Assignment - Mara Tirana

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Wha—?”

  The boy’s eyes looked up blindly at Durell. Then they touched Otto Hoffner’s nervous little figure and found Harry Hammett’s tall bulk in the pantry doorway. Fear suddenly flamed high in the boy’s glance. He made a thin, wailing sound. Hammett grinned. Durell put out a hand to touch the boy’s brow.

  “You’re with friends,” he said quietly. The boy’s mouth worked on an obscenity. “Believe me, Anton. It was a mistake.”

  The boy made a spitting noise.

  “Get away from him,” Hammett said flatly. “Don’t interfere, Cajun. I warn you.”

  Durell’s mouth was pale with anger. “Or what will you do, Harry?”

  “Throw you out. I could make it, too.”

  “Any time,” Durell said. “Try.”

  “Just get away from that boy. Fm not finished with him yet.”

  “You’re finished. You’re all through.” Durell swung away from the cot and spoke to Hoffner. “Otto, call the American Embassy and ask them for a doctor and tell them to make confidential arrangements for a hospital bed for this man. Go ahead, do it now.”

  Otto hesitated.

  Hammett said: “Stay where you are, Otto.”

  Otto looked agonized.

  Durell said: “All right, Otto, I'll do it myself.”

  He started for the door. Hammett blocked his way;, giant arms still uplifted, resting on the casement. “Stay out of this, Cajun,” he said thickly. “I’ve warned you. You have no official position here.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  Hammett did not move. His pale brown eyes were hooded, glittering sullenly. A thin shine of perspiration was on his handsome face. From the cot came a strange, giggling sound as the boy lifted himself on his elbows and laughed. Otto came forward with a quick, mincing step.

  “Please, gentlemen. Remember, we must not have the local police here under any circumstances, and no disturbances whatever. Please!”

  Hammett looked hesitant.

  “I’ll call for a doctor when I’m ready,” he muttered. “Call him now,” Durell said. “But first the Embassy.” For another moment Hammett stared at him, mouth tightened in a harsh line. Then he shrugged and dropped his massive arms from the doorway. Durell was ready to react instantly to any kind of trick attack. But none came. Perhaps Hammett remembered a moment years ago, when Durell had forced him down and almost broken an arm, back in Berlin. In any case, he retreated. He stood aside, and Durell said: “After you, Harry.”

  “Think I’ll clobber you from behind?”

  “I wouldn’t put it beyond you.”

  “Nice to be trusted, pal.”

  “I don’t trust you, Harry. And we’re not pals. Now go ahead and call the Embassy and get some medical attention for the boy, and then explain to them why you found it necessary to beat him half to death.”

  "I don’t have to explain anything,” Hammett muttered.

  But he walked away, through the pantry and kitchen, to a telephone in the front hall of the big, silent house.

  Durell waited until the call was made before he quit No. 19 Steubenstrasse. It was still raining, coldly and steadily. The sycamore trees drooped on the empty paving stones. There was no one in sight, no hidden watchers, no one who followed him as he walked alone to the corner and turned to the brighter streets of the Inner Ring of Vienna, to find a taxi that took him back to the Bristol Hotel.

  It was only nine-thirty. The lobby was crowded with murmuring Viennese waiting for their evening activities to begin. He did not see the tall blonde girl, or Deirdre. His thoughts turned back to Harry Hammett for a moment, and he shrugged off his anger, telling himself that his only concern was to remove Deirdre from the scene, to take her home where she would be safe. He wanted this more than ever, now that he had met Harry again. But he did not know how he could persuade her.

  He was thinking of this when he used his key and stepped into his hotel room. He took only one step and halted abruptly.

  He had left a lamp on, over the small rococo desk in one corner of the room.

  Now the light was out.

  He needed no more to tell him that someone either had been here while he was at Steubenstrasse 19, or was still here, waiting for him in the dark.

  He listened, but he heard no sound except the muted street noises from the Kartner Ring below. No whisper of tight breathing, no faint rustle of clothes. He closed the door quietly, although when the latch clicked it seemed an enormous sound. Then he thumbed up the light switch on the wall.

  The light came like a soundless explosion. He saw his suitcase open on the bed, his clothes disheveled by a quick, frantic search. The desk stood open, and the wardrobe closet had been forced open as well: He was not concerned about what might have been found, because he’d brought nothing important with him from New York. The room was otherwise empty. There was no other sign of the intruder.

  Then he saw that the bathroom door was ajar, and he had left it wide open deliberately. Whoever was here had been clumsy, not at all professional, leaving such evidence of his presence. Durell frowned. He took his gun out silently and crossed the room to the door of the bath.

  “Come out quietly,” he said.

  There was no sound from inside. Carefully extending his arm, he pushed the door inward with his fingertips. His gun was ready. The door thudded lightly against something that shouldn't be there, and he heard a faint gasp, a quick intake of breath, the scrape of a shoe.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he said softly.

  “Please—” someone said.

  “Come out. Now. Or—”

  It was the blonde woman who had shadowed him from the Geneva airport. She moved into the light with a diffident gesture, her head lowered, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her shapeless cloth coat.

  “Take your hands out where I can see them,” Durell said.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”

  She looked terrified. There was no gun. Her blue eyes were dark and wide, filled with apprehension. Her thick blonde hair was wet, as if she had been walking in the rain for a long time before coming here. She wore her flat-heeled shoes and a rough tweed skirt and heavy, lumpy sweater. She stood only a few inches shorter than Durell, and her wide mouth trembled.

  “Please,” she said, in accented English. “I waited for you—”

  “I’ll bet.” He gestured to his open suitcase. “Did you do this?”

  “Kopa ordered me to search your papers.”

  “And who is Kopa?”

  “The bald man. You saw him. He is sure you saw him. He gives me orders. He is—like you—a man like you, a—”

  “Spy?”

  “Yes.”

  “For whom?”

  “For them,” she said, and she sounded bitter and lost. “I must do only what he says, he told me. I—-I am not accustomed to this sort of thing, you must believe that.”

  “I do,” Durell said. “You’re too clumsy to be anything but an amateur.”

  She hesitated. “Are you—will you call the police?” “Perhaps. You said you waited here for me?”

  “Yes. If Kopa learns of this, I—it will mean disaster for me, a loss of everything. But I hate him, you understand. Believe me. I do not do this willingly. I hate it. May—may I sit down? I feel so—I’m so tired, I can’t think—”

  “Go ahead.”

  She sank into a chair facing the doorway. Durell stood in front of her. She folded her hands in her lap and kept her legs primly together. She had good posture; her back was straight, her head would normally be held in a proud manner, he decided. She wore no cosmetics at all, and her lips were pale and pink. There were astonishing freckles in a spray across the bridge of her nose. She looked up at Durell in a moment of silent appeal.

  “Please understand that I must do as I am told. I have no choice. It is not that I would do anything to hurt anyone in this world. I was not brought up in such beliefs, and in my heart, I only wish to be safe and free of it all, to live in peace an
d solitude with Mihály."

  “Mihály?”

  “My little brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In a small town, near Budapest. They keep him there. It is because of him, to keep him safe, that I must take orders from Kopa. I am told it will go very badly for Mihály if I disobey.”

  “I see. Assuming what you say is true, and they blackmailed you into this business, why do you take the risk of talking to me now?”

  “Because of what Kopa plans—-he is such an evil man, I am so afraid of him—and when I saw you with that woman in the bar—Miss Padgett, is that not her name?— then I knew, in common decency, that I must warn you about Kopa.”

  “What does Miss Padgett have to do with it?”

  “It is not the girl that Kopa really wants. It is you. He hopes to get you, through her.”

  Durell kept his face blank. “Indeed? How?”

  She looked down at her rough hands. “I do not know.” “I’m sure you do. Tell me how.”

  “Well, I—” She was silent, biting her lips, then said: "She seems—how shall I say it?—innocent.” A muscle tightened in her jaw as she clenched her teeth for a moment. “I wish I could be like her, have everything she has, know the peace she has known. I would not want Kopa to put his hands on her. The thought of it makes me want to scream. I do not know the details. I only waited here to warn you that something will be done to her, to make you do as Kopa wishes.”

  “I see. Can you tell me more about this Kopa?”

  “I know very little. But he has told me about you. If he snares you, he will get a promotion, fame, rewards. You and the—the man they call Stepanic, who went up into space. He says you will be a kind of—of a bonus.”

  “Is he MVD?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Assigned to get me through Deirdre Padgett?”

  “Yes.”

  He felt no satisfaction in finding his hunch verified like this. There was an uneasiness in him, a failure to understand or quite believe the blonde girl. This admission from her came too readily—although everything she said, in her amateur’s way, might well be taken at precisely face value. One could get too involved and devious in this business, Durell thought. Sometimes simplicity looked unreal in a world where lies and counter-lies were the normal thing. “Does Kopa have any other name?” he asked quietly. She shook her head. “I know him only by that.” “And do you have a name?”

  “Mara. I am Mara Tirana. I was a secretary in Budapest when the revolution came, four years ago. That’s when they took Mihály from me, and put him in that actors’ school, and said that since I was so anxious to flee to the West—I tried to escape the purge, with Mihály, but we were not lucky, we were caught and kept in prison together for a long time—they said that since I was so anxious to see the West, I could do so, but with Kopa, and obeying Kopa’s orders.”

  “Is this your first mission?”

  She considered her hands again. “No.” Then she looked up, and beyond him, toward the hotel room door at his back. There was a split second when her eyes widened in alarm, disbelief, dismay—

  Durell started his turn instantly.

  He had his gun in hand. He was aware of quick despair, of anger that he had been careless for a moment, because this girl had been talking about danger to Deirdre and had captured all his attention—

  There was nothing he could do.

  The man who had come into the room behind him was an expert. It was the bald, pseudo-English salesman of woolens. It was Kopa.

  He caught only a glimpse of the bald man before something slashed down on his gun arm with excruciating pain, instantly followed by a blow on the head that made his ears ring. He felt paralyzed and fell, crashing to the floor. His gun flew from nerveless fingers as if it were alive, bouncing on the carpet under the bed. The blonde girl gave a stifled scream.

  “Kopa, don’t—!”

  There was a slapping sound, a grunt, another crash. Durell could not see what happened. He cursed his carelessness with desperate fury, tried to rise, got one leg under him, collapsed, and tried again. A heavy foot contemptuously kicked him over. He looked up at the ceiling lights and saw them expand and contract with strange, iridescent rings, and saw Kopa as a monstrous image towering enormously over him, huge and dark.

  There was a flicker of movement.

  He thought he heard the telephone ring.

  And then there was nothing.

  CHAPTER V

  It was afternoon of the second day since Adam Stepanic awoke in the stone hut. Sunlight shone in a yellow shaft through the square window and made dust motes glisten where he looked. He felt better. The drugs that Lissa gave him had finally taken hold and his fevered dreams no longer tormented him.

  He knew that she had remained by the bed all through the long night, never leaving him while he slept. Yet when he looked at her, he saw the same cold antagonism that had been there before.

  “Good afternoon,” she said in English. “You feel better?”

  “Yes,” Adam said, and smiled. “Yes, thank you.” “Do not thank me. I did it because Papa Jamak asked me. I am a good daughter, and I obey.” Her mouth smiled coldly in return.

  Adam looked around the hut. “Where is the old man?” “In the forest, cutting wood. It is what he does to earn enough money so he can eat. My mother works with him. They have worked like this ever since Giurgiu betrayed them with his political stupidity. They—and Gija and I— have been treated like lepers and outcasts.”

  “I see,” Adam said quietly.

  “You see nothing. Americans have always been so safe, you cannot imagine what life holds for people like us. You always have enough to eat, everything. I can remember what it was like. You are smug and you believe the world is made to serve you.”

  “That’s not true. That’s propaganda talking.” Adam looked at her curiously. “Why are you so angry with me?”

  “Because you have brought danger to my parents, and I do not think you are worth it.”

  “Then why not call the police right now?”

  “Because I hate Petar Medjan more than I despise you.” She turned away. She wore a woolen dress of simple design, although the tiled Russian-style stove in the room made the hut very warm. Her dark red hair was tied in a severe knot at the nape of her neck. There were lavender shadows under her cool brown eyes. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked abruptly. “There is only soup and black bread.”

  “Yes.” He was suddenly hungry. “That will be fine.” He watched her move to the stove. The gray dress clung softly to her curved body, outlining the symmetry of her hips. Her back was straight and proud. She made him feel guilty, because he didn’t want to endanger anyone. Yet the danger she mentioned seemed academic; the hut was safe. Through the window he could see the wild mountainside she called Zara Dagh. The October sun was tinged with yellow. Adam sat up in the bed. There was an air of security here, as if the hut were a tiny fortress in a wilderness of savage things.

  Lissa returned with a bowl of soup and bread. “Yes, you are better. I see it in the way you look at me.” Her smile this time touched her whole face, changing her expression dramatically.

  “When will your brother Gija return?” he asked. She shrugged. “When God wills.”

  “They’re looking for me, you know. They must know I came down somewhere near here.”

  “Everyone looks for you,” Lissa said calmly. “The whole world speaks of you, though you are not the first to do what you did.”

  “The first for my side,” he said.

  “Yes. But a little late, as usual.”

  “We’ll catch up. That’s why it’s so important to get back, with my instruments. Otherwise, it’s all to do over, with more lost time.” He paused. “And don’t needle me, Lissa. I only want to be friends.”

  “I’m sorry. The old people have suffered so much, and you bring it back again. They are trapped here. In the village, because of Giurgiu’s politics, we are treat
ed as if we might contaminate the people with something the authorities cannot permit in this country.” She paused. “You understand this with your mind, not with your heart.”

  She had a quality of iron control, Adam thought, as he ate. But it was brittle, and she might snap and break if pushed too far, rather than bend and yield, and so survive. He finished the soup and watched the way the sunlight tangled in her dark red hair.

  When she took the empty bowl and carried it outside, he saw through the doorway a small clearing, with neatly stacked cordwood, and a horse tethered to a pine tree. A path wound out of sight into the woods. He heard the creak of a hand pump as the girl washed the dishes, and then he threw back the blanket and looked at his injured leg. He wore only a pair of shorts. His body was mottled with bruises, but he had been bathed clean of the mud and blood which had clung to him when he had dragged himself from the wrecked capsule. His leg was still swollen, but the ache of infection had dramatically eased. For the first time, he began to hope he might get out of this alive.

  When he looked up, Lissa was in the doorway staring at something out of sight. Tension was evident in the way she stood and looked.

  “What is it, Lissa?”

  “Nothing. Be quiet.”

  “Where are my clothes?”

  She did not look at him. “I washed them. They are in the cupboard by the bed—but you cannot walk yet.” “What do you see out there?” Adam asked.

  “The old people are coming back. And it is too soon.” He sat up and his head swam with the effort. He had to hold onto the bed with his head lowered, waiting for nausea to pass. He broke out into a light sweat, then shivered in the mountain air that spilled through the doorway where Lissa stood. A deep-throated halloo came from the old man; but Lissa remained silent, waiting. Then she stepped out, deliberately closing the door after her. Adam sat up again, fighting his weakness, and pulled himself upright with a grip on the big wardrobe. His breath whistled in his throat. Then he was erect, clinging to the door handle, and he pulled his khaki uniform in a tumbled heap upon himself before he collapsed on the bed again.