Assignment - Manchurian Doll (7 page)

“I can’t tell you that.”

“But you say he asked for me?”

Durell nodded. “He wants you to come to the States with him.”

“How could he think I would?”

“Don’t you love him?”

She was silent, disturbed.

“He must think you do,” Durell said. “He must be certain he can trust you. He’s doing an enormous thing. He’s putting his life in your hands.”

“I don’t know, I can’t think.” Her words were blurred. “I can’t believe it. It must be a trick. You want something else. Alexi isn’t in it. I thought I was clever, but you have confused me, I must admit. If Alexi is a traitor, he deserves to die!”

“You don’t mean that. I think you still love him.”

“Love!” Her head came up angrily, her thick hair swinging. “It was so long ago! And for such a short time!”

“He hasn’t forgotten. Neither have you.”

She was silent again. Her twisting emotions were beginning to betray her professional defense. He felt as if she were some wild thing from the steppes, trapped in complexities she did not understand. Her prim, severe clothes and appearance were all a facade, he thought. Underneath it, she was only a frightened girl, struggling against the hard indoctrination of party discipline. She seemed out of reach of reason, cowering on the mat, confused by a menace she could not fathom.

Nothing was ever simple in the business, he thought. There was always the unexpected snare to destroy you. The house was quiet, and he heard the crickets singing outside. The girl was trying to be defiant, but he smelled her panic, and knew she still feared an ugly execution. He could read it in her pale eyes as she shrank away from him, and he decided it was time to break her down completely.

He took out his gun.

He had to crush and crack the hard shell of her hatred and discipline.

She looked at his gun, startled, then searched his face quickly. “So you have been lying, you try to make me think you are kind, to talk about something—I don’t know what— but it isn’t really about Alexi at all, you made it all up, didn’t you? You want something from me. If I don’t talk, you will kill me. Did they choose you as the killer?”

He said enigmatically, “I’m sorry, Nadja.”

“Not you! It is just that—” she spread her hands “—I was going on a holiday, I did not expect this. I know what people say of me. That girl, Yuki—she calls me a cruel woman. But I only wanted a few days of quiet, to think—”

“About Alexi Kaminov?”

“About many things.”

He said abruptly: “All right. What do you know about ‘Pere Jacques’?”

He sprang the question to throw her off balance and pry a true reaction from her. He did not hope she would answer it. She needed more time. But he was not prepared for what she did.

Her eyes dilated, her mouth opened, and her lips quavered. “What?” she whispered. “What?”

“Pere Jacques,” he said deliberately. “Who is he? What is he?”

Her face crumpled. A wail like a small child in pain and desolation came from her gaping mouth. The sound shook unnaturally in the air. “No . . . no . . .”

“Tell me about it,” he insisted.

“I cannot, I forgot. How could you—?”

She sprang up, eyes blindly staring at something he could never see, lost in the depths of her mind, triggered by his words. She took a crouching step toward him.

“Is it so terrible?” he asked quietly. “It’s where we find Alexi. Do you know the place, Nadja? Or the man?”

“How could you know about it?” Her voice was thin and childish. “Oh, you are a devil—”

She began to curse him in gutter Russian. She came too close to his gun, but he did not warn her back. Her eyes slid like an animal’s to the door and the weedy garden beyond.

She almost killed him this time.

Her strike at his gun was blurred by speed, like the talon of a bird of prey. The edge of her hand smashed his wrist and jolted his shoulder. He did not drop the gun, but it was deflected enough to give her an advantage. She should have followed it up, to make the outcome certain for her. But she made the mistake of jumping for the outer door.

He let her reach it before he caught up with her. She was strong and clever and ferocious. She tried to knee him, gouged at his eyes. Her hair swung desperately across her distorted face. He could not hold her frantic strength. She stumbled across the threshold, staggered into the garden, and he jumped and carried her down with his weight.

Their struggle was violent and silent. He was aware of her as a woman, and there was a sexuality to the twining effort of her scissoring legs, the heave and twist of her body. He was reluctant to really hurt her. But she stabbed cruelly at a neural center in the side of his neck, and his left arm went numb. She kneed him in the stomach, kicked free, and scrambled, already running, to her feet. He tackled her about the hips and brought her down with a hard thump. Her skirt tore. He tried to pin her as she lay momentarily with her face in the dusty weeds, but she got away again, the edge of her palm cracking across the bridge of his nose. He began to regret his aim to let her almost break free and then crush her spirit with another recapture. Then she slid away and ran for the wall—her second mistake. Her newfound violence, triggered by whatever psychic meaning the words “Pere Jacques” had for her, made her only a panic-stricken creature trying to find solace in the dark.

When he caught her, he pinned her throat with his forearm and put a knee into her stomach until she whimpered and her face went white in the pale moonlight. The shadows of the mountain pines filled her eyes. She struggled wildly for breath, but he kept up the pressure until her mouth opened and her body shuddered and she was abruptly still. He released his weight carefully.

Watching her, still shocked by the violence and brutality of her struggle, he heard the sound of a motor car at the gates and Eliot’s shout of warning and the sound of running feet on the other side of the house.

He carried Nadja back to the room. She breathed with raw, uncertain gasps. She would be deathly sick when she came to. He would have to revise his strategy, in view of the violent trauma his words had induced in her.

He tied her to the bed, fashioning a line by tearing apart a bamboo screen. He worked quickly, aware of the sounds of argument from the front of the house. He had just finished when Tagashi entered. The man’s face was perplexed.

“She did not talk?”

“Not much. I hit a vital nerve, though. She admits she and Alexi were in love when she studied in Moscow. Alexi has been in love with her all through the time they’ve been separated at different duty posts.”

“Then she will help him? And us?”

“Not yet. She needs time to shift her perspectives.” “There is no time. She is either with us, or she destroys us. This woman has a bad record, Durell-san. Nothing directly can be charged to her, but if she escapes, she can wreck our operation.”

“She won’t escape. Without her, we have no chance of finding Kaminov, anyway. She went haywire when I mentioned the words ‘Pere Jacques.’ I’m not a psychiatrist, Tagashi, but her reaction was genuine. She couldn’t fake it. The words are associated with a bad shock she got once, perhaps as a child. It may be that she can remember, but refuses to do so now. I wish we had more of her background files. I think, from the way she reacted, it’s tied up far back in her past, and with Kaminov.”

“We know little of her history. And we have no time for subleties.” Tagashi’s eyes were suddenly cruel. “We committed this girl to our side. She knows us, can identify us. She can never be released. Does she understand that?”

“I think so. I’ll try her again soon. Without her, Kaminov won’t come over to us, and SEATO will have to fish for its military data elsewhere—and by then it may be too late.”

“If she refuses to cooperate, we must eliminate her, then,” Tagashi said flatly.

Durell nodded. “We’ll see.”

The tall Japanese turned his gaze from the girl. His grizzled, round head was bowed for a moment. Then he spoke on a different note.

“I would    not have interrupted you, Durell-san,    but     we have visitors. Two of Omaru’s men are here. Omaru got off the train and arranged the log blockade, and he is staying for the night in the village inn nearby. He wishes to discuss business with you, and has sent his men for you.”

“Just like that?”

“In Omaru’s world,” Tagashi said, “he is accustomed to obedience.”

They were two small, lithe Japanese in dark suits, and their eyes in their flat faces were impassive and cold. They carried U.S. Army Colts—undoubtedly stolen from an American military depot—and looked ready to use them. When Durell walked into the main room, Eliot Barnes glanced at him with chagrin. Yuki Tagashi sat cross-legged on the floor mat and looked angry and sullen.

“Durell-san?” one of the small men said. “You come with us at once, please.”

The other said: “You have the Russian woman spy?” Durell nodded. “Yes, we have her.”

“Omaru wants her, too.”

“Omaru can’t have her,” Durell said.

“You are to bring her with you.”

“No. Let Omaru come here, then.”

The first man lifted his Colt tentatively. Durell walked across the room at once and without warning knocked the gun aside and slapped the man open-handed across his toothy mouth. There came a hiss of anger. The second gunman stepped forward, eyes narrowed.

Durell said: “I will discuss the girl with Omaru, not with you.”

For a moment the room was charged with violence. Then the first man shrugged and spoke sharply to his companion.

“The insult will be remembered,” he said to Durell. “But we obey orders. Will you come with us now?”

“I’m ready,” Durell said. “I’m looking forward to your Omaru. We have a few things to discuss.”

Eliot began to protest, but Durell cut him off and followed the two men outside. Yuki smiled strangely. He didn’t like it, but he had to trust Tagashi to control matters in regard to Nadja Osmanovna.

A small car was parked in the shadows of the gatekeeper’s hut. One of the men got behind the wheel and Durell sat beside him. The second man got in the back.

“How far do we go?” Durell asked.

“It is not far,” said the driver.

In less than a minute they were twisting down the forest road and across a small river into the sleeping village. The thatched houses were all dark. Their passage aroused no one except a yelping dog. But some lights glowed on the opposite bank of the river, and this was their destination.

It was a second-class Japanese inn, of red-painted wood, with an ideogram on the gatepost naming it the Suehiro, which meant The Folding Fan. The name signified good luck, but Durell expected none.

The proprietor was a wizened old man in a yellow kimono who bowed repeatedly and then retreated at a growl from the driver. The inn consisted of a rambling series of wings, all dark except for the largest at the extreme right. The two gunmen headed Durell there, and he followed a gravel path between vague shrubbery where a small pond glimmered in the starlight.

“You go in alone,” the driver said. “Omaru waits.”

“How do I get back?” Durell asked.

“Omaru-san may invite you to be his guest. If he asks you to stay, you stay. One way or another.”

Durell slipped off his shoes and stepped into the inn. The paper screens were pale gold, and the usual tokonoma alcove held a simple stone Korean vase and a strip of red paper with beautifully brushed ideograms. A charcoal brazier took the mountain chill off the room. There were some low stools, a lacquered table, and a huge Western overstaffed chair, which looked most incongruous in this rustic mountain place.

Omaru waited for him in the big chair.

He looked even more enormous than when Durell first saw him on the train. He wore a pink yukata with family ideograms embroidered on the back. His bald head gleamed as if waxed, and there was no neck connecting the head to the ponderous shoulders and chest. Yet his feet, like the feet of many fat men, were small and even dainty. A Japanese girl was washing them, kneeling, her face averted as Durell entered. The wooden bowl she used held perfumed water. She seemed frightened, trembling. When Omaru touched her shoulder, she seemed glad to jump up and dart from the room.

“Durell-san, I trust you will forgive my impetuous invitation. One must extemporize at times, and many things might have gone wrong tonight, had I not decided to act in your interests as well as mine. Please be seated. Would you like a drink?”

“Nothing, thanks,” Durell said. “I’ll stand.”

Omaru laughed, his belly shaking. “You are startled by my Irish accent? Naturally. But I am sure you know all about my early days in Dublin, when my poor mother took me home from the Orient and was hounded in the streets because my eyes were a wee bit slanty.” Omaru’s voice, though soft, had the quality of making the air tremble. His pale blue eyes were chips of weathered stone as he regarded Durell’s uncompromising figure. “You look like a man I can do business with. Not that I trust you, mind, any more than you trust me. But it seems we can work to mutual advantage in this Kaminov matter. Is it still arranged that I put my organization at your disposal?”

“It is left to my discretion,” Durell said.

“The price I set was twenty thousand dollars, the entire sum payable in American currency, in advance.” Omaru held out a pink hand. “I will take it now.”

“Not yet. We have some problems.”

“Nadja Osmanovna? Has she not talked yet?”

“No.”

“There are ways, sir, to elicit information.”

“Not this time. She must be a willing ally.”

“She will never be that. Her reputation makes the entire premise false. Alexi Kaminov is an idealist, a throwback to the romantic Russian soul of Tolstoi and Dostoievsky. Nadja is the new breed. Romance is unimportant to her. Alexi dreams of passion and endless love; she dreams of her position in the state heirarchy. She will not help us. Yet we need her advice, eh? We must learn the rendezvous point where we can kidnap Colonel Kaminov.”

“He will be useless if he must be taken by force.” Omaru looked like a complacent Buddha. “I will not presume to advise you on your affairs. My job is to deliver Kaminov into your hands, for twenty thousand dollars. He will surrender only to you, in company with the girl, is that correct? This is the way the message read. I put the message into the appropriate pipeline and here you are, eh? A long way from home. My boat is ready in Akijuro. It takes thirty hours to cross the Japan Sea. We need only the rendezvous point, and Nadja will know this. You must make her talk, sir.”