He felt the warmth first; he found it not particularly pleasant but merely different from the cold. When he opened his eyes, his vision blurred, coming into focus slowly, he simultaneously became aware of the nausea in his throat and the stinging sensation on his face. The pungent odor lingered in his nostrils; he had been anesthetized with pure ethyl ether.
He saw flames, logs burning behind a black-bordered screen, in a large brick fireplace. He was on the floor in front of the slate hearth; his topcoat had been removed, and his wet clothes were heating up uncomfortably. But part of the discomfort was in the small of his back; the scaling knife was still in place, the leather scabbard irritating his skin. He was grateful for the pain.
He rolled over slowly, inch by inch, his eyes half closed, observing what he could by the light of the fire and several table lamps. He heard the sound of muffled voices; two men were talking quietly beyond a plain brown sofa at the other end of the room; they stood together in a hallway. They had not noticed his movement, but they were his guards. The room itself was in concert with the rustic structures outside—solid, functional furniture, thick plaited rag rags scattered about over a wide-beamed floor, windows bordered by redcheckered curtains that might have come from a Sears Roebuck catalogue.
It was a simple living room in a country farmhouse, nothing more or less, and nothing suggesting it might he something else—or someplace else—to disturb a visitor’s eye. If anything, the room was Spartan, without a woman’s touch, entirely male.
Michael slid his watch slowly into view. It was one o’clock in the morning; he had been unconscious for nearly forty-five minutes.
“Hey, he’s awake!” cried one of the men.
“Get Mr. Kohoutek,” said the other, walking across the room toward Havelock. He rounded the sofa and reached under his leather jacket to pull out a gun. He smiled; the weapon was the Spanish Llama automatic that had traveled from a mist-laden pier in Civitavecchia, through the Palatine and Col des Moulinets, to Mason Falls, Pennsylvania. “This is good hardware, Mr. No-Name. I haven’t seen one like it in years. Thanks a lot.”
Michael was about to answer, but was interrupted by the rapid, heavy-footed entrance of a man who walked out of the hallway carrying a glass of steaming liquid in his hand.
“You are very free with odds and ends,” thundered Janos Kohoutek. “Be careful or you’ll walk barefoot in the snow.”
Nie shodz sniegu bex butow.
Kohoutek’s accent was that of the dialect of the Carpathian Mountains south of Otrokovice. The words alluding to bare feet in the snow were part of the Czech-Moravian admonition to wastrels who did not earn their keep or their clothes. To understand the cold, walk barefoot in the snow.
Kohoutek came around the guard and was now fully in view. He was a bull of a man, his open shirt emphasizing the thickness of his neck and chest, the stretched cloth marking the breadth of his heavy shoulders; age had not touched his physique. He was not tall, but he was large, and the only indication of his years was in his face—more jowl than face—deeply lined, eyes deeply set, the flesh worn by well over sixty years of driven living. The hot, dark brown liquid in the glass was tea—black Carpathian tea. The man holding it was Czech by birth, Moravian by conviction.
“So here is our invader!” he roared, staring down at Havelock. “A man with a gun, but with no identiflcation—not even a driver’s licence or credit card, or a billfold to carry such things in—attacks my farm like a commando! Who is this stalker in the night? What is his business? His name?”
“Havlíček,” said Michael in a low, sullen voice, pronouncing the name in an accent dose to Moravian. “Mikhail Havlíček.”
“Ceský?”
“Ano.”
“Obchodní?” shouted Kohoutek, asking Havelock his business.
“Má žena,” replied Michael, answering. “The woman.”
“Co, žena?” demanded the aging bull.
“The one who was brought here this morning,” said Havelock, continuing in Czech.
“Two were brought in this morning! Which?”
“Blond hair … when we last saw her.”
Kohoutek grinned, but not with amusement. “Chlípný,” he said, leering.
“Her body doesn’t interest me, the information she has does.” Michael raised himself. “May I get up?”
“Vžádním případĕ!” The mountain bull roared again as he rushed forward, lashing his right foot out, the boot catching Havelock in the throat, making him reel back on the slate hearth.
“Proklatĕ!” shouted Havelock, grabbing his neck. It was the moment to react in anger, the beginning of the words that mattered. “I paid!” he yelled in Czech. “What do you think you’re doing!”
“You paid what? To ask about me on the highway? To sneak up on my house in the middle of the night? To carry a gun into my farm? I’ll pay you!”
“I did what I was told!”
“By whom?”
“Jacob Handelman.”
“Handelman?” Kohoutek’s full, battered face was stretched into an expression of bewilderment. “You paid Handelman? He sent you?”
“He told me he would phone you, get in touch with you,” said Michael quickly, using a truth from Paris that the halfway man had denied in New York, denied for profit. “I wasn’t to call you under any circumstances. I was to leave my car on the highway past your mailbox and walk down the road to your farm.”
“The highway? You asked questions about me in a café on the highway!”
“I didn’t know where the Fourforks Pike was. How could I? Did you have a man there? Did he call you?”
The Czech-Moravian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. An Italian with a truck. He drives produce for me sometimes.” Kohoutek stopped; the menace returned to his eyes. “But you did not walk down my road. You came in like a thief, an armed thief!”
“I’m no fool, příteli. I know what you have here and I looked for trip alarms. I was with the Podzemí. I found them and so I was cautious; I wanted no dogs on me or men shooting at me. Why do you think it took me so long to get here from that café on the highway?”
“You paid Handelman?”
“Very handsomely. May I get up?”
“Get up! Sit, sit!” ordered the mountain bull, pointing to a short deacon’s bench to the left of the fireplace, his expression more bewildered than seconds before. “You gave him money?”
“A great deal. He said I’d reach a point in the road when I could see the farm below. Someone would he waiting for me by the gate, wave me down with a flashlight. There was nobody I could see, no one at the gate. But then the weather’s rotten, so I came down.”
Gripping his steaming glass of tea, Kohoutek turned and walked across the room to a table against the wall. There was a telephone on it; he put down the glass, picked up the phone, and dialed.
“If you’re calling Handelman—”
“I do not call Handelman,” the Czech-Moravian broke in. “I never call Handelman. I call a man who calk another; he phones the German.”
“You mean the Rabbi?”
Kohoutek raised his head and looked at Havelock. “Yes, the Rabbi,” he said without comment.
“Well, whoever … there won’t he any answer at his apartment. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“He told me he was on his way to Boston. He’s lecturing at someplace called Brandese or Brandeis.”
“Jew school said the bull, then talked into the phone. “This is Janos. Call New York. The name you will give is Havlíček, have you got that? Havlíček. I want an explanation.” He hung up, grabbed his tea, and started back toward the fireplace. “Put that away!” he commanded the guard in the leather jacket who was rubbing the Llama against his sleeve. “Stand in the hall.” The man walked away as Kohoutek approached the fire, sitting down opposite Michael in a rustic-looking rocking chair. “Now we wait, Mikhail Havlíček. It won’t he long, a few minutes, ten-fifteen perhaps.”
“I can’t he responsible if he’s not home,” said Havelock, shrugging. “I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have an agreement. I wouldn’t know your name or where to find you if he hadn’t told me. How could I?”
“We’ll see.”
“Where’s the woman?”
“Here. We have several buildings,” answered the man from the Carpathians as he sipped his tea and rocked slowly back and forth. “She’s upset, of course. It is not quite what she expected, but she will understand; they all do. We are their only hope.”
“How upset?”
Kohoutek squinted. “You are interested?”
“Only professionally. I’ve got to take her out and I don’t want trouble.”
“We shall see.”
“Is she all right?” asked Michael, controlling his anxiety.
“Like some others—the educated ones—she lost her reason for a while.” Kohoutek grinned, then coughed an ugly laugh as he drank his tea. “We explained the regulations, and she told us they were not acceptable. Can you imagine? Not acceptable!” The bull roared, then his voice dropped. “She will be watched carefully, and before she is sent outside she will understand. As they all understand.”
“You don’t have to worry. I’m taking her.”
“You say that.”
“I paid.”
Kohoutek leaned forward, stopping the motion of the chair. “How much?”
It was the question the Czech-Morvian had wanted to ask several minutes ago, but Carpathian progress was serpentine. Michael knew he was on a tightropes; there would he no answer in New York. He was about to negotiate, and both men knew it.
“Wouldn’t you rather hear it from Handehman? If he’s home.”
“Perhaps I would rather hear it from you, příteli.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“How do I know I can trust the Rabbi? How do you know you can trust him?”
“Why shouldn’t I? I found you, found this place. Not in the way I would have preferred, but I’m here.”
“You must represent influential interests,” said Kohoutek, veering quickly, as was the custom of mountain men in negotiations.
“So influential I don’t carry identification. But then you know that.”
The aging lion began rocking again. “Such influence, how—ever, always carries money.”
“Enough.”
“How much did you pay Handelman?” All movement stopped as the question was asked.
“Twenty thousand dollars American.”
“Twenty …?” Kohoutek’s weathered face lost some of its color and his deep-set eyes squinted through the slits of flesh. “A considerable sum, přítelí.”
“He said it was reasonable.” Havelock crossed his legs, his damp trousers warmed by the fire. “We were prepared for it.”
“Are you prepared to learn why he did not reach me?”
“With the complicated arrangements you have for contacting one another, I’m not surprised. He was on his way to Boston, and if someone was not by a phone—”
“Someone is always by a phone; he is a cripple. And you were on your way to a trap that would have cost you your life.”
Michael uncrossed his legs, his eyes riveted on Kohoutek. “The trip lights?”
“You spoke of dogs; we have dogs. They only attack on command, but an intruder does not know that. They circle him, barking viciously. What would you have done?”
“And for that you would have been shot.”
Both men were silent. Finally, Havelock spoke. “And the Rabbi has twenty thousand dollars you don’t know about and I can’t tell you because I’m dead.”
“Now you see.”
“He’d do that to you—for twenty thousand dollars?”
The mountain bull again started to rock his chair. “There could be other considerations. I’ve had minor troubles here—nothing we cannot control-but this is a depressed area. Certain jealousies arise when you have a successful farm. Handelman might care to replace me, have a reason to replace me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I would have a corpse on my hands, a corpse who might have made a telephone call while he was alive. He could have told someone where he was going.”
“You shot an intruder, a man with a gun, who probably used his gun. You were defending your property, no one would blame you.”
“No one,” agreed Kohoutek, still rocking. “But it would be enough. The Moravian is a troublemaker, we cannot afford him. Cut him off.”
“From what?”
The mountain man sipped his tea. “You spent twenty thousand dollars. Are you prepared to pay more?”
“I might he persuaded. We want the woman; she’s worked with our enemies.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“That I won’t tell you. It wouldn’t mean anything to you if I did … Cut you off from what?”
Kohoutek shrugged his heavy shoulders. “This is only the first step for these people—like the Corescu woman.”
“That’s not her name.”
“I’m certain it’s not, but that’s no concern of mine. Like the others, she’ll he pacified, work out of here for a month or two, then he sent elsewhere. The South, Southwest—the northern Midwest, wherever we place her.” The bull grinned. “The papers are always about to arrive—just another month, one more congressman to pay, a senator to reach. After a while, they’re like goats.”
“Even goats can rebel.”
“To what end? Their own? To be sent back to the place where they came from? To a firing squad, or a gulag, or gar-rote in an alleyway? You must understand, these are panicked people. It’s a fantastic business!”
“Do the papers ever arrive?”
“Oh, yes, frequently. Especially for the talented, the productive. The payments go on for years.”
“I’d think there’d be risks. Someone who refuses, someone who threatens you with exposure.”
“Then we provide another paper, příteli. A death certificate.”
“My turn to ask. Who is ‘we’?”
“My turn to answer. I will not tell you.”
“But the Rabbi wants to cut you out of this fantastic business.”
“It’s possible.” The telephone rang, its bell abrasive. Kohoutek got out of the rocking chair and walked rapidly across the room. “Perhaps we shall learn now,” he said, placing his tea on the table, and picking up the phone in the middle of the second bell. “Yes?”
Havelock involuntarily held his breath; there were so many probabilities. A curious university athlete whose responsibility was the well-being of his tenants, who might have walked out into the hallway. A graduate student with an appointment. So many accidents …
“Keep trying,” said the Carpathian.
Michael breathed again.
Kohoutek came back to the chair, leaving his tea on the table. “There is no answer on Handelman’s phone.”
“He’s in Boston.”
“How much could you he persuaded to pay?”
“I don’t carry large sums with me,” replied Havelock, estimating the amount of cash in his suitcase. It was close to six thousand dollars—money he had taken out of Paris.
“You had twenty large sums for the Rabbi.”
“It was prearranged. I could give you a down payment. Five thousand.”
“Down payment on what?”
“I’ll be frank,” said Michael, leaning forward on the deacon’s bench. “The woman’s worth thirty-five thousand to us; that was the sum allocated. I’ve spent twenty.”
“With five, that leaves ten,” said the bull.
“It’s in New York. You can have it tomorrow, but I’ve got to see the woman tonight. I’ve got to take her tonight.”
“And be on a plane with my ten thousand dollars?”
“Why should I do that? It’s a budget item and I don’t concern myself with finances. Also, I suspect you can collect a fair amount from Handelman. A thief caught stealing from a thief. You’ve got him now; you could cut him out.”
Kohoutek laughed his bull of a laugh. “You are from the mountains, Cechu! But what guarantees do I have?”
“Send your best man with us. I have no gun; tell him to keep his at my head.”
“Through an airport? I am not a goat!”
“We’ll drive.”
“Why tonight?”
“They expect her in the early morning. I’m to bring her to a man at the corner of Sixty-second Street and York Avenue, at the entrance of the East River Drive. He has the remaining money. He’s to take her to Kennedy Airport, where arrangements have been made on an Aeroflot flight. Your man can make sure; she doesn’t get into the car until the money is paid. What more do you want?”
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.
“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 instrument 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.
“Get in, get in!” shouted Kohoutek, now waving a large .45 automatic as the guard held the handle of the rear door.
“I’m not your prisoner!” yelled Havelock. “We negotiated! We have an agreement!”
“And part of that agreement, příteli, is that you are my guest as well as my hostage until we reach New York. After delivery—both deliveries—I shall be happy to put away the gun and buy you dinner.”
The mountain bull roared with laughter as Jenna and Michael climbed into the van. They sat next to each other, but this was not to Kohoutek’s liking. He said, “The woman sits with me. You move across. Quickly.”
“You’re paranoid,” said Havelock, moving to the other side, seeking out the shadows.
The door was closed, the latch and lock manipulated by the guard. A dim light came through the windshield. In seconds, thought Michael, the headlights would be turned on, the reflected spill partially illuminating the van. In the darkness he pulled up his coat and reached behind him with his right hand, inching toward the knife clipped to his belt in the small of his back. If he did not remove it now, it would be infinitely more difficult later when he was behind the wheel of his car.
“What’s that?” shouted the bull, raising his gun in the shadows, pointing it at Havelock’s head. “What are you doing?”
“The bitch cat clawed my back; the blood’s sticking to my shirt,” said Michael in a normal voice. Then he yelled, “Do you want to see it, feel it?”
Kohoutek grinned, glancing at Jenna. “A Carpathian čarodějka. The moon’s probably full but we can’t see it.” He laughed his crude mountain laugh once more. “I trust the Lubyanka is as tight as it ever was. She’ll eat your guards up!”
At the mention of the word “Lubyanka,” Jenna gasped, shuddering. “Oh, God! Oh, my God!”
Kohoutek looked at her again, and again Havelock under-stood—she was covering for him. He quickly pulled the knife out of the scabbard and palmed it in his right hand. It had all taken less than twelve seconds.
The driver’s door opened; the guard climbed in and switched on the lights. He looked behind; the old bull nodded and he turned the ignition key. The vehicle had a powerful engine, and a minute later they had passed through the gate and were climbing the steep hill, the heavy-treaded tires crunching the snow and the soft earth beneath them, lurching, vibrating, rolling with the uneven pitch of the ground. They reached the wall of trees where the road flattened out; there was perhaps three-eighths of a winding mile to go before the Fourforks Pike. The guard-driver gathered speed, then suddenly stepped on the brake, stopping the truck instantly. A red light was flashing on the dashboard. He reached over for a switch, then another, and snapped both. There was a prolonged burst of static over the radio as an excited voice shouted through the eruptions: “Mr. Kohoutek! Mr. Kohoutek!”
“What is it?” asked the guard, grabbing a microphone from the dashboard and depressing a button. “You’re on the emergency channel.”
“The sparrow in New York—he’s on the phone! Handelman’s dead! He heard it on the radio! He was shot in his apartment, and the police are looking for a man …”
Havelock lunged, twisting the handle of the knife into his clenched fist, the blade protruding downward, his left hand reaching for the barrel of the .45 automatic. Jenna sprang away; he gripped the long, flat steel as Kohoutek rose, then slamming the gun back down on the wooden bench, he plunged the knife through the mountain bull’s hand, the point embedding—through flesh and bone—in the wood, the bloody hand impaled.
Kohoutek screamed; the guard in the front seat spun around as Jenna threw herself at him, crashing her roped hands down on his neck, and pulled the microphone out of his grip, cutting off the transmission. Havelock swung the gun up into the old bull’s head; Kohoutek lurched back into the wall and fell forward on the floor of the van, his arm stretched out, his hand still nailed to the wooden bench.
“Mikhail!”
The guard had recovered from Jenna’s blows and was pulling the Llama out of his leather jacket. Michael sprang forward and jammed the heavy barrel of the .45 into the man’s temple; reaching over his shoulder, he pressed down, holding the Llama in place.
“Mr. Kohoutek? Have you got it?” yelled the voice through the radio static. “What should the sparrow do? He wants to know!”
“Tell him you’ve got it,” ordered Havelock, breathing hard, thumbing back the hammer of the gun. “Say the sparrow should do nothing. You’ll be in touch.”
“We’ve got it.” The guard’s voice was a whisper. “Tell the sparrow not to do anything. Well be in touch.”
Michael yanked the microphone away and pointed to the Llama. “Now, Just hand it to me slowly,” he said. “Use your fingers, just two fingers,” he continued. “After all, it’s mine, isn’t it?”
“I was going to give it back,” said the frightened guard, his lips trembling.
“How many years can yon give back to the people you drove in this thing?”
“That hasn’t anything to do with me, I swear it! I just work for a living. I do what I’m told.”
“You all do.” Havelock took the Llama and moved the automatic around the man’s head, pressing it into the base of his skull “Now, drive us out of here,” he said.