Assignment - Mara Tirana (23 page)

Gija made a sound of anguish and despair, shook his head as if to rid himself of the image of fat, bearded Captain Galucz’ self-destruction.

Lissa added: “Kopa said you were all dead. So I said I would sign his confession. And when he handed me the paper, I snatched his gun and shot him.”

“Your screams? We heard you screaming,” Gija whispered.

“He—he took my arm—” The girl’s face was white. Durell saw the way she held her left arm. The wrist looked broken. But she ignored the pain. “Gija, they are watching the house. Only Jelenka is there, with Adam Stepanic. It is a trap, so be careful. They wait for you—”

Durell paused another moment to look at Colonel Kopa’s body. The bald man had fallen to his knees, and then his pudgy body slid over to a foetal position. The slack jaw and heavy lips opened in inevitable surprise. This one, too, Durell thought. Like Harry Hammett, Kopa’s victim. Killer and victim both ended in surprise. You did your job in this business, and you had to work as if you were sure of survival. But you were never sure of anything—least of all the time and place when the end would come.

He lifted his head as Lissa said: “You, Petar? You are here?

“I want to help,” Medjan said hoarsely.

“We need him, I think,” Gija said.

The girl’s eyes blazed. “Gija, he is one of them. If you knew how he was with me—”

A siren began to wail distantly at the far end of the village.

“Let’s go,” Durell said. “We’ve run out of time.”

They raced down the steps to the back door. Shots echoed from the far end of the main street. Yells of alarm came from the military barracks, but it meant only panic excitement among the troops there. Durell hoped they would keep themselves busy shooting at shadows for the next few moments.

Deirdre was behind the wheel of the scout car. She looked like a slim boy in her uniform coat and cap. She halted the car at the back door of the police post, near the river bank. They all tumbled in, crowding Mara on the back seat. Once more, Gija indicated Medjan.

“Do we take him with us?”

“He’ll get us through the men on Zara Dagh,” Durell decided.

Medjan nodded. “Yes, let me prove to you I will help. I am sick of things here. I did not realize—I did not know myself—”

“He is lying,” Gija snapped. “He’s a torturer, a killer—”

“Get in, up front with me,” Durell said to Medjan.

They took off with a jolt as Deirdre clashed the unfamiliar gears, jouncing past the police station to the bridge approaches. The wail of the siren split the dark, rainy night with shivering torment. A spotlight glared into life from a wooden watchtower across the bridge. It scoured the road and focused on the scout car. At once Gija lurched up and grabbed at the mounted machine-gun. The first burst of racketing shells shattered the bright lens. The darkness came back and they plunged on across the bridge.

At once the highway was left behind, under Gija’s shouted directions. Deirdre swung into a dirt road that swept under the wooden guard tower. A bullet screamed off the hood. The windshield starred, shattered. The sound of gunfire swept after them.

“Turn off your lights!” Gija shouted.

“But I can’t see—” Deirdre gasped.

“I will tell you how to go!”

Deirdre snapped off the lights. The car seemed to fall into an endless black tunnel, lurching and twisting. Above the straining motor came Gija’s harshly shouted directions. They were climbing a dirt road, nothing more than twin ruts that twisted up the lower slopes of Zara Dagh, through thickening pine woods.

Durell looked back. The village of Viajec blazed with lights, seen dimly in the valley below through the flicker of dark trees. The car struggled upward on the primitive path. He saw that Deirdre’s face was pale and strained. Her strength, as she fought the jolting wheel, was limited. But when he signalled that he wanted to take over, she shook her head. He reached for the wheel and signed for her to slide over his lap and take his place on the front seat, and at last she yielded. During the maneuver, the car slithered dangerously on the trail. Trees, shrubs and rocks swung in a wild pattern before them. Then Durell had his foot on the gas pedal and a solid grip on the wheel.

He tramped on the gas, listening to Gija’s directions. Pursuit had been organized finally in the village below, - but it was still confused. Still, the time gap was dangerously narrowed now.

Then all at once the wheels spun helplessly on slick pine needles as the grade up the mountain became too steep. For a moment they almost turned over. But Durell fought the car to a halt, there came a crash as they slapped into a grove of young pines, and he cut the engine.

Silence and darkness flowed thickly over them.

Then a spotlight suddenly stabbed from above and a man shouted an order to halt. Gija jumped from the car.

“Hold it,” Durell snapped. He swung to Medjan. “Are they your men on watch around the hut?” When Medjan nodded, he went on: “Identify yourself to them. Quickly!” Medjan nodded again and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted into the glare of arresting light. There came an answering hail and the spotlight was turned out. Medjan said: “We can go on foot from here.”

Durell looked down the mountainside. The nearest lights of their pursuers were still at the bridge. They should have blown it up, he thought, with the dynamite Gija had taken with him. As it was, they had only a ten-minute start. Time to get to the hut for Stepanic and the old woman, and then lose themselves somehow on the dark mountain.

They got out of the car. Gija loaded weapons on everyone except Lissa. The red-haired girl looked white and agonized from her injured wrist. They climbed into the woods. When a challenge came to them where the light had been, Medjan shouted back harshly. His words carried authority. There were no further challenges.

They reached the hut in fifteen minutes. Medjan insisted they had enough time. “I ordered the men down off the mountain,” the big lieutenant said. “They’ll run into those coming up from the village and create a fine confusion. It will be some time before they sort themselves out.”

Gija toiled along the dark trail through the pines. “Why do you help us now, Petar? You have always been our enemy.”

“No, no. I was your hidden friend.”

“Because of Lissa?”

“It is more important than a woman,” Medjan said. “It is as important as Viajec, what we have been and always stood for. There is no understanding between Viajec and the regime. I always knew that. But now because of all this there will be trials and executions and perhaps everyone will be shipped off to labor camps. I know, Gija. I have seen it happen to other villages that refused to change their old-fashioned ways. They look only for an excuse and an opportunity to destroy the old way of life.”

“So you decided to come over to our side?” Durell asked.

“You do not accept me. But I am here. And I will help you.”

“Do you want to go even farther with us?” Gija asked.

“No, I belong on Zara Dagh. I will stay here.”

The hut loomed up out of the shadows, small against the bulk of towering mountains around them. The rain drove harder across the hills. It was difficult to walk, and they slipped and stumbled for the last few steps.

As far as Durell could see, Medjan had given them the last help they needed. There was still no pursuit from the valley below.

Adam Stepanic met them at the door. Durell shook hands briefly. There was little time for talk. He did not miss the way Stepanic turned eagerly toward Lissa, taking her in his arms with gentle, incredulous relief.

The old woman, Jelenka, was like dark, monolithic stone. She betrayed no surprise at Gija’s return with all these strangers. She did not seem aware of them, in fact. She sat in silence, mourning as she had from the moment her husband had died.

Durell organized things quickly. Of first importance were Stepanic's instrument packages from the wrecked capsule. He distributed these among the group in the hope that at least some of the records of Stepanic’s historic flight could be returned to the Pentagon. They took what food there was in the hut, working swiftly against the inevitable chase that would crawl up the mountain after them. Then it was time to leave.

It was Stepanic who pointed to the old woman.

“She won’t go with us. She says she couldn’t make it.” “We can’t leave her,” Durell said. “Talk to her, Lissa.” The girl spoke briefly to her mother. From far down the mountain came a dim, echoing shot. The old woman asked for something and stood up and pointed to Medjan.

Lissa said: “She wants a gun for herself and Petar. She insists we must all be armed, each one of us.”

“All right,” Durell said. “We’ll take the chance.”

But there were too many of them, he thought. It would be a miracle if they could survive the mountain rigors and escape pursuit. Alone with Stepanic, he could make it easily. Or with Gija. But there were the girls, and Medjan, and the old woman. They could go no faster than the slowest among them, and be no stronger than the weakest of the group.

Nevertheless, a start had to be made.

Lissa and Adam led the way. And when they left the hut, it had stopped raining, and in the east there was the beginning of moonlight to show them the ancient way across the wilderness of the mountains.

They had walked only half an hour, moving in single file with Lissa in the lead, hoping to put as much distance as possible between themselves and pursuit before sheltering for the night, when Gija trotted up beside Durell. When he spoke, there was anguish in his voice. “They’re gone,” he whispered. “Mama—Jelenka—and Medjan.”

“You’re sure?”

“They went back to the hut, I think. Can we stop a moment? I thought I heard—I’m not sure what I heard.” Gija was tormented. “I think I know what they have done, those two. Who could have thought it?”

Durell signalled for a halt. They had crossed a valley and toiled up a slope opposite to Zara Dagh. Dimly through the night they heard a thump of grenades and the rattle of machine-gun fire. There were -muzzle flares, like fireflies, far off in the frosty night.

Gija groaned between his teeth.

“Jelenka didn’t want to come,” he whispered. “She wanted to die here. And Medjan could not leave Viajec. His soul was part of Zara Dagh. I misjudged him. He was cruel and evil, but he’s of the same clay that I am made.”

Together they listened to the faraway sounds of battle on the mountainside. Durell drew a soft, deep breath. In his mind he could see the strangely allied pair, the staunch old woman and the big, moustached Turk, besieged in the stone hut. With luck, they could hold out for hours.

They would not be taken alive.

They would fight as if they were all trapped in the hut and so buy precious time, adding to their margin of safety with every moment.

Gija wept.

And then Mara Tirana came and stood beside him and her hand touched his and her fingers entwined in his, and Gija looked down at her and knew this was the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

After a time, they all walked on over the dark mountain.

Four days later they saw the Danube again. On the first night they had halted when it began to rain again, turning off the dim path that Lissa followed to find shelter in the dim, vine-grown ruins of an old Roman watchtower. They showed no lights. They huddled together without fire, sheltered partly from the cold wind and rain, listening to the frozen trees clash all around them in the night. Flares burst in the sky over Zara Dagh to the north. They were being hunted from the air, too. Durell could hear the dim beat of a piston-engine plane slowly scouring the dark night. But they were safe here. Petar Medjan and Jelenka had bought for them the precious time they had needed.

He helped Gija bandage Lissa’s wrist while they ate cold, canned rations. Afterward, Durell spoke briefly to Adam Stepanic and they checked on the instrument packs together. Adam seemed embarrassed.

“I didn’t expect it would be you to come in after me.” Durell shrugged. “The man who got the job was killed before he was fairly started. I came in after Deirdre, and got the assignment then.”

“I really don’t know what to say. Another day, maybe, and I’d have given up. I can’t thank you—”

“We’re not out yet,” Durell said. “And I don’t do this sort of thing for thanks, of course.”

“But I want to explain about Deirdre—”

“You don’t have to explain anything.”

“But I should. You see, we thought—I thought I was in love with her. But this past week with Lissa—well, we found something—Lissa and I, I mean—”

Durell cut off Adam’s awkward phrases. “Why not tell Deirdre about it as gently as you can?” he smiled.

“I don’t know what to tell her,” Adam said miserably.

“After all her loyalty in this thing—”

“Tell her the truth,” Durell suggested.

He got up and sat with Lissa and listened to her brief account of Adam’s week on Zara Dagh, while Adam spoke to Deirdre. He knew Deirdre would make it easy for him.

He lighted a cigarette, careful to shelter the match in a comer of the old Roman wall. There was an inscription in Latin in the ancient stone, and he touched it with his—fingertips as he traced it out. It was a memorial tablet to the wife of F. Galba, centurion in the legions of Trajan, Emperor of Rome. The wife had died of fever. . . .

The match went out and he read no more.

This had endured all through the ages of man, he thought. There was a timelessness in the love of man for woman. For almost two thousand years these words of love had endured on this bleak mountain top, a quiet prayer to pagan gods for the soul of a woman, spoken from the agonized heart of a soldier stationed on the battlefront of the war against barbarians. . . .

Men did not change, Durell thought. He looked at the little group sheltering from the wind in a comer of the ancient, crumbling wall. The wind rattled bare branches overhead. There was a smell of snow in the air, and hecould only hope it would hold off. He watched Gija and Mara Tirana. They lay quietly in each other’s arms, remote from the others. She had lost her intolerance for another’s problems, he thought; and this was good. She had stopped being absorbed in herself and her tragedy, and accepted Gija’s, and this was good, too. Let them weep together and begin anew together. They had each found what was needed in the other.