Assignment - Lowlands

by Edward S. Aarons

  “What is it?” Durell asked her. “Doesn’t this godlike creature permit you to dine at the same table with him, Cassandra? Do you have to stand beside him like a faithful dog?”

  She flushed again. “I am not hungry.”

  “She is being punished,” von Uittal said calmly. “When one fails, one pays the penalty for failure.”

  “It wasn’t for lack of trial,” Durell said.

  The girl looked away. The general seemed unconcerned, although Erich made another threatening move, checked by von Uittal’s raised hand. “We will be patient, Erich. Americans pretend to be casual and humorous in the face of a desperate difficulty. Just how desperate Herr Durell’s situation is, will be seen. It depends on his cooperation, eh?” He turned back to Durell. “Your coagent, Piet Van Horn, apparently stumbled by pure luck on the bunker site, although I have searched for two weeks and have not been able to relocate it, thanks to changes in topography and the sea bottom in the past fifteen years. I did not expect to be confused by the North Sea tides, but—” Von Uittal shrugged. “There you are. I know Van Horn found the place, from his appearance in Doorn and his questioning of the fishermen’s families there, together with the local doctor. And there was the small Hals hanging in one of the cottages. I have it now, but there it was, and I recognized it. It was one that I collected myself and stored in the bunker. I bought it last night. Paid good guilders, cash, for it. The foolish woman did not know its value. She said her husband —one who died, you understand?—had brought it home a few days ago, before the dike was sabotaged. Which is another matter. That was puzzling, but it is explained now. I know who did it, and why it was done—to delay me, of course. But it won’t work.”

  “And Marius Wilde?” Durell asked suddenly. Nothing changed in the general’s face except that the icy eyes grew icier. “We have talked enough, I think. Cassandra knows that you got a map from Piet Van Horn. She did not manage to get it from you, and you told her it was mailed to England, and she was stupid enough to accept that story. I do not. I want the map, Herr Durell. I want it at once.”

  “I don’t have it with me.”

  “Then where is it?”

  Cassandra spoke in a thin voice. “What about Marius Wilde?” Her words were only a whisper, but her eyes were suddenly enormous in her lovely face. “What about Marius, Friedrich?”

  “Be still,” the general said.

  “I want to know.”

  “Do you? Do you really?” All at once the general’s voice lifted in suppressed rage. “I suppose you do, you bitch! You have bungled and blundered like a stupid woman at every turn! The maps you brought from military headquarters were all useless! ” The man abruptly lurched to his feet, almost upsetting the elaborate dining table, and opened a cabinet against the wall and began hurling out rolls of military and hydrographic charts that unfurled and rolled across the cabin deck. The general’s face was dark with anger as he swung to the blonde girl. His fist shook as he raised it. “All my work, and it is you who bungle it now! The maps you brought from Berlin are useless. And what you paid for them, selling yourself, is not my concern! You are only a whining, useless bitch, good for one purpose only! And then you claim to fall in love with an untermensch, a slave, such as Marius Wilde—a half breed, a distortion, a mixture of the lower orders, when you are my wife!”

  He slapped her. The blow rang like a pistol shot, and she fell sprawling to the floor. Her hair came undone and rippled in a heavy blonde screen across her bruised face. Durell took a step forward, and checked himself as Erich slammed the gun into his ribs. The atmosphere in the cabin vibrated with the general’s unnatural, unbalanced rage. Not a sound came from the girl. She stood up quietly, holding her cheek, and did not look at Durell.

  Durell said, “Cassandra, do you know the significance of the name that your husband gave you?” He watched her shake her head dumbly; her eyes beseeched him to be silent. But he went on. “Did you know that what the general really wants is a plague-virus culture that was developed by Nazi biochemists and medical people—a virus that can wipe out half the people on earth? He wants to find the laboratory again, not for the art treasures he stole and hid there, but to regain the virus and be in a position to bargain for power again. Didn’t you know that?”

  The girl watched with wide, dazed eyes. Neither the general nor Erich interrupted, to Durell’s surprise. Cassandra shook her head slowly.

  “No, I knew nothing of such a horrible thing.”

  “And he gave you the code name of the virus, Cassandra.”

  Von Uittal laughed. “I thought it quite fitting.” Cassandra said, “Is it true, Friedrich?”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  “It is the virus you are after?”

  “Why not? Our organization could come to light again, with such a weapon. We could sweep away all the stupidities of the past fifteen years and take our rightful place of power again. We could manipulate West against East for the greater glory and eventual domination of the New Reich.”

  “You are mad, Friedrich,” she whispered.

  “All great men seem mad, to the ignorant and the stupid,” he said easily. Then his manner changed abruptly again, charged with military precision. “Herr Durell, you have shocked my wife, and I have permitted you to do so, because she has been an extraordinary bungler and deserved some punishment. However, the amusement is now over. You will tell me where Van Horn’s map is, and what it shows upon it to indicate the location of the Cassandra bunker.” “But it’s under water now, anyway,” Durell said, “since the dike was sabotaged.”

  “The pumping goes on. It may be in reach again tomorrow. Will you tell me what I want to know?”

  “No.”

  “Do you understand that I can kill you here without fear of punishment? No one will know. You can die in agony, if I order it. Erich will be pleased, if you are obstinate.”

  “I don’t have the map.”

  “But you know where it is. Where is it?”

  “It wouldn’t tell you anything.”

  The general said impatiently, “Erich?”

  Erich said, “With pleasure, sir.”

  And so it began.

  He could have escaped it. Erich, after all, was not a professional. He made mistakes that could have been used to turn the tables in that glittering dining salon. The fat man was vicious and overly eager, and therefore he was careless. But Durell decided to wait him out. There was more to be learned here, and he was not ready yet to end the visit.

  The general held a Luger on him while Erich did his dirty work. Durell took Erich’s blows and efforts to paralyze him with pain and, although he scarcely enjoyed it, it was endurable. In Durell’s world, one had to learn the limitations of the body; you had to know your personal threshold of pain, your breaking point. It was a cardinal rule with all the field agents of K Section. When you fell into enemy hands, you had to be prepared for quick and painless death. In Durell’s case, he carried a poison capsule built into a molar by careful dental surgery. He carried death around with him like a ticking time bomb. It would not take too much to break the capsule—enough so it could not be done unconsciously, in sleep or in a drugged state; but it would be easy enough. You had to be willing to face this possibility, sooner or later; and it took a certain personality, lonely and self-sufficient, detached from the ordinary entanglements of family, friends and ambition, to be able to live with this.

  He had learned how to live with pain, control his body reflexes, and absorb punishment by accepting it and not fighting back when it was best not to do so. Erich was not a professional. Durell had been worried about this, because some of the Nazis were diabolically ingenious in devising torments for body and soul; but Erich was not one of them, fortunately. He could have done better.

  Even so, it was not easy. Questions alternated with blows, shouts and curses, with kicks and twists of limbs. Durell sweated it out. The cabin was blurred, the faces of the general and Erich and Cassandra were vague in the moments
when he could look around and breathe deeply in preparation for the next round.

  “Herr Durell, why are you so obstinate?” The general’s voice seemed to come from a vast distance. The scent of tobacco touched him and he saw that von Uittal stood at one of the cabin windows, lighting a thin cigar. The window was dark, and he realized with some surprise that night had come since his arrival on the yacht. “You may be sure that I and the people I represent are reasonable. After all, the virus does belong to us, by virtue of our discovery of this particular strain. Our technicians perfected it; we spent time and treasure upon its development. It belongs to us, and no one else.”

  “It should be destroyed,” Durell gasped.

  “One moment, Erich.” Von Uittal peered at Durell with sudden interest. “You were in contact with Piet Van Horn, who died of it?”

  “Yes. And I may now be a carrier, if that’s of any interest to you.”

  The general shook his head. “No, no, you cannot frighten me like that. The strain has a twenty-four-hour virulence only. Otherwise, how could our troops have been expected to occupy enemy territory that had been seeded with Cassandra? No, my friend, you are safe. And so are we. But you may die of Erich, you know.” The general considered the tip of his cigar. From somewhere out in the harbor came the sound of a boat engine, throbbing through the cool fog. The Valkyron rode easily at anchor, solid and magnificent. “Herr Durell, I am not noted for my patience. I do not believe that you mailed Piet’s map to England.

  Nor do I believe that it was a simple tourist map, and no more. I want the truth. I want the map. I have spent too much time in fruitless cruising of these waters, from Borkum to Terschelling, and I am without patience or pity. I leave you here with Erich. When you are ready to talk—or when you are dead—I shall come back.”

  Cassandra spoke suddenly, her face frightened. “No, Friedrich. Why didn’t you tell me about my name? Is it amusing to you that I innocently accepted a name synonymous with death?”

  “I thought it amusing, yes. But be quiet.”

  “I will not. You could have told me about the virus.” “It was not necessary to tell you anything. A woman’s mind is a treacherous and stupid thing, at best. Go to bed, Cassandra. I shall see you later.”

  “I have not dined yet,” she said.

  “And you won’t. You’ve done badly enough.”

  “Am I a child, to be sent to bed without supper?”

  “We will talk about it later.”

  “No, Friedrich. Now.” She looked defiant and frightened, all at once, as if surprised at her temerity in speaking up to him. “You are a monster, you know. You take as much pleasure in torturing me as you do with Durell.”

  “Do you deny you’ve behaved badly?”

  “I deny nothing.”

  “Ah. You were in love with Marius Wilde?”

  “Perhaps. I hadn’t thought much of it. He was pleasant to me. I did not know he was your enemy. I thought he was an Englishman, an engineer working on the dikes, and useful to us.”

  “So you went to bed with him,” von Uittal said, his voice trembling. “Bitch! Whore! To go to bed with an animal of the field, to couple with a dog, to fornicate with a beast—this is the same as giving yourself to Marius Wilde. A Pole, a slave-laborer, a—a—”

  His rage took possession of him and he struck her hard. This time the blonde girl, though staggered, did not fall. She pulled herself up straighter, defiant, her face white, her eyes blazing.

  “I will leave you, Friedrich! I will go to Marius now!” “Yes.” He laughed harshly. “Do that—into the grave.”

  “You will not hurt either of us.”

  Durell spoke sharply. “Cassandra, Marius is dead.”

  She stopped, frozen by the impact of his words. It was plain she had not heard about the murdered man on the dike. Her eyes widened in horror, and she swallowed and looked at Durell.

  “It is true?”

  “He was shot today while working on the dike. It looked like an accident, but there’s a bullet in his brain.” Durell turned to look beyond Erich’s fat bulk at the general. The general had lifted the Luger, and it was a dangerous moment. But he went on. “What happened, General von Uittal? Did you run into Marius accidentally, while probing around the dike? Did he recognize you as the Nazi in charge of the slave laborers, the prisoners of war lifted out of Buchenwald and sentenced to work on the Cassandra bunker?”

  Von Uittal nodded. “He was a madman when he recognized me. It was a mutually unpleasant surprise. He tried to kill me, and I shot him in self-defense.”

  “And his brother?”

  “I am not worried about his brother. He was not there, of course. Marius recognized me. He was shocked and startled. I suppose that after all these years, to come upon me in this same place, under somewhat similar circumstances—his resentment must have been enormous. He must have harbored longings for revenge all these years.” Von Uittal smiled grimly. “He was weeping with his fury when I killed him.”

  “But I don’t think you met him by accident,” Durell said. “You sought him out because Cassandra became friendly with him, isn’t that true? You went to the dike deliberately to kill Marius Wilde.”

  “Friedrich?” Cassandra whispered.

  Von Uittal turned to look at her. His smile was cold and cruel. He started to speak, and then there came a small crashing sound, not very loud or alarming, and Durell saw the glass of one of the salon windows blow in, crashing, and the general’s face changed in a strange fashion, suddenly blowing and swelling in distortion as his skull exploded outward.

  The sound of a heavy gun fired from the deck outside came an instant later.

  Thirteen

  The impact of a heavy-caliber bullet striking the back of a man’s head has a horrifying effect. Because of internal pressures in the cranium, fluids, brains, and bone are thrust forward into the face, distorting and swelling the features instantly into an ugly caricature of what the victim had looked like.

  Erich saw his master an instant before von Uittal fell, and he screamed like a woman. Cassandra stood frozen, smiling queerly. Durell used the moment to good advantage.

  Confused shouts and footsteps sounded on the fog-bound deck outside. Durell swung hard as Erich screamed, sank a hard left into the fat man’s belly, hit him again, caught the man’s gun as it fell, and slashed it across Erich’s face. Erich screamed again, from personal pain this time. Terror became painful agony under Durell’s hard, chopping blows. The man scrambled awkwardly aside, fell, and tried to get up again. Durell let him reach his feet, then hit him again in the stomach and straightened him with a slashing, numbing, side-handed chop that drove Erich in sprawling paralysis to the carpeted floor. He felt reluctant that it came so easily for Erich; it should have taken more time. But the score was now a little more even. Turning, within the same few seconds it took to dispose of Erich, he picked up the gun and thrust von Uittal’s Luger at the blonde girl.

  “Are you with me, Cassandra?”

  “But I—what happened?”

  “Will you come with me?”

  She seemed to be in a dream. “Yes. Yes, I want to get away. I—-I’ve had enough. I feel sick—”

  “Time later for such luxuries. Come on.”

  “But who was it?”

  “Brother Julian, ten to one. He found out what happened to Marius and came aboard to even the score. Now, run!”

  They scrambled out of the cabin and onto the dark, misty deck. A running sailor caromed into Durell. Durell tripped him, caught Cassandra’s hand, and turned toward the bow where someone had had the presence of mind to turn on one of the boat’s spotlights. The lights of Amschellig harbor all around them made a dim, pale curtain through the fog. Durell was aware of stiffness and bruises all over his body, but he did not permit his injuries to slow him down. He saw the probing finger of the spotlight sweep the oily water and pick up the white wake of a speedboat heading for shore. The blond man’s head visible behind the speedboat’s wheel cou
ld only be Julian Wilde. He had guessed correctly.

  “Is that the Valkyron’s boat?” he snapped to the girl. “No, ours must be at the ladder—”

  “Let’s go back astern, then.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Catch up to Julian, if we can.”

  They ran back along the deck to the ladder where they had first boarded the yacht. It was still lowered, and the launch Erich had used to bring them from shore was now tied there.

  “You first,” Durell told Cassandra.

  “I don’t think I— Is Friedrich really dead? Is he?”

  “He is. Hurry!”

  She went down the ladder quickly, her blonde hair swaying on her shoulders. Up forward, the spotlight still held the retreating motorboat in its grip. A rifle cracked from the bridge. Shouts and cries and questions rattled in the confusion aboard the yacht. No one knew what was happening. Then someone saw Durell and Cassandra going down the ladder and the spotlight swung blindingly to bathe them in its dazzling glare.

  “Halt! You, there, halt! Frau von Uittal, please—!” Durell aimed, squeezed the trigger, and shot out the spotlight. The darkness struck down like a falling curtain.

  Cassandra thumbed the starter button of the launch engine. It whined, reared, died. Durell pushed her aside and tried again. This time it roared loudly, coughed, and he eased out the choke until it settled down to a decisive rhythm. Cassandra scrambled forward and threw off the painter and they surged away from the yacht’s towering side.

  Julian Wilde’s boat was already out of sight, heading for the dim, iridescent line of lights on Amschellig’s docks. Somewhere on shore an alarm siren went off in response to the vague shots and confusion on the Valkyron. Other lights came popping on among the sloops and fishing boats in the fog-bound harbor. A general babble of shouted questions filled the dark evening.

  Durell paid no attention to these distractions as he headed for shore. He was not sure where Julian would land, but the only place to moor was near the Suzanne’s berth, and he headed that way.