Assignment to Disaster (2 page)

"Yes. About Calvin Padgett."

"You're all alike, aren't you?" she said bitterly.

"What?"

"Why don't you leave me alone?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," Durell said. "I can't do that"

Greenwald and O'Meara took care of the man Callahan had shot. Callahan rode away in the ambulance Greenwald called for the anonymous corpse. The street was alive with lighted windows, querulous voices. Two prowl cars calmed things down, and then Durell went upstairs with Deirdre Padgett, back into her apartment. Her shoulders were stiff, resenting him. He wished he knew why.

The apartment was furnished in bright, fresh colors, with a white chunky couch and good, colorful oils on the walls. The girl went in first, snapping on various lamps. Her rust-red suit went well with the place; she made it complete. She gave only a casual glance at her packed suitcase.

Durell looked at her with satisfaction because she was even better than he had thought. There was a quiet, dignified beauty in her clear face, and a strength in the firm shape of her mouth, in the steady way her gray eyes regarded him. Fear washed back into her eyes, and was gone. Resentment took its place again. And hatred. Then nothing at all, a blank, while her mind retreated to some distant place he could not fathom. Yet he liked her immediately.

"You need a drink," he said.

"Please. You probably know where it is by now."

He halted. "Are you accustomed to having us search your place?"

"It happened — once before."

"When?"

"Please. The drink."

He found Scotch and poured it over ice cubes in the kitchen and brought a tumbler back to her. She sat with her long legs crossed, quietly, as if nothing at all had happened outside. Her red hair was shoulder-length, filled with deep coppery highlights. A bracelet of Mexican silver showed on her right wrist. Her purse was of the same golden hue as her blouse, a rich leather, with a big black plastic catch.

He watched her drink. Then he watched her shudder. He made no move to help her or to comfort her. She put the glass down and leaned forward and made a small gasping sound, as if she were going to be sick. He drank his Scotch. It tasted smoky and bitter. His dark-blue eyes studied Deirdre Padgett with quiet interest.

She gasped again. "Damn you."

"Go ahead. Let it up."

"I won't be sick. I
won't!"

"Who were those men on the street?" he shot at her.

"I don't…" Her head lifted. She hated him. "Oh, you bastard."

He grinned. "That's better. Who were they?"

"I don't know."

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

"Never saw them before?"

"Never."

"Why were they trying to snatch you? Or maybe they were trying to kill you. Which?"

"I don't know."

"Which? Or why?"

"I don't know either answer."

He took her glass from her. Her fingers felt cold. He saw the fear crawl over her face and he resented it, as if something wet and ugly were creeping over the petal-fresh skin, the lovely mouth. He sat down across the room from her, looked at the telephone, hoped it wouldn't ring too soon, and lit two cigarettes, got up again, gave her one. Looking down at her, he saw the way her dark lashes made small silken fans against her pale skin. There were tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose that no amount of cosmetics would ever conceal. He liked them.

"This is about your brother, of course," he said quietly. "Frankly, I don't know too much about it, except that he has disappeared and the country is being turned upside down for him. He must be important, but I don't know why. It's twenty-four hours since he vanished from the Las Tiengas Experimental Base. I'm going to find him. You're going to help me."

"No."

"Don't you want us to find Calvin?"

"Whatever he is doing, he must be right about it."

"You're that sure of him?" He was surprised.

She sounded proud. "Cal is my brother. I know him well. He wouldn't do anything wrong."

"Then perhaps he's in trouble and needs help."

"No," she said positively.

He pounced. "Why are you so sure of that?"

She bit her lip. "Oh, you're so clever. You're all so infernally clever."

"He telephoned you here, didn't he? Yesterday evening."

"No."

"There's a record of it, Miss Padgett."

"I don't care."

"You're all packed, ready to go. Are you going to meet him?"

"I won't tell you anything," she said.

He was puzzled. This was a stopper. She looked innocent and clean, fine and sweet, and she sat there hating him and what he stood for. He dragged at his cigarette and it tasted harsh, burning his throat. He listened to the ebbing echoes of sound from the street below.

"Where is he, Miss Padgett?"

"I won't tell you."

"But you know, don't you?"

He saw tears glimmer on the dark lashes. She bit her lip again. Down in the basement, he knew, Greenwald and O'Meara were getting it all down on tape. Not that it would do a fat lot of good. He felt angry and frustrated by the girl's unexpected hostility. Well, what did you expect? Did you think she'd fall all over you and call you Sir Launcelot because you pushed off a couple of thugs down on the street? This girl was tougher than that. There was a hard core in her that would take trouble to reach. Not hardness, really. Pride. Old family tradition, strong fiber, Maryland aristocracy, poor but proud. She worked as a fashion editor for one of the Washington dailies; he had learned that much about her when Swayney routed him out of bed and pushed him into this. He could understand how she felt, loyal to her brother. He knew, all right, suddenly thinking of his grandfather, ninety-five, straight as a steel blade, living on the old hulk of a Mississippi side-wheeler down in Bayou Peche Rouge. Sothron steel. It was hell.

He tried another reach. "Why did you go to Prince John tonight, Miss Padgett? I know your family home is there, but nobody lives there now, do they? Why did you go there tonight?"

"I wanted to."

"Just like that? You wanted to?"

"I often go there."

"But why tonight?"

"No special reason."

"What did you do there, or put there, or take from there?"

"Nothing."

"We can find out, you know. We'll have to search. And time is apparently important. It's important that we find your brother before he talks about his work."

Silence.

And the hating.

He smiled at her, although he wanted to slap her. "What's the matter with me? Two heads? Green hair?"

"You people did enough to Calvin," she said bitterly.

"What?"

"Last year. The Committee. Alleging he was disloyal. It was a terrible ordeal for Calvin. I began hating you then."

"He's that Calvin Padgett?"

"Yes.
That
one."

Damn Swayney, the pursy-mouthed fool. The idiot. Waking him from a sound sleep, no briefing at all. He remembered about Calvin Padgett, and he was surprised to remember Padgett with sympathy. A nice-looking guy, one you warmed to instinctively, the kind you made friends with easily and liked and bought drinks for. Brilliant. Defiant. Denying any membership in the organizations that had his name down there on their rolls in black and white as a member. He was cleared. Judged loyal. A mistake had been made somewhere, but nobody was sure just what. Now he had disappeared. A royal mistake. Gone with some damned secret that could rip the world apart, to judge by the quiet, convulsive, desperate efforts being made to find him before it was too late. He looked at the girl with less warmth.

"So you think your brother was hounded, mistreated, abused?"

"I do."

"He was given his job back, in a highly ticklish, sensitive position."

"Only because the work couldn't have gone on without him!"

"And you feel persecuted by us, too?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she said.

He was angry now. He thought of telling her what it could mean, putting personal pride, spite, petty hatred over the safety of the country. Hell, she would say he was waving the flag. Well, he was willing to wave it. He wanted to keep it waving. But surely she knew all that. There was an innocence in her that he could sense even through his anger. There was something else that kept her mouth shut. He looked for the fear in her eyes. It was still there. She glanced away from him.

"Don't," she murmured.

"It's important. Tell me where he is."

"I can't tell you."

"You can't — or you won't?"

She gave no answer.

"Did somebody warn you to keep quiet? Those men in the car, for instance?"

She shook her head.

"You still don't know who they are or what they want with you?"

"No, no, no."

He sighed.

The telephone rang. Burritt Swayney.

"Anything, Sam?"

"Not yet"

"What in hell?"

"Yeah," Durell said.

"She there with you now?"

"Yes."

"No talkee?"

"No washee."

"There's nothing on the punk Callahan ventilated between the ears. Absolutely nothing. We're working in high gear. FBI files checked negative. No identification on the body. Funny, hey?"

"I'm laughing," Durell said.

"And Kelly and French lost the black sedan."

"I expected that."

"Sam, you've got to find that man."

"Make a song out of it," Durell said, and hung up.

It was full daylight outside, suddenly. When he looked at Deirdre Padgett, he saw lhal she was crying silently, the tears sliding wet down her cheeks.

When Durell left the apartment, a new crew took over the watch on the girl. Lew Osbourn was in charge, a gangling, pipe-smoking man with thinning hair and warm, friendly eyes. In Cologne, Lew had once saved Durell's life from a fanatic sniper perched in the skeletal ruins of the town. Lew had a wife, Sidonie, a French girl he had brought home from the wars. And now he had two children, twin girls. They lived in a new development out near Alexandria.

In the lobby of the apartment house, Lew sent his men to various points of vantage and personally took the front hallway himself. He winked at Durell.

"Go on over to the house and Sid will make you breakfast. You look beat, you stupid Cajun."

Durell grinned. "Brioches and hot chocolate?"

"Hell, no. I'm teaching Sid how to cook American style. Buttermilk pancakes and black coffee. I hear the babe upstairs is quite something."

"Look out for rough stuff, Lew. Can I take a rain check?"

"The twins miss you. Especially the candy you bring."

Durell grinned again. "You're a lucky dog."

"Hell, who's stopping you from the same?"

"Maybe if Sid had a sister," Durell said. "See you, Lew."

He went out into the light of the new day, found his car parked under the poplar trees where he had left it at three in the morning, and drove through the winding, early-morning streets of Washington, N.W. It was the first of July, and it was already hot, as he had expected. He felt better for having talked to Lew, after Deirdre Padgett's silent tears.

He had breakfast at a stand on Fourteenth. Stale coffee and doughnuts, left over from the night before. The morning sun made the wet streets steam. At seven o'clock he drove toward Rock Creek Park and 20 Annapolis Street.

The brass plaque on the gray-stone front of the big Georgian house read simply, "The Johnson-Kimball Company," in dignified letters. He felt gritty and tired, his shirt already sticking to his back as he entered. As he went through the Italian marble foyer he heard the busy rattle of office machines in the cover offices that formed a façade for the real business conducted in the building. The elevator man was young and husky. He looked at Durell with photographic eyes and said, "Good morning, Mr. Durell. Hazel's called down twice to see if you showed."

"Thanks, Alex." Durell went up in the elevator to the third floor, passed two doors that looked wooden but that were built of armor-plate steel, and down a long corridor into the adjacent gray-stone house. All the light was artificial, since none of the windows were really windows. When he opened his office door, Hazel looked up and quickly gathered some papers from her desk.

"Hi, Sam. You, too, eh? Nobody got any sleep last night. Swayney is waiting for you."

"Don't fret, Hazel."

He went into his inner office and flicked a finger across the neat stack of personal mail that included an alumni bulletin from Yale, a clothing bill, a rent bill, a letter from a couple he had befriended in England during the war, and a battered, dog-eared envelope postmarked Bayou Peche Rouge and addressed in fine copperplate. He put the last in his pocket and went to the outer office again and Hazel.

"Set up an interview for me with Dickinson McFee, will you, please?"

She looked appalled. "The General? If you top Swayney, he'll pout for a month."

"Can't be helped. I need the information. Set it up, eh?"

On the second floor Durell paused and took a handkerchief and dried his palms meticulously and then walked through a room that contained a battery of electronic computers, through another room where charts and graphs covered the walls, and a Class R administrator was struggling to analyze Middle Eastern reports while teletype bells and phones jangled next door. Swayney's office was beyond all these.

Burritt Swayney, as chief of section, rated a large, airy room with an air-conditioner snoring quietly in a window overlooking a tidy, enclosed garden. Swayney was round and plump and pale, with a habit of making sucking sounds with his small mouth. His eyes were the coldest, palest blue Durell had ever seen. The man was a human memory machine and a confirmed lecher. Durell didn't like him, but for the sake of the work, he got along with him.