Assignment - School for Spies, page 16
"The security forces will gather here," Xanakias said urgently. "We must find another way."
"That is through the living quarters," Slomi said.
They looked at Durell, anxious for their prey, seeing a way to short-cut him and reach their living goals before he could use them for his search of the files.
But he had no choice. "All right."
Slomi led them down and through a doorway into relatively modern apartments, almost a residential hotel, with soft lighting against the gray morning light. Doors were closed on either hand along the empty corridor. And suddenly Durell halted.
It was the place of his dream. It was the endless hall that had no way out. The finish of everything.
For an instant, panic took command. Then Slomi's urgent call shook him free of the nightmare. They ran on. But they went only a short way when the corridor ended in another staircase. Men were running up from below, to search this part of the building. They knew the fire was incendiary now.
"In here," Durell said, and chose a door at random.
It would not open.
For another moment he lived in his nightmare, remembering how the doors had closed one after the other as he tried to escape from the shadowed nemesis bounding after him.
Then the latch yielded and he pushed inside.
He came face to face with Marge Jones.
And he knew that she was the beginning and perhaps the end of his evil dream.
Twenty-Five
Sleep lingered in her long green eyes, turning them into the emerald depths of a tropic sea slightly roiled by sand. Beneath the sleep, like the sharp danger of a reef, was a quickening, a drift of fear, and a glimmer of hostile intelligence.
"Sam?"
Her voice was quiet, not surprised, almost expressionless. She had been dressing, and wore a woolen skirt with nylons and brown pumps. Above was a virginal white cotton bra glimpsed through the robe she had thrown hastily about her shoulders. Her hair was a copper tangle about her young face.
"Come in, quickly!" she whispered. "This is too dangerous for you!" She watched Slomi and Xanakias follow. "Are you all mad? What can you hope to do? I heard a fire alarm—"
"That's right. The place is on fire," Durell said.
"Who—did you set it?"
"Right the first time. You were always bright, Marge. Or will you tell us your real name now?"
"Sam, darling, I can explain—"
"Don't bother. I know the answers now. Just tell us the quickest and easiest way down to the files, so we can get the names of all the other girls like you."
"Sam, I'm not as you think —"
"Make it fast, Marge. We're a bit nervous."
Her eyes flicked over the three men and returned to Durell and his gun. "You wouldn't—not to me—"
"Soonest to you, honey," Durell said. "After the way you crossed us all down the line, it would be like stepping on a scorpion."
"Please, Sam ..."
He slapped her, not sparing his strength, and she reeled across the bedroom, stumbled against a table, her hand to her cheek, and fell to the Sarouk carpet that covered the floor. Her robe tore and bared her shoulders and back—and Durell suddenly sucked in his breath at what he saw. He heard a similar hiss of shock from Slomi, and a soft curse from Xanakias.
She tried to hide the scars, but it was too late.
Her eyes were bitter. "You never saw them, did you, Sam? You were never meant to. That's why I fainted yesterday when I saw that poor girl being whipped. I— I knew what she was suffering, because it happened to me, too."
Across her back were dark welts, long healed but forever disfiguring the otherwise velvet whiteness of her slim back. Nothing could ever erase them. They would always brand her with a memory she could never forget, and the mark showed in her eyes as she met Durell’s shocked gaze.
"Yes, I was one of those girls tied naked to the post," she said quietly. "The dwarf woman whipped me, too. It was for such a little thing—I didn't wear the proper jewelry with the costume assigned to me that day. I was told an American college girl would never forget to wear them. Silly, isn't it? We were drilled for a year in how to be good American types. Mostly, I was at the head of the class. And I fooled you, didn't I, Sam? You thought I really was a Marge Jones, from Ohio."
"For a time," he said thinly. "Until Vienna."
Slomi put in a warning. "Cajun, we waste valuable time in this hornet's nest. We will never reach the files, let alone escape, if we delay longer."
"All right." Durell did not turn from the girl who faced him with proud defiance. "What are you really, Marge?"
She laughed with soft bitterness. "I'm just what they made out of me. I'm an American. Isn't that funny?"
"Not at all."
"And I fell in love with you, Sam, like any American girl would do. I chucked the job and everything to try to save you from this. I tried to keep you from being killed.
I hoped when I let them catch me last night that you would be warned off." "Why did you do that?" "I just told you. I love you, Sam." "But you know I came here for Deirdre." "Yes, and I envy her. But it doesn't matter." She was telling the truth. Precious seconds were ticking away, lessening their chances for success; but he had to let her talk, to speak in her own defense.
Xanakias said flatly: "She tricked and betrayed us, Sam, and deserves no more than any other traitor." "Then kill me, Mike," she challenged. Durell interrupted. "Hold it. Marge, do you want to go back to the West with us?"
A light shone suddenly in her eyes, and dimmed as quickly as she said: "But how will your people punish me for what I did in Tiigensberg, acting as a KGB agent?" "You could ask for political asylum." "Would you help me?" "If you help us now."
She paused and studied his harsh, lean face. There was no mercy, no special leniency in his blue eyes. But she read his honesty, and perhaps pity, and also a flat decision to push ahead with what he had to do, whatever the cost. She shivered visibly. Then, without warning, someone pounded on the door.
"Maria! Get out! Report to Central at once!" The girl went pale and looked quickly from one to the other of the three men with her. She moistened her lips and Durell spoke almost soundlessly. "Answer. Stall for time."
She nodded and did as he suggested, replying in a sleepy, annoyed tone. The man started to hammer on the door again, and Xanakias weighed the knife in his hand. But Marge asked the man outside to be patient and he spoke one last time, about fire and imperialist saboteurs, and then his feet could be heard running off down the corridor. Marge turned back to Durell.
"You must trust me, Sam. Your life will depend on it. I thought I could help you best by letting them take me back here, and by bringing you to this room so I could do as I'd hoped."
"Don't believe the slut," Slomi growled.
Xanakias said: "Let her talk."
Slomi still objected. "But she is from this school, brainwashed, trained with fear and whipped into obedience. She is a creature dependent only on their commands. How can we trust her?"
The girl they knew as Marge Jones turned her back on their guns and pulled a sweater over her slim, branded shoulders, shrugged her hair into place, and then took a blue beret from a closet shelf. The room was quiet, but there were increasing sounds of confusion throughout the palace.
"This place," Slomi said heavily, "is like the labyrinth of Crete that Xanakias knows so well in his country's mythology. I was here as a boy, but I cannot promise that my memory is correct. If we are forced to make detours because the alarm is now out, we may be lost. We may be trapped like three rats, thanks to this girl who has played her game with you all this time."
"No," said Durell. "I think she'll help us."
"We must wait a bit," Marge said. "The man who knocked will come back and you must—dispose of him. But where do you want to go? To Deirdre? I know where to find her."
"I want the files first," Durell said.
She hesitated. "I can't do that, the people in the office are all my friends—"
"Let's slit the bitch's throat," Slomi growled, "and be done with her."
"Be quiet." Durell stared at the girl with dark and dangerous eyes. "You're committed, Marge, and can't go back again. Whether you like it or not, you're with us, and you have to be with us all the way, now."
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I see." She watched Xanakias and Slomi take up posts beside her bedroom door. "You guessed correctly, of course, Sam. This is a school for spies. Girl spies, if you wish. They are indoctrinated in Western ways, perfectly trained, given dossiers and identities of a most detailed nature. You heard me talk of my home town in Ohio. But I've never been to the States. I come from Lodz, Poland. My mother is still there as a hostage, of course. I do not know what will happen to her now." She drew a tremulous breath. "I lived here for over a year, under the command of that dwarf woman, Madame Bellau. Gradually, as with the other girls, I assumed my new personality until I almost believed I really was Marge Jones. The project was under Faulk's command, of course. We were all given assignments afterward, some to work in American business concerns in West European capitals and a few, like myself, went to cells within K Section of your CIA. I was most successful and useful, I must add. Your friend, Chet Clauson, in Vienna, could not understand the security leaks and it was his job to find us and root us out. But he never suspected the truth or guessed at the enormity of our infiltration operation. We were bleeding you to death, Sam. And the end was quite near."
"Go on," Durell said grimly.
She shrugged. "You guessed most of it, I think. When Deirdre met Bruno Faulk, she was in a morbid state of mind. I don't know if she truly fell in love with him or not. I hope not. Under his handsome facade, he has the strain of monster's blood that has created so many ugly legends in these remote valleys. They're the sort of dreadful stories you frighten children with, to get them to obey."
"The only thing out of character with your story," Durell said bluntly, "is why you helped me trail Deirdre."
"I was directed to help you. It was important to Faulk —or Bellau—important enough to break my cover identity and give up the spot I'd gained with K Section in Tiigensberg."
"Why was it so important? Do you know?"
"Chet Clauson and Geneva Central were right. Faulk and Bellau were both after you, hoping to get you through Deirdre."
"Then why didn't they kill me in Switzerland? Or in Vienna? Or anywhere in between there and here?"
"They tried, in Tiigensberg, the night you burned the railway trestle. Then Bellau changed his mind. He wanted to capture you here, alive."
"I can guess why," Xanakias granted.
"So I was told to lure you on, step by step, to this place. But I think you guessed it all, right from the start."
Durell said: "And you alerted us by going back to them last night."
She would not look at him. "Yes. You see, Sam, it's just that I gave up everything and became the American girl they fashioned out of me. I came to believe the part they trained me to act. Can you believe that? And I fell in love with you."
"Not really."
"Yes. It was pretense, at first, like the whole affair for me. It was a job, and I was very good at it. Oh, I was a prize pupil, after that day Madame Bellau employed her whip on my back. I never forgot that lesson, and decided to truly be what they had trained me to be. And when you came along, I began to hope it might all come true. I was Cinderella, and you were the Prince with the glass slipper. The only trouble was, you loved Deirdre," she finished softly.
"But you still played their game and led me here."
"If I hadn't, they would have killed her."
"Is she safe now?"
"I think so. She does not know about me, of course, or the game to get you here. She may honestly love Faulk. He has shown her only his most captivating side. But Sam, darling, how could she be so easily fooled. If you love her, she must be a bright and wonderful person, and it does not make sense for her to have done what she did."
"True. It doesn't," he said. "Which is what put me on the right track in the first place."
"What do you mean?" Xanakias asked angrily. "Did you pretend even to me to be a romance-blinded hothead?"
"Right," he said flatly. "It was all an act. You should have guessed, Mike. You know me well enough, otherwise."
"But with Deirdre, I thought—"
"Let’ s get those files," Durell said.
There came another knock on the door. Marge made a warning sound to indicate it was the guard who had come to rouse her from the room. Slomi grinned and hefted his gun and took up a post beside the door, opposite Xanakias.
"Open it," Durell ordered the girl.
She did not hesitate. The bolt slid aside with a small click as she asked the man to come in.
But it was not an anonymous guard who stood there.
It was Count Bruno Faulk.
Twenty-Six
He was handsome and Mephistophelean, with the smell of fire and brimstone curling around him from the smoke in the hallway. Dangerous, alert, his eyes instantly comprehended the scene as Marge opened the door. And he reacted instantly.
His gun made a sharp, hard sound against the distant shouts of men and the crackle of flames. Marge staggered back as if she had been slapped, and made a small sound of surprise. Before Durell could get around the falling girl, Faulk vanished.
Slomi screamed in fury at being cheated of his prey; his face was like putty. Durell caught Marge as a rose of blood blossomed at her breast, and Xanakias lifted his Mauser and squeezed off a racket of futile shots after Faulk. Slomi slammed past Durell in pursuit as soon as Xanakias stopped firing.
"Marge . . ." Durell began.
"Don't waste time," she whispered. "It does not matter. Where could I go, anyway? I was lost, right from the start. Listen to me, Sam ..."
"Let me help you."
"No, listen. There is a stairway at the end of the hall. It leads down into a tunnel to the administrative offices, in old dungeons that were made into wartime bomb shelters—cellars from the bad old days of evil fairy tales. In a vault there, you will find the lists of all the girls who are planted with your people. They are the ones who bleed you to death—just as I am bleeding, darling."
"Marge, don't try to talk now."
She wet her lips. "No. Just one more thing. In Vienna —when Chet Clauson was killed—it was my fault. You thought I was just a foolish girl, enamored with adventure. True enough, for a time. I was on their side, until then. But I—I knew Chet, and liked him. His killing was senseless. And when I saw how it hurt you, I knew I—I knew I loved you and could not betray you anymore. From then on, I was on your side, Sam."
"I know, Marge. I guessed."
She made a thin sound of unutterable relief. "I am glad I told you—anyway."
Another burst of gunfire came from the hall where Slomi and Xanakias had gone. Durell lowered the girl gently to the floor. He felt a sickness of hatred in him for the man who had so remorselessly done this to her. Slomi lurched back into the room, a red fury in his eyes.
"Faulk got away. Let's go."
"But Marge can't be moved."
"She is dead, Sam. Can't you see?"
Durell looked at the girl in his arms. Her green eyes returned his gaze, but they were blind now, empty of all the pain and questions that had tormented her. It was over for her. Slomi was right. Marge Jones was dead. Perhaps she had never been alive.
They followed her instructions. The stairs took them below the ground level, and from here a lighted tunnel led them thirty yards into an anteroom. A guard with a dog stood there, looking the other way. Xanakias' gun rapped and matched Slomi's single shot, and both the man and the vicious animal fell. Turning right, they ran down another corridor. A door was closed against them, but it was not locked. They burst in, guns up, with Slomi holding a grenade in his left hand.
Several women in severe blue smocks and some men at larger desks stared at them, frozen. A high bank of files stood against one wall, next to a steel door with a vault lock on it that gave Durell a lurch of despair. The lock and steel door seemed impenetrable.
"Get that safe open," he told Slomi.
"Shall I blow it?"
"No, get the combination from these people. Mike, watch that other door." He pointed to the ashen-faced man behind the largest desk. "Slomi, get the combination from him or kill him."
Durell spoke in German, so the man would understand. Stuttering, : he gave out a series of numbers, and Slomi turned to the steel vault. The other office people lined up against the wall under Xanakias' gun. Sirens wailed distantly, and the barking of dogs sounded faintly somewhere. As Durell waited for Slomi to open the door, he thought of Marge and knew that the true pain of her death would hit him later. Now he knew only hatred and a reckless rage to kill. But he could not yield to it now. Disaster waited that way. His enemies were cool and calculating and intelligent. They would not panic, whatever havoc could be spread about them. Already Faulk was alerted. How soon would Faulk move to use Deirdre as a hostage against him?
He went cold at the thought. Given the alternative between the success of his mission and the surrender of Deirdre's safety, he did not know what he would do. He recognized his own vulnerability, at this point. And all his resolution suddenly wavered at the thought of his Deirdre pinioned to that post, stripped naked before the leering eyes of the guards, and being lashed by that demoniacal little woman, Madame Bellau.
"Here," Slomi said. "The microfilm strips are supposed to be in this small lockbox."
"Get them out."
"How can we be sure he tells the truth?"
Durell looked at the ashen-faced office manager. "We can't be sure. Open the box."
"Sam, we haven't the time to check."
"We have to. Use that projector over there."
He had spotted the machine when they had first burst in. Slomi gave the box to the man and added a swift order. As the first threads of microfilm were blown up on the small screen, Durell saw that his guess had been correct. There were lists of names, all feminine, and then a series of encoded digits that undoubtedly indicated the stations to which the graduates of this school had been assigned.
