Assignment — Stella Marni (26 page)

Stella's green eyes clouded. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"He told me he wants to die," Durell said bluntly.

"But that doesn't make sense! Just when..."

"He kept talking about you. When you were a little girl in Budapest, before and during the war, and later, when the Communists took over Hungary, when the Red Army marched in. He told me how ambitious you always were, how hard you studied English, how you wanted to come over here, how it was the single high goal you had set for yourself."

"Yes." She nodded. "But why should he say such a thing to you? To want to die is... is..."

"I thought you might explain it," Durell said quietly.

She was silent, and she turned her head to one side, and he saw the smooth curve of her cheek and throat and the golden down of hair on the nape of her neck and the smooth white swelling of her breast under the blanket. Her voice sounded small and far away, like a sleepy child's.

"Sam? All I could think of, when you dived into that channel at Blossom's house, was how I wanted to die, too.

It was all over then. I lost all hope. There was nothing left. Can you understand?"

"Perhaps."

She would not look at him. "Don't you know I love you?"

He said nothing.

She turned her head back abruptly, staring. Her hand lifted to touch his mouth. "Don't you, darling? Whatever I am, whatever I can give you, is all yours. You surely must know that after — after that time when we were alone, in that cottage. Other men have been in love with me and wanted me; it was like that all my life, darling, I don't know why. There was always just something that made men — that made them follow me. I didn't care. I was never interested. I had other things to think about."

"Your ambitions," he suggested quietly.

"Yes, perhaps there was too much of that. But I am glad now. Because I waited for you. And now everything will be all right, will it not? You will help me stay here, darling? You will not go away?"

"Not yet," he said.

A tiny frown touched her perfect brows. "You sound strange."

"We've had a hard time, Stella." He stirred as if to get up from his seat on the bed beside her. "Perhaps you should sleep now."

"No. I want to know what you mean. You
look
strange. You look at me — not the way you looked before." Her husky, accented voice was a stronger whisper now. "Please explain to me. It frightens me. I had hoped you loved me a little, too. I thought we had discovered something — something wonderful in this nightmare of mine. Something beautiful was going to come out of it. You gave me that hope. Do you know what I mean, darling? It was something I could cling to. It gave some meaning to what was happening to me, and I was not so terribly afraid then, after I met you."

She was more beautiful than he had ever seen her. She sat up suddenly, careless of the blanket that slipped to her waist, and burrowed her warm, smooth body against him with a quickly frightened, pathetic movement. He was conscious of the round, firm pressure of her breasts against him, and he said quietly, "I'm sorry, Stella."

"Sorry?"

"For you. For everything."

"I don't..." She moved her head from side to side, quietly anguished. "Oh, please, what is it? What do you want to say?"

"It's quite simple," Durell told her. His eyes were dark, almost black in intensity. "Let me ask you something, Stella. Are you going to change your testimony to the investigating committee, now that your father is safe? We have Krame in custody, the whole gang, in fact, and none of them can hurt you."

"There will be others," she said, clinging to him.

"There will always be others, yes. The fight is never over. But for you it can be over, once you tell the truth, once you let the whole world know the difference between freedom and slavery."

Her hands slipped slowly from his shoulders. Her head was bowed as she moved back a little. He saw the perfection of her breasts, the slim tapering of her waist, the swelling of her hips lost in the blanket that covered her.

"Sam, I can't," she whispered.

"You won't change your testimony?"

"I can't."

"Do you still want to go back to Budapest?"

"Oh, no! But..."

"But what?" he persisted.

"I'm so tired of it all," she whispered. "So tired. I'm sleepy now, darling. I... I don't want to think about it this minute. I just couldn't sit in that witness chair again. Not right away, darling. Don't ask me. Can't you see I want a little time to rest, to think, to breathe, just to know I'm safe?"

"You'll never know you're safe until you decide which side you're loyal to."

"But I have decided! Long ago! There was never any doubt."

"There is," he said flatly.

She sat back suddenly, pulling away as if the touch of him burned her. She became aware of her nakedness and pulled the blanket up to her throat. The gesture made her look young and helpless and inexpressibly lovely. But there was a difference now. It was difficult for Durell to define it. It was in her eyes, in a different awareness she had of him, a subtle caution and the beginning of alarm that changed the way she looked at him, the way her mouth curved, the way she held herself.

"Once more, Sam," she said. "Does it make so much difference if I am so tired and ill now that I beg of you to let me rest because I want to avoid all the publicity and the newspaper stories that will smother me if I do as you ask?"

"Yes, it makes a difference."

"Then you don't love me," she said softly, wonderingly.

"No."

She stared, caught her lip between her teeth. "I thought you did. I was sure of it. You were like..." She paused.

"Blossom?"

"No, I didn't say that."

"But you meant it."

"Why don't you love me, Sam?"

He said it quietly, and she didn't make a sound except for one quick, tight exhalation of her breath. A clock ticked somewhere in the softly light, delicate room. She stared at him with wide, blank, uncomprehending eyes.

"You've killed, Stella," he said quietly. "You killed Frank Greenwald and you sent Art to the hospital and you killed Harry Blossom. More than that, you killed hope in the hearts of a hundred frightened, innocent people who only wanted to rest and have a little peace and security in which to spend their remaining years. There were four men and two women in Krame's ring, taking orders from Stepov. We've got the four men: Krame, McChesney, Lamont, Karl. And one of the women: Gerda. And you're the second woman, Stella. Last, but not least. You and Krame. You two were the real brains behind all the secret terror you caused, the deaths, the reluctant departures for unknown punishments back home."

"Sam," she whispered. "Sam. No. You can't believe..."

"Listen to me," he said harshly. "Why does your father want to die? Because he knows what you are, what you have been, what you plan to be in the future. He knows his kidnapping was only an excuse to give you a cover story, to enable you to testify as you did. You did a lot of damage, you gave a great boost to the enemy's propaganda, with what you said. And yet, because of the kidnapping of your father, you posed as an object of pity, beyond real police suspicion. If it were otherwise, you would have been unmasked long ago as a professional agent. But your father knows the truth about you. He knows that you used him as you used everyone else — as a tool to get what you wanted. So he wants to die. It's quite simple, after all, when his heart is broken and he sees no reason to go on living alone and deserted."

Stella Marni stared at him with great green eyes that clouded and cleared and clouded again.

He spoke in a flat, tired voice. "Nobody else could have killed Frank Greenwald. Nobody else could have put Art off guard. It took strength to crush in their heads the way you did, but not strength that was beyond you. You had that iron bar and it worked simply and fast. And poor Harry Blossom. He tried to tell me the truth about you. He practically told me he had thrown over every principle and trace of ethics he'd ever had, because he was in love with you, crazy about you. and he was willing to let you go, willing to follow you to hell if you would only give him a crumb of your beauty. And you enjoyed tormenting him. He knew the truth about you but you knew you were safe as long as he loved you as he did. In the end, when he began to come out of it and handed you an ultimatum, you simply shot him. You killed him and sat there looking at him until you heard me coming. Then you ditched the gun. Where? Out in the weeds?" He looked at her, but Stella's face was suddenly blank. "You were waiting for Krame. You stalled me out at the boathouse, hoping Krame would show up for you. And when he did and I had to dive into the channel, you went quietly away with him thinking I was dead, too. And in the ship, when you grabbed up my gun while I was fighting Krame, you weren't trying to slug him with it. You didn't miss him and hit me by accident. You were aiming for me. Your father knew it. We discussed it. You were trying to get me."

Stella whispered: "You can't believe any of that You don't. You couldn't."

"I believe it because I can prove it," Durell said.

She shook her head violently. "No. Sam, you held me in your arms, you love me, you do!" Her eyes were wet with sudden tears. "No, don't talk like this. Do not do this to me now. It is not true!"'

"It's true," Durell said. "You should have made sure of the job when you slugged Art Greenwald. He's been half over the edge for three days, ready to die in silence. Pretty rough on you, too, I suppose — and that's one more reason you played for me. to keep in touch with Art's condition, to learn if he was able to talk. Well, he's safe now. He'll recover. Half an hour ago he began to remember what happened to him. He told us what happened in Krame's studio that night Frank had learned the truth about you, too, Stella. And Frank and Art confronted you with it. Frank had gone to the
Boroslav
after Damion's call that night and he saw you there, perfectly at home and comfortable. When he charged you with it, you killed him — and tried to kill Art, who was a witness. But you missed there. Art is alive. And he'll identify you. And if that isn't enough, Captain Grozni has come over on our side and he's ready to tell us everything he knows about the operation."

Her face was a pale cameo carved in chalk. Her eyes accepted Durell's words and she suddenly nodded, her head jerking like a puppet on a string. Her hands fell limply to her sides. The bruise on her jaw looked vivid against the pallor of her skin. Her breath sighed.

"What are you going to do with me, darling?"

"You're under arrest for murder and espionage," Durell said. He looked at her for a long moment. "I guess that's about it, then, Stella."

She stared in confusion and disbelief as he started to get up from the edge of her bed. "Sam... I do not understand you... how you can do this to me..."

She could not comprehend how he could stand there, so tall and dark and cold, looking down at her beauty and knowing her ecstasies were all his, just for a word, just for a nod and a promise. The invitation was there. Her mouth parted again in asking and surrender and pleading.

She was still the most beautiful woman Durell had ever seen. And she revolted him.

"Sam, darling..."

"Good-by, baby," he said.

He turned and walked into the other room, where Markey's men were waiting to take over.

When he closed the door, her screams began.

It was a few minutes before midnight when Durell walked down the lonely hospital corridor from Art Greenwald's room. Art would be all right now. Now that the tide had turned in his favor, a swift recovery was promised. Durell's footsteps made soft, hollow sounds in the deserted hallway. He felt a curious vacuum inside him, an emptiness that he had tried to satisfy with Art and could not. He had done what had to be done, and this was the job he had set out to do. There was some satisfaction in erasing a vicious evil, but he could not erase the memory of Stella Marni's face and body from his mind. He saw her again as he had left her, and as she had been on the night they had spent alone together. He felt a sense of loss, and knew it for what it was — man's eternal attraction toward destructive and suicidal forces. The eternal Lilith. Man was still a child playing with matches and surprised when he was burned. He knew that Stella Marni's source of powerful attraction for him and others stemmed from that same darkly glowing source, the mystery of what was evil, the challenge of danger, and potential of destruction.

He had won against that, and yet he felt the primordial loss and curiosity of what might have been.

The sky had cleared, scoured by a cold wind that burnished the stars and gave infinite depth to the vault of the heavens. Durell turned up the collar of his topcoat and walked down the hospital steps toward his parked car. He was due in Washington in the morning — McFee had had an urgent note in his voice when he had requested him to attend a special conference at the White House. Top priority, condition critical. So it would start again — the hunting and the being hunted, the cold and silent war of the intelligence service, where no bugles blew and no glory shone and death could come with a silent knife blade in a dark and dirty alley on the other side of the world.

There was somebody in his car, waiting for him, and when he opened the door he saw it was Deirdre Padgett.

"You were so long, Sam," she said. "Rosalie Greenwald told me you were here."

Her face and voice were soft and anxious. She wore a dark coat and a small blue hat like a tiny tricorne over her raven hair. When he looked at her for a moment in grateful silence, Durell knew that here was a far greater beauty than what had tempted him in Stella Marni. He suddenly felt awkward and humble beside her.

"I tried to reach you at the hotel, Dee."