Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  "We can be honest with each other here, Kolia."

  "You are angry. It is your Southern temper, perhaps/'

  "Perhaps. But never too angry, Kolia. I am surprised, and a little concerned about you. You have been on the job over a year. Your superiors must be impatient now. Perhaps there is pressure on you to conclude your business with me."

  "It will be concluded," Mikelnikov said. "It is strange, you know. I have come to respect and admire you, Durell. I wish you and I could be friends."

  Durell waited.

  "We could make a marvelous team, you and I," Mikelnikov added, "if we combined our talents in our profession."

  "Are you suggesting you may defect and come over to our side?"

  Mikelnikov laughed. It was a braying sound, harshly disturbing over the muted chatter of the tourists at adjacent tables. "You could come over to us, gospodin. f>

  "I wouldn't be happy at No. 2 Dzerzhinski Square," Durell "said. "An organization that commemorates the name of Feliks Dzerzhinski is not for me. Surely you know that this Pole, although a Bolshevik of the old school, was the bloodiest butcher of all. Look at the record: the first secret police chief of the Cheka; a ghoul; a mass murderer. And from the Cheka came the OGPU and the NKVD under Stalin, and now the MVD. Do you really know Dzerzhinski's record? Do you know what he did to the peasants in the Minsk area, in the Ukraine—"

  "Enough." Mikelnikov held up a big, rough hand. He was not smiling. "It is simply a matter of viewpoint. We cannot meet, I see."

  "No."

  "You will never join us?"

  "You know that is a stupid question."

  "But I do not really wish to kill you."

  "You won't," Durell said.

  "Yes, I will. I must. And it will be done soon."

  "Are you warning me now?"

  Mikelnikov drummed thick fingers on the table. His fondue was untouched. Under his shaggy brows, the bony ridges

  med doubly heavy, and there were deep hollows in his checks. For just an instant he looked haunted and trapped. But he was no less dangerous than before. Perhaps more so, Durell thought.

  "You may call it a warning, Durell. Go back to London. Your assignment here in Geneva is an empty and hopeless mission/'

  "What would you know about it?" Durell asked.

  "You will be briefed by Haggarty this afternoon, I assume. And then you will leave. But I suggest that you decline the job. It will mean your death. I guarantee it."

  "Those are your orders?"

  "Yes."

  "Yet you tell me about them?"

  "As I said, I respect and admire you. We could be friends."

  "They will shoot you if they learn of your affection," Durell> said dryly.

  "Who will tell them in Moscow?" Mikelnikov leaned forward earnestly. "If I weep for you one day, Sam Durell, it will be tears I shed alone. I am not ashamed of tears. We understand each other. We have been enemies so long that in a sense we are true friends. . . . Were you a good friend of John Blaney's?"

  "Blaney?"

  "Please. You knew him. He was recently assigned to the Middle East—to Jidrat. An intelligence officer for your consul there, Mr. T. P. Fenner."

  "Do you expect me to applaud your information?"

  "No. You know as much about us, or more. But Blaney is dead. And you will be sent to Jidrat to replace him."

  Durell's face was blank. He gave nothing away. But for the first time he felt a sudden uneasiness, an awareness of danger perhaps of the worst sort . . . perhaps the ultimate danger, after all.

  "So you sent the truck to kill me?"

  "Yes. I know it will not stop you," Mikelnikov said. "And I shall wait for you one day, somewhere. I shall wait, Durell."

  "Your bosses must consider my job important."

  "We agree on that." Mikelnikov's pale gray eyes were now cold under his shaggy brows, like two stones set in his peasant's face. "Please, my friend, go back to London. Reject the assignment. You can surely do that."

  "Not now."

  "Tell Haggarty you cannot go to Jidrat. Do not go."

  Durell stood up. "Like you, Kolia Vassilivich, I shall miss you when you are removed from the field. I thank vou for warning me. It was unnecessary. I will go to Jidrat. You won't stop me or kill me."

  "I am sorry, my friend," Mikelnikov murmured.

  "We are not friends," Durell said.

  Mikelnikov watched the tall figure move away through the crowds on the Rue Saint-Corps. He was conscious of his own conflicting thoughts. Images of Budapest, almost forgotten, returned unsummoned to his mind. What had happened there, the blood and the torture, was a historical necessity. But he couldn't keep it on an impersonal plane. His own part in it had been too vivid, destroying his objectivity.

  It was Naomi, of course. Her loss was still an unhealed wound because he did not know what had happened to her. If she was dead because of the orders he'd had to carry out— like his orders to eliminate Durell—well, then he would know how to finish it. But he knew nothing, which was ironic since it was his business to know everything. To lose one's wife, and to know no peace thereafter, because one obeyed orders —as one obeyed this order about Durell—was worse torture than any carried out on the Budapest prisoners. They, at least, knew their fate.

  His memory of Naomi filled him quietly. She had hated him at first for what he represented. And then she had loved him. And, at the end, she had hated him again. A full cycle. He admired Durell and wished he could know him as a friend. But it was impossible.

  And where was Naomi now? Wandering lost and homeless in the world? He did not know. When he had gone to save her from the fury and destruction meted out to others, she had vanished.

  Mikelnikov shook himself mentally. His eyes again saw the Swiss caf6 where he sat, the bright sunlight, the passers-by.

  Durell was gone.

  Durell walked to the river and turned back at the bridge over the Rhone. Mont Blanc was touched by white fire on its peak. He turned right on the Rue du Rhone and, in a small restaurant, stepped into another phone booth and dialed a number—22-04-32. Presently he spoke to Haggarty. "Yes, it's important, Cajun. I heard about the truck." "Your security is rotten," Durell said. "I've just had a talk with Major Mikelnikov."

  "Cajun, don't beg for it. You're due at Georgia."

  "Just wanted to let you know I'll be there."

  Haggarty chuckled. "I've already received a report on your date with the major, Cajun. Am I supposed to be upset, because you fraternize with the enemy?"

  "All right, Hag. I'm not in the mood."

  "Sorry. See you—I hope."

  Durell used various evasive tactics to make sure he was not being followed. They were time consuming, and tedious, but within twenty minutes he was reasonably sure he was alone as he walked by the thirteenth-century Tour de Tile and then turned down through the foot of the Bastions into the old quarter. Georgi's was at the foot of the Grande Rue, the oldest street in the old town, near where Rousseau was born and where Calvin once preached his doctrines. Haggarty was waiting there.

  The cafe was small and had tiled walls, a bar, and booths. It was not crowded. Haggarty sat with his back against the tiled wall. He pulled out a chair as Durell approached, and watched the entrance. "Hello, Sam."

  Durell nodded. "Do you have a man outside?" "Two of them. We're all right here." Haggarty grinned. "I know how you hate organizational mumbo jumbo, Cajun. But contain yourself. You'll be off on a lone-wolf project soon enough."

  "Does anyone tell me about it? Or do I wait for Mikelni-kov to read me my assignment?"

  "Take it easy, Cajun. We do the best we can." "It's not good enough, if people get killed." Haggarty frowned. He was a thin, nervous man with a habit of blinking his eyes as if he perpetually had dust in them. He had a hot chocolate in front of him on the round table.

  Durell knew he was being unnecessarily sharp with Haggarty. He didn't have to tell Haggarty that care was needed to stay alive in this business. He paused and lit a ci
garette, and surveyed the cafe. It was a workingman's place, innocuous, off the tourist beat. You look over your shoulder, he thought, and under the bed and behind the wallpaper, and then you do it all over again, and then you count ten and wonder what you missed.

  He said, "I'm surprised to find you my contact, Hag. Your division has always been the Middle East. Geneva is a long way from Cairo, Tel Aviv, or Baghdad."

  "And Jidrat. Lately I've been in Jidrat. Know it, Cajun?"

  "Mikelnikov mentioned it, and said that John Blaney is dead. Were you there when it happened?"

  "I passed through, on a scream for help from the fathead we've got there as consul. Teepee Fenner, the great Oklahoma Okie. I couldn't do anything."

  "I've never been there," Durell said, "but I know it's one of those wealthy, independent sultanates built on oil—paternalistic, feudal, and savage. A hell-hole where you think it's cool when the temperature drops to one-twenty in the shade. It's a long way from Geneva."

  "Not as far as you think," Haggarty said. "I wanted to stay on in Jidrat, but they pulled me off it to meet you here. I'm on my way home to New York." He blinked again, sipped at his chocolate, and when he returned the cup to its saucer, the blue china made a faint rattling sound. He rubbed two fingers across his mouth. He had a small, sandy Arabic beard. His skin was burned a dark bronze color in which his eyes, which were the color of the blue cup, seemed to contain a blind blue pallor.

  Durell hid his sense of disturbance. He knew Haggarty casually, from past meetings in far corners of the world.

  Haggarty went on apologetically. "I'm not good enough to take on Jidrat, apparently. Fenner down there has some powerful connections. But he's a bungler, Sam. He can get you killed."

  "If I go there, I'll be careful."

  "Yes. You'll go. And I'm on my way home to the States. To a desk job in computation, analysis, and synthesis."

  "That's important, too," Durell said. "You add up the bits and pieces and construct a picture for the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon, the White House, and the National Security people."

  "I know, I know," Haggarty said impatiently. "All the same, I goofed. You don't get switched on an assignment just after you start, otherwise. Maybe I was too anxious to find out about John Blaney. You see, we were good friends. He died hard, Cajun."

  "We all do," Durell said.

  Haggarty breathed heavily. "I keep thinking of how Fenner described Blaney's death, and I know I'm no good any more. I hope you've kept up with your Arabic, Sam."

  "I have. Do you brief me, or am I left to guess my way into this? From what I've read, Jidrat is a tight spot these days. Between that religious fanatic, the Q'adi, and Colonel Ta'arife, who'd like to imitate Nasser or Kassim—nobody knows which one, and maybe he doesn't know himself—and the old Imam, who's quite a respectable literary figure, incidentally—well, something has got to boil over. It's becoming obvious. And the old Imam can't stop it, right? If we could get Bogo back in line, though—"

  "Who?" Haggarty asked.

  "Prince Amr al-Maari. The next in line to rule. After the Imam."

  "Bogo?"

  "We called him that at Yale," Durell said. Then he looked at Haggarty and nodded. "It adds up, Hag. That's why they want me. Because I knew Bogo at Yale. Years ago, when the old Imam sent him to America for a touch of Western culture."

  "Yes, it adds up. They'd have that in your dossier at K Section," Haggarty said. "That's why you're so special."

  "It's in my dossier at MVD headquarters, too," Durell said wryly. He sat back and added, "But it's a long shot."

  "Have you been in contact with the prince since Yale days?"

  "No."

  "Washington still thinks you can influence him, though."

  "I suppose that's it," Durell said. "Where is he?"

  "Here, until last night, that is. In Geneva."

  "So that ties Jidrat to Geneva."

  "Right."

  "What am I supposed to do?" Durell asked. "I knew Amr al-Maari when he was one-and-twenty. We called him Bogo, sure, but I can't even remember why. And I haven't seen him since."

  Haggarty looked grim. "He's no schoolboy now. I've checked his career since he took over his private oil farm— when his father was assassinated and his brother killed in a tribal feud. Your friend Bogo got bored with it all and left the reins in his grandfather's hands—the old Imam—and he's been out-doing Farouk seven ways from Sunday ever since."

  Durell nodded. "He was a nice, shy kid at Yale, when I knew him."

  "Well, he grew up fast. You've read about him in the Sun-

  day supplements—dope, vice parties, the orgies at his place on the Riviera, his regular bouts in Swiss sanatoriums to wring himself out. That's where he is now—or was. At the Hospital St. Homerius, out of town."

  "You don't think he's still there now?"

  "Nobody can get to see him. That's why we're not sure." Haggarty touched his wispy Arabic beard. He looked haunted. "I wish we could get Fenner out of Jidrat. But somebody loves that fat little bastard. He's in the sands of Jidrat up to his neck; moored there forever, it seems. It'll take more than a mere agent like me to yank him out."

  Durell persisted. "You haven't said what I'm to do."

  "You've got to put some steel into your pal Bogo's spine. Ram it up his rear end and make him walk like a man, go Tiome, and straighten things out. According to the extrapolations of State and Pentagon, if Jidrat goes flaming nationalist 'neutral' like Cairo, or if this Q'adi takes off on a holy jihad, warring against all Western unbelievers like the old Moslem Brotherhood, we're in the soup.

  "That's what the computing machines say. That's what common sense says, too. In Jidrat, you've got the worst sort of paternalism added to the wildest brand of Arab nationalism. And it's mixed with that peculiar savagery the Arabs seem to specialize in. The place is in ferment—a microcosm of the whole world in this one Arab sultanate. Mud shacks and starvation and goats and camels next to air-conditioned palaces, foreign sport cars, and polo ponies. The old Imam can't hold out much longer. The Q'adi and our two-bit Hitler, Colonel Ta'arife, have temporarily allied themselves to get rid of the old man and take over. And the only one who can pull the country together is Prince Amr al-Maari, the playboy of the world."

  "He may not even remember me," Durell mused. "Well, if you can get him to go back home like a man, things will calm down. The Jidratti are devoted to him. But it has to be done fast, Cajun. Before the lid blows off. And he doesn't want to go home." Haggarty grunted. "I can't say I blame the son of a bitch. But it will be your job to persuade him, Sam. Remind him of joyous college days and all that. And Zoraya." "Zoraya?"

  "She's in your file, too. The prince's betrothed. Some say he married her when she was just a child—and he won't go near her. We can reach Zoraya, though. We found her hiding out in Elba. Living on hope, I guess. Loving that bastard and constantly being slapped down by him. Yet he listens to her, it seems. You knew her, didn't you?"

  "She was just a child," Durell said, frowning in the effort to remember. "There was one time, in Baltimore, when I went with Bogo to see her . . ."

  "Use her, if you can. We've contacted her. She remembers you, Cajun. She'll see you." Haggarty looked exhausted. "It's up to you to work it out. I'm just handing you the pieces. It's up to you to make a man out of the worst bum in the world and get him to go home and run things right. Use the girl if you can. Use the prince. But don't waste any time."

  "All right," Durell said.

  "And you've got one other job you can do for me, Cajun."

  "Yes?"

  "You can find out who killed John Blaney."

  Chapter Four

  Durell walked back through the old quarter of Geneva to his hotel. He thought about Bogo, Prince Amr ibn Alid al-Maari of Jidrat. An educated savage with a prep-school accent acquired after four years at Yale. A small man with a feline face and flashing teeth and an arrogant manner with money. An arrogant manner with people, too, on those occasions when he noticed
them at all. An inhuman contempt that placed a negligible value on those things that ordinary mortals considered important and essential.

  The slim Arab boy had somehow taken to Samuel Cullen Durell, grandson of a Mississippi river gambler. Durrell remembered how, in his junior year, the money had stopped _ coming from Bayou Peche Rouge, for some obscure reason, and he'd gone to MacTivers in East Haven to become a dealer for MacTivers in the gambling games there. Old Jonathan had taught him well; Durell was the best dealer MacTivers had ever seen. Still only a schoolboy, Durell even then could weigh risks with a gambler's careful estimate. He'd made a lot of money for MacTivers. If the Yale authorities had ever learned about his extra-curricular job, he'd have been thrown out of the University, of course. But they'd never heard of it.

  Amr al-Maari had come to MacTivers' joint with some upper-classmen who fawned on the prince for his wealth, enjoying the use of Amr's convertible and free money. The prince had already been initiated into the mysteries of poker by classmates in the dorm, but MacTivers' place was professional, the game was fast and hard and ruthless, and he was faced with experts.

  In twenty minutes the prince lost six thousand dollars. His manner of playing was not subject to advice.

  The prince was a poor loser, Durell remembered, and he recalled the thin fox face, the dark, frustrated congestion of blood in the sallow cheeks. Amr al-Maari had been pampered all his life, allowed to win at his games by the sycophants around him.

  But Durell had no pity. He needed the dealer's job. He could have cheated, of course. His fingers were supple and deceptive. He knew every trick in the book, taught to him by old Jonathan on long, hot afternoons aboard the wreck of the Twis Belles moored in the bayou below Peche Rouge. Mac-Tivers wanted Durell to use those tricks, and he thought Durell had worked the cards to take Amr for the first six thousand. But this wasn't true. The prince was simply a poor poker player with an appalling disregard for the value of money.

  Nevertheless, Amr's anger boiled over at last.

  In the quiet room with its green octagonal table where the harsh cone of light spilled over chips and cards and gamblers' hands flickering in and out on the play, Amr al-Maari suddenly leaped to his feet with a shrill, thin curse in Arabic.