Line of Succession (42 page)

At the door Djelil turned, stopped, scowled at the wall, tapped his foot a few times and grunted. He walked slowly to the window and stood in front of it looking out. Lime studied his back.

Abruptly Djelil turned to face him. Djelil's features were obscured; the twilit sky silhouetted him. “Do you recall the village of El Djamila?”

“A few kilometers up the coast—that one?”

“Yes.”

“They're not holding him there?”

“No, no. Of course not. I have no idea where they might be. But there is a man in El Djamila, a
pied-noir
who was a spy in the French camp for Ben Bella. For various reasons I think he may be able to help you in your search.…”

Lime had not heard the movement behind him because Djelil's voice had his attention but when he turned his head slightly he caught a tail-of-the-eye impression imperfectly—the door swinging soundlessly open—and his scalp contracted. With the speed of long-forgotten habit he rolled off the bed and dropped to the floor, hearing the crack of the silencer-pistol and the thud of its bullet into the wall above his head; he dragged the .38 out of the armpit clamshell as he rolled.

His shoulder blade struck the wall. He saw the squat zigzagging shape across the room and fired the .38 three times very rapidly, recognizing the intruder slowly as he fired.

It was the woman with the moustache. She died with a kind of low-comedy surprise on her face and Lime spun toward Djelil as she was collapsing.

Djelil had a curved knife. His arm was swinging up toward Lime.

Lime parried with the revolver. It cracked against Djelil's wrist. Djelil didn't lose the knife but his hand had been numbed and Lime dropped the revolver, snapped a grip on Djelil's arm at wrist and elbow and broke the arm across his knee.

He shoved Djelil back out of the way; Djelil fell against the wall and Lime scooped up his revolver and crossed the distance to the woman with four long strides. She didn't look as if there were any trouble left in her but he stopped to pick up the silencer pistol before he went on to the door, feeling like somebody in a Randolph Scott western with guns in both hands.

There wasn't anyone in the corridor. The hotel had thick walls and any guests who might have heard the racket wouldn't do anything about it; a tourist alerted by sharp noises in strange places would be confused and uncertain, not eager to look for trouble.

If Djelil had more guards in the hotel they must have been beyond earshot. The one downstairs in the corridor wouldn't have heard anything.

He locked the door from the inside and glanced at Djelil. The Arab sat on the floor with his back to the wall, cradling his broken arm.

Lime squatted by the woman and put one of the pistols in his pocket; plucked a bit of fuzz from his tweed jacket and placed it on the woman's nostrils and held her lips shut.

The fluff didn't stir. She was dead.

Djelil started to mouth a litany of sibilant invective. Lime swatted him hard across the side of the head with his open hand. Djelil tipped over with a cry of bursting pain, the agony of broken bones grating when his ruined arm hit the floor under him.

Lime knew the telephone went through the hotel switchboard but he had to risk it. He gave the operator Gilliams' number.

“It's David Lime. I'm at the St. George, Room Two Fourteen. Send a clean-up squad, will you? One DOA and one busted wing, we'll want a medic. But let's not be ostentatious about it.”

The use of the American slang might confuse anyone who had an ear to the line. Lime added, “And put out a pick-up order on Houari Djelil's daughter Sylvie. She's acting in a movie the French are shooting somewhere around town.”

“You sound rattled. Are you all right?”

“Barely. Make it over here yesterday, will you?” He hung up and collapsed in the chair.

Djelil was struggling to a sitting position, gathering his shattered arm against him. Lime waited for him to get his breath. Anguish distorted Djelil's face but Lime knew he had been listening to all of it.

Finally Lime said, “Now tell me again about that
pied-noir
in El Djamila.”

Defiance: “I'm getting to be an old man, David. I haven't that much to lose by remaining silent.”

“You've got as much to lose as anybody. The rest of your life.”

“Such as it is.” Djelil was a realist.

Djelil had been telling the truth about the
pied-noir
in El Djamila because he wouldn't have had any reason to lie; he had thought he was talking to a dead man. The monologue had had the ring of truth; it had been designed to hold Lime's attention while the woman took him out from behind.

Lime tried another tack. “There are thousands of us on this you know. Hundreds of thousands. What difference would killing me have made?”

“Of them all I suppose you were the one most likely to find them.”

“How much did Sturka pay you?”

“Don't be an ass.”

“I've told them to collect Sylvie.”

“I heard that.”

“I just wanted to make sure you had.”

“Your people won't harm her. I know you.”

“Think about the stakes and then convince yourself of that again.”

Djelil's face twisted with agony and then relaxed as the spasm passed. Lime reloaded the spent chambers of his revolver, thrust it into the clamshell and then had a look at the silencer pistol. It was a 7.62mm Luger. He removed the magazine and popped the cartridge out of the breech, put the ammunition in his pocket and the pistol on the bed. “Who was she, your mother?”

Djelil grunted:
That's not funny.
Lime looked again at the dead features. The face had gone gray, ruddy at the underside from postmortem lividity. She must have been about fifty. European, or of European stock; possibly one of the
pieds-noirs.

“All right, you've had time to think about it. Now give me a name.”

Djelil lifted his shoulders and poked his head forward with the Arab gesture known as
ma'alesh
—the nothing-can-be-done shrug. What controlled Djelil now was the kind of hyper-awareness of masculinity the Arabs called
rujuliyah:
a mystical thing that steeled your courage. It was always a hard defense to break.

Lime said, “You realize we're very short for time. We won't play with you. We'll let you watch us work on Sylvie and we're going to be Goddamned hard on her.”

Djelil sat on the floor with his pains. It was getting through to him; he was thinking about it and that meant Lime had won. In the end Djelil summoned the bravado to smile. “Well then how do you say it, one has to live.”

“No.” Lime's reply was soft. “You don't have to live, Houari.”

It was damp in El Djamila.

They made the trip in two cars. Chad Hill drove Lime in a Simca and there followed an old station wagon—the kind made of real wood—containing a six-man team. In the back of the station wagon was a UHF scrambler transmitter. Its range was limited but all communications were being funneled through the U. S. Naval Station at Kénitra in Morocco.

Last night's sleep on the jet hadn't revived Lime. He felt logy and glazed. Gilliams' anger still buzzed in his ears; Gilliams had been very upset by the killing and the roust of Djelil and Sylvie and the two guards Djelil had downstairs in the hotel. Gilliams was one of those bureaucrats who pictured a fine balance in things and couldn't stand having it upset.

They had to move fast because Djelil's disappearance would be noticed soon. The thing was to find his contacts before they could go to ground.

“Turn right and go slow on the coast road. I think I'll recognize the place.”

El Djamila was a beach resort where visitors enjoyed uncrowded cheap rates and the natives lived briefly and wretchedly. The moon was up, glinting off the Mediterranean whitecaps.

Djelil had given him a name: Henri Binaud. A
pied-noir
who had betrayed his own kind to spy for the FLN; now he ran a charter outfit—three boats and an amphibious plane—and was one of Djelil's chief carriers.

Lime was a bit weak with delayed shock from the episode of the woman with the Luger. He suspected that Sturka had got a message to Djelil saying if any investigators got as far along the trail as Djelil it would be appreciated if Djelil got rid of them; appreciated in terms of substantial money. Lime wondered if Sturka knew the identity of his tracker. Not that it really mattered.

Nearly nine o'clock. Three in the afternoon in Washington. They had about sixty-nine hours.

A bar. Cinzano signs, an old rusty car up on blocks, its tires gone. Sandy vacant lots on either side of the square little stucco building. The charter pier across the road from it: several boats tied up, a twin-engine amphibious plane tied to a buoy and bobbing on the swell.

The bar was empty except for two men who sat at a table that was hardly big enough for their dinner plates and glasses and elbows. They were eating
rouget,
the local fish. Both of them looked up but kept eating. Chad Hill hung back and Lime spoke in French: “Monsieur Binaud? We understand the Catalina is for hire?”

One of them wiped the back of a hand across his mouth and reached for the wine to wash down his mouthful. “I am Binaud. Who sent you to me?”

“Houari Djelil.”

Binaud studied him suspiciously. He was bullnecked and florid. Cropped gray hair, a hard little potbelly. “And you wish to hire my aircraft.”

“Perhaps we could discuss it outside,” Lime suggested smoothly.

It was the kind of thing Binaud understood. He muttered something to his companion and stood up and made a gesture. Lime and Chad Hill turned, went outside and waited for Binaud; he came out right behind them and Lime showed his gun.

Binaud grunted; his eyelids slid down to a half-shuttered secretiveness and he flashed his teeth in an accidental smile. “What's this then?”

“Come along.”

They shepherded Binaud around to the side of the building. The others were standing by the station wagon. Three of them pulled revolvers and they put Binaud in frisk position with his hands on top of the car while they went over him with care.

The search produced a pocket revolver and two knives. After they had disarmed him Lime said, “It's a little public here. Let's take him on board one of the boats.”

They walked him out onto the pier and prodded him down the ladder into the forward compartment of a cabin cruiser. The boat rode gently up and down against the old tires that hung on the pier as fenders. One of the men lit the lantern.

Lime said to Binaud, “Sit down.”

Binaud backed up slowly until the backs of his knees struck the edge of a bunk. Sat and watched them all, his eyes flicking from face to face.

“We're looking for Sturka,” Lime said.

“I don't know that name.” Binaud had a high wheezing husky voice. Gravelly; it made Lime think of “Rochester” Anderson's voice.

“They came to you a few days ago—it was probably Wednesday night. They'd have wanted you to take them somewhere, by boat or by plane.”

“A great many people hire my boats and my plane. It's my business.”

“These had a prisoner.”

Binaud shrugged and Lime turned to Chad Hill. “He thinks anything we could do to make him talk would be nothing compared to what Sturka and Djelil would do to him if he did talk.”

“Offer him money,” Chad said in English.

Binaud understood that; his eyes became crafty.

Lime said in French, “Two hundred thousand dinar, Binaud. The price of a good airplane.”

He had the man's attention at any rate. He added, “You've nothing to fear from Djelil—he's the one who sent us to you. As for Sturka he can't come out of this alive. You know who his prisoner is.”

“No. I do not.”

“You mean they kept his face hidden.”

Binaud said nothing. Lime sat down on the bunk facing him. They were crowded into the small cabin; Binaud showed his distress. Lime said, “Two hundred and fifty thousand dinar. Call it twenty-five thousand pounds. In gold sovereigns.”

“I do not see any money in front of me.”

Lime spoke in English without looking up. “Get it.”

One of the men left, going up the ladder; the boat swayed when the man stepped onto the pier. Lime said, “We have it with us. There wouldn't have been time to do it another way. You can understand that.”

“Can I?”

“The prisoner is Clifford Fairlie. If you didn't know that already.”

No indication of surprise. Binaud sat silent until the agent returned. The leather case was very heavy. They opened it on the deck and two of the agents started counting out the big gold coins, making neat stacks.

Lime said, “Now what about Sturka?”

“I know no one by that name.”

“Call him any name you like then. Don't you want the money, Binaud?” Lime leaned forward and tapped the man's knee. “You realize the alternative. We'll squeeze it all out of you. When it's finished there won't be much left of you.”

“That's what I don't understand,” Binaud told him, and met his eyes. “Why don't you do that anyway? It would save you the money.”

“We haven't time. We'll do it if you force it, but we'd rather do it fast.”

“How do I know you won't kill me and take the money back?”

“You don't,” Lime said, “but what have you got to lose?”

The coins were counted out to the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds and the rest went back into the case. Binaud watched every movement until the case was shut; finally he said, “My information probably is not worth that much money you know.”

“If it helps at all, the money is yours.”

“And if it doesn't?”

“We'll see.”

“I didn't know their names. I didn't know the man was who you say he was. The prisoner.”

“Where did you take them?”