Assignment - Mara Tirana (9 page)

“Sam? That you, Cajun?”

“Here. I’m with Hoffner.”

“I ought to have your head in a basket, Cajun, except that I’ve had the NASA, Pentagon and State on my back. Even a call from the White House. And I’m due to report to Joint Chiefs in an hour. . . . Where is Hammett?”

“I’m going after him now.”

“And your girl?”

“With Hammett.”

“All right. You’re up for disciplinary action—you know that, of course. But we’ll talk about it when and if you get back. I ordered Hammett to leave Deirdre Padgett in the States, to refuse her request to stay in Vienna under all circumstances. I don’t know what eats at you two idiots, but it’s going to get worse instead of better. You’re going in with Harry, Cajun.”

“But I didn’t—”

“If there was time, I’d have you both in a Federal pen. But we’re running out of time. We want Stepanic. I don’t give a damn about your personal feelings in this, Cajun. And I don’t care about your feud with Hammett. I want Stepanic. And you and Harry are going in to get him.”

Durell was silent. The phone crackled for a moment. “Are you there, Sam?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You listening?”

“Yes, sir.”

McFee’s voice changed. “All right. Listen, Sam—get Deirdre home. I’ll take care of it. You do the job. And watch Hammett.”

“I intend to.”

“This one won’t be simple. We’ve got reports of a regular hornet’s nest stirred up behind the Curtain. Everybody wants Stepanic. The press is on my neck, too. Make it fast and clean and come home with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all, then.”

Durell hung up.

Otto was watching him, his eyes worried behind his gold-rimmed glasses. Durell shrugged.

“Let’s go, Otto.”

“It is a personal matter between you and Herr Hammett,
nein?
” Otto asked. He looked small and mild, like a timid middle-aged clerk with his thin face and glasses. He drove his Porsche with expert speed, his pale hands resting lightly on the wheel. They were on the main highway out of Vienna, speeding northeast into the Marchfeld District, where the Danube was over three hundred yards wide and its channel was divided by numerous small islands. The frontier, where the river passed through a narrow gap between the lower spurs of the Carpathians, was thirty miles away. Here, in the night and rain, the countryside of church spires and fertile fields was dark and peaceful. The rain was light and steady. Otto said: “I think Hammett took the fraulein with him only to annoy you. It should not be serious. There may be no danger.”

“There is always danger,” Durell said.

“Of course. But you must remember that Harry, for all his faults, is a very competent man in the profession.”

“We all make mistakes,” Durell said grimly. “This one is Harry’s.”

“Yes, I can understand how you feel about that.” They drove on for a few more silent minutes. The road was wide and slick with rain, but Otto handled the speedy little Porsche easily. The Austrian was one of those deceptive little men who could move like a streak of lightning, if necessary. Durell felt better now, with the cold wet wind blowing in his face through the open car window. The road swung sharply east now, then a bit southerly through the Marchfeld, and now beyond the flickering masses of woodland and occasional spur of hill he could see the Danube, reflecting light from the small towns and villages on its banks. It was sixty-seven kilometers to Bratislava, on the Czech frontier, but he did not expect to have to go that far.

Here and there in the darkness was the loom of a turreted, crenellated castle, fairy-like in the dim mist and rain that covered the land, relics of the petty nobility who once ruled along the banks of the ancient river by means of piracy and brigandage. Otto Hoffner, of course, paid no attention to the landscape familiar to him. The Porsche roared smoothly eastward.

In ten minutes, Vienna was far behind. Otto slowed when they passed through a small village and halted at one of the ubiquitous yellow traffic lights in the center of the narrow, cobbled street; then they sped across the intersection. Instead of following the main autobahn, he turned a corner in the old village into a narrower street, bumped over a rough stretch of road, and swung into a narrow lane that went almost due north, directly toward the river.

“You’re sure of the place?” asked Durell.

“The boy, Anton, described it carefully to Harry, before Harry lost patience with him. The meeting was to be at ten o’clock.”

“It’s after that, now.”

“But we have not met Fraulein Padgett coming back in Harry’s car,” Otto pointed out.

There were dense woodlands on either side of the narrow lane, and the car’s headlights bored a bright path through a dripping, leafy tunnel marked by careful fences. Otto slowed down even more, and then the lane angled sharply right again, and they were out of the woods.

Lights made an ochrous pallor on the undersides of low-hanging clouds in the sky to the east.

“Bratislava,” Otto said laconically. “Not far off. There is the river.” He sounded worried. “There should be a field here, and a white farmhouse, a small village just beyond. Harry was to meet this Gija fellow from the Czech barge at the first side road from this point.”

“I’d suggest you turn off your lights, then,” Durell said.

“Of course. Sorry.”

They crawled ahead, easing their way through the gloom. The reflection of city lights in the far distance made things a little easier. Durell could see the Danube now, a broad reach of rain-dimpled water, with the opposite bank, beyond several small islands, probably in Czech territory at this point. To the east was the loom of hills that narrowed the gap for the river to pass through the spurs of the Carpathians. Lights twinkled on the river, and there were moving objects, barges and small steamers chuffing, with diesel engines muttering in the mist, and an occasional glimmer of red or green running lights from the international river traffic.

“Here we are,” Otto said suddenly.

He turned the Porsche abruptly into a high, hedged road. There was a field to the right, a dim collection of farm buildings close to the river bank.

“Harry’s car,” Otto said in a strange voice. “Right ahead.”

Durell saw the dim gleam of wet metal blocking the road. Otto braked and turned off the motor. In the silence, they heard crickets singing disconsolately in the rainswept fields, and the faraway throb of a river barge seemed louder through the darkness.

The car ahead, an American Chevrolet, was dark and silent. Otto drew a long, slow breath. “If Harry is still waiting, he will be angry at our appearance here. It might frighten off the contact man, this Gija that the boy talked about.”

“I’ll go ahead. Stay here, Otto.”

Otto nodded and Durell got out of the Porsche with careful silence. There was no movement in the car ahead. But surely their arrival in the lane directly behind him should have brought Harry Hammett out of his car to meet them.

Nothing happened.

The rain fell with a soft sibilance on the wet fields, dimpling the river, making the night distances wider and echoing to the opposite shore of the vast stream. The crickets sang. A few branches of the trees that lined the lane rattled in a faint wind that came up.

Durell moved toward the parked car. He could see no one inside. A deep feeling of apprehension squeezed inside him.

“Deirdre?” he called softly.

Only the rain replied.

The car ahead was empty.

He looked at the dark hedges and saw nothing to catch his attention, then opened the door to the Chevrolet. The smell of stale cigarette smoke touched him, and with it was mingled the unmistakable essence of Deirdre’s particular perfume. So Otto’s information had been correct. Deirdre had come here with Hammett. But where was she? And where was Harry? Something had happened here. He wasn’t sure what it was, but obviously things hadn’t gone along with Hammett’s confident plans.

Something glistened in a long thin smear on the driver’s wheel. It was blood. He went around the car to that side, and in the dim yellow light reflected from the low-scudding clouds, he saw that the lane had been scuffed, as if by struggling or dragging feet. He lifted his head sharply. His apprehension increased abruptly, as he thought of what might have happened to Deirdre in this lonely place. He told himself that nothing had ever hurt her, that he had always kept her safe and out of this dirty, murderous business—but this time he had been too late, had not argued forcefully enough, or done any of a dozen things to prevent her from coming here.

“Herr Durell?”

He turned. It was Otto. The man’s gold-rimmed glasses shone as he turned his pale face to the right and left.

“They’re gone, Otto.”

“There is a barn over there.”

“All right,” Durell said. “Let’s look.”

“Take it easy, my friend. You sound strange. I know how you feel about the Fraulein Padgett—”

“Shut up, Otto,” Durell said, not unkindly.

They found Harry Hammett halfway across the field to the barn.

The big blond man lay face down in the stubble of the harvested field, a few paces to one side of the footpath Durell and Otto Hoffner followed. He was just a dark, shapeless mass against the wet earth, arms outflung, legs sprawled. His raincoat was twisted around his thighs. His curly, yellow hail looked dark in the wet.

Durell knelt quickly beside him. The back of Hammett’s head was clotted with blood where the bone had been crushed. He turned the man slightly and saw the look of utter surprise stamped forever on Harry’s handsome, arrogant face.

They’re all surprised
, Durell thought.
None of them thinks it can happen to him. I’ll probably be surprised, too, one of these days.

Harry Hammett’s body was still warm.

But he was quite dead.

The barn was fifty yards away, and the river bank a short distance beyond. The land sloped down in neat, tidy

Austrian fields, with a copse of woodland to the west, a little cluster of whitewashed houses to the east. Beyond the barn, at the river bank, Durell could see a small boat landing, two wooden piers and a narrow shed. Red and green running lights on the Danube barges moved a half mile across the water, close to the Czechoslovakian shore. Over there was unknown territory, the Iron Curtain, a different way of life that brooded over the dark foothills of the mountains beyond the glow of lights downriver from Bratislava’s factories and busy shipping wharves.

Durell walked with Otto toward the barn.

“What do you suppose happened?” the Viennese asked.

“Harry was smart,” Durell said. “So smart he died of it.”

“There is no sign of the contact man who was to take Herr Hammett down the river.”

“He’s around.”

“You think it was this Gija who killed him?”

“I’m not thinking anything about it, yet,” Durell said. “And the girl? Fraulein Padgett?”

Durell did not answer. He felt an anger in him that wanted to tear down the dark curtains of the night. He wanted to smash and break something. He knew this anger was dangerous, just as he knew there was danger waiting in the rain all around them. They were not alone. Whatever had happened back there in Harry’s car had happened not too many minutes ago. It wasn’t over yet.

The growl of a Czech patrol boat on the river came distinctly, across the far reach of the Danube. A streak of white showed in the speedboat’s wake. A barge hooted in melancholy fashion. The rain hissed.

“It will be awkward, about Herr Hammett,” Otto murmured. “The police must be notified. We cannot hide this, of course.”

“You can handle it, Otto. You know how.”

“And some report must be made about Fraulein Padgett—”

“We’ll see. Come on.”

He was almost to the barn when his eye caught a flicker of movement down the sloping field that led to the river’s edge. It was near the boatshed and the two small wharves. Rain drove in his face in a windy gust as he halted and turned his head that way.

“What is it?” Otto whispered.

“Something down there. IJe careful. Cover me, will you?”

“I see nothing, but—yes, Herr Durell.”

Durell moved into the shadows cast by the tall barn. He could hear cattle inside, then he followed the shadow off into the field, ducked under a fence, came to another and climbed a stile, and struck off through the stubble toward the shed, coming at it from the east. He was not sure what he had seen, but now that he was closer to the river’s edge, he made out the dark glimmer of a small launch tied up to the nearest pier, hidden from him before by a rise of the land. He could not tell if anyone was in the boat. He ran a few steps, became aware of his footsteps in the crunchy stubble, and slowed abruptly.

He was being careless. His need to know what had happened to Deirdre was a wild clamor inside him. He walked more slowly, forcing himself to be cautious. In a few minutes he reached the boatshed, a small unpainted wooden structure. When he turned his head to look back, he could not see Otto Hoffner anywhere.

There was a feeling of desolation around him, although the city lights of Bratislava seemed brighter here, just ground the narrowing gap between the mountain spurs of the broad, blackly sweeping river. Something rustled in the weeds growing down toward the water’s edge, and he turned his head that way.

Someone thrust a gun in his back at that moment.

“You will be careful, mister,” a man whispered in English. Durell stood still. “Do not call or signal to your friend in the lane, please,” the voice went on. “Or I will put a bullet in your spine.”

“Who are you?” Durell asked flatly.

“My name is Gija. And you?”

“Durell. A friend of Harry Hammett’s. Did you kill him?”

The man laughed. “Not I.”

“Who, then?”

“I think the girl did it. Drop your gun and turn around.”

Durell dropped his gun to the wet ground in the shadows of the boathouse, then turned carefully. The man who had trapped him took a careful step backward, keeping his weapon out of reach of any thrust. He was a tall young man with sandy hair, wearing a sailor’s watch cap and a short peajacket; his trousers were stuffed into cowhide boots. His gun was a Magnum, powerful enough to drive a bullet through a car engine. In the dim, ochrous light, Durell saw that his face, under a reckless grin, reflected anxiety and uncertainty about his next move.