Assignment — Angelina (3 page)

He stood under the shower until the approaching thunderstorm made him think about the lightning and he got out and toweled and shaved quickly. His round, good-looking face, with the thick, curly yellow hair, looked unchanged in the mirror. He remembered how Miller had gone to fat, how Everett had lost his boyish look and was stamped with dust and defeat. But he hadn't changed much. He could still pass for under thirty, he decided, thinking suddenly of Jessie.

Maybe tonight, he thought.

When he came out of the bath, Slago was sitting upright on the edge of the nearest twin bed, holding the bottle in his hand and staring at nothing at all. "What's the matter?"

Slago muttered something to himself, then chopped at the air with his hand. "I was remembering another guy who was there. You know, in Metzdorf. Remember a G-2 captain who supervised the detail, told us which files to pick out for the War Records Commission?"

"The Cajun, they called him," Mark said.

"Yeah. Maybe he ought to be on your list. But I don't remember his name."

"It was Durell," Mark said. "Sam Durell. But he was nowhere around that day. Forget it."

He went outside and waited for Jessie.

Durell closed and locked his desk and dropped the keys into a small compartment in the vault. Then he cleared the manila folder off his desk and put that in the vault, too. Sidonie Osbourn got up and used her key in the vault lock to complement Durell's, and they locked the box together. Sidonie patted his arm.

"Don't look so unhappy, Sam. You'll be back soon."

Durell smiled thinly. "I have the feeling I'm being let out to pasture, honey. Is McFee in?"

"Waiting for you."

"My orders?"

She gave him a sealed envelope. "Here. You be careful, Sam."

"I always try to be."

Sidonie was worried about the anger that darkened his eyes. She knew his temperament; she knew of his loneliness even with Deirdre. He was a dedicated man who would laugh at the thought of being called a devoted patriot. She knew what it meant to him, leaving K Section.

"Have you heard from Deirdre?" she asked.

"I had a phone call from London. She goes to Paris tomorrow. Covering fashions, of all things." Durell tried to keep his voice empty of his irritation. "She won't be back for another month."

"Well, you come have dinner with the twins, hear?"

"I don't know where I'll be," Durell said. "Ill make it if I can, of course. And thanks."

He left his office and walked down the quiet corridor to the elevator. No. 20 Annapolis Street was a graystone building in a residential section of Washington, with nothing about it to indicate it was headquarters for K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency of the State Department. Downstairs were the front offices of a commercial concern that actually procured small-part supplies — nuts, bolts, machine-screws and small optical instruments — for the armed forces. The elevator was the only approach through the steel doors to the upper floors. The place had become home to Durell in the last three years, and he knew this attitude was a mistake. An espionage agent has no home, he reminded himself, and no life he can call his own. That was the basic problem between Deirdre and himself. Scowling, he lit a cigarette in the elevator on his way up to Dickinson McFee's office.

Durell was a tall man in his thirties, with thick black hair, a small, trim mustache and dark blue eyes that reflected the quickness of his Cajun temper. He was powerfully built under his conservative gray summer suit, and he moved with deceptive ease and grace. His fingers were long and slender, adept with a gun, knife, or a hand in a poker game. He had been brought up by his Grandfather Jonathan, one of the last of the old Mississippi gamblers. The old man had worked the side-wheelers from St. Louis to New Orleans, and Durell's boyhood had been spent in the hot, green silences of the bayous around Peche Rouge in the delta country. His accent no longer betrayed him, thanks to his years at Yale and the war and his tours with G-2, the old OSS, and more recently, the CIA. His work was dangerous, and he was a dangerous man. Caution was as much a part of him as breathing. He was objective, even about Deirdre, since the difference between the living and the dead in his business was often the difference between a cool objectivity and a moment's emotional carelessness.

He could conceive of no other future for himself than doing the work he had been trained to do and wanted to do. But the orders in his pocket removed him, without warning or thanks, from the silent war he had been fighting. An ugly war, without bugles, fought in the dark alleys of all the corners of the world. Fought relentlessly, without mercy, where death came with a knife or a sniper's bullet, or the strangling agony of a swift garotte.

Sam Durell walked past the communications room and heard the regular clacking of the teletypes and the murmur of high-frequency radios; then the analysis and synthesis rooms, where electronic computers winked and hummed and glowed. Finally he entered an outer office with walls lined with charts and filing cabinets and from there he went into General Dickinson McFee's office.

There were no windows. An air conditioner worked quietly; the venting grate was high in the wall. The small, trim gray man sat behind his desk, waiting for him.

"Sit down, Sam, and let's not be formal. And we won't say good-by, either. Your orders are strictly for temporary duty."

"Where am I going?" Durell asked.

"You know better than to ask. Sit down, will you? You may keep smoking, if you like." The little general hated cigarettes, and it was an indication that he, too, was perturbed by Durell's sudden assignment away from K Section. "You can read your orders any time now."

"I haven't opened them yet."

"Read them here and then burn them."

It was an order. Durell nodded and slit the envelope and looked at the typewritten lines. He felt puzzled.

McFee said: "You'report to the Waggonner Building."

"You knew that much, sir?"

"And that's all I know, Sam."

"It doesn't say where, in the Waggonner Building." Durell frowned. "What do I do, stand around the lobby until a girl with a rose in her teeth slinks up and asks me to buy her a sloe gin fizz?"

McFee shrugged. "Go there and see. When are you due?"

"Twenty minutes." Durell tore the order sheet and envelope into small strips, went to the opposite wall and opened a small iron door and dropped the bits of paper into the incinerator chute. He remained standing. Was there anything else, General?"

"Just a word of advice. I have an idea where you are going and what you're to do. But you'll find out for yourself. If I'm right, I'd suggest extreme care. I don't have to emphasize how many police and intelligence arms the government has. Some are jealous of the others and spend more time competing with each other than in doing the job they're supposed to do. It's the penalty of governmental size, I suppose. The people you're going to work for are above inter-departmental rivalries, however. They once took Harry Keaton from us. Remember him?"

"Nobody has seen him since," Durell said flatly.

"Right. I think Harry is dead. He goofed it."

"You're quite cheerful," Durell said.

"I hate to lend you to them. I just hope you'll do better than Harry. You're the best I have, Sam, and there's been too much spent in training you, in spite of your Cajun attitudes, to make it easy to lose you." McFee stood up and they shook hands. "Take one of our cabs, the second at the corner. I left it for you. The driver knows where to drop you. You'll have five minutes to spare."

The Waggonner Building was nondescript and ordinary, off Fourteenth Street in downtown Washington. It was two in the afternoon, and the lunch-hour rush of government clerks had ebbed. The August heat was crushing, a humid blanket that smothered the city. Durell rather enjoyed the heat, since it reminded him of the bayou country.

The building had a false façade of marble, with a cigar stand beside the lobby doors, a bar to the left, with red neon signs advertising beer, a men's haberdashery and a cutlery shop with windows opening on the lobby area. Durell considered the business directory, but saw no familiar names. People moved all around him, but there were no familiar faces, either. The clock over the elevators read two minutes past two when he walked to the cigar stand and bought fresh cigarettes.

The woman attendant was middle-aged and looked tired, until her eyes met Durell's; then he saw a bright, amused intelligence in her glance.

"Waiting for someone?" she asked.

"Just waiting."

"Anything special?"

"Like a street car," Durell said.

"I see, sir. You might find one up on the fifth floor."

"Thank you."

"McGuire, Sloan and Levy. Room Five-fifty-four."

"Attorneys?"

"No, sir. Uniform manufacturers."

He took the elevator up. The corridor was dusty, lined with frosted-glass office doors. A fire escape stood open at the back and Durell walked there first, looked out at rooftops behind Fourteenth Street, and went back to Room 554. He knocked and walked in.

A blonde behind a typewriter took off harlequin glasses glittering with rhinestones and said: "Go right in. You are expected."

"Why all the hocus-pocus, Mata Hari?" he asked.

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."