Reprisal (30 page)

Ahmed nodded his agreement. “You make a good point there. We must make an example of this infidel assassin. Yet we must not
seem to be worried by him. Our attitude must always be that he is merely a flea, a minor irritant, on the great hide of the
state. I will not change my routine. Don’t let your extra efforts be too visible—that will panic our supporters and give hope
to our enemies. Watch the American Embassy.”

“We have been, sir. But I think he keeps well away from Maglis el-Sha’ab Street.”

“Laforque, the French special attaché, warned me that this American was on loan from the Mossad to the CIA,” Hasan said. “He
won’t be working through normal channels.”

After the two intelligence officers left the office, one said to the other, “He’s so damn calm today. He’s weird when he gets
like that.”

His companion laughed. “Yes, I feel safer too when Ahmed is shouting and waving his arms.”

Awad heard the radio call and raced to the scene. The dead foreigner still lay on the roadway next to a
Volkswagen van with German plates. A woman with long blond hair wept and argued with plainclothesmen standing sheepishly about,
passing papers to one another.

When one of them saw Awad, he rushed forward to explain. “We ordered the van to stop and we fired only when the driver laughed
at us and kept on going…”

Awad brushed him aside, reached down and pulled back the blanket that covered the body. The subject had a mustache and a few
days’ growth of beard, the hair was right, and the general build and height—but it was not the American.

Awad let the blanket fall to re-cover the body on the street. He shook his head and turned to leave.

Jacques Laforque was in a grim mood as he left the Hotel des Roses. Out of pride, he had turned down Ahmed’s offer to him
to ride with Egyptian government agents in search of the American. Ahmed placed great value of Laforque’s eyeball identification
of the American at the presidential palace reception, but so far seemed to have no suspicion that the Frenchman and the American
had any connection with each other. Would the American talk if they took him alive? Of course. They all did. That might cost
Paris the contract for the new reactor.

“Baksheesh! Baksheesh!”

Laforque ignored the urchins running alongside his long strides. If a foreigner gave something to one, the others would pester
him nonstop until they too got something, while meantime others gathered from nowhere like vultures around carrion.

Paris was taking the situation seriously. In their last message to the French Embassy in Cairo, they had included a mild rebuke
to him for informing them that the American assassin was withdrawing from Egypt. Why hadn’t he just gone home? Why had he
killed Omar? There was no doubt it was the same man—a hundred people had seen him gun down Omar in the street. Jesse James,
they called him now. Paris was concerned, so the undersecretary had said when they shook hands at their embassy. Laforque
noticed from the cable that no one was asking for his analysis of the situation now. They were sending down two men from the
Gendarmerie Nationale counterterrorist unit, the GIGN, where he had once been the top assault man. The message was clear—all
he had to do was find the American and the two GIGN men would do the dirty work. It was plain they no’ longer considered him
capable of doing it himself.

The begging children stayed with him, shouting and looking up into his face as he walked along. He knew they would give up
once they realized that they could not harass him into giving them money. He hadn’t seen street kids as persistent as these
in years. A sign of the times…

Laforque had no idea where he was going, though out of habit he paced forward very purposefully. The only approach he could
think of was to look up as many of the shady characters who trafficked in miscellaneous things around the suqs and bazaars
and offer to buy information from them. They would all, of course, have previously been pressured by government agents and
the secret police. However, the
promise of hard cash sometimes turned up things faster than threats from the authorities. He would be open about it, say that
France was helping Hasan against his enemies.

He finally began to pay attention to the tallest of the urchins pestering him. He noticed that she spoke good English.

“Sir, take a taxi to the Al Azhar Mosque. Your American friend will meet you there.”

He offered the children an Egyptian pound, which they refused before walking away in their rags with a dignified air.

As he sat back in the taxi, Laforque surreptitiously checked his French army pistol. It was the larger, fifteen-round version
of the 9 mm MAB. Unusual for a pistol, it operated on the delayed blowback principle. The barrel was prevented from recoiling
relative to the receiver, and in addition, initially locked the slide. The initial gas pressure rotated a barrel lug in a
cam slot and released the slide to complete the mechanical cycle When the pressure was at a safe level.

It would be a patriotic act for him to use this French pistol to fire a French 9 mm parabellum at this paid American assassin
who was no longer of use to France. Apart from that, his taking care of the unruly Yank on his own would show Paris he was
still a first-class field operative. Also, it would show his old pals at GIGN that he could manage without their help,
merci beaucoup.

There was no sign of the American outside the Al Azhar Mosque. Was he inside? Surely not.

Two teenaged boys approached. They wore Western clothes, but looked poor and malnourished.

“Mr. Laforque? I will take you to your American friend.” He turned to his companion. “Telephone them now.”

The other boy ran off and the one with him told him to hail a taxi. They climbed in and the boy spoke to the driver in such
fast, colloquial Arabic that Laforque could not catch what address he had given. He wasn’t much worried, not with the secure
deadweight of the big MAB in his shoulder holster.

He tried to talk to the boy further in English, but could not extract another word from him. Laforque was struck by the fact
that the boy had spoken in the same excellent English as the little girl he had thought a beggar outside his hotel. They could
even be brother and sister—they had the same strange, hollow eyes and starved look.

When they left the cab at a cafe near the southern edge of the city, Laforque was met by still another teenager with the family
likeness.

“Your American friend will be here in a few minutes.”

Laforque nodded, left them behind and went into the cafe. He sat at a table with his back to the wall where he could see the
door. He slid the MAB from its holster and, keeping it under his jacket, he released the safety catch and eased a shell in
the chamber. Then he slid the pistol back into the holster, repositioning the gun so it was loose and easy to draw. He sat
back and tried to relax.

Dartley did not keep him waiting long. From a parked car, Abdel Ibrahim had been watching the Frenchman through high-power
binoculars and guessed
what he had been adjusting beneath his jacket at the cafe table. Dartley set up his Browning for instant fire, dropped it
back in his shoulder holster, winked at Ibrahim and got out of the car. He threaded his way through the traffic to the cafe
across the street.

“Bonjour,” Laforque greeted him politely and stood to shake hands with him. Dartley was reminded of how the handshake evolved
in the first place, as a way for meeting swordsmen to keep everyone’s right hand in view.

Dartley ordered coffee and Laforque remarked casually that he thought Dartley would have left for home by now.

“Just a few minor complications in the travel arrangements,” Dartley remarked. “Like I think I’d have to seize the airport
before they let me on a plane.”

Laforque dutifully smiled at this little display of humor. “Too bad.”

“Looking back on a lot of recent difficulties I’ve had, I think now I have you to thank for them.”

“If you’re talking about that woman in Aqaba—”

“And other things,” Dartley went on calmly. “For instance, I thought when you hired Omar Zekri to find me, it was a dumb move
on your part since it exposed France’s involvement in the affair to a paid gossip. But you saw that the Egyptian government
agents would not take Omar’s word for that. What Omar would do was tip off the government to my presence. You had no way of
knowing that Omar already knew about me.”

“He was harmless,” Laforque said. “Why did you kill him?”

“Because he was very good at finding me.”

“That was enough to make you kill him?”

“Of course,” Dartley smiled glacially. “I never allow anyone to get in my way.”

“Is France in your way?” Laforque asked in an amused tone.

“I don’t think in such big terms. I think in terms of you, Laforque. And if I want to send France a message, I’ll do it in
terms of you, Laforque.”

The Frenchman’s humor suddenly evaporated. He grew tense. “There was never anything personal intended in my handling of your
case. I see no need to get personal now.”

Dartley spat out the words angrily. “Up till now, you’ve been behaving like the servant of someone so important it gave you
immunity, too. You thought you were so big you could fuck me over, and even if I did survive it, I could do nothing about
it. You wanted me, as an American, to make an attack on Ahmed Hasan and, of course, fail. But you wanted me to get caught
or killed and have the CIA blamed. You would have found a way to make France look good, a Western nation coming to aid its
Arab friends. Nukes in exchange for oil. I was never meant to get Hasan—you saw to that, first at Aqaba and then at the presidential
palace. I was only meant to try and fail. Laforque, you set me up as a sacrifice.”

“So what?” Laforque shrugged. “I can arrange safe passage out for you now. Why not go? Why keep after Hasan?”

“When there is some genuine change in my sponsor’s plans, usually I’m pleased to oblige,” Dartley said. “But when I find out
I was never meant to do
what I was hired to do because someone thought I couldn’t do it, I get tempted to prove him wrong. I’m not out to kill Hasan
because he’s an asshole despot. I’m going to kill him to show your people in Paris not to fuck with me.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone with an ego as big as that,” Laforque said goadingly.

“When an American tells you not to tread on him, he’s not just pulling some kind of personality trip on you. You’re in my
way, Laforque. I’m going to send you as my first message to Paris. Hasan will be the second. Draw!”

“Pardon?”

Dartley laughed harshly. “Let me explain it to you. In a few seconds I’m going to reach for the gun in my shoulder holster.
I know you’re carrying one too.” Dartley tried not to let his eyes follow Laforque’s right hand as it glided off the table
and began to move across his body. “Doing the gentlemanly thing, I’m giving you notice of my intentions and a split-second
advantage to get started. You ready? Now, drawl”

Laforque couldn’t believe what was happening to him, but he had been around long enough to know when a man was serious. He
went for the big 9 mm MAB in his shoulder holster, his right hand already more than halfway there.

Darkley yanked his 9 mm Browning out of his holster, hoping not to set the trigger off accidentally. He got his hand nicely
around the grip and snaked his trigger finger forward as he brought the barrel up to bear on the Frenchman sitting opposite
him at the small cafe table.

Laforque was more careful, more precise, slower.

Dartley squeezed the trigger when the Browning was pointing somewhere in the middle of Laforque’s chest.

The bullet snapped off the top of the MAB and buried itself in Laforque’s neck.

Dartley’s trigger finger was already sending a second shot home, and this slug hit Laforque in the solar plexus with a dull
whop. The bullet ripped through his innards and embedded itself in his backbone, severing the spinal cord.

The first shot lifted the Frenchman up out of his chair and the second sent him crashing backward into other tables and chairs.

Yet the last threshing movements of Laforque’s body, as life leaked out of it, caused less damage to cafe property than the
stampede of other customers to safety. They jumped over and kicked aside the tables and chairs, sending cups and saucers and
other customers flying.

They were still trying to untangle themselves and escape when Dartley placed a $100 bill on the counter, holstered his smoking
gun and headed out into the street.

While he made his way through the traffic toward the car waiting on the opposite side of the street, he heard some kids behind
him shouting, “Jesse James! Jesse James!”

When Ahmed Hasan heard how Jacques Laforque died, he lost his aura of calm.

“This is an open invitation to the lawless, godless elements to riot!” he screamed. “Where were the
police when this shootout was going on? How can this man conduct gunfights in crowded streets in Cairo and nothing happens
to him? Awad ran away! He is making the state security forces look like fools. The lawless ones will think we are weak. We
do not respond. One man can challenge us successfully right here in the capital city. I can see them now! The rebels are digging
up their guns and oiling them! The spies are watching! They are like wolves. When they scent weakness, they attack.” He paused
in his rapid pacing up and down the presidential office and stared at the assembled military and security officers. “We need
a diversion. Yes! Exactly! Get a mob to storm the American Embassy and we’ll hang Mubarak and the others.”

“President Reagan has told us loud and clear,” one general pointed out, “that if the embassy is attacked, either by us directly
or if we let a mob do it, the American Air Force will lay waste—”

“I know all that!” Hasan shouted, but he cooled down a bit. “Then let’s get your soldiers on the move. Have them do something.”

“Right now, sir, they might do more harm than good,” the general spoke up again. “We have a bit of a morale problem. There’s
no telling which side they might end up fighting on if we let them mix with the city mobs.”