Assignment - Treason

by Edward S. Aarons

  “We understand. Just what did Durell do?"

  “He has jeopardized the existence of an apparatus devoted to gathering for us material information, The apparatus consists of three men whose lives are now in imminent peril, if the documents Durell took from our files are not retrieved before they get abroad and into the wrong hands.”

  “And Durell has those documents?”

  “He took them.”

  “He has them now?”

  "I do not know.”

  “Why are you so certain, General, that this man is the guilty man?"

  “I am only reasonably certain. My section is not devoid of its own apparatus for surveillance of its components.”

  “So you suspect Durell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of treason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say it is more than suspicion?”

  “It is a ninety-per-cent certainty.”

  “If the people described in the missing dossiers are destroyed, if the men are executed or imprisoned, what damage will be done to our national security?”

  “Perhaps very little. Perhaps it may prove decisive. We do not know. Those men will not be easy to replace. It may take six months or a year. It may never be possible to set it up again. The information we miss may be unimportant—or vital. Our work is cumulative, gentlemen. As I said, no single item of fact can he analyzed apart from its place in the entire structure of the nation from which it comes. War is total, destruction is total; information must be as close to totality as it is humanly possible to come, in order to assure ourselves of a chance for survival.”

  Mouths tightened. Eyes glistened. Faceless men, weighing, judging. And condemning.

  Deirdre Padgett sat beside General McFee in a small, anonymous room in the undistinguished building Where the loyalty-board trial took place. Durell stood With his back to the door, his dark eyes concealing shock. They had been given a brief recess, and there were guards on the other side of the door, and probably microphones in this bare little room. But he was beyond caring.

  “Last chance, Sam,” McFee said quietly.

  Durell did not look at him. “Deirdre, did they call you back from New York?”

  “It was Sidonie,” she said, and the sound of her voice and the look of her and the feel of her presence in this room with his condemnation and shame made anguish rise in him. “She told me.”

  “You should never have come,” he said.

  “I had to. I wanted to.”

  He felt desperately weary. The hurt in her eyes was his hurt; the ugly thing that crawled behind the tremble of her mouth was an added knife twisting inside him. “It’s only a trick, Deirdre,” he said. “They want to make me break down and talk to you. As if I had anything to confess. They’re using you, don‘t you see?”

  “I don’t care. Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  She sat quietly, hands passively folded in her lap. It was a hot, sweltering day, yet she looked cool, with the freshness and immaculate sense of soap-selling cleanliness that he intimately remembered. She wore a white linen suit, and her long, firm-fleshed legs were crossed, and her hair was swept back like two delicate wings under a small flowered hat. Her gray eyes were fixed on him somberly, wide and enormous in her normally serene face. She wore net gloves and carried a red leather handbag, and her only accessory was a small golden lapel pin that he had given her one week end they had shared in New York. It had been in another time, another world.

  “Last chance,” McFee said again.

  “Please, Sam. Tell him the truth,” Deirdre said.

  “Don’t you think I’ve been telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. Make me believe it,” she said.

  “Do I have to convince you?”

  She looked at McFee.

  “May we be alone?”

  “No,” said McFee.

  “Please!”

  “No.”

  There was a silence that stung and burned. Durell looked at McFee and saw no understanding, no clemency, no benefit of doubt. He looked at Deirdre. Her dark-gray eyes were enormous, with something growing in them as she met his gaze. She was beautiful. He wanted to cross the room to her and kneel before her and beg for her trust in him. He could not do it. The thing in her was growing and hardening, almost as if she leaned physically toward McFee.

  Durell took a step toward the door. “Let’s go back and get it over with.”

  “Where are the files, Sam?” McFee asked.

  “I don’t know. Where is Corinne?”

  “No other answer for me?”

  “None.”

  Deirdre said, “Sam, darling, why? If you love me—”

  “Don’t talk to me of love,” he said harshly. “There’s a time and a place for everything. Go back to New York. Forget about me. I did what I had to do, and it’s over and done with. If I’m convicted at this phony trial, I go to prison for fifteen years. Will you wait for me?” he asked savagely. “Will you still love me then?”

  She was shocked, her face whitening as if he had slapped her. She started to speak, then pressed her lips firmly together. A veil seemed to drop between them. She stood up with McFee.

  "I’m sorry, General,” she said. “If I could talk to Sam alone . . ."

  McFee looked at Durell with bleak eyes. “I don’t believe you could sway him. He hoodwinked me, and he can lie to you equally as well. I’m sorry, too. We‘ll go back.”

  Durell’s mouth felt dry. “General . . .”

  McFee stood with his head cocked slightly to one side.

  “We made a deal, McFee.”

  “It’s off. I told you that.”

  “I get no help?”

  “Not without those files.”

  McFee was almost to the door. Durell crossed the room while he waited to one side, and when he was abreast of the General he turned, pivoting on one foot, and chopped without warning at McFee with the edge of his palm against the General’s neck. The blow was done quickly and expertly. It was completely decisive. Durell heard the girl gasp as McFee fell sidewise, eyes glazed and neural centers momentarily paralyzed. Durell hit McFee once more and McFee dropped. Durell caught him before his limp body thudded to the floor and lowered him without a sound.

  Deirdre shrank to one side, staring wide-eyed at him.

  “Sam . . .”

  “Be quiet,” he whispered harshly.

  Her face was White and shocked. Durell listened for sounds of alarm from the corridor outside. There were none. Kneeling, he felt for McFee’s pulse, flicked back an eyelid. It would be a few minutes before the General came to. The enormity of what he had done pressed up in him and he pushed it aside, thinking only of the moment, his mind jumping ahead only a step at a time. He looked at Deirdre again.

  “Trust me,” he whispered, straightening. “Please.”

  Her mouth shook. “Sam, they say you’ve been gambling, that you lost a lot of money, that you stole those things to pay off your debts. Is it true?”

  “Yes. True. But not the whole truth. Will you help me?"

  “I don’t—”

  He looked at her. In that moment he remembered how he had met her. She had good cause to know what it meant to be accused of treason; her brother had been similarly charged with betraying government secrets not long ago. He remembered how he had given her help against all of his training and instincts, believing in her as a fellow human in trouble and needing help. It seemed impossible that she could have forgotten this, or their love affair. He knew her intimately, every part of her. He loved her. He remembered her abandonment with him, the complete giving and sharing they had experienced.

  “Are you guilty, Sam?" she asked.

  “Would it make any difference?”

  “I don’t know. I feel relieved. Isn’t that strange? Now I think I understand why you acted toward me the way you did."

  There was no time to talk. He moved past her, sensing her per
fume, feeling the feather-light touch of her hand as she reached impulsively for him, then withdrew. He listened at the door again. No sound. He did not know this house, this building, or where it might be located in the city. There could be a whole corps of guards outside. What he was trying to do might be utterly futile and damning. But he had to do it.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “You’re going to escape?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  He opened the door.

  Immediately a tall, burly man standing outside in the empty corridor turned and stared at him with questioning eyes. Durell said quickly, “The General wants to see you.”

  He stepped back as if to return to the room. The guard hesitated, looked to the left, nodded to someone Durell could not see, and came forward. As he crossed the threshold, Durell hit him with all his strength, repeating the judo blow he had used on McFee. The man’s neck was thick and strong. A grunt came from him and he fell to his knees, shaking his head, mouth strained open. Tight cords of muscle stood out in his throat. Durell shut the door. He waited until the guard had struggled halfway up again, then caught him with his knee under the chin and sent him flying backward to fall across one of the oak chairs. The crash seemed enormously loud in the empty room. The man was finished. Durell went over his clothes quickly, found the service revolver in its holster, checked the cylinder, and straightened with the gun in his hand.

  Deirdre regarded him with Wide, shocked eyes.

  “Your turn now, Dee. Help me.”

  “Sam, I can’t—”

  “You go first."

  She bit her lip, then moved to the door and opened it and walked out into the corridor. Durell followed. There was a crop-headed man to the left, near an intersecting hallway. The corridor had plaster walls painted green, with a tiled floor. Other doors on either hand were closed and gave no hint as to their purpose. The second guard spoke to Deirdre. “Are you with the General, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” Deirdre said. “He’ll be right out.”

  The guard looked at Durell. “You going back to court?"

  “Yes,” Durell said. “I’m ready now.”

  “Where is Harry?”

  “Inside with the General.”

  It was easy, Durell thought later. The guard looked in the office doorway and Durell struck at him with the gun he had taken from the first man. In a moment, he closed the door of the small conference room and stood alone in the hall with Deirdre.

  She shrank away from him.

  “I didn’t know you could be so brutal," she whispered.

  “Efficient, rather.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Get out of here. Get away from that loyalty board.”

  “They‘ll hunt you down. You’ll never be free. You admit guilt by doing this, Sam. We’ll both be forced to live like hunted animals for the rest of our lives.”

  He was surprised. “You’re coming with me?”

  “I want to,” she said simply.

  “You can’t. I have to travel alone. But—thanks."

  Her smile was a ghost, a wraith, fleeting and evanescent on her pale face. “I don‘t care what you‘ve done, or why. I can’t just—”

  “Come on,” he interrupted. “We haven’t much time. Walk quietly with me and don’t talk. Walk as if we have someplace specific to go. Are you afraid?”

  “Not with you,” she said.

  They moved to the end of the corridor. Stairways with metal railings led down. They were on the third floor, and from up the stair well came the clatter of a lone typewriter in an office below. An elevator made a whining sound in the still, heavy heat. Deirdre’s high heels tapped on the steel treads with determination.

  They were in an office building, Durell guessed, of the sort that is leased quietly by the government for classified purposes. A fleeting image of the six faceless men who had judged him crossed his mind. There was still a residue of bitterness at the way McFee had deserted him, tossing him to the wolfish bigotry of the board and Quenton because their plan had failed. Well, he wouldn’t be the fall guy for McFee or anyone else. An escape had been planned for him, and since the arrangements had been canceled, he would take this way to accomplish what had to be done. He knew that once in jail, he was through.

  He paused on the landing above the street level. Deirdre halted a step above him, and he felt the slight pressure of her hand on his shoulder. He did not turn to look at her. He had changed. All his training of years past came to the surface now, and there was the deadly grace of a hunting animal in him, a sharpening of all his senses and a quickening of perception that made him at once dangerous, cunning, silent, and swift. He held the guard’s gun with apparent carelessness. Street sounds came to him. He smelled Deirdre’s fragrance along with the dust of the concrete walls of the stair well. How long before McFee or either guard revived? How long before a yell brought the house down?

  Two men were talking just inside the entrance to the building. Hot sunlight made a yellow slab on the floor below, and he could see their elongated shadows just beyond the foot of the steps. And still no alarm from above. How much time did he have? The loyalty board would reassemble in a few minutes. They had been reluctant to give McFee any time at all for private conversation with him. He based his moves on a margin of five minutes, not much more or less.

  “Sam, wait,” Deirdre whispered.

  He leaned forward, his hunter’s head alert, the gun tipped up a little.

  “Please don’t go through with this,” Deirdre whispered. “These men are your friends. You’ve worked with them. You can‘t use that gun."

  “I have no friends.” His voice carried only to the girl, and no farther. “You go down first, Dee.”

  “I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I can’t help you with any of this. It’s wrong. If you’re innocent—”

  He looked at her, his dark-blue eyes almost black with stifled fury. “I’m not innocent. Do you understand that now?”

  Although she did not move, he sensed the way she recoiled at his words. Her eyes were stricken, and he turned away. The two shadows on the sunlit floor were still below him.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Go first, Deirdre. Distract them.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Then you’re with McFee. That right?”

  “I want to be with you. But I can’t do this, Sam!”

  “All right. Stay here.”

  He went down the rest of the steps quickly and lightly, the gun dangling from his hand at his side. He took in the scene in the long, narrow lobby with one swift glance of comprehension. There were just the two men, standing ten feet inside the heavy glass doors. Hot sunlight made a glare on the busy street beyond. One of the men was Art Greenwald, short and burly, dark-haired, with thick brows over bright, witty eyes. He had worked with Art for several years; he had had dinner with Art and his wife, shared danger with him, spent time over drinks with him.

  His gun came up.

  He was halfway to the two men when Deirdre’s voice rang out behind him.

  “Sam, don’t!”

  Her cry of warning was like an accurately thrown knife, thudding into his back. The ultimate betrayal.

  chapter SEVEN

  ART GREENWALD looked at him for a moment of stunned lack of comprehension. The other man was someone Durell did not know, a lean military-looking man of middle age, with a hot flushed face in which the cheekbones stood out rubbed raw-red, either by the heat or by too much liquor. In the moment that Art hesitated, recognizing him, gathering in the meaning of Durell’s appearance with a gun in his hand, Durell saved himself.

  He shot Art neatly and accurately in the shoulder.

  The bullet struck no higher or lower than he intended. The impact jolted Greenwald back against the wall and he went half spinning, knees buckled, fingers clawing at the concrete to keep himself erect. On his face was a look of utter incredulity.

  The sound of the shot echoed in the bare lobby lik
e a pistol fired into a metal barrel.

  Durell jumped forward, hearing Deirdre call his name again. He did not look back. The second man with Greenwald was reaching clumsily into his pocket, his face red with hate and anger. Durell hit him across the cheek with the flat of his gun, and as he went down, he spun past him and stiff-armed the heavy swinging doors and ran out into the street.

  The heat and sunlight struck him, blinded him. He halted. A woman began to scream from inside the building. Not Deirdre. A man shouted hoarsely. There was some traffic on the street, and he saw a row of shops mixed with small, shabby office buildings, and he ran across the asphalt to the shade on the opposite pavement. A passer-by got in his way and he howled the man over, spun on his heel, and ducked into a haberdashery. The clerk looked up, startled, frozen behind the glass counter. The shop was air-conditioned. The clerk saw Durell’s gun and his gesture and pointed to the back door. Durell slammed through into a storeroom, a cluttered office, another doorway, an alley. He turned to the right, running hard through the smothering heat. At the mouth of the alley he put the gun away. The second street was wider, busier. A trolley came rocking along and he considered it, abandoned it, and ducked around it. There was a traffic cop at the corner. There was a sound of sirens behind him. The cop saw him running and blew a whistle. Durell twisted around the corner, dodged through a crowd of shoppers. A clock over a jewelry store read just noon. That was in his favor. Ahead were some government buildings, just beginning to disgorge their office workers for lunch. He ran that way, crossed another broad avenue, and slowed to a walk.

  He was drenched, soaked through with sweat. The hot summer air was like glue in his throat, his lungs. A police car slammed by, threading in and out of traffic. The voices of female government clerks and stenos filled the air with a birdlike chattering. He forced himself to walk more slowly. Only a few curious glances came his way. Another police car screamed by. At the following corner he paused and looked back. He saw no one chasing him on foot.

  He found a hack stand, gave the cabby a five-dollar bill for the privilege of having the cab unshared, and told the driver to take him to the Pentagon.