Assignment - Suicide (21 page)

He looked down at Gregori. Several bullets had chopped through
his left leg and one had gone into his stomach. Blood dripped through his open
leather tunic. His face was agonized. Their eyes met across the thirty vertical
feet separating them.

“It is hopeless,” Gregori called. “I cannot get out.”

“Be still.”

“You will not be able to get back!”

‘”We’ll find a way.”

He found a hand grip on a sturdy, twisted grapevine and lowered
himself slowly for six more feet. His legs dangled in thin air. The drop below
was dizzying. There were more noises from inside the Zis, and now the chauffeur
opened the door cautiously and stepped out on the road. Valya’s gun cracked and
dust sported and the chauffeur dived back into the protection of the armored
automobile.

The rough strands of the grapevine tore at the palms of his
hands. Durell swung slightly, felt a sudden jolt as part of the vine tore free,
and he dropped another foot before it tightened again. His heart pounded. He
looked down between his dangling legs and saw Gregori staring up at him. Gregori
couldn’t help him. If the man moved at all, he would slide from his narrow
ledge and fall to the road below. Durell drew a deep breath, felt his shoulder
muscles tremble violently under the strain, swung one leg carefully, caught his
foot in the crotch of a cherry tree, and lowered his weight on it. The tree
held. He caught at a branch, released the grapevine, and worked his Way down to
within jumping distance of the ledge where Gregori sprawled.

Sweat stung his eyes and dripped from his jaw. He scanned the
opposite slope and saw no sign yet of Vassili and Elena. He wondered if they
had been betrayed over there, too. Everything had gone wrong that could
possibly go wrong.

Slowly he worked his way lower through the leaves and branches
that seemed to grow diabolically to impede his descent. He was almost within
reaching distance of Gregori When he heard the sound of the half-track
returning from farther up the ravine. Apparently the tower had summoned it by
radio.

“Hold still,” he called down. “Don’t move, whatever happens.”

“I still have one arm. I can catch you," Gregori
whispered.

“No. Don’t move.”

He jumped. The narrow ledge was covered with brambly shrubs,
and his ankle caught in one as he landed. His shoulder slammed the face of the
cliff and his balance was lost, and he felt his weight thrust outward into
dizzy emptiness. For one instant land and sky swam in a wide, insane arc, whirling
before his sweat-blurred vision. He had an instant of panic knowing he was
going to die and then something caught his thigh and he grabbed in despair at a
flimsy branch and felt it crack and break under his grip. One leg shot off into
space and he landed on his left hip, twisted instantly to his stomach, and
caught at a flowering shrub that grew out of the rock. A miraculous shrub, a
promise and a prayer answered.
Its
tough little roots
held. His legs dangled in space. He saw that Gregori had caught at his thigh
with his huge left hand and held him.

“Easy, my friend," Gregori gasped.

“Don’t try to move again,” Durell whispered.

“I am all right. Can you get your feet back up?”

“In a minute.”

He waited for strength to flow back into his arms and shoulders,
then heaved up and twisted and flopped down on the ledge to Gregori’s
right. Blood had made the stone slippery. A gun cracked, the bullet snipped oil
a twig and a leaf, and the bit of branch fluttered into the void below. From
overhead came the prompt reply of Valya’s covering rifle.

“They see us here,
gospodin
." Gregori said.

“Can’t be helped. Can you move at all?”

“I am dying,“ Gregori said.

“Not yet. Maybe there’s a way back up.”

Gregori nodded his shaggy head. “To the left. There seems to
be an extension of this shelf. But I cannot walk.”

“I’ll carry you."

“Impossible. There is no cover. They’ll pick you off.“

Somebody shouted from the sentry tower at the bridge. The
sound carried a note of exultation. Durell looked down and saw that the
half-track was nosing back around the bend of the road, returning to the scene.
The squad of soldiers in it was already jumping off and spreading out,
finding cover as they neared the base of the cliff. An officer ran toward
the limousine and Valya fired and the officer fell and sprawled on his
face and did not move. A machine gun on the half-track set up a heavy,
racketing fire, the clattering filling the narrow gorge with
intolerable sound. A line of bullets chunked into the face of the cliff ten
feet above Durell’s head.

“Sam?” It was Valya’s thin voice. “Sam!”

“I’m all right.”

“I‘m coming to help!”

“Stay where you are!” he shouted.

The machine gun had stopped firing. Some sort of consultation
was taking place inside the armored body of the half-track. The motor started
again and the vehicle clattered toward the stalled limousine. Durell turned to
Gregori.

“Come along, pal. Let’s get out of here.”

But there was no answer from the guerrilla leader.

Durell looked at him. “Gregori?"

Gregori was dead.

He looked to right and left. There was no escape from the shelf
of rock to the right. To the left, as Gregori had said, the shelf lifted
upward, a goat’s path back to the top of the cliff. But for perhaps ten feet or
more it was fully exposed to the line of fire from the bridge and the
half-track. Durell wiped sweat from his eyes. Without warning, the automatic weapon
on the half-track began to hammer again, chipping rock from the cliff over his
head. The line of fire angled down toward the spot where he crouched: he
could not waste a moment after gauging the situation. He swung back to Gregori,
flipped open the man’s leather tunic, found the blood-stained map he had
taken from Marshall. Then he lifted the dead man’s head and shoulders, shoved
hard, and hurled Gregori’s body down into the abyss below.

The machine gun stopped firing for an instant.

Immediately he stood erect and ran for the open space of the
ledge while the gunners on the bridge hesitated for the time it took Gregori’s
body to fall, spread-eagled, through space. The body hit the road below with a
fiat, dead sound. A shout came from the sentry tower, a sound of triumph that
quickly changed to chagrin as Durell was spotted. But it was too late for the
gunners on the half-track. The ledge angled around a thrust of rock and as he
climbed, panting, to the last few feet from the top, the machine gun chattered
again and chipped dust and stone from the protecting bulge of granite behind
him.

A few seconds later he saw Valya’s hand and arm reaching down
to help him up. He gathered his strength, heaved, and caught at a handheld,
hauled his hips over the edge, and rolled over and over across the flat
rock he had left only a few minutes before.

For a long moment he lay on his back while the sky reeled
above him. He sucked air into starving lungs. The wild hammering of his heart
eased slowly. Valya’s face bent over him, dimly at first. Her mouth was
grim and hard.

“Were you hit, Sam?"

He shook his head, wet his lips. “They didn’t touch me.”

“Is Gregori dead?”

“Yes.”

“Then everything is lost,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

He sat up and crawled to the lip of rock where he could see
the bridge again. The squad from the half-track, except for the gun crew, was
angling at a running crouch up the slope on either hand, to circle their
position. The driver of the half-track was carefully nudging the limousine with
its frightened and angry occupants to one side of the road. Durell wiped
stinging sweat from his eyes again. Not more than ten minutes had gone by since
the action began.

He picked up the rifle from where he had left it.
Panic began to move in him. There was no escape. Gregori’s entire plan had
collapsed in disaster. He had had no right to take part in it. He had been
careful not to do any lethal shooting, and yet—there would be no compunction on
the other side, when those troops caught up with him.

His mouth felt dry, his throat was dusty. Bitterness kept him
motionless for another moment, until he suddenly saw Valya stand up.

“It‘s Elena—and Vassili. At last!”

A grenade exploded down on the bridge—and another. The
machine gun clattered and suddenly stopped, then rattled again. There were
hoarse shouts of fear and surprise. Durell pulled Valya violently down into
shelter and looked again.

The Zis limousine was burning. Great gouts of flame
shot out from under the rear end, and the back doors were flung open as
the occupants finally tumbled out. On the hillside beyond the sentry
tower, Durell saw Vassili standing gaunt and stark against the blue sky, in the
act of pulling the pin from a third grenade. It was never thrown. The machine
gun sliced through him and he pitched forward, tumbling downhill, and then
Elena appeared, running toward him, and the machine gun chattered again.

Three men had gotten out of the Zis to stand in the shelter of
the half-track and stare at Vassili’s body as it came tumbling and sliding down
the slope, arms and legs boneless in death. One of the three men wore a Red
Army uniform. The second was younger, dressed in drab blue serge, carrying a leather
dispatch case under his arm. The third man was middle-aged, fat and heavy, with
a black fedora and a dark coat. The last man’s face looked savage and angry.

Durell picked up the target rifle.

“Which one is Uncle Sergei?” he asked Valya quietly.

She looked at him with suddenly wide eyes. “The one in the
middle.”

“With the hat?"

“Yes. Will you—"

“We have a minute or two before we are caught here. Time
enough.”

He felt calm now. A silence seemed to settle around him. He
lay flat, rested the muzzle of the rifle on a little elbow of rock,
and sighted. He checked the elevation, adjusted for it, and discounted the
wind. There was not enough to deflect his aim. The face of the commissar
came into line with the cross-hairs on the telescopic sight and he pulled hack
the slide pump, felt the cartridge snick easily into the chamber.

The face of his target was broad and fleshy, with
gross thick lips and heavy jowls. The eyes were black as onyx under heavy
brows. He saw the iron gray of the man‘s hair under the broad brim of his hat.
There was cruelty in the lines of the mouth, ambition written in the grim set
of the jaw. A narrow white scar ran through the bluish-black jowl along one side
of the face.

A coolness came to him, like a fresh breeze that swept through
his mind. He pushed every other thought away from him. His hands were steady
and dry; his eyes were clear. He remembered the first time he had gone
hunting with Grandpa Jonathan in the bayous, the way the fine old man had
told him to wait, to aim, to hold his breath and think of nothing but what he
saw between the notches of his
gunsight
.

He began gently to squeeze the trigger.

Valya pushed the rifle to one side with a sweep of her
arm. The face vanished in the blur of the telescopic sight.

“Wait,” she said tightly. “Listen!”

Durell expelled an explosive breath. Valya was staring down
at the ravine. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. He heard a thin,
long-drawn call:

“Uncle—Sergei!”

It was Mikhail. The dancer stood uncertainly in the bed of the
stream, one hand resting on a large boulder where the water ran white. He was
not more than fifty paces from the bridge where the half-track and the
three men stood.

“Uncle, it is Miko!"

One of the guards raised his rifle and sighted at the wretched,
bedraggled figure. The squat man in the hat shouted something and knocked
the rifle aside and walked heavily to the bridge railing to stare down at
the apparition. He shouted something that Durell could not understand. And then
he saw Mikhail raise his hand and saw the gun Mikhail held.

The sound of the shot seemed futile after the explosions of grenade
and machine gun.

Valya whimpered and covered her mouth with her hand.

Sergei Zadanelev took one hand from the rail and clapped it
to his throat and lowered it and looked at it. He fell slowly, like a tree
reluctant to yield to the ax. He hit the rail with his head, his legs folded,
and he slid from the bridge to the water below. His body splashed and the
current took him and carried him to the shallows where a wide V of ripples spread
out as his corpse blocked the run of the river.

Valya whispered, “Mikhail did it. He Waited until he was sure,
and then he did it himself, with his own hand. He promised he would make it up
to me. He said he loved me—”

The machine gun rattled briefly, rattled again.
Mikhail was gone. Durell stood up.

“Come on, let’s get out of here if we can.”

He turned and pulled Valya away from the scene. She was like
a sleepwalker. There was still a slim chance they could elude the approaching
guards who were climbing the slope. If they could hide in the woods and swamp
again—

He stared into the muzzle of a pistol pointed at his belly.

“Drop the rifle, Mr. Durell.”

Lieutenant Kronev stepped from the brush behind him, smiling.

Chapter Eighteen

THE MVD MAN was not alone. Two other agents in blue uniforms
stood behind him with drawn guns. Durell had no time to question Kronev’s
appearance. The last time he had glimpsed Kronev was in the subway in Moscow.
He dropped the rifle.

“Come,” Kronev said. “Walk ahead of me.”

“Your boss has been killed,” Durell said flatly.

“Yes.”

“You saw it happen, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

“You could have stopped it. You saw Mikhail come up the stream.
You were at a better advantage to see him than I was.”