Darkness Before the Dawn

by Anne Stuart

  “What were you going to say?” she taunted. “Were you going to tell me you have a heart like anyone else?”

  Once more he’d withdrawn behind his masterful defenses. “Maybe,” he said. “Except that you’re probably right. Hearts and emotions are sentimental weaknesses we can’t afford. I’m probably better off without one.”

  “Haven’t you ever loved anyone?” It came out before she could stop it. “Forget I asked that stupid question,” she added hurriedly. “I already know the answer.”

  “Do you?” His voice was rich and deep, and it sent shivers down her backbone. He reached out, opened the door, and held it for her with ironic courtesy. “Far be it from me to disillusion you, Maggie. But try to be a little more romantic. We’re supposed to be lovers.”

  She paused, half in the door, half out. “Why?”

  “Why else would we be traveling together?” he replied with great practicality. “Either we’re lovers or we’re working together. And I don’t think we want the local government to think we’re here in any sort of professional capacity, do we? Do we?” he prodded gently when she said nothing.

  She looked around her before answering. The airport was sparsely populated; their few fellow travelers had long since moved through customs and departed. Only the brown-uniformed officials remained, and the expressions on their broad, slavic faces were identical: curious and suspicious.

  With a sigh, Maggie threaded her arm through Randall’s and smiled up at him a wide, loving smile that never reached her distrustful eyes. “You’re right as always, darling,” she said, pitching her voice so that their observers could hear her. Reaching up, she pressed her lips against his hard jaw. She lingered just a minute, and she could feel the tension throbbing through him, feel the pulse beneath her mouth. And then she pulled back, more unnerved than she let on. “We’re going to have a marvelous vacation,” she added.

  He stared down at her, his eyes stormy, his face enigmatic. “I’m sure we are, Maggie,” he said, his voice too low for the officials to hear him.

  Gemansk customs went smoothly. Too smoothly, she thought, still keeping a besotted simper on her face as she clung to Randall’s arm. Their luggage was inspected with only cursory interest, and no questions were asked. All her instincts were aroused. Why should Gemansk be so lax, given the troubled state of the country’s internal affairs?

  Whatever the reason, the two of them were safely through customs, through the narrow, dour corridors of the dark little airport, and out in the sunshine in a matter of minutes. Maggie immediately released Randall’s arm and stepped away from him with nervous speed. He stared down at his crumpled sleeve, smoothed it with an absent gesture, and raised his gaze to Maggie’s defiant one. And then his face grew very still as he stared at something, or someone, over her shoulder.

  “Taxi, mister?”

  Maggie turned and followed the direction of Randall’s enigmatic stare. She was barely able to swallow the small scream that welled up in her throat. Standing in front of them, an engaging smile on his youthful face, was Vasili.

  But it couldn’t be Vasili! For one thing, Vasili was dead; Maggie had seen him gunned down. For another, even if he were alive, he’d be years older than the lanky teen-ager who was grinning at them now. She moved back a step and came up against Randall’s body; his hand pressed down on her shoulder in reassurance. For once she didn’t jerk away.

  “We could do with a taxi into town,” Randall said carefully. “Do you know a decent hotel? We haven’t had a chance to make reservations.”

  The boy threw back his head and laughed. “Me, I can show you anything you want, mister. You want to see the war memorial? Very impressive, I promise.”

  She felt Randall’s hand relax when the boy made that prearranged response.

  “You’re Leopold?” Randall asked.

  Again that beautiful, flashing grin that matched Vasili’s. “At your service, mister. Welcome back to Gemansk. You too, miss.”

  Maggie winced. Returning to Gemansk had never been high on her list of priorities. But it was too late to worry about that now. She had to concentrate on why they were there, on how thankfully immune she was to Randall’s appeal, in order to get through the next couple of days.

  Leopold hoisted their luggage and took off at a trot. From the back, his eerie resemblance faded somewhat. He was dressed in the uniform of all teen-agers: faded jeans, a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and Nikes over neon-green socks. Six years ago, Vasili had managed jeans but nothing else of western culture, and his hair had been shorter than Leopold’s long black mop. Yet the resemblance was still unnerving.

  “Who—?” she began, but the swift, almost imperceptible shake of Randall’s head silenced her question before it had been formed. She didn’t need to turn around to know that their exit from the Gemansk airport hadn’t been accomplished as easily as she’d first thought. In the fitful summer sunshine, she could see tall shadows behind them. “Who would have thought we’d decide to spend our first vacation in years in Gemansk?” she continued without missing a beat, once more clutching Randall’s sleeve as she leaned into him. “I wouldn’t call this the garden spot of the world, darling.”

  “Sightseeing wasn’t particularly what I had in mind for the next few days, Maggie,” he said in his deep, slow voice. And even though she knew that the words were solely for the benefit of their military escort, and even though they were words she didn’t want to hear, she felt a slow, languorous burning in the pit of her stomach.

  “We didn’t have to travel thousands of miles to make love, Randall.”

  “With your family always around, we had to do something drastic.” His hand reached out and covered hers; his long, thin fingers stroked hers—a warning. The burning flamed a little higher.

  She smiled up at him and tossed her blond hair out of her face long enough to get a glimpse of their escort. There were three of them, tall, blank-faced, uniformed men. She looked up at Randall’s distant face and clutched him a little tighter, a perfect parody of a clinging, impassioned female. Was it a parody? she derided herself.

  They’d arrived at Leopold’s taxi, a battered Fiat that had clearly seen better decades. Leopold had already stowed their luggage and was standing by the open door, ready to usher them in with all the aplomb of a Helmsley Palace doorman. His soulful brown eyes went to the men following his passengers, then back to them. His face was impassive.

  Maggie’s heart was thudding beneath her thin cotton suit, and her palms were sweaty on Randall’s jacket. He wouldn’t like that, she thought with distant amusement, releasing her grip as she started to climb into the car.

  “One minute, please.” The words were barked out. Maggie slammed her head on the car ceiling, and it took all her shredded self-possession to pull herself back out with at least the appearance of calm.

  “Yes?” Randall said haughtily; Randall could be very haughty indeed.

  The soldiers ignored him. Their leader was shorter, older, and meaner, and his expressionless face was marred by small, hostile eyes. “You forgot your purse, Miss Bennett.”

  A shadow crossed Randall’s face, inexplicable and instantly gone. “Silly of you, darling,” he drawled, holding out his hand for it. “Didn’t you notice?”

  Maggie cursed herself furiously as she shrugged and smiled sweetly and stupidly at the nasty little man in front of her. He ignored Randall’s proffered hand, moved up to Maggie, and handed it to her. It was a large straw bag, almost empty, and when Maggie took it from him she noticed that it seemed heavier than when she’d placed it on the customs desk.

  “You should be more careful, Miss Bennett,” he said. “If you were to lose your papers, you would have a great deal of trouble leaving our country. We wouldn’t want anything to mar your—vacation.” The sneer was clear in his voice, the suspicion strong.

  Maggie gave him her most dazzling smile, but it left him stonily unmoved. “You’re very kind. I promise to be more careful.”

  “At your serv
ice, miss.” He bowed, clicked his heels together like a perfect Prussian officer, and moved away, his dark, suspicious eyes lingering.

  Maggie stared after him, her fingers clutching the purse, until Randall half-pushed, half-shoved her into the taxi. Moments later, they were careening out of the airport. Leopold was driving very fast, very badly, and he was whistling.

  “Of all the stupid, idiotic moves,” Randall upbraided her, his voice low and biting. “How could you be so half-witted? What did you have in that goddamned purse, anyway? I suppose now everyone knows why we’re here.”

  “Everyone already knows,” Leopold offered from the front seat. His dark eyes met theirs in the rearview mirror. “You can’t keep anything from the secret police. You just have to be faster than they are.”

  “Damn,” Randall muttered. “I should have tied you up and left you in the bathtub.”

  “Listen, Randall, there was nothing the slightest bit incriminating in my purse,” she shot back. “If they know why we’re here, they didn’t learn it from me. Look.” She dumped out the contents of the purse onto the tattered cloth seat between them—dumped it out and then sat very still, as a wave of nausea swept over her.

  “What is it, Maggie? What’s wrong?” Randall was never one to miss her reactions. It was lucky that she wasn’t planning to hide anything from him, she thought dizzily.

  With a shaking hand, she reached down to pick up the small clutch bag that had fit so easily into the spacious confines of her purse. It was white; the leather was smudged and stained and cracked with age. She opened it, her fingers trembling, and pulled out the passport with Margaret Mullen’s name inside, the visa, the money, even the Chanel Number Five. Everything was there, just as she’d left it six years ago when Randall had rescued her from that tiny cemetery shack, rescued her and left Jim Mullen to die by his own hand.

  Randall took the white purse out of her hand with surprising gentleness and opened the passport and the visas. He let out a quick, surprised breath. “I’d forgotten that you have a habit of losing your purse,” he said after a bit. He stared down at the picture of a younger Maggie, eyeing it objectively. “You’re even prettier now,” he said, putting the papers back into the clutch bag.

  “For heaven’s sake, Randall, do you have to be so damned cool about everything?” she snapped, pushing her hair out of her face with trembling fingers.

  “Better than being hysterical about something we can’t do anything about,” he replied, and his common sense angered her even more. “We’d be much better off spending our energy trying to figure out who knows what and why they put this in your purse. I imagine it’s a warning. But why didn’t they just arrest us at the airport or, even better, refuse to allow us to enter? They could have put us back on the next plane—it’s done often enough.”

  “I would think, mister, that they want you to lead them to members of the Resistance,” Leopold offered from the front seat as he careened around a corner.

  Maggie pulled herself out of Randall’s lap with as much decorum as she could manage. “Then why warn us? Why let us know we’re being watched? Surely it would only make us more careful.”

  Leopold shrugged. “Who is to say? The secret police get as much pleasure from playing with their victims as they get from accomplishing anything. They are very stupid men, usually from the northern provinces.” His sneering voice made it clear that he was from the more intellectually gifted southern provinces. “Very bad men, too. We will have to be careful.” He veered around another corner, and once more Maggie landed in Randall’s lap in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Once more she struggled to extricate herself, but this time his long arms wrapped around her, holding her in his lap, and her struggles were useless. “Will you take your hands off me?” she demanded in a furious hiss.

  “No. You’ll just end up back here the next time Leopold turns a corner, and I’m getting bruised from the impact,” he said in his most impassive tone of voice. “Besides, we have company. Don’t we, Leopold?”

  “Yes, mister,” Leopold agreed as the aging Fiat bucked forward with truly impressive speed. “They’ve been following us for a while now. But not to worry. I, Leopold, will lose them. I’m the best driver in Gemansk, better even than my brother Vasili was in his heyday. You have nothing to fear.”

  Maggie had stopped her struggles for a moment. “Vasili was your brother?”

  Leopold grinned in the rearview mirror, apparently entirely unmoved at his passengers’ complicity in his brother’s death. Or perhaps he was simply ignorant of it. “One of five,” he said proudly. “But none of them are as strong, as brave, as Vasili. Vasili is very much a man.”

  Randall’s arms had seemingly relaxed, and Maggie tried to jerk away from him. She was yanked back into his arms, held there by brute force, and there was nothing she could do short of punching him in the groin to release herself.

  “Stay put, Maggie,” Randall muttered into her ear, his temper finally overriding his usual calm, “or I’ll strangle you.”

  The Fiat was moving at incredible speed at this point, and the gloomy landscape was whizzing by. Maggie shut her eyes for a moment. “I dare you,” she said wearily, leaning her head against his shoulder.

  “Don’t tempt me.” His fingers were no longer biting into her upper arms; they were holding, almost caressing her.

  “Hold on,” Leopold shouted from the front seat as they once more veered around the corner, probably on two wheels or even on one. And then they were bouncing over a stubbled field, and there was nothing Maggie could do but clutch at Randall and curse under her breath.

  A breathless lifetime later, they finally rattled to a stop beneath a bridge next to a dry stream bed. Leopold killed the engine and turned to grin at them proudly. Maggie finally released Randall’s arm and opened her eyes in weary relief. There was no one around, no sound or sign of pursuit.

  She crawled off Randall’s lap, and this time he let her go. His eyes were trained on the front seat. Maggie followed his gaze directly into the barrel of Leopold’s gun. He was still smiling that beatific smile.

  “And now, mister, you will tell me what happened to my brother Vasili,” he said gently.

  thirteen

  Maggie sat staring at the gun barrel, staring at Leopold’s charming young face, so very like his older brother’s. He had the gun trained quite negligently on Randall, obviously underestimating the female of the species, and she considered for a moment whether she could take him. She could, but not without considerable risk to Randall’s impeccable gray suit. He wouldn’t care to have powder burns in his breast pocket. Regretfully she leaned back against the seat, still alert for possibilities.

  “What do you mean?” Randall said with deceptive ease. She could feel the tension running through him; his muscles were coiled and ready to spring at the first sign of weakness. He wouldn’t worry about powder burns marring her rumpled suit, she thought wryly. She’d better be prepared to duck, and duck fast.

  “Don’t play games with me, mister,” Leopold said evenly. “My brother was shot down by the secret police when you were last in Gemansk. No one will talk about the details of that time, and before I help you any further, I want to know what happened.”

  “I might feel more talkative if you put that gun away,” Randall drawled.

  “But I would feel less inclined to listen.” The gun stayed where it was. “I’m getting impatient, mister.”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Maggie said. “He wasn’t there when Vasili was shot. I was.”

  The gun turned to her. “Then you tell me, miss. Tell me what you know about what happened to my brother on that day.”

  “Maggie!”

  “Shut up, Randall,” she said fiercely. “He has a right to know what happened to his brother. We don’t have anything to hide. God knows, I’ve felt guilty enough over the years, but it wasn’t our fault. Not really.”

  “I will decide whose fault it is,” Leopold said. “What was
Vasili doing at the border? Was he going to escape to the west?”

  Maggie shook her head. “He was making sure I got out safely. Randall—Randall still had unfinished business, and he sent me out ahead of him. Vasili accompanied me of his own accord. He—”

  “You don’t need to explain my brother to me, miss. He could never resist a pretty face.”

  “We took the train to the border. When he got off, the police were waiting for him. He didn’t wait for any questions—he ran. And they—they shot him in the back.” Her voice was deceptively cool, her eyes anguished at the memory.

  “We are trained to run. The secret police have ways of making people talk.” Leopold laughed; the cheerful sound was jarring in the stillness. “That sounds like an American movie. Humphrey Bogart, yes?”

  “Maybe,” Maggie said carefully.

  “You still haven’t told me who betrayed my brother to the police.”

  “What makes you think anyone betrayed him?” Maggie said hotly. “No one could have known what would happen. He decided at the last moment to accompany me when Randall didn’t—when Randall’s plans changed.”

  “I would appreciate it,” Randall drawled beside her, “if you wouldn’t try to protect me when you don’t have the facts. It only makes matters worse.”

  Leopold’s cold, smiling eyes were old in his young, handsome face. “So why don’t you tell me the truth, mister? Did you betray my brother?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a dead silence in the ancient Fiat. Maggie could hear the distant sound of birds in the trees overhead, the rustle of leaves in the wind. She could even hear their breathing—Leopold’s rapid and angry, and Randall’s even and controlled beside her. Her own heart hammered in sudden shock and disbelief.

  “Maybe you’d better explain what you mean,” she said sharply. “Leopold is likely to misunderstand and think you literally betrayed Vasili to the secret police.”