Assignment to Disaster by Edward S. Aarons

the entrance, not meaning to have his attention distracted if Deirdre arrived. The gateway was empty. Under other circumstances, he would have been enjoying himself. Cora Neville was easily the most beautiful woman he had seen for a long time. Her hip-length jacket was open now, and he saw she was wearing a burgundy bathing suit, remarkably modest in view of what seemed to be the vogue around him. He looked at the gate again.
    "She isn't here yet," Cora said bluntly.
    "But you expect her?"
    "We have her reservation in our files, as you know. Are you well acquainted with Miss Padgett?"
    "I've never met her."
    She said, too casually, "But you know what she looks like?"
    "Tall redhead, beautiful."
    "Yes." She seemed relieved. "Calvin spoke of her often. I wish to impress upon you, Mr. Durell, that I will not tolerate a scene here. I cannot afford to divert my guests that way. As for my relations with Calvin, I have already explained them many times to Colonel Larabee. It was nothing. He was a young man I took a temporary liking to, nothing more."
    "Was?" Durell asked.
    She looked puzzled, then shrugged. "I think of him in the past, because nothing came of it. He thought he was in love with me, but it was a mistake. We had fun for a few weeks, the few times he called for me. Nothing more than that. I know you people are looking for him, but I can't help you. I don't know what he's done or why he seems to be so terribly important to you. I don't know where he is now."
    "I believe you," Durell said.
    Now she was surprised. She tried to hide it by playing with the cigarette. Durell took it from her fingers and crushed it out in an ash tray at the edge of the pool. A girl swam by, splashed water at him, laughed, and dived away. It was getting quite noisy at the Salamander now as more guests revived. Miguel went by. His eyes looked reptilian for the moment they rested on Cora Neville. The woman did not notice him, any more than she noticed the palm trees, the shrubbery, the discreet cottages, the people in the pool.
    "I wish…" she began.
    Durell waited.
    Her mouth shook.
    He glanced in the direction she was looking, and he saw the manager, George West, standing on the wide shallow steps of the lobby entrance, his tanned face alert, hard, dangerous.
    "You were going to say something," Durell reminded her.
    Cora Neville stood up. "It was nothing."
    "What are you afraid of?" he asked.
    She looked down at him. "It's so easy to feel safe, when you have everything behind you, when all the money and power and energy have molded you and made you conform. But if you stumble, if you fall out of line, what then, Mr. Durell? Then you are afraid, isn't it so?"
    "Are you out of line?" he asked.
    "I'm out of my mind," she said, and walked away from him, toward the man who stood on the steps, watching.
    The kind of work you do, Durell thought, is like that of an infantryman during a war. There are moments of intense activity, the heart-hammering excitement of an instant's action, and then there is the waiting. You've waited before, waited and watched, and let the hours go by in patience, in the sure knowledge of your business, which is mostly this waiting and watching.
    But this waiting is different. Why? You stretch out here in the incredible sun by this pool under a desert sky and idle people around you accept you and step over you and talk about you or ignore you. But your heart lurches, your stomach is knotted, you stretch your fingers and watch them tremble. And you wonder why.
    You saw her only briefly, for only a few minutes. At first she hated you and then she tolerated you and at last she trusted you. What makes her different from all the other women you have known? You might as well ask why oxygen and hydrogen make water instead of oil. There is no reason for this. It just exists. It came into being when you first saw her, standing like a doe at bay on that street in Washington. How long ago? Only a day. Or a lifetime. But it is there.