Assignment - School for Spies, page 15
"Never mind," the man said hastily. "Go ahead. Go about your business."
"And let the other trucks in after me!" Slomi shouted above his clashing gears. And they lurched forward with a rush through the first barrier.
Slomi knew his way about the grounds. The drive curved through a baronial parkland of meadow and woods veiled in mist. But the light was brightening. In any case, a bell rang from the cupola of the main building of reddish stone, that barbaric monstrosity of Si-lesian architecture that Durell had spotted as the heart of the institution. The school was alert and awake, obviously permitting no late sleepers. Lights shone in the barrack classrooms and here and there squads of full-breasted girls marched stone-faced along the paths to their classroom destinations.
"Everything is normal," Slomi said. "But it will be difficult to persuade anyone there is an emergency. And if we don't, we won't get far into the main building."
Durell nodded. Under the rough denims that Slomi had provided, he felt the reassuring weight of the guns that Slomi had provided for him and Mike. There was also a minor miracle in the form of three grenades Slomi carried, concealed in his vast waistband.
The guard at the gate had telephoned ahead, for they were halted again between two stone pillars by a grim patrol holding dogs on steel chains. The dogs snapped and snarled viciously, their rumbled threats interfering with the guards' questions. Slomi went into his act again, with wild gestures, shaking his crested fireman's helmet in anguished impatience under the noses of the guards.
They were waved on through.
Instead of swinging to the main entrance, however, Slomi spun the jeep across the lawn to circle the grotesque pile of architectual horrors. A platoon of blondes wearing Shetland wool skirts, blue cashmere sweaters, and single-strand pearls—looking precisely like a New England finishing-school class—scattered before their lurching vehicle like a covey of quail, some of them dropping books, others staring wide-eyed at this disruption of Madame Bellau's routine and whip-imposed discipline.
"The back way!" Slomi yelled. "I know it well!"
Durell wondered if the ubiquitous Slomi had made amorous as well as official visits here. It did not matter. They swung around to a wide stone terrace ornamented with a broad balustrade which in turn was adorned with hideous cast-iron statues. It was in keeping with the barbarous taste of the whole building, Durell thought, as Slomi braked.
"Where are the administrative offices?" he asked.
"Up to the left, where the lights are," Slomi said, and belched as he rolled out of the jeep.
The wing he indicated, like other parts of the building, was done in a style different from the rest, as if the generations of Faulks had each tried to assemble every style and taste—from medieval through Renaissance and baroque to Gothic—in one sprawling structure of red stone. Here was a tower right out of King Arthur's Camelot; there was a squat Romanesque wing with solid buttresses thrust into the ground; to the left was a great Gothic central piece, and above that, reached by a carriage road that wound under Venetian bridges, was a section reproduced from Versailles. Crenellated walls, conical towers, revetments, archer's slits, and rose windows reflected the melange of styles which characterized the Faulk estate.
A stone wall had been built across the carriage path, obstructing further progress in the jeep. They got out and ran up the steep grade to the large rear entrance, above the terrace with its cast-iron, rusting statues. Morning mist wound draperies around the nude metal figures. The door was closed. Slomi yanked at the old handle and it creaked open for him. His fat, round figure was limned against the light from somewhere down the vaulted brick corridor.
"Come along," he said in German.
Xanakias brushed his thick moustache with the back of his hand. "The living quarters for administrators," he said thickly. "That is where we will find them."
"It's upstairs and to the right."
A siren began to wail somewhere.
They were in the kitchen area, a commissary that supplied the entire establishment, apparently. They pushed through between stainless-steel steam tables attended by startled girls in white smocks. Their eyes went round with fright at sight of their fire helmets. Slomi grinned and shouted a cheerful reassurance and slapped some of them on the rump as he trotted by. Those who were so favored giggled and threw lewd jokes at his stout back. In a moment they were through the kitchens and into a wide hall with a divided staircase that led to the upper levels of the mansion.
Slomi swung left and picked up a polished fire extinguisher from a hook, using the heel of his hand to smash a glass alarm box and yank on the lever. In the instant, a siren began a low growl that spiraled up to hysterical alarm from one of the conical towers.
"Take that axe!" he shouted to Xanakias. Durell had already picked up a heavy crowbar off the rack of fire-fighting tools. "We go upstairs now!"
Some of the classes had already begun in this weird pile of stone buildings. Durell glimpsed pale, startled faces turned toward them as they ran by open classrooms. Some of the classes were in languages, others in modeling, the styles pure Western, and one was definitely only in hair styling. The last they passed was the only genuine secretarial class, filled with suddenly silent typewriters as the siren's scream wailed down the hallway.
"Here we are," Slomi gasped.
He was red in the face and puffing heavily as they scrambled up a winding staircase.
A door slammed ahead of them as a man stepped out of a room a short distance down the hall above.
For a moment they all halted, face to face.
It was a dead giveaway.
The man who confronted them was Rudi Kampp— Bellau's hatchet man.
Twenty-Three
Kampp's white teeth glistened in a smile that stretched thin lips even thinner. Time halted and Durell saw the man again, back in Tiigensberg, before he found Lotti Schmidt's murdered body; and again he saw Rudi moving easily through the tourists at Sacher's, in Vienna— shortly before Chet Clauson was run down by one of Faulk's trucks.
The man's carefully preserved youth belied the long years he had spent in the world of espionage. He was like the smell of death, in that frozen moment.
He wore a loose jacket of fine suede. Gray flannel slacks. A silk scarf about his neck. Finely polished loafers. Durell decided on the scarf.
He had to make it quick and silent.
As the instant of time became unglued, Durell saw recognition dawn, saw the beginning of movement as Kampp started to turn, his mouth open. Before Xanakias or Slomi could alert the place with a shot, Durell jumped, caught Kampp by the throat, and gripped the silk scarf in taut fingers. Kampp's scream of alarm was cut off, aborted by the improvised garrote. Durell kneed him to the floor, twisting savagely. He thought of the cheerful Swiss girl, who had only wanted to help; and he thought of Clauson, of his family and hi£ years of service. Here was the murderer, in his grip. And he tightened the silk noose with even greater strength.
Slomi guarded the head of the stairs; Xanakias moved to the door of the room where Rudi Kampp had emerged.
It was over in moments. Silently, efficiently.
When Durell was sure that Kampp was dead, he stood up, "In there," he said. "We look for Marge or Deirdre. One will get us the other."
Through the doorway, they were abruptly free of the institutional part of the building. No luxury was spared for the administrators of this "People's Republic" school. All the antique riches gained by the robber nobility of the Faulk clan was collected here—oil paintings lustrous with age, in heavy gilt frames; Aubusson carpets, tapestries; Louis XIV chairs and tables; candles in tall golden sconces over ornate marble fireplaces.
And not a sound. Not a human in sight.
It was like suddenly plunging into a deserted museum.
"Mike?" Durell whispered.
"Here."
"Get Kampp's body behind that couch."
"Right."
"Slomi?"
The fat man said: "It is too quiet in here."
"Where is the nearest fire station?"
"Down that hall. I have a few things hidden there, for just such a day as this."
"Let's get them," Durell said.
They ran down the carpeted corridor with its paneled walls and little plaster cupids ogling them from the comers. The absence of opposition made Durell uneasy. But the deadly, efficient teamwork of his companions reassured him, balancing his uneasiness, reminding him of wartime partisan operations where speed and coordination meant the difference between life and death, between a blown bridge or the brutal tortures of the Gestapo. The men who had survived that life were a special breed, marked forever, with their training never quite forgotten or lost.
"This way," Slomi whispered.
The man's eyes gleamed in his round, sweaty face. He held a grenade in his left hand and a Walther PPK in his right. Durell had a short-barreled .38 Smith & Wesson. He looked at Xanakias. The Greek had picked up somewhere a long and wicked-looking knife, and Durell remembered seeing some, mounted on a wall in a room they had charged through. Xanakias had snatched it with a move too quick and smooth to catch.
"I remember this place," Slomi said.
They were in a long corridor furnished with high, stiff-backed Spanish Renaissance chairs, as heavy and uncomfortable as they looked. Dim oil paintings, loot from a dozen Middle European wars, looked down from the walls. Nobody was in sight. Halting, Durell strained all his senses to locate an enemy.
He heard nothing, saw nothing.
And didn't like it.
"Here it is," Slomi said.
Incongruous amid the stiff medievalism was a modern glass fire case fitted with axe, hose, and gleaming brass flame extinguisher. Slomi broke the glass with his knuckles and the shards fell silently to the carpeted floor. The Silesian grinned as he felt behind the equipment inside and came up with four small, black tubular objects. "Remember these?"
Durell nodded. "Fire bombs. Phosphorus?"
"Something new, I think. The plastic is thin here, on the end." Slomi indicated an eggshell tip. "Pinch this and throw it—hard. It makes a tidy little blaze."
"A hell of a fireman you are," Xanakias said.
"Well, we must soon have some real smoke to make them believe there is truly an emergency here."
They each took a fire bomb. Slomi kept the extra. At the next fire station, in the eerie dawn emptiness, beyond a formal apartment of Louis Treize furniture that looked as sterile as a museum piece, Slomi extracted a wartime Mauser machine pistol. It was wasteful of ammunition, Durell recalled, on automatic; but the sound of it would be effective. He gave it to Xanakias to supplement the Greek's knife.
"Slomi?" he said.
The fat Silesian halted. "Yes, Cajun."
"First things first."
"Bellau?"
"No. Bellau is last."
"Your girl, then?"
"She can wait, too."
His friends tried to conceal the surprise in their taut faces. The lust to ambush and slay shone in their eyes. These past moments had transformed them as they ran
like hunting animals through the warren of the Faulk castle. Slomi was no longer fat and genial; Xanakias was no longer an Athenian businessman with a family bursting the seams of a Plaka apartment. They had gone back twenty years and were at war again—and enjoying it.
"What is it that is first, then?" Slomi asked.
"You know where to find the administration offices?"
"Yes, we cross a bridge and hallway, not far—"
"Are the files there? The files of this school?"
"I have seen them. As a fire inspector—"
"Then we go there first."
Xanakias said quietly: "Sam, I have come a long way, and I want Bellau."
"Business first, Mike. We want the dossiers, names and photos and assignments, of every girl who's been through this school. They've infiltrated K Section everywhere and they've got to be combed out fast. And we can't do it without the roster of names that must be somewhere in this place."
Xanakias looked stubborn. "Impossible. Bellau can be made to tell us—"
"Not enough. Not all of them. The names first."
"There is not time," Slomi demurred.
Durell weighed his fire bomb in his hand.
"We'll make the time, gentlemen."
And he threw the bomb behind him.
Twenty-Four
The black tube landed behind an ornate sofa of yellow damask. Beyond it, tall windows yielded on a cobbled courtyard. Just before the blaze began, Durell could look down through the dusty glass to the ground level, three floors below, to the ancient keep. A squad of girls was crossing the cobblestones just then, marching with a modern precision, fresh and alive and lovely in the dawn air, their discipline overriding the alarm siren that still belted out its senseless warning.
The fire began with a flat hiss and thump. A fountain of chemical flames spouted behind the Louis Treize sofa and tore at the hangings at the window.
"What have you done?" Slomi said angrily. "This is our best way out of here—"
"We'll find another way." Durell was calm, "It will give the firemen something to chew on, right?"
"I suppose so, but these antiques are priceless—"
"Chalk it up to the high cost of modern living. You do want to keep on living, don't you, Slomi?"
They left the crackling fire, with its pungent chemical smoke, and stepped cautiously after Slomi out of the museum-like apartment. The siren had stopped. From far away in the mad maze of this confused castle came the shouts of men and the single scream of a girl. Durell could not make a guess about the girl's scream.
"All clear," Slomi whispered.
Now they were three hunters, running like fleet shadows through the empty exhibits of Faulk's strange palace. Slomi's small eyes were as alert as a wild boar's; and Xanakias, that small dark bulk, had his head tucked into his thick shoulders as he charged relentlessly ahead in a manner that meant he would meet his goal or die. Durell was a tall and heavy shadow parallel to them, light on his feet, silent, intent—the hunter nearing his quarry.
A covered bridge that imitated those over the Venetian Rialto led them high above the big cobbled courtyard. There they ran into their first real opposition.
But the guard was not ready for them. He stood with his auto-rifle still slung about his neck as they debouched from the stone bridge behind him. Slomi's karate chop hit his throat with the flat sound of a meat axe. The man went down soundlessly.
"The offices, Slomi." Durell was urgent. "Never mind the people we can hear. The files come first."
"And the residence quarters?" Xanakias asked.
Slomi shrugged. "The Cajun is in command. The staff apartments are in the turrets across the courtyard."
Xanakias nodded reluctantly. Durell knew he held both men on the most slender of leashes. Any excuse would see them leaping off to satisfy their own vengeance— Xanakias after Bellau, and Slomi going for Count Faulk. But he needed both men until the mission was done, and afterward, too, for their escape. He still hoped to escape. You had to, in this business. To succeed and die was no help to those who waited for your return with information, thousands of miles away. . ..
They dropped the guard into a closet and moved down a carpeted hall that opened onto a gallery. They had to use more care, now. Voices, high with alarm, came from nearby. Smoke from Durell's fire drifted against the pearly morning sky, seen through a nearby window.
The gallery, below which was another gallery above floor level, circled a paneled baronial hall, complete with hanging banners and armor and insignia of a score of petty princelings of ancient Silesia. Their antique glory was tattered and forlorn in the dim light that seeped through a Gothic window at the far end. Durell leaned carefully over the rail near the doorway where they had debouched.
"The apartments are below and to the right, where that guard stands," Slomi whispered.
"Is there any way around him?"
"None I can remember."
"And the offices?"
"They are before we reach the apartments. Mike?"
Xanakias turned his dark head. "What is it?"
"Be patient. You will have your Bellau as I will have Count Faulk. First, give Sam your fire bomb. They will know it is incendiary, but it cannot be helped now, eh?"
Durell nodded. There was some functional furniture on the floor below, some sofas and chairs that made the baronial hall serve as a lobby to the main administrative area of the "school." The guard at the doorway under the hanging banners of ancient prides was restless. The siren had begun again and a man ran across the flagged floor, shouting to the guard to stay alert. Their Silesian gutterals came, up in garbled echoes to the gallery where Durell and his two companions crouched. Panic lurked in their brief exchange of words.
Durell broke the cone of the second fire bomb and tossed it down over the rail, toward the furniture.
It was a long way to the floor, and when it struck, it landed in front of instead of behind the settee he had chosen as the most flammable target. The guard spun toward the sound of the impact, his gun raised. Xanakias raised his Mauser.
"It has not gone off!"
"He can't see it, Mike. Wait."
They still had the advantage of surprise, until someone recognized them as enemies under the fire helmets they still wore; or until someone found Rudi's dead body, left far behind them. A stone staircase led them to the middle-level gallery. Not until they were halfway down did the incendiary bomb go off in a delaying action that brought a shriek of shock and agony from the inquisitive guard.
Durell looked down from the landing. He was directly above the sofa on which he had dropped the bomb. The guard had gone to investigate and had picked it up at the moment the device decided to go off.
The guard had been turned into a man of fire, his entire body outlined like a living torch as the chemicals ran down his arm and across his chest and loins, spreading acrid fire as they went. His screams were something from Inferno.
But they did not last long. . . .
