The second attack came the following morning. Solo had coded a message to cable to Waverly and they were on their way to the main post office in a taxi. Banks of high cloud scudded across a sunny sky, though the drying road was still greasy from the night’s rain.
They were only a few blocks from their destination when a Renault 16 passed them with the loading window at the back propped open. It was Illya who noticed the car slacken speed momentarily when it was about fifty yards ahead. Two men were maneuvering something by the open window. Then, as the Renault accelerated viciously away, a square, black, heavy object fell to the road and lay spinning in their path.
There was no time for speech. Kuryakin’s hand darted forward over the back of the drivers seat. Grasping the handbrake, he hauled on it with all his strength.
With its rear wheels suddenly locked, the heavy cab slewed sideways across the slippery road with a screaming of tires. The back end broke away, the startled driver over-corrected, and the taxi—with Illya still wrenching desperately at the lever—turned completely around and shot backwards into a traffic island, where it slammed into a post and turned slowly over onto its side.
The noise of the crash was drowned in the explosion, which blew a ten-foot crater in the roadway. Miraculously, nobody was hurt.
“That settles it, then,” Solo said just afterwards, as he picked granules of glass from his hair. “We’ll forget the cable; we’ll forget the direct flight we booked. If we go straight back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, we can just make the earlier Royal Air Maroc Caravelle to Rome and we can change planes there and fly to Cairo…”
By midnight, a hired car had deposited them in Alexandria.
Chapter 5
Exit Mr. Mahmoud
THE SEA at Stanley Bay was oyster colored and smooth. Every few minutes it gathered itself enough to flop listlessly into a miniscule wave, which sank into the sand before it could recede. Half a mile offshore, water and sky merged, horizonless, into a uniform sheet of gray.
Moisture beaded the cane tables and chairs of the Terraza, filming the shiny walls and misting the urns behind the counter. Apart from a couple of students necking at the back, Solo and Kuryakin were the only customers. Dutifully, they ordered Turkish coffee and Izarra, gazing through steamy windows towards the beach. On the deserted terrace outside, a United Arab Republic flag dropped from a peeling flagstaff.
They had spent the morning on the waterfront, strolling erratically along the moss-covered wharves, gazing at the long lines of big ships ranked in the huge dock, pausing to stare at a forest of masts and cordage outside the Yacht Club in the inner basin. Seawards, a fleet of fishing boats with liver-colored sails cleared the corridor between the moored ships and headed for open water. Once a sentry had warned them sternly away from a bay where two UAR gunboats had been refueling—but otherwise nobody had come near them. It had been almost midday when a stone wrapped in paper, thrown from somewhere behind, had landed on the cobbles at their feet. They had both swung around instantly, eyes searching. Above the hammering activity of the port, flocks of pigeons had wheeled between palms and the onion-shaped minarets of the city. But there hadn’t been a soul in sight.
Turning back, Solo had unwrapped the paper. There had been no words on it—just a meticulously drawn clock face with the hands pointing to 3:45.
And now it was a quarter past four and they were on their third order of coffee and liqueurs. Illya smacked his lips and grimaced. “Very pleasant,” he said dubiously, “once. But a small amount, as the English saying has it, travels a great distance.”
“A little bit goes a long way,” Solo corrected automatically. “I hope this man Mahmoud is coming. It’d be quite a job picking up a cold trail from here.” For the twentieth time, he stared out of the window at the livid sea.
There was a rustling of tires on gravel. A moment later, a thin man in a cream alpaca suit carried a bicycle onto the terrace and propped it against a railing. Pushing through the bead curtain, he glanced quickly around the sleazy room—a ferrety little man with glasses and a ragged moustache smudged across his pale face. The students were still immersed in each other. A table full of middle-aged tourists who had come in shortly before chattered together in French. For a second, the shifty eyes rested on the agents’ table: the yellow fluid in the small glasses, the copper pan of coffee. Then he walked quickly across and sat down in a vacant chair.
“Mr. Mahmoud?” Solo asked politely.
“No names, please,” the little man said hurriedly, glancing over his shoulder. “My apologies for the delay. As you see, things are happening.” He dragged a folded newspaper from an inner pocket and spread it on the table.
It was that day’s copy of Al Ahram, folded back to an inner page. Below the fold, an item had been ringed in red marker:
BOMB OUTRAGES IN CASABLANCA
Following an unexplained explosion in a main street of the city yesterday morning, Casablanca police were today trying to piece together the reason for a bomb blast which destroyed a coffee shop in the old part of the town during the early hours of this morning. Among the wreckage, which extended to a building behind the premises, were discovered the bodies of six young girls and three men…
Solo stopped reading and dropped the paper back on the table. “So someone got him at last,” he sighed. “I see what you mean.”
Mahmoud’s fingers were trembling. Not someone,” he said. “They got him. He told me what it was you wanted. I can give you a name—but it will cost you plenty.”
“I expected that.”
“I’ve got a wife and family, and I want to get out. When I agreed at first, I never expected…It’ll cost you plenty,” the little man repeated, mopping his brow with a large silk handkerchief.
“Okay, so it’ll cost us plenty. So can you deliver, that’s the point.”
“‘Yes, but I’m not entirely sure what you want to do. This bomb thing, you see, has altered things. They must know somebody’s on the trail. In fact, I know they do, because they’ve switched plans. I have friends in the police and Movement Control—that’s why I was so late. I was checking—”
“Sure, sure, sure. Just tell us what you found out.”
“They’ve taken the—consignment—in which you’re interested away from the caravan. They landed a helicopter and took it away.”
“They must be rattled to do something so obvious. D’you know where the helicopter went?”
“To Khartoum, in the Sudan. What do you want to do? How can I help you?”
“What happens to the stuff in Khartoum?”
“I don’t know. I think…I believe it will be concealed on another caravan leaving there in a few days.”
“What caravan? Heading where? How can I contact it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where it’s going. But I can give you a name in Khartoum. What do you want to do?
“I speak some Arabic,” Solo said slowly. “I want the name of someone who can identify that caravan, someone who can get me to the place it starts from, fix me up with the right kind of disguise, papers and so on, and finally fix it so that I can take someone’s place on the journey; bribe someone to change places with me, maybe.”
Mahmoud thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table. “There’s an Englishman called Rodney Marshel,” he said at last. “He lives in Khartoum—local correspondent for Eros newsagency, I think. He could help. I’m not sure about the papers, though. What kind did you want?”