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
