Assignment - Ankara (3 page)

“I don’t know,” Durell said.

“Hasn’t there been any word at all from the Base?”

“No.”

She was silent then, and Durell watched Kappic’s driving and the twisted road ahead. He continually expected to run into frontier guard detachments from the local divisional HQ, but none were in sight. Through the fog he could see the scars of small landslides that had tumbled debris down into the gorge where the road twisted. The air was thinner and sharper now as they climbed.

“Does your father expect you, Francesca?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wrote that I might get here, but perhaps he hadn’t had time to receive my letter. I—”

At that moment Kappic slammed on the brakes again. The heavily-loaded jeep swerved crazily on the mountain road. Out of the mist ahead loomed a great pile of rock and rubble that barred their way with an impossible tangle of debris.

The girl gasped as the jeep seemed about to slide off the road into the black-walled ravine at their right; but Kappic’s strength saved them again. The wheels locked and spewed out gravel, and they came to a lurching halt.

“I am sorry,” Kappic grunted. “This was not expected.”

They could go no further in the car, short of using a bulldozer to clear the road. To the right, the mountain gorge dropped impossibly down to a dimly heard stream racing among fallen, ancient pines and mossy boulders. To the left, the tortured slope was ripped and torn by the landslide. It would take hours for heavy equipment to dear the roadblock ahead.

“How far are we from Base Four now?” Durell asked.

Kappic wiped his heavy moustaches and sniffed at the air. The silver Byzantine crescent on his lambskin military cap gleamed wetly in the fog. “The village of Karagh should be directly ahead, in a small valley about two miles from here. I used to be a shepherd boy in these mountains, you know.” He grinned suddenly. “The road divides before it reaches Musa Karagh, however; and the new military road goes for a mile up to the mountaintop where your American installation is. We shall have to walk, I am afraid.”

“Doesn’t anybody live around here?” Francesca whispered. “I didn’t think this area was so isolated.”

“Karagh is a village of only a few hundred people.” Kappic was perspiring, although the air was cold. “My family all died of a fever twenty years ago. Now there are visiting nurses of the Red Crescent, and sanitation, anyway.” He shrugged. “One can only hope there are some survivors. The town has been cut off completely by the earthquakes.”

The girl suddenly stood up in the jeep and pointed. “Oh, look—there is someone!”

Durell had already glimpsed the two people clambering over the rubble toward them. They appeared suddenly, close at hand, the man limping clumsily, the woman younger and more purposeful. He saw in the first glance that the man had gray hair under his wool hat and a thin, harsh face. The girl, in her twenties, had straw-colored hair bound severely under a colored scarf. She wore no veil, and they were both in European clothing, the man wearing a severe black suit, dusty and tom at the knee and slightly bloodied where his leg had been injured. The girl wore a gray felt skirt and sweater under a mannish-styled jacket, and she clutched a large leather bag worn as dark and smooth as a saddle.

“Don’t any of you move!” the man called in English. His voice rang as gray and metallic as the rifle in his hands. “Hold it just like that, eh?”

Kappic cursed and made a sudden move for his holstered gun in his bandolier belt. Durell touched his arm. “Wait. He may shoot.”

The man’s eyes were wild with shock and desperation. But the rifle covered them with steady purpose as he limped and slid down the rubble heap blocking the road and then came toward them.

“Put down your gun,” Durell said quietly. “You don’t need it against us.”

The man halted, surprised. “You’re an American?”

“Yes. Put away your weapon.”

The man breathed hard. Durell noted with surprise that he wore a clerical collar with his severe black suit. His face was angular, hard and pale, with a bloodless slash of a mouth and prominent cheekbones. His yellowish-gray hair was long and lank. The girl touched his shoulder then and murmured something; her brown eyes swept over Durell and Francesca and Lieutenant Kappic, and then returned to Durell. Her oval face was devoid of all make-up, and her pink lips were firm and hard. She held tightly to the black leather bag she carried.

The man said harshly; “You must all go back. There is nothing but ruin and desolation behind us, in a Godless land. The Lord has forsaken this place and its people.” “Father—” the girl murmured. “Father, he’s an American. He’s probably going to the radar base on Musa Karagh.” “You must all go back,” the man insisted. He favored his injured leg, but the rifle was held steady in hands that seemed familiar with the feel of it. “Susan, we must use their car. Get the keys.”

“Will you take our vehicle at the point of your gun?” Durell asked.

“If I must!” the man gasped.

“You’re a strange sort of minister,” Durell said flatly.

The girl spoke in a quiet voice. “My father has been grievously hurt, as you can see.” Her pale brown eyes never left Durell’s face, and she looked puritanical as she confronted him. “Our name is Stuyvers—my father is John, and I am Susan. We’ve lost everything. All our work in Karagh and the Caucasus Mountains beyond has been destroyed. The people are dead or dying. Our car is on the other side of this landslide—we were trapped in it for hours this morning, digging our way out with our bare hands. We’ve only just succeeded. Can you understand? My father isn’t quite himself at the moment.”

Lieutenant Kappie spoke with sharp authority, his gutteral voice grumbling like a bear. “What were you people doing in Karagh, exactly?”

Susan Stuyvers replied without looking at him, still watching Durell with that strange intensity. “We were sent here on a two-month mission for the U. C. Church Mission of Izurum. We had only begun to labor in this new vineyard, but God saw fit to disapprove of our work. Perhaps we sinned. We do not know. But my father is in a state of shock—”

“I will take the car,” the man said thinly. “We must flee this land. Daughter, be careful. Take the ignition keys from the lieutenant.”

“I am sorry,” the girl said. “He must be obeyed.”

Durell said, “I only understand that he has a gun at our heads. But we are not turning back.”

“You must!” the man shouted. He lurched forward, his eyes ferocious and pale, luminous in the misty light. “Now give me the keys!”

Kappic’s hand still hovered over his holstered pistol. The Turk’s temper was highly volatile, and Durell could not have predicted what might happen in the next moment. The missionary was obviously unbalanced by disaster, and capable of any wild act. On the other hand, the Turk was a soldier not likely to yield, even in the face of the man’s rifle.

For a moment, they continued to stare at each other. In the strange light of afternoon, the mountains stood hushed, veiled in fog, the earth and trees and sky heavy with a sense of waiting. The light changed, turned yellowish and somber, playing on the face of the man with the gun.

Durell felt it first.

There came the faintest tremor of the earth under his feet. The road shifted fractionally, a hair’s breadth, nothing more.

Then a distant rumbling sounded, as of a faraway convoy of heavy trucks down in the gorge. Stuyvers felt it then. His mouth opened and his eyes clouded with sudden, dawning terror.

The earth shifted again—violently, this time. There came a shattering roar from the mountaintop. Susan Stuyvers screamed. The trees swayed, as if a cold and violent wind suddenly blew upon them all. Durell’s legs buckled, and he staggered; but he did not fall. The earth shuddered again, and as a tree Snapped and crashed nearby, Susan Stuyvers screamed again and Kappic cursed and John Stuyvers, with his injured leg, went down on all fours, losing his rifle.

Durell jumped for the gun, caught the barrel, thrust it up while his right swung hard into Stuyvers as the man rose to his knees. The rifle exploded abruptly, making a thin, spiteful crack against the roaring of the tortured earth. Francesca cried out something as Stuyvers fell again. The man’s body was alive with furious muscle, surprisingly hard and wiry, as he struggled to regain his weapon.

“Hold it!” Durell shouted.

The man’s face was a mask of fury. Durell hit him again, pulling the punch, and Stuyvers’ head snapped back. Something struck Durell a stunning blow in the back and knocked the wind out of him. He rolled aside, not knowing what it was. For an instant he stared up at the mountainside above the road and was completely disoriented. It seemed as if the earth had heaved up like a giant wave and was toppling down upon him in a giant, crushing comber of torn rock, soil and splintered trees, poised there for an instant of eternity against the ochreous sky above.

He shouted, saw that Kappic had thrown the two girls behind a great boulder. A vast, rumbling, grinding noise shook the air.

“Get up!” he gasped to Stuyvers.

The earth shook violently. He extended a hand to the man, and the missionary gaped at the hillside, where the landslide was beginning. His mouth closed, opened again. Durell pulled him angrily erect, a shower of flying pebbles pelted them. A stone struck Stuyvers in the cheek and laid open a raw, ugly gash. He did not seem to notice it.

“Susan?” he called thinly.

“Hurry!” the girl cried.

They staggered to the shelter of the boulder as a long, roaring tongue of earth slid down the black mountainside in horrifying majesty. It struck the jeep on the road like a battering ram and swept it into the dark gorge as if it had never existed, except for a brief shriek of crushed metal.

Stuyvers threw himself down beside his daughter. Durell crouched next to Francesca, with Kappic on the other side. For eternal moments, the earthquake shook the mountains around them. Francesca’s protective blankets were disarranged, and her long legs gleamed tan and firm in the ochreous light. But despite her fear, Durell noticed, she had managed to save her precious sketch case. She clung to his hand with a tense, frightened grip—and then as suddenly as it began, it was over.

The silence, after the terrible roar, was shocking.

There came a few last crashing notes as rocks still rolled to the bottom of the gorge. Then only the wind whispered in the splintered pines.

Durell stood up. His legs trembled in reaction to the uncertain shifting of the earth. He looked questioningly at Kappic, who nodded, shaken.

“It is over, for now. A bad one, eh? There may be another tremor—”

“We’ll chance that,” Durell said. “Let’s get out of here.” “How?” Kappic asked pointedly. “The jeep is gone.” “Then we’ve got to walk,” Durell said grimly.

Slowly they all rose to their feet. The tremor seemed to have jolted the missionary, John Stuyvers, back to his senses. He began to mutter apologies, clinging to his frozen-faced daughter. Their black saddle-leather bag lay on the road, and Durell picked it up to hand it to them. It was astonishingly heavy, and the girl, Susan, saw his surprise and spoke quickly.

“We have some medieval Bibles and manuscript scrolls in there—we bought them from some monks when we were in Lebanon, at the monastery at Bel-el-Echem. They are priceless relics, written in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. We hope to take them back to Philadelphia with us.”

There is no doubt that the bags contain books, Durell thought, handing it to her. “Does the Lebanese government know you’ve taken these out of their country?”

She smiled evasively. “Father paid the monks well for them.”

“I see.” It was none of his business, Durell thought, if the missionary was trying to bring back religious relics to the States illegally. But since no detail could be overlooked in his business, he made a mental note to inspect the bag’s contents as soon as possible.

He walked ahead, climbing over the rubble that blocked the mountain road, and forced his way through twisted tree limbs and around huge rocks. It was growing dark. On the other side of the roadblock he saw the crushed wreck of an American car, partly exposed under the weight of loose gravel that looked dark where the Stuyvers had dug themselves out. Ahead, the gorge widened into a narrow valley cupped in rough mountains, and far in the distance through the haze he saw a ruined village clinging to the hillside. It would be Karagh, he thought, noting the terraced fields and stone houses. A stream had overflowed its banks beside the village, and there was a white guard post hut near a bridge that crossed the swollen little river.

No lights shone there, but he thought he saw a few dim, mote-like figures stirring feebly after this latest quake.

A sound behind him made him turn quickly. It was Kappic, grim and pale. Kappic had his heavy automatic in his hand.

“What do you make of it, Durell?” the Turk asked.

“We must go on.”

“The village is ruined. You see, not even a helicopter could land on those orchards. But some people are still alive down there, it seems.”

“Shouldn’t there be a regimental frontier guard detachment at that bridge?” Durell asked.

“There usually is. The frontier with the Moskofs is not far off here,” Kappic said. He frowned. “The detachment must have been sent on relief duty elsewhere.”

“Maybe,” Durell said. “Anyway, we can leave the Stuyvers couple and the Uvaldi girl in the village. You and I can go on up to Base Four on foot.”

The Turk nodded slowly. His dark eyes reflected shock and grief as he looked down at the rubble of the distant mountain village. Something had caught fire down there, and a thin finger of smoke probed the misty, evening sky.

“Allah help us all,” Kappic murmured. “Let us go on, as you say—if only to attend the funerals.”

THE hut was dark and cold, and one corner of the roof sagged dangerously over the single interior room. But the Russian-style tiled stove still worked, and there was a little charcoal. Francesca was accustomed to caring for herself under any strange conditions. She was alone in the hut, except for the scent and memory of some goats, and on the twisted rafters above, a couple of pigeons burbled uneasily.