Assignment - Palermo

THE OLD MAN leaned back and turned his blind, ravaged face anxiously to the warm sunlight. He spoke in a quiet voice to Durell. “If someone is determined enough, clever enough, and angry enough, and he wants to kill you, he shall succeed. Somewhere. Somehow. Sometime. The victim is doomed. He is a walking corpse.”

Durell sat still in the soft wind that blew over the lake and listened to his death sentence.

“Is there someone like that?” the blind man asked after a small silence.

“Yes, sir.”

“And he is determined?”

“Yes.”

“Clever?”

“Very. Kronin is the very best they have.”

“I do not know this Kronin. Is he angry?”

“He wants me out of it. I can’t get out.”

The old man’s name was Colonel Mignon. Looking at him, Durell felt as if he were considering a myth, a living fable. He had come a long way to see him. Mignon hadn’t been in the business for a long time, not since the acid hit his face and blinded him in Vienna in 1954. He had been allowed to retire, which was something not often permitted, and had lived in this villa ever since, among the mountains rearing up out of the Italian lakes that bordered the Swiss Ticino.

The wind stirred Durell’s thick black hair, and he brushed it back, aware that he had more gray at his temples than before. The terrace was built of pink marble, adorned with Roman copies of Greek sculpture. Last night it had looked like a graveyard. Mignon had refused to see him. An overseas telephone call to No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington, D.C., had fixed that.

It was peaceful here. Like a calm before the storm, Durell thought. The fishing village below the terrace tumbled down to the steep shore of the lake in a helter-skelter pattern of red and yellow tiled roofs. Music sounded dimly from the restaurant built out over the water, where the small white lake steamers came from Lugano with their crowds of gawking tourists. Most of the tourists were German—women with fat bottoms and pot hats, the men following after in their waddling wake. Children played on the steps of the streets that twisted down between the bright stucco houses, and their cries, in Ticinese Italian, added to the irony of the peaceful scene.

“Colonel Mignon?”

The old man had fallen asleep. He wore large dark glasses with eccentric heavy rims to cover the damage done by the acid thrown in his face so many years ago. He looked frail, even skeletal, with wispy white hair and a hard, wide mouth like a trap. He wore a mouse-col-ored flannel robe, although the sun was hot and the wind was warm. Somewhere in the villa, two peasant women moved softly about to attend to him. There was a high stone fence surrounding the place, with an antique bronze door of enormous weight, and Durell had seen to it that the bolts were firmly slammed home when he arrived. There were medallions and mementos of the old Kingdom of Savoy painted in trompe-l’oeil on the pink facade of the villa.

“Colonel Mignon?” he said again.

Durell could not tell if the hooded eyes behind those enormous glasses were open or not. But the hard mouth opened and spoke.

“Yes, yes. There is a resolution of sorts.”

Durell waited.

Mignon said, “You could hide. Indefinitely. For years. Not a pleasant prospect. Not for you, eh?”

“Even if I wanted to—”

“But you do not wish it.”

“—I couldn’t.”

“So I understand. I heard your name on the radio. I understand it is in the newspapers.” The old man clicked his tongue. “
Tchk!
You are not the sort of person, Mr. Durell, to get into a barroom brawl accidentally, after smashing a car on the promenade and arguing with the
agents
, and having yourself arrested for drunkenness, and spending the night in our local jail.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” Durell said.

“I did not say you were. It was deliberate. I guessed this. You wish to attract attention, to let people know where you are. A very dangerous ploy, sir. Not too practical. You want to lure the killer into a trap?”

“Not yet. I had to do it for another reason. I’m looking for someone. Three people. They’re somewhere in Switzerland, hiding out. I want them to know where I am so they’ll come to me. I need them. I need their help. And I think they’ll recognize me as a friend.”

“So.”

Durell said nothing more.

“And if the killer comes first? You trap him?”

“Not that, either. I need information first.”

“I see. You take on an added risk. And, of course, delay the only other possible resolution. Fire with fire. You really should kill first.”

“I intend to,” Durell said quietly.

A butterfly alighted on the old man’s gnarled hand and moved its wings slowly, dusty gold and black in the morning sunshine. There was laughter from the restaurant far down the hillside on the water’s edge. The butterfly took off and settled on a potted oleander.

“The killer you mention,” said Colonel Mignon, turning his blind eyes again toward Durell, “may make some mistakes. It is possible. We are all fallible. First he may send someone else to perform his errand. He may not try personally. This will be to your advantage because the hired man will not have his employer’s incentive. Then, he may grow impatient. This, too, will help if he moves too soon. And his anger may make his brain hot instead of cold. One must be very cold to kill properly.”

“He has already made his greatest mistake,” Durell said. “I know Kronin and I know his intentions.”

The old man laughed. It was like a sound from the grave.

In Durell’s business you learned to be very careful, always, if you hoped to survive. He was familiar with danger. He lived with it always, every minute, every day. But usually it was impersonal, and you weighed this factor against that and chose your course like a gambler calculating favorable odds. He had long ago learned to think this way from his old Grandpa Jonathan, back in Bayou Peche Rouge. Jonathan was one of the last of the old-time Mississippi riverboat gamblers. Danger and death were simply occupational hazards.

But this was different.

Durell was a tall, quiet man with a heavy musculature, a lean and weathered face, and dark blue eyes that turned black with thought or anger. He had learned to control his volatile Cajun temperament, and his years at Yale, studying law in New England, gave an overlay and quiet polish to his boyhood bayou character. Despite his height and size, he always moved with a lithe and easy grace. He could lose himself in a crowd when he wished, but another observer in the business would soon know him as a dangerous and effective man. He was a subchief in field operations for the trouble-shooting K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency. He knew that his survival factor had run perilously low since his first years in the old G-2, and all the later time when he went on into the CIA to work in the dark and silent war of unheralded violence in all the nameless corners of the world. He knew there were red-tabbed files on him at KGB headquarters in Moscow and in the P.L.I. security offices in Peiping, and in Hanoi and Prague. Nothing in those files promised him a long or peaceful life.

But Kronin was another matter.

Durell spoke a dozen languages fluently and could get along in another score of dialects. He had a gambler’s hands, with strong, deft fingers, and he knew how to kill in a number of ways—with the edge of his palm, with stiffened fingers, a rolled newspaper, a long pin. He usually disdained the gimmicks dreamed up by the lab boys in the basement of K Section’s headquarters on Annapolis Street in Washington. He knew the value of team work, but he preferred to work alone. Through the years he had come to accept the solitude of his work and he never turned a comer or opened a door without expecting the worst. It set him apart. There were times when he regretted this, but there was no turning back. Not now; not ever. It was his job, and he could see no other way of life for himself.

The blind old man coughed and huddled in his robe in the sunshine. A canary flickered like a drop of gold and alighted on one of the Roman statues adorning the terrace; it sang a brief note and departed.

“Mr. Durell,” Colonel Mignon said, “you see what I have become. I am retired. You know your problem better than I. There is nothing I can do to help you. Even if I could, I would not. I have had enough. I want no more of it. You see, I was unlucky. I should have been killed. But here I am, with wasted black years.” 

“Do you regret your work, sir?” Durell asked.

The big dark glasses flashed in the sunlight as the skeletal head turned sharply toward him. “Now I only regret living. I’m out of it for good.”

“I’ve been authorized to call on you, though.”

“Of course, of course. But I live in a state of truce. I am known to be useless, you see.”

“You are known to be the greatest expert on European criminal organizations available to me.”

“No, no, I cannot enter this affair. There is a tacit agreement. I know so much, yes, that I could be valuable—to them as well as to you. But if I become active, the truce is ended.”

“Are you afraid, sir?”

“I do not know.”

“You regret living. You could die helping me,” Durell promised bluntly. “Isn’t that what you might prefer?” The hard mouth twitched. “You call my bluff and ask for my suicide?”

“It may not come to that.”

“No, no. I have had my intimation of mortality. I have made a truce with myself, too. It is out of the question. I must refuse you even before you ask.”

“But if you could square your personal account?” Durell asked softly.

The blind man lifted his head from the pillow of the chaise and made a small grunting sound. He lifted a shaking hand. “Go away. You disturb me, young man. Your presence here is dangerous to yourself and to me. I am content.”

“You’re lying. You’re not satisfied. You said you wished for death, and now you wish only to be left alone.” Durell paused. “You can’t have it both ways.” Anger hardened the wide mouth. “You come here and dare to speak to me like this?”

“I’m rather desperate, sir. I need your help. Your knowledge. I’ll force it from you if I must.”

“You couldn’t force anything from me, young man. You forget who I am.”

“I know who you
were
, Colonel,” Durell said. “And I’m counting on that. I told you I want Kronin. But first I must get some information.”

“I do not know this Kronin. I will not help you. Leave me alone.”

“But you do know Kronin.” Durell drew a deep breath. “Kronin ended your life, but he didn’t kill you. He’s the same man who threw the acid in your face ten years ago in Vienna. He used the name of Pavel Vanek then. In past years he’s killed Tony Gordon, Harry Bell, and Lucy Andrews. All good people. Now he plans to kill me. I’d like to kill him first. For both of us, sir.” He sat back and waited.

Colonel Mignon’s mouth was pale. He was quiet for a long time. Then he sighed. He said, “What do you want to know?”

IT BEGAN a week ago in Washington.

The cherry blossoms were in bloom, and the trees made rosy splashes of color, like pink dye thrown into the quiet Reflecting Pool. The air was mild. Durell walked along the path beside the pool with General Dickinson McFee. He had been up all night studying the reports McFee had asked him to memorize. His eyes felt as if someone had thrown grit into them.

McFee, who commanded K Section’s field operations, was troubled, although he rarely revealed his emotions. Durell sometimes doubted if the man ever had any. He was small, slight, and neutral, a man of gray, and he carried a Scottish blackthorn walking stick, which Durell knew was a miniature arsenal.

“We work with the Bureau on this,” McFee began. “It’s partially domestic, and they’re jealous of their jurisdiction. Amos Rand has already gone to Switzerland. You can leave tonight. Geneva Central will tell you where to find him there. You know Amos, don’t you, Sam?”

“He’s all right.”

“I understand. But it’s necessary to work with him. The FBI is touchy, Cajun, and they wanted to handle it alone. Joint Chiefs insisted on this. I know you’re looking forward to leave, but it’s been cancelled. I had to pick you because you know one of the men we’re looking for. It may help.”

“I haven’t seen O’Malley since we were boys back in the bayou,” Durell said

“But he knows you and remembers you and has some idea you’re in the business. He came looking for you.”

“And the Bureau turned him away,” Durell said grimly-

“They couldn’t know at the time how much there was to his story,” McFee said patiently. “And there are three of them, you know. O’Malley, Bruno Brutelli, and Joey Milan. You saw the dossiers?”

Durell nodded, and they turned onto a path away from the Reflecting Pool. McFee swiped at dandelion heads with his deadly walking stick. It made Durell a bit nervous. And it disturbed him to have a personal element intrude in his work. Emotion tended to blur judgment, slacken reflexes, and cause that split-second pause that could be fatal.

He remembered Frank O’Malley well. A laughing boy who dared anything, back in the bayou days. They had gone to school together, chased girls together, explored and hunted in the swamps as a team. For years they had been inseparable. Then Durell went north to Yale and later to war and he no longer knew O’Malley.