains, which dwindled to hills, and finally we emerged in arid desert country. We were in the wild, almost uninhabited area around the border, the place where Li Yuen had located Zeno’s laboratory. Occasionally, there were heavy rock outcroppings, but generally the terrain was flat, dotted with twisted, ugly plant life, a land where mountain and desert met and no one cared to live except a few primitive tribes and snakes and vultures.

We reached the tiny village of Mhamid, the only island of civilization in that vast wilderness, in late afternoon. If my memory of the map was correct, we were still quite a distance from the remotely situated research facility. At first there appeared to be no place for overnight accomodations, but then we drove up to a small, white building that pretended to be a hotel. Looking at its peeling adobe walls, Gabrielle grimaced.

“Do you think we dare sleep in a place like that?” she asked.

“We don’t have much choice. I don’t want to go looking for the lab today, with dusk coming soon. And we both need rest.”

We parked the Citrõen, and a small group of young Bedouins gathered around it curiously. They obviously didn’t get a look at many automobiles around here. Gabrielle locked the car, and we went into the hotel.

It was even less appealing inside than it had been from the street. A walnut-skinned Arab greeted us from behind a small counter that passed for a desk. He wore a tarboosh on his head and an earring in one ear. There were white lines around his eyes where the sun had not reached, and he had a sparse stubble of beard on a weak chin.

“Salaam.” The man smiled at us.

“Salaam” I said. “Do you speak English?”

“Angleesh?” he repeated.

Gabrielle spoke to him in French. “We want a room for two.”

“Ah,” he answered in that language. “Of course. It happens that our best suite is available. Please.”

He took us up a flight of rickety wood stairs that I was sure would collapse under our weight. We went down a dim, dingy corridor to the room He opened the door proudly, and we entered. I saw the repulsion on Gabrielle’s face as she looked around. It was very Spartan, with one large iron bed that sagged in the middle, a broken-shuttered window that opened onto the dirt street below, and cracked plaster walls.

“If you’d rather not….” I said to her.

“It’s all right,” she said, looking for the bath.

“The bath is just down the hall,” the clerk said in French, guessing her question. “I will heat some water for madame.”

“That would be very nice,” she said.

He disappeared, and we were alone. I smiled and shook my head. “Just think,” I said. “Hot and cold running fleas.”

“We will do fine,” she assured me. “I am going to take a hot bath, and then we will try to find a cafe.”

“Okay. I saw a bar next door, an ugly little place, but maybe they don’t water the whisky. I need something after that drive. I’ll be back by the time you’ve finished your bath.”

“It’s a deal,” she said.

I went back down the rickety stairs and outside to the bar next to the hotel. I sat at one of four old tables and ordered a whisky from a short man in baggy pants and tarboosh, but he told me they didn’t serve whisky. I settled for a local wine. At another table near me an Arab sat alone; he was slightly under the influence already.

“You are American?” he asked me in my native tongue.

I glanced at him. “Yes, American.”

“I speak American,” he said smugly.

“That’s very nice.”

“I speak good American, is it not true?”

I sighed. “True, true.” The waiter brought my wine, and I took a sip. It wasn’t bad.

“I am the hair-cutter here.”

I glanced over at him. He was a short man in his mid-forties, I guessed, but there was a great deal of aging in his face. He wore a dark red fez and a striped djellaba. Both were soiled with dust and sweat

“I am the hair-cutter for the entire village of Mhamid.”

I nodded to him and sipped the wine.

“My father was a hair-cutter also.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

He rose with a glass in his hand and joined me at my table. He leaned toward me conspiratorially.

“I am the hair-cutter for the strangers also.” He said it in a half-whisper, near my ear, and I could smell his foul breath. The waiter, over in a far corner, could not hear.

I glanced at the Arab beside me. He was grinning, and he was missing a front tooth. “Strangers?” I asked.

He glanced at the waiter, to be doubly sure he could not hear, then continued in the hoarse whisper, fouling my nostrils with his breath. “Yes, the ones at the clinic. I go out every week, you see. It is all very secret.”

He could only be talking about the lab. I turned to him. “You cut the hair of the doctors out there?”

“Yes, yes. And the soldiers as well. They depend on me.” He gave me a toothless grin. “Every week I go.” The grin slid away. “But you must tell no one. It is all very private, you see.”

“Were you there today?” I probed.

“No, of course not. I would not go two days together. I go tomorrow morning, and I would not go twice, you understand.”

“Of course,” I said. “And you take the old caravan road to the east?”

He moved his head away from me. “I cannot tell you that! It is very private.”

He had raised his voice somewhat. I downed the drink and stood up. I threw some dirhams onto the table. “Buy yourself another drink,” I said.

His eyes brightened. “May Allah go with you,” he murmured in a slurred voice.

“Praise be to Allah,” I replied.

When I returned to the hotel room, Gabrielle was through bathing; it was getting dark outside. She had not dressed yet and was combing her long, red hair, sitting on the edge of the bed with a towel wrapped around her. I sat on a straight chair nearby and glanced up at a fifteen-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling.

“He shouldn’t have gone to all the expense,” I remarked.

“At least we won’t be spending much time here,” Gabrielle said. “Did you have a whisky?”

“Nothing quite that civilized. But I did meet a man who just may be able to help us.”

“What man?”

I told her about the Arab barber. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to meet him out there,” I said. “But he doesn’t know it.”

“For what purpose?”

“I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.” I rose and removed my jacket; Gabrielle noticed Wilhelmina on my side and Hugo’s sheath on my arm.

“I am frightened for you, Nick,” she said. “Why can’t I go with you?”

“We’ve been all through that,” I told her. “You’re going to drive me out there and then re-turn here and wait. If you wait for more than twenty-four hours, you’re then to presume I didn’t make it, and you’re going back to Tangier and tell the whole story to the authorities. You will also contact Colin Pryor and tell him what happened. He will contact my people.”

“Your wound is not even healed,” she protested. “Look, it has bled through the bandage. You need a doctor and rest.”

I grinned. “Maybe with all that high-powered talent out there somebody will offer me a change of bandage.”

I took the holster off and started unbuttoning my shirt, preparing to clean up. When she saw my bare chest, she rose from the bed, dropped the comb and moved over to me.

“I like you very much, you know.”

She pressed herself against me, and I could feel the soft body underneath the towel “The feeling is mutual, Gabrielle,” I whispered.

She reached up to my mouth with her lips and pressed her open mouth to mine. Her body was warm against me.

“Make love to me again,” she breathed.

I touched her downy cheek with my lips, and then the softness of her throat and her milky shoulder. “What about our dinner?”

“I want you for dinner,” she answered in a husky voice.

Her hips pressed insistently against mine, and as I moved my hands over the towel, our lips met again, and my mouth explored hers hungrily. When we parted she was breathing hard.

“I’ll just lock the door,” I said. I went to the door and turned the key in the lock. When I turned back, she was unwinding the big towel.

The towel dropped to the floor and Gabrielle stood nude under the dim light of the small bulb. The soft light made her skin look peach-colored, with the dazzling red mane flowing down onto her bare shoulders. Her long thighs tapered beautifully from the soft curves of her hips. She walked over to the bed and curled up on it, waiting.

I undressed and joined her on the bed. She threw a thigh over me and nuzzled my right arm with a breast. She leaned over and touched her mouth to my chest, then moved down to my stomach, placing careful kisses all along my body.

In moments I was burning inside. I gently pressed her back onto the bed and moved over her. Suddenly we were one, our bodies united. She moaned, her legs locked around me, her hands caressing my back.

When it was over, I had no thought of Omega or Dr. Z or of tomorrow. There was only the warm, contented present.

NINE

The building complex behind the barbed wire bristled with armed guards and defenses, making General Djenina’s stronghold look like a resort hotel by comparison. The barbed wire hung on a steel fence approximately twelve feet high, and evenly spaced insulators along the posts convinced me that it was electrified. Two of Djenina’s soldiers stood on duty at the gate, with the usual submachine guns slung on their shoulders. There were at least two other guards visible from our vantage point — men who walked the perimeter of the complex with big dogs on chain leashes.

Actually, the place consisted of three buildings that had been joined together with covered walk-ways to form a single, closed complex. A military vehicle sat at the front entrance, and there were two large trucks visible at one side.

“It looks formidable,” Gabrielle’s voice came in my ear.

I took the high-powered binoculars from my eyes and turned to her. “We can be sure that Li Yuen has a few of his own men inside to handle stray visitors. Remember, this is the most important scientific facility the Chinese have at the moment.”

We were crouched behind a rock outcropping about three hundred yards from the lab, the Cit-roen parked close behind us. A dusty, rocky road curved in a wide arch to the gate. A single vulture could be seen flying in a large circle off in the high, cloudless sky to the east.

“Well, we’ll drive back to the clump of trees, where I’ll wait for the barber. If he comes early…”

A sound behind us stopped me. I whirled around, and Gabrielle followed my stare. There, not more than fifty yards away, moving toward us on the road, was a three-man patrol. The small breeze that had come up, had carried the sound of their approach away from us. Now it was too late. The leader of the patrol had spotted us. He was ex-claiming in Arabic and pointing at us.

Gabrielle started a panicky move toward the car, but I grabbed her arm in a hard grip and held her motionless.

“They’ve seen us!” she whispered harshly.

“I know. Sit down and act as calm as you possibly can.” I forced her back to the rock. Then I waved casually toward the small knot of uniformed men as the leader drew a pistol from a belt holster and the other two unslung long rifles.

Then moved toward us warily, looking at the Citrõen with malice. I called out a greeting to them in Arabic as they approached. “Asalaam ‘alaykum!”

They made no response. As they arrived beside the car, I rose to my feet. Gabrielle remained seated. She was hiding the binoculars under her full skirt.

“What are you doing in this place?” the leader of the squad asked in thick-accented English, his broad face full of hostility.

This was a very bad development and rotten luck. I tried to keep the disappointment out of my face. “We were just out for a drive in the country,” I said. The two other soldiers were already peering suspiciously into the Citrõen. “I hope we’re not on private property.”

The man with the pistol looked over at Gabrielle without answering me, while the soldiers with the rifles moved closer, forming a semicircle around us. In a moment the stocky one in charge turned back to me arrogantly.

“You choose a bad place, I think.” He waved the pistol toward the facility. “It is prohibited to be here.”

I glanced casually toward the building. “Oh, really? We had no idea. We’ll leave immediately.” I extended my hand to Gabrielle to pull her to her feet and saw her move the binoculars under some dry brush as she rose.

“Let me see I.D.,” the stocky soldier said to me.

“I.D.?” I said. “What the devil for? I told you we’re just out for a ride.” I was tensing inside. This man had been told to be suspicion of everybody found on his patrol, and looked as if he’d make trouble.

He raised the muzzle of the pistol until it pointed to a spot just over my heart. The other two tightened their grips on their rifles. “I.D., please,” he repeated.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew my wallet with phony identification in it. I offered the wallet to him, and he examined the cards while the other two men continued to hold the rifles on us. My mind was working overtime. There was Gabrielle to worry about. I would not have brought her even this far, but I wanted her to know where the laboratory was located. Also, if one of these guns went off, even if we were not killed, everybody at the facility would be alerted.

“Interesting,” the broad man was saying now. He looked up at me suspiciously, then pocketed my wallet. “You will come with us.”

“Where?” I asked.

He pointed to the lab. “They will want to ask you questions.”

I wanted in, but not this way. And certainly not with Gabrielle along. I looked at the pistol pointed at my chest. “This is an outrage,” I said. “I have friends in Tangier.”

The smug look was offensive. “Nevertheless,” he said. He turned to one of the soldiers and spoke in swift Arabic. He was telling the man to go back down the road to see if there was anyone else about. The soldier turned and moved off in the opposite direction from the lab. “Now, come,” the stocky one said.

I sighed and motioned for Gabrielle to follow his orders. This was tricky. If we moved more than ten yards down the dusty road toward the lab, we would be in clear view of the gate, where there were armed guards.

As Gabrielle started to walk toward the buildings, I stopped her with a hand on her arm and turned back to the stocky, leathery-faced soldier.

“Are you familiar with General Djenina?” I said to him, knowing that Djenina had been his commander.

“Yes,” he said in a surly tone.

“The general is a good friend of mine,” I lied, watching the third soldier disappear slowly around the bend in the road. “If you insist on taking us to this place for questioning, I will speak to him personally. It will not go well with you, I assure you.”

That made him think a moment. I saw the soldier beside him look questioningly into his face. Then the stocky man made up his mind.

“It is the general’s specific orders that we are following,” he said. His hand waved toward the facility. “Please.”

I made a movement as if to step past him to the road. When I was close beside him, I suddenly slammed the heel of my hand down onto his arm.

He uttered a small cry of surprise, and his pistol thumped to the sand at our feet. I jammed an elbow into his chest and he gasped loudly. He went stumbling backward and sat down hard on the ground, his jaw working as he struggled to pull air into his lungs.

The other soldier, a tall, thin young man, raised his rifle so that it almost touched my chest. He was going to blow a hole through my middle. I heard a small gasp from Gabrielle behind me. I grabbed at the muzzle end of the rifle, and before the young Arab could squeeze the trigger I pulled hard on the barrel of the gun. The soldier came flying off his feet past me, hitting the ground on his face and losing the rifle. He was just struggling to rise when I brought the stock end of the gun down onto the back of his skull. There was an audible cracking of bone as the fellow slumped back to the ground, motionless.

I was about to turn around when the stocky leader came at me, crashing into my chest with his head down. He was a tough one. I lost the rifle as we went down together. We rolled in the dust and sand, his thick fingers gouging at my face and eyes. I smashed a right fist into his face, and he lost his grip on me and fell to the ground. I got to my knees and looked around for the rifle to use as a club, but he was on me in a second.

I struggled up with him on my back, punching and tearing at me. I spun around in a tight circle and threw him against the rock outcropping near us. He thumped hard against the stone, and an involuntary grunt came from his throat his grip on me loosened as I threw my arm around into his face.

He slumped heavily against the rock, his broad face bloody. But he was not finished. He swung a fist at my head, and it glanced off at the temple. I moved a muscle in my right forearm, and Hugo slid into my hand. As the man flailed another fist at me, I thrust the stiletto into his chest.

He stared at me in surprise, then looked down at the handle of the knife. He tried to say something nasty in Arabic, but not much came out. I withdrew the stiletto as ho slumped to the ground— very dead.

I pulled the two Arabs behind the rocks, hiding the bodies. “Get in the car, Gabrielle. I want you to follow me,” I said. “Wait ten minutes, then drive slowly along the road till you spot me. Okay?”

She nodded.

I left her and went after the third soldier. I jogged along the road in the brightening sun, watching ahead of me. In just a few minutes I found him. He had checked the road as far as he thought was necessary and had just turned back toward the lab. I flattened myself behind a rise of ground to the left of the road and caught him as he passed. I grabbed him from behind and drew the stiletto across his throat in one quick movement It was all over. By the time I had hidden this body, Gabrielle was there with the Citrõen.

“Now go back to town,” I told her. “I’m going to wait here for the barber. I hope to get into the laboratory by late morning. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow noon, return to Tangier as we planned.”

“Maybe you should not go in there alone,” she said.

“It’s a one-man job,” I said. “Don’t worry. Just do as we’ve agreed.”

“All right,” she said reluctantly.

“Good. Now get going. See you in Mhamid.”

She responded weakly to my grin. “In Mhamid.”

Then she was gone.

I sat for over an hour beside the road, and no traffic came by from either direction. The sun was hot, and the sand burned my thighs through my pants as I waited. I was sitting under a clump of palms, a small oasis in the barren, rocky terrain. In the distance was a line of low hills, mostly sand, and beyond them were the homes of the Blue Men, the nomadic tribes of Ait Oussa, Mribet, and Ida ou Blal. It was wild, desolate country, and I could not help wondering why anyone would want to live in it. I was just marveling at Li Yuen’s decision to set up the lab there when I heard the choking, sputtering engine of an automobile coming along the road from Mhamid.

In a moment the van came into view. It was a rusty relic of uncertain make, and it seemed to despise the desert as much as the grumbling barber who was driving it.

I stepped out onto the road and stopped the decrepit van. It halted in a whoosh of steam and foul odor, and the barber angrily stuck his head out the window. He did not recognize me,

“Get out of the way!” he shouted.

As I moved around to his door, I saw the weathered lettering on the side of the van, in Ara-bic: HAMMADI. And underneath: HAIR CUTTER.

“What is this you do?” he shouted belligerently. Then he squinted at my face. “I see you sometime before, I think.”

“Get out of the van, Hammadi,” I said.

“Why? I have business.”

“You have business with me.” I opened the door and pulled him from the vehicle.

He looked at me, fear in his eyes. “Are you a bandit?”

“Of a sort,” I answered. “Go over behind the trees and take off your clothes.”

“I will not!”

I pulled out Wilhelmina to impress him. “You will.”

He scowled at the gun,

“Move,” I said.

He reluctantly followed orders, and in a few minutes he was sitting on the ground in his underwear, bound and gagged with what I had at hand. He watched with fascination as I donned his dirty, smelly clothes and his red fez. I tried not to think about the odor. When I was dressed, I threw my shirt and jacket beside him.

“These are yours,” I said. “And believe me, you’re getting the best of the trade.” I applied some light stain to my face and my hands, and I was ready. I reached into a pocket in the djellaba and found a pass made out to Hammadi. I stuck it back into the robe, climbed into the van and drove off.

When I arrived at the gate, two guards on duty had been joined by a soldier with a dog. They all looked mean. One of the guards remained talking with the soldier while the other guard came to the van.

“Good morning,” I said to him in my best Arabic. “It is a fine day.” I handed him the pass.

He took it but did not look at it. Instead he narrowed his eyes. “You are not the regular bar-ber.”

“That is true,” I told him. “Hammadi was taken ill this morning. I am also a hair-cutter and was sent in his place. He said I would be admitted with his pass.”

The soldier looked at the pass, grunted and handed it back to me. “What illness are you talking about?”

I gave him a grin and leaned down toward him. “I suspect it is just a matter of too much k’fta and wine last evening.”

He hesitated a moment, then returned the grin. “All right. You may go in.”

The tightness inside my chest loosened a little. I put the old van into gear and moved slowly through the gate. I nodded at the men and moved the van into the compound. I was finally inside the Mhamid facility. It was an unsettling thought.

TEN

I wheeled the old van to a parking area near the front entrance of the building complex. A hundred things I didn’t know could cause suspicion at any moment. I wondered if the van should be parked out in front or if Hammadi was expected to enter the lab through some other entrance. There was no way of finding out these details, so I had to proceed on bluff, which was not exactly a new experience.

I didn’t even know what equipment the barber took into the building. When the van was parked, I climbed out, opened the rear doors and saw a sizable carrying case inside. It contained barber’s tools.

There were several people in sight. Two uniformed soldiers stood smoking cigarettes and talking together at the corner of the building, and a white-frocked technician moved quickly past me with a clipboard under his arm.

The front entrance stood wide open, but there was a guard just inside the door, sitting at a small table. He was a black African dressed in plain khaki pants and a shirt open at the neck. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses, and he had a precise, professorial air about him.

“Pass, please,” he said in perfect Arabic.

I handed the card to him. “I am cutting hair for Hammadi today,” I told him in an offhand manner.

He took the pass and stared at me. I wondered if he thought I did not look like an Arab. “He has been told, I’m sure, that passes to this facility are not transferable to other individuals.” He glanced at the pass as if he had seen it many times previously. “But you may have clearance this time. Next week, have Hammadi report directly to me before he goes to the cutting room.”

“Yes, sir.”

He handed the pass back to me. “And you had better be good, brother. The standards here are high.”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

He pointed to his clipboard. “Sign on the first empty space.”

My written Arabic was lousy. I signed Abdul Marbrouk and handed the clipboard back. He nodded for me to proceed into the building.

I thanked him and moved on down the corridor. The place was brightly lit inside, with no windows. The walls were painted a dazzling white.

I passed through double doors in the corridor into another section of the building. I had no idea where the “cutting room” was and cared less. But I could not let anybody catch me going in the wrong direction. There was an occasional white-coated staff member in the corridor, but there people hur-ried past me without a second glance. Some of the doors had glass windows in them, and I saw employees inside the offices doing administrative work. In one room there was a console computer, and several technicians moved about near it. That expensive piece of machinery would be there to help Zeno check his calculations.

I walked through another set of doors and found myself in the main section of the building complex. A sign above the doors stated, in three languages, Authorized Personnel Only. This wing would undoubtedly be where Zeno’s and Li Yuen’s offices were located and possibly the lab where Zeno conducted his experiments.

I had just passed a door marked Service when a white-coated man with a yellow badge on his chest came hurrying out of a room and almost knocked me down. He was a tall fellow, about my height, but with narrow shoulders. His long face showed mild surprise when he saw me.

“Who are you?” he asked in Arabic. He looked German or possibly French. I wondered whether he was one of the many on this project who, like André Delacroix, knew nothing of its real purpose.

“I am the hair-cutter,” I said to him. “I am…”

“What do you think you are doing in Section One?” he said irritably, interrupting me. “You must be aware that you do not belong here.”

“Is this Section One, sir?” I said, stalling.

“Yes, you idiot!” he replied. He turned partially away from me. “The cutting room is in the other wing. You go back through these….”

I brought the edge of my right hand down in a swift chop at the back of his neck, and he collapsed into my arms. I dragged him to the closet door and turned the handle. It was locked. I swore under my breath. Somebody else could appear in this corridor at any moment, and I would be stuck with the body. I fumbled in the djellaba I was wearing and came up with the lock-picker I had taken from my clothes along with Wilhelmina and Hugo. In a moment I had the door open. But another door opened twenty feet down the corridor while the lab man was still on the floor in the hallway. Another white-frocked man came out but turned the other way without seeing us and strode quickly down the hall. I let my breath out. I grabbed the unconscious body and pulled it into the closet after me, turning on the light inside after I closed the door.

The closet was tiny, with hardly enough room for two people. I quickly stripped off the barber’s clothing and dumped it into a pile in a corner with mops and pails. Then I moved to the small sink behind me, turned on the water and scrubbed the washable stain from my face and hands. I dried with a utility towel from a stack on a stand nearby. I took off the man’s coat, shirt and tie. I’d kept my own pants in the previous exchange. I put the new clothes on, removing and replacing the holster and stiletto sheath. In a moment I was a white-coated technician. I bound my man with the utility towels, gagged him, left the closet and locked it behind me.

Out in the hall I looked at my badge. My name was Heinz Kruger and I was assigned to Department F, whatever that meant. I wondered how close to Dr. Z and Li Yuen that would get me. I moved down the corridor toward the far end, where there were large swinging doors. A young woman with spectacles came out of a side corridor, glanced at me and spoke in English, which apparently was the second language of the facility.

“Good morning,” she said as she passed, giving me a second look, as if she wondered why my face was not familiar.

I snatched a glimpse at her badge. “Good morning to you, Miss Gomulka.”

The use of her name seemed to reassure her, and she smiled briefly as she moved on. I did not look after her. I walked quickly down to the end of the corridor and the double doors.

The long room I entered was a ward, the beds filled with Arabs and a few black Africans. They looked like the flotsam of their world or any world. And they all looked very sick.

I glanced down the aisle between the beds and saw a male nurse giving a shot of something to a patient. The nurse glanced at me and nodded but paid no further attention. I returned the nod and moved down the aisle in the other direction. What I saw made my stomach turn.

There was no attempt to keep the bedding clean in this ward or even to keep litter off the floor. And it was clear that the men in these beds were not being medically treated, since many of them had the open sores and malnutrition they had been brought here with. But there was something about them that was much more unnerving than these visual marks of neglect. These people were deathly ill. Their eyes had a dull, bloodshot look, their skin was flaccid and dry, and many of them were in obvious pain. They moaned constantly and asked for medication as I passed. One bony black man lay motionless on the bed, his soiled sheets kicked off. I walked over and looked at him. His eyes were open and glazed over. His tongue protruded halfway from his mouth and was swollen and dry. His face had been wracked with the marks of excruciating pain, and there was almost no flesh on his body. I touched his wrist. The man was dead.

So that was what was going on in there. These poor devils were being used as human guinea pigs. They had probably been picked off the streets of villages with the promise of clinical treatment and then brought to the lab to be experimented on. They had been injected with Omega and represented final proof of Zeno’s success.

My insides twisted up, thinking about what these wretched men had been put through. As I stood looking at the corpse, I thought of a large city in the United States after the Omega Mutation had struck. Gray-skinned men and women dying in the streets, unable to get help, writhing in agony, hollow eyes pleading for mercy, dry lips mumbling for some miracle to end the suffering. Hospitals clogged with groaning victims, the staff itself unable to function because of the attack of the disease. Government offices closed, transportation and news services inoperable. No trucks or planes moving to get precious medicines to the hospitals.

“Can I help you?”

The voice startled me, coming as it had from just over my left shoulder. I toned and saw the male nurse standing there. His voice was high-pitched, his manner saccharine.

“Oh. Just taking a look at results,” I said. “How is everything proceeding this morning?”

“Quite well,” he said in an effeminate tone. He was trying to remember me, like the girl in the hall. “We have several third stages now, and the symptoms are remarkable. It appears that the en-tire procedure requires only about four to five days to termination.”

This man had to know what was really happening. He wasn’t one of the dupes, so he was more dangerous to me. “That’s good,” I said authoritatively. “You have a terminal over here.” I pointed to the dead man.

“Yes, I know,” he said. He looked me over with cold appraisal.

“Well, have a good morning,” I said briskly. I turned to walk away. Then his voice stopped me again.

“Why are you wearing Ringer’s badge?”

My mouth went dry. I had hoped I could avoid this kind of confrontation. I let Hugo slip into my palm as I turned back to him. I looked at the badge.

“Oh. I borrowed a coat of his and forgot to take the badge off. I’m glad you saw it.”

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asked.

“That’s right. I’m Derek Beaumont. Brought to the project under Dr. Zeno’s orders just last week.”

“Yes. Of course.”

He didn’t believe me. I sensed he was just waiting for me to leave, so he could get on the inter-com. I had no choice. I stepped a bit closer. “Well. See you around.” I clapped him on the shoulder heartily and moved my right hand forward in a quick thrust to his rib cage. His eyes saucered as the cold steel entered, then he fell heavily against me.

I replaced Hugo and dragged the limp figure to a nearby empty bed. There were at least a dozen pairs of eyes on me as I threw him on the bed, but nobody made any attempt to cry out or move in my direction. I threw a sheet over the limp figure and strode hastily from the ward.

I moved down a side corridor to the left. There were few doorways there. When I got down to the end, there was a closed door with a simple sign on it: DIRECTOR. No admission.

This had to be Li Yuen’s office. I hesitated a moment, wondering what my next move should be. I could run into so much trouble there that I’d never find the lab or Zeno. But I decided to take that chance.

I opened the door and stepped into a reception room. A secretary sat at a desk, a Chinese woman in her forties, and a big, husky black African stood guard just inside the door. Another door, to my right, led into the private office of Li Yuen.

The guard looked at my badge but made no comment. The woman looked up, smiled uncertainly and spoke. “May I help you?” Her English was excellent.

“I must see Li Yuen,” I said.

She scrutinized my face. “I don’t believe I know you.”

“I’ve just joined the research team. Kruger. Perhaps the director has mentioned me to you.” I was going on pure bluff again. I had to use Kruger’s name because the black man had already seen the badge. I could only hope that this woman was not too sure who Kruger was.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “But I’m afraid Mr. Li is in conference with Dr. Zeno at the moment. May I ask what you wish to see him about?”

I searched for a plausible answer. “The computer found a small discrepancy in data. Li Yuen asked me to come directly to him in such a situation.” I was implying that Zeno was being by-passed.

“Yes, I see,” she said, her face impassive. “Well, Mr. Li will be finished shortly, I believe. You may wait if you wish to.”

“Yes, thank you.”

I sat down on a hard chair, planning my next move. The first problem was removed without any action on my part.

“Bomboko,” the Chinese secretary said, “would you please deliver this file to Department C? Mr. Kruger and I shall guard the inner sanctum during your brief absence.” She gave me a small smile.

The big black man glanced sourly at me and took the manila folder she handed him. “Yes, memsahib.”

He gave me another look as he passed, and disappeared out the door. As soon as the door closed behind him, I pulled out Wilhelmina and aimed it at the woman’s head.

“I’m sorry to take advantage of your misplaced trust,” I said. “But let me assure you that if you make the slightest sound or attempt a warning of any kind I will shoot you.”

She sat rigid at the desk as I walked quickly around in back of her to be sure she had no warning buzzer. I noticed a large metal cabinet with full doors on it. I opened it, and there was little in it except for a first aid kit on a high shelf. I got it out, put it on the desk and opened it. There was a roll of tape inside.

“Tear a six-inch length off and place it over your mouth,” I told her.

She followed orders carefully. In a moment she had the tape across her mouth. “Now get into the cabinet.”

She got in, and I turned her back to me, grabbed her wrists and wrapped some tape around them, binding them together. “Try to stay quiet in there,” I said. I closed the door as she squatted on the cabinet floor.

I moved over to the door to Li Yuen’s office. I put my ear against it and could hear the two voices inside quite distinctly. The first voice was American; it obviously belonged to Damon Zeno.

“You don’t seem to understand, colonel; my work is not yet complete.” There was undisguised irritation in the voice, which had a nasal tone to it.

“But you have accomplished what we brought you here for, surely,” the high, slightly metallic voice of Li Yuen came through. “You have created the Omega Mutation.”

“My experiments are not yet proved to my satisfaction,” Zeno argued. “When we send our report to Peking, I want to be sure of what we have done.”

“You do not accept the findings of your own difficult labor, doctor,” Li Yuen said in an unchanging, unmodulated voice. “One can be too great a perfectionist”

“The Omega Mutation will be the most effective biological weapon ever created,” Zeno said slowly.

“It will make the hydrogen bomb obsolete.” There was a short pause. “But I will not send unfinished work to Peking!”

“Peking thinks you go too carefully, Dr. Zeno,” Li Yuen said in a tougher voice. “There are those who wonder whether you are reluctant to deliver the weapon now that you have created it.”

“That is utter nonsense,” Zeno protested harshly.

“Laboratories are standing ready all over China to start work,” Li Yuen went on. “They will be able to culture a significant quantity in a matter of weeks, thanks to your change in the genetic structure that allows rapid reproduction.” There was a rattle of paper. “I have a message from my superiors, doctor, suggesting that you forward your findings and cultures immediately and allow our laboratories to begin the breeding while you continue to work on the final proofs here.”

“But that’s not the way it should be done!” Zeno protested loudly. “If I find a flaw in the present mutation, the work they do in the meantime will go for nothing.”

“Peking is willing to take the chance,” Li Yuen’s flat voice came through the door. “They ask, doctor, that you have your report ready to send to them within twenty-four hours. They will have Chinese biologists check your findings in Peking.” The last remark was said acidly and was intended as an insult.

There was a brief silence in the room. Then Zeno’s heavy voice resumed: “Very well I’ll get something ready for them.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Li Yuen’s tone was sugary.

I moved away from the door just in time. Zeno came out of the inner office stiff-backed and angry. He looked at me briefly, standing in the middle of the waiting room, and then strode through the outer door into the corridor. I moved after him and watched the direction he took, which I presumed was to the laboratory. I stepped back inside the waiting room. I had to decide whether to go directly after him, or make a stop in Li Yuen’s office. I decided on the latter because I figured that at least some of the papers that recorded Omega’s ugly development would be located with the L5 man. Perhaps he even had a copy of everything Zeno had written down.

I turned back to the partially open door to Li Yuen’s office. I took the Luger out and walked through the door just as Li Yuen was opening a wall safe. I let him open it, then spoke up:

“Your worries about Peking are over, Li.”

He whirled about quickly, surprise on his round face. He was young, in his thirties, I thought. He focused narrowly on the Luger just as I squeezed the trigger.

The gun barked out loudly in the room and Li Yuen spun back against the open safe door, smacking his face into its edge. As he slid downward, he grabbed at the door with both hands and left a dark red stain on it.

I kicked the body and it did not move. I hoped the sound of the gunshot had not carried far outside the room, but I had had little choice because of time. I reached into the safe and drew out a sheaf of papers and two black files with silver stripes across their covers. One was lettered in Chinese OMEGA PROJECT. The other, in English, read simply DAMON ZENO.

I glanced through the file on Zeno and threw it onto the floor. When I opened the other file, I knew it was part of what I was after. There were some early notes of Zeno’s on the project, communications between Li and Zeno, and charts of letters and digits tracing the development of the Omega bug. I closed the file, turned, and left the room.

In the waiting room there was a muffled noise and some feeble kicking from the cabinet where I had put the Chinese woman. It didn’t matter now. Just as I turned to leave, the outer door opened, and the big black man stood there.

He looked at the empty desk and then at the file under my arm. I started to walk past him.

“Where is Madame Ching?” he asked.

I pointed to the inner office where Li Yuen lay dead. “She’s in with Li Yuen,” I said. There was a sound from the cabinet, and he looked toward it.

I brought the gun out again and chopped down against the base of his skull. He groaned and hit the floor.

“Count your blessings,” I said to the unconscious figure. Then I moved through the doorway and down the corridor in the direction Damon Zeno had gone.

ELEVEN

The tall, husky Almohad mountain man in the Moroccan army uniform barred the doorway to the laboratory. He wore a thick, black beard and earrings in his ears. His shoulders and chest stretched his uniform. His neck was as thick as some men’s waists. He looked down about an inch into my eyes, with what could only be described as arrogant hostility. Above his head over the closed door were painted several warning signs in English and Arabic. DEPARTMENT “A” RESEARCH. Entry Strictly Forbidden. Violators Will Be Punished.

“What do you want?” the big Moroccan asked in strongly accented English.

“Is Dr. Zeno inside?”

“He is.”

“I must deliver this file,” I said, showing him the file under my arm.

“Do you have Class One clearance?”

“I was sent by Li Yuen,” I explained.

“You must have a Class One clearance card,” he insisted. “If you do not, I will deliver the file.”

I shrugged “All right.” I handed the precious file over to him. As soon as both his hands were on it, I went for Wilhelmina.

But he was sharp. He saw the movement, dropped the papers and grabbed at my wrist as it came out of my lab coat. I struggled to turn the gun toward him, but he was too strong for me. He twisted hard on my wrist and the Luger fell from my grasp. I thought for a moment he had broken a bone. He grabbed me with both hands and smashed me against the wall beside the door. My teeth rattled, and I couldn’t focus my eyes for a minute. The big hands closed around my throat. His strength was so great that I knew he’d crush my windpipe before he suffocated me. I freed my arms briefly and brought them down hard onto his forearms, loosening his grip. I kicked at where I thought his left kneecap would be, connected and heard bone snap.

The Almohad yelled a dull yell and fell away from me. I chopped hard at his head with my right hand. He did not go down. I hit the same place again, and he fell to the floor.

But in a second he was going for the pistol on his belt, and he moved very fast for a big man. I landed on him just as the gun was clearing the holster. Hugo slipped into my hand as I hit him. As he fell onto his back and saw the flash of the knife, he brought an arm up to block it, but I knocked his arm aside long enough to make one quick plunge, driving the stiletto into his head, just under the left ear. There was a hiss from his open mouth, a violent shudder of his massive body, and he was dead.

I looked up, and the corridor was still empty. I walked a few steps and opened a door to a small office. Nobody was there. I went back to the guard, dragged him into the small room, and closed the door. Then I straightened my white coat, replaced my weapons, and gathered up the file. I pushed open the door to the lab and walked in as if I owned the place.

It was a large room, crowded with tables and equipment. On the tables were rows upon rows of small glass tanks, in which, I guessed, Omega was being grown. A large electronic machine of some kind stood at one end of the room, and an attend-ant bent over it. There were three other lab men in addition to Dr. Z himself, who was busy scribbling notes at a stand-up desk.

To my left was a tall cabinet constructed of metal and wood. The doors on this cabinet were reinforced glass, so that its contents were visible. There were hundreds of glass cylinders with labels affixed to them. Inside the containers were a greenish gray substance, which, I concluded, was the cultured Omega Mutation.

Dr. Z had moved over to a counter near the desk and was studying a beaker on top of a low flame. As I knew from the previous brief meeting and from AXE photographs, he was a tall, chalky-faced man with stooped shoulders. His hair was thick and iron gray. The nose was thin but prominent, and his mouth was wide, with a full underlip. Unlike most of the other men in the room, Z was without spectacles, and the dark gray eyes held a cold, brilliant intensity.

I remembered Hawk’s advice. Bring Zeno back if I could. Kill him if I could not. The choice was Zeno’s.

Nobody in the room had seen me, or if they had, they were paying no attention. I moved quickly over to Zeno, and as I approached him, I placed the Omega file on a table where it would be out of my way. I walked up beside him, putting myself between him and the other white-coated men in the room, so that they could not see what was going on. Then I pulled Wilhelmina. Zeno looked up just then, regarded the gun impassively for a moment, then stared at me with those hard, bright eyes.

“What is this?” he said coldly to me, in a strong, resonant voice. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’ll give you a small hint,” I said in a low hard voice. “I’m not with L5.”

His dark eyes narrowed slightly as he looked me over, and understanding came to his face. “So that’s it.” He tried to mask his fear. “You’re a fool. You’ll never get out of the laboratory alive.”

“Getting out alive is not part of my assignment,” I said to him slowly and deliberately. I let that sink in a moment. I saw his eyes dart to the other men behind me. “Don’t do it. Not unless you don’t mind having a slug punch a baseball-size hole through your chest.”

He looked down at the gun, and then back into my eyes. “What do you want?” he asked.

I pushed the Luger up against his ribs. “Tell the others to leave,” I said quietly. “Tell them Li Yuen wishes to meet privately with you here. Tell them anything, but get them out for a while. And make them believe it.”

Damon Zeno glared at the gun and then at me. “I can’t do that. These men….”

“I’ll squeeze this trigger if you don’t.”

Zeno struggled to keep his growing anger under control. But his fear was stronger. “It’s Li Yuen’s fault that this has happened,” he muttered bitterly to himself. When he glanced into my eyes, he saw that I meant what I said, and he turned slowly to the other men in the laboratory.

“Gentlemen, your attention, please.” He waited while they all turned to him. “The director has requested an emergency meeting with me here in ten minutes. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask that you absent yourselves from your work for a short time. Why don’t you all take a coffee break and I’ll join you shortly?”

There was some muttering, but they filed out of the place. I hid the gun until they were gone. Then I turned back to Dr. Z.

“Where are your recent findings and notes?” I asked. “The ones that supplement those in Li Yuen’s file.”

Zeno’s eyes flicked involuntarily toward a locked metal cabinet on a nearby wall. “You must be mad,” he said softly. “Do you actually think I would deliver Omega to you on a silver platter? At any rate, the notes would mean nothing to you or anyone else in American intelligence.”

“I bet the notes are in that cabinet,” I said, watching his reaction. “And that the cultured Mutation is behind the glass on that wall.”

Zeno’s face was dark with frustration and rage. “Get out of here while you can,” he said thickly. “Or Li Yuen will cut you into little pieces.”

I grunted. “Li Yuen is dead.”

I watched the expressions flit across his face. Disbelief, then shock, anger, and finally, renewed fear.

“So is General Djenina,” I said. “You’re pretty much alone now, Zeno, even if they kill me.”

Zeno’s pallid face was fighting for control. “If Li Yuen is dead, he is expendable. It is Omega that counts, not Li.”

“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why it must go. And you too if you’re stubborn. God knows why, but I have orders to bring you back with me if you want to come.” My voice revealed my contempt. “I’m giving you your option right now.”

He glanced again at the Luger. “And you will destroy Omega?”

“That’s right.” I moved over to the cabinet, picked up a microscope, smashed it against the lock, and broke it open. I threw the damaged instrument onto the floor, took the lock off, and opened the cabinet door.

Inside was a manila folder and some other pa-pers. I gathered them up and glanced at Zeno. The strained expression on his face told me I had hit the jackpot. I laid everything on top of the file I had taken from Li Yuen’s safe and glanced through the material quickly. It looked like the right stuff.

“I’ll take you in on the project,” Zeno said in a low voice, a voice tinged with desperation. “The Chinese don’t have to have it all. Do you know, do you have any idea, how powerful Omega can make a man?”

“I had a nightmare about it,” I admitted, closing the file. I stuffed the Luger into a pocket, carried the mass of loose papers over to the Bunsen burner, and stuck them into the flame.

“No!” he said loudly.

The papers were burning. I started back toward the files with them, and Zeno made his decision. He lunged at me, and I went down under his weight, smashing against a long table of cultures and test tubes, knocking the whole thing to the floor.

The flaming sheaf of papers flew out of my hand and hit the floor the same time as the crashing glass and liquids. The test tubes must have contained some tiling flammable, because they burst into roaring flame between us and the long wall cabinet where the cultured Omega Mutation was located. The fire reached the big wood cabinet in minutes and it caught fire instantly.

“My God!” Zeno cried out We struggled to our feet separately, neither concerned with the other at the moment. I watched the fire lick at the wall cabinet for a moment and spread to the long tables where the cultures were developing. Zeno had saved me some work.

“Damn you!” Zeno shouted above the crackling flame. “Damn you!”

I ignored him. I moved back to the table where the files still lay, picked them up and hurled them into the growing inferno. Zeno saw what I was doing and made a small move as if to step me, then hesitated. In the next moment, he was running toward an alarm box on the opposite wall.

I pulled Wilhelmina out and aimed at Dr. Z’s head as he reached the alarm. Then I heard the doors slam open behind me.

Whirling away from Zeno, I faced two guards, who had come storming into the room. One had a gun out and was leveling it at me. I crouched to one knee as he fired, and the shot tore past my head and smashed culture containers behind me. The other guard was moving in a circle toward me, in a flanking movement, but I had to ignore him. I returned fire at the first guard and hit him in the chest. He crashed back onto a table and knocked it over. He was dead by the time he hit the floor.

As I turned to the other guard, he came flying at me in a headlong plunge. He knocked me off balance before I could bring the Luger into play, and we hit a table, crashing more glass. The fire was roaring near us. In the back of my head somewhere, I could hear the alarm that Zeno had set off clanging in the corridor outside the door.

The big man slugged me hard across the face, and I hit the floor on my back. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Zeno unsuccessfully slapping at the flames with his lab coat. The guard slugged me again and grabbed at the Luger. I began twisting it toward him as he strained against me. Slowly my hand came around toward his face, and I could see the sweat pop out on his forehead and upper lip as we struggled for control of the muzzle. I had the leverage. Inch by inch I forced the gun toward him until it reached a point just over his left eye. I squeezed the trigger and blew the side of his head off.

I slumped back exhausted, pushing the bloody body off me. I strained to see Zeno through the flames and smoke, and then I saw him running toward the door. I aimed the Luger after him and fired, but I just missed, and he got away.

I struggled to my feet. I tore the ripped lab coat off to give myself more freedom of movement. Somehow I found a way through the flames and got to the door. Zeno was nowhere in sight in the corridor. I turned back briefly to the lab and saw the flames destroying Zeno’s monster bug and his records. Already the fire had spread from the lab into the corridor through a door about five feet away, and I suspected it had eaten through the walls to other rooms. It seemed like the whole facility was going to go up in flames.

I ran choking down the hall. People and fire-fighting equipment moved past me toward the lab, but it was too late for that. There was absolute chaos in the facility, as the corridors filled with smoke and employees ran for exits. The alarm was still clanging, and there was a lot of hysterical shouting in the building as I moved to a rear exit behind two choking people.

I was outside in a rear parking lot. The fire had already burst through the roof in places and was licking high into the air, black smoke curling sky-ward. The area outside the building was quickly filling with choking, gasping people. A few were trying to get fire hoses hooked up. I moved around the side of the building and saw a small van start up and screech wildly toward the main gate. Damon Zeno was driving it. He stopped abruptly at the gate and yelled something to the guards. Then he took off.

I ran to a Land Rover nearby, looked at the dash and found keys there. I hopped in and started the vehicle; the wheels spun and grabbed at the hard dirt of the compound, and the Land Rover lurched forward.

I had gone only a few yards when two guards near the main gate spotted me driving toward them. Zeno had apparently told them I was to be stopped. They both had their guns out, and one of them fired and shattered the windshield near my head. I ducked away from flying glass as an explosion ripped a building close by and flames shot out behind me. One of the guards was hit by flying embers and caught fire, screaming.

I slammed on the brakes, ripped the gears into reverse, spun the vehicle around in a cloud of dust, and roared off around the back of the building to try the gate from the other side. As I rounded the comer of the building, flames shot out and singed the hair on my left arm. I felt raw heat on my face. There was a wall of fire ahead of me, between the main building and a service building at the rear. I didn’t even hit the brakes, since I had little choice. I jammed harder on the accelerator and, crouching low in the open vehicle, roared into the flames.

For a moment it was all bright yellow heat and choking smoke, and it felt like the inside of a blast-furnace. Then I burst through and headed around the other corner toward the main gate again.

A guard jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being run down. Another guard spotted me and stood squarely between the Land Rover and the gate. He aimed and fired, and the slug sang off the metal frame of the windshield, then he dived headlong to the dirt, away from the vehicle. In another moment I drove through the gate of the facility and headed down the road after Damon Zeno.

As I rounded the curve where the patrol had surprised Gabrielle and me earlier, I slowed the vehicle for a minute and looked over my shoulder at the lab. The scene was utter chaos. The fire raged out of control, and black smoke billowed high above it. No one was going to come after me. They were too busy trying to save the building complex.

TWELVE

For the first hour there was no sight of the van Zeno had been driving. There were only the fresh tire tracks he left behind. Zeno was heading southeast from Mhamid, into the desert.

Sometime during the second hour I got a glimpse of the van, raking up a great cloud of dust behind it. After that glimpse, I lost the van again for over a half hour, but I suddenly came upon it sitting in the middle of a broad, parched area of sand and scrub brush, just beside a head-high rock outcropping. One tire was fiat. I stopped the Land Hover, cut the engine, and climbed out. I squinted at the van, wondering where Zeno might be. Drawing Wilhelmina, I moved to the van and looked inside. Zeno was nowhere about. The keys were still in the ignition. I looked at the ground around the van and saw the tracks leading straight ahead, in the direction he’d been driving. Zeno had to be pretty desperate to start walking in this country. I leaned into the van again to remove the keys from the ignition. As I was leaning down, I heard a sound behind me and felt the blow along the back of my head and neck. Pain exploded inside my head and then a black coolness swept over me as I hit the ground.

The sun was glaring harshly overhead when my eyelids fluttered open. For a minute I had no idea where I was. Then I looked up with blurry eyes and slowly remembered. I closed my eyes against the hot glare, turned my head slightly, and felt excruciating pain at the base of my skull.

I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to think. Zeno had ambushed me beautifully. He probably thought the blow had killed me. Otherwise he’d have taken my gun and shot me.

I opened my eyes again, and the glare from that white-hot orb was painful. The Land Rover was gone, naturally. I sat up and grunted aloud as the pain clawed through my head and neck. A hammer was pounding at the inside of my skull. I rose agonizingly to my knees and tried to stand but fell against the side of the van and almost went down again. I was seeing two of everything.

I stumbled to the door of the van and looked inside. Despite my poor vision. I could see that Zeno had taken the keys. The hood of the vehicle had been raised. I stumbled clumsily to it, looked under and found that the distributor wires were gone. Zeno hadn’t done any of this for me, since he thought I was dead. He just didn’t want the natives stumbling onto the scene and driving the van into Mhamid, where it would be connected with the laboratory.

I leaned heavily on the fender of the vehicle. Nausea welled up in my gut for a moment and dizziness came over me. I waited, breathing hard, hoping it would pass. Those damned tracks leading away from the van. Zeno had been clever. He had walked in a big circle, come back behind the rock outcropping, and waited there for me with a tire iron or jack. I had been stupid.

The dizziness subsided. I looked in the direction Zeno and I had come from and wondered if I would ever be able to find my way back to the dirt track that served as a road, even if I found the strength to walk that far. But I had to try. I couldn’t stay here.

So I pushed myself from the van and started walking. The thing I wanted most was to lie down in the shade and rest and let the pain in my head and neck subside. Better yet would be a week in a hospital bed, with a pretty nurse. Maybe Gabrielle.

I put those thoughts from my mind and stumbled along unevenly, the pain ripping into me with every step. Sweat began running into my eyes from my forehead, and there was a dry, cotton taste in my mouth. I wondered how far it was to the road. I tried to reconstruct how much time had elapsed while I drove to this remote place after Zeno, but I could not focus my thoughts on anything because of the pain.

Suddenly the dizziness came again, and a blackness crowded around the periphery of my vision. There was a jarring bump against my head and chest, and I knew I had fallen. I groaned at the pain and lay there, making no effort to get up for a moment. It was so much better on the ground than on my feet. I could feel the sun like a fiat-iron on the back of my neck and could smell the sweat from my exhausted body. And I felt sorry for myself. I felt very sorry for myself, and I told myself that I was in no condition to go on, that I had earned a rest here.

But another part of me prodded. “Get up, Carter, damn you! Get up and move or you’ll die here.”

I knew that the voice was right. I listened to it, and I knew that what it said was true. If I could not get back up now, I would not get up at all. That sun would boil my brains in an hour.

Somehow I made it to my feet again. I looked down at the ground for a trace of the vehicle I had been following. There was nothing. I squinted and tried to focus, but could not. I moved ahead a few yards, then made a slow turning circle. Blurred vision or not, there were no car tracks anywhere near me. I had lost them.

I glanced up at the sun, and it was like looking through the open door of a forge oven. It was in a different direction from when I had started walking. Or was it? I couldn’t think. I closed my eyes and squinted. I had to remember. When I started walking, the sun had been on my right. Yes, I was sure of it.

I moved forward again. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, but that made them burn even more. My head was being pummeled from inside. I ran a leathery tongue over parched lips and realized that the desert sun had already dehydrated me more than I liked to think. I saw something moving on the ground and stopped short, almost falling again. It was a shadow. I looked up and saw a vulture up there, high above me, wheeling and turning silently.

I grunted and kept moving. I squinted at the sandy ground as I passed over it, hoping to see the tire tracks again. For a while I made an effort to keep the sun on my right, but then I drifted. I was thinking of Damon Zeno and how I had let him get me. I had destroyed the Omega Mutation, but with Zeno still on the loose he could start all over again somewhere else. That was why David Hawk had said to kill him if he would not come back as my prisoner.

My tongue was becoming thick as if I had a wool blanket in my mouth. The sweating wasn’t so bad, because I was dried out inside. Dust caked on my clothing on top of the dampness and on my face and in my eyes and ears. It clogged my nostrils. And my legs were becoming very rubbery. My mind wandered back to all those rows of cultures destined for Peking. And I was in that horrible ward, passing down the aisle between those rows of stricken faces.

My side thumped the ground again and brought me around. I had been moving forward on my feet, but in a daze. Now I had fallen once more. For the first time I felt the back of my head where Zeno had struck me, and there was caked blood drying there. I looked around and saw that I was on a hard pan of salt clay that seemed to extend endlessly in every direction. It was a bad place to be. A man would fry like an egg on a griddle here in no time at all. The entire area was parched bone-dry, and inch-wide cracks patterned the clay everywhere. There was no vegetation of any kind on the horizon. I had a fleeting memory of seeing the edge of this area earlier, but then the memory was gone. Another shadow passed overhead, and I looked into the serene inferno that was the sky and saw that there were two vultures up there now.

I tried to regain my feet but could not get past my knees this time. That, and the vultures, really scared me. I stayed on my knees, breathing hard, trying to think which way the road might be. The hard fact of the matter was I could wander around out here all afternoon, moving in circles like a beetle on a string, and end up where I had started. If only I could regain clear vision, that might help.

I began moving over the hot clay on my hands and knees, the clay burning my hands as I moved. The cracks in the clay made an intricate design on the surface of the flats, and the edges of the cracks cut my hands and knees. A short time later the vertigo came back, and the landscape was whirling around me in a giddy circle. I suddenly saw a flash of bright sky where the ground should have been and felt the now familiar shock of hitting the hard clay, this time on my back.

Four vultures. I swallowed and glanced back upward and counted again. Yes, four, their wings whispering on the still, hot air up there. A small shudder passed through me, and the realization slowly dawned. I was immobile for all practical purposes, and the vultures had found that out. They, not the sun, represented the most immediate threat. I slumped down on my back, too weak to hold my body up even slightly. The concussion and the blast-furnace heat had taken their toll.

I had seen vultures in East Africa. They could tear a gazelle to shreds in fifteen minutes, picking the bones clean in another fifteen, so that all that was left was a dark spot on the ground. The big birds had no fear of a live animal, even man, if that animal was disabled. And they had lousy table manners. They had no compunctions about starting their grisly meal before the animal was dead. If it could not fight back, it was ready for the picking. There were stories about vultures and disabled men from white hunters and African trackers that I would rather not have remembered. It was best, I had heard, to lie on your face after you became immobilized, but even then you were vulnerable, because they would attack the kidneys which was more painful than the eyes.

“Go away!” I yelled weakly at them.

They seemed not to hear. After the sound of my voice had died away, the desert appeared even more quiet. The silence was a buzzing in my ears, a sound itself. I let my head fall back onto the hard clay, and the double vision returned. I moaned aloud. It was only mid-afternoon, with several hours of scorching heat ahead before dusk came. I felt I would collapse long before that. And then the birds would get me. Very quickly.

I raised up on one elbow again. Maybe I had been walking in the wrong direction. Maybe I was putting more and more distance between myself and the road, removing any hope of rescue from a passing traveler. It was possible that every time I got up and moved I was moving closer to death.

No, I couldn’t think that way. It was too dangerous. I had to believe I was heading toward the road. Otherwise I would not have the courage, the will, to move at all.

I struggled again to my knees, my head feeling twice its size. I gritted my teeth and inched forward along the clay. I would not give up. I wondered briefly if Zeno had known I was not dead when he left me, but decided to let the desert do the killing. That would be typical of him. But to hell with Damon Zeno. I no longer cared about him. I no longer cared about the Omega Mutation. I wanted only to survive this day, to live.

Foot by foot I dragged myself along. I had little idea where I was headed. But it was important to keep moving, keep trying. I stumbled along, the hard clay burning and cutting me as I went, and I thought of Gabrielle. I thought of her in a dark, cool hotel room in Mhamid, lying on the big bed, naked. And then I was in the room with her, and I was moving over to the bed. Her arms embraced me, pulled me down beside her, and her flesh was cool and soft and scented like jasmine.

A short time later I found that I had passed out again. I was lying on my back, and the sun was broiling. Six vultures spiraled over me. I licked at dry, cracking lips and pushed myself up. But I did not have the strength to move. One of the vultures soared low and settled just a few yards away, making that stiff-legged goose-step at the end of the landing. Then another bird came down.

I yelled weakly at them, my heart pummeling the inside of my chest. The two birds made a couple of hops and in a dry, heavy rustling of feathers, lifted off again and joined their comrades aloft.

I lay back. I was wheezing hard, my pulse racing. I had run out of strength. I had to admit to myself that I had lost. Damon Zeno had gotten me. The sun and the birds would end it before another hour passed. I had no idea where I was, I could not see clearly for even a few yards. I suddenly thought of Wilhelmina for the first time and felt for its familiar shape in the holster at my side. It was not there. I had had it out when Zeno bushed me. He must have taken it. Even Hugo was gone. I had no weapon to use against the birds.

The vultures swooped lower and lower, floating and gliding, their bright, darting eyes eager and hungry. I rolled on my stomach and began crawling. With blood-smeared hands I crawled along like a snake, expending the last ounces of energy.

I was jolted to sudden consciousness by a sharp, tearing pain just under my left eye. I had passed out again and was lying on my back. My eyes shot open in terror, my hand coming up automatically in defense.

Two big vultures stood on my chest. The long scrawny necks, the obscene darting eyes, the hooked sharp beaks filled my field of vision, and their odor filled my nostrils. One vulture was jabbing and tearing at the leather of my holster strap, and the other had made its first stab at my eyes. The second bird was just about to make another try, when my hand came up. I yelled aloud and grabbed at the ugly neck.

The big bird screamed raucously and tried to get away. I hung on to the snakelike neck as the other vulture flailed its broad wings, scratching my chest as he pushed off. The one I held thrashed about wildly to free itself, beating its wings against my face, my chest, and arms and digging into me with its talons.

But I would not release that scrawny neck. I imagined the hideous head was Zeno’s, and through all the thrashing and the squawking, I managed slowly to get my other hand up and onto the neck, the sharp beak jabbing at the hand all the while and drawing blood. Then I rolled onto my side, pinned the bird to the ground and with a desperate surge of strength bent the long neck double. Something snapped inside, and I let go. The bird beat the clay with its wings for another couple of moments while the rank smell of it assailed my nostrils, and then it lay still.

I was sick from exhaustion. I thought for a moment I might throw up. But slowly the nausea subsided. I glanced around and saw the others. They were all on the ground now, some moving around me in a tight circle with that stiff-jointed neck-jerking walk, some just standing impatiently, watching.

I lay back, exhausted. A couple of them edged closer. I felt numbly under my left eye and there was a shallow gash there. My hand came away with blood on it. But the vulture had missed the eyeball.

I glanced at the dead bird with a small amount of satisfaction. They might get their grisly feast before the day was out, but I would make them work for the meal.

The other birds were now moving in slowly, their grotesque heads bobbing in quick, weird movements. They were excited by the smell of blood and very impatient.

I felt a sharp peck at my right leg and looked to see the bird standing beside me. The others were close too, inspecting the body for signs of life. Only one had been distracted by its dead companion. I was the meat they were waiting for. I swung weakly at the bird that had pecked me, and it fluttered backward a couple of feet.

Well, it would not be so bad after the first shock of pain. Men had died more terribly at the hands of L5 and the KGB. I could manage it, too. But I would not let them have my face. Not first anyway. I rolled heavily onto my chest and laid my face on my arm.

I lay there quietly, thinking of Zeno and my failure, and what that failure would mean. It appeared I would not be around to see the results. I listened to the rustle of feet and feathers growing louder as they closed in.

THIRTEEN

There was a great fluttering of wings, and another sound accompanied it. It was a familiar sound— a car engine. And then there was the voice,

“Nick! Mon Dieu, Nick!”

I moved my arm from my face, and my eyes fluttered open. The sun was going down in the sky, and it was not so bright now. I moved the arm again and rolled onto my side. Then I saw Gabrielle, bending over me, concern and relief in her eyes.

“Oh, Nick! I thought you were dead.”

She was pulling at the shredded cloth of my shirt. “Thank God, I found you in time.”

“How…?” It was difficult to speak. I couldn’t manipulate my tongue.

She helped me up and leaned my head against her. Then she was unscrewing the top of a canteen, and I could almost smell the water as the cap came off. The miraculous wet stuff was washing down my throat, gurgling its way to my insides, moving into the vital places replenishing my energy and my fiber.

“You’re only fifty yards from the road,” she said. She pointed beyond the Citrõen. “Didn’t you know?”

I could actually feel the energy returning with the water. I moved my tongue, and it would work now. “No, I didn’t.” I took another swig, then Gabrielle was touching my parched face with a damp cloth. “But what are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be in Mhamid.”

“Someone came into town with news of the fire. I could not just sit there at the hotel, thinking you might be in trouble. I was heading for the lab when I saw the two sets of car tracks leading down this road toward Tagounite, the next town from here. Since the laboratory had been leveled, I figured you were either caught in the fire or you belonged to one of those tracks. I preferred to believe the latter, so I followed the tracks. They turn off the road just up ahead, but I saw the vultures first. And they led me to you.”

I sat up slowly, and the throbbing in my head had subsided somewhat. I grimaced in pain from several sources.

“Are you all right, Nick?”

“I think so,” I said. I noticed for the first time that the double vision had gone. I tried to get up and fell against Gabrielle.

“Come on, I will help you to the car,” she said.

I found it hard to believe that I was still alive. I let Gabrielle lead me to the car, and I slumped heavily into the front seat.

We drove slowly along the road, moving past the place where Zeno had driven into the desert and I had followed. Then, several hundred yards beyond that point, I saw the tracks. The Land Rover heading back out onto the dirt track. And turning away from Mhamid again, toward the desert and Tagounite.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Okay, we head for Tagounite.”

“Are you quite sure?” she looked worried.

I glanced over at her and grinned, feeling my cracked lips try to bend. “Zeno took my favorite playthings,” I said. “I think it’s only right that I should make him give them back.”

She returned the smile. “Whatever you say, Nick.”

We arrived at Tagounite just after dark. It was Mhamid all over again, but somehow it looked even dustier and drier. As soon as we drove into town, I sensed that Zeno either was there or had been there recently. No physical evidence, just a gut feeling, one I had learned to pay attention to on other occasions. We came to a small square just after entering town, and a gasoline pump, painted red, stood outside a place that looked like an inn. It was one of those Spanish pumps that you put a coin into and get your own gas, but this one had been converted to exclude the automatic exchange of coin and fuel.

“Just a minute,” I said to Gabrielle. “I want to ask some questions here.”

She stopped the car, and in a moment an Arab came out, a young, thin fellow wearing a desert kaffiyeh on his head. He grinned a big, toothy grin, and we asked him to fill the Citrõen’s tank. While he did, I got out of the car and went around to speak with him.

“Have you serviced a Land Rover tonight?” I asked in Arabic.

“Land Rover?” he repeated squinting at me as he pumped the gas. “There was a desert car here an hour or more ago, sir. An open top, it had.”

“Was a man driving it, a man with gray hair, a tall man?”

“Why, yes,” the Arab said, studying my face.

“Did he speak to you?”

The Arab looked at me and a small grin came onto his face. “It seems I remember something…”

I took a wad of dirhams from my pocket and handed them to him. His smile broadened. “It comes to me now, sir. He mentioned getting a good rest tonight.”

“Did he say where?”

“He did not.”

I studied his face and decided he was telling the truth. I paid him for the gas. “Thanks.”

Back in the Citrõen, I told Gabrielle what I had learned.

“If Zeno is here now, he will be here tomorrow morning,” she said. “If you find him tonight, Nick, he will probably kill you. You look terrible. You’re in no shape to go after him.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Well get a hotel room. But I want you to wake me at dawn tomorrow.”

“All right. But until then, you will rest”

The hotel room was cleaner than the one in Mhamid, and the bed just a little softer. Gabrielle slept with me, but I did not even notice when she climbed beside me in a short, filmy nightgown. I was asleep almost as soon as I hit the bed.

At midnight I sat bolt upright, yelling obscenities at the vultures and waving my arms at them. It was all very real for a moment. I could even feel the hot sand under my thighs and smell the stink of the birds.

“Nick!” Gabrielle spoke sharply to me.

I was really awake then. “Sorry,” I mumbled. I leaned against the head of the bed and realized that I felt a hundred percent better. The pains were going away, and I had some strength.

“It is all right,” Gabrielle said softly as I fit a cigarette. I inhaled, and the red coal glowed in the room. “Are you cold?” She moved her body against me. She was soft and warm and I responded in spite of myself.

“Just right now,” I told her.

She noticed my response to her body. “I had better stay on my side,” she said. She started to move away.

My hand stopped her. “It’s all right.”

“But Nick, you need your rest.”

“I won’t go back to sleep for a while anyway.”

She settled back down against me. “All right. But you just relax and let me handle tilings.”

I smiled as she kissed my mouth, caressing me all the while. She was taking care of me, and I loved it. Soon she kissed me again, and there was real fire in it, and she knew the time had come.

Gabrielle made gentle love to me, and it was unforgettable. From that moment on my strength flowed back quickly. When she had fallen asleep beside me later, I dozed off quickly and woke at dawn feeling refreshed and renewed.

I still hurt when I moved. But the wound at the base of my skull was healing, the gash under my left eye had formed a small, thin scab, and Gabrielle had patched up the cuts on my back. She also changed the bandage on my side, where General Djenina had inflicted the flesh wound. We had coffee sent to the room while we were dressing, and after I had the thick, dark stuff inside me, I felt like a different man from the one who had stumbled into that Citrõen the previous afternoon.

Out in the car again that morning, with the sun just coming up over the flat, white rooftops of the village, we headed for the other two hotels in town. I was looking for the Land Rover. Of course, if Zeno really wanted to hide, there were probably private homes where he could have gotten a room. But he had little reason to think I was still after him. I figured he would be at one of the hotels. And I also figured he would not get out before dawn.

We scoured the parking areas around the first small hotel, but there was no sign of the Land Rover. He could have changed vehicles, too, but again there seemed to be little point.

As we approached the second hotel, Gabrielle and I spotted the Land Rover at the same time. It was parked just across the cobblestone street from the entrance, and a tall man was leaning into it over its topless door.

“It’s Zeno!” I said to Gabrielle. “Stop the car!”

She followed orders. “Nick, watch out. You don’t even have a gun.”

I climbed from the Citrõen carefully. Zeno was still arranging something on the seat of the vehicle. With some luck, I might be able to move up behind him. He had not noticed our car yet.

“Don’t turn the engine off,” I said softly to Gabrielle. “Just sit here. Quietly. And keep out of the way.”

“All right.”

I had taken three steps toward the Land Rover when Zeno looked up quite suddenly and spotted me. He didn’t recognize me at first, but then he took a second look. He seemed not to believe his eyes.

I had despised Damon Zeno before I had ever met the man, but since the horrible hours in the desert, I had developed an overwhelming hatred for him. I knew that my feelings were dangerous because emotion almost always gets in the way of efficiency. But I couldn’t help myself.

“This is the end of the line, Zeno,” I said to him.

But he didn’t think so. He pulled Wilhelmina from a hip pocket, aimed at me and squeezed off a round. I ducked down and the slug zinged over my head and ricocheted off the paving stones behind me. I ran to a parked Fiat nearby, and the Luger roared again, denting the roof of the small car. Then Zeno was in the Land Rover, starting the engine.

I went for him but stopped halfway when I saw the car lurch forward and screech away down the street, toward the edge of town. I turned quickly and motioned toward Gabrielle and the Citrõen. She stripped gears, and the car charged forward, pulling up beside me.

Gabrielle made room for me and I hopped in behind the wheel. By now several Arabs had appeared on the quiet street, talking excitedly about the gunshots. I ignored them and put the Citrõen in gear, the tires spinning and then grabbing hold as we got into motion.

The Land Rover was still in sight about three blocks away. I shifted all the way down the long street, tires squealing and rubber burning on the cobblestones. At the end of the street Zeno wheeled around a corner to the right, skidding as he went. I followed the Citrõen making the turn on two wheels.

Zeno was heading out of town on a paved road. A couple of early-morning pedestrians stopped and stared as we roared past, and I found myself hoping no local constabulary was out and around at this hour. In just a few minutes we had left the village behind us. The pavement ended, and we were on a semi-improved dirt road heading again into the desert. The rising sun was almost directly in front of us, and it glared into our eyes through the windshield.

For perhaps twenty miles we roared along. The Citrõen gained some distance but wasn’t able to overtake the other car. The road disappeared almost completely, turning into a rut-filled, sand-clogged track that made us bump our heads against the ceiling of the Citrõen as we kept pace with the Land Rover. Then, as he had that other time, Zeno left the track completely in an effort to lose us. I wheeled the Citrõen after him through scrub brush and hard clay, and now Zeno had a distinct advantage. The Land Rover was made for this kind of travel, with its sturdy frame and four-wheel drive, while the Citrõen was a highway car. In five minutes we had lost sight of Zeno, though a trail of dust allowed us to stay in the right direction.

When I was sure he would lose us completely, we moved around a kopje of jutting rock, and there was the Land Rover sitting at an awkward angle, stuck in a sand drift. Zeno’s driving apparently had not matched the ability of the vehicle. Zeno was just climbing out when we skidded to a stop, not more than twenty yards away.

“Stay in the car and keep down,” I said to Gabrielle.

“Nick, you don’t have a chance without a weapon,” she warned.

“He doesn’t know what we don’t have.”

I reached over and touched her arm. Then I got out of the Citrõen.

Zeno had ducked behind the open door of the Land Rover, holding the Luger over its edge, aimed in my direction. If he had known for sure that I was unarmed, he could have made things rough for us. He could have walked back to us with impunity and made us scramble for cover. But he did not know.

“You’re not taking me back alive!” Zeno shouted as he crouched behind the vehicle door. I didn’t need him to tell me that.

The question was how to get to him, since he had Wilhelmina. It was surprising how big and dangerous the gun looked from this end of the barrel. I glanced at the ground surrounding the vehicles. There were some rocks quite close to both cars on the right and others farther away on the left. They would afford some cover if I could get to them and would confuse Zeno if he didn’t know which ones I’d hidden behind.

Zeno provided his own distraction before I could invent one. He decided it was not safe enough behind the door of the Land Rover, so he turned and moved in a crouch toward the front of the vehicle. As soon as I saw him, I scrambled for the rocks on my right and dived behind them.

When I got up to an edge to look things over, I saw that Zeno had lost track of me and had no idea where I was. His eyes searched the Citrõen and the rocks on both sides of the cars. A hysterical look had come into his face, and I saw him take a better grip on the butt of the Luger, which was slippery with sweat.

Slowly, on my hands and knees, I crawled around the perimeter of the rocks, careful not to move any gravel under my shoes. There was no sound to cover for me. Inch by inch, foot by foot, I worked my way around the rocks to a position just above the Land Rover.

“It won’t do any good to hide, damn you!” Zeno’s loud, strained voice came over the edge of the rock. “I’m going to kill you.”

I lay soundless on the rocks above him. After a moment, I crawled slowly along the crest of the rocks, still out of sight. I was above the front of the Land Rover and about ten feet to its right. I inched up and sneaked a look. I was lucky. Zeno was watching the other side.

I found a rock about the size of my fist. Taking a good grip on it, I took another quick look at Zeno. He was still facing away from me. I hauled back and hurled the rock in a high, looping arc over his head to the other side of the Land Rover; it landed with a clatter. Zeno whirled and fired a round from the Luger at the sound and I jumped down on his back.

I did not gauge the jump well enough. I hit him on the shoulders and back, and the Luger went flying. I landed hard on my left foot and turned my ankle. We hit the ground together, grunting under the impact of the fall. We both struggled up, and I slumped to one knee. I had sprained my ankle. I glanced at the Luger; the business end of the barrel was buried in sand. It would be unusable until it was cleaned. Zeno saw this too and made no effort to go for the gun. Instead, a tight grin came onto his face when he saw my leg.

“Well, isn’t that a shame,” he hissed.

I struggled up, favoring the ankle. It sent needles of sharp pain up my leg. Along with exhaustion from the ordeal of the previous day, this made Zeno despite his age, a formidable opponent in a hand-to-hand fight.

But I had my hatred for the man; I ignored the ankle and made a headlong dive at Zeno, hitting him in the chest. We went down together again. I realized that it was to my advantage to keep him off his feet because my maneuverability was nil in an upright position. We rolled over and over on the sand as I punched my fist into his face. He grabbed at my throat wildly, clawing, trying for a hold that would strangle me. We were beside the Land Rov-er. Zeno’s hands closed on my throat. I threw another fist into his face, and bone crunched; he fell back against the vehicle.

Zeno’s face was bleeding, but he was still fighting. He was on his feet, grabbing at a shovel attached to the side of the Land Rover, one of those small, short-handled ones used for digging wheels out of sand. He had it in hand now and was raising it to bring it down on my head.

I tried to get up but was slowed by the ankle. Now I had to worry about the damn shovel. It descended savagely toward my face, the blade down. I rolled away from it in a quick movement, and it buried itself in the sand beside my head.

Zeno, dark-faced, veins standing out like ropes in his neck, pulled the blade of the shovel free for another swing. He raised the weapon above his head. I kicked out viciously with my right foot and connected with Zeno’s leg, knocking him off-balance. He fell on the sand but did not lose the shovel. I struggled awkwardly to my feet and moved toward Zeno, but he was standing up, too, and still had the shovel He swung it wildly, this time in a horizontal arc at my head. I stepped back to avoid it and felt the ankle. I moved in on Zeno awkwardly, grabbed him before he could regain balance and threw him over my hip to the ground. This time he lost both the shovel and some of his strength. That was good because I was tiring very fast, and the ankle was killing me.

He swung a fist at me and missed, and I smashed a right into his face. He went stumbling backward and slammed up hard against the Land Rover, his face twisted with pain and blood-smeared. I hobbled after him, caught him there, and jammed my hand into his belly. Zeno bent double, and I brought my knee up into the side of his head. He gave a loud grunt and fell back into the front seat of the Land Rover.

As I moved toward him, Zeno struggled for a hold on the end of the seat, and I saw he was reaching for something in the vehicle. As he turned back toward me with it in his hand, I saw that I was in trouble. He had found my other weapon, the stiletto Hugo. He flashed it at me, as he struggled to his feet, his body filling the open door of the car.

I could not allow him to get at me. Not after what he had put me through already. Before he had gotten clear of the door, I threw myself bodily at it. He fell. His head was caught between the edge of the door and the frame as it slammed closed. I heard the skull crack distinctly under the impact, and then Zeno’s eyes went very wide as a muffled grunt escaped his lips. The door swung back open, and Zeno slid to a sitting position on the ground beside the car, his eyes still open, a slim trickle of red edging down his jaw from his hairline. He was dead.

I slumped against the Land Rover, near him, taking my weight off my ankle. I heard footsteps running toward me and then Gabrielle’s frightened voice.

“Nick, are you…:

She stopped beside me and looked down at Zeno. Then she looked at my ankle.

“I’m okay,” I said heavily.

Gabrielle kissed my cheek, then got Wilhelmina and Hugo for me. We started back to the Citrõen, with me leaning on her shoulder.

“This is getting to be a habit,” I said.

“I like helping you, Nick.”

I looked down at her green eyes. “Like last night?”

She actually blushed. “Yes. Like last night.”

I grinned as we moved back to the car. I was picturing Hawk’s expression if he could see the lovely girl who was so concerned about my well-being. “I don’t know how you do it,” he would say with a wry face.

We had arrived at the car. “How long a drive is it back to Tangier?” I asked Gabrielle.

She shrugged her shoulders. “We could be there tomorrow.”

“Really?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “In this broken-down old crate?”

She looked at the dusty Citrõen. “Nick, this is practically a new car.”

“But a new car can get us to Tangier tomorrow,” I argued. “And then I must contact my superiors immediately, and they may want me to fly out on the next plane. On the other hand, if this car is old and decrepit, then it ought to take us two or possibly three nights on the road to reach Tangier.”

The bewilderment in her face dissolved, and a smile replaced it. “Ah. I see the validity of your judgment,” she said slowly. “It has been through a great deal recently, and it would be dangerous to drive it recklessly.”

I patted her backside affectionately. Then I hobbled to the door and got in, and Gabrielle climbed into the driver’s seat.

“To Tangier then, driver,” I said. “But, please. Not too fast.”

“Just as you say, Nick.” She smiled.

Taking one last look at the inert figure sprawled beside the Land Rover, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I settled back on the soft seat, closed my eyes and anticipated the trip back to Tangier.

I expected it to be a memorable one.

The End

Content

Nick Carter
The Omega Terror

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN