“Surely,” Anya said finally, “you have a special purpose in coming to Meshed?”
“Yes.”
“You do not trust me to tell me about it?”
“I want you to stay in the room. Don’t answer any knock on the door unless you are sure it is me. Don’t go out, don’t use the telephone.”
She smiled tiredly. “I am confused,” she admitted. “I have betrayed my mission, made an enemy of Zhirnov, for saving your life. Why did I do it?”
“Perhaps you have a conscience,” Durell said.
“But my own life is destroyed. I do not know where to go, Where to turn.”
“Stay with me,” he said.
Her mouth was wry. But he thought it was a very ripe and promising mouth. She said, “I am alone now. I cannot appeal to my own people. If the German couple are what you say they are, agents of the Black House in Peking, then they are after me, too. What am I to do? Seek political asylum in your country?”
“There are worse choices, Anya.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I am Russian. I am a Soviet citizen, a loyal citizen. If Zhirnov is working for traitors—hawks, if you like—then I must do what I can to stop him and take my chances with my superiors when I return to Moscow.”
“Stick with me,” Durell said. “We have the same goal in mind, for the most part. We can help each other.”
“How can I be helpful? By remaining locked up in a tiny hotel room? Let me go with you, please, for whatever you have in mind.”
She looked lovely and appealing, he thought. But it was in the nature of his business never to take anything on face value. True, she had saved his life from Zhirnov. But then he wondered about it. The whole thing could have been a subtle arrangement to place her at his side, to put her in his hands, seemingly. He felt a brief rage at what the business had done to him. He had to live with convoluted suspicion, acting out a chess game of mistrust in which move and countermove made endless progressions, until they were alone, totally and irrevocably, cut off from the ordinary, open intercourse which most men enjoyed and took for granted. When he looked into the girl's apparently candid eyes, he felt a rebellion against what his years in the business had done to Mm. He sipped his hot tea with care—you didn’t drink ordinary water in these parts.
“Please, Sam,” she said again.
“No,” he decided.
The room looked secure enough. There was a solid bolt on the door and the single window opened on the sheer side of the building above an alley. There was a common bathroom at the end of the hall, and he waited until Anya had freshened up in there. The double bed seemed clean enough, with brass head and footboards. A single light bulb dangled from a cord in the ceiling. It was not the most plush hotel in Meshed, but it seemed safe enough.
“Two hours,” he promised. “I’ll be back by then.”
“I shall wait.”
He paused in the narrow corridor until he heard her bolt the door, then went down the rickety stairs to the crowded, noisy street. He walked to the Kousravi Nou and turned right to the traffic circle where it met Tehran Avenue. The Imam Reza shrine now loomed to his left. In the early hours of the afternoon, the heat of late autumn had built up until traffic was dampened somewhat, although the ubiquitous taxis, crowded with numerous fares, were still in evidence everywhere. He ignored several and kept walking. Ahead was the sacred enclosure, forbidden to foreigners, although he could visit the famous museum and glimpse the Gauhar-Shad mosque. He went along with the tide of fervent pilgrims headed that way, aware of his being an alien here, conscious of his height and obvious Western origin. Now and then he caught a hostile, angry face from some devout Shi’ite who resented his presence even here on the crowded boulevard. He had no intention of trespassing. His mind kept reviewing the thumbnailed passage in Homer Fingal’s blue bound copy of the Tao Te Ching, and he knew exactly where to go.
But it was not that easy.
He did not see the Mercedes that had followed him part way from the airport, but suddenly he felt the warm pressure of a breast against his arm and a hand slipped through to his elbow.
“Herr Durell! How fortunate we meet again here in this enchanting place! You are not with your wife? And I am not with my husband! So. We shall be tourists together, yes?”
It was Frau Freyda Hauptman-Graz. She was as tall as he, and her grip was strong on his elbow. She wore a pale gray suit that went with her ice-gray eyes, and a pink gauzy scarf over her head like a veil, in deference to Moslem habits. Her makeup made her look like a photographer’s model.
“Come,” she said. “Come with me.”
“Your husband won’t mind?”
“Ach, he is always absorbed in his business. It is machine tools, you know. He lives and breathes lathes and stamping machines and drill presses. He has so little time for me! So little inclination. His juices have dried up, I think.”
She matched his stride easily as they turned toward the great bazaar just below the shrine off Safavi Avenue. He scanned the traffic for the Mercedes, but could not spot it, nor could he detect any shadowers in the crowd of pilgrims that surged along with them. Perhaps she thought she was competent to handle him alone—one way or the other.
“This way,” she said. “It is so nice to see you privately like this. Without your wife—who says so emphatically that she is not your wife. You have traveled far together? Where did you meet? She does not seem to be as American as you, dear Herr Durell.”
“Annie is fine, but she’s a bit tired. She’s resting.”
“Ach, but you are not in any of the major hotels. Most of them are so—so uncertain, here in Meshed, You must be staying with friends?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
She frowned behind her veil. “I do not truly understand you. Perhaps my English is defective. You have friends in Meshed?”
“I wouldn’t call them friends. Associates.”
They had entered the bazaar area, and were swamped in a tidal wave of noise, the clamor of bells and the cries of hawkers, the shouts and arguments of dickering buyers and sellers. The little shops were all open to the street, displaying their wares of copper and brass, turquoise jewelry, rugs, lambskin coats, Japanese transistor radios, even motorcycles. The smells of coffee, tea and spices mingled with the dung of little donkeys and the everpresent odor of urine. He remembered the thumbnailed phrasing in the Tao Te Ching: a house without walls, a home where no one lives. Somewhere here in the bazaar, in one of the shops, was the contact Fingal had tried to lead him to. To search for Nuri Qam in Meshed without such a lead was all but impossible. He knew that K Section kept a listening post here, close to the USSR border, in a silversmith’s place in the southeast corner of the great bazaar, but he had no intention of leading Frau Freyda there.
“Ah,” she said. “This looks interesting. Let us stop here a moment, bitte.”
He was aware of her large leather handbag looped over her right arm as they paused in front of a rug seller’s mart. “In here,” the blond woman said.
“I’d rather not. I have no interest in rugs.”
“Bitte,” she said again.
He was interested to see how far she would go, and now he found out. She dipped her hand into the bag and pressed it against his side, under his arm, and he knew the undeniable sensation of having a gun shoved tightly into his ribs.
“I ask you politely,” she said, and smiled.
“A gun is not polite.”
“Inside. Quickly.”
9
He did as he was told. He had his own .38 in his waistband, and he did not intend to give it up. The dealer in carpets, a Khorasan farmer turned merchant, was haggling with a pilgrim trying to sell a Shiraz rug in order to make an offering at the holy shrine. The bazaar man simply nodded to Freyda and went on bargaining. The blond woman urged Durell into the darker shadows at the rear of the open stall, which was curtained by more carpets hanging on horizontal display poles. She had been here before and knew the way. It w
as like a maze, moving between the corridors of dusty carpets, but Freyda kept close behind him, the gun in his ribs urging him on.
Finally he came to a wooden wall and a wooden door. Freyda reached past him and knocked briefly in a sharp, coded series of taps. The door was opened immediately. Beyond it was a small room, a cubicle made of rough boards like a shed behind the bazaar rug shop. Part of the room was piled with small three-by-five Baluchi carpets and poustines, the locally embroidered lambskin coats and vests. The Chinese gentleman who had been on the plane from Zahidan sat on a pile of the coats. Herr Hans Hauptman-Graz sat on the pile of rugs. Both men stood up as Freyda ushered Durell inside and closed the plank door behind them.
“Good,” said the Chinese. “You have brought 'him. But he is still armed, is he not?”
Hauptman-Graz said gutterally, “Your gun, Herr Durell.”
Durell leaned back against the wooden wall. “You people are damned inefficient. I assume, Mr.—?” He looked at the Chinese.
“Chou. Mr. Chou.”
“From the Black House?”
“As you wish. Give the lady your gun.”
“Nonsense,” Durell said. He had his hand on the .38 tucked into his waistband under the safari coat. “If she fires, I can still get off one shot at you. Depend on it. I won’t miss. She should have asked for it earlier, outside.” Freyda made a clucking sound. “There were so many pilgrims in the crowd, Mr. Chou—”
The Chinese smiled. “Never mind. After all, we do not wish to have violence here. We are not on a mission that requires such activity. I am sure Mr. Durell will be amiable in our discussion. He will tell us what he is up to and why, and what he has done with the dragon that rightfully belongs to the Chinese People’s Republic as a national treasure. Will you not, Mr. Durell?”
“It depends. Why do you want it so badly? I understand it was found in Afghanistan. After seven centuries, I should think it belongs to the finder. It is an Afghan national treasure now, I should think.”
Mr. Chou said softly, “Our new deputy chairman is a man obsessed by our past heritage. He has requested that it be returned to Peking. Diplomatic representations have been made to Kabul, with no reasonable response as yet. If we can simply—obtain—it, there will be no difficulty at all.”
“And if you don’t get it that way?”
“Diplomacy is the art of arguing with a gun in your hand, after all.” Mr. Chou shrugged. He was short and stout, with thick black hair tinged with silver above his ears. He wore silver-rimmed round glasses that gave his face an owlish, benign look. But there was nothing beneficent about him, Durell knew. Anyone from the Black House in Peking was a mortal factor to be reckoned with. Mr. Chou said, “Where did you find the dragon? And what do you intend to do with it, sir?”
“I haven’t found it. But I intend to,” Durell said. “When I do, it goes to the Kabul government in Afghanistan. After that, it’s none of my affair or my government’s concern.”
Mr. Chou said patiently, “We know all about you, Mr. Durell. Your code name is ‘Cajun,’ is it not? We know that you are on loan, so to speak, from Washington, at the request of your old friend, Nuri Qam, to help the Afghanis recover the dragon. I warn you, our Deputy Chairman means to have it. There will be no equivocation about the dragon. One way or another, at whatever cost, he will have it in Peking. It is not important in itself, of course. We both understand that. And it is not the concern of your country. True, the Russians—certain of them—would like to irritate the Deputy Chairman into making aggressive moves. It could certainly be done.” Mr. Chou spread his hands, and Durell could see in the gesture the deadly mushroom clouds of a thermonuclear holocaust. “A showdown between the legitimate claims of the Chinese People’s Republic for Siberian territorial adjustments and the nationalist, imperialist expansionist aims of the deviationists in Moscow may certainly become inevitable. Would you want that? Of course not. No reasonable man would destroy the world for such foolishness. So be reasonable, Mr. Durell. We three—Herr and Frau Hauptman-Graz and myself, are not the totality of the forces at work to prevent you from taking the dragon to Nuri Qam. Your trust, in any case, is misplaced. Mr. Qam has his own ideas as to the eventual disposition of the art objects. You would be better off to cooperate with us.”
“I don’t have the dragon,” Durell said flatly.
“Come, come.”
“Not yet,” Durell added.
“Ah. But you have learned where it is?”
“Perhaps.”
“Tell us, then,” Mr. Chou said gently.
“To hell with you and the Black House and your nuclear threats and your new Deputy Chairman.”
“You are angry, I see. But it was not we who tortured and killed your friend Mr. Fingal. That was the work of the Russians. That perverted man, Kokin. Do not blame us for that.”
Durell was silent. Freyda emphasized the pressure of her gun in his ribs. The big blond woman looked eager to pull the trigger. She would have done well in Nazi times, he reflected. Her stout little husband also produced a gun, a Luger, and pointed it at Durell.
Durell said, “And what if I don’t cooperate with you?”
“All men are mortal,” Mr. Chou said. “We must all face death sooner or later. But better later, I should think, than now, at this moment. I am not a patient man, contrary to your Western concept of Orientals. If I cannot get the dragon from you, I shall retrieve it from your pretty Russian companion, Miss Talinova. Yes, we know about her, too. And Pigam Zhirnov. And the sadist, Kokin. We are efficient. We can be ruthless. And at the moment, I am impatient.”
Durell suddenly knew that Chou would not let him leave this little room alive. The red tab on his dossier in Peking made him fair game for killing by any Black House agent.
It was stiflingly hot in the plank shed behind the carpet dealer’s shop. The sound of crowd noises from the bazaar were muffled by the multiple layers of carpets that hung outside the door. A shot, or several shots, would surely go unnoticed and unheard by those outside. There were no windows in the wooden room, but the walls seemed to have been knocked together from thin plywood crates. There were no other doors except the one by which he had been forced to enter.
“So, Mr. Durell?”
Freyda was breathing faster than normal in her eagerness, and she pressed the gun closer to him. He said, “All right,” and then shrugged and turned inward toward her, forcing her to shift the gun in her hand. The next moment, with exaggerated care, he removed his .38 with two fingers from his waistband. Mr. Chou sighed and smiled. Freyda looked at the Chinese and Durell made his move the moment she shifted her gaze.
His gun slammed a single shot at Hauptman-Graz, who happened to be the nearest target, and in the same moment, he used his left arm to drive Freyda’s gun away from his body. It went off a split-second after his own shot, and the double roar seemed deafening in the tiny, closed room. The Luger’s slug went wild. The woman squawked and shouted something in German as she saw her husband topple backward off the pile of rags, Mr. Chou came off his seat of poustines, holding a gun.
Durell dropped down, sliding forward on one knee, fired at the Chinese, missed, and his shoulder knocked Freyda down in a tumble atop him. Her flesh was soft and yielding. Mr. Chou had no qualms about his target. His gun crashed and Durell felt Freyda jerk as the bullet grazed her, aimed at Durell. The woman’s Luger fell to the floor. Durell came up and hit Chou in the stomach with his head. The man fell backward, upsetting the balanced pile of embroidered coats and vests. He became entangled with them for a moment, and Durell heard Freyda swear softly in German, saw her grope for her fallen gun, and waited no longer.
The plank door to the rear of the carpet shop was not locked. Durell drove through it, found himself in the maze of hanging carpets dependent on their long bamboo poles across the back of the shop. A bullet thudded through them from behind as Chou recovered his balance. Durell dropped flat, urged himself on hands and knees under the hanging rugs rather than to try to figh
t his way through the narrow passages they formed. The carpet dealer had concluded his haggling with the pilgrim and was alone in the shop. He stared at Durell with mouth agape. Durell wasted no time on him. He ran for the front of the shop and the crowds of people in the great bazaar. The place was a rat’s nest of alleys and lanes, each one devoted to special crafts—coppersmithing, jewelry, more carpets, clothing. Shouts and pleas and arguments filled the hot afternoon air, but the deep lungsful Durell drew felt relatively cool after the sweaty heat in the little room behind the carpet shop.
He shoved his way rapidly through the motley crowd. Looking back, he saw Chou and the woman come out after him; he moved faster, but not too fast as to attract the attention of someone in the crowd or of the occasional uniformed policeman who patrolled casually through the bazaar. Members of the crowd, motivated by their intense religious fervor, would gladly seize the opportunity to mob him, recognizing him as an obvious ferengi, a foreigner.
It was not until he reached the first comer that he noticed two others closing in on him. From the minaret of the Gauhar-Shad mosque came the sudden ululations of a muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer. The cries were amplified by loudspeakers and inspired a tidal wave, sending all the Moslems in the crowd for their prayer mgs. The two men at the corner were Afghans, dressed in tribal costume—big men, with fierce moustaches, heavily muscled under their white shirts. They hesitated, aware of the fact that they would stand out in the vast crowd if they refused the call to prayer that boomed out from the minarets. Finally they responded by crouching in the proper position. For Durell, fortunately, there was an open shed where a jeweler practiced his craft on local turquoise stones. He stepped quickly inside, out of the crowded, dusty lane. Behind him, he saw Chou hesitate. Freyda, heedless of local customs, kept coming on, a vengeful Valkyrie in a sea of prostrate forms.
Assignment Afghan Dragon Page 7