Assignment - Manchurian Doll (15 page)

“Good morning, Durell-san. You rise early.”

“Have you had any sleep at all, Tagashi?”

“A little. I was about to waken you. There will be no difficulty about your associate’s body. The police will say it was an auto accident; the mutilation will be concealed. I have also arranged for my cousin’s trawler—it is a very fast boat—but let me get you some tea first.”

Tagashi snapped his fingers and Yuki came immediately into the room, as if she had been waiting in attendance beyond the door. The girl looked subdued. She wore a traditional kimono and her eyes fled from Durell, seeking the polished plank floor. She bowed to her father and went for the tea. The house slept. The wind whimpered. The room was gray in the rain-swept dawn light.

Tagashi spoke quietly. “I have spoken to the Tokyo weather bureau. A typhoon is in the China Sea, coming this way, but its course is not predictable. I have alerted the coast patrols to watch every one of Omaru’s boats and seize any that put to sea. One of his trawlers went out early this morning and we put a man aboard and ordered it back— the captain protests he is only a simple fisherman. We cannot maintain the situation indefinitely, however. But we can do all in our power to keep Omaru from interfering with our trip to the mainland coast.”

“I think we have to expect that Omaru will somehow alert the enemy to wait for us over there, however.”

Tagashi nodded. “I took the liberty of arranging for a trawler, as I said. Very fast, powerful boat. But we do not know where to go yet.” Tagashi looked angry. “For me, Omaru is not a secondary matter, Durell-san. I have police ready to smash and seize his boats and arrest his personnel.” “You can hold off a day or two,” Durell said. “Even if he didn’t destroy court evidence, our governments could not prosecute him openly. We’ll finish Omaru quietly, in our own way, when the time comes.”

“But delay is dangerous. He wants revenge for the bruises you gave him last night. He killed your friend just to show what your fate will be. He will trap us on the mainland.” “He doesn’t know our destination, any more than we do,” Durell pointed out. “He got nothing from Nadja Osmanovna.”

“You are sure? You believe her?”

“Yes, she—”

Yuki returned with tea and fruit and cakes. She put the tray on a low, lacquered table and looked at Durell through downcast eyes. The small strip of tape on the bridge of her nose looked fresh and white. Most of the swelling had gone from her round, young face. She bowed and left the room.

Durell said: “No amount of stress can force Nadja to talk about the rendezvous point, I think. I believe she does know and remember it, but she refuses to bring it into the open in some sort of psychic self-defense. It’s a delicate problem. Somewhere, some time in the past, something happened to her that she feels she must forget. Her reactions make     this obvious. Torture will never drag it out of her. In fact, it will only drive it farther from her reach. This is where Omaru and Isome went wrong last night—and succeeded in forcing her toward our position. She suffered a great shock at learning that her superiors distrusted her to the point of torturing her and calling her a traitor. It is value for our side. Our hope lies in further convincing her that her future and Colonel Kaminov’s belong to us. She has nowhere else to go, and she will come to see that very soon.”

Tagashi paused. “You will    take    her with us? Without     her, Colonel Kaminov will not join us, anyway, even if we knew where to look for him. It is plain that he is in hiding—already a deserter, although he may have covered his action in case he must retreat from us. He must be hiding in a place where he is momentarily safe from discovery, waiting for us. The original arrangement with Omaru’s apparatus was for Omaru’s trawler to proceed to the village of Ospesko, on the coast. It is a bleak place, a fishing center, but very poor. However, there is a radar station run by the Soviet military and a major rail line and some secret fortifications, perhaps submarine pens, as well as an establishment believed to be rocket launch pads directed at Japan. We do not know the details of these things. It will not be easy to go in. There are mine fields and patrols and radar screens. Omaru’s trawlers went in with pre-arranged signals, of course, and we did seize the log books and codes from Omaru’s trawler last night. Nevertheless, unless the girl helps us, we do not even know where to look for Colonel Kaminov.”

“We will take her with us. Can we leave tonight?”

Tagashi nodded. “Unless the storm grows too violent.”

“It’s a delicate matter,” Durell said. “We can’t use pressure to make Nadja talk. On the contrary, a gentle persuasion is necessary, to show her that her future—and a kind of freedom for herself—lies only with us. It’s the only way to get her to tell us about the rendezvous point.”

“Use honey, then,” Tagashi said grimly. “Everything depends upon it.”

Nadja awoke to the sound of dim voices murmuring in the house. Panic leaped in her, and she started up with a reflex cry on her lips; then her painful bruises brought her acutely awake, and she remembered what had happened and felt lost, betrayed by everyone, condemned by her own people. She sat still, shaking her head slowly, then began to dress with care.

Someone had placed a light cotton skirt and a man’s white shirt and sandals near the low bed. In the bathroom were cosmetics and a fresh hairbrush and sweet-smelling soap. She bathed slowly in the smooth pine tub. The bathroom window was barred. The bedroom had solid wooden walls and the windows were shuttered against the wild wind and rain outside. The air felt unnaturally warm. When she returned to the bedroom, she saw Yuki enter with a breakfast tray.

Nadja had only the hairbrush in her hand. She thought of it instantly as a weapon, remembering Yuki from yesterday; and she clutched the handle convulsively. But Yuki smiled briefly and put the tray down for her.

“Good morning, Nadja. How do you feel?”

“Do you care?” Nadja asked sharply.

“I heard of the things Omaru did to you last night.” Yuki touched the white bandage on her nose. “You are safe here. You have nothing to fear from me again.”

Nadja said suspiciously, “You hated me, yesterday.” “Yes, but—” Yuki hesitated and scuffed her toes. She looked oddly diffident, young and confused. “Did you know the American who was killed yesterday—the one Omaru caught?”

“No.”

“He was very nice. Very handsome.”

Nadja considered her curiously. “Did you like him?” “Americans are not so different from anyone else, I think. But this one did not really know I was alive. I sometimes think I am very stupid. I get so mixed up. I feel too many things too deeply, I suppose. I love too much.”

“And hate too much?”

Yuki looked up quickly. “Yes, I think so.”

“Were you falling in love with the American who was killed?”

“Oh, no. At least, I don’t think so. I’ve been in love, you see.”

Nadja almost smiled at her adolescent earnestness. “And what happened when you were in love?”

“He was killed,” Yuki said, and her words flattened harshly, her mouth curved downward, and her eyes darkened.

“He worked for my father, and he was killed by your people.”

“Oh, but I—” Nadja paused. “I am sorry.”

“Yesterday I thought you were a monster. I thought of you as personally responsible for my unhappiness. But when I heard about the American, it seemed so—so impersonal. Like a war. Who is to blame, I wonder? And then I saw what they did to you, too, and I—”

“And I can bleed, too, is that it?” Nadja asked.

“Until yesterday, I think it was like    a game to me. I’ve really been very stupid. And I do not feel wiser now,” Yuki said earnestly.

“Yuki, did Durell send you in here to talk to me like this?” Nadja asked sharply.

“Oh, no. No, he—”

“What do you want, then?”

“I don’t know. I’d better go.”

Yuki turned abruptly away and walked to the door, her shoulders oddly rigid. Then she paused, and looked back at Nadja. Irresolution made her young face look defenseless. She bit her lip and said: “I just came in to tell you I’m not angry any more, and you don’t have to be afraid of me, that’s all. I won’t do anything like yesterday, ever again.”

“I see,” Nadja murmured.

“I just wish everyone could be friends. I just wish we could be friends, you and I. But I don’t suppose that’s possible.”

“I don’t know.”

“Everyone who is older than I am seems to know all the answers,” Yuki whispered. “But sometimes, like last night when I heard about the American and saw how you looked when Durell brought you back, I wonder if the answers are right.”

“I don’t know,” Nadja said again.

Yuki was a child, Nadja thought, with a child’s forthright questions, lost in that limbo between innocence and the cruelties of adulthood. And where was she, herself? The old Nadja was gone, after last night; she knew this with certainty, after her treatment at Isome’s hands. But she did not know where to turn or where she belonged. She bowed her head, feeling forsaken and homeless.

“Can we ever be friends?” Yuki asked.

Nadja had no answer for her.

Alone again, she smoked a cigarette that Yuki left for her. It was an American cigarette, and she did not like it. She rarely smoked, since it was a personality habit that might identify her in an enemy dossier. But now all that was different. She did not care about all the warnings dinned into her at the Moscow KGB school. It seemed faraway and unreal, like something seen dimly in a dream; or like something seen in a gray, distorted mirror.

She brushed her hair mechanically, grateful for the hot bath and clean clothes. Someone had bandaged her foot with tape and ointment for her bruises. She wondered if it had been Durell, and felt strange that he might have been free with her body while she was in an exhausted stupor. She had never met a man like Durell before. His kindness was in contradiction to his record in Moscow, where he was described as cruel, dangerous and violent.

Pere Jacques.

She shuddered and sat very still. The words clanged like a bell in the back of her brain. Last night, when Omaru and the woman questioned her, she’d been glad the words were shrouded in her tormented memory. Glad? Yes, for how could she have betrayed Alexi? He was her old friend, he had saved her sanity, saved her life long ago. He had not forgotten, even though he had taught her patiently to forget. He had sent those two words to her, relying on her to save him now. Of all the millions of people in the world, she was the only one who could respond to those two words. Somewhere, he waited, hiding. And now she was an exile, too, lost and homeless.

She did not want to remember.

Fires burning, women screaming, the press of bodies seizing her, using her. A falling brand, a crashing beam that killed the last of the guerillas whose sweaty body claimed her. Blood and brains splashed her face. There was smoke and fire and wild shouting. The sea glinted, far away.

“Shoot her,” someone said. “Leave no one alive.”

She saw the guns, the grinning faces. She did not care. Father was dead, mother was dead, all were like grotesque, ugly dolls, broken and bloody, sprawled in the compound dust.

He saved her.

Who?

She did not want to remember.

Images moved like phantoms across the back of her mind. She touched her scalp above the left ear. Yes, the scar was still there, where the executioner’s bullet had missed crashing through her skull. She had survived.

The old man’s face grinned, his babbling was crazy. He wax Chinese, old and filthy, and there was a single dark room with a crack in the wall, and through the crack she could see the little stream and beyond, far below the cliff, the shining sea. The old man kept her alive, and used her in indescribable and filthy ways. How long had it been? He was crazy, and he had picked her up after they left her for dead. He mumbled prayers in mockery of Father Jacques Dallinger, who was killed at the mission. He pantomimed ritual and prayer in his grotesque insanity, assuming Pere Jacques’ identity. And he violated her child’s body in every conceivable abnormal way.

Pere Jacques.

She had been his prisoner.

Until Alexi came along.

Where was this place, this hut, this cliff by the shining sea?

But this she could not remember.

A thin, watery sun shone down on Miyako at noon. Overhead, the clouds moved in an enormous, circular pattern, twisting from one arc of the horizon to the other. The sea was like slate, capped with white beyond the harbor. All of the fishing boats were moored inside the stone breakwater, the crews uncertain about the weather. They knew the meaning of a typhoon warning. The air held in it the unnatural warmth of winds driven up by violence from the South China Sea.

Durell walked with Nadja on the beach, toward a rocky promontory not far from the house. Tagashi was away, working on the logs and code books seized from Omaru’s trawler. Their own boat was ready and waiting.

The village seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the storm to strike. Yet it might not come for days, according to the weather forecasts. Durell felt impatient to be moving, to put the operation into its last phase. He looked quietly at the girl.

“You don't mind walking? I though! you’d feel better in the air.”

“Am I still a prisoner?”

“In custody, let’s say. Unofficially."

“I have nowhere else to go. No place that is safe from Omaru and that woman." Nadja shuddered. Her voice was pitched low, and she sounded forlorn. Thank you for helping me last night. I wish I could return it. But I cannot help you, you know. I am sorry.”

Her pale eyes were like amber, reflecting the unnatural daylight. In the warm wind, her silver-blonde hair blew loosely about her throat and cheeks. The bruises on her face had darkened somewhat, and she walked carefully and slowly. They came to a narrow defile between the black rocks on the beach, and the path was uncertain, rubbly underfoot. Nadja gasped as she stepped on a loose pebble and her weight came down hard on Durell’s supporting arm.