Assignment - School for Spies Read online

  One

  The stout Swiss hausfrau regarded him with eyes as round and blue and blank—and as merciless—as the sky over the crest of the Zuttspieg, where sub-zero winds blew a plume of smoky snow as if from the cone of a volcano toward the distant Italian border.

  "Come in, Herr Durell. Kommen Sie herein."

  She took his new leather bag, which he had bought in Athens, with a gesture too determined to be denied. The bag was heavy, because he was carrying a new decoding gadget from Geneva Central to the resident here in Tiigensberg. It was a curious favor requested by Geneva Central, after he had beaten down their arguments and refused the plane ticket and expenses to fly back to New York. He had expected more resistance from them. They had said: "You have your orders, Durell." And they had said: "You won't get far alone." He'd looked at them, all three, lounging with a casual air behind the antique shop off the Grand Rue in old Geneva. They were slim, Yale-type, Madison Avenue boys who operated the resident station; one was an ex-Ivy League center with a broken nose, another was pale and blond and aesthetic-looking, the third dark and alert as a pointer after quail.

  He had to make an effort to speak quietly. "I'm going to find her."

  "But she's already gone, Durell. Don't be a fool." "I don't believe your information," he told them. "It's been verified. Look, we're as sorry as you, but it's not your show, and there's nothing—" "Go to hell," he told them.

  He had some cash he had picked up from Mike Xanakias, in Athens, when he had coded and closed the files recently on the Cairo Dancer assignment. It wasn't much money, but it was enough. Mike had given him new ID diplomatic papers, as well. There wasn't anything they Could do to stop him, short of violence. They were capable of that, of course. These three in Geneva were smooth and efficient characters; but they knew better. As sub-chief for field operations, Durell outranked them and gave them orders. He did so now, crisply and to the point. They said they would have to query K Section, back in Washington. He told them to do that, by all means. While they were scrambling the code, he also told them he was taking the train for Tiigensberg.

  The one with the broken nose spoke unsmilingly.

  "On your own head be it, Cajun."

  At the last moment, as he was leaving the antique shop that served as Swiss HQ for Central, they asked him to carry the new coding machine to the Tiigensberg resident. "We're on a tight budget here, and as long as you insist on going—"

  "I do."

  "I suppose you'll ask Margie for help, too. But don't expect any. She has her orders about you."

  "I don't believe I've met Margie," he said.

  "Jones, Marge Jones. Straight from Ohio, tall, smart, beautiful, and good value. She's tough, Sam. She won't help you."

  "We'll see," he said.

  It was strange to feel their hostility. He had worked closely with these men before, and it would not have seemed possible then to be opposed to them, or to have them as enemies. He didn't like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't turn back now.

  It was a five-hour train ride on the smooth, wide windowed Swiss National Railway car through the valleys and uplands and tunnels and Alpine shoulders to the little village of Tiigensberg. The car was overheated, but he felt cold. It was not just because he had come recently from the heat of the Sinai Desert. The ice inside him was the ice of total anger, and the knowledge of betrayal. He couldn't live with it. He couldn't run home to the States with it.

  He had to change to a private cog railway for the last leg of the trip. There was a long, narrow valley; a rushing, frothy stream; autumnal flowers in meadows; an area of boulder-strewn fields in deep shadow from the shoulders of the rugged aretes on either hand. The few farms here were linked by a single road that twisted to follow the cog railway line as much as possible. Finally, a gorge opened into a cuplike valley to and from which there was only this one entrance and exit, masked in pines and rubbly slopes.

  There was snow in the streets and at the picturesque little railway station that dead-ended in the high valley. The air was thin and sharp, and the pressures of huge crests all about made the sky sing. Two years ago, Tiigensberg had been a lost Alpine hamlet almost as remote as the moon. Smart Italian and Swiss developers had turned it into the "in" place currently favored by the ski crowd, the sports-car fans, and those who were bored with Riviera life.

  Durrell stopped thinking and let his reflexes take over as he made his way to the plush Oberhaus, the playground resort here at Tiigensberg. Snow weighted the wide eaves of peasant chalet roofs and formed frozen waves like white combers about to fall on the passersby below. It was the picture-postcard, fairyland, travel-brochure Switzerland, with jingling sleighs and shaggy horses, monstrous Alps on every hand around the valley, and jolly peasant types in costumes who had struck gold by giving up their Swiss Brown cattle to cater to tourists. And there were the tourists, of course, draped in the tentacles of their busy cameras. It was all too perfect. Behind the facade was treachery. Behind the smiles, there was death.

  Durell was a careful man. He did not watch the fat, rolling haunches of Frau Schmidt as she toiled up the wooden stairway ahead of him, carrying his grip, with its coding machine, to his assigned room. He was aware of everything to the right and left, ahead of and behind him. But the guests m the main lounge, a beamed and paneled room equipped with a roaring stone fireplace, looked reasonably normal. The barman was busy and efficient—it was a little early for cocktails, but no one minded—and the plump and pink-cheeked Swiss waitresses filled their dirndls and peasant blouses with well-nourished flesh.

  At a corner table near the fireplace, under a mounted boar's head, were two men in ski outfits who hoisted steins of beer and talked soberly to each other. Durell recognized one as a Gehlen operator out of Munich, a member of that semi-autonomous intelligence service that worked the West German Federal Republic espionage and counter-defense structures. His name was Rudi Kampp. Durell was startled by his presence. He didn't know the second man, who was short and stout and looked local, but if Geneva Central had posted a surveillance team on him here—as he was sure they would —he hadn't recognized the real shadow yet.

  But he would.

  "You will be comfortable here, Herr Durell."

  It was a statement, almost an order. The hausfrau who doubled as bellhop set down his new bag with a thump and turned, her massive arms folded. Her eyes were as cold as the drifts of snow off the towering Zuttspieg that loomed beyond his windows. It was too hot in the room, as usual. The bed was an enormous four-poster with a heavy goose-down quilt and carved footboards painted with peasant motifs that resembled Pennsylvania Dutch. He decided a dozen mikes could be hidden in that massive bed and never be found. There was also a plethora of wooden bric-a-brac with another score of places where a bug might be planted. He had his work cut out for him.

  He was curious about the stout woman. He smiled engagingly—he hoped. "Is something wrong, Frau Schmidt?"

  "Nothing, Herr Durell."

  "It is a nice day, but you seem to have a grudge against it."

  "Perhaps it is my nature."

  "Unhappy you," he murmured. "But perhaps you can help me."

  Her blue eyes blinked. "Perhaps."

  "I am here to meet a Signorina Deirdre Padgett. Mademoiselle Padgett. Or just plain Miss Padgett. She checked in here from Rome last week, to cover your fashion show for the American magazines. Do you remember her?"

  "But naturally. A charming, beautiful woman. She occupies Cottage Seven."

  He was startled. "Is she still here?"

  "She paid in advance for a fortnight. She is not in Tiigensberg at the moment, since she left—let me see— three days ago for Vienna, I think.
"

  "She went alone?"

  "I could not say, Herr Durell."

  He tipped her generously. More than generously. But she did not act like the normal Swiss innkeeper. Frau Schmidt looked down at his Swiss franc notes as if they were tainted. Then she set them aside on the table near the door.

  "You owe me nothing, Herr Durell. I wish you a pleasant visit."

  The door thudded hard when she closed it. He listened for her heavy tread in the hall and on the stairway outside, but there was no sound. After a moment he moved quietly to the door and opened it abruptly. He was sure he would catch her eavesdropping.

  But the corridor was empty.

  Like so many other fat people, Frau Schmidt could move with effortless silence.

  Two

  He fanned the room with care. Durell was big, but he could move with a smooth and lithe efficiency. He was no longer as young as the Madison Avenue types working out of Geneva Central, and there was a touch of gray in his thick, black hair at the temples, but his musculature was heavy and he had a sense of coordination that was honed to a peak of efficiency through reflexive training. He walked in a world where danger always took you by the arm and grinned its skull-toothed grin at you. It was a world in which no one could be trusted, where the reality of the senses was often betrayed by dark pitfalls carefully sprung open at one's feet. As a sub-chief for K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency, he had been in field operations longer than his survival factor permitted. But he would not transfer to a Washington desk, in Synthesis and Analysis, for example, to spend his days in preparing extrapolative reports for Joint Chiefs and the White House. He had journeyed too far into the shadows of the secret war, and could never go back to the apparent normality of suburban boxes, commuter schedules, ulcers, and interoffice back-scratching.

  This was what he had always stressed to Deirdre.

  With her name being whispered in his mind, he checked the room, locked his bag in the wardrobe closet and pocketed the key—the coding machine was nothing special, and could even be useful as bait—and stepped out into the corridor. The bar down below the ornate wooden gallery was busier than before. He turned to the back steps, where he had glimpsed the detached guest cottages on the slope above the main lodge, and stepped out onto the rising path from this second-story level.

  The resort developers had gone all-out for luxury, pandering to the jaded tastes of Europe's bored, affluent society. With only one way in and out of the valley, the guests were practically captives of the Oberhaus syndicate, confined to the village, the ski slopes, and the expensive services devoted to their pleasure. Each cottage back here was a miniature chalet, with a balcony facing the Zuttspieg or the valley, where the cog railway clattered up and down several times a day beside the winding auto road where bored sports-car owners risked their necks to drive up from or down to the outer world beyond the pass.

  Cottage Seven was above the others, reached by a snow-packed path that wound up beyond a ski-supply shop, a souvenir boutique, and a larger structure, emulating a village barn, used for fashion shows, dances, and other festivities planned by the Oberhaus management.

  Because Tiigensberg was such a recent development, and because it had so quickly attracted the drifting aristocracy of both Europe and the States, as well as the Arab sheiks and Asian sultans and generals with Swiss numbered bank accounts, K Section of (HA had seen fit to establish a resident agent here to pick up whatever tidbits of news or gossip might fall from careless tongues in the Oberhaus. Durell did not know Marge Jones, who had the assignment, but he meant to make up for that omission shortly. Meanwhile, he wanted to see where Deirdre had lived last week.

  The lock on the cottage door wasn't difficult. Several people came and went from the ski shop, but none paid any attention to him. The main body of guests were still on the slopes of the Zuttspieg. When he let himself in, there was no shriek of alarm, no outcry from a maid, no clamor of bells. He closed the door and leaned back against it with a small sigh.

  He could smell her perfume at once, as intimate and unnerving as ever. It caused a quickening in him, and a wrack of nostalgia for lost love and exciting nights, for quiet dinners and long talks, for the image of her shining eyes turned toward him, and him alone.

  His work had kept them apart for a long, long time.

  And he had thought himself immune by now to emotional distraction. He was all the more dismayed, therefore, that the merest trace of her presence in this Swiss hotel room, the ghost of the remembered scent she favored, could cause such quick and surprising pain, like the treachery of an old habit that turned out to be a deadly weakness.

  He hadn't been able to afford both his love for Deirdre and his work. He had made his choice, and she had called him stubborn, but she did not weep easily. He wondered if he had been wrong. He was too dedicated, she told him; too quick-tempered, a fool of a Cajun. Then she had broken down quietly and told him how she loved him and wanted to marry him.

  He crossed the cottage room, the scent of her in the air clinging like a ghost, and checked the closets and the bath. Some of her clothing was still here. There was an orange cocktail frock he remembered buying with her, some years ago in Portofino; and a short cloth jacket with a small gold pin that he'd brought back to her from old Roman ruins in Syria—again, some years ago. He touched the pin, and wanted to take it, but he left it where it was.

  There was no luggage in the room. She had taken what she needed, and left behind what she could abandon without regret. She had every right to do as she wished —except to betray him by joining the enemy.. ..

  He hadn't seen Deirdre for more than two years. The dark and dangerous corners of the world had swallowed him, and her rose brick colonial house at Prince John, with its sweeping view of the Chesapeake near Washington, became a romantic symbol of all he worked to preserve, but which he didn't dare claim for himself.

  When they parted finally, he had said: "It's better this way, Dee. One day, I may not come back, and you'll be like Fran Casey, with her two boys, or Stephanie, left with a typist's job and the twins. And it will make me vulnerable."

  "By worrying about me?" she asked quietly. He nodded. "One day I might be thinking about you instead of the job—just for a minute, perhaps, or a few seconds, when I should be thinking about the other people."

  "So you travel faster and more safely alone."

  "Yes. And the job gets done."

  "But there are other jobs, Sam."

  "Not for me."

  "Sam, don't you love me?"

  "You know I do."

  "But not as much as your work?"

  "I don't know."

  "If you don't know, then you've answered it," she said. "I won't cry anymore, darling."

  "Dee--"

  "No more, Sam. We'll play it your way. Go ahead and risk your stubborn neck. Get stabbed in the back in some Hong Kong alley, or get left to die of thirst in some Pakistani desert, or maybe get pushed under the wheels of a London Underground train. I know the dangers you run. I wouldn't want to be responsible for that moment of carelessness, when you'd be thinking of me instead of the job."

  "I just don't know, Dee. Don't make it an ultimatum like this."

  "It has to be exactly like this," she said.

  He almost gave in. She was beautiful, magnificent, and he loved her more than he dared to admit to her or to anyone, least of all to himself. She was a tall girl, with a quiet beauty; her dark hair had rich coppery highlights, like a brush fire seen at dusk; and this was her general quality, a calm like that of a summer evening, veiling the glow and warmth of the sun. Her eyes were gray, composed and intelligent. There was something fine in everything she did, in the pride of her carriage, her body, her voice, the way she looked at him and touched him with love. It had been going on for a long time. He could not conceive of losing her. But there was no choice.

  She knew his thoughts. "But there is 2l choice, Sam," she said. "Your contract and annual physical come up in two weeks. Y
ou'll be going out to that awful 'Farm' in Maryland where they teach you to kill with your hands, or with a newspaper, or even with a pin. General McFee will offer you a job in Analysis, Sam."

  He was touched by anger. "How do you know that?"

  "Darling, he's offered you the position for three years running, hasn't he?"

  "But how do you know?" he insisted.

  She conceded defeat. "Sam, I asked him to."

  "You had no right to do that. I've told you never to interfere."

  "I think that, in loving you, I’ve been given every such right, Sam."

  He remembered her now, as he stood alone in the cottage at the rich and fashionable Oberhaus in Tiigensberg, and searched for signs of the opposition. They had parted on the worn flagstone terrace of her rose-pink colonial on the Chesapeake, watching the crab fishermen chug peacefully homeward in the soft lilac dusk. The wide bay had been like molten silver. The giant elms whispered with an evening wind that held an autumnal chill in it. He kissed her, and he left. And he hadn't seen her for two years.

  There was no sign of violence in the cottage.

  But they told him that she had fallen in love with another man, in this very place.

  They said she had been here to meet this man in this remote village in the Swiss Alps, and that after a few days she had gone away with him.

  They told him she had defected to the East and had fled with the stranger to East Germany.

  Three

  The telephone was ringing when he opened the door to his room in the main building of the Oberhaus.

  It startled him into betraying an unaccustomed tension. He let it ring three times, while he locked the ornately carved door, checked the closet to make sure his bag was untouched, and looked out the window at the parking lot below. The phone stopped ringing. In the parking lot there were fat Mercedes-Benz sports cars and sedans, two silvery Ferraris, and a whole beetle's nest of VW's. Skis made a picket fence against a snow-capped stone wall. Two American girls with high, clear voices and vibrating stretch pants strode by, flanked by two attentive Nordic types who, in a past generation, might have qualified for SS Alpine troops. Durell left the window and the telephone rang again, and this time he picked it up.