Assignment Afghan Dragon (3 page)

The room was a whitewashed cubicle with a metal cot, straw mattress, a rug that might have been colorful once, but now showed only the gray of age. A flimsy door opened onto the wooden gallery, whose rail was burrushed by countless greasy hands through the years. The air felt cooler when Durell stepped outside. Night had come. The smell of methane was sharp and discouraging. Overhead, the stars reeled, and he saw in them the glare of Fingal’s blind eyes, sliced open to the sun. He looked down at the small cooking fires of the caravan men, who huddled over their food and muttered together in an incomprehensible Mokran dialect, humped shadows that seemed primordial in aspect. He turned back into the room and closed the wooden door to the gallery, lighted a kerosene lamp and searched the cubicle thoroughly, although he expected to find nothing alarming inside.

Later, he stripped off his clothes and washed at the single basin. The faucet issued a single trickle of yellowish, pungent water. He managed to get off most of the desert dust, and then took his Smith & Wesson .38, the heavy metal somehow comforting now, and broke the gun down, wiping and oiling it and carefully checking each cartridge before he reloaded. He listened to the noises in the inn, but heard nothing exceptional.

Durell had killed before; he was an expert at it. He could destroy a man in many ways, using his hands, his feet, a roll of paper, a needle, a knife. It was sometimes a necessary part of his business. He had seen men die, men who had been his friends, but who allowed one fatal moment of distraction to overcome them. It was a strange, silent war he engaged in, lonely and dark, and he knew he was no longer like most other men. His long years with K Section had changed him in ways he did not like, but which were necessary for survival. Survival was the name of the game. He could smell danger from far off, sense it with an instinct derived from training and experience. In a world where information and data from the other side could spell the difference between peace and holocaust, where facts were commodities commanding the highest price, life or death, he had managed to survive reasonably well so far.

When he considered the scars on his body as he bathed at the washbasin, he recalled the jungles and deserts, the alleys of the world’s great cities, its most remote areas. He could sense danger here. He could not as yet put his finger on the source. Fingal, that blunderer, had been killed in a manner which indicated a casual murder and robbery, and his murderers used local methods of cruel amusement to make it look like a chance encounter with strangers. Durell did not believe it. Every stitch of the man’s clothing had been taken, but the car had been left behind, and this surely was a prize, if only for its cannibalized parts.

He considered the two thin volumes of Chinese orientalism he had retrieved, and studied each page swiftly, starting with the book of ink sketches, pausing to reread an underlined passage describing the
wen-jen
, the gentlemen-scholars of Chinese ancient centuries. Ink and brush were used both to represent an object, such as a plum tree, and to allude to the plum tree as a reference. The
wen-jen
masters became what they painted, it was believed; the
ch’i
, or spirit of the subject, became part of the artist’s hand and then of the ink. Durell closed the book, wondering about Fingal.

In the text of Tao Te Ching, he read two or three passages, underlined by Fingal:

Tao is always inactive 

Yet Tao does everything.

Kings are increased by being lessened. 

It is not desirable to be as prominent 

   as a single jewel,

Or as monotonous as a number of 

   precious stones.

None of it seemed to mean very much here in Ur-Kandar.

In an hour he was on the telephone at the government station, led there by Mr. Chadraqi and allowed in through the back door. The place was closed and padlocked, but the clerk had a key to the rear entrance. It smelled of Turkish Tobacco and stale cooking and sweat.

“I will wait outside, sir.” Chadraqi seemed a bit nervous. “You will not be long?”

“No longer than necessary,” Durell said. As the clerk sidled away, Durell added, “Tell me, have you had many foreigners coming through Ur-Kandar lately?”

“Yes, many, sir. Oil men, travelers of all sorts.”

“Any Chinese?”

The clerk looked blank. “Chinese?”

“Diplomats, salesmen, engineers—”

“No, sir.”

“None at all?”

“I have never seen a Chinese,” said the clerk.

“All right.”

“Why do you ask about Chinese?”

“I don’t know,” Durell said.

When he was alone, he began the tedious work of getting a connection through to Tehran. The instrument clicked, whined, buzzed. The operator sounded as if he were on the moon. He spoke pure Farsi, clearly and distinctly. “Tehran, yes, sir.” Then the line went dead. Durell waited. He tried to control his anger. Then, as if the operator had moved himself next door, Durell heard, “The number again, sir?” Durell gave him the number of the U.S. Embassy on Takhte Jamshid Avenue. Another long wait. He looked through the dusty window to the end of the road, where the Greek column shone white and ghostly against the edge of the lake. He smelled tobacco smoke as someone passed outside. He heard a mutter of voices speaking in Farsi. At least he heard, “Stanhope here.”

“Get me Ben Kahlmer.” His voice was harsher than he meant it to be.

“There is no such person—-”

“In Blue Jay 5. K Section.” 

“Sir, I can’t just—there is no—”

“Tell him it’s Sam Durell.”

“Durell. Yes, sir. Sir—?”

“I’m waiting,” Durell said.

“Are you speaking on a clear line?”

“All the way.”

“I’m afraid I can’t—”

“You’d better.”

“Yes, Mr. Durell.”

He waited again. Not very long. Ben Kahlmer was K Section’s Central in Tehran, a man of economics, a former oil market analyst, a middle-aged man who had spent most of his life exploring Saudi sand dunes for petroleum. He had developed personal financial troubles, and K Section recruited him four years ago by bailing him out at the bank. Kahlmer was grateful for the salvage of his middle age. He had proved proficient and loyal.

“Sam?”

“Ben, I need a relay to Washington. Scrambled.”

“No can do, Cajun. Transmissions are heavy, busy, busy. Much ado about nothing, but we’re tied up. You’d better give it to me. I’ll transmit in about three hours. Did you meet Fingal?”

“I saw him.” Durell tried to control his anger. “The little bastard is dead. The hard way.”

“Oh, Jesus. Sam, your line is clear—”

“No help for it. What I want from Washington is a new briefing. This thing isn’t the simple search-and-deliver chore I was led to believe. Somebody knew Fingal was coming down here to meet me, to give me new data. Somebody ambushed him. It wasn’t just a desert amusement, wiping him like that. I don’t know what they got out of him, but whatever it was, it was important enough to use extreme prejudice. The poor slob wasn’t ready for any of it. He—”

“Are you all right, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“You sound funny. Strange.”

Durell said, “You tell the boss, Dickinson McFee, back in D.C., that he’s sold me down the primrose path. I’m on my back, working in the dark. It was supposed to be simple. It’s always supposed to be simple. But Fingal is dead, and that’s not easy to accept. Somebody is making me look foolish, and they used Fingal like you’d throw away a burnt match.”

“Sam—”

“All right, Ben.” Durell drew a deep breath. The phone felt slippery in his grip. “Can you get through to McFee?” “I told you, three hours. You’re sure you want me to tell him all this?”

Durell said, “Ben, I’m supposed to find Nuri Qam, the Second Deputy Minister for Afghani Internal Affairs. He’s supposed to be hiding out in Meshed, in Iran. Can you tell me why?”

“No.”

“Do you know where to find him, Ben?”

“No.”

“Do you know
anything
that Fingal knew?”

Tehran Central hesitated. “It’s about the dragon.”

“The dragon,” Durell repeated flatly. “The one that was in all the newspapers briefly, the item that the Italian archaeologist, Professor Berghetti, dug up?”

“And presumably lost again. Yes.”

“It’s only an art object,” Durell said.

“It’s the red button on the bomb, Sam.”

Durell waited.

“The Chinese want it, Cajun. A matter of national pride. An excuse to start an incident, maybe. I don’t know. I just sit here and mind my own business in Tehran, Sam. I can feel that something big is going on, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Get McFee to tell me,” Durell said flatly.

“Sure. Where will you be?”

“Meshed.”

“Why there?”

“To find Nuri Qam, who sent Fingal to fetch me. Why Else? Move your ass on it, Ben.”

He hung up.

As he stepped from the back door of the little government building, he saw that Mr. Chadraqi was gone.

Parked at the end of the alley was the van belonging to the three young Americans—Charley, Mort and Annie. They were waiting for him.

“Mr. Durell?”

Charley Anderson pushed the girl, Annie, forward from the van, down the alley toward Durell. She looked back, her dark hair swinging, as if reluctant to move toward him. Their eyes gleamed like those of feral animals in the shadows, catching highlights off the moon. The girl said something he could not understand, as if protesting, and then walked toward him again. He watched the two men. The short one, Mort Jones, balanced his fat body on tiptoe, standing at the rear of the hippie van. Durell saw the shine of his teeth as he grinned. He could not see the man’s pudgy hands. Charley Anderson’s fingers rested lightly on the front door of the van. The girl came forward.

“That’s enough,” Durell said.

She stopped. “We just want to talk to you.”

“Did you come back to Ur-Kandar just for that?” “Charley insists we can do business with you.”

“We have no business together,” Durell said.

“Oh, yes, we have.”

She had changed into cleaner jeans and a heavier, checked man’s shirt, hanging out over her hips. The night was becoming cool as a wind blew over the briny lake from the northeast. There were no clouds, and the moon, at a gibbous phase, cast a bright light over the little town, as cold and fearsome as the light in the girl’s gray eyes. The shadows in the alley were sharp ebony and silver, etching the shape of her delicate nose and chiseled mouth. She seemed to be unarmed. He was not so sure of the two men who waited at a distance behind her at the van.

“What happened to Chadraqi?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The clerk at the inn.”

“Oh, him. He ran away.”

“Why?”

“He was probably afraid the police would catch him after he allowed you illegally into the government building. Were you using the telephone?”

Durell drew a deep breath. “I think you and your two friends had better just take off. I’m not in the mood for any of your fun and games.”

“We just want to talk to you,” she said.

“What about?”

“Maybe we took a walk down that ravine after you left us by the road. Maybe we saw things we oughtn’t to have seen. Would you believe that?”

He thought of Fingal again. “You found him?”

“Oh, my, yes.”

“Who did it?” he asked.

“Now, how would we know a little thing like that? Was he a friend of yours, Mr. Durell?”

The fat young man, Mort Jones, called something in a soft, impatient, urgent voice. The girl turned her head, her dark hair swinging again, and Durell could have taken her with ease, to use her against the other two, but he did not think they would have any scruples about the girl, and Durell did not want to show any violence yet. It was a half-mile walk back to the inn, and in between was the mosque and the main huddle of mud-walled houses. He had no wish to waken the whole village.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

The girl said, “You’re a cold one, aren’t you? He was an American, wasn’t he?”

“How could you tell?”

“We’re just guessing. We’ve been discussing it a lot. All we know is that we saw your vehicle and saw you coming back up from the ravine. We don’t know how long you were down there or why you pegged him out and tortured him. The police would be interested in hearing all this, wouldn’t they?”

“Why don’t you go to them, then?”

“Well, we’re all fellow Americans in a foreign country, aren’t we? We ought to stick together, especially in trouble like this.” The girl’s voice was flat, not very persuasive. “After all, justice here isn’t like in the good old U.S.A. They could lock you up and throw the key away, like they do in Turkey—except I think they’d hang you right off the bat. Surely we can come to terms.”

“What do you want? Money?”

“Sure,” she said. “Lots of it. And a bit more. We could help you, you know.”

Mort Jones called again, his voice a hissing sound in the moonlight. The girl did not turn her head this time. When she looked at Durell, he had the feeling again of something behind her eyes; an appeal, perhaps, a cry of anguish. He couldn’t be certain. She was one of the trio, a girl who shared herself between the two men. And yet there was an odd discipline here that did not quite fit the pattern of drifting, homeless American youth.

“All right,” Durell said, “I’ll give you some money, just to save me trouble with the local fuzz, right? We’ll go back to the inn.”

“No,” Mort called. “You come with us.”

“Why?”

“We want to show you something. Something that dead man never had a chance to tell you about. Something important. Maybe it’s what you were looking for, hey?”

“Like what?” Durell asked.

He felt a menace from the two men more intense than before. The girl stood about six feet away from him and to one side, against the wall of the building, leaving a clear path between himself and the two young men. Somewhere in the village a dog began to bark. It was soon hushed. A camel grunted behind one of the houses across the road that led to the lake. He thought he heard the wailing of a popular Moslem melody; a radio, somewhere. Otherwise, the village was peaceful and quiet.