Assignment - Manchurian Doll
Page 19
“She has had a very bad time,” Durell said.
“Yes, very bad.”
“She’s different because she is not a helpless child now, but a full-grown woman, True, she no longer needs your strength as she once did, and she feels that you need her now, in turn. So she has gained even more strength by knowing you need her. Does she seem such a stranger to you?”
“Strange—and wonderful.”
“You must pretend to need her, for a time yet.”
“Yes, I intend to.” Kaminov paused and looked at the garden. “I do need her, you know. Desperately.”
Durell stood up. “You took a chance, Alexi. When she was called in and you disappeared and decided to make your fake defection a real one, you didn’t really know how she would react, did you? You were playing a double game with yourself. On the one hand, you always leaned toward defection, anyway. But you wouldn’t have gone along with it if Nadja had refused, am I right?”
“That is true.”
“How could you trust her to agree with your plan?”
“I did not, until the last moment.”
“Suppose she came to Ospesko with me, also on orders, and when we found you, suppose she had betrayed us both? You would have stood before a firing squad with me, Kaminov.”
“I think not,” Kaminov said. “Although for a moment, when she first walked into that hut, I wasn’t sure of her at all. She was so different. She was a woman.”
“But suppose she had betrayed us?” Durell insisted. Kaminov spoke quietly and sadly.
“I love her, you understand. But I would have killed her.” “Does she know that?”
“No.”
“Don’t ever tell her,” Durell said.
Kaminov glanced sharply at Durell. Durell looked tall and dark against the peaceful sunlight. He looked dangerous. Then Kaminov smiled slightly and stood up, too.
“She will never know. You see, I thought that if I had to kill her—why, then, I would have turned the gun on myself and killed myself, too.”
Nadja walked quietly beside Durell to the sedan that Tagashi had provided for the trip to the airport. The car was parked inside the gateway to the inn. There was a burly driver and another Japanese in the front seat, and Kaminov had already gotten in. Another car would precede them along the highway; a third would follow.
The girl walked slowly down the immaculate shell path, deliberately delaying so she could be alone with Durell. He noticed that the leaves on the momiji, the red maples, were tinged with brown, losing their brilliance to autumn. The girl’s golden hair seemed to pick up all the colors in the radiant sunlight, but her face was serene, and a small, secret smile curved her lips as she paused to consider the flower beds inside the gates of the inn.
“Have you spoken to him?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” Durell said.
“Please. What did he say? What did he tell you?”
“He loves you,” Durell said. “But you have surprised him.” “How?”
He laughed. “You’ve grown up.”
“He thinks of me as a woman now?”
“Yes.”
“It took a long time.” She sighed happily. “Soon he will know how much of a woman I can be for him. He will be even more surprised.” Her smile was small, fleeting. “Do you think he will be disappointed, though? His love for me was different.”
“It’s a man’s love now, for a woman.”
“Still—one loses something. Childhood fancies don’t always stay the same in this real world, do they?”
“You and I and Kaminov haven’t lived in the normal world,” Durell said. “Our work prohibits it. It changes us. It takes something—perhaps our dreams—away from us. But you and Alexi are luckier than most. You’re both getting out. I envy you, a little, for that—and for the rest of it, too. Alexi will find you an equal now, a woman. I suspect he’s in for some surprises.”
She laughed. “Pleasant ones, I think.”
She held out her hand to him and her pale gray eyes searched his face for something, and he thought he read a fleeting offering and a wish in her look, but he could not be sure and he knew he could make no move to encourage it.
“I’ll never see you again, will I?” she murmured.
“I think not.”
“It would be for the best, I suppose. But I owe you so much. It is because of you that I can meet Alexi as a woman, and not as a child.”
Her fingers were cool. They slid away from his. “Goodbye, then,” she said.
He nodded and watched her walk in grace and beauty toward the car. She walked with quick purpose, and Durell saw Kaminov waiting for her, a look of wonder on his face.
She held out both hands and he took them and drew her to him for a moment. Neither turned to look back at him.
Durell felt a sadness that did not belong in the peaceful, golden day.
She looked proud and calm and inexpressibly lovely, sitting beside Kaminov in the back of the car. He had the fleeting sensation of having lost something that those two had found; but then he told himself he was simply tired.
The car drove away, and he was alone.
He stood for a moment, looking at the quiet beauty of the garden, and then he turned from the gate and went into the inn to telephone the Embassy in Tokyo and make arrangements for his return to Washington.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE