Zumaia was not convinced. All argued the point and eventually compromised. Because of the time factor, Zumaia, a man called Carlos, and the others would stake out various places around the city in hopes of spotting Smith. Elizondo would give up the chase, since he was supposed to be at some farmhouse across the river for a meeting that was vital.
It was two words about the appointment that riveted SmithCrescent Shield. If he understood correctly, Elizondo was going to that farmhouse to meet the group’s representatives. He would walk, since their cars were too distant now to fetch.
Smith’s luck had improved. Lying motionless, he tried to control his impatience as the men made their final plans and moved up toward the city. If he tried to follow Elizondo across the bridge, which was well lighted by street lamps, he would likely be seen. He had to find another way. He could tail at a distance, but that risked losing the terrorist leader, and he was in no position to ask too many questions of the locals. The solution was to be on the other side of the river before Elizondo crossed.
As the terrorists moved off, Smith stripped off the shirt and trousers he had taken from the American tourist. He jumped up and ran down to the shore as he rolled the clothes into a tight bundle. Using his belt, he tied the roll to the back of his head and waded in, careful to avoid splashing. The water was cold, and it smelled of mud and rotting vegetation.
He slipped into the black river. Head held high, he struck out in a powerful breaststroke. His hands dug in, pushed back water, and he thought about Marty lying unconscious in the Pompidou Hospital. About the men and women who had died at the Pasteur. About Theacute;regrave;se Chambord. Was she even still alive?
Angry and worried, he pulled the water in mighty strokes. When he looked up at the bridge, he could see Elizondo, illuminated by the street lamps, his red beret easy to spot. He and Elizondo were making about the same speed. Not good.
Smith was weary, but there was no getting around it. He needed to go faster. The molecular computer was out there somewhere. Adrenaline jolted him. He pulled and kicked harder, slicing through the murky river, battling a slow current. He glanced up. The terrorist was still there, walking steadily but not so rapidly as to call attention to himself.
Smith was ahead. He continued his sprint, working his muscles, until at last he stumbled up onto the shore, panting, his legs rubbery. But there was no time to rest. He shook off the worst of the water, yanked on his clothes, and combed his fingers through his hair as he ran up onto the street and across. He ducked between two parked cars.
He had made it just in time. Elizondo was striding off the bridge. Beneath his beret, his sun-darkened face held a somber, angry expression. He looked like a man with a problem. When he turned left, Smith slipped from between the cars and trailed behind, keeping him in sight. Elizondo led him past an area of gracious country houses, cigarrales, where rich professionals lived, on up a hill and beyond the Parador hotel and past tractlike modern housing. Eventually they were in the countryside, with only the stars, the moon, and the fields for company. Somewhere cattle lowed.
At last Elizondo turned left again, this time onto a dirt road. During the long hike, he had looked back several times, but Smith had been able to use trees, bushes, and vehicles to hide from the probing gaze. But this dirt road was too lonely and isolated, too little cover. Smith slipped into a woodland windbreak and wove through it parallel to the road.
Because his Hawaiian shirt had short sleeves, bushes scratched his exposed arms. He could smell the cloying odor of some night-blooming flower. At last he plowed to the end of the windbreak, where he stayed back in the woods, studying the large clearing that spread before him. There were barns, chicken coops, and a corral that formed an L with a farmhouse, all bathed eerily in moonlight. This was his lucky nightjust one house to choose from.
He studied the vehicles. Three cars were parked at the edge of the open area near the L. One was an old Jeep Cherokee, but the two others were what held his attentiona sleek, late-model black Mercedes sedan and an equally large new black Volvo station wagon. The farm appeared modest, not wealthy enough to support two new, expensive cars. All of which made Smith think that Elizondo was meeting more than one member of the Crescent Shield.
When Elizondo reached the front door, it opened before he could knock. As Smith watched, the terrorist hesitated, took a quick breath, and disappeared inside. Low to the ground, Smith left the cover of the windbreak and moved toward a lighted window on the right side of the house. When he heard the brittle crunch of shoes on gravel, he slid into the cover of an old oak, his nerves taut. The sound came from his left.
A craggy black man emerged from around that corner of the house, silent and phantomlike, dressed in the white robes of a desert Arab. He stopped there, barely twenty feet from Smith, cradling a British-made L24A1 5.56mm assault rifle as he scanned the night. He looked like a man accustomed to weapons and distances. A desert warrior, but not an Arab, or even a Tuareg or Berber. Perhaps a Fulani from the tribe of fierce nomads who once ruled the southern edge of the Sahara.
Meanwhile, a second man materialized around the house’s other corner, the right side, farther from Smith. He was carrying an old Kalashnikov assault weapon. He moved into the farmyard.
Huddled beneath the tree, Smith tightened his grip on his Sig Sauer as the guard with the Kalashnikov turned and advanced toward the corral. He would pass within ten feet of Smith. At the same time, the tall bedouin said something in Arabic. The one with the Kalashnikov responded and stopped, so close to Smith that he could smell the onions and cardamom on him. Smith lay motionless as the two men talked more.
Suddenly it was over. The Kalashnikov-armed guard turned and retraced his steps, passed the lighted window that had been Smith’s goal, and disappeared, perhaps to a post at the back of the house. But the bedouin in the white robes remained a statue, his head rotating like a radar antenna, searching the night. Without realizing it, he was preventing Smith from approaching the house. Smith imagined this was how the deep-desert warriors of the Sahara had always stood night watch, but on a high sand dune waiting for the foreign troops that had made the mistake of marching into their desert.
At last the white-robed bedouin patrolled out into the yard and around the corral, chicken coops, and cars, still watching everywhere. Then he returned to the farmhouse, his head oscillating, until he reached the front door. He opened it and backed inside. It was a remarkable displayand warningof two highly trained sentries at work. They would miss little.
On his belly, Smith crawled quickly back from the tree until he was in the cover of the windbreak again. He circled wide through the vegetation and once more left its shelter, this time to hurry across the open space toward the rear of the farmhouse, where the light was less, the windows feweronly threeand all were barred. Thirty feet away, he dropped onto his back, cradled his Sig Sauer against his chest, and slithered toward the left window. Above him, gray clouds scudded across the night sky, while beneath him, an occasional rock bit into his flesh. He gritted his teeth.
Near the house now, he raised up and peered around, checking for the guard with the old Kalashnikov. The man was nowhere to be seen. Smith searched wider in the night, heard voices, and saw the glow of a pair of cigarettes. They were in the field behind the house, two men, and beyond them the bulky shadows of three helicopters. The Crescent Shield was both well organized and well supplied.
Smith saw no other guards. He crawled closer and raised up to peer in through the first window. What he saw was an ordinary sight: a lighted room, and through an open door across from him, a second lighted room. In the more distant one, Elizondo was seated in a stiff armchair, his nervous gaze following a figure who paced, appearing and disappearing across the open doorway.
Short and thickset, the pacer wore an impeccable dark gray business suit of English cut. His face was soft, round, and somehow enigmatic. Not an English face despite the suit, but of no particular ethnicity Smith could identify. Too dark for a northern European, lighter than many Italians or Spanish, with neither Oriental nor Polynesian features. Nor did he appear to be Afghan, Central Asian, or Pakistani. Possibly Berber, Smith decided, recalling the bedouin robes on the statuelike sentry he had first seen.