Assignment - Ankara (19 page)

“This cannot have been on your course to Istanbul, Turk.”

“We were lost. We were all refugees from the earthquakes—”

“The Americans are
refugees?
” the captain asked with heavy irony.

“They were helping with the relief.”

“How can you lie like a snake? You said they were spies. As soon as I make radio contact, I will know the truth.”

“I have told you the truth,” Kappic said.

And then he threw himself upon the radio.

He had gained enough time to see what he could use, and he had timed his effort with the last flicker of strength in him. The radio had to be smashed. Perhaps, with the few hours thus gained, Durell might be able to do something. But once the location of the fishing boat was sent out on the air, it would be over for Durell and his mission.

There was a heavy steel book end on the desk that held the radio logs and navigation texts of the captain. Kappic jumped for it. His fingers closed around the steel bust of Lenin like a claw, and with the same sweeping gesture, Kappic brought it down on the glowing radio tubes of the trawler’s old-style transmitter.

Glass shattered and wires tore free. Kappic smashed again and again at the equipment, in the brief seconds he was left untouched.

The captain’s bellow of rage and the shot were the last things Mustapha Kappic heard.

He felt as if a heavy board smashed into his back, and he was thrown away from the desk by the impact. He fell to the floor. There was a last twist of pain from his leg, and then he felt a wave of strange warmth sweep up from his vitals and into his chest. The cabin grew dim. He felt another jolt in his body as the dark shape of the bearded captain loomed over him, the gun smashed flame at him again.

But it seemed to be happening to someone else. He smiled, somehow thinking that he had done everything a man could do on this earth; he had died trying to help others, and in the performance of his duty. He had been a good soldier. Long ago, when he was a boy, he had dreamed of being a soldier, when he lived in the remote hills of his shepherd home. It seemed to Kappic that he was back there now in the soaring, singing, rugged mountains of his boyhood. He could smell the wind that came from the rocky meadows, and he saw his father walking along the path toward him, and he turned with a little cry of joy—and lost his footing somehow. Under him, a terrible cliff stood on the edge of an endless abyss, and in his earerness to run to his father, Mustapha Kappic, the shepherd boy, fell and fell, turning and twisting in the cold mountain air. And he never stopped falling. . . .

One by one, they were taken to the captain’s cabin for questioning. At first they were herded in one of the empty fish holds aft, near the diesel engine room—a steel box whose rusted, riveted sides sweated with the cold chill of the sea, malodorous, dimly lighted by a single small bulb, ringed with refrigeration pipes that fortunately had been shut off. No furniture, chairs or cots, were provided, and only as an afterthought had some woolen blankets been thrust down the hatchway. These were spread on the cold steel deck for the women, Susan and Francesca. Wickham had snatched one of the blankets for himself, and refused to part with it, standing in a comer of the cell and shuddering, his round face buried in the coarse wool

Durell had heard the two shots and waited for Kappic to return to the others. After a moment or two, he knew that Kappic was not coming back. He could guess that the Turk had deliberately sacrificed himself to gain something, and he supposed it could only be the radio. Obviously, for some reason, perhaps because of the storm, the trawler was not part of the search squadrons that were scouring the northern latitudes of the Black Sea during these hours.

It was possible they had been presumed lost and drowned, Durell thought, when the KT-4 was seen to crash in the sea.

The Stuyvers were questioned first—Susan being summoned, and handing the black bag to John before she left. She was not gone long. Then Stuyvers was called, and he in turn gave the black bag to Susan. The fishermen on guard at the hatch did not notice the maneuver, and John Stuyvers looked every inch the fanatical missionary when he left and when he returned. Neither said anything to the others. Then Francesca was called on deck.

She was gone a long time.

Durell crossed to the opposite side of the compartment where Anderson was sprawled on the deck. The trawler lurched under the impact of the heavy seas, and it was obvious they were in for stormy hours that night. Durell knelt beside the big man and shook him.

“Anderson, can you hear me?”

The wide mouth opened and sighed. The big eyes stared coldly. “Got a nasty crack—on the head—from those fools.” “What were you trying to tell them?”

“Your friend, the Turk—he screwed things up real good.” The courier’s voice was thick and uncertain. “He told the skipper that I was an American agent. God knows what he had in mind.”

Durell’s face was blank. “Mustapha opened you up like that?”

“Yeah.” Anderson’s nose had bled, and there was a trickle of blood from one ear. He kept shivering, and now and then his teeth chattered. He was badly hint. Yet outwardly he seemed to be recovering. His enormous strength was too stubborn to yield to the brutal blow he had received from his argument with the trawler captain. Durell saw that the man’s right hand was swollen, and the ring containing his good-luck charm, the chunk of coal from the Tennessee hills, was cutting into the puffy flesh.

“Let me help you with that, or you’ll never get it off,” Durell said, and began working to get the gold and black ring off. Anderson started to protest, then sank back, regarding Durell with calm eyes.

The ring came loose with some difficulty. Under it, the flesh looked tight, but hard and tanned as the rest of the big man’s hand. Durell glanced up and saw Anderson’s strange, hard face watching him.

“We were all betrayed by the Turk,” Anderson murmured. “He’s the one who probably arranged for the false radio beacon that pulled us off course. And also probably heaved the tape into the sea, no matter what he told us on the plane.” “Maybe,” Durell said. “But maybe we can use Kappic’s accusation to some advantage. It will help keep the fishing captain here off balance, trying to decide which of us is the real agent.”

“What good will that do?” Anderson asked.

“We need time. Something might turn up.”

“You always such an optimist, Cajun?”

“No,” Durell said. “But you see, the tape wasn’t destroyed by Kappic. I know where it is.”

Before Anderson could reply, Durell turned as Francesca came slowly down the ladder into the hold. Her face was pale. Wickham was summoned next, and Durell noted how the fat colonel responded eagerly, smirking at the others as if in some secret triumph. Wickham trailed the blanket with him as he climbed the ladder, moving awkwardly as the trawler pitched in the heavy seas.

Durell sat down beside Francesca. He saw from the marks on her face that she had been slapped around, and her eyes were shocked and quiet.

“Did they hurt you much?” he asked gently.

“Not really. It was just—terrifying. They’re simple fishing people, yet they’ve been taught to hate and fear us. The captain is the only educated man aboard, yet he just mouths newspaper and propaganda slogans—calls us imperialists, warmongers. It was senseless, and frightening.”

“It’s the trap the whole world finds itself in,” Durell said. “We move toward a destruction that nobody really wants. But it’s as if we all wear blinders that only permit each side to see their way, into the future, and every other possibility is to be ignored or destroyed.”

“I didn’t think you—you would feel like that, with your job—”

“What did the captain ask you?” Durell interrupted.

She shivered. “I couldn’t understand much of his Russian. But he’s got the fact that we’re carrying secret information back to Washington.”

“Where did he get that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t tell them anything?”

“Of course not.”

“Not even about your father, I mean?”

“My name meant nothing to them.” The girl tossed her black hair impatiently. Even without make up, after all the hours of this turbulent day, she looked somehow clean and lovely. Under the firm lines of her mouth, however, there was a soft, inner trembling, a beat that Durell did not miss. “But of course,” Francesca said quietly, “Susan Stuyvers spoke to them first, and now Wickham is probably spilling his fat little insides for a drink or a cup of coffee.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Wickham is a coward,” Francesca said flatly. “He’ll sell us out.”

“He can’t be blamed for everything, though.”

“He’ll tell them about you, Sam. They’ll do things, make you talk to them—”

“Did you see Kappic?”

“They said Mustapha is dead.”

“Did they say why?”

Francesca looked at her hands. “He smashed their radio.” “I see,” Durell said. “Good.”

She turned abruptly, her gray eyes anguished, twisting to face him. “How can you be so calm and quiet about it?” “I’m not, really. I’m as afraid as any man, I think.”

“Are you? Are you really? I’ve been watching you, trying to figure you out. If I thought you were a little more human, with the ordinary weaknesses of other men—” She paused and laughed bitterly. “It’s the little mother in me, you see. I don’t like men to dominate me. Just enought, you understand. But I seem to enjoy taking care of men who need me for something. It’ gotten me into trouble before, and I don’t want it to happen again.” She paused and shook her head in wonder. “Isn’t this a foolish time to talk about such things?” “No, it’s better than just shivering and worrying.”

“I suppose that’s it. But all the same—” She paused, then said without warning, “Do you care much for that Susan Stuyvers?”

“Why do you ask?”

“She isn’t what she seems to be. You know that. Both of them—Susan and John—will kill anyone who gets in their way, if they can.”

“None of us are in a position to try that,” Durell said. “They’ve taken all our weapons. Susan and John are as helpless as any of us.”

“But more desperate, perhaps.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

She stared ruefully at Durell. “I’m afraid I’ll never understand you. I was jealous of Susan for a little while. Now I think I know why you let her act the way she does with you.” “There’s nothing to be jealous about.”

“No.” She paused again. “And yet, I somehow wish you needed me. If only for a little bit.”

WICKHAM was still absent from the hold when Durell was summoned for questioning.

He smelled brandy in the captain’s cabin and saw the crudely wiped bloodstains on the deck, and wondered what had happened to Kappic. The fisherman who was his guard thrust him without ceremony along the deck into the cabin, and Durell’s brief glimpse of the stormy night was hopeful. The darkness and the howling wind seemed to funnel all its fury on the plunging fishing boat. The trawler was headed into the wind, her blunt bow thrusting and smashing into the ribbons of foam that whipped from her steel plates and fled in streamers through the noisy air. Everything creaked and groaned and gave forth metallic sounds of agony. Except for the riding lights on the masthead, everything was in darkness, and the bright glare of a gooseneck lamp and the heavy scent of Russian cigarette smoke in the captain’s warm cabin made Durell pause and blink and cough.

“So,” he heard in Crimean dialect, “this is the famous spy, eh?”

The captain was a thickset man with a black beard and a saddle nose. His hands were big and horny, resting on his desk. Durell noted the smashed radio at once, and lifted his brows.

“You have not been able to call for help?” he asked sharply.

The captain grunted. “Does that please you, Amerikanski?”

“Who charges me with being a spy?” Durell asked.

“The Turk, who was a fool, and who died because of it. And the American colonel, who likes to drink. And the big one with the face of a frog, who claims to be from the MVD—but is without credentials, of course.”

“They all accuse me?”

“Not all. Some say it is the big one.” The captain fumbled in his desk for a cigar and held it in his big, calloused hands, pointing it at Durell. “I am a simple man, comrade. I do not like it when people make puzzles and pronounce riddles and accuse each other. It is not for such a man like me to make judgments.”

“No. And you don’t want to make a mistake, either,” Durell said.

“Eh? You speak with a fine Muscovite accent—but I don’t understand your meaning.”

“You could lose your boat, your pension, your standing— everything, if you mistreat the wrong man, captain.”

“True, true. So are you the spy?” The captain grinned and showed a steel tooth in his lower jaw, gleaming above his bristly black beard. “You see what a simple man I am? I ask a question that needs only a yes or no as a reply.”

“It is Anderson who is the American spy,” Durell said. “I am Lieutenant Karili Obranovitch, Department 12, SK Division. I am Section Head for District Nine of counter-intelligence, formerly a security officer in the Guard Directorate of the Kremlin, a veteran of Stalingrad and four times wounded. I hold six military orders and six medals and graduated from the Soviet Army Counter-Intelligence School and the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and am a veteran of the Komsomol. My Communist Party Number is 2468-779. My records are filed in the Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del—MVD headquarters. I—”

The captain held up his hand, staring, then leaned back with an explosive curse. “You sound like a fine and noble Soviet citizen, Comrade Hero. You and the big one, who also claims to be from the MVD.”

“Naturally. It is Anderson who is trying to confuse you by claiming my identity.”

“He used another name. Kugriliov, I believe. And claimed to be a captain in Department 12, SK Division—but did not lay claim to as many wounds and military medals, comrade. But you agree on the department, anyway, eh?” Abruptly the captain lurched to his feet and thrust his head forward and shouted: “Now I want the truth, do you understand? A simple truth! You are an American spy! Admit it! Your own officer, Colonel Wickham, accused you!