Assignment Moon Girl Read Online Free

quick enough.
I was trying for the Bazar—that’s a real Persian word, you know-but didn’t make
it. So I joined the army. Cavalry. I always liked horses. I’m not sorry.”
    “Watch the way you fly this plane,” Durell said.
    “You nervous, Shemouel? That’s Farsi for ‘Sam.’ ”
    “Just cautious."
    Sepah laughed. He had strong, white teeth. “Here we are. In
case you don’t know it, I’m your guide, secretary, and general man Friday.
Orders from upstairs.”
    “I guessed as much.”
    In Isfahan, crushed by the August heat that reflected a
stony glimmer of the deserts, they were met by a Land Rover driven by a man
named Hanookh Ghatan. Hanookh and Ike looked enough alike to be twins. They
didn’t go into town. There were rifles, grenades, and what looked like a
small rocket-launcher in the heavy car, incongruous attachments under a striped
and fringed canopy that sheltered them from the stinging rays of the sun.
    “We go to the Englishman,” Hanookh announced.
    Ike Sepah laughed. “You see, it is all arranged. Very easy,
very efficient.”
    It was too easy, Durell thought, and therefore worrisome.
There were too many people involved, and it needed sorting out. He felt a
nagging concern that Tanya, whether she had been on the moon or not-—and that
would be the most dumbfounding Soviet space coup yet—was not rightfully K
Section’s business. He had seen no sign of the KGB’s activity. They were
around, he knew. He never underestimated them. Meanwhile, he apparently had
Chinese, English, and Iranians to contend with. There was a smell of internal
Iranian politics, too. He shook his head and sat back in the jouncing Land
Rover, behind the two boyish Farsis , and watched the
landscape go by.
    Long ago, in what seemed another time and another world, he
had hunted in the bayous with his old Grandpa Jonathan, and the old man had
taught him some basic principles of life and survival. He remembered the green
and black shadows of the bayous, the stately shimmer of a heron’s wings, the
mysterious angles of a cheniere under live oak and Spanish moss, and the slow rock of the pirogue as he poled
the old man forward. Grandpa Jonathan was the last of the old Mississippi
riverboat gamblers, who had won on a single throw of the dice the hulk of the
old sidewheeler , the Trois Belles , that Durell remembered as his boyhood home.
    Once there had been a choice of game under their guns-—and
he had hesitated, watching the deer and fox escape in that moment. The old man,
however, made his selection at once, and his gun cracked once, dropping the
deer.
    “You suffered an embarrassment of riches, Samuel,” old
Jonathan had said. “You must learn to concentrate on one goal at a time. Don’t
be distracted.”
    Durell seemed to hear the old gentleman’s words over the
creak and roar of the Land Rover as they headed out into the desert from
Isfahan. This land was far from Bayou Peche Rouge,
where he had been born. Older in civilization, wise and weary, and as dangerous
as a viper coiled on a desert rock, blending its color with the granitic stone.
    “There he is, sir,” said Hanookh.
    Durell looked back instead of forward. A plume of gray dust
lifted like a feather against the hot sky.
    “We’re being followed.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Sepah. “I’ve noticed, too.”
    “Who is it?”
    “I thought we might double back after picking up your
Englishman.”
    “He’s not my Englishman.”
    “Mr. Hannigan says you’re to work with him.” Ike grinned.
“You think I know too much? But you and I are friends and partners, like a
grape on the vine, eh?”
    “We’ll see,” said Durell.
    The Rover came to a rocking halt, and dust boiled up around
them. They were in a canyon where shadows were black, nothing grew, and the sun
was a blinding glitter on the rim above. A man stood on the top, waving his
arms. He looked like a painfully thin scarecrow, with a ragged turban wrapped
around his head. He wore tattered walking