The Radioactive Camel Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 16

Furtively, crawling on hands and knees across the beaten earth between camel and camel, he searched and prodded and investigated with exploring fingers. After an hour he was halfway along the third line of animals. The great beasts chewed noisily on the cud, turning their eyes to gaze incuriously at the crouching man. He was enveloped in the rank odor of their fetid breath.

Towards the end of the line, he fell forward as his wrist turned under him on a loose stone, and lurched against a bulging bale of merchandise still harnessed to a dromedary. The pack swung away from him in an odd manner: it didn’t move as a tightly folded wad of materials should move…

Feverishly, he turned towards it. In a moment its secret was revealed. The thin layer of cloths on the outside was stretched over a wickerwork cage: inside, the bale was bulked out with some light substance like cotton wool—and, buried in the center, his fingers slid down the cold, greasy surface of a lead container.

He let out his breath in a long sigh. Unbuttoning the flap of his breast pocket, he drew out a small leather case containing two metal devices about the size of a matchbox. One of them emitted a continuous radio signal; with the dial of the other correctly tuned, one could follow the movements of the first one from a distance by taking the direction in which the bleeps were the loudest. For a moment he hesitated, wondering where to conceal the homing device. Its magnetic limpet attachment would be useless on lead. Finally, he shrugged and thrust it as far as he could into the cotton beneath the canister. At least now he would be able to keep track of the camel carrying the deadly load, even if he had to leave the caravan when the two portions split up. The homer had a range of over thirty miles. Just in case, though, he permitted himself the briefest flash from a pencil flashlight. Between the bogus bale carrying the canister and the balancing pack on the animal’s other side, a blanket in yellow, red and black striped material was rolled. This would give him a visual check as well.

Carefully he replaced the coverings over the wicker cage, tightened the retaining straps, and crawled back the way he had come. He was just rising to his feet at the end of the line when a flashlight beam blazed at him from behind a tree trunk.

“What are you doing?” a harsh voice snarled. “Stay still or I shall shoot.” There was a movement towards him in the shadows.

Solo froze. “Pardon,” he said in French. “I was trying to find my way to the central bazaar. Perhaps Monsieur could direct me?”

“On your hands and knees? A likely story! Come here and let’s have a good look at you. The police and the military here do not look too kindly on thefts from caravans.” The man holding the flashlight advanced. It was Ahmed, the camel-master.

Solo went slowly forward, thankful that he had had the foresight to change clothes. “I assure you, Monsieur, that there was no question of theft,” he said. “I had lost my way and I fell. When you saw me, I was just rising again…”

“We shall see about that,” the other sneered. “Put up your hands and we shall find out what you have thieved.”

The agent raised his arms, standing where he was. Ahmed came closer, circling him warily, the barrel of a revolver gleaming in the beam from the flashlight. He patted Solo on both hips and under the arms, running his fingers expertly up the inside of his thighs and across his stomach. “At least you’re not armed,” he said. “That should get the sentence reduced by perhaps five years—Aha! What have we here?” His hand had touched the hard bulge of the leather case in Solo’s breast pocket.

“A transistor radio,” Solo said truthfully.

“I shall believe that when I see it. Let’s have it.”

“You want me to take it out?”

“Quick.” The gun jabbed Solo hard in the small of the back.

He lowered his right arm slowly and unbuttoned the flap of the pocket, drawing out the case with the homer in it between finger and thumb. Then, before the exclamation of satisfaction had left Ahmed’s lips, he dropped the case and his hand streaked down and behind him, knocking the other’s gun arm aside. The heavy caliber revolver roared as Solo whirled and grasped the hand holding it in both of his own. He jerked the man’s arm up and then down, exerting a paralyzing judo grip on the wrist. As the barrel pointed at the ground, the pistol exploded again, the ricochet whining away among the trees from the stony terrain.

As the weapon finally dropped from his nerveless fingers, Ahmed slammed the heel of his other hand under Solo’s chin, thrusting back the agent’s head with agonizing force. Solo went with the thrust, letting go of the man’s wrist and rolling backwards. At the same time, he brought up his knees, set his heels on Ahmed’s stomach and then suddenly straightened his legs. The camel-master flew over his head and crashed to the ground behind him with a clatter which echoed around the square.

In a flash Solo was on his feet again and running towards the alley by which he had entered the place. This was no time for a prolonged combat: all that mattered was that he should get away and back to his tent before he was recognized. Aroused by the shots, people were already running towards them from the encampment. Pausing only to scoop up the leather case he had dropped and boot the revolver into the shadows, he dashed for the corner. Before he reached it, Ahmed was shouting abuse at him while he scrambled after the gun. A moment later a third shot rang out. The wind of the bullet fanned Solo’s left shoulder. Then he was around the corner and pelting down the alley towards the street which led to the bazaar.

Before he reached the second corner he stopped abruptly and melted into the shadows of a doorway. Half a dozen soldiers with drawn pistols clattered into the alley from the street and ran past him towards the confused shouting in the square.

Once they had gone, Solo slid out of his hiding place and walked rapidly away from the noise. “But you must have passed him,” he could hear Ahmed furiously calling as he turned the corner. “He ran down that passage only a few seconds before you arrived…”

The agent joined the throng moving towards the bazaar and strove to conceal the fact that he was hurrying. Arab women veiled in black, fellaheen in striped shifts and tarbooshes, peasants in rags and Bedouin in flowing white robes jostled against him as he walked. Somewhere in the crowd behind, he could sense, there was an eddying and a commotion as Ahmed and the soldiers ran back into the street. Dimly over the general noise he could hear voices raised in argument and shouts of protest.

In the market place, the shuffling of feet was drowned in the cries of barkers and the traditional haggling of merchants and customers. Hands gesticulated, fingers wagged, palms were upraised in the suffocating press among the stalls of fruit, vegetables, cloth and hardware under the flares. He had almost shouldered his way through to the far side when three shots rang out above the heads of the crowd. There was a screaming and a stampede as everybody fought to get away from the center of the market. A great stand of copper pots and pans near Solo careened over as half a dozen robed Arabs forced their way between two stalls.

“…where you are. Don’t leave the market place!” a voice was shouting over the clangor of falling hardware and the furious protests of the stallholder. “There is a foreign thief at large here and we want to find him. This is the military. Stay where you are—you have nothing to fear.”

Feeling as though he had suddenly been exposed in the glare of a searchlight, Solo slunk around behind the stall and made for a street twisting away into the shadows. If he was to go a hundred yards down there and then find a right turn, he might be able to circle around and find the lane leading to the wall sheltering his bivouac.