Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  It would be all right, she told herself. Why should anyone trick her? Anyway, she had the gun in her purse. And Messaoud, for all his evil appearance, was certainly harmless and anxious to help.

  She saw the battered red Ford truck with another renewal of hope. Yes, it was Paul's! It was parked in front of a shop that was shuttered in steel. The whole city seemed to be dead. The silence was ominous. The street was just wide enough for the pickup truck to squeeze between the blank walls of the native houses with their balconies that leaned and almost touched overhead. She squirmed into the cab with Messaoud.

  "What about the troops and tanks on patrol?" she asked.

  "They are attacking Faiz, the Imam's palace. We will be safe."

  Messaoud paused to throw a dirty white galibaya over his mess jacket. The transformation was instant and complete when he added a rag of a headcloth. He looked like any other street Arab then.

  He started off with a rush, driving recklessly around corners without slowing at all. Esme had no chance to ask more questions. The ride was too hazardous to allow her anything beyond her sense of immediate jeopardy. Now and then thick acrid smoke billowed down from the burning oil tanks and set her to coughing.

  Once they almost ran head-on into the rear of a parked medium-weight tank. It was shelling a house down the street that had sandbag parapets on the roof. The green pennon of the Imam snapped off the tank's radio aerial. The cannon made sharp cracking noises. The wind was hot and ashen. Plaster and wood burst from a corner of the beseiged building, and screaming began inside. Messaoud quickly backed up and they took another street before the tank's crew even noticed them.

  Several bodies lay sprawled in the next street. Messaoud ran over them, careless in noting whether the fluttering white robes covered dead men or only wounded. The truck lurched, bounced. A shop burned nearby, and then rubble blocked the next intersection. Messaoud muttered thinly under his breath and made another detour.

  After fifteen minutes they reached the boulevard built by the Americans to get to the oil fields. The little truck bounced crazily onto the smooth pavement. The palm trees here looked as if they had been shredded by a giant grinder. A great many more bodies lay strewn like heaps of rags along the sidewalks and in front of the shops.

  "We'll be caught in the open like this," Esme protested. "Please. Is it much further? Perhaps we'd better go back. I ... I feel ill."

  "Your husband waits for you, Mrs. Kenton."

  "I'm not so sure of that now," Esme said.

  "As Allah is my witness—"

  "Yes, I know. All right."

  They drove west for a mile on the ghostly boulevard. Then Messaoud turned into a small track that led through thinning houses and suddenly out into the flinty desert. The truck bounced and threatened to come apart on the rough road. It could hardly be called a road, Esme thought dimly as she hung on. But no matter. She was going to Paul! She would see him soon. It would be all right. Everything would be all right.

  She could not guess their destination. The city was behind and below them. The burnished sea vanished as they crossed a narrow wadi between red cliffs, then cut across a flinty plateau, and then were into another wadi that twisted north.

  Messaoud began to sing to himself in a strange dialect as he drove. She could not understand the words, but the man's voice was high and unnatural and unearthly.

  "Will we be there soon?" she asked. He did not reply. He kept on singing.

  They came at last to the foot of a high scarp of limestone that formed an irregular bowl of cliffs around them. Esme had the vague idea that they had circled in the desert and come upon Ain Gemilha, the site of Paul's dig, from the side opposite the one by which she usually approached. But she wasn't sure. Messaoud stopped the truck. Dust boiled around them. The sun was hidden behind the high cliffs. In the shadows, the air smelled brassy, like the inside of a furnace.

  "We go up. Come," said Messaoud.

  She climbed out of the cab and looked about. "Are we so far from Ain Gemilha, Messaoud?"

  "Not so far, lady. We come by back way."

  She nodded, pleased that her sense of direction had been true. But before she could ask anything more, Messaoud started off—a scarecrow figure, his white robe flapping around his bartender's drill trousers. When his robe flapped open in the exertion of climbing, she saw that his trousers were held up by a strip of rope braided with red string, and that under his mess jacket was the tail of a striped shirt. He looked pathetic and ludicrous, with his bushy mustache in imitation of Kassim and his long, unhealthy nose. He ran across the flint with his big feet slapping dust and then turned up a narrow path angling across the face of the nearest cliff.

  Esme hurried into the crushing heat that was trapped beneath the cliffs. Thank God, soon it would be evening and the temperature would drop, she thought. Better the freezing cold of desert night than this suffocating heat. Though it was really six of one, half-dozen of the other, she mused.

  Messaoud hurried as if someone snapped at his heels. Esme stumbled, lost a sandal, paused to retrieve it. She was surprised at the height she had already climbed above the wadi floor. The truck looked small, lost in the shadows below. A lizard scuttled away as she picked up her shoe, and she called out while she struggled to replace the sandal.

  "Wait for me!"

  Her voice echoed erratically. But Messaoud hurried on. She thought she heard his laughter in quick, high, snorting sounds.

  She wore a white linen skirt, a blouse, and a short, linen bolero jacket. A blue ribbon tied up her ash-blonde hair. She suddenly thought: I must look a perfect fright. What will Paul think of me, stumbling along after this Arab? No sleep for two nights, worried sick, and now this mad chase after the al-Zaysir's bartender here in the middle of absolute nowhere!

  For the first time since Paul had been gone, her relief gave way to a natural resentment against him for frightening her like this with his absence.

  The path turned abruptly just below the top of the cliff. Messaoud blocked her way, facing her. He was motionless, his narrow head lowered between his thin shoulders.

  "We are here, Mrs. Kenton. Your husband is in the cave."

  She saw a dark fissure in the red rock beyond him. The path widened to quite a ledge here.

  "Let me by then," she said.

  She squeezed past, smelling the acrid odor of his sweat. She suddenly wondered how Messaoud, a Moslem, could work in a bar. A good Moslem never touched liquor. Not to drink it, anyway. But she supposed it was all right for him to serve it to others.

  The cave entrance was dark and narrow, but she saw the glare of a gasoline lantern far inside. Sudden apprehension squeezed her heart. Then, before she could turn, a second Arab appeared in the cave entrance. A short man with an enormous belly and thickened legs that indicated some advanced kidney or circulatory disease. He walked toward her with a waddling gait. He wore pantaloons of striped cotton, sneakers, and a striped shirt like Messaoud's. He was completely bald. He carried a new automatic rifle so recently undated that its packing grease was not yet completely wiped away. A bandolier of extra cartridges was slung over the man's fat shoulders.

  She called past him. "Paul? Paul, are you there?"

  Her voice sounded high and frightened and lonely.

  Something thrust rudely into the small of her back, pushing her forward. She fell against the fat Arab. He giggled, and Messaoud snorted. It was Messaoud who had pushed her into the cave.

  Before she could protest, Messaoud said, "Go see your husband, Englisi lady. Look long on him, and speak to him."

  Esme drew a deep breath and walked into the cave.

  There was a smell of excrement and urine, of stale food and charred ashes and something indefinable. There were half a dozen pallets against the wall on this side of the gasoline lantern that hissed and sputtered on an old woode table. Two empty ammunition boxes served as chairs. She saw no one except Messaoud and his fat, giggling friend. They were silent now, and she turned to look at t
hem. Their faces were sharply expectant. Messaoud grinned. The othe man nodded his bald head. They were encouraging her to go on, beyond the pool of bright light.

  "Paul?" she called again.

  Her voice echoed queerly. She clutched her handbag and walked around the table and then could see beyond the lantern's glare.

  And she saw Paul, her husband.

  He was spread-eagled—naked—on the floor. There we strange designs carved on the thinly muscled skin of his che and belly. Blood had dried and run and dried again in tracery of darkness. There was a pool of blood between his legs, and she couldn't look there. She looked at his face. He was dead, she thought. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open and his tongue showed between his teeth in the way of a dead man.

  Then he breathed and turned his face toward her and opened his eyes. One of his ears had been sliced off. It looked odd, she thought; just that dark little hole in the side of his head.

  Then he said in a grating voice, "Oh my God, Esme."

  She wanted to faint, to blot out the unreal sight of him as a horror too great to look upon. She swayed on her feet. But she could not faint. She could not erase his image. And from behind her came Messaoud's thin giggle.

  "Your husband will not speak to us, Mrs. Kenton. These are his first words since he became our guest."

  She heard Messaoud without really understanding what he said. She could not tear her eyes away from Paul—so impossibly spread-eagled, wrists and ankles tied to stakes in the dirt floor of the cave. He had closed his eyes. He wasn't shaved, and his beard looked thick, shot through with a gray she had never seen there before. The dark shadows made his face look gaunt and hollow. She saw his throat move spasmodically when he swallowed. She dropped to her knees beside him.

  "Paul. Paul." She wanted to scream. "What is happening?"

  "O God . . . I'm prisoner . . . sorry/'

  "Why? Why?"

  "Blaney."

  "Because of Blaney?" It made no sense to her. The name was something out of the past, almost forgotten. Then she remembered. "Oh. You mean John Blaney. The American. The economic specialist—"

  "Not economist. . . . Spy," Paul whispered. "They . . . killed him. Messaoud . . . and pals. Listen, Esme. It hurts. I can't—"

  "Please, Paul."

  "Found out why . . . John killed. . . . Hid something. They want to know. . . . Messaoud . . . takes orders from Colonel Ta'arife."

  She felt as if she were going insane. "Ta'arife? He was here? He did this? But he's been to our house for dinner so many—" "Yes."

  "Paul, I . . . I'm going to be sick." She watched him swallow air painfully. She whispered, shuddering, "Will they . . • like John. .. .?" "They... kill me." "Paul, no!" "Think so."

  "Why not tell them what they want to know?" she cried. He shook his head. "Fm here now, Paul. Will they kill me, too?"

  "Don't know. ... Oh God, Esme . . . they'll try to make me talk ... by doing things to you," he gasped.

  A rough hand suddenly pulled at her shoulder, and she turned, twisting on her knees. Her heart lurched. She shook all over. Messaoud grinned above her. All at once she remembered the tiny gun in her purse. The purse was still clutched in her hand. She knew how to use the gun. Wild hope made her heart thunder in her ears.

  She looked at Paul. His eyes were closed. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the dark hole in the side of his head where his ear had been. There was a look of death on his face. A look of finality. She saw the way someone—Messaoud who had mixed drinks for them at the al-Zaysir?—had carved with the tip of a very sharp knife the strange cabalistic signs on Paul's body. She saw that two of the fingers of his left hand had been cut off. His wedding ring—of heavy gold— was gone. Who had it? Messaoud? And what had they done with Paul's fingers?

  She felt as if she were going mad.

  She began to shake, and that was no good because she couldn't get the gun from her purse if she weren't quick and nimble. But she couldn't stop shaking. Messaoud, who had wrenched her about as she knelt beside Paul, grinned down at her.

  "You will talk more with your husband, lady. We must know where the Q'adi Ghezri hid his secret supply weapons/'

  "Weapons?"

  "Your husband understands. First Blaney found them, and the Q'adi had him murdered. Then your husband was foolish enough to inquire into it. He knows, Englisi lady. We must learn where the Q'adi hides the weapons he will use against the loyal Army."

  "You mean against Colonel Ta'arife?"

  "Yes, lady. We are all loyal patriots." Messaoud laughed. "Jidrat for the Jidratti. Down with the Western imperialists. Throw out the capitalist bloodsuckers."

  The fat Arab giggled like a woman. Messaoud blew his nose, and Esme shrank back instinctively. The Arab with the enormous paunch said something in a dialect she could not understand. He had a thin knife in his hand. So he was the one who had done those terrible things to Paul! She would shoot him first. Then Messaoud. Then she would get Paul away from here, to a doctor, a hospital—

  Messaoud slapped her. The blow knocked her backward— stunned—across Paul. Her weight was hurled against his wounds, and he screamed.

  It was Paul's scream of wild hurt that made her act too soon.

  She had dropped the purse. She looked for it and it was within easy reach. She picked it up, trying to make the move seem like a vague, feminine gesture. Her blue hair ribbon was loose and her hair screened her face. She had trouble breathing. It was as if something squeezed the air out of her lungs. And she felt dizzy. But she had the purse! She felt the reassuring weight of the gun through the thin linen.

  Now! she thought.

  She knelt and Messaoud cursed her in shrill Arabic. She opened the purse as she crouched over it, holding it against her stomach, and she reached inside for the little .28. Her hands felt enormous and clumsy. Something struck her in the back as she took out the gun; a tremendous blow that sent her sprawling. The gun flew from her fingers. She realized dimly that she had been kicked. The pain was agonizing.

  The contents of her purse spilled over the cave floor: compact, lipstick, coin purse, handkerchief, and gun.

  The gun glittered in the light of the hissing lantern.

  The fat Arab chattered in warning. She tried to snatch up the gun, but Messaoud ground his heel on her fingers as they closed convulsively over it. Pain shot up her wrist and shoulder and wrenched at her stomach. She screamed. He removed his foot and kicked the gun out of reach—under the table, where he ignored it. Then he leaned down and twisted his fingers in her long hair and yanked her head back until her throat was exposed, taut and straining.

  "You try trick on Messaoud?"

  She was strangling. She wanted to die with the agony of her failure. She had been so incompetent, so useless in her trying to help Paul.

  And now they were doomed.

  Messaoud flung her away. She fell and gasped and forced air past the agony in her throat. Messaoud and his fat friend began to argue in quick low voices. Esme looked up and saw that Paul watched her. His smile was thin, his whisper hoarse and painful.

  "Good try . . . darling."

  "Please, Paul. I muffed it. For my sake, Paul, tell them what they want to know."

  "Too many ... get killed ... if I do."

  "I don't care about that. I love you, darling. I want to go on living, the way it has been. Please tell Messaoud what he wants to know. Tell him for me, Paul. Please."

  He shook his head slowly. "Can't," he whispered.

  'Taul, darling, Paul—"

  "My . . . job," he said finally.

  "Job? Job?" she whispered wildly. "But you're a scientist, an archeologist. You're interested in history, in the dead and safe and ancient past. Politics has nothing to do with you."

  He nodded. "Yes ... my job. My real job."

  She stared at the tortured figure of her husband. "What? What are you saying?"

  "My work here . . . Ain Gemilha . . . legitimate, yes. But a year ago . . . approached by Foreign Offi
ce. Working for them ever since. General reports. . . . Pretty useless stuff. Until I began with Blaney . . . here in Jidrat. . . ." His voice trailed away.

  "You really worked with John?" she insisted.

  He nodded painfully. "Then they . . . killed him. The Q'adi. Holding out against Ta'arife." His voice strengthened for a moment. "Now Ta'arife and his new Brotherhood . . . desperate to find Ghezri's ace-in-the-hole."

  "Then tell them," she said urgently. 'Tell them, please, and they'll let us go."

  "No," he whispered.

  "But why not? We couldn't harm them."

  "Yes ... we could. We know about it, you see? So ... it would be useless." He stared at her with tormented eyes. His breathing was raw. "You don't really . . . want me to tell them . . . now, Es, do you?"

  "I'm a coward. You're more important than anything else in the world, darling. I'm not afraid for myself. . . . Well, maybe I am. No false heroics, Paul. I'm shaking with fear. But it's you, Paul. Duty makes demands and all that, yes, but—"

  "Wouldn't save us," he whispered. "Messaoud coming.

  Messaoud reached down and flung her away from Paul's naked body. He held her with his left hand and carried a knife in his right. The other Arab squatted and watched with bright eyes. Messaoud asked Paul a question. Paul shook his head. Messaoud kicked him and screamed at him again. Paul gave no answer. Suddenly Messaoud plunged the knife into the upper part of Paul's thigh and dragged it down through the flesh. It seemed to Esme she could hear the blade scrape bone. Blood spurted. Messaoud pulled out the knife and asked his question again. The fat 'Arab laughed.

  Esme wanted to faint, but a scream came from her throat instead.

  Messaoud turned to her, his eyes wide, unblinking. It was incredible to think that she had once known this man as a rather awkward waiter and bartender in the Hotel al-Zaysir. He said, "You will persuade your husband, Mrs. Kenton."

  "No," she whispered.

  He reached out, and caught the neck of her blouse and ripped it open. She tried to tear herself away, but he fell on top of her and tore off her skirt and then her brassiere. The fat Arab stood up, his face all at once gone soft and silent and waiting. Esme felt Messaoud's hands roughly searching her body.