Assignment — Stella Marni (14 page)

Control returned swiftly now as the body recovered from the neural shock. The man sat up, coughing, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He sneezed three or four times and started a nosebleed and he was busy with a handkerchief for several moments. Then he looked up and saw Durell through running eyes and shook his head and reached into his pocket abruptly.

"I have it,
tovarich,"
Durell said. "Take it easy."

The other's voice was hoarse as he stared at his gun in Durell's hand. "Who are you? By what right do you attack me?"

"Shut up." Durell said. "Just listen."

"I demand..."

«I warn you to keep quiet. Raise your voice, and you will be a dead man shouting into emptiness. Do you understand?"

The officer swallowed, subsided, scrunched back until he sat with his shoulders against the bulkhead. It was hot in the cabin. The mate was a man in his middle thirties, partly bald, with a heavy musculature and malignant black eyes. He breathed, quickly and lightly through his wide, partly opened mouth. His physique and general condition had to be remarkable to permit this quick recovery from Durell's attack. Durell suddenly reached across and grabbed the man's left hand and turned the palm edgewise and saw the hard, horned ridge developed only by judo.

He spoke with satisfaction. "You're not Polish. You don't get calluses like that handling a ship. You're MGB."

"I will answer nothing," the man said huskily.

"You will tell me about your passengers."

"We carry no passengers."

"Only one is aboard now. Where is he?"

"You are wasting your breath. I do not understand you. I warn you, return my gun. I shall lodge a complaint with the authorities. This vessel is Polish territory, and you have violated..."

"This vessel is in New York Harbor and subject to the laws governing all alien vessels who enter it. Where is Albert Marni?" Durell asked sharply.

The man licked fat lips. "Who?"

"You understand me. Albert Marni. The old man. Where is he?"

"I do not know what you are talking about."

Durell stood up. He put the gun down on the bunk deliberately and he stood before the man sitting on the deck with his bands at his sides.

"Friend, you were wailing for me. Which means you knew I was coming. If you were just an ordinary officer aboard, it could have been an accident. But you're not. You're in political control here. Maybe you don't trust your full complement of officers aboard, but as an MGB agent, you're not entirely alone in knowing why I'm here. You have a few trusted men aboard with you. And that means time is running out for me. They will be expecting your report on the bridge at this moment. I figure I have perhaps two minutes before they start wondering about you up there, another minute or two for them to start worrying. Maybe five minutes in all before they come looking for us. Unless you answer my question, they're going to find you dead. Do you understand that?"

"You do not frighten me," the mate said harshly. His mouth opened wider and Durell saw he was going to yell. He hit the man once, chopped again, and the mate's shout changed to a strangled scream that died in his battered throat. He pitched forward, twitching, and lay still.

Durell stood quietly listening. There was no alarm. The shouts of the longshoremen and the rumble of machinery in the ship's hold had effectively drowned out the single cry of the MGB agent.

Quickly he dragged the limp body to the tiny water closet, crammed the man inside in a sitting position, and slammed the narrow louvered door shut. Then he stepped into the corridor again, a swift and silent shadow opening and closing the cabin doors on this side of the dining saloon. Each stateroom was empty. He went back across the saloon, checked the four forward cabins. Empty. No sign of Albert Marni.

It could have been a false lead, but he did not think so. Not with the MGB man waiting for him.

A narrow ladder led to the officers' quarters, aft of the bridge. Durell climbed it swiftly, aware of time running out too fast. The mate would not be the only Soviet agent aboard this Polish freighter. There would be at least one other, probably two, and certainly the captain would be considered a sound security risk by the other side. He had two minutes left, three at the most.

He found Albert Marni in the captain's cabin.

The captain's name was Grozni, according to the small metal plate on the door. Albert Marni sat on a bunk with a chess set of finely carved Indian ivory on a board on his lap, and Captain Grozni, to judge by the braid on his blue uniform, sat opposite him with his left hand poised to make a move. The captain's right hand held a long-barreled pistol. It was pointed at Durell. The captain spoke English with an Oxford accent.

"Come in, sir. Shut the door. We have been expecting you."

Durell saw the panic and dismay in old Albert Marni's eyes. His own gun was lowered, and the split second it would require to raise it to firing position would be enough for Grozni to shoot him dead. He stepped over the threshold and closed the cabin door behind him.

Albert Marni looked older than he had appeared in the picture Durell had seen of him in Stella's apartment yesterday. Older and more tired and infinitely frightened. He had a halo of white hair, a sad and gentle face, dark eyes lost in aged wrinkles. He spoke in a tired, whispering voice.

"I do not know who you are, sir, but they have been waiting for you for half an hour. You do not have a chance. They deliberately allowed you to come aboard."

"Hold your tongue, Marni," the captain said.

Grozni had a round, bearded face, a big head that was totally bald. He looked big and brutal, a man in his forties, with violence stamped on him by way of a crooked scar that ran down one cheek to be hidden by his beard. Yet there was curiosity in his eyes, and caution, and his deep voice was mild enough.

"Captain Grozni." Marni said, "this man can help us. You've told me how you feel..."

"Shut your mouth!" Grozni whispered.

In the moment that the captain's eyes swung back to the pitiful old man, Durell jumped across the room. He was direct in his violence, offering no quarter, expecting none. He slapped the gun out of Grozni's hand and heard it clatter against the steel bulkhead, and then he locked both hands together and brought down all the weight of chest and shoulders in a blow to the back of the captain's neck. The bearded man was built like a bull. He surged out of his chair and Durell's knee lifted and caught him under his jaw and lifted him, arms flailing, across the narrow cabin. Even then, Grozni did not go out entirely. He hit the bulkhead and slid down to a sitting position on the deck, eyes glazed, shaking his head and muttering to himself in Polish.

Durell picked up the captain's gun and turned to Albert Marni.

"Come along, Mr. Marni. We're getting out of here."

"But... I cannot go," the old man whispered.

"Get up. We'll make it fast."

"My legs, sir. I don't know who you are, but the captain has the keys, and I cannot move."

Durell pushed aside the chessboard, and the ivory pieces clattered to the floor. Heavy chains on the old man's thin ankles shackled him to the steel bunk. He swung around, stood over the dazed captain. Blood stained the captain's beard. "You have the keys?"

"You will regret this," Grozni muttered. "Mr. Marni stays aboard my ship. Ask him. He will not leave with you."

"The keys, Captain," Durell said dangerously.

"Ask him if he will go ashore with you!" Grozni shouted. "Ask him, you fool!"

Durell looked at the old man, saw the sickness and lack of hope. "Well?"

"The captain has not been bad to me. I stay here. I go home."

"Why?"

"I wish to," the old man muttered. "I want to go home."

"Then why did they chain you like an animal?"

"I do not know."

"Did they tell you anything about your daughter?"

Terror flared in the old, rheumy eyes. Marni's breath made a thin, papery sound in the silent cabin. "It has nothing to do with Stella."

"If they told you they are holding her as a prisoner, they are lying. I know where she is. I have Stella, and she is safe. Do you understand me? You don't have to stay aboard because you are afraid for her. They can't hurt her now. They don't even know where she is."

The old man's hands came up, his white hair in a wild halo around his seamed face, and he appeared to grow suddenly younger with unexpected hope. His hand clutched at Durell's arm. "This is the truth? You do not lie to me?"

"Stella is safe. They don't have her."

Slowly, the old man nodded. "I see. It is always lies. They do not know how to live except by lies, by threats, by pain and terror and misery." Marni's voice grated, grew stronger. "They know no truth but their own religion, and their only god is power. The power to hurt, to torture, to frighten, to kill. Yes. Get the keys. The captain has them. I believe you and I will go with you."

The captain spoke from his sitting position on the floor. His voice was strangely calm. "You will never get ashore alive. Either of you."

Durell said: "Then you will die with us, Captain. And if you are counting on your second mate, you can forget about him. He is not concerned with this any more." He moved away from the old man. "Take the keys from your pocket and slide them across the deck."

Grozni's eyes opened wide for a moment, accepting what Durell had told him, and then he gave the keys to Durell. Durell handed them to the old man, not taking his stare from the Polish captain. "Free yourself, Mr. Marni."

"It is not that easy to strike off one's chains," Grozni whispered.

A half minute ticked by before Albert Marni's shackles clanked on the deck. The old man stood up, tottering, and leaned against Durell for support. "Please. I am ill. I have been ill for some time, but they refused to give me medical attention. Captain Grozni was kind, but he could do nothing."

"Come along," Durell said. "You too, Captain. You understand what will happen if you try to raise an alarm."

Grozni wavered to his feet, rubbing his throat where Durell had struck him. His bald, shaven head looked shiny in the harsh cabin light. Durell followed him into the passage with Marni shuffling painfully behind them. The officers' quarters were quiet. Albert Marni turned down the ladder to the passenger deck on shaky legs. His breathing was ragged and uneven, and now a new terror gleamed in his watery eyes.

"Please. Whoever you are, do you tell me the truth? Is my Stella safe? They do not have her?"

"She's safe," Durell assured him.

"They beat me. They made me write a note to her, to tell her to obey orders. They will kill her if she does not obey. They would have beaten me to death, I think, but Captain Grozni stopped them." Great beads of perspiration glistened on Marni's wrinkled face. He halted suddenly, his hand at his chest. "I can go no farther. There is a weakness in me."

"Try," Durell urged him. "Just down to the dock."

They stepped out on the deck overlooking the shed roofs and the pier where the longshoremen worked the cargo. Everything looked normal down there. The officer on the bridge was shouting something through his megaphone, and then he looked down, straight at the captain and Durell and Albert Marni. He shouted in Polish to the captain.

"Answer him," Durell snapped. "Tell him you are going ashore for a few moments."

The captain smiled. "And if I tell Jankewitz something else?"

"You'll pay," Durell said grimly. "Answer him."

The captain cupped his hands and shouted briefly up to the officer on the bridge. The man up there stared down at them, his face a pale patch of white against the lowering sky above him. Then he turned abruptly and vanished from the wing.

The captain laughed.

"March," Durell said. "Down to the pier."

If the captain had raised an alarm, Durell was only one man against the entire crew. The way ahead led down the passage to the stairs that opened on the cargo hatch in the side of the ship where he had entered. Durell hurried the captain along, but he could not hurry Albert Marni. The old man dragged along, gasping and panting. Durell had left the captain's gun and the mate's pistol in the cabin, but he kept his hand on his own gun inside his black leather jacket.

They were on the cargo deck when they met their first interference. Two burly seamen stood guard at the open gangway that led to the pier and safety. Grozni stopped abruptly. His eyes were narrow, his mouth tight under his disheveled beard. His scar glistened whitely.

'Tell them to stand aside," Durell ordered.

"They will not obey," Grozni whispered. "You do not understand. I am not the true master of this ship. Stepov, the second mate, is the political commissar. The
Boroslav
is a special kind of ship; she is not truly Polish. Stepov is the master here. He gives the orders."

The two seamen came forward slowly, their bulk filling the passage. Durell said swiftly: "Won't they obey any order you give?"

"No. Those two take orders only from Stepov."

"Then you're a prisoner aboard, yourself?"

"In a way. We are all prisoners of one thing or another. They suspect how I feel about their murdering regime. One's tongue slips occasionally, forced by anger. But they know I am safe. They know I must obey orders." Grozni shrugged. "They would like to replace me, but who could they get in my place? They need every shipmaster they have. And I wear my chains, like Albert Marni, even if they are not as visible as his."

Durell said carefully: "Wouldn't you like to be free, too?"

The captain said thinly: "What I would like to be and what I can afford to do about it are not the same. I have a family in Gdynia. My wife and three beautiful daughters. I love them all. They watch me. They do not trust me, but they watch, and if I make a wrong move, my family dies. So ask me nothing, please. If I could help..."