Assignment Moon Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  “You don’t have to apologize,” Durell said thinly.

  “All we have to do is to get out of this place.”

  “But the mountain is under attack. How did the government finally learn of it all?”

  Durell went to the cell door. The shocks of shell blasts came more frequently now. He heard an angry quarrel between some officers nearby, and decided to wait a moment and turned back to Ouspanaya.

  “It was a long shot, but I backed the right filly. A little Chinese girl who’d been mistreated by Madame Hung. She came over to my side. I gave her instructions to contact my young Iranian friend, Hanookh, and Hannigan, at my embassy. I also told her enough then, so that if she called in Hanookh, he‘d know where to find this place. It was all contingent on whether she saw me leave Ramsur Sepah’s garden party.”

  “You suspected Sepah then?”

  “No, but it had to be someone in an important government office who backed Har-Buri. I didn’t know Sepah and Har-Buri were the same man. But treason was brewing in high places, and Sepah stood high enough to be the big one.”

  Tanya spoke to her father. “Durell seems like a monster, sometimes, but he is kind, and thoughtful—”

  “A real Boy Scout.” Durell opened the cell door.

  “Let’s go.”

  He had no idea how to make their way safely back through the tunnels. But they had to get out quickly. Once the regular Army broke in, there would be no quarter for anyone found here. The fighting would be savage, the killing bloody and indiscriminate.

  Durell walked a step or two behind Tanya and her father, as if he were escorting them. He halted a panting, running soldier. “Where is General Har-Buri?”

  “Headquarters,” the man gasped. “Up there, Colonel. But you better hurry. They’ve hit the vehicle park.”

  At the next turn in the tunnel, Tanya said, “Why do we come this way? It is not the way out.”

  “I have some debts to call,” Durell said grimly.

  “Give me your grenade.”

  “You’re not—”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not really a monster.”

  She gave him the weapon reluctantly. It was a Chinese Mark IV, fresh from its crate. Ahead, he could see a lighted anteroom, the corner of a desk, the shadow of a soldier speaking urgently into a phone. A sudden series of shell blasts made the lamp cord jangle and dust boil around them. Durell drew a deep breath, signaled to Tanya and her father to take cover, and pulled the pin on the Mark IV. Tanya gasped. Durell threw the grenade as far down the corridor as he could, then stepped quickly into the anteroom. The soldier at the desk was a major. His gray face was haggard.

  Durell pushed Tanya ahead of him and spoke quickly. “The general wants these people, Major.”

  Suspicion suddenly flooded the rebel’s yellowed eyes. He lurched across his desk for a pistol there, and Durell’s grenade finally exploded down the corridor. The blast was thunderous. The lights went out as a cable was severed. In the darkness and smoke, the rebel major cursed and ran out to inspect the damage. Durell pushed quietly into the next room.

  It was the darkness that betrayed him. Something struck his head, and a ponderous weight threw him staggering against an invisible wall. Another blow, like a fist on the back of his neck, drove him to his knees. He lost his gun. He thought dimly that, somehow, he had been expected. He heard Tanya gasp, and there was a scuffling struggle, a muffled thud, as if a body had fallen. The darkness was absolute. He did not move for a moment. Someone took a long, slow breath. The distant bursting of shells compressed the air in the tunnels and hurt his eardrums. But he ached all over, anyway. He thought the crackle of small-arms fire was closer now, inside the mountain itself.

  His head gradually cleared. He knew his gun had fallen nearby. Very carefully, he extended a hand to find it. Immediately, someone stepped on his fingers with crushing weight.

  Then the lights came on dimly, at low voltage.

  He looked up at the massive image of Ta-Po.

  The fat Chinese smiled benignly. He removed his foot from Durell’s hand and toed the machine pistol aside. He had another, his own, pointed at Durell’s head. Professor Ouspanaya was sprawled on the floor. The worst of it was Tanya, standing white-faced beside Madame Hung, who held yet another machine pistol at Tanya’s head.

  “Be very, very careful, Durell,” Ta-Po said softly.

  “You have my word.”

  “And-welcome to Iskander’s Garden.”

  “Where the flowers of evil grow,” Durell returned. “Where is your puppet, the self-appointed General Har-Buri?”

  “He is directing the defense of this wretched place. Are you the one who betrayed us‘? How clever of you!”

  “Not quite. You know you’ve lost the game, Ta-Po? Listen to the gunfire. It’s coming nearer.”

  “It was Lotus then.” Ta-Po nodded his massive head. “You used the misguided child to inform Teheran of our little rebellion, I suppose.”

  “You never expected it to succeed, did you?”

  Ta-Po shrugged. He wore his incongruous blue serge suit like a tent over his enormous fat. Madame Hung stood like a carving of utterly malicious evil, wearing an embroidered chongsam. Her face was like old ivory, the epitome of every human wickedness ever conceived.

  “We have Tanya,” she said thinly.

  “Not for long. You can’t get away from here.”

  “If I must die, Durell, the whole world must die with me. It is a promise I have made to myself.” Her hatred was like a foul presence about her. “And I shall see you dead first, Durell.”

  Ta-Po spoke harshly. “But our puppet, Har-Buri, is a coward, my dear. He has deserted us and his men, seeking escape only for himself.”

  Durell did not move. “Har-Buri is getting out?”

  “We believe so.”

  “How?”

  “We only know we have been abandoned here.”

  “After all we did for him, too,” Madame Hung hissed. “It is typical of his backward, feudal morality.”

  Durell laughed. His head still hurt. “Yes, you did a lot for him. You took a fine gentleman named Ramsur Sepah, worked on his ambition, killed his son, promised him the world if only he’d turn Tanya over to you. You subverted him and destroyed him.”

  “A stupid fool, eroded by greed,” Madame Hung snapped. She moved her gun to cover Durell. “Ramsur Sepah is too puffed up with his own petty importance to know how we used him. Like putty, we molded him to our suggestions. He even deludes himself by denying the fact that we killed his son.”

  “Not any longer,” came a new voice. “Please make no moves, anyone. Professor Ouspanaya, stand beside Durell. Do nothing else.”

  It was Ramsur Sepah. ‘He had a bloody bandage on his head, and his khaki uniform was torn in a dozen places. He had been wounded in the leg, but he stood straight and proud, his large hawk’s nose jutting angrily, his bushy, upturned brows bristling.

  “True, I was a fool, Ta-Po, used for your personal aims. But my goals were my own, and I still believe in them. It I have been wrong—” He paused, drew a long breath. “I believe in the old virtues, but the world changes, and rejects them. If I have killed, and caused men to die, as they die at this moment, it has been for what I believed to be the better of two worlds.” His voice hardened. “But I did not know, truly, Madame Hung, that you killed my only, cherished son.”

  She made the mistake of laughing at him.

  And everything seemed to happen at once.

  With a deliberation that was swift, but devoid of passionate anger, Ramsur Sepah swung his gun and fired twice at Madame Hung. At the same moment, the outer wall burst open upon them with a tremendous, ear-splitting blast of rock and debris. The lights went out for the last time. Durell felt the shell-burst like the flat of a board across his chest. Dimly, he was aware of sunlight suddenly shining through the thick dust that boiled about him. A shell had struck the outer wall of the mountain fortress only a few yards away. There was a weight across his legs
, and for a moment he knew panic, fearing paralysis. He pushed and shoved and struggled free, coughing and blinded. It was Ta-Po’s body. He didn’t know if the Chinese was alive or dead. He didn’t care. A rage of frustration stormed in him.

  “Madame Hung!" he yelled.

  She was his, he told himself, and Ramsur Sepah must not cheat him. He knew he was not thinking rationally. But he couldn’t help himself. Rubble filled one end of the room. In the dim, dusty sunlight that sifted through the chinks of rock, he looked for the Chinese woman. She was gone.

  “Tanya?”

  “I am here. Safe enough."

  “Your father?”

  Professor Ouspanaya replied. “Also safe. But Sepah is gone. He staggered out through the door.” Ouspanaya bent over, retching. The fumes from the explosion strangled his next few words. Then he spoke more clearly. “You must follow him, Durell. He must not escape.”

  “I want Madame Hung.” Durell stood up. “Where is she?”

  “Buried in the debris, I think. But Sepah—”

  “All right.”

  You can’t always keep promises to yourself, Durell thought regretfully. The hope of settling his personal score with the woman had to be put aside. She might be dead. She might not. But time had run out. He pushed Ouspanaya and his daughter out of the wrecked room. The high-explosive shell that had cracked the mountain’s face had done more damage in the next bunker-like cave. The bodies of several rebel soldiers were sprawled in the nibble. The way to the right was blocked, choked with debris. Sepah couldn’t have gone in that direction.

  They ran the other way, climbing over wreckage. Gunfire echoed and clamored above and below them. A wounded man screamed somewhere. Tanya tripped and fell. Durell picked her up and urged her on. A sloping ramp led them downward. The mountain shuddered continuously under a barrage of shells. A trail of bloodstains showed them the way Ramsur Sepah had gone, but he was out of sight. Wreckage, abandoned weapons, and the bodies of dead and wounded hampered their speed. To a wounded soldier seated with his back to the wall, Durell snapped. a question. The man pointed to a nearby embrasure.

  “General Har-Buri just went in there, Colonel.”

  It was a small chamber hewn out of solid rock, with a single door opposite. Durell opened it. It was a cargo elevator, designed to raise munitions to this upper level. The platform was far down and out of sight. Durell pushed a button. Nothing happened. The power was off. He reached into the shaft for the cables, and Tanya helped him haul the platform up. It seemed to take forever, but at last it appeared, and they stepped in. There was blood on the platform.

  “He used this way to get down,” Ouspanaya murmured. “But why do you insist on following him?”

  “It’s a paper chase,” said Durell. “He’s trying to escape. I don’t think he plans to make the gesture of dying with his men. To Sepah, that would be foolish. Better to live and fight another day. He’ll show us the way out.”

  The cage lowered them two levels before he spotted more blood on the floor of the passage outside the shaft. They got out and ran that way. Ouspanaya was unable to move fast, but Tanya helped him. The passage seemed remote from the fighting going on around and inside the mountain. The sound of gunfire was dim. Daylight shone ahead, and Durell slowed his pace, waved Tanya behind him, and approached the opening.

  He looked out at the triangular plateau where the tiger’s pit was located. The hot sun was dazzling. They were to the left of the big tomb entrance he had used with Mahmoud, and there was no sign of fighting here. The old columns and walls stood peacefully, as they had been for thousands of years. He heard the drone and scream of a jet bombing the other side of the mountain, but nothing was happening here.

  “There he is,” Tanya said suddenly.

  “I see him.”

  Ramsur Sepah had fallen to his knees just a short distance from the pit. He was struggling to lower a ladder that Mahmoud must have used occasionally to get down into the caves. Durell remembered the gateway that led out into the valley to freedom, on the other side. It was Sepah’s only hope for escape, and he obviously had a key to unlock the bars there.

  “Sepah!” Durell called.

  The man turned his head and looked back at them across the plateau. Then he seemed to make a supreme effort and lifted the ladder and began to lower it into the cistern. Durell broke into a run, leaving Tanya behind.

  “Sepah!”

  Perhaps fifty yards separated them, Durell felt his own strength ebb as he ran. He stumbled, caught himself against the base of a broken column, and went on. A dip and a low wall cut Sepah off from sight. When he rounded the wall, he saw that Sepah had managed to lower the ladder and was about to descend. From deep down in the lower caves came the sudden roar of the tiger.

  Tanya caught up to Durell. “The animal has not been fed today.”

  “I know.”

  “He was harmless, as long as he was glutted with food, but—”

  Durell fired a warning shot in the air, to get Sepah to halt. But then Sepah fumbled in his pockets, took something out, and threw it at them. It was a grenade. But the effort threw him off balance as he took his first step down the ladder. Even as the grenade winked through the air, Durell saw him fling out one arm wildly as the ladder slipped from the edge of the pit. Durell threw Tanya to the ground and fell on top of her. Behind them, Ouspanaya dropped, too. The grenade arched through the sunlit air and Durell ducked his head. When the blast came, it was near the wall that sheltered them. Gravel and sand spouted in the air and then showered harmlessly down.

  Through the sound of the explosion, like an echo, came Sepah‘s scream and the roar of the tiger in the pit.

  Durell got up slowly. Tanya’s face was white. They walked to the pit and found the ladder still available, leaning within reach on the other side of the cistern. Neither Sepah nor the tiger could be seen.

  “You cannot go down there now," Tanya whispered.

  “I must. Follow me, after a minute or so.”

  He climbed carefully into the pit that held so many harsh memories for him. Scuffling and dragging sounds came from inside the cave. There was a moment’s silence. He looked up and signaled to Tanya and her father to follow, then took his last grenade in one hand and the machine pistol in the other and walked into the cave, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The animal had gone into the chamber where the jewel chests were stored, dragging Sepah’s body with him, Durell paused in the entrance. The beast was crouched over what looked like a mass of bloody rags. The great green eyes glowed balefully as he raised his gun. The tiger knew him. Durell aimed between the emerald eyes and fired once. . . .

  There were keys in Ramsur Sepah’s pockets. He took them and walked to the opposite end of the tunnel, where he could see the open valley beyond the steel gateway. One of the keys unlocked the bars. He stepped out into freedom.

  A long file of uniformed men was crossing the shoulder of the mountain toward him. Durell made Tanya and Ouspanaya sit down. He stood beside them and waited.

  A familiar young figure broke into a run from the deploying soldiers and came on ahead. Durell put down his gun and kept his hands in plain sight.

  “Hello, Hanookh,” he said. “What took you so long?”

  Chapter Twenty

  THE doctor shook his head, disapproving of Durell in every bristle of his lifted eyebrows. “I told you two weeks ago, at your hotel, that you belonged in a hospital.”

  “I had to go somewhere,” Durell said. “Duty called.”

  “Lunacy,” the doctor snapped.

  “That’s right. I went to the moon.”

  Rafe Hannigan laughed softly from a corner of the room. “Don‘t mind him, Denis,” he told the doctor. “The Cajun just had a few bad dreams.”

  “He also has two cracked ribs, broken teeth, a suspected fracture of the fourth vertebra in his neck, perhaps a concussion, and some rather odd injection marks as well as more contusions and abrasions than I care to count. Luckily, his spleen
wasn’t ruptured, after all.”

  “He’s tough,” Hannigan said. “He can take anything.”

  Durell sighed. “I wish you’d been with me, Rafe.”

  “I led the cavalry charge, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, about five hundred yards behind Hanookh, and in an armored car.”

  They were in a pleasant, sunlit, air-conditioned guest room in the back of the Teheran embassy. The temperature outside stood at 110°, but it was cool and comfortable around Durell’s bed. He had slept around the clock and then dictated reports to General McFee for encoding to Washington, then a report to Iranian Security, and a pleasant personal letter to Professor Ouspanaya. Then he’d ordered flowers sent to Tanya, at the USSR embassy. The secretary who took this flood of work lifted her eyebrows at this last. She was not Miss Saajadi. She was a plump redhead from Brooklyn.

  “I’m not sure we’re allowed to send roses to the Russians,” she said primly.

  “Would you prefer a bomb?"

  “Really, Mr. Durell, I know I’m new at this job, but the briefings I got from No. 20 Annapolis Street—”

  Rafe Hannigan had intervened. “They didn’t brief you about the Cajun, Miss Moriarity. Better do as Sam says.”

  “It’s very irregular.”

  “Do it,” Hannigan said quietly.

  She flounced away. Hannigan brushed his Iranian-type moustache with a lecherous gesture as he watched her walk. Afterward, Durell slept again and then was awakened for the doctor‘s probing, prodding, and clucking remonstrances. There was a note from Tanya in Russian, on USSR embassy stationery.

  “Thank you for the roses and all you have done. Papa will keep the bargain he made.”

  Rafe Hannigan took the note and frowned. “What bargain, Cajun?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You didn’t get involved with that chunk of Siberian ice, did you? She’s beautiful, but she’s got a computer for a heart.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Cajun, you’re in enough trouble back home. The assignment was a bust. You were supposed to bring the girl here first, for questioning—”