Assignment - Afghan Dragon

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Are you all right, Sam?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sound funny. Strange.”

  Durell said, “You tell the boss, Dickinson McFee, back in D.C., that he’s sold me down the primrose path. I’m on my back, working in the dark. It was supposed to be simple. It’s always supposed to be simple. But Fingal is dead, and that’s not easy to accept. Somebody is making me look foolish, and they used Fingal like you’d throw away a burnt match.”

  “Sam—”

  “All right, Ben.” Durell drew a deep breath. The phone felt slippery in his grip. “Can you get through to McFee?” “I told you, three hours. You’re sure you want me to tell him all this?”

  Durell said, “Ben, I’m supposed to find Nuri Qam, the Second Deputy Minister for Afghani Internal Affairs. He’s supposed to be hiding out in Meshed, in Iran. Can you tell me why?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where to find him, Ben?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything that Fingal knew?”

  Tehran Central hesitated. “It’s about the dragon.”

  “The dragon,” Durell repeated flatly. “The one that was in all the newspapers briefly, the item that the Italian archaeologist, Professor Berghetti, dug up?”

  “And presumably lost again. Yes.”

  “It’s only an art object,” Durell said.

  “It’s the red button on the bomb, Sam.”

  Durell waited.

  “The Chinese want it, Cajun. A matter of national pride. An excuse to start an incident, maybe. I don’t know. I just sit here and mind my own business in Tehran, Sam. I can feel that something big is going on, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “Get McFee to tell me,” Durell said flatly.

  “Sure. Where will you be?”

  “Meshed.”

  “Why there?”

  “To find Nuri Qam, who sent Fingal to fetch me. Why Else? Move your ass on it, Ben.”

  He hung up.

  As he stepped from the back door of the little government building, he saw that Mr. Chadraqi was gone.

  Parked at the end of the alley was the van belonging to the three young Americans—Charley, Mort and Annie. They were waiting for him.

  4

  “Mr. Durell?”

  Charley Anderson pushed the girl, Annie, forward from the van, down the alley toward Durell. She looked back, her dark hair swinging, as if reluctant to move toward him. Their eyes gleamed like those of feral animals in the shadows, catching highlights off the moon. The girl said something he could not understand, as if protesting, and then walked toward him again. He watched the two men. The short one, Mort Jones, balanced his fat body on tiptoe, standing at the rear of the hippie van. Durell saw the shine of his teeth as he grinned. He could not see the man’s pudgy hands. Charley Anderson’s fingers rested lightly on the front door of the van. The girl came forward.

  “That’s enough,” Durell said.

  She stopped. “We just want to talk to you.”

  “Did you come back to Ur-Kandar just for that?” “Charley insists we can do business with you.”

  “We have no business together,” Durell said.

  “Oh, yes, we have.”

  She had changed into cleaner jeans and a heavier, checked man’s shirt, hanging out over her hips. The night was becoming cool as a wind blew over the briny lake from the northeast. There were no clouds, and the moon, at a gibbous phase, cast a bright light over the little town, as cold and fearsome as the light in the girl’s gray eyes. The shadows in the alley were sharp ebony and silver, etching the shape of her delicate nose and chiseled mouth. She seemed to be unarmed. He was not so sure of the two men who waited at a distance behind her at the van.

  “What happened to Chadraqi?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “The clerk at the inn.”

  “Oh, him. He ran away.”

  “Why?”

  “He was probably afraid the police would catch him after he allowed you illegally into the government building. Were you using the telephone?”

  Durell drew a deep breath. “I think you and your two friends had better just take off. I’m not in the mood for any of your fun and games.”

  “We just want to talk to you,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “Maybe we took a walk down that ravine after you left us by the road. Maybe we saw things we oughtn’t to have seen. Would you believe that?”

  He thought of Fingal again. “You found him?”

  “Oh, my, yes.”

  “Who did it?” he asked.

  “Now, how would we know a little thing like that? Was he a friend of yours, Mr. Durell?”

  The fat young man, Mort Jones, called something in a soft, impatient, urgent voice. The girl turned her head, her dark hair swinging again, and Durell could have taken her with ease, to use her against the other two, but he did not think they would have any scruples about the girl, and Durell did not want to show any violence yet. It was a half-mile walk back to the inn, and in between was the mosque and the main huddle of mud-walled houses. He had no wish to waken the whole village.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  The girl said, “You’re a cold one, aren’t you? He was an American, wasn’t he?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “We’re just guessing. We’ve been discussing it a lot. All we know is that we saw your vehicle and saw you coming back up from the ravine. We don’t know how long you were down there or why you pegged him out and tortured him. The police would be interested in hearing all this, wouldn’t they?”

  “Why don’t you go to them, then?”

  “Well, we’re all fellow Americans in a foreign country, aren’t we? We ought to stick together, especially in trouble like this.” The girl’s voice was flat, not very persuasive. “After all, justice here isn’t like in the good old U.S.A. They could lock you up and throw the key away, like they do in Turkey—except I think they’d hang you right off the bat. Surely we can come to terms.”

  “What do you want? Money?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Lots of it. And a bit more. We could help you, you know.”

  Mort Jones called again, his voice a hissing sound in the moonlight. The girl did not turn her head this time. When she looked at Durell, he had the feeling again of something behind her eyes; an appeal, perhaps, a cry of anguish. He couldn’t be certain. She was one of the trio, a girl who shared herself between the two men. And yet there was an odd discipline here that did not quite fit the pattern of drifting, homeless American youth.

  “All right,” Durell said, “I’ll give you some money, just to save me trouble with the local fuzz, right? We’ll go back to the inn.”

  “No,” Mort called. “You come with us.”

  “Why?”

  “We want to show you something. Something that dead man never had a chance to tell you about. Something important. Maybe it’s what you were looking for, hey?”

  “Like what?” Durell asked.

  He felt a menace from the two men more intense than before. The girl stood about six feet away from him and to one side, against the wall of the building, leaving a clear path between himself and the two young men. Somewhere in the village a dog began to bark. It was soon hushed. A camel grunted behind one of the houses across the road that led to the lake. He thought he heard the wailing of a popular Moslem melody; a radio, somewhere. Otherwise, the village was peaceful and quiet.

  Mort Jones said, “Tell him, Annie. It’s something we don’t know what to do about. It’s too big for us. We don’t want trouble with the cops, either. We can all throw in with each other. Friendly, like. No need to argue or fight about it. You’d lose anyway, buddy. We’ve got you by the short hairs. So we’ll show you this thing, and afterward we can work out a deal, if you’ve got the right connections.” Mort laughed thinly. “Which we think you do. You don’t look like one of these businessmen sent over from the
States by your corporation. There’s a smell about you, mister, that I could catch a mile away. You smell like a cop. But maybe not an honest cop. Maybe you’re not above a little deal, anyway.”

  “I’m not a cop,” Durell said.

  “Well, you’re something,” Mort argued. “Anyway, we don’t want to hang around here too long. The locals might come sniffing around any minute. So be a good fella, huh? And first off, throw your gun away. We’ve got you in our sights.”

  Both men moved slightly, as if on signal, and Durell saw their weapons, snubby automatic rifles that outpow-ered his .38 beyond any chance of discussion. He was not too surprised. The girl moved quickly out of his reach, drawing back along the wall. All this time, the taller man, Charley Anderson, had left the talking up to the fat boy. Now Anderson spoke, his voice harsh as the desert Durell had left behind.

  “You’ve got ten seconds, Durell.”

  Durell said, “I’ll go with you. But I’ll keep my gun, if this is to be a friendly enterprise.”

  “No. Toss the gun to Annie.”

  Durell looked at the man’s rock-hard face and reached carefully for his weapon and held it flat in his palm, then threw it to the girl. She caught it deftly and backed away some more until she stood with her companions.

  “Sensible,” Anderson said. “Now get up front in the van, between Mort and me. Annie, you get in the back.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “What’s so big about this that you can’t handle it yourselves?”

  “We can handle it, all right. But you could tell us something about it. Get in.”

  They headed southwest, leaving Ur-Kandar and the lake with its shining Greek column behind them. They were on the road back toward the place where Fingal had died. Nobody rushed out to stop them. The sound of the VW van didn’t seem to disturb any of the sleeping villagers.

  Mort Jones drove. There was an excitation in the fat man that disturbed Durell. Mort hummed, whistled softly, made clucking sounds with his tongue. He did not seem to be high on anything, however. He handled the little bus casually, his fat fingers drumming on the wheel. Now and then Durell felt the muzzle of Anderson’s gun grate against his ribs. He felt no desperate alarm as yet. Curiosity about this trio had risen within him to the danger point. Annie sat behind them, clinging for support as the bus jolted on the rough road. Now and them he glimpsed her face in the rearview mirror. She looked tense and a bit sad, her eyes inward-viewing.

  The interior of the van was a surprise. Under the surface clutter of blankets, bedrolls, boxes of equipment that included shovels, rock hammers, and even mountain-climbing gear, the van was scrubbed spotless. The cooking utensils were stainless steel and copper, polished to a high shine, and neatly stowed. The contradiction troubled him. He wondered if it was the girl’s influence. Their outward appearance was only a facade. Perhaps Annie was brought up with a sense of tidy housekeeping. But the two men, under their casual grime, were equally meticulous.

  The equipment was all relatively new and expensive, some of it from Abercrombie & Fitch, according to the labels. Either they had indulgent parents or their drug-smuggling operation was not as petty as it seemed.

  “It looks as if you’ve been making out pretty well,” he said finally.

  “We do okay,” Charley told him.

  “You said you were from Philly?”

  “Yes. Philadelphia.”

  “How long have you been out of the States?”

  “Only a couple of months. Mort, we’re coming up on it now.”

  “I know,” the fat man said.

  “It’s to the right, from this direction.”

  “I know,” Mort said impatiently.

  Durell said, “How were the Flyers making out when you last heard?”

  “They’ll never win the pennant,” Anderson said. “Just shut up, Durell. If you aren’t a cop, you’re the next thing to it. Snooping around, estimating what we make, looking at our equipment—” Anderson’s gun pushed again at Durell’s rib. “We had a job for a while. All three of us. Annie here majored in archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. Mort was. interested in geology until his folks bugged him so much he got rid of them.”

  Durell turned his head to the driver. “How did you do that?”

  Mort Jones giggled. “I killed ’em.”

  Anderson said, “Cut the shit, Mortimer.”

  “Well, I did, in a way.”

  Anderson spoke to Durell. “We had a little job with the Berghetti expedition. Hunting old stuff here, and across the border in Afghanistan. I was straw boss for the gooks. You ever hear of Professor Berghetti? An Italian from the University of Milano. Pretty famous, I gather. Interested in Asian cultures, including China. You’re in with that stuff, too. We checked out your hotel room. Two -books in Chinese, Tao Te Ching, and all that stuff in ancient Chinese graphics. Surprised?”

  “No,” said Durell.

  “We were just curious about a guy who murders, that’s all.”

  “I haven’t killed anyone lately,” Durell said.

  Mortimer Jones snickered.

  Anderson went on, his voice pedantic, “The old caravan routes used to come out of China and across the Gobi and the mountains and then forked out, some going west, some south to Afghanistan and Iran, which was Persia in those days, and a pretty nifty empire, too. I had long talks with the professor about it. He was looking for the remains of a treasure caravan that belonged to Prince Chan Wei-li, the son of the illegitimate Emperor Shu. The Prince only ruled for eighteen months and tried to establish himself permanently with alliances to the kings of Khwarizm, who offered a few thousand mercenaries to the Emperor to fight the Mongols. Caravans took a long time to travel here, of course. By the time it got here, both the Khwarizm dynasty and the Emperor had been deposed by the Mongols and things were in a mess. The caravan vanished. Had some priceless treasures—jewels, art work, gold, so forth. Sounds like a talltale, doesn’t it?”

  “These things happened,” Durell said.

  “Anyway, the professor got some clues from some old Chinese scripts, detailing Prince Chan’s treasure, and more hints from some old Moslem scripts he studied in Meshed, and he was digging for the stuff. Annie, Mort and I helped him.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “We’ll show you. Turn here, Mort.”

  Durell knew he was in deadly danger.

  Mort Jones turned suddenly toward an almost invisible goat track that led down through the barrens under the light of the moon. The fat man drove violently, and the turn shoved Durell hard against Charley. Anderson’s gun dug cruelly into his side again and the man smiled.

  “You know all about Berghetti, don’t you, Durell? Your friend—the one we found dead—did he know about the dragon, too?”

  Durell said flatly, “What dragon?”

  “Come, come, Mr. Durell. None of us are as innocent as we appear, are we?”

  The van jolted violently as Mortimer casually took it over sharp rocks and around a hairpin descent. The land here, which fell away to the marshes, was marked by a wide series of gullies, ravines and escarpments descending to the lower altitude of the Hamun Lake system. The wind that came through the van’s window was sharp and cold, blowing from the heights of the Mokran. In the moonlight, the land looked empty. Annie muttered something as the van jolted again. This was not the path he had taken earlier to find Fingal’s tortured body at the abandoned village. They had only gone about ten miles from Ur-Kandar. He turned to look at the girl. She half crouched, trying to keep her balance against the wild lurching of the vehicle as they ground downhill under Mort’s guidance. The girl’s eyes were a gray vacuum, sucking fight into their depths and giving nothing back. In the flickering light, he saw the two thin Chinese books he had found in Fingal’s room, among a scatter of other volumes he could not identify. The comers of the girl’s mouth trembled just a bit.

  “Did you kill Fingal, Annie?” he asked.
<
br />   Her voice was bland. “Was that his name?”

  “You should know. How long have you been with Charley and Mort?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Which one is better in bed?”

  Her voice was flat. “Fuck you,” she said.

  The VW van jolted to a halt. A cloud of dust and sand boiled up around them briefly. Anderson reached out for the door handle and backed out and away, holding his weapon level.

  “Come on out, Mr. CIA man.”

  Durell did not argue his knowledge. He slid out, facing Anderson, and saw that Mort had stopped the van on a wide ledge of reddish stone, beyond which was a deep drop into a ravine filled with tumbled boulders and the dry bed of a river that didn’t seem to have flowed for centuries. The bottom of the little canyon was relatively flat, perhaps forty feet down, with a trail suitable for goats zigzagging down from the ledge. The rim of the moon touched the opposite height of the valley. He heard the VW door slam as Mortimer got out from behind the wheel. The springs of the van creaked. The girl used the rear doors. Durell ignored the automatic weapon in Anderson’s hands and walked to the edge of the narrow rock ledge where Jones had stopped the VW.

  This part of the country had flourished ages ago, before the deserts crept in and the river dried up. He saw rains among the boulders, a few ancient columns of serpentine shape, half-shadowed, white against the black where the moon’s rays failed to reach. There was a Byzantine look to the ruins, although the village had never been much, and a crude dam downstream testified to the engineering capacities of the ancients who once flourished here.

  “What do you think of that?” Anderson asked.

  “Did Professor Berghetti dig here?”

  “Hell, no. We found it ourselves and kept it to ourselves. Our private dig, see? We’d take time off from the main search area, which was south of here. The old prof didn’t seem to mind when we disappeared.”