Assignment - Manchurian Doll

by Edward S. Aarons

  He moved swiftly, until he came to another barbed-wire military fence. This one was electrified, and in the dark rain he almost stumbled into it. He looked each way in the wet night and finally saw the glimmer of a wooden watchtower not fifty yards away. A match flickered in the shelter of the small roof overhead. In the momentary glare, he saw the face of a Chinese soldier, lighting a cigarette, and his companion. The second man on the tower had night glasses, and the brief glimpse of his posture indicated he was watching something beyond the wire fence. Durell moved away along the fence and came to a place where the wire had been broken recently. In the heavy rain, he felt the depressions made by footprints in the mud—one small set, and several large, booted imprints.

  He paused, thinking it out. Nadja had come this way, had gone heedlessly through the fence and set off an alarm. The coastal watchers were alert, but not doing anything, which fitted his theory that the Chinese military were holding off from all interference, for fear of wrecking the plan to trap Kaminov, Durell and Nadja. He could dismiss the soldiers, then; their orders would be to let them all through, for the moment. But other men had come here recently and followed the break Nadja had made in the fence—and it was only a few moments ago, or the heavy rain would have washed out the footprints. Obviously, Nadja was now being tracked by Omaru’s hired cutthroats.

  Durell slipped through the gap in the fence.

  There was a path that twisted through old fruit orchards and terraces on the mountainside. He did not dare use his lamp, and the going was tortuous. He heard the sound of rushing water ahead, and had the sense of vast spaces to his left, as if the land fell away and down toward the sea; but he could not penetrate the rain-swept darkness and had to trust to his instinct for impressions of the landscape.

  The path entered a thin wood, picked clean of twigs and windfalls by the peasants. He paused and listened, and above the sound of the rain he heard the steady, plodding squelch of booted feet ahead of him, heard a man’s grunting breath and then a muttered curse. A lamp flickered briefly and went out, and Durell saw Omaru’s man briefly.

  There was no doubt of it; Omaru had command over the area, with the Chinese standing back. His men were trailing Nadja, but they were not trying to overtake her, in order to see where she would go. She seemed to be moving with a purpose.

  He walked faster.

  He wondered how many of Omaru’s people filled this mountainside, spread out to trap Nadja and Colonel Kaminov at their rendezvous. Somehow, he had to hold back the jaws of the trap and keep it from springing upon himself.

  He came out of the wood and crossed a road and skirted rice paddies in the darkness. The rain had slackened, and the wind was easier. There was a hush in the air, a deadly warmth pregnant with a sense of waiting, of fury lurking out there in the black night over the sea. Far below, at the foot of the steep hillside, he made out the dim streaks of white combers smashing against the rocky coast. The light strengthened, as if shreds in the cloudy overcast permitted some vagrant moonlight to sift through the darkness. The man ahead plodded on, unalarmed. The thin, piping shriek of a train whistle came from up the river valley. But here was a sense of isolation and detachment, and another twenty minutes went by without further signs of habitation.

  There was another patch of woods, a weedy field, a steep upward climb. The man ahead slipped, his gun clinking against stone. He cursed in Japanese and started up—

  And Durell took him—silently, ruthlessly.

  He gave no warning until he swung his rifle butt against the man’s head. The other, in civilian clothes and raincoat, fell to the stony earth without a sound.

  Durell waited a moment, then went on. He could see the hut now.

  It stood alone, a hermit’s aerie in a fold of the rocky hillside. A faint oil light glimmered from one of the small, square windows. There was a slanting, thatched roof, a terraced clearing, and the white streak of a mountain stream that tumbled and crashed in violence down to the sea.

  He suddenly knew that this was the place he had started out to find, from halfway around the world.

  And Nadja was in there. . . .

  She stood in the dark hut, facing Alexi.

  He was a shadow, a ghost, a wraith conjured up from the past, the creation of her childhood loneliness and despair. Nothing had changed inside the hut through the years. There was the same plank door, with its solid iron bar, and the ancient padlock on the outside that hung from its big hasp. How many times had she heard the old Chinaman snap the lock shut upon her, barring her from the outside world? She knew the single room intimately, every nook and corner, every curiosity in the grain of the wood in its board siding. The floor was of dirt, packed down so hard by decades of walking by the old man’s feet that it was like coarse cement. There was the straw pallet in the corner, where she had been allowed to sleep like a dog, after her slow recovery from the bullet wound of the executioner’s rifle. Delirium and dreams had made those weeks pass. There was the oil stove, where the old man had cooked his rice, and the small shelf where he kept a few lacquered bowls, one of which he filled grudgingly for her, to keep her alive for his pleasures. Outside, there had been only terror, the knowledge that she was being hunted remorselessly by the guerilla troopers. He had kept up that fiction for all the time she had been enslaved here.

  “Alexi?” she said dimly.

  He stood up carefully in the comer of the hut where once she used to sleep. He had been sleeping there, too.

  His deep voice was strange. “You have come.”

  “Yes.”

  He peered at her. “This was the last night. I planned to give myself up, tomorrow.” He paused. “Is it really you, Nadja?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did not think you would really come here.”

  “I am here,” she said.

  “Are you alone?”

  “There are friends nearby.”

  “Your friends—or mine?”

  “Our friends,” she said.

  The oil lamp flickered and cast grotesque shadows inside the hut. It made the place seem darker. She wanted to weep, because Alexi had changed so much. He was not the same. The man she had cherished in her heart had been a god, tall and clean and straight, a man superior to all other men. His sureness was gone now, he was bearded and unkempt, his hand shook as he held it out to her, and his smile was uncertain. The strangeness was a solid barrier between them. She did not move in from the doorway. He did not take a step toward her. They looked at each other with some suspicion, unsure of the other’s intentions. Outside, the world was a hostile place, filled with dark, hunting shadows. Time pressed upon her and upon him, urgently demanding that they leave this place. Yet she did not move. The world was shut out. This room that reeked of the old man’s evil presence was the only world that mattered for the moment.

  He wore a peasant’s costume, a quilted shirt and baggy pants and straw sandals on his feet. She could see the gleam of metal from the artificial equipment that replaced his left leg. His beard was blond, thick and heavy, and his hair was unkempt.

  Yes, she wanted to weep.

  This was not her god, the man she had idealized, the one human being in all the world whom she loved and trusted.

  He was broken and unsure, filled with suspicion toward her, as she was suspicious of him.

  Too much time had passed between them; there had been too many uncertainties, and it all marred the perfection of her dreams. She wanted to back away and run from him.

  “What is it, Nadja?” he whispered. “Have you really come here to arrest me? Is that the truth of it?”

  “Arrest you?”

  “How have you come here?” he demanded. The space of the room was still between them. “I trained you well. No one else knows how well. Did I create in you the creature who will destroy me? I made you an efficient arm of the KGB machine, did I not? I taught you discipline and loyalty. Did I train you out of all humanity?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “I thought so, a
t first, when I first received your message. I refused to believe this about you. I felt lost, as if you had betrayed me.”

  “I am glad of that. But—”

  “I’ve come to help you, Alexi.”

  “You sound strange.”

  She faltered. “You seem so different.”

  He peered at her from under bushy blond brows. His forehead was flat, furrowed with lines of inquiry. His eyes that had been so blue and certain now seemed dimmed, unsure. But the same blunt bones of his face were there, the strength and sensitivity still were carved in his mouth. He had lost weight, she thought irrelevantly.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said, “I have not really changed, Nadja. I saw too much here, too many things I could not accept. I have been thinking of this move for a long time. I think you suspected how I always felt.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were shocked, then—you were dismayed when you received my message?”

  “In some ways. Everything was turned upside-down for me. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “But you came here. You are with the American, with Durell?”

  “He brought me here. But it is dangerous. It is a trap, for all of us.”

  It did not seem to matter. She wondered that he did not show any fear now. They both seemed caught up in the web of a trance, as if they were alone in the world, two strangers tentatively trying to reach out and touch each other. She was aware of the increasing strength of the wind outside now. One part of her mind advised her that its renewed violence was a warning, a shout of terror to come, of insane destruction spinning and shrieking its way across the sea. It did not seem to matter.

  All that mattered was this man, Alexi Kaminov, who still seemed to wait for her to say yes or no to his life.

  Rain smashed at the thatched roof of the hut. Some of it was forced in by the insane wind, and she could see the walls tremble and the water came in with fine spurts of spray. He looked at her and smiled.

  “Nadja, you have come a long way, a hard way.”

  “I came to you,” she whispered.

  “You are more beautiful than ever.”

  “This is not the time—”

  “There is no other time. You are beautiful.”

  “It means nothing.”

  “When you were a child and I took you to Moscow, you were beautiful then, too, but you were a child, and you were ill and strange, and I felt sorry for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Later, you were a young woman, very intense and devoted to the work assigned to you, and you had buried everything that had happened to you so far down inside yourself that you wore a mask and walked like an automaton, and I could not really find you.”

  She searched his face. “Did you try?”

  “I tried.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I could never forget you. I thought of you always. It grew into the most important part of my life. You were never long out of my thoughts. Thinking of you gave me pleasure and happiness. And so I came to love you.”

  “I always loved you,” she said simply.

  “No.”

  “It is the truth. I always loved you.”

  “You were grateful to me. You were a child.”

  She said: “Why must we talk about it now? There is a storm outside, it is reported to be a typhoon, and Durell is somewhere out there. We must hurry back and find him.”

  “There is no need to hurry. I must be sure you wish to come with me.”

  “What else can I do? I have no other place to go now,” she said simply.

  He looked shocked. “They know?”

  “They wanted me to lead them to you. The people you trusted—Omaru, and his smuggling apparatus-—really worked for the KGB. They did not trust me in this. They—they tried to torture me, to learn about this place, so they could trap you and Durell together. I refused to tell them. So they are hunting me now, too. And of course they know we are somewhere in this area.”

  He said slowly: “Perhaps I asked too much of you. Are you afraid?”

  “A little.”

  “We will go to live among strangers, Nadja, in a strange world. It will not always be good for us. Are you afraid?”

  “We will be together,” she said simply.

  He was silent. The rain trickled in a steady stream through the broken thatch of the roof. The hut shook dangerously in the violent blasts of the wind. There was a distant, thundering roar somewhere far off, a sound she had never heard before.

  “Don’t you trust me, Alexi?” she asked.

  “I gave up hoping for you.”

  “I gave up everything for you, Alexi.”

  How strange! she thought. How long had she yearned for this moment of reunion, to see him and hear his voice and be able to touch him again! How often had she dreamed of knowing for certain that he loved her and wanted her!

  But it was not like her dreams.

  He was not the godlike man of her childhood, of her early love. He was not infallible and strong, always sure of himself, always right, always wise.

  He was a man, not a god.

  And this made a difference.

  Her love for him changed in that moment.

  She was the stronger now, for these few minutes, as least, and she accepted the reversal calmly, even with a sudden gladness, and at last she felt an unfreezing of something that had not dared to stir in her from the moment she had stepped in here. Her uncertainty was gone, dropping away from her like a discarded blindfold. The dreams she had lived with, all unreal and unfulfilled, impossible as it was in the world today, were gone now, too. They were replaced by a far stronger and greater acceptance of reality.

  She held out her hand to him.

  “Come, Alexi, we must go. I do not know if we can escape. They were watching for us, hunting for us, all through the hills and along the sea. Perhaps they will find us and capture us. Perhaps not. But we must try. At least, we are escaping together.”

  He moved toward her, limping.

  She wanted to weep, because he was not strong now, and because it was she who would have to lead the way. She saw the slight quivering at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes changed, the way a look of trust and sudden gladness crossed his face.

  She kissed him lightly on his bearded mouth.

  “Come,” she said simply.

  And the door of the hut burst open.

  At first she thought it was the terrible strength of the wind that seemed to shake the very earth under her feet. Rain smashed through the doorway, and the wind swept in with palpable strength, thrusting her backward, making her hair stream, her eyes water, blinding her and snatching the breath from her lips.

  Then she saw that someone had broken open the door.

  He stood there, enormous, streaming with the rain, filling the universe with his dark aspect.

  It was Omaru.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Durell watched the big man go into the hut. There was a flash of light from the opened door, partly blocked by Omaru’s bulk, and then the darkness returned, filled with the howling wind and rain. He stood in the lee of a massive boulder, sheltered from the blasts that were hurled against the mountain. The rain was blinding, flying past at the horizontal. There was a roaring from the sea as if wild monsters fought out there.

  He was not surprised by Omaru’s personal appearance. The man could have flown here overnight, in two hours, while the trawler plodded across the Japan Sea. He probably had about a dozen of his own men. Pride, and an egotism that matched his bulk, would demand that Omaru personally concluded the operation for which he was being paid.

  Pride, and a desire for revenge he could see and taste. Egotism had demanded that he insist the Chinese hold back so he could spring the trap himself.

  Durell’s only course was to go ahead, whatever the odds. He did not underestimate Omaru. To retreat would be to invite disaster, death. The boldest course was to plunge ahead toward his goal. Anything else was suicide.r />
  He stepped out from the shelter of the rock and walked boldly up the inclined path toward the hut.

  The wind buffeted him, the rain soaked through the quilted uniform he had taken from the Chinese sergeant. He did not get far without interference. He did not expect to.

  One of Omaru’s men came out on the road, shouting something that was snatched away by the wind. A branch tom from a tree came flying through the air, twisting like a bat’s wing, and the man ducked, terror in his face. Durell approached casually, leaning into the wind. He wanted to run the rest of the way to the hut. With Omaru already inside, anything might be happening. But he paused at the sentry’s challenge.

  The man, in civilian clothes, barked a command in Peiping Chinese, and Durell realized that in his stolen uniform, the other took him for one of the Chinese troopers.

  “You do not belong here!” the man shouted. “You people have orders to stay clear of this area, sergeant!”

  Durell moved so the rain drove into the other’s face, blinding him slightly. He was a Eurasian, small and compact, with a soaked trenchcoat and felt hat that was totally inadequate for this weather and terrain.

  “I must see Omaru,” Durell called in Japanese, above the roar of the wind.

  “What for? This is our job. You have no business—” “My lieutenant thinks you need help.”

  “We’re all right.” The man waved his wet gun. “How did you get past Moteki? He should have stopped you.” “Something struck him—a falling branch,” Durell said. “All the devils of the night are at work against us.”

  “That is true.” The man was squinting, trying to see Durell’s face. He said pompously, “But you must get out of here, sergeant. This is an intelligence operation.”

  “When will you give the signal for us?” Durell ventured. “I don’t know anything about a signal. There’s some business about a red flare, if we need you. That’s all I know.”

  “You’re sure you’ve got enough men?”

  “Ten of us, but that’s enough, don’t worry. You—” The man broke oil as he came closer and peered at Durell’s face. Shock, alarm, and rage twisted his face as he realized how he had been tricked. He started to bring up his gun, but he was much too late.