Assignment The Girl in the Gondola

by Edward S. Aarons

  Xanakias' men had long settled at their posts, and Xanakias sat cross-legged on the ground at one side of the stage, where the chorus usually entered. He held a short-barreled automatic rifle across his lap. Over his head was a large poster advertising the National Theater of Greece, with the head of Pataxou as Prometheus, draped in black, stark and staring with blind eyes. Durell stood against the curtain he had fastened, preferring the dark material for his own background. The wind smelled now of the sea, now of the dusty land. Overhead, the clouds were breaking and moonlight went racing across the hills, fitfully illuminating the amphitheater. It was one o'clock when the first break came. There was a false alarm. A thin whistle sounded from the left, high in the tiered seats, and one of Xanakias' men stood up in plain view, signalling. Durell and Xanakias ran that way, mounting the aisle to swing down the long rows of stone seats toward the man. Xanakias asked a sharp, low question in Greek, and the man started to respond in his native language, looked at Durell, and spoke in English, "I thought I saw someone in the seats—there." He pointed down and to his left. "Sitting there?" Xanakias was astonished. "No, no. Moving. Crouching. A woman." "A woman? You have women on your mind."

  "No, I was walking along, very quietly, just above that row. As I passed I thought I smelled a woman's perfume— but maybe it was my•imagination. It was just for the moment I went by, above that row of seats."

  Xanakias was furious. "If you can't concentrate on the job, you can go back to ybur girl in Athens. We are looking for a man here."

  Durell said: "One moment. You think you saw a woman .aiding down there? Or someone the size of a woman?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He thought of Lisette. Could she have slipped away from Cunningham somehow, and returned here instead of going back with Cunningham to Athens? He turned to face the wind. It blew gustily from across the broad stage far below. He scanned the curving stone benches, but saw no movement, no sign of life. He pointed with his right hand

  "Down there?"

  The young man hesitated. "I think so. Yes, sir."

  "All right, we'll look. A dozen people could be hiding in this place at this moment, Xanakias."

  "But he says a woman—"

  "Yes. Why not?"

  They started along the benches, scattering to cover four tiers of seats each. The moon came out again and cast deep, sharp shadows where Durell put his feet. The stones echoed even the" faintest scrape of his shoes, however careful he tried to be. The wind seemed colder. And then he was halted as if a noose had been dropped suddenly around his neck.

  "Durell "

  The whisper seemed to come from everywhere.

  ''DURELL! DURELL!"

  The shout roared, echoed back and forth in angry challenge. It beat against the stones of the theater and rode the wind over the empty stage. The curtain came loose again and flapped and fluttered and snapped.

  "Durell . . . go homer came the voice. "Go home and live. Stay, and you will die"

  Xanakias cursed in crackling Greek. Durell stood still, aware of the hackles lifting coldly at the nape of his neck. He could see nothing. Now there was silence. Was it a man or a woman? He could not be sure. The perfect acoustics that reached into every cranny of the huge amphitheater could be manipulated by anyone accomplished in trickery. He scanned the stage and searched the lifting, rising tiers of seats in the vast, arching semicircle above the performing area.

  Nothing.

  Was it Dinov? he wondered. Or Shkoeder? No, it didn't make sense, if it was Shkoeder. He spun about as Xanakias sucked in an audible breath and pointed—but it was only one of the Greek men, rising in visible, frowning puzzlement from his hiding place. Xanakias waved him angrily down.

  Silent, motionless, they waited.

  Nothing.

  The whisper was not repeated.

  Then Durell, too, caught the faint scent of a woman's perfume in the air.

  He spun about and saw the moonlight racing across a stretch of stone seats, saw the faintest break in the symmetry of silver and black shadow—

  He ran, leaping recklessly in great bounds, down the angular benches, across an aisle to the stage, swinging hard between the seats. Someone had left a pillow, and his foot sank into the shocking softness. A paper cup rattled; a lost shoe was kicked, and it slithered under the bench. He thought he heard another cry, another calling of his name that echoed everywhere at once on the night wind—

  His quarry burst from the hiding place in panic at his coming. A slim shadow arose, and he saw the narrow, angular patch of moonlit white face turning toward him; then there was a fleet twist and dash away, toward the aisle and the dark yawn of a tunnel stairway to the ground below.

  "Durell!"

  This time it was Xanakias, but there was shock and horror in the calling of his name.

  He saw one of the security men block the escape of his quarry and turned his head to look at Xanakias. The Greek was pointing across the wide bowl of the theater.

  The curtain, Durell thought. Of course.

  The temporary scaffolding that held the billowing fabric lifted in skeletal outline against the silver sky. The curtain had blown loose again—no, it was fluttering down this time like some giant, broken-winged bird, swinging and swishing to the stone stage. What had been hidden behind it, stirred by the wind, was fully revealed.

  It was a man's body, the head at an awkward angle, the neck thick and bulging, the eyes like pale jelly as the broken neck tilted the head in its hanging position.

  The body swayed back and forth like some dark pendulum over the stage.

  It was Gregori Shkoeder.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Durell saw that the person he had been chasing gave up the struggle in the arms of Xanakias' guard at the head of the aisle. Xanakias shouted, and his man deftly twisted an arm and marched the prisoner down toward the stage.-Durell turned and ran down the irregular stone steps to the playing area to face the ugly memento uncovered by the fallen curtain.

  Now from all over the amphitheater, men were rising to stare at the hanged man. Durell and Xanakias reached the stage together. Two men climbed the temporary scaffolding to cut down the corpse.

  "Was it his voice that called you?" Xanakias asked.

  "He's been dead too long," Durell said.

  "Then someone else was here. And is gone." Xanakias was distressed. "You could not recognize the voice that warned you? No, I suppose not. It would be helpful if we knew the purpose of all this—"

  Durell pointed to the hanged man. "That was the purpose."

  The hanging of Gregori Shkoeder had not been an expert job—not, Durell thought, like the killings with the knife— and Shkoeder had died painfully, dancing in space while his lungs burst for air. Durell recalled the night in Venice, the rain and the dismal tenement apartment. But he could muster little sympathy for the victim. Shkoeder had terrorized his own people, betrayed them to invaders, and afterward sought only personal gain from their disaster. He had been a hangman himself.

  "There is a note pinned to his clothing," Xanakias said, kneeling beside the body. "It is in Albanian." He held it up, a scrap of rough brown paper with lettering in bold, slashing crayon. " 'Death to all traitors!' " Xanakias read softly. "It is signed by that ancient resistance movement in Albania— 'The Legion of Skanderbeg.' "

  Xanakias looked across the stage as two of his men forced down the aisle toward them the prisoner who had been hiding in the upper benches.

  Durell drew a long, slow breath. He was not at all surprised to see that the prisoner was Ursula Montagne.

  Xanakias stood back a little, smoking a thin black cigar, his eyes alert and watchful. The girl struggled against her captors every step of the way, her lithe young body in a black sweater, her long, solidly muscled thighs thrashing in skintight black slacks. Her cropped raven hair made her look boyish; her long, topaz eyes blazed with fury as she was dragged, panting, toward Durell. He spoke quietly.

  "Don't fight now, Ursula. You have no place t
o run."

  "Tell these—these pigs to let me go!" she shouted.

  "Stop thrashing about, then."

  "Oh, you—you—!"

  He waited, and she drew a shuddering breath and then jerked her head in a short nod of surrender. Xanakias lifted one finger and the men released her. Ursula straightened, her manner defiant. The dark eyes of the men around her admired her figure. The wind flapped the curtain with a series of sharp reports again. Xanakias signalled two other men to stand aside from Shkoeder's body. Ursula saw the dead Albanian and made a thin, harsh sound in her throat. But her words were unexpected.

  "I wish I had done that," she snapped,

  "Didn't you?" asked Durell.

  "I told you, I wish I had."

  "Aren't you one of the Skanderbeg Legion?"

  "Of course. But this is not our work. It is only made to seem so. True, I am not alone." She lifted her head proudly. "Wherever men seek freedom and revenge, I have friends."

  "That's a brave speech, but it doesn't tell me much. I think you and I are going to have a long talk, Ursula."

  "Am I arrested?"

  "That depends on what you have to say to me. And how truthful you can be."

  The Minoa Hotel became headquarters for what was left of the night. The proprietor was aroused, and two peasant women hastily arranged the rooms for Xanakias and his young men. Xanakias was on the phone for some time with Athens, and looked pleased when he walked into Durell's room that overlooked the dark, stony hills behind the inn.

  "Mr. Cunningham has installed Madame Lisette Pollini in the Athenee Palace; he seems charmed with her. They were in the bar, as a matter of fact, when I spoke with him."

  Durell nodded. 'Then she's out of it, so far as Shkoeder's 'execution' goes."

  "Yes, I think we can dismiss her. As for Shkoeder, I checked the Albanian exile colony at the antique shop. Many of the men have vanished from their homes tonight. We are trying to trace them."

  "You'll find them here—or on their way to their underground way station on Corfu," Durell suggested.

  "Quite so. Our gallant old friend, Captain Stephanes, drove to Patras, by the way. A private plane flew him to Corfu, where he was greeted by his fisherman cousin. His fishing boat is the Pentiklos. They have already sailed. It seems that Stephanes is our last chance, now that Shkoeder is eliminated."

  "Perhaps. We'll see what Signorina Ursula has to say."

  "Will you question her alone?"

  "I think it will be best," Durell said.

  It was past two in the morning. He felt stiff, with a growing weariness. Except for brief snatches of sleep, he had been active since leaving Venice. One of the peasant women working at the Minoa brought him a pot of thick, sweet Turkish coffee. He did not like it, but he drank it, careful to leave the sediment untouched at the bottom of the tiny cup. He filled another cup and carried it to the next room where Ursula was being kept.

  It seemed to him that attrition might yet defeat him. Shkoeder's body had been removed with no ceremony from the theater at Epidaurus. No one mourned him; he had betrayed everyone for his private greed. But now there was only Captain Stephanes who knew the Debrec caves well enough to risk a dynamite expedition. Stephanes might succeed—or not. Durell felt torn between the wish to go north to the Albanian coast and the wish to remain here, playing the part of a tethered goat for the tiger who stalked the night. He could not be sure his decision was correct. He had to play this like a gambler deft at misleading his opponents with a stacked deal at cards. He might be wrong, but thanks to Angus Cunningham, he saw no other choice open to him.

  As he stepped into her room, the girl was sitting with folded hands in a straight-backed chair near the window. She did not look at him. Her gaze was centered on the stony hills that lifted darkly to the north, and she kept her head averted.

  "What will you do with me, carissimo, now that you think I am such a liar, a cheat, a murderess?" she whispered.

  "I called you none of those things," Durell said.

  "You cheated in Venice, pretending to be a businessman—"

  "Yes, but you knew better, Ursula."

  "Our organization knew of your arrival, that is true."

  "Your outfit is the Skanderbeg Legion?"

  "You think it is a myth?" Her tawny eyes searched his face. He turned off the garish light; it made her too easy a target through the window for anyone sniping from the hills. The girl made a small, scornful sound.

  "Ah, you are always so careful."

  "It's one way to stay alive."

  "But I feel cheated. My work was to execute Gregori Shkoeder, but someone else did it, and says it was I!"

  "You don't really know who hanged him?"

  She shrugged. "Are you angry with me? No, you could not be. You indulge neither in anger nor love."

  "Tell me how you got to Epidaurus," he persisted.

  Her story was simple. He had last seen her in the Penzione Murelli in Venice, battered and blinded by pain. Only a dark bruise on one cheekbone betrayed that beating. When she reminded him of it, he said:

  "What did Dinov's men want of you?"

  "They thought I knew where Shkoeder was. They thought you might have told me. They would not believe me when I said I did not know where to find Shkoeder, but that I, too, wished to find him. They also wanted to know what Shkoeder had told you about Albania. What could I say? I knew nothing—and so they did what you saw, beating me. . . ."

  Her curly black hair and fragile mouth and wide-eyed beauty were merged now in an image of tough and cynical competence, and yet he thought her smile was tender.

  "Caro Sam, of course I was after Gregori Shkoeder. My orders were to try to execute him. I had help. Strong, young mountain boys from Debrec, my home village. Do you understand?"

  "I'm beginning to."

  "You and I are not enemies. For a time in Venice, I dreamed I might be what I pretended. But there was always my promise to the Skanderbeg men. The villagers of my home made me promise, and I also swore by my dead father and my father's brother and my own little brother. They were all killed because of Gregori Shkoeder. I was only a child then, but one does not forget seeing the men you love shot down like dogs, their bodies stuffed into the village well. Shkoeder was judged by the survivors and doomed, a long time ago, even before the Chinese came and installed the missiles on the cliffs over our caves."

  "You've seen the missiles yourself, Ursula?" "Yes. You did not believe what Shkoeder said was true? But it is. The Chinese do not care how many of us die in atomic fire and ashes." She stared through the dark window. "This Shkoeder was the worst kind of creature. A traitor to his own flesh, with a lust for gold beyond all reason. He was possessed by a desire for it, and for the things it could buy for him. His life was devoted to recovering it." Her voice shook. "He was carrion, and an eater of carrion."

  Against the dim window, he could make out her soft, slender body, the curve of her hips and thighs as she sat with her hands clasped before her. Her voice went on, intense, angry:

  "In our village long ago, there were both Moslem and Christian. True, it was not unusual, since Albania has always been divided, and almost seventy percent of the people became Moslem, after three hundred and fifty years of Turkish rule. But in Debrec, we got along very well." She stared at him. "My poor country! How many years has it been a mincemeat of class and family, of tribe and individual! For twenty centuries we suffered from the wars of Goths and Hun, Greek and Serb, Turk, Italian and German! And still the bloody gyaks, the feuds between clans, go on. My people are from ancient stock. Our land has been called any number of names—Epirus, Illyria, and Shkupena, today. In Greek times, our village was first a colony of Corinth, then of ancient Kerkyra—Corfu, it is now called. But we have kept our own identity. My blood is pure. And the blood of my father and my brother call for revenge."

  "You deplore the feuds, yet you carry them on."

  She shrugged again. "I was sworn to my duty. The future was written in the blood
of the past. Shkoeder deserved to die. I am only sorry I could not hang him myself. He was a terror in my land, and my life was dedicated to his extinction."

  He smiled grimly. "In Venice, you accused me of trading my soul for my work. But you're the same, Ursula. Back there, you offered me your love and trust. Did you mean it?"

  "Yes, I meant it," she whispered.

  "If we could go back there, would you do things any differently?"

  "I do not know. You were so suspicious, so dangerous But we cannot go back to that house. Certainly I cannot do so."

  "Why not?"

  "Because your fat policeman friend in Venice, Signor Zuccamella, now thinks it was I who murdered General Pollini. ,,

  He stared at her. "Why should he think so?"

  "Because I went to Pollini's house and was there the night he was killed. The police now know this. And what we might have had, carissimo, for a few good days together, as long as it was beautiful, can never come again."

  She showed him a faded, worn photograph she carried tucked in the waistband of her slacks. Durell closed the shutters of the room, bolting them, then turned on an old-fashioned lamp in a milk-glass globe. The girl's eyes were golden in the mellow light. There came a rap on the door as Durell turned to study the snapshot; Xanakias stuck his head in.

  "I saw the light go on. Is everything going well?"

  "Slowly."

  "There is not much time," Xanakias said.

  The snapshot was many years old. It was of a group of men taken with their backs to a craggy mountainside, a dozen of them, all armed with ornate long rifles. They wore white skullcaps and ornately brocaded Skanderbeg jackets with homespun breeches riding low on their loins. The breeches were adorned with phallic designs—simple fertility symbols—heavily embroidered in black thread. Eight of the men were very young, two were quite grizzled, and two were mature and middle-aged.

  Durell knew that these wild Albanian hill folk had never been subdued by any of their conquerors. Throughout three centuries of Turkish occupation, they fought stubbornly and with some success against the invaders. The romantic ruins of Kruya and Elbasan testified to strongholds built against the Sultans of Constantinople; it was in the fifteenth century that Albania acquired its national hero in Skanderbeg. A master of guerilla tactics, Skanderbeg almost succeeded in throwing off the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, striking from his eagle's nests in the wild mountains. His fortresses were still national shrines, and his name and costume were still revered as symbols of Albanian defiance of tyranny.