Free Assignment - Budapest by Edward S. Aarons Page B

enough men on shore to take care of the hunt for Korvuth.
    He nodded, and the girl said, “Get him.”
    It took no more than five minutes for Tom Yordie to climb into the skiff, ship his oars, and begin his long row for shore. The old man raised no objections. Once he started to ask a question, then looked at the girl’s face and the gun in her hand and shrugged his bowed shoulders in resignation. He spoke to Durell as he climbed into the skiff. “Take care of my boat, young feller. I don’t know who you are, or what’s happenin’ rightly, but this boat is all I got in the world. It’s my home, and I don’t want her wrecked. You’ll look after her?” “Sure,” Durell said.
    “I left you the rest of that bottle.” He looked at the girl again. “I reckon you might need it, at that.”
    When he was gone, a small bowed figure bent to the oars of the little skiff, Durell turned back to the girl. “You understand that he will call the police as soon as he gets ashore?” “It will be several hours until then. The matters we must discuss will be decided by that time.” The girl turned the switch on the wheezing old engine, and the pungy was suddenly quiet except for the lapping of water along its white sides. The boat lifted and fell, drifting easily on the tidal current. “I do not think it will be dangerous for us if we simply allow the wind to push us,” she said. “I am cold and I could use a drink. Let us go below and talk.” She moved her gun. “After you, Mr. Durell.”
    He went down into the tiny cabin, found the bottle Yordie had left, handed it to her, and then sat down on one of the bunks. It was cold aboard now, with no heating equipment in the cabin with the engine off, and only the planks of the hull to fend off the icy wind blowing over the bay. In the dim overhead light he saw the girl clearly for the first time. She took off the red felt hat and shook her coppery hair free, and he saw it was long and silken, more than shoulder-length. Her face with its prominent cheekbones might have been beautiful except for the lines of exhaustion marked around her mouth and the violet shadows under her dark-brown eyes. Little flecks of gold shone in them as she sat down, the gun beside her on the bunk, and took the bottle from him. She still wore the woolen skirt and sweater and the tweed coat he had seen her in before.
    She drank and coughed and he could have taken the gun from her then, but he did not move. She looked up and smiled. “There is no subtlety in American liquor, is there?” “It’s home brew,” he said. “Tom Yordie's own mash. People get to like it, after a while.”
    “Another example of American individuality and independence?”
    “You could call it that,” he said. “You speak English well. Were you trained in Moscow?”
    “Of course. I expected you to recognize that.”
    “You did a poor job of shadowing me,” he told her.
    “I wanted you to see me and know where I was.”
    “Have you split with Bela Korvuth?”
    She nodded slowly. “It is definite now. I could not stand it. So much has happened, in only one day.” She ignored the gun beside her and clasped her hands together in her lap and leaned forward toward him. She shivered a little. “I can help you, Mr. Durell. But you must help me in return. That is why I needed this private conference with you. Anywhere else, it would be dangerous. Korvuth would find us, or you would not listen. Here, you and I can talk as two people, apart from everything else.”
    “I’m willing to listen.”
    “Of course. We know all about you. I thought you would prefer to talk. We consider you one of the most dangerous men against us. I do not know if what I have done so far is right. Perhaps I will be killed for it and perhaps I will deserve it. I will not lie to you. I came over here as part of Korvuth’s apparatus, to kill you, to get you off our books.”
    “That wasn’t all of your job,” he said.
    “No. Not all of it.