Assignment - Manchurian Doll (22 page)

“Is it hopeless, Durell?”

“I don’t know.”

“I am sorry about all this. My troubles should have remained my own. But you were the only man I trusted to bring Nadja over to me.”

“It’s not finished yet,” Durell said.

They were two of a kind, and Kaminov’s quick glance of assessment at the huddled, wet guards at their end of the bridge needed no words. They looked sullen, concerned only with their discomfort. Kaminov looked at Durell and nodded, almost imperceptibly. Durell turned to watch Omaru.

The fat man had moved to the other end of the bridge, holding Nadja with his gun at her back.

Durell knew that he and Kaminov might suddenly turn and surprise the guards and cut and run for it at this moment. He might even succeed in making it safely back to the
Okiku
. In his business, survival was paramount. Not every job was successful. You had to cut losses, estimate cost against disaster, eliminate all human emotion and frailty. His training demanded that he save himself first.

But he could not desert Nadja now.

He waited.

All the guards watched Omaru as the man put a tentative foot on the trembling planks of the bridge and then drew back.

“Durell!” he shouted.

Durell waited.

“The girl crosses with me. If I go, she goes. The girl will die with me, and my men will kill you.”

Durell looked at the other’s massive shape across the dark chasm of rushing water. The girl waited quietly.

“Come ahead,” he said, “unless you are a coward in front of your own men.”

His remark stung Omaru’s pride. The man abruptly thrust the girl before him and stepped onto the bridge.

There came a grinding shock as the weakened timbers twisted under his enormous weight. The girl lurched oil balance and caught herself on the bamboo rail and ran halfway across. Omaru shouted above the roar of the stream and lunged after her.

The bridge collapsed.

Durell was ready for it.

At the same moment, Kaminov took advantage of the guards’ attention to the bridge. Durell was aware of the swift, deadly lunge of the big Russian. He heard the nearest guard scream, and the man’s rifle went off, and another shot cracked thinly against the wind.

But he had no time to help Kaminov. He saw the first twisting surrender of the main timbers of the bridge to the boiling water below, and Durell jumped for Nadja. The bridge seemed to lift up on edge, tilting wildly, and shuddered under the blows of the flood. Nadja cried out and he saw her extended hand and caught it, swung her hard to the left. Her feet scrabbled at the bank and slipped. Her weight jolted her from Durell’s grip. Spray blinded him. He heard her scream, and heard a series of sharp, deliberate shots from Kaminov’s direction. Durell did not turn. He dived along the bank as the entire bridge came up and folded over, the planks flapping as if built of paper and then coming apart as if exploded, disintegrating into individual components.

The girl clung to some brush on the bank, waist-deep in the roaring water that threatened to drag her away. Durell threw himself flat and seized one arm. Her long hair streamed in pale splendor in the wind. There was a sudden burst of automatic fire, and then Kaminov hurled himself to the bank and caught the girl’s other arm. There was no time for words. Together, they pulled her to safety. She collapsed, gasping. Her clothing was plastered to her body by the water. The moment he saw that Kaminov had a secure grip on her, Durell straightened to his feet. “The guards?” he rapped.

A look of cruelty flickered over the man’s face. “Eliminated. I got my hands on the first one’s gun. The others tried to fight back. One or two may have escaped—but they will be grateful only to keep running.”

Durell picked up Kaminov’s rifle, taken from one of the guards, and glanced at Omaru’s guards. One was wounded, groaning. Two were dead. He looked for Omaru.

The bridge was gone. Only the two abutments where the timbers had been pegged still stood. Water sprayed the bases. The planks had been swept downstream and over the edge.

But Omaru had saved himself. His strength must have been prodigious to haul himself bodily from the stream, and his speed had been enough to help him reach this side of the little chasm.

He rose out of the water like some primeval thing, huge and streaming, his shaven head gleaming in the faint light. He had lost his gun and the yellow slicker was torn from his body. Under it, he was half naked, stripped to the waist, and his huge chest and shoulders glistened as he came toward Durell.

The rain and wind died abruptly. The sound of it diminished like an express train moving down the jagged coast.

“Durell?” Omaru called. “Come, Durell. Come and settle what is between us.”

“You’re alone now, Omaru. You’ve lost your gun and your men.”

“The men were worthless. Fools and cowards. Let it be man to man, Durell. You have injured me grievously. We are enemies, and between us there can be only one more struggle. I shall kill you, Durell.”

Nadja cried out some kind of denial and warning to Durell, but he did not turn to look at her. It should be the way Omaru wanted it, he thought. Thanks to Kaminov, they had a little time. And he had a personal score to settle with this man.

Omaru moved toward him with ponderous deception. Once in his grip, Durell knew he could not survive. He moved back from the slippery bank of the stream. Thorny weeds grew here, with a growth of long, spiny vines. He made a note of them and waited.

Omaru feinted, a deceptively clumsy lunge that took him to the left, his arms wide, his chest and belly exposed invitingly. Durell refused the bait. The fat man laughed and turned and Durell turned with him, his back to Kaminov and the girl. He did not want them to interfere. He wanted Omaru for himself.

“Are you afraid of me, Durell?” the big man taunted. I will crush the life out of you, squeeze you until your bones splinter, until your eyes burst like grapes from your head.”

“You talk too much,” Durell said.

Omaru grunted and stepped in fast. His right arm fell, slashing, like the limb of a broken tree. Durell ducked and felt the ponderous weight drop on his shoulder and then he knew shock as Omaru’s left arm, even faster, suddenly seized his wrist and spun him violently in a half circle and then sucked him in toward him. Durell’s feet slipped on the wet earth and he drummed two blows into the man’s big belly. It was like hammering at concrete. He felt Omaru’s breath explode in his face and his body was lifted from the ground in the man’s violent, sweeping grip. The dark night whirled around him. One arm was pinned to his side in the circle of Omaru’s arm. The other was released when the fat man applied the squeeze.

Durell heaved, tried to slide down and out of the constriction, failed, tried again, failed again, and heard a roaring in his ears that was not made by the storm. He could not breathe.

Omaru laughed.

Durell dug into the folds of flesh under the man’s chin with his free hand, seeking the jugular, but Omaru pulled in his head like a giant turtle and there was no opening. He tried to bring a knee up, but he was held too closely for that. He felt a popping in the sinews of his chest and shoulders as Omaru increased his effort. There was not much time left. He smashed at the man’s shaven head with his free hand, but it was like hitting stone. He thought he heard Nadja cry out, but he wasn’t sure. Then he managed to get one foot hooked behind Omaru’s ankle and he surged to the right, trying to throw the man off balance. He might as well have tried to uproot a tree.

Now the ache in his lungs and chest was a scream of anguish. Only seconds remained. There seemed no way to reach a vital spot in the man through the layers of fat and muscle that girdled his body.

He heaved convulsively once more, and Omaru lifted him and swung him about toward the bank of the stream—and slipped and staggered. For a moment it seemed as if the big man would keep his grip. And then Durell felt a slight release and he let himself go instantly, dropping downward out of the loop of those monstrous arms.

It gained only a small respite. Omaru fell on him like a pile-driver, slamming him down into the wet, slippery earth. Durell wriggled aside, reached out and closed his fingers on the thorny stem of a dark, flailing bush. Instantly he whipped the vine around the man’s naked head and tightened it with two quick loops around Omaru’s thick throat. Omaru tried to pull his head back, but it was too late. The wiry branch caught under his chin and his effort to retreat only tightened it.

Omaru raised himself a few inches and dropped his weight with a crushing thud on Durell’s body. Durell clung to the thorny vine. Its leaves lashed his face and exuded a faint, pungent odor. Omaru made a thin choking noise and tried again to pull away, rolling aside to release Durell from his weight. Durell almost let him go. Instead, he lashed the vine around his wrist for a better grip. Omaru made a strangling noise and lurched to his feet like a tethered, stampeding animal. He dragged Durell up with him. Durell braced with the vine taut, and the other man stood with his ponderous legs apart and clawed at his throat. His massive arms lashed out wildly at Durell. Each blow was like a battering ram, shaking his body, jarring him to his feet. He held on. The vine slipped slightly and the thorns dug into his flesh and he felt the warmth of blood on his wrist.

Omaru suddenly sagged to his knees.

His big arms lifted in an odd gesture of supplication. Durell stood braced, holding the double loop tightly around the thick throat. Then Omaru suddenly toppled to one side and his body slid down into the gushing torrent of the stream.

Durell could not hold the weight any longer. The vine was uprooted, torn from his grip. He glimpsed the other’s wild, congested face in the darkness, and then it vanished, caught in the strength of the flood. For a moment Durell thought he heard Omaru crying something in a thin voice.

And then he was gone.

They walked back slowly, making their way down the brushy mountainside below the place where the hut had been. The wind came and went. More rain fell, but it lacked the violence of the past two hours. The sky was lighter, and now and then the clouds tore apart and yielded a glimpse of stars and a thin, pale moon through their shredded fragments.

It took forty minutes to reach the beach, and then another hour to make their way along the shore, picking out a path among the rocks and around an occasional fisherman’s hut. Kaminov moved slowly, limping, supported gently by Nadja. Now and then they stopped to rest.

They did not talk much. All their energy had to be saved for moving forward, before the night ended.

Durell lay on his back on the damp sand, watching the dark clouds reel overhead, and Nadja sat down beside him. He ached in every bone and muscle. With Omaru dead, however, there was no longer any liaison between his outfit and the Chinese coastal troops. As confusion spread wider and wider, they might, with luck, slip through to the rendezvous point. The surf was thunderous against the rocky beach, however, and he had little hope that Tagashi and the
Okiku
had survived the storm.

Nadja touched him and he looked at her.

“The storm passes,” she said quietly.

“Are you all right?”

“Everything is better for me, thanks to you.”

“I’m glad. And Alexi?”

“It’s extraordinary. He is different. He was so quick, so ferocious with Omaru’s men. He saved us, and yet—he is not strong, as he used to be.”

“He’s been through too much,” Durell said.

“Yes. And what is different is that he needs me now, not the other way around, as it used to be. He once saved my life and reason, and now he—he needs me. And he looks at me as if I, too, am different.” She paused and pushed up her long, pale hair, fastening the knot at the nape of her neck. It was a feminine gesture, unlike her. Durell could not see her face in the shadows. She looked briefly at the Russian, who sat a little apart from them, his back against a rock that jutted up from the dark sand. Her voice softened. “I am not sorry about anything. I would not change anything now.”

“I’m glad,” Durell said.

She turned her face toward him and he saw her gray eyes shining oddly. “Do you think we will get by the coastal guards? Will we make it to the rubber boat?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

“For a little while, I did not care if we succeeded or not. I was ready to die. But now—everything is different. We must not fail now.”

He looked at his watch. The dial glowed in the dark. It was past three o’clock in the morning. The wind that blew from the sea came from a different quarter now, and the touch of it was cold, without the unhealthy and unnatural warmth of the past few hours. He saw Nadja shiver slightly in her wet clothing and he stood up.

“We only have a few hours before dawn,” he said.

“I know. Whatever happens, I want you to know that I—I am grateful. For everything.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

Her lips were cool.

They reached the rubber boat an hour later. Nothing had disturbed it. It was still safely hidden in the little cove that Nadja had directed him to when they first arrived. Toward the river mouth and the village of Ospesko the sky was pierced by wavering searchlights. Now and then they heard military trucks on the highway, farther inland. But there were no patrols on this beach, and it was clear that Omaru’s followers had been demoralized and scattered by Omaru’s death. And the Chinese, perhaps from lack of information from their suspicious Russian allies, were not making too thorough a search for them.

Durell walked over to Kaminov on the beach. The Russian had been silent and distant through the dangerous trek along the shore. He stood looking at the dark sea, streaked by heavy combers that raced and smoked out of the night. As Durell neared, he turned and held out his hand.

“We have not had time to speak before,” he said. “I knew I could trust you to come for me, Durell.”

“You didn’t make it easy, Alexi,” Durell said.

“Because of Nadja? But I would not go anywhere without her.”

“Yes. She still needs you, you know. But it may help her more to let her think you need her now, in turn.”