Assignment - Karachi (25 page)

“Not a bit different from when we began,” she said quietly. Her face looked scrubbed and fresh, and she did not wear her glasses. She added, “I must admit that I’m glad you came along on the trip, Sam. If not for you, we’d all have been lost.”

“No. Oddly enough, it was Hans’ skill that got us out.” “And he’s dead now. So your problem is solved.”

“Rudi is dead, too,” he said deliberately. “Is your problem solved yet, Sarah?”

“I don’t know.”

He asked abruptly, “Where are your glasses?”

“I don’t think I need them any more. I threw them away. Perhaps it’s symbolic, don’t you think?” Her smile was wry. “They were a poor defense against my making a fool of myself. I did exactly what I was afraid to do, all my life—left myself wide open to a smooth-talking, handsome man who promised me the moon and everything money could not buy.”

“It wasn’t an honest offer.”

“I know that now. But maybe it did me some good.” “Are you going home now?” he asked.

“Yes, to New York, where I’m going to resign as chairman of the board of Standish Nickel. I’ll leave all that to men who get paid to know their business.”

“And then what?”

She smiled again, and suddenly looked younger and less austere. “I think I’ll spend some time trying to grow up inside, instead of using my glasses and a tough exterior as a defense.”

“I think that’s fine,” Durell said.

She kissed him suddenly, leaning toward him with her arms around his neck. Her mouth was fresh, even naive, as if she were artless in expressing herself. He wondered about her future. She had learned a bitter lesson, but she was still the Nickel Queen, the most prized woman in the States. Men would be after her for all sorts of reasons—and all the reasons added up to her money. But perhaps someone would come along who would be right for her, if she didn’t make too many mistakes until then.

He couldn’t guess the future. He didn’t want to.

Sarah Standish flew home from Rawalpindi. Durell saw her off, then went to Alessa’s hotel. But Alessa was not in, and there was an urgent message for him from Donegan, in Karachi. When he telephoned, he was ordered to report there immediately, and there was no time to see Alessa before he left. He wrote her a note, left it with the desk clerk, and took the first plane south across the desert of the Sind to the coast.

He had almost forgotten the suffocating heat of the Indus Valley, and he was aware, on the trip, of a loneliness that was not usual for him. He went directly to Donegan’s office, where the little man was most apologetic.

“I’m sorry about tagging it urgent, Sam. Henry Kallinger is due in from Istanbul, but I just got word he’ll be delayed a few days. He wants to see you, naturally.”

“Probably to check on my expense account,” Durell said.

“I wouldn’t know. But you’d better stick around until he gets here.”

“What about Hawk’s Bay?”

“Sure, you can stay there, if you like. Do you good.”

Donegan found him a small villa that a friend wasn’t using, and Durell rented a car and drove out along the blacktop highway to the sea. He paid his rupee at the toll gate and found the house without difficulty. It was small, secluded, pleasantly furnished, directly on the wide beach where the Arabian Sea thundered and lashed the shore with its white combers.

He stripped, put on a pair of bathing trunks he had bought in Karachi, went into the blazing sun, and baked for a while in rivers of sweat; but the heat failed to melt a hard knot of ice inside him. He went swimming in the heavy surf, let the thick salt combers smash at him, swam beyond them for half an hour, then spread a towel and lay on the hot sun and waited. Far down the beach an English family was having a picnic under umbrellas. A camel and rider made a silhouette against the ocher sky on the sand ridge island from the beach.

He couldn't lie still. He went into the villa and showered in the tepid water from the roof tank, cooked his own dinner, and watched the sun go down over the sea. It was an awesome and lonely sight.

When it was dark, a wind blew from the ocean, cooling the beach, blowing through the windows of the little house. He showered again and felt the weight of being alone in a strange land. He was still careful. The Pakistan police

were hunting for the Chinese, and there might be others who had marked him for erasure. Far away in Washington, they would be closing the file on Red Oboe—a small step, another skirmish, in the dark war that girdled the world.

When she came walking across the beach in the moonlight toward him, he was not surprised. He was seated in a cane chair, near the door, and he watched her stride across the sand, her legs long and lithe, her hips swaying with the effort to pace in the yielding sand. The moonlight made her short-cropped, boyish hair look silvery.

He stood up.

“Alessa.”

She stood before him, wearing a white linen suit, the skirt slim and hugging her thighs, the blouse and feminine jacket embroidered with tiny seed pearls. She smiled uncertainly. “Were you waiting for me?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I asked Donegan where I could find you. He didn’t want to tell me, but I got it out of him.” She smiled briefly. Her eyes searched his face in the shadows. “Donegan said you won’t be here for very long. So I made reservations on the Lufthansa flight to Tokyo for the day after tomorrow.” 

“Tokyo?”

“It’s one way to go home,” she said. “And you?”

“I don’t know where I’ll go next.”

“I thought perhaps you might return to the States. It’s a chance, anyway,” she said tentatively. “Tokyo is on the way. We might go together.”

“True.”

She stood quietly and said in a small voice, “Don’t you want me? Are you angry with me, because after that night in ’Pindi I thought perhaps Hans—I mean, after all, Hans always loved me, and I did not suspect what he was—”

“I know.”

“I tried to tell myself I loved him, when we were in the mountains. But I suppose my first instincts, in all the years he was    after me, were the true ones. Love is either there, or it is not. One needs a person, or one does not.”

“I need you, Alessa,” Durell said.

“Yes.That is why I am here. But now that I see you—”

“Are you sorry you came?”

“No.”

“Come inside,” he said.

He took her hand. The cool sea wind had scoured the heat from the bungalow. In the darkness, she turned to him with a sudden fierceness and he kissed her, felt her tremble against him, and her weight pulled him down to her. She sighed, and he drew a deep breath. He knew that this with Alessa would last only a day or two. He would not go to Tokyo with her. It would be better if she left for Vienna without him, to return to her frayed and ancient family home and scholarly research. But for now—

“I understand how it is, Sam,” she said, as if knowing his thoughts. “It’s all right.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”

He picked her up and carried her into the other room, where the sea wind blew darkly across the tiled floor.

   THE END

          of an Original Gold Medal Novel by

            Edward S. Aarons