Assignment — Angelina (20 page)

I've been waiting to get us alone again for a long time, sweetheart," he said.

Durell followed the realty agent's directions and turned off the main highway to follow a dirt road that twisted up the side of Kittitimi Mountain. It was almost ten o'clock now. He had called Washington, and Wittington had ordered him to stand by at the motel until he could get some men up there to help. Durell couldn't just sit and wait. He kept thinking of Angelina and Amberley. He told Wittington that any men he sent could follow him, and then he had taken the road to the mountain.

The sun was now well over the thrusting shoulder of the pine-clad range ahead. Far below he could see the line of the abandoned colliery rails, curving up through the silently singing valleys. He knew where he was going now. He could even guess what Corbin's objective was, although Wittington had refused to tell him.

He kept watching for the little bridge that George Johnston had told him was only a quarter of a mile from Corbin's lodge. There were no other summer cottages on this road. Now and then he glimpsed rusted wire fencing through the woods and an occasional
No Trespassing
sign. He had looked curiously that way, but there seemed to be only a wilderness on that part of the mountain.

He found Amberley just a short distance from the bridge, and he quickly stopped the car. He did not get out immediately, but put his gun in his lap and waited and listened. Amberley lay face down, sprawled on the trail where he had fallen. In his pajamas, the man was unmistakable. Durell got out and walked slowly toward him.

The man was still alive. Durell felt his pulse, saw the blue tinge of the man's cyanotic lips, the broken arm. Durell s face was blank as he looked sharply toward the wooden bridge beyond. He couldn't see the Corbin cabin, but he knew it was there. And because of the silence, he knew no one was in it now. He was still too late, just a step behind them.

"Amberley, can you hear me?" he said gently. "It's all right now. I want to help you." He paused, and then asked: "Where is the girl? Angelina Greene. Wasn't she in there with you? Wasn't she a prisoner, too?"

"Prisoner, yes..." Amberley whispered. He opened his eyes and looked at Durell's lean, hard face. "Who are you?"

"A friend," Durell said. "You can believe that."

"Got to... stop them..."

"Where did they go?"

"I told them — told them where to go. Couldn't help it There's so much pain... Can you get me to a doctor?"

"The best thing is to lie still. Where are they?"

"The girl — let them catch her again — to give me a chance to get away. But I... I couldn't t make it."

Durell had nothing to ease the man's pain. He felt impatient to go on, but Amberley had something to tell him, and he had to learn what it was. "How long have you been out here?"

"Don't know... blacked out when' he came back."

"Who?"

"The ugly one. The girl let him grab her to give me a chance..."

"Half an hour ago?"

"Maybe."

"Longer?"

"I don't know "

"What did they get out of you? You can tell me. I'm going after them."

"Follow trail... past lodge. Old coal mine... Blue Spot shack entrance... Look at the rails..."

Amberley lowered his head. His breathing was quick and shallow. Durell felt for his pulse again. He said: "There will be some men along, right behind me, I hope. They'll take care of you."

He didn't think Amberley could hear him any more.

He spent only a few minutes in the lodge. No one was there. He went through it quickly, gun in hand, finding only silence and emptiness. There was no hint as to what had happened here.

He could take the car no farther. The road ended at the cabin, and beyond there was only a hiking trail that twisted away into the woods, climbing toward the silent green shoulder of Kittitimi Mountain. Durell wasted no more time. He started walking.

The sun was hot now. Flies buzzed persistently in the dank, green underbrush, but he paid no attention. Now and then he caught a glimpse of quiet, sunlit valleys below, with the colliery rail line lifting gradually to meet him. He wondered what Amberley had meant by telling him to look at the rails. He saw that the trail would intersect the single track, abandoned line presently, and he walked faster. When he came to the wire barrier across the trail, he did not hesitate. It was new, like the metal warning sign against trespassers that hung from it. Somebody had cut through the wires recently and gone on. A few steps beyond he found the wire clippers in the grass. They were slightly rusted, as if they had been out in the dew all night.

In twenty minutes he came to the railroad line. The trail crossed it in a narrow, wooded gorge and then swung along beside it to follow the right-of-way. The tracks had been laid recently, but not too much traffic had gone over them. The gorge opened at the northern end onto a wide slope of the mountains face. Durell was sweating from the long, straight upward climb, and now he paused and studied the open terrain with care.

He was almost at the abandoned mine workings. A mile away he could see the cluster of gray, weathered buildings of the colliery, a faded sign hanging from one of the sway-backed roofs. The rail line ahead divided at several switch points, became a double track and then doubled again. Sunlight glinted on the ribbons of steel, and all at once he saw what Amberley wanted him to see. If the colliery had been abandoned as long ago as the public was meant to believe, those rails would have long been rusted and overgrown with weeds. But they looked new.

He studied the slope for another long minute, looking for a sign of life and movement. There was nothing to see. The face of the mountain looked jagged, with great outcroppings of granite overhanging the wooden structures below. The wind made a steady, singing pressure in his ears. He wondered if he ought to wait here for the men Wittington was sending to help, but somewhere ahead in those deserted-looking buildings was the end of the trail he had followed — a trail marked with death and the blood of innocent men. He went on.

When he had covered half a mile diagonally across the face of the slope, he saw the green station wagon. He almost missed it because it was partly hidden behind a small shack that stood higher on the mountainside than the rest of the mine structures. And Amberley apparently had not known about the road by which the Buick had been brought all the way up through this wilderness. Either that, or Amberley had supposed that the footpath would bring him here faster and more surely. It was plain that Slago, after recapturing Angelina, had discovered Amberley's escape and driven here to find the others.

He came to another high wire fence, and this one was not cut, and he lost several precious minutes seeking a way to climb over it. A long tongue of pine woods intervened at this point between the fence and the shack, and he lost sight of the Buick for a time while he moved on and finally he came out on a crag of rock overlooking the fence and the workings below. By climbing a few feet into one of the pines, he was able to drop over the barrier. Now he saw that some kind of steady activity had been going on at the site of the mine — an activity that the public had been encouraged to forget or ignore in this remote place.

The rails had been used. And there was a flat clearing to the west of the leaning colliery towers that might have been designed as a landing area for helicopters, with yellow circles painted on the asphalt apron. One of the long open sheds nearby could have been used to shelter the machines. And Durell also saw that several of the gray mine buildings were not in as rickety shape as they had appeared.

Somebody was stationed and quartered here. There was a jeep, just visible in the shadows of a small hill of waste on the lower slope. There was even a faint plume of smoke from the chimney of one of the buildings. But no one was in sight.

If any troops were quartered here, they were deep underground, and so were the Corbins and Slago and Fleming by now.

Durell moved on down toward the station wagon.

Now he became aware of a restlessness in the atmosphere, a steady pulsing and a hum of hidden machinery and he paused in the brush above the shack to study the place in detail. The station wagon looked empty. The door to the ramshackle place was open, but he couldn't see inside.

He had the feeling of being an intruder in a place far from all the everyday realities of life. The silent, subtly shifting pressures of the mountain made his nerves tense. The humming and pulsing was louder now. He moved toward the station wagon first. It was parked in tall weeds behind the shack, but a well-trodden path led to the door of the building. When he paused by the car, he saw what looked like a shapeless gray bundle of old clothes or blankets huddled on the floor of the car. Then he saw her feet and his heart lurched suddenly.

"Angelina?" he whispered.

There was no movement and no reply. He drew a deep breath. A crow screamed loudly in the pines nearby. The air of the coal mine seemed deeper and darker.

"Angelina?"

There was a faint, tentative stirring. "Sam?"

"Come out of there," he whispered.

"You're too late."

"I need help."

"I can't help you."

He reached in and touched her gray dress and she reacted violently, covering her wounded body, shrinking from his touch. Her eyes looked at him as if he were a stranger, staring in terror and shame.

"What did they do to you?" he whispered.

"I can't tell you."

"Was it Slago?"

"Yes."

"Come on out," he said again. His voice, though soft, held harsh command. She looked blankly at him. There were scratches and dirt stains on her face, and her dark hair was a long, unkempt tangle framing the pallor of her face. "Where are they?" he asked.

"Down below."

"In the mine?"

"Whatever it is," she said.

"It isn't a mine?"

"No."

He didn't like the look in her eyes, the altered expression of her mouth. He helped her out. She was very careful to keep the dress closed at her throat. She shrank from his touch. "Don't, Sam."

"It's all over. They won't hurt you again."

"They don't have to. It's all been done. I'm so dirty, dirty..." Her eyes stared into terrors he did not recognize. "You'll have to forget about me, Sam."

"You're alive, aren't you?' He didn't like her obsession with what had happened. "I was afraid you wouldn't be."

"I wish I were dead."

He shook her lightly. Her flesh cringed away from his grip. "How did they go in?"

'Through there." She pointed at the shack. "I almost got away, you know. There was a man, he said his name was Amberley, or something like that, and they made him tell about it. I tried to help him get away..."

"He's all right," Durell said. "I found him."

"I'm glad. And now — you've found me. I was afraid you would."

He wasn't sure, from the way she looked at him, that she really understood what was happening. He had felt a great relief at finding her. Now he was aware of anger throwing, because of what had been done to her. He didn't know the details, but he could guess. His anger shook him badly and he fought it down, knowing that this was no time to get impulsive.

"Angelina, you've got to help me, too."

"Don't touch me, please."

"Hell, I'm going to kiss you."

"No!"

He caught her to him and held her rightly when she tried to squirm away. He couldn't think of any other way to force her back to reality. "There's nothing so wrong that it can't be made right again, Angelina. Do you understand? Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"You can't imagine what he... what Slago..."

"You wanted to revenge Pete once. You wanted to kill Slago, didn't you? Then let's go after them." He saw her shudder. "You're not afraid now. Come on."

He didn't want to leave her; he wasn't sure where everyone in the Corbin group might be, and he couldn't let them get her again. He saw her staring at him with great tears rolling slowly down her bruised face. "Oh, Sam, I've spoiled it all by being such a fool..."

"That's over with now. Let's go."

Impatience spurred him. Every moment spent was time irretrievably lost. He couldn't be late again. He walked away from her, hoping she would follow. He was at the door of the shack before he heard her quick steps behind him. He listened for sounds from inside the building, but all he heard was the humming and the pulsing and a dim, muted hissing sound.

He turned his head and looked at Angelina. She brushed at her eyes and smiled.

"All right, Sam."

The door was partly ajar. He kicked it open all the way and went in fast.

There was an inner door, and he burst through that, too. He was not prepared for the brilliant light flooding the mine shack beyond. It came from a powerful lamp in the ceiling; there was electricity still in the mine workings, although he had not spotted any power cables. A small atomic generating plant, perhaps — but he had no time to pursue the thought.

Erich Corbin came away from the opposite wall in a frantic rush.

Durell took it all in with one glance: the false roof that was really a ventilating grate covering almost the entire top area of the shack; the opposite wall of grated ducts, sucking air inside with a force powerful enough to make him feel the heavy draft of air that blew his hair almost as if he were in a wind tunnel; the twin pressure tanks Corbin had been fiddling with, the nozzles hissing into the grated openings.

"Hold it," Durell said.

Corbin's rush could not be stopped. His rimless glasses splintered light from the glaring floodlamps overhead, and his pale eyes looked wild. Durell's hand slid out, caught the waving gun in the chemist's grip, twisted it away and down as it went off with a shattering crash. A stream of German curses came from Corbin as he tried to wrench free. Durell would not let him go.