Free Assignment - Karachi by Edward S. Aarons Page B

shoved ruthlessly through the excited crowd toward the driver. Their methods were quick and efficient. Clubs lifted and fell, and the outraged Punjabi went down to the filthy gutter with his head bleeding. Someone in the crowd took the opportunity to kick at the fallen man. The cops turned on the bystander and clubbed him, too. The crowd scattered. A moment later, Rudi was able to drive on, past the bleeding, unconscious figure of the Punjabi, who still lay in the street.
    They passed an alleyway where Jane glimpsed smoke from cooking fires as women crouched on the stone paving and prepared meager meals of curry. A sense of alien hostility swept from the crowd like a tidal wave around the bright car, thick-throated with resentment at Western affluence. A dirty hand suddenly reached in and snatched at Jane’s earring, and she ducked her head in frantic panic, turning to Rudi with a low gasp.
    “What are we doing here? Why are we in this place?”
    “It is all right, liebchen, my darling,” he said quietly. “Do not be alarmed. You have not seen this quarter before. It is interesting.”
    “Rudi, take me back. I only wanted to talk to you.”
    “In a little while.”
    “It’s getting dark and I want to go back now.”
    He turned his head as he stopped the car to permit a camel cart to cross ahead of them. His eyes were pale and vacant.
    The pungency of dung fires stung her eyes, and she blinked at her tears.
    “Jane, you arranged a pretty little trap for me, did you not?”
    “A trap?”
    “You know we have been followed,” he said.
    “That’s nonsense. By whom?”
    “The police, I supposed. By Durell.”
    She looked back. The teeming humanity had closed in across the street like displaced water surging back to its natural level.
    “I don’t see anything,” she said.
    “We lost them. But I am disappointed in you,” Rudi said. “To trap me like this, Jane, is most unworthy.”
    “Rudi, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are we here?”
    “I have a business appointment,” he said shortly. “It will not take long. Some equipment we may need on S-5. Do not be so alarmed.”
    He had turned the Ferrari into an alley between high, yellow-stained buildings that looked like warehouses. It was dark and hot here, like an oven, the buildings radiating back into her face the heat of the day. She hated the feeling of sweat that came out all over her, and yet she shivered with an inner chill. Rudi stopped the car and got out. They were in a kind of cul-de-sac, and from the sudden reverberating echoes of a freighter’s horn, she knew they were very close to the wharves on the Indus waterfront. She looked back again. Nothing was behind them. But she didn’t like the peculiar emptiness of this tenement alley where Rudi had parked. The windows, up there behind their small balconies, looked lifeless. Ahead was a concrete wall with a blue-painted door in it.
    “I will be right back,” Rudi said. “You must stay here, Jane.”
    “Please, Rudi, I want to go with you.”
    “I will only be gone a moment.”
    He walked away, going through the doorway ahead, and she was alone.
    The heat seared her lungs. The freighter hooted again, as if it were just on the other side of the yellow warehouse on her right. She got out of the car, squeezing between the fender and the building’s wall. There was not much more room on the other side. She wondered if she ought to follow
    Rudi. Why was it so quiet here? Back in the other street, at least, there had been busy, swarming people, sweaty and dirty and noisy. But it was so lonely here, she thought. Such a peculiar place.
    She had gained nothing with Rudi. He would not help her. And he would not let her talk to Sarah. She saw it had been a foolish threat to make. But why had he said they were being followed? Maybe it was a good thing. But her momentary reassurance quickly vanished. She turned to the door in the wall, then turned again and started walking to the alley