Assignment Moon Girl (6 page)

“I knew your father, Tanya. Professor Alexei Ouspanaya? We
met once, at a technical convention.”

“You know him?” Her eyes widened even more.

“But you are not a physicist or
astro
-engineer.”

”No.”

“You are a spy. You mean only trouble for me.”

“All I want is to see you safely home. Maybe a few
interviews before that, so that international cooperation m these matters can
be proved to work. But there’s trouble in the way. Some others want to use you
for private ends. Local politics being what it is, you’re a tidy object for
ransom and blackmail. When did you last see your father?”

“I—I can’t remember.”

“Or your mother?”

“Oh, she is in Peking. But I’m a Soviet citizen, of course.”

“And Peking wants you back. A local troublemaker named
Har-Buri would like to trade you to them for arms and aid in getting power over
the Shah. And there are others. It’s involved. My only goal is to get you to
the American embassy in Teheran.”

“Why not the Soviet embassy?” she challenged.

He shrugged. “Those are my orders.”

“Then you would kidnap me, too,” she snapped.

“It’s not like that. We only want to help you."

“I need no help,” she said. “I promise nothing.”

When it was dark, before the moon rose, he led the girl Out
of their hiding place and climbed down to the desert plain. They moved with
care, but now and then a stone rattled underfoot with abominable noise. They
froze then, listening and watching. Once, they heard voices, carried clearly on
the cold air. The girl shivered in her thin robe, and Durell gave her his khaki
shirt. She returned a mechanical smile and shrugged into it. He left her then,
to scout for the car, but it was gone. It had been moved during the long
afternoon while they had been forced to hide.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll walk out.”

She looked at him curiously. “Either you are a stubborn
fool, or a brave man.”

“Maybe a bit of both,” he suggested.

They walked side by side, in silence, as quickly as they
could before the moon rose. It was like crawling on an endless belt and getting
nowhere. The dark pinnacle seemed to get no further behind them. His first
landmark, a ridge of gravely dunes, seemed far ahead.

A cold wind came up. The stars reeled overhead. He had not
eaten since breakfast of the day before. He was thirsty, too, but did not want
to use the water in his canteen too soon. From Beele’s chart of the
Dasht-i-Kavir, he estimated they had to walk about twenty miles before striking
any settlement. It was a tight gamble.

They stumbled on more sand-blown ruins, buried in the barren
ridge they suddenly reached. He ordered the girl to rest. She sat down
obediently, knees hunched under her chin, and stared at him. He talked idly of
the ruins, the carved friezes, the legends on stone tablets, the carefully
sculptured beasts and staircases and graceful columns of which only traces now
remained. The moon shone on an empty desert. There had been no pursuit, but he
felt uneasy. It had been too simple. The girl’s captors wouldn’t give up so
readily.

“Persepolis was completed half a century before the
Acropolis in Athens, did you know that?” he said.

“Cyrus the Great started it, designing the shrines and
palaces and his tomb nearby, at Pasargadae. But Darius did most of the
building, and Xerxes and others added to it. Have you ever been to Persepolis?”

“No,” she said.

“You should see the Grand Staircase at Apidana. Its carved
facade is a history of the ancient world.”

“We of a socialized state are trained to look forward, not
back into the cruel and bloody past.”

“But humanity can learn from the past.”

“Only evil things. We must make the world bright and new, as
it has never been before.”

“People haven’t changed enough, unfortunately.”

“That is a negativistic attitude, typical of your bourgeois
capitalistic mentality.”

He laughed softly. “All right, Tanya, we won’t argue
dialectics.”

“No, you are blind, and it is too late for you.”

“Are we so different? You’re a woman, you must think and
feel like a woman; and I’m a man who—”

“If you touch me, I will kill you,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I can see the lust in your eyes.”

“I simply admire your beauty.”

“It is not for you. I am not ungrateful for what you have
done. But I despise your motives, Durell.”

He stood up. “Time to push on.”

They walked through a moon-drenched landscape devoid of
growth, animal life, or any trace of man. Now and then the girl stared over her
shoulder. She was watching the moon. She seemed entranced by its pale light,
like a girl under some strange, medieval spell.

“There is an old Korean proverb,” Durell said, “that a man
who remains in his tent cannot see the full moon rise.”

“You are so strange,” she murmured. “You have kindness in
you. Strength. And compassion. Thank you for it, but—” She said no more.

They walked on. The moon soared above them, and the wind
died. The quiet cold seemed worse than before. The girl’s teeth chattered, although
she panted with the effort to keep up with him. She was limping, too, and he
saw that her slippers had come apart on the stony ground. He said nothing about
it, but ordered another rest when his watch told him it was past midnight. The
girl sank down at once, her dry tongue touching her lips.

“May I have some water?” she whispered.

“Later.”

“The sun will dehydrate us when it rises.”

“We’ll lie up in the shade somewhere.”

“But there is no shade.”

“We’ll find some.”

“I do not think I can go on. I begin to think we will die
out here.”

His voice was harsh. “Do you really care?”

“I—I don’t know. Something I do not understand has happened
to me. Part of my life—seems as if in a dream.”

“This is no dream. Or it’s a nightmare, it you will. We’ve
gone at least a third of the way.”

“Strange they do not follow us.”

“I think they’re waiting for dawn. They might use a plane.
Or come out in vehicles.”

“Why do they pursue me?” she whispered.

“I told you. You’re the most valuable girl on earth, at this
moment. Everyone wants to use you.”

“You, too, Durell?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

Her teeth chattered. “Oh, I am so c-cold.”

“Come here.”

He took her in his arms. She stiffened, then did not resist.
He talked of the Caspian coast, not far to the north of Teheran. There was a
thousand miles of green forest, beaches, pleasant resort hotels and casinos at
Ramsar, fishing boats loaded with sturgeon caviar, the town of Hamadan
which was ancient when Cyrus captured it from the Medes, Tabriz with its
exquisite mosques, Meshed, the holiest of Iranian cities. The sun there was
Warm, the mountain valleys green with flowered meadows. As he spoke, the
girl closed her eyes and settled close to him. He was at once aware of the ripe
firmness of her body through the tattered robe. He swore inwardly at
himself. She nestled closer, her soft hip and thigh against his stomach and
legs. Now and then a shiver went through her body, but he didn’t think now that
it was from the desert cold.

“Durell, you have seen all these green places?”

When he nodded, she went on, “If things were different, I—I
would like to go to some of them with you.”

“It’s not impossible, some day.”

She shook her head. “Do you have a girl?”

He thought of Deirdre Padgett, back in the sanity of
Switzerland. “Yes, a girl.”

“Do you love her?”

“Very much.”

“Is she—like you—in your profession?”

“Yes, she’s in the business. I wish she weren’t.” He stood
up, and she shivered as she lost the warmth of
 
his body, He said, “We‘ll have a drink now, and go on ”

She smiled strangely. “Yes. You are angry with yourself now.
That is good. It is best.”

Their water canteen was almost empty.

Toward dawn, they heard the thrum of a motor vehicle in the
bleak desert to the north. They had passed the second of Durell’s landmarks.
Ahead, a low range of hills marked the end of the desert, hovering
tantalizingly in the starlight. It seemed as if they would never reach it. They
would not reach shelter before the sun came up. With its heat, their last
strength would ebb rapidly away.

“I must rest,” the girl gasped.

“No."

“I must.” She staggered and fell.

“Get up, Tanya.”

“Let me rest!” Her voice echoed in high agony over the bleak
dawn of the desert. “I must sleep. I was in the pit so long—I am not strong, as
I used to be. . . .”

He stumbled, and realized that the ground had begun to slope
upward. He looked over his shoulder. The sky was pale. He looked ahead. A star
shone with unnatural brightness on the horizon. He watched it carefully. It was
not a star. It was a light. A campfire or beacon of some kind. He
staggered against a small clump of brush. It was the first vegetation
they had

met, all through the night.

“Fine. We’ll rest, Tanya.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

There was a loom of trees, a clump of thorny bushes up
ahead, He pulled her that way, fell on his hands and knees, and forced her
under the bushes. It was not perfect concealment. But it would have to do. He
went back then, in the half light, and saw that they had left no footprints in
the gravelly soil. That was good. He crawled under the brush after her and
heard her breathing and knew that she was asleep. In less than a minute, he
slept, too.

Chapter Five

SHE was gone when Durell awoke.

He swore softly. Through the sunlight that filtered
through a canopy of yellow leaves, he saw the depression where she had slept,
and put his palm flat on it. It was not cool, but it was not warm,
either. She had been gone for some time.

He sat up slowly, aware of thirst and fatigue and an empty
belly. His face was scratchy with beard. He tried to wet his lips, but his
tongue was too dry. His fingers shook slightly as he reached for his
sunglasses and put them on. His head ached.

He started to call Tanya‘s name, then thought better of it
and lifted himself silently in the scraggly brush. The sun was in the west. He
had slept much longer than he had expected. But where was the girl?

She had left nothing except the shirt he had lent her last
night. His blue eyes darkened almost to black. He put on the shirt and walked
up the slope through the waist-high brush. The sun struck hammer-blows against
his head. The top of the ridge seemed an endless distance away. His feet
dragged in the sandy soil. He thought he saw the girl’s trail for a moment, but
then it became confused with other footprints and he halted abruptly.

The sound of men arguing, of a sudden burst of laughter,
came incredibly from over the ridge. He paused, then moved on with care. The
shrubs gave out before he reached the top. He felt exposed under the merciless
sky. Then he saw the tops of date palms, which had been invisible in the dark
when they had paused to rest. He went down on his hands and knees, then crawled
until he could see over the ridge.

They had come within fifty yards of the end of the
desert. A small clay village, a few date trees, oleanders, and tamarisks were
grouped around a small pond. The grass seemed an incredible green. Two camels
were hobbled near the water. The smell of charcoal fires and roasting lamb
made saliva fill his mouth. The water in the pond was brackish and green.
But it looked as good as the clearest mountain spring in New Hampshire.

Besides the two camels, there was a battered Renault truck
and a motorcycle. He looked beyond the trees and saw the wet glimmer of an
asphalt road that
ribboned
away to the north. It held
no traffic. Two men came out of one of the clay houses and walked to the pond.
A fat woman followed them. One of the men wore a striped silk shirt and baggy
trousers. The other wore a tattered pajama-like costume and a ragged turban.
Their voices lifted up to him in guttural syllables. The woman attended to the
charcoal fire. The men sat down and began playing with a deck of cards.

There was no sign of Tanya Ouspanaya.

Durell took out his gun. He checked the cylinder, then
inched forward to listen. The men were speaking Farsi. He understood most of
it. They were halted to get water for the truck, before going on to
Sar
-e-
Godar
and then driving
across the salt swamp to the trans-Iranian railway and highway junction to
Teheran at
Semnan
. Their voices were languid,
unhurried. One of the men paused to curse at the woman and tell her to hurry
the meal. No one mentioned the girl.

Durell stood up and walked slowly down toward the pond where
the men sat. One of the camels smelled him and grunted. Both men looked up and
saw him. The one in the ragged Western-style clothes stood up slowly, whispered
something to his companion, who only lit a cigarette and watched Durell
approach.

“I greet you in the name of Allah,” Durell said. He had put
his gun away. “I would like food and water and transportation to Teheran.”

The stouter man had only one eye. His other eye made up for
its loss by its concentration of evil and avarice. “You are English?”

“American.”

“Where do you come from?”

“I was lost in the desert. My car broke down. It was very
careless of me.”

“You have money?”

“A little.”

“Then you are welcome.”

He said nothing about Tanya yet. He took water sparingly
from a beautifully etched copper bowl, and then sipped strong coffee from the
tiny enameled cup the woman filled. The two men simply sat and watched
him. He looked at the village huts, and saw that most were tumbled-down and
abandoned, the tiny windows grilled, the doors sagging. He could not see
inside. He saw no sign of the girl. The Iranians did not mention her.