Assignment - Budapest

by Edward S. Aarons

  “I’ll be all right,” Durell said. “What do you think Bela Korvuth is trying to cover with his sacrifice?”

  McFee said irritably: “Put out that damned cigarette, will you, Sam? It’s the refugees, of course. We’ve heard rumors about a number of their agents getting through on innocent covers. Maybe a dozen, in all. We’ve got to know who they are and where they are—every last one of them. It’s probably a highly specialized sabotage crew, ready to take up jobs and ordinary lives and officially vanish—but with the difference that these dozen or more people are going to be dedicated to the proposition that when a certain day comes, they can and must and will paralyze something vital to our national defense. We’re supposed to forget about that possibility while we chase after Korvuth and try to stop him from getting his announced victims—you, and Mr. X, whoever the poor devil may be. It’s damned clever of them, really. We can’t afford to ignore Korvuth’s being here. We’ve got to find him and stop him. There’s nothing small or unimportant about his mission here, and that’s what makes it even more important to find out what he’s been sent to cover up. A sort of doublethreat play, as I see it. The old one-two. It’s going to have to work out fast, before our dedicated friends get too well set in their cover personalities and too deep in the ground for us to dig them out in time.”

  “You think it may begin with Korvuth?” Durell asked. “Bela Korvuth’s aim is to lead us away from the infiltration of the crew that came in with the innocent refugees. He’ll certainly try to lead us down the primrose path into a blind alley. The sooner he’s stopped, the better. At the same time, Korvuth might possibly be a connecting link to the other apparatus. We can’t tell. It’s up to you to find out, Sam.”

  “Then I’d better get up there.”

  “You’ll work with Breagan in Jersey,” McFee said. “As long as the trail stays there, anyway. After that, you’re on your own. Call for help at Twenty Annapolis, if you need any. Holcomb will assist, if I’m not back from Europe yet. Try to keep your cover intact, Sam. We don’t know how much Korvuth really knows about you, but we’ve got to assume the worst and hope for the best, understand?”

  Durell nodded. He was suddenly impatient to be going. McFee had nothing more for him. He looked at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning.

  Chapter Three

  At twelve-thirty Durell met Matt Breagan in the kitchen of the Dunstermeir farm in New Jersey. Almost six hours had gone by since Bela Korvuth, Zoltan Ske and the woman known as Ilona had made their break from the refugee reception center at Kilmer. The perimeter of the search area had narrowed considerably, with no tangible results. A sense of discouragement and futility was plainly stamped on Breagan’s square, tired face.

  It was still snowing, and Durell was grateful for the tweed overcoat he had worn. He stood in the center of the shining, clean kitchen, his feet slightly apart. The Dunstermeirs, man and wife, stood in an attitude of patient waiting; their faces were like rock, expressionless, betraying no particular interest in Durell, who was not introduced by name.

  Breagan said, “So far, we haven’t spotted the truck or the hired hand, Endre, who drove off with Korvuth and his crew. It’s been snowing steadily, and by the time we got here, the tracks of the truck were pretty well covered. They seemed to turn out to the road, wich had been plowed just a few minutes before that time, and they were lost there.”

  “I’ll have a look later,” Durell said. “Right now I’m more interested in the hired hand. Endre Stryzyk, that’s his name?” “Yes,” Dunstermeir said.

  “How long have you had him with you?”

  “Over six months now. We took him from Kilmer. A fine boy. We had no suspicions of him at all.”

  “Do you mean he went with this man willingly?”

  “Endre seemed to know the man. It was almost as if he had been waiting for him.” Dunstermeir turned his thin gray head toward his wife as she made a small, almost unaudi-ble sound. The woman abruptly turned away toward the big iron and nickel stove. “Naturally, we had no suspicions,” the farmer went on. “You people are supposed to check the ones coming in now, not so? We accepted the fact that it was safe to employ him.”

  “And you don’t think so now?” Durell asked. Dunstermeir only shrugged.

  “What was your occupation in Germany before you came here?” Durell asked suddenly.

  The man’s mouth twitched. “I was—I was also a farmer.” “You don’t speak like one. Where did you learn English?” “Am I under suspicion, too?”

  “It is not impossible. Answer the question, please.”

  “I went to the University of Bonn. But I left Germany long before the war. Our two sons were forced to stay over there. They were killed in Normandy, finally.”

  “You should have suggested they were killed on the Eastern front, fighting Russians,” Durell said coldly.

  “But they were not killed there. The English killed them.” “And you were not a farmer then,” Durell stated flatly. “No. No, I was an engineer. Here, one does what one can.” “And what was Endre’s occupation before coming over?” “He was not one for speaking much about himself. He was young, you understand. About twenty-two or -three. One of the young freedom fighters, he claimed. He said he had no family, no occupation, except for having had odd jobs here and there in Budapest. But he was a hard worker.”

  “You speak of him as if he’s gone for good.”

  “We will not employ him again, if he comes back.”

  “Because he seemed to know Korvuth?”

  “Yes. Endre knew him.”

  “And he drove the truck willingly?”

  “Let us say that he seemed to be resigned to it.”

  “I’d like to look at the place where you kept the truck,” Durell said.

  Dunstermeir shrugged. “This side of the dairy barn.” Durell went out with Breagan. Breagan didn’t have much to say as they walked into the cutting sleet that slanted across the dooryard toward the big red barn. Beyond the immediate environs of farmhouse and outbuildings, the land reached in flat fields for half a mile toward a line of woods, black against the lowering gray sky. The coating of ice and snow had been thoroughly trampled by troopers’ feet and rutted by the police cars that had come and gone throughout the morning. Durell kept his annoyance about this to himself.

  There were about thirty Guernseys and a dozen Swiss Browns in the cattle stalls inside the barn. Durell looked for modern milking machines, but there were few of the conveniences and mechanical equipment used by most farmers. He stood in the warm, moist atmosphere of the barn, hearing the restless movements of the cows, checking with quick glances the equipment, the loft, the bales of hay towering high against the barn walls.

  “What bothers you, Breagan?” he asked quietly.

  “The same thing that troubles you, Sam. Dunstermeir was an engineer. Engineers believe in the efficiency of machinery.”

  “Maybe he’s having a hard time financially.”

  “Not in this day of credit and time payments,” Breagan said.

  Durell nodded. “What is he covering for?”

  “Bela Korvuth. Maybe others. Shall I pull him in?”

  “Not yet.” Durell frowned. “As long as we’ve got a peek at one cog of their apparatus, we know it’s there and we can handle it when we find it necessary. No use smashing it until we see where it leads. But it’s a start.”

  “Do you think Korvuth is still around?”

  “No. But Endre ought to be.”

  He walked through a doorway in a partition of the barn that led to a garage area and workshop. Two tractors stood here, on a concrete apron, and a 1949 Chevrolet sedan, probably Dunstermeir’s personal car. It was clean and polished, betraying the man’s innate efficiency. There was space for another vehicle, probably the missing stake-body truck. Durell lifted the wide overhead door and stepped outside, scanning the glitter of snow that covered the fields to his right. Faint imprints of tires, not completely filled in yet by the wind-dri
ven sleet, curved away in both directions from the apron.

  “Dunstermeir is watching from an upstairs window,” Breagan said.

  “I know.”

  “Why do you think Endre is still around?”

  Durell didn’t answer at once. He kept studying the tire prints—not those that led to the nearby highway, but the twin traces that curved away over the fields toward the woods.

  “If Dunstermeir is part of Korvuth’s apparatus,” he said, “then Endre is not. Otherwise, Dunstermeir wouldn’t have tried to make us suspicious of Endre. That means the boy is on our side. He recognized Korvuth as a bigwig in the AVH, tried to break for it, and had to be taken along. We’re probably much too late to help him, Matt.”

  Breagan looked troubled. “I should have thought of it.” “Let’s get your car,” Durell said.

  They drove away from the farmhouse, across the open field toward the woods. In places, the wind and sleet had obliterated all traces of the tire marks Durell followed. A wire fence helped guide him toward the distant woods, and as they drew nearer, a small barway became visible and a narrow lane opened, cutting through the maples and oaks that creaked under the weight of ice and snow. Here the tracks were more distinct, clearly those of a truck. There was a small wooden bridge over a frozen stream, a curve to the right, and they had found their objective.

  The truck stood in a small clearing, surrounded by scraggly cedars that cut it off from view of the farm and the highway. Durell got out and looked around. Other cars had been here— two, maybe three—and recently, since the snow had begun falling this morning. Breagan began to curse in a monotone. “They’ve got away.”

  Durell nodded. “Yes. And separately.”

  The lane they had followed kept going through the woods, probably to a secondary dirt road that in turn would open into the highway to New Brunswick. Their quarry had long since escaped the net that hundreds of men had been trying to draw tight since dawn.

  “I’d better pull Dunstermeir in,” Breagan said.

  “No. Let him roam free for a day or two. He might lead us to something. I’m worried about this Endre Stryzyk, though.” Durell walked back toward the wooden bridge. Breagan followed, moving stiffly with the cold. His lips were blue. Durell paid no attention to the icy wind as he climbed down the embankment and peered for a long time under the bridge where it crossed the frozen, ice-bound stream.

  “Here he is. The poor devil.”

  The body of a straw-haired young man lay huddled between the western piers of the bridge, crammed against the hard earthen embankment among stiff and brittle weeds. One foot had broken the ice in the stream and lay in the black, running water. It was a clumsy killing, and Durell wondered about it. No real attempt had been made to hide the body from even this cursory search. It was almost as if Bela Korvuth wanted his victim found, perhaps as a warning to other freedom fighters who had come here for refuge, perhaps as-a cover for his true assignment. The man was certainly not behaving as a carefully trained agent should; but this, according to McFee, was precisely the way he was supposed to act. Durell didn’t like it. He knew the way the Moscow school operated, and he could anticipate and counter the moves of their men almost by rote; but this was like operating against an erratic amateur whose blunders could not be anticipated and whose extravagantly careless moves could cause a backfire equally disastrous to himself. Uneasiness touched him for a moment and he straightened quickly, his eyes scanning the bleak wilderness of cedar woods and pin oaks. The wind made the brittle branches rattle overhead. Visibility was not very good in any direction. The sleet stung his face, narrowed his eyes. There was nothing to see. Bela Korvuth wasn’t here.

  Endre had been killed by a single bow that had broken his neck. His young face told Durell nothing. There was a pathetic, lonely quality about this ending, the way he had been abandoned here, carelessly and heartlessly, in this freezing dark space under an alien bridge. It was a long way from the street fighting in Budapest, a sad ending to the enthusiastic fighting this youth had engaged in for freedom. Durell knew it had not been necessary to kill the boy, even though Endre had undoubtedly recognized Korvuth from the AVH in Budapest. But maybe the boy had overheard Korvuth talking to Dunstermeir in a way that meant his elimination was necessary. Durell could not be sure of this, and he didn’t waste time in further speculation. Breagan could take care of the details necessary to cleaning up here.

  The trail at this spot was as cold as the dead man’s body.

  Chapter Four

  Durell had lunch in Trenton with Matt Breagan, and then boarded a train for New York. It was two o’clock when he sat waiting in a small, barren room, sparsely furnished, not far from Foley Square. He waited alone. There were only a desk, two oak chairs, and a long, battered library table pushed against the wall opposite the desk. The windows were covered with black shades, and the single light in the ceiling shed a garish blaze over the dull yellow walls. A steam radiator hissed and sputtered under the windows, and Durell stood near it, tall and dark, his eyes troubled.

  It had been necessary to make these arrangements because of Bela Korvuth. He did not want anyone in the New York office to know he was here, or what he was doing, because it was possible that Korvuth might anticipate this move.

  At ten minutes after two a guard brought in Stella Mami. The guard nodded to Durell, looked at Stella Mami, and closed the door to wait outside. Stella stood where she was, just one step inside the bleak little room.

  “So it is you,” she said quietly.

  “Hello, Stella.”

  “I would rather not be here.”

  “I'm sorry. It’s necessary.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Perhaps you do. Please sit down, Stella."

  He was shocked by the change in her, but he looked merely polite and solicitous as she seated herself. She wore a simple gray dress, and her long blonde hair had been cropped by the prison matron. There was only a touch of lipstick on her mouth. She wore no belt with her dress, and her shoes were simple, soft slippers with no metal on them at all. She had tried to kill herself a week after Durell had brought about her imprisonment, and since then she had been watched carefully.

  She had been the most beautiful woman Durell had ever known, and she had caused him to come perilously close to losing his life and everything dear to him, because of what she was, and because he believed she had loved him, in those days so many months ago, when he was tracing her down as the head of a coercion ring working to force refugees to go back behind the Iron Curtain. He did not underestimate her. She was brilliant and heartless, certainly a murderess, and one of the most devastating operators Durell had ever worked against. He respected her. Seeing her now, her face pale, her beauty faded by the months in prison, he still felt a quick little twist inside him, remembering a night they had spent together, making love, at a time when he had believed in her innocence and would have fought anything and anyone for her.

  She knew what he was thinking, and her smile was wry. “It is all over now, Sam, is it not?”

  “Yes. The old part of it. You and I both made our share of mistakes, Stella.”

  “No one is perfect, not even in our profession. We can never be friends again, can we? We were once lovers, but never friends. And you won, after all.”

  “Please sit down,” he said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Are you well?” he asked. “Are you being treated all right?”

  She smiled. “Please. Of course.”

  For one moment she lifted her gaze and he remembered the way her pale green eyes had moved him, long ago, the way he had wondered at the ivy facade of this once-beautiful woman. She had been a statue carved of cold marble that for a few hours, alone with him, had melted into a desperate and passionate woman. He forced himself to dismiss the images in his memory. He saw that she still smiled secretively as she sat down, folding her hands placidly in her lap. Her blonde hair had lost some of its luster and looked dull
now. He wondered how old she really was. She looked older than he had remembered. Older, and defeated.

  “I’m here because I need some help,” he began quietly. “Not from me. Your people have questioned me many times, as you probably know. I’ll never discuss anything with you. I do not want your pity, your favors, or your love. Some day we will win, and I will be set free. Then, perhaps, we will meet again. If you are still alive, Sam. I do not think you will be. A man in your job is not a good insurance risk, as they say. You have already lived past your time. It will not be long now. You look tired. One day you will make a slip, just one little error, and then it will all be over.”

  “Do you wish that for me?”

  “I don’t think about you any more.”

  “Your day may be a long time coming.”

  “I have patience,” she said.

  He lit a cigarette and handed it to her, careful not to let their fingers touch. She crossed her legs, tugged at the simple gray prison dress. She had lost weight, he noticed, and her cheeks were hollow and shadowed. Again, when she lifted her glance to meet his, he felt the impact of her enormous jade eyes. She smiled.

  “What sort of help do you need, Sam?”

  “It’s about Bela Korvuth,” he said bluntly. “I want to know all about him. Everything you can tell me. I won’t make any promises to you, Stella, you know better than that, but it could be easier for you to wait and be patient, if you helped me now. I could see to that.”

  “Bela?” she repeated.

  “He was your friend in Budapest, wasn’t he?”

  “My lover, you mean. If you know he was my friend, you know we shared an apartment for two years.” She smiled again, and he did not like it. “Yes, Bela was my lover. It was some years ago. It was not a good thing, really, considering that we each had our jobs to do, without thought for a personal life. And I was so ambitious. But what we had then, was good.”

  “But you were never really in love with him?”