Thriller (27 page)

border. I own it, and when I can look at that border and know

that no danger will ever come across it again, then we will build

a stone house and live in it.”

They slept for a time, took turns on watch. Greta was awake

when the ragged peddler sidled up to them like an apparition

from the slimy water of the cellar itself. She touched Hareet, who

opened his eyes but did not move.

“The mirror could be mended,” the peddler whispered in

English.

Hareet took his hand from the pistol under his ragged robes.

Greta slipped her knife back up her voluminous sleeve.

“We had to kill two,” Hareet said.

“They were found. Fortunately, I had seen the mirror five

minutes before. What is your assignment?”

“The ammunition dumps, supply depots, fuel centers.”

“Impossible. The maps and information are in General Staff

Headquarters,” the peddler said.

“I can get in,” Hareet said.

“But not out, Captain. No way you can get out. Not with the

data in usable form.”

“Why?” Greta asked.

The filthy peddler sat against the wet stone walls, seemed to

close his eyes and go to sleep. “Because our Arab friends have

become modern, Lieutenant. At least at General Staff Headquarters. The documents will have been chemically treated so

that no one can touch them undetected, or film them undetected. A sophisticated touch supplied by their friends in the big-
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ger nations. Also, to get out you must pass two ranks of guards

and locked gates, and a bank of detectors that detect film or the

documents themselves.”

“So if we steal them, they would know at once and change the

locations.”

“If you got them out, the present locations would be changed

as fast as they could do it. Perhaps a short delay in their plans,

and no help to us.”

“And we could only make the attempt once,” Greta said.

“No matter how many attempts we made, the data is useful

to us only as long as they do not know we have it,” Hareet said.

“It must be taken and sent to our forces undetected.”

“And that can’t be done, Captain,” the peddler said. “We’ll

have to beat them head to head, no matter how bad that looks.”

“Everything can be done in some way,” Hareet said, and sat

for a time in the raw stench of the cellar filled only with the

sound of running and dripping water. “Our man inside General

Staff Headquarters is still there at his job?”

“Yes.” The peddler nodded. “But there is no way—”

“The main building with the information we need is inside a

courtyard?”

“Yes. And there is a locked gate in the outer wall of the

courtyard.”

“Where are the detectors?”

“At the door of the building.”

“How is the security inside the building in the day and the

night?”

“In the day, fairly tight. At night, poor. They rely on the wall

and outer gates and perimeter guards. The guards inside make

rounds but don’t go into the offices. The staff officers don’t trust

the soldiers with keys to the offices. That’s their weakness.”

“And we’ll use it,” Hareet said.

“Can we go in together, Paul?” Greta said.

“Of course not,” Hareet said simply. Then he smiled at her.

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“But perhaps we can find some private place later tonight. A place

for us to sleep.”

She smiled in return. “Tonight, then.”

Hareet and the peddler lay down on the stone. Greta sat up,

watching. Hareet and the peddler talked for a long time. It was

well past midnight when the peddler left alone. Hareet and Greta

pretended to sleep for another hour, then slipped out of the

dank cellar together.

“Our peddler gave me another address,” Hareet said. “Somewhere we can be alone. It’s not far.”

They both knew the danger of such a move, every moment on

the streets brought the possibility of being stopped, observed,

making a mistake. Every new place exposed them to more contacts, more unexpected events. But they both also knew the risks

of tomorrow.

The place turned out to be a small room on the second floor

above a dark bookshop owned by an old Coptic Christian widow

with patriotic slogans in her window. The peddler himself let

them in, had a room of his own on the first floor where he had

lived for over a year.

“It’s as safe as anything can be here,” the peddler said, and left

them alone in the tiny room with its one bed and some chairs

and a cabinet they could barely see. There was no light.

They didn’t need a light. After they had made love once more,

Hareet held her close against him for the rest of the night as if

to build a wall of protection that would keep her safe. He was

not a demonstrative man; Greta knew he was afraid for what

could happen to her, to them, when the night ended.

The guards paced at the gates in the outer wall of Army General Staff Headquarters far out on the edge of the city. They

looked up as they walked their posts to watch their jets fly

high above in beautiful formation. The ragged people on the

streets cheered the jets and the guards as they shuffled past the

front gates.

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Among the throngs of people that passed the gates was a tall,

dark-skinned man with a pointed beard, thick glasses and a fez.

He walked purposefully, with an arrogant bearing. With the tasseled fez he wore a dark Western suit and immaculate pale kid

gloves. The crowds of fellahin gave him respectful room as he

strode around and through them.

Hareet, in the dark makeup and wearing the gloves to conceal

his missing finger, turned into a side street at the corner of the

wall and proceeded on his inspection of the headquarters building. The side wall was broken by only another high wooden gate,

locked on the inside and outside. In the rear, the wall stretched

without a break, and on the fourth side there was only a narrow,

barred gate, also locked on the inside and outside and patrolled

by a guard.

The building inside the high stone wall was from the last century and only two stories high. The roof had a steep pitch, and

the windows of the upper floor were barred and shuttered. Two

armored cars slowly patrolled the street all around the building,

moving in opposite directions.

Hareet, his study completed, walked to a house a few blocks

from the headquarters, and there changed into the flowing and

ragged burnoose of an Arab country. He removed the fez and

glasses, replaced the fez with a keffiyeh, and rearranged his false

beard. He strapped his left arm to his side, and assumed a limp

in his left leg.

A crippled fellahin was too common a sight in the streets of

the city for anyone to look at twice. The fellahin limped his way

to a filthy alley that paralleled the street in front of staff headquarters, and entered the rear of a building. He climbed to the

second floor and slipped into an empty room at the front. He

locked the door behind him, crossed quickly and without a limp

to the front window with its clear view of the guarded gate into

the headquarters.

Hareet sat in a chair some three feet inside the window so that

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no sun would glint on the powerful binoculars he took from beneath his burnoose. He sat on the chair for six hours without moving, except to rest his eyes now and then, and to light a cigarette.

He scrutinized the building, and the officers who went in and out.

Late in the afternoon, a slight scratching came at the door of

the room. Hareet listened from his chair. The scratching was repeated in a definite pattern. He opened the door. The peddler

came in.

“Have you found your man, Captain?”

“A colonel of artillery,” Hareet said. “He looks enough like me

to pass. He’s in there right now. He is arrogant, the soldiers do

not seem to like him, and he drives himself. His vehicle indicates

that he is a field commander, not a staff officer. He is unusually

tall, has slightly Sudanese features, wears a monocle and strides

much as I do. He also wears gloves. He carries a swagger stick

and is annoyed at having to present credentials every time he

goes in or out of the front gate. When does the guard change?”

“In an hour.”

“Where are all the supply, fuel and ammunition depot documents we need?”

“In a small vault. It’s an old key-locked type left by the British.

With all other precautions supplied by their more modern

friends, they don’t feel a need to spend what a new vault would

cost. It won’t be hard to open, and it’s located in a file room connected to the office of the chief of supply. They may work around

the clock tonight.”

“No, not an Arab army. They will be in conferences or with

their mistresses. Come.”

Hareet and the peddler left the room, and went down to the alley.

Greta stood in the shadows of the alley dressed as a street boy.

Hareet described the colonel of artillery. “Watch for him. If he

comes out, don’t lose him.”

Hareet and the peddler returned to the building a few blocks

away where Hareet had changed from the gentleman in the fez

to the crippled fellahin. There the peddler opened a large dossier,

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and Hareet found the picture and official history and designations of the artillery colonel he had seen go in and out the main

gate of General Staff Headquarters.

The peddler read the details. “Colonel Aziz Ramdi. Forty-two

years old. Unmarried. Sudanese mother. No foreign posts or

training, no staff time, but many commendations for bravery in

the last war with us. Commander of the Hundred and Twelfth

Field Artillery. They’re part of the city defense. Only recently

transferred to the city from service on the southern border. He

hasn’t had the plum positions, doesn’t sound like he’s made any

good connections. Probably because of that Sudanese mother.

Hard to say how well-known he could be at staff headquarters.”

“I won’t need long,” Hareet said. “It’s reasonable to assume that

a line officer who’s been out in the field and far from the capital

won’t be all that familiar to the staff here. He’s my best chance,

we don’t have a lot more time.”

The peddler nodded, and with the picture of the artillery

colonel in front of him, Hareet worked on his face until he looked

as much like Colonel Aziz Ramdi of the Hundred and Twelfth

Field Artillery as he could.

“The film could be shot over the wall from a top window,” the

peddler said. “I have the equipment.”

“They would know,” Hareet said.

“You could copy and not photograph, then the light would not

sensitize the chemicals on the documents.”

“There would not be time. I would have to touch the papers.

The data must be secured without their knowing that we have

it,” Hareet emphasized.

Hareet completed his disguise. With the peddler shuffling far

enough ahead of him that they could not be considered in any

way together, he walked back to the alley and the room across

from the headquarters. It had grown dark in the city, and large

floodlights illuminated the headquarters wall and building.

“He is still inside,” Greta said from the shadows of the alley.

An hour later, the colonel of artillery came out, got into his

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Jeep and impatiently presented his credentials at the front gate.

He drove off to the left and made a right turn onto a narrow street

that was the direct route to his unit.

A fellahin woman dashed out of the shadows directly into the

path of his Jeep. A ragged peddler pursued her. The peddler

caught the woman in the street in front of the colonel’s Jeep,

struggled with her amid a torrent of loud screams and curses.

Ramdi jammed on his brakes, and added his own curses to the

loud Arabic.

The colonel barely felt his Jeep sway as someone jumped into

it behind him. His pistol was still under its flap when the thin

cord tightened around his throat.

Colonel Aziz Ramdi glared angrily at the officer of the guard

at the gate into headquarters. The officer of the guard was nervous as he inspected the colonel’s credentials. Only fifteen minutes ago he had checked the colonel out, and he felt ridiculous

going through the entire routine again, but he knew he would

have been even more nervous if he hadn’t. In an Arab army, independent thought and decisions are not encouraged. Another

weakness Hareet had exploited before.

The colonel made no explanation for his sudden return, sat in

stony silence through the entire careful process. But his arrogant

eyes bored through the junior officer with the clear implication

that the colonel would remember this insult. The status of recognition is also part of an army too rigid with class and privilege.

“A thousand pardons, Colonel,” the officer of the guard said,

and returned the credentials with a smart salute.

Hareet drove on into the courtyard without even returning the

salute. The junior officer swore under his breath at the back of

the arrogant colonel.

Hareet parked his Jeep as close to the main entrance of the

headquarters building as he could—a senior officer does not walk