“Then Duncan is a traitor?”
“It looks that way.” Durell’s voice was grim. He felt a quick spasm of unreasoning anger and forced it down. “I don’t claim to understand it. But the girl admits Dunk had a hand in unloading the ship. And she had a good look at his accomplices. She can identify them.”
“First we have to catch up with them—and soon.” “That can be done. But I don’t think Fritsch’s roadblocks will net them. They had too many hours’ start over us. The thing to do, as I see it, is to jump over them and be waiting on the spot when they try to take the eggs out of the country.”
“What makes you think they’ll be sent abroad?”
“I’m pretty sure of it. Knowing Dunk, knowing his wife. You’ve had the same idea I have from the start, haven’t you? I know you can’t play hunches too often in this business/’ Durell said. “And this is too important to ignore.”
Wittington looked grim. A sense of urgency, almost of desperation, showed in his pale eyes under his enormous winged brows. “In misguided criminal hands, those bombs can offer a threat of blackmail and terror, of unimaginable destruction and death. If they fall into the wrong hands abroad, we can be accused of fostering tyrannies, dictatorships, spreading the holocaust of atomic war instead of seeking to curb it—” Wittington spread his hands and hunched his shoulders as if shivering with the cold.
Durell looked back at the bam. He couldn’t see Pleasure, but he knew she was there, turning over in her simple, ingenuous mind the suggestions he had made to her. He told Wittington briefly and succinctly what the girl had relayed to him. The old man listened with no change of expression. Fritsch had finished talking to his men in the radio car and was trudging back through the crusty snow toward them. It was almost noon. It occurred to Durell that twelve hours had gone by since the forced landing of the bomber and the theft of its cargo. It had taken too long for word to trickle down from this remote and desolate area. Much too long.
“Dunk’s wife is Spanish, as you know,” Durell said. “Latin American, anyway. The hijackers spoke Spanish, the girl says. She claims she recognized the language. So it fits. Do you know much about Carlotta Cortez and her family?”
“I had no chance to check those dossiers. They’ll be waiting on my desk when I get back,” Wittington said.
“My idea,” Durell said, “is that the eggs are going to be smuggled out of the country for revolutionary use somewhere down South.”
“How can we stop the cargo from being smuggled out? If the plan was properly conceived—and it seems to have gone off with military precision—then arrangements have undoubtedly been made to get by customs inspection and port security.”
“I think the eggs are headed for New York,” Durell said. “I’m betting on that.”
“Yes, you would. I understand your tendency to gamble, Sam.” He looked Puritanical.
Durell felt his anger again. “There’s nothing else to do but gamble that I’m right. If not—well, I didn’t ask to work for your Special Bureau. I have plenty to do in K Section. General McFee—”
“Dickinson McFee lent you to me. You’re working for me. If you don’t want to—”
“Do I really have a choice?” Durell demanded.
“No.”
“Then let’s not waste time. And let’s get another thing straight. I don’t want Fritsch interfering with me. I don’t like him, and he doesn’t care much for my methods, either. His prejudices don’t make him the best man for this job. He may be a good cop, but this deal needs more than a good cop.”
“That’s why you’re in on it,” Wittington said. He sounded milder. “You can work it out somehow. Try, anyway.” He paused. “Can you handle the girl?”
“I’ll need her for the stake-out. She can positively identify Dunk’s men. She can trigger our action accordingly.”
“Fritsch won’t like risking the time—”
“To hell with Fritsch,” Durell said. “I understand the importance of cooperation, and I’m willing to work with him when we get a line on where the drop is located. That will be somewhere in the New York area, I’m reasonably sure of that. When we know the place and set up the stake-out, I’ll be willing to work with Fritsch.”
“All right,” Wittington said heavily.
Isaac Kendall regarded Durell with open suspicion when Durell announced he wanted to take Pleasure with him. Durell explained the problem as simply as he could, and while he talked he was aware of the girl standing nearby, staring down at her feet with innocent, limpid blue eyes. To Durell’s surprise, the mountaineer made no real protest.
“She’s her own woman. She can do what she wants.”
The thin wife, however, was more outspoken. “You treat her right, mister, or Pa will see you get what’s comin’ to you.”
“Pleasure will be perfectly safe with me,” Durell assured her.
They took the helicopter back to the nearest military field, where a transport flew them the rest of the way to Washington.
It was Pleasure’s first trip by air. There was some delay while she packed a battered old Gladstone bag and put on a worn, checked cloth coat. Looking at her, Durell knew that most heads would turn in curious amusement at the sight of her on a city street. Something would have to be done about it, if they were to remain inconspicuous. But he put that problem off until later.
Pleasure’s first fears of the helicopter quickly gave way to innocent glee as they took off from Piney Knob. Apparently she gave full trust for her safety to Durell. She sat close to him, and he could have wished it otherwise. Wittington chose the jump seat in the back of the ’copter’s cabin.
They were back in Washington by four o’clock. Wittington promptly checked at the airport for word from Fritsch. Nothing had happened. The roadblocks were still up, several thousand cars had been stopped and searched, but there was no sign of the cargo. There was nothing in the newspapers yet, either. A cover story about an escaped convict had been given out to curious reporters who became aware of the police activity in the mountains, but Wittington was not too optimistic about the cover remaining tight.
The old man sighed and looked at Pleasure. “What makes a man like Duncan, with his rank and background, do a thing like this? I wish I could understand the human race.”
“I intend to find out, in Dunk’s case,” Durell said.
“You realize that any past friendship you had with him must be put aside. You must be ruthless, quick—kill him if necessary.”
“I know my business,” Durell said.
‘Well.” Wittington hunched his shoulders again. “Good luck.”
Durell got into a taxi with Pleasure and gave the driver the address of his apartment near Rock Creek Park.
Chapter Six
I thought we were goin’ to New York,” Pleasure objected.
“Later this evening,” Durell told her. "We’ll have to get you some things first.”
“What sort of things?” She was suspicious. “We goin’ to your house now?”
“That’s right.”
“We goin’ to be alone there?”
He smiled. “You don’t have to worry, Pleasure.” Unexpectedly, she smiled, too. “I ain’t worried, Mr. Durell.”
The cab driver, as Durell had expected, eyed Pleasure with an unconcealed grin of amazement as they got out. Durell guided the girl into the lobby. Since he had chosen the old brick apartment house because the elevators were automatic and there was no clerk, he was spared any more curious glances at Pleasure. And she was blissfully unaware of any strangeness in her clothing and appearance.
“I’m hungry,” she said, as Durell ushered her into his bachelor’s rooms.
“We’ll have dinner on the plane to New York.”
“I want something to eat right now. And somethin’ to drink. You got any liquor here?”
“I don’t think—”
“You promised you’d show me a good time. You got to feed and liquor me, Mr. Durell. That was your promise.”
But her attention again made a quick jump to Durell’s rooms. She smiled, went around touching the leather chair at his desk, the Sheraton table, and then she paused in total amazement at Durell’s bookshelves. She looked at him with puzzled awe.
“Did you read all these books, Mr. Durell?”
“Most of them.”
“They got pictures inside?”
“Not very many.”
“I can read, you know. I’d like to read them all, too, some day.” For a moment she looked wistful, standing awkwardly with her toes together, a shabby little creature lost in wonder at a world she had only dreamed about until this day. She seemed to have forgotten completely the events of that morning and the night before. “You said you were goin’ to get me some things, Mr. Durell. Like what?”
“Some clothes, first of all. New dresses. A coat. A hat. Gloves. You’ll need them for the city.”
Anger flashed in her cornflower eyes. “But I got on my best dress and coat—”
“We’ll get you something even nicer, Pleasure.” Her coat was open and he saw the obvious, unrestrained movement of her breasts as she swung violently toward him. “All sorts of things, Pleasure. First of all, while I call a friend of mine to pick up the clothes, perhaps you’d like to take a hot bath.”
Disillusion shone in her blue eyes. “A bath? What for?”
“You’ll feel better for it. Look here.” He started toward the bathroom, but she didn’t move. Hostility marked her face. “You ain’t so smart,” she said. “I know what you’re thinkin’.”
“No.”
“Then you’re ashamed of me!” she suddenly flared. Her voice turned loud and shrill. “Johnny wasn’t ashamed but you are! That’s it, ain’t it?”
“No,” he said again.
“All right,” she whispered. “I’ll do anything you say.” She walked toward the bathroom door. “Truth is, I kind of like you, Mr. Durell.”
Durell didn’t know whether he liked this reaction any better than the other. He showed her how to turn the faucets in the tiled bath, ignored her interest in his shaving lotion and her wonder at the plentiful hot water, and left her to go to the telephone.
He reached Sidonie Osbourne first. Sidonie, the mother of twins, was also General Dickinson McFee s secretary. Durell explained what he wanted: several dresses, a woolen suit, brassieres and panties, slips, nylons. He conjured up an image of Pleasure’s figure, and since he was as experienced with women as any man could hope to be, he ventured to estimate the sizes required.
Sidonie giggled with amusement. “Sounds like you’ve got a mountain wildcat on your hands, Sam darling."
“It amounts to that. I want all this stuff to be quiet and inconspicuous, Sidonie. I don’t want anyone to look at her twice.”
“I can’t imagine what’s going on,” Sidonie ^remarked.
“Nothing very good. You know Wittington.”
“Dangerous?”
“What isn’t, in this business?”
Sidonie promised to have the things delivered within half an hour. Durell used his next call to get priority reservations on the seven o’clock plane for New York. He then telephoned the Fremont-Plaza in New York, a quiet residential hotel in the East Sixties that always maintained several transient rooms open for K Section personnel without knowing just what K Section was. He got two adjoining rooms with no difficulty. His last call was to McFee.
“Don’t tell me anything, Sam,” General McFee said bluntly. “If it’s in Wittington’s Special Bureau, I don't think I want to know.”
“I may need some help, General. A couple of men.
“For how long?”
“I’m not sure. If we’re lucky, a day or two. If not, maybe a week. If it’s longer than that, the balloon goes up.”
“You sound serious.”
“It is. Can I get the men?”
“Whenever you ask for them.”
“Good. I’ll also want a run-down on Major John Duncan, U.S. Air Force. Anything we have in our dossier files. Anything you can dig up from State, the FBI, the Pentagon. And more important, the same on his wife and her father. She’s the former Carlotta Cortez. He’s known as the General.”
McFee was silent a moment. “I’ve heard of both of them. Mostly Ramon Ybanez Cortez. The General is in exile in New York, right?”
“Right. Can you do it?”
“Tomorrow morning. Call me,” McFee said.
Durell hung up. The sound of running water in the bath had changed to some wild splashings. He could smell his shaving lotion, and he wondered if Pleasure had poured the entire bottle into the hot bath. She had left her clothing in a heap outside the closed bathroom door. As he had suspected, there was only the cotton dress, her shoes, and her sleazy cloth coat. He picked them up, quietly left the apartment and walked down the hallway to the incinerator where he dropped the bundle down the chute. When he returned, the splashings still continued in the bath, and he heard her singing, too, an odd Elizabethan-sounding melody. Durell smiled thinly, lit a cigarette, went into the kitchen to make a small pot of Louisiana coffee, took a quick nip of bourbon, and waited.
The coffee was perking when he heard Pleasure at the kitchen door. She stood there as naked as the day she was bom.
“I got no clothes!” she said accusingly. “What did you do with them?”
Durell spilled a little coffee on his hand. “Pleasure, I left one of my robes in the bath for you.”
“Mr. Sam,” she said, “you think I’m ugly, don’t you?”
“No. No, indeed, Pleasure.”
“Then why don’t you look at me?”
He looked at her. He had guessed at all the roundness of her figure, but his guesses hadn’t been good enough. She was possessed of a body far more perfect than he had imagined. And she carried herself with an artless grace that only enhanced her attractions.
He smiled. “How old are you, Pleasure?”
“Twenty-one,” she said glumly. “Pretty old, I reckon.”
“Old enough to know better. Get that robe on, please.” “You just don’t like me,” she accused.
“Pleasure, please—”
She came toward him. Her blue eyes were clear and bright and innocent. She was a child walking in one of the most maddening bodies he had ever seen.
The doorbell rang.
Pleasure halted and looked puzzled. Perhaps she had never heard a doorbell before. Durell moved quickly, shoved her toward the bathroom, took the snubby .38 revolver from his belt, and moved to the door. Pleasure’s eyes went round and wide as she saw his gun. She opened her pink, petulant mouth to protest and question him, and then she closed it again.
“Who is it?” Durell asked quietly through the panel.
“Delivery. From Mrs. Osbourne.”
“All right.”
Durell waved Pleasure into the bathroom. When she closed the door, Durell opened up and took the heavy carton from the uniformed messenger and tipped him and closed the door again. Pleasure immediately came out into the open again.
“You are a cop, aren’t you?” she asked. “Did you think somebody was comin’ here after me?”
“You never know,” he said. “Here are some new clothes for you.”
“I don’t want ’em,” she snapped. “I want my old ones back. I’m goin’ home to Pa.”
"Why? What’s the trouble?”
“I was gettin’ to like you, Mr. Sam, but then I saw that shootin’ iron and that funny look on your face and it kind of scared me. I never seen a man change in looks so fast. So I changed my mind. You ain’t goin’ to help my Johnny. You’re goin’ to put him in jail.”
“If he deserves it, yes,” Durell said.
“But he’s my man. I can’t help you put him away.”
He shot your pa. He wanted to shoot you,” Durell pointed out.
I don’t care.” But her determination had weakened. He wondered if she could have forgotten that simple fact.
Apparently she had. He took advantage of her indecision to rip open the carton and show her the two dresses, the nylon underthings, the stockings, the woolen suit and coat that Sidonie had so quickly sent over. Even a pair of red shoes. It was the red shoes that did the trick. It was as if Sidonie had guessed what might sway Pleasure even without knowing the girl. Pleasure’s mouth made an O of delight and she snatched up the entire bundle with a scream and pranced, still naked, bouncing, into the bathroom to get dressed.
Durell went into the kitchen, sat down in a chair, and laced his coffee liberally with bourbon.
Chapter Seven
At nine o’clock that evening, Carlotta Cortez Duncan dressed for dinner. The General insisted on clinging to the Spanish custom of dining late, even after three years of exile in New York. Carlotta did not mind. If anything, she joined him in perpetuating the old practices.
Justino was in her bedroom, watching her dress. It made no difference. The General, as usual, was drunk in the map room, studying his charts and logistical tables, lost in liquor and dreams. Professor Juan Perez was jittery; he had closed himself in his rooms on the attic floor. The house was quiet. A light snowfall was blanketing New York, but the fine flakes melted into black wetness as soon as they struck the streets and sidewalks.
Carlotta spoke as a matter of policy. “You know you should not be here at this time, Justino.”
“What difference does it make? Who will know?” “The General would object—”
“I hurried back in order to see you and to tell you about our inital success.”
In the mirror before her, Carlotta could see Justino’s dark, saturnine face. “You call it a success?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Some parts of it went wrong.”
“They will be corrected.”
He put his hands on her bare shoulders, dark hands with pads of black hair on each finger, a thick, harsh springy mat on the backs extruding from his wrists. His hands looked barbaric against the ivory smoothness of her skin.
“Not now, Justino,” she said quietly. “I must dress.”
“I will be satisfied to watch.”
Assignment Carlotta Cortez Page 4