The Omega Terror

THREE

Iberia Airlines flight 541 arrived in Tangier late the next morning. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I noticed that it was warmer than in Madrid. The air terminal was a fairly modern one, and the uniformed Moroccan girls at the desks were friendly. There was a reservation booth for hotels, and I arranged for a room at the Velasquez Palace, in the French Quarter.

On the balmy ride into town, along a tree-lined but dusty road, I reflected on the note I had found in my room. Did the Russians leave it to let me know they were on AXE’s trail? Or was it a message from the Chicoms? Maybe, the Chinese L5 had gotten wind of AXE’s renewed interest in the Omega experiments, and an agent was trying to frighten us off until Zeno got his report to Peking.

The Velasquez Palace sat on a hill overlooking the harbor and Straits of Gibraltar and the med-ina section of Tangier, with its crammed-together ancient buildings and narrow streets. Tangier was a sparkling white-washed city set against the greenery of the hills behind it and the cobalt blue of the Straits. It had been a center of trade for over a thousand years, the meeting place of European and Asian commerce where Berbers and Bedouins mixed with merchants from every corner of the world. Smuggling and shady deals had flourished in the narrow streets of the medina and casbah until new laws were passed just after the Second World War.

When I called Delacroix from my hotel room, a young woman answered. The voice was filled with emotion as soon as I asked for André Delacroix.

“This is his real estate agent?” she asked, using the identification code that Delacroix had been given.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said.

There was a short pause. “My uncle has met with an accident. Perhaps we can meet to discuss the matters you wanted to take up with him.”

That was one of the problems with this kind of work. No matter how carefully you planned, an unknown factor was always being thrown at you. I hesitated before I spoke.

“Mr. Delacroix is unable to see me?” I asked.

Her voice was trembling slightly. “Quite un-able.” She spoke with a French accent.

“All right. Where would you like to meet to discuss the matter?”

Another slight pause. “Meet me at the Cafe Tingis, in the medina. I will be wearing a green dress. Can you be there by noon?”

“Yes, noon,” I said.

And then the phone was dead.

As I left my European-style hotel, a boy in a beige djellaba and a brown fez tried to sell me a taxi tour, which I declined. I walked along the Rue Velasquez to the Boulevard Pasteur and made a right to the Place de France. A couple of blocks later I entered the medina through an ancient archway.

As soon as you step into the medina you sense the chaos. The narrow streets are crowded with robed Moroccans. It is all winding streets and overhanging balconies and dark doorways leading to shops that sell brass and leather goods of all kinds of exotic things. As I moved along toward the Little Socco, oriental music assailed my ears from a shop somehwere, and strange but fascinating odors reached my nostrils. Veiled women wearing gray kaftans stood and spoke together in hushed whispers, and two American hippies stood in front of a dilapidated hotel, arguing with the proprietor about the cost of the room.

The Cafe Tingis sat at the end of the Little Socco. It was a large place inside, but nobody ever sat there except Moroccans. Outside on the sidewalk were tables with a wrought-iron railing in front of them to separate the patrons from the masses of humanity.

I found Delacroix’s niece seated at a table next to the railing. She had long straight, flaming red hair and wore a green dress that showed plenty of long white thigh. But she seemed completely un-aware of how beautiful she looked. Her face was tense with worry and fear.

“Gabrielle Delacroix?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, relief starting to show on her face. “And you are the Mr. Carter that my uncle was supposed to meet?”

“That’s right.”

When the waiter came, Gabrielle ordered a Moroccan mint tea, and I ordered a coffee. After he was gone, she turned large green eyes on me.

“My uncle is — dead,” she said.

I had guessed as much from the way she talked on the phone. But hearing her say it gave me a small empty feeling in my chest. I did not speak for a moment.

“They killed him,” she said, tears forming in her eyes.

Hearing the grief in her voice I stopped feeling sorry for myself and tried to comfort her. Placing my hand on hers, I said, “I’m sorry.”

“We were quite close,” she told me, dabbing at her eyes with a small lace handkerchief. “He came to see me regularly after my father died and I was all alone.”

“When did it happen?” I asked.

“A couple of days ago. He was buried earlier this morning. The police think the killer was a burglar.”

“Did you tell them otherwise?”

“No. I decided to do nothing until you tried to contact him. He told me about AXE and a little about the Omega project”

“You’ve done the right thing,” I told her.

She tried a smile.

“How did it — happen?” I asked.

She looked past me into the square toward the Cafe Fuentes and the Boissons Scheherazade. “They found him alone at my apartment. They shot him, Mr. Carter. Over and over.” She looked down at the small table between us. “Je ne comprends pas.”

“Don’t try to understand,” I said. “You’re not dealing with rational men.”

The waiter came with our drinks, and I gave him some dirhams. Gabrielle said “Mr. Carter” again, and I asked her to call me Nick.

“I don’t know how they found him, Nick. He seldom left the apartment.”

“They have ways. Have you noticed anyone hanging around your place since your uncle’s death?”

She made a little grimace. “I was sure somebody was following me when I went to police headquarters. But it’s probably my imagination.”

“I hope so,” I murmured. “Look, Gabrielle, did André tell you anything specific about the place where he worked?”

“He mentioned some names. Damon Zeno. Li Yuen. I have never seen him in such a state. He was afraid but not for himself. This Omega thing they are working on there, I think that’s what frightened him.”

“I can well imagine,” I said. I sipped the thick coffee, and it was terrible. “Gabrielle, did your uncle ever mention anything about the location of the lab to you?”

She shook her head. “He flew here from Zagora, but that is not where the facility is located. It is near a small village down closer to the Algerian border. He did not mention its name to me. I suspect he did not want me to know anything that could be dangerous.”

“A smart man, your uncle.” I stared out across the square to the Bazar Rif, trying to recall the names of villages along the border in that area. A caramel-faced Moroccan wearing a knit cap passed, pushing a handcart of luggage and followed by a sweating, red-faced tourist. “Is there anybody else around here that André might have confided in?”

She thought a moment. “There is Georges Pierrot.”

“Who is he?”

“A colleague of my uncle, a Belgian like us. They were school friends in Brussels. Uncle André visited him just days before his death, after he had made his escape from the research facility. It was about the same time that he spoke to Colin Pryor.”

Colin Pryor was the man from DI5, formerly MIS, that Delacroix had contacted in Tangier to get to AXE. But AXE knew everything that Pryor knew, and that did not include the location of the facility.

“Does Pierrot live here in Tangier?” I asked.

“Not far away, in a mountain town called Tetuãn. You can get there by bus or taxi.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. If Delacroix had gone to see Pierrot in the short time he was in this area, he might have told him pertinent things. “I’ll have to go see Pierrot.”

Gabrielle reached over and put her hand on mine. “I’m very grateful that you are here.”

I smiled. “Until this is over, Gabrielle, I want you to be extremely careful Call me if you see anything suspicious.”

“I will, Nick.”

“Do you work in Tangier?”

“Yes, at the Boutique Parisienne, on Boulevard Mohammed V.”

“Well, go to work every day as you normally would, and try not to think about your uncle. It’s the best thing for you and if anybody is watching you, it may lead them to believe that you are not suspicious about your uncle’s death. I’ll contact you after I’ve spoken with Pierrot.”

“I will be looking forward to it,” Gabrielle said.

She was not the only one who would anticipate the next meeting with pleasure.

That afternoon I walked down to the bus station and found out that it took over twice as long to get to Tetuãn by bus as by taxi, but I decided to go at least one way by bus because it would be less conspicuous. I was told to arrive at the station early the following morning to catch the Tetuãn bus at 6:30. The tickets could not be purchased in advance.

That evening I placed a call to Colin Pryor, the DI5 agent. There was no answer, even though the operator let the phone ring a number of times. I remembered that there was a recently established drop site in the newer part of town, and around mid-evening I walked over there and checked it, out. There was no message.

I didn’t like it. Delacroix dead, Pryor not available — I was beginning to smell a rat. And then, as is too frequently the case, something happened to confirm my suspicions. I was making my way back to the hotel, walking along a dark street with almost no pedestrian traffic. It was an area of new construction where shops were going into renovated buildings. Not ten seconds after I had passed a dark alleyway, I heard a sound behind me. I ducked low as I spun on my heel, and a silenced shot thumped in the blackness.

The slug from the gun dug into the brick of the building near my head and zinged off into the night. Just as I drew Wilhelmina, I saw the shadowy figure move quickly into the alleyway.

I ran back to the alley and peered down its black length. The man was not in sight. The alley was a short one and opened onto an interior court.

I started into it but stopped short. It was a kind of parking lot for several buildings. At the moment it was full of heavy equipment, including a big crane with a demolition ball on the end of a long cable. The crane looked American-made.

A wall of one building to my left had been partially torn down, and there was a lot of rubble around. The shadowy figure was nowhere in sight. But I felt he was there somewhere, hiding in the rubble or equipment, just waiting for a second, better opportunity to get me.

Everything was deadly quiet. My eyes swept over the black hulks of heavy machinery as I moved past them, but I saw no human shape. It was possible that my assailant had gone into the rubble of the damaged building. I went slowly toward the demolished wall, watching my footing carefully.

Suddenly I heard the engine break the silence with its rumbling roar. I whirled around quickly, at first unable to tell which piece of equipment the sound was coming from. Then I saw the boom of the crane move and the enormous iron ball raise slowly off the ground. Blinded by the crane’s headlights, I squinted at the cab of the machine and could just barely make out a dark figure in there.

It was a clever idea. The crane stood between me and the alley exit, and I was trapped in a corner of the building complex with no place to hide. I moved along a back wall, holding the Luger ready.

I aimed toward the cab of the crane, but the ball was between the cab and me and was swinging toward me. It came with surprising swiftness and seemed as big as the crane itself when it arrived. It was between two and three feet in diameter and had the speed of a small locomotive. I dived headlong into the rubble, and the ball swung past my head and crashed into a wall behind me. Glass shattered and stone and brick crumbled as the metal ball demolished a section of the wall. Then the boom of the crane was pulling the ball back for another try.

The ball had missed me by inches. I reholstered Wilhelmina and clambered out of the rubble, spit-ting dust and swearing to myself. I had to get around that damned crane somehow, or I would be smashed like a bug on a windshield.

I ran to my left, toward the corner away from the crane. The big ball swung after me again, and the operator’s timing was almost perfect. I saw the black, round mass rushing toward me like a giant meteor. I threw myself to the ground again but felt the massive sphere graze my back as I went down. It crashed loudly on the wall behind me, rending and tearing metal, brick, and mortar. A couple of windows popped open in the building at the right of the court, and I heard a loud exclamation in Arabic. Apparently there were people still living in that building, despite the demolition on the far side of the court.

The man in the crane ignored the shouts. The engine thudded purposefully on, and the ball swung back to strike out a third time. I struggled to my feet and continued toward the far wall. Again the ball came, black and silent, and this time I stumbled over a piece of broken concrete just as I was about to make my attempt to avoid the round hulk. I was thrown off balance for just a split second before I could dive away from the ball, and when it came I had not quite gotten out of its way. It grazed my shoulder as it went past, throwing me violently to the ground, as if I were a cardboard doll. I hit the rubble hard and was dazed for a moment. I heard the crane operating again, and when I looked up, the ball was poised about ten feet above my chest.

Then it dropped.

The thought of being mashed on that broken pavement by that descending spherical terror galvanized me into action. As the ball plummeted out of the night at me, I made a frenzied roll to my left. There was an ear-splitting crash beside my head as the ball hit and debris rained around me, but the ball had missed.

The man in the crane apparently could not see that he had not hit me because he descended cautiously from the cab as the dust cleared. I grabbed a hunk of broken wood and lay very still as he approached. The engine was still throbbing behind him. He had raised the ball up about six feet, and it hung in mid-air. More windows had been opened in the building and there was the sound of many excited voices.

My assailant was standing over me. I swung the piece of wood at his knees. It connected solidly with his kneecaps, and he yelled aloud and slumped to the ground. He was a big, ugly Moroccan. Covered with dust and dirt, I leaped up and onto him. He met my attack, and we rolled on the ground to a spot under the big metal ball. I saw the ball slip down six inches, and I swallowed hard. He had not quite gotten the pulley apparatus into gear before he left the cab of the crane.

I rolled quickly out from under the ball, the other man with me, hitting at my face with a big heavy fist. Then he was on top of me and had a good hold on my neck. His viselike grip closed, and he was cutting off my wind. He had more energy left than I, and his hands felt like steel bands around my throat.

I had to get him off or suffocate. I jabbed stiff fingers into a kidney, and his grip loosened some. With a violent movement, I managed to jam a knee into his groin. The grip on me was lost, and I sucked in a big lungful of air as I shoved the Moroccan off.

I grabbed at my stiletto, which I called Hugo, but was never able to bring it into play. Just as the big man hit the ground the ball jerked again and fell on him.

There was a dull crunch as the ball hit his chest. The dust cleared quickly, and I saw that he had been cut almost in half, his body mashed by the ball.

I struggled to ray feet and heard someone say something about the police.

Yes, there would be police. And they would find me there if I did not move fast. I sheathed Hugo and, with one last look at the dead man, left the scene.