Assignment - Afghan Dragon

by Edward S. Aarons

  “You never told him of this place?”

  “As I said, we kept it to ourselves. We hoped we’d find the old man’s treasure. Of course, we figured most of it was just a pipe dream, but you never can tell.” Anderson shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s go down. We’ll show you what we found.”

  “I’m not interested,” Durell said.

  “Sure, you are. That’s why you came here, isn’t it? You and Fingal. You found something, that’s a fact. And that’s why Fingal is dead, right?” Anderson’s eyes were lost in deep pockets of shadow. “Well, let’s go down, anyway.”

  “If you’re going to kill me, do it here,” Durell said. “We just want to show you what we found, and ask what you think of it.”

  Mortimer Jones had advanced to stare down from the rimrock at the rains in the valley below. A little smile played on his fat lips. The girl stood a little apart from them, watching and waiting.

  Durell said, “You’ll never get away with it. I figure Mortimer is your interrogator, right? He looks like he’d have fun in that sort of work. I guess he did the job on Fingal—cutting away the eyelids, emasculating 'him, all that. Mortimer tends to go overboard. It wasn’t a wandering band of brigands who caught Fingal. It was you three.” He turned to the girl. “Anya, did you enjoy watching what Mort did to Fingal?”

  She said, “My name is Annie.” There was sudden alarm in her eyes. She looked at Anderson. “What’s the matter with him, anyway? Doesn’t he believe us?”

  Anderson said, “He knows.”

  Durell said, “Tovarich, you mentioned the Philadelphia Flyers not winning the pennant. They’re not a baseball team. They’re an ice hockey team. No pennants for them. Just the Stanley Cup. You had good training, fairly good schooling. But not good enough.”

  He drew a deep breath. “You’re Russian. Soviet agents. All three of you.”

  5

  Mortimer made a hissing sound. Durell watched him with only part of his attention. The man was excitable and vicious, but it was apparent that Anderson gave the orders. Durell was a cautious man, but not one who refused risks. He had not made the statement that exposed Anderson’s cover without thought.

  “We have to kill him,” Mort Jones said.

  “No,” said Annie.

  Anderson said, “Not yet.” He looked curiously at Durell. “You don’t really know why you are here, do you? They have not briefed you completely?”

  “I’d like to know why you are here,” Durell said. “The Soviets have interests along the Afghani border, of course: So do the Chinese. But this masquerade? This searching for artifacts in the desert? Was it worth Fingal’s life?” He looked at Mortimer Jones’s sweaty face in the moonlight. “And do you usually work with such freaks, Anderson? Jones is not competent.” He switched suddenly, easily, to Russian. “Jones should be eliminated, not I.” Invective, foul and not distinguished by its inventiveness, poured from Jones like trash flowing along a sewer. Durell heard the girl draw a deep, weary breath. But most of his attention was centered on Anderson. The danger would come from that one; Anderson would make the decision. He did not know why they had performed their convoluted charade; it didn’t matter, at the moment. Just now, it was enough to consider the simple matter of survival.

  Durell had a knife in a sheath fastened to the inner seams of his shirt collar at the nape of his neck. It could be pulled out hilt-first, fitting the palm of his hand in throwing position in split seconds. They had not searched him, except to take the .38, which Anderson had thrust into his wide belt. Durell had been trained in the use of the narrow, vicious blade at the Maryland “Farm” run by K Section, but he decided in that moment not to use it unless they tried to go over him more thoroughly.

  Anderson moved his gun slightly. “We go down, Go-spodin Durell.” He jerked his head toward the man called Jones.

  “Why? What’s down there?”

  Jones grinned. “Perhaps the end of your career, Cajun. Yes, we know your code name. It’s been in our files for a long, long time. With a red tab attached to it. Which means, as you of course must know, that you are to be handled with extreme prejudice, as I believe your own official phrasing puts it.”

  The girl said, “But perhaps he can help us.”

  “Oh, he will, he will.” Jones’s round head bobbed in pleasant agreement. “This man is a professional, unlike Fingal, who waited too long before wagging his tongue. This man will be more sensible. He is a capitalist mercenary, fighting against the peoples’ revolutions. But he is also a pragmatic man, and he will not permit us to go as far as we had to go with Fingal.”

  Anderson gestured to the ravine. “Go on down.”

  Durell started forward to the goat track that led to the rocky bottom and the ruined, ancient village, He saw the flicker of an order in Anderson’s eyes, an imperceptible nod, and the moment that Anderson used to look at Mortimer Jones was enough for Durell to reach for the knife in its sheath at the nape of his neck.

  The moon over the edge of the rimrock cast the fat man’s head and shoulders in bright amber light, while the rest of him was swathed in ebony shadow, invisible against the darkness below. It was as if he had been cut in half. As Jones raised his JP-12, the muzzle moved upward into the light, Durell’s knife flickered and sped to its mark. The girl screamed. Anderson started a warning sound in his throat that never fully came out. The knife chunked into Jones’s right shoulder. The man’s gun began to stutter, set on automatic, sending slugs wildly against the moon. At the same moment, Durell crouched low and dived for Anderson, who had made the mistake of standing too close. He felt the man’s gun slam frantically against his head as he smashed into the Russian’s middle. Anderson went backward, lost his footing, yelled, and lost his balance on the lip of the ledge. He went down, grabbing and pulling Durell with him. At that moment, he heard a belated scream from Jones and glimpsed the man with the knife embedded in his shoulder; Jones fell into the dry riverbed in a series of insane cartwheels. Durell and Anderson went down, too, locked together in a desperate grip. He had no time to think about the girl.

  The dizzying fall was checked by shattering bumps and crashes as they hit rock and scrub on the way down. Durell felt something smash into his left leg, slam against the side of his head, crush against his back. The breath was knocked out of him. The fall seemed endless. Then everything exploded in one last brain-shattering jolt and he lay still, not fully conscious. The sky reeled overhead. There was a roaring in his ears. He told himself to get up. He could not get up. He forced himself to roll on one side and his hand came down on something hard, metallic, unlike rock. It was Anderson’s automatic. He closed his fingers on it, felt a small tug against him, pulled harder, got his hand firmly on the grip. Pebbles rolled and clattered down around him. He got to his knees. The sky wavered again. The darkness seemed absolute here at the bottom of the ravine. Something small scrabbled away from him at the edge of the rough river bottom. He could not see what it was.

  A large and dark object loomed to his right. He slid toward it, his left leg acting strangely, not in complete control. He hoped nothing had been broken. When he was behind the boulder, he paused and sat with his back against the cool rock and drew several long, deliberate breaths. He could not see Anderson or Jones or the girl, but he thought he heard the girl calling in anxious tones down from the top of the ravine. He could not be sure. His ears rang. But after a long minute, he began to feel better.

  There were boulders of all sizes and shapes strewn around him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that he and Anderson, in their desperate grips on each other, had rolled to the dry riverbed, where eons of storm washes had flung gravel and rolled heavy stones in tumultuous heaps here and there. He looked again for Anderson, but could not see the Russian.

  The girl was coming down the narrow goat track toward the ruined heaps of foundation stones in the ancient, deserted village. She carried Durell’s gun in her hand. He watched her until she passed below the edge of moonlight and merged into the darker
shadows down here. Something moved about twenty yards ahead, toward the ruins. Pebbles rattled.

  “Leonid? Anya?”

  It was Anderson’s whisper. Durell sat still, gathering his strength, and checked the Russian automatic. It was loaded, but the safety was still on. Anderson—-or whatever his Russian name really was—had had no intention of shooting him. He had meant to leave that business to Jones-Kokin, who enjoyed slow executions. He slipped the safety catch off and made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber. He kept the gun on single-fire rather than automatic. Then he stood up, crouching, and looked over the top of the boulder that sheltered him.

  Kokin lay spread-eagled on his back, his body broken by a sharp outcrop of rock on which he had fallen. Anderson crouched beside him, shaking him futilely. Then the dark Russian turned, slid sidewise, and vanished.

  Durell wondered about the girl.

  It was a dangerous place for hide-and-seek. He moved slowly forward, grateful that his own body functioned at reasonable normalcy now. Using care to make no sound, he drifted from shadow to shadow toward the spot where he had last seen Anderson.

  “Durell?"

  The whisper came from his right, across the river where the serpentine, broken columns reared up toward the dim moonlight. It was Anya’s voice. He did not reply.

  “Cajun, be careful!”

  There was a note of anxious warning in her words. He did not understand it. Again, he made no reply.

  He did not know why she urged caution on him, against her fellow agent. He assumed it was a trap, and moved on. Perhaps a hundred yards down the ravine, the walls of reddish rock turned sharply right, beyond the village ruins. The moon, dipping fast below the edge of the little cliff, made a pattern of silver down there that reflected somewhat up the narrow gorge. It gave him a slight advantage His general direction was toward Mort Jones’s body, where it sprawled like a broken sacrificial offering on the sharp rock where he had landed. He felt no regrets about the man’s death. Jones had been ready to execute him, or perhaps inflict on him the same horrible torment he had exercised on poor Fingal. A ripple of small, unseen pebbles gritted out from under his left boot. The sound seemed extraordinarily loud in the ravine. He froze in the shadows and listened. There was no response from his hidden adversary. He could not escape by climbing the goat path again; he would be too exposed as a target on the way up to where the van waited. What lay between him and the Russians had to be settled here, in this rocky, ruined place of shadows.

  “Anya . . . !”

  It was Anderson, calling with a fierce urgency. Durell looked in the direction of the sound, but he could not see the other man. Neither could he spot the girl. He reached Jones’s body, waited again, then began to search with quick efficiency in the man’s pockets, taking papers, keys, money. There was quite a thick wad of currency in the dead man’s shirt pocket. He could not find Kokin’s gun. Perhaps Anderson had already retrieved it to replace the JP-12 Durell had snatched up. As if in answer to the thought, there came a sharp, stuttering series of cracks from across the riverbed. Rock splinters broke and screamed in the dark air. Durell dived behind the boulder and waited, checked the direction from which the shots had come. The place seemed a little farther south than the spot from which Anderson had called to the girl. The dim rectangular ruins of house foundations made deeper cavities of shadow in the blackness over there. The top of one of the Byzantine columns was touched by the fading moonlight. Soon it would be completely dark down here in the canyon.

  “Anya, come here!”

  The girl did not reply to Anderson’s repeated call. Durell started to rise, and again a rapid burst of shots came his way. He dived flat once more, than crawled rapidly on knees and elbows toward the riverbed, slid down the slight depression it made, and rested on the opposite bank. The sand and rock still held the close heat of the past day, but now a wind came whimpering around the far turn of the narrow valley, and he felt a chill in the air.

  Something moved among the ruins to his right. A small stone rattled. He heard quick, anxious breathing a bit ahead of him when he turned and crawled up and over the river bank. Nearby was the first of debris-filled cellar excavations. He looked beyond, searching the darkness for Anderson. The broken columns of the old settlement made silhouettes against the far wall of the ravine, where the moonlight was reflected. He dried his palm on his thigh and renewed his grip on the Russian automatic. There was silence.

  He listened.

  Faintly, faintly, he heard the sound of someone moving in the foundation hole. He slid forward and halted only a few feet from the base of the single twisted column that reached for the moon. He heard nothing for a long moment.

  “Anya!”

  It was difficult from here to locate the sound of Anderson’s call. It could have come from directly ahead, in the rubble-filled excavations, or almost anywhere. The voice bounced off the rocky walls of the ravine and echoed back and forth, confusing each other. The word was laced with anger now, a sense of betrayal because she did not answer him. Then he saw the shape of a head and shoulders rising carefully out of a depression ahead.

  He moved fast, rising to his feet, and dived hard for the dim figure. He heard several shots slam back and forth from the canyon walls. He could not tell where they came from. Then he hit the figure in the back, drove the person forward, and knew instantly that he had found the Russian girl. She gave a small cry and fell forward, and he fell on top of her. Her firm body convulsed in involuntary panic. He clapped a hand over her mouth, caught at her wrist, slammed his elbow down on her other arm, and pinned her under him.

  “Be quiet,” he whispered. “Absolutely quiet.” “Please—”

  He spoke in Russian. “If you say one more word, I’ll kill you.”

  She knew he meant it. Her body remained taut under him, then lost all its resistance.

  “Anya!”

  Echoes went back and forth through the darkness like startled birds overhead.

  “Listen to me,” Durell said. “Are you listening?”

  Her head moved in a spasmodic nod. Her breathing was quick, frightened. He smelled the scent she used in her hair. He said “Answer quietly. Very carefully. Who is Anderson?”

  “Like me. An agent. On a mission here.”

  “What mission?”

  “They want the dragon.”

  “What dragon?”

  “The dragon,” she repeated.

  “Who are they? KGB?”

  “Nyet. I think not.”

  “You’re not KGB?”

  A nod. “I am. Yes. But Pigam Zhirnov? Leonid Kokin? I am not certain.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “No. It does not.”

  He said, “You tried to warn me against them?”

  “Killing you would be senseless.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I—I think I need your help. Please. Be very careful. Zhirnov will kill you. He must kill you now. It is why he and Kokin brought you here. To question you and to kill you.”

  “Because of the dragon?”

  She nodded, sucked in a breath, was silent. He felt her body all over, careless of the amenities, and recovered his own gun, the S&W .38, from her belt. She seemed to carry no other weapons. He felt better, and released his crushing hold on her.

  “Anya!”

  The angry-sounding echoes flew about his head.

  “Why does Anderson—Pigam Zhirnov—want you?” he whispered.

  “He will kill me, too, I think, and blame it on you.”

  “But you’re a team—”

  She said, “I think not. I think our purpose here is not what I understood it to be. Zhirnov knows I have become suspicious. It is enough for him, a man like him.”

  “All right.- I’m letting you go. Be very careful.”

  “Yes.”

  He rolled away from her and put the Russian gun in his belt, preferring to hold the .38. It felt good and familiar in his grip. The girl did not move for a mome
nt. Then she rolled sidewise, her long hair disheveled and swinging. He could not see her face in the darkness. An arm’s-length away, and she would be invisible. He smelled the dust of antiquity in his nostrils from the ancient excavation. He stood up, his head exposed, and looked around.

  The moon was gone.

  Except for the broken angular strip of starlit sky formed by the walls of the ravine, there was no other light. He reached behind him and caught the girl’s wrist. She was momentarily reluctant to leave the illusory safety of their hole, but then she climbed up with him. The wind made her loose shut flap briefly. He felt her shiver. There was a cluster of broken columns ahead and to the left, ghostly in the light of the stars. He moved that way with care, trying to avoid the rubble of broken building blocks and potholes. He felt as if he were stalking a tiger in the dark of the night. He visualized Zhirnov now, lean and dark and intense, holding the gun, watching and waiting. The presence of the girl with him, the possibility that he might miss and hit Anya when aiming for him, would not stop Zhirnov. Durell pulled her behind the shelter of the three or four rearing columns. Their safety was dubious. Zhirnov could be anywhere, to the right or left or even behind them now, in the narrow, dark canyon.

  But he had the keys to the van, and it was a long ten miles back along the dangerous road to Ur-Kandar. Zhirnov had already slipped up there, when he had tried to revive Jones, but he had not found the ignition keys. Durell had them. He looked across the riverbed. He could barely make out the bulk of the van in the starlight. But the climb up the side of the ravine would leave them as exposed as flies on a wall. It was a momentary checkmate. The keys were no good to him unless he could get back up there.

  “There,” Anya whispered. “There.”

  He saw nothing in the direction she pointed.

  “I thought I saw him moving,” she breathed.

  “No.”

  It was a game of patience, one in which he had been well-trained. But then, he was sure that Pigam Zhirnov had equal expertise at this deadly standoff. There was the girl to be considered, too. She was hostile, but at the same time he sensed her need for him, gleaning hints that she was at odds with her own companions. He did not understand this, and for the moment he did not try to.