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The doctor stiffened as the yellow headlights of an old and unique automobile swung into view. The car rolled quietly down the uneven street, its elegant rose-magenta-colored body oddly out of sync amid the dismal and austere mud structures. There was an aura of dignified elegance about the 1936 Avions Voisin sedan. The design of the coachwork was an odd combination of pre-World War II aerodynamics, cubist art, and Frank Lloyd Wright. It was powered by a six-cylinder sleeve-valve engine that provided smooth silence and simple endurance. A masterwork of uncompromising e
ngineering standards, it once belonged to the Governor General when Mali was a territory of French West Africa.
Madani knew the car. Almost every city dweller of Mali knew the car and its owner, and they shrank in nervous foreboding whenever it passed. The doctor observed that the car was followed by a military ambulance and he feared a problem. He stepped forward and opened the rear door as the driver braked to a perfectly noiseless stop.
A high-ranking military officer rose from the backseat and unlimbered a lean body inside a tailor-made uniform whose creases could have cut cold butter. Unlike other African leaders who listed to port under a mass of decorated hardware, General Zateb Kazim wore only one green and gold ribbon on the breast of his army jacket. Around his head, he wore an abbreviated version of the litham, the indigo veil of the Tuaregs. His face bore the dark cocoa shade and sculpted features of a Moor, and the eyes were tiny topaz dots surrounded by oceans of white. He might have been borderline handsome if it hadn't been for his nose. Instead of being straight and even, it rounded to a point, overhanging a sparse moustache that stretched off to the sides of his cheeks.
General Zateb Kazim looked like a benign villain out of an old Warner Brothers cartoon. There was no other way to describe him.
He oozed self-importance as he pompously brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his uniform. He acknowledged Dr. Madani's presence with a slight nod.
"He is ready to be moved?" he asked in a measured tone.
"Mr. Fairweather has fully recovered from his ordeal," Madani answered, "and is under strong sedation, as you ordered."
"`He's seen and talked to no one since being carried in by the Frenchmen?"
"Fairweather has only been tended by myself and a nurse from a tribe of Tukulor who speaks only in a Fulah dialect. He's had no other contact. I also carried out your instructions and admitted him to a private room away `from the open wards. I might add that all records of his stay have been destroyed."
Kazim appeared satisfied. "Thank you, Doctor. I'm grateful for your cooperation."
"May I ask where you're taking him?"
Kazim flashed a death's head grin. "To Tebezza."
"Not that!" Madani muttered thickly. "Not the gold mines at the penal settlement of Tebezza. Only political traitors and murderers are condemned to die there. This man is a foreign national. What has he done to deserve a slow death in the mines?"
"It matters little."
"What crime has he committed?"
Kazim looked Madani up and down as if the doctor was merely an annoying insect. "Do not ask," Kazim said coldly.
A dreadful thought crossed Madani's mind. "And the Frenchmen who found Fairweather and brought him here?"
"The same fate."
"None will last more than a few weeks in the mines."
"Better than simply executing them," shrugged Kazim. "Let them work out the little time left of their pitiful lives doing something useful. A stockpile of gold is good for our economy."
"`You're a very sensible man, General," said Madan, tasting the bile of his servile words. Kazim's sadistic power as a judge, jury, and hangman was a fact of Malian life.
"I'm happy you agree, Doctor." He stared at Madani as though he was a prisoner in the dock. "In the interests of our country's security I suggest you forget Mr. Fairweather and erase all memory of his visit."
Madani nodded. "As you wish."
"May no evil befall your people and goods."
Kazim's thoughts were clear to the doctor. The words from the nomad-greeting ritual struck home. Madani had a large family. So long as he kept his silence they would live in peace. The alternative was not a vision he wished to dwell upon.
A few minutes later, an unconscious Fairweather was carried out of the hospital on a stretcher by two of Kazim's security guards and placed in the ambulance. The General gave Madani a casual salute and stepped into the Avions Voisin.
As the two vehicles moved off into the night, a chilling fear coursed through Dr. Madani's veins, and he found himself wondering what terrible tragedy he had unwillingly participated in. Then he prayed that he would never know.
In one of the mural-walled suites of the Nile Hilton, Dr. Frank Hopper listened attentively from a leather sofa. Seated in a nearby matching chair on the opposite side of a coffee table, Ismail Yerli puffed pensively on a meerschaum pipe whose bowl was carved in the likeness of the head of a turbaned sultan.
