Assignment - Karachi Read Online Free PDF Page A

galloping run away from him. Durell could have brought him down with a single shot, but he did not try. He couldn’t have caught the camel, anyway. He watched the two of them, old man and old camel, until they were gone from sight down the beach, and then he walked on again.
    He stopped to bathe twice in the warm surf during the next two hours. The second time, as he staggered out of the combers to retrieve his clothes, he heard the grinding of an engine and saw a yellow Land Rover with a fringed-surrey top and oversized beach tires come across the searing sand, directly toward him. He picked up the Schmeiser first and then saw that the driver was an Englishman, with a European girl in a white linen dress beside him, next to the driver’s seat. Durell dressed quickly, before the salt water dried on him. The girl looked away. The Englishman jumped down from the gaudy Land Rover and walked toward him.
    “I say, it isn’t really true what they say about us—noonday sun and mad dogs and all that—”
    “Can you take me to Hawk’s Bay?” Durell asked.
    “Of course. It’s only five miles down the way.”
    Five miles or five eternities, Durell thought. He smiled his thanks. “I’d be very grateful.”
    “We were looking for my sailboat,” the Englishman said. His eyes were bloodshot. “Sixteen feet, home-built, painted red, Marconi rig. New nylon sails from the States. She broke away from her mooring in the wind two nights ago. We went south yesterday, and were starting up here today. Perhaps it was stolen. It’s tiresome to have to nail everything down.” The Englishman was trying hard not to be curious, but it seemed to Durell that you could carry a national trait too far. He wondered if the girl was his wife. “Your car break down, old man?”
    “In a way,” Durell said. “Do you know Colonel K’Ayub?” “Naturally. Charming fellow. Throws wonderful cocktail parties. Liz adores him.” Now he seemed garrulous, for an Englishman. “What are you doing with the gun? Popping at buzzards?”
    “Yes,” Durell said. “Could you take me to Colonel K’Ayub?”
    “Well, my sailboat, old man, cost me a pretty penny. Lovely little thing—”
    “There isn’t any boat back there on the beach.”
    “I see. Well. You’ve got a bad burn, my dear chap. This sun can be treacherous—”
    “I’m in a hurry,” Durell said. “I’d be grateful.”
    “All Americans are in a hurry.” The Englishman sighed. “Hop in, please.”
    The pale, thin girl did not say a word on the drive south to Hawk’s Bay. But the gay, striped canvas top on the Land Rover made a cheerful flapping sand, and cast a small triangle of shade over Durell.

    There were pale pink stucco houses, blue villas with red tiled roofs, a few date palms in carefully watered lawns and gardens that had turned brown in the salt air and the sun. The Englishman turned off the beach onto a bumpy asphalt road and paid a toll of one rupee at the entrance booth to the European beach colony, then followed a lane used by Arab peddlers, camels, a troupe of acrobats in colorful rags performing for some solemn English children. A man in a blue turban thrust a baby monkey at the Englishman’s wife and offered it for sale, cheap. The pale-faced girl said nothing, as if the monkey and the man did not exist.
    The road between the modest houses was lined with tamarisk and wind-carved babul trees. White-necked crows crowded the branches and sat in long, silent echelons upon the sagging telephone wires. Servants in baggy white trousers called shalwars appeared here and there in the back yards. On the flat, sloping beach, blinded by the glare of the sun, a few more children played. Fishing boats out of Karachi floated on the brilliant sea. The surf looked heavy and sullen. Farther out, a few freighters plodded from the mouth of the Indus for the broader reaches of the Arabian Sea. “Here we are,” the Englishman said.
    He called cheerfully to the smart, khaki-clad