by Harold Lamb
Then a man in shirt sleeves came running up from the nearest excavated cellar, and this man was Schuyler. “What the hell?” he yelled, but the men ignored him.
Hassan lowered himself to the terrace, hunting for Chen. Emil grabbed Lee and hurried her back to where the Effendi stood, not moving.
When Schuyler came up, Emil began hissing questions at him.
Schuyler stared at Emil’s pistol and explained that he was alone, camping out in the excavation, and then led them down to his tent. He had a cot, a suitcase, and a rough board table littered with sheets of tracing paper, a notebook and a hundred fragments of pottery.
“Sit by the wall,” said Emil. “Both of you. Do not move, or you will be shot.”
THE archaeologist nodded at the cot, and they sat down. Emil and the Effendi swiftly ransacked the American’s bag, and found only soiled clothes and a tobacco jar. Then Emil picked up the notebook and studied it.
He turned on Schuyler, who looked stubborn and bothered. “Write this,” Emil demanded, reading from the notebook. “The Graeco-Bactrian Seleucidae date from circa B. C. 323.”
Lee watched Grant copy it with a pencil on an old envelope. The Effendi snatched the envelope and compared it with the notebook. He muttered something that sounded like Allah, and Emil looked more annoyed.
“I told you,” Grant said patiently. “It’s a hobby of mine. I’ve been at work on the Greek-Bactrian civilization ever since—”
“Shut up!” Emil snapped. But he looked puzzled as he talked with the Effendi in their foreign language. Then Hassan yelled something, far off, and Emil went out, leaving the Effendi sitting at the tent entrance with a gun.
Lee tried to get her mind into focus. By the sounds outside the tent, she guessed that the other two were searching for the wounded spy, and not finding him in that maze of ruins. She turned to Grant, hoping for the answer to this madness.
He shrugged, and said: “I’m sorry, Annabelle.”
“Sorry!” she said viciously.
He looked at her wearily. “You want to know what’s coming off. The devil of it is, I don’t know either. But if they find Chen, it’s even odds we’ll end up in a rock tomb for the ages.”
That held her. Chen. So this amateur knew the beggar’s name. He pointed the stem of his pipe toward the watchful Effendi, while his lips moved almost silently.
“This is the guy we’ve been looking for. I’m pretty sure he’s the one. We had descriptions of him. Couldn’t spot him, though, because he seldom makes a personal appearance.”
“But the radio in the bazaar?”
“Records. Persians don’t know the difference. Then a while back we got a crossbearing on your Effendi. He was supposed to come and talk to the tribes in person, here at Persepolis. They’re moving down from the hills now, with families and camels. Looked as if our man was due to perform tonight, so we assumed he’d make his run from the bazaar today. He might have tried to pass the controls as a rug merchant, or mullah of the Moslems. But you showed up, with your station wagon, like a gift from heaven—”
Lee tried to smile. “Unsuspecting tourist girl drives Axis agent past military guards.”
Grant sat there, heavily, the sunset glow tinting his sandy head. “At least he showed himself. We’ll know him now.”
“We?” Lee asked. It didn’t make sense. “Who are we?”
He rubbed his pipe bowl against his nose. “Three guys.”
So he wasn’t telling. “But who is my Effendi?”
“You ought to read the home papers, Miss Lee.” Grant seemed surprised. “He calls himself Hurriat-ad Din—Flag of the Faith. A very clever old-fashioned gentleman who takes German gold and preaches religious war. His job is to get the hill tribes shooting at us—”
He broke off to listen. A faint clong-clong-clang sounded somewhere. Stones rattled and horses stirred around them. Lee sensed a crowd of people moving into the ruins. After a moment the Flag of the Faith stood up, very straight in his heavy robes, waved the pistol menacingly and strode out of the tent.
“Now what?” Lee whispered when she couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“Ghashgai,” said Grant
“Speak English.”
“The hill tribes are gathering out there. Your Effendi’s audience, complete with animals. He’ll be putting on his act.”
Lee wanted to shake him, and to speak her mind. Why didn’t he do something, if he knew so much? Even when a loud-speaker began rasping out strange music he didn’t move. Then Hassan came jumping down the steps, revolver in hand, sweating with excitement. He yelped “H'illah!" and pointed up.
“Come on,” said Grant carefully. “Do what you’re told. Remember, you’re only a tourist.”
Back again on the stone platform, Lee decided that it couldn’t be real. A round moon hung over the line of the hills, pale in the last glow of the sun. The Effendi in his heavy robes stood on the pedestal, like a king. The loud-speaker stood on the box from the station wagon, with Emil hovering over it. After a moment he stopped its racket.
Hassan pushed them out in front of the pedestal, keeping behind them with his gun. And Lee saw the audience clustered through the ruins, men in sheepskin coats with rifles, women shrouded in black veils, strings of camels and horses moving restlessly on the hillside watched by boys—all etched in a fantastic light of dying sun and the rising moon. The tribesmen jostled each other to peer at her.
THEN the Effendi spoke, shrieking out words, pointing at her and Grant. A rider drove forward on a white horse, its mane stained henna-red, and stared at the girl. He had cartridge belts slung over his shoulder, and when he grinned, his teeth showed through his mustache. This Lee understood.
The Effendi had softened up his audience with music, and now he was showing off his two captives.
The Effendi harangued the crowd, working himself up like a revivalist, his voice rising. And the tribesmen, silent as animals, hung on his words.
“He’s pretty good,” Grant whispered, “but it’s the old line. Herr Hitler is a true descendant of the Prophet, calling on all good Moslems by his voice over the air to fight the British. These birds like the talk, but action is what counts with them."
Yes, Lee thought, these men wanted blood. She thought of all these rifles blazing down at the convoy which would soon come winding up to Russia along the road through the hills. The Effendi’s voice beat at her ears, and suddenly she felt afraid of these men peering through the moonlight.
“Lie down,” Grant whispered, and pushed at her gently. She stretched out on her side, feeling the coldness of the smooth stone, and saw a man moving, coming out of a shadow.
He limped forward as if trying to see better. He stepped around the white horse, slipped in back of Hassan who squatted close by. He did not try to hide, and the Persians paid no attention to him. At last Lee saw his face; it was Chen. Until he jumped at Hassan’s back his hands were empty. Then steel flashed in his hand.
AIR whipped past Lee’s head, as a shot exploded. Running toward her, Emil was shooting at the beggar struggling with Hassan on the stone.
Grant crouched and jumped across her. Off balance he plunged at the man of the bazaar, arms closing around his knees, and Emil went down with a smash. Another figure piled on the two of them.
Then Grant was on his feet, walking up to the pedestal. Silent, now, the Effendi waited, bending over, watching him. Beside Lee, the beggar Chen held an automatic pistol across his forearm. In the haze of moonlight the watching tribesmen sat like figures of stone, their eyes on the Effendi and the American walking up to him empty-handed.
When Grant took his arm, the Effendi stepped down from his pedestal. He was staring at Emil and Hassan, their arms twisted under them, dead. His face was pale in the moonlight.
Without speaking, the Effendi let Grant lead him to the phonograph. The American spoke sharply and he lifted the cover of the machine, extracting a record.
The rider of the
white horse moved over to inspect the machine, and the Effendi, who held up the record obediently. The man leaned close to look into the face of the Effendi, and he laughed.
Then more of the watchers were laughing, snarling, rocking on their haunches, gripping their rifles. Their mirth swelled and echoed against the ruins. Some women hurried forward, hearing it, scrambling over the men. Chen put down his weapon, smiling.
The women ran up to the Effendi, their voices shrilling. Snatching off his skullcap, they jerked away his cape and tore at his caftan.
When the Effendi tried to resist, the Ghashgai ladies scratched at his face. They ripped off everything but his shirt and sandals, while he struggled helplessly, a fat man and afraid.
“Now he will do us no more harm,” said Chen, pocketing the automatic.
“Well,” Lee exploded, and then remembered that Chen, the beggar, had spoken in English. . . .
The lorries came roaring up the winding road without lights, guarded by soldiers and machine guns. The lead truck of the convoy pulled in under the terrace of Persepolis and a slender figure climbed out alone.
Grant waved, and the figure flourished a walking stick in answer, moving briskly up the great stone stairway. In a moment Lee recognized the blond British major with the unreadable eyes. He carried no weapon and he looked as if he were joining them for after-dinner coffee. He took in the tableau of the laughing tribesmen and the shirt-clad Effendi having his wrists tied by the industrious Chen. “Nice,” he said quietly to Grant. “Couldn’t be nicer.”
He stepped to the Ghashgai chieftain on the white horse and stood waiting. After a moment the Ghashgai dropped from the saddle and saluted. The major raised his stick to his cap. Then, as if fully satisfied, he blew a blast on a whistle.
The convoy cars began to move on, past Persepolis, along the road to the north.
“They’re off on time,” said the major. “If these Ghashgai had been foolish, it would have meant quite a delay. That was what you helped to prevent, Miss Lee.”
“Helped!” Grant grinned. “She delivered your man here on her own.”
Lee felt warm and comfortable inside, and the moon over Persepolis now looked as natural as any moon over the Empire State building. She glanced at the men. Three guys, Grant had said.
“I know,” she nodded. “You cover up nicely, but you’re in Army Intelligence, Lieutenant Schuyler—or is it Captain?”
“Me?” he laughed. “I’m only here to interpret for the officers. Chen roped me in, and—”
He bit off the words, and she looked at Chen, wiping the grease and dust from his face. He smiled. “I’m from New York, myself, Miss Lee,” he said. “But just now I’m in the service of Chiang Kai-shek.”
Lee didn’t ask what kind of service.
“I say,” the British major put in. “It’s still early. Won’t you make a fourth at bridge back at Praise-Allah gate?”
LAUGHING, Lee explained that Major Max would be looking for his station wagon and that she had an engagement with a boat.
“Where are you off to?” Grant demanded.
“I don’t know,” Lee confessed. “It might be Cairo, or Damascus, or Bagdad.”
“Right next door,” Grant said. “We’ll find you, Annabelle.”
She winced, but she believed him.
Over the hills and far away
SEVEN minutes before the Trans-Iranian express took off, Sergeant John L. MacKenzie, late of the 82d AB Division, sat on his duffel sack in the full power of the sun on the gravel of the platform of the Ahwaz railroad station where the temperature was 117 degrees in the shade, and decided that he wanted no part of it. That express was not even a natural train.
For one thing, it was undersized, and khaki-colored—where the color showed through the dust—with an engine that looked like a yard tender. For another thing, Sergeant MacKenzie had trouble seeing it. When he lifted his eyes with an effort the landscape circled around him, taking the train with it; when he planted his feet to steady himself the platform beneath him rose and sank with the slow but massive oscillation of a C-46 in a storm. “This is no kind of situation,” the sergeant told himself. Then a breath of air touched his bony face with the soft caress of a blowtorch.
For this situation there was a chain of causation not entirely known to the sergeant who had ceased to be a paratrooper. His I.Q. was not so good; he had jumped more than eighty times, and he had traveled. His travels from home had landed him on the North African shores, whence he had crossed the blue Mediterranean to land from the air on the rocks of Gela in Sicily, and again upon the rugged shore of Salerno. Each time under maximum fire.
When the medical examiners had recommended a transfer away from the battle zones, Mac had protested that he had not been wounded. To his company commander the medicos had mentioned the effect of shock upon the brain structure; his captain had said to him only, “There’s a law of averages, Mac. You are entitled to a break.”
The transfer had landed him in Cairo where the beer was flat and the whisky thin. The sergeant had tried both, after hearing that as a member of USAFIME—the United States Armed Forces in the Middle East—he was to travel farther to a place called Teheran, in Iran, in Asia, there to become one of a battalion of M.P.s. Concerning Teheran he knew nothing except the name, which he could not pronounce, but for all military policemen, he had a paratrooper’s abiding hatred. The night before at sight of two British M.P.s in shorts and shining white belts standing under a sign which read: MEMBERS OF HIS MAJESTY’S FORCES WILL NOT PARTAKE OF ARAQ the sergeant had drunk too much of araq, a colorless liquid which turned white when you poured water into it.
Bracing his hundred and ninety pounds on the duffel bag, steadying his cattleman’s arms on his musette bag and his sandy head on his arms, Sergeant MacKenzie decided that he wanted no more part of USAFIME. He was through. He would go over the hill as soon as he found a hill.
One thing he remembered very well, in the confusion of the last twenty-four hours. On the C-46 out of Payne Field, he had found a torn, pocket-size book. It was called The Travels of Marco Polo. Now the sergeant had read few books in his twenty-three years, his knowledge of geography was limited to the United States and more particularly to Nevada. But he had heard, somewhere, the name of Cathay, the country to which it seemed this Italian, Mr. Polo, had traveled.
And in Cathay, this travel book said, there were drinking fountains that made you feel young; there were luscious trees of life, and ivory barges floating on pleasure lakes, and lovely princesses to act as hostesses. You made millions overnight if you hired out to a big shot called Kubla Khan. Closing his eyes and yielding to the gentle lift of the platform, the sergeant thought longingly of Cathay.
“You still here?”
The voice he recognized as that of the railroad corporal who had given him an order for a place in the one first-class car of this Trans-Iranian express. There had been no place, because a British brigadier had moved in with his staff. The other cars had been besieged by Oriental humanity carrying babies and bundles in rugs. “Uh,” he said.
“Well,” said the railroad corporal briskly, “you better hoist your tail and get yourself a place.”
Opening his eyes, the sergeant beheld strange sights about the train. A husky G.I. strolled along it, tapping at the wheel boxes with a hammer. A girl, alone, slipped along in the shadow, graceful as a deer but wearing a service combat jacket. A group of bearded Sikhs tramped by, and she vanished.
A new sharp voice asked, “Where’s the guard for those One Priority shipments, Corporal?”
And the corporal responded, “Sir, I’ll get somebody.”
A pause. Then the corporal bent over Mac. He had the healthy bloom of indoor life, and papers in his hand. “Look,” he breathed, “here’s a break for you. You can simulate a guard, and have a whole car to yourself. Sergeant, you can stretch out and sleep. All you got to do is occupy the high-priority-shipments van—and keep everybody else ou
t.”
He pointed to a metal freight car in the waiting train, its sliding door half open. He breathed hard. “Sergeant, I’ll get you a belt and weapon.”
“I need a laugh,” responded the sergeant. “And this may be it.”
“Sure. You can sleep it off. Nobody’ll ask questions, because you’ll be the guard, see?” The corporal ran off briskly. This sergeant with the hang-over was dopey enough to take on this duty that nobody else wanted.
When he returned with a carbine and ammunition belt, Sergeant MacKenzie was perched comfortably in the open door of the freight car with his bag. Here he had plenty of room, and no one to observe his actions. When he wanted to, he could step out and go his own way, with a carbine that would fetch real cash money. “What country is this?” he asked with interest, “And whereto does this international express go?”
“It’s Persia, but they call it Iran.” A bell clanged, and rapidly the corporal briefed his victim. “Officially we just help the Iranian wogs run this outfit, to move all the Lend-Lease stuff up to the Russian terminals—to Bandar Shah. Actually, we have to do all the sweating ourselves. The MPs aboard is mixed, British, Iranian and U.S.A. Keep the bag outa sight, Sergeant.”
WITH a jerk that made Mac wince, the cars began to move. Vigilantly, the corporal walked alongside. “Watch that door, Sarge. These wogs’ll steal the toenails off you—”
With a grin, he dropped out of sight. Stowing the carbine away, the sergeant closed his eyes to ponder in what part of Asia Cathay might be found.
Something heavy crashed into his chest, and jangled. Instinctively he caught it, and found it to be a small tin suitcase. Something else like a guitar flew past him, followed by a heavy overcoat.
“Hi!” said Mac.
A uniformed figure running rapidly beside the car, leaped up and sat beside him, grinning. The uniform was gray, with orange epaulets, and it ended earthward in a pair of hefty boots. Russian boots. “Zdorovenki bouly!” panted the wearer of the boots.