Assignment - Mara Tirana (22 page)

Medjan looked back at the sleeping village. A scout car was parked in the dark village street a short distance upstream. It seemed to Medjan that two others were still sitting in the car, but he could not be sure. Death held him in a strangling grip by the throat.

“Gija,” Durell said. “Go see if the car is all right. It’s better if you leave for a moment. You can’t think straight.”

“I can easily cut his throat.”

“And kill him, like Mihály?”

Gija sucked in a sharp, angry breath. But he saw no reproof in Durell’s lean, shadowed face. “It had to be done! It had to be done!”

“I know, Gija. But we can’t kill this one yet.”

His words gave Medjan courage. “Gija, I’ve known you a long time. I’m your friend. Everyone knows what you’ve done. Lissa is a criminal. You can’t escape the country and you can’t help the American—”

Gija’s fist smashed into Medjan’s throat, and again in Medjan’s face, a flat sound of bone on flesh. Blood spurted from Medjan’s nose and coursed through his moustache. He coughed, strangling. He felt cold in the pit of his stomach, because he was wrong and Gija knew everything and there would be no mercy and no hesitation in the end.

“Go on,” Durell said harshly. “Go and stand by the car, Gija.”

The pilot hesitated, shuddered, and turned away, down the ravine in which the river clattered icily under the bridge. Medjan watched him go. When he looked back at Durell, he saw that Durell had a gun pointed at him.

The hours of the day had been strung as tight as steel cords, Gija thought. He drew a deep, shaken breath as he walked back to the car. Mara and Deirdre were anonymous shadows in the back, wearing their false uniforms. It had been necessary to take them along. To leave them on the barge, after the thing with Mihály, would have been to risk death for them as well as for Captain Galucz. Because the Luliga was now doomed.

They had come a long way since that moment with Mihály, hours in a nightmare. After all, Mihály had been a boy not quite twenty. Deadly, yes. But Mara’s brother had been dragged into a world he did not understand, and when he had tried to run home in confusion, he, Gija, had to take his blood on his hands.

The killing had been quick, quiet. There was no alarm. Yet Gija remembered his panic as something dimly recalled from a spasm of fever. He had started to run, then halted, his blood frozen, his heart choking him with panic. He looked back and saw Mihály lying on the deserted cobblestones of the foggy street. At any moment, a police guard might come along and find him. Then everything would be ended. The Luliga would be traced, they would be stopped, forced to suicidal destruction by blowing up the munitions in the barge’s holds. It would be done, because the alternative, arrest and questioning, was a far worse fate.

Reluctantly, Gija had gone back and knelt beside Mihály on the wet sidewalk. The boy’s handsome face was upturned to the gray of the dawn. Mihály looked older, worn. Blood ran slowly into the gutter beside him. His large eyes were open, staring at the sky.

“Mihály, can you hear me?” Gija whispered.

He began to shiver as he knelt beside the body. His thoughts were incoherent. He told himself he had done what was necessary. But Mara would never understand it. And so he had destroyed what had begun between them.

Durell had saved him.

Durell had followed him from the barge, searching swiftly through the village streets. Gija did not remember the next half hour. He kept protesting to Durell that he was not a murderer; and Durell helped him lift the boy’s body and hurry it quickly through the darkened alleys back to the waterfront, where the Luliga waited, while the dawn hurried after them like a pack of bright hounds baying at their heels.

As soon as they had returned with Mihály’s body, Captain Galucz swung the barge into the river channel. The day dawned bright and cold. The river banks were lost in a frosty haze that covered the southern hills. Northward was a small island in the swampy wilderness of drowned land and frozen lakes, alive with wild birds, stolid herons and ducks crying in the crystal air. Beyond the island was a broad, flat lake, unmarked by houses except a distant fisherman’s hut.

They buried Mihály and the bargeman, old Pashich, here. At any moment they had expected a curious patrol boat to come after them, asking why they had left the ship channel. They were lucky. The bodies were weighted in canvas and dropped to the bottom of the lake and then the Luliga reversed engines and chugged back around the farther end of the wooded island and rejoined the river’s stream.

Afterward, Gija tried to talk to Mara in her cabin. Her hands were quiet in her lap, her eyes were empty of tears. She did not look up at him when he came in.

“I do not want to talk to you, Gija,” she said dimly.

“I want to explain. I must. Will you listen to me?”

“It is not necessary.”

“It was Mihály’s life, or ours. He was frightened and mistaken, he did not understand, true. But he would have destroyed us, Mara. I had to do it. There was no time to talk. If he so much as shouted for help, out there in the street, the roof would have collapsed on our heads.”

“So you drove a knife into the boy,” she said flatly.

“He was a boy, but he was the enemyl”

Mara Tirana said nothing.

Gija fell to his knees before her. “Mara, can you forgive me?”

She said nothing.

He told himself he loved her. He did not know how or when it had happened. But he knew this had been a truth from the moment he first saw her with Durell. She had been lifeless then, but in the days that followed she had come alive a little, animated by the hope of saving her brother. Now she was like the dead again, unmoved by what was happening around her. He had destroyed her as surely as he had killed Mihály. . . .

Later that day, they had found an obscure fishing hamlet where the rickety dock was hidden from the main stream of river traffic by minor channels. The Luliga tied up there to put the scout car ashore, and it was then that Galucz insisted that the two women, Deirdre and Mara, go along in the car rather than stay on the barge.

“I might as well tell you,” the captain said heavily. “It’s been on the radio this morning—wholesale arrests in Bratislava, Racz and Budapest. It means our underground railway organization on the Danube is being smashed without pity. Our turn is next. If they do not know yet about the Luliga, it is only a matter of time. And when that time comes, I mean to stand by my plan to blow up the barge. Better that than a mock trial or slave camps and a walk to the wall some cold, dark morning.”

“You seem sure it will happen,” Durell said.

“I am sure,” the bearded man said heavily.

The few peasants and fishermen who watched them unload the car seemed dull-eyed, without dangerous curiosity. A mud road led through the swamps and lakes toward the distant outline of rising foothills and mountains beyond. The Luliga would remain at the village for forty-eight hours, waiting their return. But it was plain that Captain Galucz did not expect destiny to let him survive that long.

They drove north on the dirt road until they joined a major highway that paralleled a railroad track, and Gija pushed the scout car at its top speed. The only traffic was an occasional convoy of trucks or a speeding military cyclist.

There were no check points to pass. And Gija, who kept a map of the district in his mind’s eye, detoured around all the larger towns.

At dusk they were hidden in pine woods five miles from Viajec. It was a cold and lonely spot. They had decided to wait until complete darkness, but Gija was too impatient, and went scouting ahead alone. He was gone a long time. The night was dark, and the rain had begun when he returned.

“Could you get close to your house?” Durell asked.

Gija shook his head. “I did not try. I saw Stana the Gypsy. He told me my father is dead, and Lissa is in jail in Viajec. Medjan took her there. There are traps on Zara Dagh, men watching the house. It is a trap for us, ready to spring when we reach in for the American.”

Durell was silent for a moment. “What do you suggest we do?”

Gija’s gloved hands moved aimlessly, smoothing the pine needles on the ground where he knelt in the shadows. “If we go in, it must be done quickly. But a smart animal can snatch the bait and avoid the teeth of the trap if he is fast enough.”

“Then we must be fast enough.”

“I don’t know. Stana says it is impossible, except by the Roman road.”

“What’s that?”

“A trace trail over the mountains from Zara Dagh. A back way in. Very rugged. Difficult to follow.”

“Do you know it?”

“Not I. But Lissa once explored it alone, on a hiking trip. She likes such things. She says the old trace follows the ridges. It would take us straight along the mountain tops to the Danube and beyond. But only Lissa could show us the way.”

“Then let’s get Lissa,” Durell decided. . . .

Now, two hours later, Durell stood alone with Petar Medjan under the bridge behind the Viajec police post. The rain was cold, dappling the river. Long icicles hung from under the bridge. He had a gun thrust under Medjan’s jaw and the security man looked at him with brooding black eyes, ignoring the blood that ran down through his black moustache.

When Gija was out of earshot, returning to the scout car and Deirdre and Mara, Medjan said: “You will not fire that gun. It would create an alarm.”

“We have only our lives to lose,” Durell said, “and they are forfeited already. Understand that. Either we succeed or we die. If you force me to fire, I will. Believe that.”

Medjan’s head was tilted back uncomfortably by the pressure of the gun muzzle. He looked down from his strained attitude at Durell. “I believe you,” he whispered. “What do you want of me?”

“I want Gija’s sister. Is she in there, in the station?” “Yes. Since yesterday.”

“Why was she arrested?”

“We know everything, about Stepanic, the American, and you. You are here to smuggle him home, eh? But you won’t succeed. We know Adam Stepanic is on Zara Dagh. You’ll never get him. We are only waiting for you, I think. I'm not in command here, though. I'm not responsible for what happened to Lissa. I didn’t want to do it.”

“Did she give you a statement?”

“No. It would have been better for her if she did. I begged her to talk. I didn’t want to—to question her. But I had to obey orders.”

“Yes,” Durell said bitterly. “You obey orders. You are innocent. You torture and murder, just like the Nazis, in the name of obeying orders, in the name of duty.”

“Please, I—”

“I know what you are,” Durell said, and he sounded dangerous, more threatening than Gija’s early violence. Medjan knew he could die easily now.

“Please, I want to help her too. I—I am fond of Lissa—”

There came quick, crunching footsteps along the river bank ravine. Durell stepped back and turned his head to see who it was. It was Gija, returning from the scout car. Gija dropped to one knee in the shadows under the bridge. “We cannot wait much longer. Is Lissa in there?” “Yes, but I don’t know her condition.” Durell looked at Petar Medjan. “Can she walk?”

“I—I think so.”

Gija sucked air between his teeth. “You did it, Petar?” “I had to. It was Kopa’s orders. Please, Gija, let me help you. We’re old friends, we understand each other—” 

“Is it because you’re afraid to die?” Gija asked the Turk.

“No, it isn’t that at all! It—”

In that moment they heard the scream begin from inside the police station. They turned their heads together to stare at the high, blank wall above them.

The screaming went on and on.

They knew the sounds were torn from Lissa’s throat. Then they heard a shot. And another.

And the screaming ended.

After the shots, the silence flowed back in a thick, frozen wave.

Then someone shouted far down the village street. Another shout came from inside the police station. Medjan groaned and fell to his knees. Durell grabbed his collar and hauled him up again and rasped: “How many men do you have inside?”

“Five—no, six. . . .”

“Where?”

“The guard room, downstairs, but—”

Gija cursed, spun around, scrambled up the river bank. Durell shouted after him, but the river pilot did not stop. Durell gestured with his gun. “Go on, Medjan. Inside. Show us where Lissa is.”

“I don’t know what happened, I don’t—”

“Let’s go see.”

Medjan stumbled after Gija. Durell was hard on his heels. They were at the back door, open where Gija had plunged inside, when the grenade went off somewhere in the front of the police station.

The explosion was thunderous. Acrid smoke billowed out into the yellow-lighted passage ahead. Medjan coughed and threw an arm across his face. There were screams and groans from up ahead. Then running steps sounded. Gija appeared. His teeth shone in a grimy face. “That was me. Come on. She’s upstairs, with Kopa.”

A shot cracked from the head of the stairs. A uniformed man stood there, gun in hand. Gija fired in return. The man fell down the stairs, sprawled at their feet. Gija jumped over him, ran up.

“Give me a gun,” Medjan gasped. “Let me help.”

“You?” Durell was startled. “Why?”

“I—they’ll kill me—for failing, you see—no use—”

Durell looked at the big man. Petar Medjan looked half wild in his plea. He could understand the other’s confusion, but Medjan could not be trusted. He shook his head. “Go up,” he ordered again.

Medjan thudded up the steps, with Durell after him.

They found Gija in the doorway to Lissa’s cell. The pilot and his sister stared at each other over the body of Colonel Kopa. Lissa had a gun in her hand; her face was blank, dull. Her mouth was bruised and one eye was cut. Yet she stood in defiance and pride, unbeaten in her tall body. . . .

“So you came, Gija. . . .” she whispered.

“Am I too late?”

“No. . . .” She looked at Durell and Medjan. “I think not.”

“What happened here?”

“He came to question me. He thought Petar was—was with me. He grew angry and told me the Luliga had blown up in the Danube. It happened at four o’clock this afternoon, he said. I thought—you-—”