Assignment to Disaster (17 page)

"After a time, a man can find himself living too long with souvenirs and memories that have no life in them. It isn't living. You talk to your woman yet?"

"Yes," Durell said.

The old man said, "I can see you didn't say the right things. She looks like a fine girl to me." He spoke as if Deirdre were not right beside him. "You're a fool about some things, Samuel."

"What did you do with Swayney and Greenwald?"

"They're locked up in the old engine room. They can get out easily enough, but it will take them a bit of time before they find the way. No harm is done."

"I've got to get to Washington, Grandpa."

"I've been thinking about that. It won't be hard. Howie Gregory runs an air-freight service for the Bayou Peche Rouge Fishery. He flies quick, refrigerated planes so that the Yankees can enjoy our fine Gulf shrimp. Six hours to New York. Sometimes less. The airplanes are not fancy, but there won't be any questions asked if I tell Howie to take you and the girl."

"When does he fly, and from where?"

"Every afternoon. The field is about four miles from here, on the bayou landing at Peche Rouge. There won't be any trouble about it."

"What will you do?"

The old man smiled. "I'm going to New Orleans and start building up a fresh set of souvenirs for me to think about."

"Let's go," Durell said. Then: "Deirdre?"

She had held herself aloof and apart from the conversation. Now she looked at Durell with cool challenge in her gray eyes. "Are you sure you trust me?"

"I trust you," he said.

The DC-3 was cold, their accommodations crude bucket seats in a tiny compartment wedged between the pilot's cabin and the sealed bulkheads of the refrigeration units. The pilot had nodded to them and then had not spoken afterward. The airfield adjoining the shrimp canneries and the levee wharves had been crowded and no one paid any attention to them. Now the sun was low in the west behind them as they flew over Mississippi and Alabama.

Durell could not endure Deirdre's silence.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Why have you changed?"

"I haven't changed. I'm the same as I ever was."

"No. It's like when you first met me. Hating me. Fighting me all the way."

"I don't hate you."

"Do you regret anything?"

"Only the look on your face when Swayney told you about me."

Atlanta was a field of lights twinkling against the purple fold of the land at evening. The air was bumpy, and now and then they ran through spattering rain, remnant of the weather front that had forced them south last night. Then Atlanta was gone, lost behind them as they flew into the darkening night.

Durell slept. He dreamed. The bright missile lit up the sky, struggling toward free space and failing, then falling, fusing. Explosion! Where? In empty fields, on desolate mountains? Or on crowded cities, helpless families, fragile homes? An ugly mushroom lifted to the cloud on a flame-shot stalk, bringing destruction, desolation, death.

Durell twisted and fought in his sleep. He cried out, and Deirdre's hands were on his face and her voice whispered anxiously, "Sam? Sam!"

He awoke. He was cold. He sweated and shivered.

"You were dreaming," she said. "It must have been horrible."

"It will be," he said.

"You can stop it," she said. "Can't you?"

"I'm alone."

"That's not true," she said. "I'm with you."

"And I need you."

"Ill do anything."

He said it. "I love you."

Love and hate, pain and joy. His thoughts blurred and became a misty mirror that reflected lights below, darkness above, the heavy pulsing of the engines. He felt as if he had been flying forever. His eyes ached, his nerves plucked at his bones, his fingertips screamed.

She kissed him. "Sleep, Sam. You've got to rest."

"After I see McFee. After he listens to me."

She said, "There's something else I want to tell you about Robert Keitch."

He felt anger. "I don't want to hear it."

"But I
must
talk about him. Please!"

He was silent.

"We were in love," she said quietly. "We thought that's what it was. He was kind and gentle. Too kind; too gentle. He was soft. He was a coward. What he needed was a woman who would mother him. I couldn't do it. When he was drafted into the Army, we were already far apart. Living in the same house, sharing the same bedroom, but as far apart as if the world stood between us. Maybe it did. Perhaps I was wrong to reject him, to try to force him to be a man. I was married to him, I tried to help him. But I couldn't. It was something in him — or something that wasn't in him — something basic, that I couldn't help him with. When he went to Korea, we both knew it was all over. And when I heard about him and the things he did when he was a prisoner, I felt as if it was my fault, all my fault."

"No," Durell said. "How could it be?"

She was crying silently. "I should have been able to help him."

"Some men can't be helped. They don't want it."

"I could have tried harder to understand why he resisted everything so much. Why he always looked for easy things, the easy way."

"Deirdre, stop this."

"I just want you to know about it. I don't want you always to remember the way Swayney told you about Robert. I keep hearing the sound of Swayney's voice the way he told you. It haunts me. It will kill me."

There was rain against the plane windows, rain that filled the dark, windy sky. There was the earth and this was the sky and up above was that ultimate dark sea, that infinite space, that ineffable mystery that called man toward it though his steps tottered and faltered. Was it right to take that first step with a knife in one's hand, poised at the throat of all mankind? Humanity carried in it the seeds of its own destruction, never more pressing or potent than in these warped and troubled days. Was it right to take that first step, to create a new star, a stage for further steps that would surpass it by progressing into the awesome sea of space? And would it bring peace? He did not think so. Whether this nation or that nation seemed to control the ultimate weapon was always an illusion that crumbled in the inexorable tide of history.

What is the matter with me? Durell cried silently.

He searched in the dark emptiness beyond the plane window, but he saw no answer out there. Maybe Cyclops would give the world a breathing spell, a time in which to pause and consider and view the brink of destruction where man had stumbled and threatened to fall. If only for that, he thought, it would be enough. If it gained time…

He looked at Deirdre for the answer.

He saw in her face no questions of tormenting universal importance. He saw in her face only her concern for him, her love for him, naked and beautiful and unashamed, pleading with him for his understanding.

It's enough, he thought, and in the end this is what it comes down to, to have someone, to be complete, to give and to share and to feel the enveloping warmth of another human being's love.

Far below on the looming curve of the earth, he saw twinkling lights and a strange complex of radiance, and he saw it was a small town, and a carnival of some kind, guessing this by the tiny circlet of light that could only be a Ferris wheel, the undulating lights of a roller coaster. As he watched, lights bloomed below the plane, a burst of reds and greens and blues and yellows. Rockets. Durell looked at his watch.

It was midnight. It was the Fourth of July.

The Glorious Fourth.

A day for political oratory, a brave display of flags, picnics, fireworks, a drive in the country, sleeping, eating, swimming, making love under a free sky.

It was two o'clock in the morning when Durell got off the bus from the airport with Deirdre. He took a cab to the neighborhood of his apartment, got out a block away, and walked with the girl through the warm summer night, through the dark pools of shadow under the poplar and sycamore trees. Nobody was watching his apartment house. It seemed a long time since he was here last. The circle was completed, waiting for him to forge the final link here in Washington, where it had begun.

He had considered contacting Sidonie Osbourn and sending Deirdre to her in the Alexandria house, but Deirdre would not go. He checked front and rear entrances to his apartment building. Nobody. They went inside. Nothing was changed. His rooms were as he had left them.

The apartment looked less drab with Deirdre moving about in the rooms. She went into the bath and after a few moments he heard the hiss of the shower. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, felt the bristles of his beard; he needed a shave and clean-up badly. He went to the telephone and dialed Hazel Getcher's number.

There were two rings, a click. "Yes?"

"Hazel," he said.

"Hang up." She recognized his voice. "Hang up, please."

"I know you're tapped, Hazel. It's all right. Where is the boss? Is he back from New York yet?"

"Yes, he's back."

"What's the matter?"

"He's not for you any more. He's been talked to. He's been persuaded. Don't go there."

"I've got to go there. At his home?"

"Please!"

"Take care," Durell said. He hung up. The shower had stopped. He built two drinks in his kitchen and brought them back to the living room and Deirdre came out of the bath, wearing his old robe. She looked smaller in her bare feet and the oversized garment; her face was scrubbed and glowing. She looked wonderful. "Get dressed," he said. "We've got to move out of here."

Alarm crawled in her eyes and disappointment shadowed her mouth. She bit her lip. "So soon? Oh, Sam…"

"Let's go," he said.

He shaved while she dressed in the rust-red suit again. She used his comb and brushes to straighten her long hair. She smiled ruefully. "I look awful, Sam. I haven't had a change of clothes or any make-up for days. How can you love me?"

"It's easy," he said, smiling. "Hurry."

The streets were warm and soft with the summer night. He got his car from the garage without difficulty and he began to feel optimistic and was no longer tired. He felt as if he were about to make a fresh start, and he whistled softly as he drove, and then he heard the sound of his whistling and it surprised him. His feeling of optimism grew. He knew Dickinson McFee would believe him. He had Calvin Padgett's papers in his pocket. As a last resort, he decided, he would call the news syndicates and give them enough of the story so that a furor would be raised in the press and on the radio — enough pressure to postpone the launching of Cyclops.

Deirdre was shivering. He could feel it as she sat close beside him in the car.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Yes. For you. For both of us. For the whole world. I've never been so afraid."

Dickinson McFee lived in a narrow limestone house on Connecticut Avenue. It was set back from the street behind a high iron fence, partially hidden from the wide avenue by Japanese maples and two huge sycamores. Durell drove slowly by and saw that the sidewalks were deserted and saw a light shining in a window on the second floor. The line of parked cars stretched from one corner to the next. The street was asleep. There was no sign of special activity except for the lighted window. He went around the block again, then turned into a broad, brick-paved alley that bisected the block and ran behind the row of residences that included McFee's. More cars were parked here, but there was room for Durell's coupe near the far exit, and he parked there.

"Stay in the car," he told Deirdre. "If anything goes wrong, get away from here fast."

"I'd rather go in with you."

He shook his head. "It will be better if I see McFee alone. It will only complicate things if you're there, too."

She was worried. "Are you taking your gun with you?"

He hadn't thought about it. He had grown accustomed to its weight in his inside pocket. "Why not?"

"I wish you'd leave it here with me. I'd feel better about it. You're in enough trouble with your people as it is."

He put the gun on the leather seat. "You're probably right."

As he walked down the brick-paved alley, some of his optimism waned. The tall ailanthus trees in the back yards behind wooden fences cast motionless pools of deep shadow. From one of the houses came a chatter of French and a drone of music. The back of General McFee's house was sheltered by a tall board fence with a gate in it, and beyond the gate was a small lawn and a flagstone patio. Durell had been here to dinner on several occasions, and he knew that because of the difficulty of parking on the street, this back entrance was used more often than the formal front entry. He tried the gate. It was not locked, and he stepped quietly into the dark back garden. From inside the house came the shrill ringing of a telephone.

There was a light in the kitchen, a heavy scent of blossoms in the air. Durell crossed the back yard quickly, then squeezed through the screened kitchen doorway. A colored man in a white starched jacket paused as he reached inside a pantry shelf. Durell knew him — Jeffry had been with Dickinson McFee for years — and he saw that Jeffry knew him, too. All about him. The man's eyes widened and he started to speak, but Durell interrupted him.

"You're up late, Jeffry. Is the General at home? I've come to see him."

The butler looked frightened. "I reckon the General wants to see you, too, sir, Mr. Durell. I… I'll buzz him."

Durell moved quickly and pulled Jeffry's hand from the wall telephone. He said, "Don't do that." He spoke quietly. "You don't have to be afraid of me."

Jeffry spoke haltingly. "I don't understand. They — they're lookin' for you all over creation, Mr. Durell."

Durell's smile was stiff in the face of Jeffry's obvious fear. "Let's go find the General."