Assignment - Manchurian Doll

by Edward S. Aarons

  The man was a strong, vicious fighter, despite his drunkenness. He snatched up a stone and crashed it against Durell’s head, and for a moment everything blacked out for him. Then Durell drove a knee into the man’s belly, chopped at the sweaty, bloody face, and the other went limp all at once, gurgling in his throat as his eyes rolled up.

  Durell got slowly to his feet. He looked down the lane toward the coolie huts, but nothing moved there.

  “Nadja?” he called softly.

  There was no reply. He looked along the shadows of the wall, but she was not in sight. He drew a deep breath.

  “Nadja?” he called, a little louder.

  The old woman was gone, too. Her bottles of wine lay smashed in the stony lane.

  But Nadja had disappeared.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

  She ran, not knowing where to go.

  She was spurred by a panic that took her beyond all reasonable control. She had seen Durell go down, and then the old woman had clawed at her and shrieked, and the smell of the old woman was the same smell she remembered from the hut of Pere Jacques. It was as if a floodgate were suddenly smashed within her, and an animal instinct to run and hide from dark and filthy terrors seized her.

  For several moments she was content with the wild, physical exertion of scrambling up the hill. Her mind did not function. Her lungs pumped air, her heart thudded, the muscles of her legs stretched and tightened, her feet struck solidly on the stony earth, the warm wind tangled fingers in her hair. . . .

  She ran.

  She did not look back. Durell must be dead, the sergeant had killed him, and the old woman—the old woman who smelled like that crazy old man who had used her twelve-year-old body for dark eternities of imprisonment in a black and smelly cell—

  She fell, lay in the wet mud, wept and laughed.

  She got up and ran again.

  Papa? Papa?

  She heard voices calling, heard laughter and the chatter of coolies, heard the brazen sound of a temple gong.

  “Papa!” she called.

  She tripped and fell again.

  A trembling seized her, and she could not get up. She lay in the mud and wept. The smell of the old woman clung to her like dirt, creeping into her nostrils, her eyes and ears, the very pores of her skin. She coughed and choked and pushed the solid earth away from her, her arms extended rigidly. Her pale hair came loose and hung thickly before her face. She brushed it away and stared.

  She had reached the top of the hill, where the ruins lay black and weedy and vine-grown in the dark night. What had happened? She was aware of time gone by, of many changes wrought by wind and weather. The chapel had been here, to the right, just beyond the compound wall. The two gate posts still stood, stark against the strange light in the night sky. The heavy wooden gates were gone, of course. The peasants would have used them for firewood. It was here that the guerilla fighters had broken in, clubbing fat John Lee, splashing his brains on the dusty ground. Father Pierre, the Jesuit, had died with a bayonet in his belly, impaled against the chapel door, pinned there like Christ, dying slowly in the hot sun. Here little Mary Choong had been thrown to the ground and raped, and had died screaming in pain.

  Nadja walked slowly, like a sleepwalker, through the ruins of her childhood.

  Papa?

  A few crumbled walls still remained, dark against the darkness of the night. The infirmary had been here, to the right. Only a dark, muddy hole existed in the ground now, filled with rain-water and mud. Something splashed in the water. A frog? Nadja dropped to her knees and peered with rapt interest. But she could see nothing in the black water that filled the hole.

  She pushed her hair back from her face and looked around wonderingly. She had played here long ago. How long ago? What had happened in between? She stood up slowly. Bits of moist earth clung to the palms of her hands, and she brushed them away convulsively, shuddering. She turned right, walking through the waist-high weeds. Nothing was familiar, but everything mocked her with memories that ended in screaming and horror.

  She took a few faltering steps toward the ruined foundation walls. A gaping doorway beckoned to her. Yes, that had been the cellar, under the house. She had fled there from the rioting soldiers as the house burned above her, hearing the scream of tortured wood. That was where one of them had caught her again and dragged her out to be shot against the wall.

  She touched the scar on her scalp where the bullet had gone.

  She stopped, shivering.

  The place was empty now. Memories could not hurt her. There was no danger here now.

  She backed away slowly from the doorway and the steps that led down into the dark hole in the earth.

  Someone was in there.

  It was impossible.

  No one was here.

  But someone—

  “Alexi?” she whispered.

  The warm wind whimpered and tugged at his name.

  “Alexi, is it you? Are you here?"

  He couldn’t be here.

  This was not where she had been kept a prisoner in darkness for so many weeks, with only a chink in the wall through which she glimpsed the shimmering coast and the sea. It was somewhere else. Alexi had come to that other place, breaking down the door, reaching into the darkness to save her.

  Nadja smiled in sudden pity for the child who had huddled in Alexi’s arms. So long ago! So many years ago! She had clung to him, smelling the cleanliness of him, the uniform he wore, the kindliness of his face unable to hide the shock he felt at finding her with the old Chinaman. For days afterward, she hadn’t been able to endure being parted from him. She awoke screaming, night after night, in the Peiping hospital, and always found him seated at her bedside, ready to soothe her. She hadn’t understood much Russian in those days. He taught her slowly, and she came to understand him, and at last he made her realize she was safe, that he was taking her away with other children, across Siberia to Moscow.

  For a long time after the train trip she did not see him. There were schools and rigid training schedules and so much to learn and even more to forget. How they tried to make her forget! They told her Papa was a foolish criminal who had resisted the revolution. She was afraid to deny it. They said it again and again, and presently she accepted it, not thinking about it, always grateful for the clean clothes, the warm bed, the comradeship of the other girls in the school.

  She stood and stared at the cellar opening, a small smile of remembrance carved on her lips. Again she pushed her hair back from her cheeks. The wind made the weeds rattle and clash in what had once been the compound area, so long ago. Smiling, she remembered the heart-stopping shock she had known when she saw Alexi Kaminov again, limping down the school corridor, a man so tall and wide-shouldered, his face so grave, his eyes always shadowed by inner troubles he could not seem to solve. She had been eighteen, and a woman then, although she always shrank from the touch of a man.

  She had thrown herself into his arms with a cry of joy, like a child, forgetting her womanhood and the discipline of the school.

  She remembered his laugh of recognition, how he had held her by the shoulders to examine her, how he had thrown back his head in pleasure. . . .

  Then there was the slow dawning of adult love, to replace the early gratitude on her part, the pity from him. She remembered the anguish of their ecstasy as they slowly came to know each other during walks in the city, long afternoons in the parks. . . .

  She stared into the cellar entrance.

  Someone was there.

  “Alexi?”

  Even in those days, his soul was tormented by doubts of things he dared not discuss with her. But he had made his decision, he had known where she was stationed in Tokyo, and he had used a part of her life to come to this desolate place that reeked of ugly memories, to wait for her to find him, as once he had come here for her. . . .

  She could not fail him.

  She had to find him.

  Someone was down there in that dark hole in the earth,
surrounded by the ruins of the ten-year-old massacre.

  “Alexi?”

  Nothing.

  No one.

  And fear touched her.

  She took a step backward, and then another. The wind made strange rustlings in the tall weeds around her. She took a third step backward. Something caught her heel and she whirled, staggering slightly. Durell, she thought wildly. What had happened to him? Why had she run in panic when she saw the Chinese soldier attack him? She put a hand to her mouth, stifling a moan. How could she have deserted him? It was as if everything had come over her at once, snatching away her senses to drive her to this place, abandoning him.

  She started for the ruined compound gates, moving quickly through the night shadows until she was almost running.

  Someone ran after her, a figure flapping in rags, long skinny limbs showing aged gray skin, hard ribs. It was like a ghost, an apparition, a grinning death’s head with shaven skull and small gleaming eyes and long yellow teeth—

  Her heart stopped.

  She could not move. She could not run. She cowered against the mossy pillars of the compound gate, alone in the dark wind and the night, alone as she had been alone long ago. . . .

  “Ah!” said the apparition. “Ah, ah, little one!”

  She could not escape. It was as if she had always known he would find her again some day and take her back into the darkness with him.

  It was Pere Jacques.

  The warm wind blew her thick, pale hair and made his ragged clothing flap. He stood in a crouch, a knife in his hand, and his head, like a turtle’s, was thrust out from his rags as his beady eyes regarded her. He spoke to her in an angry voice. She did not understand him. His words were like the wind that whimpered through the desolation of the ruins.

  He reached out a clawlike hand to touch her. She shrank away. She told herself to run, to find Durell, to get away from here. Why had she come alone to this place? Why had she deserted him?

  Her thoughts clouded, grew numb.

  He touched her.

  She wanted to scream, but she could force no sound from her throat.

  “Ah,” he said. “The little one has come back!”

  “Pere Jacques?” she whispered.

  “I live forever,” he said. “It is a long time. I knew you would come back, eh? I knew it always.”

  “You—you remember me?”

  She could not recognize the sound of her own voice. Where did her strength come from now? She was partly frozen in terror, caught in the skein of perilous memories. And she was partly alert, aware of an end to a long, long search. Her heart suddenly began to lurch in her breast. She had to be careful, careful. Watch his knife, watch it. There was still the same crazy gleam in his eyes, the same drooling grin. This man for so many years had been a monster in her tormented dreams, growing in stature through time and endless nightmares until he had assumed ogre-like proportions.

  But he was only a crazy old man.

  She was not now a sick, delirious, wounded child.

  She was strong, she had been carefully trained; there was no real danger.

  “My little one,” he said, chuckling. “You have come back to me after so long a time.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You went far from me.”

  “Yes. . . . Do you live here now, in this place?”

  “Not always.”

  “You gave up the hut?”

  “It was taken from me.”

  “When?”

  He looked impatient. “Some days ago. I had to hide. He is a dangerous man. He took you from me once before.”

  “The Russian? The man with one leg?”

  “Ah, yes, the Russian. He came back. When he came back, I ran away. I knew you, too, would be here soon. I came here to wait for you.” His chuckle was insane. “I was right, eh?”

  “Where is he?” Nadja asked. “Is he in your hut now?” It was all real, after all—the dreams, the terrors, the halfveiled monsters. She forced herself to breathe evenly. His eyes devoured her body in the dim shadows. Should she

  run? She could run now, she thought. She could escape him and hide, she could elude his knife—

  “I missed you,” he whined. “I needed you.”

  “You did not treat me kindly,” she said.

  “Ah, ah! You were so lovely, such a child—”

  “I am not a child now.”

  “Ah, no. A woman—”

  The knife point made glimmering arabesques before her eyes. She pressed her shoulders back against the mossy stone pillars of the gateway and slid her eyes aside to look down the walled lane that twisted down the hillside. No one was there. What had happened to Durell? Had the drunken Chinese sergeant killed him? And the old woman —where had she gone, with her precious bottles of wine? There was no one to help her.

  Rain began to fall again. There came a rush of sudden wind that bent the weeds and threw dust into the black air. The old man coughed, and then he suddenly caught her arm and threw her with surprising strength to the hard ground and hurled himself on top of her. His smell was the same smell that had haunted her through all the past years. She felt his gasping, panting, urgent body press her into the earth. It was the same as it had been before, and in her nightmares. She could not escape. Nothing had changed.

  The rain came down in a hissing, thundering torrent. It drowned out all sound, soaked her instantly as the old man wriggled over her and pressed her down.

  And she remembered everything.

  The sound of rushing water had filled her ears for all the time she had been his prisoner, so long ago. But it had not been rain. It had been there constantly, outside the walls of his hut. She could find the place again—

  She felt the brittle bones of his wrist yield in the strength of her new grip. His furious breath slapped her cheek, his toothless mouth gaped like a dark hole in his skeletal face. She pushed the knife away from her. Anger came in a rush of new strength, filling a void that had always existed in her dreams. So many terrible things had been done to her by ‘his vicious old man, so many nightmare hours had followed her across the world and the years to torment her—

  She took the knife from his fingers and felt the wild revulsion grow against the familiar pressure of his gasping body. She had been a child once, frightened and sick. But she was not a child now.

  She struck hard with the knife.

  And struck again.

  “Ah!” he cried. “Ah . . .”

  She felt his blood on her thighs. It was surprisingly hot and warm, coming from his smelly, bony body.

  She struck a last time.

  And she felt him shudder and die.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Durell dragged the unconscious sergeant aside, out of the center of the lane. He saw the old woman sprawled in the grass under the shadows of the stone wall, and he went to her and knelt beside her and saw she had struck her head against the stones. She was not dead. He had not wanted to harm her, and he thought she would be all right. He went back to the sergeant, put the automatic rifle aside, and began methodically to strip the man’s uniform from him. It was of light quilted cotton, and it smelled of the man’s sweat and raw liquor. He put it on over his own clothes and made a quick, whipping knot around the man’s wrist, using the fellow’s shirt for strips of line and for a gag. Then he tore more strips from the shirt to make the man’s ankles secure.

  When it began to rain again, with the sudden intensity of a waterfall, he was instantly wet to the skin. The rain was warm. He tore more strips of cloth and made a gag and bonds for the old woman, too, and then dragged them both into the thick weeds that grew under the wall. Then he picked up the sergeant’s rifle and lantern and started up the hill again.

  There had been no alarm from the coolie houses below the mission ruins. The rain drummed down and blotted out all visibility except for a few feet ahead.

  He paused at the compound gate. A few twisted fruit trees grew here, their roots entangled in the crum
bled stones of the wall. When he looked back, he saw lights moving in the shallow valley below, and more lights from cars and trucks were coming up along the military highway far away. The rain blotted out any hope of seeing the shore. It kept thundering down with incredible intensity, and the earth felt slick and slippery underfoot.

  He stumbled over the dead Chinese just inside the compound gate and knelt quickly, his back feeling the rain like a palpable weight on his shoulders. He found the knife in the old man’s back and shone the sergeant’s lantern briefly on the dead, grinning face.

  There was no sign of Nadja. He understood her panic flight, but he hoped it had not carried her too far. She would be somewhere near, he decided. He was sure it was she who had used the knife on the old man. He knew he had to find her quickly, or everything would be lost in the stress she suffered.

  He searched the ruins carefully, descending into the dim, rank-smelling cellars, using the lamp at intervals to stab light into the tangled beams that still showed the charred blackness of the old fires that had destroyed this place. There was no sign of her here. He suddenly knew she would not have remained here, after killing the old man.

  He walked back to the gate and considered the body. Why had she found it necessary to kill him? He used the lamp once more and saw the repeated wounds she had inflicted. Her hand had been driven by terror, by frantic anguish, by—revenge? He stood still. Was this old coolie Pere Jacques, the one whose name had been a mystery in Japan and as far away around the world as No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington, when he was first briefed on this mission?

  He was suddenly sure of it.

  The rain hissed and stormed around him. He tried to think where Nadja might have gone. She was no longer in the mission ruins. Neither had she come back down the hill toward him, or he would have met her or seen her. So she must have gone on up the lane, beyond the compound gates. He turned that way.