CHAPTER ONE

Two things about the hotel room bothered him, although the first was a matter of routine and Sam Durell had run into it before. The day was hot, even for September, when he landed at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, on the Pan Am flight from Wake. No one had met him, although he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Eliot Barnes’ freckled, Midwestern face among the Japanese crowds. But that was as it should be. He wasn’t even troubled by the taxi that followed him into the big, sprawling complex of the most cosmopolitan city in the world. He could look into that later. What he didn’t like about this hotel room was the air-conditioning that sealed the windows and the Japanese translation of Colette’s short stories that lay in plain sight on top of the dresser.

It was Durell’s first visit to Japan in six years, and he looked forward to some days in Tokyo, getting the operation on the road. It seemed like a simple deal. Back in Washington, when General McFee briefed him, the little man had referred to it as a vacation. Durell discounted sixty per cent of what his boss usually said, but this time it really looked like a straightforward assignment.

Tokyo had changed since his last visit. It was always changing, like any living organism. He liked this vast city, largest in the world, a true melting pot of the world’s cultures. He checked in at eight a.m. at a small hotel near the moated Imperial Palace, and from the suspiciously sealed windows—thanks to the distasteful air-conditioning—he could glimpse a yagura, one of the palace’s corner towers. There was a white haze in the hot morning sky. Tagashi had made the reservation, and his greeting at the desk had been quietly anonymous. Tagashi was chief field head for K Section in the Tokyo district, and it should have been all right.

But it wasn’t.

He fanned the hotel room as a matter of routine, and in three minutes found a microphone behind a Hiroshige wood-block print, hanging on the wall by a spider-thin wire. Anyone might have planted it, and he left the bug where it was, satisfied just to know it was there.

The Colette book was another matter, because it did not belong in the room at all.

He didn’t touch it until he examined every inch of the dresser with caution, because he had known good men who had been blown to bits by such innocent-looking booby traps. Air-conditioning and sealed windows made another simple way to die, through the introduction of poison gas. Johnny Crown went that way in Singapore, a year ago. The alternative to risk was to leave the hall door open, which wasn’t much better, because then you chanced the nameless face and figure that might suddenly pop up in the doorway and with a single, silenced shot cut you down, all in an instant of eternal dismay.

He decided to risk the air-conditioning, since Tagashi himself had chosen this hotel.

But the book—

Durell was a careful man. He had to be, since his survival factor in his business had long since run out. He was a subchief of K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency, which meant he was a field man in the dark, silent war of defense that was fought in every corner and alley of the world. He was a tall man, with black hair touched with gray at the temples, with dark blue self-contained eyes that occasionally betrayed a flash of Cajun temperament. His home was in Bayou Peche Rouge, in Louisiana, and in his vocation as a hunter of men, he’d had to learn the care of being the quarry as well.

He wore a dark blue suit and a white button-down shirt and a narrow blue knitted necktie. In a special holster tailored inside his coat was his snub-barreled .38 Special. His single black suitcase was a tricky affair built for him by the lab men at No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington; it contained several gimmicky devices of his trade. He rarely used them. He had no special cover identity on this trip. He had come in his nominal rating in the Foreign Service as a senior economic advisor, a free-wheeling attache to the Embassy. The mission did not seem to call for anything else.

The telephone rang while he still considered the bright jacket of the paper-bound Japanese edition of Colette. He let it ring for a few seconds while he checked the instrument. It seemed clean. He picked it up, but he said nothing. “Hunh-hunh,” a voice breathed.

He waited.

“Sam? Is that you, Cajun?”

It was not Eliot Barnes. It was not Tagashi.

“This is Waldo,” the voice said. “Jeezus, what an hour! Only for you, Cajun, would I get up this early.”

“Waldo,” Durell repeated, waiting.

“Waldo Fingali” The man was aggrieved. “Don’t you remember me, Sam?” There was a cackle of laughter. “See, I’m still in Tokyo. How about that?”

“Are you still drunk, Waldo?”

“No, no, no. Not today. Special occasion, just for you, Sam, I’m stone sober. You sound funny, Sam.”

“I just checked in. How did you know I was here?”

“I’ve got ways. Kaiwa’s got ways. Hell, I’ve been working for Kaiwa for a year now. Very important job, hunh. Listen, Sam, I’ve got to see you right away. Right away, understand?”

“No, I don’t understand,” Durell said carefully.

“But haven’t you seen my book? The Colette item?” “Yes, I noticed it.”

Waldo Fingal giggled tinnily in the telephone at Durell’s ear. “I’ll bet you did. That’s why you’re still alive. You opened it yet? No, I’ll bet you didn’t. Look, turn to page 57. Right? I left it for you. Great Buddha, burn the note, huh? It’s strictly between you and me.”

“Waldo, you’re not in the business any more.”

“I told you, I’m with Kaiwa Trading Corporation. But they do business with you, right? Listen—read page 57, then for chrissake try to make it. I like you, Sam. You were good to me.”

Durell said suddenly: “Did you bug this room?”

“What? No. Not me. Maybe the local cops.”

“Maybe.”

“All right, all right, I’ll get off the line. Read the book, hear? Then I’ll see you. It’s a big chance, Cajun. It’s just because you tried your best for me, and it isn’t your fault I flopped six years ago, hunh? It will be good to see you, Sam.”

“All right,” Durell said. He hung up.

Waldo Fingal had worked the K Section safe house in Kanda, the student quarter of Tokyo, six years ago. Durell remembered this clearly—he was trained to absorb detailed statistical dossiers, although Waldo Fingal was not just a statistic. He was a sad example of a good man throwing himself off a cliff to destruction. Durell was surprised that Waldo was still alive.

Even six years ago, Fingal’s bony frame and professorial head with its mass of wild grayish hair looked too fragile to survive the battering of Tokyo’s crowds. He had been a professor of European Literature at Tokyo University and did translating for a Tokyo publishing house, when he happened to stumble on a code book used by a foreign embassy. He took it to an American diplomat friend, and from there he was employed to run a safe house for K Section over a bookstore on the Jimbo-Cho.

Fingal’s trouble was fear.

Some men come live with it as part of their daily lives, and others let it drive them toward the fate they dread so much. In Durell’s business, fear was a part of everyday existence. Tempered with caution, the eternal danger could be controlled, even used as a tool to sharpen the work that had to be done. There was no escape from danger. Most men in the field, like those in an assault troop battalion, learned to accept it and work with it. Fingal let it destroy him.

His trouble was drink first, then drugs, then women. He was brilliant, sober or drunk, a bit of Western flotsam that somehow had drifted into Oriental waters. His personal appearance was not attractive. He had a long, thin nose that always looked bloodless and white, shaggy gray brows, and brilliant eyes. Fear, the daily terrors that haunted him, the nightmares he rode each night to sweating panic, made him utterly unreliable.

Durell saved him from quiet extradition proceedings that would have landed Professor Waldo Fingal in Leavenworth, back in the States, for an indeterminate sentence as a traitor. Waldo Fingal was not a traitor. He was simply lost in his own hell of weakness. Durell arranged for Waldo’s separation from K Section as harmlessly as possible, changed the safe house, and arranged a sanitary cordon around the man so that nothing Waldo knew or had known about K Section could possibly be of use to an enemy.

There were enough enemies.

So he was surprised that Waldo hadn’t been cut up into little pieces and dropped into Tokyo Bay long ago, for not having the answers to questions undoubtedly put to him by many curious foreigners.

Durell opened the Colette book.

His Japanese was rusty, but he could read the first pages with reasonable fluency, and he noted that Waldo Fingal had been the translator. He turned to page 57.

It was an old basic code that had been used during Waldo’s brief career with K Section, but was now abandoned. The message consisted of small dots to identify certain ideograms on the page, and it asked Durell to meet Fingal at the Matsushiri Shrine in the Chokurijo district east of Tokyo at eleven that morning. The last symbol expressed extreme urgency.

Durell showered and shaved and chose a fresh shirt identical to the one he had worn on the flight from the States, and wondered if he should allow Fingal’s message to sidetrack him from his immediate program. The operation that had brought him in such haste from Washington to Tokyo had rated top priority, with an assist from SEATO. Joint Chiefs had also requested speed, at K Section’s weekly briefing session. General McFee had tried to shunt the job back to SEATO’s G2, with no luck.

They specifically requested Sam Durell. Nothing could be done, it was said, unless Durell headed the operation. At the time McFee regretfully told him about this, Durell had been planning a long and intimate weekend with Deirdre Padgett at her secluded home in Prince John, on the Chesapeake.

“Why me, specifically?” he had asked McFee.

The general was annoyed. “I told them to let Eliot Barnes handle it, with Tagashi, our man in Tokyo. But they insist on you, Sam, because you once knew Colonel Alexi Kaminov.”

“Kaminov? Yes, I’ve met him.”

“He was your opposite number during the Budapest days, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Kaminov is in China now. Or Manchuria. Or North Viet Nam. He’s military liaison chief with Moscow, sent out of Moscow. He seems to be disenchanted with his work.”

Durell said, “Kaminov seemed to be a sensitive man.”

McFee said, “What did you do with him in Budapest, buddy up to Mm? You don’t usually fraternize with KGB people.”

“Kaminov happened to look the other way when I took some refugees out, some folks Joint Chiefs wanted to talk to. I told you, he is sensitive.”

“You saved his life, too,” McFee said accusingly.

“One of the refugees wanted to put a bullet in the back of Kaminov’s head when he looked the other way at the Austrian border,” Durell said dryly. “I didn’t think Kaminov deserved it. We shook hands in the dark.”

“He knew who you were,” McFee said.

“They’ve got my dossier at No. 2 Dzherzhinsky Square.” “So he seems to trust you, Sam.”

“He shouldn’t,” Durell said harshly. “At another time, another dark night, and it may be one or the other of us.” “I see.” McFee sighed. “Well, our problem seems to be that, after due reflection for a number of years of working against us, Major Alexi Kaminov seems to want to defect and come over to our side. Understand? He’s disenchanted. As you say, he must be sensitive, notwithstanding his training. I don’t quite trust it. I can’t imagine, for instance, your going over to them.”

“No,” Durell said, and grinned slightly.

“Kaminov is a walking index file of Peiping’s military machine and staff plans for the new mobilizations along the Indian and Southeast Asian borders. The pot seems to be boiling there at the moment. That’s how SEATO comes into it. When we received Kaminov’s message, we found it stipulated two conditions, however.”

Durell waited.

“The first is that Kaminov will only surrender to you, Sam.” Durell waited again.

“And he wants his girlfriend, another KGB agent stationed in their Tokyo Embassy at the moment, to be on hand when he steps over the line to our side.”

“Her name?”

“Nadja Osmanovna. She’s a Grade Two Supervisor in their Group Area B.”

“I know about that one,” Durell said. “They say she’s hardly human. Beautiful, but a terror.”

“You never ran from beautiful women, Cajun.”

“She’s bloodthirsty.”

McFee said: “And Kaminov says he loves her and won’t defect without her. Make sense?”

“Some,” Durell said.

“How?”

“It’s a trap,” Durell said.

“Yes?”

“For me.”

McFee permitted himself a small smile. “So?”

“I’ll go,” Durell said.

CHAPTER TWO

He was followed from the hotel.

He took the shosen, the Tokyo subway, and stood among the chattering, swaying workers heading to their jobs; he noted the incongruity of women in Western dress next to others in kimonos and yakutas, of men in blue business suits and others in traditional robes—even a yellow-garbed Shinto priest in full regalia. There is no such thing as the inscrutable Oriental, Durell thought, listening to the noisy conversations, watching the newspaper-readers, who were like subway riders anywhere else in the world. They were interested in the Tokyo exchange, the local baseball games, their lecture classes, gossip and shows. They laughed and frowned like anyone else. Their faces were open to him. They paid no attention to him, accepting his lean, muscular height and Western clothes as just one more of the gai-jin, people from the outside, a foreigner among the other passengers.

From the subway terminal he took a bus that toiled through the grimy, ugly Tokyo suburbs, heading east. All Japanese cities are ugly, and you don’t truly know them until you get behind the walled houses in the residential districts and find the quiet, serene beauty of traditional Japanese life. Tokyo was only uglier than the other cities because it was bigger.

Durell’s shadow was a small Japanese teenage girl who wore excessively tight blue slacks and a white blouse and wore her thick, sleek black hair in severe bangs. Her mouth was sulky and unhappy in the heavy September heat. He noted the incongruity of her traditional tabi socks under her scuffed white loafers.

He did not think she was dangerous.

It was a festival day of some kind—there were countless local and national religious occasions marked by the Japanese, and this was one of the local sort—and when he got off the bus he found himself facing a crowded park by the sea with people all streaming in one direction. He let the current of humanity carry him along that way.

The sun was hot. The morning light glinted off the sea with blinding flashes, as if a thousand mirrors were played upon the sea pines dotting the shore. Brightly colored balloons bobbed and swayed in the wind. There were peddlers of all sorts, selling lucky amulets, souvenirs, food—soba sellers with wheeled carts dispensing soup, stalls offering smoked eels and raw fish, bean paste, noodles or rice.

Durell followed the crowd.

There were other Westerners here and there, visitors and tourists with their inevitable cameras, perspiring in the sun, confused by the brightly-colored chaos. The wide path fed people across shaded lawns like a river, across delicately arched wooden bridges, all leading to the huge red torii, the temple gate, up ahead.

The girl disappeared.

Durell did not see any sign of Waldo Fingal.

One soba seller had an ingenious arrangement on bicycle wheels for his cart, enabling him to remain seated while he ladled out his bowls of soup and noodles to hungry customers. He was an old man with a shaven head and a dirty white shirt and old black trousers. He wore geta clogs on big feet that looked like the twisted roots of an old tree. His voice was shrill and penetrating as he cried his wares.

He followed Durell across the last arched bridge into the temple grounds beyond the massive torii. The temple building was like a red jewel set among sparkling ponds and dwarf pines, with the sea and the towering white clouds on the horizon as a backdrop for a pageant. Here were Shinto priests in several matsuri, or processions, going about their rituals in colorful robes and ceremonial black headdresses, unconcerned with the milling tourists about them.

The sightseers’ route circled the temple and moved toward the pagoda that stood on a rocky promontory in the calm sea. Incense mingled with the smells of food; the shrill cries of children and peddlers were staccato notes among the murmuring celebrants. There were dragon costumes and those of Japanese witches and, among the children, even some outfits from the American Wild West.

The old soba seller pedaled vigorously up to Durell and extended a bowl of his soup. He spoke in Japanese.

“When the tiger is hungry, he must eat!” the man said, grinning, showing his toothless gums.

“No, thank you, I’m not hungry.”

“But, sir, you must be. The tiger is always hungry.”

“Then he chooses stronger game, old man.”

“Ah-hee! To be sure! You are Durell-san?”

Durell looked more closely at the old peddler. He still seemed quite ordinary. He nodded, and the old man said: “Follow me. You go in the third door in the back of the temple, where I will stop to sell my soup. There is nothing to fear.”

“Who will I meet there?”

“An old friend, ah-hee! He married my daughter, you know!”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Well, she died, but no matter. He is still my son. I speak of Fingal-san. He waits for you. He is a desperate man, sir. I wish you to help him as he wishes to help you.”

“All right, old man. Lead the way.”

He looked around for the young Japanese girl who had followed him from the hotel. She was not in sight. The crowd pressed him forward behind the jingling bells of the soba cart.

The temple was a low affair with a wooden pavilion circling it. Deep gongs sounded from the red-curtained entrance. The stream of tourists divided, most going to the front, where there were picnic grounds on the beach beyond. Durell turned left, following the jingling bicycle cart. There were three doors in the back wall of the temple. All were closed, recessed in deep shadow under the feathery eaves. A small porch ran the length of this end. Several people had gathered under the shade of nearby pines to rest.

The soba man paused at the door and twisted his head around to grin at Durell.

“My son-in-law waits inside. There is no danger. He will help you. And you must help him.”

“I’ll try.”

Durell went up on the porch and walked directly to the third door, a panel painted bright blue; he pushed it open and went in.

There was only darkness.

He flattened immediately against the wall to his right, feeling the pressure of the wooden panels against his shoulders. After the dazzling glare of the hot sun, there was nothing he could see, but he could sense he was in a small room that smelled of cedar and incense and a man’s fearful sweat.

“Hunh-hunh,” a voice said. “I wouldn’t want to tackle you even like this, Cajun. Forget the gun. We’re alone.”

He smelled of shochu, the cheap wine sold in the workers’ districts, and not even the thick incense of the temple could stifle it. Durell’s eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom and he saw he was in an utterly bare, little room with another door opposite the one he had entered. Waldo Fingal sat on the polished wooden floor against the far door, his white suit dirty and rumpled.

“Put away the bottle, Waldo,” Durell told him.

“Sure. It’s empty. I haven’t the price of another, either.” “How drunk are you?”

“Drunk enough to be here, but not enough to chase the glooms. It’s good to see you, Sam. You haven’t changed.” “I’ve changed,” Durell said.

“So have I, hunh. Not so pretty, I guess. Have you got any of the taxpayer’s money to spend on incidentals, Sam?” “Some. Are you an incidental?”

“What I’ve got to sell is the god’s truth.”

“Then sell it,” Durell said.

“Listen, Sam, I’ve had a hard time. I never blamed you when they kicked me out as a security risk. You could’ve slapped me in a Federal pen, the way I got the willies and funked out. But I never really let you down. I just shook at every shadow, that was all. That’s how it was. I never blamed you for the way I threw it all away.”

“Stand up, Waldo, and let’s have a look at you.”

“I’m not so pretty. I’m a beaten old man.”

“Is that really your father-in-law outside, selling soup? He says you married his daughter.”

“She died of T.B. in six months. Or maybe it was a broken heart. The Japanese can do that, you know.”

Waldo Fingal was an emaciated skeleton of a man. His wispy hair was like a halo around his partially bald head. His nose was sharp and gray, like something fashioned out of actor’s putty. He wore his white suit carelessly. Only his eyes were alive, filled with eternal terror, still intellectually brilliant, dourly amused at himself. When he moved closer to Durell, the smell of sour wine on his breath was oppressive.

“Did you read any of the Colette book?” Fingal asked. “I did a fine translation there. When it was finished, I had enough to live on for six months. It was my last job of that sort. That’s why I went to work for Omaru, when he contacted me.”

“Omaru?”

“Omaru runs the Kaiwa Trading Corporation. He runs people and propaganda and espionage cash back and forth along the East Asia coasts. Uses his fishing boats for that. You’re going to work with him, Sam. It was his pipeline that got you the message about Colonel Alexi Kaminov.” “You know a lot, Waldo. It could be dangerous.”

“All of life seems dangerous to me. That’s my trouble. If you don’t know Omaru, he’ll contact you. You’ll have to use his apparatus. I work for him, as I said. A mean bastard—Irish-Japanese. A combination, hunh? He married the widow of a Japanese baron who went into industry and made a pile in Manchuria in the Thirties. Isome, that’s her name. She’s a witch, all right, a tiny, beautiful bag of dirty tricks. They say she’s the true brains of the KGB Apparat here, but nobody knows. Omaru is just a businessman playing both sides of the fence.”

“What kind of work do you do for him, Waldo?”

“I run errands. And I work his code books for communication. That’s how I know all about Kaminov.”

“I see.”

Fingal said: “How much can you spare for me, Cajun?”

“It depends.”

Fingal giggled. “How much is your life worth, hunh?”

“It depends on who wants it,” Durell said.

“Well, you know the KGB people have you on their list.” “I’ve known that for some time.”

“And Omaru is a businessman.”

“How much will they offer Omaru?”

“Twenty thousand, American.”

“Are you sure, Waldo?”

“It’s a pretty good price in the current market. You ought to be flattered, Cajun. They’re a bit tight-fisted about American currency. The exchange problem, you know.”

Durell said, “Is there any truth in the message that Kaminov wants to come over to our side?”

“Hunh. Yes. It’s true. He wants to. I decoded his message in Omaru’s pipeline myself.”

“Where is Kaminov now?”

“In Manchuria.”

“That’s a big place. Where?”

“The coast, somewhere. I don’t know.”

“Tell me, Waldo.”

“I would, and for free, Sam. Honest. You were good to me, and I’d tell you for free. But I don’t know.”

“Does Omaru know?”

“No.”

“Then who does?”

“The girl. Kaminov’s girlfriend. The bitch who runs the KGB apparatus in their embassy here. Nadja Osmanovna.”

“How would she know?”

“Colonel Kaminov fixed it, for insurance, because he wants to get out only if the girl comes with him, you see? He wants her real bad, I suppose. He’s a fool. But he’s hinging it all on whether she comes over to you, along with him, you see?” Waldo made a gulping noise. His thin frame wavered in the gloomy little temple room. Durell heard the reverberating boom of a gong in another part of the ancient wooden structure. The air shook.

Waldo said: “I was going to charge you plenty for all this, Sam, and here I’m giving it away free.”

“You’ll get paid. So we need Osmanovna’s cooperation just to find out where Kaminov is holed up in Manchuria. It’s presumably near the coast. But from what I hear, the girl is dedicated to her work. Any ideas on where or how to persuade her?”

“Nope.”

“All right. What else?”

“Their death list, Sam. They want to pick you off when you go over there. On their territory, you see? Much better for their propaganda machine, right? Right?”

“I see.”

“Omaru’s in it. The fat bastard always plays a double game. You use him, he collects from you, then he uses you and collects blood-money when you cross over and he hands you to the other side. Kaminov gets shot. The girl, too, if she plays along with you. As for you—I hate to think of it.”

“I see,” Durell said again.

“Don’t you believe me, Sam?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen, Sam, Omaru would skin me alive—I mean that literally, he plays games that way—if he knew I contacted you like this.” “Are you sure?”

“Of what?”

“Are you sure Omaru himself didn’t set this up?”

Waldo snorted angrily. “You’re too damned devious, Sam. You’re too suspicious.”

“That’s how to stay alive in this business.”

Waldo grew angrier. “Well, hell, I just came here to do you a favor. My neck isn’t worth much, but I like to keep it without slits, you know. You were good to me once, Sam, and I didn’t want Omaru to fatten his bank accounts with your carcass, that’s all. You want to forget it, all right. You don’t owe me anything at all.”

“And you haven’t told me everything,” Durell said. “Hunh?”

“I’ll pay you, Waldo.”

“A hundred?”

“Much more, if it’s worth it.”

Fingal’s eyes glinted white in the gloom. The air was thicker now with the smell of incense. Some sort of ceremony had begun in the other part of the temple. They could hear the shuffling of feet, the beating of more gongs.

Durell said: “Don’t invent anything now, Waldo. You could still die in a Leavenworth cell, you know.”

“Well, it’s just that Kaminov is at a place. . .”

“Where?”

“I just don’t know where! The girl knows, that Nadja Osmanovna. That cold, bitchy doll is the key. And they’re all scared of her. A beautiful murder machine, that’s what she is. But she set up a private code with Kaminov, a long time ago, I guess. He was her instructor in Moscow, when she was at the KGB training school. Something private, just between them.”

“What is it?” Durell insisted.

“Pere Jacques," Waldo said.

“What?”

“That’s all of it. That’s the word. It’s the key that tells you where Kaminov is waiting for you to come and get him. Omaru would like to know what it is, too. When you get the girl and ask her, and if she tells you where it is or what it means, you go there in one of Omaru’s boats. Up to then, it’s a clean operation. But once you contact Kaminov, it gets good and dirty. Omaru turns you over to them, they scratch you off their Blue List, they nab Kaminov and shoot him as a traitor, and count their blood-money. Hunh-hunh.” Waldo was laughing. “So that’s the word. Pere Jacques. Mean anything at all to you, Sam?”

“No,” Durell said.

“Well, Osmanovna will know.”

“Is it a place, or a person?”

“It’s nothing. It might be everything . . . I’ve got to go now, Sam.”

“Wait, Waldo.”

“No. All of a sudden, I’m scared. I talked too much. You owe me a hundred, right? Omaru will kill me, though, if he finds the money on me. You could mail it to me. I’ll call your hotel, give you my address. It’s a bookstore, a front where Omaru stores printed propaganda matter taken over by his boats. I do translations. They’ve got a printing press there, too. The bookstore used to belong to my wife.”

“Waldo—”

“Please let me go now, Sam. Good luck.” Waldo went to the outer door. His thin frame was no more than a passing shadow. Then all at once he grinned and stuck out a shaking, emaciated hand to Durell. Durell took it. It was like holding a handful of wet twigs. Waldo said: “Give me a minute to mix with the crowd, hunh? And one last word of advice, Sam. You want some advice from me?”

“I’m listening,” Durell said.

“Then forget about Colonel Kaminov. Go after Omaru. He’s the one. Kill him. Smash him. Then go home. That’s all.”

He was gone.

There was a quick glare of light as he opened the door, then the gloom returned. Durell waited one minute, wanting a cigarette, wondering how much of Fingal’s information he could believe. He decided to talk it over with Eliot Barnes and Tagashi at their meeting today.

He heard Waldo Fingal’s scream as he stepped outside into the harsh sunlight.

From the rear pavilion where he stood he could look across the miniature gardens and ponds and small, jewel-like bridges to where the crowd was gathering, like steel filings attracted to a magnet, sweeping along the paths toward Waldo.

The man had moved fast—but not fast enough.

Durell jumped from the pavilion and walked with the crowd. He did not see the old soba seller or the Japanese teenage girl who had followed him from his hotel.

He was much taller than most of the Japanese, and he could look down to where the three black-uniformed Japanese police had cleared a space around Fingal. He saw Fingal’s face, teeth bared to the white, bright sky. There was a bone-handled knife up to the hilt between his skinny ribs.

But not much blood. There didn’t have to be. The knife had been shoved straight home to Waldo Fingal’s heart.

CHAPTER THREE

He knew the girl was somewhere near. She had not followed him for nothing. He did not know who she was or what she wanted, but he determined to find out. Perhaps she had seen Waldo killed, or had done it herself. One reason for Fingal’s death was obvious—he had been killed by Omaru for talking to him. He would settle that later. He would make up for Fingal’s death, because it was a small death for himself, and Fingal’s life, however mean and hopeless, lessened his own chances for survival when it was lost.

He stopped thinking about it and concentrated on the girl. She had been a clumsy shadow. Perhaps she would be an equally clumsy quarry. Durell slid into the role of hunter with a grim, single-minded ease.

She had used public transportation to follow him, and unless she was part of the affair that tied into Waldo Fingal, and had been picked up by a car as part of that business, she had to use the bus back to Tokyo. He walked with a long stride back across the park, and was gratified to pick her up quickly.

She made the mistake of turning her head, as if looking for him, and he saw she was pale with fright. Her eyes locked with his—a mistake no professional would make—and then she stepped aboard the crowded bus. The bus door slammed shut and she was away from him, the dust churning up under the vehicle’s wheels, heading back to the city.

He could wait for a second bus, but there were a hundred or more stops on the way, and she could get off and vanish before his own bus came in sight. He couldn’t afford that. The single wide-eyed glance she had thrown him had shown him she was acting in panic, running from Waldo’s death, cancelling her own commitment to follow him.

Near the bus stop was a coastal road to a cluster of fishing piers and teahouses. Some cars were parked there. The second one was a taxi. The driver wasn’t around. Durell saw the keys in the ignition and slid inside. The car was a Datsun, and he was familiar enough with it.

The fact that he was a Westerner, if he were caught pinching the taxi, would raise hell with the local police. But he had to risk that. A man going into the teahouse gave him a hard, curious stare, but kept going. The driver didn’t come out. In fact, there was no alarm at all.

Just luck, he thought grimly.

It could turn out to be the sort of luck Waldo Fingal had.

He caught up to the bus before it made its first stop. The girl didn’t get off. She didn’t get off at any of the other stops along the route through Tokyo’s industrial suburbs, either. It was hotter here, and the highway was typically Japanese—poorly maintained and overcrowded. He was aware of fatigue from the long flight over the Pacific that had ended only this morning. Fortunately, he had breakfasted on the jet, and he had long ago learned to snatch sleep and rest under any conditions. He could keep going for seventy-two hours, if necessary.

It was noon when the bus he was following swung past Hibaya Park. The girl got off there. Durell immediately swung the cab to the curb and left it, keys inside, and walked after the girl. She did not look back. She walked quickly, her head high, her small hips swinging insolently in her tight blue jeans, her thick black hair bobbing as she weaved in and out along the crowded sidewalks.

As in every city, wealth lived cheek-by-jowl with poverty in Tokyo, but here there were even greater contrasts. Along the whirling neon signs of the Ginza, which never seemed to be turned off, there were women in kimonos or Western frocks, Indian saris, or assortments of rags. There were old women in coveralls, straw sandals and gumboots, and children in stiffly starched dresses and shirts. Traffic swarmed in rivers of bicycles, crammed trolleys and cars, but the current always made way for Tokyo’s religious personalities—Shinto kannushi priests, Buddhists, Catholic nuns. There were proud Indian Sikhs in pink turbans, black students’ tunics, American military uniforms, Hindu saddhus and swarms of short, aggressive Japanese businessmen in dark, Madison-Avenue-style suits.

The girl picked up a bicycle out of a rack near the Mitsukoshi department store and then pedaled slowly toward the Babylonian architecture of the Diet Building. Durell followed easily on foot—the traffic was jammed, and her progress was slower than his. Once he had to pause, and he bought a copy of the Tokyo newspaper Mainichi and pretended to read it.

He wondered if she worked for the police or the man named Omaru. She wore her silk shirt hanging out over the blue jeans, and he guessed she was not more than twenty. Her glossy black hair was clipped in straight bangs across her forehead and made her look like a souvenir Nipponese doll. He followed her through the cascading balloons that carried advertising ideograms proclaiming the virtues of beer, toothpaste or butter. The afternoon sun was hotter than before.

She turned into a side-street off the Nishi, finally, and Durell found himself in a narrow, cobbled alley that echoed with clattering sandals and the cries of peddlers hawking bean paste, tea, fish and Coca-Cola. He noted many pachinko parlors—the pinball craze that gripped modem Japan. He waved off two painted, simpering pam-pam girls and waited for a procession of yellow-robed priests to pass, holding red umbrellas, and followed by turbulent youngsters dressed and masked as devils and dragons. The girl parked her bicycle against the curb and then stared into a gaudy pachinko parlor a few feet away.

Durell had almost forgotten the tremendous crush of people in Tokyo. There were nightclubs, bars, restaurants displaying their specialty of raw slabs of fish rolled into rice balls. You could please every exotic taste and fashion here, he thought.

He did not close in on the girl until she walked on and then paused outside the dim, speckled window of an old-fashioned Chinese chemist’s. The place looked somewhat sinister with its display jars of mummified snakes, vipers and tortoises, and big bottles of poisonous-looking liquids.

Then she disappeared inside.

Durell stepped quickly and pushed open the shuttered door to the Chinese chemist’s and went in. A strange scent of chemicals and herbs mingled with the starchy odor of fresh laundry. There were gloomy cases of ceramic jars, a grinning devil’s mask hanging from the ceiling, an abrupt feeling of darkness after the bright street outside.

The girl was already at the back of the shop, opening a rear door, when Durell jumped across the room and caught her wrist. She gasped and tried to spin away.

“Hold it, honey.”

“You’re hurting me—please—who—”

“You know who I am,” Durell said.

She tried to tug her wrist free. Her bones were small and fragile, though her body was more mature than those of most Japanese girls, and her boyish haircut made her look hoydenish. Her ripe mouth was angry, no longer frightened, and her eyes were tough and cynical. He knew his grip hurt her.

“All right, I won’t run away,” she yielded.

He said: “You followed me all morning, from the airport to the temple grounds. Who are you?”

“My name is Yuki,” she said.

“Did you see who killed Waldo Fingal?”

“No, I didn’t see it happen. I was waiting for you to come out. Please, I’m not your enemy. I’m supposed to take you to my father.”

“And who is he?”

“Tagashi-san—he works for you, doesn’t he?” Her English was that of a schoolgirl, spoken with a sing-song cadence. He eased his grip on her wrist. There seemed to be no one else in the chemist’s shop. “I followed you because he wanted to be certain nothing bad happened.”

“But something did, didn’t it? To Waldo Fingal.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said. She looked sulky, massaging her wrist. “My father got me a position in the Soviet Embassy, as a personal maid for Nadja Osmanovna. You know the name? I’ve been there for a week. He arranged all my papers. Do you understand? I was about to go to my father now. You can follow me.”

“I intend to,” Durell said. “Why did you give up the job of tailing me?”

She hesitated. ‘T saw Omaru’s men at the temple. I wasn’t afraid, but I thought it best to leave.”

She looked like a stubborn, defiant little liar. He did not know if she was really Tagashi’s daughter, but he meant to find out. The girl annoyed him.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go see Tagashi.”

He ducked through a beaded curtain at the back of the shop, went out into an alley and through a wooden doorway, and found himself with the girl on the grounds of a restaurant inside an area bounded by a high wooden fence. Here the crush and pressure of Tokyo’s streets were abruptly replaced by the calm interior beauty where the Japanese truly lived. Durell followed the girl down a winding path and caught the scent of lemons from her, as if she had been eating citrus fruit.

There were small houses around a carp pond set in a cleverly irregular garden decorated with stone lanterns. The place was busy, crowded with Japanese men attended by waitresses in the light, gaily colored yukata kimonos. In a little house that bore the ideogram for Plum Hut, Yuki Tagashi stood aside and gestured impatiently for Durell to precede her.

“You first, honey,” he said, smiling.

“But it is perfectly safe. I am not your enemy.”

“One never knows. Stay ahead of me, Yuki.”

Tagashi and Eliot Barnes were waiting in the small room furnished with foot-high tables, tatami mats of straw, and the traditional tokonoma, the sacred alcove, in which a small jade vase and a spray of chrysanthemums glowed with economic beauty. Eliot and Tagashi were seated at the table, and Tagashi lifted himself easily, a tall, spare man, to greet Durell.

Durell slipped off his shoes at the entrance and watched the girl slide to one side, bowing to her father.

“Irassahi, Durell-san.” Tagashi had a strong Kansai accent from Western Japan. “Come in, you are welcome.”

Eliot grinned and extended a hand. “Hey, Cajun. Long time no see.”

Durell suspected that Tagashi had once been a member of the dreaded Kempei-tai, the Japanese secret police of World War II. He was sure the man was still operating with the Japanese security bureaus, whatever his job with K Section. Tagashi had cropped gray hair, and he stood much taller than the average of his countrymen. His face was hollow, hard and dangerous. His eyes were tough. Next to him, Eliot Barnes with his straw hair and freckles looked like a youngster fresh from a sand-lot ballgame in a Midwestern town.

“Please be seated,” Tagashi said courteously. “We have ordered lunch.” He looked amused. “You met my daughter?”

“Yuki introduced herself. She works for you?”

“She is a bright child.” Tagashi’s hard eyes touched the girl’s jeans and shirt with disapproval. Yuki stared blankly at Durell. “She gave us some interesting information last night, while you were still flying from the States. But of course, you must give us your own views first. We are at your disposal, Durell-san.”

“Thank you. Is this place secure?”

“Perfectly, Durell-san.”

Tagashi’s looks and manner reminded Durell of his grandfather, old Jonathan, back in Bayou Peche Rouge. The old man lived alone on the hulk of an ancient Mississippi sidewheeler that had been Durell’s boyhood home, and much of his training as a hunter had been derived from the old gentleman’s wisdom. Tagashi had much the same qualities as old Jonathan. He was a gambler, familiar with the hazards of an adventurer’s life. He was professional. He was still alive. And Fingal had been an amateur.

Durell’s briefing was terse and concise. The two other men listened quietly. The girl didn’t move.

He discussed Colonel Alexi Kaminov’s motives and sincerity in sending the message that he wished to seek political asylum in America.

“According to our files, Kaminov was with the MVD, allied to the military. He had a fine record in World War II, fighting around Minsk and Moscow—and at Stalingrad, too. He was only nineteen then, and our own government decorated him. He lost a leg at Stalingrad, by the way. Afterward, he did desk work for the Guard Directorate in Moscow, then was transferred to Peiping in 1958 as a military attache. Never married. Handsome, six feet two, blond, mustache. Trained originally as a ballistics engineer. Now he’s an expert in Sino-Soviet relations.”

Eliot Barnes cleared his throat like a schoolboy. “Sam, SEATO is yelling for help. Southeast Asia is boiling under the lid, and we need dope on Red Chinese troop movements. Getting data is like groping in a dark closet. We can’t put our own people into China, and our people in Hong Kong and Macao are unreliable. Even the Soviets have their problems with their alleged Chinese allies, eh? If Kaminov comes over, he could answer a lot of pressing, urgent questions.”

Tagashi said: “Our information on Colonel Kaminov is that he was in Sinkiang last year, then Tibet. Lately he was spotted in North Viet Nam. A month ago he went to Manchuria. He’s there now, somewhere, but we don’t know exactly where.”

“At Pere Jacques?” Durell asked quietly.

There was a blank silence.

Tagashi said: “I do not understand.”

“Neither do I. It’s a code name for the place where Kaminov is waiting for us to pick him up.” Durell spoke without emotion, telling of his encounter with Waldo Fingal, and how Fingal was killed. No one commented. Tagashi’s hollow face was watchful. Eliot Barnes began to sweat a little. Durell said: “It casts a question on Kaminov’s sincerity. For myself, I think he’s willing to defect, but he’s being used by his people and by Kaiwa as a trap for me. They’d like to get me on their own territory.”

“Let’s scrub the whole operation,” Eliot said.

“Not as long as we know what’s going on.” Durell lit a cigarette. “Let’s assume Colonel Kaminov is waiting for us. We can only reach him through this girl of his, Nadja Osmanovna. She knows what the phrase, Pere Jacques, means. We’ll have to get it out of her.”

Tagashi said: “She will be difficult.”

“She may be impossible,” Durell agreed. His smile was taut. “We can only hope that this woman has a weak spot— that she’s in love with Kaminov and is willing to help him. But I want to know more about Omaru and his Kaiwa outfit.” Eliot coughed. “We’ve been using him. The Kaiwa Trading Company has headquarters in Akijuro, on the coast in the Tohuko region. SEATO knows that Kaiwa has been running stuff for the other side, too, but up to now their double-dealing balanced out pretty well. We figured on using Kaiwa to smuggle Colonel Kaminov across the Japan Sea—and then we’d smash Kaiwa flat. Does that bother you, Sam?”

“Not at all,” Durell said.

“Don’t underestimate Omaru. He’s made millions out of Kaiwa. He pushes propaganda, payrolls, munitions and sabotage agents for the Chinese, using Japanese fishing boats and junks up and down the East Asia coast. We were going to clean him up last year, but he ran some people for us into some pretty difficult places, too, for Agency work in the jungles. It kept him alive in our books. But the balance is sour now.”

Durell looked at Tagashi. The man’s face told him nothing. He asked: “Do we wait for Omaru to contact us?”

“We cannot wait,” Tagashi put in. “Our first job is to get Nadja Osmanovna. Yuki brought us word that this woman is taking the Blue Dove express tonight for Akijuro. A holiday, presumably. But we cannot be certain. I have taken the liberty of arranging to have her removed from the train at a certain point during the trip, since our information was that the presence of this woman is one of the conditions under which Kaminov will defect. I have tickets for all of us on the train, by the way. It can be done easily.”

“We kidnap her?” Durell asked.

“Precisely. Tonight.”

“Fair enough. And Omaru?”

“We must make our deal with him, I think—at least, in the beginning.”

Durell shook his head. “I think not. He killed Waldo Fingal today. I think I’d rather eliminate him. We’ll smash Omaru’s apparatus flat.”

Eliot said: “I’d really like that.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Blue Dove express to Akijuro was four hours out of Tokyo’s red-brick Central Station when Durell walked easily through the cars to find Eliot Barnes. He had made contact with Tagashi with fifteen minutes to spare. The other Americans or Europeans on the train were people on leave from various missions, economic or military, in Tokyo. The Japanese in the corridor nodded politely, with tentative smiles; most often, they simply ignored him.

Eliot was asleep in their first-class compartment. He looked defenseless, his shirt collar open, his necktie dangling. Durell could see the gun under his coat, and he was momentarily disturbed by Eliot’s carelessness. He entered quietly and Eliot stirred, but when he saw the beatific smile on the young man’s face, he realized that Eliot still slept.

“Do you hear those drums?” Eliot whispered, his eyes still shut.

Durell sat down opposite him. He heard nothing but the click of the rails of the Japan National Railway.

“Hear those bugles?” Eliot murmured, still smiling in his pleasant dream.

“What are they for?” Durell asked quietly.

Eliot sighed. “They’re all for me.”

“Is that right? Why?” Durell asked the sleeping man.

Eliot’s mouth was smug. He looked as American as apple pie. “It’s classified,” he snapped.

Durell watched him for a moment, smiling wryly at Eliot’s dream, but disturbed by the way Eliot talked in his sleep. No bugles blew, no drums boomed, in Durell’s business.

He looked at his watch. Fourteen minutes to go.

“Eliot, wake up.”

Instantly, the other’s eyes popped open, clouded briefly by sleep and dreams. Then they focused sharply on Durell. The slight movement of his hand to his gun was checked.

Eliot grinned. “Did I do it again, Sam?”

“Yes. Up to the classified bit. You never go on.”

“Ah, hell. What time is it?”

“Fourteen to go. Tagashi is in the dining car. It’s all set. The subject is still in her compartment. She has two guards, ugly types from the Embassy. Tagashi plans to take them out when we get to the Minayoru Tunnel.”

“Fine,” Eliot said. “It’s a piece of cake.”

“Maybe.”

“You worry too much, Sam.”

Durell nodded and left, walking forward to the dining car alone. The time was exactly 10:17. Dusk had fallen early after the Blue Dove rolled out of Tokyo and Issu and the ugly industrial complexes, and it was now too dark to see much of the neat countryside of fields, mountains and villages. When he sat down at the table with Tagashi, Eliot was due to move toward the locomotive, with two of Tagashi’s uniformed train guards. Others of Tagashi’s crew would take out the plug-uglies guarding Nadja Osmanovna’s compartment.

Tagashi smiled thinly. He was eating sushi. “All is in order. The shipment is definitely aboard. We will take possession very soon now. I trust you are satisfied?”

Durell nodded. The dining-car was crowded, with a sprinkling of Europeans among the Japanese travelers. A waitress in kimono and traditional hair-do came down the aisle for Durell’s order for cakes and tea. When she was gone, there came a stir at the opposite end of the dining car as a man and woman entered. A slight hiss of surprise came from Tagashi. Some of the Japanese in the car stood up and bowed, their courtesy directed at the woman.

She had an electric quality of Japanese beauty that was at once imperious and feminine. She wore a kimono of heavy black silk, embossed with a red and yellow Saga embroidery; her dark hair was piled ornately, and her pink face was carefully masked with make-up. Most of the men stared at her, but Durell turned his attention to the man who walked half a step ahead.

He was enormous, like a sumo wrestler, with a round shaven head and tiny piggish eyes set in folds of fatty flesh. Only the slightest hint of Asia was evident in the slant of his eyes. His mouth was as predatory as a barracuda’s. His ponderous step was graceful, countering the rock of the train. His huge belly loomed past Durell, and for a moment their eyes met. Durell thought there was amused recognition in the fat man’s gaze, a faint narrowing of lids, a compression of the bloodless mouth. Tagashi bowed stiffly to the lovely, doll-like woman who trailed after the big man.

The woman smiled faintly as she passed. Tagashi sank back in his seat and sighed. His manner was taut.

“It was not in the arrangement, Durell-san,” he said thinly. “You know that man? It is Omaru—and his wife, the baroness Isome. Do not be deluded—he carries muscle, not fat. He has killed three men with his bare hands. You know he is more Irish than Japanese? His true name was O’Mara. He is the equivalent of your syndicate bosses, of course. I did not expect to meet him until we arrived at Akijuro.”

“Then he knows our plans for Nadja Osmanovna,” Durell said. He looked hard to the gaunt Japanese. “It means there’s been a leak somewhere.”

“I fear so,” Tagashi said quietly.

The Blue Dove express sped like a frightened snake through the twisting valleys of the Japan Alps. The ting-ting of a warning bell sounded briefly as they flashed through a village nestled against the dark mountainside. The night was black except for the occasional flicker of town lights along the railroad’s right-of-way.

The Minayoru Tunnel was one of many bored through the crests of Japan’s rugged heights, and Durell and Tagashi had selected it because of the motor road that curved alongside near the entrance and then divided into several lesser highways in the mountains. It gave them a choice of routes for the last hour’s drive by car to reach Akijuro on the shores of the Japan Sea.

Tagashi had arranged for the train crew, the car, the split-second timing to halt the train and kidnap Nadja Osmanovna.

It was necessary to operate as quickly and quietly as possible, to avoiding attracting the attention of the local police.

At precisely 10:31 the Blue Dove swung into the last upgrade to the Minayoru Tunnel. The train was slashing along at seventy miles an hour when Tagashi pulled the emergency cord. At that moment, Durell appeared at one end of the target coach and Eliot at the other. The brakes hissed, the whistle shrieked, the train lurched. The two plug-ugly guards had been standing idly, smoking, outside Osmanovna’s compartment. Tagashi’s two men came out of the next door, shouting angrily as if in a quarrel. No one else was in sight.

Tagashi’s men were tough, bandy-legged professionals. Either of the two Russian guards looked big enough to break them in two, but as they turned their flat, solemn faces in startled suspicion, the Japanese sailed into them with deadly and efficient ferocity.

There came the flat sound of a karate chop, a grunt, a thud. One of the big KGB men slammed to the corridor floor. The other was a bit faster—but it did not save him. The two Japanese swarmed over him with a series of lightning blows; the man’s jaw dropped, his eyes glazed, and he went over like a felled tree. Tagashi’s men stepped aside, bowed, panting, as Durell and Eliot Barnes met outside the compartment door.

Eliot grinned widely. “After you, Cajun.”

Durell tried the door. It was locked. He fished out a picklock, inserted it quickly, and slid the latch inside, just as the train came to a grinding halt on the curve outside the tunnel. Eliot followed him in and the two Japanese dragged the Soviet agents over the threshold and out of the corridor.

“Nadja Osmanovna?” Durell asked quietly.

The girl was on her feet, her eyes wide, her hands at her sides a little distance from her smoothly tailored hips. She looked at the two unconscious guards, then at Durell, and her pale brows lifted in arrogant inquiry. She showed no fear.

“What does this mean, please?”

Durell deliberately replied in English. “You will come with us quietly. We are friends. There is no reason to be afraid. But we must hurry.”

She was alone in the compartment. There were two leather grips on the rack, and Eliot slid past Durell and fanned the place, picking up the girl’s leather handbag and searching it briefly, then giving it to her. He took down her thin raincoat from a hook. Nadja Osmanovna—she looked much younger than Durell had expected—followed Eliot’s movements with wide, intense interest that was almost clinical. “And just what do you think you are doing?”

Durell said: “We’re taking you with us.”

She shook her head in negation. She did not fill the description he’d been given. She had been called inhuman, a dedicated and efficient member of the KGB. He saw only a girl in her late twenties, with thick wheaten hair pulled primly back from a rounded, intelligent forehead. She had wide dark eyes with heavy lashes, a full and sensuous mouth that contradicted her apparent self-possession. She wore no makeup, and her severely tailored gray suit befitted a schoolmistress rather than the image of an Oriental Mata Hari. Her body was good. Her face was a golden tan, with broad high cheekbones and finely sculptured hollows. But her jaw was stubborn and her dark gray eyes shielded panic, summarizing Durell and Eliot with one quick glance. She was a tall girl, and the top of her strangely pale hair reached above Durell’s shoulders.

“Will you please explain?” she asked tightly.

“There is no time.” Eliot took her arm and started her for the compartment door. “You won’t be hurt. We only want to talk to you. It’s to your personal interest that you come quietly with us.”

“Am I being arrested?”

“Not exactly.”

“Personal interest, you say? But you behave like American gangsters—”

Her apparent confusion would have been convincing, if Durell did not know her history. She pretended a deceptive helplessness—at least to Eliot Barnes. He should not have put his hand so courteously on her arm.

The girl looked at his young, freckled face and smiled in pretty puzzlement. And then she screamed, the sound cracking the air, swung her handbag in his face with a hard, vicious blow, and jumped for the compartment door.

The train was stopped. There were querulous Japanese in the corridors demanding to know about the emergency stop. Outside, there was nothing to see but the dark, brooding night in the mountains. Someone was shouting on the cinder path below the train. A lantern flickered in the window, and Durell glimpsed Tagashi out there.

Then the girl caromed into him.

Her prim and helpless manner had vanished; in a twinkling she had changed to a wild tigress. Eliot sprawled on the compartment seat with blood on his face. Durell sidestepped the girl’s low jab and caught her about the waist as she tried to dart down the corridor. Her momentum carried her around and she slammed violently into him. Her body was hard, muscular. Her nails clawed at his face. He blocked her, swung her wrist down and around her back and yanked it up, and she screamed again, this time in real pain. There was no time for pity. He forced her, struggling and bucking against him, all the way to the coach door. Eliot followed, wiping his bloody nose with chagrin, and ran past them to open the vestibule panel. A cool wind blew in their faces. Below, the lantern waved again in Tagashi’s hand. Red lights flickered down the curved track, and there was a geometrical pattern of yellow rectangles on the cinder path from the train windows.

“Let me go!” the girl gasped. “You must be mad! You will all suffer, you will die—”

Eliot jumped down and waited for her with a wry grin. “Come on, wildcat, everything is all right. We just want a quiet little talk, that’s all.”

She fought against Durell’s grip. “I have nothing—to tell you—”

Her thick hair brushed against Durell’s face. She was not going to jump down. He pushed her, and she cried out as she fell from the steps. Eliot caught her, but he was not quick enough to cope with her trickery. She twisted free in an instant and started to run up the trackside. Durell caught her in a dozen steps and flung her, stumbling, to the cinders. A small cry of defeat broke from her. There were angry shouts and questions from the other passengers, the impatient hoot of the locomotive up near the tunnel entrance.

“Get up!” Durell snapped. “We’re going to a lot of trouble to help you.”

“Help me? You are gangsters—imperialist agents—” Her breath panted. “I want no help! How dare you—”

He hauled her to her feet without ceremony. She staggered, fell against him, and again her trickery became evident. Her hand slipped instantly inside his coat and almost got his .38 free from under his arm. She was quick and clever—but not quite quick enough. He tore the gun from her and she cursed in Russian, a shocking and vile term. She tried to run again. He tripped her, sent her sprawling on hands and knees.

Her thick, pale hair came loose from its prim bun at the nape of her neck and hung in a heavy screen across her face. He yanked her up once more.

Tagashi and Eliot ran up. Tagashi’s wire-taut face was careful. “We have a dangerous one on our hands, eh?”

“We’ll tame her,” Durell said.

“It must be quick. There will be official inquiries. But come, the car is waiting over here. All is arranged.”

Tagashi pointed into the darkness below the train. Durell could see nothing that way. The train stood on an embankment carved out of the mountainside. There were no lights, no houses nearby. The cool September wind was scented with pine, touched with a chill of snow that lay on the higher slopes. Durell forced the stumbling girl ahead, after Tagashi’s hurrying figure. Now a small light appeared in a hut, and from there a narrow path led through tangled woods down the steep slope. Log steps helped the descent, then a small arched bridge took them across a ravine. Durell turned to look up at the halted train. Dim figures ran along the coaches, shouting.

Eliot touched his arm. “There is the car.”

On a road ahead he saw the gleam of metal as the shadows resolved themselves into a black Buick sedan. Eliot opened the back door and Durell pushed the struggling girl in. She twisted, her hair swinging; her gray eyes blazed at him.

“You must be insane to try such a thing! You will all pay for this, all of you—”

“I’m sorry,” Durell said. “It’s the only way we can talk to you, Miss Osmanovna. We will explain it later.”

She resisted him every inch of the way. Eliot ran around and got into the car on the other side. Tagashi took the wheel, started the Buick, and they rolled ahead on the primitive mountain road, away from the confused shouts and lights of the stalled train.

In a moment, the pine woods cut off their view of the Minayoru Tunnel. The girl sat stiffly between Durell and Eliot, her face frozen in anger, her mouth compressed in a determined silence.

He wondered briefly what she was thinking. She expected to die. She would be trying to think of a reason for the assault on her, going over her history, alarmed at her apparent importance to her enemies.

He did not think she would cooperate under any terms.

When he looked back, out of habit and caution, he saw the headlights of another car following them down the rough mountain road.

There was not supposed to be another car.

Even as he turned to watch, he heard the metallic scream of a bullet as it ricocheted off the roof. An instant later, he heard the flat report of a gun in the following car as someone began to shoot at them.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tagashi tramped on the gas, and the Buick leaped at a wild, rocketing speed down the twisting mountain road. They flashed past a dark peasant’s hut, then another. The girl, pinned tightly between Durell and Eliot, made one more effort to twist free. She lunged for the door handle, caught it, tried to twist it down and open. Her body fell across Durell and he slapped her hand away.

“You’d only kill yourself,” he said quietly.

She looked at him with wide, bitter eyes. “But you are assassins. I will die, anyway.”

“We won’t kill you. But don’t try to escape again. Do you understand? I have no more patience.”

Several strands of her thick, pale hair fell across the shoulders of her tailored suit. He saw that her shoes were sensible, solid dark oxfords with low heels, but her legs— what he could see of them in the darkness of the back seat— were very good. But he turned his mind away from any identity of her as a woman. He knew her type—tough, dedicated, fanatically devoted to her work. A little snake of doubt crawled through the back of his mind as he wondered if she would be of any help with Colonel Alexi Kaminov.

Tagashi seemed to know the mountain road blindfolded, anticipating every curve and grade. Durell looked at his watch. It was 10:42. The kidnapping of Nadja Osmanovna had taken exactly twelve minutes.

The way led through the valley and hurtled over a shoulder of the slumbering mountain. The hoot of the Blue Dove’s horn followed them, and Durell saw the lights of the train crawling slowly into the tunnel mouth. They were away free— but not entirely clear.

The other car was a quarter of a mile behind, the headlights flickering now and then through gaps in the forest. Tagashi rolled down his window and a breath of frosty air poured into the car. They took a curve at maximum speed and the girl lurched hard against Durell. She had stopped struggling, however. Durell tapped Tagashi’s shoulder.

“Who are the men behind us?”

“I do not know,” Tagashi said. “No one else was supposed to be at the rendezvous. But there is a small village nearby. Possibly they came from there. Possibly the Russians had other people aboard we did not know about.”

Durell considered the girl. Her hair flew wildly in the wind that filled the sedan. Her lashes were dark, lowered against her cheek. He could not fathom her expression. He had the sudden thought that she looked Chinese, somehow, noting the faintest uptilt of her eyes against her high facial bones. She looked up suddenly and her eyes were like dark metal.

“Your name is Durell,” she said quietly.

“Right.”

“We knew you had arrived in Tokyo this morning. We did not know why. I did not guess you were after me.”

“Can you think of any reason?”

“No. None at all.”

“Who warned you about me?”

“I was not warned. Our information service advised us of your arrival in Japan. The men in the car behind you take orders from me. When they catch up with us, you will be killed.”

“I wasn’t sent to Japan to kill you," he said.

“I am not a child. We understand each other, do we not? We are—in the same profession. Do not lie to me. I should feel honored that someone like you was sent for the execution. I would simply like to know why I was chosen.”

“We don’t intend to kill you,” he insisted.

“Then why have you kidnapped me?”

“It will all be explained.”

She shut her lips firmly in final silence. Durell turned his head and looked at the other car behind them. It was definitely gaining.

The road dipped sickeningly down a series of hairpin curves. The Buick was heavy and powerful, and Tagashi squeezed out every ounce of acceleration. The tires squealed and kicked up gravel dust. A series of curves snaked through pine woods and across wooden log bridges that echoed a drumbeat as the car roared across. A small terraced clearing flashed by. In the night sky, shredded clouds yielded a glimpse of the moon.

A bullet clanged on the car roof and screamed away. Durell reached for his gun. He met Tagashi’s eyes in the mirror, and the Japanese looked momentarily desperate. If one of the bullets hit a tire, the car would go out of control, they would crash to their death on the wooded mountainside.

“A little faster,” Durell suggested.

“It is not possible.”

The pursuers had closed half the distance between them. Their headlights glared like the eyes of a pursuing beast of prey. Eliot rolled down his window and squeezed off three shots in return. The Buick screamed around a last curve and entered a straight stretch on the valley floor, along a small stream that ran with white water in its rocky bed. They slammed through a sleeping mountain village of thatched huts. A dog leaped briefly into the headlights as they roared down upon it.

In a few minutes, they would be overtaken.

A shot suddenly smashed the rear window and scattered glass over Durell’s shoulders. The girl clapped a hand to her face and murmured. He saw a long, bloody scratch on her cheek. He handed her his handkerchief, but she refused it silently, her body swaying to the rough movement of the car.

Then Tagashi slammed on the brakes as a barrier of logs across the road suddenly loomed ahead of them.

It looked like the end. Tagashi could not avoid the roadblock. The car lifted on two wheels, came down with a teeth-jarring jolt. A storm of snapping branches broke over them as the car screamed into the woods, off the road. For a moment there was oniy a wild kaleidoscope of jumping trees and brush, then a final crash, and at last an abrupt silence as the Buick came to a shocking halt beside the felled logs.

Three men ran toward them from the barrier.

Tagashi jumped out. “Please. Come with me.”

Durell pushed the girl from the car. The Buick made snapping metallic noises as it cooled in the mountain wind. The night was filled with the pressure of soaring peaks around them as they ran back toward the road where the three strange men waited. Durell had his gun ready, but Tagashi hailed them familiarly, and Durell saw they wore the rough clothing of mountain peasants. There was arm-waving, a shout, a spate of dialect he could not catch. The distant thrumming of the pursuing car grew to a roar.

“It will be all right now,” Tagashi explained. “These are Omaru’s men. They say he just telephoned.”

“Omaru? How could he know we were coming this way?” “He and Isome, his wife, left the train when we did.” Tagashi’s dark face was sweaty. “He will keep this woman’s dogs off our backs. Things have gone a little wrong, eh?” “How did Omaru telephone these men?” Durell asked. “There is a village near the tunnel. We could not see it. But Omaru knew, or guessed, our plans.”

They caught only a glimpse of what happened to their pursuers. A new car waited on the other side of the barrier, and as they got into it, Durell turned as the pursuing vehicle came on the roadblock without warning. The crash of metal and thudding logs was an ugly sound in the night. Flames burst out with a roar as the other car turned over. A man screamed, a high, ululating sound of torment in the dark. Nadja stared at the wreck, her knuckles pressed to her mouth. When Durell tugged at her arm, she looked at him with terror and hatred.

Tagashi took the wheel again. It seemed to Durell as they drove away that he heard the deliberate, spaced reports of an executioner’s gun from behind them.

“Tagashi, are you sure Omaru is helping us?”

“Yes, Durell-san. He was on the train, was he not? He guessed this problem for us, and arranged for our safety. But he is still Omaru. He killed your friend.”

Durell leaned back in the new car. “I’m not forgetting. Where do we go from here?”

“We go to a mountain estate about five miles from this place. It was part of my plan. My uncle owns the property. We will be safe there—from Omaru and any others who follow.”

The road went through a second village, skirted fields where the summer harvest was ended, then turned through a large stone gateway. The girl shivered beside Durell.

“If you are going to kill me,” she whispered, “I only ask that it be done quickly. I know this man Tagashi. He can be very cruel.”

“We only want to talk to you,” Durell said.

“I won’t,” she said. “Not to you or to him.”

The car halted. A man ran from a hut and unbarred a heavy gate bathed in the headlights, and they rolled toward a dark, elaborate house constructed in Kyoto style, with a long, low wooden front and narrow barred windows. The red roof tiles looked black in the moonlight. An aura of emptiness brooded over the place. Tagashi parked by the entrance and Durell noted the fish sculpture on the roof that was the Japanese totem for fertility. The estate had been neglected; grass grew rankly about the paths and stone lanterns.

Tagashi anticipated his remark.

“My uncle’s business keeps him in Kyoto. This is only a summer place, and he seldom comes here. Tomorrow we will go on to Akijuro. We will be safe here.”

Durell warily helped the girl from the car. Crickets sang and the wind sighed in the thick pines. Tagashi opened the front door, and again the girl balked.

“I do not go in,” she snapped. “Kill me here—”

Then, with an abrupt wrench, she tore loose and began to run back to the gate. Her pale hair flew in the wind. Instantly Durell was after her. She was fast, but she stumbled and fell headlong, and then recovered with the agility of an acrobat. The gateman watched, his mouth agape, his peasant’s face uncomprehending as she darted past and headed for the dark woods.

Durell caught up in the next few steps. He threw her off-stride and she caromed off a tree, gasping, but he held his grip, not caring if his fingers were cruel. She cried out, tried to claw his face again, then seemed to collapse, clutching at his coat and then backing away. He tried to stop her, but he was too late.

She had a gun in her hand. Not his gun. He stared at it, frozen, aware of her blazing eyes out of the shadows on her face. In the pause, the frogs seemed to chorus all around them with maniacal fury.

“Where did you get that?” he asked quietly.

“I stole it from your friend. In the car. We sat close together.”

“You’re very good. Very good, indeed.”

“I have to be,” she said.

There was another silence. Her breath hissed with exhaustion. He heard Eliot calling faintly from somewhere. The muzzle of the girl’s gun seemed enormous, a dark entrance to hell. He looked at it only once more. It was more important to watch the girl’s face. She was smiling.

“You are not afraid?”

“Of course I’m afraid,” he said.

“Don’t come near me.”

“I won’t. How many men have you killed, Nadja?”

“None, but—”

“It can be very messy,” he said.

“We are enemies,” she said. “I do not know what you plan for me, but it will not happen now, you see.”

“You’re very stubborn. We only mean to help you.”

“You keep saying that. Why?”

“Because it is the truth.” He said abruptly: “Where did you learn your English? It’s very good. You must have had an instructor from New York, to judge from the accent—”

“It was in the Dostonovski Institute for Women Specialists, in Moscow.” She looked at him. “You know all about that training unit, I suppose.”

“Some.”

“Turn around now,” she said.

He took the chance then and went for the gun. He knew she was as well trained as he, but there was no choice. He could hear Eliot crashing clumsily through the brush, and he sensed that the girl might fire in sheer panic. When he turned, as if to obey her order, the move liberated him from the need to be utterly motionless under her eyes. He kept spinning, however, his first slow movement suddenly merged in a blur of speed when he launched himself at her gun. He caught it as it went off, and the explosion raised loud echoes among the trees. The bullet spanked into the leaf mold at his feet. She wrenched away, and he was reminded again of her strength and agility.

He lost all patience with her.

He hit her, and pulled the punch only slightly. His knuckles cracked on the point of her stubborn jaw and she fell, arms flailing, to crash into the lower branches of a pine tree. The gun went spinning from her hand. He scooped it up and watched her sag to the forest floor at the base of the tree.

“I’m sorry,” he said thinly.

He felt a reflex trembling in his legs. He felt anger against her, and knew he could not afford it. The girl’s eyes were blind and dazed. When he spoke her name, she did not hear. It was not a sham. He picked her up in his arms and was surprised at her slender waist, the lithe shape of her hips. He wondered briefly at what she kept hidden under the stern facade of her prim costume. Maybe, he thought wryly, Colonel Alexi Kaminov knew what he had here, after all.

Eliot and Tagashi came running through the woods from the house. Eliot was relieved to see the girl in his arms. But someone else had joined the two men.

It was Yuki, Tagashi’s dark-haired daughter. She wore tight slacks and a dark sweater and her hair with its boyish bangs gleamed silkily as she walked with a certain insolence toward them. Her voice was eager.

“Have you got her? You really got her?”

Tagashi’s eyes looked raw. “Durell-san, are you all right?”

Yuki looked impatiently at Nadja as Durell carried her into the house and put her down on a tatami mat. “Oh, how I hate this one! How I hate her!”

“Stand back, Yuki,” Durell said. “She won’t feel too well when she wakes up. What’s the matter with you?”

“Yuki, bring some tea,” her father ordered.

She seemed deaf. All her interest was concentrated in her examination of the blonde woman. “You ought to kill her!”

“Why?”

“She is vicious and cruel, blind to all human qualities. How could any man love this one? She has a heart of stone, she has ice for blood—”

Yuki began to kick Nadja with a sudden burst of violent hatred. Fortunately, she wore sneakers, and Durell hurled her aside. Yuki fell, tried to get up and reach Nadja again. Durell slapped her, shoved her toward her father.

“What’s the matter with your girl, Tagashi?”

“It is something that happened some time ago,” the Japanese said. “I apologize for my daughter’s conduct.”

“What’s eating her now?”

“Yuki thinks this woman killed her fiance. I employed the boy in counter-espionage against their apparatus in Tokyo. He disappeared. But it was a year ago.”

“She did it,” Yuki gasped. “She killed Akiro, and I’ll kill her in return. You’ll see, she deserves to die! I’ve been waiting all this time—”

“Get out, Yuki,” Durell said.

Yuki stared at him and began to cry.

CHAPTER SIX

Two servants summoned by Tagashi started charcoal fires in the rooms and then left silently to stand sentry duty around the walled estate. They were old men with grizzled heads and bandy legs, with rough sandals on their knobby feet. They wore their silence in dignity, like a fine cloak.

Tagashi found some canned food, moving familiarly through the simply furnished house. There was some tea, and Durell took a cup and held the warm drink to Nadja Osmanovna’s pallid lips in an effort to bring her to. He did not succeed, and he felt someone watching him, and saw that it was Yuki again. The girl had dried her tears. She looked sardonic.

“She is awake. She is only trying to fool you.”

“Do you really think so, Yuki?”

“She can make a fool out of any man, they say. She is a very bad woman. She made your friend Eliot look silly, did she not? How easily she stole his gun!”

“She’s an expert, I must admit.”

“She hears everything you say. Why not slap her and make her talk to you?” Yuki insisted.

“Yuki, are you sure she killed your friend?”

“She, or someone like her.” She dropped gracefully to her knees on the tatami mat, her head forward, peering at the unconscious blonde woman with a cold and clinical interest. “She is too dangerous to keep alive. In the Embassy, where my father put me to work, they walk on tiptoe when she is near. She holds life and death for you, if she makes an unfavorable report on your work. There is something strange and wrong about her. A coldness, and it feels inhuman. Why are you so soft about her?”

“I’m not. But we need her for this job.”

“Will you kill her later?”

“Only if it is necessary,” Durell said.

She looked doubtful. “I don’t think she will help you in this. She has no heart. How could any man love a woman like this?”

Durell was irritated. “We shall see. Go ask your father if he needs anything, Yuki.”

“Don’t treat me like a child!” Yuki snapped. “I do my work well. You men just don’t understand a woman like her.” Durell smiled slightly. “Just the same, let me make the decisions. Go on, now. Beat it.”

She understood the idiom and glared angrily, her immature face flushed. She flounced out, swinging her hips impudently in her tight slacks. Durell looked after her, his eyes going solemn for a moment.

He was alone in the room with Nadja. She had been awake for some moments, listening—Yuki had been right about that —and he had seen the telltale flicker of her eyelids when she first regained consciousness. Her control was professional. He considered her for a time while he took out two cigarettes and lit them and then held one for her. Her face was pale, her lashes dark against her smooth cheeks. Her mouth fell naturally into     severe and tormented lines. Her dark gray suit was torn, and had     been pulled up about her hip, and her body looked round and surprisingly young as she lay on one side, one arm outflung. He felt no attraction toward her. Yuki was right; she must be regarded as an enemy, trained to hate and destroy him. She was good at her business, and he had to be careful with her. He had a rough idea of how to go about it, but he decided to keep his plans open for contingencies.

“Nadja, she’s gone now. You can sit up,” he said quietly, in a matter-of-fact tone.

The girl immediately opened her eyes and stared at him. He saw there were flecks of pure gold in the gray irises. A reflex of pain and fear shook her defiant mouth. Her pale hair was disheveled, hanging in thick braids over her shoulder, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She rubbed it childishly, using the back of her hand as she watched him. Then she straightened her skirt and swung her legs out and under her and crouched on her knees, facing him.

“I did not think you would hit me like that,” she said in English. “My face hurts.”

“Well, you were about to kill me,” he said equably.

“Why not? We are enemies. They called you Durell, and the name is known to me. There is a price on your head.”

“No doubt,” he said. He watched her smoke the cigarette. She was awkward about it. “Do you think we took you from the train in order to kill you?”

She shrugged. “I do not think so, now. You want something from me, but I cannot tell you anything. I will not. If you were not after something, but only me, you could have shot me right on the train.”

“All propaganda to the contrary,” Durell smiled, “we don’t run our business that way.”

Her eyes were cold. “But you have killed before. It is in your dossier. I studied it carefully, once.”

Her face was impregnable and he felt a momentary despair, a sense of the impracticality of the man far across the Japan Sea who wanted to find freedom and insisted that he have this woman with him. She would never go along that path, he thought. She was like a well-oiled machine that responded to the punch of various buttons. He said carefully:

“I am not a member of anything like your G Group, Nadja. We have nothing like your corps of assassins.”

“The G Group is a myth,” she snapped. “We do not kill like that, either.”

“Then I wish we could be friends, Nadja.”

“You know it is impossible.”

“We might be, if you opened your mind.”

She laughed scornfully. “What do you want of me? Information? I have none. I am not involved in an operation that could interest you at the moment.”

“It’s something else,” he said. “Will you listen for a moment and stop hating me or trying to figure out how to get away from here?”

“I’ll get away,” she said confidently.

“You may not want to,” he told her.

She was startled, then wary. “All right, I’m listening.” Durell said: “We are interested in a man who knows you well and who wants to see you and speak to you. He’s an old friend of yours.”

“I have no friends.”

“Apparently you had one, once, or our information is entirely wrong, and I don’t think it is. I’m referring to Colonel Alexi Kaminov.”

He spoke the name casually, letting it fall into the quiet atmosphere like a handful of dust.

She was very good, and he did not watch her face, which would betray nothing, since she was now in complete control. But his eyes touched her right hand and her fingers clenched briefly, and that was enough. She saw she had betrayed herself and she stared at her hand in dismay, and then she smiled. But her lips were white.

“What about Alexi?” she asked softly.

“Do you know him?”

“He was my instructor at the Moscow school. I knew him then. It was a long time ago.”

“It was a little more than a year ago, the last time you saw him, was it not?”

“No. But even a year can be a long time.”

“Would you help him, if he was in trouble, and you could do something for him?”

She said: “What kind of a question is that?”

“He needs help,” Durell said.

“Not from me.”

“Precisely from you. Only from you.”

She leaned forward, her face still hostile, but now her eyes betrayed a reluctant glimmer of interest. “What do you know about Alexi? What makes you think of him in connection with me? We have never worked together. He was my instructor, that was all. I gave you that much. But how could you know anything of Alexi’s troubles—if there are any?” “He has been in contact with me.” Durell was not sure yet if he should open up with this woman, but he saw no help for it. It was like chess, and nothing could be won unless he tried a gambit. He could read nothing but watchful interest in Nadja’s gray eyes. But one hand went to her pale, wheaten hair and she twisted the thick, heavy strand in quick fingers.

He went on: “Alexi and I have known each other for some years. We met in Hungary.”

“Yes.”

“You know about that?”

“He told me. He spoke of you.”

“As a friend?”

She hesitated. “Yes. I do not know what you want. I admit I am disturbed by your references to Alexi. But I have not seen him for some time, and the last time we met, we quarreled, if you must know. It was a personal matter. But I must discourage you at once, if you think you can get me to betray anything about him.”

“Not betrayal,” Durell said. “Rescue.”

She looked blank, surprised.

“He wants to come to Japan,” Durell said quickly. “He wants to surrender to me and go to the States and accept American political asylum. And he wants you to come along with him.”

She stared. Then mockery gleamed in her eyes. “You must think I’m a total fool. Do you really expect me to believe that Alexi plans to be a traitor? I knew him well.”

“How well? Were you in love with him?”

She was silent.

“And was he in love with you?”

“I will tell you nothing more,” she said.

“It’s only to help him,” Durell insisted. “Men can change their minds and attitudes and philosophies. I knew Alexi in Hungary. I was there on business—helping refugees into Austria.” He paused. “You needn’t look like that.”

Her eyes were brilliant. “You saved his life, Alexi said.”

“I helped him. There was a person, driven by panic, who would have killed him. I stopped it.”

She said wonderingly, “That is what Alexi told me. But I found it difficult to believe.”

“It was at the border, in the fog and swamps, and he could have trapped us all. But he was humane enough to let us go through. One of the refugees saw Alexi in the fog and tried to kill him. I stopped him.”

“You were wounded, instead,” the girl whispered. “Alexi said you shook hands and then you parted. He could not forget it. Especially when he found out who you were, later.”

“He trusts me,” Durell said. “So he will surrender only to me.”

“How did he get in contact with you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“But you say he asked for me?”

Durell nodded. “He wants you to come to the States with him.”

“How could he think I would?”

“Don’t you love him?”

She was silent, disturbed.

“He must think you do,” Durell said. “He must be certain he can trust you. He’s doing an enormous thing. He’s putting his life in your hands.”

“I don’t know, I can’t think.” Her words were blurred. “I can’t believe it. It must be a trick. You want something else. Alexi isn’t in it. I thought I was clever, but you have confused me, I must admit. If Alexi is a traitor, he deserves to die!”

“You don’t mean that. I think you still love him.”

“Love!” Her head came up angrily, her thick hair swinging. “It was so long ago! And for such a short time!”

“He hasn’t forgotten. Neither have you.”

She was silent again. Her twisting emotions were beginning to betray her professional defense. He felt as if she were some wild thing from the steppes, trapped in complexities she did not understand. Her prim, severe clothes and appearance were all a facade, he thought. Underneath it, she was only a frightened girl, struggling against the hard indoctrination of party discipline. She seemed out of reach of reason, cowering on the mat, confused by a menace she could not fathom.

Nothing was ever simple in the business, he thought. There was always the unexpected snare to destroy you. The house was quiet, and he heard the crickets singing outside. The girl was trying to be defiant, but he smelled her panic, and knew she still feared an ugly execution. He could read it in her pale eyes as she shrank away from him, and he decided it was time to break her down completely.

He took out his gun.

He had to crush and crack the hard shell of her hatred and discipline.

She looked at his gun, startled, then searched his face quickly. “So you have been lying, you try to make me think you are kind, to talk about something—I don’t know what— but it isn’t really about Alexi at all, you made it all up, didn’t you? You want something from me. If I don’t talk, you will kill me. Did they choose you as the killer?”

He said enigmatically, “I’m sorry, Nadja.”

“Not you! It is just that—” she spread her hands “—I was going on a holiday, I did not expect this. I know what people say of me. That girl, Yuki—she calls me a cruel woman. But I only wanted a few days of quiet, to think—”

“About Alexi Kaminov?”

“About many things.”

He said abruptly: “All right. What do you know about ‘Pere Jacques’?”

He sprang the question to throw her off balance and pry a true reaction from her. He did not hope she would answer it. She needed more time. But he was not prepared for what she did.

Her eyes dilated, her mouth opened, and her lips quavered. “What?” she whispered. “What?”

“Pere Jacques,” he said deliberately. “Who is he? What is he?”

Her face crumpled. A wail like a small child in pain and desolation came from her gaping mouth. The sound shook unnaturally in the air. “No . . . no . . .”

“Tell me about it,” he insisted.

“I cannot, I forgot. How could you—?”

She sprang up, eyes blindly staring at something he could never see, lost in the depths of her mind, triggered by his words. She took a crouching step toward him.

“Is it so terrible?” he asked quietly. “It’s where we find Alexi. Do you know the place, Nadja? Or the man?”

“How could you know about it?” Her voice was thin and childish. “Oh, you are a devil—”

She began to curse him in gutter Russian. She came too close to his gun, but he did not warn her back. Her eyes slid like an animal’s to the door and the weedy garden beyond.

She almost killed him this time.

Her strike at his gun was blurred by speed, like the talon of a bird of prey. The edge of her hand smashed his wrist and jolted his shoulder. He did not drop the gun, but it was deflected enough to give her an advantage. She should have followed it up, to make the outcome certain for her. But she made the mistake of jumping for the outer door.

He let her reach it before he caught up with her. She was strong and clever and ferocious. She tried to knee him, gouged at his eyes. Her hair swung desperately across her distorted face. He could not hold her frantic strength. She stumbled across the threshold, staggered into the garden, and he jumped and carried her down with his weight.

Their struggle was violent and silent. He was aware of her as a woman, and there was a sexuality to the twining effort of her scissoring legs, the heave and twist of her body. He was reluctant to really hurt her. But she stabbed cruelly at a neural center in the side of his neck, and his left arm went numb. She kneed him in the stomach, kicked free, and scrambled, already running, to her feet. He tackled her about the hips and brought her down with a hard thump. Her skirt tore. He tried to pin her as she lay momentarily with her face in the dusty weeds, but she got away again, the edge of her palm cracking across the bridge of his nose. He began to regret his aim to let her almost break free and then crush her spirit with another recapture. Then she slid away and ran for the wall—her second mistake. Her newfound violence, triggered by whatever psychic meaning the words “Pere Jacques” had for her, made her only a panic-stricken creature trying to find solace in the dark.

When he caught her, he pinned her throat with his forearm and put a knee into her stomach until she whimpered and her face went white in the pale moonlight. The shadows of the mountain pines filled her eyes. She struggled wildly for breath, but he kept up the pressure until her mouth opened and her body shuddered and she was abruptly still. He released his weight carefully.

Watching her, still shocked by the violence and brutality of her struggle, he heard the sound of a motor car at the gates and Eliot’s shout of warning and the sound of running feet on the other side of the house.

He carried Nadja back to the room. She breathed with raw, uncertain gasps. She would be deathly sick when she came to. He would have to revise his strategy, in view of the violent trauma his words had induced in her.

He tied her to the bed, fashioning a line by tearing apart a bamboo screen. He worked quickly, aware of the sounds of argument from the front of the house. He had just finished when Tagashi entered. The man’s face was perplexed.

“She did not talk?”

“Not much. I hit a vital nerve, though. She admits she and Alexi were in love when she studied in Moscow. Alexi has been in love with her all through the time they’ve been separated at different duty posts.”

“Then she will help him? And us?”

“Not yet. She needs time to shift her perspectives.” “There is no time. She is either with us, or she destroys us. This woman has a bad record, Durell-san. Nothing directly can be charged to her, but if she escapes, she can wreck our operation.”

“She won’t escape. Without her, we have no chance of finding Kaminov, anyway. She went haywire when I mentioned the words ‘Pere Jacques.’ I’m not a psychiatrist, Tagashi, but her reaction was genuine. She couldn’t fake it. The words are associated with a bad shock she got once, perhaps as a child. It may be that she can remember, but refuses to do so now. I wish we had more of her background files. I think, from the way she reacted, it’s tied up far back in her past, and with Kaminov.”

“We know little of her history. And we have no time for subleties.” Tagashi’s eyes were suddenly cruel. “We committed this girl to our side. She knows us, can identify us. She can never be released. Does she understand that?”

“I think so. I’ll try her again soon. Without her, Kaminov won’t come over to us, and SEATO will have to fish for its military data elsewhere—and by then it may be too late.”

“If she refuses to cooperate, we must eliminate her, then,” Tagashi said flatly.

Durell nodded. “We’ll see.”

The tall Japanese turned his gaze from the girl. His grizzled, round head was bowed for a moment. Then he spoke on a different note.

“I would    not have interrupted you, Durell-san,    but     we have visitors. Two of Omaru’s men are here. Omaru got off the train and arranged the log blockade, and he is staying for the night in the village inn nearby. He wishes to discuss business with you, and has sent his men for you.”

“Just like that?”

“In Omaru’s world,” Tagashi said, “he is accustomed to obedience.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

They were two small, lithe Japanese in dark suits, and their eyes in their flat faces were impassive and cold. They carried U.S. Army Colts—undoubtedly stolen from an American military depot—and looked ready to use them. When Durell walked into the main room, Eliot Barnes glanced at him with chagrin. Yuki Tagashi sat cross-legged on the floor mat and looked angry and sullen.

“Durell-san?” one of the small men said. “You come with us at once, please.”

The other said: “You have the Russian woman spy?” Durell nodded. “Yes, we have her.”

“Omaru wants her, too.”

“Omaru can’t have her,” Durell said.

“You are to bring her with you.”

“No. Let Omaru come here, then.”

The first man lifted his Colt tentatively. Durell walked across the room at once and without warning knocked the gun aside and slapped the man open-handed across his toothy mouth. There came a hiss of anger. The second gunman stepped forward, eyes narrowed.

Durell said: “I will discuss the girl with Omaru, not with you.”

For a moment the room was charged with violence. Then the first man shrugged and spoke sharply to his companion.

“The insult will be remembered,” he said to Durell. “But we obey orders. Will you come with us now?”

“I’m ready,” Durell said. “I’m looking forward to your Omaru. We have a few things to discuss.”

Eliot began to protest, but Durell cut him off and followed the two men outside. Yuki smiled strangely. He didn’t like it, but he had to trust Tagashi to control matters in regard to Nadja Osmanovna.

A small car was parked in the shadows of the gatekeeper’s hut. One of the men got behind the wheel and Durell sat beside him. The second man got in the back.

“How far do we go?” Durell asked.

“It is not far,” said the driver.

In less than a minute they were twisting down the forest road and across a small river into the sleeping village. The thatched houses were all dark. Their passage aroused no one except a yelping dog. But some lights glowed on the opposite bank of the river, and this was their destination.

It was a second-class Japanese inn, of red-painted wood, with an ideogram on the gatepost naming it the Suehiro, which meant The Folding Fan. The name signified good luck, but Durell expected none.

The proprietor was a wizened old man in a yellow kimono who bowed repeatedly and then retreated at a growl from the driver. The inn consisted of a rambling series of wings, all dark except for the largest at the extreme right. The two gunmen headed Durell there, and he followed a gravel path between vague shrubbery where a small pond glimmered in the starlight.

“You go in alone,” the driver said. “Omaru waits.”

“How do I get back?” Durell asked.

“Omaru-san may invite you to be his guest. If he asks you to stay, you stay. One way or another.”

Durell slipped off his shoes and stepped into the inn. The paper screens were pale gold, and the usual tokonoma alcove held a simple stone Korean vase and a strip of red paper with beautifully brushed ideograms. A charcoal brazier took the mountain chill off the room. There were some low stools, a lacquered table, and a huge Western overstaffed chair, which looked most incongruous in this rustic mountain place.

Omaru waited for him in the big chair.

He looked even more enormous than when Durell first saw him on the train. He wore a pink yukata with family ideograms embroidered on the back. His bald head gleamed as if waxed, and there was no neck connecting the head to the ponderous shoulders and chest. Yet his feet, like the feet of many fat men, were small and even dainty. A Japanese girl was washing them, kneeling, her face averted as Durell entered. The wooden bowl she used held perfumed water. She seemed frightened, trembling. When Omaru touched her shoulder, she seemed glad to jump up and dart from the room.

“Durell-san, I trust you will forgive my impetuous invitation. One must extemporize at times, and many things might have gone wrong tonight, had I not decided to act in your interests as well as mine. Please be seated. Would you like a drink?”

“Nothing, thanks,” Durell said. “I’ll stand.”

Omaru laughed, his belly shaking. “You are startled by my Irish accent? Naturally. But I am sure you know all about my early days in Dublin, when my poor mother took me home from the Orient and was hounded in the streets because my eyes were a wee bit slanty.” Omaru’s voice, though soft, had the quality of making the air tremble. His pale blue eyes were chips of weathered stone as he regarded Durell’s uncompromising figure. “You look like a man I can do business with. Not that I trust you, mind, any more than you trust me. But it seems we can work to mutual advantage in this Kaminov matter. Is it still arranged that I put my organization at your disposal?”

“It is left to my discretion,” Durell said.

“The price I set was twenty thousand dollars, the entire sum payable in American currency, in advance.” Omaru held out a pink hand. “I will take it now.”

“Not yet. We have some problems.”

“Nadja Osmanovna? Has she not talked yet?”

“No.”

“There are ways, sir, to elicit information.”

“Not this time. She must be a willing ally.”

“She will never be that. Her reputation makes the entire premise false. Alexi Kaminov is an idealist, a throwback to the romantic Russian soul of Tolstoi and Dostoievsky. Nadja is the new breed. Romance is unimportant to her. Alexi dreams of passion and endless love; she dreams of her position in the state heirarchy. She will not help us. Yet we need her advice, eh? We must learn the rendezvous point where we can kidnap Colonel Kaminov.”

“He will be useless if he must be taken by force.” Omaru looked like a complacent Buddha. “I will not presume to advise you on your affairs. My job is to deliver Kaminov into your hands, for twenty thousand dollars. He will surrender only to you, in company with the girl, is that correct? This is the way the message read. I put the message into the appropriate pipeline and here you are, eh? A long way from home. My boat is ready in Akijuro. It takes thirty hours to cross the Japan Sea. We need only the rendezvous point, and Nadja will know this. You must make her talk, sir.”

“It will take time.”

“We have no time,” Omaru said. “Turn the girl over to me. Once we have the information from her, she can be eliminated. We can persuade Colonel Kaminov to cooperate. He will be caught between two millstones, eh? He will be committed to defect; he will not be able to go back then. So he will dangle between them and us. We offer him safety, a new life. Can he refuse? He will divulge the military statistics you seek. The future is predictable, whatever disappointment he suffers at not having Nadja waiting for his eager arms.”

Omaru sighed and belched loudly. “Ours is a devious business. You are in it for patriotic motives, or perhaps from some private compulsions toward such a life. It is of no consequence to me. I owe allegiance to no land and no flag. Money is my only god, Mr. Durell. I have earned a lot of it through the Kaiwa Corporation, trading in bodies and propaganda in the Far East. I expect to earn more money in the future. So you know what I am, and what I do.”

“I don’t deal with double agents and murderers,” Durell said.

“You do me an injustice, sir. No doubt my activities irritate you. You would like to eliminate me and Kaiwa from events here, perhaps? But I make myself too useful to your side, as in this instance. Am I too complacent? I think not. Facts are facts. Who else can bring Colonel Kaminov to safety from Manchuria, into your hands? No one but Omaru.” “You don’t know where he is, however.”

Omaru’s voice hardened. “I act in good faith. Without Kaiwa, Colonel Kaminov could never have contacted you. Are you suggesting that we do not do business together?”

“Correct,” Durell said. “It’s no deal.”

“You owe me twenty thousand dollars.”

“You owe me some explanations. I don’t like being sent for by a couple of hoods—”

“My apologies. You seem sensitive, sir.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“Have you the money with you?”

“I have,” Durell said. “I will pay only ten thousand for what you have done now. Nothing more.”

Omaru frowned. He shifted his massive weight in the big chair, stroked his huge belly, folded pale fat fingers like sausages over his pink yukata. The charcoal in the brazier made a brief crackling sound, like paper crumpling.

“I have known your reputation, Durell, for some time. You have an enviable name. But in this case, it is a matter of kokuro, of heart. You seem to suffer from the Japanese disease of ense—a tiredness with life, sir. I could dispose of you now and take all the money at once.”

“You could try,” Durell said quietly.

“I could succeed. But—very well. Ten thousand dollars now, to show good faith for value received.”

“An explanation, first,” Durell said. “Why did your men kill Waldo Fingal?”

Omaru looked blank. “Who?”

“Waldo Fingal. You know the name.”

“I have many men in Kaiwa.”

“But you don’t murder them. You had Waldo killed this morning in Tokyo.”

Omaru’s eyes became more enigmatic than before. The pale light in the room emphasized the tinge of color in his skin. His mouth pushed out. “Is Waldo’s death important?”

“It is, to me. He once worked for me.”

“A drunkard, a coward, a wreck of a man?”

“He was different, when I knew him.”

“He was unreliable.” Omaru was curt. “He was eliminated. It was necessary.”

“Because he tried to warn me of something?”

“Of what?”

Durell smiled. “If I were certain, I would not be here. You’re too clever to try to play games with me, Omaru. He said enough to make me feel we cannot do business at all.” “You need me,” Omaru insisted.

“I need no murderers.”

“Come, Waldo Fingal was unimportant.”

“Was he? His death costs you twenty thousand dollars.”

Omaru opened his eyes wide, then slitted them again. “This is ridiculous. I begin to feel angry with you, Durell. Waldo Fingal was given to hallucinations and lies. So you knew him once; but that was a long time ago. His elimination had nothing to do with our business arrangement.”

“I think it did. And I’m calling it off,” Durell said. “From here on, keep out of my way, Omaru. Don’t interfere with the operation.”

“Are we enemies, then?” Omaru whispered.

“You name it as you please. We are not partners.”

Durell was aware of movement then behind the soshi screens. One of them slid to one side. He turned and saw the masklike face of Baroness Isome. She wore a white kimono with a scarlet obi and her movement was like a drifting wisp of vapor as she glided into the room. She looked through Durell as if he did not exist, and spoke to the fat man in a light, thin voice. “Omaru, my dear?”

“We are discussing business.” Omaru waved a fat paw. “Mr. Durell, if you refuse payment, I must warn you of a Japanese saying, to the effect that ‘virtue disappears in the face of poverty.’ In this case, the poverty will be mine.”

They have another saying,” Durell returned. “When one wastes money, it is ‘like throwing gold coins before a cat.’ You get nothing from me, Omaru.”

“We had a contract. I delivered a message, and I am prepared to deliver Kaminov to you, for twenty thousand dollars in American money.” Omaru lurched up, his big body trembling with anger. “You cannot do without me. I have the men and the facilities you need. All we lack is the exact rendezvous place. Osmanovna knows this. You must force it out of her.”

“Under the circumstances,” Durell said, “there is no contract and nothing to discuss.”

“I will not permit—”

“Omaru!”

The woman’s voice cut like a rasp through soft pulp. The man stopped, turned slowly, his round shaven head thrust forward a little on his monstrous shoulders. The woman’s masklike face cracked slightly with a smile. She touched Durell’s arm with a light, feathery gesture.

“You are angry because of your friend’s death. It is understandable. But this is not a time for rash decisions. We know where you plan to go—where Tagashi intends to take you. It is a small fishing village named Miyako, about five miles north of Akijuro on the coast. Tagashi has arranged quarters there for you, with an uncle, a fisherman of the village. Tagashi-san has many ‘relatives’, has he not? Have you thought of this?”

“I’ve noted it,” Durell said.

“Wherever you are, we shall send word to you. We can decide nothing tonight. Let us leave the matter open.” Omaru spoke bitterly. “But my patience is thin. Once the girl talks, my apparatus can take care of everything. I shall expect the money tomorrow, then, and when the business is concluded, I may make another assessment. I think that is all. Isome is right. We need not quarrel over the death of a drunken fool. My men will see you safely returned to your friends now, Durell-san.”

“One moment.”

Durell turned again at Isome’s words. She moved back to Omaru, hands clasped delicately before her, her painted face like a geisha’s, a mask that defied any guess as to her age or thoughts.

“One matter must be decided,” she said in her thin, piping voice. “Omaru is greedy, and sometimes he takes great risks for money. I do not interfere. But this girl you took from the train is a great risk, indeed. She refuses to cooperate. If she does not, it is Kaminov who bungled, not we. Kaminov expected her to help, and put the burden of success on her assistance to us. We are committed now, and cannot turn back. Neither can Kaminov, though he does not seem to know it.”

“What are you getting at?” Durell asked.

“Nadja Osmanovna, naturally. If she does not talk, she is too dangerous to live, knowing what she knows now.”

“I’ll decide about that,” Durell said.

Isome’s painted face was like a mechanical doll’s. “A wise man admits danger, Mr. Durell. If you have scruples about killing her, you may deliver her to us. But you must make her talk first. If you cannot, again you must turn her over to us. We will be more successful.”

Omaru said decisively, “I must have the girl now. I’ll send my men back with Durell to get her.”

“Don’t push me,” Durell said.

“I must be adamant about this, sir.”

Omaru clapped his hands and the two Japanese gunmen reappeared in the doorway. Baroness Isome smiled and gave them orders in rapid dialect. They were obsequious toward her, as if her authority equaled the fat man’s. Durell wondered at the essence of pure evil that came through the woman’s mask. He could understand Omaru as an adventurer, interested only in money. Isome was different. Her essence was that of acid, of silent poison. Of course it was a risk to let the girl live, if she eventually refused to talk. But when he looked at Isome and her fat husband, he smelled the evil in them, and he could not agree under any circumstances to turn her over to them.

One of Omaru’s men thrust a gun in his back.

“Come, we take you to Tagashi, we take the girl.”

“Put the gun away,” Durell said tightly. “I warned you, I find it disagreeable.”

Omaru gave a rumbling laugh. “He only obeys orders, Durell. I almost suspect you of bourgeois sentimentality in reference to the girl.”

The hoodlum jabbed with his gun. “Come. We go now.” One of the first things you learn when training for K Section at The Farm in Maryland is how much distance to keep when you cover a man with a gun, and especially how tight a grip to hold on your weapon. The Japanese hood was not a professional in Durell’s world. He was pitifully easy. Smiling, Durell turned and smashed the gun from the man’s hand. The man screamed, wringing a broken wrist, and Durell kicked the heavy gun aside. His partner lunged, and Durell drove a fist into his belly and smashed him through the wood and paper fusuma door. Omaru bellowed orders, his face convulsed with rage. The woman stood quietly beside him, contemptuous.

Durell felt the sudden change to enmity in the air. He had to be quick now. The two gunmen had separated, the first one holding his broken wrist, his lips skinned back, his big teeth bared. His feet in a flying judo kick could be deadly, and Durell backed carefully away to the broken doorway.

“I’ll take the car myself. Thanks for everything, Omaru.” Omaru said thickly, “I want the Russian girl. You are stupid to insist on keeping her.”

“Call your men off, or I’ll kill them,” Durell said.

“I will not tolerate this,” Omaru whispered. “You are a fool. I do not do business with fools.”

He snapped something to his two men and they jumped for him again. Durell took the one with the broken wrist first, chopping at his throat and rupturing the larynx. The man fell to his knees and bowed forward, then rolled back and forth on the floor in anguish. The second man came back through the broken doorway with a small, bright knife in his hand, and the blade flickered and weaved in a bright, dismaying pattern of thrust and parry as he closed in toward Durell.

Durell backed around the charcoal brazier in a spinning step, then kicked over the heater into Omaru’s lap. The hissing coals scattered over the fat man’s thighs. The hot iron hibachi crashed on one of Omaru’s small, pink feet.

Omaru screamed. The charcoal, strewn over the straw floor mat, promptly caused it to smoke and bum. A tiny flame leaped up. Omaru lurched, his face yellow, and screamed to his men to kill Durell.

The woman had shrunk away, but she still smiled, her winged brows lifted. She watched Durell in fascination, as he jumped across the small fire leaping up from the fat man’s chair and spun away from the men crowding in through the doorway. There was no escape in that direction. He caught the flicker of flying steel and ducked the knife, and dived for the broken wood-and-paper partition to his left. There he turned and drew his own gun, standing in the opening he had broken for himself. At his back was the cool, dark night, the sighing of the mountain wind.

“Omaru!”

The room was filled with smoke. There were shouts of panic from other parts of the inn now. The fat man lurched around and spread his enormous arms to hold his men back.

“This was for Fingal,” Durell called.

Omaru did not reply. He looked like some enormous demon rising from the red, steamy depths of hell, with the fire blazing behind him.

Durell turned and ran across the inner court of the mountain inn. The cool sound of a tinkling wind bell was ironic. He smashed through a tall bamboo hedge and found the car still parked near the carved wooden gateway. He fell in, found the keys in the ignition, and started it.

He drove away with his foot flooring the gas pedal.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nadja tried the rope that lashed her wrists once more. Her flesh was raw, and the pain from her effort went up her arms in a shock wave of agony. She gasped and lay still, watching the dull afternoon wane into evening dusk.

For a time she was passive, studying the restricted arc of her vision. She could turn her head only partially. She had slept fitfully during the day just passed, aware of a dozen alarms. She was surprised at her fear, because she always thought she could meet death bravely; at first she thought it was because her end would be useless this way, and it was her duty—as her instructors always maintained—to stay alive to the last possible moment.

But it was more than that.

During the tortuous drive down the mountains to the coast, she had been wrapped in blankets that hid her from passing traffic. She had been able to guess where they were, at different times. She knew when Tagashi cut through the outskirts of Akijuro and turned north along the shore, by the smells of the sea and the pines. The drive took four hours on the wretched roads. They had not fed her, so she was hungry when she was finally led into the fisherman’s house on the beach.

She knew she was in the village of Miyako. Just before they halted, they’d had to wait for a suburban trolley to clang past, and she had a fairly good idea where she was.

The big puzzle was why they kept her alive.

She expected questions and torture, but nothing happened. Durell came in and gave her lunch of fish and rice and tea and sat there watching, silent, not asking anything. His silence troubled her. But then the other American agent, the young one with the yellow hair and freckles and boyish face, came in and said something in a slangy phrase and Durell took the lacquered bowls and teacup and tied her up again.

She knew Durell was the most dangerous of them all. But her immediate fear came from Yuki Tagashi.

Yuki came in shortly after Durell and the others left the house with Tagashi—she could hear them leave—and the teenager’s quiet appearance somehow struck a fang of terror in Nadja’s heart. Wearing pedal-pushers and a striped singlet, the girl simply stood at the window that let in the sea breeze and stared at her. Yuki’s round face was in the shadows. Nadja recognized her as an Embassy employee, of course, and felt rueful at her failure to spot the girl as one of Tagashi’s agents, since it was her job to run the security checks. But Yuki had managed to efface herself with a meek and pleasant manner.

She looked different now, her small feet spread slightly on the waxed floor, her hands plunged deep into her tight pockets. There was a bright ribbon in her thick hair. “How do you feel?” Yuki asked suddenly, staring.

“I am all right.”

“Are the ropes too tight?”

“Yes. They hurt.”

“Would you like me to loosen them for you?” Yuki laughed and took the lines and pulled them tighter. “Do you think I am cruel and heartless?”

“Yes, but it is because you do not understand.”

“I understand you are my enemy.” Yuki spoke rapidly. “And enemies must be destroyed. I promise to destroy you, whatever Durell-san says.”

“Please leave me alone,” Nadja said. “Leave it to the men to decide about such things.” She considered the girl’s spiteful eyes. “You cannot frighten me, Yuki. But you are a cruel and vicious child.”

“Am I?” Yuki said. “Listen, I was once in love with a boy, two years ago, and he worked for my father. He was sent somewhere, I don’t know where, just before we were to be married. Yes, he was a spy. But he was handsome and gentle. And he never came back, I never saw him again. But I think I will always love him.”

“You don’t know what happened to him?” Nadja asked. “My father told me your people killed him.”

“So you turn your hatred on me?”

“Why not?” Yuki crossed to the mat where Nadja lay helplessly and prodded her in the stomach, experimentally, with her toe. “I hate you so much it is a sickness in me. Ordinarily, I do not think Western women are good to look at, but you are beautiful—or you could be, if you were cleaned up and put in decent clothes. I wouldn’t want you to die easily.”

“Leave me alone, please,” Nadja whispered.

Yuki kicked her, but since she was still wearing sneakers the blow might have been worse. As it was, Nadja gasped and doubled up as much as the ropes would allow. She could not escape. Yuki kicked her again and again, crying, the tears running down her face. Nadja felt dizzy and sick, and tasted acid in her throat. But the pain in her stomach was nothing, she told herself. Yuki did not know the tricks of making a person scream and beg for death. She rode out the storm of Yuki’s fury, and then was aware of silence in the room again.

Yuki was gone.

It had grown dark outside the fisherman's hut.

Nadja lay still, breathing with disciphne, her eyes fixed on the dim oblong of the little window. There were wooden shutters, but they had not been closed. Durell had not come back yet. There was no one else in the house but Yuki.

If she hoped to escape, now was the time. Nothing was impossible. There was always a way, always something to be turned to use—

She saw the bright glitter of a steel comb that had fallen from Yuki’s hair when the girl kicked her.

It lay on the tatami mat, within reach. Nadja held her breath. The wind smelled of fish and seaweed from the lowering tide on the beach, and filled the room with a dank chill. A tree branch scraped and rattled on the roof tiles. In the darkness, the comb was only a faint glimmer at eye level when she measured the distance. She could make it. It would hurt, but it was her only chance—

She strained and stretched and caught the comb between her teeth. It was heavy and solid. She rested, panting. Then she maneuvered until the steel comb lay under her bound wrists and she could grasp it in her fingers. Once that was done, she set to work in patience to fray the ropes that held her.

She did not know if there was time enough. Now and then, pausing, she heard Japanese voices in the courtyard, in the rude idiom of fishermen, or out in the darkness of the village strung along the shore. Durell did not come back. She worked on.

Her thoughts lingered on Yuki, and she remembered how she had been at Yuki’s age. The worst years were over by then and she was already in Moscow, sharpening her mind and body for just such a moment as this. But those were the years after the nightmare. . . .

She remembered her father, that severe and logical man in the mission that was burned and rebuilt and burned again. From her mature viewpoint, she could not understand his patience and persistence. He had his faith, but in the face of such adversity, of war and bandits, of Communist hordes and the grafting demands of local Chinese politicians of the old regime, it would seem that any man might yield.

It had been necessary to kill him in the end, the new soldiers clubbing and shooting everyone in the compound. They had been especially vicious with her mother, that gentle and sad-eyed woman of part Siberian, part Manchurian blood. Nadja’s pale gold hair, almost like silver, was like her mother’s. But the rest of her mother’s face had belonged to Asia. Nadja had inherited her father’s Gallic idiom and mentality.

She was only a child, but she learned about men when the guerilla soldiers came, and she survived the debauch on her body only by detaching her mind from the things they did to her. But she did not hate them. She was a resigned sacrifice, although in later years she often awoke shivering and screaming, her teeth chattering and her limbs weak. . . .

And that was not all. Her mind wavered, hesitant to lift the curtain on the secrets that followed. Images, terrible and obscene, flickered through her thoughts. Durell had wakened the monsters again, she thought, in slow, cold panic. Memories she had carefully buried and neglected now came oozing up to the surface. She clenched her teeth, thinking of it. . . .

Her thoughts deliberately skipped to the time when she was with other homeless children, shifted here and there; and finally Alexi came, tall and brave, and put her on the Moscow train and rode with her all the way across Siberia. She was twelve then; he was twenty. She fell in love with him at once.

In the Moscow school, they taught her to be ruthless and clever and dedicated, never accepting defeat.

Well, she would not be beaten now, either.

With this thought, the last strand of line around her wrists frayed on Yuki’s steel comb and snapped apart.

For a moment Nadja lay on her back, breathing deeply, eyes glittering, and startled at the pain that flowed through her released arms. She spread them wide and waited. She heard someone talking in another part of the house, and she thought she recognized Yuki’s sulky voice, but she was not sure.

She stood up slowly and almost fell, clutching the wall for support. The trouble passed. She went to the window. It was not too generous in size. She looked out at a dark beach where fishing nets were spread to dry on high bamboo stakes. The night sky loomed somberly over her. The air felt tense, as if a storm were due to break.

She paused to tie her thick hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, getting it out of the way, and she used Yuki’s comb to pin it in place. Then she opened the window carefully, listening for any alarm. There was none. A moment later she dropped to the sandy soil outside the house.

There was enough light in the yellowish night sky to show her the long curve of the beach, with its wooden fishermen’s houses in a row facing the somnolent, oily sea. There was a small harbor behind a stone breakwater to the right, and a dozen trim diesel trawlers were moored there. A single modern building, a fish-processing plant, loomed against the sky. Behind the houses that faced the sea, there was an asphalt road and, parallel to the road, was the interurban trolley line she had heard. The trolley would take her to Akijuro, she was sure.

Her heart thudded heavily. She could telephone to Tokyo as soon as she reached a safe place. The Embassy people could be warned about Alexi’s plan to smuggle himself across the Japan Sea and seek asylum with the Americans.

She paused, hand to mouth, thinking of him.

Confusion churned in her.

He would be shot, and she would be responsible for his death. She had loved him for so many years; first as a big-eyed, frightened waif dependent upon him, then, growing up into a woman at the Moscow Institute, devoting herself to his gentle charm, even though she was just one more student in the school run for KGB women personnel.

Nadja started carefully down the beach, away from the house. She kept close to the shadows on the seaward side of the village strung out along the shore road.

She owed everything to the Soviet motherland that had saved her from a life of brutal degradation in Manchuria. Alexi was a traitor. Therefore he must die. It was simple. But not simple. The childish adoration she once knew for him had turned to a woman’s love, in those days in Moscow. But he still regarded her as a child, even then. He had saved her once, but he had only been doing a routine official job, selecting candidates for the school. Still, he was Alexi, he was the only man in her life who managed to save her from the nightmares, the horror of her memory, gently erasing them, soothing her, holding her once, long ago, while she wept and told him how it had all happened, how her father had been killed, and where, and what had been done to her. . . .

She did not know what to do.

Then she turned the corner of a house and almost bumped into Yuki, who was walking quickly down the village lane to the beach. The meeting was unfortunate for Yuki. Nadja still ached from the torment the girl had inflicted on her.

Before Yuki could scream in alarmed recognition, Nadja was on her savagely, her hands slashing, the edge of her palm crushing the bridge of Yuki’s nose with one chopping blow, the second swing slicing at the side of Yuki’s throat. The girl fell, blood gushing from her mouth, coughing and choking. Nadja stepped lightly around her, took her time, weighed the fatal blow at the nape of the girl’s neck. Struck properly, it would put Yuki down forever.

Nadja did not use it.

Satisfied that Yuki was too busy simply trying to breathe through her bloody, broken nose, Nadja ran between the houses of the fishing village toward the trolley line.

She paused at the tracks. A lemon-green light lay over the sea horizon. The air was quiet, electric with a sense of waiting. She had no money for the trolley, not even some yen for a public phone. Well, she would steal a car, find her way to the Shimbashi Hotel in Akijuro, where there were always Soviet employees on holiday. Maybe that was the best thing to do.

But the village did not boast a single car that she could see. She looked up and down the shining tracks, listening for the approach of a trolley. For all she knew, service might be discontinued for the day.

Quickly, she ran back to where she had left Yuki, wondering if Yuki had any money with her.

Now it was her turn to be surprised.

Two men were there, helping Yuki to her feet. The girl’s face was bruised and bloody, her eyes still dazed by the violence of Nadja’s assault. The men shook her, asking questions in growling Japanese. They looked tough, ruthless and hard. Nadja knew from the way they held Yuki that they were not Durell’s men.

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 demand 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.

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—”

“No, nothing. But still, everything. Do not try to understand. You have been taught discipline. There is no place for sentiment in our work. When you are assigned to a station, you will forget me.”

“Never, Alexi!” She had wept. “How could I?”

But he got up from the park bench and went away, his slight limp marking him in the crowd. She never saw him again. In the dormitory that night, they told her that he had been transferred to the Far East again. He never wrote to her.

She loved him, and he had said he loved her, but she never saw him again. . . .

“Explain it,” Omaru insisted. “Isome will not be patient. Explain ‘Pere Jacques.’ ”

“I cannot!” Her mind raced back and forth, caged in a trap she had fashioned for herself. She had saved her sanity once by forgetting it all. Now the demons stirred restlessly in their dark, shadowy caves, provoked by Omaru’s prodding words. She was afraid. “It—it hurts me.”

“How?”

“It is all so confused!” she whispered. “It is like a dream from long ago—”

“Something you once told Kaminov?”

“I don’t know!”

“You must know. He trusted his life to your knowing. Think! Pere Jacques! Those are the key words. Explain them.” She dissolved in tears and wailed like a child. One terror fought with another in her mind, the fears of yesterday and her dread of what Omaru might do. But the older fears were the greater. She did not dare unlock the door and let them out. She felt weak and exhausted, rolling her head monotonously from side to side. Omaru watched her with curiosity.

“Do you trust me?” he asked suddenly. “You do believe that Isome is your superior, do you not?”

“Yes, yes, I suspected it for some time, but—”

“She will kill you if you do not help us. She will regard you as a worse traitor than Kaminov.”

“I know I deserve it, I want to do my duty, but—”

“But?”

“I cannot, I’m afraid—”

She writhed in the chains that held her to the floor. Omaru loomed over her. His face was an evil mask, his eyes narrowed as he watched her, startled by her transformation. She hated him. She hated Isome. There could be no worse torture than these questions. She felt as if she were burning, she could almost hear the crackle of flames. . . .

. . . as the timbers fell from the burning mission hospital. The patients screamed, trapped in their beds, burning alive. The grenades burst, rifles cracked, she heard running feet. Women shrieked and were thrown to the compound earth and were raped where they fell.

Father! she thought. Father!

You could see the coast, the shimmering sea from the hilltop where the mission had stood.

She was a child, a half-woman, and he tried to stand between her and the grinning soldiers who advanced toward them. They clubbed him down and there was blood all over him and she ran, screaming, through the burning building, looking for the cellar entrance. Jacques was dead, his head was broken open, there was blood everywhere and the smell of sweat and panting bodies piling on top of her, tearing at her frock, tearing and ripping into her body. . . .

. . . and she screamed and screamed as she looked up into Omaru’s waiting face.

He spoke to her as if from a great distance, and his bulk leaned over her in a curious stance. Her arm stung. There was a queer fire in her left arm, and she saw the glitter of a syringe in his pudgy fingers. He had injected something into her, moving so quickly that she had not even been forewarned.

It did not matter.

She had failed herself, her job, and Alexi.

She welcomed death.

The last thing she remembered was the sound of gongs.

CHAPTER TEN

Durell arrived at Omaru’s house a few minutes past midnight. Eliot Barnes came with him as far as the landing on the waterfront in Akijuro, where a taxi deposited them among other parked cars. Omaru’s island was a distant blur of light, a far aerie offshore. A boatman was hired to take him by launch from the mainland dock.

Tagashi had discovered Nadja’s escape first, when he returned from Akijuro after checking the CIA safe house there, in preparation for receiving Colonel Kaminov when he arrived. Tagashi’s eyes had gone blank, containing no special reproach.

“She cannot have been gone long,” Tagashi said. “Perhaps Yuki can tell us more, when she returns. The problem now is that Nadja Osmanovna will set off an alarm and most likely, Colonel Kaminov will be arrested in Manchuria, where he is hiding. She knows the place. We do not. The entire operation must be called off, Durell-san. It is regrettable.”

“We will cancel nothing,” Durell said flatly.

It was then that Yuki returned, subdued and disheveled by the pain of her broken nose. Yuki was suddenly a small child, weeping on Tagashi’s breast, her face swollen, her eyes humiliated. Her sobs were incoherent. Durell took her to the bath and gently washed her face, removing the clotted blood from around her nose and mouth. The cartilage showed a clean break, not as bad as he had first feared. The septums were clear, and she could breathe easily. It would mark her, but not drastically.

“I’ll tape it for you, Yuki. You’ll be fine.”

“Will I not be ugly now?” the girl sobbed.

“Not at all. It will hardly be noticed, once the swelling goes down. A few aspirins and a night’s sleep and you’ll be fine. Now stop crying and tell us what happened.”

“I am sorry,” Yuki whispered. She looked at Durell differently, without her previous hostility. She was docile in his hands. She told her story quickly, with bitter clarity, describing her last encounter with Nadja and the way the two Japanese gunmen had seized her.

“You’re sure they were not police?” Durell asked.

“They said they were. But these were very bad men.”

“You never saw them in the Tokyo Embassy?”

“Oh, no.” Her mouth shook. “I think they worked for Omaru-san.”

Durell looked at Tagashi. “Then we need not worry about the operation being aborted yet.”

Tagashi’s face went blank for a moment. He spoke softly. “Durell-san, Omaru is not to be trusted. He will torture the Russian girl, perhaps, to learn where Kaminov can be picked up. Or he will form an alliance with her to lure you into a trap over there, surely. In any case, how can we go on?”

Eliot Barnes said: “We may have to eat crow, but maybe we can still make a deal with Omaru, if he gets Nadja’s information.”

“Any deal,” Tagashi said reproachfully, “will only prepare a trap for Durell-san, however. It cannot be considered.”

Durell said: “I’m placing my bets on Nadja. I don’t think she’ll betray Kaminov to Omaru. Not immediately, anyway.”

“He will torture her. He will kill her.”

“Not if we get there and take her back in time.”

“It is impossible,” Tagashi said.

“We have to try,” Durell insisted.

They wasted no time. Eliot Barnes wanted to go with Durell to the island, but Durell decided it was a one-man operation. It was Omaru’s stronghold, and short of a raid in police strength, two men were no better than one. Eliot waited on the Akijuro dock as Durell was taken offshore in a hired launch.

It occurred to Durell, as he mounted the winding steps that led up to the brightly lighted house that was Omaru’s aerie, that the fruits of crime must taste sweet to the fat man, and bitter in the mouths of all the guests who did not dare refuse any of Omaru’s invitations. There was a guard on the island dock, but the man only pointed politely to the path up to the house, assuming that Durell was a belated guest. Still, he felt something like Daniel approaching the lion’s den.

He paused on an outer terrace to allow a small group of diplomats to pass by. A waitress in a red kimono and a high-piled gleaming coiffure pinned with elaborate ivory combs offered him a tray of cocktails. Durell shook his head, smiled, and considered his moves. The waitress walked on, beyond the high glass doors that revealed the crowded reception room, the formally dressed guests. A few drops of rain spattered on the terrace stones around him.

Music drifted down the steep, rocky slopes of the island and was snatched away by the rising wind. The rain fell lightly, as if uncertain whether to continue. Durell, standing like a shadow on the terrace, watched a group of guests taking their leave. Omaru was not at the door to bid them good night. Neither Omaru nor Isome, his wife, were among the people he could see through the big windows. His stomach muscles tightened slightly. They would be here, on the island, somewhere. This was Omaru’s headquarters for Kaiwa. Somewhere on the island was Nadja Osmanovna.

He began to explore, ignoring the public part of the big house, and followed a path that led up through dark pine woods toward the island’s summit.

He found the radio tower five minutes later, neatly camouflaged among the trees on the opposite slope. The aerial was cleverly intertwined with the branches overhead. Tracing the wire, he found a small path that led to a camouflaged steel door set into the rock wall nearby. Durell tested the door, found it locked, and turned back. The main house was not visible from here. Out at sea, he glimpsed the running lights of a ferry from Akijuro to the Tsugaru Strait, moving slowly in the rainy darkness.

The path circled the southern side of the island and forked, one branch leading to a flight of steps up an old stone watchtower. He glimpsed the tower just in time to step out of sight of the guard up there. The man was carrying a machine-pistol and smoking a cigarette. In the red glow as he inhaled, his cruel mouth and hollow cheeks looked disembodied in the darkness above Durell. Dim light shone on his weapon. Durell wondered how many others of Omaru’s men were posted at strategic points about the island. The place was a fortress, cleverly camouflaged, manned by armed men. He wondered if every step he had taken so far had been quietly observed and reported to Omaru, somewhere in this place.

He gave no sign he was aware of danger. The man on the watchtower seemed to deliberately avoid looking his way. Durell turned and walked on, slowly circling the island. A flight of wooden steps led upward through the rocky pine woods. He looked backward, but saw only the shadows of the trees. The sound of tumbling water came from ahead, and he saw the stream of a tiny waterfall cascading down the sheer cliffside to tumble into the sea. Small bridges and platforms had been artfully constructed around and across the stream. The spray from the waterfall wet his face as he crossed the footbridge under it.

The path ended in a small terrace planted with flowers. A stepping stone had been placed near the sheer rock of the cliff. Without pause, Durell put his foot on the stone and felt it turn under his weight. His balance teetered for a moment, threatening to drop him over the rock lip. Then a part of the cliff wall turned and a light shone out from the doorway carved in the stone. Durell did not hesitate. He stepped inside, accepting the silent, mechanical invitation, and found himself on a wooden platform. The door rumbled shut again and the light went out automatically before he could spot the switch.

He stepped quickly to one side, pulled his gun free, and held it ready. Then there came a second rumbling and the light flickered on again, a bulb in the smooth plastered ceiling of the tunnel; the switch was near his left hand. Then the cave door opened again.

He had been followed, as he had suspected. A small wiry figure was outlined for an instant against the white, gushing spray of the waterfall shielding the entrance. The man held his gun lifted, muzzle pointing upward.

Durell slammed the man’s arm up in a jolting arc, then got in under the gun and slashed his .38 across the hoodlum’s face. The gunman gave a gurgling cry and fell to his knees. His gun clattered on the stone floor. Durell picked it up and dragged the man inside, but then the automatic mechanism of the cave door took over and closed on the other’s legs and pinned them between the steel bulwark and the stone framing of the door. There came the brittle cracking of legs breaking. The man’s scream was brief, agonized. His eyes rolled and he fainted.

It was just as well, Durell thought.

The light in the tunnel stayed on, since the door was now jammed open. He turned and climbed up inside the pinnacle of volcanic rock that comprised Omaru’s headquarters.

It was a complete layout. Hidden deep in the core of the island itself, far under the lush villa flaunted to the public gaze, were storage rooms crammed with smuggled goods that ranged from typewriters to crates of rifles and pamphlets. Everything was clean, immaculate. A smell of seaweed filled the air as he explored the maze of corridors and rooms hollowed out of the rock, and now and then he felt the chill draught of the damp sea wind pouring in through some ventilating opening.

Five minutes later he found the steel, circular stairway to the top, installed in the smooth, black basalt tube of a volcanic chimney. In the dim, geological past, this had once been the canal through which molten rock had spewed forth to the top of the pinnacle to build up the island. The walls were cold now, polished and fused into a glasslike, shiny black surface. The steel stairway wound up through the natural channel and Durell followed it swiftly.

At regular intervals, dim light bulbs illuminated the way. A small platform was built at the top of the flume. Rain spattered through a natural crevice above, but the platform was twenty feet below the topmost opening. Durell tried a small door in the platform wall. It was not locked. He opened it and stepped through.

Two of them were waiting just beyond the door, apparently alerted by some alarm signal he had missed. He saw at a glance that he had stepped into a radio control center—there were banks of instruments, transmitting apparatus, a metal swivel chair, a green metal desk, a straw carpet on the floor. The operator’s headphones lay on the desk blotter, and a low, persistent whine came from them. Durell felt the two men jump at him the moment he stepped over the threshold.

He struck first, at the biggest and toughest of the two. Then he swung at the other man, who wore glasses—the radio operator, he guessed. The first opponent crashed back and bounced up again as if made of rubber; the radio man was more fragile. He fell, lost his glasses, and smashed them underfoot. He wailed, resting on hands and knees as he groped about for them.

The first man returned with a chop at Durell’s neck and Durell slashed back with his gun over the other’s left eye. There was a small sound of a crushed bone, and the Japanese dropped as if pole-axed. There remained only the muttering, panic-stricken radio operator.

Durell hauled him to his feet and slammed him into the swivel chair, then yanked him forward by his shirt front. “You run the radio?”

Myopic eyes blinked blindly at him. “I am Akiru—yes, I am radio man. I am nobody. I am here all the time.”

“You have no relief man?”

“Not necessary, sir. I always send messages for Omaru-san. Very best equipment, very latest.”

“Is your outfit licensed?”

“Omaru-san makes his arrangements with the police.” “Did you send any messages tonight?” Durell snapped. The man blinked, opened his mouth, shut it, then said, “Omaru-san is waiting. No messages yet.”

“You’ve got a code book, haven’t you?”

The man kept blinking rapidly as he squinted at Durell. “The code book is in the safe, sir. Here, behind the Oshigaru print.”

There was a print of the old Tokkaido Road on one wall of the radio room. Durell stepped over the first man, who lay unconscious, breathing noisily, and pushed aside the print to reveal a steel safe front with a red dial. He pointed his gun at the radioman.

“Open the safe. I want the code book.”

“Only Omaru-san has the combination. It is impossible. I cannot! Please, it is impossible!”

The man sweated, and Durell could smell the acrid stink of his fear. “You’re expecting to have to send a message out tonight, right? To Manchuria?”

The radioman hesitated, nodded. “Yes.”

“All right. Turn around. Over to the wall.”

He used his gun butt on the back of the other’s head to drop him. Now there were two, out cold, on the floor. There was a large steel closet, with the key in the door, and he opened it and found it empty except for two raincoats and a hat. He crammed both limp men inside. There were vents in the door to admit enough air so they wouldn’t suffocate. Then he locked the door and pocketed the key and left the radio room.

Another door opposite the one he had entered led him up another flight of steps. He felt a breath of salt wind and stepped out into a garden hewn from the very pinnacle of the island. He was standing behind the tiny Shinto shrine he had spotted from the landing down below at the water’s edge. The wind slapped him with raw vigor, but the rain had stopped and the moon gleamed fitfully from behind ribbons of vapor.

From inside the temple came a thin, sharp scream, abruptly silenced, then another, fainter this time.

Durell walked around the red-lacquered building and opened the ceremonial gate. He recognized Omaru’s rumbling voice and then the thin laughter of Isome. A smell of burnt flesh touched him and he tightened his grip on the gun and pushed open the door.

Stone lanterns illuminated the interior. The cedar floor smelled of lemon oil. In a niche was a lacquered bowl containing yellow chrysanthemums. Isome looked drunk, a rapturous glaze in her pale eyes, and she stood holding a steel rod that glowed hot from having been kept in the flame of one of the lamps. Her back was to Durell as he paused in the doorway.

What was left of Nadja groveled in a corner on the floor, almost naked, her body glistening with sweat and blood. There was blood along her inner thighs and on her left hand from torn fingernails. Her face behind her tangled wheaten hair was almost beyond recognition. A repetitive denial came from her broken lips, and her eyes stared blindly at Durell.

He did not think she saw him. He did not thirds she could see anything.

Omaru sat in a chair of heavy leather and dark teak. His bald head gleamed in the radiance of the stone lanterns. His tiny eyes sucked up the spectacle of the tormented girl and Isome, who moved toward her with diabolical steps.

“Hold it,” Durell said.

His voice snapped the spell for Omaru. His head jerked about and he stared. Isome seemed not to hear. Neither did Nadja, whose voice monotonously repeated the negative phrase, again and again.

“Omaru, stop your wife or I’ll shoot her,” Durell said flatly.

The fat man lurched to his feet. He smiled. “So. You have come back to do business with me, after all.”

“I’ve come back for the girl only. Do you want me to stop Isome with a bullet?”

Omaru grunted, shrugged his massive shoulders in his red kimono, and said something sharply to the woman. Isome turned her head slowly to stare at Durell. Her mouth was slack, drunken. She dropped the glowing rod with a clatter, and it smoked and fumed on the polished cedar floor. Omaru spoke to the woman again, and she complained in a whining voice. But she moved away and stood sullenly against the opposite wall.

“We can still do business, you and I,” Omaru said. “Yet you seem determined to annoy me, my friend.”

“I am not your friend,” Durell said.

“But you cannot have the girl. I have promised her to Isome. You learned nothing from her, eh? But Isome can make her talk. She seems to be suffering from some sort of traumatic amnesia, unless she has fooled me completely. You had your chance with her, Durell. Now it is mine. If I get the information, we may still come to some arrangement about Colonel Kaminov.”

“Nadja will tell you nothing. She’ll die first. But not here. I’m taking her away with me.” Durell looked at the girl, who whispered her small litany over and over again out of a battered mouth. He spoke sharply. “Nadja! Get up and come over here to me.”

She did not stir. Her muttering went on. Durell crossed the shrine, holding the gun loosely in his hand. He wondered how soon the guards he had knocked out would get here. It was ironic that this torture chamber should be in use so near the big villa where polite amenities were taking place. He knew he had very little time.

“Nadja, come with me,” he said. “Come along. You won’t be killed. No one will oblige you that way, no matter how much you want to die. You won’t be hurt any more. Can you hear me? Can you stand up?”

Her muttering ended. The blindness slowly faded from her eyes as Durell’s quiet voice reached her. She touched her puffed and bleeding mouth with a swollen hand and looked craftily across the room at Isome. The other woman breathed quietly and deeply, like a sleep-walker.

Durell held out his left hand to Nadja.

“Come, it’s all right.”

Like a striking snake, the crazed and tortured girl lunged forward and bit his hand.

Durell pulled back, reluctant to hurt her. From somewhere in the temple came the distant, vibrant boom of a gong. And he saw that in the moment his attention was distracted by the girl, Omaru had tugged at a signal cord. The island fortress was totally alerted now.

He stepped back again, his mouth taut.

“That was a mistake, Omaru.”

The fat man grinned. “Put down your gun, please—or you are a dead man. There are weapons trained on you at this moment from three points in the balcony above this room. You will not leave here alive, unless I permit it.” There was a frieze of latticework eight feet up the four walls of the temple chamber. Durell scanned it quickly, saw the glint of a gun barrel in one place, the shine of a second and a third in the opposite wall. He felt a moment’s panic. He had not underestimated Omaru, yet the fat man still had a few tricks in his bag. But he wasn’t finished yet.

He did not drop his gun. “You see I can blow a tunnel through that fat belly of yours, Omaru,” he said. “Even a reflex shot if I’m killed will do it. The gamble is yours.” “Yes. Very well. What do you want, then?”

“Get over there with Isome,” Durell rapped.

Omaru made a small sign with his pudgy hand to the three unseen marksmen behind the wooden screening and moved ponderously to the wall to stand beside the woman. Isome made a tittering sound and spoke in English. “Why not wrestle the American for the girl, darling? It would be interesting.”

“Be quiet, Isome,” Omaru snapped.

“But you always brag so much and do so little,” the woman complained. “You watch others, and do nothing yourself.” Her smile was a little crazy. “Show me, darling, and kill him by holding him in your strong arms.”

Durell looked quickly at Nadja. His left hand ached where her teeth had left deep marks in the flesh of his palm. He thought her eyes, when they met his, seemed a little less remote than before. But he couldn’t be sure.

Omaru spoke again to his men behind the screen. The guns were withdrawn. He turned his bald head to Durell, and his winged brows lifted.

“Perhaps Isome is right. If you can beat me in a fair fight between us, you can take the girl. And if you lose, you are dead, and then what I do cannot matter to you, eh?” Omaru shrugged off his red kimono and stepped out of his sandals. “Come, you have your gun, and you can kill me. But my men will kill you, in return. One of us must die, eh? I will wrestle for the girl. You have my word that you can take her, if you can make me fall.”

The man’s bulk shone with a tawny pallor, and it was not all fat. His musculature was enormous, rippling. He took a sumo wrestler’s stance, feet spread, toes pointing outward, knees flexed. His bald head seemed to shrink into his meaty shoulders, offering no grip on a nonexistent neck. Only his enormous paunch and flesh, dimpled legs seemed to be vulnerable.

“Come,” he urged. “Americans are sportsmen, are they not? You have no choice. The other way, one or both of us must die.”

Durell looked up at the lattice screen. The guns still covered him. There seemed no way out. Shrugging, he tossed his weapon aside. It landed on a tatami mat midway between him and the motionless, cringing figure of the prisoner.

With a shriek, Nadja snatched up Durell’s gun and fired it, again and again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She squeezed off three shots before Durell jumped and reached her and silenced the clamorous gun. The echoes were deafening. Fine inlaid wood flew in splinters from the first bullet; the second hit a brass bell with brazen reverberations. And the third bullet dropped Isome.

Then Durell caught Nadja’s wrist and wrenched the gun away. The air shook with the reports and the echoes of the bell. He pulled Nadja around to his back and slammed the muzzle of the gun into Omaru’s naked belly.

“Hold it.”

The fat man looked shaken. “But Isome is hurt—this girl is insane—”

“Don’t move, Omaru. Tell your men to clear out of the gallery. Do it now.”

Omaru heard the harsh warning in Durell’s voice, but he shook his head. “No, I offered you a fair trial of strength. Nothing has changed. We both die. You can still kill me, but my men are certain to kill you immediately afterward. It is a stand-off.”

“There’s been a change,” Durell said tightly. “Look at your wife. Look at Isome.”

The woman’s elaborate coiffure had tumbled in disarray when she fell against the wall. A trickle of blood oozed from her left shoulder. She looked aged and bitter, no longer a delicate puppet; she was a crone unmasked behind the fine arts of her cosmetics. She spoke in a thin whisper.

“Omaru. Omaru, you are a fool. Let it be. I need a doctor.”

“You are only scratched,” the man said impatiently.

“It is an order. I need no heroics from you. One must be intelligent in these matters, too, as well as brave. I know you are brave, Omaru. But it is an order.”

“But we cannot allow him—”

“Nor can we allow open bloodshed here. It is stupid to think he came here without friends who wait his safe return. Can we afford a police investigation tonight, or tomorrow?” “He would call the police anyway—”

“No. In his work, he would not. But his friends might, you see. Do as he says.”

Isome’s words were sharp and authoritative. Durell noted the way she expected to be obeyed, and made a quick re-evaluation of his opponents. Isome was not a pretty doll used by Omaru for public appearances. She was the brains, the one in charge of the enemy operation. This much was obvious, just from the exposed relationship between them now.

Omaru nodded slowly, his eyes glittering; then he barked a command in Japanese to the men behind the screen. The guns disappeared. There was a rustling and slapping of sandaled feet. Omaru moved to Isome and considered her wound, tore a strip of cloth from her kimono and bandaged it roughly. Then he looked at Durell with bitter eyes.

“We could have done business, Durell-san,” the fat man said. “All my efforts have been to assist you—for money, of course, but still, we could have worked together. This girl is a common enemy to both of us.”

“You have not sent your message to Kaminov yet that we are coming for him,” Durell said harshly. “Let’s do it now.” “There is a certain time for such transmissions. In the morning—it is impossible now—”

Durell pushed his gun hard into Omaru’s fat belly. The big man winced and shrugged.

“Let me put on my kimono, please.”

Durell waited. Nadja cowered behind him. She was like a shivering animal, her eyes feral, never leaving Omaru and Isome. Yet she seemed to have accepted Durell’s protection

at last, sensing through her pain and terror that he had come to help her. But it was only expediency, he thought wryly. Once they were safely away from here—if they were lucky— she would turn on him like a cat and claw him again. “Nadja, can you walk?” he asked in English.

Her eyes were clearer. “Yes . . . I think so . . .”

“You have to trust me. No more kicking or biting?” “Please ... get me out. . . the woman is a monster . . .”

“All right.” Durell turned back to Omaru. “Let’s go down to your radio room.”

Omaru nodded. “As you wish.”

Durell urged him with Isome out through the back gate of the little building. The night wind blew from the sea with a heavy, damp strength. The shredded clouds reluctantly allowed aa occasional glimpse of the moon. The stunted sea pines shook in the wind and sent down irregular showers of water from their rain-drenched needles.

The way down the circular stairs into the heart of Omaru’s bastion was still lighted. They saw no one else. From the terrace, just before descending into the island’s heart, Durell saw the rambling, geometric shape of Omaru’s cliffside villa below. The party seemed to be over. The blaze of lights had dimmed, and the lighted steps to the dock showed the last straggling guests making their way down.

The radio room was as Durell had left it, but the two men had made their way out of the metal closet. The first was gone, but the radioman was just putting on spare spectacles taken from an open desk drawer, when Durell urged Omaru and the woman inside. Nadja murmured at the banks of transmitting equipment. She had tried mechanically to straighten her disheveled, silvery hair. She limped on her bare, injured feet, and she was obviously in great pain. But the madness and terror had faded from her eyes. She kept close to Durell.

The radioman babbled frightened excuses to Omaru the moment they stepped inside. Omaru silenced him.

“At what hour,” the fat man said heavily, “do we make our usual transmission to Manchurian Station H, Yeku? Please tell the American the truth, without fear.”

The radioman peered at Durell through his thick glasses. “It is usually at 0800 daily, sir.”

“Then why are you on duty now?” Durell asked.

The man licked his lips. “My orders were to stand by—”

“To transmit tonight?” Durell asked sharply. “Have you ever called Manchuria at any hour except 0800, Yeku?”

“Sometimes, when a shipment is to be made—”

Durell nodded. “See if you can raise them now.”

Yeku looked at Omaru for confirmation. The fat man inclined his bald head. The Japanese sat down with obvious relief and familiarly snapped on switches and turned dials. Durell looked at Omaru. “Do you use a code?”

“A simple one, but quite effective. We changed frequencies on a prearranged schedule to avoid being monitored by the Chinese and Russians.” Omaru paused. “What message will you send to Colonel Kaminov? My man in Manchuria will receive it; I do not attempt to outwit you, Durell-san. It will be relayed to Kaminov, wherever he is, by further radio signal.”

“All right. Tell Kaminov we’ve done our share of the work, that we have his girl, and he can come over at once.” Omaru seemed pleased. “Agreed.”

It took only a minute to raise an acknowledgment from the clandestine smuggling station across the Japan Sea. Another four minutes passed in sending out the coded message. Without other instructions, the radioman would send the prearranged signal, Durell hoped.

There was a chattering acknowledgment; then the man shut down the transmitter and snapped off the switches.

Omaru grunted. “I trust you are now satisfied, Durell-san. But what will you do when you get there? You will not know the rendezvous point, any more than I do. Only this fanatic Russian girl can tell you where to go.”

Durell ignored his remark. He said flatly: “How many other transmitters do you operate, Omaru?”

The fat man blinked. “One in Tokyo, another in Hong Kong, another in Saigon. There are receiving stations for each one on the Chinese mainland and the offshore islands.” Omaru seemed pleased to explain his cleverness. “The operators each recognize the other’s style of transmitting. Once, when the Chinese tried to interfere by broadcasting an imitative style, I was almost captured aboard one of my boats, by the Peiping people.”

“But I thought you worked for them, too.”

Omaru smiled blandly. “My dear sir, I am a man for hire, and in this part of the world, one questions only the validity of the currency offered. Of course I sometimes work for Peiping. You understood that at our first arrangement.

I still think you are foolish not to trust me. Together, this operation could be quite simple. We could make the girl talk—”

Durell said: “I assume you arranged for no further counterfeit messages, after your near-disaster.”

“Naturally. It would lie impossible for the mainland stations to mistake our message.”

“Good,” Durell said. “Thank you. Now, have you a screwdriver and a hammer?”

Omaru blinked, looked suddenly shocked as he guessed Durell’s intention. The radioman secured the tools. Durell gave the screwdriver to Nadja.

“Are your hands good enough to take the case off the transmitter?”

“I will try,” Nadja said. “It will please me.”

She was clumsy, but deliberate and effective. Omaru breathed heavily, the sound of his anger like a gusty wind in the underground room.

Durell said coldly: “Don’t ask me to trust you, Omaru. I want to be sure that your man in Manchuria doesn’t get a message to set a trap for Kaminov before he’s taken off the mainland. You’re a crook, Omaru, who’s played both sides of the fence too long!”

“You will regret this,” Omaru whispered.

Nadja took up the hammer and began to smash the interior apparatus of the transmitter. She ripped out wires with trembling, swollen hands, smashed circuits on the floor, and in less than another minute reduced the equipment to twisted, shining bits of wreckage.

“You understand what you have done?” Omaru shouted. “There will be no escape for you now, Durell. You and this girl will die.”

Nadja’s whisper was icy. “He means it, Durell. Kill him. Kill him now.”

“The woman, too?” Durell asked.

“Both of them. Now. You must!”

Durell shook his head. The rules of his business allowed for no chivalry, and he had been trained to be merciless. But he had never been able to bring himself to apply the same ruthless rules by which Nadja’s people operated. Logic was on her side; if he eliminated Omaru now, he might save himself disaster later on. He saw dawning fear in the fat man’s face, and ultimate terror in Isome’s bottomless black eyes. His thoughts raced. He might be no more successful in finding Kaminov, through making Nadja talk, than Omaru. In that case, Omaru might be his only other hope in the future. Omaru alone did not have all the answers; but if he could get a few pieces from the girl and put them together with what Omaru had, he might get the information he needed. It was a gamble, risking present danger against possible future reward. Nadja and Omaru were both enemies. And if he killed Omaru now, he might kill the only alternative to the girl.

He lowered his gun. The fat man’s breath hissed with explosive relief. A crooked little smile flickered over Isome’s ravaged face. Nadja sagged, dull-eyed and exhausted.

“You’re lucky this time, Omaru,” Durell said.

“We shall see who lives and dies, before this is over,” Omaru whispered.

Durell found some wire and with Nadja’s fumbling help, quickly bound Omaru and Isome and then the frightened radioman, lashing them tightly to the built-in steel desk.

In five minutes he stepped out of the room with Nadja and climbed back up to the outer doorway.

Nadja limped beside him. Alone with him now, a sort of embarrassment seemed to touch her. She did not reply to his brief directions as they picked their way down the hillside to the lighted dock below. She hurried as fast as she could, pressed by the same urgency that possessed Durell. If Omaru got free before they were safely away from the island, their lives would be utterly lost.

The wind had freshened still more, and he could see the smashing white teeth of combers breaking on the rocks around the island’s perimeter. Through the thrashing pines, the lights of the mainland flickered fitfully, half a mile away. Omaru’s house was dark. Only a single light burned on the dock below. Two launches dipped and plunged in the uneasy shelter of the mooring. Durell saw no guards there, but he did not hope for any easy escape.

Nadja suddenly tripped and sprawled, rolling down the pathway on the steep slope. Durell darted after her, caught her, and pulled her to her feet again. She leaned heavily on his arm, her exhaustion dragging at him. Her eyes were closed and her face was dead white.

“I do not think I can make it,” she    whispered.

“You must try.”

She shook her head, swallowed. “Why concern yourself with me? I am more your enemy than Omaru. Why do you save me? I cannot help you.”

“No matter. Can you walk now?”

She drew a deep breath. “Yes. I will walk.”

The wind whipped her tattered skirt around her legs. She held her torn blouse with one hand, but the flimsy material, soaked with sweat and blood, was poor protection against the chill air. Her breathing was ragged as they reached the last wooden steps to the dock. Durell halted her, holding her arm.

“Wait.”

There was no one on the path above or below. The two boats bobbed restlessly at their moorings.

“We will have a bad storm,” Nadja gasped. Her teeth chattered. “It is only the beginning. I have seen such weather before. It can be frightening.”

They reached the docks just as the alarm sounded, a siren making a whup-whup hooting somewhere high on the peak of the conical island. So Omaru was free, Durell thought grimly. Lights bloomed here and there, flooding various areas of the place with brightness. Nadja sucked in a discouraged breath. A spotlight suddenly spilled brilliance down the stairway where only darkness shrouded them before. Another spotlight went on where the two boats were moored.

“It is too late,” the girl gasped. “We will be seen. They will shoot at us like targets in a gallery.”

“This way.”

She was slower than he, struggling against her pain. They had to cross the path above the dock, and it was now brightly lighted. Beyond, the island sloped sharply down and fell away in a small cliff above the dark, restless water, thirty yards from where the launches were moored. To run down the steps would expose them to marksmen, as Nadja predicted. He saw no choice but to cross the path quickly and dive into the shadows beyond. But Nadja guessed his plan and hesitated.

“I do not know if I can swim—I am so exhausted—”

“You have to try. I’ll help you.”

“You could escape, if you were alone.”

“But I came here just for you,” he said.

She looked stunned. But she did not reply, except to nod that she was ready. They could not avoid being seen when they darted across the lighted path. But their crossing was too quick for the marksmen watching from above. They were in the darkness on the other side, smashing through thickets, when the machine gun rattled and sprayed the path behind them.

“Jump!” Durell called.

The land fell away from their feet and there was nothing but the dark, roiled water of the anchorage below. Durell let his impetus take him forward, out into the dark air, the wind and sky reeling about him. Nadja cried out and he glimpsed her falling, like a boneless doll, her skirt billowing up about her lifted arms as she dropped.

Then he struck the water.

CHAPTER TWELVE

His greatest fear was the danger of submerged rocks below. But the icy shock of his descent yielded only a deep plummeting fall, and then a reflex struggle took him back to the surface. He shook water from his hair and eyes and twisted about to orient himself. The two launches were nearby. The dark loom of the island’s precipitous shore seemed to lean dangerously overhead.

He could not see Nadja.

He called her name softly, then louder. There came a dim splashing and he swam a few strokes and saw her silvery hair against the black water. He caught her, put her grateful hand on his shoulder and swam toward the nearest launch.

Two men ran down the steps, hopping and leaping the risers two and three at a time. Both held automatic rifles. One of them ran to the floodlight stanchions and turned the spotlight over the water. The other ran heavily on the echoing dock as Durell hauled himself into the launch and then turned to give Nadja a lift.

She came up limp and dripping, her body soft and shuddering against him. He lowered her to the cushioned seat and lurched to the engine controls. The keys were in the ignition. He started the engine and the man on the dock shouted something that was drowned out in the sputtering roar. The man at the spotlight turned the probing beam over the boat. Durell ducked. Nadja was not quick enough, and the light shone on her bright hair. The man on the dock started chopping at the launch with his automatic rifle.

The launch surged slowly forward. Wood splintered and the boat shuddered as half a dozen slugs smashed into the hull. Then they gathered speed, the bow lifted, and he saw they were heading out to sea. He grabbed the wheel and the speedy craft heeled far over and swept in a new course to the mainland lights of Akijuro. A few more bullets followed them from the shore. The spotlight swept past them and faltered away.

The girl touched Durell’s shoulder.

“We cannot get to the town landing. Look there!”

He followed her pointing finger. The second boat was in motion, cutting across their course to intercept them. And a third vessel, much larger, evidently Omaru’s personal seagoing yacht, was moving at a more ponderous speed in the same direction.

“There are some canals, to the left,” she said. “They go right into the town. Steer for them; I will guide you.”

She stood beside him, her long hair plastered to her cheeks and throat in thick tendrils. Her wet, tattered clothing made her look naked. She shivered as her flesh pressed against him, and for a moment their eyes met. There was puzzlement and confusion under the pain in her eyes, and she moved away a little, pointing, so she no longer touched him.

“There, to the left again. Can you see?”

“There seems to be no place to land.”

“When we get closer, you will see the canals. Take the biggest one. There is a restaurant right on the waterfront there. Go past it.”

He nodded, then abruptly swung the wheel hard as something huge and black loomed ahead of their plunging boat. It was a fishing trawler, showing only a dim gleam of light in its afterhouse. The launch sped by its anchor chain with only inches to spare.

A machine gun chattered and flared from the pursuing launch. Durell strained to see through the murky darkness. Houses slowly materialized on the shore, a few block warehouse sheds, some fences built on the stone breakwater, a few feathery trees. He saw the canal entrance then, like the mouth of a tunnel, black under the arch of a wooden bridge. A fenced terrace and the gleam of a tiled roof indicated the restaurant Nadja had mentioned. Lights glowed there. There were willow trees on both banks, dipping their branches into the black canal.

The other launch was cutting across to intercept them when the police boat happened along. Afterward, Durell wondered if it was a lucky accident, or not. He never knew. The patrol craft was twice the size of Omaru’s launches, and it proceeded at a pedestrian pace, its spotlight fixed dead ahead.

But its presence stopped Omaru’s men from using their weapons again.

Durell throttled down and let the boat surge into the canal. The bridge slid over them, dripping with moisture. The stone banks rose high on either side. The willow trees whispered, brushing the top of the launch.

He looked back. There was nothing to see.

He could hear the thrum of Omaru’s boat against the deep beat of the harbor patrol craft. He slowed down to cut the wash of their wake against the peaceful canal banks. Houses lifted on either side, dark and asleep. A few lights gleamed, but the mutter of their idling engine was softened and awakened no one. Nadja moved closer to him again, shivering.

“Take the first canal to the right now. I do not think they will dare to follow us into the heart of town.”

“They might. Omaru is just angry enough.”

“I do not understand it yet,” she said quietly. “I thought he was working for your people, was he not?”

“We used him in the past—but not this time. Washington decided to end the association,” he said grimly.

“Yes. I almost forgot who and what you are.”

“Is it so terrible, Nadja?”

“I do not know what to think. I was taught that all imperialist agents were murderers and monsters, enemies of society. But you are just like—just—”

“Just a man,” Durell said. “Quite human. Two eyes, arms, legs, head and heart, all the usual appurtenances.”

“But not an ordinary man. I wish we were not enemies.”

“We don’t have to be.”

“There is no other way.” She did not look at him. “I am grateful that you saved my life and kept that woman from torturing me. I never thought I would be treated like that by my own people. I—I am all confused. I am grateful to you, but I cannot help you. Perhaps I would, I don’t know. But I cannot. I cannot seem to remember what you want.”

“Perhaps you will, later.”

She shook her head. “I do not want to, I think.”

“Not even to save Alexi Kaminov?”

She was silent. He turned the launch into the intersecting canal, a smaller and shallower one than the first, with many small, wooden bridges crossing it. Here and there the channel was almost blocked by moored fishing craft tied to the stone embankments. But more lights shone ahead, from the center of the town, glimpsed through the waving screen of willow branches dipping in the water. The air was warmer here, sheltered from the storm brewing at sea. Durell felt as if, in using the canals, he had slipped back several centuries into the past, into the old Japan, a land of dreaming isolation. The houses were small and old, the bridges arched with delicate precision over the dark water—

He almost ran into the waiting boat before he saw it. It was Omaru’s launch, and it had debarked men on the canal banks to form an ambush. They were premature, when one man suddenly opened fire, heedless of the sleeping neighborhood. The shot was Durell’s first warning. But he needed no other.

He slammed the launch into reverse, but their momentum made it impossible to back out of the canal. Their stem crashed into a fishing boat tied to the bank under a tree. “Get out,” Durell snapped to the girl. “Quick!”

He helped her jump into the boat they had crashed and worked his way forward to the rope ladder that hung down from the embankment. A bullet splashed on the stone wall at his hand. Nadja stumbled, wavered, and he extended a hand to haul her bodily upward. Then they crouched for a moment on the bank of the canal.

The shadows under the willow tree offered them shelter for a moment. A narrow street paralleled the canal, and tea-shops fronted the sidewalk. They were all closed. He looked for a parked car, but there was nothing except a hand cart drawn across an alley entrance. He pushed it aside and dragged the stumbling girl into the dark alley after him. A shout and a querulous, seeking complaint came from behind them. Another gun cracked, but it did not seem to Durell that the shot was aimed at them.

The alley was narrow and dark, reeking with unfamiliar smells. A high board fence hemmed them in, and for a few seconds he wondered if he had plunged into a blind trap. Then he saw a glimmer of light at the far end and he pulled the girl that way. Too late, he saw the light abruptly blocked by a man who appeared there. There was no chance to check their flight. A shout came from behind, then Durell hurtled into the newcomer, his fist driving at his throat. The man shouted in protest, reeled aside, and came back in a defensive posture that Durell luckily recognized before he struck again.

“Eliot?”

“Hey, Cajun—take it easy! You pack a mean wallop!” “Omaru’s men are after us—”

“You got the girl, hey?” Eliot laughed. “Looks like you stuck your fist into a hornet’s nest, though.”

Durell looked back. The alley was dark and brooding and silent. Too silent, too dark. He pushed the girl aside against the damp brick wall.

“How did you get here, Eliot?”

“We were waiting for you on the waterfront when we saw the fireworks on Omaru’s island. Tagashi scattered some people around—he picked them up in town, local cops, I think —but Omaru’s got a small army fanning out around us now.”

“Can we get out?” Durell asked.

“I don’t know. The girl looks pretty beat, huh?” Eliot took a deep breath. “Take her down this alley to the next street, Sam, and turn right. There’s a car waiting. Another one of Tagashi’s relatives is the driver. The kid, Yuki, is there, too, busted nose and all. Worried about you. Get to that car, and you and Nadja are safe.”

“I hate to leave you here alone, Eliot.”

Eliot Barnes grinned. “Tagashi’s folks are coming up fast. I’ll be fine.”

Durell hesitated. Eliot looked tall and lean, as homey as apple pie with his straw hair and freckles and Midwest accent. He looked tough and capable and completely out of place in this back alley of a provincial Japanese seacoast town. Durell looked back again. The alley was still dark, still brooding. He thought he saw a shadow slide along the black wall, but he wasn’t sure. He felt reluctant to leave Eliot here. Then he looked at Nadja and saw she had spent the last of her reserve strength. It was a miracle she had managed to come this far.

A boat whistle hooted dimly, coming to them from all directions in the alley. Misty fog touched them, smelling of mud banks and the sea.

“Go on, Cajun,” Eliot urged. “Don’t worry about me.”

Durell took the girl’s hand and they walked on as fast as she could go. She stumbled with every step, and her breathing was ragged. She had gone dull with fatigue, insensitive and not caring what happened to her now.

The car was waiting where Eliot said it would be. The driver jumped out, but Yuki was faster. She ran to Durell and paused, hesitated, then looked at Nadja sheepishly. The tape gleamed whitely across the bridge of her nose.

“Come. Hurry. It is all arranged,” Yuki said.

Durell pushed Nadja into the car. She seemed unaware of him now. “Take care of her, Yuki, understand? Take her to your father and keep her safe, no matter what happens. Can I trust you with her now?”

“Yes, Durell-san. I am sorry for my behavior before.” She saw him turn away. “You are not coming with us?”

“I’m going back for Eliot.”

“Then I will wait. My father ordered me to wait.”

“All right. I’ll be right back.”

He ran back to the alley where Eliot had posted himself as a rear guard against Omaru’s gunmen. The streets were quiet, asleep, the local people unaware of the private war raging silently in the alleys of their town. Durell took his gun out, but he did not know if it would fire after his swim in the waters off Omaru’s island. His wet clothing hampered him, clung icily to his limbs. He turned into the alley and tripped, stumbled over something, recovered and spun around.

Nothing.

He looked down and saw Eliot Barnes sprawled on his face on the cobblestones. Eliot still had his gun in his hand, but he hadn’t fired it, or Durell would have heard the sound. He looked up and down the alley, suddenly cold. He saw no one. Everything was silent. He knelt beside Eliot and turned the straw-haired man over so he could see the SEATO agent’s face.

“El? Eliot?”

He felt colder. The bloody, gaping mouth of a knife wound in Eliot Barnes’ throat smiled a smile of grotesque death at him. It had been swift and sudden—and unnecessary. He could not imagine how it had been done, but Eliot had been taken by surprise, in the five brief minutes he had been alone here. His throat was cut from ear to ear, and there was a dark puddle of still-hot blood on the alley stones.

Omaru had exacted his first payment for revenge.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In Durell’s business, there was always the problem of keeping things quiet. Ideally, the operation of K Section’s field force should leave not so much as a ripple in the area of activity. No local police alarms could be risked, no news items printed of mysterious actions, no trace of the apparatus’ objectives could be left for the curious eye and probing mind. The enemy could be anywhere. The enemy could be anyone.

Leaving Eliot Barnes’ body in an alley of Akijuro would make more than a ripple in the international news dispatches. Questions might be asked in the Japanese Diet. The Japanese security people would have to respond publicly.

Durell picked up Eliot’s gun.

“I’m sorry, El,” he whispered.

He knelt quickly and flipped open the SEATO man’s coat, and ripped all identification from the body. He took Eliot’s papers and stuffed them in his own pocket, pulled off the coat, since it betrayed its American origin, and wrapped it in a tight ball. He took keys, wallet, passport, American change and currency, Japanese yen notes.

The alley was quiet and somber. There was no trace of the murderers. He wondered where Omaru’s men had gone, and why they apparently had called off the chase. Then some of the questions were answered when he heard the quick slap of footsteps running toward him in the alley.

He stood up, straddling Eliot’s body. It was Tagashi. The tall Japanese looked at Eliot without emotion. Durell could read nothing in the man’s face.

“Mr. Barnes was a likeable young man,” Tagashi said softly. “It is too bad he was so careless.”

“Yes. Can you arrange something about him?” Durell was angry, but he could not direct his inner rage against the crop-headed Japanese. “He has to be disposed of quietly.”

“Of course. My men have covered the neighborhood. But I do not think we will find Omaru now.”

“I want him,” Durell said flatly.

“Not now, Durell-san. I know how you feel. I can arrange for the police to question the shooting at his villa, but beyond such surface action, we can do no more.”

“We can close down his operation now,” Durell said.

“And delay our trip to get Kaminov?” Tagashi brushed his thick, black mustache. “I do not have good news for you,

I am afraid. It is something beyond our control. I speak of the weather. There are typhoon warnings out for the North China Sea. The fishermen report high seas and much damage to their trawlers. We could spend a day or two, waiting for the storm to subside, and use the time for Omaru, of course, but—”

“A day or two may be too late,” Durell said harshly. “We can’t spend it, I agree with you, wasting time on Omaru.”

“We will see,” Tagashi said heavily. He looked down at Eliot’s body. “We cannot change the winds and the seas, or exile death from the world.”

Durell slept uneasily that night in the fisherman’s house in Miyako. The weather worsened within minutes of their return with Nadja, and the rain came down in thunderous torrents that filled the air with wild noises. The wind lashed the beach surf into a thundering fury. Yet even this was not the main storm threatening the Japan Sea, Durell knew.

When he awoke in a gray, damp dawn, he lay still for a time, listening to the sounds of the sea and the wind around the house. A shutter banged and clacked; the surf roared; a harbor bell rang in brazen, irregular alarm. Inside the house, the silence of early morning held command. He thought of Eliot Barnes. He did not know any of Eliot’s people back home, but if he made it safely back himself, he would have to go there with an appropriate cover story of how Eliot had died. It would be a good story, he thought grimly. It always was. And it rarely related to the truth of how men died in this business.

He got up from the low, hard bed and dressed, walking on silent feet through the sleeping house into the bath, with its polished, wooden Japanese tub. There was hot water and a razor and fresh shirts. He washed and shaved and felt a little better, then walked to the front of the house that faced the sea. Huge, blazing chrysanthemums grew in a small garden there, rocking and flashing in the wind. A misty rain cut off his view of the rugged coast. The air felt warm, smelling of southern seas. A small charcoal fire in an antique brazier seemed unnecessary.

Tagashi squatted there, his gaunt face without expression. His dark military mustache drooped to follow the discouraged lines of his harsh mouth. It was a cruel mouth, Durell noted. Tagashi wore a dark blue shirt and a sweater and worn sneakers. He looked up at Durell and nodded.

“Good morning, Durell-san. You rise early.”

“Have you had any sleep at all, Tagashi?”

“A little. I was about to waken you. There will be no difficulty about your associate’s body. The police will say it was an auto accident; the mutilation will be concealed. I have also arranged for my cousin’s trawler—it is a very fast boat—but let me get you some tea first.”

Tagashi snapped his fingers and Yuki came immediately into the room, as if she had been waiting in attendance beyond the door. The girl looked subdued. She wore a traditional kimono and her eyes fled from Durell, seeking the polished plank floor. She bowed to her father and went for the tea. The house slept. The wind whimpered. The room was gray in the rain-swept dawn light.

Tagashi spoke quietly. “I have spoken to the Tokyo weather bureau. A typhoon is in the China Sea, coming this way, but its course is not predictable. I have alerted the coast patrols to watch every one of Omaru’s boats and seize any that put to sea. One of his trawlers went out early this morning and we put a man aboard and ordered it back— the captain protests he is only a simple fisherman. We cannot maintain the situation indefinitely, however. But we can do all in our power to keep Omaru from interfering with our trip to the mainland coast.”

“I think we have to expect that Omaru will somehow alert the enemy to wait for us over there, however.”

Tagashi nodded. “I took the liberty of arranging for a trawler, as I said. Very fast, powerful boat. But we do not know where to go yet.” Tagashi looked angry. “For me, Omaru is not a secondary matter, Durell-san. I have police ready to smash and seize his boats and arrest his personnel.” “You can hold off a day or two,” Durell said. “Even if he didn’t destroy court evidence, our governments could not prosecute him openly. We’ll finish Omaru quietly, in our own way, when the time comes.”

“But delay is dangerous. He wants revenge for the bruises you gave him last night. He killed your friend just to show what your fate will be. He will trap us on the mainland.” “He doesn’t know our destination, any more than we do,” Durell pointed out. “He got nothing from Nadja Osmanovna.”

“You are sure? You believe her?”

“Yes, she—”

Yuki returned with tea and fruit and cakes. She put the tray on a low, lacquered table and looked at Durell through downcast eyes. The small strip of tape on the bridge of her nose looked fresh and white. Most of the swelling had gone from her round, young face. She bowed and left the room.

Durell said: “No amount of stress can force Nadja to talk about the rendezvous point, I think. I believe she does know and remember it, but she refuses to bring it into the open in some sort of psychic self-defense. It’s a delicate problem. Somewhere, some time in the past, something happened to her that she feels she must forget. Her reactions make     this obvious. Torture will never drag it out of her. In fact, it will only drive it farther from her reach. This is where Omaru and Isome went wrong last night—and succeeded in forcing her toward our position. She suffered a great shock at learning that her superiors distrusted her to the point of torturing her and calling her a traitor. It is value for our side. Our hope lies in further convincing her that her future and Colonel Kaminov’s belong to us. She has nowhere else to go, and she will come to see that very soon.”

Tagashi paused. “You will    take    her with us? Without     her, Colonel Kaminov will not join us, anyway, even if we knew where to look for him. It is plain that he is in hiding—already a deserter, although he may have covered his action in case he must retreat from us. He must be hiding in a place where he is momentarily safe from discovery, waiting for us. The original arrangement with Omaru’s apparatus was for Omaru’s trawler to proceed to the village of Ospesko, on the coast. It is a bleak place, a fishing center, but very poor. However, there is a radar station run by the Soviet military and a major rail line and some secret fortifications, perhaps submarine pens, as well as an establishment believed to be rocket launch pads directed at Japan. We do not know the details of these things. It will not be easy to go in. There are mine fields and patrols and radar screens. Omaru’s trawlers went in with pre-arranged signals, of course, and we did seize the log books and codes from Omaru’s trawler last night. Nevertheless, unless the girl helps us, we do not even know where to look for Colonel Kaminov.”

“We will take her with us. Can we leave tonight?”

Tagashi nodded. “Unless the storm grows too violent.”

“It’s a delicate matter,” Durell said. “We can’t use pressure to make Nadja talk. On the contrary, a gentle persuasion is necessary, to show her that her future—and a kind of freedom for herself—lies only with us. It’s the only way to get her to tell us about the rendezvous point.”

“Use honey, then,” Tagashi said grimly. “Everything depends upon it.”

Nadja awoke to the sound of dim voices murmuring in the house. Panic leaped in her, and she started up with a reflex cry on her lips; then her painful bruises brought her acutely awake, and she remembered what had happened and felt lost, betrayed by everyone, condemned by her own people. She sat still, shaking her head slowly, then began to dress with care.

Someone had placed a light cotton skirt and a man’s white shirt and sandals near the low bed. In the bathroom were cosmetics and a fresh hairbrush and sweet-smelling soap. She bathed slowly in the smooth pine tub. The bathroom window was barred. The bedroom had solid wooden walls and the windows were shuttered against the wild wind and rain outside. The air felt unnaturally warm. When she returned to the bedroom, she saw Yuki enter with a breakfast tray.

Nadja had only the hairbrush in her hand. She thought of it instantly as a weapon, remembering Yuki from yesterday; and she clutched the handle convulsively. But Yuki smiled briefly and put the tray down for her.

“Good morning, Nadja. How do you feel?”

“Do you care?” Nadja asked sharply.

“I heard of the things Omaru did to you last night.” Yuki touched the white bandage on her nose. “You are safe here. You have nothing to fear from me again.”

Nadja said suspiciously, “You hated me, yesterday.” “Yes, but—” Yuki hesitated and scuffed her toes. She looked oddly diffident, young and confused. “Did you know the American who was killed yesterday—the one Omaru caught?”

“No.”

“He was very nice. Very handsome.”

Nadja considered her curiously. “Did you like him?” “Americans are not so different from anyone else, I think. But this one did not really know I was alive. I sometimes think I am very stupid. I get so mixed up. I feel too many things too deeply, I suppose. I love too much.”

“And hate too much?”

Yuki looked up quickly. “Yes, I think so.”

“Were you falling in love with the American who was killed?”

“Oh, no. At least, I don’t think so. I’ve been in love, you see.”

Nadja almost smiled at her adolescent earnestness. “And what happened when you were in love?”

“He was killed,” Yuki said, and her words flattened harshly, her mouth curved downward, and her eyes darkened.

“He worked for my father, and he was killed by your people.”

“Oh, but I—” Nadja paused. “I am sorry.”

“Yesterday I thought you were a monster. I thought of you as personally responsible for my unhappiness. But when I heard about the American, it seemed so—so impersonal. Like a war. Who is to blame, I wonder? And then I saw what they did to you, too, and I—”

“And I can bleed, too, is that it?” Nadja asked.

“Until yesterday, I think it was like    a game to me. I’ve really been very stupid. And I do not feel wiser now,” Yuki said earnestly.

“Yuki, did Durell send you in here to talk to me like this?” Nadja asked sharply.

“Oh, no. No, he—”

“What do you want, then?”

“I don’t know. I’d better go.”

Yuki turned abruptly away and walked to the door, her shoulders oddly rigid. Then she paused, and looked back at Nadja. Irresolution made her young face look defenseless. She bit her lip and said: “I just came in to tell you I’m not angry any more, and you don’t have to be afraid of me, that’s all. I won’t do anything like yesterday, ever again.”

“I see,” Nadja murmured.

“I just wish everyone could be friends. I just wish we could be friends, you and I. But I don’t suppose that’s possible.”

“I don’t know.”

“Everyone who is older than I am seems to know all the answers,” Yuki whispered. “But sometimes, like last night when I heard about the American and saw how you looked when Durell brought you back, I wonder if the answers are right.”

“I don’t know,” Nadja said again.

Yuki was a child, Nadja thought, with a child’s forthright questions, lost in that limbo between innocence and the cruelties of adulthood. And where was she, herself? The old Nadja was gone, after last night; she knew this with certainty, after her treatment at Isome’s hands. But she did not know where to turn or where she belonged. She bowed her head, feeling forsaken and homeless.

“Can we ever be friends?” Yuki asked.

Nadja had no answer for her.

Alone again, she smoked a cigarette that Yuki left for her. It was an American cigarette, and she did not like it. She rarely smoked, since it was a personality habit that might identify her in an enemy dossier. But now all that was different. She did not care about all the warnings dinned into her at the Moscow KGB school. It seemed faraway and unreal, like something seen dimly in a dream; or like something seen in a gray, distorted mirror.

She brushed her hair mechanically, grateful for the hot bath and clean clothes. Someone had bandaged her foot with tape and ointment for her bruises. She wondered if it had been Durell, and felt strange that he might have been free with her body while she was in an exhausted stupor. She had never met a man like Durell before. His kindness was in contradiction to his record in Moscow, where he was described as cruel, dangerous and violent.

Pere Jacques.

She shuddered and sat very still. The words clanged like a bell in the back of her brain. Last night, when Omaru and the woman questioned her, she’d been glad the words were shrouded in her tormented memory. Glad? Yes, for how could she have betrayed Alexi? He was her old friend, he had saved her sanity, saved her life long ago. He had not forgotten, even though he had taught her patiently to forget. He had sent those two words to her, relying on her to save him now. Of all the millions of people in the world, she was the only one who could respond to those two words. Somewhere, he waited, hiding. And now she was an exile, too, lost and homeless.

She did not want to remember.

Fires burning, women screaming, the press of bodies seizing her, using her. A falling brand, a crashing beam that killed the last of the guerillas whose sweaty body claimed her. Blood and brains splashed her face. There was smoke and fire and wild shouting. The sea glinted, far away.

“Shoot her,” someone said. “Leave no one alive.”

She saw the guns, the grinning faces. She did not care. Father was dead, mother was dead, all were like grotesque, ugly dolls, broken and bloody, sprawled in the compound dust.

He saved her.

Who?

She did not want to remember.

Images moved like phantoms across the back of her mind. She touched her scalp above the left ear. Yes, the scar was still there, where the executioner’s bullet had missed crashing through her skull. She had survived.

The old man’s face grinned, his babbling was crazy. He wax Chinese, old and filthy, and there was a single dark room with a crack in the wall, and through the crack she could see the little stream and beyond, far below the cliff, the shining sea. The old man kept her alive, and used her in indescribable and filthy ways. How long had it been? He was crazy, and he had picked her up after they left her for dead. He mumbled prayers in mockery of Father Jacques Dallinger, who was killed at the mission. He pantomimed ritual and prayer in his grotesque insanity, assuming Pere Jacques’ identity. And he violated her child’s body in every conceivable abnormal way.

Pere Jacques.

She had been his prisoner.

Until Alexi came along.

Where was this place, this hut, this cliff by the shining sea?

But this she could not remember.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A thin, watery sun shone down on Miyako at noon. Overhead, the clouds moved in an enormous, circular pattern, twisting from one arc of the horizon to the other. The sea was like slate, capped with white beyond the harbor. All of the fishing boats were moored inside the stone breakwater, the crews uncertain about the weather. They knew the meaning of a typhoon warning. The air held in it the unnatural warmth of winds driven up by violence from the South China Sea.

Durell walked with Nadja on the beach, toward a rocky promontory not far from the house. Tagashi was away, working on the logs and code books seized from Omaru’s trawler. Their own boat was ready and waiting.

The village seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the storm to strike. Yet it might not come for days, according to the weather forecasts. Durell felt impatient to be moving, to put the operation into its last phase. He looked quietly at the girl.

“You don't mind walking? I though! you’d feel better in the air.”

“Am I still a prisoner?”

“In custody, let’s say. Unofficially."

“I have nowhere else to go. No place that is safe from Omaru and that woman." Nadja shuddered. Her voice was pitched low, and she sounded forlorn. Thank you for helping me last night. I wish I could return it. But I cannot help you, you know. I am sorry.”

Her pale eyes were like amber, reflecting the unnatural daylight. In the warm wind, her silver-blonde hair blew loosely about her throat and cheeks. The bruises on her face had darkened somewhat, and she walked carefully and slowly. They came to a narrow defile between the black rocks on the beach, and the path was uncertain, rubbly underfoot. Nadja gasped as she stepped on a loose pebble and her weight came down hard on Durell’s supporting arm.

“Thank you. You are a kind man,” she murmured. “You remind me of Alexi.”

“Do you still love him?”

“I have not seen him for a long time.” Her head was bowed. “I never expected to hear from him again. But he did not forget me, did he? I wish—I do not understand myself. I know I loved him in an idealized way, you see. Not as a man and a woman can and should love. It couldn’t be that way, for me. I remembered too much of what had once happened to me. He was gentle about it. He understood. But now I am sorry I did not—now I feel free of the things that were like nightmares to me. Can you understand? But it is a freedom that is both exciting and confusing.”

“Nadja, you don’t know where he is?”

“It’s all vague, mixed up with fears and ugly memories. I didn’t tell Omaru. I couldn’t.”

“Would you tell me?”

She began to weep. “I don’t know. I think so. But I can’t recall. It was where he found me, I think. He would remember better than I, because it’s all something I tried to forget. I was sick and delirious when Alexi took me from the old man’s hut—”

“Where was it?”

“That’s just it. I was too sick and feeble to know.” Durell walked slowly, letting her keep pace with him. Behind them, two huge monolithic rocks loomed against the yellow sky. It was warm on the beach. Over a grassy rise and a stone wall, they heard the clang and racket of the interurban trolley heading for Akijuro. Nadja looked out across the dark sea.

“Would you like my professional opinion?” She turned tormented eyes toward him. “I would drop this project.”

“Abandon Kaminov?”

“Yes.”

“They would find him. They’ll shoot him.”

“But it is a trap for you, too. They are using Alexi to trap you. He wants to be free—” She smiled ruefully. “I used to think I was free, and I never understood him before. He is a simple man, really. He has put his life in my hands, and I have failed him.”

“Not yet,” Durell said. “You can join him in the States. The same conditions apply to you, as a political refugee.” “I do not know where I want to go.”

“You can’t stand still, Nadja. They’ll hunt you down and kill you, too, otherwise.”

“I know.”

“Nadja, I want you to go in the boat with us tonight. We can delay no longer, whatever the weather. Do you know the village of Ospesko?”

She started. “Yes. It is—familiar.”

“Do you remember it?”

“I think—yes.” She bit her Up. “May I sit down?”

“Of course,” he said quickly.

They had come to a curve in the beach where no houses were visible. The village was behind them. He found a place in the black sand under an outcrop of rock, and the girl sat down stiffly, favoring her injuries. The water moved in a bright pool at their feet. There was a strange and primitive beauty this place, a privacy and intimacy that touched them both simultaneously. The girl looked at the gush of tidal seas that came and went in the pool below them and bit her lip.

“I do not want to go with you,” she whispered.

“Maybe, if you are there, you will remember more than you can from here.”

“I do not want to remember.”

“You’ll never be yourself again, if you don’t. And Colonel Kaminov will have to come out of his hiding place and give himself up to his executioners. Do you want that?”

“No!”

“Then help us,” he urged.

She shuddered. “I don’t want to go back.”

“There is no other way to go.”

She nodded, nodded again, hung her head in despair. A hot wind blew from the sea, and on a dark rock at the end of the high promontory, a wild cormorant perched to watch the sullen waves. The sea was clouded with a shining surface vapor that hid the rocky offshore islands, detaching them from their anchorages in the ocean so that they seemed to float like shadows on the horizon of strange light. Behind them was a grassy field and then a pine woods that reached in a long tongue of trim green toward the shore.

“My name was Natalie,” the girl whispered abruptly. “They changed it in Moscow. My father was a French doctor in a mission near Ospesko. I remember this. They killed him—the guerilla soldiers. And my mother. She was half Manchurian.” She smiled. “He used to call me his Manchurian doll.”

“Your father?”

“No. Alexi. When he found me and took me with the other refugee children to Vladivostok. It was all confusing, I was terrified, I’d been a prisoner so long—”

“Where?”

“I don’t know where. It was an old man who kept me.” She shrugged. “He fed me and kept me alive. But it was terribly dirty. He was Pere Jacques, a crazy Chinese, an old man with old and filthy habits. I don’t want to talk about it. I was only twelve years old then.” She hung her head once more.

Durell was quiet, aware of the importance of her words, but not wishing to disturb her. “How far was it—the old Chinaman’s place—from Ospesko?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you told Alexi Kaminov about it—”

“No, don’t you see? He knows where it is, because he found me there, when he was doing a military survey of the coast there. I was sick by then, delirious, almost as crazy as the old Chinaman, and I don’t know how long I was in the hut. I never stepped out of it for weeks, for months.” “Didn’t you try to escape?”

“I was afraid to go outside. The old man—Pere Jacques —kept telling me they were still hunting for me and would kill me. I believed him—a child of twelve, tormented, half crazed by what had been done and by what was being done all the time—I had to do everything the old man said. I had to submit in every way, in that filthy, horrible place.”

She began to shudder violently. Durell waited. Then he said: “You were, to all intents and purposes, a slave.”

“Yes. To old Pere Jacques.”

“Do you know your real name?” he asked. “Your father’s name, I mean? If you were really someone named Natalie, you were French, not Russian.”

She shrugged, breathing deeply. “It made no difference. I was less than human then, less than an animal, and I was grateful to belong anywhere. I clung to Alexi as if he were a god. I worked and studied hard to please him, when he took me with him, along with the other children, across Siberia to Moscow. He was like—like a knight, so handsome and brave, so clean and gentle. I loved him. And then, as I grew up, I loved him differently. And I think—I don’t know—I was grateful for any word he gave me, any glance he turned my way. He never touched me,” she added suddenly. “He knew I couldn’t bear it. It—it made me think of the old Chinaman, and I would get hysterical if I thought a man—” She paused again. “But I think I’m over that.”

Durell looked at the water and felt the warm wind on his face. Out at sea, the small black islands seemed to float like ships on the mist. A feeling of electric oppression in the air gripped him. Small breakers curled upon the black volcanic beach. Nadja gripped his hand convulsively.

“I don’t want to go back there,” she whispered.

He felt an overwhelming pity for the child she had been, a deep and terrible anger for the cruelty of man against man. He recalled her reputation as an efficient and heartless agent of the KGB in Tokyo. It was all a fraud, a cover and a defense for a frightened girl who still cowered in the body of a beautiful woman.

“Will you kiss me?” she asked quietly.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes. It is important. It may tell me something about myself and you and Alexi. I don’t want to stay a schoolgirl forever, wrapped in a dream that perhaps never existed for Alexi.”

He kissed her. Her lips were firm and cold. The thick strands of her silver-white hair were scented with the sea wind and the pines. He felt her body shudder. He held her gendy. Then her arms came up and around him, and he could feel the effort it cost her, and then he pulled her body to him and held her in the warmth of a quiet embrace. Her mouth moved. She stirred, made a small sound in her throat, and her lips softened and yielded to his. He felt her breasts against his chest, through the thin shirt she wore. Her arms tightened convulsively. He held her gently.

She drew back then and stared at the islands floating in the misty sea. Her lips were parted, and her eyes were filled with tears. Her breathing was irregular.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Was it so bad?”

“No, it—it—” She was pale. “I will go with you.”

“To Ospesko?”

“Wherever I must go. I can promise nothing. I may not be able to find the place where Alexi first discovered me. He must be waiting there. But I may not find it.” “Without you,” Durell said, “he is lost.”

“Without him,” she said, “I will die.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Okiku II was a steel diesel trawler of 200 tons, with a rakish bow, twin screws, and the latest electronic equipment in radar and sounding gear. She drove ahead, solitary in the hissing Japan Sea, under an evening sky of dark yellow that was clouded from horizon to horizon, striated with an elemental movement that arched from circle to circle of the hemisphere. From the south, the wind blew like the hot breath of a wakening dragon. The dragon stirred in the slow, deep heave of the sea that gleamed with a ceramic quality in the lessening light, glazed under the heavy ground swell that felt like the breathing of some primeval creature. The course was 280° and the speed was a steady 22 knots.

The crew had been replaced by Tagashi’s men, half a dozen Japanese from Miyako who worked the ship with ease, their white headbands gleaming strangely in the dusk, their naked feet gripping the steel deck. They did not chatter or quarrel as fishermen normally would.

Tagashi stood forward, scanning the horizon as it merged with the lowering night. Nothing was visible except a dim haze to the west that might be the mainland, or might be a lower cloudbank on the rim of the sea. He adjusted the lenses carefully and spoke to Durell.

“The timing has been correct, Durell-san. In one hour, we shall be in sight of the shore, but it will be dark by then. Unfortunately, radar knows neither night nor day. We may be expected, if Omaru made contact with new radio equipment.”

“We should count on it,” Durell said grimly. “But Omaru doesn’t know our exact course or our landing point.”

Tagashi nodded at the circling sea. “The net waits for us, Durell-san. It will be spread far and wide. In one hour, we will know.”

“But they want Kaminov, too,” Durell pointed out. “They won’t move too soon. They’ll watch for us and let us land and hope we lead them to Kaminov, wherever he is. So it will seem easy at first, but we mustn’t deceive ourselves. They will let us in all right and try to follow us.  lf we locate Kaminov, our troubles will then begin. But then we have one point in our favor: the Chinese and the Russians are secretive, even with each other. Their cooperation may not be too good. And don’t forget, Omaru is being paid to handle this operation. They will insist that he carry out the action.”

“Perhaps.” Tagashi looked moody. “I dislike the sea. I am not a man of the sea. It makes me uneasy.” He sighed. “Well, then, we know they will wait and watch and let us land. And we will know that what seems easy is only a trap.”

“Maybe we can make it snap on their own fingers,” Durell said.

The smoothness of the sea was deceptive. The heavy ground swell made the sharp prow of the Okiku dip deep into the glazed green water. Then the boat lifted, spuming, shaking foam from its rails. The crew went about their business of tending the big dragnets and winches. The world seemed to wait in hushed fear under the breath of the southern dragon.

The Hokkaido radio chattered out its first definite typhoon warning for the area. Only the beginning of the report could be heard above the abnormal static in the radio. All ships at sea were warned to expect winds of 100 to 150 miles per hour velocity. The operator who gave the expected direction and course of the tropical storm faded into a series of abominable cracklings at the crucial moment. They could only hope for the best.

Durell found Nadja seated on the edge of her bunk. The mate’s cabin had been given over to her, and another to Durell and Tagashi in the crew’s quarters aft of the main holds. The Okiku lifted, rolled, plunged, creaked and trembled with the drive of her powerful engines.

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.

She wore dark slacks and a black singlet and dyed black sneakers. She shook her head. “No. I cannot sleep.”

“We’ll be there soon. The coast is just over the horizon.” “I know. I can feel it. Will the storm be very bad?”

“We may be lucky. We may stay in the fringes of it.”

“I saw a typhoon once,” she said. “I hope never to see another.” She looked up, questioning. “We will land near Ospesko?” Her eyes searched his face. “It is a rocky shore, except for the river banks there.”

“We’ll make it. Do you remember the town?”

“A little, now. I have been trying to recall. My father went there on administrative business for the mission, now and then.” She smiled. “It was usually a holiday for me. In those days, a, French doctor and a Chinese wife had no difficulty in moving about. I remember swimming there, on a small beach a few miles to the south of the river mouth.” She paused. “It is a protected place. We could land there.”

“Good.”

She looked at her hands. “Do you think he is still alive? Do you think Alexi is waiting for us?”

“Yes, I think so.”

‘‘But you are not sure?”

“No.”

“They will kill you, if you are caught.”

“And you? Aren’t you afraid?”

“Not any more,” she said. “Except—”

“Except what?”

“I don’t want to go back to that awful place.”

“I’ll be with you,” Durell said.

“Yes. That makes it better.”

Durell said: “Tell me more about this swimming place that you remember. Omaru’s code books direct a landing a few miles below Ospesko, too.”

“It may be the same place. The rest of the coast is very rugged, with steep cliffs and rocks.” She smiled wanly. “It is coming back to me. I remember a small trail down the mountainside. There was a hut there, and an old Chinese watch-tower. But all that may be gone now. It was over ten years ago.”

“Was the tower lighted at night?”

She frowned slightly. Her gray eyes were clouded. “I think so. I remember seeing a light, once, when dusk came.”

“All right,” he said. He stood up. “Well know very soon. In an hour, perhaps, Nadja.”

“My name is Natalie,” she said.

Tagashi was satisfied that everything that could be done was completed. The crewmen, each a picked expert in his line, had heightened the two steel masts that supported the trawl gear over the ice hatches by twelve feet, with the simple addition of prefabricated spars. A bright yellow stripe had been painted along the Okiku's sides during the day, from the sharp bow to the rakish stem. The vessel’s painted name and home port were hidden by new plates bolted into place in holes that had been covered by false rivet heads. Now the Okiku looked like a vessel of Siberian design, working out of Vladivostok. Nothing could be done to change the sleek lines of her Japanese bow, but the Russian trawlers were not too different. A small cabin was rigged from prefabricated sides hauled up out of the hold and placed on the foredeck, further altering her silhouette. It would take a close examination to identify her as the dragger that had left Miyako over 24 hours ago.

The first strong blast of wind came as complete darkness fell.

Tagashi did not like the sea. His brother Yugi, a colonel in the Imperial Army, had sailed away on a transport to campaign in Burma, and had never returned. Tagashi had searched the records, using the privileges of his wartime position, for a hint of his brother’s fate; but Yugi, a philosopher more than a soldier, was simply listed as missing. He wondered often if his brother were still alive somewhere in the jungles down there.

Tides of change swept the world, and the enemy of yesterday was today’s ally. It was not Tagashi’s business to question the policies of the new government. Nippon could never go back to the rigid caste system of authority of the old days. The aristocracy was dead, reduced to mercantile enterprises; the way of the warrior was equally dead.

Tagashi expected to die. He did not know how Durell, the

American, felt about this operation. For himself, he could not see how he could survive.

He was familiar with death; he had been an intimate of death throughout his professional career in the kempei-tei, and he was not afraid. He had done all that could be done. But the sea, with its rise and fall, its turbulence, and the hot wind all reminded him of the day Japan lost the war.

He had a dream that plagued him, and the sea always brought back to reality that day aboard the police cutter, when he went with his fellow members of the kempei-tei unit to bum their records. Heaven itself, that day, had fallen in wrath to erase the foundations by which all men governed their lives. The sea and sky were peculiarly white, matching the white ceremonial robes of his friends. They faced each other in two silent rows that night, drinking tea, their shaved heads bowed in submission to their inevitable decision. The war was over. They had vowed not to survive it. The new world ahead was intolerable, without honor, without duty to the Emperor and the Empire. Nippon was defeated, and guilt lay upon that double row of men who faced each other with their ceremonial knives glittering on the mat between them.

The whiteness of their robes was like the unnatural whiteness of sea and sky on their small boat, blending with the foam of the sea, and the sounds—ah, the sounds, Tagashi thought, the hiss of foam and the hiss of the knives cutting through skin and muscle, flesh and intestine, in the approved ritual arc. . . .

He alone had not killed himself with the others.

His orders had been to survive, to direct the rebuilding of a new police organization, to cooperate with the conquerors and to live for the new Japan.

It had not been easy.

Not since that day had he been at sea, and there lingered in him a certain dread, a certainty that the ghosts of his companions who had died in honor would wait for just such a moment as this, to rise up from the sea and claim him a second time, as he had sworn to join them at first—

He awoke in his cabin, shuddering, covered with sweat. Durell sat on the other bunk of the tiny compartment, watching him. The curtains were blacked out, and Durell’s face was harsh and lean in the yellow lamplight.

“You were dreaming, Tagashi-san,” he said quietly.

Tagashi wiped a hand over his mouth; his mustache felt prickly and there was sweat on his chin. “Yes.”

“Not a pleasant dream,” Durell said.

“It happens now and then. Memories from the war—”

“I understand.”

“Did I disturb you?”

“No. It’s all right, Tagashi.”

“One did many things during the war that were not to one’s taste. But we obeyed. We wished to obey. All my friends of those days are dead now. They died just after the war. They killed themselves.”

“And you did not,” Durell said flatly.

“I had my honor, but I had my orders, too. Even in the ashes of the old way, orders had to be obeyed. I saw them all die, and then I left them on the boat and came back ashore to meet your soldiers and sailors who were landing. All Japan was obedient that day, according to what each man and woman was told to do.”

“I understand. It’s all right, Tagashi.”

Tagashi said: “It will never be all right for me.”

Durell stood up.

“We are near the shore.”

The smell of land was in the dark, windy air. The night felt close and heavy and thick. The big trawler lifted and fell as it slowed and became more restless in the huge, silent swells that pushed rhythmically northward from the center of cyclonic disturbance. A few drops of rain fell. From off the port bow came the sudden blinking of a signal light, bright in the darkness.

A stabbing beam of light stabbed toward them and Durell looked beyond the glare to the sleek hunting shape of a coastal patrol cutter. A signal light blinked and winked. One of Tagashi’s men replied, using Omaru’s code book. Above the sound of the sea and the wind came the growl of the patrol boat as it came closer. The signals blinked again. Again the Okiku replied. Rain blotted out the shape of the other boat.

They could not see the land, but they could feel the pressure of its mass through the stormy night. They went on, probingly, and the patrol boat fell astern and disappeared. Now a few land lights appeared through the tattered curtains of rain, some steady, some winking and uncertain. There was a mine field at the mouth of the river where the village of Ospesko huddled between sea and mountain. For long minutes they sweated over the charts taken from Omaru. The mines might or might not have been there. None were sighted.

The rain came and went. Now the village lights were bright and distinct, pinpoints through the dark night, and the loom of the land was a blacker cloud on the night horizon. Durell stood with Nadja beside the little rubber boat. He thought he heard the growl of the patrol boat following in their wake toward the harbor, but the wind made all sounds uncertain.

The weather favored them, he thought, by obscuring them, and at the same time exposed them to more intent scrutiny in any radar screens that might have picked them up, since few small boats would venture out in the face of the storm warnings. They were all the more conspicuous for it.

Tagashi chose a sudden squall that struck at them from the south in which to change course and head for the beach Nadja had described. The squall would obscure the radar-scopes that might have picked them up and perhaps permit them to lose themselves entirely under the height of the land.

The deck heaved and pitched underfoot, and seas began to break over the prow. The rubber boat was lowered in absolute darkness, held by a line in Tagashi’s taut hand. Nadja hesitated at the rail beside Durell, then dropped over the side into the rubber dinghy at his nod. He followed a moment afterward.

Rain slashed at his face as he looked up at the trawler’s hull. Tagashi and the other crew-members were dim blurs above them. The rubber boat heaved and bounced in the unruly water. Tagashi made a signal and Durell shoved away with the oar and they were free, swinging and bobbing toward the blackness of the shore.

It was not completely black. Between the momentary deluges of warm rain, he could see the dim shape of the river mouth, a low slash in the high ridge of barren mountains running north and south along the coast. The lights of Ospesko glittered fitfully in that direction. He dug the paddle in hard, fighting the pull of uncertain tides and currents. In less than a minute, the Okiku was blotted from sight.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rain fell from the night sky in a warm trickle as Durell hauled the rubber boat up on the beach. The waters of the little cove were calm, but surf thundered at each rocky arm that sheltered it. He had paddled for half an hour, fighting unfamiliar tides and the current of the river. For part of the time he had been able to guide himself by the village lights on the river bank. Then a further light to the south served as a beacon for him. Nadja had taken the paddle a few times, to adjust their course. Behind them, the Okiku was almost immediately blotted from sight.

There were tumbled boulders on the beach, and Durell dragged the rubber dinghy behind one and paused to rest. There was little to be seen in the darkness. Towering cliffs loomed ahead, and they seemed to be at the bottom of a deep pit scooped out of the shore. The wind thrashed against the scrubby brush that grew at the inland edge of the sand.

But he did not feel as if they were alone.

Nadja stood beside him, alert and watchful.

“It smells familiar,” she murmured.

“Is this where you used to swim?”

“I think so. But it is too dark to be certain. Yet it must be the same place. Papa and I used to fish in the river—” she gestured northward—“where there are marshes and salt ponds. It’s the same smell, even here.”

“We’re only a mile or so from the river mouth,” Durell said.

The girl shivered. “It feels lonely.”

“Not lonely enough, I’m afraid,” he said grimly.

She turned her head, and her face was a pale oval, questioning him. “What is it?”

“We must assume we’re being watched,” he said.

“Do you think Omaru—?”

“We must assume the worst.” He shrugged. “We’ll go on as if we think we’re safe and unexpected.”

“I don’t like that.”

“Neither do I,” he said, and grinned.

She led the way. There was a path that twisted up the cliffside above the beach. The path was in good condition, packed hard and buttressed by sunken logs to prevent washouts. Nadja held his hand as they climbed upward. In a matter of minutes, they stood on a flat, wooded area where the path became a wagon track, the deep ruts cutting across a stubbly field toward a woods. Nadja did not hesitate. She followed the wagon tracks and presently he saw a coolie farmer’s hut at the edge of the trees. A dim oil lamp inside seemed very bright in the window, in contrast to the rainy night.

“Be careful,” Nadja whispered. “There used to be dogs.” Durell had a knife as well as his gun. He took the blade out and held it ready as they passed the small hut. But no dogs came yelping after them to arouse the night. They followed the path for several hurried, anxious moments. “Wait,” Durell said.

The girl stopped immediately. Barbed wire glinted across their path, strung along the shoulders of a military road that paralleled the shore. There was a gateway of wire barring the wagon road where it joined the asphalt highway, and beyond it stretched long, glinting rice paddies. The wind made dark ripples on the watered fields. The rain stopped at that moment, lifting the visibility.

“There was no fence here before,” Nadja whispered. “Of course, it was ten years ago, and the fields are bigger. It’s changed. The town is to our right. You can see the glow of lights. Papa and I came here in the truck, from the other way. I’d forgotten how it was. But seeing it again is bringing it back. We always came from the south, though.”

“How long a trip was it from the mission?”

“Not long. Fifteen minutes, perhaps.”

“Is it too far to walk?”

“I think not.”

The fence was not electrified, and he held the barbed strands apart as she slipped through, and then she did the same for him. Her movements were quick and silent. She was well trained, he thought, but he sensed an unnatural tension in her that might prove calamitous if it built up much more.

They were in the middle of the road when the truck came around the bend.

The wind covered the sound of its engine until the last moment, and Durell’s first warning was the sudden, lifting glare of its headlights. Afterward, he wondered if the vehicle had been coasting silently down the slight grade, and if the lights had just been snapped on. But there was no time to think about it. He shoved Nadja hard, and dived for the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The roar of the truck engine shook the air, but it was not going fast. It seemed to slow down as it passed the gateway in the barbed wire fence. The headlights flooded the rice paddies with their glare. He heard the sound of singing, and glimpsed the packed figures of uniformed Chinese troops in the open, stake-bodied vehicle. There were at least twenty of them, all armed with automatic rifles. Durell hugged the wet, rank earth. Nadja huddled beside him in the irrigation ditch, which fortunately contained little water at the moment.

The truck passed.

Durell stood up. The girl moved more slowly.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go on.”

They followed the military road on an upgrade for thirty minutes. Twice they had to dive for the ditches as other military vehicles roared by. One was a motorcycle, another an armored car. Durell could not shake off the feeling they were being carefully watched. Yet he could not pinpoint anything specific. In the darkness, he did not think they could be seen. Both he and Nadja wore dark clothing, and kept well to the shadows. By ten o’clock, they came in sight of the ruins.

First there was a small cluster of farmers’ huts, most of them dark. Dogs barked at them, but none came near— apparently there was enough military traffic on the road to dull their alarm at passersby. They circled the tiny hamlet by crossing the rice paddies on the dikes, and then followed an old stone wall that was higher than Durell’s head, climbing uphill to the summit where the ruins brooded. There were terraced orchards here, thick with fallen, wet leaves. The rain did not start again, but the warm wind blew harder.

Durell halted.

“Is that the place?”

Nadja was silent.

“Is it?” he asked.

“It seems so different, in the night—after so long—”

“What was it like when you lived here?”

Her voice sounded faint. “There was the mission church, of course. And the hospital. One of the richer villagers had donated a house for the clinic, with much ceremony, you know—a parade and firecrackers and an announcement by a crier specifying how much money the man had given and how generous he was. It’s the custom not to hide one’s light under a bushel in charitable works here. The hospital was there, on the hilltop. But I don’t see it now.”

“There are only ruins. You said it was all burned.”

“Yes.”

“But this is not the place where you were kept a prisoner by the old Chinese, afterward.”

“N-no.”

“Can you remember any more about it now? How far he took you after your parents were killed? And after they left you for dead, too?”

She shuddered. “I cannot remember anything now.” “Nadja, you must!”

“I cannot! I do not want to go on.”

“You’ve got to. It’s no use, coming this far.”

“I know,” she said wearily. “I had hoped it would come back to me—how it was, and just what happened to me. But I cannot remember anything, after they shot me.” She paused. “All I can think of is that filthy little hut, where that old man kept me locked in for weeks, for months—Pere Jacques—and what he did to me, day after day—”

Her voice lifted. He tried to stop her, but it was too late. Someone came walking toward them, calling out in a thin, querulous tone.

It was an old woman.

There was no chance to run or hide. They stood in the lane that twisted up the hillside and waited for the old woman to approach. She carried a lantern, and she wore baggy coolie trousers and a blue shirt and dirty sneakers. Her face looked centimes old, canny and cruel in the rays of the lamp.

Durell said quickly to Nadja: “Did everyone here know the old man as Pere Jacques?”

“Y-yes.”

“Ask her about him, then.”

“But—”

“Ask her.”

Nadja spoke to the old woman in quick Manchurian dialect. Her voice was shaky, and the old woman lifted her lantern to inspect them. Her face closed abruptly when she saw they were not Chinese. She started to cry out, and Nadja caught her arm and said something very quickly and harshly, and the woman lowered the lantern and looked at them sullenly. She did not reply to Nadja’s questions. Her eyes kept sliding away, as if she wanted to escape. She had been carrying a small hamper on a pole over her shoulder, and she finally put it down and said something angrily and pointed downhill toward the farm hamlet they had just circled.

Nadja shook her head and pointed upward toward the ruined mission compound. The peasant woman spoke in an offensive tone and started away. Durell blocked her path. She glared at him with fear in her eyes.

Nadja said: “I told her we were Russians. There have been some Russian military inspection teams here. She does not believe me.”

“Why not?”

“Because we are not in uniform. All Russians are in uniform, she says.”

“She does not remember you?”

“I think she does. It has been ten years, but—I think so. Perhaps that is why she is suspicious.”

“Is the military activity in the neighborhood normal? Ask her that,” Durell suggested.

Nadja spoke again to the old woman. She shook her head sullenly. Then she asked another question, and the old woman laughed. Nadja looked pale.

“What is it?” Durell asked.

“I wanted to know if the old Chinaman, the crazy one they called Pere Jacques, was still alive around here. She says yes, he is.”

“Does she know the way to his house?”

Nadja shivered. “She says it is not far.”

The old woman jabbered and pointed up the hill. Durell was curious about her hamper, and reached down and opened it. Instantly the crone swung to him in shrill anger.

“Tell her to be quiet,” he said flatly.

Nadja spoke, and the old woman stood in huddled, anxious defiance. The hamper contained only two bottles of rice wine, nothing else.

Nadja said: “This old woman says everything is normal. There are always patrols, she says. But no one has been to the mission ruins for years. She says only ghosts live there now. The white imperialist-devils, she calls them. None of the farmers ever go there now. As for Pere Jacques, she says he lives only with the wind. But she won’t explain it. Maybe she does not know any more. She simply says he lives with the wind.”

She paused abruptly. The sound of crunching footsteps on the lane suddenly came to them. Durell turned and saw the wavering shape of a man climbing the hill toward them. The man carried a lantern, too, and the rays of light gleamed on brass buttons. He wore a military uniform, with a sergeant’s insignia on his sleeve. His rifle was carried in the crook of his left arm. As he walked, he muttered to himself and sang bits of song and rolled drunkenly.

It was too late to move on or try to hide. In any case, the old woman began to scream shrilly, crying out and pointing to Durell and Nadja. The Chinese sergeant stopped and looked at them from under thick, lowering brows. He was sweating, with dark stains under his armpits. He paused with his booted feet spread firmly apart, and glowered at them.

Nadja spoke to the old woman, who jabbered something and tried to snatch back her wine bottles. It was just the diversion needed for the sergeant.

He lurched forward and shoved the old woman brutally aside, and grinned as he plucked the two bottles from the hamper and waved them high in one hand, his fingers looped around the glass necks. His rifle muzzle sagged from the crook of his arm.

Durell spoke in authoritative Russian.

“Sergeant, can you understand me?”

The man grinned and nodded. He was big, tough and muscular, approaching middle age. “Yes, comrade. A little. You have trouble with this old witch?”

“You may have her wine. A brace soldier deserves such a gift.”

“Thank you, comrade. It is proper. The soldiers of the People’s Republic of China salute the technicians of the Soviet Union, eh?”

The man broke the neck of one of the bottles on a stone at his feet and tilted it up to let the contents gush into his wide, gaping mouth. Most of the wine splashed down his chin and sweaty throat.

The old woman began to wail calamity.

The sergeant belched. “Are you lost, comrades?”

“We are looking for someone who lives near this village. He may be an imperialist spy, but we are not sure. He is a crazy old man who thinks he is a priest of the Western church.”

“What’s his name? I’ll have him shot,” the sergeant said obligingly.

“We only wish to question him,” Durell said. “You know there is an alert along this part of the coast tonight?”

The big Chinaman winked. “It is so. But your people are taking care of it. Our orders are not to interfere.”

“But there is a lot of activity from your camp.”

Again the man winked. “One shoots off firecrackers to appease the devil dragons.” Then he looked stubborn. “It’s your headache, not ours.”

“This is the attitude of your superiors?”

The man looked worried for a moment, lest he had said too much to a Russian. But Durell had learned something he had wanted to know. It was obvious that the Chinese troops were only making motions toward cooperation, for reasons of their own. It meant that his major danger came only from Omaru. He had counted on a certain amount of truculent jealousy from the two allies here.

But then the sergeant dropped his bottle and abruptly unslung his rifle. He waved the gun at Nadja. “What is the matter with her? She is shivering.”

“She is cold.”

“The wind is warm.”

“About this old man we wish to find—” Durell began. But it was too late. The sergeant’s drunken cheerfulness changed to sudden suspicion. Perhaps he feared he had talked too much about his superior’s orders. His thick brows made a dark brush across his squinting eyes. The old Woman babbled something and pointed to Nadja. The girl shrank away. Durell, unable to grasp the quick Manchurian dialect, saw the sergeant’s rifle lift and point at the girl.

“You are under arrest,” the soldier said in Russian. He laughed. “We were not supposed to interfere, but since you walk into my arms, I must hold you.”

Then the trooper shouted for the guard, and an answering yell came from down the walled lane, followed by the sound of trotting feet lower on the dark hill. There was no help for it, Durell decided. He knocked the gun muzzle up and wrenched the weapon aside.

Fortunately, the gun didn’t go off. The Chinese was big and powerful, but his reflexes were slowed by liquor. He grunted and staggered and started to yell again, and Durell hit him in the mouth and drove him against the stone wall beside the lane. The old woman screamed. She smothered the sound at once as Durell twisted the rifle free and slammed it across the sergeant’s head. The man would not fall. Desperate, Durell struck again, aware of querulous calls from the hamlet below. The Chinese swung a massive fist that caught Durell on the side of the head. The rifle clattered to the stones between them. The man grinned, drooling spittle and blood from his broken mouth. He glanced down at the rifle—and Durell jumped him, took him to the ground, and rolled over and over down the lane with him.

The man was a strong, vicious fighter, despite his drunkenness. He snatched up a stone and crashed it against Durell’s head, and for a moment everything blacked out for him. Then Durell drove a knee into the man’s belly, chopped at the sweaty, bloody face, and the other went limp all at once, gurgling in his throat as his eyes rolled up.

Durell got slowly to his feet. He looked down the lane toward the coolie huts, but nothing moved there.

“Nadja?” he called softly.

There was no reply. He looked along the shadows of the wall, but she was not in sight. He drew a deep breath.

“Nadja?” he called, a little louder.

The old woman was gone, too. Her bottles of wine lay smashed in the stony lane.

But Nadja had disappeared.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

She ran, not knowing where to go.

She was spurred by a panic that took her beyond all reasonable control. She had seen Durell go down, and then the old woman had clawed at her and shrieked, and the smell of the old woman was the same smell she remembered from the hut of Pere Jacques. It was as if a floodgate were suddenly smashed within her, and an animal instinct to run and hide from dark and filthy terrors seized her.

For several moments she was content with the wild, physical exertion of scrambling up the hill. Her mind did not function. Her lungs pumped air, her heart thudded, the muscles of her legs stretched and tightened, her feet struck solidly on the stony earth, the warm wind tangled fingers in her hair. . . .

She ran.

She did not look back. Durell must be dead, the sergeant had killed him, and the old woman—the old woman who smelled like that crazy old man who had used her twelve-year-old body for dark eternities of imprisonment in a black and smelly cell—

She fell, lay in the wet mud, wept and laughed.

She got up and ran again.

Papa? Papa?

She heard voices calling, heard laughter and the chatter of coolies, heard the brazen sound of a temple gong.

“Papa!” she called.

She tripped and fell again.

A trembling seized her, and she could not get up. She lay in the mud and wept. The smell of the old woman clung to her like dirt, creeping into her nostrils, her eyes and ears, the very pores of her skin. She coughed and choked and pushed the solid earth away from her, her arms extended rigidly. Her pale hair came loose and hung thickly before her face. She brushed it away and stared.

She had reached the top of the hill, where the ruins lay black and weedy and vine-grown in the dark night. What had happened? She was aware of time gone by, of many changes wrought by wind and weather. The chapel had been here, to the right, just beyond the compound wall. The two gate posts still stood, stark against the strange light in the night sky. The heavy wooden gates were gone, of course. The peasants would have used them for firewood. It was here that the guerilla fighters had broken in, clubbing fat John Lee, splashing his brains on the dusty ground. Father Pierre, the Jesuit, had died with a bayonet in his belly, impaled against the chapel door, pinned there like Christ, dying slowly in the hot sun. Here little Mary Choong had been thrown to the ground and raped, and had died screaming in pain.

Nadja walked slowly, like a sleepwalker, through the ruins of her childhood.

Papa?

A few crumbled walls still remained, dark against the darkness of the night. The infirmary had been here, to the right. Only a dark, muddy hole existed in the ground now, filled with rain-water and mud. Something splashed in the water. A frog? Nadja dropped to her knees and peered with rapt interest. But she could see nothing in the black water that filled the hole.

She pushed her hair back from her face and looked around wonderingly. She had played here long ago. How long ago? What had happened in between? She stood up slowly. Bits of moist earth clung to the palms of her hands, and she brushed them away convulsively, shuddering. She turned right, walking through the waist-high weeds. Nothing was familiar, but everything mocked her with memories that ended in screaming and horror.

She took a few faltering steps toward the ruined foundation walls. A gaping doorway beckoned to her. Yes, that had been the cellar, under the house. She had fled there from the rioting soldiers as the house burned above her, hearing the scream of tortured wood. That was where one of them had caught her again and dragged her out to be shot against the wall.

She touched the scar on her scalp where the bullet had gone.

She stopped, shivering.

The place was empty now. Memories could not hurt her. There was no danger here now.

She backed away slowly from the doorway and the steps that led down into the dark hole in the earth.

Someone was in there.

It was impossible.

No one was here.

But someone—

“Alexi?” she whispered.

The warm wind whimpered and tugged at his name.

“Alexi, is it you? Are you here?"

He couldn’t be here.

This was not where she had been kept a prisoner in darkness for so many weeks, with only a chink in the wall through which she glimpsed the shimmering coast and the sea. It was somewhere else. Alexi had come to that other place, breaking down the door, reaching into the darkness to save her.

Nadja smiled in sudden pity for the child who had huddled in Alexi’s arms. So long ago! So many years ago! She had clung to him, smelling the cleanliness of him, the uniform he wore, the kindliness of his face unable to hide the shock he felt at finding her with the old Chinaman. For days afterward, she hadn’t been able to endure being parted from him. She awoke screaming, night after night, in the Peiping hospital, and always found him seated at her bedside, ready to soothe her. She hadn’t understood much Russian in those days. He taught her slowly, and she came to understand him, and at last he made her realize she was safe, that he was taking her away with other children, across Siberia to Moscow.

For a long time after the train trip she did not see him. There were schools and rigid training schedules and so much to learn and even more to forget. How they tried to make her forget! They told her Papa was a foolish criminal who had resisted the revolution. She was afraid to deny it. They said it again and again, and presently she accepted it, not thinking about it, always grateful for the clean clothes, the warm bed, the comradeship of the other girls in the school.

She stood and stared at the cellar opening, a small smile of remembrance carved on her lips. Again she pushed her hair back from her cheeks. The wind made the weeds rattle and clash in what had once been the compound area, so long ago. Smiling, she remembered the heart-stopping shock she had known when she saw Alexi Kaminov again, limping down the school corridor, a man so tall and wide-shouldered, his face so grave, his eyes always shadowed by inner troubles he could not seem to solve. She had been eighteen, and a woman then, although she always shrank from the touch of a man.

She had thrown herself into his arms with a cry of joy, like a child, forgetting her womanhood and the discipline of the school.

She remembered his laugh of recognition, how he had held her by the shoulders to examine her, how he had thrown back his head in pleasure. . . .

Then there was the slow dawning of adult love, to replace the early gratitude on her part, the pity from him. She remembered the anguish of their ecstasy as they slowly came to know each other during walks in the city, long afternoons in the parks. . . .

She stared into the cellar entrance.

Someone was there.

“Alexi?”

Even in those days, his soul was tormented by doubts of things he dared not discuss with her. But he had made his decision, he had known where she was stationed in Tokyo, and he had used a part of her life to come to this desolate place that reeked of ugly memories, to wait for her to find him, as once he had come here for her. . . .

She could not fail him.

She had to find him.

Someone was down there in that dark hole in the earth, surrounded by the ruins of the ten-year-old massacre.

“Alexi?”

Nothing.

No one.

And fear touched her.

She took a step backward, and then another. The wind made strange rustlings in the tall weeds around her. She took a third step backward. Something caught her heel and she whirled, staggering slightly. Durell, she thought wildly. What had happened to him? Why had she run in panic when she saw the Chinese soldier attack him? She put a hand to her mouth, stifling a moan. How could she have deserted him? It was as if everything had come over her at once, snatching away her senses to drive her to this place, abandoning him.

She started for the ruined compound gates, moving quickly through the night shadows until she was almost running.

Someone ran after her, a figure flapping in rags, long skinny limbs showing aged gray skin, hard ribs. It was like a ghost, an apparition, a grinning death’s head with shaven skull and small gleaming eyes and long yellow teeth—

Her heart stopped.

She could not move. She could not run. She cowered against the mossy pillars of the compound gate, alone in the dark wind and the night, alone as she had been alone long ago. . . .

“Ah!” said the apparition. “Ah, ah, little one!”

She could not escape. It was as if she had always known he would find her again some day and take her back into the darkness with him.

It was Pere Jacques.

The warm wind blew her thick, pale hair and made his ragged clothing flap. He stood in a crouch, a knife in his hand, and his head, like a turtle’s, was thrust out from his rags as his beady eyes regarded her. He spoke to her in an angry voice. She did not understand him. His words were like the wind that whimpered through the desolation of the ruins.

He reached out a clawlike hand to touch her. She shrank away. She told herself to run, to find Durell, to get away from here. Why had she come alone to this place? Why had she deserted him?

Her thoughts clouded, grew numb.

He touched her.

She wanted to scream, but she could force no sound from her throat.

“Ah,” he said. “The little one has come back!”

“Pere Jacques?” she whispered.

“I live forever,” he said. “It is a long time. I knew you would come back, eh? I knew it always.”

“You—you remember me?”

She could not recognize the sound of her own voice. Where did her strength come from now? She was partly frozen in terror, caught in the skein of perilous memories. And she was partly alert, aware of an end to a long, long search. Her heart suddenly began to lurch in her breast. She had to be careful, careful. Watch his knife, watch it. There was still the same crazy gleam in his eyes, the same drooling grin. This man for so many years had been a monster in her tormented dreams, growing in stature through time and endless nightmares until he had assumed ogre-like proportions.

But he was only a crazy old man.

She was not now a sick, delirious, wounded child.

She was strong, she had been carefully trained; there was no real danger.

“My little one,” he said, chuckling. “You have come back to me after so long a time.”

“Yes,” she said.

“You went far from me.”

“Yes. . . . Do you live here now, in this place?”

“Not always.”

“You gave up the hut?”

“It was taken from me.”

“When?”

He looked impatient. “Some days ago. I had to hide. He is a dangerous man. He took you from me once before.”

“The Russian? The man with one leg?”

“Ah, yes, the Russian. He came back. When he came back, I ran away. I knew you, too, would be here soon. I came here to wait for you.” His chuckle was insane. “I was right, eh?”

“Where is he?” Nadja asked. “Is he in your hut now?” It was all real, after all—the dreams, the terrors, the halfveiled monsters. She forced herself to breathe evenly. His eyes devoured her body in the dim shadows. Should she

run? She could run now, she thought. She could escape him and hide, she could elude his knife—

“I missed you,” he whined. “I needed you.”

“You did not treat me kindly,” she said.

“Ah, ah! You were so lovely, such a child—”

“I am not a child now.”

“Ah, no. A woman—”

The knife point made glimmering arabesques before her eyes. She pressed her shoulders back against the mossy stone pillars of the gateway and slid her eyes aside to look down the walled lane that twisted down the hillside. No one was there. What had happened to Durell? Had the drunken Chinese sergeant killed him? And the old woman —where had she gone, with her precious bottles of wine? There was no one to help her.

Rain began to fall again. There came a rush of sudden wind that bent the weeds and threw dust into the black air. The old man coughed, and then he suddenly caught her arm and threw her with surprising strength to the hard ground and hurled himself on top of her. His smell was the same smell that had haunted her through all the past years. She felt his gasping, panting, urgent body press her into the earth. It was the same as it had been before, and in her nightmares. She could not escape. Nothing had changed.

The rain came down in a hissing, thundering torrent. It drowned out all sound, soaked her instantly as the old man wriggled over her and pressed her down.

And she remembered everything.

The sound of rushing water had filled her ears for all the time she had been his prisoner, so long ago. But it had not been rain. It had been there constantly, outside the walls of his hut. She could find the place again—

She felt the brittle bones of his wrist yield in the strength of her new grip. His furious breath slapped her cheek, his toothless mouth gaped like a dark hole in his skeletal face. She pushed the knife away from her. Anger came in a rush of new strength, filling a void that had always existed in her dreams. So many terrible things had been done to her by ‘his vicious old man, so many nightmare hours had followed her across the world and the years to torment her—

She took the knife from his fingers and felt the wild revulsion grow against the familiar pressure of his gasping body. She had been a child once, frightened and sick. But she was not a child now.

She struck hard with the knife.

And struck again.

“Ah!” he cried. “Ah . . .”

She felt his blood on her thighs. It was surprisingly hot and warm, coming from his smelly, bony body.

She struck a last time.

And she felt him shudder and die.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Durell dragged the unconscious sergeant aside, out of the center of the lane. He saw the old woman sprawled in the grass under the shadows of the stone wall, and he went to her and knelt beside her and saw she had struck her head against the stones. She was not dead. He had not wanted to harm her, and he thought she would be all right. He went back to the sergeant, put the automatic rifle aside, and began methodically to strip the man’s uniform from him. It was of light quilted cotton, and it smelled of the man’s sweat and raw liquor. He put it on over his own clothes and made a quick, whipping knot around the man’s wrist, using the fellow’s shirt for strips of line and for a gag. Then he tore more strips from the shirt to make the man’s ankles secure.

When it began to rain again, with the sudden intensity of a waterfall, he was instantly wet to the skin. The rain was warm. He tore more strips of cloth and made a gag and bonds for the old woman, too, and then dragged them both into the thick weeds that grew under the wall. Then he picked up the sergeant’s rifle and lantern and started up the hill again.

There had been no alarm from the coolie houses below the mission ruins. The rain drummed down and blotted out all visibility except for a few feet ahead.

He paused at the compound gate. A few twisted fruit trees grew here, their roots entangled in the crumbled stones of the wall. When he looked back, he saw lights moving in the shallow valley below, and more lights from cars and trucks were coming up along the military highway far away. The rain blotted out any hope of seeing the shore. It kept thundering down with incredible intensity, and the earth felt slick and slippery underfoot.

He stumbled over the dead Chinese just inside the compound gate and knelt quickly, his back feeling the rain like a palpable weight on his shoulders. He found the knife in the old man’s back and shone the sergeant’s lantern briefly on the dead, grinning face.

There was no sign of Nadja. He understood her panic flight, but he hoped it had not carried her too far. She would be somewhere near, he decided. He was sure it was she who had used the knife on the old man. He knew he had to find her quickly, or everything would be lost in the stress she suffered.

He searched the ruins carefully, descending into the dim, rank-smelling cellars, using the lamp at intervals to stab light into the tangled beams that still showed the charred blackness of the old fires that had destroyed this place. There was no sign of her here. He suddenly knew she would not have remained here, after killing the old man.

He walked back to the gate and considered the body. Why had she found it necessary to kill him? He used the lamp once more and saw the repeated wounds she had inflicted. Her hand had been driven by terror, by frantic anguish, by—revenge? He stood still. Was this old coolie Pere Jacques, the one whose name had been a mystery in Japan and as far away around the world as No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington, when he was first briefed on this mission?

He was suddenly sure of it.

The rain hissed and stormed around him. He tried to think where Nadja might have gone. She was no longer in the mission ruins. Neither had she come back down the hill toward him, or he would have met her or seen her. So she must have gone on up the lane, beyond the compound gates. He turned that way.

He moved swiftly, until he came to another barbed-wire military fence. This one was electrified, and in the dark rain he almost stumbled into it. He looked each way in the wet night and finally saw the glimmer of a wooden watchtower not fifty yards away. A match flickered in the shelter of the small roof overhead. In the momentary glare, he saw the face of a Chinese soldier, lighting a cigarette, and his companion. The second man on the tower had night glasses, and the brief glimpse of his posture indicated he was watching something beyond the wire fence. Durell moved away along the fence and came to a place where the wire had been broken recently. In the heavy rain, he felt the depressions made by footprints in the mud—one small set, and several large, booted imprints.

He paused, thinking it out. Nadja had come this way, had gone heedlessly through the fence and set off an alarm. The coastal watchers were alert, but not doing anything, which fitted his theory that the Chinese military were holding off from all interference, for fear of wrecking the plan to trap Kaminov, Durell and Nadja. He could dismiss the soldiers, then; their orders would be to let them all through, for the moment. But other men had come here recently and followed the break Nadja had made in the fence—and it was only a few moments ago, or the heavy rain would have washed out the footprints. Obviously, Nadja was now being tracked by Omaru’s hired cutthroats.

Durell slipped through the gap in the fence.

There was a path that twisted through old fruit orchards and terraces on the mountainside. He did not dare use his lamp, and the going was tortuous. He heard the sound of rushing water ahead, and had the sense of vast spaces to his left, as if the land fell away and down toward the sea; but he could not penetrate the rain-swept darkness and had to trust to his instinct for impressions of the landscape.

The path entered a thin wood, picked clean of twigs and windfalls by the peasants. He paused and listened, and above the sound of the rain he heard the steady, plodding squelch of booted feet ahead of him, heard a man’s grunting breath and then a muttered curse. A lamp flickered briefly and went out, and Durell saw Omaru’s man briefly.

There was no doubt of it; Omaru had command over the area, with the Chinese standing back. His men were trailing Nadja, but they were not trying to overtake her, in order to see where she would go. She seemed to be moving with a purpose.

He walked faster.

He wondered how many of Omaru’s people filled this mountainside, spread out to trap Nadja and Colonel Kaminov at their rendezvous. Somehow, he had to hold back the jaws of the trap and keep it from springing upon himself.

He came out of the wood and crossed a road and skirted rice paddies in the darkness. The rain had slackened, and the wind was easier. There was a hush in the air, a deadly warmth pregnant with a sense of waiting, of fury lurking out there in the black night over the sea. Far below, at the foot of the steep hillside, he made out the dim streaks of white combers smashing against the rocky coast. The light strengthened, as if shreds in the cloudy overcast permitted some vagrant moonlight to sift through the darkness. The man ahead plodded on, unalarmed. The thin, piping shriek of a train whistle came from up the river valley. But here was a sense of isolation and detachment, and another twenty minutes went by without further signs of habitation.

There was another patch of woods, a weedy field, a steep upward climb. The man ahead slipped, his gun clinking against stone. He cursed in Japanese and started up—

And Durell took him—silently, ruthlessly.

He gave no warning until he swung his rifle butt against the man’s head. The other, in civilian clothes and raincoat, fell to the stony earth without a sound.

Durell waited a moment, then went on. He could see the hut now.

It stood alone, a hermit’s aerie in a fold of the rocky hillside. A faint oil light glimmered from one of the small, square windows. There was a slanting, thatched roof, a terraced clearing, and the white streak of a mountain stream that tumbled and crashed in violence down to the sea.

He suddenly knew that this was the place he had started out to find, from halfway around the world.

And Nadja was in there. . . .

She stood in the dark hut, facing Alexi.

He was a shadow, a ghost, a wraith conjured up from the past, the creation of her childhood loneliness and despair. Nothing had changed inside the hut through the years. There was the same plank door, with its solid iron bar, and the ancient padlock on the outside that hung from its big hasp. How many times had she heard the old Chinaman snap the lock shut upon her, barring her from the outside world? She knew the single room intimately, every nook and corner, every curiosity in the grain of the wood in its board siding. The floor was of dirt, packed down so hard by decades of walking by the old man’s feet that it was like coarse cement. There was the straw pallet in the corner, where she had been allowed to sleep like a dog, after her slow recovery from the bullet wound of the executioner’s rifle. Delirium and dreams had made those weeks pass. There was the oil stove, where the old man had cooked his rice, and the small shelf where he kept a few lacquered bowls, one of which he filled grudgingly for her, to keep her alive for his pleasures. Outside, there had been only terror, the knowledge that she was being hunted remorselessly by the guerilla troopers. He had kept up that fiction for all the time she had been enslaved here.

“Alexi?” she said dimly.

He stood up carefully in the comer of the hut where once she used to sleep. He had been sleeping there, too.

His deep voice was strange. “You have come.”

“Yes.”

He peered at her. “This was the last night. I planned to give myself up, tomorrow.” He paused. “Is it really you, Nadja?”

“Yes.”

“I did not think you would really come here.”

“I am here,” she said.

“Are you alone?”

“There are friends nearby.”

“Your friends—or mine?”

“Our friends,” she said.

The oil lamp flickered and cast grotesque shadows inside the hut. It made the place seem darker. She wanted to weep, because Alexi had changed so much. He was not the same. The man she had cherished in her heart had been a god, tall and clean and straight, a man superior to all other men. His sureness was gone now, he was bearded and unkempt, his hand shook as he held it out to her, and his smile was uncertain. The strangeness was a solid barrier between them. She did not move in from the doorway. He did not take a step toward her. They looked at each other with some suspicion, unsure of the other’s intentions. Outside, the world was a hostile place, filled with dark, hunting shadows. Time pressed upon her and upon him, urgently demanding that they leave this place. Yet she did not move. The world was shut out. This room that reeked of the old man’s evil presence was the only world that mattered for the moment.

He wore a peasant’s costume, a quilted shirt and baggy pants and straw sandals on his feet. She could see the gleam of metal from the artificial equipment that replaced his left leg. His beard was blond, thick and heavy, and his hair was unkempt.

Yes, she wanted to weep.

This was not her god, the man she had idealized, the one human being in all the world whom she loved and trusted.

He was broken and unsure, filled with suspicion toward her, as she was suspicious of him.

Too much time had passed between them; there had been too many uncertainties, and it all marred the perfection of her dreams. She wanted to back away and run from him.

“What is it, Nadja?” he whispered. “Have you really come here to arrest me? Is that the truth of it?”

“Arrest you?”

“How have you come here?” he demanded. The space of the room was still between them. “I trained you well. No one else knows how well. Did I create in you the creature who will destroy me? I made you an efficient arm of the KGB machine, did I not? I taught you discipline and loyalty. Did I train you out of all humanity?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I thought so, at first, when I first received your message. I refused to believe this about you. I felt lost, as if you had betrayed me.”

“I am glad of that. But—”

“I’ve come to help you, Alexi.”

“You sound strange.”

She faltered. “You seem so different.”

He peered at her from under bushy blond brows. His forehead was flat, furrowed with lines of inquiry. His eyes that had been so blue and certain now seemed dimmed, unsure. But the same blunt bones of his face were there, the strength and sensitivity still were carved in his mouth. He had lost weight, she thought irrelevantly.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, “I have not really changed, Nadja. I saw too much here, too many things I could not accept. I have been thinking of this move for a long time. I think you suspected how I always felt.”

“Yes.”

“You were shocked, then—you were dismayed when you received my message?”

“In some ways. Everything was turned upside-down for me. I didn’t know what to do.”

“But you came here. You are with the American, with Durell?”

“He brought me here. But it is dangerous. It is a trap, for all of us.”

It did not seem to matter. She wondered that he did not show any fear now. They both seemed caught up in the web of a trance, as if they were alone in the world, two strangers tentatively trying to reach out and touch each other. She was aware of the increasing strength of the wind outside now. One part of her mind advised her that its renewed violence was a warning, a shout of terror to come, of insane destruction spinning and shrieking its way across the sea. It did not seem to matter.

All that mattered was this man, Alexi Kaminov, who still seemed to wait for her to say yes or no to his life.

Rain smashed at the thatched roof of the hut. Some of it was forced in by the insane wind, and she could see the walls tremble and the water came in with fine spurts of spray. He looked at her and smiled.

“Nadja, you have come a long way, a hard way.”

“I came to you,” she whispered.

“You are more beautiful than ever.”

“This is not the time—”

“There is no other time. You are beautiful.”

“It means nothing.”

“When you were a child and I took you to Moscow, you were beautiful then, too, but you were a child, and you were ill and strange, and I felt sorry for you.”

“I know.”

“Later, you were a young woman, very intense and devoted to the work assigned to you, and you had buried everything that had happened to you so far down inside yourself that you wore a mask and walked like an automaton, and I could not really find you.”

She searched his face. “Did you try?”

“I tried.”

“Why?”

“Because I could never forget you. I thought of you always. It grew into the most important part of my life. You were never long out of my thoughts. Thinking of you gave me pleasure and happiness. And so I came to love you.”

“I always loved you,” she said simply.

“No.”

“It is the truth. I always loved you.”

“You were grateful to me. You were a child.”

She said: “Why must we talk about it now? There is a storm outside, it is reported to be a typhoon, and Durell is somewhere out there. We must hurry back and find him.”

“There is no need to hurry. I must be sure you wish to come with me.”

“What else can I do? I have no other place to go now,” she said simply.

He looked shocked. “They know?”

“They wanted me to lead them to you. The people you trusted—Omaru, and his smuggling apparatus-—really worked for the KGB. They did not trust me in this. They—they tried to torture me, to learn about this place, so they could trap you and Durell together. I refused to tell them. So they are hunting me now, too. And of course they know we are somewhere in this area.”

He said slowly: “Perhaps I asked too much of you. Are you afraid?”

“A little.”

“We will go to live among strangers, Nadja, in a strange world. It will not always be good for us. Are you afraid?”

“We will be together,” she said simply.

He was silent. The rain trickled in a steady stream through the broken thatch of the roof. The hut shook dangerously in the violent blasts of the wind. There was a distant, thundering roar somewhere far off, a sound she had never heard before.

“Don’t you trust me, Alexi?” she asked.

“I gave up hoping for you.”

“I gave up everything for you, Alexi.”

How strange! she thought. How long had she yearned for this moment of reunion, to see him and hear his voice and be able to touch him again! How often had she dreamed of knowing for certain that he loved her and wanted her!

But it was not like her dreams.

He was not the godlike man of her childhood, of her early love. He was not infallible and strong, always sure of himself, always right, always wise.

He was a man, not a god.

And this made a difference.

Her love for him changed in that moment.

She was the stronger now, for these few minutes, as least, and she accepted the reversal calmly, even with a sudden gladness, and at last she felt an unfreezing of something that had not dared to stir in her from the moment she had stepped in here. Her uncertainty was gone, dropping away from her like a discarded blindfold. The dreams she had lived with, all unreal and unfulfilled, impossible as it was in the world today, were gone now, too. They were replaced by a far stronger and greater acceptance of reality.

She held out her hand to him.

“Come, Alexi, we must go. I do not know if we can escape. They were watching for us, hunting for us, all through the hills and along the sea. Perhaps they will find us and capture us. Perhaps not. But we must try. At least, we are escaping together.”

He moved toward her, limping.

She wanted to weep, because he was not strong now, and because it was she who would have to lead the way. She saw the slight quivering at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes changed, the way a look of trust and sudden gladness crossed his face.

She kissed him lightly on his bearded mouth.

“Come,” she said simply.

And the door of the hut burst open.

At first she thought it was the terrible strength of the wind that seemed to shake the very earth under her feet. Rain smashed through the doorway, and the wind swept in with palpable strength, thrusting her backward, making her hair stream, her eyes water, blinding her and snatching the breath from her lips.

Then she saw that someone had broken open the door.

He stood there, enormous, streaming with the rain, filling the universe with his dark aspect.

It was Omaru.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Durell watched the big man go into the hut. There was a flash of light from the opened door, partly blocked by Omaru’s bulk, and then the darkness returned, filled with the howling wind and rain. He stood in the lee of a massive boulder, sheltered from the blasts that were hurled against the mountain. The rain was blinding, flying past at the horizontal. There was a roaring from the sea as if wild monsters fought out there.

He was not surprised by Omaru’s personal appearance. The man could have flown here overnight, in two hours, while the trawler plodded across the Japan Sea. He probably had about a dozen of his own men. Pride, and an egotism that matched his bulk, would demand that Omaru personally concluded the operation for which he was being paid.

Pride, and a desire for revenge he could see and taste. Egotism had demanded that he insist the Chinese hold back so he could spring the trap himself.

Durell’s only course was to go ahead, whatever the odds. He did not underestimate Omaru. To retreat would be to invite disaster, death. The boldest course was to plunge ahead toward his goal. Anything else was suicide.

He stepped out from the shelter of the rock and walked boldly up the inclined path toward the hut.

The wind buffeted him, the rain soaked through the quilted uniform he had taken from the Chinese sergeant. He did not get far without interference. He did not expect to.

One of Omaru’s men came out on the road, shouting something that was snatched away by the wind. A branch tom from a tree came flying through the air, twisting like a bat’s wing, and the man ducked, terror in his face. Durell approached casually, leaning into the wind. He wanted to run the rest of the way to the hut. With Omaru already inside, anything might be happening. But he paused at the sentry’s challenge.

The man, in civilian clothes, barked a command in Peiping Chinese, and Durell realized that in his stolen uniform, the other took him for one of the Chinese troopers.

“You do not belong here!” the man shouted. “You people have orders to stay clear of this area, sergeant!”

Durell moved so the rain drove into the other’s face, blinding him slightly. He was a Eurasian, small and compact, with a soaked trenchcoat and felt hat that was totally inadequate for this weather and terrain.

“I must see Omaru,” Durell called in Japanese, above the roar of the wind.

“What for? This is our job. You have no business—” “My lieutenant thinks you need help.”

“We’re all right.” The man waved his wet gun. “How did you get past Moteki? He should have stopped you.” “Something struck him—a falling branch,” Durell said. “All the devils of the night are at work against us.”

“That is true.” The man was squinting, trying to see Durell’s face. He said pompously, “But you must get out of here, sergeant. This is an intelligence operation.”

“When will you give the signal for us?” Durell ventured. “I don’t know anything about a signal. There’s some business about a red flare, if we need you. That’s all I know.”

“You’re sure you’ve got enough men?”

“Ten of us, but that’s enough, don’t worry. You—” The man broke oil as he came closer and peered at Durell’s face. Shock, alarm, and rage twisted his face as he realized how he had been tricked. He started to bring up his gun, but he was much too late.

Durell caught the wet, slippery barrel and twisted hard, up and over the man’s shoulder. The other screeched and twisted about, lost his footing, and stumbled a few blind steps, crouched over and off balance, from the path. A scream came from him as he slid from the path and down the slope to the left. There was nothing to be seen in the darkness down there. Shrubs and small trees on the cliffside thrashed in the wind, and Durell could not see how far the drop extended. He thought he heard the man’s cry down there, but in the noises of the storm, he could not be sure.

He straightened and started toward the hut, then paused.

He had stepped fairly into the jaws of the trap now. It yawned widely, waiting to snatch him up in its grip. He did not delude himself with his success so far. Omaru was in the hut, his men surrounded this place, and he could not count on the bedlam and confusion of the storm to help him further.

Somehow he had to turn the trap upon those who had set it for him. There was no other hope.

He walked openly, sheltered by the wind and the white, lashing rain, bending into the force of the uproarious elements. His uniform protected him from the other watchers. The waterfall that came down the mountainside behind the hut had gone wild, filling the air with its din. He stepped suddenly into water and floundered desperately in a torrent that clutched avidly at his knees. In an instant he went down, and felt his shoulder slam into something dark and solid, and he snatched at it before the flood dragged him away and down the mountainside to the black sea below. He had caught the abutment of a small wooden bridge that spanned the normally placid stream.

Water slashed over his head and pulled hungrily at him. It took all his strength to cling to the abutment. His feet dug into the muddy bank of the flood, but the soil was loose and eroded and crumbled with each new grip he sought. Overhead, the little bridge shook and shuddered with the pressure of the water.

He saw that the main timbers spanning the gully were locked into place by means of crude wooden pegs driven into holes in the wooden anchor-block he clung to. Durell pulled himself out of the torrent inch by inch until he was safely out of the flood. The bridge was cleverly made, even though its trembling indicated weakness. He might put this to use, he decided. And with that thought, he searched impatiently for a stone, felt along the slippery timbers for the nearest locking peg, and began knocking it loose.

He worked with a sense of desperation as time slipped by. For the space of several blows the peg was adamant. Then he was helped by the shaking of the bridge itself as the vibration suddenly worked it loose. The leg slipped out of its hole for several inches. The timbers shook more violently. He left it as it was and found the second peg on the other side of the main timber and attacked it, too.

Five minutes later, as he stepped cautiously across the flooded stream, he knew the bridge stood precariously, ready to collapse at any sudden, new strain.

He went on toward the hut.

Rain burst in ahead of him when he kicked open the door. The oil lamp inside threatened to go out in the blast of heavy wind that preceded him. There were wavering shadows, a glimpse of the three people inside, frozen in shock at his sudden appearance.

Omaru had a machine pistol in his huge paw, and he looked monstrous and unnatural in a slick yellow poncho over his massive bulk. He was turned half toward the doorway, and his heavy brows lifted very slightly as Durell came in. He smiled and waggled the gun.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “Please close the door, Durell. I have been expecting you. Indeed, we have been waiting for you.”

Durell looked across the small, barren room at the two people covered by Omaru’s gun. Nadja stood tall and straight beside Colonel Kaminov. She looked different, proud and defiant, her eyes cleared of the haunting terrors that had burdened her. She held Kaminov’s hand in hers and smiled strangely.

Alexi Kaminov was not the spruce, handsome Russian officer Durell remembered from the Hungarian border incident, years ago. The man had aged, and his blond beard looked matted, and there was a hunted look in his eyes.

His clothing was ragged and dirty. He looked like a man pursued by demons.

Omaru’s voice was genial. “You men have met before, have you not? I believe it was in Europe, in ’59. A pity that your friendship brings you to this disaster.”

“Omaru,” Kaminov said bitterly, “I paid you well for your help. I gave you all I had.”

Omaru chuckled. “We are in a disillusioning business, are we not? Your superiors simply paid me more to keep you here, that is all. It is as simple as that. And it seems that everything has worked out well, after all. I have you and the girl and Durell—all of you here, on mainland soil, as arranged.”

“You are a fool,” Nadja said. Her voice cut through the sounds of the storm outside with sharp strength. “You could have earned much more for yourself, Omaru. But it is still not too late. Some arrangement can be made, I promise you.”

“Not now,” Omaru rumbled. “Your chance was lost.” “Listen to me,” Nadja insisted. Her face was pale and earnest. She still held Kaminov’s hand. She was tall, but the blond Russian was a giant beside her—a maimed and broken giant who still towered physically above everyone else in the hut. “Omaru, you still need lose nothing. Durell can easily guarantee payment if you let us off. In this weather, it could be explained without any trouble.”

“I once said,” Omaru began heavily, “that money was all-important to me. But this man Durell has injured me gravely, and I have found that I do have some pride, after all. I have decided to be quixotic about money this time, and take my personal pleasure instead.” He waved the pistol slightly. “You will all please leave ahead of me. There is a truck at the foot of the hill, and my men are all around the place. It would be suicide if you attempted to escape now.”

“Omaru,” Durell said sharply. “You have only one chance to live—and that is to help us to get out of here.”

The fat man turned his head. “You are bluffing. I know all about you. I know your reputation for gambling. A distressing trait in our business. I do not believe your threats. I know you are armed, and you will notice I have not asked you to discard your weapon. I expect you know too many tricks in pretending to disarm yourself, and I will not take the risk. But if you make any untoward move,

Durell, I shall shoot you at once. I would like to do that. My employers would be disappointed not to have you alive for a public trial, but they would understand.” Omaru’s voice hardened. “Now, all of you—we will leave this place at once. I will deal harshly with trickery. The girl goes last, at my side. Do you understand that, Colonel Kaminov?” The blond, bearded Russian nodded. “You must not hurt her.”

“That depends entirely on your behavior. Go ahead, now. Durell will be first. The girl comes with me.”

“Nadja—” Kaminov began.

“It is my fault,” the girl said quietly. “Do not worry, Alexi. It will be all right.”

“But you had a reasonably good life. I should not have come back into it and destroyed it. I feel that I saved you long ago, only to bring you misery now.”

“I would not want it any other way,” the girl said. Kaminov walked toward the door, limping heavily beside Durell. The wind shrieked outside, and made the oil lamp flicker and gutter out again. Black rain drenched them as they stepped out of the hut.

Omaru’s men came into sight, out of the roaring rain. They looked like a band of brigands, Durell thought, but each was armed with a rifle, and they were well disciplined. Omaru snapped complacent orders to several of them to return to the truck, and sent two more off in another direction to advise the Chinese military the operation was completed. Two others remained with Omaru, following with rifles ready. The path down to the bridge was in wet darkness. Durell saw an inquiring look in Kaminov’s eyes, as if the man wanted to say something, but he ignored it. The Russian could not help.

Durell’s main concern was for Nadja’s safety. Omaru kept his gun in her back, and the two men were close behind. Durell bent his head to shelter his eyes from the stinging wind. The air was filled with a sound like thunder, and small dark objects constantly whipped by. The wind had veered and was now blowing from offshore. He wondered about the Okiku. He could only hope that Tagashi and the trawler were weathering the storm and that they were not being blown too far off position.

He had taken only half a dozen steps down the path from the hut when the wind abruptly took possession of it. There came a ripping, crashing sound as the thatched roof was tom off and plucked away. It flew awkwardly, like some prehistoric airborne reptile, and smashed against the cliffside to disintegrate into a thousand pieces. Something slashed across Durell’s cheek, stinging and drawing blood. He heard Omaru shout a warning as he ducked and the wreckage went spinning down into the gorge below. Then, as the wind picked up the oil lantern in the exposed interior, bright flames suddenly shot up from the bamboo structure and fluttered and roared in the wind.

They all halted. In the brief surge of light, Durell saw Nadja’s face, pale and composed, as she saw the final destruction of the place that had haunted her dreams for so many years.

The rain pounded the fire out of existence in a matter of moments, A few sparks glowed briefly, and that was. all. The wind shrieked louder in triumph.

“Go on!” Omaru shouted.

Kaminov hesitated, half-turned. He saw the gun ready in Omaru’s hand, pointed at the girl, and he went on beside Durell. In another moment they came to the bridge.

A series of crude terraced steps in the path led down to it, and the spew of white flood water in the little gorge looked enormously swollen even in the few moments since Durell had crossed on his way to the hut. The bridge still stood, but it was canted slightly to the left, and in the gloom he could see it was swaying dangerously in the gush of water pouring down the hillside. Beyond the bridge, the stream shot far out into space to cascade down the mountain to the beach, far below and lost in the darkness.

Omaru paused. “One moment.”

Several more of Omaru’s men—three men, in all—had reluctantly gathered on the other side of the bridge, waiting. Omaru shouted to them to stay where they were and paused, his head lowered, considering the span. Suspicion was evident in the hunched attitude of his huge head and shoulders. The wind tore at his yellow slicker and made it flap like the wings of a sullen, predatory bird.

“Kaminov, you cross first,” Omaru decided.

“I must go with him,” Nadja protested. “He needs someone to lean on—his leg—”

“He goes alone. There will be no argument.”

The girl fell silent. The Russian shrugged and limped forward and showed no hesitation in crossing the rickety structure. Durell tried to see if the loose pins were still in their timbered sockets, but the shadows and the spray washed them from view. Kaminov clung to the rail with the one hand. The bridge creaked loudly, but that was all. He stood among Omaru’s men on the other side and waited.

“You next, Durell.”

‘You seem afraid, Omaru,” Durell said.

“I am merely cautious. Proceed, please.”

Durell stepped onto the bridge and felt it shudder precariously under his weight. If it collapsed, he knew he would be swept away in the white torrent under him, to be carried over the lip of the cliff and shot into space, falling hundreds of feet to the rocky shore below. Like Kaminov, he did not hesitate. There were six quick steps, which he tried to synchronize with the uneasy motion of the loose planking, and then he jumped to the solid path beyond. One of the waiting guards pushed him toward Kaminov. The Russian nodded, his bearded face glistening with the rain. He looked shaggy and awkward, leaning heavily on his good leg.

“Is it hopeless, Durell?”

“I don’t know.”

“I am sorry about all this. My troubles should have remained my own. But you were the only man I trusted to bring Nadja over to me.”

“It’s not finished yet,” Durell said.

They were two of a kind, and Kaminov’s quick glance of assessment at the huddled, wet guards at their end of the bridge needed no words. They looked sullen, concerned only with their discomfort. Kaminov looked at Durell and nodded, almost imperceptibly. Durell turned to watch Omaru.

The fat man had moved to the other end of the bridge, holding Nadja with his gun at her back.

Durell knew that he and Kaminov might suddenly turn and surprise the guards and cut and run for it at this moment. He might even succeed in making it safely back to the Okiku. In his business, survival was paramount. Not every job was successful. You had to cut losses, estimate cost against disaster, eliminate all human emotion and frailty. His training demanded that he save himself first.

But he could not desert Nadja now.

He waited.

All the guards watched Omaru as the man put a tentative foot on the trembling planks of the bridge and then drew back.

“Durell!” he shouted.

Durell waited.

“The girl crosses with me. If I go, she goes. The girl will die with me, and my men will kill you.”

Durell looked at the other’s massive shape across the dark chasm of rushing water. The girl waited quietly.

“Come ahead,” he said, “unless you are a coward in front of your own men.”

His remark stung Omaru’s pride. The man abruptly thrust the girl before him and stepped onto the bridge.

There came a grinding shock as the weakened timbers twisted under his enormous weight. The girl lurched oil balance and caught herself on the bamboo rail and ran halfway across. Omaru shouted above the roar of the stream and lunged after her.

The bridge collapsed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Durell was ready for it.

At the same moment, Kaminov took advantage of the guards’ attention to the bridge. Durell was aware of the swift, deadly lunge of the big Russian. He heard the nearest guard scream, and the man’s rifle went off, and another shot cracked thinly against the wind.

But he had no time to help Kaminov. He saw the first twisting surrender of the main timbers of the bridge to the boiling water below, and Durell jumped for Nadja. The bridge seemed to lift up on edge, tilting wildly, and shuddered under the blows of the flood. Nadja cried out and he saw her extended hand and caught it, swung her hard to the left. Her feet scrabbled at the bank and slipped. Her weight jolted her from Durell’s grip. Spray blinded him. He heard her scream, and heard a series of sharp, deliberate shots from Kaminov’s direction. Durell did not turn. He dived along the bank as the entire bridge came up and folded over, the planks flapping as if built of paper and then coming apart as if exploded, disintegrating into individual components.

The girl clung to some brush on the bank, waist-deep in the roaring water that threatened to drag her away. Durell threw himself flat and seized one arm. Her long hair streamed in pale splendor in the wind. There was a sudden burst of automatic fire, and then Kaminov hurled himself to the bank and caught the girl’s other arm. There was no time for words. Together, they pulled her to safety. She collapsed, gasping. Her clothing was plastered to her body by the water. The moment he saw that Kaminov had a secure grip on her, Durell straightened to his feet. “The guards?” he rapped.

A look of cruelty flickered over the man’s face. “Eliminated. I got my hands on the first one’s gun. The others tried to fight back. One or two may have escaped—but they will be grateful only to keep running.”

Durell picked up Kaminov’s rifle, taken from one of the guards, and glanced at Omaru’s guards. One was wounded, groaning. Two were dead. He looked for Omaru.

The bridge was gone. Only the two abutments where the timbers had been pegged still stood. Water sprayed the bases. The planks had been swept downstream and over the edge.

But Omaru had saved himself. His strength must have been prodigious to haul himself bodily from the stream, and his speed had been enough to help him reach this side of the little chasm.

He rose out of the water like some primeval thing, huge and streaming, his shaven head gleaming in the faint light. He had lost his gun and the yellow slicker was torn from his body. Under it, he was half naked, stripped to the waist, and his huge chest and shoulders glistened as he came toward Durell.

The rain and wind died abruptly. The sound of it diminished like an express train moving down the jagged coast.

“Durell?” Omaru called. “Come, Durell. Come and settle what is between us.”

“You’re alone now, Omaru. You’ve lost your gun and your men.”

“The men were worthless. Fools and cowards. Let it be man to man, Durell. You have injured me grievously. We are enemies, and between us there can be only one more struggle. I shall kill you, Durell.”

Nadja cried out some kind of denial and warning to Durell, but he did not turn to look at her. It should be the way Omaru wanted it, he thought. Thanks to Kaminov, they had a little time. And he had a personal score to settle with this man.

Omaru moved toward him with ponderous deception. Once in his grip, Durell knew he could not survive. He moved back from the slippery bank of the stream. Thorny weeds grew here, with a growth of long, spiny vines. He made a note of them and waited.

Omaru feinted, a deceptively clumsy lunge that took him to the left, his arms wide, his chest and belly exposed invitingly. Durell refused the bait. The fat man laughed and turned and Durell turned with him, his back to Kaminov and the girl. He did not want them to interfere. He wanted Omaru for himself.

“Are you afraid of me, Durell?” the big man taunted. I will crush the life out of you, squeeze you until your bones splinter, until your eyes burst like grapes from your head.”

“You talk too much,” Durell said.

Omaru grunted and stepped in fast. His right arm fell, slashing, like the limb of a broken tree. Durell ducked and felt the ponderous weight drop on his shoulder and then he knew shock as Omaru’s left arm, even faster, suddenly seized his wrist and spun him violently in a half circle and then sucked him in toward him. Durell’s feet slipped on the wet earth and he drummed two blows into the man’s big belly. It was like hammering at concrete. He felt Omaru’s breath explode in his face and his body was lifted from the ground in the man’s violent, sweeping grip. The dark night whirled around him. One arm was pinned to his side in the circle of Omaru’s arm. The other was released when the fat man applied the squeeze.

Durell heaved, tried to slide down and out of the constriction, failed, tried again, failed again, and heard a roaring in his ears that was not made by the storm. He could not breathe.

Omaru laughed.

Durell dug into the folds of flesh under the man’s chin with his free hand, seeking the jugular, but Omaru pulled in his head like a giant turtle and there was no opening. He tried to bring a knee up, but he was held too closely for that. He felt a popping in the sinews of his chest and shoulders as Omaru increased his effort. There was not much time left. He smashed at the man’s shaven head with his free hand, but it was like hitting stone. He thought he heard Nadja cry out, but he wasn’t sure. Then he managed to get one foot hooked behind Omaru’s ankle and he surged to the right, trying to throw the man off balance. He might as well have tried to uproot a tree.

Now the ache in his lungs and chest was a scream of anguish. Only seconds remained. There seemed no way to reach a vital spot in the man through the layers of fat and muscle that girdled his body.

He heaved convulsively once more, and Omaru lifted him and swung him about toward the bank of the stream—and slipped and staggered. For a moment it seemed as if the big man would keep his grip. And then Durell felt a slight release and he let himself go instantly, dropping downward out of the loop of those monstrous arms.

It gained only a small respite. Omaru fell on him like a pile-driver, slamming him down into the wet, slippery earth. Durell wriggled aside, reached out and closed his fingers on the thorny stem of a dark, flailing bush. Instantly he whipped the vine around the man’s naked head and tightened it with two quick loops around Omaru’s thick throat. Omaru tried to pull his head back, but it was too late. The wiry branch caught under his chin and his effort to retreat only tightened it.

Omaru raised himself a few inches and dropped his weight with a crushing thud on Durell’s body. Durell clung to the thorny vine. Its leaves lashed his face and exuded a faint, pungent odor. Omaru made a thin choking noise and tried again to pull away, rolling aside to release Durell from his weight. Durell almost let him go. Instead, he lashed the vine around his wrist for a better grip. Omaru made a strangling noise and lurched to his feet like a tethered, stampeding animal. He dragged Durell up with him. Durell braced with the vine taut, and the other man stood with his ponderous legs apart and clawed at his throat. His massive arms lashed out wildly at Durell. Each blow was like a battering ram, shaking his body, jarring him to his feet. He held on. The vine slipped slightly and the thorns dug into his flesh and he felt the warmth of blood on his wrist.

Omaru suddenly sagged to his knees.

His big arms lifted in an odd gesture of supplication. Durell stood braced, holding the double loop tightly around the thick throat. Then Omaru suddenly toppled to one side and his body slid down into the gushing torrent of the stream.

Durell could not hold the weight any longer. The vine was uprooted, torn from his grip. He glimpsed the other’s wild, congested face in the darkness, and then it vanished, caught in the strength of the flood. For a moment Durell thought he heard Omaru crying something in a thin voice.

And then he was gone.

They walked back slowly, making their way down the brushy mountainside below the place where the hut had been. The wind came and went. More rain fell, but it lacked the violence of the past two hours. The sky was lighter, and now and then the clouds tore apart and yielded a glimpse of stars and a thin, pale moon through their shredded fragments.

It took forty minutes to reach the beach, and then another hour to make their way along the shore, picking out a path among the rocks and around an occasional fisherman’s hut. Kaminov moved slowly, limping, supported gently by Nadja. Now and then they stopped to rest.

They did not talk much. All their energy had to be saved for moving forward, before the night ended.

Durell lay on his back on the damp sand, watching the dark clouds reel overhead, and Nadja sat down beside him. He ached in every bone and muscle. With Omaru dead, however, there was no longer any liaison between his outfit and the Chinese coastal troops. As confusion spread wider and wider, they might, with luck, slip through to the rendezvous point. The surf was thunderous against the rocky beach, however, and he had little hope that Tagashi and the Okiku had survived the storm.

Nadja touched him and he looked at her.

“The storm passes,” she said quietly.

“Are you all right?”

“Everything is better for me, thanks to you.”

“I’m glad. And Alexi?”

“It’s extraordinary. He is different. He was so quick, so ferocious with Omaru’s men. He saved us, and yet—he is not strong, as he used to be.”

“He’s been through too much,” Durell said.

“Yes. And what is different is that he needs me now, not the other way around, as it used to be. He once saved my life and reason, and now he—he needs me. And he looks at me as if I, too, am different.” She paused and pushed up her long, pale hair, fastening the knot at the nape of her neck. It was a feminine gesture, unlike her. Durell could not see her face in the shadows. She looked briefly at the Russian, who sat a little apart from them, his back against a rock that jutted up from the dark sand. Her voice softened. “I am not sorry about anything. I would not change anything now.”

“I’m glad,” Durell said.

She turned her face toward him and he saw her gray eyes shining oddly. “Do you think we will get by the coastal guards? Will we make it to the rubber boat?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

“For a little while, I did not care if we succeeded or not. I was ready to die. But now—everything is different. We must not fail now.”

He looked at his watch. The dial glowed in the dark. It was past three o’clock in the morning. The wind that blew from the sea came from a different quarter now, and the touch of it was cold, without the unhealthy and unnatural warmth of the past few hours. He saw Nadja shiver slightly in her wet clothing and he stood up.

“We only have a few hours before dawn,” he said.

“I know. Whatever happens, I want you to know that I—I am grateful. For everything.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

Her lips were cool.

They reached the rubber boat an hour later. Nothing had disturbed it. It was still safely hidden in the little cove that Nadja had directed him to when they first arrived. Toward the river mouth and the village of Ospesko the sky was pierced by wavering searchlights. Now and then they heard military trucks on the highway, farther inland. But there were no patrols on this beach, and it was clear that Omaru’s followers had been demoralized and scattered by Omaru’s death. And the Chinese, perhaps from lack of information from their suspicious Russian allies, were not making too thorough a search for them.

Durell walked over to Kaminov on the beach. The Russian had been silent and distant through the dangerous trek along the shore. He stood looking at the dark sea, streaked by heavy combers that raced and smoked out of the night. As Durell neared, he turned and held out his hand.

“We have not had time to speak before,” he said. “I knew I could trust you to come for me, Durell.”

“You didn’t make it easy, Alexi,” Durell said.

“Because of Nadja? But I would not go anywhere without her.”

“Yes. She still needs you, you know. But it may help her more to let her think you need her now, in turn.”

The man nodded his shaggy blond head. I understand that. How can I express my gratitude to you? I searched my soul for many years, but it is difficult to leave everything at home and go to a strange place, among strangers, and join those one always regarded as enemies.”

“I am not your enemy,” Durell said.

“I knew that long ago. That is why I asked only for you.” Kaminov paused. “Well, I shall try to be grateful. I have much information for your military people about the Peiping troop movements recently ordered in Southeast Asia. You shall receive it in time to take counter-measures, I am sure. It is all memorized—and it is all accurate.”

Durell said dryly, “We would appreciate having it, Colonel Kaminov.”

Far out to sea, a light winked briefly and then disappeared and did not come on again.

It was the Okiku.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Durell awoke with the sunlight shining in his eyes, warm and friendly. It soaked in a golden flood through the screens of his room in the Japanese inn. For a brief moment he still felt the surge and lift and fall of the Okiku as it fought its way back across the Japan Sea. But that had been three days ago. The feeling passed as he sat up.

Tagashi sat at a low lacquered table near the window, drinking tea and eating a breakfast of raw fish and rice. He wore an ornate kimono of heavily embroidered yellow silk, and his cropped gray head looked dark in outline against the sunlight. The inn was quiet, except for a maid’s dim giggle somewhere in the kitchen area. They were fifteen miles from Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Beyond the windows, the small formal garden, landscaped with meticulously miniaturized trees and rocks and streams, looked golden and

beautiful with its banks of chrysanthemums. The late September sun was warm. The sound of bees filled the air. Tagashi sipped at his tea and did not turn his head. "You are awake, Durell-san,” he said quietly.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I listened to your breathing. One falls into the habit of listening for many things. You are rested?”

“Yes. And you?”

“Quite well, thank you.” Tagashi’s voice was formal. “I have also been listening to the radio. And I received a dispatch from our own information office on Hokkaido. There has been no official protest as yet, according to Washington. It seems that the matter will end in silence.”

“How are our guests?” Durell asked.

“Quite safe.”

“Are they nervous?”

“They feel strange. The girl is most helpful, however. She is familiar with Japan, which Colonel Kaminov is not. She does not leave him for very long. Together, they have been dictating a report on the Chinese military dispositions. A man from the SEATO office in Tokyo was here an hour ago and took it away with him. He asked me to thank you. He said he knew Eliot Barnes.”

Durell nodded slowly. “We paid a high price, Tagashi.”

“It could have been higher,” the Japanese returned. He turned his head and looked soberly at Durell. His dark eyes were without depth. “I did not expect to survive. I did not wish to. There were too many memories in this that haunted me. I thought I would let the sea take me. I almost permitted it. But then I felt that I should try to take you back here. It would have been impossible if I had yielded to my instincts, would it not?”

“I’m grateful,” Durell said.

“One must to live, it seems, in this new world of ours. It is not a happy place. Each generation sees changes. The young can adapt easily. It is more difficult for us, who knew the older and more secure ways of authority and discipline.” Durell stood up. He ached here and there from various bruises all over his body. His ribs still seemed to crack with each breath he took, and he remembered Omaru’s deadly grip with a small shudder as he poured some tea for himself.

“And the Baroness Isome?” he asked.

Tagashi said: “She is dead.”

“How did she die?”

“It goes back to Yuki’s young man—the one who worked for me two years ago. I sent him into Isome’s service and he vanished. That evil, licentious woman used him for her own purposes. She drugged young men and burned them out in the flame of her evil. Somehow she discovered that the boy was really my agent. She tortured him and killed him.”

“Did Yuki learn this?”

“No. She does not know the whole truth. When we returned, I found Isome at the island house of Omaru. I gave her a choice of public trial, pretending to have proof enough to bring to court, or a quiet end by her own hand. She was Japanese, after all. A traitor to the nation, but she did what was required, when I suggested it. She was not an ordinary woman.”

“You sound as if you knew her quite well,” Durell suggested.

Tagashi looked away. “Yes.”

But he spoke no more of Isome.

Durell had breakfast and Tagashi went away to make security arrangements for the trip to the airport and the Pan American flight that would take Colonel Kaminov and Nadja to the States. Tagashi was a careful man. It seemed to Durell that the Japanese had found some kind of peace with himself.

When he finished his tea he went outside into the sunlit, garden and sat down on a stone bench near the carp pool and waited for Colonel Alexi Kaminov. He knew that Kaminov would come to him. He did not have to wait there long.

The Russian had shaved his ragged beard and cut his long yellow hair. He looked younger and fresher than Durell remembered. Tagashi had gotten a light gray suit for him, with a sport shirt and imported English shoes from Hong Kong. His blue eyes were sober, and then he smiled briefly and sat down. His English was only slightly accented.

“We will leave soon, I understand. I will let Nadja sleep a little longer. I cannot think of her as Natalie, although that is the true French name her father gave her. We will be married in California, if there are no legal objections. I suppose we shall have to live quietly for a long time. When our work for you is done, we will have to disappear, because the KGB has a long memory and a long arm for revenge.” Kaminov paused. “I explained all this to her. But she looks forward to it. She is a wonderful girl.”

There was a moment’s silence. Kaminov sighed. He looked at the fish in the carp pool, at the flowers, at the bees that hummed and flashed over the garden. He spoke on a note of sadness.

“She is not as I remembered her, my friend.”

“You remembered her as a frightened child,” Durell said. “A child who adored you. She is a woman now. You will have to discover her all over again. But you, Alexi, are not quite the same, either.”

Kaminov laughed softly. “Yes, I have changed. You were always a perceptive man, Durell.” He paused. “You knew all along it was just a trap, set for you?”

“Yes, I knew.”

“But you came, anyway?”

“It was my job.”

“Did you know I was part of the trap?”

“I suspected it,” Durell said.

“Our business deals in involuted circumstances. One sees white—and suspects black. One walks a straight path—but it is really crooked. Lucky for me,” Kaminov said easily. He crossed his artificial leg over the other. “I was assigned to lure you to the mainland. I had reported fully on our encounter some years ago, at the Hungarian border. It is part of your dossier on file at KGB headquarters. The organization never forgets details. It is most efficient. It picks this and that from the machine, estimates probabilities, and plans future projects. It chose me, because of you.”

“Did you intend to go through with it and trap me?”

“At first, yes.”

“And I would have been executed,” Durell said softly. Kaminov’s eyes smiled candidly, but under their blueness was an opacity like that in Tagashi’s eyes. Durell wondered what he himself looked like, to others. The business changed everyone, sooner or later.

“Surely,” Kaminov said, “you knew I could not have reached you through Omaru without the connivance of my superiors. It was all arranged. They had already appointed the prosecutors for your spectacular trial in Moscow. At the moment, Moscow feels a need to cry outrage on the international scene. And you have long been a great problem to them. I thought I had made peace with myself, but—are you angry, Durell, because I would have helped to execute you?”

“There is no purpose in anger.”

“Of course, the trap snapped on those who would have snared you. And all because of my sentimental protectiveness toward Nadja. I gave her pity, thinking her a child all this time. Now it is different. She is a woman.” Kaminov smiled ruefully. “It is like suddenly finding a fortune when one is fumbling for a cigarette in the dark. I do not quite know what to do with the gift. It—it overwhelms me.”

“Do you still love her?”

“Not as before. She was a child, in my eyes, and now—I am a little frightened, I think. The feeling is so strong, this new kind of love I feel—”

“How did Nadja get into your boss’s plot?”

“Oh, they are very clever. She was unexpected, of course—called in to safeguard my suspected tendencies. But they outsmarted themselves. I changed everything when she was included in the operation. Somehow, I—I felt she was more precious to me than anything else in the world, a little human being who had been entirely dependent on me for survival. And I suppose her need for me filled a like need in myself. At any rate, I was suddenly sick of the plan to trap you. I changed the rendezvous point in the coded message through Omaru’s pipeline, and then I simply disappeared. Vanished from the face of the earth.” Kaminov laughed softly. “Ah, Peiping and Moscow must have been quite disturbed!”

“Was it only then that you decided to defect?”

“Yes, really only then. Because of Nadja. Can you understand, Durell? She represents an idyll, a sweet dream, the one lovely moment in my sober life. Oh, I know her reputation as a KGB field officer, hard and dedicated and ruthless. But this image did not agree with the weeping, dirty-faced child I had saved in Manchuria long ago. I decided to see if she would defect with me, and step by step, the dream became reality and I risked everything to make it come true, thinking of how our lives would be together, in the West.” Kaminov sighed. “But she is different.”

“She has had a very bad time,” Durell said.

“Yes, very bad.”

“She’s different because she is not a helpless child now, but a full-grown woman, True, she no longer needs your strength as she once did, and she feels that you need her now, in turn. So she has gained even more strength by knowing you need her. Does she seem such a stranger to you?”

“Strange—and wonderful.”

“You must pretend to need her, for a time yet.”

“Yes, I intend to.” Kaminov paused and looked at the garden. “I do need her, you know. Desperately.”

Durell stood up. “You took a chance, Alexi. When she was called in and you disappeared and decided to make your fake defection a real one, you didn’t really know how she would react, did you? You were playing a double game with yourself. On the one hand, you always leaned toward defection, anyway. But you wouldn’t have gone along with it if Nadja had refused, am I right?”

“That is true.”

“How could you trust her to agree with your plan?”

“I did not, until the last moment.”

“Suppose she came to Ospesko with me, also on orders, and when we found you, suppose she had betrayed us both? You would have stood before a firing squad with me, Kaminov.”

“I think not,” Kaminov said. “Although for a moment, when she first walked into that hut, I wasn’t sure of her at all. She was so different. She was a woman.”

“But suppose she had betrayed us?” Durell insisted. Kaminov spoke quietly and sadly.

“I love her, you understand. But I would have killed her.” “Does she know that?”

“No.”

“Don’t ever tell her,” Durell said.

Kaminov glanced sharply at Durell. Durell looked tall and dark against the peaceful sunlight. He looked dangerous. Then Kaminov smiled slightly and stood up, too.

“She will never know. You see, I thought that if I had to kill her—why, then, I would have turned the gun on myself and killed myself, too.”

Nadja walked quietly beside Durell to the sedan that Tagashi had provided for the trip to the airport. The car was parked inside the gateway to the inn. There was a burly driver and another Japanese in the front seat, and Kaminov had already gotten in. Another car would precede them along the highway; a third would follow.

The girl walked slowly down the immaculate shell path, deliberately delaying so she could be alone with Durell. He noticed that the leaves on the momiji, the red maples, were tinged with brown, losing their brilliance to autumn. The girl’s golden hair seemed to pick up all the colors in the radiant sunlight, but her face was serene, and a small, secret smile curved her lips as she paused to consider the flower beds inside the gates of the inn.

“Have you spoken to him?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Durell said.

“Please. What did he say? What did he tell you?”

“He loves you,” Durell said. “But you have surprised him.” “How?”

He laughed. “You’ve grown up.”

“He thinks of me as a woman now?”

“Yes.”

“It took a long time.” She sighed happily. “Soon he will know how much of a woman I can be for him. He will be even more surprised.” Her smile was small, fleeting. “Do you think he will be disappointed, though? His love for me was different.”

“It’s a man’s love now, for a woman.”

“Still—one loses something. Childhood fancies don’t always stay the same in this real world, do they?”

“You and I and Kaminov haven’t lived in the normal world,” Durell said. “Our work prohibits it. It changes us. It takes something—perhaps our dreams—away from us. But you and Alexi are luckier than most. You’re both getting out. I envy you, a little, for that—and for the rest of it, too. Alexi will find you an equal now, a woman. I suspect he’s in for some surprises.”

She laughed. “Pleasant ones, I think.”

She held out her hand to him and her pale gray eyes searched his face for something, and he thought he read a fleeting offering and a wish in her look, but he could not be sure and he knew he could make no move to encourage it.

“I’ll never see you again, will I?” she murmured.

“I think not.”

“It would be for the best, I suppose. But I owe you so much. It is because of you that I can meet Alexi as a woman, and not as a child.”

Her fingers were cool. They slid away from his. “Goodbye, then,” she said.

He nodded and watched her walk in grace and beauty toward the car. She walked with quick purpose, and Durell saw Kaminov waiting for her, a look of wonder on his face.

She held out both hands and he took them and drew her to him for a moment. Neither turned to look back at him.

Durell felt a sadness that did not belong in the peaceful, golden day.

She looked proud and calm and inexpressibly lovely, sitting beside Kaminov in the back of the car. He had the fleeting sensation of having lost something that those two had found; but then he told himself he was simply tired.

The car drove away, and he was alone.

He stood for a moment, looking at the quiet beauty of the garden, and then he turned from the gate and went into the inn to telephone the Embassy in Tokyo and make arrangements for his return to Washington.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE