Assignment The Girl in the Gondola

by Edward S. Aarons

  Harris knocked again.

  They heard footsteps, a snuffling, heavy breathing.

  "Chi e? Who is it?" came in bad Italian.

  "Harris. And Durell."

  A bolt slid aside. Harris hit the peeling door with his shoulder, bursting it inward, and drove into the room like a bulldozer. Durell was a step behind. The man inside was short and dark, with curly black hair and an olive Balkan face, a round potbelly over sagging trousers, and a striped silk shirt of pink and lavender. He was not armed. He fell back, yelping, as the edge of the door cracked his cheek; Durell stepped around him and went directly to the opposite door and yanked it open to stare into the tiled gloom of a cavernous bathroom. Nobody was in there. There was a sagging shower curtain and he yanked it aside, his finger light on the trigger of his gun. The big tub with its peeling, gilt claw feet was empty. Something banged in the other room and he turned and saw Harris checking the walnut wardrobe. There was only a raincoat and a battered hat inside. Shkoeder fell into a chair and moaned, holding his split cheek.

  "Shut up," Durell said.

  He looked under the bed. Harris went to the tall windows, opened one, and stepped over the sill onto the balcony. The sound of rain in the gutters was louder than Shkoeder's moans.

  "I am alone, I am alone. What is the matter with you people? Are you crazy?" he whimpered.

  Harris came back from the balcony. "It's clean."

  "Any other entries?" Durell asked.

  "No. It's walled off from the next window."

  "Close enough to jump?"

  "I wouldn't try it," Harris said. "It's clean, Sam."

  Durell was still not satisfied. He went through the room as efficiently as a machine, upending the thick upholstered chair, ripping off the faded bed cover, taking down two religious prints that hung on the cracked plaster walls.

  "No bugs."

  Harris grinned. "Not the walking wickies, anyway."

  Shkoeder looked stupefied. "You do not trust me?"

  "Should we?" Durell asked.

  "Oh, I know your methods. I have used them, myself. But I swear I am honest with you. I am too near to death, with enemies everywhere, to be foolish. Only you can save me, signors. Only you can help my poor, oppressed country."

  "Nuts," said Harris. "You helped with the oppression. You had a good thing back home, Shkoeder. Why did you leave?"

  "Ah, but it is an insane world there. My nerves—they began to go. I take my son and we come here."

  "Is the boy outside really your son?" Durell asked, not hurt him, gentlemen? He was simply on watch for you." He sighed. His curly black hair was oily in the garish light of the unshaded ceiling bulb. He had a heavy Stalinlike moustache, but his unshaven jowls glistened with silvery hairs. There were pouches of exhaustion under his wary eyes. "Gentlemen, I am a refugee, at your mercy. I come to Italy, however, with enough to pay for a few years of peace. There is great danger for the world. I tried my best— I went to the only man I knew here, the poor General Pollini. But it did not a bit of good. He was careful with money, you see. I asked for only a little—enough to start in a small business, perhaps, so we would not be beggars in a strange land—"

  "Get to the point," Harris said. His eyes were dangerous, "Pollini said you told him plenty. Pollini told me enough about it. I want you to fill it in. Who killed him? Maybe I know about the big emergency; maybe I don't. We'll see how much truth is in you, Shkoeder."

  It was a bluff, of course, but Durell thought Harris did it well. Harris had learned little or nothing from Pollini's garbled telephone call just before Pollini was killed. But Shkoeder could not know that.

  "Gentlemen, I am only a poor, homeless exile—"

  Harris slapped him. The blow knocked the Albanian from his chair to the floor. He sat on his fat behind, legs spread, paunch sagging, a look of grieved desolation on his face.

  "We know all about you, Shkoeder," Durell said. "If you think you had trouble back home, you haven't seen anything yet, understand? We have no time to fool with you. We know you were an FDS colonel; we know you turned in Anton Serinan for deviation and that you personally shot his wife and two sons when making the arrest. Serinan worked for us. You tried in every way to break up the Skanderbeg Legion that favored the West. You've held terror in your hands for a long time. Your execution squads shot one of my friends, an Italian named Guglielmo Feranti. Remember him? You gave him no chance. You were in Peiping in 1960 when the Chinese turned your country into a satellite for themselves in Europe. You've been on missions for the Chinese ever since—to Africa, Cuba, to Venezuela. You were propaganda minister for two years, too. You've had three wives: two are dead, one is divorced or abandoned. And you helped steer your country into the Chinese camp after the split with Russia's brand of Communism. You've walked a tightrope all your life, Shkoeder, but this is where you fall off unless you play it straight with us now."

  "Gentlemen, I am merely trying—"

  "Get up off the floor. You make me ill." Shkoeder stood up, hitching his pants over his belly. His face reflected cringing fear and humility, except for his eyes. Durell thought his eyes gave the man away. They were bright and cunning behind his servile mask.

  "I do have information for you," Shkoeder admitted. He wore an old signet ring, an antique Greek family seal with a delicately carved Artemis on pink stone. "I told my old friend, General Pollini, some of it, to transmit to you. If he failed to make the situation clear—" "Let's hear it from you," Durell insisted. Shkoeder looked defeated. He did not know how much Pollini might have told Harris, Durell decided. He was weighing how much he could safely reveal and conceal.

  The Albanian said: "I left my homeland because I— yes, even I, with my history, as you might say—could no longer stomach what is brewing there. Today, a small nation has—how do Americans call it?—an equalizer, in the form of ultimate terror, gentlemen. Small nations may be great in such terms. It is the madness we live with today. Always the world sneers and conquers and enslaves my people. Ours is a bitter history. You hold us in contempt, you consider us a lackey of others. But unless you prevent it— before this week ends, we will play a major part in ultimate history."

  Durell felt a twist of raw apprehension. "Are you implying that Albania has a nuclear weapon?" "Not precisely."

  Harris snapped: "Either you do or you don't." "There are rocket emplacements, you see. A lesson learned from your affair with Cuba, eh? And hidden where your planes can never spot them, installed, ready to be fired. And—yes, they have nuclear warheads. This is what I told Pollini."

  "Where did you get them?" Durell asked. "Certainly not from Russia. And China has none." "Peiping got some," Shkoeder said. "You're lying. Not from the Soviets."

  "Not as a willing gift, no. The Chinese stole them. It is part of the split in ideology and economic and political policy between Moscow and Peiping. But underneath all such smoke and verbiage is the Kholkenny affair." "The what?" Harris asked. Shkoeder said: "May I have a cigarette?"

  "You bastard," Harris grated. He stepped forward and hit the man again. "Don't play games with us!"

  Shkoeder's nose began to bleed, but his eyes were bright and watchful, without animosity as he looked at the two Americans. His words held a mushroom of meaning. Even as long as he had been in the business, Durell thought, he could never be hardened to the terror that threatened humankind. You did your work in dirty little rooms like this, and some of your associates worked with computers and formulae on expansive charts, to synthesize and analyze and extrapolate from known data a safe course for the future. You worked with mind and muscle and nerve, with dedication or treachery. You worked with men. And all the time a great horror, implacable and beyond control if set loose, towered up, ready to swallow the world.

  A sense of this terrible danger filled the room.

  "Can you prove any of this?" Durell asked Shkoeder.

  "Oh, yes. I have the proof. But not here."

  "Where is it?"

  "I can get it, neve
r fear."

  "It's you who should be afraid," Harris said softly. His mouth was white. "You've opened Pandora's box."

  "Not I," Shkoeder said. "Others opened it. You will have to close it again. But I have the key. And the key is—for sale."

  Durell sighed silently. Even in this, men still sought their personal, greedy little ends.

  Harris said: "We can kill you right here and now, you know. We don't have to buy anything."

  "If you kill me, you kill yourselves; perhaps you kill millions, maybe the world, eh? I take the key to Pandora's box to my grave with me. I am not afraid of you." Shkoeder sounded different now. "You can beat me, break my nose, break my arms and legs; you can mutilate me. I know all the tricks. I have used them myself. But you cannot make me talk."

  He meant it. Durell knew that threats could not persuade this man. Under his fat and oily exterior was a core of iron. He had lived too long with danger to be afraid of what might be done to him now.

  "How much do you want?" Durell asked.

  "Ten thousand dollars, American. At pnce."

  "It might be arranged."

  "Then arrange it," Shkoeder said. He brushed his thick, Stalin-like moustache. "Then we will talk more. But time is precious, and I urge you to be practical. What is money to you? It is America's greatest resource. And I ask so little! I could ask a million, and the price would not be high. But I must be practical. I know the ways of political bureaus. Ten thousand, at once, for me and my son. And, of course, full protection."

  "Show us more. You mentioned the Kholkenny affair."

  "Yes, I can tell you about that. But do you have a cigarette, please?"

  Durell gave him one. Harris looked impatient.

  "Some months ago," Shkoeder began, "a military train was wrecked near the Siberian border. The 67th Missile Regiment of the Red Army was being transported to a new base north of Vladivostok, and the train carried all their equipment as a complete, mobile unit. The wreck was not an accident. The Chinese engineered it—deliberately."

  "Go on," Durell said.

  "The Chinese had no hope of getting rockets for Matsu or Laos or India, eh? Their split with the Kremlin taught them there are no fools in Moscow. They know Chinese history; they know the great plan to take bite after bite of Southeast Asia. India will fall like a ripe melon. Then the push to the West begins. Perhaps not next year or in ten years—but eventually. Another Golden Horde sweeps over Europe for industrial supplies, for spoils. Nothing stops it this time. Moscow knows this. So they refuse China nuclear arms—and Peiping simply steals them."

  "I don't believe it," Harris snapped.

  Shkoeder shrugged. "There were twenty-four rockets in this unit, with carriers and nuclear warheads. All were stolen in this very expertly organized raid. Special trains and truck convoys transported them through Mongolia into China. It was a military operation of highest efficiency, gentlemen— like one of those expert bank robberies you have in America. And then the rockets and the warheads disappeared. The Soviets made silent, immense efforts to recover them. They did not dare publicize the coup, even after their open rupture with the Chinese."

  "But Red China needs technicians who can operate—"

  "They have men who were trained in Moscow, long ago."

  "Do you claim," Durell asked flatly, "that these weapons are now set up in China's Albania satellite?"

  "I know it. I have seen them myself. Obviously they were not dragged through Russia and shipped through Odessa and the Dardanelles. A grain freighter—yes, you know how

  China, although suffering food shortages, still supplies her satellites—a grain freighter went through Suez and on to the Albanian coast. The rockets were deep in the grain holds. Did Nasser look the other way? We do not know." Shkoeder was enjoying himself. "Today we have many Chinese in my poor little country. They have taken us over, body and soul. We are caught between the anvil and the hammer, the West and the East. And Red China hopes to make us destroy ourselves."

  "How?"

  "By firing the rockets," Shkoeder said. "At both sides. And at the same time."

  "When?"

  "It will be three days from now."

  Chapter Four

  Eurell lit a cigarette. The shabby room felt cold and damp, and the rain outside made a mournful sound. Harris clenched and unclenched his fist. He started for the door, then looked with incredulity at Durrell, and halted before the Albanian.

  "Shkoeder, how much of this fairy tale did you tell the Italian Defense Minister?"

  "It is not a fairy tale. I wish it were, signor." Shkoeder sighed. "I did not tell Pollini as much as I have told you. Did he not call you? He said he would." Shkoeder coughed. "He asked me to go. He said he would inform someone. He also said he'd had evidence of this from another source, a trusted source, but—he told me nothing more. I was not gone long. An hour, perhaps. And then I called back—and learned that he had been killed."

  Harris said, "You asked Pollini for money, didn't you?" "Naturally. He promised to arrange it. He was very excited. He said he would call you, but first I was to go—he had to speak to someone else. I walked about, watched the boats on the canals, waited."

  "You don't know who his other visitor was?" Shkoeder was sweating. "I ran away. He had asked me to return by a back stairway, a small door in an alley. I saw he had been killed, and so I was afraid, and ran away."

  Durell said: "Your people know you defected, right?"

  The Albanian's dark, liquid eyes found a measure of trust in Durell's tall, calm figure. "Yes, the security people I once commanded have followed me here. Perhaps they killed Pollini. But the Russians are also interested, naturally. They surely suspect what the Chinese have placed in my country. I have heard that Helmuth Dinov is here in Venice, too."

  "It seems to me," said Durell, "the Russians should be as anxious to get those rockets out of Albania as we are."

  "It is an interesting point."

  "Have you been in touch with them?"

  "No."

  "Why not? You could hit them for cash, too—and have us bid against each other. Or draw pay from both sides."

  The Albanian was pale. "I am afraid of Dinov. He is a man with only one business in life—and that business is death. Listen, I told you I returned; I saw Pollini's body, and I saw that special knife thrust, that blow that goes up iunder the ribs to the bottom of the heart. It is Dinov's technique. I was afraid, and I ran away, hoping no one saw me in the palazzo. But I agree, when I have had time to think, that I do not know why Dinov would do this. The Russians wish to locate the missiles, too."

  Harris whistled thinly between his teeth. "Now we get to it. Just what have you got for sale, you son of a bitch?"

  "Please, sir—"

  "What is it, exactly?"

  Shkoeder said, "I know where the rockets are."

  "Where is that?"

  The Albanian rolled thumb and forefinger together. "My price is modest. Only ten thousand dollars."

  "It seems too modest," Durell said. "Have you proof?"

  "I, myself, will take you to the place. This, too, is part of my price. Happily, I know the area well."

  Durell was startled. "Let me understand you. You offer to guide us to the missile site—yourself?"

  "I insist upon it."

  "After you fled Albania, you're willing to go back?"

  "It is an extra service."

  "Why should you risk it? Why not just draw us a map? If you were caught there, they'd tear you to pieces."

  "Let us say I have some unfinished business there. Let us say that my wife lives there, gentlemen. A woman no one knows, the mother of my son. It is not in my dossier."

  Harris snapped out an obscenity. "You don't know the meaning of sentiment, Shkoeder. What's the real reason?"

  "You must believe me, gentlemen. I offer to take you to where the rockets are placed. It is my one condition."

  "It stinks," Harris said. "It's a trap."

  Durell said: "If we agree to pa
y you to guide us to this place, what do you propose that we do?"

  "You could blow it up," Shkoeder said blandly.

  "We are not saboteurs."

  "Then I would blow it up for you."

  Harris laughed. "It's a bit too much, Cajun."

  Durell was patient. "When do you want your money?"

  "At once," Skhoeder said. "Time is important. The arrangements will cost money. Let me explain. You need not commit an act of aggression yourselves. Others of my countrymen will be happy to do the job for you. But they will demand money. It is necessary that you accompany me and my son to Albania, to show these mountaineers that you and your great nation are with them." Shkoeder lifted his brows. "You ask yourself, why must we accompany this man into a trap? He can blow up the rockets for us. Why must we go to Albania, too? Believe me, you will wish to see this for yourselves. In your place, I would insist upon it. And the people we need for help will also insist on actually seeing and talking to an American."

  Durell made his decision. "I'll have the money for you in an hour. You can stay here. Harris will stay with you."

  "That is agreeable," Shkoeder said.

  Harris looked obstinate. "It's your game, Cajun. But it could buy you a kick in the teeth."

  "We might even get killed," Durell said mildly. "But I think we have to do it."

  And then they heard the boy whisper outside the door.

  "Poppa?"

  And again: "Poppa!"

  Fingers scrabbled harshly on the peeling paint. Harris started for the doorway and Durell checked him with a flick of his hand. Shkoeder stood up, hands thrusting away at the chair. His face went pale.

  "Peter, is it you?"

  "Let me in, Poppa."

  "What is it? You should be on guard—"

  Durell went to the door. His gun was ready, while Harris covered the fat little Albanian. Shkoeder looked wild. Durell yanked the door open and stepped quickly to one side. The boy fell forward. Shkoeder screamed as he saw the knife sticking, hilt tilted upward, from the boy's belly. Durell saw the blood from Peter's mouth like an extra tongue of thick purplish red, clotting on his chin. He drove out into the corridor. Something whistled past him but missed because of his speed. Another knife thudded into the door. There was no need to tell Harris to stay and protect Shkoeder. The boy was as good as dead, with that special knife thrust, and he could spare no attention for him. What happened now came in a matter of seconds.