Assignment - School for Spies, page 11
Did they blame him for Clauson's death two nights ago? Three more shots came, and the third chunked dangerously into the soft earth at his feet. They meant business. At that range, they were shooting for a hit, not caring if it also meant a kill or not.
He bent all his energies to escape.
A hedgerow gave him fleeting shelter as he ran for the river, away from the church and Schloss. A rutted cart path next let him sprint upriver toward the wide, sweeping bend while the men from Vienna fanned out over the stubbly fields at a slower pace. Then, for several moments, rain came down with blinding fury, drumming, rattling, and stinging with ice. The cart road led to a wider path between tall, bare elms, then a woods; and when he had put almost a mile between himself and the church, as well as Faulk's estate, he spotted a peasant's cottage, dimly seen through the blowing curtains of wet. Durell heard his name shouted, a thin sound snatched by the wind. He kept going. The breath was painful and hot in his throat. He looked back and glimpsed his pursuers dimly through the tracery of woods. More shots came, but they were wild.
Then an apparition appeared before him, tall, with a halo of ghostly hair, a bony face, and thin arms that waved wildly to him. It was the Reverend Mittlemann.
"This way, Herr Durell!"
He swung instantly toward the cottage gate where the pastor stood. And Marge Jones appeared beside the old man.
No time to reason away his surprise. He was grateful for any help, and he snatched at it to escape the men behind him. He knew how dangerous a group of operatives Chet Clauson had built up in Vienna. It was plain they meant to avenge Clauson's death, and equally plain they blamed it squarely on Durell. The girl called to him to hurry, and he came up to her and looked back. "What are you doing here?"
"Come, we can hide down at the river—"
"Who tipped off Clauson's people?"
"I don't know. Faulk, perhaps, to do his dirty work. He would like such irony, eh? And there are regular police, too. But what does it matter?"
"Where is Xanakias?"
"He'll find us later. He recognized the Vienna people while we waited for you—they went by in two cars—and he sent me ahead. Will you please hurry?" She started for the riverbank. "The pastor says we can surely hide down there. Later, we can use the cottage. He put some food in it just this morning, and he says we are far beyond Faulk's grounds, with the woods and the river bend between us. He thinks we will be safe and unseen, hiding here."
"Can you trust him?"
"We must," she said simply. "And here they come."
The nearest of their pursuers appeared off the cart path, moving slowly through the slogging rain. They could be glimpsed through the veil of wind-whipped hedgerows, but Durell, Mittlemann, and the girl were still hidden from them. Durell nodded to the gaunt pastor.
"Does Faulk know the neighborhood, and your cottage here?"
"I think not. He is a newcomer. And he does not trouble himself with the village or the peasants' affairs."
Durell nodded. "Keep those people coming for us now as far away from the riverbank as you can. Right?"
"I shall do all I can."
He took Marge's hand and they ran pell-mell through the woods toward the river.
Sixteen
There was a boat house and a small dock and a strip of wooded beach along the Danube's bank at this point. It was not romantic. Debris and oil refuse from industrial traffic marred the brown stream, and the rain and cold contributed to their misery. After a time, Durell began to lose track of how long he had been hiding under the little pier with the girl. He was hungry and cold, and he imagined that Marge more than shared his misery. There was no chance to talk. It was too dangerous. Within minutes of ducking under the boat pier, there were shouts and the thudding of feet overheard, a voice swearing in a Brooklyn accent, a cry in German, a pell-mell rush back to the peasant house where the Reverend Mittlemann had met Marge Jones.
Marge began to shiver when they left.
"Are you all right?" Durell asked.
"I'm scared out of my wits. Those are our people hunting you, do you know that?" She was outraged, and her teeth chattered. It was dank, gloomy, and smelly under the pier. Then more feet walked across the planking above them and she was silent until Durell nodded that they were gone. "Did you—did you see her? Did you see Deirdre?"
"Yes," he said.
"And Faulk?"
"Yes."
"And—?"
"Nothing," he said.
"What does that mean?"
"I think it was all very carefully set up for me."
"How could you tell? I mean, was she lying, or pretending to feel something for Faulk that wasn't there?
"I think so, yes."
"But he's a handsome hunk of man, Cajun. Any girl—"
"Not Deirdre. She's not any girl."
Marge fell into a curious silence. Her green eyes, remote with thought, flashed now and then in the wet gloom under the pier. The wind and rain did not relent. Neither did the hunters. After twenty minutes, their calls still sounded up and down the riverbank. Some spoke in English, others in Viennese German. They were angry and determined. It was only a matter of time before one of them called for a look under the pier and boat shed.
There was no help for it then.
Durell caught Marge and shoved her down the strip of debris-strewn shingle and into the water under the dock and boathouse. The Danube was icy. Bits of junk bumped against their legs in the current. They pushed farther out toward the daylight that seemed to be a luminous reflection off the broad surface of the river beyond the dock. A string of barges was passing quite close to the shore. Durell said urgently: "Duck your head under the water. Here, behind this post."
Marge was outraged. "Sam, I couldn't —!"
"You wanted to play this game. Now you can learn the rules," he said grimly. Without pause, he shoved her bodily under the surface, raincoat, thick hair and all. She was good enough not to struggle. He followed, ducking into the freezing current, and felt it pour through his clothing and across his belly and down around his groin. He kept his nose and eyes above water, watching, and let Marge do the same. He had to admit, with some admiration, that after her first shocked resistance, she accepted her misery stoically.
"Don't move a muscle," he whispered.
Voices echoed eerily under the pier. One of the men had a flashlight, which was needed in the rainy mid-morning gloom. Somebody said, "The tricky son of a bitch got away. I heard he was tough and cagey, but nobody thought he worked for them all these years!"
'Even Chet trusted him," someone else said
"Poor Chet."
"Never mind. We'll get him."
"And let me in the back room with him, huh?"
Marge shuddered violently under the water. Durell held her close to him, their cheeks together just above the surface. Panic glimmered in her green eyes as the flashlight stabbed and probed the rotting posts above them. Small wavelets lapped and splashed, and then the wake came in from the passing line of tugs and barges, waves that seemed immense to them in their confinement, drowning them in oily slicks and creating muted thunder under the pier. It turned to their advantage, however. The hunters were reluctant to get soaked by the Danube's icy, muddy wash. They cursed and stumbled away.
Durell lifted Marge to her feet. She clung to him and he braced her shoulders against a post and slapped her lightly. She looked very ill. Her lips were drawn back and her teeth gleamed in an unnatural grimace; her hair was sopping, and her body jerked and shuddered in violent chills.
"Steady," he murmured.
"I c-can't h-help it."
"Another few minutes, that's all."
"I'm f-freezing. This guh-goddam B-Blue Danube—"
He grinned at her, although shudders shook him, too, his clothes felt like sacks of concrete weighted to his shoulders. "Tell me something. Why are you doing this?"
"I wu-wish I knew. . . ."
He made her wait a full half-hour after all sounds of the hunt had ended. Even then, as they waded out of the water, their legs numb and aching with the cold, he went ahead with great care, concerned about a possible trap awaiting them. But the rain had eased into a steady drizzle. The northerly wind was still cold, however, blowing across the Danube. If anything, the daylight was dimmer than before.
"I'm s-soaked," Marge whimpered. "Where can we go?"
"Mittlemann's cottage, where you waited with him."
"Good. I guess he can be trusted."
She was right. The Reverend Mittlemann, having done his good deed for the day, had vanished. Durell hoped the enemy hadn't taken the parson. If so, Mittlemann wouldn't take long to talk about Marge Jones to Faulk or the people from Vienna, and he was concerned about Marge, because her commitment to his own quixotic cause had taken her beyond hope of excuse in the eyes of the Geneva CIA.
He opened the heavy cottage door by jiggling the iron drop-latch off its hook with a slice of celluloid taken from his pocket. Marge almost fell inside, wracked by shudders. The interior felt clammy with long disuse.
But there was a fireplace and kindling wood.
"Get your clothes off and don't be squeamish about it," he told the shivering girl. "We've got to dry ourselves. You're only minutes away from pneumonia."
He found blankets in the bedroom, on the goose-feather bed with carved oaken posts. He threw one to the blue-lipped girl, then located some old newspapers, split some of the fresh kindling Mittlemann had placed in a copper bucket, and spent several minutes hunting through the old-fashioned, brick-floored kitchen until he found a cranny containing wooden matches. His teeth were chattering beyond control by then. It might be dangerous to light the fireplace here, only a mile from Faulk's Schloss, but their chill had to be fought somehow. And he could only hope that the woods and distance and the mist would keep Faulk or the CIA from searching here again and smelling the woodsmoke.
As he started to light the fire, he heard Marge move behind him. "Don't turn around, Sam. Don't look at me. I must look awful. I just want to say something, that's all."
"What is it?"
"Well, I think you—I think you're just—"
Her tone of voice disturbed him. "Marge, give yourself a good rubdown and see if you can find some liquor."
"I discovered some brandy. I've taken a couple of belts already."
"Good. Then pour some for me."
He knelt beside the fire as it leaped up, filling the rude room with crackling warmth that fought back the chill, clammy shadows. He turned and found a glass of pale golden liquor on a carved table, and tossed it down avidly. The brandy hit bottom with an explosive burst of wild, welcome heat in him. From the kitchen, which had a huge old-fashioned cast-iron stove, came the sound of a fire hissing and of pans rattling.
"Marge, is there food here?"
"Yes, Mittlemann brought some, I guess. Eggs, some ham—I think we ought to eat something, don't you?"
"I guess the good pastor was planning to settle back home, all right."
He stripped off his steaming, soggy clothes, suddenly revolted by the smell of the river that clung to them, and wrapped himself in another blanket from the bedroom, after scrubbing himself vigorously to stimulate circulation.
"Sam?" she called from the kitchen. "How long can we stay here? What do you think?"
"It seems safe enough, but we've got to wait until dark, at least. The Vienna people will hang around until then. And don't forget Faulk may be looking for us, too."
"Good. I don't want to go out into that rain for a while."
The smell of ham and eggs and coffee lifted a sudden appetite in him. The brandy made his eyes heavy, and he ascribed it to the nervous and physical pressures of the past hours. He went into the kitchen to join Marge.
"I wish you didn't have to see me this way."
"Right now," he said, "I'm more interested in your cooking."
"Not much of a flatterer, are you?"
"Just honest," he grinned.
"I know I'm horrible to look at—"
"You're beautiful," he said, and he kissed her.
He meant it only as a signal of affection, because she had endured everything with little complaint. He still didn't know how she had happened to appear when he needed her most, and made a note to ask her for a fuller explanation; but he felt contented, his mind relaxed, no longer taut. He was not prepared for her fierce reaction when his lips touched hers.
The blanket wrapped around her tall figure came apart, and her body pressed against him with a silken violence that was unexpected. In the gray light that ebbed through the rain-rippled casement windows, her eyes were like the luminous flickerings at the bottom of a pool, brilliant with life. Her breasts were firm against him as she shuddered and clung to him. Her lips moved against his.
"Oh, Sam, I'm every kind of a fool. . . ."
"Marge, you can't expect—"
"I know, I know. I can't. And I must."
"But you know why I'm here, you know I've just seen Deirdre—"
"I don't care." Her voice was impassioned. "The day you walked into my nice little shop in Tiigensberg, something happened to me. I thought I was fully alive until then; and the minute I saw you, I knew I'd been half dead all these years, and I can only come alive if you ..."
She moved against him with a ferocious demand that traitorously brought a lift of reaction from him. She felt it and kissed him again and again, her lips at his throat and chest, her hands holding him and urging him on. He was shocked at himself and at her. He should have seen it coming, he thought dimly. She was a romantic, the most dangerous sort of ally in his business. But his thoughts were confused by fatigue or the liquor, or the unexpected enticement she offered to his senses after their recent peril.
"Marge . . ."
"I don't care, I don't care," she moaned.
The coffee, boiling over in the gray enameled pot, broke the spell of her frenzy. There came a sudden bubbling and hissing and the sharp odor of burning grounds on the hot iron surface of the stove. Marge drew back with a gasp and looked at him with a puzzling mixture of dismay, regret, and relief. Abruptly, she adjusted her blanket and turned away to move the pot off the heat. Durell drew a deep, uncertain breath. What was happening to him? His thoughts were fuzzy, and yet he was not particularly alarmed. He walked out of the kitchen without another word to Marge.
It was a few minutes before she appeared with the eggs and ham and coffee. Her face was pale, without makeup, and the fine bones of her face were highlighted by the gray light that came through the leaded windows. The rain still fell outside. There was no alarm, no sight of another human being on the road or the riverbank or in the wide stubbled fields lifting toward the grim, dimly seen battlements of Faulk's Schloss. He felt a security here that could easily prove false, and yet he seemed unable to do anything about it.
"Sam, I'm so sorry. It was so stupid of me!"
"Forget it. You were just unnerved."
"And almost undone," she said wanly, "like any fair young maiden. Can you forgive me?"
He smiled in return. "We were both vulnerable there, for a few moments."
"How can such things happen? I thought I had everything under control. I know you love Deirdre. I know I can't mean anything to you, or fit myself into the pattern of your life. Oh, I should never have left Mama and my little gray home in the Midwest, damn you!"
He felt inadequate. "Marge, it was just the reaction from having those people hunting for us—"
"Partly that, yes. But gosh, Sam, surely you know I've fallen in love with you. And that's so stupid. It's going to ruin everything. Now you'll send me back to Switzerland and they'll take away my job and discipline me and there'll be nothing left to do but go home and try to trick the boy next door into marrying me." She fished in his shirt, drying before the fire, and found his cigarettes. They were soggy, but some were usable, and she lit two with a twig from the grate and handed him one. "I could use another drink."
"Where did you get that brandy?" he asked.
"It was here, on the kitchen table."
"In plain sight?"
"Yes." She regarded him with wide eyes. "Why?"
He should have felt alarm and heard the clamor of a warning bell; but nothing happened. He was contented. "Nothing, I suppose. I'm jumpy, too."
The fire crackled cheerfully. He felt warm at last, soothed by the sound of the rain, the burning logs, the heat of food in his belly, the smooth, white thigh glimpsed through a parting of Marge's blanket. He could not understand himself. He felt as if he were swimming deep under the surface of warm green water.
"Poor Sam," she whispered. "Don Quixote, battling windmills. Galahad and Lochinvar, all rolled into one. She doesn't love you anymore, you know."
He closed his eyes.
She said: "I'm not as stupid as you think, Sam. I'm trying to move in, that's true, but you know how nature abhors a vacuum. Right now, you need someone, and I'm trying to take advantage of it." Her voice was soothing as she sat beside him before the fire. "That is, if you don't send me away now, because I've made such an idiot of myself."
"No, Marge."
"You don't despise me, do you?"
"Marge, of course not."
"I think you do like me a little, or you would never tolerate me on this personal junket of yours. And you know how I feel. I've thrown away everything to stick it out with you. Maybe I had a hunch how things might break when you caught up with Deirdre. Maybe I had a little hope."
"The job isn't finished yet."
"I know, darling, but about Deirdre—"
He didn't want to talk about it, and stared at the fire as she nestled close to him. "One of us ought to be on watch while we're here."
"You need rest, Sam. I'll take care of it."
"Something—I feel something—"
"Sleep, Sam, and I'll watch. Don't worry. I'll behave. But if it comes to it again, I won't back down. I'm a predatory, devouring member of the female of the species."
He grinned. "I'll remember that."
He tried to come alert and shake his senses awake and back to reality. He could not. The thought drifted through his mind that the brandy had been too conveniently left in the cottage, that the whole setup was too easy and, therefore, wrong. But Marge seemed all right. Maybe it was just himself, a reaction to his long hunt for Deirdre that had ended in open warfare between himself and his former partners and friends in K Section. He was alone; he was fair game for either side. . ..
