Assignment Carlotta Cortez

by Edward S. Aarons

  “What do I say to him?”

  “Beg him to change his mind. Tell him about the innocent people who will suffer. Make it big. Say any damned thing, but keep him on that telephone!”

  “I don’t get it,” Barney whispered. “I need a drink.”

  “Later.”

  “There may not be any later, Sam.”

  “Look, it’s about ten feet from the wall telephone to the table. I’m betting the bomb and the detonator mechanism are on that table. There are twelve risers from the third floor to the attic door. I’ve got to get up those stairs to the table faster than Perez can drop the phone and jump for it.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I think so,” Durell said.

  Barney looked ill. “Can’t we at least pull as many people as possible out of the area, before you go in?”

  “No. We don’t have the time, and we can’t afford to make Perez suspicious by any activity in the neighborhood.”

  Kels said, looking at him, “I’m thinking of Betsy.”

  “Betsy?”

  “My wife. My place is three blocks from here. And my two sons are asleep there. One is eight, the other is three. I love them, Sam.”

  Durell paused. He studied the small, dark-haired man. “That’s up to you, Barney. You can go, if you want to. Get them uptown. Somebody else can stay and make the call.”

  Kels shook his head. “You know I won’t do that.” He drew a deep breath and wiped the palm of his hand across his mouth. “No, I won’t run out. I’ll do it.” Durell went to speak to Wittington.

  Wittington sat down and stared at him with the same look that Kels had given him. At least, Wittington said, they ought to wait for the AEC team. The men from Washington were due to arrive any minute.

  “They can’t do anything for us now,” Durell insisted. “They’re trained to decontaminate an area or defuse a bomb, and to check safety factors in critical mass, sure. But this takes a different kind of specialist.”

  Wittington looked haggard. “You?”

  “I’ve been trained for this,” Durell said. “If there is any reason at all for my existence, it’s for this situation right now.”

  Wittington shook his head. “Sam, it’s too risky.”

  “It can be done.”

  “But you can’t jeopardize all these people around us—” “They’re in jeopardy now, and it gets worse every moment. Perez will explode that bomb. O’Brien thinks so, and so do I. Perez can’t do anything else but explode it. He won’t give up meekly when the time limit ends. He’s not that kind.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “Hoping he’ll surrender is just as big a risk as to let me go in there right now.”

  Wittington sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed his big beak of a nose aimlessly and looked at the pattern of the linoleum tile on the floor. The kitchen clock whirred. It was three-thirty. It would soon be dawn, and with daylight there would be no chance of decision.

  The old man said harshly, “I never thought I’d have to make this decision. It isn’t right. I’m nearly seventy. It doesn’t matter about me or my life. But all these people—”

  “There’s really no decision to make,” Durell said. “You can’t trust Perez. You don’t know what he’ll do. We can’t wait idly and hope for the best. Hoping, in this case, isn’t good enough. It’s too big for that. Somebody has to go in there and take that bomb away from him. If you can think of any other way to do it, and do it soon, then I’ll be glad to step aside.

  Wittington lifted his head and stared at him with blind eyes and had no answer.

  “Then I’m going,” Durell said.

  The misty air of the predawn hours sent a slight shiver through him as he stepped out through the back door of Number 11. He drew a deep breath and walked to the comer, where the alleyway joined the side street around the comer from the Cortez house. He knew someone was following him. When he turned around, he saw it was Garry Fritsch.

  “Durell,” said the older man.

  “Go on back,” Durell said.

  “Will you go back with me?”

  “Get your car and drive away from here. Take anybody with you that you want.”

  “None of them will go, Sam.”

  “But it may not work. I may fail.”

  "Well never know the difference. I’m going in there with you, Sam.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  They were two shadows talking about eternity. Fritsch walked beside him in a long, circuitous route that brought them to the driveway behind the Cortez house. Durell was aware of the amount of time left to him. Barney Kels was sitting in the kitchen of Number 11, ready to telephone when twenty minutes had passed. There was no time to argue with Fritsch, but he tried. “I don’t need you, Garry,” Durell said.

  “You might.”

  “Go on back,” Durell said brutally. “I can’t count on you. You’ve got a bad ticker, and you know what might happen any minute.”

  “That’s why I want to go. I feel fine. If I go down, I’m not much of a loss to anyone, anyway. I’ve been dead ever since my first attack. There isn’t much else left for me to do, except die.”

  “You won’t be the only one, tonight.”

  “But I can do this better than you, Sam. I’m an old-time cop, sure. But I’ve taken scum, hoodlums, hop-heads and maniacs out of tougher places than Perez is in. I know I can do it!”

  “They didn’t have a bomb,” Durell said bluntly.

  He turned into the alley and paused. There was nothing to see. Only the sleeping brick walls of the houses that backed up on the fenced passageway ahead. The mist was soft and kind to the old buildings. He heard Fritsch breathing beside him. It didn’t sound quite right. There was a deep rasp in the way the man pumped air in and out of his chest.

  “Don’t try anything,” Fritsch said quietly. "One yell, one loud noise, and Perez can send us all up, and we’ll all be just a lot of dust contaminating the air.”

  Durell walked on down the alley. He was angry, he wanted to clip Fritsch and put him down for good, but he didn’t dare. He made no sound when he walked, and Fritsch was equally silent. They were two dark shadows drifting through die mist, sliding along the wooden fencing.

  Durell said, “All right. Just back me up.”

  “Fine, Sam,” Fritsch said. He breathed easily again. “That’s just fine. Thanks.”

  “If—or when—we get back, I’ll turn in a report on you.”

  “I won’t care, then. As long as we get back.”

  The Cortez house was only a few steps farther on. No lights shone in any of the lower floors. The garage doors were closed and bolted, as they had been on Durell’s previous probe. He decided on the same method of entry as before, scaling the fence into the tiny garden, opening the French doors on the ground floor sitting room. For all of his chunky size, Fritsch was as lithe and silent as Durell.

  The same faint smell of mildew that he remembered from before touched Durell as he forced open the French doors and stepped inside. Fritsch was hard on his heels. They paused, and Durell looked at the luminous hands of his watch. Twelve minutes had gone by. Eight more until Barney Kels used the telephone to distract Perez.

  The house was silent. He thought about the servants, Carlos, and the woman, Muro. His eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom of this back sitting room. The shapes of green plants, ferns and begonias, made strange shadows against the walls. The wicker furniture, painted white, was easy to define. Durell crossed the stone floor and opened the door into the corridor beyond.

  A flash of light blinded him.

  A voice said, “Quien es?"

  He saw the man’s throat beyond the brilliant glare of the flashlight and struck at it. There came a strangled gasp. He felt Fritsch lunge past him and grab for the falling flashlight. He missed it. The metal tube clattered to the stone floor, and the noise of its fall seemed deafening.

  The man collapsed. It was Carlos, the servant. D
urell eased him to the floor. He was sweating. There would be no more trouble from Carlos—not for fifteen or twenty minutes. Time enough.

  He straightened up and listened.

  Fritsch was on his hands and knees from the effort to catch the flashlight before it shattered on the floor. The noise might or might not have reached up to the attic rooms. Durell felt as if the breath was squeezed out of his lungs by the tension. Fritsch didn’t bother to rise. They waited and listened. All Durell heard was the thick, heavy pounding of his heart. It was a wait for eternity.

  But nothing happened.

  Very slowly, Durell let the breath ease out of him. He stepped over Carlos, and Fritsch straightened up. The older man’s silvery hair moved as he nodded in the gloom and whispered:

  “It’s all right.”

  “Get the woman,” Durell told him. “She’ll be in bed.”

  Fritsch said, “Shoes, first.”

  They took off their shoes and moved on stockinged feet thereafter. Fritsch opened a door in the front of the ground-level servants’ quarters and found the bedroom. The woman, Muro, stirred restlessly on the bed, not quite awake, not quite asleep, disturbed by her husband’s rising but not knowing what had disturbed her. Fritsch used a pillow to stifle her. He moved fast and accurately. The woman’s body threshed about in wild spasms under the covers. The springs creaked and groaned. Durell held her down until suffocation made her arc her body in one last, convulsive gesture, and then she passed out.

  They used the bedsheet to tie her, a pillow-slip to gag her. She was still alive.

  They moved back to the foot of the service stairs in the rear of the house.

  Seventeen minutes had gone by.

  The house was old and the stairs were wooden, with rubber treads tacked to each step. Durell went up first. He tested his weight on each tread, feeling the pressure of time slipping by. He sweated with anxiety. The first floor was reached. He rounded the landing and went on up again. Fritsch followed silently. He passed the landing on the second floor and started up to the bedroom level, just below the attic.

  It was taking too long. Time had almost run out.

  Footsteps suddenly moved across the floor above. Durell froze. The footsteps halted, moved again, halted once more.

  Durell waited. He heard Fritsch breathing below and behind him, on the third flight of stairs. Durell looked up, as if he could see through the solidity of the flooring into the attic rooms above, as if he could see the man and the bomb and the infinite destruction that waited there, only a potential at this moment, but able to change into a fury in a split second. What was it Barney Kels had said? You’ll never know it if you miss.

  They reached the last landing below the attic. The stairs going up were even narrower here. There was no chance for Durell and Fritsch to go up abreast. They halted, and Durell looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had passed. More than twenty. But the phone hadn’t started to ring.

  He looked up the narrow steps. The stairway ended in a small landing and a wooden door, and a thin slab of yellow light came from under the doorway. Was the door locked? Bolted? If he had to crash through it, could it be done, and if he could do it, would he have enough time?

  All at once he felt a crushing weight of indecision. It was too much to ask of a man. The lives of too many people were lost if he failed. He felt cold, and his hands shook, and he held on to the smooth bannister rail, squeezing the wood hard until his hands ached, and then the moment passed.

  The telephone rang.

  The shrilling sound was explosive.

  Fritsch gasped, lurched a step upward, bumped into Durell, and halted.

  The telephone rang again.

  There was no movement in Perez’ apartment.

  And again.

  Durell’s jaws ached. He felt an overwhelming impulse to drive up the steps anyway, slam through that doorway, using the sound of that bell to cover him. He forced it back. He would be heard. Perez sat with his hand on the switch. It wouldn’t work. He would never reach the top of the stairs.

  Once more the telephone rang.

  Something creaked up there. A chair was shoved back, scraping the bare wooden floor.

  Footsteps moved, paused, moved again.

  The telephone rang a last time. Wasn’t Perez going to answer it? There could be no rush up those steps if they didn’t have the slim margin given by those ten or more steps separating Perez from the bomb. But suppose Perez carried the detonating switch with him, trailing wires as he walked about? Durell’s throat was dry. He could have been wrong about everything. He could be forcing a madman to destruction.

  “Hello?"

  He heard Perez’ voice dimly through a roaring in his ears. At the same moment, Fritsch suddenly squeezed past him and lunged on up the stairs.

  Durell had no chance to grab at him, to speak. It was too late. Fritsch ran soundlessly, on stockinged feet, up the steps to the closed attic door. Durell plunged after him. There was a taste of bitter gall in his throat. Fritsch had planned this all along. Between Fritsch and Perez, there was really little difference right now. Both men had an uncontrollable urge toward self-destruction,

  There was no time to think about it. Fritsch’s powerful shoulders hit the attic door with a shattering crash.

  It burst inward.

  Durell surged up to the landing and looked beyond Fritsch into the room.

  Perez was at the wall telephone beside the rumpled bed. One hand held the phone. The other held a gun. The feeble yellow light made the disorder in the room seem unreal.

  Fritsch, for all his speed, did not shoot first. Perez’ gun roared, and Fritsch coughed and stumbled and fell. Durell had his own gun in hand. He fired over Fritsch’s falling body. Perez wheeled and staggered to the table.

  It was there. It looked obscene, smooth and shining and metallic, resting on the table.

  Perez was closer to it than Durell. The gaunt man lunged, hands clawing for the electrical contacts nearby.

  Durell shot to kill.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Durell stepped over Garry Fritsch. Fritsch was bleeding, and the blood made a scarlet puddle on the floor, soaking into the dusty pine boards. He ignored Garry. Perez lay on his stomach, his long arms and legs sprawled like broken pipe-stems, his body oddly deflated, empty in the dark suit.

  On the table was the egg.

  Durell didn’t touch anything. He felt a tremor go through him. He wanted to sit down and just go on breathing. He rubbed a hand across his mouth and looked at the bomb, at the wires connecting it to a portable battery on the floor, at the small switch plate screwed to the table top. He found a screwdriver among the tumbled blankets on the bed and went back to the table, still breathing awkwardly, and loosened the wire terminals.

  When the contacts fell away to the floor and the bomb was disconnected, Durell stood still again for a long moment.

  Silence closed in around him.

  He turned and looked at Fritsch and went to him and knelt beside him. “Garry?”

  Fritsch looked blind. “It’s all right, Sam.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “It was for you,” Fritsch whispered. His face was gray, but he smiled. It was a grimace of death. The blood was spreading on the floor under him. There was pain in his eyes, and also a tremendous, dawning relief. “How is the bomb?”

  “Harmless, now.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll get you an ambulance,” Durell said.

  “What for? I’ve bought it, Sam.”

  Durell asked again, “Why did you do it? Why go first?”

  “You’re good, Sam, good at the business . . . and I’m finished. I was finished when my ticker went bad . . . and you’d have reported me, and I’d be out of things for good. . . . I had the feeling that one of us . . . wouldn’t make it. I wanted the one to go down to be me. You’re still young. . . . You’re as good at the business as I ever was . . . you’ve got a lot of time to keep working at it yet.”

&
nbsp; Durell didn’t know what to say.

  When he spoke to Garry Fritsch again, the man didn’t answer. He was dead.

  He telephoned to Wittington. Barney Kels was still on the line. Barney had heard the shots, and his voice was a tinny yelling of Durell’s name when Durell picked up the dangling receiver. The telephone weighed enormously in his hand when he spoke into it.

  “Jesus. Oh, God,” Kels gasped. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s all over,” Durell said.

  “Look, the AEC men are here.”

  “Send them up,” Durell said.

  There was nothing in the newspapers about it. There never would be. Durell went uptown to K Section’s hotel and slept through the day and had dinner sent up and slept again.

  It was mid-morning when he awoke, and he knew he had rested enough. Barney Kels came in and told him about the Cortezes. They had already been aboard the General’s yacht, El Triunfo, when the Coast Guard cutter intercepted them off Sandy Hook. They were all in custody, except Justino, who had tried to escape and been killed. The General and Carlotta were awaiting trial under Grand Jury indictments for conspiracy to violate United States neutrality.

  Durell ordered breakfast sent up while he showered and shaved and Barney finished talking about the case. Wittington had already returned to Washington. While finishing his third cup of coffee, Durell telephoned General Dickinson McFee, in charge of K Section, and was told to return to his office whenever he was ready. Durell said he had one or two things to clear up first. He was given all the time he needed.

  It was an unusually warm day. Christmas decorations were going up in the shop windows on Fifth Avenue, and in the stores directly opposite his hotel window. Durell looked down at the crowded street and wondered why he felt haunted and troubled. Physically, he had recuperated from the things Justino had done to him. He thought of Carlotta Cortez, possessed by her lust for power; he thought of her in prison, awaiting trial. He felt nothing. He thought of Garry Fritsch, and he knew that this was one of his troubles. He would never forget Garry.

  If not for Fritsch, he himself would have taken Perez’

  bullet. It was as if Garry had known that more than one kind of death waited for them in that attic room.