Assignment — Angelina

by Edward S. Aarons

  She stiffened. "I beg your pardon?"

  He didn't bother to reply. An inner door opened into an office crowded with two shabby desks, a clothing rack loaded with samples of army and air force uniforms, and two men who turned to consider him. One wore a seersucker suit and looked thin and rumpled; his bald head glistened with perspiration. The second man had a young face that contrasted oddly with his snow-white hair. Durell closed the door behind him.

  "Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Durell," said the white-haired man. "We do not operate on formal levels here." He had the stamp of the military on him, but Durell did not know him or the older, bald man. "We appreciate your coming here."

  "Did I have a choice?" Durell asked.

  "You could have refused, of course. But then McFee would have had to let you go. McFee said you wouldn't like this, because your speciality has been working on overseas assignments. Our outfit has somewhat different problems. K Section deals primarily with espionage and counter-efforts concerned with defeating your opposite numbers abroad. Our viewpoint is much wider. Our problems, necessarily, are not as clear-cut as those you have been accustomed to consider. You might call us troubleshooters on a general scale, Mr. Durell."

  "Odd balls," said the bald man. "Relax, Durell."

  There was an air of command in these two men that was immediately felt. Durell sat down. He lit a cigarette and waited. The white-haired man smiled. I'm Daniel Kincaid. This is John Wittington."

  Neither man offered to shake hands.

  Kincaid said: "Just to brief you a bit, you've been elected to a rather exclusive club. You may refer to us as the Special Bureau. Our staff is small and select. We are responsible to only two men, whom I shall not name. Mr. Wittington is second in command. You will probably never know our immediate superior, or the two men he reports to, but I can tell you we are associated with the National Planning Board and several other commissions that are not publicized. If you make any guesses about us, don't make them aloud, please."

  Wittington cleared his throat, rubbed his bald head, and grunted. "I told you, odd balls. We get the strange ones. We use the FBI, the Treasury men, your own people from State, and G-2. A kind of clearing house for off-beat problems affecting our national security. From inside as well as out. The Reds are our biggest problem, but not our only headache. We do anything, like spotting a town where gambling elements or crooked unions tend to undermine our democratic way of life if their illegal powers reach up too far." The bald man looked annoyed. 'Am I making a speech? I never can tell this without sounding like an orator on the Fourth of July."

  "I think I understand," Durell said.

  "We can collapse from weakness within as well as from enemy pressure on the outside. You people take care of the overt threats. We look into the others. Most of them do not constitute clear problems. We take a hint here and there and try to extrapolate what it may mean in terms of next year, or five or twenty years from now. Then we try to guide the matter the way it should go to insure our national safety. The first law of nature is to survive, but there is also the question of the conditions under which we survive. Are you still with me?"

  Durell nodded. "Yes."

  "You look troubled."

  "I never heard of you people before."

  "And you will forget us the moment this is over," Wittington snapped. "If you get the job. That depends. As I said, we sit on top of the other police agencies; we use their files and occasionally their men. For example, five years ago we correlated certain Foreign Service data and made some guesses and ran them through our machines." Wittington rubbed his bald head and grimaced. "I hate those mechanical monsters. Calculators, just gadgets without souls. We feed data to our beast, Lucy, and Lucy comes up with a prediction of what may happen. Five years ago, Lucy predicted atomic war in ten months, unless we did something about it. So we did it. And there was no war. Perhaps it proves nothing but the sound and fury in which we live today. I mean, Lucy might not have had proper data for an accurate prediction in the first place. But we took steps based on her forecast, and it worked out. She gave us another forecast recently that doesn't make much sense to those who have seen it. We're not sure what steps to take, if any. It's been decided we need more information to make a proper prediction; and you are the man to get that information for us. It depends, in part, upon your memory, Durell."

  "My memory?"

  "About Metzdorf."

  "I was there in 1945," Durell said. "I was a captain in G-2 then, working with Amgot and the War Records Commission and the dismantling of the Ruhr industries, before that policy was reversed."

  "The exact dates on Metzdorf?"

  "I was there from June 10, 1945 to August 2, same year."

  "Erich Corbin?" Wittington snapped.

  Durell thought a moment. "Nothing there."

  "Never heard of him?"

  "No."

  "Metzdorf Chemicals?"

  "We stripped that plant; took the files and shipped them to Washington. The job was completed by the second week in July."

  "Lieutenant Mark Fleming?"

  The image of a baby-faced young man with a temperament like stone came to Durell. "He ran the packing and shipping detail."

  "Thomas G. Everett?"

  Durell shook his head. "Nothing there, either."

  "Pete Labouisse?"

  Durell crushed out his cigarette. "There is a family by that name in Bayou Peche Rouge. I come from there. Delta country, below New Orleans. I don't remember Pete. Or Pierre, as he was probably called. Just the family name is familiar."

  "All right. Relax a minute."

  * * *

  Wittington got up abruptly and went out through a back door, followed by Kincaid. Durell listened to the clacking of the typewriter in the outer room. Two minutes went by before Kincaid returned. He was alone. Wittington did not come back again.

  Kincaid placed a folder on the battered desk and smiled briefly. 'Tour memory is fine. Mr. Wittington is quite satisfied."

  "I'm in the club?"

  "For this job, yes." Kincaid opened the file, frowned at it, and closed it. "As Mr. Wittington explained, our job is to gather data from various sources and synthesize them, if we can, into a pattern of meaning for the future. We deal in possibilities and probabilities, in permutations and combinations. By now, I assume you understand that we chose you because, first, you were in Metzdorf in 1945, and second, you were in G-2 assigned to the collection of war records and supervising the dismantlement of the Nazi industrial strength. Are you sure you don't remember Herr Erich Corbin?"

  "I never met him or heard of him."

  Kincaid nodded. "He was plant supervisor for the Metzdorf Chemical Works. Absolutely nonpolitical, as far as every record goes. Neither nazi nor communist, socialist or democrat, fish or fowl."

  "How did he keep his job?"

  "He was good. A genius, of sorts. He guided the development of such drugs as scopolamine for espionage usage and experiments in their concentration camps. And nerve gases of various sorts. Very good technician. Fine administrator. Hell be fifty-one years of age now."

  "Then he's still alive?"

  "Oh, yes. He went to Berlin after the war and wandered over to East Germany and dropped out of sight for all these years. Worked for the .Russians, but don't get ideas about that. As I said, he is totally apolitical. He believes too strongly in the right of the individual to a profit, you see, and freedom of enterprise. The criminal mind has no sympathy for a totalitarian police state."

  "Why do you say Herr Corbin is a criminal?"

  "His record is here. Embezzlement, as a young clerk with a shipping concern in Hamburg. A scrape with the Weimar Republic police, for smuggling heroin. He was perfectly spotted for drug traffic, with his merchant marine connections and then his job in the chemical works, which gave him access to drug supplies merely by juggling the books. In his late thirties he presumably reformed and became the respectable supervisor of the chemical division of the Metzdorf Works. Here
is a picture of him. You can't keep it, of course. Take a good look and memorize it."

  Durell studied the glossy print Kincaid handed him. He noted the round forehead, the thinning grayish hair, the sharp nose, the cold Teutonic eves behind rimless spectacles. His glance absorbed the physical description: height five four, weight 162, eves gray, hair gray, no distinguishing scars. He ignored the fingerprints in the ruled boxes below the print and handed back the photo. Kincaid took a pipe from his pocket and filled it awkwardly, spilling tobacco crumbs on the desk top.

  "Erich Corbin," Kincaid said, "came to the U.S. almost a year ago, in September, on a visiting-alien permit. Your office and the FBI had no reason to deny him entry. Ostensibly, he came over to inspect some pharmaceutical plants in New Jersey; and he did, for two months. The FBI kept him under surveillance, just to be on the safe side."

  Kincaid paused. "Corbin came here with a wife, by the way. Newlyweds. An American girl who had been living abroad since 1949, until she married Erich in West Berlin. Jessica Handley, maiden name, age twenty-eight right now. Graduated Des Moines, dramatic student. Came from Fremont, Iowa — a farm girl. Lived in Greenwich Village for a time, made an unsuccessful stab at a theatrical career, and then went over to Paris."

  "What did she do there?"

  "We don't know," Kincaid said simply.

  "Do you have her picture, too?"

  "Passport, only." Kincaid slid another enlargement over the desk. Durell noted the blonde girl's sulky mouth, the look of harsh wisdom in her pale eyes. Kincaid said: "Her story, told frankly, is that she lived by sponging on American tourists over there. We think she was the mistress of a Swiss exporter named Krell, for a time; and we're sure she was the mistress of a young Yugoslav attaché at their Paris embassy. Anyway, she returned to the States as Herr Erich Corbin's wife."

  "Where are they now?" Durell asked.

  "Missing. They vanished two days before last Christmas — and that's item one in the picture." Kincaid struck two matches for his pipe, puffed futilely, and put it down. "The FBI files that came to us in a purely routine way indicated one interesting thing. Corbin's wife, Jessie, deliberately sought out and made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Mark Fleming, in a New York nightclub. The FBI has Fleming on their criminal list. The man had a good army record, but a lot of gun-happy characters were just what the army needed in those days. Actually, Fleming's record is that of a small-time hoodlum since boyhood, and he went right back to his old life when he mustered out. Fleming dropped out of sight, by the way, the same time the Corbins disappeared; and that's the second interesting item."

  "Fleming was in charge of the detail that removed the files from the Metzdorf plant," Durell said.

  "Right. Of course, this didn't have much importance to our analysts until the third factor was presented. It came from the War Department — again, a routine memorandum. Certain records in their storage warehouse across the Potomac have been tampered with. It happened three months ago. Nothing apparently stolen. Just pawed around. Among them were the cartons of records from the Metzdorf plant."

  "Haven't they been analyzed and returned by now?"

  Kincaid spread his neat hands. "You know how it goes. The army sent home shiploads of the stuff. Then it put only a handful of clerks to sorting and recording all those tons of paper. Even after all these years, the Metzdorf files were undisturbed, just as they had been placed in storage pending a check."

  Durell grinned. "I remember those men sweated plenty, getting those heavy cases down into the trucks."

  "But you don't remember a Thomas Everett?"

  "No," Durell said.

  "Well, no real reason why you should." Kincaid tapped the pipe stem against his white teeth. It was quiet in the office. "Anyway, one of our men happened to be diddling with this data and connected Corbin with the disturbed Metzdorf files. We sent him over to double-check. There was a boxful of formulas, most of them known to our chemical men; and some incomplete and useless experimental work." Kincaid sighed. Durell looked at his white hair and wondered how it had happened, with his young face. "Well, you heard what Mr. Wittington thinks of our prediction machine. He doesn't trust it. He prefers instinct, hunches — anything. He sent over to the army for the service records of the men who moved the files from the Metzdorf Works, and we got their names. That's how we ran across your name, too. Mr. Wittington thinks there is some rather nasty meaning in the fact that Herr Corbin came to the United States and picked up contact with ex-Lieutenant Fleming — a man with a vicious criminal mind — and then they all vanished after the storage files were tampered with."

  "Has Mr. Wittington come up with any suppositions?"

  "Not yet. But since Corbin contacted Fleming, we checked the other members of that squad. Ten days ago we learned about Tom Everett, a former Pfc in the squad, a gas station owner out in Arizona. He was found by his wife. Very dead, with his throat cut."

  "Ten days ago?"

  "Cold trail. Nothing there. Could be coincidence, but we don't buy it. Everett was murdered then, and we've had two other reports since. A second man in the squad, John Miller, was killed Tuesday a week since. Same method. A knife across the throat. And a Perry Hayward, a Madison Avenue huckster, but a nice chap with the usual wife, four kids, and a mortgaged home in Westport, Connecticut. Found in the men's room at Grand Central, in one of the lavatory booths. Same method."

  "Then there are only two left," Durell said. "A Sergeant Slago. I remember him. And you mentioned Pete Labouisse."

  Kincaid tried to light his pipe again. "We can't find Slago. Maybe he's with Fleming; or maybe he's dead. He was a merchant seaman for a time, but there're no recent records of him in Department of Commerce, the Maritime Commission, or the seamen's union."

  "Does your Mr. Wittington know why these men were killed?"

  Kincaid shook his head. "Only that something connects these men with Corbin's arrival in this country. We don't think it's some military secret the Communists want. Forget your work with the CIA, Durell. As Mr. Wittington says, we get the odd-ball cases. We're thinking along lines of criminal endeavor. We want more facts so we can estimate the potential in this matter. Perhaps it will turn out to be unimportant to us. In that case, we simply turn it all over to the FBI."

  Durell stood up. "And I'm to get those facts?"

  Kincaid looked at him. "You're to find Erich Corbin. Not to interfere with him, please. Just find him."

  "And Labouisse?"

  "Another reason you were picked. The last survivor, barring Slago. He comes from your home parish. Go home on vacation and see him."

  "Has he been warned or contacted yet?"

  "He's been out to sea on a shrimp boat, due back tomorrow. The boat is the Deux Soeurs. See if he has anything Corbin might be looking for. And..."

  Durell waited.

  "Try to keep his head on his shoulders, eh?"

  Chapter Three

  Mark drew the razor carelessly down the side of his face. The blade nicked his skin and he started and tossed the razor down into the bowl. His hands were shaking, and he told himself it had to stop. He felt anger, and that was good, and he drew a steadying breath, feeling the tremor in his arms as he leaned on the washbowl, head down.

  It was the heat, he told himself, that was all. This damned bayou country, where the air was like breathing water, drowning you. But it wouldn't last long. They were near the end of the line.

  New York had been a mess. The job with Perry Hayward had been his, since Slago was not the sort to approach Perry's advertising office. It was easy enough to begin, but Perry was downright cool and suspicious from the start. He had always been a snobbish bastard. College punk in gray flannels, even in the summer heat. Clean and rich-looking, talking with a Harvard accent, just as phony as he had been in Germany. Perry resented him because he had a lieutenant's bars then. Mark's first few questions had seemed to alert him, and for a few moments Mark had begun to hope that their search was at an end. But he hadn't gotten anywhere. He
denied ever seeing the advertisement asking for war souvenirs in the form of Hitler autographs or letters, and he didn't even remember the detail, although he remembered Metzdorf. He hadn't been lying, either.

  Mark grinned at his reflection in the bath mirror. That sort didn't lie with a knife at his throat. Good thing Slago had joined them in the lavatory down in Grand Central. Hell of a place to slice a guy's throat. There had been a bad moment with that drunk suddenly wanting to get into the booth, and when the blood that had missed the bowl went splashing bright red and thick on the tiled floor behind the swinging door, while men came and went all around them. A hell of a bad moment.

  Mark dried his face and went into the bedroom he shared with Slago. This was the worst of the places they had stayed in — a cheap fishing camp named Moon's, two miles up the highway from Bayou Peche Rouge. The heat made him sick to his stomach, and he had had only coffee all day. And that was loaded with the chicory that Louisianans liked.

  Slago was sprawled on Mark's bed, muddy shoes staining the cheap cover. The sight of the barrel-chested man with his cropped salt-and-pepper hair instilled a sudden fury in Mark.

  "Get your goddam feet off my bed," he snapped.

  Slago opened his mean, small eyes. He stared at Mark in silence, then said: "You ain't a lieutenant any more, buddy boy/*

  "I still give orders. Move your feet."

  "The Dutchman gives orders, not you." Slago grinned slowly. "And you know something, Mark? Nobody would miss you in this operation. All you done is drive that big Cad like you owned it. And you don't own it. It's Corbin's." Something in Mark's face made Slago's rumbling voice end. He grinned and lifted his feet off the bed and looked at the pinch bottle on the floor. "You're just getting nervous, buddy boy."

  Mark sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the bottle. He knew that in this heat he ought not to drink, but he swallowed heavily, feeling the Scotch glow in the pit of his stomach. He saw Slago watching him with a curiously wary expression in his eyes.