"Rich Amerik ani" murmured Joe flippantly.

Antun, excited now, said, "Yallah! Let's go!"

Actually, thought Mrs. Pollifax, it was like theater for an unseen audience, should there be one. They walked slowly, stopping to lean over and pretend to pluck something from the earth; they stopped, they pointed, they strolled on, their pace slowly quickening as the town receded behind them. There were three fields to cross, each defined by low walls of black stone, and they were large fields, but the trees ahead grew slowly nearer. The moon that had been full two nights ago was on the wane, but as it rose out of the east it was dismayingly bright. They crossed the first dried-up riverbed, or wadi, and a mile later reached the first gnarled and stunted trees that gave them cover.

"Now," said Antun, "we go fast."

But what Antun had failed to mention was that these were thorn trees, tall, overgrown spiny shrubs with thorns as sharp as needles, rendering it impossible to hurry. There were gasps of "Ouch!" from Amanda, and a few well-chosen curse words from Farrell, and although Mrs. Pollifax was well wrapped in her black shroudlike abaya and burqa, her hands were soon bleeding as she pushed her way in and out of close-knit groves with Antun pleading with them to go faster, faster.

From time to time the thorn trees mercifully thinned but it felt to Mrs. Pollifax as if they'd been plodding through h.e.l.l for hours, even days, when Antun abruptly stopped. Placing a finger to his lips he bade them to be still and silent and then, frowning, he nodded and they continued. The moon was high in the sky now and Mrs. Pollifax guessed that it must be nearing midnight . Off to their left, looking up, she could see the pinp.r.i.c.ks of light on the Jebel Druze, as Antun had described, but it had begun to be an effort to lift her head; she could only put one foot after another, her eyes on the ground.

At last she dared whisper to Antun, "The border -how far now?"

He stopped, and when he turned to look at her a chance ray of moonlight illuminated his face and she saw that his eyes were glazed with terror. "One mile," he said, and then, "Someone is following us. We are being followed."

"How do you know?" she whispered, alarmed.

"Listen," he said.

She listened but heard nothing.

Farrell and Joe, returning to her side to ask why they'd stopped, looked at her questioningly.

"He says we're being followed."

"Oh G.o.d," murmured Farrell. "What does he hear?"

Joe whispered to Antun in Arabic. "He says he has heard the snap of trees being cut -off to our right-and he has seen birds fly away-and he knows how to listen."

Amanda returned to join them, saying, "What -"

"Sssh," whispered Mrs. Pollifax, and in the silence that followed they could hear at some point behind them the snap of a thorn tree branch, and suddenly Mrs. Pollifax realized that she was the eldest member of this group and that, tired as she was, Carstairs had placed her in charge. When Farrell hissed, "We can't stop like this, we've got to make a run for it," she said, "No."

"No?" whispered Antun.

"No," she repeated in a low voice, and to Antun, "If they capture you, Antun?"

He shuddered. "I know too much. Prison."

Joe understood. "Yes, and no doubt torture, whereas we are four Americans, we have an emba.s.sy to appeal to -with luck," he added grimly.

"Exactly," she said. "I say we split. If we're being followed they'll follow us whether Antun is with us or not, and he mustn't be found with us. If he steals away alone -with his lantern . . . Antun, you could cross the border and light the lantern for us, couldn't you? So we could find you?" And hated herself for adding, "And pay you the rest of the money? We'll carry your bag for you, too." Just in case, she thought.

She had underestimated Antun. "Na'am -oh yes," he exclaimed, and there were tears in his eyes. "I am .. , am hit hard by such kindness. I would not fail you, I promise. Take my bag," he said, handing it to her. "It has all my new life in it."

"Thank you," she told him, "and now you must tell us exactly what we must do. We reach the border, the fence, the road and... ?"

"Go dughri -straight on-to meet road at border. Then half a mile to east-"

"To the left," emphasized Joe.

"Yes, toward Jebel Druze. To the big black rock that shines even in moonlight. With Allah's blessing I will have dug away wasakh -no, earth-and light lantern."

"Then go," said Mrs. Pollifax. "Now. Quickly."

"Shukren, shukren," he said, and stepped in among the thorn trees and soon vanished to their left, and at once they resumed their own flight toward the border.

"Who would be following us?" asked Amanda in a desperate voice. "That policeman Fuad?"

"Keep your voice low," counseled Mrs. Pollifax and added, "We seem to have done all that bending over and looking for melons for nothing, if we've been watched from the beginning." A pity, she thought; their performance had been tiresome.

They could hurry now, for the thorn trees were behind them and once again the earth was littered with rocks, and the moonlight was of no help because, perversely, it had disappeared behind a cloud. They reached and crossed the second wadi, met with a scattering of trees, and then suddenly came upon a rough dirt road, and - "The fence," whispered Amanda. "We've reached the border!"

"Turn left," pointed Joe, "and let's pray Antun has already reached the crossing."

"Half a mile," Farrell reminded them. "He said half a mile. Dare we run?"

"No," said Mrs. Pollifax sharply, and purely from instinct. "We don't know -can't know-if Antun is there."

They stopped to listen for any sounds behind them but there were none. "We've outdistanced whoever it was," whispered Farrell. "We must have."

Unless they picked up Antun s trail, worried Mrs. Pollifax, thinking of the trampled branches and beds of broken thorns that a man in a hurry might leave behind him, and then scolded herself for being so negative.

The moon had surfaced again from behind its cloud as they began their walk down the road, and it was good to feel earth under their feet, with no th.o.r.n.y trees to hara.s.s them, and no rocks to skirt. They had covered a fair distance when Mrs. Pollifax saw the flicker of light ahead.

"Antun's lantern!" exclaimed Joe triumphantly. "He's there, he's safely across the border. We can hurry now?"

They hurried.

"And there's the big, shiny, egg-shaped rock," cried Amanda, "Oh, thank G.o.d!"

They could also see Antun -he had crossed the border, and he was in Jordan . He stood waiting, dimly illumined by the lantern, but the lantern was not beside him; it had been left on the Syrian side of the fence. At sight of them he screamed, "Wakkif! Nas! Hadi 'atteh!"

Joe gasped. "He says stop -there are men-it's bad!"

"But what -" began Farrell.

It was too late. From behind the egg-shaped rock stepped two men, both Arabs and dressed just as Antun had described them that morning, in shorts, T-shirts and boots.

"Zaki!" gasped Amanda. "And Youseff? Oh to have come so far!"

The taller one stepped forward menacingly. "You think we let you go, you b.i.t.c.h? With what you know?"

So this was Zaki.., a very distinguished Arab, decided Mrs. Pollifax .., very military in his well-trimmed mustache, but his lips were thinned now, and his eyes blazing, while the man behind him -Youseff?-looked every bit the subordinate, but his eyes were like a cat's, glittering with triumph; he looked a dangerous subordinate.

They faced each other in the flickering light of the lantern, the moonlight streaming silver over them. Beyond, out of reach, lay the fence and Mrs. Pollifax saw that Antun had cleared his narrow pa.s.sage under it for them, but he had left the lantern too late.

She turned as she heard the sound of a sharp slap and a cry from Amanda; Zaki had walked over to Amanda and had hit her hard on the cheek. She pressed her hand to it, not looking away but staring at him with narrowed eyes.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" said Joe, and for a moment Mrs. Pollifax thought that Joe was going to attack him, but it was Amanda who hurled herself at Zaki with a tigerlike fury that astonished Mrs. Pollifax.

"I'll kill you," she shouted. "You can't stop me now -you can't, you can't!" Her hands had found his eyes and she was clawing at them while Zaki, taken by surprise-unprepared for a.s.sault from a docile pupil-stepped away from her. Viciously he reached out, picked her up and threw her to the ground.

"Brute," shouted Farrell, and at this remark Youseff headed toward Farrell but met instead with Mrs. Pollifax, who stepped forward, seized his arm, and as he turned to confront her she delivered a swift, efficient karate slash to his throat. He sank to the ground, gasping for air and retching, both hands clutching his neck, while Joe, rushing toward Amanda and swearing at Zaki, came to an abrupt halt as Zaki brought out a gun.

Smiling maliciously at Joe he stood over a prostrate Amanda and said, "Well?"

Joe eyed him cautiously. "You really are a devil," he said. "Amanda.. ."

Amanda lay shockingly still, but Mrs. Pollifax, staring at her with concern, saw that she was not unconscious after all, but with one hand she was fumbling inside her abaya in an effort to find something, and Mrs. Pollifax's mouth literally dropped open to see Amanda pull out from her abaya a gun. Where on earth did she get that? wondered Mrs. Pollifax in amazement.

Too late Zaki glanced down at his captive, arrested by her movement, but he had overlooked the pupil he had trained for almost two months. Amanda looked up at him, lifted the gun and shot him twice, once in his left arm, once in his right arm. Stunned, he stared down at his helpless hands, his arms dripping blood, and Amanda, stumbling to her feet, said simply, "I stole it from Omar's cupboard."

Farrell said, "For G.o.d's sake, let's get out of here!"

"Yes, go -all of you-out," commanded Amanda, her back to Mrs. Pollifax, Farrell and Joe, the flickering lantern illuminating Zaki dripping blood on the Hawran earth and Youseff on the ground unconscious. "Go-I'll come once you're under the fence and over the border." She did not look at them; her eyes remained on Zaki.

"Not me," said Joe flatly, gesturing Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax to hurry and join Antun. "I stand with her."

Mrs. Pollifax tasted her share of earth as she burrowed and crawled through Antun's narrow pa.s.sage into Jordan . Behind her came Farrell, who, once upright, shouted, "All clear, you two! Hurry!"

The oil in the lantern on the ground between Zaki and Amanda was perilously low. Together Amanda and Joe backed toward the fence, and Mrs. Pollifax marveled: Amanda Pym might have been frightened of life in Roseville, Pennsylvania, she thought, but what had been overlooked when seen on film, was the girl who had managed a household, worked stoically in a grocery store, learned budgets and repairs, tended an invalid mother, and all without emotional nourishment.

It was interesting, thought Mrs. Pollifax, if not miraculous, to realize that this had given Amanda a strength she'd certainly never realized that she possessed until now.

Amanda was blossoming.

"Allahu Akhbar, Allah be praised," said Antun as the last two joined them. "You are in Jordan now."

"Amanda, I could kiss you," Farrell said, and to Mrs. Pollifax, "Omar said to look for gypsies encamped not far from the border?"

The lantern on the other side of the fence had run out of oil and the moon had disappeared behind Jebel Druze. Darkness enclosed them, but in the distance they could see a dim light -a lantern, perhaps-and the black silhouette of tents against the night sky. They stumbled toward them, Joe and Antun holding up a shaken Amanda between them, until a different shape could be seen next to the tents; it had the silhouette and lines of a jeep.

Seeing it, Farrell said, "Trouble, d.u.c.h.ess?"

They stopped, suddenly wary, until abruptly the headlights of a car flashed on, then off, then on again, like a signal. A man stepped out of the jeep and shouted, "Mrs. Pollifax? Farrell? I heard shots -my G.o.d, is it you?"

And Mrs. Pollifax, recognizing that voice, gave a sob of relief and forgot her exhaustion.

"It's all right," she told them. "Somehow -" Her voice broke. "Somehow it's Rawlings-Rawlings, bless him, from the CIA office in Amman ."

16.

There was an older man in the office with Rawlings when they met the next morning, an American with a tired face and kind eyes who introduced himself as Mr. Smith. He ordered coffee brought to them, or perhaps Miss Pym would prefer a cola?

She smiled. "Oh yes, please."

"I want you to begin at the beginning," Smith emphasized to Amanda. "The very beginning: in Roseville , Pennsylvania , for instance. Why you decided on a trip to Egypt , and why you -but let us begin with the 'why' of it all. You'd been unhappy?"

Mrs. Pollifax gave him a curious glance and wondered if Carstairs and the department still cherished suspicions about Amanda.

The girl nodded. "I realize now how angry and hurt I was; it was such a shock." She hesitated. "It's because I grew up thinking we were poor, you see. There were never any trips or new clothes, always hand-me-downs. It's hard to explain . . , like every night after dinner my mother and father met upstairs in his little office and wrote down every penny they'd spent that day; I learned this after he died, when I had to clear his filing cabinet. It was all there on index cards -years of it. He managed a discount store in Roseville and it turned out that he owned it, but they never told me that. I wanted to go to college-I was even offered a tuition scholarship, but they said no, they couldn't afford the dormitory fees or the books or the travel. Later they said I could start community college if I lived at home, so I registered for that but then my father died. Quite suddenly."

Her face tightened. "After that my mother took to her bed -her heart, she said-and I gave up community college and took a job at the grocery store, at the checkout counter for three hours every morning. Only part-time because it was up to me to look after her, cook, clean, shop, budget."

She added in a toneless voice, "And then when she died and I went with the lawyer to the safe-deposit box they pulled out stock certificate after stock certificate after stock certificate. And the estate came to nearly a million: it was eight hundred thousand dollars."

She looked up at last, her face sad. "My first thought was what a joyless life they'd lived -and all for that. At first I wanted to cry for them, and then-"

"And then," said Mr. Smith, "you wanted to cry for yourself?"

Startled, she said, "Yes. Because they'd left only money, and no love, and I didn't know how to be rich. It was when I stopped trying to save baby dolphins that I realized how depressed I was."

"I beg your pardon?" said Smith.

"Dolphins?" echoed Joe.

She nodded. "Those plastic circles that hold together six-packs of sodas and beers. You didn't know? In the ocean the baby dolphins are attracted to them and they strangle in them, so I've always -always-cut up the circles with my scissors. Except I stopped caring even about that."

Recovering from this, Smith said, "And so -not caring- you decided to travel to Egypt ."

She shook her head. "It was the lawyer who suggested it. I think he felt sorry for me."

There was a long silence and then she said, "We were on that plane -on the ground, in Damascus -for so long that I finally understood that going to Egypt wasn't going to change me. I had no idea at au what I'd do when I got there, and I'd still be Amanda Pym. And I realized-realized how hopeless everything was, but most of all me."

Mrs. Pollifax wanted very much to intervene but this was Mr. Smith's interview, and she waited.

"So you no longer cared," he said.

"It seems a long time ago," she told him, "but no, I no longer cared."

"And now?" he asked gently, with a smile.

"Now I'd like another chance at living," she told him. "I think I'd like to go to college, although," she added wryly, "I don't suppose knowing how to take apart and clean rifles and pistols would sound well on a r esume, would it?"

"Find a college in New York City ," Joe said eagerly. "That's where I'll begin teaching in February."

She gave him one of her quick, startled glances, and Mrs. Pollifax thought how surprised she continued to be when she was given the acknowledgment and attention she'd never experienced.

Smith said gravely, "Yes, but now we come to what is very important to us: what your abductors planned for you. Can you tell us that now?"

"What they planned for me," she said in a steady voice, "was to use me -instead of one of their men-to a.s.sa.s.sinate a man who sometimes walked around the grounds of the place where he lived-heavily guarded-and once I became expert at shooting and camouflage I would be a sniper. I was expendable, you see. I would be caught and killed, of course, but it would be Zaki's revenge."