Assignment - Mara Tirana

by Edward S. Aarons

  He saw Deirdre, and any doubts he had about coming here were swept away.

  The evening rain that fell on the Kartner Ring outside the hotel windows made a dimness in here, although through the dusky window he could see the wide, busy avenue that faced the Opera House. Deirdre was turned to face him, obviously waiting. For a moment he thought he saw no difference in the objective way she looked at him from the manner in which the lumpy blonde girl had raised her eyes to consider him. Then she smiled, and one slim, gloved hand gestured involuntarily, lifting slightly from her glass of Heuriger wine.

  He walked over to her table. “Hello, Dee,” he said.

  “Sam.” She nodded quietly.

  “May I sit down?”

  “Of course.” The waiter bustled about as he pulled out a chair beside her. They smiled awkwardly at each other, and Deirdre touched his hand. “It’s good to see you, Sam. You’ve changed a little.”

  “You look wonderful.”

  “It’s been a long time. One year, one month, and four days.” She smiled again. “You see, I could never be anything but honest with you, Sam, even if it means giving away all my secrets. Which I’ve always done with you, of course.”

  She was more beautiful than ever, Durell thought. Slim and dark-haired, with an oval face and a carriage that filled the softly-lighted room with her presence. Her large gray eyes were solemn, and her smile was only on her soft pink lips. The corners of her mouth quivered slightly, and she sipped her wine. She wore a dark traveling suit, a small, winter-white hat, white gloves. There were faint shadows under her eyes. Looking at her, Durell felt incredulous at the thought that he had possessed her many times. He felt, as often happened, as if he had just met her, and was full of surprise at her beauty, always renewed each time he saw her again.

  He touched her hand. “Deirdre, you know why I came here, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Harry Hammett told me, a few minutes ago. But there’s nothing to worry about; I’m perfectly all right here. It’s sweet of you to be concerned, after all this time, and after—after everything.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “There isn’t any other way to talk, and if I don’t, I'll break down and cry for all the things we’ve lost. And I haven’t wept girlish tears for a long time, Sam. I promised myself I never would again. What’s lost is lost, for always.”

  For a moment he said nothing. Her long black hair was smoothly groomed, done in a French knot at the nape of her neck, and it would have looked severe on any other woman but Deirdre. He felt an ache for her that had always been reserved for her alone.

  “Dee, I want you to go back home,” he said finally,, “No, you have no right to ask it of me, Sam.”

  “But you can’t do any good here, you know.”

  “I want to be as close to Adam as possible. That’s all I can do, but it’s necessary. Don’t you understand?”

  “You’ll only make things more difficult.” he said. “Getting Adam out is not your job,” she objected. “You wouldn’t want it, anyway. It would put you in a difficult position—considering, I mean, the way things have changed between us. You’d be rescuing him for me, you see.”

  “Wouldn’t you trust me to do that, Dee?”

  Her gray eyes were level. “Of course, Sam. You’ve always been honest. I know you would do everything possible to bring Adam back, even at the cost of your own life. He needs help. According to Harry Hammett’s information, he’s been badly hurt. Call it an exaggerated sense of loyalty, if you will, but Adam is the sort of man who needs me much more than you ever did, Sam.”

  “That isn’t love, though—needing someone, or standing by because someone else needs you. It’s not mature, it—”

  “Don’t, Sam. We all want to be needed. Women, anyway.”

  He spoke with a touch of anger. “Adam Stepanic is either a man, able to stand on his own two feet in an adult world, or he’s a boy. And you’re not the woman for a boy, Deirdre.”

  “Did you ever truly need me, Sam?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Once, perhaps—in the beginning—”

  “I still do. But not in the way you say Adam depends on you—”

  “Yes, you can live and work without me, while I’m alone and can only wait and hope for you to come back.”

  “I can’t change that, Dee.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. About Adam, though—Harry says there isn’t much time. But there is nothing you can do. Harry Hammett has the assignment, and he’ll take care of it.”

  “I hope so,” Durell said.

  “Harry knows his job. Perhaps not as you do, and perhaps he isn’t as devoted as you are. But I feel sure he’ll bring Adam back safely.” She paused. “I’ll only stay until Harry leaves. He’s going tonight.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Just now, yes.”

  Durell sat back. The waiter hovered. He ordered bourbon, to be rid of the man, and when he looked up he saw the blonde woman who had trailed him from Paris and Geneva. She had ordered another drink, and as he watched, she drank it quickly, like a man, and stood up and left, in her tweed suit and heavy walking shoes. Her leather handbag was big enough, he thought, to hold any kind of a gun. He waited until she left the bar, and he listened to a waltz from a string quartet in the hotel dining room, and then he turned back to Deirdre.

  “Tell me about Adam,” he said quietly.

  “What do you want to know? Are you asking if I love him?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don't know. Not now. Not with you here, Sam. Oh, I’m a fool,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything, really. Not about Adam or myself or about you, darling.” She paused. “I’m sure Adam loves me, though.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  She drew a soft, deep breath. “Don’t hurt me with these questions, Sam. And don’t hurt yourself, either. You’re thinking of all the times you and I—when we were together —when you loved me—”

  “Let’s stick to Adam Stepanic. I want to know. It's important. I don’t trust Harry Hammett.”

  “Please, Sam.”

  “He’s good at his job, but not that good. And I can get Adam out of there for you.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to go.” “Why not?"

  “Not you, darling. You might not come back.”

  “I’ve come back other times. True, there’s always the last assignment, the one time things might go wrong. And then you’d just wait and wait, like you’re waiting now, only it would be worse if we were married—”

  “I was always willing to chance that. That’s what we quarreled about, isn’t it? Yet, you see, I’m willing to wait for Adam. I was willing to settle for any conditions you imposed on our lives together. And ready to settle for an hour, a day, a week or a year. It would have been a lifetime, anyway.”

  “And I insist that’s not good enough for you.”

  “So you go on being selfish,” Deirdre said quietly. “It was only that, you know. And not wanting to worry about me, which would make you too careful and perhaps do the wrong thing. Isn’t that right?”

  Their love had been destroyed a year ago on these same rocks, Durell thought. And he hadn’t changed his mind about it.

  “About Adam,” Deirdre went on, “I just had to come here, don’t you see? To get as close to him as possible. Call it only loyalty, perhaps, but I want to be here when Harry Hammett gets him out, so I can see him at once. I owe it to him. He’s a brave, uncomplicated man, Sam. Not like you at all. He sets no conditions for me, as you do.”

  He looked at her and for the first time since they’d met, she seemed remote and cool and unattainable. He felt an unfamiliar sense of wavering in him, because he was here against all the rules and grim precautions that had kept him alive in this business. Back in the bayous of Louisiana, old Jonathan had taught him what it meant to be not only a hunter, but the quarry as well. You had to be quick, objective, sure of your aims. He wa
sn’t sure this time, because he wanted Deirdre and yet he could not have her like this.

  He did not want her to live in agonized waiting to learn one day that she was a widow. He loved her too much for that.

  Her gloved hand touched his. “Sam, what is it?”

  “I still love you,” he said simply.

  “I know that.”

  “And all I’ve given you is pain and anguish.”

  “No, never. That’s exactly what you don’t understand, Sam, what you will never admit to yourself or to me.” He stood up. “I want you to go back to Paris, at least, Deirdre, where you’ll be safe.”

  “Surely I’m safe here in Vienna,” she smiled.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Harry says it’s perfectly all right for me to wait here for him to come back with Adam.”

  “It’s not all right.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  He looked down at her. There was nothing more to say. He had no right to say more. Yet there was an innocence in her, a belief in the essential goodness of man that he could not and would not destroy unnecessarily.

  Because his own motives were suspect, he could not tell her of the danger she had created for herself, nor of the one she had created for him.

  CHAPTER IV

  Night had come, and the rain falling on the bright streets of Vienna’s inner city seemed cold and implacable. Durell watched Deirdre leave the bar to go to her room. She had quietly rejected his suggestion that they have dinner together. As he followed her with his eyes, he felt as if a most important part of him walked away with her. He did not understand himself. He told himself that the old adage about having your cake and eating it was applicable here. He was acting dangerously, intruding without authority. But he could not help himself.

  He ordered another bourbon and when he finished it he crossed the lobby and bought cigarettes from the clerk, taking his time to consider the well-dressed Viennese and the few foreigners in sight. He did not see the blonde woman, nor did he see the bald, pseudo-Englishman he had shaken in Geneva.

  It was time to visit Otto Hoffner at Steubenstrasse 19.

  He was careful now. He walked in the rain for several blocks beyond the famed Opera House to the baroque pile of the Hofburg, the old Imperial Palace at Josef’s Platz, then doubled back by way of the Kohlmarkt until he found a cruising cab. He gave the Main Post Office as his destination and watched the lights of traffic reflected on the wet, gleaming streets. At the Franz Josef’s Kai he got out, found another cab, and gave an address close to Steubenstrasse.

  He was not followed.

  The house he sought was one of a row of rococo limestone town mansions, relics of the glory of the days of the Hapsburg Empire. The street was quiet, lined with sycamore trees that dripped on the brick paving. A number of private cars were parked along the high curb, but only an occasional hurrying passer-by under an umbrella was visible as Durell walked up the curving avenue. It was close to nine o’clock when he walked by No. 19. He circled the block once, came back the way he had started, and saw nothing suspicious. A church bell rang with a dull iron clangor in the night rain, as he went up the white stone steps and rang the bell.

  There was only a dim light shining in one of the upper-floor windows. It did not change or go out. Waiting patiently, he rang again and saw a shadowy movement in the tiled vestibule beyond the big double doors. A moment later Otto Hoffner opened one of the panels and gestured him inside.

  “Come in, come, bitte,” the man said breathlessly. “I am so glad you are here.”

  “Is anything the matter?”

  “Oh, it is—there was no need to—but come, see for yourself, Herr Durell.”

  Durell halted in the vestibule and saw two umbrellas in an old-fashioned Victorian ceramic stand, and an American raincoat and dark brown hat hanging on an ornate clothes-tree. “Is Harry Hammett here?”

  “Yes. Upstairs, washing up. But come, you must see this man—the informer, the messenger—”

  “What are you so upset about, Otto?”

  “I wanted to stop Harry, believe me, I did. It is not my method, you can be sure. The poor lad came here innocently, to help, to deliver the message. I tried to stop Harry. Bitte, believe me, I tried.”

  Durell said grimly: “Let’s see this man.”

  Otto Hoffner was small and slim and middle-aged, with a slight paunch and graying hair cut en brosse and gold-rimmed glasses. He wore narrow striped trousers and a black linen jacket and vest. Durell could not tell if he was armed. His face had a waxen quality, like that of a museum doll; but as far as Durell knew, Otto Hoffner had worked for K Section for three years, had been efficient as a relay message center agent, and had been useful in offering his home here at Steubenstrasse 19 as a major depot on the underground railway used to smuggle Hungarians out of the terror of the Soviet purge. He followed the hurrying little man down a wide, paneled hallway, then across a huge, old-fashioned kitchen into a pantry.

  “Just a minute, Otto,” he said.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “You say Harry Hammett is upstairs, washing?”

  “Bathing, yes.” Otto nodded. “His clothes—some of the blood, you see—”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  “The messenger—the boy, Anton—is in here—”

  Beyond the pantry there was another room, like a windowless cell, originally designed for cold storage of food, reached by a barred and bolted door. Otto Hoffner’s pale hands trembled as he opened the bolts and snapped on the lights. He stood aside to let Durell enter, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and polishing them nervously as Durell looked at the man on the iron cot shoved into one corner of the cubicle.

  Blood was spattered on the yellow plastered walls, and on one of the iron cot posts, with a small mat of brown hair stuck to it. More blood was puddled on the polished floor beside the cot. The figure on the bed groaned. His face was battered, his mouth a shapeless bruise, open and black as he struggled to breathe. A regular groaning noise came with each heave of his chest. He was in his late teens, long and painfully thin. On the floor beside the bed was a knitted woolen cap, of the sort that sailors wear, and his tattered dungarees and shirt also testified that the injured boy was a sailor.

  “What happened here?” Durell asked grimly.

  “Nothing I could stop, you understand.” Otto wrung his hands. “It was impossible. In my position, with a man like Hammett, if I protest he is likely to turn on me and put me in an awkward position—”

  “Did Harry do this to the boy?”

  Otto said: “I have not yet sent for a doctor here, you understand—” He paused. “Yes, Herr Hammett did it. He lost control of himself. The boy was—how do you say it?— fresh, perhaps. He came to deliver a message about the subject—the subject of Hammett’s assignment—”

  “Major Stepanic?”

  “Yes. You understand, I had nothing to do with this, and if you are taking over Herr Hammett’s job—”

  “I am not.”

  Otto Hoffner looked frightened. “Then why are you here?”

  Durell did not answer that. “You say the boy’s name is Anton?”

  “Anton Galucz—his father is captain of a Danube barge at Bratislava. On the Slovak side, you see. There is a man who just returned to rejoin the crew—the pilot, a man named Gija—who knows where Adam Stepanic can be found.”

  “Alive?” Durell interrupted.

  “Alive. Exactly so. And this Gija sent the boy to arrange for a rendezvous with himself. The boy, Anton, telephoned the American Embassy here in Vienna. He was very circumspect. When it was understood what he wanted, the matter was turned over to Harry Hammett, of course. The boy was told to call back, to give the Embassy time to reach Hammett. And when this was done, the boy, Anton, arranged a rendezvous for Herr Hammett to meet this Gija, on the Austrian bank of the river.”

  “So why did Harry beat up the boy?”

  “I do not know. He lost his temper. The boy wa
s sarcastic—cocky, as a boy may be, full of bravado at coming on such a mission—”

  There was a slight sound from the pantry door. Durell turned and saw Harry Hammett there. Hammett was in shirt sleeves, his collar open on his bare chest, exhibiting a thick mat of springy yellow hair that matched the tight blond curls on his head. He looked huge, filling the doorway, and he exuded an animal strength, the aura of a rogue male. He had very pale brown eyes, flecked with gold, under brows that would have seemed heavy if the hair had been dark. His nose was thin and straight, his mouth full, with carefully carved lips; he would have seemed handsome, except for the indefinable distortion of his features that gave his face a cruel and arrogant look.

  “Ask me the questions, Cajun, not Otto,” Hammett said, grinning. “Otto is scared of a little blood.” Hammett’s voice was thin and light. His biceps rippled as he lifted his arms to lean in the doorway. “You don’t like what happened to the smart-aleck punk?”

  “He came to help us. Why get so rough with him?” “Like I said, he was smart. He wants extra dough, I think; he tried to hold out. Wouldn’t give the name of the barge this Gija gook is supposed to be waiting on.”

  “Did you get the name?”

  “I got it,” Harry said. He laughed lightly. “You know me, Cajun, I don’t take no for an answer, especially from a gook kid.”

  “You were pretty rough with him.”

  “And you don’t like it? You got nothing to say about it. You don’t belong here. I suggest you get out right now, Cajun.”

  Otto said timidly: “Please, gentlemen—”

  “Shut up, Otto,” Hammett said, without looking at him. “Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag, Durell, and hike back home to your desk. This is my job, and I do it my way. You don’t like it, you can type up a nasty report, right? I’ll answer for it when I get back home with Stepanic.” “Why did you take Deirdre here with you, Harry?” “Maybe just to needle you, Cajun. You don’t like that, either? Or maybe she just loves this Stepanic flyboy so much, she wants to be waiting for him with open arms when I bring him back. That Deirdre, Cajun, you lost a real woman there.”

  The boy on the cot groaned louder. His eyes flickered, opened, closed, opened again. Durell looked at him and walked to the side of the cot. From the boy’s shapeless, broken mouth came inarticulate animal sounds of pain. Durell said gently: “Anton, can you hear me?”