Assignment Moon Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  He pointed his gun at Hanookh, knelt, and thrust its muzzle under the Iranian’s chin.

  “Will you shoot?” Hanookh gasped. -

  “If I have to.”

  “Like you killed Colonel Saajadi?”

  “You have a lot to learn,” Durell said. He felt a brief wave of dizziness and knew he had pushed himself too far, considering Madame Hung’s recent treatments. He nudged the gun muzzle under Hanookh’s chin again. The Iranian showed no fear. There was only anger, a look of betrayal in his dark eyes. “Get up, friend.”

  “You are not a friend. You killed Saajadi—"

  “He needed it, Listen carefully. Your boys will be here any minute. I don’t want to run from them—”

  “You would not get far.”

  “I know that. I respect you, Hanookh. Will you make a deal?”

  “You are under arrest for murder, sabotage, espionage—”

  “All right. But your noble colonel was a traitor and a crook and a plotter against your government. Did you know that? He turned me over to Ta-Po and the Chinese.”

  “That is not possible—”

  “Give me a chance to prove it.”

  “Yes. In court.”

  “No, it won’t work that way. Give me a little time with you. If you cool me, my cover is blown, I'm no good for anything else, and I’m out of the business and might as well be dead.”

  “You will hang for murder, Sam Durell.”

  But Hanookh didn’t sound quite as certain as at first. Puzzlement flickered in his eyes. He licked his lips, started to speak, and looked down the road. His cops were tumbling out of the back gate of the villa, looking this way and that.

  “Saajadi?” Hanookh whispered. “With Ta-Po?”

  “Look at my bandages. Little souvenirs. Give me time to convince you,” Durell said urgently.

  “How can I do that?”

  “I’ll go back to Teheran with you. In Hannigan’s car. Lotus can squeeze in the back. Your van follows close behind us. What more can you want? I couldn’t get away. But don’t make any moves you couldn’t retract, that’s all.”

  Hanookh said abruptly: “Ike Sepah’s father wants to see you.”

  “About Ike’s death in the desert?”

  “And other things.”

  “Do you think it’s important?”

  “Ramsur Sepah is an important man, a member of the Majlis, our Parliament. He is very rich, very influential.”

  “Should I see him?”

  “It would be a good thing, I think.” Some of Hanookh’s bitter fury had ebbed, and he looked uncertain now. He waved back his running policemen, gave them sharp orders. Durell kept his back to them, and they couldn’t see the gun he held on Hanookh. He eased it from Hanookh’s throat. “Am I officially under arrest?”

  “No. Not if you agree to see Ramsur Sepah.”

  “Would it be about Tanya, and Har-Buri?”

  “I don’t know. I am only a simple man, Durell. I obey orders. Your charges against Saajadi are—shocking. It turns my world upside down, if they are true.”

  “You can believe me. It’s true.”

  “May I step away from you now?”

  Durell slid his gun into his belt and covered it with his coat. He pushed his sunglasses up a bit and turned, smiling to the policemen who now surrounded him.

  “Tell them you’re taking me back to Teheran, as ordered.”

  Hanookh nodded and spoke in quick Farsi, and sent his men back to the van. “You do the driving, Durell. I don’t understand about this Chinese girl. Can she understand French?”

  “Can you, Lotus?” Durell asked in French.

  She looked blank.

  “It’s all right,” Durell said. “She’s on our side, anyway. I’ll tell you about her on the way back.”

  He told Hanookh everything while he drove. They were in the mountains, heading south, when darkness fell, and they stopped once for Lotus, who whimpered with discomfort, and again for food at a small mountain village hotel. Hanookh sent his sergeant into the kitchen for dinner plates. The hotel looked empty. The men ate in the van, and Durell, Lotus, and Hanookh sat on the edge of the road, while they finished the plates of rice and lamb. It was cold in the mountains, and Lotus shivered as she sat close by his side. Durell told Hanookh about Saajadi’s defection to Har-Buri’s cause, about Ta-Po and Madame Hung, and how Lotus had helped him to escape.

  “I can’t prove any of it. How did you happen to find Saajadi’s body?”

  “There was a telephone call. Miss Saajadi—the one who works in your embassy, for Hannigan—was quite hysterical. I’m afraid she will be of no further use to us.”

  “She never was of much use, anyway, since she was a plotter with the rebels.”

  Hanookh sighed. He looked very young in the evening shadows. He could not understand the motives of rich, powerful men playing on the needs and hopes of the poor. He admitted to Durell that there had been sudden unrest in a number of southern villages and towns that afternoon. There had been a brief riot in a Teheran bazaar, too, and a mob of people carrying Har-Buri banners had been arrested. Two men were shot, a woman injured, in the street-fighting.

  “It seems as if you triggered a response from Har-Buri,” Hanookh said. “Let us hope it is premature and can be crushed. These are difficult times for me. All the solid ground I’ve walked on has turned to quicksand. If what you say about Saajadi is true, then who can be trusted? I only want to do my job and do what is best for my country. I think that all movements that seek change by violence are suspect from the start. Perhaps it is sometimes necessary, but today in my country, such leaders all have personal motives of ambition.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t killed last night,” Durell pointed out. “Saajadi had just about decided to eliminate you, for being too honest. It’s the one reason I’m trusting you with all this. If you were dangerous to Saajadi, then you must be straight with your government.”

  “I did not go home last night,” Hanookh admitted. “I went to see Ike Sepah’s father—Ramsur Sepah, a fine gentleman of the old school, you might say. I went to extend my sympathy and explain what had happened to us in the Dasht-i-Kavir. It was very difficult. But he was very understanding. I felt guilty, being alive and telling him that his son had been killed by enemies of the state.” Hanookh looked at his watch. “It is time we went on to Teheran.”

  “I’ll want to call Hannigan there,” Durell said.

  “After you tell me about Har-Buri’s headquarters.”

  Durell sighed. “You, too?”

  “Otherwise, you will be under official arrest.”

  “And again turned over to one of Har-Buri’s people in your agency?”

  Hanookh bit his lip. “Well, we shall ask Ramsur Sepah what to do. At least, I think we can trust him.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Durell said.

  It was midnight when they reached Teheran. Lotus was curled up on the narrow luggage area behind the two front bucket seats. She seemed to be asleep. Durell wondered what he could do with her. The best thing would be to turn her over to Hannigan for political asylum in the embassy; but he doubted if she would leave him until this was all over. There was something touching in the trustful way she slept. She was a waif lost in a stormy, alien world, driven only by the simplest of motives. Her dependence on him, now that she had broken her servitude to Madame Hung, was disturbing. But he could settle that later, in the future—if he had any future at all, he thought grimly. If Har-Buri had put his revolutionary mobs into action, anything could happen now.

  And there was always Tanya Ouspanaya to consider, wandering in the darkness of the night, lost and confused and hunted by self-seeking men who only wanted to use her for their own purposes. Her father’s words had been less than satisfactory. But certain items had been confirmed in his mind, just the same. There were too many cross-currents to figure them all out. First, he had to find Tanya. It seemed an impossible task. Find her, take her to the embassy, and negotiate
with the Soviets for her safe return. There would be bureaucrats at home who would throw roadblocks up to that, anxious to pick her mind clean, regardless of the diplomatic consequences. Nobody was in the clear, these days. He knew that only after he found Tanya again could he give Hanookh his information about Hat-Bun. If the Iranians moved too soon, Tanya would be lost forever.

  But he couldn’t find her without Hanookh’s help. Time was running out, and if Har-Buri made his revolutionary move too soon, then his own trump might prove useless.

  The lights of Teheran’s boulevards slid by. Hanookh gave him directions to Ramsur Sepah’s house. “He is holding a diplomatic reception there tonight,” Hanookh said. We could be inconspicuous in the crowd. I have been thinking, Durell, that it would be easy, with planes and tanks, to go back into the desert and take Har-Buri. Then his rebels would be crushed at once, the head lopped off and the body useless.”

  “And Tanya Ouspanaya?”

  Hanookh shrugged. “She is of no concern to my government.”

  “But my job is to save her.”

  “That is secondary now.”

  Not to me. If you use the military—provided you can find officers who can be trusted, and I don’t think at this moment that you can—then Tanya, if she’s back in Har-Buri’s hands, will die.”

  Hanookh was annoyed. “Then what do you suggest?”

  “I think I have to go back to the Dasht-i-Kavir and do it myself.”

  “You got her once, and lost her. Now it must be done the way I propose.” Hanookh was uncompromising- I cannot bargain on this. Har-Buri’s rebellion is urgent. The highest authorities must be consulted tonight. And if you tell them what you know, the strike can be swift and sure.”

  “You said I could call Hannigan.”

  “Yes. After we speak to Ramsur Sepah.”

  Lotus suddenly became very feminine and insisted she could not to go a diplomatic reception dressed as she was. She had been docile until they turned the car through the gates of the Sepah house. But when she

  saw the bright garden lanterns and heard a French orchestra, she breathed more quickly, and a tiny worry frown appeared between her eyes.

  “I have been here before,” she said dubiously.

  “When?”

  “Oh, perhaps a week ago. I was in attendance to Madame Hung, of course. It was a reception for most of the major embassies.”

  Durell thought it didn’t have to mean anything. “Did you meet Ramsur Sepah, Lotus?”

  “Oh, no. I had to wait in the servants’ quarters.”

  Her smile was uncertain. “It used to be the segregated women’s apartments—the former harem.”

  “Then you don’t know if Ta-Po and Sepah had any private conversation during that evening?” Durell asked.

  She shook her head. Hanookh said, “Truly, you are the most suspicious of men, Durell.”

  “We’ll leave Lotus where she remained before, then. All right with you, Lotus?”

  She nodded, and when they parked their dusty car before the brilliantly lighted entrance to the square, sandstone house, Durell walked with her to a side door. He took her arm and made her pay close attention as he told her what he wanted her to do. She listened while her eyes searched his face.

  “Will they arrest you here, Mr. Sam?”

  “Quite possibly. So you must get to Hannigan on the telephone and do the other things, if possible.”

  She nodded. “I will do all you say.”

  The garden party was set against a background of quiet wealth and splendor, a gloss of Western culture like a thin sheen of oil over the richer and more ancient Persian motifs. There were flaming torches set in rose beds, fountains, music, a quiet and efficient scurrying of waiters moving back and forth from a separate building that housed the kitchens. A high wall effectively surrounded the estate and cut off all sounds from the street beyond. Everything was cultivated to the final millimeter. The majordomo at the door looked uncertainly at Durell and Hanookh until Hanookh flashed a card and spoke curtly to the huge, moustached man, and then they were admitted, but not announced. Music, wine, perfume seemed to spill about them as if from a giant cornucopia. There were walks and mosaic walls and antique sculptures. It was a formal party, a. remarkable collection of dazzling women and men from every country of the globe, it seemed. When one compared the poverty of the desert to this sumptuous home of Ramsur Sepah, one of the last of the feudal squires, Durell wondered if Har-Buri’s cause might not have a few small points in its favor. He searched the faces moving in the torchlight between the long refreshment tables, but he didn’t spot Ta-Po or any members of the Soviet delegation who looked familiar. But there seemed to be a preponderance of high-ranking Iranian military officers in formal uniform, with their lieutenants in stiff attendance.

  “Which one is Ramsur Sepah?” he asked Hanookh.

  “I do not see him yet. I don’t understand—”

  “What bothers you, Hanookh?”

  “Nothing. Come this way, please.”

  Durell followed him down a flight of steps, across a corner of the garden, smiling and apologizing to the guests they had to squeeze by, and then through a Moorish arched doorway into a wing of the big red-dish-stone house. He had hoped to catch the eye of some American officials at the far side of the garden, but he had no luck. Neither did any of the British people recognize him. Hanookh was never more than a step behind him.

  “Does Ramsur Sepah expect you?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “With me?”

  “He specifically asked for a prior interview with you, if I found you, and if it proved feasible. He was most urgent about it. As a member of the Majlis and as the father of my dead friend, I promised to do what I could to accommodate him.”

  They came to an ornately carved door at the end of a corridor, and Hanookh straightened his rumpled jacket, brushed his moustache nervously, and then knocked with military precision. There was a brief wait. Then a man’s voice asked them to enter.

  If the rest of the house and garden promised Persian delights from olden times, the study that opened before them was all modern efficiency, top-executive-suite styling, the latest word from Madison Avenue. There were some fine French Impressionist paintings, and they looked like originals. The desk was enormous, with a leather top and inlaid boxes gleaming with mother-of-pearl and polished fruitwood. The heavy draperies were tightly drawn, and even the sound of the dance orchestra did not intrude into the privacy of Ramsur Sepah’s office.

  “Welcome, Mr. Durell.”

  Ramsur Sepah was tall and dapper, a man who had known wealth and position all his life, and who had the indefinable air of command that such fortunate people acquire like a second skin. His face was grave; he had a strong nose, thick gray hair and a seamed brown face; his powerful hands rested lightly on the leather-topped desk. Under heavy hawk’s brows, turning upward at the ends in twists of bushy hair, his dark brown eyes smiled solemnly.

  “Yes, Welcome. Hanookh, my dear boy, you have done very well.”

  “I am glad you are pleased, sir. It is a difficult situation. Mr. Durell has submitted to technical arrest.

  Since Colonel Saajadi is—is no longer with us—I am uncertain as to who my immediate superior may be. I understand that your committee in the Majlis was in direct control of our operations, commanded by Saajadi, and so I assume it is proper to bring Durell to you. But the reports from the southern towns are very grave, and the military must be put on alert. It is all beyond my power, I confess. I don’t know friend from foe, at the moment.”

  “I am most pleased with you, my boy.”

  “Ike and I were the best of friends, sir,” said Hanookh. “This American was with us for part of the time we were in the desert, along with the Englishman, Beele, looking for the Russian girl and Har-Buri’s headquarters.”

  “The matter is now out of your hands,” Ramsur Sepah said gently. “I will take care of everything. You will receive a commendation, you can be sur
e.”

  “Durell says that Colonel Saajadi was a traitor,” Hanookh blurted out. “I am sure this is as great a shock to you as it was to me—assuming it is true. But Mr. Durell has no reason to lie about something that could be proved.”

  “It is not a shock.” Ramsur Sepah’s rich voice conveyed paternal sympathy toward the young man. “We have known about Saajadi’s leanings for some time.”

  “But then—”

  “Yes. A calculated risk was taken. I lost my personal stake in the matter, when my only son was killed.” A quiver touched the Iranian’s harsh face. “Perhaps I should have warned Ike. And you, too, Hanookh. But it was decided in committee that it was best to have known enemies than to grope in the dark, as you put it. It was not an error. There are forces at work tonight that will clarify the situation nicely, you can be sure. I’d advise you to go home and go to bed. You look tired, you have been through an ordeal.”

  “Sir, I must stay with Durell.”

  “He is out of your hands.” Sepah’s voice crackled with sudden authority. “Mr. Durell is now my responsibility.”

  Durell had the sudden feeling that he had been this way before. He said nothing as Hanookh asked for permission to wait for him in the garden.

  “If you insist,” Sepah agreed. “But it will be pointless. Mr. Durell will cooperate with us when everything is explained.”

  Hanookh hesitated a moment more, then reluctantly backed out of the room. There was a small silence while Ramsur Sepah moved boxes about on his big desk, opened a drawer and stared into it for a moment, then sighed and stood up.

  “I mourn my son,” he said quietly.

  “Ike was a fine young man.”

  “Yes. My only son. He was important to me. I did not think he would be killed in the Dasht-i-Kavir.” The bushy hawk’s brows swooped up, then down. “Could you tell me just where it happened?”