He had the habit of driving every evening to inspect the progress in construction at his newest site. He was a careful man, a cautious bookkeeper, and he always checked the work that had been accomplished by his carpenters and masons. The project was two miles beyond the country club, along the Dearing River, where he had picked up some lush meadowland for a song. The houses were small, rectangular boxes with slab roofs, all identical. They were monotonous and ugly. But they looked beautiful to Miller because he saw them only in terms of profit. He parked his car by the construction shack and walked across the bald, dusty area of what would be the main street of the development.
The evening was sultry, with a heavy quality in the air, a static summer weight that oppressed him. It would rain again soon, and rain always meant delays in his schedule.
He was surprised to see the Cadillac parked beyond the last foundation. And even more surprised to see Sergeant Slago come walking toward him, unchanged after all these years.
Hatred followed Miller's surprise, leaping in full flame from the dark hole where he had buried it long ago. For over a year after being mustered out, Miller had nurtured dreams of meeting Slago somewhere and beating the man until he crawled for mercy. Even now, he was aware of a feeling of guilt, as if he had goofed at some stupid duty ordered performed, and he froze in his tracks to watch Slago walk toward him with that hard, familiar rolling gait.
A gorilla, Miller thought. Hardly changed at all. And in the same breath he knew how much he had gone to fat, soft as a woman in the belly, and even more of a physical coward than he had been during the war. He was frightened.
But Slago smiled, and his handshake was hard and friendly. Miller's guilt and hatred evaporated. He saw Lieutenant Mark Fleming get out of the Cadillac, too, and he felt a small pleasure in the meeting, anticipating his exhibition of civilian success. And this was mixed with surprise and wonder at their appearance here.
Slago wasted no time. Slago asked his questions.
"You're kidding," Miller said. "I don't remember anything about Metzdorf. I wasn't even on that detail."
"Yes, you were," Slago said. "I remember it, all right."
"What difference does it make? It's long dead and buried. You fellows didn't look me up just for that, did you? Listen, come back to town with me and have dinner. We can have a time. I could even get you some women." Jessie and Erich Corbin were not with Mark and Slago this time. They had remained at the motel, five miles west of Harlanville. Miller smiled, then found the effort painful as he saw the bleak look in Slago's eyes. He tried to smile again. "Well, come on, let's not just stand here," he added uneasily.
"We're not going anywhere," Slago said. "Not until you answer us."
"I told you I wasn't in on it. What's so important about Metzdorf, anyway? I don't remember a thing about it."
Slago abruptly began the work he relished. It was easy, softening up this fat pulp of a man. He went slower this time, letting Mark ask more questions between rounds, because Corbin had suggested that perhaps they had rushed things a bit back in Arizona. It was lonely at the unfinished development site. The evening was dark with growing shadows. Under the drooping willows nearby, the river ran placidly on between its banks. Slago didn't worry about Miller's screams; there was nobody around to see or care about it.
In ten more minutes, Mark was satisfied. Slago paused, panting in the evening heat. "Another blank. He ain't got it. He'd spill his fat gut by now, if he had it"
"All right," Mark said. "Finish it."
Slago took out his knife.
* * *
They were a hundred miles from Harlanville before Mark chose a motel for the night. While Slago arranged for their rooms with the proprietor, Mark took out his small black notebook and tore off a perforated page and crumpled it in his fist. He got rid of it by burning it in the Cad's ashtray.
Erich Corbin said: "Who is next?"
'Terry Havward. New York"
"Very well. We will go there." Corbin touched the glasses on his pinched, white nose. He wore a seersucker suit and a small prim bow tie. "It will be all right, Mark. We will use the same methods. A man in pain will gladly babble the truth. Slago is excellent for the purpose. The letter and the other papers exist; the answer to our ad proves that. One of the men in your squad that day still has it. Perhaps he keeps it only as a souvenir, since not many men have the training in chemistry to recognize the contents of the papers accompanying the Hitler letter." Corbin smiled thinly. "Otherwise, we would have heard of the product before this."
"And if we make a mistake with one of these men?"
"It is up to you to make sure there is no mistake." Corbin's voice was quiet. 'True, you could play the part of an old war buddy and visit each man, search his home quietly, ask questions without arousing suspicion. You could talk over old times, and what would be more natural than to inspect any souvenirs laying about? But you would be alone then, nein? I could not be a guest with you. And if you learned something, you would learn it for yourself."
Mark looked very dangerous for a moment. "You have a lot of faith in me."
"I have none at all, my friend." Corbin smiled easily. "But do not let that insult your vanity. Millions are at stake, too much for trust to exist between us. Not a bank in the country will be safe. But in order to insure this, as I've told you before, there must be no chance of the police making any connection between these men. Who will remember that they served together, so many years ago? Eliminating them is the only way for us to remain safe."
"I still don't see why it took you fourteen years to come over here after them," Mark said.
"And I explained that, too," Corbin said patiently. "I was taken to East Germany and put to work there. I had no chance to escape. But I never forgot, and when the opportunity came, I moved. I am a patient man, Mark. I found you, did I not? So we will find what we are looking for, too. This person, this A. Greene answered our advertisement with a description of the Hitler letter — so we know it still exists." Corbin frowned. "You are concerned because A. Greene did not follow through with the deal and vanished. We must hope that some inconsequential personal affair prohibited his reply to our second letter. But we do know that one of your men picked up those papers when the filing cabinet broke. I saw him do it. And I know they were the papers we want. I have friends in Washington, and they checked the records for me. This one sheet, with the letter attached to it, is missing." Corbin turned and looked at Slago coming out of the motel office. "We must operate on the assumption that the man in your squad who took the paper still has it, or knows where it is. Unfortunately, I was watching from an upper window of the plant. I was virtually a prisoner there. All of your men looked alike in their uniform raincoats. It was impossible to identify him. But I was curious about the man's behavior. So I approached the Military Governor captain and told him the file box had been broken when loading on your truck, and I offered to check to see if everything was in order. I was most cooperative. As soon as I came to the formula papers, I knew that the piece your man took was the one I would need some day. Naturally, I said nothing about it."
Mark wanted a drink. He wished Corbin wouldn't keep repeating what he had been told before. "Well, I hope your pie in the sky makes good eating."
If we succeed in this first step, all the rest will be simple," Corbin said gently. "Think of the money. All we want, simply for the taking of it. Without danger, without any risk at all."
"I'm thinking of it," Mark said.
* * *
Mark and Slago occupied the motel room next to the one shared by the Corbins. It was a hot night, with the rumble of thunder muttering over the plains of Indiana. Truck traffic roared steadily on the highway nearby. Mark took a bottle of Scotch from his suitcase and filled half a tumbler and drank it slowly while he stripped off his clothes and took a shower. Corbin was right. There was no risk, as long as they were careful. Each man had to be killed. Nobody could possibly connect what had happened in Arizona with what happened
in Indiana and what would be in New York.
He stood under the shower until the approaching thunderstorm made him think about the lightning and he got out and toweled and shaved quickly. His round, good-looking face, with the thick, curly yellow hair, looked unchanged in the mirror. He remembered how Miller had gone to fat, how Everett had lost his boyish look and was stamped with dust and defeat. But he hadn't changed much. He could still pass for under thirty, he decided, thinking suddenly of Jessie.
Maybe tonight, he thought.
When he came out of the bath, Slago was sitting upright on the edge of the nearest twin bed, holding the bottle in his hand and staring at nothing at all. "What's the matter?"
Slago muttered something to himself, then chopped at the air with his hand. "I was remembering another guy who was there. You know, in Metzdorf. Remember a G-2 captain who supervised the detail, told us which files to pick out for the War Records Commission?"
"The Cajun, they called him," Mark said.
"Yeah. Maybe he ought to be on your list. But I don't remember his name."
"It was Durell," Mark said. "Sam Durell. But he was nowhere around that day. Forget it."
He went outside and waited for Jessie.
Chapter Two
Durell closed and locked his desk and dropped the keys into a small compartment in the vault. Then he cleared the manila folder off his desk and put that in the vault, too. Sidonie Osbourn got up and used her key in the vault lock to complement Durell's, and they locked the box together. Sidonie patted his arm.
"Don't look so unhappy, Sam. You'll be back soon."
Durell smiled thinly. "I have the feeling I'm being let out to pasture, honey. Is McFee in?"
"Waiting for you."
"My orders?"
She gave him a sealed envelope. "Here. You be careful, Sam."
"I always try to be."
Sidonie was worried about the anger that darkened his eyes. She knew his temperament; she knew of his loneliness even with Deirdre. He was a dedicated man who would laugh at the thought of being called a devoted patriot. She knew what it meant to him, leaving K Section.
"Have you heard from Deirdre?" she asked.
"I had a phone call from London. She goes to Paris tomorrow. Covering fashions, of all things." Durell tried to keep his voice empty of his irritation. "She won't be back for another month."
"Well, you come have dinner with the twins, hear?"
"I don't know where I'll be," Durell said. "Ill make it if I can, of course. And thanks."
He left his office and walked down the quiet corridor to the elevator. No. 20 Annapolis Street was a graystone building in a residential section of Washington, with nothing about it to indicate it was headquarters for K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency of the State Department. Downstairs were the front offices of a commercial concern that actually procured small-part supplies — nuts, bolts, machine-screws and small optical instruments — for the armed forces. The elevator was the only approach through the steel doors to the upper floors. The place had become home to Durell in the last three years, and he knew this attitude was a mistake. An espionage agent has no home, he reminded himself, and no life he can call his own. That was the basic problem between Deirdre and himself. Scowling, he lit a cigarette in the elevator on his way up to Dickinson McFee's office.
Durell was a tall man in his thirties, with thick black hair, a small, trim mustache and dark blue eyes that reflected the quickness of his Cajun temper. He was powerfully built under his conservative gray summer suit, and he moved with deceptive ease and grace. His fingers were long and slender, adept with a gun, knife, or a hand in a poker game. He had been brought up by his Grandfather Jonathan, one of the last of the old Mississippi gamblers. The old man had worked the side-wheelers from St. Louis to New Orleans, and Durell's boyhood had been spent in the hot, green silences of the bayous around Peche Rouge in the delta country. His accent no longer betrayed him, thanks to his years at Yale and the war and his tours with G-2, the old OSS, and more recently, the CIA. His work was dangerous, and he was a dangerous man. Caution was as much a part of him as breathing. He was objective, even about Deirdre, since the difference between the living and the dead in his business was often the difference between a cool objectivity and a moment's emotional carelessness.
He could conceive of no other future for himself than doing the work he had been trained to do and wanted to do. But the orders in his pocket removed him, without warning or thanks, from the silent war he had been fighting. An ugly war, without bugles, fought in the dark alleys of all the corners of the world. Fought relentlessly, without mercy, where death came with a knife or a sniper's bullet, or the strangling agony of a swift garotte.
* * *
Sam Durell walked past the communications room and heard the regular clacking of the teletypes and the murmur of high-frequency radios; then the analysis and synthesis rooms, where electronic computers winked and hummed and glowed. Finally he entered an outer office with walls lined with charts and filing cabinets and from there he went into General Dickinson McFee's office.
There were no windows. An air conditioner worked quietly; the venting grate was high in the wall. The small, trim gray man sat behind his desk, waiting for him.
"Sit down, Sam, and let's not be formal. And we won't say good-by, either. Your orders are strictly for temporary duty."
"Where am I going?" Durell asked.
"You know better than to ask. Sit down, will you? You may keep smoking, if you like." The little general hated cigarettes, and it was an indication that he, too, was perturbed by Durell's sudden assignment away from K Section. "You can read your orders any time now."
"I haven't opened them yet."
"Read them here and then burn them."
It was an order. Durell nodded and slit the envelope and looked at the typewritten lines. He felt puzzled.
McFee said: "You'report to the Waggonner Building."
"You knew that much, sir?"
"And that's all I know, Sam."
"It doesn't say where, in the Waggonner Building." Durell frowned. "What do I do, stand around the lobby until a girl with a rose in her teeth slinks up and asks me to buy her a sloe gin fizz?"
McFee shrugged. "Go there and see. When are you due?"
"Twenty minutes." Durell tore the order sheet and envelope into small strips, went to the opposite wall and opened a small iron door and dropped the bits of paper into the incinerator chute. He remained standing. Was there anything else, General?"
"Just a word of advice. I have an idea where you are going and what you're to do. But you'll find out for yourself. If I'm right, I'd suggest extreme care. I don't have to emphasize how many police and intelligence arms the government has. Some are jealous of the others and spend more time competing with each other than in doing the job they're supposed to do. It's the penalty of governmental size, I suppose. The people you're going to work for are above inter-departmental rivalries, however. They once took Harry Keaton from us. Remember him?"
"Nobody has seen him since," Durell said flatly.
"Right. I think Harry is dead. He goofed it."
"You're quite cheerful," Durell said.
"I hate to lend you to them. I just hope you'll do better than Harry. You're the best I have, Sam, and there's been too much spent in training you, in spite of your Cajun attitudes, to make it easy to lose you." McFee stood up and they shook hands. "Take one of our cabs, the second at the corner. I left it for you. The driver knows where to drop you. You'll have five minutes to spare."
* * *
The Waggonner Building was nondescript and ordinary, off Fourteenth Street in downtown Washington. It was two in the afternoon, and the lunch-hour rush of government clerks had ebbed. The August heat was crushing, a humid blanket that smothered the city. Durell rather enjoyed the heat, since it reminded him of the bayou country.
The building had a false façade of marble, with a cigar stand beside the lobby doors, a bar to the
left, with red neon signs advertising beer, a men's haberdashery and a cutlery shop with windows opening on the lobby area. Durell considered the business directory, but saw no familiar names. People moved all around him, but there were no familiar faces, either. The clock over the elevators read two minutes past two when he walked to the cigar stand and bought fresh cigarettes.
The woman attendant was middle-aged and looked tired, until her eyes met Durell's; then he saw a bright, amused intelligence in her glance.
"Waiting for someone?" she asked.
"Just waiting."
"Anything special?"
"Like a street car," Durell said.
"I see, sir. You might find one up on the fifth floor."
"Thank you."
"McGuire, Sloan and Levy. Room Five-fifty-four."
"Attorneys?"
"No, sir. Uniform manufacturers."
He took the elevator up. The corridor was dusty, lined with frosted-glass office doors. A fire escape stood open at the back and Durell walked there first, looked out at rooftops behind Fourteenth Street, and went back to Room 554. He knocked and walked in.
A blonde behind a typewriter took off harlequin glasses glittering with rhinestones and said: "Go right in. You are expected."
"Why all the hocus-pocus, Mata Hari?" he asked.
Assignment — Angelina Page 2