Assignment - Black Viking (3 page)

“It is a starting point. Don’t belittle it. You will be given more details later.” Again McFee looked at his watch. “Your Swedish co-agent will be here any moment. You will be more fully briefed then.”

“I’d rather work alone.”

“I told you, you have no choice.” McFee’s smile was thin, gray, and fleeting. “Judging from your past performances, Samuel, you will have no objection to her.” 

“Her?”

There was a knock on the door. “Here she is now.” McFee turned. “Come in, please.”

The door opened and Sigrid Bjornson entered. She smiled warmly at Durell.

“Hello, surprised man.”

IT WAS still raining, but there was blue sky to the west, beyond the flat fields and canals that stretched to the North Sea. Durell dismissed the gray Mercedes in the Marktgasse of Bruges and walked with Sigrid to one

of the awning-protected cafes that faced the carillon, which promptly began to chime the noon hour with all of its forty-seven bells. The place seemed safe enough, with its swarming tourists and parked tour buses in the big square. Belgian provincial flags flapped or drooped colorfully in the center of the square.

“Time for lunch,” he explained.

“Hungry man, you seem angry with me,” Sigrid murmured.

“You could have told me who you are.”

“But I had to make sure of your identity.”

“And did you, by searching my cabin?”

“Not exactly. But you fitted our dossier we have on you, at Desk Five.”

“I think I’ll join the Swedish Intelligence,” he said. “I didn’t know they had people like you working in it.” 

“Then you do like me?”

“I’m still quivering from the cabin episode.”

“You lie so nicely.” She gave him a gamin smile. “Now let us eat and I will explain just what we are to do.” Sigrid was easily the most gorgeous creature Durell had seen in a long time. She wore a gray suit of soft light wool that clung lovingly to her body, hugging every provocative curve. Her high heels brought her proud blonde head almost to the level of Durell’s. She had done her long hair into a braided coronet that gave her a regal look and made every man who passed by turn for a second glance and an envious look at Durell. She carried a large leather shoulder bag that made him wonder just what unpleasant surprises might be in it, however.

He ordered ham and mushroom omelettes and beer for both of them, and she ate in ravenous silence, using up several minutes while he scanned the passersby. Nothing seemed suspicious. The drizzle ended and the sun came out to shine gloriously on the medieval baroque gilt of the Cloth Hall.

“We start, of course,” she began abruptly, “with Professor Peter Gustaffson. Uncle Eric and Uncle Peter—” 

“Hold it.
Uncle
Peter?”

“Yes. ‘Bjornson’ is my code name. My real name is Gustaffson. That is why I am assigned to work on this with you. Uncle Eric and Uncle Peter are my father’s brothers. Neither ever married. Peter is the scientist interested in weather, Eric is a doctor who works up in Lapland and is interested in archaeology.” She paused and grimaced. “Eric is a bit strange.”

“How, strange?”

“He is interested in only old things. In Scandinavian myths, legends, and history. Too much, they say. He would like to turn the clock back and pretend he is a Viking of a thousand years ago. But he is quite harmless, if a little terrifying at times.”

“And where are these uncles of yours?”

“Well, Peter disappeared, as you know. Eric and he lived on the Baltic coast up north. A dismal and not very interesting land in winter. But Eric insists he can best recreate the world of the first millennium there.” “Charming,” Durell said.

“We will go there, to Skelleftsvik, after Stockholm, to learn more about Uncle Peter’s disappearance. They say we must hurry—the weather up north is disastrous, just now. When we get there, you must not be surprised at anything Eric does. He has reconstructed an old Viking home, where he lives, and even has a Viking ship and swords and shields—oh, it is harmless enough, but sometimes a little—barbaric.”

“Does Eric know we’re coming?”

“No.”

“Do you think Peter Gustaffson is still alive?”

Her blue eyes grew sober. “Well, that is the whole thing. No one heard anything from him for months. Then Uncle Eric got a letter from him. It was not postmarked; it was delivered by hand. A man from the far North came down to deliver it, a trapper and fur hunter in Lapland. It was in Peter’s handwriting, and it simply told him— Eric—not to worry about him, that he was safe and well and—busy.”

“ ‘Busy.’ ” Durell met her serious eyes. “Did Peter say with what?”

“No.”

“And how did this trapper get the message?”

“He said he met some men on the ice—they were lost, he thought, and he wanted to help them, but they drove him off. But one of them came after him—it was snowing, and the one who came after him was not seen by the others—and gave him the letter.”

“Was there anything in it besides simple good wishes and ‘I’m-well, wish-you-were-here?’ sort of thing?”

Sigrid said: “It ended with ‘God forgive me.’ ”

Durell was silent.

Then he asked: “Did this trapper say anything more about the others in the party on the ice?”

“Yes.” Sigrid drank her coffee, paused a moment, then looked up at Durell. “He said they were all Chinese.”

They walked back to the Black Swan Inn along the banks of the Minnewater, under the copper beeches reflected in the still surface of the Lake of Love. It was peaceful and sunny now, the air a sudden soft caress perfumed by springtime flowers growing in their beds near the Baguinage. The Minnewater was a calm and reflective ornament for Bruges, a place for swans and willows and the ornate facades of Flemish houses in the distance. Cathedral bells rang softly as the sun sent warm shafts of light through the newly budded leaves of the beech trees.

“My superiors at Desk Five,” Sigrid said suddenly, “are most disturbed. We have our traditional neutrality to maintain, and the balance of our relations with the Soviet Union is always subject to sudden and unpredictable pressures. It was with great reluctance that they assigned me to work with you on this strange matter. . . . Do you believe that?”

“That, and about the weather?”

“Yes. All this sense of impending catastrophe, this brooding feeling that was so contagious among those men at the conference—intelligent, rational men whose judgment is respected everywhere. It seems so—-so unreal.” “The phenomena need to be explained. Was your Uncle Peter so advanced in his research that his brain could be picked to achieve such a thing?”

“He is a genius,” Sigrid replied simply. “And I wonder why you speak of him as if he were dead.”

“Do you think he is, Sigrid? After all, there is the letter you say was received. It could be phony.”

“I don’t know. I cannot think of it as possible—that Peter is dead. We Swedes tend to be too morbid, you know. It would be just too terrible to contemplate, if such a disaster came about.”

He took her arm as they turned toward his inn along the bank of the canal. “Maybe we can uncover something between us to cheer us up,” he grinned.

She nodded abstractedly. “Do we go back to the
Vesper
now?”

“As soon as I check some things at the inn. McFee ordered some special equipment put there for me—a radio, to be exact. I’ll pick it up, and then we’ll go.”

The narrow street bordering the canal was quiet and empty. The Flemish houses cast placid reflections in the still waters. The lobby with its, hand-carved desk and paneled walls was empty. A smell of cigar smoke lingered briefly in the air, and Durell wondered about it with one part of his mind as he followed Sigrid’s magnificent figure up the dark, heavy staircase to his room. He thought he heard footsteps moving softly somewhere in the back of the rambling, complicated old house, but he wasn’t sure.

Sigrid stood to one side as he put his key into the ornate bronze latch.

The moment the lock clicked, the world dissolved in a blast of red flame and thunderous, explosive noise.

SIGRID’S scream echoed through the ringing in Durell’s ears. He picked himself up from the landing. He felt a pain in his chest as if someone had taken a plank and slammed it across his body. He examined himself for blood and wounds, and saw Sigrid rush toward him from the other side of the shattered doorway.

“Are you all right, darling?”

“I think so.”

“What was it? I mean—”

“A bomb. Set for me. Stand back.”

He had escaped the full force of the blast, but every muscle in his body vibrated in reaction. Anger and chagrin mingled in him as he drew his gun and plunged through the smoking, broken doorway. The lovely diamond-paned windows of his room were bulging and shattered. He heard shouts and running feet below, but he ignored them. He’d had nothing in the room, but it had been thoroughly searched. The bomb, powerful as it was, could not have opened the drawers and doors of the heavy wardrobe chest against the plastered wall. He saw the small radio McFee had ordered left for him against contingencies in the North. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with a string. He picked it up gingerly. It was not another boobytrap. Then he went to the window and looked down at the narrow street and the canal beyond.

A man was running away under the trees there. Durell swung abruptly and bumped into Sigrid. “Come along.”

“What is it?”

“Our bomber. Let’s go.”

“Darling, you look awful. Your clothes—”

“I
feel
awful. Hurry.”

He went down the stairs three at a time. The girl’s heels clattered behind him. The fat Flemish host of the Black Swan Inn, wearing a cook’s apron, barred his way with waving hands and a spate of excited questions. Durell shoved him aside and plunged outdoors with Sigrid. Anger roweled him, spurred him to more speed.

His chest ached and his left arm tingled. The street in front of the inn was empty except for some cars parked diagonally on the brick sidewalk. He ran along the front of the inn and charged down a narrow slot to the canal. By the time he turned the corner, however, the man who had been running away was gone.

He did not check his speed. He had not seen the man’s face, and had only a vague impression of a stout body and dumpy legs in a brown sack suit. He ran under a row of copper beech trees, dodged the parked cars, and came to the next street. A flicker of brown caught his eye. But the blank wall of a church made a dead end here. Durell glimpsed a white, strained face, open-mouthed, turned his way. Then the man darted to the left, down a small alley. Durell followed. Sigrid’s sharp, clattering heels were close behind him.

The bell of a police car clanged near the inn. Shadows flickered in the alley. Puffy white clouds sailed in the serene blue sky. Another canal, another bridge, showed at the end of the alley. The running man in the brown sack suit was almost to the bridge when Durell fired. He heard an echo to his shot as Sigrid, who had somehow managed to get a gun from her black shoulder bag, shot at the fugitive, too.

He never knew which bullet found its mark.

The man suddenly lifted on his toes like a ballet dancer, his face a pale moon of astonishment. Durell had aimed high, as a warning, in case he had mistaken his quarry.

But the fugitive suddenly spun toward the bridge rail and reached for it as if to clamber up on it. His hand went to his mouth and he chewed violently, his face convulsed. Then he grabbed his throat. He was choking to death when Durell caught up with him.

“Who is he?” Sigrid panted.

Durell had never seen him before. The man drew up his knees in a foetal position, shaking and jerking. He had taken a poison pill that worked with implacable speed. His eyes rolled and his lips were skinned back to bare all his teeth. He was about forty, bald, and he could have passed for any stolid citizen of Flanders.

“He’s dead,” Sigrid whispered.

Durell checked the bullet wound. It was high in the shoulder, hardly mortal. It was rare, he thought, for an agent to actually follow orders to the point of choosing suicide instead of capture. A remorseless terror of reprisal had to be built up for this to take place. He felt angry and frustrated.

“Watch the streets,” he told Sigrid.

The canal nearby gleamed peacefully in the warm sunlight. Swans floated under the bridge. The voices of a choir lifted dimly in the air from a nearby convent.

The face was meaningless, anonymous. Durell, whose memory was capable of almost total recall, could not place it in the files he often pored over in K Section’s archives. He searched the dead man’s pockets. They were empty. The labels were from the Bon Marche, Brussels’ big department store. The suit was new, but it was probably a cash sale and impossible to trace.

“Let’s get out of here,” he told the girl.

“Do we just—just leave him here?”

“He wouldn’t be an ornament aboard the
Vesper
.”

The yacht was moored off the pleasure beaches at Ostend, and the guests were taking advantage of the warm sunshine to swim and sun themselves on the polished teak deck. Durell had checked out the tiny radio transmitter McFee had left for him. It was the size of a pack of cigarettes, operating on only one microwave frequency. He wondered when he might have to use it to summon an American nuclear submarine to the Arctic wastes.

Up on deck, Sigrid had donned her bikini again and sprawled like something out of a Viking saga near the bow. A radio played American jazz, and some guests were dancing while others splashed about the float that the crew had obligingly lowered for them. There was a general blanket of laughter, music, and amorous murmurings as Durell made his way forward toward the Swedish girl.

“Sir? Mr. Durell?”

It was the new captain, Olaf Jannsen. He touched his white cap respectfully.

“What is it, Olaf?”

“I just wondered, sir, if you and Miss Gustaffson were leaving with the others. Baron Uccelatti has ordered a float plane to take those who wish to go over to London. You can be flown anywhere you like, compliments of the Baron, sir, if you do not wish to proceed with the cruise.”