Assignment - Ankara (17 page)

At the last moment a hand reached out and caught his wrist, thrusting through the window next to the pilot’s seat. Pain twisted through his arm. His legs dangled over the leading edge of the wing. He struggled up, got one foot back on the wing, and threw himself out of the water again.

It was Anderson who had saved him.

The big man, grinning in triumph, shouted something that was snatched away by the wind. Durell caught the edge of the sliding window. His muscles trembled with fatigue as he tried to lift himself inside and failed. But Anderson’s huge strength helped him, dropped him, streaming water, into the cockpit at Kappic’s feet.

“You are all right?” Kappic shouted. He gestured to Anderson, who slammed the window shut. “You found the leak?”

Durell nodded, shivering. His eyes were locked with Anderson’s. He felt sick with fatigue, and now that he was in the comparative warmth of the plane’s cabin, his shuddering was beyond control.

Francesca threw a blanket around him.

“You’re a brave man, Durell,” Anderson said quietly.

“Why didn’t you pull me in when I signalled?”

“But you didn’t signal.”

“I did. More than once.”

“Perhaps I confused it with the tugging of the sea. We lost sight of you when you went into the water. I really thought you’d been drowned.”

Kappic nodded. “True. We did not know you were still alive until we heard your footsteps on the roof over our heads.”

Durell watched Anderson’s smile. The man’s challenge seemed obvious, but it could not be proved that he had acted wrongly. He turned back to Kappic. “Any luck with the radio?”

“I do not know,” The Turk said. “There is a bad storm all around us. Once I thought I heard an acknowledgement, asking for a better fix on our positon. I could not help, of course. I do not know where we are. But I kept sending, until the power faded.”

“We’ll hope for the best, then,” Durell said. “Let’s check the water level back in the cabin.”

“Please, you ought to rest,” Francesca said.

“Later.”

He went aft. The water in the main cabin seemed to be at the same level as before. It was colder in here now, and his breath plumed in vapor as he walked aft to the tail compartment where the leak first became evident. For several moments, because of the surging lift and fall of the derelict, he could not tell if more water was coming in, or not. But in any case, even if it was, it was at a much slower rate than before. Slow enough to remove the immediate peril of sinking, he decided.

He found lifejackets for everyone and insisted they be put on. Colonel Wickham was too apathetic to bother, and Durell had Susan adjust the jacket around the fat man’s shoulders. Susan’s teeth were chattering with the cold as she worked beside him.

“I’m so hungry. Isn’t there any food?” she whispered.

“Emergency rations, in the lockers. But it should be saved for later. If the storm worsens, nobody will find us for hours, perhaps not until tomorrow.”

She made a wry face. “If we’re still afloat, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“We’re in a pretty bad spot, aren’t we?”

“Yes, Susan.”

“I mean, we could be picked up by the wrong people, and for you that would be as bad as drowning, right?”

He nodded. “No use thinking about that now, though.” “I just wanted to tell you—if these are our last hours— I wanted to tell you something about myself—”

He shook his head. “Not now, Susan.”

“But I want to warn you about John, if we’re picked up and—”

“There will be other troubles, aside from John, then.” She bit her lip and looked angry. “You won’t let me touch you in any way, will you? I keep trying to reach you, and you just turn away from me. Why?” Her voices was low and intense, pitched just for his ears as she turned away from Wickham. “What is it you do that makes me feel like this?”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like a person who’s afraid of falling, but who goes on to the roof of a tall building and looks down, anyway, even though he knows he might jump and kill himself, just on impulse. I feel that way about you. I think you might kill me, somehow. I’m afraid of you. But I can’t stay away from you.” “Help me with the other life jackets,” he said.

“You’re cold. You’re soaking wet and cold and shivering.” “I’ll be all right.”

“There’s an extra flight suit in the back,” she said. “Come with me. You have to get out of those wet things.” Her eyes glittered. “Please let me help you. It doesn’t matter what you do to me later. Let me help you now.”

“All right, Susan.”

They went aft to the rear compartment. Susan reached into a small locker and pulled out a blue khaki flight jumper and an extra pair of socks and Texas boots, reminding Durell sharply of the young pilot who lay dead up forward. Susan closed the small door behind her and they stood crowded against each other in the narrow, gloom space. “Let me take your clothes off,” she whispered. “Hurry.” His fingers were numb and clumsy when he tried to strip out of his wet coat and shirt. A violent spasm of shuddering left him helpless, and her hands deftly helped him. She breathed quickly, made small moaning sounds of commiseration. “You’ve saved our lives so far. I heard Anderson talking about it to that Italian bitch—”

“Francesca?”

“I told you, she’s got her eye on you. She wants you. I want you, too, and I’m going to have you.”

In the gloom, he saw the way she stared intently at him. “Now?”

“No. I have a feeling, all of a sudden, that we can wait. I have a good feeling about it now, because you let me help you. Here, get into the jumper. Can I help you get warm? You can hold me. You’re so terribly cold!”

“I’m all right now,” he said.

“Hold me. Like this.” She laughed softly. Her hands searched his body, seeking, playfully, with restrained passion. Her breathing quickened and caught in her throat. “Here, put your hands here.” She put his hands on her breasts, and they were firm and proud under her uneven breathing, and then she forced them down to her hips and thighs and she laughed again. “Does this make you feel better? You were right about the missionary's daughter. Except that I’m not—you know I’m not—and John is nothing to me now.” “Susan,” he said, “you make me remember what life is like.”

“I can do more for you,” she whispered. “Right now. I can tell you what you want to know.”

He adjusted the jumper slowly. “Yes?”

“I saw Kappic talking to you before, and I saw you looking through Francesca’s sketch box. Darling, darling. Just kiss me now. Because I have it. I took it for you.”

He stared at the blonde girl in the gloom of the tiny compartment. Something seemed to lurch wildly inside him. “The tape?”

He wanted to swear when Susan laughed softly. “Everyhing was so mixed up in the plane, for a while. It was really easy. I sat beside the box for a few minutes. Lieutenant Kappic had fainted, I think. And you were talking to Francesca. Oh, I hated you then, the way you looked at her! But I didn’t care. I saw Kappic put the tape in the box, and I took it from there.”

“What did you do with it?” he asked tightly.

“I put it in John’s bag. I just dropped it in. It’s safe now.” He let out a long slow breath. He felt exhausted, suddenly, as relief seemed to drain all his strength from him. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll leave it there.”

A sullen quiet settled over the plane in the next hour. The daylight was an ugly yellow, and the rain came down in relentless floods. Slowly the seas grew more violent. The

KT-4 lay dead in the water, floating only because of the special tanks in her long wings. But if more stress was placed on those extraordinary wings, Durell thought, they would sink like a stone to the bottom of the Black Sea.

For twenty minutes after he left Susan, he checked life jackets on everyone and then issued some of the biscuits from the packet of emergency rations. Wickham bolted his share with one gulp and asked for more, staring resentfully when he was refused. John Stuyvers muttered a thanks and nibbled at his biscuit listlessly. Francesca ate with Kappic, who looked feverish. Anderson sat alone, near the pilot’s compartment door, and Durell chose a single seat in the rear and rested, situating himself where he could watch the black bag on John Stuyvers’ lap.

There was nothing to do now but wait.

And he was accustomed to waiting.

THE trawler came upon them at dusk. Daylight faded prematurely from the rain-swept sky, and the fishing boat was not spotted until it loomed out of the mists to the north on a direct collision course, as if it intended to run them down. Anderson saw it first. Perhaps he was expecting it; Durell did not spend much time wondering about that now. But the big man was calm as he walked back through the cabin with Durell and pointed silently through the window at the plunging bow of the trawler.

It was the first object they had seen apart from the sea and sky since they had crashed six hours earlier.

Twice during the long afternoon Durell had heard the muted thunder of distant jets through the steady surge and hiss of the sea. The sound ranged from all quarters of the horizon, but not once had he glimpsed one of the searching planes, and he had the feeling that the thick overcast was playing the odds in his favor to conceal them from the hunters up above.

But the trawler seemed to have homed on them with speed and accuracy. He turned as soon as Anderson pointed silently to the approaching fishing boat and went forward into the pilot’s compartment.

“Kappic?”

The Turk had already seen the vessel. “It seems we have been found, eh?”

“Yes. but the question is, who is the lucky finder?” Durell asked. “Can you tell if that’s one of your boats, or is it from the Crimea?”

The Turk squinted at the trawler, which had changed course and slowed its speed and now began a wide, wary circle around them, swinging to the south. Kappic shook his head.

“I cannot tell. I cannot help you with this.”

“But you can’t be sure it’s not Turkish, right?”

“I cannot see too clearly.” Kappic rubbed his eyes with an angry fist, peered again, and shook his head. “But what does it matter, eh? We will know in a few moments.” Anderson spoke heavily. “It’s a Russian trawler.”

Durell turned. “How do you know?”

“I’ve seen that type before. Twin screws, steel hull, diesel engine, five hundred horse—”

“How many in the crew?”

Anderson shrugged. “Ten, twelve. It’s well mechanized.” His eyes locked with Durell’s. “Have you located the Uvaldi tape yet? Or do you plan to abandon it with the plane and give it all up?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The big courier looked angry for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, our fishermen friends who seem about to rescue us will settle things, I think. Do you speak Russian, Cajun?” “Some.”

“So do I We’ll have to do some fast talking, eh?”

The others in the cabin had seen the trawler and were roused from their apathy now. Even Wickham returned to reality long enough to shout with relief. John Stuyvers appeared, holding the black bag, and Durell, after one glance at it, decided to make no move about it now. What would happen, he did not know. It would not be long before he was identified, and his dossier in the MVD files at No. 2 Dzherzinski Square, in Moscow, where he stood high on the wanted list, would be flashed to his captors. Perhaps he would be used for propaganda—if he survived. Or perhaps he would simply vanish and never be heard from again. He had no illusions about himself. He would have to make a choice quickly. Death was part of his briefing commands, and he knew that no man could keep silence in the face of modern questioning techniques. Suicide was the alternative, and he had the means to do this. And yet—

He drew a deep breath, watching the trawler’s blunt bow smash through a sea, shattering the crest into white, smoking spume. Men crowded the rails of the small green ship and stared, pointing. Durell shoved back the canopy over the pilot’s compartment. The rain was thicker, heavier. A premature dusk daubed everything in one drab, smoky gray. The trawler did not fly any flags. She was perhaps a hundred feet in length, beamy and powerful. Her rig was made fast to a steel mast, and a thin plume of diesel smoke was shredded by the wind whistling around her stubby black stack.

A red star was painted on the side of the stack. And as Durell spotted it, a hail in Russian came to them. . . .

The rescue operation was a race against darkness, and its final stages were completed in the bright glare of the trawler’s powerful searchlights. In answer to the trawler’s hail, Durell shouted back in Russian. The trawler was the Djornia Makin, from Okrinsti-Don, near the Crimean coast. The fishing captain had a rustic dialect that verified his origin. As a rope was snaked across to the wrecked plane, Durell caught it and heard the next hail.

“Amerikanski?”

“Da!” he returned.

There was a hurried consultation among the men on the trawler’s bow. Durell held the rope, waiting, feeling the KT-4 surge heavily in the sea. The port wing was under water now, and he knew that if the trawler abandoned them, they didn’t have many minutes left. He turned his back to the cutting wind and pretended not to understand the next few questions bawled at him through the electronic loud-speaker on the fishing boat. The voice seemed deep and hostile, booming through the sound of the sea and the clamor of the storm. He shouted back with deliberate incoherence and signalled for speed in taking them off. The trawler backed away, its powerful screw churning up a thick current of foam that washed dangerously against the derelict. Then it came around to windward, providing a lee for them under its rail that offered some protection for the transfer.

The women were taken off first, Francesca going ahead. One end of the rescue line was made fast to the radio mast and she was able to run out on the wing, choosing her time between the seas, and then cling to the line as the fishermen reached down and hauled her aboard.

But then John Stuyvers halted Susan. He had adjusted his clerical collar, as an act of defiance, perhaps, after Durell advised them all that they were in soviet territorial waters and that they would all be in for a long delay in returning to the West. Stuyvers was pale, and his voice was thin.