Assignment - Budapest (14 page)

“Sam?” she whispered.

There was no need to reply. He felt a responsive stirring within him, as if something that had recently been lost was now found again, springing to new life and hope. He did not love Ilona, and she knew it. Yet in their mutual loneliness and in the danger they shared, perhaps they were closer in needing one another than others in warm safety might be. His pulse quickened as she turned back toward him, and then there was the silk of her body pressing against him, stirring and waking him, until he took her back into his arms. Her lips pressed with avid hunger against his.

“Do not think of yesterday or tomorrow,” she whispered. “Yesterday is gone and done with; and tomorrow may never be. We are here, and it is now, and we owe each other nothing but our lives.”

He kissed her gently, and then, feeling her quick, impatient movement against him, he took her in the cold, dark stillness of the attic room.

For an hour or more afterward, Durell lay quietly with the girl asleep in his arms. He was not sure later whether or not he slept, too. He was aware of her weight against him, of the warmth and sweetness of her breath against his cheek. She sleeps like a child, he thought, safe and warm, and at peace after having been frightened. He felt a deep sense of gratitude toward her, even knowing that her giving of herself had been a deliberate act, designed to help him and clear away the deep-rooted uncertainties that had shrouded him. Perhaps in a way she had simply been selfish, concerned with her own safety that depended in as many ways upon his strength in this situation as he, in turn, depended on her. Yet her giving had been frank and uncomplicated, an expression of her desperate need for life and warmth. No promises were made and none had been demanded. She slept, trusting him. And he lay awake, listening to the sounds of the night.

There was only the faintest lightening of the night sky through the tiny attic window now. It would soon be dawn. The farmhouse was quiet, although now and then there came a faint creaking of timbers as wood and nails reacted to the intense outer cold. From far away came the high, thin piping of a train whistle, and he remembered the sounds of trains in the night when he had been a boy in Bayou Peche Rouge, when the harsh horns of the diesels had sent his imagination vaulting to the far corners of the world. There were not many places in the world now that were strange to him. Yet as a man he had learned that one place was very much like another, this farm like that, this city like the others, this nation like its neighbor. It came down, in essence, to people everywhere, to the desperate, universal hunger throughout the tormented world for peace and dignity and freedom. And it was because of this, Durell knew, that he could never quit or turn aside from the job assigned to him. He would go on working and fighting and doing what had to be done as long as he was able, as long as he lived. And it was this feeling in him, this deep and tender sympathy for all men everywhere, hidden under the hard, highly trained exterior of his working personality, that he could never convey to Deirdre or anyone. This girl beside him understood how he felt. No words were necessary. He would never consciously admit what might be considered softness or idealism, since his opponents in the dark war in which he fought were neither soft nor given to any ideals except the lusts for personal power, modem Caesars bestriding a world that now, for the first time since time itself began, could be destroyed by the touch of an idiot’s grasping fingers.

He did not know exactly when he became uneasy. Perhaps it was with his growing awareness of soft, subtle sounds throughout the house. Not all of them came from below the attic room, either. The cold, still dawn was still half an hour away, but a faint, amorphous light now outlined the gable window, and the still air seemed to ring silently with the cold. He sat up, sliding away from Ilona’s weight, and picked up his gun.

The girl was instantly, quietly awake.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“I’m not sure. I thought I heard something.”

“Shall I get dressed?”

“Yes.”

He stood up now, the gun in his hand, feeling the cold bite of stagnant attic air as he pushed the blankets aside. The girl dressed in haste under the protection of the covers over their improvised bed. The hours just past were forgotten.

He moved with care over the floor boards toward the door.

A low murmur of voices, just faintly discernible, touched his straining senses. Gently, a fraction at a time, he slid the bolt free and opened the door and looked down the crude ladder that led to a room just off the kitchen. A protesting, thin voice speaking in quick tones of alarm was answered by a growled command in Russian. Durell turned as a small sound came from Ilona.

“There are men outside. Two of them. A Russian and an AVO.” Her mouth formed the words that were almost inaudible. Durell nodded and closed the door and bolted it again. His pulse began to hammer and he waited a moment, resisting the panicky feeling of pressure, of a trap closing around him. His uneasy hunch about this place had been right.

He moved silently to the window and exerted controlled strength against the sash. Apparently it had been used recently, and it opened inward without sound. An icy wind blew into the attic room. Below, the slightly slanting shed roof he had noticed before was white with frost. He could see a corner of the Hegedus barn, the dim gleam of head-lights from a car that had approached in disconcerting silence. The crunch of a boot made him draw back a bit. A uniformed man walked by, pacing with the meticulous solemnity of bored sentries everywhere.

He turned and saw Ilona standing beside him. He did not understand the expression on her face. From downstairs came the sudden crash of breaking furniture, a man’s shout, the sound of a blow, a sudden shrill scream of pain.

“It is Geza Hegedus,” Ilona whispered. “They are asking him about you.”

Durell’s face was suddenly blank. “About me?”

“About an American they know is hiding somewhere near here.”

“How could they know about that?”

Ilona said in a flat, dead voice: “We are destroyed. We have been betrayed.”

Tire sound of another blow, another scream came from below. Durell looked through the small window again. The pacing guard was out of sight. He drew a deep, steadying breath. There was no time to consider the implications of Ilona Andrassy’s words. He nodded, took the girl’s arm, and told her to get out on the shed roof below. She obeyed quickly, without question, her body agile as she slid over the sill, clung for a moment to the casing, and then dropped the foot or so to the glistening, frosty shingles beneath. For an instant Durell’s heart seemed to stop as her foot slipped and she started to fall toward the edge of the shed roof. But she caught herself, balancing precariously, and a moment later he followed and joined her.

The sound of the guard’s booted feet came from around the corner of the farmhouse. Durell slid down to the edge of the roof and waited. The man appeared in a moment. Durell jumped. Both feet struck the man in the small of his back and he went forward, catapulted to his knees, the automatic rifle spurting from his gloved hands. Before the guard could do more than grunt, Durell had recovered, whirled, and chopped with his gun at the nape of the guard’s neck. The man fell forward, sprawling on the dark, frozen ground, and Durell straightened. His arm ached and he felt under his coat at the bandages over the bullet wound in his shoulder. They seemed secure. The jolt of his drop had not started it bleeding again. He looked up as Ilona came down to the edge of the shed roof and jumped after him.

“Let’s go,” he whispered.

They ran through the icy dawn toward the Skoda hidden in the barn. Durell did not like to think of what was happening to Geza Hegedus, inside the farmhouse. There was no alarm as he hauled the barn doors open and scrambled into the car with the girl. Evidently the men inside the farmhouse were busy tormenting the old farmer.

Their luck held until he got the car backed out of the bam and heading for the road. Then he heard a dim, faint shout from the house, and an instant later a shot crashed and a bullet smashed the rear window of the little Skoda. Durell tramped on the gas pedal. The road was slippery with dawn ice, and the wheels spun and they skidded sidewise onto the highway. Another shot smashed after them, ricocheting off the bonnet. Durell looked back and saw three men running toward the large dark sedan parked in front of Hegedus’s house. He cursed softly, wondering why he had slipped up by not disabling the car before getting out the Skoda. It was panic, and the surprise of the trap, that had made him run too fast. He yanked the wheel left and the little Skoda’s tires bit on the highway surface and they straightened up, rocking perilously, headed for Gyor. Ilona looked backward.

“They’re coming now. Drive faster.”

The road twisted downward through a thick grove of woodland where the gray dawn light had not penetrated. Durell pushed the little car to the limits of its speed. There was no traffic, and no roadblocks were in sight as they soon began Sashing past sleeping houses and a factory or two in the outskirts of the industrial town. The pursuing car was a quarter of a mile behind, hidden from sight now and then by the twists of the road. They flashed over a bridge, and Durell suddenly braked, yanking the Skoda around a tight corner and across a railroad siding where signal lights blinked a wan orange-red. A freight train was coming toward the massive pile of brick factory nearby. He looked back through the rear-vision mirror and did not see the pursuing sedan, and took his foot off the gas pedal. Up ahead was a yellow trolley not unlike those that had been used in New York City until recent years. It was crowded with laborers, and he looked at his watch, saw it was almost six o’clock, and knew the city was coming awake. He drove more slowly, knowing that any car was conspicuous in this city, usually considered official by the passers-by who saw it coming. He turned the next corner and the next. The street became rough and pitted with chuck holes, narrow and wet between the grim walls of industrial plants. Behind them, the freight train whistled and he heard the clashing of couplings as the train slowed on the siding.

“We’d better ditch this,” he said to the girl.

“We’re still a long way from Budapest.”

“Would it be safe to take a train?”

“If we moved quickly.”

Neither was ready to discuss what was uppermost in their minds. The girl looked tense and frightened as he stopped the car near a high iron gateway between two manufacturing plants and they got out. She said, “This way. It’s over a mile to the railroad station.”

They walked through the brightening dawn, along streets that were coming alive sullenly with workingmen and women. Here and there Durell saw torn-up asphalt and the marks of tank treads and the occasional pocked fagade of a building that had been sprayed by machine-gun bullets in the October uprising. He remembered there had been considerable fighting in this city, too, although Gyor had suffered lightly in comparison to Budapest. Durell walked neither too fast nor too slow, and Ilona kept up with his stride. It was bright daylight when they reached the railroad station, and Durell walked through the dingy waiting room looking for danger in the form of police, and saw only the uniformed guards he had expected. There were several dozen people, huddled in clumsy overcoats, waiting on the hard wooden benches. There was no sign of unusual danger, and he began to hope that the men in the sedan were still of the opinion that he and Ilona were still with the Skoda. His mind cast ahead as well as backward, and he sent Ilona to buy their tickets with a handful of forints he gave her. When she came back with the tickets she told him there was a half-hour wait before the train departed for Budapest. A small coffee shop in one end of the station seemed to be the best place to wait. It was fairly crowded, and they could make themselves anonymous among the other waiting passengers in case the station building was checked before train time.

Ilona ordered coffee and a roll, and he nodded to the waiter to duplicate the order for himself. Ilona’s hand trembled slightly as she lit a cigarette.

“I feel exposed. This is not the best place for us to be.” “It’s our only chance of getting to Budapest,” Durell told her. “Speak quietly. My Hungarian is too obviously foreign.” There were three men and a woman at the next round table, in the coffee shop, but except for the first casual glances sent their way as they sat down, nobody paid them any attention. “Do you know of any other way we can get there?”

“They may think you are Russian,” Ilona said. “It will be all right. I’m just nervous, that’s all. A little shaken up.” “Who did it?” Durell asked. “Who tipped off the secret police that an American was hiding at Hegedus’s farm?”

“I wish I knew,” she murmured. “I’m frightened by it.” 

"Could it have been Tibor Szabo?”

“How could he have known you would follow so soon?” “That’s right,” Durell said. “Not even McFee knew I was coming in after him. Even if Hegedus’s was betrayed, say, by Tibor—if Tibor has been captured—they wouldn’t be looking for me there last night, would they?”

“We don’t know that Tibor has been caught. But McFee —perhaps he has talked.”

“He hasn’t,” Durell said flatly. “He wouldn’t.”

“You are very sure of your man,” the redheaded girl said. “Yes. McFee is the one element I am sure of.”

She looked down at her cup of coffee. She had taken only one sip of it. “You are not sure of me, Sam?”

“I don’t know how you could have tipped off the police we were here. And you could have stopped me when we got out of that damned attic room.”

She flushed slightly. “Thank you. Thank you for your trust.”

“I’m just trying to look at it from every direction.”

“It will go worse for me, if I am caught, than for you.” “We’ll both die,” Durell said. “That’s true.”

“But they will see to it that I die slowly,” Ilona said.

One of the men at the next table was staring at her. Durell reached forward and patted her hand and smiled. “Drink your coffee, darling.”