Assignment - Lowlands

by Edward S. Aarons

  He nodded. “And surprise,” he said. “I’ll reach him underground.”

  “I don’t understand. How—”

  “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, try to make some arrangement with Wilde to take you two off the island.”

  “I’d rather not. I can guess what his terms will be.”

  “Is it better to drown?” he asked flatly. He looked at Cassandra. “I’ll take that waterproof torch on your diving outfit.” He had noticed the compact equipment belted to the woman’s rubber suit. Cassandra handed the light to him. It was small and square, and when he tested it, a narrow beam of light shone across the curving brick walls of the lighthouse. “Remember, Trinka. Don’t wait more than fifteen minutes, do you understand?”

  “I want to go with you,” she whispered.

  “You can’t. Watch Cassandra. She may be tricky.” Cassandra said grimly, “I won’t try anything. This one is too quick and handy with the knife.”

  Trinka blanched, then set her small mouth tightly. “Yes. I can kill, if I have to, with my bare hands. And I will, if something happens to Durell.”

  Twenty-three

  The trap door he had found earlier in the stone base of the lighthouse yielded without much difficulty. He squeezed through the silted opening and used Cassandra’s torch on the sea moss and weeds that grew up in his way, awaiting the return of the tide. He lowered himself down the mossy steps and looked back at Trinka’s face above him.

  “Will this take you to the bunker?” she asked.

  “I hope so. It’s our only chance.”

  “Be careful, Sam.”

  He nodded and went on, not looking back.

  Beyond the stairs there was less silt and sea growth to hinder him. He was in a brick-lined tunnel where the footing was slimy and treacherous, the air filled with the sharp odors of decay. He felt oppressed, as if he were in a dark trap from which there could be no escape. Soon enough, the surging tide would pour into these old bunkers through a hundred openings and when it did, the crushing tons of sea water would fill every crevice to prevent his escape.

  He moved on cautiously, through trailing sea growth and around a rusted coast-artillery cannon that was like some surrealistic representation encrusted with sea jewels of shells and barnacles. The arched and vaulted tunnels picked up the sound of the raging sea outside, and the dank air was filled with the muted tumult of the storm.

  This was a desperate and calculated risk, he knew. If he could slip behind Julian Wilde this way and take the man in the lab bunker by surprise, they might reach the boats in time to save themselves. There was no other choice of action. As for the risks he ran, death could come one way or another, but it was inevitable if he failed.

  Then he paused. There seemed to be no exit from the chamber he had just entered.

  The flashlight shone on brick and concrete walls ahead.

  Water dripped from the ceiling, and an eager trickle ran across the mossy floor. The room had been designed for storage, to judge from the fantastically barnacled racks and shelves all about. And he could find no door ahead into the next vault.

  Something clicked nearby, as of steel on stone.

  He snapped off the torch and darkness folded in. He might have been in a mine thousands of feet below the surface, for all the light evident. He could see nothing. And the black, inky air accented the trickling echoes of the encroaching sea water in the vaulted chamber.

  There came another click, from his right and overhead. He waited. Something scraped. The sea boomed beyond the bunker walls. The smell of brine and iodine and decayed vegetation was thicker. He tried the flashlight, turning it toward the sound. The old shelves and storage scaffolds glinted with crustacean growth. He walked around them to the wall beyond and saw the crevice. He instantly turned off the light.

  This time the darkness did not return completely.

  Dim radiance filtered through the silted opening. It wavered, faded, strengthened. He moved forward, splashing in the water that now ran in eager tongues across the bunker floor. He felt a chill of apprehension. This chamber was already below flood-tide level. How soon would the sea fill it? Perhaps his return route was already impassable.

  The light beyond the crevice faded again, but not before he saw that the tides had cracked and silted what had once been a concrete bulkhead doorway. Steps lifted beyond. The opening was narrowed by shell growth, and when he squeezed through his skin was painfully scraped. He went on sidewise, felt for a step, and suddenly got through.

  The stairs ahead went up toward the wavering light. Now he could hear Wilde’s footsteps and the man’s heavy, labored breathing as he shoved crates and furniture aside in his search for whatever he had come here for. For an instant the man’s shadow leaped, gargantuan and distorted, down the stairs toward him.

  The open bulkhead door ahead was one of the hermetically sealed doors to the Cassandra laboratory.

  Water suddenly sloshed around his feet and he looked back. Without his torch, which he had pocketed with the sample vial of the Cassandra virus he had taken earlier, there was little to see. But he heard a thunderous roar as if water had burst through from the rising sea, and a white turbulence spun and eddied across the floor behind him. A cold wind whipped by him and up the stone steps ahead.

  He plunged up with it.

  The water rose violently, dragging at his knees, his thighs. It came in a great tidal surge that drowned out all need for caution. He was half driven up the steps by the impact.

  When he was almost to the top, he saw the ponderous door being swung shut in his face.

  For an instant he faced the possibility of being caught here, left to drown in this cauldron of tidal flux. There was no hope of retreating. He had to go up.

  His shoulder slammed the closing door and drove it inward. There came a grunt of surprise from beyond. Durell fought free of the tide and drove on again. There was just enough space to tumble through into the storage room of the Cassandra bunker, and then Julian Wilde slammed shut the rubber-gasketed door against the crash of the impouring sea.

  “You?” the man gasped. “Where—”

  Durell kicked at the gasoline lantern on the stone floor and spun toward the startled blond man. All in an instant, he took in the purpose and achievements of the other. Stacked against the far wall were the crates of oil paintings that General von Uittal had tried to get. In addition, there were several more wooden boxes of test-tubes and vials. Julian Wilde held one of the boxes in both hands, staring in astonishment at Durell’s sudden appearance.

  The darkness blanketed them both,

  The tide in the chamber below made a dull, muffled pounding. Durell heard a careful scraping sound.

  “Wilde?” he called softly.

  “Don’t come near me,” the man replied in the dark. “I’ve got the virus culture in my hands. Unless you want me to smash it—”

  “It would get you, too.”

  “I’ve also got my gun.”

  Durell tried to remember if he had seen the weapon before he had kicked out the lantern light. It was not there. He said, “You’re lying. You left your gun at the top of the exit stairs.”

  “Even so.” Wilde’s voice was thick and disembodied in the sterile laboratory air. “What do you want, then?”

  “We want to get off the island.”

  “I could have killed you before, you know,” the man said.

  “Perhaps you should have.”

  “It’s not too late, chum. I just thought it would be more amusing if I left you and the Dutch copper girl to swim a bit before you bought it. After all, nobody invited you into this. You could have obeyed Flaas’ orders, eh? You could’ve gone back to Amsterdam.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The inspector himself. Apologized for your interference, he did. Of course, this was before those stupid Swiss decided I was a leper, or some such sort of beast.”

  “You are,” Durell said. “Nobody will have you. Were you planning to make a
run for it to England?”

  “When the weather smooths out a bit, sure. I’ll have Cassandra with me—the virus, I mean. She’ll buy me out of anything.” Wilde chuckled. “Now stand where you are, eh? I’m going to run for it, and it doesn’t matter any more if you or a million people die. They don’t concern me, you see. I’m going to get what I want, no matter what. Marius and I didn’t suffer all these years for nothing.”

  “Marius is dead—or have you forgotten?”

  “I don’t forget anything. Not ever. Goodbye, chum.” The last words were tighter and harsher, as if Wilde were suddenly holding his breath with a preparatory muscular spasm. Durell was ready when the light suddenly splashed across the chamber. He dived to the left and was not surprised by the roar of a gun in the narrow confines of the room. The eye of the flashlight was enormous, jerking to and fro. The room was crowded with tables, cabinets, crates of supplies. He could not see beyond the glaring eye of the torch. The gun smashed at him again, and something shattered overhead and sprinkled glass on the floor.

  “I’ll kill you now, Durell! And I’ll take the women with me.”

  “There isn’t time. The tide is too high already.”

  “Twenty more minutes. I checked it. Come on out from behind that table, eh? Make it easy for yourself. Didn’t think I had a hand gun, eh? Surprised you, I take it.”

  Durell gripped one of the table legs he crouched behind and tipped it over. It crashed toward the light, and he moved forward and to the left behind it. Wilde’s figure was enormous, powerful in the haze and glare. The light swung erratically and something went slashing across the floor with cold emphasis. It was sea water, pouring up the steps Durell had just used, slamming through the doorway he had kept Wilde from sealing.

  Wilde yelled and the light swung over the seething tongue of flood. Durell drove at him, chopped at the light, and sent it falling end over end into the water. Wilde slashed with the gun barrel and Durell felt pain explode above his ear. He staggered down to one knee in the current. Wilde wrenched back. Durell tried to get up and grab at Wilde again, but the water slowed him and Wilde escaped, stepping backward rapidly. The gun roared deafeningly. Durell picked up a box from one of the tables and threw it. It struck the flashlight on the floor and smashed it out.

  The darkness returned.

  Sound was magnified into devouring proportions. There was the crash of the sea and the whine of the wind through the bunker opening above; and the rushing thrust of the tidal current drove through the bunkers below. Above or below, the sea was coming for them, Durell thought. There was no escape.

  He listened to Wilde’s harsh breathing through the multitudinous noises. He thought he heard the man to the right of him. He tried to remember if Wilde still held the box of culture vials, but decided he must have had to put it down in order to handle both the flashlight and the gun. All right. But Wilde might have picked it up again. He listened. His life depended on what he heard, since every other sense was for the moment denied him.

  Something scraped ahead and above him.

  Alarm sent off panic reflexes inside him. Wilde was on the steps to the surface. There was another hermetical door there. If Wilde closed it on him, it would be like being sealed in a tomb.

  He plunged forward.

  The water was up to his knees. He reached the steps in the dark, stumbled, felt a sudden horror and panic as he remembered the sample vial of culture virus he had pocketed earlier. He paused, breathing carefully. It was still in his shirt pocket. He took it out, using only his sense of touch, and carefully lowered the slim ampoule into the water at his feet. Then he stepped ahead, free of that danger.

  Wilde’s footsteps scraped on stone above him. There was a dim illumination the next moment. Daylight, gray and gloomy from the stormy evening, seeped through the opening up there. As Wilde’s figure blocked out the light, Durell saw that Wilde held the case of virus cultures in both hands again.

  Both hands, Durell noted.

  He had lost the gun somewhere.

  Durell drove up the steps fast. Wilde turned and kicked, trying to shove him back down into the flooding bunker. He would not be stopped. When Wilde kicked at him again, Durell caught his ankle and hauled savagely down. Wilde yelled as he lost his footing and tumbled down the steps. Durell slammed a fist at the blur of his face, struck again, and Wilde tried to fight back and still cling to the box of vials. His face convulsed. His foot slipped and Durell struck again. Wilde fell back, arms flung wide. His eyes blazed with sudden terror as the box of virus cultures flew from his grip. It shattered on the stone steps and broke, spilling pale liquid that splashed on Wilde’s legs and arms. They both stood frozen.

  Gray light filtered down from above. Wilde drew in a shuddering breath and stared in disbelief at the wet stains on his skin.

  “The virus . . . you spread it. . . . My God!”

  Durell stood above him now. Their positions were reversed.

  Wilde faltered, “I’ll be infected—it’s all over—”

  Durell backed away up the stairs. He stood in the opening and looked down at the big man, who regarded him with stunned eyes that gazed into a dreadful infinity. “Help me, Durell. . . .”

  “Stay where you are,” Durell said harshly.

  Wilde’s words were ragged. “No, wait. I need a doctor—”

  “No doctor can help you now.”

  “Surely there must be something—”

  “It’s too late for you.”

  “For you, too, then!” Wilde shouted.

  “No. I’m leaving you here.”

  “You can’t!” Wilde screamed.

  Then Durell swung the heavy door shut on the bunker.

  Rain pelted his back as he leaned both arms upon the panel and pushed all his weight against it. He felt Wilde slam against the steel door like a ravening animal, again and again. The jolts of insanity hammered at him. Durell drew one deep breath after another. He had had to kill men before—but never like this. He did not know if his waning strength was equal to it. But it had to be done. Wilde was like the plague itself now, irrevocably destroyed by the very weapon with which he had threatened the world. His muffled screams came thinly through the door, mingled with the patter of rain and another sound—

  The sound of gushing, pouring water that tumbled in final fury into the underground chamber.

  Durell shoved harder against the door.

  It wa' like slamming shut the lid to Pandora’s box of evils spt loose upon the world.

  Rain pelted his back. His shoulders ached. Again he thrust back a blow from the other side of the door. He looked over his shoulder at what was left of the island. It had shriveled alarmingly. On either side, the furious combers, lashed by the North Sea gale, hammered in inevitable triumph against the remaining land. Nowhere was another island to be seen now. But the boats were still there, straining at anchor, dimly visible through the gloom.

  He thrust again at a ravening blow against the door.

  There came a muffled scream.

  Then he felt the smash of water against the inner side of the panel. He thought he heard Wilde cry out again, but it might have been the wind. Exhaustion dragged at him but he did not leave.

  A time passed.

  It might have been a minute, or perhaps ten. He was not sure. There was no more life inside the bunker.

  He stepped back.

  Nothing happened.

  He turned his face up to the pelting rain. It felt good on his body, crisp and clean and normal. The wind was cold, but he did not mind it.

  He sank to his knees and rested for another brief time until the growing darkness warned him. and then he got up and walked back to the lighthouse where Trinka and Cassandra waited for him to lead them back to the boats.

  Twenty-four

  The summer storm ended by morning. Then the sun shone, and everything along the shore of Friesland quickly returned to normal.

  Durell slept until noon. He had returned with Trinka and Cassand
ra to Amschellig at eight o’clock in the evening and had then spent three hours in the local police station with Inspector Flaas. It was difficult to convince the Hollander that the virus danger was over. In the morning, when the tide dropped, Flaas said he would go out in the police launch and see for himself.

  “Don’t open the bunker,” Durell warned him. “Wait a while.”

  “How long, mynheer?”

  “Let the sea sterilize the place. Wilde had enough virus culture with him to infect half of Europe.”

  “Perhaps it should not be opened at all, then.” Flaas sighed. “Perhaps we should let it be his tomb.”

  There were papers to sign, affidavits to dictate, phone calls and coded messages to be sent to London and to General McFee in Washington. By personal cable, Durell sent a brief message to Deirdre Padgett in Prince John, Maryland. Eventually, the Dutch Security people let him go back to the Gunderhof Hotel to rest and sleep.

  He awoke to the ringing of the telephone and profuse apologies from the desk clerk. It was the police again, the clerk said. But it turned out to be Trinka Van Horn.

  “Sam? Is that you?”

  “All of me,” he said. “How are you today, Trinka?”

  “I am better. I have not forgotten my shame at being so afraid, but I feel much better.”

  “And Jan?”

  “He is back on the Suzanne”

  “Good. Will I see you before I go back to Amsterdam?” She said in a strange voice, “Please come for lunch.

  Please. I must talk to you. It must not end like this. I understand how it was yesterday, on the island. You were very kind and wonderful. But I do want to see you once more.”

  “All right. In half an hour?”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He showered and dressed in a dark summer suit with a fresh white shirt and blue necktie. In the bathroom mirror, his face looked drawn and tired; his blue eyes were darkened almost to black. He looked older, he decided: the last survivor of a long list of men like John O’Keefe, who had lost the odds on. survival in the performance of duty, in giving service to the cause for which they worked. Perhaps there was a touch more of gray in his black hair, Durell thought. Or an added sorrow to carry with him from this day on.