Assignment to Disaster (6 page)

"You bastard," Durell said. "You think I don't have a right to get sore about this?"

Durell said, "The girl received enough of the kind of treatment you want to give her. She took it for her brother and she got enough of it for herself. All right, it wasn't anybody's fault, but she doesn't see it that way. She feels antagonism, she feels she won't get justice for herself or her brother. She doesn't like the idea of Calvin Padgett being hunted down like a bubonic rat. You try your loudmouthed, bullying tactics on her, and she'd clam up. She's tough. You wouldn't get anywhere. So I tried to win her confidence. I did, too. But Weederman's men booby-trapped me."

Swayney's pursy mouth closed as if tightened with a drawstring. Durell pushed the doctor away and sat up. His head swam. Pain hammered at him. He closed his eyes, hearing Swayney's thin voice go on and on. After a moment he felt better, the pain ebbed, he stood up. The man with the bullet head loomed in the back of his mind. Ugly, jeering, deadly. The man who had killed Lew Osbourn. The man who had Deirdre Padgett. He felt sick. He drew a deep breath and steadied himself. Swayney watched him with curiosity.

"You belong in a hospital, Sam," Swayney said, more softly. "I'm sorry, but I'm pulling the cork on you. You're off the case."

"No."

"What did the girl tell you about Calvin Padgett?"

"She is to meet him in Las Tiengas tomorrow evening."

"Where?"

"A place called the Salamander." Durell wanted to hold this out, but he couldn't. Everything he had been trained to be required that he transfer this information, now that the girl was gone. "Cal Padgett is playing it cagey. He won't show unless his sister is there. And I've lost her. If you throw a stake-out on the place, you'll lose, Burritt."

"We'll see who loses."

"I've got to find that girl," Durell said.

"Hell. We've got to find Calvin Padgett."

Dickinson McFee lit his pipe very carefully, puffing hard, watching the flame shoot up and die away as he blew on the wooden match. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Durell sat patiently in his office at 20 Annapolis Street. His head ached, his ribs ached, his teeth were sore. There was anger in him and a sense of tension he could not dispel. As usual, the little general seated behind his smooth, cleared desk wore civilian clothes, a gray flannel suit with a blue necktie and a pearl stickpin. As usual, Dickinson McFee seemed to fill the room with his presence. He spoke quietly.

"Swayney is down on you, Sam. With some reason, you must admit. Don't interrupt me, now. You ought to be in bed for the next twenty-four hours; but if you say you're all right, then I'll accept that. Officially, you're off the case. I've got to back up Swayney."

Durell waited.

The pipe emitted great clouds of aromatic smoke.

"I know Lew Osbourn was your friend," McFee said.

"My best friend."

"You don't want to quit on this one, do you?"

"No," Durell said.

"I'll tell you what I've been thinking. Swayney is throwing nets out in all directions to snare the girl. I don't think he'll find her or the son-of-a-bitch who clobbered you and killed Lew. The apparatus we're working against seems to be smart, fast, and highly organized. They must not be allowed to get their hands on Calvin Padgett. The FBI is rounding up every suspected agent in the country, but it's my hunch that this crowd is all new, never used before, held in reserve for just this kind of thing. Swayney won't find the girl. Not alive, anyway."

"You can't let them kill her," Durell said tightly.

"We'll try to stop it. Swayney is competent on that end. But it's my hunch she'll crack. She'll have to. It's only a matter of time, maybe hours, with luck maybe a day, before she tells about her rendezvous with her brother."

"So?"

"We'll work this on two levels. Swayney is the obvious, the overt activity that they'll see. He'll throw weight around, here in the East, and in Las Tiengas, too. The enemy apparatus will spot it all, you can count on it."

"And the other level?"

McFee pointed the stem of his pipe. 'That's you."

Durell felt a great wave of relief wash through him.

"Officially," McFee said, "you'll be in the hospital. But I've got an Army jet bomber ready to fly West in about an hour. You'll be on it. You'll go to Las Tiengas and work alone."

"But the girl…"

"If she cracks, they may take her with them to Las Tiengas, too. As a decoy, a lure to bring her brother into the open. There's a better chance for you to find her and help her out there than if you stayed here and chased yourself in circles for Swayney. I'll call Mike Larabee, the security chief at Las Tiengas. You can check in with him. After that, you'll be on your own."

Durell stood up. "Thank you. I'm grateful."

"There isn't much time. I'll tell you something else. There's something wrong out there at the Las Tiengas Base. I can smell it. Something stinks in all this. Don't trust anybody. That's a hell of a thing to say, but that's the way I want you to play it. If you latch on to anything, don't contact anybody but me. No matter what it is." Blue eyes burned at Durell. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good luck, then," said McFee. "You'll need it. Officially, you're
persona non grata
for having lost contact with the girl. You know what happens if you miss." McFee sighed. "I'd hate to have to accept your resignation, Sam."

Durell nodded. "Is there time to see Sidonie Osbourn?" he asked.

McFee sighed. "God help her, yes."

The little house near Alexandria looked the same. He thought it ought to look different, somehow, but he could not see any change in it, and he knew that any difference he felt was in his mind, in the knowledge of permanent absence and loss. There was a neatly trimmed lawn, a low privet hedge, children playing a few houses away up the sloping curve of the street. It was cooler here than in Washington, which seemed to gather in a peculiar heat of its own. There were a few cars parked by the curb, none in front of the house. Durell got out and walked up the brick path to the door.

It opened as he reached for the bell and Sidonie stood there. No tears, but her eyes were unnaturally bright. He remembered her eyes as vivacious, Gallic, with their slightly upturned slant. He remembered the way she had kissed Lew on the occasions when he had come here with Lew for dinner.

He kissed her cheek.

Her underlip trembled. "Thank you, Sam."

He felt awkward, hating this. "Are you all right?"

"No. Of course not. How could I be?" Then she said, "I'm sorry, Sam. Don't mind me."

He followed her inside. Everything was the same. Well, what did you expect? Lew isn't here, he won't ever be here again, but he's left this, this house and this girl and the twins. He wanted to smash something.

"I sent the girls to a neighbor's," Sidonie said. "Sam, don't look like that."

Strength from her, given to him. He was astonished. "Sid…"

"I know how you loved him," she said quietly.

"I wish I'd been there."

"I knew it was going to happen, someday."

Staring at her, he said. "You knew?"

"We both knew. It was always a question not of
if,
but
when.
Every day was a holiday, Sam. Can you understand?"

"No," he said.

"You think he was wrong to marry me? I know you think so. You talked about it to Lew so often. But he wasn't wrong. It was wonderful."

"How can you…"

"He did his job," she said. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap and looked at her wedding ring. A small girl. Strong and brave. He felt ashamed of his own weakness. "He did his job and he knew the danger in it and so did I. We accepted it and lived with it."

"What will you do? I know it's too soon…"

"It's all been arranged. I'm going to work for General McFee. He just called me."

He looked at his watch. He had twenty minutes to get to the airport. He stood up.

"I have to go."

She nodded, arose, and kissed him. "Lew always said you needed a girl. I wish…"

"No," he said, almost violently.

"Sam, I'm sorry for you."

He was surprised. "For me? Don't be. Sid."

"Come back soon. I need to talk to you."

"Is there anything I can get for you, that you need?"

"No. Thank you, Sam."

"Anything I can do…"

"Finish the job," she said. "For Lew."

The plane was riding high through the night, trying to overtake the purple sunset. The earth was hidden beneath cotton clouds. The interior of the bomber was austere, stripped, a pattern of punched-out Duralumin girders painted gray, yellow, black. He was in a bucket seat where he could see the seven-man crew up forward, hunched over a fantastic series of lighted banked instruments. One of them yawned. None was curious about him.

A blond young airman second class worked his way back toward Durell. "Are you all right, sir?" A Mississippi drawl.

"Fine."

"You like some coffee, sir?"

"Yes, please. Thanks. Could you tell me where we are now?"

"Vicksburg, I reckon."

He thought of the mighty river below. Several hundred miles to the south, in the Cajun bayou country, was his grandfather, aboard the old hulk of the
Three Belles.
His mind spun back to the past and he remembered Bayou Peche Rouge and the general store when he was fourteen, and Toinette Deslabes, whose papa ran the store. Toinette he remembered well, the way she ate oranges, small white teeth biting into the pulp. He remembered a night in the Pass-a-Joix, across the bayou, when he and 'Toinette had walked along the
chenière
together and then stopped walking and sank to earth under the moss-dripping live oaks. There were awkward fumblings, the making of love for the first time, frightened and ashamed when he failed. He remembered the smell of her, the pungency of oranges, the way she had writhed, frustrated by his boyish failure, how she had come at him furiously with a knife and he had knocked her down and taken the knife away; and then because she was no longer the aggressor, he was able to take her as he willed. Later, his grandfather had asked him what had happened, and he knew the sounds they had made had carried across the still black water, across the masses of water hyacinth…

His stomach tightened. He thought of Deirdre Padgett. He saw her in his mind with the bullet-headed giant, tortured and in pain, hurt badly. He forced himself to shy away from the images.

Later, at Yale, there was a girl from Litchfield, in her beaver coat, in her little roadster, driving back through the icy, barren hills to her home for dinner after the football game. She had turned into a barway, parking in the dark among the frozen, crystal weeds, and torn off her fur coat, torn away the veneer of Radcliffe, and it had been awkward in the tiny car, and strange to sit at dinner later in the old colonial house, with the milk glass and antique copper and the huge fireplace, and feel her hand groping for him under the table while her parents discussed the Yale eleven and its chances against Harvard…

Deirdre, he thought, wanting to forget her, unable to forget her, helpless to aid her wherever she was at this moment. He told himself there was nothing he could have done back there that Swayney wouldn't do. He told himself that McFee was right, that the men who had taken her might as easily manage to bring her to Las Tiengas tomorrow. It didn't do any good. He thought of her red flowing hair, her wide gray eyes, the courage in her that fought against the ugly haunting fears. He thought of her bitter anger, because her brother had been abused and served with injustice. She had known, in his apartment, that she had been mistaken. He had seen it dawn in her, the knowledge that she herself was not important, or her brother; not any of them. But it had come too late, this putting aside of personal feelings. She might be dead now.

The bomber flew on through the night.

There were no clouds over Texas, and the stars were like polished bits of silver in the night sky. Up ahead, the navigator was talking to the engineer, laughing about something, reminding the engineer of a fiasco with some girl in a San Francisco bar. The radioman volunteered a comparison between the girl in the bar and a Japanese girl he had known in Yokosuka. Their laughter was strong, easy, free, mingling with the vibration of power from the jet engines. They knew what their job was and they were doing it, asking no questions of their passenger.

Hearing the soft voices, the different accents from Maine to Mississippi, from Brooklyn to Houston, he felt a change come over him. Hearing the steady beat of the powerful engines, feeling the lift of the wings that spanned the earth and the sky and carried him across the continent in a matter of hours, he felt better.

He closed his eyes and slept.

The airport at Las Tiengas was new, raw, and busy. A white-helmeted MP with eyes like steel marbles met him at the bomber, asked his name, and guided him to an Army scout car parked in the restricted military area of the field. Durell did not object, although this was not what he had expected. In a matter of moments, they were skimming down a new highway across the flat desert floor, away from the gaudy glow of lights that marked the town.

They passed a white-and-black barrier manned by more MP's, and under the desert moon Durell saw the white blocky shapes of barracks, skeletal rocket launchers, a huge hangar, a glare of blue light from a cavernous machine shop. The MP who drove was not communicative. He seemed bored. The desert wind was chilly.

Mike Larabee was waiting for him in an office of the Base Administration Building. Larabee was a squat bulldog of a man, his jaw dark with unshaven beard, eyes bloodshot, face tired. His glance was hostile. His handshake was hard and quick.