Assignment - Mara Tirana

by Edward S. Aarons

  The suspect was a young man of twenty, with square shoulders and lank yellow hair, a Magyar face, a defiant curl of lip. Blood ran from a broken tooth in his mouth. One eye was puffed shut. But there was much spirit still in him, Kopa decided.

  “Young man, we want only a few words from you. We want a name, the name of the man who asked you to sabotage the bridge of Racz Prison.”

  The boy spat blood on the floor and was silent.

  “Sergeant, convince him he must talk,” Kopa said quietly.

  Kopa sat in a corner and watched. There was the thudding of blows, the wrench of muscles, the cracking of tendon and bone, the sudden ululating scream from tormented lungs.

  “Well?” Kopa asked.

  The boy spat at Kopa.

  “Doctor,” Kopa said, “can you make this young stallion something less than a man?”

  “Colonel, I couldn’t—”

  “It is an order. Omit the anesthetics. You need no nurses. Sergeant Banya will tie him down on the table.”

  The doctor looked at Kopa’s mad face and said: “Yes, sir.”

  The boy stared at them through battered eyes that did not comprehend. Without warning, Banya hit him and threw him to the floor. Another guard held the boy’s shoulders while Banya yanked off the trousers; then the two burly men swung the suspect like a sack of grain to the steel operating table. The doctor nervously switched on the overhead light. The boy’s eyes widened incredulously.

  “Go ahead,” Kopa said. “Cut him.”

  The boy shrieked: “No! No, you can’t—”

  The doctor hesitated, scalpel shining in his thin hands. Kopa said: “Who ordered you to bomb the bridge?”

  “I—it was—I know only he came from the river—”

  “The Danube? A seaman?”

  “His name is—is—” The boy sweated. He looked at the doctor’s scalpel and felt the guard’s tug at his arms until his shoulders seemed wrenched from their sockets. His legs looked pale, the muscles standing out in knots. Little muscular spasms rippled the bare skin of his belly. He stared down at himself in sweaty wonder.

  “His name?” Kopa asked.

  “Gija. It is all I know. It is everything I can tell you.”

  Kopa nodded. “Hold him for trial.”

  By nightfall, Kopa was in Budapest, consulting the KGB files. A Lieutenant Smetsanov, a pale man with lidless, disappointed eyes, handed Kopa folders and dossiers. “These are the probable suspects, Colonel. But if I may say so—are you well, sir?”

  “I am sick,” Kopa said. “Does that make a difference when a crime against the state must be uncovered and checked?”

  “But your health, Colonel. I only thought—”

  Kopa ignored him. His bald head shone under the lamp over the desk where he considered Gija’s dossier. Smetsanov smelled as if he needed a bath—an acrid smell like that of mildewed paper. Outside the walls of security headquarters in Budapest, traffic hummed, buses rumbled by, and the lights of the theater district made a haze against the night sky. Kopa had no interest in his surroundings. He was obsessed, carried along by only one thought.

  “This is the one. Gija Zarije, aboard the barge Luliga. Phone the river check points and see if the vessel has passed Budapest yet.”

  “Yes, Colonel. At once.”

  “I only want the information—no interference with the barge, understand? And bring me a drink. Anything.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Kopa sat back. He felt as if he had been running a long race. But exultation made him content. He rubbed his chest absently. The pain that had ridden him all day was easing. So the doctor was a fool. A man had to go on, ignoring his weakness; it was often the best way. Nature knew best. A man was made to work, not to pamper himself. Work cured everything. Devotion to duty made one forget pain. Success was worth anything.

  When Smetsanov brought him a bottle of Hungarian brandy, he drank greedily. It was quiet in the file room. Yes, Kopa thought, he could afford this quiet moment now. The brandy warmed his belly. His eyes felt heavy from lack of sleep; but he could not afford to sleep yet. He would ask the medical officer for some pills, to keep going. Probably, the end would not come for a day or two.

  Smetsanov returned. His pale, yellowish face looked oily. “The barge Luliga has just left the docks at Margueritan Island, Colonel. The man Gija is aboard. I have the patrol officer’s crew-list. Everyone you want is on the barge.”

  “Not everyone,” Kopa said. “Not Stepanic.”

  “Shall I order the barge detained?”

  “Of course not. We will watch it, fool. Let it go on down the beautiful Danube. We shall note where it stops and where Durell gets off and in this way, he will lead us to the elusive astronaut. Then—” Kopa held out his hands, fingers splayed wide, and suddenly closed them into twin fists that he knocked clumsily together. “Then we will take them all. The spies and the traitors and the saboteurs. All of them, at once.”

  Smetsanov poured him another drink. It was eight o’clock.

  The Luliga moved steadily downstream from the industrial docks of Budapest toward the Yugoslav border and the Iron Gates. First the river flowed south, through slowly rising mountains that loomed through the dark of early night in welcome relief from the flat monotony of the Hungarian plains. They passed Mohacs in early moonlight, the scene of Hungary’s greatest disaster, when the Magyars lost their independence to the Turks in a two-hour battle. Bending eastward, the river carried them through darkly looming Balkan mountains, past white houses in small villages, under a rare railroad bridge. There was an hour’s delay at the border, but the international agreements covering Danube commerce resulted in only a routine inspection at floodlighted docks. Durell wondered if an alarm had been sent out ahead. But everything was routine, and the Luliga’s blunt bow pushed a steady, chuckling wave of foam ahead.

  For hours, Durell watched Deirdre sleep under rough blankets in a cubbyhole in the forward hold, among the munition crates. It was the only place to hide her after they rejoined the Luliga at a dock just north of Budapest. Gija had returned safely. And there was no problem in recognizing the new steel barge as she delayed at the pier on the pretext of engine trouble. Captain Galucz, bearded and tubby, ordered Deirdre hidden at once in the cargo compartment.

  Shortly after Deirdre fell asleep, Durell went aft to the pilot house. Gija was in Mara’s cabin, talking earnestly to the blonde girl. Mara looked tense and defiant; Gija was quiet and persuasive.

  “Your brother does not want to come with us, Mara. You must face this. He is like a time bomb, ticking aboard.”

  “He does not understand,” she murmured. “He is a victim of propaganda, of brain-washing, since he was a child.” “Whatever the reason,” Gija said gently. “If he were not your brother, do you know what we would do with him now?”

  She looked at him fearfully.

  “We’d drop him overboard—well anchored and wired to stay on the bottom forever.” Gija paused. “He cannot be trusted. It would be safest for us.”

  “I promise you that Mihály—”

  “You can promise nothing in his name, Mara.”

  She looked at Durell with frightened eyes. “What will you do with him, then?” Gija looked at Durell, too, “What do you suggest?”

  “Where do you have him now?” Durell asked.

  “Up forward, with Tomas,” Gija answered.

  “And when we’re boarded for inspection? He’ll yell for help from the security police. How do you stop that?” “We tie and gag him for that time and hide him with the cargo.”

  Mara said: “He promised he will do nothing to endanger me.”

  Gija shook his head. “Mara, you cannot trust him. I know how much you love him, and what you’ve risked for him. But what can we do? Even if we got him safely to the West, he would head straight for the nearest Soviet embassy and give us all away. It would ruin the whole underground.” She bit her pink lip. “I can’t tell you what to do, then. I’m sorry I brought all th
is trouble to you.”

  Durell went forward to talk to Mihály. He was locked in a crewman’s cabin in the bow. The moonlight made the Danube waters look phosphorescent as the Luliga smashed her way downstream. He felt uneasy. He saw how Gija had taken to Mara, how protective he was toward her. But Gija’s hard sense of values was still secure. He was absolutely right. The safest thing was to kill Mihály. Too many people might die because of his sulky defiance. And Mara might soon persuade Gija otherwise.

  Mihály lay on the bunk with his handsome face turned toward the steel wall, when Durell stepped in. He looked briefly at Durell, his eyes sullen, then turned away again.

  “Mihály, I won’t fool with you,” Durell said. “We know it was a mistake to try to rescue you.”

  “A mistake you will regret,” the boy said.

  “Not likely. We are debating what to do with you.” “Put me ashore,” Mihály said. “I refuse to be kidnapped.”

  “If you persist, we have no choice except to get rid of you in a way that will guarantee your silence and our safety. Do you understand?”

  Mihály sat up on the bunk. ‘You wouldn’t kill me. I know you Americans. You’re all soft and idealistic, too delicate to do such things.”

  Durell said softly: “Don’t delude yourself, Mihály.” The boy started to speak again, looked at Durell’s eyes, and a pallor touched the corners of his mouth. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered.

  “It may be necessary. I thought I’d warn you.”

  “Mara wouldn’t let you touch me—”

  “Mara has nothing to say about it. You should know, Mihály, that you are dealing with desperate men on this barge. When we are stopped for inspections, you risk blowing us all up.” Durell told the boy briefly about the wiring and detonating caps set in the munitions cargo. “We all go up together. So it’s up to you, when the inspectors next board the Luliga, whether you want to destroy yourself along with us.”

  “I don’t,” Mihály whispered. “I promise I won’t.”

  “You have your bargeman’s papers?”

  “Yes. Gija gave them to me. But I haven’t looked at them.”

  “Study them. Memorize them. Your life depends on it,” Durell said quietly, and went out.

  He returned to the cargo hold where Deirdre slept and sat beside her, looking at her in the dim light of a small bulb. Her dark hair spread in a soft fan across the rough blanket bundled under her head as a pillow. After a time, Durell stretched out beside her and slept, too, although aware of the steady beat and thrust of the barge moving downstream. For a time he hovered between sleep and wakefulness, and he was not sure when he truly slept and when he listened, with that trained suspicion and alertness that never deserted him.

  He woke instantly when Deirdie called him.

  “I’m here, Dee.”

  “I’m—I thought it was a dream—youi finding me—”

  “It’s all right.”

  She trembled. “Hold me close, Sam.”

  He took her in his arms. They were alone in the dim shadows of the cargo hold. Overhead, there was a thin slice of night sky where the hatch had been hauled aside for ventilation. The air was cold and crisp. The stars were like swinging lamps against velvet. “Are you all right?”

  “Don’t let me go,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “Can you forgive me, Sam? I never really understood your work; I never knew how it was. Intellectually, yes. But not how it could tear at your insides. I was never so afraid—not just for myself, but for everyone trapped by the forces of ambition and tyranny and terror. Why is it? Why are men like that?”

  “History hasn’t changed,” he said. “If we were on deck now, you’d see on the river banks the ruins of old Roman walls and camps, the periphery of the Imperial Empire, the checks against the barbarian hordes. It has always been like this.”

  “And will it always go on?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  She was silent for a moment in his arms. “Can you get us out, Sam?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I know. But if something goes wrong tomorrow—”

  “Nothing will go wrong,” he said.

  “But if it does—we’ve lost so much time, you and I —in not understanding each other. I was foolish. For almost a year, darling—”

  “We’re together now,” he said.

  She moved against him, warm and yielding. “Yes. Together, now. Let’s—let’s not forget how it used to be. . . .”

  CHAPTER XVI

  Kopa flew east the next morning. On a whim, he had the plane follow the course of the Danube, obtaining air clearance for the trip. It pleased him to spot the barge Luliga far below on the silvery river, plodding along so slowly, like a child’s toy. The sunlight was bright on the Danube as the stream narrowed toward the east and the high gorges of the Iron Gates. He felt sure of himself now. His web of control spread north and east. Gija’s dossier gave him what he needed to know last night.

  He lit a cigar, although the doctor who attended him shook his head in protest. Kopa waved a thick hand to ward him off. He felt fine today. A few hours sleep, a glimpse of success, had worked wonders. These doctors didn’t know everything. Perhaps it was only indigestion.

  By noon the plane had landed at a military airstrip twenty miles from the village of Viajec. When Kopa disembarked, he found Lieutenant Petar Medjan waiting to report to him, with a car standing by at the edge of the airfield. Kopa’s shrewd eyes sized up Medjan quickly—a mixed breed, he decided, with too much Turkish blood in him to be truly trustworthy, although his records so far showed a ruthless efficiency. He could appreciate the physical bulk of the security man, and suspected at once that Petar Medjan lived too close to the routine of the village where he had been born ever to rise to any great height in the security police hierarchy. But just for this reason Medjan could be useful, the perfect man to ferret out just what was needed, and to do so quickly.

  "You’ve placed the subjects under surveillance?” Kopa asked, as the car sped along the road toward Viajec.

  “They were gone, Colonel, before the orders came through from headquarters.” Then Medjan added quickly: “It turned out all right, however. We’ve had a busy night.” Kopa was startled, and pushed his cigar at the big Turkish lieutenant. “You didn’t let them guess we know Stepanic is on Zara Dagh?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that, Colonel. They tried to move out, and it cost me the death of one man. We found his cycle in a stream beside the road—he evidently tried to stop them, growing suspicious somehow—and they killed him. But the father, Jamak, was also killed. We searched all night in the stream until we found both bodies.”

  “And the suspects?” Kopa asked harshly,

  “They returned to Viajec and Zara Dagh.” Medjan smiled. “They are under observation at this moment. The American is with them.”

  Kopa was relieved. For a moment he thought these stupid provincials might have spoiled everything. Nothing could come between himself and success now. He could not afford it. His first reports to KGB headquarters, coded from Budapest, were deliberately ambiguous. There would be some lifted eyebrows, a few questions murmured, but the generalities he had reported would gain desperately needed time to repair the situation.

  Petar Medjan was uneasy in such close contact with someone like Colonel Kopa. His isolated mountain district had never seen such excitement and activity. He did not like it. He knew he was not particularly clever. He accepted his limitations and realized that he operated best in the village of his birth. He was at home in Viajec, on Zara Dagh, in the tumbled, wild mountains of the district. He knew his way here like a blind man knows his own home. He resented the intrusion of all these outsiders, who had no knowledge of the villagers and their problems.

  Petar Medjan thought of himself as a protective overseer for the Viajec district. In his way, he tried to do what was best for his people. He was cruel, yes. But a father must whip his sons occasionally. And he trie
d to be fair. Yes, he was honest and fair in everything—except in the matter of Lissa.

  Here, where his passion had ruled, was the scene of his biggest mistake, the threatened disaster that could destroy him.

  He told Kopa everything he knew about Jamak and Jelenka. He mentioned his visit to Zara Dagh, putting it in the light of a routine check. He did not mention what happened with Lissa, of course. Anyway, wasn’t he willing to marry the girl? So it was no crime, what he had done in the barn. She would marry and love him eventually.

  But now everything was changed, everything hung in the balance.

  Kopa could ruin everything. And like a diabolical nemesis, Kopa put his hand right on the sore spot and twisted.

  “This girl,” he said. “The village nurse, you say?”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Medjan muttered.

  “An educated girl. She would have recognized Stepanic, known what his orbital flight meant, arranged to hide him and get word to the West to rescue him. The old people wouldn’t have been up to it, otherwise. It is the girl we must question.”

  “I don’t know,” Medjan said.

  “Is she pretty?”

  “I pay no attention. She works in the village with a certain efficiency. She is practically a doctor to the peasants. They do not love her, because she has strange ways, but they respect her.”

  “I seem to hear a reluctance in your voice, Lieutenant, when you discuss this girl.”

  "I—I am fond of her, a little,” Medjan admitted.

  “Ah? And that means—?”

  “Nothing else, Colonel.”

  “If she proves a traitor, she will be shot. You may be in trouble yourself, by association. I want to question her when we reach Viajec. Will she be in the village, or on the mountain?”

  “I will get her for you,” Medjan said glumly.

  As it turned out, he did not have to go far. As they crossed the stone bridge into the main street of the village, he saw Lissa striding along with her usual proud carriage, looking neither to right nor left.