Assignment - Mara Tirana by Edward S. Aarons Read Free Book Online

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