Final Flight Read Online Free PDF Page B

couple’s conversation.
The reporter’s bed had not been disturbed and his
luggage was missing when the hotel maid entered the
next morning. The bartender ventured the opinion that
the woman was not a prostitute, and this professional
observation caused police to make fruitless
enquiries at every other hotel in Tangiers that
catered to foreigners. Where the pair had gone after they
left the hotel bar was never established.
    An official of the French government asked the
American embassy in Paris if the Accuse
press pass to the United States had been used,
and was informed several days later that it had. Two
weeks after the event a photo of the missing
journalist was shown to the naval officers who had
guided the tours. The ship was then at sea in the
Mediterranean. None of those who viewed the
picture could recall the individual, so that
information, for whatever it was worth, was passed via the
embassy to the French authorities.
    The American embassy CIA man reported
the disappearance to his superiors, and U.s.
Naval Intelligence was routinely informed.
    Apparently the incident was too unimportant
to be included in the summaries prepared for the
National Security Council. After all, the group
had not been shown anything classified or anything that
was not shown as a matter of course to any visitor
to the ship. Notations were made in the appropriate
computer records and within a month the incident was
forgotten by those few persons in the intelligence
community who were aware of it. The reporter was never
seen again. Since he was divorced and his only
daughter lived in Toulon with children of her own, his
disappearance caused scarcely a ripple. Within six
weeks his mistress had another regular visitor
and Accuse had another reporter at a lower
salary.
    EL HAKIM, THE RULER, stood at the
window and gazed east in the direction of Mecca. He
took a deep breath. Ah, the air smelled of the
desert-it smelled of nothing at all. It was pure
and empty, as Allah had made it.
    “There are enormous risks involved, Colonel
Qazi.” The colonel sat behind him on
a carpet before a low table. A hot dry wind
stirred the curtains. El Hakim continued, “The
Americans declared war at the end of the last century
when one of their warships was merely suspected of being
lost due to hostile action. The course you
propose is unambiguous, to say the least.”
    El Hakim turned from the window and glanced down
at Qazi, today dressed in clean, faded khakis.
About forty, Qazi was dark with European features.
Only his cheekbones hinted at his ancestry. The
son of a British army sergeant and an Arab
girl, Qazi often moved about Europe as a
wealthy playboy or businessman, sometimes
Greek, sometimes French, English, or
Italian. He spoke seven languages without
an accent. In a military environment he stood
ramrod straight. “You have never failed us,
Qazi. And you have never attempted so much.”
    The colonel remained silent.
    El Hakim obliquely examined the seated
man. Qazi did not think like most soldiers, he
reflected. He thought like the spy Allah must have
intended him to be. And his ability to slip so
completely into the roles of these people he pretended to be
indeed, to actually become the man his papers said he
was-this ability troubled El Hakim, who had
heard the stories of Qazi’s feats from
informants and silently marveled, since he himself had
spent his entire forty-nine years in the Arab world,
except for one six-month visit to England
twenty years ago. On that one foreign excursion
he had felt so utterly, totally out of place,
among people who seemed to have just arrived from another
planet. One just never knew, he told himself now,
when Qazi was onstage. He was a dangerous
man. A very dangerous man. But most dangerous for
whom?

Final Flight
    El Hakim reluctantly resumed his seat.
“Tell me about the ship.”
    “Her main weapons are her aircraft. Her
deck is crammed with airplanes and to ready them for
launch requires many men and a