Assignment Moon Girl (14 page)

Durell considered his bandages. “Then you can do some
driving for me,” he said.

The Chinese girl began to weep.

Hannigan got him his own car from the embassy garage. It was
a small, blue Triumph with an extra petrol tank under the luggage rack. He was
very dubious when Durell levered himself out of bed.

“You’ll never make it. I should send someone else. That
woman made mincemeat out of you, Cajun."

“I’ll manage.”

The room began a slow gyration as Durell dressed. It was
broad daylight now. Lotus helped him on with his socks and shoes. It was good
to get back into his own clothing again. He had lost his sunglasses somewhere,
and he asked Hannigan for his pair, Hannigan made out an expense chit for it.
“They cost me six bucks.”

“And I’ll want another gun.”

“We don’t have the S&W’s you prefer.”

“I’ll take anything except a Colt .45. That’s military
issue, and there’s too much red tape going with it.”

Hannigan produced a Browning for him. Breakfast was sent up,
and Durell ate hungrily. After his third cup of coffee, he felt better. He took
three aspirins to ease his aches and pains and made his last request.

“Money, Rafe. All you can spare.”

Hannigan looked agonized. “I don’t know if the budget can
take it, Sam.”

“Bend a little. How much do you have on you?”

“Couple hundred, I think. I’m not sure.”

“Count it. It’s a sign of the affluent society when a
man no longer can tell exactly how much cash he’s got in his wallet. You should
be ashamed of your prosperity, Rafe.”

“It’s my own money,” Hannigan mourned.

He counted it out reluctantly.

It was after lunch before they left the Royal Teheran.
Hannigan arranged it efficiently. They used the back stairs, going
through the kitchens to a loading area. The blue Triumph was parked there.
Lotus slipped quickly behind the wheel, frowned for a moment, and Durell eased
into the cramped little bucket seat beside her.

“I’m a little nervous,” the girl said. “I don’t know what
came over me, with you. I feel—lost.”

“How is your hand?”

“It only hurts a little now.”

The doctor had put a splint on her broken finger. She
handled the wheel a little awkwardly, but once she adjusted to the Triumph’s
power, she drove quite well. No one stopped them. No policeman flagged them
down as they worked out of Teheran’s wide boulevards and took the road to the
north. Durell slumped in his seat and kept on his sunglasses, hoping there were
no barricades on the highway. They were in luck. If there was an alarm out for
him, because of Colonel Saajadi, it wasn’t evident.

The highway bent east and then north to cross the Elburz
Mountains. The distance to Babul on the Caspian coast was under two hundred
miles. Lotus found a scarf in the map compartment and tied it around her thick
hair. It streamed behind her like a gay pennant as she drove. Her young face
was serious.

“What will happen to me, Mr. Sam?”

“Nothing, I hope.”

“I mean, when this is all over.”

“Hannigan will make arrangements for you.”

Her slanted eyes regarded him mournfully. “But it is for you
that I have left everything I’ve ever known.”

She paused. “I know you do not love me, or even care much
for me, and I understand this, for I was too impetuous with you, and I don’t
know how to care for myself in such matters of emotion.” She spoke English With
a schoolgirl precision. “Nevertheless, I do not want you to worry about me now.
I will help all I can. I am only happy to be free of that woman.”

“Tell me about Madame Hung,” he suggested.

Her words filled important gaps in the dossiers he had
seen at No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington. Ta-Po was not merely a chief of
intelligence in Peking’s hierarchy of power. Ta-Po was interested in rocketry
and the use of atomic ballistic missiles in outer space. Madame Hung really ran
his intelligence department. More and more, lately, Lotus explained, Ta-Po was
away on secret missions dealing with the rising power of the Red Chinese
nuclear development program.

“And your own job?” he asked finally.

“I told you, I was little more than a feudal handmaiden to
Madame Hung.”

“In a socialist society?”

She bit her lip. “What is done privately is often at odds
with the ideals of our social system. Officially, I was her secretary.
But she enjoyed having me perform many menial tasks, degrading things. She gave
me to Ta-Po himself once, and watched all evening.”

Durell adjusted his sunglasses. “Sounds like par for the
course, for that lovely couple.”

“I am so happy to be free at last. But I am also afraid. It
feels so strange.”

He directed her to the eastern road, by way of
Firuz-Kuh
and
Shahi
. They began
to run into showers as they descended the mountains into tropical Iran. The
land turned lush and verdant, a kaleidoscope of jungle, swamp, rice fields,
tobacco and sugar plantations, fruit trees. Lotus recognized a tea farm on the
slopes of a rugged mountain from which they caught their first glimpse of
the Caspian Sea.

“But it is lovely here! So different!”

“The Old King knew it,” Durell said. “That’s why he built
his Riviera down there.”

“Look! Mulberry trees! They breed silkworms?”

Durell nodded. “The
gilaki
peasants aren’t much thought of, though. The
sophisticates of Teheran poke fun at their dialect and call them
kalle-mahi
khor
—eaters
of fish heads.”

She laughed. “It is good to be with you, Mr. Sam.”

“Farther on toward
Gorgan
, you run
into
Turkoman
territory. Horses, sheep, camels, and
cattle. Good hunting in there. They’ve got wild boar, even wolves and tigers.”
He paused, suddenly remembering Tanya in the pit with the tiger. They went
through another rain shower. “Slow down a bit, Lotus. There’s time, it seems.”

They passed Babul-
Sar
, with its
pines and palm trees, at four in the afternoon, glimpsing the fine
Swiss-managed hotel there. The Caspian looked gray-green. In a rice paddy,
women in red gowns were dipping and bending, planting new shoots. The men
followed longhorn buffalos behind swing plows. Then the houses, with their
twin-sloped roofs and high-galleried porticos—some stenciled with D.D.T.
decontamination dates—gave way to thicker forests, a smell of
sulphur
springs, and an architectural horror of a
German-Rumanian resort hotel.

Durell told the girl to go on a short way toward Bandar Shah
and
Asterabad
. They passed fishing ports, and
heavy clots of truck traffic from the caviar-producing canneries. Here and
there a gleaming beach shone against the green of the Caspian. The air was mild
and smelled of citrus fruit and melons. It was difficult to realize they
were in the same country that held the grim Dasht-i-Kavir desert to the south.

“It is not far now to the Russian border and the
Turkoman
S.S.R.,” Lotus suddenly said. “Is it not
dangerous, what you seek to do? You have enemies on all sides.”

“Occupational risks,” he said absently. He was looking for
the road that Hannigan had described, the one on which the Teheran Soviet
embassy had built a resort villa for their diplomats. “Turn left here, Lotus.”

There were some fishing piers, boats, a bumpy
boulevard lined with stunted palm trees. High walls hid a number of villas from
view. Here and there, the canvas of a beach cabana flapped in the warm sea
wind. The water was grayer. Farther out, there were faint whitecaps. Lotus
shifted the Triumph down to a crawl. The road curved between high iron fences
and tennis courts. Durell heard the Russian scorekeeper before he saw the
place.

“Stop here, Lotus.”

Ahead was a striped barrier that blocked their way. A
sentry-box stood beside it, but no one was inside. Masonry posts flanked
the driveway. Durell got out stiffly. The air was cool down here by the beach,
heavy with the odor of salt and fish. Electronic warning beams were set‘
into the masonry posts. He passed a. hand over them and was rewarded by a
distant clamor. He walked back to Lotus, seated rigidly behind the wheel, and
spoke quietly.

“In the village we passed, about a mile up the shore, is a
hotel. Go in and ask for Amir. Tell him I sent you, and give him my name. Amir
is a friendly fellow, even if he looks like a Cossack. It’s been four years
since I came this way, but he’ll remember me. Ask for a room—or two rooms, if
you wish—and take a bath and a nice nap.” He peeled off some of Hannigan’s
currency and gave it to her. “Buy yourself some clothes. Believe it or not, there’s
a French couturiere with a very swank shop in the resort pavilion. Have a good
time, Lotus.”

She looked blank. “But what about you, Mr. Sam?”

“If I’m not back for dinner, call Hannigan to bail me out.”

Chapter Twelve

A SECURITY guard in a loose-fitting uniform took his
name at the gate with only a slight flickering of his eyes. Ile was
curtly told to wait. Durell listened to birds singing, watched a squirrel
bounce down the road, tried to catch the count of the tennis match going on
behind the wall. After a moment or two, the game abruptly ended. Professor
Ouspanaya had enjoyed tennis at Brussels, Durell recalled, when they had met
before.

The guard carne back. “This way, sir.”

A water sprinkler threw diamonds into the late afternoon
sunlight on the green lawn. Two chunky men in gray suits came toward him,
unsmiling. Beyond, the villa loomed through dense shrubbery, in solemn and
secretive isolation. ”Your pardon,
gospodin
. We must search you.”

I have a gun, but I want it back when I leave.”

“Yes, sir.”

Their courtesy worried him. Their eyes were hard with
curiosity as they studied him. Probably they had seen his dossier at No. 2
Dzerzhinsky Square, in Moscow, Durell reflected. He hoped they would
remember that this was neutral ground.

“This way.”

He was not allowed into the villa. That was routine
security. He walked between them, feeling somewhat like a prisoner, into an
arbor above the tennis court. Butterflies looped over a mass of blossoms.
The strains of a Soviet Army march tune came from the villa.

“Professor Ouspanaya?”

The man seated on the bench, tennis racket in hand, stood up
and smiled and extended a hard, lean hand.

“Mr. Durell. The Cajun, am I correct?”

“I’m happy that you remember me.”

“Oh, these men would never let me forget. It seems I outraged
their security by befriending you, when we met, long ago. How many hours I
spent with them afterward, recalling every word of our brief conversations! And
we merely talked of the weather, eh? Such nonsense!”

“Could we speak in English now?” Durell asked.

Ouspanaya laughed. “The watchdogs would not permit it. It
will be easier for me, later, this way.”

The two men in gray suits stood stolidly by, their eyes
never leaving Durell as he sat on the stone bench beside the Russian. Ouspanaya
was a fine-looking man, about fifty, with a handsome head and thick
gray hair, a tanned and healthy complexion. A brilliant man, Durell thought. He
wondered about Tanya. There was a resemblance, of course. He could see the
fine Siberian bone structure in the father. But then he thought of Madame
Hung and wondered how Ouspanaya could ever have married the witch woman.
Perhaps Madame Hung had looked like Lotus at that time.

Ouspanaya took a towel and wiped sweat from his face and
asked one of the guards if he could have some vodka sent out from the villa.
“Five sets makes me thirsty.”

One of the guards left, looking back over his shoulder until
the shrubbery hid him. He was back with remarkable speed, carrying a tray of
bottles and glasses.

“We will drink to our reunion. But we must keep matters on a
relatively inane social level, Mr. Durell. These people know why you are here.”

“And do you?”

“Naturally. We knew when you left Geneva, and when you left
Istanbul, and when you came to Teheran.”

“For a scientist, you make a good intelligence man.”

“I only repeat what I have been told.”

“Then you know I’m looking for Tanya. But I don’t know why
you haven’t been looking for her.”

“My daughter will be saved.”

“Saved? From whom?”

Ouspanaya looked uncomfortable, and smiled sadly. “I cannot
speak of her. Is that understood? It is forbidden.”

“Then we don’t have much else to talk about. Don’t you want
to know how she was? I had her with me, for a short time. I should think, as
her father, you’d want to know how she looked, about her health, her state of
mind—”

Ouspanaya shook his head. “You did not see her.”

“But I did. And she’s lost again, wandering somewhere in the
desert, half out of her mind.”

Ouspanaya looked pale. “The watchdogs did not tell me any of
this. Do you mean you found Tanya, and then you lost her? But how—?”

One of the guards uttered a sullen warning. Ouspanaya
answered angrily. “But I must know about my daughter, Sergei.” He turned back
to Durell. “You really did see her?”

“She was in Har-Buri’s hands. Not comfortably.”

He described the pit and the tiger and the manner in which
they had escaped and had been pursued. He spoke tonelessly, giving facts
uncolored by emotion. He told of the Farsi and the Renault truck and the
discovery of Tanya’s robe and how she had vanished again. “She was in an
extraordinary state of mind. I was with her long enough to determine that. I
spent the night with her.”

Ouspanaya coughed. “She told you of her experiences?”