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.”

It was damp in El Djamila.

They made the trip in two cars. Chad Hill drove Lime in a Simca and there followed an old station wagon—the kind made of real wood—containing a six-man team. In the back of the station wagon was a UHF scrambler transmitter. Its range was limited but all communications were being funneled through the U. S. Naval Station at Kénitra in Morocco.

Last night’s sleep on the jet hadn’t revived Lime. He felt logy and glazed. Gilliams’ anger still buzzed in his ears; Gilliams had been very upset by the killing and the roust of Djelil and Sylvie and the two guards Djelil had downstairs in the hotel. Gilliams was one of those bureaucrats who pictured a fine balance in things and couldn’t stand having it upset.

They had to move fast because Djelil’s disappearance would be noticed soon. The thing was to find his contacts before they could go to ground.

“Turn right and go slow on the coast road. I think I’ll recognize the place.”

El Djamila was a beach resort where visitors enjoyed uncrowded cheap rates and the natives lived briefly and wretchedly. The moon was up, glinting off the Mediterranean whitecaps.

Djelil had given him a name: Henri Binaud. A pied-noir who had betrayed his own kind to spy for the FLN; now he ran a charter outfit—three boats and an amphibious plane—and was one of Djelil’s chief carriers.

Lime was a bit weak with delayed shock from the episode of the woman with the Luger. He suspected that Sturka had got a message to Djelil saying if any investigators got as far along the trail as Djelil it would be appreciated if Djelil got rid of them; appreciated in terms of substantial money. Lime wondered if Sturka knew the identity of his tracker. Not that it really mattered.

Nearly nine o’clock. Three in the afternoon in Washington. They had about sixty-nine hours.

A bar. Cinzano signs, an old rusty car up on blocks, its tires gone. Sandy vacant lots on either side of the square little stucco building. The charter pier across the road from it: several boats tied up, a twin-engine amphibious plane tied to a buoy and bobbing on the swell.

The bar was empty except for two men who sat at a table that was hardly big enough for their dinner plates and glasses and elbows. They were eating rouget, the local fish. Both of them looked up but kept eating. Chad Hill hung back and Lime spoke in French: “Monsieur Binaud? We understand the Catalina is for hire?”

One of them wiped the back of a hand across his mouth and reached for the wine to wash down his mouthful. “I am Binaud. Who sent you to me?”

“Houari Djelil.”

Binaud studied him suspiciously. He was bullnecked and florid. Cropped gray hair, a hard little potbelly. “And you wish to hire my aircraft.”

“Perhaps we could discuss it outside,” Lime suggested smoothly.

It was the kind of thing Binaud understood. He muttered something to his companion and stood up and made a gesture. Lime and Chad Hill turned, went outside and waited for Binaud; he came out right behind them and Lime showed his gun.