Assignment — Stella Marni

by Edward S. Aarons

Chapter Thirteen

  He was alone.

  The darkness was bitterly cold.

  He was in a clammy vacuum where water dripped monotonously with an echo of cold steel. The feeling that he was blind, when he opened his eyes and saw absolutely nothing, brought stark panic to him. There was nothing he could see. A total of nothing. His arms and legs were not tired. He was free to move, but for a long minute he did not move at all. letting strength and control return to his nerves and muscles. He had the feeling that he had not been out too long, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes at the most, but he knew that this was deceptive and he could not count on it.

  He listened to the drip-drip of water falling steadily on steel. It resounded hollowly. Eyes open wide, he strained again to penetrate the darkness. There was nothing to see. He had never known such absolute blackness.

  He was underground, then. Such total absence of light could be obtained only under the earth. Unless something had happened to his eyes.

  His head ached, pulsing with a slow rhythm of pain, and he lay motionless, wondering why his arms and legs were free, wondering about the intense, raw cold he felt. Not underground. That would be warmer. He was in a cramped, fetal position, and after a few moments he became aware of steel under him, too, riveted rusty plates that were icy to the touch. And he was aware now, too, of the hollow drumming of rain overhead, very close to him. He began to shiver. His teeth chattered and he clamped his jaws together hard.

  He thought of Stella, waiting for him.

  He thought of Deirdre, waiting for him.

  He wondered what Tom Markey would say and do when he failed to show up.

  There was a feeling of pressure all around him, of a small, enclosed space slowly moving in to crush him, and he recognized the panic of claustrophobia and fought it off, concentrating on the ebbing pain in the back of his head, the coppery taste of nausea in the back of his throat. He straightened his legs slowly. His feet touched steel before his knees were fully level. He sat up. His head scraped steel just above him.

  For a moment then, without light or anything but the sense of touch to guide him, he experienced a violent vertigo, a loss of orientation that gave him a sensation of swinging, tipping, sliding, falling into the still blackness around him. He waited, very still, for several minutes before it passed. Then he began to probe the darkness with care, feeling the cold wet plates under him, against his shoulders behind him. The walls curved. He got on his knees and felt the ceiling overhead as it lifted to a point not more than five feet high and then curved sharply down again on the opposite side.

  He was in a solid iron cage, not more than six feet in diameter, a circular cage five feet in height at its peak, shaped roughly like the top half of a giant steel acorn.

  It defied his understanding.

  For several minutes he explored his prison solely by the sense of touch, examining the rivets that held the plates together, finding a heavy battery of cables that went from the peak overhead down through the floor. There was a small leak overhead, and water dripped steadily through it, and he assumed it was still raining outside and the iron shell that caged him was exposed to the sky. He shivered violently in the cold, and he could not control the chattering of his teeth.

  Never in his experience had he known anything like it.

  He could not imagine where he was.

  A cold wind whistled through the joints in the plates, and he had no fear of suffocating, yet there was a wild pressure in his chest and for long moments his heart hammered beyond control, adding to the pulse of pain in his head where he had been struck down. When he thought of the giant he had glimpsed in that last moment of consciousness, he remembered Krame and Silver Bells and Krame's words about Stella. A different fear possessed him then. He knew that somewhere at this moment there were men looking for Stella, hunting her ruthlessly, with only one aim. Stella Marni had to be killed. She had to be shut up before she could change her testimony and expose to the whole world the truth of what had been done to her and her father. She had to be silenced.

  Durell fumbled in his pockets with hands that shook with the cold. He found his cigarettes, his wallet, searched for matches, found a small packet. His gun was gone, of course. He traced four paper matches in the invisible booklet and his hands shook so that he waited for a time, tucking them under his armpits before he dared risk striking for a light.

  His heart thudded with fear that he was blind.

  Again he had the feeling he was sliding, reeling, falling into black space.

  He struck the match.

  In the tiny flare he felt an enormous wave of relief wash over him. He could still see. And then he felt a wave of incredulity at what his eyes opened for him. His estimate of an acorn-shaped steel shell was verified. The plates curved upward close overhead, so he could not stand upright, and from the peak they arched down to the circular steel floor, six feet wide, wet with condensation and even a patch of ice where the wind blew through an uncaulked seam between two of the plates. His topcoat was poor protection against the bitter cold that crept out of the steel walls of his lightless cage.

  He struck another match.

  This time he was able to see more details of his tiny prison. Directly behind him the wall was not curved in the same arc as the rest of the plates, but was flat, and his fingers traced the outline of a small hatch of steel before the match guttered out in the draft that poured into the cell. There was no lock or handle on the narrow, three-foot-high door. No way to open it from this side, at any rate.

  He had only two matches left, and he decided to save them.

  He considered yelling for help, but postponed that for a moment. He was thirsty. His head ached. He tried to figure out where he could be.

  Only one place, he finally decided. His thoughts raced, flared with panic, grew cool and objective again. Only one possible place. High up above the vast ceiling of Krame's studio. High in the very pinnacle of the building tower.

  No one could have devised a more ingenious, safer prison.

  He was isolated in a tiny steel cell perched above the city, and he could shout until his lungs burst and no one would hear him. He could die here and no one would find him until the building was razed. He was sealed up, bottled and corked. No amount of cleverness, no test of strength could help him.

  The shout burst from his lungs involuntarily.

  His voice was monstrous, echoing in distorted inflections, bouncing back and forth inside the acorn cage. His head pulsed and throbbed. It was ready to burst. He shouted again. He took off his shoe and banged the heel against the cold steel plates of the floor. He was suddenly sweating.

  "Krame! Krame!"

  And: "Gerda! Gerda!"

  Nothing happened.

  He was alone up here.

  They had deserted him.

  * * *

  Time was a sluggish black river carrying him through hours of frozen hell and burning thirst. He eased his thirst a little by finding the tiny tongue of ice that had been formed by the cold wind on the rain that had dripped between the plates, and he hammered at it with the heel of his shoe until he broke off a small chunk no larger than his thumb and sucked at it. Time was a weight that slowly closed in upon him with inexorable pressure, soon to crush him. He knew that Tom Markey was looking for him with angry disillusionment now. He knew that Stella was waiting for him with terror and despair as her companions.

  He tried to sleep, and for a time he dozed, and he dreamed of Stella as Blossom had described her, half naked, taunting him with the sculptured perfection of breasts and buttocks, her lovely hair brushing his face, the perfume of her seeping through him in delicate torture. Deirdre was in the dream somewhere, too, crying out to him. And for a time, too, he dreamed he was back home, a boy again, in the bayous with his grandfather, hunting through the heavy, still heat of the green channels and chenieres down toward the sparkle and glitter of the wide blue Gulf. He was a boy again, sweating in the Louisiana sun on the deck of the Three Belles, th
e side-wheeler that old Jonathan had run up on the mud flats and made his home.

  He awoke sweating and gasping, panting for air.

  From the bitter, icy cold of a short time ago, the steel cage that imprisoned him had turned into a miniature furnace. The metal walls were almost too hot to touch. The air was a long tongue of flame that he sucked in and out of his lungs. His throat closed against it and he sat up, coughing, scraping his head painfully against the curving roof. A shout leaped to his lips and died before it was born.

  A thin crack of sunlight came through the same spot where ice had formed before he slept.

  He took off his coat, his jacket, his shirt. Sweat ran down his chest, soaked his belt and trousers. He did not dare lean his naked shoulders against the steel walls of the acorn. The tiny crack in the plate joints admitted just enough light to verify what he had discovered by using his matches a few hours before. He could not understand the change in temperature for several moments, and again panic shook him. He dug his fingers into his thighs until the pain helped clear his mind.

  Slowly he figured out what had happened.

  Somehow, he had slept through the night and it was daylight now, the next day, and the rain had ended. The sky must be clear and sunny, and although it was November, the sunlight beat on the copper sheathing outside the tower and transmitted its heat to the structural steel within until the temperature had soared fantastically.

  He did not know what time it was. His motions and his thoughts were clogged by the heat. His watch had stopped. If it was still early morning, there was a dangerous chance that the temperature of his cage would rise until it killed him.

  His thirst returned, emphasized by the water he had lost in sweating while he slept. But there was no ice left now. And the condensation that had dampened the cage a few hours ago had given way to dry, rust-flaked heat unendurable to the touch. Through a red haze of despair, he wondered how long he could live up here, with no food and no water, no chance to escape. The use of the cage to keep him a prisoner indicated a cruel, twisted genius. That would be Krame, he thought slowly. He allowed hate to rise in him, turning his thoughts away from his physical torment, and he concentrated on the wavering vision of Krame's round, brutalized face with the cropped red hair and silently laughing mouth. He thought of ways he would like to kill Krame, slowly, plucking out nerve endings, snipping muscles and tendons and flesh from here and there. The red madness lasted only for a few moments. His trousers were soaked with sweat, his chest was slick, water ran down from his disheveled hair and dripped from his jaw to trace paths down his back and chest muscles.

  He couldn't breathe.

  He yelled again.

  He hammered on the steel plates with his shoe, heedless of the torture of echoing sound that pierced his ears with intolerable reverberations. Somebody had to hear him. Someone had to come soon. If Krame wanted to kill him, it could have been done hours ago, last night, when the giant had slugged him. Why was he a prisoner, then? Why was he kept here, ignored, without even a humane sip of water, a bite to eat, a breath of cool air for his lungs?

  The temperature mounted slowly and inexorably with each passing minute. His strength ebbed. He sat still, bent forward from the waist, all of his being concentrated solely on the effort of drawing in a breath, exhaling, and breathing again. He began to hear odd sounds, echoing metallic whispers, voices that spoke to him. Hallucinations. He stood up with a lurch and slammed his fists against the steel trap door in the side of the acorn, beating against the hot steel until his knuckles bled. He sucked at his blood and felt a greater thirst because of the salt that was left in it.

  He watched with dulled eyes that no longer focused as the thin sliver of sunlight moved across the iron plates. It came from the east, he judged, and after a time it grew shorter and waned and withdrew. The heat continued. He tried to determine if it was growing worse, but he had gone beyond any fine distinction in the degree of his torture. He had never felt so utterly helpless in his life.

  There were times when he dozed, succumbing to the feverish heat and the cramped position he was forced to maintain. Darkness washed over his mind in deeper and longer waves.

  He was not sure when he heard the first distant, dim clang of metal striking metal. At first he thought it was another trace of his fevered imagination, another element in the distorted dreams that chased themselves across the heated mirror of his mind. He opened his eyes. He thought it was a little cooler in the cage. There was no sunlight in the crack between the plates now, only a little grayness, and he crawled over to it and tried to see through the riveted edges of the plates and glimpsed only a vague grayness that might have been the clouded November sky. No bright sunlight. If an overcast had come up over the city, it very possibly had saved his life.

  Now a clanging came distinctly from under the floor plates and then a scraping noise and then the rasp of steel and the clink of bars being dropped. Durell swung around, crouching, to face the trap door.

  It opened slowly.

  A gun appeared, black against the strange burst of light that blinded him after the long hours he had endured in darkness. Then the face of the huge man who had struck him down appeared behind the small swinging door, followed by the giant's shoulders.

  "Hello," the man rumbled. "Still with us, tovarich?"

  Durell stared hypnotized at the gun in the huge fist.

  "You stay just like that, eh? You don't move closer to me. Or I shoot and you die quick up here, all alone. You like the room? Is nice? Is private enough?"

  Durell licked his dry, cracked lips. His voice sounded harsh and croaking when he spoke. "Where is Krame? I want to talk to him."

  "Is busy. You talk with me. I bring you water."

  "Thanks for small favors."

  "Eh? You no want water? Not thirsty?"

  "I'll take whatever you can spare."

  From his crouching position in the center of the acorn, Durell could see through the narrow opening, which was just wide enough to admit the giant's shoulders. There was bright space beyond, the under surfaces of the ceiling above Krame's studio, the arch of the walls, the huge porthole window on this side, the heavy cable from which the battery of fluorescent light tubes hung. He wondered how the big man had climbed up here. A ladder of some sort, but a tricky one, set up in the center of the studio floor because of the inward arch of the tower walls that ended in the floor of his cage.

  The big man had a bullet-shaped head covered with a thick thatch of grizzled brindle hair, a prognathous jaw, big teeth, and a broken nose. He pushed a thermos of water into the cage with the hand that held the gun. For a moment Durell was tempted to grab at the thick hairy wrist, but the giant's pale eyes were too watchful and ready. He knew he could die very easily up here and never be found.

  "Is there anything to eat?" Durell asked.

  "Not now. Maybe later, when you feel like talking. I got some news for you, mister. Krame tells me to let you know. Albert Marni ain't in the hospital no more. We got him back again."

  "You're lying," Durell said.

  "Was easy. He look too sick to walk, but I make him feel better quick. I hit the nurse, I kill a cop, I pick him up like he a little child and we go down freight elevator and Krame meet us on street with a car. Last night, two o'clock, we did it. Is true. We got Albert Marni again. You a fool to take him from the Boroslav yesterday." The giant grinned. His teeth were big and yellow and crooked. "Is all for nothing, eh? All you suffer up here. We got him again, so we got Stella, too. Is nice woman, that Stella. Much woman. I like her. She like me, too. She tell me so."

  "Where is she?" Durell asked.

  "Is no matter now for you. She do what we want, we got her papa back, she obey orders like everybody else. She show up, we don't worry about her now. We put her on ship with papa and she go home. Tomorrow morning the Boroslav sails. Stella will be on it."

  "Isn't she with Krame?"

  "You sleep now," the giant said.

  "Wait a minute. Wait.
What's your name?"

  "Karl."

  "All right, listen to me, Karl. Help me. I'll make it worth while. Listen for a minute. Hold that door open."

  The giant said: "What can you give me?"

  "You name it. Money? Women?" Durell asked. He was panting. The open trap door was like a tantalizing mirage, just out of his reach. "I can get you whatever you want, Karl. The government will pay you to let me out of here. They'll give you whatever I tell them to give you, understand? It's important. You can believe me. Anything you ask for. You've got to let me out."

  "You a fool," Karl said softly.

  The door slammed shut again.

  * * *

  A steel cone, a hemisphere six feet in diameter at the bottom, the floor of his cage, and less than six feet high — this was his world. His legs ached with cramp. He felt the heat oozing away from the walls, evaporating like water under a hot sun. There was no more light coming through the crack, but he was not sure if it was night again or if it was because the sun had gone behind the thick overcast in the west. The air in the cage was growing foul. Now and then he twisted about and put his mouth to the rusty, tiny crack in the steel plates and tried to suck the cold, fresh November air into his lungs, and this revived him and he began to think a little more rationally, now that he had seen Karl and knew he was not abandoned here indefinitely, simply to die. They wanted something more from him, or they would have killed him at once. And this thought gave him hope and the will to live and a slow lessening of the nightmare panic that had roweled him through all the long hours past.

  The heat left and a coolness came into the cage and he knew that presently the bitter cold would come again. He sipped some of the water from the thermos bottle, and then drank half of it all at once in an effort to maintain his strength and clarity of thought.

  He wondered if Karl had told the truth about abducting Albert Marni from the hospital. It would be a daring and dangerous move, a sign of desperation, but it could have been done if Krame was really desperate enough, if he needed absolutely to regain control of Stella. He decided that Karl had had no real reason to lie to him about it.