Assignment — Stella Marni

by Edward S. Aarons

  He did not expect to sleep himself. He took his gun and put it on a small table within reach and turned out the oil lamp. The firelight cast leaping shadows through the room he had appropriated.

  For the first time in hours he thought of Dickinson McFee. He did not know how far McFee would back him in what he had done. He did not minimize the seriousness of his conflict with Blossom. Blossom swung a lot of weight, and his superiors would be justified in making an issue of his actions tonight. McFee might just let him hang by the thumbs, having clearly warned him he was on his own. Whatever happened, Durell thought, it had better come out all right or he would be back in Bayou Peche Rouge — if not in a federal pen — dealing poker hands for Andy Ti-Bo in the back room of the Bayou Rose Cafe.

  All at once, he slept.

  He slept lightly, not dreaming, but with one part of his mind aware of the sounds of the surf and the dying crackle of the fire, alert for the sound of an approaching car. He was not sure what time it was when Stella suddenly screamed.

  He was on his feet, the gun in his hand. The room was almost dark, with only the dying embers of the driftwood fire making a dim ruddy glow throughout the room. Dawn had not yet come. He looked first at Stella on the couch and saw her sitting bolt upright hugging herself, hands crossed and holding her shoulders, her face white with terror.

  She stared at him without recognition.

  "Stella, what is it?"

  "Who — I don't know — I was frightened."

  She shuddered violently. He listened for sounds of danger, but there was nothing, and he put down the gun and crossed the room to her. The air was cold and damp again. She shrank away violently from his touch. "Don't!"

  "You had a nightmare," he said quietly.

  "Did I? I... I don't remember. I thought..." Her mouth shook. She covered her face with her hands. "I am sorry," she whispered. "I do remember. All of it. It comes back to me now and then."

  "What comes back, Stella?"

  "I've never told anybody."

  He forced her hands away from her face by gripping her wrists. Her eyes stared beyond him into some unimaginable horror. "Tell me," he said.

  "It is too ugly. You would hate me."

  "Try me," he urged.

  "I am foolish," she breathed. "H-hold me for a moment Please. I have the most horrible feeling. As if I am all alone. All alone in the world."

  "No," he said. "You're not alone, Stella."

  When she started to speak after a moment, it was again as if a mask slipped, but this time he saw no ruthless core of hard ambition revealed under her beauty.

  "I was fourteen when the Russians entered Budapest," she began quietly. "Nobody knows what happened to me then. I never told anyone. Not even Papa. I was pretty, attractive even then, a child in a woman's body. They — they caught me one night — three drunken ones, like beasts — in an alley near the apartment where Papa and I lived. Near the river. The beautiful Danube." Her voice was harsh, bitter. "It did not run blue, it ran red with blood. And some of it was mine when those drunken soldiers forced me to — forced me..." She paused, her body in the grip of great shudders as Durell held her. "I never told anyone. But that was the night I swore my oath. I developed an ambition to be the one in power, safe and secure, not the terrified little girl in a dark alley, with those monsters tearing at my dress, breathing their drunken breath all over me." She paused, swallowed. "I decided I would learn English, get away, come to America. Everything I was, all that was in me, I bent to that ambition. And I thought I knew how to accomplish it. I would use men, men who wanted me, men who fell in love with met And I did. I did. Again and again. And yet — something happened to me that night. Something froze inside me. I could not love in return. The act itself, the giving of love — it was impossible for me. It still is. I can never be — I can never forget how it was with those Russians. And to use men for my own purpose — it is like a narcotic with me still. With poor Frank Greenwald, with Harry Blossom. With Frank, I wanted to love him back, to repay him, to be kind and gentle with him — but when he touched me, something inside me crawled, like cold snakes, all through me. I couldn't. I couldn't." She stirred in Durell's arms. "Don't look at me. You can let me go now. I know you want to. Now you know the truth about me, you must consider me a vile, unnatural thing."

  "No," he said gently. "No."

  She burrowed against him, her arms around him in unexpected violence. Her body shook. His coat, which had covered her, slid to the floor, unheeded. As he held her he felt a great wave of pity for her lost childhood, lost girlhood, forsaken womanhood. Her scented hair brushed his face. He felt the pressure of her body against his and heard the sobs that shook her. He murmured something and kissed her, not meaning to kiss her, but doing it, anyway. Her arms tightened about him.

  "Am I such a monster?" she asked frantically. "Do you hate me? I want to die. I know I shouldn't think about it, but I cannot stand it. I have tried and tried, wanting to be calm. But there was nobody I could turn to, no one to trust. Poor Frank was no help. And he was killed because of me. I cannot bear to think about it. It was all my fault. It is no excuse that one is the product of the world we live in. My fault..."

  "No," Durell said.

  "And you will be killed, too. I know it. I hold you and I know you will soon be dead. And you are the only man, the first man who — who makes me feel as if there might be hope, a chance."

  "Look at me. Stella," Durell said.

  "No. No, I don't want you to see my face."

  "Look at me." he said again.

  "Help me," she whispered. "Help me."

  He forced her hands down again and drew her head back, tilting her chin until he could see her eyes. Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her gaze searched his with a frantic despair, and then he kissed her again and her lips clung to his and he held her in the dimness of the dying fire, with the sound of the ocean's surf all around, until she stopped trembling with her fear, and then, when he kissed her again, something else took the place of her dark terrors.

  "Sam?"

  "Yes, Stella."

  "I want you. Take me. Please take me. I want to try. If I could forget how it was in Budapest — Could you be gentle? I have hated men for so long, and yet I know it is a sickness with mc. in my heart..."

  They slid to the floor together, before the fire. Her body writhed in his arms, desperate, frantically trying. He did not know what made him open his eyes to look at her when he kissed her once more. Her eyes were open, too, enormous, studying him, and there was something cold and hard and detached in their green depths, like a flame of ice, leaping and exultant...

  Chapter Eight

  Durell drove into New York at ten o'clock in the morning and turned north in his rented Chevy from the Brooklyn Bridge to thread his way to Washington Square. The day was overcast, threatening more rain, or perhaps snow. He was not sure if Blossom knew about his rented car, but none of the prowl cars he passed paid any attention to him.

  He used a pay phone in a drugstore to call the hospital about Art Greenwald, but Art's condition was unchanged. He was still in a coma. The supervisor asked his name and he did not hesitate to give it.

  "I have a message for you, Mr. Durell. You are to call a Mr. Isotti at the Crescent-Plaza at once."

  "Thank you."

  McFee hadn't wasted time sending Isotti into town to help. Durell was not sure he wanted help at this moment, and before he made his second call he bought several newspapers and drank a cup of coffee while he studied them. There was nothing at all in the Times about the murder of Frank Greenwald, and only a small item about it in the Daily News, which surprised him until he recognized the censoring touch of Blossom's district office. Stella Marni was not mentioned in connection with the murder, but her picture was in the center fold, a flash shot taken of her yesterday at the Foley Square courthouse when she had testified before Senator Hubert's committee that she wanted to leave America, preferring her homeland to New York. Durell studied her photograph ca
refully, trying to reconcile this image of a cool, defiant woman with the frightened, lovely girl he had left only an hour ago. The two images refused to merge into one, and he gave it up to find a cab and ride uptown to Isotti's hotel.

  Tony Isotti was a slim dark man, young for the job he was doing, but dedicated to it more than most. He had fallen in love with a girl in Prague during a mission for K Section last year, and she had disappeared without a trace. He blamed himself for her disappearance. He was sure she was dead because of her association with him and because it was probably known in MGB headquarters in Moscow by now who he had been and what he had accomplished. Only Isotti's eyes gave him away; they were cold and black and flat and eternally angry. He was dangerous now, rated as a little too hotheaded for most assignments, but competent with gun, knife, or judo, a swift and deadly killer.

  Now as he sat in the hotel lobby he looked like a Yale man waiting for a date, dressed in checked jacket and dark slacks, with a solid-color gray vest, his thick black hair neatly brushed. He stood up and shook hands with Durell. "Hello, Sam. You didn't check back at your hotel, so I left word around for you. All right?"

  "Fine. What did McFee tell you?"

  "To do anything that needs doing."

  "It's spadework, at this moment Routine digging."

  "Whatever you say. You look beat. A rough night?"

  "It could have been worse," Durell said. He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. He felt a quick urgency to make better use of the time that was chipping away at Stella's safety. "I'm going to check on an organization called the New American Society, personally. Meanwhile, you tackle it from the research side. Find out who organized it, get a membership list, the names of officers and philanthropic sponsors, if any — everything about them."

  "Hell, that's library work." Isotti looked disappointed.

  "Sometimes it pays off. I'll check back here with you later in the afternoon."

  "McFee said this might be a rough one. I didn't figure on sitting on my haunches totting up dossiers." He grinned suddenly, but his flat eyes were as bleak and cold as the gray November light "They say at K Section that you get the wild and woolly ones, Sam. I was delighted when the little man said I was to work with you. I've got an ax of my own to grind in this thing, you know."

  "Which is why you sit and do research. It may pay off better than using your fists."

  Discipline asserted itself in Isotti's glum, quick nod. "Whatever you say. Set up a contact, huh?"

  "Get back here by two o'clock this afternoon. I'll leave a message at the desk if you're not in. Dig deep, Tony. I think we'll need everything you can discover." Durell paused. "And don't get careless. Art Greenwald was careless last night, and you know what happened to him. If this ring smells you digging into them, even at a library or a newspaper morgue, there can be an accident. To you."

  "I can take care of myself," Isotti said.

  "See that you do."

  Durell started to turn away, and Isotti said: "One thing, Sam. When I checked for you at your hotel, Deirdre Padgett answered. She flew up here last night on the one-o'clock plane. She's anxious to hear from you."

  Durell was startled, but his face showed nothing. He felt a moment of guilt, and then resentment, because Deirdre had not remained here in the first place when he had asked her to, and then he told himself he was foolish to castigate himself about it.

  "All right, Tony, thanks. Get to it."

  He retrieved his rented car and drove along Central Park South before turning back to his hotel. The trees were bare, the greenery turned brown, and the city seemed to huddle for warmth within itself under the bleak gray sky. He left his car in a lot after circling the block three times for a parking space, and went into the hotel to find Deirdre.

  She was in the coffee shop, the clerk told him. He scanned the other people in there with practiced care, but he saw no sign of Blossom or his fellow agents, and he walked toward her. She sat in calm serenity, her dark hair perfect under a small red hat, her dark blue eyes watching him first with unconcealed warmth and pleasure, then with caution. Her smile was natural. She wore a red wool suit that matched her hat, and white gloves. Durell bent to kiss her and her mouth was cool.

  "I hope you weren't worried about me." He smiled.

  "No, darling." She patted his hand lightly. "I used to worry, you know. But now I know you can take care of yourself. Now I just... have faith in you. It's all I have."

  He drew a chair out at her table and signaled the waiter for a pot of coffee. He was aware of Deirdre's cool, objective eyes and he spoke out of a need to fill the awkward little vacuum of silence that began.

  "I thought you weren't coming back. Tony Isotti told me you flew up on the morning plane."

  "Yes. I didn't really have any work to do in Washington."

  "Then why?..."

  "I guess I was a fool. I guess I didn't want you to take me for granted. Your invitation for me to spend the night here was so casual, darling. That sort of thing can be upsetting now and then."

  He said: "Dee, we know each other too well to begin playing this son of game with each other. I'm glad you're here now."

  "Are you?" Her voice was a soft challenge.

  "What is it?" he asked. "Why the cross-examination?"

  She smiled ruefully. "I suppose I'm making noises like a jealous wife, and I'm not your wife, am I? And I may never be. When I learned you are not permitted to marry anyone who isn't fully cleared for security, the same as you are, I went and got myself cleared. And still we're not married. You're off to the West, or to Europe, or you disappear into Russia for a month, and I simply sit and wait for you to come back each time as if nothing had happened. I'm beginning to think well never be married, Sam."

  "You're depressed. Why?"

  She sighed. "I saw Harry Blossom an hour ago. He came here to the hotel, looking for you."

  "Wild?"

  "No. Quite calm." She poured coffee for Durell and herself. "He told me what you did to him last night. He said you spent the night with Stella Marni."

  "Yes, I did," Durell said carefully. "And that troubles you?"

  "She's a beautiful woman. Harry Blossom says she has a power over men, he says she can twist a man like you around her little finger."

  "Blossom should speak for himself." Durell said. "But if you remember, you asked me to help her yourself."

  "Not to the point of spending the night with her, Sam."

  He smiled. "You're jealous. That it?"

  She did not smile in return. "Yes, darling. Very, very jealous. I love you, Sam. All of a sudden I'm afraid I'm going to lose you. And if I do, it will be my own fault. I got you into this. It's true, I wanted you to help Stella Marni. She needs help. But Blossom says..."

  "To hell with Blossom. Don't you trust me, Dee?"

  "I know how you are, Sam. I know I'm not the only woman in your life. I knew that long ago. But I kept hoping I was something special."

  "And you are," he said.

  "But not special like Stella Marni."

  "Dee, I don't think we ought to talk about this now." The coffee he swallowed tasted bitter. "Blossom has a thing about that girl. It's turned him from a damned good agent into a sick paranoiac. He's lost all sense of balance and proportion. He's as much a victim of this affair as any refugee going home in terror of death and imprisonment I don't know what he told you or suggested about Stella and me..."

  "You spent the night with her. Did you comfort her, Sam, as you once comforted me?"

  "She was frightened," Durell said.

  "Did you make love to her?"

  "In a way."

  "Was she good? Better than me?" Deirdre insisted. Her face was very white. "Answer me, Sam."

  "Nothing happened. She was close to hysterics. I helped to calm her down and got her to sleep."

  "Am I supposed to believe that?"

  He stood up, anger surging in him, an anger that he never thought in all his life would be directed against this lovely girl he k
new so intimately. "You've got to believe it, because that's what I tell you and it's the truth. And if anything else had happened, I'd tell you that, too."

  "Would you, Sam? Why are you so upset about it, if nothing happened?"

  He stared down at her in masculine frustration. He saw the glitter of tears in her lovely eyes and he wanted to shake her and tell her — He did not know what he wanted to tell her. There was nothing he could say that would not hurt her even more, in her present state of mind. He could not deny to himself how the very essence of Stella Marni had stolen into him. It was simply there, and he could not explain it. And he could not cast her out.

  Deirdre looked up and bit her lip and considered her gloved hands on the table. "I'm sorry, Sam. I couldn't help myself. I love you too much to be complacent about you, I guess, even though I hate myself for acting like a possessive female. But Blossom told me so many things about Stella that i hadn't known before. He called her a witch, a sorceress."

  "Blossom is crazy about the subject," Durell said harshly.

  "I know. I could see that. And I'm suddenly afraid it might happen to you, too, Sam." She stood up gracefully, her smile tremulous. "Please forgive me. I should have known better, darling." She drew a deep breath. "I've taken a room here and I'll stay in town as long as you're working on this case, if you'll let me. Come up with me, Sam."

  Their eyes met, spoke of intimacies in the past, of quiet, tender love and the wild ecstasies of passionate moments.

  "Dee, I'm sorry. There is no time," he said.

  "No time — for me, Sam?"

  "Dee, be reasonable. Stella Marni is in danger. I shouldn't even be spending these minutes here with you. I have too much to do, and I'm in trouble myself, and somebody else is likely to get killed if I don't stop this thing fast."

  "Just half an hour, Sam."