Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

George Sumner Albee Foreign Agent

Michael Gilbert’s “The Future of the Service” and George Sumner Albee’s “Foreign Agent” — we simply couldn’t resist the impulse to couple two counterespionage stories, both by outstanding authors. You will find the contrast interesting — indeed, we found it fascinating — the contrast between British and American intelligence ops at work, one at home, the other in a foreign land, and each playing a deadly serious, if not a desperate, game of wits at high, tremendously high, stakes...

Algiers is pronounced not Algiers but El Jay; the Sahara is spelt with a Z and looks more like Texas range-land than it does the dune-breasted desert you see in the movies; and there are other things in North Africa about which we Americans have unrealistic notions. But there are things, also, about which we are quite realistic.

The young Arab who stepped down at Bou Zanna from an old Chevrolet truck piled high with canned tomatoes and slab codfish wore scuffed slippers with tire-tread soles, an undergarment like a rayon nightgown, a burnoose of whitish wool to reflect the sun and keep him cool, and a pale blue turban. Not having bathed for nine weeks, he stank, but in the dry air not too badly — something like a bunch of over-ripe bananas. His skin was dark, his eyes were darker. He came from Sioux Falls and his name was Warren Tate.

The truck bustled on southward toward Ghardaya, over the good road the French had laid down in safer times for luxurious P.L.M. buses, and Warren balanced his cheap fiber suitcase on his turban and walked splay-footed into the village. The Arab walk was not hard to mimic — not in such shoes.

Bou Zanna was a cluster of mud-brick huts the color of cocoa. There was a fonduk, a corral good for half a dozen dromedaries at most; there was a dusty public square in which the owner of an ambulatory restaurant was broiling chunks of fresh-killed mutton over charcoal.

“Peace,” said Warren Tate. “I seek my Great-Uncle, Ahmed ben Ahbes.”

“The two-story house at the end of the street,” said the restaurateur, his arms gloved with blood and flies. “You will see his horses with their heads out of the windows on the ground floor. Beauties.”

Ahmed the son of Ahbes was a powerful, dignified man of forty-odd with a square beard, dyed blackest black, and lime-green eyes far handsomer than those of the women who, peering and tittering, gathered behind him.

“Good evening, Uncle,” said Warren. “I’m Sellim.”

“You are expected.” Ahmed eyed wives and daughters with no great enthusiasm. “Hens cackle,” he said. “Leave your suitcase. We will promenade ourselves.” He used the French expression.

They passed some ragged boys playing with a hoop who, touching fingertips to forehead, lip, and breast, saluted them respectfully because Ahmed was a man of substance. Under dusty palms, barefoot women hoisted water from Bou Zanna’s only well. Fifty meters farther along they stepped onto open desert With the sun setting, it was the color of a ripe apricot every ledge casting its long purple shadow. The clearness of the air was beyond belief; pebbles, cobblestones looked as if they had been scrubbed clean and thrust beneath a magnifying glass; each foot-high shrub threw golden sparks. An expanse of black pumice a mile away shone like a reef of coal.

“Your Arabic is very good,” commented Ahmed.

“I learned it at a United States Army language school,” replied Warren. “But I’ve been in Algeria six months, and I have a good ear.”

“You’re the first American I’ve seen since tourist days,” lamented Ahmed. “I used to rent horses to Americans, and sell them sand roses — vous savez, the little crystalline flowers made by the heat of the sun. Tell me, what do your fellow Americans think of this mess of ours?”

“We admire you. Ten, twenty Moslems a day murdered since the cease-fire, and you take it with restraint. These last few months you’ve won over not only America but the whole free world to your side.”

“We’re behaving like good Christians, eh?” Ahmed smiled wryly. “Alors, De Gaulle behaved honorably, he gave us hope, and we can understand the last few colons hanging on — we Arabs don’t like change, either.”

“You bring me to my reason for visiting you,” said Warren. “Since the army blasted Bab-el-Oued last March, the colons and their piedsnoirs, their gutter riffraff, know they’re beaten. But there are still shootings every day. Someone is paying for them, someone is coordinating them — and he isn’t a rebel general, and he isn’t in Algiers.”

Ahmed combed his dyed beard with strong, broad-tipped fingers. His nails were orange-brown with henna. “I must say this is a possibility that has not occurred to me.”

“He could be in a submarine off your coast, but I doubt it. I think he’s here on the desert — near enough to get his commands into the city, but far enough away to keep from being picked up by the army patrols.”

“But surely the police know all foreigners. They have to fill out police cards. And if a man came ashore illegally, or slipped across the border, he couldn’t go into a village for so much as a handful of dates without having his papers verified.”

“Nobody has checked mine,” said Warren, “and if an American agent can dye his skin and learn Arabic, so can a Russian. But the police are doing a good job of looking for the dyed Russian. My assignment is to have a look at foreigners with valid reasons for being on the North Sahara. I’ve checked out Dutchmen drilling water wells, Englishmen looking for oil, Hindus, Syrians — is every Syrian a salesman? Now I want a German in a Volkswagen bus, last seen near Bou Zanna.”

“Last seen when I glanced at him two seconds ago,” said Ahmed, deadpan but relishing his surprise. He pointed. Out toward the expanse of black pumice, smoke rose straight into the air like a magician’s rope. “He sleeps in his automobile and cooks his own food.”

“Dog-son-of-a-dog!” exclaimed Warren. “On his passport his name is Herwarts and he’s an anthropologist. What’s he doing?”

“He has a machine that spins little plastic wheels,” replied Ahmed with a shrug. Islam finds machinery unimpressive. “He pays people to sing for him, then he records what they sing on a ribbon.”

“Folk music! What a cover, for mass murder!”

“Now that you suggest it, yes,” said Ahmed. He cursed.

“It looks as if I’ll be here a few days. Can you let me have a room? I’ll pay.”

“Do not speak of paying, to a patriot,” said Ahmed. “Anyhow, you are a relative by marriage, we must remember. I’ll just throw out one of the women, preferably an old one.”

The clay walls of the tiny room gave off the dry, spicy fragrance of an old Spanish mission church. After prayers toward Mecca and kous-kous, Warren made a quick count of his tools. He had very few along: a spool of fine, insulated wire of unusual tensile strength, a knife, a transistor radio, a longish automatic that fired soft-nosed 9-millimeter cartridges without flash or noise, a dozen boxes of cough drops that might be salesman’s samples, a packet of franc notes, and a bottle of anisette that looked and smelled like liquor but that stained skin and hair. Taking only the automatic, he locked away everything else, using not only the visible lock on the suitcase but the secret one under the flap.

“Come to the café,” said Ahmed. “You must meet my friends.”

Hand in hand according to custom, they walked to the cafe, a mud hut like any other except that its walls were lime-washed blue and it had a few deal tables and crude benches. Formally, under the gasoline lamps swinging from the sapling ceiling, Ahmed presented the sporting set of Bou Zanna: jaunty teenagers with sprigs of mint up one nostril, a cavalryman in Spahi bloomers and leather stirrup cuffs, the tailor, the teacher, an aged farmer blinded by glaucoma. Salutations and compliments were exchanged. So far as Warren could tell, nobody suspected him. Arab families are so ramified that stray relatives arouse no great curiosity. Leaving the others to their gossip, which could have borne the title Notable Horses of the Past Thousand Years, he and Ahmed ordered mint tea and took a table by themselves.

“If it’s this Germanized Russian,” asked Ahmed, “why are you waiting? Why don’t we just go out there and blow off his head?”

In spite of himself, Warren laughed. “For one thing,” he explained, “I’m not sure he’s my man. And even if he is, I want to find out how he’s getting his murder orders into Algiers when we’re reasonably sure he doesn’t have a radio transmitter.”

“Hélas, you Americans are squeamish. Wait until your population explosion kills a million of you a year from starvation, and you won’t put so much value on human life. Let’s kill him tonight. If the murders in Algiers stop, we’ll know he was the right man.”

“I’ll work as fast as I can,” promised Warren. “Every hour I delay means more bodies on the sidewalks in the city, I know that. Pretty soon you Moslems are going to get sick of it and start rioting again — who could blame you? — and then everything De Gaulle has accomplished will go down the drain, and there’ll be dancing in Red Square.”

“How can I aid you?”

“The murders are still selective. Unless Herwarts has a detailed timetable, pharmacists on Tuesday, bus drivers on Thursday, something like that. His orders for today’s executions had to leave yesterday — leave here, I mean — yesterday or the day before. How is he managing it? Telephone? Telegraph? Homing pigeons? Couriers?”

Ahmed called over a slim boy with a fastidiously trimmed, down-turned mustache. “This is Djalil, my sixth son, the postmaster. Djalil, our relation has certain questions,” he said.

“Has this Herwarts used the telephone or sent a wire, yesterday or the day before?” Warren asked the boy.

“No.”

“Did he send a letter?”

“Herwarts” — Djalil pronounced the name perfectly, since Arabic is as throaty a language as German — “sends no letters. Only packages, addressed to himself.”

“To himself?”

“To his own name, Rue de Joinville, Algiers.”

“What sort of packages?”

The young chef des postes touched a saucer on the table. “This size.”

“Tapes. And tapes are as good as letters,” said Warren. “Did one go off yesterday?”

“Yes, and another today.”

With the father and son, Warren walked to the Postes et Telegraphes, under stars that were like Christmas tree ornaments. He put through a call to Chardin, the Deuxieme Bureau chief in the city, reaching him at a restaurant.

“Herwarts is recording native music. There should be a reel of tape in your central Algiers post office right now,” he said, in English. “Look for a package about eight centimeters square with his name on it. Play the recording for an expert, will you, and find out if the music is authentic? Then put a cipher man on it.”

“Do I let the package go through, afterwards?”

“It’s a hell of a choice,” said Warren. “If you do, and I’m right, it means more deaths tomorrow. But it may be our best chance of stopping them the day after.”

“D’accord, it’s a nasty choice... Our cryptographer is painstaking — this is going to take all night. I’ll report to you in the morning,” said Chardin. “How do I reach you?”

“Phone me. The postmaster here is loyal — I’m with him now. Call me at eight,” directed Warren.

The blasting sunlight of the desert woke him at 5:30. Through an old brass telescope which was Ahmed’s most treasured possession other than his horses, he studied the camp out toward the black lava. A lone man moved about a fire — presumably, Herwarts breakfasting.

Warren helped Ahmed to feed and water the gray stallion and the matching mare. Then, a little before 8:00, he strolled to the Postes et Telegraphes. The priority call came through promptly.

“The music is authentic, all right,” reported Chardin. “The only thing about it that might be fishy is that it’s commonplace stuff that was recorded twenty years ago on disks. But maybe your East-German doesn’t know that, or maybe he wants it re-recorded in high fidelity. There are three ballads, and one instrumental passage with a nose flute, a reed horn, and a drum. Neither the words nor the notes show recurrent patterns. Our cipher chap insists they’re clean.”

“Did you go over the reverse side of the tape with a camera?”

“Yes — with ultraviolet. And we also fumed it for invisible inks. Nothing.”

“That’s bad news.”

“I know. Sorry. We resealed the packet, and it’ll be delivered in the mail an hour or so from now. We’re watching the carrier to see he doesn’t relay it on the way. The concierge at the Rue de Joinville pension will put it into Herwarts’ room there. But I have more bad news for you. We’ve been into the room. There are a dozen tapes on the table, and they don’t look as if they’ve been opened, although of course they may have been. It looks as if Herwarts is simply mailing them for safekeeping... Allo, allo?”

“I’m here,” Warren assured him, “I’m just beating my brain. I have a feeling we’re missing something, don’t you?”

“No. Perhaps I’m tired. We’ll do anything you say—”

“I don’t know what to say, that’s the trouble. Well, stake out the Rue de Joinville address, anyhow, will you, Chardin? If a stranger goes in, pick him up and sweat him — he might just still take you to the pistol boys.”

“That,” said Chardin, “would be a pleasure.”

Disappointed, Warren walked back along the dusty street to Ahmed’s two-story mansion-stable.

“They say it isn’t the tapes, Ahmed. So it has to be a courier.”

“Nobody in Bou Zanna would work with the S.A.O.,” said Ahmed stiffly. “No man, no boy.”

“Knowingly, no. But suppose Herwarts asked someone to do an innocent favor for him in the city — deliver a book, for instance.”

Ahmed shook his turbaned head. “In a place this small, everybody would know in five minutes. In any case nobody has gone up to the city. I am positive.”

Warren pondered. “Herwarts has his bus. He could drive down the highway a few kilometers, stop a northbound truck, and ask the driver to deliver a message.”

“That is much more probable. Many truck drivers are Communist,” agreed Ahmed. “He could have an accomplice among them, for that matter. But, once again, you run up against fact. Herwarts has been here a week, and in that time he has not once left the village.”

“Has anybody visited him?”

“It could be managed at night, I suppose, but only with the greatest difficulty. The dogs would bark... No, only our own people who have gone out to sing for him. He pays well.”

No matter how he looked at it, it appeared to be a dead end. “I’ve got to see Herwarts’ camp,” decided Warren. “Have one of the women teach me some old song he isn’t likely to have heard, will you? Does he speak Arabic?”

“No — only French.”

“Ride out with me, then, and be my interpreter. If I try French, any European will spot my American accent as soon as I open my big mouth.”

The song was merely a conventional catalogue of teeth like pearls and hair like the midnight sky, a tin-pan version of the Song of Solomon; but the elderly aunt from whom Warren learned it vouched for its antiquity.

“Do not be uneasy; the stallion is a perfect gentleman,” said Ahmed, and, rocking comfortably in the high-backed, chairlike saddles of scarlet leather, the two of them rode out. Herwarts welcomed them cordially, offering them coffee. He was a squat creature in shorts, nailed shoes, enormous of chest, cropped of skull, and ugly as a shaved gorilla.

“This is my nephew Sellim, who wishes to sing for your machine,” said Ahmed. “He has no French, but I am here to translate.”

Herwarts brought out a hand microphone with a long cord. As he did so, Warren got a good look into the little bus. There were two German-made tape recorders — big, battery-driven ones with all the gadgets. But, other than clothing, supplies, and a sleeping bag, there was nothing else of importance in the Volkswagen. There was no radio, not even a receiver. He did glimpse a pair of field glasses.

Warren sang, accepted compliments on his exquisite voice complacently as a native would have done, and took his pay in dirty franc notes. He would have been overjoyed to see new, counterfeit notes, but the intelligence business is never that easy. Herwarts thanked his guests once more, wishing them a pleasant ride. There was no further reason to stay.

Riding back into town they passed the oasis, with its bedraggled palms. Over the flat roof of a hut near it, wisps of white vapor curled in the breeze.

“Ahmed,” demanded Warren, “is that a steam bath?”

“Yes. Ours is a good well.”

“But why didn’t you tell me, man! I need a bath so bad I can taste it! That’s a slang phrase.”

“How about your dye?”

“It’ll stand water. But how about my hair? It’s still much too short for a Moslem.”

“Wear your turban. Some men do. Just remember to cover your sex with your left hand, never your right,” advised the Arab.

The public bath, its interior walls and floor faced with black slate, was as dark as a coal bin. Only now and again could Warren glimpse, through the steam, a shining brown arm or leg. Soaping himself generously for the third time, he called for a boy to douse him with a bucket of warm water. Sitting with his back against the warm wall, he slumped comfortably — and it was the sudden, unanticipated slumping that saved his life.

Steel rang. He felt the sting of stone splinters on his neck. A throwing-knife with a broken point slid down across his chest into his lap.

Charging like a halfback, he lunged into the steam. His hands recognized Herwarts’ khaki shirt and shorts, even though his eyes could barely make out the man’s bulky figure. Hooking, with his left, he drove for the midriff with Ids right. Both punches landed, but Herwarts stamped down with hobnails on his bare foot. The pain was dizzying. Before he could get in another blow — there were shouts, now, and men running — Warren felt himself lifted bodily and slammed against the wall. His head struck stone.

When he came to himself he was on the couch in his room at Ahmed’s, alone, with an ache like a skewer through his head. Where, he asked himself angrily, had he gone wrong? What blunder had he made, to give himself away? All he had done was open his mouth to sing a mawkish ballad for the Russian... and picturing himself with his mouth open, he groaned.

His teeth, of course! He could not have offered Herwarts a better view of his molars if he had taken them out and handed them to him. And no Arab past the age of twenty has a full set of teeth; no Arab has gold inlays fashioned by an American dentist. All that Herwarts had to do, after such a revealing dental display, was watch the American agent through his field glasses, note that he went into the bath, laugh heartily, and follow.

“Ahmed,” called Warren. The skewer jabbed his brain.

“I broke open your suitcase looking for medicines,” said Ahmed, coming into the room, “but you have none.”

“I’m all right Did anybody catch him?”

“No, unhappily.”

“He’s a fast man.” Warren sat up, wincing. “He’s on his way, now, damn him. He’ll either head for Algiers and go underground there, or he’ll try to make the border.”

“His bus is still out on the desert. His campfire is burning, too. He may be out there, but I didn’t want to move against him without your orders.”

“He’s not out at his camp. He made a try for me and kept right on going,” disagreed Warren. “He doesn’t want the Volkswagen any longer; he knows I’ll wire the police to look for it. No, he’s walking, Ahmed. If sunstroke doesn’t get him, or sand vipers, he’ll walk until he catches a ride on a truck — or on a dromedary. And meanwhile he’ll go on ordering killings because I didn’t crack his communications system!”

“The killings are continuing, it is true. While you were in the bath, we heard on the radio that piedsnoirs broke into a hospital and murdered eight patients in their beds.”

“Oh, I’m a great all-round success,” said Warren bitterly. “What time is it?”

“Five in the afternoon.”

“Saddle up. We’ll have a look at the camp. Maybe in his hurry he’s left something behind.”

“Take your automatic, my son. I will take the old revolver I used in the maquis in the Second World War.”

The camp was deserted. The campfire smoldered. Warren knelt beside it “What’s that I smell?”

“Skin,” replied Ahmed. “Leather.”

Warren raked the embers with a stick. “Here’s a piece. Why would he destroy something made of leather, I wonder. A code book, maybe.”

“Only Allah knows.”

Warren sighed. “Anyhow, you own a Volkswagen. I’ll drive it back to town for you; I have to send my wire to Chardin in Algiers.”

“As you wish.” Ahmed spat into the embers. “I’ll ride Dusk. The mare follows well.”

The dusk for which the dapple-gray stallion was named descended on the North Sahara like a snowfall of gray powder. Stars winked on, and, below them, gasoline and carbide lanterns. His telegram to Chardin on its way, Warren left the Volkswagen parked beside the post office and handed over the keys to Ahmed.

“Don’t censure yourself too severely,” said the older man. “When you are as old as I, you will know life is just one error after another. We think we think; but that, also, is an error more often then not.”

“I need a drink worse than I need food,” responded Warren glumly. “Let’s go to the café. I’ll buy you an anisette.”

“First I will lock my new automobile to discourage thieves,” said Ahmed. “Take Dusk — I’ll be along in a moment.”

The brightly lighted cafe was full of men who crowded round to offer their sympathy. Herwarts had attacked him because they’d had a quarrel, Warren told them, but he doubted very much if they believed the story. He ordered drinks for the house. After a few minutes Ahmed appeared, sending home the horses in care of a small, delighted youngster.

“What will you do now?” asked Ahmed.

“There isn’t much I can do,” replied Warren realistically. “He knows me. There’s no point in my following him, even if I knew where to look.”

“You don’t think he might still be nearby? We could mount a search party.”

“We’d never find him at night. And night is when he’ll travel. No, I’ll go back to Algiers and ask to be reassigned. I’ve blown this one, that’s all.”

The owner of the portable restaurant came in from the street waving smoking lamb chops, and they bought a plateful from him. In a corner, a trio of musicians spread mats on the floor and began to play — two flautists and a drummer with a set of small, thin drums not unlike tambourines. The music rippled like water, the ceaseless dream of every desert dweller.

Ahmed patted Warren’s hand as though he were a small boy. “If you came of a race as old as mine,” he said comfortingly, “you would know that the one thing man can count on is man’s stupidity. Herwarts, too, will do something stupid, attend to my words.”

“Not Herwarts. No such luck.”

Smiling mischievously, the Arab stroked his black beard. “Would you care to wager your magnificent automatic,” he inquired, “against my poor old black-powder pistol?”

“You’ve got yourself a bet, Great-Uncle.”

“My bet,” said Ahmed, “is that Comrade Herwarts is still in Bou Zanna. As you have pointed out, the intelligent thing for him to do was to run. Therefore he is still here. Why? Because he is in panic, and panicky men are even stupider than the rest of us.”

“Get together your search party!” exclaimed Warren. He leaped to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“There is no need,” murmured Ahmed, gently waving him down. “He will deliver himself to us, believe me. It is all arranged. Another anisette?”

“Ahmed, you realize how important this is. If—”

“Tranquilize thyself.”

The music changed. The rhythm became staccato, the flutes quickened their pace, and Warren felt his pulse respond. “Wah’-shah’lah, get hot,” someone cried. Several of the younger men, stretching arms in simulation of the long flintlocks their great-grandfathers had carried into war, formed a ring and whirled into a crouching, hopping dance. The drummer waved a small drum high over his head, his fingers tapping it so fast they became a blur.

“The best jazz drummer in the United States couldn’t do that,” marveled Warren. “He’s syncopating the beats, too. Why, it’s impossible!”

“He smokes hemp to heighten his sense of rhythm,” said Ahmed. “They all do. They tighten the leather of the drum over a fire.”

“The leather—” Warren frowned into his drink. He looked up. “The piece of leather we found in Herwarts’ campfire was what was left of a drum, Ahmed. Now I know how Hewarts sends his messages. He taps them out on a drum in ordinary Continental code, at high speed, as an accompaniment to the instrumental music he records. Dubbing, recording engineers call it. All that his accomplice in Algiers has to do is play back the tape at low speed, decode, and reseal the package. The accomplice is somebody living in the pension on the Rue de Joinville.”

“Technology,” said Ahmed, “is beyond my poor understanding. Nevertheless, I must congratulate you.”

“I must phone—”

From somewhere not too far off came the crash of an explosion.

“Ahmed—” began Warren sternly.

“I found your detonators when I forced your suitcase,” confessed Ahmed, with a little shrug of apology. “They led me to examine your red and green cough drops. We used something similar in the Second World War, although our explosive was more like a jelly. I felt sure Comrade Herwarts would try after all to escape in his Volkswagen, parked so conveniently, so I left the keys in it for him.”

Warren shook his head. “You’ve lost an automobile, Great-Uncle,” he said.

“And a post office too, I rather imagine,” replied Ahmed, deadpan. “But, on the other hand, I have just won a superb automatic with a silencer, which will be something far more useful to me in my small affairs.”