Assignment - Ankara

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Uvaldi’s tapes—have you found them? After all, my job is to deliver them to Washington.”

  “It’s my job, too,” Durell said.

  Anderson’s gray eyes were sober. “Then you did find them, Cajun?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re sure one of this crowd has the tapes on him?59 “That’s the gamble I’ve got to take,” Durell said.

  “We could strip ’em all down to the buff right here on the field before they get aboard, couldn’t we?” Anderson insisted.

  Durell studied the misty sky. “We might get socked in by fog again if we delay too long. No, I think the tapes will be on the plane, somehow.”

  Anderson paused, then grinned his mountaineer’s grin, slow, amiable, tight. “Good, then. I’ve heard a lot of things about you, Cajun, and I guess you deserve ’em all. Still, it’s a big risk. I still think we ought to strip them all down, right here and now, before we leave.”

  “Let’s get aboard,” Durell suggested quietly.

  He went into the plane behind Susan, who clutched her black bag to her breast as if it were life itself.

  The fog had thickened in only the few minutes it took to turn the strange-looking plane into the wind, and Durell knew his sense of urgency in getting out of the valley now was justified. True, he was gambling everything on the conviction that somehow one of this oddly assorted group was the enemy, in possession of the Uvaldi tape. He could not conceive yet how last night’s search had failed to turn it up.

  If he were wrong, the consequences were too enormous to contemplate. But he couldn’t be wrong, he told himself. One of this group was a traitor, an enemy. Before the flight was over, he had to determine which one it was.

  The KT-4’s engine roared and the extraordinary, long wings shook. The field was curtained by mist that curled across the brawling river. Hackitt paused before climbing into the pilot compartment and spoke to everyone.

  “Got everything you need, friends? There’s some rations tucked in the head yonder, if anybody’s hungry. And another Thermos of coffee. Nobody’s sick, are they? Because I don’t have any penicillin. We’ll fly about six hours—not fast, but high. Notice the wings? We’re practically a glider. My orders are to skip Ankara and head straight for Istanbul. Mr. Dinty Simpson will be waiting for all of you there.”

  Anderson said, “Do you fly over the Black Sea, then?”

  “Some of the way, huggin’ the Turkish coast,” Hackitt said. “Got a radar beam in Istanbul that pulls us home with no sweat.”

  Durell took his seat with the others in the cabin. Colonel Wickham looked pale, and under the stress of the take-off in the fog, he abandoned all pretense and took his courage in the form of deep swigs from a bottle of raki. He coughed, wiped his eyes, and sat hugging the bottle against his little round belly for comfort.

  The long, delicate wings of the KT-4 shivered as they trundled across the field to pick up speed. Fog whipped by, blurring the rocky, white-foamed river beside them. Nothing could be seen of Base Four on the summit of Musa Karagh, but Durell assumed that Sergeant Isaks up there was capable of holding out until more direct aid could be sent.

  The lift-off came smoothly. In a moment the rough earth vanished under them, replaced by the fog. They seemed not to be moving, except for the vibration of the ship and the endless shaking of the wings. Durell remembered the steep red shoulders of the mountains all around the valley of Karagh as the plane lifted, banked, and lifted again. He thought he saw the loom of a cliff to the right, but the fog hid it before he could be sure. Colonel Wickham drank again, loudly, and then sat as if paralyzed.

  It occurred to Durell they were less than twenty miles from the Soviet frontier. He started up, then sat down again.

  He had to trust someone. It might as well be Harry Hackitt.

  The KT-4 banked once again, then settled into a long, steady climb. It grew cold in the cabin, although some heat and pressurization was provided. Francesca found the Thermos jug of coffee and paper cups and poured for the others. Her long gray eyes met Durell’s in quiet understanding.

  “I’m glad we’re leaving like this,” she said. “Together, I mean. Have you forgiven me?”

  “But there’s nothing to forgive,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, there is. I made things difficult for you.”

  “And how do you feel about your own job in Karagh?” he asked.

  She smiled secretly. “I think it will work out all right.” “Perhaps we ought to compare notes.”

  “Oh, as long as you suspect us all, I don’t think it’s necessary. Not until we establish some mutual trust, Sam.”

  A few moments later she went forward to give the pilot some coffee and Susan Stuyvers slid into the seat beside Durell. Under the peasant scarf that covered her head, her yellow hair looked severe, giving her face a prim and childlike look quite different from the passion that had been unveiled to Durell last night. He turned his head to glance at John Stuyvers, but the gaunt missionary seemed to be asleep in the last seat toward the tail of the plane.

  “You haven’t even looked at me this morning,” Susan murmured. “Not really, except to wonder if I had that damned tape.” Her eyes slid sidewise, watching him. “What did that black-haired bitch say just now, when she gave you the coffee?”

  He grinned. “You don’t sound like a missionary’s daughter, Susan.”

  “Did she ask anything about me?” Susan persisted.

  “Why should she?”

  “She doesn’t like me. Haven’t you noticed how she looks at you? She doesn’t want another woman near you, Sam.” “You’re imagining things.”

  “I’m not. You have that look of knowing women, darling, and I’m glad, but for now I want to feel as if you belong to me alone. Does that make sense?”

  “Not much, considering where we are, and the company involved.”

  “Oh, we’ll see each other again, in better times. I’m sure of it. Some day, when this is all over—” She paused, then whispered, “Please hold my hand, Sam.”

  “Do you think it’s wise?”

  She grinned like a gamin. “Well, you know what they say about a missionary’s children, darling.”

  Durell said quietly, “But John is not your father, is he?”

  “Of course not.” She smiled.

  He held her hand.

  The KT-4 circled, climbing above the summit of Karagh, then caught the homing beam and Hackitt set the autopilot and let the plane fly itself toward Istanbul. The course was north of west, taking them above the mountains and the shores of the Black Sea.

  Back in the cabin, Colonel Wickham began to feel better. They were safely aloft and on their way out of the nightmare of Musa Karagh. Anything was better than staying with those dead men at Base Four. The plane seemed safe; the pilot competent, if young. After another drink or two, Wickham decided, he would pull a little rank and let everybody know that he was the commanding officer aboard, after all. No harm in that. It was necessary to compensate for the unpleasant image he might have created last night. Probably they suspected his panic and loss of control in yesterday’s situation. They didn’t understand how it was, but it wouldn’t do to have a chap like Durell report on that sort of thing. Wasn’t true, anyway. You could easily mistake exhaustion for having had a bit too much to drink. After all, when calamity strikes an isolated post like Base Four, wiping out officers and men, and you happen to be there— well, the responsibility for pulling things together is enormous. Takes it out of you, right? But things were fine now. The fog didn’t bother the pilot a bit. A man could relax now. You were never really scared, Wickham told himself. It was just frayed nerves, tension, from having to cope with that mutinous sergeant, isolated on top of that damned mountain. . . .

  He had himself believing it, presently.

  They were more than an hour’s flight from Karagh when the first incident occurred.

  It might have been innocent; but Durell wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was only idle curiosity on An
derson’s part; but he never had time to decide about it later.

  Almost everyone had succumbed to the steady, hypnotic drone of the KT-4’s engine and the uneventful flight through the misty sky. Wickham was asleep, as was John Stuyvers and Lieutenant Kappic. Susan rested her head in silence against Durell’s shoulder, and Francesca stared quietly out at the fog from her window seat across the narrow aisle. Susan’s eyes were wide open, looking at her past, or perhaps her future. She said nothing.

  Yet one part of her was alert and watchful in the present.

  She did not seem to notice when Anderson got up, ducking his head to accommodate his huge frame to the height of the cabin roof. The big man turned aft toward the galley and head, going past Durell with a brief, meaningless smile. Susan did not turn her head to watch him. But she was immediately aware of it when he paused, turned back at her empty seat beside John, and picked up the black handbag she had left there.

  Before Durell could check her, she jumped up with a sharp cry. Anderson, who could be as quick as a cat, had already inserted a picklock in the bag. He opened it and flipped the handle back and reached inside. Nobody in the plane could see into it. But Susan, her face blanched white, leaped for the big man with a scream and tried to take the bag back.

  “Give me that! How dare you—?”

  Anderson swung away easily, turning his back to her. His wide mouth was set in a tight grin. “Take it easy, honey.”

  “Why, you—John? John!”

  Her shrill voice shattered the warm lethargy in the plane. She tried to squirm around the big man, reaching futilely past him in the aisle to prevent him from searching the bag. But Anderson’s size was too much for her. He shrugged her off easily and she fell back, panting.

  “John!”

  Stuyvers was on his feet, facing Anderson. His thin, hollow face looked demoniacal. “Close that bag, sir.”

  “I’m curious, Reverend. Or is it just Mr. Stuyvers? Or is Stuyvers your real name at all?” Anderson said in his thick voice.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Your daughter—if that’s what she is—seemed mighty worried about this bag until an hour ago. Maybe she saw me watching her and decided to leave it here to look more casual about it. Well, I want to take those precious books and scrolls of yours apart, once and for all.”

  “You have no right, sir.” John Stuyvers’ pale eyes flared. “They are too valuable to be tampered with by anyone who isn’t an expert. I resent your police methods, your insults and insinuations. You must not destroy these religious relics, whatever your motives.”

  Durell looked away, glancing out of the window. He saw nothing but fog. Then he looked down and saw the dark surface of the sea, a thousand feet below. He was startled. He had assumed they were much higher and had cut back over the Turkish shore. But there was no land in sight as far as he could see through the mists below.

  Then he turned sharply as Susan screamed. Anderson had pushed her aside, and she had fallen to the aisle floor between the seats. At the same moment, Stuyvers launched himself at the big man, grabbing for the books. Anderson swung the bag high and crashed it against the missionary’s head. It made a flat sound as it slammed against the thin man’s jaw. Stuyvers fell, sprawling, and blood trickled from his twisted, smiling mouth. He rested on his elbows, his clerical collar awry. There was something in the way he looked at Anderson that made the big man’s hands pause over the books.

  Durell said sharply, “Stop it. All of you.”

  “It is quite all right,” the missionary gasped. “Mr. Anderson will return the books.”

  Anderson spoke quietly to Durell. “I was just curious. We could have cut those books open. The tapes might be in there, somewhere. Sure, maybe the scrolls are valuable, but I’ve got a job to do, and so have you.”

  “When you provide an expert on old documents, I will be glad to have the books examined,” Stuyvers said coldly. “Until then, I do not trust any of you. Whatever you say you are, sir, you have proved nothing to me.”

  Anderson hesitated a moment, then strangely shrugged and yielded, as if his interest in the whole affair had quite evaporated. He tossed the black bag aside in contempt, and it landed heavily on one of the seats. John Stuyvers picked it up and dragged it toward him and held it on his lap.

  The tension abruptly eased.

  Anderson said quietly, “I suppose I made a mistake. You have my apologies, Reverend.”

  Stuyvers nodded and settled back into his seat near the tail section. The momentary threat of violence was gone, and Durell returned to the plane window. The fog had evaporated, replaced by a sudden wind that drove shredded clouds from the north across the foam-whipped sea, but even with the better visibility, there was no sign of the Turkish coast to the south. Durell frowned and lit a cigarette thoughtfully. The sea looked lifeless under the scudding clouds, and the buffeting wind made the slender wingtips of the KT-4 tremble violently as he stared at them.

  The scene between Anderson and John Stuyvers had struck an odd, discordant note. Uneasiness made his nerves taut, and he searched for the cause. But it was natural for Anderson, also suffering from the uncertainty about the tapes and the tension of the flight, to make a move on his own. The big man surely resented Durell’s arrival on the scene in the first place, however easily he had accepted Durell’s authority.

  Durell looked at his watch. They had been flying for two hours. It was difficult to guess their air speed over the ocean, but he was sure they should have been back over the Turkish shore by now.

  He got up and went forward into the pilot’s cabin.

  Hackitt had the radio earphones on his head and was calling with low urgency into his throat mike. He turned sharply as Durell came in, signalled for the door to be shut, and went on calling with worried intensity. His straw-colored hair was disheveled, as if he had run shaky fingers through it. Through the plexiglass bubble, Durell saw darkening clouds to the north and west and a low fogbank to the south. Under them, the sea looked hard and gray, untouched by the dim sun hidden behind the overcast.

  “What is it, Texas?” Durell asked.

  “I’m not at all sure, Mr. Durell.”

  “Are we off course?”

  “According to the beacon, we’re not.” Hackitt flipped fingers toward the control instruments. “We’re right on the nose, using the autopilot. Istanbul signals come in strong, but it’s got a funny way of fading now and then.”

  “Is that usual?”

  “No, sir, it sure as hell ain’t usual.”

  “Can’t you talk to Istanbul directly?”

  “I’ve been trying. But there’s a storm between us. I’ve never seen such weather. Must be the earthquakes, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Durell said. “But why aren’t we over the Turkish coast by now?”

  “That’s what worries me. My orders are to stay with the auto pilot, no matter what. You know the trouble some of us boys have had, drifting out of our air space. We lean over backward these days, and nobody is supposed to chance flying by the seat of his pants. Still, I just don’t know. I don’t like what I don’t understand, Mr. Durell.”

  “Is your compass correct?”

  “I’m not sure of that, either.”

  “If it’s not, we could be halfway across the Black Sea toward Russia by now.”

  “Yes, sir. But the beacon—”

  “Never mind the beacon,” Durell said sharply. “Get off it and start using your own judgment. Right now!”

  “I don’t know, sir; my orders are—”

  “Head south, Major. Unless I’m wrong, we’re already being tracked by a dozen radars—and none of them our own!”

  Hackitt’s freckles suddenly stood out in sharp orange spots against his skin. He bit his lip, leaned forward to snap switches, and took the controls in hand, settling himself in his bucket seat with his cowhide boots stretched before him. The plane lurched, then canted sharply as he swung the KT-4 in a long bank to port that headed them s
outh toward land.

  From behind them in the cabin came a shout of alarm— a man’s cry, but Durell was not sure who it was. It didn’t matter. Their maneuver brought another reaction immediately—from the sky above.

  Like a thunderbolt, the first MIG screamed down across their new course, a dark streak of malevolent metal that left a thunderclap of jet turbulence behind it. The KT-4 slammed into it and shuddered. The MIG leveled off at wave-top level and scoured away to the north. It was followed almost at once by another—and then another. Hackitt licked bloodless lips.

  “You were right. They were tailing us from upstairs.” “Guiding us, you mean,” Durell said softly.

  “Huh?”

  “You were following a false beacon that’s been taking us straight into Soviet air space, Harry. But it’s not your fault.”

  “But how could that be? The signals were authentic—” “No. They were set up especially for us.”

  Hackitt started to speak, then remained grimly silent. The knuckles of his hands on the controls shone white.

  There came the sound of a blow, a woman’s scream, from the cabin behind them. Durell did not turn. He watched another MIG drop upon them from the clouds above, like a hawk upon a sparrow. And this time there came the unmistakable warning shots of wing cannon, thudding rapidly, the shells bursting ahead and to the left of their course. There was a flashing glimpse of the other pilot as the jet screamed past and banked to the north, a quick signal, an order to follow.

  “What do I do?” Hackitt whispered. “We’re a clay pigeon to these gusy.”

  “Keep heading south.”

  “Listen, they’ll shoot us down!” Hackitt objected.

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s going on back in the cabin?”

  “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter just now.”

  Another MIG dropped upon them. This time a machine gun stitched a shuddering row of ragged holes in the KT-4’s delicate wing. Metal tore loose and went shredding away like tin foil in the slipstream.

  “Can you put us down on the water without killing us?” Durell asked.