Assignment Carlotta Cortez

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Durell! Come down here! We know you are there!”

  The echoing voice reached for him with cold fingers. Durell pushed the gun through the crack in the doorway and fired blindly. He didn’t want the men down there to think his silence meant that he had somehow escaped, or they might start up the other stairway. The slamming shot was deafening in the tower. A gun answered him. The bullet spattered harmlessly against the steel fire door. Then a man’s head poked up above the steel rail of the landing. Eyes swiveled, rolled, found him. Durell shot again. The head vanished.

  There was more talk down there, quick whisperings in Spanish, too muted for him to understand.

  “Durell! We will let the young lady go! Is that what you want?”

  Justino would have learned his name from Carlotta Cortez, Durell decided. Two minutes had gone by since O’Brien had left with Pleasure. He had heard nothing. Time enough for them to have reached safety or be caught. Time now to follow after them.

  He squeezed off another blind shot, then slammed the door shut and bolted it, and ran through the General’s bedroom to the bath and the narrow stairway beyond, moving quickly down these steps into the pool of darkness below.

  He didn’t dare use his pencil flash. At the foot of the steps he paused, sensing space around him. A window made a dim gray rectangle against the night. Enough of a glow came from the harbor and the city beyond to outline the shape of conventional living-room furniture. He was in an apartment of some sort. The narrow stairway continued on down. O’Brien and the girl were gone, however. Crossing the first room, Durell found a second chamber furnished with enough double-decked bunks to sleep a dozen men. Justino’s barracks, he thought. Nobody was here, either. The smell of stale tobacco smoke clung to the dark air.

  He moved toward the fire door that opened on the main stairs. He was on the landing below the General’s tower apartment, but he did not open the door. Someone—perhaps more than one man—stood on the opposite side of the door. There were quick, hurried phrases in Spanish, muted by the steel barrier. Durell could not hear the words distinctly enough to identify what was being said. Then he heard Justino’s voice, startlingly near the door, calling his name again.

  He moved away and stood between the shadowy outlines of the bunks and looked out through the window. The street and the slip beyond looked scoured clean by the harbor wind. He was directly above the loading platform where the canvas-covered truck was parked, and he could see diagonally across the way to the next building, where he and Pablo O’Brien had gone down into the tunnel to get in here. As he watched, two men ran out on the landing below and turned to the parked truck. One of them jumped in and threw back the canvas top, as if searching it. Durell had been wondering about the parked truck. Now he saw that it was empty. No cases concealing the missing bombs were aboard.

  The two men ran around the truck and got into the cab. It started up and roared away, onto the pier, then reversed and came back and turned the corner to the right.

  Where was O’Brien and the girl?

  The gun in Durell’s hand felt hot and slippery, and he dried his palm on his thigh, shifting his grip.

  The street was empty now. He heard a crashing sound from above as the fire door into the General’s quarters was smashed open. Only a few seconds left now. There was no place to go. He had tried to buy time for Pablo and the girl. But where were they?

  Footsteps pounded across the floor overhead. Justino would know about the back stairs. Maybe he had caught O’Brien and the girl already. They couldn’t have gone through the fire door to the main tower stairway, so they must have continued on down the narrow steps near the bathroom. If so, they should have been out by now, through the basement furnace room and the tunnel to the building across the street—

  He saw them.

  Where there had been solid, angular shadow in the doorway over there, where he had entered that building with O’Brien, there was now a subtle shift and change in the blackness.

  Then he saw them running.

  They ran side by side up the street, away from the waterfront. The girl ran gracefully and swiftly, keeping up with Pablo with ease. A long sigh came from Durell. There was no one on the street to see their escape. Nobody shot at them. There was no alarm.

  One part of his job was done. The other, locating the eggs, seemed impossible. He had found no trace of the missing bombs. Now he had to get out of here.

  He turned to the back stairs in the room next to the barracks. As he did so, he knew he was too late. There had been silence from the searchers up above, a sudden quiet that meant no good.

  The shadows came leaping at him like wolves.

  They had been waiting. There were three, four, five of them, but the narrow passage to the stairs was too small to accommodate them all at once. He smashed his gun into the blurred face of the first, kneed a second, slashed at a third. He felt a draft of cold wind at his back and knew they were coming in from the fire stairs as well. He couldn’t face both ways at once. He rushed forward, saw Justino on the narrow steps above, tried to reach him and stumbled over one of the men he had dropped. Instantly a massive weight fell on his back, driving him to his knees. He fought up again, but he couldn’t shake off the man on his back. He went down, and his face scraped cruelly on the concrete floor. Someone kicked him in the side. He caught a fleeting image of a face above him and struck at it, his knuckles crushing cartilage. Hands seized him, lifted him, slammed him against the wall. He felt fists striking everywhere. Darkness rushed at him, and the darkness became a whirlpool that sucked him down.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He heard voices, dimly at first. “Quien es?"

  “Se llama Durell. Policia federal.”

  In English, a woman said, “Is he dead?”

  “No.”

  “What shall we do with him?”

  “Haz lo que gustes,” the man said. “Do whatever you like.”

  Footsteps moved back and forth. A man’s shoes, a woman’s high heels. The woman said desperately, “Estamos totalmente cubierto por la nevada.”

  “It is only a small delay.”

  “Any delay is dangerous.”

  The man said irritably, “Can I do anything about this filthy climate? It snows. We cannot stop it.”

  “It snows more than snowflakes, fool. It snows police and federal agents. It can snow death.”

  “For them, too. We must wait, that is all.”

  The footsteps moved again. Durell heard the floorboards creak. He smelled dust and wood rot and the rankness of harbor water. He felt cold. The chill in the room penetrated his bones. He did not open his eyes. Was it day? He could feel them watching him. He did not change the slow rhythm of his breathing.

  After a moment he felt the eyes turn away. The footsteps moved away, too. He lay still for a long time, sleeping perhaps, then conscious of stiffening pain all through him where they had gratuitously worked him over after knocking him out. He moved his tongue in his mouth. There was dried blood inside his lips, on his teeth. There was one particular pain that kept stabbing his left side. He waited. A man and a woman had been looking at him and discussing him, worried about the fact that it was snowing. Some time must have passed, then. He heard a door open, creaking, and thud shut again. After a while he was sure he was alone, and he opened his eyes and looked around.

  Gray morning light with the quality of snow in the air sifted through a tall dirty window that hadn’t been cleaned in a generation. Frost made a gaudy, lacy pattern on the panes, and he couldn’t see through it. The cold in the air made plumes of vapor of his breath.

  He was alone now.

  The room was small and bare, with cracked plaster walls stained with mildew and other things that Durell preferred not to think about. There was a small pine table with a cheap lamp on it; the flowered shade was cracked and lopsided. It was not lit. Overhead, a single naked bulb hung from loose wires in a hole in the ceiling where the fixture had been. The floor was of bare pine boards, dusty a
s if flour had once been stored on it. He found he was lying on the rusty springs of an iron cot, and the pain in his left side came from where one of the broken springs probed into his ribs. He shifted a little. He was tied hand and foot and lashed to the cot itself. He could not move more than an inch or two, but it was enough to give him some relief from the broken spring.

  His attention returned to the smells. Carlotta’s Spanish perfume, fought a weak and losing battle against the rank odor of harbor water, and now he could hear the lapping of that water against pilings somewhere nearby. It was not immediately under the floor, but close enough. And there was another smell that interested him—the old, stale, ineradicable odor of ale and beer, the sort of smell that has permeated the wood of a bar or taproom for decades. All at once he remembered the waterfront hotel and bar that Pablo O’Brien had pointed out as a hangout for Justino’s men, not far around the comer from the warehouse. They must have taken him here, then. He was reasonably sure of it.

  Wind suddenly rattled the dirty, frosted window, and he heard the quick scratching of sleet against the glass.

  Snowing. And it bothered Carlotta Cortez very much.

  He wondered when the weather had changed. And he wondered why O’Brien hadn’t brought Fritsch and Barney Kels’ men in a raid against the warehouse. Maybe because he, Durell, hadn’t returned himself, action had been held off. Maybe some sort of parley was being planned with the Cortezes. From the way Carlotta had talked, Durell did not think the bombs had arrived yet. And this thought led to the next logical step. The storm had delayed their transportation schedule.

  Maybe Fritsch and Jensen had figured that out, too. Durell hoped so.

  He tried twice to get freed, but only succeeded in scraping skin from his wrists and ankles. Then he thought the blood might help, providing a slippery lubricant to help squeeze his hands through the loops; but it didn’t work. The effort helped to keep him warm, however.

  The light in the window grew brighter, but the violence of the sleet storm had increased, when footsteps came up a creaking stairway and the door was pushed open. Justino came in and stood beside the cot. “Awake, Durell?”

  "I was awake before,” Durell said.

  “I thought you were. But I wished to speak to you alone first, without the Cortezes present to interfere.”

  “Secrets from your boss?”

  “The General does not mix into my business. He prefers to know nothing about it.”

  “He must be a squeamish man, then,” Durell said.

  Justino eyed him like a hawk considering his prospective prey. “You are in no position to make jokes, my friend.” He spoke English with careful precision. “How do you feel?”

  “I could be better,” said Durell. “But I could be worse —like Johnny Duncan.”

  “Your friend was an unimportant weakling who never knew whether to sail with the wind or against it.”

  “He was important enough for you to kill him.”

  “Of course. He would have talked too freely.”

  “About the bombs? We know all about them,” Durell said. “Let’s not play games with each other. You’re in trouble and you can’t find a way out. Your plans have gone haywire. That’s the only reason you let me wake up here. Otherwise I’d have gone to join Johnny.”

  “You are partly right. But things are not so bad for us as you imagine.”

  “The snow is delaying you, isn’t it?” Durell asked suddenly.

  Justino’s narrow head came up and an ugly brightness flickered in his dark, conspiratorial eyes. He said abruptly, “You realize, don’t you, that your friends have abandoned you?”

  “Maybe they don’t figure I’m worth saving,” Durell said.

  “And this does not trouble you?”

  “No man is indispensable in our business. You ought to know that, Justino. One man’s life must be weighed against the lives of thousands, and perhaps the fate of nations. I don’t flatter myself that I’m too important to sacrifice for greater ends.”

  “You speak bravely,” Justino said. His voice was thin. “And perhaps you really are a brave man, after all. I could use you.”

  “In place of Johnny?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “In your SN outfit, when you get home?”

  “A man of your training could do good work for me.” “Butcher’s work,” Durell suggested. “Revenge, retaliation, mass executions for those who threw you and the Cortezes out.”

  “Do you have a price?” Justino asked quietly. “Every man has a price,” Durell replied. “For some, the price is measured in money, in financial rewards. I’ve known some who sold out for cash. For others, like Johnny Duncan, the price is love. For love of a woman, a man will sometimes do anything. I can understand that better than I can the money motive.”

  “And what is your price, señor?” Justino insisted. “For some, it’s power, say a job in authority, no matter who the real masters may be.”

  “You wish power? You could be my assistant.”

  Durell looked at him. “What would I have to pay for the job?”

  “Tell me your answer first.”

  “I don’t make bargains blindly,” Durell said.

  Justino laughed. “We are not bargaining. You are only inches, perhaps moments, from death. Can a dead man bargain?”

  “It was your suggestion,” Durell said.

  Justino bent down and his fingers touched Durell’s throat, found nerve centers and blood vessels, and exerted pressure. Durell felt pain streak up and down his spine. A dark explosion seemed to burst in his brain. He couldn’t breathe. He wrenched instinctively at the cords that tied him to the cot. Justino’s fingers probed deeper into his throat. The darkness expanded like a black balloon. He could see the shape of the window beginning to spin, losing its rectangular form as it vanished into a diminishing vortex of light. Just as it began to flicker out, Justino lifted his hand and stepped back.

  Durell sucked air past his throat, breathed again, lay back, panting. He was soaked with cold sweat.

  “Have I made my point clear, señor?” Justino asked softly.

  Durell nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.

  “First of all,” Justino said, “you will tell me how you got into the warehouse, and with whom, and what happened to the girl.”

  “She got away,” Durell said. His throat ached. “I got in with O’Brien.”

  “The pistolero?”

  “Call him what you like. He showed me the way in, past your guards.”

  “How was that?”

  “Through a tunnel from the building across the street.” Justino looked at him with glittering eyes. “I am glad that you are being sensible.”

  “I only give you what you can easily find out for yourself,” Durell said.

  “Where is the girl now?”

  “Safe, with the authorities.”

  “She can identify me, is that it?”

  “She already has.”

  Justino lit a thin black cigar. His actions were slow and measured. “A man does what his position in life calls for. A péon digs in the fields, a ranchero raises cattle, a politician gives out lies, a policeman seeks out and punishes. I have no quarrel with the girl. But it was necessary to find her and quiet her, you understand. You are interested in her amorously?”

  “No.”

  “She is very pretty.”

  1 want a little more from a woman than prettiness.”

  “But you care what happens to her?”

  “Of course.”

  “If I let her go—”

  "You don’t have her,” Durell pointed out.

  But I can get her. Sooner or later, if it takes a year or more. I do not forget about these things. I am a patient man. As a policeman, I know about patience even as you do, I am sure. One day I will kill her.”

  “You don’t have even one day,” Durell said.

  “I have more time than you think. You have underestimated your value to your associates. I know you
r men have surrounded the neighborhood of the warehouse. I am sure they were prepared to make arrests and indictments against us. Yet they have made no move, since your failure to return. They do place a value on you, Señor Durell, one that you do not realize. You are too modest, perhaps.”

  “How much time do you need right now?” Durell asked.

  “Perhaps only a day. Perhaps until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You don’t sound sure of yourself.”

  “One does not control the weather.”

  It was something, anyway. His guess about the sleet storm causing a delay in the Cortezes’ plans was right. Justino had confirmed it, perhaps unwittingly. Then he looked at Justino again and knew that nothing the man said was without calculation and full knowledge of the consequences. The man was confident. Yet he wanted something badly enough to attempt bribery. Durell searched desperately for what it might be.

  “Have you spoken to Fritsch?” he asked.

  “I have spoken to a Mr. Wittington.”

  “Is he here in New York?”

  “You are surprised.” Justino smiled. “You see, you are valuable, after all. As valuable to your friends as Perez is to me.”

  “Perez?”

  “Your surprise continues?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You are good at your business, señor. You know all about Juan Perez, of course. You know how important the professor is to us. We can get someone else, eventually, but it would mean further delay and some minimum danger for us. We want the professor back in our hands.”

  Durell said slowly, “I see.” His thoughts twisted, jumped ahead of what was being said, and he ventured a guess. “You’d like to exchange me for Perez, is that it?’’

  “Precisely.”

  “Then what’s holding you up?”

  “Your agreement to be exchanged is necessary.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Your Mr. Wittington has made it a condition in our negotiations.”

  Durell’s thoughts flew in all directions for a moment. Barney Kels’ man, at last report, has lost contact with Perez. But Justino apparently believed that the professor was in their hands. Was he right or wrong? Had Perez actually been picked up during the small hours of morning, while he was here? It could change everything. Then he thought of Wittington. Wittington would no more consider such an exchange seriously than of slapping down a fly. To Wittington, Durell was certainly expendable, if the Cortezes could be stopped and the eggs recovered. Then why was Wittington bargaining? The answer was that the old man was bluffing, not bargaining with Justino at all. He was fighting for more time. What happened to Durell was of no consequence. And Durell did not resent this. He knew this was part of the pattern and the stakes for which this game was played. So Perez had to be still missing. Justino wanted him and didn’t have him and thought Wittington had him in custody. And Wittington had stalled for time by pretending a willingness to make the exchange if Durell agreed to it. Wittington was playing a wide gamble that Durell would grasp and understand this, and know that time had to be bought.