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  “There will be an El Hassan,” Abe said definitely. “And you can be him.”

  Crawford stared at Abe, undecided.

  Isobel said, suddenly, “I think Abe’s right, Homer.”

  Abe seemed to switch the tempo of his talk. He said, “There’s just one thing, Homer. It’s a long-range question, but it’s an important one.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’re your politics?”

  “My politics? I haven’t any politics here in North Africa.”

  “I mean back home. I’ve never discussed politics with you, Homer, partly because I haven’t wanted to reveal my own. But now the question comes up. What is your position, ultimately, speaking on a world-wide basis?”

  Homer looked at him quizzically, trying to get at what was behind the other’s words. “I don’t belong to any political party,” he said slowly.

  Abe said evenly, “I do, Homer. I’m a Party member.”

  Crawford was beginning to get it. “If you mean do I ultimately support the program of the Soviet Complex, the answer is definitely no. Whether or not it’s desirable for Russia or for China, is up to the Russians and Chinese to decide. But I don’t believe it’s desirable for such advanced countries as the United States and most of Western Europe. We’ve got large problems that need answering, but the commies don’t supply the answers so far as I’m concerned.”

  “I see,” Abe said. He was far, far different than the laughing, beatnik-jabbering youngster he had always seemed. “That’s not so good.”

  “Why not?” Homer demanded. His eyes went to where Isobel sat, her face strained at all this, but he could read nothing in her expression, and she said nothing.

  Abe said, “Because, admittedly, North Africa isn’t ready for a communist program as yet. It’s in too primitive a condition. However, it’s progressing fast, fantastically fast, and the coming of El Hassan is going to speed things up still more.”

  Abe said deliberately, “Possibly twenty years from now the area will be ready for a communist program. And at that time we don’t want somebody with El Hassan’s power and prestige against us. We take the long view, Homer, and it dictates that El Hassan has to be secretly on the Party’s side.”

  Homer was nodding. “I see. So that’s why you shot at me in Timbuktu.”

  Abe’s eyes went wary. He said, “I didn’t know you knew.”

  Crawford nodded. “It just came to me. It had to be you. Supposedly, you broke into the mosque from the back at the same moment I came in the front. Actually, you were already inside.” Homer grunted. “Besides, it would have been awfully difficult for anyone else to have doped that bottle of cognac on me. What I couldn’t understand, and still can’t, was motive. We’ve been in the clutch together more than once, Abe.”

  “That’s right, Homer, but there are some things so important that friendship goes by the board. I could see as far back as that meeting something that hadn’t occurred to either you or the others. You were a born El Hassan. I figured it was necessary to get you out of the way and put one of our own—perhaps me, even—in your place. No ill feelings, Homer. In fact, now I’ve just given you your chance. You could come in with us.”

  Even as he was speaking, his eyes moved in a way Homer Crawford recognized. He’d seen Abe Baker in action often enough. A gun flicked out of an under-the-arm holster, but Crawford moved in anticipation. The flat of his hand darted forward, chopped and the hand weapon was on the floor.

  As Isobel screamed, Abe countered the attack. He reached forward in a jujitsu maneuver, grabbing a coat sleeve and a handful of suit coat. He twisted quickly and threw the other man over one hip and to the floor.

  But Homer Crawford was already expertly rolling with the fall, rolling out to get a fresh start.

  Abe Baker knew that in the long run, in spite of his somewhat greater heft, he wouldn’t be able to take his former chief in the other man’s own field. Now he threw himself on the other, on the floor. Legs and arms tangled in half-realized, quickly defeated holds and maneuvers.

  Abe called, “Quick, Isobel, the gun. Get the gun and cover him.”

  She shook her head, desperately. “Oh no. No!”

  Abe bit out, his teeth grinding under the punishment he was taking, “That’s an order, Comrade Cunningham! Get the gun!”

  “No. No, I can’t!” She turned and fled the room.

  Abe muttered an obscenity, bridged and crabbed out of the desperate position he was in. And now his fingers were but a few inches from the weapon. He stretched.

  Homer Crawford, veins heavy in his own forehead from his exertions, panted, “Abe, I can’t let you get that gun. Call it quits.”

  “Can’t, Homer,” Abe gritted. His fingers were a few fractions of an inch from the weapon.

  Crawford panted, “Abe, there’s just one thing I can do. A karate blow. I can chop your windpipe with the side of my hand. Abe, if I do, only immediate surgery could save your…”

  Abe’s fingers closed about the gun and Crawford, calling on his last resources, lashed out. He could feel the cartilage collapse, a sound of air for a moment, almost like a shriek, fill the room.

  The gun was meaningless now. Homer Crawford, his face agonized, was on his knees beside the other who was threshing on the floor. “Abe,” he groaned. “You made me.”

  Abe Baker’s face was quickly going ashen in his impossible quest for oxygen. For a last second there was a gleam in his eyes and his lips moved. Crawford bent down. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that somehow the other found enough air to get out a last, “Crazy, man.”

  When it was over, Homer Crawford stood again and looked down at the body, his face expressionless.

  From behind him a voice said, “So I got here too late.”

  Crawford turned. It was Elmer Allen, gun in hand.

  Homer Crawford said dully, “What are you doing here?”

  Elmer looked at the body, then back at his chief. “Bey figured out what must have happened at the mosque there in Timbuktu. We didn’t know what might be motivating Abe, but we got here as quick as we could.”

  “He was a commie,” Crawford said dully. “Evidently, the Party decided I stood in its way. Where are the others?”

  “Scouring the town to find you.”

  Crawford said wearily, “Find the others and bring them here. We’ve got to get rid of poor Abe, there, and then I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Very well, chief,” Elmer said, holstering his gun. “Oh, just one thing before I go. You know that chap Rex Donaldson? Well, we had some discussion after you left. This’ll probably surprise you Homer, but— hold onto your hat, as you Americans say—Donaldson thinks you ought to become El Hassan. And Bey, Kenny and I agree.”

  Crawford said, “We’ll talk about it later, Elmer.”

  He knocked at her door and a moment later she came. She saw who it was, opened for him and returned to the room beyond. She had obviously been crying.

  Homer Crawford said, but with no reproach in his voice, “You should have helped me, to be consistent.”

  “I knew you’d win.”

  “Nevertheless, once you’d switched sides, you should have attempted to help me. If you had, maybe Abe would still be alive.”

  She took a quick agonized breath and sat down in one of the two chairs, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She said, “I… I’ve known Abe since my early teens.”

  He said nothing.

  “In college, he was the cell leader. He enlisted me into the Party.”

  Crawford still didn’t speak.

  She said defiantly, “He was an idealist, Homer.”

  “I know that,” Crawford said. “And along with it, he’s saved my life on at least three different occasions in the past few years. He was a good man.”

  It was her turn to hold silence.

  Homer hit the palm of his left hand with the fist of his right. “That’s what so many don’t realize. They think this is all a kind of cowboys and Indians affair. Th
e good guys and the bad guys fighting it out. And, of course, all the good guys are on our side and their side is composed of bad guys. They don’t realize that many, even most, of the enemy are fighting for an ideal, too—and are willing to die for it, or do things sometimes even harder than dying.”

  He paced the floor for an agonized moment, before adding. “The fact that the ideal is a false one—or so, at least, is my opinion—is beside the point.”

  He suddenly dropped it and switched subjects. “This isn’t as much a surprise to me as you possibly think, Isobel. There was only one way that episode in Timbuktu could have taken place. Abe was waiting for me to pass that mosque. But I had to pass. I had to be fingered as the old gangster expression had it. And you led me into the ambush.”

  He looked down at her. “But what changed his mind? Why did he offer, tonight, to let me take over the El Hassan leadership?”

  Isobel said, her voice low. “In Timbuktu, when Abe saw the way things were going, he realized you’d have to be liquidated, otherwise El Hassan would be a leader the Party couldn’t control. He tried to eliminate you, and then tried again with the cognac. Last night, however, he checked with local Party leaders and they decided that he’d acted too precipitately. They suggested you be given the opportunity to line up with the Party.”

  “And if I didn’t?” Homer said.

  “Then you were to be liquidated.”

  “So the finger is still on me, eh?”

  “Yes, you’ll have to be careful.”

  He looked full into her face. “How do you stand now?”

  She returned his frank look. “I’m the first follower to dedicate her services to El Hassan.”

  “So you want to come along?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “And you remember what Abe said? That in the end the hero invariably gets clobbered? Sooner or later, North Africa will outgrow the need for a hero to follow and then… then El Hassan and his closest followers have a good chance of winding up before a firing squad.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  Homer Crawford ran his hand back over his short hair, wearily. “O.K., Isobel. Your first instructions are to contact those two friends of yours, Jake Armstrong and Cliff Jackson. Try to convert them.”

  “What are you going to be doing … El Hassan?”

  “I’m going over to the Reunited Nations to resign from the African Development Project. I have a sneaking suspicion that in the future they will not always be seeing eye to eye with El Hassan. Nor will the other organizations currently helping to advance Africa-while still at the same time keeping their own irons in the fire. Possibly the commies won’t be the only ones in favor of liquidating El Hassan’s assets.”

  The End

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