The Caliphate by André Gallo (books to read for 13 year olds .TXT) 📕

strength, Steve forced the arm up behind Hussein’s back. They both heard a crack and Hussein grunted. The knife fell. Steve picked it up and let Hussein go. Hussein was still on his feet and he turned to face Steve holding his right arm with his left hand, his face a grimace of pain. But he made no sound.

     At that moment, the man with the twin lightning bolts muscle shirt walked in and stopped at the sight of Hussein and Steve facing each other, the air virtually crackling with tension.

     In French he said, “Dirty Arab! These Arabs don’t belong here, eh? Let me help.” He started taking the chain from around his waist with relish.

     “Thanks,” Steve replied, also in French, “But I think that’s enough. He learned his lesson.”

     He took his opportunity and left. The two deserve each other, he thought. He saw Luke in the hallway and stopped him. Now that the fight was over, Steve found himself breathing in quick shallow breaths.

     “Call the police,” he said. “There’s a fight in the bathroom.”

     He stopped a second to take a breath.

     “Here, that’s for my bill,” and handed Luke fifty Swiss francs.

     The band was playing again and he couldn’t see Karim but headed toward his table. Karim wasn’t there. He went back toward the hallway leading to the bathroom and saw him going toward the men’s room. He stopped him and brought him to the protection of the dark. He talked quickly, recalling the message he’d planned to give him.

      “Your boss just tried to kill me. Where were you? The police are coming so you want to get out of here. Listen, I’ll be in the lobby of the Hotel Beau Rivage, Quai du Mont Blanc, tomorrow between 11:00 and 11:30. When I see you, I’ll get up and you follow me at a distance. Don’t talk to me. If you can’t come then, I’ll wait for you in the lobby of the Palace Hilton between 5:00 and 5:30, also tomorrow. They’re major hotels. You’ll find them. Okay? Where are you staying?”

     Karim nodded and gave him the name of a small hotel near the Cornavin railroad station. They had been together for less than a minute. Steve left by the back door that opened onto the parking lot after repeating his instructions.

     He waved a taxi to the Montbrillant Hotel. He walked to the Cornavin station and took a taxi to his hotel, the Ramada Encore, back in the Carouge district. If the police were looking for him, they would no doubt find him, but not right away. He would have time to meet with Karim and, with any luck, Kella. His hand traced the edge of Hussein’s knife under his shirt with both satisfaction and apprehension.

***

The next day, as agreed, Steve waited in the atrium of the Beau Rivage Hotel. Behind his Journal de Genève, he was inspecting the rose-marble columns and tapestried walls when he saw Karim walk in. He folded his newspaper after he was sure Karim had spotted him and walked out and down toward the river shuttle service. The boats, called mouettes, or seagulls, provided convenient conveyances and were part of the city’s public-transport system.

     As instructed, Karim followed him from a distance, giving Steve a chance to take a position on one of the mouettes, from which he could observe the back of the hotel as well as the people boarding. He was looking for anyone paying undue attention to Karim, an obviously young Arab.

     As he waited, he wondered if he had made a mistake directing him into an environment where a young Arab man might stand out, especially to the hotel security staff. He hoped Karim would become invisible among the forty-percent foreign-resident population. Swiss hotel security staffs profiled their foreign clientele only out of necessity.

     Steve had noticed several Arabs in the atrium wearing the ankle-length gallabiyya robes and kufiyya head covering. The hotel clearly did not discriminate among its wealthy clients no matter where they came from. But Karim would not fool anyone into believing he was a rich Arab sheikh in Geneva on business.

     Karim boarded the mouette and Steve noticed a well-dressed man who seemed to have his eyes glued to Karim’s back. He stayed on the dock until the boat pulled away and began to cross the river. Apparently satisfied that Karim was no longer his problem, the man turned away and headed toward the hotel. His obvious interest in Karim marked him as someone comfortable and secure in his operational environment, not a foreign intelligence officer or agent. Steve pegged him for a retired cop now working for hotel security.

     Karim approached him and they leaned over the side of the boat as they talked.

     “How much time do you have? What happened last night?”

     “Hussein saw you and recognized you. I told him to let me go and kill you. He liked that but said no, he was going to do it, to make sure. There was nothing I could do. He told me not to move. When I went to get him somebody was hitting him with a chain. I stopped him. The police did come but about twenty minutes later. They arrested the guy who was beating up Hussein. He is still in the hospital; broken arm.”

     Karim smiled.

     “The Swiss guy said he hadn’t done it, that someone else had been fighting Hussein before he went into the bathroom. I heard him give the police a good description of you, even that you were an American. Did you break his arm, Monsieur Christophe?”

     “I didn’t have a choice. What’s your schedule?”

     Steve could see from Karim’s expression that he had gained status by surviving Hussein’s assault.

     Karim looked questioningly at Steve.

     “You could have killed him. That’s