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  Mecca for Murder

  A Chester Drum Mystery

  Stephen Marlowe

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  Chapter One

  The minaret had Washington’s northwest skyline all to itself. Only the Monument would dwarf it, but that was to my left and behind me as I made my way through the traffic on Embassy Row. If structures of stone could, the minaret and the mosque which it topped looked lonely. They were a long way from Saudi Arabia.

  I parked, forced a nickel into an overfed meter and started across the sidewalk toward the mosque’s portico. The minaret, mosque and portico all belonged to Washington D.C.’s Islamic Center, the Near East’s answer to the U.S. Information Service. The center had a hall of worship, library, museum of fine arts, lecture halls and a potential client named Fawzia Totah. All I knew about her was that her telephone voice rendered English in crisp, unreal perfection. That and the fact that she wanted to see me. The doorman came equipped with double-breasted blue serge suit and small scarlet fez atop his sleek black hair. When he nodded at me, the tassle on the fez swung before his head like a pendulum. “Mit ahlan wa sahlan,” he said, beaming a professional benediction on me. “That means welcome a hundred times. You are barely in time for the lecture in the east wing.”

  I shook my head and told him why I had come.

  “Miss Fawzia Totah sent for you?” he said, repeating my words. He was a young fellow with very dark eyes that blinked shut and reopened slowly with a wistful look. He was seeing date palms and pomegranate seeds red as rubies, and perhaps a line from Omar. He sat down in an alcove a couple of strides from the door and dialed a PBX phone. Then he said, “Mr. Chester Drum to see you, Miss Totah.” The tassle swung in front of his forehead again. “She said run, don’t walk. If I may ask, what are you selling?”

  “Should Miss Totah be interested in something I’m selling?”

  “She’s our purchasing agent,” he said, and directed me to Miss Totah’s office.

  I set out across the tiled floor and went down a tiled corridor. Gold letters on a black plaque said the colored tiles came from Turkey. Other plaques said the carpets were from Iran, the draperies from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the chandelier in the main hall and the inlaid mother-of-pearl pulpit, which I did not get to see, from Egypt. Somehow it was like leaving the price tags on an expensive suit of clothing.

  As I wandered by the lecture hall in the east wing, I spotted a large white cardboard sign propped on an easel, the way they used to do it in vaudeville. It said someone named Azaayim Bey was lecturing on something called the Hajj. The lad at the closed double doors of the lecture hall ignored me.

  Finally, when I had begun to think I might need a passport, a very small sign pointed the way to a door which bore the legend Purchasing Agent in gold-bordered black letters on pebbled glass. I went in there.

  Fawzia Totah was a dark-haired girl a few years on the young side of thirty. Her skin was pale but her cheeks had color. She had the most unusual eyes I had ever seen, but I didn’t know quite why until I approached the desk and shook the hand she offered me. Her irises were violet. They made the difference. They turned a fairly pretty girl into a beautiful one.

  “Mr. Drum,” she said, “you don’t know what it’s been like.”

  “I got here as fast as. I could.”

  “Did you?”

  “The traffic,” I said.

  We both sat down. Miss Totah leaned across the leather surface of the desk and offered me a flattened Turkish cigarette from a box with a mother-of-pearl lid. The flattened cigarette tasted like a cigar.

  “How do you hire yourself out?” she said.

  “Depends,” I said. “What’s the trouble, Miss Totah?”

  She stood up and came around the side of the small desk. All the walking motion was confined to her hips and legs. Her torso and shoulders were perfectly still under a light summery blouse, through which you could see her slip. She walked like a professional rumba dancer. She came very close to me. I didn’t know what she wanted, but I stood up. I had to edge out of my chair sideways.

  “Am I beautiful?” she said suddenly.

  I remembered the doorman’s words. I said, “What are you selling?”

  She slapped my face, but not hard. “I buy,” she told me. “I do not sell. I never sell.”

  “Have it your way. The answer to your question is yes.” I turned around and moved toward the door. “There is no charge for this service.”

  “Wait. Did you ever hear of Mrs. Davisa Lee Tyler?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “Mrs. Tyler is a very rich, very spoiled old woman who thinks her family settled in Tidewater, Virginia, before Powhattan’s braves. She thinks I’m beautiful too, but she wants to make me ugly. Mrs. Davisa Lee Tyler has spent her whole life getting exactly what she wants. I’m frightened, Mr. Drum. I’ve never been so frightened in my life.”

  She didn’t look it, but I let that pass. I walked back to the guest chair and sat down. I said, “You’re speaking literally? This Mrs. Tyler wants to disfigure you?”

  “Her son Lyman thinks he’s in love with me. We’ve had fun together, but that’s all. Limerock’s a colonel in the United States Army, married—”

  “Limerock?” I said.

  “Lyman. Lyman Tyler. He met me in Jordan when I was a raqs-essurat. I’m not a raqs-essurat now.”

  “A raqs-essurat?”

  “A dancer of the navel. You call it belly dancer. Don’t you?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “You’re the first belly dancer I ever saw.”

  “I’m no longer a raqs-essurat,” Miss Totah said frostily, then asked abruptly, “What are your rates, Mr. Drum?”

  I told her what they were—fifty dollars a day plus expenses.

  “That’s very high. I couldn’t afford that for more than a day or so. What I wanted was a bodyguard until I leave the country. I’m starting on my Hajj next week.”

  “Are you?”

  “But I couldn’t possibly afford you for a whole week.”

  “Well, then,” I said, getting up again. This time I got my hand on the doorknob.

  “Please don’t go,” she said. I didn’t. It was probably those violet eyes. “I have a better idea, Mr. Drum.”

  “Look,” I suggested. “If this Mrs. Tyler threatened you, why don’t you call the police?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that. Azaayim Bey would never forgive me. Notoriety is the last thing anyone at the center wants.”

  “What’s your better idea?”

  “I can afford fifty dollars and one day’s expenses. I’ll pay you that if you drive down to Toano for me.”

  “That’s where the Tylers live?”

  “Yes. Tell Mrs. Tyler I won’t be seeing Limerock again. Tell her you will guard me around the clock. Tell her anything you want.”

  “But what happens if she’s already started the ball rolling? What happens tonight?”

  “Oh, I can sleep here in the center tonight. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “Then why don’t you sleep in the center every night until you go on your Hajj?”

  “Because I have things to do.”

  “Like seeing Lyman Tyler?”

  “That’s no business of yours.”

&nb
sp; “If I have to lie to Mrs. Tyler, it is.”

  “Then just tell her you’ll be my bodyguard. I can’t think of an easier way to earn fifty dollars.”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “Do you really think it will do any good?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I want you to see Mrs. Davisa Lee Tyler, so you’ll know what I’m up against. You’re like a big bear, Mr. Drum. You make me feel less afraid, just looking at you. Will you do it?”

  “No,” I said, and watched her eyes widen slightly.

  “Do you mind telling me why not? I’ll pay you.”

  “For the same reason I don’t handle divorce cases. Because Congressmen and members of the diplomatic corps pay me fat fees to do confidential investigations for them, but wouldn’t if I meddled in domestic affairs for fifty-buck retainers.”

  “But this is important to me,” Miss Totah said, her voice smoking like dry ice.

  I shook my head, got my hand on the doorknob a second time and said, “Enjoy your Hajj, Miss Totah.”

  “One doesn’t enjoy oneself on a Hajj,” she told me pedantically. Then she smiled for the first time. It surprised me and it made her very lovely. “I’ll bet you don’t even know what a Hajj is.”

  I said I did not, and Fawzia Totah suggested I find out from Azaayim Bey. I said that I would. Then she asked me if I could recommend anyone else to her and I gave her the name of an agency which did divorce and other domestic work. I opened the door.

  A crowd of American tourists was overflowing from the opened double doors of the east wing lecture hall as I went by. Up closer, there was more to the name on the easel. It was Al Hajj Azaayim Bey. The bey was just coming out through the double doors. He needed both of them to get through. He had more chins than Allah has names. You could tell it was the bey because tourists nudged him like tugboats, asking questions. He wore a flowing white khaffiya, the headpiece fastened to his skull with a pair of black leather thongs.

  I got as far as the front door. The doorman with the lamp shade was just opening it. Four big men came in, pushing him before them. Only two of them were carrying cocked pistols.

  But the other two toted cases which I was willing to bet contained grease guns.

  Chapter Two

  Later, the newspapers said that one hundred and fifty-seven American citizens were present in the Islamic Center at the time of its captivity. One of these was Chester Drum, but that you already know.

  “Please return to the east wing lecture hall,” one of the men told me. A second one took a ring of keys from the doorman and disappeared with them. The other two removed grease guns from their carrying cases. I had wondered what happened to all the surplus grease guns when the Army stopped using them. Now I knew.

  “I wasn’t in the lecture hall,” I said.

  “You will go there now.” He had learned his English from records. He spoke it slowly and you could almost see him watching the needle track along the grooves.

  I shrugged and fell into step with the lads with the grease guns. We set out for the east wing. I heard something fall behind me and when I looked around the doorman had collapsed. He hadn’t been touched.

  In the east wing the tourist tugboats were still trying to run Azaayim Bey aground. He responded with waving hands and wagging chins. He stopped talking when he saw us. The last word he said was Hajj. His cheeks swelled out like a blowfish and he made a faint whistling sound through lips pursed like a small scarlet flower. One of the grease gunners jabbed the bey’s ample belly with his weapon and grunted something in Arabic. The bey grunted back at him. A lady tourist screamed.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” another lady tourist asked me. I had come in with the bad guys and the puzzled scowl on my face made me look mean. I was obviously a member of the raiding party.

  “I’m a stranger here myself,” I said, and went over to join the tourists. They moved away from me.

  Al Hajj Azaayim Bey raised his plump hands for silence. “They say they mean you no harm,” he announced. “They say—”

  “Just let us out of here,” someone suggested. “Just let us the hell out of here.”

  “Crazy Ay-rabs,” another tourist said.

  Azaayim Bey removed the khaffiya and dabbed a neatly folded handkerchief at his completely bald skull. Without the khaffiya his head looked very small. “These men are extremists,” he told us. His tone was apologetic and resigned. “They lead me to believe the entire center is now in their power. It will remain so until they have wrested certain concessions from the eleven Moslem nations represented here in Washington. I am sorry.”

  A tourist said, “Then we’re hostages.” He sounded righteously indignant. It was the wrong thing to say. The tourists milled about, and some of them seemed on the verge of stampeding. A well-dressed youngster with a wilt-proof ersatz carnation on his lapel grabbed his girl friend’s hand and said, “We’re getting out of here.”

  “But Charlie—”

  “We have dinner reservations, don’t we? You think I want to wait all night for a table?” They moved out across the tiles toward the corridor, but the girl’s feet were dragging.

  One of the grease gunners went after them, lifting his silvered weapon by barrel and trigger guard. I sighed and wished I had accepted Fawzia Totah’s retainer early enough to have been on the hot street now, searching out a gin and tonic. I opened my jacket and started after the grease gunner. I got my Magnum .357 from the shoulder rig and shouted something. I don’t remember what it was, but it failed to stop the man. He brought his weapon down across the skull of the lad with the carnation. There was a loud collective sob behind me. The grease gunner whirled as his victim slumped to the tiles. I whirled too, but not quickly enough. The second grease gunner gave my head the thousand-mile lubrication job. There was a hole in the tiled floor which hadn’t been there before. It yawned up at me, and I fell in.

  The voice sounded worried, but only a little. It belonged to Fawzia Totah, the ex-raqs-essurat. It said, “Are you all right?”

  “For crying out loud, don’t touch that,” I said as fingers probed the delicate area at the back of my head. I sat up and looked around. It was a large, high-ceilinged room with graceful gold Persian script flowing around the black walls. I slumped forward and let my head loll between my knees while someone beat his immense gong inside my skull. There were two other people in the room, not counting Fawzia Totah. One was the lad with the wilt-proof carnation, who either had not been hit as hard as I had been hit or who had a harder head. The other was his girl friend, whose eyes were red. There was a stained-glass window high up near the ceiling. It was dark outside.

  “They’re still here?” I asked Fawzia Totah.

  “Very much. Your police are outside. Stringing barbed wire, I think. They have spotlights on all the entrances. Every now and then they yell something over a loudspeaker, but they are afraid to do anything because there are over a hundred Americans trapped in here. Besides, the center is owned jointly by the eleven Moslem nations who built it. Including mine. Can I get something for you?”

  I said no thanks. Wilt-proof carnation said thanks for trying. He shook my right hand and his girl friend squeezed my left hand. I finally got both my hands free and lit a cigarette and began to feel better.

  “What the hell do they want, anyhow?” I said.

  Fawzia Totah shrugged. “Do you think they know themselves? They’re members of the Umma Brotherhood. You’ve heard of it?”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “Fanatics, Mr. Drum. They have pledged their lives to a pan-Islamic brotherhood. They would die for it cheerfully. Naturally, such an organization is an ideal breeding ground for communism. The Reds thrive in ultra-nationalistic, xenophobic, fanatic groups. You understand?”

  “How did they get into this country in the first place?”

  “That’s easy. I know those men: Some work at the U.N. in New York and some work at the embassies here in Washington. The man who hit you is Izzed-een Shafik, fourth
secretary of the Jordanian delegation to the United Nations.”

  “Some secretary.”

  “He’s desperate. His brother Fadhil belongs to an Umma cell in ’Amman, the capital of Jordan. Fadhil and some others are in jail awaiting death for blowing up a truckload of Glubb’s Girls.”

  “Of which?”

  “I’m sorry. Glubb’s Girls are the Arab Legion. You’ve heard of that?”

  “Yeah, but why—”

  “Because the fanatics of the Umma don’t believe in a foreign-trained army for an Arab nation. John Glubb and his fellow officers, of course, are English. Now do you understand? What makes it worse is the members of the brotherhood don’t go around wearing cards saying which ones are adapted communists. Izzed-een Shafik and his companions have vowed to hold the center until Fadhil and the other terrorists in ’Amman are given their unconditional freedom.”

  A loud voice blared “Attention please.” It came from outside, booming across the night. It was muffled by the walls of the center, but you could hear the words, metallic and impersonal. I figured a peek outside would reveal a sound truck on the other side of the barbed wire.

  “Attention please. The next voice you hear will be that of the honorable Yusef Bey Farhan, the ambassador of Pakistan.”

  The ambassador spoke in Arabic so I couldn’t understand a word of it, but his rich, practiced voice climbed the scale from a deep guttural to a sustained, high-pitched tremolo. It was earthy and deep and then all at once angry and explosive, and when he finished I felt like applauding.

  “Farhan Bey begged them to give up their folly,” Fawzia Totah explained. “He is sure the highest tribunal of Jordan will review the terrorists’ trial, but this is the most he or anyone can promise.”

  “You think they’ll do it?”

  “I doubt it. We’re in for a siege, Mr. Drum.”

  “Not me,” I said. “I’ve got a date.” Then I smiled. It was just like wilt-proof’s table reservations. I patted the left side of my jacket, under the armpit. I was surprised to feel the solid weight of the Magnum in its rig, but when I took it out and opened the chamber I saw that the shells had been removed.