Assignment - Black Viking (9 page)

OLE OLSEN had gone into Visby, according to the desk clerk at the Snacksgarsbaden Hotel. Durell knew he had a small furniture shop on one of the town’s old streets, for sales to Visby tourists. It was part of Olsen’s cover, and there seemed nothing unusual about his going there.

He needed Olsen’s help in disposing of the Tartar’s body and covering up the affair at Elgiva’s isolated house. Explanations to the police would be awkward. There were enough rumors in the world about the weather. If the public knew of the great official concern, there could easily be panic.

He dismissed his taxi and used Elgiva’s Mercedes for the foggy drive back into town. It was not a comfortable trip. Elgiva drove, and he sat between her and Sigrid. Both women maintained a stony silence. He had explained to Elgiva that the isolation of her house made it dangerous for her to stay there; and after Sigrid minimized the danger, Elgiva perversely agreed to obey all of Durell’s orders. Sigrid ground her teeth and was silent.

It was after ten, and true nightfall had come over the Baltic at last. Most of the shops in the cobbled streets

of the walled town were shuttered for the night. Tourists were in rare supply these days.

Durell told Elgiva to park around the corner in an alley that led downhill toward one of Visby’s battlements. He was reluctant to leave the two women alone together, and decided it could do no harm to take them with him. They maintained a silent truce as they walked toward the shop.

The small display window in the medieval building was dark and partly curtained. Polished modern mahogany chairs were glimpsed inside. But Durell saw no lights within.

“Your resident agent is not here,” Sigrid said.

“He is. Ole wouldn’t get out of touch tonight.”

He led the way down a dark alley to the back entrance. A cat ran across their path and leaped over a wooden fence. Sigrid shrank back for a moment.

“Perhaps he has gone to the
Vesper
.”

Elgiva spoke coldly. “If you are anxious to go, then leave us. Your blood is not that of a true Viking woman. I will stay with Durell.”

“Oh, you talk such nonsense, darling.” Sigrid went with them to the back door of the furniture shop.

A dim light shone inside. The wide service door was locked. Durell frowned. Visby, a town marked by many churches, suddenly came awake with the sound of old church bells tolling in the misty air. The iron clanging was just what he needed. He found a slat of wood near the door, wedged it between the two panels, and shoved against the bolt. There came a snapping sound, drowned out by the carillon. Something clattered to the floor inside, and the door swung open.

Sigrid started forward. He caught her arm. “Stand back.”

“I am not afraid!” she retorted.

“Well, I am.” He was a cautious man, and he knew better than to ignore his hunches or the technique of IPE—Illegal, Perilous Entry. He moved in at a fast crouch, his gun at hip level cocked up at an angle that would hit a man in the lower abdomen if he had to fire. His leg grazed a crate, he turned left, and then paused. There were dark geometric shapes of crated furniture stacked to the ceiling, and a smell of wood shavings and steel nails. The nails glittered on the plank floor where they had been strewn to trap the unwary. He was grateful for his caution.

“What is it?” Sigrid called softly.

“Stay where you are. Both of you.”

A door stood open at the far end of the storage room, the source of light he had seen outside. He moved around a wood-working bench cluttered with mahogany shavings and a partly built modern chair, then used his technique on the second door.

Nothing happened.

He followed a corridor to a flight of old wooden steps that creaked no matter how carefully he placed his feet. Sigrid came in behind him, disobeying his orders, and he halted, anger in him. Sigrid raised a great many questions in his mind. Before all this was over, he thought tiredly, he might have to kill her.

Someone breathed with a deep, irregular effort in a room at the far end of the upper hall. He could see a modern desk, an aluminum pole lamp, a corner of a splashy op art painting on the wall. The breathing halted. There was silence. Then it began again.

“Ole?” he called softly.

It began to rain again, a sullen drumming on the roof just overhead. Through the sound came a grunt, a gasp, a dragging noise. Durell went into the office.

“Ole?”

The Stockholm agent was trying to crawl from behind the desk where he had fallen. His narrow, bald head gleamed in the light. His eyes were odd crescents, tilted up to look at him. His mouth was a jagged red smear with broken teeth above his lantern jaw.

Durell walked around him, not touching him, and opened a door behind the desk, checked a lavatory, found nothing inside, then crossed to a door opposite and checked the coat closet. Nothing. Ole was alone with his torment. Durell dropped to one knee beside the man. Olsen now lay with his face against the Oriental rug.

“This is Sam,” Durell said. “What happened?”

“He came—surprised me—too old for this sort of— thing now, Cajun—”

“Who was it?”

“Big fellow—silent—just beat me—”

“You’re not shot?”

“Don’t—think so—”

Durell straightened. His eyes were dark. “I’ll get you a doctor, Ole.”

“Wait.”

Thick blood came from Olsen’s broken mouth. He grunted each time he breathed, and Durell suspected several broken ribs. One hand looked crushed, as if a brutal boot had stepped on it.

“I called—Stockholm—about Miss Sigrid. Professor Peter’s daughter. She was—in Hong Kong with him— when he vanished—”

“Good.”

“But so was—so was Elgiva.”

“All right, Ole. I’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Sam, he—the man—still here, somewhere—”

Durell straightened, knees loose, his hand up with the gun. Sigrid and Elgiva spoke in whispers at the head of the stairway behind him. He felt surrounded by intangible dangers. He did not know friend from enemy. Ole shuddered and lay still. His cadaverous figure and face made him look corpse-like in the dim office light. The rain grew heavier, drumming over any other sounds in the old house. Then Sigrid screamed.

There came a sudden clattering rush of heavy feet in the corridor, moving away toward the stairs and the girls. Durell dove for the office door. A dim shape loomed in the stairwell. The man had been hiding near the front of the house, in one of the storage rooms. A rectangle of darkness showed where a hatch was open in the attic ceiling. He had been up there, most of the time.

Durell cursed and spun toward the stair rail. He saw Sigrid falling, bowled over by the man’s downward rush. Elgiva was flattened against the yellow-painted wall. The man’s broad back was strong and familiar.

“Hold it!” he called.

The man leaped the last eight steps, arms wide for

balance, and jumped for the back exit. Durell squeezed off one shot. The man fell to his knees with a thump that shook the house, then, incredibly, stood up again. He turned his head to look back up at Durell. His lips were skinned back in a savage grin.

It was Olaf Jannsen. Olaf, whom Sigrid had hurled to his death in the stormy sea off the deck of the
Vesper
.

Durell jumped after him, but he knew he was too late. Olaf vanished into the alley, running through the night. Durell went as far as the back door. The rain hid everything. He drew a thin breath. It was incredible that Olaf had survived his plunge into the Baltic and managed to swim ashore to Visby. But he had to believe the evidence of his own eyes.

He turned back to the two women on the stairs. Sigrid sat on the lowest step, her face uplifted to him.

“Sam, was it—was it really Olaf?”

“It was,” he said shortly.

She buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

STOCKHOLM

The Town Hall is its trademark. The city lies on the eastern shores of Lake Maleren, twisting on peninsulas and islands that give it a unique air of spaciousness. It was originally settled in the tenth century, on Staden Island, by warlike Varangians. In medieval times, they extended their influence into Russia as far down the Volga as the ancient Byzantine Empire, where many Varangians served as elite bodyguards for the Emperor there.

Stockholm is a showcase of Swedish cleanliness, efficiency, and the “Middle Way” of constitutional monarchy. The city has spacious squares, green parks, and wide boulevards. The modem buildings are in harmony with the Swedish seventeenth-century baroque of the medieval section known as the “City between the Bridges.” The channels and bays are dotted with small white steamers that use the waterways as alternate transportation to swift, modern buses and subways.

There are long hours of daylight in the spring. The climate in May is normally much the same as in New England. The temperature ranges from a low of 40° to a high of 57°, with an average of 49°. The days of rain average 12.

Despite the security of one of the world’s most highly developed welfare states, Sweden has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

THE sun was shining.

But the wind blew with irregular ferocity from the north, ruffling the channels and bays, pinning the yachts in their basins near the tall, clean apartment buildings across from Stockholm’s Old Town. Near the Riddarsholm Church, where Sweden’s ancient kings are entombed, was a sprawling complex of glass and concrete hospital wards served by helicopter ambulances on the roofs. The hospital was so big that the nurses rode to and from their wards on bicycles. The helicopters were not flying today. The nurses had difficulty balancing on the bicycles because of their flapping capes torn by the strong gale winds.

It was four in the afternoon when Durell left the hospital. He had flown via Linjeflyg from Visby to Stockholm’s new airport, Arlanda, with Olsen, Sigrid, and Elgiva. A doctor had pronounced Ole in reasonable condition to travel, but recommended a week under strict medical care. The flight across the Gsterjon and up Sweden’s coast took only forty-five minutes, and an ambulance met them to take Olsen from Arlanda.

The
Vesper
, following from Visby, was due to dock that evening. The storm damage proved to be easily repaired in Visby’s competent boatyards.

Durell spent an hour with Olsen at the hospital, with one of Ole’s young men from Stockholm Central. Ole’s assistant was Mark Talmage, a button-down-collar, tidy Princeton type. Talmage carried the usual fine attach
é case cluttered with folders, dossiers, and flimsied orders in quadruplicate. Durell surveyed the snowfall of douments with distaste.

“You meet your counterparts at Skansen Park,” Talmage said briskly. “That’s the open-air museum. Do you know the place, sir?”

Durell nodded. “I was there some time ago.”

“They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to arrange the meet. They believe in all the routine precautions.” Talmage wore black-rimmed glasses and he pushed them up on his snub young nose. “They seem to distrust you, Mr. Durell.”

“I don’t exactly regard them as Snow Whites, either,” Durell said.

“Well, then. They were most disappointed at the failure to rendezvous off Visby.”

“It was stupid,” Durell said. “Who arranged it?” Talmage flushed. “I did, sir. It seemed that they wanted it that way.”

“And they still insist on using the
Vesper
?”

“Yes, sir. General McFee is setting up an HQ at Bruges, cooperating with elements of other national security units, to coordinate the operation. The KGB in Moscow, Colonel Metroff, has approved all of this. But he feels that time is of the essence.”

“To coin a phrase,” Durell said.

Talmage flushed again. His voice was resentful. “Sir, I have been directed to brief you and I’m trying to make it clear—”

“All right. Let Ole talk for a moment.”

They moved back to the hospital bed. Sunlight poured through the wide window into the sterile room. Outside, the gorgeous nurses careened along the walks on their bicycles. The wind seemed stronger. Ole’s injuries consisted of four broken ribs, a suspected rupture of the spleen, which had the doctors considerably worried, and his smashed mouth. His gaunt face was mottled, one eye was covered with a bandage, and he looked terrible. When Durell returned to the bed, Olsen spit a swab from his mouth and nodded.

“Mark, don’t tangle with the Cajun,” he told Talmage. “You’re not familiar with field operations.”

“But I’ve been ordered—”

“Forget it.” Olsen gave Durell one of his rare smiles. It hurt him to do so. “Thanks for pulling Olaf off my back last night, Sam.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t screw him to the wall for you.” Durell sighed. “But I’ll make up for it, Ole.”

“Do that. But be careful. He’s enormously strong. It was frightening, frankly.”

“What did he want of you, anyway?”

“I never found out. He just walked in and swung. Like a madman, Cajun. However.” Olsen worked a tongue around his battered mouth. “My wife never thought I was handsome, but now—” He paused again. “What have you done about Sigrid?”

“She’s at her uncle’s apartment for the moment.” “You think it wise to let her run loose?”

“It’s her town and her country.” Durell shrugged. “No matter what I think of her—and it’s plenty—I can’t very well chain her to my wrist, Ole.”

“She checks with Swedish Security as absolutely reliable, Sam. Nothing in her dossier to worry about.”

“It’s what’s in her mind that worries me. She’s playing a game of her own, and lying every inch of the way.” “Because her father is involved? What about Elgiva? Has she told you anything useful?”

“She may be only a reluctant bystander. A remarkable woman, though. She offers another way to skin a cat.” “Handle her with care,” Olsen warned. “Elgiva is a world personality. Where is she now? Not with Sigrid, I hope.”

“Waiting at my hotel. She has an appointment with her publisher.”

Olsen had tired rapidly. He lifted one hand, signaling Mark Talmage to go on. The young man adjusted his thick glasses, cleared his throat, and spoke briskly.

“The main matter, sir, is the meeting with the men from KGB. Since Moscow made a direct contact with Washington, using the utmost frankness in the problem, our orders are to cooperate fully. They are very much concerned. There have been thoughts that this may be a bluff, to distract us from the truth. That is, the Russians may be behind the weather control apparatus themselves, and wish to throw us off-guard for as long as possible. It is a factor that must always be considered.”