“It is difficult. I haven’t seen Sturka since the days of the ALN, you know.”
“But you may have heard a few things?”
“I am not sure.”
“Sturka needed a hideout. He needed transportation and supplies. He needed access to the ministries in charge of government patrols out in the djebel—to make sure the FLN keeps clear of his hideout.”
“Well I suppose that must be true, if as you say they are hiding in the djebel. But what makes you think so?”
“We’ve identified Benyoussef Ben Krim.”
“Surely you have more than that?”
Lime only nodded gently; he had given away all he was going to give, it was no good adding that through Mezetti they had traced Sturka’s movements as far as the south coast of Spain and had concluded that Sturka must have made the crossing to North Africa.
Djelil stood up and paced to the door, turned, paced to the window, turned. Lime lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. There was no hurrying Djelil; he had to think about the money a while. Then he would start to bargain. Djelil was a past master at horsetrading; he had learned his art as a slave auctioneer.
At the door Djelil turned, stopped, scowled at the wall, tapped his foot a few times and grunted. He walked slowly to the window and stood in front of it looking out. Lime studied his back.
Abruptly Djelil turned to face him. Djelil’s features were obscured; the twilit sky silhouetted him. “Do you recall the village of El Djamila?”
“A few kilometers up the coast—that one?”
“Yes.”
“They’re not holding him there?”
“No, no. Of course not. I have no idea where they might be. But there is a man in El Djamila, a pied-noir who was a spy in the French camp for Ben Bella. For various reasons I think he may be able to help you in your search.…”
Lime had not heard the movement behind him because Djelil’s voice had his attention but when he turned his head slightly he caught a tail-of-the-eye impression imperfectly—the door swinging soundlessly open—and his scalp contracted. With the speed of long-forgotten habit he rolled off the bed and dropped to the floor, hearing the crack of the silencer-pistol and the thud of its bullet into the wall above his head; he dragged the .38 out of the armpit clamshell as he rolled.
His shoulder blade struck the wall. He saw the squat zigzagging shape across the room and fired the .38 three times very rapidly, recognizing the intruder slowly as he fired.
It was the woman with the moustache. She died with a kind of low-comedy surprise on her face and Lime spun toward Djelil as she was collapsing.
Djelil had a curved knife. His arm was swinging up toward Lime.
Lime parried with the revolver. It cracked against Djelil’s wrist. Djelil didn’t lose the knife but his hand had been numbed and Lime dropped the revolver, snapped a grip on Djelil’s arm at wrist and elbow and broke the arm across his knee.
He shoved Djelil back out of the way; Djelil fell against the wall and Lime scooped up his revolver and crossed the distance to the woman with four long strides. She didn’t look as if there were any trouble left in her but he stopped to pick up the silencer pistol before he went on to the door, feeling like somebody in a Randolph Scott western with guns in both hands.
There wasn’t anyone in the corridor. The hotel had thick walls and any guests who might have heard the racket wouldn’t do anything about it; a tourist alerted by sharp noises in strange places would be confused and uncertain, not eager to look for trouble.
If Djelil had more guards in the hotel they must have been beyond earshot. The one downstairs in the corridor wouldn’t have heard anything.
He locked the door from the inside and glanced at Djelil. The Arab sat on the floor with his back to the wall, cradling his broken arm.
Lime squatted by the woman and put one of the pistols in his pocket; plucked a bit of fuzz from his tweed jacket and placed it on the woman’s nostrils and held her lips shut.
The fluff didn’t stir. She was dead.
Djelil started to mouth a litany of sibilant invective. Lime swatted him hard across the side of the head with his open hand. Djelil tipped over with a cry of bursting pain, the agony of broken bones grating when his ruined arm hit the floor under him.
Lime knew the telephone went through the hotel switchboard but he had to risk it. He gave the operator Gilliams’ number.
“It’s David Lime. I’m at the St. George, Room Two Fourteen. Send a clean-up squad, will you? One DOA and one busted wing, we’ll want a medic. But let’s not be ostentatious about it.”
The use of the American slang might confuse anyone who had an ear to the line. Lime added, “And put out a pick-up order on Houari Djelil’s daughter Sylvie. She’s acting in a movie the French are shooting somewhere around town.”
“You sound rattled. Are you all right?”
“Barely. Make it over here yesterday, will you?” He hung up and collapsed in the chair.
Djelil was struggling to a sitting position, gathering his shattered arm against him. Lime waited for him to get his breath. Anguish distorted Djelil’s face but Lime knew he had been listening to all of it.
Finally Lime said, “Now tell me again about that pied-noir in El Djamila.”
Defiance: “I’m getting to be an old man, David. I haven’t that much to lose by remaining silent.”
“You’ve got as much to lose as anybody. The rest of your life.”
“Such as it is.” Djelil was a realist.
Djelil had been telling the truth about the pied-noir in El Djamila because he wouldn’t have had any reason to lie; he had thought he was talking to a dead man. The monologue had had the ring of truth; it had been designed to hold Lime’s attention while the woman took him out from behind.
Lime tried another tack. “There are thousands of us on this you know. Hundreds of thousands. What difference would killing me have made?”
“Of them all I suppose you were the one most likely to find them.”
“How much did Sturka pay you?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I’ve told them to collect Sylvie.”
“I heard that.”
“I just wanted to make sure you had.”
“Your people won’t harm her. I know you.”
“Think about the stakes and then convince yourself of that again.”
Djelil’s face twisted with agony and then relaxed as the spasm passed. Lime reloaded the spent chambers of his revolver, thrust it into the clamshell and then had a look at the silencer pistol. It was a 7.62mm Luger. He removed the magazine and popped the cartridge out of the breech, put the ammunition in his pocket and the pistol on the bed. “Who was she, your mother?”
Djelil grunted: That’s not funny. Lime looked again at the dead features. The face had gone gray, ruddy at the underside from postmortem lividity. She must have been about fifty. European, or of European stock; possibly one of the pieds-noirs.
“All right, you’ve had time to think about it. Now give me a name.”
Djelil lifted his shoulders and poked his head forward with the Arab gesture known as ma’alesh—the nothing-can-be-done shrug. What controlled Djelil now was the kind of hyper-awareness of masculinity the Arabs called rujuliyah: a mystical thing that steeled your courage. It was always a hard defense to break.
Lime said, “You realize we’re very short for time. We won’t play with you. We’ll let you watch us work on Sylvie and we’re going to be Goddamned hard on her.”
Djelil sat on the floor with his pains. It was getting through to him; he was thinking about it and that meant Lime had won. In the end Djelil summoned the bravado to smile. “Well then how do you say it, one has to live.”
“No.” Lime’s reply was soft. “You don’t have to live, Houari.”