Assignment Moon Girl (9 page)

It was the Farsi’s Renault.

Hanookh was uncertain. “I think it is a trap.”

“But I have a few questions to ask—if anybody is still alive
down there.”

He slid over the edge of the road and down the steep gully,
following the deep gouges cut by the Renault truck when it went down. The smell
of woodsmoke was stronger. The gurgling of the stream was strangely alien after
the dry wind of the desert. Some of the cargo of used auto parts was strewn
about in the stream. Of the rifle boxes, there was no trace. Then he
heard the thin voice of the Farsi and the weeping of his woman. He wondered
where the Arab had gone, and then he saw him, sprawled dead, nearby. His
companion hadn’t bothered to bury him. It looked as if the Arab had been killed
when the truck went over.

There was a small fire on the bank of the stream, and
the Farsi and his woman huddled beside it. The woman squatted, rocking back and
forth, holding what seemed to be a broken arm. Her husband was digging with a
shovel in the stony soil. The rifle crates were here. The Farsi kept up a
stream of complaint directed at the injured woman.

“Hold it,” Durell said, rising.

The Farsi whirled, his hand streaking for a gun at his side.
Then he saw Durell and Hanookh and froze. The woman began to screech, and then
was silent as if throttled.

“Ah, my
Amerikani
friend!” The
Farsi smiled. He spread his fat hands
placatingly
.
“Allah has seen fit to punish me. Would you do more, dear sir?”

Hanookh kicked the man’s gun away. Durell saw that he had
been trying to bury his smuggled rifles.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“Bandits! Assassins! Foreigners!” the woman screamed.

“Be quiet, my love,” said the Farsi. “Would you call them
back?”

Durell realized that the woman’s invective was not aimed at
him. “Who were these foreigners?”

“Only Allah knows. They were waiting on the road, many, many
of them, as Allah is my witness. I am only a poor trader, struggling to
survive.”

“They didn’t rob you,” Hanookh pointed out.

“Only because my wretched driver panicked and went off the
road. Allah punished him. The bandits did not bother to follow us down here. We
have been here a night and a day.” The man smiled. “I was worried about you,
sir.”

“I’ll bet,” Durell said. “Were the bandits Chinese, by any
chance?”

“Yes, yes! How did you know?” The Farsi’s one eye widened.
“Oh, you Americans are all so clever!”

“Ta-Po?” Hanookh asked.

“Possibly.”

“And the girl? Miss Tanya?”

The man suddenly lost his tongue. He knew nothing. He had
seen nothing. He swore it by all his hopes for Paradise.

“But her robe was in his truck.” Hanookh was nervous. “It is
dangerous here, Durell. We must move on.

Allow me to make him talk.”

Durell nodded. “I owe him something, anyway, for the clout
on the head that he gave me.”

The Farsi wriggled back on his haunches until he was half in
the stream. The woman laughed at him. Hanookh dragged him back toward the
glowing fire and forced the man’s fat fingers toward the
flames. “You will tell us all about the girl, and how she came to be in
your vehicle and what happened to her. Did you sell her to the Chinese,
perhaps?”

“No, no, she was gone by then!”

“Ah, so you did know of her?”

“Yes. Please. I am sensitive to pain.”

“I have not begun to hurt you.”

“She was a strange girl, sir. Another foreigner. What are
all you foreigners doing in my country?”

Hanookh said: “Am I a foreigner?”

“No, sir, I didn’t mean you, but—”

Durell said: “Tell us more about the girl. Where is she?”

“I don’t know, I swear! She ran away from me. The woman here
helped her. She was jealous. She was a most beautiful girl, but very strange.
Not in her right mind. But my woman hated her. May Allah punish her for helping
her to go free! If she was with me now, you gentlemen would have been
satisfied.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. She simply—vanished. I heard in the village
that she had been seen with some Kurds, traders from the north. I think she hid
herself among them.”

Durell looked at Hanookh, who said, “The Kurds are still
ahead of us. But I think he lies.”

“Maybe. But she’s certainly not here.”

“Then Ta-Po got her.”

Durell sighed. “I hope not.”

They left the Farsi and his woman and climbed back up the
gorge to the jeep. Durell jumped the ignition Wires again, and the motor came
to life at once.

“I think,” said Hanookh, “that this road is absolutely
unsafe for us now.”

“I agree,” Durell said. “We’ll ditch it soon.”

The way ahead dipped down out of the range of hills and
crossed a flat, scrubby plain toward more crags ahead, There were low
mesas to the left and a high mountain to the north. The wind blew from there.
The smell of salt marshes came to them, and Hanookh signaled a bearing more to
the north. Far ahead, a dim light flickered in the moonlight. “It may be
Hajiabad,” said Hanookh. “It’s on the railway.”

The trail climbed again. Durell felt a growing tension. The
lights vanished. They were still many miles away, and the jeep only crawled. It
would take three hours, at least, if the jeep could climb those high ridges. He
felt as if they were being watched. But nothing was in sight in this desolate
landscape. He thought of Ta-Po, hunting the girl. Ta-Po and the rebel,
Har-Buri, must be working together. He began to wonder just how helpless Tanya
was. She showed a remarkable facility for survival in this primitive land.

“Go north now, sir,” said Hanookh. “The nearest railway
station is at
Ab
-e-
Garrn
. A
spur goes part of the way toward the highway, but we should stick to the
Trans-Iranian Railroad. It’s our best chance.”

“How far is it to
Ab
-e-
Garrn
?”

“Maybe twenty—thirty miles.”

“And no trails?”

“No, sir.”

“The jeep might make it, but it’s like flying a
flag, driving this thing.”

He began to worry about their gas supply now. The gauge
didn’t operate, and he stopped to dip a twig into the tank. It came out almost
dry. There couldn’t be more than a gallon left. He rummaged on the rear seat
for spare cans. There were none. He yanked up the worn and greasy seat pad. Two
flat fuel cans lay there. He wondered how they had escaped from thieves.
When he lifted them, they gurgled satisfactorily. For a moment, he thought they
might be filled with water. Then he uncapped one and smelled it. His
relief made his arms quiver. He emptied the gas into the tank quickly, and got
back behind the wheel.

Ten minutes later, he slammed on the brakes again and said,
“We’d better hold it right here.”

The trail had twisted up, and their elevation must have been
over 6,000 feet. The night was bitterly cold. Hanookh shivered violently beside
him, Ahead, two lofty hills made a gateway through which the trail proceeded.
The coughing of the jeep engine bounced painfully off the rocky crags. The
shadows in the defile were black and ominous. Durell looked to right and
left. On the right, the way was impassable, leading almost vertically up the
cliff. To the left, the land dropped away into salt flats that stretched
to the moonlit horizon. The setting moon looked red.

“Up there, Hanookh. Do you see them?”

“No, sir.”

“Moonlight on glass. A windshield.”

Hanookh sucked in his breath. “Yes, sir. It looks like a
scout car, of sorts. Perhaps Har-Buri?”

'Or Ta-Po.
Tweedledum
or
Tweedledee
. Either would be happy to kill us and keep me
from Teheran.”

“Here they come,” Hanookh said tightly. “They’ve seen us.”

The enemy car nosed out of the shadowed defile like an
ugly beetle. It was crowded with men. Rifles stuck up like nasty nettles.
Durell slammed the gear into reverse. The jeep screeched in complaint, then
lurched backward.

“Is there a way around them?” he asked.

“We cannot escape by going back.”

“I didn’t ask that. Around them?”

Hanookh chewed his moustache. “We could try the salt
flats. We’d have to go fast.” He smiled wanly. “It’s a chance. But we
might bog down.”

fi “They’re heavier than we are. They’d get stuck
first.”

“It’s very dangerous, Durell, sir.”

”No more dangerous than those people coming at us.”

A bullet whined overhead as they rolled down the slope into
the salt marsh. The land looked solid enough, but Hanookh shouted that it was
only a crust over a vicious quagmire. Durell tramped harder on the gas pedal.
The jeep clashed into third gear and bounced ahead, rocking and grinding.
Another bullet hit the back of the vehicle with a loud
spang
!
Hanookh ducked. The wheel was alive, resisting Durell’s grip. He
held on with all his strength. They tore away down the slope from the
defile and onto the-flats. Brush tore at their sides. On this lower
elevation, the edge of the moon was just visible over the hills. In a few
minutes, it would be totally dark. Durell tramped harder on the gas.

The scout car was gaining. Hanookh shouted instructions.
“Left, sir! Now right! Quickly!”

The salt swamp engulfed them, seemed to swallow them. The
left rear wheel suddenly sank, spun, whined, threw a spray behind them. They
came free with a jolt and rocked on. Hanookh stood up, careless of the shots
being fired at them, and clung to the windshield to see their way better.
He was familiar with these salt swamps. His lips were skinned back in a tight
grin.

“A little to the left now. That’s it. Hold it, hold it. Now
to the right again. Sharp! Ninety-degree turn!”

The scout car was still gaining. It had entered the swamp,
too, following their deeply scoured tracks. Again the jeep’s weight broke
through the crust. They almost stopped. Hanookh jolted forward over the hood
and Durell grabbed the slack of his trousers and hauled him hack again. The
jeep groaned and pulled free.

“That open space,” Hanookh gasped. “Try it. It’s our last
chance.”

The area looked deceptively hard and smooth. Durell headed
for it. Abruptly, the moon was hidden by the mountains to the west. The
darkness was absolute. He could do nothing but keep the jeep blindly on the
course he’d set.

The sound of the tires changed as they crossed the open
crust. The scout car was close behind. Evidently their orders had changed. They
had stopped firing. They wanted him alive.

The front wheels went down, breaking through with a lurch.
For a heart-wrenching moment, they plowed through the sand as if through a sea.
Hanookh groaned. Then something under the surface bounced the front wheels up
and they slid onto harder soil again. Durell gunned the engine. A twisted shrub
slapped at the windshield, and another. He looked back. Hanookh did the same
and gave a great shout.

“It worked!”

The heavier scout car had proved too much for the thin crust
to support. It was over on its side, buried in a. great slew of sand and
brackish water that broke through to the surface. It was sinking fast, and the
men in it scrambled out for safety.

A single frustrated shot followed them. It whined harmlessly
overhead. Then a fold of land lifted them up and away from the swamp and they
were free.

Hanookh fell back on his seat and covered his face with
shaking hands.

Shortly before they reached the railway station at
Ab
-e-
Garm
, Hanookh pointed out a
series of low, craterlike depressions near a mound of old ruins.

“It is a disgrace. People live in those old cisterns. It is
cooler by day, a bit warmer by night. But it is so primitive, the government
must modernize this sort of thing.”

Durell stopped the jeep. One or two black tents flapped in
the cold night wind. The stars danced in a bitterly black sky.

“Are people living in those holes right now?”

“Assuredly. But why do you stop?”

“I think we ought to swap clothes with them.”

He got out of the jeep and found some coins in his pocket
and went to the nearest cistern hole and leaned over it. Carefully, one by one,
he dropped the coins into the blackness. There was a long pause. Then a rough
ladder came swaying up and, after another pause, a bearded, sleepy-eyed nomad
climbed painfully up.

“Tell him we want to buy his clothes,” Durell suggested. “It
will help us get through on the railroad, if Ta-Po and Har-Buri are watching it
for us.”

“It will be watched, certainly.”

“So we’ll be nomads, third-class, on the way to Teheran.”

“He will not sell his clothes to us, sir.”

“Coins brought him up. Some folding money will get his
clothing.”

He was right. There was a long clicker in an obscure dialect
that gave Hanookh some trouble, but not too much. After a time, the nomad elder
leaned over the edge of the cistern and shouted to someone below. A scrawny
hand and arm presently appeared above the ladder and threw a bundle of what
seemed like old rags onto the sandy ledge. The nomad took Durell’s money and
climbed down out of sight.

Hanookh groaned. “It will take ten baths to free ourselves
of the lice, after this.”

“Better to be lousy than dead,” said Durell.

Far off in the distance, echoing over the bleak landscape,
came the mournful hoot of a diesel locomotive and the clatter of iron wheels on
rails.

Chapter Seven

TEHERAN looked shockingly normal, noisy, and bright, when
they arrived at mid-morning. The air was brisk, since the day’s heat hadn‘t
gathered yet. Floating high in the sky was snow-capped Demavend. Durell took
Hanookh to a food stall and bought round Iranian bread, a melon, and two
fragrant cups of coffee. Hanookh scratched himself with impatience. No one paid
attention to their ragged figures as they joined the surging crowds on
the sidewalk a short distance from the rail terminal.