Mecca for Murder Read online

  “Shafik said you’re to join the others when you’re all right,” Fawzia Totah said. “Are you all right?”

  “From the hairline down,” I said. Wilt-proof rubbed his own hurt head and offered me a brotherly smile. We went outside to the hall and traversed half a dozen corridors in which our footsteps echoed on the tiles. Izzed-een Shafik was leaning against the closed double doors of the lecture hall in the east wing. He held his grease gun at port-arms but otherwise did not look very military. He wore a charcoal-gray suit with no shoulder padding, a pink shirt with button-down collar and a black knit tie. He was lean and handsome, with equine length to his face. The stub of a cigarette adhered to his lips on the left side, but he let it fall and ground it savagely into the tiles with a gleaming black shoe as we approached. He looked graceful, capable, and mean.

  He moved aside and jerked the double doors out toward him and said “In” without opening his mouth or changing his expression, which belonged over a straight flush in a no-limit poker game.

  He came from Hashemite Jordan and looked like a mean ivy leaguer. He closed the door behind us and we walked down the aisle of the lecture hall. On either side of us were rows of folding chairs, most of them occupied by tourists and Islamic Center employees. They all stared straight ahead at the empty stage, waiting for the show to begin. But the show was behind them, through the double doors, where a handful of Arab fanatics had captured a few acres of Islamic soil in downtown Washington. The show was outside, with coils of barbed wire surrounding the Islamic Center and a police sound truck which carried the voice of a top-level Pakistani named Yusef who could probably recite lines from Hafiz and make you weep. But the show was going to give the police commissioner and the State Department ulcers.

  We sat up front, near the stage. Yusef’s voice came to us again, more faintly here in the rear of the east wing. Someone, two rows behind us, told a joke about an Ay-rab traveling salesman whose camel had a baby. There was nervous laughter and a squeal of amused indignation from a woman.

  The doors opened suddenly. Izzed-een’s head and grease gun appeared. His eyes roved the small auditorium. He was looking for someone. “You,” he said. He meant me. His head jerked down, then up, and disappeared through the doors. I got up and went after him. Fawzia didn’t say anything.

  Chapter Three

  “How come the rod?” Izzed-een Shafik asked me in the hall.

  “It’s licensed.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “Private investigator.”

  “I never met one. You know it?”

  “We’re even. I never met a fanatic of the Umma Brotherhood.”

  “I guess you’ll do,” Izzed-een decided.

  “For what?”

  “We need a go-between. They’re yammering over that sound truck, but we can’t yammer back. We got a phone through to the police commissioner’s office, but it ain’t the same thing.”

  “What makes you think I’ll come back if you let me out of here?”

  “Listen,” Izzed-een said. “Why you think I picked you? You didn’t want to see the guy with the flower get clobbered, right? He a friend of yours?”

  “No.”

  “I kind of thought he wasn’t. Here’s the deal, Lone Ranger. You play messenger boy, back and forth like a rubber ball. As soon as you stop bouncing, we start hurting people.”

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” I said. “How long do you think you’ll get away with a stunt like this? You’re through as soon as the riot squad thinks of using tear gas. Maybe I’ll tell them. You still want to send me?”

  “They won’t use tear gas. This center is Islamic property. The Islamic governments are embarrassed, but they ain’t desperate yet. All your police can do is wait and see. Get it? This is between the Umma and the Islamic governments.”

  You couldn’t argue with him. Like all fanatics, he thought he was one step ahead of everybody. I felt sorry for him, but I hated him too. I said, “What kind of message have you got?”

  “Tell the Pakistani loudmouth to give political asylum to my brother and his friends in ’Amman. Tell him to have the Pakistani embassy there fly them to Pakistan. Tell him we want it all in writing, on official embassy paper. Then we’ll surrender, but only to the D.C. police. You got that? And we don’t want to be extradited against our will. We want that in writing too.”

  “Otherwise?” I said.

  “Just carry the message. Wait a minute.” He poked his head inside the double doors and called, “Hey, you with the hat. Come out here a minute, will ya?”

  A short plump tourist with an off-white Panama hat and a pink high-blood-pressure face waddled obediently through the doors. Izzed-een shut them. “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Samuel J. Fuller of Huntington, New York,” the plump man said nervously.

  Izzed-een looked at me. “This is Samuel J. Fuller,” he said, as he held the grease gun in the crook of his left arm. Then, still watching me, he hit Fuller in the face with his right fist.

  The plump man slid slowly to the floor, massaging his back against the shut doors. He alighted almost gently on the base of his spine and spit out two teeth and some blood. I didn’t say a word. Fuller’s mouth was open but he couldn’t talk. His eyes said please.

  “The message,” Izzed-een said.

  “I’ll deliver it.”

  The big spotlight pinned me against the door of the mosque like an oversized door-knocker. A surprised voice shouted: “Straight ahead, mister! Don’t try to lose the spot. We’re covering you.” Another voice spoke in Arabic.

  Walking straight ahead was easy. Even a drunk could have done it with that spotlight shining in his face. I thought I walked a long way. I heard a car engine idling somewhere nearby. There were no more voices and nothing to see, but the spotlight grew larger and brighter.

  Something grabbed my left elbow and yanked it. I stumbled out of the light into utter darkness. The man was unnecessarily rough with my elbow. He said, “You speak English, you goofed up Ay-rab?”

  He was a cop, and later on the State Department officials could have their chat with this defector from the ranks of the raiding party, but right now he wanted to get in his licks. “Sure,” I said. “I speak English. Don’t you?”

  “If you bastards hurt any of the Americans in there—”

  “Did it ever occur to you I might be one of the Americans in there?”

  Before the cop could yank his size twelve out of his mouth another voice said, “For God’s sake, Hogan. Bring him over to the captain, will ya?”

  Vision returned slowly. The sound truck and the spotlight truck stood side by side. The motor of the sound truck was idling unsteadily. There were a lot of people, but they were still hardly more than shadows. Three or four flashbulbs popped and someone started yelling. A rasping voice said, “You’re an American?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you escape or was it their idea?”

  “It was their idea. Who are you?”

  “I’ll ask the questions.”

  “Look. Publicity never hurt anyone in my business, but I’ve got a message for the ambassador from Pakistan. If you’re a reporter, you better listen with the rest of them.” I didn’t think he was a reporter. I thought he was a cop, probably the scout master of the riot squad, whose job it was to string barbed wire, place spotlights at strategic locations and await orders. I wanted to see someone who gave the orders.

  “I’m Captain Rivers. What line of business is that?”

  I could see him now. He was a very tall fellow, and thin. His cheeks were black hollows in the semidarkness. He wore mufti. I sighed and got it out quick. “I’m a private investigator. I had a prospective client in there. I got caught by the raiding party. They gave me a message. They poked a couple of teeth out of a harmless little guy from Huntington, New York, to show they meant business. They expect me to bring them back a message.”

  “Are you nuts? You’re going back in there?”

  “After
I see the ambassador of Pakistan.”

  Someone said, “Excuse me, Captain. The man from State is getting itchy. He figures we’ve had the renegade long enough.”

  “You damn fool, don’t go jumping to conclusions!” Captain Rivers rasped. “He’s no renegade. He’s an American.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  My elbow was grasped more gently this time. I could see the man who grabbed it. He was stocky and wore a uniform which needed pressing. He said, “This way, sir.”

  The man from State wore a dark suit flecked with white. With horn-rimmed glasses and slightly stooped shoulders and a potbelly the well-tailored suit couldn’t quite hide, I would have guessed him for a C.P.A. “How do you do, sir?” he said. “I understand you are an American.” He stood with his back to the coils of barbed wire. A cop carrying a tommygun walked slowly back and forth behind the wire.

  I said that was right, I was an American. I told him I had a message for the Pakistani ambassador. I told him what the message was. I said, “They’re expecting an answer.”

  “Yes, of course. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “They’re expecting me to bring it.”

  “Oh no, sir. I intend to deliver the message myself.”

  “They might get scared if they see someone else. They might hurt someone.”

  “But we couldn’t let you—”

  “Listen. Maybe you know Jack Morley in Protocol Section. We’re friends. We’ve worked together. I also used to be in the F.B.I. You don’t want to be responsible for what happens in there if I don’t go back, do you?”

  He enlightened me about the better part of valor. He said he would convey the message to the Pakistani ambassador, who was still the only Islamic high official on the scene. I was left alone and the reporters alighted around me like buzzards but were soon off and winging again when a black car with a flashing light and a siren growl dying in its throat lurched to a stop near the barbed wire.

  Captain Rivers came rushing over, scattering reporters with rapier thrusts of his elbows in an attempt to reach the car first. He made it, and was already speaking when a uniformed patrolman opened the rear door.

  “I think we ought to gas them, Commissioner,” Captain Rivers said, giving a semiofficial salute. “How do we know they won’t go berserk in there and start killing people?”

  “I have consulted with State on a level considerably higher than what is present here,” the commissioner said. “You share my own sentiments, Captain Rivers.”

  Rivers licked his thin lips and scratched the back of his neck. “What did they say, sir? Over at State.”

  “It has been mutually decided,” said Commissioner Mann, who removed his hat to show the press photographers his bristling gray crew cut, “that no discussions of a plenipotentiary nature can be considered until every American citizen is safely outside that building.” Commissioner Mann had a politician’s red face. Right now there was a look on that face which would have done Macbeth justice. I can be State’s errand boy, the look said, but I don’t have to be; I can fight violence with violence and get all of them out of there in a few minutes and tomorrow morning it won’t be the Secretary whose picture they see in the papers.

  “We cannot bow to the will of a handful of fanatics who do not even represent their own governments,” Commissioner Mann declaimed. “We cannot stand by while over a hundred American citizens, justifiably taking for granted the protection of their own government here in their nation’s capital, are held prisoner. For if an American is not safe from this sort of thing in Washington, D.C., where on God’s good earth is he safe?”

  At that moment the State Department functionary came trotting over. He nodded at the commissioner but said to me, “Pakistan says no to everything. Pakistan does not recognize the powers of plenipotentiary in the ruffians who hold the Islamic Center.”

  “Is that a quote?” a reporter asked.

  “More or less,” the harried C.P.A. told him.

  “You’re Bible, aren’t you?” the commissioner said.

  “Paul Bible, yes sir.”

  “Bible, I have full authority to—”

  “Pardon me a moment, Commissioner.” Turning his back on Mann, Bible said to me, “I was thinking over what you told me, mister. I won’t stop you from going back in there.”

  “Who the hell is going back in where?” the commissioner yelped. “I don’t care who he is,” he snapped before anyone could answer. “He’s not going back in there. We’re going to use gas, Captain Rivers. Alert your squad.”

  “Yes, sir!” cried Rivers, and sprinted along the barbed wire.

  Bible, who was the only one watching me now, shook my hand. Then I ducked through the hole in the barbed wire and ran across the broad midan in front of the mosque. My leather soles made a lot of noise on the cement and I hoped a trigger-happy cop wouldn’t decide this was the time to vie with the commissioner for headlines.

  I ran parallel to the searchlight beam and didn’t duck into its yellow tunnel until I had almost reached the elaborate front door of the mosque. When I did, someone yelled behind me. I clawed at the latch and the fellow with the lamp shade opened it. He looked much better now. “It’s all right,” he said as I ran by him. “They haven’t hurt me.”

  Izzed-een took my return without a change of expression. Samuel J. Fuller looked delighted. Izzed-een said, “All right, what happened?”

  “The answer is yes,” I said slowly. “Yes to everything you wanted.”

  “Allah rahim!” Izzed-een exulted, and smiled from ear to ear. Then he abruptly demanded, “You wouldn’t be lying to me?”

  “What’s in it for me if I lied? Coming back here.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Izzed-een admitted.

  I wondered how long it would take Captain Rivers’s men to station themselves at all the windows with teargas grenades. I wondered if they were out there in the darkness now, slipping across the lawn and waiting for Captain Rivers to blow his whistle.

  “And we surrender only to the Washington cops?” Izzed-een asked me. “I figure they’ll clip us with disturbing the peace.”

  I didn’t want him to think everything was rosy. “They might try to stick you with a kidnaping rap,” I suggested.

  He shrugged. It was a very Levantine gesture, the first I had seen Izzed-een make. He was three quarters of the way through his shrug when Captain Rivers blew his whistle.

  You could hear it shrilling faintly through the night, but it was immediately swallowed by the sound of breaking glass. Half the glaziers in Washington would be busy repairing glass at the Islamic Center in the morning. Izzed-een just looked at me.

  There was a series of dull plopping explosions. Smoke roiled up magically. Samuel J. Fuller gave a tentative cough and rubbed his eyes. I blinked and squinted at Izzed-een. I knew I would have to breathe the stuff in and get it over with, but I was holding my breath.

  Izzed-een called me names, most of them four-lettered, half in English and half in Arabic. My throat and chest began to burn and my eyes turned to hot springs. I could barely see Izzed-een as he reached the double doors, yanked them open and raised the shadow of his grease gun. I lurched at him and caught his arms.

  We danced there in the doorway, spraying the ceiling with bullets. The people who were not coughing screamed.

  “We’ll meet again,” Izzed-een said, choking on the words. “I swear … to Allah we’ll meet … again. When we do … I’ll kill you.”

  The pan of the grease gun made a full circle and clicked emptily. Choking and coughing, Izzed-een dropped it. When the riot squad, their faces covered with gas masks, took their beachhead a few moments later, they found Izzed-een and me embracing and gasping at each other like a pair of dying lovers.

  Chapter Four

  From the window of my office in the Farrell Building you could see the Treasury Department blocking off the head of F Street like the crossbar of a letter T. It was very hot down there on the street and not much cooler in my
office. But it was hotter than both under my collar and would go on being hot like that until they stopped making people like Eric Mann police commissioners.

  Because Izzed-een Shafik and his cronies were getting off free.

  The opposition newspapers hinted that Commissioner Mann had been precipitous. He’d coerced a minor-league State Department official into allowing him his full head of steam. He’d used it, all right. He’d damn near blown the safety valve off the diplomatic boiler.

  The Islamic Center, like a foreign embassy or the U.N., is not U.S. soil. Not that the Moslem countries wouldn’t have given Washington officials permission to do what Mann had done. The point was, he had done it without waiting for permission. The next day, which was yesterday, the commie press all over the world had a field day with Commissioner Mann. American military interventionists had violated the most basic rule of diplomacy, they said, pointedly ignoring the American hostages.

  The Moslem countries had to save face in the eyes of the world and had done it the only way they could. They demanded the release into their custody of Izzed-een and his fellow fanatics. This had been effected, also yesterday. Concentrating on the Near East, Pravda and its pink tentacles had already made martyrs of Izzed-een and his friends. It was in all the Washington papers. When Izzed-een reached Jordan, somebody would probably slap his wrist gently.

  Come off it, Drum, I thought. What the hell do you care? Nobody got badly hurt—except American prestige.

  I got out the office bottle which, in summer, is gin. I took some lemon juice from the icebox under the water cooler and mixed it half and half with the gin. I drank it and mopped the sweat from the back of my neck with a sodden handkerchief and lit a cigarette. Then the telephone rang.

  “Mr. Drum?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This is Fawzia Totah. Mrs. Tyler called me this morning.”

  “Mrs. who?”

  “Mrs. Davisa Lee Tyler. Don’t you remember?”

  I remembered, all right. I had spent most of yesterday explaining to the cops why I had gone back inside the Islamic Center. Unfortunately, my picture shared the front page of the morning papers with the police commissioner’s. It made him unhappy—not unhappy enough to put my license in his suspended file, but almost. What little time the police had left me yesterday I had used to do some G-2’ing on Davisa Lee Tyler. According to my sources, which are usually reliable, she had a reputation for vindictiveness only a little milder than Madam Defarge’s. If Fawzia Totah was scared of her, she had good reason to be.