“Of course I’m not lying.” Clara was getting angry at their attitude toward her, and it showed. She didn’t go out in society much, but when she did she was accustomed to being treated with respect, if not downright deference. After all, she was a Winston and a Jolly—not to mention a published author! What she was not was a total fool. She told them so, and McClain grinned at her.
“You tell ’em, baby.”
“Another of your bimboes, McClain? Somebody should warn you, Miss Winston: he’s famous for them.”
“Thompson, I swear to God that when I get these handcuffs off I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat!”
“Shut up, both of you!” Knebel hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. The resultant loud slap made Clara jump. She looked over at McClain uneasily. Of course, she knew that every word she’d said was the truth, but what about the things he had said? Maybe, just maybe, he
had
shot up that emergency room. She hadn’t been with him Friday night, after all. Maybe Rostov was after him for an entirely different reason than what he said. Maybe Rostov wasn’t KGB at all, but a Mafia enforcer, for instance. Who knew what McClain might have gotten himself involved in? Drugs, maybe, if a hospital was involved? After all, during the time she had known him he had not impressed her with his stability.
Her eyes were upon him, and he must have correctly read the doubt in them.
“Et tu,
Clara?” he said softly, then settled back in his seat, his mouth grim.
“Jack …” Her voice was troubled. Those green eyes
were very hard as they met hers. She bit her lower lip. She wanted to tell him that if he was … troubled in his mind she would understand. He had been through a very difficult experience in Vietnam and apparently afterwards too, if Thompson’s words were true. It was no shame that he had broken under what must have been an intolerable burden.
“I am damned well in possession of every one of my faculties,” McClain ground out, glaring at her Clara gave him a gentle smile.
“See there, Miss Winston? You’re beginning to have second thoughts, aren’t you? Now I don’t doubt that McClain here is in some trouble, but the question is, what kind of trouble? Could any kind of a different interpretation be put on what you’ve experienced? After all, what did Rostov actually say to you? Admittedly, Rostov is
KGB,
but the point is, except for McClain’s telling you so, how do you know that the man who came after you was Rostov? He could have been anyone with a personal grudge against our pal here, don’t you see?”
“Bullshit!” McClain gritted. Clara looked over at him helplessly. She wanted to believe him, she did, but the whole thing was so utterly fantastic. Here were these calm, reasonable men working for the very agency that her spy claimed to represent, telling her that McClain was crazy. Who was she to believe? All her instincts urged her to side with McClain, but were her senses unfairly disordered by her attraction to him? Face it, she had never had very good judgment when it came to men, and apparently, if Thompson were to be believed, he was a past master with “bimboes.” Had he made a fool of her in more ways than one?
“The point is,” Thompson continued inexorably, “that
be hasn’t any proof. Just what he says a supposed defector told him. And I never heard a word about that defection, by the way. Again, we have no proof except his say-so that it ever happened.”
“You damn idiots,” McClain said bitterly, and turned his head away from them.
No one spoke for a while. McClain stared out the window, watching the passing scenery in tense silence. The countryside was beautiful, Clara noted in passing, but she had no appetite at the moment for the beauty of North Carolina in the autumn. She watched McClain and her heart ached for him. Poor, tormented man. His face was turned away from her, but she knew each feature as well as she knew her own. If her hands were free she would reach out and touch that harshly carved face. But as it was, all she could do was look.
“Damn it, Clara, I am not crazy!” He turned his head to catch her sorrowing eyes on him. Her pitying look must have galled him because his words were filled with suppressed violence.
“Oh, Jack, I know you’re not crazy.” The very emphasis she put on the word left room for a large but. He glared at her, then leaned forward again.
“Listen, Knebel, you can see she’s not involved in this. At least let her go before you take me in. Like Thompson said, she’s just another of my women. No point in dragging her into this any further.”
Knebel shook his head regretfully. “No can do. My orders are to bring you both in. Sorry.”
“Damn it, man, you realize that they’ll kill her!”
Knebel sighed. “McClain, nobody is going to hurt anybody, least of all Miss Winston. Miss Winston, I hope you believe that.”
“Do you believe that, Clara?” McClain turned to look at her with a fierce bitterness, Clara stared back at him helplessly. The truth was, she didn’t know what to believe. She wet her lips, trying to think of an answer. Before she could come up with one, Thompson looked in the rearview mirror and frowned.
“Hey, we’ve lost our backup.” Just then the radio crackled. Thompson picked up the microphone.
“Where are you guys?” he barked. The answer from the radio was unintelligible to Clara, but Thompson relaxed again as he replaced the mike and spoke to Knebel. “Seems some damn fool truck tried to turn in front of them just as we went around that bend. They’ll catch up.” Clara realized that the two cars had a two-way communication set up.
“Shit! This is it! Man, I told you, they’re not going to let you bring me in! The whole setup is
KGB,
you damn fools!”
“Now, McClain, calm down.” But Knebel looked in the rearview mirror as he spoke, sounding the slightest bit uneasy. McClain was sitting tensely alert, scanning the surroundings with narrow eyes. Clara turned around in her seat to look back down the road. It was deserted. Nervously she wished the backup car would hurry and catch up.
“They’ll be back with us in a minute.” Knebel still sounded uneasy.
“Unlock these cuffs and give me a gun!” McClain’s voice was urgent. He leaned forward, practically shouting in Knebel’s ear. Clara shrank back against the seat. She was scared, really scared, and she didn’t know if it was of McClain or Rostov or who.
“I said calm down, McClain!” Knebel roared, looking
nervously from the rearview mirror to the road in front of him. “Nobody’s going to hurt—”
A moving van pulled out of a side road in front of them, its long orange length blocking the road as it executed a leisurely turn. Horizon Movers was emblazoned in black letters on its side. Another moving van was behind the first.
“Turn around, Knebel! For God’s sake!” McClain was shouting, but Knebel ignored him. He approached the van, but slowed slightly, looking worried when it failed to move out of his way. Clara waited to see what would happen with a kind of horrified fatalism. Either McClain was right and it was a KGB trap or it was nothing more than a moving van, and in a moment they would be past it and on their way. Knebel sounded the horn. The driver, features indistinguishable in the shadows of the cab, seemed to notice them at last. He stuck his gloved hand out the window and gave them a wave as if to say that he would be out of the way shortly.
The truck’s back door rumbled up, and four men wearing identical gray coveralls jumped out. It was only as they began walking toward the now barely moving car that Clara noticed that their faces were smudged, the features squashed in a most peculiar way. They were wearing stocking masks. And they carried rifles in their hands. Knebel and Thompson must have noticed all that at the same time, because they swore and fumbled for the pistols they wore in holsters beneath their impeccably tailored coats.
“Oh, Christ!” McClain threw himself on top of Clara, knocking her out of her seat and crushing her down on the floor behind the back seat just as the shooting started. Clara screamed as the sound of gunfire roared around her like point-blank thunder. Bullets tore through the body of the
car, skewing it sideways in the road. For the first moment the agents in the front seat were returning fire
,
but then either Knebel or Thompson, she wasn’t sure which, shrieked. The shriek died in a liquid gurgle. The other one grunted, and muttered something that sounded like damn. Then there was an awful silence.
The rear door opened. Clara heard it distinctly despite McClain’s body all around and over her. Then she felt McClain’s weight shift as he was dragged off her. Finally she felt an ungentle hand on her own arm. She opened her eyes as she was pulled from the car. McClain was standing by the car in the grip of two of the masked men, looking remarkably calm for a man with two rifles pointed at his heart. Another thug was holding her, while the fourth used his rifle to poke at Thompson, who was lying half on the front floorboard of the idling car and half on the ground. The thug put the rifle behind Thompson’s head, then pulled the trigger. The shot at point-blank range exploded the agent’s head like a grapefruit. Bright crimson blood mixed with gray brain matter spattered over the roadside. The smell of blood was strong in the air. Then the thug turned Thompson over. Clara felt her stomach heave when she saw the oozing crimson pulp that was all that remained of his face. Knebel was slumped over the steering wheel, she saw as she deliberately averted her eyes from what was left of Thompson. She assumed he too was dead. The thug who’d finished off Thompson walked around to the other side of the car, reached in and turned off the ignition. Then he plowed a bullet into Knebel. This time Clara closed her eyes before she could witness the butchery. Bile rose sickly in her throat. She thought she was going to vomit.
McClain swore. Clara opened her eyes. A figure she
remembered all too well stepped from the back of the van. Unlike his compatriots, he was not masked. The sun glinted on his sandy hair as he walked toward them, a rifle tucked negligently under his arm.
“Well, well, it seems we are destined to meet in out-of-the-way places, doesn’t it, Dragon? And Miss Winston too, of course,” said Rostov, and smiled. Then, as he reached them, he lifted his rifle in a quick, savage movement and clubbed McClain viciously on the side of his head.
XVII
“Now, I am going to give you a final chance to be sensible. Miss Winston, I will ask you first: Where is the microfilm?” Then he smiled at McClain. “Oh, yes, Yuropov told us all about it. Did you doubt that he would? Toward the end he was very eager to tell us everything he could.” His eyes shifted back to Clara. “Well, Miss Winston?”
The moving van was rumbling down the road. Huddled half clad beside McClain on the cold metal floor, back pressed against the narrow wall at the forward end of the mobile prison, Clara felt her skin quiver with horror as Rostov looked at her. She prayed that he would not touch her again.
They were going to die, sooner or later, she knew. No one would know what had become of them. Knebel and Thompson’s bodies had been loaded back into the car in which they had been killed, and that car had been driven up a ramp and inside the second moving truck, which had headed in the opposite direction from the first. The backup car, Clara’s last hope, had not shown up. It had been deliberately delayed by another moving van that had pulled
across the road in its path, ostensibly to turn around. By the time the occupants of the backup car figured out that the other car was not in front of them, all three vans would be long gone. And the authorities, being what they were, would undoubtedly assume that the hijacking of the agents and their car had been carried out by McClain. One more act of bloody mayhem by a crazed agent.
When McClain and Clara’s bodies were found, if they ever were, they would be in the purloined
CIA
car at the bottom of a river somewhere. Thompson and Knebel would be discovered in the trunk.
Rostov had related this plan almost casually as they were herded aboard the first of the trailers. Then she and McClain had been forcibly strip searched in the most humiliating way possible. The two thugs with Rostov had first stripped McClain, roughly examining every part of his body and then going over his clothes with minute thoroughness before shaking their heads and tossing the garments back at him. McClain had borne the indignity with stony lack of responsiveness.
Clara had tried not to watch. But when they had turned to her, it had been a different story. She had screamed and struggled, to no avail. They removed every stitch of her clothes, ran their hands over her body, looked in her hair and mouth and ears and made her bend over so that they could check the most intimate of body cavities. When it was over, Clara was reduced to a trembling wreck of humiliation. They had allowed her to pull on her teddy, flannel shirt and sweater (simply because the items had been dangling from the handcuffs that still chained her wrists and were therefore in the way) before pushing her stumbling toward McClain, who sat impassively against the front wall, clad once again in jeans and sweatshirt. Clara huddled against
him for warmth as well as what scant protection he could offer, her long bare legs drawn up in front of her to hide as much of herself as she could from these monsters who had no human feelings whatsoever. At least their actions had been impersonal—so far. Rape was a horrible spectre she refused to even think about.
Until now Rostov had been almost affable—except for that single instant when he had clubbed McClain with his rifle butt. He had said little throughout the searches, just watched keenly. He was smiling, swaying slightly with the movement of the truck as he stood before them, balanced on the balls of his feet, hands clasped behind his back. His teeth gleamed whitely in the light of the generator powered lightbulb that hung from a wire rigged across the ceiling. One of the two thugs who had stayed with Rostov had cranked the old-fashioned generator to get it going as soon as the prisoners had been taken aboard. The other two had gone into the cab as driver and lookout. With his blond hair, ruddy cheeked, classically featured face and upright military bearing, Rostov looked like the all-American boy. Even his navy wool pants and white crewneck sweater over a pinstriped button-down shirt were in impeccable taste. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought that death, when it came for her, would be dressed like a preppy!
“I don’t know anything about a microfilm.” Clara’s voice was as steady as she could make it. She really didn’t know anything about a microfilm, but Rostov wouldn’t believe her in a million years. She knew that already. She cast a sidelong look at McClain. Did
he
know anything about a microfilm? He hadn’t said anything about it to her.
“Admirable courage, Miss Winston,” Rostov was still smiling. “Aided, of course, by your ignorance of how truly
easy it will be to make you talk. What about you, Dragon? Are you going to save yourself and your lady some pain?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Rostov’s smile stayed in place. “Ah, Dragon, I know what you are thinking: if I tell Rostov where that microfilm is, I am dead—what do you say, beef?—as soon as he gets his hands on it. Right? You are not a fool, my friend, so I will not attempt to deny it. You and the lady will die, just as everyone you have talked to is either dead or soon to die. The operative you and the traitor Yuropov have imperiled is too big to permit us to take chances. But what you can choose is the manner of your dying. I can make it very easy for you. Or I can make it very hard and painful. You would not like the lady to suffer pain, would you, Dragon?”
“She knows nothing about any of this, Rostov. You made a mistake when you went after her. I never saw her before in my life before that night. If she wanted to, she couldn’t tell you anything.”
“Then that is her misfortune.” Rostov turned to the goon behind him. “Get her up.”
“No!” Clara whimpered, huddling closer to McClain, who was motionless. Her eyes were huge as she watched them come for her. She had never felt so terrified in her life.
The stockier of Rostov’s henchmen reached down to grab Clara by the arm and haul her to her feet. As she tried to resist, earning a vicious pinch for her pains, McClain made an abortive movement beside her. Almost instantly he subsided, his face impassive. Clara struggled as she was pulled toward Rostov, but to no avail. The man holding her was an ape. Shorter than either McClain or Rostov, thickset, heavy
featured with a bald head so smooth Clara wondered hysterically if he shaved it. he had long since discarded the stocking mask he had worn during the ambush. Shuddering as she looked into his avidly gleaming small eyes, Clara wished he had kept it on. Then she would not be able to see the anticipation in his eyes.
“You know. Dragon, I am inclined to believe you when you say the lady was a mistake. She is too soft, too easily hurt. Not your type, eh? This one does not have the toughness of the other, Gloria?” McClain’s expression changed, almost indiscernibly. But Rostov saw it and smiled. “Ah, yes, I have made the acquaintance of Gloria. It seems she wished to make up your quarrel. At any rate, she returned to your apartment a couple of days ago. But she, too, knew nothing. A pity. But one must do what one must do. For one’s country, you understand.”
Clara felt her throat go dry as she absorbed the implications of his words. Had Rostov killed Gloria? He would do so without compunction, she knew. Clara had a moment of thanksgiving that her mother was safely out of the country. Then she was jerked back to reality by Rostov’s almost casual command.
“Break one of her fingers.”
Before Clara could recover her wits enough even to scream, the other thug had his arm around her throat in a choke hold. The first one grabbed her by the handcuffs that still linked her wrists, caught her left hand in his, and wrapped his huge hand around her pinky. With a twisting motion, he wrenched it to the side. Clara screamed in agony as pain shot through her body. When he released her hand, the littlest finger stuck out at an odd angle. Already it was swelling, turning black. Sobbing, Clara cradled the injured hand with the other. Her knees gave out; the thug behind her
let her slump to the floor. Clara sprawled on the cold metal, clutching her hand, unable to believe the agony. They had deliberately broken her finger! She vomited, retching until her stomach was empty.
“Such a little pain, and you see how she reacts? This one is a lady. Hurting her will be easy.” Rostov was talking to McClain, ignoring Clara who was still sobbing at his feet. As he spoke she scooted a little away from the puddle of vomit, but remained huddled on the floor. Hoping against hope that they would forget she was there.
“What shall we do to her next, Dragon? We could, of course, break all her fingers and toes. But that is mere child’s play. Or we could strip her naked again and let Orlov have some fun with her. He is a sick man, our Orlov. But then, I am not feeling in charity with Orlov today. I specifically asked him to save the coup de grace to your agents for me, and instead he got carried away and killed them himself. So he needs a lesson in discipline. But there are still many other choices. You know them as well as I. So I will ask you again, Dragon: Where is the microfilm?”
“Go to hell, Rostov.”
Rostov shook his head. “I am sorry, Miss Winston, but as you see your friend does not value you as he should. Malik, help Miss Winston up.”
The second thug walked over to pull Clara to her feet. She cowered, whimpering, still cradling her injured hand. Pain and shock throbbed along her nerve endings. She felt cold—so cold—a cold that had nothing to do with her bare feet and legs beneath the scanty edgings of silk and lace. Her throat was dry. Even the soft little cries she was making hurt. But she couldn’t seem to stop whimpering. Terror
filled her as she was jerked to her feet, imprisoned again in the choke hold.
“Scream all you like, Miss Winston. The trailer is soundproof.” The words were benevolent. Their effect on Clara was horrible.
“Oh, please, please …” They positioned her so that McClain could see her and she could see him. He was looking at her, his face like stone. His eyes were as hard and impersonal as Rostov’s. He was not going to give them what they wanted. A dry sob racked her, then another and another. They were going to hurt her, torture her, kill her…
“What shall we do to her, hmm? Orlov, have you a cigarette?”
“Da.”
He fished in the pockets of his gray coveralls and came up with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, which he passed to Rostov.
“Ah, thank you, comrade.” Rostov leisurely extracted a cigarette from the pack, which he then slid into his shirt pocket beneath the sweater. Putting the cigarette in his mouth, he flicked the lighter to life and held the flame to the tip, inhaling deeply. Snapping the lighter shut and sliding it into his pants pocket, he took a couple of long drags on the cigarette. Then he looked at Clara, frowning in a mock-considering way.
“Now, let us see. …”
“Please, don’t hurt me!” Clara’s voice was a hoarse croak. She was dizzy with pain and terror. This animal was going to burn her tender skin with the cigarette, she had absolutely no doubt. It would hurt—like her hand still hurt. She couldn’t bear any more pain. But there was nothing she could do; she was helpless, at their mercy. And they were merciless men.
“Where shall we start? Not the face, at first. No, the face is too pretty to mar unless we must. What about the neck? Just beneath the ear. …”
He pulled hard on the cigarette. The tip glowed bright red when he took it from his mouth. Clara cringed as he reached for her with his free hand, smoothing her hair away from her neck with a caressing gesture.
“Such soft skin,” Rostov murmured.
Clara realized with a sick heave of her stomach that he was actually enjoying what he was doing. She strained away from him, whimpering, pressing her head back against Orlov’s barrel chest in a vain effort to evade the approaching cigarette. Rostov’s hand held her hair clear; the cigarette touched her neck just below her ear. Clara screamed, jerking helplessly as the cigarette burned into her white skin. The scent of charred flesh reached her nostrils as Rostov stepped back. For a moment she thought she might faint. Everything swam before her eyes … She wanted to faint, to hurry up and die and get it over with. But she didn’t. She could only stand trembling, cringing, sobbing, to wait for another onslaught of pain.
Rostov returned the cigarette to his mouth and took another leisurely drag. When the tip was glowing bright red again he took it out and turned it over in his hands, studying
“Hold her up, Malik.” Rostov’s order was sharp.
“No, please. No.” Clara barely even heard her own mindless pleading. The thugs paid no attention. Orlov tightened his grip on her swaying, trembling body.
“That’s better.” Rostov nodded, looking Clara up and down. Then he reached toward her, grasped the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head so that it hung from her chained hands. Clara shook from head to toe as he began to
Sick open the buttons that fastened her shirt. She felt nausea churn again in her stomach as he exposed the soft flesh of her neck and shoulders, the burgeoning swell of her breasts against the silky white teddy. He pushed the shirt off her shoulders. Clara could feel the men’s eyes on her breasts. She had a horrible premonition that before this was over they would all rape her, not because they wanted her woman’s body but because they enjoyed inflicting pain and humiliation on the helpless. They were sick, evil men. …
Rostov’s hand reached out, caressed her shoulder, slid a spaghetti strap down one arm. He continued to tug at the strap until her left breast was exposed. Clara cringed against Orlov as Rostov ran a questing finger over her breast, flicking the shrinking nipple.
“Very nice, very sexy. I compliment you on your taste in women, Dragon.” Rostov was drawing on the cigarette again. Tears fell from Clara’s eyes. She was helpless to stop him from hurting her.
She looked over at McClain to find him watching her. Those green eyes were stony in his set face.
Rostov withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and held it over her breast without quite touching it. Clara squirmed, panting and whimpering in anticipation of the pain as he moved the cigarette around in the air, seemingly trying to position it just right. Finally he stopped when it was directly over her nipple. She could feel the heat of the glowing red tip although it was still about an inch from her skin.