Assignment - Ankara (15 page)

“I don’t have them.” Durell met the big man’s flat stare. “For the next few hours we have a simple problem—one of survival. This KT-4 is supposed to float indefinitely, but we’re taking water. If we abandon ship and use life belts, we’ll die of exposure. There’s a storm making up. In any case, we’ll lose the tapes then—they’re aboard the plane somewhere. So we stay here until the last possible moment.” Anderson grinned tightly. “You know, none of us trusts the other. And I don’t trust you. I think you want to stay aboard until the Russians find us. Those MIGs damned well started the ball rolling. They’ll break their necks to pick us up before dark, that’s sure.”

“The weather may be on our side,” Durell pointed out. “It might break up the wreck, but it might also keep anyone from spotting us.”

“Well, which are you hoping for?” Anderson asked angrily. “I’ve got you pegged now, by God. You’re a phony. You’re not Durell at all. You killed Dr. Uvaldi and grabbed the tapes! You’re working for the other side!”

Durell nodded. “The same suspicion could apply to you, Bert. But it would be better if we worked together to stay alive. If you think I’ve got the tapes, though, and you want to try to take them from me—come ahead.”

Anderson hesitated. His big head was thrust forward and for a moment he studied Durell, then shrugged. “All right, let’s make the ship watertight,” he growled. “We’ll settle this later.”

He turned away, his shoulder dipping as he swung to the cabin door.

He was fast—but Durell knew he was fast.

Anderson came around in a full, spinning swing, his fist stabbing for Durell’s belly in a massive, paralyzing blow. But Durell stepped back and felt the man’s fist sink into him at the end of the stroke, and even then he knew the taste of the other’s enormous strength as the wind went out of him with a crash of pain. He staggered, slipped, and Anderson came in like a bull, his head lowered, a hard grin on his wide mouth. Durell brought up his knee and caught him on the point of the jaw, and Anderson went flying back against the bulkhead. Grunting, the big man shook his head and looked surprised. Before Durell could get his gun, he charged again. His attack brought him around the pilot’s seat, however, and the dead man slid forward with the jolting collision and Anderson tripped and stumbled over the stiffening limbs. His thrust at a judo stab for Durell’s throat missed its mark. Durell caught his arm and tried to twist it up and behind the other’s shoulders; but it was like trying to twist a telephone pole. Anderson grunted again and came around hard and fast. His pale eyes were suddenly cruel. He shook off Durell’s grip with a shrugging motion and grappled with Durell by locking him in a tight, bear hug that crushed the air from Durell’s chest and lifted him bodily from the cabin floor.

A roaring filled Durell’s ears, and the gray daylight grew dim. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to bring his arms up to burst Anderson’s grip apart, but it was impossible. The other’s muscles crushed in the ligaments and tendons of his rib cage with implacable strength.

“Don’t be a fool,” Anderson whispered. “Give me Uvaldi’s tapes.”

“No.”

“If I squeeze harder, your ribs will pucture your lungs. Take your choice.”

Durell’s anguish was unendurable. He knew too late that he had underestimated the big man in several ways, and this was a mistake that had proved fatal to others in the past. A strange lightness touched his mind. The roaring in his ears was like the pounding sea. He tried again to break the other’s grip, straining, trembling. He felt his strength drain away.

Then all at once he stopped resisting and collapsed, let everything go limp. The unexpected maneuver took Anderson by surprise, long enough for Durell to slip down and out and under the other’s grip, staggering to one side. Anderson spun, lunging, an expression of consternation on his face. Durell smashed at his mouth, felt his knuckles crack on teeth, and struck again, harder. Anderson moved back, and again tripped over the dead pilot. Durell chopped at his left arm just inside the elbow and saw the spasm of pain from paralyzed nerves and minor ruptures shoot across the other’s face. The next moment Durell stepped back and pulled his gun free.

“Now,” he gasped, backing away. “That’s enough, Bert.” The big man straightened slowly. “You’re pretty good.” “Not good enough against your bear hug, it seemed.” “You got out of it,” Anderson said. “Nobody ever managed that before.” He spread his hands painfully. “What do you do now? Shoot me? Drop me overboard?”

“We have to work together. You suggested it yourself.”

“But I still want those Uvaldi tapes,” Anderson whispered. “I promise that they’re safe for now,” Durell said quietly. “How can I take your word for it?”

“The tapes are on the plane. You know that. So it’s in our mutual interest to keep the plane afloat, right?”

Anderson nodded slowly. “I’ll go along with that.”

“Give me your weapons, then.”

“No, I—”

“I can’t take the chance that you’ll jump me again,” Durell said. “It’s either your gun or you go off the plane now.”

Anderson grinned uncertainly. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me,” Durell said.

“But you wouldn’t kill me in cold blood,” Anderson began.

Then his smile faded as he saw Durell’s eyes, and he looked astonished. “I believe you would, at that. I’ve heard how you were trained. People mean nothing to you—just items in equations to be solved, to be used or eliminated without thinking twice about it, in order to carry out your mission.” “It’s not quite like that,” Durell said. “But if I had to, I wouldn’t worry about killing you, Bert.”

Anderson drew a deep breath. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. All right, here’s my gun.”

Durell pocketed the big man’s .38 Colt and kept his own weapon in hand as he gestured to the cabin door. “Now let’s find the new leak.”

The KT-4 was markedly lower in the water. Over a foot of salt sea surged over the cabin floor when Durell followed Anderson inside. The plane lifted sluggishly, and now and then the port wing went under and out of sight for long moments before laboriously spilling the foaming weight from its shining skin. The wind around the high tail fin made a mournful piping noise that accompanied the hollow drumming of rain falling on the hull.

Durell scanned the other passengers quickly. John and Susan Stuyvers sat together again, and Susan’s eyes searched Durell’s quickly before she looked away. She held the black bag on her lap. Colonel Wickham sat alone, muttering to himself. The trickle of blood from his scalp wound had dried in a crusty brown ribbon across his jowl. He stared at the sea in endless horror.

Durell turned to Francesca, who sat with Lieutenant Kappic. The Turk’s face was pale, and his broken leg was propped on the seat ahead. The bandage Francesca had applied looked secure. Deep lines of pain were graven on the young Turkish soldier’s face, and his eyes held a quick appeal as he regarded Durell with a rueful smile.

“I must talk to you—alone,” Kappic whispered.

Durell nodded, waved Anderson on, and paused while Francesca quickly got to her feet and went aft, too. Then he sat down in the girl’s seat and considered the young Turk. Kappic met his gaze for a moment, then looked away, wetting his lips. “I do not know how to say this, Durell,” he whispered. “I do not know how to begin. I am ashamed of my stupidity.”

“What is it, Kappic?” Durell asked quietly.

“When I was first stationed in Ankara, in the first big city I had seen in my life, I was idealistic; I talked of how things were with the peasants, and I—I met people who— who trained me to think in a certain way, who—who got me to work for them. I thought it was for the best, for my people. There was corruption, and misuse of funds, and the promised reforms were so slow in coming. . . .” Kappic paused and shook his head, winced with pain, and looked at Durell again with an appeal for understanding. “I thought I was doing the right thing, back in Karagh.”

Durell drew a long, slow breath. He did not want to stop the Turk from talking. His instinct told him that at long last there was going to be a break in the wall of silence that had stopped him so far.

“Kappic, do you have the tapes?” he asked quietly.

“No. Not now.”

“Are you the one who slugged me and took it, outside the Stuyvers’ hut? It had to be one of us—and you were outside, on guard.”

“You trusted me,” Kappic said slowly. “And I betrayed you. Yes, I took the tapes from you last night.”

Durell stared at the Turk’s tormented face. Kappic said quickly, whispering, “I am a traitor. But last night I thought I—it was the right thing, according to those people who taught me how to be a traitor, back in Ankara. Now I know how wrong I was. Now I know that the tales of cruelty my peasant mother told me about the Moskofs—it is all true. I saw how they shot this plane down, when we were lost and unarmed. I could not believe it would happen. I have been sitting here in pain much worse than the pain from my broken leg.”

“Kappic,” Durell interrupted. “Did you bring the tape aboard the plane?”

“Yes.”

“It’s here now?”

“Yes.”

“How did you hide it last night?”

Kappic grinned suddenly. “I took the tape off the spool and jammed it into the clip in the butt of my automatic. Here.” Kappic gave him his service pistol. His hands shook as he snapped the cartridge case loose. Three bullets were gone from the spring clip, and when Durell pressed down

on the topmost cartridge, he saw that there was ample room in there for the tape to have been hidden. But it wasn’t there now. He looked up, questioningly.

“You remember, you took my gun and Anderson’s, when you ordered each of us to search the other and then to search the hut. It sat on the table, in the hut, all the time, until you told me to take it again and stand watch with you for the rest of the night.”

“Kappic, where is the tape now?”

The Turk looked at him. “Can you forgive me, Durell? I have been a stupid man—I didn’t realize what I was doing, until I saw how, in cold blood, we were marked to be destroyed by the Moskofs—”

“It’s not important now,” Durell said. “Where is the tape?” “When we first crashed—and everything was confused, and I lay here in my double pain—I was afraid I might be dying. So while everyone was moving about, straightening things up after the crash, I took the tape and put it there— in Francesca Uvaldi’s sketch box.”

Durell turned quickly at the Turk’s whispered words. Francesca’s familiar box lay on the next seat. He reached over and took it, glancing up at the others in the rear of the plane, led by Anderson, who was searching for the leak. The locks on the box gave him no trouble. He snapped it open.

“There, with the pastel sticks,” Kappic whispered.

Durell turned the smaller box of pastel chalk over, spilling the sticks every which way. He looked again, searching through the whole container, and then he raised his eyes and met Kappic’s questioning, apologetic look, and Durell’s glance was dark and angry and dangerous.

“They’re not here, Kappic.”

KAPPIC said, “But they must be.”

“They’re not.”

“But I put them there myself! And no one saw—I”

“Did Francesca handle the box afterward?”

“Yes, but just to move it about to make herself comfortable. I think—I’m not sure—I was in such pain from my leg, afterward—”

“She could have taken the tape from the sketch box?”

“I don’t know,” Kappic said miserably. “Perhaps it was anyone.”

“Mustapha, are you sure—?”

“Yes. I am sorry. I was a fool. I listened to evil people, who made me betray you, you who are my friend. It began long ago, when all I wanted was something better in the lives of the shepherd people where I was bom. And now— now I know, when I see how ruthlessly we were shot down, how little value is placed on innocent lives—” Kappic began to shiver. “It came to me suddenly that I had been tricked and duped, and I am still only a peasant boy, fit only to care for the herds in the hills. Yes, I am sorry.”

“Mustapha, will you help me now?”

The Turk looked ruefully at his broken leg. “Someone must have seen me open Francesca’s sketch box, and took the tape again, in the confusion. What can I do now? I have made a mess of things.”

“I want you to go forward,” Durell said. “You can work the plane’s radio, can’t you?”

“I have had some training, in military school, yes—” “We’ve got to raise Ankara or Istanbul somehow—let them know what happened to us. As it is, we’re literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. Do you understand?” Anderson walked back in time to hear Durell’s request. The big man paused and said, “Hell, the man’s leg is busted. Do you want to kill him? I’ll try to work the radio myself.”

Kappic straightened. “No, if I can walk—if I can understand the manner in which the radio operates, and if it works at all—”

“But those MIGs could use our signal to get a homing beacon on us all the quicker,” Anderson objected.

“We’ll take that chance,” Durell said. “Let it be a race, to see which side gets to us first.”

Kappic whispered, “I will try, my friend. And I will look and watch, to see what happened to what is missing.” He looked at Anderson. “It was you who communicated with Ankara last night and got this plane for us. You could have arranged for a radio beacon to pull us off course, too.” Durell drew a deep breath. “I’ve thought of that, Mustapha. Either our pilot, who is now dead, made a gross error, or was lured off his course deliberately. Anderson might have arranged it last night. But it also could have been arranged earlier.”

“Thanks, chum,” the big man said drily. “I appreciate your trust in me now.” He laughed barkingly.

“I don’t trust you or anyone,” Durell said flatly. “Not any more. Can you get to the radio now, Mustapha?”

Francesca came back and offered her shoulder for support. In the momentary silence, all that could be heard was the slosh of water on the cabin floor, the soughing of the wind and the muted thunder of the sea beyond the fragile metal walls that kept them momentarily safe. The young Turk swung his broken leg off the seat and stood on one foot, his breath hissing from between clenched teeth as he hobbled into the pilot’s compartment.