Mecca for Murder Read online

  I couldn’t blame Fawzia for trying. She was under a sentence of death but I was the only one who had heard the sentence pronounced.

  “Maybe, she says,” Limerock sneered.

  “Chet, can you please come here a minute?” Terry said. She was sitting across the tent with Mahmoud, who was fanning her slowly with the trailing skirt of his ihram. I dragged myself over there.

  “I was listening to what you said, Chet. And to what Fawzia said. I have no business butting in, but did it ever occur to you that what this man Izzed-een is after is some kind of public murder?”

  “Public murder? I don’t get you.”

  “Well, I don’t get it either. That’s all I mean, public murder. I don’t mean anything else. I thought maybe you could get something from it. I guess I shouldn’t have butted in.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. Yeah,” I mumbled. “Public murder. Lady, you should have been a detective. It makes sense. It was just intuition with you. He brings us to the most crowded place he could possibly bring us. Why? Because he doesn’t want to keep the murder a secret. Look at it another way. If he just wanted to knock off Fawzia—”

  “Don’t talk so loud. She’ll hear you.”

  “She ought to hear me before that knucklehead convinces her she’s got nothing to worry about and it was five other guys Izzed-een meant to kidnap last night. But look. Five of us. He could have taken Fawzia by herself, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

  “He wanted to take all of us, not Fawzia alone. Fawzia alone would have been all right for the deal he made with Davisa Tyler. So that means he has some other kind of deal cooking.”

  “What other kind of deal?”

  “I don’t know what other kind of deal. But there’s your public murder. A patsy—or four patsies. He kills Fawzia and sets somebody up as a patsy. Not because he needs a patsy, don’t you see? The law in Saudi Arabia isn’t like the law in Washington, D.C., or even like the law in ’Amman, Jordan. He could get away with it with no sweat if he wanted to. He doesn’t need a patsy, but he wants one. That’s the side of the deal we don’t see. It means there’s more to this than Izzed-een’s doing what Davisa Tyler wants just so she lobbies for Islam in certain circles in Washington.”

  “You mean you’re getting all this from what I said?”

  “Look. I overheard them talking on the telephone, Davisa Tyler and Izzed-een. She says Fawzia is going on the Hajj. She says my son Lyman may be going with her. Would you please do me a favor and knock off Fawzia? I hate her guts. I’ll be ever so grateful. I’ll make pretty speeches about pan-Islam. I’ll collect clothing for the Gaza Strip refugees. Izzed-een’s a fanatic, but it sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

  “You didn’t think it sounded stupid if you came halfway around the world to stop him.”

  “Who knows?” I said. “It could have been buried all the time.”

  “In your subconscious, you mean?”

  “All right, give it a name. In my subconscious, if it’ll make you happy. There was a private eye name of Lash. I mentioned him to you, I think. Limerock had hired him, he said. First he wanted to pay me off, and that figured. When that didn’t work he came at me like the Texas Rangers, guns blasting. That didn’t figure. Despite what you see on television, private eyes don’t go around shooting at people because they’re trying to detain their clients. Not with revolvers, they don’t.”

  “Why not with revolvers?”

  “Because also despite what you see on TV, beyond thirty or forty feet you can’t aim so good with a revolver. If you’re lucky you can hit the side of a floodlighted barn at high noon on a clear day—with a steady hand. But you don’t scare people with a revolver or bluff them by shooting at them and missing by a distance a snail could cover in a second or two. That’s not bluffing. You mean business if you’re that close. You just happened to miss.

  “So, Lash meant business. For Limerock’s money? Hell, no. For some other reason. Because whatever would fit Izzed-een’s hand would fit his too? Maybe. It’s got to be something like that. Izzed-een wanted a patsy all along. That’s why he said yes to Mrs. Tyler. He had it planned. He would kill Fawzia, all right, but only if Limerock came along for the ride. Only if he could pin it on Limerock.”

  “But what kind of a vendetta could he have against Limerock?”

  “Good question. No kind of a vendetta. But Limerock’s an American convert to Islam. He’s as rare as a dodo bird in the Rock Creek Zoo aviary. He’s good for a lot of publicity and it could go either way. If Limerock killed Fawzia on the Hajj, when acts of violence—let alone murder—are taboo, it wouldn’t be Limerock who did it. It would be an American convert. Better yet it would be an American convert and a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. You see?”

  “I’m not sure if I do or not.”

  “Okay, look at it this way. If a Russian Communist came to Atlantic City and killed a Shriner during their annual convention there, the headlines wouldn’t read Vladimir Whoosit Kills Shriner, would they?”

  “No. Mr. Russian Whoosit’s name wouldn’t be as important as what he is. The headlines would say Red kills or Commie kills or something like that.”

  “Now you’ve got it. But we’re in the Near East. This isn’t Atlantic City. So you’d better magnify everything a few hundred times—remembering, though, that the masses of Islam tend to think of Christians just like we think of Commies of the other way around. All right? An American kills a religious Hajji, a devout Moslem. That’s bad enough. But an American soldier? That’s worse. Did the government send him? Are they trying to terrorize us? Will there be more of these killings? Then maybe the Umma’s right—the Americans are obviously a menace to the freedom and well-being of all Islamic peoples. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s not. These people are Arabs, Terry. I don’t have to tell you about them. All you have to do is touch a match, they’re always ready to burn. Now do you see?”

  “Yes. It would strike quite a blow for anti-Americanism. But who would want to strike it?”

  “The Umma,” I said.

  “Well …” Terry said doubtfully.

  “Then try this. The Communists.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. “Every year the Reds are more active on the Hajj. If they saw an opportunity like this … But is Izzed-een Shafik a Red?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. They would have said something in D.C. when Shafik took over the Islamic Center. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be working with the Reds. If an unbeliever invades the forbidden Hejaz, that’s bad enough. If he invades it during Hajj, that’s worse. But if he pretends to be a convert, as they’ll make out Limerock pretended, and then does something violently taboo on pilgrimage, the Arabs will tear him apart and the propaganda mills will start grinding out the story. Before they’re through, they’ll give Uncle Sam the most unsavory reputation since Genghis Khan invaded this part of the world.”

  “But what can we do about it?”

  Instead of answering her, I put my hand on Mahmoud’s skinny shoulder. “Mahmoud,” I said, “do you think you can get lost in that crowd out there?”

  “Easy for Mahmoud, effendi.”

  I felt around the bottom edge of the tent wall. The tent had been staked and roped expertly: the goat-hair met the sand snugly. “How far would you have to dig to squirm out?”

  “Not far.” Mahmoud showed less than a foot between his two hands.

  “Will your uncle be with Azaayim Bey now?”

  “Yes, effendi.”

  “Could you find them?”

  “In Mecca, yes. At Mosque of Sanctuary and waters of Zem Zem. All go there.”

  “Start digging over here in back,” I said. “But only if you want to try it, Mahmoud.”

  “Mahmoud hot and hungry. Mahmoud try.” He got down on his hands and knees and commenced scooping out the sand. He worked at it with
small swift motions, like a terrier. Soon he had made a shallow depression and you could see daylight beneath the tent.

  “Someone going out the back door?” Limerock asked.

  I said, “When he’s ready I’m going out front. I’ll start hollering. They won’t understand me and I won’t understand them but it ought to keep them busy while Mahmoud gets away.”

  We all watched Mahmoud, who finally stood up and showed us the hole. I thought a good-sized scorpion might have had trouble squeezing through, but Mahmoud seemed satisfied. I climbed to my feet and told him to give me just a few seconds. Terry grabbed my arm as I went toward the tent flap.

  “Be careful, tough guy,” she cautioned.

  “Better tell it to Mahmoud,” I said.

  I lifted the tent flap and started hollering. There were two Bedouins out there, squatting and sweating. One of them had the Mannlicher across his back. The other one came rushing over to me, hollering louder than I was. He pointed at the tent flap and I gestured vaguely at the horizon and we sounded like a couple of U.N. delegates from different parts of the world arguing without benefit of earphone translators.

  It went on like that for a little while, and I don’t know what idea I got across because all I was doing was shouting close order drill about six inches from the Bedouin’s face, but he turned around and said something to his partner, who stood up and brought the Mannlicher off his back and in front of him and said something I didn’t understand in pleasant, polite tones. The first Bedouin jerked a thumb toward the tent flap and I backed up in that direction smiling and reciting and still gesturing vaguely at the horizon. I lifted the tent flap, and saw Mahmoud’s left leg just disappearing—and the Bedouin without the rifle saw it too.

  He shoved me into the tent and came after me. I stopped short and we both went sprawling across the sand. The Bedouin with the Mannlicher was silhouetted against the sun outside the rear wall of the tent. You could see the silhouette lift the Mannlicher, but it was never brought into firing position. After a minute or so the second Bedouin came inside the tent and said something to the first Bedouin.

  “Well, we did it,” I told Terry.

  “Look out!” she cried.

  I swung around and dropped toward the sand. The butt of the Mannlicher blurred down after me and I fell to hands and knees and then flat on my face. I ate sand.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A delightful cold wind howled outside the door of Senator Hartsell’s hunting lodge near Jackman, Maine. I went outside and the cold stung my face and brought tears to my eyes, but I liked it. There was a lake, too, which should have been frozen over but wasn’t. A houri wearing what houris wear cupped her hands and brought them up with sweet, chilling water. I drank. The water suddenly became tepid. It was that houri. There are no houris in Jackman, in the state of Maine. The tepid water squirted from the spout of a bladder and the lake was now a pool of kerosene to which someone, possibly the houri, had touched a match. The heat engulfed me. Choking, I tried to tear off my sheepskin-lined jacket. It tricked me by becoming a dirty white shroud. The houri, too, had swapped her sexy veils for a dirty white shroud.

  She said, “Try to drink some of it.”

  I gagged on the tepid water and waved the bladder away. Something a degree or two cooler than the furnace inside the tent bathed the side of my head. “He got away, didn’t he?” I said.

  “He got away,” Terry said.

  I looked around. A little mound of sand had replaced Mahmoud’s back door. Fawzia and Limerock stood at the tent flap, Limerock parting it just enough with his hand so they could see out.

  “Is it noon?” I asked.

  “Way past noon,” Terry said. “They’ve been glued there, those two, watching the ritual. I looked out once, but all I could see was umbrellas, millions of them. Are you feeling better?”

  “How late is it?”

  “The sun ought to set in about half an hour.”

  “No sign of Mahmoud or Azaayim Bey?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What the hell,” I said. “You can’t blame the kid. Why should he stick his neck back in here? What about Izzed-een?”

  “He hasn’t come back. I think he’s waiting until they strike the tent city. You want more water?”

  “Not that stuff.” I made a face and the face made Terry laugh. “Why’s he waiting for that?”

  “It’s only a guess. Because if Arafat is the most deeply religious part of the Hajj, the evacuation of Arafat and running for Mina and the stoning there is the most ecstatic. Maybe he wants his pilgrims ecstatic.”

  I sat up. There was suddenly an army of miniature ecstatic pilgrims inside my head, all of them beating drums. I struggled to my feet and wandered in the direction of the tent flap. It was only a few miles. I gripped something and the something was Fawzia’s elbow. “What are they doing out there now?” I said. “Striking the city?”

  “Not yet,” Fawzia told me. I looked outside. All I saw were umbrellas and the heat haze shimmering over them and far away across the valley of tents a snaking, chanting line of pilgrims, working its way up the side of the highest hill.

  “Car coming,” Limerock said. “Beat-up station wagon.”

  It came slowly through the assembled throngs of pilgrims. The hood was halfway up to help cool the motor. The driver craned his neck out the side window and leaned down on his horn as often as he breathed. They didn’t try for stealth.

  The station wagon rolled to a stop outside our tent. Izzed-een Shafik climbed out before the motor died. He said something to the Bedouin with the Mannlicher and the Bedouin answered in his polite voice. Then Izzed-een came into the tent, followed by his arms-bearer.

  “I hear the kid blew,” he said.

  Nobody answered.

  “Where to?”

  Outside, pilgrims yelled and motors growled.

  Izzed-een said, “The hell with it. I don’t give a damn where he went. It doesn’t matter. Couple of minutes, they’ll be striking Arafat for Mina.” He grabbed Fawzia’s arm. “Hey, belly dancer. Come here.”

  Fawzia’s face matched the color of her ihram. The Bedouin with the Mannlicher stood with his back to the tent flap. I wondered how long it would take him to raise the rifle to his shoulder and get off a shot.

  “Limerock,” Fawzia said in a soft voice.

  “You’ll never get away with it,” Limerock said.

  Izzed-een ignored him and lit a cigarette. It was a long, flat cigarette and it burned with a sour smell. In a few moments he went to the tent flap and opened it and peered out. “They ain’t striking Arafat yet,” he said. “You got a few minutes.” He turned to me suddenly, savagely, dropping the cigarette and grinding it into the sand with his pilgrim sandal. “Don’t think I forgot about you, jack. I ain’t forgot nothing.”

  “They’ll find out Lyman Tyler’s not only an American but an American soldier. That’s why you’re not pulling a switch with me, isn’t it?”

  “You catch on fast, jack. But it doesn’t matter. What the hell, so I use both of you. Who’s the skinny blonde?”

  Terry introduced herself. There was defiance in her voice. “If you kill the girl and make it look like Tyler or Chester Drum, or both of them, did it, what about me? Do you think I’ll keep quiet?”

  I shook my head at Terry, but it was too late. Izzed-een said, “You know, you got a point there.”

  He lifted the tent flap again. “Get a load of that,” he said. From where I was standing I could see an enormous dust cloud that billowed and rolled across the floor of the valley of Arafat. It carried the smell of human sweat and of automobile exhaust and of the stink of the thousands of sheep which had been slaughtered here in this valley on this hot sacred afternoon. In the dust cloud were the squat black shapes of trucks and cars and the smaller silhouettes of running men and women and an occasional ass or camel. The noise was awesome, the noise of half a million screaming, ecstatic pilgrims tearing across the hot valley and into the hills and across them to th
e Stoning Places of Mina.

  Izzed-een dropped the tent flap and walked slowly toward Fawzia. She watched him, wide-eyed, swaying slightly. He hit her in the face. She fell to a sitting position and rubbed the side of her jaw.

  “Get up,” Izzed-een said.

  Limerock took a step toward him, but the Bedouin with the rifle jerked his weapon up and Limerock stood still, his mouth working.

  Izzed-een hit Fawzia again as she got up. The Bedouin held his Mannlicher ready. Fawzia sat down again, whimpering. A red welt appeared beneath her right eye and there was a trickle of blood from her nostrils. Limerock bellowed something and charged across the sand.

  The Mannlicher roared. Limerock was a puppet suspended on wires. Someone cut all the wires at once and Limerock jerked convulsively and flat on the sand. His fists closed on fistfuls of sand, then opened and the sand trickled out.

  I ran for the Bedouin and Izzed-een shouted something in Arabic. The Bedouin swung his Mannlicher and clubbed me with it. I spun around and fell across Limerock’s body, facing Fawzia. She sat there staring at us and screaming silently. Izzed-een grabbed her bare arm and jerked her to her feet. My head was very clear and I could see the whole picture. It was going to be attempted rape. Limerock was dead, but that didn’t matter. They had Drum. I was an American too, wasn’t. I? In the process of trying to rape Fawzia, a Moslem girl on a pilgrimage where violence and sex and certainly violent sex were taboo, where Nosranis and all kinds of unbelievers were likewise taboo, I would be discovered by the mobs of the faithful outside.

  Davisa would be satisfied because Fawzia was dead, or would be by the time Izzed-een finished with her. And Limerock? Limerock unfortunately got himself killed in the process. Chester Drum? Drum was torn apart by the outraged Moslems, so there was no need to pay him the five thousand bucks. Terry Maddox? But Davisa never even heard of Terry Maddox and she was no skin off Davisa’s teeth.

  The black goat-hair of the tent is very dark and Fawzia’s skin very pale against it. Not her shroud. Her skin. Izzed-een is pulling the ihram off her now. She’s naked. That’s her bare skin and those are her breasts and that’s Fawzia screaming out loud now, you fool. Do something.