Assignment - Lowlands Read Online Free PDF

German authorities were enlisted in a desperate attempt to locate the laboratory and personnel indicated by the writer.
    Negative.
    Nothing was turned up.
    Then a warning letter came to K Section, threatening to turn the secret over to the enemies of the West (the Cold War having suddenly entered a virulent phase all its own just then), unless immediate action were forthcoming on the demands. An agent to treat with the writer of the note was named—Piet Van Horn. This last was cause for considerable discomfiture at Number 20 Annapolis Street, K. Section’s HQ. How did the writer know that Van Horn was on the CIA payroll? The signature caused confusion, too: the note was signed Cassandra . How could anyone not originally familiar with the Nazi project know its secret code name?
    It could mean that someone among the German biochemists had waited all these years to strike for personal profit.
    Or it could mean there was a leak from within the ranks of the CIA.
    Piet Van Horn was questioned. His house was placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Everything he owned and everything he did, every single uneventful, unimportant detail of his life was picked up, turned over, examined microscopically, analyzed, and finally dismissed. Negative again. Piet was innocent. Since he was the agent specifically named to negotiate the matter of Cassandra, Piet would have to be used.
    It was at this point that Durell was called in.
    One more effort was made to run down those who were trying to blackmail the West by threat and terror. No, not just trying, Durell thought grimly. People had died. Innocent Dutch fishermen in the north country had been exposed to the virus. It showed the sort of temperament of the men they were up against—or women, he corrected himself, since you could take nothing for granted in this business— who had somehow stumbled upon or deliberately uncovered the buried laboratory of the Nazi virologists who had been seeking an ultimate weapon with which to force a victorious end to their lost war.
    They might be up against madmen; but Durell doubted it. There was a breed of hard-bitten international adventurers who owed allegiance to no one and possessed no principles. They were a group apart, socially amoral. Their detachment from normal social responsibility was marked in their manner and moods, in the sense of feral strength and jungle individuality among them.
    There were no more dangerous men in the world than Durell thought. They recognized no code, legal or moral, except that which served their own interests.
    Life was cheap: a matter of getting and holding, by strength, cunning, or force, every material thing the world had to offer. You lived and died by a set of primitive rules the world had almost forgotten.
    The last effort to uncover the site of the old bunker-laboratory had been made by Piet Van Horn yesterday. He had been sent up to Amschellig to sit and wait for those who wanted to sell Virus Cassandra. After all, something had to be done. You couldn’t sit still and let a plague grow wild in the world.
    The effort had killed Piet.
    Perhaps he himself had contracted the virus, too, Durell thought. He knew nothing about it, how it was spread or how it might affect him. Piet had told him much too little.
    But Piet’s steps now had to be retraced, with care and caution, to keep the fragile contact alive. Perhaps a different ending to Piet’s trip might be managed.
    And this was Durell’s job.
    He didn’t like it. He preferred an enemy he could see and feel, in the shape of a man. The shadow that hung over an unsuspecting world was too big and formless to combat rationally.
    He waited now, and watched the girl in the restaurant window. . . .

    It was dark when she left. Durell had seen no one near her except the waiter. She hadn’t gone to a telephone or sent any messages as far as he could tell. She picked up her gold purse and walked quickly from ’T Oude Schaap, checked her watch, and went to the