The Assignment Read Online Free Page B

sky had been quite cloudless during the flight in. The concrete apron shone with pools of water, and as he had left his raincoat on board, he put his head down and half ran to the plane. He was very conscious of his limp and thought that he must look rather foolish.
    Manuel Ortega sat by the window with his black briefcase lying on his knees. Everyone seemed to be in place, but the seat beside him was still empty. He peered out into the rain and busied himself with the seat belt and did not notice heruntil she was standing about a yard away from him. She took off her dark-green leather coat, folded it up, and put it up on the luggage rack. Then she sat down, fastened her belt, and placed a worn canvas bag on her knee. She took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of the bag and put them into her jacket pocket. Then she turned her head and looked at him.
    “Miss Rodríguez?”
    “Yes. Danica Rodríguez.”
    “Manuel Ortega.”
    She thrust her hand into her bag again and passed him an identity card in a plastic case.
    While the plane was rolling toward the takeoff runway and the engines were being revved up, he studied the identity card. It was the same type as his own, issued by the department but signed by the Foreign Minister of the previous government. Everything was there, from thumbprint and details of height, age, marital status, and color of hair, to her service codes. Surname: Rodríguez Fric. First name: Danica Antonia. Born: 1931. Place of Birth: Bematanango. Marital status: Married. Height: 5 ft. 8 in. Hair: Black. Eyes: Gray.
    The first part of the code he solved with ease: stenographer, correspondent, interpreter, but after that there followed a series of numbers which he did not recognize and which for a moment at least he could not figure out.
    The plane had air beneath its wings when he returned the card. She took it without looking at him and it vanished into her bag. As soon as the warning lights went off, she took a cigarette out of her jacket pocket and lit it.
    “Where is Bematanango?” said Manuel Ortega.
    “Down there, where we’re going. Right down in the south. It hardly exists. Twenty-five or thirty mud huts at the bottom of a valley, one street, a little Catholic chapel. There was a little hospital there once, but it’s fallen down now.”
    He nodded.
    She let the subject drop.
    “I have a few things with me for you to deal with. Do you want to look at them now?”
    “It can wait. We’ve plenty of time.”
    Manuel Ortega lets the back of his seat down and closes his eyes. A formula has once again begun to grind away in his brain: The sentence will be carried out within two weeks at the most. Then he shrugs his shoulders and thinks, without knowing it, in exactly the same words as his predecessor: Barking dogs don’t bite. Then he remembers the news item about Orestes de Larrinaga, his name misspelled. He thinks about the journalist with the neat safety pin and the abrupt question: Are you afraid? It is easier to spell Ortega, he thinks. A few seconds later he is asleep.
    An hour later they are over another part of Europe. The plane is a Convair Coronado 990 jet of Swissair. It is flying at twenty-six thousand feet and the air in the cabin is dry and smells of cloth and leather. The man by the window has awakened. His mouth tastes of lead and he is sitting forward with his black briefcase on his knees and he has put his right arm across it so that no one can see the chain between his wrist and the handle.
    He turns his head to the right and looks at the woman in the seat beside him for the first time. Her hair is short and black and she is wearing a red dress with blue revers. She is sitting slightly crouched with her right elbow on the foam-rubber armrest and her head resting against her hand. On her knees there is an open notebook and a page of stenciled tables. She is smoking as she reads. When she picks a flake of tobacco from her lip with her little finger, he sees that her nails are