The diode was still in the bottom of the toilet bowl. “I’m up here.” Qazi reached into the water and retrieved it. No towels! Ali was running up the stairs. Qazi wiped his hand on the back of his trousers, dropped them, and sat down on the toilet seat.
“In here.”
Ali’s head popped through the door. “A car has driven slowly by the access road twice. Four men. They were looking.”
“Put four men on the rooftops, out of sight.”
Ali disappeared back down the steps. Qazi wrapped the diode in toilet paper and dropped it in the water. It swirled away as the toilet gurgled.
Ali was pointing out the rooftop positions to four men armed with assault rifles as Qazi approached the terrace. “No shooting until you see their weapons,” he told them. One man climbed a tree to get on top of the parking garage. Two more went through the villa to the attic exit to the roof. The fourth used a ladder to reach the top of the guesthouse directly across from the villa, then Ali took the ladder away.
Colonel Qazi sat on the terrace and Noora brought him a pistol, a silencer, and a glass of iced tea, then went back inside. Her station was with Jarvis. The rest of the men were still sleeping with their weapons beside them.
Qazi pushed the button and the magazine slipped from the grip of the Browning Hi-Power. It was full. He screwed the silencer to the barrel and replaced the magazine, then chambered a round. After lowering the hammer, he tucked the weapon into his belt behind him. Then he adjusted the volume on his two-way radio and laid it on the table. The guards and Ali also had radios and would use them in an emergency.
It is pleasant here in the dappled shade of the giant trees, Qazi reflected, with the short lawn grass stirring ever so gently to the breeze. The air smelled of flowers, which were still blooming in the beds around the house and walks. He filled his lungs and exhaled slowly. Very pleasant.
Even the pervasive traffic sounds were absent in this pastoral setting. All he could hear were leaves rustling under the wind’s caress.
A large yellow-and-black butterfly settled on the toe of his shoe and gently stirred its wings. A shaft of sunlight fell upon the shoe, making the insect’s wings appear luminous, almost transparent.
Such a place the Prophet must have envisioned when he described paradise—“a garden beneath which a river flows.” And his listeners in their tents under the merciless sun, amid the sand and rock, had known the truth of his message. Yes, paradise will be green and flowering, with pools of clear water and abundant grass and majestic trees that reach deep into the earth and drink of Allah’s bounty. And the believers shall spread their rugs on the grass in the shade of the trees and make their prayers to Allah, the all-merciful, all-compassionate. Truly, man loves best what he has not.
The stars had begun to fade one by one. Time dragged on slowly. Then he realized he could distinguish the outline of the top of the escarpment from the lighter black of the sky. Even as he watched, the relief became bolder and the sky beyond began to gray.
He left the camel and crawled toward the edge. The wadi below was still enshrouded in darkness. Behind him he heard the camel rise, then urinate, groaning against the rag around its muzzle.
He stared expectantly into the wadi, trying to distinguish features as the eastern sky changed from gray to a pale, thin blue. He listened intently, trying to hear something, anything, but all he could hear was the pounding of his heart. Finally the top of the sun flamed the stones around him. The wadi was still impenetrably dark.
He saw the flash in the wadi and heard the bullet slap the stone near him at precisely the same instant. Then he heard the shot, a flat crack that boomed off the rock and died, leaving a deeper silence. He couldn’t fire back because he might hit the camels. He backed away from the edge and felt his stinging cheek. A piece of stone or shard of lead had caused it to bleed. So this is how it feels!
He changed positions, surprised at how alive and vigorous he felt. He would not die. Even if he did, he was vibrantly alive now, aware of everything, a part of the universe.
When he looked again over the lip of the rock, he could see the hobbled camel in the sandy bed of the wadi, which was lined with boulders larger than a tent. There were four camels. He gently eased the rifle forward and thumbed off the safety.
He saw a head, searching again for him. He lined up the Enfield and tried to quell his rapid breathing. The rifle fired before he was ready.
The weapon slammed back against his shoulder. He crawled backward away from the edge, the barrel of the heavy rifle dragging against the rock.
“You are surrounded!” His uncle was shouting. “Lay down your rifles and step out and you will live. Allah is merciful.”
“We have the water.” The voice was high-pitched, a boy’s voice.
“Surrender or die!”
“You will kill us anyway.”
“I swear by the Prophet. If you surrender, you live.”
Qazi crawled back to the edge and looked down.
“As Allah wills it,” the boy said, barely audible. He and his companion stepped from behind the rocks. Only one of them had a rifle. He tossed it on the ground before them.
“I don’t think anyone is coming, Colonel,” Ali said.
“Perhaps later. Relieve the men on the roofs when you relieve the perimeter guards.” This was done every two hours.
“Who could it have been?”
“Anybody,” Qazi shrugged. “Even curious neighbors.” He glanced at his watch. It was three-thirty. He stood and picked up the radio on the table. “I am going upstairs to sleep. Wake me at five o’clock. Put only men who are not going with us on guard duty. All the others should meet in the dining room at five for a briefing.”
Jake threw the telephone receiver onto its cradle with a bang. “The whole damned afternoon wasted, all because of him!”
“Now, Jake,” Callie said, “don’t be nasty. It’s not Toad’s fault.” They had ridden the same ferry back from Capri that they had ridden over, and Jake had stopped by fleet landing and talked to the ship by radio. He had spoken to the XO, Ray Reynolds, and told him of Callie’s suspicions about Judith Farrell, Lieutenant Tarkington’s new flame. He had left word that Toad was to personally call Captain Grafton at his hotel. And Jake had asked to be telephoned when Lieutenant Tarkington was located.
In the lobby the Graftons had telephoned Judith Farrell’s room, but no one answered. They had even gone to the fourth floor and knocked on the door. All to no avail.
“They say he isn’t aboard. They’ve just figured out that he had liberty all day and cycled through the ready room at ten o’clock, on his way ashore again. No one knows where he is.”
“How about the Shore Patrol?”
“Reynolds has already alerted them. If they run across him, they’re to secure his liberty and send him back to the ship immediately, after he calls me.”
“Surely you don’t think Judith is behind the disappearance of those petty officers?”
“I don’t know what to think. Goddammit, I don’t have enough facts to do any thinking with. Sailors are over the hill. Sailors go over the hill all the time when the ship is in port. The captain has a big mast when we get underway and kicks a lot of kids’ butts for overstaying liberty. But petty officers rarely do that. And Judith has a funny accent — a faint, funny accent that only a linguist can hear. She’s not what she says she is and she’s not in her room and she was aboard the ship in Tangiers. And Toad can’t be immediately located. So what does it all add up to?”