Assignment - Amazon Queen

by Edward S. Aarons

  He meant it.

  Chapter Two

  It had begun over two weeks ago, in Washington, D.C.

  "Take the skipjack," McFee had said. "Norman Apple will go with you. He's with the DIA now. Defense Intelligence is in it, too. You know Apple, don't you?"

  "Yes, sir," Durell had said.

  "You don't like him?"

  "I didn't say that, sir."

  "You won't have to work with him. Just sail the boat down to George's Fields. You know the point there?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Just take a look at it. This afternoon. It's a nice day for sailing. We don't know who might be on surveillance down there, and this has to be kept to ourself, between us and Sugar Cube. The White House gave us specific orders on that. So play it innocently. Look and report."

  "What do I look for?" Durell had asked.

  "You won't miss it. It will be big enough."

  Durell paused. "I haven't renewed my annual contract, sir. I'm not sure I will, after what happened in Ceylon."

  "I wish you would forget all that," McFee told him. He brushed the air with the back of his small hand. "You still have two weeks before the contract runs out. Perhaps I can manage a bonus. You're living in Deirdre Padgett's house for the time being, aren't you?"

  "Yes. She's in Rome again."

  "Miss her?"

  "Yes, sir. Like my right arm."

  "I'll have her back for you when this is finished."

  "Is that a bribe, sir?"

  "Of course," McFee admitted. His gray eyes permitted a little amusement to show. "Mr. Apple is waiting for you at Prince John. At Deirdre's house. In an hour."

  "Yes, sir."

  Norman Apple was a ruddy-faced, ebullient man who knew nothing about sailing. He was no help with the skipjack. The converted Chesapeake Bay oyster boat leaped before the early spring wind, her huge sail bellying like a white wing. Apple considered the day's outing as a holiday. He wore a striped singlet and electric-blue belled stretch slacks, and had had the sense to change into sneakers. His face was open and candid, belying somewhat a keen intelligence and a high capacity for efficient action. His straw hair blew in the wind over the Chesapeake, and he fumbled happily with the lines of the skipjack under Durell's commands. The sun was warm, the water sparkled, and the low slopes of the Eastern Shore loomed green and inviting, with stretches of sandy beach, an occasional crowded marina, a chugging tug hauling a stream of barges upstream to Baltimore.

  "You have any idea what this is all about, Cajun?"

  "We'll see for ourselves," Durell said.

  "I wish I could have brought a gal or two along. This is great. Why didn't I ever take up sailing before?"

  Durell considered McFee's brief words. It was not often that he could detect tension in the little gray man. He thought he had sensed something in General Dickinson McFee's manner that wasn't quite normal. McFee was not an easy man to work for, and Durell had learned from several difficult experiences that nothing superseded the success of an assignment, neither life nor death or personal attachments, in McFee's mind.

  The skipjack heeled in the freshening breeze. A tanker came downstream from Annapolis. Durell stood with an easy balance at the wheel. He had worked hundreds of hours refurbishing the old vessel, scraping paint, replacing rigging, remodeling the oyster boat's hull into spacious, comfortable cabins below. He eyed the puffy white spring clouds, noted the chop of a cross-current as he watched the shore. Speedboats raised white plumes on the western side of the Bay, along a series of marshes that were havens for duck hunters during the season. The sun had laid a beneficent hand over the fields, woodlands, and small white towns along the shore. He filled his lungs with the salt air. He watched a school of fish splash, and considered the bounty of nature, the softness of the sky, the inestimable wealth of growing things—

  Until he rounded the skipjack toward the Eastern Shore and spotted the Coast Guard patrol vessel, apparently on routine duty, three miles from George's Fields.

  "Get the glasses. Norm," he said quietly.

  "Are we there already?"

  "In a few minutes."

  "What are those buoys for?"

  "It's apparently a restricted area," Durell said. •

  "Something new?"

  "Yes."

  A series of blasts from the patrol boat's horn warned them off. Durell obediently turned the wheel over and headed farther offshore. Slowly, as in a turning diorama, the area of George's Fields came into sight, dimly at this distance.

  The change was abrupt and shocking.

  "Got the camera. Norm?"

  "Right here."

  "We'll need the new GX5 telescopic lenses."

  "They're classified, Sam."

  "So are you. You were directed to bring them, weren't you?"

  "Yes, but we're not authorized—"

  "Do as I tell you." Despite himself, Durell caught a harsh note in his voice. Something prickled on the back of his neck. "Start taking high-intensity pictures, please."

  "What's wrong over there on shore?" Norman Apple's voice had changed, too. The DIA man's freckles stood out against a sudden pallor in his skin. "Oh, Jesus, what's happened to that place?"

  "McFee will tell us. I think he just sent us out here like this to impress us."

  "I'm impressed," Apple whispered. "Also, I don't mind admitting, more than a little scared."

  George's Fields formed an outward bulge in the shoreline, and normally the ten-square-mile area was a center for fruit growers, orchards, tidy white houses, and the neat little village center on the shore, with its pilings and docks and small boatyard doubling the productivity of some of the richest farmland in the area. Durell held the wheel steady with his thigh and took the glasses from Apple. The scene leaped into quick, sharp focus. It was as if a line had been drawn across the neck of the point, separating it from the main body of the land beyond.

  To the north and south of George's Fields, the farms and trees were lush with new spring growth, blowing in the light warm wind that came from the southwest across the Bay. Through the glasses, Durell could see that the mam road turned off the highway into George's Fields, and the police kept a roadblock there. Two other feeder roads were similarly blocked, and with the help of the lenses, he saw a number of men moving slowly along on foot patrol, cordoning off the entire point of land. All of the men were heavily armed. Some were in uniform, but most of them wore civilian clothes as they probed cautiously along on the green side of the barrier.

  Nothing grew on the other side, in George's Fields.

  Nothing moved.

  There were no blossoms on the fruit trees.

  There was no sign of life in the small village that nestled in its cove beside the blue shore of the Chesapeake.

  There were no new leaves on the trees.

  Everything was brown, desolate, shriveling, dying.

  "How—how many people in George's Fields, Sam?" Apple whispered.

  "About five hundred, I believe."

  "Are they all dead?"

  "I think they must have been evacuated. But maybe they're dead, yes." He scanned the area further from the deck of the heeling skipjack. The wheel pushed anxiously against his thigh as the spring wind freshened. "No, there are some cattle. No calves, though. Some horses over there, near a paddock fence. No foals. It's as if—"

  "Oh, Jesus," Apple said again.

  "Yes. The whole area has been sterilized."

  "Sam—"

  “I don't know why or how," Durell said.

  "You think it might have been an accident—with one of our own devices?"

  "Sugar Cube ordered a ban on all CBW warfare material. Most of the stockpiles, maybe all, have long been disposed of in the Atlantic. No chemical, biological, bacterial warfare equipment has been permitted, by directives from the White House."

  Apple whispered again, "But maybe an accident—"

  "I don't think so."

  "It hasn't been in the press, on the radio, or on TV. Wher
e are all the George's Fields people being held?"

  "McFee will tell us."

  "But if it wasn't an accident, due to our own stuff—"

  "That's right."

  "—then it was a—a sort of sample of something from someone, somebody else."

  "A demonstration," Durell said. "A threat." He told Apple to take more pictures while he took a long last look at the desolate fields, the trees that bore no blossoms, the grass that had not seeded itself. Inwardly, he suddenly shivered. It was something new. Not immediate death to living things. Perhaps something far worse. No growth, no calves, no foals, no fruit. And no babies born. His voice was hoarse as he said, "Are you finished. Norm?"

  "We don't need the pictures," Apple said. His words were peculiarly flat. "Nobody could forget this, anyway. And besides, we seem to have enough people in charge over there on the land. I feel sick. Could I be seasick, Cajun?"

  "No."

  Durell turned the bow of the skipjack into the wind, let the sail flap, then turned on a direct tack back across the Chesapeake toward Prince John, on the green, living shore opposite.

  A small plane droned by, high overhead in the pale, springtime sky. It followed their same course.

  2

  Deirdre Padgett's house in Prince John was an old rose-brick Colonial set back on a wide lawn from the shore, under big old elms, oaks and sycamore trees. There was a small landing and a gray boatshed down by the water, and a brick path led up to the inviting white doorway. Durell had been living here for the past two weeks, while Deirdre was in Europe. He'd been waiting for his new contract and a new assignment. The place was home to him, the only true home he'd ever known since his youth in the bayous aboard the hulk of the old Trois Belles, with his grandpa Jonathan. But anywhere with Deirdre was home, he told himself. There was a serenity about the gentle house that echoed the peace and love he had found in Deirdre. He had a momentary ache for her, wishing for a glimpse of her dark coppery hair, her oval face, her soft mouth and quiet voice, her rich woman's body that he knew so well. The ache for her became a sudden pain, echoing the memory of what he had just seen. He kept his face impassive as he tied up the skipjack to the little dock. From behind the boatshed, he heard Norman Apple vomiting.

  Three men in dark suits, white shirts, and dark neckties, with shoes polished to a high gloss that reflected the sunlight, came down the walk from Deirdre's house. One of them Durell recognized as Homer Carboyd, one of the President's most confidential advisers. He was a stocky, barrel-shaped man with florid face and a thick shock of pure white hair. His angry blue eyes were set deep under heavy, bristly brows.

  The second man was from State, Kevin Kendall, one of those rare, dedicated, intelligent men whose blunt brilliance kept him from the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, but whose incisive mind was always respected, despite the sneers of those diplomats who deplored Kevin's lack of Ivy League background.

  The third man was General Dickinson McFee,-whose small stature was deceptive. There was an aura about McFee that made him seem bigger than his companions. He was all in gray, as usual, and he swung his blackthorn walking stick with no trace of impatience. That stick, Durell knew, was loaded with every lethal protective and aggressive personal gadget that the lab boys could devise in the basement of K Section's headquarters at No. 20 Annapolis Street. It made Durell a bit nervous when McFee pointed the stick at him.

  "Ah, Samuel. Did you have a good look?"

  "Yes, sir"

  "Where is Apple?"

  "He'll be along in a minute."

  "Yes. I hear him. Well, there's no time for delay. We've set things up in the living room."

  "What things, sir?" Durell asked.

  Homer Carboyd made a grumbling sound. "Let me brief him, Dickinson."

  Durell looked at Kevin Kendall, whose fifty-odd years looked fortyish. Kendall smiled faintly. His dark brown eyes measured Durell like a camera, weighing, judging, deciding him, all in one swift, comprehensive glance. His melodious voice still held a trace of Boston Irish—another feature that his more elegant coworkers at State often deplored.

  "You understood what you saw at George's Fields?" Kendall asked.

  "Part of it, Mr. Kendall."

  "Good. General McFee places great faith in you— much more than anyone at Sugar Cube, Treasury or State. I think McFee is correct in his analysis. Sugar Cube considered sending an army, virtually. McFee insists that one man, or a small team of men, would do. Come along, Mr. Durell."

  Durell paused. "An army?"

  "Overreaction. It's a violent world." Kevin Kendall waved a blunt, disparaging hand. "I spoke figuratively."

  Two long black limousines were parked on the shell driveway in front of the columned entrance to Deirdre's pink-brick house. The town of Prince John, a mile away, slumbered in the warm sunlight. A cardinal screeched in a

  budding maple tree. Squirrels chattered at him. Norman Apple, appearing with a pale face and mumbling apologies, was delegated to watch the two official cars.

  A chart on a tripod, covered with a sheet of blue cloth, had been set up on the old oriental rug in the living room. The three men had made themselves at home in Deirdre's place. They had helped themselves to drinks from the bar, moved the shining Chippendale table into the area of the bow window that looked out on the clipped lawn and the little beach and the bright expanse of the Bay. The smell of cigar smoke from Homer Carboyd's eternal stogie—actually, a Havana cigar imported from a London tobacconist, much to the President's private annoyance—clung heavily to the light, figured draperies. Durell felt a brief touch of resentment at the way these men had intruded themselves into this quiet, calm house where he and Deirdre had spent so many highly personal and intimate days together.

  As if aware of his thoughts, McFee said, "I spoke to Deirdre in Rome, Samuel, asking her permission. She sends you her love and tells you to be careful."

  "I think I should be, in this company." Durell smiled. The other men were too grim, he thought. Too nervous. Their tension made the atmosphere crackle. It was as if they had replaced all the glory of the growing springtime outside with a darkness, a gloom that held in its dark cupped hands an omen and a foreboding.

  "Samuel?" McFee said quietly.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Before we discuss the problem of George's Fields with you, you must agree to accept the assignment. I admit this. is a bit unusual and irregular. But the problem we have here is under the direct supervision of Sugar Cube." McFee nodded slightly to the stocky Homer Carboyd. "If you do not accept these terms here and now, we must place you in temporary confinement until the matter is resolved."

  "Arrest me?" Durell said. "On what grounds?"

  "Call it national security," Carboyd grunted. "Are you going to quibble about it? McFee says you aren't that kind.

  "I'm not so sure." Carboyd swung heavily to McFee. "I'm not sure at all but what the President isn't right about all this. It's not a job for one man or half a dozen men. We need every possible agency on the job. And we need a man we can trust, a man who can be counted on to insure the safety of unlimited funds." Carboyd glared at Durell. "I mean that literally. Unlimited funds."

  Kendall said in his gentle Boston voice. "The instructions are clear, Homer. No more than half a dozen men." He turned his slender body to Durell. "Mr. Carboyd is talking about a truly unlimited amount of money. Hundreds of millions. Perhaps more. And your ability to stay alive. And at the end, to trade accurately, shrewdly, perhaps ruthlessly, for what has been offered to us."

  "Tell me what it's all about," Durell said flatly. He sensed tension and danger in the room, directly not merely against himself, but against the whole nation. Perhaps the world. "Tell me, and then I'll decide whether to do it or go into custody."

  "Quite sensible," Kendall said blandly.

  Homer Carboyd relit his Cuban cigar. "All right," he snapped between his teeth. "Show him."

  McFee walked to the chart on its stand and lifted the blue cloth that hid its surfac
e. It was a map of the world. It did not seem particularly significant. Then he crossed the living room and scanned it more closely. He stared at it for only a moment; but everything imprinted on the chart would stay in his memory.

  He touched a point on the map. "Is that George's Fields?"

  "Yuh," Carboyd said. "You want a drink, Durell?"

  "Not yet."

  "Pour him one, Kendall. He'll need it."

  Durell touched another point on the map. "And this, in the Soviet Union?"

  Carboyd said, "A collective farm, Drashnaya Kolvetzniya. Fifty miles from the Kremlin. The other red dots— the one in Red China, for example, is a commune about forty kilometers from Peking, one of their showcase combination farm and industrial-factory units. Shantze, I think it's named. You'll note other places, one in just about every large nation of the world. Plenty in Western Europe —England, West Germany, France. One in Israel, a kibbutz not far from Tel Aviv-Yafo. One in Egypt, too. A couple in Africa—the one in Pakuru, for instance. McFee tells me you did a nice job there, not long ago."

  "The niceness depends on your viewpoint. Prince Tim Atimboku was and still is a son of a bitch," Durell said. "I assume that all these places are in the same condition as George's Fields?"

  "You assume correctly."

  "And they all went sour simultaneously?"

  "Just about."

  "Is it a plague?"

  "No."

  "A biological warfare mishap?"

  "No. You know it couldn't be. Not in all those places at once."

  "Has George's Fields been analyzed?" Durell asked.

  "The works. We've given the people there biological, physiological, X-ray, EKG, blood tests, sera—everything. There are no results except that the women haven't ovulated and the specimens of semen from the mature males are all negative." Carboyd's voice rasped. "We have biologists checking the plant and animal life in the whole area. For the time being, we've put the inhabitants of George's Fields incommunicado—a camp out West. So far, we've kept it from the press. But that can't succeed forever."

  "When did this first begin?"