Assignment Afghan Dragon (12 page)

“Please,” she whispered. “No noise. No guns. Do not speak my name.”

“Don’t move,” he said.

“Whatever you say.”

The tall Nordic woman was outlined against the winking, blinking cinema lights that came through the other window. She did not look in the least frightened. He glanced about the room in the dim light for traces of Anya. The Russian girl was gone. It was as if she had never been here. He looked at his watch and saw that he had left her for more than the two hours she had promised to stay. He had told her to wait that long, and he hadn’t expected her to wait any longer, but—

“Where is she?” he asked softly.

“You speak of the Russian girl? But no one was here, when I came in,” said Freyda.

“Wasn’t the door locked?”

“No, it was open. I was a little surprised about that, myself.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I did not come here for that. I came to make a deal, a business proposition, and while I waited here for you, I made myself comfortable. Do you mind?”

Her clothes, shoes, skirt and blouse, were tossed in a heap on the bed. Her purse, of fine cream-colored leather, was open amid her pile of clothing. He moved to it, dumped out the contents, saw tiny Parisian perfume bottles and lipstick and passport and a ring of keys. No weapons. She had used some of the perfume on herself while she waited, and the scent was too strong, too overwhelming, no more subtle than she was. She watched him with amusement kindled in her pale gray eyes. She was not as young as he had thought, when he met her first on the plane and later, during the episode in the bazaar. She was careless about the skimpy towel that covered her from breasts to hips.

“What kind of a deal?” he asked.

“My husband Hans, you met him, of course, he is in the local hospital. He is very painfully wounded, so he is now out of it. Mr. Chou and his other people are looking for you everywhere in the city, did you know that?”

He nodded and waited.

“I took my husband’s wallet, and so I have all his money and am independent of him now. I do not care about him. Let Mr. Chou take care of all the expenses. It does not matter to me. I never wanted to get mixed up in this affair, anyway.”

“So?”

She smiled. Her eyes invited him to remove the towel. “May we make a deal, perhaps?”

“For what?”

“The dragon, of course, May I buy it from you?”

“I don’t have it,” Durell said.

“Ah,
bitte
—”

“Do you want the dragon for yourself?”

“I understand that as an object of art, it is truly worth a fortune. Perhaps as much, perhaps more than five or six of your million dollars. It is no good to you for that, I suppose, even if you could find the proper market. You would not be interested in the dragon for that, would you? For yourself,
Herr
Durell?”

“No,” he said shortly.

“I did not think so. You are a man of—business ethics? Proud of your profession? But, you see, I am sick of this shadow-world life. I want—how do you say it?—I want to get out. For myself, alone. Privately. Most personally. But in comfort, do you understand? With what I feel is owed to me. I have lived in this—this gray world— much too long. I have had to do things that I despise myself for. Ah, but if I had the dragon! Ah! Then I could take it to South America—I do not care if you know about this—where there are some of the Old Guard still living, the Gestapo villains, they made a good life for themselves there. My father—you needn’t know about him—had dossiers, bank records, shipping accounts— everything about them. They could help me, they would have to help me, I could hang them. I could make a bargain with the collectors, perhaps even hold a private auction. And I could retire and live far away from Berlin—” 

“You come from
East
Berlin,” he corrected her.

“Yes. East, West, I could get away from it all. I am sick to my soul of it. I am frightened by it. In our business, dear Cajun, once the fear gets in your blood, it is like cancer, eh? It weakens you and you die. I want the dragon. I need it. I must have it. I wish to buy it from you. Please, please accommodate me. I am desperate.”

She did not look or sound very desperate. But perhaps she was telling the truth—partially—about herself. She had within her the air of a predator that Durell had seen before in men and women involved in his business. It would always be Freyda first, with her; and the devil take the hindmost. He watched her move, her figure rich and magnificent behind the thin gray towel. Her legs were long and full-fleshed, her buttocks plump, her waist very narrow; she held the towel so that her arm pushed her provocative breasts up to where they were deliberately revealed, exhibiting their own interest in him.

The cinema lights in the window behind her blinked on and off. Obviously, she could not be carrying a concealed weapon. Not the usual type, he thought wryly. But she could have planted a gun, a bomb, a knife, somewhere in the room, in the time she had been alone in here. He wondered if she had done something to Anya, removing her forcibly somewhere else, in order to take her place. But the room did not reflect any violence, only the sadness of past clientele. He listened to the muffled noises from the other rooms in the hotel, and considered exits and entrances—the narrow corridor, the rickety wooden steps in the rear, the stairway that came up over the restaurant from the street lobby.

Freyda said impatiently, “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes.”

“You do not look at me very much.”

“I see you,” Durell said.

“Do you not like what you see?”

“Yes.”

“Listen,” she said imperatively. “How long have you been in this business, Cajun? I’ve heard so much about you before this—oh, yes, we have our dossiers on you, too. I have always wondered if you were like the talented and dangerous man described in the read-outs. And you turn out to be more so.” She made her voice softer. “Always, although I was married to a poor excuse of a husband, I wondered how I would feel and what I would do, if I met a man like you.”

“You’re being obvious, Freyda,” he said. He looked at the outline of her body through the thin towel. “In more ways than one.”

“What would it take to buy the dragon from you?” she whispered. And then she came closer. “How much money?”

“Not enough in the world,” he said. “And I don’t have it, anyway.”

“But you know where the dragon is,” she insisted. 

“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I do, now.”

“Would a new world of safety and freedom—and me?—be attractive to you, then? Surely you are tired of hunting and being hunted. One never grows old in this business. One dies, suddenly, usually very badly. There is no retirement for people like you and me. Unless we escape, somehow. Into anonymity, yes? With money. Lots of money. New names, new identity, new papers. And then the freedom to be one’s true self, without constant fear of every shadow.”

Now she was within touching distance of him, and he scented her perfume, and knew she had been liberal with it, all over that magnificent body. She looked sidelong at the bed. “We are safe here, for the moment. It is quiet here. I was lucky, just lucky, to see Anya leaving this hotel as I was passing by. That is how I found you. I was discreet coming up here. No one, certainly not Mr. Chou, knows I am here with you.”

She put her arms up and locked her hands behind his neck. He did not like it. She could easily develop it into a paralyzing, spine-breaking grip. She was big enough and strong enough. The towel fell to the floor in a heap between them. Her breasts pressed against his chest, firm and goddesslike. He laughed softly, moved forward, kissed her. She changed at once, sensing a victory, and pulled him toward the bed. Her mouth was anxious, eager, ripe and demanding. When they were up against the bed, he murmured softly against her open mouth, “To hell with you, Freyda.”

Her anger flashed like an eruptive volcano. She was as strong as he had suspected, and more. Her training was good. She tried to pull his head forward, to smash his face against the top of her head, but he was ready for her, and dropped out of her locked hands behind his neck, got his shoulder into her ribs, and heaved her backward upon the sagging bed. She made a small sound of dismay, bounced, her legs flying up to kick him low in the belly, missing her major target. Her thick blond hair came awry out of its neat, tight coils. Naked, she looked up at him with a face darkened by fury.

“Oh, you bastard—”

“Take it easy, Freyda. It’s just no deal.”

“I could have turned you over to Chou—”

“Perhaps you should have.”

He was right about her having stashed a weapon in the little hotel room. Her hand slid under the dingy pillow and came up with a six-inch blade, razor-sharp, honed to a point as thin as a needle. She drove it at him and he slid aside, caught for her wrist, missed, felt a thin hissing pain in his upper arm, then captured her wrist and twisted, came down with all his weight upon her. She was all woman, all fury, all murder. She thrust upward under him, trying to free her knife hand, and he came down harder, felt her teeth sink into the side of his neck. He hit her with his left fist, hit her again as she pulled up a knee into his groin. She yelped, groaned, slid aside, yielding the knife, and fell off the bed on the opposite side. He saw the flash of her long, firm thighs and hips and buttocks as she sprawled on the dusty floor. Her long blond hair flew wildly. He caught at a heavy braid, wrapped it around his hand, and tugged her head back hard. She got to her knees, her strength that of a man’s, her efforts practiced and expert. Durell put a foot against her quivering buttocks and shoved hard. She sprawled forward with a cry of outrage.

Smoothly, he dropped a knee on her back and used his hand on the nape of her neck to press her face against the grimy little rug. She heaved and struggled, her naked body writhing. He pressed his weight down harder until she suddenly groaned and began cursing softly in German.

“Now we’ll have the truth,” he said softly.

“Oh, you are cruel—!”

“The truth,” he repeated.

“I have told you all—more than I ever told anyone else—”

“But not enough,” he said.

“Please—let me up.”

He pressed down harder. She groaned again, tried to reach back and claw up his flexed knee that pressed into the firm flesh of her rump.

“Freyda, be very careful. Be very quiet. It won’t do either of us any good if you raise an alarm and get the police up here. The local jail isn’t any bed of roses.”

“Yes, yes . . .” she gasped. “Let me at least turn over. My breasts hurt—they are crushed on the floor—”

He released his weight carefully and she rolled over on one ample hip, then onto her back. Her long legs came up slowly on either side of him. Her eyes were blind with fury. There were red splotches on her cheek where he had forced her face into the rough, duty rug. Her chest heaved, her breasts moving upward. He forced himself to pay no attention.

He said quietly, “You have good reason for deserting your husband and Mr. Chou. You know how dangerous that can be, however. The Black House would never let you live a single day, a single hour, with any peace of mind.” His voice was low and persuasive. “You know how it is in our business. You’re an intelligent woman.

What you told me about wanting to pull out of the business, with the dragon, and live in South America, was all lies. You have other reasons.”

“No, no,” she whispered. “I swear it—”

She tried to wrap her long legs around him as he straddled her. Durell dropped a forearm across her throat and pressed his weight down hard again. She couldn’t breathe. Her face turned purple, ugly with hatred and terror. When her eyes started to roll, he released his weight on her windpipe. She drew her breath in with a long, rasping, rattly hiss. He waited until some of the purple color faded.

“Everybody is afraid of the Black House people,” he said gently, looking down at the big woman. “Anybody with any sense, that is. So I figure you have a bigger fear, something you’re more afraid of than Peking’s vengeance if you betray them. What is it, Freyda?”

“Nothing.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

He applied pressure again. His face was blank, without expression, as he hurt her. This time her ripe body flopped, bucked, and bounced under him, between his legs. It took her longer to recover, when he at last relented.

“Well?”

“My sister—”

“Who?”

“Wilma Strelsky. Madame Strelsky. The mistress of General Chan Wei-Wu.”

“In Peking?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. She is in Peking. She wants a visa to Hong Kong, official papers, so she can escape and come home. It is not given to her. General Chan keeps her there, in the city, in Peking, just as a prisoner for his pleasure. He will not release her.”

“We’re talking about the same General Chan who sent the Chinese team—you and your husband and I suppose others—in here for the dragon?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. The man who wants war. The man everyone on the Committee is so terribly afraid of. Except for the Deputy Chairman. He stands out. The Deputy Chairman is General Chan’s enemy. It is no secret. The Deputy Chairman understands the folly of nuclear war.”

“How do you know this?”

“My sister and I—Wilma and I—we have secret correspondence. It is in a childhood code. It is so simple, so obvious, it is not suspected. She writes to me.”

“And what does she write that makes you want to double-cross the Chinese—General Chan’s—team?” “Wilma is part of a plot. The Deputy Chairman is using her, too. He has offered her a release from China, an escape from General Chan’s attentions and imprisonment. She does not want to be Chan’s mistress forever, or until she is old and then discarded and made to work in the fields, or in some factory commune making bicycle parts. She is truly a prisoner there, you see—unofficial, uncounted, with no one to speak for her or even aware of her. And only the Deputy Chairman can save her.”

“How?” Durell asked harshly.

“I do not know the politics of the inner ruling circles in Peking, but—”

She was reluctant to go on. He waited, patient and watchful, his blue eyes very dark. He wondered about Wilma’s existence in the unlikely lovenest in distant Peking. Frey da’s breath was still ragged.