Assignment - Cong Hai Kill Read Online Free Page A

McFee. He worried
about you, and cared for yon, and would send you to your death without the
slightest change in his glacial gray eyes, if he thought your death might be
useful to some important project hatched in his fertile mind.
     
    Thinking of his
interview with McFee as he stood in his hotel room halfway around the world,
Durell reflected that the electronic air-conditioning in McFee’s office
had failed that day, and the Washington heat then, ironically, was as humid and
suffocating as that in the Palace Hotel. Durell had asked for permission to
smoke one of his rare cigarettes, and permission had been bluntly denied.
    “Read these dossiers,”
McFee had said, pushing folders across his desk. “I got on my knees to pry them
out of the cellar files at NSA. They’ll tell you all about Orris Augustus
Lantern of Hemmington, Kentucky. Read ’em and weep, Cajun. And remember
that there, but for the grace of God, and so forth.” McFee paused. “Don’t judge
him too quickly. Whatever you feel about men like Lantern, remember this:
you’re going into the Chaines des Cardamomes, in Thai or
Cambodian territory, legally or illegally, and bring him back here—alive and
talking. In three weeks, Cajun, you have him sitting in that chair across from
this desk.”
    “What does he have
that's worth so much?”
    “Orris reneged out
of our S.F. units in Vietnam after his outfit was zapped, and they took him to
Hanoi. He made himself indispensable, and they took him to the Grass Basket, in
Peiping. Then they put him to work with the Cong Hai—brothers-in-arms in
sabotage and treason to the V.C. over in Vietnam. He has a gift for guerrilla
warfare. The best man they have. He's led them in burning, ravaging,
murders-—through his Cong Hai infiltrators. He’s started a small war
on our flank that We must eliminate. And he’s been clever enough so the Thais
blame the Cambodes and the Cambodes raise
hell  about the Thai border. He’s developed some fortress areas in
the highlands near the Cardarnomes, just as the Viet Minh and Viet Cong
built up ‘safe areas’ in Saigon territory. He knows where all the caches of
rice, weapons, and money are. He’s worked with the outlaw Kuomintang army
people who were stranded in northern Thailand and he’s developed a big
opium-running racket that finances his jungle empire. As a matter of fact, we
first got onto it through the dope angle. Interpol and our own Narcotics Bureau
sent it over to us.”
    “And you turn it over to
me,” Durell said dryly.
    “To you and Deirdre
Padgett. Her new job for us.”
    Durell’s face betrayed
neither shock nor dismay. He sat quietly, wishing for a cigarette, aware of the
heat and the window facing a blank wall behind McFee and the guards and
security devices on every elevator, door, and corridor in this inner sanctum of
K Section. If McFee pressed a button, he would never get out alive. . . .
    Deirdre ,
he thought.
    “You’re breaking all the
rules, General,” he said.
    “I am aware of the
rules. I make them, myself. Deirdre loves you, Cajun. You’ve known many women,
but you always return to her. She’s too damned good for you, of course. We have
no rule against married men, but it’s easier on bachelors in this business, and
we prefer men who don’t have their minds on wives and families back home.
You’ve always agreed with this, I know.”
    You take a moment off to
daydream, Durell thought, and it could be the last moment and the last dream
you ever enjoyed. He shifted in his seat.
    “General, you know how I
feel about Deirdre. You’ve been a good friend to both of us. You also know I’ve
done all I could to keep her from signing into the Agency. I don’t want to work
with her. It wouldn’t be successful.”
    “You mean, if she were
hurt, or killed?” McFee’s manner was unchanged. He might have been
discussing the weather. But putting it into words was like twisting a knife.
Durell did not like to think of