Assignment Afghan Dragon Read Free

didn’t seem to mean anything.
    The second book was a thin volume of Taoist poetry and interpretation, also in Chinese, by the Chinese scholar Ch’u Ta-kao. Durell opened the yellowed leaves at random. Tao produces all things. Virtue feeds them. All things appear in different forms and each is perfected by its innate power.
    Durell put both books in his bush jacket pocket and turned away to climb the hill back to the highway.

    The sun was lower now, but the impact of its heat struck as forecefully as before. The wind had died completely. Durell moved faster now, not looking back at Fingal’s body. In a few moments, the abandoned oasis was out of sight and below him. Sweat stained his back. He started to put his gun away, tucking it into his belt, and then he saw the roof of his Toyota and saw that another vehicle was parked behind it, and he remembered the rumbling sound of a passing car or truck on the rough, graveled road while he was down below. The vehicle had not passed. He stopped short and listened and presently heard voices, a male, another male, and then a female giggled. It sounded harmless enough. Even reassuring. He swung right, keeping below the rim of the road embankment, and when he had gone about fifty yards, he climbed again and came out on the road behind the two cars parked there.
    The second vehicle was a VW van, ancient, rusty and dusty to the point where the original painting, all sworls and blobs, was barely visible under the coating of desert sand. The license plate was Afghani. This place was, after all, only about forty miles from the Afghan-Iranian border.
    The two young men and the girl seemed unarmed and harmless enough, and he did not think they were aware of his presence behind them, as they explored his Toyota, climbing in and out with a youthful, animallike curiosity punctuated by the girl’s laughter and the men’s comments. He was being ripped off. They had removed his extra jerry cans, his spare water tank, his battered leather luggage. They were speaking to each other in English— American accent—and apparently enjoying themselves. One was smoking a cigarette, but he could not smell the smoke from here and couldn’t be sure if it was pot or just plain tobacco.
    “Hey!”
    The fat one had turned, lugging the plastic water can, and saw him standing there, a tall, enigmatic silhouette against the lowering sun.
    “Hey, people,” the fat one said.
    They all turned to stare at him, guilt and some surprise on their faces, changing in a swift blur to defiance and animosity, even resentment, that their thieving game was about to be interrupted.
    “Hey, Charley.”
    The taller one, thin and dark-haired, with a strange intensity that could be dangerous, hooked his thumbs in his wide, brass-studded belt. They were all bare-footed, dirty, unkempt in blue jeans, tie-dyed, and shirts of ancient stripes that hadn’t seen wash-water for some time. The girl, also dark-haired, slim and somehow of better quality than the two men, tossed back her long black hair. She grinned slowly. The fat one looked worried, holding the water can. The thin one happened to be empty-handed, and Durell watched his dirty toes curl slowly and tensely into the dust of the road.
    “So there he is,” the girl said. Her voice hinted at distant cultivation. “No more fun and games. My, he looks angry. Mister, we just found your car and figured it was broken down and you went off somewhere on a lift.”
    “Nature called,” Durell said.
    “My, aren’t we delicate; ha-ha, you had to take a crap, you mean?”
    Durell kept his eyes on the tall, dark one with the angry, intense eyes, who said, “Shut up, Annie . . . You American?”
    “Yes.”
    “We were borrowing some of your stuff. Finder’s keepers, we figured.”
    “Put it back,” Durell said.
    “Sure.”
    “All of it.”
    “Sure.”
    “Now.”
    “My, my,” the girl named Annie said. “Isn’t he the hard-nosed establishment type, Charley.”
    Charley