Assignment - Karachi (8 page)

“We will    be    together for several weeks,” he said coldly.

“Must you    be    so melodramatic?”

“Why do you avoid me?” she insisted.

“You make a fool of yourself.”

She bowed her head. “But I can’t help it. I’m desperate.” “Desperate?”

“I’m in trouble.”

He did not ask what she meant. Perhaps he knew, or at least suspected. He said impatiently, “Come with me, Jane. People are staring at us.”

“I don’t care. I must talk to you.”

“Then let us talk in private, not here. I have rented a car, a Ferrari.” His sudden change in tone when he mentioned the motorcar was almost childlike, she thought. “It belongs to a member of the Italian legation, Count Pucci. He’s up in the Northwest Territory for the summer. We can enjoy a drive, perhaps out to the Karachi Country Club.”

“All right,” she said meekly.

She gathered up gloves and handbag clumsily, aware of his critical eyes. When she was ready, he did not move. “Where are Sarah’s glasses?”

“Oh, I took them off. Mr. Durell said I shouldn’t go on with the impersonation.”

“Nonsense. It is your duty to Sarah.”

“But I—”

“Put them on, please. At once.”

She obeyed, and followed his tall figure through the crowd to where a low-slung, dark blue Ferrari was parked. He drove quickly, settling with a sigh of pleasure on the leather bucket seats. She sat as far from him as possible, twisted side-wise to watch his strong, rather brutal profile, to see the way the wind whipped his over-long hair in thick, ropy strands. She was appalled, because she still wanted him. The hot wind seared her face like a branding iron as they drove out Victoria Road. A few lights glowed in the shop windows now, against the deepening early dusk.

“Don’t drive so fast, Rudi,” she said. “Please.” “One must face life boldly,” he said. “One must be ready for defeat as well as victory, Jane. I gather you wish to speak to me of our personal relationship.”

“Yes.”

“I told you before, again and again, it is over.”

“But it isn’t, unfortunately,” she said.

“I am not responsible for any further problems.”

“But you are. And I need your help.”

“Do you want to go home, back to the States? Is that it?” “No, I can’t go home.”

“You want money, then? For a doctor?”

She was startled. “You know I’m—going to have a child?” “You are a stupid, naive girl. Of course I know. With a type such as you, it was inevitable, I suppose. I should have known better, in the first place. But I needed you.” His voice was cold. “However, now I am going to marry Sarah Standish.”

“No,” she said, and the firm harshness of her voice was almost like an outcry. “No, you’re not.”

“You plan to tell her about us?”

“If I must.”

“What do you want of me?”

She twisted her gloved hands in her lap, not knowing how to reply. What did she want? He did not care a pin for her, perhaps he never had. He had used her to be introduced to Sarah, that was all, and now he was finished with her. But it couldn’t be all over for herself. She thought of all her dreams, her future with him idealized, the letters she had planned to write home to Poppa and Momma about him. Useless to try to bend life itself to fit such dreams. But how could she answer him? She did not know what she wanted.

“I will give you money and find a doctor for you,” Rudi said. “You will tell Miss Standish you are sick. The doctor will co-operate. You can stay here in Karachi until the matter is settled.”

“I won’t do it,” she said. “It’s sinful. I won’t lose the child.” “Don’t be stupid. It is all I can offer. You must agree.” “No.”

He said bluntly, “Very well. It shall be as you wish.” “What do you mean?”

“We will have to settle it my way, entirely.”

The Ferrari, she noticed, had slowed to a crawl. When had they left the bright and busy Victoria Road? She could not remember turning off. But now she saw loading cranes, warehouses, low tin roofs glimmering in the red rays of the sullen, setting sun. They were near the West Wharf area. The smell of the ancient Indus River, carrying with it the waste of a continent, touched her offensively. The car laboriously threaded its way down a narrow street of yellowed houses, a Chinese quarter of teashops, bazaars, tall and leaning Arab tenements. The narrow street was crowded with cycles, a
tonga
, and two haltered camels. As they halted for a moment, someone opened a window above and emptied a bucket of filthy water into the street. It splashed heavily on the driver of the two-wheeled tonga cart. Instantly the air was shrill with imprecations between Punjabi and Arab, the driver shaking his fist and screaming, the man above in the window looking down at the other’s rage with impassive eyes. A small crowd began to gather as the Punjabi tonga driver started bellicosely for the tenement door, and Rudi clucked in annoyance. But order was quickly restored by two uniformed policemen who shoved ruthlessly through the excited crowd toward the driver. Their methods were quick and efficient. Clubs lifted and fell, and the outraged Punjabi went down to the filthy gutter with his head bleeding. Someone in the crowd took the opportunity to kick at the fallen man. The cops turned on the bystander and clubbed him, too. The crowd scattered. A moment later, Rudi was able to drive on, past the bleeding, unconscious figure of the Punjabi, who still lay in the street.

They passed an alleyway where Jane glimpsed smoke from cooking fires as women crouched on the stone paving and prepared meager meals of curry. A sense of alien hostility swept from the crowd like a tidal wave around the bright car, thick-throated with resentment at Western affluence. A dirty hand suddenly reached in and snatched at Jane’s earring, and she ducked her head in frantic panic, turning to Rudi with a low gasp.

“What are we doing here? Why are we in this place?”

“It is all right, liebchen, my darling,” he said quietly. “Do not be alarmed. You have not seen this quarter before. It is interesting.”

“Rudi, take me back. I only wanted to
talk
to you.”

“In a little while.”

“It’s getting dark and I want to go back now.”

He turned his head as he stopped the car to permit a camel cart to cross ahead of them. His eyes were pale and vacant.

The pungency of dung fires stung her eyes, and she blinked at her tears.

“Jane, you arranged a pretty little trap for me, did you not?”

“A trap?”

“You know we have been followed,” he said.

“That’s nonsense. By whom?”

“The police, I supposed. By Durell.”

She looked back. The teeming humanity had closed in across the street like displaced water surging back to its natural level.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

“We lost them. But I am disappointed in you,” Rudi said. “To trap me like this, Jane, is most unworthy.”

“Rudi, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are we here?”

“I have a business appointment,” he said shortly. “It will not take long. Some equipment we may need on S-5. Do not be so alarmed.”

He had turned the Ferrari into an alley between high, yellow-stained buildings that looked like warehouses. It was dark and hot here, like an oven, the buildings radiating back into her face the heat of the day. She hated the feeling of sweat that came out all over her, and yet she shivered with an inner chill. Rudi stopped the car and got out. They were in a kind of cul-de-sac, and from the sudden reverberating echoes of a freighter’s horn, she knew they were very close to the wharves on the Indus waterfront. She looked back again. Nothing was behind them. But she didn’t like the peculiar emptiness of this tenement alley where Rudi had parked. The windows, up there behind their small balconies, looked lifeless. Ahead was a concrete wall with a blue-painted door in it.

“I will be right back,” Rudi said. “You must stay here, Jane.”

“Please, Rudi, I want to go with you.”

“I will only be gone a moment.”

He walked away, going through the doorway ahead, and she was alone.

The heat seared her lungs. The freighter hooted again, as if it were just on the other side of the yellow warehouse on her right. She got out of the car, squeezing between the fender and the building’s wall. There was not much more room on the other side. She wondered if she ought to follow

Rudi. Why was it so quiet here? Back in the other street, at least, there had been busy, swarming people, sweaty and dirty and noisy. But it was so lonely here, she thought. Such a peculiar place.

She had gained nothing with Rudi. He would not help her. And he would not let her talk to Sarah. She saw it had been a foolish threat to make. But why had he said they were being followed? Maybe it was a good thing. But her momentary reassurance quickly vanished. She turned to the door in the wall, then turned again and started walking to the alley entrance.

Her heart lurched and pounded suddenly. Two men had come into the alley from the street beyond. They were young Chinese, and their appearance was incongruous. They wore blue denims and sneakers and one wore a white baseball shirt with YANKEES printed on it. The other wore a gaudy Hawaiian type sport shirt, the tails hanging out around his belt. They moved swiftly and decisively toward her in the evening gloom of the alley.

She choked down a silent scream. After all, Rudi had brought her here. It would be all right.

The two Chinese came toward her, walking on their toes. One said, “Oh, babe.” The other said, “This is too bad, Miss Standish.”

“I’m not Miss Standish,” Jane said quickly.

“Sure, honey, you’re nobody.”

They crowded close to her as she shrank against the wall, and then she saw the first Chinese boy’s eyes widen suddenly, unnaturally, and he made a quick movement and she felt something go into her belly and rip upward, with a hissing sound of cut flesh. A shattering scream tore out of her lungs and throat, like the sound of a slaughtered animal. She screamed again and then the Chinese boy pulled the knife out of her and she saw the blade, half shining, glistening with her blood, for just an instant as it flashed before her eyes. Then it came across her throat in a quick, expert movement and she felt herself falling, aware of no pain, aware of a darkness and warmth enveloping her and thinking dimly of Momma and Poppa in Gardens Falls, Indiana, before she died. . . .

Everything was quiet in the alley. The second Chinese, who had only watched, turned and trotted away. Rudi came out of the door nearby. He was wiping his hands on his handker-

chief. He did not look at the crumpled body of Jane King in the dirty alley.

“It is done,” the Chinese boy said. He was the one in the baseball shirt. “You pay me now.”

“Why not?” Rudi said.

He took a gun from his pocket and shot the Chinese boy in the head. The single report was enormous, echoing back and forth between the yellow warehouse walls. The Chinese fell across Jane King’s sprawled legs.

Rudi hesitated, staring up at the sky for a speculative moment, weighing the gun in his hand. Then he brought his arm up with a sharp, smashing gesture and struck himself once, twice, a third time across the face and forehead. He went down on hands and knees with blood spilling down his face, blinding him, and he remained like that, shaking his head, watching the drops spatter in the filth of the alley, and he did not look up as he heard Durell and Colonel K’Ayub run toward him at last. . . .

The nearest police station was in a dark blue cinder-block building near the Johnston-May Oil, Ltd. wharves. Inside, where a Sikh sergeant sat behind a new metal desk, there were several uniformed police at work in a long, wide room with barred windows that gave a view of the river traffic. A fat, bald Frenchman was arguing with the Sikh sergeant, and a naked man, except for a dirty loin cloth, was being dragged by two big policemen into a back room. An air-conditioner wheezed in the windows, but across the room another window was wide open, letting in the hot stench of the waterfront. Fishing boats, Arab dhows, and a tanker moved in the fairway. Lights blinked on the ships and busy docks.

The station smelled like all police stations the world over, Durell thought. It carried in its walls the stench of urine and vomit and blood, and above all, the smell of human fear and pain.

The doctor was a gaunt Englishman, yellow with years of malarial bouts. Rudi sat in a chair while the doctor tended to his cut face. Durell and K’Ayub stood against the opposite wall, watching the patient who was bathed in hot light from a tin-shaded lamp over the chair. At the door was Sergeant Zalmadar, K’Ayub’s Pathan servant, big and tough and light on his feet, like most mountain people.

“Could these wounds be self-inflicted?” Durell asked.

The English doctor waved a bloody swab. “My dear man, it would take a great deal of courage. This eye could have been badly injured.”

“But it isn’t.”

“Fortunately for Herr von Buhlen, no.”

Rudi’s mouth was puffy, and the eye the doctor referred to was partly closed by swelling. There was a gash above it that needed stitches.

“Tell us again why you took the girl to Aswali Alley,” K’Ayub said harshly.

Rudi shrugged. “I was lost, as I said. We were heading for the golf course—for dinner, a few drinks. Jane wanted to see the waterfront slums. I made a wrong turn and found myself in that dead-end spot and before I could back out; the Chinese boy jumped her.”

“For no reason?”

“He had a reason, I suppose.”

Durell lit a cigarette. “What do you suggest it was?” Rudi winced as the doctor began stitching above his eye. “He thought she was Sarah Standish. I don’t know how to express my shock. It was a terrible mistake, to impose the deception on Jane. It led to her death.”

“The Chinese boy addressed her as Miss Standish?”

“Yes. And then he knifed her. He was terribly fast.” “And then you shot him?”

“Yes. I was shocked, but after all—”

K’Ayub said quietly, “But you knew we were following you, did you not, Herr von Buhlen?”

“No, I did not.” Rudi’s voice was angry for a moment. “Why should I think anyone would follow me?”

“You knew we were looking for Jane King.”