Assignment - Ankara

by Edward S. Aarons

  “What else did Ankara say?” Durell asked.

  “They’re sending a KT-4 first thing tomorrow morning— one of the new types, lands on a dime, carries ten for a four-thousand-mile range. I told them to land on one of the fields across the river. Nothing else except a chopper could sit down there, and the fog socked in the whole valley yesterday, so nothing could fly in. Tomorrow it should be okay.”

  Anderson paused and spread his big hands and looked curiously around the room. Francesca seemed to be asleep. The charcoal fire in the tiled stove had gone out, and it was growing chilly in the hut. Anderson shook his head slowly and grinned his wide grin, and Durell found himself liking the man and glad he was on hand.

  “I ought to resent Ankara sending you to help me,” Anderson said. “I’ve been in the business almost as long as you, Durell. But I’m in a jam here, no mistake. The tapes are missing, and we’ve got to find them fast, before whoever got them manages to escape from this valley.”

  “What happened when you got back from locating the radio?”

  “Uvaldi was dead. It was only two or three minutes before you showed up. I had no time to ask questions or learn if any strangers had been around. You and Turk came along and I figured I’d really bought it—I lost my gun yesterday, in the quake. So I hid in the hall—”

  “Are you the one who turned out the lanterns?” Durell asked.

  “No. I found the blasted things just the way you did. My only thought was to get away from you and the Turk—you looked dangerous to me. I had an idea of getting back to Base Four and picking up Sergeant Isaks and some other men for reinforcements. Dinty Simpson said on the radio you were coming, but I couldn’t be sure when, and I didn’t even guess it was you, back at the inn.” Anderson grinned. “Glad I didn’t brain you when you were chasing me, anyway, Cajun.”

  Durell smiled. “My luck. Do you know Dinty well?”

  “Just from around the Embassy.” Anderson’s prominent gray eyes looked almost colorless in the pale light of the kerosene vapor lamp inside the hut. Then, as Durell wondered what was taking Kappic so long in fetching Susan Stuyvers to take care of Francesca, Anderson walked over to the bed and frowned at the unconscious girl. His big hands looked surprisingly gentle as he adjusted the thin blanket over her form.

  “Quite a looker,” the courier said. “Who is she?”

  “She’s Dr. Uvaldi’s daughter.”

  Anderson was startled. “Hell, Uvaldi never mentioned her.”

  “He wasn’t expecting her.”

  “I mean, he never mentioned having a daughter.” The big man looked troubled. “Do you trust her?”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” Durell said quietly.

  Anderson nodded, not surprised. “Yeah, I know your training, Cajun. You’d kill her or me or anybody in your way, if it was necessary. Killing is part of your business, I hear.”

  “Not exactly,” Durell said.

  “Well, I hope you trust me,” the big man said. He started for the door of the hut. “I’m going to see this Susan Stuyvers.”

  “Why?”

  Anderson drew a deep breath. “Because she’s got the tapes.”

  Durell looked quickly at the sleeping girl. Francesca had not moved.

  Anderson said quietly, “It can’t be anyone else. When I came back after hunting for the radio, the local medic stopped me down in the inn. He said Uvaldi had sent an old woman with a small package to the missionary’s daughter, only a short time before I returned.”

  “Why would Dr. Uvaldi do that?”

  “Search me. Maybe he thought I’d gotten into trouble and wasn’t coming back,” Anderson said. He looked angry for a. moment. “Of course, I’m not sure the old woman really delivered anything to John or Susan Stuyvers, and even if she did, I’m not sure it’s the tape we want. But that’s why I want to see her.”

  Durell was silent. Until he had more facts, there was no point in jumping to quick and possibly wrong conclusion. He felt trapped in this desolate valley, alone with an urgent problem to solve. Back home, in Washington, they were waiting impatiently for Uvaldi’s taped data. Something big was brewing over the mountainous frontier, and whatever it was, Washington had to know about it. He was glad he had met with the Tennessean, Anderson. But everyone else here could only add to his uncertainty. He could trust none of them. And he was trapped here as much as any of them. The only positive fact he had was Dr. Uvaldi’s murder and the ominous loss of the tapes. It meant someone was lying, and that person was in Karagh or somewhere in the valley, determined to head for the Soviet border with the tapes Washington needed.

  Durell walked quietly over to the girl who called herself Francesca Uvaldi. She breathed quietly and easily, as if in a natural sleep of exhaustion. Under the thin blanket, her body looked firm and shapely. Her face was composed and lovely. Then, as he continued to look down at her, she turned on the bed and whimpered and flung out an arm, disarranging the blanket and exposing a firm, tanned breast. He straightened the blanket to cover her nakedness and returned to Anderson.

  “I think we’d better not say anything directly to Susan Stuyvers,” he suggested. “Let’s see what she has to offer on her own initiative.”

  “But even if she’s loyal, she may not trust us. She might decide to keep quiet about the tapes, anyway.”

  “In that case,” Durell said. “I’ll have a look at that black bag she’s so eager to hang on to.”

  Chapter Seven

  THE opportunity to check on the missionary and Susan came sooner than expected. John Stuyvers arrived with his daughter, herded into the hut by Kappic. The gaunt missionary looked disheveled, full of protests. His fanatic’s eyes considered Francesca with something like dismay, but then he dismissed her and refused to look at her, as if she were something unholy and not to be permitted near him. Susan, on the other hand, was calm and coldly efficient. She took Francesca’s pulse, put the back of her hand to the other girl’s cheek, nodded, and went to the tiled stove and built up the charcoal fire, then found some water in an earthen jar, picked up a battered teakettle from one of the crudely carpentered shelves, and began heating the water in it. John Stuyvers sat on a stool and watched Susan with baleful eyes. Durell lit a cigarette, and ignored John Stuyvers’ complaints, nodded to Kappic and Anderson, and stepped outside.

  The wind had died, but an overcast hid the mountains and the stars. He hoped the fog would not return, in view of what Anderson had said about the KT-4 coming in the morning. The courier had done a good job, finding the radio and getting a message back to Ankara. Durell flipped away his cigarette and walked through the grove of twisted trees toward the Stuyvers’ hut.

  A lantern burned inside, and the door was unlocked. The hut was very much like the other, furnished sparsely in peasant style, with two small windows in the stone walls. There was a roaring fire in the stove, and the air felt immoderately hot and stale. The big bed was rumpled and disarrayed. He walked to it and felt the pillow and noted its warmth. There was a faint scent of perfume near the bed and this surprised him, because Susan’s puritanical appearance had ruled out all cosmetics and feminine adornments.

  He could not find the big black handbag she had been so anxious to keep with her, back on the mountain road. He had the feeling he ought to hurry, that John or the girl might return almost at once, and he began a rapid search of the cupboards and shadowed corners of the hut. They yielded nothing. He paused once, thinking he heard the grate of a footstep outside; but no one came in and he went on, deciding there was no place here that could be used as a hiding place except the bed itself.

  There was nothing under the pillow, but when he heaved back the heavy mattress and exposed the ancient springs, the black bag came to light at once. He picked it up, feeling the weight of books inside, and noted the fine leather and French manufacture. He tried the lock. There was a small keyhole, but the bag was tightly sealed. It did not delay him long. He carried with him some picklocks, and he chose one of the small steel instr
uments with care, and worked it into the keyhole.

  The bag came open.

  For a moment he studied the scrolls and books inside. There were two large, leather-bound tomes with heavy covers and ancient parchment pages handwritten in Aramaic and illuminated in medieval fashion. So far, John and Susan Stuyvers’ story was verified. The books would have an extraordinary value back in the States. He put them aside with care, together with three small, tightly rolled scrolls on wooden pins, sealed with wax. He did not break the seals. Under the manuscripts, he found personal feminine articles in a small leather side pocket, a small vial of perfume, lipstick, a gold comb. He tried the pocket on the other side, and knew at once his search was successful.

  The small steel box might have held a typewritten ribbon, and there was an official U.S. insignia stamped on the green enameled top. A piece of cloth tape held the little lid fast.

  Durell flicked open the seal and carried the box into the lamplight. Inside was a metal spool and a reel of white plastic ribbon imprinted like Braille, with a complicated series of dots and dashes forming an incomprehensible pattern. Without the decoding machine in the Pentagon, half a world away, the data on the ribbon was meaningless. But he did not underestimate the opposition. Given time enough, they could decode the information here. And even if they couldn’t, simply delaying its delivery to Washington, where it could be broadcast to the world as deterrent knowledge, might have disabling effects on American security.

  Durell replaced the spool of ribbon. The importance of this small box was incalculable, and he did not relish its possession. All the others knew who he was. He stood as a natural target for any enemy masked among them. Not that he avoided danger; he was accustomed to it, and it was part of his job. But if he were someone’s target and he kept the tape on himself, he might add to the peril of failure.

  He paused and listened. The hut was silent. He wondered briefly why Uvaldi had sent the tape to Susan Stuyvers by way of the old peasant woman. But Uvaldi would never answer any questions now. And why hadn’t Susan come straight to him with the tape? He needed answers, and there were none, for the moment.

  He turned back to Susan’s bag and began repacking the brittle scrolls and the heavy Biblical tomes—then paused as his senses caught a sound he should not have heard. He listened, but there was nothing now. Turning, he pocketed the tape, took out his gun, and walked to the closed door of the hut and stood for a long moment, motionless, alert, tense. Then he went back, replaced the leather bag under the mattress, blew out the lamplight, and returned to the doorway in darkness.

  He had the feeling he had been watched every moment of the time he had been in the hut. But there was nothing to be seen outside. Then he heard a light footfall from the direction of the other hut and he saw the missionary’s daughter walking openly toward him. But she was too far away then to have been the source of the sound that had alerted him. He stood still, watching her, and when she came up to him her features were quiet and smiling.

  “Hello. Did you blow out the lantern?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, I thought—” He paused. “Did you see anyone else outside, on your way over?”

  “No one.”

  “I was wondering if you were comfortable here with your father,” he suggested. “Perhaps you’d like to share the other hut with Francesca, and I could bunk here. We’ll all be leaving Karagh tomorrow, you know.”

  Her tawny eyes regarded him with that steady, disconcerting stare he had noticed on the road that afternoon. Unerringly, she had walked straight to the lamp, found a match, and lit it, then returned to close the hut door. “And how will you manage our departure, Mr. Durell?”

  “An American plane is coming for us, in the morning.”

  “I see. And will you be taking John and me with you?”

  “As American citizens, you’re entitled to all the help and protection our government can afford.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled again. He waited for her to glance at the bed, where he had replaced the bag of manuscripts and books, but she did not look that way. Neither did she mention the tape. “I will stay here with my father, I think,” she said quietly. “Francesca is still asleep, and I’m sure she’ll be all right. I came back here to find you, naturally.” Her voice was still pitched low, but it was no longer flat and colorless as it had been before. Something about her manner and figure looked different, too. There was color in her cheeks, perhaps from the cold night air. And previously she had moved with a flat-footed, graceless stride. Now, when she walked away from the lamp on the table, her body adopted a feminine posture that was suddenly and deliberately provocative. Her smile was full of secrets. He saw the passion in her pale mouth and in the curve of her chin and throat, and his estimate of Susan underwent a swift and radical change. She looked up again, her pink mouth curved in the smile she held for him. “You see, I knew you would be here. I came as quickly as I could.” “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “From the way you looked at me, when we first met.” “You’re imagining things, I think. And your father—”

  “He’s drinking brandy with Kappic, the Turk. John likes brandy.”

  “That’s not very characteristic of a devoted missionary.” “John is not characteristic of anything. He is a very unusual man. Like you, his pattern isn’t often repeated. You’re different, too.”

  “How, different?” he asked.

  “You know,” she said. In the small silence, he saw that she was breathing faster. She added, “There is something between us, isn’t there? I felt it right away. It shook me up terribly. Does that surprise you?”

  “A little.”

  “I suppose everything they say about a minister’s child is true,” she said, and smiled. Then she came toward him with a sliding, graceful, hipswinging walk and lifted her face to his. “Don’t you want to kiss me, Durell? It can be very exciting. Didn’t you come here for that? You’re not all that surprised, are you?”

  “Look, Susan—”

  “If you’re worried about John, he won’t be back for some time yet.” Her mouth trembled, pouting; her intense, pale gaze never left his face for a moment. “Don’t you like me?” she whispered. “Is it the way I must dress, or do my hair? John insists on it, you know. But you know I’m not the way I look, don’t you? You can feel it, I’m sure. Otherwise, I—I couldn’t have misunderstood you, could I?”

  “I think you have.”

  “But if you didn’t come here for me—” She stepped back, and her face changed, became wary and hard, touched by a random fear. Her eyes slid away to the bed for just a flicker of an instant.

  Durell said quickly, “But I did come to see you, Susan.”

  It hung in the balance, then. She could tell him about the tape now, he thought, since she must know about it. Or did she? Perhaps her father had seen the old peasant woman leave alone, and received the tape sent to him by Uvaldi, without Susan’s knowledge.

  She kissed him then, with no warning except a quick reach of her arms and a clasping of her hands behind his neck to draw his head down to hers. She gasped, her mouth warm and alive and moving against his lips. Her hands came around to cup his face, her fingertips moving, pressing against him. He was suddenly conscious of the small metal box in his pocket. Could she feel it when she clung to him? Had she arranged the bed in deliberate, but careful, disorder so that she knew he had been searching here? He felt her breath more rapidly,, and then she pulled away and looked up at him from under her lashes and smiled. She quickly shoved down the shoulders of her prim, simple dress, tugging at the cloth with crossed arms until it tumbled to her narrow waist as she sank down on the big peasant bed.

  She wore nothing under the dress. She drew a deep breath, aware of her firm, proud breasts and moved slightly, to make her flesh tremble.

  “Now,” she whispered. Her eyes were bright, delighted. “Now you see me as I really am. Do you like me now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me?”

/>   “Any man would.”

  “I’m not just interested in any man.” She spoke with panting breaths. “I’m only interested in you, Durell. From the first time I saw you—”

  “Susan—”

  “Don’t talk anymore.”

  She pulled him down toward her, her body warm and smooth and alive. He could not deny her quick passion. He saw her intense stare, her open mouth, the thin gold necklace swaying, pendant, between her breasts—

  A footstep sounded outside above the quick, animal gasps of her breathing. He pushed her away, stepped back, and said, “Now isn’t the time, Susan.”

  “Yes, yes it is—”

  “Someone is coming.”

  “What? She seemed not to comprehend. “Who?”

  “John, probably. Move quickly.”

  She turned her head, her eyes oddly blind, and looked toward the door. Someone knocked loudly and imperatively. With a quick movement, she pulled up the top of her dress and fastened the button at the throat, smoothed back her prim blonde hair, and transformed herself, immediately and completely, into the minister’s daughter again. Only the quick intensity of the way she breathed might have betrayed her. “Who is it?” she called.

  The knock was repeated.

  “Are you all right?” Durell asked her softly.

  “Yes. Of course, I must be. We—later, at some time—” He nodded and went to the door and opened it.

  Colonel Wickham stood there, fist upraised to knock again.

  Chapter Eight

  THE colonel had pulled himself together since Durell last saw him in the wrecked office at Base Four. His face was still flushed and florid, and there was a trace of yellowish bloodshot in his eyes, but his white brush-cut hair was groomed and his mouth had tightened and his slack figure was carefully uniformed in a remarkably fresh outfit. He stepped inside the hut without ceremony, pushing past Durell.