Assignment Moon Girl (4 page)

“The Henderson-Smith group had a dig here,” Beele explained.
“Some years ago, they hoped to strike it big. But they gave up. Too dangerous,
and the government was quite hostile to the whole project.”

Sepah said: “You were stealing our national heritage, Mr.
Beele.”

Durell interrupted. “Stop here, Ike.”

“But they can see our tracks.”

“I want them to. Everybody out. Take your rifles,
grenades, everything we’ve got—food and water, too. Beele, can you do some
climbing?" The Englishman nodded. “Good, let’s go,” Durell went on. “We’ve
only got a few minutes. They’re coming on like homing pigeons now.”

It was almost dark. Durell led them up a broken wall of
ancient brick and tile, moving away from the parked Rover. The wind mourned in
the ancient ruins. Here and there were signs that caravans had halted in this
place; but no living thing was in evidence as they climbed onto a ridge of
rocky ledges. In the east, a huge pale moon began to sail over the bleak sky of
the
Dasht-i-Lut
. Two plumes of dust, like tiny
dervishes, converged toward them.

“You make a good hunter, Shemouel,” Ike said approvingly.

“Don‘t fire unless necessary. Wait for me.”

The Farsi’s eyes gleamed mockingly. “We have laws in our
country against
gunfighting
. This is not your
wild West.”

“The West you see in our movies never existed,” Durell said
shortly. “Take it easy.”

The nearer car had turned on headlights. The wind blew
bitterly, cold and rough against his cheek. Durell pumped a cartridge into the
chamber of his rifle and settled down. Their car was still visible in the
gloom of the ruins below. The first vehicle came on with reckless speed,
the men in it apparently worried because they had disappeared. But the second
car had vanished in the swiftly dropping curtains of night, and he felt a
little worried about that.

“Beale?”

“Yes, old chap.”

“This Har-Buri, and his Garden of Alexander. Tell me more
about it.”

“I can only give you directions. Never been there, myself.
Half a day’s drive tomorrow morning—”

“We’ll make it tonight.” Durell sounded hard. “And I’m not
counting on our two Iranians to take our side.”

He paused and looked at the Englishman. “I don’t even count
on you.”

Beele smiled. “Right you are.” He reached into his shirt
pocket. “Here, I made a map of what I think is Har-Buri’s private hideout.
Don’t give it to Sepah. His I.S. would like to have it, but we see no point in
doing work for them gratuitously, eh?”

Durell pocketed the folded paper. “Here they come.”

The first vehicle looked like a U.S. Army surplus
half-track. Its engine threw rough echoes back and forth among the proud
columns in the "moonlight. It nosed cautiously around a shattered wall
like a suspicious, antediluvian animal, treads clacking and squealing. Durell
tried to count the men aboard, but the light was bad. Eight, he thought. And
all armed with automatic weapons. Moonlight gleamed on pajama-striped clothing
as they jumped out, voices guttural in Arabic and some Persian. They scattered
with efficiency to close in on the abandoned Land Rover.

“I hope they don’t wreck the buggy,” Ike Sepah whispered.
“It’s a long walk home, Shemouel.”

“Whose men are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s have an intelligent guess.”

Sepah was reluctant. “Har-Buri’s, I think.”

“Or working for the Chinese?"

Sepah shrugged and said angrily, “Or maybe the Russians have
hired the natives to do the dirty work.”

Durell looked at the young man. “Are you neurotic about such
terms as colonialism?”

“I am from an old and proud people, Durell. My country was
civilized and trading with China when you lived in the swamps and forests of
western Europe.”

“Does that prove anything now?”

“We were singing Hafiz’ love songs when you were
organizing barbaric crusades. We ruled the world and fought the Greeks and
absorbed Alexander’s men while you fought wolves in the forest.” Sepah shook
his head; he looked young no longer. “The world is strange. Loyalty is confused,
these days.”

“But you obey the Shah?”

“The people need land reform, medicine, schools. We must
keep up with the modern world. You offer help, and so do our traditional
enemies, the English and the Russians, who fight over a way to the
Persian Gulf and our oil. Ah, but now is no time for politics. I think we must
now fight for our lives in this place.”

Sepah lifted his rifle, but Durell pushed it down
again. “Wait. The other party is coming.”

From the north, closing in with suspicion equal to the
first group, came another vehicle. No headlights. Durell had already made
up his mind what to do. Hanookh and Sepah were engrossed in the oncoming clash
below. When he looked at Beele, however, he found the Englishman’s pale eyes
bright with curiosity upon him.

“Cajun, old man, you didn’t return my map.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“Very good. Shall I cover for you?”

“If you will.”

“Which vehicle will you take?”

“The fastest. That first one.”

“Good-o. It’s Russian-built, you know.”

“No matter.”

“Bear away north-by-northwest until you come to more sand
hills. They shift a bit each year. Careful you don’t bog down.” Beele spoke
softly. “It’s gravel up to that point. Don’t go into Shekarab. You’ll see the
lights. Couldn’t vouch for the friendliness of the caravan people there. From
then on, it’s
unsurveyed
. Keep Shekarab to starboard
for fourteen miles, then bear due west. Thirty-two more miles, and you’ll be
there.”

“Thank you, Beele.”

“The Iranians will be grateful if you nail
Har
-Burl.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Durell.

Down below, a rifle cracked, and then another, as the
two pursuing parties clashed in the darkness over the abandoned Rover.

Chapter Three

IT WAS simple enough to slip away in the dark, covered by
the bitter firefight between the unknowns below. Durell scrambled down
with care, circled, took the half-track, and was relieved to find the
ignition keys there. He was off and running before anyone could organize
pursuit. And from the ridge where Beele and the two Iranians were hidden came a
sudden burst of rifle fire and grenades to distract the enemy long
enough for him to vanish into the desert gloom.

He felt better, once he was alone. It was easy to maintain
the compass courses Beele had indicated. He checked the fuel gauge, his .38,
and the rifle, and shrugged into an evil-smelling sheepskin coat he found
on the driver’s seat. He turned the car north over a wasteland as empty as any
moonscape that might be imagined.

It was like playing poker in the dark, he thought, with an
unknown number of players at the table, Even the stakes were invisible. Old
Grandpa Jonathan would have enjoyed it. But this wasn’t the warm comfort of the
Louisiana bayous. This was the Dasht-i-Kavir, a dreaded desert that had been
killing men since ancient times. And although the modern world of swingers and
H-bombs was just over the horizon, he might truly have been on the moon. . . .

He wondered why he had so many reservations about Tanya
Ouspanaya. Had she really been the first to cross forbidding space and
exist there for any length of time? If so, how had she returned, and why was
she so far from her own country? Nowhere had he heard a whisper about the crash
of a space capsule. He could see her face clearly in his memory—he had seen
enough pictures of her, and even studied her file dossier routinely, back
in Washington. A girl of strange beauty, dedicated and stern, a scientist with
a luscious mouth and entrancing Oriental eyes. The few press interviews she had
given had been grim and hostile. He pictured her running in wild panic, lost as
a moonbeam in the alleys of Teheran. It didn’t add up to much. But there were
some hard facts to consider.

First, there was no doubt that the Russians and Chinese
believed she was here, that she had been on the moon, and that she was
immensely valuable. Others thought so, too. Iranian politics being what it was,
a rebel like Har-Buri could make capital out of seizing her for secret ransom.
Peking would pay heavily for her, in terms of political and military aid for a
coup against the Shah. Perhaps the Soviets would do the same. Somewhere in this
mélange of cross-purposes, there had to be a key to unlock the riddle. Har-Buri
and his desert hideout might be that key. And there was only one way to find
out.

He was not followed. He drove for an hour, while the
crescent moon sailed over a gravel desert filled with black and silver
shadows. The wind was cold. He hoped Beele and the two Iranians had made it
safely away. Then the sand hills Beele had mentioned loomed ahead, and he had
to concentrate all efforts on maneuvering the lumbering truck over the
grinding, dusty slopes.

Twice he bogged down, and spent long, bitter minutes
struggling to get the vehicle free. He had never known such emptiness before. He
might have been the last man alive in a scourged and desolate world. It was
long past midnight when the half-track slid down the last dune onto a rocky
terrain that reached endlessly northward before him. He rested then, checked
fuel and vehicle tracks, and his gun, and slept for twenty minutes. The cold
made his teeth chatter. And he knew that when the day dawned again, the
Dasht-i-Kavir would become an inferno once more.

There were lights ahead. He crossed a well-marked caravan
track while keeping the dim flicker of campfires to his right. That
would be Shekarab, a lonely outpost for travelers in this wilderness. He hoped
the sound of the truck’s laboring engine wouldn’t carry that far.

In time, he turned due west. The moon now rode ahead of him.
There was a loom of higher land about five miles away, and far ahead,
where a single massive thrust of rock stood like a sentinel in the fiat
desert, was his goal. He was paralleling the caravan trail now. And this was
hopeful, since they marked the routes traveled since antiquity. If there were
ruins ahead that had become Har-Buri’s secret fortress for rebellion, it was as
good a place as any, and not too far from Teheran.

By dawn he found it. The high pinnacle was just where Beele
had said it would be, massive, immense, with a
rubbled
base that stopped even the half-track. Durell hid the vehicle between high
boulders on the west side, where the rising sun would past concealing shadow;
he took his sunglasses and belted on his revolver and a full canteen of water.
Then he unfolded Beele’s map and studied it for an intent minute. By the end of
that time, he had committed to memory every wriggly line and dot on the paper.
Satisfied, he struck a match and burned it to ashes before he started to
walk.

A natural trail led up from the base, but it was too obvious
and dangerous. On foot, the water canteen banging irritatingly against his hip,
he rounded the northern side before he found the first ancient artifact,
a tumbled column with fragments of Corinthian carving. A gateway, once. A third
of the way to the summit, the trail ended. If anyone lived here, there was no
sign of it. Then he discovered a little valley cupped in a fold of the
pinnacle. Invisible from below, shadowed from above, it defied discovery
except by chance, and he wondered how Beele had learned of the place.

Then he heard the tiger roar.

It was full daylight now. The sun was like a branding iron
across the back of his neck. The sound of the tiger, incredible and unexpected,
came as if from under the rocks where he stood. Then he heard the animal again.
He turned his head from the glaring sunlight and the valley took on definition.
He saw more ruined columns, a few date palms and tamarisks leaning over a
brackish brown pool, a gateway that looked new, opening into the face of the
cliff. A well-beaten track led from the pool to the gate. The greenery in the
valley looked like a mirage in this wilderness of stone and sand. He
reflected that without Beele’s map, he might have spent days
finding his way here. It would have been impossible, without the
Englishman’s previous work.

The tiger grumbled somewhere, and the hair prickled on the
nape of Durell’s neck. Nothing moved. Then a man howled in sudden fright. The
sound ululated in the ochre sky. He turned and climbed toward the sound. A dim
track led deeper into the depression, but the sun was behind him and he
remained in deep shadow. He felt as if unseen eyes were watching him. His sense
of danger shrilled sharp warnings in his mind.

He came to the steel-barred gate in the face of the cliff.
The trail ended here. From the darkness beyond came an animal stench that
checked him. There were outer bolts and bars on the gate. Within, only darkness
loomed.

Then he heard the girl scream.

The gate hadn’t been on Beele’s map, but he waited no
longer. The bars were oiled and slid easily aside, and he stepped into the
abrupt coolness of the cave. Dim light flickered ahead, sunlight that
seemed around a further bend in the passage. He moved forward, gun in hand,
through several chambers filled with chests and furniture, at which he
gave only a cursory glance. Then he heard the girl’s running footsteps, and saw
her fly toward him, long hair streaming, her face a mask of terror.

Behind her, the cat lay twitching with a rope around its
neck, sprawled on the sand floor of a pit that was flooded with hot
sunlight.

The running girl checked herself, crouched warily.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Sam Durell,” he said.

Chapter Four

DURELL was conscious of her nakedness and of the rich
perfection of her body under the grime and bloody scratches that marked her.
Her pale hair tumbled heavily about her shoulders. Her full breasts lifted and
fell rapidly, her hips quivered with muscular tension. §he shrank from him. Her
eyes were as wild as any Jungle beast’s, he thought, devoid of all human
rationality. Small wonder, if she had been in this stinking place for long. The
girl’s mouth opened as if to speak, closed, then opened again.