Assignment - Suicide (19 page)

“I thank you not to interfere."

“It’s my business as well as yours.” Durell swung to the man
on the ground. “Mikhail, tell us the truth. We‘re all dead men here. You know
that now, as well as I. And you’re going to die with the rest of us. You have
nothing more to lose. Where did you go last night?”

Mikhail cursed in a soft, womanish voice. He coughed and shook
his head. “You’re all crazy, do you hear? You will never succeed.”

“Because you told them about us?” Gregori growled.

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. And I don’t believe it. You’ve lied
to us from the start.”

“No, no—”

Gregori‘s knee suddenly lifted and slammed into the dancer’s
face with crushing force, and Mikhail, moaning, toppled over backward on his
tied hands. He started to scream and Gregori hit him again, with swift and
deadly precision. Mikhail sobbed and rolled over on his face. His chest heaved and
he gagged. Durell did not interfere. He was aware of the warm afternoon
sunlight, the balm of spring in the air, the caress of a small breeze that
found its way between the cleft in the rocks to where they stood. His face was
dark and impassive as he looked down at the tormented man. He felt nothing
toward Mikhail. He had seen death and brutality and savagery many times before.
None of it was new to him. He saw that Gregori stood undecided of his next
move. The Russian was capable of any torture, and although he was without doubt
a fine combat leader, Durell suddenly felt that Gregori was
floundering beyond his depth in this.

He knelt beside the fallen man.

“Mikhail,” he said quietly. “Can you hear me?"

“Kill me and get it over with quickly,” Mikhail whispered.

“Will you answer some questions for me?”

“I did not betray you last night. Don’t you understand? Valya
would have been caught with you. They would have shot her, too. Even though—no,
it doesn’t matter if she despises me and thinks I am a coward. Perhaps I am.
But I couldn‘t hurt her. I couldn’t betray her, too."

“I understand that," Durell said. He added suddenly:
“Tell me—who is your uncle?"

Mikhail lay very still, face down, unmoving. His stillness was
complete, absolute.

Gregori made a hissing sound. “His uncle?"

Durell kept talking to Mikhail. “When I landed near Leningrad
and met Valya, she said the
dacha
where I found her belonged to the uncle of a friend of hers. Is that your uncle,
Mikhail?”

Gregori said: “What makes you ask about this, all at once?"

“I have been wondering about it for some time.” Durell looked
at the fallen man. “Answer me, Mikhail.”

Mikhail rolled over on his back and stared unwinkingly at
the sky. Blood trickled from his broken nose down the side of his cheek. His
throat moved spasmodically as he swallowed.

“Was it your uncle’s place, Mikhail?"

“Yes.”

“And your uncle is an important political figure,
isn’t he? A commissar of something or other, some important defense department?"

“I don’t know—What Uncle Sergei does.”

“Sergei? What’s his last name?"

Mikhail blinked and stared at the sky.

“All right. Explain this. Tell us how Kronev happened to
come to that
dacha
within minutes
after I parachuted down outside of Leningrad and met Valya.”

“I—don’t know. There was an alarm-—the plane was shot down—”

“Was it by chance? An unlucky encounter? Or were they expecting
me?”

“I don’t know!”

Durell looked at Gregori. The big man leaned forward a little,
his right arm in his tattered sling, his left hand open and swinging restlessly
at his side. Durell drew a deep breath. “Sit up, Mikhail. Look at us. I have
been slow to think about this. I should have known the truth before this. Look
at me, Mikhail!”

“I have not betrayed you," Mikhail muttered.

“Then how did Kronev know enough to intercept us at the
opera house when we went there to meet you?"

“He—he must have followed you.”

“No. I watched. Nobody followed us. Arid how did he know
enough to come straight to your apartment?"

Mikhail swallowed. “Again, he followed you.”

Durell said flatly, “Listen. I’m in the business. I
know enough to keep eyes in the back of my head. We were not followed from the
dacha
. We were not caught accidentally at
the opera house. We were not followed from there to your apartment. Each time,
Kronev knew that we were moving to contact you and Kronev moved to get there at
the same time.”

Mikhail’s face was drawn as tight as a sheet of white rubber.
His eyes were liquid and white and unnatural. He licked his bleeding lips,
shook his head, tried to sit up, and fell back again with his bound hands
behind his back.

All at once Gregori hit him, swinging his left arm. The sound
of his fist was like the flat of an ax against a slab of meat.
Mikhail stifled a scream and tried to roll over on his knees and get up to run.
Gregori kicked him and Durell grabbed Gregori’s shoulder and spun the big man
around and hurled him away from their captive.

“Leave him alone now. He knows what we know.”

Gregori breathed heavily. “He betrayed us days ago!”

“Perhaps not.”

“But you just said—"

Durell said: “Mikhail, you never consciously told your Uncle
Sergei about Valya’s activities and her invitation for you to join her band,
did you?”

“No, no," the man moaned.

“Yet he knew.”

“He—he suspected, I think. He had me followed."

“So he knew,” Durell said.

“
Da
. . .
da
. . . he knew. He treated me with
contempt. He considered my art—the ballet—with contempt. A plaything for women,
he said. He used to imply—what he knew about me and Valya and what we hoped to
do—and he would laugh. There is something in him—a madness. In the war he was a
general in command of a brigade. When our troops drove back in Poland, he began
to kill and kill and kill. They called him the Butcher of Potolsk. A butcher,
that is what he is.”

It’s clear enough, Durell thought heavily. Mikhail did not have
it in him to be a conspirator. In his innocence, he had served as an unwitting
decoy, a weathervane that, because of his movements, always and unerringly gave
the opposition the key to all of Valya’s activities, and through Valya, to the first
of the organization. Perhaps even Mikhail‘s original meeting with Valya had
been arranged with that purpose.

‘And last night?” he asked. “I want the truth, Mikhail—not
just for myself, but for Valya.”

I saw no one. I was panicked, yes; I fled in torment because
Valya chose you over me. I admit it was in my mind to go to the missile base
and tell them everything. But I did not do it! I swear I didn’t! I sat and
thought about my life and Valya and I knew I was at fault for everything that had
gone wrong. I knew that Uncle Sergei had made a fool of me, as usual. And I
came back here when I could, to help you, to tell you all this.”

Gregori’s brows curved in a beetling scowl. “What do you
think?” he rumbled.

“He’s telling the truth."

“And what do we do with him?"

Durell turned back to Mikhail. “You didn’t answer one question.
Do our enemies know about us here?”

“No, I swear it!”

“Do they suspect?”

“I cannot say. I never breathed a word of it.”

“One more thing. What is your Uncle Sergei’s real
name?"

Mikhail looked at Gregori, at Durell, and at his hands.

“Zadanelev,” he whispered. “He is Comrade Z."

Chapter Seventeen

SLEEPING, Durell dreamed of nightmare things. He lay on the
rocky ledge overlooking the bridge and the road, wrapped in a thin blanket, the
rifle under the blanket beside him under his hand, protected from the
dew. Vassili kept watch nearby, a thin shadow merged with the trunk of a tree. The
night was warm. Mosquitoes whined hungrily around them. There was moonlight and
the road and the guards in the sentry tower were clearly visible, outlined in silver
and jet against the dappled rise of land on the opposite side of the gorge.

Sleeping, Durell knew he was far from home, on the other side
of the world from all that was safe and familiar and of value to him. He knew
he was in a place of death. He saw Dickinson McFee’s grave face again,
briefing him in Washington; he spoke to Marshall, dying, and heard
Marshall’s voice coming to him from the roiled current of the black Neva. He
saw Valya lost, alone on a plain of barren emptiness that stretched from
horizon to horizon. She ran toward him, her mouth wild and imploring. He called
to her that he could give her safety, and he knew he was lying . . .

“
Gospodin
Sam. Wake up.”

He opened his eyes to brilliant sunshine. Vassili’s haggard,
bearded face bent over him. “You were getting noisy,
gospodin
."

“I was dreaming.”

“That I could easily guess. And not pleasant dreams, eh?”

“What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock. It is time enough. Look.”

Vassili pointed down into the ravine. Durell rolled over, untangled
the blanket, and brought the rifle to position before he followed
Vassili’s pointing finger. The bridge was partly in morning shadow,
partly in bright light from the slanting rays of the sun. Two command cars had
stopped by the sentry tower, and several officers stood there in angry conversation
with the guards. Durell saw at once that in place of the two guards who had been
stationed there up to now, there were six—no, eight. Two more soldiers had come
out of the sentry shack. They went trotting across the bridge to take up posts
at the nearer end; two more scrambled down the sides of the gorge to the bed of
the stream at a sharp command from one of the officers. They began checking the
underside of the bridge. Another pair lifted a 50-caliber machine gun from the
back end of one of the command cars and set it up at a vantage point that
commanded the long, curving approach to the bridge.

“He must be coming," Vassili whispered. His lips looked
dry and cracked. “He will be coming soon.”

“Go get the others," Durell ordered.

Vassili looked at him with tight eyes. “You will not fail us?”

“No,” Durell said.

He did not know when the final decision had come to him.
He felt better, now that he had voiced it. He felt more sure of himself. There
was no other way out, and he knew he would be dead before the sun set.

“Wait,” he said.

The second officer was pointing directly up the side of
 
the ravine to the ledge where he crouched
with Vassili. All of the men in the watchtower looked up, following the officer’s
words. It was exactly as if the officer knew they were there and was pointing
at them and discussing them. Durell felt a cold sweat break out on his hands.
He did not move. Vassili was carved of stone.

“Do they see us?" Vassili whispered.

“I think not. Be silent.”

The first officer said something in a sharp,
irritated voice. Two of the guards who had started across the bridge came to a
halt and stood indecisively, waiting for the argument between the two officers
to be decided. It was clear that the second man wanted to post two men on the
crest of the ridge, exactly where Durell lay watching. The first officer
did not think it was necessary.

The first officer had his way.

The two guards, recalled by a sharp command, went into the
sentry shack, trailing their bayoneted rifles. The two officers got into the
command car and drove away, directly under Durell’s vantage point. There was
more conversation among the guards, commanded by a huge sergeant who
finally laughed and slapped one guard on the back and went inside. Then
the sergeant came out again and stared for a long time at the slope of the hill
opposite him. He shrugged again and vanished for good.

Durell exhaled softly. “All right, Vassili, go get the
others. It won’t be long now."

Vassili bobbed his head and slipped away as silently as a
snake in the bush. Durell dried the palms of his hands and studied the terrain
again. The extra guards made things infinitely more difficult. The sentry
shack across the bridge could be turned into kindling with one grenade, but the
tower beside it was another problem. it was sturdily built on high pilings, with
a log blockhouse above it,
slitted
for machine gun
and rifle posts, much like the early blockhouses of American frontier
days. There was a small balcony jutting out from the tower, facing this way,
with a crude log railing, and while he watched, the huge mustached sergeant
came out and stood there pensively, leaning on the rail.

Durell adjusted for the erratic breeze, wished it would either
grow steady or vanish altogether, and sighted along the telescope sights of the
rifle until he got the sergeants head lined up in the cross-hairs. It was
startling to see the man’s enlarged face through the scope. He had broad,
Slavic features, prominent cheekbones, and narrow, restless eyes. There was a
huge mole on his left cheek that he scratched now and then. His mustache was
large and flourishing, evidently the sergeant’s pride and joy.

The breeze came in irregular puffs. Durell adjusted the range
to three hundred yards, laid out a clip of five .30-09 cartridges on the
smooth rock before him, emptied the clip in the gun, checked each cartridge,
reloaded, drew back on the pump slide and heard the first bullet snick
into the chamber. He looked at the extra clip, with the snobby black bullets in
their gleaming brass jackets. The gun worked smoothly, with oiled precision.

There was a rustling sound behind him and he turned his head
to see Gregori and Valya. Gregori’s skin was stretched tight around his temples
and jaw. Valya ventured an uncertain smile at Durell and touched his hand.

“You are going to do it, Sam?”