Pretending to examine the control console, Pyotr Koldunov smiled tightly. That would fix the officious bastard, he thought.
"Yes, Brother Colonel," Al-Qaid said quickly. "A problem, Brother Colonel. He will not say, Brother Colonel. No, sir. Yes, sir. At once, Brother Colonel."
Al-Qaid hung up the phone and addressed Koldunov in a stiff voice.
"Our glorious leader demands your immediate presence in the capital."
"Good," said Koldunov.
"Good?" sputtered the Lobynian. "Many who are summoned to his office do not return alive."
"I am not concerned ... for myself," Koldunov said simply.
"It was your device. Your failure."
"Yes, exactly. My device. My access codes. My everything. On loan to your government as a gesture of solidarity from my government. I am hardly expendable. Can you say the same, Al-Qaid?"
Musa Al-Qaid blinked as if a thought had just occurred to him. "Colonel Intifadah directed that you be brought before him immediately," he countered.
"And who did he say would perform that errand?"
"I have that privilege."
"You? Not a flunky, but the senior Lobynian adviser on this project?" "
"Colonel Intifadah obviously thinks highly of me."
"On the other hand, it was you who gave him the bad news. And we all know how Colonel Intifadah reacts to bad news."
Al-Qaid had no answer to that. The Lobynian swallowed tightly. He kept on swallowing all the way up the bucket elevator to the surface and to the green helicopter waiting on the pad.
The ride to the Lobynian capital of Dapoli was pleasant. The sun was high in the desert sky. It was a cruel sun, but it brightened Pyotr Koldunov's mood. The thought that Colonel Intifadah might become extremely irate upon being told that his revenge weapon was temporarily inoperative did not lessen his improving humor. In fact, it added to it. Perhaps Colonel Intifadah might become so upset that he would shoot someone.
Koldunov turned to look at his pilot. Al-Qaid. Koldunov smiled. Al-Qaid looked at him quizzically.
Yes, life would be more pleasant without Al-Qaid. The man smelled of fear and constant perspiration. And his Russian was atrocious. He mangled the language worse than the conscripts from Urkutsk and Tashkent with whom Koldunov had been forced, in his long-ago youth, to serve in the Red Army. He hated them too-and their backward ways. Besides, Al-Qaid was next to useless as a technician. Koldunov suspected that he was a CID spy. Koldunov suspected half his technical staff were in the employ of Colonel Intifadah's Green Intelligence Directorate. Even Lobynian technicians could not be so incompetent.
Yes, it would be pleasant if Colonel Intifadah had Al-Qaid shot.
Pyotr Koldunov settled back in his seat as the many-towered capital of Lobynia loomed ahead, confident that he was not expendable.
The helicopter landed in the palace courtyard. From the air it looked as if the courtyard was green with welltended grass. In fact it was concrete painted green. The helipad was a lighter shade of green.
The door to Colonel Intifadah's office was also green. The guards on either side of the door carried green rifles and wore green uniforms. They belonged to Colonel Intifadah's elite Green Guard. They pushed Koldunov back from the door and, taking Al-Qaid by the arms, escorted him into the Colonel's office. The green door slammed shut and Pyotr Koldunov found a seat on a long leather divan. It matched the walls, which were chartreuse.
When fifteen minutes had passed and no sound of gunshots came from behind the green door, Pyotr Koldunov decided that Colonel Intifadah was not going to execute Al-Qaid. Koldunov frowned.
Then the green door opened and the two Green Guards carried out the limp body of Al-Qaid. His green smock was almost black with blood. His head hung slack-jawed from his scrawny neck.
Al-Qaid looked as if he had been methodically beaten to death. The splintered and stained rifle butts of the guards told Pyotr Koldunov that his guess was probably correct.
Koldunov smiled as the guards carried the scientist to a green elevator door. They pressed a button. The doors slid instantly apart and the guards heaved the body in.
The thud of it landing came loudly even though the body had obviously fallen several floors.
Koldunov walked up to the elevator door. He looked down. Al-Qaid's body lay atop a heap of other bodies. Some looked fresh. Others, however, seemed very, very old.
"This isn't the elevator I rode up on," Yoldunov remarked pleasantly.
"It is not," replied one of the guards. "It is a garbage disposal. Colonel Intifadah's personal garbage disposal." Then Yoklunov realized that the shaft contained no cage, no cables, no dial to indicate floors, and only one button. It was marked "Down." Obviously Colonel Intifadah had gutted an elevator shaft for this special purpose. "Well," Koldunov said happily, "shall I go in next?" The Green Guards looked at the Soviet scientist with undisguised stupefaction. The man was about to walk into a tiger pit and he acted as unconcerned as if he were about to stroll into a matinee.
They did not have to escort him in by force as they had expected. He walked ahead of them as if eager to face Colonel Intifadah's wrath.
Chapter 13
After he had overthrown King Ardas of Lobynia, Colonel Hannibal Intifadah had taken possession of the royal palace. As a gesture to the new order, he had renamed it the People's Provisional Palace. Then he had had it painted green, inside and out, and decorated with the new Lobynian flag, which was also green. Blank green. For Colonel Intifadah claimed to despise all ornamental trappings of office.
The official history of the new Lobynia, as chronicled by Colonel Hannibal Intifadah in a book he called The Green Precepts, had it that the Colonel had chosen green as the new Lobynian national color as a gesture of sympathy with the rest of the Islamic world, green being a color favored by Moslems.
But the truth of the matter was that when the people of Lobynia learned via radio that yet another military usurper had engineered a coup against good King Ardas, they massed around the royal palace with the intent of bringing down this latest upstart in gold braid.
Seeing the mob, Colonel Intifadah's cell of revolutionaries grew nervous. They were starting to lose their courage. So Colonel Intifadah personally shot them all to death. Then he went into the royal dining room and pulled a tablecloth off the king's dining table, shattering precious Waterford crystal goblets and fine china and, waving the makeshift flag before his unprotected chest, announced from the balcony that he had eliminated the usurpers. And then, proclaiming the new Islamic Republic of Lobynia, he ran the green tablecloth up the flagpole and proclaimed that if he were to fall in the defense of Allah, then so be it. Let the assassins have their way. Islam would live on without him.
The crowd broke into spontaneous cheering.
Colonel Intifadah raised his clenched hands above his head triumphantly, bestowed the crowd with a snaggletoothed smile, and tried to make the best of it. In truth, he was deeply disappointed.
He hated green. The flag that he had personally designed for the new Lobynian republic was red and carried the hammer-and-sickle emblem of international Communism. But he comforted himself with the thought that on some days you initiate the tide of history and on others it carries you along. Either way was fine with Colonel Intifadah just so long as the tides of history eventually deposited him safely on shore. If he got a little wet in the process, that was okay too. Just as long as it wasn't his own blood soaking his uniform.
Today, as it had been on so many other days since he had risen to power in the North African desert nation of Lobynia, the blood on the Colonel's uniform belonged to someone else.
Colonel Intifadah looked down at the gleaming dark spots spattering his sleeves and blouse. They shone redly wet. He knew from experience that later the spots would brown into a rust color and finally cake and flake off. Al-Qaid's blood would be no different from that of the hundreds of others who had displeased him.
Colonel Intifadah reached for a damp cloth, intending to rub some of the blood off. But he decided against it. Better to let the Russian see the spots, to know that this son of the desert stood so close to the kill.
Colonel Intifadah went to his desk and stood behind it. In the floor-length mirror on one wall, he regarded himself critically. His middle-aged face had coarsened, the skin dark and large-pored. His mouth was cruel and arrogant, his eyes as black as the tight-curled hair that no comb would ever tame. Although it was early, the beard growth had already started to show.
It was a face that intimidated weaker men. With that face, Colonel Intifadah would intimidate this Russian. Colonel Intifadah straightened out his uniform. It was green. He always wore green, even though he passionately hated the color. Even the gold braid coiled at his shoulder was greenish-gold.
The door opened and Colonel Intifadah hastily let the green curtain fall over his personal mirror.
"Leave us," Colonel Intifadah barked to his guards. The two men swiftly and gratefully withdrew.
"Stand before me, comrade," Colonel Intifadah ordered. The pale Russian scientist Pyotr Koldunov stepped up to the dark green desk. In order to stand before the Colonel, he would have to walk through the sticky pool of blood in the middle of the floor.
The Russian did so without showing a flicker of notice. Colonel Intifadah frowned darkly.