“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.