“Morning, or afternoon, and what day?" I put the question to Sheikh el Atassi.
"If the Jirgha was to be the meeting place, morning. It would not be open in the afternoon. Also, I think it a good surmise that our assailant was to have reported to whoever hired him following the attack. Therefore, tonight -- or, rather, early tomorrow morning-—would seem a logical time. Probably he had been paid something in advance to kill me, and was to pick up the balance at the Jirgha after the job was done. If we go there at the appointed time, we should be able to determine who employed the Hindu dung to murder me."
“Sounds like a good bet," I agreed.
So, promptly at one a.m., Sheikh el Atassi and I arrived at the Cafe Jirgha. It was a dive, small, dimly lit, and smoke-filled. We stood off to one side of the entry-way and studied the occupants. Suddenly, I felt Sheikh el Atassi stiffen beside me. I looked at his face. It was a study in hatred and the desire for quick vengeance.
“What is it?" I asked.
“Mustafa Ben Narouz! The friend of my youth! My adopted brother!" He pointed to a tall, good-looking young Egyptian sitting alone at a table toward the rear of the nitery. He was set apart from the other patrons by the well-tailored, typically European business suit he wore. The fingers of one hand drumming the table, while the other stroked his carefully clipped moustache, gave away his impatience. He looked like a man who was waiting for someone and getting annoyed because that someone hadn’t materialized.
"So it was really he who arranged for my death," Sheikh el Atassi said bitterly.
“But why?"
“I had served my purpose. I could be of no further use to him. And now I was somehow getting in his way, probably because I was asking questions he did not wish answered. I don't understand fully what his reasons are. But I do understand that I have been betrayed. That is enough. For that there is swift justice. Come." He turned sharp on his heel and led me out of the Cafe Jirgha to the limousine which had been standing by for us.
The sheikh took the seat by the window facing the entrance of the night spot. He pulled out a revolver and checked it carefully. Then he opened the window and sat back to wait.
“Don't kill him now," I said.
“Why not?”
“Because he's the only one who can lead me to Anna Kirkov. If you kill him now, the trail we've picked up becomes a dead end."
"That is of no importance to me. If I don't kill him, who knows when he will arrange to have me slain? It is a matter of survival. One of us must die and I prefer it to be him."
"Understandably. However, I must ask you not to do it. You said earlier that you would do anything to show your gratitude for my saving your life. If you meant that, I must tell you that you can best show it by not killing Ben Narouz before he has led us to the Russian girl."
“Very well, Mr. Victor. I am a man of honor. It shall be as you wish." He put the gun away. “I presume you wish to follow him when he emerges?”
“Yes.”
“Then we shall do so."
Less than an hour later Ben Narouz emerged and climbed behind the wheel of a jazzy sports car. We tailed him through the narrow streets of Karachi until he reached the outskirts of the city. Here he got onto a surprisingly modern highway and stepped on the gas. Headlights out, we stayed behind him.
After about twenty minutes of this, the intercom buzzed, signifying that the chauffeur had something to communicate to Sheikh el Atassi. The sheikh picked up the earphone, listened, murmured something into the mouthpiece and hung up. “He wishes to warn us that we are proceeding into very dangerous territory,” the sheikh told me. "I instructed him to proceed anyway.”
“Dangerous how?"
“There is a band of Sikh terrorists in these hills who prey on the Moslem natives. Recently, some of the young Moslems have formed themselves into a sort of vigilante band to combat them. The two groups have been fighting pitched battles. Also, the Moslem band has proven just as apt to attack and rob traveling strangers as the Sikhs. This is indeed dangerous country Ben Narouz has chosen to transverse in the middle of the night; “
“Well isn't that just ginger-peachy?" I said wryly. As if things weren't complicated enough!"
But I didn't know just how complicated they could get. About ten minutes later I got a hint of the potential. The buzzer sounded again and Sheikh el Atassi answered it.
“The driver tells me we are being followed," he announced calmly after he'd hung up. “He advises that if we watch carefully after we go around this next hairpin turn we will be able to see the vehicle following us on the road below."
We followed the driver's advice. We looked.
"I'll be damned!" The words exploded in surprise from my lips. There was a car following us all right. But that wasn’t all. There was also a car cautiously tailing the car that was following us! Now there were four of us sled-dogging, up the winding highway, with all but the lead dog hanging back with headlights out and trying not to be noticed! “Everybody loves a parade," I started to add philosophically. But before I could finish the sentence, the night was exploding with bullets all around us.
Crackling volleys of rifle fire were followed by the chatter of at least two machine guns. The sounds were coming both from up in front -- from the hills on both sides of the patch of road Ben Narouz had reached-—and from behind the fourth car in our little parade. My guess, confirmed later, was that the Sikhs had let all four of us drive into the ambush and were now closing in on us.
A roadblock in front of him forced Ben Narouz from the road. He had no choice but to drive his sports car off to a field where the hills gave way to flat ground. This too, I suspected, had been planned in advance. Especially since we had no choice but to follow him.
Ben Narouz leaped from his sports car, gun in hand, and took shelter underneath it. It seemed a good idea, and as our limousine braked to a halt, I reached for the door, bent on following his example. Sheikh el Atassi stopped me.
"We're safer inside," he told me. “This car is completely bulletproof."
“Looks like we've got a ringside seat," I said, sitting back. The third and fourth cars were pulling onto the field now and soon people were tumbling out of them and diving for shelter underneath them. Figures with guns appeared around the fringes of the field and started closing in on the four vehicles.
“Sikh terrorists.” Sheikh el Atassi identified them as they drew closer. “Be prepared to battle, Mr. Victor. It will be better to die fighting them off than to be taken prisoner. Torture is a great sport to them. It can go on for days before the release of death."
“Cheerful alternatives." I checked my pistol. From under the other cars, a flurry of bullets was already flying back at the Sikhs.
This defense couldn't have been effective in the long run, but as things turned out, it lasted just long enough to change all our prospects for living through the ambush. Suddenly, from behind the Sikhs came a heavy volley of fire and they were forced to regroup to meet it.
“Ah,” said the sheikh, “the Moslems!"
“That’s a stroke of luck."
“You are optimistic, Mr. Victor. Actually, we will fare no better at their hands than we would with the Sikhs.” He picked up a pair of field glasses and zero’d in on the heat of the battle. "But wait a moment! What is this?" he exclaimed.
“Let me see." He passed me the glasses. The Sikhs and Moslems were tangling in hand-to-hand fighting on one side of the field. The rest of the battle was a swapping of sniper shots between them. I raised the glasses and saw what it was that had so startled the sheikh. Down the road from which we'd come, a large truck was parked. The tailgate had been lowered to provide a ramp of the sort used on tank-carriers. And an armored tank was indeed rolling up the road toward the battle. "Chinese," I told the sheikh positively.