Assignment - Treason

by Edward S. Aarons

  “And can you trust your people after this holocaust? Can you trust those you force into stealing our confidential items and shooting them across the sea to create tensions with the aim of inducing somebody, somewhere, to order a bomb dropped?”

  “I have them all on file.”

  “In your head?”

  “Right, right.”

  “You’re lying," Durell said. “Yon can’t remember that much.”

  Swayney looked angry. “Lying?”

  “There has to be concrete evidence. Photographs, pornography, perhaps, illicit affairs by which your people have been trapped into working for Q. You have photostats, affidavits, tucked away somewhere.”

  "Naturally."

  “Where, Burritt?”

  Swayney did not reply. He seemed to be listening to something beyond the closed office door. Durell listened, too. He did not hear anything. He kept his eye on Swayney’s gun. He did not underestimate Swayney. He knew that he had not disarmed the man with the talk he had evoked from him. Swayney would kill him. He had to. He felt the doors closing, one by one, all around him. There was no way out. Not once had the gun wavered from its point-blank aim, and if the shot was triggered, Swayney would become a hero.

  And somewhere in Europe another man would squeeze off a shot, and a high official would fall to an assassin’s bullet. Out of the ensuing charges of treachery, deceit, and plot would evolve an equation that spelled atomic war.

  Durell moved his hands slightly on the desk.

  “Don t," Swayney said. “Where is the file you recovered?”

  “Here,” Durell told him. “In my pocket.” ‘

  “Which pocket?”

  “Inside, left.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t move, Sam. Just don’t move.”

  Swayney left his position by the door and came around the desk. He put the gun to Durell’s head. The muzzle grated painfully against his scalp, just above his ear. He smelled the oil on the barrel, and the shave lotion that Swayney used, and the heat in the summer fabric of Swayney’s suit. It was all over. Only seconds were left. He had no doubt that Swayney would fire the moment he was sure he had the papers he wanted.

  “What will you do with the file?” Durell asked.

  His voice sounded strange in the silent office.

  “Send it over there,” Swayney said. “Let them know that Antonio works for us. Let them think we’re on a program of assassination. They’re as frightened of us as we are wary of them. There’s no trust or faith in them. Maybe they will welcome the excuse to try to bomb us.”

  “They won’t just try. They will."

  “All right, so they will, hey?”

  “And suppose you’re killed by one of the bombs, Burritt?”

  “It's not likely to happen.”

  “There’s no place you can hide from it. Don’t you know that?”

  Swayney said, “You’re making me nervous, Sam. Keep your hands as they are. Don‘t move a hair.” With a quick gesture, Swayney flipped open Durell’s coat, removed the gun Art Greenwald had given him, dropped it in the wastebasket, and took the Manila envelope as well. “It’s been opened,” Swayney said. “Have you checked inside?”

  “I haven’t had time. But it’s probably what you want.”

  Swayney put it in his pocket and retreated a. step. “Are you afraid now, Sam?"

  “Yes, I’m afraid. For the whole world.” Durell turned his head and looked at the small, fat man. He saw in Swayney’s face all the prejudice, all the narrow bigotry and fanatical ambition he had always fought against, Maybe Swayney would win the last battle, after all. Maybe this is the way the world ends, he thought—in the fat little hands of Burritt Swayney. He said. “Will you kill me here?”

  “Why not?”

  “It will raise some questions—why I came back, what I’m doing in Dickinson McFee’s office, at his desk, at this time of night. Why I risked capture to get in here, and how I managed to enter the building at all.”

  Swayney’s mouth dropped open. "What did you say?”

  “Think about it, Burritt.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “It was easy.”

  “You had an accomplice? Someone helped you get the guard out of the way!” Swayney’s voice lifted. “Who was it, Sam?”

  Durell shook his head. “You see how it is, Burritt? You won't be made safe simply by shooting me. You’ll have to go on shooting."

  “Was it Deirdre?"

  “She has no authority to order the guard away.”

  Swayney was sweating. “McFee? You got to him, convinced him you hadn‘t crossed him on your assignment?”

  “You‘ll have to find that out yourself.”

  “Answer me!" Swayney shouted.

  Durell laughed at him.

  And Swayney swung the gun in a raking blow across Durell’s face.

  Durell was waiting, hoping, ready.

  His arm came up, blocked the blow, caught the gun, and drove it down. It went off‘ with a violent crash. Wood splinters flew and a scar appeared on McFee’s desk. Swayney made a squalling sound, a. noise compounded of pain, anguish, and frustration. His pale eyes were incredulous as Durell came up out of the chair. Durell hit him, felt the crunch of breaking cartilage, hit him again. The gun fell to the floor. Swayney dodged back, squirmed, twisted, ran for the door. Durell lunged after him. Swayney yanked open the door, yelling for help. His voice echoed hysterically through the dark corridors of the building.

  Art Greenwald appeared at the end of the hall, Swayney ran toward him, screaming for Art to shoot Durell. Greenwald looked past him to Durell’s tall figure in the doorway. Durell nodded. Greenwald caught Swayney’s fat, flying form and bounced him off the wall.

  Swayney’s mouth hung open. Saliva dripped and drooled from his loose lips.

  Greenwald hit him once, hard, with finality. Swayney’s mouth closed and his eyes closed and he went down to the floor.

  chapter TWENTY-TWO

  DICKINSON McFee walked restlessly up and down, his normally tidy military figure in dishevelment. He said, “Damn it all, why didn’t you come to me straight od? Why chase all over the countryside? If I hadn’t dropped into Greenwalds place an hour ago, I’d never have stumbled on Corinne there and got the story from her. Chances are, I’d still be in the dark. Why not come to me, Sam?”

  A doctor was puttering with a cut on Durell’s face. His antiseptic swab stung and burned.

  “Would you have believed me, General?” Durell asked quietly.

  McFee halted as if struck. “Damn it, no.”

  “All right, then.”

  “But you took one hell of a chance!”

  “It was a gamble, but it had to work.” Durell shrugged. “Somebody was tapping your phone conversations with a bug in that electric clock. It was either Sidonie or Swayney. Have you found the recorder in Swayney’s office?”

  “Yes, we found it.”

  “And the documentary addenda to Swayney’s memory files?"

  “Tucked away under Q, in his personal office records. Of all the goddamn, brazen nerve!”

  McFee’s office was crowded. A teletype kept rattling in Sidonie’s office beyond the doorway, and men came and went irregularly. State was in a flap. The FBI was in consultation. The White House wanted to be kept informed. Durell sat back in his chair and let the doctor work on his face. He felt an exhaustion that weighed down every nerve and bone and muscle. He wanted to sleep. But he couldn't sleep.

  “Where is Swayney now?”

  “In custody. He’ll he held for the grand jury. Can’t be helped. The publicity will be hell.”

  “And what about our friend Antonio, over in Budapest?”

  McFee made a quick, hard grimace. “Shot and killed four hours ago while attempting to knock off the visiting dignitary from Moscow. There’s much emotional howling over there, but nothing to connect us with it. Antonio died instantly. No sweat now. A good man, bu
t unstable. There won’t be any kickback.”

  "I’m sorry for him,” Durell said. “And Quenton?”

  “In a hospital: Complete collapse, physically and mentally. Nothing there, either. His organization is done for. We’ve got Hackett salted away. There isn't anybody else important.” McFee pushed aside the fussy doctor and stood in front of Durell, hand thrust out. “Welcome back, Sam.”

  “You little son-of-a-bitch,” Durell said. He pushed back his ¢hair, stood up, and reached for his coat.

  McFee said. “Wait a minute.”

  “You put me through a grinder and then just say welcome back?”

  “What would you have me do?"

  "You could have believed me, you could have trusted me."

  ‘No. I couldn’t.”

  “All right, then. Go to hell.”

  He walked out, clad in bitterness.

  Nobody stopped him. McFee made a quick sign, and stared after him as his men made way for Durell, and Durell left the building walking alone.

  It was almost dawn, in that brief moment between starlight and the first delicate streak of gray in the east. The air was cool, the street glistened with dew that dripped from the sycamore trees. There was no traffic. His heels made hollow echoes on the wet brick sidewalk.

  He drew a deep breath, and another. There would be peace. Men were still wrapped in the shackles of war, still chained and trapped by suspicion and inherited hate and diverse fears. It could not be shaken off all at once. But one day, certainly not tomorrow or next month or next year, his job would become obsolete, as useless as that of a feudal squire assisting his liege lord with armor, gauntlets, and spear. Yet by his continued existence for today, the peace might gradually and painfully be secured. Accidents would happen. A man deranged by grief over the loss of his love, thousands of miles from this street and this city, could still trigger old hatreds and primitive fears in the beast who might manipulate the intricate electronics of an atomic bomb. A senile old man in terror for his hoard could be deluded into the belief that slaughter and destruction were all for the best. A frustrated man of brilliant intellect could induce the old man to act for him in a dream to gain power.

  Swayney’s nightmare had been no more impossible of achievement than the dreams of a recent paperhanger or the ambitions of a. Corsican artillerist, true. Swayney had not been alone in imagining himself to be unique, starred by destiny.

  But it was over, and he felt only a negative emptiness, and no sense of achievement.

  Because it would happen again.

  There would be other dangers, in other times.

  Durell came to a halt.

  A car was parked at the corner, and when he stopped on the sidewalk the door flew open and Deirdre came running toward him. crying his name.

  “Sam? What is it? Are you all right?”

  He looked at her. “It’s all over.”

  “But what’s wrong? Where are you going?”

  “I just resigned,” he told her.

  The street light looked dim and feeble now in the gray light of the new dawn. A cool breeze stirred the leaves of the sycamore trees, and they rustled and rattled over his head. The girl's eyes searched his face.

  “You’re angry because you were alone, because McFee didn’t believe you or trust you?”

  “Yes, I’m angry," Durell said. '

  “But What would you have done in McFee’s place?”

  He saw her beauty and her goodness and all the anxiety of her love for him.

  “McFee trusted me. He should have trusted me all the way.”

  “But he couldn’t," she argued. “And you couldn‘t ever leave your job, Sam. It’s part of you. And you didn’t answer my question; Given McFee’s job, would you have acted any differently?”

  He thought about it. He tried to imagine what he would do if his resignation went into effect. He saw a dreary wasteland ahead of him, a uselessness, a spectator’s life. His anger ebbed. He laughed at himself, at the moment’s pique, the anger he had felt.

  “Let’s go back, Sam,” Deirdre said.

  “Not yet.”

  “But you—”

  “There’s plenty of time,” he said. “I’ll see McFee later. I’m sure he’ll be waiting.”

  He took her arm and her fingers quickly locked in his and he turned her away. They Walked together, with no questions asked as to their destination.