Assignment - Mara Tirana (3 page)

“Did you pull me out?”

“Yes. There was a terrible storm. Are you able to eat?” “I don’t feel anything,” Adam said.

“Can you sit up?”

“Sure,” Adam said.

But when he tried, nothing happened, except the pain that came, and he fainted.

When he awoke the second time, he had a fever, like a slow-burning fire inside him. There was sunlight in the hut now, and he could see the old man clearly. The old woman was not in sight.

He stared at the political poster on the wall. Giurgiu Zarije, a former foreign minister. The poster was several years old. The man. portrayed in it looked strong, young and handsome. Adam wished he could remember the details of the man’s execution.

“You know who that is?” the old man said.

“I’ve read about him in the newspapers,” Adam said. “He was my son. He is dead.” The old man had a large round head, with grizzled gray hair and a shaggy moustache stained yellow with tobacco. His hands were gnarled like twisted knots of oak, and they shook slightly as he adjusted the ragged blanket with a strange gentleness around Adam’s body. “You wonder where I learned to speak American?”

“Where was. that?” Adam asked. He felt as if he were drifting away somewhere. He could hear chickens clucking outside, but he could not see more than a dim clearing and a distant mountainside clothed in autumn foliage, beyond the open doorway of the hut. “You speak English well.”

“I lived in America, didn’t I tell you? I worked in the steel mills. I took my wife and two sons there. Giurgiu was young then. He always wanted to come back. After the war, he did so, and went into politics. He was always radical. He thought he could build a new life for all of us here.” The old man sighed. “So they shot him.”

“He brought you back when he was successful, before they accused him?”

“Yes. All of us. He was very proud of himself then.” “You say you had two sons.”

“Gija is the younger—a pilot on the Danube barges. He is not here.” The old man spoke shortly. “I sent him to get help for you, from the West. But have no alarm. No one knows about you on Zara Dagh.”

“How long is it—?”

“Two days, Major. You are safe here.”

“But the radio in the capsule—”

“It was destroyed. They could not trace it. No one has eome. They would have been here by now. If they know you came down in the mountains, they still do not know where, in this wilderness. No, you are safe enough, for now.” “The cameras and instruments—it’s important to get them back home. Otherwise. . . Adam paused and thought of his life and his terrors. . . otherwise, it was all for nothing.”

“I understand,” the old man said gently.

“And a doctor? I need a doctor.”

“There are none who are safe.”

“What's wrong with my leg?”

“It is infected. It will heal or not, as God wills. Gija will come back in a few days. He will bring someone from your country, one of your people. It is the only way I could think of. If your friends come to take you out, all may still be well for you.”

Adam looked around the stone hut.

“They may not come for me,” he said quietly.

“You are important to them, are you not?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything.”

He slept again, and was awakened to eat hot soup, and threw it up. His fever was worse. It brought him nightmares and strange memories. He woke up crying someone’s name. He shivered under the thin blankets. It was night again, and the old woman, Jelenka, came to the bedside and crooned to him, but he could not understand her words now. She had dark brown eyes that filled with tragedy and tenderness when she looked down at him, and somehow this frightened him.

“Poor boy,” she said. “Poor boy.”

“I was dreaming of Deirdre,” he said.

“A girl?”

“Yes. My girl.”

“You will see her again. My daughter, Lissa, is here. She brought some medicine for you.”

He heard a movement in the hut and then saw the girl. She had been standing in the shadows, motionless, tall and slim and dark. It must be cold out now, he thought, because she wore a scarf over her dark red hair and kept her thin coat buttoned to her throat. She had the dark brown eyes of her mother, but they reflected neither the tenderness nor the aged, wise compassion of the old woman. She looked at him coldly, with no emotion.

“I have brought you penicillin, Major,” she said in a flat voice.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“It should help you.” She spoke English easily, with an American accent, and he guessed she had been born there. “But do you know how dangerous it is for us to ask for penicillin?”

“I can imagine. I’m grateful.”

“You cannot imagine. You are an American, and you do not know the meaning of life as it is lived here. But I brought it for you, anyway. Each tablet is one hundred thousand units. You will take two, every four hours. It will stop the infection in your leg.”

“Is it broken?”

“I think not. Your back muscles are only terribly strained. You will be well again.”

She gave him the tablets and a tumbler of water. She looked down at him with cold brown eyes that seemed to be looking at someone else. Her mouth was a little too wide to be beautiful, but her dark red hair caught and held the gleam of light from the oil lantern. Behind her, Jamak stood beside his wife, and the old people looked exhausted and gray, like the shadows and the stones that made up the hut.

Adam saw that the old man’s hands shook worse than before. “Lissa, where did you get the medicine?” Jamak asked. “I got it, I got it,” she said impatiently. “Is that enough?”

“Were you careful?”

“One cannot be careful asking for this sort of thing.” The girl spoke crisply. “I told Stana the Gypsy I needed it, and she got it from Medjan. I said it was for you, Jamak.” The old woman moaned. “You went to Petar Median?”

“Who else? The Turk wants me.”

“Did you promise—?”

The girl’s face was cold with contempt. “What promises I made were with my lips, not my heart.”

“Medjan will be angry. He is a lieutenant of the police, he will demand—”

“He will demand, but he will get nothing except a knife.”

“Lissa, Lissa—” the old woman moaned.

“Be quiet. It is done. It was the only way.”

“Will he stay away?”

“Of course. I will not stay here on Zara Dagh. I will go back to Viajec. Why should he come here, if I am at the village, so close to his police station?” The girl walked back to where Adam lay and looked down at him. She spoke coolly. “How do you feel now, Major?”

“Not good. I don’t like to have put you all in danger.” 

“We always live in danger. A little more, a little less. . ."

“Don’t be angry with me,” Adam said.

“I am officially a nurse in the village. Do you understand that? These old people are my parents. And Gija, who has gone to tell your countrymen where you are, Gija is my brother. We live on the edge of a very sharp knife here.”

“You were bom in America, weren’t you? And you came back when your older brother Giurgiu sent for the whole family?”

She shrugged. “Why not? He was a big politician here. I was only a child, anyway. I had no choice. And life brings unpleasant surprises. For Giurgiu, it was a firing squad, because he got too big and too careless in his position. And he left us all stranded here, in these mountains, treated like pariahs because we were his family.” Her words were bitter. The warmth that flashed in her eyes was that of anger. “Now you come here and Gija, the wild one, has rushed away like a boy playing a game, to go to the West for your friends.” “Lissa, what can I do?”

“If you had died, it would be easier for all of us.” “Is the danger for you very great?”

“Zara Dagh is a wild and lonely place. But I could get a doctor for you. And call the police. This man, Medjan, is from the police. He wants to marry me. My job in the village of Viajec is to be district nurse for the peasants. I am twenty-four years old, and because I am not married yet, the people say I am an old maid, sour and bitter, full of crazy American ideas. Do I look like an old maid to you, Major?” 

“No,” he grinned. “Not at all.”

“You were crying out a woman’s name in your sleep. Someone named Deirdre. Who is she? Your wife? Your girl?” 

“My girl,” Adam said.

“Ah. You spoke her name many times, did you know? Gija wrote it down, before he went off to Czechoslovakia to pick up his barge, and so reach your friends. They will let her know about your safe landing. If Gija, that crazy one, reaches your friends, he will do what is necessary. But one can never foresee the future.”

She stood looking down at him beside the bed, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her cloth coat. Their eyes met and locked for a long, mystical moment. Then she smiled for the first time, and her voice changed, and she pulled the scarf from her head. Her rich, thick hair tumbled in the light of the lantern. She pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down.

“Sleep, Major. I’m sorry I was angry. I am not really angry with you. It is life itself that has betrayed us here. We knew good things once, security and respect. It has been taken away from us, because my older brother was such a fool. Perhaps such a fault runs in the family, and we are all fools. We do what we think is right, not what we know to be safe. You can sleep easily here. I will stay with you until the fever goes down.”

Adam sank back upon the bed. The girl touched his forehead, and he closed his eyes. Her palms felt rough, but her touch was gentle and soothing. With his eyes closed, Adam thought of Deirdre Padgett.

He had met her through Sam Durell when they were assigned to the Mojave base training unit, and he remembered that strange, tall, stone-eyed man who had introduced them. Adam had thought Deirdre was Durell’s girl. But when Durell was transferred elsewhere, Deirdre stayed on alone at the desert motel. Adam began to date her, diffidently at first. He knew something had gone wrong between Deirdre and Durell—a quarrel, perhaps, a deep and serious quarrel. He didn’t know the details and didn’t care. He only knew that Deirdre was unlike any other girl he’d ever met.

He closed his eyes and let his memory of her fill him. It was like coming back to life again. . . .

Durell flew from New York to Paris and looked up Charley Loughlin there. Loughlin told him to go back to the States.

“We’ve got a cable on you, Sam. McFee is raising hell. You're out of bounds and he wants you back in Washington.” 

“I’m here on my own time,” Durell said. “What have you heard from Harry Hammett?”

“Nothing. And if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. You’re just hunting trouble, Cajun. This job doesn’t concern you. You’re on leave from K Section and supposed to be resting up, back home. Why not leave it to Hammett?”

“I will, when I go back with Deirdre Padgett.” “You’re going back on the next plane,” Loughlin said. “I’ve got your ticket here. Free ride, compliments of K Section.”

Durell looked angry. “Is that an order?”

“Well, not exactly. No. But. . .”

Loughlin drew a deep breath. It was early morning in Paris, and his office was a photography shop on the Rue Griselle, not far from the Seine. It was an overcast day. Loughlin was a small, cherubic man with a bald head and sharp, discerning eyes under remarkably bushy brows. He looked more French than American, having been in charge of the CIA drop here for over six years. He had picked up French mannerisms, Durell noted, in the way he now waved his hands and shrugged.

“Let well enough alone, Cajun. If your former girl chooses to go to Vienna with Harry Hammett, we have no way to stop her. Harry is—well, just Harry. Everybody knows how he is. A lone wolf, a—”

“A sadist and a bungler,” Durell said grimly. “I know him. We had a little trouble, once.”

“So you don’t get along, and this puts the ground glass in your wine, eh? I know you don’t care about Hammett; you just want Deirdre out of this. But listen to me, Cajun—I know all about you and the girl, and how she is to marry this Major Stepanic, right?”

“I heard about it,” Durell said. “But not from her.” “So you’re here on an emotional binge, right?” Loughlin looked soberly at Durell’s tall figure. “Look, I’m not trying to make like a head-shrinker, Cajun. But it’s not right for you to come over here after her, interfering with Harry. Forget it. It’s not your business.”

“I’m making it mine. There’s something more to it than shows on the surface. Deirdre has too much sense to get involved like this. She knows the racket. God knows, I’ve told her enough about the dirty end of it. She wouldn’t do anything foolish, unless . . .” He paused, harassed by a vague uneasiness that had begun last night, in Deirdre’s house across the sea. But he was unable to define the source of his misgivings. “I don’t know what it is, Charley. I just want Deirdre out of Vienna, and away from Harry Hammett.” Loughlin stared out the window at the cobblestone street beyond his photography shop. He said curiously: “You don’t give a damn if Stepanic is alive or dead, do you, Cajun? He hit you where it hurt, taking Deirdre away from you.”

“He took nothing from me that I wasn’t ready to give up,” Durell snapped.

“Sam, you show how you hurt,” Loughlin said softly. “All right, so I hurt. I just don’t like this twist of events, Charley. What exactly do you have on Stepanic, anyway?”

“We got word the poor bastard came smashing down somewhere in the Balkans. That was all. Our radar and the signal from his rocket capsule gave us that much of a fix. But there was a hell of a storm front in the area where he hit. We can’t pinpoint him.” Loughlin paused. “But he’s alive. An informer came to our drop in Vienna, from over in Bratislava, to say that more word was coming in about him in detail. So he’s out there somewhere waiting for help from us. The Soviets know he’s down there, too—but they have no more specific a fix than we. Everything promptly tightened up along the borders—air, rail, highway traffic all triple checked, turned upside down, and shaken three times for good luck. Not even a mouse could break through to pick up Stepanic.”

“Hammett will do it,” Durell said. “I won't deny he can. But is it so urgent to get Stepanic out this way? It’s a simple scientific experiment. I thought we were cooperating on outer space data now, exchanging the result of our flights.” “Stepanic went into space, Cajun, in our first real effort to catch up. The whole world was watching. We want him back and we want his instruments. Call it a matter of prestige, if you will. Political face is important these days— and it gets more important as we move into this so-called peaceful competition that’s in the air. We need every advantage we can get. We need Stepanic back and his instruments, to find out what went wrong so it won’t happen like this again.”