“People haven’t changed enough, unfortunately.”
“That is a negativistic attitude, typical of your bourgeois capitalistic mentality.”
He laughed softly. “All right, Tanya, we won’t argue dialectics.”
“No, you are blind, and it is too late for you.”
“Are we so different? You’re a woman, you must think and feel like a woman; and I’m a man who—”
“If you touch me, I will kill you,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I can see the lust in your eyes.”
“I simply admire your beauty.”
“It is not for you. I am not ungrateful for what you have done. But I despise your motives, Durell.”
He stood up. “Time to push on.”
They walked through a moon-drenched landscape devoid of growth, animal life, or any trace of man. Now and then the girl stared over her shoulder. She was watching the moon. She seemed entranced by its pale light, like a girl under some strange, medieval spell.
“There is an old Korean proverb,” Durell said, “that a man who remains in his tent cannot see the full moon rise.”
“You are so strange,” she murmured. “You have kindness in you. Strength. And compassion. Thank you for it, but—” She said no more.
They walked on. The moon soared above them, and the wind died. The quiet cold seemed worse than before. The girl’s teeth chattered, although she panted with the effort to keep up with him. She was limping, too, and he saw that her slippers had come apart on the stony ground. He said nothing about it, but ordered another rest when his watch told him it was past midnight. The girl sank down at once, her dry tongue touching her lips.
“May I have some water?” she whispered.
“Later.”
“The sun will dehydrate us when it rises.”
“We’ll lie up in the shade somewhere.”
“But there is no shade.”
“We’ll find some.”
“I do not think I can go on. I begin to think we will die out here.”
His voice was harsh. “Do you really care?”
“I—I don’t know. Something I do not understand has happened to me. Part of my life—seems as if in a dream.”
“This is no dream. Or it’s a nightmare, it you will. We’ve gone at least a third of the way.”
“Strange they do not follow us.”
“I think they’re waiting for dawn. They might use a plane. Or come out in vehicles.”
“Why do they pursue me?” she whispered.
“I told you. You’re the most valuable girl on earth, at this moment. Everyone wants to use you.”
“You, too, Durell?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
Her teeth chattered. “Oh, I am so c-cold.”
“Come here.”
He took her in his arms. She stiffened, then did not resist. He talked of the Caspian coast, not far to the north of Teheran. There was a thousand miles of green forest, beaches, pleasant resort hotels and casinos at Ramsar, fishing boats loaded with sturgeon caviar, the town of Hamadan which was ancient when Cyrus captured it from the Medes, Tabriz with its exquisite mosques, Meshed, the holiest of Iranian cities. The sun there was Warm, the mountain valleys green with flowered meadows. As he spoke, the girl closed her eyes and settled close to him. He was at once aware of the ripe firmness of her body through the tattered robe. He swore inwardly at himself. She nestled closer, her soft hip and thigh against his stomach and legs. Now and then a shiver went through her body, but he didn’t think now that it was from the desert cold.
“Durell, you have seen all these green places?”
When he nodded, she went on, “If things were different, I—I would like to go to some of them with you.”
“It’s not impossible, some day.”
She shook her head. “Do you have a girl?”
He thought of Deirdre Padgett, back in the sanity of Switzerland. “Yes, a girl.”
“Do you love her?”
“Very much.”
“Is she—like you—in your profession?”
“Yes, she’s in the business. I wish she weren’t.” He stood up, and she shivered as she lost the warmth of his body, He said, “We‘ll have a drink now, and go on ”
She smiled strangely. “Yes. You are angry with yourself now. That is good. It is best.”
Their water canteen was almost empty.
Toward dawn, they heard the thrum of a motor vehicle in the bleak desert to the north. They had passed the second of Durell’s landmarks. Ahead, a low range of hills marked the end of the desert, hovering tantalizingly in the starlight. It seemed as if they would never reach it. They would not reach shelter before the sun came up. With its heat, their last strength would ebb rapidly away.
“I must rest,” the girl gasped.
“No."
“I must.” She staggered and fell.
“Get up, Tanya.”
“Let me rest!” Her voice echoed in high agony over the bleak dawn of the desert. “I must sleep. I was in the pit so long—I am not strong, as I used to be. . . .”
He stumbled, and realized that the ground had begun to slope upward. He looked over his shoulder. The sky was pale. He looked ahead. A star shone with unnatural brightness on the horizon. He watched it carefully. It was not a star. It was a light. A campfire or beacon of some kind. He staggered against a small clump of brush. It was the first vegetation they had
met, all through the night.
“Fine. We’ll rest, Tanya.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
There was a loom of trees, a clump of thorny bushes up ahead, He pulled her that way, fell on his hands and knees, and forced her under the bushes. It was not perfect concealment. But it would have to do. He went back then, in the half light, and saw that they had left no footprints in the gravelly soil. That was good. He crawled under the brush after her and heard her breathing and knew that she was asleep. In less than a minute, he slept, too.
Chapter Five
SHE was gone when Durell awoke.
He swore softly. Through the sunlight that filtered through a canopy of yellow leaves, he saw the depression where she had slept, and put his palm flat on it. It was not cool, but it was not warm, either. She had been gone for some time.
He sat up slowly, aware of thirst and fatigue and an empty belly. His face was scratchy with beard. He tried to wet his lips, but his tongue was too dry. His fingers shook slightly as he reached for his sunglasses and put them on. His head ached.
He started to call Tanya‘s name, then thought better of it and lifted himself silently in the scraggly brush. The sun was in the west. He had slept much longer than he had expected. But where was the girl?
She had left nothing except the shirt he had lent her last night. His blue eyes darkened almost to black. He put on the shirt and walked up the slope through the waist-high brush. The sun struck hammer-blows against his head. The top of the ridge seemed an endless distance away. His feet dragged in the sandy soil. He thought he saw the girl’s trail for a moment, but then it became confused with other footprints and he halted abruptly.
The sound of men arguing, of a sudden burst of laughter, came incredibly from over the ridge. He paused, then moved on with care. The shrubs gave out before he reached the top. He felt exposed under the merciless sky. Then he saw the tops of date palms, which had been invisible in the dark when they had paused to rest. He went down on his hands and knees, then crawled until he could see over the ridge.
They had come within fifty yards of the end of the desert. A small clay village, a few date trees, oleanders, and tamarisks were grouped around a small pond. The grass seemed an incredible green. Two camels were hobbled near the water. The smell of charcoal fires and roasting lamb made saliva fill his mouth. The water in the pond was brackish and green. But it looked as good as the clearest mountain spring in New Hampshire.
Besides the two camels, there was a battered Re
nault truck and a motorcycle. He looked beyond the trees and saw the wet glimmer of an asphalt road that ribboned away to the north. It held no traffic. Two men came out of one of the clay houses and walked to the pond. A fat woman followed them. One of the men wore a striped silk shirt and baggy trousers. The other wore a tattered pajama-like costume and a ragged turban. Their voices lifted up to him in guttural syllables. The woman attended to the charcoal fire. The men sat down and began playing with a deck of cards.
There was no sign of Tanya Ouspanaya.
Durell took out his gun. He checked the cylinder, then inched forward to listen. The men were speaking Farsi. He understood most of it. They were halted to get water for the truck, before going on to Sar-e-Godar and then driving across the salt swamp to the trans-Iranian railway and highway junction to Teheran at Semnan. Their voices were languid, unhurried. One of the men paused to curse at the woman and tell her to hurry the meal. No one mentioned the girl.
Durell stood up and walked slowly down toward the pond where the men sat. One of the camels smelled him and grunted. Both men looked up and saw him. The one in the ragged Western-style clothes stood up slowly, whispered something to his companion, who only lit a cigarette and watched Durell approach.
“I greet you in the name of Allah,” Durell said. He had put his gun away. “I would like food and water and transportation to Teheran.”
The stouter man had only one eye. His other eye made up for its loss by its concentration of evil and avarice. “You are English?”
“American.”
“Where do you come from?”
“I was lost in the desert. My car broke down. It was very careless of me.”
“You have money?”
“A little.”
“Then you are welcome.”
He said nothing about Tanya yet. He took water sparingly from a beautifully etched copper bowl, and then sipped strong coffee from the tiny enameled cup the woman filled. The two men simply sat and watched him. He looked at the village huts, and saw that most were tumbled-down and abandoned, the tiny windows grilled, the doors sagging. He could not see inside. He saw no sign of the girl. The Iranians did not mention her.
“They are your camels?” he asked quietly.
“They were here.”
“Without owners?”
The stout man shrugged. His eye glittered. “The beasts are valuable. We do not know where the owners are. It is very strange. We have asked at the inn, but no one says they know of it.”
“The camels will slow your truck, will they not?”
“We go with God. He makes his own time.”
Durell nodded. He knew it was useless to ask them to hurry. He ate pieces of greasy lamb and a bowl of rice. It tasted like ambrosia. The men watched him as he ate and the fat one said: “You are one of the diggers for the old things?”
Durell nodded. “I was separated from the other learned men.”
“You are fortunate to find us. Allah blessed you. Few men come this way.”
When he had eaten and had three more cups of the Arab coffee, he dug in his sweaty shirt pocket and found the last of his cigarettes. Four of them. He offered them around and extended the last to the woman who cooked. She wore a veil and a black robe and was not, obviously, among the emancipated women who danced in the nightclubs of Teheran. She shied away in embarrassment and the fat man took the cigarette with a grin.
“How much money do you have, American?”
“Enough to reward you reasonably.”
“American dollars?”
“A few.”
“And your watch?”
“If you insist.”
“We are not greedy. Your money and your watch. I would like them now.”
Durell moved so that the Arabs could see the gun in his belt. Something shimmered in the fat one’s face. The thin Arab looked angry. Then the other said: “Yes, we will be reasonable, sir.”
“Then let‘s get started.”
He walked toward the huts. They were all empty. A small inn yielded only an inarticulate old man who told him nothing and knew less. No sign of the girl. He walked back to the two men and the woman.
“I was not alone," he said casually. “Where is the girl who traveled with me?”
“We see no one but you, sir.”
“But there was a girl here.”
“No, sir. No one.”
“In Teheran, you will be rewarded richly for her. Tell me where she is.”
“We did not see a girl.”
After some hours, they were ready to move. He could not hurry them. The truck was loaded with second-hand car parts that looked like the castoffs from a ten-year-old junk yard. The man in the Arab robe tied the camels to the tailgate of the truck. It was obvious that the beasts had been stolen from somewhere. The water-cans were filled, and the stout man indicated Durell’s seat in the truck cab, between the two Iranians. He shook his head.
“I’ll sit with your cargo.”
“We travel at night. It will be cold.”
“I’ve been cold before.”
He was not sure he should leave this area without the girl. But she was gone without a trace. There was no sign of violence here, and he felt sure she had slipped away from him on her own account. He wondered what Hannigan would say about that. Teheran Central would be furious. But it couldn’t be helped. He watched the thin Arab range through the junk-piles of the oasis, shouting in a high, angry voice. The stout one picked his teeth and waited and talked to the woman. Presently the Arab came back, his thin, crooked face dark with fury. They spoke together in a dialect that Durell could not understand.
“What is it?” he asked in Farsi.
“The third camel is gone.”
“There were three?”
“Your friend—the woman—must have taken it.”
The fat man laid a pudgy finger against his nose. “The beast was the best of the three, a fine runner. Most valuable, sir. She stole it—your woman friend. We must be paid.”
“Very well.” Durell felt much better suddenly.
“You’ll be rewarded in Teheran.”
“We would like something now, sir.”
“In Teheran,” he insisted.
“In the city of men, we will be cheated and ignored and perhaps beaten and accused of crimes of which we are innocent. We want the money now.”
“All right. Here is all I have.”
Durell gave the man his last fifty in American currency. The single eye lit up greedily in the dusk.
The money was snatched from him. The woman cried out something in protest, and the Arab began to argue, but the fat man suddenly started beating the woman and the Arab moved away in fear and finally got behind the wheel of the Renault truck.
A few moments later, the ride began.
It was strange, Durell thought, that Har-Buri’s hunters hadn‘t come this way after him.
They traveled all night under the light of the moon, along a thin and treacherous trail that threaded its way through odorous salt swamps. Durell kept checking their direction, but it remained correctly westward, toward the railroad and highway that would take him back to Teheran. Seated on some greasy crates of car engines, he scanned the wasteland that undulated and shimmered under the night sky. Their pace was tedious, limited to the heavy, clopping steps of the camels tied to the tailboard. The truck engine labored and whined most of the way in low gear. They passed through another oasis, then began climbing to higher ground and took a trail that wandered more to the north. By dawn there was the loom of barren hills to the left, a clay ridge to the right. A clump of tamarisks marked a walled village that might have existed unchanged since the days of Assyrians.
The Arab and the fat man got out of the truck when they stopped. The woman waddled away between dark mud huts. The air felt coldest now, just before dawn.
“Sir, we must stop to rest ourselves and the camels, as God orders.”
“I’ll pay you double to go on.”
“Impossible, sir. We must stay for the day.”
“What are you afraid of?” Durell asked.
The man rolled his one good eye. “We are men of peace. We fear no honest people.”
They walked into the clay village. Durell got down and walked around to the truck cab. The ignition key was gone; but it would be simple to jump the wires. He listened to the skinny rooster’s crow at the rising sun. The smell of cookfires and smoke filled the desert air. How far was it to the main highway? Thirty, forty miles, he guessed. He saw there was a caravanserai in the center of the huddled mud huts, a three-sided building with a central courtyard filled with sleeping people, camels, goats, and donkeys. He walked that way and halted at the entrance. One or two of the women who were cooking looked at him over their veils, dark eyes aglow, and then looked quickly away. Among the animals in the low-walled courtyard, a modem Iranian Anny truck stood out incongruously. There was no driver or crew in sight—no doubt they occupied the best rooms in the place. He stepped back out of sight and saw the fat Farsi running with remarkable speed back to the truck. The Arab was ahead of him, and the woman had already cut the camels loose. They must be mortally afraid to give up the camels, he thought. Then he ran back through the village gate.
He almost didn’t make it. The one-eyed Farsi had started the motor, the Arab and the woman had piled onto the heaped crates of old auto parts in the truck body. Durell jumped for the driver’s side and reached in and cut the switch. The engine died. The stout man made a hissing sound and drew a knife. His face was the color of mud.
“Are you abandoning me?” Durell asked quietly.
“We must go.”
“Because the Army is here?”
“We must hurry.”
“What do you carry under that junk in the back?”
“Nothing! Scrap iron, that is all, sir!”
“We’ll see.”
He jingled the ignition key in his hand and walked around to the back. The Arab and the woman had gotten out of the truck. Durell began to heave at the rusted machine parts on the splintery boards. The woman started to yell and wail, and the Arab flashed a knife in his hands. But the fat one smiled and spread his pudgy hands wide.
“You must understand us, sir. We are poor, we have no land, we are like serfs to the rich, and an opportunity to earn a little extra does not come often.”
Assignment Moon Girl Page 5
