“Am I not helping you already?” the girl said simply. “You are no longer in the interrogation room. That is why I show you all this.”
“I’m sorry. I’m very gratefuclass="underline" I owe you much…But tell me one thing more. Will Ahmed and the other not guess that we escaped through the hinged grating and follow us? If they locked the door when they went out, there is no other way we could have gone.”
The girl shrugged. “Perhaps. You were securely tied and they probably left the door unlocked. Even if not, if they did open the grating they could never find their way through the passages, for Ahmed is not of our people and the other is a nothing. Now I will show you the rooms where the important ones, the chiefs of the organization, talk.”
And once again she led Solo down a narrow tunnel in the rock.
Some time after Illya Kuryakin had been left alone in Mazzari’s office, the general returned with two men: a short, squat army officer in uniform and a tall man in dark robes. The former was Colonel Ononu; the latter, the Russian saw to his intense surprise, was Hassan Hamid.
“Ah, Mr. Kuryakin!” the soldier said. “I did warn you of the consequences of a too inquisitive lens, did I not?”
“The Council member will be with us in a few minutes,” Mazzari said. “Until then the precise consequences of Mr. Kuryakin’s transgression cannot be arrived at.”
“What name did you say?” Hassan Hamid exclaimed. “But this is Solo—the man to whom those documents rightfully belong!”
“I have never seen this man before in my life,” Kuryakin said, looking him straight in the eye.
“What kind of joke is this? Why, you came to see me in my villa at Khartoum. I gave you the authorization myself…”
Illya shook his head slowly, his eyes wide with innocence.
“I hardly think, Excellence,” Ononu said awkwardly, “that it can be the same man. I myself saw this one, almost three days ago, in the desert of thorns—heading north in a Landrover.”
“And I had seen him cross the southern border a day before that,” Mazzari put in with a puzzled frown.
“But that is impossible. Absolutely impossible. He traveled here from Khartoum in the caravan with the decoy canister…or at least almost here. Colonel—you were with the caravan for the first two or three days: was there or was there not this spy among its members?”
“There was a spy—or so you told me,” Ononu said slowly. “But the only evidence I saw was of the radio transmissions. By the time he was caught, I had already left the caravan two days. Whereas I do know that this man was three hundred and fifty miles to the southwest when the spy tried to rejoin the train after Wadi Elmira. Also, I myself caught the man following the homing device; you yourself saw him earlier today.”
“But the papers that man had were given—”
“The photograph on them was of the other man.”
“I told you they must have been altered, forged, you fool,” Hamid said furiously. “Where is the man, the other one, now?”
“He is being interrogated, as you know.”
“Come, then—we will soon get to the bottom of this foolishness.” Hassan Hamid grasped Ononu roughly by the arm and stormed him from the room.
Illya smiled deprecatingly at Mazzari. “I was attempting to tell you, General,” he said quietly, “that I fear you and your well-trained little army are being made into dupes. The organization Thrush is making use of you to help build this arsenal—and when it is finished, you will be dispensed with. I assure you they have no intention of using these weapons to help you take Khartoum or any other city in the Sudan.”
“That is ridiculous, old chap.”
“Are you a missile expert, General?”
“No. But…”
“Then how can you explain the fact that the weapons are not short range missiles such as would be suitable for such a task, but intermediate range rockets capable of delivering atomic warheads all over Europe?”
“How can you know that? You are a photographer—”
“I must plead guilty to a little deception there, General. I am not at liberty to tell you for whom I work, but I am a missile expert—and what I tell you is the truth.” The Russian’s even voice carried conviction, and for the first time Mazzari hesitated. “Moreover,” the quiet voice continued, “if they were really going to help you conquer the Arabs of the north, would there really be such a highly placed Khartoum official working for them?”
“A Khartoum official?”
“Hassan Hamid. Do you mean you didn’t know? He’s the head of—”
“I don’t believe it,” Mazzari said blankly. “It cannot be true.
“I can prove it to you. Now.”
“I challenge you to do so, old chap.”
Kuryakin unbuttoned his shirt and reached for the money belt around his waist. From one of the pouches at the back he produced the miniature tape recorder and a pack of photographs. “These pictures show him in his official reception office in Khartoum; he said. “You can see the arms, the crest, the flag flanking the wall map…”
While Mazzari stared in disbelief at the prints, the Russian started the tiny recorder. Faintly but distinctly Hamid’s voice spoke:
“…There are one or two cutthroat bands of renegade blacks…We Muslims of the north are continually being misrepresented by the backward Negroes of the south…go tonight to the police station at this address…the necessary documents will be waiting for you…There are various charges payable to the departments…
Illya switched the machine off. “It could be faked, of course,” he said. “And so could the photos. But, taking it together with the strange confusion that appears to exist about some document signed by Hamid, I think you must agree that my warning should at least be carefully considered.”
Mazzari was still sitting thunderstruck at his desk when the door burst open and Ononu returned with Hassan Hamid. The Arab’s face was dark with anger, and Ononu looked perplexed. “The man’s gone—he has apparently escaped!” he exclaimed, snatching off his beret and slashing his thigh with it. “I don’t understand how it can have happened.”
A telephone was ringing on the desk. Mazzari picked it up and listened for a moment. “All right,” he said. “We are all here.”
He looked up as he replaced the receiver. “The Council member is on his way in,” he announced. “Perhaps he will be able to answer a few questions that badly need a reply.”
The door opened again and the three of them stood stiffly and bowed to the young man who came in.
It was Rodney Marshel.
Chapter 14
A Lady to the Rescue!
“Marshel!” Illya was on his feet, his mouth open in astonishment. “But it can’t be…surely you are not…”
“Yes, Kuryakin—I am a member of the Council of Thrush,” the young man snapped, very different now from the languid, diffident person they had seen in Khartoum. “Waverly and your poor organization don’t have a chance: we have agents everywhere; we were on to you from the moment you landed in Casablanca.”
“It seems to have taken you quite a time to catch up with us, in that case,” Illya said mildly. “Now I understand why there was no helicopter when I arrived in Stanleyville. You didn’t pass on any of the messages.”
“Of course not,” Marshel said contemptuously. “Neither yours nor any of the ones Solo so laboriously transmitted from the caravan. So far as Waverly is concerned, the last he heard from you was in Alexandria.”