Read Assignment - Ankara for Free Online

shone in the windows of the hut where John Stuyvers and Susan were sheltered for the night.
    She took one step toward the hut, and a sound stopped her.
    She wasn’t sure what it was.
    It might have been the thin rattle of twigs in the tree limbs overhead. Or it might have been a footstep on the coarse, gravelly soil.
    She looked to the right and left, then suddenly spun around to look behind her.
    Nothing.
    The village was bleak and desolate, shattered into dark heap of rubble by the quake disaster. She looked up the blacksoar-ing slopes of Musa Karagh, toward Base Four where Durell had gone. The summit was dark, lost in the mist.
    She shivered, for no immediate reason.
    Francesca Uvaldi was not normally given to an unreasoning attack of nerves. But fear surged in her now without warning. She knew she was playing a dangerous game, but she was accustomed to this. She knew the danger very well, and Martin Cambridge had paid the price for carelessness back in Ankara. She could have quit then, or asked Rome for more help, gotten someone else from the bureau to fill in. But she had gone on, urged by the need for haste.
    Now, abruptly, she wished she had been more cautious about it.
    She heard the sound again, and whirled about.
    A shadow moved thirty feet to her left, above her on the rocky slope hanging over the Stuyvers’ hut.
    “Who’s there?” she called softly.
    There was no answer. She stared hard at the area, but she could not define anything.
    “Who is it?” she called again.
    The trees rattled dimly behind her.
    Shivering, she tightened her grip on the ornate little gun. It gave her little assurance now. She told herself it could be a
    villager up there, prowling the two huts out of simple curiosity about foreigners. Or it could be a looter, or someone bereaved or half-crazed by the tragedy that had almost destroyed the village.
    She started toward the Stuyvers’ hut again, walking quickly and silently. She did not want to cry out and let the Stuyvers know she was approaching their window. She could see the dim glow of the oil lamp inside, but from this point she could not quite see into the hut, and this was what she intended to do.
    Something moved again, crouching low, and streaked down the hillside with feral speed to get between herself and the hut. An animal? A dog, or a donkey? No. Too big and too fast for any animal here.
    A man, then.
    Her heart began to hammer violently. Pausing, she lifted the gun. The trees were twenty feet behind her now. Her hut was even farther, and she could not remember if there had been a bolt on the door. Her panic impulse was to run back to shelter. But if she turned now, she had the feeling that whoever or whatever stalked her out here would leap with rending claws upon her back and bring her down.
    She could only go forward.
    There was a dim, dirt path that angled up the slope of the hill toward the Stuyvers’ hut, and she took several determined steps along it, climbing above the empty village street. A few huge rocks lay embedded in the dead grass, and she swung left again, climbing the small field to get above the boulders as she scanned them closely. She saw nothing more. No movement, no flickering shadowy shapes. Perhaps it had been her imagination, after all. There was nothing here.
    She walked ahead again.
    A silhouette appeared in the small window of the Stuyvers’ hut. It was Susan, straight-backed and prim. The shadow flickered quickly and was gone. Francesca turned downhill again, picking her way toward the hut. Mist touched her face with cool, damp fingers.
    Then the first blow fell.
    She hadn’t heard or seen anyone. She was not at first aware of what had happened. The violence was crushing, like the onslaught of a landslide. She sprawled on hands and knees on the rubble and felt something thud into her back, then smash into her head. She thought dimly of her gun. It was gone. Panic screamed in her throat, fighting the pain. She twisted violently, summoning