Assignment - Ankara (20 page)

“Me? Or Anderson?”

“You!”

“Impossible. Wickham speaks no Russian. He could not make such a distinction. What have you done with him, by the way?”

The captain shook his head with frustrated anger. “He is drunk, and asleep I am not inhuman. I let him turn in. After all, he is an officer.” The captain glowered at Durell’s tall figure. “At least he wears a uniform and has identity cards.”

The fisherman was obviously tormented by indecision. It was true, Durell thought, that he was a simple man, devoted only to his daily labor of harvesting the fish in the sea. Kappic, in breaking the radio, had put the captain in an untenable and tormenting position for hours, thanks to the storm that kept the from making headway and delayed their arrival at a Crimean port and contact with Soviet authorities.

The captain shouted something to the two crewmen on guard who vanished from the doorway. “Eh. Well. Now we shall see. We shall let you confront each other—you and this Anderson. We shall see who is the spy and who is the loyal Soviet citizen.”

Durell smiled. “And suppose you make a mistake, Comrade Captain?”

“A mistake will not happen.” The captain grinned cunningly. “But if I accepted your word for what you are—what would you have me do, eh? What would be your command, Comrade Counter-Intelligence Agent?”

“To proceed as you are for the moment,” Durell said.

“Ah. And how long does this moment last?”

“Until the storm ends. You know that one of the Americans aboard has information vital to our security. It was stolen from us by spying techniques, and my orders are to recover this information.”

“Yes. I know this much. It must not be permitted to reach America!”

“So it is vital that we discover who has this information, what it is, precisely, and then keep that person in custody,” Durell went on. “The others, who are innocent, must be returned to the Turkish authorities without creating an international incident. It is equally important to keep everything as quiet a possible in order to leave the enemy in question, not knowing what happened to their agent or the information they want.”

“True.” The captain made a thin, breathing sound. “You would have me turn all the others over to some Turkish vessel, perhaps?”

“Only when the true spy is first identified.”

The fisherman shouted angrily, “And how can I identify him? To the devil with all of you! In the morning when the storm dies, I take you ashore and turn you over to the military and wash my hands of all this.”

“You are not acting as a responsible Soviet citizen, Comrade Captain, when you take the easy course. It would go hard with you if I report that you made difficulties for me. I only need a few hours here to settle the question.”

“You shall have the time—down in the hold!” the captain snorted, chewing on his cigar.

Then he looked up as Anderson was thrust into the cabin. The big man still had a dazed look in his bulging eyes, and there was a grayish pallor under his skin. Yet his words were clear enough, spoken slowly and in faultless Russian.

“Have you decided yet, Comrade Captain?”

“I have decided only that one of you is a liar and an American spy,” the fisherman snapped. “But it is not up to me to decide such things.”

Anderson turned cold-bright eyes, like polished steel, to* ward Durell. His broad mouth grinned. “Very nice, Durell. You pose as my counterpart now, is that it?”

“Just as you did to me, back in Musa Karagh,” Durell said evenly. “That was when we were all betrayed.” He stared at the big man. “One of us was a Russian, or working for the Russians. One of us slugged Francesca, killed Dr. Uvaldi, and arranged for the false radio beacon that pulled us off course over the Black Sea.”

Anderson grinned. “And you think it was me?”

Durell spoke quietly.

“I know it was you. And you’re not Bert Anderson.”

Anderson sighed. The sea made a hollow, smashing sounds against the trawler’s hull. “Can you prove that, Durell?”

“I don’t think I’ll have to,” Durell said. “I wasn’t sure about anything, though, until I helped you take the ring off your injured hand, back in the hold a few minutes ago.”

“Yes, you saw my skin, then.”

“If you were really Anderson, and had been wearing that chunk of coal as a good luck charm since you were a kid back in the coal mines, your finger under that ring would have been white, and not evenly tanned as it is.”

Anderson nodded slowly. He spoke in English, his frog’s mouth smile rueful. “So you know the truth now. Then why go on with the masquerade? You’re fairly caught, you’ve identified me too late, and your mission has failed. There is no place you can go. You can gain nothing by adding to the confusion of our poor fishing captain.”

Durell said, “What happened to the real Bert Anderson, the diplomatic courier sent from Ankara?”

“I had to kill him,” the big man said crisply. “I took his ring and his credentials. I was briefed on his history before I ever came to Karagh—it was my job to intercept him and take his place. Our people in Ankara came through to us with very careful dossiers on your personnel there.” Anderson paused. “I buried the real courier on the mountainside and took his place. It was as simple as that.”

“Not quite. Uvaldi didn’t accept you, really, did he? He didn’t turn the tape over to you. Where did you slip up?” “Uvaldi was a naturally suspicious man, that is all. He insisted he should keep the tape on his person. I let him have his way, for the time, rather than make a serious issue out of it back in the village.”

“But you killed Uvaldi, too.”

“Yes, when I heard you had arrived in Karagh.” The man who called himself Anderson bulked big and powerful in the cabin. His pale eyes glittered ominously, touching the captain’s puzzled face as he listened to the incomprehensible English. He went on, “The mistake I made with you, Durell, was in the way I killed Dr. Roberto Uvaldi. You recognized the professional touch, eh?”

“Yes, it was obvious.”

“So you knew about me from the beginning,” Anderson sighed.

“I suspected everyone. But your use of the needle to kill Uvaldi alerted me to the presence of a professional. It could have been anyone.” Durell paused before Anderson’s wide, assured grin. “You’re the one who attacked Francesca outside her hut the first night?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Why did you try to kill her, too?”

“It was an error. I was coming back from where I had buried my radio and made my broadcast—first arranging for the KT-4, then for the false beacon to bring you all this way. It seemed the easiest escape route, and I’d have you, too, to hand over to my superiors.” Anderson laughed thickly. “I didn’t know who Francesca was, but I didn’t want anyone seeing me in that area—and she was acting rather suspiciously, anyway, sneaking up on the Stuyvers’ hut. I still don’t know why she behaved that way, however. Then someone came, after I jumped her, and I had to let it go and get out of there. That’s when I went back to the inn and killed Uvaldi. Then you came.”

“How did you know about the Uvaldi tape, in the first place?”

Anderson shrugged. “We know about Base Four, of course. And we had complete reports on Uvaldi’s work. The experimental program for personnel nuclear weapons at Kapustin Yar was sure to be spotted, but we aren’t willing to have the information transmitted to your people yet. So I was sent across the Caucasus Mountains to stop the shipment of records. The earthquakes were fortunate for me, creating confusion and disrupting communications and helping me in my work.”

At this point the fishing captain jumped to his feet with an impatient expletive and yelled to his armed guard in the doorway. One of them came forward with a machine-pistol pointed at both Durell and Anderson.

Anderson looked rueful. “So you now claim my identity, too? You are trained to spread confusion, but you won’t get away with it here.”

The fishing captain shouted, “Be quiet, both of you!” Anderson replied in Russian. “This man is a liar, a spy, a notorious imperialist saboteur and secret agent. I order you in the name of the MVD and the Party to arrest him at once.” “You do, eh’?” the man said heavily. “And how am I to know he is not the MVD agent, and you the spy?”

“It can be proved easily,” Anderson said. “I will turn over to you the object he was trying to smuggle to Washington.” Anderson turned and grinned at Durell. “You think I don’t know where Uvaldi’s tape is? I’ll give them to the captain, and that will convince him. I’m sorry for you, Durell. You’re a brave man, doing the same job as mine, but we happen to be born with different loyalties.”

“I think you’re bluffing,” Durell said.

“We’ll see.” The big man’s strange, gray face turned back to the captain and he spoke sharply. “Among the prisoners is a blonde woman who has a large black leather bag. Take it from her, but be careful. You will find some old relics in it, books and Aramaic scrolls. And among them will be a small roll of plastic tape. This is what the imperialist agent was trying to smuggle through to Washington.” Anderson turned to grin at Durell. “One must speak in the language of the propaganda press to these simple people. They are impressed by slogans. You are surprised that I know where to find the tape?”

“A little. You didn’t seem so sure of it an hour ago.”

“True. But since then I engaged in a mental exercise that involved the process of elimination. I can see that my estimate was correct. The tape is in Susan Stuyvers’ handbag, isn’t it?”

“No,” Durell said.

“No? You are bluffing now!”

“Send for it,” Durell said. “You’ll see.”

He had no further hope, as Anderson spoke to the captain again. The captain looked dubious, then shrugged and agreed, since he had nothing to lose by eliminating this test. One of the crew members was sent below to fetch the bag and Susan. The captain settled back and lit his cigar with a wooden match. A second crewman stood alert and ready with the machine-pistol in the cabin doorway. Durell and Anderson faced each other from opposite sides of the captain’s room.

Sooner or later, Durell thought, your luck runs out and the skill of any gambler defeats itself against the mathematical percentages. You had a long run for your money, he thought. You were lucky sometimes, and skillful, and you survived when other men died and failed. Each time you made it, your survival factor lessened and grew a little more desperate.

Now he saw no way out of the dilemma. He had gambled on a delay by confusing the fishing captain by claiming Anderson’s identity, but even then he had only played it by ear, hoping that the time thus gained might bring about some slight change of fortune, some small tipping of the scales that he could use. But even this was now going to be lost to him.

Anderson swayed slightly and grasped at the captain’s desk for sudden support. A look of surprised crossed the big man’s face.

Durell spoke quietly, “You’re badly hurt, you know. You need a doctor.”

“Yes. I know.”

“It’s a concussion, most likely.”

“Possibly. I have a blinding headache. But do not take any satisfaction from that, Durell. I’ll live long enough to turn you over to my people for whatever they decide to do with you.

It’s been a long time coming, you know. You’ve been in our files for some years, with a price on your head.” Anderson straightened again with an effort. “But don’t count on my passing out before the captain knows which of us is authentic, so to speak.”

“I don’t count on it,” Durell said. “I’m sorry you’re hurt.” “Are you?”

“I don’t hate you for doing your job. You’re damned good at it.”

“Thank you. I would have thought that you regarded me as a murderer,” Anderson said wryly. “An ogre, who kills wantonly, to be dreaded and destroyed, if possible—”

“We are at war, you and I—long, cold, dreary war that has no value in terms of humanity’s progress. No bugles blow, no trumpets blare for you and me,” Durell said.

Anderson’s mouth widened. “You truly think of it this way? I did not suppose—an imperialist agent like yourself—” He paused. “But you would kill me if you could, wouldn’t you?” “Yes,” Durell said. “That’s my job.”

“Then in a sense we are even.”

“Not yet. Nothing has been decided yet.”

“It will be—now.”

They both turned as the crewman who had been sent below pushed Susan, stumbling, over the cabin threshold. The man’s face was scratched, and he shoved the girl with a show of brutal anger. Susan fell and sprawled on the deck, her hair a thick screen across her face. Her head was bowed and her breathing was laboured as she lay on the steel deck.

The crewman held the polished black bag.

Durell started toward the fallen girl, but the captain snapped, “Stay where you are! Do not touch her!”

“Are you all right, Susan?” Durell asked quietly.

She lifted her head slowly. She had been hit in the face several times, and her lip was puffy and swollen. Her pale eyes stared at Durell without comprehension for a moment, and then she moaned, “Oh, God, look what they’ve done to me.” “It’s all right, Susan,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have offered any resistance. Don’t say any more now.”

Anderson spoke in guttural Russian to the fishing captain. “Open the black bag, comrade, but be careful of the old books the missionary had in there. They are valuable. But even more valuable is the little roll of tape you will find among them.

It is this tape that contains the coded information our scientists want to keep the enemy from stealing.”

The captain held the bag poised over his desk, and his small, shrewd eyes considered Durell. “Is this true?”

Durell drew a deep breath. “He is a liar and murderer, an enemy agent, Captain. If the tape is in the bag, then he hid it there.”

“You both give me only double-talk,” the fishing captain said angrily. “Well, we shall see.”

He opened the bag with a wrench and turned it upside down and dumped the contents on his desk.

Long ago, when Durell learned the fine art of bluffing at poker from old Jonathan, his grandfather, who knew all the ways and habits of the former Mississippi riverboat gamblers, he had been taught never to swerve from the course of a bluff. Once you start, you must stick to it, the old man said. No matter what the odds against you then, you have to face out your opponents to the bitter end.