Assignment - Mara Tirana

by Edward S. Aarons

  “No,” he grinned. “Not at all.”

  “You were crying out a woman’s name in your sleep. Someone named Deirdre. Who is she? Your wife? Your girl?”

  “My girl,” Adam said.

  “Ah. You spoke her name many times, did you know? Gija wrote it down, before he went off to Czechoslovakia to pick up his barge, and so reach your friends. They will let her know about your safe landing. If Gija, that crazy one, reaches your friends, he will do what is necessary. But one can never foresee the future.”

  She stood looking down at him beside the bed, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her cloth coat. Their eyes met and locked for a long, mystical moment. Then she smiled for the first time, and her voice changed, and she pulled the scarf from her head. Her rich, thick hair tumbled in the light of the lantern. She pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down.

  “Sleep, Major. I’m sorry I was angry. I am not really angry with you. It is life itself that has betrayed us here. We knew good things once, security and respect. It has been taken away from us, because my older brother was such a fool. Perhaps such a fault runs in the family, and we are all fools. We do what we think is right, not what we know to be safe. You can sleep easily here. I will stay with you until the fever goes down.”

  Adam sank back upon the bed. The girl touched his forehead, and he closed his eyes. Her palms felt rough, but her touch was gentle and soothing. With his eyes closed, Adam thought of Deirdre Padgett.

  He had met her through Sam Durell when they were assigned to the Mojave base training unit, and he remembered that strange, tall, stone-eyed man who had introduced them. Adam had thought Deirdre was Durell’s girl. But when Durell was transferred elsewhere, Deirdre stayed on alone at the desert motel. Adam began to date her, diffidently at first. He knew something had gone wrong between Deirdre and Durell—a quarrel, perhaps, a deep and serious quarrel. He didn’t know the details and didn’t care. He only knew that Deirdre was unlike any other girl he’d ever met.

  He closed his eyes and let his memory of her fill him. It was like coming back to life again. . . .

  CHAPTER III

  Durell flew from New York to Paris and looked up Charley Loughlin there. Loughlin told him to go back to the States.

  “We’ve got a cable on you, Sam. McFee is raising hell. You're out of bounds and he wants you back in Washington.”

  “I’m here on my own time,” Durell said. “What have you heard from Harry Hammett?”

  “Nothing. And if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. You’re just hunting trouble, Cajun. This job doesn’t concern you. You’re on leave from K Section and supposed to be resting up, back home. Why not leave it to Hammett?”

  “I will, when I go back with Deirdre Padgett.” “You’re going back on the next plane,” Loughlin said. “I’ve got your ticket here. Free ride, compliments of K Section.”

  Durell looked angry. “Is that an order?”

  “Well, not exactly. No. But. . .”

  Loughlin drew a deep breath. It was early morning in Paris, and his office was a photography shop on the Rue Griselle, not far from the Seine. It was an overcast day. Loughlin was a small, cherubic man with a bald head and sharp, discerning eyes under remarkably bushy brows. He looked more French than American, having been in charge of the CIA drop here for over six years. He had picked up French mannerisms, Durell noted, in the way he now waved his hands and shrugged.

  “Let well enough alone, Cajun. If your former girl chooses to go to Vienna with Harry Hammett, we have no way to stop her. Harry is—well, just Harry. Everybody knows how he is. A lone wolf, a—”

  “A sadist and a bungler,” Durell said grimly. “I know him. We had a little trouble, once.”

  “So you don’t get along, and this puts the ground glass in your wine, eh? I know you don’t care about Hammett; you just want Deirdre out of this. But listen to me, Cajun—I know all about you and the girl, and how she is to marry this Major Stepanic, right?”

  “I heard about it,” Durell said. “But not from her.” “So you’re here on an emotional binge, right?” Loughlin looked soberly at Durell’s tall figure. “Look, I’m not trying to make like a head-shrinker, Cajun. But it’s not right for you to come over here after her, interfering with Harry. Forget it. It’s not your business.”

  “I’m making it mine. There’s something more to it than shows on the surface. Deirdre has too much sense to get involved like this. She knows the racket. God knows, I’ve told her enough about the dirty end of it. She wouldn’t do anything foolish, unless . . .” He paused, harassed by a vague uneasiness that had begun last night, in Deirdre’s house across the sea. But he was unable to define the source of his misgivings. “I don’t know what it is, Charley. I just want Deirdre out of Vienna, and away from Harry Hammett.” Loughlin stared out the window at the cobblestone street beyond his photography shop. He said curiously: “You don’t give a damn if Stepanic is alive or dead, do you, Cajun? He hit you where it hurt, taking Deirdre away from you.”

  “He took nothing from me that I wasn’t ready to give up,” Durell snapped.

  “Sam, you show how you hurt,” Loughlin said softly. “All right, so I hurt. I just don’t like this twist of events, Charley. What exactly do you have on Stepanic, anyway?”

  “We got word the poor bastard came smashing down somewhere in the Balkans. That was all. Our radar and the signal from his rocket capsule gave us that much of a fix. But there was a hell of a storm front in the area where he hit. We can’t pinpoint him.” Loughlin paused. “But he’s alive. An informer came to our drop in Vienna, from over in Bratislava, to say that more word was coming in about him in detail. So he’s out there somewhere waiting for help from us. The Soviets know he’s down there, too—but they have no more specific a fix than we. Everything promptly tightened up along the borders—air, rail, highway traffic all triple checked, turned upside down, and shaken three times for good luck. Not even a mouse could break through to pick up Stepanic.”

  “Hammett will do it,” Durell said. “I won't deny he can. But is it so urgent to get Stepanic out this way? It’s a simple scientific experiment. I thought we were cooperating on outer space data now, exchanging the result of our flights.” “Stepanic went into space, Cajun, in our first real effort to catch up. The whole world was watching. We want him back and we want his instruments. Call it a matter of prestige, if you will. Political face is important these days— and it gets more important as we move into this so-called peaceful competition that’s in the air. We need every advantage we can get. We need Stepanic back and his instruments, to find out what went wrong so it won’t happen like this again.”

  “When is Harry going in after him?” Durell asked. “He’s waiting for the specific contact from Bratislava.” Durell drew a deep breath. “Look, Charley, I’m going on to Vienna, whether you make it official or not. Deirdre doesn’t belong there. The competition knows Deirdre was Stepanic’s girl—don’t underestimate them. If Harry spills anything to her, they might just pick her up for a talk, to find out Harry’s plans—and, incidentally, to locate Stepanic if Harry learns that much from the contact.”

  Loughlin passed a hand over his bald head and looked at Durell with a face suddenly gone hard and serious. “Jesus, so that’s what’s eating you!”

  “Among other things,” Durell admitted.

  “You may have something there, Cajun. Maybe she ought to be out of Vienna, just for insurance, at that.”

  “Tell it to Washington,” Durell said. “Meanwhile, I’m going after her.”

  “What shall I tell Harry?”

  “Tell him I’m coming,” Durell said.

  He was followed from Paris to Vienna.

  He was not surprised at this. He knew that his opposite numbers kept a detailed file on his activities. At No. 2 Dzerzhinski Square in Moscow, headquarters of the MVD, there was a lengthy dossier on Samuel Cullen Durell, of Bayou Peche Rouge, Louisiana, and No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington. There was a time
when this dossier had been urgently ordered closed for good, and attempts were made to remove him. Durell had survived. He had been quick and lucky. Lately, the pressure had eased. Yet there was no outguessing the unpredictable enemy. It was better to be safe.

  He followed another axiom. Better to know where your shadow is at all times than to elude the tail temporarily and have the known factor replaced by someone unsuspected and invisible. The job was usually done in this double fashion—first someone a little too clumsy to be true, appearing in the background. You shook him or her, and thought you were free of surveillance and went on with your business. But, usually there was another in the background—the real expert, the professional, who, like a chameleon, made himself invisible and thus lulled you into a false sense of security.

  In the present case, Durell’s shadow was a squat, paunchy bald man with a bumbling manner and accent that suggested a salesman of woolen goods from Manchester. He let this be known at Orly airfield, speaking in a loud voice about his sales trip to Vienna and complaining about the customs delay.

  There was a brief stop at Geneva. Durell got off and went to the rest room, washed his hands, smoked a cigarette, entered the cafe for a drink, and managed to miss his embarkation. The salesman of yard goods flew off into the Swiss skies and Durell went to the railroad station for a ticket. He did not congratulate himself too much on this maneuver. He had already spotted the second tail.

  This one was a tall, blonde girl in a shapeless, lumpy cloth coat. She bumped into the bald Englishman while at the Geneva airport, apparently an accident. There was a brief exchange of angry words. The blonde girl lost her hat, and her long hair looked bedraggled. Durell, watching from the cafe, sipped his drink and saw the woman shake her head at something the plump man said. The bald man looked angry and adamant. The blonde shook her head again and started to turn to look at Durell, and the bald man said something sharply and she stiffened, then shrugged and finally nodded. But there was a look of anger and unwillingness in her manner, as she went about her task of following Durell.

  Durell made no effort to shake her on the express to Vienna. The fact that he’d been assigned a double team was significant enough to assure him that his hunch about Deirdre’s danger was valid.

  He told himself that the concern he’d expressed to Loughlin was his true motive. Stepanic had to be gotten out, with his capsule instruments, of course. And conceivably Deirdre, learning too much from Harry Hammett, might spoil the game. Also true.

  But there was more.

  He did not delude himself. He had explained everything to Deirdre long ago, and she was free to follow any life she chose. If she was truly in love with. Major Stepanic, she had every right to stick to him. Durell had no claim on her.

  But he could not deny his emotions. And emotions in this business were dangerous. They could kill him. He had no right to come to Vienna this way. It was not his assignment. He might very well confuse things for Harry Hammett in a way that might result in disaster.

  Yet he couldn’t turn back. Deirdre was in Vienna, and Vienna was dangerous ground now. He knew this with an inner conviction that defied all rational objections.

  He did not stop to analyze his feelings about Stepanic, lost behind the Iron Curtain. Stepanic was the secret objective of a swift, desperate, and cumulative search by two of the cleverest and most dedicated organizations in the world.

  Vienna was cold and windy when he got off the train at the Westbahnhof Station. The city was between seasons, having ended its annual fair at the Prater, but with the opera schedule not yet begun. It lay in gray and baroque splendor along the dark Vienna woods. Most of the American tourists had left for home, and the city was itself again, easy and free, ignoring the dimple of rain that fell as Durell chose a taxi and gave the moustached driver his destination as the Bristol Hotel in the Innere Stadt.

  The tall, lumpy-looking blonde who had replaced his bald, pseudo-English shadow in Geneva was not in sight. But Durell knew he was still under surveillance.

  At the Bristol he unpacked, gave the room a routine check in his methodical fashion that missed nothing. Then he phoned the Embassy, gave a code name, received a number to call and did so, identifying himself and alerting the K Section man in the city, Herr Otto Hoffner. The number was that of a small coffee house, and this phone, in turn, was connected with another at the K Section drop at Steubenstrasse 19. Durell had been to the “safe house” on Steubenstrasse before.

  “Loughlin called me from Paris,” Otto said quietly.

  “Anything official?”

  “No, no, Herr Durell. He says to tell you the subject you wish to speak to so urgently is at the Bristol Hotel. Also, I want to see you tonight, as soon as possible. Can you make it at nine? I am somewhat disturbed and I would like some advice. You know where to find me?”

  “I had coffee there last year,” Durell said, and hung up.

  The “safe house” at Steubenstrasse 19 was not far away. He had time. He telephoned to the desk to verify Deirdre Padgett’s registration at the Bristol, and the desk clerk rang her room; but there was no answer. Then he showered and shaved, chose a fresh white button-down shirt and a maroon knitted necktie. In the shoulder holster under the specially tailored coat went his snub-barreled .38 Special.

  He was ready to leave the room when the telephone rang.

  He turned in surprise, thought of Deirdre, let it ring once more, and decided to answer it.

  “Durell here,” he said briefly.

  It was not Deirdre. He pushed down a quick sensation of disappointment at hearing the man’s harshly angry, American voice. “You’ve got a lot of gall, Cajun. You’re not even using a cover?”

  “Not this trip. How are you, Harry?”

  “As if you give a damn, except to wish my throat gets cut. Loughlin called Otto from Paris. Otto told me, too. You’d better go back to your desk in Washington, man.” “I’ll go back,” Durell said, “with Deirdre Padgett.” “And maybe she doesn’t want to go back with you. Then what?”

  “Where is she?” Durell asked.

  “I just left her downstairs in the restaurant.”

  “Did you tell her I was here?”

  Hammett spoke in a taut voice. “Why not? She’s waiting to tell you to go peddle your papers. You stay out of my job, Cajun, hear? You have no orders to stick your fingers into this pie.”

  “I don’t intend to interfere with your assignment,” Durell said. “I just want to keep the girl out of trouble.” “Trouble? Trouble? This is routine. She just wants me to hurry up and get her boyfriend back to freedom land, safe and sound.”

  “Then we have no quarrel,” Durell said quietly. “You think not? I’m wiring Washington about you. I don’t want you mixing in, understand? I handle my jobs my own way.”

  “I wish you luck,” Durell said.

  He hung up, aware of a tremor of unreasonable anger directed against both Harry Hammett and himself. Harry was big and tough, competent and ruthless. Too ruthless. His record at K Section was one of implacable drive, and if his methods were criticized, the results kept Dickinson McFee in ominous silence.

  Durell lighted a cigarette and waited for the anger to pass. He had worked with Hammett as a team some years ago, investigating a leak in the CIA organization in West Berlin. Elements of information were getting through that were traced eventually to a German named Karl Henlein. Henlein was low man on the totem pole of a counter-espionage group aimed at getting information of IRBM sites for NATO, and there would have been more fish caught in Durell’s net if it hadn’t been for Hammett. There was a girl involved, Karl’s wife, a charming but fanatic redhead who first captivated Harry and then turned on him. Durell never proved how intimate Hammett got with Sophia Henlein, but he knew that Henlein had caught Hammett with his wife, in their West Berlin apartment. Henlein was shot and killed with Harry’s gun, and there was no other evidence against him. But the case was closed. Henlein was charged, at Harry’s insistence, with having resisted arres
t. Although Karl Henlein was an elderly wisp of a man, and no match for Harry’s bull strength, he had been beaten tragically before being shot. The girl, Sophia, was a suicide, having drained a vial of poison. Her death had not been pleasant. There were marks on her wrists that made Durell wonder if she had killed herself willingly or been made to drink the poison by force; but he could prove nothing. The case against the counter-espionage ring collapsed. There was no other place to go; the rest of the ring was hidden behind Karl Henlein’s dead eyes. The missile bases had to be moved to new sites, and the whole program was delayed for several precious months.

  Durell hadn’t worked with Hammett since. He had made a factual report, omitting his private inferences, but they became mutual enemies since Hammett knew that Durell had not been fooled by the evidence. On the few occasions when their paths crossed they openly expressed dislike for each other.

  Durell knew that Hammett was a man who placed little value on human life, who allowed no scruple to block his objectives. In a way, this was according to the rules of the business. But Harry had an innate and gratuitous cruelty that, as in the Henlein case, defeated its own purpose.

  He did not like the thought of Deirdre being in his care.

  And he did not intend to let it go on.

  He went downstairs to the lobby in the elevator cage and paused in the entrance to the small bar.

  The blonde woman in the shapeless tweed coat sat at a round table in the corner, drinking from a cocktail glass.

  She had a briefcase on the upholstered bank beside her. She wore a dark brown beret and sensible walking shoes, and she looked up as Durell paused in the arched entry. Her eyes were blank and dark, in an objective, unemotional face. For a moment their glances locked, and then she looked down at the drink between her quiet hands. She bit her lip. Then the headwaiter hurried to Durell, full of obsequious smiles.

  “The fraulein waits for you, Herr Durell. Over here, bitte.”