Assignment - Manchurian Doll

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell said: “We’re taking you with us.”

  She shook her head in negation. She did not fill the description he’d been given. She had been called inhuman, a dedicated and efficient member of the KGB. He saw only a girl in her late twenties, with thick wheaten hair pulled primly back from a rounded, intelligent forehead. She had wide dark eyes with heavy lashes, a full and sensuous mouth that contradicted her apparent self-possession. She wore no makeup, and her severely tailored gray suit befitted a schoolmistress rather than the image of an Oriental Mata Hari. Her body was good. Her face was a golden tan, with broad high cheekbones and finely sculptured hollows. But her jaw was stubborn and her dark gray eyes shielded panic, summarizing Durell and Eliot with one quick glance. She was a tall girl, and the top of her strangely pale hair reached above Durell’s shoulders.

  “Will you please explain?” she asked tightly.

  “There is no time.” Eliot took her arm and started her for the compartment door. “You won’t be hurt. We only want to talk to you. It’s to your personal interest that you come quietly with us.”

  “Am I being arrested?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Personal interest, you say? But you behave like American gangsters—”

  Her apparent confusion would have been convincing, if Durell did not know her history. She pretended a deceptive helplessness—at least to Eliot Barnes. He should not have put his hand so courteously on her arm.

  The girl looked at his young, freckled face and smiled in pretty puzzlement. And then she screamed, the sound cracking the air, swung her handbag in his face with a hard, vicious blow, and jumped for the compartment door.

  The train was stopped. There were querulous Japanese in the corridors demanding to know about the emergency stop. Outside, there was nothing to see but the dark, brooding night in the mountains. Someone was shouting on the cinder path below the train. A lantern flickered in the window, and Durell glimpsed Tagashi out there.

  Then the girl caromed into him.

  Her prim and helpless manner had vanished; in a twinkling she had changed to a wild tigress. Eliot sprawled on the compartment seat with blood on his face. Durell sidestepped the girl’s low jab and caught her about the waist as she tried to dart down the corridor. Her momentum carried her around and she slammed violently into him. Her body was hard, muscular. Her nails clawed at his face. He blocked her, swung her wrist down and around her back and yanked it up, and she screamed again, this time in real pain. There was no time for pity. He forced her, struggling and bucking against him, all the way to the coach door. Eliot followed, wiping his bloody nose with chagrin, and ran past them to open the vestibule panel. A cool wind blew in their faces. Below, the lantern waved again in Tagashi’s hand. Red lights flickered down the curved track, and there was a geometrical pattern of yellow rectangles on the cinder path from the train windows.

  “Let me go!” the girl gasped. “You must be mad! You will all suffer, you will die—”

  Eliot jumped down and waited for her with a wry grin. “Come on, wildcat, everything is all right. We just want a quiet little talk, that’s all.”

  She fought against Durell’s grip. “I have nothing—to tell you—”

  Her thick hair brushed against Durell’s face. She was not going to jump down. He pushed her, and she cried out as she fell from the steps. Eliot caught her, but he was not quick enough to cope with her trickery. She twisted free in an instant and started to run up the trackside. Durell caught her in a dozen steps and flung her, stumbling, to the cinders. A small cry of defeat broke from her. There were angry shouts and questions from the other passengers, the impatient hoot of the locomotive up near the tunnel entrance.

  “Get up!” Durell snapped. “We’re going to a lot of trouble to help you.”

  “Help me? You are gangsters—imperialist agents—” Her breath panted. “I want no help! How dare you—”

  He hauled her to her feet without ceremony. She staggered, fell against him, and again her trickery became evident. Her hand slipped instantly inside his coat and almost got his .38 free from under his arm. She was quick and clever—but not quite quick enough. He tore the gun from her and she cursed in Russian, a shocking and vile term. She tried to run again. He tripped her, sent her sprawling on hands and knees.

  Her thick, pale hair came loose from its prim bun at the nape of her neck and hung in a heavy screen across her face. He yanked her up once more.

  Tagashi and Eliot ran up. Tagashi’s wire-taut face was careful. “We have a dangerous one on our hands, eh?”

  “We’ll tame her,” Durell said.

  “It must be quick. There will be official inquiries. But come, the car is waiting over here. All is arranged.”

  Tagashi pointed into the darkness below the train. Durell could see nothing that way. The train stood on an embankment carved out of the mountainside. There were no lights, no houses nearby. The cool September wind was scented with pine, touched with a chill of snow that lay on the higher slopes. Durell forced the stumbling girl ahead, after Tagashi’s hurrying figure. Now a small light appeared in a hut, and from there a narrow path led through tangled woods down the steep slope. Log steps helped the descent, then a small arched bridge took them across a ravine. Durell turned to look up at the halted train. Dim figures ran along the coaches, shouting.

  Eliot touched his arm. “There is the car.”

  On a road ahead he saw the gleam of metal as the shadows resolved themselves into a black Buick sedan. Eliot opened the back door and Durell pushed the struggling girl in. She twisted, her hair swinging; her gray eyes blazed at him.

  “You must be insane to try such a thing! You will all pay for this, all of you—”

  “I’m sorry,” Durell said. “It’s the only way we can talk to you, Miss Osmanovna. We will explain it later.”

  She resisted him every inch of the way. Eliot ran around and got into the car on the other side. Tagashi took the wheel, started the Buick, and they rolled ahead on the primitive mountain road, away from the confused shouts and lights of the stalled train.

  In a moment, the pine woods cut off their view of the Minayoru Tunnel. The girl sat stiffly between Durell and Eliot, her face frozen in anger, her mouth compressed in a determined silence.

  He wondered briefly what she was thinking. She expected to die. She would be trying to think of a reason for the assault on her, going over her history, alarmed at her apparent importance to her enemies.

  He did not think she would cooperate under any terms.

  When he looked back, out of habit and caution, he saw the headlights of another car following them down the rough mountain road.

  There was not supposed to be another car.

  Even as he turned to watch, he heard the metallic scream of a bullet as it ricocheted off the roof. An instant later, he heard the flat report of a gun in the following car as someone began to shoot at them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tagashi tramped on the gas, and the Buick leaped at a wild, rocketing speed down the twisting mountain road. They flashed past a dark peasant’s hut, then another. The girl, pinned tightly between Durell and Eliot, made one more effort to twist free. She lunged for the door handle, caught it, tried to twist it down and open. Her body fell across Durell and he slapped her hand away.

  “You’d only kill yourself,” he said quietly.

  She looked at him with wide, bitter eyes. “But you are assassins. I will die, anyway.”

  “We won’t kill you. But don’t try to escape again. Do you understand? I have no more patience.”

  Several strands of her thick, pale hair fell across the shoulders of her tailored suit. He saw that her shoes were sensible, solid dark oxfords with low heels, but her legs— what he could see of them in the darkness of the back seat— were very good. But he turned his mind away from any identity of her as a woman. He knew her type—tough, dedicated, fanatically devoted to her work. A little snake of doubt crawled through the back of his mind as
he wondered if she would be of any help with Colonel Alexi Kaminov.

  Tagashi seemed to know the mountain road blindfolded, anticipating every curve and grade. Durell looked at his watch. It was 10:42. The kidnapping of Nadja Osmanovna had taken exactly twelve minutes.

  The way led through the valley and hurtled over a shoulder of the slumbering mountain. The hoot of the Blue Dove’s horn followed them, and Durell saw the lights of the train crawling slowly into the tunnel mouth. They were away free— but not entirely clear.

  The other car was a quarter of a mile behind, the headlights flickering now and then through gaps in the forest. Tagashi rolled down his window and a breath of frosty air poured into the car. They took a curve at maximum speed and the girl lurched hard against Durell. She had stopped struggling, however. Durell tapped Tagashi’s shoulder.

  “Who are the men behind us?”

  “I do not know,” Tagashi said. “No one else was supposed to be at the rendezvous. But there is a small village nearby. Possibly they came from there. Possibly the Russians had other people aboard we did not know about.”

  Durell considered the girl. Her hair flew wildly in the wind that filled the sedan. Her lashes were dark, lowered against her cheek. He could not fathom her expression. He had the sudden thought that she looked Chinese, somehow, noting the faintest uptilt of her eyes against her high facial bones. She looked up suddenly and her eyes were like dark metal.

  “Your name is Durell,” she said quietly.

  “Right.”

  “We knew you had arrived in Tokyo this morning. We did not know why. I did not guess you were after me.”

  “Can you think of any reason?”

  “No. None at all.”

  “Who warned you about me?”

  “I was not warned. Our information service advised us of your arrival in Japan. The men in the car behind you take orders from me. When they catch up with us, you will be killed.”

  “I wasn’t sent to Japan to kill you," he said.

  “I am not a child. We understand each other, do we not? We are—in the same profession. Do not lie to me. I should feel honored that someone like you was sent for the execution. I would simply like to know why I was chosen.”

  “We don’t intend to kill you,” he insisted.

  “Then why have you kidnapped me?”

  “It will all be explained.”

  She shut her lips firmly in final silence. Durell turned his head and looked at the other car behind them. It was definitely gaining.

  The road dipped sickeningly down a series of hairpin curves. The Buick was heavy and powerful, and Tagashi squeezed out every ounce of acceleration. The tires squealed and kicked up gravel dust. A series of curves snaked through pine woods and across wooden log bridges that echoed a drumbeat as the car roared across. A small terraced clearing flashed by. In the night sky, shredded clouds yielded a glimpse of the moon.

  A bullet clanged on the car roof and screamed away. Durell reached for his gun. He met Tagashi’s eyes in the mirror, and the Japanese looked momentarily desperate. If one of the bullets hit a tire, the car would go out of control, they would crash to their death on the wooded mountainside.

  “A little faster,” Durell suggested.

  “It is not possible.”

  The pursuers had closed half the distance between them. Their headlights glared like the eyes of a pursuing beast of prey. Eliot rolled down his window and squeezed off three shots in return. The Buick screamed around a last curve and entered a straight stretch on the valley floor, along a small stream that ran with white water in its rocky bed. They slammed through a sleeping mountain village of thatched huts. A dog leaped briefly into the headlights as they roared down upon it.

  In a few minutes, they would be overtaken.

  A shot suddenly smashed the rear window and scattered glass over Durell’s shoulders. The girl clapped a hand to her face and murmured. He saw a long, bloody scratch on her cheek. He handed her his handkerchief, but she refused it silently, her body swaying to the rough movement of the car.

  Then Tagashi slammed on the brakes as a barrier of logs across the road suddenly loomed ahead of them.

  It looked like the end. Tagashi could not avoid the roadblock. The car lifted on two wheels, came down with a teeth-jarring jolt. A storm of snapping branches broke over them as the car screamed into the woods, off the road. For a moment there was oniy a wild kaleidoscope of jumping trees and brush, then a final crash, and at last an abrupt silence as the Buick came to a shocking halt beside the felled logs.

  Three men ran toward them from the barrier.

  Tagashi jumped out. “Please. Come with me.”

  Durell pushed the girl from the car. The Buick made snapping metallic noises as it cooled in the mountain wind. The night was filled with the pressure of soaring peaks around them as they ran back toward the road where the three strange men waited. Durell had his gun ready, but Tagashi hailed them familiarly, and Durell saw they wore the rough clothing of mountain peasants. There was arm-waving, a shout, a spate of dialect he could not catch. The distant thrumming of the pursuing car grew to a roar.

  “It will be all right now,” Tagashi explained. “These are Omaru’s men. They say he just telephoned.”

  “Omaru? How could he know we were coming this way?” “He and Isome, his wife, left the train when we did.” Tagashi’s dark face was sweaty. “He will keep this woman’s dogs off our backs. Things have gone a little wrong, eh?” “How did Omaru telephone these men?” Durell asked. “There is a village near the tunnel. We could not see it. But Omaru knew, or guessed, our plans.”

  They caught only a glimpse of what happened to their pursuers. A new car waited on the other side of the barrier, and as they got into it, Durell turned as the pursuing vehicle came on the roadblock without warning. The crash of metal and thudding logs was an ugly sound in the night. Flames burst out with a roar as the other car turned over. A man screamed, a high, ululating sound of torment in the dark. Nadja stared at the wreck, her knuckles pressed to her mouth. When Durell tugged at her arm, she looked at him with terror and hatred.

  Tagashi took the wheel again. It seemed to Durell as they drove away that he heard the deliberate, spaced reports of an executioner’s gun from behind them.

  “Tagashi, are you sure Omaru is helping us?”

  “Yes, Durell-san. He was on the train, was he not? He guessed this problem for us, and arranged for our safety. But he is still Omaru. He killed your friend.”

  Durell leaned back in the new car. “I’m not forgetting. Where do we go from here?”

  “We go to a mountain estate about five miles from this place. It was part of my plan. My uncle owns the property. We will be safe there—from Omaru and any others who follow.”

  The road went through a second village, skirted fields where the summer harvest was ended, then turned through a large stone gateway. The girl shivered beside Durell.

  “If you are going to kill me,” she whispered, “I only ask that it be done quickly. I know this man Tagashi. He can be very cruel.”

  “We only want to talk to you,” Durell said.

  “I won’t,” she said. “Not to you or to him.”

  The car halted. A man ran from a hut and unbarred a heavy gate bathed in the headlights, and they rolled toward a dark, elaborate house constructed in Kyoto style, with a long, low wooden front and narrow barred windows. The red roof tiles looked black in the moonlight. An aura of emptiness brooded over the place. Tagashi parked by the entrance and Durell noted the fish sculpture on the roof that was the Japanese totem for fertility. The estate had been neglected; grass grew rankly about the paths and stone lanterns.

  Tagashi anticipated his remark.

  “My uncle’s business keeps him in Kyoto. This is only a summer place, and he seldom comes here. Tomorrow we will go on to Akijuro. We will be safe here.”

  Durell warily helped the girl from the car. Crickets sang and the wind sighed in the thick pines. Tagashi opened
the front door, and again the girl balked.

  “I do not go in,” she snapped. “Kill me here—”

  Then, with an abrupt wrench, she tore loose and began to run back to the gate. Her pale hair flew in the wind. Instantly Durell was after her. She was fast, but she stumbled and fell headlong, and then recovered with the agility of an acrobat. The gateman watched, his mouth agape, his peasant’s face uncomprehending as she darted past and headed for the dark woods.

  Durell caught up in the next few steps. He threw her off-stride and she caromed off a tree, gasping, but he held his grip, not caring if his fingers were cruel. She cried out, tried to claw his face again, then seemed to collapse, clutching at his coat and then backing away. He tried to stop her, but he was too late.

  She had a gun in her hand. Not his gun. He stared at it, frozen, aware of her blazing eyes out of the shadows on her face. In the pause, the frogs seemed to chorus all around them with maniacal fury.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked quietly.

  “I stole it from your friend. In the car. We sat close together.”

  “You’re very good. Very good, indeed.”

  “I have to be,” she said.

  There was another silence. Her breath hissed with exhaustion. He heard Eliot calling faintly from somewhere. The muzzle of the girl’s gun seemed enormous, a dark entrance to hell. He looked at it only once more. It was more important to watch the girl’s face. She was smiling.

  “You are not afraid?”

  “Of course I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Don’t come near me.”

  “I won’t. How many men have you killed, Nadja?”

  “None, but—”

  “It can be very messy,” he said.

  “We are enemies,” she said. “I do not know what you plan for me, but it will not happen now, you see.”