Assignment - Ankara

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell jumped for the gun, caught the barrel, thrust it up while his right swung hard into Stuyvers as the man rose to his knees. The rifle exploded abruptly, making a thin, spiteful crack against the roaring of the tortured earth. Francesca cried out something as Stuyvers fell again. The man’s body was alive with furious muscle, surprisingly hard and wiry, as he struggled to regain his weapon.

  “Hold it!” Durell shouted.

  The man’s face was a mask of fury. Durell hit him again, pulling the punch, and Stuyvers’ head snapped back. Something struck Durell a stunning blow in the back and knocked the wind out of him. He rolled aside, not knowing what it was. For an instant he stared up at the mountainside above the road and was completely disoriented. It seemed as if the earth had heaved up like a giant wave and was toppling down upon him in a giant, crushing comber of torn rock, soil and splintered trees, poised there for an instant of eternity against the ochreous sky above.

  He shouted, saw that Kappic had thrown the two girls behind a great boulder. A vast, rumbling, grinding noise shook the air.

  “Get up!” he gasped to Stuyvers.

  The earth shook violently. He extended a hand to the man, and the missionary gaped at the hillside, where the landslide was beginning. His mouth closed, opened again. Durell pulled him angrily erect, a shower of flying pebbles pelted them. A stone struck Stuyvers in the cheek and laid open a raw, ugly gash. He did not seem to notice it.

  “Susan?” he called thinly.

  “Hurry!” the girl cried.

  They staggered to the shelter of the boulder as a long, roaring tongue of earth slid down the black mountainside in horrifying majesty. It struck the jeep on the road like a battering ram and swept it into the dark gorge as if it had never existed, except for a brief shriek of crushed metal.

  Stuyvers threw himself down beside his daughter. Durell crouched next to Francesca, with Kappic on the other side. For eternal moments, the earthquake shook the mountains around them. Francesca’s protective blankets were disarranged, and her long legs gleamed tan and firm in the ochreous light. But despite her fear, Durell noticed, she had managed to save her precious sketch case. She clung to his hand with a tense, frightened grip—and then as suddenly as it began, it was over.

  The silence, after the terrible roar, was shocking.

  There came a few last crashing notes as rocks still rolled to the bottom of the gorge. Then only the wind whispered in the splintered pines.

  Durell stood up. His legs trembled in reaction to the uncertain shifting of the earth. He looked questioningly at Kappic, who nodded, shaken.

  “It is over, for now. A bad one, eh? There may be another tremor—”

  “We’ll chance that,” Durell said. “Let’s get out of here.” “How?” Kappic asked pointedly. “The jeep is gone.” “Then we’ve got to walk,” Durell said grimly.

  Slowly they all rose to their feet. The tremor seemed to have jolted the missionary, John Stuyvers, back to his senses. He began to mutter apologies, clinging to his frozen-faced daughter. Their black saddle-leather bag lay on the road, and Durell picked it up to hand it to them. It was astonishingly heavy, and the girl, Susan, saw his surprise and spoke quickly.

  “We have some medieval Bibles and manuscript scrolls in there—we bought them from some monks when we were in Lebanon, at the monastery at Bel-el-Echem. They are priceless relics, written in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. We hope to take them back to Philadelphia with us.”

  There is no doubt that the bags contain books, Durell thought, handing it to her. “Does the Lebanese government know you’ve taken these out of their country?”

  She smiled evasively. “Father paid the monks well for them.”

  “I see.” It was none of his business, Durell thought, if the missionary was trying to bring back religious relics to the States illegally. But since no detail could be overlooked in his business, he made a mental note to inspect the bag’s contents as soon as possible.

  He walked ahead, climbing over the rubble that blocked the mountain road, and forced his way through twisted tree limbs and around huge rocks. It was growing dark. On the other side of the roadblock he saw the crushed wreck of an American car, partly exposed under the weight of loose gravel that looked dark where the Stuyvers had dug themselves out. Ahead, the gorge widened into a narrow valley cupped in rough mountains, and far in the distance through the haze he saw a ruined village clinging to the hillside. It would be Karagh, he thought, noting the terraced fields and stone houses. A stream had overflowed its banks beside the village, and there was a white guard post hut near a bridge that crossed the swollen little river.

  No lights shone there, but he thought he saw a few dim, mote-like figures stirring feebly after this latest quake.

  A sound behind him made him turn quickly. It was Kappic, grim and pale. Kappic had his heavy automatic in his hand.

  “What do you make of it, Durell?” the Turk asked.

  “We must go on.”

  “The village is ruined. You see, not even a helicopter could land on those orchards. But some people are still alive down there, it seems.”

  “Shouldn’t there be a regimental frontier guard detachment at that bridge?” Durell asked.

  “There usually is. The frontier with the Moskofs is not far off here,” Kappic said. He frowned. “The detachment must have been sent on relief duty elsewhere.”

  “Maybe,” Durell said. “Anyway, we can leave the Stuyvers couple and the Uvaldi girl in the village. You and I can go on up to Base Four on foot.”

  The Turk nodded slowly. His dark eyes reflected shock and grief as he looked down at the rubble of the distant mountain village. Something had caught fire down there, and a thin finger of smoke probed the misty, evening sky.

  “Allah help us all,” Kappic murmured. “Let us go on, as you say—if only to attend the funerals.”

  Chapter Three

  THE hut was dark and cold, and one corner of the roof sagged dangerously over the single interior room. But the Russian-style tiled stove still worked, and there was a little charcoal. Francesca was accustomed to caring for herself under any strange conditions. She was alone in the hut, except for the scent and memory of some goats, and on the twisted rafters above, a couple of pigeons burbled uneasily.

  She was not afraid, and Durell had returned her ivory-handled gun before he left her in Karagh village.

  “You won’t mind staying here a few hours?” he asked. “It might be difficult to hike up to the base on the mountaintop. Kappic talked to the headman here, and you’ll be better off in the village.”

  “I’m worried about my father,” she had said. “I had no idea conditions were so bad here. And I have no clothes—” She gestured to the blankets she had fashioned for herself, and Durell wondered how she had made herself look so desirable and seductive, even like this.

  He looked at the red-eyed pigeons on the rafters. “You have only the birds to watch you. But the Stuyvers are in the next hut, anyway. If you need anything, I’m sure they’ll be glad to help.”

  Her eyes slanted up to meet his. “Aren’t they rather strange? For missionaries, I mean?”

  Durell grinned. “He’s a smuggler.”

  She stared in shocked silence. “A smuggler? But then you—

  “Rare old Biblical manuscripts in Aramaic, out of Lebanon.” He shrugged. “None of our business, of course. They’ve been through a lot, I gathered, but I think they’ll be all right now.”

  Francesca sighed with quick relief, then frowned again.

  “Well—” She looked dubious. “You’ll be back tonight?”

  “As soon as possible,” he promised.

  When he was gone, she gladly dropped her air of helpless femininity that she had donned for him. She did not know if he had been deceived by any of it, or not. She could guess what Sam Durell was, with a reasonable degree of certainty, and she was aware of his function in the scheme of things here. She considered him a dangerous man. And yet he could be useful, i
f she played things correctly. The next few hours would let her know. And, meanwhile, she had her own business here.

  She got a fire going briskly in the stove, and although it leaked smoke, the chill was quickly taken from the hut. She found an oil lantern with a little kerosene in it, and lit it. The resulting yellow glow cheered her. She was not immune to shock, and the day had been full of unpleasant surprises.

  Durell, before he left, had found some peasant clothes for her, with his quick efficiency, in an abandoned hut they had passed when entering the ruined village, and she turned to these now that her quarters were growing more comfortable. Casualties in Karagh had run to almost a third of the small population, and no one remained to help, except for a local doctor and nurse from the Red Crescent. The guard detachment had been sent on an alert to frontier stations. Other villagers had fled into the mountains for safety, and were missing. The few remaining Turks were huddled in the main town hall, eating at communal tables and sleeping in dormitories while the harried native doctor tended to their injuries.

  The village, pitched on the steep mountainside below Base Four, showed few signs of the usual Americanization that followed such nearby projects. The single street was paved with stone slabs and ended at her hut, and except for one or two curious villagers, the men in sheepskin coats and the woman, shapeless, swathed and veiled, who peered dubiously at them when they arrived, she had seen no one. And those who had gathered nearby had been dispersed abruptly by Kappic’s harsh orders.

  There were rough curtains over the single square window in the hut, and she pulled these tight before changing her clothes, luxuriating nakedly in the glow of heat thrust out by the charcoal stove. Aside from a bruise on her hip, acquired when she was swept downstream from her wrecked car, she had suffered no real injuries. Her body had a smooth ivory perfection with a blush of pink, perfect health under the silken skin. Few men had seen her like this, tall and proud in her nakedness. She moved with the easy, rippling articulation of an uninhibited animal, her dark hair loose, gleaming in the dim light of the oil lantern. She dried herself carefully and attentively before putting on the woolen peasant’s clothes Durell had given her, and she remembered with some pleasure the way he had looked at her, aware of her as a woman, yet with a reserve for the business he had at hand.

  He was interesting, she thought regretfully. Perhaps in another time and place, their instinctive chemistry might have brought about some enchanting results.

  Durell might be a problem later, when events were better clarified. She knew she couldn’t keep the truth from him indefinitely. True, Roberto Uvaldi was her legal father, and her identification papers would have shown this. But she hadn’t seen Uvaldi for many years, after he had married her mother in Rome; and to tell the truth, she had never liked her stepfather. He was a barren man, too narrow in his interests, and she preferred the humanists, the artists and poets, the creators. But Roberto went through life wearing blinders that restricted his vision solely to his electronic theories. Perhaps he was a genius, as they said. But she and her stepfather had been estranged for years, and she did not look forward to meeting him again.

  Francesca dressed quickly. The skirt and blouse were large for her supple body, but the clothing was warm. There was no time to lose.

  The night air felt cold when she stepped out of the hut. To the left, a narrow, dangerous path led back to the village, where a few lights now shone. But no one moved down there. The mist rolled slowly up the steep mountainside like plumes of steam, and she paused to adjust her vision to the gloom.

  The two huts were in a natural cul-de-sac, walled in to the north and east by towering, sheer rock cliffs that hung over the roofs. The hut where John Stuyvers and his daughter Susan were sheltered was the inner one of the two, almost backed up against the cliff wall sixty yards away. There were primitive garden patches, and on the village side another steep drop, fit only for goats, and guarded by a stone wall, hemmed in the area on the third boundary. Access was available only by the narrow path leading west to the village.

  Francesca watched and waited, and for the first time a sense of fear touched her with cool fingers. Perhaps she ought to wait she thought. But she was alone. She could trust no one. In the confusion of the quakes, all normal balances had shifted, all appearances were treacherous and distorted. She could have waited in Ankara and wired back to Rome for help; but there had been no time, once the earthquakes began and offered confusion to her quarry.

  As it was, she thought, she was almost too late.

  But she had her gun again, since Durell had returned it, and she knew how to use it. There was nothing else she could appeal to, here in this mountain wilderness. She was on her own, and if she waited much longer, the quarry that she and Martin Cambridge had chased across half the world might be lost for good.

  Martin was dead in Ankara, the victim of an alleged auto accident that had crushed the screaming life out of him on a narrow side street behind the hotel. But it was no accident, Francesca thought bitterly. The other side was alerted to their danger, and Martin Cambridge had known too much. So they killed him. From their point of view, death is the simplest way of eliminating problems. She didn’t want to think about it, because the same thing might happen to her, right here, tonight.

  She drew a deep breath and moved off into the misty night. A few small, scrubby trees gave her shelter for the first few steps, and she paused when she reached the opposite side of the grove. A dim light shone in the windows of the hut where John Stuyvers and Susan were sheltered for the night.

  She took one step toward the hut, and a sound stopped her.

  She wasn’t sure what it was.

  It might have been the thin rattle of twigs in the tree limbs overhead. Or it might have been a footstep on the coarse, gravelly soil.

  She looked to the right and left, then suddenly spun around to look behind her.

  Nothing.

  The village was bleak and desolate, shattered into dark heap of rubble by the quake disaster. She looked up the blacksoar-ing slopes of Musa Karagh, toward Base Four where Durell had gone. The summit was dark, lost in the mist.

  She shivered, for no immediate reason.

  Francesca Uvaldi was not normally given to an unreasoning attack of nerves. But fear surged in her now without warning. She knew she was playing a dangerous game, but she was accustomed to this. She knew the danger very well, and Martin Cambridge had paid the price for carelessness back in Ankara. She could have quit then, or asked Rome for more help, gotten someone else from the bureau to fill in. But she had gone on, urged by the need for haste.

  Now, abruptly, she wished she had been more cautious about it.

  She heard the sound again, and whirled about.

  A shadow moved thirty feet to her left, above her on the rocky slope hanging over the Stuyvers’ hut.

  “Who’s there?” she called softly.

  There was no answer. She stared hard at the area, but she could not define anything.

  “Who is it?” she called again.

  The trees rattled dimly behind her.

  Shivering, she tightened her grip on the ornate little gun. It gave her little assurance now. She told herself it could be a

  villager up there, prowling the two huts out of simple curiosity about foreigners. Or it could be a looter, or someone bereaved or half-crazed by the tragedy that had almost destroyed the village.

  She started toward the Stuyvers’ hut again, walking quickly and silently. She did not want to cry out and let the Stuyvers know she was approaching their window. She could see the dim glow of the oil lamp inside, but from this point she could not quite see into the hut, and this was what she intended to do.

  Something moved again, crouching low, and streaked down the hillside with feral speed to get between herself and the hut. An animal? A dog, or a donkey? No. Too big and too fast for any animal here.

  A man, then.

  Her heart began to hammer violently. Pausing, she lifted the gun. T
he trees were twenty feet behind her now. Her hut was even farther, and she could not remember if there had been a bolt on the door. Her panic impulse was to run back to shelter. But if she turned now, she had the feeling that whoever or whatever stalked her out here would leap with rending claws upon her back and bring her down.

  She could only go forward.

  There was a dim, dirt path that angled up the slope of the hill toward the Stuyvers’ hut, and she took several determined steps along it, climbing above the empty village street. A few huge rocks lay embedded in the dead grass, and she swung left again, climbing the small field to get above the boulders as she scanned them closely. She saw nothing more. No movement, no flickering shadowy shapes. Perhaps it had been her imagination, after all. There was nothing here.

  She walked ahead again.

  A silhouette appeared in the small window of the Stuyvers’ hut. It was Susan, straight-backed and prim. The shadow flickered quickly and was gone. Francesca turned downhill again, picking her way toward the hut. Mist touched her face with cool, damp fingers.

  Then the first blow fell.

  She hadn’t heard or seen anyone. She was not at first aware of what had happened. The violence was crushing, like the onslaught of a landslide. She sprawled on hands and knees on the rubble and felt something thud into her back, then smash into her head. She thought dimly of her gun. It was gone. Panic screamed in her throat, fighting the pain. She twisted violently, summoning strength to turn and see what it was. A darkness blotted out the sky. There was a wedge of a face, pale anonymous. Something smashed across her mouth. She was being struck cruelly, again and again. She tried to scream, but couldn’t. A crushing weight slammed down on her chest. She tried to draw up her legs to kick, but it was impossible. Through the roaring in her ears she heard a low grunting, as blow after blow struck her. She was being beaten to death in endless, demoniacal fury. She tried to flail back with her arms, her fingers twisted into claws, but the effort was feeble. The blows seemed remote now. She was beyond pain. Through the dimness she saw fanatic eyes, a savage mouth. . . .