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

offering his home here at Steubenstrasse 19 as a major depot on the underground railway used to smuggle Hungarians out of the terror of the Soviet purge. He followed the hurrying little man down a wide, paneled hallway, then across a huge, old-fashioned kitchen into a pantry.
    “Just a minute, Otto,” he said.
    “Yes? What is it?”
    “You say Harry Hammett is upstairs, washing?”
    “Bathing, yes.” Otto nodded. “His clothes—some of the blood, you see—”
    “All right, go ahead.”
    “The messenger—the boy, Anton—is in here—”
    Beyond the pantry there was another room, like a windowless cell, originally designed for cold storage of food, reached by a barred and bolted door. Otto Hoffner’s pale hands trembled as he opened the bolts and snapped on the lights. He stood aside to let Durell enter, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and polishing them nervously as Durell looked at the man on the iron cot shoved into one corner of the cubicle.
    Blood was spattered on the yellow plastered walls, and on one of the iron cot posts, with a small mat of brown hair stuck to it. More blood was puddled on the polished floor beside the cot. The figure on the bed groaned. His face was battered, his mouth a shapeless bruise, open and black as he struggled to breathe. A regular groaning noise came with each heave of his chest. He was in his late teens, long and painfully thin. On the floor beside the bed was a knitted woolen cap, of the sort that sailors wear, and his tattered dungarees and shirt also testified that the injured boy was a sailor.
    “What happened here?” Durell asked grimly.
    “Nothing I could stop, you understand.” Otto wrung his hands. “It was impossible. In my position, with a man like Hammett, if I protest he is likely to turn on me and put me in an awkward position—”
    “Did Harry do this to the boy?”
    Otto said: “I have not yet sent for a doctor here, you understand—” He paused. “Yes, Herr Hammett did it. He lost control of himself. The boy was—how do you say it?— fresh, perhaps. He came to deliver a message about the subject—the subject of Hammett’s assignment—”
    “Major Stepanic?”
    “Yes. You understand, I had nothing to do with this, and if you are taking over Herr Hammett’s job—”
    “I am not.”
    Otto Hoffner looked frightened. “Then why are you here?”
    Durell did not answer that. “You say the boy’s name is Anton?”
    “Anton Galucz—his father is captain of a Danube barge at Bratislava. On the Slovak side, you see. There is a man who just returned to rejoin the crew—the pilot, a man named Gija—who knows where Adam Stepanic can be found.”
    “Alive?” Durell interrupted.
    “Alive. Exactly so. And this Gija sent the boy to arrange for a rendezvous with himself. The boy, Anton, telephoned the American Embassy here in Vienna. He was very circumspect. When it was understood what he wanted, the matter was turned over to Harry Hammett, of course. The boy was told to call back, to give the Embassy time to reach Hammett. And when this was done, the boy, Anton, arranged a rendezvous for Herr Hammett to meet this Gija, on the Austrian bank of the river.”
    “So why did Harry beat up the boy?”
    “I do not know. He lost his temper. The boy was sarcastic—cocky, as a boy may be, full of bravado at coming on such a mission—”
    There was a slight sound from the pantry door. Durell turned and saw Harry Hammett there. Hammett was in shirt sleeves, his collar open on his bare chest, exhibiting a thick mat of springy yellow hair that matched the tight blond curls on his head. He looked huge, filling the doorway, and he exuded an animal strength, the aura of a rogue male. He had very pale brown eyes, flecked with gold, under brows that would have seemed heavy if the hair had been dark. His nose was thin and straight, his mouth full, with carefully carved lips; he would have seemed handsome, except for the indefinable distortion of his features