Assignment - Suicide (6 page)

Durell said, “There are men in Moscow waiting for this map
you gave me, Luke. When Z goes to the missile base, they plan to assassinate
him. And you promised to tell ’em where the base is hidden. Right?”

Marshall nodded very slightly.

“Your idea to stop this whole thing is to let our Embassy
people know about it. Get it to Alex Holbrook, right? But Valya and Mikhail
won’t let you do it. They’ll try to stop me, too. But for now, I’ve got to work
with them. When the right time comes, we break it up.”

“Be careful . . .” Marshall whispered.

“One more thing. How much time, Luke? A week? Do you know,
exactly?"

There was no answer. The room was cold and silent.

Durell felt for Marshall‘s pulse and there was no pulse. He
tried to catch a whisper of Marshall’s breathing, but there was no breath.

Someone pounded heavily and with authority on the front door
of the apartment.

Chapter Five

GO TO the door,” Durell said. “Let them in.”

He spoke to Mikhail. The ballet dancer stood with his knees
slightly bent, trying to peer from the bedroom doorway across the living room
to the outer door where the pounding came from. He did not move. Mikhail looked
as if he wanted to spring into the air, do a pirouette into nothingness and
disappear. A clattering came from the steam pipes in the room.

“Open up!” someone shouted.

“Answer him," Durell whispered harshly. He put a hand
on Mikhail’s back and shoved him toward the door. The dancer stumbled,
recovered with reflex grace, and stood frozen again. Durell looked at the
blonde girl. She was frightened, but there was calm in her, too.

“We are finished when they find your friend
here,” she whispered. Her head swung slightly toward the bed, but she did not
look directly at the body. “There will be questions we cannot answer, so we
will be shot or sent to the labor camps. It is all over, all finished."

“Damn you both,” Durell said harshly. “It hasn’t even begun!
Answer that door!”

The girl shrugged and moved around Mikhail to the doorway as
another knock echoed through the apartment. She moved slowly and deliberately.
Then she shrugged again and pulled the bolt aside and opened the door and
stepped back one step and said: “Come in, citizens.”

Two men stood there. One was the fat man with the saddle
nose: Lieutenant Kronev, from the
dacha
.
His fur hat looked ratty and sodden with rain. Durell closed the bedroom door
behind him before the fat man could look inside. The second man was a uniformed
politseyski
who stood uncomfortably a little behind Kronev.

“We meet again so soon, citizens,” Kronev smiled. “And at
the apartment of such a famous artist. One would think such a meeting were
merely a social gathering of good and true friends, am I right?”

“Why are you following us?” Durell demanded.

“You people from the Moscow branch are accustomed to asking
all the questions, I can understand your annoyance, citizen." Kronev
spread fat hands toward Durell and when he smiled again he looked like a squat,
grinning gunman. “We think someone else is here."

"What do you moan, we?” Durell asked. “By what right do
you intrude here?”

“Please let me look through the apartment.”

“Why should we?"

“We know who is here. We know all about him. Has he died
yet?"

Durell looked past him down the outer corridor and saw it
was empty. He could not be sure there were no others with Kronev, but what he
saw gave him hope. Then he looked at Mikhail and tried to tell the dancer with
his glance what he expected of him, but Mikhail stared at the fat man like a
bird hypnotized by a snake, and there was no chance of help there. He did not
consider the girl at all, in this.

Kronev said heavily: “Step aside, citizen, and do not
interfere. Possibly you are here in political innocence.” He smiled at Valya. ”
Gaspasha
, you
know me. I am Kronev. You will not interfere, either.”

“You are perfectly right," Durell said. “Please help
yourself. I am sure Mikhail will not object to a search."

Mikhail said nothing. Durell stepped back and the fat man
jerked his head at his uniformed companion and started directly for the bedroom
door. When he was one step beyond him, Durell turned as if to speak to the girl
and brought the hard edge of his palm in a slashing stroke against the back of
Kronev’s neck, just above the fold of flesh over his coat collar. He
heard a dim cracking sound of bone buried in suet and as Kronev fell to his
knees, mouth open like a fish straining out of water, Durell chopped at
the
politseyski
who was fumbling to get his gun in hand. He was off” balance and the blow was
not very effective. The
politseyski
fell back and hit the wall with a thump, dull surprise in his eyes. He was a
big man with a. round, stupid face and a shaggy mustache. Durell struck at his
mouth, heard a tooth break, and yelled at Mikhail for help; but Mikhail stood
at the windows and simply stared. Durell hit the policeman again and the other
swung a fist like a ham and the blow drove Durell halfway across the
room. He tripped over the sprawled legs of the fat man and went down and then
started up and looked into the gun in the
politseyski’s
huge hand. Blood dribbled from the man’s broken mouth. His eyes were no longer
stupid. They were sullen and angry.

“You have killed Kronev." he said heavily.

Durell managed a smile. “What a pity.”

“Are you insane?”

“He is a traitor." Durell stood up slowly. His hands
ached. "He is a tool of the Western imperialists. He deserves death. But
he is not killed; he is only paralyzed for a short time.”

“I know nothing of medical things. You are under arrest.”

The policeman fumbled with his left hand and pulled out a
whistle and lifted it to his bleeding mouth. Before it touched his lips, Durell
dived for his legs and prayed that the gun would not go off. The
politseyski
collapsed on top of him like a ton of
bricks. The gun did not fire. Durell struck at his face and struck again
and grabbed for the weapon. The man was built like an ox. His breath under his
walrus mustache stank of vodka, but his strength was incredible. He heaved and
arched and threw Durell off him as if he were a fluffy pillow. Something
blurred before Durell’s eyes and there was a flurry of skirts and then a
hard, crunching sound. He stood up, shaken, and saw that Valya had finally
come to help. She stood beside the sprawled figure of the man with a
statuette bust of Lenin in her hand. There was blood on the bronze and blood on
the
politseyski’s
face. He still breathed, blowing pink bubbles from under his mustache.

Durell picked up the cop’s gun and looked at Mikhail.

“You were a big help. Many thanks.”

Mikhail made a fluttering gesture and looked away. Valya’s
face was very white. She looked ill. Durell pushed past her to the apartment
door and looked up and down the corridor. Nobody was in sight. The struggle had
been swift and gratifyingly silent. There seemed to be no alarm. He shut the
door carefully.

“You were very good with them,” Valya whispered. “Very good,
gospodin
.
My friend, Sukinin, was good like you, once."

“When?”

“In the Pripet marshes, when the Nazis invaded us. There
were many guerrilla bands there, and Sukinin was with them. And so was I.”

“You were only a child,” Durell said.

“I was not quite twelve." She shrugged. “I lived with
the guerrillas and fought with them against the Nazis. I killed nine of them.
But was it necessary to kill Kronev?"

“It was necessary, but I don’t think he’s dead."

“What can we do now? There is no escape."

Durell turned and said sharply: “Mikhail?”

The dancer sat with his head in his hands. “Valya is right.
We are lost. Everything has gone wrong.”

“Hell, we’ve just begun. Go down the back stairs and see if
there are any others.” Durell knelt beside Kronev and searched him with swift,
expert fingers. The fat man still breathed. He would
he
all right, but he would be crippled for several hours to come, until his neural
centers recovered. Durell flipped through the papers in the man‘s
pinseal
wallet and looked up at Mikhail. who had not moved.
“Did you hear me?” he rasped. “We haven’t much time. If there are other men
downstairs, tell them Kronev says it’s all right for them to leave.”

“Please help us, Mikhail,” Valya pleaded softly. “Please!”

He lifted suffering dark eyes to her. “I know how you must
despise me. I know you cannot love me, after seeing me like this. I cannot help
it—not since I was a prisoner and a slave in Germany. They took my strength
from me. I’m afraid of pain now. I wish I could make you think I am brave, but
it would be false. You must despise me.”

“Mikhail,” she said gently. “Not all men are the same. Not
all have the same qualities, and yours are different from other men’s. And I do
not despise you.”

“You do not love me."

“Now is not a time to talk of love. Will you just help us?”

He stood up, his eyes suddenly tender. He did not glance at
Durell’s angry figure. “It seems I have no choice. I will go.” He went
out the back way.

The girl said to Durell: “He suffered terribly. He is only
the shell of a man. But should I be ashamed of him?”

“The question is can we trust him?”

“We have no choice in that, either.”

“All right. Find some rope,” he said crisply. “Clothesline,
anything to tie up these two men. We’ll need every moment’s delay we can get.“

“Are you planning to go to Moscow?”

“Of course. And you will come with me?’

You seem to have taken command swiftly. I heard the warning
Marshall gave you. You understand, we cannot permit you to reach your Embassy.
I will do what I can to stop you. What you know about us must remain in Russia.
We prefer to settle our problems for ourselves.”

“I have the map of the missile bases. And you need it.”

“When the time comes,” she smiled, “you will give it to me.”

“Until then, is there a truce between us?”

She turned to the kitchen and Durell dragged Kronev’s body
and then that of the
politseyski
into the bedroom. It was hot in the apartment, and he sweated as he tied the
two men with the rope Valya brought him. He ripped a pillow slip into wide
strips and fashioned gags and arranged them so that neither man would
suffocate. He knew it would be safer and more sensible if he simply slit their
throats. There were no rules or pity in this war he fought. Dead men could not
identify him. But he needed Valya’s help, and he knew that if he killed them,
he might alienate her completely. She was uncertain enough in her own mind,
whipping herself with dark Slavic moralities about the right and wrong of her
actions.

When he had them shoved out of sight under the wide bed, he
pulled Marshall’s body from the bloody counterpane and carried him to the back
door.

“Strip the linen," he said. “Is there an incinerator in
the building?“

Valya nodded. “Yes.”

“Take the stained sheets and throw them down the
chute."

“Yes.”

“Then make up the bed with fresh linen. And be sure you are not
seen when you go to the incinerator.”

Mikhail came back along through the rear doorway. There was
a subtle change in the way he walked. “It is safe to leave,” he said. “By the
way, what are you going to do with Kronev’s gun‘! I know you have it.“

“I‘ll keep it,” Durell said. “Let’s go.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to bury my friend,” Durell said bluntly.

He hoisted Marshall’s limp weight to his shoulder.

Valya went ahead at his order to bring the Pobeda around to
the back of the apartment house. The stairway going down was an echoing,
concrete shaft, dimly lighted, as cold as an icy tomb. Mikhail trailed after
Durell with his grim burden. The Way down seemed to take an eternity. On the
third landing, Durell heard the strains of symphonic music from a nearby
apartment; on the second landing, a man quarreled drunkenly nearby, his voice
angrily muttering, the woman’s patient and weary. He came to the bottom and
heard the sound of the Pobeda’s motor outside.

A man lay on his face in the small areaway inside the doors.
Durell rested a moment, looking at the glitter of a knife that protruded from
the back of the dead man’s overcoat. He looked up at Mikhail.

“Your work?”

“He was suspicious."

“You surprise me,” Durell said.

“I was frightened, and that made it easier. I was sick
afterward. I did not Want to kill him like this."

“Didn’t you kill during the war?”

“That was different."

“Were you in Leningrad in those days?”

“Yes, before I was captured. It was different then. I could
kill Germans very easily."

Durell suppressed an impatient curse. Kronev‘s dead guard
here was a problem. He put down Marshall’s body and found a door that led to
the basement and dragged the dead guard down there behind a pile of bricks and
rubble remaining from the old foundations bombed during the Nazi siege.

“Why don’t we put Marshall down there, too?”

“We don’t want them found here together, for Mikhail’s
sake," Durell said. “Officially, Marshall must not even exist as a body.”

He got the dead man into the back of the Pobeda. It was an
exhausting, sickening process. He told himself that this cool, inert flesh
was no longer Luke Marshall, and it didn’t make any difference what indignities
were inflicted on him. Afterward, he crowded into the front seat with
Mikhail and Valya. He had Kronev’s gun and Marshall’s map in his pocket. The
girl drove. Durell told her to go to some deserted point along the Neva River.
The streets were empty now in the post-midnight hours, but their progress
attracted no attention from the few
politseyskis
they saw at the intersections. They did not
talk during the brief ride. Crowded against the girl, Durell felt her shivering
steadily, and he wanted to put his arm around her and say something to give her
courage but he didn‘t. They turned into a narrow street between two tall,
ornate buildings on the waterfront and found themselves on a steel and concrete
pier. Arc lights flooded the wide, rainy expanse of shed and wharf with
brilliant light.