Assignment — Stella Marni (10 page)

"Innocent, yes," Durell agreed.

"You were fond of this man Art?"

"Very fond of him."

"And that is why you are helping me? To get the man who killed him?"

"Art isn't dead yet. He may die tonight, perhaps he's dead right now, but there's a faint chance he may pull through."

She shivered. "Do not look at me like that, please. It is frightening."

"I can't help it. I hate people who prey on the hopes and fears and lives of others, who make trade in torment, who have lost so much contact with humanity that other human beings represent only so much merchandise from which a profit can be wrung." He stood up restlessly and walked away from her. This woman, he thought. She was too disturbing in her troubled beauty to remain near for very long. She made him want to take her in his arms and somehow comfort her. Looking down at her from the fireplace, he said: "Frank was very interested in something he called the New American Society."

"Oh, that. Yes. But it is an innocent organization, I am sure. I belong to it myself. So did Papa. It is only a social club for people like Papa and me, where we can express a little nostalgia for the old times, before the war."

"You were only a child before the war," Durell said.

"I only went there because of Papa. He enjoyed it so. It is nothing."

"But Frank mentioned it. Perhaps I should start there to look for your father."

there was always somebody there, Stella said. The club was licensed to serve food and liquor, and you could find some of the elderly members there at all hours, from breakfast time on. It was a private house in Greenwich Village, near Sheridan Square, and there were even sleeping quarters available for new arrivals from overseas or for regular members who wished to stay overnight. Stella described the place without much interest. The heat of the fireplace and the snugness of their temporary safety made her eyes look sleepy. Now and then she put her head back and closed them for long moments, and finally Durell got up and searched the cottage for bedding. But there were no blankets in any of the closets, and away from the area about the fireplace in the living room, the chill clamminess of the November night was penetrating. When he came back he found Stella asleep on the couch in front of the fire.

There was a look of touching innocence about her as she lay curled under his topcoat He stood looking down at her, frowning, for a long time. It was quiet in the cottage now, and the wind had died, and there was only the still, sullen roar of the combers breaking on the beach outside. Stella slept like a child, except, he told himself, she was not a child, but a woman, and a very disturbing woman. There was perfection in the arch of her brows, in the way her dark lashes made tiny delicate fans against the damask of her cheeks. Her lips were parted, soft and moist. He watched her breasts rise and fall with her easy breathing.

And then she suddenly started and made a whimpering sound and cried out in words he could not understand. She was dreaming, and it was not a pleasant dream. He saw her mouth change from the innocence of a child's to twisting torment and anguish. He did not waken her. He put more driftwood on the fire, moving silently, and then sat down in a chair nearby.

He did not expect to sleep himself. He took his gun and put it on a small table within reach and turned out the oil lamp. The firelight cast leaping shadows through the room he had appropriated.

For the first time in hours he thought of Dickinson McFee. He did not know how far McFee would back him in what he had done. He did not minimize the seriousness of his conflict with Blossom. Blossom swung a lot of weight, and his superiors would be justified in making an issue of his actions tonight. McFee might just let him hang by the thumbs, having clearly warned him he was on his own. Whatever happened, Durell thought, it had better come out all right or he would be back in Bayou Peche Rouge — if not in a federal pen — dealing poker hands for Andy Ti-Bo in the back room of the Bayou Rose Cafe.

All at once, he slept.

He slept lightly, not dreaming, but with one part of his mind aware of the sounds of the surf and the dying crackle of the fire, alert for the sound of an approaching car. He was not sure what time it was when Stella suddenly screamed.

He was on his feet, the gun in his hand. The room was almost dark, with only the dying embers of the driftwood fire making a dim ruddy glow throughout the room. Dawn had not yet come. He looked first at Stella on the couch and saw her sitting bolt upright hugging herself, hands crossed and holding her shoulders, her face white with terror.

She stared at him without recognition.

"Stella, what is it?"

"Who — I don't know — I was frightened."

She shuddered violently. He listened for sounds of danger, but there was nothing, and he put down the gun and crossed the room to her. The air was cold and damp again. She shrank away violently from his touch. "Don't!"

"You had a nightmare," he said quietly.

"Did I? I... I don't remember. I thought..." Her mouth shook. She covered her face with her hands. "I am sorry," she whispered. "I do remember. All of it. It comes back to me now and then."

"What comes back, Stella?"

"I've never told anybody."

He forced her hands away from her face by gripping her wrists. Her eyes stared beyond him into some unimaginable horror. "Tell me," he said.

"It is too ugly. You would hate me."

"Try me," he urged.

"I am foolish," she breathed. "H-hold me for a moment Please. I have the most horrible feeling. As if I am all alone. All alone in the world."

"No," he said. "You're not alone, Stella."

When she started to speak after a moment, it was again as if a mask slipped, but this time he saw no ruthless core of hard ambition revealed under her beauty.

"I was fourteen when the Russians entered Budapest," she began quietly. "Nobody knows what happened to me then. I never told anyone. Not even Papa. I was pretty, attractive even then, a child in a woman's body. They — they caught me one night — three drunken ones, like beasts — in an alley near the apartment where Papa and I lived. Near the river. The beautiful Danube." Her voice was harsh, bitter. "It did not run blue, it ran red with blood. And some of it was mine when those drunken soldiers forced me to — forced me..." She paused, her body in the grip of great shudders as Durell held her. "I never told anyone. But that was the night I swore my oath. I developed an ambition to be the one in power, safe and secure, not the terrified little girl in a dark alley, with those monsters tearing at my dress, breathing their drunken breath all over me." She paused, swallowed. "I decided I would learn English, get away, come to America. Everything I was, all that was in me, I bent to that ambition. And I thought I knew how to accomplish it. I would use men, men who wanted me, men who fell in love with met And I did. I did. Again and again. And yet — something happened to me that night. Something froze inside me. I could not love in return. The act itself, the giving of love — it was impossible for me. It still is. I can never be — I can never forget how it was with those Russians. And to use men for my own purpose — it is like a narcotic with me still. With poor Frank Greenwald, with Harry Blossom. With Frank, I wanted to love him back, to repay him, to be kind and gentle with him — but when he touched me, something inside me crawled, like cold snakes, all through me. I couldn't. I couldn't." She stirred in Durell's arms. "Don't look at me. You can let me go now. I know you want to. Now you know the truth about me, you must consider me a vile, unnatural thing."

"No," he said gently. "No."

She burrowed against him, her arms around him in unexpected violence. Her body shook. His coat, which had covered her, slid to the floor, unheeded. As he held her he felt a great wave of pity for her lost childhood, lost girlhood, forsaken womanhood. Her scented hair brushed his face. He felt the pressure of her body against his and heard the sobs that shook her. He murmured something and kissed her, not meaning to kiss her, but doing it, anyway. Her arms tightened about him.

"Am I such a monster?" she asked frantically. "Do you hate me? I want to die. I know I shouldn't think about it, but I cannot stand it. I have tried and tried, wanting to be calm. But there was nobody I could turn to, no one to trust. Poor Frank was no help. And he was killed because of me. I cannot bear to think about it. It was all my fault. It is no excuse that one is the product of the world we live in. My fault..."

"No," Durell said.

"And you will be killed, too. I know it. I hold you and I know you will soon be dead. And you are the only man, the first man who — who makes me feel as if there might be hope, a chance."

"Look at me. Stella," Durell said.

"No. No, I don't want you to see my face."

"Look at me." he said again.

"Help me," she whispered. "Help me."

He forced her hands down again and drew her head back, tilting her chin until he could see her eyes. Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her gaze searched his with a frantic despair, and then he kissed her again and her lips clung to his and he held her in the dimness of the dying fire, with the sound of the ocean's surf all around, until she stopped trembling with her fear, and then, when he kissed her again, something else took the place of her dark terrors.

"Sam?"

"Yes, Stella."

"I want you. Take me. Please take me. I want to try. If I could forget how it was in Budapest — Could you be gentle? I have hated men for so long, and yet I know it is a sickness with mc. in my heart..."

They slid to the floor together, before the fire. Her body writhed in his arms, desperate, frantically trying. He did not know what made him open his eyes to look at her when he kissed her once more. Her eyes were open, too, enormous, studying him, and there was something cold and hard and detached in their green depths, like a flame of ice, leaping and exultant...

Durell drove into New York at ten o'clock in the morning and turned north in his rented Chevy from the Brooklyn Bridge to thread his way to Washington Square. The day was overcast, threatening more rain, or perhaps snow. He was not sure if Blossom knew about his rented car, but none of the prowl cars he passed paid any attention to him.

He used a pay phone in a drugstore to call the hospital about Art Greenwald, but Art's condition was unchanged. He was still in a coma. The supervisor asked his name and he did not hesitate to give it.

"I have a message for you, Mr. Durell. You are to call a Mr. Isotti at the Crescent-Plaza at once."

"Thank you."

McFee hadn't wasted time sending Isotti into town to help. Durell was not sure he wanted help at this moment, and before he made his second call he bought several newspapers and drank a cup of coffee while he studied them. There was nothing at all in the
Times
about the murder of Frank Greenwald, and only a small item about it in the
Daily News,
which surprised him until he recognized the censoring touch of Blossom's district office. Stella Marni was not mentioned in connection with the murder, but her picture was in the center fold, a flash shot taken of her yesterday at the Foley Square courthouse when she had testified before Senator Hubert's committee that she wanted to leave America, preferring her homeland to New York. Durell studied her photograph carefully, trying to reconcile this image of a cool, defiant woman with the frightened, lovely girl he had left only an hour ago. The two images refused to merge into one, and he gave it up to find a cab and ride uptown to Isotti's hotel.

Tony Isotti was a slim dark man, young for the job he was doing, but dedicated to it more than most. He had fallen in love with a girl in Prague during a mission for K Section last year, and she had disappeared without a trace. He blamed himself for her disappearance. He was sure she was dead because of her association with him and because it was probably known in MGB headquarters in Moscow by now who he had been and what he had accomplished. Only Isotti's eyes gave him away; they were cold and black and flat and eternally angry. He was dangerous now, rated as a little too hotheaded for most assignments, but competent with gun, knife, or judo, a swift and deadly killer.

Now as he sat in the hotel lobby he looked like a Yale man waiting for a date, dressed in checked jacket and dark slacks, with a solid-color gray vest, his thick black hair neatly brushed. He stood up and shook hands with Durell. "Hello, Sam. You didn't check back at your hotel, so I left word around for you. All right?"

"Fine. What did McFee tell you?"

"To do anything that needs doing."

"It's spadework, at this moment Routine digging."

"Whatever you say. You look beat. A rough night?"

"It could have been worse," Durell said. He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. He felt a quick urgency to make better use of the time that was chipping away at Stella's safety. "I'm going to check on an organization called the New American Society, personally. Meanwhile, you tackle it from the research side. Find out who organized it, get a membership list, the names of officers and philanthropic sponsors, if any — everything about them."

"Hell, that's library work." Isotti looked disappointed.

"Sometimes it pays off. I'll check back here with you later in the afternoon."

"McFee said this might be a rough one. I didn't figure on sitting on my haunches totting up dossiers." He grinned suddenly, but his flat eyes were as bleak and cold as the gray November light "They say at K Section that you get the wild and woolly ones, Sam. I was delighted when the little man said I was to work with you. I've got an ax of my own to grind in this thing, you know."

"Which is why you sit and do research. It may pay off better than using your fists."

Discipline asserted itself in Isotti's glum, quick nod. "Whatever you say. Set up a contact, huh?"