Assignment - Afghan Dragon

by Edward S. Aarons

  Be old, and you will stay new.

  The Sage keeps to One, and becomes All.

  He saw nothing helpful in the phrasing. He read another of the groups of characters:

  Between yes and no there is no difference.

  Between good and evil, is there a difference?

  The ignorant are bright,

  The witty are stupid.

  Tao is a thing both visible and intangible;

  But there is substance and essence in it.

  All things in the Universe come from Being,

  And being from non-being.

  Returning is the movement of Tao

  And weakness is the appliance of Tao.

  Durell put down the book for a moment. He saw nothing but obscure scholarly academics in Homer’s little book. Yet he had carried it with him to the rendezvous where he had met his death. The old underlinings meant nothing. Did the fact that it was simply Chinese have importance? That alone could be Homer’s message. Homer Fingal was supposed to have instructed him on how to find Nuri Qam, the Afghan Deputy Minister who had handled the case of Professor Berghetti and the objet d’art that was known as the Afghan dragon. Were the Chinese in on it as well as the Russians?

  He read:

  As Tao is to the world,

  So are streams to the rivers.

  The rivers become kings, rising and lowering.

  herefore the Sage, to be above the people,

  Must keep below them.

  Another bus went by, coming from Zahidan. This one was crowded with locals, almost all men, their heads and bodies wrapped in ragged clothes against the dust. Anya had to pull off the road to let the juggernaut go by; there was no room on the narrow path for both vehicles. She clashed gears nervously as she started up again. The sun topped the edge of the plain to the east, and the first hot shafts struck the open pages of the Tao Te Ching book. It was then, in the slanting light, that Durell saw the thumbnail marks made by Fingal under certain passages.

  The city of Tao is to the north.

  The net of heaven is vast and wide,

  But nothing escapes wisdom.

  In the palace of the Sage there are no walls.

  In the house of Tao there were many windows.

  But no one truly lives there.

  Durell closed the blue leather book. Homer Fingal might have been an erudite academician, more suited to library stacks than this cruel and brutal land, but he had managed to do his job. To the north was Meshed, a holy city. It was noted for its bazaar, a place of no walls and many windows, where the merchants did not live, but only carried on their trade.

  He knew where to go.

  7

  He was in luck. There were two flights a week on a feeder line of Iran Air that flew from Zahidan to Meshed in the ostan of Rhorasan, and they had hit the right day. Anya had no objection as Durell bought their tickets, producing their papers for the lackadaisical clerk. Meshed was less than one hundred miles from the USSR border. Their flight was scheduled to leave at 0945. It was a flight of about 700 kilometers, and Durell figured that the approximate 400 miles could be covered in less than two hours, bringing them to Meshed about noon. They had almost an hour in which to wait, and they cleaned up in the primitive facilities available. He was a bit concerned about letting her out of sight, but she seemed as anxious to accompany him as before. There was a teahouse near the airfield, and Durell bought breakfast for them, paying less than fifty rials, and then got extra cups of hot tea, although the sunbaked airfield thermometer already registered 105°. Somehow, Anya managed to remain cool and fresh-looking. She bought a silk scarf for her long dark hair, and did not offer to share the expense of the plane fares when Durell paid for the tickets. White-necked crows perched on the telephone lines, and an occasional bus wheeled recklessly in and out of the airfield parking area. Durell put the van in the least conspicuous place he could find. The dust of their drive had obscured both the faded designs and the license plates. He locked it up, although he did not expect much to be left of the vehicle after the usual thievery of tires, wheels, and anything removable.

  “Was there something you wanted to save out of it?” he asked the girl.

  “No. Nothing. I never want to see it again. It stinks of Kokin. I don’t want to remember him.”

  “But you were part of the team,” he said.

  “I did not kill or torture your friend Fingal. I was left behind on the road, away from it all, to keep watch. I did not know what Zhirnov and Kokin planned to do.”

  She turned away and sat down on a crude bench in the shade beside the hangar. Mechanics nearby were working on several planes, and there was a slight stirring of activity in the hangar shed as the bi-weekly flight was prepared. The girl’s face was somber as she regarded Durell.

  “I am afraid of Zhirnov. I do not wish to be a failure in this mission, but I think that you and I, from our different nations, are only pawns in this matter. Our enemies are the same. We are being used as bait for bigger fish, and that is why I have left Zhirnov.”

  “Were you lovers?”

  She grimaced. “No.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “No men at all?”

  “That is no concern of yours.” She sounded almost prim. “Are you not listening to me? Zhirnov, Kokin and I were sent out together, but I do not think we are employed by the same people. You and I have perhaps the same objectives. But the agencies we each work for have other goals, I think.”

  “You’re being ambiguous.”

  “Perhaps.” She shrugged. “I can explain no more.” “You can tell me what’s so damned important about this little dragon.”

  “The dragon is only an excuse, this statue from old China. An excuse to blow up a small incident into a large war. It is encouraged by elements in your country and in mine, as well as in Peking.”

  “Do you know where the dragon is?”

  “If I did, I would not be sitting here, not knowing what to do.”

  “Just what happened to Professor Berghetti, who found the thing in the first place?”

  She shook her head and got up and went into the hangar. He followed her, but she only bought some local cigarettes and came back to the bench, blinking in the hot glare of morning sunlight. She struck a match to the cigarette and inhaled deeply, blew out the smoke, and looked gloomily at the waiting plane.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “You seem to know where you are going and what you must do. I do not. Not any more. I must make some important decisions, and I am not prepared to do so, as yet.”

  “Berghetti,” he urged her.

  “Oh, he found the statuette, along with other old artifacts, in the Afghan area of the Seistan, near Qali-i-Kang. Berghetti was a foolish old man. He tried to smuggle it out across the border, but he was intercepted and arrested, and Pasha Nuri Qam, the Interior Deputy Minister, took charge of the case, claiming the art objects for Afghanistan. It all came out in the newspapers. Berghetti refused to tell where he had— how do you say it?—cached the dragon. Peking, of course, immediately claimed the objects and made very threatening pronouncements. But Berghetti himself, we think, was helped to escape from the jail by Mr. Nuri Qam, in order to retrieve the dragon from where the professor had hidden it. Since then, Qam has fled—he took an enforced vacation from his offices in Kabul— and he is believed to be in Meshed.” The girl crushed out her cigarette. “So we are going there, is that not so?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know Nuri Qam?”

  “We went to the same university, back in the States. We were classmates.”

  “Ah. Yale, I think?”

  “You’ve been briefed about me,” Durell said.

  “A little. We know more than you think. You are to find Berghetti, wherever he hides, retrieve the dragon, and give it back to the Afghan authorities, namely Nuri Qam. As a gesture of goodwill, international cooperation, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it is not so sim
ple, my friend.”

  “I realized that when Fingal was killed by your team. Why do you want the dragon? What’s the USSR to do with it?”

  “If I knew that, I would know why Colonel Cesar Skoll, my superior, is imprisoned and taken from this mission. I would know what Zhirnov’s and Kolin’s true orders were and why all this is so important to Moscow and Peking and Washington.”

  “But you don’t know,” Durell said flatly.

  “No. 1 feel that something is very wrong in this matter of the dragon, and that you and I are being used as fools by people in both our countries whom we would not approve of.”

  “When did you last see Skoll?”

  “He was arrested over two weeks ago.”

  “He’s not a man who would care for prison,” Durell said. He remembered Cesar Skoll very well, from assignments in Malta and Morocco and Ceylon, where in the past their paths had crossed, mostly as competitors and deadly enemies, and sometimes as unwilling allies. He admired Skoll, had been amazed at the man’s brute strength, his quick wit, his unswerving honesty and dedication, his roaring laughter. Colonel Skoll was not a man who would go down easily.

  Powerful forces must have been at work to remove him from this mission. Perhaps equal forces were at work back in Washington, controlling and manipulating his own efforts.

  A loudspeaker announced their flight. Durell picked up his bag and motioned Anya to her feet. In the ramshackle waiting room, he saw the other passengers for the first time. There were no more than eight of them: an elderly German tourist and his tall, languorous blond young bride. There were two youthful Iranian officials, who despite the morning heat wore their dark coats and neckties as emblems of their office; a Chinese of uncertain age, wearing a white Panama hat; an Indian, very dark, with angry, defensive eyes; and two American businessmen, sharp and alert, carrying their attache cases as if they were boarding a commuter train from Manhattan to Greenwich.

  The Chinese bobbed his head and smiled affably at Durell. He mentally flipped through the dossiers of Peking’s Black House agents, but the man’s face rang no bells. The blond German wife gave Durell a direct, appraising look; her stout husband grumbled in German about the heat.

  Durell and Anya trailed after the little group.

  “One more thing about your boss, Skoll,” he said. “Did you have a chance to speak to him before coming here with Zhirnov and Kokin? Did he give you any hint as to why he refused the mission and was subsequently arrested?”

  She frowned. “Only briefly. Skoll is old-fashioned, you see. He feels protective toward women, despite feminine freedom in socialist society. He only told me to be very careful.”'

  “In what way?”

  “He suggested that Zhirnov was—headstrong? And apt to cause unnecessary difficulties. Skoll had nothing but contempt, of course, for Leonid Kokin. A mere assassin.”

  “Did Skoll expect to be arrested?”

  “Oh, yes. He was clearing out his desk when we last spoke to each other.”

  “But he didn’t tell you directly what it was all about?”

  “No, he did not.”

  Durell followed the girl into the Iran Air jet.

  8

  Meshed was a place of fruits and farms, of minarets spiraling high over holy places, the Imam Reza’s mausoleum, of pilgrims on their way to the tomb of Nadir Shah and the sacred enclosures where all nonbelievers were forbidden. Meshed was a garden exuding the scent of growing things and possessing the aura of religious fervor that amounted to a strange ecstasy. It was a quiet storm, fed by the Shi’ite feasts, under a milder sun than in the Seistan; a storm like the swift rippling movement of a whirlpool.

  Here were memories of barbarians and the glory of the Sassanids, of nomad wars and the monstrous avalanche of the Mongols led by Genghis Khan, who left behind them fire and destruction and mountains of bleached skulls. Meshed was the Place of the Martyr, where the Imam Reza confronted the Caliph Harun el Rashid in a conflict between orthodoxy and Shi’ism. Pilgrims to the holy places in Meshed bring in a tide of money, coins and rugs and goats to sell, with which to make their pious offerings.

  There were modem things today, however: sugar refineries and parks, traffic circles and broad boulevards, avenues shaded under gentle trees, and bazaars selling turquoise and embroidered skin coats, soapstone platters, rugs, antiques, clay tablets and beads for the religious pilgrims.

  Over all lay the heat of summer, which still drove the inhabitants to sleep on their flat roofs and terraces in search of a cool breeze from the mountains toward Quchan.

  Among the other passengers in the plane from Zahidan, only the young German woman with her older husband showed any interest in Durell and Anya. She was statuesque and full-fleshed, a modern Valkyrie with long blond hair done up in a tight, sedate braid atop her head; her hands were long and strong, free of jewelry, not even a wedding ring. She did not exchange anything more than monosyllables with her businessman husband, who was engrossed in corporate tallies taken from his attache case. Durell was aware of her pale gray eyes straying his way, and so was Anya.

  Anya seemed annoyed. But Anya was interested in the Chinese and the others, as if wondering which, if any of them, could be working with Zhirnov—or perhaps Peking. The blond woman got up once and bumped her soft, pliant hip against Durell’s shoulder as she made her way to the back of the plane. She apologized most profusely, first in German that identified her to Durell’s ear as a Berliner—West or East? he wondered—and his guess was verified when she gave her name as Frau Hauptman-Graz. She waved a - negligent hand toward her husband, who was engrossed in his business papers.

  “My husband, Hans, he is not a tourist. But I am.” When she smiled, her teeth were strong and white and rapacious. “You are touring this part of Asia, also?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Durell said.

  “Meshed is supposed to be a beautiful city, filled with a religious excitement, I hear, an air of holiness, nicht?”

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  “And perhaps we shall meet there at the sights to see. Bitte?”

  “It would be delightful.”

  She pouted, towering over Durell in his seat like some Norse goddess seeking her prey. “My husband Hans, he is always busy, I am often lonely and need— companionship? A guide? It would be pleasant to share experiences in Meshed with you and your lovely wife.”

  Anya said hostilely, “We are not married.”

  “Ah. So? Well, times have changed, of course—”

  “Are you married?” Anya asked pointedly.

  The blond woman turned slightly pink. “I do not wear Hans’s ring, but that is only because—”

  An announcement from the cockpit broke it off. The woman sat down again next to her husband and stared out the small window. Anya considered her hands. “The bitch,” she murmured. “But then, I suppose you find it commonplace, a man like you is attractive to a certain type of woman—”

  “You could have been kinder. She’s from East Berlin. Her accent gives her away. A good Communist, no doubt, like you,” Durell suggested.

  Anya shrugged. “Not all Communists are ‘good.’ ”

  “And not all of them follow Moscow’s line, is that it?” Durell murmured.

  “I do not understand.”

  “The Black House in Peking would hardly send conspicuous Chinese into Afghanistan and Iran to hunt for the dragon. They would use Maoist fellow travelers who would stand out less against the color of the local people,” Durell said. “Like the Indian, up ahead. Or perhaps the two men who look so American, behind us.”

  Anya was a bit pale. “I did not think of that.”

  “Do so, then,” Durell said.

  Not once had Herr Hauptman-Graz looked up from his business papers. It was a bit too obvious. They were amateurs. But then, Durell supposed, you can’t always be sure of quality when you have to hire outside help.

  They were followed from the airport in Meshed. The sun was hot and glittering, and there was a thin
haze of pale golden dust in the air. The rest of the passengers scattered and vanished in the waiting room, seeking taxis or being met by friends for the trip into the center of town. Durell chose a cab and had the driver take them to the bus station on Tehran Avenue, where he and Anya then chose another taxi down Pahlevi Avenue, past the banks and the HOMA air office. The same black Mercedes that had picked up Herr and Frau Hauptman-Graz at the airport doggedly clung to their trail. It was so obvious that Durell wondered if there was a second-layer surveillance team, hiding beyond the Germans. But if there were, he couldn’t find it, nor could he spot a parallel team on the side streets.

  He ignored the Pars and Darbandi Hotels and the Kousravi Nou, and told the second driver to go out Jahanbani Road, where more modest quarters were available. After the first twenty minutes, the Mercedes seemed to have lost them, but he didn’t count on it. Anya sat stiffly, her back very straight, staring ahead as they rode.

  The hotel he chose was small and reasonably clean, on a side street off Kousravi Nou. Not more than eight blocks away was the sacred enclosure of the Imam Reza shrine, the Gauhar-Shad mosque, and the great bazaar catering to pilgrims and tourists alike, although the latter were hardly made welcome. There was a privacy to this Shi’ite fervor that made the exclusion of foreigners more than a bit obvious.

  They ate lunch at the Safa, down the street from the hotel in a narrow lane where traffic could be watched. He did not see the Mercedes again. They ordered tea from the huge samovar that bubbled on the zinc counter, and chelo kebabs, rice heaped high on a platter with a sauce of walnuts, the kebabs of chicken skewered and broiled over a charcoal brazier. The place was smoky and noisy with local inhabitants. Durell chose a table against the wall, where he could see the open doorways in the narrow lane and watch who entered and left. He did not see the Hauptman-Graz couple. Anya behaved nervously, her eyes rarely meeting his. She started to talk about Zhirnov, and wondered what might have happened to her boss, Colonel Skoll, but he cut her off, not knowing who might understand English at the crowded tables near them. She looked at him worriedly and picked at her food. Durell found himself ravenous and cleaned up his plate, ordered a bottle of Iranian wine, and ate the flat Moslem bread, and thrust a handful of nuts from the bowl on the table into his pocket.