Madani knew the car. Almost every city dweller of Mali knew the car and its owner, and they shrank in nervous foreboding whenever it passed. The doctor observed that the car was followed by a military ambulance and he feared a problem. He stepped forward and opened the rear door as the driver braked to a perfectly noiseless stop.
A high-ranking military officer rose from the backseat and unlimbered a lean body inside a tailor-made uniform whose creases could have cut cold butter. Unlike other African leaders who listed to port under a mass of decorated hardware, General Zateb Kazim wore only one green and gold ribbon on the breast of his army jacket. Around his head, he wore an abbreviated version of the litham, the indigo veil of the Tuaregs. His face bore the dark cocoa shade and sculpted features of a Moor, and the eyes were tiny topaz dots surrounded by oceans of white. He might have been borderline handsome if it hadn't been for his nose. Instead of being straight and even, it rounded to a point, overhanging a sparse moustache that stretched off to the sides of his cheeks.
General Zateb Kazim looked like a benign villain out of an old Warner Brothers cartoon. There was no other way to describe him.
He oozed self-importance as he pompously brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his uniform. He acknowledged Dr. Madani's presence with a slight nod.
"He is ready to be moved?" he asked in a measured tone.
"Mr. Fairweather has fully recovered from his ordeal," Madani answered, "and is under strong sedation, as you ordered."
"`He's seen and talked to no one since being carried in by the Frenchmen?"
"Fairweather has only been tended by myself and a nurse from a tribe of Tukulor who speaks only in a Fulah dialect. He's had no other contact. I also carried out your instructions and admitted him to a private room away `from the open wards. I might add that all records of his stay have been destroyed."
Kazim appeared satisfied. "Thank you, Doctor. I'm grateful for your cooperation."
"May I ask where you're taking him?"
Kazim flashed a death's head grin. "To Tebezza."
"Not that!" Madani muttered thickly. "Not the gold mines at the penal settlement of Tebezza. Only political traitors and murderers are condemned to die there. This man is a foreign national. What has he done to deserve a slow death in the mines?"
"It matters little."
"What crime has he committed?"
Kazim looked Madani up and down as if the doctor was merely an annoying insect. "Do not ask," Kazim said coldly.
A dreadful thought crossed Madani's mind. "And the Frenchmen who found Fairweather and brought him here?"
"The same fate."
"None will last more than a few weeks in the mines."
"Better than simply executing them," shrugged Kazim. "Let them work out the little time left of their pitiful lives doing something useful. A stockpile of gold is good for our economy."
"`You're a very sensible man, General," said Madan, tasting the bile of his servile words. Kazim's sadistic power as a judge, jury, and hangman was a fact of Malian life.
"I'm happy you agree, Doctor." He stared at Madani as though he was a prisoner in the dock. "In the interests of our country's security I suggest you forget Mr. Fairweather and erase all memory of his visit."
Madani nodded. "As you wish."
"May no evil befall your people and goods."
Kazim's thoughts were clear to the doctor. The words from the nomad-greeting ritual struck home. Madani had a large family. So long as he kept his silence they would live in peace. The alternative was not a vision he wished to dwell upon.
A few minutes later, an unconscious Fairweather was carried out of the hospital on a stretcher by two of Kazim's security guards and placed in the ambulance. The General gave Madani a casual salute and stepped into the Avions Voisin.
As the two vehicles moved off into the night, a chilling fear coursed through Dr. Madani's veins, and he found himself wondering what terrible tragedy he had unwillingly participated in. Then he prayed that he would never know.
In one of the mural-walled suites of the Nile Hilton, Dr. Frank Hopper listened attentively from a leather sofa. Seated in a nearby matching chair on the opposite side of a coffee table, Ismail Yerli puffed pensively on a meerschaum pipe whose bowl was carved in the likeness of the head of a turbaned sultan.
Even with the universal sounds of the busy Cairo traffic seeping in through the closed windows to the balcony Eva could not bring herself to accept the nightmare of her brush with death on the beach. Already her subconscious was blurring the memory. But Dr. Hopper's voice pulled her thoughts back to the here and now of the conference room.
"There is no doubt in your mind these men tried to kill you?"
"None," Eva answered.
"You described them as looking like black Africans," said Ismail Yerli.
Eva shook her head. "I didn't say black, only that their skin was dark. Their facial features were more sharp, more defined, like a cross between an Arab and an East Indian. The one who burned my car wore a loose-fitting tunic and a thick, intricately wrapped headdress. All I could see were his ebony eyes and a nose shaped like an eagle."
"The headdress, was it cotton and swathed about the head and chin several times?" asked Yerli.
Eva nodded. "The cloth seemed enormously long."
"What color was it?"
"A deep, almost ink blue."
"Indigo?"
"Yes," replied Eva. "Indigo sounds about right."
Ismail Yerli sat in silent contemplation for a few moments. He was the coordinator and logistics expert for the World Health Organization team. Lean and stringy, immensely efficient, and with an almost pathological love of detail, he was a smart operator with an abundance of political savvy. His home was in the Mediterranean seaport of Antalya, Turkey. He claimed Kurdish blood, having been born and raised in, the Asia Minor hinterland of Cappadocia. A lukewarm Muslim, he had not been inside a mosque in years. Like most Turks he had a massive thicket of coarse black hair complemented by bushy eyebrows that met over the nose and were supplemented by a huge moustache. He displayed a humorous disposition that never quit. His mouth was always stretched in a smile that was a decoy for an extremely serious temperament.
"Tuaregs," he said finally.
He spoke so softly that Hopper had to lean closer. "Who?" he questioned.
Yerli looked across the coffee table at the Canadian leader of the medical team. A quiet man, Hopper said little but listened long. He was, the Turk mused, the complete opposite of himself. Hopper was big, humorous, red-faced, and heavily bearded. All he needed to look like the Viking, Eric the Red, was a battle-axe and a conical helmet sunk on his head with horns curving from it. Resourceful, precise, and laid-back, he was regarded by international contamination scientists as one of the two finest toxicologists in the world.
"Tuaregs," Yerli repeated. Once the mighty nomadic warriors of the desert, who won great battles against French and Moorish armies. And perhaps the greatest of all the romantic bandits. They raid no more. Today, they raise goats and beg in the cities bordering the Sahara to survive. Unlike Arab Muslims, the men wear the veil, a cloth that when unwrapped measures over a meter in length.
"But why would a tribe of desert nomads want to do away with Eva?" asked Hopper to no one in particular. "I fail to see a motive."
Yerli shook his head vaguely. "It would seem that one of them, at least, does not want her, and-we have to heavily weigh this possibility-the rest of the health teams investigating the outbreaks of toxic poisoning in the southwestern desert."
"At this point of the project," said Hopper, "we don't even know if contamination is the culprit. The mystery malady could be viral or bacterial."
Eva nodded. "That's what Pitt suggested…"
"Who?" Hopper asked for the second time.