Assignment- 13th Princess

by Will B Aarons

  “Then you’ll return to Istanbul?”

  “Why not? I’ll be glad to get out of this museum—just look at it! It just suited Tahir, it’s just like a Turk.”

  “Then we’ll be going,” Durell said.

  “Oh, no. You spend the night here.”

  Durell looked at her.

  “I had Volkan check you out and bring your bags with you.”

  “What?”

  “All I have is you—and your lovely little wife, of course.” A thin shadow appeared between Nadine’s perfectly plucked brows. “She’s awfully young, Sam.” She turned back to him. “You will spend the night. Don’t let that big old bear Volkan get me. Say you will!”

  Dara stared at Durell. He sighed and nodded to Nadine.

  “Did you always love this girl named Deirdre?” There was a long silence as Dara stood uncertainly in the bathroom doorway.

  “Yes,” Durell replied. He saw her shadow in a carpet of light that fell from the bathroom door. He looked back at her, from where he lay on the bed. The light behind her cast a fringe of fire around her straw-blond hair. She wore a modest robe of peach-colored tricot. He saw a scallop of lace beneath its hem.

  “I’ll sleep in the chair,” she said, and came barefoot into the room, hugging the robe closed. It whispered around her thighs.

  “Not if you’re my wife.” Durell threw back the covers on the other side of the bed.

  “You’re carrying this a bit far.”

  “It wasn’t my idea. You don’t know who might come through that door. We have to be convincing.” Durell felt the presence of Volkan, perhaps at the other end of the house, maybe just outside the door. It was possible that Nadine had been indulging herself with her theatrical display of fright and rage. So far, Volkan had kept himself above reproach except for tailing them earlier. And even that was understandable as an excess of virtue, if his job included screening Nadine’s callers. Durell did not know what to think.

  The bathroom went dark, and the walls swam with muzzy, distracting afterimages; then the soft gray of the city’s nightglow settled over everything. The rain had picked up, and the shower drummed against French doors to a terrace. The lights of London came through black tree-shapes out there. Durell felt the bed sink with Dara’s weight and heard her low voice: “This is strictly business, Sam.”

  “Are you still wearing the derringer around your neck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are you worried about?”

  He heard a rustle of bedcovers, and the sweet aroma of bathpowder touched his nose.

  Dara spoke through the darkness. “Do you really think you can get Princess Ayla to leave Dhubar?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Sheik Zeid loves her very much, they say. If she runs out on him, he may never allow her to return—she must understand the risk. He could be vengeful. You know an Arab’s pride.”

  “While we’re on the darker side of things—it would be embarrassing if he found out we were providing cover for you.”

  “We don’t wish to harm him, Sam. Heaven knows we can use all the moderates we can get among the Arabs, and we want him to retain his throne—whatever happens to the Thirteenth Princess. If he loses it, all of Dhubar’s wealth could go to promote another round of war in the Middle East, more terrible than ever. My mission is only to gather information.”

  “Try to tell him that,” Durell said in a dry tone.

  He felt a toss of Dara’s slender frame. She blew a breath. “If only it weren’t for Princess Ayla. . . .”

  “We have to play the cards we’ve been dealt,” Durell said. “This is a hand where nobody folds.”

  It seemed a long while before Dara’s breathing took the deep, slow rhythm of slumber. Durell remained awake.

  The ancient city rumbled and glowed. The hoot of a freighter came from the Thames.

  He relaxed slowly and reluctantly, the presence of Volkan an unknown quantity on his mind. When he entered a twilight state of rest, the nightmare in the hotel room came back to him, and he drowsily shook it from his mind.

  He did not sleep in the ordinary sense.

  Something high in his brain never quite stopped weighing and testing, perceiving his surroundings.

  The sound of gunfire started at the back of Dara’s mind, as from a well, in ebony blackness, and she knew the dream was coming again.

  The spitting, mechanical hammering became a clutter of violent noises, explosions, screams, the rattle of falling debris on the hard earth a few miles from the Sea of Galilee.

  Fourteen-year-old Dara peered with frightened eyes from the window of her cinder-block house. Men in ghutras and crazy striped clothing, pants tucked into boots, ran out of the black thicket that was an orange grove and into the moonlight, rifles winking. They ran like monkeys, bent over, and brought the rattle of death up the row of little houses. Something snicked at the window frame, and Dara heard glass shatter near her ear. At the same moment one of the dark figures hurled something into the window of another house and ran on, and the house came apart with tongues of flame shooting out the cracks.

  Now men darted out of the little houses, half-clothed, carrying rifles that jerked and snapped, and many of them seemed to stumble over something and fall on their faces and just lie there. The bonfire of an automobile cast a yellow glow over everything as the crazy-striped intruders scrurried on up the slope toward Dara’s house.

  They were very close now, and Dara’s eyes seemed to fill her freckled face with great, milky pools of fear in the moonlight, but she did not leave the window, didn’t even think to.

  “Dara! Get down!” It was her mother.

  She heard her mother’s frantic breath and the slap of her bare feet as she ran across the floor toward the window. Behind her was the wail of her brother, scarcely noticeable in the confused racket.

  “I said get down, girl! Under the bed!” Dara had never seen such a look on her mother’s face. Her mother yanked her arm and slapped her face, and she could see tears on her mother’s cheeks and the anguished gleam of teeth clenched in her mouth.

  Dara was bawling, disoriented in the dark bedlam as she scrambled on all fours.

  The room flashed white and orange. The brilliant stroke of light sucked all the breath out of her.

  There was no sound.

  There was nothing.

  It was gray dawn when feeling- returned, and Dara found herself clawing for air from under tumbled debris. A hand discovered her. Shattered boards and stone were lifted away, and she was hauled gently into the cool, smoke-smudged air.

  And this was the worst part of the dream:

  A sad-faced woman showed her to the sheet-covered bodies of her mother and little brother. She fell to her knees and clawed at her cheeks. Her lips and face and eyes screamed, “Mother! Brother!”—but no sound came out.

  If only she could bring forth the agony that tore her insides.

  Now she had no family—her father had died in the molten cradle of a tank in the Sinai in June, 1967.

  And now all she could see in the dream was her face, screaming silently for all that was lost.

  Sometime during the night a small, sharp noise awakened Durell from his twilight sleep, and he sat up, his .38 in his grip, the odor of its gun oil heavy in his nostrils.

  Then Dara whimpered again and cried out.

  A thin alarm of half-opened eyes shone in her face as she stared up at him, her breath ragged and light.

  “It was only a nightmare,” he said.

  She nodded. Her short hair was spread like a crown on the pillow. She made no move for the reassurance of his arms.

  “It’s all over,” he said as he tucked his gun back under the sheets.

  “It will never be all over,” she replied.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  A pale banana light of morning filled the room when Durell awakened again. Dara’s cheek was against her pillow, her breath soft thro
ugh a curtain of polished teeth. He sensed that something was not quite right, moved his eyes about the room, gun under his palm, tendons tensing. It had stopped raining. Durell felt the city stirring out there beyond the wall of the gloomy terrace. Something had disturbed him, but he did not know what.

  Then his eyes fixed on a darker shadow behind an overgrown alder bush, but quite near the French doors.

  It was Volkan.

  Lazily, Durell rolled onto his side and planted his lips over Dara’s warm, pliant mouth. Her eyelids sprung open, and he felt her hands push adamantly against his shoulders. Her robe did nothing to dampen the erotic pressure of her breasts as she straggled for an astonished breath. Then she saw Durell signal toward the terrace with his eyes, and whispered: “What’s he doing?”

  “Checking up on the deck,” Durell muttered.

  “Well—we mustn’t look like a fifth ace.” She smiled, and her arms pulled him harder against her. Abruptly her kiss developed sincerity.

  Durell glanced toward the terrace again—Volkan was gone, apparently satisfied that Durell and Dara were the honeymooners they had said they were. Reluctantly, he started to pull away from the scented softness of Dara’s body, but she held him with surprising strength. Her hazel eyes were fevered, her face a pink blush against the white pillow case.

  “We should get dressed and pack,” he said.

  “In a little while.”

  “It’s only an hour and a half until our plane leaves.”

  She kissed him and nuzzled his neck, and the roundings of her body pressed against him, as she said:

  “I want to fly now.”

  Chapter 5

  TURKISH BITCH

  OTTOMAN WHORE

  DOWN WITH THE THIRTEENTH PRINCESS

  A score of such signs and banners, in sweeping Arabic letters, fluttered and rattled in the hot breeze at Dhubar Airport. They hung from a high chain link fence near the new terminal building, behind which a mob had awaited the arrival of Princess Ayla two nights before. She and Sheik Zeid had been escorted from the airport to the city by a column of heavily armed troops.

  That the signs remained was indication enough of a government still off-balance and fighting for its life, Durell thought as he stood on the scorching gravel of the airport parking lot and argued with Patrick McNamara.

  “Send her back, Sam. It’s really unsafe.”

  “Dara stays,” Durell told the pink-faced man.

  “I never thought I’d see you act like a lovestruck dope,” McNamara said, and his pale blue eyes changed from nervous to annoyed. He was slope-shouldered, powerfully built, and had a seamed, sunburned face that could change its character second by second. Normally, it held a warning of secrecy, the threat of forbidden knowledge, but Durell knew that you could never be really sure what he was thinking.

  “There won’t be any other women,” McNamara said. “Just the locals. The embassies have sent all their dependents out.”

  “I’m willing to take my chances with my husband,” Dara said.

  “Aw—!”, McNamara cursed beneath his breath. “Get in the car then.”

  “Never mind,” Durell said. “The embassy was to have had a car waiting for us.” His head felt as if the sun had it in a vise, out here in the open. The lemon sky hurt his eyes with its fierce brilliance, and shimmering mirages to the east made a plate that held the haze-gray rumple of Dhubar City. The temperature must have been 120°. “We’ll wait for the embassy car,” Durell said.

  “There won’t be an embassy car; I’m taking you under my wing,” McNamara said.

  “I don’t want your wing. I’m regular embassy personnel.”

  McNamara’s deeply grooved face changed from considerate to skeptical. “Sure, Sam. Like butterflies have balls—excuse me, little lady. Don’t try to kid an old kidder, Sam.”

  Durell said nothing. McNamara’s hand wiped sweat from the hairy V of his open-necked, short-sleeved shirt. They stared at each other.

  Dara broke the silence. “Oh, let’s ride with Mr. McNamara. What difference does it make, Sam, darling?”

  “Listen to the little lady, Sam. You know I could get you both sent straight back to where you came from—”

  “Not if you value your cozy ties with Washington,” Durell said.

  “Don’t throw that up to me,” McNamara said in a brusque tone. Then, more thoughtfully: “You know, the time has come when I can do without you easier than you can do without Dhubar. I don’t know why you’re here, but you remember this: Dhubar is my turf. I’m going to keep an eye on you.” He grinned—but it wasn’t a grin.

  Durell put Dara into the car and got in beside her.

  Baking sand and stone lay in every direction as they drove toward the city. The webbed spires of oil drilling rigs were everywhere, and the pure desert air was fouled with the stench of natural gas. The sudden splurge of mineral wealth had put the old of Dhubar on a collision course with the westernized Twentieth Century, Durell thought, as they passed a shepherd boy tending scrawny goats near a Bedouin tent with a new pickup truck parked beside it.

  Durell had not cared for the omens in McNamara’s pink, vulpine face—and he had been taught to read faces by an expert, his Grandpa Jonathan, one of the last Mississippi River gamblers. The home of Durell’s boyhood had been on board Jonathan’s beached side-wheeler, Trois Belles, and every stroll through its ornate salon, with its roulette wheel and card tables, had brought to his grandfather’s mind another story to tell, another lesson to be learned. There, amid the moss-hung oaks of Bayou Peche Rouge, under the hot Louisiana sun, Durell had learned when to raise and when to fold—and to judge the will and cunning of his opponents.

  The minarets of Dhubar, seen through the dancing heat, came closer as Durell considered Patrick Kelly McNamara, who ran what was arguably the largest, most professional and best-funded intelligence operation in the Middle East, barring only Israel’s. The archconservative old emir had despised all creeds, political or otherwise, that did not spring from the tenets of Islam. He suppressed the communists and socialists and republicans with relatively little cruelty and no consistency, but he was fanatical and undeviating in his demand to know who they were and what they were doing at all times. When tremendous oil wealth had come his way, he used it to carry his fanatical quest beyond the borders of tiny Dhubar, with its population of scarcely one million, and eventually came to know what political plagues and irreligious epidemics sprouted throughout the Arab world.

  This huge budget and store of information had made McNamara a powerful man in his own right.

  A document from him could seal the doom of a man two thousand miles away.

  Money had been no object when the old emir asked the CIA to build him the most modern intelligence apparatus from the ground up, and McNamara had been tapped to honcho the project in its pilot stage. He’d had more experience than anyone in the Mideast, had served as Central in Cairo, Riyadh, Damascus, Ankara, and Athens. McNamara had taken the job and resigned from K Section in his prime. Then the old emir had asked him to stay on permanently.

  K Section could afford to be philosophical about its loss. McNamara still maintained close ties with Washington that were ultrasecret. It was one of those arrangements that thrive on mutual self-interest.

  But McNamara was a man of divided loyalties.

  Durell did not trust him.

  He remembered the man who had ambushed him in London and looked back, through the rear window, as they drove through a large section of new, concrete workers’ houses. Each had a small, walled courtyard and a window air conditioner. The old emir had done something to share the country’s wealth with its people, but there was a long way to go.

  Durell did not see anyone behind them.

  McNamara’s Cadillac entered a broad, palm-lined boulevard flanked with parks where whirling sprinklers spewed water in fiery, prismatic streams. Dirty smoke rose from the town’s old quarter and was torn by the Persian Gulf wind. Beyond the city, with its ribs of shadow
ed alleys, its mud houses and sparkling high rises, he saw great columns of dense, black smoke given off by flaming pools of slush crude oil.

  Fire should have been the national emblem of Dhubar, he thought, instead of a golden scimitar on a blue background. Everything burned to the touch, and the wind that stirred sand in the gutters hit you like a blowtorch.

  They passed a low, crenelated tower, all that remained of the city’s ancient mud-brick wall. Another sprinkler-irrigated park surrounded it, recalling the Arabs’ love of water and shady places.

  A large gathering hove into view, and McNamara wove the car carefully through a surly crowd where soldiers savagely beat eight prisoners who were chained to parking meters. Two of the prisoners had slumped to the street, dead or unconscious. The crowd watched in stony silence, their eyes filled with hatred for the soldiers, who worked methodically, their khaki shirts soaking with sweat. The onlookers filled the street and were stubborn about parting to make way for the big black car with the tinted windows.

  Durell exchanged tense glances with Dara.

  Nothing happened.

  Soldiers lounged in the shade of awnings and held their M-16s casually. Here and there were a smashed window, a fire-scorched building, a looted shop. The Dhubar Oil Company headquarters had been gutted. Junk Uttered the sidewalks, bottles, paper, scraps of cloth; and imprecations against the Thirteenth Princess were scrawled on walls. Most shops were shuttered on the boulevard, and there was little traffic, although Durell noted a fair amount of activity on the side streets. The big avenues seemed to be no-man’s-lands, set aside for violence.

  McNamara twisted the wheel, and the car veered onto a street that ran along the bay front. A trooper with a holstered .45 waved them around a Shorland armored car of British manufacture, and Durell remembered that Dhubar had been a British protectorate until the last decade.

  “Most of the fires are out,” McNamara said. It was the first time he had spoken since leaving the airport.

  “There will be more tonight, to judge by that crowd we passed,” Durell said.