Kohoutek rocked, his squint returning. “The Rabbi is a thief. Is the Cech as well?”
“Where’s the hole? Can’t you trust your best man?”
“I am the best. Suppose it was me?”
“Why not?”
“Done! We shall travel together, the woman in the back seat with me. One gun at her head, the other at yours. Two guns, příteli! Where is the five thousand dollars?”
“In my car up on the road. Send someone with me, but I get it myself; he stays outside. That’s the condition or we have no negotiation.”
“You Communists are all so suspicious.”
“We learned it in the mountains.”
“Cechu!”
“Where’s the woman?”
“In a back building. She refused to eat before, threw the tray at our Cuban. But then, she’s educated; it is not always a favorable thing, although it brings a higher price later. First, she must be broken; perhaps the Cuban has already begun. He’s a hot-tempered macho with balls that clank on the floor. Her type of woman is his favorite.”
Michael smiled; it was the most difficult smile he had rendered in his life. “Are the rooms wired?”
“What for? Where are they going? What plans can they hatch alone? Besides, to install and service such items could raise gossip. The alarms on the road are enough trouble; a man comes from Cleveland to look after them.”
“I want to see her. Then I want to get out of here.”
“Why not? When I see five thousand dollars.” Kohoutek stopped rocking and turned to his left, shouting in English. “You! Take our guest up in the truck to his automobile. Have him drive and keep your gun on his head!”
Sixteen minutes later, Havelock counted out the money into the Moravian’s hands.
“Go to the woman, příteli,” said Kokoutek.
He walked across the fenced—in compound to the left of the silo, the man with the Spanish Llama behind him.
“Over there, to your right,” said the guard.
There was a barn at the edge of the woods, but it was more than a barn. There were lights in several windows above the ground level; it was a second floor. And silhouetted in those lights were straight black lines; they were bars. Whoever was behind those windows could not get out. It was a barracks. Ein Konzentrationslager.
Michael could feel the welcome pressure of the leather scabbard at the base of his spine; the scaling knife was still in place. He knew he could take the guard and the Llama—a slip in the snow, a skid over iced grass and the man in the leather jacket was a dead man—but not yet. It would come later, when Jenna understood, when—and if—he could convince her. And if he could not, both of them would die. One losing his life, the other in a hell that would kill her.
Listen to me! Listen to me, for we are all that’s left of sanity! What happened to us? What did they do to us?
“Knock on the door,” said the man behind.
Havelock rapped on the wood. A voice with a Latin accent answered.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Open up, Mr. K’s orders. This is Ryan. Hurry!”
The door was opened two or three indies by a stocky man in a bolero and dungarees. He stared first at Michael, then saw the guard and opened the door completely.
“Nobody called,” he said.
“We thought you might be busy,” said the man behind Havelock, a snide laugh in hit voice.
“With what? Two pigs and a crazy woman?”
“She’s the one we want to see. He wants to see.”
“He better have a pene made like rock, I tell you no lie! I looked in ten minutes ago; she’s asleep. I don’t think she slept for a couple of days maybe.”
“Then he can jump her,” said the guard, pushing Michael through the door.
They climbed the stairs and entered a narrow corridor with doors on both sides. Steel doors with slits in the center, sliding panels for peering inside.
We are in our movable prison. Where was it? Prague? Trieste?… Barcelona?
“She’s in this room,” said the Latin, stopping at the third door. “You want to look?”
“Just open the door,” said Havelock. “And wait downstairs.”
“Mr. K’s orders,” broke in the leather-jacketed guard. “Do what the man says.”
The Cuban took a key from his belt, unlocked the cell door, and stood aside.
“Get out of here,” said Michael.
The two men walked up the corridor.
Havelock opened the door.
The small room was dark, and the dark light of night grudgingly spilled through the window, the white flakes bouncing off the glass and the bars. He could see her on the bed, more cot than bed. Fully dressed, she was lying face down, her blond hair cascading over her shoulders, one arm hanging down limp, the. hand touching the floor. She lay on top of the covers, her clothes disheveled, the position of her body and the sound of her deep breathing proof of exhaustion. Watching her, he ached, pain pressing his chest for the pain she had endured, so much of it because of him. Trust had fled, instincts rejected, love repulsed; he had been no less an animal than the animals who had done this to her … he was ashamed. And filled with love.
He could see the outline of a floor lamp next to the bed; lighted, it would shine down on her. A cold fear went through him and his throat tightened. He had faced risks before, but never a danger like this, never a moment that meant so much to him. If he lost it—lost her, the bond between them shattered irremediably—nothing would matter except the death of liars. He was profoundly aware that he would willingly give up years of life for the moment to be frozen, not to have to turn on the light—simply to call out her name softly, as he had called it a hundred times a hundred, and have her hand fall into his, her face come against his. But the waiting, too, was self-inflicted torture; what were the words? Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream. It would end or it would begin when he turned on the lamp. He walked silently to the bed.
An arm shot up in the darkness. Pale skin flashing in the dim light, a hand plunged into his abdomen. He felt the impact of a sharp pointed object-not a knife, something else. He leaped back and grabbed the hand, twisting yet not twisting—to cause her further pain was not in him. He could not hurt her.
She’ll kill you if she can. Broussac.
Jenna rolled off the bed, her left leg bent, her knee crashing into his kidney, her sharp fingernails clawing his neck, digging into his skin. He could not strike her, he could not do it. She grabbed his hair, pulling his face down, and her right knee smashed into the bridge of his nose. The darkness was splintered into fragments of white light.
“Cunĕ!” she cried in a muted voice, made guttural by her fury.
He understood; he had taught her well. Use an enemy. Kill him only if you must. But use him first. Escape was her intent; it accounted for the disheveled clothes, the skirt pulled up to expose her thigh. He had attributed it all to exhaustion, but he had been wrong; it was a sight for a prase peering through a slot in the cell door.
“Stůj!” he whispered harshly as he held her, twisting nothing, damaging nothing. “Těsí mĕ!” he freed his left hand and pulled her writhing body across the small room to the lamp. He reached over and found the switch; he snapped it on, her face in front of his.
She stared at him, her wide brown eyes bursting from their sockets with that strange admixture of fear and loathing he had seen in the window of the small plane in Col des Moulinets. The cry that was wrenched from her throat came also from the center of her life; the scream that grew from it was prolonged and horrible—a child in a cellar of terror, a woman who faced the return of infinite pain. She kicked wildly, and spun away, breaking his grip, and threw herself across the bed and against the wall. She whipped her hand back and forth, slashing madly, a crazed animal cornered, with nothing left but to end its life screaming, clawing, thrashing as the trap snapped shut. In her hand she grasped the inst
rument that had been her only hope for freedom; it was a fork, its tines tinted with his blood.
“Listen to me!” he whispered sharply again. “It was done to both of us! It’s what I’ve come to tell you, what I tried to tell you at Col des Moulinets!”
“It was done to me! You tried to kill me … how many times? If I’m to die, then you—”
He lunged, and pinning her hand against the wall, her right arm under his, he forced her to stop writhing.
“Broussac believed you … but then she believed me! Try to understand. She knew I told her the truth!”
“You don’t know the truth! Liar, liar!” She spat in his face; she was kicking, twisting, digging the nails of her trapped hand into his back.
“They wanted me out and you were the way! I don’t know why, but I know men have been killed … a woman, too, who was meant to be you! They want to kill us both now, they have to!”
“Liar!”
“There are liars, yes, but I’m not one of them!”
“You are, you are! You sold yourself to the zvířata! Kurva!”
“No!” He twisted her hand, the bloodied fork protruding from her clenched fist. She winced in pain as he pulled her wrist down. Then she slowly reduced her counterpressure, her wide eyes frightened still, hating still, but piercing, too, with confusion. He placed the fork against his throat and whispered. “You know what to do,” he said carefully, clearly. “The windpipe. Once punctured there’s no way out for me here.… But there is for you. Pretend to go along with them; be passive, but watch the guard—as you know, he’s a goat. The sooner you’re cooperative, the sooner they’ll find you work on the outside. Remember, all you want are your papers; they’re everything to you. But when they let you out, somehow get to a phone and reach Broussac in Paris—you can do it. She’ll help you because she knows the truth.” He stopped and took his hand away, leaving hers free. “Now, do it. Either kill me or believe me.”
Her stare was to him a scream echoing in the dark regions of his mind and hurling him into the horror of a thousand memories. Her lips trembled, and slowly it happened. Fear and bewilderment remained in her eyes, but the hatred was receding. Then the tears came, welling up slowly; they were the balm that meant the healing could begin.
Jenna dropped her hand and he took it, holding it in his own. The fork fell from her unclenched hand, and her body went limp, as the deep, terrible sobs came.
He held her. It was all he could do, all he wanted to do.
The sobs subsided and the minutes went by in silence. All they could hear was their own breathing, all they felt was each other as they clung together. Finally he whispered, “We’re getting out, but it won’t be clean. Did you meet Kohoutek?”
“Yes, a horrible man.”
“He’s going with us, supposedly to pick up a final payment for you.”
“But there isn’t any,” said Jenna, pulling her face back, studying his, her eyes absorbing him, enveloping him. “Let me look at you, just look at you.”
“There isn’t time—”
“Shhh.” She placed her fingers on his lips. “There must be time, because there’s nothing else.”
“I thought the same when I was walking over here, and when I was looking down at you.” He smiled as he stroked her hair and gently caressed her lovely face. “You played well, prěkrásně.”
“I’ve hurt you.”
“A minor cut and a few major scratches. Don’t be insulted.”
“You’re bleeding … your neck.”
“And my back, and a fork scrape—I guess you’d call it—on my stomach,” said Michael. “You can nurse me later and I’ll be grateful, but right now it fits the picture they have. I’m bringing you back on Aeroflot.”
“Do I continue fighting?”
“No, just be hostile. You’re resigned; you know you can’t win. It’ll go harder for you if you struggle.”
“And Kohoutek?”
“He says you’re to stay in the back seat with him. He’ll have us both under a gun.”
“Then I shall smoke a great deal. His hand will drop.”
“Something like that. It’s a long trip, a lot can happen. A gas station, a breakdown, no lights. He may be a mountain bull but he’s close to seventy.” Havelock held her shoulders. “He may decide to drug you. If he does, I’ll try to stop him.”
“He won’t give me anything dangerous; he wants his money. I’m not concerned. I’ll know you’re there and I know what you can do.”
“Come on.”
“Mikhail.” She gripped his hands. “What happened? To me … to you? They said such dreadful things, such terrible things! I couldn’t believe them, yet I had to believe. It was there!”
“It was all there. Down to my watching you die.”
“Oh, God …”
“I’ve been running away ever since, until that night in Rome. Then I started running in a different direction. After you, after them—after the liars who did this to us.”
“How did they do it?”
“There’s no time now. I’ll tell you everything I can later, and then I want to hear you. Everything. You have the names, you know the people. Later.”
They stood up and embraced, holding each other briefly, feeling the warmth and the hope each gave the other. Michael pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it against his neck. Jenna took his hand away and blotted the deep scratches herself; she touched the bridge of his nose, where she had struck him with her knee, then smoothed his hair at the temples.
“Remember, my darling,” she whispered. “Treat me sternly. Push me and shove me and grab my arm firmly as you do it. A man who’s been scratched by a woman, whether she’s his enemy or not, is an angry man. Especially among other men; his masculinity suffers more than the wounds.”
“Thank you, Sigmund Freud. Let’s go.”
The guard in the black leather jacket smiled at the sight of Havelock’s bleeding neck while the Cuban nodded his head, his expression confirming a previous Judgment. As instructed, Michael held Jenna’s arm in a viselike grip, propelling her forward at his side, his mouth set, his eyes controlled but furious.
“I want to go back to Kohoutek and get out of here!” he said angrily. “And I don’t care for any dicussion, is that understood?”
“Did the great big man get hurt by the little bitty girl?” said the guard, grinning.
“Shut up, you goddamned idiot!”
“Come to think of it, she’s not that little.”
Janos Kohoutek was dressed in a heavy mackinaw coat, a fur-lined cap on his head. He, too, smiled at the handkerchief held in place on Havelock’s neck. “Perhaps this one’s a witch from the Carpathians,” he said, speaking English, his stained teeth showing. “The old wives’ tales say they have the strength of mountain cats and the cunning of demons.”
“Spell it with their b, příteli. She’s a bitch.” Michael pressed Jenna toward the door. “I want to get started; the snow will make for a longer trip.”
“It’s not so bad, more wind than anything,” said the bull, taking a roll of thick cord out of his pocket and walking toward Jenna. “They keep the turnpike clear.”
“What’s that?” asked Havelock, gesturing at the cord.
“Hold out her hands,” ordered Kohoutek, addressing the guard. “You may care to put up with this cat, but I do not.”
“I smoke,” protested Jenna. “Let me smoke, I’m very nervous. What can I do?”
“Perhaps you would prefer a needle? Then there will be no thought of smoking.”
“My people won’t accept drugs,” interrupted Michael firmly. “The airports are watched, especially our departure gates. No narcotics.”
“Then she’ll be tied. Come, take her hand.” The guard in the leather jacket approached Jenna; haltingly she put out her hands, so as not to be touched more than necessary. Kohoutek stopped. “Has she been to the toilet?” he asked harshly of no one, and no one answered. “Tell me, woman, have you been to the
toilet?”
“I’m all right,” said Jenna.
“For a number of hours? There’ll be no stops, you understand? Even to sit on the side of the road with a gun at your head, there’ll be no stop. Rozumíš?”
“I said I’m all right.”
“Tie her, and let’s go.” Havelock took several impatient steps toward the door, passing the Moravian and glancing at Jenna. Her eyes were cool glass; she was magnificent. “I assume this refugee from a žalář will take us up in the truck.”
The guard looked angry as Kohoutek grinned. “You are not far wrong, Havlíček. He’s been put away for aggravated assault several times. Yes, he’ll take us.” The bull pulled the cord tight around Jenna’s hands, then turned and shouted, “Axel!”
“He has my weapon,” said Michael gesturing at the man in the leather jacket. “I’d like it back.”
“You shall have it. At a street corner in New York.”
The second guard entered the room from the hallway, the same man who had first seen Havelock awake on the floor.
“Yes, Mr. Kohoutek?”
“You’re handling the schedules tomorrow, no?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay in radio contact with the north trucks and have one pick me up in Monongahela after my plane arrives tomorrow. I will phone from the airport and give you the time of the flight.”
“Right.”
“We go,” said the mountain bull, heading for the door.
Michael took Jenna’s arm, the guard in the leather jacket following. Outside, the wind was stronger than before, the snow angrier, whipping in circles and stinging the face. With Kohoutek leading, they ran down the farmhouse path to the truck in the road. A third guard, wearing a white parka, stood by the gate fifty yards away; he saw them and walked to the center latch.
The truck was enclosed; there were facing wooden benches in the van for transporting a cargo of five to six on each side, and coiled ropes hung on the walls. At the sight of the covered, windowless quarters Jenna was visibly shaken, and Havelock understood. Her country—his native country—had seen too many such vehicles over the years, heard too many stories told in whispers of convoys carrying away men and women and children who were never seen again. This was Mason Falls, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., but the owners and drivers of these trucks were no different from their brothers in Prague and Warsaw, late of Moscow—before then, Berlin.