Free Assignment Afghan Dragon by Unknown Author

Washington.”
    “But you don’t know,” Durell said flatly.
    “No. 1 feel that something is very wrong in this matter of the dragon, and that you and I are being used as fools by people in both our countries whom we would not approve of.”
    “When did you last see Skoll?”
    “He was arrested over two weeks ago.”
    “He’s not a man who would care for prison,” Durell said. He remembered Cesar Skoll very well, from assignments in Malta and Morocco and Ceylon, where in the past their paths had crossed, mostly as competitors and deadly enemies, and sometimes as unwilling allies. He admired Skoll, had been amazed at the man’s brute strength, his quick wit, his unswerving honesty and dedication, his roaring laughter. Colonel Skoll was not a man who would go down easily.
    Powerful forces must have been at work to remove him from this mission. Perhaps equal forces were at work back in Washington, controlling and manipulating his own efforts.
    A loudspeaker announced their flight. Durell picked up his bag and motioned Anya to her feet. In the ramshackle waiting room, he saw the other passengers for the first time. There were no more than eight of them: an elderly German tourist and his tall, languorous blond young bride. There were two youthful Iranian officials, who despite the morning heat wore their dark coats and neckties as emblems of their office; a Chinese of uncertain age, wearing a white Panama hat; an Indian, very dark, with angry, defensive eyes; and two American businessmen, sharp and alert, carrying their attache cases as if they were boarding a commuter train from Manhattan to Greenwich.
    The Chinese bobbed his head and smiled affably at Durell. He mentally flipped through the dossiers of Peking’s Black House agents, but the man’s face rang no bells. The blond German wife gave Durell a direct, appraising look; her stout husband grumbled in German about the heat.
    Durell and Anya trailed after the little group.
    “One more thing about your boss, Skoll,” he said. “Did you have a chance to speak to him before coming here with Zhirnov and Kokin? Did he give you any hint as to why he refused the mission and was subsequently arrested?”
    She frowned. “Only briefly. Skoll is old-fashioned, you see. He feels protective toward women, despite feminine freedom in socialist society. He only told me to be very careful.”'
    “In what way?”
    “He suggested that Zhirnov was—headstrong? And apt to cause unnecessary difficulties. Skoll had nothing but contempt, of course, for Leonid Kokin. A mere assassin.”
    “Did Skoll expect to be arrested?”
    “Oh, yes. He was clearing out his desk when we last spoke to each other.”
    “But he didn’t tell you directly what it was all about?”
    “No, he did not.”
    Durell followed the girl into the Iran Air jet.
8
    Meshed was a place of fruits and farms, of minarets spiraling high over holy places, the Imam Reza’s mausoleum, of pilgrims on their way to the tomb of Nadir Shah and the sacred enclosures where all nonbelievers were forbidden. Meshed was a garden exuding the scent of growing things and possessing the aura of religious fervor that amounted to a strange ecstasy. It was a quiet storm, fed by the Shi’ite feasts, under a milder sun than in the Seistan; a storm like the swift rippling movement of a whirlpool.
    Here were memories of barbarians and the glory of the Sassanids, of nomad wars and the monstrous avalanche of the Mongols led by Genghis Khan, who left behind them fire and destruction and mountains of bleached skulls. Meshed was the Place of the Martyr, where the Imam Reza confronted the Caliph Harun el Rashid in a conflict between orthodoxy and Shi’ism. Pilgrims to the holy places in Meshed bring in a tide of money, coins and rugs and goats to sell, with which to make their pious offerings.
    There were modem things today, however: sugar refineries and parks, traffic circles and broad boulevards, avenues shaded under gentle trees, and