Assignment - Budapest Read Free

It was something deeper and more fundamental. It could have been caused by old memories and a revival of halfforgotten terrors that had brought them here originally; but Breagan did not think so. There was an immediacy to the fear he smelled in this house now.
    He lit a cigarette, took off his hat, and brushed back his thick gray hair. He found the warmth of the kitchen welcome, but none of his tiredness eased up. Through the windows he saw the thin, sleety snow flying every which way in the dooryard between the house and the dairy barn. Nothing moved out there to disturb the Currier and Ives aspect of this place. It was almost too perfect, Breagan thought, in its nostalgic reconstruction of a more peaceful time. Maybe that was it. The place and the Dunstermeirs were too good to be true. McEneny, with his bland, quick mind, hadn’t seen it, obviously, although he had caught some of Breagan’s disturbed reservations.
    “What exactly did Bela Korvuth say to you?” Breagan asked quietly.
    "I do not know which one was Korvuth,” Dunstermeir said.
    “The leader. The one in charge.”
    “The smaller man? The one who frightened Mama?”
    “That’s probably he,” Breagan said, nodding. “Didn’t he say anything out of line at all?”
    Dunstermeir and his wife exchanged a quick glance, and Breagan felt a quickening in him. There was something here, all right. He forgot the way he had been wakened at dawn to get out into this frozen morning. But he didn’t rush it. When the woman offered him a cup of coffee, he accepted quietly, his manner gentle, knowing McEneny, too, felt it at last, and was waiting for his move.
    “What else did Korvuth say?” Breagan insisted.
    The woman spoke. “He took Endre with him. Endre recognized him—perhaps from the fighting in Budapest. They took the guns. I felt sorry for the girl. She looked nice. She was afraid of him.”
    “Are you sure of that?”
    “It is a feeling I had. And then Korvuth told us—”
    “Hilda, be quiet,” the man said.
    “But he ordered us to tell these men!” she insisted. “And we should. You say it is none of our business, but we should, Papa.”
    It was too good, too pat, this little quarrel between them.
    It might have been a clever bit of play-acting. Breagan wasn’t sure. He still rode his intuition, and he still kept his voice gentle, as if he knew them and trusted them and understood their fears.
    “Go on, Mrs. Dunstermeir. It may be important. Do I get you right, that Korvuth gave you a message for us?”
    “For a man named Durell,” the woman said.
    “Sam Durell?”
    “A man in Washington by that name, yes.”
    “What exactly did Korvuth say?”
    The Dunstermeirs exchanged another quick look. The fear wasn’t there any more. Something else glittered in the pale blue eyes that watched Breagan’s heavy, tired movement across the kitchen. Was it triumph? Violence? Hatred? He wasn’t sure. He could be imagining all of it.
    The woman spoke quietly.
    “Korvuth said he came to this country to kill two men. He wanted the police—the CIA, he said—to know that. He would not name one of the men. But the other he named. It was Durell.”
    McEneny made a small, vague sound and looked at Breagan. “Isn’t he the one who worked with our New York office on the Stella Marni case?”
    “Yes,” Breagan said.
    “We’ve got to let him know.”
    Breagan exhaled softly. He found that his hands were clenched at his sides, and Mr. Dunstermeir was looking at them, aware of the explosive impact of his words. But the farmer’s stony face gave nothing away now. I’m getting too old for this, Breagan thought again. Too old and tired, when a man like this can read me so easily.
    “I’ll call Washington,” he said quietly.

Chapter Two
    Durell put the telephone away and walked down the hall back to Deirdre. A thin rain was falling, turning the Chesapeake, glimpsed beyond the village of Prince John, in Maryland, into a dimpled plate of sullen gray steel.