Assassins for peace, p.14
Assassins For Peace, page 14
The two men shifted nervously. “There is some mistake,” the taller of the two said defensively. “This is not possible.”
Borrelli had already covered them with the machine pistol. “You damned fools,” he snarled. “Take your hands out of your pockets. Quick now. And bring them out empty. Aziz, you’d best search them as well.”
“This is crazy,” the taller man said. “We do not —”
“Shut up, Ricard. Do as you’re told.”
The tall man flinched, and slowly drew his hand from his jacket pocket. His companion followed suit and they both stood stiffly as Aziz moved behind them and emptied the contents of their pockets. It was on the second man that he found Chevalier’s heavy gold cigarette lighter.
Khalil picked it up and broke it open. He pulled the wadding from inside and the miniature transmitter fell out on to the table. He looked at Borrelli.
“All right, Hassim.” Borrelli’s voice was savage. “Where did you get it?”
Hassim had backed away a step, and there was a knot of fear strangling his voice as he answered.
“I found it on the body of Henry Mallory, the man you ordered us to kill. You said that we must leave no means of identification on the body, and so I kept it. How could I know that there was anything inside?”
“You were told to destroy any means of identification on the body, not to loot it like a common thief. This thing was a plant and you fell for it. You’ve endangered us all just for the sake of a bit of petty pilfering on the side. I ought to —”
Borrelli never finished, for the bark of an automatic cut him short, and the man he was threatening staggered back and toppled sideways to the floor, a red hole neatly blotting out his left eye. The big man turned and saw that Khalil had picked up Hassim’s own gun from the pile of effects that Aziz had placed on the table beside him.
Khalil said flatly, “That is the reward of a fool. For one fool working inside the organisation is more dangerous than a dozen clever men working from without.” His voice only slightly betrayed the inner fury that had caused him to undertake his own killing, and his eyes were on Hassim’s partner as he spoke.
Ricard swallowed hard, and his words came thick and rushed. “I didn’t know, Mr Khalil. Hassim did not tell me that he had kept back that cigarette lighter. Mallory had a false passport, and we gave that and his wallet to our car driver in Tangier and told him to get rid of them. I thought that Hassim had given him the cigarette lighter also.”
There was a moment of silence as Ricard’s life hung in the balance, and then Khalil turned away and dropped Hassim’s automatic back on to the table. Again he was as calm as if nothing had happened. He no longer spoke through Borrelli, but addressed Larren directly.
“I think that now I understand. You are obviously English, some kind of agent or policeman. When your people destroyed our British section they must have discovered something that told them that the man Mallory had escaped to Morocco. You were sent after him, and the fact that he had also hidden himself from us on arrival gave you a chance to find him before we did. You planted this homing device, either in the hope of following Mallory himself, or because you guessed that his murderers would be unable to resist such a valuable item if he was to be killed. Then you followed Ricard and Hassim here to Algeria.” He paused. “Is my reconstruction approximately correct?”
Larren met his eyes for a moment, and then answered, “It sounds plausible.”
“At least you do not deny it.” Khalil frowned and then continued, “I think perhaps I have spared the wrong man. The loss of your friends has not made you as co-operative as I had hoped. Yet on the other hand, I think that you must know more than the other two would have been able to tell me.”
Larren shrugged. “There’s nothing left to tell. You’ve guessed it all.”
“Not all,” Khalil returned softly. “I cannot guess at whether or not you were able to leave a trail behind you that would enable more of your friends to trace you to this airfield. I cannot even be sure that there were only three of you, and we have yet to find the plane in which you arrived. With all these things you can help me.”
“My amnesia,” Larren reminded him. “You shouldn’t have given me such a violent shock.”
Khalil drew a long deep breath, but then Peter Goodhart interrupted boldly. “Their plane is somewhere to the north-west. In fact, I should expect to find it somewhere behind those red rock hills in the desert.” Khalil was looking at him hard and he explained, “They approached the airfield from that direction, and in any case they couldn’t land a plane just anywhere in the sand dunes. They would have to set her down upon solid ground, and the area around those hills is the only possible place within walking distance.”
“But of course,” Khalil smiled. “I should have realised. And naturally it must be behind the hills, because we know that it followed the Cherokee and must have arrived in daylight, when we would otherwise have seen it.”
Borrelli said quickly, “I’ll take the Land Rover, Mr Khalil, and a couple of men. We’ll circle behind those hills and see what we can find.”
“No,” Khalil said sharply. “You are area controller and I may need you here. Ricard can redeem himself by attending to the plane. If there is anyone there bring them back, but in any case totally destroy the aircraft. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr Khalil.” Ricard looked relieved at being given a definite job, and he came forward quickly to collect his automatic from where Aziz had laid it upon the table. He tried not to look down at his dead partner as he did so.
Borrelli detailed two of the armed men to accompany him, and Simon Larren watched their preparations with a sinking heart. He had hoped that Barbara Mallory would be left free to radio for help as soon as dawn arrived and no one had returned to her, but now he knew that he had been hoping for too much. There was nothing that he could say or do as Ricard and his two companions left, and he could only hope that his feelings were not showing on his face as he once again became the focal point of Khalil’s attention.
The hook-nosed man pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, “I think we had best place this gentleman in cold storage until we know more fully the present situation. It will be best if we set a guard on both hangars until Ricard gets back to report, and you, Borrelli, will need to arrange such things. Later you will interrogate him for me and find out exactly how much or how little information he was able to leave for anyone who might follow. Meanwhile, see that he is made secure.”
Borrelli nodded grimly. “Yes, Mr Khalil.”
Larren was taken outside and marched across to another small building which proved to be an old detention block. It reminded Larren of an army glasshouse, and seemed to confirm the fact that the airfield was a relic from the Second World War. Now only the two hangars and the stone-built buildings that could not be dismantled remained, but the cell into which he was thrown looked as solid as when it had first been put into service.
Borrelli slammed the heavy steel door behind him, and Larren turned to watch through the grille as the big man twisted a large key in the lock. Borrelli grinned at him and threw the key to one of the two armed men who had accompanied him.
“That should keep you cosy,” he said. “And I’ll leave these two Johnnies to watch over you just to make doubly sure.” He rapped some instructions in Arabic to his two subordinates, then slung his machine pistol over his shoulder and strode briskly away along the corridor.
Larren remained at the grille a moment, watching the two men. Then he turned away and surveyed the darkened interior of his cell. It was about ten feet square and totally empty; there wasn’t even a bed or a bucket. In the far wall was a high barred window that allowed a little starlight to enter, but it was too high for him to see outside. He prowled around in the gloom, kicking the solid, immovable walls, and then he sat down with his back to the wall and tried to think.
For a while the cold anger inside him made his thoughts irrational, and he could not rid his mind of the picture of Chevalier and Powell lying together in a dead, crumpled heap simply because Khalil had reasoned that the shock would break Larren’s own nerve. But then slowly he forced his mind on to the basic issue. There was no way of giving life back to two dead men. He had to concentrate on the problem of his own escape, and even more important, on finding some way of getting a report through to Whitehall and Smith.
He leaned his head back against the cold stone of the wall behind him, staring up at the blank ceiling of his cell, and then abruptly his thoughts fled and his mind became clear and listening as he heard a faint sound. It came again, and the second time he recognised it as human, or at least near-human, as though someone was moaning softly on the far side of the wall. He turned his ear against the stone, and then he was sure. There was someone in the next cell.
During the next half-hour the moans and movements became louder, as though the unseen prisoner was slowly awakening into pain or delirium. He began to mutter in rapid guttural sounds, and although Larren could not catch the words he recognised the language, for he had been obliged to learn German before he had been parachuted into occupied Holland so many years ago in 1944.
The movements from the next cell became even more restless, and Larren sat perfectly still as he tried to sift enough recognizable words to make a few grains of sense from the incoherent ramblings. And then suddenly the man’s voice rose, sobbing and in perfect English.
“You can’t do it. It’s murder! It’s mass murder … murder … murder … MURDER!”
The anguished voice rose in the heat of twisting fever, screaming the one accusing word over and over again. And then there was a commotion in the corridor outside the cells, the sound of a steel door crashing open, an angry scuffling on the far side of the wall, and then, mercifully, silence.
Larren rose to his feet and crossed to the grille in the door of his cell. He saw the two guards standing with their machine pistols in the lighted corridor, and then he saw Borrelli emerging from the next cell. The crop-headed man was tight-lipped, and in his hand he carried an empty hypodermic syringe with a long needle. He nodded to one of the guards to close the door, and then he saw Larren watching.
He said harshly, “He will not disturb your rest any more for tonight. But do not worry. It was not lethal, only a sedative.”
Larren watched the big man hurry away once more, and his knuckles were white where he gripped the steel bars of the grille.
CHAPTER 16: A HOSTILE FRIEND
In the cabin of the old Fairchild Argus, Barbara Mallory was huddled against the sharp desert cold. It was over three hours since she had been left alone, and she had finished her weeping and remade her face. At first she had sat still and uncaring, feeling that it could not matter whether the three men returned or not, but now that the cold had penetrated she was hoping that the waiting would soon be over. Her thin blouse and the light jacket of her costume were ideal for the scorching heat of the day, but now she shivered as she hugged her folded arms to her breasts.
Through the cabin window she could see the dark silhouette of the hills showing clearly in the starlight, and from time to time she strained her eyes to see whether anything moved in the blackness. Mostly, however, she looked at the control panel and the cluster of switches and dials in front of her, for she was sitting in the pilot’s seat. She felt no loyalty to the three men who had brought her here, and she knew that if she had been capable of flying the Argus on her own then she would have taken off and left them. Several times her hand touched the control column and the switches, but it was a false hope, and she knew that even if she started the engine she could only succeed in crashing the plane and killing herself. And despite her grief she had no thoughts of suicide.
The cold became more than a slight discomfort, and the constant sitting made her feel fidgety and restless. She shifted her position several times, and then abruptly decided that she didn’t have to just sit here and do nothing. If she climbed up into the hills to meet the three men the activity would make her warmer, and as long as she did not go out of sight of the plane she could not get lost. The idea seemed to be healthier than to simply sit here brooding, and on impulse she pushed open the cabin door and climbed out. She hesitated for a moment, standing beneath the plane’s wing and looking around her. Then she picked up her father’s automatic from the seat, slammed the cabin door, and walked away towards the black barrier of the hills.
She climbed slowly and cautiously, the danger of falling reduced by the starlight which showed up the individual crags and boulders on the steep slope now that she was actually amongst them. She had seen the red rocks by daylight and knew that there was nothing here to harm her, and any basic fears of the night or loneliness were dispelled by the gun in her hand. She felt better for the exercise and was no longer shivering when she reached the top.
She paused, feeling a slight breeze ruffle her hair. Below her was the desert floor again, but there was no sign of anyone returning across the darkened dunes. She turned her head to look back at the Argus, standing like some squat, waiting bird, with more empty dunes beyond, and she was undecided whether to return or to go on. She did not want to go back and continue sitting in the cramped cabin, but at the same time she did not want to lose sight of the plane.
Suddenly she heard the faint sound of an engine, and her body stiffened warily. She turned her back on the Argus, staring out into the night on the far side of the hills. The sound was approaching fast, and after a few moments she saw the vague shape of a Land Rover clawing its way across the dunes. She thought for a moment that her three companions must have stolen the vehicle, but caution made her sink down on one knee to watch. The Land Rover passed close below her, and although there were three men inside she was sure that they were strangers.
The vehicle jolted out of her sight, seeking a way round the range of hills. The sound of the engine never faded completely, but when it gained in volume once more the sound was behind her. She turned, and descended the hill a little closer to the Argus, and then she crouched among some of the larger rocks and waited.
She saw the Land Rover reappear and rush up to the silent aircraft, skidding to a halt opposite the tailplane as the three men tumbled out. The leader of the three was a tall man in a European suit, and the way he held his right hand in front of him made it obvious that there was a gun in his fist. He yanked open the cabin door of the Argus and looked inside, and his companions — two men in long, nightshirt-like djellabas — halted behind him holding what looked like short, stubby little sten guns.
They held a short conference, and then the two men slung their weapons on to their backs and returned to the Land Rover. They fetched a heavy can from the back and pushed it into the cabin of the Argus, then one of them climbed inside and tipped the can up to spill its contents. The breeze was blowing in the wrong direction for Barbara to catch a smell of the fluid, but she knew instinctively that it was petrol. The Man climbed out of the plane’s cabin, then the tall man struck a match and tossed it inside.
There was a muffled roar, and the front of the Argus exploded into a sheet of yellow flame. In an instant the hungry tongues were snaking along her wings and running down the slope of her tail. The whole plane blazed merrily, lighting up the frantic movements of her murderers as they hurriedly backed their Land Rover away from the glow. Then the plane’s own petrol tanks ignited, and the tubby little Argus seemed to wholly disintegrate in a fearful blast of fire and sound, and black smoke gushed up to the stars from her ruptured remains.
Barbara had lowered her eyes, pressing her hands to her ears as the plane blew up, and she found that she was trembling violently. She crouched close to the earth for several long minutes, and when she finally dared to raise her face the smoking wreckage was burning itself out.
She looked for the Land Rover, and instinctively cowered back to the earth again, for the vehicle was moving slowly along the foot of the hills, and the two men in the back were gazing up the slopes, their eagle eyes searching every crack and crevice. She lay perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe and praying that the three men would not leave the Land Rover to search more fully. Twice she heard them cruise back and forth, but she did not lift her head again until she finally heard the engine accelerate as the vehicle moved away.
She straightened her back an inch at a time and peered down the slope. The twisted skeleton of the Argus still exuded a thick, slanting pillar of black smoke, and she uttered a silent prayer for the cold and the whim of fate that had caused her to leave it before the arsonists had arrived. There was no reason to descend to the scene, for there was nothing recognizable left, and so when she moved it was upwards, returning to the top of the hill. Barbara could still faintly hear the receding engine of the Land Rover, and when she reached the top she was just in time to see it disappearing back amongst the dunes.
She stood there, alone in the night now that the last echo of the Land Rover’s engine had died. She was cold again now that the warmth of her earlier exertions had evaporated, and fear made her colder still as she stared out over the empty desert. There was only one explanation for the sudden arrival of the three men who had fired the Argus, and that was that Larren, Powell and Chevalier had been caught and were now either prisoners or dead, and she could expect help from no one. She was truly alone.
She tried to think, but only one fact would stand clear: she could not stay here on the hilltop, for in daylight these crags would become a veritable oven of heat and she would soon die with the agonies of thirst. She had to move, and there was nowhere to go except to follow the Land Rover across the desert. It was a futile hope, but it was better than lying down to die, and she slowly descended the hill.
She walked out across the dunes until she found the tyre tracks of the Land Rover running across the sand, and then she walked between them and followed where they led. She was slower than the three men who had preceded her, and it was almost three hours before she came in sight of the old airstrip. She knelt wearily in the sand as she stared down at the silhouettes of the few stone buildings that remained, and felt the last of her hopes die within her. She had clutched to a dim belief that there might be a town or village at the end of her walk, where she might possibly find help as well as enemies, but now the delusion crumbled clear away.
