Death Is My Comrade (24 page)

“Why should she have, Mr. Drum?” Laschenko asked. “She was trying to help Ilya.”

“At first she was. But at first she didn't know the contents of the letter. There wasn't time. Ilya had just given it to her when we arrived at the beach house. She gave it to Marianne. All Eugenie knew then was that Ilya wanted her to give it to her father.”

“But to kill—” Laschenko began.

“Her?” I said. Eugenie was crying. Galina put an arm around her shoulders. “Killing doesn't mean the same thing to her as it means to you. You've got some pretty good firsthand evidence of that. She tried to kill you on Custer Steet.”

Laschenko looked at his arm. He wasn't wearing the sling any longer.

“Why'd she follow you?” I asked him. “Why'd she go gunning for you?”

“I had threatened Lucienne,” he said tonelessly. “I would reveal her past unless she.…” He couldn't go on.

“Unless she called Leo Ring off. But spilling Lucienne's background would have messed up Eugenie's gay little social life, so she went after you with a gun. Went after you with a gun the way other people would raise their voices and holler. Right, bright eyes?” I asked Eugenie. “Isn't that the way it was?”

Eugenie just glared at me through her tears.

Mike Rodin said: “That's enough, Drum. I don't know what you're talking about, this Custer Street business, but I know my daughter couldn't have killed Alluliev. She was trying to help him. She wanted to deliver his letter to me. Didn't she? Didn't she?” He waited for my answer. Rage and uncertainty had made his voice hoarse.

I looked at him. At Mike Rodin, standing there and seemingly strong and healthy now in his anger, but dying a little, dying a day at a time. I thought I knew the answer now, I thought I knew all of it. But I wasn't going to tell Mike Rodin. I couldn't.

“Well? Well, Drum?”

“Don't make me answer you, Mike. Forget it.”

“You bastard!” he cried. “You made an accusation. Now back it up.”

I shook my head.

Mike Rodin hit me, hard enough to drive me back against the wall. I tasted blood in my mouth.

“Back it up,” he said. He came after me, his big fists ready. “Go ahead and back up your accusation.”

“No, Mike.”

“Then take it back, damn you.”

I said nothing.

He struck again, blind with rage, savage. My head smashed against the wall. I didn't raise my hands. He hit me a third time, at the point of the jaw, driving me to my knees.

He stood over me. “A dick,” he sobbed. “A cheap lousy no-good bastard of a private dick, in the end. Get up and fight. Get up and.…”

Something thumped against the roof of the wagon. Something else moved the hanging at its front, and fire flickered there. The curtain began to smolder. It burst into flames. Vasili Rodzianko looked at his brother, looked at me and then rushed to the curtain. He tried to beat out the flames with his hands, couldn't. They spread, licked along the walls. Another torch thumped on the roof. The wagon filled with smoke.

I got up. Flames danced at my elbow. The smoke choked us, made us gasp for air that suddenly wasn't there. Water streamed from my eyes. I couldn't see.

The wagon was dry as tinder. It
was
tinder. In seconds it would come crashing and flaming down on us.

“Outside!” Laschenko cried. “Got to get outside!”

I waited, aware of the others stumbling through smoke toward the door. When Mike Rodin hit me, I'd dropped the automatic. Vaguely I saw him crouch for it now, groping, then stagger outside. I got the rifle and followed him, reeling from his blows and the smoke in my lungs.

I didn't see the blue of the sky and the white and green of the birch woods, not right away. Smoke had seared my eyes. I saw a red haze and shifting, moving shapes. I went down two steps. Something struck the side of my neck. I plunged off the steps, lay on the ground, saw a gypsy's legs near me, and the haft of a spade. At least there was that. I could see again.

Eugenie screamed. I got to hands and knees and scrambled toward the rifle. Felo was carrying Eugenie toward one of the wagons. She clawed and kicked and screamed her hope away.

Mike Rodin ran after them with the little automatic. A gypsy with a shotgun cut diagonally across the clearing to intercept him. “Mike,” I shouted. “Mike, look out!”

He fired the automatic once, hitting nobody. The gypsy's shotgun roared.

Mike Rodin leaped back three feet as if he'd been jerked by wires. Then slowly and with a great deal of care he spread himself out on the ground.

Only a second or two had passed since Eugenie's first scream. I reached the rifle. A shadow hovered over it. The haft of the spade struck again. The shadow grew, enveloping me. I lay for a time in darkness, but there were the smells of the earth, and sounds: the creak of the Kelderaris' caravan wagons, the whinnying of horses, the shouts of men.

And something more: Eugenie's voice, high and thin over the creak of the wagonwheels. “Chester! Save me, please, please.… It's true, everything you said is true! I admit it, I killed him … save.…” Then just the creak of the wagonwheels and faintly over them, “Save me.…” once more.

I ran toward the sound, stood in choking dust. The Kelderaris' caravan was leaving. On foot we'd never overtake it, not that we could have done anything for Eugenie if we had.

Time passed. I don't know how much. I was out on my feet. I staggered back toward the others. They had gathered around Mike Rodin's body. Beyond them, our wagon burned like a bonfire.

“Are you all right?” Galina asked me. “Are you all right?”

I didn't answer her. I went to Mike Rodin. He had taken the shotgun blast full in his face. He was dead.

In the first flush of comprehension, acting on instinct and years of ingrained habit, I'd blurted my accusation at Eugenie. But knowing what she had done meant knowing why she had done it, and that was something I never could have told Mike Rodin.

I wouln't have to tell him now.

The earth lurched and dipped. Galina kept me from falling.

Chapter Twenty-nine

W
e dug a grave for Mike Rodin between the gutted wagon and the nearest of the birch trees. The Kelderaris had taken my rifle, but Mike Rodin had fallen on the automatic, and we still had that. We also had the spade I'd been slugged with. I used it to dig the grave. After a while Mikhail helped me. I stood watching him. Galina was comforting her father. He wouldn't look at Mike Rodin's body.

At first Lucienne stood near it. “He was too much man,” she said, almost musingly. “Too much man for me, or anyone.” Then Laschenko took her arm and drew her away. He comforted her.

The grave wasn't very deep. Mikhail and I carried Mike Rodin to it.

Rodzianko suddenly brushed Galina aside and came to the grave. He spoke words over it in Russian, his voice barely audible. I never knew what it was he said. Tears filled his eyes. When he finished, I picked up the spade to cover Mike Rodin with earth. Rodzianko took it from me.

“I wish to do that.”

He filled the grave, and the six of us started walking north through the birch woods.

I looked at Lucienne. I'd expected trouble from her. There wasn't a chance in the world we could do anything for Eugenie now, but still, wasn't she Eugenie's mother? She should have been raving and ranting, shouldn't she? They're not far yet, we can follow them, we must follow them—something like that.

She didn't say a word about it. Numbed by Mike Rodin's death? Maybe.

She just walked.

After a while Laschenko fell into step with me. “Was it true?” he asked me. “About Eugenie?” He spoke in the past tense, as if he already knew that with all the vast Eurasian land mass to hide them, no one would find the Baro Sero of the Kelderaris and Eugenie. She belonged to the gypsies now.

“It was true.”

“But it makes no sense, Mr. Drum. If Eugenie wanted to help Ilya, why then did she kill him?”

“In the beginning she wanted to help him. A letter. That was all she knew. A letter for her father. What Ilya Alluliev, a clerk at the Russian Embasssy, wanted with her father—that she couldn't possibly have known. It intrigued her. Mike Rodin had kept his origins secret. No one knew he'd come from Russia as a boy, no one knew he was Vasili Rodzianko's brother.”

“No one? Ilya knew.”

Lucienne joined us. Laschenko patted her hand. “I assure you, my dear,” he said stiffly, perhaps because he knew it wouldn't help, “when we reach freedom we will do something to find Eugenie. You have your American citizenship … the American legation in Helsinki … there are ways.…”

“Yes,” Lucienne said. “Of course.” She'd hardly heard him. She told me tonelessly: “Semyon is right. Ilya knew. Last year in France, Ilya was at the Russian Embassy there. I was spending the summer in France. I knew, you see. I have known for years. I and no one else. Not Eugenie, not anyone. Vasili Rodzianko's book had already been published in the West.”

Her face colored. “At a party, I—I dropped my purse. In it I kept, I have always kept, a picture of Mike.” She shrugged. She wouldn't look at us. “Energy. He radiated energy. Sometimes he infuriated me, he was so much … the epitome of the profit system. But he was so much man. He—anyway, Ilya was there. He helped me with the purse. He saw the picture. It amazed him. Rodzianko, he said. This man looks so much like Rodzianko. I denied it vehemently. Perhaps too vehemently. I never convinced Ilya.”

“But he wasn't sure?” Laschenko said.

“How could he be sure?”

“I said: “All right, a year passes. Figure Ilya was ready to defect. Figure you never convinced him, Lucienne. And the names—Rodzianko, Rodin. He had a year to think about it. Figure he also knew how it really was with Rodzianko inside Russia. That Rodzianko wanted out, was under house arrest. He would have known of course that Rodzianko had had a brother, years ago. And he wrote his letter—for Mike Rodin. If he was wrong, if Rodin wasn't Mikhail Rodzianko, no harm done. The letter wouldn't have meant much to Rodin then. But Rodin being the kind of guy he was—and if he
was
Mikhail Rodzianko—Ilya could expect him to do something about it.”

Laschenko shook his head. “But Eugenie. First she helped him, then she—”

“She didn't know at first what was in the letter, don't forget that.” I turned to Lucienne: “Did Eugenie ask you about her father?”

“Why, yes. Yes, she did.”

“When?”

“Saturday morning. It was Saturday morning, after what had happened at the beach house.”

“Before or after she told you about Ilya's letter?”

“Told me!” Lucienne gasped.

Gently Laschenko said: “Drum knows, Lucienne.”

“Before or after?” I asked again.

“Right before she told me about the letter.”

“And you told her who Mike Rodin really was?”

“I told her.”

“Where was this? In Chevy Chase?”

“In Chevy Chase, yes.”

“She'd been with you all the time till then?”

“No. Back in Chevy Chase she said she was all tensed up over what happened at the beach house. She couldn't sleep. She went for a walk.”

“Ilya,” I said. “She saw Ilya. Which was when Ilya told her what the letter said, told her who he thought her father was.”

“But I don't see—” Laschenko began.

“That changed things for Eugenie. Another question, Lucienne: did you know Mike was dying of cancer?”

“I knew it, yes.”

“He told you?”

“No, I hadn't seen Mike for years. Eugenie told me.”

“Then she knew?”

“Every time she came to the States she spent some time with Mike.”

I nodded. I had it then. I knew I had all of it. Not the exact details. The exact details no one would ever know—except Eugenie. And Eugenie wasn't where she could tell anyone. But Mike Rodin, I thought: Mike Rodin wanted to go out with a bang, not with a whimper. I hadn't told him. He never knew. He'd died trying to save his daughter's life. As much as you could like anything under the circumstances, I liked that.

“The way Eugenie acted with Mike here in Russia,” I said, “it was pretty obvious she'd known how sick he was.” I asked Laschenko: “How do you think she'd have felt in the States when Ilya told her what was in the letter and told her who he thought her father was—and when Lucienne confirmed it?”

Laschenko's eyes widened. “Why … why, she immediately told Lucienne about the letter.”

“Sure, because—”

“Because she knew Lucienne was a Communist?”

“Right. At first she was intrigued by Ilya and his letter, but once she found out what it was and what it would mean to her father, she was desperate to stop Ilya at all costs. She knew Mike Rodin as well as anyone knew him. Knew he was sick but also knew he'd move heaven and earth to rescue his brother. She didn't want that. She was afraid for him. Maybe she even guessed he'd come here. We'll never know that for sure.”

“And she thought,” Laschenko said, “Lucienne and I could thwart Ilya?”

“Yeah, there's that; but don't forget Marianne already had the letter. Saturday morning she told Ilya it was in my office, and Ilya went there. Eugenie followed him.”

“With a gun? To kill him?” Laschenko asked doubtfully.

“With a gun. To scare him, probably. To threaten him, or me, or anyone she had to, to get the letter back and destroy it. I wasn't there. She must have argued with Ilya. He had a gun. She had a gun. He was a fugitive. The Russians were looking for him. You were looking for him, Laschenko. He was desperate. But so was she. She wanted to protect her father, to keep him from grief. They must have fought. In the heat of the moment, and Eugenie being what Eugenie was, she shot him.”