Assignment - Karachi

by Edward S. Aarons

  He had turned the Ferrari into an alley between high, yellow-stained buildings that looked like warehouses. It was dark and hot here, like an oven, the buildings radiating back into her face the heat of the day. She hated the feeling of sweat that came out all over her, and yet she shivered with an inner chill. Rudi stopped the car and got out. They were in a kind of cul-de-sac, and from the sudden reverberating echoes of a freighter’s horn, she knew they were very close to the wharves on the Indus waterfront. She looked back again. Nothing was behind them. But she didn’t like the peculiar emptiness of this tenement alley where Rudi had parked. The windows, up there behind their small balconies, looked lifeless. Ahead was a concrete wall with a blue-painted door in it.

  “I will be right back,” Rudi said. “You must stay here, Jane.”

  “Please, Rudi, I want to go with you.”

  “I will only be gone a moment.”

  He walked away, going through the doorway ahead, and she was alone.

  The heat seared her lungs. The freighter hooted again, as if it were just on the other side of the yellow warehouse on her right. She got out of the car, squeezing between the fender and the building’s wall. There was not much more room on the other side. She wondered if she ought to follow

  Rudi. Why was it so quiet here? Back in the other street, at least, there had been busy, swarming people, sweaty and dirty and noisy. But it was so lonely here, she thought. Such a peculiar place.

  She had gained nothing with Rudi. He would not help her. And he would not let her talk to Sarah. She saw it had been a foolish threat to make. But why had he said they were being followed? Maybe it was a good thing. But her momentary reassurance quickly vanished. She turned to the door in the wall, then turned again and started walking to the alley entrance.

  Her heart lurched and pounded suddenly. Two men had come into the alley from the street beyond. They were young Chinese, and their appearance was incongruous. They wore blue denims and sneakers and one wore a white baseball shirt with YANKEES printed on it. The other wore a gaudy Hawaiian type sport shirt, the tails hanging out around his belt. They moved swiftly and decisively toward her in the evening gloom of the alley.

  She choked down a silent scream. After all, Rudi had brought her here. It would be all right.

  The two Chinese came toward her, walking on their toes. One said, “Oh, babe.” The other said, “This is too bad, Miss Standish.”

  “I’m not Miss Standish,” Jane said quickly.

  “Sure, honey, you’re nobody.”

  They crowded close to her as she shrank against the wall, and then she saw the first Chinese boy’s eyes widen suddenly, unnaturally, and he made a quick movement and she felt something go into her belly and rip upward, with a hissing sound of cut flesh. A shattering scream tore out of her lungs and throat, like the sound of a slaughtered animal. She screamed again and then the Chinese boy pulled the knife out of her and she saw the blade, half shining, glistening with her blood, for just an instant as it flashed before her eyes. Then it came across her throat in a quick, expert movement and she felt herself falling, aware of no pain, aware of a darkness and warmth enveloping her and thinking dimly of Momma and Poppa in Gardens Falls, Indiana, before she died. . . .

  Everything was quiet in the alley. The second Chinese, who had only watched, turned and trotted away. Rudi came out of the door nearby. He was wiping his hands on his handker-

  chief. He did not look at the crumpled body of Jane King in the dirty alley.

  “It is done,” the Chinese boy said. He was the one in the baseball shirt. “You pay me now.”

  “Why not?” Rudi said.

  He took a gun from his pocket and shot the Chinese boy in the head. The single report was enormous, echoing back and forth between the yellow warehouse walls. The Chinese fell across Jane King’s sprawled legs.

  Rudi hesitated, staring up at the sky for a speculative moment, weighing the gun in his hand. Then he brought his arm up with a sharp, smashing gesture and struck himself once, twice, a third time across the face and forehead. He went down on hands and knees with blood spilling down his face, blinding him, and he remained like that, shaking his head, watching the drops spatter in the filth of the alley, and he did not look up as he heard Durell and Colonel K’Ayub run toward him at last. . . .

  The nearest police station was in a dark blue cinder-block building near the Johnston-May Oil, Ltd. wharves. Inside, where a Sikh sergeant sat behind a new metal desk, there were several uniformed police at work in a long, wide room with barred windows that gave a view of the river traffic. A fat, bald Frenchman was arguing with the Sikh sergeant, and a naked man, except for a dirty loin cloth, was being dragged by two big policemen into a back room. An air-conditioner wheezed in the windows, but across the room another window was wide open, letting in the hot stench of the waterfront. Fishing boats, Arab dhows, and a tanker moved in the fairway. Lights blinked on the ships and busy docks.

  The station smelled like all police stations the world over, Durell thought. It carried in its walls the stench of urine and vomit and blood, and above all, the smell of human fear and pain.

  The doctor was a gaunt Englishman, yellow with years of malarial bouts. Rudi sat in a chair while the doctor tended to his cut face. Durell and K’Ayub stood against the opposite wall, watching the patient who was bathed in hot light from a tin-shaded lamp over the chair. At the door was Sergeant Zalmadar, K’Ayub’s Pathan servant, big and tough and light on his feet, like most mountain people.

  “Could these wounds be self-inflicted?” Durell asked.

  The English doctor waved a bloody swab. “My dear man, it would take a great deal of courage. This eye could have been badly injured.”

  “But it isn’t.”

  “Fortunately for Herr von Buhlen, no.”

  Rudi’s mouth was puffy, and the eye the doctor referred to was partly closed by swelling. There was a gash above it that needed stitches.

  “Tell us again why you took the girl to Aswali Alley,” K’Ayub said harshly.

  Rudi shrugged. “I was lost, as I said. We were heading for the golf course—for dinner, a few drinks. Jane wanted to see the waterfront slums. I made a wrong turn and found myself in that dead-end spot and before I could back out; the Chinese boy jumped her.”

  “For no reason?”

  “He had a reason, I suppose.”

  Durell lit a cigarette. “What do you suggest it was?” Rudi winced as the doctor began stitching above his eye. “He thought she was Sarah Standish. I don’t know how to express my shock. It was a terrible mistake, to impose the deception on Jane. It led to her death.”

  “The Chinese boy addressed her as Miss Standish?”

  “Yes. And then he knifed her. He was terribly fast.” “And then you shot him?”

  “Yes. I was shocked, but after all—”

  K’Ayub said quietly, “But you knew we were following you, did you not, Herr von Buhlen?”

  “No, I did not.” Rudi’s voice was angry for a moment. “Why should I think anyone would follow me?”

  “You knew we were looking for Jane King.”

  “No, I didn’t know that, either. I was upstairs when Mr. Durell came to the bungalow. I haven’t met him before—not until you gentlemen found me in that alley.”

  “Yet you took evasive tactics in your drive that caused us to lose you and drop far behind. We only found you because of the distinctive car you drove. It attracted some attention.”

  Rudi spread his hands. “Well, there you are. If I were trying to lure Jane secretly to that place, would I advertise my route by hiring that Ferrari?”

  “You might,” Durell said.

  Durell looked tall and angry. He had seen the butchery on Jane King, and the ugly image lingered in his mind. It was one thing, when you were in the business and knew the risks and balanced your training and reflexes against the wiles of the enemy. It was another to be a bewildered and helpless Jane King, accustomed to the sane and orderly world abo
ve the surface of Durell’s. He resented her death. It was unnecessary. And it had been brutally cruel. He was not satisfied with Rudi’s explanation that Jane had been mistaken for Sarah Standish. Possibly it was the truth—but not all of the truth, he thought.

  He tried to be objective about Rudi. There are men you meet whom you dislike instinctively, as two male animals in a jungle will at once be charged with mutual enmity. The feeling was there between himself and the blond man. Rudi knew it. They both understood it the first time their eyes met. There was a smell of conflict between them that might only be resolved by violence. Yet nothing but a few polite questions and replies had been exchanged.

  The Sikh sergeant came in and whispered something to K’Ayub, who gestured to his Pathan servant. Zalmadar went out with the Sikh.

  K’Ayub said, “Herr von Buhlen, you were a friend of Miss King’s, were you not?”

  “Not exactly a friend.”

  “More, perhaps?”

  “Once. Not any longer.”

  “You were once lovers, is that it?”

  Rudi nodded readily. “True.”

  “But today your love had turned to hate, it had ended in jealousy, in a threat perhaps by Miss King to tell Miss Standish of your affair with her?”

  Rudi did not look surprised. He paused for only a moment. “She was pregnant,” he said. “I suppose your doctor just reported that. Please don’t play clever games with me, Colonel. You and I may be together for some weeks, starting tomorrow. We may need each other. So I admit it, man to man, and trust you will understand. Jane King thought I should be named as the father of her unborn child.”

  “And were you the father?”

  “I couldn’t say. There may have been other men. I don’t know of any, frankly, but with a girl like Jane—” Rudi paused. “She wanted to discuss her predicament. We were going to have dinner and talk about it. I had no idea you were looking for her. She telephoned the house while you were there, Durell, and I went out to meet her and we got lost.

  When she saw the native streets, she wanted to go farther. But I guess we were followed all the time. Not just by you. But by the Chinese killers.”

  “We did not see them,” K’Ayub said. He looked angry. There was a small silence while the English doctor asked Rudi to hold still and then snipped off the end of the sutures and applied a square of gauze and tape to his wound. Rudi pushed his long hair back from his yellow and bruised face, straightened his necktie, shrugged into his coat. The Englishman offered him some brandy. Rudi said, “Bitte,” and gulped it down.

  “Am I under arrest now?” he asked quietly. “Perhaps my story seems strange to you, but I’ve told you all I know about how it happened. Jane was mistaken for Sarah Standish. It was my fault—our getting lost, I mean—but I think it would have happened, anyway. The miracle is that it didn’t happen earlier, when she was wandering around alone.”

  “Yes,” K’Ayub said.

  Rudi looked worried. “Will your report on Jane’s condition be kept confidential? I’m naturally concerned about its effect on Miss Standish if she learns what I’ve confessed to you gentlemen—”

  “It will not be necessary to publish this fact.” K’Ayub looked at Durell. “Nor is it necessary for any of us to remain here.”

  He nodded for Durell to follow him into the outer room. K’Ayub was a strong man here, with power and influence, and his soft body and face were deceiving. The Pakistani minced no words.

  “Durell, do you think he killed Jane King?”

  “I think he arranged it,” Durell said.

  “And his wounds are self-inflicted?”

  “They’ll heal,” Durell said. “But Jane is dead. Will you hold him on a murder charge?”

  “We are a new nation,” K’Ayub said thinly, “but we respect law and order. Murder is the same the world over. An investigation is required. Technically, all of you could be detained for inquiry. But our problem is awkward. Miss Standish has leased a plane from a local airline. When one need not count money, luxuries and comforts are automatic, eh? Our problem is that, if we hold Rudi von Buhlen in Karachi for the courts, or on any pretext, we may not merely delay the expedition to S-5, but Miss Standish may call the whole thing off. This might be deplored by my government, but it would end its interest in the affair. I happen to be in opposition to certain governmental factions that resist exploratory progress. We may gain nothing in the end, anyway. If Rudi is an enemy and has further plans, we would give him a little rope, you agree? And if we proceed, pending a further inquiry, he will be in a sense in our custody.”

  “I understand,” Durell said.

  “You and I can take care of Rudi when the times comes,” K’Ayub said, smiling thinly.

  “Let’s hope so,” Durell said.

  chapter seven

  THEY flew from Rawalpindi an hour after dawn, through a sky already a molten yellow, swinging wide over the many mouths of the sluggish, muddy Indus. The sun flared brilliantly over the sand hills and the winding black road that followed the river north through the desert of the Sind. For a hundred miles, the scene was one of severe desolation, erosion, and emptiness.

  The DC-3 had been hastily converted, with comfortable seats, a kitchen, and staffed with two turbaned Bengali servants who served tea and rolls and omelets when they were aloft. Constraint persisted among the passengers since Durell had brought back the news of Jane’s death. Sarah looked as if she had not slept at all, and she had changed her usual glasses for a pair with large green sun lenses that hid her eyes. She sat alone at take-off, and then Rudi came back from the pilot’s compartment and kissed her lightly. She murmured something in apparent annoyance. Her face was pale. He whispered again and she shook her head and then he spoke more urgently and she sighed and got up and went forward with him. The Pakistani co-pilot came back and took a seat in the rear and promptly fell asleep.

  Colonel Lathri K’Ayub kept himself busy with a small knee desk on his lap, absorbed in correspondence. A busy man, Durell thought and a growing power in this dynamic Moslem country—the sort of military man with education and ambition who often entered politics, usually with a military coup, and helped to rule the new nation.

  There had been radio reports of trouble on the closed Afghan border, but nothing had come through on the news program of Jane King’s death. It had been kept off the air and out of the newspapers, thanks to K’Ayub’s influence.

  Durell noted that Alessa had not spoken to her brother Rudi at all. She sat at a window with the harsh sunlight glancing off the wing and reflecting in her oval face. Her pale hair, cut like a boy’s, made her look youthful and denied her scholastic air. She wore a white silk blouse, cut low, and when Durell stood beside her and asked if he might sit with her, he saw the smooth, taut swell of her breasts under the silk. Her smile was mechanical. She touched her blue skirt and nodded.

  “Please do. I am most unhappy. I am not a superstitious person, and yet I feel we begin under a bad omen.”

  “Jane’s death may only have been an unhappy coincidence,” he suggested, sitting in the chair beside her.

  Her eyes were solemn. “Do you believe that?”

  “There’s no point in jumping to conclusions.”

  “You do not strike me as a cautious man,” she said. “Nor much of a diplomat, either. I was very fond of Jane.” “So was Sarah, and your brother. Perhaps it will all be explained, one day.”

  “Maybe it will be best if we never find the answer,” Alessa murmured.

  “It must be found, though. I mean to find it.” He paused. “Why wouldn’t you want to know? Are you afraid of the truth?”

  “Perhaps it would serve no purpose,” she said.

  “Still, murder must be punished.”

  She turned away then, and pointed downward at the brown, seared landscape to change the subject. “There are the ruins of Mohaghadoro. Do you know about them?” There was a short, dusty airstrip inland from the Indus, a few nondescript mounds of mud brick ruins that se
emed insignificant from the thousand-foot elevation. Alessa spoke animatedly, engrossed in her special knowledge, pointing to the ruins of a Buddhist temple in what had been a flourishing city in 2500 B.C., a community of pillared halls, public baths, granaries and watchtowers. Durell saw small rice fields, groves of tamarisk and babul trees that looked dusty silver in the morning light. Laboring bullocks and men in turbans and loin cloths looked infinitely small as the plane bore north through the brazen sky.

  Alessa talked on about the Mohaghadoro artificats—gold, silver and alabaster jewels, tall vases and tools of copper and bronze. Her face grew absorbed as she talked of Indra, the war god of the Aryans who fought the local “barbarians” who built the walled cities, discussing the word pur in Sanskrit that meant a fort, and how the Rig-Veda described Indra’s destruction of ninety of these walled cities of the Indus valley.

  The land lifted steadily for the eight-hundred mile flight to Lahore, capital of Punjab. The waste of the Arabia Sind was left behind. By noon the lush garden city came i sight on the banks of the Ravi. Sarah had remained wit Rudi in the pilot’s compartment all morning. Lahoi looked like a green jewel of wide streets, emerald pari with cricket fields, stately Victorian buildings from the British reign, and the terraces and canals of the fabulous Shalimar Gardens. The tomb of Mohammed Iqbal loomed in red sandstone amid golden domes and spires, minarets and pavilions and cypress trees.

  They landed for fuel and lunch, and a visiting delegation of Pakistani and American officials greeted them, seeking out Sarah and murmuring polite offers of assistance. Durell ate lunch with Alessa until a messenger came up to them and he got up to call Donegan, back in Karachi.

  Donegan’s voice was thin and crackly over the Ion; distance wire of the airport telephone.

  “Nothing here, Sam. We’re sitting tight on everything. Had to cable home to the King girl’s parents, of course,. and that will break in the local Stateside newspapers; but can’t be helped.”

  “Any word on the Chinese boy who got away?”