Assignment - Karachi (6 page)

Bicycle bells jangled in the street, a beggar crawled across the sidewalk toward her, hands outstretched like claws. She avoided him, walked around a domed mosque, crossed a small park where men in white muslin and women in veils sat in lethargy under the shade of peepul trees. Every now and then she turned her head and looked behind her. No one was following. Voices lifted on the oven-heated air, speaking Urdu, Pathan, English and Portuguese. All at once she longed for the familiar flat tones of her Midwestern home in Garden Falls, Indiana.

A short, fat man with a terribly scarred face, wearing a white silk suit and a topee, stopped in her way on the path through the park.

“May I help you, madam? Do you wish a taxi?’’

“No—no, thank you.”

“You are lost, please?”

“No, I’m not.”

She walked around him, thinking, But I am lost, terribly

lost, and I can never go home again, because I don’t know what will happen to me.

She paid no attention to where she was going. The heat dazed her, the nausea rode in her stomach. Something had to be settled. She couldn’t stand it any longer. Rudi would have to decide.

It had been wonderful to write home to Momma and Poppa, in that quiet white clapboard house on Elm Street, and tell them about her job and Sarah Standish and all the amazing things she saw and did; how she lived in the lap of luxury and traveled everywhere with one of the richest women in America. To get a job like that was a stroke of fortune; but now all her luck had turned bad.

She saw a policeman at the other end of the park and she turned and walked the other way, casually, aware of a heaviness in her legs and exhaustion in her lungs. She dodged one of the diesel tramway cars, forced herself around a covered tonga. Tricycle cabs sought her as a fare. She kept walking, ignoring the beggars on the sidewalk, the crisply uniformed Pakistani military men, the occasional European.

She had escaped Durell, but nothing else, she thought.

How ironical that she’d had to pose as Sarah here, for the one day! It was a circlet of thorns, crowning all her folly that had begun so long ago in Switzerland.

She had been the first to meet Rudi von Buhlen, because Sarah always made herself inaccessible to informal approaches. Rudie was the first man Jane had made love to.

Jane paused in her walking. She had crossed Napier Road and was in the Juna Market, a native bazaar. Here the women were less emancipated than those on Victoria Road and wore dopattas, long headcloths that fell to the shoulders, and even burkas, the heavy veils that have two holes in the face to see through. She paused, turned, bumped into a tall man wearing an immaculate white sherwani, a frock coat buttoned at the upstanding collar. His Jinnah cap and white hair made him look like a specter in the noise and heat.

“If you are looking for a bargain, madame—”

“No, no.” She tasted panic. “I was trying to get back to the Metropole Hotel.”

“Perhaps a taxi, then.”

“I’ll walk, thank you.”

He bowed and left. Turning, she went quickly back the way she had come. On Victoria Road again, among the shops and greater percentage of Europeans, she felt easier. There was a Chinese restaurant, and then Monkton’s Cafe Grand, looking somehow French. Again she dodged traffic to find a table and chair under the striped awning. It was safe here, she thought, crowded enough to hide in. But she had another moment of panic, thinking how she might be mistaken for Sarah Standish, and she hastily took off the useless glasses. But nobody paid any attention to her, beyond the usual speculative glances that men always gave her figure, until her prim face made them turn away. There was no reason to be afraid. Durell was over-cautious. After all, no one even knew Sarah Standish was in Karachi; they had arrived only yesterday; and Sarah hadn’t left her villa once. So she was safe enough, Jane told herself. Nobody wanted to kill her, even by mistake.

She felt better after sipping her iced vermouth, although the heat gathered under the awning was stifling. She thought of Rudi and wondered how anyone so strong and handsome could be so evil inside. Her stomach spasmed. Yet, remembering, she felt a familiar tremor.

Jane knew she was not particularly pretty, although her figure was all right. Rudi said her body was sculptured for love. And it had been a source of wonder that a man as sophisticated and cultivated as he should have chosen her, last winter in the Alps. She knew herself to be an unaffected Midwestern girl, even though polished by her employment with Miss Sarah. But Rudi became her first lover. And he had wakened an inner, passionate nature she had never suspected. Even now, fearful and worried, hating him, she still wanted him.

Because of her childhood in Garden Falls, Indiana, she was still ashamed of the lurid, pornographic memories of herself making love with Rudi. He was tall and strong, with a broad, flat brow and pale eyes, and his long hair was the color of old haystacks in the fields back home. His confidence—and arrogance—had overwhelmed her. He knew his way everywhere, knew everyone. He was a first-class
bergsteiger
, a mountain-climber and guide, at home on any glacial ridge, exulting in mastery over brute nature. She was clumsy at climbing, but he was patient with her those first days. She’d had a lot of free time, because Miss Sarah was resting and seeing no one. There were many quiet evenings then, in little chalets and mountain huts, when they made love and everything was wonderful.

Until he asked to meet Miss Sarah, she thought; and she innocently agreed. Then everything changed.

And everything ended.

She saw too late that meeting Miss Sarah had been Rudi’s single goal from the very beginning.

She saw him again in New York last winter, just once, meeting him at that shabby little hotel where it had all been so ugly; and yet she hadn’t been able to keep herself from begging him to love her again. He had been arrogant, impatient. But he had gone to bed with her, for just that last time. And she had been careless....

So their child would be born not out of love, but from that last union of hate and despair, Jane thought.

She hadn’t seen Rudi since. He went back to Europe—to the Carlton at Cannes, the Ritz Bar in Paris, the family schloss near Vienna. She followed him by the regular, devoted flow of letters addressed to Miss Sarah, which crossed her desk as Miss Sarah’s personal secretary. She had longed to destroy them, or to read them. But she did neither, impersonally turning them over to her employer.

Sometimes she had thought of telling Miss Sarah the truth about Rudi. But the opportune moment never seemed at hand, although it almost arrived the day of her first visit to the doctor.

Knowing they would meet here in Karachi, she had kept silent. Of course, she could not really go with the expedition into the Himalayas. Not the way she was. The doctor had utterly forbidden it.

So what was left now was to see Rudi alone and tell him what had happened and ask for his advice and help. There was nobody else to turn to. Certainly she could never go back to Garden Falls, Indiana.

He had avoided her at the villa last night. But never mind, Jane told herself. He would come to her now, this afternoon, this evening. They would meet alone, and settle everything.

There was a telephone inside Monkton’s Cafe. After she finished the iced vermouth, she picked up her purse and walked in and called the number of the villa.

Sarah Standish got up to answer the telephone. It was surprising to Durell how much Jane King had patterned herself after her employer. They were approximately the same age, and watching Sarah walk across the Bokhara carpet, he realized that she, too, had a body of full and unsuspected beauty, in contrast to her remote, cool features.

The telephone stopped ringing before Sarah could reach it. She made a little gesture of impatience. “Someone else took it,” she said to Durell. “On the extension.”

“Are the von Buhlens here?” he asked.

“They have a suite of rooms upstairs. Rudi and his sister are checking the supply lists. It’s probably a call for them.”

Durell had come here directly from Donegan’s office. The police had been alerted to look for Jane. K’Ayub promised every co-operation, although his soft voice had sharpened with irritability. “I cannot help but resent the fact, Mr. Durell, that I was not trusted to be told about the impersonation.”

Durell had apologized, said he, too, hadn’t known about the sham. The colonel was only slightly mollified. Nevertheless, a quiet, desperate hunt was combing the city for the girl. No more could be done at the moment.

Sarah Standish returned from the telephone and sat down, her knees and legs primly straight. “I am terribly sorry about this,” she said. “Jane is a fine girl, devoted and loyal. I’m quite fond of her. I can only hope nothing serious will happen to her.”

“If something does, it will be because she is mistaken for you.”

Sarah nodded. “I am aware of that.”

“Yet you let her take the risk of impersonating you.”

“I merely followed Mr. Donegan’s advice.”

“Your conscience didn’t trouble you?” Durell asked.

Her eyes were objective behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “It is not your business to be concerned about my conscience. You presume too much. Your job is to insure my personal welfare. No more, no less. I should point out, however, that I did not request your help. I think it is all rather melodramatic and unnecessary. I am not in danger. But everyone insisted some precautions should be taken, and Mr. Donegan suggested that Jane double for me, here in Karachi.”

“And now she may be killed,” Durell said.

“You seem to be unnaturally concerned.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m worried. Puzzled. No more. Jane is a capable young woman. I trust her judgment, and I have faith in her behavior.”

“You make yourself sound tough,” Durell said. “Are you really as hard as all that?”

“You are impertinent.”

“I don’t apologize. You don’t frighten me, as you did poor Mr. Donegan. I have my job to do, that’s all. You’re going into dangerous country, and all the people who preceded you didn’t come back. Those mountains aren’t like the Alps. They’re not mapped or explored. The Pakhustis are hostile. Are you tough enough for that?”

“I’m tough," Sarah said thinly. “I’ve had to learn to be.”

The room where they sat was big and airy, with wide doors open to a garden of date palms and tamarisk. An ivory screen that dated back to the Moguls, under Babur the Tiger, shone softly behind Sarah’s tall Bombay chair. A servant moved quietly in the garden, the flicker of his high-collared sherwani catching Durell’s eye. There were uniformed guards out there on watch. This house was as safe as any place could be. Yet he felt uneasy. He was worried about Jane. And he could not solve the contradictions in Sarah Standish. Her face was severe, her body in her white tailored silk suit remarkable. He could not avoid the firm lines of her thighs and hips, the swell of her breasts under the simple striped blouse. She was an enigmatic bundle of frustrations wrapped in a gilt package of money and power, the product of an unnatural life that was reflected in her wariness of all men, whom she had to regard as predators. There was a challenge in her. He wondered what she would be like if she let her mouth rest naturally and simply relaxed.

“Please do not stare at me,” Sarah said quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know I’m an object of curiosity to most people. I should be accustomed to it, but it makes me a little nervous.”

He said, “I didn’t ask for this assignment, Miss Standish.

I was chosen because I’m supposed to be acquainted with you.”

“Through Deirdre Padgett. I remember you well.”

“Thank you. I wasn’t sure you did. May I call you Sarah?”

“If you wish.”

“I’d like to know your real objectives here in Karachi,” he said. “The real reason for financing and going on this expedition.”

She looked faintly uncertain. “I am in love with Rudi von Buhlen. I want to be with him.”

“Is that all?”

“I am not quixotic by nature. I cannot afford to be.” She was firm and precise again. “There has never been any— adventure—in my life before. I decided that this would be good for me.”

“Is your goal the search for this mythical jeweled crown? Or is it the nickel?”

“You are not very flattering.” She smiled faintly, for the first time. “I can hire a hundred geologists to find more nickel. I don’t have to go about the world with a hammer, chipping rock. On the other hand, I don’t honestly give much credence to this story about Alexander the Great, or a crown that’s been lost for two thousand years. I’m not much interested.”

“Then why put yourself in danger like this?” he asked.

“Being with Rudi,” she said, “makes the danger unimportant.”

Rudi von Buhlen put down the telephone in his upstairs room and noted, with some surprise, that his hand was trembling slightly. He stood half-naked, having just stepped from the modern American shower stall in the bath next to his bedroom. A towel was wrapped around his waist. The hot wind blowing through the balcony windows brought with it the indefinable smell of the city and the Indus River wharves—a smell compounded of cooking, human waste and garbage, and oil storage tanks. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, saw the lines of strain on his handsome, tanned face. As usual, he admired the powerful musculature of his body, then dropped the towel and reached for his shorts and slacks.

His room had a tiled floor, a Sarouk rug, a huge bed in one corner with damask hangings. His hands still trembled. The shower had been tepid, the water coming from the tank on the roof under the broiling sun. He ran fingers through his long hair, turned, and saw Alessa watching him from the connecting doorway to her room.

“Was it Jane on the phone?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in town.”

“Are you going to meet her?”

“I’ll arrange something,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

She was three years younger than he, but somehow she had dominated him all their lives. He could not meet her steady, controlled gaze.