At the Point of a. 38

6

Inside the bathroom, the woman who was using the identity of Esther Landau-she was the wife of the Sheik Muhammed al-Kabir, and a strong sympathizer with the Freedom Front-flushed the toilet again. She let the tank fill and flushed it once more, to cover the half-hearted choking noises she was making.

And that was enough, she decided. It was hard to vomit convincingly without feeling sick. Earlier, to maneuver Shayne into a motel room, she had swallowed a fast-acting emetic, but she wasn’t putting her long-suffering stomach through that torment again, and there wasn’t anything left to come up.

She gave her reflection in the mirror a small smile. So far, everything had meshed like the works of a fine watch. Shayne’s phone call from Washington, which had frightened her at first, had actually helped; he had given her identification folder no more than a quick glance, after all the trouble they had put themselves to, changing photographs.

She listened at the door. She didn’t want the man to make any more of those sudden phone calls. She had convinced him, she thought, that the dead woman in the back of the car had been someone named Gerda Fox, one of Murray Gold’s procession of Israeli mistresses, but Shayne was no fool, and she knew that his mind was working. He impressed her, this American. There was strength and competence beneath his quiet manner, and something else. A hint of passion, if that was the proper word. Given the right occasion, he would catch fire, and like fire moving through brush, he would be impossible to stop.

Even with his immobilized arm, he was as graceful as a cat. The movement of muscle across his chest had been delightful to watch. She was unaccustomed to big men, and she had been stirred by him. She had even considered-for only a moment, she was glad to say-maneuvering herself beneath the covers of that bed, still wearing the personality of the Israeli policewoman, and maneuvering Shayne’s large body in beside her. She herself, though she had never been allowed the freedoms that were considered by Israeli women to be theirs by right, was a woman of the twentieth century. She subscribed to western magazines, which kept her aquiver with reports about the worldwide sexual revolution. She agreed with this in theory, but until recently there had been pitifully little she could do to put it into practice. From this moment on, however, things were going to be very different.

She took the pistol out of her purse, and started the water running hard into the basin to cover the sound she made changing clips. As she had been shown, she cleared the harmless blank round out of the chamber, replacing it with one that looked the same, but was nevertheless deadly. She smiled. Fuad had overdone the agony, pretending to be shot in the stomach, and Shayne, even with nine-tenths of his attention on the road, had come close to seeing the deception. She reminded herself again that it was a sharp man she was about to kill, and her hand had better not tremble.

She slid the pistol back carefully, and wadded up handkerchiefs to wedge in around it. When she reached, she wanted her hand to close naturally on the handle. She was an amateur here, whereas the man in the other room was clearly skillful with guns.

Her head felt suddenly queer and light. It would be the first time for her, ever. She had to do it, that had been made plain by everybody. She had asked to be included in the main action, and they had smiled. A woman? It was a galling reflection to her, that in the hated nation of Israel, women were required-not permitted, required-to serve in the army, elbow to elbow with men. Presumably they were also allowed, in certain circumstances, to initiate the sexual encounter. Among her own people, it was a different story. The women could show their faces at last, after centuries of agitation. But while the men talked and acted, they were expected to make the soup and keep their eyes modestly lowered.

The thought had always made her angry. Now if she could focus on it she could carry this off without wishing it didn’t have to happen. She had been a soldier for one hour, Esther Landau, once an army lieutenant, now a police agent, who had come to a foreign country, entirely on her own, with a gun, to hunt a fugitive. The real Esther had had hair on her legs, a straight bar of eyebrows-an unattractive woman, probably. Did Israeli women make up their eyes? Probably not. Nevertheless, she took out a brush and worked on her eyelashes.

Perfume? Unnecessary. She looked at herself once more. In another moment, she would kill a man.

Shayne was at the TV set, flipping channels, with the sound down. “Better?” he said, causing the picture to dwindle and disappear.

“Somewhat, I think.”

“Cognac?”

“No!”

She sat in a chair this time, setting the purse on the floor so she could touch it with her right hand. Shayne stayed across the room. She had been advised to shoot him twice, aiming first at the bulk of his body, to knock him down, and then at his head, to kill. But if she missed with her first shot, he would be on her like a bolt of lightning. So she had to get him to come to her.

“You were beginning to tell me something,” Shayne said.

“It’s gone. Remind me.”

“About why you expected Gold to come back to Miami.”

“For this reason. I searched his residence after the arrest, most carefully. There was painfully little, a scattering of checks and bills and memos to himself. And one letter. Mr. Shayne, move nearer to me. I haven’t the strength to speak loudly.”

Shayne moved to the edge of the bed and sat down there. This was no improvement, for his weight was forward and he was watching her closely.

“If he received any other mail, he didn’t save it. It was from a girl here who signed herself Helen. No address-merely the date and Miami.”

She could have invented something, but Gold and Rashid had decided, discussing what she was to say, that she should stick closely to the truth. No one could be sure exactly where Shayne stood, or how much he knew. There actually had been a Gerda Fox, and she had actually been a Shin Bet informer. Gold’s opium-into-heroin laboratory had actually been set up in the galley of a fishing boat. The letter she was describing now was real. They had laughed about it in Beirut.

“It was illiterate and childish. That is his pattern, it is in his dossier. He confined himself to girls below the age of twenty. From indications, this was one of them, it seemed perhaps the last before he left this country. She was having difficulties at school, at home, she longed to see him and squeeze him, et cetera. Oddly enough, she was a policeman’s daughter. She asked Gold to tell her where to look, and she would go into the files through her father and remove or destroy evidence against him, so he could come back and she could do various sexual things to him which I won’t repeat. Did he need money? She had some saved. And I thought to myself-if he came to Miami, wouldn’t he notify her? He could use her to carry messages, to find him a secure place. He would have to be careful about old acquaintances. I thought this Helen would be a good one to start with, in any event. Do you think it’s enough?”

She played with the flap of her purse. Shayne’s eyes were on her every minute. She had a horrible thought suddenly that something had made him doubt she was Israeli. The earrings? She regretted those. Perhaps she would have to lay the purse in her lap and shoot through its bottom. But she had bought it in Paris, she would hate to spoil it.

Shayne scraped his thumbnail across his chin. “Half the people in the drug world inform on the other half. They’re jittery right now. If Gold killed a woman last night, that steps up the pressure. He can’t hang around and feed it into the market a bag at a time. It all has to hit at once. We can wait till that happens and trace it back. There are a few people I can lean on. But there may be a faster way.”

He continued to watch her with those penetrating eyes. She sat forward, bringing the purse up from the floor. The pistol inside had shifted, and she couldn’t locate the grip.

“If that was Murray Gold I was chasing,” Shayne said, still working on moves which her two bullets would prevent him from making, “why would he drive down to Homestead to pick up ten tommy guns?”

“Tommy guns?” Rashid hadn’t known that Shayne knew about those. “This doesn’t fit into my theory at all.”

“See if you can make it fit. Did Gold grow a beard in Israel?”

“Not while I watched him. Perhaps in prison. I can cable and find out.”

“You can buy beards at a hair-store. But if that woman was Gerda Fox, and Gold knew she was the one who turned him in-if she knew the name of the buyer here-”

He stopped to think again. “He bought the guns from a master sergeant. I’m not really sure how many, but he paid three thousand in cash, and submachine guns go for about three hundred apiece. For ten guns, you need ten men. You don’t take ten men along on a drug buy. The hell of it is, I had him right in my fist. But I tried to be too tricky, and I lost him.”

She had adjusted the pistol so it was pointed at Shayne. The safety was off.

“Mr. Shayne, you keep throwing fragments. What do you mean, you lost him?”

“I had a helicopter on him, and the engine conked out. He was up around Boca Raton at the time. That doesn’t mean he stayed there.”

Alarm bells began clanging. Wait. Wait.

All at once she thought of the danger she was in. Of course the plan had been worked out to minimize the danger, but if Shayne and his helicopter hadn’t linked Gold to the Arabs, it was no longer necessary to kill him. She had been keyed up to do it, but it was a relief not to have to.

And then she had a better idea, having to do with the money. It was mad, and most unlikely to work, but what a coup if it did! It would prove to a few people, including her almighty husband, that Arab women were not altogether as helpless as they looked.

“Then we’ll be working together?”

“It seems so,” Shayne said, still studying her. “Unless you can think of something else you ought to tell me, I’ll be moving.”

“Mr. Shayne, if you knew how relieved! All the piled-up sleepiness has caught up to me suddenly.” This was true; she had had no sleep the night before, after Rashid had come into her bedroom, and now she was having trouble keeping her eyelids up. “How would it be if I simply stay here? If you’ll get off that bed I’ll fall into it. Three hours at the most. Three hours would make an enormous difference.” Also true! Everything was scheduled to take place during the next three hours. “My dress will be dry by then. Phone me or come back for me.”

“I’ll see what I can find out about the girl. First name Helen. A cop’s daughter. I’ll ask some people.”

Good; that would take him out of Miami. He had a few more questions, and to make him go she acted as though she was about to fall asleep in the chair. They stood up together. She pretended to lose her balance, and touched his arm. She would like to see him undressed.

But not now, unhappily. Even if she could have thought of a way to bring it about, there was too little time.

After he left she waited at the closed blind, peering through the thin slit between blind and window-frame, and saw his Buick pull out, return to the street and turn north. He was apparently in every way a careful man. A moment later he was back, cruising slowly past to make sure he had left her in safety.

But Rashid was equally cautious. He had parked elsewhere, and came among the motel cars on foot. He rapped quickly. Smiling, she let him suffer out there in the open, where the world could see him. He would be furious, she knew.

He shook the doorknob. Would it disturb this strange creature, she wondered, if Shayne had taken away her gun and left her dead on the floor? Not for more than a moment, probably, and then only because it would entail a change of plan. He would prod her with his toe, walk out and never think of her again. And that made her almost as angry as he was when she opened the door and he came storming in.

“What in the devil’s name have you done here, woman?” he demanded. “You let him walk away unharmed.”

No woman likes to be called woman in that tone of voice. “I decided not to shoot him,” she said calmly. “Those magnificent shoulders and narrow hips.”

Really enraged, he slammed her in the face with his closed fist. It was a serious blow. He had entered her sexually a half dozen times in Beirut, and apparently he thought, incorrectly, that that entitled him to do this. She fell against the television set, and somehow the contact turned it on. The voices came up first, followed by a picture of four American women with beautifully groomed hair, sitting at a table discussing the population explosion.

She still had her purse in her hand. Sitting up, she took out the gun and let Rashid look into the muzzle.

“Or perhaps you think I was unable to change the bullets,” she said. “That I am too ignorant to understand the mechanism, unlike Israeli women. Shall I press the trigger and convince you?”

He waved to show her that the gun didn’t intimidate him. But she noticed that he was careful to move no closer.

“No, no. Merely tell me at once how it happened. Up to a point it went off perfectly. You were alone together. I watched the window for your signal, that you had done it and I should drive in to pick you up. Instead, he drove away, in a car with a radio telephone. And I find you here partly undressed.”

“It was necessary to wash my dress.”

“And because of those narrow hips and so forth-”

“We discussed making love, but decided against it. It would have been a mistake to kill him. The helicopter last night had a failed engine. He knows nothing about us.”

Rashid thrust his head forward. “He told you that.”

“Convincingly. If I put the pistol away, will you hit me again?”

“No, I was angry. Turn off that noise.”

As much as she would have enjoyed hearing intelligent American women talk about the best way to avoid becoming pregnant, this was not the time, she agreed.

Rashid put a cigarette in his mouth. After shutting off the television, she came up to him, removed the cigarette and kissed him, forcing her tongue between his lips, daringly. He responded with less than his usual masculine fervor.

“You taste of being sick.”

“Still?” she said coolly. She lay down on the bed and crossed her ankles. “I know our schedule as well as you do, my dear. We have a full twenty minutes before you meet the Jew, and it is safer to be here behind drawn blinds than riding around in a foreign city. Michael Shayne will not be back. He believes me to be asleep, from airplane exhaustion. And if he does come back, you can have the pleasant experience of killing him, as you seem to want to so much. Meanwhile, I want to persuade you to take me with you.”

“Akhatari, I beseech you, not again and again. But if I have to listen to it, finish first with the detective. How much did you tell him?”

“Only about Gold and his narcotics. I watched the time constantly. You said fifteen minutes would be safer, so I wouldn’t walk out one moment after we came in. I said nothing about the prison escape, that it was Mr. Gold’s idea.”

“It was also mine. For months I was thinking of nothing else.”

“But without him you would all still be gathering dust, behind bars. You did the fighting, of course, and I admire your bravery. A word about this Michael Shayne. I see why Gold fears him. I was very much struck by him, to be truthful, and even with the one arm, I knew I would have to be quick. You have taught me to be willing to take chances, but only when necessary, and in this case it would have been foolishness. Oh, the Jew would be delighted to hear of Shayne’s death, but we should let him take care of his own part of that business. If a policeman and his mistress were making love in the next room, for example, and he heard the shots, I would have been captured immediately. But if you prefer to think I failed to shoot because I am a cowardly female-”

“Akhatari, you know I respect you. Where is Shayne now? Do we have to include him as a factor?”

“I sent him off on a wild chase, in the other direction from Miami Beach. All he thinks about is Murray Gold and the heroin, the one thing that occupies all Americans’ thoughts, it seems. He knows nothing about Palestinians, only that Gold last night bought ten machine pistols-”

“He knows that!”

“But could the cleverest detective in the world find out more than that in the next twenty minutes? Needless to say, no.”

“I still believe it would have been better-”

“If so, the harm is already done. But up to that moment, do you agree that I did well? I persuaded him I was a woman of action, formerly an officer in an army at war. Now I hope to convince you.”

“Akhatari, it’s impossible. Women have no place in the camps. And you are a sheik’s wife, it would be insane to offend him. He has given us much money and support.”

“He’s divorcing me in any case.”

Rashid was so surprised that he dropped his cigarette. “Does he know about Beirut?”

“He knows what he wishes to know. He wanted me to come with him to the United States because of my English, but I have developed the wrong style for him. I disagree with his opinions. Unheard of! He wants submission, and many children. Do you think he knows about you and Sayyid and the rest? Wait and find out! If the action succeeds, he will take credit for it-his own wife was one of the conspirators. But if it is a disaster-”

“Don’t say it,” Rashid said superstitiously.

“He will say he had no part in it, and cast me out. For me to come in the airplane with you, would fit either story.”

“When we land in Libya, we disperse and disappear, one by one. For you to disappear would be difficult. You are too beautiful.”

“Nonsense. I would disguise myself as a bent-over grandmother.”

But she could see there was no chance. This was going to be another all-male operation, from first to last. Very well. They could hardly object if she played an independent hand. A million dollars would be a marvelous sum of money with which to start her new life.

Changing the subject, she suggested that while they had the use of this big soft bed, they should give each other a moment’s pleasure. It would ease the tension in so many ways, and it might be their last time. He was reluctant, but masculinity has its bad side, and by making it into a challenge she left him no choice. He came down to her.

And nothing came of it in the end, for he failed to erect, for the first time in their dealings together. She had been three-quarters sure this would happen, and she wasn’t particularly nice to him about it. But she needed some compensation, she believed, for being struck in the face with his fist.