Sahara dpa-11 Page 6

  After kindly seeing that Fairweather was comfortably bedded down and attended by a doctor and nurse, the French thought it wise to inform the Chief of the local Malian Security Forces. They were asked to write a lengthy report while the Colonel in command of Gao headquarters apprised his superiors in the capital city of Bamako.

  To the Frenchman's surprise and indignation they were detained and jailed. In the morning an interrogation team arrived from Bamako and grilled them separately about their discovery of Fairweather. Demands to contact their consulate were ignored. When the oil geologists refused to cooperate, the interrogation turned ugly.

  The French were not the first men to enter the city's security building and not be seen again.

  When supervisors at the oil company headquarters in Marseilles received no word from their oil exploration team, they became concerned and requested a search. The Malian Security Forces made a show of sweeping the desert again but claimed to have found nothing but the oil company's abandoned Renault truck.

  The names of the French geologists and the missing tourists from Backworld Expeditions were simply added to the list of outsiders who disappeared and perished in the vast desert.

  Dr. Haroun Madani stood on the steps of the Gao hospital, beneath the brick portico with its unfathomable designs running around the top of the walls. He stared nervously down the dusty street running between the seedy old colonial buildings and the single-story mud brick houses. A breeze from the north blew a light coating of sand over the city, once the capital of three great empires but now a decaying relic of French colonial days.

  The call to evening prayers drifted over the city from the high-towered minarets that rose above the mosque. The faithful were no longer summoned to prayer by a Muslim holy man, or muezzin, who climbed the narrow steps inside the minarets and wailed from the balcony. Now the muezzin stayed on the ground and offered the prayers to Allah and the Prophet Mohammed through microphones and loudspeakers.

  A short distance from the mosque, a -three-quarter moon reflected its beam on the Niger River. Wide, scenic, its current slow and gentle, the Niger is a mere shadow of its former course. Once mighty and deep, decades of drought had lowered it to a shallow stream, plied by fleets of small sailing ships called pinnaces. Its waters once lapped at the base of the mosque. Now they sluggishly flowed nearly two city blocks away.

  The Malian people are a mixture of the lighter-skinned descendants of the French and Berbers, the dark brown of the desert Arabs and Moors, and the black Africans. Dr. Madani was coal black. His facial features were Negroid with deep-set ebony eyes and a wide flattened nose. He was a big bull of a man in his late forties, beefy around the middle, with a wide square jawed head.

  His ancestors had been Mandingo slaves who were brought north by the Moroccans who overran the country in 1591. His parents had farmed the lush lands south of the Niger when he was a boy. He was raised by a major in the French Foreign Legion, educated and sent through medical school in Paris. Why or how this came about he was never told.

  The doctor stiffened as the yellow headlights of an old and unique automobile swung into view. The car rolled quietly down the uneven street, its elegant rose-magenta-colored body oddly out of sync amid the dismal and austere mud structures. There was an aura of dignified elegance about the 1936 Avions Voisin sedan. The design of the coachwork was an odd combination of pre-World War II aerodynamics, cubist art, and Frank Lloyd Wright. It was powered by a six-cylinder sleeve-valve engine that provided smooth silence and simple endurance. A masterwork of uncompromising engineering standards, it once belonged to the Governor General when Mali was a territory of French West Africa.

  Madani knew the car. Almost every city dweller of Mali knew the car and its owner, and they shrank in nervous foreboding whenever it passed. The doctor observed that the car was followed by a military ambulance and he feared a problem. He stepped forward and opened the rear door as the driver braked to a perfectly noiseless stop.

  A high-ranking military officer rose from the backseat and unlimbered a lean body inside a tailor-made uniform whose creases could have cut cold butter. Unlike other African leaders who listed to port under a mass of decorated hardware, General Zateb Kazim wore only one green and gold ribbon on the breast of his army jacket. Around his head, he wore an abbreviated version of the litham, the indigo veil of the Tuaregs. His face bore the dark cocoa shade and sculpted features of a Moor, and the eyes were tiny topaz dots surrounded by oceans of white. He might have been borderline handsome if it hadn't been for his nose. Instead of being straight and even, it rounded to a point, overhanging a sparse moustache that stretched off to the sides of his cheeks.

  General Zateb Kazim looked like a benign villain out of an old Warner Brothers cartoon. There was no other way to describe him.

  He oozed self-importance as he pompously brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his uniform. He acknowledged Dr. Madani's presence with a slight nod.

  "He is ready to be moved?" he asked in a measured tone.

  "Mr. Fairweather has fully recovered from his ordeal," Madani answered, "and is under strong sedation, as you ordered."

  "`He's seen and talked to no one since being carried in by the Frenchmen?"

  "Fairweather has only been tended by myself and a nurse from a tribe of Tukulor who speaks only in a Fulah dialect. He's had no other contact. I also carried out your instructions and admitted him to a private room away `from the open wards. I might add that all records of his stay have been destroyed."

  Kazim appeared satisfied. "Thank you, Doctor. I'm grateful for your cooperation."

  "May I ask where you're taking him?"

  Kazim flashed a death's head grin. "To Tebezza."

  "Not that!" Madani muttered thickly. "Not the gold mines at the penal settlement of Tebezza. Only political traitors and murderers are condemned to die there. This man is a foreign national. What has he done to deserve a slow death in the mines?"

  "It matters little."

  "What crime has he committed?"

  Kazim looked Madani up and down as if the doctor was merely an annoying insect. "Do not ask," Kazim said coldly.

  A dreadful thought crossed Madani's mind. "And the Frenchmen who found Fairweather and brought him here?"

  "The same fate."

  "None will last more than a few weeks in the mines."

  "Better than simply executing them," shrugged Kazim. "Let them work out the little time left of their pitiful lives doing something useful. A stockpile of gold is good for our economy."

  "`You're a very sensible man, General," said Madan, tasting the bile of his servile words. Kazim's sadistic power as a judge, jury, and hangman was a fact of Malian life.

  "I'm happy you agree, Doctor." He stared at Madani as though he was a prisoner in the dock. "In the interests of our country's security I suggest you forget Mr. Fairweather and erase all memory of his visit."

  Madani nodded. "As you wish."

  "May no evil befall your people and goods."

  Kazim's thoughts were clear to the doctor. The words from the nomad-greeting ritual struck home. Madani had a large family. So long as he kept his silence they would live in peace. The alternative was not a vision he wished to dwell upon.

  A few minutes later, an unconscious Fairweather was carried out of the hospital on a stretcher by two of Kazim's security guards and placed in the ambulance. The General gave Madani a casual salute and stepped into the Avions Voisin.

  As the two vehicles moved off into the night, a chilling fear coursed through Dr. Madani's veins, and he found himself wondering what terrible tragedy he had unwillingly participated in. Then he prayed that he would never know.

  In one of the mural-walled suites of the Nile Hilton, Dr. Frank Hopper listened attentively from a leather sofa. Seated in a nearby matching chair on the opposite side of a coffee table, Ismail Yerli puffed pensively on a meerschaum pipe whose bowl was carved in the likeness of the head of a turbaned sultan.

  Even with th
e universal sounds of the busy Cairo traffic seeping in through the closed windows to the balcony Eva could not bring herself to accept the nightmare of her brush with death on the beach. Already her subconscious was blurring the memory. But Dr. Hopper's voice pulled her thoughts back to the here and now of the conference room.

  "There is no doubt in your mind these men tried to kill you?"

  "None," Eva answered.

  "You described them as looking like black Africans," said Ismail Yerli.

  Eva shook her head. "I didn't say black, only that their skin was dark. Their facial features were more sharp, more defined, like a cross between an Arab and an East Indian. The one who burned my car wore a loose-fitting tunic and a thick, intricately wrapped headdress. All I could see were his ebony eyes and a nose shaped like an eagle."

  "The headdress, was it cotton and swathed about the head and chin several times?" asked Yerli.

  Eva nodded. "The cloth seemed enormously long."

  "What color was it?"

  "A deep, almost ink blue."

  "Indigo?"

  "Yes," replied Eva. "Indigo sounds about right."

  Ismail Yerli sat in silent contemplation for a few moments. He was the coordinator and logistics expert for the World Health Organization team. Lean and stringy, immensely efficient, and with an almost pathological love of detail, he was a smart operator with an abundance of political savvy. His home was in the Mediterranean seaport of Antalya, Turkey. He claimed Kurdish blood, having been born and raised in, the Asia Minor hinterland of Cappadocia. A lukewarm Muslim, he had not been inside a mosque in years. Like most Turks he had a massive thicket of coarse black hair complemented by bushy eyebrows that met over the nose and were supplemented by a huge moustache. He displayed a humorous disposition that never quit. His mouth was always stretched in a smile that was a decoy for an extremely serious temperament.

  "Tuaregs," he said finally.

  He spoke so softly that Hopper had to lean closer. "Who?" he questioned.

  Yerli looked across the coffee table at the Canadian leader of the medical team. A quiet man, Hopper said little but listened long. He was, the Turk mused, the complete opposite of himself. Hopper was big, humorous, red-faced, and heavily bearded. All he needed to look like the Viking, Eric the Red, was a battle-axe and a conical helmet sunk on his head with horns curving from it. Resourceful, precise, and laid-back, he was regarded by international contamination scientists as one of the two finest toxicologists in the world.

  "Tuaregs," Yerli repeated. Once the mighty nomadic warriors of the desert, who won great battles against French and Moorish armies. And perhaps the greatest of all the romantic bandits. They raid no more. Today, they raise goats and beg in the cities bordering the Sahara to survive. Unlike Arab Muslims, the men wear the veil, a cloth that when unwrapped measures over a meter in length.

  "But why would a tribe of desert nomads want to do away with Eva?" asked Hopper to no one in particular. "I fail to see a motive."

  Yerli shook his head vaguely. "It would seem that one of them, at least, does not want her, and-we have to heavily weigh this possibility-the rest of the health teams investigating the outbreaks of toxic poisoning in the southwestern desert."

  "At this point of the project," said Hopper, "we don't even know if contamination is the culprit. The mystery malady could be viral or bacterial."

  Eva nodded. "That's what Pitt suggested. . ."

  "Who?" Hopper asked for the second time.

  "Dirk Pitt, the man who saved my life. He said somebody doesn't want me in Africa. He also thought you and the others might be on a hit list too."

  Yerli threw up his hands. "Incredible, the man thinks we're dealing with the Sicilian Mafia."

  "Most fortunate he was nearby," said Hopper.

  Yerli exhaled a blue cloud from his meerschaum and stared at the smoke thoughtfully. "More like opportune, considering the only other body on miles of shoreline had the courage to face a trio of assassins. Almost a miracle, or . . ." he stretched out the pause, "a preconceived presence."

  Eva's eyes widened in skepticism. "If you're thinking it was a setup, Ismail, you can forget it."

  "Maybe he staged the act to frighten you back to the States."

  "I saw him kill three men with my own eyes. Believe you me, there was nothing staged about it."

  "Have you heard from him since he dropped you off at the hotel?" queried Hopper.

  "Only a message at the front desk asking me to have dinner with him this evening."

  "And you still think he was just a passing good Samaritan," Yerli persisted.

  Eva ignored him and looked at Hopper. "Pitt told me he was in Egypt for an archaeological survey of the Nile River for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I have little reason to doubt him."

  Hopper turned to Yerli. "That should be easy enough to check out."

  Yerli nodded. "I'll call a friend who's a marine biologist with NUMA."

  "The question is still why?" muttered Hopper almost absently.

  Yerli shrugged. "If Eva's attempted murder was a conspiracy, it may well have been part of a plot to instill fear and force us to cancel our mission."

  "Yes, but we have five separate research teams of six members each heading for the southern desert. They'll be spread across five nations from Sudan to Mauritania. No one forced us on them. Their governments asked the United Nations for help in finding an answer to the strange sickness sweeping their lands. We are invited guests, certainly not unwanted enemies."

  Yerli stared at Hopper. "You're forgetting, Frank. There was one government who wanted no part of us."

  Hopper nodded grimly. "You're right. I overlooked President Tahir of Mali. He was very reluctant to allow us inside his borders."

  "More likely General Kazim," said Yerli. "Tahir is a puppet head of state. Zateb Kazim is the true power behind the Malian government."

  "What's he got against harmless biologists trying to save lives?" asked Eva.

  Yerli turned up his palms. "We may never know."

  "It does seem a timely coincidence," said Hopper softly, "that people, especially Europeans, have been vanishing with some regularity in the great emptiness of northern Mali during the past year."

  "Like the tourist safari that's making the headlines," said Eva.

  "Their whereabouts and fate are still a mystery," added Yerli quietly.

  "I can't believe there's a connection between that tragedy and Eva's attack," said Hopper.

  "But if we assume that General Kazim is the villain in Eva's case, it would stand to reason his spies ferreted out the yet that she was a member of the Malian biological studies gram. With that knowledge in hand, he ordered her assassination as a warning for the rest of us to stay clear of his camel park."

  Eva laughed. "With your fertile imagination, Ismail, you'd make a great Hollywood screenwriter."

  Yerli's thick eyebrows pinched together. "I think we should play safe and keep the Mali team in Cairo until this matter can be fully investigated and resolved."

  "You're overreacting," Hopper said to Yerli. "How do you vote, Eva? Cancel the mission or go?"

  "I'll risk it," said Eva. "But I can't speak for the other team members."

  Hopper stared at the floor, nodding his head. "Then we'll ask for volunteers. I won't cancel the Mali mission, not with hundreds, maybe thousands, of people dying out there from something nobody can explain. I'll lead the team myself."

  "No, Frank!" snapped Eva. "What if the worst happens? You're too valuable to lose."

  "It's our duty to report this affair to the police before you run off half-cocked," Yerli persisted.

  "Get serious, Ismail," said Hopper impatiently. "Go to the local police and they're liable to-hold us up and delay the entire mission. We could be bound in red tape for a month. I'll not walk into the clutches of Middle East bureaucracy."

  "My contacts can cut the red tape," pleaded Yerli.

  "No," Hopper said adamantly. "I want all teams on board
our chartered aircraft and in the air toward their designated locations as scheduled."

  "Then we're on for tomorrow morning," said Eva.

  Hopper nodded. "No hang-ups, no rainchecks. We're going to put our show on the road first thing in the morning."

  "You're needlessly endangering lives," murmured Yerli.

  "Not if I take out insurance."

  Yerli looked at Hopper, not comprehending. "Insurance?"

  "Actually a press conference. Before we leave, I'll call in every foreign correspondent and news service in Cairo and explain our project with special emphasis on Mali. Of course, I'll make mention of the potential dangers involved. Then, in light of the international publicity surrounding our presence in his country, General Kazim will think twice before threatening the lives of scientists-on a well-publicized mission of mercy."

  Yerli sighed heavily. "For your sakes, I hope so. I truly hope so."

  Eva came over and sat down by the Turk. "It will be all right," she insisted quietly. "No harm will come to us."

  "Nothing I can say will talk you out of it? You must go then?"

  "There are thousands who might die if we don't," said Hopper firmly.

  Yerli stared sadly at them, then bowed his head in silent acceptance, his face suddenly pale.

  "Then may Allah protect you, because if he doesn't, you will surely die."

  Pitt was standing in the lobby of the Nile Hilton when Eva stepped from the elevator. He was dressed in a tan poplin suit with single-breasted jacket and pleated pants. The shirt was a light shade of blue with a wide Botticelli tie of deep blue silk with black and gold paisleys.

  He stood casual and loose, his hands clasped behind his back, head tilted slightly to one side, as he studied a beautiful, young, raven-haired Egyptian woman in a tightfitting gold sequin dress. She was sweeping across the lobby in a blaze of glitter, hooked arm in arm with an elderly man easily three times her age. She jabbered every step across the carpet. Her ample bottom swung back and forth like a melon on a pendulum.