Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  Goru suddenly laughed and called out to one of his companions, who brought him a small jug. “Icki,” Goru said to Dr. Belleaux, and held out the jug to him. Dr. Belleaux sighed with exasperation as he accepted it. Another gypsy handed jugs to Stefan and to Assim, and at once jugs blossomed everywhere among the gypsies. Apparently a toast had been proposed by Goru—a toast to their murders, wondered Mrs. Pollifax?

  “I don’t like this,” Colin said in a low voice.

  Obviously Dr. Belleaux did not like it, either. Impatiently he lifted the jug to his lips, drained it, threw the empty vessel to the ground and spoke sharply to Goru. Goru, sipping his drink like a connoisseur, smiled back at him and smacked his lips appreciatively.

  Angrily Dr. Belleaux seized the knife from Goru’s hand. “Budala,” he snarled and turned to Mrs. Pollifax. “Enough delay!” he said, and looking down at her in a cold fury, he lifted the knife for its thrust into her heart.

  Behind him no one stirred. The gypsies watched with a passive, detached interest, and Mrs. Pollifax realized they were not going to stop her murder. Dr. Belleaux’s livid face came close and she gasped, bracing herself against his blow, and then she gasped again as he continued a headlong descent and pitched into her lap, the knife still in his hand, his body limp. He twitched once, and then was still.

  “They will sleep for eight hours, they are not dead,” Anyeta was explaining to Colin and Mrs. Pollifax. “We would be fools to kill a gorgio, the police are our enemies everywhere, like fleas forever on our backs.”

  An unbelievable amount of activity was taking place in the gypsy camp; Anyeta had been carried from her tent to a wagon where she sat on a cushion giving orders in a low husky voice. Her tent had been struck and packed away, and the two campfires extinguished and raked. Horses were being harnessed to the wagons, and the three casualties of the night—Magda, Sandor and Ramsey—had already been stowed carefully away in one of the wagons, wrapped in blankets and still unconscious.

  “We have our own drugs, but kinder than theirs because they are herbs as old as time,” she explained with a flash of a smile. “The three men will sleep dreamlessly for eight hours, and wake up refreshed. By then we must be far away.”

  “But where did your men carry them?” asked Colin.

  “To the plane, where they have been strapped into the seats. They will make a peaceful picture when they are found. Now it is time to ask you an important question: You have found us, and you have found Magda’s grandson, and soon she will open her eyes to see him, too. What do you plan to do with her?”

  Mrs. Pollifax explained their hopes that Magda might be alert enough to be placed on the Friday plane at Kayseri.

  “She has passport?”

  “She has passport, ticket, money and clothes.”

  Anyeta smiled broadly. “Not money.” She shook her head. “Yule!”

  The youth who had robbed Mrs. Pollifax ran over, and Anyeta held out her palm. The young man grinned handsomely, brought the wad of bills from his pocket and bowed as he placed them in Anyeta’s hand.

  “He is very skillful, we are proud of him,” Anyeta told Mrs. Pollifax. “But of course we do not steal from friends. Count it.” She affectionately boxed his ears and he ran off to help with the loading. “So. You wish to take Magda to Kayseri. That is good—we head in that direction. What is more difficult is a place to hide for a day or two. You say Friday?”

  “Yes. It must be Thursday by now. The plane leaves Friday morning at eight. The next plane is Monday, but who knows what could have happened by then?”

  Anyeta nodded. “No hiding place is safe for that long! A place for us all to wait safely, then, during the daylight hours today. Yes I know of one, but far—we must go straight as the eagle flies toward the rock country near Ürgüp. From there it will take only hours to walk or ride to Kayseri, and it will be dark again when the time comes to get her to the airport.” She nodded. “Very good.”

  A long shrill whistle broke the silence. “We are ready to go,” Anyeta said. “We go cross-country, avoiding all roads.”

  Mrs. Pollifax took leave of her and hurried to the wagon in which her friends lay. Colin climbed into the van—he was to drive it a few miles from the scene and leave it hidden, to be found later. The wagons formed a line. From the lead wagon in which Anyeta and Goru rode there came a shout, and six wagons began to move into the night with only the stars to guide them south.

  There was no tarpaulin over the wagon in which Mrs. Pollifax rode, and she could feel the softness of the cool night air on her cheeks. The wagon creaked and groaned over the untilled, rocky ground but the movement and the creaks were not unpleasant, and as her eyes adapted to the darkness Mrs. Pollifax could decipher rocks and boulders to left and right, and at last the silhouettes of her companions. Magda was beginning to stir at last, to fling out a hand and murmur occasional unintelligible words. The silhouette of dark curly hair beside her was Dmitri—her grandson, Mrs. Pollifax repeated to herself, still touched and amazed by the discovery. Colin drove the van that whined in low gear behind them while his uncle snored peacefully on the floor of the wagon, sharing a blanket with Sandor, who had also slipped into the exhausted sleep that still eluded Mrs. Pollifax.

  Magda called out sharply, and Mrs. Pollifax crawled over Sandor and Ramsey to look at her. Dmitri was leaning over speaking to her, and Magda said, “It’s you? It’s really you, Dmitri?” in a wondering and astonished voice.

  “Good morning,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “I believe it’s morning!”

  Magda began to laugh. “And you too? No no, it is too much,” she gasped, and reached for Mrs. Pollifax’s hand. “Again you have rescued me. And found Dmitri!”

  “It’s been a long night,” admitted Mrs. Pollifax, “but I had a great deal of help: Colin and Sandor, Colin’s uncle, a girl named Sabahat and your gypsies.”

  Magda’s laughter abruptly turned into tears, and then into exhausted, wrenching sobs.

  “It’s all right, Dmitri, let her cry,” Mrs. Pollifax told the boy, patting his shoulder. “She’ll feel better for it, she’s been through so much.”

  Gradually Magda’s tears subsided and she slept. She would need that sleep if she was to gain enough strength to board a plane within twenty-four hours—and that, thought Mrs. Pollifax as she crawled back to her corner of the wagon, was the one thing that mattered now. The seriousness of her own plight had dimmed once she had met Dmitri—and then the boy had pulled the Evil Eye from under his ragged shirt to show her, and Mrs. Pollifax had understood that she was of no importance at all to Dr. Belleaux, nor was Magda or her grandson. From the beginning he had been set upon recovering something more. What had Carstairs said? “The mystery is why Ferenci-Sabo’s abductors didn’t silence her on the spot by killing her—they certainly had no difficulties in gaining access to the consulate, damn it. Obviously Ferenci-Sabo still has more value to them alive.”

  But not because of Dmitri, Mrs. Pollifax realized. The kidnapped son of a high Bulgarian official would never bring about such a merciless pursuit. At most it would beget inquiries and protests at a government level, but not murder after murder, and certainly not the possible loss of Dr. Belleaux as a highly placed counteragent in Istanbul. Since Magda had not been killed following her abduction it was obvious that the knowledge Magda carried in her head was of less concern to the Communists than what she had carried out with her that was concrete, graspable, returnable and of an almost hysterical significance to them. Only after this had been recovered would Magda be silenced.

  “A great deal changed with the invasion of Czechoslovakia,” mused Mrs. Pollifax. “Perhaps even Russia’s leadership changed, but certainly to the western world she turned suddenly irrational, paranoiac, unpredictable. As to what might be sealed inside that innocent-looking blue stone I can only guess, of course. What might it be to prove so threatening to the Communists? Transcripts of a terribly secret conversation? a photostatic copy of the minutes of a Politburo meeting? It would have to
be an important clue as to what happened that August, and what can be expected in the future, and this would matter a great deal to NATO, to Yugoslavia and Rumania, to future nuclear pacts, to the balance of power.”

  Magda and her blue stone had to be gotten out of Turkey.

  Not even Dmitri could be involved in the departure now. Perhaps Colin could look after the child until he had acquired the necessary papers to travel. She had no illusions as to what lay in store for herself, and jail would be no place for the boy.

  The caravan halted, and Goru went to the rear of the line and spoke to Colin; the van was directed off the road, and several minutes later Colin jumped into the wagon beside Mrs. Pollifax carrying the van’s battery in his arms. “Good lord what terrain!” he gasped. “Thought I’d have to abandon her long before this! No wonder roads are called the lifelines of civilization.”

  “Where did you leave the van?” asked Mrs. Pollifax curiously.

  “There’s a deserted village in there—Anatolia is pockmarked with them. A well runs dry, the people just move on and start a new village. I rammed the truck into one of the buildings that still has a roof.” He glanced up at the sky. “It’s just past three now, you know, it’ll be dawn in an hour or so, and there’s that damn helicopter to worry about as soon as it’s light.”

  “Yes, the helicopter,” sighed Mrs. Pollifax.

  They dozed uncomfortably for another hour. Just as the country around them was growing visible in the cold first-light they crossed a main road, the first Mrs. Pollifax had seen since they left Yozgat. They crossed it wagon by wagon, with Goru waving each one on or back. Then they resumed their interminable procession southward. It must have been the Kayseri-Kirsehir road, Colin said drowsily, but Mrs. Pollifax only half-heard him.

  When she opened her eyes again Magda was awake, propped up against the side of the wagon with one hand resting on Dmitri, who had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. The sun was rising with an explosion of colors that swept the sky like a wash of watercolor. Mrs. Pollifax looked at Magda and saw that her eyes were fastened almost hypnotically on Colin’s sleeping uncle. Seeing Mrs. Pollifax sit up Magda lifted her free hand and waved at her, but it was with a puzzled frown that she said, “This man here—I do not understand where he came from.”

  “He—just arrived,” said Mrs. Pollifax with humor.

  “He so much resembles someone I once knew.”

  “He does?”

  Magda nodded. “Someone I’ve not seen in—oh, twenty-five years at least. Many times I’ve wondered what happened to that man—one does, you know,” she said with a faint smile. “Yet I believed I’d forgotten him until I saw this man. That same beak of a nose—”

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at Uncle Hu buried in his blanket and said with a twinkle, “His nose is all one can see of him. Who is the man he reminds you of—a good sort, I hope?”

  Magda nodded. “I have loved only two men in my life. There was my first husband Philippe—they called him the rich French playboy but it was the big performance with him because he too was an agent.” She looked across the tangle of sleeping bodies at Mrs. Pollifax. “You understand he worked for his government—the French—in Intelligence. We had one year together before he was murdered.”

  “By whom?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  “They were called Reds then,” said Magda. “Only they did not just murder him, they arranged it to appear I had done their work. He was shot with my small pistol, still with my fingerprints on it, and there had been arranged false evidence of a lover.” She shrugged. “It was blackmail. I would have preferred to kill myself but I was expecting a child, which revived my interest in living. And they did not know I already worked for my husband’s people. I took my problem to French Intelligence.”

  “So that’s when you became a double agent.”

  “Yes.” Magda was silent, and then, “At least until World War Two when I work also with America and England.” Her lips curved ruefully. “One does not expect to love a second time. I did not believe I had the heart left.”

  “But you did?” suggested Mrs. Pollifax with interest.

  Magda sighed. “One cannot control such matters, eh? It was only an encounter, a passing thing, it was all it could mean with me because by then I was vulnerable, my daughter a hostage growing up in Russia.” She frowned. “I have learned that one’s life assumes a pattern—call it karma if you will. At every turning point in my life I am always thrust back into this work, as if a firm hand insists upon it. It has not been my karma to be either wife or mother for long.”

  Mrs. Pollifax said, “Perhaps it is now. As I understand karma—and the subject has interested me lately—a person can eventually work through to another level, isn’t this true? There are karmic debts to be paid, but if one manages them well, and cheerfully, there comes a time when one moves on to a new level, a new beginning, a different karma.”

  “You speak as if you feel this,” said Magda curiously.

  Mrs. Pollifax laughed. “I can only tell you that suddenly—after quiet years of marriage and family life, and at my age, too!—I have entered a very dangerous profession. It’s preposterous, as if the page of a book had been abruptly turned over by the wind. Mistake? Coincidence? Accident? There feels more to it than that. Perhaps I enter your kind of life just as you leave it for something else now.”

  “I could hope this for me,” said Magda soberly.

  “Do keep hoping,” said Mrs. Pollifax, her gaze falling on Hu Ramsey with humor and a touch of mischief. She thought that just when life appeared to have no discernible pattern there could arrive a coincidence so startling that one could envision Forces tugging, arranging, balancing, contriving and contracting all the arrivals and departures of life. Magda and Colin’s uncle had met once, years ago: now they met again through the most absurd of coincidences in the center of Turkish Anatolia. Mrs. Pollifax chuckled; it was so statistically impossible that she thought it had to be an act of cosmic humor, even of cosmic playfulness.

  It was growing dangerously light when a shout came from a wagon up ahead. Goru stood up and waved, pointed, and Mrs. Pollifax understood that they were reaching their destination. She looked again at the high cliff that she had been examining from a distance for some time; now it rose sharply above them on their right, appearing to almost touch the sky. Here and there holes had been punched through the cliff by a giant hand, like a great wall with windows in it. Mrs. Pollifax sat up, alert and interested.

  In the rubble that spilled down from the cliff like lava she could make out the shapes of crumbling houses; the hill running up to the cliff was honeycombed with caves, holes and the ruins of abandoned buildings. The wagons ahead had already begun to turn and head up the hill through the debris in a circling, ascending line. “What a wonderful hiding place!” said Mrs. Pollifax. “Unless—” She paused doubtfully. “Unless it’s so good that it becomes the first place Dr. Belleaux looks for us.”

  Colin shook his head. “Not the first. I’ve driven through this part of the country with Uncle Hu, and it’s even more dramatic further along. The rocks fairly jump out of the earth like weird stalactites. At Göreme they’re called fairy tale chimneys—the early Christians hid in those rock chimneys centuries ago, hollowing them out inside and carving air holes and windows. They left behind fantastic Byzantine frescoes on their interior walls. The whole valley is full of surprises.”

  “Really? I wish I’d pinned the guidebook to my trousers.”

  “You ran out of pins,” Colin reminded her.

  The first wagon had reached the summit, and Goru had climbed out, looking small and doll-like against the great height of the wall behind him, and separated from the rest of them by the mountain of rubble. Their own wagon was lurching and slipping now as it followed the narrow rock-strewn path upward toward the top. Mrs. Pollifax clung to the sides of the wagon and prayed. Each time she looked ahead, a wagon in the line ahead had disappeared and she could only hope that it had safely reached Goru
and been directed out of sight, and had not instead plunged into a hole or rolled back down the hill. They climbed higher and higher until Goru came into sight, suddenly his own size again. They had reached the top of the rubble, with the cliff above them.

  By a curious freak of nature there was no rubble close to the cliff wall, and a kind of primitive, washed-out road curved up and down behind the houses that had once been built into the hill and inhabited. But as the wall had eroded over the decades—perhaps even centuries—the rocks and silt it sent down had fallen upon the houses, missing the small avenue directly under the wall, but leaving holes in the roofs that it did not completely demolish, and piling debris around the sinking homes. Along this primitive avenue the wagons had stopped, each in front of a ruin that still boasted a roof or half-roof while the men dug out rocks to allow their wagons inside. One by one Mrs. Pollifax saw the wagons backed out of view.

  Their driver was Yule, who leaped down and began shouldering aside rocks—they were now the only wagon exposed. Colin jumped down to help, and behind her Mrs. Pollifax heard a startled voice say, “Wotthehell!”

  “Sandor,” she murmured, smiling, and turned.

  Sandor was sitting erect rubbing his head but his eyes were on Magda and Ramsey. Mrs. Pollifax saw that these two were both awake and staring at each other with interest and astonishment; she had the impression that they must have been mutely observing one another for some time.

  Colin’s uncle said abruptly, “You’re thinner. You never did care sufficiently about meals—no schedule at all. If you’d married me I should have insisted upon your eating. Why didn’t you?”