Clive Cussler - Sahara

General Kazim peered from the lush comfort of the executive helicopter as the pilot caught and passed a long train of sealed, hazardous waste container cars pulled by two diesel locomotives. The train was outbound to Mauritania, having emptied its deadly cargo and turned around.

He smiled craftily as he turned his stare from the waste cars and nodded to the steward, who refreshed his glass of champagne and offered a tray of hors d'oeuvres.

The French, Kazim mused, they never seemed out of reach of champagne, truffles, and pate. He considered them an insular race who only halfheartedly tried to build and maintain an empire. How the general citizenry must have sighed with collective relief, he thought, when they were forced to give up their outposts in Africa and the Far East. Deep down it angered him that the French had not disappeared entirely from Mali. Though they severed their colonial leash in 1960, the French had maintained their influence and a taut grip on the economy, exercising strong control over most all of the nation's mining, transportation, industrial and energy development. Many French businessmen saw investment opportunity and bought heavily into Malian ventures. But none had dug their money shovel deeper into the Sahara sands than Yves Massarde.

Once the wizard of France's overseas economic agency, Massarde had carved a profitable niche on the side, using his contacts and influence to take over and turn around ailing West African corporations. A tough and shrewd negotiator, his methods were cutthroat and it was rumored that he was not above using strong-arm tactics to consummate a deal. His wealth was estimated to be between two and three billion dollars, and the hazardous waste disposal project in the Sahara at Fort Foureau was the centerpiece of his empire.

The helicopter arrived over the sprawling complex, and the pilot swung around the perimeter to give Kazim a good view of the sprawling solar detoxification complex and its vast field of parabolic mirrors that collected solar energy and sent it to concentrating receivers, creating an incredible 60,000 suns with temperatures as high as 5000 degrees C. This superheated photon energy was then directed to photochemical reactors that destroyed the molecules of hazardous chemicals.

The General had seen it all several times, and he was more interested in selecting another bite of truflled goose pate. He was just finishing his sixth glass of Veuve Clicquot Gold Label champagne when the helicopter slowly settled onto the flight pad in front of the project's engineering offices.

Kazim stepped to the ground and saluted Felix Verenne, the personal aide of Massarde, who stood waiting in the sun. Kazim gloated at seeing the Frenchman suffering from the heat. "Felix, how good of you to greet me," he spoke in French, his teeth flashing beneath his moustache.

"Did you enjoy your journey?" Verenne asked patronizingly.

"The pate was not up to your chef's usual standards."

A slender, bald-headed man in his forties, Verenne forced t a smile over his inner disgust for Kazim. "I'll see that it meets with your approval on the return flight."

"And how is Monsieur Massarde?"

"He's waiting for you in his executive suite."

Verenne led the way under an awning-covered walkway into a three-story black solar glass building with rounded corners. Inside, they crossed a marble lobby that was totally deserted, except for one security guard, and entered an elevator. The doors opened onto a teak-paneled entry halt that led to the main salon that doubled as Massarde's living quarters and office. Verenne showed Kazim into a small but luxuriously decorated study and pointed to a Roche Bobois leather sofa.

"Please have a seat. Monsieur Massarde will be with you-?'

"But Felix, I am here," came a voice from the opposite doorway. Massarde stepped forward and embraced Kazim. "Zateb, my friend, how good of you to come"

Yves Massarde had blue eyes, black brows, and reddish hair. His nose was slender and his jaws square. The body was thin and the hips trim, but the stomach protruded. Nothing about him seemed to match. But it was not his physical impression that lingered in the memories of those he met. They only remembered the intensity that burst from within his being in a manner like that of static electricity.

He gave a knowing look to Verenne, who nodded and quietly left the room, closing the door behind.

"Now then, Zateb, my agents in Cairo inform me that your people made a fiasco of frightening the World Health Organization from coming to Mali"

"A regrettable circumstance," Kazim shrugged indifferently. "The reasons are unclear."

Massarde gave the General a hard stare. "According to my sources of information, your assassins disappeared during a botched attempt to kill Dr. Eva Rojas."

"A penalty for their inefficient handling of the matter."

"You executed them?"

"I do not tolerate failure from my people," Kazim lied.

The failure of his men to kill Eva and their strange disappearance had baffled him. In frustration he had ordered the death of the officer who planned the murder, accusing him and the others of betraying his commands.

Massarde did not get where he was without being a shrewd judge of personalities. He knew Kazim well enough to suspect the General of laying a smoke screen. "If we have outside enemies, it would be a grave mistake to ignore them."

"It was nothing," Kazim said, dismissing the subject. "Our secret is safe."

"You say that when a UN World Health team of contamination experts is landing at Gao within the hour? Do not treat this matter lightly, Zateb. If they trace the source here-"

"They won't find anything but sand and heat," Kazim interrupted. "You know better than I, Yves, whatever is causing the strange sickness near the Niger cannot be coming from here. I see no way your project can be responsible for pollution hundreds of kilometers to the east and south of here."

"That's true," Massarde said thoughtfully. "Our monitoring systems show that the waste we burn for appearance sake .is well within the stringent limits set by international policy standards."

"So what's to worry," shrugged Kazim.

"Nothing, so long as every avenue is covered."

"Leave the UN research team to me."

"Do not hinder them," Massarde warned quickly.

"The desert takes care of intruders."

"Kill them and Mali and Massarde Enterprises will be at -great risk of exposure. Their leader, Dr. Hopper, called a news conference in Cairo and played on the lack of cooperation from your government. He went on record as claiming his research team might encounter danger after their arrival. Scatter their bones around the desert, my friend, and we'll have an army of news reporters and UN investigators swarming over the project."

"You weren't squeamish about having Dr. Rojas removed."

"Yes, but the attempt was not in our backyard where there could be suspicion of our involvement."

"Nor were you disturbed when half of your engineers and their wives went for a picnic drive into the dunes and vanished.

"Their disappearance was necessary to protect the second phase of our operation."

"You were fortunate I was able to cover the situation without headlines in Paris newspapers or on-site investigations by French government agents."

"You did well," Massarde sighed. "I could not do without your esteemed talents." Like most of his desert countrymen, Kazim could not exist without perpetual compliments to his genius. Massarde Loathed the General, but the clandestine operation could not exist without him. It was a contract made in hell by two evil men with Massarde getting the top end of the deal. He could afford to put up with the camel turd, as he called Kazim behind his back. After all, a payoff of fifty thousand American dollars a month was a pittance against the two million dollars a day Massarde was reaping from the waste disposal project.