Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (9 page)

Mrs. Pollifax watched him hopefully, but he did not say what he was thinking or on what continent such mountains might be. The flight continued, with Farrell’s glance constantly moving from earth to sky. “We’re going to land,” he said suddenly.

Mrs. Pollifax leaned forward. A scattering of lights increased in density, the plane wheeled and began its approach to the runway. Mrs. Pollifax braced herself—there were no seat belts on this plane—and suddenly the earth was rushing past her with dizzying speed, they touched land and taxied to a very bumpy stop. Mrs. Pollifax gathered up her playing cards and put them in her purse. The door to the cockpit opened and two men they had not seen before walked in, one of them carrying
a revolver. The other drew out keys and unshackled their ankles. Both were Chinese. The door was pulled away and by gestures it was indicated that Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell were to get out. This was accomplished only with difficulty because there was nothing more than a wooden ladder propped against the side of the plane, and for illumination a flashlight was shone on its rungs. Mrs. Pollifax descended into an oppressively warm night that gave the feeling of new heat lying in wait for sunrise. The two men waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder were not Orientals and she saw Farrell stare intently into their faces. To Mrs. Pollifax they looked—perhaps Greek, she decided, recalling an evening spent in Miss Hartshorne’s apartment viewing slides on Greece; at least to Mrs. Pollifax their skin had that same similarity to the skin of an olive, moist and supple and smooth. She saw Farrell glance from them to the mountains behind the plane and then again at the stars in the sky. She said anxiously, “It’s not Cuba, is it.”

He shook his head.

“Do you know—have you any idea
where
we may be?”

His eyes narrowed. He said grimly, “If my guess is right, Duchess—I hope to God it’s not—I should now turn to you and say, ‘Welcome to Albania.’ ”

“Albania!” gasped Mrs. Pollifax, and peering incredulously into his face she repeated blankly,
“Albania?”

“Albania.”

“But I don’t
want
to be in Albania,” Mrs. Pollifax told him despairingly. “I don’t know anything
about
Albania, I’ve scarcely even heard of the place, the idea’s preposterous!”

“Nevertheless,” said Farrell, “I think it’s where we are.”

A long car, once black but nearly white with dust now, drew into the periphery of the flashlights and they were ushered to its door and prodded into the rear. “A Rolls,” Farrell said out of the corner of his mouth, and Mrs. Pollifax nodded politely. The two men with Grecian profiles climbed in and sat down on a drop seat facing them, guns in hand, and the car began to move at reckless speed over incredibly bumpy ground. Mrs. Pollifax clung to its sides and longed for an aspirin. The headlights of the car illuminated the road onto which they turned but the road held as many ruts as the airfield. They appeared to be entering a town, and presently they were threading narrow streets where garbage flowed sluggishly in gutters. They passed cobbled alleys and shuttered cafes and what appeared to be a bazaar. They met no other cars and saw no people. Even
the homes that showed briefly in the glare of the headlights looked inhospitable, their rooftops barely seen over the tops of high walls that surrounded them. The walls were guarded by huge gateways with iron-studded doors—clearly not a trusting neighborhood, thought Mrs. Pollifax—and then they had left the town behind. Looking out of the window at her side Mrs. Pollifax saw the mountains again silhouetted against the night-blue sky; not comfortable-looking mountains at all, but harsh craggy ones with jutting peaks and cliffs and towering, rocky summits. The mountains, decided Mrs. Pollifax, looked even less hospitable than the homes. It was toward these mountains that they appeared to be heading.

Their guards stared at them impassively and without curiosity. Mrs. Pollifax turned to Farrell and said, “But why Albania? Surely you’re wrong!”

“Well, this isn’t Cuba.”

“No,” responded Mrs. Pollifax sadly, “it isn’t Cuba.”

“I thought at first these mountains might be the Himalayas, but this isn’t China. The mountains aren’t high enough, there aren’t enough of them and the whole topography is wrong.”

“I shouldn’t care at all for China,” Mrs. Pollifax agreed.

“One has to think of the few parts of the world where the Red Chinese are welcome. There aren’t many, you know. That town we passed through was definitely not Chinese, it was Balkan in flavor. These mountains must belong to the Albanian Alps, and certainly these men are Europeans.”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “I thought they looked Greek.”

“If this is Albania then Greece is only a few hundred miles away,” he pointed out. “You saw how primitive the airport was, and you see how primitive the country is. If we’re in Europe there’s no other country but Albania where the Red Chinese can come and go at will.”

“I didn’t know they could come and go
anywhere
in Europe,” said Mrs. Pollifax indignantly.

“It happened about 1960,” he mused, his brow furrowed. “Until then Russia was Albania’s big brother and pretty much in control of the country. Then Stalin was denounced—that was a surprise to the world, you must remember that. It rocked Albania, too—they’re Stalinist here, you see. I don’t recall the details, it happened at one of their Big Party Congresses, but there was rather ugly name-calling, with China and Albania siding against Khrushchev. Russia punished Albania by withdrawing all its aid, all its technicians, all its military, and China
very happily moved in to help. The chance of a lifetime, giving Red China a toehold in Europe.”

“I didn’t know,” faltered Mrs. Pollifax. “The very idea—and to think that I subscribe to
Time
magazine. I really
must
stop skipping the Balkan news. But why bring us here? Why go to such a great deal of trouble?”

Farrell gave her a quick glance and looked away. “Perhaps they feel we’re worth the trouble,” he pointed out gently.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Pollifax in a small voice and was silent.

The car had been climbing steeply for the past twenty minutes on a road that appeared to be carved out of the side of the mountain. On the left the car lights picked out weird rock shapes, on the right side nothing, and Mrs. Pollifax had a terrible suspicion that there really was nothing there, and that any nervous turning of the wheel would send them hurtling through space into the valley. Higher and higher they climbed until at last the car came to a stop and their two guards came to life and jumped out. They spoke rapidly to the driver in a strange, oddly nasal language, and gestured to Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax to leave the car. Once outside they found themselves in a vast basin of desolate gray rock, and noting this, Mrs. Pollifax realized the darkness was dissolving and that dawn must be near. Another day, she thought wonderingly, and suddenly, quite absurdly, recalled her son Roger telling her to wire him if she found herself in a jam.

“This is extremely sticky jam I’m in,” she reflected. “Treacly, oozy black raspberry, I think. And no Western Unions.”

One of the guards had disappeared behind a rock. Now he reappeared leading four donkeys, and to Mrs. Pollifax’s consternation the man signaled that she mount one of them. “I can’t,” she said in a low voice to Farrell, and to the guard she said in a louder voice, “I can’t.”

“I believe you’re going to have to,” Farrell pointed out in amusement.

She eyed the animal with distaste and in turn it eyed her with suspicion. Farrell moved forward to help; it was only with his intercession that a truce was accomplished between the two, and this was mainly because, once upon its back, the donkey could no longer see Mrs. Pollifax. When Farrell and the guards had also mounted donkeys they formed a procession and moved on.

The wilderness path along which they moved was desolate beyond belief. This was a country where all life had been extinguished,
to be supplanted by rocks of every color, shape and formation. The air was thin but only a little cooler than the valley. There was no shade of any kind. Slowly, as they traveled, the sunrise spread a golden light across the valley and Mrs. Pollifax could look down upon green slopes and occasional trees, but the rising of the sun brought warmth as well, followed by heat, and between this and the donkey Mrs. Pollifax was soon extremely uncomfortable. Horseback riding had never been her métier, and sitting sidesaddle on a donkey was taxing; it took a great deal of energy simply to keep from falling off, and the donkey moved with unexpected lurches. They had traveled for perhaps an hour when Farrell said suddenly, “Psst—look.”

Mrs. Pollifax reluctantly lifted her eyes. They had left behind the bleak gray rocks and cliffs of the first leg of their journey and had come out upon a small plateau literally carpeted with stones. The ground was like a brook bed that had been emptied of silt and water—the stones were scattered everywhere in such profusion that not a blade of grass could grow. The sun beat down mercilessly on the landscape, turning everything into a tawny color of yellow dust. At the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley stood a square, fortresslike building made of stone piled upon stone, with only black slits for windows. It stood at the very edge of the precipice, and after a drop of a hundred or so feet the earth formed a rock-strewn terrace, and below this another, showing tentative signs of green, and then the earth flowed like a green river down to the floor of the valley. As her donkey picked its way over the stones Mrs. Pollifax saw a second, smaller building at some distance from the first, also built of rocks and precisely like the other except in size. If she were a tourist, thought Mrs. Pollifax wistfully, this would be a wild and romantic scene; one could imagine bandit chieftains holing up in these impregnable buildings, completely safe against attack. But unfortunately she was not a tourist, she was an American spy who had been abducted—no, captured, she thought uneasily—and no one on God’s green earth knew where she was except the people who had brought her here. For just the briefest of moments she allowed herself to think of her children, of Jane having a safe and happy vacation in Canada, of Roger, who had told her to wire him if she got into a jam. “If it just didn’t seem so
unreal
,” thought Mrs. Pollifax unhappily. “I mean—what on earth am I doing
here
? I’m in Albania—at least Farrell
thinks
it’s Albania.” And again she felt it was preposterous, her being in Albania. Why, she didn’t even own a passport.

“Journey’s end,” commented Farrell dryly, with a nod at the smaller building toward which they were heading.

She said crossly, “I really don’t think you need put it in just that manner.” But as they approached the second of the two buildings she realized that unconsciously she had begun bracing herself for the worst. She drew herself up to her full height—it was a little difficult on a donkey—and said primly, “I have always found that in painful situations it is a sensible idea to take each hour as it comes and not to anticipate beyond. But oh how I wish I could have a bath!”

Someone must have noted their approach through the slits in the wall because the iron door of the building opened as they drew near. A man stepped out into the blazing sun with a rifle under his arm but Mrs. Pollifax was too busy to pay him any attention; she was involved in separating herself from the animal to which she had become welded during the past hour. No sooner did she stand upright, all her bones protesting, when the guard grasped her arm and led her into the building.

“Journey’s end,” she thought bleakly, looking around her at more stone—really she was growing very tired of stones. In shape the building was a rectangle about thirty feet long. The door through which they entered was set at one end of the long rectangle, and as they entered they faced a room that occupied the precipice end of the structure. On their left was a dark hall that ran across the front, and looking down it Mrs. Pollifax saw two iron cell doors opening from it. She quickly turned her gaze back to the room, which contained a desk, a chair, a water cooler, a well-stocked gun rack, a small switchboard and a gray-haired man dressed in a uniform. He greeted them curtly in English.

“I am Major Vassovic.” With this announcement he took a huge iron key from the wall and led them down the hall to the first door and opened it. “In, please,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you have any aspirin,” Mrs. Pollifax asked him hopefully. “I’ve had the most ridiculous headache for hours. I don’t often get them, you know, and I don’t mean to complain, but I’ve been doped twice and apparently fed intravenously, and it’s been a rather exhausting plane ride—”

The major looked at her in astonishment, and then carefully wiped all expression from his face. “I have no orders to give you anything,” he told her stiffly.

Farrell gently pulled her into the room, the door clanged shut behind them and Mrs. Pollifax said, “I don’t see how one aspirin could …” Her voice died away at sight of their prison. It was quite decent in size, but so dark—lighted only by the two slits in the wall—that it was twilight inside. There was to be no privacy for her or Farrell, she noted; none at all except for the dimness. There was an iron cot at each end of the room, with a night chamber under each; there were two small tables and that was all. No chairs, no screens, no lavatory, no clothespegs, nothing else except the oppressive stone walls and floor.

“Well,” said Farrell, and sat down on a cot.

“Well,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and sat down on the other cot. They stared at each other through the gloom, a distance of perhaps twelve feet, and Mrs. Pollifax realized that the silence was becoming long and much too dismal. “Well,” she said again, briskly, and getting up she carried one of the tables to the cot, reached into her purse and began spreading out her deck of playing cards.

“Not again,” groaned Farrell. “Not
here
.”

“Whyever not?” said Mrs. Pollifax and was glad to see him diverted.

She had played three games when the door was unlocked and opened and a guard gestured that she come with him. Farrell also stood up but the guard shook his head. Farrell said lightly, “Well—I do feel snubbed. Good luck, Duchess.”