The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax Page 14

  "Bora" murmured Georgi, impressed. "You really are like a witch. But he will have to wear bandage over the eyes or he will know to find us again. Your scarf, please?"

  "All right. What about Mrs. Bemish?"

  "She has been with us all day giving much information. This lady has much courage. Last night she go to third floor at Panchevsky Institute-very illegitimate, you under-stand-and looks. She make guards very angry, but she says, 'This is Petrov's son.' "

  "I'm so glad we went to see her," said Debby.

  Radev climbed in and grudgingly suffered the scarf to be tied over his eyes. When they arrived at the warehouse, their steps echoing again through the basement, Georgi whispered, "You have face stockings?"

  Mrs. Pollifax handed him four pairs of stockings and he hurried ahead. When she and Debby and Radev entered the room behind the furnace they found the faces of their Underground friends unrecognizably blurred: the noses flattened, mouths distorted and chins obscured by the gauzy stockings. Mrs. Pollifax removed Radev's blindfold and he swore heavily. "Goons!" he cried despairingly.

  "Bring in Mrs. Bemish," said Tsanko. He was lifting a large sheet of cardboard to the wall. When he had propped it among the pipes he stood back and Mrs. Pollifax saw that it was a large diagram of Panchevsky Institute. "Good evening," he said, bowing. "I look sinister? As you can see, we have been busy."

  "Good evening, Tsanko. We've been busy, too. This is Assen Radev, who knows a guard at Panchevsky Institute."

  "Someone's missing," she said, counting the shrouded heads.

  "Capital!"

  "Volko-he has been taking apart fireworks today and working out formulas. Is most important. Ah, Mrs. Bemish," he said.

  Georgi had brought in Mrs. Bemish, looking frightened, although her face brightened at sight of Mrs. Pollifax and Debby. "They think I do something," she whispered to Mrs. Pollifax. "Is this possible?"

  "Ah-here is Volko, we begin now," said Tsanko. "Please, everyone sit? Please, the meeting is to come to order," he said sternly. "We are about to consider the storming of Panchevsky."

  Boris said sourly, "What a pity we not forget whole tiling and go to big tourist nightclub for evening."

  Tsanko leaned over and affectionately gripped his shoulder. Straightening, he said, "Perhaps I say now that Boris has twice been to prisons for slips of the tongue. He has spent eight of past sixteen years in jails for mention of history not in our Republic of Bulgaria textbooks. Yet still he risks himself by helping us."

  "I am behaving so badly you must say this?" asked Boris gloomily.

  "Very badly," Tsanko told him gravely.

  Boris smiled, and again his face lighted up. "Then I be quiet-if only someone tell me how to silence my stomach, which growls at thought of prisons. Never mind, as history professor I have always the longing to see history made. Please continue."

  Tsanko nodded. "Mrs. Bemish has brought much news for us tonight, both good and bad. In return we have had only bad news for her. We have told her that her husband is dead. Because his death is on our heads it is only fair we give her passport to leave country if this experience is survived. It is agreed? . . . Now here is diagram made from her very helpful description."

  After swift glances at Mrs. Bemish they turned to the diagram. "The bad news is this," continued Tsanko. "Our Bulgarian friends are here"-he pointed to the first floor of the south side. "Philip Trenda is at opposite end of Panchevsky, and high up, on third floor."

  "Ouch," said Debby, wincing.

  Glances swerved reproachfully to Mrs. Pollifax. "And the good news?" she asked, ignoring the others.

  Mrs. Bemish spoke. "The wall is not busy," she said. "Only one man walk round and round. This is vacation season, workers go free to Varna and Golden Sands. Seven guards gone this week."

  "Do you mean there aren't sentries in each box?"

  Mrs. Bemish nodded.

  "A touch of carelessness," murmured Mrs. Pollifax happily.

  "What are the plans?" asked Assen Radev, speaking for the first time.

  Mrs. Pollifax said, "We make the plans now. To begin with, because it does look so frightful-the diagram-I suggest we forget it's a prison with a wall around it and look at it as though it's two boxes, one inside the other."

  Assen Radev made a rude sound.

  Boris said, "We are attacking boxes?"

  "But she's right," Debby said, jumping to her feet "Look where Phil is, his cell is high up but directly across from the wall."

  "Three stories high," pointed out Boris.

  "Yes, but don't you see? We wouldn't have to enter the prison at all to rescue Phil if we could get across the courtyard from the wall to a window."

  Boris sighed. "And which of us has wings? Who is an angel? What windows would be open in a prison?"

  Debby said impatiently, "I don't know about windows, but I do know you can get across space like that with ropes. I told you I know about ropes. Last summer at camp we learned how to cross white water-that's rapids -on a rope. It was a survival course, only our parents heard about it and the instructor got fired and we all went back to beadwork. But what's the difference between crossing rapids or a prison courtyard by rope?"

  "Did you do it personally?" asked Mrs. Pollifax. "Can you remember how it worked?"

  Debby nodded. "Yes to both."

  Tsanko shook his head. "You are forgetting something. Doubtless your instructor swam the rapids first to secure the rope at the other side. How would you achieve this across a courtyard?"

  With a heavy sigh Boris uncrossed his legs. Almost crossly he said, "Do not obliterate the child. I hesitate to encourage this madness, but the solution is there-the rope could be shot across with the bow and the arrow." He sat back and glared at them all.

  "Hey," said Debby, looking with a fresh eye at Boris.

  "Wild," said Assen Radev disgustedly.

  "Of course it's wild," Mrs. Pollifax told him indignantly. "What else have we to work with but imagination?"

  "Okay, you want wild ideas? I have the wild idea," said Volko, sitting up and walking to the diagram. "Here on first floor you see our countrymen, our friends. Let us look at them a minute. You recall this is hill here, on Persenk Boulevard. If one of my trucks is stolen, with explosives in it, and is parked here on Persenk Boulevard, at top of hill, and brakes happen to be bad, very bad, and the truck begin rolling . . ."

  There was silence.

  Georgi said, "It would roll down the hill and explode the outer wall but go no farther. It would never touch the walls of Panchevsky."

  "Explosives? You have explosives?" said Assen Radev. "Me, I have only geese and one pistol. If you have dynamite here is what could be done."

  As Assen rose from his chair Mrs. Pollifax wrote down geese-one pistol.

  "You need two explosions, two separate ones, you understand? One for outside wall, one for Institute. What kind of explosives you have?"

  "Fireworks," said Boris gloomily.

  "You're kidding. What about detonators?"

  "A small amount of pentolite," said Volko. "But not enough for two big explosions."

  Radev frowned. "On collective there is PETN for clearing of rocks. But what do I get from this?" he demanded. "For me this is very dangerous, I know none of you, but you all know who I am. Anytime it pleases, you need just finger me, telling identity, what I do."

  Tsanko nodded. "He has a point there."

  Mrs. Pollifax realized that to her growing list of indiscretions she had added the lifting of an agent's cover. She sighed.

  Radev said, "You give this lady here, this Mrs. Bemish, passport out of country. I think I prefer passport to counterfeit Russian rubles."

  The members of the Underground exchanged glances.

  "We have only eight passports," pointed out Tsanko. "We've promised Mrs. Bemish safe-conduct to her brother and we reserve one for this young Trenda, who will not have a passport any more, and there are four of our countrymen who must not remain in Bulgaria."

  "That
's six," Radev said. "Give me one and you keep fifty thousand counterfeit Russian rubles in trade."

  Tsanko and Volko exchanged amused glances. Volko said, "We might have a use for those counterfeit rubles, eh, my friend?"

  "But it leaves us with only one passport." Tsanko turned to Radev. "You would have to earn it. Let us hear first what you can do to earn it"

  Radev laughed. "You get money's worth from me-I know explosives. I learn in America before they deport me. I am real hood, and frankly do not care to see another goose in my life again. I know also the guard at Panchevsky named Miroslav. You give some counterfeit rubles and I pay him well for whatever you wish him to do. Maybe he even let me into Panchevsky, yes? A little explosive wrapped in plastic, a fuse, and I maybe break locks here or there. All this I do for passport"

  His words brought a distinct change to the atmosphere. Radev was just what they needed. Mrs. Pollifax could sense doubts being replaced by eagerness.

  Even Mrs. Bemish was affected. Leaning forward, she said with bright eyes, "I go to work now, but first, you do this at night when I am there and I put out electric boxes if you show me how. In room off kitchen, big room. Electric switches run lights and siren."

  "Sirens-feorai" muttered Georgi.

  "Da, sirens."

  "They have a generator for emergencies, I suppose," Tsanko said.

  Mrs. Bemish nodded. "When electric go off-snowstorm or power kaput-big machine start Generator."

  "How long before they can start it?"

  "I think," she said, and closed her eyes. "Two, maybe three years back. I am making mishmash. Elena bring candle and I cut maybe ten eggplants. Then I peel and take out seeds before generator bring lights again." She opened her eyes. "Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

  Georgi said, "You mean we have only ten minutes-fifteen at most-to get prisoners out?"

  "You want to spend any longer in Panchevsky Institute?" said Boris dryly. "You hear her, we have ten eggplants' time."

  Mrs. Pollifax intervened. "Another point. Difficult as it may be, I strongly urge that we do this tomorrow night or Sunday morning. I've been asked by Balkantourist to leave."

  "How is this?" said Tsanko.

  She told him of Nevena and her anger. "So I shall have to tour Sofia tomorrow and behave very well, which means assignments really must be distributed tonight."

  "We prefer not to use women," Tsanko told her.

  "Nonsense," she said flatly. "Everyone involved in this can't wear stocking masks over their faces. You're going to have to use people who have passports and can leave the country."

  Radev said, "This is true. If you give me passport I risk myself big. This lady leave, too, and the girl. If this is success there will be investigation later."

  Tsanko threw up his hands helplessly. "Then we must get to work-serious work!"

  "Exactly," said Volko. "Let us hear more talk."

  As everyone began to speak at once Mrs. Pollifax thought, Brainstorming! and settled back contentedly in her chair, knowing they were involved now, knowing that each of them was ready to make something happen.

  It was midnight before they reached a tentative plan and broke up, but only because they needed sleep for the hours ahead. During her day as a tourist Mrs. Pollifax was to purchase nine Bulgarian wristwatches-one for each member of the group-so that the ten or fifteen minutes allotted them could be plotted precisely by the hands of identical watches. Debby was to drop out of sight, hidden by Georgi in an abandoned hut on the outskirts of the city. In that same hut in the country Volko and Radev would spend most of the day designing their explosives. Assen Radev was to contact the guard at Panchevsky Institute who was on his payroll and discover what could be worked out, and Mrs. Bemish had promised to alert the four Bulgarian prisoners to the possibility of rescue, and try to learn more about the third floor that housed Philip's cell.

  The attack on Panchevsky Institute had been set for three o'clock Sunday morning, just before dawn.

  On this note they parted, each of them with a sense of astonishment at the events of the evening.

  20

  The next morning Nevena strode into the lobby of the Rila exuding cheerfulness. "The bus is outside filled with peoples," she told Mrs. Pollifax. "Very nice peoples, all western Europeans. You like Slavko yesterday? You like goose farm? Please recall at seven tonight I come and take you to airport for nine o'clock plane."

  "I recall," said Mrs. Pollifax meekly.

  "You come now for tour of Sofia."

  It was the beginning of a long day, thought Mrs. Pollifax as she seated herself on the Balkantourist bus. It was a luxurious vehicle, with a driver who spoke no English, a small chair beside him for Nevena and a microphone into which she spoke. If Mrs. Pollifax had expected to be bored by Nevena's deluxe tour, she was soon pleasantly surprised.

  All along the boulevards flags were flying in the breeze. "You see Sofia in unique moment," announced Nevena, breathing heavily into the microphone, her eyes sparkling. "Tomorrow Comrade Brezhnev, Party Chairman of our great Soviet comrades, come to visit with our leaders. There will be procession and many talks spoken here."

  The bus drew to a halt before the National Assembly building so they might observe the wooden stands, the workers installing microphones. "Across, down avenue, consider Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum," she continued. "There will be ceremony there, too, in morning, the Changing of the Guard for Chairman Brezhnev."

  As the tour progressed, Mrs. Pollifax noticed that Nevena showed a definite preference for the new and the Soviet-inspired. Not for her St. George's Church, which had been built in the third century; she was visibly bored. She allowed them an hour to examine the ikons and the Thracian exhibits in the crypt of the Nevsky Cathedral, but plainly what impressed her most was the number of people who came to Bulgaria to see them. However, about the Monument to the Red Army she waxed poetic, and her voice fairly sang as she pointed out the new Pliska and Rila hotels and the apartment complexes on the outskirts of the city. Apparently Nevena was not one of the young people about whom Tsanko worried. Over thirty, probably, thought Mrs. Pollifax.

  In the middle of the day they lunched on Mount Vitosha, at the restaurant where Mrs. Pollifax had first learned of Philip's arrest. They descended the mountain in cable cars and met the Balkantourist bus at the bottom, and were whisked off to Boyana to see the church's medieval art. At half-past two Mrs. Pollifax was deposited back at her hotel. "I shall do a little shopping for souvenirs now," she told Nevena reassuringly. "At the Tzum department store."

  "But at seven o'clock be in lobby, please," instructed Nevena.

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pollifax, and made her way around the corner and down the street to the Tzum, where she confounded the clerks by purchasing nine watches. Following this she spent an hour in her room setting and checking the watches and then on impulse she brought out a stamped postcard and wrote to her neighbor Miss Hartshorne, Dear Grace, If I should be late in returning-detained for any reason (such as going to either prison or the firing squad, she thought) please deliver my night-blooming cereus to Professor Whitsun. This sounded pessimistic and so she added with a flourish, Having lovely time, Emily. And then she tore the postcard up and dropped it into the wastebasket.

  At half-past four she put the watches carefully back into the paper shopping bag, locked the door behind her and went downstairs through the lobby to the front entrance. Presently the familiar blue car drew up, she climbed inside and she and Georgi drove away.

  The hut in the country had once been a stone house with a thatch roof until a fire had destroyed the roof and blackened the interior. Timbers leaned crazily against the stone walls and sunflowers had begun to weave a new roof of vines. It was charming and pastoral. Above all it was hidden from sight at the edge of a wood and isolated from the nearest tiny village.

  "But where is everyone?" asked Mrs. Pollifax as Georgi parked the car under a linden tree.

  "Ah, Boris is in the forest rehearsing his fifty-pound hunting bow. You
know-he is good, very good? Volko and Radev are in hole under house packing explosives."

  "And Debby? Tsanko?" '

  "Tsanko come to us later. Debby? She is no doubt with Boris rehearsing ropes." He added proudly, "We have long, long rope, very strong, used by men to clean windows very high."

  "Scaffolding rope?" suggested Mrs. Pollifax. "I wonder how you found that."

  Georgi said eagerly, "You must not think small of our group. Is true Volko and Tsanko and Boris are not young, but they much knowledge, much history. I myself enjoyed much cynicism in beginning, wanting only young people. Now I am different. We join together like sky and clouds, you know? They see the way to get things, the; have great knowledge."

  Experienced scavengers, thought Mrs. Pollifax with a smile.

  "Radev has visited guard he knows. He was gone long time. He brings news this guard Miroslav will go on wall midnight to dawn. At 3 a.m. sharp this man will stop at gate to smoke cigarette and talk. He will not be on wall. But Radev pay much money-oh, wow!"

  "Oh, wow?" Mrs. Pollifax laughed. "You've been with Debby!"

  "You see that?" he said, grinning. "She is good girl, we become friends today."

  "And Mrs. Bemish? Has anyone seen her today?"

  "Da. As liaison I go visit her 8 a.m. this morning. She observe and make pictures of windows on Trenda side of Institute. Radev and Boris go over these very very slowly."

  "So all the equipment, and all the information, is here," said Mrs. Pollifax as they walked from car to hut.

  Georgi nodded. "We gain much experience for Under* ground. Come-inside."

  "I'm curious, Georgi," she said. "You're very young. Why do you do all this?"

  Georgi looked surprised. "They not tell you? My brother is one of prisoners in Panchevsky."

  "Oh-I'm sorry."

  "Life imprisonment," said Georgi, nodding. "He is good communist, too, but he disagree with wrong party official, they search apartment and find notebook in which he records the correctness of our becoming freer, like Yugoslavia. They say this very bad, very revisionist." He sighed. "He will not want to leave his beloved Bulgaria, but if he go-maybe things change a little in five, ten years, and he I turn. Already my country is better now than before. No more-how you call it-bloodlettings? Purges?"