Assignment - Mara Tirana (8 page)

Adam gritted his teeth. A thin chill of sweat covered him. The hay in which he sprawled thrust needle probes against his neck and legs. There was a curious wet warmth on his injured leg, and a new alarm overcame his disgust and frantic helplessness. At the same moment, he heard the soft sound of something dropping through the chinks in the rough planks of the hayloft. He wanted to turn his head to look at his leg, but he didn’t dare move. It was bleeding again, and the blood was dripping through the planks to the floor below the hayloft. Even as he realized this, he heard a soft spattering of drops, a sudden increase of the flow. He held his breath.

Under him, it was all over. The act had been like that of an animal, quick and implacable, a movement of inflamed lust guttering out now in the man’s sigh, in the girl’s whimper. Adam heard Lissa reach for her clothing again. The man stood up. Adam could see him now. His face looked swollen and replete, and yet dissatisfied.

“Well, Lissa,” he said thickly. “I gave you medicine and antibiotics, but you are not grateful at all, are you?”

“I was. Believe me, I was.”

“You did not show it. I do not apologize for this.”

“I expect none,” she whispered. “Are you finished with me now?”

“I only want to warn you that there will be trouble in the neighborhood soon, and it would be best if you stayed here.”

“Trouble?”

“There’s something up in the whole area around here. A lot of official excitement. There’s talk of a dragnet through the mountains.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s official business, Lissa.” The man grinned. He had a steel tooth in his mouth that flashed in the sunlight. He patted her cheek possessively. Adam could not see the girl’s face. She stood before the big man in her torn clothing as if she had been broken. “Stay here with your parents for a day or two. I’ll be back. It would be best if no one remembers you or Giurgiu for now, eh? Here you are safe, as long as you cooperate. Understand?”

“Yes. I understand,” she whispered thinly.

He laughed. “I expected a knife in my back, you know that, Lissa? I expected more fire from you.”

“The knife is in the house,” she whispered.

“For next time?” he grinned. Then his face hardened. “Next time I shall expect you to behave a little better, eh? I shall insist on it. There was no pleasure in having you so unwillingly.”

“Yes, Petar Medjan,” she whispered.

“Everything is as usual here now, is it not? You haven’t seen any strangers around?”

“No one comes to Zara Dagh,” she said, shrugging. “Well. . .”

There came another faint pattering of blood droplets on the floor under the hayloft. Adam gritted his teeth. He knew the girl had heard the sounds now, and she moved quickly, turning through the doorway so that Medjan followed her, turning out of the barn. But then the man halted and looked back and stared hard at the cow in its stall.

“Lissa. . . ”

“I am tired,” she said. “I will see you again. Soon.”

“And it will be different?”

“Yes. Quite different.”

They walked away.

Adam waited for several moments until he could no longer hear the crunch of boots on the ground. Then he turned and looked at his leg. It was covered with blood. He felt a quick panic, watching the dark puddle that spread on the floor of the hayloft, running into the crack between the planks. He felt as if he couldn’t stay here in this place a moment longer. He was ashamed of his manhood, for what he had helplessly witnessed. Without thinking further, shivering and sweating all at the same time, he pulled himself up and dragged himself to the ladder.

He had to get away from here. He couldn’t face Lissa again. And Medjan was not stupid. Adam had the impression that the lieutenant was smarter than Lissa gave him credit for. But more than that, he could not stay and bring more grief to these people.

They were guilty of nothing more than trying to survive. Because of the one son, Giurgiu, who had risen to power and took a wrong step somewhere that ended in his execution, they lived like this, alone and in fear, outcasts at the mercy of Medjan’s whims. He could not endanger them any more. It wasn’t fair to them.

Carefully, slowly, he climbed down the ladder, letting his wounded leg dangle free. His thigh was wet and warm with the blood from his injury. No matter. He could bandage it himself. Pausing, he rested his weight on it, felt the pain again, bit his lip against it, and limped to the barn door. The girl and Medjan were gone out of sight beyond the stone hut. Nearby, the pine woods began, dropping down a slope into a ravine where he could see only the treetops. Water gushed and chattered somewhere down there. He started that way.

He would find the capsule himself, he decided, recover the instruments that weren’t damaged and stay there until he was better, and could think of taking the next step toward freedom. The capsule couldn’t be too far away. He would find some vantage point and search the mountains for a trace of its landing spot, he decided.

His breath made small plumes of vapor in the chill mountain air. He reached the pines with a quick, hobbling rush that left him staggering, clinging to a tree for support. His head hung down; his mouth was open. He had left a small trail of blood behind him. He looked at the hut, and his vision blurred, and he shook his head, but his eyes still refused to cooperate with his will. He did not have much strength. Nor was there much time. Turning, he went deeper into the woods. He did not go far.

A stone moved underfoot, and he felt himself falling, and his injured leg banged against something and the pain leaped up like something screaming inside him. A small cry escaped him. He saw he had come abruptly to the edge of the ravine, and the wall of the gorge was a steep, rocky drop. He staggered, fell to his knees, and tried to stop himself. But he could not hang on. For an instant he hung dizzyingly between earth and sky, with the wind in the pines like the labored sound of his breathing. His fingers scrabbled desperately at the earth, clawed at air—

And he fell.

In Vienna, hours later, the telephone rang again.

Durell opened his eyes. The ceiling light in his room at the Bristol still shone, expanding and contracting with luminous colored rings. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked up again. That was better. His gaze sharpened and moved sidewise and up again.

The telephone rang once more.

He sat up, felt an ache in the back of his neck and a stab of pain when he put his weight on his right arm. He drew in a sharp whistling breath and forced himself up on his feet, to sway drunkenly in the middle of the room.

Everything was quiet. The corridor door was closed. The blonde girl, Mara Tirana, and the MVD man, Kopa, were gone.

He was lucky to be alive, he thought.

Why hadn’t Kopa taken a few extra moments to shoot him? It was one of the KGB objectives, Durell knew. Or at least, Kopa could have forced, or tried to force, some answers from him. Why hadn’t he finished the job?

Perhaps the telephone had frightened them off. It kept ringing, reaching for him with insistent shrillness, refusing to let him sit down to rest and ease his swimming head. He walked slowly to the disheveled desk and picked it up, but it fell from his fingers and he had to stoop carefully to retrieve it.

“Yes?”

“Herr Durell?” It was Otto. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I don’t know why. They had me cold, a moment ago—”

“I had a man in the room next to you.” Otto sounded apologetic. “Forgive me, I thought it was wise. He had orders to shout for the police if there was any sign of a disturbance in your room.”

“Where is your man now?”

“Gone after Kopa and the girl. But I’m afraid they both got away. Still, he did his job, no? He just called on another phone—from a cafe on the Marianenstrasse—a schnapps-drinkers joint. Kopa and the girl fled from your room. He looked at you, but only enough to determine you were not dead. Then he went after them. But he thinks he lost them.”

“All right,” Durell said. “Can you get me information on those two? I made a mistake about them. I thought they were just from the surveillance arm of the KGB—topol’-shchiki, foot-sloggers. But Kopa must be a code name. Have you got anything on him or the girl, Mara Tirana?”

“I can have it for you. Herr Durell, I thought you should know—” Then Otto paused. “Are you sure you are all right?”

“I’m alone with a headache. What is it?

“Your pardon. I was only being careful. But Harry Hammett is gone. He met Fraulein Padgett and took her with him.”

Durell drew in a sharp, painful breath. “Where?”

“To the rendezvous. I thought you should know.” “Thank you.” Durell scowled, shook his head. “Listen, can you take me to the rendezvous point?”

“Well, I—yes, I can. I think you should go. It is not right for Hammett to take the girl with him. She is only to bring the car back, you understand—this is what Herr Hammett tells me. But she does not belong in the picture and I could not agree, so I thought to tell you.”

“Where can we meet?”

Otto coughed apologetically in the telephone. “I did more. There was an urgent call from Washington about you. You are to speak to General Dickinson McFee at once. The phones here in my safe house are absolutely secure. You had better come here.”

“All right,” Durell said. “In ten minutes.”    

“Be most careful, please. There may be more
topol'-shchiki
on surveillance duty at the hotel.”

“I'll watch it.”

“Good. I shall be waiting for you.”

Durell dropped the French phone on its delicate hooks and drew a deep breath. The room swung in an unsteady circle around him. He shook his head and walked into the bathroom, stripped off his shirt and tie, and ran cold water in the basin, where he had plunged his head under the reviving tap, he felt better. He would have liked a drink, but he had no liquor in the room. He stared at himself in the mirror and saw an unfamiliar pallor in his lean face, a look of alarm that turned his blue eyes dark, almost black. He looked dangerous. He ran cold water methodically over his wrists, looked at his injured elbow and decided it was nothing more than a deep bruise. Dressed again, he searched for the gun that Kopa had knocked from his hand.

It was under the bed, where it had fallen when he lost it. Apparently Otto’s man in the next room had raised such a loud alarm that Kopa hadn’t had time to retrieve it.

He looked at his watch. It was five after ten.

He took every precaution when he left the hotel, doubling and redoubling on his trail to Otto’s “safe house.” He used the stairway instead of the elevator, walked through the kitchen into the back street, crossed over behind the huge Opera House, and mingled with a crowd in front of a cinema. He was not unaware of the danger of assassination now. But his maneuvers were successful. By the time he reached the town house at Steubenstrasse 19, he knew he had not been followed.

Otto quickly let him in. His short-cropped gray hair looked almost white against his pink face and gold-rimmed spectacles. From a vest pocket over his small paunch he took out a folded, typewritten sheet of paper. “You -were not followed, Herr Durell?”

“I was careful. What have you got there?”

“The data on Kopa and Mara Tirana. Do you want it now?”

Durell nodded and took the dossiers from the Austrian. There was a full summary on the man known as Kopa. As he suspected, Kopa was the code name for a Colonel Pavel Yudinov, of the KGB branch of State Security. On the neatly typed sheet was a typical history of such a man: born in 1921, in a remote Ukrainian village, son of peasants who fortunately escaped the classification of “kulaks,” he had been a member of the Young Pioneers and then a Komsomolets until the war, when he became a junior lieutenant political officer assigned to a mortar brigade of the 198th Division. His war record indicated three wounds, two received in the desperate battles before Moscow against the invading Nazis, another at Stalingrad. Party Card No. 4234498, dated May 10, 1946. After the war he was promoted to senior lieutenant and transferred to Moscow to the Personnel Directorate of the KGB, trained at the SMERSH Counter-Intelligence School on Stanislavskaya Street in Moscow, advanced to major in the Second Main Directorate of the Security Office Committee, which dealt with foreign intelligence. From there he had been posted to East Berlin, did a brief tour of duty in London, and another in Vienna in the Spetsburo. No notations had been made on the dossier for the past year, however, except that of his promotion to colonel.

There was one further brief note: “This man is known to have killed two prisoners held for interrogation with one blow of his fist. His nickname among associates is The Sledge.”

Durell looked up at Otto’s pale face.

“This is no ordinary case-officer in the KGB, Otto. Not a usual foot-slogger.”

“No,” Otto said. “He is too important for that.” Durell nodded. “What about the girl?”

There was much less on Mara Tirana. Age 26, bom in Budapest, arrested in the uprising of the Hungarians and transported for a three-month term in the MVD Lefortovo Prison. There was no note about a younger brother named MiMly, but this did not necessarily mean he did not exist. There was a questioned statement about possible training at SMERSH Headquarters, a suggestion that she had been inducted for foreign espionage in the KGB as a result of personal blackmail, not an unusual method for recruiting agents. There was another note that she had been assigned routine case work in Paris under “Kopa.” And nothing more.

Durell returned the dossiers, feeling dissatisfied and more worried about Deirdre than before.

From a room nearby in Otto Hoffner’s house a telephone rang with a peculiar note, and Otto started.

“It is the scramble phone. Washington. It will be for you, Herr Durell.”

“I’ll take it now. Get ready to go as soon as I’m through, Otto.”

“Yes, Herr Durell.”

It was early evening in Washington. General Dickinson McFee’s voice was sharp and crackly, with that slight pause between sentences and words while the electronic coder worked to distort his words.