Assignment Afghan Dragon

by Unknown Author

  “That may come in handy,” Durell said.

  He took Anya’s hand and they started down the narrow pass, moving quickly away from the caravan camp.

  19

  Southward were the salt lakes of the Gaud-i-Zirreh. To the north was the Khash desert. The road was mostly dirt, paved only in sections where dam construction on the Khash and Helmand Rivers was in progress. The heat was intolerable. The mountains were far behind them, and it was noon of the second day of their tortuous drive south after they left the wrecked Ferrari. Chakhansur shimmered like a mirage ahead, a spot of green oasis in the barren land. Howard and George slept in the back of the van. Lucy and Anya sat up front with Durell. He had allowed Howard to drive for a few hours during the night, then returned to the wheel at dawn. His weariness went bone-deep from the irregular jolting on the rippled dirt roads. Groups of nomads in their black woolen robes, herding camels and goats, passed now and then on the trail. A few construction trucks also occupied the track. They had stopped at midmoming at a small village near the Khash-Rud, where a hammam, a small Turkish bath in a government-sponsored inn, was available. There were no facilities for the girls. Later, Lucy prepared a meal for them on the van’s propane stove. From the post office next to the hammam, Durell had tried to call Sarah Fingal in Meshed. It was impossible to get a connection this time.

  In Chakhansur, a place that seemed as remote as the moon, he tried again. Some Americans worked here on another of the dams, but the town was dusty and secretive behind its blank house walls and drooping date palms. The jail stood at one end of a small square, flanked by two mosques with minarets that scratched at the brazen sky. Although the Helmand Lakes were just twenty miles off, there was no relief from the heat. In ancient times, this area had been fertile and prosperous, until the Mongols laid it waste and destroyed the qanats that brought water underground from the rivers. Most of the laborers were Hazaras here, a cheerful, hard-working tribe universally scorned and avoided by the rest of the population, for reasons lost in the darkness of the past.

  It took only twenty minutes to get through to Sarah Fingal this time, while Howard and George and Lucy wandered about the dusty square and considered the tiled mosques on either side of the government building. The clerk inside was efficient. When Durell heard Sarah’s voice above a thin crackling in the phone, he blew out a breath of relief.

  “Sarah?”

  “Oh, good, Sam. Are you all right?”

  “Reasonably. Did you get Washington?”

  “I spoke to McFee himself.” Sarah’s voice was crisp and alert, unlike the dullness that had clouded her mind after learning of Homer’s death. “McFee gave me quite a handful for you, and a lot of instructions for me. You haven’t gotten the dragon back, have you?”

  “No.”

  “You won’t find Professor Berghetti in jail there, either. I’ve been on the phone, myself, to Hal Oberman in Kabul, early this morning. A man named Andrews, an American, got Berghetti out on forged papers from Kabul at four o’clock this morning.”

  “Andrews has to be Zhirnov,” Durell said.

  “And they’ve both flown the coop. Literally.”

  Durell said, “The nearest airfield is at Qali-i-Kang. Not far from here.”

  “But service is irregular,” Sarah said. “Zhirnov and Berghetti got a private plane there.”

  “Heading where?”

  “Wait,” Sarah said. “McFee said you’d need air transport, too. Jules Eaton was at Karachi. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I know Jules,” Durell said.

  “Is he a good pilot?”

  “One of the best.”

  “He’s bringing a plane for you to Qali-i-Kang. In fact, he should be at the field now, waiting.”

  “The destination?”

  “Well, you asked for some background on the Qam brothers—Dochi and Nuri, your friend who started all this.”

  “Nuri is not my friend. Not since yesterday.”

  “Oh? You’ve got something?”

  “I think so,” Durell said. “What about the Qams?” “Art collectors. Millionaires plus. Nuri has a record of three visits to Eastern Europe: Budapest, Warsaw and Sofia. Also two trips to Moscow. No details on any of the trips. But guess why he’s a persona non grata in Kabul, and why he’s over the border in Meshed these days?”

  “He’s suspect. Playing hanky-panky with Big Brother to the north. Maybe both Big Brothers.”

  “How did you get that?” Sarah asked.

  “Is Nuri still in that villa in Meshed?”

  “I had people check on that, too, Sam. He’s gone. Destination is an eighty percent probability, McFee says. Dochi and Nuri share a pretty big estate, pretty posh, on the island of R’as Khasab in the Gulf of Oman. Off the tip of the Iranian coast. Maybe four hundred miles due south of Qali-i-Kang.”

  “Thank you, Sarah.”

  “Jules Eaton knows it. You’ll have to fly the border illegally, I reckon, but Jules can do it. He knows the territory like a book, from his old geology exploration days. Jules has worked for McFee before. You can trust him, Sam.”

  “I do.”

  “Another thing, Sam. General Wellington is out as chief of staff at Sugar Cube, as of last night. McFee got to the Oval Office. Wellington is now posted to Fort Riley, Kansas.”

  “Two down,” Durell said, thinking of Peking.

  “What?”

  “What’s the rest of it?”

  “You sound funny, Sam. Strange, I mean.”

  “I feel strange.”

  Sarah, enjoying herself now, said, “The last thing, maybe the most important. Our listening post in the Indian Ocean—Station Forty-Four, you know it?—intercepted urgent messages to the USSR helicopter cruiser Georgi Daghestan to proceed at full speed to the Gulf of Oman from the ship’s post off Bombay. Guess where, Sam?”

  “R’as Khasab. Within helicopter range, anyway. To pick up Zhirnov and the dragon.”

  “You get a gold star, Sam. But you’ll have to hurry.” Sarah’s voice faded on the crackling telephone line, then grew strong again. “You there, Sam?”

  “Sarah, you ought to be in the business,” he said.

  “No, thanks.”

  At the airfield at Qali-i-Kang, he paid off Howard and George and Lucy. Lucy looked tearful again, but she accepted his money gratefully.

  “You won’t find work here with Berghetti any more,” Durell told them. “He’s finished, headed for Moscow, maybe, or Timbuktu. There’s enough cash here to get you all home.”

  “That’s for me,” Lucy said.

  “Me, too,” said George.

  Howard hesitated. He regarded Durell strangely. “You are a spook, aren’t you?”

  “Whatever you care to think.”

  “You’ve got problems, right?”

  “Lots of them,” Durell said.

  “Can I help?”

  “I’m surprised,” Durell said. It was possible that another gun might be needed. Durell considered the tall, long-haired Vietnam veteran and suddenly nodded. “Yes, come along.”

  Howard grinned. “Great.”

  “Do you have a last name?” Durell asked.

  “Swiftman. They used to call me Tom Swift. Used to be the name of a series of boys’ books, long ago. I’ve been kidded enough about it, you know?”

  Durell nodded and looked across the hot, shimmering airfield. A nondescript Cessna was parked in the slanting shade of one of the hangars. Jules Eaton stood there, waiting.

  20

  The beer was lukewarm. The room was scorching. At ten o’clock in the evening, the thermometer in the little port town of Bandar-e-Sirri stood at 118°. The humid, fitful wind off the gulf of Oman felt like molten lead in the lungs.

  The waterfront hotel room had two windows facing the quai where several Arab dhows were tied up. They were ancient craft, but their lines were swift and graceful, although they were rapidly being replaced by motor fishing boats in the Persian Gulf. The time of romance and exotic shipping pres
umably had come to an end, replaced by the stink of diesels and the rust of steel plates.

  The dhow-master stared at the four of them in the little room. He was a big man, with a dirty white turban and a striped silk shirt whose once gaudy colors had turned gray with sweat. He wore new Keds sneakers. In the waterfront cafe outside were Indians and Arabs, blacks from Africa, a few European and American engineers involved in the new refinery whose stacks made bloody flames against the night sky. The dhow-master settled his gaze on Durell.

  “All of you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Not the woman.”

  '

  “Yes.”

  “I do not take women aboard my vessel.”

  Durell looked at Anya. “Do you want to go?”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  He looked at the dhow-master. “She wants to go.” He counted out more money. “Is that enough to overcome your superstitions?”

  “I do not like it.”

  “Nobody asked you to like it. Just take us out to R’as Khasab. It’s not far. No more than an hour. Then you can come back here so much richer.”

  “There are patrol boats,” the man said.

  “You can avoid them.”

  “It is a private island.”

  “Not any more. Take it or leave it.”

  The dhow-master scooped up the money and folded it, head down, eyes on it, his rough hands loving the touch of currency. “I will need more for the crew.”

  “No crew. Just you and your pilot.”

  “It is not enough to handle the vessel—

  Durell said, “To hell with you, then.”

  The man licked his lips. “Well, I will try.”

  They all got up and followed him out to the quai.

  Jules Eaton said, “It’s a good thing they laid a lot of bread on me in Karachi. Taxpayers’ money. You’re free enough with it, Cajun.”

  Durell said, “I have influence with McFee."

  “Who is the kid?”

  “They call him Tom Swift."

  “Who is he? A freak?”

  “He looks good enough for an extra hand.”

  “He shouldn’t be in this,” Jules said. “He’s not in the business. Does he know he might be killed?”

  Howard said, “I’m here of my own free will.”

  “All right, kid. Get your head blown off. Just stay out of my way.”

  Jules was squat and square, a cube of a man who looked as if he were built entirely out of slabs and planes. His thick black hair and heavy brows made him look more Greek than American. He ran errands for K Section as a sideline to his business in Karachi, whatever that was these days. Jules had taken them across the border, flying low over the lakes and then cutting through the passes of the Mokran, the mountain range south of the salt desert of the Dasht-i-Lut. If any Baluchi nomads in the Mokran noted the plane, no one had reported it. Jules knew how to swing west and south of the radar towers at Zahidan, and then he headed the old Cessna on a course across the Baluchi ostan toward the Gulf of Oman coast. They landed on a makeshift strip usually reserved for the refinery people on the outskirts of Bandar-i-Sirri. The landing was made by moonlight. An hour later, the dawn came up in a red haze of furnace heat and the naked hills that separated the coastal plain from the inner desert began to cook in the shimmering haze. The local people shuffled about their daily work, selling pottery and goats, basket-work and donkeys. The women wore bright robes and embroidered baggy pants. The men spent their time sleeping.

  They arrived, they found the room, and then nothing happened. The timing was bad, but it couldn’t be helped. They had had to fly across the border by night, and it would be foolish to sail for R’as Khasab in broad daylight. They made arrangements for the dhow and waited for darkness to fall. The end of the day did not mean the end of the heat.

  While Jules and Howard were on the waterfront, Durell found himself alone in the room with Anya.

  She had been silent ever since Jules picked them up at Qala-i-Kang. Now she sat on the edge of the bed, her back bowed, her hands covering her face. Now and then a shudder went through her, and Durell turned from examining the weapons bag Jules Eaton had brought with them in the plane.

  “What is it, Annie?”

  “Nothing. I am tired, I suppose. It is so warm. I think how futile this all is. We risk our lives and leave death in our paths, and all the time in your country and mine, the whole plot is countered by others, and the dragon becomes unimportant. Except to Moscow, which does not seem to know yet what is happening. Why do you and I go on now?”

  “It’s a personal matter,” Durell said.

  “I do not understand.”

  “A harmless little man named Homer Fingal was betrayed and cruelly murdered. It’s something I have to finish up before I go home.”

  “Home?” Anya picked listlessly at the word. “I will have no home when this is over. I think they will have shot Colonel Skoll by now, and there will be no one to speak for me. I shall be Usted as a traitor—at best, as unreliable.”

  Deep violet smudged her eyes, and her face was pale and shining in the dingy little room. All at once she began to shudder again, shaking her whole body; she hugged herself and her teeth chattered. Durell touched her forehead. It was burning.

  “You have a fever,” he said gently. “It would be best if you got into bed for a time.”

  He helped her to undress, surprised again by the ripe contours of her body. The shivering made her cling helplessly to Durell.

  “I am still cold.”

  He found a cloth and used the tap in the room to wet it with tepid water and applied the cloth to her face and body, bathing her gently. Her dark hair fell in tangled skeins over her face. He did not think she was aware of her nakedness.

  “I’m so c-cold.”

  “Hush, Anya.”

  “Am I sick? Hold me, Sam.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tighter, Sam.”

  “Yes.”

  After a time she slept. Durell slid out of the bed and sat on the single chair at the window, watching the waterfront. Nothing happened out there. He went back to checking the guns in the waterproof bags Jules Eaton had brought. Two hours later, when Jules and Howard returned, Anya was up, her fever gone. She said nothing as she put on her clothes again. Perhaps, Durell thought, she did not remember anything.

  The dhow lifted and fell on the oily waters of the Gulf of Oman. From the quiet murmuring of the diesel, Durell guessed that the below-decks power was unusual, perhaps used for smuggling runs across to the Trucial States of Arabia. The lights of Bandar-i-Sirri were only a dim glow on the horizon, marked by the flares of burning gas towers at the new refineries. They had passed three islands, and now the burly dhow-master turned the wheel a few points to port. It seemed just as hot here on the water as on land. There was no moon, but the stars had a tropical glitter that showed Durell the dark loom of a mile-long island over the bow. The pilot called out something from the bow and the dhow-master turned the wheel another few notches to the left.

  “R’as Khasab,” he murmured. “You say you do not want to run in to the cove? At the dock?”

  “No,” Durell said.

  “There is a long sandpit, a shallow, to the south. One could wade ashore from there.” The man made a contemptuous spitting sound as Howard came aft. “Unless the boy with the girl’s hair is afraid of the sharks.”

  Howard’s face tightened. Jules Eaton looked up from where he had been securing the waterproof bags. Anya checked Howard with a quick hand on his arm.

  The dhow-master grinned. “Yes, there are many sharks in these waters. Everyone knows that. Are you afraid of them, dear girl?”

  From up forward came the pilot’s grunt of laughter. The pilot was as big as the dhow’s captain. In another century, these two would have qualified as murderous pirates, and their instincts were still alive today. There came a snicking sound as the pilot came aft with a knife in his hand.

  “Perhaps we shou
ld cut open his pants and see what he truly has there, eh? A young man with such long hair—”

  “Leave him alone,” Jules said quietly.

  Howard said, “I can take care of myself.”

  The pilot slid in front of Howard, feinting with the knife. Howard did not withdraw. There came a flash of movement, the sudden thrust of a kick, and Howard was poised horizontally in the air as his foot caught the knife and sent it spinning from the pilot’s grip, over the rail and into the water with a splash. The pilot shouted with surprise and rushed at the young man, and Howard spun quickly and used his feet again, thudding against the Arab’s chest. The dhow captain started to leave the wheel, and Durell checked him. The pilot hit the deck with a thump, scrambled up and rushed at Howard with a bellow of rage. Howard hit him a third time and the man’s eyes crossed and he staggered back, hit the rail, and followed his knife into the water with a mighty splash.

  Howard drew a deep breath. “Let him see if he is afraid of sharks.”

  The dhow-master twisted away to throw a line to his pilot. “Ali?”

  Jules moved casually beside Howard. “Help him out of the water, kid. We don’t want him to drown—yet.”

  Five minutes later, the subdued pilot, dripping and scowling imprecations, was back at his post.

  The water was like soup, waist-deep, and Howard and Jules carried the weapons bags on their shoulders as they waded toward the dark, flat shore at the southern tip of R’as Khasab. A row of palms fringed against the starlit sky guided them to the beach. The dhow’s motor suddenly throbbed as the vessel turned away. Durell watched it head for the mainland, then helped Jules distribute the weapons. There were two automatic rifles, knocked down and needing assemblage, which they did quickly in the darkness; and two handguns; two thermite bombs; and four grenades. Durell took one of the rifles, Jules Eaton the other.

  Howard said, “Give me a couple of the grenades and a pistol. I used ’em in Nam for a full year.”

  “Fine, kid,” said Jules.