Assignment - Ankara (13 page)

Yet one part of her was alert and watchful in the present.

She did not seem to notice when Anderson got up, ducking his head to accommodate his huge frame to the height of the cabin roof. The big man turned aft toward the galley and head, going past Durell with a brief, meaningless smile. Susan did not turn her head to watch him. But she was immediately aware of it when he paused, turned back at her empty seat beside John, and picked up the black handbag she had left there.

Before Durell could check her, she jumped up with a sharp cry. Anderson, who could be as quick as a cat, had already inserted a picklock in the bag. He opened it and flipped the handle back and reached inside. Nobody in the plane could see into it. But Susan, her face blanched white, leaped for the big man with a scream and tried to take the bag back.

“Give me that! How dare you—?”

Anderson swung away easily, turning his back to her. His wide mouth was set in a tight grin. “Take it easy, honey.”

“Why, you—John?
John!”

Her shrill voice shattered the warm lethargy in the plane. She tried to squirm around the big man, reaching futilely past him in the aisle to prevent him from searching the bag. But Anderson’s size was too much for her. He shrugged her off easily and she fell back, panting.

“John!”

Stuyvers was on his feet, facing Anderson. His thin, hollow face looked demoniacal. “Close that bag, sir.”

“I’m curious, Reverend. Or is it just Mr. Stuyvers? Or is Stuyvers your real name at all?” Anderson said in his thick voice.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Your daughter—if that’s what she is—seemed mighty worried about this bag until an hour ago. Maybe she saw me watching her and decided to leave it here to look more casual about it. Well, I want to take those precious books and scrolls of yours apart, once and for all.”

“You have no right, sir.” John Stuyvers’ pale eyes flared. “They are too valuable to be tampered with by anyone who isn’t an expert. I resent your police methods, your insults and insinuations. You must not destroy these religious relics, whatever your motives.”

Durell looked away, glancing out of the window. He saw nothing but fog. Then he looked down and saw the dark surface of the sea, a thousand feet below. He was startled. He had assumed they were much higher and had cut back over the Turkish shore. But there was no land in sight as far as he could see through the mists below.

Then he turned sharply as Susan screamed. Anderson had pushed her aside, and she had fallen to the aisle floor between the seats. At the same moment, Stuyvers launched himself at the big man, grabbing for the books. Anderson swung the bag high and crashed it against the missionary’s head. It made a flat sound as it slammed against the thin man’s jaw. Stuyvers fell, sprawling, and blood trickled from his twisted, smiling mouth. He rested on his elbows, his clerical collar awry. There was something in the way he looked at Anderson that made the big man’s hands pause over the books.

Durell said sharply, “Stop it. All of you.”

“It is quite all right,” the missionary gasped. “Mr. Anderson will return the books.”

Anderson spoke quietly to Durell. “I was just curious. We could have cut those books open. The tapes might be in there, somewhere. Sure, maybe the scrolls are valuable, but I’ve got a job to do, and so have you.”

“When you provide an expert on old documents, I will be glad to have the books examined,” Stuyvers said coldly. “Until then, I do not trust any of you. Whatever you say you are, sir, you have proved nothing to me.”

Anderson hesitated a moment, then strangely shrugged and yielded, as if his interest in the whole affair had quite evaporated. He tossed the black bag aside in contempt, and it landed heavily on one of the seats. John Stuyvers picked it up and dragged it toward him and held it on his lap.

The tension abruptly eased.

Anderson said quietly, “I suppose I made a mistake. You have my apologies, Reverend.”

Stuyvers nodded and settled back into his seat near the tail section. The momentary threat of violence was gone, and Durell returned to the plane window. The fog had evaporated, replaced by a sudden wind that drove shredded clouds from the north across the foam-whipped sea, but even with the better visibility, there was no sign of the Turkish coast to the south. Durell frowned and lit a cigarette thoughtfully. The sea looked lifeless under the scudding clouds, and the buffeting wind made the slender wingtips of the KT-4 tremble violently as he stared at them.

The scene between Anderson and John Stuyvers had struck an odd, discordant note. Uneasiness made his nerves taut, and he searched for the cause. But it was natural for Anderson, also suffering from the uncertainty about the tapes and the tension of the flight, to make a move on his own. The big man surely resented Durell’s arrival on the scene in the first place, however easily he had accepted Durell’s authority.

Durell looked at his watch. They had been flying for two hours. It was difficult to guess their air speed over the ocean, but he was sure they should have been back over the Turkish shore by now.

He got up and went forward into the pilot’s cabin.

Hackitt had the radio earphones on his head and was calling with low urgency into his throat mike. He turned sharply as Durell came in, signalled for the door to be shut, and went on calling with worried intensity. His straw-colored hair was disheveled, as if he had run shaky fingers through it. Through the plexiglass bubble, Durell saw darkening clouds to the north and west and a low fogbank to the south. Under them, the sea looked hard and gray, untouched by the dim sun hidden behind the overcast.

“What is it, Texas?” Durell asked.

“I’m not at all sure, Mr. Durell.”

“Are we off course?”

“According to the beacon, we’re not.” Hackitt flipped fingers toward the control instruments. “We’re right on the nose, using the autopilot. Istanbul signals come in strong, but it’s got a funny way of fading now and then.”

“Is that usual?”

“No, sir, it sure as hell ain’t usual.”

“Can’t you talk to Istanbul directly?”

“I’ve been trying. But there’s a storm between us. I’ve never seen such weather. Must be the earthquakes, huh?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Durell said. “But why aren’t we over the Turkish coast by now?”

“That’s what worries me. My orders are to stay with the auto pilot, no matter what. You know the trouble some of us boys have had, drifting out of our air space. We lean over backward these days, and nobody is supposed to chance flying by the seat of his pants. Still, I just don’t know. I don’t like what I don’t understand, Mr. Durell.”

“Is your compass correct?”

“I’m not sure of that, either.”

“If it’s not, we could be halfway across the Black Sea toward Russia by now.”

“Yes, sir. But the beacon—”

“Never mind the beacon,” Durell said sharply. “Get off it and start using your own judgment. Right now!”

“I don’t know, sir; my orders are—”

“Head south, Major. Unless I’m wrong, we’re already being tracked by a dozen radars—and none of them our own!”

Hackitt’s freckles suddenly stood out in sharp orange spots against his skin. He bit his lip, leaned forward to snap switches, and took the controls in hand, settling himself in his bucket seat with his cowhide boots stretched before him. The plane lurched, then canted sharply as he swung the KT-4 in a long bank to port that headed them south toward land.

From behind them in the cabin came a shout of alarm— a man’s cry, but Durell was not sure who it was. It didn’t matter. Their maneuver brought another reaction immediately—from the sky above.

Like a thunderbolt, the first MIG screamed down across their new course, a dark streak of malevolent metal that left a thunderclap of jet turbulence behind it. The KT-4 slammed into it and shuddered. The MIG leveled off at wave-top level and scoured away to the north. It was followed almost at once by another—and then another. Hackitt licked bloodless lips.

“You were right. They were tailing us from upstairs.” “Guiding us, you mean,” Durell said softly.

“Huh?”

“You were following a false beacon that’s been taking us straight into Soviet air space, Harry. But it’s not your fault.”

“But how could that be? The signals were authentic—” “No. They were set up especially for us.”

Hackitt started to speak, then remained grimly silent. The knuckles of his hands on the controls shone white.

There came the sound of a blow, a woman’s scream, from the cabin behind them. Durell did not turn. He watched another MIG drop upon them from the clouds above, like a hawk upon a sparrow. And this time there came the unmistakable warning shots of wing cannon, thudding rapidly, the shells bursting ahead and to the left of their course. There was a flashing glimpse of the other pilot as the jet screamed past and banked to the north, a quick signal, an order to follow.

“What do I do?” Hackitt whispered. “We’re a clay pigeon to these gusy.”

“Keep heading south.”

“Listen, they’ll shoot us down!” Hackitt objected.

“Maybe.”

“What’s going on back in the cabin?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter just now.”

Another MIG dropped upon them. This time a machine gun stitched a shuddering row of ragged holes in the KT-4’s delicate wing. Metal tore loose and went shredding away like tin foil in the slipstream.

“Can you put us down on the water without killing us?” Durell asked.

Hackitt wet his lips. “Crash land?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe. We’re built to float a while, you know.” Hackitt grinned tightly. “This little ship can do a lot of surprising things—if I’m good enough to coax her into it.”

“How long could we float?”

“Six, maybe eight hours. The wings have flotation tanks in ’em.”

“Put us down, then.”

“On this sea?”

“You’ve got to.”

Hackitt said, “We could follow orders—land where they tell us. Put up a protest that we were lured into their air space by a false beacon—” “Maybe. But there’s something aboard that they want and which Washington’s got to have. Put us down,” Durell said.

“We might all be killed,” Hackitt whispered.

“That’s the general idea.”

Durell looked down at the sea below. The wind had covered the surface of the water with heavy whitecaps. It looked hard and cold and dark down there under the lowering skies. He drew a deep breath, and his mouth felt dry. He turned his head and stared back at the cabin door, then looked down at the sea again.

From above came the first warning scream of another jet fighter dropping upon them.

“Let’s go down,” he said quietly.

THE KT-4 floated downhill on a slope of air, sliding to the surface of the sea. The water waited sullenly for them. It seemed to reach up all around the horizon to embrace the dying plane.

“Here they come again,” Hackitt whispered.

The jets glistened like silver darts against the black overhang of clouds. At the same time, a burst of violently angry voices sounded in Hackitt’s earphones, audible even to Durell as he stood beside the Texan.

“What’s it all about?” Hackitt asked.

“They’ve tuned to your wave length, Harry. It’s Russian. It’s probably the squadron leader upstairs. He orders you to level off and follow him at once.”

“Back to his field?”

“He says you’ve intruded into Soviet territory. Follow—or else.”

Hackitt pulled off his earphones angrily. “To hell with that jazz. I was sucked off course deliberately.” He looked questioningly at Durell. “What do I do?”

“Put us down.”

“We could all get killed real fast down there.”

“It’s got to be done,” Durell said. “Keep banking south. There’s something over there—see it? On the water.”

A solitary shape had broken the heaving monotony of gray sea in their range of vision. It was only a blur, a splinter tossing on the uneasy surface of the water far to the south.

“Could be a fishing trawler,” Hackitt muttered. “Turkish, I hope.”

“Can you reach it?”

“Not unless you want to get shot to pieces here and now.” “Then get as close to it as you can before we crash. I’m going back to get everybody strapped in.”

The KT-4 sank lower, sliding on delicate, sensitive wings. Durell ducked through the narrow doorway into the main cabin. He looked up into a gun in Bert Anderson’s hand. Sprawled on the aisle floor behind the courier was John Stuyvers, bleeding from nose and mouth.

“He tried it again,” Anderson said gustily. “Why axe we going down?”

“You saw the MIGs?”

“Yes, but—”

“We’ll crash land to get away from them.”

“Are you crazy?” Anderson’s big, protuberant eyes seemed to pop even further in outrage. “We’ll drown in five minutes down there.”

“It’s the lesser of two evils.”

Colonel Wickham lurched to his feet, his normally florid face pasty white. “See here, Durell, you’ll kill us all! I demand —I order you to obey the instructions of those fighter planes out there! I’m sure it’s all a mistake—we can explain—the pilot’s at fault—”

Durell faced them all. “I suggest you all take your seats and buckle yourselves in. We’ll hit the water in less than three minutes.”

“But—it’s suicide!” Wickham whispered.

Durell pointed to John Stuyvers’ unconscious figure in the aisle. “Pick him up, Colonel. Help him, Susan. Strap him into the seat with you.”

Susan looked dazed. There were finger marks on her cheek where someone had struck her. Durell glanced at Francesca. She sat still beside Kappic. Kappic was disarmed. His dark, Turkish face was furious.

“This courier of yours,” Kappic said softly, “wants to take command. Everybody has gone crazy here.”

“All right, Bert,” Durell said. “Put down your gun.”

“Get out of my way,” Anderson said. “I’m going to talk to the pilot.”

“What for?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you. Step aside!”

But at that moment there came a sudden rapid shuddering all through the plane, as if a giant hand quickly hammered a succession of blows all along the fuselage. Metal screamed, and smoke filled the compartment. The plane lurched, fell off on one wing. Durell staggered back to the pilot’s door, and Anderson fell with him. There was a confusion of hoarse shouts and screams in the cabin. Durell felt himself slide to the left as the KT-4 went into a long, turning spin. Air howled through the holes torn in the side of the cabin. One of the MIGs had become impatient and sent a burst of shells into the unarmed ship. Durell had a fleeting moment of concern over Hackitt, wondering if the young Texan had been killed—and then, groaning, the KT-4 began to pull out of its dive. Metal cracked and made loud protests as the strain on the long wings took effect. Durell shoved hard at Anderson’s weight. The man had struck his head against the compartment wall. He looked dazed, and offered no resistance when Durell took his gun from him.