Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels (37 page)

Kelly strolled out of the temple yard. His hands were in the pockets of the jacket Ramdan had been cajoled into giving him. In the borrowed clothing, Kelly was not a prepossessing figure, but at least he was no longer dressed in blood-stained rags.

“Well, I hit him on the head,” the agent sang under his breath, “and I left him there for dead. . . .”

The hilt of his knife was blood-warm in his hand.

XLIV

It was chill and dark in the hour before dawn. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Minh felt as weary and gray as the sky. They had to wait for the other team to get in position in back of the shop, and they seemed to be a long time doing so.

This was the sixth arrest—or arrest attempt—the Vietnamese officer had participated in during the night. Two of the suspected Kabyle terrorists had been missing. The squad, three civil police under Captain Majlid of the Presidential Security Office, had ransacked the houses and arrested all family members present. That might in time help the local security forces with their Kabyle problem, but it was of small use to Nguyen.

He had not found the three successful pickups to be a great deal more helpful to him. Nguyen was quite certain from their reactions that two of the Kabyles arrested had known nothing about the plot. The third man had owned the shop through which the kidnapped—or defecting, that was obvious—scientists had been spirited away. The Kabyle was anything
but
innocent . . . but his claim to have been attending a wedding in Oran would probably hold up. It meant that he had isolated himself from the operation. Whatever the prisoner might divulge in the interrogation rooms next to the Civil Prison, it would not include detailed information about the American operatives and their plans.

“Allah, four more of these,” muttered the Algerian captain. “And then they’ll add more to the list if I know them.” He took out a French cigarette and looked at it before dropping it back in the packet. The policeman with him at the front door said something in Arabic. Majlid laughed and took the cigarette out again.

Faintly through the air came the whistle that meant the other two men had found the correct back door. Radios were less common than was needed for them this night in Algiers.

The captain cursed and threw the cigarette toward the squad’s blue and white Mikrobus. He hammered on the door and shouted in French, “Open up in there! At once!”

Nguyen stepped instinctively to the hinge side of the shop door. The front wall was mostly display window and no protection, though. The police seemed only tired. The uniformed man clicked off the safety of his sub-machine gun without any apparent concern. Out of deference to his hosts, Nguyen kept his hand away from his own pistol. He was taut, ready to move in whatever direction was required.

Majlid cursed again. He nodded to the man with the sub-machine gun. The uniformed man stabbed the butt of his weapon through the glazed door panel. He jerked the tube stock up, then sideways, spilling more glass on the floor within the shop. Nguyen thought that he could hear movement inside.

The Algerian captain reached carefully through the opening to avoid the rippling edges above the putty. He worked the paired locks without haste. When he had turned the knob to actually unlatch the door, Majlid withdrew his hand. He kicked the panel open, shouting, “Come out, Ramdan!”

There was a crash within the shop as someone met the pair at the back door and tried to retreat. Majlid frowned and took a step into the darkness. He tugged at the pistol in his shoulder holster.

“
Don’t
!”
Nguyen shouted. His Tokarev was already in his hand. “The light’s behind you!”

A red cordite flash hit the interior of the shop. The captain’s head snapped up. He toppled against the policeman behind him.

The Vietnamese officer shot twice, aiming for the muzzle flash. Through the echoing shots cut the howl of a ricochet. That did not mean Nguyen had missed. The high-velocity bullets of his pistol would not have been stopped by anything as slight as a manchest.

Within, something hard dropped. The uniformed Algerian was trying to clear his own weapon. “Not now!” Nguyen screamed. He dived into the shop just as somebody in back found the switch for the overhead fixture.

A stepped display platform filled the center of the shop. A boy gripped it to hold himself upright. The revolver with which he had shot Majlid lay on the floor at his feet. The boy’s face was as white as a flag of surrender—except for his lips. His lips were brightened by bubbles of orange pulmonary blood. There were two holes a finger’s breadth apart in the center of the boy’s shirt. In his back would be matching holes.

The team from the back door was pushing a third, heavy-set Algerian ahead of them. There was blood on the prisoner’s trouser leg. Since there had been no shooting from the rear, it was probably a reopened wound. As the older man was frog-marched in, the boy slumped to the floor of the shop. He covered the revolver with his corpse. The older prisoner wailed and tried to catch him. The policeman holding his arms jerked him back.

“Are you all right?” cried one of the men from the back. “Look what this one had—good thing he didn’t pull the pin!” He raised a fragmentation grenade with a block of plastic explosive molded around it. The combination would lift the roof of a bunker or spread pieces of an automobile over a square block.

“Hey, where’s the captain?” asked the man holding the prisoner.

“Him? Oh, dead,” Nguyen said absently. He threw the safety of his pistol and holstered it without unloading the chamber. Majlid had taken the bullet through the bridge of his nose. His eyes bulged in ultimate surprise.

The Vietnamese took the bomb from the Algerian who was holding it. The prisoner inches away stank of fear and urine.

“Yes,” Nguyen said as he examined the explosive, “this is very good. It will save us going back to headquarters to question this one.”

“Wait a minute,” objected the man with the submachine gun. “You can’t—”

The Vietnamese colonel turned and looked at him. Words choked in the policeman’s throat.

After a moment’s silence, Nguyen began to give his instructions.

XLV

When the French couples came out of the museum, Kelly was standing on the broad firing step of the city wall. He was gazing out through one of the crenellations. The firing step was a good five feet above street level, so that even though the agent was standing beside the Renault, the grade separation kept him from being a part of the scene. The couples ignored him as he seemed to ignore them.

The tourist who looked most like Kelly began to unlock the driver’s door. Kelly dropped into the street in front of the Renault. “Excuse me, please,” the agent said with a smile. His hands lay atop one another, waist high.

The would-be driver scowled at the American. “We don’t need a guide, thank you,” he said, holding the door ajar with his hand. Behind him on the street side stood the black-haired woman. She looked more interested than anxious at the moment. There were other cars, other people, nearby, but no one else was within fifty feet.

“Oh, not a guide, no,” Kelly said with a chuckle. He stepped around so that the man and woman were to either side of him. Their bodies masked the knife which the agent suddenly displayed. Only they and the other couple, staring across the car’s low roof, could see the steel shimmer in the bright daylight.

“I am an agent of the Second Bureau,” Kelly continued in soft, persuasive French, “but there is neither the time nor the opportunity for me to make this request through channels. I am so sorry, but three of you”—his smile and the splayed fingers of his left hand indicated the woman beside him and the other couple—“must accompany me back to Tunis.”

“You’re mad!” blurted the nearest man. “We have done nothing!” The woman beside him had drawn in her breath, but she was staring at Kelly’s battered face and not at his knife. The other couple was straining, wide-eyed, trying to hear what the agent was saying in his deceptively mild voice.

“Of course you have done no wrong,” the American agreed. “You have by chance the opportunity to serve France at only a slight inconvenience to yourselves. Here, give me the keys—” Kelly did not force the key ring from the other man’s hand, nor was the way his knife rotated actually a threat. Between firm pressure and the winking edge, however, the Frenchman released what he at first had intended to hold.

“Madame,” Kelly went on with a nod to the black-haired woman, “if you will enter and admit your friends?” He swung the door open, keeping his body in the opening so that he could not be closed out. Puzzled and hesitant, the three tourists got in the car. The knife was hidden again, but it was more real to the others than was the smile which never slipped from Kelly’s face.

“And you as well, sir, for the moment,” the agent said to the last Frenchman. The man obeyed awkwardly, because he kept his eyes on Kelly instead of watching what he was doing himself.

With all four of the tourists inside, Kelly knelt. He braced his left hand on the top of the steering wheel. A small rubber band was wrapped several times around the last joint of his little finger. Blocked circulation darkened and distended the fingertip, “Now, it really doesn’t matter whether you believe that what I am doing is necessary to the survival of France,” the agent continued reasonably. “You can believe I’m a Mossad assassin, if you like, it’s all one with me. But—you must believe that I am serious when I say that none of you will be harmed if you cooperate, yes?”

The others nodded, mesmerized by the gentle words and the mirror-finished steel.

“But you are not, I judge,” Kelly continued, “persons used to violence. It is necessary that you believe me utterly when I say that I will kill you all without compassion if there is the least trouble from you.”

The blonde woman in back nodded again, but the meaning of Kelly’s words had not penetrated the gloss of fear upon her.

Kelly reached up with his knife. He slashed off the last joint of his own left little finger. The fingertip spun into the lap of the man behind the wheel. The Frenchman sagged as if his spinal cord had been cut. There were tiny droplets of blood spattering the inner slope of the window.

Kelly felt as if he were being bathed in hot sand. There was a notch and a streak of blood on the steering wheel where the blade had cut through his finger. In a voice that rushed through fire, the agent said, “I am very serious. Now, madame, please remove your husband’s passport and identity papers. He will stay here. You will drive, I will sit beside you . . . and you will all be released unharmed near Tunis as soon as we can get there.”

Kelly carefully wiped both flats of his knife on the coat of the man who had fainted. The wet streak soaked away instantly in the dark fabric. There was very little blood. The rubber band tourniquet prevented that. The bandage Kelly would apply when they got moving would handle infection for as long as it would have to.

The blonde woman managed to stick her head out the window before she vomited.

“Sorry,” the agent repeated, “but it can’t be helped.”

There would be no trouble from this crew on the long drive. Of that, Kelly was sure.

XLVI

Fear had drawn all the blood from Ramdan’s skin. The pigment remained to turn the prisoner’s naked body into a construct of yellow wax. Only his eyeballs and the occasional tremors that shook his whole plump frame proved the shopkeeper was still alive.

The two policemen still on the lower floor were silent and increasingly uncomfortable. Nguyen himself kept up a constant flow of conversation as he completed his preparations. “Did they ever talk of Doctor Hoang Tanh?” he asked with a glance at Ramdan. see, I’m not in the least interested in your friends, only in the foreigners who were involved in all this.”

One of the policemen stirred uneasily. He said nothing. Nguyen turned to him sharply. “Here,” the Vietnamese said. He held out a shallow silver bowl. “Take this upstairs and fill it with water. When you’ve brought it back, you can go up again and help your colleague guard the women.”

The Algerian hesitated only a moment before he clumped up the stairs on his errand.

“Or perhaps,” said Nguyen, again in a mild voice, “they talked of Professor Evgeny Vlasov?”

That brought a tremor from the prisoner, but he still did not speak.

The police had cleared the central display platform. They had bound the shop owner to it in a sitting position after stripping him naked. The swivel chair in the office would have been too easy to tip over. That would have given the subject something to think about other than what Nguyen intended. Ramdan’s limbs were tied to the platform supports. A final loop locked his waist to a pillar behind him so that he could not throw himself forward. The edge of the platform’s second step caught the prisoner in the small of the back. That provided just the slight measure of discomfort which the Vietnamese officer wanted for the moment.

“I don’t suppose you know the real name of the American in charge,” Nguyen said, “but perhaps you’ll tell me what name he used? Kelly, perhaps? Ah, well.”

He found what he wanted for the demonstration in the tangle of objects which they had brushed off the platform. It was a glass plate on a stand of bronze filigree. Nguyen held the plate up to the light fixture and rotated it. The heavy glass threw a lens across the floor. It wavered briefly across the head of the teenage boy who still lay where he had fallen. The blood which had gushed from his mouth was dry now. It was as black as his hair. Ramdan’s eyes followed the light across the floor. He began to tremble again.

The policeman who had been sent for the water returned. He carried not only the bowl but a full plastic bucket as well. “In case you need more,” he muttered, keeping his eyes turned away from both Nguyen and the interrogation subject.

“Very thoughtful,” said the Vietnamese, “but I would not have called you back anyway.” Torture requires a particular mind set, the capacity to think of the subject as a thing to be manipulated rather than a human being.

Effective interrogation, which is not necessarily the same thing, requires the same mind set.