Assignment - Mara Tirana by Edward S. Aarons Page B

reflecting light from the small towns and villages on its banks. It was sixty-seven kilometers to Bratislava, on the Czech frontier, but he did not expect to have to go that far.
    Here and there in the darkness was the loom of a turreted, crenellated castle, fairy-like in the dim mist and rain that covered the land, relics of the petty nobility who once ruled along the banks of the ancient river by means of piracy and brigandage. Otto Hoffner, of course, paid no attention to the landscape familiar to him. The Porsche roared smoothly eastward.
    In ten minutes, Vienna was far behind. Otto slowed when they passed through a small village and halted at one of the ubiquitous yellow traffic lights in the center of the narrow, cobbled street; then they sped across the intersection. Instead of following the main autobahn, he turned a corner in the old village into a narrower street, bumped over a rough stretch of road, and swung into a narrow lane that went almost due north, directly toward the river.
    “You’re sure of the place?” asked Durell.
    “The boy, Anton, described it carefully to Harry, before Harry lost patience with him. The meeting was to be at ten o’clock.”
    “It’s after that, now.”
    “But we have not met Fraulein Padgett coming back in Harry’s car,” Otto pointed out.
    There were dense woodlands on either side of the narrow lane, and the car’s headlights bored a bright path through a dripping, leafy tunnel marked by careful fences. Otto slowed down even more, and then the lane angled sharply right again, and they were out of the woods.
    Lights made an ochrous pallor on the undersides of low-hanging clouds in the sky to the east.
    “Bratislava,” Otto said laconically. “Not far off. There is the river.” He sounded worried. “There should be a field here, and a white farmhouse, a small village just beyond. Harry was to meet this Gija fellow from the Czech barge at the first side road from this point.”
    “I’d suggest you turn off your lights, then,” Durell said.
    “Of course. Sorry.”
    They crawled ahead, easing their way through the gloom. The reflection of city lights in the far distance made things a little easier. Durell could see the Danube now, a broad reach of rain-dimpled water, with the opposite bank, beyond several small islands, probably in Czech territory at this point. To the east was the loom of hills that narrowed the gap for the river to pass through the spurs of the Carpathians. Lights twinkled on the river, and there were moving objects, barges and small steamers chuffing, with diesel engines muttering in the mist, and an occasional glimmer of red or green running lights from the international river traffic.
    “Here we are,” Otto said suddenly.
    He turned the Porsche abruptly into a high, hedged road. There was a field to the right, a dim collection of farm buildings close to the river bank.
    “Harry’s car,” Otto said in a strange voice. “Right ahead.”
    Durell saw the dim gleam of wet metal blocking the road. Otto braked and turned off the motor. In the silence, they heard crickets singing disconsolately in the rainswept fields, and the faraway throb of a river barge seemed louder through the darkness.
    The car ahead, an American Chevrolet, was dark and silent. Otto drew a long, slow breath. “If Harry is still waiting, he will be angry at our appearance here. It might frighten off the contact man, this Gija that the boy talked about.”
    “I’ll go ahead. Stay here, Otto.”
    Otto nodded and Durell got out of the Porsche with careful silence. There was no movement in the car ahead. But surely their arrival in the lane directly behind him should have brought Harry Hammett out of his car to meet them.
    Nothing happened.
    The rain fell with a soft sibilance on the wet fields, dimpling the river, making the night distances wider and echoing to the opposite shore of the vast stream. The crickets sang. A few branches of the trees that lined the lane rattled in