Assignment - Karachi

by Edward S. Aarons

  “All right,” Durell said. “One thousand and expenses—a limit of fifteen hundred.”

  Swerji Hamad opened his muddy brown eyes and smiled. “You have cash, of course?”

  “American dollars.”

  “See me tomorrow, then. Before your party leaves for the hills.” He paused. “Some laugh about the expedition to S-5 and say it is foolish to believe in such a thing as a jeweled crown once belonging to Alexander the Great. Others say it is possible. You are not a man who chases fables, however. You have other goals, eh?”

  “Such as?”

  Swerji Hamad smiled again. “Otherwise, why do you seek an old man, a geologist, named Ernst Bergmann?”

  Durell matched the fat man’s smile. Tea was brought in, and cakes. They discussed Swerji’s family and business problems. Eventually, Durell returned to the subject of the Red Oboe.

  “You have heard of the shadow system, Swerji Hamad? Where a free-lance operative such as Red Oboe has a silent partner, so to speak?”

  Swerji looked blank. “I am sorry. I am ignorant of this.”

  “The free lance must have his contacts to pass on his information, just as the thief needs a fence. Usually, in the shadow system, the professional is unknown to the amateur except as a number, a contact covered in different forms. There must be such a man for Red Oboe, here in Pindi. But you have heard nothing?”

  “There are many professional spies in ’Pindi, M’sieu Durell.” Swerji sighed. “I can see you look beyond Red Oboe already. But I cannot help you in this matter.” Durell went out into the pavilion and ate another sweet

  roll and had another cup of tea and wondered a little more about Swerji’s references to the Red Oboe. All the file data concerning the name referred to Europe. There was nothing to indicate operations in this part of the world. But that didn’t necessarily mean the man and his shadow couldn’t be here.

  He watched the street and suddenly saw Rudi von Buhlen walking alone through the noisy, colorful crowd.

  By the time he paid for his tea and rolls, the Austrian had turned the far corner and vanished. Durell pushed quickly after him, saw his Morris parked nearby, and turned toward it.

  Every tire had been carefully slashed and flattened.

  He walked away to the corner, searching for the blond man’s head above the crowd of bazaar merchants, beggars, Sikhs, Punjabis and Arabs.

  But Rudi had disappeared.

  chapter eight

  RUDI turned left down the alley, counted off four doors in the leaning stone buildings, squeezed past a camel driver, a candy peddler, a beggar sprawled naked in the gutter, and avoided a huge Pathan to come to the fifth door. He opened it, went down an evil-smelling, dark corridor, opened a back door, and turned left again into a narrow lane. Naked children squirmed and screamed and played in the dust. He came out into another street too narrow for vehicular traffic, but crowded with a camel caravan squeezing between the back fences of bazaar shops. He avoided the long, wicked teeth of the beasts, answered a greeting from one of the scrawny drivers, and turned at last into another doorway that led into a small, walled yard. In the center of the yard was a small, eroded Buddha statue holding a lotus blossom in his stone lap.

  So far the instructions were precise and accurate. He had found them in a small, folded wedge of paper in his coat pocket, only an hour ago, and he could not begin to guess who had put the paper there; Sarah’s bungalow had been so crowded with visitors and dignitaries during the late afternoon reception, it was impossible to pick anyone out.

  A young Chinese boy was squatting beside the Buddha image paring his fingernails. He wore a baseball cap and blue denims and sneakers. He looked up at Rudi and said, “Hi, daddio,” in English.

  “Are you Lim?” Rudi asked coldly.

  “Welcome to the home pad. Glad you made it.”

  “Take me to your father, please.”

  “Right.”

  The boy was insolent, Rudi thought, with his patter of beat English, his black eyes amused. Rudi followed him through small and gloomy back rooms, redolent with the smells of hides and baled spices and bins of tea. He knew that the front of the building was a Chinese restaurant of sorts, flophouses of the Pakistani variety. You could buy anything from Kou Li, Lim’s father, from betel nuts to European call girls, from hashish to smiling boys with make-up to enlarge and brighten their eyes.

  Kou Li wore a Western seersucker suit and a tiny white beard; he looked gentle, smiling, obsequious. He stood up quickly from behind a long table and bowed.

  “Ah. We have waited long for this honor. You will come with us, please?”

  “Is he still alive?” Rudi asked shortly.

  “Yes. An old devil, very stubborn. We could have made him talk, but his heart is very bad now. I had expenses for a doctor to give him adrenalin, twice.”

  “You will be paid.”

  “Further questions had to be postponed. We did not want him to die before you could see him. But force is out of the question. He is very frail now.”

  “I haven’t much time,” Rudi said bluntly. “But I can make him talk, if anyone can.”

  “Lim?” The old Chinese signaled to the boy in the baseball cap. “You know the way.”

  Lim took a flashlight from a hook on the wall and went ahead, down a flight of cellar stairs and along a weaving path between unidentifiable boxes and bales of merchandise. A door in the cellar led to a brick-walled tunnel that turned sharply right, and opened into a narrow room furnished with only a plank table and long benches. Beyond was another room, then more steps into another brick tunnel. Rudi began to feel apprehensive, not knowing where he might be taken. Lim’s flashlight bobbed ahead, steadied on a thick wooden door that was bolted and locked. Lim unlocked it and stepped inside.

  “You want the light, daddio?”

  “If you please.”

  Lim grinned. “Glad to meet you. Pops talked a lot about you. It’s a big deal, eh?”

  “You talk too much,” Rudi said.

  “I’m real Americanized. Spent five years in San Francisco with a cousin. Old Gramps sent me there to cover for some' body he wanted to get out of the States. I liked it there.”

  Rudi stepped into the cell. He could see nothing in the darkness, except for what the flashlight showed him. Then were stone walls, filth on the floor, an odor of sickness and sweat and torture. Somebody breathed in quick, short gasps from from failing lungs. He turned the light into a corner and saw the living skeleton there feebly flail with a pipe-stem arm against the torment of the bright flash. He flicked the lamp aside.

  “Uncle Ernst?” he said softly.

  “What?” the prisoner gasped. “What?”

  Rudi spoke in the soft German of the Tyrol. “It is I, Uncle Ernst. Rudi von Buhlen.”

  “Impossible—”

  “Yes, it is I. It was difficult to find you—when Alessa cabled about your disappearance. But I came as soon as I could.”

  In the reflected light, the man in the cell struggled to press himself back into the filthy comer. The air stank. Rudi pinched his nostrils and did not move, not wanting to walk in the squelching filth any more than necessary.

  Ernst Bergmann looked like a survivor of Auschwitz, he thought coldly. His white suit had long been blackened and tattered and fouled with food and blood and excrement. Rudi remembered the geologist as a stout, cheerful man in his fifties, with thick gray hair. What hair was left on the round head was white, in thin falling strands. The face was gaunt and haggard, almost beyond recognition.

  Bergmann extended a shaking, claw-like hand. “You have come to take me out of here, Rudi? It is truly you? Your voice—”

  “Yes.”

  “You do not lie. It is not a trick?”

  “No trick, Uncle Ernst.”

  “Why did Kou Li let you in? Is he a friend of yours?” The old man’s mind was still sharp enough, Rudi thought dourly. “Do you work for Kou Li, Rudi?”

  “No. It is just that I have—certain influence.
”

  The old man’s voice strengthened. “Yes. Influence. Like your Uncle Franz. Is Uncle Franz still your hero, boy? You still admire what he did, how he lived, and how he died?” “I did not come here to discuss Uncle Franz.”

  “He was an idealistic fool, boy. A traitor.”

  “To fight Hitler?”

  “To help the Communists. He went to the other extreme.” Bergmann made a gasping sound that might have been laughter. “And you, Rudi? Help me up. Take me out of here.”

  “I will, Uncle Ernst. You will see, I have—reformed.”

  “Then help me. Bitte, Rudi. Please.”

  Rudi crouched beside the old man in the corner, conquering his revulsion for the filth. “Uncle Ernst, you know how I have always admired you and Franz. I would do anything to help you. I think I can. I have convinced Kou Li to release you, since he has given up hope of making you tell him what you found on S-5.”

  Bergmann sighed, grunted.

  “He knows you went to the Americans with the ore samples,” Rudi went on. “Why has he held you prisoner like this, for a month?”

  “He wants the chart,” Bergmann whispered.

  “Didn’t you leave it with the Americans?”

  “No.”

  “Yet you didn’t have it with you when Kou Li took you.” “No.”

  “What did you do with it, Uncle Ernst?”

  The old man’s eyes were the only part of his parchment face that seemed alive in the reflection of Rudi’s light. “I have been asked that question several thousand times, Rudi.” “Could you answer it, if you would?”

  “Yes.”

  “You did something very clever, then, eh?”

  Bergmann sighed. “Not very clever. Quite simple. And look what my cleverness bought me. I am dying.”

  “You will not die. I will take you to a doctor, in the — American hospital.”

  “If I tell you about my chart?”

  “You must trust me, Uncle Ernst. I am not what you think. I admit I was wild when I was younger; but I have settled down now. Here,” Rudi said. He reached in his wallet and took out a clipping from the society page of the New York Times. He had kept the clipping with him carefully, for several months. “Can you read this. Uncle Ernst? It tells of my engagement to marry Miss Sarah Standish.”

  “Yes. I heard of it.”

  “Of Standish Nickel, Incorporated.”

  “Yes.”

  “She is here in Rawalpindi now. We are all going back to S-5. The American and Pakistan governments are giving us escorts to relocate what you discovered. If you help us, the job can be done quicker and easier.”

  “And the Chinese?”

  “If you help us,” Rudi insisted, “we cannot fail to get there first. Otherwise, your silence will defeat precisely what you hope to achieve by all the torture you have stood here.” Bergmann’s eyes closed, and Rudi was not sure if the old man was simply thinking, or had fainted, or had fallen asleep. He reached for the thin, skeletal wrist. The pulse was vague, thready. The odor in the cell seemed sharper. No sound came from the brick tunnel outside.

  “You will marry Sarah Standish” Bergmann asked suddenly.

  “It is all arranged, Uncle Ernst.”

  “A very wealthy young woman, eh?”

  Rudi made a jest of it. “A very capitalistic young woman, Uncle Ernst. But I happen to be in love with her.”

  Bergmann sighed.

  “Where is the chart, Uncle Ernst?” Rudi asked. “What did you do with it?”

  Bergmann opened his eyes. “You have made an arrangement with Kou Li? He will let you take me out of here?” “Yes. I promise.”

  “Then I will tell you—when I am in the hospital.”

  Rudi stifled the spurt of anger in him. “You must tell me now. When I have the map, I will make a copy for Kou Li. But not an exact one.” He whispered anxiously, hurriedly. “When Kou Li has a chart—one I shall misinterpret for him—then he will release you.”

  “I have been in this room for a long time,” Bergmann said.

  “We will fly you home to Vienna, Uncle Ernst, as soon as you are strong again. The Americans will pay for everything.”

  “Vienna, you say?”

  “I swear it to you, Uncle Ernst.”

  Bergmann whispered, “Sometimes the words were a scream in my throat. Sometimes I bit my tongue and filled my mouth with blood and choked, so I could not speak even when I wanted to. And now—Rudi, will you betray me?” “Would I betray my adopted uncle?” Rudi asked gently.

  “I cannot keep it back any longer. Have I been here a month, really? I lost track of time. One can think of nothing but the answer to their questions. You fear you will scream it in your sleep. You think of it with every breath you take. It is like a sickness in me. I cannot hold it back any longer.” “Don’t try, Uncle Ernst. Tell me.”

  The old man wept.

  Rudi waited.

  Bergmann said quietly, “I left the ore samples at the American Information Office. From there I walked down Aswali Street, to the corner. There is a shop just beyond, to the right, and the proprietor is named Gustl Broeder. He is a Viennese, you know? He sells musical instruments, Rudi.” “Musical—” Rudi paused. “Herr Broeder has the chart?” “He holds it until I call for it. He was instructed to tell no one about it. A few moments after I left his shop, Kou Li’s men took me and brought me here.”

  Rudi stood up. “Thank you, Uncle Ernst.”

  He became aware again of the stink and the slimy filth on the floor. He took the flashlight and walked to the big wooden door and looked into the tunnel. The Chinese boy was not in sight. Turning, Rudi went back into the cell and shone the light on Bergmann. The direct glare made the old man throw up his bony arm again to shield his blinded eyes. The mouth was open, like a black hole in his skeletal face, and there were ugly gaps in his teeth. Rudi took a gun from his pocket and pointed it at the prisoner. The old man could not see what he was doing. His smile for Rudi was an entreaty to hurry back and release him.

  Rudi fired once, and the sound was a vast thunderclap in the underground cell. The old man jerked back against the corner and then tried to crawl out of the light. Rudi walked over to him and turned him over and put the muzzle of the gun to the back of the bald skull and pulled the trigger again for the coup de grace.

  Then he walked out.

  Kou Li waited for him in the office. The boy had heard the shots and came back to lead Rudi through the maze of tunnels and rooms to Kou Li’s establishment. Rudi sat down, unbidden, in a chair and looked at the old Chinese.

  “The price for the chart,” he said bluntly, “will be the equivalent of one hundred thousand pounds sterling in used Swiss franc notes to be deposited in account number 552 in the Suisse Internationale Banque de Geneve. I will expect cable confirmation by tomorrow. You know how these arrangements are usually made.

  Kou Li nodded, his black eyes touching his grandson. “So Herr Bergmann talked to you? You know where the chart is?” “I can get it.”

  “Perhaps we can save you the errand.”

  “I am not an exhausted old man,” Rudi said. “I can hold out against your questioning longer than Bergmann. By the time you made me talk, the Americans will be on S-5 and the

  Pakistan Frontier Rifles will have a division of troops on the spot.”

  Kou Li nodded again. “So it will be as you say.”

  “It must be as I say,” Rudi insisted.

  “It is a great amount of money you ask, but there is no time for bargaining. It is an agreement, then.”

  Rudi paused. “There is one other thing you must do for me.”

  “Yes?”

  “There is an American agent with the expedition—a man named Sam Durell. A dangerous and competent man. It will go much safer if he is out of the way.”

  Kou Li nodded, once again. “It shall be arranged.”

  “It must be done tonight.”

  “Mr. Durell will not see the sun rise again,” Kou Li promised. />
  chapter nine

  A COOL night wind blew down from the northwest hills and washed away the stifling heat of day. It rattled the fronds of palm trees, rustled in the bougainvillaea vines, made a shutter bang erratically in the bungalow occupied by Sarah Standish and the S-5 expedition.

  Durell’s room on the second floor had wide windows and a French doorway open to the veranda that circled three sides of the house. He had checked the door, the veranda with its Bombay chairs, the moonlit lawn below. He had locked the common corridor door, inspected the huge wardrobe closet, locked the connecting door from the bathroom he shared with Colonel K’Ayub.

  He had arranged to send out a coded message for K Section’s information. At first he considered transmitting it by telegraph to Donegan in Karachi, then decided not to trust Donegan and used the cable office near the Liaqat Gardens to relay the coded inquiry to Henry Kallinger in Istanbul. Kallinger would get what he wanted by further relay to Washington, if he didn’t have it immediately on hand, although Durell doubted that the information would catch up with him in time to be useful. What he asked for was any information available on Red Oboe.

  Sarah, Rudi, Alessa and Hans were playing bridge in the big, open living room below, when Durell returned from the cable office. He went quietly up to his room, made his routine check, and decided that what he needed was sleep. He did not think there would be many opportunities for rest in the days to come.

  He slept uneasily, dreaming. The voices of the others downstairs at the card table touched him and set off new dreams of distant places and past times. He was in the bayou again, at Peche Rouge, a boy slipping through the mottled shadows on the old Indian chenieres, those dike-like paths that twisted across the black waterways where cypress knees lifted in abstract forms and the Spanish moss dripped down and brushed the surface of inky pools in supplication. He was running, but he did not know from what. He was afraid. Moonlight shone in patterns of ebony and silver on the gum trees, and the croak of frogs and the splash of fish and the startled cry of a bird accompanied him. He fell from the cheniere and slipped into deep mud that sucked at his feet, his ankles, his knees, dragging him helplessly into black mire. Someone called his name from above. Sam? Sam! It was a girl with Alessa’s face, and her enormous eyes were terrified and he tried to yell to her to run to Bayou Peche Rouge and escape the swamp. He was down to his hips and then his chest in the sucking mud, and something grunted and splashed in the water nearby and terror crawled like cold lice over his face. He tried to hold his chin up, but the mud reached a clammy hand over his lips and pinched his nostrils, and all at once there was an explosive convulsion in his chest as the air was cut off. He couldn’t breathe. He thrashed out—