'Turn around!' ordered the surrogate foreman or sergeant, in a harsh voice directly behind him.
'I'll turn when I care to,' said Kendrick, wondering if he was heard.
'Now,' rejoined the man in a voice no louder than Evan's—a quiet prelude to his strong hand suddenly crashing down on Kendrick's right shoulder, gripping the flesh around the bleeding wound.
'Don't touch me, that's an order!' Evan shouted, holding his ground, his hands gripping the iron bars so as not to betray the pain he felt, his antennae alert for what he wanted to learn… It came. The fingers clenching his shoulder spastically separated; the hand fell away on Evan's command, but tentatively returned a moment later. It revealed enough: The noncom gave orders bluntly, yet he received and executed them with alacrity when they were given by an authoritative voice. Enough. He was not the man here in the compound. He was high on the totem pole but not high enough. Was there really another? A further test was called for.
Kendrick stood rigid, then without motion or warning swung swiftly around to his right, ignominiously dislodging the hand as the stocky man was thrown off balance by the clockwise movement. 'All right!' he spat out, his sharp whisper not a statement but an accusation. 'What is it about me you don't like? I'll convey your judgment to others. I'm sure they'll be interested for they would like to know who's making judgments here in Masqat!' Evan again paused, then abruptly continued, his voice rising in a one-on-one challenge. 'Those judgments are considered by many to be curdled in ass's milk. What is it, imbecile? What don't you like about me?'
'I do not make judgments!' shouted the muscular terrorist as defensively as the boy-man who feared a firing squad. Then just as quickly as his outburst had erupted, the wary sergeant-foreman, momentarily frightened that his words might have been heard above the babble, regained his suspicious composure. 'You're free with words,' he whispered hoarsely, squinting his eyes, 'but they mean nothing to us. How do we know who you are or where you come from? You don't even look like one of us. You look different.'
'I move in circles you don't move in—can't move in. I can.'
'He has light-coloured eyes!' The stifled cry came from the older, bearded prisoner with the long filthy hair who was peering forward. 'He's a spy! He's come to spy on us!' Others crowded in studying the suddenly more menacing stranger.
Kendrick slowly turned his head towards his accuser. 'So might you have these eyes if your grandfather was European. If I cared to change them for your grossly stupid benefit, a few drops of fluid would have been sufficient for a week. Naturally, you're not aware of such techniques.'
'You have words for everything, don't you?' said the sergeant-foreman. 'Liars are free with words for they cost nothing.'
'Except one's life,' replied Evan, moving his eyes, staring at individual faces. 'Which I have no intention of losing.'
'You are afraid to die then?' challenged the well-groomed youngster with the soiled trousers.
'You yourself answered that question for me. I have no fear of death—none of us should have—but I do fear not accomplishing what I've been sent here to accomplish. I fear that greatly—for our most holy cause.'
'Words again!' choked the stocky would-be leader, annoyed that a number of the prisoners were listening to the strange-looking Euro-Arab with the fluid tongue. 'What is this thing you are to accomplish here in Masqat? If we are so stupid, why don't you tell us, enlighten us!'
'I will speak only to those I was told to find. No one else.'
'I think you should speak to me,' said the sergeant—now more sergeant than foreman—as he took a menacing step towards the rigid American congressman. 'We do not know you but you may know us. That gives you an advantage I don't like.'
'And I don't like your stupidity,' said Kendrick, immediately gesturing with both hands, one pointing to his right ear, the other at the moving, chattering crowd by the door. 'Can't you understand?' he exclaimed, his whisper a shout into the man's face. 'You could be heard! You must admit you are stupid.'
'Oh, yes, we are that, sir.' The sergeant—definitely a sergeant—turned his head, looking at an unseen figure, somewhere in the huge concrete cell. Evan tried to follow the man's gaze; with his height he saw a row of open toilets at the end of the hall; several were in use, each occupant's eyes watching the excitement. Other inmates, curious, many frantic, rushed alternately between the loud group by the heavy door and the crowd around the new prisoner. 'But then, sir, great sir,' continued the heavyset terrorist mockingly, 'we have methods to overcome our stupidity. You should give inferior people credit for such things.'
'I give credit when it is due—’
'Our account is due now!' Suddenly, the muscular fanatic shot up his left arm. It was a cue, and with the signal voices swelled, raised in an Islamic chant followed instantly by a dozen others, and then more, until the entire compound was filled with the reverberating echoes of fifty-odd zealots shrieking the praises of the obscure stations leading into the arms of Allah. And then it happened. A sacrifice was in the making.
Bodies fell on him; fists crashed into his abdomen and face. He could not scream—his lips were clamped by strong clawlike fingers, the flesh stretched until he thought his mouth would be torn away. The pain was excruciating. And then abruptly, his lips were free, his mouth halfway in place.
'Tell us!' screamed the sergeant-terrorist into Kendrick's ear, his words lost to the wiretaps by the wildly accelerating Islamic chanting. 'Who are you? What place in hell do you come from?'
'I am who I am!' shouted Evan, grimacing and holding on as long as he could manage, convinced he knew the Arabic mind, believing a moment would come when respect for an enemy's death would induce a few seconds of silence before the blow was administered; it would be enough. Death was revered in Islam, by friend and adversary alike. He needed those seconds! He had to let the guards know! Oh, Christ, he was being killed! A clenched fist hammered down on his testicles—when, when would it stop for those few, precious moments?
A blurred figure was suddenly above him, bending over, studying him. Another fist crashed into his left kidney; the inward scream did not emerge from his mouth. He could not permit it.
'Stop!' cried the voice of the blurred outline above. 'Tear off his shirt. Let me see his neck. It is said there is a mark he can't wash away.'
Evan felt the cloth being ripped from his chest, his breath sinking, knowing the worst was about to be revealed. There was no scar on his neck.
'It is Amal Bahrudi,' intoned the man above. The barely conscious Kendrick heard the words and was stunned.
'What do you look for?' asked the bewildered sergeant-foreman, furious.
'What is not there,' said the echoing voice. 'Throughout Europe, Amal Bahrudi is marked by the scar on his throat. A photograph was circulated to the authorities that was confirmed to be of him, a picture obscuring the face but not the bare neck where the scar of a knife wound was in clear focus. It had been his best cover, an ingenious device of concealment.'
'You confuse me!' shouted the squatting, stocky man, his words nearly drowned out by the cacophonous chanting. 'What concealment? What scar!'
'A scar that never was, a mark that never existed. They all look for a lie. This is Bahrudi, the blue-eyed man who can take pain with silence, the trusted one who moves about Western capitals unnoticed because of the genes of a European grandfather. Word must have reached Oman that he was reported to be on his way here, but even so he'll be released in the morning, no doubt with great apologies. You see, there is no scar on his throat.'
Through the haze and the terrible pain, Evan knew it was the moment to react. He forced a smile across his burning lips, his light blue eyes centering on the blurred figure above. 'A sane man,' he coughed in agony. 'Please, get me up, get them away from me before I see them all in hell.'