Assignment Moon Girl (11 page)

“Then that will be all.”

Hanookh hesitated and looked at Durell. “The American needs
a rest, too. Without him, neither of us would have survived.”

“He will be given every courtesy. Do not worry.”

“Sir, I would beg permission to remain ”

“You are dismissed,” said Colonel Saajadi.

Hanookh’s liquid eyes regarded Durell for a brief and
curious moment. His reluctance was obvious, and Durell wasn’t sure what it
meant. Then the young Iranian nodded and backed from the room and closed the
door behind him with exaggerated care.

Durell was alone with the Iranian Security Chief.

“Come with me, sir,” said Saajadi.

“I like this office,” Durell said. He crossed his legs. He
felt a louse crawl across his chest and under his armpit, but he didn’t
scratch. “Can’t we talk here, Colonel?”

“There are too many ears listening. You know such problems,
eh? You are shocked that my daughter works in your embassy?”

“Standard operating procedure.”

“Eh? Ah. Yes. Amusing.” Colonel Saajadi did not look amused.
“Now we will go where we can talk privately.”

“Must we?”

“Please, sir. Your orders are explicit.”

“Yes. Cooperate. All right.”

Saajadi was as slim and sharp as a finely honed saber.
His gray hair was thick and his moustache
 
neatly trimmed. His forehead was flat and leonine, his nose
prominent, and in profile he looked precisely like a carving on an
ancient Assyrian frieze. His mouth was sensual. He stood up quickly, touched
Durell’s arm, and led him through a back door in his paneled, modem
office, and down a flight of echoing concrete steps to the rear of
the building, where a Jaguar sedan was parked conveniently nearby. It occurred
to Durell that in this manner no one had seen either of them leave the
building.

There was no driver for the Jaguar. Saajadi took the wheel himself.

“My home,” he said, smiling. “Rest, refreshment, and a long
chat, and the making of plans to nab Har-Buri, eh?”

“As you say,” Durell agreed. The louse had found a brother
under his other armpit, and perhaps some sisters were crawling across his belly.
“A bath will be welcome.”

“Of course. You will be made comfortable.”

Saajadi drove impetuously but with precise skill. Durell
wondered if by now Hannigan was looking for him. He hoped so. But he didn’t
have too much faith left in Hannigan, any more than he trusted anyone in this
world of myth, glazed over with modernity, and quaking with Moslem
conservatism. The center of Teheran lies at 4500 feet above sea
 
level. The residential areas are on hillsides
at 6000 feet. Saajadi drove quickly by the new Senate Building, the
Sepasalar
Mosque, and headed as if toward
Darband
, a quiet mountain village with a good hotel, hot
springs, and bathhouses. But after a time he turned the Jaguar into a side
road, passing walled villas secluded behind ornate cypress trees. He took a
left turn, then another. They went through a piney woods, and skirted a deep
ravine. Durell thought they were going much too far out of the city. Then
Saajadi tapped the horn, and gates opened for them, and they passed onto a fine
shell driveway between ornamental shrubbery, skirted a lush garden, and then a
glimmering, mosaic, convoluted villa appeared.

“My residence,” Saajadi said.

Roses bloomed in an orgy of profusion along a stone terrace.
Arched doorways, espaliered fruit trees, fretted walls, and antique carvings
were everywhere. Durell wondered what sort of salary Colonel Saajadi drew as
chief of security in his particular department.

“Ah, my daughter,” said Saajadi. “Home for lunch, my dear?”

The same girl who had delivered the dossiers from the
embassy stood just inside the main entrance. She smiled meaninglessly at
Durell, all her concern concentrated on the colonel. “Did all go well?”

“Perfectly, my dear. You may go back now.”

Her linen skirt was tight across her wiggling bottom as she
stepped down the walk and took the Jaguar away. Durell didn’t like her, he
decided.

“Come,” said Colonel Saajadi.

Again, Durell was impressed by the curious emptiness and
lack of witnesses. A villa this size should have swarmed with servants,
obsequious and visible. But he saw no one. The colonel’s boots made sharp
clackings
on the mosaic floor. He glimpsed inner
courtyards where fountains played and more roses bloomed. Galleries and
balconies right out of the
Arabian Nights
ran endlessly overhead. They should have been packed with peeping, veiled
beauties, he reflected. But there was only empty sunlight and shadow.

And then deeper shadow. The colonel led him down a
flight of steps, along a gloomy corridor, and opened a heavy plank door
fitted with elaborately forged hinges. His slim brown hand gestured.

“In here, Mr. Durell.”

“You go to extremes for privacy.”

“I do my best work here, sir.”

“Would you have one of your servants draw me a bath, get my
clothes from the hotel, and bring some food?” Durell spoke blandly. “I’d like
some caviar,
chello
-kebab, and lots of coffee.”

“It will all be arranged.”

He went in ahead of Colonel Saajadi. It was against all the
rules of procedure to do so. But he had been ordered to cooperate, after all,
by General McFee himself .

The room was almost entirely bare. It had solid stone walls,
a desk, a single chair, a tin-shaded lamp. He had time only to think of all the
barren back rooms in all the crummy police stations in all the corners of the
world, and then he turned to Colonel Saajadi.

The colonel hit him with a metal object in his hand. He
couldn’t see what it was. But he felt a tooth break as he fell, and he tried to
grab at his gun, and suddenly he was hit in the face again, by someone he
couldn’t even see through the mists and roaring red darkness that surged up at
him. He struck back at Saajadi, tried to make it to the desk in the center of
the room, hoping to get around it for a respite. Blood gushed into his mouth.
He heard Saajadi call out in a sharp, military manner. Other men rushed into
the room. He was carried back by their weight and his hip slammed into a corner
of the desk. He was bent double, and managed to drive his knee into someone’s
groin, and was re warded by a sibilant hiss of agony. Then he went down under a
pounding, pushing, pummeling weight.

He let himself go limp.

After a time, the ceiling stopped its carousel revolutions.
The light glared in his eyes. An elegantly booted toe prodded his ribs.

“Mr. Durell?”

“So much for orders,” Durell said.

Chapter Nine

“NOW we understand each other,” said Colonel Saajadi.

“Was Hanookh in on this?”

“No. His life, too, is in great peril.”

“He doesn’t know anything of value.”

“You did not tell him how to find Har-Buri’s
headquarters?” Saajadi was angry. “He says you had a map.”

“Yes, I had. It’s gone now.”

“You did not show it to Hanookh?”

"No."

“Or tell him precisely where you found Tanya?”

“No. Let Hanookh be.”

“I may. I may not. It depends on you.”

Durell felt with his tongue for his broken tooth. He spit it
out, along with a gobbet of blood. Oddly enough, he felt the lice as an
irresistible itching now, and he gave in and scratched at himself. “May I sit
up, Colonel?”

“Yes. Be careful. We know all about you. We respect you. We
know how competent you are.”

“I made a great showing just now—I think not.
 

Saajadi laughed. “Ah, well, it was merely to put things into
perspective, right at the start. You are in my country now, Mr. Durell. In my
house. In my private jail, if you like. So you will be cooperative, obedient,
and amiable. If not—who will miss you? No one knows you are here. Hanookh will
be lucky to live through the night. For the record, you could still be
wandering in the Dasht-i-Kavir.”

“No. I phoned my embassy.”

“Ah, that could have been a—how do you say it?-—a ploy by
other agents. Hannigan will be perplexed, nothing more.”

“Cheers for Rafe Hannigan.”

“You are in good spirits, and that is fine. It makes
me happy. A cheerful man is talkative.”

“I don’t have the map anymore.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I destroyed it two days ago.”

“Did Beele have another, do you think?”

“I think not.”

“Could you draw another one for me?”

“I doubt it.”

“Try. Sit at the desk. There are pencils and paper in the
top drawer. Don’t look for a weapon in there. I am not that foolish, you see.
Draw me a copy of Beele’s map?

“You’re awfully anxious,” Durell said.

“Har-Buri is an enemy of the state.”

“And you want to get at him, do you?”

“Naturally.”

“By bashing out my teeth?”

“Forgive my methods. I have no sympathy for foreign agents
who operate in my country.”

Durell walked slowly around the desk and sat down. The
tin-shaded lamp shone in his eyes. Saajadi was in the shadows. He opened the
drawer and took out a sheet of fine bond paper and sharpened pencils.
There was nothing else in the desk. Saajadi was a tall and elegant shadow just
beyond the pool of yellow light. Durell scratched. The filthy robe itched.
He felt a bit foolish in the costume. It had served its purpose, but it seemed
out of place here. He wished he had his gun. It had been taken from him before
he entered Saajadi’s office in Teheran, and he hadn’t objected then. He

sighed, thinking of McFee, and said, “Your daughter is very
clever, Colonel.”

“Yes, she is. Draw the map.”

“She changed McFee’s memo to me, didn’t she?"

“Your chief had a few details about me that might have
seemed alarming, had you read them before coming to me.”

“Such as the fact that you really work for Har-Buri?”

Saajadi laughed softly. It sounded like breaking glass. “Ah,
you are such a clever man.”

Durell turned the sharpened pencil over and over in his
fingers. “Am I right?”

“Perhaps.”

“I’m right. And poor Hanookh has no idea.”

“None at all. The map, please.”

“No idea that his boss is the real traitor.” Durell idly
tested the point of the pencil. It was very sharp. “Why don’t you ask me about
the girl? Aren’t you interested in Tanya Ouspanaya?”

“I will come to that subject, afterward.”

"What will you use? LSD? Pentothal‘? And if you get
her, what of it? How do you plan to use her?”

“I grow impatient, Durell.”

“And I’m itchy. It makes me nervous. Cantankerous. That’s an
American backwoods word. I wonder why you insist on speaking French, Colonel?”

“I like its elegance. You are quite good at it, too. A touch
of Provence accent, perhaps. Otherwise, quite good."

“I had a teacher from Provence, at the Maryland Farm. That’s
where we bad guys, agents, saboteurs, imperialist reactionaries, and so forth,
get briefed at how to do you in.”

“You are playing for time, Durell. It will do no good. Do
you wish to die right now?”

“I’d hate to die lousy,” Durell said. “And since you like
French so much,
sauve
qu’il
peut
.”

He pulled the desk drawer off its runners with a swift,
smooth gesture and threw it at Saajadi, and then came over the desk with the
sharp pencil in his hand. A corner of the lightweight desk drawer caught
Saajadi on the /forehead and he ducked backward, gun raised high in his hand.
Durell aimed the sharpened pencil at the man’s exposed throat. The gun went off
in reflex action as the pencil pierced Saajadi’s carotid artery. He used
his thumb to drive it in all the way. The report of the gun was deafening in
the stone-walled room. Saajadi’s scream was drowned in it. He went down with
blood
gouting
from his neck. His eyes opened
unnaturally wide and glittered for an instant. He tried to get the gun to bear
on Durell. Durell snapped it from his fingers and quickly searched
Saajadi’s pockets. He found a ring of keys and took them, and a wallet stuffed
with
rial
notes, and he took the money, too, since he
was short now, and didn’t know when he might reach Hannigan again. By the time
he finished, Saajadi was dead.

The room was quiet. There was no alarm. He arm-locked the
heavy, plank-paneled door to the cellar room. The corridor and stairs beyond
were empty. He kept Saajadi’s gun ready. Somewhere in the place were

Saajadi’s
three
hashishim
who had
helped to put him down here. He tried to remember if the colonel had given them
any instructions. But the attack had come too fast and furiously. The villa
felt empty.

The warm sunlight threw showers of diamonds from the
fountain in the courtyard. He could see no eyes peeping at him from the carved
stone balconies over the garden. The smell of roses was overpowering. Bees

buzzed there, in almost as many numbers as the questions in
the back of his mind. He drifted silently up the wide, elegant staircase. His
robe smelled of rancid lamb fat, sweat, and charcoal smoke.

Upstairs, the corridors were sunlit and perfumed. He found
Colonel Saajadi’s private apartment without difficulty. The windows gave him a
splendid view of the mountainside and distant Teheran. Rococo cupids leered at
him with gilt faces from the corners of the plush bedroom. He opened another
door and saw a bath the size of the
Taj
Mahal
pool. The taps were solid gold. He turned on the hot,
and was rewarded with a quick gush of steaming water in the green marble tub.
He left his nomad’s robe on the tiled door as he walked back into the bedroom,
locked the big double-leafed door, and picked up the green telephone beside the
colonel’s round bed.