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"But Felix, I am here," came a voice from the opposite doorway. Massarde stepped forward and embraced Kazim. "Zateb, my friend, how good of you to come"
Yves Massarde had blue eyes, black brows, and reddish hair. His nose was slender and his jaws square. The body was thin and the hips trim, but the stomach protruded. Nothing about him seemed to match. But it was not his physical impression that lingered in the memories of those he met. They only remembered the intensity that burst from within his being in a manner like that of static electricity.
He gave a kno
wing look to Verenne, who nodded and quietly left the room, closing the door behind.
"Now then, Zateb, my agents in Cairo inform me that your people made a fiasco of frightening the World Health Organization from coming to Mali"
"A regrettable circumstance," Kazim shrugged indifferently. "The reasons are unclear."
Massarde gave the General a hard stare. "According to my sources of information, your assassins disappeared during a botched attempt to kill Dr. Eva Rojas."
"A penalty for their inefficient handling of the matter."
"You executed them?"
"I do not tolerate failure from my people," Kazim lied.
The failure of his men to kill Eva and their strange disappearance had baffled him. In frustration he had ordered the death of the officer who planned the murder, accusing him and the others of betraying his commands.
Massarde did not get where he was without being a shrewd judge of personalities. He knew Kazim well enough to suspect the General of laying a smoke screen. "If we have outside enemies, it would be a grave mistake to ignore them."
"It was nothing," Kazim said, dismissing the subject. "Our secret is safe."
"You say that when a UN World Health team of contamination experts is landing at Gao within the hour? Do not treat this matter lightly, Zateb. If they trace the source here-"
"They won't find anything but sand and heat," Kazim interrupted. "You know better than I, Yves, whatever is causing the strange sickness near the Niger cannot be coming from here. I see no way your project can be responsible for pollution hundreds of kilometers to the east and south of here."
"That's true," Massarde said thoughtfully. "Our monitoring systems show that the waste we burn for appearance sake .is well within the stringent limits set by international policy standards."
"So what's to worry," shrugged Kazim.
"Nothing, so long as every avenue is covered."
"Leave the UN research team to me."
"Do not hinder them," Massarde warned quickly.
"The desert takes care of intruders."
"Kill them and Mali and Massarde Enterprises will be at -great risk of exposure. Their leader, Dr. Hopper, called a news conference in Cairo and played on the lack of cooperation from your government. He went on record as claiming his research team might encounter danger after their arrival. Scatter their bones around the desert, my friend, and we'll have an army of news reporters and UN investigators swarming over the project."
"You weren't squeamish about having Dr. Rojas removed."
"Yes, but the attempt was not in our backyard where there could be suspicion of our involvement."
"Nor were you disturbed when half of your engineers and their wives went for a picnic drive into the dunes and vanished.
"Their disappearance was necessary to protect the second phase of our operation."
"You were fortunate I was able to cover the situation without headlines in Paris newspapers or on-site investigations by French government agents."
"You did well," Massarde sighed. "I could not do without your esteemed talents." Like most of his desert countrymen, Kazim could not exist without perpetual compliments to his genius. Massarde Loathed the General, but the clandestine operation could not exist without him. It was a contract made in hell by two evil men with Massarde getting the top end of the deal. He could afford to put up with the camel turd, as he called Kazim behind his back. After all, a payoff of fifty thousand American dollars a month was a pittance against the two million dollars a day Massarde was reaping from the waste disposal project.
Kazim walked over to a welt-stocked bar and helped himself to a cognac. "So how do you suggest we handle Dr. Hopper and his staff?"
"You are the expert in these matters," Massarde said with oily charm. "I leave it to your skills."
