Assignment - Ankara by Edward S. Aarons Page A

all that had happened to her lately. And she felt an inner yearning to give up everything and let him do whatever he wanted, to be mindless and empty and live in waiting, just to be filled by him.
    She was tired of scheming and fighting and clawing toward something better for herself in this world—something she didn’t yet define or recognize. . . .
    John stood up suddenly and walked to the bed and stared down at her. “Susan, my dear.” His voice was deep, quiet. “You are awake.”
    “Yes.”
    He sat down quietly on the bed beside her, a gaunt and feverish man she did not understand, except for his strange, aloof kindness toward her. His thin face loomed over her.
    “Fancy this, getting as far as Istanbul, and perhaps further, as guests of the U.S. government, travel expenses all paid!” “Does it please you, John!”
    “I have been thinking of many things. We will go to Naples, in Italy, and rest in the sun there, while I arrange for the books and scrolls to be sent to the mission library in Philadelphia. I am determined to do this thing, Susan. Under the laws of man, taking the books from Lebanon is an illegal act, perhaps. But in the eyes of God, these things belong with those who treasure and revere them.”
    “I understand, John.”
    “But I have been thinking, Susan—perhaps the mission committee will not approve of my act. I may have to resign, give up the collar and my work, change my whole life afterward—”
    “Oh, no.”
    His thin face smiled. “I think my work as a missionary will be finished then. A different life has been beckoning to me, since—since you came into my world, my dear. You— you have never been like a true daughter, you know.”
    “I—I’m sorry, John. I tried to do exactly what you told me.”
    “It isn’t that,” he said quickly. “I feel differently about you.”
    She stared at him, aware of the way he was looking at her, and she felt excitement, and a little fear.
    “Can we talk about it in Istanbul? Or Naples?” she asked.
    “Of course. Go to sleep, Susan.”
    He got up slowly and went back to his chair.

    Lieutenant Kappic and Colonel Wickham walked slowly back from the village. The local doctor, who had taken charge of village administration when the mayor was killed by a collapsing house, had agreed to send a squad of men to make sure the field across the river was safely cleared for the expected landing of the plane in the morning. The other villagers had calmed down after the excitement at the inn, and the community had settled back into the cold darkness of the night.
    The earth was silent and steady now. There would be no more tremors, the older men said. If the sun shone tomorrow, the rebuilding work would begin, all through the mountain district of Musa Karagh.
    Kappic did not like Wickham, so he walked back to the huts without talking. Kappic had found a half-eaten haunch of lamb and a stale loaf of bread in a ruined house near the wrecked river bridge, and he had shared it with the others at the inn. Their bellies were cramped with hunger and the salt taste of impending starvation.
    He knew what it was to feel your belly growl and sense a creeping weakness in your limbs when there was nothing to eat. As a boy, he had been a goatherd in these hills, near the military frontier posts where the Moskofs watched. There had been nautral calamities in those days, too, and hunger was a common thing, almost a normal state of affairs. And if he had his choice, his heart and memories were with the simple peasants of Karagh, and not with the official dignitaries his Army career had brought him to meet.
    When he gave the food to the doctor at the caravansaries, the man’s eyes had been grateful and surprised. He had not expected Kappic to side with the miserable poor of this calamity-stricken village. The years had changed him, and the young goatherd who had been Mustapha Kappic was outwardly submerged in the modern uniform of the Army official from Ankara. But the