Assignment - Suicide

by Edward S. Aarons

  “And ruined everything.”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  A stifled screaming continued to come from out of sight under the ledge. Durell scanned the sentry tower and the machine gun post. Nothing stirred. He could not see any of the guards; they had all taken cover. And the occupants of the Zis were still inside, fearful of getting out into the open. A whistle shrilled again and a shouted order came dimly up the slope, but nobody showed.

  Gregori kept on screaming.

  “We can’t leave him there,” Valya said tightly. Her voice curled up to the thin edge of hysteria. “I can’t stand it. He’s wounded and suffering.”

  “Cover me,” Durell said. His words were flat and dry. “I’ll go over after him.”

  “But they’ll shoot you, too.”

  “As you said, We can’t leave Gregori there. You’re not a bad shot, Valya. You picked the sergeant with no trouble. Just don’t let them get back to the machine gun.”

  “Sam, please—”

  Gregori screamed again. Durell laid his rifle flat on the hot surface of the ledge and crawled on hands and knees to where the brush formed a last screening barrier between his body and the enemy eyes that watched for him. He glanced downstream, searching for Mikhail’s body in the distance, but there was nothing to be seen. Little more than five minutes had gone by since the Zis limousine had first appeared. Nothing stirred, but there was dim shouting from inside the disabled car. Apparently the occupants in the back seat were urging the driver to get out and try to start the car moving again; and the driver was arguing back with understandable reluctance.

  Durell slowly and carefully worked the brush apart and looked down the sharp slope. Trees grew crookedly out of the rocky scarp, together with brush and grapevines. There was another ledge about twenty feet below, covered with more brush, from which several wild cherry trees grew with twisted trunks.

  “Gregori?” he called softly.

  The screaming stopped abruptly, became a low moaning.

  “Gregori?”

  “Go back," Gregori called faintly. “Don’t be a damn fool.”

  “I’m coming down for you.”

  “Go back! I’m a dead man.”

  Gregori lay on his back on a narrow shelf of stone not more than two feet wide. Both legs dangled over the edge of the drop. Below, the face of the cliff turned inward and there was a sheer drop to the rocky bed of the river a hundred feet below, Sunlight glinted on mica in the asphalt road that followed the river bank. A bird called plaintively. There was more muffled shouting from inside the stalled limousine.

  Durell slid over the edge of the cliff, finding handholds on vine and brush. For one moment he was fully exposed to the eyes that sought him from the sentry tower. A rifle cracked and the bullet kicked up a spatter of gravel that stung his face. Valya‘s rifle replied instantly from above him. He dropped five feet, caught another scrubby vine, and worked his legs around until his searching toes found a tentative grip. The thin foliage offered only a flimsy screen from across the river. Sweat soaked through his shirt. From somewhere a rifle spoke again and again a bullet sprayed gravel over his head. He could not move now. He could not escape. His toehold was too precarious to permit any attempt to hide.

  He looked down at Gregori. Several bullets had chopped through his left leg and one had gone into his stomach. Blood dripped through his open leather tunic. His face was agonized. Their eyes met across the thirty vertical feet separating them.

  “It is hopeless,” Gregori called. “I cannot get out.”

  “Be still.”

  “You will not be able to get back!”

  ‘”We’ll find a way.”

  He found a hand grip on a sturdy, twisted grapevine and lowered himself slowly for six more feet. His legs dangled in thin air. The drop below was dizzying. There were more noises from inside the Zis, and now the chauffeur opened the door cautiously and stepped out on the road. Valya’s gun cracked and dust sported and the chauffeur dived back into the protection of the armored automobile.

  The rough strands of the grapevine tore at the palms of his hands. Durell swung slightly, felt a sudden jolt as part of the vine tore free, and he dropped another foot before it tightened again. His heart pounded. He looked down between his dangling legs and saw Gregori staring up at him. Gregori couldn’t help him. If the man moved at all, he would slide from his narrow ledge and fall to the road below. Durell drew a deep breath, felt his shoulder muscles tremble violently under the strain, swung one leg carefully, caught his foot in the crotch of a cherry tree, and lowered his weight on it. The tree held. He caught at a branch, released the grapevine, and worked his Way down to within jumping distance of the ledge where Gregori sprawled.

  Sweat stung his eyes and dripped from his jaw. He scanned the opposite slope and saw no sign yet of Vassili and Elena. He wondered if they had been betrayed over there, too. Everything had gone wrong that could possibly go wrong.

  Slowly he worked his way lower through the leaves and branches that seemed to grow diabolically to impede his descent. He was almost within reaching distance of Gregori When he heard the sound of the half-track returning from farther up the ravine. Apparently the tower had summoned it by radio.

  “Hold still,” he called down. “Don’t move, whatever happens.”

  “I still have one arm. I can catch you," Gregori whispered.

  “No. Don’t move.”

  He jumped. The narrow ledge was covered with brambly shrubs, and his ankle caught in one as he landed. His shoulder slammed the face of the cliff and his balance was lost, and he felt his weight thrust outward into dizzy emptiness. For one instant land and sky swam in a wide, insane arc, whirling before his sweat-blurred vision. He had an instant of panic knowing he was going to die and then something caught his thigh and he grabbed in despair at a flimsy branch and felt it crack and break under his grip. One leg shot off into space and he landed on his left hip, twisted instantly to his stomach, and caught at a flowering shrub that grew out of the rock. A miraculous shrub, a promise and a prayer answered. Its tough little roots held. His legs dangled in space. He saw that Gregori had caught at his thigh with his huge left hand and held him.

  “Easy, my friend," Gregori gasped.

  “Don’t try to move again,” Durell whispered.

  “I am all right. Can you get your feet back up?”

  “In a minute.”

  He waited for strength to flow back into his arms and shoulders, then heaved up and twisted and flopped down on the ledge to Gregori’s right. Blood had made the stone slippery. A gun cracked, the bullet snipped oil a twig and a leaf, and the bit of branch fluttered into the void below. From overhead came the prompt reply of Valya’s covering rifle.

  “They see us here, gospodin." Gregori said.

  “Can’t be helped. Can you move at all?”

  “I am dying,“ Gregori said.

  “Not yet. Maybe there’s a way back up.”

  Gregori nodded his shaggy head. “To the left. There seems to be an extension of this shelf. But I cannot walk.”

  “I’ll carry you."

  “Impossible. There is no cover. They’ll pick you off.“

  Somebody shouted from the sentry tower at the bridge. The sound carried a note of exultation. Durell looked down and saw that the half-track was nosing back around the bend of the road, returning to the scene. The squad of soldiers in it was already jumping off and spreading out, finding cover as they neared the base of the cliff. An officer ran toward the limousine and Valya fired and the officer fell and sprawled on his face and did not move. A machine gun on the half-track set up a heavy, racketing fire, the clattering filling the narrow gorge with intolerable sound. A line of bullets chunked into the face of the cliff ten feet above Durell’s head.

  “Sam?” It was Valya’s thin voice. “Sam!”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I‘m coming to help!”

  “Stay where you are!” he shouted.

  The mach
ine gun had stopped firing. Some sort of consultation was taking place inside the armored body of the half-track. The motor started again and the vehicle clattered toward the stalled limousine. Durell turned to Gregori.

  “Come along, pal. Let’s get out of here.”

  But there was no answer from the guerrilla leader.

  Durell looked at him. “Gregori?"

  Gregori was dead.

  He looked to right and left. There was no escape from the shelf of rock to the right. To the left, as Gregori had said, the shelf lifted upward, a goat’s path back to the top of the cliff. But for perhaps ten feet or more it was fully exposed to the line of fire from the bridge and the half-track. Durell wiped sweat from his eyes. Without warning, the automatic weapon on the half-track began to hammer again, chipping rock from the cliff over his head. The line of fire angled down toward the spot where he crouched: he could not waste a moment after gauging the situation. He swung back to Gregori, flipped open the man’s leather tunic, found the blood-stained map he had taken from Marshall. Then he lifted the dead man’s head and shoulders, shoved hard, and hurled Gregori’s body down into the abyss below.

  The machine gun stopped firing for an instant.

  Immediately he stood erect and ran for the open space of the ledge while the gunners on the bridge hesitated for the time it took Gregori’s body to fall, spread-eagled, through space. The body hit the road below with a fiat, dead sound. A shout came from the sentry tower, a sound of triumph that quickly changed to chagrin as Durell was spotted. But it was too late for the gunners on the half-track. The ledge angled around a thrust of rock and as he climbed, panting, to the last few feet from the top, the machine gun chattered again and chipped dust and stone from the protecting bulge of granite behind him.

  A few seconds later he saw Valya’s hand and arm reaching down to help him up. He gathered his strength, heaved, and caught at a handheld, hauled his hips over the edge, and rolled over and over across the flat rock he had left only a few minutes before.

  For a long moment he lay on his back while the sky reeled above him. He sucked air into starving lungs. The wild hammering of his heart eased slowly. Valya’s face bent over him, dimly at first. Her mouth was grim and hard.

  “Were you hit, Sam?"

  He shook his head, wet his lips. “They didn’t touch me.”

  “Is Gregori dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then everything is lost,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  He sat up and crawled to the lip of rock where he could see the bridge again. The squad from the half-track, except for the gun crew, was angling at a running crouch up the slope on either hand, to circle their position. The driver of the half-track was carefully nudging the limousine with its frightened and angry occupants to one side of the road. Durell wiped stinging sweat from his eyes again. Not more than ten minutes had gone by since the action began.

  He picked up the rifle from where he had left it. Panic began to move in him. There was no escape. Gregori’s entire plan had collapsed in disaster. He had had no right to take part in it. He had been careful not to do any lethal shooting, and yet—there would be no compunction on the other side, when those troops caught up with him.

  His mouth felt dry, his throat was dusty. Bitterness kept him motionless for another moment, until he suddenly saw Valya stand up.

  “It‘s Elena—and Vassili. At last!”

  A grenade exploded down on the bridge—and another. The machine gun clattered and suddenly stopped, then rattled again. There were hoarse shouts of fear and surprise. Durell pulled Valya violently down into shelter and looked again.

  The Zis limousine was burning. Great gouts of flame shot out from under the rear end, and the back doors were flung open as the occupants finally tumbled out. On the hillside beyond the sentry tower, Durell saw Vassili standing gaunt and stark against the blue sky, in the act of pulling the pin from a third grenade. It was never thrown. The machine gun sliced through him and he pitched forward, tumbling downhill, and then Elena appeared, running toward him, and the machine gun chattered again.

  Three men had gotten out of the Zis to stand in the shelter of the half-track and stare at Vassili’s body as it came tumbling and sliding down the slope, arms and legs boneless in death. One of the three men wore a Red Army uniform. The second was younger, dressed in drab blue serge, carrying a leather dispatch case under his arm. The third man was middle-aged, fat and heavy, with a black fedora and a dark coat. The last man’s face looked savage and angry.

  Durell picked up the target rifle.

  “Which one is Uncle Sergei?” he asked Valya quietly.

  She looked at him with suddenly wide eyes. “The one in the middle.”

  “With the hat?"

  “Yes. Will you—"

  “We have a minute or two before we are caught here. Time enough.”

  He felt calm now. A silence seemed to settle around him. He lay flat, rested the muzzle of the rifle on a little elbow of rock, and sighted. He checked the elevation, adjusted for it, and discounted the wind. There was not enough to deflect his aim. The face of the commissar came into line with the cross-hairs on the telescopic sight and he pulled hack the slide pump, felt the cartridge snick easily into the chamber.

  The face of his target was broad and fleshy, with gross thick lips and heavy jowls. The eyes were black as onyx under heavy brows. He saw the iron gray of the man‘s hair under the broad brim of his hat. There was cruelty in the lines of the mouth, ambition written in the grim set of the jaw. A narrow white scar ran through the bluish-black jowl along one side of the face.

  A coolness came to him, like a fresh breeze that swept through his mind. He pushed every other thought away from him. His hands were steady and dry; his eyes were clear. He remembered the first time he had gone hunting with Grandpa Jonathan in the bayous, the way the fine old man had told him to wait, to aim, to hold his breath and think of nothing but what he saw between the notches of his gunsight.

  He began gently to squeeze the trigger.

  Valya pushed the rifle to one side with a sweep of her arm. The face vanished in the blur of the telescopic sight.

  “Wait,” she said tightly. “Listen!”

  Durell expelled an explosive breath. Valya was staring down at the ravine. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. He heard a thin, long-drawn call:

  “Uncle—Sergei!”

  It was Mikhail. The dancer stood uncertainly in the bed of the stream, one hand resting on a large boulder where the water ran white. He was not more than fifty paces from the bridge where the half-track and the three men stood.

  “Uncle, it is Miko!"

  One of the guards raised his rifle and sighted at the wretched, bedraggled figure. The squat man in the hat shouted something and knocked the rifle aside and walked heavily to the bridge railing to stare down at the apparition. He shouted something that Durell could not understand. And then he saw Mikhail raise his hand and saw the gun Mikhail held.

  The sound of the shot seemed futile after the explosions of grenade and machine gun.

  Valya whimpered and covered her mouth with her hand.

  Sergei Zadanelev took one hand from the rail and clapped it to his throat and lowered it and looked at it. He fell slowly, like a tree reluctant to yield to the ax. He hit the rail with his head, his legs folded, and he slid from the bridge to the water below. His body splashed and the current took him and carried him to the shallows where a wide V of ripples spread out as his corpse blocked the run of the river.

  Valya whispered, “Mikhail did it. He Waited until he was sure, and then he did it himself, with his own hand. He promised he would make it up to me. He said he loved me—”

  The machine gun rattled briefly, rattled again. Mikhail was gone. Durell stood up.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here if we can.”

  He turned and pulled Valya away from the scene. She was like a sleepwalker. There was still a slim chance they could elude the
approaching guards who were climbing the slope. If they could hide in the woods and swamp again—

  He stared into the muzzle of a pistol pointed at his belly.

  “Drop the rifle, Mr. Durell.”

  Lieutenant Kronev stepped from the brush behind him, smiling.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE MVD MAN was not alone. Two other agents in blue uniforms stood behind him with drawn guns. Durell had no time to question Kronev’s appearance. The last time he had glimpsed Kronev was in the subway in Moscow. He dropped the rifle.

  “Come,” Kronev said. “Walk ahead of me.”

  “Your boss has been killed,” Durell said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw it happen, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “You could have stopped it. You saw Mikhail come up the stream. You were at a better advantage to see him than I was.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Yet you let Mikhail kill him?”

  “You are wasting time. Do you want to die here?”

  Durell took Valya’s hand. The girl looked exhausted. Her shoulders drooped and her fingers were cold in his. Durell moved at a sharp gesture of Kronev’s gun and walked down the slope on the faint trail that led back to the dugout. The two MVD men followed Kronev with caution.

  “If you value your life," Kronev suggested quietly, “you will cooperate with me by making no sound whatever. Do you understand?”

  “Why don’t you just shoot us right here?”

  “My orders advise other measures.”

  “Where did you come from? You weren’t in the limousine.”

  “Be quiet and walk. Quickly, now!”

  It was silent in the woods, at odds with the sounds of the battle just passed. Durell drew a deep breath and tried to clear his head. Success had come only through Mikhail’s suicidal effort. Mikhail must have known that his attack on Sergei Zadanelev meant instant death. He must have known that Gregori’s plan for ambush and assassination would fail otherwise. Probably he would never find out why Vassili and Elena were delayed in beginning their attack. Everything had gone wrong, yet the end was finally accomplished by a man Durell had considered n coward and traitor. He looked sidewise at Valya. She was walking with stunned eyes that saw nothing. He put his arm around her to support her, but she seemed to be unaware of his touch.