Assignment - Suicide

by Edward S. Aarons

  “You have killed Kronev." he said heavily.

  Durell managed a smile. “What a pity.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “He is a traitor." Durell stood up slowly. His hands ached. "He is a tool of the Western imperialists. He deserves death. But he is not killed; he is only paralyzed for a short time.”

  “I know nothing of medical things. You are under arrest.”

  The policeman fumbled with his left hand and pulled out a whistle and lifted it to his bleeding mouth. Before it touched his lips, Durell dived for his legs and prayed that the gun would not go off. The politseyski collapsed on top of him like a ton of bricks. The gun did not fire. Durell struck at his face and struck again and grabbed for the weapon. The man was built like an ox. His breath under his walrus mustache stank of vodka, but his strength was incredible. He heaved and arched and threw Durell off him as if he were a fluffy pillow. Something blurred before Durell’s eyes and there was a flurry of skirts and then a hard, crunching sound. He stood up, shaken, and saw that Valya had finally come to help. She stood beside the sprawled figure of the man with a statuette bust of Lenin in her hand. There was blood on the bronze and blood on the politseyski’s face. He still breathed, blowing pink bubbles from under his mustache.

  Durell picked up the cop’s gun and looked at Mikhail.

  “You were a big help. Many thanks.”

  Mikhail made a fluttering gesture and looked away. Valya’s face was very white. She looked ill. Durell pushed past her to the apartment door and looked up and down the corridor. Nobody was in sight. The struggle had been swift and gratifyingly silent. There seemed to be no alarm. He shut the door carefully.

  “You were very good with them,” Valya whispered. “Very good, gospodin. My friend, Sukinin, was good like you, once."

  “When?”

  “In the Pripet marshes, when the Nazis invaded us. There were many guerrilla bands there, and Sukinin was with them. And so was I.”

  “You were only a child,” Durell said.

  “I was not quite twelve." She shrugged. “I lived with the guerrillas and fought with them against the Nazis. I killed nine of them. But was it necessary to kill Kronev?"

  “It was necessary, but I don’t think he’s dead."

  “What can we do now? There is no escape."

  Durell turned and said sharply: “Mikhail?”

  The dancer sat with his head in his hands. “Valya is right. We are lost. Everything has gone wrong.”

  “Hell, we’ve just begun. Go down the back stairs and see if there are any others.” Durell knelt beside Kronev and searched him with swift, expert fingers. The fat man still breathed. He would he all right, but he would be crippled for several hours to come, until his neural centers recovered. Durell flipped through the papers in the man‘s pinseal wallet and looked up at Mikhail. who had not moved. “Did you hear me?” he rasped. “We haven’t much time. If there are other men downstairs, tell them Kronev says it’s all right for them to leave.”

  “Please help us, Mikhail,” Valya pleaded softly. “Please!”

  He lifted suffering dark eyes to her. “I know how you must despise me. I know you cannot love me, after seeing me like this. I cannot help it—not since I was a prisoner and a slave in Germany. They took my strength from me. I’m afraid of pain now. I wish I could make you think I am brave, but it would be false. You must despise me.”

  “Mikhail,” she said gently. “Not all men are the same. Not all have the same qualities, and yours are different from other men’s. And I do not despise you.”

  “You do not love me."

  “Now is not a time to talk of love. Will you just help us?”

  He stood up, his eyes suddenly tender. He did not glance at Durell’s angry figure. “It seems I have no choice. I will go.” He went out the back way.

  The girl said to Durell: “He suffered terribly. He is only the shell of a man. But should I be ashamed of him?”

  “The question is can we trust him?”

  “We have no choice in that, either.”

  “All right. Find some rope,” he said crisply. “Clothesline, anything to tie up these two men. We’ll need every moment’s delay we can get.“

  “Are you planning to go to Moscow?”

  “Of course. And you will come with me?’

  You seem to have taken command swiftly. I heard the warning Marshall gave you. You understand, we cannot permit you to reach your Embassy. I will do what I can to stop you. What you know about us must remain in Russia. We prefer to settle our problems for ourselves.”

  “I have the map of the missile bases. And you need it.”

  “When the time comes,” she smiled, “you will give it to me.”

  “Until then, is there a truce between us?”

  She turned to the kitchen and Durell dragged Kronev’s body and then that of the politseyski into the bedroom. It was hot in the apartment, and he sweated as he tied the two men with the rope Valya brought him. He ripped a pillow slip into wide strips and fashioned gags and arranged them so that neither man would suffocate. He knew it would be safer and more sensible if he simply slit their throats. There were no rules or pity in this war he fought. Dead men could not identify him. But he needed Valya’s help, and he knew that if he killed them, he might alienate her completely. She was uncertain enough in her own mind, whipping herself with dark Slavic moralities about the right and wrong of her actions.

  When he had them shoved out of sight under the wide bed, he pulled Marshall’s body from the bloody counterpane and carried him to the back door.

  “Strip the linen," he said. “Is there an incinerator in the building?“

  Valya nodded. “Yes.”

  “Take the stained sheets and throw them down the chute."

  “Yes.”

  “Then make up the bed with fresh linen. And be sure you are not seen when you go to the incinerator.”

  Mikhail came back along through the rear doorway. There was a subtle change in the way he walked. “It is safe to leave,” he said. “By the way, what are you going to do with Kronev’s gun‘! I know you have it.“

  “I‘ll keep it,” Durell said. “Let’s go.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “I’m going to bury my friend,” Durell said bluntly.

  He hoisted Marshall’s limp weight to his shoulder.

  Valya went ahead at his order to bring the Pobeda around to the back of the apartment house. The stairway going down was an echoing, concrete shaft, dimly lighted, as cold as an icy tomb. Mikhail trailed after Durell with his grim burden. The Way down seemed to take an eternity. On the third landing, Durell heard the strains of symphonic music from a nearby apartment; on the second landing, a man quarreled drunkenly nearby, his voice angrily muttering, the woman’s patient and weary. He came to the bottom and heard the sound of the Pobeda’s motor outside.

  A man lay on his face in the small areaway inside the doors. Durell rested a moment, looking at the glitter of a knife that protruded from the back of the dead man’s overcoat. He looked up at Mikhail.

  “Your work?”

  “He was suspicious."

  “You surprise me,” Durell said.

  “I was frightened, and that made it easier. I was sick afterward. I did not Want to kill him like this."

  “Didn’t you kill during the war?”

  “That was different."

  “Were you in Leningrad in those days?”

  “Yes, before I was captured. It was different then. I could kill Germans very easily."

  Durell suppressed an impatient curse. Kronev‘s dead guard here was a problem. He put down Marshall’s body and found a door that led to the basement and dragged the dead guard down there behind a pile of bricks and rubble remaining from the old foundations bombed during the Nazi siege.

  “Why don’t we put Marshall down there, too?”

  “We don’t want them found here together, for Mikhail’s sake," Durell said. “Officiall
y, Marshall must not even exist as a body.”

  He got the dead man into the back of the Pobeda. It was an exhausting, sickening process. He told himself that this cool, inert flesh was no longer Luke Marshall, and it didn’t make any difference what indignities were inflicted on him. Afterward, he crowded into the front seat with Mikhail and Valya. He had Kronev’s gun and Marshall’s map in his pocket. The girl drove. Durell told her to go to some deserted point along the Neva River. The streets were empty now in the post-midnight hours, but their progress attracted no attention from the few politseyskis they saw at the intersections. They did not talk during the brief ride. Crowded against the girl, Durell felt her shivering steadily, and he wanted to put his arm around her and say something to give her courage but he didn‘t. They turned into a narrow street between two tall, ornate buildings on the waterfront and found themselves on a steel and concrete pier. Arc lights flooded the wide, rainy expanse of shed and wharf with brilliant light.

  “Not here,” Durell protested.

  “Just beyond," she said. “I know where.”

  They bumped across the lighted wharf and eased into a dark alley and there was another, older pier just past it. This one was dark enough. Valya stopped the car and they all got out and Durell pulled Luke Marshall’s stiffening body from the back seat and walked with it to the edge of the pier, where the Neva ran black and icy in a rushing torrent to the sea. He checked everything in Marshall’s clothing and found no identifying marks or papers whatever, and then he dropped Marshall's body into the water. After a moment, the black current, speckled with ice and drifting rubbish, looked the same as before.

  Chapter Six

  LITTLE ATTENTION was paid to the comfort of passengers in the Aeroflot plane from Leningrad to Moscow. There was little zoom for movement, and no food was served. The Russian passengers carried little hampers of sandwich bags. The ride was monotonous.

  Durell sat with Valya in a double scat of the DC-3 model, midway to the tail compartment. Mikhail sat across the aisle ahead. They had not spoken to each other after entering the plane separately at the Leningrad airport. it was past noon now, and the April sun shone on a level landscape six thousand feet below, a land of rolling collective farms, an occasional industrial town, a long and endless ocean of woods and field and wilderness, oppressive in its vast, unending reach.

  There were no empty seats, Opposite Mikhail’s handsome, sullen profile, a man sat With a bandaged head and face, occupying a double seat; his white mummified head rested and lolled on the back of the seat. Durell had watched the man with misgivings from the first moment. His build resembled Kronev’s, although the face was invisible; still, no obstacles had appeared in their way. The other passengers looked innocent enough: mostly men in somber overcoats, minor officials, a French newspaper correspondent With a dapper Intourist guide, and an American man and woman, perhaps a lower-echelon Embassy official. The American couple looked silent and withdrawn, the man middle-aged with disillusioned gray eyes and a tight mouth. His wife seemed harassed and uncomfortable. Durell regarded them for a long time, Weighing a future course of action. He considered everyone in the plane as an enemy, including Mikhail and Valya.

  Valya had performed minor miracles in the small hours of dawn. She had driven them to a small apartment building in the city’s outskirts, gotten them into a tiny worker’s flat that looked and smelled unoccupied, and from there she had left thorn, to return two hours later with plane tickets, breakfast of black bread and fruit and milk, and new identity cards for the three of them.

  Durell and she were traveling as man and wife. Mikhail had turned white with anger at the arrangement, but the girl had cut off his protests coldly.

  “Do not be childish, Mikhail; it is the best I could manage. In any event, we Will all be together, and With the police searching for us now, new cards were absolutely necessary.”

  “I do not like it, Valya.” Mikhail had looked at Durell bleakly. “Why do We need the American at all, now?”

  “He has Marshall’s map—or have you forgotten?”

  “We can take the map from him. The rest we can do ourselves.”

  Durell was grateful for Kronev’s gun when he saw Mikhail‘s eyes consider him.

  “Miko, if we take the map from Durell he will simply go to his Embassy and tell the world about the whole thing. Do you want that to happen?”

  “We can send him with his friend down the Neva. He can talk all he wants, under the ice.”

  “We are not murderers, Miko,“ the girl said impatiently.

  “And if he escapes us and goes to his Embassy anyway?“

  The girl lifted her large blue eyes to regard Durell. “You will give your promise not to betray us, gospodin?”

  “No,” Durell said. “I won’t promise that.”

  “You see?” Mikhail said, rising.

  Durell said, “But we all need each other for the moment. I can promise to stay with you until we reach Moscow safely.”

  “And then?" Valya asked.

  “I have my own duty to perform.”

  “You will betray us then?“

  “It would save you from becoming assassins.” Durell pointed out, “if world-wide publicity halted Z’s entire plan.”

  Mikhail had stood up. “This is an impossible situation. We cannot trust this man as far as Moscow."

  Durell did not move. “I'm afraid you will have to.”

  Mikhail’s move for his knife was oddly clumsy. Durell slapped it from his hand as it came from his pocket, his move so swift that Valya had no time to cry out. He twisted the blade from the dancer‘s hand and flung it aside and as Mikhail uttered a thin, bleating cry, Durell hit him, not very hard. The ballet dancer fell to the floor, his mouth bleeding.

  Durell stood over him. “I’m sorry. I’d like to be friends. I think we all want the same thing.”

  “Miko,” the girl said gently. “Please.”

  Thinking about it as he sat in the plane now With Valya, Durell regretted the incident. But Mikhail had forced his enmity upon him and had not spoken to either of them from that moment on. He knew he had made an implacable enemy of the man because of Mikhail’s loss of face before the girl he loved. But Durell had had no choice.

  The cabin of the plane felt cold. A uniformed stewardess came down the aisle, smiling, and distributed chess hoards to those who Wanted them. The man with the bandaged head asked her for tea and she came back with a miniature samovar on a tray for him. The stewardess returned again to distribute illustrated Russian magazines. Up ahead, two Red Army captains and a Polish colonel engaged in a low muttering argument over chess. The American couple uneasily tried to assume a detached air from the other passengers, as if to pretend they weren’t really here at all. Mikhail had not stirred from his moody pose across the aisle.

  Durell felt Valya’s hand slip into his. Her fingers felt cold and firm. “I have been thinking," she whispered. “About the kind of man you are. You are not a bad man, really. I mean, you are not a brutal man, the Way our newspapers portray your kind. You are strong, yes. You are not like Mikhail.”

  “Mikhail may be all right," Durell said. “He’s in love with you, and you should have arranged the papers so he could sit here with you."

  “One of us must be close to you at all times. This way seemed the simplest." Her fingers moved in his hand. “Do you have a wife back home?”

  “No.”

  “A sweetheart?"

  “Yes.”

  “Is she beautiful?”

  “Yes”

  “Does she know what you are doing? Professionally, I mean?”

  “She has an idea about it, and she resents it. We do not agree about my continuing in this work.”

  Valya smiled. Her eyes were lovely and suddenly serene. “If we have time later, will you tell me more about her? When we are alone I would like to know how life is where you come from. I would like to learn all about it—it seems like another world to me. We were always taught that you were i
nhuman ogres, that you are our enemies. But you are only a man of flesh and blood with a man’s emotions. You do not truly prefer violence, but you are strong enough to be violent when necessary. Yet I think you could be a tender, gentle man, too.”

  “What do you want, Valya?” he asked quietly.

  “Nothing.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder, and he twisted a bit to look down at her. Her blonde hair was parted in the middle and coiled in thick braids at the nape of her neck. A small smile curved her full lips, touched with a trace of pale lipstick. She said: “I feel alone up here in the sky, and at peace with you."

  “We'll be landing soon.”

  “For the moment, everything ugly is below us.”

  “When we land,” Durell said, “we shall be enemies again. Each of us has different duties to perform. If you are successful. I shall fail. I don‘t intend to fail."

  “You and I need not be enemies.”

  “That’s up to you," Durell said.

  A small sigh came from her. She was asleep with her head on his shoulder. He looked across the aisle. Mikhail had twisted about in his seat to stare at them. There was anger and hatred in the dancer’s handsome, dark face.