CHAPTER I

Durell stood at the living-room window watching the late afternoon sunlight reflect the October colors of the trees on the lawn and the blue of Chesapeake Bay. Deirdre was gone. He had known it before he had stepped through the doorway of the old, pink-brick Colonial house. All his morning phone calls had gone unanswered, and he knew he should have come here sooner.

He lighted a cigarette and stared out at the flat shoreline and the distant roofs of Prince John. It looked empty and peaceful. Sidonie Osbourn was upstairs calling Deirdre’s name, but he knew it was no use.

She called downstairs. “Sam?”

“I’m here,” he replied quietly.

“All her usual travel things are gone.”

“I know.”

The house echoed with Deirdre’s presence. He could see her and feel her everywhere around him. It was almost a year since he had stood in this serene house. Far too long. He had been to the ends of the earth, in many dark corners, and he had come back at last—come home, he thought— but it wasn’t home at all, when Deirdre was not here.

Sidonie came down the white, curved stairway. She was a small woman with a petite French face, the mother of twins, the widow of a man whom Durell had worked with and admired. They were close friends. Sidonie worked as a secretary at No. 20 Annapolis Street, a job Durell got for her when Osbourn was killed. There hadn’t been any trouble about security clearance for her, not with General Dickinson McFee. No. 20 Annapolis Street was the anonymous headquarters for K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency, and before her husband was killed, Durell and Osbourn were a working team where life and death depended on each man’s intimate knowledge of the other. Now, when Durell was in Washington, he never failed to call on Sidonie at the little house in suburban Virginia, across the Potomac, where she lived with the twins.

“Sam, don’t look like that,” she said now. “Please,

Sam.”

He managed a thin smile. “Does it show?”

“It’s not like you to act like this.”

“How do you expect me to act? Deirdre is gone, isn’t she? As a matter of fact, I had A1 Hogan check on her for me. She met Harry Hammett and flew with him to Paris, and then went on to Vienna.”

Sidonie said gently: “But you have no right to check on Deirdre any more, darling. You set her free a year ago. She’s going to marry Adam Stepanic, and you can’t claim her again, Sam.”

“Did she tell you she would marry Adam?” he asked angrily.

“No, not in so many words.”

He drew a deep breath. “You misunderstand me, Sid. It isn’t a matter of jealousy. This is my work, my business. All right, let’s say Deirdre was going to marry Major Stepanic. And Major Stepanic, our first astronaut, crashed yesterday after two or three orbits around the earth. We don’t know where Stepanic came down. He may be dead. The whole world is looking for him, and it’s only a thin assumption that he landed behind the Iron Curtain somewhere and is still free to get out, if we can reach him in time. That’s Harry Hammett’s job; to go in there, find Adam Stepanic, and get him out before he’s picked up by their security police and pumped dry. We want Stepanic’s information to ourselves, right? Well, Harry Hammett has no right to take Deirdre with him to Europe. It’s foolish of Deirdre to go there just in the hope that she’ll be that much closer to wherever Adam may be.”

“Sam, please.”

He turned away. “I’m sorry, Sidonie.”

“Deirdre had to make a life for herself, after you broke up with her. You’re being very illogical.”

“Of course.”

“Then why not forget it? Deirdre isn’t in any danger.”

“I can’t forget it. I don’t want her with Harry Hammett, I don’t want her in Europe, and I don’t like the whole idea.”

“You have no claim on her, Sam.”

“Perhaps I do,” Durell said quietly.

He turned back to the window and stared at the bay. The autumn wind was cold, and there were small whitecaps on the glimmering width of the Chesapeake. He watched a seagull slide down the edge of the wind and he felt an unexpected pang of loneliness, a feeling of loss he had never anticipated. He knew that Sidonie’s advice was sensible and good. But he could not accept it. He couldn’t, because nothing was safe in the world that Durell had fashioned for himself these past years. He had reached a point of no return long ago, and there was nothing for him except his job in the silent war of espionage, to which he had dedicated himself.

He could never go back to ordinary civilian life again. And he did not want to. He was a man alone in a world of dark and dangerous shadows.

Long ago, he tried to explain to Deirdre Padgett how he felt about this. He had gone from the old OSS during the war into the Central Intelligence Agency, training at the Maryland “Farm” before being assigned to K Section under Dickinson McFee. Since then he had worked with many men who were now dead, killed in different corners of the world—some with a garotte, or a knife in the back, some crushed by speeding cars, or shoved from subway platforms, in a Hong Kong alley or the Thames Embankment in London or in a skiing “accident” at Montreux. But what mattered in this business was not the way in which a man died but that the future was too uncertain to undertake any permanent commitments.

In this business, the man who survived was the man who walked alone, without emotional entanglements. It was safer that way. You learned to react to stimuli that ordinary men never noticed. You locked your doors and checked in closets and behind the pictures on the wall, and you always looked over your shoulder, wherever you happened to be.

It was not a life he wanted to offer Deirdre. He knew what Osbourn's death had done to Sidonie. But still Deirdre had been willing to share his life. They had discussed it often. But each time he’d drawn back, asking her to forget him. And each time she refused.

They were lovers, and he knew there would never be another woman like her in all time, in the world, for him.

“Sam, what are you thinking of?” Sidonie asked quietly, standing behind him.

“Of Deirdre. And everything. And nothing.”

“I think you need a drink. Deirdre probably has your bourbon in stock,” Sidonie smiled.

“In the kitchen,” he said.

His thoughts continued when Sidonie left him. He stared unseeing at the gulls hovering over the darkening waters of the bay.

There were months when he’d had to vanish without telling Deirdre where he was going or when he’d be back. Her home here in Prince John, on the Chesapeake, was also home to him, after his grandfather’s place down at Bayou Peche Rouge, in Louisiana. Deirdre had always waited patiently at one place or the other for his return. Yet each time it became a little more difficult. He found himself taking precautions that only added to his danger, because he was thinking of her. He found himself longing for her, thinking of her warm smile and her desire and her lovely body. It was dangerous to himself and to the others who depended on his objectivity in carrying out the missions to which he was assigned.

Durell was a tall man, over six feet, and he carried his solid weight of one-ninety easily and deceptively. He moved lightly, always without sound. He had thick black hair, touched with gray at the temples, and a small, trim moustache. His hands were strong, narrow, quick. He was adept at card tricks. In another place and at another time, he would have passed as an old-fashioned Mississippi riverboat gambler.

His grandfather, Jonathan Durell, had been among the last of that dangerous breed. The old man, past ninety now, had taught him every honest and dishonest trick of the business, inculcating in him a gambler’s temperament, a habit of weighing odds and calculating risks that was often the despair of his superiors at K Section headquarters.

He owed much of his temperament to the old man and to his boyhood spent aboard the old hulk of the Mississippi sidewheeler, the Trois Belles, which was moored among the towering gum and cypress trees of the bayou that was his boyhood home. The veneer he later acquired at Yale made no real change in his Cajun heritage. He was equally at home in both the dark fastness of the cypress swamps of the bayous and the glittering capitals of the world. The main thing was that he had survived in a business where the survival potential was less than encouraging.

He turned as Sidonie Osbourn returned with his drink. It was fast growing dark outside. The light on the bay turned to a delicate lilac hue. Sidonie’s smile was small and tight and strained.

“Sit down, Cajun. Let’s talk about it.”

“There’s not much to talk about—but you can tell me more about Deirdre and this Adam Stepanic.”

“Sure you want to hear it? You’ve been away a long time, Sam. Everyone knows that she was going to marry him.”

“ ‘Was?’"

Sidonie shrugged. “Major Stepanic rode a rocket into space, didn’t he? Like an arrow shot into the sky—and he came down no man knows where.”

“K Section knows. They’ve sent Harry Hammett to get him.”

“I suppose so. And Deirdre went along.”

“Why?”

“Because she loves Adam,” Sidonie said simply.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why not? Because of your pride, darling? But you gave up all claim on Deirdre back in the Mojave Desert almost a year ago. She was patient for such a long time. I tried to tell you how she felt, so many times. And you pointed to me as an example of her possible fate, if you were killed on a mission. But have I ever regretted marrying? Did you ever see me cry, because my husband was killed doing his duty? I regard it as a privilege to have been married as I was."

“But you’re alone now,” Durell pointed out. “And I don’t want Deirdre to live that way. Forgive me for being blunt, but that’s how I felt then, and I still feel the same now.”

“But do you really love her, Cajun? Or are you just being possessive?”

“I still love her,” he said.

He turned away, wondering at the sudden anger in him. Perhaps it was foolish, he thought. True, he had no business interfering now. Then why was he here? Deirdre could take care of herself. She didn’t belong to him any more. The long easy days and warm passionate nights he had known with her were in the dead past.

The thing to do, Durell thought, was to walk out of this house and drive back to his Washington apartment and stay there.

But he couldn’t do it.

He remembered that temporary assignment doing security work at the Mojave base where the astronauts were training for their flights into space. Deirdre came to join him, staying at a desert motel complete with luxury swimming pool, five miles from the base. He remembered Major Adam Stepanic, who had been chosen to ride the rocket into orbit for the first U.S. effort to put a man into space. He had introduced Adam to Deirdre one day, and thereafter Adam had made his feelings plain.

Durell blamed no man for falling in love with Deirdre. He remembered how she looked the day he had finished the assignment and was ordered back to Washington. He remembered everything about her, in tormenting detail.

Hair black as midnight. Eyes clear and wide and gray, shining with an inner serenity. She was tall, with a body he had come to know frankly and intimately, and one which harmonized to his needs as his had to hers. She moved fluidly, with clean-limbed grace. She was a woman who caught all eyes not simply because of her beauty, but because of a harmony of mind and body he had come to love and cherish, above all things. . . .

“Except your job,” Deirdre had said quietly, that day at the motel pool in the desert. “That always comes first, darling.”

“I’m sorry. I do what I have to do.”

“Where will you be sent now?”

“I don’t know.”

“And if you did, would you tell me?”

“You know the rules, Dee.”

She was silent, watching the tourists in the pool, her eyes grave, her long tanned body in the white suit relaxed in a deck chair. “I’ve decided not to go back East with you, Sam.”

“Why not?”

“I want to stay here,” she said. “I want to say goodbye to you, Sam. Here and now. You don’t understand, I know, but—I don’t want to go on like this forever. I want— I’m not sure what I want, darling, but this isn’t enough. I want to belong to you completely, in every way, and you shut me out and won’t let me.”

“But we—”

She shook her head gravely. “There’s no future for either of us in that world you’ve built for yourself, Sam. Not the way you feel about things. And you refuse to change.” “Don’t we have enough?” he asked. “You and I—” “Not enough for me. Perhaps I’ve been mistaken about myself all along. I thought I was like Sidonie Osbourn, but I’m not. I’m not as strong-minded as you are. I can’t live in your shadow world—you won’t let me in, will you? —and I can’t endure waiting, like Penelope, and wondering if you will ever return.”

“Then what do you want?” he had asked.

“Peace, and a little security. Solid ground under my feet.”

“You know I can’t give you that and stay in the business.”

“I know.”

He had tried to smile her out of it. “You’re just in a mood, Dee. It will pass.”

“No. I’ve thought about this for a long time. Either you let me into your world, Sam, and take me there with you—”

“No. It’s not for you,” he interrupted grimly.

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t do that, either, Dee.”

She spoke quietly. “Then I must do it for us.”

He stared at her, feeling a wild sense of sudden loss. She was free to make her choice, of course. He would not change his mind. Her hair shone with dark light in the sunshine beside the pool. The shouts and laughter of the tourists around the motel patio seemed faraway and remote, detached from the reality of what was happening between them.

“You've been seeing a lot of Stepanic,” he said abruptly.

“Yes.”

“He’s fallen hard for you, Deirdre.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Can he give you more than I? A man who may be shot up into space and never come back?”

“And will you come back from your next assignment, Sam?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “My chances are probably worse. But is Adam your choice, then?”

“I want to stay here and find out,” she said. . . .

Almost a year later, Adam Stepanic rode in a capsule in the nose cone of a ballistic missile and went into orbit, in the U.S.’s first successful attempt to overtake the Soviets in space competition. The newspapers ran black banner headlines for the first twenty-four hours. Then for several editions there was silence, leading to speculation, and finally the terse announcement that something had gone wrong with the re-entry calculations and, although Major Adam Stepanic had come down out of space, he was lost on the tracking radar screens that had followed him up to that point.

The headlines were bigger and blacker.

The Soviet press claimed the capsule had burned up in the atmosphere, incinerating its human pilot.

The United States insisted the capsule had landed behind the Iron Curtain, lost on radar tracking screens because of violent thunderstorms at the time of re-entry over Central or Eastern Europe.

The Moscow papers promptly denied this possibility.

Washington demanded the return of the capsule and the pilot.

Moscow again denied all knowledge of the landing.

Twenty-two hours after the last impasse, Durell flew from Bayou Peche Rouge, where he had been waiting for another assignment, and went to see Deirdre Padgett at her home in Prince John.

She was gone.

He went to No. 20 Annapolis Street and learned that Harry Hammett had been assigned to go behind the Iron Curtain, on certain information received from the CIA drop in Vienna, to rescue Adam Stepanic.

Durell returned to Prince John with Sidonie then, to confirm what he was reasonably certain about already. . . .

Night had fallen over the Chesapeake. The lights of an oil tanker plodding up to Baltimore glimmered on the bay, and inside Deirdre’s house, Durell finished the drink Sidonie had fixed for him.

“Tell me the truth,” he said quietly. “Didn’t Deirdre tell you anything about her plans?”

“Sam, you know the kind of person Deirdre is—” “Look at me. And don’t lie any more to me, Sid.”

“I won’t. Adam Stepanic was in love with her; or still is. Deirdre wants to be as close to him as she can be.” “So she went with Harry Hammett?”

“She isn’t going all the way, of course.”

“How far?” he demanded.

“To Vienna,” Sidonie said reluctantly. “She’ll wait for Harry at the Bristol there, hoping he can bring Adam back.” Her voice was gentle. “She saw a lot of Adam in the last few months, while you were abroad. She—she’d made up her mind, Sam. I’m sorry. And now she feels it’s necessary for her to be with Adam as soon as possible, if he’s still alive. If Harry can get him out, that is.”

Durell said flatly: “Adam Stepanic must be dead.”

“She won’t believe that until it’s confirmed.”

“Dead, or a prisoner somewhere, being milked of all the information he got on his flight. Harry won’t get him out.”

“That’s his job,” Sidonie said. “He’ll do it, or—”

“Yes. . . or.”

“She’ll be perfectly safe in Vienna, Sam.”

“I don’t think so,” Durell said. “I don’t think so at all.”

CHAPTER II

Adam Stepanic heard the old woman's voice through his dream. He knew exactly what she looked like, exactly where he was. Yet he kept falling through the cosmos of his dream, and the stars tumbled in giant arcs around his head. It was terrifying. He trembled and groaned when the old woman spoke to him, and strangely, he understood her.

“Can you hear me, Adam?” she said.

He could not reply.

Adam, Adam, he thought. His name was Adam, and he was the first man, the first of his kind. The stars wheeled and plunged around him. He drowned in emptiness. Everything had gone wrong, and he was afraid and alone with his fear, more alone than that first Adam, he thought, because that one had his Garden, and then Lilith, and then Eve. But he had nothing but the thin shell of an egg to protect him from the violence of the plunging, arching stars.

“He cannot hear me, Jamak,” the old woman said.

“I think he does,” a man said.

“Is he going to die?”

“He will die, or not die, as it will happen, Jelenka. We may all die with him."

“Are you afraid, too, Jamak?”

“We will know better,” said the man’s voice, “when Lissa returns.”

Adam floated away, almost drowning, in a sea of pain. In his dream he saw the earth fall dizzyingly from him, to become a giant orb that drifted in sweet green mist against all his horizon. Exaltation filled him like a mystic rapture. Everything had started off so well. He was not afraid to be alone up there. He had been chosen from among so many; he would succeed where others had tried and failed and died.

He would live. He wanted desperately to live.

He had been given the best training; he was picked for his natural aptitudes, psychological presence, technical background, physical fitness. He, after the others, would not fail.

And then the dream began.

The old woman hovered over him like some old crone out of a medieval tale. He heard her voice from a far distance.

“Help is coming, boy,” she said. “We have sent for help. Lissa will be here, and you must stay alive until she comes. But it is difficult. Can you hear me?”

She spoke in the Slavic tongue of his grandmother that rang dim, faraway bells in the corridors of his memory. He did not reply. He dreamed.

He began to fall again, but this Adam’s fall was not like the fall of that other, that first man in his Eden. This was a bestial primordial terror, this sensation of falling that was universal to all the children of man. He laughed to himself. The apeman fell from his high, leafy bough, and afterward his children were haunted by the nightmare. And he, this Adam, had fallen from the stars.

He awoke and dreamed and awoke again. He was not sure how many times this happened. Past and present were confused in those hours. He knew he had crashed, and he remembered being carried by the old man, Jamak, to this stone hut in the mountains. But he kept passing out, falling into the dream again. He remembered one time when the old woman called his name.

“Adam?” she had said. “Adam?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Ah. Ah. You can hear me?”

“Yes, old woman.” His voice echoed and rang among the stars.

“You have pain, I know, but we cannot help you with it. We have no medicine, but we have sent for Lissa. If the pain is very bad, we can get a doctor. But if we call a doctor, the police will know. Do you understand?”

“No doctor,” he said. “Have you told anyone else about me?”

“No. Then you know where you are?”

He waited, and the old woman told him, and he knew he was a long way from safety. All the calculations for his orbit had reckoned on his landing where his information could be rushed back to Washington. But if he were found here, anything could happen, and everything he had suffered would be wasted.

“We have sent for help from your own people,” the old woman said. “My Gija has gone for help, and surely someone will come soon and help you to escape from this country. Are you listening? Can you open your eyes?”

He kept his eyes shut. “I hear you.”

“It has been two days since you came to us. We sent Gija away at once. It will not be long now. Your friends will come and slip you away from here and it will be done in secret. It must be secret, or you know what will happen.”

“I thank you, old woman,” he said.

He wondered if his leg was broken. It felt hot and swollen. There was no such thing as penicillin in these silent, looming mountains where he had fallen from the stars. He could not move. Perhaps his back was broken, too. Something seemed wrong with his spine. No matter. A man died, one way or another. You fall from the stars, from life itself, into a black, dead net of the past.

They meant to be kind, the old man, Jamak, and the old woman, Jelenka, in their stone hut in the mountains, with their pigs and two cows and the silent, wild Balkan gorges and tall pines all around. He thought the Turks had denuded all the forests during their long hegemony over this part of the world. But forests grow up again, Adam thought. The earth is always renewed after man’s devastation. But not he. He would never be whole again.

He slept, and the dream went on.

The rapture of the stars ended when the tumbling and the falling began. He rode in silence, the thundering trail of flame long dead behind him. Then the stars began to reel as if the entire universe had suddenly gone drunk or mad. He did not know what went wrong. Everything had been so precisely calculated and adjusted. The tumbling of the capsule that held him like an embryo in an egg could not be controlled. And then he fell.

The air jets that were supposed to control such an emergency did not work. He pushed and pulled at the levers as he lay on his cushioned back, and through the periscope he saw the stars reel, he saw the vast floating globe of the green earth fill the universe and stagger away. He knew only panic. All the training of the arduous months behind him meant nothing, because he was going to die.

The electronic tapes whirred, clicked and chuckled. Geiger counters recorded radiation, sensitive plates noted the impact of meteoric dust, and the cameras hummed. He was trapped in a steel cocoon, a mechanism designed to kill him.

The tumbling could not be ended. The erratic orbit had begun when the monster Atlas rocket, with its second-stage Thor-Able, failed in one of its hundreds of thousands of components, somewhere on the roaring, fiery way up from Canaveral. All the ingenuity of man that had gotten him up here among the stars was useless now.

When the retro-rockets began firing, he knew it was too soon, off schedule. Only twenty orbits had been completed of a planned pattern of twenty-six.

He wondered what announcements were being made on earth. Perhaps the whole teeming, hungry-complacent, angry-peaceful, man-woman, rich-poor millions on earth were watching, hushed and curious and awed, resentful or jealous, as he staggered through his starry path around home.

He wept, and his tears were trapped inside the globe of his helmet. He did not know what was wrong with him. He knew about the rapture of the deep, that deadly euphoria suffered by skin-divers who went down into the sea too far. Perhaps space had a similar effect on the emotions. He did not think about it too clearly.

Later, when the capsule hit the atmosphere for reentry, his memory became jumbled. He felt the jolts of the retro-rockets, knew the outer skin peeled off in a temperature of twelve hundred degrees, and felt the heat rise in the capsule. But this, at least, was securely planned. The air-conditioning functioned smoothly. The tumbling went on until the first series of parachutes opened and cut the rate of descent a trifle, tore free, and another series bloomed. He could see none of this. He had no idea where he was landing. Radar, and the automatic tracking signals, ought to help him. Even if he landed in the sea, the capsule would float long enough—he hoped—for someone to find him and pick him up.

But this, too, did not go as planned. The capsule struck a mountainside at night—he did not know where—and then slid off a cliff and rolled and crashed down several hundred more feet. Only the crash padding saved him. As it was, the straps finally burst and he was aware of a vast gush of pain in his back and his legs, and then it was all blotted out.

His first clear memory afterward was of the hut.

The hut was small and crudely built, with a dirt floor and a Russian-style tiled stove that gave off a welcome heat in the chill mountain night. The only light was the light of the moon that came through two small windows. Adam lay still and listened and looked. On that first awakening, fortunately, the pain was slow in coming.

His first reaction was one of enormous gratitude that he had come down alive. But that was before he realized that his legs were wounded and wondered if he was paralyzed with a broken back.

The hut was no more than twenty by fifteen feet. There was an ikon in one comer, and he thought he might be in Russia, and then he saw a poster tacked to the wall and the language was in the Cyrillic script of Rumania. The man’s face on the poster was that of a politician who, Adam vaguely remembered, had been executed for rightist deviationism in Bucharest about two years ago.

He put the pieces together slowly.

His capsule had come down somewhere in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps, well behind the Iron Curtain. He was certainly not in a city, nor anywhere near a city, to judge by the lack of electric power and rudimentary facilities in the cabin. Most of the furniture, the crude chairs and huge bed, was hand-made.

Two people slept in the bed across the room from his pallet, making small noises.

“Hello,” Adam had called softly.

The burly old man awoke at once; the woman was a little slower. She said something in a querulous voice, and the. old man hushed her and spoke to her in that curious, half-forgotten tongue that Adam remembered from his grandmother’s house in Pittsburgh.

Then the old man came to him and said in English: “You are awake, American? That is good. Very good. How do you feel?”

“What place is this?” Adam whispered.

“We are forty miles from the Danube. The nearest village is called Viajec.”

“Did you pull me out?”

“Yes. There was a terrible storm. Are you able to eat?” “I don’t feel anything,” Adam said.

“Can you sit up?”

“Sure,” Adam said.

But when he tried, nothing happened, except the pain that came, and he fainted.

When he awoke the second time, he had a fever, like a slow-burning fire inside him. There was sunlight in the hut now, and he could see the old man clearly. The old woman was not in sight.

He stared at the political poster on the wall. Giurgiu Zarije, a former foreign minister. The poster was several years old. The man. portrayed in it looked strong, young and handsome. Adam wished he could remember the details of the man’s execution.

“You know who that is?” the old man said.

“I’ve read about him in the newspapers,” Adam said. “He was my son. He is dead.” The old man had a large round head, with grizzled gray hair and a shaggy moustache stained yellow with tobacco. His hands were gnarled like twisted knots of oak, and they shook slightly as he adjusted the ragged blanket with a strange gentleness around Adam’s body. “You wonder where I learned to speak American?”

“Where was. that?” Adam asked. He felt as if he were drifting away somewhere. He could hear chickens clucking outside, but he could not see more than a dim clearing and a distant mountainside clothed in autumn foliage, beyond the open doorway of the hut. “You speak English well.”

“I lived in America, didn’t I tell you? I worked in the steel mills. I took my wife and two sons there. Giurgiu was young then. He always wanted to come back. After the war, he did so, and went into politics. He was always radical. He thought he could build a new life for all of us here.” The old man sighed. “So they shot him.”

“He brought you back when he was successful, before they accused him?”

“Yes. All of us. He was very proud of himself then.” “You say you had two sons.”

“Gija is the younger—a pilot on the Danube barges. He is not here.” The old man spoke shortly. “I sent him to get help for you, from the West. But have no alarm. No one knows about you on Zara Dagh.”

“How long is it—?”

“Two days, Major. You are safe here.”

“But the radio in the capsule—”

“It was destroyed. They could not trace it. No one has eome. They would have been here by now. If they know you came down in the mountains, they still do not know where, in this wilderness. No, you are safe enough, for now.” “The cameras and instruments—it’s important to get them back home. Otherwise. . . Adam paused and thought of his life and his terrors. . . otherwise, it was all for nothing.”

“I understand,” the old man said gently.

“And a doctor? I need a doctor.”

“There are none who are safe.”

“What's wrong with my leg?”

“It is infected. It will heal or not, as God wills. Gija will come back in a few days. He will bring someone from your country, one of your people. It is the only way I could think of. If your friends come to take you out, all may still be well for you.”

Adam looked around the stone hut.

“They may not come for me,” he said quietly.

“You are important to them, are you not?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything.”

He slept again, and was awakened to eat hot soup, and threw it up. His fever was worse. It brought him nightmares and strange memories. He woke up crying someone’s name. He shivered under the thin blankets. It was night again, and the old woman, Jelenka, came to the bedside and crooned to him, but he could not understand her words now. She had dark brown eyes that filled with tragedy and tenderness when she looked down at him, and somehow this frightened him.

“Poor boy,” she said. “Poor boy.”

“I was dreaming of Deirdre,” he said.

“A girl?”

“Yes. My girl.”

“You will see her again. My daughter, Lissa, is here. She brought some medicine for you.”

He heard a movement in the hut and then saw the girl. She had been standing in the shadows, motionless, tall and slim and dark. It must be cold out now, he thought, because she wore a scarf over her dark red hair and kept her thin coat buttoned to her throat. She had the dark brown eyes of her mother, but they reflected neither the tenderness nor the aged, wise compassion of the old woman. She looked at him coldly, with no emotion.

“I have brought you penicillin, Major,” she said in a flat voice.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“It should help you.” She spoke English easily, with an American accent, and he guessed she had been born there. “But do you know how dangerous it is for us to ask for penicillin?”

“I can imagine. I’m grateful.”

“You cannot imagine. You are an American, and you do not know the meaning of life as it is lived here. But I brought it for you, anyway. Each tablet is one hundred thousand units. You will take two, every four hours. It will stop the infection in your leg.”

“Is it broken?”

“I think not. Your back muscles are only terribly strained. You will be well again.”

She gave him the tablets and a tumbler of water. She looked down at him with cold brown eyes that seemed to be looking at someone else. Her mouth was a little too wide to be beautiful, but her dark red hair caught and held the gleam of light from the oil lantern. Behind her, Jamak stood beside his wife, and the old people looked exhausted and gray, like the shadows and the stones that made up the hut.

Adam saw that the old man’s hands shook worse than before. “Lissa, where did you get the medicine?” Jamak asked. “I got it, I got it,” she said impatiently. “Is that enough?”

“Were you careful?”

“One cannot be careful asking for this sort of thing.” The girl spoke crisply. “I told Stana the Gypsy I needed it, and she got it from Medjan. I said it was for you, Jamak.” The old woman moaned. “You went to Petar Median?”

“Who else? The Turk wants me.”

“Did you promise—?”

The girl’s face was cold with contempt. “What promises I made were with my lips, not my heart.”

“Medjan will be angry. He is a lieutenant of the police, he will demand—”

“He will demand, but he will get nothing except a knife.”

“Lissa, Lissa—” the old woman moaned.

“Be quiet. It is done. It was the only way.”

“Will he stay away?”

“Of course. I will not stay here on Zara Dagh. I will go back to Viajec. Why should he come here, if I am at the village, so close to his police station?” The girl walked back to where Adam lay and looked down at him. She spoke coolly. “How do you feel now, Major?”

“Not good. I don’t like to have put you all in danger.”

“We always live in danger. A little more, a little less. . ."

“Don’t be angry with me,” Adam said.

“I am officially a nurse in the village. Do you understand that? These old people are my parents. And Gija, who has gone to tell your countrymen where you are, Gija is my brother. We live on the edge of a very sharp knife here.”

“You were bom in America, weren’t you? And you came back when your older brother Giurgiu sent for the whole family?”

She shrugged. “Why not? He was a big politician here. I was only a child, anyway. I had no choice. And life brings unpleasant surprises. For Giurgiu, it was a firing squad, because he got too big and too careless in his position. And he left us all stranded here, in these mountains, treated like pariahs because we were his family.” Her words were bitter. The warmth that flashed in her eyes was that of anger. “Now you come here and Gija, the wild one, has rushed away like a boy playing a game, to go to the West for your friends.” “Lissa, what can I do?”

“If you had died, it would be easier for all of us.” “Is the danger for you very great?”

“Zara Dagh is a wild and lonely place. But I could get a doctor for you. And call the police. This man, Medjan, is from the police. He wants to marry me. My job in the village of Viajec is to be district nurse for the peasants. I am twenty-four years old, and because I am not married yet, the people say I am an old maid, sour and bitter, full of crazy American ideas. Do I look like an old maid to you, Major?”

“No,” he grinned. “Not at all.”

“You were crying out a woman’s name in your sleep. Someone named Deirdre. Who is she? Your wife? Your girl?”

“My girl,” Adam said.

“Ah. You spoke her name many times, did you know? Gija wrote it down, before he went off to Czechoslovakia to pick up his barge, and so reach your friends. They will let her know about your safe landing. If Gija, that crazy one, reaches your friends, he will do what is necessary. But one can never foresee the future.”

She stood looking down at him beside the bed, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her cloth coat. Their eyes met and locked for a long, mystical moment. Then she smiled for the first time, and her voice changed, and she pulled the scarf from her head. Her rich, thick hair tumbled in the light of the lantern. She pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down.

“Sleep, Major. I’m sorry I was angry. I am not really angry with you. It is life itself that has betrayed us here. We knew good things once, security and respect. It has been taken away from us, because my older brother was such a fool. Perhaps such a fault runs in the family, and we are all fools. We do what we think is right, not what we know to be safe. You can sleep easily here. I will stay with you until the fever goes down.”

Adam sank back upon the bed. The girl touched his forehead, and he closed his eyes. Her palms felt rough, but her touch was gentle and soothing. With his eyes closed, Adam thought of Deirdre Padgett.

He had met her through Sam Durell when they were assigned to the Mojave base training unit, and he remembered that strange, tall, stone-eyed man who had introduced them. Adam had thought Deirdre was Durell’s girl. But when Durell was transferred elsewhere, Deirdre stayed on alone at the desert motel. Adam began to date her, diffidently at first. He knew something had gone wrong between Deirdre and Durell—a quarrel, perhaps, a deep and serious quarrel. He didn’t know the details and didn’t care. He only knew that Deirdre was unlike any other girl he’d ever met.

He closed his eyes and let his memory of her fill him. It was like coming back to life again. . . .

CHAPTER III

Durell flew from New York to Paris and looked up Charley Loughlin there. Loughlin told him to go back to the States.

“We’ve got a cable on you, Sam. McFee is raising hell. You're out of bounds and he wants you back in Washington.”

“I’m here on my own time,” Durell said. “What have you heard from Harry Hammett?”

“Nothing. And if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. You’re just hunting trouble, Cajun. This job doesn’t concern you. You’re on leave from K Section and supposed to be resting up, back home. Why not leave it to Hammett?”

“I will, when I go back with Deirdre Padgett.” “You’re going back on the next plane,” Loughlin said. “I’ve got your ticket here. Free ride, compliments of K Section.”

Durell looked angry. “Is that an order?”

“Well, not exactly. No. But. . .”

Loughlin drew a deep breath. It was early morning in Paris, and his office was a photography shop on the Rue Griselle, not far from the Seine. It was an overcast day. Loughlin was a small, cherubic man with a bald head and sharp, discerning eyes under remarkably bushy brows. He looked more French than American, having been in charge of the CIA drop here for over six years. He had picked up French mannerisms, Durell noted, in the way he now waved his hands and shrugged.

“Let well enough alone, Cajun. If your former girl chooses to go to Vienna with Harry Hammett, we have no way to stop her. Harry is—well, just Harry. Everybody knows how he is. A lone wolf, a—”

“A sadist and a bungler,” Durell said grimly. “I know him. We had a little trouble, once.”

“So you don’t get along, and this puts the ground glass in your wine, eh? I know you don’t care about Hammett; you just want Deirdre out of this. But listen to me, Cajun—I know all about you and the girl, and how she is to marry this Major Stepanic, right?”

“I heard about it,” Durell said. “But not from her.” “So you’re here on an emotional binge, right?” Loughlin looked soberly at Durell’s tall figure. “Look, I’m not trying to make like a head-shrinker, Cajun. But it’s not right for you to come over here after her, interfering with Harry. Forget it. It’s not your business.”

“I’m making it mine. There’s something more to it than shows on the surface. Deirdre has too much sense to get involved like this. She knows the racket. God knows, I’ve told her enough about the dirty end of it. She wouldn’t do anything foolish, unless . . .” He paused, harassed by a vague uneasiness that had begun last night, in Deirdre’s house across the sea. But he was unable to define the source of his misgivings. “I don’t know what it is, Charley. I just want Deirdre out of Vienna, and away from Harry Hammett.” Loughlin stared out the window at the cobblestone street beyond his photography shop. He said curiously: “You don’t give a damn if Stepanic is alive or dead, do you, Cajun? He hit you where it hurt, taking Deirdre away from you.”

“He took nothing from me that I wasn’t ready to give up,” Durell snapped.

“Sam, you show how you hurt,” Loughlin said softly. “All right, so I hurt. I just don’t like this twist of events, Charley. What exactly do you have on Stepanic, anyway?”

“We got word the poor bastard came smashing down somewhere in the Balkans. That was all. Our radar and the signal from his rocket capsule gave us that much of a fix. But there was a hell of a storm front in the area where he hit. We can’t pinpoint him.” Loughlin paused. “But he’s alive. An informer came to our drop in Vienna, from over in Bratislava, to say that more word was coming in about him in detail. So he’s out there somewhere waiting for help from us. The Soviets know he’s down there, too—but they have no more specific a fix than we. Everything promptly tightened up along the borders—air, rail, highway traffic all triple checked, turned upside down, and shaken three times for good luck. Not even a mouse could break through to pick up Stepanic.”

“Hammett will do it,” Durell said. “I won't deny he can. But is it so urgent to get Stepanic out this way? It’s a simple scientific experiment. I thought we were cooperating on outer space data now, exchanging the result of our flights.” “Stepanic went into space, Cajun, in our first real effort to catch up. The whole world was watching. We want him back and we want his instruments. Call it a matter of prestige, if you will. Political face is important these days— and it gets more important as we move into this so-called peaceful competition that’s in the air. We need every advantage we can get. We need Stepanic back and his instruments, to find out what went wrong so it won’t happen like this again.”

“When is Harry going in after him?” Durell asked. “He’s waiting for the specific contact from Bratislava.” Durell drew a deep breath. “Look, Charley, I’m going on to Vienna, whether you make it official or not. Deirdre doesn’t belong there. The competition knows Deirdre was Stepanic’s girl—don’t underestimate them. If Harry spills anything to her, they might just pick her up for a talk, to find out Harry’s plans—and, incidentally, to locate Stepanic if Harry learns that much from the contact.”

Loughlin passed a hand over his bald head and looked at Durell with a face suddenly gone hard and serious. “Jesus, so that’s what’s eating you!”

“Among other things,” Durell admitted.

“You may have something there, Cajun. Maybe she ought to be out of Vienna, just for insurance, at that.”

“Tell it to Washington,” Durell said. “Meanwhile, I’m going after her.”

“What shall I tell Harry?”

“Tell him I’m coming,” Durell said.

He was followed from Paris to Vienna.

He was not surprised at this. He knew that his opposite numbers kept a detailed file on his activities. At No. 2 Dzerzhinski Square in Moscow, headquarters of the MVD, there was a lengthy dossier on Samuel Cullen Durell, of Bayou Peche Rouge, Louisiana, and No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington. There was a time when this dossier had been urgently ordered closed for good, and attempts were made to remove him. Durell had survived. He had been quick and lucky. Lately, the pressure had eased. Yet there was no outguessing the unpredictable enemy. It was better to be safe.

He followed another axiom. Better to know where your shadow is at all times than to elude the tail temporarily and have the known factor replaced by someone unsuspected and invisible. The job was usually done in this double fashion—first someone a little too clumsy to be true, appearing in the background. You shook him or her, and thought you were free of surveillance and went on with your business. But, usually there was another in the background—the real expert, the professional, who, like a chameleon, made himself invisible and thus lulled you into a false sense of security.

In the present case, Durell’s shadow was a squat, paunchy bald man with a bumbling manner and accent that suggested a salesman of woolen goods from Manchester. He let this be known at Orly airfield, speaking in a loud voice about his sales trip to Vienna and complaining about the customs delay.

There was a brief stop at Geneva. Durell got off and went to the rest room, washed his hands, smoked a cigarette, entered the cafe for a drink, and managed to miss his embarkation. The salesman of yard goods flew off into the Swiss skies and Durell went to the railroad station for a ticket. He did not congratulate himself too much on this maneuver. He had already spotted the second tail.

This one was a tall, blonde girl in a shapeless, lumpy cloth coat. She bumped into the bald Englishman while at the Geneva airport, apparently an accident. There was a brief exchange of angry words. The blonde girl lost her hat, and her long hair looked bedraggled. Durell, watching from the cafe, sipped his drink and saw the woman shake her head at something the plump man said. The bald man looked angry and adamant. The blonde shook her head again and started to turn to look at Durell, and the bald man said something sharply and she stiffened, then shrugged and finally nodded. But there was a look of anger and unwillingness in her manner, as she went about her task of following Durell.

Durell made no effort to shake her on the express to Vienna. The fact that he’d been assigned a double team was significant enough to assure him that his hunch about Deirdre’s danger was valid.

He told himself that the concern he’d expressed to Loughlin was his true motive. Stepanic had to be gotten out, with his capsule instruments, of course. And conceivably Deirdre, learning too much from Harry Hammett, might spoil the game. Also true.

But there was more.

He did not delude himself. He had explained everything to Deirdre long ago, and she was free to follow any life she chose. If she was truly in love with. Major Stepanic, she had every right to stick to him. Durell had no claim on her.

But he could not deny his emotions. And emotions in this business were dangerous. They could kill him. He had no right to come to Vienna this way. It was not his assignment. He might very well confuse things for Harry Hammett in a way that might result in disaster.

Yet he couldn’t turn back. Deirdre was in Vienna, and Vienna was dangerous ground now. He knew this with an inner conviction that defied all rational objections.

He did not stop to analyze his feelings about Stepanic, lost behind the Iron Curtain. Stepanic was the secret objective of a swift, desperate, and cumulative search by two of the cleverest and most dedicated organizations in the world.

Vienna was cold and windy when he got off the train at the Westbahnhof Station. The city was between seasons, having ended its annual fair at the Prater, but with the opera schedule not yet begun. It lay in gray and baroque splendor along the dark Vienna woods. Most of the American tourists had left for home, and the city was itself again, easy and free, ignoring the dimple of rain that fell as Durell chose a taxi and gave the moustached driver his destination as the Bristol Hotel in the Innere Stadt.

The tall, lumpy-looking blonde who had replaced his bald, pseudo-English shadow in Geneva was not in sight. But Durell knew he was still under surveillance.

At the Bristol he unpacked, gave the room a routine check in his methodical fashion that missed nothing. Then he phoned the Embassy, gave a code name, received a number to call and did so, identifying himself and alerting the K Section man in the city, Herr Otto Hoffner. The number was that of a small coffee house, and this phone, in turn, was connected with another at the K Section drop at Steubenstrasse 19. Durell had been to the “safe house” on Steubenstrasse before.

“Loughlin called me from Paris,” Otto said quietly.

“Anything official?”

“No, no, Herr Durell. He says to tell you the subject you wish to speak to so urgently is at the Bristol Hotel. Also, I want to see you tonight, as soon as possible. Can you make it at nine? I am somewhat disturbed and I would like some advice. You know where to find me?”

“I had coffee there last year,” Durell said, and hung up.

The “safe house” at Steubenstrasse 19 was not far away. He had time. He telephoned to the desk to verify Deirdre Padgett’s registration at the Bristol, and the desk clerk rang her room; but there was no answer. Then he showered and shaved, chose a fresh white button-down shirt and a maroon knitted necktie. In the shoulder holster under the specially tailored coat went his snub-barreled .38 Special.

He was ready to leave the room when the telephone rang.

He turned in surprise, thought of Deirdre, let it ring once more, and decided to answer it.

“Durell here,” he said briefly.

It was not Deirdre. He pushed down a quick sensation of disappointment at hearing the man’s harshly angry, American voice. “You’ve got a lot of gall, Cajun. You’re not even using a cover?”

“Not this trip. How are you, Harry?”

“As if you give a damn, except to wish my throat gets cut. Loughlin called Otto from Paris. Otto told me, too. You’d better go back to your desk in Washington, man.” “I’ll go back,” Durell said, “with Deirdre Padgett.” “And maybe she doesn’t want to go back with you. Then what?”

“Where is she?” Durell asked.

“I just left her downstairs in the restaurant.”

“Did you tell her I was here?”

Hammett spoke in a taut voice. “Why not? She’s waiting to tell you to go peddle your papers. You stay out of my job, Cajun, hear? You have no orders to stick your fingers into this pie.”

“I don’t intend to interfere with your assignment,” Durell said. “I just want to keep the girl out of trouble.” “Trouble? Trouble? This is routine. She just wants me to hurry up and get her boyfriend back to freedom land, safe and sound.”

“Then we have no quarrel,” Durell said quietly. “You think not? I’m wiring Washington about you. I don’t want you mixing in, understand? I handle my jobs my own way.”

“I wish you luck,” Durell said.

He hung up, aware of a tremor of unreasonable anger directed against both Harry Hammett and himself. Harry was big and tough, competent and ruthless. Too ruthless. His record at K Section was one of implacable drive, and if his methods were criticized, the results kept Dickinson McFee in ominous silence.

Durell lighted a cigarette and waited for the anger to pass. He had worked with Hammett as a team some years ago, investigating a leak in the CIA organization in West Berlin. Elements of information were getting through that were traced eventually to a German named Karl Henlein. Henlein was low man on the totem pole of a counter-espionage group aimed at getting information of IRBM sites for NATO, and there would have been more fish caught in Durell’s net if it hadn’t been for Hammett. There was a girl involved, Karl’s wife, a charming but fanatic redhead who first captivated Harry and then turned on him. Durell never proved how intimate Hammett got with Sophia Henlein, but he knew that Henlein had caught Hammett with his wife, in their West Berlin apartment. Henlein was shot and killed with Harry’s gun, and there was no other evidence against him. But the case was closed. Henlein was charged, at Harry’s insistence, with having resisted arrest. Although Karl Henlein was an elderly wisp of a man, and no match for Harry’s bull strength, he had been beaten tragically before being shot. The girl, Sophia, was a suicide, having drained a vial of poison. Her death had not been pleasant. There were marks on her wrists that made Durell wonder if she had killed herself willingly or been made to drink the poison by force; but he could prove nothing. The case against the counter-espionage ring collapsed. There was no other place to go; the rest of the ring was hidden behind Karl Henlein’s dead eyes. The missile bases had to be moved to new sites, and the whole program was delayed for several precious months.

Durell hadn’t worked with Hammett since. He had made a factual report, omitting his private inferences, but they became mutual enemies since Hammett knew that Durell had not been fooled by the evidence. On the few occasions when their paths crossed they openly expressed dislike for each other.

Durell knew that Hammett was a man who placed little value on human life, who allowed no scruple to block his objectives. In a way, this was according to the rules of the business. But Harry had an innate and gratuitous cruelty that, as in the Henlein case, defeated its own purpose.

He did not like the thought of Deirdre being in his care.

And he did not intend to let it go on.

He went downstairs to the lobby in the elevator cage and paused in the entrance to the small bar.

The blonde woman in the shapeless tweed coat sat at a round table in the corner, drinking from a cocktail glass.

She had a briefcase on the upholstered bank beside her. She wore a dark brown beret and sensible walking shoes, and she looked up as Durell paused in the arched entry. Her eyes were blank and dark, in an objective, unemotional face. For a moment their glances locked, and then she looked down at the drink between her quiet hands. She bit her lip. Then the headwaiter hurried to Durell, full of obsequious smiles.

“The fraulein waits for you, Herr Durell. Over here, bitte.”

He saw Deirdre, and any doubts he had about coming here were swept away.

The evening rain that fell on the Kartner Ring outside the hotel windows made a dimness in here, although through the dusky window he could see the wide, busy avenue that faced the Opera House. Deirdre was turned to face him, obviously waiting. For a moment he thought he saw no difference in the objective way she looked at him from the manner in which the lumpy blonde girl had raised her eyes to consider him. Then she smiled, and one slim, gloved hand gestured involuntarily, lifting slightly from her glass of Heuriger wine.

He walked over to her table. “Hello, Dee,” he said.

“Sam.” She nodded quietly.

“May I sit down?”

“Of course.” The waiter bustled about as he pulled out a chair beside her. They smiled awkwardly at each other, and Deirdre touched his hand. “It’s good to see you, Sam. You’ve changed a little.”

“You look wonderful.”

“It’s been a long time. One year, one month, and four days.” She smiled again. “You see, I could never be anything but honest with you, Sam, even if it means giving away all my secrets. Which I’ve always done with you, of course.”

She was more beautiful than ever, Durell thought. Slim and dark-haired, with an oval face and a carriage that filled the softly-lighted room with her presence. Her large gray eyes were solemn, and her smile was only on her soft pink lips. The corners of her mouth quivered slightly, and she sipped her wine. She wore a dark traveling suit, a small, winter-white hat, white gloves. There were faint shadows under her eyes. Looking at her, Durell felt incredulous at the thought that he had possessed her many times. He felt, as often happened, as if he had just met her, and was full of surprise at her beauty, always renewed each time he saw her again.

He touched her hand. “Deirdre, you know why I came here, don’t you?”

“Yes. Harry Hammett told me, a few minutes ago. But there’s nothing to worry about; I’m perfectly all right here. It’s sweet of you to be concerned, after all this time, and after—after everything.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“There isn’t any other way to talk, and if I don’t, I'll break down and cry for all the things we’ve lost. And I haven’t wept girlish tears for a long time, Sam. I promised myself I never would again. What’s lost is lost, for always.”

For a moment he said nothing. Her long black hair was smoothly groomed, done in a French knot at the nape of her neck, and it would have looked severe on any other woman but Deirdre. He felt an ache for her that had always been reserved for her alone.

“Dee, I want you to go back home,” he said finally,, “No, you have no right to ask it of me, Sam.”

“But you can’t do any good here, you know.”

“I want to be as close to Adam as possible. That’s all I can do, but it’s necessary. Don’t you understand?”

“You’ll only make things more difficult.” he said. “Getting Adam out is not your job,” she objected. “You wouldn’t want it, anyway. It would put you in a difficult position—considering, I mean, the way things have changed between us. You’d be rescuing him for me, you see.”

“Wouldn’t you trust me to do that, Dee?”

Her gray eyes were level. “Of course, Sam. You’ve always been honest. I know you would do everything possible to bring Adam back, even at the cost of your own life. He needs help. According to Harry Hammett’s information, he’s been badly hurt. Call it an exaggerated sense of loyalty, if you will, but Adam is the sort of man who needs me much more than you ever did, Sam.”

“That isn’t love, though—needing someone, or standing by because someone else needs you. It’s not mature, it—”

“Don’t, Sam. We all want to be needed. Women, anyway.”

He spoke with a touch of anger. “Adam Stepanic is either a man, able to stand on his own two feet in an adult world, or he’s a boy. And you’re not the woman for a boy, Deirdre.”

“Did you ever truly need me, Sam?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Once, perhaps—in the beginning—”

“I still do. But not in the way you say Adam depends on you—”

“Yes, you can live and work without me, while I’m alone and can only wait and hope for you to come back.”

“I can’t change that, Dee.”

“I know. I’m sorry. About Adam, though—Harry says there isn’t much time. But there is nothing you can do. Harry Hammett has the assignment, and he’ll take care of it.”

“I hope so,” Durell said.

“Harry knows his job. Perhaps not as you do, and perhaps he isn’t as devoted as you are. But I feel sure he’ll bring Adam back safely.” She paused. “I’ll only stay until Harry leaves. He’s going tonight.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Just now, yes.”

Durell sat back. The waiter hovered. He ordered bourbon, to be rid of the man, and when he looked up he saw the blonde woman who had trailed him from Paris and Geneva. She had ordered another drink, and as he watched, she drank it quickly, like a man, and stood up and left, in her tweed suit and heavy walking shoes. Her leather handbag was big enough, he thought, to hold any kind of a gun. He waited until she left the bar, and he listened to a waltz from a string quartet in the hotel dining room, and then he turned back to Deirdre.

“Tell me about Adam,” he said quietly.

“What do you want to know? Are you asking if I love him?”

“Do you?”

“I don't know. Not now. Not with you here, Sam. Oh, I’m a fool,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything, really. Not about Adam or myself or about you, darling.” She paused. “I’m sure Adam loves me, though.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

She drew a soft, deep breath. “Don’t hurt me with these questions, Sam. And don’t hurt yourself, either. You’re thinking of all the times you and I—when we were together —when you loved me—”

“Let’s stick to Adam Stepanic. I want to know. It's important. I don’t trust Harry Hammett.”

“Please, Sam.”

“He’s good at his job, but not that good. And I can get Adam out of there for you.”

“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to go.” “Why not?"

“Not you, darling. You might not come back.”

“I’ve come back other times. True, there’s always the last assignment, the one time things might go wrong. And then you’d just wait and wait, like you’re waiting now, only it would be worse if we were married—”

“I was always willing to chance that. That’s what we quarreled about, isn’t it? Yet, you see, I’m willing to wait for Adam. I was willing to settle for any conditions you imposed on our lives together. And ready to settle for an hour, a day, a week or a year. It would have been a lifetime, anyway.”

“And I insist that’s not good enough for you.”

“So you go on being selfish,” Deirdre said quietly. “It was only that, you know. And not wanting to worry about me, which would make you too careful and perhaps do the wrong thing. Isn’t that right?”

Their love had been destroyed a year ago on these same rocks, Durell thought. And he hadn’t changed his mind about it.

“About Adam,” Deirdre went on, “I just had to come here, don’t you see? To get as close to him as possible. Call it only loyalty, perhaps, but I want to be here when Harry Hammett gets him out, so I can see him at once. I owe it to him. He’s a brave, uncomplicated man, Sam. Not like you at all. He sets no conditions for me, as you do.”

He looked at her and for the first time since they’d met, she seemed remote and cool and unattainable. He felt an unfamiliar sense of wavering in him, because he was here against all the rules and grim precautions that had kept him alive in this business. Back in the bayous of Louisiana, old Jonathan had taught him what it meant to be not only a hunter, but the quarry as well. You had to be quick, objective, sure of your aims. He wasn’t sure this time, because he wanted Deirdre and yet he could not have her like this.

He did not want her to live in agonized waiting to learn one day that she was a widow. He loved her too much for that.

Her gloved hand touched his. “Sam, what is it?”

“I still love you,” he said simply.

“I know that.”

“And all I’ve given you is pain and anguish.”

“No, never. That’s exactly what you don’t understand, Sam, what you will never admit to yourself or to me.” He stood up. “I want you to go back to Paris, at least, Deirdre, where you’ll be safe.”

“Surely I’m safe here in Vienna,” she smiled.

“I don’t think so.”

“Harry says it’s perfectly all right for me to wait here for him to come back with Adam.”

“It’s not all right.”

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

He looked down at her. There was nothing more to say. He had no right to say more. Yet there was an innocence in her, a belief in the essential goodness of man that he could not and would not destroy unnecessarily.

Because his own motives were suspect, he could not tell her of the danger she had created for herself, nor of the one she had created for him.

CHAPTER IV

Night had come, and the rain falling on the bright streets of Vienna’s inner city seemed cold and implacable. Durell watched Deirdre leave the bar to go to her room. She had quietly rejected his suggestion that they have dinner together. As he followed her with his eyes, he felt as if a most important part of him walked away with her. He did not understand himself. He told himself that the old adage about having your cake and eating it was applicable here. He was acting dangerously, intruding without authority. But he could not help himself.

He ordered another bourbon and when he finished it he crossed the lobby and bought cigarettes from the clerk, taking his time to consider the well-dressed Viennese and the few foreigners in sight. He did not see the blonde woman, nor did he see the bald, pseudo-Englishman he had shaken in Geneva.

It was time to visit Otto Hoffner at Steubenstrasse 19.

He was careful now. He walked in the rain for several blocks beyond the famed Opera House to the baroque pile of the Hofburg, the old Imperial Palace at Josef’s Platz, then doubled back by way of the Kohlmarkt until he found a cruising cab. He gave the Main Post Office as his destination and watched the lights of traffic reflected on the wet, gleaming streets. At the Franz Josef’s Kai he got out, found another cab, and gave an address close to Steubenstrasse.

He was not followed.

The house he sought was one of a row of rococo limestone town mansions, relics of the glory of the days of the Hapsburg Empire. The street was quiet, lined with sycamore trees that dripped on the brick paving. A number of private cars were parked along the high curb, but only an occasional hurrying passer-by under an umbrella was visible as Durell walked up the curving avenue. It was close to nine o’clock when he walked by No. 19. He circled the block once, came back the way he had started, and saw nothing suspicious. A church bell rang with a dull iron clangor in the night rain, as he went up the white stone steps and rang the bell.

There was only a dim light shining in one of the upper-floor windows. It did not change or go out. Waiting patiently, he rang again and saw a shadowy movement in the tiled vestibule beyond the big double doors. A moment later Otto Hoffner opened one of the panels and gestured him inside.

“Come in, come, bitte,” the man said breathlessly. “I am so glad you are here.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“Oh, it is—there was no need to—but come, see for yourself, Herr Durell.”

Durell halted in the vestibule and saw two umbrellas in an old-fashioned Victorian ceramic stand, and an American raincoat and dark brown hat hanging on an ornate clothes-tree. “Is Harry Hammett here?”

“Yes. Upstairs, washing up. But come, you must see this man—the informer, the messenger—”

“What are you so upset about, Otto?”

“I wanted to stop Harry, believe me, I did. It is not my method, you can be sure. The poor lad came here innocently, to help, to deliver the message. I tried to stop Harry. Bitte, believe me, I tried.”

Durell said grimly: “Let’s see this man.”

Otto Hoffner was small and slim and middle-aged, with a slight paunch and graying hair cut en brosse and gold-rimmed glasses. He wore narrow striped trousers and a black linen jacket and vest. Durell could not tell if he was armed. His face had a waxen quality, like that of a museum doll; but as far as Durell knew, Otto Hoffner had worked for K Section for three years, had been efficient as a relay message center agent, and had been useful in offering his home here at Steubenstrasse 19 as a major depot on the underground railway used to smuggle Hungarians out of the terror of the Soviet purge. He followed the hurrying little man down a wide, paneled hallway, then across a huge, old-fashioned kitchen into a pantry.

“Just a minute, Otto,” he said.

“Yes? What is it?”

“You say Harry Hammett is upstairs, washing?”

“Bathing, yes.” Otto nodded. “His clothes—some of the blood, you see—”

“All right, go ahead.”

“The messenger—the boy, Anton—is in here—”

Beyond the pantry there was another room, like a windowless cell, originally designed for cold storage of food, reached by a barred and bolted door. Otto Hoffner’s pale hands trembled as he opened the bolts and snapped on the lights. He stood aside to let Durell enter, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and polishing them nervously as Durell looked at the man on the iron cot shoved into one corner of the cubicle.

Blood was spattered on the yellow plastered walls, and on one of the iron cot posts, with a small mat of brown hair stuck to it. More blood was puddled on the polished floor beside the cot. The figure on the bed groaned. His face was battered, his mouth a shapeless bruise, open and black as he struggled to breathe. A regular groaning noise came with each heave of his chest. He was in his late teens, long and painfully thin. On the floor beside the bed was a knitted woolen cap, of the sort that sailors wear, and his tattered dungarees and shirt also testified that the injured boy was a sailor.

“What happened here?” Durell asked grimly.

“Nothing I could stop, you understand.” Otto wrung his hands. “It was impossible. In my position, with a man like Hammett, if I protest he is likely to turn on me and put me in an awkward position—”

“Did Harry do this to the boy?”

Otto said: “I have not yet sent for a doctor here, you understand—” He paused. “Yes, Herr Hammett did it. He lost control of himself. The boy was—how do you say it?— fresh, perhaps. He came to deliver a message about the subject—the subject of Hammett’s assignment—”

“Major Stepanic?”

“Yes. You understand, I had nothing to do with this, and if you are taking over Herr Hammett’s job—”

“I am not.”

Otto Hoffner looked frightened. “Then why are you here?”

Durell did not answer that. “You say the boy’s name is Anton?”

“Anton Galucz—his father is captain of a Danube barge at Bratislava. On the Slovak side, you see. There is a man who just returned to rejoin the crew—the pilot, a man named Gija—who knows where Adam Stepanic can be found.”

“Alive?” Durell interrupted.

“Alive. Exactly so. And this Gija sent the boy to arrange for a rendezvous with himself. The boy, Anton, telephoned the American Embassy here in Vienna. He was very circumspect. When it was understood what he wanted, the matter was turned over to Harry Hammett, of course. The boy was told to call back, to give the Embassy time to reach Hammett. And when this was done, the boy, Anton, arranged a rendezvous for Herr Hammett to meet this Gija, on the Austrian bank of the river.”

“So why did Harry beat up the boy?”

“I do not know. He lost his temper. The boy was sarcastic—cocky, as a boy may be, full of bravado at coming on such a mission—”

There was a slight sound from the pantry door. Durell turned and saw Harry Hammett there. Hammett was in shirt sleeves, his collar open on his bare chest, exhibiting a thick mat of springy yellow hair that matched the tight blond curls on his head. He looked huge, filling the doorway, and he exuded an animal strength, the aura of a rogue male. He had very pale brown eyes, flecked with gold, under brows that would have seemed heavy if the hair had been dark. His nose was thin and straight, his mouth full, with carefully carved lips; he would have seemed handsome, except for the indefinable distortion of his features that gave his face a cruel and arrogant look.

“Ask me the questions, Cajun, not Otto,” Hammett said, grinning. “Otto is scared of a little blood.” Hammett’s voice was thin and light. His biceps rippled as he lifted his arms to lean in the doorway. “You don’t like what happened to the smart-aleck punk?”

“He came to help us. Why get so rough with him?” “Like I said, he was smart. He wants extra dough, I think; he tried to hold out. Wouldn’t give the name of the barge this Gija gook is supposed to be waiting on.”

“Did you get the name?”

“I got it,” Harry said. He laughed lightly. “You know me, Cajun, I don’t take no for an answer, especially from a gook kid.”

“You were pretty rough with him.”

“And you don’t like it? You got nothing to say about it. You don’t belong here. I suggest you get out right now, Cajun.”

Otto said timidly: “Please, gentlemen—”

“Shut up, Otto,” Hammett said, without looking at him. “Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag, Durell, and hike back home to your desk. This is my job, and I do it my way. You don’t like it, you can type up a nasty report, right? I’ll answer for it when I get back home with Stepanic.” “Why did you take Deirdre here with you, Harry?” “Maybe just to needle you, Cajun. You don’t like that, either? Or maybe she just loves this Stepanic flyboy so much, she wants to be waiting for him with open arms when I bring him back. That Deirdre, Cajun, you lost a real woman there.”

The boy on the cot groaned louder. His eyes flickered, opened, closed, opened again. Durell looked at him and walked to the side of the cot. From the boy’s shapeless, broken mouth came inarticulate animal sounds of pain. Durell said gently: “Anton, can you hear me?”

“Wha—?”

The boy’s eyes looked up blindly at Durell. Then they touched Otto Hoffner’s nervous little figure and found Harry Hammett’s tall bulk in the pantry doorway. Fear suddenly flamed high in the boy’s glance. He made a thin, wailing sound. Hammett grinned. Durell put out a hand to touch the boy’s brow.

“You’re with friends,” he said quietly. The boy’s mouth worked on an obscenity. “Believe me, Anton. It was a mistake.”

The boy made a spitting noise.

“Get away from him,” Hammett said flatly. “Don’t interfere, Cajun. I warn you.”

Durell’s mouth was pale with anger. “Or what will you do, Harry?”

“Throw you out. I could make it, too.”

“Any time,” Durell said. “Try.”

“Just get away from that boy. Fm not finished with him yet.”

“You’re finished. You’re all through.” Durell swung away from the cot and spoke to Hoffner. “Otto, call the American Embassy and ask them for a doctor and tell them to make confidential arrangements for a hospital bed for this man. Go ahead, do it now.”

Otto hesitated.

Hammett said: “Stay where you are, Otto.”

Otto looked agonized.

Durell said: “All right, Otto, I'll do it myself.”

He started for the door. Hammett blocked his way;, giant arms still uplifted, resting on the casement. “Stay out of this, Cajun,” he said thickly. “I’ve warned you. You have no official position here.”

“Get out of my way.”

Hammett did not move. His pale brown eyes were hooded, glittering sullenly. A thin shine of perspiration was on his handsome face. From the cot came a strange, giggling sound as the boy lifted himself on his elbows and laughed. Otto came forward with a quick, mincing step.

“Please, gentlemen. Remember, we must not have the local police here under any circumstances, and no disturbances whatever. Please!”

Hammett looked hesitant.

“I’ll call for a doctor when I’m ready,” he muttered. “Call him now,” Durell said. “But first the Embassy.” For another moment Hammett stared at him, mouth tightened in a harsh line. Then he shrugged and dropped his massive arms from the doorway. Durell was ready to react instantly to any kind of trick attack. But none came. Perhaps Hammett remembered a moment years ago, when Durell had forced him down and almost broken an arm, back in Berlin. In any case, he retreated. He stood aside, and Durell said: “After you, Harry.”

“Think I’ll clobber you from behind?”

“I wouldn’t put it beyond you.”

“Nice to be trusted, pal.”

“I don’t trust you, Harry. And we’re not pals. Now go ahead and call the Embassy and get some medical attention for the boy, and then explain to them why you found it necessary to beat him half to death.”

"I don’t have to explain anything,” Hammett muttered.

But he walked away, through the pantry and kitchen, to a telephone in the front hall of the big, silent house.

Durell waited until the call was made before he quit No. 19 Steubenstrasse. It was still raining, coldly and steadily. The sycamore trees drooped on the empty paving stones. There was no one in sight, no hidden watchers, no one who followed him as he walked alone to the corner and turned to the brighter streets of the Inner Ring of Vienna, to find a taxi that took him back to the Bristol Hotel.

It was only nine-thirty. The lobby was crowded with murmuring Viennese waiting for their evening activities to begin. He did not see the tall blonde girl, or Deirdre. His thoughts turned back to Harry Hammett for a moment, and he shrugged off his anger, telling himself that his only concern was to remove Deirdre from the scene, to take her home where she would be safe. He wanted this more than ever, now that he had met Harry again. But he did not know how he could persuade her.

He was thinking of this when he used his key and stepped into his hotel room. He took only one step and halted abruptly.

He had left a lamp on, over the small rococo desk in one corner of the room.

Now the light was out.

He needed no more to tell him that someone either had been here while he was at Steubenstrasse 19, or was still here, waiting for him in the dark.

He listened, but he heard no sound except the muted street noises from the Kartner Ring below. No whisper of tight breathing, no faint rustle of clothes. He closed the door quietly, although when the latch clicked it seemed an enormous sound. Then he thumbed up the light switch on the wall.

The light came like a soundless explosion. He saw his suitcase open on the bed, his clothes disheveled by a quick, frantic search. The desk stood open, and the wardrobe closet had been forced open as well: He was not concerned about what might have been found, because he’d brought nothing important with him from New York. The room was otherwise empty. There was no other sign of the intruder.

Then he saw that the bathroom door was ajar, and he had left it wide open deliberately. Whoever was here had been clumsy, not at all professional, leaving such evidence of his presence. Durell frowned. He took his gun out silently and crossed the room to the door of the bath.

“Come out quietly,” he said.

There was no sound from inside. Carefully extending his arm, he pushed the door inward with his fingertips. His gun was ready. The door thudded lightly against something that shouldn't be there, and he heard a faint gasp, a quick intake of breath, the scrape of a shoe.

“Don’t be foolish,” he said softly.

“Please—” someone said.

“Come out. Now. Or—”

It was the blonde woman who had shadowed him from the Geneva airport. She moved into the light with a diffident gesture, her head lowered, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her shapeless cloth coat.

“Take your hands out where I can see them,” Durell said.

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”

She looked terrified. There was no gun. Her blue eyes were dark and wide, filled with apprehension. Her thick blonde hair was wet, as if she had been walking in the rain for a long time before coming here. She wore her flat-heeled shoes and a rough tweed skirt and heavy, lumpy sweater. She stood only a few inches shorter than Durell, and her wide mouth trembled.

“Please,” she said, in accented English. “I waited for you—”

“I’ll bet.” He gestured to his open suitcase. “Did you do this?”

“Kopa ordered me to search your papers.”

“And who is Kopa?”

“The bald man. You saw him. He is sure you saw him. He gives me orders. He is—like you—a man like you, a—”

“Spy?”

“Yes.”

“For whom?”

“For them,” she said, and she sounded bitter and lost. “I must do only what he says, he told me. I—-I am not accustomed to this sort of thing, you must believe that.”

“I do,” Durell said. “You’re too clumsy to be anything but an amateur.”

She hesitated. “Are you—will you call the police?” “Perhaps. You said you waited here for me?”

“Yes. If Kopa learns of this, I—it will mean disaster for me, a loss of everything. But I hate him, you understand. Believe me. I do not do this willingly. I hate it. May—may I sit down? I feel so—I’m so tired, I can’t think—”

“Go ahead.”

She sank into a chair facing the doorway. Durell stood in front of her. She folded her hands in her lap and kept her legs primly together. She had good posture; her back was straight, her head would normally be held in a proud manner, he decided. She wore no cosmetics at all, and her lips were pale and pink. There were astonishing freckles in a spray across the bridge of her nose. She looked up at Durell in a moment of silent appeal.

“Please understand that I must do as I am told. I have no choice. It is not that I would do anything to hurt anyone in this world. I was not brought up in such beliefs, and in my heart, I only wish to be safe and free of it all, to live in peace and solitude with Mihály."

“Mihály?”

“My little brother.”

“Where is he?”

“In a small town, near Budapest. They keep him there. It is because of him, to keep him safe, that I must take orders from Kopa. I am told it will go very badly for Mihály if I disobey.”

“I see. Assuming what you say is true, and they blackmailed you into this business, why do you take the risk of talking to me now?”

“Because of what Kopa plans—-he is such an evil man, I am so afraid of him—and when I saw you with that woman in the bar—Miss Padgett, is that not her name?— then I knew, in common decency, that I must warn you about Kopa.”

“What does Miss Padgett have to do with it?”

“It is not the girl that Kopa really wants. It is you. He hopes to get you, through her.”

Durell kept his face blank. “Indeed? How?”

She looked down at her rough hands. “I do not know.” “I’m sure you do. Tell me how.”

“Well, I—” She was silent, biting her lips, then said: "She seems—how shall I say it?—innocent.” A muscle tightened in her jaw as she clenched her teeth for a moment. “I wish I could be like her, have everything she has, know the peace she has known. I would not want Kopa to put his hands on her. The thought of it makes me want to scream. I do not know the details. I only waited here to warn you that something will be done to her, to make you do as Kopa wishes.”

“I see. Can you tell me more about this Kopa?”

“I know very little. But he has told me about you. If he snares you, he will get a promotion, fame, rewards. You and the—the man they call Stepanic, who went up into space. He says you will be a kind of—of a bonus.”

“Is he MVD?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Assigned to get me through Deirdre Padgett?”

“Yes.”

He felt no satisfaction in finding his hunch verified like this. There was an uneasiness in him, a failure to understand or quite believe the blonde girl. This admission from her came too readily—although everything she said, in her amateur’s way, might well be taken at precisely face value. One could get too involved and devious in this business, Durell thought. Sometimes simplicity looked unreal in a world where lies and counter-lies were the normal thing. “Does Kopa have any other name?” he asked quietly. She shook her head. “I know him only by that.” “And do you have a name?”

“Mara. I am Mara Tirana. I was a secretary in Budapest when the revolution came, four years ago. That’s when they took Mihály from me, and put him in that actors’ school, and said that since I was so anxious to flee to the West—I tried to escape the purge, with Mihály, but we were not lucky, we were caught and kept in prison together for a long time—they said that since I was so anxious to see the West, I could do so, but with Kopa, and obeying Kopa’s orders.”

“Is this your first mission?”

She considered her hands again. “No.” Then she looked up, and beyond him, toward the hotel room door at his back. There was a split second when her eyes widened in alarm, disbelief, dismay—

Durell started his turn instantly.

He had his gun in hand. He was aware of quick despair, of anger that he had been careless for a moment, because this girl had been talking about danger to Deirdre and had captured all his attention—

There was nothing he could do.

The man who had come into the room behind him was an expert. It was the bald, pseudo-English salesman of woolens. It was Kopa.

He caught only a glimpse of the bald man before something slashed down on his gun arm with excruciating pain, instantly followed by a blow on the head that made his ears ring. He felt paralyzed and fell, crashing to the floor. His gun flew from nerveless fingers as if it were alive, bouncing on the carpet under the bed. The blonde girl gave a stifled scream.

“Kopa, don’t—!”

There was a slapping sound, a grunt, another crash. Durell could not see what happened. He cursed his carelessness with desperate fury, tried to rise, got one leg under him, collapsed, and tried again. A heavy foot contemptuously kicked him over. He looked up at the ceiling lights and saw them expand and contract with strange, iridescent rings, and saw Kopa as a monstrous image towering enormously over him, huge and dark.

There was a flicker of movement.

He thought he heard the telephone ring.

And then there was nothing.

CHAPTER V

It was afternoon of the second day since Adam Stepanic awoke in the stone hut. Sunlight shone in a yellow shaft through the square window and made dust motes glisten where he looked. He felt better. The drugs that Lissa gave him had finally taken hold and his fevered dreams no longer tormented him.

He knew that she had remained by the bed all through the long night, never leaving him while he slept. Yet when he looked at her, he saw the same cold antagonism that had been there before.

“Good afternoon,” she said in English. “You feel better?”

“Yes,” Adam said, and smiled. “Yes, thank you.” “Do not thank me. I did it because Papa Jamak asked me. I am a good daughter, and I obey.” Her mouth smiled coldly in return.

Adam looked around the hut. “Where is the old man?” “In the forest, cutting wood. It is what he does to earn enough money so he can eat. My mother works with him. They have worked like this ever since Giurgiu betrayed them with his political stupidity. They—and Gija and I— have been treated like lepers and outcasts.”

“I see,” Adam said quietly.

“You see nothing. Americans have always been so safe, you cannot imagine what life holds for people like us. You always have enough to eat, everything. I can remember what it was like. You are smug and you believe the world is made to serve you.”

“That’s not true. That’s propaganda talking.” Adam looked at her curiously. “Why are you so angry with me?”

“Because you have brought danger to my parents, and I do not think you are worth it.”

“Then why not call the police right now?”

“Because I hate Petar Medjan more than I despise you.” She turned away. She wore a woolen dress of simple design, although the tiled Russian-style stove in the room made the hut very warm. Her dark red hair was tied in a severe knot at the nape of her neck. There were lavender shadows under her cool brown eyes. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked abruptly. “There is only soup and black bread.”

“Yes.” He was suddenly hungry. “That will be fine.” He watched her move to the stove. The gray dress clung softly to her curved body, outlining the symmetry of her hips. Her back was straight and proud. She made him feel guilty, because he didn’t want to endanger anyone. Yet the danger she mentioned seemed academic; the hut was safe. Through the window he could see the wild mountainside she called Zara Dagh. The October sun was tinged with yellow. Adam sat up in the bed. There was an air of security here, as if the hut were a tiny fortress in a wilderness of savage things.

Lissa returned with a bowl of soup and bread. “Yes, you are better. I see it in the way you look at me.” Her smile this time touched her whole face, changing her expression dramatically.

“When will your brother Gija return?” he asked. She shrugged. “When God wills.”

“They’re looking for me, you know. They must know I came down somewhere near here.”

“Everyone looks for you,” Lissa said calmly. “The whole world speaks of you, though you are not the first to do what you did.”

“The first for my side,” he said.

“Yes. But a little late, as usual.”

“We’ll catch up. That’s why it’s so important to get back, with my instruments. Otherwise, it’s all to do over, with more lost time.” He paused. “And don’t needle me, Lissa. I only want to be friends.”

“I’m sorry. The old people have suffered so much, and you bring it back again. They are trapped here. In the village, because of Giurgiu’s politics, we are treated as if we might contaminate the people with something the authorities cannot permit in this country.” She paused. “You understand this with your mind, not with your heart.”

She had a quality of iron control, Adam thought, as he ate. But it was brittle, and she might snap and break if pushed too far, rather than bend and yield, and so survive. He finished the soup and watched the way the sunlight tangled in her dark red hair.

When she took the empty bowl and carried it outside, he saw through the doorway a small clearing, with neatly stacked cordwood, and a horse tethered to a pine tree. A path wound out of sight into the woods. He heard the creak of a hand pump as the girl washed the dishes, and then he threw back the blanket and looked at his injured leg. He wore only a pair of shorts. His body was mottled with bruises, but he had been bathed clean of the mud and blood which had clung to him when he had dragged himself from the wrecked capsule. His leg was still swollen, but the ache of infection had dramatically eased. For the first time, he began to hope he might get out of this alive.

When he looked up, Lissa was in the doorway staring at something out of sight. Tension was evident in the way she stood and looked.

“What is it, Lissa?”

“Nothing. Be quiet.”

“Where are my clothes?”

She did not look at him. “I washed them. They are in the cupboard by the bed—but you cannot walk yet.” “What do you see out there?” Adam asked.

“The old people are coming back. And it is too soon.” He sat up and his head swam with the effort. He had to hold onto the bed with his head lowered, waiting for nausea to pass. He broke out into a light sweat, then shivered in the mountain air that spilled through the doorway where Lissa stood. A deep-throated halloo came from the old man; but Lissa remained silent, waiting. Then she stepped out, deliberately closing the door after her. Adam sat up again, fighting his weakness, and pulled himself upright with a grip on the big wardrobe. His breath whistled in his throat. Then he was erect, clinging to the door handle, and he pulled his khaki uniform in a tumbled heap upon himself before he collapsed on the bed again.

Voices touched him from outside. He recognized the old man’s urgent rumble, the old woman’s thin reply. He listened for Lissa’s answer with an odd tension, remembering his grandmother’s language from the long-ago days in Pittsburgh.

“You are a fool, Jamak. Is he coming here?”

“Yes, Lissa, he is on the way. I spoke to him only for a moment. Then Jelenka and I took the Zara Dagh path and ran most of the way. But Medjan will be here soon.”

“Does he suspect anything?”

“You know his face. It is like black stone.”

The girl muttered: “He must know something, or he would not dare—”

“What will you do, Lissa?”

“Perhaps we should give him up,” she said.

“How can we do that now?”

“How? How?”. The girl’s voice lifted impatiently. “Would you kill us all for the American? What do we owe that man? We did not ask for him to fall on us from the sky. And he can bring the axe falling on our necks, if he is discovered here. We owe him nothing—nothing! Don’t you understand? Why should we help him? We must live and survive here. Would they help us in a reverse situation? I think not!”

The mother’s voice said gently: “Lissa, you cannot give him to Lieutenant Petar Medjan. You must not.”

“Can we hide him, then?”

The old man spoke. “In the bam, perhaps.”

“And if the barn is searched, and he is found?”

Their silence was an eloquent answer to the girl’s question. Adam stood up again, clung to the bedpost. It was easier now. He struggled into trousers, shirt, shoes. The argument went on outside, but it was quieter now, as if they were now aware that he might be listening. Only the adamant old man saved him, he thought. Yet he could find no anger or blame toward the girl. What was he to them? A foreigner. A deadly danger, dropped from the sky like a plague upon them. She was right, they owed him nothing.

He couldn’t put on his right shoe. His leg was too stiff to let him bend over. Then the door was opened hurriedly and the girl ran across the room toward him and knelt at his feet as he sat on the bed. Her red hair looked burnished in the late afternoon sunlight that came through the doorway. The wind felt cold, and smelled of the pine trees.

She spoke without looking up. “Did you hear it all?”

“Part of it,” he admitted.

“The best thing you could do for us would be to surrender to the authorities now, without waiting any more. I love my parents. This danger is too much to ask them to risk. Put out your foot, please, so I can get your shoe on.”

“I won’t surrender myself,” Adam said. “Not while there is any chance I can get out, with the instruments.” “The only chance you have is with me, do you understand?”

“Yes. And I am grateful.”

“I do not do it for gratitude. I do it because Jamak is a stubborn, foolish, and gallant old man.”

“You’re not worried about yourself?” he asked.

She raised her head. Her face was lovely, like alabaster, hut cold and hostile in her gaze. “I have a price I may have to pay, to keep you safe. Petar Medjan wants me.”

“Now, look, I don’t ask—”

“Please. Don’t be foolish or blind. He is head of the police in Viajec. And he is my only friend, in a way. He is cruel and officious, and an ugly man, although strong. But because he wants me, he has lent his influence to allowing us all to live here in reasonable peace. Now and then, I must encourage him. But he is not eternally patient. Today he comes to claim something from me.”

“You don’t have to, for me,” Adam said. “I can hide in the woods.”

“With your leg? You would die in a few hours. Or be caught, and made to talk, which would be worse. Come, lean on me. We haven’t much time to hide you.”

He tried to take a few steps alone, ignoring her offer. Somehow he was angry with her now. The next moment he felt the pain again, and his pride collapsed in a wave of dizziness. The girl supported him as he stumbled out through the doorway into the clearing.

The sunlight was blinding. The cold, mountain air helped, and he sucked in a great, rasping lungful. The old couple stood staring at him, and Jamak started forward to help, but Lissa waved him back. Slowly, laboriously, Adam moved around the hut toward a stone barn in the rear.

The barn was not much larger than the hut, but he was happy to get out of the cutting wind as the girl guided him through the doorway. A cow stood in a stall and turned her head to stare at them with great, limpid eyes. There was a tiny hayloft, and a ladder going up, and Adam paused and looked at it and shook his head in dismay.

“I can’t make it.”

“You must,” the girl insisted. “Try.”

“My leg—”

“Medjan will shoot you on the spot, if you are found here. And perhaps all of us, as well. So get up there.”

Adam drew a deep breath and reached for the rungs of the crude ladder. By using the strength of his arms and shoulders, he hauled himself up step by step until he was able to roll over onto the edge of the wooden platform. He was drenched with sweat from the effort. The girl looked up at him anxiously.

“Cover yourself with straw, quickly. And make no sound!”

He nodded, unable to speak for the moment, and rolled away from the edge of the hayloft and lay, gasping, with the rafters of the barn roof only two feet overhead on the low platform.

They had been none too soon. Booted steps crunched on the gravel outside. He heard the girl turn swiftly to leave the bam, but it was too late. A man’s harsh voice rang out, echoing.

“Lissa? Are you there?”

The girl paused. Then Adam could see her as she moved out into the sunlight that spilled through the bam door. “I am here, Petar Medjan.”

“Ah, yes. I have just seen Jamak. He looks remarkably well, for a man who was as sick as you said.”

“The medicine works miracles,” Lissa said quietly.

“Miracles, indeed!” The man laughed thickly. “Well, I am happy to have been able to help, you see. You look well, Lissa.”

“I am well,” the girl said.

The man loomed suddenly in sight when Lissa moved again as if to leave the barn. He blocked the entrance like a heavy shadow, thick arms out-thrust to lean on the doorpost. His booted legs straddled the earth in a posture of absolute authority.

He was uniformed in the blue of the Internal Security Police, with polished boots and a holstered gun at his hip. He took off his visored cap and the sun shone on a strong face like carved rock, on thick black hair. The man had the physique of a bull, with massive shoulders, a thick chest, a booming voice. His eyes squinted into the interior shadows of the bam, lifted to consider the placid cow in its stall, then touched the ladder to the hayloft. Adam felt his heart lurch as Medjan’s glance swept upward. Too late now to draw farther back into the loose hay. The movement would be seen. He had to count on the shadows to hide him, more than anything else.

The security man’s glance swept on, dropped back to the slim figure of the girl who managed to convey an air of defiance as she faced him in the doorway.

“We missed you in Viajec this past night.”

“No one among the peasants was ill. I had no duties, and my father needed me.”

“Of course, of course, Lissa. Perhaps I should have said it was I who missed you.”

“Let us not talk about it. I am tired. I had little sleep.” “You never want to talk about it, Lissa. What is the matter? You know how I feel. I will not crawl or act the lover-dandy for you. I have been kind to you, have I not? Your family lives in peace here. Can I do more? Do I not make myself plain?”

“Please, Petar Medjan—”

“Come here, Lissa.”

“I must go back,” the girl said coldly.

“Come here!”

Without warning, his arm shot out and caught the girl and pulled her to him. She did not resist when he tangled thick fingers in her hair and yanked her head back so her face was upturned to his. Adam saw the lust on the man’s cruel, strong face. Medjan kissed her brutally, and he knew she was hurt by his embrace. He trembled. He did not want to watch the girl’s degradation, knowing it was because of him, knowing at last the full price she had to pay for his safety.

But he did not dare move or make a sound in the hayloft. He was crippled and helpless against the other’s strength and weapons. It would be suicide. It would be worse than useless—

Lissa still did not resist when Medjan fumbled at her clothing. For a moment the sound of his breathing rasped through the close air of the bam. Lissa stood limply, hands at her sides. The man muttered something, then suddenly straightened in frustration. The sunlight caught his pale eyes under his thick, angry brows. He shoved her aside and she tripped, stumbling, and caught herself.

“Agh! Not like this! Must I have you like this?”

“It is not the time, Medjan,” she said quietly.

“When is the time, then? You promise and promise—”

“I never promised anything, Medjan.”

“With your eyes, with your manner, when you want something that only I, I, Petar Medjan, can get for you—oh, then you are sweet and pliant and presumably willing!” the man shouted. “You will be sorry for all this, Lissa! I am not a boy, to be played with, as you play with me!”

She was silent. Adam could see the rapid, uncertain lift of her breasts as she breathed. For a moment, the uniformed man and the girl stared at each other, the one angry and bull-like, uncertain about his next move—and the girl quietly waiting, trying to defeat him by not resisting. Then Medjan made an impatient sound and abruptly threw her to the floor of the bam. They were out of Adam’s narrow range of vision now; but he could hear the sounds Medjan made, the grunting, the slap of his hand on flesh, the girl’s stifled whimper, the rhythmic gasps of the big man, the sobs of satisfaction from him, the groan of pain from the girl.

Adam gritted his teeth. A thin chill of sweat covered him. The hay in which he sprawled thrust needle probes against his neck and legs. There was a curious wet warmth on his injured leg, and a new alarm overcame his disgust and frantic helplessness. At the same moment, he heard the soft sound of something dropping through the chinks in the rough planks of the hayloft. He wanted to turn his head to look at his leg, but he didn’t dare move. It was bleeding again, and the blood was dripping through the planks to the floor below the hayloft. Even as he realized this, he heard a soft spattering of drops, a sudden increase of the flow. He held his breath.

Under him, it was all over. The act had been like that of an animal, quick and implacable, a movement of inflamed lust guttering out now in the man’s sigh, in the girl’s whimper. Adam heard Lissa reach for her clothing again. The man stood up. Adam could see him now. His face looked swollen and replete, and yet dissatisfied.

“Well, Lissa,” he said thickly. “I gave you medicine and antibiotics, but you are not grateful at all, are you?”

“I was. Believe me, I was.”

“You did not show it. I do not apologize for this.”

“I expect none,” she whispered. “Are you finished with me now?”

“I only want to warn you that there will be trouble in the neighborhood soon, and it would be best if you stayed here.”

“Trouble?”

“There’s something up in the whole area around here. A lot of official excitement. There’s talk of a dragnet through the mountains.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s official business, Lissa.” The man grinned. He had a steel tooth in his mouth that flashed in the sunlight. He patted her cheek possessively. Adam could not see the girl’s face. She stood before the big man in her torn clothing as if she had been broken. “Stay here with your parents for a day or two. I’ll be back. It would be best if no one remembers you or Giurgiu for now, eh? Here you are safe, as long as you cooperate. Understand?”

“Yes. I understand,” she whispered thinly.

He laughed. “I expected a knife in my back, you know that, Lissa? I expected more fire from you.”

“The knife is in the house,” she whispered.

“For next time?” he grinned. Then his face hardened. “Next time I shall expect you to behave a little better, eh? I shall insist on it. There was no pleasure in having you so unwillingly.”

“Yes, Petar Medjan,” she whispered.

“Everything is as usual here now, is it not? You haven’t seen any strangers around?”

“No one comes to Zara Dagh,” she said, shrugging. “Well. . .”

There came another faint pattering of blood droplets on the floor under the hayloft. Adam gritted his teeth. He knew the girl had heard the sounds now, and she moved quickly, turning through the doorway so that Medjan followed her, turning out of the barn. But then the man halted and looked back and stared hard at the cow in its stall.

“Lissa. . . ”

“I am tired,” she said. “I will see you again. Soon.”

“And it will be different?”

“Yes. Quite different.”

They walked away.

Adam waited for several moments until he could no longer hear the crunch of boots on the ground. Then he turned and looked at his leg. It was covered with blood. He felt a quick panic, watching the dark puddle that spread on the floor of the hayloft, running into the crack between the planks. He felt as if he couldn’t stay here in this place a moment longer. He was ashamed of his manhood, for what he had helplessly witnessed. Without thinking further, shivering and sweating all at the same time, he pulled himself up and dragged himself to the ladder.

He had to get away from here. He couldn’t face Lissa again. And Medjan was not stupid. Adam had the impression that the lieutenant was smarter than Lissa gave him credit for. But more than that, he could not stay and bring more grief to these people.

They were guilty of nothing more than trying to survive. Because of the one son, Giurgiu, who had risen to power and took a wrong step somewhere that ended in his execution, they lived like this, alone and in fear, outcasts at the mercy of Medjan’s whims. He could not endanger them any more. It wasn’t fair to them.

Carefully, slowly, he climbed down the ladder, letting his wounded leg dangle free. His thigh was wet and warm with the blood from his injury. No matter. He could bandage it himself. Pausing, he rested his weight on it, felt the pain again, bit his lip against it, and limped to the barn door. The girl and Medjan were gone out of sight beyond the stone hut. Nearby, the pine woods began, dropping down a slope into a ravine where he could see only the treetops. Water gushed and chattered somewhere down there. He started that way.

He would find the capsule himself, he decided, recover the instruments that weren’t damaged and stay there until he was better, and could think of taking the next step toward freedom. The capsule couldn’t be too far away. He would find some vantage point and search the mountains for a trace of its landing spot, he decided.

His breath made small plumes of vapor in the chill mountain air. He reached the pines with a quick, hobbling rush that left him staggering, clinging to a tree for support. His head hung down; his mouth was open. He had left a small trail of blood behind him. He looked at the hut, and his vision blurred, and he shook his head, but his eyes still refused to cooperate with his will. He did not have much strength. Nor was there much time. Turning, he went deeper into the woods. He did not go far.

A stone moved underfoot, and he felt himself falling, and his injured leg banged against something and the pain leaped up like something screaming inside him. A small cry escaped him. He saw he had come abruptly to the edge of the ravine, and the wall of the gorge was a steep, rocky drop. He staggered, fell to his knees, and tried to stop himself. But he could not hang on. For an instant he hung dizzyingly between earth and sky, with the wind in the pines like the labored sound of his breathing. His fingers scrabbled desperately at the earth, clawed at air—

And he fell.

CHAPTER VI

In Vienna, hours later, the telephone rang again.

Durell opened his eyes. The ceiling light in his room at the Bristol still shone, expanding and contracting with luminous colored rings. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked up again. That was better. His gaze sharpened and moved sidewise and up again.

The telephone rang once more.

He sat up, felt an ache in the back of his neck and a stab of pain when he put his weight on his right arm. He drew in a sharp whistling breath and forced himself up on his feet, to sway drunkenly in the middle of the room.

Everything was quiet. The corridor door was closed. The blonde girl, Mara Tirana, and the MVD man, Kopa, were gone.

He was lucky to be alive, he thought.

Why hadn’t Kopa taken a few extra moments to shoot him? It was one of the KGB objectives, Durell knew. Or at least, Kopa could have forced, or tried to force, some answers from him. Why hadn’t he finished the job?

Perhaps the telephone had frightened them off. It kept ringing, reaching for him with insistent shrillness, refusing to let him sit down to rest and ease his swimming head. He walked slowly to the disheveled desk and picked it up, but it fell from his fingers and he had to stoop carefully to retrieve it.

“Yes?”

“Herr Durell?” It was Otto. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I don’t know why. They had me cold, a moment ago—”

“I had a man in the room next to you.” Otto sounded apologetic. “Forgive me, I thought it was wise. He had orders to shout for the police if there was any sign of a disturbance in your room.”

“Where is your man now?”

“Gone after Kopa and the girl. But I’m afraid they both got away. Still, he did his job, no? He just called on another phone—from a cafe on the Marianenstrasse—a schnapps-drinkers joint. Kopa and the girl fled from your room. He looked at you, but only enough to determine you were not dead. Then he went after them. But he thinks he lost them.”

“All right,” Durell said. “Can you get me information on those two? I made a mistake about them. I thought they were just from the surveillance arm of the KGB—topol’-shchiki, foot-sloggers. But Kopa must be a code name. Have you got anything on him or the girl, Mara Tirana?”

“I can have it for you. Herr Durell, I thought you should know—” Then Otto paused. “Are you sure you are all right?”

“I’m alone with a headache. What is it?

“Your pardon. I was only being careful. But Harry Hammett is gone. He met Fraulein Padgett and took her with him.”

Durell drew in a sharp, painful breath. “Where?”

“To the rendezvous. I thought you should know.” “Thank you.” Durell scowled, shook his head. “Listen, can you take me to the rendezvous point?”

“Well, I—yes, I can. I think you should go. It is not right for Hammett to take the girl with him. She is only to bring the car back, you understand—this is what Herr Hammett tells me. But she does not belong in the picture and I could not agree, so I thought to tell you.”

“Where can we meet?”

Otto coughed apologetically in the telephone. “I did more. There was an urgent call from Washington about you. You are to speak to General Dickinson McFee at once. The phones here in my safe house are absolutely secure. You had better come here.”

“All right,” Durell said. “In ten minutes.”

“Be most careful, please. There may be more topol'-shchiki on surveillance duty at the hotel.”

“I'll watch it.”

“Good. I shall be waiting for you.”

Durell dropped the French phone on its delicate hooks and drew a deep breath. The room swung in an unsteady circle around him. He shook his head and walked into the bathroom, stripped off his shirt and tie, and ran cold water in the basin, where he had plunged his head under the reviving tap, he felt better. He would have liked a drink, but he had no liquor in the room. He stared at himself in the mirror and saw an unfamiliar pallor in his lean face, a look of alarm that turned his blue eyes dark, almost black. He looked dangerous. He ran cold water methodically over his wrists, looked at his injured elbow and decided it was nothing more than a deep bruise. Dressed again, he searched for the gun that Kopa had knocked from his hand.

It was under the bed, where it had fallen when he lost it. Apparently Otto’s man in the next room had raised such a loud alarm that Kopa hadn’t had time to retrieve it.

He looked at his watch. It was five after ten.

He took every precaution when he left the hotel, doubling and redoubling on his trail to Otto’s “safe house.” He used the stairway instead of the elevator, walked through the kitchen into the back street, crossed over behind the huge Opera House, and mingled with a crowd in front of a cinema. He was not unaware of the danger of assassination now. But his maneuvers were successful. By the time he reached the town house at Steubenstrasse 19, he knew he had not been followed.

Otto quickly let him in. His short-cropped gray hair looked almost white against his pink face and gold-rimmed spectacles. From a vest pocket over his small paunch he took out a folded, typewritten sheet of paper. “You -were not followed, Herr Durell?”

“I was careful. What have you got there?”

“The data on Kopa and Mara Tirana. Do you want it now?”

Durell nodded and took the dossiers from the Austrian. There was a full summary on the man known as Kopa. As he suspected, Kopa was the code name for a Colonel Pavel Yudinov, of the KGB branch of State Security. On the neatly typed sheet was a typical history of such a man: born in 1921, in a remote Ukrainian village, son of peasants who fortunately escaped the classification of “kulaks,” he had been a member of the Young Pioneers and then a Komsomolets until the war, when he became a junior lieutenant political officer assigned to a mortar brigade of the 198th Division. His war record indicated three wounds, two received in the desperate battles before Moscow against the invading Nazis, another at Stalingrad. Party Card No. 4234498, dated May 10, 1946. After the war he was promoted to senior lieutenant and transferred to Moscow to the Personnel Directorate of the KGB, trained at the SMERSH Counter-Intelligence School on Stanislavskaya Street in Moscow, advanced to major in the Second Main Directorate of the Security Office Committee, which dealt with foreign intelligence. From there he had been posted to East Berlin, did a brief tour of duty in London, and another in Vienna in the Spetsburo. No notations had been made on the dossier for the past year, however, except that of his promotion to colonel.

There was one further brief note: “This man is known to have killed two prisoners held for interrogation with one blow of his fist. His nickname among associates is The Sledge.”

Durell looked up at Otto’s pale face.

“This is no ordinary case-officer in the KGB, Otto. Not a usual foot-slogger.”

“No,” Otto said. “He is too important for that.” Durell nodded. “What about the girl?”

There was much less on Mara Tirana. Age 26, bom in Budapest, arrested in the uprising of the Hungarians and transported for a three-month term in the MVD Lefortovo Prison. There was no note about a younger brother named MiMly, but this did not necessarily mean he did not exist. There was a questioned statement about possible training at SMERSH Headquarters, a suggestion that she had been inducted for foreign espionage in the KGB as a result of personal blackmail, not an unusual method for recruiting agents. There was another note that she had been assigned routine case work in Paris under “Kopa.” And nothing more.

Durell returned the dossiers, feeling dissatisfied and more worried about Deirdre than before.

From a room nearby in Otto Hoffner’s house a telephone rang with a peculiar note, and Otto started.

“It is the scramble phone. Washington. It will be for you, Herr Durell.”

“I’ll take it now. Get ready to go as soon as I’m through, Otto.”

“Yes, Herr Durell.”

It was early evening in Washington. General Dickinson McFee’s voice was sharp and crackly, with that slight pause between sentences and words while the electronic coder worked to distort his words.

“Sam? That you, Cajun?”

“Here. I’m with Hoffner.”

“I ought to have your head in a basket, Cajun, except that I’ve had the NASA, Pentagon and State on my back. Even a call from the White House. And I’m due to report to Joint Chiefs in an hour. . . . Where is Hammett?”

“I’m going after him now.”

“And your girl?”

“With Hammett.”

“All right. You’re up for disciplinary action—you know that, of course. But we’ll talk about it when and if you get back. I ordered Hammett to leave Deirdre Padgett in the States, to refuse her request to stay in Vienna under all circumstances. I don’t know what eats at you two idiots, but it’s going to get worse instead of better. You’re going in with Harry, Cajun.”

“But I didn’t—”

“If there was time, I’d have you both in a Federal pen. But we’re running out of time. We want Stepanic. I don’t give a damn about your personal feelings in this, Cajun. And I don’t care about your feud with Hammett. I want Stepanic. And you and Harry are going in to get him.”

Durell was silent. The phone crackled for a moment. “Are you there, Sam?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You listening?”

“Yes, sir.”

McFee’s voice changed. “All right. Listen, Sam—get Deirdre home. I’ll take care of it. You do the job. And watch Hammett.”

“I intend to.”

“This one won’t be simple. We’ve got reports of a regular hornet’s nest stirred up behind the Curtain. Everybody wants Stepanic. The press is on my neck, too. Make it fast and clean and come home with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all, then.”

Durell hung up.

Otto was watching him, his eyes worried behind his gold-rimmed glasses. Durell shrugged.

“Let’s go, Otto.”

“It is a personal matter between you and Herr Hammett, nein?” Otto asked. He looked small and mild, like a timid middle-aged clerk with his thin face and glasses. He drove his Porsche with expert speed, his pale hands resting lightly on the wheel. They were on the main highway out of Vienna, speeding northeast into the Marchfeld District, where the Danube was over three hundred yards wide and its channel was divided by numerous small islands. The frontier, where the river passed through a narrow gap between the lower spurs of the Carpathians, was thirty miles away. Here, in the night and rain, the countryside of church spires and fertile fields was dark and peaceful. The rain was light and steady. Otto said: “I think Hammett took the fraulein with him only to annoy you. It should not be serious. There may be no danger.”

“There is always danger,” Durell said.

“Of course. But you must remember that Harry, for all his faults, is a very competent man in the profession.”

“We all make mistakes,” Durell said grimly. “This one is Harry’s.”

“Yes, I can understand how you feel about that.” They drove on for a few more silent minutes. The road was wide and slick with rain, but Otto handled the speedy little Porsche easily. The Austrian was one of those deceptive little men who could move like a streak of lightning, if necessary. Durell felt better now, with the cold wet wind blowing in his face through the open car window. The road swung sharply east now, then a bit southerly through the Marchfeld, and now beyond the flickering masses of woodland and occasional spur of hill he could see the Danube, reflecting light from the small towns and villages on its banks. It was sixty-seven kilometers to Bratislava, on the Czech frontier, but he did not expect to have to go that far.

Here and there in the darkness was the loom of a turreted, crenellated castle, fairy-like in the dim mist and rain that covered the land, relics of the petty nobility who once ruled along the banks of the ancient river by means of piracy and brigandage. Otto Hoffner, of course, paid no attention to the landscape familiar to him. The Porsche roared smoothly eastward.

In ten minutes, Vienna was far behind. Otto slowed when they passed through a small village and halted at one of the ubiquitous yellow traffic lights in the center of the narrow, cobbled street; then they sped across the intersection. Instead of following the main autobahn, he turned a corner in the old village into a narrower street, bumped over a rough stretch of road, and swung into a narrow lane that went almost due north, directly toward the river.

“You’re sure of the place?” asked Durell.

“The boy, Anton, described it carefully to Harry, before Harry lost patience with him. The meeting was to be at ten o’clock.”

“It’s after that, now.”

“But we have not met Fraulein Padgett coming back in Harry’s car,” Otto pointed out.

There were dense woodlands on either side of the narrow lane, and the car’s headlights bored a bright path through a dripping, leafy tunnel marked by careful fences. Otto slowed down even more, and then the lane angled sharply right again, and they were out of the woods.

Lights made an ochrous pallor on the undersides of low-hanging clouds in the sky to the east.

“Bratislava,” Otto said laconically. “Not far off. There is the river.” He sounded worried. “There should be a field here, and a white farmhouse, a small village just beyond. Harry was to meet this Gija fellow from the Czech barge at the first side road from this point.”

“I’d suggest you turn off your lights, then,” Durell said.

“Of course. Sorry.”

They crawled ahead, easing their way through the gloom. The reflection of city lights in the far distance made things a little easier. Durell could see the Danube now, a broad reach of rain-dimpled water, with the opposite bank, beyond several small islands, probably in Czech territory at this point. To the east was the loom of hills that narrowed the gap for the river to pass through the spurs of the Carpathians. Lights twinkled on the river, and there were moving objects, barges and small steamers chuffing, with diesel engines muttering in the mist, and an occasional glimmer of red or green running lights from the international river traffic.

“Here we are,” Otto said suddenly.

He turned the Porsche abruptly into a high, hedged road. There was a field to the right, a dim collection of farm buildings close to the river bank.

“Harry’s car,” Otto said in a strange voice. “Right ahead.”

Durell saw the dim gleam of wet metal blocking the road. Otto braked and turned off the motor. In the silence, they heard crickets singing disconsolately in the rainswept fields, and the faraway throb of a river barge seemed louder through the darkness.

The car ahead, an American Chevrolet, was dark and silent. Otto drew a long, slow breath. “If Harry is still waiting, he will be angry at our appearance here. It might frighten off the contact man, this Gija that the boy talked about.”

“I’ll go ahead. Stay here, Otto.”

Otto nodded and Durell got out of the Porsche with careful silence. There was no movement in the car ahead. But surely their arrival in the lane directly behind him should have brought Harry Hammett out of his car to meet them.

Nothing happened.

The rain fell with a soft sibilance on the wet fields, dimpling the river, making the night distances wider and echoing to the opposite shore of the vast stream. The crickets sang. A few branches of the trees that lined the lane rattled in a faint wind that came up.

Durell moved toward the parked car. He could see no one inside. A deep feeling of apprehension squeezed inside him.

“Deirdre?” he called softly.

Only the rain replied.

The car ahead was empty.

He looked at the dark hedges and saw nothing to catch his attention, then opened the door to the Chevrolet. The smell of stale cigarette smoke touched him, and with it was mingled the unmistakable essence of Deirdre’s particular perfume. So Otto’s information had been correct. Deirdre had come here with Hammett. But where was she? And where was Harry? Something had happened here. He wasn’t sure what it was, but obviously things hadn’t gone along with Hammett’s confident plans.

Something glistened in a long thin smear on the driver’s wheel. It was blood. He went around the car to that side, and in the dim yellow light reflected from the low-scudding clouds, he saw that the lane had been scuffed, as if by struggling or dragging feet. He lifted his head sharply. His apprehension increased abruptly, as he thought of what might have happened to Deirdre in this lonely place. He told himself that nothing had ever hurt her, that he had always kept her safe and out of this dirty, murderous business—but this time he had been too late, had not argued forcefully enough, or done any of a dozen things to prevent her from coming here.

“Herr Durell?”

He turned. It was Otto. The man’s gold-rimmed glasses shone as he turned his pale face to the right and left.

“They’re gone, Otto.”

“There is a barn over there.”

“All right,” Durell said. “Let’s look.”

“Take it easy, my friend. You sound strange. I know how you feel about the Fraulein Padgett—”

“Shut up, Otto,” Durell said, not unkindly.

They found Harry Hammett halfway across the field to the barn.

The big blond man lay face down in the stubble of the harvested field, a few paces to one side of the footpath Durell and Otto Hoffner followed. He was just a dark, shapeless mass against the wet earth, arms outflung, legs sprawled. His raincoat was twisted around his thighs. His curly, yellow hail looked dark in the wet.

Durell knelt quickly beside him. The back of Hammett’s head was clotted with blood where the bone had been crushed. He turned the man slightly and saw the look of utter surprise stamped forever on Harry’s handsome, arrogant face.

They’re all surprised, Durell thought. None of them thinks it can happen to him. I’ll probably be surprised, too, one of these days.

Harry Hammett’s body was still warm.

But he was quite dead.

The barn was fifty yards away, and the river bank a short distance beyond. The land sloped down in neat, tidy

Austrian fields, with a copse of woodland to the west, a little cluster of whitewashed houses to the east. Beyond the barn, at the river bank, Durell could see a small boat landing, two wooden piers and a narrow shed. Red and green running lights on the Danube barges moved a half mile across the water, close to the Czechoslovakian shore. Over there was unknown territory, the Iron Curtain, a different way of life that brooded over the dark foothills of the mountains beyond the glow of lights downriver from Bratislava’s factories and busy shipping wharves.

Durell walked with Otto toward the barn.

“What do you suppose happened?” the Viennese asked.

“Harry was smart,” Durell said. “So smart he died of it.”

“There is no sign of the contact man who was to take Herr Hammett down the river.”

“He’s around.”

“You think it was this Gija who killed him?”

“I’m not thinking anything about it, yet,” Durell said. “And the girl? Fraulein Padgett?”

Durell did not answer. He felt an anger in him that wanted to tear down the dark curtains of the night. He wanted to smash and break something. He knew this anger was dangerous, just as he knew there was danger waiting in the rain all around them. They were not alone. Whatever had happened back there in Harry’s car had happened not too many minutes ago. It wasn’t over yet.

The growl of a Czech patrol boat on the river came distinctly, across the far reach of the Danube. A streak of white showed in the speedboat’s wake. A barge hooted in melancholy fashion. The rain hissed.

“It will be awkward, about Herr Hammett,” Otto murmured. “The police must be notified. We cannot hide this, of course.”

“You can handle it, Otto. You know how.”

“And some report must be made about Fraulein Padgett—”

“We’ll see. Come on.”

He was almost to the barn when his eye caught a flicker of movement down the sloping field that led to the river’s edge. It was near the boatshed and the two small wharves. Rain drove in his face in a windy gust as he halted and turned his head that way.

“What is it?” Otto whispered.

“Something down there. IJe careful. Cover me, will you?”

“I see nothing, but—yes, Herr Durell.”

Durell moved into the shadows cast by the tall barn. He could hear cattle inside, then he followed the shadow off into the field, ducked under a fence, came to another and climbed a stile, and struck off through the stubble toward the shed, coming at it from the east. He was not sure what he had seen, but now that he was closer to the river’s edge, he made out the dark glimmer of a small launch tied up to the nearest pier, hidden from him before by a rise of the land. He could not tell if anyone was in the boat. He ran a few steps, became aware of his footsteps in the crunchy stubble, and slowed abruptly.

He was being careless. His need to know what had happened to Deirdre was a wild clamor inside him. He walked more slowly, forcing himself to be cautious. In a few minutes he reached the boatshed, a small unpainted wooden structure. When he turned his head to look back, he could not see Otto Hoffner anywhere.

There was a feeling of desolation around him, although the city lights of Bratislava seemed brighter here, just ground the narrowing gap between the mountain spurs of the broad, blackly sweeping river. Something rustled in the weeds growing down toward the water’s edge, and he turned his head that way.

Someone thrust a gun in his back at that moment.

“You will be careful, mister,” a man whispered in English. Durell stood still. “Do not call or signal to your friend in the lane, please,” the voice went on. “Or I will put a bullet in your spine.”

“Who are you?” Durell asked flatly.

“My name is Gija. And you?”

“Durell. A friend of Harry Hammett’s. Did you kill him?”

The man laughed. “Not I.”

“Who, then?”

“I think the girl did it. Drop your gun and turn around.”

Durell dropped his gun to the wet ground in the shadows of the boathouse, then turned carefully. The man who had trapped him took a careful step backward, keeping his weapon out of reach of any thrust. He was a tall young man with sandy hair, wearing a sailor’s watch cap and a short peajacket; his trousers were stuffed into cowhide boots. His gun was a Magnum, powerful enough to drive a bullet through a car engine. In the dim, ochrous light, Durell saw that his face, under a reckless grin, reflected anxiety and uncertainty about his next move.

“What girl are you talking about?” Durell asked.

“She is in the boatshed. Be very careful, chum. I am nervous, as you can probably see. I came here to do a good deed, like a regular Boy Scout, and I find myself in serious trouble, and I do not like it. I am anxious to get back to where I belong. Since Mr. Hammett is dead, I have no information on my next step. And I haven’t seen young Anton since I sent the kid to Vienna.”

“I’ve seen him,” Durell said. “He’s all right.”

“Is he? He was supposed to return with Hammett.” Durell said carefully: “He’s all right. He—there was a small accident. But he’s safe in Vienna, at the American Embassy, as a matter of fact. I know all about you, Gija—how you came to meet Hammett and take him to the American astronaut, Major Stepanic.” Durell paused. “I work with Hammett. I want to know about the girl you say killed him.” Gija hesitated. He seemed to be alone. “Anton is Captain Galucz’ son. He will not like this. He is from the barge Luliga, where I work as river pilot. We’re loading at Bratislava for our trip downstream. It was arranged for Hammett to come with us and pick up Stepanic.”

“Let me see the girl,” Durell insisted.

“How can I trust you? I know nothing about you—”

“Is she in the boatshed?”

“Yes,” Gija muttered. “But be careful, and walk slow ahead of me, hey? Real slow.”

Durell turned the comer of the boathouse to an open door that faced the river above a wooden platform. The patrol boat was returning, rounding a bend in the mighty stream; its engine echo snarled back and forth from the river banks. But there was a difference now—a bright probe of a spotlight swept across the dimpled water, seeking with random stabs and starts, touching a moored tugboat and scow close to the Austrian bank, then swinging along the far shadows of the opposite side. The patrol came at a fast clip, the light swinging back and forth.

“Quick! Inside,” Gija breathed.

Durell stepped into the boathouse. His heart was clutched by tension, expecting to see Deirdre here, in God knew what condition.

Gija had a flashlight. It shot past Durell and touched the girl who lay huddled in a corner of the shed, illuminating her lumpy tweed coat, a strand of blonde hair, a trickle of blood from a scalp wound, and big frightened eyes that looked blindly into the glare of Gija’s light.

It was Mara Tirana, the woman who had last seen Durell slugged by Kopa in the hotel room at the Bristol.

Durell let out a long, exhausted breath and turned abruptly to Gija.

“And the other girl? The one who was with Hammett?” he asked sharply. “Where is she? Damn you, what happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I was down here by the river bank, and all I know is that there was a scuffle, a quick fight. It was difficult to see clearly, and I was too far away—a little late in arriving at the rendezvous, but not more than a few minutes. I thought I heard a woman scream, but I assumed it was this one. Was there another?”

“Yes. Didn’t you see her at all?”

“I heard the scream. Nothing else.” Gija looked worried. He had sandy brows that met above the bridge of a strong nose in his reckless face. He looked rakish in his pea-jacket, slightly shorter than Durell, built in a slim and wiry fashion. “Do you know this one?” he asked, gesturing toward Mara.

“Yes. We’ve met. She’s not a friend.”

“Yet whoever killed Hammett put the slug on her,” Gija said, in his curiously accented but colloquial English. “He left her for dead. The other one might explain it— there was that scream, and maybe she struggled, and the assassin had no time to make sure this one was put out of the world.”

Durell nodded. It could have happened as Gija suggested. But where was Kopa, then, and where was Deirdre? Kopa had her—there could be no doubt of that. An image of Deirdre in the bald man’s hands made him suddenly shiver. It was like a nightmare come true. All these years in the business he had tried to keep her safe, detached from his work and the dangers surrounding him. But she had come here and the danger had reached out for her and taken her. She might be dead now. But he did not think so. His mind jumped ahead, putting himself in Kopa’s place. The enemy agent had a powerful motive for going after Deirdre, and that motive was to trap bigger game. Himself. It was just as this girl, Mara, had tried to tell him, back at the Bristol Hotel. She had tried to warn him exactly of this, before Kopa came in and slugged him and prevented her from giving him the details.

He turned and looked at Mara with new interest.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

She coughed and made an inarticulate sound. “He took your girl,” she whispered. “They will be in Czechoslovakia by now.”

“How did Kopa plan to get there?”

“He had another boat waiting—a mile downstream.”

Durell gestured toward the tall young sailor. “Why didn’t Kopa wait for this one, too, Mara? Gija has what Kopa wants to know about the American spaceman, Major Stepanic.”

“He was frightened off. I—I frightened him.”

“How? Why?”

“I could not endure it,” the blonde girl said. She looked down. “Please untie me. I am your friend. Please believe me.”

“Who hit you?”

“It was Kopa.” And then she began to cry, in great racking sobs. Gija looked at her with astonishment. Durell could have taken him then, wresting the Magnum from him. But he was thinking fast, far ahead. There was Deirdre’s kidnapping to consider, and Harry Hammett’s mission. He didn’t want to antagonize the bargeman. Too many things had gone wrong already to add any unnecessary complications. “I couldn’t bear it,” Mara was whispering. “I do not wish to hurt anyone. But Kopa was suspicious, because you and I were talking in your hotel room. He demanded to know what we were saying. But I simply told him you had caught me searching there, as he had instructed me to do; and that his arrival saved me. He did not believe me entirely.” She paused and looked up, her eyes filled with bright tears. There was a naivete in her that somehow was convincing. “I cried out a warning to Harry Hammett and the girl who was with him. Kopa won out anyway, killing Mr. Hammett. Then he struck me. I was unconscious.” She touched her injured scalp wonderingly. “Then this sailor caught me as I tried to crawl away across the field. I think Kopa left me believing I was dead. But he has Miss Padgett now. And he is taking her into Czechoslovakia.”

“You’re sure of that?”

She nodded slowly. “It is part of his plan to capture you on Soviet territory, so you can be executed without any international fuss.”

“Using Deirdre, as bait, to get me into his hands?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Do you know where he intends to keep Deirdre a prisoner?”

“Yes. In Moralova Castle. A few miles east of Bratislava.”

Durell stared at her. Everything could have been arranged—the girl’s head wound, her apparent willingness to defect to the West, her spilling of information that might be intended to lead him precisely where Kopa wanted him to go. He did not know what to do. He did not trust Mara now.

There was no time to pass this information to Otto Hoffner, waiting in the dark field above. In any case, the decision was taken from him when Gija raised his gun abruptly, looked at his watch, and said: “Come, we will all go. We have no more time for talk.”

“Go where?” the girl asked wonderingly.

“Back east.” Gija grinned at her. “I'm sorry, beautiful, but we can’t leave you in Austria. You might betray our underground organization, now that you’ve seen me and know about the barge, Luliga. Captain Galucz will have to decide about you. Maybe he’ll simply drop you into the river.” Mara turned in desperate appeal to Durell, who said: “Then you’re going back to your barge?”

“As planned. I promised I’d bring an American to help Stepanic, and I will. You’re as good as anyone, maybe better than Hammett, seeing he didn’t get very far, eh? So you come in his place. And we take the blonde tear bomb with us. We sail in the hour.”

Durell hesitated only a moment. Gija was his only contact with which to reach Stepanic. With Hammett dead, the chance of getting Stepanic safely out of hostile territory might be lost forever, if someone didn’t go on the barge now.

But there was Deirdre.

He had to assume responsibility for taking over Harry Hammett’s mission now, since his call from Washington. But Deirdre was a problem he could not immediately solve. He had to make a choice. His impulse was to go after her, get her out of Kopa’s hands. He knew the sort of methods a man like Kopa might use on Deirdre—it was only too evident in the dossier he had read. Kopa could destroy her in many subtle ways, and the thought of Deirdre in his hands was almost intolerable. He had to get her free, back home, and safe.

And he had to go after Stepanic, too.

The choice between his job and Deirdre was sharp and clear. There was no way to do both.

He had to abandon one or the other.

CHAPTER VII

The rain had stopped, and now a mist hung low over the dark, smoothly flowing waters of the Danube. The mist was a help. A speedboat, hidden in the reeds along the shore a short distance from the boathouse was Gija’s immediate destination. Durell walked ahead of him with Mara, not quite sure if he, too, was a prisoner. The immediate choice of action was taken from him by Gija’s gun.

There was no sign of Otto Hoffner.

“You two sit in the middle,” Gija said softly. “Use the oars. And for your life, don’t make any noise.”

They pushed away from the bank and immediately felt the thrust of the dark, deep current going downstream. Durell, after the blonde girl’s first awkward efforts, took both oars. He could not see where they were going in the mist, but Gija had a riverman’s sixth sense of direction. In a few minutes the shore was out of sight, and they were surrounded only by the lapping black water, the curling fog, and the dim sounds of river traffic downstream.

The girl was shivering. Durell could feel it in her shoulder as she sat beside him and pressed against him.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“Yes. No. I feel sick. My head hurts.”

“You weren’t hit very hard.”

“I don’t want to go back. Please. Make him put me ashore again. I’ll be killed, shot, if Kopa gets his hands on me again.”

“What about Mihály, your brother? Or was all that just a fancy fairy tale to get my sympathy?”

She looked at him blankly as he pulled on the oars. “No, no. It was all the truth. Mihály is abandoned now. I can only hope and pray they will do nothing to him. He is only a boy. An innocent. He knows nothing of what they’ve made me do, to keep him safe. He knows nothing of the threats Kopa made to me, concerning him.”

“Be quietl” Gija snapped.

Durell looked up at the bargeman. Gija sat tensely in the stem, a hand on the tiller, just beyond the engine housing. He was studying the opposite river bank, lost in the shrouding mist. A glow of intense bright light made iridescent halos through the fog, and the snarl of the patrol boat seemed to come from all directions, growing imminently louder.

“Stop rowing,” Gija whispered. “For the love of God—”

They drifted in milky-white silence, unbroken except for the lap of current against the boat’s sides. Mara sat tensely, her shoulders straight, her face turning this way and that as if she could see through the night gloom. The glare of the patrol boat’s searchlight seemed to be coming from upriver, astern. Then the roar of its motor seemed to shake the wet atmosphere as it started again. It seemed as if the patrol was bearing straight down upon them.

Each droplet of fog hanging in the air seemed to catch the searchlight’s brilliance. In the glare, Durell saw Gija’s face go tense. They drifted on. The motor screamed invisibly toward them. The brightness increased. . . .

And then, miraculously, it went by, and they were left rocking heavily in the wash of the enemy’s wake.

“Go on rowing,” Gija said.

The waterfront of Bratislava was a busy place, a key port for the Danube traffic that went a thousand miles downstream, through Hungary and Yugoslavia and the Iron Gates into Rumania and the Black Sea ocean ports. The fog was cut somewhat by the glare of lights on the docks and factories, both munitions and machinery works, concentrated along the waterfront. Once around the bend in the river between the mountain spurs, Gija kept the boat close inshore on the Czech side, working in and out among the jutting piers to avoid the patrols that moved ceaselessly up and down the shipping channel.

The barge Luliga turned out to be comparatively new, a steel box over two hundred feet in length, powered by two semi-diesel engines. It was painted black, with huge gaping hatches that even now were receiving the last of the cargo in nets that carried numerous wooden crates into the holds. Like all barges, the Luliga had a comfortable housing aft for the crew, although most of the men aboard her now were dockworkers who began to leave as hatch after hatch was sealed down tightly.

A whistle blew as Gija waved Durell’s oars in and started the launch motor. They idled in the deep shadow of the next pier, holding their position against the thrust of the current with only an occasional revving of the engine. The noise didn’t matter now, since it was drowned by the clamor and chugging of donkey engines and screeching winches on the dock. When the dockworkers were all ashore, there came a deep, throbbing burst of power as the Luliga’s engines were started. Gija said: “We’ll go aboard now. It will be up to Captain Galucz to decide what to do about you. He will expect his son Anton to be with us.”

“Is the captain one of the underground?” Durell asked. Gija shrugged. “Half and half. He does what he does for money, or for the hope of money. You have some?”

“I’m only substituting for Hammett. I didn’t get much.”

“That will not go down well with Galucz.”

“I can promise him a reward,” Durell suggested. “Promises can’t be eaten. Well, we’ll see. Here we go,” Gija said.

A few moments later the launch was up against the massive, blunt stern of the barge. A rope ladder came snaking down and Gija gestured with the gun. They were hidden from the docks by the bulk of the barge, as first Mara, then Durell climbed up to the crew housing.

They were greeted by a stout bearded man in a thick turtleneck sweater, his head covered by a captain’s cap with a cracked and misshapen visor. This was Captain Galucz. The man’s thick brows came down in a scowl as he considered Durell and Mara; then he muttered something to Gija. Gija shrugged, and Galucz turned to Durell and spoke in roughly accented English.

“My son, Anton—where is he?”

“Safe in Vienna, captain.”

“Why did he not return to you?”

“There was an accident. He is well, I assure you. He is at the American Embassy.”

“Was there trouble?”

“No, no,” Durell said. “Otherwise, why should I be here?”

“You are not the one who was sent originally, Gija tells me. There was a killing.”

“Yes. And a kidnapping.”

“And this woman? Gija says she is a spy.”

“I do not know,” Durell said.

A cloud of steam floated from the dock across the tiny afterdeck of the barge. The captain looked uncertain. He touched his hard, round belly and wet his lips that seemed bloodless between his gray beard and moustache. A whistle sounded piercingly on the dock. A man shouted, and the captain waved a gloved hand at Gija’s gun.

“Hold them here a minute.”

Durell said suddenly: “I want to go ashore, captain.” “Eh? What’s that?” Galucz turned, scowling, his hands on his hips. “What for?”

“I told you, they kidnapped a girl. I want to go after her. I can catch up to you farther downstream.”

The captain grinned. “Are you insane? We cast off this minute. And if you returned, it would be with a boatload of security police! You must think I’m a fool! I knew I should never have agreed to this scheme, but Gija talked me into it.” He swung around to the young barge pilot. “Are you satisfied now, hey? What should we do with these people? Throw them to the carp in the Danube? Or turn them over to the police on the docks?”

Gija said: “I think the man is all right—a friend of Harry Hammett’s, the man who was killed.”

“If the first agent was killed, it means the police agents are on the whole thing already. Gija, you are a crazy fool to bring these people to the Luliga!”

“I don’t know about the woman,” Gija went on, “but —she looks all right to me, too, Fedor.”

“Bah! You are an idiot. Take them below.” The captain turned to Durell and shouted something, but his voice was lost in the clatter of winches and another ear-splitting whistle. In the fog, the floodlights beyond the barge cabin made a vast yellow aura against the sky. “As for you, you want to walk right up to the security men on the docks and point out Captain Galucz as a traitor, hey? Am I insane, to let you go now?” He swung back to Gija. “Take them ,to my cabin. Hold them there, until I can decide what to do with them. Lock them in, understand? Then come on deck so we can get started.”

“What about Tomas and Pashich?” Gija asked. “They’ve been crew on the Luliga long enough not to ask questions. Go. Or have you forgotten to obey orders?” the fat man shouted.

Gija gestured with his gun at Durell.

The choice was taken from Durell now. Wherever Deirdre was, whatever was happening to her, he could not help her at this moment.

The deckhouse was surprisingly comfortable, warm and steamy after the clammy fog of the river. Gija urged them down a ladder into the bright warmth, closed a bulkhead door after them that abruptly shut out the cacaphonous clamor on the docks. Underfoot, the steel decks trembled with the idling power of the diesels. Gija urged them forward through a small, comfortable lounge with leather chairs, with a glimpse of an efficient galley to port, then down another ladder into the living quarters. There were three cabins, the captain’s aft, and two others, smaller, with double bunks, forward, with a lavatory between. Gija motioned them into the small room to starboard.

“Stay here until Galucz cools off. But don’t worry about him. He makes noises like a steam whistle, and has a good heart. His wife was killed in the Budapest uprising. He hates the regimes on this side of the Iron Curtain much worse than you do.”

“Where do the other crew members sleep?” Durell asked.

“Up forward for this trip. I’ll get you some papers and clothes when I come back, to show the inspectors when we are boarded. It happens often. We’ll have to do something about this woman, though.” Gija stared at Mara. “Quite a shapeless wench, eh? But a pretty face, if she’d only stop that damned weeping.”

“How long will you keep us down here?” Durell asked.

“Until we are under way. Keep still and hope for the best.”

Gija went out. Bolts clicked on the outside of the door with a harsh sound. The bulkheads were all steel, impenetrable. Through the sides of the barge came only muffled sounds from the dock. There was a porthole over the double bunks, and Durell immediately switched off the light and then looked out.

Beyond the dock area was the city of Bratislava, a former medieval crossroads of church spires and parks turned into a major manufacturing town by the industrious Czechs. The city was swathed in the eerie yellow glow of the fog. He saw sudden movement on the dock as the fat, bearded captain walked into Durell’s angle of view. He was stopped by two uniformed men, armed with sidearms, and Galucz gestured impatiently, pointing to the closed hatches and waving papers in his gloved fist. He did not see Gija or the other crew members.

“Mr. Durell,” Mara began timidly. “What will happen to me? I am here only because I tried to help you, don’t you see that? If I am turned over to the police, I will be shot. Kopa knows I tried to betray him. It was not an easy thing for me to do, because of my little brother. They will take their revenge on him, and I—I’m afraid, I can’t think—”

“Sit down,” Durell said gently. “Take it easy.”

“But I’m frightened, and sick with regret—”

“You did the right thing.”

“But Mihály—he is innocent, why should a boy be punished for my mistakes? Perhaps it would be best if I were turned over to Kopa. That way, they may decide not to hurt the boy—”

Durell felt in his pockets for a cigarette. He hoped that Gija would manage to find a crew’s outfit for him, quickly. He looked down at Mara as she sat on the edge of the lower bunk. Her blonde hair was damp from the fog, but the chill had put some color in her cheeks, and he saw that her complexion was remarkably clear. Her fine eyes, despite her tears, were big and round and appealing. Her mouth trembled and she bit her lower lip and looked down at her hands.

He told himself to relax, since there was nothing he could do now except to go along with the swift tide of events that had brought him here.

“Will you help me?” Mara asked in a small voice. Her eyes looked up at him, and he had the sudden surprising sensation that she could be a remarkably beautiful woman, if she were not so frightened. “I will do anything you say— we are both prisoners, I think—these bargemen do not trust either of us. If we can work together—”

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You—you know more about these things than I. I’ve seen you—you are frightening, you are efficient, you can think of something to help me. And in return, I will obey your orders, do anything you say—”

“Do you really want to defect to the West?”

She twisted her fingers. “If I could take Mihály with me—"

“And if we could pick up the boy somehow, on our way downriver. . ."

Her lips parted, and her eyes brightened with sudden hope. “Oh, if you could—and then take us with you when the man you came to find is safe—it would be—like a miracle! I would be so grateful. . . .”

There came a sudden increase in the trembling of the deck underfoot, a sense of movement, of powerful thrust from the twin diesels. Durell went to the porthole again and looked out. The dock was receding as the barge slogged its way out into midstream. The pier was empty now except for the two uniformed policemen who stood talking in a pool of light cast by one of the floodlamps.

They were on their way.

More than a thousand miles separated them from a port on the Black Sea where they might escape into friendly NATO territory in Turkey. A thousand miles of danger, distrust, peril from the river and from the hundreds of suspicious eyes that would watch their progress down the Danube.

Whether he liked it or not, he had Hammett’s assignment now. Gija knew where Stepanic was hidden, but so far he had given out no information. That would come, when Gija decided to trust him.

But there was Deirdre, somewhere in Bratislava. What would happen when Kopa learned that his bait to trap Durell had failed? He did not want to think about it. He felt a sudden frustrated anger against the rules of this business. The individual counted for nothing; the job was all-important. If a friend fell, and had to be left behind, that was what had to be done. Every man in K Section understood this and accepted these risks. It was a lonely business, cruel, exacting a price in loyalty and humanity each step of the way.

But Deirdre was an innocent bystander, and no diplomatic representations could be made in this case, no official acknowledgement of her predicament, without giving away too much of the mission and endangering both Stepanic and himself.

He felt a heavy sense of responsibility. He should have insisted, back in Vienna, that Deirdre take the first plane back to the States. And now that she was a prisoner, if it came to a showdown, he would have to surrender himself in order to set her free.

He crushed out his cigarette in a steel ashtray. It was warm in the little cabin. The barge thrust steadily ahead. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost midnight.

“Mr. Durell—”

He looked at Mara. For the moment, he had forgotten her. She still sat in her shapeless tweed coat, as if she were cold. Her eyes regarded him soberly.

“I know what you are feeling about the girl. I know all of Kopa’s plans. He is a shrewd, clever man. It is quite possible that he planned everything, you understand? The murder, so that you would come, instead of Hammett. And my capture, to accompany you and tell you exactly this. But I know what he will do with the girl. I can help you. It may be that this is what Kopa wants me to do—but if you can find a way to get her back, knowing what Kopa plans, I will help you to do it.”

Durell sat down on the bunk beside her.

“All right,” he said quietly. ‘“Tell me.”

CHAPTER VIII

On the day after Medjan came to the hut, Adam insisted on returning to the capsule. Lissa thought it too dangerous.

“I’ve got to know if anything can be salvaged,” Adam said. “Otherwise, I’m just endangering all of you for nothing. I need the tapes and instruments. Do you know where the capsule is, Lissa?”

“I can take you there.” She nodded and smiled. “If you think you can make it this time without falling down the mountain.”

He had awakened back in the hut, after his futile attempt to escape from the barn. The girl was angry at what she considered his foolish heroics. Lissa and the old man had found him easily and carried him back to the hut, where they fed him hot soup and gave him the last of the antibiotics before he fell asleep.

This morning his strength returned; the damage which his leg had suffered in the fall was only superficial.

Lissa’s hair was done differently, he noted, allowing the dark red waves to fall softly to her slim shoulders. She wore a black sweater and slacks. The old couple were out in the woods, and he could hear the distant, steely ring of Jamak’s axe from afar.

Lissa sat down on the bed beside him, but she kept her face averted. “Adam, you are foolish if you place too much importance on what happened between Medjan and me.”

“Was it the first time?”

She nodded. “Yes. I could not—I wasn’t strong enough—”

He said bitterly: “And I was too helpless. It wasn’t easy to hide up there. It made me feel less than a man.”

“You are too proud, Adam.” She drew a deep breath and looked at him with strange eyes. “I have thought about you all night. Jamak's attitude makes more sense now. I can remember a little of America, when we all lived in Pittsburgh. It was very comfortable there.”

“Would you want to go back?” he asked. “If my friends come for me, perhaps we can all get out together.” She shook her head. “That is too much to hope for. I don’t care about myself—I am young, and I can get accustomed to this life. But something must be done for the old people.”

“We can all get out together,” he insisted.

“I don’t like to hope too much.” She paused. “Please say nothing to Jamak about it now, anyway. It will be some days before Gija returns. He’s a pilot on a Danube barge, you know—he was here on vacation when you fell upon us.” She smiled thinly. “But he is a wild one, too brave to be sensible. So we can only hope for the best.”

The sudden, screaming thunder of a military jet plane overhead made them fall silent. It was such an unexpected sound here that Adam’s heart lurched with unreasoning alarm. The jet swooped low, shaking the earth, then howled away to the north. After a moment, Adam said: “Does this happen often?”

Lissa shook her head. “It is the very first time here.” “Then they’re looking for me and the capsule.”

“Yes. Medjan said the countryside was alerted. Fortunately, there were thunderstorms to confuse the radar when you landed.”

“But from the air they’ll spot the crash site easily.” “No, you came down just south of Zara Dagh, on a gravel bed; and then the capsule slid into a ravine between the trees. The scar on the gravel will look like a natural landslide, and we took up the parachutes and buried them.” Adam exhaled slowly. “For someone who doesn’t approve of me, you’ve done a lot to save me.”

“I never said I disapproved.” Lissa’s eyes met his evenly. “I only resent the danger you brought to us. I know you could not help yourself, but the heart is never logical, like the mind.”

“Speaking of the heart—”

“You are very much in love with your Deirdre, yes?” Lissa looked down at her hands. “You spoke her name again in your sleep. She must be very different from me—soft and elegant and sure of herself. And I am only a village nurse, with blunt hands and ways—and yesterday, yes, if you insist on speaking of it, the local policeman raped me.”

“None of that matters,” Adam said quietly.

“You are a liar.” She looked angry, then tearful, then suddenly laughed, a soft sound deep in her throat. “But a nice one, Adam Stepanic. I like you very much.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

At eleven o’clock they set out for the capsule. Rain had dampened the pine woods, and a light fog clung to the valleys of Zara Dagh below the patina of sunlight. The air was warm. As long as he moved carefully, Adam had no trouble with his injured leg.

There was no way to reach the capsule except by walking along a dim trail that twisted up the mountain spurs high above the hut. They rested at regular intervals, and the mountains seemed to sing in the silence around them. These were ancient hills that had seen the outposts of Roman legions and later witnessed the feudal castles of Balkan tyrants, the cruelty of the boyars and the iron barbarism of the medieval Turks. Conquest and tyranny, hunger and torture, had ruled in a cycle of centuries. It had never been a happy land.

Adam shook off these thoughts. Lissa had taken a lunch of black bread and cheese, and they rested in a glade to eat during the noon hour.

“Are we far from the capsule now?” he asked. “Another hour, perhaps. Look, there is Viajec, the village. See, down there, where the small river shines in that sun, down the valley.”

Adam caught the flicker of sunlight on water, the gray of a bridge, the white of a concrete road. It seemed too remote to bring danger to them, from up here on Zara Dagh. “Is that the only highway in the area?” he asked. “Yes, and there is not much traffic. Over beyond that range is the valley of the Danube. About forty miles off, I think. Gija will come from over there, with help for you.” Adam considered the bleak hills. “Could we walk out that way?”

“I know of one very old trail—an old Roman road. I once found the ruins of a castra over on Belajok—that mountain, over there. This was the farthest reach of the Roman Empire, you know—their outpost against the barbarian hordes.” She paused abruptly. “Let’s finish the wine.” But he put out his hand and lowered the bottle. “What will you do about Medjan, Lissa?”

“Some day, if I cannot escape, I will kill him.”

“You have no friends in Viajec who could help you?” “There is no one.”

Looking at her, Adam felt a sudden, confusing wave of tenderness. Lissa’s red hair shone radiantly, her lips were soft and moist, and the comers of her mouth trembled. It was as if they were alone in all the world, with no one to judge them, with no tomorrow and no yesterday.

He kissed her gently, then with abrupt strength. She stiffened, resisting. Then she went apathetic, as she had done with Medjan. And then she suddenly responded with an equal violence, her mouth moving against his. Her arms held him with a wild desperation.

'‘Lissa, Lissa—” he murmured.

But she quickly tore free. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes angry and resentful. “You had no right to do that, Adam—not after yesterday. Or is it because you saw another man take me, and think it will be nothing now?”

“Don't say that,” he rapped.

“You think of me as Medjan does, as a peasant woman to be seized and enjoyed—!”

“Medjan never really took you. Listen, Lissa, don’t let it destroy you. I simply wanted to kiss you, all of a sudden—”

“You thought to show pity for me—or gratitude, because I am trying to save your life? You love someone else, your Deirdre.” She leaped up, her dark red hair swinging. “Or have you conveniently forgotten her?” Resentment and shame blazed in her eyes as Adam climbed laboriously to his feet beside her. The wind made a soft, desolate sound in the pines. All at once, the mountains seemed cold and empty. Lissa shrugged and her attitude softened. “I am sorry. We haven’t far to go to reach the capsule. And there is much to do, to get the instruments today.”

“Lissa, I’m not sorry I kissed you. Are you, truly?” But she turned away toward the vestigial footpath they had been following through the mountains. He labored after her, thinking how to rationalize his feelings. He thought of how he had wanted Deirdre. But Deirdre was far away now, and he might never see her again. She was like Lissa in many ways, full of a quiet strength. She could get along without him, in time.

Yet as he walked along, he wondered if Deirdre was thinking of him at this moment. . . .

CHAPTER IX

Deirdre sat quietly in her cell. So far, no one had touched her or questioned her. The room was simple and monastic, with a single barred window and a harsh overhead light in a tin circular shade. There was a hard cot, where she had slept several hours through the first night and the empty, frightening day. She had been fed a simple meal of veal, coffee and dark bread. Now it was night again.

She told herself to be patient, but it was not easy. Harry Hammett’s sudden death stood out starkly in her mind. She had seen him fall, seen his incredulity in the last moments of his life. She could understand now why Durell so rarely spoke about his missions or the men who had died beside him.

One moment they waited quietly in the car at the rendezvous point. The wide Danube was marked only by a ribbon of mist beyond the trees, and somewhere a cock crowed in raucous challenge to the silent world. She had been grateful to Harry for letting her come along. Her only part in the affair, after contact had been made, was to drive the car back to Vienna. Harry had told her she could not go all the way with him.

“I understand,” she replied. “I just want to see this man who knows where Adam is.”

Harry had grinned. “Sam won’t like it a bit, you know. Are you really through with the Cajun now?”

She had not answered. She didn’t like Hammett’s manner when he spoke of Durell, and she felt as if she were being disloyal to Sam. But she couldn’t help it.

Sitting quietly in the stone-walled room, alone and hearing no sound anywhere, she remembered the footsteps suddenly grating beside their car parked under the trees. The

two men appeared out of the mist like ghosts. Harry’s explosive curse and violent reaction took her by surprise. He had tried to get out of the car, elbowing the door open and reaching for his gun. But he never had a chance.

The gun against Harry’s head was not simply a warning. There was cold precision in the quick move, the stunning blast against Harry’s blond head, and then the look of utter astonishment on Hammett’s face as his eyes died, bulging, grotesque. . . .

She was unsure of later details. Her scream was cut off by a hard hand clapped across her mouth. Then a blanket was thrown over her head and she was tied into a helpless bundle and hoisted to someone’s shoulder.

She remembered the smell of the river and the creak of oars. Then there was a car and a feeling of city streets and fast driving. When the blanket was removed, she tried to see where she was, but a hand caught her hair and yanked her head back. Then something clicked against her teeth, and liquid, like tainted brandy, splashed into her throat.

She had slept then, and awakened here.

Her heart lurched now when she heard footsteps approach her cell. She stood up as a key jangled and a man came in, bobbing his bald head in casual greeting. His English was scarcely accented.

“Good evening, Miss Padgett. My name is Andre Kopa. I tell you this at once, so we can converse in a reasonably civilized manner.”

“We have nothing to discuss,” Deirdre said immediately. “Just let me out of here. I don’t call kidnapping civilized.”

“There is nothing to worry about. Please sit down and be comfortable. We are only going to have a little chat, because I believe you have some things to tell me. No harm has come to you—correct? You have been treated with courtesy. Correct? You suffer only a minor inconvenience.” The short, heavily-built man moved around the room. Kopa was about fifty, with a round face that was curiously hard and pale eyes and a wide mouth that smiled too easily. “You are in a small police station,” he went on, “on the outskirts of Bratislava. Actually, this is a small castle, overlooking the Danube. A very pretty site. The Danube has many such castles, correct? They were once the homes and strongholds of petty princelings, robber barons, and river pirates.”

“I’m in Czechoslovakia then,” Deirdre said tightly. “Correct.”

"I did not come here willingly.”

“That will be difficult to prove. Officially, you were arrested in Bratislava yesterday evening while taking pictures of certain factories. We have your American camera, with your fingerprints on it. We also have the film. Can you dispute such evidence?”

“You did all that while I was drugged,” Deirdre objected.

“Perhaps. Of course, you may be innocent, after all, and we will release you promptly. It depends on what you have to tell us about your fiance, Major Adam Stepanic, and on how soon your former fiance, Sam Durell, comes here for you.”

“Durell is coming here?”

“We are sure of it.”

“He wouldn’t be so foolish,” Deirdre said.

“He loves you, correct? A man in love loses his perspective. We think he will try to take you back to Austria. We count on such a weakness, in a man who up to now has betrayed no weakness.”

“He won’t know where to find me.”

“We have arranged to get the information to him.” Kopa spread his hands. “It is quite simple, and there is nothing to do but sit here like a good girl and talk to me, while we wait.”

Deirdre felt an unbearable dismay; she sank down on the hard wooden chair while Kopa sat on the cot. He looked so ordinary, she thought. He could be a shop-keeper, or a clerk.

“You’ve baited a trap for Durell with me,” she said. “It is Durell you want. And you think I’m the one who will bring him to you.”

“Precisely. I am glad to see you are so calm now. Hysterics might be expected. Would you like a drink? We wish to make you comfortable. No harm will come to you —not to a woman as beautiful as you. So proud, you are. So sure and righteous. So beloved by such a brave man.”

“I am ashamed of myself,” Deirdre whispered.

“You could not know the rules of our game. And emotion spent in berating yourself can bring you nothing but useless distress.”

She went to the barred window. She could see nothing in the dark night outside. Why hadn’t Sam warned her of this danger? But he had, when he told her to go home. She had seen only jealousy in him, and she hadn’t really listened, because she hadn’t wanted to. So she had foolishly done exactly what this man Kopa wanted her to do.

She turned as Kopa lighted a cigarette.

“What do you want of me?” she asked bluntly. “If Durell comes here after me, will you kill him? Is that it?” Kopa shrugged. “That has not yet been decided.”

“He has no information you can use. It was Harry Hammett’s assignment—and you killed Harry. He was the one who could have told you what you want to know.”

“Indeed?” Kopa stood up suddenly, a fat, bald man with a cruel mouth. “What did Harry Hammett tell you about your lover, Major Stepanic? He expected to find Stepanic and smuggle him back to the United States, did he not? Where exactly did Stepanic land?”

“Adam Stepanic is not my lover,” Deirdre whispered. “And I don’t know where he is.”

“Come, come. Someone contacted Hammett. And, after all, we sent    a man into space long ago.”

“Then why are you so concerned about it?”

“Naturally, our scientific agencies are curious about your progress in trying to overtake us.” Kopa moved behind Deirdre’s chair, “You were foolish to let your loyalty bring you this far, Miss Padgett. But you are here, and I intend to catch two birds with one stone. I want Durell and I want Stepanic. I intend to have them.” Kopa abruptly closed his stubby hands into implacable fists. “I want them, and I am not famous for my patience. Stepanic is hiding somewhere in our territory, sheltered by traitors. No harm will come to him, however. After questioning, he will be released to your authorities. Perhaps he needs medical attention, you know. You may be killing him by your stubborn silence. Have you thought of that?”

Deirdre said nothing. Kopa drew a deep breath.

“If you talk now, and tell me where Hammett expected to find Stepanic, I will release you at once. You will be returned to Vienna, and so you will not act as bait to lure Durell into my hands. Is that not fair? You may thus save them both. And have you any real alternative?”

“I don’t know where Adam is,” Deirdre whispered.

Kopa made an impatient sound, swung violently around the chair and stood before her, cupping her face in hard fingers to make her look up into his narrowed eyes. His right hand slashed across her cheek. The pain of the blow was sudden, shocking.

Deirdre welcomed it. Any threat of hysteria vanished. And when Kopa struck her again, it was like a sharp astringent on an open wound, shocking her into clarity of mind. The blow knocked her sprawling to the stone floor.

“You are a foolish woman,” Kopa said thickly, “to be so obstinately silent. Now, stand up.”

She stood up slowly. Her ears rang. Her heart hammered. He slapped her again and she fell into the chair. For moments afterward, she was not sure what was happening. The pain came quickly now; she welcomed it, because it strengthened her.

Sam, she thought, don’t come here. Sam, don’t.

And she thought: Now I know why you always kept this from me.

“Will you talk?” Kopa shouted.

She looked up at him. “No,” she said.

CHAPTER X

Durell lay on his bunk in the Luliga’s cabin and tried to recall the Danube’s course from Bratislava through its middle range. The river was no respecter of national territories. Its route had been fashioned through the millennia by mountain upheavals and ancient interior seas in its mighty sweep to the east. Nothing stopped it. Sometimes it was thrust aside by a mountain spur, or squeezed through narrow gaps of granitic rock, or eased on the broad plains of the Hungarian Alfold and the fabulous wheat fields of the Backa, in northern Yugoslavia.

Beyond the Carpathian gap at Bratislava, the Danube for a few miles was entirely in Slovakia before entering Hungary. Thereafter, for one hundred miles, the channel flowed upon alluvial deposits of the Little Hungarian plain, separated from the Alfold by the Bakony ridge, the innermost arc of the Carpathians. But east of Esztergom, the river broke through into the wheat plains.

For those first miles, Durell remembered, the Danube was divided into three channels, forming two main islands, until at Vac the river turned south all the way across the plains, passing Budapest on its sweep into the Balkans.

The Luliga pushed along for twenty minutes after leaving the docks at Bratislava, and then halted.

Durell sat up on the bunk.

The diesel engines idled, then there was a dim shouting from up forward, followed by the clanking of anchor chains. Silence followed. Someone ran across the steel deck overhead. Then there was more silence.

Through the porthole, Durell saw only the dim, foggy night, with a vague hint of the river bank nearby. The Luliga swung slowly about until her blunt bow pointed upstream to the current.

“Mr. Durell?”

He got off the bunk. It was Mara Tirana. “Yes?”

“Have you thought about it? Will you help me?”

Before he replied, the bolts on the door were thrown and Gija came in, his arms filled with bundled clothing. The pilot grinned at them and dropped the clothes on the lower bunk. “These are for you. Get into them at once. We’re held up on inspection by the Hungarians. Nothing to worry about, though. Routine. We’ll be here about an hour.”

Mara said uncertainly: “Will they—will they board us?” “Naturally,” Gija nodded. “They always do.” He delved in his coat and tossed two packets of papers to the bunk. “These are your identity cards. Memorize the data on them. You have only an hour, so do this at once.” He stopped and stared at Mara. “What is the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I’m frightened, I suppose.”

“You’re safe on the Luliga. The captain has decided to go through with the job. The police won’t look for you here.” Gija smiled cockily and patted the girl’s arm. “I think you’re going to be all right, Mara. I'm changing my mind about you. But for God’s sake, try to look less tearful. You’d be a pretty girl if you’d just smile, don’t you know that?”

She did not smile.

Gija turned briskly to Durell. “You’re a new crew member and Mara will be your wife—for the purpose of the trip. You’ll share this cabin.” He grinned, but his smile faded as he looked at Mara. “Your papers make you an East German diesel mechanic, okay? I assume your German is good.” “Yes,” Durell said.

“Mara stays Hungarian. No harm in that. Now get into these work clothes and throw out what you’re wearing. I’ll drop them in the river with some ballast to take them to the bottom.”

“One minute,” Durell said, as Gija turned to go. “As long as you’ve decided to help, I’d like to know how far downstream we have to go before we pick up Stepanic.”

“It will take three days or more. Past the Iron Gates. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll let you know later.”

“But suppose something happens to you? You’re the only one who knows how to find Stepanic.”

“That’s right,” Gija said. “So just obey orders, hey?” He went out, and this time did not bolt the door after him.

Mara sat in silence on the edge of the lower bunk, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes considering the steel deck. Durell looked down at the thick, buttery smoothness of her blonde head. “Gija likes you.”

She murmured: “Gija? Yes, I think so.”

“You might find that useful.”

“I’m not that kind—I don’t—” She looked up. “We must share this cabin, is that what he said?”

“Yes. It will be all right.”

“Please. I told you about Mihály. It will be simple. From Budapest, where the barge is sure to tie up for some hours, we can take a bus to Racz, where Mihály is at the state dramatic school. You could get him out easily. He’s a good boy. If I could only have him with me—”

“But you say Kopa will expect such a move.”

“Yes, he will be waiting. But don’t you see, you will be forewarned and ready for him. And he will take Deirdre Padgett with him, wherever he must go. He swore it, and I heard him say this, because he is obsessed with the idea of trapping you.”

Durell said: “Then she will be at the Racz Prison if he expects us to go for the boy.”

“I am sure of it,” Mara whispered, “Will you help me?” He did not reply. The barge was quiet. He picked up the clothes Gija had left and sorted them out. There was a rough corduroy coat for himself, a work shirt, heavy shoes. For the girl there was an almost identical outfit, with a heavy gray sweater. In the manila envelope were greasy, folded documents covered with official stampings, with a marriage certificate. Durell’s respect for Gija lifted sharply.

“You and I are Mr. and Mrs. Pol Slansky, of Sofia,” he said to the girl. “Better look these over. Can you memorize the data quickly?”

She nodded, staring at him with an odd intensity. “Will you help me rescue Mihály?”

“I’m not in command here, Mara. Now get into these clothes. We haven’t much time.” He paused, puzzled by the look on her face. “I’ll turn my back, if it’s a matter of modesty.”

Picking up the outfit intended for himself, he crossed the small stateroom and stripped quickly, getting rid of every item of Western clothes. The situation was dangerous. He wasn’t prepared with an adequate cover identity. Ordinarily, a mission like this demanded the most meticulous planning; but under the present conditions, an examination of any of his former clothes could bring disaster. Well, there was no help for it, except to trust Gija.

He was aware of rustlings behind him as Mara got out of her clothing, too. She made a small tentative sound and spoke again.

“Look at me,” she said.

Something in her voice warned him, but he still could not suppress his surprise. She stood before him in the quiet, warm cabin wearing nothing but a painfully contrived smile. He was not prepared for her metamorphosis. He had thought of her as lumpy and dowdy, too graceless for beauty. But her bulky clothes had hidden an Aphrodite’s figure. She had a narrow waist, firm taut breasts, a smooth swell of hip and thigh, long clean limbs. Her head was held high. But there was a tremulousness in her voice that betrayed her anxiety. “Do you like me?” she asked.

“Mara, you’re very beautiful, but—”

“Do you want me?”

He said gently: “You don’t have to do this, Mara.”

“Look at me,” she insisted. “You are surprised. In these times, I did what I must, under Kopa’s orders. I hid what I am.” Her words became harsh, challenging, as she walked toward him. In the regal pride of her flushed and naked body there was an equal challenge, an offering and a desire. The breath caught in his throat. Then she pressed herself to him and touched his face with both hands and brought her mouth to his.

“We must pose as man and wife,” she murmured. “We will be on this barge for days. Why not make the most of it?” He forced her hands down to release himself and chose his words carefully. “Listen to me, Mara, you’re very persuasive, but—”

“I want your help,” she insisted. “I’ll do anything you ask, don’t you understand? Perhaps you think I am too clumsy and awkward; but you see how I have already surprised you. I admit I do not know much about love. But I have learned about men—and you are certainly a very special man. I can please you. Let me try!” She stepped back, inviting him to look at her nakedness again. “We are here for only a short time. Perhaps you are thinking of your girl; you have a twinge of conscience, perhaps? But which of us will be alive tomorrow? Gija might make a mistake, we can be discovered by an inspection party, we can all be shot. What do you lose if you take me now?”

“Get your clothes on, Mara. I understand you and I don’t blame you. But I’d be something less than a man if I considered your offer under these circumstances.” He smiled at her. “I’ll do what I can about your brother. If it’s possible, we’ll take Mihály with us, out of the country.”

Her fingers came tremblingly to her mouth, and her eyes went wide. Then she began to nod, and she came to him again, more quietly, and kissed him with soft lips that were salt with tears.

“Thank you. Thank you, I—”

The cabin door opened and Gija stepped in, bringing with him a sudden breath of urgency and then a violent, paralyzed astonishment as the pilot took in the scene. His eyes flicked from Mara to Durell with abrupt contempt. His voice rang harshly.

“You know how to make use of this frightened one, hey?”

“Nothing happened, Gija,” the girl said. “It was my fault. I was a terrible fool. I want help for my little brother, Mihály—”

“You don’t have to buy it like that.” Gija’s words were raw. “Get dressed now. Hurry. We’re due for an inspection in a few minutes.”

Mara nodded and hastily stepped into the rough barge-woman’s costume that Gija had provided. She looked pale and shaken. On the steel deck overhead came a sudden clumping of authoritative boots. Gija cracked his knuckles nervously. There would be a tight dragnet in the area, Durell thought: the reward for their capture would be high. He wondered if the other crew members could be trusted. But it was too late for any other course of action. As for Gija’s display of anger, stemming from a personal reaction to Mara, there would be some way to make use of it, Durell decided. Everything around him had to be seized as a tool to further the job ahead.

Then his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden angry pounding on the cabin door.

CHAPTER XI

The inspection of the Luliga took more than an hour. And afterward, the river patrol crew at the check point was in no hurry to leave. The two officers who scanned identity papers and cargo manifests looked wet and cold from the fog on the river, and they readily accepted Captain Galucz’ offer of coffee and plum brandy. Durell went forward to the board cargo hatches. The Luliga was a fine new craft, ably powered by her twin semi-diesels. He estimated her cargo at about 3,000 tons, and gave credit to the rapacious efficiency of the Soviet Control Commission that regulated the river.

Gija stepped out of the mist behind him, his tall figure outlined momentarily against the yellow light from the pilot-house door. Water dripped from the wet cargo booms. An accordion played a Hungarian melody somewhere, but its location was lost in the night gloom over the water.

As far as Durell could see, the ship channel was crowded with barges, tugs and scows brought to a halt by the border, inspection. Fishing-vessels, pleasure-boats and steamers all rode at anchor against the thrust of the current. The fog made curious halos around the riding lights astern.

Gija mounted the cargo hatch and leaned against a steel stay, his collar raised around his neck. His voice was quiet.

“You and the girl did well. You showed no nerves. I was worried about Mara, but she pulled herself together.”

“She’ll do all right.”

“Does she mean anything to you?” Gija asked.

“No.”

“She—I can’t get her out of my head. Do you trust her?”

“Yes. I do, now. Not at first. But now I do.”

“What do you think of that business of her baby brother, hey? Could we get Mihály to the barge?”

“It’s asking for extra trouble,” Durell said.

“We’re equipped for it. Our outfit can certainly handle one more, after all the dozens and even hundreds we’ve taken east or west. We’re not far from Racz.” Gija laughed softly. “You see, she has been persuading me, too. A remarkable girl.”

“We have no weapons,” Durell said. “We could use a gun.”

Gija laughed again. “We have enough to arm a brigade.” He stamped his foot on the hatch cover. “Under here are grenades, mortars, field rockets, rifles, machine-pistols, and ammunition. All nicely wired, too, if Tomas has done his job.”

“Wired?”

“If we get into serious trouble, we go sky-high. Tomas has his orders. We blow up the barge with its cargo, and anyone aboard with us.”

Durell looked sharply at the pilot. “You would really do that?”

Gija shrugged. “It would be better than answering questions.”

Durell nodded. “How long are we to stay here?”

“An hour or two. Or a day or two. The ways of official check points are inscrutable. So far, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“A day or two of delay may be too long,” Durell objected.

“You must be patient.” In the misty dark surrounding the barge, they heard the distant clangor of a bell buoy marking the channel ahead. Gija added: “I know your only objective is to rescue the astronaut, Major Stepanic. But you cannot do this without me. Only I can take you to him, because only I know where he is to be found.”

“And where is that?”

“With my people, in my home. Don’t worry. It may be even a week before it is done, but I will take you to him.” “We could travel faster overland.”

“You would never get far into the mountains where Stepanic is hiding. The country is too primitive. A stranger would be noticed at once. You need a guide,” Gija said. “You need me.”

“What are you hinting at?” Durell asked. “Is it money? Do you want pay for the job?”

“I could put a knife in your belly for your insults. There is that much of the Balkans in me.” Gija’s teeth gleamed as he grinned. “But I understand how it is with you. Your job is to get Stepanic. Nothing else must interfere, eh?”

“Nothing,” Durell nodded.

“Not your woman, who was kidnapped, or Mara Tirana and her problems. These are human beings who do not concern an efficient machine like you, eh?”

“I have my job to do,” Durell said.

“Yet it would be easy to make the girl happy. I know the town of Racz. I even know the theater-school where the boy is studying. A little effort on our part—not even a delay —we won’t drop below Budapest for thirty hours yet, I guarantee.”

Durell lighted a cigarette, one of a Russian pack that Gija had supplied, along with his bargeman’s clothes. The match made a tiny explosive light in the mist. He knew how Gija felt. He had seen this look on men’s faces before, but it never grew easier. In the course of every job there was human tragedy that needed and begged for help—but which he was forced to pass by in order to accomplish his mission. The job always came first. It had to be like that. The dedication to the assignment was too great to balance against individual misery.

Or was it? he wondered. For the first time, he was touched in a personal way. There was Deirdre to be abandoned this time. She could be one more victim of tragedy.

His fingers trembled slightly as he dragged on the cigarette. He did not want to think about Deirdre in Kopa’s hands. He could not trust Mara’s promise that Deirdre would be rescued in the process of going after her brother. It was too thin a chance, too risky. Stepanic was the only matter to consider. To find him and get his capsule instruments and get out. There was no time for personal tragedy, for love or hate or another’s death.

He shook his head and threw the cigarette overboard.

“You will not go to Racz?” Gija asked softly.

“No.”

Mara was in the upper bunk when he went below. She seemed to be asleep, but he wasn’t sure. Her face was turned to the steel bulkhead, and all he could see of her was the sweep of her hip under a gray blanket and the gleam of her yellow hair. He remembered how she had looked when she offered herself to him and he glanced at her again. Her breathing was too deliberate, her body too rigid. She was not asleep. But she did not want to talk to him. He turned off the tiny light and undressed quietly in the dark and slid into the lower bunk beneath her.

He could not sleep. He thought of Harry Hammett, and how Harry had died, with the inevitable surprise of a strong man when death caught up to him. The barge rocked easily in the current of the river. Before he slept, he felt the stir of the diesels again, and the barge began to move slowly, at ten knots, down the ship channel. Gija would be at the wheel, familiar with every turn and twist of the river as it entered Hungarian territory. Between Esztergom and Vac, he remembered, the river valley would narrow until it made its great turn to the south.

In the darkness of the cabin, he felt a strange affinity with the river. It was like the Mississippi on which he had been bom and raised, a channel that had known the shouts of conquerors and the tumult of trade. Benign and destructive, serene and stormy, the river had its own essential personality, independent of the men who used her. It could be bridged and dammed, but its essential flow could not be stopped. And this was where a river was unlike the current of a man’s life. . . .

He fell asleep suddenly, and in his sleep he felt the Luliga push on. Some time in the night, the barge halted again, and when he awoke, it was daylight.

And Mara was gone.

He dressed quickly, aware of a stillness and a thick gray mist beyond the cabin porthole, where he could dimly make out the flatness of a reedy shore and a feeling of infinite plains stretching far into the distance. There was no sign of Mara, and he was chagrined that she had been able to dress and slip out of the cabin without alerting him. But it was not until Gija entered that he realized what her absence meant.

“Have some coffee,” Gija said. “Captain Galucz wants to put you two to work, like deckhands—” He paused, handing Durell the thick china cup, and stared at the empty bunk. “Where is she?”

“Out on deck, I assume.”

“No one is on deck. I just came from forward.” “Then with Captain Galucz.”

“He is having coffee alone. Are you hiding her somewhere?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Did she leave the barge last night?”

“How could she? We’ve been in midstream all night.” “Oh, no. We’ve been tied up five miles above Racz for

the last two hours.” Gija looked suddenly anxious. “If this is a trick—”

Durell pulled on his heavy sweater. “Come on. She may be aboard somewhere.”

“I tell you—” Gija paused, bit his lip. “All right. But I don’t like it. You were cruel about refusing any hope for her brother—”

“Shut up,” Durell said. “We’ll find her.”

But Mara Tirana was not aboard.

No one had seen her leave. But twenty minutes later, Durell was convinced she was not on the Luliga. Every possible hiding place had been searched. She had gone ashore, quietly, and alone.

Captain Galucz chewed on a roll liberally spread with cheese and swallowed scalding coffee. He grunted and heaved in his leather chair, hugging his stomach. His bearded face was hard and angry as he looked from Gija and Durell, a few moments later.

“So what do you intend to do about it? Your little bird decides to enjoy dry land. Is it something to worry about?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “She may be caught and turned back to Kopa. If that happens, she will tell the security police about the Luliga.”

Galucz looked up from under shaggy brows. “True, Gija?”

“She would not talk willingly.”

“But she does know about us. The American is right. You’ve both been fools. You should have slept with her in your arms, American, and held on tight, hey?” Galucz grinned, but his eyes were like stones. “Gija, can you find her if you go after her?”

“She is obsessed with rescuing her little brother, at Racz.” The pilot shrugged. “It is not far to Racz from here.” “But it could be a trap,” Durell pointed out. “Kopa will be waiting there, too.”

Galucz shouted suddenly: “Well, do we let Kopa fry her on his griddle and hang us all? Where will we be then?”

Durell had no reply. He felt a momentary anger against the girl, and brushed it aside. He could not blame her. He looked up and saw the fat captain and Gija waiting for his decision.

“Can you let me have a gun?” he asked.

Gija waved a generous hand. “Take your pick of the cargo. Do you want me to go with you?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER XII

The fog lay over the Danube in a muffling blanket that smothered all life and sound. It was the fog this time, and not the security check points, that halted the Luliga’s progress down the Danube.

Durell and Gija tied their skiff in the high reeds along the black clay bank. Gija had chosen the eastern shore. When Durell looked back, the barge was lost in the river mists. He knew that beyond the river were the Dinarides, where the famous grapes of Badacsony ripened in season. But now there' was only the chill of fog and the faint luminosity of the sun lost behind an impenetrable, dripping grayness.

“There’s a highway and some riverside cafes beyond a fishing village here,” Gija said. “If we get to one and mix with the passengers from a river steamer, we can take a bus to Racz. . . . Do you speak Hungarian?”

“Only a little,” Durell said.

“Then let me do the talking, eh? Damn the girl—if she’s caught, we’re all angels, because she’s sure to talk about the Luliga. . ." Gija scrambled up the bank “Here, we have to walk this way.”

Durell had chosen a Magnum pistol from among the stores in the barge cargo holds. He kept it under his belt. Gija had a knife and a smaller gun and brass knuckles.

The highway followed the river embankment for about a mile. The morning had an unreal, misty quality, with the river lapping gently below them in the reeds. They passed a long string of rafts chained together, held against the current by a wheezing little tug. Several times they heard the harsh alarm of warning bells from vessels in the fogbound channel. There was little traffic on the road, except for an occasional truck rumbling out of the mist, using headlights, bound for Budapest.

Gija was talkative. He had been a barge pilot for four years, three of them in the refugee underground system, and he knew the Danube intimately. He had no special ambition except to persuade his family to get back to the United States. Durell picked this up and questioned him, and this time Gija held nothing back.

“My people are at Zara Dagh, a mountain near Viajec. Trapped there for the rest of their lives, maybe. You wonder why I don’t use the underground system to get them out? It would blow the thing sky-high, right? I’d be questioned, and who knows where that would lead? I can’t always be sure we’ll have a cargo of munitions to end their curiosity.” “Is Stepanic with your family at Viajec, then?”

“On Zara Dagh, yes. In case I—if something happens to me, you’d better know. You get off the barge at Cerna-Voda—there’s a railroad bridge crossing from Bucharest to Constanta. You might have to use it, to get away. As for Stepanic, he’s all right. A few days’ rest will fix him up fine. And Lissa, my sister, being a nurse, can help him along.”

“How safe is he there?”

“How safe is anyone? Believe me, don’t try to make it to Viajec alone, without me. Right now, you wouldn’t get far off the barge.”

They came to the fishing village a few moments later. The houses were small, white-washed, with their sides to the streets and small windows opening onto gardens and courts, a relic of the days when this design was meant to keep out the inquisitive eyes of the Turkish pasha’s spies. The streets twisted and turned between rows of acacia trees dripping in the fog.

“The kavehaz is this way, on Kiraly utca. It’s not bad,” Gija suggested. “We have time for a bite to eat before the bus comes.”

The cafe was on a stone landing, where a small steamer was tied up, as Gija had predicted. It was warm and noisy inside, crowded with travelers, villagers and fishermen. Two Magyar csikos, cowboys from ofi the Hungarian Prairie inland, made room for them at a table, shoving their woolen subas to the floor. No one else paid any attention to them. Gija ordered coffee and rolls, and Durell listened to the ordinary talk around them. The two Magyar cowboys soon left, swaggering noisily, and a few moments later the bus was announced. Many of the steamer passengers decided to crowd aboard, and Durell and Gija joined them in the confusion.

Half an hour later, they were in Racz. It was a small industrial town, with a large central square boasting a medieval statue of a mounted St. Stephen, in odd contrast to the Party headquarters building newly erected across the cobbled way. Opposite the headquarters was the Racz Conservatory of Theater Arts, a baroque building that rambled on into the side streets about the square. The fog was less in evidence in the town. People hurried along the sidewalks in grim silence, intent on their business. There seemed to be a pall over the square, broken only by the sound of sudden music from the drama school. A tumble of youngsters spilled down the broad steps, laughing and chattering, and vanished into one of the nearby káféhazes. Gija suddenly took Durell’s arm.

“There she is, watching the boys. Will you just get that look on her face! As if she were starving.”

Durell saw Mara at the same moment, but he pulled Gija back. “Be careful. She’s probably being watched.”

“The how do we contact her?” Gija asked.

“Let’s walk around the square and see,” Durell suggested.

Mara once again looked shapeless and plain in her cheap coat, flat heels, and severe hairdo under a peasant’s scarf. Evidently Mihály was not among the crowd of youngsters who had just come out of the building. She looked uncertain, taking a step or two toward the cafe as if to question the boys, then turned back nervously to the corner where she could watch the main entrance to the conservatory.

Gija bit his lip. “She looks desperate enough. Suppose you wait here, and I'll approach her. Nobody knows me. If I am interfered with—well, Mara said that Kopa set a trap here, but I see none.”

“It’s here all the same,” Durell said. “I can smell it.” He considered the broad, cobblestoned square, the pigeons waddling around the statue of St. Stephen, the luminosity of a few electric signs shining through the mist. Music came in another burst from the conservatory. A traffic cop idled in his striped booth across the square, and a few trucks rumbled by. Nothing else. It was an ordinary bleak scene in an ordinary bleak town. Yet he sensed danger all around him, waiting to pounce and destroy. His glance swept the blank windows of the shops and apartments in the gray buildings around the square. He could not be sure what eyes were watching him even now, turning from the nervous girl across the way to him.

“Suppose you stay here and watch Mara,” Gija said. “I’ll scout the back of the school. If I see anything, I’ll be back at once.”

“Good enough,” Durell nodded.

He watched the tall pilot stride off, hands in pockets, whistling a gypsy tune as he dodged around a clanging trolley car crowded with factory workers. The clock in the tower of the Party headquarters building showed past ten in the morning, and the fog began to lift. The light seemed brighter. He watched Mara. She stood in front of the kafdhaz now peering through the steamy window. Her movements were studiously awkward and heavy, like that of a peasant, hiding all the astonishing beauty he knew she possessed. He felt the pressure of the Magnum against his belly. He should not be here. There was a trap, he was sure of it. Yet he had no choice. The girl had left the barge, and if Kopa took her, nothing could keep the information about the Luliga from the security police. And with that, the mission to get Stepanic would be defeated completely.

“Hey, pal.”

He turned, saw Gija behind him. The pilot looked grim. “You were right. There are two police cars back there. One of them is parked by the back door, with a chauffeur. Would that be Kopa’s?”

“Probably.”

“They haven’t touched Mara yet, I see.”

“They’re waiting for me.” All at once, Durell’s decision was clear. He spoke rapidly and urgently. “I’ll go in with Mara and get the boy. I’ll be captured, do you understand? We have to take the chance that Kopa is on hand in person, and that he’ll escort Mara and me to the car at the back of the theater. Can you handle the chauffeur?”

Gija nodded. “I can. But you take big chances, friend.”

“So do you. You have to do the job right—no noise, no alarm. And be ready for others with Kopa when we come out.”

Gija nodded again. “I’m beginning to like you, friend.” A thin shaft of sunlight broke through the overcast, and he squinted at the sky beyond the trolley wires and the wheeling pigeons. He spoke with sudden anxiety. “If the fog lifts, we won’t have much time to spare. The Luliga will have to push on downstream.”

“Then get going. And be careful.”

Durell waited until Gija vanished around the corner. Then he walked across the wide, cobblestoned square toward Mara Tirana. He felt as if a score of eyes followed. Mara saw him, but did not stop her pacing at the north end of the square. Nothing in her face showed any recognition. Durell walked after her, lit a cigarette, and went on until he was beside her.

“You could have waited for me before doing this,” he said.

“Would you have come to Racz, then?” she whispered bitterly.

“Probably not.”

“Then you walked into the trap with your eyes open.”

“Is it a trap?”

“Kopa is in there with Mihály.”

“How do you know?”

“Like a fool, I went in. They were sitting in the auditorium. Kopa was laughing. Mihály seemed to be enjoying the conversation. I drew back just in time.” She looked sidewise at Durell, who said quietly: “Keep walking. We’ll circle the square before we go in.”

“But Kopa is waiting—” She paused, swallowed. “It is useless. You will be killed or captured. They will have a trial with a lot of publicity about you as an American spy.” He said impatiently: “Do you want Mihály out of there, or not? Will you go back to the barge without him?”

“No, but—”

“You forced me to come after you, Mara. If Kopa gets you, it will cost the lives of many people.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” she whispered. “At least, I think not—”

Two men in blue overcoats had fallen into step behind them. Durell flipped away his cigarette. “It’s too late to turn back now.”

She hesitated. “I—I’m afraid.”

“It’s late for fear, too,” he said.

He guided her up the wide steps of the conservatory. Behind them, the two men in blue overcoats fed the pigeons, although one stood watching the door while he scattered peanuts aimlessly. Durell felt Mara shiver. Then they were inside, in a wide theater lobby, with corridors to right and left opening into classrooms and dormitories. Durell turned left, avoiding the auditorium, and followed a narrowed hallway toward the rear. Now and then some youths hurried by, either in stage makeup or in smocks or costumes dedicated to some rural drama. There was not much laughter among the students; their discipline was grim and competitive.

“Where are you going?” Mara whispered.

“Backstage, first.”

Durell moved into the echoing cavern of the wings, with its careful confusion of flats and props, stagehands and apprentices. Three girls in yellow leotards crashed into him, one after the other, as they fled someone’s angry jeers. Durell turned another corner and looked out over the brightly lighted rows of audience seats beyond the proscenium arch. “You said Mihály was sitting out there with Kopa?”

“Yes. Twenty minutes ago, in the third row over there.”

The seats were empty.

“Where would they go?” Durell asked.

“Perhaps to Mihály’s room. I’ve been here before, to visit him. I could take you there, but I—suppose Mihály doesn't like you?"

He looked at her curiously. “Will that matter? We won’t have time to worry about what the child thinks.”

“But Mihály isn’t—” Mara paused. “All right. Follow me. He’ll be in the dormitory wing. But if Kopa is still with him—”

“He will be,” Durell said grimly.

But he wasn’t.

Mara knocked on the plain brown door with the painted number on it. The room was near the end of a corridor. No one was about—apparently all the students were engaged in classes or rehearsals at this hour. Yet Mara’s knock was answered immediately.

“Mihály?” she replied to the querulous sound. “Is that you?”

“For the love of—come in! Come in, Mara!”

The door was pulled open and Mihály stood there.

He was not a child.

He stood tall and gangling, almost like a caricature of his sister. But where her regular features could turn her into a creature of ultimate beauty, Mihály’s handsome looks were petulant, egocentric, and intolerant. He was about nineteen. He wore a white shirt open at the throat, a pair of tight slacks and light dancing shoes. He examined Durell, entering behind Mara, with amusement.

“Sister,” he said, smiling. “What a surprise!”

Durell answered for Mara. “Is it?” He shut the door, found no lock on it, and surveyed the cubicle. There was a cot, an open closet, a single window in an embrasure, where the yellowish stone of the theater building framed the cobbled square of St. Stephen below. “Are you Mihály?”

"I am."

“Get your coat. You’re coming with us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mihály smiled. He turned to Mara. “Your friend is so impetuous, darling sister. What gives him the idea I wish to go anywhere?”

Mara sounded desperate. “Mihály, this is no time to tease. We talked of this before. I told you if there was a chance to get you away—”

“Yes, you told me. And what did I tell you, in reply?” “You—you were joking,” Mara whispered.

“I certainly was not.”

“Mihály, you must come with me! We have risked so much—”

“I will not go anywhere with you, my foolish sister. How could you believe I would give up my career for a wild flight into the jungles of a capitalist land? I am happy here. My name will some day be famous all through the Soviets, all through the world—”

Durell said: “You’ll be on your way to a labor camp in a week, if they take Mara this time.”

“I am not responsible for her treachery!”

“You’re a fool if you think they’ll consider you as a safe Soviet citizen ever again,” Durell snapped.

Mihály moistened his lips and touched his forehead with a theatrical gesture. Durell felt as if he had come upon some exaggerated version of a witless rock-and-roll idol. He felt a surge of anger, because of the way Mara had misled him. But it was too late for argument now.

“Get his coat, Mara,” he rapped. “Hurry.”

“Really,” Mihály said. “Do you think you can come in here like an American gangster and persuade me, kid nap me—!”

Durell slapped him, carefully pulling the punch against his impatience. Even so, Mihály fell to the cot with a squawk of surprise and pain. His mouth twisted, and his eyes slid venomously to Mara’s stiff, awkward figure. He got up, darting for the door. Durell caught him and slapped him again, harder. Mihály began to curse Mara in a loud voice. “Shut up and get your coat,” Durell rapped. A trickle of blood sprang from the handsome boy’s mouth. His eyes slewed back to Durell and he laughed. Durell said: “Go on, call for your friend, Colonel Kopa. Call him now.”

And a voice spoke behind him:

“That will not be necessary, Mr. Durell.”

The bald, stocky man stood in the doorway to the room. Kopa wore a dark blue overcoat, like those of his agents, and a rather flashy silk tie and gray fedora. He gestured with the Tokarev in his hand.

“You will not raise any objections, Mr. Durell. Throw your gun to the cot. Mihály, take it. Mara, you understand you are to cooperate?”

The girl stared mutely. Mihály snatched up Durell’s gun and slashed Durell across the face with it. Durell fell against Mara, who cried out against her brother, but Mihály swept her aside and struck Durell again, only to be cut short by Kopa’s harsh voice.

“Enough. You have proved your loyalty, Comrade Tirana. Your sister is simply a victim of propaganda. As we agreed, she will be re-educated. You are to be congratulated, both of you.”

Mara shook her head violently. “No. Not me. I am not part of this. Oh, Mihály, you poor, blind fool—!”

“It will be best,” Kopa said, “if we leave without any disturbance.” He looked at Durell, who pressed a handkerchief to his face where Mihály had cut him. Beyond Kopa in the dormitory corridor were two other men, with drawn guns. Cross and double-cross, he thought. But how much of a chess player was Colonel Kopa? Kopa had expected Durell to come here, convinced by Mara. But did he expect Mara to warn him and did he expect any counter-measures? Hard to tell. Durell was up against an expert in Kopa. In any case, however, the throw of the dice was over.

Kopa urged Mara into the corridor. “You, too, Mihály.”

“But I have rehearsals, Colonel—”

“Your rehearsals are over for now. We will need your testimony and sworn statements. You will come with me now.”

“Very well.” Mihály tried to sound assured, but his moment of surprise was unmistakable. He got his coat and joined Mara, while Durell walked quietly ahead of the armed men who closed in around him. He wondered if the odds in this calculated risk were not too great, after all. He had banked everything on Gija’s move outside, to get Kopa alone in a moving car. But if Gija failed . . .

The last of the fog was shredding away as they stepped into the narrow back street behind the theater. Durell immediately spotted the car Gija had mentioned. It was a black Zim sedan, with bullet-proof glass that dimmed the view he wanted of the interior. Kopa gave brisk orders and his assistants scattered to other waiting cars, and two remained for the waiting sedan.

“Get in, Mara. You, too, Mihály.” He turned to a burly man with the face of an ox. “Pavel, in the back with them. I ride up front. Durell, in the back.” He leaned in and spoke to the chauffeur. “Ready, Ilyan?”

The man behind the wheel should have been Gija, with a gun pointed at Kopa’s heart at this moment. But it was not Gija.

He was a stranger.

Gija had failed his part of the assignment.

CHAPTER XIII

Kopa’s two assistants sat on jump seats in the back, their bulks crowding out a view through the windshield of the road ahead. Durell sat on the back seat with Mara and Mihály, facing the guard’s guns. Up front, Kopa lit a cigar beside his chauffeur. The streets of Racz, after they made a wide turn in St. Stephen’s Square, gave way to flat farmland. They bumped over a rail crossing, topped a small rise, and from the side window Durell glimpsed the Danube, its channel divided by many small, wooded islands that made the waterway seem extremely wide, a world unto itself. River traffic in the form of a tug pulling a string of rafts, and a flotilla of barges, was moving again, now that the fog had lifted.

Mara’s hand slid into his, and Durell looked at her. Her face was still and cold. She had expected him to command the situation somehow, after warning him that Kopa would be in wait at the theater. He had certainly expected to. Part of his plan had been to capture Kopa at this point. But from the moment they left the school, nothing went according to schedule. He did not think Gija had deliberately betrayed him. On the other hand, if Gija had been captured, Kopa seemed unaware of it. Surely Kopa would have spoken of it, if only to brag a little.

So Gija was on the loose somewhere. But where?

If the river man waited too long, and Durell landed in a cell, it would be too late for everything, then.

It seemed to Durell that time rushed by like the thunder of a waterfall. The heavy limousine turned left, and clumps of alders and acacia trees screened out the river.

“Mara, you will be all right,” Mihály said suddenly. “You were simply misled, that is all. You should have considered me before you tried this foolish scheme. I did not want to be rescued! How many times have I told you this? But I will take care of you. You need not worry.”

“You have killed me, Mihály,” she said quietly.

Up front, Kopa chuckled.

And up ahead, a wooden bridge across a small stream suddenly dissolved in a red mushroom blast of explosion.

The car was already upon the bridge approach, and the timing of the blast was perfect. The earth lurched under the heavy car. The driver cursed and yanked wildly at the wheel to avoid the hole where the road had been. But it was too late. The brakes screamed, and twin bursts of sound came as two tires ruptured, and the limousine careened off the road and smashed down into the spindly trees along the banks of the stream.

Durell’s move was almost simultaneous with the blowing of the bridge. As the car swerved, he drove a fist at the guard on the jump seat before him. At the same time, he smashed at the gun in the man’s hand.

The next moments were pure confusion. They caromed into a heavier tree and came to a sudden halt, tilted crazily on two wheels only a few feet from the little river. Inside the car, everyone was momentarily tangled. The doors were sprung, and one of the guards had been thrown free. The driver looked dead, impaled on the steering-wheel post that had smashed into his chest. Kopa lay half in and half out of the car. From the woods came brief, triumphant yells and a scattering of wild shots.

Durell had the guard’s gun. The man was struggling up, eyes dazed. Durell slugged him without mercy, turned, saw a flicker of movement to his right and twisted, sliding out of the car. It was Mihály. The boy’s petulant face was wild with terror. Durell leveled the gun at him.

“Hold it.”

“Please—let me go-—!” Mihály gasped.

“Get your sister out of the car.”

“Those men—they’re partisans—”

“Get her out and stay with her!” Durell’s voice brooked no argument. Mihály swallowed and climbed back into the wreck and helped Mara free. She seemed to be only dazed. Durell heard someone call his name and turned. It was Gija, scrambling up the bank of the stream along the splintered bridge timbers. The river pilot was grinning broadly.

“Had you worried for a minute or two, hey?”

“Who are the others with you?” Durell asked.

“Just friends. They’ll fade away now. They owed me some favors—I helped some of their families get away to the West-—and we had a couple of expert dynamiters, as you can see, in the crowd.”

“All right.” Durell spoke briskly. “Help me with Kopa.” “Is the bastard dead?”

“No, and we don’t want him dead, either.”

“You have a better idea for him?”

“We’re going into Racz Prison. He’ll lead the way.” Gija looked dubious. “I think you’re crazy to try it. And you don’t know for sure if your girl is in there.”

“We’ll ask him,” Durell said grimly.

Ten minutes later Kopa spat on the ground and vomited and tried to crawl away from Durell. They were hidden in the woods, a mile from the damaged bridge. So far, the alarm had not touched them, but there could not be much time left. Mara and Mihály sat under a pine tree, watching.

“Let me try,” Gija said. “He’ll talk to me.”

“We can’t have any marks on him,” Durell said. “There won’t be. I studied the art of questioning, too.” Gija hauled Kopa back. Kopa’s mouth was bleeding. His bald head shone in the bright sunlight that flooded down through the bare trees. They were about fifty yards from the highway,

inland from the Danube. Gija’s friends had melted away, leaving two small cars for their use, hidden in the brush. Gija looked at Durell and said: “I couldn’t take the chauffeur’s place, you know. There were two other agents on the sidewalk, talking to him. I had to go get things organized fast.”

“You did fine. But we have to make Kopa front for us, or we’re finished, anyway.”

“I’ll kill him,” Gija said. “It will be no loss.”

Kopa breathed thinly and looked at Gija with blank eyes.

“He’s shamming,” Gija said. “Look. One of his own techniques.”

Gija bent over him and Kopa screamed. Gija hit him, turned his squat body over, pressed his face into the earth as if to smother him. Kopa flopped about like a fish out of water. When his legs began a spasmodic twitching, Gija released him and let him breathe.

“Now, Colonel, for the last time—tell us where the American girl is. If she is still in Bratislava, you die. If she is anywhere but here in Racz, you will die, here and now. Do you understand me?”

“She is here,” Kopa whispered. “In Racz Prison. I brought her with me last night.”

“Then you will take us to her and lead us all out.” “But I cannot—”

“If you cannot, then you will die.”

Kopa’s eyes slid to Durell. “What do you want of me?” “I want Miss Padgett. You have her in Racz Prison. We’ll go in together, and I’ll have a gun at your back, and if anything goes wrong, you will get a bullet in your spine.” “Do you really think you can escape with her?”

“I intend to.”

“And what will you do with me, if I help you?”

Gija slid a finger across his throat, but Durell shook his head. “No, we’ll let him go.”

“He’ll trace us. He’s clever, this one,” Gija said.

Kopa said flatly: “If I refuse you now, you’ll kill me. To die without purpose is rather distasteful. So I will do as you ask.”

“Good,” Gija said. “On your feet now.” He looked at Mara and then at Mihály, exhibiting surprise. “Is this the little brother, Mara?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

Durell said: “We have a juvenile delinquent on our hands.”

Gija took Mara and Mihály in one of the cars and assured Durell he would get them back “home.” No mention was made of the barge Luliga. Durell took a gun from Gija and waited for five minutes before he ordered Kopa to drive in the second car to Racz Prison. It was almost noon. The sun was bright. To the east, the vast plains of Hungary stretched to the horizon. Across the vast Danube there was woodland, the ruins of a medieval tower, a church spire, a small village. To the south was the industrial haze of Budapest.

“Once inside,” Durell said, “it is your life or mine. Don’t mistake me. You die first, if there is any alarm. You will take me straight to where you’ve detained Miss Padgett. Stop for nothing. If you are questioned, use your seniority and rank to ignore any delay. Act purposefully, as if you have much on your mind.”

“You speak Russian well,” Kopa said. “I can see why your dossier is so involved. You will get away from Racz, I promise you, since I have no wish to die. But you will never get back home. And you won’t locate Stepanic before I do.”

“We shall see.”

“I could admire you professionally, except that what you do today would hardly be approved by your superiors.”

“They’re not here,” Durell said. “And I am. Now let the guard identify you and drive through the gates when he opens for you.”

They were at the grim outer walls of the prison. It was an isolated pile of gray stone, a former army barracks of the old Horthy fascist regime, with a bloody and sinister reputation. Open fields had been cleared around it, and the . environs of Racz looked distant beyond the undulation of brown autumnal land. Not even the harsh bright sunlight could ease the pall of ominous air that clung to the prison.

Their challenge was brief, the guard saluting as Kopa drove through the gates. Inside, there were parade grounds, barracks, watch-towers and barbed-wire compounds, in which several hundred men in anonymous gray plodded around and around. Durell wondered if these were prisoners from the uprising. Kopa halted the car before a small residential-like structure built against the prison’s stone outer walls.

“Miss Padgett is here, quite comfortable, and unhurt’"

“Get out,” Durell said. “And be careful.”

Kopa looked shorter and chunkier than usual, as if defeat had already crushed him into the earth. His small eyes touched Durell’s face and dropped to the hand on the gun in Durell’s pocket. He nodded and entered the building. From one of the barracks behind them came a thin, remote wailing that was difficult to associate with a human throat.

A uniformed man behind a desk and a moustached sergeant jumped to their feet as Kopa entered. None gave Durell more than a passing glance.

“I am taking the American woman with me now,” Kopa announced.

“But Colonel, General Murovanov is driving out from Budapest himself to speak to her,” the moustached sergeant said.

“Arrangements have been changed. I take her with me.”

“You will have to sign a receipt for her custody, Colonel—”

“Naturally. You will please get her, Sergeant.”

The sergeant nodded to the uniformed man at the desk, who went away. Durell stood at the doorway. He did not think Kopa had a chance to signal an alarm. The moustached sergeant sat down again. A steam radiator made a clanking noise. Dust danced in the sunlight that came through one of the windows. It seemed to Durell he could still hear the wailing that came from the cellblock across the courtyard.

The place smelled of death and blood and dust and defeat. The guard seemed to be taking a long time in getting Deirdre. Apprehension touched him. Maybe it was happening too easily. Kopa might have arranged for an alarm somehow. He did not underestimate the man. Somewhere in the building an iron door clanged. Kopa lighted a cigar.

One of the attendants in the waiting room began to type laboriously on a series of cards.

A new danger offered itself. What would happen when Deirdre was ushered in and recognized him? How much might she give away? She would not expect him here. She might say something that could alert the guards, ruin everything.

Maybe Kopa counted on this.

He touched Kopa to urge him forward into the hall to the detention cells, thinking to intercept Deirdre out there.

But it was too late.

The guard appeared, holding Deirdre by the arm. He looked upset. “Colonel,” he blurted, “the American woman says she will not eat or drink until she is released. A hunger strike, in protest—”

“Be quiet, Banya,” Kopa said quickly. “Miss Padgett, we are leaving at once. My assistant and I will escort you to Budapest, where suitable arrangements will be made for your prompt return to Vienna. Do you understand?” Deirdre did not seem to listen. She was looking at Durell, who stood tall behind the squat security colonel. Her face went white. What saved the situation was that, to the others in the room, she might have been staring at Kopa. Her lips parted, and a small, brief sound came from her. Durell silenced her name in his throat, and he put everything he could into the way he looked at her—a warning, a smile of encouragement, a promise of freedom.

She stood proud and beautiful and adamant, untouched by the nightmare hours behind her. She looked wonderful. Her eyes widened and seemed to drink in the sight of Durell. It was very quiet in the anteroom.

Then she looked away from him. “I am ready to leave at once.”

“Good,” Kopa said.

She was a stranger as she came toward them and walked to the door. She did not come close enough to Durell for him to touch her. Kopa turned, puffing his cigar with apparent ease, and led the way out. Deirdre hesitated on the doorstep as the sunlight struck her eyes, and now Durell saw the lines of fatigue on her face, the dark violet of sleeplessness under her eyes. Anger moved in him. He walked ’ beside her, a step behind Kopa, as they returned to the car.

Ten minutes later they drove out of Racz Prison with Kopa at the wheel. And as they passed the guard at the gate, the sirens went off.

Kopa’s face blanched. Durell took Gija's gun and pressed it into the back of Kopa’s thick neck. “Drive. It’s for your life, Colonel.”

“I do not know how this happened—” Kopa stammered.

“You know. You gave the alarm yourself. Was it your cigar?” Durell paused, and Kopa moved his head in a slight, reluctant nod. “It's not important. If we don’t escape them, you’ll die.”

“But you—you will go, too,” Kopa whispered. “And Miss Padgett—”

“We’re prepared for that”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Any time you care to call my hand, Colonel, you’re welcome.”

The little car rocketed ahead as Kopa stepped on the gas. The road was empty. Behind them, the blue air was cracked and shattered by the ululating alarm of the prison siren. Durell ordered Deirdre down on the floor of the car for safety as they screamed around a curve. There was a bus lumbering ahead in their direction. Woodland cut off the gray walls of the prison behind them. The bus was slowing, perhaps in response to some regulation about the sirens. There wasn’t much room in which to pass. Kopa made a gasping sound and wrenched too hard at the wheel. Perhaps he was not a good driver. Or it might have been a deliberate error of judgment. The car slewed on the paving, hit the gravel shoulder with a jolt and careened past the halted bus with a sound like a handclap of compressed air. Kopa wrenched at the wheel again and Durell reached over his shoulder and steadied it for him. The road ahead was straight fortunately, with a cross-road coming in at an angle from the river.

“Turn right!” Durell shouted.

“I can’t I—I’m sick, I—”

Durell pulled at the wheel, fighting Kopa’s panicky strength. A copse of woodland, an embankment a wire fence flashed past the windshield. He straightened the wheel and felt Kopa suddenly slump to his side and the car slowed as the man’s foot slid off the accelerator.

“Colonel, sit up or—”

The only response was a dim expiration of breath from Kopa. The man’s eyes were sightless, open, staring. Started. Durell had no choice but to guide the car into the side road as their speed slackened. Deirdre sat up. “What happened to him?”

“He fainted,” Durell said briefly. “Looks cyanotic. Maybe a heart attack, but I’m not sure.”

“Could he be shamming?”

“I doubt it.”

Kopa’s lips were slack and blue. Durell got out and yanked open the door to the driver’s side. The road was empty. There was no sign of the bus they had grazed, and he couldn’t hear the prison siren. Deirdre got out on the road beside him. Ahead, there was a glimmering of water from the placid Danube.

“What can we do? They’ll be after us in a few minutes.”

“Think you can drive this car, Dee?” He looked at her sharply, and she nodded. “Wait a minute, then.”

He reached in and hauled Kopa’s slack, heavy body without ceremony from the car to the brush beside the road. Kopa’s faint was genuine, without doubt. Fear or tension or the desperate chance he took in passing the bus could have brought it on. It didn’t matter. Durell carried him deeper into the woods until they were safely hidden from the road, then dropped him there. Kopa looked as if he were dying. His breath was dim and shallow. His mouth was ugly, gaping. His eyes bulged, open, unseeing. There was nothing Durell could do. Turning, he ran back to the road. Deirdre sat behind the wheel. The road was still empty. “Head back,” he said.

She was startled. “Back?”

“The prison people will turn down here—the bus driver will direct them. If we’re lucky, we’ll pass in the opposite direction. Maybe it will work. It’s got to work.”

They went by the bus a minute or two later. Two official cars were parked beside it and a small crowd of passengers and uniformed guards were gathered around the excited bus driver. Deirdre drove by without haste. Her face was pale, but her hands were firm on the wheel. Scarcely no one turned to look at them, since they were coming from the other way.

“What now?” she whispered.

“We swing through Racz and then downstream again to the Luliga. That’s a barge we’re sailing on down the Danube, Dee.”

She looked skeptical, saw his grin, and said: “Would you mind driving now? I think I—I haven’t slept—and I’m so shaky with relief and joy at seeing you, Sam, darling. I never knew what it was really like over here, walking through a jungle of enemies, and you came after me—”

“Hush,” he said. “Stop the car and I’ll take over.”

She halted on a small side street in Racz. Neither moved for a moment. Then she made a small sound and turned to him and Durell took her in his arms, gently, then aware of the fierce and trembling desire and relief with which she responded. Her lips were cold. He touched her face with gentle fingers.

“You’re all right, Dee?”

'Yes. Yes, now I am. Can we ever—I mean, can we really get out, though? I feel so lost and helpless, I can’t think of what’s next—”

He said only: “Dee, I love you.”

“Yes, Sam,” she whispered. “Yes. Oh, yes.”

He drew a deep breath. “We still have some rough hours ahead. I don’t like leaving Kopa in the woods. He may come to and lead the chase after us again. But he was so much dead wood for the moment, I thought it best to get rid of him.”

“I hke it better this way,” Deirdre said. “Just you and me—against all of them.”

“Don’t romanticize it, sweetheart. It’s rough and dirty and dangerous and bloody.”

“As long as I’m with you, it’s all right.” She kissed him, and then began to laugh softly, staring at the quiet little street. “It’s incredible.”

“What is?” he asked.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “I’m suddenly absolutely starved.”

CHAPTER XIV

It was Adam’s fifth day. He could walk without Jamak’s cane, although his leg still ached and he limped a little. His uniform had been buried near the wrecked capsule, but he wore a coarse shirt, trousers and boots donated by the old man. He knew this might lend itself to an espionage charge, but it seemed the least of several evils.

It had been strange to come upon the wrecked space capsule in the ravine the day before. Even from an open vantage point above, he missed it until Lissa pointed it out for him. Having crashed at night, the area looked totally unfamiliar.

The one-ton mushroom bell had floated down on its parachute apparatus at the same angle of descent as the slope of a gravel spill at the head of the ravine, and the rock slide it had started on impact was already darkened by the recent rains into a similarity of appearance with the other slopes. Rugged pines grew here, and their green upper limbs formed a canopy over the shattered brush below. It was as if the capsule had slid conveniently into a tunnel for camouflage. Only the most direct air search could spot this place, he had thought. And it was doubtful if any humans passed this place in the craggy mountains more than once a year.

The parachutes had been gathered up by Jamak and Lissa long before, and buried under the pines. The escape hatch, opened by explosive bolts, stood open in the shadows. Adam felt strange, viewing the wreck. This vehicle had soared into the voids of space, and the scarred metal, the rust-like color, a result of the heat that had melted part of the special skin of one-sixteenth alloy of nickel, chrome, and steel, made the wreck seem tragic in its twisted silence. The capsule was surprisingly small—not more than ten feet long and six feet wide. The interior contained a plastic, crush-able couch, against the broad “screen” face of what might have been a huge TV tube. The couch was only two feet wide, providing what the NASA team had facetiously termed his “living space.”

But packed inside the bell was over two hundred pounds of instrumentation. The damage was surprisingly slight, even with the shock endured during the emergency re-entry program.

Lissa helped him unload the tapes and miniaturized instruments. She had been impressed by what she saw when she peered through the hatch.

“All this equipment,” she commented. “You had to watch all these dials and instruments? And this strange seat for you—”

He explained what he could of the capsule control system and the electronic controls to maintain capsule altitude during flight. These were the first tapes he rescued, since it was here that the failure had begun. Crouching inside the narrow space, he disconnected the telemetry system, the radio beacon, and indicated for Lissa the system of gyroscopes and reaction jets by which the initial orbit had been achieved.

“The Space Task Force boys calculated over 126 separate measurements for environmental control alone,” he told her. She reached down through the hatch for the instruments as he detached them, using the tools provided inside for disconnecting cables and tapes. “Temperature, pressure, atmospheric composition—it’s all here. Anyway, I survived,” he grinned.

“Could you—see what it’s like up there?” Lissa asked.

“A little. I had this periscope that worked for both navigation and viewing on this eight-inch screen.” He pointed it out among the complex litter of instruments. It had been hot and cramped inside the bell, and his leg gave him difficulty. Eventually, he yielded and let Lissa go in to finish securing the recorded tape data under his direction. Her smaller size made it easier to disassemble what was needed.

“With all this,” she said, her brown eyes sober, “how did you go wrong and come down here?”

“That’s what the lab boys will find out, back home —if we can get this stuff out to them. The automatic reentry system failed, you see. When I was at orbital altitude, I could see over 1,700 nautical miles on the earth, on that screen—or so the engineers told me. There were filters I could swing and interchange to measure the angle of the rising sun, and indices to measure the capsule’s relation to the earth and its pitch and yaw. It let me calculate the bell’s proper position when I fired the retrograde rockets manually, for re-entry, and I could watch the parachute deployment, too, through the periscope screen. Besides—” He paused, seeing her confused smile. “I’m sorry, Lissa. It gets technical, and I’ve lived with this stuff in training for over three years.”

“No, it—you’re different, when you talk about the flight.”

“I guess I’m just glad to be alive,” he said.

All at once, he had wanted to get away from the sad wreckage of that shiny vehicle in which he had soared to the stars. Its streaked, heat-rusted metal, cracked and cratered and crumpled, had an air of desolation that made him shiver. “Let’s get away from here,” he had said. . . .

They had returned to the hut by evening. The miniaturized instruments were now hidden in the hayloft of the stone bam. The tapes and cameras had not proved too much for Lissa and himself to pack through the mountain gorges back to the hut. But that night, Lissa returned to Viajec.

“I must go now,” she explained. “There are sick people waiting for my attention, and there is no one to do my work. Besides, Petar Medjan will come back here if I stay on Zara Dagh.”

He felt a sudden anxiety for her. “I don’t like your being down there with him.”

“Do not worry about me, Adam.”

She had smiled, touching his cheek in an oddly tender gesture. Something good had grown between them on the long hike to the wrecked capsule. She had laughed and sung peasant songs in a throaty, captivating voice. When she returned to Viajec, he knew she could cope with Petar Medjan, yet he felt a helpless anger as he watched her slim, proud figure move down the trail and out of sight. Her life held little joy. And he felt an overwhelming desire to do everything for her, to make her laugh and sing always.

He had spent the night in an agony of worry over her.

Twice he awoke to the thunder of jet search planes overhead. The second time, he went outside and found Jamak staring off to the north, where the sky was artificially bright with magnesium flares.

“They search for you now,” the old man murmured grimly.

“Lissa and I covered things up pretty well. I don’t think they’ll find the capsule this way.”

“Lissa is brave and clever—not like Gija, who rushes into things like a bull, confident his strength will carry everything with him. I wish Gija were clever, like Lissa.

But he is not,” the old man said. “With my older son, it was different. Giurgiu was like a fox, but he fell into a political snare here. We should have stayed in America. But he was determined to be a big man, eh? He learned that no man stands taller in the grave than his neighbor.” Jamak sighed and stared to the north. The flares were dying, and the dark mountains melted back into the night. “What will you do with Lissa?” he asked quietly. “She put herself in great danger for you. But when you go, if all is lucky for you, what will happen to her?”

“Perhaps you can all come with me,” Adam said abruptly.

“How could such a thing be done?”

“I don’t know yet,” Adam said.

He looked down into the dark valley of Viajec and wondered about Lissa and felt a sharp, strong ache for her that made him shiver.

She brought a portable radio back when she returned the next day, and it carried home the enormity of the hunt for Adam Stepanic. He was world-famous now, the object of infinite speculation, accusation, and counter-accusation.

The State Department’s note demanding his release with the instruments was summarily rejected by Moscow. Voices were raised in the U.N. about him, but Adam knew that his only hope for rescue lay with Gija.

On the next day they saw troops moving across the valley in a cordon that meant a careful search. Apparently the location of the capsule had been narrowed to a degree that inspired this effort. Adam’s feeling of being trapped grew deeper. There was no word from Gija. And it was only a matter of time until they focused on this mountain, Adam thought. He decided he could not wait for help that might never come.

“The best thing is to get out now, rather than sit around like this,” he told Lissa. “The Turkish border is the best bet, I think.”

“It is over two hundred miles away. You could not walk so far, with your leg, and you do not know the language, you have no papers—” Lissa took a deep breath and turned away. The sky was a tumble of dark clouds over the peak of Zara Dagh. “We could use Jamak’s horse and cart, however.” She paused again. “Do you want me with you?”

“I need you,” he said simply. “The old people will come, too.”

She looked doubtful. “There are many back roads, but the peasants are suspicious, and there are also many police posts. But it could be done. If we are caught—”

“Every hour we stay here makes it more dangerous,” he insisted.

But it was Jamak who made them wait one more day for word from Gija. It rained that night, and the wind lashed wildly at the stone house. Adam worked in the barn with Lissa, getting the old cart ready and loading the canvas-wrapped electronic gear from the capsule. Later, when the old people were asleep, they remained in the barn, drinking hot, bitter coffee. They spoke very little. They had not mentioned the time in the pine woods when he had made love to her, and he felt this was intolerable. When she finally turned to go, he caught her arm.

“Lissa, we must talk about things.”

“Not here.”

“It doesn’t matter about here, or what happened here.” “Please,” she whispered. “Do not speak of anything. I was foolish to think about you. When you first came here, my attitude toward you was the correct one—to consider you simply as a danger to us all. But you were different from what I expected. I thought all Americans were so strong. But you were not so, when I first saw you, and I—I wanted to help you—”

He wanted to tell her he loved her. The words leaped to his tongue and were checked there. She would not believe him. The wind struck impotently at the stone bam, but inside the air was warm and heavy with the scent of animals and hay. Lissa suddenly made a small sound and clung to him feverishly. Her body was firm and alive in his embrace. “Adam, not here—not where Medjan—”

“Nothing happened to you herel” he said fiercely. “Nothing!”

He stopped her protests with a kiss. They were drank with the imminent discovery of each other, moving with staggering steps to the warmth and sweetness of the haymow. They clung to each other as if drowning, and she slid down against him with a quick, muffled cry.

“Yes, you are right,” she whispered intensely. “It must be here in this place, or I can never forget—”

He took her gently. Her body was quick and smooth and lithe, cupped against him in satiny fervor. It happened explosively, beyond control. Like drowning, Adam thought dimly, at the miracle of contact. And like awakening. And afterward, they burrowed deeper into the hay and he told her he loved her. She only shook her head and smiled.

“Say nothing now, darling. It was enough, these few minutes—everything to me. It finishes one thing, it begins another.”

“I’m taking you back to the States with me,” he said. Her eyes were sad. “You are foolish, Adam. But perhaps that is why I love you. . . .”

The rain stopped in the morning, and a cold wave froze a silvery sheath on the pines and hardened the earth until it rang like iron. With the first light, the old man hitched up the two-wheeled cart. Adam hid under the hay strewn in back, with the canvas-wrapped instruments. Lissa sat between the old people on the driving board. Jelenka had baked bread and cut ham to provision them for a week.

There was also the rifle—an ancient, long-barreled gun of Turkish make, a relic of the Ottoman hegemony; there were only a dozen cartridges for it, preserved for a long time. The old man had dug it up from under the tiles behind the stove.

“We are not permitted to have weapons,” he said. “But I bought this from the peasant who owned the stone hut before us.”

Lissa did not want to take the gun. “What good will it do? If we are stopped, that will be the end of it, anyway.”

“It makes me feel less helpless,” old Jamak said.

For the first part of the journey, Adam could look out from his hiding place in the cart and see the wild mountain gorges of the valley of Viajec. The wind was bitterly cold. The old horse picked his way gingerly down the rough road, and the cart creaked and jolted on its springless axle. Jamak kept up a constant murmur of encouragement to the animal, his breath pluming in the icy air.

In an hour they rattled across the bridge into Viajec. Now Adam heard voices, a sharp ringing command, the tramp of booted feet, the distant roar of a motorcycle. They were ordered to halt in the marketplace, but it was only a routine check, and Lissa was well known. She explained in a calm voice that they were going to the next village to look for more customers for Jamak’s wood. Adam huddled, tense, in his hiding place, expecting instant discovery. But they were ordered on their way.

The cart rattled over cobblestones, then rolled more easily on the paved road to the south. The chill air bit into the hay where Adam lay, and he began to shiver violently. It seemed forever before they were clear of the village, but not more than twenty minutes passed before Lissa called him softly. The cart halted. He shook off the covers and got out clumsily, stiffened by the cold.

They were in a narrow ravine, with the river rushing along one side of the road and a sheer rock wall towering over the other. The sound of the river filled the air with thunder. Adam stamped his feet to restore circulation and looked at the old couple and Lissa.

“What is it?” he asked.

Lissa shrugged. “Jamak is worried. Corporal Nagatov went by on his motorcycle a few moments ago. Did you hear it?”

“Yes, but what of it?”

“We told him we were going to Hanat to sell wood, remember?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Hanat is in the other direction, you see. If he remembers—” Lissa paused. “Well, Jamak thinks we ought to turn back.”

“We can’t go back,” Adam said. “We’ve only just started.”

“Corporal Nagatov is ambitious and clever,” Jamak said. “I did not like the look on his face as he passed us.”

“That was minutes ago,” Adam objected. “He’d have stopped us then, if he suspected anything.”

“Perhaps he will realize it and come back soon,” Lissa said.

Adam was dismayed. “Look, how far is it to the Danube?”

“We will reach it tomorrow,” Lissa explained. “And each mile we go makes it more difficult to explain ourselves. There is a new bridge we can use, but after that the people will be even more suspicious of strangers. Jamak has papers he kept from long ago, when Giurgiu was in office, and perhaps they will help us if people don’t notice the dates.”

“Then I think we should go ahead,” Adam said. “I think—”

They were not prepared for what came next. None of them could hear the motorcycle’s return because of the roar of the river, echoing back and forth from the rocky walls of the gorge, drowned out all sound on the road. The first warning they had was when the cycle and driver skidded around the bend ahead and slid to a halt in front of the cart. The old horse skittered nervously. They all stood frozen. Adam was caught in the open without a chance to get back to his hiding place in the cart.

The corporal who slid off the cycle was a barrel-chested young man with a thin face and a long, drooping moustache. His green eyes flickered from the old people to Lissa and Adam, and he grinned.

“Are you having trouble here?” he asked, shouting above the clamor of the river.

“No, no trouble,” Jamak said. “I lost my way, Corporal Nagatov. It is so long since I left Zara Dagh, I took the wrong turn.”

“Yes, I see.” The corporal’s fingers moved restlessly along his uniform trousers. He wore a fur cap, a cartridge bandolier, and a bolstered gun. He looked at Adam. “And you? Where did you come from?”

“I was walking along the road here,” Adam said haltingly. “These people were good enough to offer me a ride.” “Indeed. Where did you get those clothes?”

“They are my clothes.”

“And your accent?”

“I come from the south.”

“And your papers?”

“I lost them.” Adam tried to sound vague and stupid, but he knew it was no good. The corporal’s green eyes were too bright and alert. They had no chance. Everything gave him away. He looked at Lissa’s stricken face and insisted: “These people are complete strangers, Corporal, and have nothing to do with me. If you arrest me, remember they are innocent.”

“So?” The corporal spoke softly. “You are the American. You are wise not to deceive me. Turn around, please.” When Adam hesitated, the man drew his gun and his voice went shrill above the roar of the river. “Turn around, all of you! Jamak, get back on the cart. Lissa, stand still.” “Believe me—” Adam began again.

“Why should I believe you? They were helping you to escape. Everyone knows they are traitors and scum. Am I simple, not to understand what I find here? You are all under arrest!”

Adam saw only calamity for Jamak and Jelenka. He felt desperate. His escape plan had been impulsive, poorly planned, and it had brought them only a few miles, to this.

He looked up and down the empty road. There was no guard rail along the turbulent river bank. Down there, the water smashed in white foam against dark rock. He thought: Only this man stops us. Only he can destroy us.

“What will you do with me” Adam asked.

“Why, you will be treated properly,” the coiporal grinned.

“And these people?”

The man laughed. “They will be shot.”

Adam turned slowly, as if to get into the cart. His first panic was gone. He felt sure of what he had to do. The corporal was only a few steps away. When he turned, as if defeated, he suddenly launched himself at the man, grabbing for the corporal’s gun. He almost made it. But his leg betrayed him. At the last moment the thrust of his leap made his foot slip under the strain and his hand slashed with only partial effect at the trooper’s arm.

The gun crashed thunderously in the narrow ravine. Lissa screamed. Adam was dimly aware of Jamak standing up in the cart, and then the corporal smashed viciously at him with the gun butt. He went down on hands and knees, his ears ringing. The corporal cursed. His first shot, squeezed off in surprise, had only spanked into the dust of the road. Now he raised his gun again and stepped back as Adam scrambled up.

“Adam!”

He heard Lissa’s cry as he tried to close with the trooper. But his injured leg could not match the corporal’s agility. He saw a glimmer of steel come down at him, and then the man’s eyes shifted in sudden alarm. Adam could not see what was going on behind him. He swung wildly; his knuckles cracked on the man’s jaw. The corporal staggered and sprawled in the dust, rolled desperately across the road, and came up again with the gun leveled.

Before Adam could jump again, the corporal fired. Adam twisted, hearing an echo. He saw Jamak on the cart with the ancient Turkish rifle in his grip. The corporal shrieked and the old man fired again, and the trooper’s body jerked and rolled almost to the edge of the road above the rocky, roaring stream. Still grinning, the man lay prone and raised his gun a third time. Adam tried to rise, but his head swam and blood ran into his eyes. Jamak tried to fire the Turkish rifle again, but the hammer clicked on a dead cartridge. With a strangled sound, the old man jumped between the corporal and those on the cart just as the policeman, with his dying strength, squeezed off a last shot.

Jamak’s bull-like charge carried him to the corporal at the edge of the road—and beyond. Adam saw a puff of dust jump from the old man’s chest where the bullet slammed into him.

Then, astonishingly, both men were wiped from sight.

Adam climbed slowly to his feet. Under the steady roar of water in the gorge, there was a great, suffocating silence. He walked carefully to the edge of the road and looked down. There was nothing to see but black rock and tumbling white water. Then footsteps ran behind him and he turned and caught Lissa in his arms. She was white and trembling.

“Can you see them?”

“No. Neither one.”

“He—Papa saw the corporal aiming at me. And the J old rifle didn’t work a second time, so he—he—”

“Don’t.” He felt helpless, watching her stricken face. She breathed raggedly. He looked at Jelenka. The old woman looked blank, accepting her ultimate loss. “Go to your mother,” he said quietly. “I’ll get rid of the motorcycle.”

“What are you thinking of?” Lissa asked wildly.

“We have to go on.”

“But we can’t!” she cried. “Don’t you understand? Papa had the papers to get us across the bridge. Without the papers, we can’t go anywhere—except back to the hut. . .

She sank to her knees and stared into the raging stream below. There was no sign of either body. The rushing current was white with the crescents of ice in the shadows, and in a few days the water would be strangled in winter’s grip. Neither corpse might be discovered until spring.

He helped Lissa to her feet. She moved as if in a dream.

“Go back to the cart,” he said flatly.

When she turned away, like a sleepwalker, he went quickly to the cycle, wheeled it to the river bank, and sent it crashing to the rocks below. It was not completely hidden, but that could not be helped. By the time it was found, the issue would be settled, one way or another.

Adam walked slowly back to the girl and the old woman.

There was nothing for them to do but return to the hut.

CHAPTER XV

Colonel Kopa lay on his hospital bed in Racz and gave orders. He ordered the oxygen tent taken away. He ordered Sergeant Banya brought to him for instructions. He ordered that a complete sweep of the countryside down toward Budapest be made. He dictated a memo to headquarters, to General Lubakatsky, and rejected all advice from the worried doctor who attended him.

“Colonel, you must rest. You have had a serious attack. Your system cannot stand the strain of this activity.” “It cannot stand the results of inactivity, either, Doctor.”

“Colonel, I cannot take the responsibility for your life if you disobey medical orders.”

Kopa felt driven as if by demons. He was an intelligent and ruthless man. He was ambitious to succeed, and he knew what the opposite face of the coin would mean. He had seen it happen to other associates who had bungled cases less serious than this matter of Durell and the astronaut. But he could not give up because of a ridiculous physical lapse. The doctor could keep him going for a few more days. After that, it would not matter.

When the massive, moustached Sergeant Banya arrived, Kopa asked for the list of suspected partisan sympathizers in the Racz district and ordered a swift combing to determine who could have been involved in the affair at the bridge. He gave the sergeant one hour to bring the prime suspects to the emergency room in the hospital clinic.

Sergeant Banya said heavily: “It will be difficult, Comrade Colonel. They will be hiding. You know how they hide after a job.”

“Find them!” Kopa screamed. “Bring them to me!” The doctor ran in with adrenaline as Kopa fell back,  coughing, his pudgy face bluish again. Kopa ignored the twisting pain in his chest. It would get better or worse. He could curse his physical distress for an eternity, but it would not change things. He had to go on.

When word came, an hour later, that Sergeant Banya had a suspect down in the clinic’s emergency room, Kopa got out of bed and dressed and walked down the steps with the doctor. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lowering sun sent shafts of reddish light through the narrow, dusty windows of the clinic. Outside, a streetcar clanged and rumbled across St. Stephen’s Square. The doctor, a slim man with a delicate face and slightly slanted, Mongol eyes, had brought his bag of surgical instruments, as Kopa had ordered.

The suspect was a young man of twenty, with square shoulders and lank yellow hair, a Magyar face, a defiant curl of lip. Blood ran from a broken tooth in his mouth. One eye was puffed shut. But there was much spirit still in him, Kopa decided.

“Young man, we want only a few words from you. We want a name, the name of the man who asked you to sabotage the bridge of Racz Prison.”

The boy spat blood on the floor and was silent.

“Sergeant, convince him he must talk,” Kopa said quietly.

Kopa sat in a corner and watched. There was the thudding of blows, the wrench of muscles, the cracking of tendon and bone, the sudden ululating scream from tormented lungs.

“Well?” Kopa asked.

The boy spat at Kopa.

“Doctor,” Kopa said, “can you make this young stallion something less than a man?”

“Colonel, I couldn’t—”

“It is an order. Omit the anesthetics. You need no nurses. Sergeant Banya will tie him down on the table.”

The doctor looked at Kopa’s mad face and said: “Yes, sir.”

The boy stared at them through battered eyes that did not comprehend. Without warning, Banya hit him and threw him to the floor. Another guard held the boy’s shoulders while Banya yanked off the trousers; then the two burly men swung the suspect like a sack of grain to the steel operating table. The doctor nervously switched on the overhead light. The boy’s eyes widened incredulously.

“Go ahead,” Kopa said. “Cut him.”

The boy shrieked: “No! No, you can’t—”

The doctor hesitated, scalpel shining in his thin hands. Kopa said: “Who ordered you to bomb the bridge?”

“I—it was—I know only he came from the river—”

“The Danube? A seaman?”

“His name is—is—” The boy sweated. He looked at the doctor’s scalpel and felt the guard’s tug at his arms until his shoulders seemed wrenched from their sockets. His legs looked pale, the muscles standing out in knots. Little muscular spasms rippled the bare skin of his belly. He stared down at himself in sweaty wonder.

“His name?” Kopa asked.

“Gija. It is all I know. It is everything I can tell you.”

Kopa nodded. “Hold him for trial.”

By nightfall, Kopa was in Budapest, consulting the KGB files. A Lieutenant Smetsanov, a pale man with lidless, disappointed eyes, handed Kopa folders and dossiers. “These are the probable suspects, Colonel. But if I may say so—are you well, sir?”

“I am sick,” Kopa said. “Does that make a difference when a crime against the state must be uncovered and checked?”

“But your health, Colonel. I only thought—”

Kopa ignored him. His bald head shone under the lamp over the desk where he considered Gija’s dossier. Smetsanov smelled as if he needed a bath—an acrid smell like that of mildewed paper. Outside the walls of security headquarters in Budapest, traffic hummed, buses rumbled by, and the lights of the theater district made a haze against the night sky. Kopa had no interest in his surroundings. He was obsessed, carried along by only one thought.

“This is the one. Gija Zarije, aboard the barge Luliga. Phone the river check points and see if the vessel has passed Budapest yet.”

“Yes, Colonel. At once.”

“I only want the information—no interference with the barge, understand? And bring me a drink. Anything.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Kopa sat back. He felt as if he had been running a long race. But exultation made him content. He rubbed his chest absently. The pain that had ridden him all day was easing. So the doctor was a fool. A man had to go on, ignoring his weakness; it was often the best way. Nature knew best. A man was made to work, not to pamper himself. Work cured everything. Devotion to duty made one forget pain. Success was worth anything.

When Smetsanov brought him a bottle of Hungarian brandy, he drank greedily. It was quiet in the file room. Yes, Kopa thought, he could afford this quiet moment now. The brandy warmed his belly. His eyes felt heavy from lack of sleep; but he could not afford to sleep yet. He would ask the medical officer for some pills, to keep going. Probably, the end would not come for a day or two.

Smetsanov returned. His pale, yellowish face looked oily. “The barge Luliga has just left the docks at Margueritan Island, Colonel. The man Gija is aboard. I have the patrol officer’s crew-list. Everyone you want is on the barge.”

“Not everyone,” Kopa said. “Not Stepanic.”

“Shall I order the barge detained?”

“Of course not. We will watch it, fool. Let it go on down the beautiful Danube. We shall note where it stops and where Durell gets off and in this way, he will lead us to the elusive astronaut. Then—” Kopa held out his hands, fingers splayed wide, and suddenly closed them into twin fists that he knocked clumsily together. “Then we will take them all. The spies and the traitors and the saboteurs. All of them, at once.”

Smetsanov poured him another drink. It was eight o’clock.

The Luliga moved steadily downstream from the industrial docks of Budapest toward the Yugoslav border and the Iron Gates. First the river flowed south, through slowly rising mountains that loomed through the dark of early night in welcome relief from the flat monotony of the Hungarian plains. They passed Mohacs in early moonlight, the scene of Hungary’s greatest disaster, when the Magyars lost their independence to the Turks in a two-hour battle. Bending eastward, the river carried them through darkly looming Balkan mountains, past white houses in small villages, under a rare railroad bridge. There was an hour’s delay at the border, but the international agreements covering Danube commerce resulted in only a routine inspection at floodlighted docks. Durell wondered if an alarm had been sent out ahead. But everything was routine, and the Luliga’s blunt bow pushed a steady, chuckling wave of foam ahead.

For hours, Durell watched Deirdre sleep under rough blankets in a cubbyhole in the forward hold, among the munition crates. It was the only place to hide her after they rejoined the Luliga at a dock just north of Budapest. Gija had returned safely. And there was no problem in recognizing the new steel barge as she delayed at the pier on the pretext of engine trouble. Captain Galucz, bearded and tubby, ordered Deirdre hidden at once in the cargo compartment.

Shortly after Deirdre fell asleep, Durell went aft to the pilot house. Gija was in Mara’s cabin, talking earnestly to the blonde girl. Mara looked tense and defiant; Gija was quiet and persuasive.

“Your brother does not want to come with us, Mara. You must face this. He is like a time bomb, ticking aboard.”

“He does not understand,” she murmured. “He is a victim of propaganda, of brain-washing, since he was a child.” “Whatever the reason,” Gija said gently. “If he were not your brother, do you know what we would do with him now?”

She looked at him fearfully.

“We’d drop him overboard—well anchored and wired to stay on the bottom forever.” Gija paused. “He cannot be trusted. It would be safest for us.”

“I promise you that Mihály—”

“You can promise nothing in his name, Mara.”

She looked at Durell with frightened eyes. “What will you do with him, then?” Gija looked at Durell, too, “What do you suggest?”

“Where do you have him now?” Durell asked.

“Up forward, with Tomas,” Gija answered.

“And when we’re boarded for inspection? He’ll yell for help from the security police. How do you stop that?” “We tie and gag him for that time and hide him with the cargo.”

Mara said: “He promised he will do nothing to endanger me.”

Gija shook his head. “Mara, you cannot trust him. I know how much you love him, and what you’ve risked for him. But what can we do? Even if we got him safely to the West, he would head straight for the nearest Soviet embassy and give us all away. It would ruin the whole underground.” She bit her pink lip. “I can’t tell you what to do, then. I’m sorry I brought all this trouble to you.”

Durell went forward to talk to Mihály. He was locked in a crewman’s cabin in the bow. The moonlight made the Danube waters look phosphorescent as the Luliga smashed her way downstream. He felt uneasy. He saw how Gija had taken to Mara, how protective he was toward her. But Gija’s hard sense of values was still secure. He was absolutely right. The safest thing was to kill Mihály. Too many people might die because of his sulky defiance. And Mara might soon persuade Gija otherwise.

Mihály lay on the bunk with his handsome face turned toward the steel wall, when Durell stepped in. He looked briefly at Durell, his eyes sullen, then turned away again.

“Mihály, I won’t fool with you,” Durell said. “We know it was a mistake to try to rescue you.”

“A mistake you will regret,” the boy said.

“Not likely. We are debating what to do with you.” “Put me ashore,” Mihály said. “I refuse to be kidnapped.”

“If you persist, we have no choice except to get rid of you in a way that will guarantee your silence and our safety. Do you understand?”

Mihály sat up on the bunk. ‘You wouldn’t kill me. I know you Americans. You’re all soft and idealistic, too delicate to do such things.”

Durell said softly: “Don’t delude yourself, Mihály.” The boy started to speak again, looked at Durell’s eyes, and a pallor touched the corners of his mouth. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered.

“It may be necessary. I thought I’d warn you.”

“Mara wouldn’t let you touch me—”

“Mara has nothing to say about it. You should know, Mihály, that you are dealing with desperate men on this barge. When we are stopped for inspections, you risk blowing us all up.” Durell told the boy briefly about the wiring and detonating caps set in the munitions cargo. “We all go up together. So it’s up to you, when the inspectors next board the Luliga, whether you want to destroy yourself along with us.”

“I don’t,” Mihály whispered. “I promise I won’t.”

“You have your bargeman’s papers?”

“Yes. Gija gave them to me. But I haven’t looked at them.”

“Study them. Memorize them. Your life depends on it,” Durell said quietly, and went out.

He returned to the cargo hold where Deirdre slept and sat beside her, looking at her in the dim light of a small bulb. Her dark hair spread in a soft fan across the rough blanket bundled under her head as a pillow. After a time, Durell stretched out beside her and slept, too, although aware of the steady beat and thrust of the barge moving downstream. For a time he hovered between sleep and wakefulness, and he was not sure when he truly slept and when he listened, with that trained suspicion and alertness that never deserted him.

He woke instantly when Deirdie called him.

“I’m here, Dee.”

“I’m—I thought it was a dream—youi finding me—”

“It’s all right.”

She trembled. “Hold me close, Sam.”

He took her in his arms. They were alone in the dim shadows of the cargo hold. Overhead, there was a thin slice of night sky where the hatch had been hauled aside for ventilation. The air was cold and crisp. The stars were like swinging lamps against velvet. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t let me go,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“Can you forgive me, Sam? I never really understood your work; I never knew how it was. Intellectually, yes. But not how it could tear at your insides. I was never so afraid—not just for myself, but for everyone trapped by the forces of ambition and tyranny and terror. Why is it? Why are men like that?”

“History hasn’t changed,” he said. “If we were on deck now, you’d see on the river banks the ruins of old Roman walls and camps, the periphery of the Imperial Empire, the checks against the barbarian hordes. It has always been like this.”

“And will it always go on?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

She was silent for a moment in his arms. “Can you get us out, Sam?”

“I’ll try.”

“I know. But if something goes wrong tomorrow—”

“Nothing will go wrong,” he said.

“But if it does—we’ve lost so much time, you and I —in not understanding each other. I was foolish. For almost a year, darling—”

“We’re together now,” he said.

She moved against him, warm and yielding. “Yes. Together, now. Let’s—let’s not forget how it used to be. . . .”

CHAPTER XVI

Kopa flew east the next morning. On a whim, he had the plane follow the course of the Danube, obtaining air clearance for the trip. It pleased him to spot the barge Luliga far below on the silvery river, plodding along so slowly, like a child’s toy. The sunlight was bright on the Danube as the stream narrowed toward the east and the high gorges of the Iron Gates. He felt sure of himself now. His web of control spread north and east. Gija’s dossier gave him what he needed to know last night.

He lit a cigar, although the doctor who attended him shook his head in protest. Kopa waved a thick hand to ward him off. He felt fine today. A few hours sleep, a glimpse of success, had worked wonders. These doctors didn’t know everything. Perhaps it was only indigestion.

By noon the plane had landed at a military airstrip twenty miles from the village of Viajec. When Kopa disembarked, he found Lieutenant Petar Medjan waiting to report to him, with a car standing by at the edge of the airfield. Kopa’s shrewd eyes sized up Medjan quickly—a mixed breed, he decided, with too much Turkish blood in him to be truly trustworthy, although his records so far showed a ruthless efficiency. He could appreciate the physical bulk of the security man, and suspected at once that Petar Medjan lived too close to the routine of the village where he had been born ever to rise to any great height in the security police hierarchy. But just for this reason Medjan could be useful, the perfect man to ferret out just what was needed, and to do so quickly.

"You’ve placed the subjects under surveillance?” Kopa asked, as the car sped along the road toward Viajec.

“They were gone, Colonel, before the orders came through from headquarters.” Then Medjan added quickly: “It turned out all right, however. We’ve had a busy night.” Kopa was startled, and pushed his cigar at the big Turkish lieutenant. “You didn’t let them guess we know Stepanic is on Zara Dagh?”

“No, no. Nothing like that, Colonel. They tried to move out, and it cost me the death of one man. We found his cycle in a stream beside the road—he evidently tried to stop them, growing suspicious somehow—and they killed him. But the father, Jamak, was also killed. We searched all night in the stream until we found both bodies.”

“And the suspects?” Kopa asked harshly,

“They returned to Viajec and Zara Dagh.” Medjan smiled. “They are under observation at this moment. The American is with them.”

Kopa was relieved. For a moment he thought these stupid provincials might have spoiled everything. Nothing could come between himself and success now. He could not afford it. His first reports to KGB headquarters, coded from Budapest, were deliberately ambiguous. There would be some lifted eyebrows, a few questions murmured, but the generalities he had reported would gain desperately needed time to repair the situation.

Petar Medjan was uneasy in such close contact with someone like Colonel Kopa. His isolated mountain district had never seen such excitement and activity. He did not like it. He knew he was not particularly clever. He accepted his limitations and realized that he operated best in the village of his birth. He was at home in Viajec, on Zara Dagh, in the tumbled, wild mountains of the district. He knew his way here like a blind man knows his own home. He resented the intrusion of all these outsiders, who had no knowledge of the villagers and their problems.

Petar Medjan thought of himself as a protective overseer for the Viajec district. In his way, he tried to do what was best for his people. He was cruel, yes. But a father must whip his sons occasionally. And he tried to be fair. Yes, he was honest and fair in everything—except in the matter of Lissa.

Here, where his passion had ruled, was the scene of his biggest mistake, the threatened disaster that could destroy him.

He told Kopa everything he knew about Jamak and Jelenka. He mentioned his visit to Zara Dagh, putting it in the light of a routine check. He did not mention what happened with Lissa, of course. Anyway, wasn’t he willing to marry the girl? So it was no crime, what he had done in the barn. She would marry and love him eventually.

But now everything was changed, everything hung in the balance.

Kopa could ruin everything. And like a diabolical nemesis, Kopa put his hand right on the sore spot and twisted.

“This girl,” he said. “The village nurse, you say?”

“Yes, Colonel,” Medjan muttered.

“An educated girl. She would have recognized Stepanic, known what his orbital flight meant, arranged to hide him and get word to the West to rescue him. The old people wouldn’t have been up to it, otherwise. It is the girl we must question.”

“I don’t know,” Medjan said.

“Is she pretty?”

“I pay no attention. She works in the village with a certain efficiency. She is practically a doctor to the peasants. They do not love her, because she has strange ways, but they respect her.”

“I seem to hear a reluctance in your voice, Lieutenant, when you discuss this girl.”

"I—I am fond of her, a little,” Medjan admitted.

“Ah? And that means—?”

“Nothing else, Colonel.”

“If she proves a traitor, she will be shot. You may be in trouble yourself, by association. I want to question her when we reach Viajec. Will she be in the village, or on the mountain?”

“I will get her for you,” Medjan said glumly.

As it turned out, he did not have to go far. As they crossed the stone bridge into the main street of the village, he saw Lissa striding along with her usual proud carriage, looking neither to right nor left.

Viajec had only one paved street, an extension of the auto highway from north to south in the long valley between the mountains. The villagers had no idea where the road began or ended. It did not concern them. Their world was bounded by the terraced vineyards, the orchards, the hunting preserves in the wooded hills. They were isolated and illiterate, tied to the land and their customs as effectively as their ancestors had been. The few shops in Viajec catered only to basic needs. There was a single power line stretching along the highway into the village—everywhere else, kerosene lamps and stoves served for light and heat. One branch went to the police building, a small stone structure from the Turkish pasha’s time; the other served the small military barracks that usually was empty, but which now was crammed by alien troopers who had already rubbed most of the Viajec people the wrong way.

Medjan, who looked on the village and the souls in it as a form of personal property, resented what was happening here, and at the same time felt alarm for his own safety. He knew that Kopa could destroy him. And so, when he saw Lissa crossing the bridge, he did not dare pretend he failed to see her and pointed her out accordingly.

“If you like, Colonel,” he said, “I will question her for you—”

“Arrest her now, Medjan, but do it quickly and quietly, to prevent a local alarm. Can you get her into the police building on some pretext?”

“Of course.”

“Then do so now.”

Lissa knew at once that she was in trouble. She heard Medjan call her and saw his bulky figure jump from the official car. Her first impulse was to turn and run. But she knew this was impossible. There was nothing to do but face him, as she had always faced him until that day in the bam, as if nothing had changed between them.

She had not wanted to go into Viajec after their abortive attempt to escape. She had thought to stay on Zara Dagh with Jelenka, who sorrowed in dark silence and did not yet weep for Jamak. She wished her mother would blame her for what happened on the road, for that nightmare moment of violence that had served no purpose. But Jelenka was silent. She moved about the hut as quietly as always, and it seemed to Lissa that almost all of her mother’s conversation must have been directed only to Jamak, as if he had been the reason for her life and the core of her universe.

It was probably true, Lissa thought. And she wished that she herself could weep for Jamak. But there was no time for tears. And the trip into Viajec was necessary.

She had talked it over with Adam. They needed to know how far the alarm had spread, and how seriously the search was being conducted around Zara Dagh. If they continued to hide in the hut without word from the village, without hope of warning they would be like the ostrich burying its head in the sand. They needed information, so they could make intelligent plans.

“We will have to go out over the mountains,” Lissa said. “It can be done. There is the old Roman road I showed you. I do not know how far it runs, but it follows the ridge crests, going south. Perhaps it connected a series of watch towers in the old days. If so, it will get us as far as the Danube.”

“We’ll have to walk, right?”

“Yes,” Lissa said.

“I could do it. And you. But Jelenka?”

“She will find it difficult, but she can do it. It will be cold. We’ll get hungry and tired, Adam. It will take a long time, moving on foot through these mountains. It may be very bad. And there will be snow any day, soon. If that happens, we could die of the cold, exhaustion—”

He kissed her gently. “We’ll decide tomorrow if it’s necessary. When you come back from the village. . . .” Now she knew that even this modest move was a mistake. Something was wrong with Medjan, beyond an embarrassment he showed because of the bam. The barn was really nothing to him, she knew; he placed no value on taking a woman by force, and did not concern himself with her sensitivity. No, his manner was different for other reasons. It was that man in the car with him, perhaps, bald-headed, cruel, a stranger who looked at her with odd eyes and looked away again.

“Come to the police station, Lissa,” Medjan said. “Whatever happens, believe me, I did not want it like this,” he added in an undertone.

“Petar, what is it?”

“You know what it is,” he said. “You should have told me about it, Lissa. You could have asked for my help.” “Your help? Would you give it to me?”

“Perhaps. I do not love the people who have come to Viajec lately. Why should I? What do they know about us? They give orders, tie things up in red tape, they have powers they don’t deserve. They could order my execution in a moment. Now walk quietly beside me, Lissa. You must come into the station with me.”

“Very well.” Her heart began to pound wildly. “Am I arrested?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me why?”

He looked down at her. He was an enormous man. “We found Jamak in the river. And Corporal Nagatov.”

“I see.”

“You will have to explain. Do nothing foolish. Protect yourself, Lissa.”

“How can I? I am already condemned.”

“Tell everything. Speak the truth. Then I will speak for you, afterward. Something might be arranged.”

She felt confused. She had thought of Petar Medjan as an enemy. Yet his brutal peasant’s face seemed honestly perturbed as he walked with her into the police station. She had known pain and animal lust in his hands. She hated him, and he knew this, yet he was trying to help her. She shook her head briefly in mute astonishment. The human heart was too difficult to fathom. Nothing about a man or woman was simple.

Kopa waited in a back room of the police station. There was a barred window overlooking the steep bank of the rushing stream under the village bridge. Opposite were barren reeds, a square white house—it belonged to Subro, the farm cooperative supervisor, who did nothing in response to the directives except to fill out endless reports and complain about peasant stupidity. The sun made the rushing river look like molten steel. Kopa stood with his back to the window, his bald head thrust forward on thick shoulders. The smell of his cigar did little to cover what Lissa thought of as the smell of blood and anguish in the interrogation room.

“Sit down, Lissa,” Kopa said.

“Why am I brought here?”

“You will help us. Surely you wish to cooperate?”

“I don’t know how I can help you.”

“I have been studying your family’s record. Anti-Soviet activity carried on by your brother, Giurgiu, surely could not still be cherished by you. You have been treated well in Viajec, have you not?”

“We live,” Lissa said.

“Yes. You live. All of you?”

Lissa looked up. “All of us.”

“Your father, Jamak? He lives, too?”

She said nothing. Everything was known. Kopa was impatient, she guessed, to bring such a blunt challenge so quickly into his game. She heard him demand an answer and sank down on a chair, aware of Petar Medjan beside her. Medjan’s big hand moved as if to touch her shoulder, but then he dropped it aside. Kopa was insistent, asking about Jamak, about Adam Stepanic. So everything had indeed been a foolish game, played by blind mice, she thought. She was doomed. Kopa could go up and take Adam and Jelenka whenever he was ready. Perhaps the soldiers were already on the way.

“Why are you silent?” Kopa asked. “Can you see how hopeless your situation is?”

“You know everything already,” she whispered. “Why ask me?”

“You know why.”

“Why do you wait? You can take the American any time now.”

“We are not ready. We do not have everyone we want in our net.” Kopa laughed. “Eh, Medjan?”

Petar Medjan nodded. Kopa’s words were like a twist of a knife inside Lissa. Of course. She was even more stupid than she thought. There was Gija, and the Americans he was bringing down-river to take Adam home.

She knew what they would do to Gija, that laughing, reckless one. They would break his body, tear his blood and tissue, turn his amusing mind into an idiot’s jungle of mumbled confessions. Yes, they could do it. They were waiting for this, for Gija and the others. This Kopa would not act until all the fish were in his net, as he said.

But how could she stop it? She could think of no way, except by keeping silent.

“Petar, make her talk about it,” Kopa said negligently.

“Comrade Colonel, I have known this woman—”

“Then shall I send for one of my men, if you are squeamish?”

“Colonel, we can raid and take them in now.” Medjan was not aware of Kopa’s biggest scheme. He sweated. “We can hold this woman here and take some platoons into the mountains—”

“My men are already posted, with the hut under observation. I want the story now, from this woman. She must talk. You can use my cigar, if you like. A few caresses with a hot coal where she may be tender—it is done, and then she will cooperate.”

Petar loomed over Lissa. His face was like something anguished, carved in dark and frozen stone. “Tell us, Lissa. Talk to us.”

“No.”

He shut his eyes and slapped her. Her head snapped to one side and she felt the blow like an explosion. She made herself look up and smile at Medjan, meeting his tormented eyes with scorn and derision.

“Lissa, pleasel”

“Again,” Kopa said.

He hit her again—harder, this time. His face dripped sweat. Lissa fell from the chair and sprawled on the floor. Kopa prodded her with his boot.

“Again, Lieutenant.”

Medjan pulled her up and put her back in the chair. His voice was a shout. “Lissa, tell us everything! Why be stubborn? We know you helped the American. He was there when I last inspected your father’s place, was he not?”

She spoke through a bloodied, thickened mouth. “Ah, you remember your visit, do you?”

“Lissa, I could not help myself, or stop what I did—”

“I spit on you,” she whispered.

He hit her. In his anguish, he found refuge in a dark and furious comer of his mind. This girl could not and would not destroy him. Whatever happened, he had to end her defiance. He struck her again and again. Her dark red hair flew back and forth in a screen across her face. Kopa looked on patiently, smoking his cigar.

Below the prison walls, the little river ran between the icy banks with a sound like the chuckling of steel.

CHAPTER XVII

The Luliga forged downstream toward the junction of the Drava in convoy with other barges, tugboats and steamers. Here was the famous Backa of black soil, wheat farms, and white village houses, of fishermen stolidly tending their nets. Not even the new regime had made much of a mark here. At dawn, Durell and Deirdre sat on the forward hatch and watched larks shoot high into the cold sunlight in a sky alive with soaring swallows and herons.

Durell felt curiously at peace. Gija lounged at the pilot’s wheel with Captain Galucz and Mara Tirana. An air of respite touched everyone aboard.

A tugboat’s whistle echoed over the broad waters, and Durell thought of the Mississippi delta country. But this was different. The fishermen on the banks wore baggy trousers and shaggy moustaches, with an occasional fez, and it would continue like this until late afternoon, when they approached the canal through the wild narrows of the Iron Gates.

Deirdre had been clothed in baggy trousers and a rough workman’s sweater, and her dark hair was tucked up under a ragged cap. She sat hugging her knees as she watched the river at the ruins of Golubac, where the Danube’s left bank lifted into piney foothills scarred by old mines. Far ahead, the Transylvanian Alps presented a solid wall of craggy rock.

"Now I know why they sing about the Danube,” Deirdre sighed. “It’s truly beautiful.”

“Blue, red, and bloody,” Durell said grimly.

She looked at him gently. “No rest for the weary, darling?”

“Not until you and Adam Stepanic are safely home.” “Sam, that’s over. Surely you know how I feel now—”

“We’ll know better when you meet him again,” Durell said. “But you’re right. Let’s not talk about it.”

He stood up when he saw the bearded Captain Galucz descend from the pilot house and left Deirdre to go below with the fat man. He had noted yesterday the half-dozen scout cars crated in the hold. There were also boxes of uniforms, boots, and Russian-style helmets. Captain Galucz wheezed impatiently as Durell scrambled around the crowded, echoing hold.

“Can we rig up the booms to get one of these cars ashore?” he asked the captain. “I want to uncrate one, service it, and have it ready to go the minute the wheels touch the river bank.”

“It can be arranged.” Galucz was curious. “And then?” “Mara and Deirdre can sew us uniforms today. We’ll mount a machine-gun on the car and take along hand weapons, grenades, and perhaps a mortar.” He saw Galucz purse his lips. “Can’t it be done?”

“Of course. But it is sheer suicide.”

“It's the quickest way to get to Viajec,” Durell said. “And if you are discovered to be impostors by a road block? This whole consignment is for the Arabs of die Middle East—though why I* help put powder in that damned glory-hole is more than I can explain to myself.” Galucz slapped his big belly. “I have the feeling this trip will be the last for all of us, you know. It is a temptation to blow it all up”

Durell grinned. “Maybe that can be arranged.” “Uh-huh.” Galucz tugged his beard. “Tomas could paint insignia on the scout car. Gija can drive. Two hours should see you in Viajec from where I could put you ashore.” “Then let’s get started,” Durell said.

The Luliga was equipped with her own cargo booms. As they plodded downstream, the cables were rigged and the crates of munitions shunted aside so that Tomas and Pashich, the other crewman, could get at the nearest car. Servicing and equipping the car with a light machine-gun and mortar mounted on steel frames took most of the noon hours. Durell added a box of grenades, dynamite sticks and percussion caps.

“We won’t look for trouble,” he told Gija. “It will be best if we go in fast, pick up Stepanic and your people, and get out before anyone knows about it.”

Gija shrugged. “It will not happen that way. Nothing comes easily or with luck in my country.”

Mara was in the pilot house with Gija as they neared the Iron Gates. With the sun behind them, it seemed to Mara that the river narrowed until it met a solid wall of rock. Gija pointed out the Carpathian highlands, the limestone water caverns and crystalline schist in rocky shoals. The air was filled with a sharp essence from the pine woods, and it seemed to Mara as if the whole world waited in suspense for the struggle between the mountains and the on-rushing river.

There was more space between units of river traffic now as they entered the Greben Defile. The current was markedly faster, and Gija watched the channel signals intently.

“Gija, can you talk to me now?” Mara asked timidly. He nodded. “It is good to have you beside me, Mara.” “Do you say that just to make me feel better? To forget how I almost ruined everything over my foolish brother?” “I think only of you, Mara. I—I like you.”

“Yes, perhaps you do,” she said gently. “It is something in the heart, a sudden knowing, a quick thing like a bird in the air.”

“Do you feel it, too?” Gija asked. When she nodded, he sighed. “I keep wondering what will happen to you when this is all over.”

“I only want to live in peace. Perhaps in America— will you be going with Durell?” she asked.

He shrugged. “The underground will be destroyed by this mission. But this one coup will be worth it.”

Mara paused. “Can I explain to you, Gija, how it happened that you saw me with Durell that first night? I want you to know and believe how desperate I was—” Gija did not reply. The river suddenly boiled with furious currents under the high crags of limestone. Every time it seemed as if the mountains would triumph, the river found an opening ahead. Silently, Gija pointed to the south bank, then said:

“The Emperor Trajan built a road there in the first century. You can still see Imperial Rome’s words carved in the stone. Their glory ended, but those men left a permanent mark here. I want to leave a mark here, too, before I go to the West with Durell.”

“I only want you to be safe, Gija. Do nothing foolish.” He turned to look at her. There was a new quickness in her. Her blonde hair was neatly coiled in thick braids at the nape of her neck, and her face reflected some of the contagious excitement of the river.

“And you, Mara? Going to the West will mean a new life for all of us.”

“Yes, strange and new,” she nodded. “I thought once I wanted it so much, but now that I face it alone, I’m not so sure.”

He felt awkward as her large eyes turned somberly toward him. Something of their mutual loneliness suddenly offered to break down between them. Mara’s heart began a wild, runaway beat. It seemed to her as if she had never met such a man. Gija had the strength she needed and yet, he was not complete in himself, either; he needed balance, warmth and comfort. She could give him this, and in return, he could give her—what? Love was an idyl she did not permit dreams about. And yet, with Gija, anything was possible, in a new world, with a new beginning.

Then the faint, tremulous connection between them fell apart as he said: “What can we do with Mihály? The underground may be useless after this trip, but we need time for our people to find new identities. So we must make sure Mihály can’t talk—not for a long time, at least.”

She said nothing. Something in him had turned abruptly remote, cold and calculating. . . .

The river smashed headlong at the solid mountains, and in the Kazan Narrows, the channel exploded in fury. Echoes beat wildly back and forth from the towering banks. A steam tug hooted, hauled up in the west-bound channel by diesel engines and tow ropes. The whistle sounded petty against the thunder of the river as it hurtled through the gap.

Gija had no time for Mara now. All his attention was on the channel markers blinking in the dusk. Then suddenly they were through the Kettle and the Danube sprawled widely at Orsova, slowing its pace. The Luliga’s blunt bow swung toward Ada Kaleh Island. In the fading sunlight, the minarets and mud-plastered walls of the island town seemed to have been transplanted from the Near East.

Gija spoke formally to Mara about the navigational improvements installed by the Russians, and of the old Roman canal and road inside the Iron Gates. He mentioned the tunnel from the river bank to the island that once existed for smugglers of tobacco who avoided the taxes of the High Porte of Turkey. Then a whistle blew from the docks of Ada Kaleh and he returned to his job as pilot with obvious relief.

Mara said nothing more. She knew he did not want to mention the real shadow between them. That shadow was her brother, Mihály—and the need to kill him to insure his silence. . . .

Mihály waited patiently. By midnight the Iron Gates were astern, with the canal and roaring channel, floodlights and tow engines between the rocky cliffs. He saw little of this, since he was still a prisoner in the Luliga’s hold. But when the current grew placid and the barge thrust easily downstream between the dark Bulgarian hills, he was summoned by Tomas to help with the rigging of the scout car on deck.

There was a bright, cold moon. Here and there on the Pannonian plain were a few feeble village lights. Mihály remembered a student tour he once took here, turning up his patrician nose at the old towns with their bit bazaars, the begging gypsies, the hamais screaming for trade. Usually a Greek Orthodox church dominated the settlement, with an open-air cafe for slh'ovitsa raki. Here you still saw an occasional Greek merchant, Vlachs rubbing shoulders with stubborn Turks in fez and feieddja. The new regime worked hard at stamping out the old ways, but the peasants were equally stubborn.

Mihály worked at the booms with a growing desperation. He had to escape. He could not go on. These people had no right to snatch him from the safe theater school and drop him into dangerous politics. He wanted none of it. Not because he was a coward; it was not from fear, but common sense, that he had hidden from the boys who fought so insanely against the Russian tanks in Budapest’s streets.

But he was afraid now. Mara’s foolish plan involved him as a reluctant refugee; but why should he risk his life? For freedom? He did not know or care what it meant.

He paused in setting the sling booms in place with Tomas and Pashich. A deep silence blanketed the river under a cold moon. They passed smoothly under the shadows of Appolodor’s Bridge, where Trajan had crossed the Danube to plant the Roman eagle in barbarian territory, while Mihály studied the phlegmatic forms of the two bargemen. The job was almost done. It was his duty to report this crazy scheme to the police, he thought. Surely they would be caught, anyway. And if he could find Colonel Kopa and prove his loyalty, everything would go easy for him and Mara.

To the north, the river spread into a world of marshes and lakes. Fishermen’s huts huddled on the dark banks. The river had become what the local gypsies termed “the dustless road.” Its width was so great in places that the far shore was invisible. Boat traffic was heavier, and the song of bullfrogs rose against the chill autumn night. Ahead were the mountains of Dobruja, the Cerna-Voda Bridge where the Blue Danube train crossed from Bucharest to the Black Sea port of Constanza. Soon the Danube would lose itself in the vast delta channels, a drowned wilderness of islands, and shoals, where the waters teemed with salmon and pelicans, and wild geese and plover fed in the reeds and tamarisk along the banks.

Escape had to come quickly—tonight, Mihály thought.

They rested, had coffee, and returned to work again. The Luliga halted before dawn to tie up at a small town dock. Tomas slept, but Mihály offered to keep working on the car sling with stolid, gray-haired Pashich. He felt a rising excitement when he saw his chance.

“Take up some slack, boy,” Pashich called to him. The bargeman stood with the scout car in the deep hold. The sling was ready, the booms set in a triangle over the hatch. “Wake up, boy!” Pashich bawled. “Stop your dreaming!”

Mihály looked aft. The pilot house was dark. What was Mara doing with Gija, there in the dark? Well, it didn’t matter. He looked to the east. It would soon be light. Nobody was in sight on the dock where the Luliga was tied up. A fine mist covered the river’s broad surface.

“Haul away!” Pashich grumbled again.

Mihály threw his weight on the lines. The booms creaked, and then he kicked on the electric motor. The car came up easily from the deck in the hold. He looked down and saw Pashich’s blunt peasant’s face staring up in inquiry out of the hold.

“Fine,” the man called softly. “Let her down easy.”

Mihály set his jaw, kicked out the cog pin in the pulley, and the cargo net snapped free. The taut lines shrieked momentarily in their pulleys, and the heavy car crashed back into the hold.

Pashich screamed.

It was the most awful sound Mihály ever heard.

For a moment it froze him. He wanted to clap his hands over his ears to cut off Pashich’s screaming. The car had smashed down on its side and pinned the old man under it.

Mihály jumped down to the pier. Somebody shouted his name, but he did not look back. He ran as hard as he could. The dock was a narrow path of wooden planks that shuddered underfoot. Then there were houses, an alley, and the streets of the sleeping river town.

“Mihály!”

They did not dare shoot. It would wake up the police.

But he ran until he fell headlong, spent, in the square in front of a large building that seemed to be the town hall. Nobody was in sight. His lungs were bursting for air, and he pressed his face against the cold cobblestones for relief. The earth seemed to stagger under him.

Then he heard the footsteps and he scrambled up.

It was Gija. Gija pulled him erect, a fury on his face.

But Gija was interested in Mara, Mihály thought. He wouldn’t do anything bad, because Mara would never forgive him if he hurt him. . . .

“Why did you kill Pashich?” Gija whispered in a strange voice. His words seemed to echo from house to house and shout itself from the pale dawn sky. “Why did you run away, Mihály?”

“Let me go!” Mihály gasped.

He tried to squirm away. Gija’s grip was of iron.

Mihály wanted to shout for help, but he was afraid. Gija looked different. He was not the same man who joked on the barge. Then Gija looked and saw they were in front of the police station, and he changed even more.

“Were you going in there? Mihály, were you going to report us—your sister, too?”

“I don’t want anything to do with you crazy people! Anyway, Mara would be all right—I’d put in a good word for herl”

“But the rest of us would be shot, eh?”

Mihály gasped: “You’re all spies, traitors—”

“There is no hope for you,” Gija said in anguish.

‘What? What? Let me go, don’t hold me so hard—” Mihály saw the knife then, in Gija’s hand. He tried to break away—and he felt the knife strike solidly into his side.

Everything went spinning and crying away into the new dawn that somehow turned dark and became the cold wet of cobblestones under his cheek. He lay still and sobbed. There was no pain, and he was not afraid any more. He was too tired for fear.

He heard Gija’s footsteps move away uncertainly. He had a last impulse to call out for help, and he raised his head and saw the cross on the boarded-up Orthodox church across the square, and then it seemed as if the sun came up and exploded and caused a great wave of blackness to sweep eternally over him. And that was all.

CHAPTER XVIII

Colonel Kopa awoke with a stab of agonizing pain and sat up in confused panic. It was night again. The long sunny day was past. The pain wrenched at him again, and he heard an irregular gushing sound, like thunder, in his ears.

He sat very still, laboring only to breathe, and waited.

He remembered where he was, the small bedroom of Petar Medjan’s above the police station cells. The day had been wasted. The girl, Lissa, hadn’t talked. And it was important to document the case with statements, affidavits and confessions, to complete the file properly.

Nor was there word yet about the barge, Luliga.

Slowly, the pain in his chest ebbed away. Finally he felt strong enough to get up with care and pour himself a brandy. Kopa despised physical weakness. He was drenched with sweat. But the brandy warmed his belly, and he soon felt reasonably better.

He decided nothing must happen to him until he had crushed them all. Then the documented case would be a monument to his life’s work.

At the door, he called for Petar Medjan, who was dozing in a chair in the next room. From below came routine noises of a provincial police post—a man whistling, a typewriter clicking, the hum of a radio. It was after nine o'clock in the evening. Kopa suddenly felt hungry and impatient. It was raining outside now, on the edge of icy sleet. The windows reflected his grayish face and slack jowls. He looked ill.

“Medjan, wake up!”

“Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, springing to his feet.

Kopa envied Medjan’s bull-like strength, his muscular grace, the vitality of the bushy black moustache. Medjan’s dark eyes were alert, as if he had not been sound asleep a moment ago.

“Have you given up questioning the girl? She has confessed?”

“I am sorry, Colonel; I shall return to her at once. It's just—” Medjan paused. “She really has nothing new to tell us, sir. We can move into the hut and take the American spaceman and the old woman any time. Stepanic will talk to us. Why not? And why torment the girl any more? Stepanic will tell us whatever we want to know.”

Kopa chuckled. “I would like some tea and something to eat, comrade. Can you get my dinner, please?”

“At once, Colonel.”

“Do so. And ask the girl to sign a statement again. We need it.” Kopa looked at Medjan bluntly. “Do not let your affection for this Lissa girl warp your judgment, Lieutenant.”

“No, sir. It’s just-—” Medjan paused, sweating. He did not know the demons that drove Kopa. Saluting, he went out and told the duty sergeant to arrange for Kopa’s dinner. Then he found some vodka in his locker and swallowed thirstily. Down the hall was Lissa’s cell, where she slept. He thought her face would haunt him for the rest of his life. She was not strong enough for more questioning. He admired and hated her, all at once. Why was she so stubborn? What could she gain by more defiance, by inviting more pain and more outrage?

Medjan stepped outside through a back door. The dark bulk of Zara Dagh blotted out the night sky. He sweated, although icy rain hissed on the frozen ground. It was not a pleasant night for the men posted up there in the pine woods around Jamak’s hut.

The river made crackling, frosty sounds in its steep banks near the back floor of the police post. The village slept. Medjan drew a deep breath and turned to go back inside. His hand was on the door when he heard the quick, light footstep behind him.

An arm whipped around his throat, a knee crashed into his back, fingers caught his jaw and wrenched his head to one side, thrusting him off balance with a snap of the spine.

But he did not fall. Staggering, he reacted to the savage assault; but he was not fast enough. Before he could shout an alarm, a knife flickered before his eyes and he felt its sharp bite as it tore a tiny triangle of flesh out of his throat. His blood gushed warmly down his throat.

“Quiet, Petar! Or it goes deeper!”

He could not see his enemy. He breathed out, a great gusty explosion of the lungs, pluming in the frosty air. He was wrenched away into the shadows of the station wall under Kopa’s window.

He was allowed to turn a little, then, and he saw his captor.

“Gija?” He could not believe it. “It is you, Gija?”

“Give me an excuse to kill you,” Gija whispered. “Speak too loud! Shout for help! Make a move, please!”

“Gija, you are insane. I didn’t want to hurt Lissa.”

“Shut up.” Gija spoke in English to a second, taller man in the shadows, who moved easily up through the icy rain. “Can I kill him?”

“Not yet,” Durell said. “Ask him about Lissa and Kopa.”

Gija cursed. “Come,” he said to Medjan.

Medjan stumbled erect. He felt cold. The steel in Gija’s hand promised a quick death. He did not have time to wonder where Gija had come from, when they were waiting for just this to happen, waiting with the trap of Kopa’s ready to spring; he did not know how Gija had learned about Lissa. Maybe Gija only guessed. But then he saw it was plain on the pilot’s face, the knowledge of what Medjan had done to his sister.

Medjan obeyed orders, not knowing why he wanted to spin out his life to the last possible second. He was pushed toward the river’s edge and stumbled over the steep bank into the sparse, frozen brush that thrust up, naked and barren, from the hardened earth. He slid toward the icy water. Gija yanked his gun from his holster and threw it into the river under the nearby bridge. It splashed briefly and was gone.

Medjan looked back at the sleeping village. A scout car was parked in the dark village street a short distance upstream. It seemed to Medjan that two others were still sitting in the car, but he could not be sure. Death held him in a strangling grip by the throat.

“Gija,” Durell said. “Go see if the car is all right. It’s better if you leave for a moment. You can’t think straight.”

“I can easily cut his throat.”

“And kill him, like Mihály?”

Gija sucked in a sharp, angry breath. But he saw no reproof in Durell’s lean, shadowed face. “It had to be done! It had to be done!”

“I know, Gija. But we can’t kill this one yet.”

His words gave Medjan courage. “Gija, I’ve known you a long time. I’m your friend. Everyone knows what you’ve done. Lissa is a criminal. You can’t escape the country and you can’t help the American—”

Gija’s fist smashed into Medjan’s throat, and again in Medjan’s face, a flat sound of bone on flesh. Blood spurted from Medjan’s nose and coursed through his moustache. He coughed, strangling. He felt cold in the pit of his stomach, because he was wrong and Gija knew everything and there would be no mercy and no hesitation in the end.

“Go on,” Durell said harshly. “Go and stand by the car, Gija.”

The pilot hesitated, shuddered, and turned away, down the ravine in which the river clattered icily under the bridge. Medjan watched him go. When he looked back at Durell, he saw that Durell had a gun pointed at him.

The hours of the day had been strung as tight as steel cords, Gija thought. He drew a deep, shaken breath as he walked back to the car. Mara and Deirdre were anonymous shadows in the back, wearing their false uniforms. It had been necessary to take them along. To leave them on the barge, after the thing with Mihály, would have been to risk death for them as well as for Captain Galucz. Because the Luliga was now doomed.

They had come a long way since that moment with Mihály, hours in a nightmare. After all, Mihály had been a boy not quite twenty. Deadly, yes. But Mara’s brother had been dragged into a world he did not understand, and when he had tried to run home in confusion, he, Gija, had to take his blood on his hands.

The killing had been quick, quiet. There was no alarm. Yet Gija remembered his panic as something dimly recalled from a spasm of fever. He had started to run, then halted, his blood frozen, his heart choking him with panic. He looked back and saw Mihály lying on the deserted cobblestones of the foggy street. At any moment, a police guard might come along and find him. Then everything would be ended. The Luliga would be traced, they would be stopped, forced to suicidal destruction by blowing up the munitions in the barge’s holds. It would be done, because the alternative, arrest and questioning, was a far worse fate.

Reluctantly, Gija had gone back and knelt beside Mihály on the wet sidewalk. The boy’s handsome face was upturned to the gray of the dawn. Mihály looked older, worn. Blood ran slowly into the gutter beside him. His large eyes were open, staring at the sky.

“Mihály, can you hear me?” Gija whispered.

He began to shiver as he knelt beside the body. His thoughts were incoherent. He told himself he had done what was necessary. But Mara would never understand it. And so he had destroyed what had begun between them.

Durell had saved him.

Durell had followed him from the barge, searching swiftly through the village streets. Gija did not remember the next half hour. He kept protesting to Durell that he was not a murderer; and Durell helped him lift the boy’s body and hurry it quickly through the darkened alleys back to the waterfront, where the Luliga waited, while the dawn hurried after them like a pack of bright hounds baying at their heels.

As soon as they had returned with Mihály’s body, Captain Galucz swung the barge into the river channel. The day dawned bright and cold. The river banks were lost in a frosty haze that covered the southern hills. Northward was a small island in the swampy wilderness of drowned land and frozen lakes, alive with wild birds, stolid herons and ducks crying in the crystal air. Beyond the island was a broad, flat lake, unmarked by houses except a distant fisherman’s hut.

They buried Mihály and the bargeman, old Pashich, here. At any moment they had expected a curious patrol boat to come after them, asking why they had left the ship channel. They were lucky. The bodies were weighted in canvas and dropped to the bottom of the lake and then the Luliga reversed engines and chugged back around the farther end of the wooded island and rejoined the river’s stream.

Afterward, Gija tried to talk to Mara in her cabin. Her hands were quiet in her lap, her eyes were empty of tears. She did not look up at him when he came in.

“I do not want to talk to you, Gija,” she said dimly.

“I want to explain. I must. Will you listen to me?”

“It is not necessary.”

“It was Mihály’s life, or ours. He was frightened and mistaken, he did not understand, true. But he would have destroyed us, Mara. I had to do it. There was no time to talk. If he so much as shouted for help, out there in the street, the roof would have collapsed on our heads.”

“So you drove a knife into the boy,” she said flatly.

“He was a boy, but he was the enemyl”

Mara Tirana said nothing.

Gija fell to his knees before her. “Mara, can you forgive me?”

She said nothing.

He told himself he loved her. He did not know how or when it had happened. But he knew this had been a truth from the moment he first saw her with Durell. She had been lifeless then, but in the days that followed she had come alive a little, animated by the hope of saving her brother. Now she was like the dead again, unmoved by what was happening around her. He had destroyed her as surely as he had killed Mihály. . . .

Later that day, they had found an obscure fishing hamlet where the rickety dock was hidden from the main stream of river traffic by minor channels. The Luliga tied up there to put the scout car ashore, and it was then that Galucz insisted that the two women, Deirdre and Mara, go along in the car rather than stay on the barge.

“I might as well tell you,” the captain said heavily. “It’s been on the radio this morning—wholesale arrests in Bratislava, Racz and Budapest. It means our underground railway organization on the Danube is being smashed without pity. Our turn is next. If they do not know yet about the Luliga, it is only a matter of time. And when that time comes, I mean to stand by my plan to blow up the barge. Better that than a mock trial or slave camps and a walk to the wall some cold, dark morning.”

“You seem sure it will happen,” Durell said.

“I am sure,” the bearded man said heavily.

The few peasants and fishermen who watched them unload the car seemed dull-eyed, without dangerous curiosity. A mud road led through the swamps and lakes toward the distant outline of rising foothills and mountains beyond. The Luliga would remain at the village for forty-eight hours, waiting their return. But it was plain that Captain Galucz did not expect destiny to let him survive that long.

They drove north on the dirt road until they joined a major highway that paralleled a railroad track, and Gija pushed the scout car at its top speed. The only traffic was an occasional convoy of trucks or a speeding military cyclist.

There were no check points to pass. And Gija, who kept a map of the district in his mind’s eye, detoured around all the larger towns.

At dusk they were hidden in pine woods five miles from Viajec. It was a cold and lonely spot. They had decided to wait until complete darkness, but Gija was too impatient, and went scouting ahead alone. He was gone a long time. The night was dark, and the rain had begun when he returned.

“Could you get close to your house?” Durell asked.

Gija shook his head. “I did not try. I saw Stana the Gypsy. He told me my father is dead, and Lissa is in jail in Viajec. Medjan took her there. There are traps on Zara Dagh, men watching the house. It is a trap for us, ready to spring when we reach in for the American.”

Durell was silent for a moment. “What do you suggest we do?”

Gija’s gloved hands moved aimlessly, smoothing the pine needles on the ground where he knelt in the shadows. “If we go in, it must be done quickly. But a smart animal can snatch the bait and avoid the teeth of the trap if he is fast enough.”

“Then we must be fast enough.”

“I don’t know. Stana says it is impossible, except by the Roman road.”

“What’s that?”

“A trace trail over the mountains from Zara Dagh. A back way in. Very rugged. Difficult to follow.”

“Do you know it?”

“Not I. But Lissa once explored it alone, on a hiking trip. She likes such things. She says the old trace follows the ridges. It would take us straight along the mountain tops to the Danube and beyond. But only Lissa could show us the way.”

“Then let’s get Lissa,” Durell decided. . . .

Now, two hours later, Durell stood alone with Petar Medjan under the bridge behind the Viajec police post. The rain was cold, dappling the river. Long icicles hung from under the bridge. He had a gun thrust under Medjan’s jaw and the security man looked at him with brooding black eyes, ignoring the blood that ran down through his black moustache.

When Gija was out of earshot, returning to the scout car and Deirdre and Mara, Medjan said: “You will not fire that gun. It would create an alarm.”

“We have only our lives to lose,” Durell said, “and they are forfeited already. Understand that. Either we succeed or we die. If you force me to fire, I will. Believe that.”

Medjan’s head was tilted back uncomfortably by the pressure of the gun muzzle. He looked down from his strained attitude at Durell. “I believe you,” he whispered. “What do you want of me?”

“I want Gija’s sister. Is she in there, in the station?” “Yes. Since yesterday.”

“Why was she arrested?”

“We know everything, about Stepanic, the American, and you. You are here to smuggle him home, eh? But you won’t succeed. We know Adam Stepanic is on Zara Dagh. You’ll never get him. We are only waiting for you, I think. I'm not in command here, though. I'm not responsible for what happened to Lissa. I didn’t want to do it.”

“Did she give you a statement?”

“No. It would have been better for her if she did. I begged her to talk. I didn’t want to—to question her. But I had to obey orders.”

“Yes,” Durell said bitterly. “You obey orders. You are innocent. You torture and murder, just like the Nazis, in the name of obeying orders, in the name of duty.”

“Please, I—”

“I know what you are,” Durell said, and he sounded dangerous, more threatening than Gija’s early violence. Medjan knew he could die easily now.

“Please, I want to help her too. I—I am fond of Lissa—”

There came quick, crunching footsteps along the river bank ravine. Durell stepped back and turned his head to see who it was. It was Gija, returning from the scout car. Gija dropped to one knee in the shadows under the bridge. “We cannot wait much longer. Is Lissa in there?” “Yes, but I don’t know her condition.” Durell looked at Petar Medjan. “Can she walk?”

“I—I think so.”

Gija sucked air between his teeth. “You did it, Petar?” “I had to. It was Kopa’s orders. Please, Gija, let me help you. We’re old friends, we understand each other—”

“Is it because you’re afraid to die?” Gija asked the Turk.

“No, it isn’t that at all! It—”

In that moment they heard the scream begin from inside the police station. They turned their heads together to stare at the high, blank wall above them.

The screaming went on and on.

They knew the sounds were torn from Lissa’s throat. Then they heard a shot. And another.

And the screaming ended.

CHAPTER XIX

After the shots, the silence flowed back in a thick, frozen wave.

Then someone shouted far down the village street. Another shout came from inside the police station. Medjan groaned and fell to his knees. Durell grabbed his collar and hauled him up again and rasped: “How many men do you have inside?”

“Five—no, six. . . .”

“Where?”

“The guard room, downstairs, but—”

Gija cursed, spun around, scrambled up the river bank. Durell shouted after him, but the river pilot did not stop. Durell gestured with his gun. “Go on, Medjan. Inside. Show us where Lissa is.”

“I don’t know what happened, I don’t—”

“Let’s go see.”

Medjan stumbled after Gija. Durell was hard on his heels. They were at the back door, open where Gija had plunged inside, when the grenade went off somewhere in the front of the police station.

The explosion was thunderous. Acrid smoke billowed out into the yellow-lighted passage ahead. Medjan coughed and threw an arm across his face. There were screams and groans from up ahead. Then running steps sounded. Gija appeared. His teeth shone in a grimy face. “That was me. Come on. She’s upstairs, with Kopa.”

A shot cracked from the head of the stairs. A uniformed man stood there, gun in hand. Gija fired in return. The man fell down the stairs, sprawled at their feet. Gija jumped over him, ran up.

“Give me a gun,” Medjan gasped. “Let me help.”

“You?” Durell was startled. “Why?”

“I—they’ll kill me—for failing, you see—no use—”

Durell looked at the big man. Petar Medjan looked half wild in his plea. He could understand the other’s confusion, but Medjan could not be trusted. He shook his head. “Go up,” he ordered again.

Medjan thudded up the steps, with Durell after him.

They found Gija in the doorway to Lissa’s cell. The pilot and his sister stared at each other over the body of Colonel Kopa. Lissa had a gun in her hand; her face was blank, dull. Her mouth was bruised and one eye was cut. Yet she stood in defiance and pride, unbeaten in her tall body. . . .

“So you came, Gija. . . .” she whispered.

“Am I too late?”

“No. . . .” She looked at Durell and Medjan. “I think not.”

“What happened here?”

“He came to question me. He thought Petar was—was with me. He grew angry and told me the Luliga had blown up in the Danube. It happened at four o’clock this afternoon, he said. I thought—you-—”

Gija made a sound of anguish and despair, shook his head as if to rid himself of the image of fat, bearded Captain Galucz’ self-destruction.

Lissa added: “Kopa said you were all dead. So I said I would sign his confession. And when he handed me the paper, I snatched his gun and shot him.”

“Your screams? We heard you screaming,” Gija whispered.

“He—he took my arm—” The girl’s face was white. Durell saw the way she held her left arm. The wrist looked broken. But she ignored the pain. “Gija, they are watching the house. Only Jelenka is there, with Adam Stepanic. It is a trap, so be careful. They wait for you—”

Durell paused another moment to look at Colonel Kopa’s body. The bald man had fallen to his knees, and then his pudgy body slid over to a foetal position. The slack jaw and heavy lips opened in inevitable surprise. This one, too, Durell thought. Like Harry Hammett, Kopa’s victim. Killer and victim both ended in surprise. You did your job in this business, and you had to work as if you were sure of survival. But you were never sure of anything—least of all the time and place when the end would come.

He lifted his head as Lissa said: “You, Petar? You are here?

“I want to help,” Medjan said hoarsely.

“We need him, I think,” Gija said.

The girl’s eyes blazed. “Gija, he is one of them. If you knew how he was with me—”

A siren began to wail distantly at the far end of the village.

“Let’s go,” Durell said. “We’ve run out of time.”

They raced down the steps to the back door. Shots echoed from the far end of the main street. Yells of alarm came from the military barracks, but it meant only panic excitement among the troops there. Durell hoped they would keep themselves busy shooting at shadows for the next few moments.

Deirdre was behind the wheel of the scout car. She looked like a slim boy in her uniform coat and cap. She halted the car at the back door of the police post, near the river bank. They all tumbled in, crowding Mara on the back seat. Once more, Gija indicated Medjan.

“Do we take him with us?”

“He’ll get us through the men on Zara Dagh,” Durell decided.

Medjan nodded. “Yes, let me prove to you I will help. I am sick of things here. I did not realize—I did not know myself—”

“He is lying,” Gija snapped. “He’s a torturer, a killer—”

“Get in, up front with me,” Durell said to Medjan.

They took off with a jolt as Deirdre clashed the unfamiliar gears, jouncing past the police station to the bridge approaches. The wail of the siren split the dark, rainy night with shivering torment. A spotlight glared into life from a wooden watchtower across the bridge. It scoured the road and focused on the scout car. At once Gija lurched up and grabbed at the mounted machine-gun. The first burst of racketing shells shattered the bright lens. The darkness came back and they plunged on across the bridge.

At once the highway was left behind, under Gija’s shouted directions. Deirdre swung into a dirt road that swept under the wooden guard tower. A bullet screamed off the hood. The windshield starred, shattered. The sound of gunfire swept after them.

“Turn off your lights!” Gija shouted.

“But I can’t see—” Deirdre gasped.

“I will tell you how to go!”

Deirdre snapped off the lights. The car seemed to fall into an endless black tunnel, lurching and twisting. Above the straining motor came Gija’s harshly shouted directions. They were climbing a dirt road, nothing more than twin ruts that twisted up the lower slopes of Zara Dagh, through thickening pine woods.

Durell looked back. The village of Viajec blazed with lights, seen dimly in the valley below through the flicker of dark trees. The car struggled upward on the primitive path. He saw that Deirdre’s face was pale and strained. Her strength, as she fought the jolting wheel, was limited. But when he signalled that he wanted to take over, she shook her head. He reached for the wheel and signed for her to slide over his lap and take his place on the front seat, and at last she yielded. During the maneuver, the car slithered dangerously on the trail. Trees, shrubs and rocks swung in a wild pattern before them. Then Durell had his foot on the gas pedal and a solid grip on the wheel.

He tramped on the gas, listening to Gija’s directions. Pursuit had been organized finally in the village below, - but it was still confused. Still, the time gap was dangerously narrowed now.

Then all at once the wheels spun helplessly on slick pine needles as the grade up the mountain became too steep. For a moment they almost turned over. But Durell fought the car to a halt, there came a crash as they slapped into a grove of young pines, and he cut the engine.

Silence and darkness flowed thickly over them.

Then a spotlight suddenly stabbed from above and a man shouted an order to halt. Gija jumped from the car.

“Hold it,” Durell snapped. He swung to Medjan. “Are they your men on watch around the hut?” When Medjan nodded, he went on: “Identify yourself to them. Quickly!” Medjan nodded again and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted into the glare of arresting light. There came an answering hail and the spotlight was turned out. Medjan said: “We can go on foot from here.”

Durell looked down the mountainside. The nearest lights of their pursuers were still at the bridge. They should have blown it up, he thought, with the dynamite Gija had taken with him. As it was, they had only a ten-minute start. Time to get to the hut for Stepanic and the old woman, and then lose themselves somehow on the dark mountain.

They got out of the car. Gija loaded weapons on everyone except Lissa. The red-haired girl looked white and agonized from her injured wrist. They climbed into the woods. When a challenge came to them where the light had been, Medjan shouted back harshly. His words carried authority. There were no further challenges.

They reached the hut in fifteen minutes. Medjan insisted they had enough time. “I ordered the men down off the mountain,” the big lieutenant said. “They’ll run into those coming up from the village and create a fine confusion. It will be some time before they sort themselves out.”

Gija toiled along the dark trail through the pines. “Why do you help us now, Petar? You have always been our enemy.”

“No, no. I was your hidden friend.”

“Because of Lissa?”

“It is more important than a woman,” Medjan said. “It is as important as Viajec, what we have been and always stood for. There is no understanding between Viajec and the regime. I always knew that. But now because of all this there will be trials and executions and perhaps everyone will be shipped off to labor camps. I know, Gija. I have seen it happen to other villages that refused to change their old-fashioned ways. They look only for an excuse and an opportunity to destroy the old way of life.”

“So you decided to come over to our side?” Durell asked.

“You do not accept me. But I am here. And I will help you.”

“Do you want to go even farther with us?” Gija asked.

“No, I belong on Zara Dagh. I will stay here.”

The hut loomed up out of the shadows, small against the bulk of towering mountains around them. The rain drove harder across the hills. It was difficult to walk, and they slipped and stumbled for the last few steps.

As far as Durell could see, Medjan had given them the last help they needed. There was still no pursuit from the valley below.

Adam Stepanic met them at the door. Durell shook hands briefly. There was little time for talk. He did not miss the way Stepanic turned eagerly toward Lissa, taking her in his arms with gentle, incredulous relief.

The old woman, Jelenka, was like dark, monolithic stone. She betrayed no surprise at Gija’s return with all these strangers. She did not seem aware of them, in fact. She sat in silence, mourning as she had from the moment her husband had died.

Durell organized things quickly. Of first importance were Stepanic's instrument packages from the wrecked capsule. He distributed these among the group in the hope that at least some of the records of Stepanic’s historic flight could be returned to the Pentagon. They took what food there was in the hut, working swiftly against the inevitable chase that would crawl up the mountain after them. Then it was time to leave.

It was Stepanic who pointed to the old woman.

“She won’t go with us. She says she couldn’t make it.” “We can’t leave her,” Durell said. “Talk to her, Lissa.” The girl spoke briefly to her mother. From far down the mountain came a dim, echoing shot. The old woman asked for something and stood up and pointed to Medjan.

Lissa said: “She wants a gun for herself and Petar. She insists we must all be armed, each one of us.”

“All right,” Durell said. “We’ll take the chance.”

But there were too many of them, he thought. It would be a miracle if they could survive the mountain rigors and escape pursuit. Alone with Stepanic, he could make it easily. Or with Gija. But there were the girls, and Medjan, and the old woman. They could go no faster than the slowest among them, and be no stronger than the weakest of the group.

Nevertheless, a start had to be made.

Lissa and Adam led the way. And when they left the hut, it had stopped raining, and in the east there was the beginning of moonlight to show them the ancient way across the wilderness of the mountains.

They had walked only half an hour, moving in single file with Lissa in the lead, hoping to put as much distance as possible between themselves and pursuit before sheltering for the night, when Gija trotted up beside Durell. When he spoke, there was anguish in his voice. “They’re gone,” he whispered. “Mama—Jelenka—and Medjan.”

“You’re sure?”

“They went back to the hut, I think. Can we stop a moment? I thought I heard—I’m not sure what I heard.” Gija was tormented. “I think I know what they have done, those two. Who could have thought it?”

Durell signalled for a halt. They had crossed a valley and toiled up a slope opposite to Zara Dagh. Dimly through the night they heard a thump of grenades and the rattle of machine-gun fire. There were -muzzle flares, like fireflies, far off in the frosty night.

Gija groaned between his teeth.

“Jelenka didn’t want to come,” he whispered. “She wanted to die here. And Medjan could not leave Viajec. His soul was part of Zara Dagh. I misjudged him. He was cruel and evil, but he’s of the same clay that I am made.”

Together they listened to the faraway sounds of battle on the mountainside. Durell drew a soft, deep breath. In his mind he could see the strangely allied pair, the staunch old woman and the big, moustached Turk, besieged in the stone hut. With luck, they could hold out for hours.

They would not be taken alive.

They would fight as if they were all trapped in the hut and so buy precious time, adding to their margin of safety with every moment.

Gija wept.

And then Mara Tirana came and stood beside him and her hand touched his and her fingers entwined in his, and Gija looked down at her and knew this was the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

After a time, they all walked on over the dark mountain.

CHAPTER XX

Four days later they saw the Danube again. On the first night they had halted when it began to rain again, turning off the dim path that Lissa followed to find shelter in the dim, vine-grown ruins of an old Roman watchtower. They showed no lights. They huddled together without fire, sheltered partly from the cold wind and rain, listening to the frozen trees clash all around them in the night. Flares burst in the sky over Zara Dagh to the north. They were being hunted from the air, too. Durell could hear the dim beat of a piston-engine plane slowly scouring the dark night. But they were safe here. Petar Medjan and Jelenka had bought for them the precious time they had needed.

He helped Gija bandage Lissa’s wrist while they ate cold, canned rations. Afterward, Durell spoke briefly to Adam Stepanic and they checked on the instrument packs together. Adam seemed embarrassed.

“I didn’t expect it would be you to come in after me.” Durell shrugged. “The man who got the job was killed before he was fairly started. I came in after Deirdre, and got the assignment then.”

“I really don’t know what to say. Another day, maybe, and I’d have given up. I can’t thank you—”

“We’re not out yet,” Durell said. “And I don’t do this sort of thing for thanks, of course.”

“But I want to explain about Deirdre—”

“You don’t have to explain anything.”

“But I should. You see, we thought—I thought I was in love with her. But this past week with Lissa—well, we found something—Lissa and I, I mean—”

Durell cut off Adam’s awkward phrases. “Why not tell Deirdre about it as gently as you can?” he smiled.

“I don’t know what to tell her,” Adam said miserably.

“After all her loyalty in this thing—”

“Tell her the truth,” Durell suggested.

He got up and sat with Lissa and listened to her brief account of Adam’s week on Zara Dagh, while Adam spoke to Deirdre. He knew Deirdre would make it easy for him.

He lighted a cigarette, careful to shelter the match in a comer of the old Roman wall. There was an inscription in Latin in the ancient stone, and he touched it with his—fingertips as he traced it out. It was a memorial tablet to the wife of F. Galba, centurion in the legions of Trajan, Emperor of Rome. The wife had died of fever. . . .

The match went out and he read no more.

This had endured all through the ages of man, he thought. There was a timelessness in the love of man for woman. For almost two thousand years these words of love had endured on this bleak mountain top, a quiet prayer to pagan gods for the soul of a woman, spoken from the agonized heart of a soldier stationed on the battlefront of the war against barbarians. . . .

Men did not change, Durell thought. He looked at the little group sheltering from the wind in a comer of the ancient, crumbling wall. The wind rattled bare branches overhead. There was a smell of snow in the air, and hecould only hope it would hold off. He watched Gija and Mara Tirana. They lay quietly in each other’s arms, remote from the others. She had lost her intolerance for another’s problems, he thought; and this was good. She had stopped being absorbed in herself and her tragedy, and accepted Gija’s, and this was good, too. Let them weep together and begin anew together. They had each found what was needed in the other.

Adam Stepanic finished talking to Deirdre. Durell watched him get up and cross the shelter to Lissa. They sat in silence. The wind whimpered. Dark clouds made the night impenetrable, except where another flare burst on the peaks of Zara Dagh.

Deirdre sat down beside him. She touched Durell’s face and then put her hand in his. They sat like that for a time, and then they slept.

They reached the Danube on the fourth day. Gija went ahead to contact the underground in the town below, and came back that the purge of the organization seemed to have ended with the Luliga’s self-destruction. A fishing-boat would take them down through the delta. It would be slow, but safer, and they could reach the Black Sea that way. And the boat had a navigational radio that could be used to contact a NATO air base in Turkey.

The boat was small and crowded. It took devious channels through the vast, drowned wilderness of the Danube delta. The sky hardened and turned a cold blue. There was no warmth in the sun. They slept and ate in the holds, except when the crew signalled it was safe to come on deck. Then they sat in the chilly sunshine and looked at the birds in the reedy swampland and the distant hump of a wooded island and smelled the salt of the approaching sea.

The next day they were well beyond the coastal waters. By nightfall, they were picked up by an Army helicopter based on the Turkish mainland. Twenty-four hours later they were in Istanbul.

General Dickinson McFee was already waiting for them at the Divan Hotel near Taksim Square. The sun seemed warmed here, shining on the crowded international shipping in the Bosporus and the Golden Horn. McFee, a small, tightly-strung, gray-haired man with crackling authority, wasted no time.

“Stepanic is already headed for home, Sam,” he told Durell. “Got his orders fifteen minutes ago. His electronic equipment and tapes from the capsule are being flown to Washington in a SAC bomber. We’re giving out to the press that he was recovered in the wilds of Anatolia. No use making an unnecessary international incident out of this thing.”

Durell nodded. “About this girl, Lissa—you can arrange a special entry visa for her, can’t you?”

“It’s already done, Cajun. She'll fly commercial, of course; we’ve arranged passage, drawn against Stepanic’s flight pay—we have to stick within the budget these days.” McFee turned his trim, narrow head and looked hard at Durell. “I thought Major Stepanic and Deirdre were—”

“It’s all over,” Durell interrupted.

“Did you fix it, Cajun?”

“It happened by itself.”

“I’ll bet. . . . One other thing: this young man, Gija, and Mara Tirana. Can we arrange something for them? Should we?”

“You’ve got the authority, Dickinson, and I recommend it. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Gija. I think it would be best if they all flew together in tonight’s flight. I wouldn’t want them picked up by other agents and questioned as to how we got Stepanic out. The best place for them is Washington. You can use some authority from a Congressional committee, can’t you?”

“All right, we’ll do that, then. Something can be arranged for them as refugees seeking political asylum.” McFee paused. “You’ll make your report about Harry Hammett, of course?”

“I'll write it up when I get back.”

“When do you want to fly?”

“Any time. With Deirdre, of course.”

McFee smiled thinly. “Istanbul is a romantic place, not bad for a few days’ rest, Cajun. You and Deirdre are in no hurry, are you?”

“No,” Durell said. “Not now.”

They shook hands. McFee was busy. He did not often come aboard from K Section's headquarters in Washington. Durell watched the dynamic little man leave the hotel lobby, and then he took the elevator up to his room. He could see the shining sweep of the Sea of Marmara and the dome and minarets of St. Sophia’s basilica near the Galata Bridge. Ancient Byzantium, he thought, still endured. He would enjoy showing Deirdre the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, the Hippodrome of Constantine the Great.

They had connecting rooms. He heard the shower going in her bath when he knocked, and then she called his name and he went in and sat down to wait for her.

She came in wearing a new robe he had purchased for her that morning. Her long, dark hair was soft, incredibly alive; her eyes smiled at him. There was a tentative invitation in the corners of her mouth.

“Well, what did McFee say, darling?”

“We have some time to ourselves. I thought perhaps we could spend a few days here, Dee. We have a lot to talk about.”

He would tell her, he decided suddenly, about the inscription he had read on the stone in the light of his cigarette match, that first night of their flight from Zara Dagh. For two thousand years, a centurion of Trajan’s legions had declared his love for his lost wife. She had gone with him on the military duties demanded by Rome. Perhaps they had discussed her staying at home, as he had discussed his own duties with K Section. Perhaps the centurion wanted his wife to remain safe in the Eternal City. But she had gone with him on the campaign and lonely outpost duty in the wilderness of the barbarians, where she had died.

Was it worth it? he wondered. The centurion thought so, although he had lost his heart's love. They had been together. Neither time nor distance had separated them.

His was not a unique decision. And now Durell had made his own, and he wanted to tell Deirdre that there was a time in their lives when caution could prove a tragic trap to deprive them of happiness forever. She wanted to share his world. He would open the door, then, and let her in, and hope it would not end for them as it had for the centurion on Zara Dagh. And if it did—well, there would be a time behind them, and this time right now, when he looked at how beautiful she was and wanted her.

And Deirdre said: “When will you tell me to go home again, Sam?”

“Never,” he said. He walked toward her and she opened her arms to him and he said: “Home is here.”

THE END

of an Original Gold Medal Novel by

Edward S. Aarons

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX