Assignment- 13th Princess

by Will B Aarons

  “Come to the point,” Durell said.

  “The point is, that could all be avoided—perhaps—if the Dhubaran government had an opportunity to question those parties it suspects.”

  “You mean us. You’re asking us to give ourselves up. For something we didn’t do.” Durell’s voice was harsh.

  “If you’re not guilty, what have you to fear? It would lift suspicion, and assuage Sheik Zeid’s honor, at least vis-a-vis the United States.” Slack skin tightened around the old man’s eyes. “The situation is explosive, Mr. Durell. Which do you think more sensible: surrender yourself or perhaps start events toward disaster?”

  “Neither,” Durell said flatly.

  Swayne’s voice turned tough. “I shall have to query Washington, before I allow you to leave.”

  “I intend to find the princess, sir.” Durell kept his face hard. “That’s the only solution.”

  The ambassador’s voice became more stubborn. “I’m sorry. I must detain you.”

  “Don’t try it, sir. It would be messy.” He rose and moved to the door, and Dara came up beside him and looked up at him and then back at the ambassador.

  Her voice was bitter, as she told Swayne: “This is all so damnably laughable—but I suppose you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’m afraid I would not see the humor, Mrs. Durell.” He slid his gaze to Durell. “I could call the guard.”

  Durell twisted the doorknob, looked into the empty hallway, then back. “I said I would find the princess. I’ll get to the bottom of this. You have my word.”

  As he and Dara stepped out, Swayne said: “If you fail, the damage may be incalculable.” And then, “Good luck.”

  “How will you find her, Sam? How?”

  “I have a hunch she’s flown to Istanbul,” Durell told Dara.

  “To be with her mother?”

  “To hide until Dhubar cools off. She showed real affection for Nadine in the films we viewed in London. There’s no one else for her to turn to.”

  The elevator did a slow bounce and opened its doors, and they turned into a long corridor. Durell showed his papers to a marine guard, and they went out of the building through a side exit. The crush of dead, stale heat rolled over them as they approached the street through a small garden of ornamental shrubs and small trees.

  “Israel’s stake in this is as big as your country’s,” Dara said. “I’m going to Turkey with you.”

  “I expected you would,” Durell said.

  “You won’t try to stop me?”

  “You’ve been wiped out here. I can hardly leave you behind,” Durell said as he paused at an iron gate. He cast his eyes back and forth, up and down the dark and deserted street. The wind made boiling sounds in the short palms and acacias that grew in the little garden. “Let’s get the truck,” he said as he pushed the gate open.

  “Do you think we can drive across the border?” Dara asked.

  “We wouldn’t have a chance.” Durell kept walking. He could smell the odors of goat dung and urine mixed with the fragrances of jasmine and spices.

  Dara spoke again through the gloom. “The airport will be under surveillance.”

  “We’ll drive to the old harbor. We’ll take the dhow,” Durell said. “Once in the Persian Gulf, Task Force Talon will pick us up. If we miss it, we can still land in Iran. There won’t be any problems there.”

  A twisting sense of urgency wound Durell’s nerves taut. Every hour counted, but patience and slow caution would be necessary to get him out of Dhubar. The whole security establishment would be alerted, focused on one thing now:

  Get Durell; get the Israeli spy he calls his wife.

  They turned left, went a block, crossed an alley, and the truck came into view, cold starlight glinting on its cab. Suddenly Durell was staggered by an explosive, blinding glare, threw the shield of a hand before his eyes—saw that someone had turned on the truck’s high beams. . . .

  Chapter 11

  “Oh, no!” Dara breathed, the two syllables running together in a pinched sound of dismay.

  From the corner of his eye Durell saw her hand lift abruptly toward the hidden derringer. He slapped it down, hoping he did so before the move could be analyzed. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Save it.”

  There was no point in running, except to get shot down, Durell decided. Blank-walled mud buildings crowded in on the street here, their gritty facades shining and glittering in the fierce glare, and Durell sensed guns aimed at him. He might as well have been in an arena at high noon.

  Pat McNamara’s voice was hoarse with triumph, as he called above the wind. “You’re under arrest, Durell. The lady, too. Don’t move; stay cool; make it easy on yourself.”

  Durell raised his eyes above the stabbing dazzle of the headlamps and saw that the roofs on both sides of the street were lined with armed men.

  “You’re making a mistake, Pat,” Durell called out. “They won’t like this in Washington.”

  A crude laugh came from the direction of the truck, behind the lights. “Maybe not, but it’ll play damn well here. That’s all that counts.” He showed himself against the brilliance of the headlamps, a heavy, slope-shouldered cutout that moved cautiously toward Durell. “The cops and the army are looking all over town for you, running around like crazy. I had an idea you’d come back here, though,” he gloated. He lifted a chopped .45 Colt automatic, and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” he said. “Real sorry.”

  “Can it.” Durell’s tone was blunt. “You can’t play both sides. Anyhow, my guess is that you’re tickled to death to do a big favor for Sheik Zeid and show him what a good boy you are.”

  McNamara’s teeth shone in yellow light reflected from the mud walls, and he wiggled the .45. “Just drop your weapons,” he said.

  Durell’s .38 clacked to the paving stones. He held his breath for Dara’s derringer.

  “I mean you, too, little lady,” McNamara persisted. “We’ve got a computer file on you that goes back three years. I’ve known about you all along; I was just waiting for you to show your hand. Don’t expect me to believe you’re unarmed.”

  “I have no weapon,” Dara said and stared at him with hateful eyes.

  “Ali?” McNamara spoke to one of the men who had come down from the rooftops, and a subordinate with ropy muscles showing below the short sleeves of his shirt and an eager, sharp-featured face stepped forward. “Search her,” McNamara said.

  The man patted down the sides of her dress, turned to McNamara and shrugged.

  McNamara cursed. “Get between her boobs, you idiot. This isn’t a church social.”

  “Now just a minute. . . .” Durell began, as the man plunged a hand into Dara’s bodice with obvious relish. A savage cry of disgust and fury sounded in Dara’s throat as she slammed a knee into Ali’s groin, and he went double and stumbled back with a twisted face. McNamara shouted something in Arabic, and other men darted into the radiance of the truck lights, grabbing and clawing at the struggling Dara, smothering her efforts with their combined strength. Durell heard a short scream, the abrupt tearing of dress material.

  He caught the nearest man by the back of the neck and hurled him away, and the man hit the mud wall and slid down like a smashed egg. Durell waded into the midst of the men, surprised in the back of his mind that McNamara had not shot him—but then McNamara would want him alive—and lashed out with elbow, fist, foot, and knee. He saw Dara down on all fours, trying to get up, but jostled off-balance, rolled, kicked, and stepped on. Except for a bra, her glossy skin showed through a ragged rip in her dress that extended from neck to navel, and the little derringer holster that hung by a chain was empty—either someone else had the gun now or it was lost. Durell lunged, swung, and kicked, but the men were all over him like a pack of wolves, and blows rained on him from every direction, and he found himself borne down, tasting blood.

  Then something cracked against the back of his head. Lightning flashed behind his eyes.

&
nbsp; When it was gone, there was nothing.

  Durell did not know how much time had passed, but he could not have been out long. He lay very still and waited for his mind to clear. First in his awareness was the jolting of the floor, but it wasn’t a floor, he realized, hearing a laboring engine and the rumble of tires. It was the bed of a truck. Scrapes and bruises ached all over, and it felt as if an ax head was buried in his skull. With some effort, he collected himself and put aside the pains and torments. But one minor discomfort persisted, where something prickled annoyingly against his cheek. He just barely opened his eyes and saw a folded canvas awning, used to shelter troops from sun and rain. His face lay on a loose heap of hemp rope that would serve to tie the awning down.

  He saw now that he had been tossed into the forward corner of the troop truck, where a slatted sideboard and headboard kept him from falling out.

  Durell moved his head with nearly imperceptible slowness and kept the rest of his body lying loose, as it had fallen. Dara sat in the other forward corner of the truck bed, the wind whipping her straw-colored hair about her face, and held her torn dress together. Her wide mouth was compressed into a sullen line as she defiantly returned the stares of two leering guards. The guards sat on the tail end of the bed, one on each side, M-16s between their knees.

  Durell noted thankfully that they were sparing little attention for him.

  A plan had been growing in his mind since he had seen the rope. There wasn’t much time to act, and it was a long shot, but it was all he had.

  The truck lurched and banged, as he slowly and deliberately extended one arm through the slats of the headboard, reached down, unscrewed the cap to the gasoline tank, and dropped it. Next, counting on the darkness and skillful muscle control to conceal his efforts as much as possible, he snaked a length of the rope into the gasoline tank and let it soak there for a moment.

  Dara saw that he was up to something, but the guards had not caught on. She engaged them in an exchange of name calling and obscenities that brought roars of laughter from the end of the shivering, rattling truck bed.

  Carefully, Durell retrieved the dripping rope.

  The last step could only be done openly. But if he were quick enough. . . .

  He struck a match close to the rope. The match was blown out immediately, but the spark had been enough, and the rope turned into two feet of flaming wick. He lurched up, feeling the startled eyes of the guards on him and the grinding need for instant action. He dipped over the headboard and hurled the blazing rope into the driver’s face. It gave him some pleasure that Ali was at the wheel.

  There was an immediate lurch that threw the guards off balance, then a wild scream as fire flashed into Durell’s vision, beyond the rear window. He dropped to his knees and hung onto the headboard with all his strength. The guards were not a source of worry on the crazily swerving vehicle.

  “Hang on!” he yelled to Dara and saw fright in her wide, fixed eyes.

  The truck slammed into a wall and caromed away in a cloud of grit, and one of the guards rolled off the bed and into the street as easily as a melon. Then there was a rending, stupefying crash. Mud bricks exploded in every direction. The remaining guard was hurtled the length of the bed and hit the headboard, splintering it with a sickening crunch.

  Durell was half-dazed, although he had braced himself. He came to his senses with acrid smoke burning his nostrils. The driver screamed, whimpered, shrieked. He was trapped in the bent and twisted wreckage, and Durell glimpsed a flail of arms, then his blazing head and shoulders as he attempted to hurl himself out his window.

  Durell scuttled over the sodden heap of the dead guard and slapped Dara’s cheeks to revive her. She moaned as her long lashes fluttered. He did not think she was seriously harmed. Swiftly, he gathered up the guard’s M-16 and dragged her to the rear of the bed.

  He did not know what kind of building they had crashed into. It was dark in here, except for the wavering patterns of light thrown through the dust and smoke by the crackling fire in the truck cab. At least there seemed no innocent casualties, he noted. The cavity of the broken wall beckoned escape.

  He did not go that way.

  Dara was on her feet now. The fire spread from the truck as he held her and studied her eyes.

  “I’m all right,” she said. Her voice was shaky.

  The squeal of brakes sounded from the street. Car doors slammed. Men shouted.

  Durell pushed through splintered and tumbled furnishings to the rear of the room and found a doorway. Smoke seared his lungs, and heat scorched his face.

  “Hurry!” he yelled, as Dara stumbled through the debris after him.

  He saw that the driver was still now and hung like a charred beam half out the window of the fiery cab. The stench of his cooked flesh brought spasms to Durell’s throat as he went back impatiently to shepherd Dara to the rear.

  Wails of terror and alarm came from upstairs. .

  Men called in the street.

  A figure appeared in the toothed gap of the wall, wavering and indistinct viewed through the heat and flames, and there was a spitting racket of automatic rifle fire. The fire and smoke-filled room made sounds like a hornet’s nest, and something nipped hotly across Durell’s thigh. He crouched, shot from the hip, and saw the man out there flop backwards.

  Then Durell and Dara were in the alley and ran for their lives.

  After ten harrowing minutes of deadly cat and mouse, Durell and Dara came out of a maze of fetid alleyways. The sound of the chase was right behind them, harsh in their ears. Calls and the slap of running feet mingled with the bleat of awakened goats, the bray of a donkey.

  Durell’s nerves were raw. There could be no mistaking the consequences of capture now. Blood had been drawn, and only blood in return would satisfy. Pat McNamara would not be able to stop it, even if he wished.

  Durell leaned around the corner of a building, glimpsed his hotel to the left, the palace to the right. The old harbor seemed a black void beyond the broad avenue. The wind blew against Durell’s face and chilled the rivulets of perspiration. It smelled clean and briny as he filled his aching lungs.

  Two blocks to the north, midway between where he hid and the floodlighted facade of the hotel, sat another of those Shorland armored cars. Troops were deploying from trucks parked in the hotel driveway, some moving away, others filing in his direction, their rifles held at port arms.

  “McNamara must have called for help,” Dara said. She seemed composed and eager now, despite the pressure.

  “They’re about to cordon us off,” Durell replied. He looked back toward the approaching sounds of pursuit. “There’s nothing to do but make a break for it.”

  “We didn’t get this far to fail now,” Dara said. She laid a long, slender hand on his arm.

  He did not look at her but surveyed the boulevard. It would be impossible to cross, he thought, except for the miserly cover of a few scrawny trees and low shrubs that grew in the center strip. If that screened their approach across the first two lanes, then speed and surprise might get them safely across the second two. After that it would just be a rat chase down the long pier to the Nedji and into the Persian Gulf. None of it would be easy, he thought worriedly. He regarded the advancing soldiers for another second, aware of the sting of the bullet crease on his thigh, the odors of dead fires in the neighborhood and of natural gas drifting in from the oil field. A radio somewhere sounded a mournful, minor-key melody, played on a kemancha.

  “Keep low and move fast,” Durell said.

  He darted into the open, Dara a step behind, her womanly figure crouched awkwardly, a frail presence in the expanse of the divided boulevard. Durell felt utterly exposed and vulnerable. He just clenched his jaw and ran as hard as he could. Dara tripped at the last moment and fell forward and struck the grassy center island with a gasp that to Durell’s tense hearing sounded like a bomb exploding. On hands and knees she joined him behind a spiky planting of aloes.

  They had made it halfw
ay.

  But the soldiers were moving closer.

  Crickets shrilled angrily in the lovingly watered grass as Durell regarded the troops. Surf drew long, thumping sounds from the beach and harbor breakwater.

  “Ready?” he whispered.

  Dara nodded.

  Durell took a last, quick look to read her beautiful face. Her eyes were calm and indomitable. Then he darted into what seemed to be an eternity of deadly, open space. . . .

  Chapter 12

  Major Ethan Rabinovitch had not slept well in his cramped, dank bunk aboard the Nedji. The air was hot and still in his cabin, and his sweat dampened the sheets. The odor of mildew and dead fish, or floating garbage and cockroaches filled his nose. It was not the physical discomfort that troubled him. He’d had worse beds and been glad for them.

  He was reminded of the spring of 1943 and the arduous flight from Austria that he and his father had begun then. All of their relatives had disappeared, rounded up by the Nazi SS, freighted like so many cattle off to the extermination camps. Aided by friends, he and his father had hidden for months in the cellar of an abandoned and dilapidated old porcelain works, located between the Danube River and its canal just south of Vienna. But they knew time was against them and decided to run for it.