The Hidden Target (33 page)

“Sh!” he told her, his eyes on the courtyard. He drew his left arm away from her waist to let him raise the small object he had been gripping in that hand to his ear.

Nina heard a faint murmur of voices, stared at the small object. A radio? No—something else, picking up the sounds of talk in the courtyard. “You’re eavesdropping!”

“Weren’t you?” He pulled her closer, so that she could listen, too.

“They’re speaking English now,” she said in astonishment.

“Someone at a bedroom window might hear them. Wiser to get back into character, don’t you think?”

She stared at him.

He remained silent, listening, until Kiley and Shawfield had entered the inn. Then he clicked off his receiver and slipped it into his pocket. “Did you get any of that?” he asked.

“Not much. I stopped listening,” Nina said unhappily.

“It was of little importance.” Nothing compared to what had been already discussed in the camper, Pierre Claudel thought. “Merely their projects for tomorrow. Shawfield will have extra work to do—he will study maps, plan a new route. Kiley leaves at four o’clock to meet his friends.”

“At four? No, he said...” Eight o’clock, she remembered, and closed her eyes.

Claudel glanced at his watch. “Thirty-five minutes before he leaves. I think you had better remain here until then. He might be having breakfast in the dining-room.”

Nina nodded, bit her lip, fought back a sudden attack of tears.

“I’ll stay with you. Bob Renwick would insist on that.”

“Bob Renwick?”

“Yes,” Claudel said mildly. “We are good friends. I saw him in Istanbul before I left. When I was travelling this way, he asked me to keep an eye open—speak with you—find out if you were all right.”

This is a trick, Nina thought. This pleasant, frank-spoken man could be lying—just as Jim Kiley has lied. She said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Bob thought you probably wouldn’t. So he gave me this.” Claudel reached for his wallet and handed her a card. Then he pulled out a thin pen, flashed on its small light, shielding it with his cupped hand as he turned his back to the yard.

Nina read:
J.P. Merriman & Co., Consultant Engineers. Advisers on Construction Abroad, Surveys made.

“Look at the back,” Claudel urged.

Courtyard of the Janissaries.
Nina looked up in amazement, held Claudel’s eyes with hers. Then her face hardened; “You could have been there—seen us together.”

“Yes.” He switched off his flashlight. “But I couldn’t have heard how you pitied the tribute children.” He heard her sharp intake of breath. She kept staring at him.

“Not even with that listening device?” she asked.

“By the time you were talking about janissaries, I was far away, too far for even the—that device to reach. It has its limits even with all its latest improvements.” That reminded him of something. He said, “Wait here. I’ll only take five minutes. I’ll come back. I promise you. Will you wait?”

She looked towards the inn. Jim Kiley might be in his room; again, he might not. She nodded. “I’ll stay.”

Claudel took the card from her hand. “It’s safer with me,” he told her. It went, back into his wallet. He touched her hand encouragingly. “My God, you’re freezing!” So the wallet went into a trouser pocket as his jacket came off and was placed around her shoulders. “Five minutes,” he said and left.

He didn’t go directly to the camper, although it was only a short distance away. Instead, he used the trees on his left to circle part-way around the yard until he found a spot where the camper’s bulk would block his approach if anyone was looking out of a bedroom window. Then, as he judged it safe enough, he darted forward. Nina could see him, barely twenty feet away from her, reach the side of the camper that was not visible from the inn. His hand was raised, touching something on one of the windows, pulling it away. Then his hand was lowered and he pocketed whatever he had removed, and he was retracing his steps exactly. She watched his dark shadow merge into the row of trees, lost him completely as he worked his way back to where she stood. What had he taken from the window? Another gadget, something to let him listen clearly to any sounds inside the camper? She could only guess. And guess at this man’s interest. It wasn’t with her—it was with Jim Kiley and Tony Shawfield. Why? But I’m interested in them, too, she thought bitterly. I’ve been used. All of us have been used, manipulated. The rest of our group still don’t realise it, never will. And I never would have if Bob hadn’t sent his friend— Where has he gone? She panicked for a moment, and then relaxed as he left the neighbouring tree and stood beside her.

“Okay,” he said softly. He fell silent, his eyes on the inn.

That was all he was going to say, Nina realised. But she had questions. “Who are you? You are not Turkish, are you?”

He dodged that neatly. “My mother was French. I went to school in England.” Both statements were true.

So that explained his accent: idiomatic English with a hint, every now and again, of French. “What shall I call you?”

“My mother chose Pierre,” he said briefly. Again, true.

She looked at the inn. “Are they German?”

“I don’t know. They aren’t strangers to the language, that’s certain.”

“Why use it?”

“They may have received a message in German, just continued talking in it.”

“May have? Didn’t you hear it?”

He hesitated. “It doesn’t work that way. They received a message, yes. In code. They decoded it from German and continued talking in German.”

“Received a message... But how? On our camper radio?”

He repressed a smile. “No. Something more sophisticated than that.”

“Hidden. Where?”

He shrugged his shoulders. He had noted its antenna, the long wire that ran cleverly under the edge of the camper’s roof. “It could be anywhere inside the camper.”

“I’ll find it.”

“No,” he said sharply. “What you have to concentrate on now is—escape. Leave tomorrow. With me. I’ll see you on to a plane to Tehran. You’ll fly to Rome. Renwick will meet you there. I’ll let him know.”

She said slowly, “So that’s why Bob wanted you to meet me... This was his idea, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. But not exactly this kind of meeting, at this time, in this place. He wants you out. He’s counting on that.”

“What about Madge? We’re together.” More or less. Without Madge I’d never have joined the camper. I wanted the world trip, yes. It seemed a dream for the taking. But I’d never have come alone. “I can’t walk out on her. I’d have to tell her.” Claudel shook his head to that idea. “Ask her—in a general way—if she’s had enough. Suggest leaving, but give no details. Don’t mention tonight, or this talk. If she’s willing, bring her along. If she says no, then you’ll feel free to leave. Would that work?”

“No. Madge would wonder, be alarmed. She’d talk. Shawfield has become her friend. It’s too dangerous, Pierre. For you as well as for me. Shawfield would have you arrested at the Tehran airport for kidnapping.”

Nothing quite so official as that, Claudel thought. Shawfield’s type of friends in Tehran would do a little kidnapping of their own: two bodies found in some back alley. Silently, he cursed Madge and the problem she presented. “Leave,” he urged. “Get out of this mess. Why do you think I told you so much, let you see so much? Goddamn it to bloody hell, I’ve—” He broke off in frustration.

“I know,” she said. “You risked everything in order to shock me into leaving. You did shock me. But I can’t leave. Not yet.” She reached for his arm, pressed it reassuringly. “I won’t go running to Shawfield. Or to James Kiley. Or anyone.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “You really think you can go on, never let them know, never give your real feelings away? No, no. Now that you’ve learned so much, you’re in double danger.”

“On the contrary. Now that I know—and it isn’t so much, either—I’m on guard.”

“Not so much?” My God, he thought, when Renwick hears how I broke the rules tonight, he’ll—no, perhaps Renwick wouldn’t. He can guess what I’m dealing with here; he warned me about Nina. And I thought I could handle her.

“No,” Nina was saying. “You didn’t tell me who sent Kiley’s instructions tonight.”

His quick French wits failed him for a moment. He searched for an answer, found none.

“Are Kiley and Shawfield working for the Russians?” she asked.

“Indirectly,” he hedged.

“What on earth does that mean? The Russians are in charge?”

“From a safe distance.”

“Then who is—”

“Sh!” he said. Their voices had been kept to a murmur all through their talk, but now complete silence was needed. He pointed to the inn. Its door had opened. And simultaneously, from around the far corner of the inn where the gas station lay, a farm truck, small in size, loaded with baskets, drove quietly into the yard. It barely stopped at the inn’s door—less than a minute to let Kiley emerge and climb on board. Then it left, easing its way into the rough driveway, and turned right as it reached the main road. It looked like any truck heading for one of the early markets in Tabriz. Claudel glanced at Nina. Yes, she had seen it all.

She slipped off his jacket, handed it to him. “It will soon be daylight. When do we meet again?”

“You won’t leave with me tomorrow?”

“No. But couldn’t we meet—”

“Not here. You’ll be taking the southern highway out of Iran—into Baluchistan, then Pakistan.”

“No Afghanistan. Why? There’s been some trouble, I know, but we were to have an escort. Jim said it would be safe.”

“No longer. Eight foreigners killed last week, one on a tourist bus. There’s more than trouble there. It’s war. Atrocities on both sides. Soviet troops, Soviet tanks are massing at the border, and Muslim rebels are massacring anyone who looks like a Russian.”

“Then why did we ever plan to go through Afghanistan?”

“Because the planning must have been done months ago. You don’t imagine, surely, that this trip was arranged in a few weeks? That camper you’re travelling in—it wasn’t custom-built in less than three or four months. History just caught up with them: their plans had to be changed. So, as there are only two decent roads leading east out of Iran, one through Afghanistan, one through Baluchistan, I know which one you’ll be taking. I can’t tail you. Too many bare stretches. But I’ll meet you. Somewhere. Possibly near Kerman. Remember that name.”

“The carpet place.”

“Have you got a map?”

“No.” She thought of the kindly Swede. “But I can get one. Safely.”

He was beginning to see the expressions on her face. Daylight was coming up. “Back to the inn,” he urged her. “They’ve left the door open. You may find a woman sweeping out the hall. They rise early here.”

“I’ll think of some excuse. And thank you. And don’t worry. Tell Bob—” Her voice faltered. “Thank him.” She slipped away, quickly reached the camper and then slowed her pace to a normal walk.

Claudel watched her enter the inn. So I failed, he thought, and the admission was bitter. But he’d have another try at Kerman. And this time he would have a plan prepared. Beyond Kerman, at Zahidan, not far from the Baluchistan frontier, there was a crossroads where the road to the east met the road coming down from the north. It had been built by the Soviets, in one of their agreements with the ex-Shah, to run south to the Persian Gulf. That could be our escape route, he thought. If she will come. What is holding her back? It’s just possible she has done what Renwick didn’t want to do: she has recruited herself. She doesn’t know it yet, but that’s what she has done.

The inn remained quiet, undisturbed. Nina must have made it safely to her room. With relief, he began making his way along the rows of trees that edged the yard, aiming to reach the inn from an angle that was the opposite of Nina’s approach. And there
was
a woman, smothered in black, who was washing the floor of the dining-room. Selim’s voice, speaking in Turkish dialect, was listing his complaints about an uncomfortable night. The woman was dutifully silent, just moved on her knees to the next part of floor to be washed. Claudel slipped silently down the dark passage to his room.

Fahri was awake and waiting. “Well?” he demanded.

Claudel repressed his excitement. “We have big news to send out.”

“Anything about Turkish terrorists?”

“Yes. They were discussed. They are not inclined for united action, insist on continuing assassination as their best means at present. But they took Kiley’s money, listened to his proposals. If Shawfield can guarantee shipment of weapons—they gave him a list—they’ll use them as he directs.” Claudel took out his receiver. Nina, he thought, would have opened her blue eyes even wider if she had known it could record as well as listen. “The little miracles of modern technology,” he said with a laugh. He kissed the receiver and set it gently on top of his suitcase. “It’s all in there—discussions about Bursa and more. Much more. Okay, let’s start it talking to us, and we’ll condense its news.” Tomorrow, somewhere on an empty stretch of road, they’d send the completed report to Kahraman in Istanbul. From there, it would be transmitted to London. Another report would go to London, too: for Renwick, about his Nina.

“Now?” Fahri asked. Do you need no sleep?”

“I’ll catnap while you drive.”

“We are leaving? Is one day here enough?”

“Quite enough. Let’s get to work.”

Fahri was listening. The stillness outside was broken by a distant voice calling from the peak of a minaret, chanting its summons to the faithful. Fahri rose, unrolled his prayer rug.

So night is over, Claudel thought, and the new day begins. He stretched but on his cot, closed his eyes. He’d snatch twenty minutes of deep delicious sleep.

By the last week of September, they were on their way out of Iran. It had been a start at daybreak from Kerman. “Not much more than two hundred miles to the frontier,” Kiley said as encouragement to his shivering flock as they sat in bleak silence, sweaters and jackets around hunched shoulders, and stared out at less and less foliage, more and more sand. “In another couple of hours you’ll start complaining that you’re being roasted.” He’s sharp-set this morning, Nina thought as she heard the edge in his voice: what is worrying him? It can’t be our Iranian guide and interpreter—Ahmad isn’t a continual talker like Selim.