Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  "I did nothing to your employer, Juliano."

  "He says you have desperately wronged him. Only a little pain will even the score."

  Durell's mouth went dry. Suddenly, the Elbani held a knife and it glittered in the white mist that drifted across the road. Far below, there was the crash of the sea below the pines that grew in the fiord. The thin man moved closer, on careful feet—like a dancer, smiling. His teeth were white and large and very even. He wore a large gold wedding ring on the hand that held the knife.

  "Come here, signor," Juliano whispered. "It will be easier if you do not struggle."

  Durell came around the Fiat with his gun in his hand. Juliano saw the gun and halted. He looked astonished. He looked back at the fat Swiss, but it was too late. There was the roar of the Mercedes motor, and the glint of dim sunlight on the fat man's green glasses. Then the Mercedes leaped forward at them—at the Fiat and Durell and the Elbani with the knife.

  The thought flickered through Durell's mind that he should have anticipated this. The Swiss had used this method before. He liked to commit murder with moving vehicles. * The next moment he jumped for safety. His shoulder smashed into the Elbani and spun the man sideways. The knife jumped, slashed feebly at him. Then the heavy Mercedes was upon them, crashing into the little Fiat at the side of the road.

  Durell fired three times at the fat face behind the windshield.

  The glass starred and shattered.

  The face dissolved in blood.

  There was a thin screaming above the beat of the Mercedes' motor followed by the breaking sound of twisting trees as both Durell's Fiat and the Mercedes plunged off the road into the deep fiord.

  Durell had no chance to watch. The Elbani scrambled to his feet, fell, and tried to get up. His face was twisted in agony. His leg was broken. He held out a hand in a wild plea for help, but it was too late. He lost his balance and went over the edge. It was as if a giant hand had suddenly plucked him out of existence.

  For a few moments there was the sound of falling, of breaking branches, a distant crash upon rocks.

  Then the rhythm of the sea was resumed in the fiord below.

  Durell, who had dropped to his knees to fire at the Swiss, slowly got up. He walked to the edge of the road £nd looked down.

  There was nothing to see. Both cars were gone.

  Both men were gone, too.

  He drew a deep breath of the air that smelled of the pines' and the fog and the salty sea. His legs trembled^or a moment. He looked up and down the twisting switchback road he had traveled. No one was in sight. Far up in the blue sky he saw the thin vapor trails of a squadron of jets on a training flight toward the coast of France.

  He turned and walked in the same direction, up the hill, toward the villa of Zoraya.

  Chapter Six

  In the American consulate in Jidrat, T. P. Fenner stared at the shattered office window and wiped his red face and cursed the day he had let them flatter him into the notion that he was a diplomat. It would have been all right if they'd sent him to Paris or Rome or even Madrid, although as a son of Oklahoma he didn't cotton to Spaniards who might be related to Mexicans who, in turn, were a distinct sub-species of the human race, in Teepee's catalogue. But they'd sent him here—a hell of a reward for all the cash and votes he'd contributed to the last political campaign.

  He sat down angrily behind his desk, feeling ar parched sensation in his throat, a prickly rash on his body. The air conditioner was useless with the smashed window. And beyond the broken glass was the wreckage of the garden, a degradation inflicted on U.S. property by the savage, inflamed mob of Jidratti. Beyond the broken window he could see the strange five-story limestone houses of Jidrat, like the eyeless, bombed-out cities of Europe after the war. In this case, however, there was only the daily scourge of sun and sand, with a wind like a breath out of hell, to effect this result.

  He glared at the Arab who was trying to pull the rest of the glass from the shattered window frame. "Impshi, ya homarJ" he rasped. "Get out, you donkey!"

  The Arab turned at the irrational note in Fenner's voice. Across the office, the aged Imam Yazid spoke quietly to the laborer, who bowed and ran out. Fenner blew out a long breath of air.

  "Sorry. It's the heat, Highness. And the outrageous insult to the American flag, the destruction of property—"

  "The mob was out of control, Mr. Fenner. They acted like animals crazed by the sun. I am here, personally," the old man said, "to apologize and make restitution for the damages."

  Fenner felt as if he'd punched a sack of feathers. This senile old man was interested only in his old books of Koranic lore, but he could still roll with the punches. These

  Arabs were smart and sly. They knew when to knuckle under. And they knew how to strike back—with a knife, in the dark. Oh, they were experts at that!

  He thought of last night's riot with an inner shudder. Yazid's trtfops couldn't control the mob. Everything came apart: telephones and power failed and all law and order went up into the dark sky with the screams of the dirty crowd. The mob really ruled Jidrat, Fenner thought bitterly. Maybe Ta'arife was right. You needed a strong man, not this old geezer. What did Washington know about it, insisting the Imam be supported?

  "I'll have to cable home," he said, aware of how the Imam had undercut his justifiable anger. "We can't accept this lawless threat to American lives and investments."

  "Yes. I came to apologize." The old man looked tired. His hooded eyes in his old eagle's face were fixed on something in the blind mist of the past. "I ask again that Washington use its influence to bring back the prince."

  "Impossible."

  "To Americans, nothing is impossible."

  "We have no influence with Amr al-Maari," Fenner said. "Anyway, he's not much, is he? No offense meant, but your grandson hasn't got the guts to come back here and face the music."

  "He must be so persuaded, or you lose all. If Ta'arife and the Q'adi Ghezri win, as you saw last night, there will be nothing left here for your country, believe me."

  "We can handle it all right," Fenner grumbled.

  "But the world is complicated these days. When the English were here, at least they kept order. Today, a stone cast in Jidrat can smash the skyscrapers of New York City."

  "Don't worry," Fenner said. "We'll take care of it."

  "I trust that you do," the Imam said gravely.

  Fenner stood up as the old man left. The Imam's guards, nattily turned out in khakis and snowy turbans, crowded the corridor outside the consulate. The old man walked feebly, as if exhausted.

  To hell with it, Fenner thought. What was needed here was a platoon of U.S. Marines to put these people in their place.

  He lit a cigar and went to the broken window. Beyond the tiled balcony was an open blast of afternoon sun. He looked at the wrecked garden, littered with filth and offal by last night's chanting mob, and then he stared beyond, to the shallow harbor with its tangle of crude oil pipelines intertwining like spaghetti to the concrete loading pier in the haze of the sea. Several tankers were pumping up the black liquid, like hungry beasts from some gargantuan, prehistoric world. The native dhows and trading vessels were tied up in the confusion of the waterfront. Nearer, the shrill ululations of food and coffee vendors, camel drovers and sheep herders, made a steady droning in the simmering air.

  Fenner chewed his cigar and glared at the small tramp freighter that had limped into Jidrat the night before. She flew Liberian colors, but her skipper was American. And due here this afternoon, no doubt, with his tale of woe, expecting miracles from the American consul in this godforsaken hole.

  Just for once, Fenner thought, let me go over to the bar at the Hotel al-Zaysir and talk shop with the oil men and hear the old Texas and Oklahoma drawl and drink some decent bourbon with men who made sense out of their lives. But he had the unhappy feeling that this wasn't going to be the day for it.

  There was a knock on his door and he turned, half-expecting the old Imam back. But it
was Esme Kenton. The Englishwoman, wife of the archeologist, Paul Kenton, wore a white suit, and her pale, sun-bleached hair was tied back with a simple ribbon. Her lips looked bloodless.

  "Mr. Fenner, I want to know if you've heard anything," she began, in a tight blurt of words.

  "Madam." He waved impatiently. "You see what happened last night. The police are busy with other matters."

  "But you must find my husband!"

  "I'm not responsible for British subjects, although I use my influence, of course. Colonel Ta'arife's police have promised to search the desert around Ain Gemilha for your husband."

  "Ta'arife!" she cried. "But he killed your own man, John Blaney. Don't you know that? And now perhaps he's killed Paul!"

  Fenner wondered who had ever described the English as an unemotional race. "Sit down, madam. You need a drink, now."

  "I need my husband," Esme said thinly. "He tried to find out what happened to Blaney. That's why he's missing."

  Fenner's stomach squirmed, remembering how Blaney had looked, pegged out there in the desert with his body all carved up. "We know what happened to John Blaney," he muttered.

  "But you don't know why," Esme insisted. "And Paul tried to find out. He went to the dig yesterday noon and he hasn't been seen since. The laborers at Ain Gemilha say he never got there. And they're all gone now, every one of them! As if they know Paul is dead and there won't be any more work for them."

  "My dear madam, you're upset—"

  "Oh, please," she said quietly. "Please help me."

  Teepee Fenner shrugged helplessly. What did this plain Englishwoman in her thirties expect from him, anyway? It was up to Ta'arife's cops to hunt missing persons. And all that garbage about Kenton knowing something about Blaney's murder! She was just trying to get the weight of Uncle Sam behind her desperate hunt. No harm trying, Fenner thought, but he had other things to do besides upsetting the local applecart bv insisting that the professor be turned up pronto. Probably the old boy had found some chips of pottery that had interested him and had just forgotten to come back. Probably nothing more serious than that, Fenner thought.

  He looked at Esme Kenton with exasperation. "Your husband was warned not to interfere in political matters. What can I do now?"

  "Won't you try to help?" she whispered again.

  "There's a man coming here. He'll take charge of it."

  "When? When will he be here?"

  Fenner shrugged again. "I don't know. In a few days."

  Esme Kenton stood up. She walked to the broken window and looked at the wreckage of the garden under the glare of the sun. Her voice was a tired whisper when she spoke.

  "In a few days, Mr. Fenner, we may all be dead."

  She walked through the crowded bazaars toward her house near the waterfront, heedless of the arrogant pushing of the throngs. A different temper ruled in Jidrat, as if the boiling sun had finally steeped men's brains in madness. She walked as though in a dream, thinking of Paul, and the fear in her was too great to be contained.

  Her house faced the burning sea. There was a blank wall on the street side, facing the quay with its tangle of oil lines feeding the tankers. On the headland that formed the harbor, there was no tree, not a speck of green, nothing but lizards and the sun and the muffled figures of Arab laborers. Yes, there were the limousines and the camels, she thought, the palaces and the hovels, and it was all insane, like handing a reckless child a dynamite cap and a hammer.

  She had been all over the world with Paul. Their seven years of marriage had been a wonderful idyl, a dream of quiet joy and rewarding work. As an archeologist for a British foundation, Paul had worked in Yucatan and Malaya and now here, Jidrat, searching for the origins of the Nabatean culture that had spread over the Arabian peninsula into Sinai and the Negev, and merged with that of the ancient Judean tribes of Bible times. Ain Gemilha, the most promising site, was only six miles out of the city. She had been there twice today, but Paul wasn't there. And the Arab crews of diggers had scattered, frightened by something they would not tell her about.

  Esme walked through her house into the walled garden-in the rear, refreshing with its fountain and green oleanders. But there was no relief for her here. She called abruptly, "Tabib?"

  He was there, the Sudanese Negro with three knife marks on each cheek. He was patient and strong. He had been with the Kentons since their arrival in Jidrat.

  "Get the jeep, will you, Tabib?"

  "Once more, Mrs. Kenton?"

  She said tiredly, "We must keep looking for him."

  It was only a short drive into the desert to the site of the archeological dig. The sun was still an hour above the horizon. The road spanned a wadi on a rickety Bailey bridge put up by the oil engineers and left as a courtesy to Paul. There was nothing to see but the high, flat mound of the ancient town buried under the debris of the two millenia since people flourished here in the time of Christ. Dear Christ, Esme thought, help me find him. Christ, help me.

  Vultures soared in the burnished sky, far away. She told herself it was a dead camel or goat. Tabib stopped the jeep.

  "There is no one here, Mrs. Kenton."

  "Let's look again," she said.

  There was the deep, uncovered well, dry now after a thousand years of disuse. Paul had laboriously uncovered the steps going down in spirals to the heart of the wadi floor. There were heaps of broken shards awaiting Paul's tally. Esme put a trembling hand to her lips. Carefully, she went down the steps of the ancient well, out of the blast of sunlight, and looked for any sign that might end her suspense and tell her about Paul.

  Tabib went trudging over the flinty ground in the other direction, dutiful but stupid.

  Esme paused at the bottom of the well. The sky seemed shut off above by the round opening over her head. A small heap of picks and shovels had been left against the wall of the cistern. If Paul had come here, there must surely be a sign—

  She heard Tabib scream.

  The sound was dim and faraway. Unreal. Like the scream of an animal in incredulous pain. It came and was gone, as if it had never been.

  Esme turned and ran up the stone steps that circled out of the well. Her heart pounded. She came out into the blinding sunlight and could see nothing for a moment. The flat hill of Ain Gemilha looked as flinty and sterile as before. She could see no one.

  "Tabib!" she called. "Was that you?"

  Her words winged away into brazen emptiness.

  Then she saw him.

  He came running, arms flapping, with the staggering gait of a scarecrow. His white robe looked tangled and darkly stained. His mouth was open, and there was something strange about it. It was a dark, liquid orifice in a crazed face.

  He made sounds of agony. He spit and coughed and choked on blood. The blood ran down his chin and he stared at her with unbelieving eyes from a dozen paces away.

  His tongue had been cut out. He had been thrown to the ground, to judge by the dirt on his usually snowy robe. And his tongue was cut out.

  "Tabib!" she cried.

  He turned and ran away, staggering, and although she called after him and tried to overtake him, she could not. And presently he was lost in the orchid shadows of the desert and she found herself quite alone, her heart thudding enormously, as if to shake the world.

  She turned and faced the empty, desolate digging site.

  "Is anyone here?" she cried. "Where are you?" But her voice was swallowed by the grinning sun, and she cried again, "Come out where I can see you! Are you cowards? Are you beasts? Why did you do it?"

  The desert offered no answer.

  She sat down and wept in total agony of spirit.

  When the sun went down and the chill night touched her, she knew that Tabib would not come back. He had been silenced forever. Whatever he had found was gone with him. So she walked slowly back to the jeep and drove across the Bailey bridge again, toward Jidrat.

  Colonel Ta'arife also made appropriate apologies to T. P. Fenner. They sat in Bombay chairs on Fen
ner's balcony, behind the screen that hid them from the darkening street below. The colonel drank black coffee from a small brass cup. Fenner preferred bourbon. He had managed to kill most of a quart today.

  "If therq were a change in government," Ta'arife said blandly, "you could be assured that the restlessness would end. The people are disturbed by the rule of a senile old man. Imam Yazid has outlived his day, Mr. Fenner. Surely your government must understand that new ideas, new blood, youth—all this must be given an opportunity to rule." Ta'arife paused and smiled. "We would, of course, maintain the strictest neutrality."

  "We?"

  "I would be a part of the new government," Ta'arife said.

  "That's settled, is it?"

  "Yes. The Q'adi and I are agreed."

  "That's the part I don't like," Fenner said bluntly. He spread his knees to ease his solid little paunch. "This Q'adi Ghezri, always going around in that black outfit, riding his white donkey—he looks like a lunatic to me. One of them radicals, like. A fanatic, y'know?"

  "He will serve his purpose," Colonel Ta'arife said.

  "Hum," Fenner said.

  "If you could advise your government to be favorably disposed, to help us with money and arms, then perhaps . . ."

  "Impossible. We won't interfere."

  "Non-interference, too, if we could count on it, would help," Ta'arife murmured. He stood up, slender, elegant, a whip of a man with dark eyes that could hypnotize a crowd like the eyes of a snake holding a bird in its grip. "You understand that the mob violence last night was unavoidable? If matters threaten again, you will be warned, of course. And it will happen once more so long as Yazid rules here."

  "Any further damage to U.S. property—"

  "Will be paid for. I promise."

  "I reckon that's all you can do, then," Fenner said grudgingly.

  The colonel turned to go, then paused as if in afterthought. "One more thing, sir. The Liberian freighter that came into harbor this afternoon—the one with engine trouble?"

  "Nothing to do with me," Fenner said promptly.

  "The captain is American. He has asked permission to come ashore, urgently, to see you. We insist that his vessel be searched for contraband, you know."