Assignment - Budapest (4 page)

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-driven 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.

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?”

She looked up suddenly. “Are you going to tell me that Bela is dead?”

“No, he isn’t. He’s here, in this country.”

She stood up. She was agitated, he could see, and he was relieved that his guess about a direct, blunt approach was working to this extent. He watched her walk, and the fine coordination of her magnificent body was exactly the same as he remembered it. He wished he didn’t think so often of the past, when he was with her.

“You don’t have him in custody, however, or you wouldn’t be here,” she pointed out.

“That’s true.”

“And you want him very badly.”

“That’s also true.”

“Not from me,” she said. “Never from me.”

“Sit down, Stella. I haven’t finished. Bela came in with the last group of refugees from your home town of Budapest. He broke out before he could be picked up and he left with a man named Zoltan Ske and a woman, Ilona, who posed as his wife.” He waited, but nothing changed in her face. “We’re pretty anxious to haul in all three of them.”

“Ilona?” she asked curiously.

“Posing as his wife,” he repeated.

“Do you imagine this makes me jealous?”

He grinned. He looked different for a moment. “I rather hoped it might.”

“You should know better than that. We cannot allow our private emotions to interfere with the work we must do. Surely you, who are one of the best, know all about that.”

“Doesn’t it bother you at all that he’s with another woman?”

She looked defiant and proud. “Why should it? I slept with you, did I not? Did it trouble you, then?”

“Stella—”

Now she was angry. “Why is Bela here? Do you know that?”

“He has announced that he’s going to kill me,” Durell said quietly.

She stared at him. Her pale lips were slightly parted. Then she shook her head stubbornly. “No, no. He would never do such a foolish thing. He is not an amateur. He would not give you warning first.”

“Well, he did. I guess you can understand why. It’s a ruse, of course, to throw us off balance while something else is accomplished.”

“So?”

“Which doesn’t mean he’ll ignore me. He’ll still try to kill me, all right.”

“Then you should be frightened, Sam,” she said softly. She was smiling again. “Bela is an expert at that sort of thing. He will succeed, you know. He has never failed yet. You are as good as dead, standing here right now, at this moment.” Her green eyes were searching, cool and objective. “But you never showed fear when I knew you. Can you be afraid now? Is this why you came to me, so I might help you to save yourself?”