Assignment - Treason

by Edward S. Aarons

  “No.” He spoke from experience and knowledge. “There’s no place under the sun or sky or on land, no place at all, Corinne, that would be safe for us. Not for people like you and me. Not for people who have done what we’ve done.”

  She drew a little away from him, chilled, and hugged the towel around her as if suddenly aware of herself. She stared at the sea. He saw the silver shine of tears on her face. Her hair looked black in the moonlit pattern of light and shadow in the car. She bent forward and covered her face with her slim hands and wept silently.

  He let her weep. He did not touch her. He did not comfort her.

  There was loneliness in this small shadowed area of sand and sea. Danger lived in him and beside him, yet he felt detached and safe. How much time did he have? They were looking for him now. They would miss Hackett’s car, check the guards, and eventually come this way. There was no escape. He did not Want escape. All he wanted was a little time. A little of the truth.

  Corinne rubbed her eyes with a child’s gesture. “I’m sorry. You are very patient with me.”

  “You know why.”

  “You want the papers you lost?”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t have them, Sam. I never had them.”

  “This is not the time for lying,” he said.

  “I do not lie. I know how to lie; I admit that. I am not a very nice person. I have tried to be, since coming to this country, but they would not let me. But to you I want to be fine and good, and I won’t lie, Sam. After you took the envelope back from me last night, I never saw it again.”

  “Hackett says he doesn’t have it.”

  “I don’t understand."

  “The only reason they brought me here and are hunting for me right now—and maybe they want to kill me now—is because Hackett Wants that file. I don‘t have it. They don't have it. So it must be you.”

  “No,” she whispered. “Please believe me!”

  Anger surged in him. He wanted to slap the truth from her. He did not trust her. He turned, then, and looked at the thunderous surf, the glimmering line of the beach. The moon Was low in the west. The night was darker, cooler. The wind was thinly edged, blowing from the wild Atlantic. He fought with his anger and looked down at the girl and saw her face lifted in appeal.

  “Why did you telephone to me?” he asked.

  “I wanted to do something decent and help you, Sam. They want you, of course. They can offer you safety. Maybe even a trip abroad, to Europe, where you can lose yourself. I wanted to warn you not to trust them.”

  “Are you talking about Quenton?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “You work for him?"

  Another nod. She said, “It is a long story. Please sit down. Here, beside me. It is not pleasant to talk about. l never told anyone. But they found out about me and they will tell Colonel Gibney—Roger’s father—and they will see to it that Roger knows, too. Then my life will be over. I am tired of fighting like an animal for a little quiet time in which to live. Very tired. So I did what they asked of me.”

  She spoke without looking at him. Her voice was flattened, a monotone Without the inflection of emotion. He sat on the sand beside her. Salt spray stung his face. She hugged the towel around her and stared at the ocean.

  “Sometimes I think I should have died long ago,” she said. “Why do we struggle so hard to live? Why do we search so long for love? There was a time when I would have laughed at these questions, long ago, during the war. I was only fourteen, but I knew all about men, everything. I wanted life, and they wanted me, and I exchanged myself for what they could give me. Those were the Vichy days. I had no politics. It was not a question of being a patriot with the Maquis and learning enemy secrets while I was in bed with them. Life was quite elemental, actually. One fought and schemed for bread, for nylons, for cigarettes. And perhaps a kind word, even though it was spoken in German with a hidden sneer. I did not care. I lived through it.”

  Durell said, “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  “I want you to understand what I am, that is all.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Later, after the war, I was driven out. I went to Barcelona. I was a singer." Pride edged her voice for a moment. “Once I had an engagement for two Weeks in La Floridita, in Madrid. It was wonderful. I earned a good salary. I was respectable. Then people who knew me from Vichy days in Marseilles saw me and I was fired and a Spanish gentleman was kind to me and helped me. Then I met Roger Gibney.”

  “In Spain?”

  “He was working at the Air Force fields there. He was in Madrid on a holiday. There was something about him—something wonderful. Can you understand? I cannot explain it.”

  “You fell in love.”

  Her laughter was harsh. “Yes, imagine it! How ridiculous! I fell in love.”

  “Not ridiculous.”

  She looked down at the sand and whispered, “For me it was something wonderful and frightening and tragic.”

  “Did you tell him about yourself?”

  “A little of it. But I was too afraid.”

  “Did he understand?”

  “I think so. He was wonderful to me. I followed him to Berlin when he was transferred there.”

  “And your Spanish gentleman?”

  “I left him the day I met Roger.“ She shivered. “It is a dreary tale, is it not? An ugly history. Nothing that a respectable family like the Gibneys could accept.”

  “They don’t know about it?”

  “I hope not. When Roger was captured in East Berlin, I came over here. I could stand Europe no longer. I wanted to meet his parents and tell them Roger and I were in love, to comfort them and wait with them for his release. I found Sidonie, my cousin. She helped me get the job in K Section as a translator. I speak many West European languages. I should,” she said bitterly. “I was intimate with many of them."

  “But you also worked for the Q people," he said.

  “Yes. It was not long before Amos Hackett came to me. He took me to lunch and recited my history, every ugly page of it. It is amazing how much he knew. There were even some things I had forgotten. And he asked how it would go with me if the Gibneys learned all of that.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “I understood his kind of man at once. I knew there could be no pity in him. So I belonged to him, and my soul was no longer mine again.”

  “He made you spy for Q?”

  “He Wanted information. Most of it seemed unimportant. And he paid me. He paid me well."

  “You gave him classified information?”

  “There are many others working for him like me.”

  “Girls, being blackmailed?”

  “And men.”

  “They must have an extensive filing system of data on all of their employees, then.”

  “Yes, they have.”

  “Do you know where it's kept?”

  She shook her head. Her dark hair swung across her face. She leaned forward with her arms on her knees, and the moonlight made her exposed back look satin-smooth and warm.

  “I have looked,” she said. “They have photographs, affidavits, all sorts of things to prove what they know. I hoped I might find it somewhere and destroy it, and then be free again. But I will never find it. And I will never be free.” Suddenly she turned to him, the towel sliding to the dark sand between them. Her face was anguished, her voice a whimper. “Oh, Sam—help me, help me!"

  She came against him like a burrowing animal, her silken body shaking. Her teeth chattered again. He put his arm around her, pity moving him, and she flung herself against him in an agony that produced great wrenching movements of her arms and legs.

  “Love me,” she gasped. “I almost died tonight. I want to know that I’m still alive! I want to live. Love me!”

  She moved against him in great, Warm waves of twisting desire. He heard her quick, gasping breath as her hands sought him searchingly. The moon was only a dim glimmer on the landward horizon
. His feeling of isolation expanded until the cool sand was like an impervious stronghold protecting them from the moment when disaster might threaten again. He did not know how long they would he safe. For the moment he did not care.

  “Corinne . . .”

  She was sinuous, quick, adept. The soft curves of her body gleamed and undulated, now above him, now beside him, now beneath him. Her eyes were wide, staring up at the deep vault of the starry sky. The sound of the surf grew thunderous in his ears until it filled the universe. Her arms encompassed him in a tight, frantic grip.

  “Roger, darling,” she moaned. “Oh, Roger!"

  Gasping, she spent herself and was suddenly very still beside him, her long legs flexed, her head arched back, her tumultuous breathing slowed. He drew away from her and sat up.

  Corinne reached for the towel and wrapped herself carefully in it, sitting beside him. The beach on either hand was still deserted. She looked at the sea for a long moment.

  “So you still love Roger,” Durell said.

  “I am sorry. Yes.”

  “Don’t apologize for it. I’m glad.”

  “Are you? Thank you for pretending to be him.”

  He looked up and down the beach again. The cool wind had freshened. The grassy dunes moved, shifting in the uncertain light. Shadows swayed here and there. He wondered if they had been watched.

  “Then you work for Quenton’s spy organization just to help Roger,” he said. “Is that it?”

  “Q isn’t a spy outfit,” she said.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don't know. I don’t understand it.” She drew a deep breath. Her face was calm now, quiet and lovely in the dim starlight. She stared at the silver sea. “Quenton is not a traitor. The old man may seem to help those who are, but the face he presents to the public is the true one. Have you ever met him?”

  “No.”

  “He is a fanatically loyal American. He wants this country to be supreme. He is sincere about it. Believe me, I have met demagogues and men who live and breathe only for their political beliefs. Quenton is one of them."

  “But he seems ready to help me, a confessed traitor.”

  “I don’t understand his reasons. Just as he helps Gibney."

  “Who is the enemy contact with Gibney? Isn’t it Quenton?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Then who is putting pressure on Gibney?”

  “Quenton,” she said.

  “You’re contradicting yourself."

  “And you ask strange questions for one in your position.” She looked at him and her face had changed and there was a deep question in her wide eyes. She touched his face very gently, and then he felt the faint sting of her nails drawn across his cheek, like a warning. “Are you really a traitor, Sam? Did you really steal that information they want?”

  “I'm here because I was half promised a chance to get out of the country,” he said.

  “I wonder.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the sound of sand suddenly sliding and hissing down the dune behind them in a miniature avalanche. A man stood there, looking at them.

  “We have company,” Durell said.

  It was Hackett.

  chapter THIRTEEN

  HE DID NOT RUN. There was no place to go, and he did not want to run any more. He helped Corinne up, and the girl shrank beside him, watching Hackett climb down the dune. Her face was pale. Other men appeared on the beach, on the dune, on the jetty. All around them.

  “Durell!”

  He stood still. He did not reach for his gun.

  “Sam, be careful,” Corinne whispered.

  Hackett’s face was dark with fury as he strode up to them. Two men with rifles stood straddle-legged on the dune, covering him. Durell said, “Tell your trigger men to relax, Amos. I won't shoot back.”

  “Give me your gun,” Hackett snapped.

  Durell took the gun carefully from his pocket and handed it to Hackett. Hackett smiled twistedly. He weighed the gun for a moment and without Warning hit Durell in the face with it. Durell went down and heard Corinne’s scream and then heard her smothered yelp of pain as Hackett slapped her aside. He was on his feet, rising, when Hackett kicked him. He went down again. Anger struggled against a cold knowledge that resistance would be suicide. Hackett wanted him to fight back, to furnish an excuse to kill him. He rolled with the blows that followed, protecting himself when he could. A burly man dragged Corinne aside and flung her to the beach. Her towel was lost in the sand. Another man hauled Durell up, twisted an arm cruelly behind his back, and pushed him toward Hackett.

  “He’s not so tough," said the burly man.

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Hackett grated. He leaned forward and stared at Durell. Durell felt blood trickle down his cheek from a cut under his eye. “What kind of game do you think you’re playing with us?”

  “No game,” Durell said.

  “I told you to wait in the house.”

  “I wanted to talk to Corinne."

  “What about?”

  “The file.”

  “She doesn’t have it.” Hackett was contemptuous. “You cooked your goose, man."

  Durell’s face ached. He tasted blood in a corner of his mouth. A car came churning over the soft sand, and the headlights were momentarily garish on Corinne’s nudity as Hackett’s men flung her inside. Durell stood up. His breathing was light and easy. In the starlight, he saw Hackett looking at him with satisfaction. The man was balanced on his toes.

  “Come on, Durell,” Hackett said coaxingly. “You had your fun. Now give me a little trouble.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m going to kill you. Something I wanted to do the first time I saw you.”

  There was an ugly, jumpy, jittery anticipation in Hackett.

  His eyes flickered darkly. Durell wiped at the blood on his mouth with a forefinger. It could happen like this, he thought, on a lonely beach, under an empty sky, after a travesty of love. He looked at the men around him. They were stamped with death. There was silence from the car where they had taken Corinne.

  “Come on," Hackett said again. “You want it here, now?”

  Durell stood waiting.

  Hackett grinned. “That would be too easy.”

  There was movement to Durell‘s right, a quick nod from Hackett, and one of the guards hit Durell across the back with the barrel of his rifle. He throttled a scream between his teeth. Hate gorged him; he choked it down. Sand scraped the side of his face. Someone kicked him. The stars jolted from their courses, reeling. Hackett leaned over him.

  “Where is it, Durell? Where are those papers?”

  Durell leaped at him. . . .

  Corinne was screaming.

  Durell lay in darkness, and her screams came in short bursts of agony, filling every pocket of silence, every bleak corner of his mind. He floated on a sea of pain. The girl’s screams became a bubbling flood of invective, broken and breathless. Another scream, and quick, abrupt silence came.

  The darkness lay without and within. The room where they had taken him was small, and he did not remember too clearly the transition from beach to house. But he knew that this was Quenton’s place, and he was still on the island, and it was almost dawn. When he twisted his head, straining against the bonds that tied him, he saw the dim gray rectangle of an open window, and through the window came the muted hiss and crash of the surf and the forlorn cry of a gull. He was aware of all this with a part of his mind still detached from the pain Hackett had inflicted on him.

  The door opened, closed. He did not turn to look at Hackett.

  “The girl passed out again," Hackett said. “She’s tough.

  You like what we’re doing to her, Durell?”

  He did not answer.

  “You want us to keep on with it?"

  “You’ll kill her.”

  “Oh, no. But she won’t ever be pretty again. You wouldn’t want her again.”

  Durell said nothing.
>
  "It’s up to you, Durell.”

  "No"

  “Give us the file, that’s all."

  “No."

  “There‘s a plane coming at two o’clock this afternoon. A private amphibian. From here it flies to Andros Island, in the Bahamas. A Greek gentleman there is ready to put you onto the next leg. Then the Balkans. You’ll be all right over there. Safe, with no more problems."

  “To hell with you.”

  “Give me the file. Talk to me, Durell.”

  “I’ll talk to Quenton.”

  “No."

  “Quenton or nobody," Durell said.

  “You’ll talk to me, you stubborn Cajun bastard.”

  Pain.

  Laughter, hissing in the dawn gloom.

  You let the laughter come, breaking over you like a storm at sea, and then you welcome the dark silence that follows.

  Daylight brightened the room.

  He thought of escape. But he did not want to escape. Where would he go? This was where he wanted to be. This was where the answer could be found.

  But they’ll kill you, he thought.

  Not yet, he thought.

  It grew hot in the room as the sunlight struck into it. He was left alone for a long time. He did not hear Corinne screaming any more. He wanted to stop what they were doing to her, but he could not help her. Maybe she was dead. He considered this, and he considered that he, too, was going to die, if he was wrong. Hackett was clear about that. He concentrated on Hackett, on hatred, on a lust in him to meet Hackett again in another time, another place. The hatred gave him strength. He studied his surroundings.

  A small room, a small window, a solid paneled door. Cars came and went somewhere outside. He wondered about last night’s guests. Had any of them heard Corinne screaming? And where was Quenton? He hadn’t yet seen the man behind this voluptuous wealth and deliberate depravity.

  The answers he wanted were somewhere, if he could hold on.

  Hackett came in. He wore a singlet and slacks, and his arms were tough and wiry.

  “Well, Durell?”

  “Where is Quenton?”

  “He’ll see you when you talk.”

  “Does he know I’m here?”