Assignment - Treason

by Edward S. Aarons

  The surf sounded with muffled thunder beyond the fence, and above the crash of the combers came the varied strains of music. The cars in the driveway were rich and powerful: a white Jaguar, three MG’s, a Lancia, several Cadillacs With official government licenses. Durell’s mouth tightened. Above the music in the house came snatches of conversation and laughter pitched just a shade too high, tight with a hysterical gaiety.

  Hackett crossed the patio with a long stride. The gate in the beach fence was opened to admit a white-jacketed waiter carrying a tray of empty glasses. and Durell glimpsed the beach beyond. Around a picnic fire were gathered half a dozen people, men and women sprawled in the ruddy glare and the softer moonlight. It apparently was a nude swimming party. He caught only a snatch of the scene, and then the door closed and the waiter crossed the patio softly ahead of them, nodding with respect to Hackett.

  “This way,” Hackett said. His flat voice and thin face registered contempt for what he saw.

  Durell had halted. Within the house, seen through tall glass windows facing the ocean, he saw a skinny pale man clad only in shorts, sprawled on a needle-point wing chair. Durell looked at him and wondered What the newspapers would make of this picture of a national legislator relaxing for the week end.

  A woman’s high, erotic laughter bubbling with drink touched him like the rough edge of a file. It came from the terrace near the beach fence. In the yellow floodlights, he recognized her, without her typical charcoal-gray business suit, as one of the more waspish Washington gossip columnists. The man with her was a lobbyist currently being questioned by the G.O.C. subcommittee. The woman staggered through the gate to the beach and the man moved out of sight after her. In other chairs he saw a high-ranking member of State, a general’s uniform, another legislator, a professional administrator of foreign aid.

  He did not see Corinne.

  “Come on,” Hackett said impatiently.

  “This isn’t the place for me,“ Durell told him. “Not with the cops after me.”

  “They don’t see you. They don’t want to and they wouldn’t dare. They wouldn‘t be surprised at anyone showing up here. But as long as you’re with me, they won’t question anything.”

  “How can you be sure? That Freeley woman is looking straight at me.” Durell saw another columnist start to wave, then suddenly lower her hand and turn her head away as if it had been snapped by a string. “She knows who I am.”

  “For a minute, she knew you. Not anymore.”

  “You‘re very sure of your people.”

  “Very.”

  “Quite a club,” Durell said. “Who is the host?”

  “Come along," Hackett said. “You’ll meet him.”

  They Went into the house through a side door. Immediately facing him on the opposite wall, Durell recognized a Rubens that had recently sold at a private sale for well over a hundred thousand dollars. There was French provincial furniture, softly glowing with centuries of hand polishing, Aubusson tapestries, Louis XV chairs, an enormous Sarouk carpet over Belgian tiles, a Greek head in marble with the nose broken off. Money had been spent here with a frantic and lavish hand, and the result was a hodgepodge where each treasure clashed and fought and died in the suffocating pressure of all the others around it.

  Hackett gestured to a chair.

  “Wait here, Durell.” He started away, then returned. “Have you got a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you’d better give it to me.”

  “No. I don’t trust you out of my sight,” Durell said.

  “I could have taken it from you. You’re in no position to dictate terms, you know.”

  “We’ll see when we come to it.”

  Something glimmered in the lean, clever, cruel face. “Then you do have something to bargain?”

  Durell ignored the question and gestured toward the patio.

  “Does this go on all the time?”

  “Quite often. I’ll send in a drink.” Hackett grinned. “Make yourself comfortable. It might not last.”

  He went out. Durell lit a cigarette, sat down, looked at his watch. He had seen no sign of Corinne, but he knew where the sea wail was located. He smoked for several minutes, with the feeling that unseen eyes were upon him. He heard the surf, the music, the shrill and hysterical laughter of a woman, the deeper rumbling of a man's voice.

  He stood up silently, and as he turned toward the French doors, a waiter came through the doorway behind him carrying a tray with decanters and pink goblets.

  “Your drink, sir?”

  “Bourbon on ice,” Durell said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Through the French doors he saw more faces he knew, prominent Washingtonians with their faces flushed, eyes heated and shining, the women shrill and anticipating the rest of the night. He found it difficult to accept.

  “Bourbon on ice, sir.”

  He took the drink from the tall colored Waiter, and on second glance decided the man was an Indian, perhaps Canadian Algonquin. “Thanks. Where is the host?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Don’t go. Do any of these people know his name?”

  “Some of them, sir. Most of them know Mr. Hackett, of course. It’s the usual guest list for the week end.”

  “Regular affair?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who is the host, anyway?”

  The waiter’s face was dark, blank. “Mr. Hereward Quenton, sir. Will that be all?"

  Durell exhaled softly. He looked at the waiter’s face, saw nothing there. “I’m looking for a young lady named Miss Ybarra. A redhead. Have you seen her around?”

  “On the beach, sir. But you are to wait here.”

  “Swimming?”

  “I could not say what she is doing there, sir. She went out with the Colonel’s lady. Mrs. Gibney, that is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My name is Charles, sir.”

  Durell gave him a ten-dollar bill with his empty glass.

  “Thanks, Charles."

  There was a flickering in the Indian’s eyes. “Please stay here, sir. It will be best.”

  “Don‘t worry about me," Durell said.

  “No, sir. I won’t worry. I leave that up to Mr. Hackett.”

  He moved away silently with his tray of drinks.

  After a moment Durell stepped out on the front patio. No one paid any attention to him. When the guests looked his way, they seemed to look right through him. He saw two men in dark suits at the gateway in the beach fence, and he turned aside and walked back down the shell drive, past the line of parked cars in the shadows. When he came to Hackett’s Austin-Healey, he turned left on the road toward the high sea wall that blocked off his view of the beach. The sea wall was an extension of the cedar fence.

  A flight of stone steps led to the top of the wall. He mounted swiftly, surveyed the drop to the sand below, and jumped, let his knees flex easily, and stood up in deep shadows.

  To his right was the nude group around the picnic fire, but their numbers had thinned, scattered toward either the black, floodlighted surf or the rise of dunes and twisted jetties beyond. The wind was warm, and beyond the circle of the fire the moonlight made a silvery patina on the land and sea. He looked for Corinne. She was not here. The picnic fire was perhaps two hundred feet away.

  He called her name, softly.

  From nowhere, seemingly, a woman sprang up from the shadows of the yielding sand at the foot of the sea wall. She blocked his way. She was about forty, flat-chested, her hips bony. She was nude. Her narrow, intense face was heavily made up.

  “Well, hello, there!” she shrilled. “What are you doing with all your clothes on? It’s against the rules! You look positively disgusting!"

  “I just got here," Durell said quietly.

  “Well, hurry and join us! Shoo! No prudes allowed, you know! After all, We’re all grown up, you know.” She laughed shrilly. Her eyes were black holes in her moon-bathed face.

  “Hur
ry back. Ask for met I’m Isabel.”

  “I’m looking for Corinne Ybarra,” Durell told her. He did not want to look at her, but he knew that if he glanced away, she would sense his rejection and make an issue out of it.

  “Have you seen her?”

  “She’s with Mary."

  “Mrs. Gibney?”

  A skinny arm waved and flapped. “Down the beach. Mary followed her with blood in her eye.” A giggle came from the black, stretched mouth. “You never saw such a sight. Honestly! Mary Gibney, au naturel! Really, the most disgusting specimen. And quite drunk, y’know. Oh, quite! Otherwise, she would never— You know how sensitive she is. Or must be. After all, with all those rolls and rolls— It’s absolutely nauseating.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  The arm flapped bonily again. “Mary is quite drunk—oh, quite-—and I hope she gives that bitch of a Corinne what’s coming to her. If you’re smart, Mr. Ugh, you won’t bother with Corinne tonight. And really, you mustn’t be here on the beach like that. House rules, you know. It's such an adolescent attitude most people have, about clothing. After all, as I said, we’re all adults. So hurry, and come back here. To me. Isabel.”

  “I’ll try,” Durell said.

  The skinny woman stepped hack a little. Her face became uglier. “What is the matter with you, anyway? Don’t you like me?”

  “Sure,” Durell said. “I’ll be back."

  “You bastard,” she hissed. “Oh, I could kill you all!”

  “Have fun,” Durell said.

  He walked past her down the beach, beyond the fringe of lurid light from the picnic fire. There was a sour taste in his throat. At the nearest jetty, he turned in the shadows and looked back. The nude woman was staring after him, hands on her bony hips. Beyond her, hesitating on the patio entrance to the beach, were the two men in dark suits, tall and burly. There was a purposeful look to their thick necks and narrow heads as they glanced up and down the beach. Charles, the waiter, stood with them. Durell walked around the sand-blown pilings onto the next section of the beach.

  The change was startling, from planned landscaping to the original, primitive wilderness untouched by bulldozer or construction engineer. The sea wind Whispered and rattled in tall, reedy grasses growing over the dunes. The surf thundered. No one was in sight to the next half-buried jetty, about a hundred yards away.

  He walked that way, the sand dragging at his shoes.

  The picnic fire and the two guards were out of sight now, but Durell had no illusions about his time for freedom. He searched the beach and the dunes anxiously for a glimpse of the redheaded girl. She had not been at the meeting place that she herself had specified, yet her attitude on the telephone had been one of desperate urgency. Remembering the skinny woman’s words, Durell felt the thin edge of anxiety cut into him, and he began to trot toward the distant jetty.

  Beyond, the wilderness of sand and sea and night sky stretched in a long curve, vacant under the impassive moon. He saw nothing, no one. He wondered if the nude woman had lied to him. She was a type, Durell knew, that might derive vindictive pleasure from that petty sort of thing; and she had been more than half drunk. He paused, not sure of his next move.

  That was when he heard, above the crash and thunder of the surf, a stifled, muted scream that bubbled up over the warm sea wind and then was abruptly choked off.

  He halted and looked toward the surf. There had been something in the sound. that prickled the skin on the nape of his neck. He saw nothing extraordinary. The black combers curled around the leaning piles of the jetty, and the jetty itself thrust obstinately into the surf while the seas burst like massive white flowers around it. The tides had scooped out dark pools here and there, and in one of the pools there was a white thrashing that for a moment he confused with the bursting combers.

  He heard another brief, bubbling scream. It was weaker this time. It came from the farthest pool beside the jetty. Durell spun and ran toward the water, the sand hissing and dragging underfoot.

  The surf was only knee-deep in the shadows cast by the jetty. A comber battered him, drenched him to the chest, and burst against the pilings. He saw the thrashing movement again.

  White limbs, dark-red hair streaming, a blanched and terror—stricken face. Corinne. She half rose from the black water, stumbling, crying out something. A monstrous mass of white flesh surged after her. There was something elephantine and inexorable in the way the second woman overtook the floundering girl. A massive arm shot out, caught the slender form, twisted her about. Corinne went down under the surface. In the pallid moonlight, Durell saw the other woman clearly. He had never seen a truly fat woman without protective clothing before. He glimpsed the round, babyish face, dark with primitive fury, over the quaking hills and mounds of enormous breasts and buttocks. The ponderous weight settled on Corinne‘s struggling body and slowly and deliberately crushed the girl under the water.

  chapter ELEVEN

  DURELL shouted.

  Either the fat woman did not hear or she was past being concerned. She was intent on murder. The push of the combers dragged at Durell‘s plunging progress, then the backwash pulled him forward. When he was still ten feet away, the fat woman looked up. She stared with blank, uncomprehending eyes in her baby’s face. Her mouth, small and delicate, strained open. Then she lifted her enormous weight, like a white, bulbous Leviathan.

  “Get away from me,” she breathed.

  “Let her go."

  “She’s dead!”

  “Mrs. Gibney—"

  The fat woman began to giggle, and her body shook and trembled with the convulsive, hysterical sound. Durell pushed past her and groped for the long, glimmering white shape of Corinne’s limp body. Her skin felt warm and smooth and wet as he caught her thigh, then encircled her waist and lifted her from the water. The dark-red hair streamed as her face came up. She coughed and gagged and struggled against his grip.

  “Easy, Corinne,” he said.

  They stood in waist-deep water. As he started to turn toward the fat woman and the shore, Mrs. Gibney swung an arm like a monstrous ham. The blow caught him like an ax at the back of his neck. He stumbled, dropped Corinne. An enormous weight came thrashing after him, pushing him down. He grabbed for the girl, caught at her, and struggled to rise. Again that massive forearm smashed at him. He heard the deep, vast sound of the fat woman‘s breathing. Twisting, he pulled back, away from her Gargantuan blows. He kept his grip on Corinne. A comber struck his back, pushing him toward the advancing bulbous flesh that opposed him. There was muscle under that shuddering mountain of pink, wet flesh. The weight against him was enormous, and he felt smothered, panic slicing hot knives into him.

  Another comber helped him break free. Corinne sagged on one arm, her mouth open, her eyes staring in the dim moonlight. She was only partly conscious. Durell moved back toward the beach, feeling the tug of surf and the tide against his trembling legs.

  “Mrs. Gibney . . .”

  The fat woman stood thigh-deep in the swirling water, staring as if she recognized his presence for the first time. Some of the insane, hysterical rage melted from her face. Her tiny pink mouth opened nervously.

  “Go on. Go on, take her. I’m sorry . . . sorry. . . .”

  Durell carried the redheaded girl to the beach. Behind him, advancing ponderously through the surf. came the fat woman. He did not trust Mrs. Gibney’s sudden surrender. When he considered it safe, he lifted Corinne’s slim, pale body fully in his arms and carried her to the high, grass-grown dune above the jetty. She leaned against him when he put her down, clinging to his neck with a strength that betrayed her state of mind. There was a warm firmness to her body, the look of a dryad to her slender legs and narrow waist. He caught the glimmer of opaque white under her lids.

  “Let me go, Corinne,” he said quietly. “You're all right now."

  “Sam?”

  “Sit up,” he ordered.

  She coughed, gagged, pushed back her hair with a vague gesture.
“I tried to meet you . . . but she followed me . . .and tried to kill me.”

  “All right,” he said.

  He forced her arms from around him and looked across the moonlit beach. From the dune he could see the picnic fire some distance away, but he did not glimpse either of the two thick-necked bouncers. The wind rattled the dry, reedy grass over his head. Then he saw Mrs. Gibney advancing toward him again. The fat woman had found two large beach towels and she had wrapped one around her massive figure.

  When she approached, she tossed one with contempt toward Corinne.

  “Cover yourself, you nasty little whore,” she said.

  Corinne looked up with fear glistening on her face. “You tried to kill me,” she said in wonderment.

  “I’m only sorry I didn’t succeed.” Mrs. Gibney’s face was composed now. Under the multiple layers of flesh, her bone structure seemed small and delicate. Her face could have been pert, and even beautiful, if one could ignore the glutinous fat below. Her hands were small and dimpled, her feet almost tiny. She looked at Durell. “I want to talk to you,” she said bluntly. “Corinne will be all right if she‘s left alone for a few moments.”

  “Don’t go, Sam,” Corinne said quickly. “Don’t leave me.”

  “Are you Mr. Durell?” Mrs. Gibney asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you know that the police are looking for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t seem very much concerned about it.”