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He resigned himself for a long wait. Not good to hang around during daylight. He moved 100 meters into the desert before stumbling onto a small pit half filled with debris from some long-forgotten shed. He scooped out a depression in the dry sand, climbed in, and pulled several rotting boards over him. The hole could have been filled with ants or scorpions for all he knew, but he was too tired to care.
He was asleep within thirty seconds.
Roughly manhandled by Massarde's crewmen, Pitt and Giordino's wrists were cuffed, and they were forced in a kneeling position by short chains that wound around a steam pipe. They were helplessly confined in the bilge area below heavy steel plating that served as a deck of the engine and power-generating room above. Overhead, a guard armed with an automatic machine pistol slowly paced back and forth, his shoes clicking on the steel floor. They knelt in the dank bilge of the houseboat, their wrists chafing in the tight handcuffs, bare knees below their shorts only a few degrees from being burned by the hot metal flooring.
Escape was impossible. It was only a matter of time before they were turned over to General Kazim's security police, and their existence would end with a virtual death sentence.
The atmosphere in the bilge was stifling and nearly unbreathable. Sweat streamed out their pores from the damp heat that radiated from the steam pipe. The torment increased with each passing moment. Giordino felt badly weakened and debilitated, his strength almost totally sapped away after two hours of confinement in that hellhole. The humidity was worse than any steam bath he had ever sat in. And the loss of body liquids was driving him half mad from thirst.
Giordino looked across at Pitt to see how his self determined friend was taking this torturous confinement. As far as he could tell, Pitt showed no reaction at all. His face, soaked in perspiration, looked thoughtful and complacent. He was studying a row of wrenches that hung neatly in a row on the aft bulkhead. He could not reach them because the chain on his cuffs was stopped from slipping along the pipe by an overhanging brace. He thoughtfully measured the distance that stretched beyond his touch. Every so often he turned his attention to the grating and the guard, then back to the wrenches.
"Another fine mess you've gotten us into, Stanley," said Giordino, echoing a line from Laurel and Hardy comedies.
"Sorry, Ollie, all in the name of humanity," Pitt said with a grin.
"Think Rudi made it?"
"If he stayed in the shadows and kept his cool, there's no reason for him to wind up like us."
"What do you think old French moneybags expects to gain by making us sweat?" Giordino mused, wiping the sweat from his face with his arm.
"I have no idea," answered Pitt. "But I suspect we'll know why he stuck us in this hot box instead of turning us over to the gendarmes before too long."
"He has to be a real sorehead if he's mad over us using his telephone."
'My fault," said Pitt, his eyes reflecting mirth. "I should have made a collect call."
"Oh well, you couldn't know the guy is a cheap screw." Pitt looked at Giordino in long, slow admiration. He marveled that the stocky Italian could still summon up a sense of humor despite being on the brink of passing out.
In the long, agonizing minutes that followed, their ovenhot cell in the bilge, their ominous predicament, was pushed aside in Pitt's mind as he focused his thoughts on escape. At the moment any optimism was futile. There was not nearly enough muscle between them to break their chains, and neither he nor Giordino had the means to pick the locks on their handcuffs.
His mind conjured up a dozen contingencies, each ready to be canceled in favor of another. None were workable unless certain situations fell into place. The main hitch was the chains. Somehow or other they would have to come off the steam pipe. If not, Pitt's best-laid plans evaporated before they could get off the ground.
He broke off his mental gymnastics as the guard pulled up one of the floor plates and swung it back on its hinges. He took a key from his belt and opened the cuffs attached to their chains. Four crewmen were standing in the engine room. They leaned down and lifted Pitt and Giordino to their feet, dragged them through the engine room, up a stairway, and into a lush-carpeted hallway of the houseboat. One knocked on a teak door, then pushed the door wide and shoved the two prisoners into the room.
Yves Massarde sat in the middle of along, leather couch smoking a thin cigar and swirling a goblet of cognac. A dark-skinned man in an officer's military uniform sat in a facing chair, drinking champagne. Neither man rose as Pitt and Giordino stood before them dressed only in shorts and T-shirts, dripping with sweat and moisture.
"These are the pitiful specimens you fished from the river?" asked the officer, regarding them curiously through black, cold, and empty eyes.
"Actually, they came aboard without an invitation," replied Massarde. "I caught them in the act of using my communications equipment."
"You think they got a message through?"
Massarde nodded. "I was too late to stop them."
The officer sat his glass on an end table, rose from his chair, and walked across the room until he was standing directly in front of Pitt. He was taller than Giordino, but a good 6 inches shorter than Pitt.
"Which of you was in contact with me on the river?" he asked.
Pitt's expression cleared. "You must be General Kazim."
"I am."
"Just goes to show you can't judge a person by their voice. I pictured you as looking more like Rudolph Valentino than Willie the Weasel--"
Pitt crouched and turned sideways as Kazim, his face abruptly flushed with hate, his teeth clenched in sudden rage, lashed out at Pitt's groin with his booted foot. The thrust was vicious and carried most of Kazim's weight behind it. His expression of wrath suddenly turned to one of shock as Pitt, in a lightning move, caught the flailing foot with his hands in mid-flight and gripped it like a vise.
Pitt did not move, did not cast Kazim's leg aside. He merely stood there holding it between his hands, keeping the General balancing on one leg. Then very slowly he pushed the maddened Kazim backward until he dropped into his chair.
