Assignment - Black Viking

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell stood up slowly. His legs trembled. He knew he had been closer to death than ever before. He walked toward Olaf Jannsen. The man’s head was bleeding copiously. But he still breathed, although his eyes were open and unseeing.

  There came a sound from somewhere else in the apartment. Durell turned and walked down a long hall.

  “Olaf? My Viking, it is you?”

  Sigrid’s voice was sharp with alarm. Durell threw open a bedroom door and stood looking at the blonde girl.

  She sat on the edge of a huge bed, about to rise, and she was stark naked again.

  17

  “MANIACAL man,” Sigrid said.

  She had that indefinable look of a woman who has just been loved. Her long hair was tumbled about her smooth, golden shoulders; her eyes were dazed. She fumbled a silken pink sheet up about her hips, and for a moment she looked bewildered and at a loss.

  Durell stood with his feet slightly spread, looking down at her. She was very beautiful and appealing.

  “It didn’t take you long,” he said wryly.

  “What—what do you mean?”

  “You didn’t waste any time getting together with Olaf, as soon as you got back to Stockholm.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is he your lover?”

  “Is that any of your business?”

  “I think it is.”

  “Are you jealous, poor Sam?”

  “I just want to know.”

  “He wanted to kill you?”

  Durell nodded. “He tried hard enough.”

  “Is he—what did you do to him?”

  “Put him away for a bit. He called himself a berserker. What’s the matter with you people? You try to live in a time long gone, as if you could recreate the bloody Vikings in yourselves. Why is Olaf so anxious to kill me?” Sigrid said abruptly, “I want to see him.” She stood up, using the sheet to cover herself. Durell let her take a few steps to the door, then shoved her hard, back to the bed. She fell and bounced. She had long, wonderful legs. “I must see him! I think you killed him!”

  “I might do that,” Durell said.

  “You wouldn’t dare—!”

  “I would. Believe me. Tell me all about it, Sigrid. Otherwise, his life isn’t worth a plugged nickel. I have no sentiment about a man who comes after me with a mace and a sword.”

  She looked astonished. “Did Olaf do that? He used to practice with them, hour after hour, with Uncle Eric. He was very good. And you beat him?”

  “I beat him.”

  “Olaf is the Black Viking. I told you. He’s a legend come to life. The Black One, who comes with the ice and storms, the wind and the sleet. He brings death wherever he goes. One must be kind to him—or else.”

  “You seem to have been kind enough.”

  “I think I love him. He is crazy about me, nasty Sam.” “He was crazy to kill you, back on the Vesper.”

  “That was a mistake,” she said thoughtfully. “Anyway, I knew he could swim ashore. I told him to go. I told him he was foolish to try to stop you from going north. I said that nothing could stop you. Perhaps I said the wrong things. I told Olaf you were a better man than he.”

  She looked at him carefully through lowered lashes. It was very appealing, and very false.

  “Go on,” he said. “Tell me about Olaf.”

  “We were children together. He spent a lot of time with Papa and Uncle Eric, up north. Eric loved him. Papa wasn’t so sure, and didn’t trust him. It was Eric who first called him the Black Viking. They spent their time talking of the olden days, the dreams of empire and glory. Olaf and I became lovers when I was fourteen.” She looked demure. “Does that make you jealous? I want to see him now. I want to know what you’ve done to him.”

  Durell barred her way. “Who does Olaf work for? He’s not in your security department, is he?”

  “Oh, no. Olaf couldn’t stand the discipline. He used to be a submarine officer in our Navy. He was cashiered for disobedience. That was typical of him. He was too young to have been in World War II, but his father was a Nazi sympathizer, and Olaf always felt that was a stigma. He came to live with us, and then he went away on ships and became an adventurer, a smuggler, everywhere in the world. He lived in Hong Kong. He was there when Papa went there and disappeared.”

  “It figures,” Durell said dryly.

  “Olaf had nothing to do with that!” she snapped.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He told me about it.”

  “Just what did he tell you?”

  “That’s confidential material,” she said quietly. “Swedish security data?”

  “I’m not permitted to tell.”

  “Your people don’t really want me to go north, do they? They don’t want anyone up there, really. They want your father’s machine for themselves.”

  “Why not?” She was defiant. “After all, Papa is of this country.”

  “I thought he might be with Peking now. How many other national agencies are after this thing?”

  “Everyone. Greedy, lustful, dreaming of power. They

  dream of making rain in the Sahara, of flooding enemy seaports by melting the icecaps; they dream of making droughts to starve their enemies. It’s beastly. If Papa only realized what he’s done!”

  “Where do you fit into it?” he asked.

  “I have my job to do. May I get dressed?”

  He nodded. “You’re supposed to cooperate with me.” “True. Up to a point.”

  “Where does the point exist?”

  “I cannot say. I have not been told.”

  “All right.” Putting questions to Sigrid was like punching into soft taffy. She was sticky and tricky and her answers were shapeless, pulled out of proportion by her personal motivations. He turned away. “Get some clothes on. I’ll have a chat with Olaf. It’s time I got some answers from him.”

  The black-haired man was on his hands and knees on the floor, shaking his head in confusion. Durell walked toward him. Olaf’s eyes were crescents of pure hatred, his big shoulders hunched as he pushed his weight upward.

  “Sit with your back to the wall,” Durell said. He held his gun and stood a safe distance away. “We’ll have a few minutes of question and answer now.”

  “I have nothing to say,” Olaf growled.

  “You have plenty, and you’ll say it.”

  “What more can you do to me? Kill me? I am not afraid of death.”

  “I know that. But I could turn you over to the police. Interpol has an all-points out for you, for the murder of Uccelatti’s captain in Brighton. It’s been checked out. We found his body. You killed him, didn’t you?”

  Jannsen breathed heavily, his enormous chest expanding, then falling. He said nothing.

  “You were anxious to get aboard the Vesper, right?” Durell continued. “Who gave you your orders?”

  “I will answer no questions.”

  “Who do you work for? The Chinese Reds?”

  “You are mad.”

  “You know where the WMC submarine is. You’re getting your orders by radio from them, right?”

  “I don’t know what you talk about.”

  “I’m discussing weather modification control. Professor Peter’s machine, the one that’s making everybody talk about the weather. It’s in a Chinese sub up in the Gulf of Bothnia, isn’t it?”

  Jannsen was silent.

  “And they put you ashore so you could get aboard the Vesper and become one of the crew members?” Jannsen’s mouth was a cruel, adamant line.

  “You helped talk Sigrid’s father into going over to Red China,” Durell said, “when you met him in Hong Kong. You helped the submarine get set up with the mechanism for controlling weather. You were aboard on this shake-down cruise, until you went ashore secretly in England to take care of Uccelatti’s captain. It’s easy to guess that somebody, in one of the agencies at Bruges, is a defector, a spy, a traitor, and sent you our plans by radio.”

  “You spin a clever web, Mr. Du
rell.”

  “It just makes sense. And you’ll confirm it. I won’t mind killing you, if I have to. I owe you a few lumps.”

  “I shake with fear,” the big man sneered.

  “And I’ll shake answers out of you. Why did the sub get itself bottled up in the Gulf of Bothnia? It will never get out now, you know. The Baltic is closed. The Russians, the NATO fleet, are all on patrol. The Skaggerak and Kattegat are closed. The Kiel Canal is impossible. There’s no place for your people to go. It was a stupid thing, to go up there to the Lapland coast.”

  Olaf twitched his shoulders. He touched his bloody mouth. When he moved his legs, he winced from the pain in his groin where Durell had managed to kick him.

  Durell said: “I’ll tell you what I think, Olaf. Your submarine had to go up into that bottleneck. And the only thing that could draw your people there is Professor Gustaffson’s house there—and laboratory, probably— because you need something from Professor Peter’s lab. Some piece of machinery, perhaps. You know the coast, you know the land, you know the house. It all adds up.” Something stirred in the other’s glittering eyes. Then the stare became blank and emotionless. But Durell knew he had hit something.

  “Until now,” he went on, “the weather experiments you made in other parts of the world during your cruise from China were all brief and reasonably managed. But what is happening here is different. It shows no sign of control. It goes on and on, and it’s getting worse. That isn’t what Peking wants, is it? So something has gone wrong.”

  “You make wild guesses, Durell,” Olaf muttered. “Your machinery went out of whack. And Professor Peter can only fix it if he gets some equipment out of his house in Lapland, right? That’s why the sub had to go up into the bottleneck, where we can get at it and destroy it.” “You’ll never—” Olaf began, then checked himself and bit his lip.

  At that moment, Sigrid screamed in the bedroom.

  18

  THE SOUND was sharp and shrill, a quick yelp of terror, and it was enough to distract Durell for a fatal moment. When he turned his head, Olaf moved. The man had enormous recuperative powers. He came at Durell with a quick rush, his head down like a charging bull. But Olaf was not aiming at Durell. He drove for the apartment door instead, moving at incredible speed. Durell spun, lifted his gun, then checked himself. A shot in this apartment would bring all of the Stockholm police down around his head. The damage would be irreparable. And Olaf knew it.

  The door slammed in his face. Durell yanked at it a second later, leaped out into the private foyer. The elevator was still there. The doors hissed shut in his face. The indicator spun downward.

  There was no hope of chasing him. He stood for a moment, swearing softly. Anger built up in him. He turned on his heel and walked back to Sigrid’s bedroom.

  She had stopped screaming.

  She was dressed in a soft gray jersey that clung to her

  beautiful body. She looked almost more naked than

  before. She was calmly putting orange lipstick on her

  mouth, and her back was toward him as she faced the mirror.

  “What was it, Sigrid?” he asked harshly.

  “Nothing. I was silly. I thought I saw a man on the terrace, peeping in at me.”

  “You’re lying.”

  She laughed. “Did Olaf leave?”

  “He got away, thanks to you.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I told you, he loves me. And you were asking all sorts of bad questions.”

  He wanted to slap her. “And getting bad answers.”

  She shrugged. “Do you want to beat me, angry man? Go ahead. I am strong. But Olaf is gone now. He is safe.”

  “He’ll try to kill you again.”

  “I can handle him. He loves me,” she said again.

  “Why do you want him free? He’s the enemy. He helped to kidnap your father; he’s been running that submarine; and he’s stopped at nothing so far to check us.” She spoke gravely. “People are more important than things. Friends are more important than ideologies. Lovers are more important than the struggle for world power.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  She turned suddenly, and her great eyes were filled with tears. “Olaf is a part of me, don’t you understand? Maybe the bad part, yes. I don’t know. But we were childhood friends, adolescent sweethearts. No one in the world knows me as Olaf knows me. We have shared secrets since we were children. We have the same memories, the same past. Who else could be closer to me?”

  “He’s a murderer,” Durell said flatly. “He’s killed senselessly, killed innocent men. He’ll kill again.”

  “But Olaf—”

  She halted as the telephone rang.

  Durell picked it up. He kept Sigrid in view, blocking her way out of the bedroom. It was Ole Olsen.

  “Cajun? Glad I caught up with you. I’ve been phoning all over Stockholm for you. Young Mark Talmage is in a funk.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Vesper came in. But the port authorities won’t let her sail out again. They’ve wrapped her in a snarl of red tape. It’s obstructive, and it’s apparent that one department here doesn’t know what the other is doing. I’ve told Baron Uccelatti to take the boat to Saltsjobaden. That’s where Elgiva’s house is, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Elgiva is definitely there. As soon as it’s dark, the Vesper will move out. Uccelatti says he can handle the customs guard on the schooner. You’ll have to pick up the Vesper and Elgiva at Saltsjobaden.”

  “Why is Talmage in a funk?”

  “Well, Miss Elgiva has been trying to reach you. She tried your hotel and here, at the hospital. You told her about me, I gather.”

  “Yes.”

  “A good thing. Anyway, she got me here and asked for you. I convinced her she could tell me her troubles.”

  “What troubles?”

  “It seems that your KGB friend—Colonel Traskin, not the Muzhik—greatly admired Elgiva’s poetry. He went out there to see her.”

  “Without Smurov?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’d like a private talk with him.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible now, Cajun. Traskin is dead. He’s been murdered. In Elgiva’s living room.”

  Durell shoved Sigrid roughly ahead of him. She stumbled, and he followed her, and closed the door. In forty minutes they were through the city and at Elgiva’s house.

  It stood on the beach, a small replica of a fisherman’s home, painted red as they usually were, in sharp contrast to Elgiva’s ultra-modem house at Visby. It was small, simple, and rustic. In the gloom of evening, the resort town and beaches looked dreary and deserted. The weather had changed again. The burnished sky had clouded over as the sun set, and now the wind came with a different note, whooping and keening in argument with the uneasy surf. Now and then a spit of rain darkened the sand and the roofs of other houses nearby.

  Sigrid tried to look dignified, but she was frightened and uneasy. “Do not be so cruel, angry man.”

  “You’ve used up all my patience, Sigrid.”

  “I had nothing to do with this!”

  “We’ll see.”

  Mark Talmage came to the door as they entered. His young face was pale. His Ivy League manner had been pulled out of shape in the past hour.

  “Glad you’re here, sir. God, it’s an awful mess. We must reorient the whole program.”

  “Stop jittering. Where is Elgiva?”

  “She’s here.”

  “Keep your eye on this one,” Durell said, indicating Sigrid.

  Elgiva looked as serene and remote as the night before. She came into the little “parlor” with her smooth, gliding walk and held out a hand to Durell. Her fingers were warm and friendly and held his a fraction longer than necessary. Her great eyes were filled with mystery.

  “I am so happy you came. He was such a nice man. He wanted me to autograph one of my books of p
oetry. That was all. And then—”

  “Where is Traskin?”

  “In the back.”

  Talmage stuttered. “I—I had to move him, sir. She insisted. Miss Elgiva, I mean.”

  Durell looked at him. “You got here quickly.”

  “Yes, sir. I hope I did the right thing.”

  “Right enough.”

  Durell had forced Sigrid to drive here, in a car she had produced which she claimed belonged to her Uncle Eric. It was a Mercedes convertible, and he had parked it in the lane beyond a picket fence smothered with roses. Durell listened to the wind rise outside and felt a sense of doom and despair.

  “We haven’t much time,” he murmured.

  “This way,” Talmage said anxiously. “I have no idea what we can do. The Russians will be suspicious now—”

  “Be quiet,” Durell said.

  Elgiva tucked her hand in his arm as he walked down a short corridor to an old-fashioned, brick-floored kitchen. Colonel Vladimir Traskin’s body lay there. His fine, intellectual face carried a look of surprise that death had come to him this way. There was a single drop of blood on his beard, and a small patch of it on his white shirt, where the bullet had gone into his back and burst his heart and come out the chest. Durell went through the man’s pockets with swift efficiency. He found a CPSU card, other identity documents, and no weapons. He breathed out angrily through his nose.

  “How did it happen?” he asked Elgiva.

  The tall, fair-skinned woman looked distant; her voice was calm and controlled. “He simply knocked on the door and asked for me. He told me who he was and said it would be a privilege if he could talk to me for a short time.”

  “What did he want to talk about?”

  “My work, of course. He had read everything I’ve written. It was most flattering. He knew my poems from memory, and understood them very well, I thought.” “How long was he here?”

  “No more than twenty minutes, before it happened.”