The Omega Terror

FOUR

“André Delacroix? Yes, of course I knew him. We were close friends. Please step into the library with me, Mr. Carter.”

I followed Georges Pierrot into a comfortable, small room of his Moorish-style home. The room was all books and ornate carpet and wall maps of various areas of Africa. Pierrot had carved out quite a niche for himself in Morocco. He was a chemical engineer for a private industrial firm in Tetu&n.

“May I offer you a drink?” Pierrot asked.

“I’ll take a glass of brandy if you have any.”

“Of course,” he said. He went to a built-in bar on one wall, opened carved doors, and withdrew two bottles. Georges Pierrot was a small man in his mid-fifties with the look of a French university professor. His face was triangular with a goatee on the end of it, and he wore spectacles that kept slipping down on his nose. His dark hair was streaked with gray.

Pierrot handed me a glass of brandy and kept a Pernod for himself. “Were you also a friend of André?”

Since Pierrot was close to Delacroix, I answered, with at least some of the truth: “I’m the help he was looking for.”

His eyes studied me more carefully. “Ah, I see.” He looked down at the floor. “Poor André. All be wanted was to do good. He was a very dedicated man.” Pierrot spoke with a heavy French accent.

We had seated ourselves on a soft leather sofa. I sipped at the brandy and let it warm my insides. “Did André discuss the facility with you?” I asked.

He shrugged thin shoulders. “He had to talk to somebody. There is his niece, of course, a lovely girl, but he seemed to feel the need to confide in another man. He was here less than a week ago, and he was very upset.”

“About the experiments at the lab?”

“Yes, he was quite despondent about them. And, of course, he barely escaped from there with his life. They knew he was suspicious of what was going on, so when he tried to leave one night, they followed him with guards and dogs. They shot at him in the darkness, but he got away — only to have them find him in Tangier.” Pierrot shook his head slowly.

“What else did he tell you when he came here?” I asked.

Pierrot looked up at me tiredly. “Not a great deal. Probably nothing you do not already know. That the Chinese were working on a terrible biological weapon and that they had moved the laboratory to this country recently to conclude their experiments. He admitted to me that he was working with the Americans to keep a watch on the project. I am sorry if it was wrong of him to speak so openly, but as I said, he felt the need to talk to somebody.”

“Yes, of course.” It was one of the troubles with depending on amateurs.

“Did he mention the location of the laboratory to you?” I probed on.

Pierrot paused a moment. “He did not speak of the exact location, Monsieur Carter. But he mentioned that the facility was close to a village down near the Algerian border. Let me think.”

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, pushing the spectacles down farther, and closed his eyes in concentration. “It was — the one south of Tamegroute — it begins with an ‘M.’ Mhamid. Yes, Mhamid, that is the village he mentioned.”

I made a mental note. “And that’s down near the border?”

“Yes, on the other side of the Atlas Mountains, in dry, arid country. There is almost no civilization there, monsieur. It is the edge of the desert.”

“A well-chosen spot,” I mused. “Did André describe the personnel of the facility to you?”

“Only briefly. He told me of an American scien-tist”

“Zeno,” I said.

“Yes, that is the name. And, of course, the Chinese who is the administrator of the facility. Li Yuen, I believe he said the name was.”

I sipped some more brandy. “Did André talk of Li Yuen’s personal ties to Moroccan generals?”

Pierrot’s face lit up. “Yes, he did.” He looked around the room conspiratorially as if there might be someone lurking behind the draperies. “There are two names André spoke of, men he saw at the facility, conferring with Li Yuen.”

“Who are they?”

“I remember both names because they were in the news here fairly recently. You will remember the uprising of the generals? The coup was put down by King Hassan in a bloody reprisal. The two military men that André saw were among the ones accused at first, but later they were cleared. Many believe that they were the real leaders of the coup and that they are even now waiting their chance to make another attempt to overthrow the Moroccan government and establish a leftist regime. They are General Djenina and General Abdallah,” Pierrot said. “It is believed that Djenina is the leader.”

“So Djenina promised protection to the laboratory for a limited period,” I guessed aloud, “in return for financial backing from the Chinese for a second and more efficient coup.”

I still had to have a better description of the location of the facility. I could not go down to the border and roam around in the desert for a week trying to find the lab. By then it might be too late.

General Djenina knew where it was located. And if he was like most army men, he had a written record of it hidden away somewhere.

“Where is this Djenina now?” I asked.

Pierrot shrugged. “He commands an imperial army in this area and has his headquarters in Fez. But I have no idea where he makes his home. It would undoubtedly be near Fez.”

“And it’s his home where he would keep anything important, away from official eyes,” I said. I set the brandy glass down and stood up. “Well, I want to thank you for your cooperation, Monsieur Pierrot.”

Pierrot rose to see me to the door. “If you are going to Ibn Djenina,” he said, “you had best take care. He is a ruthless, dangerous man who wants to be dictator of this country.”

I extended my hand to the Belgian, and he took it. “I promise to be careful,” I said.

As soon as I got back to Tangier, I went to the Velasquez Palace to clean up and make another call to Colin Pryor. When I entered my room, I stopped short.

The place was a mess. My one piece of luggage was open, and the contents were strewn all over the floor. The bedding was in shreds and the drawers of the chest had been pulled out and flung across the room. It seemed someone wanted to know how much information I had at this point and thought my belongings might tell him. But the action was also a terror tactic, a show of muscle. When I went into the bathroom, I found another note, in the same scrawl as in Madrid, this time taped to the glass of the mirror over the washbowl. It said:

You’ve been warned. The girl is next. Read tomorrow’s newspapers to her.

I didn’t understand the last part. I stuck the note into my pocket, went to the phone and called Pryor. This time I got him. His accent was distinctly British.

“Good to hear from you, chappie,” he said when I had identified myself to him in code.

“Same here. I’m seeing the sights. How about taking them in with me tonight? We could meet around 11:00.”

“Sounds good. I have to stop to see a friend first, but I can meet you after that.”

“Right. See you later.”

I hung up after we’d arranged to meet at a small sidewalk restaurant on Mohammed V, a site used previously by both DI5 and AXE. Then I called Gabrielle Delacroix and was relieved to find that she was all right. I asked her to join me for dinner at Detroit Restaurant, in the casbah, at eight and she agreed.

My last call was to Avis Rent-A-Car, to see whether they would be open for a while. They said they would. I took a taxi and rented a Fiat 124 convertible. The car had five forward gears as standard equipment and was just right for driving in the streets of Tangier. I drove up the hill to the casbah, through the narrow winding streets of the medina, and met Gabrielle at Detroit. The restaurant was perched atop an ancient fortress building that had been a sultan’s palace. Three walls of the dining area were glass and gave an incredible view of the Straits of Gibralter. I found Gabrielle at a window table. She was white-faced and looked very different from the way she had sounded on the phone.

I sat down at the low round table and studied her. “Is everything all right?” I asked.

“I turned on the car radio on the way here,” she said in a monotone.

“Go on.”

“There was a brief news item from Tetuãn.”

My stomach tightened automatically. “What was it, Gabrielle?”

The green eyes looked up at me. “Georges Pierrot is dead.”

I stared at her, trying to grasp what she had said. It seemed impossible. I had left him just hours ago. “How?”

“The police found him hanging from a short rope in his garage. They are calling it suicide.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I am very scared, Nick.”

Now I knew what the note had meant. I was just about to speak when the waiter came along, so I stopped and gave him our orders. Neither of us was very hungry, but I ordered two pots of Moroccan couscous with a light wine. When the waiter left, I took the note from my pocket.

“I think you ought to see this, Gabrielle,” I said, handing the paper to her. “I found it in my hotel room.”

Her eyes skipped across the message, and as they did so, a glaze of raw fear came into her eyes. She looked back at me.

“They are going to kill me too,” she said hollowly.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I assured her. “Look, I’m really sorry that you and Pierrot had to get mixed up in this. But that all happened before I got here. Now that they know about you, the only thing we can do is take special care that you don’t get hurt. You may have to move out of your apartment for a while until this blows over. I’ll register you in a hotel this evening.”

She had gotten control of herself now, and there was no more hysteria in her eyes. “My uncle fought these men because he knew they must be fought,” she said slowly. “I will not run away.”

“There’s no need for you to do any more than you’ve done already,” I told her. “I’m leaving Tangier soon to find the research lab. You’ll be alone, and the only thing you have to do is stay out of sight for a while.”

“Where is the facility?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet, but I think I know somebody who can tell me.”

We finished the meal in silence, left the restaurant, and got into my rented car. We drove through the ancient archway to the casbah, over the rough cobblestones, back down through the medina toward the French Quarter. But before we got out of the medina, we found trouble. I had been followed.

It was on a narrow, dark street, away from the shops and people. We were almost at the Old City gates when it happened. A boy came up the street from the opposite direction pulling an empty handcart, the kind used for luggage by the hotel porters. There was plenty of room for us to pass, but suddenly he veered the cart sidewise in front of us, blocking the street. Then he ran into the shadows.

I jammed on the brakes and jumped from the car to yell after the boy. In the next instant a shot barked out in the night from a nearby balcony. The slug ripped into the roof of the car beside my left arm and spent itself somewhere inside. I heard Gabrielle give a sharp little yell of fright.

I ducked to one knee, going for the Luger as my eyes sought the blackness of the balcony. I saw a shadow move. A second shot rang out and tore at the sleeve of my jacket, smashing window glass in the car beside me. I returned fire with the Luger but did not hit anything.

“Get down!” I yelled at Gabrielle.

Just as she obeyed, a shot exploded in the night from the opposite side of the street. The slug ripped through the windshield of the Fiat and missed Gabrielle’s head by inches. If she had been sitting upright, it would have killed her.

I fired back toward the sound of the shot, then swung back behind the open door of the car. I heard a voice shout loudly in Arabic, calling to someone behind us. They had laid a trap for us and had us boxed in.

“Keep down!” I yelled to the girl again. I climbed back into the driver’s seat just as another shot was fired from the balcony and shattered the glass of the driver’s window.

I crouched low on the seat, holding onto the Luger all the while, and started the car. Another shot came from the opposite side of the street, and I could see that the gunman was in a doorway. But Gabrielle was between us. I ripped the gears as I shifted into reverse, and with both of us ducked down low in the front seat, I roared backwards down the narrow street.

The figures came out of the deep shadows and fired openly at us as we moved away. Two more shots shattered the windshield as I tried to keep the car from running into a building. I reached out the vent window with the Luger and returned fire. I saw the man who had jumped from the balcony to the street go down holding his right leg.

“Look out, Nick!” Gabrielle yelled.

I turned and saw a man in the middle of the street, aiming a gun at my head through the rear window. I ducked lower as he fired and the slug shattered both the rear window and the windshield.

Then I stepped hard on the accelerator. The sports car jumped backward. The gunman tried to get out of its way, but I followed him. The car hit him with a thump, and I saw him fly over the left side of the Fiat and hit the pavement against the side of a building. We reached a small intersection, and I backed into it, then slipped the Fiat into first and shot away toward the bright lights of the French Quarter. We drove onto Rue de la Liberty, the Fiat limping on a flat tire, its glass spider-webbed with cracks and holes. I pulled over to the curb and looked at Gabrielle to see if she was all right.

“I see you came through it,” I said, giving her a reassuring grin.

I thought she would be scared speechless, considering her reaction earlier to the killing of Pierrot, but she was looking at me clear-eyed and calm.

She reached over and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. “That’s for saving my life.”

I said nothing. I got out of the battered car and went around and helped her out. Curious passersby were already pausing to look at the Fiat, and I guessed the police would be in the area very soon. I took Gabrielle’s arm and rushed her around a corner and onto the Rue Amerique du Sud. In the shadow of a sapling, I stopped and pulled her close to me.

“This is for being a good sport about everything,” I said. Then I kissed her. She responded completely, pressing her body close against me and exploring my mouth with her tongue. When it was over, she just stood there looking up at me, her breath coming shallow. “That was very nice, Nick.”

“Yes,” I said. Then I took her hand. “Come on, we have to find you a place to stay tonight.”