Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  It was plain that unless something extraordinary happened, something to whip the mob to a new frenzy, Faiz would continue to stand against him.

  But the extraordinary thing was ready, at hand. And his six men were already gathering the material for Ta'arife's fox hunt.

  He went into the Al-Zaysir, noting the sleepy, spitting platoon of soldiers who guarded the foreigners here, and went up to the second floor and knocked on Naomi Haledi's door.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed at the open window. The morning light was still dim and the cool air was deceptive. Soon the crushing heat of Arabia would return and smother all breath, inflame the lungs and the mind and the heart with insane passions. When the knock came, she stood up slowly, her hand at her throat.

  "Esme?" she whispered.

  The knock was repeated and the lever handle on the door went down, then up, then down again. "Who is it?" she called.

  "Let me in, Miss Haledi." The answer came in English. "It is useless to resist. I am a friend. Believe me," Ta'arife said persuasively, "I am a friend. I have come here to help you."

  She went to the door and unlocked it.

  When she saw Ta'arife, she knew at once who he was. But she did not understand the compassionate smile on his full lips or the way he said gently, "Please do not be alarmed. I am your friend."

  "My friend? I have no—"

  "You should have remained on the ship," Ta'arife said. "It would have been less dangerous for you."

  "You . . . you're concerned about my danger?"

  "It would take too long to explain," Ta'arife said. "You understand the situation here. There must be no distractions. The people must not be diverted by discovering that you are in Jidrat."

  "I meant no harm. I mean, I'm not a spy, you know."

  "Of course I know that."

  She stared incredulously at the slim, elegant Arab. Ta'-.arife's smile showed fine white teeth. She said, "Is this some kind of trick?" She found it difficult to breathe. She felt trapped. For her, the worst had happened, and so easily, so casually that she still could not believe that she had been caught in this room like this. "Is it?"

  "Why must you believe we are all evil, all thirsting for your blood? You are only a woman, after all. We see m danger in your presence here. But the street crowds might think . . ." He shrugged. 'That is why I have come alone, You can see for yourself I have no one with me."

  "Am I under arrest?"

  "No."

  "I don't understand why—"

  "It is not difficult. I want you back on the ship, out of the way, so there will be no disturbance."

  "I. . . I don't know what to say," she whispered.

  "Come with me," he said.

  "Where?"

  "You must not be seen by the soldiers in the lobby. I have a car in back of the hotel. We can go that way."

  She felt weak with relief. For a moment she was still confused, not daring to believe that this polite man was the ogre she had hidden from in such terror. She looked around the room. "I should leave a note for Esme Kenton."

  "I will explain everything to her."

  Ta'arife's eyes were very bright and amused. She could not understand his smile. She said, "You know, I am not a spy."

  "That sort of thing is simple propaganda for the people. It is unfortunate, but that is the way of the world we live in. I am at heart a peaceful man. As an individual, I could be friends with anyone. Do you understand?" He shrugged expressively. "But as a soldier and as head of the national police, one has official duties. When I can be, I am lenient. As I am now. But you must hurry, please."

  "Yes, of course."

  "Do you want to take anything with you?"

  She picked up her handbag. Its weight reminded her that she had the Luger. She held it casually. "Only this."

  "Good. Let us go."

  She followed him into the empty corridor and down the back service stairs and through the rear hall to the kitchen of the Hotel al-Zaysir. She did not know it was the same route Esme Kenton had taken many hours ago.

  The kitchen was deserted. There would be no help today. She hurried through, following the colonel's slim, striding figure. She thought, joyously: It's almost too good to be true. I can hardly believe it. I'm safe. Nothing is going to happen to me after all. I was worried about nothing. Nothing at all.

  Daylight had come. The alley behind the al-Zaysir—with its steps going up under the archway and the native houses crowding close, balconies almost touching overhead—was still in cool shadow, however.

  She followed Ta'arife up the steps under the archway.

  At the head of the stone stairway in the alley stood four or five men.

  They looked ominous in their ragged white robes. They were armed with a variety of weapons. They blocked the way at the head of the stairway under the arch and looked at her, staring.

  Ta'arife halted. He smiled. "Wait," he said.

  Naomi paused, expecting Ta'arife to order the men aside. Nothing happened for a moment. Then one of the street Arabs stepped forward and shouted something. His voice echoed in shrill, urgent notes in the narrow alley.

  "Can't you—" Naomi began.

  "Israeli!" the leader of the Arabs cried. "Kill the spy!*'

  Something struck her in the back. She staggered, almost fell, and Ta'arife helped her up. He had shoved her. He laughed silently.

  "Run!" he cried.

  For an instant she stood without understanding. The breath was squeezed from her lungs. She felt the pain of Ta'arife's sudden blow, like a numbness.

  "Run!" he shouted again. "That way!"

  The Arabs walked toward them, then trotted. They began to yell. Naomi stood frozen in the shadowy alley. Ta'arife was pointing to a narrow slot between two nearby buildings. He gave an impatient exclamation, drew his gun, and pushed her again.

  Without thinking, she began to run.

  The moment she moved, the Arabs sprinted after her. Their yells and cries sounded almost at her heels. Without understanding, with no knowledge of how she was being used, or why, Naomi began to run.

  And nightmare turned into reality.

  It was all carefully arranged. Ta'arife's men did their work well.

  The city was coming awake to violence again. The sun was over the horizon of the sea. Its first rays touched the houses and streets of Jidrat with searing heat. Far in the distance, a grenade exploded, like the opening note of a devil's symphony. The faraway thump echoed in the air for a moment; then a chord was struck by a series of mortar shells. Smoke plumed into the sky from the gardens of } aiz. A machine gun chattered, adding its staccato notes to the growing series of discords. And, like a sleeping giant, the people and the mob appeared again; first in ones and twos, then in small armed groups eager for more burning and killing and looting. The sound of the mob began as a low, rumbling growl. Here and there came a shrill cry, a shriek of p-in, a shout of triumph. Fires broke out here, there—in half a dozen places. The city shook itself and awoke once again, with a roar, to rebellion.

  Colonel Ta'arife counted on his fox hunt to bring final success today.

  Naomi's first thought was to get back to the Hotel al-Zaysir somehow. Other Europeans were there. People who might help, who might demand civilized protection for her or at least be witnesses to what was being done to her. She did not think about it too clearly.

  But the alleyway into which Ta'arife had pushed her twisted away from the sanctuary of the hotel. When she came to the end of it, she stood blinded by the sudden glare of sunlight on a small bazaar. All the shops wcr closed, the baradas empty. Nobody was in sight. She looked behind her. The band of street Arabs trotted a short distance to the rear. When they saw her looking at them, they paused, too. "Kill the spy!" one of them shouted. "Kill!" The cry started her running again. She tried to turn right, racing across the uneven pavement of the square, still trying to circle back to the al-Zaysir. But as if they had suddenly sprung from the earth, another band of Arabs appeared in the street e
ntrance she had chosen.

  She checked her headlong flight, gasping. The heat of the sun struck her. Turning, she ran the other way.

  Now they closed the gap. Very slightly. She ran faster, up one street, down another. Panic rode on her back. She stumbled and fell sprawling in the filth of the gutter. A Moslem woman came out of the dark hole of a doorway and saw her on her hands and knees. The woman, veiled below the eyes, looked at the men who chased her and heard their screams. Her eyes widened. She spit at Naomi and clutched at her, trying to hold her down. Naomi screamed and clubbed at her with her handbag and scratched at the veil and staggered up again. The woman shrilled curses after her as she ran.

  The harbor, she thought. The quay and the ship. MacPherson would do something for her. Oh God, help me! she prayed.

  She turned left, toward the harbor. More people chased her now: a growing crowd, an organism that grew and fattened on her terrified flight. Miraculously, the street ahead was empty. She saw the distant glare of water in the harbor —a glimpse snatched between two coral-block buildings. She ran harder. The breath burned in her lungs. She stumbled and fell again.

  Her dress was torn. When she got up, she couldn't find her handbag and the gun. Oh God. Where had she lost it? How had it happened? Wildly, she looked behind her. She would use the gun, if she had it now. On herself, if necessary. Yes, on herself. That would be best.

  But she couldn't see the gun or the leather bag. A running mass of men in flapping, dirty robes turned the corner and saw her and shrieked in triumph. She turned and ran.

  Her left leg hurt. She had scraped it painfully on the cobblestones when she fell. Fortunately, her shoes were sensible flats, strapped snugly up to her ankles.

  She went down another street, and saw another group of six men suddenly block her way to the harbor.

  How did that happen? she wondered. She was trapped. She was being driven this way and that, like a hunted animal. It was a nightmare.

  She ran and fell and ran again. The streets slanted upward, going away from the harbor, away from the hotel. Higher and higher into the city by a series of stone stairways in the alleys and streets. The streets, yes! She had to get off the streets. Hide. Where? Somewhere. Where? Anywhere! Hide!

  She looked for an open door, an entrance, anything. The mob howled and stormed after her. Strange that they couldn't run as fast as she. No matter. Keep running! Look for a place to hide! Where?

  She was alone in a city thirsting for her blood. Running, falling, running. Her hands were bleeding. Her skirt was torn.

  The breath tore through her throat, threatened to rupture her lungs. There was a pain in her chest, a clutching and squeezing that threatened her with a bursting heart. She saw the open doorway. She ran into it.

  Darkness blinded her. Green globes danced and whirled before her eyes. She could see nothing. She felt stairs, smelled urine and human excrement and the stale odor of roasted lamb. She looked up the stairway. A man stood there. He was tall, enormous. A knife gleamed in his hands. He looked uncertain: his bullet-like head, shaven and unnatural, cocked to one side as he listened to the shrieking mob not far away. "Help me," she moaned. She did not know she spoke in Hungarian. "Help me, please. . . ."

  The man answered in Arabic, querulously. She did not understand him. But she understood his smile. He started down the steps for her, the knife lifted.

  She screamed and stumbled back and ran out into the hot, bright street again.

  How long had she been running? There was firing up ahead. Through the beat of blood in her ears, she distinguished the crackling of rifles, the tat-a-tat of a light machine gun, the thud and thump of mortars. She ran past a group of khaki-clad soldiers who yelled at her and stared in wonder and then turned incredulously to the mob at her heels. One of the soldiers reached from behind his sandbag parapet and clutched at her arm. She spun away, fell. Her dress was torn even more. She saw the soldier's face—young, astonished, puzzled. He was part of a regular platoon, a squad wearing the black armbands of rebellion—the Q'adi's men, or Ta'arife's, assaulting the walls of the palace. The walls were straight ahead.

  She saw a wide, bright, sunlit square; a broad avenue that led to soaring medieval battlements. The ponderous gates to the entrance were closed. Return fire crackled from the walls where the Imam's guards still stood, fearful and uncertain of what this second day of battle would bring.

  There was nowhere else to go. She ran toward the close gate.

  A bullet spanked the mosaic tile pavement of the square beside her flying feet. She looked back again.

  The mob saw her fleeing toward the sanctuary of the square that faced the Bab es-Salam, the main gate by which

  the palace, Faiz, could be breached. The mob was an irresist-able flood. Yesterday's dead who had fallen in the square trying to assault the gates were forgotten in the bloodlust whipped up by the chase, so carefully controlled by Ta'arife's men who had driven her here where the tide of the maddened crowd could not be stopped.

  The mob saw her fleeing toward the sanctuary of the Imam's palace. She stood between two forces—a tiny figure in torn white, her dark hair streaming, her face smeared and dirty, her eyes blurred by sweat and fear. Unwittingly, she had led the howling men straight to the towering gates.

  The Imam's guards on the walls saw her and saw the mob. Yesterday had not been like this. This was a human flood, howling for blood.

  They threw down their weapons and scrambled away from the wall.

  Naomi came to the gate, and turned.

  It was closed against her.

  She faced the mob, then, and saw their faces, across the broad square with its shattered palm trees and broken houses.

  She could run no further. There was no other place to go.

  Let them kill me now, she thought.

  Let them do it quickly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kolia Mikelnikov saw her.

  He was awake at dawn and had gone down to the bar of the al-Zaysir for breakfast wearing a light gray summer suit and a straw Panama that covered his short gray-tinged hair. His long, sad face was expressionless as he joined the other Europeans at the makeshift meal. They knew he was Russian. He did not know how they had learned this, but he supposed the soldiers had talked. It made no difference—except that the other Europeans, in their common trouble, did not speak to him or even nod. Their faces showed signs of strain, and they all stopped talking when Mikelnikov arrived.

  They look at me as if I were a leper in the streets of Jidrat, he thought. They blame me for all that has happened here.

  But this was only partly the truth.

  Afterward, he was picked up by Colonel Ta'arife, who seemed to be in a particularly jovial and optimistic mood. The assault on Faiz would begin in a very few minutes. They could view it from the roof of one of the buildings fronting Faiz Square and the Bab es-Salam. It would be interesting. The Major had fought in World War II with the Soviet forces, of course; he had been in Stalingrad; thus he would appreciate the street fighting, the method chosen to crash the gates.

  There would be heavy losses in a frontal attack, Kolia suggested. Would the rebel troops have the courage to charge across the square?

  Oh, they would be screened, Ta'arife said airily. The people themselves would lead the attack.

  They had gone to one of the buildings on Faiz Square and stood on the roof, waiting. The sun struck the back of Kolia Mikelnikov's neck like a hammer blow. They were sheltered here, standing behind a parapet on the rooftop three floors above the broad, barren square, from sniper fire coming from the walls of Faiz. Smoke rolled across the city from the new fires set by the mob. It smelled like the smoke of a burning garbage dump, Kolia thought.

  When Naomi first appeared, running out of a side street to the broad, open reach of the sunlit square, he did not recognize her.

  He had put her out of his thoughts, with the end of night.

  He cocked an eyebrow at Ta'arife, for an explanation, when he saw the mo
b pouring from the street, after the running girl.

  "It is an Israeli spy," Ta'arife said pleasantly. "I set the people to chivvy her this way. Nothing will stop them now. They are maddened with their blood lust. No bullets from Faiz will stop them until they have gone through and over the wall after her."

  Kolia did not recognize Naomi until she turned at the tall, high barrier of the Bab es-Salam and faced the mob streaming toward her, and waited for death.

  She had been given a good start. The square was over a hundred yards across, and she had reached the gates of Faiz before the mob really started pouring into sight like an angry river of open-mouthed, screaming faces.

  A machine gun chattered and the tide of humanity paused for an instant.

  And he recognized her.

  He saw her face clearly from the parapet. Saw the stark, white terror that shaped her mouth, her enormous eyes. Saw her torn clothing, the dirt and filth on her where she had stumbled and fallen in the streets. Saw her as a hunted animal deliberately set loose to lead the pack of murderous hounds to where their master wanted them to go.

  And their master, Colonel Ta'arife, was saying, "This girl, this Naomi Haledi, came from—"

  Kolia did not stop to think, to question, to doubt the possibility of what he saw. He had been trained and conditioned through long years in the MVD to expect only the unexpected. He raised his voice in a mighty shout that was torn abruptly from his lungs.