Assignment - Suicide (7 page)

“Not here,” Durell protested.

“Just beyond," she said. “I know where.”

They bumped across the lighted wharf and eased into a dark
alley and there was another, older pier just past it. This one was dark enough.
Valya stopped the car and they all got out and Durell pulled Luke Marshall’s
stiffening body from the back seat and walked with it to the edge of the pier,
where the Neva ran black and icy in a rushing torrent to the sea. He checked
everything in Marshall’s clothing and found no identifying marks or papers
whatever, and then he dropped Marshall's body into the water. After a moment,
the black current, speckled with ice and drifting rubbish, looked the same as
before.

Chapter Six

LITTLE ATTENTION was paid to the comfort of passengers in
the Aeroflot plane from Leningrad to Moscow. There was little zoom for movement,
and no food was served. The Russian passengers carried little hampers of
sandwich bags. The ride was monotonous.

Durell sat with Valya in a double scat of the DC-3 model,
midway to the tail compartment. Mikhail sat across the aisle
 
ahead. They had not spoken to each other
after entering the plane separately at the Leningrad airport. it was past noon
now, and the April sun shone on a level landscape six thousand feet below, a
land of rolling collective farms, an occasional industrial town, a long and endless
ocean of woods and field and wilderness, oppressive in its vast, unending
reach.

There were no empty seats, Opposite Mikhail’s handsome,
sullen profile, a man sat With a bandaged head and face, occupying a
double seat; his white mummified head rested and lolled on the back of
the seat. Durell had watched the man with misgivings from the first moment. His
build resembled Kronev’s, although the face was invisible; still, no obstacles
had appeared in their way. The other passengers looked innocent enough: mostly
men in somber overcoats, minor officials, a French newspaper correspondent With
a dapper Intourist guide, and an American man and woman, perhaps a
lower-echelon Embassy official. The American couple looked silent and
withdrawn, the man middle-aged with disillusioned gray eyes and a tight mouth.
His wife seemed harassed and uncomfortable. Durell regarded them for a long
time, Weighing a future course of action. He considered everyone in the plane
as an enemy, including Mikhail and Valya.

Valya had performed minor miracles in the small hours of
dawn. She had driven them to a small apartment building in the city’s
outskirts, gotten them into a tiny worker’s flat that looked and smelled
unoccupied, and from there she had left thorn, to return two hours later with
plane tickets, breakfast of black bread and fruit and milk, and new identity
cards for the three of them.

Durell and she were traveling as man and wife. Mikhail had
turned white with anger at the arrangement, but the girl had cut off his
protests coldly.

“Do not be childish, Mikhail; it is the best I could manage.
In any event, we Will all be together, and With the police searching for us
now, new cards were absolutely necessary.”

“I do not like it, Valya.” Mikhail had looked at Durell
bleakly. “Why do We need the American at all, now?”

“He has Marshall’s map—or have you forgotten?”

“We can take the map from him. The rest we can do
ourselves.”

Durell was grateful for Kronev’s gun when he saw Mikhail‘s
eyes consider him.

“Miko, if we take the map from Durell he will simply go to
his Embassy and tell the world about the whole thing. Do you want that to
happen?”

“We can send him with his friend down the Neva. He can talk
all he wants, under the ice.”

“We are not murderers, Miko,“ the girl said impatiently.

“And if he escapes us and goes to his Embassy anyway?“

The girl lifted her large blue eyes to regard Durell. “You
will give your promise not to betray us,
gospodin
?”

“No,” Durell said. “I won’t promise that.”

“You see?” Mikhail said, rising.

Durell said, “But we all need each other for the moment. I
can promise to stay with you until we reach Moscow safely.”

“And then?" Valya asked.

“I have my own duty to perform.”

“You will betray us then?“

“It would save you from becoming assassins.” Durell pointed
out, “if world-wide publicity halted Z’s entire plan.”

Mikhail had stood up. “This is an impossible situation. We
cannot trust this man as far as Moscow."

Durell did not move. “I'm afraid you will have to.”

Mikhail’s move for his knife was oddly clumsy. Durell
slapped it from his hand as it came from his pocket, his move so swift that
Valya had no time to cry out. He twisted the blade from the dancer‘s hand and flung
it aside and as Mikhail uttered a thin, bleating cry, Durell hit him, not very
hard. The ballet dancer fell to the floor, his mouth bleeding.

Durell stood over him. “I’m sorry. I’d like to be friends. I
think we all want the same thing.”

“Miko,” the girl said gently. “Please.”

Thinking about it as he sat in the plane now With Valya, Durell
regretted the incident. But Mikhail had forced his enmity upon him and had not
spoken to either of them from that moment on. He knew he had made an implacable
enemy of the man because of Mikhail’s loss of face before the girl he loved.
But Durell had had no choice.

The cabin of the plane felt cold. A uniformed stewardess
came down the aisle, smiling, and distributed chess hoards to those who Wanted
them. The man with the bandaged head asked her for tea and she came back with a
miniature samovar on a tray for him. The stewardess returned again to
distribute illustrated Russian magazines. Up ahead, two Red Army captains and a
Polish colonel engaged in a low muttering argument over chess. The American
couple uneasily tried to assume a detached air from the other passengers, as if
to pretend they weren’t really here at all. Mikhail had not stirred from his
moody pose across the aisle.

Durell felt Valya’s hand slip into his. Her fingers
felt cold and firm. “I have been thinking," she whispered. “About
the kind of man you are. You are not a bad man, really. I mean, you are not a
brutal man, the Way our newspapers portray your kind. You are strong, yes. You
are not like Mikhail.”

“Mikhail may be all right," Durell said. “He’s in love
with you, and you should have arranged the papers so he could sit here with
you."

“One of us must be close to you at all times. This
 
way seemed the simplest." Her fingers
moved in his hand. “Do you have a wife back home?”

“No.”

“A sweetheart?"

“Yes.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Yes”

“Does she know what you are doing? Professionally, I mean?”

“She has an idea about it, and she resents it. We do not
agree about my continuing in this work.”

Valya smiled. Her eyes were lovely and suddenly serene. “If
we have time later, will you tell me more about her? When we are alone I would
like to know how life is where you come from. I would like to learn all about
it—it seems like another world to me. We were always taught that you were
inhuman ogres, that you are our enemies. But you are only a man of flesh and
blood with a man’s emotions. You do not truly prefer violence, but you are
strong enough to be violent when necessary. Yet I think you could be a tender,
gentle man, too.”

“What do you want, Valya?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head against
his shoulder, and he twisted a bit to look down at her. Her blonde hair was
parted in the middle and coiled in thick braids at the nape of her neck. A
small smile curved her full lips, touched with a trace of pale lipstick. She
said: “I feel alone up here in the sky, and at peace with you."

“We'll be landing soon.”

“For the moment, everything ugly is below us.”

“When we land,” Durell said, “we shall be enemies again.
Each of us has different duties to perform. If you are successful. I shall
fail. I don‘t intend to fail."

“You and I need not be enemies.”

“That’s up to you," Durell said.

A small sigh came from her. She was asleep with her head on
his shoulder. He looked across the aisle. Mikhail had twisted about in his seat
to stare at them. There was anger and hatred in the dancer’s handsome, dark
face.

They landed in the afternoon at Moscow’s Vnoukovo Airport,
twenty miles from the city. The air was appreciably warmer than in Leningrad.
There was no difficulty with the white-aproned porters or at the cheek point in
the hangar. The papers Valya had procured for them received only a cursory
glance. The man with the bandaged head was met by two uniformed officials, and
rode off in an ambulance that had been waiting at the edge of the field.
The Red Army officers and the Polish colonel were drunk as they filed
down the ramp. Durell felt Valya slip her arm in his. Mikhail was among the
last to debark, with the French correspondent and the Intourist guide. The
dapper Intourist man looked curiously at Valya, as if he half-recognized her,
but she stared coolly through him until he turned away. They ate at Vnoukovo,
in the airport
stolovaya
. The meal
consisted of hashed meat. potatoes and fresh tomatoes flown up from the Crimea.
Small bottles of vodka were served as a matter of course at each table. Next to
them sat three gentlemen from Turkestan wearing gigantic sheep's-wool hats.

There was no opportunity to talk among themselves then or in
the battered limousine they shared on the highway into Moscow. The Red Army men
sat on jump seats and Mikhail was in another car with the American couple. The
army men were noisy and boisterous, but since they ignored the other
passengers, Durell felt they were no threat.

The lights were just coming on in the city when they got out
of the limousine at the Metropole Hotel. The second car carrying Mikhail was
not in sight. The broad avenues were wider than in Leningrad, and Petrovka
Ulitza’s department stores and furniture shops were bigger and brighter. The
G.U.M. department store on the vast area of Red Square was crowded, and the five-pointed
red stars above the onion spires and crenellated walls of the Kremlin glittered
against the purpling spring sky.

Here was the heart of empire in this brooding, dangerous
land of enormous extent, sprawled over half the face of the globe, a composite
of many nations, races and cultures. The city was alive and vital. The crowds
were animated, perhaps by the premature spring weather that prevailed today and
the approaching festivities of May Day. People stood in queues at the shop
counters of Stoleshnik Periulok. Durell’s trained eye noted the preponderance
of uniforms. the number of Chinese, the far greater number of private cars on
the broad boulevards since his last visit here. It was as if the death of
Stalin‘s oppressive shadow had slowly animated the people of this city.

Durell took Valya’s arm and they swung into the crowds on
the wide sidewalk in front of the ornate hotel and moved toward Red Square. He
was relieved to be separated from Mikhail by a trick of fate that placed them
in different cars at the airport. He could control the girl. She had lost much
of her inherited enmity toward him. He had the feeling she had been trying to
understand him from the moment of their first meeting, and he knew enough
about women to consider without egotism the possibility that she was interested
in him as a man. There were little nuances in the things she did that betrayed
her. His own feelings were mixed, but she was beautiful and he had never
retreated from a beautiful woman.

“You are determined to go to the Embassy?” she asked as they
waited for a traffic light to change.

“Right now,” he said.

“Could we not have dinner first? l am very hungry, and
there
 
an Uzbek restaurant nearby, just
off Arbat Ulitza.”

“You don‘t have to some with me now, Valya.”

“I understand that. You do not need me anymore, and you have
Marshall‘s map. Part of the bargain was that you turn it over to us.”

“I need it to convince the Embassy people my story is
true."

“And do you think they will believe you?”

“They know I am
 
the
country. They’re waiting to learn what Marshall discovered on his mission
here."

“‘You will never got to the Embassy," Valya said. “You
will see." She paused to look up at him, her face somewhat innocent
 
perturbed. “Kronev has not been idle today.
Do not do anything foolish, I beg you. They will kill you.”

“Are you concerned for me?”

“Promise you will not take any foolish chances."

“I think we had better part company now,“ he said. “It will
be better for you if you aren’t seen with me now.”

“I will go part of the way with you. I know l cannot stop
you. It was a mistake for us to trust Marshall. It was a mistake to believe
that you would help us, too. Sukinin died for nothing.”

“But I am helping you in the best way I know. I don’t want
any part of assassinations. It’s not my job to interfere in your internal
problems. I just want my country to be safe."

He walked faster now, along Arbat Ulitza. He knew the way to
Spasso House, and he did not ‘talk to Valya anymore. The choice of coming with
him or going on her own was hers. He knew she could probably summon help from
her own people to try to stop him. Perhaps she already had. He was sure that
Mikhail was trying to do that at this moment. His whole plan depended on moving
faster than the others, in being sure and decisive in his actions.

The girl walked with him in silence, her hands thrust into
the pockets of her coat as she matched his long stride through the darkening
streets.