Assignment — Stella Marni (21 page)

She clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward. The pale winter sunlight caught in her long golden hair and gave it burnished highlights. He wanted to touch her, to lift her up, to hold and comfort her. He couldn't do it. He didn't move.

"Somebody was in the house waiting for us," she went on. "It happened so fast, I am not sure how it was. Blossom stood there and I was sitting here and he told me what he was going to do to me. He wanted me, but because I didn't love him I think he began to hate me. He was — I think he was a little crazy. I couldn't understand all of what he said. I tried, but it did not make much sense. He accused me of terrible things. He said I didn't really care for my father's safety and that I was testifying to Senator Hubert's committee the way I was doing because I really wanted to, because I felt that way. And then — then somebody shot him."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't you see anybody?"

"No, I... I was looking at Blossom, listening to him. There was somebody in the doorway, I could just see movement in the corner of my eye — and then the shot came and he fell like that, into the fireplace, and all the ashes puffed up around his face and... and..."

"Don't think about that"

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"Did the killer get away in a car?"

"Yes, I think so. I heard him running away and then..."

"It was a man?"

'The footsteps were heavy. Yes. A man."

"And then a car drove away?"

"Yes. But I didn't see that. I don't know what happened. I didn't seem able to move. All I could think was that this was the end of everything. Papa would be killed because I would be arrested and couldn't obey their orders any more and everything was lost and I'd go to prison here..."

'Take it easy," he said. "Didn't you hear the car approach?"

"No."

"But you heard one leave?" he persisted.

"Yes."

He frowned down at her. For a moment, when he turned his head to glance at the dead FBI agent, he wondered if Blossom had not been right all the way down the line. Whatever Blossom's mistakes, he had paid for them. Stella's story was thin, too thin to be credible. He studied the room for evidence of the gun. He saw nothing that resembled a weapon. He told Stella to get up and she stood, wavering, and leaned on him, and he felt the soft pressure of her trembling body against him and he tried to ignore it He took the cushions off her chair, but the gun wasn't there. He got down on his hands and knees and scanned the floor under the furniture, looking in the corners. Then he went out in the hall and looked up the wide stairway, where a bronze cupid held an electric torch atop the newel post. No gun anywhere. He felt slightly better about it It still could have been hidden in the few moments between his parking the car and entering the room.

When he returned, Stella stood exactly where he had left her, facing the doorway. Her large green eyes were wide, watching him soberly.

"Sam, don't you believe me?"

"I don't know what to believe." He spoke harshly and he saw the way she flinched at his words and he tried to soften them. "When Blossom finally located you at the cottage, did he have his own car with him?"

"I suppose it was his, yes. The gray one."

"Did you notice if you were followed when he came here?"

"I did not have time to notice anything. He was in a strange state of mind. He wept and begged and threatened me, and you know what he wanted. He wanted what I offered you the other night, Sam — what I can offer you again. I..." She paused, flushing. "It is difficult to be frank about such things, is it not? Perhaps, with Blossom, my sins came home to me. Not long ago I would have reveled in his torment, remembering that alley in Budapest, those men who took me and changed me and made me into something I now despise. I would like to be quite a different person from what I was for so long. I would like to forget the ambition I have, the feeling I have for men, my lack of capacity for — for love. I would like to be the woman I pretend to be, in truth. After you, Sam, I could not consider Blossom for a moment, not even to save Papa's life, not for anyone in the world. All I could think of was to wait for you to come back, to tell you this, how I feel about you, how you have given me hope and... and a different future."

Beyond her, through the tall Victorian windows, he saw the vista of beach and marsh and empty road winding toward the mainland. A gull balanced on the thin edge of the lonely winter wind above the weathered cupola on the boathouse. If Stella hadn't killed Blossom, he thought, who had? She could have hidden the gun just before he drove in. He had not searched too thoroughly, perhaps because he wanted to believe and trust her. He understood what she had just said. She was in love with him. She wanted him with the same wild, strange impulse that he felt for her. She was beautiful, everything a man could desire in a woman. She had made many men love her, and some had died for her. Or because of her. But she had been a cold and forbidding goddess then, driven by dark impulses bred in the fires and hatreds of war. But to him she had uncovered the lonely image of a lovely, despairing woman.

"Sam," she whispered. "Will you arrest me?"

"Not exactly, Stella."

"Do you think I killed Harry?"

He looked at her and smiled briefly. "No."

"Thank God," she whispered. "I would have died if you looked at me the same way Blossom used to."

He was not prepared for the way she came to him and put her arms around him and kissed him. Her mouth was moist and open and her eyes were heavy-lidded, glistening under dark lashes like tiny fans on her soft cheeks. All in an instant, her body was a consuming flame against him, and her clinging lips held secret ecstasies just for him. His hands sought her, he returned the kiss. For moments it was silent in the room except for the muted thunder of the surf and the whimpering of wind outside.

She began to shudder against him. "Please ... let us go outside."

He took her hand and they moved quickly through the house to the back door. The wind caught her hair, blew it across her mouth.

"What will we do?" she asked. "Where shall we go?"

"I'm going to turn you over to Markey," he said softly.

She looked stunned. "But you..."

"He's in charge of the case now. You'll be safe with him."

"The man with the pipe?"

"That's the one," Durell said.

"We're going to him right now?"

"Now," he said.

But she did not walk toward his car. She went toward the boathouse instead, onto the little pier over the channel that twisted through the salt marsh toward the sea. He walked after her with a long stride. Behind the boathouse, she stood facing the vast wilderness of flat marsh and open, turbulent sea. There was an inexpressible loneliness in the scene, an isolated torment reflected in her face. It made him feel as if he were alone and isolated with this girl from all the world for this moment. He knew he should be on the telephone right now, calling Markey about Harry Blossom's murder. One part of his mind still questioned the reasons for and the manner of Blossom's death. If the killer had been one of Krame's men, why wasn't Stella taken with him? Why had she been left here, stunned and terrified? It didn't make sense. The cool, analytical part of his mind questioned the complete truth of what Stella had told him. Something more had happened here. She was keeping something from him. She knew her father was a prisoner again, and she was a prisoner once more, too, chained by her fears for the old man's safety.

The other part of his mind was concerned only with Stella Marni as a helpless woman, needing solace and a moment of comfort. There was a bright fever in her, the fever of a woman who had been through hell. Her strength had not been equal to the terrible pressures that had been put upon her. He knew she was close to destruction. And she was too lovely to be destroyed.

There is a little time, he thought.

She spoke while she faced the sea, not looking at him, her hands gripping the pier rail. "When I go back with you, Sam, it will start all over again. Senator Hubert, his questions, the FBI, the cameras, the reporters." Suddenly she covered her face with her hands. "I couldn't endure it again."

"You're not going back to Europe," he said.

"But if they have Papa..."

"Your father wants you to stay."

"But they will kill him!"

"Promise me, Stella."

She shook her head. "I don't know, I don't know..."

He said urgently: "Change your testimony, Stella. Tell them the truth. Tell it to the whole world! You'll do more good that way than by surrender. They may be forced to give back your father. They wouldn't dare hurt him if you told the world what has happened to you and all the others like you. Don't you see what great good you could do, Stella?

"I... I'm not sure."

"Tell the truth," he said again. "How people like you came here for asylum, for peace and the right to live in dignity, without fear. How you've been coaxed and threatened, how they promised you better things that turned out to be ashes and dust for those who fell for the promises. Tell them about the anonymous letters, the hints about relatives and friends still behind the Curtain, the threats of what would happen to them if you didn't choose repatriation. You don't have to go back, Stella. The truth is the most powerful weapon of them all. It can destroy all the evil they've done to you, Stella. We need the truth desperately, to end all this, and you're the one who can do it."

Her eyes searched his face and something moved within their depths. Perhaps it was hope that changed everything about her. Her smile was tentative and shaken, but it was a smile. Then it faded abruptly.

"They would never let me. They would kill me."

"They killed Blossom, but they let you live."

"Only because they must think I'll go on with the testimony that I want to go back to Budapest. If I change that,
then
they will kill me. You don't know. Somewhere, somehow. They will do it."

"Don't be afraid of them, Stella."

"Could you stop them?"

"Yes. While I'm alive, they won't hurt you."

"They may try a year from now. Or five," she said. "Where will you be then?"

"With you. Near you," he said. "I promise."

Her fingers traced the line of his mouth, wondering. They were cool, trembling. The wind whimpered around the corner of the boathouse. The little chop in the channel splashed among the tall yellow reeds. She looked beyond him, and there was a difference in her eyes that he did not understand, a tiny look of triumph, of sudden hope under the gray November sky, hope in the center of all that loneliness of sea and marsh and white-frothed water. A gull wheeled overhead, screaming briefly.

"Must we go right now?" she whispered.

"There is no point in waiting."

"Just for a little time, Sam."

She came against him, that strange brightness in her eyes that looked beyond him at something he could not see...

He did not hear the car approach over her quick whispering in his ear. He was conscious of the wind that smelled of the sea and the salt marshes, of the pale lemon glow in the western sky where the sun was setting, of the fragrance of Stella's skin and the excitement of her importunities as her lips sought his.

The car came silently and the men in it went through the house quickly, with only a casual glance at Harry Blossom, dead in the fireplace. There were three of them and one nodded and they went out through the back door and considered Durell's car, and then they separated, approaching the boathouse. Each man had a gun ready.

The first warning Durell had was the subtle change of Stella's expression. Her eyes widened and glowed, and her parted lips moved soundlessly as she looked beyond him. The flimsy board planking behind the boathouse creaked. Durell swung, pulling free of Stella's hands, and saw the first man suddenly looming dark against the pale winter sky. The watery sunlight glinted on the gun. He swiveled, got his legs under him, and thrust upward savagely. Stella screamed as he flung her aside. Her eyes were wide, glistening. The gun slammed and the bullet boxed his ear. He twisted left, saw the sudden loom of two other figures blocking their escape around the other corner of the boathouse. He saw John Krame's cropped red hair, his soundlessly laughing mouth, the guns covering him.

"Hello, Stella, baby," Krame said.

His pale amber eyes flicked to Durell and he raised the gun in his hand and said: "You're for me, friend."

He fired.

Durell was not there. There was no place to go except over the rail into the channel. There was no time to think or take Stella. Instinct took over and his body arched through the air in a flat dive that took him low into the lapping tidal water behind the boathouse.

The shock of it was paralyzing.

His hands touched bottom ooze, pushed away, thrust him forward. Reeds scraped and dragged at his clothes. The water was only six feet deep, but the outgoing tide thrust him strongly to the right. He did not fight it. The icy water and the lack of preparation made his lungs scream, and he struggled to keep his jaws clamped against the single deadly inhalation that would drag sea water into his chest and drown him. There was no time to think of what was happening to Stella on the tiny porch behind the shed.

He swam underwater as hard and as long as he could. When his head broke through into the air, he was facing downchannel, away from the boathouse. Instantly he heard the sharp, spiteful crack of a gun, and a bullet splashed inches from his face.

He dragged in a breath of air and dived again.

The second time he surfaced, he was in among the reeds on the opposite side of the channel. The water here was only hip-deep. He was facing the boathouse now. There was another shot, but the bullet went far to the left and he guessed he could not be seen from the porch.