Assignment - Black Viking (8 page)

“But you do not understand dear Peter at all,” she murmured. “He is a dreamer, yes, and a most impractical man in everything but his scientific achievements. He has nothing to do with politics. He shuns the world of today.”

“He uses today’s technology to tamper with the balance of the earth’s climate. We’re sure of this. It’s too dangerous to be allowed to go on. Surely you understand this, Elgiva.”

“I am like Peter,” she said flatly.

He stared. “Does that mean you refuse to help?”

“Why should I?” she asked. “I want nothing to do with it.”

“You say you love him.”

“It is not a love you could understand, however.”

“Do you want him to die?” Durell asked.

“Would you kill him?”

“If I must. If there is no other way.”

“I see.” She turned abruptly and descended to the ledge which circled the sea pool. The ocean exploded with thunder all around them. “I felt this in you at once, Mr. Durell. You are not a man of this world, either.” 

“I’m very much of this world.”

“An American agent,” she mused. “And very strong, with a strength of the olden times. Yes, you would kill Peter, if you had to. I believe you.”

“But I don’t want to. I want to save him. He’s in danger, a prisoner of those who use his climate control techniques for political purposes.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“Have you heard from him recently?” he insisted.

“Not for many months. I had a letter—She shrugged. “It was from the East. He was touring the Orient. He was to confer in Manila with Pacific meteorologists.”

“And he vanished from there?”

“I have not heard from him since.”

“Elgiva, he was kidnapped.”

Again she was silent, staring at the seething maelstrom twenty feet below the ledge. “Peter and Eric and I had this dream. You could not comprehend it.”

“Perhaps I do.” His voice went savage. “You three are a little mad, trying to retreat into the past to escape the problems of today. You write of ancient times and call yourself a skald. But the old bards are dead. They served a purpose in their day. Now Peter works to recreate a world of ice that existed mainly in pagan myths, and dreams of giants with bloody swords. And Eric is wrapped in the past, too, with his archaeology and recreation of Viking days. All three of you only seek escape.”

She slapped him with furious strength. Her amber eyes blazed. She said something in Swedish and turned sharply, her cloak swirling about her. Durell caught her arm and flung her back against the cliff wall.

“Elgiva, Peter is in danger. Accept it and show you believe in what you say, and help me.”

“I will not help you to trap Peter! You lie to me! Go away! I have heard enough of your schemes! Your people want Peter to use him for your own ends—”

“We just want him to stop doing what he’s doing to the weather. It’s time you all gave up the past and lived in today’s world.”

Elgiva tried to strike him again. Her angular face was twisted in the mist. Durell caught her arm and forced it down. She struggled against him, her body rich and strong.

“Help me find Peter,” he said harshly. “Come with me, if you like. You’ll see for yourself—”

The sound of the shot checked him.

He heard a thin ripping sound, and Elgiva fell away toward the seething, wild pool below.

HER CLOAK saved her. Durell caught its wide flap and for a heart-stopping instant he held her as if in a sling over the abyss. Another shot cracked through the fog. Stone chipped off the ledge and stung his face and hands. He had no time to look for the source of the attack. For another moment he held Elgiva Neilsen over the brink and stared deep into her wide eyes. There was no fear in her. He couldn’t guess what turbulent thoughts possessed her. The sea thundered, bursting about them with a shower of cold spray, bellowing as if for a sacrifice.

Then he pulled her in. She fell against him, then flung herself swiftly away and flattened against the wall of the ledge, arms wide against the rough limestone.

Her face was white. “What happened?”

Durell tried to see through the fog. “Somebody up there doesn’t like us,” he said wryly. “We were shot at. Twice, so far. Were you hit?”

“No. No, I’m all right. But who would shoot at you like this?”

“Maybe you were the target, Elgiva.”

She looked confused. “Are we trapped here?”

“Maybe. Stay where you are.”

“You seem pleased by this.”

“It means the trail is getting warm at last. It means you know something that can help me.”

“But I do not. I truly do not.”

He edged away, looking for a place where he could see to the top of the cliff. The sea turned the pool at their feet into a thundering cauldron again. He took advantage of the noise to take a few more steps to the right.

The gun cracked again. It sounded thin and far away in the ocean’s roaring. The bullet made a thin splatting sound against the ledge at his feet. He searched again for the sniper. In the strange, pearly light, he thought he saw something stir in the sky above. His gun was in his hand. He fired once, but he knew it was not effective. Yet the movement stopped, and he couldn’t tell if it was a man up there, or just another of the grotesque rock formations created by millennia of winds and seas.

“Elgiva!”

“Yes,” she replied quietly.

“Do you know another way back up to your house?” “It is difficult, especially in this poor light—”

“We’re cut off from the way we came down.” He wondered angrily where Mario and Gino might be. He had taken them along for just this contingency. He reached for Elgiva’s hand. It was cold, but strong. “Let’s go.”

She led him around the pool, toward the cave. The mouth of the hole yawned with dank blackness. Durell thought he heard the scrape of a shoe on the cliff above, but he could not be sure, nor could he tell how many people were up there. Beyond the cave entrance, Elgiva took his hand again and pulled him after her.

“It is difficult for a stranger here.” She was calm, considering her narrow escape from death. He felt a twinge of admiration for her. She surely wasn’t accustomed to being ambushed and shot at. “Just follow me, Mr. Durell.”

She climbed by slow and painful handholds and waited for him in the gloom to take each grip as she released it. There were tall, monumental crags of upright stone, carved by the sea far back in geological ages. Then she stopped.

“We are just below the top. Listen.”

Garbled voices came through the mist. Again, Durell wondered what had happened to his two
Vesper
crewmen. Then abruptly there was another shot, and a woman screamed.

It was Sigrid.

There was no time to guess what was happening. With his head just above the lip of the cliff, he saw the muzzle flame as it was fired again. He moved Elgiva aside, clambered over the top, and ran for the spot.

Boulders were strewn among the rough grasses that grew here. At a vague distance through the fog, he saw the lights of Elgiva’s house. Then the world took on a blinding radiance as a navigation light across Faro channel shone his way. He felt as if a spotlight had been thrown upon him. He threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the glare. Every particle of mist caught the dazzling brightness to reflect it a thousand times over.

“Sam, look out!”

It was Sigrid again.

Another shot followed on the heels of her warning. Durell felt a snap of air as the bullet winged by. He threw himself forward toward an outcrop of stone. A man yelled in triumph. Another replied with a grumble of words he could not understand. It was not Swedish. Footsteps came toward him through the grass. He tightened his grip on the gun. The fog distorted sight and sound. The swinging probe of the searchlight across the channel vanished, and he blinked to adjust his eyes to the lesser glare of the fog.

“Sam? Sam, over here!”

Sigrid’s words echoed all around him. He looked back and saw Elgiva sheltered behind a small pinnacle of wind-carved rock. A shadow moved, distorting the radiance of the fog. As Durell rose, another shot cracked, but he ran forward, saw a figure rise before him, and fired twice, aiming at the belly. The man slammed backward, hands splayed out. Another man made a sound like a neighing horse and went reeling toward the edge of the cliff. Clutching his stomach, he blasted a series of shots inland, toward something Durell could not see. He fired again, and the man vanished as if seized by an invisible, giant hand, swept from the edge of the cliff. He made no sound as he fell.

Durell ran toward the house. Another figure intervened. He almost shot Sigrid before he recognized her.

“Foolish man!” she gasped.

She held a knife, and it had blood on it. She had used it on the second man. Her long, pale hair glistened with the fog. She wore a seaman’s jacket and a jaunty beret.

“Are you all right, darling man?” she asked.

“I had two men here—Mario and Gino, from the yacht—”

“I sent them back to the boat,” she said.

“You sent them away?”

“I told them you had ordered it.”

He controlled his anger. “Why?”

“I wanted to prove something to you. I know you’ve had strange thoughts about me. I know you don’t trust me. But I saved your life, you see.”

“You weren’t needed,” he said shortly.

She pouted. “You need me more than you think. Those men would have killed you. If they had killed Elgiva, I wouldn’t care; but you are precious to me, cruel Cajun. I like you so much better alive.”

Durell took her knife and threw it away. She did not resist. He did not put down his gun. He did not know what to make of her. Her relief at finding him seemed genuine enough.

“Who were those people?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Foreigners. I do not know their language. But I heard them move toward the cliff after I sent Mario and the boy back to Visby, so I followed, after making sure Elgiva’s house was empty. Oh, I hate that woman! You made a mistake, appealing to her. Did Olsen suggest it?”

“You know a lot that you shouldn’t know,” he said grimly. “Come with me.”

But Sigrid hung back. “We must return to the boat. I don’t want to meet that woman. Don’t be angry with me, darling man. Of course I know all about Olsen. Desk Five knows and tolerates him. Although Sweden must be officially neutral, that is no reason why we should blind ourselves to what is going on.”

He wanted to shake her in his frustration. But her face looked innocent of all guile. Nothing she had said made him feel easier about her, but he had orders to work with her. He turned away to examine the man he had shot.

The face was alien to this Scandinavian island of tall blonds. The cheekbones were high, the eyes faintly slanted, the moustache drooping. The clothes had no labels. Aside from a Luger, the dead man had no identification. The face had a definite Tartar cast, a hint of deep Asia in its broad contours. Such a man might have ridden west with the hordes of Genghis Khan centuries ago.

The body was a problem. In Durell’s business, you worked quietly, without attracting public attention. A police spotlight on these events, especially on a woman of such renown as Elgiva Nielsen, might end all hope of contacting his Soviet counterpart. On the other hand, he could not be sure who had sent these men after him. They were simply hired hands, gunmen. It was the mind and brain and plan behind them that he had to identify.

Sigrid made a small sound of distaste.

Elgiva approached them with her gliding, graceful walk, wrapped tightly in her dark cloak.

He knew at once that there was an implacable hostility between these two women. Yet the younger Sigrid immediately smiled with apparently complete and sincere pleasure.

“Elgiva, dear, I am so happy you are safe!”

The other’s smile matched Sigrid’s, and they pressed their cheeks together briefly in greeting. “I do not understand what happened. Why should anyone wish to kill me?”

“Maybe it was just Sam they were after.”

Elgiva turned her great amber eyes to Durell. “Does this have to do with Peter and Eric? What we discussed?” “I’m sure it has,” he returned.

“And little Sigrid? Her work is peculiar. Is it the same

as yours, Mr. Durell?”

“Somewhat. We’re working to find Peter and bring him home.” He turned to Sigrid. “Why did you say Professor Peter is your uncle? I know he’s your father.”

She bit her lip. “I am sorry. It just seemed better not to seem so close to this problem—”

“Sigrid often tells strange lies,” Elgiva said coolly. “She is a very strange child.”

“Elgiva, you never liked me, but that is not reason for you to—"

Their claws were showing. Durell intervened. “Let’s get inside. Elgiva, I’m sure you want to help us now. You didn’t believe how serious it was before. Peter is in grave danger. He’s a prisoner, and his machinery for weather control is being used by enemies of all society, against all humanity. Surely you see this now.”

“I will not go with Sigrid,” Elgiva said.

“Then fly to Stockholm with me, in the morning. Sigrid will join us there later in the day.”

Sigrid started to protest, then pressed her lips together angrily. “It’s all your fault, Elgiva. You filled Daddy with idealistic nonsense, until he saw the world in the same distorted perspective you show it in your silly, old-fashioned poetry. They say you are a witch, and I believe it. You hypnotized poor Daddy and you want to marry him. But you never shall, I promise you that!”

It was a side of Sigrid that she had not shown before. Under her calm voice was an icy contempt. But her words defeated her own purpose. Elgiva stiffened, her face paled.

She tucked her hand in Durell’s arm and watched Sigrid’s hostile reaction to the possessive gesture.

“You do not want me along, Sigrid?”

“Stay here and spin your foolish tales of the olden days. You’ve done enough harm.”

“But I think I shall accompany Mr. Durell. In Stockholm I shall decide just what to do.”

Sigrid bit her lip in exasperation. “Do not trust her, gullible man. She will bewitch you, too.”

“Maybe I’d like it,” Durell said.