Safari for Spies

The Cockeyed Optimist

“Try to get hold of a what for Miss Ashton?” Abe Jefferson’s voice was incredulous. It had taken some time before the Police Chief could be reached on the telephone. Apparently he had been thoughtful enough to place his mystery call from somewhere other than his office. During that time Nick had been able to think himself into the person of an enraged, bewildered diplomat and prepare a carefully guarded story that would fit in with an eavesdropper’s version of what had happened in Special Emissary Carter’s room.

“A dress,” Nick repeated patiently. “I’ll explain it all when you get here. But she can’t go around in her...”

“I shop at the Paris Boutique,” Liz called out helpfully. “They know my size and everything.”

Nick relayed the information.

Jefferson chuckled. “I’ll ask my wife to take care of this, or I’ll never hear the end of it. In the meantime I’ll be on my way.”

He was there with his estimable Corporal in a matter of minutes. His face was a kaleidoscope of expressions as he stared around the room. Liz sat on the edge of the bed clutching Nick’s bathrobe to her ample bosom and trying to look demure. With her long, dark hair falling loosely about her shoulders and the robe revealing lengths of lovely leg and her eyes sparkling with Scotch and excitement, she looked anything but. The overturned service cart, instead of suggesting a brush with death, only contributed to the general impression of an uninhibited romp.

“Well!” Jefferson remarked appraisingly. “It must have been quite a party!”

“It was nothing of the sort,” said Nick severely. “It was a shocking experience. If that fellow isn’t picked up...”

“He already has been,” said Jefferson, his lips twitching. “Charged with indecent exposure and being improperly clad in public.”

Liz giggled. “I’ll be next.”

The soothing cadence of Corporal Stonewall Temba’s voice rippled across the room. “Chief Jefferson, sir. Mr. Carter, sir. Are you aware that there are listening devices implanted in this room?”

Nick turned and stared at the massive African with the mellifluous voice. Chief Jefferson smiled benignly.

“No, really?” said Nick at last, acid thinning his voice. “Then I suggest that you find out at once who is responsible for this further outrage...”

“Remove them, Corporal,” Jefferson said crisply.

Stonewall’s huge hands clawed at the wall and something snapped decisively. A loose wire dangled from the ceiling. “Done, six,” he boomed melodiously. “Perhaps, also, the telephone.” He lifted the instrument between vast thumb and massive forefinger and plucked at something beneath the base. “Excuse me now.”

He wafted swiftly from the room like some storybook genie and closed the door silently behind him.

“I had hoped,” Nick said carefully, fixing Jefferson with a stony stare, “to catch the eavesdropper in the act. But now, my friend, you’ve blown it.”

“Not necessarily, Mr. Carter.” Jefferson picked up the intruder’s throwing knife by the tip and viewed it thoughtfully. “You told us about it, you know. And we prepared ourselves. Oh, I realize what you intended.” He raised a placating hand. “But you must not forget that I am the Chief of Police, and I must handle these things in my own way.” His monkey face was serious, and the sharp eyes held assurance and command. “You have your job, sir, and I have mine. Now suppose you tell me just what happened.”

Nick scanned his face and made a rapid assessment. If this was round two, he’d lost two in a row without throwing a punch. But he liked what he saw in Jefferson’s face, and perhaps it was just as well that he could talk in front of these two people without wondering who else was listening in.

“Right,” he said. “Sit down. I called you because I think Miss Ashton may be in danger if she stays here. And as you know I have to leave here in a few minutes. What happened was this...”

In a few crisp phrases he sketched the details. Abe Jefferson frowned and smiled alternately.

“What I would like you to do,” Nick wrapped up his story, “is square this with the hotel people — I don’t want to hang around explaining things to them — and take care of the lady for me. And of course try to sweat something out of the fellow with the bare behind. Who sent him, what for, how his orders — well. As you said, you’re the Chief.” It was the first time in years that Nick had spoken freely to a policeman, and it made him feel wildly indiscreet and slightly hamstrung at the same time. “By the way, is the meeting still arranged?”

Jefferson nodded. “Oh, yes. There was no need to interfere with that. You must not worry, Mr. Carter. I shall not get in your way.” His lively eyes probed at Nick’s face. “I will only intrude myself when I am sure there is police business to be done. Catching wiretappers, protecting undraped ladies, and the like.” His face crinkled. “Even in those somewhat specialized areas I shall endeavor to be less a hindrance than a help. The attention you are attracting is of much interest to me. We can be of mutual value.”

“I hope so,” Carter said sincerely. “Any word from the hospital?”

“The President is holding his own,” the Chief said quietly. “That is all we know. We have not yet made the news public. There is a danger of Anti-American demonstrations — like the retaliatory bombing of the American Embassy.”

“Is that what you think it was?” Liz spoke up unexpectedly. “I don’t think so.”

Nick flashed her an approving look.

“I’d like to hear more from you later on, when you’re decently dressed and we have some time,” he told her. “Chief, you’ll see that she gets home, will you? I’ll have to be on my way. Meet you in the lobby at two?”

Jefferson nodded. “If not myself, then Stonewall. He and Uru will take you wherever you wish to go.”

“See you later,” Liz murmured comfortably. “Perhaps we can have breakfast together some time this afternoon.”

Nick walked swiftly down the broad main street and consulted his mental map. The Croix du Nord was four blocks south and three to the west on a broad thoroughfare in the business district. His cane tapped rhythmically along the smooth sidewalk and across the streets thinly speckled with traffic. The town was oddly silent — he could hear with separate clarity each swish of tires and each honk of a horn and each peddler’s call. There was something ominous about it, as if the town had stilled its normal sounds to listen. Or wait. Or watch. He wondered if the news about Makombe had somehow managed to leak out, or if it was just that he was not yet attuned to the natural quietness of an African city. Abimako, after all, was not New York.

And yet it was big enough to support a stunning array of adolescent skyscrapers and a downtown section of unrivaled department stores and restaurants flanked by markets ablaze with brilliant color and usually frenetically busy. No, the quiet tension was real, almost real enough to touch.

Nick detoured suddenly from his appointed course and strode swiftly into the newly completed railroad station. The morning’s dispatches were burning a hole in his inside pocket and there was no knowing what the rest of the day would bring. He found the men’s toilets and made himself at home in one of them. When he had mentally photographed the contents of the papers he tore them into miniscule pieces and flushed them into oblivion. Then he left the station and made his way briskly to the Cafe Croix du Nord.

It was five minutes to twelve when he sat down at a sidewalk table near the door and ordered a cup of Nyanga’s thick, strong coffee and an aperitif. After a few minutes of nervous sipping and watch-glancing he walked into the café and bought himself a pack of Players at an exorbitant price. He peeled it open while his eyes grew accustomed to the comparative gloom and lit one as he glanced casually around.

He knew even before his eyes told him that one of his visitors had already arrived, because little snakes seemed to be slithering down his back. The man with the unhealthily green face was sitting at a corner table half-hidden in the shadows, studiously not watching him. But his view of Nick’s chosen table was perfect.

Nick walked back into the sunlight and sat down. Five past twelve. He scanned the sidewalk with what he hoped looked like controlled eagerness.

An unusual number of soldiers and police constables mingled with the brightly robed figures who were passing by. A beggar with shriveled arms stopped at his table with his outstretched hands. Nick shook his head sternly and turned his face away. The man whined and shuffled off.

At a few seconds before ten past twelve a tall man with hunched shoulders walked slowly past the café and turned back. He ignored the one free table and came over to Nick in a curious sideways shamble, and the face that darted about suspiciously was one that would have been conspicuous for its villainy even in an Arab bazaar. The cast in his eye, the cruelly curved thin lips and the dingy, pitted skin all added up to a picture of unbelievable malevolence.

He sidled closer to Nick.

“Feelthy pictures?” he hissed.

“Later, perhaps,” Nick muttered. “Got anything else?”

“A question. You are Carter?” One surprisingly limpid eye stared down at Nick. The other went off on a trip of its own.

“Uh-huh. You have a message?”

The newcomer nodded. “From Cousin Abe.” He glanced around furtively. “Are we alone?”

“We are surrounded. Sit down and hiss me a message of great import, stopping only to demand money in the middle of it. But tell me first what I can call you.”

“You can call me Hakim, because that is my name. And you will have to plot the moves for me because I am new at this sort of thing.”

He pulled up a chair and sat down close to Nick, contriving by his manner to suggest some hideous conspiracy. The back of his head faced the watcher in the cafe. His unmatched eyes struggled valiantly to peer at Nick.

“I have been sent by my superiors to bring you news that the enemy would give their balls to hear,” he said darkly. “But I am not a ball-collector and therefore I have come to you. You must understand, though, that the information has great value. I cannot speak until I have your promise to pay my price.” He leered horribly at Nick.

Nick frowned and shook his head.

“I refuse to be intimidated,” he said coldly. “You may frighten me to death with that ferocious leer, but your demands will get you nowhere. My Government has instructed me to lose my virtue rather than their money.”

“Then buy me a drink, at least,” Hakim said threateningly.

“I do not buy drinks for informers,” Nick answered stuffily.

Hakim pushed back his chair. “I do not inform unless I drink.”

“All right, all right, stay where you are. Why didn’t Abe warn me you’re a blackmailer?” Nick signaled a waiter. “Better order for yourself. I’d feel shy, asking them for human blood.”

Hakim ordered a double shot of an ill-reputed local painkiller.

“I hate the stuff,” he confided after the waiter had looked at him with loathing and gone back to the bar. “But I feel it fits the part.”

“What do you actually do for a living?” Nick asked curiously.

“How nice of you to put it that way. Many people ask me — ‘What did you do when you were alive?’ Unkind, are they not? I teach. In fact, I am a professor at the University of Cairo, God help them.”

“What do you teach? Medieval Eastern Torture?”

The incredible face split into an even more incredibly attractive grin. “I call my course The Seven Lively Arts.”

His drink came. Hakim threw back his head and swallowed.

“Now the message?” he asked, his shoulders hunching suggestively.

“Now the message,” Nick agreed.

Hakim talked. His eyes flickered off in impossible directions and his evil-looking head bent low like a striking snake. Beyond him, in the café, the man with the froggy lids fidgeted impatiently. Hakim talked of his long friendship with Abe Jefferson and of the promising students in his course — all the while hissing and crooning in an astonishingly evil way that gave the impression of a grasping man acting as a go-between for two extremely important principals. It was a masterly performance.

Nick cut him off at last.

“That’ll do it. Now I have a message for you. First, though — I gather you can handle a tail. Are you willing to do it now? I warn you, it may be dangerous.”

The awful eyes rolled lasciviously. “Time now for feelthy pictures?”

“Enough, Hakim.” Nick kept himself from grinning. “Keep ’em for Cairo. This one is a little green-faced man, watching us right now. He’s inside going crazy because he couldn’t listen. Five foot six, globs for eyes with shutters over them, slightly handsomer than you but somehow much more horrible...”

“Unbelievable,” hissed Hakim.

“Yeah, you’d think so. Now he may want to follow me, but I don’t think so because he knows where he can find me. I want to follow him. So I give myself an opportunity. You. And I give him a reason, in case he doesn’t already think he has one. I give you a message to take back. Take back where, I don’t care. Shake him as soon as you can.”

Hakim cocked his head over one hunched shoulder while Nick reached into his pocket and drew out an envelope that contained nothing but a blank sheet of paper.

“Invisible writing?” Hakim suggested helpfully.

“Of course,” Nick agreed. “A new, permanent process. I will now add something to it.”

He wrote swiftly, inscribing a meaningless message in a meaningless cipher on the innocent sheet of paper.

“I feel something slimy on the back of my neck,” Hakim murmured. “Is that the way it feels when he watches?”

Nick folded the paper and put it back in the envelope. He sealed it decisively and thrust it at Hakim.

“Be sure not to guard this with your life,” he said. “Yes, that’s the way it feels when he watches. And I thought I was being over-sensitive.”

“Sickening,” said Hakim, putting the envelope into his pocket. “I’ve felt this way only once before. And the fellow who was watching then turned out to be slightly more revolting than Jack the Ripper. He went for little boys.”

Nick stared at him, surprised that anyone else could share his own inexplicable revulsion without even having seen the man they both meant.

“Well, we’re not little boys. How long are you free from the University?”

“One week,” Hakim answered. “If you’re thinking of asking me to join you again in something like this, the answer is yes.”

“Thanks,” said Nick. “I was. I’ll check with cousin Abe. Now get lost. Literally.”

Hakim pushed back his chair. “You don’t think you should give me money?”

“I do not,” Nick said firmly. “You might keep it, for one thing. For another, I don’t want to get you mugged for money. Let’s not cloud the issue. Go lose yourself. I have dates for this afternoon.”

“A pox on you and all your dates,” Hakim growled sullenly, pushing back his chair. “Thank you for your lousy drink.”

He sidled away without a backward glance. Nick watched him for a moment with apparent distaste and then let himself sink deep into thought.

When the man who made snakes slither down Nick’s spine sauntered on to the sidewalk and strolled off after Hakim, Nick was staring thoughtfully into space and drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Nick let him walk as far as the crosswalk before he placed a bill and some change on the table and slowly started after him.

Nick crossed to the far side of the street and paused for a moment at the window of a curio shop. Hakim’s tall figure was two blocks away and moving with surprising speed in spite of the shambling gait. His follower stayed well behind him. But the man’s short legs made sudden little toddling movements as if he had underestimated Hakim’s walking pace and had to hurry to keep him in sight.

When Nick moved away from the curio shop window, a tall, coal-black man on the café side of the street matched his movements and glided along the opposite sidewalk with aloof dignity. Nick stopped on the corner to buy a paper from a newsboy. Hakim had gained a block and the short man was holding his distance behind him. The tall black man, in filmy cloak and full trousers pinched at the ankle, stopped on his corner and waited for nothing in particular. Nick walked on. So did the man in the cloak.

It could be coincidence.

Nick looked at his watch and increased his speed. Two minutes later he was crossing a small square only yards behind the green-faced man. He lost Hakim momentarily but saw him again beyond the trees. The man in the cloak was closing in.

Hakim sauntered into a narrow street and turned into one that was even narrower. Here were lowslung dwelling places with huge brass doorknobs that had once been a symbol of status but were now covered with grime and neglect. Narrow steps led down into dim little basement-level shops smelling of old leather and overripe fruit. The cobbled road curved crazily and Nick paused to let the man with the green face get ahead. The cloaked black man passed him and stopped to peer into a window that had nothing in it but a dying potted plant.

Nick moved. He moved. It was not coincidence.

Both Hakim and his follower were out of sight. Nick rounded the curve and walked rapidly down an uneven slope. Once-white steps led up on one side to houses that desperately needed a coat of paint and down on the other to ramshackle wooden buildings that looked like abandoned storehouses.

The man with the sick green face was standing in the middle of a narrow footpath with his hands dangling at his sides. Even from the back he looked puzzled and betrayed. Hakim was nowhere in sight.

His disappearance was as skillfully contrived as his appearance. And even more astonishing.

Nick shot a sideways glance at his own black shadow and decided that the time had come to say goodbye. And he was adept in the art of vanishing, himself. The cloaked man gave him just the fraction of time he needed by stopping like a statue and staring at Green Face, who obligingly gave him something to look at by stamping his foot down on the half-paved path and swaying like a man with fever. Nick glided quietly into a doorway and turned a knob that yielded to his touch. He was not worried about finding the battered building occupied; he knew with cynical certainty that in this forlorn part of town he would be able to buy his way in or out of anything.

The room smelled vile. A snoring man lay on a pile of newspapers in the corner and told the world through his nostrils that he didn’t give a damn who came or went or lived or died. A rickety ladder led upstairs to a loft. Nick took the steps quickly, still ready with explanations and defenses. But the loft had long ago been abandoned to the mice.

He looked through the grimy broken window at the scene below. A donkey cart was making its thoughtful way down the lopsided slope, its driver nodding sleepily in the noonday sun. The man with the green face had recovered himself and was walking purposefully along the shack-lined footpath (where Hakim had somehow staged his disappearing act) looking into every impossible little nook and cranny. The black man with the cloak had walked back to the curve of the cobbled road and was looking around wildly as if his pocket had been picked. Then he came back down the slope and peered anxiously along Green Face’s footpath. Green Face was temporarily out of sight, but Nick could predict where he would reappear. The Cloak started along the footpath.

Nick whistled shrilly. The Cloak froze in his tracks. Nick whistled again, urgently. The tall African swung around and started walking slowly toward Nick’s hiding place. Nick kept on encouraging him with urgent little whistles. In the distance he watched Green Face emerge from an alley and walk on. Down below, the African ambled cautiously up to the doorway Nick had entered moments before.

Now! thought Nick, and raised his cane. Damn, the angle was too sharp. The African disappeared from his view and the door below Nick opened.

He was waiting at the opening of the loft even before the African took his first cautious step into the room. When the flowing white cloak came into view, Nick aimed his unfamiliar new weapon and fired.

The man in the cloak gave a yelp of pain and clutched his shoulder. He swayed for a moment, his face contorted more with surprise than pain. And then he dropped.

Nick looked out of the broken window. Green Face was coming back.