“I think you’re right.” Sean said. “Let’s get down to our council of war. This not being able to contact El Hassan or find out where he is has its ramifications. Suppose that his adherents overrun Adrar before we can pull off the job? What happens to our getaway aircraft and pilots in that case?”
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Bryan growled unhappily, tamping down the tobacco in his shell briar.
Sean said, “I got a tightbeam from Saul Saidi this morning. He’s gnawing his nails about our holdup. It seems that El Hassan’s movement is spreading like a brush fire. If he manages to consolidate all of what they call Ifriqiyah before we do him in, then it might be too late. He might become a martyr and elements among his followers take over.” He dwelt upon it inwardly. “As a matter of fact, these charismatic leaders are sometimes better off dead, after a certain point. If they lived, possibly their followers would begin to detect feet of clay. But dead, nobody can say a word against them.”
“Examples?” Bryan growled.
“There’s lots of them” Sean told him. “Take Jesus. Suppose that he had lived on, instead of being crucified as a young man, so that Paul and others could defy him and knock together a viable program. Jesus, himself, never had one, or, if he did, it was evidently edited out of the gospels.”
“Why, Sean,” Meg said, twisting her mouth. “You’re absolutely blasphemous.”
Major Ryan ignored her and said, “Lenin’s another example. Suppose he had lived? Stalin and the boys must have blessed their lucky stars when he kicked off. If he hadn’t, when he did, they probably would have had to take steps to accomplish it.”
“Very well,” Raul Bazaine said impatiently. “And where do we stand now? Have we any information all aren’t acquainted with?”
Sean looked at Lon Charles. “You’ve been given the run of Tamanrasset. Have you learned anything?”
The black sergeant shook his head. “I don’t speak any of their languages, or even French. The only thing I’ve noticed that kind of set me back, is that they all seem caught up in this El Hassan idea. I’ve been in a lot of backward countries, in my time, and I found out they got one thing in common, a dislike of work.”
Meg said, “People ridden with everything from pellagra to hookworm haven’t got much energy or ambition.”
Lon looked over at her. “You’re the doc. But somehow these people are different. They’re all working like bastards. Uh, sorry…”
Meg snorted at the apology.
Sean turned his eyes to Raul Bazaine. “I noted you talking to El Hassan’s secretary. Did you pick up anything?”
The Frenchman snorted. “The little cocotte is tight-mouthed. However, perhaps she let a little something drop.”
Meg said, “That’s hardly the term to describe Miss Cunningham. I found her a cultivated, sincere and idealistic woman.”
The four men took her in, empty-faced.
But Sean said to Bazaine, “Dropped what?”
“Possibly she let slip that El Hassan and his closest aides are not in the vicinity of Tamanrasset at all but have gone off somewhere. This so-called ekhwan, the great council, they are supposedly holding, doesn’t ring true, at any rate, n’est-ce pas? How could but four men take this long to talk things over?”
Sean pursed his lips and looked unseeingly out of the side of his eyes toward the tent opening. He poured himself another slug of the cognac—which he knew he shouldn’t do—and then one each for the others.
Then he said, “I’ll be thinking that possibly fits in with something Saul Saidi told me this morning. Remember the rumors we heard in the north about some Algerian tribesman proclaiming he was a second coming of some Moslem religious figure and was being taken up by all the marabouts and so forth? His program was anti-El Hassan; in fact he was proclaiming a jehad holy war against him and had captured one of El Hassan’s closest followers.”
“That’s right,” Bryan said. “He was a Chaambra, wasn’t he? And his name was Abd, something or other.”
“Abd-el-Kader,” Bazaine said. “He’s been a minor celebrity among the Arabs and other nomads in the northwestern Sahara for some time. A real bandit before he got this religious, ah, kick as the Americans say.”
“At any rate,” Sean said. “Somehow this vizier of El Hassan has been rescued and the light of the self-proclaimed religious leader has gone out like a skyrocket.”
They all looked at him.
Sean said, “My guess is that was El Hassan and his men we passed near In Salah and that they were on their way north to confront this upstart. If so, they succeeded and it’s to be assumed that they’re on their way back.”
Bryan relit his pipe thoughtfuly and said, “If this was anything more than a guess, the thing for us to do would be to head north—there’s only one road, or what passes for a road—and intercept him somewhere along the way. In that manner we’d be up against only the four of them, not the whole of Tamanrasset and Fort Laperrine. That rescue aircraft of ours can sit down just as easily anywhere along the route as it can in this vicinity.”
“That’s the trouble,” Sean growled, wanting another drink and steeling himself against taking it. He had ruled himself onto the waterwagon as long as this assignment was underway and this was his first deviation. “It’s only an educated guess, and we can’t spare the time to drive all the way up that god-forsaken road, and then come back again if he doesn’t show. Besides, it would look suspicious to Isobel Cunningham and the rest.”
They all mulled that over awhile, without result, and then Sean turned to Megan McDaid. “Did you have any luck getting information when you volunteered your services as a doctor?”
Meg had been unhappy at the proceedings of this whole war council and now she let it come out.
She said,“I found out one thing. When we started down here I was of the opinion that El Hassan and his closest followers were all adventurers. But in talking to Isobel Cunningham, Doctor Smythe and the Vizier of Education, Peters, I reversed my engines. They’re idealists.”
Sean looked at Bryan O’Casey, holding his own peace.
Bryan stared down into the dottle of his pipe. “It’s an elastic word,” he said finally. “But they’ve evidently convinced you. However, in these things it’s difficult to tell who is in the right and who the wrong. If either side is right—or wrong. As soldiers of fortune, we are unconcerned with such matters. Let history decide which side was right and which wrong. And even history doesn’t do a very good job. If General Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the other so-called revolutionary forefathers of the United States had lost their war and been hanged how do you think history would now read? They would be considered a bunch of rebels who had revolted against their king and had come to their just desserts. We’re mercenaries, Meg. We fight for money. We’re not basically interested in who is right or who wrong.”
She looked into her lover’s eyes. “Do you really subscribe to that?”
He knocked the ash out of his pipe, momentarily considered his tobacco pouch but then returned the briar to a pocket of his bush jacket. “It’s one of the reasons I retired from the game, mavourneen. But, to raise our nestegg, I returned for one last job—the most lucrative I’ve ever been offered. And now I’ve taken his money and owe my allegiance to Saidi. It’s the code of the mercenary.”
She looked at the four men, one by one. Only Lon Charles avoided her challenging stare. She said, “So, if Hitler had hired you for some similar assignment to this, you would give me the same argument?”
Bryan said patiently, “If I had signed up with Hitler, yes. The thing is, I wouldn’t have signed up with him in the first place. Even we mercenaries do have a choice.”