Assignment - Karachi Read Free

darkness under the bushy brows, with nothing but a sense of tiredness, of patient exhaustion in his face, like that of an overworked draft animal.
    In the small room overlooking the Bosphorus, where you could see the little ferries plying back and forth between Europe and Asia, above the warehouse sheds redolent with the scent of Turkish tobacco—Kallinger’s cover was that of an exporter of tobacco to all parts of the world, and he had lived in Istanbul for twenty-two years—Durell had listened to the man’s slow, even apologies.
    “I’m sorry, Cajun. I know you’re due back in the States. But we need you. This one has what our happy bureaucrats call top priority. And what hasn’t? Everything is classified, everything grows out of a crisis, like mushrooms in a bed of horse manure. They don’t stop erupting.”
    “You asked me if I remember any Pakhusti dialect and Urdu,” Durell said. “Is that where I’m going?”
    “How many languages do you really speak, Sam?” “Eleven,” Durell said. “And as many more dialects. You know all these things. You have my dossier. Everybody has it.”
    “Yes. But I’ll bet ours isn’t as complete as the one at No. 2 Dzherzinsky Square, in Moscow.”
    “Let’s hope there are a few pages missing in the MVD files,” Durell said quietly. “Why Pakhusti province? It’s up in the high Himalayas, without much frontier to separate it from Pakistan, Afghanistan and—last, but not least—Sinkiang Province of China.”
    Kallinger sighed. “Exactly. Precisely. Where else?”
    “There’s always trouble in that area. The Pakistan government usually handles it.”
    “There’s also nickel up there,” Kallinger said.
    “Nickel?”
    “Apparently quite a lot. Enough to make up for what we’ve lost in Cuba. A very strategic metal, Sam. It goes into all kind of engines and machinery, all kinds of rocket components. Little by little, if we continue to lose the world’s resources, we lose the Cold War. Strategic Materiels people are in a flap. It’s part of the over-all strategic concepts, to borrow another one of the Pentagon’s damned phrases. More mushrooms, to me.”
    “I’m not a geologist,” Durell said.
    “Can you climb mountains?”
    “I’ve done it.”
    “That’s all we need you for. The nickel ore was found and lost again. The original geologist’s survey was stolen, lost or destroyed—or sold to the Chinese, who know about it—God knows how. They’ll be pushing patrols over the hills from Sinkiang to grab it by military force, if they get there first. Standish Nickel, Incorporated, with the blessings of our State Department, has already concluded a contract with the Pakistan government to exploit the nickel ore—if it can be found again. And it’s got to be found, Cajun. You’ve got to find it.”
    “Pakistan doesn’t exercise much control over the Pak-hustis,” Durell said. “And the Pathans are in the way, besides the Chinese just over the hill, as you suggest.”
    “You’ll have a military escort all the way with the expedition.”
    “What expedition?”
    “To S-5, naturally. That’s where the nickel is supposed to be. S-5 happens to be a mountain that’s also called Alexander’s Crown. Ever hear of it?”
    “No,” Durell said.
    “Read this, then,” Kallinger said.
    He pushed two newspaper clippings across the small table to Durell. Durell read them in the light that cams through the window from over the Bosphorus.
    The first was from Al Ahram , an English-language Pakistan newspaper of reasonably good repute:
    —Rawalpindi, June 7. It has been reported that three survivors of the ill-fated Austrian mountain-climbing expedition to explore and scale Alexander’s Crown, the frontier peak labeled as S-5 in Pakhusti State, are on their way back to this city. Three male members of the group are known to be dead, either through accident or difficulties with local dissident tribesmen. The survivors, two men and a woman, are expected in