Assignment Afghan Dragon (18 page)

“Yes. According to Peking radio.”

“ ‘The mischief of fire or water or robbers touch only the body,’ my grandfather used to say. ‘But those of evil doctrines destroy the mind.’ The old man often told me stories about lucky tortoises and dragons. I would have liked to see this particular dragon. ‘A man without thought for tomorrow will have sorrow today.’ ”

Mr. Chou stared blindly up into the glaring sun. His smile was a child’s smile, of faraway remembrance. “The old man told me how P’an Ku, a sculptor who lived for eighteen thousand years, fashioned the world with his hammer and chisel. While he built the mountains and scooped out the seas and hollowed the river courses, P’an Ku’s eternal companions were the four auspicious beasts, the Dragon, the Unicorn, the Tortoise and the Phoenix. The dragon heads all the creatures; he is larger than large, smaller than small. His breath is a cloud on which he rides up to Heaven. The Dragon has five colors in his body, and owns a pearl which is the soul of the moon. He can be visible or invisible. In the spring, he rides the clouds; in the summer he swims in deep waters . . ." Mr. Chou’s voice trailed off. He smiled again. “I would have liked to see this dragon we all pursued. I would like to see my old grandfather again—”

The Chinese made a thin sound in his throat. He smiled at Durell, a sad, sad smile, filled with doubts and regrets. His eyes turned up and remained fixed on the harsh sky. A vulture soared up there.

The man was dead.

Durell turned and looked down the narrow valley. Anya was climbing up from below. He decided to wait until she joined him, and he watched her small figure move among the rocks that had spilled at the base of the canyon. Nothing else stirred except for dust devils kicked up by the whimpering wind. The air felt suddenly cooler. He thought of Chou, and how each man turned back to his origins at the moment of his end. Anya appeared and disappeared among the huge boulders. He felt a sadness for Mr. Chou and for a world of men that never found peace until the end came. Would peace for all men come with the desolate peace of a dead, radioactive world? He shrugged off a shudder and knelt beside the dead Chinese to search the man’s pockets.

He heard a small scream, quickly stifled, from Anya.

She had come only halfway up among the rocks on the slope to meet him, the last time he saw her. Now he could not spot her down there.

“Anya?” he called.

His voice echoed in the narrow canyon. Down below, he saw Howard and George talking, standing beside the parked van. Anya did not reappear.

“Anya?” he called again.

He thought he glimpsed movement among the boulders where she had last been climbing, but he wasn’t sure, and he left Chou’s body and started down toward her, sensing the hostility of these bleak Afghan hills. Stony rubble rattled away from under his boots. He moved wide to the right, not retracing the way he had come up. Great reddish rocks towered above his head. It was like being lost in a stone forest. He could not see more than a few yards in any direction, and he turned downhill toward the center of the rock spill.

"Sam!”

Her muffled shout, quite near him, was quickly cut off. At the same moment, he heard the whisper of secret sound above and behind him. Anya’s warning came too late. He felt the shock of heavy weight as a man crashed down on his shoulders; he staggered, slipped in the rubbled shale, went down on one knee, his right hand and gun flung out to keep his balance. A booted foot crushed his wrist on the stone. He smelled sweat and rancid sheepskin. Something smashed against his head and drove him over on his side. His opponent was a giant, bearded and wild-looking, his teeth showing in a cruel grin. Durell tried to draw up a knee, failed, felt something hit the nape of his neck. The mountains reeled. The earth heaved under him. He had lost his gun. He suddenly thought that this was the way it was going to end, after all, here in these empty mountains, victim of a simple, sly ambush set by tribesmen.

He heard more booted feet rush toward him and then he was buried under the weight of several evil-smelling men, and a torrent of blows rained down on him, He thought he heard Anya scream again, and a quick burst of sound from the van’s engine, far below. They were running away, he thought dimly.

Then there came a last blow, and he slid inevitably into a darkness that was almost welcome.

It was dark and cold.

His teeth were chattering, and with a great effort he clenched his jaw against the spasms of pain in his face. The pain grew as he crawled slowly up out of unconsciousness. He did not move. Perhaps someone would notice that his teeth were not noisy any more, but the cold shook him like an aspen in the wind. One side of him was warm, pressed against something smooth and yielding. It was a woman’s urgent body. He felt an arm around him, holding him close to the rounded heat. A naked leg and thigh closed over him, as if to impart the warmth of blood and living tissue to his own.

He tried to give no hint of being awake again. He lay on his left side, with the woman spooned behind him, and when he opened his eyes, he thought he had been blinded, because he saw nothing at all, only a blackness unrelieved by even the faintest glimmer of light. Gradually he became aware of the smell of poorly tanned goatskins, of stale goat’s milk, of camel-dung smoke from cooking fires. The wind made flapping sounds, as if something were loosely blowing; there was a wooden creaking, too. He realized that he and the woman were lying inside a pitch-dark tent, in a place exposed to bitter mountain winds. His every muscle ached; there was a special pain

in his ribs, and if several were not broken, they were at least badly bruised. His left hand throbbed where his attacker’s boot had stamped on it. He carefully tried to move his fingers. They worked all right, if stiffly and painfully.

The woman wriggled against him, as if to get even closer to impart her warmth to his battered body.

“Anya?” he whispered.

He did not move when he spoke. He had pitched it too low, and he spoke her name again. “Anya?”

Her body came away from him with a startled, sudden thrust and jerk. He felt the chill wind against his back where she had been pressing against him.

“Sam?”

“Hush. Keep your voice down.”

“I thought—I thought you were dying.”

“Not yet,” he said grimly. “And you?”

“I’m c-cold.”

“They took your clothes away?”

“Every stitch. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Please. Just whisper. Is there a guard?”

“Outside the tent.”

“Come back. We might as well warm each other.”

“I—now I am embarrassed.”

He turned over, very carefully, testing his limbs and muscles. Nothing seemed to be broken or torn. On his right side now, he could see a glimmer of reddish light, in a long slit at ground level under the sides of the tent. It was obviously a cooking fire from outisde. He took the girl’s nude, warm body in his arms and held her close. She was firm and smooth against him, surprisingly womanly. She tried to pull back in the darkness, then came forward with a sigh to nestle against him.

“I was only trying to keep you warm,” she whispered.

“I know. Thank you.” He paused. “Did they hurt you?”

“No. Some of the men wanted to—take me—but the chief said no, and he had to hit one with the rifle, and ever since we’ve been here alone. No food, no water, no fire. I don’t know what they plan to do. I can understand some of their dialect. They’re wandering nomads. Chou hired them to ambush Zhirnov. Did you see Chou?”

“He’s dead,” Durell said.

“But—did you speak to him at all?”

“He was a good servant of his state,” Durell said, “but in the end, he spoke only old heresies.”

“The dragon?”

“He tried for it, but Zhirnov was too quick for him. Zhirnov shot him, broke his spine. When that happened, Chou’s tribesmen turned their attention to looting the car. Then we came along.” He thought of the secret luggage space in the wrecked Ferrari, a space that only he and Nuri Qam knew about, but which someone had opened, someone who must also have known about it. He didn’t mention it to the girl in his arms. He said, “It’s my bet that Zhirnov got back to the road and bought himself a lift on a passing truck. Maybe he killed the driver. He must be still going south, getting farther and farther ahead of us while we’re here. Do you have any idea what time it is, Anya?”

“It turned dark only a couple of hours ago.”

“Then I’ve been out for about four hours?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Sam?”

“Ummm?”

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“I can’t help it,” he said, aware of the revived heat in him.

“You do not love me, of course.”

“We have to keep warm.”

“Not this way.”

“Why not?”

“You have a woman back home?”

“Home is far away.”

“You love her? You are married?”

“No, not married. I can’t afford any strings to my life. I won’t give the opposition any handle by which they can reach me.”

“That is a selfish attitude. If she loves you and wishes to assume the risks of your work, you should still be willing to accept her into your life—”

“You’re too serious.”

“Love is serious. We Russians—”

“You’re no different from others. My work is serious, too. Do you have a man back in Moscow, Anya?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“And Moscow is a long way from here, too.”

“Yes.”

He touched silent tears on her small face. He heard the footsteps of the guard pacing around the tent. Anya’s breath quickened helplessly as they lay entwined in the dark. The guard’s boots paused, then went on again, circling the tent. Anya came back to him with a little whispered moan . . .

“Yes, Sam . . . oh, yes . . .”

Later, he searched the tent, feeling his way in the darkness with extreme care to avoid alerting the tribesmen outside. Now and then he heard guttural voices speaking, not too far away. The smell of the cooking fires slowly died away. The night grew colder. The tent was twelve feet in diameter, he judged, supported by four comer poles that kept the tattered covering no more than four feet over their heads. The floor was only the cold, rocky shale, but then in one comer near the pole he found a heap of sheepskins that had been tossed aside. Underneath the skins, to his pleasure and surprise, he found his khaki bush jackets and slacks and boots, and Anya’s clothing as well. The pockets were all empty, of course; his papers, money and weapons were gone, grabbed by thieving fingers. Still, he was grateful for the find. He crouched back toward Anya and knelt beside her with her clothing.

“Here. We can stay warm legitimately, now.”

She dressed quickly in the darkness, but the gleam of firelight that seeped under the flap of the tent revealed her slim, rounded body as she pulled on her clothes.

“What will they do with us, Sam?” she whispered. “Nothing, at the moment. I think the camp is all asleep, except for our guard stomping around outside.” 

“But in the morning?” she asked.

“I don’t think they’re going to kill us; they would have done so already, if that was their intention. Maybe they have some idea of holding us for ransom. Or—” He paused.

“Or what, Sam?”

“Some of these mountain tribes still go in for slavery. There was a whole people once, related to Hazara tribe, who were enslaved for centuries. Some of that nasty habit probably still survives. There’s very little law that can reach into the Hazarajat.”

She shuddered. “I’d rather they killed us.”

“Not I,” Durell said lightly. “We’re still alive, and that’s the main thing.”

“But they beat you so awfully—”

“Yes, I still ache. Don’t remind me of it. By the way, Freyda Hauptman-Graz was with Chou, when Chou hired these people to trap Zhirnov. Have you seen anything of her?”

“What I saw, I don’t want to remember.”

“She’s here?” he asked.

“In the next tent. I heard her screaming for what seemed hours.” Anya’s voice was tight. “They pegged her out in the tent, after stripping her, and I guess every man in the group had her, one after the other.” She paused again. “I kept waiting, wanting to die, thinking I would be next. But they didn’t come into this tent; I don’t know why, except maybe because you were here.”

Durell thought about it. Zhirnov had escaped Chou’s trap, certainly—the trap that had turned itself on Chou and the German woman; perhaps the bandits knew that Anya was Russian, like Zhirnov, and planned to learn from her what it was that Zhirnov had that was so valuable. The question of Anya would not be pleasant. And it meant that their time was rapidly running out. At any time the mood seized him, the chief of the group could be coming for the girl.

He did not discuss it with Anya. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness in the tent, and he could see her with fair clarity as she sat with her knees under her chin, rocking slightly, her pale face watching him. The faint light from under the tent flap was broken regularly by the shadows of the guard’s boots as he circled the tent. There was nothing helpful in their sheepskin prison. Not even a knife to cut their way out, nor a stone he could use as a weapon. His head ached less, and the slow movements he had made as he searched the tent had eased the stiffness of his bruised muscles. He did not think they would be allowed to remain here unmolested until morning.

He knelt beside Anya. “I’m going to try to slip out and explore a bit. Will you be all right now?”

.“Don’t go away from me,” she said. “I’m sorry, I—I’m not myself, you see, so much has happened to confuse me—”

“Still thinking of Zhirnov?”

“Yes. I have been disloyal to him, believing I am right in suspecting that he really works for General Goroschev, in Moscow—the man who imprisoned Colonel Skoll—” “Cesar Skoll won’t stay in jail too long,” Durell said. “Not if I know him as I think I do. He’ll manage to expose Goroschev’s plan to instigate-war—and then it will all be over.”

“But—but what will happen to me?” Anya asked.

“You can always come to the States,” he suggested.

“No, I will not be a defector.”

He spoke gently. “It will work out. Stay here. Don’t move about to attract the guard’s attention. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”