Assignment - Suicide Read Online Free PDF Page A

Zis started, headlights flaring across the windows of the dacha .
    Durell exhaled softly and turned to the girl. She was
sitting with her face in her hands. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    Her shoulders moved. “Nothing. Please pay no attention to
me.”
    He crossed to her and touched her shoulder, but she flinched
and shrank away, lifting her face to stare at him. Tears streaked the smooth
silk of her cheeks, but her eyes were cold, suddenly blazing with pure hatred
as she looked at him.
    “What is it?” he asked again. “Can I help?”
    “It is not your fault. You are doing your duty and you are
well paid for it by your masters. But I—I am a traitor to all that I love and
to all who trust me. I am to be despised.”
    She stood up, careful not to brush against him as she moved
by. Her long hair was thick and gleaming against the dark blue robe that she
now hugged chastely around her body. Her voice was fiat as she spoke
again from the bedroom doorway. “Get dressed, Gospodin Durell. We must hurry now. We can talk further on our way
to the city.”
     
    The little Pobeda did not have too much leg room for him.
They drove easily along the wet, two-lane road. Now and then Durell looked back
to see if they were being followed, but he couldn‘t see anything. There was no
other traffic, and after a time the road widened even further, following the
high-speed railroad tracks, and more izbas appeared and then a few huge, gaunt factories on the
sprawling outskirts of Leningrad itself.
    He had not been here since shortly after the war and the
murderous siege by the German armies, when everything had been shot up and
destroyed: power, shelter, food supplies. The two million inhabitants had clung
to their positions in the rubble and fought it out through the savagely cold
winter to victory. He was astonished at the amount of rehabilitation that had
been accomplished—and again, by the forest of television antennae on the
rooftops. Scarcely any trace remained of the devastation worked on the
countryside. He expected to run into more roadblocks, but nothing happened to
interrupt the trip.
    He was concerned about the girl. Valya’s attitude was clear;
she regarded him as an enemy, a Westerner, and she was an unwilling ally. He
knew nothing about her; he had not been briefed as to the people he had to work
with. She had carried off the first test well, thinking fast, acting with
speed and decision to deceive the MVD search party, and she had not cracked at
all until it was finished.
    Yet he did not trust her. Enmity crackled in the air between
them, silent and tight as a bowstring, evident in her cold, beautiful profile
and in the way she carefully avoided any cooperation beyond what was necessary.
    He lit a cigarette. “Why are you doing this for me? If you
feel you are a traitor, Valya, why should you help me?”
    “One must weigh good against evil. We are not perfect here.
We strive for the future, and every now and then one of us goes astray. I am
doing what I think is best."
    “How far will you go to help me?”
    "As far as needed, and no more.”
    “You speak in riddles. Either you are with me or against
me."
    “Must everything be white or black?” she asked coldly. “You
need not fear me. I will warn you when I have gone as far as I can go. We do
not trust each other, but now we must work together, and a certain amount of
reliance, one upon the other, is necessary if we are to live.” She turned the
Pobeda expertly into a wider street of broad asphalt that glistened under
startlingly bright lamps. More cars were in evidence on the wide avenue that
arrowed between massive piles of new apartment houses. “I do not know how much
time we will have to talk later," Valya said quietly. “So perhaps you had
better tell me how it began for you.“
    “To check my story?” Durell asked.
    “Why not?"
    “All right. But I expect the same from you. Frankly, I did
not expect to find someone like you mixed up in this. I