Soft Targets

room, it did not store au­diovisual data. It merely fed its impressions to the transceiver equipment packed into the van's dummy differential case. Hakim considered the possibility of a hoax until he heard the fierce whine of a multikilowatt generator over the engine, and then saw the great inflated meter-broad balloon, spidery metallic film covering its lower segment, that sat on Guerrero's horizontal rear cargo door. Almost certainly a dish antenna, he marveled, for a Soviet Molniya satellite in clarkeian orbit.

Hakim did not show his relief but remained docile as Guerrero shoved him down at the base of a manzanita shrub. Such equipment was fiendishly expensive and tallied well with Guer­rero's claim to be a KGB infiltrator. Hakim was limp with gratification; at least his captor repre­sented law and order, not capricious revenge by some gang of charlies.

'There was no American blockade,' Hakim accused, and drew a hissing breath as the wire tugged at his wrists.

'What does it matter to whom I turned them? It was neatly done except for the girl, and a bent mount on the differential housing,' Guerrero replied, slitting Hakim's sleeves, tearing away the fifty-dollar shirt. 'Chaim Mardor is enter­taining the KGB—as you would be, had we known your idiotic choice of sites in advance. We opted against a motorcade; even you might have been alerted by that in Moorpark. And later, they could not bring equipment from Long, Beach in time to pinpoint our location while you slept. Take credit, Hakim, for preventing us a regular transmission schedule.' Pride forbade him to add that he had not been furnished with sophisticated receiving gear, so that feedback to Guerrero was relatively primitive.

'You are a fool, Guerrero; they could have homed in on your unit, had you only kept it going.'

'And so might you, with the noise and mi­crowave interference.' Hakim took a stinging slap. 'That was for the lecture.' Another slap, with an effect that shocked Hakim. 'And that was for making it necessary to interrogate you here where the terrain impedes local transmission. I dare not pass that village again before dark.'

Hakim swallowed hard. It was not Guerrero's brawn that bred such terror with each small suc­cessive violence. Hakim and pain were dearer friends than that. Yet he felt a rising sense of dread, and of something else; a betrayal of faith. And how could this be so, when Hakim's only faith was in Hakim?

Guerrero stepped away and laid the pencil-slim camera on an outcrop of weathered basalt. 'You have seen these before,' he chided. 'A similar device recorded your last tender sessions with the comedian. Later I will retrieve the mi­crocorder and feed those scenes to the Molniya. Ravine or no ravine, the Molniya will receive me then, as it receives us now.'

As he spoke, Guererro took a slender case from an inside pocket. Hakim feared the hypodermic but, far worse, dreaded the fact that he was bathed in sweat. He prepared to flail his body, hoping to destroy the injector or waste its un­known contents.

Guerrero was far too battle-wise. He chose a nearby stick of the iron-hard Manzanita and, with a by-your- leave gesture to the camera, sud­denly deluged Hakim with blows. It became a flood, a torrent, a sea of torment, and Hakim realized that the thin shrieking was his own. He, Hakim Arif, mewling like any craven Berber? He invoked his paladin's wisdom, '. . . no longer actor, but spectator, thought not to care how my body jerked and squealed.'

Jerking and squealing, Hakim cared too much to feel the prick of the needle in his hip.

Hakim rallied with great shuddering gasps, rolled onto his back, and fought down a horror he had expected never to meet. His emissary, pain, had turned against him.

Guerrero leaned easily against a boulder, toss­ing and catching a drycell battery of respectable voltage. 'You have long been a subject of KGB study at Lubianka in Moscow,' he glowered, 'and I am impressed by our psychologists. You built a legend with your vain volunteer anguish, Hakim, and never knew that the operative word was volunteer.' His face changed to something still uglier. 'You will divulge two items. The first, Fat'ah accounts. The second is your new Damascus site.' He raised the stick and Hakim cowered, but the things that touched his naked flesh were merely the drycell terminals.

Merely an onslaught of unbearable suffering. Hakim needed no verbal assurance to learn that the drug made each joint in his body a locus of gruesome response to even the mildest electrical stimulus. When his spasm had passed he had fouled himself, to the syncopation of Guerrero's laughter.

'Your funds,' Guerrero said, extending the drycell, and Hakim bleated out a stream of in-formation. Squinting into the overcast as if to confirm the satellite link thirty-six thousand kilometers away in its unchanging position overhead, Guerrero grinned. 'Coding, I am told, is automatic, and gracias a Dios for small favors. But it may take minutes to check your figures. Perhaps in Los Angeles, perhaps Berne or at Lubianka. But if you lie, you must understand that I will quickly know it. Lie to me, Hakim. Please. It justifies me.'

Raging at himself, Hakim hurriedly amended crucial figures. The pain in his joints did not linger but its memory overhung him like a cliff. Through it all, degrading, enervating, the sinu­ous path of Guerrero's amusement followed each of Hakim's capitulations.

When Hakim fell silent, Guerrero pressed his demand. 'You are learning, I see. Now: the Damascus site, the new one. The Americans would like to know it, too, but they tend to impose order slowly. We shall be more efficient even without Pentothal.' Hakim squeezed his eyes tight-shut, breathing quickly, wondering if it were really possible to swallow one's tongue—and then the drycell raked his bicep and jawline.

Hakim was transfixed, skewered on a billion lances that spun in his body, growing to fiery pinwheels that consumed him, drove all else from his being. Hakim was a synonym of appalling agony. Guerrero, who had previously laughed for the necessary effect, punished his lower lip between his teeth and looked away. He wished he were back soldiering under Torrijos, hauling garrison garbage, anything but this filthy duty.

Yet appearances were everything and, 'Again? I hope you resist,' he lied, and had to caution Hakim to answer more slowly. Under torture, the answers came in a fitful rhythm; a phrase, shallow breathing, another strangled phrase, a sob, and still another phrase. Hakim was finished so soon that Guerrero knew embar­rassment. He had hurried, and now he needed only wait. The military, he shrugged to himself, must be the same everywhere.

Waiting for his van's radio speaker to verify or deny, Guerrero viewed his keening captive with glum distaste. 'The girl was more man than you,' he said in innocent chauvinism. 'Chaim accepted capture, but not she. Another agent took her knife. She fought. When he pointed the knife at her belly, she embraced him. I never heard the sound of a knife like that before, it—'

'Kill me,' he heard Hakim plead.

'Before I know how truly you betray Fat'ah? For shame.'

'Yes, for shame. Kill me!'

^'Because you were so quick to surrender? Because you are not your beloved Lawrence, but only a small puppeteer? Absurd, Hakim. Think yourself lucky to know what you are, at last: a primitive little executive, a controller—even of yourself as victim. Is it so much more glorious to be a masochist pure and simple, than what you really are?'

^'Enough! End it,' Hakim begged.

'As you ended it for the comedian, perhaps. Let me tell you the greatest joke you will ever hear, Hakim, you snot-gobbling little coward. It is on both of us, but chiefly on you. The big blond one, Kenton, is neither a blond nor a Kenton. I dusted his fingerprints and transmitted them while you sought your damned newspapers. Something about him disturbed me.

'Last night I received a message which I deciphered twice to be certain—and still I wonder how it can be true: Kenton is your Jewish target, Maurice Everett.' Guerrero laughed aloud, slapped his belly in a gesture more violent than pleasant. 'I hoped you would learn it for your-self so that I could record more of your butchery. But it was unnecessary. As it was, I waited for days on orders to record your disposal of Charlie George. Without those orders, my work would have been simpler.' Guerrero spat in irritation.

Hakim stared. The Soviet security organ had waited only to obtain audiovisual records of Fat'ah killing the comedian? He fathomed the KGB logic gradually, and concluded that they could use such evidence to justify reprisals in Syria, when and if it suited them.

Another thought brought a measure of calm: he still had control over Guerrero's future. Hakim exercised it. 'It was not my intent to kill Charlie George,' he said distinctly. 'And we left him alive.'

Guerrero said nothing for ten seconds. 'The video record will show that he died,' he as­serted, licking lips that were suddenly dry.

'It will show his breathing tube, and also what we both already know: that he is an actor.' Their eyes met in angry silence.