Assignment - Suicide Read online

  A blast of American jive music, as incongruous here as a Bronx cheer, suddenly reached Durell from a knot of grinning pedestrians midway to their goal. Durell moved that way with Valya, walking with a long stride that sliced through the people on the sidewalk, putting them between himself and his pursuers. The music was Dixieland jazz, as true and authentic as magnolias and corn pone. He could not see the musicians who were playing outside the neon-lighted doorway of a restaurant similar to the one they had just fled. The knot of grinning spectators clapped their hands to the rhythm, obviously enjoying themselves.

  “What is it?” Valya asked.

  “Something hard to believe,” Durell said. “A message from home.”

  It was obviously an impromptu jam session there on a Moscow sidewalk, carried out with zest and musical abandon that plucked the stolid. disciplined Muscovites out of their somber existence. It was a five-man combo of clarinet. drums, bass fiddle, sax and trumpet. The grinning Negroes, in American hats and coats, with bright scarves around their necks, were enjoying themselves as much as the onlookers. Durell pushed deeper into the crowd with Valya. Kronev and his men were not far behind.

  “It is an American troupe,” the girl said. “I read that there was a cultural exchange mission. Part of a theatrical enterprise that has been very popular in Moscow.” The girl looked over her shoulder. “But the subway—”

  She was cut oil by a sudden shout of delight from the bass fiddler, who spun his instrument with wild abandon and grinned hugely.

  “Sam! Sam, boy! Skin me alive if I ain’t dreaming! Boy, are you here or is it all that vodka I drunk? Sam?"

  “Hello, Johnny,” Durell said. “It’s me, and not a ghost.”

  Johnny McPadd was a short, burly man with ebony skin and big, happy eyes. His face glistened with perspiration despite the cold April wind. His stubby fingers, heavily ringed, snapped the strings of his bass for two more bars and then he spoke to the saxophonist beside him and pushed him aside to hug and thump Durell with exuberant glee.

  “Last time I saw you was down in Orleans, in the Lotus Blossom. Remember? You were working the tables for Andy T-Bo. Best damn dealer since your grandpa quit workin’ the river boats. What are you doing here, Sam?”

  “Sightseeing,” Durell said. “I’m glad I ran into you, Johnny.”

  “Who’s the chick?" McPadd asked, looking at Valya. Without waiting for a reply, he went on: “Heard you were on the government payroll, Sam. Let's see, it’s been six, eight years, hasn’t it?”

  “Look, Johnny, I need some help,” Durell broke in.

  “Help? Are you broke? I tell you. all you got to do is ask for something and these people fall over their feet giving it to you. We’ve been treated with the red carpet here, ever since we started the tour. They eat our jive like a cat licks cream, Sam.”

  Durell saw Kronev‘s swart, puzzled face through the crowd of spectators that ringed the musicians. The politseyski apparently had been cooled down with the removal of Kronev’s car from the traffic lanes. The MVD man was making no effort to push through the spectators to seize Durell and the girl. His eyes gleamed with interest. Evidently Kronev was not too sure of his ground; Kronev did not want an overt scone in public that he would have to explain. Kronev’s work tonight was obviously outside his MVD duties, under orders from the mysterious Z. A lack of decision showed on the fat man‘s ugly face. But it wouldn‘t remain for long. After Johnny McPadd’s greeting, there was no hope new for Durell to continue to assume his Russian cover identity. Kronev knew him for an American. But whether that was good or bad remained to be seen.

  Durell cut short Johnny McPadd’s flood of words. “Johnny, listen. Wait a minute. It isn‘t money. There are some local cops after me and Miss Hvalna. We‘ve got to shake them."

  The ebony-skinned musician was puzzled. “What have you done, Sam?”

  “Johnny, this is important. All I want you to do is let us stick close to you. Work your way to the subway entrance down the block. The cops are in this crowd right now and they’ll move in on me in a minute unless you help to distract them.”

  “That’ll can do, Sam. Right now.” McPadd turned and yelled something incomprehensible to his musicians, who had not stopped playing once during these past few moments. Like a troupe of Pied Pipers, the combo band moved down the sidewalk, carrying with them the hand-clapping audience whose shouts of friendly approval swamped Kronev’s commands.

  Walking beside Johnny McPadd, Durell spoke swiftly and succinctly. “Listen once, and don’t forget a word. I can’t repeat anything. Ready?” And When the bass fiddler nodded, Durell gave him Alex Holbrook’s name and the Embassy number and the name of Operation Dart. He told McPadd about Marshall and Leningrad—everything that had happened and what he thought was going to happen. He did not know how much McPadd would remember of it. But it was a hope, a slim chance, a prayer.

  “All right, if you’ve got it,” he said at last. “Now stop at the subway entrance and cut loose with everything,” he told McPadd. “But arrange your instruments so the passage is blocked.”

  “Reet,” Johnny said. “I got the ball and I’m running with it, boy. Good luck."

  It took only a few moments for the swaying, clapping crowd to drift toward the brightly lighted subway entrance. Durell kept near McPadd as the grinning man twirled and thumped a deep rhythm for his bass fiddle. Back in the New Orleans days, Johnny McPadd had been a legend. It was an astounding piece of luck to stumble into him on the other side of the world, at a moment when every way out was blocked. There was always an element of luck in the game, Durell thought, but what counted was the way you seized and twisted it to your advantage. If McPadd could get through somehow to Alex Holbrook . . .

  His mind jumped ahead while his gaze kept Kronev in the periphery of his vision. He could tell that Kronev was coining to a decision. It was evident in the man’s taut mouth, the quick, inaudible orders he gave to the two huge men who flanked him. But Kronev acted a few seconds too late. McPadd’s hand securely blocked the subway entrance now.

  “Thanks a million,” Durell told the musician. He had to shout now over the blare of the trumpet. “Do your best with Dart, understand? See you in the Lotus Blossom someday.”

  “May it be soon, boy—and don’t worry none about the message to Garcia. I got it and I’m Western Union with wings. Give my best to your grandpa.”

  “Get clumsy if somebody tries to follow us, Johnny.”

  McPadd nodded and Durell snatched Valya‘s hand and they ran down the subway stairs. From behind them, the syncopation of a Basin Street blues number blared louder than before. Dimly through the thumping melody came a man‘s angry shout. The stairway curved down into marble splendors, Valya. moved more slowly than before, and her color was not good; Durell was still not sure that one of the bullets behind the stolovaya hadn’t hit her. A gush of warm air struck them as they came out on the vast waiting platform. Durell looked hack. Nobody had followed them—yet.

  Valya gasped. “That was fortunate, meeting your friend like that.”

  “‘We’re not in the clear yet."

  "But Kronev must move with care—you saw that. He didn’t dare move in front of so many people. It was all right at the restaurant; everything happened so fast, before any objections could be made. But on the street—it was clever of you to use your friends like this.” They were walking now through vaulted, echoing corridors of rose marble. “What did your friend mean when he said you were the best dealer he had ever known?”

  “I was once a professional gambler." ‘Durell said.

  “A card -player? To earn a living?“

  “It’s a family tradition.”

  He followed her toward the ticket booth. They did not run now. The platform was crowded, and people flowed between them and the toot of the stairs they had descended. He looked back again. Still no sign of Kronev. ‘He hoped Johnny McPadd Wouldn‘t get into trouble by helping them. Then he heard a distant, impatient shout behind a thick clot
of people who had just disembarked from a gleaming, waiting train.

  Valya went to the ticket booth and shoved sixty kopeks for their fares through the wicket at the stolid woman. The woman was in no hurry. She looked curiously at Valya’s white face. “Are you ill, gaspasha?”

  “No, no. But I must catch that train.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Of course not. But my husband and I just heard my mother is ill—”

  “I am sorry. Here you are.”

  They pushed through the turnstiles onto the immaculate waiting platform. The tile and marble gleamed, and statuary stood in solemn marble and bronze in niches set into the wall--images of the Soviet great in arts and sciences. The pneumatic doors of the waiting train began to slide shut as they plunged through. Durell controlled his breathing, forcing himself to inhale easily despite the aching strain in his lungs. Valya gasped and leaned against him. Some of the passengers looked up from their copies of Pravda to stare.

  “Relax,” Durell whispered.

  “I will be all right."

  There was shouting far down the subway platform. Far behind them at the turnstiles, Kronev and his two men finally burst through. The train lurched, halted, lurched again and started. Statues, columns, plaques began to slide past the glass doors. Kronev waved his short arms in wild anger. He stopped running. The last Durell saw of him was his figure suddenly immobile, his round head thrust forward in an ominous stance of deadly patience.

  Valya leaned her weight against him and he tried to support her as inconspicuously as possible in the swaying train.

  “Tell me the truth. Were you hit?”

  “No, no. But my ankle—I turned it on the street—”

  “Lean on me,” he ordered.

  The train clicked and clattered smoothly along a sweeping curve under Red Square.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked. “We can’t stay on the train too long or we‘ll be intercepted.”

  “We will get out at Smolenskaya Square.”

  “And then?”

  She frowned slightly. “We can stay at a place I know of for tonight. We will be safe there and we can decide what to do.”

  “What of your friends? And Mikhail? They’ll resent your being with me.”

  “I cannot help what they think."

  “You will be alone," Durell said. “Just as I’m alone here."

  Her eyes searched his, looked away, and looked up again. She shrugged. “You and I are not alone—not if you have told me the truth. There is half the world with us.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

  “We will talk about it later,” Valya said quietly.

  Chapter Eight

  DURELL lay back in the huge stone tub and let the hot steaming water soak the weary ache from his muscles. It was two hours later, long after midnight. Beside him, on a stool drawn up near the tub, was his clothing and the Mauser P.38 he had taken from Kronev in Leningrad. The gun was cocked and ready. Marshall’s map lay beside it. He listened, but he heard no sound from Valya in the next room. Reaching from the tub, he dried his hands on a coarse yellow towel and picked up a Russian cigarette from a cardboard pack the girl had left there. The smoke tasted harsh and bitter in his throat. There was a bottle of Armagnac brandy on the floor beside the huge tub, and he took a long swallow between drags on the cigarette. The heat of the tub and the brandy made him drowsy, and he fought against relaxing by remembering the last two hours. . . .

  Valya had been more than efficient. They had debarked from the subway train at Smolenskaya Ulitza, and nobody had intercepted them there. They had walked for a number of blocks through a rabbit warren of tenements dating back to Czarist days, odorous and rotting, and he had had to wait in a dark, windy doorway while she went into one of the ancient houses. He had had to trust her all the way at this point, and she had not failed him. When she returned they walked another block to where a Moskva car was parked in a rubble-strewn lot. The car belonged to a friend of hers, she had said. They had driven out Smolenskaya Ulitza and then cut west to cross the Moscow River with the dim radiance of the Kremlin and the city cultural parks to the south of their path. The broad boulevard became an autobahn marked by the high green fences and watchtowers of the Politburo’s country homes, but Valya had soon turned off into a bumpy road that led through dense woodland of pine and white birch, circling hack to the river. The tortuous road ended in a small log dacha hidden away in the woods, with the river bank a hundred yards to the rear.

  He had suspected a trap, but the log cottage was empty.

  “This place belongs to Petra, an official of the Intourist bureau where I work," Valya had explained. “He is on his vacation at Yalta."

  “You know what my plans are,” Durell had said. “I’m going to get to my Embassy. Shall we consider another truce for the present?”

  “Yes. We can be comfortable here. I shall make some tea and prepare the bed. And I suspect you would appreciate a hot bath. So would I. But you must be taken care of first.”

  “You don‘t have to bother about my welfare," he said.

  “But I want to.” She had looked away from his direct gaze. “I like to do this. Perhaps I am silly, but I find it pleasant."

  “You’re a strange person.”

  “Why am I strange? Do not your American girls like to do things for their men?"

  “I am not your man, Valya. Mikhail is your man.”

  “Perhaps he was. But he is not so any longer."

  Durell had said bluntly: “Was Mikhail your lover?”

  She had flushed and looked away from him in silence, her lashes dark against the ivory cream of her skin. There was something appealing and defenseless about her that had contradicted her decisive behavior of the past few hours. “I will draw your bath," she had said, and then she had left him. . . .

  There came a knock on the bathroom door as Durell soaked in the tub, thinking about her. “Sam?” It was the first time she used his name. “Tea is ready. And I made some sandwiches.” She was speaking English. “Whenever you are ready.”

  “Coming right out.”

  He dried his hard, solid body vigorously, grateful for the soaking that had eased most of his muscular aches. He wrapped a towel around his middle, tucked the map away in the toe of one of his heavy boots, picked up the gun, put it down with a shrug, and opened the bathroom door.

  Valya stepped back, smiling with unaccustomed shyness. She looked different. At first he was puzzled to define the difference, and then he saw it went beyond the fact that she had unpinned her magnificent hair. She wore a slim, pink princess-style robe, and she had put a touch of lipstick on her mouth.

  “Please don’t stare at me,” she whispered, smiling. “The tea and food are ready.”

  He kept on staring. “You’re very lovely."

  She looked away. “I know what it is to be with a man. I am not a child. I lost my childhood many years ago during the war and in the terrible years afterward. Perhaps I never had a childhood. I cannot remember a time when there wasn’t some responsibility thrust on me. I do not like to think about all that now.”

  “You should always be like this,” Durell said gently.

  “You speak these things with your lips but not your heart,” she said. “You are suspicious of me, but the perfume and clothing is nothing. My friend Petra acts as guide for many foreign visitors and newspapermen. They give him gifts—French perfumes, nylons, candy, a few articles of clothing. He is supposed to turn them in to his Intourist boss, but a few things he keeps for me." She sat down at a small table on which she had spread a lace cloth and dishes of sandwiches beside a samovar of tea. “You still look suspicious,” she said, her head lowered as she poured the tea.

  “Are you sure we’re quite safe here?” he asked.

  “For the night, at least.”

  He smiled. “Am I safe from you?”

  “As safe as you wish to be.” She lifted her dark lashes and her eyes were frank on his. �
�Do you think I may use the fact that I am a woman to put you off guard?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind," he admitted.

  “Yes. It might he so, That is a risk you take." She jumped up suddenly so he could not see her face and opened a closet door to rummage for a man's flannel robe for him. “You look so uncomfortable in that silly towel. Here, put this on. And please, let us have our tea."

  It was quiet and peaceful in the dacha. Durell felt a sense. of remoteness, as if time stood still and a wall of isolation surrounded the log cottage. From far in the distance came the shrill whistle of a Russian locomotive in the railroad yards, and a moment later came the thin thunder of a jet plane in the night sky. Otherwise it was quiet. The dacha was comfortably furnished with a strange mixture of overstuffed Victorian and Swedish functional. The flannel robe Valya had given him was a little tight across the shoulders. He noticed that Valya scarcely touched the tea she had been so anxious to drink. She seemed nervous and expectant. Twice he got up and carefully examined the night view from different windows of the dacha. There was nothing much to see. The narrow road was empty under a bright flood of cold April moonlight. Durell put the P.38 in the pocket of his robe and let the girl see him check the map in his boot when he returned from his second tour of inspection. He decided that her nervousness might well come from being alone with him, from her thoughts about him rather than from any fear of intrusion from the outside. He was inclined to trust her on the latter score.

  Then she filled the tub again with hot water from an old-fashioned bottled-gas heater, and while she bathed, he smoked two more cigarettes and had another cup of tea, wished briefly for bourbon, and prowled the cottage restlessly. There was a small gilt-and-ivory ikon in a corner of the living room, inset with tiny pearls, and he lifted it from its niche, frowning, pondering its worth as an art object among the cheap furnishings. Then, while the girl was out of sight, he took Marshall’s map and placed it in the wall niche and put the ikon back in front of it. . . .