Assignment to Disaster by Edward S. Aarons Read Free Book Online

filthy Red bitch like the rest of them. What did she do, show you a leg, Sam?"
    "You bastard," Durell said. "You think I don't have a right to get sore about this?"
    Durell said, "The girl received enough of the kind of treatment you want to give her. She took it for her brother and she got enough of it for herself. All right, it wasn't anybody's fault, but she doesn't see it that way. She feels antagonism, she feels she won't get justice for herself or her brother. She doesn't like the idea of Calvin Padgett being hunted down like a bubonic rat. You try your loudmouthed, bullying tactics on her, and she'd clam up. She's tough. You wouldn't get anywhere. So I tried to win her confidence. I did, too. But Weederman's men booby-trapped me."
    Swayney's pursy mouth closed as if tightened with a drawstring. Durell pushed the doctor away and sat up. His head swam. Pain hammered at him. He closed his eyes, hearing Swayney's thin voice go on and on. After a moment he felt better, the pain ebbed, he stood up. The man with the bullet head loomed in the back of his mind. Ugly, jeering, deadly. The man who had killed Lew Osbourn. The man who had Deirdre Padgett. He felt sick. He drew a deep breath and steadied himself. Swayney watched him with curiosity.
    "You belong in a hospital, Sam," Swayney said, more softly. "I'm sorry, but I'm pulling the cork on you. You're off the case."
    "No."
    "What did the girl tell you about Calvin Padgett?"
    "She is to meet him in Las Tiengas tomorrow evening."
    "Where?"
    "A place called the Salamander." Durell wanted to hold this out, but he couldn't. Everything he had been trained to be required that he transfer this information, now that the girl was gone. "Cal Padgett is playing it cagey. He won't show unless his sister is there. And I've lost her. If you throw a stake-out on the place, you'll lose, Burritt."
    "We'll see who loses."
    "I've got to find that girl," Durell said.
    "Hell. We've got to find Calvin Padgett."
* * *
    Dickinson McFee lit his pipe very carefully, puffing hard, watching the flame shoot up and die away as he blew on the wooden match. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Durell sat patiently in his office at 20 Annapolis Street. His head ached, his ribs ached, his teeth were sore. There was anger in him and a sense of tension he could not dispel. As usual, the little general seated behind his smooth, cleared desk wore civilian clothes, a gray flannel suit with a blue necktie and a pearl stickpin. As usual, Dickinson McFee seemed to fill the room with his presence. He spoke quietly.
    "Swayney is down on you, Sam. With some reason, you must admit. Don't interrupt me, now. You ought to be in bed for the next twenty-four hours; but if you say you're all right, then I'll accept that. Officially, you're off the case. I've got to back up Swayney."
    Durell waited.
    The pipe emitted great clouds of aromatic smoke.
    "I know Lew Osbourn was your friend," McFee said.
    "My best friend."
    "You don't want to quit on this one, do you?"
    "No," Durell said.
    "I'll tell you what I've been thinking. Swayney is throwing nets out in all directions to snare the girl. I don't think he'll find her or the son-of-a-bitch who clobbered you and killed Lew. The apparatus we're working against seems to be smart, fast, and highly organized. They must not be allowed to get their hands on Calvin Padgett. The FBI is rounding up every suspected agent in the country, but it's my hunch that this crowd is all new, never used before, held in reserve for just this kind of thing. Swayney won't find the girl. Not alive, anyway."
    "You can't let them kill her," Durell said tightly.
    "We'll try to stop it. Swayney is competent on that end. But it's my hunch she'll crack. She'll have to. It's only a matter of time, maybe hours, with luck maybe a day, before she tells about her rendezvous with her brother."
    "So?"
    "We'll work this on two levels. Swayney is the obvious, the overt activity that they'll see. He'll throw weight