Assignment Afghan Dragon

by Unknown Author

  This time he made the approach.

  “Zhirnov!”

  His voice echoed. There was no answer.

  “Zhirnov! I have Anya! She is helpless and hurt—”

  “No,” the girl murmured.

  He did not loosen his grip on her wrist. He called again, “She needs help, Zhirnov. Don’t you care about her?”

  This time he heard laughter, cruelly distorted by the walls of the ravine. He tried to estimate the general direction it came from, and judged it to be farther down the canyon, where the riverbed turned to the right, just beyond the ancient dam that once had blocked and controlled the flow of the stream. He turned his head briefly and looked at the girl.

  “Will you stay here? Wait for me?”

  She shook her long hair. “No. I come with you.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” she insisted.

  “He’s up there. We’re as trapped as he is.”

  “I know, but—will you kill him?”

  “Only if I have to.”

  “We can escape—move back. We could climb the walls farther back.” Her breath was uncertain. “Do not kill him, please.”

  “I want to question him.”

  “You can question me. Later. Please. I will be honest with you. I promise. I swear it.”

  “What do you swear on? Your socialist ideals?”

  “I have a God,” she said grimly. “My parents were exiled and died for Him. I swear on his Name.”

  “Do your bosses know about your beliefs?”

  “They know about my parents, of course. Perhaps it was necessary to do such things, in the early days. I have no hatred in my heart for those who persecuted us. Just the same, I am faithful and loyal to my country. Make no mistake about that.”

  “I won’t,” he promised grimly.

  A sudden barrage of shots came from the direction of the dam. The bullets flew overhead like aimless hornets. One of them hit a broken column and sent chips of stone whistling in the air. The girl shivered. He looked back up the ravine. There was a giant tumble of rockfall about a hundred yards behind them, well past the goat track by which they had descended.

  He pulled the girl backward with him, moving as silently as possible. No more shots came down the ravine. When they were beyond the village ruins, it was just a short sprint to the tumbled boulders in the neck of the gorge. He kept a grip on the girl’s hand when he ran for it. Two shots racketed up and down the canyon. The bullets went wide. In another few moments they were across the riverbed, clambering up the steep slope to the level where the van was parked. They were exposed up here against the starlight, but Zhirnov apparently did not spot them. Or perhaps he was content to let Durell go, thinking that with the girl planted at his side, he might gain his objectives more easily. Durell did not trust Anya in any way. Her behavior seemed sincere, but there was a competent toughness underlying her words and her actions.

  It took five minutes to work their way back to the ledge where the van was parked. In that time, there was no sound or movement from the ruins below. The girl slid quickly in beside the driver’s seat; he took the wheel himself.

  When the engine turned over, the mechanical roar seemed to fill sky and earth. He was sure that Zhirnov would begin to fire at them in his frustration.

  But nothing happened. The man had disappeared. Or given up. Or was content that Anya was with him.

  He began to feel his aches and bruises from the fall down the canyon side as he backed the van carefully up toward the road above. Before this business was over, he knew there would be another time and another place when he would meet Pigam Zhirnov again. He would settle the score for Fingal when that happened.

  6

  She said her name was Anya Lubidovna Talinova. She seated herself in the single chair in DureU’s tiny room in the provincial hotel and sat back, her arms stiffly bent, pushing her palms against the seat on either side of her hips. Her manner was defensive. Her eyes were big, watching him as if he were some strange beast about to devour her. He wondered what sort of tales she might have been told about Americans. She did not express any inner guilt for helping him to escape from her two fellow agents. Her dark eyes were fathomless as she watched Durell’s every move as he checked out the room.

  “We’ll have to leave,” he said. “Very soon. Zhirnov knows of this place, so it’s no longer safe for you.”

  “For me?” she asked.

  “He will consider you a traitor, perhaps a defector. You betrayed him back there by helping me to get away. What else could he think? Your career with the KGB is finished, Anya. By the way, what is your rank?” “Lieutenant-Colonel,” she said.

  He tried to picture her in a military uniform, complete with shoulder boards and medals. “So young?”

  “I’ve done good work for my country.” Her chin was proud. “I have earned my promotions.”

  “But you wifi be suspect from this moment on,” Durell pointed out. “Didn’t you consider that, when you chose to help me?”

  “Yes, I thought of it.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “It was Jones and Anderson—Zhirnov—who were suspect in my mind, for what they were doing, not I.”

  “What were they up to? What was your team supposed to do?”

  She was silent for a moment. Durell moved quietly around the room, checked his bag, then stepped out through the slatted doors to the wooden balcony that ran around three sides of the inner courtyard of the caravanserai. The night air smelled of the briny lake and the reed swamps all about. It felt heavy and warm and sticky in his lungs. The moon was down. When he looked at his watch, he saw it was only an hour before dawn. He could not see his Toyota Land Cruiser, which had been parked in an alcove to the right of the main courtyard gate. The Baluchi caravan men and their women who had camped inside the court all seemed to be asleep. Their charcoal-cooking fires were faint glowing embers, scattered here and there between the recumbent forms. One of the camels snored, loudly and persistently. The wind blew smoke upward from the charcoal fires, across the wooden-railed balcony. There were no lights in any of the other rooms. Nothing stirred. From far off, added to the camel’s snores, came the dim barking of a dog.

  He stood in the shadows of the long walkway over the courtyard, waited three minutes and then another three minutes, watching and listening. He did not feel alone. He looked up at the brilliant stars, felt the faint, marshy breeze off the lake, heard one of the Baluchi men cough and grunt in his sleep. He went back inside.

  Anya had not moved from her position in the crude wooden chair. He knew at once that she had not touched his bag or his papers or his weapons.

  “Pigam Zhirnov is out there,” she said softly.

  “Yes. Somewhere. What were you three supposed to be doing in Ur-Kandar?” he asked again.

  “I did not come with you for an interrogation,” she said stiffly. “It is I who should question you, Mr. Durell. You have no business here. Your country has nothing to do with this matter.”

  “When it comes to that,” he countered, “what business do you have here? It seems to me that we’re both unwelcome strangers in a strange land.” He turned down the hissing gasoline lantern until the room filled with webbed shadows again. He thought he heard someone stir faintly in the cubicle next door. “I think you had better come with me.”

  “You are not very courteous to someone who saved your life,” she said.

  “Come along. We’ll decide who thanks whom later on. I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “North. But that’s later on.”

  “North? Where?”

  He told her no more than necessary. “You’ll know later. Let’s go.”

  “But this place is where—”

  She paused. He waited. She said nothing more. He said, “I’m only going to find Mr. Chadraqi.”

  She got up and followed him from the room.

  He found
the Toyota where he had left it. The man he had hired to guard it against vandalism and theft was sound asleep in the shadows nearby, but nothing seemed to have been disturbed. Durell let the man sleep, and went next with Anya to her multicolored van. She climbed inside and gathered up clothing while he watched in silence. In two or three minutes she changed into dark slacks, boots and a thin sweater and pulled out a small suitcase of extra wear. He noted the radio and electronic equipment banked against one side of the van, when she pulled away one of the built-in bunks. The Russian team had been efficiently equipped. He watched the shadows, thinking of Zhirnov’s bitter, fanatic’s face. The man Kokin, who had called himself Jones, had been simply a hired killer; it was Zhirnov who headed the team, until Anya’s rebellion broke it up and left him alone. Zhirnov

  would not be alone for long, however, Durell reckoned; and it seemed to him that every shadow held a menace from the man.

  Anya jumped from the rear of the van. “Where do we go now?”

  “Come along. You’ll see.”

  “You treat me like a prisoner,” she protested.

  “That’s exactly what you are.”

  “I could call the police and tell them that you are forcing me—”

  “Go ahead. Right now. Tell them everything.”

  She grimaced. “You know I could not do that.”

  He walked toward the hotel office. “Did you ever know a man named Colonel Cesar Skoll, in the KGB?”

  “Skoll?” She looked at him peculiarly. “Yes. A Siberian. How do you know of him?”

  “We worked together, once or twice. Not willingly, but effectively.” Durell smiled wryly. “How is he?”

  “He is in prison,” she said flatly.

  “Ah. The freedom of the Soviet Union. What was Skoll charged with?”

  “I do not know.” The girl was agitated. “As a matter of fact, I am his replacement on this mission. But I do not know the charges against Colonel Skoll, or anything else about the affair.”

  Durell went into the proprietor’s office first. It was dark inside, although now there was a faint illumination in the sky to the east, far away over the lake and the Afghan border along the Helmand and Khash Rivers. The office was empty. The last time he had seen Mr. Chadraqi was when he had left the man outside the government post office, followed by the subsequent attack by Zhirnov and Kokin.

  “I have a torch,” the girl said.

  “Let me take it.”

  He thumbed the button and carefully swept the dim little office with the beam. Everything seemed normal. There was a curtained doorway in the rear, and he headed for it, hearing the camel cough and snore in the courtyard. The curtain parted with a jingling noise of small bells. It made little difference. He smelled sleeping bodies, heard a quick rustle of clothing, and thumbed the flash again.

  “It’s me, Mr. Chadraqi. Durell.”

  “Oh. Very good. Allah is merciful.”

  “Come out here, please.”

  A woman’s voice queried them sleepily. Chadraqi made soothing sounds and struggled into an old gray robe, put on slippers, and limped into the outer office. He first went to the door and sniffed at the warm dawn air, considered the caravan men in the courtyard, and then turned back to Durell and Anya Talinova.

  “You are well, sir? This is most fortunate. I saw those three young countrymen of yours coming after you—”

  “They were not my countrymen,” Durell said. “I may need more help from you, Chadraqi.”

  “No, sir, I have done all I could, I have taken great risks that could leave my poor family, my wife and my daughters impoverished and perhaps in prison, at great risk and cost—”

  “You will be paid for it,” Durell said.

  “Ah. Ah, yes. Allah is most generous to the poor, indeed.”

  “It’s not a case of Allah, this time,” Durell took money from his pocket, rial notes, and separated a thousand-rial note from his funds. Chadraqi’s dark, liquid eyes gleamed with sudden interest, and he bobbed his head.

  “Yes, sir. It is not often I have the blessing of opportunity here in this small village—”

  “Do you know my Toyota?” Durell asked.

  “Yes, of course. Mahmud guards it.”

  “Mahmud sleeps and dreams of paradise, perhaps. No matter. Can you drive such a car?”

  “Yes, sir.” Chadraqi was instantly proud. “Yes, I can.”

  “And you have a daughter, approximately this young woman’s age and size?”

  Chadraqi stared at Anya curiously. “Indeed, yes. By the blessed hand of Fatima—”

  “I would like you and your daughter to take the Toyota and drive it north, through Hormakabad toward Zabul. I will give you some of my clothes, and your daughter can wear an outfit of Miss Talinova’s. Got that?”

  Chadraqi nodded, his eyes intelligent. “We are to pretend that we are you, sir?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Through Hormakabad, toward Zabul. Yes. And we go all the way? It is a bad road, sir. Very bad country. Very unfriendly people, who do not respect the teachings of Allah. My daughter is the blessing of my heart, the rose of my eye, the breath in my lungs. I assume there is danger, sir?”

  “Yes, there may be danger.”

  “For myself, the thousand rials is plenty. But for my daughter, perhaps another thousand—”

  “Two hundred,” Durell said.

  “Sir, perhaps more. Eighteen hundred, altogether.” “Fifteen.”

  “It is agreed. And when do you wish us to go?”

  “At once. When you are dressed as I am, and your daughter, the rose of your eye, is dressed like Miss Talinova, you must depart as loudly and as obviously as possible.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you are stopped,” Durell suggested, “do not argue and do not struggle. Simply come back.”

  “And who will try to stop us, sir?”

  “I do not know.”

  “And you, sir? Where do you go?”

  Durell touched the man’s arms. “It is really not necessary for you to know, is it?”

  “They will ask,” Chadraqi said.

  “And you will not know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Durell led the girl quickly back to the little room. The Baluchi people were already astir in the courtyard in the dim light, although the sun had not yet come up. The air smelled more strongly of the briny lake. He took his bag, checked his gun, and asked the girl for the keys to the van.

  “Chadraqi will cheat you, of course,” Anya said. “He will drive out of the village, out of sight, and simply wait there for a while, and then come back.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “It will not fool Zhirnov.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “And why did you tell Chadraqi to drive north if you intend to go that way, yourself?”

  “Because Zhirnov might think that we, in turn, plan to go south. But we’re going north, too.”

  “In the van?”

  “Only part of the way. Then south, to Zahidan.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “The airfield?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl drove the van with an easy expertise, and her competence put Durell’s nerves a bit on edge. In the dawn light, the road to Zahidan was occupied only by a few goatherders, a single camel-train, and once they were overtaken by a local bus that passed them with a blare of the horn and flash of light. As soon as they were away from the lake region, with its swamps and reeds and salty humidity, the desert quickly took over again. In this area of the world, at this time of the year, the average mean temperature stood at 120° normally. Today, Durell thought, it would be hotter than that.

  Anya kept watch in her rear-vision mirror, but the rough, narrow dirt road behind them remained empty. There was no obvious pursuit. She looked different than she had yesterday, when she posed as a young American girl traveler. She drove as fast as she could, mindful of the oncoming heat of the day, and her long dark hair blew extravagantly in the wind. No
w and then Durell studied her from the comer of his eye, and he knew she was aware of his scrutiny. She had a fine profile, a strong chin, a delicate and aristocratic nose. Her brows were naturally arched, and he doubted if she knew the techniques of plucking and reshaping them. Her underlip was full, almost sensuous, and her long, lithe body was rounded and womanly where it ought to be. Now and then the van lurched when they hit a pothole, and he was thrown against her. He could feel the warmth of her thigh through the light slacks she wore. They had not briefed her back in Moscow that it would be more appropriate in this country of Moslem tradition for her to wear skirts.

  After a time he took Homer Fingal’s book of Tao poetry from the wide pocket of his bush jacket and studied it. It was a slim volume in Chinese Mandarin, bound in well-worn blue leather. Durell's knowledge of Mandarin was reasonably good enough for a sketchy translation as he opened it from the right side. The girl at the wheel gave him a sidelong glance.

  “Yes,” she said, “your dossier in our files tells us you are versed in a number of languages. I do not read Chinese, however. Is the book yours?”

  “It was Homer Fingal’s,” he said shortly.

  “But Kokin was not certain, when he found it—”

  “He doesn’t read Chinese, either, I gather. Pay attention to your driving, please.”

  She looked away, her mouth compressed with dissatisfaction. Homer Fingal, as an Orientalist, had been competent and scholarly. As an agent for K Section, he had fumbled and stumbled and eventually fallen into the pit of death. And yet, Durell thought, there might be something . . .

  Most of the little chapters, arranged in a format of poetry, consisted of negatives and contradictions, the teachings of Tao Te Ching in mystical and often baffling anomalies. Fingal had long ago underlined the most puzzling passages, judging by the pencil smears and well-thumbed pages of the booklet. Durell read: