Assignment - Mara Tirana (21 page)

He felt awkward as her large eyes turned somberly toward him. Something of their mutual loneliness suddenly offered to break down between them. Mara’s heart began a wild, runaway beat. It seemed to her as if she had never met such a man. Gija had the strength she needed and yet, he was not complete in himself, either; he needed balance, warmth and comfort. She could give him this, and in return, he could give her—what? Love was an idyl she did not permit dreams about. And yet, with Gija, anything was possible, in a new world, with a new beginning.

Then the faint, tremulous connection between them fell apart as he said: “What can we do with Mihály? The underground may be useless after this trip, but we need time for our people to find new identities. So we must make sure Mihály can’t talk—not for a long time, at least.”

She said nothing. Something in him had turned abruptly remote, cold and calculating. . . .

The river smashed headlong at the solid mountains, and in the Kazan Narrows, the channel exploded in fury. Echoes beat wildly back and forth from the towering banks. A steam tug hooted, hauled up in the west-bound channel by diesel engines and tow ropes. The whistle sounded petty against the thunder of the river as it hurtled through the gap.

Gija had no time for Mara now. All his attention was on the channel markers blinking in the dusk. Then suddenly they were through the Kettle and the Danube sprawled widely at Orsova, slowing its pace. The
Luliga’s
blunt bow swung toward Ada Kaleh Island. In the fading sunlight, the minarets and mud-plastered walls of the island town seemed to have been transplanted from the Near East.

Gija spoke formally to Mara about the navigational improvements installed by the Russians, and of the old Roman canal and road inside the Iron Gates. He mentioned the tunnel from the river bank to the island that once existed for smugglers of tobacco who avoided the taxes of the High Porte of Turkey. Then a whistle blew from the docks of Ada Kaleh and he returned to his job as pilot with obvious relief.

Mara said nothing more. She knew he did not want to mention the real shadow between them. That shadow was her brother, Mihály—and the need to kill him to insure his silence. . . .

Mihály waited patiently. By midnight the Iron Gates were astern, with the canal and roaring channel, floodlights and tow engines between the rocky cliffs. He saw little of this, since he was still a prisoner in the Luliga’s hold. But when the current grew placid and the barge thrust easily downstream between the dark Bulgarian hills, he was summoned by Tomas to help with the rigging of the scout car on deck.

There was a bright, cold moon. Here and there on the Pannonian plain were a few feeble village lights. Mihály remembered a student tour he once took here, turning up his patrician nose at the old towns with their bit bazaars, the begging gypsies, the hamais screaming for trade. Usually a Greek Orthodox church dominated the settlement, with an open-air cafe for slh'ovitsa raki. Here you still saw an occasional Greek merchant, Vlachs rubbing shoulders with stubborn Turks in fez and feieddja. The new regime worked hard at stamping out the old ways, but the peasants were equally stubborn.

Mihály worked at the booms with a growing desperation. He had to escape. He could not go on. These people had no right to snatch him from the safe theater school and drop him into dangerous politics. He wanted none of it. Not because he was a coward; it was not from fear, but common sense, that he had hidden from the boys who fought so insanely against the Russian tanks in Budapest’s streets.

But he was afraid now. Mara’s foolish plan involved him as a reluctant refugee; but why should he risk his life? For freedom? He did not know or care what it meant.

He paused in setting the sling booms in place with Tomas and Pashich. A deep silence blanketed the river under a cold moon. They passed smoothly under the shadows of Appolodor’s Bridge, where Trajan had crossed the Danube to plant the Roman eagle in barbarian territory, while Mihály studied the phlegmatic forms of the two bargemen. The job was almost done. It was his duty to report this crazy scheme to the police, he thought. Surely they would be caught, anyway. And if he could find Colonel Kopa and prove his loyalty, everything would go easy for him and Mara.

To the north, the river spread into a world of marshes and lakes. Fishermen’s huts huddled on the dark banks. The river had become what the local gypsies termed “the dustless road.” Its width was so great in places that the far shore was invisible. Boat traffic was heavier, and the song of bullfrogs rose against the chill autumn night. Ahead were the mountains of Dobruja, the Cerna-Voda Bridge where the Blue Danube train crossed from Bucharest to the Black Sea port of Constanza. Soon the Danube would lose itself in the vast delta channels, a drowned wilderness of islands, and shoals, where the waters teemed with salmon and pelicans, and wild geese and plover fed in the reeds and tamarisk along the banks.

Escape had to come quickly—tonight, Mihály thought.

They rested, had coffee, and returned to work again. The Luliga halted before dawn to tie up at a small town dock. Tomas slept, but Mihály offered to keep working on the car sling with stolid, gray-haired Pashich. He felt a rising excitement when he saw his chance.

“Take up some slack, boy,” Pashich called to him. The bargeman stood with the scout car in the deep hold. The sling was ready, the booms set in a triangle over the hatch. “Wake up, boy!” Pashich bawled. “Stop your dreaming!”

Mihály looked aft. The pilot house was dark. What was Mara doing with Gija, there in the dark? Well, it didn’t matter. He looked to the east. It would soon be light. Nobody was in sight on the dock where the Luliga was tied up. A fine mist covered the river’s broad surface.

“Haul away!” Pashich grumbled again.

Mihály threw his weight on the lines. The booms creaked, and then he kicked on the electric motor. The car came up easily from the deck in the hold. He looked down and saw Pashich’s blunt peasant’s face staring up in inquiry out of the hold.

“Fine,” the man called softly. “Let her down easy.”

Mihály set his jaw, kicked out the cog pin in the pulley, and the cargo net snapped free. The taut lines shrieked momentarily in their pulleys, and the heavy car crashed back into the hold.

Pashich screamed.

It was the most awful sound Mihály ever heard.

For a moment it froze him. He wanted to clap his hands over his ears to cut off Pashich’s screaming. The car had smashed down on its side and pinned the old man under it.

Mihály jumped down to the pier. Somebody shouted his name, but he did not look back. He ran as hard as he could. The dock was a narrow path of wooden planks that shuddered underfoot. Then there were houses, an alley, and the streets of the sleeping river town.

“Mihály!”

They did not dare shoot. It would wake up the police.

But he ran until he fell headlong, spent, in the square in front of a large building that seemed to be the town hall. Nobody was in sight. His lungs were bursting for air, and he pressed his face against the cold cobblestones for relief. The earth seemed to stagger under him.

Then he heard the footsteps and he scrambled up.

It was Gija. Gija pulled him erect, a fury on his face.

But Gija was interested in Mara, Mihály thought. He wouldn’t do anything bad, because Mara would never forgive him if he hurt him. . . .

“Why did you kill Pashich?” Gija whispered in a strange voice. His words seemed to echo from house to house and shout itself from the pale dawn sky. “Why did you run away, Mihály?”

“Let me go!” Mihály gasped.

He tried to squirm away. Gija’s grip was of iron.

Mihály wanted to shout for help, but he was afraid. Gija looked different. He was not the same man who joked on the barge. Then Gija looked and saw they were in front of the police station, and he changed even more.

“Were you going in there? Mihály, were you going to report us—your sister, too?”    

“I don’t want anything to do with you crazy people! Anyway, Mara would be all right—I’d put in a good word for herl”

“But the rest of us would be shot, eh?”

Mihály gasped: “You’re all spies, traitors—”

“There is no hope for you,” Gija said in anguish.

‘What? What? Let me go, don’t hold me so hard—” Mihály saw the knife then, in Gija’s hand. He tried to break away—and he felt the knife strike solidly into his side.

Everything went spinning and crying away into the new dawn that somehow turned dark and became the cold wet of cobblestones under his cheek. He lay still and sobbed. There was no pain, and he was not afraid any more. He was too tired for fear.

He heard Gija’s footsteps move away uncertainly. He had a last impulse to call out for help, and he raised his head and saw the cross on the boarded-up Orthodox church across the square, and then it seemed as if the sun came up and exploded and caused a great wave of blackness to sweep eternally over him. And that was all.

Colonel Kopa awoke with a stab of agonizing pain and sat up in confused panic. It was night again. The long sunny day was past. The pain wrenched at him again, and he heard an irregular gushing sound, like thunder, in his ears.

He sat very still, laboring only to breathe, and waited.

He remembered where he was, the small bedroom of Petar Medjan’s above the police station cells. The day had been wasted. The girl, Lissa, hadn’t talked. And it was important to document the case with statements, affidavits and confessions, to complete the file properly.

Nor was there word yet about the barge, Luliga.

Slowly, the pain in his chest ebbed away. Finally he felt strong enough to get up with care and pour himself a brandy. Kopa despised physical weakness. He was drenched with sweat. But the brandy warmed his belly, and he soon felt reasonably better.

He decided nothing must happen to him until he had crushed them all. Then the documented case would be a monument to his life’s work.

At the door, he called for Petar Medjan, who was dozing in a chair in the next room. From below came routine noises of a provincial police post—a man whistling, a typewriter clicking, the hum of a radio. It was after nine o'clock in the evening. Kopa suddenly felt hungry and impatient. It was raining outside now, on the edge of icy sleet. The windows reflected his grayish face and slack jowls. He looked ill.

“Medjan, wake up!”

“Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, springing to his feet.

Kopa envied Medjan’s bull-like strength, his muscular grace, the vitality of the bushy black moustache. Medjan’s dark eyes were alert, as if he had not been sound asleep a moment ago.

“Have you given up questioning the girl? She has confessed?”

“I am sorry, Colonel; I shall return to her at once. It's just—” Medjan paused. “She really has nothing new to tell us, sir. We can move into the hut and take the American spaceman and the old woman any time. Stepanic will talk to us. Why not? And why torment the girl any more? Stepanic will tell us whatever we want to know.”

Kopa chuckled. “I would like some tea and something to eat, comrade. Can you get my dinner, please?”

“At once, Colonel.”

“Do so. And ask the girl to sign a statement again. We need it.” Kopa looked at Medjan bluntly. “Do not let your affection for this Lissa girl warp your judgment, Lieutenant.”

“No, sir. It’s just-—” Medjan paused, sweating. He did not know the demons that drove Kopa. Saluting, he went out and told the duty sergeant to arrange for Kopa’s dinner. Then he found some vodka in his locker and swallowed thirstily. Down the hall was Lissa’s cell, where she slept. He thought her face would haunt him for the rest of his life. She was not strong enough for more questioning. He admired and hated her, all at once. Why was she so stubborn? What could she gain by more defiance, by inviting more pain and more outrage?

Medjan stepped outside through a back door. The dark bulk of Zara Dagh blotted out the night sky. He sweated, although icy rain hissed on the frozen ground. It was not a pleasant night for the men posted up there in the pine woods around Jamak’s hut.

The river made crackling, frosty sounds in its steep banks near the back floor of the police post. The village slept. Medjan drew a deep breath and turned to go back inside. His hand was on the door when he heard the quick, light footstep behind him.

An arm whipped around his throat, a knee crashed into his back, fingers caught his jaw and wrenched his head to one side, thrusting him off balance with a snap of the spine.

But he did not fall. Staggering, he reacted to the savage assault; but he was not fast enough. Before he could shout an alarm, a knife flickered before his eyes and he felt its sharp bite as it tore a tiny triangle of flesh out of his throat. His blood gushed warmly down his throat.

“Quiet, Petar! Or it goes deeper!”

He could not see his enemy. He breathed out, a great gusty explosion of the lungs, pluming in the frosty air. He was wrenched away into the shadows of the station wall under Kopa’s window.

He was allowed to turn a little, then, and he saw his captor.

“Gija?” He could not believe it. “It is you, Gija?”

“Give me an excuse to kill you,” Gija whispered. “Speak too loud! Shout for help! Make a move, please!”

“Gija, you are insane. I didn’t want to hurt Lissa.”

“Shut up.” Gija spoke in English to a second, taller man in the shadows, who moved easily up through the icy rain. “Can I kill him?”

“Not yet,” Durell said. “Ask him about Lissa and Kopa.”

Gija cursed. “Come,” he said to Medjan.

Medjan stumbled erect. He felt cold. The steel in Gija’s hand promised a quick death. He did not have time to wonder where Gija had come from, when they were waiting for just this to happen, waiting with the trap of Kopa’s ready to spring; he did not know how Gija had learned about Lissa. Maybe Gija only guessed. But then he saw it was plain on the pilot’s face, the knowledge of what Medjan had done to his sister.

Medjan obeyed orders, not knowing why he wanted to spin out his life to the last possible second. He was pushed toward the river’s edge and stumbled over the steep bank into the sparse, frozen brush that thrust up, naked and barren, from the hardened earth. He slid toward the icy water. Gija yanked his gun from his holster and threw it into the river under the nearby bridge. It splashed briefly and was gone.