Read Online Assignment - Budapest by Edward S. Aarons - Free Book Online Page B

of the pines until he came to a swampy area that he knew was a favorite spot for duck hunters. Several old blinds had been built along the waterfront here, visible now through the brittle reeds growing along the ice-crusted shore, and Durell checked each one carefully before going on. The path led inland for a short distance and then came out again on the shore, this time to the north of the cove. Tom Yordie’s pungy was still out there, its riding light dimly visible through the laced pattern of brittle weeds. Apparently it was at anchor, because he couldn’t hear the sound of the old engine. He could see no one aboard, either.
    The Prince John Gun Club used this area occasionally, and its members had built a shelter hut over on the far point. Durell had walked here with Deirdre many times, and he knew the ground well. A stretch of swamp, often inundated with tidal water, served as a barrier between the shelter hut and the more solid land to the west, where the search was going on. Durell looked back, but the lights of the searching men were obscured by the trees. He held his gun a little higher and walked through the cold darkness to the point.
    Without a torch to guide him, he had to move with care, and slowly, through the black night. Only a faint, luminous glow to the north, from the street lights of Prince John village, broke the utter darkness, but the reflected light from the low, scudding clouds only served to make shapeless shadows and strange patterns out of the land and the bay, the massed swamp oaks and pines and the dully glistening expanse of the Chesapeake. Durell moved forward to within twenty yards of the shelter hut before his straining eyes identified its vague shape against the deeper blackness of the night. A small, rickety wharf projected into the cove, and two skiffs had been pulled up and overturned on the shingle nearby. Durell looked out at the anchored pungy, then at the low, looming bulk of the shelter hut. Suddenly he was sure he had come to the right place. Korvuth was here. He was somewhere nearby. Every instinct told him this, and he stood very still, watching and listening, hearing the lap of icy water against the shore, the sigh of the wind, the brittle clashing of branches behind him. His training urged him to go back for help. But he wanted Korvuth for himself. This was something that had to be settled between the two of them.
    Nothing moved in the windy darkness. He stepped forward again, closing the distance toward the hut. Now he saw that one of the skiffs on the beach beside the pier was not overturned, but rode on the tide, moored with a line to one of the pier pilings. His pulse quickened, and he turned back to the shack.
    The shot and the scream of warning came simultaneously. The muzzle flare came spitting from the hut. The scream seemed to echo from the shadows under the pier. Durell threw himself flat. The voice that had warned him was a woman’s, and it came again, sharp and clear. He did not understand the words. She seemed to be talking to the man with the gun who had been waiting for him. Talking to Korvuth, in rapid, bitter Hungarian. A curse answered her. Another shot cracked the silence wide open. From far away, beyond the tongue of marsh that almost made an island of the point, came the alarmed yells of the searching troopers.
    Durell was pinned down on the beach. There was agony in his arm and shoulder, because he had dropped instinctively, without thought for his wound. It was bleeding again, and for a moment the earth heaved and turned under him.
    “This way!” the woman called.
    He did not think he could get up. A wave of weakness kept him on his belly on the beach. He looked up and someone was running from the hut, back toward the dark swamps. He got his gun up with an effort and fired once, twice. His vision was blurred. The woman called out to him again and he got to his hands and knees and tried to stand. He had missed. The running man, Korvuth, was gone. He