Death Is My Comrade (25 page)

“And you?” Laschenko asked.

“I popped in after that. She slugged me on the way out.”

“She could have killed you too. She still did not have the letter.”

“She had just killed a man. She was scared. It had been done on impulse.”

“On a whim? You said before on a whim. Then she also would have—”

“All right,” I said. “Not on a whim. Call it desperation, call it impulse.” Maybe that was for Mike Rodin in his Russian grave, I thought. Maybe that would help a little. That wasn't going to get me anywhere; he was dead. “Impulse,” I repeated. “And the first impulse after that—to get the hell out of there.”

Laschenko said nothing. Lucienne said nothing. I said: “A spoiled, selfish brat. A psychopath.” I remembered my words in Moscow: a walking gratuitous act. “But there was one person she loved,” I said. “She loved her father. But more than anything else, Mike Rodin was his own man and proud of it. How do you think he'd have felt if he knew his daughter had murdered a man to keep him from learning about his brother?”

Laschenko's eyes narrowed. “So that's why you let him hit you? That's why you wouldn't talk?”

“I'd talked too damn much already, in the wagon. A detective, when the facts suddenly fall into place, a detective running off at the mouth.…”

“You could not help that,” Laschenko told me, and repeated the word I'd used for Eugenie: “Impulse.”

Mike Rodin didn't know. Mike Rodin didn't have to be told. He had come to Russia to save his brother and had almost seen that through; had died trying to save his daughter. Mike Rodin would rest.

Chapter Thirty

T
he fisherman came out of the birch woods a mile from Ozero Yanis. He was a tall, cadaverously thin man. He wore a loden-cloth jacket and a soft cap with a stiff leather visor. He had a white, soup-strainer moustache.

He came right up to Vasili Rodzianko. He let loose with a torrent of words in Russian.

“He wishes to know where the gypsies are,” Galina told me. “He is here to intercept us.” Her eyes were big with fear.

“Why?”

“The gypsies. The caravan noise. At the lake, Chet. The Secret Police have come.”

The tall old man was still talking. “The police?” Laschenko cried.

I glanced at Lucienne. She was calm. “Neat,” I said. “All nice and neat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Felo. You told Felo who Vasili Rodzianko was. Didn't you?”

“Don't be ridiculous. If I had, wouldn't the police have come right away?”

“I followed him to the police station in Pytkyaranta. You told him.”

“That is too ridiculous to deny.”

But of course she would deny it. She was still with us, wasn't she? Until the Secret Police came? Which of course explained why she hadn't been concerned about what she would do at the American Legation in Helsinki. A State Department note wouldn't get Eugenie out of the hands of the Kelderaris. Only the Russians could' do that, if they wanted to. And they'd want to, if Lucienne delivered Vasili Rodzianko to them on a platter.

The Russians had played it cool. Why shouldn't they? They could have stopped us any time after Pytkyaranta, but they'd had us and they knew they had us. They'd probably paid off the Baro Sero that night at the police station. The carrot and the stick, I thought. To stop Rodzianko at Pytkyaranta was one thing, to stop him on the beach at Ozero Yanis, across the water from Finland and freedom, was another. Brain-washing technique. Dangle hope before his eyes, withdraw it irrevocably at the last moment. The carrot and the stick.

Five hundred miles for nothing. Mike Rodin's death for nothing. Leonid and Father Alexi and the nameless Russians who had helped us through a hostile land—all for nothing.

The man with the soup-strainer moustache was talking again, and so was Galina. She was saying: “.… two dozen police, this man says. They are armed. They are waiting. Since last night they have been camping on the lake shore.”

“They have boats?” Tasked.

Galina translated the question. The fisherman answered it, and Galina said: “On Ozero Yanis are many boats. They are camped on the lake shore, where the gypsy was supposed to deliver us. A trap. The gypsy has betrayed us. We would have walked right into it. They—”

“You! You did this?” Laschenko's face was contorted with rage. He was shaking Lucienne by the shoulders.

“It's a lie. I never—”

“Please,” Galina said. “We have no time for that now. They will hide us in the woods on the edge of the lake, until nightfall. We will cross at night in a skiff. A mile down the lake. There is hope.”

I looked at her father's face. If the expression on it meant anything, he didn't agree with her.

We went with the fisherman.

A dark night. Low clouds had scudded over the gray surface of Lake Yanis in the late afternoon. It was cold, and a strong wind blew in off the lake. Far across the angry gray water we could see a smudge on the horizon. Finland. Visibility was poor. Ten miles, I kept thinking. At the outside, twelve.

A rowboat had been drawn up into the reeds. It seemed barely big enough for all of us. Cold and wet, we waited in the reeds. Behind us on a ridge was barbed wire. We had come through it, and through the last of the birch trees beyond it. Three times, as the afternoon advanced toward night, armed men had prowled past on the other side of the barbed wire. Even as it grew dark we could see them silhouetted against the birches. Fifty yards off and perhaps forty feet above us they prowled the ridge. If they parted the strands of barbed wire, if they came down the steep slope at the foot of the ridge, if they walked across the gravel beach to where the reeds grew.…

Once settled in the reeds, we'd hardly been able to move. They were tall and stiff and offered us good cover, but they rustled in the wind. If we moved, they crackled. The wind drove the shore line higher. For most of the long northern dusk we were hunkered down in six inches of water, waiting, miserable and wet, for nightfall.

I was nearest Lucienne. Each time the armed men went by on the ridge I almost expected her to call out, and I had my hand ready to clamp on her mouth. Her eyes were narrow slits, reflecting the lake. She watched me watch her. She remained silent.

So did the rest of us. The minutes crawled by, spawning other minutes, building the long tormenting hours with them, as darkness grew out across the lake.

Finally the fisherman said something. Galina told us in a breathless whisper: “It is dark enough. He says it is dark enough.” I heard the fisherman's footsteps crunch away on gravel.

There was a faint silver glow on the lake, absolute darkness on the shore. Mikhail squatted behind the hidden skiff, began pushing it out through the reeds. It snagged on something. Mikhail was knee-deep in water, struggling. The skiff did not budge.

“Watch your wife,” I told Laschenko, and went over to help Mikhail, sticking the automatic in my belt.

We heaved together. The skiff came clear suddenly. We splashed after it through the last of the reeds, trampling them.

A light winked on above us on the ridge. A voice called something in Russian. Galina and her father were already climbing into the skiff;

Lucienne shouted: “We're here, down here—Rodzianko!”

I heard her and Laschenko struggling. I floundered back toward them through knee-deep water.

“Mike was too much man,” Lucienne was panting. “You are not—man enough. Your career, for this? For this man and his book? This scribbler? There is still time, we can betray him, we were prisoners.…”

The light on the ridge was swinging back and forth, shooting its beam across the beach and into the reeds, trying to locate us. Lucienne broke free just as I reached them. Laschenko stumbled back against me heavily. He was sobbing.

“Get in the boat. Hurry.”

The automatic was in my hand. Lucienne ran through the reeds, then broke clear of them. I could just make her out, running across the narrow strand of beach.

“Rodzianko!” she shouted. “Rodzianko is here! Rodzianko is here!”

She reached the steep slope that led up to the ridge. She started to climb it.

That was when the light impaled her.

“Rodzianko.…” she said once more, and then I heard the stuttering roar of a machine pistol. Lucienne's arms flew up. She reached out toward the light. Except for the splashing behind me, there was a moment of absolute silence. And then Lucienne's voice, bewildered: “You don't understand … my daughter.…”

She crumpled there. She rolled down the slope and into darkness, and the light lost her.

I heard footsteps crunching on gravel, men shouting. The light moved toward me. I shot at it and a man groaned and it went out. I rushed back through the rustling, crackling reeds. They were holding the skiff offshore, waiting for me. I could see it, dark against the silver sheen of the lake. In a moment the police would see it too.

The water was hip-deep, then waist-deep, then up to my shoulders. I held the automatic above its surface. Another ten or fifteen yards to the boat. Galina called: “We're over here. Hurry, please hurry, Chet.” Then her voice changed—anxious at first, terrified now. “Look out behind!”

I whirled. There were two of them. One in the water as deep as I was, only his head and shoulders above the surface and his hands high, holding a machine pistol over his head. I shot that one. He never made a sound. His head just sank below the surface. The machine pistol splashed, was gone.

The other one was a mountain of a man. The water barely reached his chest. I blinked water out of my eyes. He splashed toward me. I fired three times and then the gun clicked emptily. I hurled it at him and missed. He came on, splashing. Either I had missed all three times, which seemed incredible, or else he wasn't particular as to what—up to and including bullets—hit his body. He came closer. The water was very cold. There was a light from shore and it caught the two of us, and the water lapping at my armpits was the cold obscene caress of fear, because I saw his face then.

Boris. The hulking acromegalic from Lubianka Street.

I turned and surface-dived. Boris? I thought a little wildly. Sure, why not, there'd been plenty of time. Lucienne had betrayed us to Felo and Felo to the police in Pytkyaranta four nights ago. The case belonged to Plekhanov as Plekhanov belonged both to the Ministry of Culture and Lubianka Street. And Plekhanov and his acromegalic henchman had come here to wrap it up.

Something caught my leg as I dived. I shook it off, swam a few strokes under water, surfaced again. I couldn't touch bottom.

Boris' head bobbed up two feet from mine. The light had lost us. I treaded water. If Boris could stand here.…

He couldn't stand. He closed with me. His left fist, moving through water and then through air, cuffed the side of my head. The water cushioned the blow, drew out its strength. Still, my head rang. Boris swung again, his arm wrapping around my neck. I butted his chin with my head. His arm moved away. I filled my lungs with air and dove.

Below the surface, I caught Boris' belt. I tugged him down with me. One of his knees floated toward my face and exploded there. I held on. Only just held on. Sank with Boris, slowly through the cold and dark, fighting the same fear he was fighting as his legs thrashed and his arms pummeled me. Then my feet landed in the ooze of the lake bottom. I crouched there, holding on. Boris squirmed, kicked, clawed. My lungs began to ache for air. Up, I thought, go up, you've got to go up. I waited in the cold wet darkness. Held on.

Then what I held was dead weight. It floated there. A knee struck my face, gently. I let go and kicked, heading for the surface. Compulsively I opened my mouth and breathed.

Not water. Air.

I came up ten feet on the other side of the skiff. Boris didn't come up at all.

Hands helped me aboard. I just lay there. Mikhail Rodzianko and his father began to row. I think there was light for a time. I know there were shots, rifle fire and the chattering stutter of the machine pistols. The skiff rocked gently.

We moved out across Lake Yanis.

After a while I took Vasili Rodzianko's place at the oars, and Laschenko took Mikhail's. We thought we were rowing north. Occasionally one of us thought he could see the eastern shore of the lake. It began to rain, slowly at first and then very hard. Galina and her father bailed with their cupped hands.

All night there were power boats on the lake, looking for us. We could hear the rasping roar of their motors, see their spotlights bouncing off the water. Once they approached so close we could hear them hailing us with a megaphone. They hadn't spotted us, though. The light went by a hundred yards to our left, the rasp of their boat faded. We bobbed in its wake.

I rowed until my hands blistered, until the blisters broke and new ones formed, until the oar was slippery with my blood. Mikhail replaced Laschenko. Vasili Rodzianko was exhausted. I kept rowing. A motorboat, I thought. The fisherman could have given us a motorboat. He hadn't. He knew what he was doing. The sound would have guided them to us. They knew we would head north to Finland. That was all they knew. It was dark. They had a lot of lake to cover.

So did we.

“Shore,” Galina said. “I can see the shore.”

It had stopped raining. The first bleak gray light of a new dawn squatted on Lake Yanis. I bent my back and pulled my oar through water and bent my back again.

We heard a power boat. It didn't have a light. It didn't need one now.

It pulled alongside. We had no weapons. We waited. A figure in a gray uniform stood on the aft deck. It was a large cabin cruiser. The man called something to us.

Finland or Russia?

The cabin cruiser drifted toward us. Galina watched it. She licked her lips. She didn't say anything. Another man appeared on the aft deck. This one had a rifle.