Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Contraband? The ship's engines broke down. He didn't choose to make port in Jidrat."

  "We don't know that. We must always be alert."

  "Against what? You're seeing ghosts, Colonel."

  "Perhaps. But you do not object to our search of this ship?"

  "Not my jurisdiction," Fenner grunted.

  He drained the last of his bourbon as Colonel Ta'arife went out.

  The captain of the Atlantic Maid was Thomas MacPherson. He was in his late fifties, gaunt and weather-beaten, with an ugly face and a massive chest and a habit of chewing, not smoking, cigars. He had been in the merchant marine since he was fourteen, and he knew the Arabian Sea and its dangers as he knew the craggy contours of his face. He carried a mixed cargo of raw rubber, spices, coffee, and hides from Indonesia and Malaya to the ports of Greece and the southern Mediterranean.

  The Atlantic Maid, five thousand tons, was a rusty relic of thirty years at sea, with ancient engines and equipment. It was bad luck, however, that they'd had to put into Jidrat for repairs. MacPherson knew all about this cruel coast. He could smell political trouble in all the corners of the world, and he would have preferred to drift at sea while Kuhlman, his engineer officer, struggled to set things right down below. But parts were needed and there were Americans in Jidrat who could help. So there really hadn't been a choice.

  But it was a tough shake for the girl.

  Tom MacPherson always sailed with trouble, but it hadn't made him callous to the suffering of others. He firmly believed that the major trouble with the world came from the fact

  that most people failed to pause and listen to the pitiful cries for help that came from those less fortunate than themselves.

  He certainly felt sorry for the girl.

  She said her name was Naomi Haledi. She came aboard in Singapore, a brisk dark-haired woman, far too pretty to be traveling alone, he thought. But there was a business-like competence about her, an attitude that brooked no nonsense, when she asked for passage to Athens or Haifa via Capetown, as the Atlantic Maid's itinerary advertised.

  She was an Israeli, she said, the representative of a potash and cement factory in Beersheba. She spoke English with an accent that told MacPherson she had been born in Europe, possibly Hungary. Her big, almond-shaped eyes had seen enough to match even MacPherson's book of troubles at sea.

  There was room aboard for four passengers, but she was the only one booked for the trip. Miss Haledi came aboard with a briefcase full of contracts, a feeling of satisfaction at having made a successful trip, and enthusiasm over the prospect of a four-week rest while the Atlantic Maid slogged to Karachi and across the Indian Ocean to Capetown and then up along the old Gold Coast of Africa to the Mediterranean.

  Now she was in trouble. The worst sort of trouble.

  It was exactly the sort of thing she had tried to avoid.

  MacPherson had asked her bluntly why she hadn't flown home, using a commercial airline instead of his bumbling, rusty teakettle of a boat. She said she wanted a vacation; the time was coming to her. All the data and contracts she had collected had been mailed home to Israel, except for unimportant documents. She had been ill, too. The doctor in Singapore had recommended the sea voyage.

  MacPherson wondered if it was nerves, although she seemed calm enough when she booked passage. But he remembered now, as he went from the bridge to her cabin, that he had heard her weeping quietly, twice, during the hot, brutal trip around India.

  He knocked gently and heard her speak, after a moment, in a voice both guarded and alarmed. "Who is it?"

  "MacPherson, Miss. May I talk to you?"

  "Are you alone?"

  "Yes, Miss."

  "Have the inspectors come aboard yet?"

  "They're not due until tomorrow morning, I think."

  The louvered door opened, and she stood there, squinting into the huge westering sun that turned the sky into a shocking, incredible array of colors over Jidrat. She wore a white dress and carried her shoulder bag of brown leather. "Come in, please."

  "Are you all right?" MacPherson's manner was fatherly. "You haven't stepped out on deck since we came into port, Miss Haledi."

  "Best if I don't," she said tightly. "They will come aboard and my Israeli papers will make trouble for you. They may imprison me."

  "Not while I'm captain of the Atlantic Maid."

  "You could not stop them," she said gently. "They will call me a spy and seize your vessel if you resist. True. I could not know we would break down and come here for repairs. But they will not be so rational, Captain. You know this is true. You try to be kind, but what can you do? I can only say ... I will not be taken from your ship."

  "Of course not."

  She shook her head. "You understand, I will fight them." She opened her purse and showed him a Luger. Sh« held it easily. "I will use this first, before I let them put their hands on me."

  "Now, Miss Haledi . . ." He paused, knowing that any attempt to ease the truth would only be met by her contempt. She knew the truth. She knew what might happen to her in this city of inflamed passions. He waved a big hand. "Put the gun away. It won't be enough, you know."

  "I must try. That is all I can do."

  "We'll think of something before they come here. Maybe I can dig up a British or American passport we can doctor for you. Anyway, I'll see the American consul again."

  "Why should he help me?" she asked scornfully.

  MacPherson had no reply. It was hot in the cabin. Moored by the quay, the old vessel absorbed all the heat exuded by the limestone hills of Jidrat. "We might smuggle you aboard one of the tankers," he finally suggested.

  "They go through the Suez Canal. They would not risk their passage for me." She shook her head. "I appreciate your kindness in trying to help me, but do not trouble yourself more, Captain."

  She closed the cabin door when MacPherson left and sank down on a bunk to light a cigarette. Her hand* shook. Through the open porthole she smelled the brassy heat of the desert, the incredible odor of excrement and spices that came across the filthy harbor water.

  All my life, she thought, I've been running and hiding. I thought I was safe when I came to Israel. I thought I'd come home. But there is no safety anywhere. One must live always in fear, it seems. Nothing has changed since Budapest.

  She thought of Budapest, of her acting career, of her father and two brothers. All dead now, gone in that dreadful moment of fire in the square. She saw it happen. She saw Kolia give the command that killed them as he sat in his armored car, his face savage and unnatural.

  It had been a childish dream, those months of marriage to Kolia before it happened. He could protect her and her family, she'd thought. But she hadn't married Kolia for that. She loved him—until that moment in the square.

  Afterward, she'd fled through Vienna to Israel. She never went back to that little apartment she had made into a home for herself and her Russian husband. You began again and tried to forget. But sooner or later fate picks you up and laughs in your face and puts you down in a place of terror, like this. A place from which there can be no escape—except by death.

  Chapter Seven

  Durell followed the maidservant, a demure, sloe-eyed El-bani, up the marbl( steps and across th' ba!u«tradcd terrace that seemed to be pasted to the mountainside The evening was cool. The Mediterranean and the distant Italian mainland were shrouded in pastel shadows. The wiinJ carried with it the sound of old church bells, the rumble of ca-t wheels on the road below, the bellow of an ox, and the endless beat of the sea.

  The villa was small, and not pretentious like its neighbors. He noted that the shutters were a faded blue and the outer walls had once been a chrome yellow, but h^r- bee-n washed by sun and rain for years until the?} were almost v hire Wicker furniture was grouped on the terrace, and Zoraya was there, waiting for him.

  He felt an unexpected anticipation. In his memory, she existed as the big-eyed. frightened child in the dawn brilliance of a Chesapeake morning, her he
ad bowed against the Arabic invectives delivered by a Yale student.

  He did not knew what he had expected, but from Cato's words he knew she had become beautiful. He felt astonished when he saw her rise and come toward him. For once, Cato had understated the case.

  She smiled, and extended her hand, and there was about her the same air of anticipation as his, as if they were old, old friends and not simply two people who hed met lon^ ago on a misty morning far from this place. Each sheuild have long ago forgotten the other, but it was cleai that she had not forgotten Durell, any more than he had lost her image in his memory.

  "Sam," she said quietly. "Sam Durell."

  "Hello, Zoraya."

  "I always knew that you and I would meet again."

  "You remember, then?"

  "Of course. Anei you do, too. It is strange, is it not?" She gestured. "Do sit down. I am happy to see you. How did you find me?"

  "For a woman with an international reputation for mystery, you were not difficult to find."

  She laughed. "Mystery? I am a simple person, devoted to simple causes, Durell. May I get you a drink? We have some native white wine. A light supper? There is freshly netted fish, pasterella cheese—"

  "Nothing, thank you."

  "You look as if . . . Were you in an accident?"

  "It was not an accident," Durell said. "My car went over the cliff, however."

  She touched her lips in a swift gesture of dismay. She had grown tall. She wore a Hindu sari, a shimmering swirl of gold net around a body that obviously was full and mature and desirable. Her eyes were incredibly large—a clear and unusual gold—and he remembered the tawniness of her gaze. Under her wide, arched brows, her eyes expressed concern for him with an intimacy that was warm and at once responsive, as if, in their mutual memories of that Chesapeake dawn, they had somehow remained close to each other through all the years that had intervened. It was as if they were truly old friends.

  Her complexion was English, inherited from her mother. There was strength and intelligence in her face. She came toward him and touched his cheek with wondering fingertips.

  "I've thought of you so much. ... It was not an accident?"

  "No. Another car was involved."

  "I do not understand."

  "I came here to ask something of you, Zoraya, and there are some who would like to prevent that."

  "Oh. Politics."

  "You could call it that."

  "I am not interested in politics."

  "Are you interested in Amr?"

  She said quietly, "I am still married to him. He could choose the Moslem way and divorce me, simply by announcing it three times. But he has not done so. I think he will never do so."

  "Do you debase yourself with hope, then? You know what he is," Durell said. "Have you seen him since he arrived last night?"

  "No."

  "Will you see him?"

  "If he sends for me." She smiled. "You think I crawl

  to him. He has not forgiven the child I was for what happened the day of our marriage. The men who stole me are long dead. I can only keep telling him that nothing happened then, that I am still his bride."

  "You can't still love him," Durell said.

  "You know nothing of it."

  "I'm sorry." He paused. "I meant to take it slower. I have much to say to you, Zoraya. Perhaps I have no right to say any of it. You are angry with me already, because of my clumsiness. I admit that I don't understand you or Amr or what is between you."

  "You never will."

  "May I go on? May I tell you why I am here?"

  "You said your car was damaged, but that it was no accident."

  "That's part of why I'm here," Durell said.

  She stared at him with golden eyes, bright and enormous in the fading light of day. Somewhere in the chestnut trees behind the villa, a nightingale suddenly sang in full throat. The house was silent, as if listening. The wind was stronger. It pressed the girl's sari close to her slender body. Her dark hair moved with the pressure of the wind as if endowed with a life of its own, caressing her cheek, a tendril kissing her lips, curling about a small, delicate ear on which a large pearl glistened, opalescent and milky in the evening light.

  "You are not the first to come to me about Prince Amr," she said finally. "To come with tales of danger and warnings of catastrophe."

  "Did you believe the others?"

  "No."

  "Will you believe me?" he asked.

  Her eyes searched his face. "I will listen."

  "But you must believe," he insisted. "There will be no others after me. There will be no more time, after tonight."

  "You come here out of the past with an urgency that is frightening, Durell. My memory of you is bright. You were kind that night, when I was so unhappy. I have thought of you often since then. I told you I would see you again. But not like this, not like this."

  "I am sorry. We cannot control our destiny."

  She said, "Do you think I am a fool? A silly woman devoted to a man whose acts of vice are an abhorrence?"

  "I simply do not understand it," he said.

  She said, "Then you are not here just as an old friend."

  "Not entirely. But because of that, of course."

  "They chose you because of that night long ago?"

  "Yes."

  "Your people have the confidence of arrogance."

  "No. We only try to do our best."

  "For whom? For yourselves, naturally. It does not matter who else may be hurt or what the results are to others."

  "That's not so. They sent me, it is true, because I once knew you and the prince. But it seems I cannot reach Amr. He is well protected. So I am here. I came to you foi help, for understanding. And perhaps, in doing this thing together with me, you will find what you have been searching for all these years, Zoraya."

  "What thing is that?" she challenged him.

  He looked at the villa. It was empty. He looked at the darkening sky, the shifting sea, the mountains up and clown the misty shore. It all seemed empty. He knew it was not. He knew there was danger. He had the feeling that the Swiss in the car was not the only agent sent to Elba. There were others. There would be someone sent by Mikclnikov, and some others from Jidrat, to keep the prince here—stupefied by his pleasures—to see that he continued to wallow in his vicious pastimes and forget the reason he had been born into the world.

  He began to talk softly to the quiet, lovely woman who listened. He told her what he could. Not all of it, but enough. He knew that much of what he said was known to her already. Her mind was quick and bright. She knew the tremulous balance of power in the world today. She knew that only a small pebble could tip the scales to disaster. A pebble in the desert sands of Jidrat, perhaps, hurled by wild-eyed Jidratti inflamed by impassioned promises of a new glory for Islam.

  Finally he told her what he wanted to do with the prince.

  She was silent, staring out over the terrace to the d rk sea. He lit a cigarette, wondering where the Elbani maid had gone. He wondered if there were other servants in the house. He did not break the silence with more questions. He watched the girl.

  It came to him that she was young and vulnerable, after all. She was a woman now, but her life was warped by seclusion. The fact that she remembered him spoke vividly of the

  rarity for her of such moments as that morning in Maryland. She remembered him with fondness, with a strange, immediate, compulsive affection that he returned without hesitation, wanting to help her, wanting to touch her and hold her and comfort her.

  She said, "And if he refuses to go home?"

  "He will lose everything."

  "And if he agrees?"

  "They will try to kill him. Perhaps tonight. What happened to me on the road here shows that they know I am here, and they know why, and they are afraid, lest I succeed."

  "They?"

  "Those who would take Jidrat into a world alien to Islam."

  "But the Q'adi Ghezri is a holy man—"
/>
  "Crazed with a lust for power, for worldly immortality."

  "And Colonel Ta'arife?"

  "An imitator of dictators in Egypt and Iraq."

  "Would it be so terrible, then, if Amr stayed here and forgot politics?"

  "Should he forget his duty?"

  "It is only a word, nothing more."

  "Would he be a man here, or in Jidrat?" Durell asked. "You have waited so long, Zoraya. I think you love him. The reasons for love are beyond rationality. You want what is best for him. I say that death is better for him than to stay here."

  Her lips were parted. "Yes," she whispered.

  "And nothing will ever change for you. You will go on waiting, a mystery to the world, dying slowly each day because you know the things he does to destroy himself."

  "Yes."

  "Would you end it now? Tonight?"

  She stood up. She clasped her hands and the sari rustled with a golden, metallic sound, shaping itself lovingly to her body. "I am not afraid. But I feel certain that I should not interfere."

  "You should. It is your right. And also your duty."

  "After all this time . . ."

  "You can end it. Or make a beginning of it, for yourself."

  She looked down at him. "Amr will die."

  "We don't know that."

  "I know it. It is written. He will die."

  Durell was silent.

  She said, "But I agree. We will end it. I will take you to him now/'

  "You need not go with me to d'Igli's villa. There will be people there and acts you should not see—"

  "I know of them. I will go. I am ready now."

  Chapter Eight

  The pleasure dome of Xanadu, Durell thought, was never pictured as the Count d'lgli's villa on the island of Elba. Yet he was sure that never in Coleridge's opium-induced dreams were the pleasures he so vividly intimated as broad or as amoral as the evening affair in full swing when Durell arrived with Zoraya.

  She still wore her golden sari. He had dusted the grit and brambles, token of his escape on the mountain road, from his clothing. He had not reported the affair to the local police. Time enough for that. Someone would find the wrecked cars in the fiord, and the two bodies also; but not at once, he hoped. Not until he had left Elba behind him.