Assignment - Lowlands by Edward S. Aarons

which he moved and lived and worked. No quarter was given; none was asked. No bugles blew in triumph or to mark a retreat. If you failed or died, you were simply removed from the scene and your records disposed of. There was never a monument to mark the work you had done.
    Marius Wilde’s death threw a serious monkey-wrench into the general plan that had been forming in his mind since he’d arrived at the Gunderhof Hotel. He would have to play it by ear for the next few hours, he decided—depending on what happened with Julian.
    “Sam?”
    He turned as Trinka spoke. She was looking back toward him from her lookout position at the bow. He got up and joined her.
    “Listen,” she said. “We are being followed.”
    “Here at sea?”
    “Listen,” she said again.
    Above the steady beat of the Suzanne’s two-cycle engine he heard the deep-throated mutter of a diesel motor, somewhere astern and off the port quarter. He looked that way, but only the bright white blindness of the fog greeted his search.
    “How can we be followed in this?” he asked quietly.
    “It’s a much larger vessel than ours—a large yacht, which has a lookout mast, or a bridge. The fog may only be a few feet above the surface of the sea here—maybe ten, fifteen feet at the most. Our mast may show above it. And they can see it.”
    “Who would they be?” he asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’ve been here long enough to have a few ideas.”
    She turned in quick hostility. “Do you mean I have not done my job properly? We have searched every island for twenty miles up and down the coast, Jan and I, day in and day out. But searching for the bunker, which is the job I was assigned to do, is worse than hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. If you think—”
    He held up his hands to ward off her angry words. “You have a Spanish temper, Trinka. Take it easy. I implied nothing. I just thought you might be able to identify the boat, because of the diesel—”
    She looked only slightly mollified. “There are a number of yachts around here of the that size—two German, a Swedish, an Italian publisher’s schooner—it could be anyone.”
    “Why would anyone follow us now?”
    “Have you no theories of your own?” she countered.
    “None.”
    “Well, I don’t like it,” she said flatly. “I would feel much better if we can get rid of them.”
    “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they’re just following the same tidal channels to get back to Amschellig.”
    “No. We have taken some evasive action. Jan turned out to sea several times, through quite tricky channels, just to see if the other boat turned, too. They are definitely trailing us.”
    “Perhaps they’re lost and using our mast as a guide.”
    She looked dubious. “Well, we shall see. Are you armed?”
    “Yes.”
    “I shall get a rifle for Jan,” she said.
    She went below. Durell stood on the wet deck and tried to see through the blinding mist. The sound of the other motor, deep-throated and somehow ominous, seemed to come from every quarter. But he could make out nothing. Looking straight up, there was only the dazzling glare of water suspended in the air, brighter in one area to indicate where the sun was. Trinka was right. The fog that covered this area of the sea was only a few feet thick, a low creeping blanket that lay heavily on the oily surface of the water.
    Trinka came back and put a rifle beside Jan, who sat at the wheel like a stolid graven image. She said something to the big Hollander, and Jan increased their speed and then suddenly put the helm hard over, making the Suzanne swerve sharply in her course. It was a game of blind man’s buff, Durell thought, in which their mysterious pursuer had all the advantages of not being blind at all.
    The other vessel changed course with them, at once. And now the beat of the diesel engine came faster and louder from astern.
    “Jan!” Trinka called.
    The big man at the wheel shook his head.
    “Can we