Assignment - Manchurian Doll (6 page)

“You’re very good. Very good, indeed.”

“I have to be,” she said.

There was another silence. Her breath hissed with exhaustion. He heard Eliot calling faintly from somewhere. The muzzle of the girl’s gun seemed enormous, a dark entrance to hell. He looked at it only once more. It was more important to watch the girl’s face. She was smiling.

“You are not afraid?”

“Of course I’m afraid,” he said.

“Don’t come near me.”

“I won’t. How many men have you killed, Nadja?”

“None, but—”

“It can be very messy,” he said.

“We are enemies,” she said. “I do not know what you plan for me, but it will not happen now, you see.”

“You’re very stubborn. We only mean to help you.”

“You keep saying that. Why?”

“Because it is the truth.” He said abruptly: “Where did you learn your English? It’s very good. You must have had an instructor from New York, to judge from the accent—”

“It was in the Dostonovski Institute for Women Specialists, in Moscow.” She looked at him. “You know all about that training unit, I suppose.”

“Some.”

“Turn around now,” she said.

He took the chance then and went for the gun. He knew she was as well trained as he, but there was no choice. He could hear Eliot crashing clumsily through the brush, and he sensed that the girl might fire in sheer panic. When he turned, as if to obey her order, the move liberated him from the need to be utterly motionless under her eyes. He kept spinning, however, his first slow movement suddenly merged in a blur of speed when he launched himself at her gun. He caught it as it went off, and the explosion raised loud echoes among the trees. The bullet spanked into the leaf mold at his feet. She wrenched away, and he was reminded again of her strength and agility.

He lost all patience with her.

He hit her, and pulled the punch only slightly. His knuckles cracked on the point of her stubborn jaw and she fell, arms flailing, to crash into the lower branches of a pine tree. The gun went spinning from her hand. He scooped it up and watched her sag to the forest floor at the base of the tree.

“I’m sorry,” he said thinly.

He felt a reflex trembling in his legs. He felt anger against her, and knew he could not afford it. The girl’s eyes were blind and dazed. When he spoke her name, she did not hear. It was not a sham. He picked her up in his arms and was surprised at her slender waist, the lithe shape of her hips. He wondered briefly at what she kept hidden under the stern facade of her prim costume. Maybe, he thought wryly, Colonel Alexi Kaminov knew what he had here, after all.

Eliot and Tagashi came running through the woods from the house. Eliot was relieved to see the girl in his arms. But someone else had joined the two men.

It was Yuki, Tagashi’s dark-haired daughter. She wore tight slacks and a dark sweater and her hair with its boyish bangs gleamed silkily as she walked with a certain insolence toward them. Her voice was eager.

“Have you got her? You really got her?”

Tagashi’s eyes looked raw. “Durell-san, are you all right?” 

Yuki looked impatiently at Nadja as Durell carried her into the house and put her down on a
tatami
mat. “Oh, how I hate this one! How I hate her!”

“Stand back, Yuki,” Durell said. “She won’t feel too well when she wakes up. What’s the matter with you?”

“Yuki, bring some tea,” her father ordered.

She seemed deaf. All her interest was concentrated in her examination of the blonde woman. “You ought to kill her!” 

“Why?”

“She is vicious and cruel, blind to all human qualities. How could any man love this one? She has a heart of stone, she has ice for blood—”

Yuki began to kick Nadja with a sudden burst of violent hatred. Fortunately, she wore sneakers, and Durell hurled her aside. Yuki fell, tried to get up and reach Nadja again. Durell slapped her, shoved her toward her father.

“What’s the matter with your girl, Tagashi?”

“It is something that happened some time ago,” the Japanese said. “I apologize for my daughter’s conduct.”

“What’s eating her now?”

“Yuki thinks this woman killed her fiance. I employed the boy in counter-espionage against their apparatus in Tokyo. He disappeared. But it was a year ago.”

“She did it,” Yuki gasped. “She killed Akiro, and I’ll kill her in return. You’ll see, she deserves to die! I’ve been waiting all this time—”

“Get out, Yuki,” Durell said.

Yuki stared at him and began to cry.

Two servants summoned by Tagashi started charcoal fires in the rooms and then left silently to stand sentry duty around the walled estate. They were old men with grizzled heads and bandy legs, with rough sandals on their knobby feet. They wore their silence in dignity, like a fine cloak.

Tagashi found some canned food, moving familiarly through the simply furnished house. There was some tea, and Durell took a cup and held the warm drink to Nadja Osmanovna’s pallid lips in an effort to bring her to. He did not succeed, and he felt someone watching him, and saw that it was Yuki again. The girl had dried her tears. She looked sardonic. 

“She is awake. She is only trying to fool you.”

“Do you really think so, Yuki?”

“She can make a fool out of any man, they say. She is a very bad woman. She made your friend Eliot look silly, did she not? How easily she stole his gun!”

“She’s an expert, I must admit.”

“She hears everything you say. Why not slap her and make her talk to you?” Yuki insisted.

“Yuki, are you sure she killed your friend?”

“She, or someone like her.” She dropped gracefully to her knees on the
tatami
mat, her head forward, peering at the unconscious blonde woman with a cold and clinical interest. “She is too dangerous to keep alive. In the Embassy, where my father put me to work, they walk on tiptoe when she is near. She holds life and death for you, if she makes an unfavorable report on your work. There is something strange and wrong about her. A coldness, and it feels inhuman. Why are you so soft about her?”

“I’m not. But we need her for this job.”

“Will you kill her later?”

“Only if it is necessary,” Durell said.

She looked doubtful. “I don’t think she will help you in this. She has no heart. How could any man love a woman like this?”

Durell was irritated. “We shall see. Go ask your father if he needs anything, Yuki.”

“Don’t treat me like a child!” Yuki snapped. “I do my work well. You men just don’t understand a woman like her.” Durell smiled slightly. “Just the same, let me make the decisions. Go on, now. Beat it.”

She understood the idiom and glared angrily, her immature face flushed. She flounced out, swinging her hips impudently in her tight slacks. Durell looked after her, his eyes going solemn for a moment.

He was alone in the room with Nadja. She had been awake for some moments, listening—Yuki had been right about that —and he had seen the telltale flicker of her eyelids when she first regained consciousness. Her control was professional. He considered her for a time while he took out two cigarettes and lit them and then held one for her. Her face was pale, her lashes dark against her smooth cheeks. Her mouth fell naturally into     severe and tormented lines. Her dark gray suit was torn, and had     been pulled up about her hip, and her body looked round and surprisingly young as she lay on one side, one arm outflung. He felt no attraction toward her. Yuki was right; she must be regarded as an enemy, trained to hate and destroy him. She was good at her business, and he had to be careful with her. He had a rough idea of how to go about it, but he decided to keep his plans open for contingencies.

“Nadja, she’s gone now. You can sit up,” he said quietly, in a matter-of-fact tone.

The girl immediately opened her eyes and stared at him. He saw there were flecks of pure gold in the gray irises. A reflex of pain and fear shook her defiant mouth. Her pale hair was disheveled, hanging in thick braids over her shoulder, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She rubbed it childishly, using the back of her hand as she watched him. Then she straightened her skirt and swung her legs out and under her and crouched on her knees, facing him.

“I did not think you would hit me like that,” she said in English. “My face hurts.”

“Well, you were about to kill me,” he said equably.

“Why not? We are enemies. They called you Durell, and the name is known to me. There is a price on your head.”

“No doubt,” he said. He watched her smoke the cigarette. She was awkward about it. “Do you think we took you from the train in order to kill you?”

She shrugged. “I do not think so, now. You want something from me, but I cannot tell you anything. I will not. If you were not after something, but only me, you could have shot me right on the train.”

“All propaganda to the contrary,” Durell smiled, “we don’t run our business that way.”

Her eyes were cold. “But you have killed before. It is in your dossier. I studied it carefully, once.”

Her face was impregnable and he felt a momentary despair, a sense of the impracticality of the man far across the Japan Sea who wanted to find freedom and insisted that he have this woman with him. She would never go along that path, he thought. She was like a well-oiled machine that responded to the punch of various buttons. He said carefully:

“I am not a member of anything like your G Group, Nadja. We have nothing like your corps of assassins.”

“The G Group is a myth,” she snapped. “We do not kill like that, either.”

“Then I wish we could be friends, Nadja.”

“You know it is impossible.”

“We might be, if you opened your mind.”

She laughed scornfully. “What do you want of me? Information? I have none. I am not involved in an operation that could interest you at the moment.”

“It’s something else,” he said. “Will you listen for a moment and stop hating me or trying to figure out how to get away from here?”

“I’ll get away,” she said confidently.

“You may not want to,” he told her.

She was startled, then wary. “All right, I’m listening.” Durell said: “We are interested in a man who knows you well and who wants to see you and speak to you. He’s an old friend of yours.”

“I have no friends.”

“Apparently you had one, once, or our information is entirely wrong, and I don’t think it is. I’m referring to Colonel Alexi Kaminov.”

He spoke the name casually, letting it fall into the quiet atmosphere like a handful of dust.

She was very good, and he did not watch her face, which would betray nothing, since she was now in complete control. But his eyes touched her right hand and her fingers clenched briefly, and that was enough. She saw she had betrayed herself and she stared at her hand in dismay, and then she smiled. But her lips were white.

“What about Alexi?” she asked softly.

“Do you know him?”

“He was my instructor at the Moscow school. I knew him then. It was a long time ago.”

“It was a little more than a year ago, the last time you saw him, was it not?”

“No. But even a year can be a long time.”

“Would you help him, if he was in trouble, and you could do something for him?”

She said: “What kind of a question is that?”

“He needs help,” Durell said.

“Not from me.”

“Precisely from you. Only from you.”

She leaned forward, her face still hostile, but now her eyes betrayed a reluctant glimmer of interest. “What do you know about Alexi? What makes you think of him in connection with me? We have never worked together. He was my instructor, that was all. I gave you that much. But how could you know anything of Alexi’s troubles—if there are any?” “He has been in contact with me.” Durell was not sure yet if he should open up with this woman, but he saw no help for it. It was like chess, and nothing could be won unless he tried a gambit. He could read nothing but watchful interest in Nadja’s gray eyes. But one hand went to her pale, wheaten hair and she twisted the thick, heavy strand in quick fingers.

He went on: “Alexi and I have known each other for some years. We met in Hungary.”

“Yes.”

“You know about that?”

“He told me. He spoke of you.”

“As a friend?”

She hesitated. “Yes. I do not know what you want. I admit I am disturbed by your references to Alexi. But I have not seen him for some time, and the last time we met, we quarreled, if you must know. It was a personal matter. But I must discourage you at once, if you think you can get me to betray anything about him.”

“Not betrayal,” Durell said. “Rescue.”

She looked blank, surprised.

“He wants to come to Japan,” Durell said quickly. “He wants to surrender to me and go to the States and accept American political asylum. And he wants you to come along with him.”

She stared. Then mockery gleamed in her eyes. “You must think I’m a total fool. Do you really expect me to believe that Alexi plans to be a traitor? I knew him well.” 

“How well? Were you in love with him?”

She was silent.

“And was he in love with you?”

“I will tell you nothing more,” she said.

“It’s only to help him,” Durell insisted. “Men can change their minds and attitudes and philosophies. I knew Alexi in Hungary. I was there on business—helping refugees into Austria.” He paused. “You needn’t look like that.”

Her eyes were brilliant. “You saved his life, Alexi said.”

“I helped him. There was a person, driven by panic, who would have killed him. I stopped it.”

She said wonderingly, “That is what Alexi told me. But I found it difficult to believe.”

“It was at the border, in the fog and swamps, and he could have trapped us all. But he was humane enough to let us go through. One of the refugees saw Alexi in the fog and tried to kill him. I stopped him.”

“You were wounded, instead,” the girl whispered. “Alexi said you shook hands and then you parted. He could not forget it. Especially when he found out who you were, later.”

“He trusts me,” Durell said. “So he will surrender only to me.”

“How did he get in contact with you?”