Free Sahara by Clive Cussler Page A

security guards and placed in the ambulance. The General gave Madani a casual salute and stepped into the Avions Voisin.
    As the two vehicles moved off into the night, a chilling fear coursed through Dr. Madani’s veins, and he found himself wondering what terrible tragedy he had unwillingly participated in. Then he prayed that he would never know.

5
    In one of the mural-walled suites of the Nile Hilton, Dr. Frank Hopper listened attentively from a leather sofa. Seated in a nearby matching chair on the opposite side of a coffee table, Ismail Yerli puffed pensively on a meerschaum pipe whose bowl was carved in the likeness of the head of a turbaned sultan.
    Even with the universal sounds of the busy Cairo traffic seeping in through the closed windows to the balcony Eva could not bring herself to accept the nightmare of her brush with death on the beach. Already her subconscious was blurring the memory. But Dr. Hopper’s voice pulled her thoughts back to the here and now of the conference room.
    “There is no doubt in your mind these men tried to kill you?”
    “None,” Eva answered.
    “You described them as looking like black Africans,” said Ismail Yerli.
    Eva shook her head. “I didn’t say black, only that their skin was dark. Their facial features were more sharp, more defined, like a cross between an Arab and an East Indian. The one who burned my car wore a loose-fitting tunic and a thick, intricately wrapped headdress. All I could see were his ebony eyes and a nose shaped like an eagle.”
    “The headdress, was it cotton and swathed about the head and chin several times?” asked Yerli.
    Eva nodded. “The cloth seemed enormously long.”
    “What color was it?”
    “A deep, almost ink blue.”
    “Indigo?”
    “Yes,” replied Eva. “Indigo sounds about right.”
    Ismail Yerli sat in silent contemplation for a few moments. He was the coordinator and logistics expert for the World Health Organization team. Lean and stringy, immensely efficient, and with an almost pathological love of detail, he was a smart operator with an abundance of political savvy. His home was in the Mediterranean seaport of Antalya, Turkey. He claimed Kurdish blood, having been born and raised in the Asia Minor hinterland of Cappadocia. A lukewarm Muslim, he had not been inside a mosque in years. Like most Turks he had a massive thicket of coarse black hair complemented by bushy eyebrows that met over the nose and were supplemented by a huge moustache. He displayed a humorous disposition that never quit. His mouth was always stretched in a smile that was a decoy for an extremely serious temperament.
    “Tuaregs,” he said finally.
    He spoke so softly that Hopper had to lean closer. “Who?” he questioned.
    Yerli looked across the coffee table at the Canadian leader of the medical team. A quiet man, Hopper said little but listened long. He was, the Turk mused, the complete opposite of himself. Hopper was big, humorous, red-faced, and heavily bearded. All he needed to look like the Viking, Eric the Red, was a battle axe and a conical helmet sunk on his head with horns curving from it. Resourceful, precise, and laid-back, he was regarded by international contamination scientists as one of the two finest toxicologists in the world.
    “Tuaregs,” Yerli repeated. Once the mighty nomadic warriors of the desert, who won great battles against French and Moorish armies. And perhaps the greatest of all the romantic bandits. They raid no more. Today, they raise goats and beg in the cities bordering the Sahara to survive. Unlike Arab Muslims, the men wear the veil, a cloth that when unwrapped measures over a meter in length.
    “But why would a tribe of desert nomads want to do away with Eva?” asked Hopper to no one in particular. “I fail to see a motive.”
    Yerli shook his head vaguely. “It would seem that one of them, at least, does not want her, and —we have to heavily weigh this possibility—the rest of the health teams