Assignment — Angelina

Mark drove the Cadillac right into town. Corbin objected, in his usual, mild manner, but Mark said it didn't make any difference, because the town was just a gas station and a few ghost shanties in the middle of the Arizona desert. Since Mark gave the orders, there was no further discussion.

Slago sat in the back with Corbin. He looked massive, sweating with eagerness now that the operation was actually begun. Jessie sat up front with Mark. She looked cool and sleek, unaffected by the desert sun, her yellow hair bound up with a narrow blue ribbon she had bought in a five-and-ten in Tucson. Corbin had wanted his wife to sit with him, and have Slago up front, but Jessie had blandly ignored him. Mark, feeling Jessie's warm thigh roll against him as he turned a curve, looked sidewise at her and smiled; but she wasn't having any. Now for the first time, he was struck by the cool detachment she was able to maintain.

"There it is," Slago rumbled. He thrust his round head forward. He had cropped his salt-and-pepper hair in Tucson, and you could see the sweat on his scalp through the short bristles. "Tom Everett. Look at the dump, will you? He was always a jerk, that Tom, remember? Readin' cowboy stories all the way across Europe. He always wanted to come to the West and ride the range, he said." Slago laughed thickly. "So he's a gas jockey in the middle of a stinkin' nowhere. Tech corporal, he was. Always in my hair. No goddam good when the tanks came into the Bulge."

"Did he run?" Corbin asked. His German accent showed a clinical interest. His gray eyes looked opaque behind his rimless glasses. "Is this Everett a coward?"

"Don't make no difference." Slago grinned, and his broad, brutal face shone with anticipation. "He won't be nothing, soon."

"It's fourteen years," Mark said. "Maybe he won't know us."

"Ah, hell remember me," Slago said.

None of them was as young as they had been in the old days, Mark thought. He himself was thirty-eight, and he had called himself Mark Fleming for so long now that he had almost forgotten the name he'd once had, the one on the records up in Ossining. But Jessie made him remember some times in Antwerp and Paris, in that long-ago past. He felt her soft thigh roll against him again, but he didn't want to get Erich Corbin sore. They had been aiming for this a long time, and he didn't want to spoil it because of the blonde. Even if Jessie was twenty years younger than Erich, and had that look on her face and in her pale violet eyes that told him she was willing, he had to remain aloof to keep Corbin happy.

After all, it was Erich who had bought the car, and it was Erich's plans that had started the whole thing. He still needed the little chemist, Mark decided. Later on, if things worked out, he could think about changing the setup.

Tom Everett's gas station looked shabby, crushed by the desolate desert heat, small against the purple mountains on the horizon. A new highway had by-passed the town ten miles south, and there was no other traffic on the road. Mark slowed the heavy Cad reluctantly, because he enjoyed driving the luxurious car. There were two pumps, and a screened door stood ajar in the gray shack beyond. A faded Coca-Cola sign hung askew on its steel stand. There were some weather-beaten frame houses nearby, ranging the road, but they all looked deserted. A wire cattle fence stretched across the cactus and sage flats beyond the highway, but it was bent and neglected. Nobody was in sight. Liquid heat pools shimmered in the distance. Mark tapped the horn ring, and the sound was lost in the vast, hot silence that closed around them.

A door slammed somewhere in the back of the station shack, and Slago sat up, his broad face alert. Tom Everett came around a corner of the shack, eating a sandwich. Mark knew him immediately. The man was seared by the desert he had yearned for, the juice of youth crushed out of him. But there was no mistake about it They had the right man. The first on the list. Maybe they'd be lucky and have to go no farther.

"Hey, Tom," Mark called softly.

"Fill her up, folks?"

"Don't you remember me, Tom? And the sergeant, back here?"

Everett was tall and thin, with straw hair bleached white by the sun. He had a bony, ingenuous face. He had been the butt of platoon jokes because of his omnivorous reading of Western pulps, and his ambition to get out of Jersey City and live in the West had been universally derided. His faded blue eyes looked confused as he stared at Mark.

"Lieutenant? Lieutenant Fleming?" A slow grin spread over the freckled face. "Glory, it's been a long time! Think of meetin' you here!" His voice lifted and he called, "Mary! Mary, here's some friends I told you about!"

Mark said quickly: "Don't call your wife, Tom. Not yet."

Slago said: "We didn't know you were married, cowboy."

"Oh, sure, I'm married." Everett sounded different when he addressed Slago. His grin was not quite as happy. He sounded a bit cautious, remembering. "Been married for ten years now."

"Where is she?" Slago asked.

"Over yonder, in the second house." Everett pointed. "Let me get her, huh? You got time for a beer and bite with us?"

"Not really," Mark said. "Actually, we looked you up to talk to you. His voice was easy as he felt the car lift as Slago got out and walked casually around the gas pumps behind Everett. "Something has come up," Mark went on. "It's about Metzdorf."

"Metzdorf? Golly, that's a long ways back."

"But you remember it, don't you?"

"Sure." Everett looked puzzled. "What about it?"

"You'remember the detail our platoon was on? Bugger-lugging all that paper out of the chemical plant?"

"Yeah, reckon I remember. But we can talk about old times later. You fellows must be powerful dry." Everett seemed to notice the Corbins for the first time. "Maybe the lady would like to freshen up a bit. Your wife, Lieutenant?"

"No," Mark said shortly. Jessie smiled. Corbin frowned behind his thick glasses. "About those files, Tommy."

"What about 'em?"

Slago spoke from behind him. "Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"Go somewhere? There's nobody here but me and Mary." Everett began to look alarmed. He no longer seemed happy about the reunion. "What is it with you guys, anyway?"

"We're lookin' for something you swiped, cowboy," Slago rumbled.

"I never swiped anything in my life!" Everett exclaimed. "Look here, you fellows got something awful wrong. Maybe I ain't as glad to see you as I thought. I'm beginnin' to remember some things I wasn't too crazy about in those days."

"Then remember about the files, too," Mark urged gently. He saw the sweat on Everett's bony face, and began to enjoy himself. "Remember Metzdorf, Tom."

"Are you crazy? There's nothing to remember."

"You swiped something," Slago said impatiently. "We were loadin' those files on the truck, and one of the boxes busted. You dropped it and it busted, remember? You always were clumsy, cowboy. And all them papers spilled into the mud."

"I don't remember that," Everett said doubtfully.

"Sure you do. Try."

"I never stole a thing," Everett insisted. "Look, all that happened a long time ago. You fellows come driving in from nowhere and don't even have a beer or anything, you just start giving me the third degree, like. Is it a gag?"

"No gag," Slago said softly, and hit him on the back of the neck, without warning.

Slago, at forty, was still a bull of a man, his shoulders meaty and powerful under the flowered sport shirt he wore. The blow slammed Everett to his knees in the dust in front of the gas pumps. He clawed at the Cadillac's dusty tail fin and Slago chopped at his fingers and Everett rolled away, trying to get up. Slago kicked him in the ribs. Everett started to scream in anguish and surprise, and Slago hauled him up with one hand and hit him in the mouth, starting blood from broken teeth, and then flung him, sprawling, toward the screen door of the station shack. Slago had worked with speed, efficiency, and relish.

Jessie got out of the car, her long legs flashing under her full skirt. "Does he have it, Mark?"

"We don't know."

"Let Slago do it, Mark. Do you understand?"

Mark nodded. He could smell her perfume as she put her hand on his arm and watched Slago pick up Everett. She wore a peasant-type blouse and he could see the deep, smooth cleft between her breasts, tanned all the way down. There was some excitement in the way she breathed, but not much. He wished he knew what was going on behind her pale violet eyes.

"Get back in the car, Jessie. Look out for his wife, if she shows up."

"You don't have to worry about me."

"It isn't going to be pretty."

"Maybe I've seen worse.

"Where?" he asked.

She looked at him. Her face was cool and lovely. "You're not very subtle, Mark. Don't ask questions like that."

Mark looked at Erich Corbin. Corbin, still in the Cad, seemed disinterested in the proceedings, and Mark felt a sudden, irrational flash of hatred for the German's cool temperament. He turned away from Jessie and followed Slago as Slago shoved the shattered Everett into the shack.

There was no alarm. The empty, weather-beaten houses down the road were drowned in the silent blast of sunshine. Apparently, Tom Everett's wife was either asleep or out of sight and sound in the back of her house. It was cool in the shack, away from the direct impact of the afternoon sun. A thermometer on the outside wall registered 105, but inside there was an illusion of coolness in the dark shadows. There was a Coke machine, a cigarette machine, a battered cash register, a glass-topped counter thick with dust, containing automatic accessories, sunglasses, candy bars and spark plugs. He felt contempt for Everett, who had dreamed of the glamorous West and had ended like this. "Now we get the truth out of him," Slago said thickly.

Slago was an expert. Everett had no chance to cry out, and Slago needed no help from Mark. He worked on the man avidly, using fist and knee, and finally a long, bone-handled switchknife.

They didn't get the answer they hoped for.

Everett was still conscious when Mark knelt on the wooden floor beside the gasping man.

"Look, Tom, we know it still exists, even after all these years. We advertised in newspapers all over the country for war souvenirs. For letters with Hitler's signature, for instance. We got all kinds of answers, because we offered good prices, and people collect anything, so nobody paid any extra attention to our ads. And we got one answer we were looking for, in St. Louis. It was signed A. Greene, with just a box number for a return address, but it described what we were looking for. But when we wrote and checked back, we got no answer. And we couldn't find A. Greene. He never even picked up our letter offering to pay for the autographed papers we wanted. But it satisfied us. We know it hasn't been lost or destroyed, even after all this time. One of our squad members stole it from that broken file box in Metzdorf. It still exists. And we want it. We don't really give a damn about the letter with Hitler's signature that was cupped to it. If you want to keep that, fine. But we want the other papers in that folder."

"I don't know what you're talking about." There was a bubbling sound in Everett's throat. His eyes looked vague, then sharpened in focus and reflected a last spark of anger. "You guys won't get away with this, comin' in and beatin' up on me like damn coyotes. I ain't got what you want, but you won't go askin' any of the other guys in the squad, either. Ill see to that. I'm callin' the sheriff..."