Assignment - Budapest Read Free Page A

It was ten-thirty on that Saturday morning. He had driven over from Washington for breakfast with Deirdre Padgett, with a long winter’s weekend ahead of them, alone here, just the two of them. That was gone now, but he didn’t let the disappointment trouble him after the first few moments.
    “It was Dickinson McFee,” he said to Deirdre, and sat down at the table again.
    “Do you have to go?” she asked quietly.
    “Yes. There will be a plane at the local airport soon. We have half an hour.”
    “Oh, Sam . . .”
    “Forget it, hon,” he said. “Where were we?”
    “What does it matter?” Her words were toneless. “We could talk about it forever, and nothing would materialize out of it. One phone call from your little general, and all the talk in the world between us goes up in smoke and remains just that—idle, wishful thinking. Talk, smoke, nothing at all.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I suppose I shouldn’t ask where you’re going, or why.”
    He smiled. “You know I wouldn’t tell you.”
    “Yes, I know. I know it only too well.”
    He watched her fill his coffee cup again. The kitchen of this fine old Maryland house was quiet and peaceful. A small fire that he had built burned cheerfully in the red brick fireplace set into the kitchen wall, opposite the modem stove and the shining antique copperware that Deirdre loved. Through the twelve-over-twelve windows, he could see the sweep of wet lawn from the house to the water’s edge. A man was out there in the chill rain, dredging for Chincoteagues from an ancient, dirty-white pungy in a cove of the bay, just north of the beach here. Durell knew the ways of the bay oystermen, in their bugeyes and pungies, and there was nothing really unusual about a crew of two or three going out in this weather. But he saw only one man, bent over on the narrow deck, forward of the small pilothouse. He wondered if it meant anything, and he sat very quietly while he considered it, his suspicion and alertness silencing him for the moment.
    He was a tall man, black of hair, just over thirty, with a small dark mustache and a taut, competent mouth. His blue eyes often appeared black when he was angry or especially thoughtful. They were very dark just now. There was a fine coordination in the way his lean body moved. His hot Cajun temperament had been carefully honed and controlled by the years of his training and silent warfare he had experienced since his boyhood in the Louisiana bayous, far from this place. It had been necessary to learn that often the difference between the quick and the dead was patience, silence, and watchfulness. A long series of ghosts, of dead men he had once known and worked with, were grim evidence of the price one paid for a mistake or a miscalculation. The war that Durell fought was not one that rang with bugles or trembled to the beat of drums. It was dark and silent, fought with nerve and skill; the war of espionage; and its battlefield was only too often the dirty streets and black slum alleys of faraway corners of the troubled world. The weapons of this war were more often cunning and vigilance rather than strength, although occasionally knife or gun came into swift, explosive play. The years in which Durell had served in this war had left their mark upon him in indefinable ways. He had survived until now, when so many others had failed or broken or died, and this spoke for itself as to what he was and what he had become.
    Deirdre saw him watching the man in the pungy.
    “It’s only old Tom Yordie,” she said quietly.
    “From Prince John?”
    “He’s been around ever since I was a child. He’s perfectly harmless.” Deirdre sighed. “You never relax, do you, darling? What is it with you? A perfectly fine old man, who’s never missed a day oystering in his life, and you look at him with such suspicion. How long does such dedication to your job go on?”
    “I can’t afford to relax, Dee,” he told her.
    “Well, that’s what I mean,”