Assignment to Disaster (3 page)

"Oh. Sam, hey?" Swayney said. He waved plump hands. "Sit you down."

Durell sat. "I want some facts, Burritt."

"Sure. Sorry there was no time for a thorough briefing. I've got most of the poop. You drop everything else until this is over."

"It's that important?"

"Nothing else matters. Find Calvin Padgett."

"Tell me."

Swayney closed his eyes and recited: "Born in Prince John. Parents, Franklin Padgett, Mary Sprague Lewis. Good stock. Old aristocracy. Lots of money then. Two siblings — John Franklin Padgett, Deirdre Sprague Padgett. When their investments turned sour, father and mother turned on a gas oven and went out on the kitchen floor. The oldest boy, John, was then eleven. He found them. Something happened, nobody knows what — explosion. John's leg injured. Still a cripple. Brilliant man. Physicist. In charge of electronics at Las Tiengas."

"What?" Durell said. "Calvin's brother was there, too?"

"And still there. Why?"

"Nothing," Durell said. "I didn't know about it."

"Not important. John is perfectly sound. What else?"

"Calvin had trouble with the Senate Investigating Committee."

Swayney nodded, his round head loose on his pipe-stem neck. "Somebody used his name to join various subversive organizations. Calvin was cleared, put back to work under his brother. John vouched for him."

"I see. Anything on the girl?"

"Two years younger than Calvin. Goucher graduate. Brilliant in her own way, works on the newspapers here. Had an unhappy love affair, boy killed in Korea. Keeps to herself since then. Passionately devoted to family, keeps the home fires burning. Quite a babe. Well stacked, I hear."

"Stop licking your chops. Anything else on her?"

"Devoted to Calvin. Cool toward John. Understandable. John is much older than Calvin and Deirdre." Swayney's eyes popped wide open, glacial blue. "Why won't the girl talk, hey?"

"I gather she resents the treatment Calvin got last year."

"Doesn't she understand how important this is?"

"I don't know," Durell said.

"Can we
make
her talk?"

Durell shrugged. "Twist her arm. But I don't think it will work."

"What about the men who tried to grab her? She say anything?"

"A blank," Durell said.

"I identified the meat, finally," Swayney said. "A steel worker named Stanislaus Lujec. Immigrant, hard-working type, no record of crime or subversive affiliations. Looked at his hands, figured his occupation, checked Pittsburgh. Neat, hey?"

"Pin a rose on yourself."

Swayney leaned forward. "You sore about something?"

"I'm in the dark. I want to know more about this."

"Wait a minute. Two hoods try to grab the girl. Why? She knows where her brother is, hey? And they want to know, too. They'd like to get Calvin Padgett. It's neck and neck, who gets him first. And maybe he'll spill everything to the newspapers beforehand. If he does, slit your throat, Sam. Hell breaks loose."

"Why?" Durell asked.

"Cyclops."

"I asked you before. What is Cyclops?"

"Something. A gimmick. If the world hears about it,
kaput.
Maybe bombers come over to blow Las Tiengas off the map. It's that hot."

"You said we had five days to find Calvin Padgett," Durell said. "Why five days?"

"Cyclops goes up on the Fourth of July. Symbolic date. You stand corrected. There are only four days left."

Durell said angrily, "He must be somewhere!"

"Everything else is covered. Your job is the sister. Calvin called her, we know that. She knows something, hey? You squeeze it out of her."

"She hates us all," Durell said.

Swayney grinned. "Put some wax on your mustache. Make her talk."

Durell got up and went out.

General Dickinson McFee was dictating a footnote for the minority opinion to be appended to the weekly intelligence estimate being readied for the President's desk, with copies for the intelligence heads of Army, Navy, Air Force, Joint Chiefs, the State Department, the AEC, and the FBL McFee was a small man, narrow-shouldered, with a bulging intellectual forehead and pale-brown, tired eyes. You forgot how small he was physically after you were with him any length of time. After a moment he seemed to fill the room. He waved Durell to a metal chair while he continued talking into a tape recorder. Durell smoked and waited.

Then McFee said, "Sam, you need some sleep. You can spare two hours, I suppose. Who is with the girl now?"

"Lew Osbourn."

"He's good, but not that good. You'll have to crack her. Sleep, and then go back there. Talk to her. Take an hour or so. If she won't tell, bring her down here."

"All right. But I need something to convince her. I'm not even convinced myself."

"Anything I can do…"

"Am I a good enough security risk to know about Cyclops?" Durell asked bluntly.

McFee got up and shut the office door and then returned to the desk and snapped off two switches placed in the kneehole. Nothing changed in his small, hard face. Durell watched him and smoked his cigarette and waited, and the General said, "Why do you want to know?"

Durell said, "So I can talk sense. If I'm not convinced, I can't convince the girl. I think she's all right. Just mixed up a little. I think she'll do the right thing, if it's put to her correctly."

"She must not be told about Cyclops."

"All right. And me?"

"Aside from the men working under Dr. John Padgett at Las Tiengas, only half a dozen others here in Washington really know about it. Why should you know, too?"

Durell stood up. "I see. Thanks anyway, General."

He got to the door before McFee told him to wait. He sat down again. He felt tense, hungry, and angry. He didn't know why. The girl was in him, in the back of his mind, and he saw again the ugly animal of fear crawling over her face. His throat felt dry and harsh, and he crushed out his cigarette, noting that he had smoked too much this morning. Dickinson McFee tapped on the desk with a pencil.

"Colonel Mike Larabee is chief security man out at the Las Tiengas Base," McFee said. "Both Padgetts were doing a fine job. You know the type of installation it is?" Durell shook his head. McFee went on: "It has top priority on guided missiles. They've worked on all classifications out there in the desert; those machines don't need men, they think for themselves. They carry tactical lightweight A-bombs. And they've experimented with aerodynamic shapes, functions, propulsive mechanisms, long-range guidance. Everything you can think of. But at Las Tiengas they've gone way to hell and gone beyond ballistic missiles like the Corporal or Honest John. They've worked on rockets, turbojets, pulse jets, ram jets; they've aimed for altitude, guidance, accuracy in beam-riders as in the Nike and Viking, distance hi the Regulus and Matador. Hell, I don't have to break it down for you, Sam. You know what our space scientists have done, and what the other side can do. Well, Cyclops tops them all."

"In what way?" Durell asked.

"Cyclops does not come down."

"She free-flights in space?"

"Cyclops orbits at one thousand miles up, circling the globe once every ninety minutes. They hope. Target date is the Fourth."

"I didn't think we were up to that yet," Durell said.

"Nobody thinks so. A lot of money went into it. More than for the Manhattan Project, which developed the A-bomb. We've compressed maybe twenty-five, maybe fifty years of research into the last five. Money talks. Organized effort wins. The thing will work."

"And Calvin Padgett knows all about it?"

McFee nodded. "He worked on the brain for Cyclops. It's all in his head. Suppose he tells the newspapers about it? The world will rock. Or suppose the other side gets their hands on him? Hell to pay."

"Why did he run?"

"Nerves," McFee said. "Emotional disturbance. It's not clear to me, but he broke down somewhere. He was under medical care, but he escaped. Nobody knows how."

"He's a maniac?"

"Hell, no. Psychotic, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they bought him and he's already across the ocean. Who knows? All we can do is hope it's not so. You know the only clue we've got is his sister. We hope she knows where he's hiding out, and why. Your job is to find that out for us."

Durell stood up. "I appreciate your confidence. I'll get what we need from the girl. She's got the fright bug from somewhere, but I'll try to break it down."

Frowning, Dickinson McFee tapped the pencil against his teeth. 'There is one more thing about Cyclops. She's to be the arbiter of peace, according to the top brass. She circles the earth like a Valkyrie, and if I may mix time and place in my speech, she carries a sword of Damocles poised at the throat of any who may be our enemies."

Durell was startled. "Cyclops will be armed?"

"To the hilt. Policy figures there isn't time to build two of them and just use Mark One for test and research. Cyclops goes up with a warhead and all that will be left will be the man with the push button to make her drop. I told you, we covered twenty-five or more years in the last five. There will be a new star in the heavens after the Fourth of July. What's the matter, Sam?"

"I don't know if I like it."

"Nobody likes it. It scares you, eh?"

"Yes," Durell said. "Doesn't it scare you, General?"

McFee grinned for the first time. "My innards have been green ever since I was briefed on it. Welcome to the club, Sam."

"Thanks for nothing." Durell smiled.

"Get some sleep. Then go back to the girl. Find Calvin Padgett."

Durell went out.

Durell woke at eleven o'clock. He sat up and went into the shower stall and turned the water on full cold. He had slept for less than two hours. His apartment looked comfortable but drab, familiar but empty. He set coffee to perking in the bachelor kitchen, then shaved with care and laced the coffee with rum and drank it while he dressed in a sober blue suit and a white shirt with a buttondown collar and a plain dark burgundy necktie, loosely knotted. He emptied his gun, a short-barreled .38 Special, cleaned it, reloaded it, and put it under his arm in the pocket specially tailored to hold it without bulging too much.

The apartment depressed him, and this was surprising, for he had always felt all right in it before. Perhaps he should have taken Lew Osbourn up on his offer of breakfast. He enjoyed being with Sidonie and the twins. He felt more at home there than in this place, which merely served as a peg on which to hang his hat. Now wait a minute, he thought. Why all this restlessness? He was thinking of the girl, Deirdre Padgett. The long legs, the smart rust-red suit, the red hair with dark-copper highlights. The low, controlled voice, the wide gray eyes, the…

Forget it.

But maybe Lew Osbourn was right. You can't live alone forever, just because you hate the thought of leaving a widow behind you someday. Or having someone constantly worrying about you. Look at Lew. Doing fine. Sidonie and the twins. Happy as larks. You visit there and you feel the warmth, the friendship, the closed circle of a fine little family.

No.

Anyway, why put Deirdre Padgett in the picture? She hates you. She resents you. To her, you're a symbol of everything unhappy that came to her beloved brother. She doesn't know you exist as a man.

Durell went out of the apartment, his anger spurting in all directions.

He retrieved his car from a parking lot and drove east out of Washington, hit Route 5, turned south, took an asphalt side road, and came to Prince John, on the Chesapeake. It was noon by then. The sun was blazing, a hot weight on the back of his neck. The bay sparkled in a wide expanse of blue. The Padgett estate consisted of a stone gatehouse and a big colonial house of faded rose brick, with black shutters and twin chimneys and a wide sloping lawn that reached down to the shore. The main house was only an empty shell, with nothing behind its lovely façade except the wreckage of a fine Maryland family.

The gatehouse was in better condition. The neat flower garden and trimmed lawn made an oasis in the wilderness of rank weeds and underbrush that assaulted the manor house. Far out on the Chesapeake he traced the smudge of smoke from an oil tanker plodding south from Baltimore, bow riding high and empty. Two cars were parked in front of the gatehouse. As Durell stepped from his coupe, feeling the sun smite him, he saw Frank Gresham come out of the house, look at him, and walk over to the picket fence.

"Hi, Sam. Something?"

"Just looking."

"Nothing here. I thought you were working on the girl."

"I am. I just thought I'd drive out for a look."

"Well, the place is clean. We covered it like a blanket. If she got a message from Brother Calvin, it's in her noodle, no place else." Gresham looked at him curiously. "Something biting you, Sam?"

"No."

"Harrison found the black sedan. Stolen, of course. Wrecked down in Virginia, near Richmond. Burned. So no prints or anything. I'd say it was burned deliberately to wipe 'em out."

Durell wondered why he had come here. There was nothing to be learned in this place. He looked up at the hot sun, feeling its weight, sweating. What was he looking for? Something about the girl, Deirdre. He wanted to know more about her, more than he had learned from Swayney's inhuman memory files. Why had she come here last night? There had to be a reason.

"Did the girl sleep here, do you know?" he asked.

Gresham shrugged. "If she did, she made the bed before she left."

"Have you checked the local telephone company?"

"Why?"

"I'll do it," Durell said.

"Hell, I never thought of…"

"I just thought of it, myself," Durell said. "See you."

He went to the railroad station in Prince John first. The tiny town boasted only two cabs, and he spoke to both drivers, showing his CIA card. They were impressed. One of them had driven Deirdre Padgett to her house here at eleven o'clock last night. Was she alone? The driver was incensed, suspecting a slur upon the flower of Maryland womanhood. Of course she was alone.