Assignment school for.., p.13
Assignment - School for Spies, page 13
So they had met up with Slomi.
Later that afternoon, Slomi said: "Deirdre, this lady you follow, Cajun, is certainly in there."
Slomi's quarters could not have been chosen to better advantage, Durell thought. It was a garage, which explained the number of tools he carried with him. The garage was an annex to the industrial complex run by Faulk's powdered metal factories—which here were State enterprises—turning out small bronze and brass machine parts for some mysterious project Eastward, across the Polish and Soviet frontier far off down the railroad track. The spate of new buildings climbed the hillside above the walled and guarded establishment where the girls had been seen.
"Down there, yes," Slomi said. "But I have not seen her except once before, when she went riding with Bruno Faulk—may he drop dead of scurvy and bubonic plague."
Slomi smelled of sweat and grease, in addition to garlic. His hideout for them was a long, low loft—hardly an attic—above the main service floor of the garage, where tractors, trucks, and machine tools stood about in various stages of dismemberment and cannibalization. The loft was reached by a ladder through a hatchway in Slomi's living quarters. It was hot in the daytime, freezing at night. But it had the advantage of hiding their movements since the clatter of machinery below covered any sound they might make.
Daylight seeped through a ventilating louver at one end, and Durell covered this with a blanket at nightfall so they could use the droplight and single electric bulb when it grew dark. There were cooking facilities that looked like field equipment stolen from the Wehrmacht a quarter of a century ago.
"You did not know about this place, Cajun," Slomi said proudly. "All these years I kept it ready for another war, another tyrant. I tell myself the time will come. And do you know, Cajun, it's never really finished, eh? It goes on all the time."
"You've grown fat on it, old friend," Durell said.
"Not enough meat in our democratic republican diet. Hah! Rice from China, in Silesia! It is madness."
"Give me the field glasses again," Durell said.
He had to crouch near the ventilating louver, because of the low loft roof. From here he could look down on the mountainside establishment they had passed that morning. Through the glasses he saw the girls exercising in their leotards again. Others marched from one building to another, much as schoolgirls on their way to and from classes.
"You are sure Deirdre is there?" he asked.
"She arrived two days ago, with Faulk."
"Does Faulk run everything around here?"
Slomi grunted and wiped a greasy hand over his wide frog's mouth. "Almost everything. What you watch is his pet project that he persuaded the district commissars to begin. It is a school for secretarial help."
"A school for—secretaries?"
Slomi was amused. His small brown eyes glinted in the flat light that came through the attic louver. "My friend, competent help is in short supply. Training schools are springing up everywhere."
"It looks more like an armed camp." Durell's glasses caught a glint of barbed wire beyond the wall and he followed a uniformed guard with an automatic rifle slung over a burly shoulder, walking with a huge mastiff on leash. "Have you ever been in there, Slomi?"
"Just once. I am in command of the local fire department, you see. I made an inspection of extinguishers only a month ago."
"And?"
Slomi shrugged. "The young ladies are beautiful. Their instructors speak every European language. They are trained to dress, talk, act like typical bourgeois young women of the decadent West. They even have a—what do you call it?—a discotheque. They play Beatle records— and Brahms. An unlikely combination?" Again Slomi shrugged. "Do not ask me for an explanation. I have none."
Durell turned as someone approached across the loft floor. It was Marge Jones. On a pile of old blankets in a far comer of the dim attic, Xanakias was asleep.
"What's so interesting out there?" Marge asked.
"Girls, girls, girls," Durell said.
"In that quantity, I'd be silly to be jealous." She grinned, but there was a new, petulant note in her voice. Dust and spider webs graced her cheek, and her hair needed doing. She wore a sweater and slacks, both much too large, but practical in their cramped quarters. No one could stand upright in the attic. "How long do we stay here, Sam?"
"Hard to tell. A day or two. Maybe a week."
"Oh, lordie, the facilities aren't exactly like the Hilton."
"We're not in Cleveland, Ohio," he said.
"Okay, don't add that I'm the uninvited guest. I'm not complaining." But she was, Durell noted; it was in her tone and manner. She went on: "Do you think your lady love is behind those fences and guards?"
"Slomi is certain of it."
"But he says it's a kind of State secretarial school."
"That remains to be seen."
"What does that mean?"
Durell said nothing. But from the moment he first spotted the place, a growing inner excitement had begun to fill him. It was dangerous to gamble on hunches in this business, but he often did, depending on that inner sense of what seemed to be right at any given instant of time. Doc Goldman, back in Washington, had once described it as a short-circuiting of intuitive reasoning, a leap of the mind toward a logical conclusion that skipped the laborious details and steps in between. Whatever it was, he had known it before, and he felt it now.
He had stumbled into something big, in his headlong chase after Deirdre.
Bigger than anyone had expected.
Nineteen
Durell questioned the fat Silesian. "You say you were once inside that place on a fire inspection. Then you must have a list of all the fire stations—hoses, ducts, extinguishers, sprinkler systems, axes—that sort of thing?"
"It is all charted." Slomi's little eyes gleamed. "I am ahead of you, old friend. You would like a diagram of Faulk's school full of beautiful girls, eh?"
"Very much. Can you get me such a plan?"
"Possibly. It may take a little time. Tomorrow at the local fire headquarters; and it must be done delicately. A little wine for those on duty, a casual glance into the filing cabinets—yes, it can be done."
"As soon as possible, Slomi."
"Right. But—it is dangerous to go in there, Cajun. I do not minimize it. I am not a coward, but there are things within those walls—an atmosphere, perhaps—that reminds me of the death camps during the war."
"But the girls are voluntary inmates, aren't they? They're not prisoners?"
Slomi belched a cloud of garlic. "Most are not mistreated. I have seen some punished—this place is my favorite watching post. Sometimes, in the evening, there is a punishment drill. Yes, this camp for secretaries is like a camp for storm troopers."
"Where do the girls go when they get out—or don't they ever leave?"
"Oh, they finish their training, whatever it is, and then they are taken away by twos and threes, in cars. They say in Hohernitzen that the girls are assigned to various industrial offices to improve efficiency."
"Do you believe that?"
"I don't know what to believe. But I'm glad you are here, even if you did not come to Hohernitzen for this."
Time dragged perversely, with every minute dreary and filled with the bite of chill wind blowing across the mountainside. Xanakias awoke and ate some dark bread and drank the coffee Slomi provided, and then agreed to go out with Slomi to scout the town. Durell wondered if any of the guards at checkpoints they had passed en route had reported ahead that an assistant manager and Ukrainian production inspector was on the way. Their disappearance would surely raise suspicions, in that case. He could only hope they had a few hours—at best, a day or two—of grace. Slomi couldn't hide them indefinitely. It was too dangerous.
Slomi returned to the machine shop below, using the hatchway from his private quarters above the repair pits. A sense of confinement began to press in on Durell as the day waned. How far could he trust Slomi? Men changed, their motives grew different, the years eroded their ideals and morality. He began to feel trapped in the low-ceilinged attic. Xanakias did not share his troubled feelings. The Greek slept again, curled in a muscular ball, his dark hair and moustache bristly with his vitality.
Durell considered Xanakias in the waning light. You thought you knew a man, but you never knew all of him. He had never heard of Xanakias' job as a military assassin during the war years. He could only have been a boy at that time. How many men had he killed in cold blood? But that was putting it wrong. The blood, and need for revenge, never ran cold in Xanakias' veins, or in those who survived with him. He worried about this for a time, because he did not want Xanakias to do anything rash here.
He knew now that he had plunged into water far over his head, from the moment he walked out of Geneva Central not believing that Deirdre had defected to the East. A man could drown without a sound in the depths he had suddenly encountered. The currents were treacherous, although the matter had seemed simple at first. Did Deirdre know what she had gotten into? Was she really a willing visitor to this remote mountainside that remembered the vicious Nazi regime, the glorification of the Panzers as they rolled eastward over Poland, and the bitter defeat years later? It was a little-known backwash of Europe, this place; and Durell knew he had to learn what was going on here. In learning this, he also knew he might lose his life, and perhaps cause Deirdre's death, too.
But he could not turn back now. .. .
"Sam, I'm cold."
"Be careful of that oil lamp," he told Marge.
"Oh, who cares if this rat's nest burns down! I'm going to climb the walls if we have to sit here much longer."
"Slomi says we have to stay. There's been an alert in the town. Maybe they're looking for us."
"If only I'd known—" She paused. "Okay, I know I sound like a whining bitch. And you haven't forgiven me for trying to seduce you, have you, darling? You're not that opaque, though you try to be. Can I help it if I've fallen for you? Listen, I know Faulk is a dreamboat, and every gal from the sticks dreams about someone like him when she leaves the tall corn and heads for the glamour spots and aristocratic spots of Europe. But Deirdre is a nut. She's a fool. She had you and gave you up. I don't care what terms you gave her. I don't care about a gold wedding ring, Sam. Or about a little rose-covered cottage, either. I wouldn't care about the waiting, until you came home, no matter how rugged that would be. You could name your terms with me."
"Marge, that's foolish talk."
"Not with me, it isn't. I'm serious."
"And shameless." He smiled across the glow of the lamp that Slomi had left them for their attic hideout. "You've just got cabin fever, that's all."
"I've got another kind of fever, and that's no dark hint, either." Marge sighed elaborately, lifting her shoulders and dropping them as if exhausted by invisible weights. "Mama always warned me about slick European men, ain't that ironic? And along you come, our dedicated American, our boy from the bayous, and I lose all—"
"Cut it out, Marge."
"I'm sorry. Don't be angry with me."
"I'm not."
"Well, I still think Deirdre is an idiot."
"Perhaps she knew what she was doing when she came here. But don't ask what I mean. I'm not sure." He felt the teasing presence of an answer in the back of his mind, but the thought refused to crystallize. Marge pushed back her hair with long, sensitive fingers. In the lamplight that shone between them, her green eyes were huge and mournful. She looked slim and striking in her dark sweater and slacks, gleaned from Slomi. Slomi had also brought them all the ubiquitous sneakers, coated with black grime, and she wore these without stockings; her ankles were delicate and dirty. She crossed them under her long thighs, tailor-fashion, and Durell said: "You seem more nervous since we got here, Marge."
"It's as you said, it must be cabin fever. I always hated the smell of gasoline and grease. My daddy had an auto dealership back home, and ran a repair shop with it, of course. I don't know why, but I always hated the smell. He made me work after school for him, doing the books and typing. I'd rather have been down at the Sugar Bowl, of course, with the other kids. So I hated the office and the work and the smell of gas and oil, and I guess that's what bothers me most about this place." She laughed softly. "So much for my true confession, lover."
Just then Xanakias, from his vantage point at the attic louver, called urgently to them.
Although the attic was dark, light still hovered over the hillside below, where the "school" buildings sprawled behind their guarded walls. Mist moved on the mountain-top, but along the wide lawns and paths between the buildings, the daylight still lingered as if reluctant to go.
There was a central court between the ugly main stone building and the stark concrete modernity of what seemed to be new barracks. Xanakias pointed to this square.
"Look at her, Cajun. Did you know she existed?"
His voice was taut.
Durell looked through the louver. "How long has she been out there?"
"Just a minute or two. Here comes the whole school, it seems. Some kind of ceremony." Xanakias sounded curious. "But her size—she reminds me of—of—"
"Franz Bellau?"
"The female of the species," Xanakias whispered. "So he must be here!"
"Take it easy, Mike."
"But just the thought that I might reach him after all these years of hunting and failing—"
"Shut up," Durell said harshly.
There was a wide paved circle in the grassy square between the buildings. He used Slomi's glasses to survey it. In the center of the circle was a post that was ten feet tall, rising from a round platform only a few feet in diameter, raised a step or two above the concrete circle.
Standing by the post was a tiny, gnarled figure that at first glance defied any sexual definition; then he decided she must be a woman. Her hair was yellow-white, pulled back from an overlarge head that wobbled with frailty on hunched shoulders. The clout of hair ended in a tight, clublike braid down her back. She wore an ankle-length blue smock, belted to accent doughy hips and lumpy breasts. What Durell could see of the tiny woman's face was unclear. But he felt Xanakias' revulsion, not so much for her unfortunate size and shape, but for the evidence of evil that glinted in the heavy-browed eyes, in the impatient jerking of the cruel mouth.
"She must be Madame Bellau," Xanakias breathed.
"There is no record that he had a wife."
"We thought she was long dead, in the war years. But here she is, working for these people—"
"High priestess and executioner," Durell murmured. "Look at the whip she's carrying."
Some sort of ritual assembly was taking place among the school's lovely inmates and the "faculty." The girls gathered in squads with military precision, making a triple circle around the concrete area. This time they wore a kind of uniform that resembled the dwarf woman's blue smock. Their young bodies were proud and vibrant under the coarse material. But all their faces were pale, washed clean of cosmetics; their eyes were indrawn, blind, even though directed obediently by the woman with the whip at the center post.
Marge came up behind them at the attic peephole.
"What is it, a striptease? You men are glued to the louver-like flies on stickum paper."
"You're not far off," Durell said.
A girl was brought forward to the post where the monstrous little woman waited, her whip flicking about her tiny boots. Two burly guards thrust the girl forward and the little woman then ripped the smock from the victim's shoulders. The girl stood naked in the waning light, her body gleaming with a pearly luster as the last of the day's radiance touched her.
Durell studied her proud figure for only a moment, however. He turned back to the woman with the whip— was she really Madame Bellau?—and then to a familiar face in the background that suddenly quickened his pulse.
Deirdre was there. She stood beside Faulk's handsome figure, and she, too, wore one of the institutional blue smocks. But there was no mistaking her tall beauty, her lustrous hair, the oval face he remembered for its serenity.
"Let me see, Sam," Marge whispered urgently.
"It would be better if you didn't."
"But what's going on?"
"Punishment drill, I think."
He tried to keep his voice free of the quick excitation he felt at this distant glimpse of Deirdre in the twilight. There were clangings and hangings from the repair shop under their attic hideout, a spate of men's good-nights in German, Polish, and Slovak. Some trucks started up and rolled away, their headlights flaring against the dusk. But there was still just enough light to see what was taking place on the school grounds.
Madame Bellau had begun to ply her braided whip on the girl's bare back and buttocks, with swinging strokes that fell faster and faster on the ivory body tied to the stake. There was something obscene in the exercise. No sound could be heard at this distance. Durell turned back to Deirdre's face. Her eyes were wide, obediently fixed on the medieval spectacle, her face without emotion. ...
"Let me look."
Marge's tight voice made him turn. Her face was paper-white. She snatched the glasses from him and leaned forward to focus on the view far below. Durell did not wish to see any more. His stomach still churned at the image of the sadistic dwarf-woman whipping that helpless, naked body....
But then a small moan came from Marge, and Xanaxias snatched the field glasses just in time to keep them from shattering as she dropped them.
Durell caught her as she fainted.
Twenty
Slomi said anxiously: "A little of the local—ah, hooch?— and she will have roses in her cheeks again. She is lovely, no? So pretty. I think I have seen her before."
Durell said: "What do you mean?"
"She is a type." Fat shoulders went up and down. "Do not be alarmed. This young American lady—how could she have been in Hohernitzen?"
"Then what makes her seem familiar to you?"
Slomi's belly moved up and down in laughter. "Perhaps it is that ladies in distress stir old memories, eh? See? A little brandy, and she wakes up."
