Killing Time

'Well, I can certainly understand your desire to kill this man slowly,' Tarbell answered. 'But privately? You yourself have said that the people in this ridiculous community are a mindless mob. Why not seize the opportunity to tighten your hold on them?'

General Said pondered the question, then began to smile once more. 'Ah! I see your point, Dr. Tarbell — a public execution!'

Tarbell grinned back at him. 'Exactly.'

Said's face went straight for a moment. 'Would it have to be quick?'

'Oh, no, not necessarily,' Leon answered.

The general began to pace thoughtfully. 'We might do it at the old dinner theater — they love their theater, these degenerates, and we could give them something special.' He continued to mull it over. 'I might crucify him,' he said.

Tarbell cocked his head skeptically. 'Well,' he said. 'It's a bit trite, isn't it? Not to mention the implications — you don't want him to seem the martyr, after all.'

'Yes, yes, this is so.' Said kept pacing, then finally stopped and turned to Tarbell. 'Well, then, Doctor, I open the floor to suggestions.'

Tarbell took the general aside conspiratorially. 'I'm not sure the length of his death is really the most important consideration. My own idea would be this — have your men escort him to a high public spot after attiring him in one of your own uniforms.'

'My uniforms?' Said protested. 'But why should—'

'I assume,' Tarbell interjected soothingly, 'that the Americans have you under close satellite surveillance?'

'Oh, by the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, they do indeed!' General Said looked momentarily distraught. 'Twenty-four hours a day, I can scarcely ever leave this place—' Suddenly he stopped, getting the point. 'Ah! Excellent, Dr. Tarbell — truly, for an infidel that is inspired!' He moved toward the shoe room, studying Eshkol. 'We shall have to shave his beard, of course, and neaten his mustache, but other than that…'

I was utterly in the dark. 'Neaten his mustache?' I asked. 'Why?'

'So that the Americans will think he's General Said,' Slayton explained, smiling as he grasped Leon's idea.

'At which point,' Larissa concluded, shaking her head in good-natured wonder at Tarbell, 'they'll kill him themselves — a single satellite-guided missile would be enough.'

Said turned to Larissa in surprise. 'Excellent comprehension! Indeed, given that you are an unbeliever and a woman, it is doubly excellent!'

Larissa's patience with the general was waning, and Tarbell could see it: he quickly took Said by the elbow and walked him away from her, saying, 'His death not only makes a statement to the vermin in the resort but convinces the Americans that you yourself are no longer alive — and so they will suspend their satellite watch.'

'Thus allowing me to go outside! A brilliant plan in all respects!' Said turned to his officers and began barking orders: 'We shall use the roof of the Theme Park Hotel — let the fools blow the rest of it up! Inform the manager of the casino that in one hour he will suspend all play. The patrons will be herded outside, at gunpoint if necessary, and everyone in the streets will be forced onto the plaza to watch, as well!'

During the momentary whirl of activity that followed, Slayton quietly told the rest of us to follow him into the shoe room. Once there I adjusted the brushing machine just enough so that it wasn't actually making contact with Eshkol's feet, while Slayton whispered in the captive's ear, 'Keep screaming, or we'll all get killed.' Eshkol's features had begun to relax with the cessation of the flaying, but he quickly contorted them again, taking Slayton's meaning. 'Listen to me, Dov Eshkol,' the colonel went on. 'We know who and what you actually are, we know why you're here, and we know what your plan is. But if you want to avoid what the general is planning for you, do exactly as we say.' Eshkol nodded quickly between muffled screams, and then Slayton turned to the rest of us. 'We'll need his pack — we certainly can't leave a device like that with these people. We'd better take the plutonium as well. Larissa, tell your brother that we'll want to be picked up off the roof of the casino sometime in the next hour.'

'And what happens when the general doesn't get his execution?' I asked.

'Gideon, really,' Tarbell scolded. 'That question is unworthy of you. By the time the general realizes that he is not to have his precious execution, we will be aboard the ship and far away.'

'Oh,' I said as we all filed back out of the room. 'Yes, of course.' I breathed a little easier at the thought and gave Tarbell a gentle pat on the back. 'Well done, Leon — you could sell ice to Eskimos, my friend, no doubt about it.'

Tarbell laughed, quietly but with his usual fiendish delight. 'Yes,' he said as he glanced up at me, 'it is almost frightening, isn't it? But I can't help myself, Gideon. The great throws, the lies told for the highest stakes — so immensely sexual! At such times I really do think that I could talk anyone into anything!'

Even now, as I sit here waiting for dawn to break through the African gloom, I can see my brilliant, strange little friend's grinning face in the flame of the lamp that burns before me; and though the vision makes me smile, I shudder with sorrow as well. For there is one sexless wraith that not even Leon could dissuade from his grim purpose, and he was hovering nearby even as we laughed.

CHAPTER 38

In order for our plan to succeed, it was of course necessary that Eshkol be able to walk. In addition, the torment through which Said had put his prisoner roused some primitive form of empathy in me, despite all the contemptible things I knew about the man. For both of these reasons I did my best to clean, pad, and bind the bleeding soles of Eshkol's feet, forgetting in my disgust with such tortures as he'd endured that someone with his training and temperament could likely have run on bleeding stumps if he'd thought it would serve his fanatical purpose. What I did was not merciful but foolish, and it should have been I and I alone who paid for the mistake. Had it been, the tragedy that ensued might even have made some sort of twisted sense.

Just before the appointed hour of Eshkol's death, we all accompanied Major Sadad to the place of execution: the same abandoned hotel roof where we had first debarked from our ship. Following more of Tarbell's clever suggestions, the Malaysians had created a false command center on the roof, such as General Said might himself have used to direct his forces. Colonel Slayton was relatively sure that we were already under satellite observation — the United States had, after all, gained a great deal of experience with such long-range surveillance operations during its efforts to locate various elusive enemy leaders over the last thirty years — and when we returned to Said, who was staying carefully out of sight in a half-demolished suite on a lower floor of the hotel, the colonel declared that the authenticity of the stage and its props would certainly bring about the desired result. General Said was delighted with this affirmation from a fellow officer, and before long he ordered his men to bring up Eshkol.

The prisoner, in accordance with the plan, had been dressed in a uniform very similar to Said's, and his facial hair had been carefully adjusted. The general expressed some concern about the obvious discrepancy between his own height and that of his doppelganger; but Slayton told him that this shouldn't matter, since the American satellites would be watching from above. The colonel and Said continued to go over the details of the operation in an increasingly collegial manner, one that succeeded in distracting the general completely; and while he was thus engaged Larissa and Tarbell slipped back to the bowling alley to secure Eshkol's rucksack and the plutonium containment canister. They soon returned with both items, and though at the time this seemed a coup, it, too, soon proved a bad mistake.

At ten o'clock General Said announced that it was time to proceed: Eshkol was to be taken up to the roof, where his men would tether him to a heavy slab of concrete rubble. When we got outside we discovered that, as was apparently often the case on that mountain, a beautiful mist had formed around the resort, though not above it: the starry night sky was still quite visible through the vast white halo. Below the building the enormous crowd ordered by General Said had gathered, and though armed soldiers had surrounded the area, the spectators seemed