Hazard (40 page)

The best Hazard could do was to try to hide. He quickly went to the dark side and down one course. Again he stretched out and wedged his body along the inner angle formed by the step of the rocks.

He soon heard Mustafa climb up onto the platform, breathing heavily. After a moment he heard Mustafa's footsteps, and judging from them, knew he'd gone over to survey the west face. Then across to the east.

The north, the dark face, would be next. Hazard wedged even tighter into the shadowed angle as the footsteps headed his way, drawing closer. Suddenly, there was Mustafa standing on the edge above. Hazard took shallow, short, noiseless breaths.

All Mustafa had to do was look directly below. Even dark as it was there, chances were he'd notice Hazard. Mustafa's eyes scanned and strained to make out the courses further down. Literally overlooking Hazard, he turned and walked from that edge.

What Hazard next heard was the familiar scratch and flaring of a match. Supporting himself with one arm, he slowly raised up, kept his head horizontal and brought one eye just above the level of the platform.

Mustafa was faced two-thirds away, having a smoke, the first in over an hour. For the moment the need for nicotine took precedence; he would also take the opportunity to reload the rifle. It had to be near empty by now. He altered his hold on it, pressed the release and jerked the thirty-shot magazine free. He shoved it into his left jacket pocket. He had two spare magazines in the right.

Hazard had no time to consider his next move. Almost as a reflex he leaped up and went for Mustafa.

For that second or two the rifle was useless. Mustafa managed to get the full magazine from his pocket but he was only close to snapping it into place when Hazard hit him.

He hit him with a head thrust, came at him fast, lowering his head at the last moment to catch Mustafa exactly front center between the curves of the ribs. The impact drove Mustafa back and down. The rifle flew from his grasp.

Mustafa didn't try to retrieve it. He also didn't give Hazard a chance to push his advantage. In a single, swift motion he recovered and came up. With a knife.

The sight of it backed Hazard off. He dug quickly into his pocket for his special knife. The blade flicked out. He'd wanted a confrontation, but not this.

Mustafa had good reason to be confident. He'd learned to fight with a knife almost before he'd learned to eat with his left hand. He took his stance—a crouch with knees bent slightly for spring, feet apart and flat so that he could shuffle and more surely feel the surface beneath them, arms at chest level, extended to about half their reach. He circled Hazard, who stayed in place, merely turning defensively to keep Mustafa in front of him.

Hazard's mouth was dry and his stomach felt as though it were cringing into a hard ball. He tried to recall his instructions, theories, hours of serious but not so deadly practice at knife fighting. This was different.

Mustafa stalked around, gripping his knife lightly, like an artist would a brush. He dabbed the air with it, painted the air with little intricate, distracting designs.

Don't look at his knife, Hazard warned himself, watch his eyes.

A sudden move by Mustafa, a sort of zig-zagging lunge with a swipe to it.

Hazard went up on his toes, arched, pulled his midsection in.

Not soon enough. It felt like a fine, white-hot wire had been drawn across his chest.

“
Weld l-qáhba
!”
—
son of a whore—Mustafa said, adding insult to injury.

Hazard didn't know how badly he'd been cut but he could feel the blood running down. Desperation made him go on the offensive. He lunged forward, slashed, but Mustafa easily avoided his pass. Hazard realized then he couldn't win on these terms. No way.

Mustafa continued his circling stalk. “
L-ihûdi hallûf
!”—Jew pig. He would, he thought, toy with Hazard, prolong it, carve Hazard into submission, weaken him with loss of blood, and then, when Hazard was down, helpless, and asking for his life, he'd end it. Bedouin style. By severing Hazard's spinal cord.

Hazard concentrated on Mustafa's eyes. He saw them tighten just slightly, perhaps telegraphing the start of another lunge. He'd have one chance.

He straightened and kept one leg perpendicular while he swung the other out in a swift semicircle. The side of his foot connected with Mustafa's thrusting forearm, parrying Mustafa's knife hand, sending it upward and away. In almost the same motion Hazard snapped that foot down and shifted his weight forward on it. He came in low, bringing his knife up. A diagonal stab.

The point went into Mustafa just below the right rib cage. The moment it met resistance the six-inch blade activated, rotated, spun in through skin and fat, bored in through muscle and vital organs, blood vessels and arteries. To the hilt.

Mustafa's neck stiffened and his chin went up. Hazard caught a glimpse of Mustafa's disbelieving expression. A protesting grunt came from the oval of Mustafa's mouth just before he collapsed backward over the edge of the south face and tumbled deadweight down about forty courses.

Hazard controlled the urge to throw away the knife. He retracted its blade and put it back in his pocket. His wound was burning. He tried to determine how bad it was but really couldn't. From the pain and his shirt sopped sticky with blood, he knew it was more than a scratch. He picked up Mustafa's automatic rifle, found the magazine, snapped it into place, and started down the west face.

No trouble on the way down, maybe they were all dead or gone. The Jeep was where he'd left it. Gabil was in the passenger seat.

“Mustafa?” Gabil said.

Hazard nodded decisively as he got behind the steering wheel. He was relieved to see Gabil, genuinely pleased. It now looked as though they both might make it. The moment called for some show of camaraderie and, soon after they were under way, Hazard extended his hand, palm up. Gabil wasn't familiar with the new American custom of a palm slap for well done. His huge hand enclosed Hazard's and gave it a couple of shakes.

Landsmen,
thought Hazard. It was a good feeling. He told Gabil about the rendezvous near Rahman.

Gabil wanted to know how he'd managed that.

Hazard explained as briefly as possible, self-conscious about how farfetched it must have sounded to him. He expected Gabil to be incredulous but all the Israeli said was, “Keep the moon over your left shoulder.”

By then they were well out on the desert, with the headlights finding nothing but the endless beige of sand. Seldom a flat stretch, mostly dunes and hollows, one after another. The grind of the Jeep's transmission and the repetition of its rather unhealthy engine added to the monotony.

“What will you do when you get home?” Hazard asked.

Gabil didn't reply.

Hazard glanced over and saw Gabil was slouched down, chin to chest, apparently dozing.

Hazard thought of the answer to his own question. Gabil's days as an agent for Mosad were over. Now that his cover was blown he'd no longer be of any use to that organization; he'd be too easily recognizable. Would Gabil go back to the army, or to his original ambition and be a teacher? Probably both. Fighter and teacher. Yes, in Israel he would be both. Hazard decided he wanted to keep in touch with Gabil; maybe even write letters.

Crest of a dune ahead. And then there was an unexpectedly steep drop off. Hazard braced himself for it and noticed Gabil didn't try to hang on. Gabil lurched forward and stayed slouched against the dashboard.

Hazard asked was anything wrong.

No answer. No movement.

Gabil was dead, shot twice in the lower part of his back. He hadn't complained, not even mentioned it. Maybe he'd thought he could last the trip or more likely, he'd known he couldn't and at least wanted to be headed toward home.

Hazard decided he'd try to take Gabil home, not leave him in this enemy land if he could help it. He pulled Gabil back to the seat so that he appeared more comfortable.

It was half past four. Dawn was only an hour or so off. No way of making it to the coast by then—the rendezvous time he'd sent to Keven. The eastern horizon was already hinting orange.

He still had fifty miles to go when the sun came up. And it was much higher, creating a bright, hot morning when Hazard saw a vast field of white military crosses in the distance. El Alamein. Sown with the lives of thousands, but barren ground, bleached and deathly dry.

A short way farther on was the coastal road, a black, incongruous ribbon. Hazard crossed over it and after five miles more there was the Mediterranean. He concealed the Jeep in the dunes.

Getting out, standing for the first time in hours, his head felt light, his legs heavy. Everything seemed to be tilting and he was suddenly nauseated, had to use the fender of the Jeep to steady himself. Blood had seeped down and saturated the waistband of his jeans. He was very thirsty.

He surveyed the beach. It was deserted, no sign of anyone having been there recently. He'd have to negotiate a fairly high embankment to get down to the water.

Every movement required extreme effort. He assumed that was from loss of blood and delayed shock. He got the automatic rifle from the back and placed it on the hood. Then he went around, opened the door and squatted to pull Gabil over and out. He got his shoulders and back under Gabil's body, but it seemed he'd never be able to rise with all that additional weight on him. He thought of having to leave Gabil there and, determined not to, he slowly straightened up. One hand helped balance Gabil. The other took up the rifle. Hunched over, wobbly, hardly able to life his feet, he went down the crumbling incline and across the wide beach to a large, jutting rock at the water's edge. He dropped Gabil in the shade of it and fell to the wet-packed sand.

He closed his eyes, but when he felt himself slipping away into a deep, red vortex he opened them, forced them wide open, blinked and shook his head sharply to try to clear it. The day had seemed stark clear to him before, but now there was a haze. Caused by the sea?

Five minutes past nine.

Maybe the Israelis would come back for another look. A final onceover before giving up. Ten miles east of Rahman. Hell, Hazard realized, he could be twenty miles east for all he knew, way off the mark. Probably the rendezvous message hadn't even gotten through. Stupid of him to have put that much faith in it. Telepathy. A mental game, that's all it was. Unpredictable, tenuous. Who could seriously believe in it, count on it? He had and he was going to die alone here on a desolate North African beach. Sure as hell.

And for what?

He gazed over at the late Abraham Ben-David.

The tide was coming in. Hazard felt it reach his feet, cold. It lapped up. Was that how it would be? A cold sort of drifting away?

Thoughts of his father and Carl. Ironic that his father would never know how and why he'd died, would never get to enjoy the pride of knowing. As for Carl, maybe somehow Carl had been with him all the way.

Saving best for last, his thoughts went to Keven. Times with her crowded up. Now he knew they were his only true times. Only with her had he ever, ever been touched and reached.

He raised his head and shoulders, his body went rigid, and his hands at his sides fisted in protest.

No use. He lay back.

Keven. How much she'd meant to him, really. Much more than he'd ever told her. She must have known. But …

Keven, if you were here now I would tell you. I would hold me to you. I would say it over and over into your mouth until I was out of breath. I would.

He felt the same sense of futility he'd known when Carl had died. The same impotence from not being able to say what had been left unsaid. Was there a way to say it now?

He fixed his mind on the words, making them the image that he desperately wanted to send. Detaching his awareness of everything else—the pain of his wound, the beach, the water, oncoming death—he visualized Keven's eyes, their special blue with slivers of silver.

Her eyes.

The image.

As he saw it.

As she would see it.

With her eyes.

The image.

It was not difficult for him to bring the two together. No strain to keep them simultaneous in his concentration. They seemed eager to merge and remain one.

Keven
and
I love you.

He prolonged the experience, finding it pleasant. But a sound interrupted.

Incredible sound.

A camouflaged helicopter was coming in low over the water.

21

A
FTER TEN
days in Tel Aviv.

Having been sutured, transfused, fed and rested back into excellent condition, Hazard was now on the way to reunion.

A sign said only sixty-five kilometers to Avignon.

To hell with the rain that had just started coming down hard. Hazard floored the accelerator pedal of the rented car. He was going to surprise Keven. She wasn't expecting him until the day after tomorrow.

Earlier that afternoon at Cap Ferrat the sun had been out. He'd gone to the villa to settle with Pinchon, found the Frenchman and Catherine out by the pool, just the two of them. Pinchon sitting on the edge, with his feet in the falseblue water and a mirror up to his face, applying an estrogenicplacenta cream to ward off smile lines and crows' feet. Catherine, nearby, sunning nude on a soft cushioned lounger. Pinchon, despite his tan, went white, sure that he was seeing his death when he saw Hazard.

Except for Hazard, Pinchon was in the clear. The useless canisters had been thrown back into the sea. There was no evidence, and no one to implicate him. Mustafa was dead. Colonel Bayumi, Brigadier-General Fahmi and the others involved would not make trouble for themselves. Of course, Israeli Intelligence, Mosad, would keep a close eye on him, but Pinchon doubted it would order its anti-terrorist agents to take action against him. Hazard was the only real threat.

Pinchon got up and was calling for help when Hazard hit him the first time. Catherine said nothing, did nothing. While Pinchon cried out and tried to protect his face by covering it with his hands, Catherine turned over to bake evenly.