Assignment Carlotta Cortez

by Edward S. Aarons

  Chapter One

  He crawled as far as he could go.

  When he collapsed, his face and shoulders plowed a small ridge in the cold, dark snow. He lay still and was ready to give up and die. Then he told himself he had to go on a little more, and he raised himself to his hands and knees and slowly, like a wounded animal, dragged his unwilling body a little farther.

  He wondered where Pleasure was hiding. He had seen her flashlight; he had been guided by it. But now it was gone. He couldn’t see anything now. The mountaintop brooded in a midnight blackness. After the rending cacophony of the crash, the only sound present was the whimper of the wind cutting through the notch between Piney Knob and the next ridge.

  His teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. He stopped crawling and reached in back of him and hauled his bad leg around and sat up in the snow. He was sweating, even though it was so cold. He didn’t want to look back, but he forced himself to stare at the wreck.

  Actually, Duncan thought, he had made it come off well. He had done exactly what he was supposed to do. Charley Camp and Les Humphries would be all right. They had bailed out on his order, miles back. They would only report as much of it as they knew—that the engines had sputtered, flamed out, and he had yelled an order over the intercom for them to jump. As far as the Colonel and the rest of the operational staff would ever know, he had crashed, been injured, had crawled away and died somewhere. They’d look for him for a long time. Especially after they checked the ship. They wouldn’t give up. There’d be hell to pay. But they wouldn’t find him. Or what went with him. Not tomorrow, not next week, not ever.

  The pain in his leg was easier now, and a spark of hope lit in him. Maybe it wasn’t broken, after all. Damn thing. Bring the ship down in as neat a crash landing as anyone could do, then hop out of the hatch and land smack on a boulder that upset the whole applecart.

  But where was Pleasure?

  And the truck?

  Duncan looked all around in the darkness of the mountaintop. Maybe he had made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t her signal flare he’d seen, or maybe he’d ditched in the wrong place. Any one of these mountains in Tennessee looked exactly like all the others, as far as he was concerned.

  He looked back at the new CP-2 bomber. No fires, anyway. The crumpled plane, designed expressly for the test mission he flew tonight, was a huge, shimmering, silvery shape, not very distinct against the background of snow on the mountain clearing.

  Duncan opened his mouth and swallowed air. He listened to the wind in the snow-laden pines and hemlocks. He felt his leg. It was distinctly better now.

  Actually, when he looked at his watch, he saw he was five minutes early. Justin had promised him that the truck would have chains and get through. They had tested the whole operation on two dry runs, and it had worked perfectly, in even heavier snow than this.

  Still, Duncan almost wished they wouldn’t show up.

  He was a tall man in his middle thirties, heavy-set, with fine, thinning blond hair, and a strong face except for a certain vagueness about his mouth and chin. Even after service in two wars, he was still a major, and he knew the fault was his. Especially after that Korean episode. But that was past. It would all be changed now. Unless . . .

  He almost wished that Charley Camp or Les Humphries might have landed near a telephone and gotten the authorities out in a search that would find the plane before Justin arrived. He had balked at ditching with the two men still aboard. That would have been murder, and he wasn’t quite ready for that yet. But if either man got to a phone, then the failure of the whole operation couldn’t be blamed on him. Justin, Carlotta, the General—none of them could really complain.

  He knew he was fooling only himself. They would kill him. And Carlotta would let it happen.

  Carlotta. The thought of her was a dark flame moving in his mind. He could almost see her, cool and beautiful, with those damned cold, contemptuous eyes that could promise so much, that had promised so much, if only he would do this thing for her.

  It was for Carlotta and nothing else that he had started on this road to exile, to fear, to the life of a fugitive.

  The life of a traitor.

  He remembered the time just two days ago when he had almost called Sam Durell, in Washington. He had wanted to quit, escape while he could. That was the way things had been all his life. Even his wanting and his need for Carlotta hadn’t been enough in those wavering moments. He knew he was weak. That was why it had been easy to go along with Carlotta and Justin and the General. Up to a point. Then the balance had shifted the other way. It was more difficult to go on, and he had wanted to escape having to do what he had promised. He had actually lifted the telephone to try to locate Durell.

  Durell could tell him what to do. The Cajun could handle it. He had known Sam a long time. Sam would understand and help.

  The thing that had stopped him was the delay entailed in calling the State Department and the CIA. He knew that Durell worked for something called K Section, but he hadn’t seen Sam in over a year, and he would have had to run a gauntlet of suspicious inquiries. And Durell might be anywhere. On the other side of the world, following out a mission. Suppose he couldn’t be reached? He couldn’t speak to anyone else, and his name would be on the records. He knew what would happen then. Intelligence would put him under surveillance. Once you attracted their attention, however discreetly, you were dead.

  He had put down the telephone without taking the first step.

  Now there was no going back.

  Duncan was suddenly aware of another sound moving up through the wind on Piney Knob. He hoisted himself up, getting his right leg under him in a half crouch. The pain of the wrenched muscle was minor—he was sure now nothing was broken. At first he saw no one.

  “Pleasure?” he called softly.

  “Here, honey.”

  She walked toward him. Seeing her in her dreadful innocence against the dark night, Duncan felt a pang of guilt. She was so trusting, and so damned ignorant. In her simple cotton dress, bare legs thrust into snow boots, and her cheap coat, she had a quality of childish, animal spirits that had first amused and attracted him, then repelled him. But his guilt rode over everything now. He tried to keep it out of his voice, but he knew she would sense the truth, much as a child knows when adults are lying or being evasive.

  But she wasn’t a child, Duncan thought—not with that lush woman’s body, not with that face and hair. She dropped to her knees beside him, heedless of the snow. Her hands cupped his face.

  “Oh, Johnny, Johnny. Are you all right?”

  “I just twisted my leg. What took you so long?”

  “I was over t’other side of the Knob.”

  She spoke with that quaint, sing-song mountaineer’s twang that they say can be traced back to Elizabethan times. “You brung my presents, Johnny?”

  “In my pocket. Here.” He thrust the small packages at her, cheap dime-store cosmetics that she went insane for.

  “I wisht I knew what you was doing, Johnny,” she said. She twisted about to stare at the wreck. “Oohee, that’s a real good one. Was you alone?”

  “Johnny, you mean you run that big thing all by yourself?”

  “The other men got out long ago. They’re all right.” He wet his lips. His mouth felt very dry. “Where is the truck?”

  “It’s coming. I heard it. I can hear it now, can’t you?”

  He couldn’t hear anything but the sound of the wind and the quickness of her breathing. He remembered all at once how he had met her, long ago, that time his car broke down and he had taken a wrong turn here in the mountains, in his hurry to make the most of a ten-day leave from Albuquerque and get home to Litchfield, in Connecticut. Just l
ike the comic books, he thought wryly. The shot from her pa’s squirrel rifle had whistled by an inch from his ear. Startled hell out of him. But it had turned out well, as it happened. The old man was caught in a windfall, one leg broken, and Pleasure—she was in her late teens then-had been unable to get her father loose. After a little parley, Pa Kendall permitted Duncan to help. He’d gotten the old man home to the mountain cabin near Piney Knob and had stayed the night.

  Afterward, on several occasions when driving through the region, he had stopped again and again, in order to see Pleasure once more.

  He hadn’t told her he was married to Carlotta, of course.

  “Do you have my civilian clothes?” he asked suddenly.

  “Sure, honey. Right here.” She reached behind her, where she had dropped a crudely wrapped bundle, and hastened to open it for him. He had given her the gray worsted suit, white shirt, necktie and overcoat two weeks ago, when he had arranged for all this. “I kinda like you in your uniform, though, Johnny.”

  She didn’t understand anything.

  “I can’t help that,” he said irritably. “Here, help me change.”

  He shivered in the bitter mountain wind as he got out of his flight suit and the major’s uniform. For a moment he looked hard at the rows of ribbons from World War II and Korea. There was something very final about changing into civilian clothes this time.

  “Pleasure?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Pleasure, listen, I’ve changed my mind—”

  She spoke with quick alarm. “About us?”

  “No, no. Everything is the same with us. I mean about this—this thing I’m doing. You understand, I told you it was very secret, a government thing, and you mustn’t ever tell about it.”

  “Sure,” she said, her smile bright and simple.

  “Well, something has gone wrong. We’ve got to get out of here and find a telephone.”

  “Honey,” she said patiently, “you know the nearest phone is at Parker’s, and that’s over eight miles away.” He sweated with his fear now. This was his last chance. He could call Durell. Or anybody in that place where Durell worked. Then it would be out of his hands. He would take whatever punishment they handed out to him. But he couldn’t go on with this, this. . .

  He heard the truck.

  Duncan stood up. He could see the lights now, flickering through the trees. For just another instant he wanted to turn and run. But it was too late. He knew the men who would be in the truck. He couldn’t ever run fast enough or far enough to escape them.

  “Never mind, Pleasure,” he said tiredly.

  “There’s just one other thing,” she said thoughtfully. “I think Pa is sneakin’ around somewhere. I think he followed me.”

  Duncan was alarmed. “I told you to be careful!”

  "Well, I couldn’t just help it,” she said. She pouted. “What’s so all-fired important, anyway? You said it was just a bunch of soldiers doing some practice work, like.” He took her by the shoulders. “Pleasure, look. You’d better get out of here now. If your Pa is somewhere around, get him away from here, too. It might be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” She didn’t understand. “How come?” “Just go, will you?” He wanted to shout and yell at her. “I’ll see you again as soon as I can.”

  He pushed her away as the truck jolted into sight in the clearing. It was a big, canvas-covered vehicle, with chains on all four rear wheels. He couldn’t see who was in the cab.

  “Go on, Pleasure. Don’t let them see you.”

  Duncan walked abruptly away from her. The truck had halted beside the sabotaged bomber. Already the dark shapes of men moved across the snow toward the bomb hatches. One of the men saw Duncan approaching across the field and raised his hand. He had a gun in it and the gun was pointed at Duncan.

  Chapter Two

  The CP-2 had made a long scar across the snow in the mountain clearing where it had crashed. Against the snow and the pines, the wrecked plane looked silvery, crumpled by the impact, a dead eagle sprawled on die despised earth. Durell looked down from the helicopter, his face impassive, considering the wreckage.

  “How many men were aboard?” he asked.

  “Three,” Wittington said.

  “None left alive?”

  “All of them, we think. None here.”

  “Nobody’s been picked up?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know the cargo is missing?

  “Garry Fritsch is down there.”

  Durell looked again. He couldn’t see any signs of life in the area. Now he saw that the pattern of tire tracks indicated at least two cars, and possibly three, had approached the wreck during the night. The snow lay in thick white folds on the rocky ground. There were no houses, no roads, nothing human in sight.

  It was almost noon. At five o’clock that morning, Durell had been awakened in pre-dawn darkness by Wittington’s telephone call. A Saturday morning, and he had been looking forward to a reasonably quiet weekend. Durell hadn’t ever expected to hear from Wittington and his Special Bureau again. But here he was, all appointments cancelled, the decks cleared in a single swift sweep of power that only Wittington seemed to command.

  The helicopter pilot made another pass at the wreck site. He was whistling tunelessly between his teeth.

  Wittington said, “You say you know Major John Duncan?”

  Durell nodded. “Yes. I went to Yale with him.”

  “And his wife?”

  “I’ve met her once or twice.”

  “She may be a widow. You’ll have to speak to her.”

  It was possible that Johnny Duncan lay somewhere down there in the snow and the blue-white wreckage of the dead ship, the flesh tom from his bones, a darkness upon him for all time. Durell felt a coldness move within him. It never seemed to end. People you knew and liked, people you laughed and ate with, were suddenly gone. Usually there was a better reason for it than this, however. There was no reason at all for what lay down there. No good reason, anyway.

  “Let’s sit down,” Wittington said.

  “Where?” the pilot asked.

  “Over the knob to the south. There’s a farmer lives there. The clearing is big enough to land,” Fritsch said.

  The helicopter tilted and skimmed over the needlepoint tops of pines heavy with snow. Durell lit a cigarette and thought back through the hours. He still didn’t know what Wittington wanted with him on this thing. He would learn in time, when Wittington, irascible and secretive and impatient, decided to make things clear. It had to be important to concern the Special Bureau.

  Durell sighed and Wittington looked at him and looked away again. The chief of the Special Bureau was a gaunt, round-shouldered man, a New Englander with a long, dour face, a strong nose, and a bald, freckled scalp. The Special Bureau operated above and beyond all the other police agencies of the Federal government —borrowing men when needed from Justice, or Treasury, or even K Section of State, where Durell had been ever since the old OSS days. The war had never ended for Durell. He had gone from one kind of battle into this other war, this dark and secret struggle, filled with sudden and often ugly death, not on an open battlefield but in the alleys and chancelleries of the world.

  He was an old hand at it now. Long ago, McFee had called him a bright young man, marked for many successful assignments if only he kept his hot Louisiana Cajun temperament in hand. This morning, Wittington had called and explained that he needed an old pro, an old reliable. Durell grinned slightly at his thoughts. Fifteen years had suddenly been bridged with a few words. From an enthusiastic amateur he suddenly saw himself as he was today: self-reliant, too silent, capable in ways and means most men never heard of.

  Old reliable, he thought. And he wondered if he hadn’t seen just one too many crises, and been squeezed out of his last tight comer. Perhaps now he was walking along the last path of danger from which, like Johnny Duncan and all the others, he wouldn’t return. His reflexes were not what they had been fifteen ye
ars ago. True, his volatile Cajun temper was more easily curbed now. You stopped, looked, and listened more readily these days. The careful men and the suspicious men were the ones who survived this business of being a spy.

  What Durell’s feelings amounted to this morning was that he had been in the business too long.

  The helicopter came over the top of Piney Knob and he saw below a tumbled-down cabin, a fenced clearing, a sagging bam and outhouses belonging to a mountaineer’s settlement. A narrow, twisting road led down the mountainside to a highway far off. Three new cars looked unnatural and unwanted in the dooryard, and several men made dark specks down there against the trampled snow.

  “There’s Garry Fritsch,” Wittington granted.

  “Is that the Fritsch with the FBI?”

  “Yes.”

  “Working for you?”

  “Borrowed. Like you, Durell. You’ll work with him.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” Durell said.

  Wittington looked at him over his beak of a nose and looked away again. The second time, Durell thought. The New Englander made him impatient. He was a gaunt dark spider sitting in his shabby little office on Fourteenth Street, in Washington’s business section, behind a door that indicated this was a uniform manufacturing establishment. Durell had reported to Wittington at a few minutes before six, at the airport. He hadn’t been followed.

  “We’re going to Tennessee,” Wittington announced glumly. “One of our military planes on a test alert crashed there about midnight.”

  “Anyone I know?” Durell asked.

  “I believe so. Major John Fremont Duncan, the pilot.” It came like a blow to the stomach, with no warning, no sign of sensitivity. Wittington’s sunken eyes watched him carefully from under his shaggy brows. “We’re going to pick up the bodies, if we can find them. And the cargo.”

  Durell said, “What’s the cargo?”

  “I'll decide if you have to know when we get there.” So patience was the watchword for this cold December morning. Durell’s face was uncommitted and watchful as they got out of the helicopter and walked toward the mountaineer’s cabin. Durell was a tall man in his middle thirties; his body reflected an easy, controlled musculature, a lightness and litheness notable even under his sober blue overcoat and dark hat. He had a narrow hunter’s face; his agile, careful hands were those of a trained gambler. He owed that part of his talents to his grandfather, old Jonathan, back in Bayou Peche Rouge. The only home Durell had known as a boy had been the hulk of the old Mississippi sidewheeler, the Three Belles, which the old man had won on a final turn of the cards back at the beginning of the century.