Assignment - Ankara (5 page)

“What else could I do? How could I know who they were?” “You could have waited. You could have spoken to them first.”

“All I saw was that jeep we needed.” He breathed hard. “I am dreadfully worried, Susan.”

“I know. The books mean so much to you,” she said patiently. “But you always said that American officials would pay no attention to them.”

“I’m worried about Durell.”

“Not the girl?” she asked.

“I think they are together,” John said.

“I think not.”

She did not give her reason for her assessment of the situation. She knew that when he was like this, no amount of logic could calm him. He was obsessed by the religious relics in the saddle-leather bag, and she felt sorry for him, but at the same time coldly determined to get away from this place for reasons of her own.

He was a strange man, she thought. He had a tall, muscular frame, a wire-tight virility, a maniacal devotion to his ends. But she was not interested in his missionary efforts, and indeed, she had seen little of his work in that direction.

She was not his daughter.

She sat piously, knowing that for now no one must get beneath the prim, drab exterior she had managed to maintain since those days in Lebanon. To look at her now, she thought wryly, no one would recognize her as a glamorous night-club entertainer, sleek and svelte under the muted pink spots, a sheath of rippling gold on her body. John had saved her, but she knew she would go back to that, some day. She had no voice, and little enough real talent, but her figure more than compensated for whatever else she lacked.

She had been restless in New York, and the deal that Tom Huppman suggested, touring Egypt and Lebanon and cashing in on the oil-rich Arab sheiks, seemed just the thing to break the monotony. But disillusionment come fast after she arrived three months ago. There was too much competition from the blonde, warmly fleshed, amoral women from Middle Europe, who were there for the purpose of attracting rich Arabs and went willingly to bed with them, first on the basis of being a mistress and then, somehow as it always happened, working as a call girl in the plush tourist hotels, and then finally going downhill into the worst sort of degraded, nightmare existence in the cribs, passed from hand to hand, from camel driver to oil-rigger and anyone else willing to part with money.

Luckily, she had been smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall, and she never took that first step, no matter how much Ali Khalil ben Tourami tempted her. Thinking about it in the warmth of the hut now, she could still see the glitter of Ali Khalil’s diamond-studded hands, still feel his fat and searching fingers, still hear his softly whispered insistence like the hissing of a snake. It had been a mistake to reject him with such open contempt, however. She hadn’t played it smart, but there was something about the Arab that made her flesh crawl. She was no angel. She knew all about men, and used what she knew to good advantage, usually. But Ali Khalil was something she couldn’t bring herself to take.

His anger when she rejected him was sudden and venomous. Even now, remembering, she felt cold and frightened, as if poised on the edge of a graveyard pit.

She had gotten into a taxi in downtown Beirut one night and given her hotel address, overlooking St. George’s Bay, where every guide eagerly told the story of the slaying of the legendary dragon. She hadn’t paid much attention to the route the driver was taking, weaving through the traffic of crowded buses and clanging trolleys. She had left Ali Khalil that evening at the Ghalainni, for the last time, she hoped, turning down a conciliatory offer from him to go sightseeing at the ruins of Baalbek. When she suddenly realized the driver of her taxi was not taking her back to her hotel, it was already too late. There were no police around. And at her sharp protest, the cab driver simply speeded up, rocketing out into the barren desert mountains behind the city, the Syrian border was not far. When she tried to jump out, the cab simply went faster, and she did not dare. Finally the car slowed near a copse of olive trees growing below the looming walls of what looked like an abandoned monastery, and here they were surrounded by half a dozen evil-smelling, rough-handed Lebanese, led by Ali Khalil.

She knew at once what was going to happen, and when Ali Khalil tried to drag her from the cab, she fought and screamed in the night, stabbing at him with a nail file hastily pulled from her purse. But she was really helpless to fight back, unless she wanted to be killed for resisting too much. Ali Khalil ordered her stripped, and it was done slowly, so he could relish the slow exposure of her body in the moonlit copse of olive trees. He was a fat, giggling man, and he paid no attention to her curses and protests. He ordered her flung to the ground naked, and spread-eagled by his helpers, and then he threw himself upon her. But she fought against him, twisting and turning her body to avoid his thrusts, and he became impotent, and in his frustration he screamed to the men to beat her. But first she managed to kick and claw at Ali Khalil’s groin and injured his sex to the point where he went screaming into the trees, doubled over.

Afterward she lay placid and endured it all with an animal vacuity. But she could not fight against all of them, and when the Arabs threw themselves lustily upon her, she no longer resisted. By holding herself detached from the intense pain and humiliation, she saved her reason that night under the olive trees. They debased her again and again, in curious ways, to satisfy their lusts. It seemed to go on endlessly, a nightmare of rape and defilement, of degeneracies she had only vaguely heard about. And the men were urged on again and again by Ali Khalil, who sat on the ground hugging himself, and the diamonds on his hands flashed and winked under the cold stars.

Later, when she was abandoned in the stark dawn of the red and yellow barren hills, she tried to walk back to the city in her torn clothes.

That was when John found her.

He had been to the monastery nearby at Bir-el-Echem, for the purchase of his precious, ancient books in Aramaic, and he stopped his car and took her to his shabby little house he had rented on the outskirts of Beirut. She was incoherent, and for several days she wasn’t sure where she was or what was happening to her as he bathed her and nursed her and got a native doctor to attend to her injuries. He made no complaint to the police. Nor did she. He arranged for her job at the night club to be filled by someone else, without fuss or questions asked. He was just a vague, impersonal, rather waspish man in a clerical collar, who fed her and helped her to bathe as if she were a child, and he talked to her about the States and about the precious books he wanted to get back to Philadelphia, to the mission library, in the States.

He was a strange man, not particularly godly, she thought later. He drank too much, and there was a wild intensity in his manner that sometimes frightened her. But he was kind to her. And she needed kindness then.

For hours he worked on the musty, leather-bound books and scrolls he had gotten from the monks at Bir-el-Echem, usually when she was sleeping. And sometimes he was gone for a day, or a night, and he did not tell her where he went or why. He did no actual missionary work that she could see. But he told her his work was finished in Lebanon and that he was going home to the States, and if he could get the manuscripts out of the country without their being seized by the Arab authorities, his work would be a success.

She agreed to help him, by posing as his daughter, and he got her a new passport and photograph and visa, and together they slipped safely across the Turkish border and into the Caucasus Mountains. When they reached Karagh, he insisted he had to meet someone there, and they waited four days, while he went about his business. She did not question him. And then the earthquakes had come, imperiling the whole venture. . . .

She looked up suddenly now, in the Turkish hut, her memories abruptly halted as John came toward her. In the dim light, he looked gaunt and somehow dangerous, his pale eyes absorbing her. She knew that he had almost a psychotic fear that someone was trying to steal his medieval manuscripts, and his obsession had grown worse, since the earthquakes had trapped them here.

He was looking at her differently, somehow, and she realized, with a small shock, that he was looking at her figure in a way he had never looked at her before. She hadn’t thought of him as a man, at least not that way. Perhaps it was his clerical collar, or the curious tenderness he had shown her when he led her back to health in the week after the incident with Ali Khalil. She knew her body was magnificent, all tans and creams, smooth and firm and vibrant, with bold breasts and a narrow waist and womanly hips. Perhaps he hadn’t considered the way they had been living up to now, in a neutral privacy, out of consideration for what had happened to her. But if he had asked her to bed with him, she would have done so. She felt she owed him anything he asked for.

Whatever he was about to say, whatever he was about to do as he reached out a hand to touch her as she sat there, was interrupted just then. Someone knocked on the hut door.

The quick rise of strange excitement in her died abruptly. John turned, facing the door. His breathing made a harsh sound in the little room.

“Who is it?” he called.

It was Susan who opened the door, before John could stop her. But it was only an old peasant woman from the village, who spoke to them in a dialect neither could understand. . . .

IT WAS long dark when Durell and Lieutenant Kappic reached the high wire fence that encircled Base Four on the summit of Musa Karagh. It had been a long, hard climb up the military road that switched back and forth along the rocky slopes, and they had met no one on the way. Landslides, rocks, and uprooted trees marked the passage of the earth tremors that had shaken the mountain.

They were above the mists that shrouded the valley village below, and in the starlight and the dim glow of the moon that shone from behind ragged clouds, Durell saw that the striped guard booth was empty and the wire mesh gate in the fence stood wide open. A silence, emphasized only by a thin wind in the pine trees, enveloped everything.

Kappic pointed to the deserted barrier. “What do you think of that? I do not like it, my friend.”

“Nor do I.”

“Can they all be dead up here?”

“Let’s go see,” said Durell.

They went through the open gateway, climbed a winding graveled road, then crossed a lot where flying rocks and debris had smashed a U.S. troop truck and a command car into twisted wreckage. Nobody challenged them. No floodlights showed them the way ahead.

They passed a mound of rubble of stone and splintered wood, that had been a laboratory and officers’ quarters, judging by a broken wooden sign on a shattered doorway, and then climbed a flight of stone steps that slanted crazily from the effects of the quakes. Evidently the tremors had struck with particular ferocity at the mountaintop, slicing off huge ledges of red rock and sliding houses, men, and equipment down to destruction far below.

Lieutenant Kappic looked pale. “Do you think everyone is dead? It would explain why no word had come from here to your headquarters in Ankara.”

“I hope not.”

“Professor Uvaldi and his tapes must surely be gone from here.”

“Perhaps.”

They reached the top of the stone stairway to a level area where the radar towers had soared into the sky. In the starlight, everything looked as if a giant hand had reached playfully down from the smoky heavens and swept everything aside in a crushing, implacable grip. The steel girders and dish-shaped radar screens were tumbled and twisted in utter ruin, like a child’s toy. Rocks strewed the level area, and one huge boulder had smashed through the radio shack at the base of the antenna tower. Wires hung like tangled spider webs, torn and gray in the starlight.

“It is terrible,” Kappic whispered.

“Hold it, Mustapha.”

Someone was coming toward them at last, limping, calling in a harsh challenge. In the dim light, Durell saw a chunky, grizzled sergeant in a torn uniform. His face was battered, his nose broken and swollen. But the man held an Army Colt .45 in a big, rock-like fist.

“Hey, now,” the man said. “You got our rescue message?”

“No,” Durell said. “But you can put down your gun.” He gave the sergeant his identification card and the man looked at him quickly, nodded to the Turk, and blew out a gusty breath of immense relief. “You got any military rank, Mr. Durell?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. We need somebody to give orders around here. Somebody’s got to take charge of this mess, and I’m having my own troubles. I’m Sergeant Frankie Isaks. From Brooklyn.” He grinned quickly, then stopped smiling as he turned his head and surveyed the ruins behind him. “We took one hell of a clobbering up here, as you can see.”

“Are you the only survivor?” Durell asked.

“Only five of us are still alive—including Colonel Packard Wickham, who got stuck here with us a couple of days ago while on an inspection tour for some Congressional committee. You know the deal, I guess, Mr. Durell. Anyway, Major Donahue is dead, and so is Gilbertie, Langston, Cohen, O’Toole, Lieutenant Marriot—and what’s left of us, only me and the colonel can get around much. And even the colonel ain’t in such hot condition, although it ain’t from being hurt.”

“What’s the matter with him, Sergeant?”

“I’ll take you to him. He just ain’t himself.”

“Have you been sitting here like this for the last few days?” “Mr. Durell, I couldn’t even walk until this morning,” Isaks said. “And I spent the whole day huntin’ for survivors and collectin’ the dead, as far as I could go.”

“You said something about getting a message out—”

“I spelled out an S.O.S. with some sheets and stones, hoping a plane might fly over. I heard one, but it didn’t sound like one of ours.”

Durell waited as the sergeant paused significantly. “Did it land?”

“No, sir.”

“Did it circle the area for long?”

“No, sir. And if flew away across the mountains into Georgia, sir.”

“You’re sure of this?”