Assignment - Suicide (9 page)

“What is it?” Valya asked.

“Something hard to believe,” Durell said. “A message from
home.”

It was obviously an impromptu jam session there on a Moscow
sidewalk, carried out with zest and musical abandon that plucked the stolid.
disciplined Muscovites out of their somber existence. It was a five-man
combo of clarinet. drums, bass fiddle, sax and trumpet. The grinning
Negroes, in American hats and coats, with bright scarves around their necks,
were enjoying themselves as much as the onlookers. Durell pushed deeper into
the crowd with Valya. Kronev and his men were not far behind.

“It is an American troupe,” the girl said. “I read that
there was a cultural exchange mission. Part of a theatrical enterprise that has
been very popular in Moscow.” The girl looked over her shoulder. “But the
subway—”

She was cut oil by a sudden shout of delight from the bass fiddler,
who spun his instrument with wild abandon and grinned hugely.

“Sam! Sam, boy! Skin me alive if I ain’t dreaming! Boy, are
you here or is it all that vodka I drunk? Sam?"

“Hello, Johnny,” Durell said. “It’s me, and not a ghost.”

Johnny McPadd was a short, burly man with ebony skin and
big, happy eyes. His face glistened with perspiration despite the cold April
wind. His stubby fingers, heavily ringed, snapped the strings of his bass
for two more bars and then he spoke to the saxophonist beside him and pushed
him aside to hug and thump Durell with exuberant glee.

“Last time I saw you was down in Orleans, in the Lotus
Blossom. Remember? You were working the tables for Andy T-Bo. Best damn dealer
since your grandpa quit workin’ the river boats. What are you doing here, Sam?”

“Sightseeing,” Durell said. “I’m glad I ran into you,
Johnny.”

“Who’s the chick?" McPadd asked, looking at Valya.
Without waiting for a reply, he went on: “Heard you were on the government
payroll, Sam. Let's see, it’s been six, eight years, hasn’t it?”

“Look, Johnny, I need some help,” Durell broke in.

“Help? Are you broke? I tell you. all you got to do is ask
for something and these people fall over their feet giving it to you. We’ve
been treated with the red carpet here, ever since we started the tour. They eat
our jive like a cat licks cream, Sam.”

Durell saw Kronev‘s swart, puzzled face through the crowd of
spectators that ringed the musicians. The
politseyski
apparently had been
cooled down with the removal of Kronev’s car from the traffic lanes. The MVD
man was making no effort to push through the spectators to seize Durell and the
girl. His eyes gleamed with interest. Evidently Kronev was not too sure of his
ground; Kronev did not want an overt scone in public that he would have to
explain. Kronev’s work tonight was obviously outside his MVD duties, under
orders from the mysterious Z. A lack of decision showed on the fat man‘s ugly
face. But it wouldn‘t remain for long. After Johnny McPadd’s greeting, there
was no hope new for Durell to continue to assume his Russian cover identity.
Kronev knew him for an American. But whether that was good or bad remained to
be seen.

Durell cut short Johnny McPadd’s flood of words.
“Johnny, listen. Wait a minute. It isn‘t money. There are some local cops after
me and Miss Hvalna. We‘ve got to shake them."

The ebony-skinned musician was puzzled. “What have you done,
Sam?”

“Johnny, this is important. All I want you to do is let us
stick close to you. Work your way to the subway entrance down the block. The
cops are in this crowd right now and they’ll move in on me in a minute unless
you help to distract them.”

“That’ll can do, Sam. Right now.” McPadd turned and yelled
something incomprehensible to his musicians, who had not stopped playing once
during these past few moments. Like a troupe of Pied Pipers, the combo band
moved down the sidewalk, carrying with them the hand-clapping audience whose
shouts of friendly approval swamped Kronev’s commands.

Walking beside Johnny McPadd, Durell spoke swiftly and
succinctly. “Listen once, and don’t forget a word. I can’t repeat anything.
Ready?” And When the bass fiddler nodded, Durell gave him Alex Holbrook’s
name and the Embassy number and the name of Operation Dart. He told McPadd
about Marshall and Leningrad—everything that had happened and what he thought
was going to happen. He did not know how much McPadd would remember of it. But
it was a hope, a slim chance, a prayer.

“All right, if you’ve got it,” he said at last. “Now stop at
the subway entrance and cut loose with everything,” he told McPadd. “But
arrange your instruments so the passage is blocked.”

“Reet,” Johnny said. “I got the ball and I’m running with
it, boy. Good luck."

It took only a few moments for the swaying, clapping crowd
to drift toward the brightly lighted subway entrance. Durell kept near McPadd
as the grinning man twirled and thumped a deep rhythm for his bass fiddle.
Back in the New Orleans days, Johnny McPadd had been a legend. It was an
astounding piece of luck to stumble into him on the other side of the world, at
a moment when every way out was blocked. There was always an element of luck in
the game, Durell thought, but what counted was the way you seized and twisted
it to your advantage. If McPadd could get through somehow to Alex Holbrook . .
.

His mind jumped ahead while his gaze kept Kronev in the
periphery of his vision. He could tell that Kronev was coining to a decision.
It was evident in the man’s taut mouth, the quick, inaudible orders he gave to
the two huge men who flanked him. But Kronev acted a few seconds too
late. McPadd’s hand securely blocked the subway entrance now.

“Thanks a million,” Durell told the musician. He had to
shout now over the blare of the trumpet. “Do your best with Dart, understand?
See you in the Lotus Blossom someday.”

“May it be soon, boy—and don’t worry none about the message
to Garcia. I got it and I’m Western Union with wings. Give my best to your
grandpa.”

“Get clumsy if somebody tries to follow us, Johnny.”

McPadd nodded and Durell snatched Valya‘s hand and they ran
down the subway stairs. From behind them, the syncopation of a Basin Street
blues number blared louder than before. Dimly through the thumping melody came
a man‘s angry shout. The stairway curved down into marble splendors, Valya.
moved more slowly than before, and her color was not good; Durell was still not
sure that one of the bullets behind the
stolovaya
hadn’t hit her. A gush of warm air struck them as they came out on the vast
waiting platform. Durell looked hack. Nobody had followed them—yet.

Valya gasped. “That was fortunate, meeting your friend like
that.”

“‘We’re not in the clear yet."

"But Kronev must move with care—you saw that. He didn’t
dare move in front of so many people. It was all right at the restaurant;
everything happened so fast, before any objections could be made. But on the
street—it was clever of you to use your friends like this.” They were walking
now through vaulted, echoing corridors of rose marble. “What did your friend
mean when he said you were the best dealer he had ever known?”

“I was once a professional gambler." ‘Durell said.

“A card -player? To earn a living?“

“It’s a family tradition.”

He followed her toward the ticket booth. They did not run now.
The platform was crowded, and people flowed between them and the toot of the
stairs they had descended. He looked back again. Still no sign of Kronev. ‘He
hoped Johnny McPadd Wouldn‘t get into trouble by helping them. Then he heard a
distant, impatient shout behind a thick clot of people who had just disembarked
from a gleaming, waiting train.

Valya went to the ticket booth and shoved sixty kopeks for
their fares through the wicket at the stolid woman. The woman was in no hurry.
She looked curiously at Valya’s white face. “Are you ill,
gaspasha
?”

“No, no. But I must catch that train.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Of course not. But my husband and I just heard my mother is
ill—”

“I am sorry. Here you are.”

They pushed through the turnstiles onto the immaculate
waiting platform. The tile and marble gleamed, and statuary stood in solemn
marble and bronze in niches set into the wall--images of the Soviet great in
arts and sciences. The pneumatic doors of the waiting train began to slide shut
as they plunged through. Durell controlled his breathing, forcing himself to
inhale easily despite the aching strain in his lungs. Valya gasped and leaned
against him. Some of the passengers looked up from their copies of Pravda to
stare.

“Relax,” Durell whispered.

“I will be all right."

There was shouting far down the subway platform. Far behind
them at the turnstiles, Kronev and his two men finally burst through. The
train lurched, halted, lurched again and started. Statues, columns, plaques
began to slide past the glass doors. Kronev waved his short arms in wild anger.
He stopped running. The last Durell saw of him was his figure suddenly
immobile, his round head thrust forward in an ominous stance of deadly
patience.

Valya leaned her weight against him and he tried to support her
as inconspicuously as possible in the swaying train.

“Tell me the truth. Were you hit?”

“No, no. But my ankle—I turned it on the street—”

“Lean on me,” he ordered.

The train clicked and clattered smoothly along a sweeping
curve under Red Square.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked. “We can’t stay on the
train too long or we‘ll be intercepted.”

“We will get out at Smolenskaya Square.”

“And then?”

She frowned slightly. “We can stay at a place I know of for
tonight. We will be safe there and we can decide what to do.”

“What of your friends? And Mikhail? They’ll resent your
being with me.”

“I cannot help what they think."

“You will be alone," Durell said. “Just as I’m alone
here."

Her eyes searched his, looked away, and looked up again. She
shrugged. “You and I are not alone—not if you have told me the truth. There is
half the world with us.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

“We will talk about it later,” Valya said quietly.

Chapter Eight

DURELL lay back in the huge stone tub and let the hot
steaming water soak the weary ache from his muscles. It was two hours later,
long after midnight. Beside him, on a stool drawn up near the tub, was his
clothing and the Mauser P.38 he had taken from Kronev in Leningrad. The gun was
cocked and ready. Marshall’s map lay beside it. He listened, but he heard no
sound from Valya in the next room. Reaching from the tub, he dried his hands on
a coarse yellow towel and picked up a Russian cigarette from a cardboard pack
the girl had left there. The smoke tasted harsh and bitter in his throat. There
was a bottle of Armagnac brandy on the floor beside the huge tub, and he took a
long swallow between drags on the cigarette. The heat of the tub and the brandy
made him drowsy, and he fought against relaxing by remembering the last two
hours. . . .

Valya had been more than efficient. They had debarked from
the subway train at Smolenskaya Ulitza, and nobody had intercepted them there.
They had walked for a number of blocks through a rabbit warren of tenements
dating back to Czarist days, odorous and rotting, and he had had to wait in a
dark, windy doorway while she went into one of the ancient houses. He had had
to trust her all the way at this point, and she had not failed him. When she
returned they walked another block to where a
Moskva
car was parked in a rubble-strewn lot. The car belonged to a friend of hers,
she had said. They had driven out Smolenskaya Ulitza and then cut west to cross
the Moscow River with the dim radiance of the Kremlin and the city cultural
parks to the south of their path. The broad boulevard became an autobahn marked
by the high green fences and watchtowers of the Politburo’s country homes, but
Valya had soon turned off into a bumpy road that led through dense woodland of
pine and white birch, circling hack to the river. The tortuous road ended in a
small log
dacha
hidden away in the
woods, with the river bank a hundred yards to the rear.

He had suspected a trap, but the log cottage was empty.

“This place belongs to Petra, an official of the Intourist
bureau where I work," Valya had explained. “He is on his vacation at
Yalta."

“You know what my plans are,” Durell had said. “I’m going to
get to my Embassy. Shall we consider another truce for the present?”

“Yes. We can be comfortable here. I shall make some tea and
prepare the bed. And I suspect you would appreciate a hot bath. So would I. But
you must be taken care of first.”

“You don‘t have to bother about my welfare," he said.

“But I want to.” She had looked away from his direct gaze.
“I like to do this. Perhaps I am silly, but I find it pleasant."

“You’re a strange person.”

“Why am I strange? Do not your American girls like to do
things for their men?"

“I am not your man, Valya. Mikhail is your man.”

“Perhaps he was. But he is not so any longer."

Durell had said bluntly: “Was Mikhail your lover?”

She had flushed and looked away from him in silence,
her lashes dark against the ivory cream of her skin. There was something
appealing and defenseless about her that had contradicted her decisive behavior
of the past few hours. “I will draw your bath," she had said, and then she
had left him. . . .

There came a knock on the bathroom door as Durell soaked in
the tub, thinking about her. “Sam?” It was the first time she used his
name. “Tea is ready. And I made some sandwiches.” She was speaking English.
“Whenever you are ready.”

“Coming right out.”

He dried his hard, solid body vigorously, grateful for the
soaking that had eased most of his muscular aches. He wrapped a towel around
his middle, tucked the map away in the toe of one of his heavy boots, picked up
the gun, put it down with a shrug, and opened the bathroom door.