Assignment - Manchurian Doll

by Edward S. Aarons

  Nadja turned and tried to run, but they saw her and one of them laughed and drew a gun, lifting it eagerly. Nadja froze. The sea wind felt abruptly cold. The man looked as if he wanted an excuse to kill her.

  His voice barked. “Matte imashita. I was waiting for you.”

  “I do not know you,” Nadja answered thinly.

  “You will come with us, please. To the keisatsusho— the police station.”

  She did not believe him. “What for?”

  “It is only a routine questioning. Do not argue.”

  Yuki dabbed at her broken nose; her eyes were glazed with pain. Nadja felt a momentary regret that she had been so merciless with the girl. The first Japanese pushed Yuki, staggering, against the house wall. She seemed unaware of what was happening. The second man walked stiff-legged toward Nadja, his grin toothy.

  “Who do you work for?” she asked. “The kempei-tai?” “There is no more kempei-tai. The war ended those good times. It is Omaru. He wishes to see you. Omaru-san will pay us a bonus for obstructing your escape.”

  “Were you sent to kill me? Will you do it now?”

  The man slapped her. His hand was callused, like a fisherman’s, as rough as his local idiom. The blow knocked Nadja from her feet. She heard Yuki’s shrill, senseless laughter, and saw the girl suddenly dart away from the house and run to the beach. She had pretended to be more dazed than she was. One of the Japanese started after her, stumbled, and halted in indecision. He had no orders about Yuki, and he was unsure about her. In the moment before he made up his mind, the girl had made her escape, vanishing in the maze of narrow alleys between the houses. The first man cursed at his comrade for his carelessness, and vented his anger with a second blow at Nadja. Darkness fell over her like a spinning net. Her last thought was of surprised gratitude, because the decision to report Alexi as a traitor was taken from her hands.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Omaru-san was never comfortable indulging in formal society, and he bowed with reluctance, aware of his vast bulk in the red kimono, as the wife of a Dutch diplomat accepted his champagne and went away. In his big house overlooking the sea, built on a rocky crag of an island where the pines were warped by the prevailing ocean winds, there were bright lights and an imported orchestra from Tokyo playing American jazz, caviar from Vladivostok and French wines, and half the vacationing diplomatic corps on September holiday. Omaru stood at one end of the noisy room and felt only contempt for his guests. He decided he would add the expense of this affair to the tab for Durell, before the Kaminov business was finished. He had not given up hope. Something good might still be made of it, and you simply went on playing your cards the best you could.

  He thought, Johnny-o, you are lucky, indeed.

  Then it was time to see the baroness.

  Isome had made only a brief appearance at the party. She was a favorite with the Westerners, with her doll’s beauty and ease with French and English. They found her charming, delightful. Omaru’s face folded in deep creases of amusement. She was a witch, the strangest woman he had ever known, but their partnership promised to be auspicious. He felt an impatience to be with her at once, and left the reception room quietly.

  The house was vast and complex, with the best features of Japanese intimacy to play down its size. It was the true headquarters of Kaiwa, Omaru’s smuggling apparatus, although in Akijuro it was considered a bright center of social activity. Omaru knew how most of the Westerners here really regarded him. He was a bastard Irishman, neither European nor Japanese, and his mountainous physique and appearance of a sumo wrestler attracted none of the women. Now and then he was aware of the curiosity of a deviate, but he amused himself, he thought sardonically, without outside involvements. Isome saw to that.

  He walked quietly up a flight of free-standing, polished steps to a small balcony. Only a glow in the overcast night sky to the south revealed Akijuro’s presence on the nearby mainland. Noting the clouds, Omaru frowned, his winged brows dipping in concern. The weather reports were of vital interest in this operation. The radio announced gale winds approaching typhoon strength in the East China Sea, and there was an alert in the provinces of Miyazaki and Kagoshima, at the southern end of the archipelago. The storm, whose leading edges were already sliding up over the horizon, might veer away, however.

  He had the KGB girl, and that was of immediate importance. He felt impatient, because Isome had her plans for her, and Isome went about things in her own way.

  He mounted another flight of steps curving to a private wing of the house on the cliff. Omaru’s launches had ferried his guests from the mainland dock half a mile to the east, where Akijuro’s lights glowed. The sea wind smelled of strange things, he thought, full of indefinable odors sweeping off the huge mainland of Asia itself.

  These private rooms were never seen by guests, and were open only to a few trusted servants. Omaru stepped out on a wooden balcony pinned to the cliffside. It was like walking on air, suddenly, to feel the thunder of surf below, to sense the strange wind, to hear the sounds of the sea and the thrashing pines above. A glass door at the far end of the balcony stood open for him.

  The baroness had her pleasures, and death was often at the heart of them. Death of body or spirit equally inflamed her. Tonight it might be both, and Isome would work herself to a shuddering climax before she killed Nadja Osmanovna.

  Omaru was too fat to please Isome sensually. She would not let him touch her, even if his bulk permitted such intimacies. But he did not want to. He was too fond of his ease to endure the awkward grappling necessary in his case.

  He stepped into a small anteroom where the girl had been taken. Nadja’s eyes flew wide open, regarding him from above her gag. He smiled with a touch of compassion. No one deserved to die the way Isome planned it. He went on, nodding to himself, ignoring her, and entered a room where music flowed, and he saw his chair in its accustomed place in the dim red light that Isome preferred. He sank into it with a heavy sigh, spreading his huge knees as fat men do.

  The three people there paid no attention to him. They were not permitted to acknowledge his presence in any way. The bedroom was aglow with pinkish radiance from silk-screened lamps, and the music throbbed with a languorous tempo. Isome stood in the center of the thick Sarouk carpet, her kimono and obi in a heap at her tiny feet. Her body gleamed like pink jade, her breasts firm, hips and thighs taut before the two young Japanese who knelt before her, eyes glittering from Isome’s drugs.

  One of Isome’s maids knelt in swift silence at Omaru’s side, bowing beside his big, special chair. He shivered, looked down at the pale, smooth nape of the maid’s neck, seeing the tender wisps of dark hair that escaped her exquisite coiffure. He put his thick thumb in the small indentation just below the hairline and stroked with an increasing rhythm . . .

  The two young men moved through their performance with Isome as in a trance, eyes glazed, their movements slow and drugged. A small, rare smile made the baroness’ mask-face the epitome of joyous evil. The young men weaved in a pattern of slavish obedience to her whims as she sank to a heap of cushions on the floor.

  Omaru’s breath hissed as he watched. His rotating thumb quickened on the maid’s neck as she knelt beside him. His grip hurt her, but he did not know or care. His bulk trembled in response to Isome’s increasing passion. The music quickened subtly. In the morning, the youths would remember nothing, but they would wonder at the odd weakness of their muscular, gleaming brown bodies—

  A small shudder shook Omaru. He sighed, leaned back, released the kneeling maid’s neck. She got up at once, handing him what was needed. He felt contempt for himself and the sybaritic tangle of bodies on the cushions.

  “Wine,” he said quietly to the maid.

  She helped him rise and he drank reflectively from the cup she gave him, regretting the weakness of his monstrous flesh. Then he left the room as quietly as he had entered, Isome and the two boys were unaware of him. He knew, however, that Isome’s peculiar thirsts would now dem
and slaking and the Russian girl would pay with her life. He wanted to talk to Nadja first.

  The wind moaned in the twisted dwarf pines behind the house wing. Down below, the main body of the house glowed brightly with the diplomatic reception. Money talked, Omaru thought grimly, and made them all come to fawn upon him. They all used him—the Americans and the Japanese, the Russians and the Peiping Chinese. They needed him and they came to his parties, smiling and enchanted and murmuring of politeness.

  He mouthed a curse for them all. He knew he walked the edge of a very sharp knife, and he could easily plunge into disaster. But he was quicker and more savage than they. He had learned cruelty in the streets of Dublin, because of the way he looked; and his mother, unable to explain him to the neighbors, finally sat in her kitchen and listened to the hiss of gas jets until all shame and rejection became meaningless. . . .

  He hated them all. Relishing his hatred, he quickened his ponderous step and crossed a terraced garden and went into the shadowed pine woods where the wind clashed the branches and he could hear the rising thunder of an uneasy surf.

  They had moved her into the antique Shinto temple that stood like a jewel on the peak of the island’s crags, high above the house that clung to the cliffside. The temple had once lapsed into ruin, but it pleased Omaru’s irreverence, since he was dedicated to no faith but himself, to carefully restore the small structure and revive its delicate, tiled roof and carved, lacquered torii of red. It was now a gem to delight any antiquarian, or convince any Shinto priest of his devotion.

  A stone lantern glowed in one comer of the interior, making the polished floor bright with light. Nadja lay in a heap in the opposite corner, her skirt and blouse torn, her face battered. The men who had captured her had been rough and crude.

  Omaru prodded her cautiously with the toe of his slipper and his voice rumbled.

  “Nadja Osmanovna? Do not try to sham with me. I know you are awake. They have removed your gag, eh? But you are sensible not to scream. No one would hear you.”

  The girl opened dulled eyes. “Is it to be now?”

  “Soon.”

  “Will you be the one to do it?”

  “Isome wishes the pleasure.”

  Nadja’s wrists and ankles were chained, and she was helpless. Her despair excited Omaru again, and he decided he might not wait for Isome if she dallied too long with her two drugged young men. But Nadja spoke calmly enough through her bruised lips.

  “It is foolish to treat me like this. I escaped from the American just to see you. You and I have done business before—you brought in prohibited propaganda material and you transported some of our personnel and payrolls to North Viet Nam. We have no quarrel, Omaru. I was coming to see you.”

  “We cannot trust you,” Omaru said. “Can you offer more than the Americans? You know where Colonel Kaminov is hiding, in Manchuria. You are Manchurian yourself. You were born there.”

  Nadja hesitated. “I can double what the Americans offered.”

  “Forty thousand dollars?”

  “Moscow would consider it a cheap price to catch a traitor.”

  Omaru was amused. “Moscow is never free with money. They demand an accounting for every kopeck. It is a nuisance.”

  “The money will be paid with no questions asked,” Nadja said urgently. “It can be arranged. We can do business.” Omaru shook his round, shaven head. The stone lantern behind him cast a grotesque shadow of his body on the yellow walls. Outside, the wind lifted to a thin, piping wail.

  “In your position, facing death so soon, I would offer fortunes, too,” Omaru said. “Promises are not expensive.” “There is more,” Nadja said quickly. “The Americans are finished with your apparatus. I heard them talking—Durell, especially. When the Kaminov affair is ended, they will smash you flat, Omaru. They will wipe you out.”

  The wings of Omaru’s dark brows lifted sardonically over his small, piggish eyes. “Like your promises of money, young woman, your implied threats are fevered by your desire to stay alive. But you need not plead with me. We are allies. In fact, dropping security for a moment, you should know that you are in the hands of your own superiors. All your orders come from this place and go to Tokyo.”

  Nadja stared. “But—”

  “It is true. Isome is head of the Japan KGB Station. She is in command of Station G here.”

  “If that is so—”

  “Why do we treat you as an enemy? It is simple,” Omaru said. “You are a security risk in this matter.”

  “But I have always been loyal—”

  “Listen to me,” Omaru said impatiently. “You can save your life, prove your loyalty. Our plans go beyond surface problems in this matter. But it was decided you cannot be trusted, understand? It is because of your sentimental attitude toward Colonel Kaminov, the traitor. Still, you can yet prove you are with us. You can help us eliminate him.”

  “Even if I believed you—about Isome and this being Station G—”

  “You still would not help us?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You would not help execute Colonel Kaminov?”

  She was silent.

  “The plan is simple,” Omaru said. “We are after bigger gamp than your traitorous friend. We are after Durell. We can kill two birds with one stone, you see. We could eliminate Durell here, if we chose, but it would not be as advantageous as Isome’s plan to capture him in Manchuria, along with Kaminov. Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “If the bait were anyone but Kaminov, you would have been briefed in the matter from the start. But since your relationship with Kaminov makes you suspect—”

  “That is not fair!”

  “Fair? We are in a hard business, young woman. Bourgeois sentiments of fair play do not enter into it, eh? Since when do we operate on a code of honor? We deal in facts; it is war, and we eliminate human frailties.”

  “You cannot condemn me as a traitor, too!” she cried. “That remains to be seen.”

  “What do you want? Why am I treated as if I already betrayed everything, without a chance to defend myself? If Isome is my superior, why am I treated as a criminal?”

  “Will you help us?” Omaru asked softly.

  “It is my duty!”

  “Knowing it will mean Kaminov’s summary execution?” Nadja turned her face away, bitterness shaping her mouth, tears stinging her eyes. She did not want to make the decision. She did not know what to think. She felt sick; her stomach churned. She had to answer quickly. Omaru was waiting. He held her life in balance on what she said next.

  “Yes,” she said coldly. She needed time, she thought. “Yes, Kaminov is a traitor. He deserves to die.”

  “Was he your lover?”

  “Not exactly. But long ago, we—”

  “You could see him shot?”

  “If the State demands it—”

  Omaru sighed. “Your help is all we need to conclude this matter. Tell us what the phrase, ‘Pere Jacques,’ means.”

  This time the words did not shock her as before, although there was an inward flare of panic and fright, and a quick rejection. No, she thought, no one can make me go back there. I won’t, I can’t, it’s impossible. She felt her mouth quiver, and she pressed her lips firmly together. She felt cold. But a sense of cunning took over. She looked sidewise and down from under lowered eyelids.

  “Pere Jacques?” she whispered. “Is it a man?”

  “We do not know.”

  “Or a place?”

  “You can tell us, Nadja. Do you pretend not to recognize the phrase? Kaminov sent the code for you to interpret. Did you tell Durell what it means?”

  “How could I? It is meaningless to me!” she cried.

  He smiled “You have made this decision?”

  Her thoughts moved back and forth, seeking a way out. She shivered in desperation. I can’t, I can’t, I tried so hard and now it’s all coming back, and I don’t want it to come back. I’d rather die now.
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  She tried cunning again. “Let me talk to Isome.”

  “Your last chance is with me, dear girl.”

  “You do not believe me?”

  “Of course not. Why or what or where is Pere Jacques? Now is your last chance.”

  “Let me think. I need a moment to remember.”

  “A moment is all you have.”

  She pretended to concentrate. But whichever way her mind turned, desperately probing, she faced only a kind of self-destruction. This ugly man who peered at her with tiny eyes folded in suet was much too clever for her. Everything had once been so clear, bounded by rules. Except for Alexi. Men were no strangers to her, and but for him, her heart would have been closed in a steel cage forever.

  She remembered her early adoration of him, the way she had trembled at his approach in the classroom, her fits of despair and anguish because he regarded her as a child. But then there had come those long summer evenings with Alexi in Gorki Park, the talk of things he had seen when on diplomatic missions to the West. Oh, he had been circumspect, he followed the official doctrine in his comments. But he was tormented.

  And she loved him.

  His missing leg, lost at Stalingrad, did not bother her. She felt it a privilege to know the human being behind his stern official facade. He was sensitive, opening for her the world of books, rousing her from numb shock to a wide-ranging curiosity about the whole world.

  She loved him.

  She had trembled at his nearness, clung to his hand as a refugee child, quaked under his gaze, wanted to give him all, everything. . . .

  That summer, as they sat on a bench near the Moscow River, alongside the tables of chessplayers and the children and the military uniforms moving to and from the onion spires of the Kremlin, he had said:

  “Nadja, you are good for me. You have helped me very much toward my decision.”

  “What decision? How have I helped you?”

  “By permitting me to love you.”

  She had been struck dumb. She thought her heart had stopped. Then she stammered, “But you have never done— or said anything—”