Assignment - Suicide (10 page)

Valya stepped back, smiling with unaccustomed shyness. She
looked different. At first he was puzzled to define the difference,
and then he saw it went beyond the fact that she had unpinned her magnificent
hair. She wore a slim, pink princess-style robe, and she had put a touch of
lipstick on her mouth.

“Please don’t stare at me,” she whispered, smiling. “The tea
and food are ready.”

He kept on staring. “You’re very lovely."

She looked away. “I know what it is to be with a man. I am
not a child. I lost my childhood many years ago during the war and in the
terrible years afterward. Perhaps I never had a childhood. I cannot remember a
time when there wasn’t some responsibility thrust on me. I do not like to think
about all that now.”

“You should always be like this,” Durell said gently.

“You speak these things with your lips but not your heart,”
she said. “You are suspicious of me, but the perfume and clothing is nothing.
My friend Petra acts as guide for many foreign visitors and newspapermen. They
give him gifts—French perfumes, nylons, candy, a few articles of clothing. He
is supposed to turn them in to his Intourist boss, but a few things he keeps
for me." She sat down at a small table on which she had spread a lace
cloth and dishes of sandwiches beside a samovar of tea. “You still look
suspicious,” she said, her head lowered as she poured the tea.

“Are you sure we’re quite safe here?” he asked.

“For the night, at least.”

He smiled. “Am I safe from you?”

“As safe as you wish to be.” She lifted her dark lashes and
her eyes were frank on his. “Do you think I may use the fact that I am a woman
to put you off guard?”

“The thought has crossed my mind," he admitted.

“Yes. It might he so, That is a risk you take." She
jumped up suddenly so he could not see her face and opened a closet door to
rummage for a man's flannel robe for him. “You look so uncomfortable in
that silly towel. Here, put this on. And please, let us have our tea."

It was quiet and peaceful in the
dacha
. Durell felt a sense. of remoteness, as if time stood still
and a wall of isolation surrounded the log cottage. From far in the distance
came the shrill whistle of a Russian locomotive in the railroad yards, and a
moment later came the thin thunder of a jet plane in the night sky. Otherwise
it was quiet. The
dacha
was
comfortably furnished with a strange mixture of overstuffed Victorian and
Swedish functional. The flannel robe Valya had given him was a little
tight across the shoulders. He noticed that Valya scarcely touched the tea she
had been so anxious to drink. She seemed nervous and expectant. Twice he got up
and carefully examined the night view from different windows of the
dacha
. There was nothing much to see.
The narrow road was empty under a bright flood of cold April moonlight.
Durell put the P.38 in the pocket of his robe and let the girl see him check
the map in his boot when he returned from his second tour of inspection. He
decided that her nervousness might well come from being alone with him, from
her thoughts about him rather than from any fear of intrusion from the outside.
He was inclined to trust her on the latter score.

Then she filled the tub again with hot water from an
old-fashioned bottled-gas heater, and while she bathed, he smoked two more
cigarettes and had another cup of tea, wished briefly for bourbon, and
prowled the cottage restlessly. There was a small gilt-and-ivory ikon in a
corner of the living room, inset with tiny pearls, and he lifted it from its
niche, frowning, pondering its worth as an art object among the cheap
furnishings. Then, while the girl was out of sight, he took Marshall’s map and
placed it in the wall niche and put the ikon back in front of it. . . .

Valya came out of the bath pink and scrubbed and radiant.
Over the robe that outlined her statuesque figure, her long thick hair
shimmered down to her waist. She smiled tentatively at Durell and looked
quickly at the front door and gathered up the tea cups and the samovar. Her
hands were trembling slightly. She was beautiful, but she had the awkward grace
of a young filly, of a bayou child trying to play the part of a seductive
temptress. He did not underestimate her. She could be dangerous. But at this
moment she was someone who needed help and gentleness.

She returned to sink onto a long couch, hugging the robe
around her figure. She bit her lip. Durell came away from the front door
with the gun in his pocket and said: “You’re troubled.”

“I was wondering about Mikhail."

“Does he know about this place?”

“I think so. I can’t remember if I mentioned it."

“Would he betray you to the MVD?”

“He would not betray me, but he has taken a great dislike to
you. He is jealous, of course. He might do something to hurt you, if he could
do so without hurting me.”

He smiled. “Then I’m safe as long as I stay with you.”

"Perhaps."

“Tomorrow I’m going to try for the Embassy again, and if
that doesn’t work, I’ll make a break for the American Chancery. If I remember
correctly, that's next to the National Hotel on Macovoia Ulitza.” When she
nodded, he said: “Will you help me then, Valya?"

“The Chancery can he reached from the Savarin. That's a
Gypsy restaurant around the corner from the National. And there’s a subway
entrance nearby.” She frowned. “I have been thinking it all over, as I told
you. I don’t want any more killing. I don’t think I could stand it if anything
happened to you or to any more of us. I feel strangely responsible for your
being here, you see. I’m sick of the thought of bloodshed. Your way is better,
Sam."

She clasped her hands tightly before her. It was dim and warm
in the room. He looked at the gleaming ivory ikon. On the river a tug hooted
again, a train whistle screamed in the cold April night. He sat down beside
her. She was shivering.

He said: "What else is there you want to tell me?”

“Nothing. I am afraid, that’s all. It‘s so strange—I was
never really afraid in the old days. I hated it, it was terrible, but somehow I
never felt like this before.”

“Is your fear for yourself or Mikhail?”

“Neither. I am afraid for you.”

“But you said we were safe here.”

She made a low whimpering sound and quickly hit her lip.
“But tomorrow? And the day after? And if you are successful, what will happen
to the rest of us? You can go back to your country and forget it all, but—” She
was crying silently. He took her face in his hand and tried to lift her chin so
he could look into her eyes. “I’m being silly. I’m a fool."

“Would you want to come with me when I go back, Valya?"
he asked. “Is that what you mean? You could live in freedom, away from
nightmare—”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I want!” She started up,
but he held her down beside him. She trembled violently at his touch. “Please,
I know I am confused. I don’t know what has happened to me.”

“I could help you get away, if that is what you want."

“How can I tell you what I want when I don't know myself?”
she cried. He read the appeal in her large eyes, saw the misery in the
quivering of her mouth. He knew then that she had fallen in love with him.

His own feelings were mixed. He knew it was dangerous to
confuse pity with love. He wanted to help her. He felt gentle and tender toward
her. He saw that in her naive way she was offering him love, offering herself
to him in warmth and despairing companionship, like two people alone on a raft
in an alien sea. He wanted her. He could not deny the stirring of desire in
him.

Her mouth was warm and clinging and shaken when he kissed
her. Her arms encompassed him in desperation and her lips moved against his and
her words were moaning sounds. “I don’t know, I don’t know, hold me, please
hold me . . ."

He picked her up in his arms. Her eyes were closed. Her long
hair brushed across his face, silken and perfumed. He carried her into the
bedroom, kicked the door shut, and put her on the bed. She did not want to take
her arms from around his shoulders.

“Everybody needs someone,” she whispered. “I’ve been so
alone all my life! When I first saw you, at the
dacha
of Mikhail’s uncle, I thought—I cannot say what I thought. I
have not stopped thinking of you from that first moment . . ."

There was a sudden sharp snapping sound from outside the
house.

Durell stiffened. He pulled her arms violently from around
his neck and freed himself. Her eyes came open, wide with alarm.

“What is it?”

“Is someone outside?” he whispered harshly.

“No. How could there be?”

“You bitch,” he said, looking down at her.

“I don‘t understand—"

He took the P.38 from his pocket. “I’m supposed to forget
about Mikhail and your friends While I pay attention to you—is that it?”

What she saw in his hard, dark face seemed to frighten her.
She put the hack of her hand to her quivering mouth. “But I heard nothing.”

“Stay here,” he snapped.

He snapped off the light in the main room of the
dacha
. The dark swooped and folded in
around him. There was no sound from the bedroom. He held his breath and
listened. A dim throbbing of engines came from the river, but he heard nothing
more from outside.

He slipped out through the back door, a tall shadow mingling
with the shadows of the birch trees that stood slim and delicate and white
against the darkness of night. He stood fiat against the wall, waiting,
listening, looking.

The river glimmered under the cold moon. A bird rustled and
sounded sleepily in the piney brush. There was no repetition of the snapping
sound he had heard. It could have been an animal in the brush, or the snap of a
limb in the cold night air.

Or the breaking of a twig under a man’s boot.

The narrow road they had driven in upon was empty—what he
could see of it. Nothing stirred in the shadows of the trees and brush around
the wide-
eaved
house. He circled the place warily,
sliding from one pool of darkness to the next. He found nothing—nobody.

He waited five minutes, ten minutes.

At last he went back inside.

He did not turn on any of the lights as he walked to the
bedroom. Moonlight came through the narrow windows, shining on the huge bed.
Valya sat there, waiting for him. Her face was in the shadows.

“There was no one outside,“ he said. “I am sorry if I
frightened you."

“Yes, you did frighten me,” she said. Her voice was cool and
formal, and she spoke in Russian again. “You were a different man. All in a
moment, you changed. I had forgotten what you were and how you were. I think I
wanted to forget, that’s all. But I do not like you after all, I think.”

“Valya . . .”

“I am going to sleep. Where there is no trust, there can be
no love.”

He stood in the doorway, looking at her for a long moment
before he turned away and went to the couch in the other room. He stretched out
in the darkness with his eyes wide open, the gun on the floor beside him,
ready at hand. His anger persisted, and was a long time ebbing.

He got up once, cat-footed, and felt behind the ivory ikon
in its corner niche. The map Marshall had died for was still there.

He was not sure what hour it was when he finally fell
asleep.

Chapter Nine

DURELL awoke to sudden violence.

He heard the sound of the footfall while he was still almost
asleep, and his eyes were still closed when a hand was clasped hard over his
mouth. The hand smelled of coarse bread and machine oil and onions, and the
palm was horny and rough and strong. He was awake at once then, awake and
moving, at the first contact. All his first moves were pure reflex.
He jerked his head to the left, out from under the smothering hand, and at the
same moment he threw his body also to the left, off the couch where he had been
sleeping. He hit the floor hard, slammed against someone‘s legs, opened
his eyes, and lunged upward. It was gray dawn. The room was dim and shadowed.
Before his eyes he saw the outline of a black Russian boot, uplifted to stamp
down on his face. He rolled again desperately, drove his fist behind the
man’s knee, felt the man‘s legs fold and collapse, and the other’s weight
tumbled down upon him.

Valya screamed, a thin quickly muffled sound that was cut
off at once, as if by another hand over her mouth.

A fist rocked his head, a boot kicked at his stomach.
He came up, throwing the man's weight from him by main strength. There were two
men in the room, and another slighter figure by the open front door. Fog
moved in thin gray tendrils outside. A sharp command, reflecting
irritation, came from the slim figure in the doorway. A gun gleamed.
Durell drove at the first man’s thick, barrel-chested body, smashed at
the broad, startled face in the gloom, felt his knuckles crack on cartilage and
bone. The face fell away from him. A curse ripped through the dark air. The
second man leaped for him, a thin sprawling figure, arms wide, body
unprotected. Durell ripped him with a left in the stomach and as he folded
over, chopped at his neck with a judo stroke. The second man hit the floor,
got in the way of his first assailant.

Durell went for the door.

The slim figure in the doorway lifted the gun and
could have killed him. but for some reason the gun was not fired. He went
spinning into the armed figure and discovered with a jolt of surprise
that it was not a man but a slim, dark-haired woman with a face that was as
cold and beautiful as a face of marble. He checked his bone-crushing blow at
her head just in time, diverting his strength in a sweep of his arm at the gun.
It clattered to the floor. The first man landed on his back in a flying
leap that drove him to his knees just short of the threshold. Furniture crashed
and shattered under his weight. A gun caught him behind the head in a short,
chopping blow. His head rang. He felt his strength ebb away, then flood
hack again. He came up, throwing off the massive weight of the man on his back,
caught at a wildly swinging arm. twisted it, rammed the man in a running push
at the woman in the doorway. The woman screamed with a high, tight sound. The
man grunted and collapsed and Durell crashed through the doorway toward
freedom.