Free Assignment Afghan Dragon by Unknown Author Page B

Durell chose a cab and had the driver take them to the bus station on Tehran Avenue, where he and Anya then chose another taxi down Pahlevi Avenue, past the banks and the HOMA air office. The same black Mercedes that had picked up Herr and Frau Hauptman-Graz at the airport doggedly clung to their trail. It was so obvious that Durell wondered if there was a second-layer surveillance team, hiding beyond the Germans. But if there were, he couldn’t find it, nor could he spot a parallel team on the side streets.
    He ignored the Pars and Darbandi Hotels and the Kousravi Nou, and told the second driver to go out Jahanbani Road, where more modest quarters were available. After the first twenty minutes, the Mercedes seemed to have lost them, but he didn’t count on it. Anya sat stiffly, her back very straight, staring ahead as they rode.
    The hotel he chose was small and reasonably clean, on a side street off Kousravi Nou. Not more than eight blocks away was the sacred enclosure of the Imam Reza shrine, the Gauhar-Shad mosque, and the great bazaar catering to pilgrims and tourists alike, although the latter were hardly made welcome. There was a privacy to this Shi’ite fervor that made the exclusion of foreigners more than a bit obvious.
    They ate lunch at the Safa, down the street from the hotel in a narrow lane where traffic could be watched. He did not see the Mercedes again. They ordered tea from the huge samovar that bubbled on the zinc counter, and chelo kebabs , rice heaped high on a platter with a sauce of walnuts, the kebabs of chicken skewered and broiled over a charcoal brazier. The place was smoky and noisy with local inhabitants. Durell chose a table against the wall, where he could see the open doorways in the narrow lane and watch who entered and left. He did not see the Hauptman-Graz couple. Anya behaved nervously, her eyes rarely meeting his. She started to talk about Zhirnov, and wondered what might have happened to her boss, Colonel Skoll, but he cut her off, not knowing who might understand English at the crowded tables near them. She looked at him worriedly and picked at her food. Durell found himself ravenous and cleaned up his plate, ordered a bottle of Iranian wine, and ate the flat Moslem bread, and thrust a handful of nuts from the bowl on the table into his pocket.
    “Surely,” Anya said finally, “you have a special purpose in coming to Meshed?”
    “Yes.”
    “You do not trust me to tell me about it?”
    “I want you to stay in the room. Don’t answer any knock on the door unless you are sure it is me. Don’t go out, don’t use the telephone.”
    She smiled tiredly. “I am confused,” she admitted. “I have betrayed my mission, made an enemy of Zhirnov, for saving your life. Why did I do it?”
    “Perhaps you have a conscience,” Durell said.
    “But my own life is destroyed. I do not know where to go, Where to turn.”
    “Stay with me,” he said.
    Her mouth was wry. But he thought it was a very ripe and promising mouth. She said, “I am alone now. I cannot appeal to my own people. If the German couple are what you say they are, agents of the Black House in Peking, then they are after me, too. What am I to do? Seek political asylum in your country?”
    “There are worse choices, Anya.”
    “No,” she said firmly. “I am Russian. I am a Soviet citizen, a loyal citizen. If Zhirnov is working for traitors—hawks, if you like—then I must do what I can to stop him and take my chances with my superiors when I return to Moscow.”
    “Stick with me,” Durell said. “We have the same goal in mind, for the most part. We can help each other.”
    “How can I be helpful? By remaining locked up in a tiny hotel room? Let me go with you, please, for whatever you have in mind.”
    She looked lovely and appealing, he thought. But it was in the nature of his business never to take anything on face value. True, she had saved his life from Zhirnov. But then he wondered about it. The whole thing