Assignment to Disaster (16 page)

Durell shook hands with his grandfather. The old man looked tall and straight and wonderful. "You're in a mess of trouble, boy. It seems you failed to cover your bets."

"I'll be all right."

"Are these gentlemen really from Washington?"

"That's right."

"They think you are a traitor."

"It's a mistake. It will all be straightened out."

"Is this your woman?"

Durell looked at Deirdre and smiled. "Yes," he said.

Her face was white and frightened.

The pilothouse was comfortably furnished. There were several rocking chairs and a day bed and a woven rug on the floor. The old man's books were tiered against one mahogany-planked wall. A desk stood against the huge brass-trimmed wheel. The bayou beyond the windows looked sunny and peaceful. A ship's clock ticked and then rang eight times. It was noon of the third of July.

Swayney's voice was thick with complacent satisfaction. "Sit down, Sam. You've raised enough hell. You can relax now. It's all over. You know it's over, hey? You had us all fooled. Even McFee. He believed in you, when you went to him over my head."

"You son-of-a-bitch," Durell said. "That's all that gripes you."

Swayney smiled; his fat figure rocked easily in his chair. "Let me bring you up to date, hey? We've got Cora Neville. She told us the whole story about Weederman. Seems I was wrong there and the man is still alive. She had a love affair with him and he got her to run a few errands for him over in Germany and she didn't know she was acting for a spy until it was too late. Then he threatened to expose her if she didn't continue to co-operate. So she helped him by making the play for Calvin Padgett. We've got it all down pat in her statement."

"And Weederman?" Durell asked.

"He got away, but he won't get far."

"And Calvin Padgett?"

"We found the boy. Then we went after you. You took feet pretty fast, Sam. You should have listened to my orders when I spoke to you on the telephone. But it didn't matter. We had a tap on Hazel's line, thanks to Art, here. We got that fellow Olsen and he spilled about the whole airfield network. Quite a setup. We did pretty good on cleaning that up, alone. Then we figured where you might land next. You jumped the gun on us and beat us to Jamie's field, but we found your pilot there. They killed him."

Durell winced.

"Once we had you spotted in this territory, it was just a matter of waiting you out. We've crippled Weederman's apparatus. Clobbered it good. You look like you had a hard time last night."

"We spent it in the swamp," Durell said harshly. He didn't like Swayney's satisfaction. He knew there was more coming. Art Greenwald didn't meet his gaze; Art held his gun as if he hated it. His grandfather looked troubled, loo, studying Deirdre. "What else is there? I've got Calvin Padgett's papers. Cyclops must not be launched tomorrow."

"Cyclops will be launched," Swayney said quietly. "She goes up at four o'clock in the afternoon."

"Just as it is?"

"There's nothing wrong with the hardware."

"Is that McFee's word?"

"When I told McFee about your girl, he gave me the white slip on handling you, Sam. You've been played right over the barrel." Swayney stood up; his manner changed. His voice was hostile and implacable. "I hate a man who makes a fool of himself like you've done, Sam. Maybe you aren't selling us out, or maybe you just don't know what kind of a ride this babe has given you. Have you still got Padgett's papers?"

"Yes, I have them," Durell said.

Swayney looked at the girl. "I'm surprised you didn't get them off him yet. You must have felt pretty sure of Sam, hey?"

"What are you talking about?" Durell asked.

Swayney hooked a fat hip on a corner of the desk. "Did Deirdre Padgett tell you about her boy friend who was killed in Korea?"

"Yes, she mentioned it."

"Once over lightly, hey? Did she say she was married to him?"

Durell felt the shock. "No. Is that true, Deirdre?"

She would not look at him.

Swayney said, "Did she tell you how this husband of hers, Robert Keitch, happened to get himself dead over there?"

"Deirdre?" Durell said.

She would not look at him.

"He was a prisoner of war," Swayney said, "along with a lot of other guys who were caught short over there when the Chinese put their fat fingers in the Korean pie. But Keitch was different. This little lady had a husband who knew how to take good care of himself. He did good in prison, didn't he, baby? So good he was known as a pro-Red and he elected to stay over there. But at the last minute one of the boys got him. One of the boys who'd been strung up by the thumbs in a barrel of ice water because Keitch played footsie with the guards and told them about a planned prison break. So our own boys took care of Keitch. That's the guy she loved and married."

"I don't believe it," Durell whispered.

"Ask her."

"Deirdre?"

She would not look at him.

"Tell him." Swayney said. He slid off the desk, crossed the room, stood in front of the girl. Her face was white. "Tell him how you and your subversive rat of a brother made a deal with Weederman to sell the plans for Cyclops, and how your brother held out for a bigger bonus and crossed Weederman. That's why they leaned on you so hard, isn't it? And that's why you played for Sam the way you did. They killed your brother, but you still held out for the price, hey? I can't figure people like you. I can't see it. But there you stand. Go ahead and tell Sam. Tell him the truth."

She said nothing.

Durell said stiffly, "Are we under arrest?"

"Let's say you're in custody," Swayney said.

"Do you go along with that, Art?"

Greenwald looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Sam. Swayney is the boss."

"I'm touched," Swayney said. "Art, get some cuffs on the girl. She got away once, she'll try it again, hey?"

"I'm sorry," Greenwald said again.

He stood up, a young man with curly black hair and a troubled face. Deirdre stood stiffly, motionless. Sunlight glinted on the cuffs Greenwald produced. It was hot in the pilothouse. In that moment, Durell's mind probed for an elusive element in the pattern around him, something disturbing, not quite within reach. He heard the calls and songs of the birds in the trees; he heard the splash of a fish in the lagoon. There was nothing else.

"Wait a moment," he said. "Be reasonable. We're tired and we're hungry. Can't we have something to eat?"

Jonathan said gently, "I have some court bouillon and redfish in the galley, boy. If these gentlemen will let me get it…"

Swayney hesitated. "All right. Sit down, Art You, too, Miss Padgett."

Deirdre sat down stiffly. Her face was a blank mask. Durell looked at his grandfather and felt overcome by a deep wave of affection and love for the old man. Jonathan went out.

"There's a car coming for us from New Orleans," Swayney said. He looked at his watch. "We'll be moving out in half an hour."

"The sooner, the better," Durell said. "I want to see Dickinson McFee."

"Sorry. We're holding you both at the FBI offices in New Orleans."

"I want to go to Washington. Burritt, it's important!"

"You will stay where I put you. Both you and your girl friend."

"At least, will you let me talk to McFee on the phone?"

"No. What do you take me for, Sam? I know what you're thinking," Swayney said angrily. "But on the one hand, I've got the word from all the Las Tiengas people that everything has been checked and double-checked. You can't just throw out a schedule and firing time that hundreds of people have planned on for over two years! And what have I got to balance all that weight? Calvin Padgett, a traitor, a psychotic, soft-minded subversive. And his sister, who's made a monkey out of you. She didn't deny a word I said, did she? You ought to smarten up, Sam, and admit that you're wrong."

Durell said nothing. He heard the birds outside, the splash of fish in the lagoon. His mind reached forward into tomorrow. He saw the faltering missile in flight, he saw the flame and smoke of its arching trajectory. He saw it reach for the vast ocean of space and then respond to the mortal flaw in the myriad of bright relays and tubes and transistors that composed its brain. It plummeted back to the earth that had given it birth.

Explosion… desolation… death…

He could not let it happen.

No matter what he had to do. And no matter about Deirdre.

Jonathan was taking a long time getting the soup from the galley. Much too long. The galley was only down on the lower deck, a few steps from the wide staircase… Durell's mind suddenly tensed with alarm, with sudden relief, with gratitude.

His grandfather stood in the doorway of the pilothouse, holding a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun casually, easily, intimately. It was pointed at Swayney.

The old man said, "I regret the necessity of this, gentlemen. I am a loyal citizen, I assure you. But so is my grandson. Kindly drop your weapons, sirs."

Swayney turned purple. Art Greenwald looked as if he wanted to smile and then the shotgun twitched just a little in his direction and he dropped his gun. Swayney said something incoherent.

"Why, you stupid, blundering, senile old man…"

"I take that unkindly, sir," said Jonathan. "Samuel, if you wish to go now, you may go."

Durell stood up. He retrieved the pump gun. He looked at the girl. "Deirdre?"

"Take me with you," she whispered. It was the first time she had spoken in several long minutes. "Please, Sam."

"Of course," he said.

The old man said, "I'll meet you at the twins. Where I cut you that fishpole. You remember, Samuel?"

"I remember." Durell looked at Swayney and Art Greenwald. "Can you hold them, Grandpa?"

"I can do anything," the old man said gravely. "Within reason, of course."

Durell touched Deirdre's arm and they went out through a side door. Swayney shouted something vituperative after him, but he paid no attention. The side door led to the open topmost deck, between the huge rusted rocker arms that had once helped to power the old side-wheeler. The sun was hot, blazing. The black water of the lagoon seemed to suck up all the light when Durell looked down over the side of the old vessel. There was no sound from behind them. He drew a deep breath, then led the girl quickly down the staircase to the afterdeck and then along the rickety gangplank to the shore. He kept the bulk of the old side-wheeler between himself and the pilothouse windows so that Swayney would not be able to determine their direction.

Deirdre stumbled and he held her arm for a moment and helped her upright. She said nothing more. Perspiration glistened on her pale face. Beyond the ruins of the gutted house ashore, a narrow trail led them into the dense shadows of the swamp. Durell paused and listened. There was still no sound from the hulk. He said a prayer for his grandfather and plunged on. The trail twisted and lifted and fell through the brush and swamp. When they had gone on for five minutes, a little glade opened before them, a grassy clearing on the bank of a shallow pool sheltered by a curiously twisted double oak and massive, drooping willows. Durell halted. Deirdre breathed with difficulty beside him.

"We'll wait here for him."

"Suppose he doesn't come?"

"He'll be here."

"What can an old man do against people like Swayney?"

"Don't underestimate him," Durell said. "He'll show up."

She sank down on the grass and buried her face in her hands. Durell stood beside her. The jacket of her rust-red suit was torn and stained by their night in the swamp. He saw the coppery glint of her hair, and remembered the soft and flesh-warm miracle of her body as she had been last night. Confusion tore at him.

"Deirdre," he said. "Deirdre, why didn't you deny the things Swayney said about you?"

"I couldn't."

"Are they true?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm simply asking."

"Yes," she said. "You're asking."

"What's the matter?"

"You believed Swayney completely, at once."

"Were you really married to Robert Keitch?"

"Yes, I was."

"Was he the man Swayney described?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"It would have made a difference."

"What makes you think so?"

She looked up at him. "It makes a difference now, doesn't it?"

"I don't know," he said bluntly.

"Well, that's why I didn't tell you."

There seemed to be nothing more to be said between them. The little glade was quiet except for the humming of the insects. Durell felt tired. He sat down and plucked a blade of grass and chewed on it. An eternity ago, a lifetime away, in another world, he had come here with his grandfather and old Jonathan had cut willow poles from those huge old willows and taught him to fish in the little pond before him. It was in another reality, not this one. He shook with exhaustion. He felt hunger and thirst. He wondered if it was worth while to go on. The last of his bridges had been burned behind him now.

Suddenly he hated himself and everything he had done.

The old man arrived fifteen minutes later. He looked calm and unhurried. He carried the shotgun in one hand, a bag of sandwiches and bottles of beer in the other. His quiet old eyes regarded the stiff figure of the girl, then swung to Durell.

"You are betting everything on one throw of the dice, Samuel. That is not the way I taught you to gamble."

"I can't help it, Grandpa. This is the way it has to be. I'm only sorry I got you involved in this."

"I'm enjoying it," the old man said.

"But you won't dare go back to the
Three Belles
now."